Ep. 23 // "Should We Still Be Yearning?" w/ Rabbi Moshe Gourarie

00:00 Speaker 1 For quite some time, everything that, that we did, uh, I did was, uh, um, permeated with a, with a, with a Beis Din-ish. And I was talking with, with, with some friends, whatever Beis Din-ish. Our kids were there at the table, you know, our kids, 16, 17, whatever. And, um, and one, one of my friends said to me, "Our kids have no idea what you're talking about. They don't know, they don't know what you're talking about. Beis Din to what?"

00:21 Speaker 2 Right. Exactly.

00:22 Speaker 1 Beis Din to what?

00:26 Speaker 2 Welcome to Homesick for Lubavitch, a podcast where we explore Lubavitch identity in the year two thousand and twenty-four. My name is Bentzi Offson, and I will be your host. Let's begin. All right, so I'm here with, uh, Rabbi Moshe Gurari in Toms River, um, which is not Lakewood. But kind of is Lakewood at this point. Um, Rabbi Moshe Gurari is the founder, I think, of Project Klitzekes. Uh, definitely one of the faces of Project Klitzekes.

01:01 Speaker 1 That's more like it.

01:02 Speaker 2 And, um, we will get to that project and the motivation behind it and the spirit behind it within the course of conversation for sure. Uh, many people I'm sure who are listening to this podcast have, have also listened to Project Klitzekes and probably Rabbi Gurari's classes, and so we will get there. But I did want to start not even with where you come from, but with, uh, before you came from. The jump back two generations. I don't usually ask people to do that, but, uh, in, in some of the podcasts, at least one of the earlier podcasts, some people talked about Montreal and Rabbi, uh, Noson Gurari, who in a way is this kind of figure that, uh, those, those-- There are many who never heard of him, but then those who heard of him, they're like, "What do you mean? He, he was this towering figure." And I think it'd be interesting if you could start off talking a little about, about him, maybe, may- Where, where does, where does this Gurari chain come from?

02:09 Speaker 1 Okay. So I can talk about the Gurari chain-

02:13 Speaker 2 All right

02:13 Speaker 1 ... because it, it's much broader than just me and my family.

02:16 Speaker 2 Right.

02:16 Speaker 1 But I-

02:17 Speaker 2 No, but you're a Gurari chain

02:18 Speaker 1 ... I, I can go back to my Zayde. My Zayde, Noson Gurari, lived in Montreal. Um, w- w- we would go there. I mean, he was a towering figure, but to me he was my Zayde. And, um, I used to enjoy going into his office. He was, uh... I never saw him working. Maybe by the time I used to come around, he was partially retired. But he did have a parnasah, which is what he did, you know, to make a living. But I, uh, the passion of his life was learning chassidus. I remember after the Seder once, you know, we'd sat down at the dining room table about one thirty, two o'clock in the morning with the sefer as if it was the middle of the day.

02:58 Speaker 2 Hmm.

02:59 Speaker 1 Um, I remember once, uh, I was there for Pesach one year myself. My father, he, he, he had fallen during the winter, and he slipped on the ice, and his, his, he, he wasn't up to traveling. In those years, he would travel to o- one of his children for Pesach. I went my... I was 16 years old. And, uh, the first day of Pesach after the seudah, so this, so this Yontif, which is when most people take a nap-

03:21 Speaker 2 Right

03:22 Speaker 1 ... because the Seder the night before was late, the Seder the night... Anyway, he asked me if I wanted to learn a little bit, so I, I said of course. I said yes. And, um, he sat down with me, and we started learning Mazza Zu, Samech Zain, which is in the back of Samech Vav.

03:34 Speaker 2 Sure.

03:35 Speaker 1 And, um, a little bit meant, uh, till it was two, two hours- ... then three hours. And I was never happier to go to Mincha, even though the whole way to Mincha we continued to make him, to make sure I understood the Maimar. He had an incredible way of explaining things. He was speaking to me in Y- Yiddish mostly, or all, all in Yiddish, and Baruch Hashem I understand Yiddish. But the way he, he presented the ideas was, it was something that he was so familiar with. It was, it was even to a child, he was able to explain it. And I... And that this was... So this, this was his life. I mean, I remember he would come, he came once, uh, he would come to Detroit. I grew up in Detroit. Um, so he would take the train from Montreal to Windsor. My father would pick him up in Windsor. So I once went with my father, you know, to pick up Zayde. Father says, "Wie is geven die nisie? How was the ride?" So he says, "A ganz gute nisie." And he showed the, the sefer Pele Choirim from Reb Hillel Paritcher that he, that he learned along the way. That's what made it a comfortable ride, was the fact that he had good reading material. So, uh-

04:36 Speaker 2 But he wasn't an academic. He was a, he, he went to business. He lived in this world, right?

04:41 Speaker 1 He li- I don't know what, what you mean by academic, but he lived in this world and he-

04:44 Speaker 2 No, I'm saying an academic is someone whose job is to learn, right? They, they work in a university and, you know, you know, the professor kind of thing where they-

04:52 Speaker 1 He was... No. No. This was a-

04:54 Speaker 2 He wasn't a mashpia. He wasn't-

04:55 Speaker 1 Well, he taught. In the later years, he taught in one of the, one of the Chabad houses, one of the Chabad shuls there.

05:00 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

05:00 Speaker 1 Uh, but that's like me. Every different years, bachurim would come. He would teach. He just didn't look to teach. He didn't look to... He wasn't looking to be a teacher or an academic. He was, he was... He, he, he, he enjoyed, like, lear- learning and understanding chassidus. He enjoyed talking about it with someone that was-

05:16 Speaker 2 Right

05:16 Speaker 1 ... on his level. It was always enjoyable to watch my father and him, you know, discuss something. Uh, my father once told me that, um, my grandfather in the end of his life had, uh, had yana machlah on his brain.

05:28 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

05:29 Speaker 1 So at one point he, he got, he had, he went in for, uh, an operation. So when he woke up, he told my father, "Chabad naif ashstand in shvir dis akeilum." And they began to discuss, uh-

05:39 Speaker 2 Mamash

05:40 Speaker 1 ... shvir dis akeilum. Um-

05:41 Speaker 2 Wow.

05:42 Speaker 1 So this was, this was, uh, uh, this was, this was, this was his life. This was, uh, how he lived. E- everything else was the fact that he made a living, and he did so, you know, was, was 'cause that's what you have to do, but not that's, that wasn't where his head was.

05:54 Speaker 2 Well, because the reason I'm asking that or pointing that out is because, you know- It's, it's something that I, that I've noticed is where, like, when you leave yeshiva, and then, you know, learning, learning Chassidus in yeshivas is so connected to the atmosphere of the yeshiva, which is very unique because most of the world isn't yeshiva, and most yeshivas are not Lubavitch yeshivas. So it's a very few places where, you know, let's say Matzo Zoo of Samach Zayin is, is a thing. You know, most of the world, it's not a thing. Then you leave the yeshiva, and it's like, "Okay, nobody else seems to care about this. My wife doesn't know what I'm talking about even," you know? And, like, a- and a lot of my friends or people that I'm around aren't interested. And so for me, I wouldn't say it was an excuse to kind of let it dwindle, but it was, it was hard to maintain that excitement or that intensity, that interest in this thing where it, it's, it becomes essentially a very private, and it's, it's just you in, in many ways, right? There, there's fewer and fewer people with which you can engage on this, and that's why it's so interesting to hear how someone who was a businessman... And, and I understand what you're saying, that it wasn't, he wasn't about business, but someone who didn't, he didn't have the comfort of being surrounded by yeshiva bachurim the whole day, and like, where, where what he's learning is

07:19 Speaker 2 what he's teaching, and so it's, you know, that's his... He, he's in the world, and he still is, is, is, is, is learning. Not even, it doesn't sound even like out of kabbalah, more portions 'cause he, this is his life. This is what he enjoys. And, you know, it didn't seem like he wrote s- like, he didn't even write sefarim about it. It was just, it was just him.

07:38 Speaker 1 He actually wrote a lot, wrote a bunch of stuff, but it, it's, it's, it's almost impossible to print unless someone was to take it and, and, and, uh, elucidate it.

07:47 Speaker 2 So it was notes. It was notes.

07:49 Speaker 1 Yeah. Notes, yeah.

07:49 Speaker 2 I'm saying he didn't, he didn't, he wasn't out to publish and to write books. I, I just think, you know, it's just a beautiful example of a, of, uh, of that personal private joy of, of learning Chassidus that, that someone had.

08:05 Speaker 1 A hundred percent. And to be fair, I think it's, it's fair to mention his, his father, who I'm named after-

08:09 Speaker 2 Right

08:09 Speaker 1 ... Moshe Gerari.

08:10 Speaker 2 Sure.

08:10 Speaker 1 Who was also a businessman, and was an askan in, uh, in... Once he came to Eretz Israel, he was involved in-

08:15 Speaker 2 Right

08:16 Speaker 1 ... Agudas Chabad, and, and he too was, was, was well-known, but I think he was, he was a little bit more out there than my grand- than, than my grandfather was.

08:25 Speaker 2 What do you mean out there?

08:26 Speaker 1 Meant more, more teaching and more-

08:28 Speaker 2 Ah, ah, yeah

08:29 Speaker 1 ... uh, um-

08:29 Speaker 2 Sure. Well, didn't he teach Reb Yael? Wasn't he one of Reb Yael's teachers? Or, or-

08:34 Speaker 1 Well, the, the, he... I don't know if he was officially his teacher. I mean, my, my zayde and Reb Yael were chavruses.

08:39 Speaker 2 Your zayde, Nosson?

08:40 Speaker 1 My zayde Nosson and Reb Yael were chavruses.

08:42 Speaker 2 Ah.

08:42 Speaker 1 They learned together in Eretz Israel.

08:44 Speaker 2 In Eretz Israel.

08:44 Speaker 1 And even here when they came to New York.

08:46 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

08:46 Speaker 1 So they certainly crossed paths, and they lived in the same area in Tel Aviv.

08:50 Speaker 2 And they maintained relationships later on in life?

08:53 Speaker 1 Yes.

08:53 Speaker 2 Yes.

08:53 Speaker 1 They did. Yes. Um, not, um, to my best of my knowledge, when my zayde would come to New York, he'd visit Reb Yael, and they would talk usually about the latest, uh, or about the mamarim. My, uh, my zayde, um, I know that in his house, the ma- the s- the, the, the, this, this, uh, Sifrei HaMamarim, Melukit, even though I, I, I've heard people said, people say things about it, but I know that they were, in his house, they were well used.

09:18 Speaker 2 Really?

09:19 Speaker 1 Yes. Yes.

09:20 Speaker 2 That, that's really interesting because, uh, I think what you're referring to is, you know, there's, you know, some people, some people, uh, pay more attention to the fact that Reb Yael was involved in Melukit, and some people pay less attention to that, I think is a nice way of putting it.

09:36 Speaker 1 Okay.

09:36 Speaker 2 Right? Is that what you're referring to?

09:37 Speaker 1 Yeah, pretty much.

09:38 Speaker 2 That's what you're referring to, you know, did Reb Yael change it up or what, you know. That it's clear that the mamarim are different in Melukit than they are in the recorded versions, and so it's, it's very inter-

09:50 Speaker 1 As, as, as the Rebbe wanted.

09:52 Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, yeah. I understand. I understand. But no, I'm saying it's interesting that someone like your grandfather, who, who was his friend, and in many ways could therefore say, "I, I know this guy, like I'm gonna take his sh- his take on it that seriously," you're saying he did.

10:09 Speaker 1 And he may have disagreed with him on certain things.

10:11 Speaker 2 Say that.

10:12 Speaker 1 Certain approaches, certain things, but nevertheless-

10:14 Speaker 2 Right

10:14 Speaker 1 ... it was... I mean, I have actually somewhere in the house a stack of, of the Rebbe's mamarim, um, you know, when, when they came out as kitreiisim, and they were-- he, he collected them all. He learned every single one of them.

10:25 Speaker 2 Right. Which, which, which leads me to my, my next point, and I don't wanna make this podcast all about your zayde, but I think it's gonna feed into the rest of the conversation because there was someone else who spoke about him. I think maybe it was, maybe it was Reuven Li or maybe it was you and someone else, who had gotten to know him in Montreal and, you know, they're, they weren't a grandson, so I don't know how much they got to know him and how much they saw of him. But in their mind, you know, here's this person who kind of keeps to himself, loves learning Chassidus, but he's not, like, involved. Not... It didn't seem like he was involved in all the pauleis and all the kind of activities and, uh, you know, stuff going on. And so, like, it didn't seem so much like a Dushni kind of guy. Like, he's almost like, like he's a throwback to a different time. And I remember you, you, you commented to me at the time that, like, "That's not how I remember him." So, I mean, talk a little bit about... I'm not, I'm not asking you to defend your zayde's honor here, but what I would ask you is, you know, when you were growing up, um, you know, you grew up, you grew up in a very Dushni kind of atmosphere. We can get to that soon. Um, how did you place your zayde in this whole, you know, like, space? Like,

11:37 Speaker 2 how did he fit in for you? Like, because he wasn't a shliach, right? He wasn't... Was he officially a shliach? He wasn't a shliach. He wasn't, he wasn't in the, in yeshivas. He's like a, you know... How did you, how did you s- how did you see him? Where did he fit in in your mind to, to Dushni, to being a Chassid? Like-

11:56 Speaker 1 Well, at the time, I wouldn't have even known, I wouldn't have even known to, to differentiate.

12:03 Speaker 2 Uh, interesting.

12:04 Speaker 1 Like my father Um, despite being, you know, m- m- more Derech HaChaim oriented, if you will.

12:12 Speaker 2 Right.

12:12 Speaker 1 But what did I, what did I see of my father? Learning. When I was a kid, my father, my father would sit late at night and push and learn.

12:18 Speaker 2 Right.

12:18 Speaker 1 And he said this mostly.

12:19 Speaker 2 Yeah. Right.

12:20 Speaker 1 When he taught niglah, he taught Gemara to the 70 bachurim. But, uh, at night he would sit and learn. I remember when a, when a, when, when, when, when his new sefer would come, when a new... Whether it was, uh, from the previ- from the Friediker Rebbe or from the Rebbe, I, I, I didn't at the time understand the, the, the, the distinction of each one, but my father liked to learn. My father l- my father sat and learned Pusha for hours.

12:40 Speaker 2 Right.

12:41 Speaker 1 So, so I saw my Zayde doing the same thing. I mean, like, like I... If I, if I was to look back now, I would say to you that some of the, for the lack of a better term, shtick that became, uh, uh, synonymous with Derech HaChaim, my Zayde didn't buy into that.

12:55 Speaker 2 He didn't buy into that.

12:56 Speaker 1 He didn't buy into that. Uh, um, n- not so much 'cause he disagreed with it, just because it wasn't his nature. It wasn't his personality.

13:01 Speaker 2 He was busy learning.

13:02 Speaker 1 So yeah, he was doing his thing.

13:04 Speaker 2 Right.

13:04 Speaker 1 And this is how he was... This is, this is, this is what... This is how he became a Hasid, if you will, and this is how he was-

13:10 Speaker 2 Right

13:10 Speaker 1 ... a Hasid, and this is how he always was.

13:11 Speaker 2 Right. Yeah. I, I think that's, I think that's a really interesting point because so much of, like, these categories that are made up are very often just made up. Like, like, okay, a Derech HaChaim Hasid. Why... What exactly defines a Derech HaChaim Hasid? Like, that he doesn't learn? You know what I mean? Like, uh, you know, no, I don't think anybody seriously thinks that that's a definition, but, but, like, it, it, it can s- it can quickly become silly of like, okay, y- you are on the right side of things or you're on the wrong side of things, on this made-up category, right? And, and what you're saying, it seems like, is that, you know, someone may come and say, "Oh, this, this guy's father was Derech HaChaim because X, Y, Z, and this guy's grandfather was Derech HaChaim because X, Y, Z," but really they were doing the same thing, right? Meaning the, the categories, they... You don't have to play ball with the categories is what, is what, is what it sounds to me. Like, you don't have to, like, defend that, "No, no, according to your made-up category, he's also Derech HaChaim."

14:15 Speaker 1 Keep, keep in mind that my Zayde, at least, I mean, I don't, I don't know so much about later on, but when he was a bachur, I don't know how to say it. I'm saying he, he knew the Rebbe personally. The Rebbe knew him personally. The Rebbe wrote to his father about him. He wrote him, called him. He said, "Nechba lakeilum."

14:33 Speaker 2 You're saying when he c- when he came-

14:34 Speaker 1 He came to New York

14:34 Speaker 2 ... he came with Reb Yisroel on Yontif shvat.

14:36 Speaker 1 On Yontif shvat, and then the Re- they asked the Rebbe what to do, and the Rebbe told them to stay. So they stayed. And they... And he was a bachur for t- he got married in, I believe, 5703.

14:45 Speaker 2 Right.

14:46 Speaker 1 So for, for those few years, he was a 770 bachur.

14:49 Speaker 2 And why did he end up in Montreal?

14:50 Speaker 1 Because... I, I don't know, but probably because his wife was from, was, was from Montreal.

14:55 Speaker 2 Oh, his wife was from Montreal. Yeah, that makes sense.

14:57 Speaker 1 My grandmother, her maiden name, tza"l, I don't know my grandmother's... Her name is, her maiden name is Chaiken.

15:02 Speaker 2 Chaiken.

15:03 Speaker 1 She's an older sister of Berl Chaiken by many, many years.

15:06 Speaker 2 Uh, the one in, in, in-

15:07 Speaker 1 In Cleveland

15:07 Speaker 2 ... Cleveland. Okay.

15:08 Speaker 1 Her father, her father was, uh, Meir Chaim Chaiken. He was a rav in Montreal at the time.

15:12 Speaker 2 Uh-huh.

15:13 Speaker 1 He had come from, from Gruzia.

15:15 Speaker 2 Very interesting.

15:15 Speaker 1 And he was... I'm, I mean, I don't know that's why, but I'm guessing that that, that might be the connection. But, um-

15:21 Speaker 2 Yeah, and I, I think, I think, I think, I think it's, I think it's, I think it's an important point. Maybe you take it for granted, but, and maybe people listening also th- don't know what I'm going on about. But, you know, I, I think, like, so mu- like this, this label of Derech HaChaim is, is, it becomes so silly so quickly, and it becomes useless. It becomes useless because, you know, here's, here's your grandfather who-

15:43 Speaker 1 It depends on the context, though. I'm sorry to interrupt you 'cause-

15:45 Speaker 2 Yeah. But-

15:46 Speaker 1 ... Derech HaChaim is the Rebbe's, is the Rebbe's, uh, Rebbe coined it.

15:49 Speaker 2 No, no, I'm not saying Derech HaChaim is a silly thing. Calling someone Derech HaChaim and deciding-

15:53 Speaker 1 Yeah

15:53 Speaker 2 ... who is and who isn't, that kind of thing. 'Cause Derech HaChaim is an idea, right? Derech HaChaim is an idea. Once it becomes a label, it's a different thing. It becomes like a status of are you in or are you out? Like, here's your Zayde who, you know, is not... One person says, "Zayde looked like a Derech HaChaim person." Yeah, but his, his mamarim al loket were, were, were, were, were, were worked through.

16:14 Speaker 1 He used to-

16:15 Speaker 2 Were worked through, you know? So why... Like, is that not Derech HaChaim? Like, you know, why is that not Derech HaChaim? Like, I, I think, a- and maybe, maybe his personality was more a learning person, so he, maybe he wasn't involved in the big pulas or the outward stuff. Maybe he was. Maybe we don't know about it. Who knows? But it... That's another way to be a Derech HaChaim person is to learn the chassidus of Derech HaChaim. I think... I don't know. I, I think, I think, I think I'm pointing it out enough. But no, but I think, I, I think it'll come into the conversation because, you know, it's, it certainly, to me, I can already see how it... I asked you a question, and you're like, "I don't even..." And it wasn't even a question to me. And I th- I think, I think that will, that will, that will play a role. As a storyteller, I'm somewhat convinced that that's gonna play a role down the line. We'll see. We'll see if I'm right.

17:06 Speaker 1 All right.

17:06 Speaker 2 We'll see if I'm right. Okay, so, so, so your Zayde was Rav Nosson Gurary, who lived in Montreal. Your father is Rabbi Yossi Gurary, who was a, who was the maggid shiur, but mainly known as a mashgiach in Detroit for many years. And while I, I never learned in Detroit, I did have, uh, the, the, the enjoyment of hearing a few shiurim from your father over the years. And, um, I can say, and I know many others say that, um, like, the, the best shiur they ever, we e- I ever heard or we ever heard, um, very, very, um, rigorous, I think would be the, the best word. It was never the, the... It was never ideas coming from the sky and, like, falling into the Maimon. It was all worked out from the Maimon, and very rigorous and very serious and, and everything, e- everything, everything had to be earned, right? There was no easy way out. This is someone who, who hard of it is, is the, is the Yiddish word for it. So talk a little bit about Talk a little about, um, growing up in that kind of atmosphere and, uh, you know, what that was like.

18:16 Speaker 1 Well, I grew up, as you, uh, as you said, I grew up in Detroit. I grew up in a very idyllic shtetl-like Chassidishe shtetl. Um, my father and his friends, you know, the other younger light his age, farbrengte every Shabbos. Not every Shabbos farbrengted, often than they'd farbrengted together. Um, there were some older, you know, maybe ten years older than my, uh, than my parents, my father, you know, who were durkhe tanine Chassidishe Yidden. I'll mention one because he's in Eilev Ha'emes, but it's America again.

18:46 Speaker 2 Okay.

18:46 Speaker 1 Um, on the one hand was a very-- on the, on the surface would look as like a very Bal Abatisha person. He was a shliach, and he was involved with Bal Abat, and he dressed sort of what we would, at least for us little boys, we would consider it Bal Abatish. But he was a Yid who learned Chassidus every single morning. He would come, we can hear him through the window learning Chassidus. Shabbos, he would daven ba-ba-barechis. He would-- Uh, he, he was like, uh, maybe we didn't appreciate it at the time, but I'm just giving a dugma of someone who was the Rebbe Shliach, was dedicated to the Rebbe B'eleven Nefesh. At the same time, he learned Chassidus. One time, we know we-- If I say it between a chamayrov, we needed someone to have a maimer. No one-- one of the bachurim hadn't prepared a maimer to chazer. So I went over to him, I said, "Benny Chenz, could you maybe say something?" He said, "No, Nasfartum Tashvin Aleph." Like, as if it was his phone number, saying in those days when people knew phone numbers. But you know what I'm saying? It, it was-- He, he was living with it. I'm saying, and, and, and him is just one, one name amongst many, and it was a very, um, Rebbe-centric life, and we went to New York f-few-- many times a year, and especially later on when I got a little older, um, and whether it was Halukis, if we knew in

19:53 Speaker 1 advance, we would try to get there in time. There was giving out, uh, Kontresim or Sfarim. Um, to, to, to know what was going on, I remember, um, at a certain point i-in our basement, we had a, a copy machine, a few copy machines, and the bachurim would, would get the Likot every Friday from some office that had a fax machine, and they, they would copy it and print it in our basement. Later, we ourself, in other words, the next class of bachurim got, got the fax machine in our house. So everything that came through, the taxi, the rad, the yumanim, the... You know, I was there. I, I, I lived in that basement for those years, so I watched everything come in. I didn't under-understand everything. I did-- wasn't able to follow everything, but I was part of it. I was, I was growing up with the Rebbe, um, because I was-- I, I knew everything that was going on, and when I was old enough, I would take one-- ask one of the older bachurim to learn with me whether it was the, the Likutey Sichos or the Midrash. Um, so-- And, and the discussion, the conversation that came Hay-Hay-Hay Teves, the time leading up to Hay Teves, or Hay Teves, or Chaf B'Shvat, or... But the, the, the, the oiver that I was in, the environment that I was in was a very Chassidisha and a very Rebbe-focused, uh, environment.

21:07 Speaker 2 It, it's interesting because you started off describing Detroit in a way that sounded almost like one of the old Lubavitch communities. I don't know, one person will say Neville, another person will say, I don't know, Klimovitch. I, I don't know enough of the history of which one it's the most similar to. But, um, but then, but then you mentioned the thing about the faxes and all the faxes coming in. And I wonder, 'cause in those days, earlier on in Russia, let's say, if you were in a town or a village, um, you know, you lived there, you were very present there. Yeah, maybe once a year you went to, to Lubavitch or whatever. You got a letter here and there, but communication was very, very sparse. Travel was very, very sparse. You, you, you were present to where you were. Whereas here, it sounds almost like there was a tension between being in Detroit and, like, being part of this very rich atmosphere that's in the here and now, and at the same time being, you know, this fax machine pinging every day with, with updates, and your monument, like all the action's over there, actually. How did, how did that play-- Did it play a role, and how did that play a role i-in your mind when you were growing up? Like, w-w-how did, how do you manage to be both here and also there?

22:32 Speaker 1 So when I, when I use the term shtetl, I didn't mean that we were locked in or isolated. I meant more that there was the, the, the environment was very not megushamdik.

22:44 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

22:45 Speaker 1 Very not, um, like, um, uh, focused on, on, on gasmisdike things. We lived very basically, and we lived very happily. And, um, but, but the, the center of our lives was, was, was the Rebbe.

23:00 Speaker 2 Right.

23:01 Speaker 1 And therefore, um, when we were able to go, we went. There were times that my father d- couldn't take me or whatever it is, and me begging to go and me being devastated when I couldn't go.

23:10 Speaker 2 But did, would-- Did you feel like you were away? You-- Did you feel you were away from New York?

23:14 Speaker 1 Well, uh, to, to be fair, there, there, there was also a very, very big, um, geirain yankev, a very great pride about being on Shlichas.

23:23 Speaker 2 Uh-huh.

23:23 Speaker 1 So, so even though my father was really-- My father is in, is in the world of Chinuch, but the fact that we were not in New York and we didn't grow up literally at the Rebbe's feet was because we were on the Rebbe Shlichas.

23:35 Speaker 2 Right.

23:36 Speaker 1 And that gave us a sense of pride that despite the fact that we weren't living, uh, by the Rebbe li-literally, but we, we, we, we-

23:44 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm

23:44 Speaker 1 ... we did, we did as much as we can from where we were. But to be fair, to talk about your attention, I remember talking with my friends. When we were kids, the trajectory was that as soon as we finished two years of Mesivta in Detroit, we were going to Olat Taera. Not, not for Olat Taera, but for so that we could be bachurim and, and be every day by the Rebbe. That was, that was the goal. The goal was you grow up.

24:04 Speaker 2 Right.

24:04 Speaker 1 And, um, and you, you do everything you're supposed to do until you're old enough to, to reach, to reach heaven.

24:11 Speaker 2 Right.

24:12 Speaker 1 And, and that was to, to, to grow up as a bachur, uh, and, and be every day by the Rebbe, which-

24:18 Speaker 2 Right. Right

24:19 Speaker 1 ... which, uh-

24:20 Speaker 2 Which, which has a, which has a history-

24:22 Speaker 1 No, I'm just saying in, in, in my case, it, it didn't actually happen.

24:25 Speaker 2 Eh, we're gonna get there.

24:26 Speaker 1 But-

24:26 Speaker 2 But, but that has a history in Lubavitch, right? 'Cause like in Lubavi-- at least from the founding of Tenach HaTumim, very few Chassidim actually lived in Lubavitch, but the bachurim would live there in the, in the yeshiva, right? They, they were the yeshiva. The main yeshiva, at least, was by, was by the Rebbe, even if the Rebbe Shab was less, I don't-- I think was less available, less public than the Rebbe was later on, and many times he was away for months at a time. But they were, they were literally down the street from the Rebbe Rashaab's courtyard, chutz, right? So I mean, there is a, there is a tradition of that. But yeah, I mean, it just sounds-- I think, I think it's, it's an interesting tension to point to. It's also what you added about it being on Shlichas is also in a way interesting because like in a way, Shlichas, shlichus like sends you to a place, but you always feel like this isn't my pl- I, I'm here 'cause I'm sent here, I'm not here 'cause it's, um, it's my place, right? So on one hand, I have to be here 'cause that's where I was sent, but on the other hand, I'm only here because I was sent, like not because... Right?

25:32 Speaker 3 I have, um-

25:32 Speaker 2 That's the paradox of it, right?

25:35 Speaker 3 I have a Taich in Keh Bodim that is all about shlichus.

25:38 Speaker 2 Uh-huh.

25:38 Speaker 3 So ""Semeichim v'tzeisim v'sasim b'vayam""

25:40 Speaker 2 Right.

25:41 Speaker 3 "Sh'has semeichim v'tzeisim," they're happy to go out.

25:43 Speaker 2 And happy to come back.

25:43 Speaker 3 But "sas b'vayam," not come back forever. When they come back to see the Rebbe-

25:46 Speaker 2 Ah

25:47 Speaker 3 ...there's a simcha that, that, that we get to come back every once in a while.

25:50 Speaker 2 Right. It's, it's, it's interesting because, I mean, not to go into a whole spiel about shlichus, but I mean, it's just in terms of thinking of it just like the, like how the mind grapples with it, you know, you are, you are both here and not here at the same time. It's an interesting kind of way to live, right?

26:09 Speaker 3 But I think a lot of the question is coming from the fact that, that we're not there anymore, not physically in the, in that space, but physically in that time.

26:17 Speaker 2 Why?

26:18 Speaker 3 Because, because at the time there was, there, there was no tension. You were where you belonged, and part of, part of, part of being there was knowing that there was a s- there, there was a space or, or, or, or there was, there was something that you have to always remain connected to.

26:34 Speaker 2 Right. But you, you wanted to go back there, right? So you as a bachur wanted to grow up and go to Seven seventy. You-

26:40 Speaker 3 Because, because-

26:41 Speaker 2 We're told to

26:41 Speaker 3 ...bec- because within the, within the s- within the, the, the, the structure, there was a time where it was the right thing to do to be, to be there because that's what bachurim did.

26:53 Speaker 2 But that's what you wanted. You said that's what you wanted.

26:54 Speaker 3 And that, that, I... Yeah, but I, I didn't wanna live there for the rest of my life necessarily.

26:59 Speaker 2 Right. But hagufa, so "'Al karoch chata chaiva, al karoch chata meis," is that it's the same idea where we're both are true at the same time, right? You, you don't wanna be here, but, but once you're here, you also don't wanna leave here, but you also don't wanna be here in the first place, right? So it, it's a constant-

27:13 Speaker 3 But you have to go back to the same constant. It's the Rebbe.

27:15 Speaker 2 Right.

27:16 Speaker 3 The Rebbe... I, I wanna have a, a, a connection and a relationship with the Rebbe, and therefore I wanna see the Rebbe, ""Vayiru ein haChareidim es melech ha-"

27:23 Speaker 2 Right.

27:23 Speaker 3 And I wanna hear from the Rebbe and see, and, and, and be as close as possible. I also wanna do what the Rebbe wants from me.

27:28 Speaker 2 Right.

27:29 Speaker 3 And what the Rebbe wants from me is sometimes to not be there.

27:32 Speaker 2 Right. So that's my point. I'm not, I'm not saying it's a bad tension-

27:35 Speaker 3 Okay

27:35 Speaker 2 ...or that it's a stira. The tension sometimes is a paradox where the two things are both true, and because they're both true and because you have to hold both of them at the same time, you have to live with these two-

27:45 Speaker 3 Balance

27:45 Speaker 2 ...uh, well, I, I don't know if the word's balance. It seems the word I think is tension. It's, it's y- you wanna be here on shlichus, but you also wanna be there to see the Rebbe, right? That's what it sounds like. And so a- as a human being that can only be in one place, if you're here, you're not there, and if you're there, you're not here.

28:03 Speaker 3 I, I like the word balance because, because when you're talking in the world of ruchnius-

28:08 Speaker 2 Right

28:08 Speaker 3 ...two things, two opposites can, c-c-can coexist.

28:12 Speaker 2 Beseder. Beseder. You're saying, so you're talking in inyan.

28:16 Speaker 3 You can-

28:16 Speaker 2 I'm talking about... But, but as physical human beings-

28:18 Speaker 3 You can love, you can love your parent and you can love your child, and they're not a stira to each other, even though loving your child means doing st- a, a, a, and loving your parent means doing something else sometimes.

28:27 Speaker 2 But let, but let's say I love my child and I send them to camp, let's say, right? And so I send them to camp because I think that's what's best for them, but I also miss them. I want them home. So both of those things are true, and because we're human beings-

28:40 Speaker 3 Exactly

28:40 Speaker 2 ...we have to live with these conflicting emotions, where on one hand I am happy and pushing them to go to camp, but at the same time I, I want them to come back. I mean, it's something actually now already we're kind of circling back to that conversation, you know, or, or something that has... An earlier conversation on the podcast, but I, I don't mean to keep on going back to other conversations. It, like, the there, there is a tension there in shlichus, and I'm not saying this to put, to, to try to poke holes or anything. Far keert. I think it's part of life. Any, any, any, any, um, worth-worthwhile endeavor, any- anything, anything that-that's worth its salt has a tension in it, right? Because otherwise you're just swimming along with the current. But like, you know, I wanna... Like, you, when you say that the Rebbe had such simcha by the Knessia Shlichim, right? Or, or even, or we could even go away from shlichus, the simcha that the Rebbe had with the Eretz Yisrael for Tishrei, right? But then there was a goodbye at the end and, and it was, it was hard. You could see. And the Rebbe would say, "Marim, ai patter, ai patter, ai patter ad mem, mem chaverai," right? Like, this was real. It was real. It was real. It was real for the Chassidim, it was real for the Rebbe, it was re-real for the shluchim, it was real for the Rebbe. Like, I think the only difference

29:51 Speaker 2 is that with Eretz Yisrael, like, that's where they happened to live. It wasn't in many cases Rebbe's choice that they lived there. That's where they lived. Whereas with shlu-shlichim, Rebbe sent them out to places, and so that was a choice where people were distant for a while. I just, I, I think it's just an interesting tension to pl- to, to, to, to point out.

30:09 Speaker 3 But I, I wanna comment on that.

30:11 Speaker 2 Sure.

30:11 Speaker 3 I wanna say, um, I had this conversation about... I mean, it's gonna sound off topic, but I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll... about, um, uh, schools that don't teach English.

30:21 Speaker 2 Okay.

30:21 Speaker 3 And so some children feel, um, you know, they feel lacking when they grow up.

30:28 Speaker 2 Right.

30:28 Speaker 3 And I said, "You know, when I grew up, I didn't learn English."

30:31 Speaker 2 Right.

30:31 Speaker 3 And Baruch Hashem, it hasn't affected me negatively, at least to the best of my knowledge. Um, but I do understand that some people st- some people struggle with that.

30:41 Speaker 2 Right.

30:42 Speaker 3 And I... Someone asked me about it, and this was when the, when the whole discussion about in, in New York State when there was-

30:46 Speaker 2 Right.

30:47 Speaker 3 And I said, I said that one of the things that I think is important is if, if you're going to not teach your child English, you have to give them pride in that. They have to understand why, and they have to believe in it, because later on they can look back at it. They might disagree with you.

31:04 Speaker 2 Right.

31:04 Speaker 3 And they might be upset at you. I'm not saying that's guaranteed that they're gonna agree with you. But- For me, I, I was proud of the fact that I belonged to this select, uh, group of people that didn't learn English.

31:16 Speaker 2 Right.

31:16 Speaker 3 Um, and it, it was inculcated in me, so later I don't look back with a disappointment at my parents or at my educators because, um, be-be-because I understand where they were coming from, and they, and they did it from that way. And I think it's very, very important in the world of Shlichus or just referring to the comment about that other podcast that you just mentioned, and that, that, um, despite the hardships of Shlichus or, or, or for that matter, even if not Shlichus, even if you l- if you live in a-anywhere, wherever it might be that's different, di-difficult or far from family or far from New York or far from anything, and there, there, there could be a sense of disappointment or, uh, with the parents that they went there or whatever it is, and I'm not saying this works across the board and it fixes everything.

32:04 Speaker 2 Right.

32:04 Speaker 3 But one of the things that's necessary is to give a child a sense of pride in where they are and why they're growing up differently, and not just hope that it's all gonna work out, just say-

32:14 Speaker 2 Uh-huh

32:14 Speaker 3 ...I'll send them to yeshiva when they get older, and that'll, that'll fix it. But from t-to, to revel in the, in, in being different rather than-

32:22 Speaker 2 Right

32:22 Speaker 3 ...try to be a-as the same as, as everybody else-

32:25 Speaker 2 Right

32:25 Speaker 3 ...and hope that it, that, that it all falls together. And so you can call it tension or you can call it whatev- saying if it's, if, if it's done in a healthy way, and the, from, from kindheit, from, from, from, from childhood, the, the, the tension is, is oiled. It's made to feel less as a tension. It becomes easier for the child to live with it and to grow from it-

32:46 Speaker 2 Right

32:46 Speaker 3 ...rather than it becoming a tension that ultimately becomes a paradox and, and, and the kid does not know, uh, doesn't know where to go from there.

32:53 Speaker 2 Yeah. Yeah. I mean, f-fair enough. Fair enough. Yeah, I mean, I, I think, I think, I think I can concede that, that focusing too much on the tension can, can make it more, more-

33:06 Speaker 3 Correct

33:06 Speaker 2 ...more of a problem than it needs to be. Uh-

33:08 Speaker 3 But focus on the positive

33:09 Speaker 2 ...my-- I, I would, I would never suggest that, you know, when you're raising your child, you point out to them the contradictions of life.

33:16 Speaker 3 No.

33:17 Speaker 2 And, and, and, and, like, and press the two things. But, you know, at the same time, at the same time, you know, looking, looking back, I think it's interesting, I think it's valuable to, to, to notice these kind of inherent tensions that exist because, um, I think it, it, it's not to point, uh, say, "Oh, this is therefore a problem." A tension isn't a problem. At least that's not how I'm mean it here. How I mean it is that it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it makes... It, it opens up, um, it, it opens up the, the, let's say, the, the layers and the textures to, to what's going on here so that people, people have a better, "Okay, so this is-- Okay, th-this makes sense. Okay, I get it." When... Or for example, like, I think even to your exact point about teaching English, for example, when a child knows that they don't learn English, why they don't learn English, um, and, and I, I would also add, I think the most important thing is that the biggest hadgash is that they, that the, that, that they learn a lot of limudei Kodesh. It shouldn't be so much what they don't learn, but what they do learn instead, right? I think when the focus is on the not is... But that's a whole separate parshah. But when, when you, when you, when you point out the reasonings, and you point out that, yeah, there's a trade-off here, or there's, yeah, you may not

34:33 Speaker 2 be able to... It, it may be harder to go to law school, but there's a ma'yan. There's a reason why we're doing this. It may sound like you're pointing out a tension, but really you're pointing out the reasoning. And so later on in life, when a person maybe changes his mind or life takes a different path, and he looks back at it, even if he's not... Even if that wouldn't have been the thing that he would have done knowing what he knows now, he can look back and say, "Okay, I understand why that was done. I understand why that happened." So it's, it's not to point holes and to say, "Ah, you see? There, there's a problem here," or, you know, "This, this can't work." It's to say, "This is what it is. Th-this is what, this is what is involved in it, and, and it leads to all kinds of things." Uh, you know, it leads... It, it, it explains all kinds of things down the road. That, that's all, that's all I'm trying to-

35:21 Speaker 3 I once heard a word, not, not, uh-

35:23 Speaker 2 Yeah

35:23 Speaker 3 ...it's not from the Chutzos.

35:24 Speaker 2 Okay.

35:25 Speaker 3 But, uh-

35:25 Speaker 2 We're gonna get there. We're gonna get there

35:26 Speaker 3 ...but, uh, the, the, the, the lecturer was saying, "Ubecharta bachayim lemaan tichyeh ata vezaracha," you should choose life so that you and your children should live.

35:35 Speaker 2 Right.

35:35 Speaker 3 So the question is, why vezaracha?

35:37 Speaker 2 Right.

35:37 Speaker 3 Obviously, if you're alive, which I'm saying like-

35:39 Speaker 2 Right.

35:39 Speaker 3 So he said like this, "Ubecharta bachayim," if you choose life, if Yiddishkeit, if-

35:43 Speaker 2 Right

35:44 Speaker 3 ...if you do it 'cause you wanna do it.

35:45 Speaker 2 Right.

35:46 Speaker 3 You, you revel in it. You enjoy it. You... Then laman tichyeh ata vezaracha, then your children will wanna do it too.

35:50 Speaker 2 Right.

35:51 Speaker 3 But if you're a martyr-

35:52 Speaker 2 Beautiful. Yeah

35:52 Speaker 3 ...if you're doing so because your father did it 'cause you had no choice-

35:56 Speaker 2 Right

35:56 Speaker 3 ...and you, you feel like, "I have to," then your children are gonna say, "Okay, Tati was a martyr. No, our parents were martyrs. Why should I be a martyr?"

36:02 Speaker 2 Yeah. Yeah.

36:03 Speaker 3 And that's really the point I was making about explaining things.

36:05 Speaker 2 Uh.

36:05 Speaker 3 And that is, is that, is that when the children see, uh, that you're happy, that you... But not that nothing's hard. They know that life is hard sometimes and whether it's whatever it is. But when they see that, that, that, that as do leps with them-

36:17 Speaker 2 Right

36:18 Speaker 3 ...then, then, then this is something that they, that they wanna emulate.

36:21 Speaker 2 Right.

36:21 Speaker 3 And not n- And they, they may get older and decide no, but they'll, they'll have a different attitude to it because it, they didn't live a life of... And I can't use the word tension because that's, that's like the word here. But they didn't, they... It wa- it wasn't a, a difficult life.

36:34 Speaker 2 Right.

36:34 Speaker 3 Because even though things weren't perfect, it, it came with the ubecharta bachayim.

36:39 Speaker 2 Right. Uh, yeah. Uh, beautiful. Yeah. Yeah. When, when, when, when, when... Ultimately, when, when something is chosen and something is imbued with, with, with, with love, um, uh, you know, at, at the very worst, you, you say, "Okay, that wasn't for me, but I'm not upset about it because it came from a place of love." Right? Uh, and, and hopefully you stick with it, right? It, it, I mean, for your child, if you believe that what you're doing is the right thing, uh, then hopefully your child sticks with it. But at the very, at the very worst, they They, they, there's a-- they can look back and, and what they will find is, is love and, and goodwill, uh, and, and-

37:16 Speaker 3 S-s-sincerity

37:17 Speaker 2 ... sincerity and, and yeah, and good faith. So, so let's go back to, to this story that you're telling. So you're, so you're in Detroit, um, as a young bocher waiting to get to Olatara. Um, and then, like you said, it didn't happen. Uh, but first of all, so it seems like at that time, you know, y-you're, you're in this shtetl, there's other shtetl, there's other kind of „Finkel Olovavich," but everybody would kind of melt. It was like Olatara was a melting pot. Was that how it was?

37:46 Speaker 3 Look, I, I, uh, I, I, I was-- I never made it to Olatara

37:51 Speaker 2 I'm saying-

37:51 Speaker 3 So I-

37:52 Speaker 2 But, but I'm trying to understand the mindset

37:53 Speaker 3 I knew from camp, I, I knew from camp when I, like, at camp, the bochrim would come. Who were the, who were the, who were the bochrim that we looked up to?

37:58 Speaker 2 Camp is Detroit camp.

37:59 Speaker 3 Camp in Detroit.

37:59 Speaker 2 Right.

38:00 Speaker 3 Who, who were the guys we looked up to? All these bochrim. I don't... I, I didn't even know Olatara in '70. I, they, like, they, they came. These are the, the, these are the bochrim. You know, Motzei Shabbos when I was li- when I was, uh, 12 years old, I would sneak out and listen to Chazarah under the, under the, the, the window-

38:15 Speaker 2 Right

38:16 Speaker 3 ... of the office because a bunch of the bochrim would, uh, as soon as Shabbos was over, they would run to hear Chazarah. Um, whatever. There was, there wa- there was, there was, there was an environment-

38:25 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm

38:25 Speaker 3 ... that, that, um, a-as we were here, we have to be here, we're supposed to be here, but at the same time, you know, we're missing-- We, we, we, we missed the Fabrengen, and we wanna know what the Rebbe said and what the, what, what happened and-

38:37 Speaker 2 So which year was this in camp? Like, give me a... Is it late mems or early nuns?

38:40 Speaker 3 No, yeah, but I mean, uh, um, probably Tosfon. My last year as a camper was Tosfon and Alef.

38:46 Speaker 2 Nun Alef.

38:47 Speaker 3 I was, yeah. I was, I was almost Bar Mitzvah.

38:50 Speaker 2 Right. So, so, s-so you're, you're saying that even, you know, even in the corners of Lubavitch and, uh, even in the cor-- these different kind of corners of Lubavitch, at that time, there was diff- there's one Fabrengen, there's one, there's one thing going on, and so that, that's the melting pot of the thing-

39:06 Speaker 3 I, I can't talk about all the corners, but from, from, from where I was-

39:09 Speaker 2 Well, Detroit was a pretty distinct corner, so it's-

39:11 Speaker 3 Yeah, fine. I can only talk about my, uh, uh, my where I grew up, and, uh, going to camp was a very big part of that because that's when we got a, a, a taste of being around the older bochrim. And when I was, when I was in, in Detroit, Detroit had a Mesivta. So like I'm saying, in the, in the, in the second half of the '80s, you know, it was Mesivta. So by the time you were fifteen, sixteen years old, you, you, you, you, you left.

39:35 Speaker 2 Yeah.

39:36 Speaker 3 So, so the, the, the bochrim that were older than that, you know, um, some of which I, I-- were, were much older than me, and I'm still friends with them until today from, from, from, from those times at camp. Um, th-this is, this was a, a, like a taste of „Lebn mit dem Rebben", of Chassidishe Bochurim.

39:54 Speaker 2 Right.

39:55 Speaker 3 So it was a, the, there was a big... And then when we would come to New York and we would see-

39:59 Speaker 2 Your counselors

40:00 Speaker 3 ... the counselors, the staff, uh, sometimes they would push us in, they would schlep us in. I remember, uh, being carried over the shoulders by a few bochrim so I could be closer to the Rebbe's Fabrengen. Um, just a, a funny anecdote, but, uh, I remember once standing by the Rebbe's place, um, before the-- right before Fabrengen at one fifteen, one twenty, and two guys that I knew from camp, I won't say them by name, but, uh, they were, they were killing each other. They were „pasht makas retzach."

40:23 Speaker 2 What-

40:23 Speaker 3 They were fighting over a place.

40:24 Speaker 2 Oh.

40:24 Speaker 3 But, uh, and on the way home after, after Fabrengen, I met up with my father, and I was walking, and I said, and I said them by name, I said, "This guy and this guy, „zim zikh, zim zikh geschlagen."" So my father said, „Yeder eynel hot geshtubt dem ander nener tzum Rebben." Each one was pushing the other one closer to the Rebbe. That was-- You're talking about, you know, creating a positive-

40:43 Speaker 2 Okay

40:44 Speaker 3 ... twist. So it was... To, to me, it's something I remember till today.

40:49 Speaker 2 Right.

40:49 Speaker 3 It was like a, it was like a very beautiful way of explaining what was happening-

40:52 Speaker 2 Right

40:52 Speaker 3 ... that, uh, they weren't, they weren't fighting with each other. They were just g- trying to get closer. Anyway.

40:57 Speaker 2 Yeah. But, but you don't buy it, uh, all these years later.

41:01 Speaker 3 I don't, I'm not... I'm saying-

41:03 Speaker 2 Okay

41:03 Speaker 3 ... I know what went on.

41:04 Speaker 2 I'm saying. So, so the, the bochrim that were coming for camp, they themselves were, like, from the Detroit yeshiva?

41:12 Speaker 3 No.

41:12 Speaker 2 Not necessarily.

41:12 Speaker 3 No, no, no.

41:13 Speaker 2 And that's what I'm pointing to. So there was this... It, it's very interesting 'cause at the time, there was this melting pot of, you know, like-

41:18 Speaker 3 Yeah. I don't-

41:19 Speaker 2 There wasn't, there wasn't, you know, this place, that place. Everywhere ends up „kol kol in haros hos ha'olam."

41:25 Speaker 3 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

41:26 Speaker 2 It all ends up, it all ends up there.

41:28 Speaker 3 Yeah.

41:29 Speaker 2 And then it doesn't happen.

41:31 Speaker 3 Yeah.

41:31 Speaker 2 S-so, so, so tell me, so tell me what, what, what, what happened over there. I mean, we all know what happened, but tell me what it was like.

41:37 Speaker 3 Well, I was in, I w- I, I, I was sitting in Mishmar. Mishmar was w-what we called the six to seven thirty PM class.

41:43 Speaker 2 In Detroit.

41:43 Speaker 3 In Detroit. My father was our teacher. He would teach us „Look at the Torah." And someone came in to my father. He goes, "Uh, father, there's a, there's, there's a phone call for him." So he got up, and he went to take the phone, and then he came back two minutes later, and he said the, he said, "Zol zayn a till." And, uh, so right away, the older guys, I was, I was like, I was thirteen, thirteen and a half. But the older guy, the next class up, they right away went out to find out what happened, and we heard that, that Rebbe's „gefallen." That's what they told us. And it w- it made sense because, because the Rebbe had been having pain with his leg.

42:16 Speaker 2 Right.

42:17 Speaker 3 So, so we thought it was a leg thing.

42:19 Speaker 2 Okay.

42:19 Speaker 3 Then we found out that it was not just a leg thing. And-

42:23 Speaker 2 How did you f-- How soon did people realize that?

42:26 Speaker 3 Uh, very soon. Very, very soon. Very, very soon. Maybe that night, next day.

42:30 Speaker 2 Right.

42:30 Speaker 3 Very, very soon. I mean, saying, I don't know if we understood as we were, we were young. I don't know if we understood the-

42:33 Speaker 2 What it meant. Yeah

42:34 Speaker 3 ... the severity of it and the, the, the, the, what, what, what it meant, uh, yeah. But, um, you know, in many ways we could say that that was, that was the end of my childhood. I mean, not in a bad way. I'm saying, like, there was, there was a, a-- there was a certain, there was a trajectory, and then-

42:51 Speaker 2 Yeah, absolutely

42:51 Speaker 3 ... and that, at that, at that point, whatever. And then our, our-- as much as until that point of like „Lebn mit dem Rebben", like in a certain way, from that point and on, it was different, but it was, it was the Rebbe was present in our, in our, in our, in our hearts and in our minds every single, every single day, every single minute. Like when there was a Fabrengen, what was Fabrengen about? We have, we have some- something has to change within us so that should bring the Rebbe more „nachas” to „Rebbe should become gezunt”. Like ev- the everything, you know? Even the, the, the, the, the external things that were going on in New York that was not related to, you know, things that we, we, we were supposed to know or be involved in. But, you know, we, we, we knew what was going on, and we, whatever. We, we, we, we, we, uh-

43:36 Speaker 2 Right.

43:36 Speaker 3 This would be a, you know, a little off the learning topic and a little more into the, the arum topic, but of, of, of be-being a Hasid, but what was going on by the rebbe was, was, was very important to us.

43:48 Speaker 2 So y-you were, you were, you were planning to go to Alter shortly aft-

43:53 Speaker 3 No, no. I-

43:53 Speaker 2 Like, what was the trajectory? The trajectory was what?

43:55 Speaker 3 I don't know. I, I, well, well, I, I was my first year Mesivta, so I would've done at least one other year Mesivta, maybe two more years Mesivta depending on whatever it is.

44:02 Speaker 2 But you never ended up going to Alter.

44:03 Speaker 3 I never ended up going to Alter. I did, um, I did three years Mesivta and on ... Gromadala, did my three years of Mesivta in Detroit.

44:09 Speaker 2 Right.

44:10 Speaker 3 Mesivta ended, ended a few weeks early. Uh-

44:12 Speaker 2 Because of Gil Student.

44:13 Speaker 3 Yes. Um, and then the next year, they opened a yeshiva in Detroit, so I, I stayed there for two more years.

44:20 Speaker 2 So you were one of the... You were the first class.

44:21 Speaker 3 I, yeah, it was two classes. I was the younger of the two classes, but yeah.

44:25 Speaker 2 So, so, so in a sense, everything did change.

44:28 Speaker 3 Yeah.

44:29 Speaker 2 Like the, the entire, the entire path changed. At the time, at, at the time, how did you c- how did you... I mean, I, I, I'm gonna start off the question in a, in a very kind of clumsy way, but hopefully we'll figure out a way to get to... H-how did you, how did you process this? Or was there a point where, like, w-w- Did it feel natural? Like, uh, 'cause it's easy to look back and say, "Well, it seems ab-abrupt," but it did happen over the course of a few years. Like, was there a point where you felt like, "Okay, I'm, like I was supposed to be here, and now I'm over here. Like, I've taken a completely different path"? Was there a point that you felt that?

45:18 Speaker 3 I don't know.

45:18 Speaker 2 Or it just felt like one thing led to another?

45:20 Speaker 3 I don't know if it's supposed to be here or supposed to be there, but there was a major letdown. There w- we felt like we were... The rug was pulled out from under our feet.

45:31 Speaker 2 Mm.

45:31 Speaker 3 And we, we... I mean, it's not just, it's not just 'cause we were end- supposed to end up there. It's because we lived, we lived in a world where we're

45:38 Speaker 2 Right.

46:35 Speaker 3 And also, you have to understand that nobody, nobody was there to guide us, certainly not right in the beginning.

46:41 Speaker 2 Was it sad nobody was there?

46:42 Speaker 3 Everyone was reeling. You think that the people that were, that, that were our, our teachers and our, and our parents-

46:47 Speaker 2 Ah.

46:47 Speaker 3 ... weren't reeling? They, they were reeling. They, they didn't either know how to.

46:50 Speaker 2 Right.

46:51 Speaker 3 As a matter of fact, if you would say the older, older people who seemed to embrace the situation, um, um, uh, I don't wanna say easier or easier is not the right word, but more seamlessly than, than-

47:04 Speaker 2 Right

47:04 Speaker 3 ... than, than... Like, we looked at them like they were, as I did, like they were crazy.

47:08 Speaker 2 Like the, yeah. The more elegant they dealt with it, the more, the more out of touch it would seem to you.

47:13 Speaker 3 Yeah. I remember, uh, um, we started the yeshiva in Detroit. Um, I know, never mind. I can't do never mind, right? Anyways, I was just saying we... Somebody, one of the, one of the older shluchim who I, whom I respected then, I respect today to, to, to... I know a very, a person that I respect greatly. He gave a very significant donation to start a library.

47:32 Speaker 2 In the yeshiva.

47:33 Speaker 3 In the yeshiva. So, um, um, he, he worded out the plaque that would be on the, on this

47:38 Speaker 2 Right.

47:49 Speaker 3 And I went to my father and I said, "We're not hanging this up." I thought, "We can't." We, in other words, we know what the right thing is and all, and we know. But to put these words up on, on, on the Mizrah wall, to have to look at it every day, it w- w- and that's not happening. And of course, at the end my father said, "And I followed," and I listened, and I put it up. But I'm saying there was, there wa- there was a, a, a, uh ... It was hard to look at.

48:12 Speaker 2 It was hard to look at reality.

48:13 Speaker 3 Hard to look at.

48:14 Speaker 2 Right.

48:14 Speaker 3 It was, it was, it was... And I, I was saying I, I haven't been there in a long time. Um, but that, that, that, that, that sign would still bother me today, not, not, not to put it up today, but the fact that somebody was comfortable enough to put it up then, it, it, it, it-

48:31 Speaker 2 Right

48:31 Speaker 3 ... it, it, it, um, there's a certain, there's a certain, like, uh, uh, feeling of, of, of not understanding.

48:38 Speaker 2 Right. Yeah. I mean, to me, to me it's, it's fa- you know, I, I was, I was, I was too young for it to... I was, uh, I was five, six years old, and I lived in Hong Kong, so it... I, I, I can't speak to it from personal experience, but in a way that's what fascinates me because, you know, childhood and growing up, it's all about kind of projecting the future, like what the life ahead of you. And it's, it's very similar when you hear stories of children that grew up, and then there's a war, you know? And like their whole, their whole kind of future basically gets ripped out from a, from, from, from in front of them. And, and, like on one hand, children are like the least equipped to deal with it because they're, they have, you know, they, they've been protected in general, and they have the least life experience, and in a way they have the most to lose. It's like a double whammy, right? 'Cause it's not like they have their whole life behind them and it's like, "Okay, so what? Well, you know, we're gonna, we're gonna live with the memories," you know? "Okay, fine. We had a good run here," right? It's like, "No, what do you mean? Like, you're, you're stealing my entire future here. Like, this is all I got," right? "And this is, this is, uh, this is everything, and I also don't know how to process it." And so, like, that's what

49:50 Speaker 2 it sounds like. That's what it sounds like. It sounds like this, you know, this, this moment in time where... Because to, to take it, to like, to like unpack it just a little bit, you know, there's always, there's always, um, I hate to use the word again. There's always a tension between generations, right? There's different... This is throughout history. In Yiddishkeit, it's the whole story of Yiddishkeit. It's the Sefer Pesach. It's how do you communicate one generation to the next? How do you take the values, these timeless values that work for you, and w- you know, God willing, and transmit to the next generation who lives in a different situation and, and, and comes to the world from a different place? They're your child, but they're also from, you know, from the world.

50:31 Speaker 4 Did I just lose you?

50:32 Speaker 2 No, no. Did you? No.

50:34 Speaker 4 Oh.

50:34 Speaker 2 I think you just heard this sound.

50:35 Speaker 4 Oh, okay.

50:36 Speaker 2 You're not hearing me?

50:37 Speaker 4 No, I, I, I think I hear you.

50:38 Speaker 2 Yeah. No, we're still recording. Um, how do you... You hear me now?

50:45 Speaker 4 Yeah, I think so.

50:47 Speaker 2 Yeah. How do you, how do you... How about now?

50:51 Speaker 4 Once again. Talk again.

50:53 Speaker 2 Yeah.

50:54 Speaker 4 Yeah, I think I hear you from here.

50:55 Speaker 2 Yeah, you hear me from there. Just getting used to it.

50:58 Speaker 4 Yeah.

50:59 Speaker 2 I'm sorry, not Rav. But how do you, you know, how do you, um, how do you, how do you communicate timeless values from one generation to the next? That's a whole st- that's a whole, that's a whole endeavor of Yiddishkeit, right? And so there's always this, this, this, this space between generations, and like, it sounds like up till Gemilut Chassadim, yeah, your, you know, your father, your, your father is, is, is in his world, your grandfather's in his world, you're in your world. But you're all a bunch of planets revolving around the sun, in the sense that there's a core here. We know what's going on. We're all... We, we all kind of are seeing the same picture, maybe from different places, but it's all the same picture. And then that gets yanked out from underneath you, and suddenly this older guy is, he's coming. He's like, "Oh, doing that, yeah, this is how it has to be. You know, we're not gonna get carried away with feelings. That could lead to a very dangerous place. We have to be stoic and, and real." Right? For him, that works. You're like, "Wait a second, this is crazy." You know what I mean? That's what I'm hearing. It's like, it's not just, it's not just a, you know, a traumatic event or whatever the word would be, or catastrophic event for the younger generation. It also rips apart the generations themselves, right? Because now how do you communicate? How do you... Does that make sense? Because

52:22 Speaker 2 that's what, that's what that anecdote tells me. That anecdote tells me that the, that suddenly the generations have a hard time communicating with one another.

52:29 Speaker 4 Right, but, but, but we're ha- we're having the conversation though a b- a bunch of years later.

52:33 Speaker 2 Right.

52:34 Speaker 4 So now we have the benefit of hindsight.

52:36 Speaker 2 No, I understand. I'm, I'm just trying to understand if that's what happened then. It-- I think it could be repaired.

52:40 Speaker 4 I think, I think that that did happen, and I think that if we'll be honest with ourselves, the, the, the, the healing of that, of that, um, let's call it trauma. It's, uh, not the right word, but, uh-

52:55 Speaker 2 Well, it's just an overused word, so now everything-

52:57 Speaker 4 Correct. So the, the, the, the, the healing of the effects of that expectation and that not being filled, and not only that, but also there was a bunch of things that, that, that were happening that stopped happening, that were supposed to, in our minds, supposed to be happening. But what, what, what happens is that we end up in i- immersing ourselves either in the Rebbe's Yushimis that started coming, started to come out shortly thereafter, in Mitzoim, in Shlichas, in Farbrengens. And while, and while, while, uh, while... And because we're immersed in, still in, in the Rebbe, so while it doesn't take away, at least certainly not then, the, the, the... Or not, not entirely at least the pain, but it still gives you a reason to live, and it gives you a, a, a feeling of connection, and it gives you a reason to continue, to continue doing what you're doing.

53:59 Speaker 2 I wasn't, I wasn't Chas V'Shalom trying to-

54:01 Speaker 4 I didn't say you were.

54:02 Speaker 2 No. Yeah. No, no, I'm saying I wasn't... My point was not to say that everything came to an end. I think it's just that anecdote that you talked about, 'cause this is something that I'm fascinated about. In many ways, the whole podcast is about that, because, you know, you have Lubavitch, right? Let's say. Uh, Lubavitch is made up of different ages, different experiences, different backgrounds, all... Like any community, right? And I think especially after Gemilut Chassadim, the shared experience came under a lot of pressure, right? Because what is even the shared experience? One generation wants it to be Zachronus. Another generation says it's not enough. Another generation says we want more. You know, the, the, every-

54:46 Speaker 4 One second. One second. You, there's... I always say, "Don't confuse Jews and Judaism."

54:48 Speaker 2 Right.

54:49 Speaker 4 You know, there's, there's Hasidim and there's Hasidus.

54:52 Speaker 2 Right.

54:52 Speaker 4 So y- uh, uh, Lubavitch, if you will, is made up of everything.

54:56 Speaker 2 Right.

54:56 Speaker 4 But there, there's, there, there's Hasidim, and in Hasidim there's gonna be different ages and different approaches-

55:02 Speaker 2 Right

55:02 Speaker 4 ... and different feelings. This one's Chesed. This one's Gevurah.

55:05 Speaker 2 Right.

55:05 Speaker 4 And, and, and they're Besivil Bezhamai.

55:07 Speaker 2 Right.

55:07 Speaker 4 But there's also Hasidus.

55:08 Speaker 2 Yeah.

55:08 Speaker 4 And Hasid- Hasidus is Emes, and Hasidus is Nitzchi.

55:12 Speaker 2 So ju-just, just to point out, what I said earlier was gonna come up in the conversation came up.

55:18 Speaker 4 Okay.

55:18 Speaker 2 Just for those holding right here. Just for those who are, those who are holding Cheshbon, the one, the point that I said was gonna come up earlier. Yeah.

55:24 Speaker 4 Remind me how. It's in... Tell me the connection.

55:26 Speaker 2 Oh, you said that your, your, your Zayde being a d- be- the, the, the importance of, of being able to be a Dishvi Hasid, but, but also being someone who learns Hasidus and, and seeing it that way through the framework of learning.

55:40 Speaker 4 Yeah, in that way. Yeah.

55:41 Speaker 2 It comes up now.

55:42 Speaker 4 Yeah.

55:42 Speaker 2 Uh-

55:42 Speaker 4 But in Hasidus itself, there's, there, there, there's, there's the Limud of Hasidus.

55:46 Speaker 2 Right.

55:46 Speaker 4 Then there's the Inyan of Hasidus-

55:48 Speaker 2 Right

55:48 Speaker 4 ... the idea of that, that was started by the Baal Shem Tov-

55:50 Speaker 2 Right. Right

55:50 Speaker 4 ... and then the Alter Rebbe, and that goes on till Mashiach comes-

55:53 Speaker 2 Right

55:53 Speaker 4 ... and beyond.

55:54 Speaker 2 No, a hundred percent. A hundred percent. And I think ultimately that is the most optimistic part of all of this, which is- At the core, right? Because any, any, anything in, in, in this world will, will eventually come under pressure. Any idea, any project will come under pressure. So the question becomes, what does it have at its core? Like, what... Like, how strong is this? Yeah, it may get, uh, some cracks and some scratches, but, but what's there? Like, you know, what's gonna survive? Or is it gonna survive? And that depends on what's, what is it at its core. And what you're saying is that at its core-

56:32 Speaker 4 Moish Emes v'Tzedas Emes

56:33 Speaker 2 ... yeah, it's, it's, it's Emes, and so it's in a way, in a way you could say from the get-go, it's irrelevant all this pontification and, and, and... 'Cause in a sense it's all shtusim because at its core, it's-

56:47 Speaker 4 The manifestations will change.

56:49 Speaker 2 Okay, so that's true. I, it's true. I, I-

56:51 Speaker 4 And to be hon- to be fair with you, because we're human beings and we're affected by manifestations, so how we relate to Moish Emes v'Tzedas Emes-

56:58 Speaker 2 That changes

56:59 Speaker 4 ... is going to change, and it's going to-

57:00 Speaker 2 Oh, so, so, so that's my point. So that's my point.

57:02 Speaker 4 Yeah. Okay.

57:02 Speaker 2 I, I, I 100% can see that-

57:03 Speaker 4 So when you say Lubavitch is made up of a lot of different people, like, it's, it's important to clarify

57:06 Speaker 2 I mean, I mean that part of Lubavitch. I mean, I mean the lived experience, right? There, there's people trying to connect or, or living their life around the sun, let's say. The, the, the sun is there. It's not going anywhere. But, um, when, when, when it, when it's harder to, let's say, to feel like you're all in orbit of the same sun, or one person says the sun's here, another person says the sun's over there, and it starts becoming... Right? It, the, it's, it's the orbit that I'm talking about, not the sun itself, right? I'm talking about the orbiting around the sun. And so what it, that anecdote that you mentioned, although it's a kind of a throwaway anecdote, to me, what it, what it reveals is something that I've, that I've experienced and I've thought about a lot, which is, you know, the, the, the generation... One of the th- one of the things that happened by Gimel Tammuz, amongst many other things, is that the generations had a, suddenly had a hard time communicating with one another. I'm not saying that they can't ever communicate again or that they didn't get better at some point, but it does seem like, like the, like the, the gap between generations became more pronounced, became more of a real thing.

58:12 Speaker 4 Although I would say that in, in the Lameds and the Mems, there was also a gap of the generations.

58:16 Speaker 2 100%.

58:16 Speaker 4 It wasn't my generation 'cause I wasn't there yet, but-

58:18 Speaker 2 I can see, I can-

58:19 Speaker 4 But the, the, the people that were, we were looking u-up to i-i-in, in Tach Men, in the Mems, you know, were talking about the generation before them as, as dershushi- And, uh, you know, as, as, as disconnected.

58:32 Speaker 2 Right.

58:33 Speaker 4 So, so it's just because it was the most, I don't know what the word is, major event-

58:40 Speaker 2 Right

58:40 Speaker 4 ... that took place in our lives, so therefore th-that, that difference was the most highlighted. But you know this as well as everyone d-d-does, that b-besides for the fact if y-you're going, um, a, a vertical from generation to generation, if you go horizontal, you know, whether it was before Gimel Tammuz or after Gimel Tammuz, there were plenty of differences and there were plenty of gaps-

59:01 Speaker 2 100%

59:01 Speaker 4 ... and chasms between, between, between people and groups.

59:04 Speaker 2 100%.

59:04 Speaker 4 So, so a-and again, and because this was such a big-

59:08 Speaker 2 Right

59:09 Speaker 4 ... big thing, so therefore that, that, uh, tha-those differences were highlighted then as well.

59:13 Speaker 2 100%. 100%. A-a-anybody-

59:16 Speaker 4 But, but, but-

59:16 Speaker 2 Anybody, anybody that says these things started by Gimel Tammuz is, is, is being silly.

59:20 Speaker 4 No, but, but I, but I think it's important, and maybe you're going there, but it's important to, to, to because Moish Emes v'Tzedas Emes, and because the Rebbe is, is, is Inni Nitzchi, so it, it, it may have taken on another form, and it may have taken on... But, b-but whatever, but whatever was continued.

59:39 Speaker 2 Right.

59:39 Speaker 4 Not, not everything that was, but there was the, the, the ability to live with the Rebbe and the ability to be a Hasid of the Rebbe.

59:47 Speaker 2 Right.

59:47 Speaker 4 It, it, it continued.

59:48 Speaker 2 Yeah. Right.

59:49 Speaker 4 It continues.

59:49 Speaker 2 Right. So, so, so, so yeah, I, I, I-

59:51 Speaker 4 So which is why I'm saying, saying I-

59:52 Speaker 2 We, we are getting there

59:53 Speaker 4 ... I understand that you want to, you, you, you, you, you wanna recognize the, the evolution of it.

59:58 Speaker 2 Right.

59:59 Speaker 4 But I, I, I think if we get stuck at the evolution of it-

1:00:02 Speaker 2 We're gonna get there

1:00:02 Speaker 4 ... then, then it... 'Cause because especially today-

1:00:05 Speaker 2 Yeah

1:00:05 Speaker 4 ... especially today, for me at least, uh, of the age I was then, the age I am now, and when, when, when I look back, the, the relationship that I have, let's say, you know, with the Rebbe is, is, is, um, has gr-- has... I don't know what the right, what the, what the right word is, but looking back then, it was, it was birth pangs.

1:00:28 Speaker 2 Right.

1:00:28 Speaker 4 And, and it, it brought me to somewhere, that brought me to somewhere, that brought me to somewhere, that brought me to where I am today. And, and the ability to, despite everything that I went through, to be able to still feel like I can have a, a personal connection to the Rebbe.

1:00:42 Speaker 2 Yeah, so that's exactly where I wanna go. I'm not trying-

1:00:44 Speaker 4 Okay

1:00:44 Speaker 2 ... to, to dwell on the complications of it. Um, you know, I just... I think it's... So you could ask, "So why do I keep on pointing them out?" Well, first of all, that, that might be my bias or my problem. But I feel the reason to point it out is because the narrative where everything just kind of works out on, on... in the end, that's the narrative that everybody already has. Like, that's the going narrative. And I'm not trying to say that the narrative is wrong or try to upend the narrative, but I think when we, when we kind of go through that narrative to point out that, as much as I push it, and, and again, it's not to be like a, like a, like a smart alec and just to point it out, "You see? Aha, I found it." I, I think, I think it makes it more relatable to people, and it makes it more real to people when it's like, okay, that's not make believe. Like, you know, yeah, this happened, and then that happened, and it's all, you know, it's, it's, it's all beseder mesuder, and it, it all makes se- It, it, it, it took turns. It took time. Th-you know, there were, there were, there were challenges along the way. And, and these kind of, these kind of, th-these, these bumps or whatever you wanna call them, these bumps, these tensions, these, th-these, these contradictions, it makes it more alive in my view. Um, it makes it

1:02:02 Speaker 2 more relatable. It makes it more real. It makes it more honest. Makes it more honest. You know, we don't have to... We could, we could say that, that- You know, as a, as a, as a predicate at the beginning that Moshe Emes to Roshi Emes, and we believe that. But the way we get there now after all these years, that's not make believe like it was a fairy tale. You know what I mean? That, that, that's the reason why I pointed out. Now, sometimes do I go too far with it? I don't know, basically. But I was, I was, I was trying to get there 'cause I-- and what we spoke about on the phone last week or on the WhatsApp last week is that, you know, you said that you, you felt one way in the years after Gemal Tamos, and you, you know, you've, you, you felt eventually that that wasn't the right way and kind of evolved along. I think to-- you first-- for that to make sense, it's first like everybody was in a way they found themselves on their own almost, and everybody had to figure it out in a way that worked for them, and that's what I was trying to set up.

1:03:03 Speaker 4 Okay.

1:03:03 Speaker 2 Does that make sense?

1:03:04 Speaker 4 Okay. No, I get... No, I think I understand now.

1:03:07 Speaker 2 Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's-- yeah, you, you can-- I-- it can come across as like, "Oh, okay. So you're just trying to make everything complicated, and sophisticated, and academic, and whatever." But, um, yeah, it's not the, it's not the, it's, it's not my, it's not my goal. So, so, so let's talk about, let's talk about that. So y-y-you've set up where the rug has been pulled out from underneath your feet. W-w-how long does it f-- how long would you say or, or, or describe a little bit the initial kind of impulse to, to hold on? Like that, that what I have to do now is to hold on. Like one of the phrases that I remember being quoted for many years was Yeshua, Yeshua, Yeshua. What's the word? Yeshua Mashac-- Yeshua Mashac Le'olam Meshech Ha'olam.

1:03:55 Speaker 4 Le'olam Meshech Ha'olam.

1:03:57 Speaker 2 There was, there was an ex-- there, there was that kind of feeling of, you know, and yeah, each group of Lubavitch took it a different way what exactly that meant, whether it's Ohel seven seventy, whatever. I'm not going there now. But I'm saying the idea was that, like, you cannot... Like our job now is to be faithful. There was that famous video, the Faithful Shepherd, the, you know, the Tzidkatim waiting. I don't know if you remember that. Uh, it was for-- I think it was made for kids, but it was like, you know, the, the, the... Anyway, the idea of waiting faithfully, that-- was that the origin-- was that the initial feeling?

1:04:31 Speaker 4 Um, it's a little hard to, to, you know, pinpoint exactly like the, the, the, the exact evolution. But for, for quite some time, um, well, first of all, we, we, we created-- not say we as in me, but around me, I was in a world where, where there was a very-- a major koch in k- remaining connected to the Rebbe, um, learning the sichas of Tav Shni Tav Shni Aleph. Uh, um, the Reshumas came out and to, to, uh, I mean, the Reshumas, we-- at least the earlier ones, I-- we learnt them word, you know, word for word. We knew them by every single word.

1:05:10 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

1:05:11 Speaker 4 Um, Farbrengens and, uh, uh, um, um, you know, videos weren't that big yet, but, you know, if we can get our hands on a video. Remember once, uh, I was actually, we were actually at the Ohel and, uh, someone had a, you know, a, a... This was like the, when the first-- shortly after the first house was bought and we were sitting in the, in the, in the basement and someone had a video, and we watched a Farbrengen. And, um, and, uh, yeah, and we, we continued to do everything, you know, according to what the Rebbe, uh, what we understood from the Rebbe's sichas and what it takes to, to be r- to be connected to the Rebbe. Um, to, to get to your point because, because I-- it's hard to, it's tough to-

1:05:52 Speaker 2 Yeah

1:05:52 Speaker 4 ... to go through, you know, month by month. To get to your point, for quite some time, for quite some time, everything that-- I'm, I'm talking about myself now.

1:06:00 Speaker 2 Sure.

1:06:01 Speaker 4 Everything that, that we did, I, I did was, was, uh, um, permeated with a, with a, with a benkinish.

1:06:11 Speaker 2 Right.

1:06:11 Speaker 4 With a benkinish. Um-

1:06:13 Speaker 2 And so in English, you would say that's a yearning?

1:06:15 Speaker 4 I-

1:06:16 Speaker 2 Nostalgia?

1:06:17 Speaker 4 I don't like the word nostalgia because I don't know exactly what it means. It could-

1:06:20 Speaker 2 Fair enough

1:06:20 Speaker 4 ... it could be interpreted in different ways.

1:06:22 Speaker 2 Right.

1:06:22 Speaker 4 Nostalgia could be a very positive thing, and it could be a very negative thing.

1:06:25 Speaker 2 So you-- but so what would you say is the English word, a yearning?

1:06:28 Speaker 4 A, a, a longing.

1:06:29 Speaker 2 A missing?

1:06:29 Speaker 4 A longing.

1:06:30 Speaker 2 A longing.

1:06:30 Speaker 4 A longing, uh, yeah, to, yeah.

1:06:32 Speaker 2 A missing.

1:06:33 Speaker 4 Yeah. To, um, and it ha-- I, I, I think it makes sense because at-- the mindset at that time was-

1:06:41 Speaker 2 Right

1:06:41 Speaker 4 ... that, that adat and, and we're gon- everything will revert back to exactly where it was.

1:06:45 Speaker 2 Right.

1:06:45 Speaker 4 We know Moshiach is coming-

1:06:46 Speaker 2 Right

1:06:47 Speaker 4 ... and, and what, it's gonna revert back to exactly where it was.

1:06:50 Speaker 2 Yeah. Like you said, for someone to not miss at that time would be like, "What's wrong with you?"

1:06:53 Speaker 4 Yeah. So, um, whatever. And but, but, but, but, but the, the, the, the way I was raised or, or educated was that, you know, I went-- I continued going to yeshiva, the next yeshiva, the other yeshiva, whatever it was. I, I, I, you know, I ultimately got married, um, um, moved out on shlichus, whatever. I don't know, I end up staying. But, but, but, but everything in our, everything in our life is we, we, we've, we've, you know, I'm not saying I'm, I'm a tzadik or, or, or even anything close to that, and I had my, uh, I had my, my, my own ups and downs. But bechalal, you know, I was following, I was following what I thought was the right thing, to live with the Rebbe, to be connected to the Rebbe, to talk to my campers as-- about the Rebbe, to, to, uh, talk with people, you know, am ivtayim. Yeah. The, the, the Rebbe re-remained and remains the focal point of, of my Yiddishkeit.

1:07:46 Speaker 2 Right.

1:07:47 Speaker 4 And, and, and, and, and, uh, a lot of that was done with, with, with, you know, checklist items, which I like to call, you know, Chitas and Rambam.

1:07:55 Speaker 2 Right.

1:07:55 Speaker 4 Learning sichas.

1:07:56 Speaker 2 Yeah.

1:07:56 Speaker 4 And a lot of it was hagasham, you know, whatever, how, how, what-whatever that, whatever, what-what-whatever that mean-- that would mean at that specific time. I would say that at a certain point, um, there was, there was-- at a certain point, I, I, uh- Something started, so-something started to shift.

1:08:17 Speaker 2 Mm.

1:08:19 Speaker 4 Um, um, I'm trying to remember, you know, you know, a specific, but one of them a point we were sitting, we were fabriying and, um, uh, it was... Well, I'll, I'll go back even a l-little before that. I remember I took my son to the oil for Shabbos. My son was seven or eight years old. Shabbos Gimmel Tammuz, and, and I still did not know, like, I, I, I didn't... Not I didn't know, but I, I, I didn't know how I'm supposed to act. Like, I, I couldn't, uh, I, I didn't have a Seder Masuder. Uh, that's not being s- It's not saying it right. But Shabbos g- uh, not Shabbos. The day of Gimmel Tammuz was still the most c- most, the most difficult day of the year.

1:08:58 Speaker 2 Oh, you didn't know how to act on G-

1:08:59 Speaker 4 Yeah

1:08:59 Speaker 2 ...on Shabbos Gimmel Tammuz?

1:09:00 Speaker 4 No, sh- Shabbos is a weekday. Like, like-

1:09:02 Speaker 2 Gimmel Tammuz will fall-

1:09:02 Speaker 4 I've always, besides for one year, I've always been by the, at, at the oil, uh, for almost the entire mess less of Gimmel Tammuz, and I just go into a, into a, uh, into a bubble, so to speak.

1:09:12 Speaker 2 You're just there.

1:09:12 Speaker 4 And I try to do all, all, all the things I'm supposed to do, and that's it. Um, so but the point I'm making is that I'm watching my son, who's m- seven or eight years old. He's pushing to, to, to be on the front row to daven chakras by the oil itself.

1:09:28 Speaker 2 Right.

1:09:29 Speaker 4 And, you know, and he's, he's h- he's comfortable. He's, he, he, he's, he... A-And it blew my mind. Like I, I actually, I discussed it with someone that, later that afternoon. I said, like, "Here I am, here I am, like, like, I, I'm, I'm like outside of my own body, and this kid is, is, is like he knows exactly where he's supposed to be."

1:09:49 Speaker 2 Right.

1:09:49 Speaker 4 "He's just doing everything." Like, uh, it just, it didn't make any sense.

1:09:53 Speaker 2 Well, like you were when you were seven years old.

1:09:55 Speaker 4 Yeah, true, true.

1:09:56 Speaker 2 Right.

1:09:56 Speaker 4 But he was, he was in a different world than I was when I was seven years old.

1:09:59 Speaker 2 Right.

1:09:59 Speaker 4 And, and for me, that was a, a, a, a, a, a, a very big, a very big turning point where I began to, to see, I began to s- If...

1:10:12 Speaker 2 No.

1:10:12 Speaker 4 I began to see that, that how I feel is not necessarily how other people are gonna feel, and maybe if other people are feeling different, maybe I have to shift a little bit how I feel. Um, why? Because maybe I can, I can do better at being a, the person I'm supposed to be if I have a different... If I, if I'm able to see a, let's call it a bigger picture.

1:10:37 Speaker 2 Are you saying you realized that, that, that there isn't one way to act after Gimmel Tammuz, is what you're saying?

1:10:45 Speaker 4 N-Not just that. I was real- Maybe the way I was s- Maybe I was stuck.

1:10:49 Speaker 2 Right.

1:10:50 Speaker 4 And I wasn't-

1:10:50 Speaker 2 But until then, you felt that this was the way.

1:10:52 Speaker 4 Well, no, no. Look-

1:10:53 Speaker 2 Or you didn't realize there was another-

1:10:54 Speaker 4 It's a weird... It's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's a weird way of, of explaining this because it's like, um, we, we were doing all the things we're supposed to be doing or at least-

1:11:03 Speaker 2 Right

1:11:03 Speaker 4 ...at least, you know, relatively speaking.

1:11:05 Speaker 2 Right.

1:11:05 Speaker 4 But it was, it was, it, it was, it was eye-opening to see that, that a child could be, could be... It's like I would have thought about this like the kid who, who grew up in the dungeon.

1:11:18 Speaker 2 Right.

1:11:19 Speaker 4 And he, he only knows the dark, but it, but he wasn't in the dark.

1:11:24 Speaker 2 Right.

1:11:24 Speaker 4 So I might have thought, you know, earlier, I might have thought, "Well, it is dark."

1:11:29 Speaker 2 Right.

1:11:29 Speaker 4 "And, and he just doesn't know it." But I began to change my perspective and say-

1:11:33 Speaker 2 Uh-huh

1:11:33 Speaker 4 ...maybe he's not in the dark.

1:11:34 Speaker 2 Right. He's living his life.

1:11:35 Speaker 4 He, he, he, he is, he is, he is living as a Hasid should boy, as a Hasid should live in, in the world and the situation that we are today, and, and that's, and that's incredible.

1:11:46 Speaker 2 Right.

1:11:47 Speaker 4 That's actually, uh, the, the, the most encouraging thing-

1:11:50 Speaker 2 Mm

1:11:50 Speaker 4 ...that I could actually experience on, on... at, at that time.

1:11:54 Speaker 2 Right.

1:11:54 Speaker 4 Uh, you know, fast-forward a couple of years, and I was talking with, with, with some friends, whatever, Beinkinish. And one of my friends said to me, um, um, because our, our kids were there at the table. You know, our kids, sixteen, seventeen, whatever. And, um, and one, one of my friends said to me, "Our kids have no idea what you're talking about. They don't know, they don't know what you're talking about. Making it to what?"

1:12:12 Speaker 2 Right.

1:12:12 Speaker 4 "Making it to what?"

1:12:13 Speaker 2 Yeah.

1:12:14 Speaker 4 And it, it, it, it threw me off, off my equilibrium at first.

1:12:19 Speaker 2 Right.

1:12:19 Speaker 4 'Cause I, I, I understood what he was saying. For art. One day a year.

1:12:23 Speaker 2 Right. Right.

1:12:24 Speaker 4 Um, um, but you know, I, I started, I started thinking about it, and I very, very seriously. I actually... You mentioned Yeshua, and I don't wanna go into this whole thing, but I want something I want to search with my father about Yeshua and Kalev, which were both on the right side of the, of the, of the fence at their time.

1:12:40 Speaker 2 Right. Right.

1:12:40 Speaker 4 My father once pointed out that Yeshua is not heard of. Kalev is doing all the speaking.

1:12:46 Speaker 2 Right.

1:12:46 Speaker 4 And Yeshua is quiet. And-

1:12:48 Speaker 2 Same with defending Maish in

1:12:50 Speaker 4 Yes. Yes. And, and there's a part that, that the reason the Raglin didn't wanna go into Eretz Yisrael is because they heard that Maisha wasn't gonna go with them.

1:12:57 Speaker 2 Uh-huh.

1:12:57 Speaker 4 A part from Shmuel Vital.

1:12:59 Speaker 2 Uh-huh.

1:12:59 Speaker 4 And in Parsha's Balot Ischa, it says, "Elders of the maiden was now in the machana."

1:13:02 Speaker 2 Right.

1:13:03 Speaker 4 So Rashi says they, they, they were saying that Maisha

1:13:08 Speaker 2 Right.

1:13:09 Speaker 4 So the Meraglim said, "Without Maisha, we can't go. We can't survive Eretz Yisrael without Maisha."

1:13:13 Speaker 2 Uh-huh.

1:13:13 Speaker 4 Kalev and Yeshua say, "No, if Maisha says we have to go, we have to go."

1:13:16 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

1:13:17 Speaker 4 So let's add cannons from the Shmuel Vital, the son of Chaim Vital.

1:13:20 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

1:13:21 Speaker 4 My father, he added to this that, that despite the fact that Yeshua and Kalev are gonna go, and they know they have to go because they're gonna do what Maisha wants of them, difficult as it might be-

1:13:33 Speaker 2 Kalev's too excited about it.

1:13:34 Speaker 4 No, no, no, no. That's not what he said. He said, "Kalev is, Kalev is going. Yeshua is a Like he, he can't. He's... Doesn't know how it's gonna happen." So I, I mentioned this discussion to my... Not about Yeshua and Kalev, but the, the discussion I had with my friends, I mentioned it to my son, and he said to me, "You guys need more Kalev, and we need more Yeshua."

1:13:56 Speaker 2 Ah. Very interesting.

1:13:58 Speaker 4 And, and to me, that was a very mature-

1:14:00 Speaker 2 Yeah

1:14:00 Speaker 4 ...and a very, um, beautiful analysis of, of the tension.

1:14:06 Speaker 2 Yeah.

1:14:07 Speaker 4 That for some of us, we were, we, w- we, we, we were still crying-

1:14:11 Speaker 2 Right

1:14:11 Speaker 4 ...fig-figuratively speaking, and we, we, we, we, we were missing out on the, on the what? On the shefa that's available to us today in the current Matzav.

1:14:21 Speaker 2 Right.

1:14:22 Speaker 4 And for some that are growing up in this Matzav, they're missing out on the shefa that one can get by connecting to, to the past.

1:14:30 Speaker 2 I like that a lot, yeah. 'Cause a lot of people, I mean-

1:14:33 Speaker 4 And this is a kid. I mean, he was, he, he was a, a... So it was like it came from a very sincere, innocent place. It wasn't like a-

1:14:40 Speaker 2 Right

1:14:40 Speaker 4 ...a, a intellectual person that sat down to analyze a Matzav.

1:14:43 Speaker 2 Right.

1:14:43 Speaker 4 You know, and, and it was almost spontaneous.

1:14:45 Speaker 2 Right.

1:14:45 Speaker 4 I told him about the fabriying we had last night, and I, I wanted to hear his take, and this was his, this was his response.

1:14:51 Speaker 2 How, how old was he at the time?

1:14:52 Speaker 4 Sixteen.

1:14:53 Speaker 2 Sixteen. A

1:14:53 Speaker 4 Fifty.

1:14:56 Speaker 2 A

1:14:56 Speaker 4 Yeah. It's a beaut- It's a beautiful... It's a, that's in general, a beautiful conversation, but I, I think it... I also like the, the f- the framing of this Kalev and Yeshua because a lot of times people like to frame this tension as Ephraim and Manasseh. I think there's a sikha about it, you know, like which there, the tension is like past and future or past and present, which I, I don't like so much because it's, it's almost like th- those are opposites and, uh, uh, to me it feels, it feels almost a little bit too easy and it's, it doesn't get to the nub of it. What you're, what you're talking about is two, two people who are both cognizant of the present. They're both very much in the present, right? So it's like within, let's say Ephraim, they're both, they're, they're both, they're both in the present-

1:15:44 Speaker 5 They're not yet looking back at something.

1:15:45 Speaker 4 Yeah, yeah. They're, they're, they're not... neither of them are, are stuck in the past. They're both in the present. The shaila is how do you deal with the present, right? How do you deal with the present that feels ripped away from the past? That feels ripped away from the past. That feels that it's not-- It doesn't feel as a natural... The, the Bnei Yisrael saw after everything Moshe Rabbeinu did, the natural thing was that he, you know, the story ends and this is how it's supposed to end, right? Until all the other, all the gesheften. But it was supposed to end because that's, a story is supposed to have ... is supposed to make sense. It's supposed to take them in and, and ge- geulah shleimah, right? And after everything they went through, they- that's what they would expect, and it gets cut off. Uh, and frankly, if we look at Tanakh, everything kind of downhill from there, you know. It, it, like we know, it was supposed to be-

1:16:31 Speaker 5 In a, in a sense.

1:16:32 Speaker 4 Well, there was supposed to be a geulah and, and s- and we're in galus thousands of years later, and it, it started, the beginning of that trajectory happened when Moshe Rabbeinu passed away, right? Um, because the geulah didn't come, right? So, uh, anyway, they, they both, they're both walking into this new chapter that was not expected. It was a, it was a total detour from the first, from how it was supposed to be and for... and there's still two ways of doing it, do it and who-- and there's, and you should have both, is what your son's saying. You should have both.

1:17:09 Speaker 5 And, and to say for-

1:17:09 Speaker 4 It's beautiful

1:17:10 Speaker 5 ... to say for myself is over ever since that point, I have learned to, I have learned or tried to learn and tried to grow in the ar- it, to, to be more, using his expression, more Calev-like-

1:17:24 Speaker 4 Right

1:17:24 Speaker 5 ... um, without, without losing-

1:17:29 Speaker 4 Yeshua

1:17:29 Speaker 5 ... to the best of my ability.

1:17:30 Speaker 4 Yeshua.

1:17:30 Speaker 5 I'll, I'll tell you something. Um, uh, I, I, I hope it's okay if it's, if it's a, like a vart.

1:17:35 Speaker 4 Please don't tell.

1:17:35 Speaker 5 But, um, um, just a, a, a takeaway from the Kotei Sikhas, and I'm not yet, you know, we're not talking about project yet.

1:17:41 Speaker 4 We're getting, we're, we're getting there.

1:17:42 Speaker 5 Okay. Okay.

1:17:42 Speaker 4 We're getting there.

1:17:43 Speaker 5 But, um, and I shared this numerous times. Um, but and just to give you the setting, it was, we were, we were farbrengen-ing. Um, I, I, I'm not we, I'm saying there was a farbrengen. It was actually at the IO, um, a few years ago. It was Cheit Teves. And I, I sat down. It was mostly the yeshiva, I think Baltimore and, and, and, and, uh, Chicago. And there was a shliach farbrengen-ing with them, very nice, chashuve, important, wonderful shliach, someone I respect greatly. And he was going on and on about the gute tsaytn. And technically, Cheit Teves is the one time, uh, the one time, but it's a time-

1:18:18 Speaker 4 Oh, it's a Cheit Teves farbrengen.

1:18:19 Speaker 5 It's a Cheit Teves, yeah. It was, was Cheit Teves

1:18:20 Speaker 4 So during, so during the week?

1:18:21 Speaker 5 It was during the week.

1:18:22 Speaker 4 Okay.

1:18:22 Speaker 5 Yeah. I'm, but anyway, and, and, and, and if you will, "Vayom eigla niskan venasim," Cheit Teves is a time that, that, um, you know, talking about the past is technically-

1:18:30 Speaker 4 Yeah, yeah

1:18:31 Speaker 5 ... uh, um, um, more acceptable than others. But anyway, the way-

1:18:34 Speaker 4 I've, I've heard, I've heard a thing or two about Cheit Teves over the years.

1:18:37 Speaker 5 Okay. No, but I'm saying, like-

1:18:37 Speaker 4 I know, I know some of the people. I'm related to some of the people.

1:18:39 Speaker 5 I understand. I understand. I understand. Um, this, this was, th- this person farbrengen-ing was not related to you. Um-

1:18:46 Speaker 4 Say less

1:18:46 Speaker 5 ... but, um, anyway, uh, but, but the, the signen of his, of his, of his farbrengen-ing coupled with who his audience was, they were all, you know, m- uh, mesivta or Sial of Zal Bacharim.

1:18:58 Speaker 4 Right.

1:18:58 Speaker 5 It, it didn't sit well with me based on my, my, my, uh, my, my newer, my newer approach.

1:19:03 Speaker 4 The new version.

1:19:04 Speaker 5 Yeah. So I interjected and I, I, I said a vart in the Friediker, very well known that a molech is a molech-

1:19:11 Speaker 4 A molech, yeah

1:19:11 Speaker 5 ... gute tsaytn. So he, he, he, he, he, he went on and, and he actually dug his heels deeper into his... And it bothered me. Like I thought, you know, it could be he got stu-- you know, he got carried away a little bit, but here he was like almost emphasizing, you know, how, how the past is so relevant, so necessary.

1:19:32 Speaker 4 Right.

1:19:32 Speaker 5 Whatever. And it... So al- almost out of desperation, I, I started, I, I started arguing with him, and I had like a thought from a sikha that came, and, and I'm gonna share it with you, um, if you let.

1:19:43 Speaker 4 If, if I let?

1:19:44 Speaker 5 Yeah. Whatever. I'm saying like it's, it's, it's, it's... Uh, um, very short, the Rebbe asks a question. Um, uh, if, I mean, fa- you probably know the sikha, everyone knows the sikha, but, uh, uh, what was the big deal about figuring out Paroh's dream?

1:19:58 Speaker 4 Mm-hmm.

1:19:58 Speaker 5 Like, technically, you have s- seven healthy cows, means there's food. Seven.

1:20:01 Speaker 4 Right.

1:20:02 Speaker 5 It's number seven. Like, why was it such a big deal?

1:20:03 Speaker 4 Right.

1:20:04 Speaker 5 And, and, and only Yosef could figure out the dream. And then the Rebbe, uh, within that, the Rebbe asked a second question: Why, why did Yosef give advice?

1:20:12 Speaker 4 Right.

1:20:12 Speaker 5 Like, who asked... Like, he was asked to, to interpret the dream.

1:20:14 Speaker 4 Right.

1:20:15 Speaker 5 So the Rebbe says that if someone good at the dream would have been totally understood. There was one detail in the dream that threw off everyone, and th- that detail is that it says in the posek that when the, when the, uh, the unhealthy cows come out of the water, they stand beside the healthy cows. So now you have 14 cows side by side.

1:20:37 Speaker 4 Right.

1:20:37 Speaker 5 So the Rebbe says, "Zman," time is cyclical. So if, if the interpretation of the dream is seven and sev- seven years and seven years, then the first seven years have to go away before the new seven years come.

1:20:48 Speaker 4 Right.

1:20:48 Speaker 5 So none of the, none of the chartumim Mitzrayim could figure out-

1:20:52 Speaker 4 What's a pshat

1:20:52 Speaker 5 ... what's pshat. Comes Yosef HaTzadik, and he interprets the dream, and he says, "No, you could have good and bad in the same time."

1:20:58 Speaker 4 Mm-hmm.

1:20:59 Speaker 5 You could have... They, they, they could be simultaneous How do you do that? For that you need eitzas, and they should give eitza of to appoint someone to collect the, the, the grain and the, and the food from the, from the, from the good years to have them for the later years.

1:21:11 Speaker 4 Mm-hmm.

1:21:11 Speaker 5 So I said, so I said like this. I said, I said, "You and I will both agree that we're in Shevet Sheini Arov."

1:21:17 Speaker 4 Right.

1:21:18 Speaker 5 And I know that not everyone agrees with that, but, but for the sake of that, that, that-

1:21:22 Speaker 4 You and him, it's a story. I, I-

1:21:24 Speaker 5 Exactly. Exactly. You and I will agree, yeah, the Mashiach is not here yet. We can't see the Rebbe Hagashmius.

1:21:29 Speaker 4 Right.

1:21:29 Speaker 5 It's Arov.

1:21:31 Speaker 4 Right.

1:21:31 Speaker 5 But Chartomim, Mitzrayim claim that it's just too bad. It's just too bad.

1:21:36 Speaker 4 If it's Arov, it's Arov.

1:21:37 Speaker 5 We're in the, we're in years of famine, and we just have to daven for Mashiach to come, and, and until Mashiach comes-

1:21:41 Speaker 4 Right

1:21:41 Speaker 5 ... we're stuck.

1:21:43 Speaker 4 Right.

1:21:43 Speaker 5 And Yosef HaTzadik, which the Rebbe very often use that as a euphemism for Yosef HaTzadik, referring to the, to the Rebbe, comes and has a whole nother approach.

1:21:51 Speaker 4 Right.

1:21:51 Speaker 5 And he says, "Inside of the Sheini Arov, you can have sava."

1:21:55 Speaker 4 Right.

1:21:55 Speaker 5 As long as you, you, you, you lean on and you utilize the, the tevuah that was collected for you, and it's not a thing of the past.

1:22:02 Speaker 4 Beautiful.

1:22:03 Speaker 5 It's because we have it now in the present.

1:22:05 Speaker 4 Right.

1:22:05 Speaker 5 We have oitzlis-

1:22:06 Speaker 4 Right

1:22:07 Speaker 5 ... that are filled with, with heroes and mayim rim and sichas and, and guidance from the Rebbe on how to be a Hasid, how to be connected to the Rebbe, that we can have sava inside of the Sheini Arov, Sheini Sarov.

1:22:21 Speaker 4 Beautiful. Yeah.

1:22:22 Speaker 5 And I've s- I, I repeated this a number of times 'cause to me, this-

1:22:25 Speaker 4 Now, was it Mekabel?

1:22:26 Speaker 5 What?

1:22:27 Speaker 4 Was it Mekabel?

1:22:28 Speaker 5 Uh, I think a story has to have an ending.

1:22:30 Speaker 4 Oh, go on. Uh, no, I'm just, I'm just being a ying to the-

1:22:32 Speaker 5 I know. I, I, I don't, I, I don't remember. I, I don't remember, uh, uh, you know, that there was a, some major, uh, uh, uh-

1:22:38 Speaker 4 Breakthrough

1:22:39 Speaker 5 ... a breakthrough. Exactly.

1:22:39 Speaker 4 Okay. Sorry. So, so go ahead.

1:22:40 Speaker 5 But no, but, but, but I repeated this a number of times to other people. I bring it to the Rebbe 'cause I think that this, for me, is a very, a, a very, um, a, a way for me to understand exactly, ag- for me at least, where I am today. I, I can't make peace with saying that today is Sheini Sasava.

1:23:02 Speaker 4 Right.

1:23:02 Speaker 5 Even, e-even, even, even just the fact that Mashiach is not here-

1:23:05 Speaker 4 Right

1:23:05 Speaker 5 ... and how much the Rebbe spoke about and, and, and, and begged for Mashiach and cried for Mashiach, uh, uh, want, wants Mashiach and wants us to bring Mashiach. To say that we're in, we're, we're in Sheini, Sheini Sa-Sheini Sasava now, it, it just, it doesn't jive for me.

1:23:19 Speaker 4 Right.

1:23:19 Speaker 5 But to say, Chas ve'Shalom, that, that s- that a, a child, a Mekurev, a me, growing up today, that I don't have access to the same tools or similar tools, but the same objective-

1:23:35 Speaker 4 Same grain

1:23:35 Speaker 5 ... th-yes. That, that, that, um, I'm not either ready to accept.

1:23:41 Speaker 4 Right.

1:23:42 Speaker 5 Which means that a bachur today can be a Hasid and can be a Mekusher and has access to everything that he needs to, to, to be a Chasidish bachur, a Chasidish girl, a Chasidish couple, a Chasidish, a, a Chasidish home. Whatever it is, it's-- Whatever we need, we have.

1:23:56 Speaker 4 Right.

1:23:57 Speaker 5 It's do-doesn't mean, doesn't mean that we don't miss the past.

1:24:00 Speaker 4 Right.

1:24:00 Speaker 5 Doesn't mean that there wasn't something in the past that was, that was and is incredible and that we want that and we wanna connect to that.

1:24:07 Speaker 4 Right.

1:24:08 Speaker 5 But not having that cannot, Chas ve'Shalom, be a reason or an excuse to, to, to not be the best us we can be today.

1:24:19 Speaker 4 Yeah. I mean, it, it, the story of Yosef HaTzadik is, is, is a perfect-- in, in many ways, it would seem to be a perfect, a perfect mashal, um, to this because I think everybody in Mitzrayim would have liked for the fields to still, you know, be growing. Like, uh, it's, it's not the optimum situation where you, you basically have to come for a handout from, from this granary and it's, it-- You're not gonna-- It's not-- Like you said, it's not Sheini Sasava, it's Sheini Sarov. But that's, that's around you, right? The fields are barren, but-- And, and, and, and the world may look different around you, but if you've, i-if, if you've had foresight or Yosef HaTzadik has had foresight to put away things for you, you could still be nourished, right? And, and you're, you're-- That's where it's a beautiful way of looking at it, where again, we come to the word tension, but the past and present don't collide with one another. The past or what, what things that something that was stored in the past is, is the present. That's the beautiful thing that you just said that I, that, that, that I heard from what you said.

1:25:26 Speaker 5 Yes.

1:25:28 Speaker 4 You know, if you look at the past as something that was basically spent in the past, like a, a memory, an experience that was spent. Hey, I'm thinking now even like, you know, you you know, uh, maybe, maybe it'd be a little bit against my, you know, persona, but like, you know, a, a Z-Zichrones, like a Tekias of Rosh Hashanah. If it's portrayed as something that happened that was spent, like exhaust-- like it happened and it's over, and now we just have to remember the past, that doesn't sit well with me. Uh, what do you, you, you're just saying-- you're, you're just making me feel bad. I get nothing from that. But if that was a memory, even a memory, and I'm not talking about a Sicha or a Mayim, we're talking about a portion of memory, a memory or a story that was stored in the past, right? Because at the end of the day, if it's a powerful memory, who knows how long it-- how, how much nourishment it can give. But then it's in the present. It's all about how you look at it, right? Right? I-is that, is that, you know, you, you, you wanna have it-- you, you're looking at it as a current of, of, of, of the Tekias, let's say, or our Kafas. Is it something that was-- that happened in the past and ended in the past? I don't see the, the, the what comes out of that. But if it, if it was, if it happened

1:26:40 Speaker 4 in the past for it to be stored in the hearts and minds of people so that some message could be shared down the road, then it's in the present. It's not in the past. I think that's what you're saying, right?

1:26:51 Speaker 5 Yes. Yes. Yes. And that's why, and, and th- and that's why... In o- in other words, in other words, despite the fact that I very, very, very much believe that, that- Um, in today's, in t-in today's day, especially because time has passed and the, and, and, and in, in the human condition, we're able to, to, to, you know, evolve or, or, or accept certain things that were harder to accept, uh, y-years ago. So I, I very much believe that as we raise our children, as we raise ourselves, as we raise our Mikvah, that we're raising them with, with, with a Rebbe in the present. Um, I, I'm not comfortable with divorcing ourselves of the past.

1:27:36 Speaker 4 Right.

1:27:37 Speaker 5 Or even to say that everything that we had then we have now.

1:27:40 Speaker 4 Right.

1:27:41 Speaker 5 What I would, what I would say is that for those things that we don't have then... We, we don't... For those things that we, that we had then that we don't have now, we have other things that could-

1:27:51 Speaker 4 Mm.

1:27:51 Speaker 5 -accomplish the same thing or a very, very similar thing. But... And, and, and again, I understand that I, I'm old enough to have at least some Zachronos.

1:28:01 Speaker 4 Right.

1:28:01 Speaker 5 And I wish I had more, which I know for some is very, you know, you're, you're, you're, you don't need Zachronos. I, you know, because of the age that I was, I till today, I wish I was a little bit older and I had a few more Zachronos and a few more things to remember. I think that for me, it, it, it, it, it, it, it animates me and, and it keeps me alive in the present.

1:28:20 Speaker 4 Right.

1:28:21 Speaker 5 But I, I, I have a very difficult time with divorcing ourselves from-

1:28:29 Speaker 4 Right.

1:28:29 Speaker 5 -from the past and saying, "You know, that was then. You know, there was a Der Hashishi. That was, that was, that was how they dealt."

1:28:34 Speaker 4 Right.

1:28:34 Speaker 5 "Then there was this Tkhufe, and now there's another Tkhufe, and this is, this is how it's meant to be." And I know that .

1:28:41 Speaker 4 Right. Right.

1:28:41 Speaker 5 But, you know, I'll just, you know, if we're quoting people, my shver, at least, uh, uh, I don't know if he still uses the same expression, but when I had just gotten married and I spent Yom Tov there, it was Motza'ei Pesach, you know, Motza'ei Achesh of Pesach, and he was putting away the dishes, and he said, " allen."

1:28:57 Speaker 4 Uh-huh.

1:28:58 Speaker 5 In other words, putting away the dishes is, is what people do after Pesach.

1:29:01 Speaker 4 Right.

1:29:02 Speaker 5 But until, until two... Until, you know, two... Till, you know, seven, eight years before that, um, Motza'ei Pesach, you were standing on, on the bleachers watching the .

1:29:10 Speaker 4 Right.

1:29:11 Speaker 5 So, so we gotta do what we gotta do. I don't know if he would still use those expressions today. Probably he's a, he's a Isha Emes. He's a, he's a, he's... Probably by him-

1:29:19 Speaker 4 Right

1:29:19 Speaker 5 ...the time passing doesn't affect as much. But, but there, there, there, there, there is, there, there is an imp... There is an inion in realizing-

1:29:27 Speaker 4 Right

1:29:27 Speaker 5 ...where we are today and what, and what, and what we don't have today, and it doesn't have to, uh, uh, be a letdown for today's children or today's us because, because the Rebbe and the Aibishter, you know, gave us the Kochas-

1:29:40 Speaker 4 Right

1:29:41 Speaker 5 ...to, to, to be Hasidim today with everything that we have today. But at the same time, the, the, the, the avar is, is

1:29:53 Speaker 4 I... Yeah. I, I'm makov what you're saying. I mean, I can't speak for others. I hear what you're saying. I, I think, I think, I think the problem originates when people pit the two against one another, right? So it's, you know, like we... Like you s-you're, you're sitting at that Farbrengen, and that person, we don't know who it is, but that person, and everybody has met such people or been by such Farbrengens. That person is basically pitting the avar against the hole. He wants the whole space to be about the avar. That... And I'm not saying that he did it maliciously. I don't even know who you're talking about. But it could well be that, that, that's what he lives with, right? But he wants the whole room that's in the present to be dominated by the avar. You had already kind of grappled with it, so you, you, you weren't trying to get rid of the avar, you were trying to calibrate the two. But there are people who get so annoyed by that and get so put off by that, they're like, "Okay, you know what? Avar away, hole," right? They're just pushing back another direction. So when you have the two at odds, that's what ends up happening. It becomes which one wins. What I think you're suggesting, at least what I'm hearing from you, it's n- it doesn't have to be a fight, right? The s-the beautiful story about Yesha Talik and that sicha that you mentioned is that the avar

1:31:07 Speaker 4 and the hole, they, they don't have to be... Like you said, time doesn't ha-- The, the, the seven-- the fourteen cows are standing together. They're all... In that moment, they're all there, right? One of the things... I'm not some big aca-- I'm, I'm not some big maskil, not some academic. I, I haven't researched Rabba's Torah. But one of the things that's very common in the Rabba's Torah is seeing things as layers. Like he'll say, "All of this is true in the Chitzonios Nefesh, but in the Pnimios Nefesh, it's kar anders", right? Then there's always layer-

1:31:39 Speaker 5 It's funny, it's funny that you say that 'cause I have... I, I was gonna say it the exa-- almost the exact opposite.

1:31:44 Speaker 4 Okay. Fuck it.

1:31:44 Speaker 5 Like I-

1:31:45 Speaker 4 Make it int-- make it interesting.

1:31:46 Speaker 5 No, no. I'm saying, uh, that, that... And, and this is part of, of, of, of my thinking, is that there's so much in the Rabba's sichas about Davar ve'ufcha, that a Yid is a Davar ve'ufcha.

1:31:57 Speaker 4 That's what I'm saying, though. What I'm saying layers as opposed to Davar ve'ufcha.

1:32:01 Speaker 5 No. La-la-layers would mean that there's a, there's one layer on layer on top.

1:32:04 Speaker 4 But no, but a lot of times it's Davar ve'ufcha. So like the f-

1:32:07 Speaker 5 Okay. Yeah

1:32:07 Speaker 4 ...the s- the obvious, the obvious, the obvious example is-

1:32:09 Speaker 5 If that's what you meant, then I, then, then I was supporting you.

1:32:10 Speaker 4 Well, I, I think... No, I wasn't thinking of the words Davar ve'ufcha, but a lot of times it opens up possibilities of Davar ve'ufcha. So, for example, in the Chitz... One of the thi-- one of the Gemaras that the Rabbi loved to quote was But the guy's not a Tzadik Gomer. But because, but previous... You know, 'cause he could be, so he is. And then a Chassidus would be in the Chitzonios he looks one way, but in Pnimios he's a whole d-- he's the opposite way, right? So it's almost like a, a way of Davar ve'ufcha not because of some, you know, Nesiah Fachim, some s... But poshut by, by categorizing or, or layering things on top of one another, especially in Medrigos of, of Ruchnius, you can end up having layers that they coexist even though-

1:32:54 Speaker 5 Right

1:32:54 Speaker 4 ...they would seem not to be able to co-- Does that make sense? Like you can have a person who on the outside looks one way, but in Pnimios, the, the Rebbe's insisting that he's a Tzadik Gomer

1:33:02 Speaker 5 Even though So, so I was, I was, I was coming from a little bit of a different perspective when I was d- One of the, one of the classic Farbrengens that come to my mind where the, uh, the Rebbe talks about this is the Farbrengen of Right And he speaks about, um, um, That it, that by a Yid it comes from Right And in that Farbrengen, the Rebbe says that a person could be sitting here in Brooklyn on a Wednesday, and the Rebbe says the year, and at the same time you could be at Har Sinai. Right. And that, that's a Okay. And, and by the Rebbe, those two things were Not a But, uh, uh, once you, you train your brain to, to think like that, if not to think like that, at least to understand that there is- That's possible ... that there's such a possibility that a lot of these, a lot of the tensions- Right ... are, are able to be, to be, uh, uh, um, less tension or at least a-able to coexist- Right ... because as a Yid, Right And th-this example that I'm giving, the Rebbe's telling people that we should, at the Farbrengen, that we should pretend for a few minutes that we are, are, we, uh, we are at Har Sinai. Right. And I are sitting in Brooklyn. So it's not a problem. It's not a problem. It's not a Right Because a Yid is, a, a, a Yid i-i-is characterized as a Uh-huh ... which

1:34:31 Speaker 5 means that a Yid could be in Right With all of the challenges that brings with it. Right And he could also be Right So, yeah, and, and, and what happened is, I mean, we can, we can, we can focus on a couple of things, but number one, we, we keep from people how unbelievable, you know, people say, "I haven't missed a week, and it's changed my life." Um, you know, sometimes we hear a story here or there, a guy that was, you know, wavering in his Yiddishkeit, Baaber but that was, you know, wasn't so, and started doing this, and after a while, you know, his beard got longer and, you know, he started wearing tzitzit every day. And I'm saying we, we, we-- over the course-- I mean, we, we, we don't hear most of the, most of the feedback because-

1:40:38 Speaker 6 Right

1:40:38 Speaker 5 ...it's a very fragmented-- like, there's no, there, there's no community. Everyone is in their own place-

1:40:43 Speaker 6 Right

1:40:43 Speaker 5 ...do-doing, you know, learning and doing. But, but... And then-

1:40:48 Speaker 6 If you stop the project, you'll get feedback.

1:40:50 Speaker 5 Uh, it's for sure. Not only that, this week there's only one sicha.

1:40:53 Speaker 6 Then you get feedback.

1:40:54 Speaker 5 The people were wondering about, "Well, what's the second sicha?"

1:40:55 Speaker 6 Yeah.

1:40:56 Speaker 5 You know, when we did three sichas, they say, "I can't do three sichas. It's too much."

1:40:58 Speaker 6 Yeah.

1:40:59 Speaker 5 When we did one sicha, they're wondering about, "Why, why only one sicha?"

1:41:01 Speaker 6 Yeah.

1:41:01 Speaker 5 Um, whatever. And, and, and there's a WhatsApp group or a few that, that discuss the sichas. Um, I ran into someone yesterday. He saw Ha-Ha'arah last week. It says, "Ve'im shargisi, Hashem yechaper." He said, like, "If not for the project of the Likutei Sichos, I would have never n-known that the Rebbe writes in Ha'arah ve'im shargisi." Like, it's, it's not a common thing for the Rebbe to write. And things like that and, and, and certain sichas that, you know, would have never gotten learned by the amount of people that are learning them o-on the depth level that they're being learned. And I will add, say-- I will say s-this. Um, shortly after the project started, maybe a month or two, I was talking to my father, and my father said to me something that I-- that, like, we were thinking it, but he said it in, in, in Eisyes. He said, "Gone are the days that you could raise a generation on I say this, I don't say this," uh, you know, various different things that are said or aren't said, which, which was a passion that existed and actually motivated us at a certain time in our lives. He said, "That passion doesn't work today, and today you have to have substance." And Likutei Sichos is substance. Not that it's the only substance, I wanna be clear.

1:42:14 Speaker 6 But i-gone are the days where you just listen to your father saying-

1:42:17 Speaker 5 No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Taf Shin and Hey, Taf Shin and Vav, we fought with each other over, over various different-

1:42:24 Speaker 6 Oh, gone are the days where, where, where I believe this and you believe that-

1:42:27 Speaker 5 Correct. Yeah

1:42:27 Speaker 6 ...and I belong to this side of the f-fence, and you belong to that side of the fence.

1:42:31 Speaker 5 Correct. Correct. And that, that-- and that passion was enough to, to-

1:42:34 Speaker 6 The fights, yeah

1:42:35 Speaker 5 ...to keep, to keep a person going.

1:42:37 Speaker 6 Right.

1:42:37 Speaker 5 And it worked. I mean, sadly, but it worked-

1:42:40 Speaker 6 Right

1:42:40 Speaker 5 ...um, to, to a certain degree, to certain people. And I shouldn't really call it it worked because the, the price was heavy.

1:42:47 Speaker 6 Very high. Very high.

1:42:48 Speaker 5 Heavy and sad.

1:42:49 Speaker 6 Right.

1:42:49 Speaker 5 But, but there were certain people that were able to, to, to, to keep a passion alive f-because of that.

1:42:56 Speaker 6 Right.

1:42:56 Speaker 5 But, you know, you fast-forward to where we are today or even five years ago-

1:43:01 Speaker 6 Yeah

1:43:01 Speaker 5 ...that passion doesn't work. And today you-- it only goes with substance, and Likutei Sichos is substance. And over the course of the f-four years of learning Likutei Sichos, uh, besides the fact that I myself giving a shiur every single week have, you know, I've come out of my own shell to a certain degree. I, I, I go to speak places. I've a bring here, there. You know, nothing major, but I've-- the fact that I'm sitting in front of you today-

1:43:24 Speaker 6 Right

1:43:24 Speaker 5 ...I would have-- five years ago, I would have never, I would have never been brave enough to sit, to sit here, honestly. You know, 'cause what am I gonna say and what will people think? You know. But, but, um, um, but it had a... It, it... It helped me. But at the same time, there's a certain-- And I, and I do wanna say, uh, in, in, in my specific case, I'm talking about me, is my wife teaches the sicha. Um, my wife learns the sicha. I mean, sometimes we learn together. And she teaches it here in Toms River. One, once a week in Toms River, once a week in Lakewood, to ladies, obviously. Um, um, my, my, my wife makes a poem on the sicha. My kids make these little animated videos, three, four-minute videos every single week, every single week. And it's incredible to see that, that, that it didn't-- it, it permeated, it permeated, uh, uh, um, into the fabric of our home.

1:44:18 Speaker 6 Hmm.

1:44:19 Speaker 5 Uh, the other, the other day, I was driving home from New York, and I called my wife. I'd given a shiur, and I was, I was giving my wife, you know, some, uh, tips based on the shiur that I gave, you know. And then we were on the phone for quite some time talking about the sicha and the pshat and how to, how, how to present it. And then I, I said to her, and I think we're, we're a weird couple. Like, this is, th-this is what we're talking about on the phone. Like, you know.

1:44:40 Speaker 6 Yeah, yeah.

1:44:41 Speaker 5 But at the same time, I think that, um, um, you know, that, that, that it has a very, very healthy impact, not just on me, but on, on, on, on, on the, on the, on the kids growing up in the house. And I wanna say something else. And this is not Likutei Sichos, Likutei Sichos, but I wanna say something else. It's been sitting since that last conversation, since that text, it's been, it's been sitting in my head. Um, one of my kids said to me that they were, they were somewhere with a, with a family friend, and they had a conversation, and it was not a good conversation. That's what they-- that quote, unquote. What pshat? It was a, it was a person who's a little more modern and said things, you know, a-a-about the Hasidish lifestyle, let's say, that, uh, whatever, not to get too carried away. I, I, I don't know. I wasn't there, and I, and I didn't get chazarah, but I, I understood. Anyway, so I, I said to my, uh, to my daughter, and I said, um, "When is the last time that person opened up a Likutei Sichos?" So my daughter rolled her eyes at me like, "I told the Likutei Sichos."

1:45:38 Speaker 6 Everything's Likutei Sichos. Yeah.

1:45:39 Speaker 5 So, so I said, I said this. I said-- Generally, I, I try to be careful not to be too pushy about it. I try to, like-- I'm not pushing it at anyone's throat. But I wanna say something. I, I'm saying it to, to, to this child of mine. And I said, "How do you expect someone to have, to have a healthy perspective, even a balanced perspective, perspective of Olam Hazeh that they live in and work in, but also at the same time a perspective, the Rebbe's perspective of Torah, of Hasidus-

1:46:07 Speaker 6 Right

1:46:08 Speaker 5 If you haven't opened a Sefer in ten years. Right. Just because you went to yeshiva or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or high school, it-- if, if you're a doctor, if you're a lawyer, if you're any, any profession, you have to constantly read up. You have to constantly, uh, uh, uh, uh, refresh your memory. Certainly there's gonna be new-- in certain fields, there's gonna be new- Right ... uh, technologies that are gonna come up, that if you were an amazing doctor and you came out of school in nineteen eighty-five- Right ... and, and, and you didn't read a-any of the... You can't be a, you can't be a doctor today. Right. So how do we expect, how do we expect a person to have a healthy approach to whatever the subject is if, if the person didn't open up a Sefer in ten years? Right. When I say Sefer, I don't know, Chitas, Rambam. When I say... You have to-- A person has to... If, if you don't care, you don't care, that's fine. Yeah. But if you wanna say, "This is a healthy, fair, balanced perspective." If you're talking about Deah, you have to open up the Sefer. No, f- yeah, I, I'm not saying that to sound, to sound coy. No. I'm saying that- It's, it's not on the list ... in, in, in, in the Olam HaZeh world that you come from- Right ... if, if, if the doctor spoke like you speak about Chassidus, about medicine, then you would look

1:47:19 Speaker 5 at them like they're crazy. Right, right, right. Because they're, be-be-because they're speaking about, uh, medicine that w- that, that was applicable twenty years ago. Right. So in this case, there's no new technology. But the reality is, is that so many of the Rebbe's Sichas and Maamarim and Torah, and, and for that matter, Bl- Blatt Gemara, and for that matter, Chassidus from the previous Rebbeim, that to us, to our generation, is Chadashim Mamash. Right. We don't know what it says. We never learnt it. Not just the Im Shoi Gisi Hashem Yichapeh, Avaya Yichapeh. Right. But poshut topics, ideas. And, and, and, and, and as we go through, th-th-through, through the Sichas, there are so many things. I mean, this is a more, a more famous one, Vayechi, that how did they survive? Uh, how did the... How is it Vayechi galecht in Mitzrayim? Right. Uh, be-be-because there was a yeshiva. Right. And the Rebbe explains this, this, this... So, so Hayomim is the story. The Rebbe explains the story at length, uh, uh, what Yaakov was worried about, that Yaakov wasn't worried about himself, because the way we understand the story is that Yaakov-- how did Yaakov live? Rebbe says Yaakov was, Yaakov was in the Shomrei Teツilas. Right. Yaakov was, Yaakov was worried about the Shvatim. Shvatim are Neshamas Dibya. How are Neshamas Dibya going to survive i-in, in Mitzrayim? And the answer is through Limud HaTorah. And my father would add to that, whose Torah were they learning? Yaakov Avinu's Torah. Right.

1:48:29 Speaker 5 Yaakov was the Nasi. Right. But, but fine, that's a little Chassidus Shveetel. But the, but the point is, is as you go through Likutey Sichos, it, it, it not only, not only does it, d-does it shift your perspective on how to, on how to learn... I'll, I'll give you one more, uh, um, um, um- As much as you want. I'm saying, I'll give you ten more if you want. But I'm saying- ... like that one more that, that, that talks the tension. And, and, and, and again, in, in, in the Vartez on Likutey Sichos and I sort of... You know, I was learning with someone here. We learn every Sunday morning. So I, I, I, I, I gave my, uh, my Noifech Med-Med-Medileh. But the, the, the Sicha the Rebbe is- I'm, I'm gonna write a disclaimer at the bottom of the podcast. Okay. That what, that the music is from someone else? No. That, the, the, the, the, the, that this is not, it's not- No, no, I, I'm making the disclaimer. So when, when it's a Sicha, it's a Sicha. Yeah. Okay. When it's a, when it's whatever. Okay. But, uh, the, uh, uh, the Sicha Parashat Terumah, the Rebbe asks why is the whole parashah called Terumah if only the very beginning is about donations? Right. The Rebbe answers that the word Terumah is Malashan Haromah, to uplift. And the Ufto of the, of the Mishkan was to uplift the Gashmius. Right. And the Rebbe explained that, that, that, that, that, that,

1:49:35 Speaker 5 uh, it, it has to be little by little. And the Rebbe explains the contrast between Matan Torah and the building of the Mishkan. And then there's like a, a, a, like a Vesigen Achar, which clearly was written by the Rebbe 'cause it's all Hebrew and hyphens. And the Rebbe wrote, "Vesigen Achar, Matan Torah, Bitul HaTachton or HaTachtonim. Binyan HaMishkan, Zichachata or Yizdachachus HaTachtonim." I, I don't remember. I don't remember the exact word. Zichachata Tachtonim, which basically means the Matan Torah, the, the, the, the, the, the Ohr was so powerful- Overpowering ... that it overpowered and overwhelmed, it was Mivatel HaTachton. In Matan Torah-- In, but the, the idea of the Mishkan is to slowly but surely refine the Tachton. Right. So I said, I said to my, uh, my Chavrusa over here, I said, "Before Gemut Talmud, when the Rebbe was Fabrengen, it was Bitul HaTachton." Mm-hmm. Like, obviously, not, not everyone was a, a fully Durkitan and a, a Chassid. But just being in the Rebbe's presence and hearing the Rebbe's words, that had an effect on the person. That at least in that moment, for sure, there was a Bitul HaTachton. Today, it's harder to have that, that, that level of Ohr, to access that level of Ohr, to a Bitul HaTachton. Mm-hmm. But today, we have, we have through learning the Rebbe's Torah and through g-going through a gradual process of inculcating into ourselves and, and, and, and, and meshing our, our, our, our brain with the, with the Rebbe's Torah, we

1:50:50 Speaker 5 have the ability of Yizdachachus HaTachtonim. Beautiful. The ability to refine ourselves and grow, which maybe in a time when there was a Ribui Ohr, it was harder to grow, and it might to-touch upon, you know, the contrast to the, the Deida, Deida Shishi, where there was more of a focus on learning may-maybe. And we'd say that, that, that, that the Shas, the, the, the Tekufa, you know, of, of, of when the Rebbe was here physically, the Gashmius. So the Rebbe was constantly giving us instructions, Hirayus. And of course, the Rebbe wants us to learn, and Rebbe always wanted us to learn, and Rebbe told us to learn. And obviously, you know, it's, that, it's, it's not, it's, uh, it's the, the obvious doesn't have to be said or shouldn't have to be said. But, but, but in, in, in, in the... I mean, my, my, uh, my son and his ilk will argue with me if I, if, if it sounds in any way, shape, or form that I say there's a Milah in today over the past, because Chas Vshalom to say that. But, um, but I'm not saying... I'm not, I'm not pitting one against the other, but I'm saying in the Teku- in the time that we live in today, we, we, we have the ability to learn Likutey Sichos. And for that matter, you know, the Rebbe's Maamarim and, and Torah in general, if we, if we do so on a, on a, on a regular basis. And especially, I think

1:52:02 Speaker 5 there is something very unique about Likutey Sichos. And the more I, the more I learn, the more that, that, that A meimer, a meimer is, is, is, a meimer entails a lot of, a lot of emunah. Like, k- as much as a 1 of us arguing that there isn't a meimer, and I know that people-

1:52:19 Speaker 6 It's, it's a delivery m- mi- uh

1:52:20 Speaker 5 I, I know people like my Zayde that would, would, would be horrified that I said it.

1:52:24 Speaker 6 Yeah, I think so.

1:52:25 Speaker 5 To a certain degree, you know, and, uh, you, you... There was, in other words-

1:52:29 Speaker 6 The Rebbe would close his eyes and even there were Shabbos like that, that they close their eyes.

1:52:32 Speaker 5 So there's a cer- there's a certain level in which I'm accepting-

1:52:35 Speaker 6 Yeah