Ep. 59 // "Talking to My Nefesh Habehamis" w/ Mayer Prager

00:00 Speaker 1 I'm already the older guy in seven seventy or whatever time. I go to Yaga, "What is this bonus?" And then years later, I used to give him, I used to tell my mashal, like I'm, I give him a mashal. I said, "Let's say this mashal, what do you think?" "What stuff does that?" Like, "What do you need that?" I said, "Did you watch TV? You watch movies?" I go, "We got different Nevi'im Bahamis. Your Nevi'im Bahamis are with us stuff. I, I'm, I gotta talk to a different guy."

00:29 Speaker 2 Welcome to Homesick for Lubavitch, a podcast where we explore Lubavitch identity in the year two thousand and twenty-five. My name is Benji Afson, and I will be your host. Let's begin.

00:48 Speaker 1 Oh, someone was asking me about why the Altar Ebisou against Chocham Chitzinius.

00:52 Speaker 2 Right.

00:52 Speaker 1 Like he speaks about it like, it's like e- like evil and like what's the bad-

00:57 Speaker 2 Right.

00:58 Speaker 1 What's so bad if a person reads, you know-

01:00 Speaker 2 Right

01:00 Speaker 1 ... Aristotle-

01:02 Speaker 2 Right

01:02 Speaker 1 ... Plato, Socrates, okay? So I said, the way I understood from Altar Ebatanie is that let's say, uh, for example, let's say we're talking about somebody who has a tremendously talented way of with material. It's very fine taste.

01:19 Speaker 2 Right.

01:19 Speaker 1 So he touches on a, on a material. He knows what it's made from. He knows how, if it's, if it's tightly done, if it's done well-

01:26 Speaker 2 Right

01:26 Speaker 1 ... it's not done when. He's very sensitive to-

01:29 Speaker 2 Right

01:29 Speaker 1 ... to, uh, all the nuance and uniqueness of that. And then all of a sudden he goes, for whatever reason, he needs to be in a mine for, for like a year or two years. And he comes out, and he tries to touch this stuff.

01:43 Speaker 2 His hands are all, yeah.

01:44 Speaker 1 He, he feels something, but he all the, all the finer things he can't get to anymore.

01:50 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

01:50 Speaker 1 He, he, he dulled those senses. The Altar Ebisou is like that's what he's worried about. He says, "The Nevi'im kiss resides in the, in the brain." Yeah, it's not bad, but what it does is it dulls you. It dulls you from the spirituality, and, and if you delve too much into it, you're just not gonna pick up spiritual nuances. You-- That, the uniqueness of, of, of learning and, and, and connecting spiritually will be dulled down by your, by your involvement in a different logic. It just dulls, it's, it's a, it's a lower-- Something wrong with mining either.

02:27 Speaker 2 Right.

02:27 Speaker 1 It's just that if you're gonna be a guy who's gonna be touching silks, don't go in the mine. If you're gonna be somebody who's gonna be dealing with Chochma Ukes, with godliness, which is definitely not part of this world, then the more you solidify this world as more real, you're just not capable of gonna-- to be able to do that mental leap to know how to, to, to appreciate it. So you, you have to.

02:53 Speaker 2 Fair enough. That's a good way to start. All righty, I am here in Bay O- Bay Harbor?

02:59 Speaker 1 Bay Harbor.

03:00 Speaker 2 Bay Harbor, right over the harbor from Bal Harbor, Surfside with Rabbi Meir Prager. I never know if I should say Rabbi, then people get upset I'm not a rabbi.

03:12 Speaker 1 Just Meir.

03:12 Speaker 2 Meir. Rabbi Meir Prager, or just Meir. Um, thank you very much for doing this, and, uh, a few people have asked me to have you on, and it's very nice to meet you for the first time. And, uh, I, I think, I think we can begin with, uh, a little bit, a little bit of background of, uh, who's Meir Prager? Who's Meir Prager? Like, no, like, okay. That's a little bit too open-ended, but, like, uh, you know, you grew up in Crown Heights. When? Uh, give me a... Set, set a little bit, set a little bit of picture, not about yourself so much, but about what Crown Heights was like growing up.

03:48 Speaker 1 Well, I think Crown Heights, I, I was born in nineteen sixty-four, so Crown Heights was a lot different. Um, there was already a lot of the mass exodus already left, and there was only a, uh, skeleton of Lubavitchers there, so to speak, and there was some, a lot of non-Lubavitchers, but all with eyeing to, uh, to move to Borough Park, I mean, to Flatbush, Borough Park, whatever, somewhere. There were other-

04:20 Speaker 2 Basically-

04:20 Speaker 1 So we had-

04:20 Speaker 2 Basically in the heat of white flight.

04:22 Speaker 1 Yeah. I remember q-q-- On my block, there was at least three, four major rabbis. The, uh, the Sadiker-- Oh, no, the Sadiker's son, the one who beca-- passed away, his... He just passed away, but he became the Mamaluc. Sadiker was next door to us. Um, I forgot who was on the corner there. A lot of big, major, major players. There's a lot of big rabbis there.

04:47 Speaker 2 So Crown Heights was Borough Park before there was Borough Park? Is that what it was?

04:50 Speaker 1 I'm not as familiar with Crown Heights how it was then, so I'm not gonna-

04:53 Speaker 2 Okay. Okay

04:54 Speaker 1 ... you know, I just, you know, I remember that from the Lubavitcher point of view, you know, we went to Lubavitch Yesh- I went to Lubavitch Yeshiva. Most of my class, I don't think-

05:02 Speaker 2 Was it Ocean Parkway?

05:02 Speaker 1 Yeah. Most of the class, I mean, it was half Lubavitchers-

05:05 Speaker 2 Right

05:06 Speaker 1 ... half not till, was it, you know, more.

05:09 Speaker 2 Right.

05:10 Speaker 1 Until the Iranians came in, and then it was almost all Iranian school for a while.

05:14 Speaker 2 Right.

05:14 Speaker 1 But, um-

05:16 Speaker 2 Who did you gravitate to? Who are, when I ask you, if I ask you, like, who are the, who are the figures in Crown Heights that you, that you, that jump out to you? Who are the... Were, were there people that stuck out? Was everybody-

05:28 Speaker 1 So my father was from, uh, you know, the more affluent members of the community. He was a big Bal Stalker.

05:36 Speaker 2 He was a Lubavitcher?

05:37 Speaker 1 Yeah. He came from Brisk. My, my Zeyda was a Sheikht of Brisk.

05:42 Speaker 2 Okay. So a Litvish family?

05:44 Speaker 1 No. They were Hasidim, but not Chabad.

05:46 Speaker 2 Uh-huh.

05:46 Speaker 1 That, uh, that there were many Hasidim in Brisk.

05:49 Speaker 2 Okay.

05:49 Speaker 1 The Chaba- Because Brisk was very friendly to Hasidim, and my Mishpacha, Zeyda, Zeyda, Zeyda, Zeyda, Zeyda, were all the Schachter of Brisk for many, many years back.

05:58 Speaker 2 Uh-huh.

05:58 Speaker 1 Zey-- You know, where Hasid comes from the Chaim Brisk and Beis Halevi. And, uh, actually, if you read the Brisk Erov, the Sefer that came out, three sets, you see Moshe Prager, which is my Zeyda. He was very in-- He mentions him quite a bit because he helped him pack all his teres, the Brisk teres was packed by my Zeyda.

06:17 Speaker 2 What, before the war?

06:18 Speaker 1 Yeah. On his last, on his... He got arrested on his bringing the Brisk Erov stuff to the boat. You read in the books- How did you, how did you say they get, he get, he got out before the war? No. If I- So you said it was a survivor? No, my zeide died there. So the Brisker Rav- Oh, okay ... so some how, some- How did your father get out? My father got out because some- my, I'm not exactly sure. It was, uh, the, why my fa- how my father ended up in Lubavitch Yeshiva in, in, in Varsha and then V- in Brisk, in, uh, in Otwock and then he went to Shanghai. Oh, so your fa- your father's one of those. Yeah. What do they call them? The B, the B, uh, the B-59 or something. That's what- Uh ... Celikson told me. Yeah. So I'm not... Something happened, and based on that, I've understood that the Brisker Rav recommended to my zeide to send him to Lubavitch, which- Before the war? Before the war. So my father is the only one that, him and his brother survived. Everybody else didn't survive. His brother was also in Otwock? No, his brother was the troublemaker that he was supposed to separate from. You know, that's what they say. He's a good guy, but he was, uh, he was a bit more on the wild side, so, um, at that time. That's what I heard from one, from, from some... People in Brisk are like people

07:31 Speaker 1 in, in, in, uh, Nevel, and they, they, they, their tradition is Oh, yeah? Yeah, very much. Gez, gezher Brisk. Gezher B- They're so, everybody knows each other. There's a guy I know, Boruch, he knows my f- my family better than I'll ever know. Do they fast on Taanis Esther or not? The, uh, so he, that's my father grew up, yeah, he grew up in Brisk, and then at thirteen years old, he went to Lubavitch Yeshiva, and once you're in, you're in. So your father was a Lubavitcher guy, and he was, uh, he was a Lubavitcher Hasid- Yeah ... and, and, and he was a businessman. He was a businessman, so I gravitated to mostly to the gra- to the, to the business people. And it wasn't a big crowd. Wasn't it four people in Crown Heights who, who- Yeah, I mean, I re- Shmuel Isaac ... I remember, I remember Shmuel Isaac made money later on. Um, but it was, Was it three people? Two people. There were other names, people that were there that left. It's, it's a lot of different stories. But, uh, Crown Heights was small, yeah. So it was seventy... I don't remember upstairs, but I remember downstairs before the expansion. I remember the expansion. I remember running through it, destroying the place. Your- We were very wild kids. Your father would daven every, every Shabbos in seven seventy? Yeah. So like all the way- Yeah, yeah ... not- Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And- He didn't have, in the beginning, he didn't

08:45 Speaker 1 have a beard, and in the last two years, he did have a beard. Uh, story with the Rebbe, something got involved. But, um, so he started having. But it was... Though most people in Crown Heights didn't have beards, and, uh, it was much different. Hmm, most people did not have- A lot of people didn't. I can't say most, but I know- Even, even Lubavitch Hasids themselves. Yeah. There were, there were a lot of people, you know, so. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. A lot of people came to, became Lubavitchers. Also, yeah. You know, Lubavitch is always a, an organization that's making itself. Right. You know, so we picked up a lot of people. Yeah. We're always on, we're always on the way to somewhere else. Yeah. That's right. Um, so- But, but were there any Hasidim that stuck out to you? If, if I... Any Hasidim that stick out that you were mentioning earlier that you used to learn with, with Rav Meir? That happened much, much year, year, that's years later. Okay. Look, I'm asking, so I'm asking. Is there like a, you know, i- is it, or was there too much going on that nobody sticks out individually? Like describe Crown Heights to me. You started- I was a very- Describe to me the people ... I was a very, um, I was wild, and I was questioning, so I never gravitated to the normal people that you should have gravitated to, the Hasidim. It was not my style. I didn't wanna hear about it.

10:00 Speaker 1 I wasn't... So I never really, until years later, when I was maybe sixteen to about seventeen, I, I, I discovered Hasidism- Really? ... fell in love. So until then, I wasn't interested. I wouldn't gravitate. I wasn't looking. You weren't interested in Lubavitch. You weren't interested in Yiddishkeit. I wasn't, no, I was interested in Yiddishkeit. I was enamored by... Everybody was enamored by the Rebbe. You were? Oh, yeah. Yeah. You had to. It was, he's- What were you enamored by? Just, you cannot- No, but describe it to me ... you, you, you remind me, I was just talking to somebody- Mm ... who went out with somebody, and she'd be getting mar- she should've been married already. And I said, "Why didn't it work out?" He goes, "I can tell you many reasons why, but n- none of the reasons are the reason why I'm not going out with her." You know, he just doesn't like her. Right. You know, there's a good reasons. Why the, really connecting to somebody on a, on a real level, it's not about one thing. What, what did the Rebbe do to me? I don't even remember Yechidus. I went to Yechidus. I don't remember Yechidus that much. But it's just the way the Rebbe da- the Rebbe walked, the way he looked, the way he spoke. I'll tell you, I'll tell you why I'm skeptical of that. Not that I don't believe you. I'll tell you why I, why I made the face. Yeah. Okay? I didn't notice the

11:10 Speaker 1 face, but- Oh, you, oh, I thought you... No, you- No ... you saw me, like, me question it, right? Why I... It's because when someone me- if you meet someone, whether it's, uh, for business or to get married, and you feel something either for or against, that's a very personal, individual kind of thing that you're feeling. And so, yes, like that, that gut instinct that can't be explained with a specific reason is believable to me. When, when everyone in a community feels something about someone, and they can't articulate it, is it that everyone on an ex- instinctive level feels the same thing, or is it that we're not willing to figure out what it is? You see what I'm, you see what I'm asking? Very mu- very interesting, yes. When we grew up, most of the teachers were m- some of them were not, they're being one of Lubavitchers. Yes. So no one sat with us and told us the Rebbe di- like the stuff, like the, what's going on now in yeshiva. Nothing like that happened. Nothing. Nothing. Okay. Nothing like that happened. It wasn't like for bringing, you have to love the Rebbe, this, that, the other. Let's put it this way. Not everybody came to for bringing. Yes. And nobody sat down and said, "The Rebbe's the most important thing." Didn't happen. There wouldn't... JJ, we had maybe... I don't remember. I, I remember... No, nothing Nothing like that. Nobody ever indoctrinated, you know, told us, "This is it. Now is the

12:32 Speaker 1 birthday, and this is the Rebbe since this, and then it came to America." No idea what day it came to America. No idea, no idea birthday. Okay, you know, from this, it didn't... We didn't do that. We just was in. He was just took us. I'm telling you, there's a big difference. In Chassidus, it explains about certain times. It depends on what you're connecting to. Are you connecting to a koach or to etzem? There's certain people that just carry an energy that's so pure that it gets to you. You don't know why.

12:58 Speaker 2 Hmm.

12:59 Speaker 1 I wasn't even into it, and you got to. I have friends like that, friends who weren't even religious. When it came to the Rebbe, you, let me tell you, in the years when the Rebbe-

13:07 Speaker 2 I know, but that's a very, it's a very interesting concept

13:09 Speaker 1 ... Ask people when they hear, when you, when you have a chance-

13:11 Speaker 2 Yeah

13:11 Speaker 1 ... about what it looked like when the Rebbe gave the berakhah to bachurim.

13:16 Speaker 2 I'm asking you. I don't know.

13:17 Speaker 1 No, I'm just gonna tell you, but I'm gonna say to me, I'm gonna say mine, but you'll see. The people that showed up then-

13:24 Speaker 2 Uh

13:24 Speaker 1 ... never showed up before. Never.

13:26 Speaker 2 Oh, you had, like, what, you had one, you had one time a year Jews in Crown Heights show-

13:29 Speaker 1 Sure, yeah. D- you think it was Nilah? It was Yank- it was, it was Kol Nidre? No. For Lubavitcher, the berakhah for bachurim, y- you fought. You had guys that were doing what- whatever they did.

13:40 Speaker 2 Where, where come, come from.

13:42 Speaker 1 C- not at all.

13:43 Speaker 2 Not at all from.

13:44 Speaker 1 Coming, you gotta g- the Rebbe's giving berakhah to bachurim, and they fought their way in. Th- there was a connection then that was just crazy. The Rebbe didn't look at you. You didn't look at that. You couldn't see anything. The Rebbe was very serious, but it was like, whoa. When you, when I-

13:58 Speaker 2 So how do you explain-

13:59 Speaker 1 I'll get emotional. When I hear, when I remember hearing the Rebbe saying, "Yevarekh Hashem," I don't know. Can't explain it. I can't. Most of my relationship, now I can explain the Rebbe's relationship better because I'm in, I'm studying it and learning in sichas and been so crazy about it, and I tried so many other chochmas, not Talmud Chazal, other Yiddish chochmas. So now I developed also an intellectual appreciation, uh, seriously. But at the time, it was just, it was, it was... No, it was very, it was very weird. Very, very special. Very special. There were times this year, Yom Kippur, Rosh Hashanah, times, differences, man, um, just the way looking at him. Just, he got you.

14:44 Speaker 2 Spring is here, which means that in two months, many communities will be looking for a way to mark Gimmel Tammuz, the Rebbe's yahrtzeit. If you're looking for an event that is memorable, meaningful, and affordable, let me recommend This World Is a Garden, a film and live concert production created by us here at Uvlah Media, inspired by Vasili Gani, the first maimer the Rebbe said. If you're a regular here at HFL, you know that Vasili Gani is something that we think about and talk about a lot. And in this production, we use the power of cinematic filmmaking and a live concert by a string quartet to bring the beauty of Vasili Gani to your community and your audience in a way that they've never seen, heard, or experienced it before. The production has already been hosted by Chabad houses around the country and has drawn wonderful reviews. Our package comes with everything that you need to put on the production, the film's original arrangements for string quartet, publicity materials, everything besides the string quartet, which we recommend that you hire locally to save on travel costs. To find out more about this production, please visit thisworldisagarden.com. Again, thisworldisagarden.com. And now, back to the show. So how do you explain that? Is there a way to explain it? Is there a point to explain it, why bachurim who are struggling with their Yiddishkeit feel this need to come to get a berakhah? Was it because they, you know, like, like the businessman who says it's, it's worth

16:10 Speaker 2 the off chance that it helps?

16:11 Speaker 1 No.

16:11 Speaker 2 No, that's not what a bachur's thinking about.

16:12 Speaker 1 No. No, no, they didn't.

16:13 Speaker 2 I'm saying that's what a cynical businessman's thinking about at 40 years old. What's, what, what's pulling the bachur in for that? Like, what, what is it? 'Cause you see it a lot today. I don't know if it's the same exactly thing you're describing.

16:22 Speaker 1 Well, let me ask you a question. Oh, I'm sorry. You were gonna say something. Go.

16:26 Speaker 2 No, but, uh, there are things that, there are things, like today you see also a lot of guys are like, they, they, they don't, they, they have problems with God, but, but, but not with the Rebbe. Never. It's always, like, it's, it's never with the Rebbe. It's always, if, if there's a problem, it's with God. Where does that come from in your mind? This, I... 'Cause that's what you're descri- that's what you're touching on basically.

16:44 Speaker 1 I, I, I like to mention one thing that, that even though it happened years later, but I guess the guts of it you can see. I remember once, I don't remember which farbrengen it was, and it maybe took, maybe took fi- three minutes for the Rebbe to say this, but it seemed like an hour. It was, like, shocking. The Rebbe then referred to that there were tzadikim. This was in the later years, the later mems. I think so. Yeah, later mems, for sure. Um, maybe, yeah. So the, uh, he says there were tzadikim that took an account of what's going to be after they pass away, and they try to make, uh, uh, provisions to protect them to somehow still be advocates for Jews. The Rebbe famously spoke about it in taf shin yud, Yud Aleph, about the go- about the Levi Tzimtzim Tzemach that he made up, that he's now going to Gan Eden as a protest until-

17:44 Speaker 2 Uh

17:44 Speaker 1 ... until he gets in. Something happened, and I think the story goes Ktusha, but the Rebbe didn't say what happened. Whatever it is, they got him.

17:51 Speaker 2 Uh.

17:51 Speaker 1 That's the Rebbe, they got him. And the Rebbe said then that the Friediker Rebbe it's not chayekh. Why? Because they're into gog u'ma'yim. You know, c- like you're saying things, reasons, edge, whys, and if you're just into it with no, with no Is and whys and no, no boundaries, there, there's nothing. That's, that's who you are, and that's, he said, who the Friediker Rebbe is, and therefore it won't happen to him. That's what the Rebbe said. By this farbrengen, the Rebbe said there were tzadikim that made up, but it looks like they got everybody. Now, obviously, he didn't say the Friediker Rebbe, but I'm, the way I saw it, the way I was, I was, I, my place was right across there. Is that he meant everybody, like somehow you gotta... So there was "Vos di eitzah?" Like, "What is the eitzah?" So the Rebbe says the eitzah, the eitzah that he found was that if you make a neder dass Rabim, if you make a neder for, uh, for whatever it is, you can go to Chacham, and the guy can somehow, if he's smart enough, he can say, "Okay, but you didn't know that if this and this."

18:52 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

18:52 Speaker 1 And you have to be all of conscious mind to know what you're promising.

18:55 Speaker 2 Right.

18:55 Speaker 1 Otherwise, it's not a real promise.

18:56 Speaker 2 But you're Makor, yeah.

18:57 Speaker 1 Yes, so he can take it away. But the, so, but if you... So there's always a way out of a neder.

19:03 Speaker 2 Right.

19:03 Speaker 1 But if you make a neder dass Rabim, there's, in other words, your opinion doesn't matter.

19:07 Speaker 2 Right.

19:08 Speaker 1 You give it over to everybody else. They never can take you out of that-

19:11 Speaker 2 No

19:11 Speaker 1 ... because it's, you're, you're not a guy who's... You gave away that right.

19:14 Speaker 2 Right. Right, right.

19:16 Speaker 1 And you knew there that the Rebbe was doing this neder dass Rabim, that he's not gonna forget this reality, so to speak. He didn't, he didn't have to ex- you know-

19:25 Speaker 2 Well, when was this? Th- this was in the later years.

19:27 Speaker 1 Yeah. Which year?

19:28 Speaker 2 A few years, a few years before he passed away.

19:30 Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. And, uh, who does that? Who sits there and makes up that he's not going to forget this reality? Because what happens is once you go to, like we go to Chassidis, Kabbalah, anything, once you see God's perspective, you're like, "Okay, I see what you're saying." You know, you have two fights, and all of a sudden you're, you're committed on one side, and all of a sudden you hear the other side, you're like, "Okay, I didn't realize that. Now that I know that, like, I hear you. Maybe you're not, you know, you're not so guilty." You don't wanna lose that. You don't wanna lose any of that edge for anybody on this side.

20:05 Speaker 2 Right.

20:05 Speaker 1 Cannot be forgot. That's, that's how he was. He wa-- That's how he was from the beginning. It was always about the people. It was never about himself. Where did the Rebbe go?

20:13 Speaker 2 So that-

20:13 Speaker 1 Where did he live?

20:14 Speaker 2 So that's what-

20:14 Speaker 1 He lived in a... He lived... You just looked at his physical life.

20:17 Speaker 2 So-

20:17 Speaker 1 You looked at him, you just, his soul was all about somebody else.

20:20 Speaker 2 So that's what, that's what a bunch of, a bunch of wild, wild boys, teenage boys, that's what they're connecting to? They're just so impressed by his selflessness?

20:31 Speaker 1 No. No, no. It was not conscious. I'm, I'm making it about... I'm, I'm, I'm just giving context.

20:36 Speaker 2 Right.

20:36 Speaker 1 It's, it's... E- even if someone told me something against that, I would still feel that light because it's... There, there was a magic. There's something special. The same reason... Right now, we're seeing hostages coming out of, out of Gaza re- believing in God. It makes no sense. They were in the most godless... Everything logically says that God put down his arms and let things happen at that time, October 7th.

21:03 Speaker 2 Right.

21:03 Speaker 1 It is. And they, everything God... S- s- From a logical point of view, God did everything possible to make sure that you never come back to shul.

21:12 Speaker 2 Right.

21:13 Speaker 1 And here these, one after the other, found God. It's crazy. This girl became Shabbos. This one, a moon of this. We had the Shabbos, two, two survivors that came here. I, I never heard a Mashpia speak like this to like these people. They're like unbelie- Like something changed. There's certain things that are Emes, that are much, much bigger than, than the brain and bigger than the heart. But the brain can have recognition that it's there. The heart can have recognition that it's there. But what exactly it is, it's inexplicable.

21:45 Speaker 2 Mm.

21:45 Speaker 1 It's inexplicable. It's like these deeper, deeper relationships. Look, just in the terms of Chassidis, Sechem, these are creations.

21:55 Speaker 2 Right.

21:55 Speaker 1 And there's some... There's a, there's another you know. There's things be, you know, that it has its limitations.

22:04 Speaker 2 Yeah.

22:04 Speaker 1 Whatever has a beginning has an end. This, this, these relationships, these things of recognition of real Emes is there's no place for logic to, to... How is it that I'm seeing today more? In my life, I've never saw so many beautiful, so many Chassidim like it is today. People really into it. Never. Never. This is unbelievable. The kids, my, my, my nephews, kids, my own kids, some of my kids, I'm like, "What the... Where did this come from?"

22:37 Speaker 2 If I can push back though at that, you're seeing also a lot more kids who are not interested.

22:45 Speaker 1 Oh, that happened more than you knew in the old days.

22:47 Speaker 2 No, but the numbers are growing.

22:49 Speaker 1 No, no, no.

22:49 Speaker 2 They're not?

22:50 Speaker 1 Not... Percentage-wise, not even close to what it was.

22:53 Speaker 2 Really?

22:53 Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

22:56 Speaker 2 I, I mean-

22:56 Speaker 1 I'm thinking about my class. I'm thinking about my first grade and where most of them or where a lot of them are in second grade.

23:01 Speaker 2 Well, well, you said a lot of them to begin with weren't Lubavitchers.

23:03 Speaker 1 No, no, no. I'm talking people that were Lubavitchers.

23:06 Speaker 2 A lot of them today are not religious?

23:07 Speaker 1 Whatever. With the perce- I don't, I don't believe-

23:08 Speaker 2 It's okay. Well, you know, you know, I don't, I don't need to-

23:10 Speaker 1 I don't, I don't believe that the perce-- I think the percentages are much greater.

23:14 Speaker 2 I don't need to argue that point. So what about them? Why didn't they, why didn't they connect to this that you're describing?

23:18 Speaker 1 That's ... That doesn't... There's, God has a purpose in this world. Everybody has a place that needs to be.

23:26 Speaker 2 So there are limitations as well.

23:27 Speaker 1 Yeah.

23:27 Speaker 2 There are limitations. Not every-

23:29 Speaker 1 It's part of the, part of what has supposed to happen. It's always like that.

23:32 Speaker 2 Right. Right. You see, you're not, you're not suggesting that because the Rebbe was here, everyone, everyone just got swept into it.

23:40 Speaker 1 No. No.

23:41 Speaker 2 Okay.

23:41 Speaker 1 No. And he's not... And, and people turning off are not there because he, he, because Gimmel Tammuz happened either.

23:48 Speaker 2 Okay. Yeah.

23:49 Speaker 1 It's, it's, it's an independent thing of, of whatever needs to happen. When the Rebbe was here, the Rebbe was here, and the Rebbe is not here, so-called, you know, involved with us in the regular-

23:57 Speaker 2 No, it's the way of life.

23:58 Speaker 1 It's the way of life.

23:58 Speaker 2 It's the way of life. It's the way of life.

23:59 Speaker 1 Yeah.

24:00 Speaker 2 I mean, yes. That, that's something that I, I... And as I, as I, the little bit that I read about history, and you don't have to go very far. Like Lubavitchers were dealing with this 100 years ago, 100 years ago in Russia. It's just part of life. Like this idea that you're gonna... You know, it used to be that you would have 10 kids, and you were lucky if four of them survived.

24:21 Speaker 1 Right.

24:21 Speaker 2 B'chol, like physically, right? And then from the ones that survived physically, you were lucky if a few of them survived spiritually.

24:28 Speaker 1 Right.

24:28 Speaker 2 This idea that we have that, you know, thank God, physically things have gotten a lot better, right? But, but like all your children are one by, after another going to follow this one path that you set out for them when there are infinite paths available to them in the world, and you're astonished when they, when they don't choo- Like the odds are against you, immensely against you, right? What do they say about like the counter, counter-terrorism in the country? That like they, the terrorists have to get it right once-

24:59 Speaker 1 Right

24:59 Speaker 2 ... to win, and we have to get it wrong once to win. Like it's a c- it's a terrible fight.

25:03 Speaker 1 Right.

25:03 Speaker 2 It's the same thing when you're raising a kid to be-

25:04 Speaker 1 Right

25:05 Speaker 2 ... frum, right? Or to be a Lubav- To be a Yid, to be a Chassid, right? Like they, one person has to get to them, and that's over. And you slip up once, and you can lose them, right? And I don't know, people have this thing in their mind like, like, like, so that's why I don't know because when I was growing up, I remember, and this is after you obviously, I remember when people started talking these kind of expressions like, "In bayis, such a in shul, maysek." It became like at first it was hush-hush, like this family has a guy, a kid who fell off the path. This family has like a whole like scandal, and then it became in bayis, in shul, mayse. Every family is like this. You're saying it was always like that.

25:42 Speaker 1 It's much and it's, it's, it's totally, it's exaggerated because-

25:46 Speaker 2 It's not-

25:46 Speaker 1 ... the number, I mean, they're bigger, their cronites is huge.

25:49 Speaker 2 Right. Absolute numbers-

25:50 Speaker 1 Chabad which is great, is huge.

25:52 Speaker 2 Yes.

25:52 Speaker 1 The absolute number, but percentages, no way. It's no way. We're way better off than, than ever, I believe.

25:59 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

26:00 Speaker 1 And also the quality of good, when you look at a, like a good Bacher, so to speak. When I watch good, I've never seen anything. I, it's amazing. St- so this is real. It's more because it's more homegrown. It's came, it's more Dasa. Everything the Hasidist says that we have to end up doing, that's what's happening. First of all, even about T'shuvah, if you think about it, maybe I'm wrong about this, but I don't think so. From Bayis Hashishon, most Jews were not religious. Once the Tzedukim, the Ba'al Teshuvim, and all those-

26:33 Speaker 2 Right. Yeah, people should read a little bit of Ezra also.

26:35 Speaker 1 Yeah. Most Jews were not affil- were not on the r- reservation. They all left, most of whatever the reason was.

26:41 Speaker 2 And, but, and they left hard.

26:43 Speaker 1 Hard.

26:43 Speaker 2 Hard. You, it was-

26:44 Speaker 1 Hard

26:45 Speaker 2 ... Ezra is 70 years after the-

26:46 Speaker 1 Right

26:46 Speaker 2 ... Purim Bayis.

26:47 Speaker 1 Yeah.

26:47 Speaker 2 He comes back.

26:48 Speaker 1 Nobody-

26:48 Speaker 2 Nobody's keeping Shabbos. They're all intermarried. It's like-

26:51 Speaker 1 It's unbelievable

26:52 Speaker 2 ... yeah, it's like literally-

26:52 Speaker 1 No. So now think about it. Now, then that's, we're talking about thousands of years ago.

26:56 Speaker 2 Yeah.

26:57 Speaker 1 And then all, and then all the years and, uh, uh, all the-

26:59 Speaker 2 By the way, Lubavitch-

27:00 Speaker 1 ... Lubavitch families. There were 600,000 Lubavitchers in times of Tzemach Tzedek.

27:05 Speaker 2 Right. Tzaddik, yeah, right?

27:06 Speaker 1 Yeah. The t- what do, what do, what-

27:08 Speaker 2 Where do they go?

27:09 Speaker 1 Where do they go?

27:10 Speaker 2 Uh, the Kazakhstan.

27:11 Speaker 1 They became everything, whatever. The point is-

27:13 Speaker 2 The KGB. We blame it on the KGB

27:14 Speaker 1 ... most pe- uh, the-

27:15 Speaker 2 It's not true

27:16 Speaker 1 ... whatever the reason is, most, most never survived.

27:19 Speaker 2 Right.

27:19 Speaker 1 And also what's, that's not my point. My point is no Ba'al Teshuvahs ever. There's never a Ba'al Teshuvah movement. You never hear about somebody, "Oh, he was not from, he came from..." He was a goy, he became a Ger. You hear stories of Ger, but from, came from, it doesn't exist. All of a sudden, in the last X amount of years, you literally have people coming back. It's unbelievable.

27:42 Speaker 2 Right.

27:43 Speaker 1 Throughout Jewish history, anybody that went to university, higher education learning, lost their religion. It was just a given. You're done with them.

27:51 Speaker 2 That's true. That's true.

27:51 Speaker 1 And this is the first time in... Not only that, more Jews are being introduced to Judaism and turning that the, the only experienced pupil who says of Judaism is in university.

28:02 Speaker 2 I see what, I see what you're saying. You're saying it used to be that the future was inherently pessimistic. If you start with 100 today, in 50 years, it's gonna be down to 20 or 50, whatever. You, you, you, the question is only how much are you going to lose or how little are you gonna lose, but you're gonna lose.

28:17 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

28:17 Speaker 2 And now you're saying it's also going the opposite direction. There could be optimism where the better, the future could be better. Is that what you're saying?

28:24 Speaker 1 100%. And-

28:26 Speaker 2 Why do, why do you think that is?

28:27 Speaker 1 Because there is a time when your parents are, are holding the bicycle, and they, you know, sometimes they wobble you, and while you're wobbling, you're nerve... Every time your father moves with the bike, you get even more nervous until all of a sudden, he finally lets go of the, of the, uh, handrails, and you start pedaling, and then you realize what happens when you go to this side, you move a little bit here, you move a little bit here, and you get comfortable with the risk, and you get comfortable about the reward, and you get comfortable with the experience, and then you start loving it.

28:55 Speaker 2 Right.

28:56 Speaker 1 And that's what happened. That's what they, that's what they ever wanted from us, and that's what Yiddish guy, that's what David Kaneh, he wanted us to have. It should be a guy goes, a guy goes to the hole, a guy goes into Gaza, comes back a, a, a frum Yid? Where is that? Even in Mitzrayim, they, you, you, they were off lunch, was off two hours. They're already going back to Mitzrayim with the, with the most amazing miracles.

29:23 Speaker 2 Right.

29:24 Speaker 1 And the Beis Hamikdash with crazy miracles and Neviim. I was just listening to a Sikher there, it was farbrengen from Yid to Ulamid Beis. He was talking about the Neviim. He was talking about how many Neviim there were. You d- it's mind-boggling how much, how many Neviim there were. And even though-

29:38 Speaker 2 Right

29:38 Speaker 1 ... we only quote the, the, the ones that we know.

29:40 Speaker 2 Right. The Gemara says, yeah.

29:41 Speaker 1 Thousands. There was, the numbers were staggering with Neviim, but, and most people they-

29:47 Speaker 2 Thank you. Yeah. Yeah

29:48 Speaker 1 ... they left because it's inspiration from above. It's not, it's not real. I remember once a story, I was once talking to Yael, and, and he wanted, he liked to inspire, to get me on Hasid, whatever. So I was going with, he told me once a Maamer, it's not a concept of Hasidism, and he was so excited about it. And when he finished it, he goes, "Das ist Hasidist." And, and my, uh, my reaction to him was like, "I don't know if that's Hasidist, that's Sechel." Like, that was just smart. It wasn't you saying it's per se Hasidist. I just think that it was just smart. And I remember him like loving that. He's like, like that's what he really wanted to hear. He wanted to hear that at the end because that's what Hasidist, the end is-

30:34 Speaker 2 It's clipped. It's clipped. Like it's not-

30:35 Speaker 1 Yeah. It's, the realities are not, they're working together in unison.

30:38 Speaker 2 It's too late. You've seen, you've seen something that you can't unsee at this point. It's too real. It's not like, it's not-

30:44 Speaker 1 Okay

30:44 Speaker 2 ... it's not imposed onto your reality.

30:46 Speaker 1 You're, you're, you're taking it from an, from I hear you.

30:48 Speaker 2 That's not, that's not what you mean?

30:49 Speaker 1 I, I meant to say that it was that y- usually, another line from Yael. He tells me, "Mir ruft as Chabad, ober beemesht as a Emunah." You know, it's c- it's really emunah. You know, you say it's Chabad, but his point was, or why it's always Chabad, is that 'cause we need to ground it into sekhel. It's our job. They're giving us enough framework to, to, to, to make it logical. So when it comes logical, then you're that, then you're like, "Oh, that's chasidus."

31:19 Speaker 2 How, how did you... Well, how did this relationship with Rav Yoel... Was it, was it something common?

31:24 Speaker 1 No, it wasn't common.

31:26 Speaker 2 That he, they took interest in... Well, how did it start?

31:28 Speaker 1 No, not at all. I don't... So me, yeah, I was not even, I was not a bachur. He was, he, he, he, he gave shiurim for 770, and he was a superstar. Yoel was always a superstar.

31:38 Speaker 2 Yeah.

31:39 Speaker 1 And I was just a shmegegi bachur in Marissa.

31:42 Speaker 2 Right.

31:43 Speaker 1 And I remember learning a certain Maamar, and there was something that the Friediker Rebbe wrote over there that just didn't make sense to me. So I remember going to Meir, made him crazy one day, another day, fighting. Uh, he's, he, he, he didn't, he-- it wasn't happening. He didn't know how to unpack that one. And that was a, and it was a good, it was a good subject. It was a very interesting subject.

32:03 Speaker 2 Which one, do you remember?

32:05 Speaker 1 Yeah. It was the Hemshich Tzadok Daad. The Friediker Rebe-

32:08 Speaker 2 Oh, Tzadok Daad, Tzadok Heh.

32:09 Speaker 1 Tzadok... With the Hemshich that's, that they told the Friediker to stop because it was too hard.

32:13 Speaker 2 Yeah.

32:14 Speaker 1 So over there at one point he says that the difference between gashmius and ruchnius is that in gashmius, b'mitzius b'botel ki im b'botel. You take away its mitzius, there's nothing left.

32:23 Speaker 2 Right.

32:23 Speaker 1 It's kiim with everything. It's gone. It's like it never been here. But in ruchnius, b'mitzius b'botel ki im inish. Just it's, it's kiim. How is it kiim with it? How is that possible? What's the difference? One's physical and spiritual, it should be the same thing. So I, whatever, it couldn't go. So, uh, someone told me that Yoel once went to the Rebbe on this question. So I'm like, "You know what? I'll go Shabbos to 770. I'll go to Yoel, speak to him." So I was a young boy, came over to him, and I remember he goes, "Was ist ruchnius?" And I was an arrogant kid, so usually when someone asks me something, I usually either I tell them what I know or I make something up, but I don't just walk away empty-handed. But something told me, "Just shut up." Like, "Just shut up now." He goes, "Was ist ruchnius?" So I was quiet. So he told me to go in the sefer Heh Lamed Heh about the four kys, and, and come back to him. I don't remember how he answered this question, but, uh, at that time, he, I, he, I felt comfortable to ask him, and he gave me enough credibility. He would listen to me, he would talk to me, and I never... That was amazing like. He would talk, your grandfather old and maybe, and, uh, Mendel Futerfas, and, uh, you know me, like nothing to do with each other. It's like-

33:46 Speaker 2 Right

33:46 Speaker 1 ... he would talk, if he's talking about Henia Chasidis, he's talking the same thing. He would be talking to each one the same way. It's about the subject. And he wouldn't care. He had no preconcepti- he didn't care young, old, whatever. If you're getting it, if it's okay, y- then you got it. And so I used to speak to him, used to whatever, you know. It's even when I had other challenges spiritually also, I, well everybody has their ups and downs. I went, I had my ups and downs. I, he, I always had an, a, an open door with him. I remember once coming to him and I was talking to him, and I must have had like maybe white pants or a white jacket. I don't know, something odd. "Dos he a modne kleid." And then he, he, he felt bad about it. He was like, "Ah," you know, whatever. Like he, he never went there, and it was like he was shocked that he went there. But it was always like talking about the subject.

34:38 Speaker 2 So he wasn't so out of it, turns out. He knew weird cloth- what clothes are weird.

34:42 Speaker 1 He was pretty out of it. Yeah, he was pretty out. He wasn't stupid. He wasn't stupid. But he wasn't into it. So people got, he-held him like, like he was, you know, absent-minded. He's not absent-minded. He was focused. He was focused to what he's focused in. He's a clear, you know, he was a thinker, and he thought to what he thought. And the stu- the, the, the nuanced things is like... I remember once hearing about someone talking about entrepreneurs. He was talking about a certain, he met some genius and who had two different color socks. So he asked him about it, and said, "Rebbe," he goes, "I didn't notice." He goes, "In socks, the importance is the thickness," "not the color."

35:26 Speaker 2 Right.

35:27 Speaker 1 "What the, how does color make a difference?"

35:29 Speaker 2 Right.

35:29 Speaker 1 It's like it's odd. You have to have the same thickness to go in the same shoe, you know, whatever.

35:33 Speaker 2 Right.

35:34 Speaker 1 Yoel was like that. You know? The nuance is just, it's not into it.

35:39 Speaker 2 And you were attracted to that?

35:41 Speaker 1 I was attracted to it because I'd never met... He was for real. He was probably one of the only real, real guys I met. Was bamis.

35:49 Speaker 2 So what, what he was into, he was into.

35:51 Speaker 1 He, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I was always, I always bothered me about meeting people, and they're not, uh, the thickness and the color doesn't match.

36:04 Speaker 2 I know.

36:04 Speaker 1 Technically

36:06 Speaker 2 All muscle here.

36:06 Speaker 1 Um, and he was, he was very real. Very, very real. Very into the Rebbe in a very real way. Very amistik. And also he was very, very smart. He didn't have to, uh...

36:26 Speaker 2 I hear- I heard, I don't know if you wanna talk about it, but I heard there was a story that you had with him. I heard you, I heard you had a conversation with him on the night of Yom Ha'atzmaus.

36:34 Speaker 1 What?

36:35 Speaker 2 I heard you, you spoke to him the night of Yom Ha'atzmaus.

36:37 Speaker 1 No, no, no. No, I didn't. Um, I, I sp- when, when he, when he, when he was s- when he passed away-

36:47 Speaker 2 When who passed away?

36:48 Speaker 1 When Yoel passed away. So I went to Malach HaMavet. I knew her too. She's a very interesting woman. And, uh, so I was sitting with her. So she said, she said, "I'll share with you. I'll tell you what happened when the Rebbe, when... Let me tell you what happened when Yoel found out about Yom Ha'atzmaus." Like, what, what was-- I don't know what compelled her to tell me that. It's not like we were discussing it. We were just discussing how much of a mensch he was because she knew I appreciated it. Like, she knew how everybody thinks of him as a genius, but he was Posher, a nice guy. He's Posher, a mensch. He was so... He was nice. He was a, he was Posher. He was a really good guy. And, uh, and she knew that I like, that I knew that, and she knew that he liked me and whatever, so she... So then she tells me, um... It's an interesting story. Um, she says that when... So what happened was they had a heart at- heart failure that night. It was during Shabbos once, and his heart stopped for a while, and then they finally, they got it back on. And then Motzei Shabbos again, it happened. And so she was on-- she told me she was on the phone, I think with Mrs. Sternberg, if I'm not mistaken, that she told me, who was in the hospital, who had access to the phone in the hospital. They knew what's, what's going

38:08 Speaker 1 on. So she was on the phone with her, and Yair was... She was always in the kitchen. The, Y-Yair and I, we used to live on Crown Street, so she was in the kitchen.

38:16 Speaker 2 Oh, upstairs.

38:17 Speaker 1 Yeah, so she was-

38:17 Speaker 2 I went up there once.

38:18 Speaker 1 Okay, so she, she always sat by the, by the table-

38:20 Speaker 2 Right

38:20 Speaker 1 ... by the kitchen, and he always sat by the table in the dining room.

38:23 Speaker 2 Right.

38:23 Speaker 1 So he, that's his... So he would come w- in every f- every minute or two, and ask, "Nuu, es s'van reis?" Like, "What's going on?"

38:30 Speaker 2 Right.

38:30 Speaker 1 And she would say, "No, no reis. No news." And he would go back and come back every, like a minute, like he's panicking and whatever. "Any news? News?" And then finally, what happened, what happened, she says that, uh, he asked her, "Es s'van reis?" And she said, "I didn't answer." He, uh... So she said, he, um, he f- he leaned, like he fell, so to speak, like on the, on the... He leaned on the top of both, like, and he was just like, like tuned out, which he does. So, uh, she, she goes, "Yair, vos vet zain?" So he doesn't answer. And so once, twice, she goes, "Yair, vos vet zain?" Like she goes-- And she's a tough woman. She goes, "Yair, vos vet zain?" So he, she says, Yair says, "Vos vet zain vey siech nit, ob es vet nemn a zach lenger."

39:22 Speaker 2 Huh.

39:22 Speaker 1 "Well, what's gonna happen, I don't know, but it's gonna take a lot longer." And it's interesting because I, he made that switch at that point. There's a big difference when there's when even the execution, you have to have bitachon until the last moment, and then what happens, nabach, if something hap- You know, how you have to turn into a mayan.

39:45 Speaker 2 Right.

39:45 Speaker 1 And that's how he turned too.

39:47 Speaker 2 What does it mean that it's gonna take a lot longer?

39:48 Speaker 1 He was a crazy believer. What? What does it mean a lot longer? Look around. He was-

39:52 Speaker 2 I'm saying, what do you think, what do you think he meant?

39:54 Speaker 1 The Rebbe ran the show.

39:55 Speaker 2 Right.

39:56 Speaker 1 Who knows what happens now?

39:57 Speaker 2 Right.

39:58 Speaker 1 Something else. He doesn't know. He, he has enough recognition to know that something has just changed. Something changed here.

40:04 Speaker 2 Right.

40:05 Speaker 1 Right now, till now, like the Rebbe used to say, there was, there was a time there was kitzin, they, so they came around to show. They told you when things are going to happen, and now there's not even mechashve kitzin. There aren't those people anymore. Why? The Rebbe just, the Rebbe actually spoke about this, pretty amazing farbrengen. About a year before Yichab Shenalz Geton, there was another farbrengen that the Rebbe just had. That has to be learned, some of the most amazing. Why the Rebbe was so enamored with Mashiach, why Shabbat Shmini Atzeret. A lot of these things he, he discussed at that time. Um, and one of the things he said was times have changed. There was a time that Hanasi Hu HaKohel, and therefore it was all about the Nasi, and now we changed to a time where HaKohel Hu Hanasi. Yerush Bakah-

40:49 Speaker 2 What does, what does that mean?

40:51 Speaker 1 Went crazy when they heard that farbrengen. Not-- I, I remember also socially from the concept.

40:55 Speaker 2 They liked it.

40:56 Speaker 1 They did not like it. It was something... The Rebbe basically said it's not up, it's up to everybody now. It's a new language.

41:02 Speaker 2 Oh, oh, oh, you mean-

41:03 Speaker 1 The Rebbe said-

41:03 Speaker 2 Oh, you mean that instead of the Rebbe being everything-

41:06 Speaker 1 Yeah. Now-

41:06 Speaker 2 Every-everybody's the Rebbe essentially, kinda thing. Where like the Rebbe, it's demo-democratic almost.

41:11 Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah. He literally said it to his very... And he says, "Why it says in Rashi, 'Hanasi Hu HaKohel, HaKohel Hu Hanasi?'" Discussed it and said, "Se felt in haskachas."

41:22 Speaker 2 Ah.

41:23 Speaker 1 And he said, "Because se felt in haskachas." But he-- So they, you could take it as maybe as a punishment-

41:29 Speaker 2 Right

41:30 Speaker 1 ... or B, this is how it's supposed to, uh-

41:34 Speaker 2 Homesick for Lubavitch is brought to you by Yuvala Media, a boutique video production company servicing the Chabad and Jewish community. Since opening ten years ago, Yuvala Media has pushed the boundaries of artistic and thoughtful storytelling in the community, with an insistence on there always being a memorable story as well as a beautiful and striking visual image that we believe is second to none. Over the years, we have worked with Chabad organizations around the country, as well as large organizations like Bonialo, Torah Mesora, and Hatalathon, guided by the belief that your story is absolutely worth telling with depth and creativity. If you are looking to tell your story with a video, please reach out to us at hello@yuvalamedia.com. Again, that is hello@yuvalamedia.com. A link can be found in the show notes. And now, back to the podcast. How, how did you process the, that whole kuf of nun alef, nun beis?

42:33 Speaker 1 I was in-

42:33 Speaker 2 Where were you? Where, where, where were you at that time?

42:35 Speaker 1 I was living, I was in Manhattan. I was living in Manhattan. I was in a different mind space.

42:38 Speaker 2 You were a bit checked out.

42:39 Speaker 1 Yeah.

42:39 Speaker 2 You were not coming to the farbrengens on Shabbos.

42:41 Speaker 1 No. No, but I remember once-

42:44 Speaker 2 Did you feel like you were missing out on something, or you were too preoccupied with what you were doing?

42:48 Speaker 1 I was, I was too preoccupied, but I came in. I remember once coming to far-- coming, coming once to farbrengen, and the farbrengens then were very, very different.

42:56 Speaker 2 Yeah.

42:56 Speaker 1 It was very hard. It was all, um, the Rebbe jumped from one thing to another thing. It was very hard. And I remember meeting Gail outside the f-- outside 770, and I go, "Gail, vos is goin'?" Like, "What, what just happened?"

43:09 Speaker 2 Right.

43:09 Speaker 1 "What was that?" Like, "What's going on?" So, uh- So Yale told me two things. First of all, he, he, he says, "First of all, I go home now, and I spend hours to take out one quota of the Rebbe," what he said. I saw this guy, he's a struggling guy. Like-

43:24 Speaker 2 Even he's struggling

43:25 Speaker 1 ... you know. No, but he's working. He knows. Why? But then he told me two good stories on, uh, on how you, um, that we don't know. The Rebbe's a different, on a different level. It's a different, it's a different thing. He told me about a story about, um, watching... Actually, um, Shapiro said it recently because he, he, because he heard it al- also from Yale. It's an amazing, amazing story. There was, there was a time there was a window. The window's behind the Rebbe's room. There was a, it was windows. Now it's blocked by a building, but you were able to look into the Rebbe's room. So there were t- there were some sh- some guys that used to spend time looking to see-

44:05 Speaker 2 Spying

44:05 Speaker 1 ... what Rebbe was up to, yeah. I think there was a big movement to keep people away, but some people figured out how to be there. I'm d- Um, I jumped to that. One... Sorry, let me go back. Khadikov once came to Reb Yeruel to tell him that the Rebbe was not happy with Yech, with the Khazar. This is what he told me. He told me that Khadi came to him, told him that he's not happy, the Rebbe is not so happy with Khazar. So Yale says, "W- okay, no problem. What? What should I fix?" Khadikov didn't know what to fix. So he goes, "How am I supposed to fix if I don't know, like, what... I, I'm, I'm in. I'm ready to fix. Like, what to fix?" So, so Yale says to him, Rebbe was very against that. In the beginning years, Rebbe didn't want any recordings.

44:45 Speaker 2 Right.

44:46 Speaker 1 Because Rebbe wanted everybody to be present. If there's a recording, you're not present. You know, you can pause it, come back later. It breaks it up. You're there. You know you m- if you don't, if you don't remember it, you're not there now, you're never gon- y- you're never gonna see it again.

45:00 Speaker 2 Right.

45:01 Speaker 1 So that, that's what... So the Rebbe was very against it. So he said, "But for Khazar, it would be amazing. It's an indispensable tool. It'd be great. You know, you can have what the Rebbe said. And not only that, I can make Khazar, the Rebbe can listen to the tape, and then, I mean, and then, and then if there's something wrong, the Rebbe can listen to the tape. Or I can listen to the... It could be looked on, and I can see what happened, and we can see where the mistake happened. And maybe the Rebbe himself wants to hear the fabreningen himself." So Khadikov said, "That's a really good idea, but since the Rebbe's against it, I'm not gonna say it in your name, just in case the Rebbe's gets disappointed. I'll say it in my name." He comes back, the Rebbe agreed to be recorded for that fabreningen. And he, and the Rebbe's gonna listen to the fabreningen. So he says, "I knew the Rebbe, the Rebbe was gonna listen for it." So he goes, "I went to that place. I want to see the Rebbe list- watch the fabreningen." He says that he remembers, he says that they put the recording, and they were like sat like this, and he didn't move for three, four hours.

46:02 Speaker 2 Listened to the whole recording.

46:03 Speaker 1 Listened to the whole recording, and then sent back a, a note to Yale basically accepting, understanding why Yale said what he said. And he said that, that by the fa- by the chassid fabrengen, the words I remember the Rebbe said to him was, "Because of the flow, intellectual flow, I can see why you made those mistakes." So in other words, the Rebbe excused him for making that. And he says the next three fabrengens were the clearest fabrengens he ever... Remember, they went back to the old style. But his point was-

46:38 Speaker 2 This is when? This is in the last years?

46:40 Speaker 1 This is the early years.

46:41 Speaker 2 The early years.

46:41 Speaker 1 The early, early years. So he says, "The Rebbe, to stop..." He, he, he, he's processing your... There's a crazy amount of information being processed here.

46:53 Speaker 2 Right.

46:54 Speaker 1 Y- you figure out how to get it.

46:56 Speaker 2 Right.

46:57 Speaker 1 Just don't, don't blame it on the-

46:58 Speaker 2 Right

46:59 Speaker 1 ... speaker. Blame it on the listener. Do, do what you gotta do.

47:02 Speaker 2 I heard a similar story, uh, from the son of, of Harold Dovid Krinsky, that the Rebbe once asked-

47:08 Speaker 1 But-

47:09 Speaker 2 ... or to show a video of fabreningen-

47:10 Speaker 1 And say, "Find a shorter one."

47:12 Speaker 2 No, but I heard that... What I heard was-

47:14 Speaker 1 Yeah

47:14 Speaker 2 ... that they were playing the video and somebody stopped it or someone was talking, and the, and the Rebbe said not to be mas- Like, the Rebbe took it very seriously. They shouldn't interrupt it.

47:22 Speaker 1 I just heard the story-

47:23 Speaker 2 The opposite

47:23 Speaker 1 ... from, from them recently, from the, from, from, from what they called, from, um-

47:28 Speaker 2 Leibel?

47:29 Speaker 1 No, from Yodel Krinsky himself.

47:31 Speaker 2 Okay.

47:32 Speaker 1 There was this thing-

47:32 Speaker 2 I botch the story? So tell me.

47:33 Speaker 1 I don't botch. He, I, he says that they, they played... They want to show the Rebbe the f- the, the tape, and, and the Rebbe saw the tape, and, uh, and the Rebbe said, "Next time, if they want to see, come back." And the Rebbe told them, "I can't. You can, you know, smaller sefer."

47:47 Speaker 2 I see. It's, yeah.

47:47 Speaker 1 Because I think there was a big difference. Over the years, the Rebbe was listening, watching the production part of it.

47:52 Speaker 2 No, no, I understand, but I, I-

47:53 Speaker 1 This is, the Rebbe's talking to a chozer, and he's looking to see-

47:57 Speaker 2 No, of course

47:57 Speaker 1 ... the Rebbe, the Rebbe empowered him crazy to-

47:59 Speaker 2 Right

47:59 Speaker 1 ... to be... By the way, the one and only-

48:02 Speaker 2 I, I-

48:02 Speaker 1 ... Yale Lamed Ches.

48:04 Speaker 2 I mean, look, when you think about it, it, it's very interesting. I mean, maybe this is an obvious point for most people, but you bringing it up now, like, there, that story with Reb Yeruel talks a lot to the, the kind of basic idea that a fabrengen is a Rav and a Talmid.

48:20 Speaker 1 Right.

48:20 Speaker 2 And Chassidus talks as I'm su- as you know, at length. Like, uh, I don't know if there's a Mashal brought in Chassidus as often as Mashal of Rav and Talmid on a consistent basis, right? The Rav and Talmid this, Rav and Talmid that. And, and, um, and, like, the, the, the Rav faces a t- a, a very difficult predicament trying to convey a real Chochma that he has to a Talmid, right? It's, it, it's, it's a, it's, it's a, it's a-

48:49 Speaker 1 Struggle

48:49 Speaker 2 ... right. This is a Mashal for simsim.

48:51 Speaker 1 Right.

48:51 Speaker 2 This is serious stuff.

48:52 Speaker 1 Ser- right.

48:53 Speaker 2 Serious, right? And what you're talk- the story of, like, the Rebbe realizes that there's a disconnect even with Reb Yeruel, who's the one person that he's trusted to understand on some level what he's saying. And, and when he realizes there's a disconnect, they bring him the tape because that is the, that is the tool with which the Rebbe can reflect on what he's saying, and he's trying to figure out what's the problem. Where am I, where am I, where am I, uh, where am I not conveying what I wanna convey in the clearest way possible? And he spends four... Like, the serious- the seriousness, like, I don't know, I may- may- maybe, maybe it's a Dvar Parshat, but I think it's... There's a lot of times in the, the, the, like, the, the, the, the, the m- the spectacle of the fabrengen and the whole, like, you know, the, the Negunim and the whole situa- You forget that, like, the Rebbe's simply trying to convey ideas in a clear way as best as he can.

49:52 Speaker 1 Right.

49:53 Speaker 2 And this story points to, you know, there was a challenge that needed to be surmounted-

49:59 Speaker 1 I-

49:59 Speaker 2 ... 'cause there is a challenge.

50:00 Speaker 1 I was-- We were just fabrening about this concept on Shabbos that I hear. I remember ye- um, Leibel Groner saying this story. It's a known story, but I remember Leibel saying it because he was there at the time. He was talking on this in Emunov, and he was saying how he remembers that, uh, when came to Yech-- he, he put his name. He said he wanted to go in Yechidas, and he asked L-Leibel to put him the last na- the last Yechidas. He says when it came time to open the door for the people coming in, he was the first person standing on line. He went to the side, he said to him, and he says for hours and hours and hours, and finally, cr-- you know. He says finally came time, and he went over to him. He says, "It's time to, uh, to go in." He says, "I'm not ready." He says, "I'm not ready. Not ready." He says, "You're going in." He says, "Ah, ""тафна гин онах онес"" . And he went in. When he came out, he made a farbrengen. And, um, and he was crying by this farbrengen, 'cause he said that he was-- he told, he told-- he shared with the Rebbe that he's having very big frustration with the fact that he's talking to these Bachurim, and he's not connecting. He's just not connecting to them. So... And that's just... What should he do? He s-says the Rebbe told him , amazing thing. The Rebbe says: "Why don't

51:13 Speaker 1 you do what I do? Because before I say something to the Olam, I imagine if fifty percent of the Olam can do it. If I don't see fifty percent doing it, I don't bring it up." So he's crying on how many-- God knows how many things the Rebbe wants to do, but he doesn't see fifty percent return.

51:35 Speaker 3 Huh.

51:35 Speaker 1 And he's not gonna even bring it up. It kind-- Just shows you how the Rebbe was very conscious of the crowd that he's talking to.

51:42 Speaker 3 Right. Right.

51:43 Speaker 1 And this is an amazing, it's an amazing story, and it's an amazing message to everybody, how did you communicate.

51:48 Speaker 3 Right.

51:48 Speaker 1 Most people are like, "Ah, they don't get me."

51:51 Speaker 3 Too bad on you. Yeah.

51:51 Speaker 1 Yeah, too bad on you. Communication means for that person.

51:55 Speaker 3 The-

51:55 Speaker 1 It's all about that. He's not getting you. That means you're not, you're not-

51:57 Speaker 3 Yeah

51:57 Speaker 1 ... you're not delivering it correctly.

51:59 Speaker 3 Yeah. I make v- I, I make videos for a living, and I can tell you that that's the number-- that's the first lesson you learn, and it's, and it comes at you hard. 'Cause you make this whole fancy idea, and then you show it to someone, and they're like: "I don't get it." And you're like: "How could you not get it? How could you not get it? It's there." And they're like: "I'm sorry. I don't get it." But, like- And in the beginning, you're like: "Excuse me. You should, you have to get it." And at some point, you realize the client's not gonna pay you if people don't get it. People don't-- like, they don't care that you want them to get so-

52:26 Speaker 1 Right.

52:27 Speaker 3 Yeah.

52:27 Speaker 1 I, I used to-- I should get back to it. I used to write something on a weekly basis or daily sometimes on Chassidus, what I share, that I gave. And then, but, but 'cause I went to Ocean Parkway, my English needs English . It's like you never went to a English department.

52:44 Speaker 3 Right.

52:45 Speaker 1 So, um, my wife is very good with, with, uh, in English, so I would give it to her to edit. But she doesn't buy any of this BS. It has to be c- When she's-- You're telling her something, it has to be one plus one equals two.

52:59 Speaker 3 Right.

52:59 Speaker 1 Don't tell me one plus whatever is two.

53:01 Speaker 3 Yeah.

53:02 Speaker 1 What's the whatever?

53:03 Speaker 3 Right.

53:03 Speaker 1 So she would call me out on what I'm writing. So it became not about the English. It became the fact that I was a mess, and I spoke like a mess, and it, the message doesn't make sense.

53:16 Speaker 3 Right.

53:16 Speaker 1 It doesn't make sense. So she would end up making me come up with a product that was so much better-

53:22 Speaker 3 Right

53:22 Speaker 1 ... because I thought it was her. And I used to get nervous, and I was like, was, y-y-yeah, it's true. And-

53:30 Speaker 3 You, you-- We assume very often, we, we assume very often that, that because I'm talking to a Lubavitcher or because I'm talking to people-

53:37 Speaker 1 Right

53:38 Speaker 3 ... that love Chassidus-

53:39 Speaker 1 Yeah

53:39 Speaker 3 ... so basically, I have leeway to assume that they-

53:41 Speaker 1 Right

53:41 Speaker 3 ... believe in XYZ, and they have tolerance for this an- leap of logic and that leap of logic and the third leap of logic. And then eventually it's like, no, that's not how this works. Okay? People, people... Like, you, you, you have, you have to take people seriously. You have to take people seriously, and that's what's so beautiful about that story with, with, with, with Reb Yael and the Chazarah. It's a beautiful story. That, like, the... Look, it, it-

54:08 Speaker 1 The Rebbe took it upon himself. He-

54:09 Speaker 3 Yeah. Yeah

54:10 Speaker 1 ... it's amazing.

54:11 Speaker 3 Look-

54:11 Speaker 1 True

54:11 Speaker 3 ... the Rebbe is a, is a holy person, okay? He's a Tzadik. And, and, and so we can easily, like, lose track of the practical need for communication. Like, this is something that I, I, I, I think about a lot, and we talk about a lot on the podcast. Like, one of my favorite lines in Yom Kippur, and I think a lot of people love this line, is: "The, the ufu, the hela ufu of, of, or the getla ufu of Chassidus is Rebbe's nishtael and the Chassidim's nishtaelent." Right? And it's like, what's the big deal? Just get in a room and talk, and you're not a le- elent anymore. Is that, is that such a ufu, such a getla ufu? It's like, no, the, the... A Rebbe by definition is supposed to be lonely 'cause he's bein hareych from, from, from, from, from the Chassidim-

54:55 Speaker 1 Yeah

54:55 Speaker 3 ... from the Talmidim.

54:56 Speaker 1 Right.

54:57 Speaker 3 Or even the, the, the, the, the, the, the Yom Kippur is about the regular, even, not regular, a Rosh Hashanah. Like, a person who's in the position of being a Rebbe or a Rav is by definition in a, in a level that's separate from the rest, and so by definition is lonely.

55:12 Speaker 1 Right.

55:12 Speaker 3 And, and, and so you can easily end up in a place where the Rav is talking into a, into a, into a chasm, and it's not getting across. It's not getting to the other side of it. And, and, and he's talking, and, and no one's listening. It does feel a little bit like that's what was going on in the last years from what I gather, like malchut and base. Like you're saying Reb Yael couldn't even piece together, could hardly-

55:35 Speaker 1 Rebbe was completely available.

55:36 Speaker 3 No, but the Rebbe, the Rebbe was talking and nobody understood what he was saying.

55:39 Speaker 1 He didn't... It, it, it didn't nobody was under... First of all, I hear you. It, it, you know, it's-- First of all, that goes to the classic question of Tzadok, you know, with the Hill Parsha that he's chassing a Meimun, but they don't get it.

55:53 Speaker 3 Right.

55:53 Speaker 1 And the, the, it goes back to our original subject. Not everything in this relationship is, is understood.

56:00 Speaker 3 Yes, I agree.

56:01 Speaker 1 There's a lot of magic.

56:02 Speaker 3 I agree with that.

56:02 Speaker 1 Hill Parsha needed to say something where a guy sitting there is like What is going on? But he's ho- he's like a holy guy. I don't know what he's talking about. I'm not saying that's what the Rebbe needed to do, but it's done, and they did make a sicha. They did make a mokedeh gesicha. They did make something out of it. It wasn't for nothing. But the Rebbe completely made himself available in a way that was crazy. I don't know-

56:27 Speaker 3 What do you mean by that? Made himself available.

56:29 Speaker 1 It was, it was, it was, this was around '24, this. He's giving dollars, this, that. It was always... It was never a time that he was as much available as the last years.

56:36 Speaker 3 Right. No, no, I-

56:37 Speaker 1 And actually, most people got turned on to Chabad in the last couple of years.

56:40 Speaker 3 I know. I meant, I meant ideas-wise.

56:42 Speaker 1 I, yeah, yeah.

56:43 Speaker 3 Ideas-wise.

56:43 Speaker 1 I think also he, he trusted at that point.

56:46 Speaker 3 But I think the point that you just made, I actually just spoke about it last night with, uh, Velvel Lipsker, and, uh, that'll depend on how the episodes are published. So either have already heard that, people listening to this, or will soon hear it. But, um, Velvel Lipsker, we were talking about that, about, um, about the last years and how, like, in a w- one way to, like, wrap up the show almost would be to kind of tie together all the loose ends and make sure that, you know, here's my Torah, here's my, here's my legacy, so to speak. Here's my intellectual legacy, and it's all figured out, and now you have it. But like you said, foundationally, this relationship or this, this, this, this, this, this truth of Chassidus and this truth of a Rebbe is not something that you can ever fully wrap your mind around, and really you can't really... You, you shouldn't be able to wrap around, uh, your mind around most of it. And so, in a way, it had to end in a way-- It had to end this way, where the f- the kind of final, the final speech, so to speak, was this is much bigger than you can ever comprehend.

57:51 Speaker 1 Two things I can say about that. First of all, I hear you. The Rebbe many times said there's everything, everything's purpose is to move up. Like the, the, the deim in Adam and Eve is supposed to evolve into a tameah, and a tameah for food for animals.

58:07 Speaker 3 Sure.

58:08 Speaker 1 And that to medaber, and a medaber to a yechidut haRuchni. The Rebbe also in the years went, you see the early years more space, you know, logically, more emotional, more maram, and more... And the in different years, you see how the Rebbe evolved.

58:22 Speaker 3 Right.

58:22 Speaker 1 In, in that year, it went totally spiritual. There's a very interesting part of Likutei Sichos that I don't know why people don't... This is, I believe, maybe the most important sicha of understanding what Chassidus Chabad is doing, is I think it's Kislev. I don't remember which chelek. I apologize. Where the Rebbe asks a question. The Alter Rebbe's in jail, and the Tzemach, and the Baal HaTanya, and the Maggid appear to him.

58:51 Speaker 3 Right.

58:51 Speaker 1 And he's like: "What am I doing here?"

58:53 Speaker 3 Right.

58:53 Speaker 1 He's like: "Because you're teaching Chassidus." "Okay, so I'll stop." "No, you started, continue." So, so there, and then he went out, and he went, and he became elaborate, more elaborate than normal. So he goes: "I don't understand. This, this conversation happened with Pinchas Kar TSA, with the stone, the, the diamond, you know, the kids dying-

59:13 Speaker 3 Right

59:13 Speaker 1 ... and the, the whole point, and why Chassidus... The whole point is to get one drop in. You get one drop in-

59:18 Speaker 3 It's worth it

59:19 Speaker 1 ... it's worth everything. Why are we revisiting this story again?"

59:24 Speaker 3 Right.

59:26 Speaker 1 The Rebbe says something so amazing. He says there's two parts of Chassidus. There's one, there's mechaye habasim, and that was settled then. But then there's another part. It's the way the future is, the times of Mashiach, how people are gonna speak and how we're gonna learn when we're not part of this real- when, when ookus is more reality than the physical world, and you're gonna speak differently, you're gonna act differently, everything's gonna be differently, and that's Toras HaShalom Mashiach. He says the Alter Rebbe started talking like that. He started talking about the next, uh... He wasn't just talking about the part that's being mechaye habasim. So it's always bothered me. Why isn't... Like, I used to like the practical. I started-

1:00:03 Speaker 3 So, so, so finish it off.

1:00:04 Speaker 1 Okay. So the, there, there is a part of Chassidus that's there to, to inspire.

1:00:11 Speaker 3 To save people. To save people.

1:00:12 Speaker 1 To inspire.

1:00:12 Speaker 3 Right.

1:00:13 Speaker 1 It's a vor, that that's a vor.

1:00:14 Speaker 3 To save people.

1:00:15 Speaker 1 Yeah. And there's certain parts of this, when you learn Kuntester, Terer, it's like y- w- you have to be mekubal. It's like almost impossible to understand.

1:00:22 Speaker 3 And that's what he felt the Kitri was on.

1:00:25 Speaker 1 That, and if... He didn't know that was the Kitri. That's what the Kitri was on. That's what it was.

1:00:29 Speaker 3 On Toras HaShalom Mashiach.

1:00:30 Speaker 1 He, yeah. He, he thought it was just normal to speak like this.

1:00:33 Speaker 3 Uh-huh.

1:00:33 Speaker 1 And then like, who gave you permission to talk like that? That's not how we s- you just... The only part of Chassidus-

1:00:37 Speaker 3 Uh-huh

1:00:37 Speaker 1 ... that we did is to, to inspire people, to, to wake people up from galus. Now you're talking like this is a real thing. No, not... I'm, I'm being facetious.

1:00:47 Speaker 3 I get it.

1:00:48 Speaker 1 You know, whatever.

1:00:48 Speaker 3 I get it. I get it.

1:00:49 Speaker 1 But that's what happened to Rebbe the last years also. Start talking about Mashiach, everything's Mashiach, everything connected. He said, "Talk about another reality." He's completely in a different reality that no, no, no. That's why you find even Lubavitch today, m-most people... Well, I can't say, I can't talk for Lubavitch, but a lot of people don't go to this sichas of Nun, of the Nun. It, it's too hard. It's like, what?

1:01:09 Speaker 3 Well, it's, it's very cryptic. It's not-

1:01:10 Speaker 1 It's cryptic. It's-

1:01:11 Speaker 3 It's not very satisfying for-

1:01:12 Speaker 1 It's the reason why most people don't go to Kuntester. I mean, they do, like, if you read in Tilim Shabbos morning.

1:01:16 Speaker 3 Right.

1:01:16 Speaker 1 But they don't really learn it.

1:01:18 Speaker 3 I like Likutei Torah. It's not the same.

1:01:20 Speaker 1 I know, because it's h- it's holy.

1:01:22 Speaker 3 No, Likutei Torah is nice. You can, you can, you can make sense out of it.

1:01:25 Speaker 1 Okay.

1:01:25 Speaker 3 You can make it, I think.

1:01:26 Speaker 1 No, dep- depends which parts.

1:01:28 Speaker 3 Yeah, of course, but as a rule, I feel like there's something-

1:01:30 Speaker 1 You're, you're very special.

1:01:32 Speaker 3 Really?

1:01:32 Speaker 1 Yeah. It's very hard. It's very hard. It's very hard Mimar.

1:01:35 Speaker 3 No, it's, it's more poetry than, like, let's say, Rebbe Rashab's Maamar.

1:01:38 Speaker 1 That's, you know, it's, it's in poetry. You're ready, you, you, you're ready because you have a sense... You, you appreciate maybe a more spiritual take, but, but somebody who wants to take away... Let, when you, when you learn a Maamar from Likutei Torah, Ter- Terer, you have to do a lot of work if you're gonna meet somebody who's not religious-

1:01:54 Speaker 3 Right

1:01:54 Speaker 1 ... and have to pass him over an idea.

1:01:55 Speaker 3 You, you're not... Yeah, you're not learning a Sugya Sef Chochmah. No.

1:01:59 Speaker 1 Yeah.

1:01:59 Speaker 3 No. You're not learning a Sugya of Chochmah and Binah. No.

1:02:01 Speaker 1 He, he's opening up doors that are just... It's, uh, it's-

1:02:04 Speaker 3 Yeah. It's razzle dazzle and-

1:02:06 Speaker 1 I find it almost like a mikveh experience. It's completely spiritual. It's very special.

1:02:10 Speaker 3 I see. I see.

1:02:11 Speaker 1 And, uh, but- Actually, Yale, I heard-- I didn't hear this story from Yale. I heard somebody else saying Yale's name. These are good. There's quarter, like, total synthesis there. Anyways-

1:02:23 Speaker 3 And BHO said that the whole-

1:02:24 Speaker 1 I, I heard that in his na-- I don't know if this... I, I remember who I heard it from exactly, but-

1:02:29 Speaker 3 Oh, it makes sense

1:02:29 Speaker 1 ... but that there was a time that the rabbi wanted every bocher to own a Sefer. Like, own it, meaning you earned it until it's yours. Like, it's your book.

1:02:38 Speaker 3 Uh.

1:02:38 Speaker 1 That's your book. And that's how I heard it.

1:02:40 Speaker 3 I know-

1:02:41 Speaker 1 In the early years. And the-

1:02:41 Speaker 3 I know, I know the rabbi told, uh, we had on the podcast, the rabbi told Ra-Rabbi Manguel-

1:02:46 Speaker 1 Yeah

1:02:46 Speaker 3 ... to learn it five, the whole Torah, the whole Torah five times each week.

1:02:49 Speaker 1 F-four times?

1:02:50 Speaker 3 Five.

1:02:50 Speaker 1 He's told you five?

1:02:52 Speaker 3 Or maybe it's four. I don't know.

1:02:53 Speaker 1 Maybe four. I-- 'cause he told me the story two years ago.

1:02:56 Speaker 3 It's either four or five.

1:02:56 Speaker 1 Whatever. It's amazing. And he told me, "No, that was unique." He t-- I asked him, "Did the rabbi tell that to anybody else?"

1:03:02 Speaker 3 No, but it's the same-

1:03:03 Speaker 1 He told me he told me Sholom Arzov.

1:03:05 Speaker 3 Oh, yeah?

1:03:05 Speaker 1 Yeah. Sholom Arzov did.

1:03:06 Speaker 3 I didn't happen to ask him that question.

1:03:07 Speaker 1 Did, did he tell you how the rabbi told him to learn it?

1:03:10 Speaker 3 I don't know.

1:03:10 Speaker 1 The rabbi told him, "Nisht vi tilim, oben medafnish mins ein ha'letuch." Uh, you don't have to go look up all the places.

1:03:18 Speaker 3 I think it... It was on the podcast. It was-

1:03:19 Speaker 1 Yeah.

1:03:19 Speaker 3 I don't-

1:03:20 Speaker 1 He told me he killed him.

1:03:21 Speaker 3 Yes.

1:03:21 Speaker 1 He was up all night.

1:03:22 Speaker 3 Yes.

1:03:22 Speaker 1 Yeah, because the rabbi was breaking him. He came with the conditions. He told you about the conditions?

1:03:25 Speaker 3 Yeah, with, with Rabbi Kramer.

1:03:27 Speaker 1 Yeah.

1:03:28 Speaker 3 Yeah.

1:03:28 Speaker 1 So he, so he-- And then they send him to the rebbe, and the rebbe-

1:03:31 Speaker 3 No, yeah, he had a fantastic, he had a fantastic story. I'm referencing now another podcast, but he had a fantastic story where he had a, he had a, a literature kid that he brought from Lakewood or something, uh, to seven seventy. And the rebbe gave him a Yorah in Yechidus 'cause he went in after the bocher. Give him a Yorah, that keep him in seven seventy for another night, bring him to Fabregin, Chassidim, and make sure he gets elbowed.

1:03:56 Speaker 1 Wow.

1:03:56 Speaker 3 Yeah. You have, you have to break him in.

1:03:59 Speaker 1 Wow. Yeah.

1:04:00 Speaker 3 You have to elbow him in a-

1:04:01 Speaker 1 That's incredible.

1:04:02 Speaker 3 Right?

1:04:03 Speaker 1 It's incredible.

1:04:04 Speaker 3 Uh-

1:04:04 Speaker 1 Because let me tell you, the pushing was a very intense time. It was very hard.

1:04:10 Speaker 3 Yeah.

1:04:10 Speaker 1 It was very difficult. But-

1:04:13 Speaker 3 This was even by the rebbe's Fabregin. This was by Chassidim Fabregin.

1:04:15 Speaker 1 Oh.

1:04:16 Speaker 3 You're, you're talking about the rebbe's Fabregin.

1:04:17 Speaker 1 Oh, the, the, you're talking when the, the, oh, by a F- a regular Fabregin.

1:04:19 Speaker 3 Yeah.

1:04:20 Speaker 1 Ah.

1:04:20 Speaker 3 Make sure you-- somebody elbows him on-

1:04:22 Speaker 1 Wow. Wow. Someone told me a similar story also there. But anyways, going back to the rebbe, he, he opened up another door. He opened up another door that, that's why people are even full-fledged Chassidis learning. My rebbe said that the rebbe stairs, everything, they don't go to that, uh-

1:04:41 Speaker 3 Yeah

1:04:41 Speaker 1 ... those years because the rebbes opened up a new, a new book over there.

1:04:45 Speaker 3 So what do you think it is? People, people are, people are scared? People are scared to find out what's on the other side of it?

1:04:54 Speaker 1 You can't... Everybody's comfortable. One of the, the, the m-- If you had to say one thing the rebbe fought more than anything else was, was one's comfort factor. The number one thing he didn't... Teva, which is teva.

1:05:07 Speaker 3 Right.

1:05:07 Speaker 1 Like, everybody, everybody, everything you do is you look to, to make it normal and-

1:05:13 Speaker 3 Right. But they say-

1:05:14 Speaker 1 Take it to p-potate, take it to his... Everything in the physical world, one thing I do remember from science class, is that everything goes to its equilibrium.

1:05:21 Speaker 3 Yeah.

1:05:21 Speaker 1 There's a pressure here, pressure here, and then there's a-

1:05:23 Speaker 3 There's nothing, nothing easier than pushing an environ-environment mikvah.

1:05:26 Speaker 1 There you go. That, and, and that's the place that the rebbe found as the enemy of everything.

1:05:33 Speaker 3 Right.

1:05:34 Speaker 1 Whatever you're doing, what-- any part of your life-

1:05:37 Speaker 3 Right

1:05:37 Speaker 1 ... that's the enemy. So he always was a pusher, and everyone's like, "Why are you pushing?" He's pushing 'cause he's doing you a favor 'cause it's n- it's n- it doesn't... He always sits back. That, that equilibrium doesn't, doesn't s- it doesn't actually stay there.

1:05:50 Speaker 3 All right. So I, I wanna, I wanna move the conversation a little bit to something that you alluded to, and I, I, I, I, I imagine that you probably don't wanna go too personal with it, but you did allude to it earlier that you had your own journey in and out to some extent, or out and in. And I'm not trying to pry into your own life, but I, I, I, I wonder what you make of... And we've s- we've, we've touched on it a few times, but I know it's something that you, that you've been involved with. What do you make of the... How does a, how does a community or how do people think of what it means to be a Lubavitcher when there is so much, uh, chaos? Or, like, it's not as static as it used to be, where people are in, people are out, people are exploring, people are changing, people are, "I'm a Lubavitcher, and I look this way. I'm a Lubavitcher, and I look that way. I'm a Lubavitcher and think this way. I'm a Lubavitcher that thinks that way." How do you think of, uh... There are a lot of people, let me put it this way, a lot of people who they see the only way forward is if everyone kinda gets on the same page. That's the only way to save or to, you know, you're very-- to keep things very systematic, systematize things. And it seems to me like that's not possible for many

1:07:07 Speaker 3 people. How do you th- how do you see, how do you see the, the, the, the future of Lubavitchers? I know that sounds a little bit pretentious, but how do you see, how do you see things panning out with, with so many, so s- people kind of spinning off in so many directions?

1:07:28 Speaker 1 Uh, uh, uh, same thing we said before. It's, it's the human experience. At the end of the day, the, the rebbe would many times say the Alter Rebbe didn't want to mafleg a lot, someone. He didn't want this Lubavitch by itself, and then there's everybody else, and you got Lubav over there in care, and Aguda. It's so real. It's, it's Judaism. A person anywhere should feel it.

1:07:48 Speaker 3 Right.

1:07:49 Speaker 1 You know, it's like I have a friend of mine in, in the Five Towns. He's a Breslover. He learns Chassidis. He's a so much a better Breslover because he's learning Chassidis. He comes back to me and tells me, "You know, the Chai... What Nachman said over here, and I'm w- I'm listening to him, he's not talking Breslov. He's talking Chabad." He's just seeing it in Breslov. Fine. It's true everywhere. It's, uh, the, it's, it, it, it's not, it's not, it's, it's real emes. It's ca-- it doesn't have a framework You, you're trying to s- it's people that you're saying is like they're trying to keep something. What's something? What's that something? That something, whatever you're doing is way different. Whatever they're imagining it-

1:08:27 Speaker 3 Ah.

1:08:27 Speaker 1 It wasn't like that in, in, in, in, in Natvarsk. It wasn't like that in Varsha.

1:08:31 Speaker 3 That's true.

1:08:31 Speaker 1 And it wasn't that in Yastov, and it wasn't that in Ladi. It, it's never like that.

1:08:37 Speaker 3 But if you were running a yeshiva, I mean, let's steel man that side a little bit.

1:08:41 Speaker 1 But-

1:08:41 Speaker 3 I, I think it's easy to, to kind of, to, like you say, question it. I question it too. But if you're, if, if you're... Like, there is a purpose of a group identity. It's not like just-

1:08:52 Speaker 1 Yeah.

1:08:52 Speaker 3 It's not just a crush.

1:08:54 Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. You're right. You're right.

1:08:54 Speaker 3 There is, there is something about-

1:08:55 Speaker 1 True

1:08:55 Speaker 3 ... you have a family. A family is a group identity. We're all part of this family. No, we're all human beings. No, no.

1:09:00 Speaker 1 Yeah.

1:09:00 Speaker 3 We're human beings, but we also, we're related to each other, and we have a certain feeling for each other and a certain responsibility, and community is the same thing. So I don't think it's completely, like, useless and-

1:09:10 Speaker 1 No, you're right. I was, I was talking... You see, I'm coming from my... You're right. I'm coming from somebody who lived in most of my l- years as always not in a Lubavitch community and most of the people I know, not Lubavitchers. So I'm very, you know, I, I, I look at it a bit, a little different, but that's true. But my kids, I send them Dafke, Dafke Lubavitch, Dafke this-

1:09:30 Speaker 3 Right

1:09:30 Speaker 1 ... Dafke that, and a hundred percent. Uh, but if they choose whatever they choose, they have choo- if they choose, they, they have a right to, but I do... Yes, you do need to have a, a framework. Um, so what's the problem? It's doing very well. It's-

1:09:44 Speaker 3 Well, I mean, it's doing well on absolute numbers, I think. But I think that, no, I, look, look, I, I don't, I don't wanna be just the, the, the negative guy looking for problems, but I think, I think if you look, you're gonna, you can see that there, there, there are issues. There, there are, there are, there are f- there are fundamental issues. I have a lot of friends who work in the yeshivas, and if you speak, uh, I, I've spoken to them, and the, to me, the most fundamental issue that I can sense is that people feel that there are some questions that need to be asked, but if they are asked, they, they, they, they, there aren't answer, there aren't ready answers for those questions. And in a way, if you ask those questions, all bets are off. Right? So we don't ask those questions. And s- to me, that comes from a place of fear or a place of caution, to put it nicely. And I, and I, and I believe that it could be that reason, caution of, like, we don't, don't break this thing that we have here, and if that means, if, if, if to not break it means avoiding some, some uncomfortable questions, let's avoid it. You know what I'm s- Uh, do I have to be more specific?

1:10:49 Speaker 1 No, no. No, I hear you.

1:10:51 Speaker 3 I, for example, what does it mean to be a Lubavitcher Bocher in 2025 as opposed to 1985? Do we farbrengen the whole day about what happened in the mems, or do we farbrengen about today? The people in yeshivas, and that's a very kind of basic, almost caricature of the qu- question, but people in yeshivas, they don't really, at least people I speak to, they don't really know the answer because if, what do we mean? The yeshiva's gonna mo- uh, become modern and become disconnected from the past? S-

1:11:21 Speaker 1 So now you're bringing in my critical side. So I was always the critical guy, and I was questioning.

1:11:26 Speaker 3 All right. That's what, that's what I'm here for.

1:11:28 Speaker 1 And, uh, and I found mostly the problem is not, is, is actually the personalities.

1:11:36 Speaker 3 Right.

1:11:37 Speaker 1 Not the philosophy, the personalities, and emes, and being truthful, and, and not just regurgitating something you heard from somebody else, and saying it over and over and over and over again. It's, it's tedious. It's, it's, it's boring.

1:11:51 Speaker 3 You don't think the two things are connected? Is it, isn't, isn't the lack of tr-

1:11:55 Speaker 1 I, I think there's needs to be a better, um... D- I don't think people, I don't think anybody... See, this is not being learned. It's being read. It's not being learned. I speak to people all day long about Tanya, different things with Alter Rebbe, and I'm like, "What, what does Alter Rebbe mean here? What's he saying here?" I'm like, "Uh, the thing, the thing, the thing I remember in yeshiva was, you know, the thing's Gumilut. That, uh, no, that Gumilut's higher than that."

1:12:21 Speaker 3 Right.

1:12:21 Speaker 1 Higher than what? What what? What's this? What's that? What's going on? Do you- Just say you don't know.

1:12:29 Speaker 3 Right. My, my grandfather always t- told me this story so many times. A lot of people have heard it from him, that, like, one of his first memories of coming to 770 as a... He grew up in England or France, and then England, and then he comes to 770 as a young teenager, and this is 770, right? You know, it's, it's Rabbi's, it's Rabbi's Zal Adamas. This is Zal Yeshiva. This is Ten Chaf Tzimbim, right? I don't, I don't... I think that was before they took his name off it, the famous, uh-

1:12:53 Speaker 1 Yeah

1:12:53 Speaker 3 ... you know, story. But, but this is Ten Chaf Tzimbim. This is it. And he walks into the Zal of, of sure 770, and there's two Bocherim learning there. One of them's, uh, I don't know if one of them's a Bachur or certainly very American, and here's one of them go, "What the hell is a Tzimtzum?"

1:13:11 Speaker 1 It's a great question.

1:13:12 Speaker 3 Right?

1:13:12 Speaker 1 That's real. That's what I'm talking about.

1:13:13 Speaker 3 That's real.

1:13:14 Speaker 1 That's what I'm talking about.

1:13:15 Speaker 3 And what I feel is like-

1:13:16 Speaker 1 That's what it is

1:13:16 Speaker 3 ... what I feel like is that question was asked, then ignored.

1:13:19 Speaker 1 Right.

1:13:20 Speaker 3 And maybe now people are beginning to address it. Like, you have to be able to answer as a, as a, as a, you know, as a community that, that makes these ideas central to who we are, we have to be able to accept and tolerate that kind of question of, "What the hell is a Tzimtzum?"

1:13:37 Speaker 1 Right.

1:13:37 Speaker 3 Like, d- don't just tell me, uh, as a state.

1:13:39 Speaker 1 Right.

1:13:39 Speaker 3 You know, you kavals the emes and just, just move along, you know? No, that's a question. People want... People are very direct. They have direct questions, and you have to, you have to respect those questions with, with answers that are equally as direct.

1:13:55 Speaker 1 Also, you remind me on a negative, so to speak, on Yod. I can't say negative, but, because I love the guy, and I still do. But I remember once coming over to him, and this is, like, such a ridiculous quest- co- conversation. I can't even b- I can't, I, I'm still shocked of it. I'm already older guy in 770 or whatever time. I go to Yod, "Vos is his boninus? Tell me what you think his boninus is." "No, no. "Tsva a vort in the Meimer, zen hein," you know. He started going into his, uh, whatever, uh, Meimer. "Lo ze chupp." Like he was bothering, he's, uh, he was bothered by the fact I was learning a lot of the Chiddushei Bemarom at the time because he was talking to me.

1:14:41 Speaker 3 Right.

1:14:42 Speaker 1 And he's like, "Like, what are you..." And then years later, I used to give him, I used to tell him, "My Meshal." Like I'm, uh, I give him a Meshal. I said, "Let's say this Meshal, what do you think?" "Vos daft is that?" Like, "What do you need that?" Like this... I said, "Did you watch TV? You watch movies?" I go, "We got different Nevuhat Bahamas. Your Nevuah is from a stove." I go, "My Nevuah is-"

1:15:03 Speaker 3 You, you told him this?

1:15:04 Speaker 1 Yeah. I told him, "I have a different Nevuah. I need, uh, I, I, I'm, I gotta talk to a different guy." So, so I'm asking him just to... I used to ask him the question to make sure if this is Chassidus or this is my own-

1:15:19 Speaker 3 Self-help

1:15:19 Speaker 1 ... I remember once asking him, was it in, in Pirkei Avos Tes? 'Cause I, uh, you know, this is a very important story for me personally because I remember I had a way of how the Al- H-How the Alter-- Well, how everybody's learning the Tanya, that part, and how I-- It doesn't make sense to me, and I think that we should learn it this way.

1:15:37 Speaker 3 Right.

1:15:38 Speaker 1 So I remember going to him and telling him this. He goes, "It's a sheina vort obs nisht Tanya." So-

1:15:44 Speaker 3 That's good now

1:15:45 Speaker 1 ... so that's a great-- So first of all, I knew-- Okay, so I knew it's kosher. Okay, fine. So it's, it-

1:15:49 Speaker 3 He wasn't disagreeing with the logic of it.

1:15:52 Speaker 1 No. And it's, and Chabad, and Chabad, right. He didn't disagree with the Chabad part. It was just not, that's not what the Alter Rebbe is saying here.

1:15:56 Speaker 3 Yeah. Don't blame it on Tanya.

1:15:58 Speaker 1 So then I went to him and I said, I s- and I continued the conversation. "Listen, I give shiur in Tanya and I wanna teach it this way. Do you have a problem with that? Would you have a problem with that?" So he told me a story, and in the end he says, "Nah, it's fine." Like it's okay. Whatever the story, it's a good story in its own right.

1:16:11 Speaker 3 Right.

1:16:11 Speaker 1 All right. But we're talking about this. Chassidus needs to be personalized. Now, we learn the stories of Chassidim being misbonen, thinking that they're going to Shamayim. That... Well, if they were, then I don't, uh, this doesn't, that doesn't make sense from the way the Chabad describes it and whatever. Misbonanus means contemplation. It's how do you ground it? How do you personalize it? How do you make it your... There's a famous story of the Tzemach Tzedek's son. This is a very great story. That one time when he got married, he got married, uh, whose son is Yosef Yitzchak, the one who the Chabad was named after. Son of Tzemach Tzedek, he married, I forgot who, some rebbe's, not Chabad-

1:16:53 Speaker 3 Right

1:16:53 Speaker 1 ... you know, whatever, you know. He had, and it was Sheva Berachos Shabbos. So he wanted to know where, technically, when do we start Sheva Berachos? So he went, they knew Chabad, they daven for long times, and he went over to the, he went over to him. He asked his son-in-law, "How do you da- like, what's your system on Shabbos?" He goes, "I daven with the tzipa." He goes, "Oh, now with tzipa, no problem." So they meet up right after Shabbos, and they sit down. Like after, you know, they sit down with, with Y- with Yosef Yitzchak. He's davening one hour, two hours, like three hours later, he comes back, and his father-in-law, his new father-in-law's like, "I don't understand. I asked you, you said, you said tzipa. You daven with the min- with a minyan."

1:17:31 Speaker 3 Yeah.

1:17:31 Speaker 1 So he says, "I, sorry." He goes, "By me..." He says, "Tzemach Tzedek is my father." Explaining that tzipa means when you take your esei, keves, and nefesh, and you bring them together as a tzipa, as one, and you're focused.

1:17:44 Speaker 3 Right.

1:17:44 Speaker 1 That's how you daven. He goes, "That takes time." That takes time. So he, he personalized it. You know, Chassidus has to become personal. Like the Alter Rebbe said, you have to mechadesh in Chassidus. You have to mechadesh. Mechadesh means that you're-- something you-- not saying over somebody else is saying. You-- Something you already take.

1:18:05 Speaker 3 Here, here's a problem with that, though. Uh, something that we discussed on the phone a few days ago-

1:18:09 Speaker 1 Okay

1:18:09 Speaker 3 ... is that, is that, you know, uh, to, to make it, to make it personal about this podcast, for example, I-- Something that I've run into is that it is very, very hard f-for me to get people on this podcast who are part of the quote, unquote system. The, you know, the, the, the, the shivas, whether, you know, whoever it is. I've asked plenty of them, and there's a certain kind of, uh, there's a certain kind of hesitation, uh, cautiousness about, you know, getting involved in something that's less sanctioned and l-looser, let's say. You know, uh, it, there's no rabbinical committee and approving who does come on, who doesn't come on, and what people say and what people don't say, and so on. Maybe they don't approve of me. I don't know. Um, and, and, and, and so, you know, we were discussing it, and you're like, "Look, at, at some, at, at some point if, if you are, if you are acceptable to the most cautious members of the community, then you're actually not doing something. You're not, you're not really doing anything," which I thought was, was, was, was very, uh, very, uh, apt. But what I w- the, the problem is, is that when you s- you talk, you, you know, you talk about scale, and everybody, everybody's personalizing it in their own way, then what are you part of? How do you see-- You, you seem to be very, um, optimistic or hopeful, positive about where things are going. People, uh,

1:19:29 Speaker 3 everyone's falling off the derech. No, no, things are better than they used to be. There's a lot of good that you see, and I think that's very nice. I, I, I respect that. But I think you also recognize that, uh, a lot of people are kind of off doing their own things or, or just exploring in their own way, and you do see that that does create a tension between the personal and the communal. So how do you see that being resolved? How, how have you navigated-

1:19:54 Speaker 1 It's funny. I-

1:19:55 Speaker 3 How have you navigated that?

1:19:56 Speaker 1 I, I, I've seen the op-- I, I see that's exactly why we're still here. That's the reason why the Lubavitch held together.

1:20:03 Speaker 3 Mm.

1:20:04 Speaker 1 The so-called together is because we didn't conform to one place. Because like it says in Goas, "This one I sent to Borovichi, this one I sent here."

1:20:12 Speaker 3 Right.

1:20:12 Speaker 1 He said, there's right now whole communities in Russia and in Argentina, Lubavitchers, that have no idea what's going on in Crown Heights. They've never seen Crown Heights. They've heard, they have nothing to do with... They, in Russia, they have nothing to do with any of the people that we know.

1:20:26 Speaker 3 Right.

1:20:26 Speaker 1 They're completely on their own.

1:20:28 Speaker 3 Right.

1:20:28 Speaker 1 It's, it's own-- Any-

1:20:31 Speaker 3 I mean, you're talking about the Rebbe Chabad Tzadok HaSharon.

1:20:33 Speaker 1 Yeah, Sha Pi Tzemach.

1:20:34 Speaker 3 Sha Pi Tzemach almost. Yeah.

1:20:35 Speaker 1 He made it open.

1:20:36 Speaker 3 Yeah.

1:20:36 Speaker 1 The Rebbe left it open for everybody. Now, obviously, at the end of the day, you need checks and balances.

1:20:42 Speaker 3 Right.

1:20:42 Speaker 1 So the checks and balances is Halacha.

1:20:44 Speaker 3 Right.

1:20:45 Speaker 1 All meaning Chabad... Okay, that's true. I, I... It's hard to answer what exactly that is.

1:20:50 Speaker 3 And no, and sometimes the checks and balances is someone who's more cautious telling you you're going too far, even if it's not Halacha.

1:20:55 Speaker 1 So I, personally, I always, when I feel about something that I didn't hear from anybody-

1:20:59 Speaker 3 Right

1:20:59 Speaker 1 ... I would always call somebody that I know that's somebody. I used to, yeah, or somebody else. I would ask. I'd say-

1:21:05 Speaker 3 Like the, like the story you just said about Tanya.

1:21:07 Speaker 1 Yeah. I must say, "Is this, what do you think? You think it's still... You know, I'm gonna teach it this way, but I, I know that I was definitely not taught this way."

1:21:14 Speaker 3 Mm-hmm.

1:21:14 Speaker 1 "And, and my, my shpi would not like, like this. But do you think it's still Chabad?"

1:21:18 Speaker 3 Did, did, were you asking someone who's more cautious and conservative than you specifically, or someone-

1:21:22 Speaker 1 Yeah. More, somebody usually much more sensitive to this, to, to spiritual, much more closer to... Like maybe-

1:21:28 Speaker 3 But is cautious, is cautious a barometer? That's my question.

1:21:32 Speaker 1 This way, ev- the Rebbe dealt with all these issues. You read, if you read how the Rebbe says about the Minere, anybody can light the fire.

1:21:39 Speaker 3 Right.

1:21:40 Speaker 1 But the Kohen needs-- You need to know how to put in the oil, how to put it in, what you're gonna measure. You get... How to set it up. Afterwards, what you can do with your fire, you go a fire. I- But you have to have a certain framework-

1:21:53 Speaker 3 Right

1:21:53 Speaker 1 ... that it's there. Then your fire is gonna be unique because ones, well, the ones on this one's going to the left, and these are going to the right.

1:22:00 Speaker 3 Right.

1:22:00 Speaker 1 Left and right don't see each other.

1:22:01 Speaker 3 Right.

1:22:02 Speaker 1 But if it, if, if there was a Kohen that, that, that, uh, that saw, that, that put it together, so to speak. So I do my part. I, I will usually try to find a Kohen to ask him if this is, uh-

1:22:15 Speaker 3 And by Kohen, you mean someone who's, who's living that life-

1:22:18 Speaker 1 Some more spirit, yeah

1:22:19 Speaker 3 ... like surrounded by s-

1:22:21 Speaker 1 More, more-

1:22:22 Speaker 3 Yeshiva, like-

1:22:24 Speaker 1 Well-

1:22:24 Speaker 3 ... more protected from the world.

1:22:26 Speaker 1 Right.

1:22:28 Speaker 3 Interesting.

1:22:29 Speaker 1 You have, you have to do that. You have. That's why the Sechenov. That's one of the Rebbe's thing about the Sechenov. You know, you gotta, you gotta connect. You gotta, you, you gotta be your own man. And I, I don't, I don't like these people who wanna box it. It's not, it doesn't work. There's no such thing. There's, there's no such animal. It never worked, it never will work.

1:22:50 Speaker 3 Right.

1:22:50 Speaker 1 It's, it's, it's counter, it's, it's against human nature.

1:22:54 Speaker 3 Right.

1:22:54 Speaker 1 Everybody's unique. Ain't a, nobody has the same thoughts-

1:22:57 Speaker 3 Right

1:22:57 Speaker 1 ... in the same Chavas.

1:22:59 Speaker 3 Right.

1:22:59 Speaker 1 So now you say you wanna have everybody in the same thing.

1:23:01 Speaker 3 Right.

1:23:01 Speaker 1 We're inherent. But in, in the same Chavas, it's-

1:23:05 Speaker 3 There's still terror

1:23:05 Speaker 1 ... which, which direction. Like the end, we're going to one direction, but yeah, everybody's doing, well, it's going that way.

1:23:11 Speaker 3 Right. Right.

1:23:13 Speaker 1 That's a... Okay, you tell, so now you... Yael told me then when I said that story that he said, uh, I asked him if I can s- teach it anyways. So he told me a beautiful story. He told me that, that, uh, um, he told me that when the Rebbe established Temimit Mimim, he asked Mechila from Seider Shtarlshus. You know the story?

1:23:36 Speaker 3 No.

1:23:36 Speaker 1 He asked Mechila from Seider Shtarlshus, apologizing that if the Bacharim are gonna learn Chassidus, Seider Chassidus, and they're gonna mess it up.

1:23:44 Speaker 3 Right.

1:23:45 Speaker 1 They're gonna go this way, you know, you know.

1:23:46 Speaker 3 What, what the hell is Seider Shtarlshus?

1:23:48 Speaker 1 Well, well, you know, they're gonna just mess up all the levels.

1:23:50 Speaker 3 Yeah.

1:23:51 Speaker 1 And they're gonna just, whatever. It's still what happens.

1:23:53 Speaker 3 Yeah.

1:23:55 Speaker 1 No, it's valuable. Don't, don't, don't take it to heart. They, don't get personal. Don't, don't-

1:23:59 Speaker 3 Right.

1:23:59 Speaker 1 It's okay. Like, whatever. So Yael's laughing, and he tells me, "You, with that, with that thing from the Rebbe, you can scan. Like, you can go."

1:24:07 Speaker 3 Right.

1:24:07 Speaker 1 That's what he told me. Years later, I thought about that story, and like always, that's my point, is you have to personalize things. I'm thinking the story doesn't make any sense because, uh, the Rebbe asking Teichtel, the Seider Shtarlshus shouldn't take it personal. Well, is it personal or is it not personal? If it, if the, if the boys are learning and, and what they're saying has value, then if they make a mistake, it's a problem. What do you mean don't, like it's okay? What do you mean it's okay?

1:24:35 Speaker 3 Right.

1:24:35 Speaker 1 You must, it's, it's a problem.

1:24:37 Speaker 3 Right.

1:24:37 Speaker 1 And if it's not a problem, whatever they're saying has no meaning anyway, so you don't have to ask, apologize. It doesn't mean anything. It's-

1:24:44 Speaker 3 Right.

1:24:44 Speaker 1 So which one is it?

1:24:45 Speaker 3 Right.

1:24:46 Speaker 1 So I'm thinking that I wish I was able to talk to Yael, ask him about this, but I think this is what the story is meaning. Kabbalah is all about the spiritual realm. You mess up there, it has a, has a ramification, has a different, has a-

1:25:01 Speaker 3 Right

1:25:01 Speaker 1 ... on the Neshama of the person.

1:25:02 Speaker 3 If you're Meyach and you could have in the wrong way.

1:25:04 Speaker 1 Yeah, if you, if you learn it wrong, you see it wrong.

1:25:06 Speaker 3 Right.

1:25:06 Speaker 1 You can't learn it two people at the same time.

1:25:08 Speaker 3 Yeah.

1:25:08 Speaker 1 You gotta be careful because any, you can mess up there. But all of a sudden, when it comes to Chassidus, no problem? I believe, my belief, okay, it says Chabad Zamuna. My belief is that Chassidus is embedded like with a GPS to Ein Eid Movadi. Kabbalah is not, Kabbalah is, uh, uh, Ruchni, but it's not hard-coded like that. So if you go off the, if you go off, it's like using a roadmap. Once you, the map's wrong, you gotta go-

1:25:37 Speaker 3 Yeah

1:25:37 Speaker 1 ... you're, you're off. You're gone.

1:25:38 Speaker 3 Yeah.

1:25:38 Speaker 1 You're in the water. You're here. You're-

1:25:39 Speaker 3 Yeah

1:25:39 Speaker 1 ... you're in Gaza. I don't know where you are. You went to the wrong place. You're done.

1:25:43 Speaker 3 Right.

1:25:44 Speaker 1 But, but in, uh, but Chassidus Chabad is almost hard-coded, and I definitely can feel it at this point of the learning over here, that no matter how you mess it up, you're still coming to the same place. Yeah, you might have to go around the reunion, you go around traffic, you have to go that way. You, you go three times. It's, the destination is never, is never, is never lost.

1:26:08 Speaker 3 Beautiful. Beautiful.

1:26:09 Speaker 1 And, and that's what he meant. I don't mind what you're going. You're teaching Chassidus, you're going Tanya, you'll get back on. It's, you're going off this way. You'll-

1:26:18 Speaker 3 Yeah

1:26:18 Speaker 1 ... I'll pick you up in the next Perek.

1:26:20 Speaker 3 Yeah.

1:26:20 Speaker 1 We'll find you.

1:26:21 Speaker 3 Yeah. There's, there, there's a beautiful... I, I, I, I remember reading once-

1:26:24 Speaker 1 Okay

1:26:24 Speaker 3 ... I'm not, I'm not some bucky in the Fidika Basichas. I, I wish I was, uh, like the stories and, but I do remember reading this, and I couldn't find it afterwards. Maybe someone listening to this can tell me where. But I just remember the idea that the Fidika was talking about how the Baal Shem Tov had patience, and he was describing how different Talmidim and the Baal Shem Tov, it took years. There was like, the Baal Shem Tov was very tactical, even strategic of like letting, you know, s- softly and slowly dropping hints and dropping connections to these big Talmid Chachamim, and eventually they came. He wasn't, it wasn't aggressive about it, 'cause I have the truth. I, time's on my side, right? W- when, when you're, you know, you're, you're, you're a businessman, y- you know someone is, is rolling a con on you when they need an answer this minute, right? If it's a good deal, you're not so, you're not so aggressive about it, right? And I, and I feel like, I feel like-

1:27:25 Speaker 1 Essentially, you're, you're making me realize now what, you know, it says the Talmid said the Baal Shem Tov never moved or, uh, would go, uh, the, and the Maggid would not move He would n- he would not, it was the opposite.

1:27:37 Speaker 3 The Baal Shem Tov would move?

1:27:38 Speaker 1 The Baal Shem Tov would move around.

1:27:40 Speaker 3 Right.

1:27:40 Speaker 1 He would go to people because-

1:27:41 Speaker 3 I think it was Baal, I think it was Baal Shem Tov in the

1:27:43 Speaker 1 Interesting

1:27:43 Speaker 3 ... maybe it was the Maggid. I, I-

1:27:44 Speaker 1 Interesting

1:27:45 Speaker 3 ... I think it was, I, what I-

1:27:46 Speaker 1 It's a very good point.

1:27:47 Speaker 3 But the, the idea was that either the Baal Shem Tov or the Maggid, I remember it being Baal Shem Tov.

1:27:51 Speaker 1 Okay.

1:27:51 Speaker 3 Maybe you're right. Maybe it was the Maggid.

1:27:52 Speaker 1 Maybe, I don't know. No, I'm just going, I remember.

1:27:52 Speaker 3 But the point was that, the point was the patience.

1:27:54 Speaker 1 Right.

1:27:55 Speaker 3 And that something, I, it struck me. I had a conversation with someone else here in Florida for the podcast, and he's a, uh, he's a fellow who was a, was, w- was in Bedford and Dean, um, for 10 years. He wa- he came from Washington DC, stayed in the dorm, came from a... He didn't know what Yom Kippur was. Comes to Bedford and Dean, spends 10 years in, in the, in the, in the school, and then, and then the two years in Hadar, two ups here, 770. He's, man was in the thick of it. Went for Kiddush every year for, for his birthday, but he, he felt, he f- felt a fondness and an appreciation for Lubavitch and the rabbi for what they did for him, and, and they, they brought him to Yiddishkeit, he's a Frummie to this day. But he never came to Lubavitcher, never thought about coming to Lubavitcher. And we're having this conversation, and he's like, "I don't even know what you want from me. Like, I don't have any big zacharonus to tell you. I don't have any big, like, memories or..." But as we're, as we're pushing and, like, talking and kind of... 'Cause it's been, he hasn't spoken about it for, like, 60, 60 years. 'Cause he, he, he moved on with his life, and he didn't keep in touch, he didn't come back for dollars. And as we were talking, I was telling him, he's like, "You know what? When I look back at that part of

1:29:01 Speaker 3 my life, I realize now, now that I think about it, that it was the most important part of my life, and I was lucky to have been there."

1:29:07 Speaker 1 Wow.

1:29:09 Speaker 3 And I realized that's the idea of patience. Like, this guy, that this is how he's processing it. He pulls out from me after that, he says, "Look, I need to show you something." He pulls out a Siddur, a Tehillat Hashem. He's like, "The cover's new, I just got it recovered 'cause the cover's falling off." He starts opening up, the pages are all worn out. Taken care of meticulously. Like, uh, y- the book is still, but they're worn out. He's like, "This is a book I got my first day at Bedford and Dean, 70 years ago. Tehillat Hashem. I've been davening out of it every day since."

1:29:42 Speaker 1 Wow. Yeah.

1:29:44 Speaker 3 That, that's patience. That's patience. It'll come. It'll come. Like, you know?

1:29:48 Speaker 1 I, I would say go back to our first point, it's real.

1:29:51 Speaker 3 Yes.

1:29:51 Speaker 1 And therefore it's, u- using the word patience, but it's real, and therefore it, it, it never lets you go. It's there. It's always there.

1:29:58 Speaker 3 It never lets you go. It never lets you go.

1:29:59 Speaker 1 It's always there.

1:29:59 Speaker 3 We don't have to have everything organized this moment.

1:30:01 Speaker 1 Yeah. And not everybody is supposed to be the same Chabad guys.

1:30:04 Speaker 3 Exactly.

1:30:04 Speaker 1 And not everybody is supposed to, for bringing every single Yemei D'pag of every birthday and whatever, it's everybody find, find what works f- There's a guy here, I was very moved by this. It's a yungerman here, and he tells me, what it, today tells me that he was losing his, uh... Oh, it was a, it was something in Tanya. I mentioned something that I, I, I saw a unique concept in Tanya, and it was about chatas noren. And, uh, w- and I remember this guy just, "I don't talk. I don't want to even talk. Whatever. I don't, I don't wanna hear about it." I go, "It was today's Ta-" He goes, "I don't care." So I'm like, "W- what is that? How does, how does that work?" He says, "I was losing my religion, and I went to California, and I met, um," uh, Schw- uh, Schwartzy? Was it Schwartzy? I don't remember who it was.

1:31:04 Speaker 3 Right.

1:31:05 Speaker 1 Think it was Schwartzy. And he was talking to him, and he told him, "Why don't you just do the things that you like? Don't do anything you don't wanna do. Just do the things that you like. That's it." He goes, "That's what I've been doing, and it works for me." And I'm watching the guy, I'm working. I'm like, "You know, I have a new respect for you."

1:31:24 Speaker 3 He does the things of Yiddishkeit that he likes?

1:31:26 Speaker 1 Oh, yeah. I go, "You come..." He davens every day, he this, he learns. He's a g- he's a g- he's a great guy. I go, "You obviously, you love all this stuff." I go, "There's so much stuff that I'm doing just because you gotta do it."

1:31:37 Speaker 3 Right.

1:31:37 Speaker 1 "You actually..." He goes, "No, I don't do anything I don't wanna do. I only do things I want, that I wanna do." And he's a good boy today. And, uh, he's a really, a amazing yungerman. He's a married guy, maybe a zeide already. And, uh, and it's very good advice.

1:31:53 Speaker 3 Right.

1:31:54 Speaker 1 It's very good advice. Do what you want. That's how the Re- the Rebbe wanted things. Uh, focus on the w- w- focus on the good stuff, whatever. The bad s- whatever. Let it, it will take care of itself. It's, it's from the light, from positive, everything changes. If everybody finds themselves and they're comfortable and they're learning to see this individually, then as a group, it changes the whole place in the way you talk to people. You know, you, you, everybody... You know, there's a line in the Gemara, "Lav ach bar ganav chor ganav."

1:32:26 Speaker 3 Oh.

1:32:26 Speaker 1 It's not, it's not the mouse that steals.

1:32:28 Speaker 3 It's the-

1:32:28 Speaker 1 It's the... Because it know, it has a place to go to.

1:32:31 Speaker 3 Right.

1:32:31 Speaker 1 If your friends come to you and you're not that kind of guy anymore, they can't come, they don't talk to you about that. They talk to you about something else. So you made them change also. Everybody ch- everybody by changing makes everybody else change.

1:32:42 Speaker 3 Yes. Yes.

1:32:43 Speaker 1 And to think of it how we're going to do it as a whole, no, the whole is the sum of the parts.

1:32:48 Speaker 3 Correct.

1:32:49 Speaker 1 It's all about the parts. We have to be a good part.

1:32:52 Speaker 3 Right. I mean, that's how explosions are done also, right? Is you, you trigger something on a very sm- on a very microscopic level, but the chain reaction is what, is what sets things off.

1:33:01 Speaker 1 Expotentially.

1:33:02 Speaker 3 Yes, is what sets things off. When you, when you, when you empower people and you trust people, and you let them, and you can find all kinds of power inside the people that from the top is impossible to, to find.

1:33:14 Speaker 1 That's where you found, I just heard that from the Rebbe or someone saying about the Rebbe. His demand was from asking people, "Change one person. Like, change one. Don't-"

1:33:24 Speaker 3 Right.

1:33:24 Speaker 1 If anybody thinks the Rebbe wanted everybody to build big buildings and build crazy institutions, if it happened, if you need it, then you need, then you build it.

1:33:32 Speaker 3 Right.

1:33:32 Speaker 1 But the point is, you, you're going for one, one step at a time. It just, it just, it spirals. It spirals into more stuff.

1:33:42 Speaker 3 Wonderful. So I hope this, uh, I hope this podcast is, uh, is part of that, and your conversation and the ideas you shared will, will, I'm sure they will touch other people and inspire other people. And I've en- I've enjoyed this immensely. We'll see where that goes and what that, what that chain reaction, uh, results in. Thank you very much for your time.

1:33:59 Speaker 1 Thank you for coming here.

1:33:59 Speaker 3 It's been a pleasure meeting you, and, uh,

1:34:02 Speaker 1 And keep up doing what you're doing, and if, uh, if everybody wants to go on, then you did something wrong.

1:34:08 Speaker 3 Yes. I, I, I-

1:34:09 Speaker 1 You know the famous line, "If all think alike, no one thinks much."

1:34:11 Speaker 3 Yes. Yes. That's good. Uh, it's, it's all good. I, I'm here with you as a result.

1:34:15 Speaker 1 You've been validated.

1:34:16 Speaker 3 Yes, sir. Thank you.

1:34:17 Speaker 1 That's your semikhah.

1:34:19 Speaker 3 Thank you. The music for this podcast comes from the album Repentance Doors by Oren Dror and Nadav Bahar, and is used with their permission.