Ep. 6 // Emergency Podcast "Wartime Changes Everything Including Lubavitch" with Rabbi Shmully Hecht

00:00 Speaker 1 In wartime, break down all the boundaries. Everything has been decentralized. And if every Lubavitcher acts today in their own space, their business space, their home, their community, as a representative of this philosophy, then you're going to see Lubavitch grow a hundredfold, a thousandfold, and bring Hasidus to, to a world that has never seen it.

00:24 Speaker 2 Welcome to Homesick for Lubavitch, a podcast where we explore Lubavitch identity in the year two thousand and twenty-three. My name is Bentzi Alfsin, and I will be your host. Let's begin. All right. Um, I'm sitting here with Rabbi Shmuley Hecht, the founder of Chabad at Yale and the senior rabbi at Chabad at Yale, as well as the co-founder of Shabtai, the Global Jewish Leadership Society. Um, thank you very much for doing this. Um, I would call this, uh, an emergency podcast, which means a conversation that is dictated and, uh, demanded by current events as opposed to just casual conversation about general topics. This is very much about what's going on and has been instigated by what's going on. Um, let's jump right into it. Why don't, why don't you tell me where you were and what your first reactions were to what you have described as a pogrom of two thousand twenty-three?

01:42 Speaker 1 I was, um, approaching the Chabad House on Shabbos morning and, uh, encountered two students sitting outside. Uh, they looked rather sullen and distraught, and they said, "Did you hear what happened?" Uh, I said, "No." S- uh, they res-- they replied, uh, "There's a war in Israel. They've broken through the border. Uh, Jews are being massacred."

02:06 Speaker 2 So what were your first thoughts when you heard that?

02:09 Speaker 1 Um, my first thoughts were that we were going to be victorious, we were going to win, and sadly, HaKadosh Baruch Hu wanted this victory to come through a tremendous amount of pain and suffering for Am Yisrael.

02:27 Speaker 2 You, you chose, you chose deliberately, um, to refer to this event as a pogrom, right? Um, many-- The, the, the general way that people have referred to this is a terrorist attack or, or a war like you just said. You specifically chose to call it a pogrom. What are you trying to indicate with, with that kind of terminology?

02:51 Speaker 1 Uh, I think we can refer to terrorist attacks as isolated attacks, um, mostly in Israel, maybe the United States, um, brought on by either government or government-sponsored or quasi-government entities, uh, that surgically target, uh, a group of Jews or a synagogue or a household, a lo-- a specific location. Th-this was like in, um, twentieth century, nineteenth century, eighteenth century Europe, a, uh, an uprising of a population, essentially. Hamas is a population of people. Their leadership was voted in by their, by their people, uh, to go rape, pillage, um, a-and exterminate the Jews, the local Jews, the local Jews for the people of, of Gaza, uh, the people on the other side of the border. And so, uh, uh, um, it's much more dramatic. It comes with a tremendous amount of, uh, exhilaration on their part, excitement, um, terrible, terrible hatred deeply embedded in their blood to go and to massacre and to, uh, exterminate Jews, in many instances with whom they've lived and dealt and, and, uh, conducted business, neighbors, people they would have referred to on both sides as friends. Um, it's an uprising of a very, very dark side of humanity, uh, and a, a check of reality when you realize that the person whose shoes... You read about the Kishinev pogrom, and you hear about-- You read stories, um, in the early nineteen hundreds of the Kishinev pogrom where people who con-- who were, um, the day before the pogrom picking up their clothing from the tailor and then slaughtered them. That's,

04:39 Speaker 1 that's not a terrorist attack. Um-

04:41 Speaker 2 What is, what is it?

04:42 Speaker 1 It's a pogrom.

04:43 Speaker 2 It's a pogrom. Yeah. The, the first thing that I-- 'Cause I mean, I, I also f-- right away was like, "Okay, this is a pogrom." This is, this isn't just a-another terrorist attack, which, you know, sadly, like terrorist attacks almost have this quaint feeling now. It's like, oh, if only it was just a bus bombing. It's insane how, how, how, how things can get contextualized that way and also minimized that way. But I, I did think of it as a pogrom, and to me, what that did was, like it didn't-- It, it-- Not that it isn't enough that it slaughtered hundreds and hundreds of Jews, thousands or over a thousand Jews, um, you know, created all kinds of havoc in Eretz Yisrael. But to me, what it also slaughtered was the, the, A, the innocence or the sense of innocence that we had, but I think more deeply it slaughtered the idea of modernity. Like, you know, people always say, "In the year two thousand and twenty-three, this and this would happen," as if like bitme, like it's impossible that it would happen. And when you say the pogrom of two thousand and twenty-three, what you're essentially doing is you're slaughtering the idea of two thousand and twenty-three. Not just the people that were slaughtered, but the idea that we've somehow moved past and that we've kind of, like you referred earlier before we started the podcast, the end of history, like we're past that. The Jew is never at the end of history until

06:02 Speaker 2 Mashiach comes. That's what I thought of.

06:05 Speaker 1 Yeah, one other thing I-- we should add is that this, uh, uh, a pogrom is, has generally been conducted or carried out by civilian populations. It's the people in the street.

06:16 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

06:16 Speaker 1 It's the neighbors.

06:17 Speaker 2 Interesting.

06:17 Speaker 1 You know, you think about the Ukrainians, you know, sixty forty-eight, forty-nine, Tach V'Tat. Uh, you think about, um, the ones in the Ukraine in the, in the nineteenth century. They're the people next door.

06:29 Speaker 2 The rabble.

06:30 Speaker 1 The rabble. And it-- what it means is that it, it, it sort of pervades and, uh, permeates the, the community. The hatred is there, and even if it goes quiet sometimes, be very, very wary. Uh, something like nineteen twenty-nine in Eretz Yisrael in Hebron.

06:45 Speaker 2 Right.

06:45 Speaker 1 That is pogrom-esque. It's pogrom-like-

06:48 Speaker 2 Right

06:48 Speaker 1 ...uh, where the person across the street comes to slaughter your baby.

06:51 Speaker 2 Right. Right. It, it, it basically destroys your sense of everything around you, right? Um, like it, it's just a complete destruction of, of your reality, and that's probably its intention as well, right? Its intention is-- like in the-- back in the day, the people that, the rabble-rousers, the people that were instigating these r-- these, these, what you say, regular people to go slaughter Jews, what they, what their main mission was to make sure that people never got along and that the Jews were never fully accepted into the community and, and that there was always an othering of the Jew. So to do that, they would, they would feed their population all kinds of insanity and conspiracies and all kinds of stuff. The goal was to make sure that people couldn't live together and that the Jew would always be the other, right?

07:41 Speaker 1 Ac-- yes, and actually in the, in the, uh, in the po-- in the Kishinev pogrom, the media, the local media was controlled by the person who ultimately wrote the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

07:55 Speaker 2 Right.

07:55 Speaker 1 And so there was this pr-propaganda that preceded the pogrom that made the pogrom so easy because people were already drinking this Kool-Aid-

08:03 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm

08:04 Speaker 1 ...that the Jew is the enemy. So they went, and they destroyed businesses, and they massacred the population. They destroyed neighborhoods. Um, it wasn't specific or unique to any particular household or, or, or destination. It was just the m-- the absolute destruction of anything Jewish, any trace of Jewish. Here you see people, civilians from Gaza who saw the border open. They said, "Let's go. Let's go steal. Let's go kill." Not even, uh, regular soldiers or, or combatants that are usually part of the Hamas, uh, military infras-infrastructure. Um, in fact, we'll probably find, if we haven't already, that, uh, some of the people that worked every day in Israel went back home, and when the g-- border was open, they came back to kill the people they worked for.

08:44 Speaker 2 No, they, they, they already made that accusation, that in one of the villages, they knew exactly who lived in which house.

08:50 Speaker 1 There you go.

08:50 Speaker 2 And they said the only person who could have known this was the one Palestinian that came every day from over, for thirty years, and he had always been this, you know, sweet, kind of nebach guy that, oh, we, we, you know, rachmanus on him, and we give him... And he was the only guy who could have known exactly the names and the ages, exactly who lived in each house. How else would they have that kind of intelligence? No way, right? Um, yeah, I mean, like it's-- uh, the immediate repercussions obviously are closer to the border there and then, uh, in Eretz Yisrael at large, but, you know, we're seeing here, it here in America as well that suddenly, wait a second, there's hundreds of thousands of people in our cities. Maybe we don't know them, but some of the, some of them we do know who suddenly say kinds of things that you would never think possible. I'm sure you had that in Yale, where different professors or different people that you knew, and you probably always knew that they were left, you know, on the left, and they had different viewpoints. But for sure, if something like this would happen, they would come out against it, and no, they didn't, right?

09:52 Speaker 1 A-actually, what I'm seeing, um, a lot of is non-Jewish students emailing me saying how shocked they are-

09:59 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm

09:59 Speaker 1 ...by some of the antisemitism or Jew hatred that they're seeing in their offices. I get this from alumni, from students in their dorms. Um, they're just absolutely startled by things that people who they thought were just moderate, normal, progressive American liberals, frankly, at Yale in most, most cases, spewing hatred that they never imagined these people could, could articulate. Um-

10:23 Speaker 2 So you're seeing the pogrom reach them too in some way.

10:26 Speaker 1 Uh, well, Esav sonei li Yaakov. You know, there's a, there's an old, uh, Halakhic doctrine that we believe in that Esav's hatred for his brother Yaakov, uh, is universal and eternal. Uh, obviously, there are wonderful nations of the world and wonderful people in the world who love the Jewish people, respect the Jewish people, admire the Jewish people. Uh, but there's an enemy out there. There's-- those are pe-- in some cases, ignorance, in some cases, just pure bigotry. Um, people are biased. People don't know a lot of things. Uh, and you see them voicing things today. Um, a-among the faculty, I'll tell you, here on campus, uh, the faculty has been moderately neutralized and controlled. Um, I get a lot of feedback from faculty that are frustrated by what's going on and wanna voice more, and we're gonna probably see a lot of things come out of this campus as we're seeing in other campuses. I hope it doesn't get to a breaking point. Um, on both sides of the aisle, um, I don't think you're gonna get a lot of antisemitic, uh, rhetoric from Yale's campus. I don't believe there are a lot of real-

11:27 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm

11:28 Speaker 1 ...uh, antisemitic people on this campus. I think it's a minority. It's a small group, and it's a radical group, which is why, thank God, this campus has been-- has fared fairly well in the context of other Ivy League and, and, um, leading universities in the United States.

11:40 Speaker 2 Right, but you, you are seeing in the public, other campuses at least, you are seeing people that nobody thought that something like this-- like, okay, there's no way they could condone this. Like this, they're gonna have to admit went too far, and no, they-- people are finding ways to make all kinds of intellectual somersaults, or it's not even somersaults. It's just complete, complete, um- blasphemy, you know, just, uh, this is okay, it's for oppression, whatever it is. And I think, I mean, something must have changed in your mindset of like what kind of world we live in. Like why don't you describe a little bit the before and after? You know, yes, you said that Alei, Alei, um, uh-

12:22 Speaker 1 Alei Yakov.

12:23 Speaker 2 Alei Yakov. And, and-- but there's a-- you said the other part.

12:26 Speaker 1 Es avsan-

12:26 Speaker 2 There's a, there's es avsan asi. Um, and there's, there's, there's certainly, you know, any-- we all know growing up in the Jewish community, especially anybody who likes to read history, the, the, the, the tragic history and the constant history of antisemitism. Um, but, you know, in many ways we kind of hope that it's behind us, right? So what changed? What was the before and after for you? Before Sonchos Terra morning and after Sonchos Terra morning.

12:53 Speaker 1 I, I'm actually not surprised that this happened, nor am I surprised by the world's response. Um-

12:57 Speaker 2 Really?

12:58 Speaker 1 Not, not in the slightest, uh, not in the slightest surprised or shocked. In fact, like we, we somewhat predicted it. We've-- and we're Hasidim of the Rebbe. Uh, the Rebbe gave us guidelines and rules about what works and what doesn't work. Absolute victory, destroy the enemy, move into their capitals, push them all the way back. Peace comes only from strength. The Am Yakov has to be, um, extraordinary.

13:22 Speaker 2 Right.

13:22 Speaker 1 Uh, the world must, must fear the Jewish people. We are the chosen people. We're the first civilization. Um, we're the eternal civilization. So the notion that this happened, um, was not a shock to me.

13:32 Speaker 2 Hmm.

13:33 Speaker 1 And I've been fr-fairly calm about it actually, because if you read history, it's just a matter of time until these things reoccur. Obviously, I'm terribly upset and distraught, and I don't sleep, and, you know, we're-- but we're mobilized. Um, I'm not depressed. I'm not anxious. Um, I'm mobilized because it is happening in our time, sadly enough, and it's our calling, our generation as Hasidim, as Jews, as humanity to stand up and put it to an end in the short term, and then to rethink a lot of the misconceptions that, uh, have allowed it to happen so rapidly and so dramatically. Um, the notion that at university campuses they could be doing the things they're doing, spewing antisemitism in mass rallies, and the faculty and administrations and presidents of universities don't know what to do. They're shocked because they've lived a great-- the great lie.

14:25 Speaker 2 Right.

14:26 Speaker 1 The great lie of the last ten, fifteen years. Um, I'm not talking about the enlightenment, uh, of the last two hundred and fifty or three hundred years. I'm talking about the current lie, um, you know, wokeness, wokeness, BLM, um-

14:40 Speaker 2 Right

14:40 Speaker 1 ... proportionality, all the things that have been thrown at us as normal. Um, we live in a world where it's okay to raid Nordstrom stores in America if you're Black because cops brutally murdered a, a, a, a, a per- a, a Black person.

14:57 Speaker 2 Right.

14:57 Speaker 1 We live in a world where, um, you know, uh, doctors are performing surgeries on little girls and turning them into little boys, uh, and they haven't gone to prison yet. Uh, they will, um, just like eventually they'll stop stealing from Nordstrom's. Um, so there's a cultural problem in, in America. It-- the West is going through a cultural problem. They've moved too far, mostly because the a-academics, frankly, are cowards, and they've been pressured by somewhat of a generational, a generational outcry. Um, they're insecure. They m-mostly can't, you know, couldn't get their cars out of a parking lot in, in many cases, some of these academics. And, uh, they live in a world of ideas, some sort of utopian intellectual stratosphere.

15:38 Speaker 2 Right.

15:38 Speaker 1 And, um, in the world of ideas, a lot of things work. And on the ground, you wake up, you go outside, and it's, it's a very different world out there. So the, the lies now are, are br- are busting at their seams. You know, here we say Athens is falling, it's burning. Um, and, uh, it's going to be difficult for them to respond because they don't believe that it's actually happening. And the reason they don't believe, it's, it's, it's, uh, cognitive dissonance is what we call it. Um-

16:05 Speaker 2 They can't, they can't admit that it's happening 'cause then, 'cause then they have to admit a lot of other things.

16:10 Speaker 1 They have to admit that they have-- they are at fault for-

16:13 Speaker 2 Right

16:13 Speaker 1 ... for this happening. This could only have happened in a culture that has been, that has been promoted-

16:18 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm. Right

16:18 Speaker 1 ... um, by them. So they're the responsible party. So they go home now, and they throw up at night.

16:23 Speaker 2 Right.

16:24 Speaker 1 Because they have to think about whether they can teach the class they wanted to teach yesterday. Does it-- is it still true?

16:28 Speaker 2 Right.

16:28 Speaker 1 The lie that you were teaching your students has been proven to be false.

16:32 Speaker 2 Right.

16:32 Speaker 1 So what do you do with that? Discourse has broken down. Um, th-there's, uh, the, the, the, the real, uh, uh, academy, what the academy is supposed to do, which is, uh, pursue truth, uh, with ideas. And even in the, you know, Socrates, Platonic, uh, Aristotelian sense, um, uh, doesn't exist anymore. There's been a silencing for years on this-- on these campuses, which is why most students today in college, you know, at least here, and probably most places, are in therapy. Because when you can't say what you think and you're suppressed and, um, you're silenced to the point of almost becoming mute, it can drive you crazy. The human being is not-- it wasn't created that way, especially not in a world that's supposed to be enlightened and modern.

17:15 Speaker 2 So I mean, everything that you've said, I agree with. Um, I also know that you know a lot more about th-that world than I do. And so, like I res-- I, I both agree with it from what I can see, and I also respect your vantage point that you-- that that's how-- that that's what you see and that you certainly have a more accurate reading of it. Um, so there's nothing for me to dispute. My, my question is though, going back to your-- how you started that point with that as a Lubavitch, you're not surprised by any of this because in many ways the Rebbe anticipated it. Um, that does kind of lead me to, to probably the most important question that we have right now and why, why we came together today, is because I, I, I'm of two minds about that point. On one hand, I, I couldn't agree with you more. You know, uh, I was brought up in many ways the same way, where, you know, the Rebbe kind of just laid a basic framework that You can-- the only way Jewish people can be respected is if they respect themselves. And the only way, the only way they can, um, the only way they can have, uh, true respect and fear is if they are, if they have true pride in who they are. And the second you start getting flaky and needing other people's, um, other people's-

18:31 Speaker 1 Affirmation

18:31 Speaker 2 ... affirmation, they're not gonna give it to you by definition. That's just the Jewish people's lot. You either, you either take it or you, or it's taken from you. Um, so in many ways, I agree with that. The, the, the, the f- the, the problem for me is that the second part of your point was, you know, the Western... You, you start talking about how Western civilization essentially is falling apart. And so much of at least what I took, and maybe I misunderstood it, and I have to re-understand it now, so much of the Rebbe's optimism seemed to be, seemed to go together with, you know, America's a medinat chesed, and there's, there's a very positive trend in the world at large where we don't live in Nazi Germany. We don't live, we don't live in Soviet Russia. You know, the Rebbe celebrated before, before the stroke, the, the fall of the Soviet Union as all good steps of, for humanity. You know, so on one hand, you know, yes, a lot of, a lot of what we're seeing today, almost the, the Rebbe predicted and the Rebbe spoke about. But where did the Rebbe predict the fall of Western civilization, and how does that, and how, and how do you, how do we, you know... Do the two things, are the two things dependent on one another? Can we expect that the Goan Yaakov will result in respective Yaakov in a world that has fallen?

19:52 Speaker 1 Right. That's a great question. I think, uh, we have to remember America's a young country.

19:56 Speaker 2 Right.

19:56 Speaker 1 Um, it's, it's two hundred and fifty years old about, and this is going to be a blip in history.

20:03 Speaker 2 Well, what's... Did this e-era?

20:04 Speaker 1 This, yeah. Yeah. It's gonna be a blip in history. It's, it's g- it's a, it's a major, major, uh, inflection point in, in American history. Um, and I'll answer your question. It's a major inflection point in, in history, and it's, you know, it's what we call, uh, you know, uh, like in Wall Street, you call it a major sell-off. Uh, you know, a, a-

20:20 Speaker 2 Right

20:20 Speaker 1 ... a computer-triggered sell-off where the, where the systems, you know, go sell, sell, sell, and you have something called bottom down or, or t- or top up where the market m-moves, you know. And, um, you have to shut the market down because the emotional response or the computerized generated response is so dramatic, um-

20:36 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm

20:36 Speaker 1 ... that things m-move outside. Uh, it's a hyperbolic move.

20:40 Speaker 2 Right.

20:42 Speaker 1 I am confident that American Jewry will s- will survive. I hope and I'm confident that, you know, we're not gonna all pack up and, and go to Eretz Yisrael. We're gonna survive. America, well, you're right that Western civilization and progress has done tremendous things, and the Rebbe did tell us that, that this is a c-- a me- a medinat chesed. That doesn't mean that along the trajectory over time, over decades or centuries, um, of a free world, a world of liberty, a world of religious freedom, a world that, uh, of har- of, of har-harmonious living, a ho-homogenous, you know, community and, and, and social discourse can't have these, uh, these pullbacks and, and, uh, moments where a ten-year period could result in something like this. Look at h- American history. Uh, Pearl Harbor, the, the day of infamy, how did it happen, right?

21:27 Speaker 2 Right.

21:27 Speaker 1 Uh, the McCarthy era, um, the silencing of the left, right? The dramatic s-silencing by McCarthy. Look at the-

21:34 Speaker 2 I mean, I think you're skipping over, uh, what we were just talking about, Ben Hecht. There was ten years where there was, there, there were Nazi rallies in Madison Square Garden-

21:42 Speaker 1 In Madison Square Garden

21:43 Speaker 2 ... with tens of thousands of people.

21:44 Speaker 1 Yeah.

21:45 Speaker 2 And there's a growing Nazi party in New York City.

21:48 Speaker 1 There probably still is.

21:49 Speaker 2 But bullying... Yeah, I know, but there was-- They were out in the open bullying Jewish people on the daily.

21:53 Speaker 1 So, right. So let's just go through. Then you had, you had, you had, you had the McCarthy era. You had dramatic events like you had Vietnam, um, the Korean War to some extent. Um, Vietnam, you had, um, uh, um, the, the social up-upheaval and, uh, during Vietnam, right?

22:08 Speaker 2 Right.

22:09 Speaker 1 The sit-ins in Berkeley-

22:10 Speaker 2 Right

22:10 Speaker 1 ... and, and the, and the, um, the, uh, civil rights movement, right?

22:14 Speaker 2 Right.

22:14 Speaker 1 And the civil rights movement on both sides, the pro and the, and the, and the con for, for-

22:18 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm

22:18 Speaker 1 ... for real, uh, um, uh, civil rights in, in America. Um, so you have blips along the way, and America recovers because America ultimately, as the Rebbe t-- as we know, uh, if you read the Constitution and if you, uh, understand the Bill of Rights and understand the, the, what, what type of, uh, uh, democracy, I think, uh, was, you know, the best of, the best of all of the worst options is, is a d- a democratic regime for the world. Jews obviously have to have a Jewish state, but for the world, democracy is the best. There will be, um, a recovery from this, and America's going to have to heal after this, just like they healed and reverted back. And I think, uh, society reverts back to the mean. There was a time when we thought Bernie Sanders was gonna become the president of the United States, and it didn't happen. By Joe Biden, like him or not, now we have to love him, um, because he showed his true colors. He was the mean. He was the, the, the, the middle road, you know, the Rambam's middle road. Not an extreme to the left, not an extreme to the right. The extreme right in this country, vocal, doing terrible, terrible things, hasn't taken over the United States, and the far left hasn't quite taken over the United States. There is still a center in the United States, and therefore, America's going to have to recover from this and rethink a lot of things,

23:29 Speaker 1 and that's healthy. It's healthy for, for, for a bruise, for a, a, a very damaging moment, um, and it allows you to come back. I think Eretz Yisrael is gonna be stronger. It's gonna be larger than it was.

23:41 Speaker 2 Yeah.

23:41 Speaker 1 It's going to be a stronger nation. It's going to be a united nation.

23:45 Speaker 2 Yeah.

23:45 Speaker 1 A much more united. Um, I was talking to some pilots, uh, about some interesting things going on in chats, uh, Israeli pilots. Uh, there's some chats, uh, WhatsApp groups that they have. Um, some fascinating stories, but the nekuda is, the, the point was, uh, uh, uh, two weeks ago, there were hundreds of, of, uh, hundreds of pilots and maybe thousands of Israeli soldiers that said they wouldn't serve.

24:06 Speaker 2 Right.

24:07 Speaker 1 Uh, I, I don't think there's one who's not in, in uniform right now serving.

24:12 Speaker 2 So the contrary, there are more than the, there are more than they asked for.

24:15 Speaker 1 Okay. So-

24:16 Speaker 2 And you have Haredim joining the army now also.

24:18 Speaker 1 So it's, it's, it's, uh-- and I think you'll see Haredim after this war volunteer.

24:21 Speaker 2 Yeah.

24:21 Speaker 1 I think you're gonna see the numbers increase in Eretz Yisrael. In America, um, the, the haters have shown their faces. Don't take this out of context. It's a terrible, tragic thing. In the long term, it's a good thing. Show your faces. We'll get your license plates and your addresses. We'll find out what schools you go to and where you wanna work, where you live, and what you eat. We'll know who you are. We'll put the lists together, and we'll deal with it. We, being the American people, will deal with it. We will deal with it appropriately. We'll deal with it civilly. We'll deal with it legally. But we're going to deal with it to make sure that you don't become the mainstream of this country, and America will be a stronger nation after this, just as it was after all the setbacks that America faced. And the same thing with Bnei Yisrael, Am Yisrael. We are going to see tremendous, uh, rebuilding, almost a resurrection. A resurrection of the dormant soul of the Jew, a resurrection of the spirit of America, a resurrection of, of America, um, that brought liberty and continues to, to bring liberty to the world. It will happen on a dual track. Hopefully, it will happen quickly, but it's going to be dramatic, and we will look back at this moment as a seminal moment in history. When I interview Yale alumni about their time at Yale, here in nineteen forty-eight when the State of Israel was being formed, in nineteen

25:41 Speaker 1 sixty-seven, um, when the Six-Day War occurred, or when John F. Kennedy was shot in nineteen sixty-three, uh, th-those were mo- those were seminal moments in their lives that changed their lives, and they changed America. Nine eleven was a, a changed America.

25:54 Speaker 3 Sure.

25:54 Speaker 1 And America became stronger after nine eleven.

25:58 Speaker 3 Y- So, so y-y-you're, you're se- you're buying, you're buying the American stock.

26:02 Speaker 1 I'm long.

26:03 Speaker 3 You're long on America. You're bullish.

26:04 Speaker 1 Yeah.

26:05 Speaker 3 Um-

26:06 Speaker 1 I'm long the American, I'm long the American spirit. I'm not long the stock market, just so that-

26:09 Speaker 3 Fair enough.

26:10 Speaker 1 I don't want anybody buying stocks on my back.

26:12 Speaker 3 Uh, this is not a financial recommendation.

26:14 Speaker 1 Yeah.

26:14 Speaker 3 We take no responsibility.

26:15 Speaker 1 Yeah. Do we have a disclosure for the, uh, for the podcast that we don't give financial advice?

26:18 Speaker 3 We, we just made it.

26:19 Speaker 1 Okay.

26:19 Speaker 3 We just made it.

26:20 Speaker 1 Thanks.

26:20 Speaker 3 Um, we just made it. But, um, uh, look, I, I think, I think it's a very interesting conversation to have, and I th- I, I personally see two sides to it. You know, there's, there's the very pessimistic side, where, like, America's just going down and down into the pits, and, uh, things are just getting worse and worse. And there's the optimistic side where, you know, America is this kind of sleeping giant that just basically wakes up, takes care of business, and goes back to sleep, and then it gets woken up and, you know, it goes-- it happens again and again. And, you know, uh, like I was telling you earlier, I was reading this book yesterday, The Abandonment of the Jews, which is about-- which is a very disturbing history of how Amer-- the American government, uh, kind of forgot about the Jews... Not kind of. Deliberately forgot and ignored the Jews that were being massacred in Europe during the Holocaust. And on one hand, that book is just disturbing. It's totally dystopian and, and dispiriting, and it's like, how could this have happened? But then you look-- but then on the other hand, you say, "Wait a second, look at American Jewry today." Like, look what's-- like, for all the horror in that book, look what has ha-- like, uh, we're, we're in a better place today than we were then. So, like, it-- that kind of captures both sides of it. But to me, the interesting question, at least for this podcast, is

27:41 Speaker 3 more, m-must we combine these two narratives? Like, is Lubav- is the Lubavitch outlook dependent and conjoined with, with this optimistic American outlook, or, or is it independent? Like, how much, how much of how we look at this situation as Lubavitchers is intertwined with the American outlook? Because the Amer-- like, I'll give you... I, I, I, I was having this thought experiment on, on my way here. So you'll have now, like you have this-- I mean, I don't find this a very compelling argument, but it's become a quite popular argument. It's almost more like just like a, a shtich, where like, um, you'll have people who are supporting Israel making fun of, let's say, the, the LGBT community for Palestine, right? And they're like, "Where else in the Middle East can you be LGBT if not in Israel?" Right? So, like, k-kind of what k- what kind of joke is it to be LGBT for Palestine? In Israel, you can be LGBT. Like, you should be for them. And to me, that kind of illustrates where the two things fa- come apart, right? Because your argument is for Israel, but your argument is not for LGBT, right? Y-your argument is for Eretz Yisrael, not for the modern state of Israel being all tolerant and liberal and progressive. In many ways, your argument is fakert, that that's where we've lost our way. We've lost our pride and, and our identity, right? So as a Lubavitcher, you end up being like, okay, so what's, what's, what's-- you know,

29:09 Speaker 3 if I start looking forward and I start l- trying to think, like, where do things go and, and w-what, what do I... Like, what can I... W-what, what, what do I hope to happen? Where do I... Like, how do I understand the unfolding of these events? You see what I'm asking you?

29:21 Speaker 1 Yeah. I think, I think the answer is that when, when, when you're shocked, when your reality is shattered, and, and structural societal norms break down or, or, or turn upside down, you have to s-- if you're a thinking person, you have to scratch your head and say, "Where did we go wrong? W-where was the mistake?" And you have to go back to the, the texts, right, the ideas-

29:51 Speaker 3 Mm-hmm

29:51 Speaker 1 ... um, on which you build your life and that guide you in your life. If you, if you do this in a three-prong, a three-prong approach, where we talk about it, we talked a little bit about America, a little bit about Israel, and you talk about Lubavitch. I think if you put them together, we ask ourselves, we're Lubavitcher Hasidim, and we're guided with the teachings of the Rebbeim, right? So you start with Tanya, and you ask yourself, you go back and you read Tanya again, and you ask yourself, "Is there anything in Tanya that, that shouldn't have been said?" And the answer is, every single absolute word, syllable, and space in the book of Tanya is true now more than ever.

30:22 Speaker 3 Mm-hmm.

30:22 Speaker 1 You go through all the maamarim of all the Rebbeim, you go through the lives that the Rebbeim lived, and you analyze the Mesiras Nefesh they had, the way the Tzemach Tzedek fought the Haskalah-

30:30 Speaker 3 Right

30:30 Speaker 1 ... uh, the way the Frieda Rebbe fought the K- the KGB, the way the Alter Rebbe fought the, the, you know, f- dealt with the Misnagdim, the way he dealt with the Tsar. They-- th-those truths are highlighted now more than ever.

30:39 Speaker 3 Right.

30:39 Speaker 1 So for us, if, if that is the unique space in which we live as Hasidim, which is the, the ra-- the teachings of Hasidus, the Torah, and then the lives of the Rebbeim who guided us, the lessons and the directives that they gave us, we should be liberated because we should smile at ourselves and says, "Anan, anan po yomama anan. Uh, yad hasidim al yena."

31:00 Speaker 3 Right.

31:00 Speaker 1 We knew this, so we're, we're confident. We're comfortable. We're not throwing up Living with a, an existential metamorphosis-

31:08 Speaker 3 Right

31:08 Speaker 1 ... of, of realizing that we lived a lie. Um, we lived the truth. Now the world is seeing it. So the w- in, in this evolution of, of, of despair, in this evolution of mayhem, the world is going to look back and say, "Okay, where are the truths? Who are the people that preached these truths? Who are the people that never had these issues," right?

31:32 Speaker 3 Right.

31:32 Speaker 1 "And these problems that the, that, that the, that the m- the most current modern propaganda has, has pushed and stuffed into our faces." Well, you know, Shabbos is still Shabbos, and Pesach is Pesach.

31:43 Speaker 3 Right.

31:44 Speaker 1 And Torah is Torah.

31:45 Speaker 3 Right.

31:45 Speaker 1 And Emes is Emes, and Amalek is Amalek, and Bnei Yisrael is Bnei Yisrael. So-- And Chassidim are Chassidim, and Lubavitch is Chassidim. We have to mobilize. We have to be humble, remain humble and confident with absolute conviction that we are carrying the torch, that to some extent has been somewhat diminished because of the pressures, but the world needs us now more than ever. L- the world needs Lubavitch. Within the Jewish world, the world needs us more than ever because we have something that they don't have, which is the teachings of Chassidus and the directives of the Rebbe, or up to the Rebbe's approach to dealing with Eretz Yisrael in its form today as a modern state, the political leadership, the military leadership, and the way Ch- the Rebbe sent Shluchim to Eretz Yisrael and sent Chassidim to Eretz Yisrael.

32:26 Speaker 3 Right.

32:27 Speaker 1 So w-we have to, uh, mobilize ourselves. We have to a-activate Lubavitch in mass. Um, it's happening-

32:35 Speaker 3 Okay. I w- I wanna talk about that, but before we get there, I wanna highlight something you just talked about. I, I, I wanna get to the mobilization also, but I think what you just said is such a powerful point, and I, and as I've als- I've also been thinking about it so much. Like I don't think I've spent time thinking about the Friediker Rebbe in prison and like the, the struggle with the KGB and which included also my grandparents and then uncles and cousins and Chassidim that I learned about, you know. Like to me, that was always far away. It goes back to what we spoke about earlier, like the pogroms were always far away. The KGB was always far away. The idea of like, "I'm not gonna be scared of you. Like I'm, I'm gonna live my life now in fear." Like the Friediker Rebbe's line, like a gun can scare somebody with, with, with, with one world, not someone with two worlds, which is in a way just the you know, it, it, it ca- it, it encapsulates the, the comeback to the Islamic, uh, desire for death. It's, it's not that I want to die, but you're not gonna scare me with, with your bloodlust and your death cult. You're not gonna scare me with that, right? And I have never thought about those things before so much 'cause I always felt like that's Lubavitch history.

33:43 Speaker 1 Yeah.

33:43 Speaker 3 You know, like that's Der Shishi. Like Der Shishi is build Chabad houses and, or you know, whatever it is, be, be Lubavitcher and it c- like even think, you know, I had conversations with people about Lubavitch identity a few months ago, and it, it all feels so quaint 'cause we're kind of just what does Lubavitch identity mean today, and how is it different than it used to be? And it's like, wait a second. I feel in a way so much more reconnected now to what the Lubavitch identity has meant through the generations and what Yiddishkeit has meant through the generations. Like the Alter Rebbe wrote Tanya or revised Tanya in prison, right? He, he thought, he thought through Tanya in prison. The older Rebbeim went through some kind of um, uh, they went through some kind of oppression. Life was not, life was not on, on, on easy, right? Chassidus was not, was never something that worked hand in hand with the world, just sort, s- a completely sorted out world. So why don't you talk a little bit about... 'Cause before we get to mobilization and ac- and action, I feel like there has to be also a moment of introspection. What has to change in your mind? Not what Lubavitch does to the world outside, that'll come, but what has to change in the way Lubavitch sees itself as a result of the pogrom of two thousand twenty-three?

34:55 Speaker 1 I, I, uh, L-Luh- for Lubavitchers, um, we, we, we are, we are blessed to have been taught, um, con- how to deal with confrontation, how to deal with, uh, adversarial, um, neighbors, how to deal with opposition, uh, because truth is very expensive, Bentzi.

35:19 Speaker 3 Mm-hmm.

35:19 Speaker 1 Truth is very expensive. It's the most expensive commodity in the world, but it's also the most precious.

35:24 Speaker 3 Right.

35:24 Speaker 1 It's-

35:24 Speaker 3 The Alter Rebbe lost how many Chassidim by putting the word Emes?

35:26 Speaker 1 There you go. So, so, so if truth is expensive and it is the most cherished thing in the world that every human being, sane, rational, divinely created human being un-understands, then as Lubavitchers, as Jews in general, being, um, uh, Am La'Ovad Et Hashem and an oppressed nation historically, but within the Jewish world, Lubavitch has a unique, in the last two hundred, uh, two hundred and tw- twenty-five years, since, since, uh, uh, Yud Tes Kislev or two hundred and fifty years, Chassidim from the, from the beginning until today. You know, the neo, the neo-Misnagid was the Reform rabbi, is the Reform rabbi. Uh, the neo-Misnagid is the, is the far left. The neo-Misnagid is the, um, is the, uh, the, the, the modern person who mocks the traditional lifestyle, right? So we've experienced this f- we have experienced it f- uh, for, for hund- for, for a few hundred years as Lubavitchers.

36:23 Speaker 3 Right.

36:23 Speaker 1 In different, in different iterations every decade, every century. Because of that, we're stronger because we've been given the ammunition and the tools, uh, and the capacity to deal with it if we think deeply into our ph- our philosophy, our ideology, um, the maxims and the adages and the, and the, and the idioms that we li- that we've lived with, that we pass around. L'chatchilah Ribbur, I mean, it's just a simple thing. L'chatchilah Ribbur for us is n- is normal. What does that mean, l'chatchilah Ribbur? That there is no, there is no real a- a- a- a- adversary. I'm on the other side already. I've jumped-- I've, I've seen you. I understand you. I know you. I know through you, and I can see the other side, and I'm on the other side. Take, take anything like Didan Natchach. We-- Didan Natchach For us, it's normal to li-- most children don't grow up with that type of deep, strong affirmation of who they are. So-

37:14 Speaker 3 But I would push back on that actually, because I feel like the Chachilah Ribir, it's known that the Chachilah Ribir was something that the Marash said like once. And the Rebbe was the one that turned that into being the identity of the Marash. Didan Atzach, I think, is essentially like something that only became a Lubavitch thing in Derashvi, right? And so in many ways, that kind of optimism, that like endless optimism feels very much a modern Lubavitch thing. I'm not saying that to denigrate it, but it feels like it's like a post-Russia American, post-Russia Lubavitch, Lubavitch in America kind of way of thinking, right? The world's your oyster, go conquer the world, right? Don't you feel like, like let's say you're running a school, you know, or you're talking to your children. Don't you feel that now we have to not abandon those ideas, but also revisit and reclaim some of the things that were said beforehand that are a little bit more survival mode and, and, I mean, like the Chachilah Ribir sounds beautiful, but there's also like, like the Chassidim in Russia, when they were trying to survive as Yidden under the communists, I don't think they were thinking of Chachilah Ribir. There were, there was a different kind of gritty, very like realistic appreciation of, of just surviving and, and, and, and tapping into what's true and what's worth sacrificing for.

38:42 Speaker 1 Let me, let me answer your question, if I may. The Rebbe Marash only had to say something once. That's first of all.

38:48 Speaker 3 Fair enough.

38:49 Speaker 1 Yeah. And I think that, you know, we are often conflicted with, you know, ein kel chadosh tachas hashemesh. Kal ma she'atamed basagasa l'chadosh nam l'meshe mesinai. Are things new? Are there new ideas? Or is everything already there and we just have to go back in Torah and find them?

39:07 Speaker 3 Right.

39:08 Speaker 1 And those, that dichotomy, that dichotomy of, of, of should we be novel? Can we be novel? Can we be revolutionary? Is there a reason to be revolutionary? Or do we just have to be traditional, right? And how do you straddle that line of the big new idea versus go back and just perpetuate the old ideas? I don't see them as a, as a, as a, as a conflict. When we say that there's nothing new under the sun, it means that everything is there. And this is basic Chassidus and all the Maimarim and all the theories of Chassidus is that it's there and it's there in a certain form.

39:42 Speaker 3 Right.

39:43 Speaker 1 And it may be in a hidden form or concealed form. It may be dormant.

39:46 Speaker 3 Right.

39:46 Speaker 1 And there are times like, you know, where you have to, where you have to find them and you have to reveal them. And it's our job to illuminate those ideas that are distilled. The Rebbe talks a lot about this with the Frieda Gur Rebbe, certain campaigns, the birthday, for example. You know, we celebrate birthdays now in Lubavitch and the Rebbe really promoted this idea of birthdays. Something that you don't see a lot in Jewish history. And the Rebbe's writings, the Rebbe's Chassidus, the Rebbeim talk a lot about the notion that there are things that in different periods of history, we have the right to experience en masse or to promote, even though maybe historically they weren't necessarily promoted. And you can go back and find places in the Gemara where it talks about the notion of a birthday. And all you need to find is one place because it's eternal. That one line in the Gemara has an eternal message. And maybe it was written then 1,500 years ago, 1,600 years ago for it to become relevant today. When we talk about Didan Atzach, we talk about the Chachilah Rebbe, we talk about the Rebbe, the Alter Rebbe saying, "Kataytim mikhalachsad," and his approach to the Misnagdim after Yitzhak Kislev, right? Go back into any of the things that the Rebbeim said. They are as true today, and today maybe it's our generation's moment to augment them, to grow them, and to develop them in a much bigger way. The Chassidim in Russia survived because

41:12 Speaker 1 there were, there was a L'chachilah Rebbe approach to it. And if it wasn't articulated in those words, it was articulated in other words. The Mesiras Nefesh of the Frieda Gur Rebbe was the Mesiras Nefesh of Rav Ramavinu. It's no different. It's, there's a truth in the universe that our responsibility that the Amrishta gave us and the Rebbeim gave us is to promote that truth. In every generation, it manifests itself in a different way. And so every generation has to go back. These are truths. If they're true, they have to always be true. They have to be found in Torah, and they have to be true for infinite time. So what are they? And that's where the Svarim and the Sichas and the Maimarim come back out. And you go back and you look at the old classics, and you go back and you look at the old Maimarim, and you go back and you look at the Sichas, and you look at the Frieda Gur Rebbe, and you look at the videos that are being put out, and you see, is this any different than it was then?

42:02 Speaker 3 Right.

42:02 Speaker 1 And so Chabad, I think, has an obligation. It's incumbent upon us today to cherish the gift we were given as Chassidim, to cherish the teachings of the Rebbeim. We're truly chosen among Bnei Yisrael to be the leaders, to bring Mashiach, to inspire the world. We have the chemer, we have the goods, and we have to bring them, bring it to the world. And the world is more prepared today, today, right now, during this Milchama, to accept everything that Lubavitch stands for infinitely greater possibly than ever before in the history of Lubavitch, because we don't have to tell it to them. They're seeing it on their own.

42:48 Speaker 3 Yeah.

42:48 Speaker 1 And they're turning to us today. They're turning to the strength of the shtuchim on campus that are standing outside rallies, putting on tefillin with students while hundreds of Jew haters march by. Where does that come from? That student passed the tefillin stand. His freshman year, his sophomore year, his junior year, and in his senior year, he now has woken up and he says, "Look, that's the Jew. That's me they're marching against. That's not just the rabbi they're marching against." 'Cause his mother called him and said, "Are you okay?" every single day, and he says, "No, Mom, I can't get out of the dorm."

43:22 Speaker 3 Right.

43:22 Speaker 1 And so now he's-- reverts back to something that has been there. We never wavered. We, uh, we're always there. Our message hasn't changed. Welcome aboard. So now shluchim on campus and shluchim around the world are seeing people that never came to Chabad calling. They wanna help. They wanna support. And those that were on the other side of history are pulling their money from universities, are rethinking everything. Another thing I think it-

43:50 Speaker 3 But you don't, but you don't think that there needs to be some kind of change. I, I, I'm not disputing your, your main point, which is that truth is eternal. Uh, what, you know, you don't have to reinvent the wheel, and, and, and with Torah, it's actually forbidden to reinvent the wheel. Like, what's true is true, and, you know, original is not necessarily a good thing, right? And very often isn't. Um, but let me, let me just illustrate my point a little bit, you know. So for example, this thing happened, right? This, th-this, this pogrom happened, and within a few days you start seeing the responses of the rabbis from different communities and what to do and, you know. So like I saw, for example, the, the letter from the Rabbonim in Eretz Yisrael, the Rabboim in Eretz Yisrael, and it was pretty much, from what I could tell, pretty much the same things that they usually say. You know, do this, do that. Do-- Like, the rabbi said this, rabbi said that, uh, be ma'aseh in this, be ma'aseh in that, and so on. My point is not that any of that was bad, but my point is only that it seemed like same old. And then I saw, uh, someone published a letter from Rabbi Schachter in YU where he was saying that in a time like this, um, you should be saying Avinu Malkeinu on Shabbos, even on Shabbos. I-- You're not supposed to say Avinu Malkeinu on Shabbos, only Ne'ilah. A

45:05 Speaker 3 time like this is like Ne'ilah, right? I'm not here to say Rabbi Schachter versus Rabbonim in Eretz Yisrael or to, you know, who's a bigger Rav or whatever, but it seemed to me like he was addressing the moment as opposed to just going back to same old. Now, he wasn't being machadis or new thing in Torah. It was just the question becomes, yes, you don't wanna start inventing for the sake of inventing, but where do you go to find the choimer that you're talking about that, that's going to be applicable and relevant and, and energizing to today? And so my question is not that Lubavitch should change and become something it never was. That's not my argument. My argument is, my question is, it doesn't seem to me that Lubavitch... Yes, there are many things that Lubavitch knew all along, or there are truths that it was holding onto all along. But I think many Lubavitchers are also startled by what happened, and they're also rethinking things, right? So to say that we can, that we have only answers and we don't-- You can't have answers to what happened now if you haven't asked new questions, right? This is a new situation, at least for all of us that are living today. So I'm not arguing that we have a lot of good answers, and we have to find those answers, but I don't think we have those answers already. You see what I'm saying?

46:20 Speaker 1 Yeah. I, I, I think that, um, the answer to that is, is, is, um, is going to require a tremendous amount of bravery. Lubavitch has unbelievable talent and genius. I'm not just speaking about shluchim and Rabbonim and Mechunim. I'm talking about the masses of Lubavitch. To some extent, there's a parallel where there, there's been a silencing, um, o-o-of those masses. I mean, i-if we're gonna be real, Lubavitch, Lubavitch, Miyangalay, lay leadership, uh, a weird word, have been good for their money, right? You, you throw a campaign, you're running a Chabad house, you raise money. I went on Shlichus. You're in business. Throw me your money. I'm gonna go do Miftzim.

47:06 Speaker 3 Right.

47:06 Speaker 1 I think that that whole model is over.

47:08 Speaker 3 Over.

47:09 Speaker 1 Over. It's over. I think what we're seeing in Eretz Yisrael, um, it's over too. The, the go-- The fact is the government failed.

47:17 Speaker 3 Right.

47:17 Speaker 1 And the military establishment failed.

47:19 Speaker 3 Right.

47:19 Speaker 1 And the intellectual left failed.

47:21 Speaker 3 Right.

47:21 Speaker 1 Which pretty much until this, until this, this war was still the, the voice.

47:26 Speaker 3 Right.

47:26 Speaker 1 Right? So we had assumptions about leadership.

47:28 Speaker 3 Right.

47:28 Speaker 1 Now, obviously, society needs leadership.

47:30 Speaker 3 Right.

47:30 Speaker 1 It needs political leadership. It needs rabbinical leadership. It needs intellectual leadership.

47:34 Speaker 3 Right.

47:35 Speaker 1 We're gonna win this war, and Eretz Yisrael is going to be stronger because every single individual in Eretz Yisrael today is an army, is a political establishment-

47:44 Speaker 3 Right

47:44 Speaker 1 ...and is as, and is a smart enough Jew to understand what needs to be done. Nobody needs to tell them. It's, it's facing them right in front of them.

47:50 Speaker 3 No more followers is what you're saying.

47:51 Speaker 1 No, we're all leaders. Ev-- There's fifteen million Jewish leaders in the world. There's fifteen million Jewish governments in the world. There's fifteen million Jewish Rabbinates in the world. There's fifteen million Jewish intellectual think tanks in the world. There's fifteen million Jewish institutions in the world. Every-- Fifteen, sixteen, I'm not sure exactly what the number is. As many Jews as there are in the world today, there are institutions. Every person is an institution. What you're gonna see in Eretz Yisrael in the short term is that that institutional life of the seven or eight million Jews that live in Eretz Yisrael are go-going to be menatzeach in ways, we're gonna be victorious in ways we've never been victorious before. Because acharai kadima, I'm gonna go first. The, the, the rookies, the first-year eighteen-year-olds who just got into the army are gonna be scrambling to get to the front lines to go into, into Gaza and into Beirut and m-- perhaps to Tehran and wherever else we have to go to keep the Jewish people alive. That we see there. I think today in America also, um, you're s- you're seeing voices coming from the masses because the leadership has failed. Now, when we talk about the leadership in America, the political leadership, thank God, is extraordinarily strong. Our government in this country has done extraordinary things, Biden, the Senate, um, and also-

48:56 Speaker 3 For Israel.

48:56 Speaker 1 For Eretz Yisrael with all the government agencies.

48:58 Speaker 3 Not for a lot of other things.

48:59 Speaker 1 Correct. But on the, on this front, I'm talking about in the current.

49:01 Speaker 3 Okay.

49:01 Speaker 1 I think if we go back to Lubavitch, um, Lubavitch needs to mo-- We need to inspire the masses of Lubavitch. Lubavitch Hasidim, let's just d- let's just define Lubavitch Hasidim as anyone who has a Lubavitch education.

49:13 Speaker 3 Okay.

49:13 Speaker 1 Okay? If you have a Lubavitch education, then you have a basic understanding of what Hasidism teaches us and what the Rebbe's message was from the Alter Rebbe, um, to the Rebbe. That's the doctrine. That is the, the, um, the encyclopedia of Lubavitch, of Lubavitch teachings.

49:27 Speaker 3 Right.

49:28 Speaker 1 Any person who's, who's lived, who, who, who learned that and has a basic understanding of it today is an, is a Lubavitch institution. Practically speaking, what that means is there's no longer gonna be an exchange, you know, a sandwich for a sermon. Those days are over. I'm an institution. So there's going to be structured Chabad houses, and then there's going to be Chabad houses which I think is, is already happening, and institutions that are gonna be started by individuals. I run an, uh, take a-- Not I, but a person says, "I run an Amazon company, and I've got a thousand employees, and I've got fifty business relationships," or, "I work at a law firm, and I've got fifty partners, and I've got fifty clients," or, "I work at a tech company, and I have twenty people that sit in my office every day in, in a, in an open space, and we communicate with one another, Jews, non-Jews, et cetera. I live in a neighborhood, Pomona, or I live in San Diego, and I'm a Lubavitcher." Great. Start your Chabad house. Start your Chabad house means start af- uh, asserting yourself as a leader in the Jewish people-- of, of the Jewish people. Invite people to your home, message them, tell them what has to be done, do miftayim, um, sh-show them the beauty of the teachings of Hasidus, because Hasidus is beautiful, and Torah in general, but Hasidus in, in, in particular, and stand up and say, "Okay, um, I can't wait, and frankly,

50:41 Speaker 1 my local shliach, formal shliach, uh, doesn't have the bandwidth, doesn't have the capacity to cater to everybody. But I have fif- I have one Jew who sits next to me in, in my medical practice. I have one Jew that sits next to me in my dorm room." Great. Go out, if you're a Lubavitcher, and o-open your institution, and you will define how your institution is going to function. If, if five, ten, fifteen, twenty, twenty-five thousand Lubavitcher households put a little sign on their front door that says, "Base Chabad," Chabad House, and invited home this Shabbos one Jew, two Jews, three Jews, twenty-five thousand more Jews are gonna, are gonna come and have Shabbos, maybe for some of them for the first time in their life.

51:18 Speaker 4 Right.

51:18 Speaker 1 You, you, you see on, on, online today a, a, a guy who goes into the dentist, and before you know it, he's putting on tefillin. He doesn't have any title. I don't know if-- I don't know who he is. I don't know if he has smicha. I don't know if he finished the system, the, the educational system. He's a Lubavitcher. He's a shliach of the Lubavitcher Rebbe. The Lubavitcher Rebbe, in my humble opinion, would want-- always wanted every Lubavitcher to be a shliach, and today we need to ta-- we have to advance and grow everything the Rebbe taught us. In wartime, break down all the boundaries. Everything has been decentralized. Everything has been-- And we're living in a decentralized world at every level in society today.

51:59 Speaker 4 Right.

51:59 Speaker 1 In, in the economic world, we're living it in the political world. It's a decentralized world. And so you can say something today, and you can have a million people hear your voice in, in an instant.

52:08 Speaker 4 Right.

52:08 Speaker 1 It behooves Lubavitch to go out today and to assert ourselves and to say, "This movement is w-- just like Bnei Yisrael, is way bigger than you think." You wo- you woke up the nation of lions? Guess what? You woke up the nation of Hasidim. And if every Lubavitcher acts today in their own space, their business space, their home, their community, as a representative of this philosophy, this ideology, this exis- this movement that has given us a purpose and a reason and a, and, and light to see in the darkness, then you're going to see Lubavitch grow a hundredfold, a thousandfold, and bring Hasidus, um, to, to a world that has never seen it. And it's, it's incumbent upon us to, uh, to instill that. I would, I would o-- I would-- I wanna add one more thing to that, which is Lubavitch-- A lot of Lubavitchers are struggling with their own children. We won't get into the details. Um, every family seems to know somebody who's, who's, um, l-chosen, let's just call it an alternative lifestyle to the-- excuse me, to the traditional lifestyle that we, we, we think of as being Hasidim.

53:05 Speaker 4 Right.

53:05 Speaker 1 Um, a lot of people are struggling with that, and if they're not in leadership positions, or they're not financially, uh, secure, or they're not wealthy, or they don't have resources, um, they have to go out to the institutions. And thank God we have the institutions to go to, and hopefully they'll do a better job. The way to deal with our own com-- our own children, and the way to deal with our own family members, and the way to deal with our immediate, immediate surroundings is by going on offense. When Lubavitcher children who grow up in Miami or grow up in LA or grow up in, in the Midwest in a small town because employment, you know, compels their family to live in a certain location, and they see their parents today, uh, redesigning their home into a home that's no longer just for the family, and not just tzedakah, but in a formal way to say that I represent Lubavitch, and I represent the teachings of a Rebbe and Hasidus that spans a few hundred years, that gave us the answers to this Jewish pride, right? Gave us the answers of Jewish pride, of, of, of the Gaon Yaakov, of, of Emes. Um, it's gonna help their own families, and I think they're going-- their, their-- because their children are going to be on offense. One of the great things about shlichus was that if you went out, you maybe had a better ch-- in some ways, a better chance of surviving because you're constantly

54:16 Speaker 1 m-moving forward, you're constantly growing.

54:18 Speaker 4 Right.

54:18 Speaker 1 And so, uh, not to say that shluchim don't have struggles and, and challenges.

54:22 Speaker 4 Right.

54:22 Speaker 1 Uh, but there's something about the mindset of children who grow up in that home. We need to have tens of thousands of Chabad houses. You can call them whatever you want as long as they do what we are-- we're taught as Lubavitchers to do. We're seeing it already. People are not asking anybody if they should charter a plane. People are not asking anybody if they should run a barbecue at a, at a, at an army base. People are not asking anybody if they should, uh, open up their home to something pro-Israel or pro-Bnei Yisrael. They're doing it. Let's give them the, the, uh, confidence to know that they too represent in no less way the Lubavitcher Rebbe and the teachings of Chabad Hasidus to the world, and we're going to see infinite, infinite return, beruchnis and begashmis.

55:06 Speaker 4 Yeah. I think, I think what I'm-- what, what, what, what resonates with me from what you're just saying now is, is that, you know, there, there's always... Uh, you, you, you kind of framed it as, uh, establishment, anti-establishment, right? Or, or establishment, the lack of establishment, establishment versus individual. Um-

55:28 Speaker 1 I didn't say anti or versus, just-

55:30 Speaker 4 All right. I, I, I was, I was correcting myself. Establishment versus a regular guy, right? You said the establishment kind of failed or-

55:36 Speaker 1 What I'm saying is that the regular guy is the establishment.

55:37 Speaker 4 Is the establishment.

55:38 Speaker 1 Yeah. In a-- In wartime and forever now-

55:40 Speaker 4 Right

55:40 Speaker 1 ...the regular guy is going to be the establishment because the, the individual today is g- Read Avigdor Kalani. You ever read Avigdor Kalani?

55:46 Speaker 4 No.

55:46 Speaker 1 Avigdor Kalani was the general who was on the Yom Kippur-- on the Sinai and the, uh, the Golan Heights on the morning of Yom Kippur.

55:52 Speaker 4 And if he hadn't done what he did-

55:53 Speaker 1 He, he saved the Jewish nation.

55:55 Speaker 4 Arik Sharon also.

55:56 Speaker 1 He sa-

55:56 Speaker 4 Arik Sharon.

55:57 Speaker 1 But read Kalani, uh, The Heights of Courage. It's an expensive book now because it's, uh, it's one of the greats. It's one of the cl- great classics. Anybody who knows-

56:03 Speaker 4 It's your fault from what I understand.

56:04 Speaker 1 Yeah. I have a few books that I've, I've cornered the market. The Heights, The Heights, I believe it's called The Heights of Courage Avigdor Kalani was there, and hundreds of tanks were coming over

56:14 Speaker 4 Right. And he had-- and the cavalry wasn't coming. Right? That-

56:18 Speaker 1 Eh, wait, I wanna-

56:19 Speaker 4 Yeah, you gotta-

56:19 Speaker 1 You gotta talk-

56:20 Speaker 4 No, finish

56:20 Speaker 1 ... this is an important story.

56:21 Speaker 4 Yes.

56:22 Speaker 1 He has a few guys, a few of them are dying, they're scrambling. He knows how many hours it's going to take for them to come.

56:28 Speaker 4 Right.

56:29 Speaker 1 He's running out of ammunition.

56:31 Speaker 4 Right.

56:32 Speaker 1 And it's unclear as to what you do. The command centers are telling him to move the tanks forward and backward to create dust.

56:41 Speaker 4 The impression that there's more tanks.

56:43 Speaker 1 That's right.

56:44 Speaker 4 Right.

56:44 Speaker 1 And he, he-- speak to the... read the history of, of Israeli military. He held, for those few hours, the mesirus nefesh, that one, I think he was a battalion commander, I'm, I'm not sure exactly of his title. One soldier with a few good men-

57:01 Speaker 4 Yeah, that was insane

57:02 Speaker 1 ... uh, hel-held back. So who is the establishment? Avigdor Kalani is the hero of Bene Israel.

57:06 Speaker 4 Right.

57:06 Speaker 1 Nachshon ben Aminadav.

57:07 Speaker 4 I-

57:07 Speaker 1 That's it. So it's Nachshon ben Aminadav again.

57:09 Speaker 4 I never heard of Avigdor Kalani. I heard of Arik Sharon, similar story, but I, I wanna... I'm gonna look into it. Yeah. That's how Arik Sharon became this big hero. He was the guy in Egypt with a similar story.

57:18 Speaker 1 Tell us the story.

57:19 Speaker 4 No, I don't, I, I don't... It was a similar story where he was in Egypt, and th-they had, in their mind, similar to what Israel had by Gaza, this impenetrable defense. They had the Bar Lev Line as a... And just like now, there was this fence, and the Egyptians just steamrolled through the Bar Lev line, and all of a sudden, all that's standing between the mighty Egyptian army and the, and the cutting off of Israel in half, which would've been a fatal blow, was this schnook with a, with a Yom Kippur-

57:46 Speaker 1 With a water gun.

57:47 Speaker 4 Well, with like, with like probably a tank, you know, like, but he only should have had a hundred or something. Like, everybody else is in the middle of Yom Kippur davening, and what's he supposed to do? And like you said, I mean, that's where he became the famous Arik Sharon. Um-

58:00 Speaker 1 So if you're, if you're nineteen years old today, and you're Lubavitch, and you're going to NYU Law School-

58:05 Speaker 4 Right

58:05 Speaker 1 ... and you take your hat and your jacket and your tallis and tefillin, and you go outside, and you stand in front of a thousand Jew haters-

58:13 Speaker 4 Right

58:13 Speaker 1 ... and you make a statement 'cause you're going to wake up the souls of the thousands of Jews at NYU, the students, the faculty, the alumni, the parents watching on television, and you're gonna save Bene Israel. You are now a shliach of the Lubavitcher Rebbe. I hope and pray that the Rebbe, Lubavitcher Rebbe, um, uh, I hope and pray that the Lubavitcher Rebbe, today, if we were to hear his voice, I have to assume that that's what the Rebbe would say to us. That the Rebbe would say, "Go out and be, be Lubavitch. Be my shliach. Be the shliach of Hashem. Be Avraham Avinu. Be Moshe Rabbeinu."

58:48 Speaker 4 I think-

58:48 Speaker 1 "Be the Alter Rebbe. Be the Lubavitch Rebbe. Be the chassid of the Rebbe. Be the follower." The greatest followers of the Rebbe, of the Rebbe were the leaders of the Rebbe, and r- and leader means innovation. Let's translate the word leader. Leader means innovation.

59:03 Speaker 4 Right.

59:03 Speaker 1 Leader means new. Leader means bold. Leader means courageous. Leader means to... novel. Leader means bravery. Leader means that you take the people with you.

59:17 Speaker 4 Right.

59:17 Speaker 1 Who's not a leader? Who's not a leader in the, in, in, in, in, in Lubavitch? Every Lubavitcher kid that grew up through our system understands this. You walk through... You walk into downtown New Haven, and you see thirteen-year-olds, fourteen-year-olds, fifteen-year-olds from the mesivta standing on the ... on Yale's campus.

59:33 Speaker 4 Right.

59:34 Speaker 1 That mesirus nefesh, it's in our blood.

59:36 Speaker 4 Right.

59:37 Speaker 1 They don't even know the stories. I can write books of the stories that I've heard from students who come back and tell me about their first experience putting on tefillin from a thirteen, fourteen, fifteen-year-old mesivta boy from the yeshiva-

59:47 Speaker 4 Right

59:47 Speaker 1 ... from a Haredi yeshiva. So who, who, who, if not us?

59:50 Speaker 4 Yeah, but I, I, I know I love your point, but I think limiting it only to putting on tefillin in a way kind of undercuts your point. Like I, I think what I, what I was, what, what what I'm hearing from what you're saying, at least what's resonating with me, there's a lot to what you're saying. What's resonating with me is that the whole, the whole dichotomy of, um, you know, the establishment and the regular guy falls apart in wartime, right? Why? Why? Because at wartime, you recognize that if you're going to insist on certain dichotomies and certain hierarchies, there may not be anything to have a hierarchy for at, at the end. Like, who cares? Who cares if I'm qualified? Like you look at, I think the, the best war in Israel to, to bring this out is the War of Independence, where people that were just out of the concentration camps who had never used a gun before were using guns because i-if you start saying you need to be trained, there's not gonna be a country to defend, right? So the wartime basically cuts to the essence and says, "What's this really about?" Right? Is it about titles and, and, and, and, and experience and, and protocols? No, it's, it's about survival, and it's about essence.

1:00:58 Speaker 1 Uh, yeah, I think it's more than that, actually. I, I hear what you're saying, but I think it's, I think it's deeper than that.

1:01:02 Speaker 4 Okay.

1:01:02 Speaker 1 I think that it happens during wartime because kasos lamar means that in war, the greatest, the g- the greatest evil is manifested in war, and the greatest good is manifested.

1:01:15 Speaker 4 Well, that's what I was getting to.

1:01:16 Speaker 1 Yeah.

1:01:16 Speaker 4 That's what I was get... What I was getting to was is that it's not just... Well, on one level, it's just about survival, so it feels like very kind of just basic level. But it also brings out the deepest truth a-about, like, like what, what are we about? Are we about our titles, or are we about, in that case, living in Eretz Israel? So the same thing comes down t- here, where it's, you know... I can, I can spend hours of my time and hours of my podcast listeners' time talking about what Lubavitch identity is, but so much of that conversation is s-superficial. Like what does it exactly look like? What does it... What... How does it work today versus then? How has it changed over twenty years? But at some points in time, all of that gets stripped away, and all that's left is what's the essence of this, right? What's the essence of this? And, and when you get to the essence of it, it's no longer, well, here's the big chassid, here's a small chassid, here's a guy appointed, here's a guy that's not appointed. It's not to say that those things are meaningless, but it's to say that in this kind of moment, all hands on deck. And, and what's most important is, is the essence of things, right?

1:02:19 Speaker 1 Yeah.

1:02:19 Speaker 4 And, and then so the question is, what's the essence of a Lubavitcher? And the essence of a Lubavitcher is the essence of Chassidus. And the essence of Chassidus is that, I mean, I, I, I, I suppose there are... Y-you would have people arguing about it, but to me, the essence of Chassidus is the essence of Yiddishkeit and the essence of, the essence of-

1:02:38 Speaker 1 Yes, it is, and it's more than that.

1:02:41 Speaker 4 Okay. Go ahead.

1:02:42 Speaker 1 It's, it's 1812, and Napoleon is marching into, into Russia.

1:02:46 Speaker 4 Okay.

1:02:47 Speaker 1 The Alter Rebbe is fleeing and running, uh, in, running to Mo- running towards Moscow, right?

1:02:53 Speaker 4 Okay.

1:02:53 Speaker 1 He takes the family, fifty chariots, sixty, whatever the s- the amount is, I think it was sixty, and he's running. And the Alter Rebbe's, you know, taking his kasavim, taking Chassidus, taking the family, taking his closest Chassidim, and trying to preserve for, for, for, for, for eternal time the, the movement of, of what is then Lubavitch, right?

1:03:13 Speaker 4 Right.

1:03:13 Speaker 1 It was c- It wasn't Lubavitch because we weren't, we weren't a Lubavitch yet, but it was Chassidus. It was Chabad.

1:03:17 Speaker 4 Right.

1:03:20 Speaker 1 N-no different than Reb Yaakov Mezachi who says t-uh, "Tell the oven of a kahameha" at the fall of the Second Temple, right?

1:03:25 Speaker 4 Right.

1:03:25 Speaker 1 He says, "Tell the oven of a kahameha." He has to sur-- Right? We're not gonna, we're not gonna... We may not be in the same place-

1:03:29 Speaker 4 Right

1:03:29 Speaker 1 ...but we're gonna, we're gonna, but we're gonna live the same lives.

1:03:31 Speaker 4 Right.

1:03:31 Speaker 1 And we'll just live them somewhere else because-

1:03:33 Speaker 4 Right

1:03:33 Speaker 1 ...it's not temporal.

1:03:34 Speaker 4 Right.

1:03:35 Speaker 1 It's, it's ubiquitous. It's, it doesn't matter where you are.

1:03:38 Speaker 4 Right. Right.

1:03:38 Speaker 1 Moshe Meisels. Do you know the name of the Chassid Moshe Meisels?

1:03:41 Speaker 4 Sure.

1:03:41 Speaker 1 Moshe Meisels is a spy.

1:03:43 Speaker 4 This famous spy.

1:03:43 Speaker 1 He's a spy.

1:03:44 Speaker 4 Right.

1:03:44 Speaker 1 Was he no less a Chassid than the one who was, who was copying the Alter Rebbe's kasavim of Tanya or, or copying the Mayim Aram of the Alter Rebbe? His, his specialty was language.

1:03:55 Speaker 4 Right.

1:03:55 Speaker 1 So his role in the war against Napoleon, which is what the war the Alter Rebbe wanted to wage, was literally by spying, uh, i-in the French, in the French, uh, um, uh, uh, uh, military hierarchy. Ma-

1:04:08 Speaker 4 And helping, and helping the tsar who was-

1:04:10 Speaker 1 And helping the tsar, who the Alter Rebbe believed was, was, was supposed to be the victor.

1:04:13 Speaker 4 Right.

1:04:13 Speaker 1 That was, that's what the, that's what the... Okay, so if you're a Chassid, you say to yourself, "Who is the Chassid?" The answer is they're both Chassidim.

1:04:19 Speaker 4 Right.

1:04:19 Speaker 1 Moshe Meisels had a-- He was a linguist.

1:04:21 Speaker 4 Right.

1:04:21 Speaker 1 It seems he was a linguist because he spoke French, and he spoke Russian.

1:04:23 Speaker 4 Right.

1:04:23 Speaker 1 I'm sure a lot of Russians spoke French at the time, and, and he took... Now you-- So who-- What were the other Chassidim doing at the, in, in the time of, of, of, of, of, of the war, right, in 1812?

1:04:33 Speaker 4 Right.

1:04:34 Speaker 1 Every person needed to figure out what their strengths were.

1:04:37 Speaker 4 Right.

1:04:37 Speaker 1 And every peop- every single person then, the term shliach maybe wasn't. You go through the history of Chassidus in the last hundreds of years, and the Alter, and all the rabbeim mobilized the, the Chassidim to do the things that they were good, good at, specialized in. Take your specialty. Today, Lubavitch is very diverse. Is everybody gonna stand on Fifth Avenue outside a mitzvah tank and put on tefillin with people? Not necessarily. But maybe that's not their calling. Maybe their calling is to talk to a journalist that they know. Maybe their calling is to talk to a, a pr- a professor that they know. Maybe their calling is to talk to a colleague who w- they work with, who they trade with, who they barter with, who they negotiate with. Maybe it's a local city council member, right? Maybe it's the housemaid who speaks Spanish and has a Spanish community that she goes back to.

1:05:26 Speaker 4 Maybe it's her sibling.

1:05:27 Speaker 1 Maybe it's a sibling. Maybe it's-

1:05:29 Speaker 4 Maybe it's a child.

1:05:29 Speaker 1 Maybe it's a child. Not maybe. For sure, it's our children, right?

1:05:32 Speaker 4 Right.

1:05:32 Speaker 1 It's, it's our children that are doing a lot of different things today in, in Lubavitch.

1:05:36 Speaker 4 Right.

1:05:36 Speaker 1 We-- Going back to what you said about what war does, war brings the worst and the best out in mankind.

1:05:44 Speaker 4 Right.

1:05:44 Speaker 1 And the Jews are always going to s-s-- are going to always answer to a higher calling, and we're going to remain civilized as Jews as-- because that's what Bnei Yisrael was taught to do. Chassidim are going to, we're going to have to be the nicest and the kindest and the most loving people, um, in the world. We have to be. The most sharing and most compassionate and honest, gentle, humble people. Every Lubavitcher today is a shliach of the Lubavitcher Rebbe because every Lubavitcher today that does what the Rebbe wants. The Rebbe himself, if you think about his approach to milchamah, we're living through a war, so let's look at what the Rebbe did. The Rebbe had a multi-front strategy. The first was to carry mitzvahs. But how many public talks did the Rebbe give on military strategy? How many private yechidut did the Rebbe have with military strategists? How many things did the Rebbe talk about the politics, the UN, the generals, the mistakes that were made, the things they should have done, the things that they listened to the Rebbe, the things that they didn't listen to the Rebbe? Publicly. And whatever wasn't public became public, and there's probably things that we'll never know, right?

1:06:50 Speaker 4 Right.

1:06:50 Speaker 1 That are, that, that probably haunt a lot of people who didn't listen to the Rebbe.

1:06:53 Speaker 4 Right.

1:06:53 Speaker 1 Including Begin in seventy-nine, right? Uh, because we understand that from the-- We-- Our understanding is that the Rebbe was very upset, and we understand that Begin lived to regret Camp David. Another, another topic for another time. Is it the, uh... We have to ask ourselves then, therefore, is the sh- is the Lubavitcher shliach today who's in the army any less of a shliach of the Lubavitcher Rebbe if his expression connecting to Chassidus, being a Lubavitcher, is his role in what he does in the army, even if it doesn't include putting on tefillin with the soldier next to him, even if it's just the spirit with which he fights, even if it's just the way he behaves with soldiers that come from a kibbutz who are secular, who never maybe met a, a, a, a frum person and never had a relationship with a frum people, a frum person. There's a film in com- going around of a line of Haredim, of Chassidishe Yidden in Eretz Yisrael feeding a line of, of Israeli soldiers. And y- when you first look at it, uh, at the picture, it, it almost looks, it's, it's, it's, it's, um, it's almo- It, uh, it, it could almost look like a stunt, right?

1:07:55 Speaker 4 Right.

1:07:55 Speaker 1 It's, uh, uh, almost propaganda.

1:07:57 Speaker 4 Right.

1:07:57 Speaker 1 It's almost like, look, the Haredim are, uh, thank you very much, right?

1:08:00 Speaker 4 Right. It has to be fake.

1:08:01 Speaker 1 If you're... It has to be fake. Or you could even argue, if you're a secular person, wonderful, you're feeding us, but, you know, we're getting into tanks and going to the front lines. So you could m- you could manipulate it in your mind or extrapolate from it a lot of different things. But at one point, you see one of these soldiers without a yarmulke, and he comes over and he hugs One of the . And there's a , there's a hug. It, it's such a powerful moment for Benei Yisrael to look at that and to say, "What, what, what's going on over here? We're really one. We're really one." There have to be Jews that sit in Kollel. There have to be Jews that sit in Limud Torah. There has to be Jews that preserve Yiddishkeit for Am Yisrael. All Jews need to preserve Yiddishkeit for Yisrael. There ha-- and every person plays their role. As Lubavitchers, we need to operate on multi, multi-fronts in the name of Lubavitch, in the name of Hasidus, and sometimes anonymously, and sometimes the-- clandestinely, and sometimes secretly. Hasidus started with secret movements, you know. The Baal Shem Tov was in Pshemysh for many years. The Nistarim were the ones. But when the milchamah with the Misnagdim came, they came out in Shklov, and they came out in Minsk, and they came out in Vilna, and it was the, the, the world looked around and said, "What is this all of a sudden Hasidus?"

1:09:09 Speaker 4 Right.

1:09:09 Speaker 1 And within, within twenty, thirty years, Hasidus spread through then Russia, Poland, depending on where the border was, and Hasidus, you couldn't stop it. Because for years, there was planning, strategic planning of planting people to really go in one by one and to bring the teachings of Hasidus. Lubavitchers today, some are gonna be public, some are gonna be on the Internet, some are gonna be private, should feel emboldened to be shluchim, to announce themselves as shluchim. Let's have fifty thousand Chabad houses lining the streets of Manhattan. You know, um, that's-

1:09:42 Speaker 4 Well, what, what, what is-- But to, to use the, the, the t-the terminology of a war, what are the aims of this Lubavitch war? 'Cause going back to what we spoke about earlier, you know, you could look at this war in Israeli, in Israeli, you know, what do, what do the Israelis want? Then there's what do the Americans want, right? What do the Lubavitchers want? Okay.

1:10:07 Speaker 1 I, I th-- I, I, I, um... We have to bring more Torah and mitzvahs to Benei Yisrael. We have to be

1:10:17 Speaker 4 But hasn't that always been the case?

1:10:18 Speaker 1 Yeah. We have-

1:10:19 Speaker 4 So, so what changes now?

1:10:20 Speaker 1 We-- One second. We have an op-- we have an opportunity now to bring more Torah and mitzvahs to Benei Yisrael. We also have to fight for the survival of the physical nation of Israel, the people of Israel, and the Rebbe, the Rebbe engaging in a multi-level discourse with multi-level segments of the, of s- of society and the hierarchies and the institutional, um, hierarchies of, of decision-makers that actually, you know, that actually legislate and, and, and, and, and make judicial decisions. It w-- It happened at m-many levels. Lub-- We ultimately wanna bring Mashiach. Bringing Mashiach means bringing Hasidus to the world. Uh, to, to bring, uh, uh, to bring Hasidus to the world means we have to preserve the physical life of the Jewish people, and we have to, and make sure that the Jewish people are safe. Um, there's no, there's no, there's no one or the other. It's both. It's the physical, spiritual, survival, growth, and flourishing of Benei Yisrael, Torah, and Mitzvahs. And on top of that, frankly, bringing universal peace to the world, which is the days of Mashiach. In this instance, we're faced with having to bring universal peace to the world through battle, and so we have to make sure that battle is successful, so that the world of nations can live with each other, which is ultimately going to be the... That is what Mashiach is. That when the world eradicates evil and, and good, good positivity, kindness, love, um, unity of the nations of the world recognizing a

1:11:54 Speaker 1 God in the world, that is the days of Mashiach. And how it unfolds practically speaking, you gotta learn the Rambam, you gotta learn the teachings of the Rebbe. We have to see a Mashiach Ben David come and take us, uh, and take us to the Geulah. But we have to be, we have to be a part of that. So what, what should we be doing? Every single Lubavitcher should find their voice. Every Lubavitcher should say, "What can I do today to help Benei Yisrael physically and spiritually?" And the Rebbe always said, "." I don't know, always. I, I haven't learned every teaching of the Rebbe. "Was it ?" Well, if you're not alive, right, then there's no .

1:12:28 Speaker 4 Right. Right.

1:12:30 Speaker 1 So we have to be on the front of preservation, strength, mighty lions imbued with, with, with, with truth, and truth comes from Torah. And w-- Very few people are gonna check out. This is an opportunity for us internally in Lubavitch to make achdus. There's gotta be achdus in Lubavitch at every level. There has to be if we want Mashiach to come. There's gonna be... This is a mo-- an a- an amazing moment in history internally in Lubavitch to unite, to amass the masses, and to inspire the masses. Tens of thousands of shluchim should stand up independently and announce themselves that they're opening a Chabad House in their office and in their home and on the bus and on the train and in their, on their campsites and their RV centers and their storefronts. That a Jew shouldn't be able to walk anywhere on planet Earth and not see the presence of Chabad. Imagine that. I don't have to go to my local Chabad House maybe thirty miles away to say Kaddish. I have a neighbor who says he has a Chabad House in his apartment, and there's ten Jews in the building. Let's go.

1:13:46 Speaker 4 So to, so to bring the qu-- so, so to bring the conversation full circle, we s-- when, when I, when I asked the question, what has changed from before Simchas Torah to after Simchas Torah, and when we narrow that question to what has changed in Lubavitch, what you, what you have suggested is that, um, being that it's wartime, um, or even take it a step earlier, this kind of catastrophe puts you in a state of war. It shakes everything up. All assumptions are gone, right?

1:14:18 Speaker 1 Within the context of listening to the directives of the Rebbe. We're not-

1:14:20 Speaker 4 I, I, I understand.

1:14:21 Speaker 1 Yeah.

1:14:21 Speaker 4 I understand. I mean, the, the... Even war, the, the whole idea of, like, there's a, there's a limit to war as well, right? Um, there's a limit to what's acceptable within the framework of war as well, right? War itself has guidelines, right? But, but w-- like we spoke about earlier, a lot of the s-- what, what the peacetime, the things that kind of accrue over years of peacetime, and a lot of them beco-- are just on top of silliness on top of silliness or superficiality on top of super-super-superficiality.

1:14:52 Speaker 1 Background.

1:14:53 Speaker 4 That goes away.

1:14:53 Speaker 1 Yeah.

1:14:54 Speaker 4 Right? So that's gone. And so what has changed? What has changed is, on one hand, a, a deep reckoning that the world in many ways is not the world that it, that looked like the day earlier. Whether or not you expected it to come or not, it's still, still very disturbing to see it in front of your eyes, or at, at, at the very least, it's confrontational to see it in front of your eyes. That's changed. But what you're suggesting is what's also changed is that the people have become activated, and people have become empowered, and everybody now is that tank commander on the-- holding the line between you, bet-between, between, you know, uh, and so, like you-

1:15:38 Speaker 5 Between the entire world and you.

1:15:39 Speaker 4 Be-between nihilism and the world, uh, uh, betwi-between nihilism and, and, and a, and a positive future.

1:15:46 Speaker 5 Nihilism, paganism, hedonism.

1:15:48 Speaker 4 Right.

1:15:48 Speaker 5 All the, all the isms. All the isms, every one.

1:15:50 Speaker 4 You're, you're the one between, between the world falling off the cliff and not, you know, to, to paraphrase, to paraphrase a famous Rambam of one deed tips the world over. That becomes a lot more-- it becomes a lot more obvious in times like this where, you know, that the choice of-- everybody always has a choice of sitting on the sidelines and s-- letting somebody else do it. And we al-- i-in the course of our lives, we always, "Okay, let somebody el-- let somebody else do it. I got other stuff going on." Right? When, when, when times become more, more, uh-

1:16:25 Speaker 5 Desperate

1:16:25 Speaker 4 ...more desperate, right? Times become more desperate and more essential, that, that choice of leaving it up to somebody else becomes a lot more-- it becomes a much bigger deal, right?

1:16:36 Speaker 5 Mm-hmm.

1:16:36 Speaker 4 And so what you're saying is, is that, at least what I'm understanding from what you're saying, is that we are all literally, or we ha-- we have to, we have to see in ourselves, uh, that we are standing between doom and, and, and a good, and, and a good future.

1:16:53 Speaker 5 And redemption.

1:16:54 Speaker 4 And redemption.

1:16:54 Speaker 5 Yeah. And the, you know, the Frieda Grabbe says-

1:16:56 Speaker 4 But you're not saying it in like some kind of... Not that you're not saying it in a religious way, but you're not saying it in some kind of like-

1:17:01 Speaker 5 Uh

1:17:02 Speaker 4 ...in some kind of philo-

1:17:03 Speaker 5 It's-

1:17:03 Speaker 4 ...uh, uh-

1:17:04 Speaker 5 Allegorical way?

1:17:04 Speaker 4 Allegorical way.

1:17:05 Speaker 5 No, I'm s-- I'm s-- I'm actually-- I'm saying it humbly, it's, and it's only my opinion.

1:17:09 Speaker 4 Fair enough.

1:17:10 Speaker 5 So, uh, for the record, um, it's my reading of everything that is Hasidism Chabad.

1:17:15 Speaker 4 Right.

1:17:16 Speaker 5 And so I'm sure a lot of people will disagree, and, you know, maybe we'll get excommunicated, uh, Bentzi. You know, we'll have to maybe run away.

1:17:22 Speaker 4 We should be so lucky.

1:17:25 Speaker 5 Um, I think this, this-- I, I, I hope that this reading of what Chabad and Hasidism, um, teaches us, we c-- uh, is, it, it, uh, is absolutely the message. The Rebbe did very radical things during wars that the Rebbe didn't conve- didn't do because the Rebbe lived with the times.

1:17:45 Speaker 4 Right.

1:17:45 Speaker 5 When it says, "Lev mit di tzeit," it's a, it's a, it's a very pr- it's a very pragmatic-

1:17:50 Speaker 4 Right

1:17:51 Speaker 5 ...tangible thing, living with, living with the times.

1:17:53 Speaker 4 Right.

1:17:53 Speaker 5 Living with the times means that you are a Lubavitcher, therefore you are an intellectual.

1:17:57 Speaker 4 Right.

1:17:58 Speaker 5 You are a Lubavitcher, therefore you are a rational, thinking person.

1:18:01 Speaker 4 Right.

1:18:01 Speaker 5 You're a philosopher king. You're a Lubavitcher Hasid. You grew up in Lubavitch. You went to a Lubavitcher family. You went to Lubavitcher school. Your family's not Lubavitch, but you are Lubavitch. You identify. If you could say, "Eh, even I love Lubavitch, I wanna be Lubavitch," then you are the philosopher king. If you're the philosopher king, w- take that part of your personality, because you understand Hasidism, and attach it to the practical. Now you are the activist, because Lubavitch encompasses everything from the deepest philosophy to the most mundane, simple act, physical act of putting a piece of parchment on your, on your doorpost, right? And, and, and, and, and putting a piece of leather, wrapping a piece of leather around your arm. That, that-- those are the two polar opposites of the world, right? It's the, it's the Platonic idea down to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the stone-

1:18:44 Speaker 4 Right

1:18:44 Speaker 5 ...uh, lying in the desert. Frieda Grabbe says, um, in, in, um, in a, in a sikha somewhere, and, um, I, I quote, I paraphrase, I'm not sure. Something to the extent of the, the Avraham Avinu is given a Chabadбка. That Avraham Avi- Avraham Avinu was a Lubavitcher, a Chabadбка. What does that mean, Avraham Avinu was Cha- Avraham Avinu predated Lubavitch by thousands of years.

1:19:03 Speaker 4 Predated Yiddishkeit.

1:19:05 Speaker 5 Yeah.

1:19:05 Speaker 4 Yeah.

1:19:05 Speaker 5 Yeah. I mean, he was the vanguard.

1:19:07 Speaker 4 Right.

1:19:07 Speaker 5 Right? It mean-- what does that mean? It means that Lubav-- I, I mean, you can read it at multiple layers, because in the Frieda Grabbe sikhas seem like they're simple. They're the deepest-

1:19:15 Speaker 4 Right

1:19:15 Speaker 5 ...so much depth in the Frieda Grabbe. I won't give you a dissertation on how to read that line, but one aspect of that is that Avraham Avinu was, was Chad Bedaro.

1:19:28 Speaker 4 Right.

1:19:29 Speaker 5 He was one.

1:19:30 Speaker 4 Avram, Avram Avi, he was on the other side of the river from everybody else.

1:19:33 Speaker 5 His father was Terah.

1:19:35 Speaker 4 Right.

1:19:35 Speaker 5 He came from nothing. He came from Terah, and he was one.

1:19:40 Speaker 4 Right.

1:19:41 Speaker 5 And he changed the whole world.

1:19:42 Speaker 4 Right.

1:19:42 Speaker 5 If we just take that simple meaning of the Frieda Grabbe's words, that Avraham Avinu's given a Chabadбка means that one Lubavitcher could change the whole world.

1:19:50 Speaker 4 Right.

1:19:50 Speaker 5 The whole universe. For Bnei Yisro and for all the nations of the world. So s-seize the moment. This is an unbelievable opportunity for Lubavitch to seize the moment.

1:20:02 Speaker 4 Right.

1:20:03 Speaker 5 And to revolutionize our work as a movement. The Rebbe always referred to us as a movement of, of the greats. We're the movement of the greats. The... And frankly, there's no one else. There are great, thank God, segments of Bnei Yisro. On this path, on this specific path of the ˈkhshet yifut may nasakh khutsa, bringing the teachings of Hasidism, which is the deepest philosophy that the Jewish people have, and the most real, and the most relevant today, seeing the light of the basic premises, the ethos of Chabad Hasidism, it's us. Every individual needs to s-- uh, announce themselves to be the vanguard, to stand up, and to say, "I'm gonna do this." And the hierarchical sh-structures within Lubavitch, of course, have to continue to exist, and the meistes have to continue to exist and grow. Um, but we need a, a ten x, a hundred x dissemination. Practically speaking, tens of thousands of people should announce their Chabad houses, their Chabad institutions, in whatever shape or form they want to name it or call it and do it. And it's also gon-go-- it's only going to bolster. It's not-- it's no longer enough to click your thirty-six dollar donation.

1:21:15 Speaker 4 Right.

1:21:16 Speaker 5 Those days, those days are behind us, and we're seeing it. We're seeing this decentralization across all classes. We're seeing it inside Lubavitch today.

1:21:27 Speaker 4 If I could just, if I could just put it in, in my own words, what I'm understanding from you is that, you know, there are peop-- you seem to be-- to be honest, you seem to be very, um, hopeful and optimistic.

1:21:42 Speaker 5 I am.

1:21:43 Speaker 4 Which is, which is great.

1:21:44 Speaker 5 Wasn't the Rebbe always optimistic?

1:21:45 Speaker 4 Fair enough. Uh, but I'm saying, yeah, that's how you seem.

1:21:48 Speaker 5 So we're, so we're Hasidim.

1:21:48 Speaker 4 Yeah, but, but just because Rebbe was something doesn't mean that I automatically am that, you know? It's-

1:21:53 Speaker 5 I, I hold on to the Rebbe for my optimism.

1:21:56 Speaker 4 Gesundheit. But I'm saying you, you are, you are-- It seems that you're genuinely optimistic and genuinely hopeful. It doesn't seem you're just going through the motions.

1:22:03 Speaker 5 Do, do we have-- By the way, is there a plan B? I'd like to know what the plan B is.

1:22:08 Speaker 4 Fair enough. I mean, look, I, I-- Very often optimists are just realistic pessimists. That's what, that's what I sometimes feel. Like optimists are just people that are more re-- like, like what are you gonna do? Be p- be p- be, be pessimistic? Oh, that's ridiculous.

1:22:21 Speaker 5 There's, there's a famous book called Only the Paranoid Survive.

1:22:24 Speaker 4 Right.

1:22:24 Speaker 5 Yeah.

1:22:24 Speaker 4 Right. So an optimist is essentially just a more realistic pessimist-

1:22:27 Speaker 5 Okay

1:22:27 Speaker 4 ... in some way.

1:22:28 Speaker 5 Okay.

1:22:28 Speaker 4 Right? It's possible. But my point-- what I was, what I was saying, I'm not-- I wasn't trying to, uh, question your, your optimism or to, or to, um, or to di-- you know, dispute it. What I was, what I, what I was going for was that, you know, for some of us, perhaps, at least I can speak for myself, it doesn't come so naturally. And, you know, the s-- the so-called doom scrolling where you start looking into things and you see... Yeah. I mean, on one hand, Israel, you know, could, could, could have a miracle the way of the Six Day War. That would be amazing, right? But there's also many people who think that Israel's in a very bad place and has a-- strategically is in a very weak place. But, but I'm not saying what I... You know, but there, there, there are these different voices that you hear and, and so what, what I'm trying to paint the picture of is that some of us, or let me, let me just speak for myself, I sometimes find myself in a place where I'm backed up against a very, uh, uh, gloomy doomscape where it's like, my goodness, the... I just told somebody yesterday where, like, you know, the, the whole kind of theological framework that I grew up with feels like it needs to be refreshed because it didn't take into account this kind of pessimistic atmosphere. All I'm saying is, from what I'm picking up from you, is that even if

1:23:51 Speaker 4 you find yourself in a place like that where there is a lot of uncertainty and a lot of, a lot of reasons for concern, what you have to remember is that ultimately, all that-- what, what you can do about it is, is-- The only thing you can do is what you can do about it, right? What, what you have at your disposal is the only answer. That's what war does. What war does is, okay, uh, you're not trained to go into a tank and shoot actual artillery shells. You're not an Air Force pilot.

1:24:21 Speaker 5 Yeah.

1:24:22 Speaker 4 But if you can go, like you look at Israel now, if you can go... You know, I'm sure there are a lot of Haredim now that are rethinking the fact that they never signed up for army training. Okay, fine. But right now, your introspection and your regrets are worthless.

1:24:35 Speaker 5 Ah.

1:24:35 Speaker 4 What is worth something is going and feeding the food to the soldier, right? What, what I have at my disposal, maybe I could-- I should have done things differently. I should have thought of things differently. There are a lot of should've, could've, would'ves. There's no time for that in a time of war. What-- Al- so all you're, all you're left with is that which you can do.

1:24:54 Speaker 5 Yeah.

1:24:54 Speaker 4 And that which you can do is all that you can do.

1:24:56 Speaker 5 Yeah.

1:24:56 Speaker 4 And because it's all that you can do, that's what you must do.

1:24:59 Speaker 5 My, my-

1:24:59 Speaker 4 Right? You see what I'm-

1:25:01 Speaker 5 I'm, I'm with you. So my mother, my mother told me that my grandmother used to tell my grandfather, Reb Chaim Shneor Chaim Guttnick of Australia.

1:25:06 Speaker 4 Sure, I remember him.

1:25:08 Speaker 5 My grandmother, Baba Rosie, uh, Rachel Shoshana, would, would say to my grandfather when he would shy away from doing cert- certain things that he was asked to do, honorable things, she would say to him, "You're not so great that you can make yourself so small."

1:25:22 Speaker 4 Yeah, that's a fair-

1:25:23 Speaker 5 So to-- Benzie, to you, I would say this: You-- we all have, obviously, challenges and struggles. Uh, we all have yeitzer Hara. Uh, none of us are perfect. We're small. We're small people, but we're, we're small people with giant, infinite capacity and, and potential. Um, you care enough to have a podcast. You drove a few hours today for us to, to sit down and do this. You want, you wanna deliver a message to people. Maybe one person will listen to this podcast. Maybe just one. And that one person will do something extraordinary, and that extraordinary thing they'll do, they'll pop onto a, a, a website, and tomorrow, a million people will know about it. Imagine then a million people doing one small thing and putting it onto their websites. Now square it. Just square that number.

1:26:08 Speaker 4 Well, you don't have to sell me on that.

1:26:10 Speaker 5 That's it. So that's the answer. So the answer-- This is what the Rebbe taught us.

1:26:12 Speaker 4 Well, that-- Look-

1:26:13 Speaker 5 The Rebbe, the Rebbe taught us that if you meet a Jew on the street, and you ask him if he's Jewish, and he crosses the street and says no-

1:26:21 Speaker 4 You've still done something

1:26:22 Speaker 5 ... and he lies-

1:26:24 Speaker 4 Right

1:26:24 Speaker 5 ... you may have changed his entire life.

1:26:26 Speaker 4 Right. Right. No, no, I, I, I'm agr-- I, I agree with you. Fir-first of all, like you said, I drove a few hours. I, I don't believe, I don't believe in, in, in, in chronic, um, you know-

1:26:36 Speaker 5 So let's stay positive

1:26:37 Speaker 4 ... proce-

1:26:37 Speaker 5 Now, let's not even go there.

1:26:38 Speaker 4 No, no, but I, I wasn't trying to sell negativity. To the contrary, I was just trying to say that for, for s-- for, for, for anybody listening or even talking for myself, when, when you feel-- if you feel, oh, here's this guy, you know, who, who seems to be very, very optimistic, if you don't feel that way, that's not the point that you're making, right? The point that you're making is not every time you get worried-

1:26:58 Speaker 5 I, I actually-- I don't, I don't-

1:26:58 Speaker 4 The point-

1:26:59 Speaker 5 No, no, I, I wanna hit this head-on.

1:27:01 Speaker 4 Okay.

1:27:01 Speaker 5 I don't believe that there are pe-- I don't believe that there are people that don't have an urge to do something. I think people have been, have been strapped down to some extent-

1:27:12 Speaker 4 Mm. That's true

1:27:12 Speaker 5 ... by hierarchical structures and restraints. That have mandated that may-- perhaps they don't have the right to speak or to do the things that they believe are the right things to do in the name maybe of the movement or in the name of, um, uh, Lubavitch.

1:27:35 Speaker 4 Right.

1:27:35 Speaker 5 Um, and I think if we took those, if we took those sh-bootstraps off, if we unshackled-

1:27:43 Speaker 4 Hmm.

1:27:43 Speaker 5 If we unshackled that now, which we have to, and it's happening on its own, so we don't... It's not a mandate that has to come out from anywhere.

1:27:49 Speaker 4 Right.

1:27:50 Speaker 5 It's coming from the people.

1:27:51 Speaker 4 Right.

1:27:51 Speaker 5 Right? The volunteers that are running-

1:27:53 Speaker 4 Right.

1:27:53 Speaker 5 So inside Lubavitch today, we-- if people know that you, and we're s- and we're seeing it every day, go out and do what you, what y- is your little thing, standing and waving a flag at a tank that's going to war can give that soldier what he needs to know.

1:28:13 Speaker 4 Right.

1:28:13 Speaker 5 Because for the next ten days or ten weeks or ten months, he may see your face. He may see the face of that old lady standing in Yerushalayim-

1:28:22 Speaker 4 Right

1:28:22 Speaker 5 ...knowing that if he doesn't, if he's not victorious, that lady will not survive.

1:28:27 Speaker 4 That's what I'm fighting for.

1:28:28 Speaker 5 That's-- I'm fighting for that one woman who came out of her house with her cane.

1:28:32 Speaker 4 Right.

1:28:32 Speaker 5 And she held the flag up because that's all she could do.

1:28:35 Speaker 4 Right.

1:28:35 Speaker 5 So she is Mikam Yisroel. She is the whole nation of Bnei Yisroel.

1:28:38 Speaker 4 Right.

1:28:39 Speaker 5 And when you have that moment that soldier has to face, that's the same thing for Lubavitch. Every single thing we do today, every single person who in Lubavitch who wants to, who's listening to this, who wants to do something today should do it, should publicize it, should publicize it in their own name, should publicize it in the name of Lubavitch, should call it a Chabad house, should call it something else, should do what they believe is going to bring about one step closer to Mashiach, to bring the teachings of Chassidus light to the world, to the Jewish people, to Bnei Yisroel, and to all the nations of the world. That's what Mashiach is. And so the notion that we can, "Well, I don't know. I'm not the right person. I'm not appropriate. It's not for me. I wasn't asked. I wasn't hired. I'm not on the list." There's no list.

1:29:21 Speaker 4 Right.

1:29:22 Speaker 5 There's no, there's no list, Bentzi.

1:29:23 Speaker 4 Yeah, no, no, no. Your, your point right now, I think, I think it's worth, I think it's worth, um, like repeating or even rewor-- like for me to reword it in my own words and make sure that I understand you right is that, because I think it's a, I think it's a brilliant and very important point. What you're saying is that the reason why a lot of people will feel helpless or, or will feel, will feel gloomy and pessimistic is because they have-- they feel like there's nothing they can do. Like there's nothing more pessimistic and gloomy than helplessness, right? So what you're saying is it's not that don't be helpless. It's when... It's not that when you're gloomy, don't be helpless. What you're saying is, is that the gloominess comes because you're helpless, right? And, and so the, the, the, where it starts from is not the world around you. In a way-

1:30:12 Speaker 5 No, it's internal

1:30:13 Speaker 4 ...this is a brilliant insight of the idea of a chassid macht a svivah, right? It's a recognition that the s- the fact that the svivah has an imprint on you is because you don't recognize-

1:30:24 Speaker 5 Your potential

1:30:24 Speaker 4 ...your role.

1:30:25 Speaker 5 Exactly. Your role.

1:30:25 Speaker 4 Right? Your role and who you are. If you did, you would automatically change the svivah.

1:30:30 Speaker 5 And, and it's-

1:30:31 Speaker 4 The svivah, at the end of the day, the svivah, the svivah, the, the surroundings of the world are ultimately passive. And if I want to get a little bit philosophical-

1:30:39 Speaker 5 It's a, it's a, by the way, it's a tautology because y-you make your svivah. You know how you make your svivah? By just believing that you make your svivah.

1:30:47 Speaker 4 By, by being you.

1:30:48 Speaker 5 That's right.

1:30:48 Speaker 4 By being you, right. No, and I, I'll say if I can, if we can go a little bit longer, and I go a little bit, a little bit deeper on this.

1:30:54 Speaker 5 How long have we been?

1:30:55 Speaker 4 An hour and a half.

1:30:56 Speaker 5 By the way, is this still a war?

1:30:59 Speaker 4 I, I think I just read-

1:31:00 Speaker 5 Maybe the war's over. We're gonna delete the tape.

1:31:02 Speaker 4 No, no, no. I read before we started that Bibi's procrastinating, so given his proclivities, there's still a war. Um, no, but I, I, I wanna go a little bit deeper for a few minutes because it was something I was thinking on my way here. Um, you know, Connecticut highways are, are great for, for, for thinking 'cause-

1:31:19 Speaker 5 They're parking lots. We know.

1:31:20 Speaker 4 There's parking lots. There's, there's no time for driving, so all you, all you're left to do is think. That's why you're so profound. That's your secret. Anyhow, um, you know, it's-

1:31:31 Speaker 5 I'll tell you a little story about that.

1:31:32 Speaker 4 Go ahead.

1:31:33 Speaker 5 Yoav Galant, who's now the Secretary of Defense of Israel.

1:31:34 Speaker 4 Right.

1:31:36 Speaker 5 He started off as the head of the Shayetet, which was the Navy SEALs.

1:31:39 Speaker 4 Right.

1:31:40 Speaker 5 And then he became Hazkir Tzva'i, which was the military secretary to Sharon.

1:31:43 Speaker 4 Right.

1:31:44 Speaker 5 And then he became the head of, the head of Southern Command. He was the head of Southern Command.

1:31:47 Speaker 4 Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, in the la-- in the, in the Gaza War ten years ago.

1:31:49 Speaker 5 Yeah.

1:31:50 Speaker 4 Yeah.

1:31:50 Speaker 5 That's what he did. And then he, and then he, um, and then he became what he is today. Uh, he left the government for a while, and he came back.

1:31:58 Speaker 4 Right.

1:31:58 Speaker 5 He left, by the way, over like a dispute over like some zoning issue on his driveway in his house or something. It was absolutely ridiculous. Anyway, he's back. Uh, so I've known Yoav for, for I think fifteen, twenty years. We hosted him here in New Haven at Yale. He spoke, and he stayed with us, and we spent a lot of time, and I'm still in touch with him. So the last time I saw him, the-- on one of my last trips, it wasn't the last time, but one of the last trips, um, I saw him, he was in the Southern-- he was on the Southern Command, and I went with Norman Bender, who ultimately gave us the Chabad House here at Yale, a good friend of mine who gave us the money to build the Chabad House, uh, to Eretz Israel. And it was just a trip, me and Norman.

1:32:33 Speaker 4 Okay.

1:32:33 Speaker 5 Um, Norman had gone to Yale. He's a, a, an alum, and, uh, Baruch Hashem, he, he ga-- he, he was the f-first major gift to build the Chabad House at Yale. So I went to the Southern Command to visit him, and he said, "Let me give you a tour of the Gaza border." And, uh, so we got into a Jeep, and he called in one of his, uh, uh, soldiers, and they gave us a tour of the, of the, uh, the opening, the crossing, and how the food goes in, how the food goes out. And we went up dirt roads with no signs. They take you into what's really the bases and the overlook of-

1:33:03 Speaker 4 Right

1:33:04 Speaker 5 ...of the Gaza Strip. And he was, he was talking about the strategic challenges, et cetera. But going back to parking lots, um, I knew that Yoav lives in Haifa. So we were sitting afterwards and eating, having lunch, having a cup of coffee, and I said, "Yoav, you live in Haifa. You-- We're in, we're on the southern tip of, uh-"

1:33:19 Speaker 4 Right.

1:33:20 Speaker 5 "...you know, close to the southern tip of Israel." Uh, and he s-- I-I said, "You know, I have to go to New York. It's like a whole... It's a nightmare with the traffic." And he says, "No, no." He points outside. He shows me there's a helicopter outside.

1:33:29 Speaker 4 Oh, okay.

1:33:30 Speaker 5 Yeah, so he got a helicopter every day to take him from Kfar to-

1:33:33 Speaker 4 Yeah

1:33:33 Speaker 5 ... to the Strip.

1:33:35 Speaker 4 Yeah.

1:33:35 Speaker 5 Anyway, speaking of traffic.

1:33:36 Speaker 4 No, but so I, I just wanna... So on my way here, and I've been thinking also about the past few days, is, you know, a lot of times, you know, I-I to be, to be, to be honest, like, the kind of like the Rebbe said this about resembling the situation, those kind of insights don't talk to me so much because I don't know enough about what was going on then and what's going on now to be sure that like, the, the, like, that they just kind of horizontally transfer, copy and paste, right? Like you said, the Rebbe was someone who, who lived with the times, and the geopolitics are different. The, the, the war strategy is different. Those things don't talk. And also, going back to what we've been talking about earlier, it's irrelevant to me. Like, I'm not, I'm not involved in, in-

1:34:17 Speaker 5 Well, it is irrelevant to the fact that the Rebbe engaged in those things.

1:34:19 Speaker 4 Yeah, yeah, fine. But-

1:34:20 Speaker 5 And it wasn't beneath the Rebbe to actually give strategy-

1:34:23 Speaker 4 Granted

1:34:23 Speaker 5 ... to speak resembling to people who have in power.

1:34:25 Speaker 4 Granted, and I re-- I think I remember hearing in yeshiva also that there were, the Rebbe once said or was once asked, like, you know, what are the-- Is for bringing about resembling and all the war strategies, what's relevant to the Bachman? The Rebbe said that, well, he's talking about the different, uh, spiritual resembling. My, my point is, like, a lot of the kind of the discourse of like the Rebbe said to blow up this place or, or this is a way to do it, that doesn't talk to me personally. I'm not saying right or wrong. It doesn't talk to me personally. But what does talk to me, I try to think like, what are some of the deeper themes the Rebbe spoke about that I'm aware of that are relevant to discussions that are going on now? And so we were just talking about earlier the idea of like the sviva, the Hasid makes the sviva, and a lot of it is just the recognition that the sviva is passive. It, it's in a, in a sense, like you said, it's a tautology. It doesn't exist unless you let it exist, right? And one of the things, one of the distinctions that I saw that I came across as fascinating between the way the Rebbe framed the struggle between America and Nazi Germany and then between America and Soviet Union is the, the difference between the individual and the masses. And the idea of a masses is that the individual is just a passive

1:35:32 Speaker 4 piece of clay, like it's irrelevant. Individual's worthless. It's only when you-

1:35:36 Speaker 5 In communism.

1:35:37 Speaker 4 Yeah.

1:35:37 Speaker 5 Right.

1:35:37 Speaker 4 And when you have the idea of a mass of people is basically the negation of the individual. And so the individual itself is just a, a passive thing to use for the sake of a larger cause, right? You-

1:35:48 Speaker 5 The movement.

1:35:49 Speaker 4 Right.

1:35:49 Speaker 5 The movement.

1:35:49 Speaker 4 Right.

1:35:50 Speaker 5 Yeah.

1:35:50 Speaker 4 Right. And, and what, what, what-

1:35:52 Speaker 5 Not the movement, the party.

1:35:53 Speaker 4 It's like, yeah.

1:35:53 Speaker 5 The party. Communism was always about the party.

1:35:55 Speaker 4 It's not, it's not, it's not, it's the end justifies the means in the most brutal way.

1:35:59 Speaker 5 As long as the party con-continues, doesn't matter.

1:36:01 Speaker 4 Right. Right.

1:36:01 Speaker 5 And that's which is why Stalin killed all those-

1:36:03 Speaker 4 Right

1:36:03 Speaker 5 ... all those top people.

1:36:03 Speaker 4 Right.

1:36:04 Speaker 5 Who, who by the way, in many cases, were happy to die for the party because they were so brainwashed into believing in the party, which was a, a, an amalgamation-

1:36:14 Speaker 4 Right

1:36:14 Speaker 5 ... of the individuals, that they let the individual die.

1:36:16 Speaker 4 I mean, yeah. I mean, like, uh, you know, some people say they were happy until the minute that it came to the actual execution when they realized, "Okay, wait a second. Maybe not."

1:36:24 Speaker 5 It's too late.

1:36:24 Speaker 4 Yeah, fine. But the, the point is more that, like, like the one theme that has always resonated with me is th-- you know, what the Rebbe saw in America as not just a place where Jews could live comfortably, but resembling, that where each individual, where each individual is, you know, the Bill of Rights. What's the Bill of Rights? That the government, the mighty government ca-- must respect the rights of the individual-

1:36:47 Speaker 5 And minority

1:36:48 Speaker 4 ... and the value of the individual. Why? Not because just because, uh, legally. There's a deep philosophy to it because each-

1:36:54 Speaker 5 They have nobody. They have nobody

1:36:54 Speaker 4 ... each, each human being is created in the image of God, right? And so that, you know, to me, this is the idea that at least that I'm taking away from this conversation, which you said, you know, it's worth for me to have this conversation if someone else listens to it. I even see it, it's worth to have this conversation-

1:37:08 Speaker 5 For ourselves

1:37:08 Speaker 4 ... if I listen to it.

1:37:09 Speaker 5 Yeah, if I listen to it.

1:37:10 Speaker 4 Right? And so what I'm taking away from it is that, is that, you know, you, when you, when you fi-find yourself in a predicament where things are swirling around you so fast and, and, and, and, you know, one day seems good, one day seems bad, things get... There, there, there's catastrophe on the horizon. There's also endless potential on the horizon. It's a very, very new time and a very uns-unsettling time. You said it's hard for you to sleep. A lot of people are having a hard time sleeping. Very unsettling time, and, and there are concerns. I, I think you have to, you have to admit that there are concerns. Ultimately, what it comes down to is recognizing that you are an individual. You're not just a, you're not just a, a passive, a pa-- a passive, um, thing that things happen to. You're something that makes things happen. You know, so much of the discourse today about like the Palestinians versus the Israelis, forget about all the, forget about all the kind of geopolitics about it. A lot of the philosophy boils down to the Palestinians don't have their own agency. They're doing things because they've been forced into it. You can't blame them for what they've done because they don't have a choice in what they're doing, whereas the Israelis have all the choice, right? There's so much of the world's discourses that you don't have a choice. E-everything just happens. It's inevitable. And, and the end, and, and that creates terrible, terrible anxiety.

1:38:26 Speaker 4 It creates terrible, terrible pessimism.

1:38:28 Speaker 5 Because it me- it means I'm not relevant.

1:38:30 Speaker 4 It means I'm not relevant. It means I'm helpless. It means I'm a spectator.

1:38:33 Speaker 5 Now, I'm not relevant me-- it leads... You know what it leads to? I mean, what's the endgame of I'm not relevant?

1:38:37 Speaker 4 Suicide.

1:38:38 Speaker 5 Suicide, exactly.

1:38:39 Speaker 4 Suicide.

1:38:39 Speaker 5 Exactly. Very-

1:38:39 Speaker 4 Right. And, and so if it's-

1:38:41 Speaker 5 And by the way, today it doesn't take very long.

1:38:42 Speaker 4 And by the way, suicide takes guts. So what it usually leads to is not suicide, but depression.

1:38:47 Speaker 5 Yeah.

1:38:47 Speaker 4 'Cause, 'cause-

1:38:48 Speaker 5 Yeah, no, and-

1:38:48 Speaker 4 'Cause, 'cause, 'cause for suicide, you actually need to take action.

1:38:51 Speaker 5 Right.

1:38:51 Speaker 4 Right? And that's always the kind of the irony of suicide is that, I, I remember reading about this somewhere, but like the, the, the, the, the, the irony or the tragedy of suicide is that like in order to be suicidal, you actually have to be-

1:39:02 Speaker 5 Assertive

1:39:03 Speaker 4 ... you have to be assertive.

1:39:03 Speaker 5 Right.

1:39:04 Speaker 4 Right? So there are a lot of people who c-- live in this, in, in, in, in, in this, in, in, in, in a worse place in a way where, where they don't even ha-- they-

1:39:11 Speaker 5 They don't have the guts to do it

1:39:12 Speaker 4 ... they don't, they have all the reason to do it, but none of the guts to do it, right?

1:39:14 Speaker 5 They have all the pain to do it, it's like-

1:39:16 Speaker 4 Right. And, and, and that to me is like at the end of the day, if, if, if there's one thing I take, can take away from this conversation-

1:39:21 Speaker 5 On the positive. Let's go to the positive.

1:39:22 Speaker 4 Yeah. Yeah. I'm saying, I'm saying only on the positive.

1:39:24 Speaker 5 Yeah.

1:39:24 Speaker 4 Well, you have to paint the picture.

1:39:25 Speaker 5 Yeah. No, no, you don't.

1:39:26 Speaker 4 Right? Right. When you... Instead of that kind of helpless feeling of I am just a passive lump of clay that things happen to, there's a surrounding, a sviva that makes me... If there's one teaching that, that I have picked up or, or been reminded of in this conversation is that a Hasid makes the sviva. And a Hasid makes the sviva, may-maybe there's an interpretation because a Hasid has a connection to the Rebbeim, and therefore he has extra powers, et cetera, et cetera. I'm not saying it's not, it's not right. Fine. But at the very simple level, a Hasid makes the sviva because a Hasid recognizes that the sviva has got nothing on him. It's all in, it's all a trick. If you are you and you realize that you, it starts with you-

1:40:12 Speaker 5 Then the sviva is you.

1:40:13 Speaker 4 The sviva is you. Exactly.

1:40:14 Speaker 5 And I would, I would add one thing to that just to, just to, to be, to take it one level higher. The svivah is in the immediate sense.

1:40:22 Speaker 4 Right.

1:40:23 Speaker 5 Karavel.

1:40:24 Speaker 4 Right.

1:40:24 Speaker 5 Something we say a lot in Lavash.

1:40:25 Speaker 4 Right.

1:40:26 Speaker 5 A velt.

1:40:27 Speaker 4 A velt. And there's only one world, by the way.

1:40:29 Speaker 5 And there's only one world.

1:40:30 Speaker 4 Right.

1:40:31 Speaker 5 Uh, we don't-- you don't have to say the world.

1:40:33 Speaker 4 Right.

1:40:33 Speaker 5 You could say a velt.

1:40:34 Speaker 4 Right.

1:40:35 Speaker 5 Turn a world.

1:40:37 Speaker 4 Right.

1:40:38 Speaker 5 So we make a svivah.

1:40:40 Speaker 4 Right.

1:40:40 Speaker 5 We karavel.

1:40:43 Speaker 4 And?

1:40:43 Speaker 5 And.

1:40:44 Speaker 4 And?

1:40:44 Speaker 5 And.

1:40:45 Speaker 4 Right. And, and it's import-- And, and what happens in war is you recognize that that expression that the Rabbi said who knows how many years ago has a literal application, has a literal application.

1:40:55 Speaker 5 We should remember that every war starts and ends with one gunshot.

1:40:59 Speaker 4 One gunshot. All right.

1:41:01 Speaker 5 Shot by one person.

1:41:03 Speaker 4 Right.

1:41:04 Speaker 5 Starts and end with one gunshot by one person.

1:41:07 Speaker 4 That's, that's so profound.

1:41:08 Speaker 5 Yeah.

1:41:08 Speaker 4 That's so profound. All, all the noise, all the noise has a beginning and has an end, and that end, uh, and, and it's-- What does it say? It's, it's the, it's a, ch-how, what's this expression? The, the, the tip of the needle, right? There's the-- Chassidus talks about how-

1:41:26 Speaker 5 Chudeshamachat.

1:41:26 Speaker 4 Chudeshamachat. The beginning and the end is the tiniest part-

1:41:30 Speaker 5 Yeah

1:41:30 Speaker 4 ... of the whole continuum.

1:41:31 Speaker 5 Yeah.

1:41:31 Speaker 4 And that could be, that could be you.

1:41:33 Speaker 5 Pure physics.

1:41:33 Speaker 4 And that could be you.

1:41:34 Speaker 5 Yeah. It will be us.

1:41:36 Speaker 4 It will be you.

1:41:36 Speaker 5 L'chaim.

1:41:37 Speaker 4 L'chaim. Uh, this was a pleasure.

1:41:39 Speaker 5 Thank you. Thanks for having me.

1:41:39 Speaker 4 This, this was a pleasure.

1:41:40 Speaker 5 It's always good to see you, Venti.

1:41:41 Speaker 4 Likewise. Likewise. I'm very glad I made the trek.

1:41:43 Speaker 5 Maybe, maybe, maybe a s-second home in New Haven? Vacation home? Vacation home?

1:41:46 Speaker 4 Well, well, if I-

1:41:47 Speaker 5 You'd do really well on Yale's campus.

1:41:48 Speaker 4 Well, if I, if I-

1:41:49 Speaker 5 There's a lot of work to do here, Venti.

1:41:50 Speaker 4 Yeah.

1:41:50 Speaker 5 We have-- If we had more cover like you, you know, you can come in and just start, uh, open another mesivta across the street, you know, and get going.

1:41:56 Speaker 4 I, I appreciate it.

1:41:57 Speaker 5 Or, or come help us with our mesivtas.

1:41:58 Speaker 4 I appreciate it. Uh, well, I just have to buy the right stocks that you didn't recommend.

1:42:02 Speaker 5 You're always welcome.

1:42:02 Speaker 4 That you didn't recommend on the show. All right.

1:42:04 Speaker 5 You're always welcome.

1:42:04 Speaker 4 This has been, this has been great. Thank you.

1:42:05 Speaker 5 Thank you.

1:42:08 Speaker 4 The music for this podcast comes from the album Repentance Doors by Oren Zorn and Dav Bahar, and is used with their permission.