Ep. 85 // "In Defense of Temimus" w/ Rabbi Shlomo Yaffe

00:00 Speaker 1 The Rebbe combined a very sophisticated approach to defend the Tzemach Stitcher reading of the Torah. That's the essence of what-- of, of, of the paradox of Chabad.

00:15 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

00:15 Speaker 1 It is this full development of the intellectual, but instead of, of modifying the Tzemach with the intellectual, he deploys the whole intellectual arsenal to defend the Tzemach.

00:30 Speaker 2 Welcome to Homesick for Lubavitch, a podcast where we explore Lubavitch identity in the year two thousand and twenty-six. My name is Benji Afson, and I will be your host. Let's begin. Alrighty. We are here in Springfield, Massachusetts, with Rabbi Shlomo Yaffe.

00:56 Speaker 1 At Congregation B'nai Torah.

00:58 Speaker 2 Congregation B'nai Torah. Thank you very much for making the time, and, uh, this was a bit of a last-minute arrangement, but, uh, I'm glad that we're able to do it. This has been a long time in the making. And, uh, to all those listening who like this podcast, please support the podcast by liking and subscribing on the various platforms. And those who really like the podcast, please support the podcast at hflpodcast.com/donate. Rabbi Yaffe, we already started speaking before the recording, and, uh, I hear you have origins in Maine. So how about we begin there?

01:40 Speaker 1 Okay. Um, my, uh, my parents, uh, with the Rebbe's bracha, moved to Portland, Maine a few months after I was born, uh, to teach in the then Portland-- Portland, Maine, Portland Hebrew Day School. Not long after they got there, the school folded, and, uh, they-- my father was-- and mother were doing, uh, teaching at different Hebrew schools, various other things. And, uh, then my father got together with a group of parents, and they created a new day school, which is where we were, you know, basically until Tosh Lamitess.

02:19 Speaker 2 So you were a Lubavitch family in Maine?

02:21 Speaker 1 Yes. Um, yeah, there was, there was, there was, um, there was briefly another Lubavitcher, uh, Melamed in the school, uh, Moshe Zaklikowski, alav ha-shalom.

02:32 Speaker 2 Oh, yeah.

02:32 Speaker 1 Very, very special person.

02:34 Speaker 2 Moved to Detroit after, yes.

02:35 Speaker 1 Yes. Yeah. Um, but, uh, but pretty much, uh, most of our history, my father was the, uh, was the sole Lubavitcher in Maine until much later in Tosh Mem Zion, about eight years after we left, Rabbi Wilansky came-

02:50 Speaker 2 Right

02:50 Speaker 1 ...and he's, of course, built a beautiful, uh, Chabad program in multiple cities there.

02:56 Speaker 2 So what was it like? That's very interesting. Um, what was it like to grow-- What was it like in general? How did you see yourself? Were you shluchim, y-like, in the, in the, in the technical sense of the word? Uh, how did you, like, how did you, as a child, understand, like, what are we doing here in Maine?

03:14 Speaker 1 Okay. So, um, so the shlichus was a much more inchoate thing back then.

03:22 Speaker 2 Inchoate.

03:23 Speaker 1 Yeah.

03:23 Speaker 2 For tho-

03:24 Speaker 1 Yeah

03:24 Speaker 2 ...for those-

03:24 Speaker 1 In other-

03:25 Speaker 2 Inattention to older English.

03:27 Speaker 1 In other words, it was, it was much fuzzier. In other words-

03:29 Speaker 2 Yes

03:29 Speaker 1 ...you had people like Rabbi Posner, who was a rav in Nashville. You had people who were Melamedim in different schools. There were Chabad meistes.

03:35 Speaker 2 Right.

03:36 Speaker 1 The Chabad House movement had just started with, uh, with, uh, with Chabad at UCLA, with Rabbi Kunin in sixty-five. So, so basically, there was-- the Tzach list had a list of shluchim. We were on the Tzach list. There was no kinus then.

03:51 Speaker 2 Oh, so you were, like, uh, listed as shluchim.

03:53 Speaker 1 Well, I mean, yeah, we were listed, but the-- like, what I'm saying is, is you had Tzach people, you had, you had various Rabbanim, Melamedim-

04:00 Speaker 2 Right

04:00 Speaker 1 ...some Balabatim. It was, uh, it was sort of shlichus as a shlichus does, which is the attitude that my father, you know, kept throughout his life, whether he was-

04:09 Speaker 2 But your father was there to make a living, or was he there because he believed in Chafetz Haim's, like-

04:13 Speaker 1 Well, he was, he was there because he was looking-- He's, uh, he, he has a whole backstory, but-

04:18 Speaker 2 So what's the back-

04:18 Speaker 1 The fact is he's in, you know, he's in seven seventy, and he gets married, and he wants to do-- He wants to-- The Rebbe's big thing was hafatzas. He wanted to do hafatzas. So he saw the ad for teaching. He wrote into the Rebbe. The Rebbe told him to go.

04:31 Speaker 2 I see.

04:32 Speaker 1 You know, that's, that's how, that's how it worked back then.

04:35 Speaker 2 Right.

04:35 Speaker 1 Um, my, my, uh, my father's history, uh, briefly, I don't know how much time we have, but my, my, uh, you know-- So first of all, you know, uh, I always tell people that I owe a great de- a great debt to Bnei Akiva. So my, my father grew up in Sheffield, which is a, which wa-- is a big city, but a relatively small community in the north of England. It's the Pittsburgh of England. That's where they, the big steel, uh, the big steel center of England. Um, my, uh, my, my, my grandparents, my father's parents, were typical English Jews, traditional, ate kosher, you know, uh, did, you know, had a Shabbos meal, weren't necessarily entirely shomer Shabbos. I only found out much later, very interesting, that even though it wasn't very common in those days, I discovered that much later in, in, in life, I discovered that my grandmother actually used the mikvah faithfully, which is something unusual for England at that time-

05:37 Speaker 2 Right

05:37 Speaker 1 ...and at that place.

05:38 Speaker 2 And where did your grandparents come from?

05:40 Speaker 1 So my-- So both of them were, were basically, um, their parents had come very young as immigrants at the end of the nineteenth century.

05:51 Speaker 2 But so they, they, they had grown up in England.

05:53 Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah. My, my, um, my grandfather, Avraham Abe, uh, his father was a, his father was a tailor and was a, a Schneider, and his father before him was a shuster, was a cobbler. The cobbler had come over from Europe.

06:09 Speaker 2 His grandfather

06:10 Speaker 1 Yeah. When I think-- And his father was, I think, young, was not born. But he was born in, in the United Kingdom. He was born in, in Sheffield, as a matter of fact.

06:19 Speaker 2 Just leave the microphone.

06:20 Speaker 1 Yeah, he was born in Sheffield.

06:22 Speaker 2 Yeah.

06:23 Speaker 1 And, um, and, uh, the same thing with my grandmother. Uh, my Zayde was a bus mechanic. Very interesting, he, at the age-

06:32 Speaker 2 Your mother's father?

06:33 Speaker 1 My father's father.

06:35 Speaker 2 I thought you said he was a-

06:36 Speaker 1 No, no

06:36 Speaker 2 ... he was a tailor.

06:37 Speaker 1 No, that was his, that was his father.

06:39 Speaker 2 His-- So your father's father's fa-

06:40 Speaker 1 My father's grandfather was a Schneider

06:42 Speaker 2 ... was a tailor. And his father was a cobbler.

06:45 Speaker 1 My-- Right. So-

06:45 Speaker 2 So your great, your great-grandfather was a cobbler.

06:47 Speaker 1 Right. But my, my grandfather was a bus mechanic.

06:50 Speaker 2 Okay.

06:50 Speaker 1 But before that, he had, he had, um, he had joined, he had joined the Scots Highlanders, uh, when he was, like, sixteen. He was b- Yeah. He was sixteen. He-- I think he forged his parents' signatures. This was during World War I, okay? So a long time ago. And he had joined this very elite Scottish unit. He was, I think, the only Jew and the shortest person in the whole unit. Um, he was always a gibber. Very, he's very small, very strong. And he f-- and he fought throughout the whole First World War. I have the, the-- I have-- I found his service records. N- He never talked about the First World War. But then he spent at least another ten years, I'll tell you in a second. She was eighteen, and she was born in ni-- So till nineteen twenty-nine, he was in the British Army in India, and he had a lot of interesting stories from his time in India. That he talked about. He wouldn't talk-- He never talked about World War I. He-

07:42 Speaker 2 Well, World War I was hell.

07:43 Speaker 1 Yeah. Well, uh, look, um-

07:46 Speaker 2 He was in the trenches?

07:47 Speaker 1 Probably. Well, he was an engineer, which probably meant he was digging those tunnels under the trenches with other people digging tunnels into him. He, he never talked about it. Um, but, uh, but he was always a very tr-- He was a traditional Jew, not, not partic-- not frum, but traditional. Um, later in life, when my father became a Baal Teshuva, they, they got much more involved. But they always kept kosher. Like I said, I only discovered very late in life that my bubbe went to the mikvah.

08:14 Speaker 2 Can I take us-

08:15 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

08:15 Speaker 2 Can I, can I, can I just go off for a tangent for a second? Something I've, something I've been thinking about recently. How do you view frumkeit? You know, your, your, your f- you're saying your grandfather was a traditional Jew. You are a rav, a frum Yid. How do you view frumkeit in the context of a Zayde who held on to Yiddishkeit in a way, like, against such circumstances? Like, it kinda changes the equation a little bit. Now, we usually see, like, frum tr-- you know, frum is higher tradition.

08:46 Speaker 1 Look, look. Look, with regards to Ne'emanos, uh, to be a mashgiach, and so on, frum is kashrut, Shabbos, taharas hamishpacha.

08:52 Speaker 2 Halach-- You're talking halachically?

08:54 Speaker 1 Right, halachically. But, but he-- But, you know, this way, he was someone who would attend a shul relatively regularly. Um, they were very careful with kashrus. I think, uh, you know, Shabbos work was six days a week back then. You know, I, you know, I, I d- I don't think he kept Shabbos, you know, in the way-

09:11 Speaker 2 But now how do you, how do you value your own frumkeit vis-à-vis-- 'Cause so much of today is, like, frum versus not frum.

09:18 Speaker 1 But look-

09:18 Speaker 2 And, like, here you're comparing, it's like-- Like, how do you even come, how do you even come close to that kind of-

09:23 Speaker 1 Look, a mitzvah, a mitzvah oheker. What I mean to say is that typically speaking, we talk about frumkeit, it's about mitzvahs. It's about mitzvahs. Are you doing-

09:31 Speaker 2 Right

09:31 Speaker 1 ... the key, big, hard-to-do mitzvahs? That's-

09:34 Speaker 2 Right

09:34 Speaker 1 ... that's basically it, right? You know, you work, you know, with a Chabad house, or you're doing outreach or whatever. When someone undertakes Shabbos, kashrus, taharas hamishpacha, you know, that's three-quarters of the battle 'cause those are the hardest things-

09:45 Speaker 2 Right

09:45 Speaker 1 ... honestly. And they're considered very big things in the realm of Halakha.

09:51 Speaker 2 Right.

09:51 Speaker 1 Now, even though we all know what Hasidism says, that every mitzvah is the same, but lipayot, that's how we define, that's how we define, um, we define frumkeit. On the other hand, you have people from that generation who felt they had no choice, whether it was true or not, but to work on Shabbos, who had a lot of yirat shamayim when they daven. You know, Rabbi Soloveitchik actually, uh, his, his son, um, a doctor, who was it, who wrote, uh, Rupture and Reconstruction, writes a lot about this, that the people his-- in his father's shul in, like, the '40s and '50s, were people who might not have been so careful about Halakha, but come Rosh Hashanah, they'd tittered, you know. They trembled, and when they'd daven, they'd daven with real tears and so on. So it's-- You're right. It, it, it is a hard thing to define. But when I say frum, not frum, I'm simply talking about the big three in Halakha, honestly. You know, that because later in life, they began to observe those things. Later in life, they became shomer Shabbos.

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12:12 Speaker 1 I mean, remember, he passed away when I was, uh... He passed away when I was eight years old, so I only knew him as a child, but I heard a lot about him from my father and from my grandmother-

12:22 Speaker 2 Right

12:22 Speaker 1 ... who lived much longer.

12:23 Speaker 2 No, but the story of him, like, the, the image of him, how do you, how do you, how do you, like, measure him in your, in your Yiddishkeit? Now, I'm not asking you, like, if you see him as a from Yid or not. How do you measure yourself vis-a-vis him?

12:35 Speaker 1 Well, look, I know, I, look, I know, I know he was-

12:36 Speaker 2 Like, do you, do you look up to him in his Yiddishkeit?

12:38 Speaker 1 Look, he was a very proud Jew. Um, he, he kept whatever he thought he was, he was supposed to keep. Um, my father always told me this story. So, uh, when he was a bus mechanic, you know, again, this wasn't a typical Jewish, uh, just like being a career soldier wasn't a typical Jewish thing back then. You got drafted, and you went out. He stayed in the army for a long time. And, um, by the same token, uh, there weren't a l- you know, where he worked, with Sheffield Transport, uh, the bus company, there weren't too many Jews, and there was this very, very big, big, strong, uh, Yorkshireman. This, this guy who, you know, used to give him a hard time on him being Jewish. So in those days, you didn't have lifts. You had a grease pit, which is you drove the bus over a, over a basement, over an opening in the basement, and you went down into the basement, and you worked on the bus.

13:36 Speaker 2 Right.

13:36 Speaker 1 So-- And because they didn't have all these, uh, all these environmental concerns then, basically, dirt and old oil and, you know, and, and f- and diesel fuel and all just, you know, so tended to accumulate, uh, so you were walking around in that pit.

13:51 Speaker 2 Hence the name of g- hen-hence the name grease pit.

13:53 Speaker 1 Yeah. So you're walking around with rubber boots, basically, you know-

13:56 Speaker 2 Yeah

13:56 Speaker 1 ... you know, uh, you know, up to, up to your shins and whatever-

14:00 Speaker 2 Exactly. Yeah

14:00 Speaker 1 ... whatever junk was, uh, was there from the previous years. So, uh, so once this guy, you know, insulted his Yiddishkeit in some very obnoxious way. So my Zayde was five foot four. This guy was easily a six-footer, weighed, you know, well over two hundred and fifty pounds. But my Zayde picked him up, turned him upside down, and dropped him headfirst into the grease pit. No one ever said another word about Jews again. You know, um, like I said, he was a gibor. A little guy, but he was a gibor. Um, but, uh, so that's, uh, you know, again, I only know most what I know about him I know secondhand. I did go online and find his service records. No, he served. He, he finished the war as a corporal. I have the m- the medal they gave all the soldiers for the victory over Germany after World War I. Um, you know, there were no negative marks on his service records, and he was in India for a long time, and he, he actually-- You wanna talk about his Yiddishkeit. When I was seven years old, he told me something very interesting, and he told this Masiach L'fi Tumoi. He told me that, um-

15:04 Speaker 2 And this was where? Here in-

15:05 Speaker 1 When we were living in Maine. He visited us in Maine-

15:07 Speaker 2 Uh-huh

15:07 Speaker 1 ... from Sheffield. They came-- They visited us, like, twice in my memory. They might have come before, but I was too small.

15:13 Speaker 2 Right. Right.

15:14 Speaker 1 Um, and he tells me to, that, um, that when he was stationed somewhere, I think in the Punjab, uh, uh, that, um, that there was the... You know, he, he, he had a friend who wasn't Jewish, but they used to, they used to, he used to go out and schmooze with the natives. You know, not a lot of the British, uh, Raj didn't do that, but they-

15:36 Speaker 2 Right

15:36 Speaker 1 ... used to go out and schmooze, got to know them. So he met this, this guru, and he said this guru was the real thing. He wasn't, he says, he wasn't like the fakers. This was in the early seventies, time of the Maharaji and all that.

15:47 Speaker 2 Yeah.

15:47 Speaker 1 He said, you know, the, the ones the Beatles followed. He said, he said, you know, he, he-- this guy was the real thing.

15:53 Speaker 2 Right.

15:54 Speaker 1 He said he, he's not, he, he's not joking, and he's not hallucinating. My Zayde was a mechanic. He was a very down-to-earth person. He saw him levitate.

16:03 Speaker 2 Uh-huh.

16:03 Speaker 1 You know, float in midair. And, uh, once when he came, he didn't come with his friend. He's, "Where's your friend?" He goes, "My friend's on, on, on vacation. He's on leave." So the guru told him exactly what his friend was doing then and what he did the whole time he was on leave, and he was, like, a thousand miles away in the mountains, you know, where they used to go for, you know, for leave in the summer. And when he came back, So, uh, so the guru wanted to make him a Talmud of his. You know, I guess he wanted, he wanted a Jewish neshamah.

16:34 Speaker 2 Right.

16:34 Speaker 1 So he showed him all these amazing things. So my grandfather told him, uh, we used to call him Grandpa Yaffe. He said, "It's very impressive, but I'm a Jew, and I'll always be a Jew, and I'm not mixing it with anything else, and that's that." So there was, there was a lot under the hood there with him.

16:50 Speaker 2 Right.

16:50 Speaker 1 You know, the, the pretty-- You know, just that he had these experiences and, and, uh, you know, and his-

16:56 Speaker 2 Do you-

16:57 Speaker 1 He told me. He says, "Look, I'm Jewish. This is what I told you."

16:59 Speaker 2 Do you think we still have that?

17:02 Speaker 1 People-- You mean people like that?

17:03 Speaker 2 No. Do you think, you know, as, as, in, in a front community, once you, like, in, in, in, in the world that we inhabit-

17:10 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm

17:10 Speaker 2 ... um, do you think we still have that kind of tumos?

17:15 Speaker 1 I think there are people who have that tumimos. I have people, uh, you know, in my-- in, in the, in the synagogue here, in B'nai Torah, there's a group of people who are now, um, you know, I would call them middle-aged because middle-aged is longer these days, um, who, who, who, who became observant on their own. They're . They just became observant on their own 'cause at some point they said, "Hey, I'm Jewish. I ought to be doing this."

17:40 Speaker 2 Right. No, but-

17:40 Speaker 1 With a tremendous tumimos.

17:42 Speaker 2 Right. But do you, do you feel like there's a conflict at all between, you know, um, what we were talking about, the frumkeit of Halakha, like where, where it's an established-

17:51 Speaker 1 System

17:51 Speaker 2 ... quantifiable frumkeit. You know, what, what people sometimes derogatorily call organized religion. But I don't mean it in a derogatory way. I mean it in a way, like, that's quantifiable like Halakha does. Is there so- is there a conflict between that and this kind of old-school individual tumos? You know, like, uh, says, that the chidush is that even after he becomes Avram, hey, you know, the binah and the bini-- uh, the, the extra understanding Is still «matzas, s'vorah, v'hanachah», still has that «ne'emanus» and «tmimus». It's, it's a «chiddush», no?

18:24 Speaker 1 No, no. Right. I mean, but let's look at something, you know, famous story that Samach Tzedek, who told this very big intellectual to study Tzejah Rena or to, you know, to say Tehillim, to get Yiras Shamayim. No, there's, there's no question that, that they, they can-- they don't necessarily mesh perfectly. There's a great line, I believe it's in the «Kovetz Michdavim» for Tehillim from the Friediker Rebbe, where he talks about this-

18:46 Speaker 2 That's the end of the Siddur.

18:47 Speaker 1 Yeah, in the back of the Tehillim.

18:49 Speaker 2 Right.

18:49 Speaker 1 So where he talks about this guy who said Tehillim all the time, and there was-- and he had tremendous «chus», you know, the Baal Shem Tov son. So he says, "He probably even said Tehillim in places you shouldn't."

19:01 Speaker 2 Right.

19:01 Speaker 1 So the-- then there's a line the Friediker Rebbe says that, that «l'poel», you know, he-- Hashem valued him greatly for his «tmimus». But the fact that, that he s- that he said Tehillim where he shouldn't, he might have been held to account for not learning if he could have. There's such a line. But I'm saying they're not, they, they don't-- they're not necessarily one contradicts the other. A person can be a great Talmid and so on-

19:26 Speaker 2 Right

19:26 Speaker 1 ...and not have had the opportunity to learn about Halakha and so on. Um, if you ever talk to people who were in the Nuns in Yeshiva in Los Angeles, you know there was a man who-- there who died at like the age of a hundred and something, by the name of Label Shapiro, who was very close to Rabbi Shochat, to the Rosh Yeshiva there. Um, and he-- I was there when he wandered in. I was a, I was a kid then. We had just moved to LA, and his wife had died, and he came in to say Kaddish. And he was a very «tmusdik Yid». He, he re-- I think he was in the junk business. Never knew any-- knew very much. I mean, he was too old to be drafted in World War I. That's how old he was at the time. We met him in the-

20:08 Speaker 2 Uh-huh

20:08 Speaker 1 ...in the early '80s. You know what I mean? He was too old. Say, you know, he was, uh... And, um, but he was incredibly «tmusdik». So Rabbi Shochat told him, "You gotta put on Tefillin." So he put on Tefillin. Rabbi Shochat told him he has to daven. So he knew how to read Hebrew from his bar mitzvah, whatever, but he read very slowly. And he never could-- Even with the English, he never really understood the directions. So he would start davening from «Meidani» and, you know, go through at, you know, like the Baal Shem Tov stories. He'd go through Shabbos and Rosh Chodesh and so on. So Rabbi Shochat, you know, would like stop him and, you know, move him over. But otherwise, he would just, he would-

20:44 Speaker 2 He would just truck

20:45 Speaker 1 ...he would just go, truck right through the, right through the Siddur. And he was very «tmusdik», but he didn't know a lot. But I mean, I mean, I wasn't there when he passed away, but I hear that Rabbi Shochat cried greatly at his funeral. But, um, but the things I remember once, so he used to come for like Shalosh Seudahs, and he used to drive up. He used to tootle up. He had like a nineteen fifty something truck, um, that, you know, that he kept running, and he would tootle up in that old, in that old creaky truck. And one day he, he-- one day he shows up for Shalosh Seudahs, and he drove there, right? But he takes out his wallet, and he shows-- and he remembered something from his childhood. He shows Rabbi Shochat, "Look, it's Shabbos today. No money." He took all the money out of his wallet. So he was a very «tmusdik Yid», and I'm sure Hashem, you know, didn't did-- you know, didn't judge him for what he didn't know. And he was already in his nineties by then. Um, but he, but he was a tremendously «tmusdik Yid», and everyone, everyone saw that, that holiness, you know. You can ask anyone who was in Los Angeles about Label Shapiro. Anyway, so-

21:47 Speaker 2 So how do we, how do we capture that «tmimus»?

21:50 Speaker 1 I, um... Look, I, I think that, um, I think that, um, that, uh, that you see the way the Rebbe talked about mitzvahs, the way-- especially, you know, you can see, see the way the Rebbe talked to the children. The Rebbe exhibited that «tmimus», and I think he expected it from, from us. You know, there's a-- I, I, I don't want to embarrass him, so I won't tell you who the Shliach is. But there's this one Shliach who, you know, he do-- he's a campus Shliach. He doesn't get a million people, you know, at his Shabbos table or so on, but he's made a huge number of Baalei Teshuva over the years. And him and his wife tell me this story. I happened to have been in that town. I'm sitting with them, and they tell me a story, «mesiach lefitumam». They didn't even realize it was special. So I'm saying, "Here's a guy, he knows a velt." Him and his wife are both very learned. They know a lot. They, they, you know, they're very sophisticated Hasidim. You know, they're, they're very-- I think he's a, a, a Baal Avoda, very, you know, very knowledgeable in Halakha. I'm saying this is not-

22:50 Speaker 2 Yeah.

22:50 Speaker 1 This is not a «pashte Yid» who can only say Tehillim.

22:53 Speaker 2 Right.

22:53 Speaker 1 But he tells-- But, but the, the, the «tmimus»... So anyway, so this, this young lady is in, is in this-- is in town. She's not college. She's in town for a fi- a financial services convention. She's some kind of Wall Street person, or she was in New York, wherever, you know, that kind of world. And, um, so it is a, you know, conference. It's a whole day, and she, she gets, you know, she gets a bit claustrophobic, so she goes for a walk. And it so happens that this, this campus Chabad house is relatively near the center of town. So she, uh, so she walks by. She sees a menorah. She's Jewish, and she's intrigued. So she walks in, and, um, and, uh, and the rabbi and the, the Shliach and the Shlucha greet her. And they say, "Oh, come eat with us." And she says, you know, um, and she sees there's all this, uh, all this cheesecake and lasagna and so on, a really nice «milchiga» meal. It was Shavuos, and it's the first day of Shavuos. So after eating, she says, you know, "Thank you so much for this beautiful meal and the nice thought and the nice ideas. You know, I'm gonna go back to the conference." So «mesiach lefitumam», the, the, the couple tells her, "But it's Yom Tov. You, you can't go do a conference on Yom Tov. You can't. You have to-- Right, business. You, you have to stay here with us." So she stayed there for the

24:13 Speaker 1 whole two days of Shavuos just 'cause it was like with tremendous «tmimus». You know, you're gonna go on Yom Tov, you're gonna go away? And, um, and, uh, by the time she gets back to the hotel a day and a half later, you know, she's in her mid-twenties or late twenties. Her mother's-

24:28 Speaker 2 The search party

24:28 Speaker 1 ...her mother's a typical Jewish helicopter mother. She's-

24:31 Speaker 2 The search party.

24:31 Speaker 1 She left her cell phone when she went, took her walks. Her mother's calling her. She was about to call the police. The-

24:37 Speaker 2 Right

24:37 Speaker 1 ...My daughter's been kidnapped. But, um, but they-- But he tells me years later, discovers she's living in the Midwest. She's Frum. She's married, a whole passel of kids. You know, all, all, it, you know, all from, from this, you know, this «tmusdik» thing. Well, you can't go away on Yom Tov. I mean, how many of us would do that? But I'm saying this is a real, a real «tmimus», but I think also a «tmimus» that involves being tuned into someone else's «tmimus». I'm sure they didn't tell this to everyone.

25:07 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

25:08 Speaker 1 But they could see through this whole veneer of sophistication and all that to her «tmimus». So this is one of my favorite Shliach stories.

25:16 Speaker 2 So how, how-- In your, in your, in your estimation, how do you, how do you, uh, hold onto tzimmes? How do you f- how do you find tzimmes?

25:26 Speaker 1 It's, it's, it's, uh, it's, it's very hard, but, um, it's some-- But I, I can tell you it, it's hard because you're always thinking, you know. It, you know, it's like-

25:36 Speaker 2 Right. You, you, you like to learn-

25:37 Speaker 1 You know, one thing is-

25:37 Speaker 2 You like to learn. You're a thinking man.

25:39 Speaker 1 But what I'm saying, but-

25:40 Speaker 2 How do you get out of your head?

25:41 Speaker 1 But this is, but this is the great, you know, Sri Freeman, he should be well, always says that Chabadniks are not Orthodox, they're paradox. 'Cause the whole Chassidus-

25:50 Speaker 2 Sounds like him.

25:51 Speaker 1 Right. Right. But, but what-- Why? Because on one hand, you're Chabad and you're busy analyzing every sphere and every Olam and all the different, you know, all the different levels in which Ray Atzmus expresses itself, et cetera, et cetera. On the other hand, on the other hand, you know, the Rebbe's always telling, "Mispalel daze atinuk," right? I'm having-

26:11 Speaker 2 Mm.

26:11 Speaker 1 And, and, and, and, and also, um, not just that, there's this sense of Kabbalah cell, this sense of, of, of tzimmes, you know. Um, the Rebbe took a lot of very difficult positions about certain scientific matters and the like, just because as a sheteh in Torah. And the Rebbe, uh, anyone, any real scientist who had connection with the Rebbe is aware, uh, this is not Chassid speak, is aware of the Rebbe's enormous grasp of science and mathematics and so on.

26:41 Speaker 2 Right.

26:41 Speaker 1 But the Rebbe took very difficult, very, very challenging, I say challenging in the eyes of many people, positions about scientific matters because of his tzimmes. We, we, we teach, we teach the Torah simply, and, and I-- My zeide, um, Sri Meir Shtainmetz, uh, wrote poem, poetry, the Sri I hear-

27:00 Speaker 2 The, the, those who listen to the podcast will remember Yankee Tauber spoke about him, I think.

27:05 Speaker 1 So, so this-- So, um, so I used to give a class in my, uh, my sh- my shul, Godes Achim, in West Hartford. It was a small shul of mostly older people, but a lot of very bright people, real intellectuals. And, um, so I used to give a, used to give a shiur in his poetry. We would study his poetry. They all knew Hebrew, you know. We go through his poetry in the original. And there's one, you know, com-- Uh, it's about Moshe Rabbeinu, but really it's about the Rebbe. It's one of his Yud Aleph Nissan poems, which I'm sure Yankee told you about. It's, um-

27:36 Speaker 2 No. No, I didn't.

27:37 Speaker 1 So he-- Every year he wrote it. Once he didn't write a poem for Yud Aleph Nissan, the Rebbe says he owes him double. He had to write two poems. The Rebbe waited for those poems as his birthday present.

27:45 Speaker 2 Really?

27:45 Speaker 1 Yeah. So one of them, one of those poems, there's a whole biography about him out, out now-

27:51 Speaker 2 Uh-huh

27:51 Speaker 1 ... that was just published. But, um, but one of the poems is about how Moshe Rabbeinu is leading the people, and he's leading them. There, the, you know, there's an abyss on either side, you know, a deep r- abyss on either side, and there's like sort of a tightrope. He's l- leading this narrow path with an abyss to the right and an abyss to the left. And, uh, but the people following Moshe Rabbeinu, they only see his broad shoulders, so they don't see the abyss. His-

28:22 Speaker 2 Oh.

28:22 Speaker 1 He sees the abyss and the, and the danger, but they don't 'cause they just see his broad shoulders that they're following. And the idea was is, you know, the, the Rebbe had to-- There were a lot of, you know, schlechas, you know, sending people out in the middle of nowhere, you know. There's dangers opening Chabad up to the, to the world. You know, there's a, there's a lot of dangers.

28:40 Speaker 2 That's a-

28:41 Speaker 1 My, my zeide, who grew up in a, in a very Chassidish Hungarian home, and then was later part of Mizrahi, he saw the whole picture. So he understood that the Rebbe's, you know, walking this tightrope, you know.

28:51 Speaker 2 That's a beautiful taich of the famous line that is attributed to the Rebbe, "Af mine plotzes."

28:57 Speaker 1 Yeah.

28:57 Speaker 2 When it comes to the chinuch of, of, of, of shluchim's kids. A lot of times people say it means, you know, the Rebbe said everything's gonna be fine. But this taich is that, you know, af mine plotzes is-

29:07 Speaker 1 I have the broad shoulders

29:08 Speaker 2 ... I'm, I'm gonna look at it, you can just look at my shoulders, like.

29:11 Speaker 1 Yeah. So, so the-- Anyways, so he taught. So the idea was is that everyone's following the Rebbe.

29:17 Speaker 2 Right.

29:17 Speaker 1 You know, and, and the, you know, the Rebbe sees the issues, but we, we just follow. So, uh, one of the really-- It's someone, his father was a big rav in, in Germany. Well, actually in Poland, but the German part, speaking part of Poland before the war. Tremendous intellectual, a very accomplished surgeon.

29:34 Speaker 2 One of the people in West Hartford.

29:35 Speaker 1 One of the, in the shiur. Yeah. So he turns to me, he says, you know, um, I believe they met my zeide briefly at a simcha, but they'd been reading his poetry, doesn't understand, you know, your-- And they knew his history. Says, "I don't understand. Your, your grandfather is a highly educated individual, you know, someone who came, you know, from, you know, from this great German tradition. He was close with Breuer. He knew all the German and European philosophers. He was a very well-educated person, my zeide." He says, "Tremendous sophisticated intellectual, your grandfather."

30:06 Speaker 2 Right.

30:06 Speaker 1 "And he writes this poem about his relation to the Rebbe with a childlike simplicity-"

30:14 Speaker 2 Yeah.

30:14 Speaker 1 "... that he follows the Rebbe-"

30:15 Speaker 2 Almost naivete.

30:16 Speaker 1 "... you know, like a child following a-"

30:17 Speaker 2 Naivete almost.

30:18 Speaker 1 Yeah. So but I, but I-- When he said that, when he said that, I realized that's the es- that's the essence of what-- of, of, of the paradox of Chabad.

30:31 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

30:31 Speaker 1 It is this full development of the intellectual, but the intellectual is there just like we say that, that much of Chassidus teaches us the ma'al of the actual doing of mitzvahs and ma'asehs. So a lot of the, how do I put it? A lot of the, of the arum, the em- the emotional, um, you know, the, the, uh, the, the, uh, aggadic part of Chassidus is there to teach us that the purpose of all this deep learning- Is to bring us to a point where someone can be deeply learned yet have this tzimmes.

31:07 Speaker 2 But if you could-

31:08 Speaker 1 I, I mean, you saw this by the Rebbe.

31:10 Speaker 2 Homesick for Lubavitch is brought to you by Yuval Media, a boutique video production company servicing the Chabad and Jewish community. Since opening 10 years ago, Yuval 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 Boniolah, Torah Mesora, and Atalahon, 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@yuvalmedia.com. Again, that is hello@yuvalmedia.com. A link can be found in the show notes. And now, back to the podcast. So can I drill down on that a little bit? 'Cause, like, going back to the point you made about the Rebbe's, uh, tzimmes regarding science, one way of teaching that is, is that, you know, the Rebbe had this very sophisticated, obviously sophisticated outlook on, in learning and life in general, and then when it comes to certain conflicts with Torah and science or apparent conflicts with Torah and science, the Rebbe just says, "We're gonna take a, a, a, so to speak, simplistic view of what the Torah says," and we're-

32:29 Speaker 1 And, well, and the, and the science can work itself out.

32:31 Speaker 2 I think Yikve Zohar, right? Yikve within Zohar, what's the lotion?

32:34 Speaker 1 Yeah.

32:35 Speaker 2 Um-

32:36 Speaker 1 Yes, very much so.

32:36 Speaker 2 But, but I think there's another way of understanding-

32:38 Speaker 1 But my, my point is the Rebbe could have, and no one would have complained. And again, uh, the Rebbe, although Lubavitchers will forgive me, the Rebbe could have done what a lot of Gedolei Israel did and, and said, "Well, this is metaphor-"

32:50 Speaker 2 Negotiated.

32:50 Speaker 1 Right. "This is metaphorical. We don't have to take..." Right? Rambam says anything-

32:54 Speaker 2 But can-

32:55 Speaker 1 You know, you don't have to take it lit- you don't have to take things literally when they're obviously don't.

32:59 Speaker 2 Right.

32:59 Speaker 1 But to the Re- but to the Rebbe, the Rebbe, if, if the Rebbe was not gonna take something entirely literally, he demanded absolute proof of a mathematical nature. You know the nature of mathematical proof is much higher than what we call proof even in a court of law.

33:13 Speaker 2 Right.

33:14 Speaker 1 So the Rebbe, for the Rebbe to say that something was allegorical, he demanded proof on the level of a mathematical proof.

33:22 Speaker 2 Right. Uh, I think Rabbi Nadsen Yagans is, uh, like, speaks about this a little bit, right? That in o- that you can only start, uh, teaching Isoposek the way you want if you have an, an extremely good reason to do so.

33:34 Speaker 1 Yeah, um, uh, uh, the Rambam says the same thing, but, uh, you know-

33:38 Speaker 2 You say the Rebbe's standards were even higher than the-

33:40 Speaker 1 Well, well, it's hard to-

33:41 Speaker 2 Than the typical philosopher.

33:41 Speaker 1 It's hard to say. The Rambam-- The Rebbe would argue that his, that his standards, that the Rambam and his standards are, are extremely similar. Um, you know, but, uh-

33:52 Speaker 2 It's not a, it's not a, not so apparent.

33:53 Speaker 1 Uh, the, the-- Put it this way. Uh, put it this way. There's no question in my mind that to the, that, that to the Rebbe there was... In other words, it wasn't an absolute-- There was no, there was no metzias that science proved that contradicted the way he understood Torah, right?

34:13 Speaker 2 But is that, is that an act of simplistic belief, or is it the contrary? Another way of looking at it is that the Rebbe-

34:18 Speaker 1 The answer, the answer is it's, it's both

34:19 Speaker 2 ... the, the, the Rebbe's belief in Torah was so radical that, that, like, the literal, the literal understanding of Torah can be at once simplistic and also radical.

34:33 Speaker 1 But I think-

34:33 Speaker 2 Sometimes the most radical way of reading a posek is its most simple, right? Like-

34:39 Speaker 1 No, but I think that's exactly the point.

34:40 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

34:41 Speaker 1 That's exactly the point, that the, that the Rebbe combined a very s- a very, um, sophisticated approach to defend the tzimmesdiker reading of the Torah. The Rebbe's-

34:56 Speaker 2 Right

34:56 Speaker 1 ... you know, talk on science is extremely sophisticated and demonstrates incredible scientific knowledge.

35:02 Speaker 2 Right.

35:03 Speaker 1 But the point-- what he's defending is the tzimmes.

35:05 Speaker 2 Oh.

35:05 Speaker 1 In other words, instead of, instead of, of modifying the tzimmes with the intellectual, he deploys the whole intellectual arsenal to defend the tzimmes.

35:15 Speaker 2 Oh.

35:15 Speaker 1 And that's the great paradox, I think, of Chassidus Chabad.

35:18 Speaker 2 Very interesting.

35:19 Speaker 1 And, and, and of what the, and what the Reb- Rebbe asked of us. So, you know-

35:22 Speaker 2 So the idea is that it's not that you, you use your intellect, and then when it gets challenging, you retreat back to, you know, I don't know, childishness. It's I am going to protect this childlike wonder, so to speak.

35:34 Speaker 1 I'm gonna protect this, this is-

35:35 Speaker 2 Childlike wonder

35:36 Speaker 1 ... this essential-

35:36 Speaker 2 I'm never gonna let my intellect get me away from the purity of, of-

35:40 Speaker 1 No, because since the purity is the truth, my intellect is going to support that truth.

35:44 Speaker 2 It's gonna have to protect it.

35:45 Speaker 1 Right. "Ein mikomei ha'etzem im shutei" is-

35:47 Speaker 2 Right

35:48 Speaker 1 ... the, the, the verse doesn't leave its plain meaning. That's, that's true unless it's something like the hand of Hashem, which we know can't be the plain meaning, right?

35:56 Speaker 2 I mean, it seems to me, uh, this, like, uh, this kind of explains why the Rebbe spent so much time on the Rashi suches and the, and the, the, you know, the, the Ra- and, and insi- insisting that Rashi has to be teaching the poshat and the posek-

36:09 Speaker 1 And that it's not merely, he's not merely collecting midrashim. You know, the f-

36:12 Speaker 2 Like, all of, all of this intellectual exercise just to get back to we're talking literal... Like, we're not going to take an inch away. We're not gonna move an inch away from the literal.

36:22 Speaker 1 No, all this, all this intellectual work to get to the point of what the Ben Chamesh Lemikra understands and doesn't understand.

36:27 Speaker 2 Right.

36:27 Speaker 1 Yeah. And, uh, but when-- And again, because I, I think this goes to the whole, you know, the whole doctrine of tzimmes and, and it-- a- a- and, and Chassidus Chabad, you know, that ultimately it's the actual, you know, fact of the doing of the mitzvah that is the most profound connection to Hashem's being. And, you know, and that's a very, a very defined abs- absolute thing that, uh, that doesn't leave a lo- that, that, you know, isn't sophisticated and doesn't leave a lot of wiggle room and so on. You'll notice that, um, that, uh, that when it came to, when it came to Halakha, the Rebbe was extremely conservative.

37:07 Speaker 2 What do you mean?

37:09 Speaker 1 I mean that the Rebbe, the, the Rebbe was very strong about, about keeping Halacha in the greatest Hiddur, and, and, and the Rebbe did not, you know, the Rebbe fought against, you know, microphones and so on. There are those who, you know, you know, and so many other things. I mean, you know, the Rebbe was, the Rebbe was very skeptical about, about adoption because of the question of Yichud, you know?

37:30 Speaker 2 Right.

37:31 Speaker 1 You know, um, it-- the Rebbe was extremely conservative-

37:34 Speaker 2 Right

37:35 Speaker 1 ... when it came-- The one exception which deserves its own discussion that I haven't sufficiently developed yet is when it came that even though, uh, and the Rebbe explains himself in, in the Sichof Emor Taf Shenun, the Mugdi Ke Sicha. But when it comes to women learning, the Rebbe was extremely radical. The Rebbe negated everything the Alter Rebbe had to say on the topic.

37:57 Speaker 2 Right.

37:57 Speaker 1 Everything said in Shulchan Aruch, everything that all the Gedolei Yisrael said, women have to learn. They have to be be- they have to be bakium on the level with their husbands in Kollel. Shas and Poskim and-

38:09 Speaker 2 Right

38:09 Speaker 1 ... and, and Chassidus. You look at that Sicha, it's, it's amazing stuff. It's the basis of this organization, Bat Sheva, which you might have heard of-

38:15 Speaker 2 Right

38:15 Speaker 1 ... which does a lot of incredible work with- within Chabad, a very high level of learning for women. So there's certain things-- And the same thing with Afartza. When it came to things like public menorah lightings, there's questions about the Brachos. When it came to questions putting on tefillin whom people might not have washed their hands and so on. When it came to Afartza also, the Rebbe was extremely, um, how do I put it? Extremely creative when it came to Halacha.

38:39 Speaker 2 Right.

38:39 Speaker 1 But not when it came to any question of actual observance.

38:44 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

38:45 Speaker 1 You know, the Rebbe was extremely machpid about everything, right? I mean, look, this is-- It's a different world now than in, you know, and, and again, but, you know, the Rebbe was quite strong about not having mixed classes.

38:58 Speaker 2 In schools?

38:59 Speaker 1 No. Yeah. For adults.

39:01 Speaker 2 For-- Oh, even in, in, in-

39:02 Speaker 1 There's letters about this, Ari

39:03 Speaker 2 ... in Batí Chabad.

39:04 Speaker 1 Yeah. I mean, now, uh, look, I assume, you know, I assume someone figured out why they're allowed to do it, but there's a letter from the Rebbe from the sixties about not-- or the fifties about not doing that.

39:15 Speaker 2 Uh-huh.

39:15 Speaker 1 He says, "Only in Russia where, where circumstances were so difficult," you know. Um, and yeah, and, and I'm not the, the-- What, what I'm saying is, is that the, the, the, this Tumimus Yusabe, the Rebbe extended to a lot of things. Also, listen to the way he t- speaks to the children. That wasn't just him speaking to the children. That's the way he saw the world.

39:35 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

39:35 Speaker 1 If you look at the Rebbe's Sichas to the children.

39:38 Speaker 2 Right.

39:38 Speaker 1 Think of the 12 Psukim, which one could, one-

39:41 Speaker 2 So, so what, what is the, what is the relevant takeaway besides admiring the Rebbe's ability to hold these two to, uh, you know-

39:48 Speaker 1 But we need to. The-- we need-- The Rebbe, the Rebbe, the Rebbe-

39:51 Speaker 2 But how, but how-

39:51 Speaker 1 ... the Rebbe didn't hide it from us.

39:52 Speaker 2 What's a path-

39:52 Speaker 1 The Rebbe taught it to us

39:53 Speaker 2 ... what's a pathway? In your own experience, what's a pathway to, to, to holding the... Because these two things are in conflict with one another. On, on, on a, on a, on a, on a-

40:03 Speaker 1 I, I think they're, I think they're in-

40:05 Speaker 2 They're in an apparent conflict with one another

40:07 Speaker 1 So what I'm telling you is I think this is one of the great, and again, this is my, my meshugaas, so take it or leave it, but I think this is one of the great purposes of Chassidus Chabad. Think about all the Mimarim, you know, that, that, you know-

40:20 Speaker 2 This talk less to me

40:21 Speaker 1 Think about all the Mimarim, okay? Whose ultimate purpose is to explain the milah of Amon HaBshuta or the minah of the Eved Poshet or the milah of the Mitzvas Maasiyas and, and, and so on. Or even, or even the, you know, even the, even the-- Like the Rebbe talks about why the Aravah was the big deal in the, in the Beis Hamikdash, that you truly see the value of the essence of a Jew in someone who doesn't have much-

40:50 Speaker 2 Right

40:50 Speaker 1 ... Torah or mitzvahs and so on. You know, um, so a lot of-- That's the role of Chassidus. Chassidus teaches us to use our minds to, um, to be able to em- to embrace and treasure the Tumimus, and then you have it.

41:06 Speaker 2 You-- So you think this is something that can come through learning itself?

41:09 Speaker 1 Oh, I think-- Uh, look, I think there has to be, again, Chassidus Chabad costs a lot in Kabbalah. So look, it's, it's a very basic idea that if you, you know, it's in Kirkyov.

41:19 Speaker 2 'Cause the challenge for me about Tumimus is that it seems like Tumimus is something like, like a, like, it's like a state of being. Like you're, you're, I, you know, you say a Tumimus Diki, like that's just how a person is.

41:30 Speaker 1 Yeah, but I-- But it's-

41:31 Speaker 2 The, the, the, the more you spend in your, your head trying to get to Tumimus, in a way, the, the further away you're going.

41:37 Speaker 1 No, no. I think it's something that, that you, that you, that you develop. That's the whole thing with the Temur Seder telling this, this, uh, big Talmud Chacham to learn Sanhedrin and so on. No. I think, I, I think-

41:48 Speaker 2 So you, you can develop it?

41:49 Speaker 1 Yeah. I mean, think like the, for example, um, the Rebbe's, uh, the Rebbe's insistence, you know, about the Shiurim of Chumash, Tehillim, and Tanya. You know, Chumash, Rashi, and Tehillim, you know-

42:00 Speaker 2 Right

42:00 Speaker 1 ... for, for all this, you know, for all the big intellectuals the Rebbe wanted to develop. But the Rebbe was very insistent about-

42:06 Speaker 2 Yeah

42:06 Speaker 1 ... those things. And more than that-

42:08 Speaker 2 And Altis Kashas also, right?

42:10 Speaker 1 And, and, and, yeah

42:10 Speaker 2 Like Altis Takana, the free Dikeva.

42:12 Speaker 1 Yeah, but, but more than that, I'll tell you, I always say that the biggest expression of, of Kabbalah so that we experience every year, every three years as Chassidim, is reading through the table of contents of the Mishneh Torah and the Shiurim of Rambam. The Rebbe insists 'cause the Rambam-- I mean, there's no greatest Kabbalah certain than just reading that list. I mean, there's like-

42:32 Speaker 2 Yeah

42:32 Speaker 1 ... there's, there's, there's nothing-- I mean, yeah, you can, you can be Medayek and so on, but you're reading that whole list because the Rebbe said to read it because the Rebbe felt it's part of the Shleimus of Torah, okay? The Rebbe trained us, um, in Tumimus. And I think also, like where, where the Rebbe took these positions, uh, with regards to scientific matters and with regards to, to various communal matters, the Rebbe took very strong Tumimus Dike positions that otherwise, if left on our own, we would have, uh, we would have, um, we would have probably, you know, bent to a more modern approach, you know?

43:09 Speaker 2 Right. So y-y-y-- this is a subject that I know you're very involved in this, the, the, the world of science and, and, and, and, and Yiddishkeit, how it goes together.

43:17 Speaker 1 But I, but I just wanna say that, that, that the point is, is that, is that if you, i-if you start with the, with the, with the thing, "Okay, here's an idea in Yiddishkeit, let's understand it." I accept the idea of naso venishma, the way-

43:31 Speaker 2 Right

43:31 Speaker 1 ... the Rebbe understands naso venishma. So my point is all of Chassidus Chabad, in my opinion, is there to give us to get our brains, and our emotions, and our beings along with the tumimus. So the fundamental fact that I ha- that I have to do what Hashem wants, that I, you know, that I have to do things, you know, the way, the way is set down in, in the case of Chassidim by the Rebbe and so on. And, um, you know, uh, there, there are so, there are so many, there are so many things, you know. I mean, there are so many e-areas of Halakha, I mean, you know, that the Rebbe was very strong on, that there are plenty of fine, great Jews who would've been happy to fudge or be more lenient or so on.

44:14 Speaker 2 Right.

44:15 Speaker 1 Um, so no, so I think a lot of Chassidus Chabad is explaining the maaseh, maaseh b'pnim and the ma'alot tumimus, and I think tumimus is something that, that you, that you, uh, that you develop. I think it's something that's developable. Um, and more than that, I, I don't know that it, it comes intellectually, but it can be supported intellectually.

44:36 Speaker 2 So have you b- you know, this, you're, you're very into this field of science-

44:39 Speaker 1 Yeah

44:39 Speaker 2 ... and ter and how they work or don't work together. Um, have you found that the Rebbe's approach is something that you can replicate on your own? Like, not just the subjects where the Rebbe has an obvi- has a, you know, a, a, an, a, a open and obvious take.

44:58 Speaker 1 Well-

44:58 Speaker 2 But let's say another subject where the Rebbe didn't speak about it. Are you able to replicate that approach in an, uh, with, with intellectual honesty?

45:06 Speaker 1 It, it's, it-it's hard to replicate because on one hand, the Rebbe stood very strongly on certain things. On the other hand, um, on the other hand, like with, with regards to the twentieth-century advances, like relativity and quantum mechanics and so on, the Rebbe was very embracing, um, these, these new, these new ideas and saw them as, as matching Yiddishkeit better than the old deterministic science.

45:32 Speaker 2 Right.

45:33 Speaker 1 You know, so honestly, a lot of what I liked is I'm not a scientist, but a lot of what I deal with, a lot of what I think about, a lot of what I try to teach has to do actually with the way that advances in scientific thinking, um, really, uh, really dovetail with the Rebbe's teaching. Here's a good example, something very, very new. Um, there's a lymphatic system in the brain, um, literally, you know, channels of, of fluids that, that help maintain the brain. One of the reasons human-- uh, recent discovery, about maybe the last year or two, why do human beings need to sleep, and why do we make bad judgments when we're sleep-deprived? Because when we sleep, the lymphatic system in the brain starts flushing out, um, various, uh, neurotransmitting chemicals and so on, things that are, you know, sort of we spent all day thinking. We're all-- we have all these experiences using our brains, and it gets clogged up. You need to, you need to, you need to flush out, you know, some of these chemicals and that like so the new chemical connections can be made tomorrow, and your, your brain will work properly.

46:41 Speaker 2 Right.

46:41 Speaker 1 'Cause there's, you know, a lot of chemical stuff going on in the brain.

46:44 Speaker 2 Sure.

46:44 Speaker 1 So there's a ma'amar from tof shin chaf beis or chaf gimel, Yitzhak Kislev ma'amar. The Rebbe explains that the purpose of sleep is that a person is involved in all kinds of nareshkeit and so on, and when you sleep, he says even if you don't have lofty chalomos, part of the purpose of dreaming is to flush out all the, all the empty, useless stuff so you can better serve Hashem in the morning. So what you see there is the Rebbe's anticipating on a spiritual way a precise physical, uh, phenomenon taking place in the brain that no one knew about for another sixty years. I mean, that's, that's just, you know, one of the-- th-that's just one of the, uh, o-one, one, one e- one example. But then, like, for example, very seminal sicha. You know, if you wanna understand the Rebbe and science, you have to read n- the second sicha in Noah chelek tes vav about the six hundredth year of the life of Noah, the, the, you know, the windows of above and the, uh, and the, uh, you know, the rulay shomayim and the ma'ayanot hatam, right? Chassidus and modern science and, and one of the things the Rebbe says there, the Rebbe starts talking about relativity. He says that it's not just a mashal. He says the fact that everything is ultimately one thing, energy, right? That's the premise of relativity. Ultimately, everything is energy in different forms. They recently discovered the particle that allows energy to become matter, the Higgs

48:09 Speaker 1 boson, right? Um, so, uh, so the, um, so the, so the Rebbe says this isn't merely a mashal. The Rebbe doesn't-- the, the Rebbe makes the point. He says this is an actual manifestation of the ein od milvado. In other words, the fact that physically everything is made of energy is a manifestation of the yachdus that exists up to the highest levels, which is a very radical, and talk about radical, very radical idea. But my point is, is that the Rebbe sees, uh, genuine advances in science as opposed to those things that-- You know, a lot of the things that the, the Rebbe objects to are basically scientists saying, "Since I refuse to accept the idea of God or the idea of Bria, this is the best answer I can come up with about the origin of things."

48:56 Speaker 2 Right. A-an attack-

48:57 Speaker 1 But, but-

48:57 Speaker 2 An attack on s-- using intellect to attack sincerity as opposed to-

49:00 Speaker 1 Right. But the Rebbe's point, the Rebbe's point was is that, you know, the existence of a God and the Torah and so on are historical facts and logical ideas that should be folded into the discussion. There shouldn't be a divide between science and Torah, science and religion, because they're all part of a single truth, and that was the Rebbe's thing, that everything is part of a single truth. Again, I, I highly-- you know, anyone who's not read that sicha recently, to read it, you know, with a fine-tooth comb and being medayek in every word and every R is an incredibly important sicha. It's like I feel it's like, you know, a really seminal sicha to understand the Re-- a key to unlock the Rebbe's whole approach to so many things.

49:40 Speaker 2 Hmm. So let's get to your-- let's get back to your story. I know I took you on a tangent here, although it's fascinating, um, a very fascinating tangent, in my opinion. But, um, let's go back to your story. You, um-

49:56 Speaker 1 So I, so I-

49:56 Speaker 2 You, you, you said you, you, you, your family lived in Maine until, until you didn't, and then you moved to Crown Heights?

50:01 Speaker 1 Well, so then we were in Crown Heights briefly, then we were in Los Angeles for three years, at which point I already went away to yeshiva. Then my family moved back, moved to Crown Heights. My father got a principal position in a school in, uh, first in New Jersey, then, then Westchester, and he ultimately ended up doing kashrus. But we, you know, we moved to Crown Street, and we've been there ever since.

50:22 Speaker 2 What was it like to come to Crown Heights at that time in your life? Oh, so when was this? This was the eighties?

50:28 Speaker 1 Yeah. Well, it was seventy-nine, eighty. But I, I already knew Crown Heights, uh, you know, with all its milas and hasmanas because there was no online school, 'cause there was no internet in my time. So-

50:39 Speaker 2 No kidding. I, I... Even I'm that old.

50:42 Speaker 1 So they-

50:43 Speaker 2 Even I grew up without the internet

50:44 Speaker 1 ... so they, so they sent me-- They-- So when I was eight years old, and my only yachidus with the Rebbe, 'cause the year of my bar mitzvah was the year of the Rebbe's heart attack, so I didn't get yachidus that year. The only yachidus is I went in with my family. I remember I went into the Rebbe's room much later for one of my son's bar-- aliyas, you know, bar mitzvah mincha, you know. And, um, I was shocked at how low the Rebbe's table was, 'cause the last time I had stood by the Rebbe's table, it came up to my nose.

51:10 Speaker 2 Oh, you hadn't gone in the room since?

51:11 Speaker 1 Right. Hadn't been in the room since I was eight years old.

51:13 Speaker 2 On purpose?

51:14 Speaker 1 No. I, I had no reason to go. At some point, uh, at some point, you know, they opened the room up for b- for davening and so on, you know-

51:21 Speaker 2 Right

51:22 Speaker 1 ... after Gimmel Tammuz and whatever. But, you know, so it would be the mid-- it was already the late Nuns, so, you know, it's a long time from-

51:29 Speaker 2 Oh, I see

51:29 Speaker 1 ... from when I was eight years old.

51:30 Speaker 2 I see. So a while ago. Okay, a while ago already.

51:31 Speaker 1 So it was the only time, so I'm-- so I, I remember 'cause my mother kept pulling me back 'cause I kept leaning on the Rebbe's desk. Um, but at any rate, and they were all speaking in Yiddish, which I didn't understand at the time. So basically, the Rebbe said that I should go to, I should go to day camp for a year-- for two summers, and then they can send me away. I should get used to being away from home. So the Rebbe sent me to Oheli Torah Day Camp.

51:55 Speaker 2 This is when your family already lived in Crown Heights?

51:57 Speaker 1 No, we were in Maine.

51:58 Speaker 2 In Maine. So you went to-

51:58 Speaker 1 I went away from home. When I was nine years old, I went, I went-

52:01 Speaker 2 So what does it mean to go to day camp to get used to going away from-- uh, before you went to school?

52:05 Speaker 1 I stayed-- Yeah, I stayed by, I stayed by my grandparents.

52:07 Speaker 2 Before you went to school?

52:08 Speaker 1 Right.

52:08 Speaker 2 I see.

52:09 Speaker 1 So I, I stayed by my, by my grandparents, by my cousins-

52:12 Speaker 2 Right

52:12 Speaker 1 ... uh, for two summers. And then, um, and then, then I, uh-

52:17 Speaker 2 So Rebbe told your parents to-

52:18 Speaker 1 Yeah

52:18 Speaker 2 ... let you acclimate to leaving home.

52:20 Speaker 1 Right. And then, then from nine-- It, it wasn't easy being away from home and, you know, being-

52:25 Speaker 2 Yeah

52:25 Speaker 1 ... you know, being, being-

52:26 Speaker 2 I have experience

52:27 Speaker 1 ... be, you know, being, being a kid from Maine, you know. You understand that, that, that the Crown Heights kids, you know, use their hands a lot. And, and, um, and in all my years in school in Maine, you know, I was there through fourth grade, I never-- This may not be true of-- but it's true of our Jewish day school, I never saw a kid lift up a hand to another kid.

52:48 Speaker 2 Yeah.

52:48 Speaker 1 Never. I remember, um, I remember, uh, you know, a member, Rabbi Tennenbaum, who was the, was, you know, was officially the Mesifta principal, but he was the principal of the whole yeshi- of the whole yeshiva in Ocean Parkway at the time. So I remember he saw I looked a little bit lost, you know, one year, one day, so he, so he takes me, you know. Only the teachers used the elevator, so he take me to the elevator, took me to his office, and asked what's going on. So I said, "You know, you know, um, the, these, these, these Crown Heights kids, you know, they, they fight with each other, they call each other names, and so on. You know, where I come from, they never did that." So I remember what he told me. I don't know if it's a good answer or not, but he said, "Look." He says, "Look, the kids you went to school with, you know, a lot of them," you know, he says, "a lot of them weren't frum," which is true, you know. So he says, "Look, they, they didn't always eat kosher. They didn't always keep Shabbos. Yetzer Hara field day with them. These kids, they keep Shabbos, they keep kosher. What's the Yetzer Hara gonna get them? So the Yetzer Hara tells them to, to be nasty to each other." I don't know if that was a good answer, but at least he understood, you know, where I was coming from. I never forgot that. Um, you

53:56 Speaker 1 know. Um, but-

53:59 Speaker 2 Sounds a little bit okay.

54:00 Speaker 1 Might be mid for it, but the, the point was that he bothered to-- that he saw a kid, you know-

54:05 Speaker 2 Right

54:05 Speaker 1 ... you know, looked a little bit lost, and he, you know. But, um, so I was in, uh, I was in yeshiva in, in Ocean Parkway, uh, basically until, uh, through the beginning of Mesifta, and then, then I went to Los Angeles, so my family moved to Los Angeles. My father was there at the high school for a few years. Then they moved back to Crown Heights, but by then I was already, you know, I was already in, in-- I was already in Yeshiva Gedola by then.

54:27 Speaker 2 Right. So what, what, what was it like to-- when you first came to Crown Heights or as a bachur, whatever time, uh, whatever, whatever part of the story you feel is, is, is-

54:36 Speaker 1 Well, as a, as a child coming to Crown Heights, you know, it's almost like the Native Americans got all these diseases. You know, I came from Maine, from which was extremely, extremely pristine environment, you know, from little town, you know, Portland. Uh, uh, the first year I was there, I was sick. Like, I was sick every other week.

54:52 Speaker 2 Oh, you mean literal diseases?

54:53 Speaker 1 Physical, yeah.

54:54 Speaker 2 I thought you were talking about meta- like metaphorical.

54:56 Speaker 1 No. Mom, it was physical. I was, you know-- So that was-- I missed so many days of school. I was like-

55:00 Speaker 2 Right

55:01 Speaker 1 ... you know, I, I-- You name it, I caught it that year. Um, and, uh, you know, and, uh, but, uh-

55:07 Speaker 2 What about the metaphorical?

55:09 Speaker 1 The, the metaphorical? Look, look, I wasn't-- I w- you know, Crown, you know, um, Crown, you know, Crown Heights was, you know, was a little bit smellier and dirtier than I was used to, and-

55:19 Speaker 2 No, I'm talking about, like, uh, like the cultural kind of-

55:22 Speaker 1 Cultural. Kids were-- Look, kids were rougher. They, they're, you know, they, they, they, they argued a lot. They fought a lot. They-

55:28 Speaker 2 Yeah. Okay. Let's, uh, drill a bit deeper. What about, like, f- you know, Lubavitch-

55:32 Speaker 1 Well, on, on, on the-

55:33 Speaker 2 It's one thing to be a Lubavitcher when you're the only Lubavitch family. And so you had r- you had a pristine identity, I mean.

55:38 Speaker 1 Right. Yeah, because my fa-

55:39 Speaker 2 That's the thing about-

55:39 Speaker 1 ... father and mother were very Chassidish, and-

55:41 Speaker 2 And that's all you had to see. Everyone else wasn't Lubavitch.

55:43 Speaker 1 Right. I never saw someone talk during davening-

55:45 Speaker 2 Right

55:45 Speaker 1 ... and every, uh, yeah.

55:46 Speaker 2 What was it like? What was it like? Uh, let's drill a bit deeper. What was it like to get to Crown Heights and see that?

55:51 Speaker 1 Well, you know what? I, I didn't notice-- I, I only began to notice that, you know, much later, um, because my world was mostly the kids, you know. So I noticed, uh- You know, so I noticed, you know, the way the kids behaved, you know. You know, on the, on the, you know, on the other hand, you know, I had a lot of good teachers, and a lot of the elder Hasidim were around then. I didn't understand a word of a Farbrengen, but, you know, being at the Farbrengen, you know, was, was a, you know, was an experience. And you clearly, uh, you know, the Rebbe was clearly something, you know, unique and special.

56:25 Speaker 2 Well, how old were you then?

56:27 Speaker 1 So I came to Crown Heights when I was nine.

56:29 Speaker 2 So you're nine years old, you're standing through a whole Farbrengen that you didn't understand?

56:32 Speaker 1 Not, not, not a, not a whole-- Well, I-- It's only when I started living in Crown Heights I started going to Farbrengens.

56:37 Speaker 2 So how old were you then?

56:39 Speaker 1 So, uh, so I was-- So the first year I was away, I stayed... That's funny 'cause East Flatbush became a Chabad neighborhood again. But then there was, like, the last Jewish family in East Flatbush, the Bookchts, if you remember them. Chaim Aryeh Bookcht, olive hashalom.

56:50 Speaker 2 I don't remember the-

56:50 Speaker 1 The father of all the Bookchts.

56:51 Speaker 2 I know, I know a bunch of his sons, yeah.

56:52 Speaker 1 Right. Yeah. So gr- tremendous, uh, tremendous. I can still hear his voice. You know, he used to wake us up in the morning. I stayed in the room with one of his-

57:01 Speaker 2 Oh, you stayed by the Bookchts?

57:02 Speaker 1 Stayed by his-- Yeah, that's where I stayed when there was no dorm for nine-year-olds.

57:06 Speaker 2 Right.

57:06 Speaker 1 Yeah. "Haskeh, Haskeh," in a Polish accent. "Haskeh, Haskeh, lavoy, des a boy." I still remember him.

57:12 Speaker 2 He used to wake up his kids that way?

57:13 Speaker 1 Yeah. He was, he's a very special person, a very holy person, I think. Um, so, uh, no, so I was there, and then, then I later stayed in Crown Heights, um, by another family. So once I was in Crown Heights, I started going to Farbrengen. So the truth is, you know, I, I, I sort of sat under a bench, and as the years went on, I began to understand more and more. But you saw the Rebbe a lot, and you got dimes from the Rebbe. You know, the Rebbe would give out tzedakah. And, you know, and obviously, being around the Rebbe was a very, uh, a very powerful, uh, a very powerful thing.

57:46 Speaker 2 For a kid who didn't understand what the Rebbe was saying, it was powerful?

57:50 Speaker 1 Yeah. The, yeah, there's a presence, you know. You know, and b- you know, and, um-

57:54 Speaker 2 Yeah, but a kid, kids, kids are not usually searching for presence. They're usually searching-

57:58 Speaker 1 You just, yeah, yeah

57:58 Speaker 2 ...for a presence with, with the T.

58:00 Speaker 1 Everyone went running when the Rebbe came in. All the kids, you know, all the kids were, were very e-engrossed in the Rebbe at the time.

58:09 Speaker 2 Right.

58:09 Speaker 1 Everyone stood, you know. Everyone wanted to see the Rebbe, you know. And everyone was every, you know-

58:14 Speaker 2 But where did you get that from?

58:15 Speaker 1 The people had-

58:15 Speaker 2 'Cause you grew up in Maine. You didn't grow up-

58:17 Speaker 1 Um, the Rebbe was-

58:17 Speaker 2 No one taught this to you.

58:18 Speaker 1 The Rebbe was a presence in my house. You know, my father, my mother always talking about the Rebbe, you know.

58:22 Speaker 2 Right.

58:23 Speaker 1 The, the Rebbe was a huge presence in, in, in our home. We were Lubavitchers after all.

58:27 Speaker 2 Right.

58:28 Speaker 1 You know? Remember a lot of things. There was no, there was no Chol Hamoed Israel. Uh, the newest nearest Chol Hamoed Israel was, like, in New York. So my father, you know, he used to go to a-- He used to take me five in the morning to go to a farm when the, uh, when the, you know, when the receptacle for the milk was empty, and it was cleaned out. So he would get the first milking and put it in bottles, and we'd bring it home. I remember going-- We'd-- It's very funny because not long before he was niftar, a few years before we went up there, and the, the old-- the mamone of the farmer was still there, and she still remembered us. It was, uh... But I remember, you know-- So I remember, like, you know, the sort of the mesira. You know, everyone else, you-- The other Frum Yidden at the point, there were a lot of Frum people in the community, but we're the only ones who ate Chol Hamoed Israel. So Chol Hamoed Israel, Pascha Israel, you know, and, you know, it's like, you know, if you didn't, you know, we made our own bread. You know, it was whatever. It was, uh, y-you-- The Lubavitch identity was very strong, not to mention, you know, all the Chabad Sfarim. I-- You know, no matter how early I got up in the morning, my father was up learning Hasidus, you know. Um, my father, he never called it Avodah. They called

59:32 Speaker 1 it Arichos. My father davened by Arichos his whole life. So Shabbos, we never ate before two, three o'clock. He'd sit in the little shul. It was like all the American shuls have a big shul and a little shul. So he'd sit in the little shul till two, three o'clock davening, you know. And I remember, you know, as a little kid sitting next to him, you know-

59:49 Speaker 2 He went to yeshiva, your father? He went to Lubavitch yeshiva?

59:51 Speaker 1 Yes. My-- So that's the Bnei Akiva angle. So when-

59:55 Speaker 2 Oh, yeah

59:55 Speaker 1 ...he was in Sheffield, um, Bnei Akiva started up in the, in the late fifties in England. And there was a group from Sheffield, Manchester, a group of, of boys and girls who, you know, they, they were mecharev them, Bnei Akiva. It was a, it was a Frum organization, a Zionist org- But there were no yeshivas in Israel then for English speakers.

1:00:13 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

1:00:14 Speaker 1 You know, it was not-- There was no year in Israel thing. So they encouraged people to go to yeshiva. So my father ended up in one Litvish yeshiva, another Litvish yeshiva. Then he met, uh, the first Lubavitchers in, in, in England. Uh, uh, Mul Liberov and Arendov Suffrin were there, and they had a, the first overnight camp, and my father was, like, the cook, a maintenance man at the overnight camp. And then he, he learned Hasidus with Mul Liberov, and later, I think with Nachman Sudak a little bit. And so when he asked his Lit- Rabbi Raklav, who was the Rosh Yeshiva in Chaim, whether he should go to Ponevezh or should go to Lubavitch, he says he thinks that, you know, his neshama will be happier in Lubavitch.

1:00:53 Speaker 2 So it was Rosh Yeshiva-

1:00:54 Speaker 1 Litvish Rosh Yeshiva, yeah. He was the head of, uh, Godus Israel in, in, in Europe. Uh, but it's Mentsian Raklav, Chayyi, and I met him once, a very special Jew. But at any rate, so my father came to seven seventy. And then there's the famous story I tell many times that Farbrengens, his first yechidas. My father's birthday is Yud Nissan. So he went into yechidas the day before Yud Aleph Nissan, the night before. And, um, you know, you give the Rebbe a list of questions when you go into yechidas. So one of them was he was very perturbed. This was, uh, you know, this was a, uh, a talk about Shpitz Chabad, is, you know, if you, you know, you can, you can imagine who was in seven seventy in Tuf Shin Yud Tes, in Tuf Shin Chuf. You know, all the first-- You know, all the, the Russians, you know.

1:01:39 Speaker 2 I'm related to some of them.

1:01:41 Speaker 1 Yeah, I understand that, you know. I understand that. I'm just not gonna, you know, I, I'm not gonna mention any names.

1:01:47 Speaker 2 It's okay.

1:01:48 Speaker 1 But, but he was very perturbed 'cause all these people were always saying very unpleasant things about Misnagdim. So he wrote-- So he went to the Rebbe, um, and, and he wrote that, you know, he learned by the Misnagdim, and they're fine Jews. Why is everyone giving them a hard time? So the Rebbe got very serious, and the Rebbe told him-- And there are many interpretations over the years from h- my father's children and grandchildren, grandchildren-in-law about this. But the Rebbe told him sort of with a niggun. The Rebbe told him, "Heint is nisht doch kemisnagdim. Di eintzige misnaged is der vef zeynt tsi tung far in davening." Which probably means Twitter too.

1:02:30 Speaker 2 Good one. Yeah. I, I, I could tell you, uh, we'll see how long it lasts, but my life has taken a wonderful change for the better since I instituted... It's only a few weeks old, but, uh, in the morning, the first thing I do is I, is I learn Chitas, and I don't look at Twitter until I'm done Chitas and davening.

1:02:51 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

1:02:52 Speaker 2 And I don't even do it so much for kedusha reasons, although maybe it is in a way. I do it partially for mental health reasons. Like, it's, it-- the whole day changes when you, uh, when you don't contaminate your, your... It's just your mind starts... You know, they have, you know, they, they've shown it m- they've shown it, um, in papers that your mind just gets rattled when that's how you start your day with news and whatever.

1:03:14 Speaker 1 Yeah, anyway, so the, the Rebbe anticipated that. But- ... you know, the idea is that a, that, that, that a, that a Chassid is someone, you know, the Aibishter comes first, you know?

1:03:22 Speaker 2 Right.

1:03:23 Speaker 1 Um, but also, uh, at one of the dorms, they used to, they used to-- someone had a subscription. He used to get a newspaper delivered, so my father vents, you know, maybe some of the Bochurim were looking at the newspaper before davening. Whatever.

1:03:35 Speaker 2 Right.

1:03:35 Speaker 1 Um, but, uh, yeah, so that's, you know, so my father spent a bunch of years in seven seventy, and then he married my mother, and then he went to, then he went, then he went to, then he went to Maine.

1:03:45 Speaker 2 So your father picked up in those few years the, the sense of davening by-- You said-

1:03:50 Speaker 1 Yeah

1:03:50 Speaker 2 ... apave the beparechos and-

1:03:52 Speaker 1 I mean, everyone in Lubavitch, you know, was into with it. So my father, his whole life, like whenever he-- all the kosher places he went to, there was a Jew. He brought the matzah before Pesach 'cause in the late yud to early kafs, the big mitzvah was giving out matzah.

1:04:06 Speaker 2 Right.

1:04:06 Speaker 1 Shmurah matzah for Pesach. Well, again, he was very, very big on shmurah matzah. Um, another example of, of the Rebbe's-

1:04:12 Speaker 2 Handmade shmu-

1:04:12 Speaker 1 You know-

1:04:12 Speaker 2 Handmade shmurah matzah

1:04:13 Speaker 1 ... yeah, dafka, which, you know, again, we can argue f- Yeah.

1:04:15 Speaker 2 No, 'cause peop- the, the, there were people in the country who argued that shmurah matzah machine is, machine shmurah matzah-

1:04:21 Speaker 1 Right

1:04:21 Speaker 2 ... is better.

1:04:22 Speaker 1 So the Rebbe was very big on the handmade matzah and-

1:04:24 Speaker 2 Right

1:04:24 Speaker 1 ... and, you know, but, um, nobody picked up a lot of things. Uh, you know, he picked up, uh, you know, he was always a yirat shamayim. He was, you know, someone very careful with, uh, with mitzvahs and so on. Um, you know, uh, but, you know, growing up within Maine, yeah, it was, it was a pristine environment because the only-- I know everyone else. They're Frum, but they're not Lubavitch, you know?

1:04:47 Speaker 2 Right.

1:04:47 Speaker 1 It's like when I went to-- There were a few Frum people. I went to the Francis. I could eat from the fleishig geckelim but not from the milchig geckelim. Fleishig geckelim were fine. Milchig geckelim, chalav akum. You know, I'm saying, so you, you, you grew up, you know, with a very pristine sense. I understood that a Chassid davens, davens barechos and is very, you know, and, and learns Chassidus every day and, you know, and, you know, and then, you know, and, uh, you know, and spends a lot of time learning and-

1:05:12 Speaker 2 Right

1:05:12 Speaker 1 ... and, and, and so on, you know?

1:05:15 Speaker 2 Right.

1:05:15 Speaker 1 So yeah. So there, there's no question that, uh, that, um, that, you know, that, you know-- I mean, he-- I even noticed, you know, that, uh, that it was actually, you know, harder to maintain Chassidus standards with my children when, uh, we moved to Boston, and the kids were going to yeshiva with lots of other Lubavitchers and shluchim's kids than when we were in West Hartford, and basically, other than one other family of shluchim, everyone wasn't shluchim.

1:05:41 Speaker 2 Right.

1:05:42 Speaker 1 So everyone-- So you know my, uh, so my kids know, you know, we're different.

1:05:46 Speaker 2 Right.

1:05:46 Speaker 1 It's harder when you're the same, and there's, uh, and there are different levels of, of behavior.

1:05:52 Speaker 2 Yeah. It ki- it ki- it kind of ties a little bit back to the, the struggle between, uh, you know, the standardized frumkeit and the individual tzimmes, right? Where the two, in a way, are in conflict with one another, which is why I think-

1:06:07 Speaker 1 But on the, on the other hand, I have to say that one of the things that really moved me is, you know, is that at the time in Crown Heights, you had a lot of-- There was the first big wave of baal teshuva.

1:06:19 Speaker 2 Right.

1:06:19 Speaker 1 And you met people who came from very far away backgrounds and, you know, who really gave up a great deal-

1:06:25 Speaker 2 Right

1:06:25 Speaker 1 ... um, from the perspective of the Nefesh Berehones to be Frum, and that, that was, that was-- And, and Chassidim, and that was a, that was a very, that was a ve- that was a very powerful positive influence.

1:06:38 Speaker 2 Look, uh, ulti- ultimately, you need to have, you need to have a community, right? There, there's no-- There's-- They-- Uh, what, what was it? Tzidur is insistence that you need tzadikim v'rashaim, benim and rashaim, right? And, and, and, and we're not saying that the baal teshuv- that the baal teshuvas are the rashaim. It could, it could be the opposite, if anything, right? But my, my point is that, that y- that Tzidur insists on diversity and, and, and differences, and there are challenges that come with that because a community, by definition, will insist on certain norms, right? One, one of the reasons that we have these norms of Halakhic frumkeit is in order to eat-

1:07:16 Speaker 1 Well, even, even-

1:07:17 Speaker 2 In order to eat, to eat in each other's homes, right?

1:07:19 Speaker 1 Even nor- even norms, uh, within, within Lubavitch, though-

1:07:22 Speaker 2 But, uh, but like Halakhic norms are in many ways there to allow for people to eat in each other's homes, like-

1:07:27 Speaker 1 Right

1:07:27 Speaker 2 ... right? To, to, to how do we, how do we trust each other? How do we c- how do we il- interact with one another?

1:07:32 Speaker 1 Listen, I'm just saying-

1:07:33 Speaker 2 And so, and so you insist on conformity, but you still need to have that kind of individual sincerity, and it's, it's, uh, it's a challenge. It's, it's, it's a challenge. But you cannot escape it by saying, you know, "Everyone's gonna live in their own corner where they can define things for themselves."

1:07:49 Speaker 1 Well, obvio- obviously not. And yeah, and, and there are, you know, and there are some, there are some norms that, you know, some, you know, find more, more irritating than others. You know, in a certain point, you know, I found the extreme, you know, um, rigorousness about, you know, about what you should wear and what you shouldn't wear. I found it rather, you know, superficial. But on the other hand, it's like a uniform, and-

1:08:08 Speaker 2 Right

1:08:08 Speaker 1 ... now I'm involved with, with Aleph, with the military. You understand the idea of a uniform. So I've become more tolerant of things that I, I used to be, you know, rather indifferent to. Um-

1:08:21 Speaker 2 Interesting.

1:08:21 Speaker 1 And at the same-

1:08:22 Speaker 2 So you found the value in, in, in, in standards-

1:08:25 Speaker 1 There's a-

1:08:25 Speaker 2 And norms?

1:08:25 Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah, and I also wanna say that one of the, you know, that w- you know, there's a lot, you know, Chabadniks, you know, so they're always taking people in. There's, you know, tons of people doing mitzvah, tons-- And, and there's enormous amount of Chesed. You know, there's a lot of good things going on. You know, you complain about Chabad, but there's enormous amount of good-

1:08:43 Speaker 2 No, I'm not, I'm not f- I'm not trying to bash Chabad. It's the contrary. I, I think, I think one of the chall-- I think one of the, one of the challenges, if, if one wants to speak in that language, one of the challenges, contemporary challenges that Lubavitch faces today is that in many ways there's a lot of models of how to be a Hasid on, on an individual level. A shliach in a town. Th- people know how that works. Whether or not you're successful is up to you.

1:09:09 Speaker 1 I think, I think it's hard-

1:09:10 Speaker 2 But the, the community-

1:09:10 Speaker 1 I think it's harder for people, uh, living in the community is what I think.

1:09:13 Speaker 2 That's what I'm saying. And I-

1:09:14 Speaker 1 But I think that's-

1:09:15 Speaker 2 I think that's a new cha-- I think that's a challenge today-

1:09:17 Speaker 1 Yeah

1:09:17 Speaker 2 ... 'cause more and more people are staying in the communities, and staying there by choice, and there are more and more communities spread around the country.

1:09:23 Speaker 1 And, and there's a lot of, uh, and I can tell you, there's a lot of variety of what constitutes, you know, being a Chabadnik.

1:09:29 Speaker 2 Exactly.

1:09:29 Speaker 1 Ho-however, I would say that this is something that m- that we, we didn't m-miss the boat. We need to catch the boat on this, was the Rebbe was very big on there being Mashpi'im-

1:09:41 Speaker 2 Right

1:09:41 Speaker 1 ... for all the communities, and we never really did that. A lot-- You know, people ask me, you know, now, you know, that since, since Gimmel Tammuz, y-you need a Rebbe. I say, "No, the Rebbe gave us a hundred years more worth of work." What the Rebbe did in his nasius, the work he gave us, all the programs he gave us. Like for example, this thing with Bat Sheva, this whole thing about advanced learning for women. The Rebbe talked about it many times. It took, uh, it took a, a, a, um, a young woman, Rabbi Silverstein's daughter, is her name Shemtov now, Hadassah Shemtov, to, to make this or-- this, this movement.

1:10:12 Speaker 2 Right.

1:10:12 Speaker 1 And it's something the Rebbe spoke about many times and wanted it. So I'm saying there's a lot of things, there are a lot of things like that.

1:10:18 Speaker 2 Right.

1:10:19 Speaker 1 Um, you know, I, I think that C Kids and CTeen is really the, the vision that the Rebbe had what service Hashem was supposed to be, especially C Kids, right? You know, it took, you know, forty years.

1:10:30 Speaker 2 Right.

1:10:31 Speaker 1 But we're getting there. You know, so I think there's, you know, there's, there, there's a lot to be done and, you know, and, you know, the Rebbe wanted every-- You know, the Rebbe had a lot of demands about learning and so on. There are a lot of-

1:10:41 Speaker 2 Yeah, and p-p-people want more and it's like there's a, there's like four hundred Sefarim to get through, right?

1:10:47 Speaker 1 Yeah, and but, you know, um, yeah, but I, but I, I will say just as an aside, you know, though, when the, when you read one of the Rebbe's and he brings all these different sources-

1:10:58 Speaker 2 Right

1:10:58 Speaker 1 ... when you go through verticals-- One of-- That's the first thing I did with Bat Sheva. You know the ?

1:11:04 Speaker 2 Yeah.

1:11:04 Speaker 1 That famous ?

1:11:05 Speaker 2 Of course.

1:11:06 Speaker 1 So I went through all-- I went through with them, uh, over the course of a few weeks in the summer, all the that it's based on.

1:11:13 Speaker 2 Uh-huh.

1:11:13 Speaker 1 And when you go through the, the process vertically from the Alter Rebbe to the Rebbe, you get a much better insight and understanding. You know, like, like there's the, the, there's the um, uh, uh, in, of Peisayim from the, the, from the Rebbe. There's a based on the Rebbe's Zochan, which is based on the Rebbe Rash Peisayim, based on the Rebbe Rashab's-

1:11:38 Speaker 2 Samach

1:11:38 Speaker 1 ... Zochan Samach. Right. And but when you learn all four of those , you get a much better picture 'cause there's, like there's a lot of important Avedic things in the Rebbe's Mayim.

1:11:49 Speaker 2 There are variations in the parentheses.

1:11:52 Speaker 1 No, no, no, but the, the, uh, there's a lot of Aveda there that the Rebbe references and expects you to have learned the Rebbe's Mayim.

1:11:58 Speaker 2 Mm.

1:11:59 Speaker 1 And he really, Rebbe really hits really hard. Which brings me to something that I, that I, the, a, a pet idea of mine, um, about the Rebbe. The of the Rebbe, which I re-read since I'm seven years old, like every five years. Um, so the Rebbe's which originally, you know, serialized in the Tog Morgan Journal, which is a more not from, but a more right-wing Yiddish paper.

1:12:26 Speaker 2 Right.

1:12:26 Speaker 1 Basically for, you know, the, that second generation of still Yiddish-speaking Americans. Um, and as you know, it, it, it, it, you know, it starts with the Alter Rebbe's father and then zooms back three hundred years. It's, it's a real stream of consciousness, a very postmodern kind of work, really.

1:12:45 Speaker 2 Right.

1:12:45 Speaker 1 Um, but I believe that, I mean, again, and this the Rebbe's speaking Yiddish, but he's-- And the Rebbe had it translated to English very early, but the Rebbe's really speaking to contemporary American Jewry. But I think he's also speaking to Chabad, because I feel that in the the whole agenda of the Rebbe's Chabad is laid out. For instance, there's a tremendous amount about how the and so on, how they, uh, how they, um, how they, how they went out to people who were very ignorant and they, you know, and they learned with them, and they taught them, and so on.

1:13:28 Speaker 2 Right.

1:13:29 Speaker 1 But wait a second, but the Rebbe's, um, heroes, you know, there's a, there's the young man who, you know, who beats up the Goyim. They're, they're very capable. They grow things. They fix things. They spend a lot of time in nature. There's this beautiful thing about one of the older, the previous Baruchs, about how he experiences closeness to Hashem on this mountain with the sunsh-- You know, um, but all, uh, which is by the way, I think, you know, to a certain extent, this, this perception of within nature and so on, that is so big in the is something we're missing a little bit today, or maybe a lot of a bit.

1:14:07 Speaker 2 You think may-may-maybe that would help with some Tumus as well?

1:14:10 Speaker 1 Yes. But, but wait a second.

1:14:11 Speaker 2 A di- a direct connection to-

1:14:12 Speaker 1 But also the, but also the Rebbe makes a big point. All his heroes are people who the Goyim admire-

1:14:20 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm

1:14:20 Speaker 1 ... and the local Goyim appreciate.

1:14:22 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

1:14:22 Speaker 1 And they change their behavior because of them, anticipating the whole Sheva Mitzvot thing.

1:14:27 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

1:14:27 Speaker 1 And then you'll notice that the anti, before Misnagdim, they were anti, anti-Makubalym, anti-Nistarim. The anti-Nistarim don't want the women to learn.

1:14:37 Speaker 2 Right.

1:14:37 Speaker 1 But all the women who are heroes in are learned, because by the Hasidim, by the Nistarim, the women learn. So the whole idea of advanced learning for women is there. The whole idea of Afatza is there. The whole idea of Sheva Mitzvot is there.

1:14:52 Speaker 2 Yeah.

1:14:52 Speaker 1 Um, the, the, the various heroes of the Rebbe speak many languages. They're conversant mathematically and scientifically, and they use those things to serve Hashem. So the, you know, the Rebbe's whole thing. You know, and the way they're using agriculture and business, you know, to further the, you know, to as, as means of getting Jews well involved. You have Pesach, you have this, you have this, this Yid who was completely assimilated, came from France, is managing someone's estate, and he becomes a Ba'al Teshuvah, you know, and he uses the skills he learned, you know, to, to, you know, to, to, to, to, to serve Hashem. I mean, it's mamish a blueprint of what Chabad became under the Rebbe.

1:15:37 Speaker 3 Have you ever thought, tying this back to the idea of, of what you were saying earlier about the Rebbe's tumos, have you ever thought about the radical way-

1:15:46 Speaker 1 And by the way-

1:15:47 Speaker 3 The, that the Rebbe took-

1:15:47 Speaker 1 I wanna say one other thing.

1:15:49 Speaker 3 Sure.

1:15:49 Speaker 1 There's a story, I mean, there's a whole discussion with this in my, uh, part of this why you Yochei Kaliko discussion with this, that, you know, that there's a piece there. So remember, we're talking about Barak. We're talking about the Alter Rebbe's father, who was considered a big tzadik and so on. But there's a moment in his youth, you know, where he, he's walking in the snow and, and, you know, and he, and he, and he, and he comes, and he's, you know... And he can't make it back to his home. He was working for this almanah. So the almanah brings him into the house, you know, to, to rest, and he wakes up at night. And he realizes he's alone with her, and he has, he has thoughts of averos, and he runs, he runs out and, you know, rolls in the snow. But the point is, Fredy Krebber wasn't afraid to talk about the kinds of challenges that we don't talk about.

1:16:34 Speaker 3 Right.

1:16:34 Speaker 1 There's a lot there. There's a greatness bear-

1:16:37 Speaker 3 I mean-

1:16:37 Speaker 1 Reading very carefully.

1:16:38 Speaker 3 Right. That is-

1:16:39 Speaker 1 Very carefully

1:16:40 Speaker 3 ... fascinating. I mean, really, when you think about it, we, the two things that you mentioned are, are two sides of the same coin. It's, it's, it's, it's a, it's a, an acceptance of the, of the fullness of humanity, right? And, and, and, and an insistence as well that-

1:16:55 Speaker 1 But as a means that all those human things become part of the averos.

1:16:58 Speaker 3 Right. That's what I'm saying. It's an insistence that all those things are actually, uh, uh, are actually beneficial and, and, and, and, uh, they're bene-beneficial in the service of Hashem, right? You know, it's, it's interesting. It's interesting, even anecdotally from my own experience, you know, I, I tell stories for a living. I make videos for people, and I make videos for different kinds of organizations, meaning a lot of Lubavitch Chabad organizations and non-Chabad organizations, but also frum people and beau- doing beautiful things. It's very interesting. I mean, maybe people say I'm biased, but I've seen this. I, I, I have, I've experienced this, where non-Chabad moises who have all kinds of critiques of Chabad, right? And a lot of them, you can understand where they're coming from.

1:17:44 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

1:17:45 Speaker 3 They will come and tell me, "We want you to tell a story about us and, and with our standards, but we want it to have the fullness of a Chabad story." And I think what they're pointing to, I'm not trying to say that everyone accepts all the... No, they, they have their critiques, but what they're pointing to is that there is a insistence in Chabad thinking-

1:18:07 Speaker 1 Of holistic

1:18:07 Speaker 3 ... of holistic, that every, that, that you, you can't tell a story that's just intellectual or just, or just pragmatic. It's all of the above. It's intellectual. It's emotional. There's a lot of richness. It's something that we take for granted that all of like, you know, the stories that we even have of Hasidim of, of, of the past, there are so many different aspects-

1:18:27 Speaker 1 But you see the world-

1:18:28 Speaker 3 Intellectual, emotional

1:18:28 Speaker 1 ... the way the Rebbe takes apart these stories.

1:18:30 Speaker 3 Right. No, but also the men, the women, the, the family. There are all ki- the, the ups and downs.

1:18:36 Speaker 1 Did you, did you... There was an amazing sifra from the Chof that there was talk about mishpacha. Mishpacha, the reason it's called Megillas Esther, because she was the one who's Moisha Nefesh, and the Megillah is written mishpacha, mishpacha, that the key element of Judaism is not the community, but the family.

1:18:49 Speaker 3 Family.

1:18:50 Speaker 1 And the woman is the... So therefore, kisvuni lederech to know that the woman is the center of mishpacha and Yiddishkeit rise and falls. Amazing stuff.

1:18:57 Speaker 3 Right.

1:18:58 Speaker 1 Um, so, uh-

1:18:59 Speaker 3 Right. But also, but also like you mentioned also, it's, it, it's, it's the fullness is also seen in the ups and downs. Like, you know, you're talking about the Philip Krebber, the famous story of Rebbe Yosef Masbir, right? The Ma- Masbir, the Rebbe's Ba'al HaGolah.

1:19:12 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

1:19:13 Speaker 3 Right? And you know, the story that you, you remember as a kid is that, you know, he was told by the Alter Rebbe that-

1:19:19 Speaker 1 To become a Ba'al HaGolah

1:19:19 Speaker 3 ... to become a Ba'al HaGolah. He became a Ba'al HaGolah, and he saved this Yid in Shaul Malach Israel. And you read it in Philip, I was telling, I was like, "Wait a second." You know, he, he, he, the, the Alter Rebbe told him that when some such and such happens, this will be the siman. He never f- was clear that it was-

1:19:33 Speaker 1 He said when they ask you to be a rav, you're better off being a Ba'al HaGolah.

1:19:36 Speaker 3 Yeah. And he was never clear if it was takid the siman that he was given, and he had tzvekes, and his wife, and his wife tells him-

1:19:41 Speaker 1 Is the one with the tzimenes

1:19:42 Speaker 3 ... the one that pushed him to do it, and he was tzilbrochen the whole time 'cause he, he wasn't, he, A, he wasn't sure if the Alter Rebbe told him-

1:19:48 Speaker 1 And he wasn't very good at it

1:19:48 Speaker 3 ... Uh, uh, no, but well, that's C. But A, he wasn't sure if the Alter Rebbe really meant it, meant this. B, he has less humor than his wife.

1:19:57 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

1:19:57 Speaker 3 And C, he's not good at it. And so the whole story is about a person struggling, and we, we turned it into a story of, of, of-

1:20:04 Speaker 1 Right

1:20:04 Speaker 3 ... everything of, of clarity. And it was a story of struggle, really.

1:20:07 Speaker 1 And, and, and the Fredy, the Fredy Krebber in a lot of ways, you know, addresses that, that, that, that. You know, if you look at all... But also, I'm just saying like, uh, maybe because Lubavitch became urban, but there's missing, you know, that connection to Hashem that comes with a connection to nature. Um, and you know, it, you know, something growing up in a, it wasn't a rural, it was a town, but growing up more, you know, in a, you know, where you're closer to the wilderness and so on, it's something you, you appreciate. Like there's a line, and I think it's in the Reshimas HaMeiser where the, or s- uh, can, but another one of the diaries that we have from the Fredy Krebber. I, I really think the time has come the whole diary should be published, but that's anyways 'cause-

1:20:51 Speaker 3 Who's holding onto it?

1:20:52 Speaker 1 Uh, the Moskeres. Uh, they, they, they released, the only little bits got released.

1:20:56 Speaker 3 Of the Fredy Krebber?

1:20:57 Speaker 1 Yeah. I mean, there's, you know, not all the Rebbe's Reshimas released, but the Fredy Krebber's Yoman, most of it is not released. Anyways-

1:21:03 Speaker 3 Why?

1:21:04 Speaker 1 I think they think it's sensitive, this stuff there. They might, you know, they're, they're trying to control the narrative. But, um-

1:21:10 Speaker 3 It's not Chabad there

1:21:11 Speaker 1 ... but, but, but, but there's this piece there, and I don't, I, it, I'm, I'm not sure if it's in Shimas or Mais or elsewhere, but he's going with the, with the Rabbi Rashab to dacha, and the Rabbi Rashab looks up at the sky, and he tells him, he says, uh, he says, you know, he loves the pure blue of the sky because the hand of man can't reach there to pollute it the way they do to the Earth. You know, and I was thinking that was probably before air pollution, but, but it's just this, this idea of, of the pristine beauty of nature and, and, you know, and that, that it brings you closer to Hashem. I, I think there's a lot of that in the Frierdiker. You see it in the Rabbi Rashab, you see in the Frierdiker Rebbe's-

1:21:52 Speaker 3 Yeah, yeah

1:21:53 Speaker 1 ... writings a lot, and it's a little bit, uh, you know, um, a little bit, uh, a little bit missing. Also, the Frierdiker-

1:22:00 Speaker 3 If you, if you have, you have in the Akdamit HaKodshim HaMa'ayan, something that I've, uh, a piece that I've quoted many times here. Have you ever read it? That, the Shima that's the Akdamit HaKodshim HaMa'ayan?

1:22:10 Speaker 1 I've read it, but you have to remind me.

1:22:11 Speaker 3 And the Frierdiker Rebbe talks about coming back to home, to the place that they came when he was younger, like a dacha place, and he comes back to a bench that he remembered as a child-

1:22:21 Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

1:22:21 Speaker 3 ... in, in nature, and he's talking about... And also the famous story where him, him and the Rabbi Rashab pass by and they see the two Melamdim on the street, and the-

1:22:28 Speaker 1 Yeah

1:22:29 Speaker 3 ... Rabbi Rashab talks about that this tree has been waiting so-

1:22:32 Speaker 1 Yeah

1:22:32 Speaker 3 ... so, so, so, so, so many years.

1:22:33 Speaker 1 But also the story where, where he tears off when he's 16, he absentmindedly tears off a leaf, and the Rabbi Rashab says, "What are you doing? That leaf has a purpose from the moment of the-"

1:22:42 Speaker 3 That's in that Rebbe Shimon?

1:22:43 Speaker 1 It's another Rebbe Shimon.

1:22:44 Speaker 3 Right.

1:22:44 Speaker 1 But it's a very famous-

1:22:45 Speaker 3 No, but it's, it's, it's a, it's a connection to nature. And look, people today in general are talking about what it's done to us as modern people to be disconnected from nature, but I think it has a lot to do with-

1:22:54 Speaker 1 But you also don't want it to become an, an avodah zarah.

1:22:56 Speaker 3 Of course not. But I think, uh, to me, it's not so much about nature per se. It's about the ability to be directly... It, it's, it's the ability to interface as an individual, right? Nature, like if the whole community moves to a park and then builds houses and lives there together, you're, you're surrounded by trees, but you're basically urban inside nature. The whole idea of nature is that the individual surrenders to the enormity of the world, right? That's the whole point of nature, and it's, it's the ability to interface with God on an individual level as opposed to using community as a crutch.

1:23:32 Speaker 1 You know, you know, you see this in the Rebbe's letters to Rosh Hashanah, and he describes very beautifully how, how Adam HaRishon gets, you know, everyone to say all the creatures, the huna and the var.

1:23:42 Speaker 3 Right.

1:23:43 Speaker 1 You know, whatever. So I'm just saying that it's something that it's a very-- there's a very rich vein of this in Chassidus Chabad, in particular in the Frierdiker Rebbe's writings who writes, you know. You know, ba-basically, um, what the Rebbe does with, with science and technology, you know, the Rebbe brings all kinds of examples, science and technology. Frierdiker Rebbe did with, with literature, with art. The Frierdiker Rebbe basically paints beautiful literary pictures, you know?

1:24:12 Speaker 3 So what do you make of... You're talking about the Rebbe's, uh, Tumimus, um, or, or insistence on, on, on almost radical, like a radical ac-acceptance of, of, of the, of the literal types, like we, like we discussed earlier.

1:24:25 Speaker 1 Or, or with regards to Eretz Yisrael, Shin Chof Tes, and that's that.

1:24:28 Speaker 3 Right. What, what do you make of it vis-a-vis the Rebbe's relationship to the Frierdiker Rebbe? Have you, have you thought about that? The way that the Rebbe was this brilliant mind, clearly, and when it comes to the Frierdiker Rebbe's yonim, the Rebbe like-- i-it's almost like it's, it's... Like for example, Chitas, you mentioned it earlier. The way the Rebbe insists on Chitas, like as like a halfway, like a foundational brick of, of, of, of connection-

1:24:54 Speaker 1 No, and more than that, any of the things people who, you know, anyone who stood up against a Minhag Chabad, even if it's a Minhag that's from a Halakhic perspective may be problematic.

1:25:04 Speaker 3 Right.

1:25:04 Speaker 1 You know, like the Rebbe's, uh, I won't call it a rant, but the way the Rebbe really gave someone a chelek over the whole sleeping in a sukkah thing, if I remember.

1:25:12 Speaker 3 Right.

1:25:13 Speaker 1 The Rebbe was anything from the Frierdiker Rebbe, the Rebbe was like, like, like, you know, almo-- You can say childlike. That's it.

1:25:21 Speaker 3 So what do you make of that? Do you-

1:25:23 Speaker 1 I ma- I make of that this concept of Tumimus, this concept of Nasi. This was the Rebbe's Nasi. This was the, it's the concept of the, of this Kabbalah soul. In other words, I feel if you read between the lines, even not between the lines, to the Rebbe, what a Rebbe does, what a Nasi does, is it sort of transmits the pure Kabbalah soul to, to the, to the, to the people.

1:25:45 Speaker 3 Rayim HaEmunah.

1:25:46 Speaker 1 Yeah. Uh, Rayim HaEmunah.

1:25:48 Speaker 3 Right.

1:25:48 Speaker 1 And that's what Emunah is. You know, and, um, you know, and but I'm saying you saw this by the, by the Frierdiker Rebbe. To r-read the Frierdiker Rebbe's Maamarim and Sichos, you know, he, you know, he warns what happens when you lose Tumimus, you know?

1:26:03 Speaker 3 Right.

1:26:03 Speaker 1 That like the, the, the whole, his whole thing with the Peh Zion, the whole thing with Amalek, you know, where, yeah, you can-- He says there's a real subtle Amalek. Right. The Hamish is great, but he's so great. What's the big deal if he does a miracle, you know?

1:26:16 Speaker 3 Right. Cynicism.

1:26:17 Speaker 1 And, and Torah becomes a means of, of avoiding Kabbalah. So I mean, that, that, that, the, the Rebbe references that Maamar in several places. The one, uh, the one from like, uh, Parsha Zach or Peh Zion. Amazing stuff there. You know, by the way, you know, when different seforim, different Beit Midrash come out, the Rebbe pushed learning them. You know, to a great extent, the Rebbe's relying in his Maamarim and Sichos that you read the things he references. You really don't appreciate the fullness of what Chassidus is asking us to do without reading the earlier stuff too. Like there's amazing stuff in, in the Rebbe Rashab's Maamarim, for example.

1:26:57 Speaker 3 Sure.

1:26:57 Speaker 1 Um, I'm just saying that, that, uh, that, you know, ordinary Chassidim who, you know, they work, they have limited time, but you really, you really, um, everyone learns Rabbi Rashab, everyone learns Alter Rebbe, but like there's so much in the, in the Frierdiker Rebbe that, that really It really hits the gut. It really talks about the, y- the Rebbe references them, but like I say, he expects you to read it. But it's the phrase the Rebbe really develops sort of the, the emotional landscape, um, and, and the, and the particular systems of Avoda to create change. The Rebbe says, "Okay, you know, here's this idea, here's this transformation. You need to make this transformation." But it's the phrase the Rebbe sort of tells you how to do it, and the Rebbe expects you to read that.

1:27:40 Speaker 3 Right.

1:27:42 Speaker 1 You know, and so, you know, so, um, starting with the Zichronot, and Zichronots are amazing, and then you read them as a mature adult, especially if you have, you know, 30, 40 years of experience. It's a whole different Zichronot as you read as a kid.

1:27:55 Speaker 3 Right.

1:27:55 Speaker 1 But, but it's very, very powerful stuff. Um, anyways, so that, I'm just-- But I, but I really see all the elements of everything, you know, the Kochim, Moshiach, Sheva Mitzvahs, um, you know, Hafatza, um, women learning. E- all the things that the Rebbe pushed, you'll find in the Zichronot.

1:28:21 Speaker 3 It, it's, it's a, it's a very interesting idea, it's, and how all this is tied together. The, the you know, how to m- how, how... I, I think this is something Chassidus talks about at length, that, that Seichel ultimately, Seichel ultimately is, uh, I think a tool is a word that we use too flippantly, but Seichel is ultimately a means to an end.

1:28:46 Speaker 1 Well, but, but remember, there's also the Rebbe Rashab says that the, one of the purpose of Chassidus is Yeda'at Hiyei Sebechusa.

1:28:53 Speaker 3 Right.

1:28:54 Speaker 1 Not as a question. If I would know Hashem, I would be Him. W- but the philosophers of the, the great Chochim, right? That's a, that's a statement of, well, you can't be-- you can't know God, and therefore you can't be God.

1:29:06 Speaker 3 Right.

1:29:06 Speaker 1 And the Rebbe Rashab says, "Yeda'at Hiyei Sebechusa", that by knowing Hashem, you become one with Him. But that knowledge begins, uh, begins with a fundamental, with a fundamental Kabbalah Sr. The knowledge begins with the sense that, that what I know is because I've been taught it. In other words, I-

1:29:26 Speaker 3 Yeah. So I, so I lear- I lear- I learned yesterday in a Ma'amar of the Rebbe Rashab, I think it was in Tofsh-- Uh, it was, uh, it's, it's Ezras Tofsh, Ayin Zayin, a Ma'amar of, it is Kislev with the, with the f- Rebbe Rashab says that the, if we say Tachlis Ha'idiya Asher Lo Neda'acha. And o-one way of teaching it, the classic way of teaching it, is that you, you basically take knowledge to its limit, and then you end up in a place that's beyond knowledge. The, the purpose of knowledge is to get you to a place-

1:29:55 Speaker 1 To know what you don't know.

1:29:56 Speaker 3 Right. And he says, really, what Chassidus teaches us is that the Tachlis of Idea is to come to Idea of that which can't be known, or that there is a way to know that which, the unknowable, which he explains this idea of Da'as Yekidusha, which is, I think, what we're talking about here, that there is, there is a, there is a foun- there is a foundation of connection that goes beyond knowledge per se. It's a different kind of knowledge. It's a know- it's a knowledge of knowing because it's just part of you. It's a, it's an essential connection.

1:30:27 Speaker 1 Remember, that's why Da'as is, and it's, uh, is explained several places in HaVaYaH. That's why Da'as is connected with Kesser.

1:30:32 Speaker 3 Yeah, that's what he says over there, right? So, I mean, but it's, uh, but in, in, in the language that we're using here is that there, there is a connection, there's an essential connection that, that, that is found in the, in the innocence that, that, that, that we have, the sincerity that we see in others-

1:30:47 Speaker 1 So, uh-

1:30:47 Speaker 3 ... that we see in ourselves, and we're-- The goal is always to somehow get back to that.

1:30:52 Speaker 1 Also, I wanna say that, that the Rebbe's final Mogid HaMa'amar at the top of Ma'amar with the, the, that final Mogid HaMa'amar, the Konchos Mumei De'os, the Rebbe, the, the Rebbe makes a very important point that sometimes we sometimes miss, that, that the Koses is not because we're being oppressed anymore or not because we have... The Koses is because we're not experiencing Alekos.

1:31:15 Speaker 3 Right.

1:31:15 Speaker 1 And we want a world in which we... In, in other, in other words, um, the more you know, the more you appreciate what you're missing and not experiencing it.

1:31:25 Speaker 3 Right.

1:31:25 Speaker 1 You know, it's, y- the, the more you know, you, you know, uh, you know someone, uh, someone, a Chassid who lives in the Amazon, you know, in a cave, you know, never saw... He doesn't know he's missing electricity and a car and antibiotics and so on.

1:31:38 Speaker 3 Yeah, it's a famous Mashal of Zal, of the z-

1:31:40 Speaker 1 Yeah.

1:31:40 Speaker 3 The next generation of the cave.

1:31:42 Speaker 1 Right. But once, and which is taken, I believe, from the, from the, from the Mitler. Mitler Rebbe is similar.

1:31:46 Speaker 3 Uh-huh.

1:31:47 Speaker 1 But my, my point is that, that, um, that, that with, that one of the, that one of the, the purposes, uh, of what is, is to talk a yearn for Alekos. The only way to yearn for Alekos is to learn enough about it and to sort of make it part of yourself till it's something you really want. 'Cause that's the Koses, that we don't experience what we know.

1:32:09 Speaker 3 Right.

1:32:10 Speaker 1 But, but to do that, you need, you need that Tximimus. You need that sense that it can be experienced, that it can be known, you know, that you, you... It, it's an acceptance. You have all these wonderful ideas, you have to accept that they can be experienced. 'Cause the natural inclination is to place them on intellectual shelf.

1:32:30 Speaker 3 Right. Right. Right. Uh, right. So s- is there somehow has to be, somehow the starting point has to be somehow, and maybe this is ultimately what we said, you said, um, you said earlier, the idea of a Raai Memna, that, that one of the, one of the things that the Rebbeim teach us is that from the get-go, we know that Seichel is not everything, right? So if you know that Seichel isn't everything from the beginning-

1:32:59 Speaker 1 Then you can use it effectively.

1:33:01 Speaker 3 Right. Right. Well, well, they say that, y- you were talking about how your grandfather was British. They say that one of the points of the, having a king in England is to let everyone else know that they're not the king.

1:33:12 Speaker 1 Very interesting.

1:33:13 Speaker 3 Right?

1:33:13 Speaker 1 Very interesting.

1:33:13 Speaker 3 Like the point of a king is that you're not, uh, at the very least is that you're not the king. So a point of a Rebbe in a way is to let you know that you're not, you're not a Rebbe. Either there's something bigger than your mind- And no matter how brilliant you think you are, and, and, and that ultimately allows you to use your mind in a way that's, that's, that, that, that, that-

1:33:32 Speaker 1 Rabbi Lubavitch

1:33:33 Speaker 3 ... it's, it's, it's striving for something bigger.

1:33:34 Speaker 1 I, I just wanna say o-one last thing about this, that the Rebbe modeled to me midras. So one of them is, is, it's something that we sometimes lose sight of, if we're being honest, is the Rebbe meant exactly what he said.

1:33:47 Speaker 3 Right.

1:33:47 Speaker 1 When the Rebbe said something, he meant it. It's not subject to some deeper kavana. The Rebbe was very straightforward and meant what he said and said what he meant. And, um, you know, and, uh, you know, uh, w- you know, and, you know, one of, one of those, one of those things was, is that the Rebbe said that, you know, the connection to-- through to him, even when he was in this world, is through learning his Torah and doing, doing his pulus. And I remember him saying, I remember the time he said that, "If people keep staring at me during davening, you don't stare at a basar vedam during davening, I'm not gonna come down to davening anymore." And, you know, the Rebbe sa- you know, uh, the Rebbe s- the Rebbe said he's a basar vedam. The Rebbe is abs-absolutely a basar vedam, and that's his greatness. But the, the Rebbe meant, meant what he said. And again, to the Rebbe it was anathema that someone should look at a human being during-

1:34:37 Speaker 3 How did you deal with the fact that everyone else tried to taich to the ois with all kinds of deida?

1:34:41 Speaker 1 No, that's-- So that's-- Th-that-- This is w- uh-- When I was a bachur, we called it the CPO, the Kavanapnimius Organization. And, and we were very against it. You know, there was a group of us who basically said there is no Kavanapnimius. The Rebbe means what he said. The Rebbe had enormous hasbara and, uh, beautiful, and the Rebbe was not, you know, merinavuchim. The Ramdam says, "Well, I say one thing, but I also mean something else." The Rebbe wasn't writing merinavuchim. The Rebbe was very gleicher, very straight, you know. And, um, and by the way, you can hear sometimes the Rebbe's frustration that he said something and, and people, you know, taich to the ois and, you know, and, and that-- By the way-

1:35:20 Speaker 3 You-

1:35:20 Speaker 1 ... that's where, that is where you hear the Rebbe in a mocking way and not a, and not a positive way. "Amein terish spitz Chabad!" You know, you, the, you can listen to the sichas, you know. Um, and, um, but I-

1:35:33 Speaker 3 So you, you and your friends didn't like that?

1:35:35 Speaker 1 No, uh, but my, my point being is that, you know, so if the, the Rebbe said, you know, not to stare him during, not to stare him davening. The Rebbe, the Rebbe, you know, said that his kashrus is, is, is not about his persona, but about, you know, not, you know... I'll tell you, my father, alav ha-shalom, in the mems, you know, complained a lot. You know, a lot of people coming, and a lot of them were, you know, you know, coming from various places, and they got very-- Because the Rebbe had an incredible personality, and very caught up in the Rebbe's personality. The Rebbe said we're becoming peylei shochasidim. Chagas, that's our derech, is to take what the Rebbe teaches us and to internalize it and to do it ourselves. And, you know, and, and, you know, and, and the Chabadim want ... I mean, you know. And I'm just saying that especially today, um, where-

1:36:23 Speaker 3 Your father didn't like that.

1:36:24 Speaker 1 He was very-- He, he says it's against everything he learned in Chabad. It's against everything the Rebbe said. The Rebbe talked about this-

1:36:31 Speaker 3 This is in, this is in the mems. He was-

1:36:32 Speaker 1 Yeah

1:36:33 Speaker 3 ... he was seeing a, a veering.

1:36:35 Speaker 1 Uh, among-- in certain circles. And, and I think the, I think the point is, is that, is that the, is that, you know, we can all be ad ha-yom, and there's so many videos, be very impressed with the Rebbe. But the goal is not to be impressed with the Rebbe. The goal is, um, is to, is to emulate the things the Rebbe wanted us to emulate, to do those things and the learning, the doing. You know, in other words, the idea that, that-- Let me be very honest. The idea that, you know, a deep loyalty to the Rebbe, uh, is, uh, is an excuse for failures, for failing to be scrupulous in all areas of, of Shulchan Aruch and Halakha and dinim of davening and so on and so forth. You know, or the, you know, or the Rebbe's, or the Rebbe's takana about if you're under forty, not more than four lechayims, and if you're over, and if you're over forty, you should have your own sense how much you can drink. But the Rebbe did not appreciate drunkenness. And so I'm saying there's a lot of things that, that we're not taking the Rebbe seriously enough. And there's one last thing I wanna say about this that, that I've thought about a lot, and I th-- and I've seen it more since Gimmel Tammuz 'cause I've watched so many videos of the dollars. Very often, if it's, if there's any long exchange by dollars, the Rebbe's demanding something of someone.

1:37:58 Speaker 3 Mm-hmm.

1:37:58 Speaker 1 And I look, I know some of these people, and I see what the Rebbe demand, and I see what the Rebbe demanded of us, uh, as a generation. And I, I realized something, that the Rebbe believed in us far more than we believe in ourselves. And it's our job to believe in ourselves and our abilities as much as the Rebbe did. And I, and I'm seeing this. I, you know, um, I, I think a really good example, you know, the Rebbe was very big on Einem and development Torah and so on. And, um, you know, and, you know, and Rabbi Mintz with JLI, he, you know, long after Gimmel Tammuz, he, you know, he really devoted himself to this, and the amount of learning at the high level that takes place. You know, this is, I think, what the Rebbe envisioned. But it took a while, and there are a lot of other things the Rebbe envisioned-

1:38:51 Speaker 3 Right

1:38:52 Speaker 1 ... that haven't happened yet, that can and should happen. 'Cause you just keep seeing, you know, like I say, you know, you see what-- with the, with the, with the shluchim, you see the expansion on campus. You see the, you see the C-teens and the C-kids. But also, uh, but also I have to say, I spend, you know, I spent a lot of time in various shivas. I, and I know a lot, a bunch of boys and, you know, and I, I go Suffield's right across the river. I go see the new yeshiva in Suffield. And the level of, of Chasidishe kain and Frum kain in this kashrus you see in so many of the young men and young women today. The Rebbe, you know, the Rebbe poured out thousands of hours of teaching on us, and I'm embarrassed to say, you know, you know, how much of it, how much of it stuck. And these people, these kids, so many of them, and yungerleit, have no experience of the Rebbe, but the Rebbe is so real to them. I mean, these are Chasidisha people, people kasich in learning, kasich in the Rebbe's Torah, kasich in mefsoyim. There's a tr-- You know, before we complain too much, there's a tremendous generation out there of people who are deeply connected to the Rebbe in exactly the way the Rebbe wanted people to be connected to him. And it's ironic, you know, because now after Gimmel Tammuz, you have no choice. So there's really no other way

1:40:11 Speaker 1 to be connec- to be connected.

1:40:14 Speaker 3 Right.

1:40:14 Speaker 1 You know, I mean, can, you know, you can, you can pay lip service and tell everyone how great the Rebbe is and look at videos, but, but in, but in truth, everyone I think deep down understands this. And more than that, you know, um, when, when again, people outside Lubavitch, I have a lot of member of the RCA I go to, to this YU Kollel. We have a lot of, I'm involved with the OU, have a lot of connections outside Lubavitch. And people always say, you know, you know, uh, "How do you manage without a rabbi?" I say, "No, we have a Rebbe." Because what the Rebbe was about as a Chabad Rebbe was his teachings, and his i- and, and, and, and, and the, and his effort or his agenda and his campaigns, and we really have all those things sitting right there. I mean, the Rebbe published more, there's more there's more videos. In other words, there's more of the Rebbe available than there was ever before of any other Rebbe, and but it has to be internalized.

1:41:10 Speaker 3 Right.

1:41:10 Speaker 1 You know, y- y- and, um, but I-- And, and I-- And you talked about community. Yes, uh, certain things are, how do I put it? The uniform. But in terms of, but in terms of the Rebbe, there's so much that I really think every person can and should develop a very personal sense of those things that, that speak to them that they should kochen.

1:41:34 Speaker 3 Absolutely. Absolutely.

1:41:39 Speaker 1 And he's well-

1:41:39 Speaker 3 This has been a wonderful conversation. Thank you very much. I think it's a great note to end off on, and, uh, thank you again for the time.

1:41:47 Speaker 1 My pleasure. Come, come visit anytime.

1:41:49 Speaker 3 Thank you very much. I appreciate it.

1:41:51 Speaker 1 Come spend Shabbat if you, if you wanna get, you wanna get out of Philly and, uh-

1:41:56 Speaker 3 All right

1:41:56 Speaker 1 ... spend Shabbat with us.

1:41:57 Speaker 3 Yes. Absolutely. Thank you. Gut Nacht.

1:41:59 Speaker 1 Gut Nacht.

1:42:01 Speaker 3 The music for this podcast comes from the album Repentance Doors by Oren Zornar Nadav Bahar, and is used with their permission.