Ep. 58: Does The Rebbe Want Everyone Speaking Yiddish? with Rabbi Mendy Greenberg

00:00 Speaker 1 I don't know anything, and I'm hearing everything you're saying. I would assume that it's a chutzpah that there's any English, so we should immediately change all the languages of the chadarim and the yeshivas and go cold turkey on English and only speak Yiddish, but-

00:19 Speaker 2 In Chinuch, it's a very interesting question.

00:21 Speaker 1 Chaf Av, the yahrtzeit of the Rebbe's father, the HaGaon, the HaChasid, HaMakubal be'chol ha-rav, Rebbe Levi Yitzchak is upon us. One of the things that we can do this Chaf Av is to donate and be mechatef in the Keren Levi Yitzchak, which was founded by the Rebbe in tachshin chaf daled, for specifically for Chaf Av and rezikron of the Rebbe's father. There's a very interesting story behind it, and please stay tuned later on in the episode for more details. If you've been enjoying this podcast, please like and subscribe so that others can enjoy it as well. In addition, if you've benefited in any way from Among Chasidim podcast and would like to give something back, you can do so today at derher.org/donate. I'm Yossi Kamen. Welcome to Among Chasidim by Derher, an ongoing fabrengen about life as a Chasid, our vibrant connection with the Rebbe, and inspired living shaped by the way he teaches us each and every day. Shalom aleichem, Mendy, how are you?

01:36 Speaker 2 Baruch Hashem, how are you?

01:38 Speaker 1 Thank you so much, and thank you for coming again on the podcast. Um, last time you were on, we discussed some of the articles that you were working on at the time. And this month, in the month of Av, you wrote a very interesting article about Yiddish. And, uh, I felt that it's an interesting subject and something that people struggle with, so there's, uh, what to discuss. So thank you for being here.

02:08 Speaker 2 Thank you for having me.

02:10 Speaker 1 So, um, I g- I guess the, the, the reason why we're having this discussion in the first place is because, you know, it's not so clear, meaning that it's very clear that the Rebbe is for, um, you know, mitzvot tefillin or mitzvot mezuzah, et cetera. And there's... And this is what actually what it says in the beginning of the article, there's no mitzvot Yiddish. So at the, at the same, at the same time, it has been addressed by the Rebbe on multiple occasions, as we'll hear. But, uh, there's some, um, I don't know, commentary or, you know, diff- different people can form opinions because I mean, the, uh, the reason why we needed the article was to kind of set the record straight and put things in order. Now, someone told me that they, they, they, they read it and they're still confused.

02:58 Speaker 2 Ay.

02:59 Speaker 1 But so I'm not sure exactly what we'll do here, but let's, uh, I guess you could present to us or to me what, uh, what your findings are and what the, and what it is, and we'll take it from there.

03:14 Speaker 2 That's very interesting. Uh, the, mmm, it is interesting that there is no mitzvot Yiddish. That's, that's, that's very true. And that's how we talk at the start of the article. That you don't hear from the Rebbe again and again and again, "Oh, zm darfn lern Yiddish." And, and the, and the reason seems to be very, very obvious that, uh, you know, in, in the cause of afat roshei hamayanos and bringing more people into, into, into Yiddishkeit, you're not gonna get very far if you insist on Yiddish. If all the schools only speak Yiddish and all the shluchim only give darshans in Yiddish, um, then, then, uh, obviously it's not, we're not gonna accomplish much. And, and ad kedeikach that there's, we, there's even a sicha where the Rebbe himself said it about his own sichas, where the Rebbe spoke about the Maayanoft translation and explained that the reason he doesn't say sichas in Yid-- in English is m- he says, "Kamei taamim", several reasons, but simply, but mainly because, or I would maybe primarily because that's the mamloshen, that's Rebbe's mamloshen, that, that's the language the Rebbe was most comfortable to speak in. So in other words, you very often see that we're darf ken not making Yiddish a big cause. And I think that was ev- it was even unique in back in those days. We did once an interview with Rabbi Feldman from Sydney, and he said that when he came down to Australia, he was a rav of a shul there, where

04:28 Speaker 2 they were very upset that he wouldn't give speeches in Yiddish. It was in the takanah from the old country that it was very important that in a shul, a rav speak in Yiddish. And, and he came, and he wanted to speak in English 'cause the young crowd didn't understand Yiddish, and, and there was a whole, there was a whole fight over it. And he had... There was a back and forth with the Rebbe about it because he didn't know what to do, 'cause he, he, 'cause he knew it was very clear mita- mitzah der Rebbe that he should be, his speeches shouldn't be in Yiddish. On the other hand, the Yiddish is, I mean, a Chasidim, if the Rebbe speaks Yiddish, a Chasidim speak Yiddish. Uh, to, to understand Rebbe, you have to speak Yiddish. You can't, you can't just, uh, flippantly say, "Oh, Yiddish is not important. We're gonna translate the whole of the sichas to Hebrew and to English, and we're gonna run all yeshivas and, and chadarim. Everyone's gonna switch to English, and, uh, that will be, and that will be settled, and we'll forget the Yiddish." That's obviously not, not, not the correct answer. And, and that, that's true from the Rebbe too.

05:21 Speaker 1 So may- maybe... So that, that, that's basically the, the maskana of, uh-

05:28 Speaker 2 Yes

05:28 Speaker 1 ... of, you're telling us the maskana. So may- may- maybe you can tell us what you discovered.

05:34 Speaker 2 So it was very interesting that when you, when you start looking for, for mekoros where the Rebbe's going to encourage this, uh, the, the... Or Rebbe speaks about Yiddish v'chalal, you get a very conflicting story, and which is, which is like, like I said before. At the same... But however, you do see a very clear insistence and a, and a hope that, that Chasidim will speak Yiddish. And just over the y- past few years of collecting stories for the Derher, we had, we had a number like that. Like there was Rabbi Chaim Alul was, we did an interview with him in Adar Of la-- this past year, I think. And he said, we, we didn't print this in the original article, but he had a st- he said that one of his friends was in Yiddish. And he-- the rabbi asked him what language he sp-- if he speaks Yiddish, which was very standard. Rabbi would ask people in Yiddish if they speak Yiddish. And he said no. Uh, he, he-- even though he did understand the basic Yiddish, that's the, the way Rabbi Melul said. He, he was French, he understood a little bit of Yiddish, but he was afraid that he wouldn't understand properly, and he wanted the rabbi to speak in French. So he told the rabbi he doesn't understand Yiddish, and the rabbi asked him, uh, in, in Lubavitch. And there, uh, or I, I... There's another, another story which we didn't print, where Moshe Itzak Hecht came with his school

06:37 Speaker 2 from New Haven to the Rebbe, and they had a Yiddish in Tashlikh days. And after the Rebbe spoke to them in Yiddish, Rabbi Hecht gave a translation to English, and the Rebbe looked at him, like, surprised and said, "The, the, the kids don't speak any English? Don't, don't speak any Yiddish?" And, uh, there, there was a number of stories like that. There was Rabbi Groner's wife, um, was coming by dollars, and, uh, w- as Rebbe was talking to someone by dollars, she spoke to Rabbi Groner in, in, in English. And then when she came by a minute later, the Rebbe said, "Why are you not talking in Yiddish? You can't talk in Yiddish." And, uh, at the end, the mil-- the most famous, the most famous source for this is a sicha where the Rebbe said that when the Yiddish Chabad come together, it's a pela that they're speaking in English. So it's in-

07:21 Speaker 1 So what's the backstory behind it?

07:22 Speaker 2 So the backstory we had from Rabbi, Rabbi Avshi Spiegel said that he remembers the night before that sicha. This is Vayechi Tashlikh. So the night before the Rebbe said that sicha, he remembers standing in the, in the, in the front of seven seventy, the main room. They were waiting for the Rebbe to leave. It was after Kabbalat Shabbos, and there was an argument over a sicha or a maimer that had come out just then. And there was a whole discussion going on. It was a loud discussion. And he-- the, the thought occurred to him at the time that the Rebbe could probably hear our, our, the discussion 'cause the wall, the walls in seven seventy are very thin. If you have a loud discussion in that area of seven seventy, the Rebbe could probably hear. It didn't occur to him English or Yiddish. That wasn't his thought. He just thought that the, the Rebbe probably hears what's going on. And the next day at the farbrengen, the Rebbe spoke about it and said that it's a pela that Yiddish Chabadnik speak in English. The interesting thing is that whole sicha is a maimer hamuskar. It's a, it's a, uh, it's a, uh, side note to the, to a long sicha about the milev translation. Dafke translating, Dafke for Afos Hamayan. That's when the Rebbe said, explained why he says sichas in Yiddish in, in, as opposed to English. And it-- as a, as an aside, the Rebbe said, "By the way, it's a pela Yiddish

08:29 Speaker 2 Chabadnikas don't speak Yiddish to each other." And the Rebbe explains like... The Rebbe goes on in saying that they have no problem speaking Yiddish, and they know Yiddish well from their houses, and they know Yiddish 'cause their Rosh Yeshiva didn't speak English b'chol. And Yeshiva, the only way they, they got around in Yeshiva was speaking Yiddish. So the- it's a pela that they speak Yiddish. But it's always with a l- with a, with a, like, in a gentle way, not saying that everyone has to go learn Yiddish and everybody has to, has to do this. But-

08:54 Speaker 1 One second. There's two, two things. First of all, in that sicha, the Rebbe says something which is pretty, I don't know, well, you call it strong, that it's a-- that not speaking Yiddish is part of the Shinas Hashanim.

09:06 Speaker 2 Shinas Hashanim. Yeah. Yeah.

09:08 Speaker 1 So that, that when we're not speaking Yiddish as we are doing now, we're speaking English, we are actually, uh, not fulfilling that inyan that the Yudim Hatzayim di-didn't change their language, the Shinas Hashanim. So it's a very str-- it's a strong... Meaning to say it's not just a nice thing or a cute thing or a positive thing. No, it's, it's actually an inyan in it. Speaking Yiddish is a Shinas Hashanim. Also, I think that's kind of the crux of the issue, the way, the way you're describing that sicha, that the Rebbe's explaining how it is, it's beneficial and it's important to translate for Afos Hamayan, but don't get carried away and think, "And that means that Yiddish is not important." No, far keyn haye takech Yiddish Chabad get together and don't speak Yiddish. So it's kind of like both, both points come across clearly in that sicha.

09:58 Speaker 2 Yes. Yes. That, that, that I think that's absolutely right. In, in the mugga tekka part of that sicha, the Rebbe goes on a whole explanation to say how Yiddish is special among all other languages. Uh, how even within the world of translation and where Dafke translating things, how when you translate Yiddish to another language, it brings it down to another level of, of Elul Mazza. But Yiddish is a step higher than all the other languages. The Rebbe says it's like, uh, it's like Aramaic, which is a holier language than all other languages. It's the language of Gemara, et cetera. So therefore, Yiddish, so Yiddish is ad arizya. It was Mekudeshed by Bnei Yisrael. It was, it was, it was sanctified by Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi. There's another sicha like that too by, um, by the Tanya in Yiddish. The Rebbe spoke about the Tanya on radio, and that is also-- it, it was done in Yiddish. So the Rebbe has a whole piece there explaining w-with the milev Yiddish, and there's a tzion in the Mugga Tekka Sicha. There's Maram Mekames, the two places in Yiddish. There's one on Teris Reish from the Mitzvah Rebbe, and there's another one from Ayin Beis, where they explain how something that is s-designated for the use of a mitzvah is already sanctified, is already on a higher level. And therefore-

10:58 Speaker 1 Before the mitzvah was done

10:59 Speaker 2 ... Before, even before the mitzvah was done. The very fact that it was designated as use-- as useful for a mitzvah, like the mitzvah Rebbe said, I, I think the Rebbe Rashab says that it's about y- it's, it's like Klipos Negah versus Klipos Hatmeus. Any Klipos Negah which could be used for a mitzvah, something that is not a Dvar Isur, it could be used for a mitzvah, so it already has a level of sanctity. So the Rebbe says that Yiddish ad arizya. Yiddish, even more than any regular thing, Yiddish was used for by Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi to, to, to, to teach for the Chassidus Maram, and they, they all spoke in Yiddish. So that already shows on a milev, on a milev. But yes, at the same time, the Rebbe says it go, it goes both ways. Mitzvas Yiddish Chabad, um, there's an inyan speaking Yiddish. At the same time, you can't-- it can't become a barrier that blocks other people from speaking. That's why, uh, we-- I would like to claim that that's why this podcast is only in, in English. Otherwise, we would speak only in Yiddish to each other. But-

11:47 Speaker 1 It ha- it happens to be that whenever I have a guest, um, I tell them that... I mean, in general, I tell the guests that we're speaking the Lubavitch, uh, sprach, you know, the lingo. Fine. That's a certain, you have to have a certain, uh, education for that. But- I do tell guests, now that we're speaking in English anyways, if you do say a whole sentence in Yiddish, please, please translate. 'Cause when-- if anybody's talking in English, just make it more accessible to, to more people. If the guy's speaking just Yiddish, that's another story.

12:15 Speaker 2 Right.

12:16 Speaker 1 Um, so, so maybe-

12:17 Speaker 2 In other words, if for example, just to, to give an example of the contrast, it just... Like someone told me that in, in Israel, a lot of the other chazzan they had the chadarim in, in schools, they didn't all speak Yiddish. Today, like as Polisher, Polisher a lot of them, they speak solely Yiddish. That wasn't always like that in the early years of, of, of after the Holocaust. They were speaking Hebrew. Then they specifically switched to Yiddish in order to keep out, to keep out people who didn't speak Yiddish. It was a, it was a, it was a dafka barrier of entry. It was, it was specifically done to keep, uh, to keep the doors closed. And Mashal Eken, when he came Tim Chetzmim in, in Lud, they, they had, uh, they had, uh, they had tema, tem-- uh, many, many Yemenite children coming to s- coming to the Yeshiva. And it was actually a huge language problem where the Hanhal wrote to the Rebbe, "What should we do about these, all, all these Bachim coming? They don't speak a word of Yiddish, and the language of the Yeshiva is Yiddish." And in the letters, I don't rem- I don't have it in front of me right now, but I think the Rebbe tells them to keep the Shiurim in Yiddish, and also to make another, another, um, stream of, of Shiurim in, in, in Lashon Kodesh or whatever language they understood best, because not, not Chas V'Shalom not to keep them out. So Yiddish,

13:18 Speaker 2 Y-Yiddish by... Because by nature, the nature of Yiddish is that it could be something that makes a barrier and keeps people out, and Rebbe was very insistent that it shouldn't happen. The Tim Chetzmim-

13:27 Speaker 1 So-

13:28 Speaker 2 I think it had a sign.

13:29 Speaker 1 Right.

13:31 Speaker 2 That it's an o- an open door policy.

13:33 Speaker 1 So a second. I, I, I wanna keep g- keep some structure to this conversation because we, we go in a lot of ways. So maybe, maybe first make the case why Yiddish is important. You know, you started doing that. Maybe continue that, and then give... bring in the nuance from the Rebbe, and then, then we'll, we'll try to correlate and, and figure out how they work together. That make sense?

13:57 Speaker 2 Sure. In, in, in, in the importance of Yiddish, you see the Rebbe in stories, even though you don't see, like we said, a mifse Yiddish, you see story after story after story where the Rebbe tells... gives a little commentary or commentary, um, a, a small Inyan where Yiddish is a holier language, and it's a Dvar HaPashut almost that a chasid speaks in Yiddish. Why, why would you speak any other language? So there's the... there's two sifras-- two mogi-- uh, there's two Mogida that Rebbe speaks about the importance of, of Yiddish as a holier language than all other languages. That's the Vayeshem and Khes that we spoke about earlier, the, and, and the one about Tanya and the radio. Um, the, the stories going off ha- uh, off the top of my head is, uh, we have the story with Rabbi Groner, we have the story with Rabbi Melul. There was one interesting thing. I wrote on my status that, uh, I'm writing about Yiddish, and someone sent me a piece from the Yiddishe Chaim where someone had written an article in the English part of the Yiddishe Chaim magazine saying about the decline of Yiddish. And the Rebbe would edit. Rebbe was magiya all the ar- English articles in Yiddishe Chaim. And this paragraph, I quoted it in, in whole in the article where it says that Yid- the English is... And not, not even as a mile. It just says that English is now the language of the, of the Jewish community, and Yiddish

15:07 Speaker 2 is in decline, and people don't speak Yiddish. And Rebbe crossed out the whole paragraph and wrote a whole minor that even if you think that that's true a hundred percent, you don't, you don't have to be announce it. You don't have to say Kein Yochol that this is how it's gonna be. Rebbe didn't even appreciate the fact that a l- that somebody would write straightforwardly that Yiddish is in, in decline. Even that statement itself was giving, giving in too much.

15:28 Speaker 1 Which kind of addresses a different question when it comes to the whole Yiddish conversation. The obvious question people can ask is, "Okay, fine. I understand Yiddish is an ideal, but the fact of the matter is that many, many, many or most Anash are not speaking Yiddish at home. So that's what it is. So that's what it is. That's what it is. Next. Goodbye. Case over." And here from this thing, from the Yiddishe Chaim, you kinda see that the Rebbe's like, even if that's a hundred percent accurate, but to announce it and to be satisfied and say, "You know, Kein Yochol, you know, you know, that's the way it is," doesn't seem like the Rebbe liked that.

15:59 Speaker 2 Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, I think you don't need... Even if, even, even if you're not looking from what the Rebbe himself says... By the way, there's a, there's, there's many famous stories about the Rebbes and how the Rebbes would tell people to, to speak Yiddish. There's, uh, the famous story is, uh, Rabbi Levi Shemtov and, and, and, uh, and his wife was, was the daughter of, of Dr. Feldman. So they came... They had a... They got a bracha when they got engaged by the Rebbes and the Rebbes said, said that he's... she's very happy that she's getting married to, to Shemtov because then he... she knows they'll speak Yiddish, and they, and then, and they for many years they didn't have children. They had children, they, they But they always knew they had the Rebbes's bracha because of, because of that statement. And it was known that the Rebbes told a number of people that they should speak Yiddish, and the, and the Rebbes was disappointed when she would hear Hasidisha families from Crown Heights speaking English. She would give... She gave comments about that. And, uh, uh, we, uh, if we put in the article, Chaimar Halberstam, Rabbi Halberstam from WLCC, he gives out stamps from the Rebbes. The Rebbe would keep valuable stamps. I don't know exactly why and w- in what context. I think they... 'cause they were valuable in some, um, in some, in some way. And the Rebbes had a-

17:02 Speaker 1 If the Rebbe got a letter, the Rebbe, the Rebbe would rip them off the envelope-

17:04 Speaker 2 Yeah

17:04 Speaker 1 ... and put them away. Yeah.

17:05 Speaker 2 And they can make a collection out of that. There's some stories when the Rebbes of, uh, that as a child Rebbe had a, a stamp collection. But anyways, so the Rebbes had a whole collection of stamps. Rabbi Chaimar Halberstam got some, got from, got from the Rebbes in such a, such a collection, and he gives them out to anyone who commits to speaking Yiddish 'cause... And he said, he said for him, the whole... He says, "H-how could..." To... If you wanna understand the Rebbe in, in first person, if you wanna be able to, to understand how the Rebbe speaks, you have to understand Yiddish. And the, the... It's very nice to have translations, but you'll never be able to have the same, the same appreciation for, for a sifra if you can't listen to it in the original on a tape, the way the, the way it's coming from the Rebbe. All the books are good, but it's, it's-

17:41 Speaker 1 Yeah

17:41 Speaker 2 ... it's a bein haray.

17:42 Speaker 1 My kids got, uh, stamps from, uh, from... for the Sakata, from, from-

17:48 Speaker 2 Oh, very nice. Uh, so, so he says so... And he said that i-i-it's for him, it's almost a personal thing that he spent, you know, s- decades and decades preserving the tapes, making the tapes and, and preserving them and selling them and all. And now everything's available at your fingertips And, and people in the bottom tell him, "Oh, I, I can't listen to the Rebbe directly because I don't understand Yiddish." So of course we have to speak Yiddish. I mean, it's, it's, it's almost a

18:14 Speaker 1 Okay. By the way, I remembered you said that the Rebbe in Yechidas when asked if you speak, uh, if anyone speaks, if, uh, if, if you understand Yiddish. I just remembered a personal story, a little, uh, piece of mission in my, in my, uh... I mean, there's not, there's no, like, ma-major punch. I mean, there's not, there's no, like, lesson about Yiddish, but just a fact. My parents were in Yechidas for the Hasana Tuchan Lamed He. My-- It was my parents and my mother's parents, and, uh, the Rebbe started off the Yechidas asking if, if, uh, if they understand Yiddish. So my mother's father said, "Yes." His parents came from Russia. You, you know Yiddish. So the Rebbe started speaking in Yiddish, and I guess it was going over people, everyone's heads.

19:05 Speaker 2 They didn't know Yiddish that well.

19:06 Speaker 1 Yeah. So the Rebbe stopped, and the Rebbe said, "I think English is better."

19:12 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

19:12 Speaker 1 And the Rebbe switched to English. Yeah.

19:13 Speaker 2 Oh, very interesting.

19:15 Speaker 1 Yeah.

19:15 Speaker 2 And every Yechidas, I'm pretty sure... No, there's more stories. Yeah. Um, there's also, by the way, the... What's-what's another interesting thing is that it's not only to Hasidim that Rebbe gave these comments. Anybody that had a chance to speak in Yiddish, so that the, the famous story is David Chase when the-the they had the Hanukkah seven opinion in seven seventy. For the expansion of seven seventy in Tuchan Meches, David Chase asked the Rebbe to come to the Hanukkah seven opinion, and the Rebbe said that a Jew is always making a deal, and the deal is that you should speak in Yiddish. So, so, and, and, uh, the... You know, there's a very famous video where he gives this long, very, very long speech in English, and but then at the very end, he says, he says, uh, that he has... He told the Rebbe that he's gonna have to give a speech in Yiddish, and he said-

19:56 Speaker 1 I promised you I would speak in Yiddish. Yeah.

19:58 Speaker 2 And he said, "Rebbe, "" And there's a beautiful video of the Rebbe smile by that. And the interesting thing is that, that a few weeks later, I didn't notice it. I didn't... I, I noticed this when I was working on this article. So there was a Yechidas to Machane Israel just a few weeks later, and there was a whole piece on Yiddish, and it, it, it seems connected to some extent because David Chase is the big Macher of Machane Israel. The Rebbe's speaking to the Baal Batim, to David Chase, and to all the Baal Batim there, and it was the first time the Rebbe said a long sicha to them. Usually, it was very, very short, three, four minutes, and there's an English sicha. There's a nice English video of the, uh, sicha about Chafko the Rebbe gave in, uh, in the year, the year before that. But here, the Rebbe, before switching to, from English to Yiddish, the Rebbe gives a whole explanation that it's a, it's an honor for them and it's a mile for them that the Rebbe will consider them to be fluent in Yiddish. It's a source for them to, uh, to, to have that status. It's not just that the Rebbe says, "Oh, you know, it's, it's a whole... The sicha is, you know, it's gonna be too difficult or something like that." The Rebbe says that there's a mile in Yiddish here that, uh, and therefore, the Rebbe wants to sw- to switch to, to Yiddish and, uh,

21:00 Speaker 2 and that's, that's what the Rebbe told them. And the Rebbe says that they should use it, and they should use it with their children and their grandchildren as an example of how they're proud Jews. And, uh, so, so that, that's all on the, on the, on the side of, of doctor, of, yes, we can get this. I mean, that's-

21:12 Speaker 1 I believe, uh, we mentioned Chaim Baruch. I believe he has it hanging next to the WSC office, that, that sicha, seven seventy.

21:20 Speaker 2 The sicha in, uh, about, about the mile of speaking Yiddish?

21:23 Speaker 1 Yeah. The... This one, this one from Machane Israel, yeah.

21:26 Speaker 2 Oh.

21:26 Speaker 1 And by the way, later, later Machane Israel, the Rebbe from then on, the Rebbe spoke Yiddish sichas to Machane Israel, and they were longer sichas, you know?

21:32 Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

21:33 Speaker 1 Changed.

21:34 Speaker 2 After that it went even downstairs. They were sitting down. They were all sitting down. It was much longer. Yeah. This one, this one was still upstairs. It was still a short, a relatively short and informal thing, but the sicha was definitely longer.

21:45 Speaker 1 Okay. So if I, uh, if I don't know anything, and I'm hearing everything you're saying, I would assume that it's a chutzpah that there's any English, so we should immediately change all the languages of the Chabadim and the yeshivas and go cold turkey on English and only speak Yiddish. But...

22:06 Speaker 2 In Chinuch, it's a very interesting question. The... You know, when, when I started doing the article, I remembered vaguely that there was something from the Rebbe against teaching languages in yeshivas and schools. Using language as something to teach the kids in school, that, that, that's not the thing you're supposed to do in a cheder or in a yeshiva. You're supposed to teach Torah. And but vaguely, what, what I thought it was, was about Ivrit B'Ivrit where, uh, there was, uh, there's probably bigger experts than me on this topic, but there was... There are schools where they teach Hebrew through immersive Hebrew language, where the teachers and the entire school functions in Hebrew only. And, uh, and, and obviously, that didn't come from a place of, of, uh, Torah and mitzvahs. That was obviously with a very secular agenda. And therefore, the, um, you know, vaguely, I remember the Rebbe was against it. I wasn't sure how would that, whether that would be-

22:50 Speaker 1 That's what, that's what Ivrit B'Ivrit is. It's not like the method of teaching alphabets. That's something else.

22:55 Speaker 2 So I understand-

22:56 Speaker 1 Okay

22:56 Speaker 2 ... but I, I could be mistaken. Let's say if, if I remember correctly, it was about the, about immerse- im-im-immersing the children in, in Hebrew.

23:03 Speaker 1 Ivrit B'Ivrit. Okay.

23:04 Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah. I mean, the... It could be there's two types and, and maybe we're confusing names there, but, but there is such a concept of, of immersive Hebrew learning, and the Rebbe was against it. But I wasn't sure if that, you know, does that apply to Yiddish also? The, uh, house of cheder when they speak in Yiddish and they teach the kids Yiddish, well, well, you know, what could be wrong with that? And the place that I remembered is there is this very interesting recording of, uh, Yechidas to Lautenberg. Frank Lautenberg was a, uh, a, a state senator or something at the time. He has a long Yechidas on re- on record.

23:32 Speaker 1 In New Jersey.

23:33 Speaker 2 Yeah, in New Jersey and, yeah, and, uh, he was there for many more years after that. He died only not, not so long ago. So he... And he was... And he had this very long Yechidas, a very, very fascinating Yechidas. And at the very end, for some reason-

23:44 Speaker 1 He's a United States senator.

23:47 Speaker 2 Okay.

23:47 Speaker 1 Yeah.

23:48 Speaker 2 And, uh, and, uh, at, at the very end, for some reason, the Rebbe speaks about language, and he says, "I'm not fond of the fact that yeshivas in the schools, they, they take the time in, in, in, uh, in school to teach a language." I didn't realize that the Rebbe was talking about Yiddish. The Rebbe wasn't talking about, uh, about Ivrit B'Ivrit. The Rebbe specifically identified Yiddish and said, "I am not..." I mean, we had the full language in the, in the, in the li- in the, in the article where he says that the Rebbe tells him that a fire is burning. That it was part of the Yechidas before. The Rebbe was telling him that you have to invest more money in Jewish education, that a fire is burning, and if you don't invest money in Jewish education, the UJA and the big Jewish, uh, philanthropies won't have anyone to fundraise from in the next generation. So the Rebbe says, "A fire is burning. You can't use language. You can't teach a yeshiva in, uh, cheder in Yiddish. If the kids don't understand Yiddish, then they're not learning anything." And, and, uh, the Rebbe says there, "In a good way, it's a computer error, and in a computer error, everything has to come in one second." So if you, if you're creating barriers for the kids to understand what they're learning, that's obviously not gonna be, not gonna be, not, not, not helpful. And the Rebbe says it there. You know, I... Well, I

24:53 Speaker 2 wasn't sure. Is the Rebbe talking there about it, about like the, you know, a, a day school, a, a school that's the which is not an Anash school. But you have the same thing in letters to, to, uh, Chabad where the Rebbe says... Or like in... Or Hadar of all types and all stripes where the Rebbe says that s-school, the... Teaching Torah is not the place to teach a language. The... And in the Kfar Chabad, in the Kfar Chabad letter, it's very interesting where the Rebbe uses language, very strong language, where the Rebbe says that the job of a, of a Talmud Torah is to teach, to be mechanech talmidim Torah, Torah and mitzvahs and Ahavat Hashem, Yirat Hashem. And the key line there is, "Itarucha mi'eretz midor echav minayam." Torah is endless, so there's no... So any time that's spent teaching a language is time not spent teaching Torah, which could've been taught. So it's an automatic loss, so you can't, you can't, you... So that's, that's, um, that's something that's unacceptable. And it, it goes across all the spectrum. When parents write to the Rebbe about, "Should we, uh, we insist that our kids have Yiddish?" The Rebbe says... So about these schools, the Rebbe says that, that, you know, judging by the fact that there's so few hours for Limud HaKodesh in, in the current schools and, and there's hours taken for English and the Bechal, the schools are, you know, on vacation every other day. So th- that seems to be

26:08 Speaker 2 the implication. The Rebbe says that there's so few hours for Limud HaKodesh, don't take it away for don't take it away to teach a language. But then even in the cheder where, where it's longer hours and, and less vacation and all those things, the Rebbe still s- is insistent there that it's not the job to teach a language, it's the job to it's the job to teach Torah, and that's what you have to, you have to do. In another... There was another letter, I don't think we've quoted it in the, in the article, that were to a menaalim in Uruguay, where he wrote to the Rebbe saying which language-

26:34 Speaker 3 We did. We did. It's in the article.

26:35 Speaker 2 It's in the article. That, uh, you know, you have to know- teach them the mitzvot Hashem, and you have to teach them what they are allowed to do and what they are not allowed to do, binna geula pil. So you can't wait till they know the language. If you're, if you're teaching, uh, Halakha and Torah in, in a different language, then, then you're delaying the, their own knowledge of, of, uh, of, uh, of Halakha, basically. So obviously, you can't, uh... That's, that's not something that's, uh, that's acceptable.

26:58 Speaker 3 Okay. So how do these two things correlate? How, how is Yiddish, the importance of Yiddish and the «shorush» to Yiddish and then the Rebbe saying that it shouldn't be on the cheshbon of kids understanding what they're learning? So how do you do both? Did the Rebbe address that?

27:17 Speaker 2 I mean, it-- that goes exa- that's exactly the theme of the entire article where, where it's not a myth. That Yiddish cannot be a barrier for Torah and mitzvahs. E-with all its merits, they cannot be a barrier for Torah and mitzvahs. But yes, in a cheder, so the Rebbe... So the-there were menaalim that were talking to the Rebbe and saying that the parents have said that we're not teaching Yiddish, and we bechal, we want the kids to know Yiddish. So the Rebbe's gave, gave different ideas. There was one, the menaalim in London, the Rebbe told them, "You can ta- teach, you talk Yiddish on the playground. You can talk, talk in Yiddish during lunch." The idea of i- uh, immersive Yiddish basically is fine, as long as it's not coming on the cheshbon of, of Talmud Torah. And there was another interesting i-idea where there was a letter that the Rebbe sent to Rabbi Fogelman while he was still in Buffalo. This is in Taf Shin Daled. And the Rebbe writes the... He writes that we're teaching... That the kids don't speak Yiddish. The Rebbe says that ideally they should speak Yiddish. They should un- they should come to understand Yiddish. That is a goal. But it can't be over... It can't be during the time of, of Limud HaTorah. What you could do is do chazarah over what you learn in Yiddish, because anyti- any way you have to use take time in school to «fide gez de chazar» what they learned. And there's

28:17 Speaker 2 gonna be kids that are the smarter kids that are not really, that are not, uh, that, that are not... That are bored because they already know the Chumash. So give them a new thing to learn there. They learn the Chumash in Yiddish, and that way, that's how they do chazarah. For the, for the slower kids, they'll, they'll just be learning the Chumash, and then you'll... The kids will... So other... Some kids will have an opportunity to pick up Yiddish. So there is space for it as long as it's not coming on the cheshbon of the Torah itself, which is the main goal. And that... And, and it's valuable too. And it's interesting that just now they came out a Torah from the «Shmatkin Sudak» they put out a Torah with many of Nachman Sudak's phone calls from Rabbi Chadikov. He would write down what Rabbi Chadikov told him. And, uh, and there's like from thirty years later, forty years later, after this letter in Taf Shin Daled, Rabbi Fogelman, Rabbi Chadikov makes the same thing. And he goes, he says-- he goes on a whole speech against the fact that chadarim teach in, in teaching Yiddish. He says that, you know, when you do a «bereshit» you know, uh, in the beginning, and you do three languages, or you do two languages, and the kids don't understand, the kid doesn't understand what's going on. You're learning in three different language, languages. It doesn't help. It's not educational. He says that, uh, that he said, "Giving...

29:21 Speaker 2 Teaching a kid Torah in, in Yiddish is like giving children to eat raw food. It's not just that it's not gonna help them, it's also gonna give them a stomach ache." So you're, you're, you're, you're, you're mixing them up. You're not helping the situation. You have to teach in English. You can do chazarah in Yiddish, and that way he, he says the same Torah. And he says, and he goes with... And he, he gets very sharp, and he says it's... We're talking about people, Yirashamaim, that how can they not think about this? How could they not think about the fact that you're teaching Torah to kids, and you're, you're doing it in a language that they don't understand, and therefore you're turning them off. And, uh, they're not understanding. They're gonna have a negative experience and, and is... The whole, the whole point of the school is to bring them in and, and, and here you're chasing them away. So there is ways to teach Yiddish and-

30:01 Speaker 3 There's another letter. There's another letter. I think it was... There's another letter you quote in the article. I think it was Popeak. But, uh-

30:09 Speaker 2 Rabbi Popeak

30:10 Speaker 3 Anyway, what-

30:11 Speaker 2 Shaun to... Yeah, to Popeak in Pittsburgh. He wrote asking the Rebbe whether we should insist on the school being in Yiddish, and the Rebbe wrote, "There's very few hours to Limud HaKodesh. It would be better for the parents... Yiddish should be something that the parents teach in the house." And the letter to Kfar Chabad also was very similar where he writes-

30:26 Speaker 3 But that was a little different. I think, I think the Rebbe wrote that you should do it in the house. And there was something like, once he knows Yiddish from the house, then, like there's something to talk about, about the learning to be in Yiddish, right? The, the, I quote, quote that correctly?

30:38 Speaker 2 Yeah. Yeah. No, I think, I think, I think you're correct. I'll, I'll tell you right now. It says, um, "If you wanna learn Yiddish, you sh- you «zasza hubu zugaze» him and his wife, you and your wife should do it. And in the cheder now, until he knows Yiddish, he should continue with the language that he's cont- that he, uh, that he, that he knows. When he knows Yiddish, then you'll move him into a Yiddish class." With Rabbi Fogelman too, I don't have the text right in front of me, but Rabbi Fogelman i- it's also in ti- in, in Buffalo, the Rebbe says that the goal is that the kids should, should know Yiddish That's not to say that we don't care about Yiddish here altogether. We do want them to, to, to speak Yiddish, but it shouldn't come at the judgment of, of the things that you, you... Of, of Limud HaTorah. So you teach it in, in Chazal and another, you know, in other opportunities, and then over time you can switch the language to Yiddish of the entire cheder.

31:24 Speaker 3 Okay. So I have a few questions that I don't know if you know the answer to, but maybe you do. So but before we do that, so, so can you like summarize basically everything you just said? W- so what's, what's the Rabbi's position about Yiddish in, in a few paragraphs?

31:39 Speaker 2 In a few paragraphs, and to give Tiskit Dinim here is, is, uh, may- maybe we left it vague in the article. It's easier that way. But Yiddish is an incredible thing. If our children would speak Yiddish and if, if, uh, all Lubavitchers would speak Yiddish, that would be the highest value in the world. It would be... Uh, that's how it should be. Chasidim should speak Yiddish to each other. However, that said, it should never come at the expense of Torah, Mitzvot or Ahavat Zeman Y安us. And it's very important to make sure that those who don't speak Yiddish don't feel pushed away or don't feel a barrier of entry into anything, in anything, any matter of Yiddishkeit or Chasidishe, it has to be open to, to the broader public, and that's really the entire existence of the "Her" magazine was created to bring all the, all, all whatever... I mean, there's already many, many publications. There's so much printed in Hebrew and in Yiddish, and to, and to kind of bring that to the English-speaking audience in a, in a closer way. So at the sa-- And it goes both ways. Yiddish is very, very valuable. At the same time, it can create a barrier. And the Chinuch part, on the Chinuch aspect, it i-- I think the, the basic rule is that, uh, we have to speak Yiddish to our kids, and you can't, uh, leave it to the school to teach them. It's, it's, it's, it's almost like it's, it's a very

32:44 Speaker 2 easy kapah. I'll speak English at home. We'll have it, take it easy, and we won't, we won't work too hard. But my kid goes to school, that's where I want the m- the, the Melamed to teach him in Yiddish and to force Yiddish on him and to struggle with that. That should be the school's problem. Yiddish, the Rebbe says, the, in the letter to Kfar Chabad, there's, there's a, there was a group of parents there that wanted to have a, have... Wanted more Yiddish in the schools in Taf Shin Chaf Ches. And Rebbe writes a very long letter, um, speaking about the machlikas there and speaking about the importance of Yiddish. And the very, at the very end, they say, the Rebbe says, "It's very important to..." I don't know if I have the, the lashon right here, but the Rebbe says, "The real question is, is the job of teaching Yiddish the job of the school, or is it the job of the parents in the, in the home?" So as it comes to Chinuch, I think that, that sums it up the best.

33:32 Speaker 3 Okay. Seems pretty clear. Now I have a few questions. Um, as far as you know... I'm gonna ask the first question, and then I guess I'll lead into where, where I'm getting at. As far as you know, the schools that got th-this heter or these heters to, to speak in English, were they generally schools that taught also Limud HaChol?

34:07 Speaker 2 The question is what you mean by Limud HaChol, but these, these heters... So all schools, besides for Alei Torah, taught Limud HaChol. It was unheard of in the entire world to have a school that doesn't teach Limud HaChol, and it's still quite rare. But in those days, the only school was like, like that was Alei Torah. So it was almost, uh, a non-starter. It was obvious that the schools are teaching Limud HaChol, and the Rebbe was-

34:27 Speaker 3 So you're saying, so you're saying there's a... You have a school, they're teaching Limud HaChol. The kids are learning, you know, science and math, but, and they're, and they're also learning how to write and read English. And then, but then the kid there should Yiddish and then they don't understand it all of a sudden they're speaking English. So fine. So that, that's basically what you're saying.

34:46 Speaker 2 In Kfar Chabad, I don't know how much Limud HaChol and science they were learning. They learned a little bit of reading and writing, not in anyway, and they learned a little bit of math. Um, it was unlikely that they were learning much more. It was specifically about the language.

35:01 Speaker 3 Okay. Yeah.

35:02 Speaker 2 Okay.

35:02 Speaker 3 Uh, my, my obvious question is, I mean, this is like, uh, the elephant in the room. You know, you didn't mention a word in the article about Alei Torah.

35:09 Speaker 2 Yeah.

35:10 Speaker 3 Now, I would say probably the, I don't know if it's the largest school in Lubavitch or, or, or the way the... And we're ac- I think we're, we're, we're working on an article about Alei Torah. I think that that's in the works.

35:21 Speaker 2 Yeah.

35:22 Speaker 3 So, um, that the way, the way exactly historically what happened, if it's accurate, we'll, we'll find out, uh, when we, uh, finish researching the article. But the way it's portrayed is that the Rebbe spoke very passionately about Limud HaChol and how it's, uh, metama the Chabad, the ma'aya of the children, and shouldn't happen, sh'rain atah nine, shouldn't happen to all, at all, ideally. And the Rebbe says, and that includes, it's, this is clear in the, in the Sicha that's in Chesed LeChacham Techin, I think. Um, that it's clear in that Sicha that it incl... I mean, we're not talk-- Our topic today is not Limud HaChol, Limud HaKelez, it's a whole different thing, and there has written articles on that. But in that Sicha it's very clear that the Rebbe includes in Limud HaChol also learning the sefas hamedina, how to read and write English. Uh, at, that's pretty... It's, it's clear in that Sicha. And subsequently, Alei Torah was founded, I think inspired by, by, by that farbrengen or exactly how it happened, I don't know 100%, but definitely that's the model that Alei Torah was established, that there's no Limud HaChol and there's Yiddish. I don't know exactly what's happening today, but that, that's definitely the way it was when it, when it, when it was founded for many, many years, that the whole instruction and language was in Yiddish. I heard... And I, I heard from, uh, Rabbi Shol Friedman that, um, I, I heard this personally from Rabbi Shol Friedman, I

36:59 Speaker 3 mean, by farbrengen. He said that when Mochol Teitelbaum was, uh, in charge of Alei Torah, he once went to the Rebbe And first of all, he said that the Ɣkade, it's, it's under the maskiris. You have any questions you should ask and, and, and how to conduct the Ɣkade, you should go to Rabbi Chadegov-

37:20 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

37:20 Speaker 3 Number one. I also remember, we saw that, uh, at that time, Bedford and Dean wanted a... They, they opened up a Limudei Kodesh, a pure Limudei Kodesh track. And the Rebbe said as he went to the Rebbe, like, "Okay, should we close all the Ɣkade? 'Cause now, now, now the Lubavitcher Shave is also doing just the Limudei Kodesh." And the Rebbe said something to the effect that, like, he wants the Eigina Yeshiva and, uh, if you don't wanna do it, well, someone else could do it, you know?

37:50 Speaker 2 Eigina Meisid.

37:51 Speaker 3 Something like that, yeah. So but basically the, the-- I would say the flagship school of L- of Lubavitch, the biggest school in Lubavitch, has no Limudei Kodesh and they do-- And the main instruction is in Yiddish. Which leads me... So that, that's... So, so where does... I mean, that, that's obviously a big part of Lubavitch, so where does that come in? Which obviously, which leads me to the next question, and if you wanna answer that before I get to the next part-

38:13 Speaker 2 No, no

38:13 Speaker 3 ... it's all, it's all connected. No, yeah, you h- In the, in the article, there was a very, um, fancy, uh, footnote that said that there's a new phenomenon today. There are certain... Also probably not so many, but there are, are some schools that adhere to the Rebbe's directives of no Limudei Kodesh, and therefore, there's no instruction at all on any secular subjects, including how to read and write English. But they're not speaking Yiddish, and therefore, what do you do with children if they're not learning how to read and write English, but they don't know Yiddish? So how are they supposed to write?

38:51 Speaker 2 They're illiterate.

38:52 Speaker 3 How are they supposed to write anything? Yeah. How are they supposed to f- write a test? Um, so h- how... So you, you wrote in the, in the footnote that-

38:59 Speaker 2 So we wrote in the, we wrote in the footnote-

39:01 Speaker 3 You didn't see, you didn't see the Rebbe addressing this, so therefore you copped out and, and didn't, didn't address it.

39:05 Speaker 2 Exactly.

39:05 Speaker 3 But, uh, so, so my question is about Alef Beis and about this concept of how do you adhere to the Rebbe's call, which is an important call, as usua- as everyone could read in the sichos and in the article that I wrote, maybe do another part of ksenat about only Limudei Kodesh. But then, and I ha-- The only way I see in my mind that, uh, you can do that, the kid has to be able to read and write, and so he has to know Yiddish or, or Hebrew. So what, what are you, what are you saying? I'd like to bring your attention to the Keren Lev Yitzchak, the fund that the Rebbe established, specifically the zichron of his father, Harav Reb Lev Yitzchak. And there's an interesting story behind it. In Tachaf HaDaled, the Rebbe gave a sicha, and the Rebbe said that we find an interesting phenomenon in the United States, that there are schools that have Limudei Kodesh and Limudei Choel, sometimes more, sometimes equal amounts. And, you know, there's a government requirement to have it, and that's why many of the schools have it. But the Rebbe said even if there is a government requirement to have Limudei Choel, there is no requirement, and the government does not meddle at all into which one is more important and which has priority. Yet we find an interesting phenomenon that there are schools that prioritize Limudei Choel. How so? When it comes to paying the teachers, the teachers of the Limudei Choel get

40:23 Speaker 3 paid quicker, more on time, and m-- and even more money than the teachers of the Limudei Kodesh. And the schools rationalize it. They say, "What do you mean? The teachers that teach Limudei Kodesh yiri shamayim, and they, uh, they'll still come. They'll show-- They'll still show up the next day even if they don't get paid. But the teachers of the Limudei Choel, if you don't pay them, they're-- they, they'll go, uh, somewhere else." The Rebbe said therefore, he's establishing a fund specifically for Melamdim and Melam- and Melamdei of Limudei Kodesh, that they can come, and if they get a, a, a head check, if they're getting delayed in payment and they're owed money from the school, they can take a gemach from this Keren Lev Yitzchak. As well, the Keren Lev Yitzchak should be supporting other causes of Torah in the-- in Kodesh. And the Rebbe said that this is something that, that he gave the reason of where the seed money for this came. He said there was a woman who either her or her husband worked in a school, and they were owed back pay, five thousand dollars. But this is nineteen sixty-four, which is about forty, fifty thousand dollars today. And somehow they got a check all at once. Every-- All the back pay was paid to them at once. But this woman rationalized and says that, said that, uh, you know... She didn't rationalize. It's just the opposite. She said, "If I survived till now without it and we're living, then

41:38 Speaker 3 therefore I don't need it." So she gave a check to the Rebbe. The five thousand dollars that she received, she gave to the Rebbe. And the Rebbe said that it's a large family, and they definitely don't have a savings account, and they didn't grow up in Medina, he in Russia with Mesirut Nefesh. They're Am- American. Nevertheless, she had this conviction that she-- if she was able, able to survive and she got this check, you know, unexpectedly, she should just give it away to the Rebbe. Therefore, the Rebbe says with, "This is the seed money with, with which I will start the fund, and therefore every single person should give the equivalent. Whatever that five thousand dollars meant to this woman, that's how much we should be giving to this Keren, Keren Lev Yitzchak." Therefore, Keren Lev Yitzchak is something that exists till today. Keren Lev Yitzchak this year has given out many, many gemachim and loans to teachers that n- that were waiting on, on, on pay or, or, or a loan which is a-- goes a-against their pay. And therefore, um, it is incumbent upon every single one of us that we can all donate this year on Chafod or around Chafod to, and to Keren Lev Yitzchak. And the Rebbe wrote numerous times around Chafod that Le-lenade. The Rebbe specifically used the word that we should be donating around Chafod, specifically when it comes to Chafod. Therefore, every single one, every single chassid should donate to Keren Lev Yitzchak this year, and you

42:57 Speaker 3 could do so at magbis.org. That's M-A-G-B-I-S .org. And you can look for the tab for Keren Lev Yitzchak. And with this, we will all have a zchus in honoring the Rebbe's father and honoring the Rebbe and helping The kedusha of our children and helping the mechanechim

43:18 Speaker 2 Yeah. No, so th-so it's, it's definitely true that like, like we said on the footnote, i-in those days it was an un-- It was, it was a given that, that, that most schools are teaching English, so kids are going to know the, the language of English. And Oholei Torah, where they teach in Yiddish, the kids spoke Yiddish. They take a did speak Yiddish, and therefore there was always a language, uh, there was always a literacy in, in, in, in any language. And the, and the-

43:38 Speaker 3 From home?

43:40 Speaker 2 From... In, in-- So I'll, so I'll tell you more about Oholei Torah in a second. So re-re-regarding the other schools, it was English, and that was it. It was a... That was an assumption. The kids could read and write in English, so they could choose to go and to force everyone to learn Yiddish or just to use the regular language that they know anyway, which is English. And, uh, today, and today, yes, you have a very strange thing where, where, where there's, where the schools that are not... Where it's not fully immersive. So, so it is-- The real question is about the schools that are not fully immersive in, in Yiddish because if... And the, the fully... I guess there's several layers here. Um, but I'll... But I guess let's start with Oholei Torah. So in the article, we didn't mention Oholei Torah because these haredim are not given to Oholei Torah, and Oholei Torah had children who spoke Yiddish, at least, uh, culturally speaking in the community. The, the language was Yiddish, and the language in the school was Yiddish. Enough that kids spoke Yiddish. And there's no... There was no Haredi's viksav ab-about this. We, we just left it out. And the Haredis are very clear that children who are English speakers should not be learning Torah in a language they don't understand. And that is standard. I don't think-- I, I think that's absolute clear from there, but without any question. That English-speaking children need to... Need-- Should be learning, learning Torah

44:48 Speaker 2 in English until they know, until they actually know Yiddish. The... I gave over, uh, some of these, uh, these, uh, things at a, at a, uh, at the Knessets here, at a, in a, in a workshop. And somebody who was once a, a, a teacher in Oholei Torah came to me a-all furious, infuriated. He said he taught in Oholei Torah, and he didn't speak Yiddish well, and the kids didn't understand Yiddish, and the schools told him that it doesn't matter, he has to teach only in Yiddish. And here he sees from the Rebbe, Shach Al Gabi Lavan, that it's, uh, that it's, that it's a, it's a terrible crime. Uh, it's not only, not only, not only the Rebbe says that you shouldn't do it. There's a very interesting letter to a, to a, an English speaker. So it was written... The letter ca-- went to the person in English. It was printed in the, in a short after, uh, after Rebbe, uh, after Meir HaLevi passed away. And there the Rebbe adds a whole addendum in Ksav Yad, and it was later tr-translated to English. And the Rebbe writes there that it's a crying injustice, ovil misheveya, that you... Uh, that a child would be put into a school to learn Torah in a language that he doesn't understand. And there's a whole paragraph. The Rebbe was writing it about ivrit be ivrit. The Rebbe writes ivrit be ivrit about the, about not doing that. And then at the last line, the Rebbe adds

45:52 Speaker 2 a line and says, "You shouldn't do that for Yiddish either." Um, the, the same would apply. In other words, if you, if you would think that it was only in opposition to, to Ivrit or has, has to do with Zionism or something, it has nothing to do. It was... The Rebbe was very clear. Don't learn Torah in languages that you don't understand 'cause then you're not actually learning. So that it... I mean, it, it's so, it's so clear. It's, it's, uh, it's really... So this guy, this guy told me. He said, he says, "I, I, I taught in Oholei Torah. It was all wrong. Was it all wrong?" So actually, we are, we're talking, doing an a-article about Oholei Torah, and I interviewed Rabbi Lustig, um, Rabbi Lustig Senior from... Who was the, the menahol in Oholei Torah for many years. And I asked him about it. I asked him, "Why, why are you teaching, why are you teaching English in a school? Why are you teaching in Yiddish in a school where all the kids speak English?" So he said that in the Lameds, the community language was Yiddish. So they never had to go to the Rebbe and say, "What should we do about the language? Nobody understands Yiddish anymore." That question didn't arise. But what did arise was the questions of the Limudei Chiel. Because many parents came and said, "Why can't you teach a little bit of math? What's wrong with the kids knowing two plus two equals four? Why is

46:50 Speaker 2 that not, uh, taught in Oholei Torah?" And, and there was a sense in the, in the early years, he said until in, in, by Lamed Heh, Lameds Vav, when he came into Lanhala, the, the style of Oholei Torah was that people came there almost ultimately Nefesh. The Rebbe spoke against Limudei Chiel, and the Rebbe spoke especially until nine years old. So they sent their kids to Oholei Torah until nine years old, and then they would run away to, to the Babci Yeshiva or to other schools. And, uh, Oholei Torah would have two classes until nine years old, and then after nine years old, they would go down to half a class. That was, that was what Oholei Torah looked like. And many parents were saying that, that, you know, "It's a very nice school, but maybe teach a little bit of math, and then we won't have this issue, and we'll be able to stay for longer." And like you said, the Rebbe said the Haredis-- The Hareda was to ask the questions in Chinuch should go to Rabbi Chaitikav. That's what the Rebbe told, um, told the Machal because he... The, the Rebbe told them that Rabbi Chaitikav has Haredis from the Schwer Bachinuch. If you think you have a Haredis Bachinuch, Rabbi Chaitikav has that, go talk to Rabbi Chaitikav. And that was the saying there. You always went to Rabbi Chaitikav. They didn't ask any Chinuch questions to the Rebbe from whenever that Hareda, Hareda was till Tachshinim Beis. There was no,

47:55 Speaker 2 there was no asking the Rebbe Chinuch questions, at least from... That, that was the impression I got.

47:58 Speaker 3 I actually, I actually remember by my eighth grade graduation, Rabbi Rosenfeld got up. By the way, he gave a whole, uh, Musar schmooze at that graduation that everyone should... The parents should all speak their kids in Yiddish.

48:12 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

48:12 Speaker 3 By the way, this is the Chabad. And he said, he said that in Tachshinim Beis, they wanted to throw out every kid who comes from a home that has a television.

48:23 Speaker 2 Okay.

48:25 Speaker 3 And they were about to enact it, but they went to Rabbi Chaitikav, I guess, 'cause they have a Haredi to go to the Rebbe. And Rabbi Chaitikav nix-nixed this whole idea to throw out every kid that, that, that has a television.

48:37 Speaker 2 Television at home.

48:38 Speaker 3 But so it's interesting. Yeah, he said Tachshinim Beis. I, I heard it myself from Rabbi Rosenfeld that-

48:43 Speaker 2 Yeah

48:43 Speaker 3 ... the Torah who was the last word in the Chinuch in Oholei Torah was, was Rabbi Chaitikav. Right.

48:47 Speaker 2 Right. Right. The... And, uh, uh, Rabbi Lustig said that they once prepared a whole booklet about Limudei Chiel, which has a very sharp Lashonius, and he wasn't sure if he could put it out or not. But Rabbi Chaitikav was already not so well or something, and, and it was Tachshinim Beis. He's not... You just don't ask the Rebbe. That was it. So he didn't have a Haredi from the Rebbe whether to print this or not. So regarding... So he says regarding Yiddish, there was never a question. But there was a question regarding math, and it was... There, there was pushback. And he, he would go to Cha... So Menachem Rosen, I think went to, went to... He was the menahol poel in Oholei Torah for many years.

49:16 Speaker 3 He was part of the Menahala, yeah.

49:17 Speaker 2 Yeah. He was the main menahol. And he... So he would go... He went to Chaitikav, but Chaitikav said, "I can't make any changes without the permission of the Miyased or the Machal titled by me. You have to go ask a Machal." And he would go to a Machal, and Machal would say, "You can't do anything without Rabbi Chaitikav." And they would, they would send him back and forth like that. There was another time, right, he said Rabbi Groner told him that there was a question about math in, uh, math in, in, uh, in, in Oholei Torah, and Rabbi Groner asked the Rebbe about it, and the Rebbe banged on the table and said that s- that in Oholei Torah, it's gonna be Chinuch Al Taas Likei This Only. There's gonna be no other math. If the kids, if the, if parents want the kids to know math, they should learn Mesachtah Eiruvin and another Mesachtah that escapes me right now. The, that, that's the only math. There's gonna be no... There's going to be no, uh... The whole Vart of Oholei Torah was that this is Chinuch Al Taas Likei This to the extreme. There's no place for anything else in it. And I think the... And e-even if you have Haredis, Oholei Torah... Especially bec-- The simple thing is that in Oholei Torah, you can always go to a different school. There's always the Babci Yeshiva. If a kid is not... If, if a parent wants the kid to learn the Midochel, they, they

50:16 Speaker 2 have somewhere to go. And go to Chinuch and it's fine. So Oholei Torah is the place where there's going to be no, no Midochel whatsoever. So, so today the question is, should Oholei-- does Oholei Torah need to cater to the parents who don't speak Yiddish to the kids and the kids don't speak Yiddish, and therefore change the language to English, and therefore also teach them how to read and write English so they can write something? Or is the real question, do parents sending their kids to school have to ask themselves what language does my kid, does my kid understand, and therefore what school should he go to? And obviously, the real answer would be talk Yid- speak-- we should, we have to speak Yiddish to our kids. So, so regarding Oholei Torah, it's not, it's not like, uh, the, s- the article here, I don't think it's a sak din on Oholei Torah or any other school that's te- that's not teaching Yiddish, not teaching in Yiddish. There was a place for that of, uh, Chinuch Atzma'i L'Kodesh. In other communities, you don't see this from the Rebbe. You don't see that the Rebbe gave Hederots to open special chadarim for only Yiddish. And in other-

51:10 Speaker 4 But also, uh, but these communities also don't have special chadarim for only Limudei Kodesh.

51:15 Speaker 2 Yeah. Yes. It would go together. But in, uh, in, in Far Chabad, it was a specific focus on Yiddish. There was-- it wasn't just the Al Ta'aseh Kodesh. It was, it was very much Yiddish-focused.

51:24 Speaker 4 Cheder Yiddish.

51:25 Speaker 2 The Cheder Yiddish, and we, and we published part of the story there. I mean, the... It, it's very interesting about Oholei Torah too, where there were the Lubavitch, Lubavitch open schools that were-- that catered to every Jewish child. There's no such thing as opening a Cheder that doesn't cater to everyone. And that's why in, uh, Lod they had Oholei Teman, and every school was meant to be... The, the schools are meant to be open. And you don't see from the Rebbe ever a Hederot or even an agreement, bechirav, ahead of time to open a different institution to be more Al Ta'aseh Kodesh than the others, to be holier than everyone else and to take... You see, the impression that I have is that the Rebbe always wanted that the, that the best kids should davka stay in the regular schools and be mashpia'on everyone else. So in London, there was discussions about opening a Cheder, and there were discu- and there was, uh, this story in Far Chabad. And there were other cities too, where you don't-- where the Rebbe did not give Hederots to open other schools. The- Then, and then, however, after the fact, there were chadarim that did open, and then those chadarim got many brachos from the Rebbe. So it's not, it's not straightforward on, in either, in either direction. On, uh, so in, in the Moshel in Detroit, I believe the Detroit Cheder was opened without a direct Hederot originally, and then the Rebbe gave many brachos afterwards. And the

52:34 Speaker 2 Cheder Yid-Yiddish is a similar example. And... But you, but you d- what you see, what it seems to be outside of Crown Heights in communities where, especially small communities where the schools are not very large, and opening another school means taking out the best kids from one school and putting them in another, that's something that the Rebbe doesn't, uh, uh, it's not absolutely clear at, at least it's not, it's not clear that Rebbe always agreed with such things. And, and I... That's why we davka included the story of Cheder Yiddish in the article because every, every, uh, Hederot comes, you know, there's always a question of in, in application of to what extreme in either direction. So it's-- if you, if you say that in Chinuch, kids should be learning in the language that they, that they, that they understand. So one result could be that any family that says, "My kids speak Yiddish, so I'm gonna take them out of the existing school and the existing framework, and we're gonna open a new school, and we'll have-- we'll... And our school will be only in Yiddish." In, in Far Chabad, the definitely the Rebbe didn't agree with that. The, the other school had Limudei Chiel. They did not teach in Yiddish, and it was a mesorah of the Rebbe. The Rebbe didn't want that, that, that there should be another school. And after the ikar, that when the menalim of the school, the-- it was, it was, uh, when-- there was a few different

53:46 Speaker 2 people that came to New York for Yechidas with their children, their children who were in this Cheder Yiddish, and the Rebbe wouldn't-- the Rebbe didn't ask the kids in Yechidas whether they spoke Yiddish or not. That was usually standard. The Rebbe would ask them if they spoke Yiddish. And these kids, the Rebbe didn't ask. And then the kids didn't actually understand because the Yiddish take wasn't up to par in the Cheder Yiddish. And the Rebbe was, was, uh, very, very, uh, un- very-- didn't look very happy about, about, about the result. In other words, that you, you went... It was-- there was machlikos. You opened a whole new, a, a whole new mesivta, and you pulled all these kids out of a existing mesivta. And then, uh, afilu Yiddish ken nisht yiddishe. You know, so they, they don't even speak Yiddish. So what, what do, what do we have? The Cheder Yiddish actually was another piece that we didn't print in the article. So there's a whole series in the article where, where at first they, they... Reb Mendel Futerfas was pushing to open the school, and they asked the Rebbe, and the, and the, the... Someone asked the Rebbe if he could take the job to become the first teacher, and the Rebbe said he could take the job. And then the people still argue that it's against the Rebbe, so they sent someone to Yechidas, and the Rebbe said that there should be a separate track of Limudei Kodesh, not a separate school.

54:41 Speaker 2 And the school of Peleg stayed open anyway. And, uh, and then there was, there was a, a few additional stories. But then at some point, the Cheder Yiddish had fifty kids, and the menahal wrote to the Rebbe. He says, "I hear people are saying that this is against the Rebbe's ratzon. And if, if it's against the Rebbe, we'll-- I'll, I'll retire right now from my job. I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll leave the school, and, uh, I'm, I'm, I'm go- I'm going away from this. I wanna have no part in it." And the Rebbe told him, "Ash ki chal'ke be kodosh chusei ubede cheidei zeh veHashem yatzlicha a whole nother bracha." So, so whoever likes the Cheder Yiddish will put all the brachos that they have on one side, and anyone who, who's against the Cheder Yiddish will put the Hederots against. I mean, and it, it seem, it seems very clear that the Rebbe wasn't pro opening a mesivta. But once a mesivta exists, especially after it has fifty kids, and then closing it down means fifty kids don't have a misgeres. And I don't know if the other Cheder in Far Chabad was ready to take them back. So obviously, the mesivta that exists now has to stay and has to, has to be successful. And now both mesivtas have to be successful. But as an initial thing, it's like agrasa lav davka.

55:36 Speaker 4 So you think, you think Oholei Torah was an exception?

55:40 Speaker 2 I don't know. But it seems to be an exception in that, in that regard. But Oholei Torah also was not cre-- was not opened as a direct, as a direct Hederot. The Rebbe opened-- the Rebbe spoke about Limudei Chiel at some chasdei Torah, and for a few months, nothing happened. Nothing changed in any of the Ma-- of the Lubavitch institutions. And then Rabbi Michol said, "What's going on here? The Rebbe spoke about Limudei Chiel. We have to do something about it." And he opened the Cheder. And then the Rebbe took it on. The Rebbe gave many, many brachos. The Rebbe even funded the budget of Oholei Torah for several years Until I think Reb Nissan Demanov came to America, and he told-- And he heard that, that the Rebbe is, is sponsoring the whole, the entire Oholei Torah, and he told Reb Mechal: "What's going on over here? I see that you give money to the Rebbe. You don't take money from the Rebbe." So that's... Reb Mechal heard that, and he told the Rebbe he's not going to, he's not going to take any more money from the Rebbe. And that's when the Rebbe asked David Deitsch, Rabbi David Deitsch from New Haven to be the sp- main sponsor of Oholei Torah, and he was the main funder of the school.

56:34 Speaker 4 Um, first of all, I just wanna say that, uh, part of the, part, part of the, uh, advantages of, uh... I'm a, I'm a, I'm the "" of the "" I'm also a consumer. So I love when we write about topics that I thought I know something about, but then when you do a deep dive, you start, uh, get-getting new perspective on a lot of these things. So I know. I was talking to a few teachers that are, are among my friends and in different, different schools. And I was wondering about this because, you know, in, in, in a cheder where some- where they- And I would say, I just wanna add one point.

1:00:24 Speaker 2 Yeah.

1:00:24 Speaker 4 In this day and age, you're saying that the Rebbe said to speak it at home. So I, I guess I'm one of those parents that rely on the cheder to, to, to speak the Yiddish, and I speak English at home. Even though I do speak a little Yiddish at home, but at the end of the day, I speak English at home. So I'm relying on the cheder. So you're saying that's "" okay, fine. But the fact of the matter is because, because I would say a hu- vast majority of Anash are speaking English at home, if they're not learning in the cheder, they're v- they're not knowing Yiddish.

1:00:50 Speaker 2 That's true. That's the question. Yeah.

1:00:52 Speaker 4 They're gonna, they're gonna walk in, they're gonna walk at them as if they're, they don't know, they don't know Yiddish. And I, I know amongst my contemporaries that I speak a much better Yiddish than I would say m- a vast majority of people that I, of my contemporaries, the ones that didn't go to Oholei Torah. That's, that's a fact. I don't know. Yeah. Go ahead.

1:01:08 Speaker 2 The question of total immersion. You s- you said you, you, you take the, you know, kids, you put them in a, in a, in a school where they, where everything is in Yiddish. The language is, is completely Yiddish from top to bottom. For a few months, they don't know what's going on, but very quickly they learn the language.

1:01:19 Speaker 4 By the way, by the way, Oholei Torah did, Oholei Torah did not do that as well, and I think... And I don't know what they're doing today, but that, that's for sure a failure. That, that's for sure that it doesn't make any sense.

1:01:28 Speaker 2 If they're, if-

1:01:28 Speaker 4 But they're fine

1:01:28 Speaker 2 ... if they're using the language, they're not even teaching the language. The-

1:01:31 Speaker 4 Yeah.

1:01:31 Speaker 2 But even the question of the, the... Even the question of a total immersion, that's weird. I think the Rebbe's letters are very clear against total immersion in a language when the kid doesn't understand. The Rebbe does not tell schools to just take, um, the cheder in Chabad could've been such an example. The... In there were enough teachers in Chabad that could have spo- taught in Yiddish only, and the kids in two months could have spoken a full Yiddish. That could've been a good option. But that's not-- That definitely was not the suggestion the Rebbe gave. When the idea of total immersion in a language, the Rebbe says that's for on recess, on the playground, and during lunchtime, and when you tell when you tell stories, and when you do Hazzan. There you see the Rebbe says, "Use Yiddish. Adra will teach Yiddish." But I, I think it's very clear from all of... from these letters that we, that we have here and all the, their stories and , um, which all, which are all, all very, very consistent, that the Torah itself has to be taught in the language that kids understand. And if that means if at this moment the kids don't understand the language, then, then that's the, that's the way, that's the way it's supposed to be done. And I was talking to a, to a friend who's a teacher, and he says that, you know, "What, what do you mean? We could teach total immersion. I'll just speak in Yiddish from

1:02:40 Speaker 2 the first day everybody walks in. And, and give it two months they'll, they'll understand, understand Yiddish." So it's one question. So there are some chadam that do this from very young, and if the kids at three, four... two, three, four, five, and six years old are speaking Yiddish, then by the time they get to in, in Kita Alef or whatever, then, then they'll talk and speak Yiddish, and then you have no problem there. But to take kids from at a, at a s- at a later stage in life at when-- in whatever grade they are, they switch into a school, and that school is total immersion in Yiddish, that's not clear from the Rebbe saying if that's, if that's the way it should be done because right now the school has the responsibility-

1:03:12 Speaker 4 It's not c- it's not clear or it is clear?

1:03:13 Speaker 2 It's not... It, it's, it's... I don't, I don't, I don't even have to give a psak any other way, but the idea that just switch the language of the school to Yiddish and give the kids total immersion in, in Yiddish, that's exactly what the Rebbe said not to do to children who don't speak Yiddish. So there's, there's place for teaching the language. There's place for them to actually learn it. But the Torah learning itself when they're... If you use that as a tool to teach them, teach them, they're not gonna learn. And also the child is on de... I'm sure it depends on the child on how well they'll take it and the result and on how they will feel about it long term. If a kid... Not every child is going to be ready for total immersion in a school and, and what the, and the repercussions of that could be very, very, very, very strong i-to, for a child that speaks total, total English to be immersed in Yiddish if he's not ready for it. So it, there's place for the immersion in Yiddish in the right, in, in the pla... times in school, which is not . By the time there's no from the Rebbe like that and other Rebbe that the Rebbe says very clearly that Torah is which is is not, that's not the time to teach a language.

1:04:13 Speaker 4 Learning never ends. So, so I think, so I think the only, the only thing that you're saying is that perhaps a cheder that's doing this from kindergarten, by the time they get into first grade, they already know Yiddish. Okay, fine. May-maybe, maybe that's, maybe that's kosher.

1:04:27 Speaker 2 Yeah. If, if a school can teach Yiddish on the playground and during lunchtime, that sums up the entirety of preschool more or less. So then you can teach, uh, then you can teach Yiddish .

1:04:35 Speaker 4 Okay. But the problem is my... the footnote that you didn't address. How can we follow the Rebbe's halachah of having pure Limud HaKodesh, chinuch ataris HaKodesh, including not learning the Sefas HaMedinah if you don't have total immersion? What, what's the, what's the option here?

1:04:56 Speaker 2 We haven't collected, uh, a authoritative guide on Limud HaChal yet. The Her-- And Mis-hashem, um, we'll have time.

1:05:02 Speaker 4 What do you mean? We had articles. We had, we had articles on Limud HaChal in the-

1:05:05 Speaker 2 Not, not, not comprehensively. I definitely didn't write them. But I, but I- So I can't give you an auth-authoritative version. There was one, one, one version told me that there was a machlikess between a few of the Ziknei Hasidim. Some, some, some are, some are Shavai Khaim uKhakhai, some are still alive, where what to do about this fact, this language. There was so- on one, on one s- on one side, somebody said the, the ta Nah was that the children who are not coming from Yiddish-speaking homes are illiterate, and it's like th... It's like we went back to the caves where, where they, you know, there was no ca... The people couldn't pass information one, one to another without, without actually directly speaking to. They couldn't read and write anything, anything in written form. And, uh, and this w... There's this one w- person was a Talmid of Shalom Hachaim, and he said that Shalom Hachaim basically taught us Limud HaChal. And he said what he meant by that is that they taught them how to write. He taught them how to express themselves. Obviously, all Mashnah Kodesh 'cause they were, they were in Eretz Yisrael. But they, they all... all of his Talmidim knew how to write an idea very well. They knew how to think, think through an idea and express it in letters. And, uh, and they, they all have many beautiful letters that they would write to each other. And so he said that the idea that, that you would take

1:06:07 Speaker 2 the Rebbe's halachah to make chi... so that children don't read or write a, a coherent language is just, it's just mind-boggling. It's just, it's just i-impossible. The other time-

1:06:15 Speaker 4 By the way, in our cheder when I was there, these five Rabbi Tachtel would come and teach us how to write.

1:06:23 Speaker 2 Okay. Got-

1:06:24 Speaker 4 In, in Yid- in Yiddish.

1:06:25 Speaker 2 Yiddish. Yeah.

1:06:25 Speaker 4 So he... Yeah, I remember he tell-telling us-

1:06:28 Speaker 2 Yiddish. 'Cause by the Rebbe there's-

1:06:29 Speaker 4 ... a zats, a zats is a sentence. A zats is a That's a... He taught us what a sentence is and what a, a dat is, otherwise known as a period, and what an indent is. Like, he taught us how to write letters, but in, in Yiddish.

1:06:41 Speaker 2 In Yiddish. And the... By the Rebbe, there's letters pushing for it specifically that people have to know the . You have to know how to express yourself. You have to know how to elaborate on, on an idea. And the other argument on the other side was that you're not gonna... that, that the way to make Hasidim is to go, is to go all the way. And, uh, and, and if, and if, and if, and if they don't know how to read and write, th-that's fine. It's not even a big deal. My grandfather, Moshe Greenberg, made a cheder in Bnei Brak, and there was... It was all totally . So people were telling it to him that your kids are not gonna know how to read and write anything in, in, in any language. And he would tell people, "What do they need to write? They need to know how to write a pan to the Rebbe, and that they know how to write, and that's good enough. They don't need to know how to write anything else." So Rebbe said-

1:07:20 Speaker 4 Meanwhile, meanwhile, some of your uncles are writing articles all, all the time, uh, so they apparently learned how to write.

1:07:25 Speaker 2 Or they have secretaries that do it for them. You know, you never really know.

1:07:28 Speaker 4 Okay.

1:07:30 Speaker 2 Um-

1:07:30 Speaker 4 Uh, so what do you-

1:07:31 Speaker 2 So, yeah. So on the con- on the question of the Limud HaChal, we'll have to make, we'll have to make another article. This, this Yiddish question is really adjacent 'cause the... England is another ig- is, is, is the same example. England and, and Karhabar where it was a question of opening another cheder to not have Limud HaChal, and that you didn't see from the Rebbe. There was once... There was a kid in Limud HaChal, and he asked the Rebbe. He wrote to the Rebbe say- saying that, you know, he's asking for a bracha that the Limud HaChal shouldn't affect him negatively, and he want... and he, he didn't know what to do. And the Rebbe didn't tell him to take the kid out. The Rebbe said, "It's and show more interest in Limud HaKodesh, and that way you'll... she'll give the impression that of what's more important." In, in many of the sefas of Limud HaChal, there's, there's I think two, there's two distinctions in the sefas of Limud HaChal. There's the sefas of Limud HaChal In that it's Matam T'nal-- uh, it's Matam T'nal Chabad like, like it says in Tanya. And then there's a-ano-another aspect there, but it costs him a lot, perhaps even more, which is the idea of what is being celebrated more. 'Cause in the regular school of those days, and today, depending on the school, you'll, you'll have the same thing, where what they learn in secular studies is gonna be celebrated and, and showed off and, and, uh,

1:08:39 Speaker 2 and, you know, there's a lot more excitement around it. When the Limudei Kodesh, uh, seem to be a little bit more, um, underappreciated. So there, uh, many of the sekhas there because of the fact that, that, that what are you showing you're interested in? And there's a sta- that they write to the Shliach that, that, uh, that, that's, that's to say that, that, you know, that your son is lo-learning Limud Hachal. Sayak a petel tilan and show, make sure to show more interest in Limud Hakedosh. And, uh, Bar Mitzvah sham will have to, will have to make, uh, will have to make a better collection. And if anyone has good, uh, if anyone has interesting chemer on this topic of Limud Hachayil or on the topic of Aletei Teah for that matter, they should, uh, they should send it, send it our way.

1:09:16 Speaker 4 Right. Listen, there's, there's one, there's one... Uh, it's, it's very interesting. So ba-basically, these two topics might be... There might be a b-strong correlation between Yiddish, Limud Hachayil and... But we're... A-a-and could be... And that's why Aletei Teah might be different also, by the way. Like, Aletei Teah might be, be a unique case because it's, it's, it's a very unique mesivta. It's one of the only mesivtas in the world that are taught Limud Hakedosh. And maybe the other few mesivtas, like I think of two or three other mesivtas that are also pure Limud Hakedosh, they probably have to follow that model. I mean, uh, could, could... I mean, I guess we have to dissect this maybe when we, when you, when you figure out the Aletei Teah article, and then we'll do another Limud Hachayil di-deep dive. Maybe we'll have a, a, a full picture on this. That make sense?

1:09:59 Speaker 2 Everyone, everyone can, can, uh, flag by Mashpia. That's the easy way to say. I don't know.

1:10:03 Speaker 4 Yeah. I, I... There's, there's one general point which I think is pretty much... I mean, you just have to open your eyes and you'll see, you'll see this. I mean, the-there's a... The fact of the matter is that the Rebbe spoke about the Shpitz Chabad, Shpitz Yiddish, et cetera, and it's important. And, and it's, uh, it's also important, it's also important you're not... If you don't know Yiddish, you're, you're secondhand. Everything... The Rebbe's sekhas are secondhand. The chassidim of, of old are secondhand. Um-

1:10:32 Speaker 2 Like Rabbi Shaul Hammerstein says, "Cliche in the einem avashal."

1:10:36 Speaker 4 Yeah. I-it's true. A-and, and you, you... A-a-and it's, it's like a secondhand. Everything's being translated for you. By the way, also Yiddish has another advantage. You end up using a lot of, um, a lot of, uh, Ish Brachin from, from Torah and from, from Y-Yiddish. You're a little more in tuned to Yiddish if you have a command of Yiddish.

1:10:53 Speaker 2 There was, there was a... On Mashpia, and one of the yeshivas told me that he sees when kids that don't speak Yiddish and the, you know, versus the kids that do speak Yiddish, there's a certain switch in the brain when if you understand Yiddish, you hear the Rebbe talking, the Rebbe's talking to you. If you don't understand lang-- the language, you don't... So you never hear anything directly from the Rebbe. So the Rebbe says something, it's translated, it comes to you. There's a distance that that puts between the receiver, the mechabbal and the, and the, and the original. And in a, in a... It becomes almost, almost less relevant or less, or less immediate. Uh, Adke D'Kach, someone else says it to me when I was, uh, involved in this, in this topic of Yiddish, that, oh, the idea that chassidim should speak Yiddish, um, those are Herois that, that, you know, I... He said, he argued to me that the Rebbe gave Herois that are, that Rebbe knew are not going to be, um, are not going to be practical for people. And that was in... The Rebbe had to give the Hero. And even though the Rebbe knew that no one, no one's, no one's gonna do it, and, and, and, you know, basically don't even aspire to do what the Rebbe says, no Hero, because that, that's not even, that wasn't even the plan. And, uh, I, I think that it's, it's total baloney. The, the, the... When the Rebbe speaks about

1:11:52 Speaker 2 Yiddish, the Rebbe, Da- is very careful, Dafke, to say that it's people who could speak Yiddish. But even, even if not, the idea that the, the, just the, the cop-out of saying, "Oh, we don't want to speak Yiddish, we can't speak Yiddish", like you said, there's no greater value than, than the kids actually speaking Yiddish and get ourselves not only our kids. Us talking, speaking Yiddish, and it brings you, it brings you into the Rebbe's world in, in, in a way that, that has no other, no other, uh... There's no other way to replace that.

1:12:17 Speaker 4 Right. So I think two things are true. One is that basically Yiddish is a value, and a very strong one, and it should be pushed amongst ourselves and amongst our children. Definitely, I would say definitely if you, if you can't commit to speak Yiddish fluently, at least like it should be a familiar language, something that you should try to use or use sometimes. Like something like you're, like that, uh, it's not completely foreign. A-at the same time, I would also say... I mean, by the way, um, in the beginning of this conversation, we were, you were saying what the Rebbe said. Now we're, we're doing a little more, uh, Pashanuta there. Uh, I would say at the same time, it seems to me that basically there's a big difference if you look at Lubavitch in terms of... A-and, and other groups, that the fact is that English is basically the predominant language i-in, in America at least.

1:13:09 Speaker 2 You can't make an announcement that Kane Yakum. That's-

1:13:12 Speaker 4 Right. You can't say that, that Kane Yakum. And at the same time, it seems that there was a certain sacrifice on the importance of Yiddish, I think for, for Chafats Chamayones, to have people included and that the chassidus is not a maflaga and that it's for everybody and everyone can be part of it. You could, you could, you could be living in Crown Heights, even if you don't speak Yiddish, you know, and, and send your kids to the meistes. It, it seems that th-this value of, of bringing Torah chassidus to everybody does, uh, like, I mean, one of the results is that, uh, that's a fact that we, that we... I think that's, I think that's the, the very, the basic sociological reason why we speak, why, why most of us speak English because-

1:13:53 Speaker 2 That wouldn't be a good excuse based on that.

1:13:56 Speaker 4 It's not, it's not an ex-

1:13:56 Speaker 2 As an explanation, yes. Not, not as a, not as a geshvanka. That's not-

1:14:00 Speaker 4 Yeah, but, but-

1:14:01 Speaker 2 It's not saying that that's how it should be.

1:14:02 Speaker 4 But, but the, but the, but the Rebbe foresaw that this would happen, right? I don't know. Uh, this, this is, this is, uh-

1:14:09 Speaker 2 I, I think that the-

1:14:09 Speaker 4 This is a discussion.

1:14:11 Speaker 2 Uh, but, um, I'll... The, uh, Melech Tzibul in, in, uh, in Morristown was once habering with us that, that Amalek chassidim, I don't remember exactly the details of the story, that the Rebbe was writing the Torah Yisroel that he was upset about a certain thing, and the letter was written to one person. That guy knew that it's someone else's fault, and, uh, and he was writing, and he wanted to... You know, he wrote a whole letter explaining and giving excuses and, and, you know, that it's the other guy's fault. And then he decided, you know, that, that he wrote... To the Rebbe, you don't write excuses. And then he said there was another story where you don't... That where the Amalek chassidim, the Rebbe would write things to the, to chassidim to-- with instructions, and if there was ever pushback for those Herois, you didn't blame it on the Rebbe. Like Shloime, Shloime Chaim Kasselman in Chabad, the Rebbe wrote to him not to let Bochum come to someone's town too very, too fast or at all. And the-- everyone thought that he was the evil man that was holding everyone back from going to the Rebbe, and it was, it was clear the Rebbe was saying he never breathed a word of it. In other words, that we're, we're gonna start blaming our, our anyonim on the Rebbe. The Rebbe us establish a fatsona yannis, and therefore we're gonna speak in English, um, as a sociological thing. A-actually to make it a statement like

1:15:22 Speaker 2 that, I don't know. Of course, uh, yeah. And then by the way, there was... Someone else told me a story where, where, um, Mrs. Karasik, Lazar Karasik's wife. This is going... Lazar Karasik was the head of a good Chabad in Eretz Yisrael in the early years until he passed away in the youth, I believe, or the, or the Hoffs. So his wife, well, they lived in Eretz Yisrael, and she had several daughters. They went to Poland, or they went to Europe to have Yechidas by the Friediker Rebbe one time. They went a special trip. And, and in Yechidas, the Friediker Rebbe either heard or, or understood that she was speaking Russian to her children. And the Rebbe said, "Why aren't you speaking Yiddish?" The Friediker Rebbe said they should speak... That you should speak... Why don't you speak to them in Yiddish? And they... As they walked out of the room, and the kids said they never heard another word of Russian from their mother again. That was Yiddish, and that was it. I don't know if they understood Yiddish well at the time or not, but th-that was j- another story that, that didn't make the cut.

1:16:18 Speaker 5 And, uh, and we also wrote an article that, uh, Yossi Groner was saying that when the Rebbe made that comment to Mrs. Groner that, "Why, why are you not speaking Yiddish to your husband?" And he, he says it that-

1:16:29 Speaker 2 He talks about Yiddish

1:16:29 Speaker 5 ... from then on, my pa- my, my parents only spoke to each other in Yiddish.

1:16:33 Speaker 2 Yeah.

1:16:33 Speaker 5 So I guess the halo of it all is that, uh, everyone should speak Yiddish, and, uh-

1:16:39 Speaker 2 Even if it's only s- even if it only starts as an aspirational value. Um, yeah, yeah, you have to speak Yiddish.

1:16:47 Speaker 5 Right. And then, and then the... And if everyone speaks Yiddish, we don't really have this question so much about what to do in the chadar 'cause they're supposed to speak Yiddish in, you know, internet, you know, that question.

1:16:56 Speaker 2 Exactly.

1:16:57 Speaker 5 Okay, so we're making a cultural change right now.

1:17:00 Speaker 2 And then, uh-

1:17:01 Speaker 5 I did get, I did get more, I did get more requests. I did get more requests for Yiddish podcasts.

1:17:07 Speaker 2 That podcast should be only in Yiddish?

1:17:09 Speaker 5 I got some more requests that... 'Cause sometimes I interview somebody that speaks Yiddish better than English, but I just... If, if the guy speaks English well enough, I just ask them to do it in English. The two podcasts I did in Yiddish were people that don't really converse well in, in English. So maybe if I... If there's someone that can, uh... But yeah, but then, then I get to the whole question. What do you mean? If that's somebody honest, there's another person that's not gonna listen to it because it's in Yiddish. It... This, uh... I'm going through the same debate in my mind right now.

1:17:37 Speaker 2 Yeah.

1:17:39 Speaker 5 Okay. Very refreshing. I hope people are less confused and not more confused. And, uh, I guess we'll have to have you on again after you, uh, dissect the lateta subject and, uh, the maybe, and, uh, we'll, uh, we'll make a hemsha for this.

1:17:56 Speaker 2 Very good. And, uh, on, on the topic of Yiddish, I think we ended the article with the, what the Rebbe said that using Yiddish, the, the Rebbe said that Yiddish is a good start, that you shouldn't... You should, uh, not only to be... Not to be ashamed of it, but to use it in everyday life and to influence also your family and children and grandchildren. And, uh, the Rebbe-- the way the Rebbe ends off there, I don't think it was in the article. I think the last sentence is not there. The Rebbe says to use it in everyday life as an example of your pride to being a Jew, in addition to being a human being, and in addition to being a wealthy person. Maybe it's, uh, the, the but, but, uh, it's a language that belongs to, to Jews, and y- and to use it every- in everyday life, and it's an example of being proud to be a Jew.

1:18:36 Speaker 5 Okay.

1:18:37 Speaker 2 It's Jewish.

1:18:38 Speaker 5 So let's speak Jewish.

1:18:40 Speaker 2 All right. Thank you very much.