פנורמה של הלכה 2

00:04 Speaker 1 Hello? Yeah. Yeah, I, I do have a shared night, um, so. Yeah. About what? Yeah. I heard what you said. Yeah. So. Yeah. No, I, I-- it was a nice orb. I really, I can't deal with it now. Oh. Yeah.

03:10 Speaker 2 just asked if it was still quiet as usual. Is that better?

03:13 Speaker 1 Yeah.

03:14 Speaker 2 Is it when you speak quieter, it comes up here.

03:18 Speaker 1 All right.

03:19 Speaker 2 Yeah. So also probably losing my power afterwards. I put the questions, the panorama on the Semper Parade account.

03:28 Speaker 1 Okay.

03:28 Speaker 2 So Sara, I think, was just called. She said they look really interesting. Is it okay if... Can they join? Can they listen? And is it okay if Mendy forwards it, the link to other people?

03:41 Speaker 1 Okay.

03:44 Speaker 2 For sure. Do other people talk if they're mainly-- You talk and in between, people can write on the chat, and then you address that. I'm happy about that.

12:36 Speaker 3 This does not-- this is not a h-

14:13 Speaker 1 Mendel. Hello?

14:17 Speaker 3 Yeah.

14:18 Speaker 1 Yeah. Now, I have a problem. I won't be able to be online with the Zoom and to be online with the, with the, with the entire

14:47 Speaker 3 No. All c-- All I can see is me eating. What? All I can see is me eating. It's too late. I'm exhausted. Where's my glasses? Where are my glasses?

16:34 Speaker 1 Gutgevocht, everyone. Can you hear me? Any, any yeses over there? Can you hear?

16:46 Speaker 3 Yes.

16:47 Speaker 1 Oh, good. Oh, Lalech. Yeah. Okay, um, okay. I don't know whether Rabbi Dansiker is online yet. But what I want to-- the first fifteen... We, we've asked him to speak at, at, um, eight o'clock, which is eleven o'clock in Rostov. And before that, we wanted to have a video. So my son Mendel has prepared something, which is, he's gonna try to share it. If not, I have another, um, thing which I have, which I would be able to share. It's a documentary, um, about Rostov, but it's, it's largely in Russian and with Hebrew subtitles. So I would prefer to have it-- Mendel's trying to get the, the one with the English subtitles, um, online. So Mendel, you tell us when you're ready, but meanwhile, we're going to say It's a Habrengen. So, uh, then we'll sing the Rabbinish Mossad's Nigun, the Rostov Nigun.

18:03 Speaker 3 The Rostov Nigun and the, is the Maimon Nigun.

18:10 Speaker 1 Um, okay. Fine. Okay. I always get mixed up with names. Okay. L'chaim, l'chaim.

20:35 Speaker 3 L'chaim, Yaakov. You remember, this is the sefer we began learning together in Rabbi Sorotzkin's house.

20:43 Speaker 1 Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

20:44 Speaker 3 Before Shul ran up. L'chaim.

20:52 Speaker 1 I think it's, uh, on a, a matter of order, we should certainly say, uh, um, we're very sad, uh, to hear about the passing of, uh, the ch-- Emeritus Chief Rabbi. And I remember going back from probably about f-fifty years ago, when he would come for Shabbos to Stamford Hill as part of the pegshies. Um, I'm sure Yaakov Koor also remembers this. Uh, he was one of the, the-- Rabbi Sacks was one of the more outspoken of the students. But, uh, he would come, and that was before he went to Chabad, et cetera. And, uh, he has many zechusim and, uh, sh'yes.

21:38 Speaker 3 Amen.

21:39 Speaker 1 L'chaim, l'chaim.

21:43 Speaker 3 L'chaim.

21:47 Speaker 1 Mendel, any, any progress with the video? Otherwise, I'll put on the other one. If anyone is able to share a URL bar, I could post it on the chat, and then you could share it. You know what, Mendel, I think we'll ju-we'll just share the other one when finished, yeah? Okay. Okay. All right. So now, um, I'm going to share. So this is-- I'll, I'll-- Perhaps I'll give a little bit. I'll disturb you with a little bit of, uh, translation in English as it goes along. So there we are.

22:25 Speaker 3 But Dantzig is here.

22:27 Speaker 1 Dantzig, Rabbi Dantzig is on here. We're gonna first have this, um, clip of, um, Rostov. Um, can you see the clip?

22:36 Speaker 3 Yeah.

22:37 Speaker 1 I'll make it bigger, though. I-- He says, he's saying he was born in Rostov in that year. He's- This is an aerial view of Rostov, and the s-song which is being sung now is known as the Rostov Song. This is the house of the Rebbe Rashab in... He was born in the opposite the house of the Rebbe in Thirty-Five Bratsky Street. His grandfather saw the Rebbe. He says his grandfather remembers, remembered the meetings of the Yidden. Her name is Miriam Bella. Born in nineteen twenty-six. Her, her, her grandfather had a friend called Nachum Golander. So this friend of her father, grandfather, Nachum Golander, lived also on Bratsky Street. She was born on the second floor of this house. Rebbe Rashab was very friendly with Nachum Goland. Nachum Goland was aware of the house being for sale, so he recommended the Rebbe to buy it, which he indeed, uh, indeed, he bought it. This is Rabbi Yitzchak Horgan. This is the dwelling of the Rebbe Rashab, and this, uh, subsequently, the Rebbe Rayatz. This is where the Rebbe passed his last few moments in this world. He asked for his-- he be, should be brought in the room where he would say Cheder, and that's where he passed away. His last words were, "I leave the m-- I leave the, uh, writings, my manuscripts to you." Lesson for all of us. If you want to connect with the Rebbes, it would be through studying the Cheder and to live accordingly. Back into Miriam Berlow's house. When

26:56 Speaker 1 she was born, the Rebbe was no long-- the fifth Rebbe was no longer alive. She was talking about the fact that he was, he was reinterred, reburied in a new place. The... She's talking about the time when they had to reinter the, uh, the Rebbe Rashab because the, the, the old cemetery was being, uh, developed for something else. They were gonna make a sports center, and therefore, the old ce-cemetery would be destroyed totally. Her grandfather involved with them when they had to reinter the Rebbe. Tells where it was rein-- re-relocated to and... Something was shocking was, for the people there- -and whenever her grandfather would talk about it, he'd take a breath. When they opened the coffin, the, um, the body was intact. It was a shock for everyone who was there. They were gasping. They couldn't say anything. I knew long time ago, for long that the Rebbe Rashab is buried here and that he lived here. All my relatives are buried in tho-th- in that, um, cemetery where the Rebbe Rashab is buried. When Jews arrived to the cemetery, they would point to the right, and they would say, "That's where the, the tzaddik is buried." They didn't know him as Rebbe Rashab, but they knew that their great rabbi was buried there. This was a kn-known fact. He's, he's explaining what the Rebbe Rashab sees, the, um, deterioration in Yiddishkeit in, in his town. Assimilation. What we're seeing today is we're seeing a, a, a resurgence of Yiddishkeit, marri-- Jewish marriages. We've

29:43 Speaker 1 had some brises. We've had some weddings here. Jewish clubs. Everything's expanding. This is thanks to our rabbis, obviously. But truthfully, they are only branches. The, uh, trunk, the s- the, the source is from the Rebbe Rashab who's buried here. The, when the Rebbe lived here, and is buried here, his yeshiva was here. There was a yeshiva here. And, and the sixth, sixth Rebbe continued this, and the seventh Rebbe. Now it's come back. It's very important. Couldn't, couldn't imagine the, uh, the resurgence of Jewish life without the input of the Rebbeim. Last year, we started learning Cheder. For us, this was like a new victory. He has to in-in-in-invest in his Yiddishkeit. We have a custom. Whenever we have a problem, where do we go? We go to the Rebbe's Ohel. My mother wasn't-- My mother was ill. I went to the Ohel, and I told the Rebbe, "Rebbe, help me. I want my, my mother should feel well. When my mother will recover, I won't, I won't be, uh, I, I won't remain in debt. I'll give a hundred shekel, a hundred ruble." He's forty-one. He says, "Jews from, uh, from, uh, America want to, want to visit the Ohel. I wasn't brought up in this tradition. I was asked to accompany them. So I asked them, I, I asked them, "Did you want come to ch-- visit the USSR?" They say, "No, I came to the Rebbe's Ohel." "Just for the Ohel?" I ask. "Yes, just for the Ohel." That's what they came for.

32:58 Speaker 1 We are not a big city, not the most Jewish city, but the fact that Jews from all over the world come to visit, you can't stand indifferent. When we visit, visit the Ohel, we can feel his presence. He's here. We're very fortunate, we people of Rostov. We have the ti-- we have the opportunity every time, whenever, simply, literally. If only my parents and grandparents were able to be part of this. When I stand by the Ohel and I look down at the grave, I think, "If only my grandmother and grandfather would have been able to be here." This is in front of the house of the Rebbe Rashab on Bratskaya Street in Rostov. Now they're visiting the cemetery. Hello. Hashem, God gave us a gift. The fact the fifth Rebbe came to our town, and we can always be with him. People come specially to visit, but we live here. We are very fortunate. Okay, I think that's it. Close that. Rabbi Danziger?

37:27 Speaker 4 Yes.

37:30 Speaker 1 Oh, for joining us and and the floor is over to you.

37:43 Speaker 4 Let me just... I wanna see the chassidim I'm, I'm farbrengen with. One second. Oh. Oh. It's a big zechus for . Oh, It's a big, uh, zechus for me to be, um, farbrengen with, um, with chassidim and anash and shluchim in England because I have the, uh, zechus and the pleasure to spend a year in Kingsley Way, uh, one of the better yeshiva years that I recall. I, uh, started my first, uh, year in yeshiva, but that was in London, and it was a very special and, uh, important year for me. So this is the first time I'm connecting with, uh, with London, albeit, uh, via Zoom, but, um, but that's, uh... We're not gonna complain. In these times we're living in, this is, uh, more than adequate. So usually is a very special time for us here in Rostov. We have, uh, normally a lot of anash comes here. They come here to, uh, to be the local kehillah, which, uh, for us is a very, very, very big chizuk. When we have someone coming, and people sometimes say, "Why, why come back to Russia? We have ohel. We have seven seventy." But, but I believe when people come here for a visit, it's we're not coming specifically for one ohel o-over another ohel. The rabbeim are everywhere. But we come here personally to, to somehow inspire also the local Yidden. So, uh, you know, I can't begin today without saying the story. It's not a story. Everyone knows the, the, the ma'aseh from

39:17 Speaker 4 the Rebbe Rashab, uh, when he was five years old, but I'll say why I wanna just repeat this, the, the story when he came to his day there, right? The Shabbos. It was, uh, um, and, uh, he asked why was Avraham that he was, uh, the... Hashem was Avraham Avinu. And what did the Tzemach Tzedek say when they hear that ninety-nine years old decides to do a bris is deserving of this? So this is a story we all heard many times, the Rebbe repeated many times. But, um, what, what I wanted to discuss tonight, what I wanted to say tonight was that really the, the Rebbe Rashab and the Rebbe, the Friediker Rebbe, and our Rebbe, the mesirat nefesh they had for, for Klal Yisroel, for Yiddishkeit in the hardest of times was no less than that, that Avraham, that Avraham Avinu had. And it's something that we see to this very day with the holy Yidden that live here in Russia. So the Rebbe Rashab took a chorayus for all of the Yidden. There was... You know, there are many rabbeim, many different Chassidic, um, uh, uh, Chassidim and, and, and different factions that usually focused on their own Chassidis, right? You had a rebbe that focused on his Chassidim, and that was it. The Rebbe Rashab went out to worry about every single Yid living in Russia and elsewhere. So it was the hardest of times. The Russian Revolution took place. The Rebbe came to Rostov, and, uh, the first few years were

40:39 Speaker 4 very turbulent, very difficult until he decided... You saw in the video the house that the Rebbe Rashab bought. The Rebbe Rashab was there for a year and a half, so it was a very difficult time. But nonetheless, the Rebbe Rashab worried for all of the Yidden. Anyone that knows a little geography, there's, uh, the Caucasian that live around Rostov. So Caucasian come from Southern Russia, so they, they, they had tremendous hardships and difficulties. They didn't have any rabbonim. So even the Nazis when they came here, and they occupied Southern Russia, and they killed every single Jews in Rostov. They killed, uh, twenty thousand Jews. It was the largest mass killing, killing of Yidden. When they saw Caucasian Jews, they thought they weren't Jews, so they didn't kill them. The Rebbe Rashab sent his shluchim to the Caucasian, and so that he should protect and save these kehillahs. So there's a tremendous mesirat nefesh the Rebbe Rashab had, and it was passed on in the, the famous story of, uh, the Friediker Rebbe, which happened here when he gathered the Chassidim, and he made a minyan that they're gonna take a chorayus for the Yiddishkeit and the, and, and, and, and, and for the Yidden all over Russia. But, um, what I wanted to talk about today was the mesirat nefesh that, that the Yidden in Russia have. Um, I've had the, the zechus to be on shlichus here for the past eleven years, and before that, I had the zechus of being on shlichus in

41:55 Speaker 4 California, which is a bit of, um, a bit of, um, if you could say, uh, a bit of a... You know, there's a little bit, a little... It took a-- It was a little, a lit-- It, it was a little challenging to move, let's just put it, to put it mildly, um, to come from California to Rostov. But not a day goes by that I don't sit here and think what a zechus it is to be here amongst Yidden that have a mesirat nefesh, which I ask myself, "Where do they get this mesirat nefesh? Where do they get the mesirat nefesh where after seventy years of communism, where after the-- multiple occupations of the Nazis that killed every single Jew in the city, where do they get this mesirat nefesh to wanna embrace Yiddishkeit, to wanna come out of the woodwork, and to go do brisim at ages that are almost as amazing as the age Avraham Avinu did it, to go ahead and, and, and begin keeping kashrus and Shabbos in a city that has no kosher restaurants? Where do they get this from?" There's only one answer, I think, is that the rabbeim have left their mark on every single Jew. They left this dormant mesirat nefesh that exists in every single Jew in Russia, and this mesirat nefesh has been coming through the Rebbe's shluchim that he sent here, through the help the Rebbe sent throughout Soviet times, these hidden underground shluchim that came here. It was Rabbi Levy. It was other

43:09 Speaker 4 ones that came, and it, it, it kept this spark going. And today it's, it's, it, it's, it, it's j- just-- it's expanding. It's showing. It's-- We're feeling it. We're seeing it. So I wanna share with you, um, a few stories. You know, in, in this video that we just watched, we saw a lady by the name of Miriam Miriam Bela. So I want-- She was an amazing, she was an amazing Jew who had tremendous Mesires Nefesh throughout Soviet times to keep Yiddishkeit going. So, uh, she was a Jew that, that, that in recent years, the past twenty, thirty years, obviously like many other Yidden living here have challenges, Begashmiyus. They earn a hundred and fifty dollar, uh, pension, and it's very hard to live off of that. But she was so proud of her Yiddishkeit, so proud of who she was. She asked me for a Sforim. She wanted to learn. I take my kids to her house. She had no children, and her husband passed away, and she lived alone. And we'd come, I'd take my kids, we'd go there, we'd call her Bubby Miriam. And, uh, together, we'd go there thinking, you know, to, to, to get inspired from her. So one day I get a call from Miriam, and she tells me, "Rabbi, I need to see you urgently." When you get a call from a ninety-year-old woman, you take it, and I said, "I'm gonna come to you, no problem. Do you need me to come to you today?" She said,

44:25 Speaker 4 "No, I'm gonna come to you." So I told her, "Miriam," you're-- At the time, I think she was eighty-eight years old. "You're eighty-eight years old. You don't need to shlep to me. I'll come to your house." She said, "No, I must come to you. I'll be by you in a half an hour." She shows up in the shul, our ancient shul. It's called the Cantonist, the Soldatskaya Sinagoga. And she comes up to my office, and she takes her purse, and she tells me, she says that, "I am now gonna be-- do a mitzvah that I've dreamed of doing my entire life." And she tells me the following story. She says that, "I, uh, I lived here through the Nazi times, and it was a terribly difficult time. I barely survived the war. And since then until today, I've been dedicating my life to bring Yiddishkeit back, to teach people Yiddish, to teach them about our traditions. I love this shul more than I love my own home. But there's one mitzvah I could never fulfill, and that's the mitzvah of tzedakah. You, you know, Rabbi, in what house I live in." She lives in a small, tiny one-room apartment, which is also the living room and also the kitchen. It's like a studio, but it's not a studio. It's a, uh, twenty-five square meters. Says, "You know my means. I could never give tzedakah." She said, "Today I'm here to give you tzedakah." And she opens her purse, and she hands me two hundred dollars.

45:38 Speaker 4 I look at this woman. Two hundred dollars is about a month and a half of pension for her. I look at Miriam. I tell her, "Miriam, what are you doing? How are you giving me this money?" She says, "Today I received restitution money from the German government. I received two thousand dollars. And the first stop, I just picked up this money from the bank. This is the first money I received from the Germans." And I said, "The first stop has to be our beloved shul. I wanna come here. I wanna bring money here. I want to-- this money to go to whatever you think it needs to go to. But for me, this is the happiest day of my life, a day that I could come here and give tzedakah." I look at this woman. She's ninety years old, hitting ninety. And what, what, what gives her joy, gives her joy is, is, is that there's a shul. She tells me, "When my grandparents wanted to come to shul, I would walk them to shul, and I would wait outside. I was a student in the university. I couldn't come in shul. If I'd come into shul, they'd, they'd kick me out of the university. So throughout communist times, I'd stand by the door. I'd wait for my bubbe, my zeide to come out, my parents to come out, and then I'd go back home. Then when the shluchim arrived in nineteen ninety-one, I started coming to shul every single day. When I come to

46:46 Speaker 4 shul, I know this is my home. I know my grandparents used to come here, my parents used to come here. And today I feel this tremendous, tremendous feeling of joy that I could come, I could actually give something." I look at Miriam. I think how difficult it is for us sometimes to go into our own wallets, and I look at her, and I'm amazed. What an amazing person. You know, one of the biggest challenges we have in Russia is assimilation. When I first moved here, I, uh, I gathered a whole group of students, and I farbrenged. I said, "It's so important we have to marry Jewish because there's ninety-five, ninety-six percent assimilation rate." What that means is, if I have a Jewish day school, in my Jewish day school, we have close to a hundred kids, ninety, uh, uh, five kids. Out of those kids, only five or six of them have Jewish fathers. So think about the, the, the type of assimilation rate. What communism has done, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, you know, they, they-- no Jewish families. So I said we have to work on the youth. We have to encourage them to m-marry and establish Jewish homes, and they really want to. We sat, we farbrengen. You have to have a Jewish wife, a Jewish husband. You have to have a chuppah to establish a home, al yisa dei dero mitzvos. So I, I-- we, we have a project in Russia, which is where we teach the kids, the students

48:02 Speaker 4 Torah lessons every week, and then we go on a trip with them, a Jewish heritage trip to Europe. And what happens is, every single year when we make this trip, one of the, one of the points, one of the places we stop at is in Auschwitz or in Buchenwald. And the reason we do that is that the kids should be mesuyer. The, the students should be mesuyer a little bit to come back, to, to, to do what they can to, to, to reconnect to Yiddishkeit. They should be, you know, a little bit emotional, and hopefully this will help get them back on the path. So I recall we're in Buchenwald, and I was standing with about forty-five students from Rostov in the gas chambers. And I stood there. I said before, you know, we're having a-- we had a moment of silence, and I said, "A moment of silence is very nice, but our tradition is not so much into silence. Our tradition is into doing. Our tradition is to not be silent, but to go out and do something." I said, "We're standing here in a room where hundreds of thousands of our brothers and sisters gave up their lives Al Kidush Hashem. And incidentally, we come from Rostov, the city which was most affected by the Holocaust in Russia, the city which had the largest mass killing of Yidden." And I said, "When we go back to Rostov in a few days, if we go back the same people that we were when

49:17 Speaker 4 we left, then this trip wasn't worth anything. We have to do something serious to change Rostov, to make a Jewish religious revolution." So I spoke Dvarim Ayetz Min Halav, and that's an amazing thing in Russia, that in Russia you don't need to be politically correct. You say it the way it is, and people are keilim to take it. You know, in the, in the States, we have to beat around the bush, and you have to this. Probably in England also, you have to be very proper. In England, you have to be even more proper. Here in, in Russia, you say it to give a clap on the back, and you say it. If it doesn't work, you give the clap a little harder, and you give it harder, and eventually, you know... So we arrived back to the hotel. Now, what happens when we're with students in Russia, you know, there's a concept of lights out in camps, in yeshivas. With students in Russia, the lights go out when the sun rises. So we're standing in the lobby, and they said, "Let's make a farbrengen." You know, farbrengens go very well here. Anything that has anything involved with a little l'chaim goes very well. So we're sitting in the lobby of the Sheraton Hotel in a city near Buchenwald, and we're making a farbrengen for a few hours. It's two-thirty in the morning, and I'm feeling a little drowsy, and I tell the chevra, "You know, I thought either I'm gonna fall asleep soon, soon,

50:27 Speaker 4 they'll fall asleep soon." I said, "Tachlis, we have to have some type of this y-- this, this farbrengen has to have some type of an ending, some type of a ‑‑ so I said, "Chevra, listen, we're having a beautiful farbrengen. We had a special trip. But bottom line is, if we go back to Rostov without making a achlata, this is useless. I wanna ask you guys, what are you willing to take upon yourselves?" And one girl gets up, and she says, "I'm gonna start lighting Shabbos candles." Okay. Very nice. Another boy gets up, and he says, "You know, I've considered putting on tefillin. I don't have them, but I've made the decision today that I'll buy tefillin, and I'll put on tefillin every day." Very nice. Beautiful. Another, another guy gets up, and he says, "You know, I'm gonna keep one Shabbos every month. I'm gonna keep a full Shabbos. ‑‑ I'm gonna keep Shabbos what it means once a month." And a beautiful, beautiful achlata. It's very nice. But then a boy that we have this one cool boy, a nineteen-year-old boy at the time. His name is Vova. Vova gets up, and he says, "Chevra." He says, "Guys, what is this? ‑‑ what is this? This is a preschool here? You-- we come here to Buchenwald, we come here on this Jewish heritage trip, and you're gonna light a candle once a week that takes you five seconds? Wow, that's what you're gonna do. That's what we're taking from here? Igor, very nice

51:49 Speaker 4 you wanna put on tefillin. What, you're gonna go, you're gonna wrap tefillin five minutes a day? That's what you're gonna do?" And he goes around the room remembering, he's a smart boy, what everyone said, and said, "Chevra, we're coming from Rostov. Rostov is a city that was the capital of Chabad. A hundred years ago, the capital of Chabad was our city, and we don't live there because we have some zchus, because we're-- we live there by chance. And it's a tremendous achrayus responsibility, otvetstvennost in Russian, that we come from Rostov, from a city where the Rebbe Rashab lived. So this is what I'm telling you now. I take upon myself when we go back to Rostov, that I will dedicate next year of my life to go to Yeshivat Tomchei Tmimim. The Rebbe Rashab established Tomchei Tmimim, the Chabad yeshiva. There is one in Moscow. I will dedicate a full year and go to yeshiva and consider becoming a proper Jew, ‑" I look at this guy, Vova. This is a young guy, nineteen-year-old guy, very popular. He was in some business, perhaps even shady business, but we don't ask questions here. And he, he's gonna go to yeshiva. I didn't bel-- You know, I knew to myself that, you know, we all made achlatas by farbrengen. Let's be honest. I don't know about you, but I, I make the same achlata. It usually takes five, six times till it actually happens. We make the achlata. A few days you do it, you forget it.

53:17 Speaker 4 Then the next farbrengen, you do it again. The next... Eventually, hopefully after five, six times, the achlata... So I told myself, "Vova made achlata. Whether or not it's gonna happen, the thought counts. The thought-- It's a thought that counts. Very nice." We come back to Rostov. A week later, I get a text, uh, uh, or two, three days later, I got a text message, a WhatsApp message. It says, "Rabbi, do you remember what you promised you would give me if I go to yeshiva?" Now, WhatsApp has a tremendously useful, uh, feature where if you don't read the message, it doesn't have two check marks. So I didn't wanna read it. I have a very weak spot in my heart for people that try using us for presents. 'Cause when I was a bocher, I, I, I... Actually, my first fundraising for a overnight camp in, in, in, um, in Russia was in London. I remember going to, to, uh, Hampstead Garden Suburb, going from house to house to fundraise for Ukraine for a camp we were doing. Believe me, it was a great... Seventeen years old at the time, knocking on doors. Said, "No solicitations." I said, "I'm not ‑‑ we learned in yeshiva what solicitation mean. I have no idea what that is." I'm knocking on the doors. "Yes, we're going to Russia, Ukraine. Orphan kids, come help us." So, so when, when I went to camp, the way it worked, the first year I went to camp, we realized that these kids are

54:27 Speaker 4 willing to do brisim. So the first year I went there, we'd give them a Tetris game. You remember before the games that we have today, a Tetris, it was a-- cost two dollars. It just played Te-Tetris. So the first year, in nineteen ninety-seven, when I went-- or nineteen ninety-eight or ninety-seven when I went to camp, to get a kid to do a bris, you had to give him a Tetris game. When they saw that the American bochrim coming were willing to part with various prizes to get a bris, so there was a huge inflation rate. The next year, they wanted a Game Gear, Game Boy. A year later, they wanted PlayStations. The next year, they wanted cell phones. Before I had a cell phone, they knew there was such a thing as cell phone. They didn't even have home phones at the time, but they wanted a cell phone. And it was getting out of hand. The last year I was there, someone wanted us to connect a home phone to his house if he does a bris. It was getting out of hand. So when I hear someone is gonna do a mitzvah because, because you promised him... Now, I was at a farbrengen in the Sheraton Hotel after we went to Buchenwald. It was my moment of weakness. I don't know what happened there. I don't remember. It was, you know, you sit with the Russian people, they make you make a l'chaim. If I made one l'chaim too many, perhaps I made

55:29 Speaker 4 a promise that I can't hold. Maybe I promised him a phone. Maybe I promised him a computer. In a moment of weakness, I may have even promised a car. So here I am thinking to myself, "What did I promise this guy that for that he's willing to go to yeshiva?" So I was like, "You're going 'cause of my gift. I don't wanna hear. I don't wanna talk. I'm not opening this message." So I don't open the WhatsApp message, and there's no two check marks, Baruch Hashem for that, and I'm going on with my life. A few days later, I see another one of our youngsters who's on the trip. So I ask this youngster, "Tell me, when we were on the trip, do you remember, did I promise anything to this guy?" He said, "Yes, you did." I said, "Is it expensive?" He says, "Uh, yeah, it's not cheap." I'm like, "Okay, tell me please, what did I promise him?" So he says, "You promised him that if he goes to yeshiva, you're gonna get him a black hat." I said, "Black hat? A fedora?" He said, "Yeah. You said that if he goes to yeshiva, you'll buy him a black hat." "That's it?" He said, "Yeah." So I open my text message, I write this, "Vova, Vova, two black hats for me. No problem. Tell me what size you are, you'll get them tomorrow." That's it. He wants to, he wants to feel like a mensch. He wants to go to yeshiva and have

56:32 Speaker 4 a black hat. I sent him a black hat. He went to yeshiva. that year, I called the yeshiva, the rosh yeshiva, I said, "I want the bachurim to come to Rostov," because I figured the, the, the kehillah would get tremendous chayas from seeing this boy that went to yeshiva, he came back to Rostov. They came to Rostov and I said, "I'm gonna give the first aliyah to this Vova." He did a bris. His name is David. So I go to call him to the Torah. I say, His father's not Jewish. He screams from the corner of the room, David bin Avram. He's been in yeshiva three months. He's correcting me, the rabbi, that I called him David when he's really David. So I say, He comes up, he gets his aliyah. He's so happy. He's looking, he's, he's, he's glowing. This is a boy, from Rostov that made this tremendous to go out all the way. This is something that you don't have anywhere else. Only here that you could take someone, turn him around, and he comes back. Since then, what is he now? He has . When I leave Rostov, I could call him to come here, and he leins. He did the whole package. He leins better than me. Don't tell him. It's a problem. I, I, I invite him to come back to lein only one Shabbos, 'cause if-- I worry if I'm gone for too many Shabbats, then they might tell me, "Rabbi, stay behind. Go back to Canada where

57:50 Speaker 4 you've come from. We'll keep David." But this is a beautiful thing that you see people changing. I wanna share... I know we're a little out of ti-time, so I wanna share one other story with you, and then just, uh, a point that, uh, you know, for me, the most inspiring thing, the thing that moves me most is when a Yid here does a bris. There's nothing in the world that gets close to the feeling when you look at a Jew who was born and raised in Russia. No one had a bris in here at eight days old. Communism meant that the institution of a bris milah, the concept where an eight-day-old boy does a bris milah doesn't exist. It's, it-- No one has ever heard of it. So you have that a Yid didn't have at an older age to go and do a bris. So I-- When someone in my shul came to me, name is Boris, a fifty-year-old man. He tells me, "Rabbi, I wanna do a bris." Very, very moved. I look at this Boris. I didn't have to push him. It's not my chosid. I didn't do anything here. He comes to me, he wants to do a bris. I call up the mohel, Shaya Shaffit. He lives in Moscow. Tell him, "Shaya, we have a, an order came in. We need you to come to Rostov." He tells me, "Okay, I'll be there next week on Tuesday." I tell, uh, Boris, "Next Tuesday, we have a bris." Now, where does

58:57 Speaker 4 the bris happen? It happens in my office. It happens on my desk. My desk becomes the operating table. We put a mattress on my desk. Any doctors here? No doctors here? We, um, we have to sterilize the room. Any doctors would know when you do an operation, you do a, a, you know, a, a, some type of a procedure, you have to sterilize the room. So I have a can of Lysol. We spray, we sterilize the room with a Lysol strawberry flavor. They say it's better than the lime flavor. And my office is the... So Boris, I-- Boris comes up, he's waiting that day. I get a call from the mohel, "I have bad news." "What's the bad news?" He landed in Rostov, but his suitcase didn't arrive with all the, with all the tools. I told him, "Listen, this Boris wants to do it. If you need a kitchen knife, we have, we have whatever you need. Tell me what you..." No, he said, "Chaim, no jokes. The next flight is arriving at two PM, im yirtze Hashem." "Okay." So two PM, we have five o'clock shkiah. So we have three hours. It's an hour drive from the airport to us. He landed at twelve. He's gonna wait at the airport for two hours. At two oh five, he calls me, "Rabbi, good news. The, the suitcase arrived. I'm heading to shul." He comes to shul, goes to mikveh, does all the preparations. Next, you know, Boris comes in my office. I'm shedding tears.

1:00:09 Speaker 4 I'm very emotional. I'm shedding tears before it even begins. Before the shul began, he's on the bed, he's on my table, he's with the mattress. This guy, fifty-year-old guy, why on earth would he choose to do a bris? I have no idea. I don't support it. I don't think it's normal, but he has , he has this thing in his heart, tells him he has to do it. This pentile Yid. So he's lying on my, on my thing, and we're-- we begin the bris. In middle of the bris, there's a knock on the door. I go to the door, I open the door, and there's a thir-- a thirteen-year-old boy, Nikita. And he tells me, "Rabbi, is the mohel in town?" I said, "Yes." He learns in our school. His father is not Jewish, and we just met him this past summer in camp. He says, "I wanna do a bris today." I told him, "Are you sure?" He said, "Yes." I said, "Does your mother know?" He said, "I, I..." You know, when I was back a bachur in Ukraine, we do bris and not always do we ask the parents, and I learned the hard way. You always wanna make sure the parents know. When they send their kid to camp and he comes back with a bris, it's not always the easiest thing. So I told him, "Does your mother know?" "Yes." So I come back into the mohel. I say, "Shaya, we have to hurry on Boris because we have to

1:01:10 Speaker 4 fit in Nikita before shkiah." Now, for some reason, I said it in Russian. Boris heard this. He's like, "No, no, no. Don't rush. There's no rush. Take your time, Shaya. Don't rush on me, please." Okay. Fifteen minutes before shkiah, Nikita gets on the bed, uh, gets on the table and we're doing a, a, a, a bris on Nikita. He's terrified. He's shaking. He's terrified like I've never seen before. He has this huge fear, and I'm-- and, and we're doing the bris. I said, "Nikita, you're sure you want?" "Yes, I wanna do it." Because he's having a panic attack. I told him, "Nikita, what do you like? You like basketball?" "Yeah." I told him, "Let's talk about basketball, the NBA, whatever you want." We did the bris on Nikita. After the bris, we're sewing him up, and I'm asking Nikita, "Why'd you decide to do a bris today? Tell me, why did you do a bris today? You're terrified. What would lead you to doing a bris?" He told me, "Chaim, this summer, I went to your overnight camp." And for me, overnight camp is our biggest pull. The Rebbe said what a camp does. You know, why was the Rebbe so big into camps? It's the twenty-four-hour avira. For me, the biggest thing is our overnight camp. So he says, "I was in camp in the summer, and on Shabbos, the counselor said, 'Who wants to get an aliyah?'" I knew that I turned thirteen a few months ago, and I said, "I want an

1:02:17 Speaker 4 aliyah." They promised a bracha for you and for your family. So the head counselor said, "It's gonna cost you money. You're gonna have-- It's gonna cost. You're gonna have to pay." So I told the head counselor, "I don't have money." He said, "No, no, no, we don't charge you money. You have to do a mitzvah, a big mitzvah. What mitzvah are you gonna do if we give you an aliyah?" So Nikita's thinking, and Nikita said, "I decided-- My counselor told me that the most important mitzvah for us is a bris. I'll do a bris." So I said, "I'll do a bris." So the head counselor announced, "Nikita is gonna do a bris. We'll get an aliyah, but there's one problem." The head counselor says, "I live in Moscow, and you live in Rostov." Nikita said he's not gonna do a bris right away. He said he's gonna do a bris within three years. So the head counselor said, "Wait a minute. How do I know you're gonna do it? I need a guarantor. I'm gonna go back to Moscow. You're not gonna do it, then we gave you an aliyah." So Nikita looks up at his counselor, a beautiful boy, an eighteen-year-old boy from Rostov, Shalom, Shalom Shapira, a boy that became Frum on his own, started keeping Shabbos, kashrus, an amazing Yid. He looks up at his counselor, and he says, "He will be my guarantor." When they say he will be the guarantor, the head counselor says, "No questions. We're going ahead with

1:03:21 Speaker 4 this." And they gave him an aliyah. Nikita looks at me, and he says, "You know what happened to Shalom?" This Shalom, his dear counselor, this beautiful baal teshuva of ours, someone who gave his life for Yiddishkeit, was killed in a car accident a few months before the Moel came to Rostov. This beautiful boy with like a santas, he was driving a few hours away from Rostov. He was hit head-on collision, and he was killed. And Nikita looks at me and says, "How could I, how could I wait three more years to do a bris? I said I'm gonna do a bris within three years. How can I wait three years when I know that Shalom is waiting for me?" When the, when the bris was over, we made the, the, the bracha. We gave the naming ceremony. I took the Kiddush cup, I looked at him, and I said, "V'ikara sh'mo Yisrael." He looks at me. He said, "No, what name?" He says, "What do you think? Shalom, for his counselor." I, I choked up. How do you look? You look at a boy, a thirteen-year-old boy. His father's not Jewish. He knew nothing about Yiddishkeit. He's taking a Jewish name on this day in honor of his counselor, mesirus nefesh like I've never seen before. So I say, "Shalom ben Avraham," and I'm about to continue. He's like, "Wait a minute. Dov Ber." He's adding the Rebbe Rashab's name. It's gonna be Shalom for his counselor and Dov Ber for the Rebbe Rashab. Not

1:04:37 Speaker 4 a dry eye in the room. We finish this. We go downstairs. We make a little meal, and now he says, "Now, we have to go to the oil, to the Rebbe Rashab. I wanna write my first pan with a Hebrew name." I look at this boy, what mesirus nefesh. What a tremendous, tremendous boy this is. He knew... How does this happen? How does he have this mesirus nefesh? Where does it come from? Who gives him this inspiration to come? It wasn't me. What was it? It is his neshamah. The Rabbeim that lived here, Chassidus that began in Russia, has installed inside every single person some special spark. It was dormant for seventy years. It was sitting aside for so long, and suddenly now it's coming out. Suddenly now people are running right and left doing tremendous mesirus nefesh. You know, before I moved here, when I told people-- and I'm co- I'm ending now, Rabbi. Before I moved here, I told my friends. They asked me, "Why are you moving?" I said, "We're moving to Russia to inspire. We're moving to Russia to push, you know, to push..." Now, I'm living here eleven years, I could say one thing, that more than we inspire, we get inspired. So I think the message is, the message is that, you know, we demand of everyone mesirus nefesh. We demand of everyone to change. We as Anash, as Shluchim, as Rabonim, we're always telling people that they have to become better, they have to do more. But I

1:05:53 Speaker 4 think we should ask ourselves the same question. How-- We know how hard it is to change ourselves. When we wanna do something more, when we wanna actually take something up, it's so difficult. And yet we demand of these people that we deal with e- on a daily basis, these community members, these Yidden, that they should do changes that are much bigger than anything we've ever done. So I think the message is that, uh, if, if, if these tremendously, uh, inspire- inspiring Yidden have what it takes to make changes, how much more so we could change something within us. And one last thought about the Rebbe Rashab. There was a Chassid that lived in Rostov in, um, in nineteen eighteen. He went to the Rebbe Rashab, and he told the Rebbe Rashab, "I want to leave Rostov." The, the, the, the things were getting difficult here. The re- the, uh, revolution took place. It became hard to live as a Yid. So he told the Rebbe Rashab, "I want to leave the city so I could live as a Yid somewhere else where people won't find us." They were coming. The KGB was coming, the NKVD. So the Rebbe Rashab didn't tell him, "Don't leave." The Rebbe Rashab didn't tell him, "You must stay." The Rebbe Rashab told him, "If you leave, who's gonna stay behind?" That was the message. If you leave, who's gonna stay behind? What happened to this Chassid? His name was Mordechai Lifshitz. In nineteen eighteen, when he heard this from the

1:07:03 Speaker 4 Rebbe Rashab, he decided to stay in Rostov. In nineteen twenty, the Rebbe Rashab was in Stalag. Mordechai Lifshitz remained in Rostov. In nineteen twenty-three, the Friediker Rebbe left to Leningrad, and Moishe-- and, and, and, and, and Lifshitz stayed-- Mordechai Lifshitz stayed in Rostov. 1942, the Nazis occupied Rostov. He went into hiding. They killed every single Yid in the city, and he stayed in Rostov. In 1960, he was the last remaining Frum Yid in Rostov. Long beard. There were years that he had no kosher meat, so what did he do? He didn't eat meat. He ate fish the whole year. In 1969, he was-- he passed away, and he's buried a few plots away from the Rebbe Rashab. What did the Rebbe Rashab tell him? He didn't tell him, "Don't leave." He told him, "If you leave, who's gonna stay behind?" I think that's a message for all of us, both Shluchim, both Chassidim, Anash, anyone, that we have to stay the course. The Rebbe gave us a mission. The mission is to bring Mashiach. Sometimes we wanna take the easy way out. Sometimes we-- Or our shlichas, we're saying, "It's getting too hard. It's getting too, too difficult. Let's go somewhere." When it happens to me, and it happens quite often, when you live in Russia, sometimes you wonder, could we handle this? A problem. I think about Mordechai Lifshitz, and if he- Because the Rebbe Rashab told him, "If you leave, who's gonna stay behind?" That was strong enough to keep him going for

1:08:20 Speaker 4 so long. How much more so that we, that we're shluchim or that we're a nation. The Rebbe gave us a mission that we have to do something, that we should have the koichas, and we have the koichas to do and to fulfill our mission, that we should be zecher to the coming of Mashiach

1:08:32 Speaker 5 Amen.

1:08:40 Speaker 4 If anyone's ever in the area, come for a visit. We'd be very happy to... When I used to live in California, I'd tell people they'd come every week to visit us. For the past eleven years, let's just say few have taken up the offer. But, um, we- the offer is there.

1:09:00 Speaker 5 And, uh, so sh- uh, I think on behalf of everyone, a gr- a very big to Rabbi, um, Shlicha in Rostov. Um, who for him it's 11:30 now, actually 11:35. But, um, we wish you a tremendous , and we always look to the shlich- shlichas in Russia, and she- we get tremendously inspired when we see-- by seeing the, the, uh, tr- tremendous changes which have taken place, uh, over there over the last twenty years. So thank you. And now we're going to switch from the, uh, Farbrengen mode. We're going to switch to the Halacha session, which we have a weekly, uh, panorama of Halacha. I'd like to welcome everyone, as those who, uh, were here before and those who have joined us, us just now. And so we'll just go straight to, um, the questions as we have, which, which were communicated before Shabbos. Okay. Following on from last week, we had the discussion about making, um, art out of, uh, foods. And I was reminded on Erev Shabbos, I'm surprised that no one, uh, reminded me about the Tzemach Tzedek when he was three-years-old. So he was an orphan. His, his mother had, uh, passed away when he was a small baby, a small boy. And, uh, he would hang around the Alter Rebbe's room, his, his grandfather's room. And when Alter Rebbe would, uh, wear his tefillin, so the Tzemach Tzedek would take little po- he would take potatoes and shape them like tefillin, and he would put in s- strings, and he

1:10:37 Speaker 5 would, uh, run around in the room. There's a whole long story about this. Many years later, he was once running around while the-- during the Ma'amar, and, uh, one of the Hasidim thought he would tell, tell him to leave the room 'cause he's disturbing. Alter Rebbe said, " ." He's-- he can hear, and he's listening, and you'll, you'll know. And many years later, with the first, uh, one of the first Ma'amorim, which the Rebbe, the Tzemach Tzedek said, it was the Ma'amar. He was repeating what he had-- the Ma'amar which the Alter Rebbe said while he was running around with his potato tefillin and with his strings, um, attached. So according to the Mishne Berei V'HaShailo, we can out of potatoes, um, unless you can say that was the derech to do it in, in Russia at that time, according to the way we looked from the, from the Alter Rebbe, et cetera. Um, so what we discussed last week is if you don't have any alternative. So then if that-- he didn't have any, uh, local modeling shops, so therefore, that he-- that was the only what was the only resources available to make his mo-modeled tefillins he made out of potatoes. So according to the Magen Avraham, it's, uh, it's like Latin Halacha. Okay. Let's now go on to our, uh, last week, we also spoke about Tefillas Keilim, and this, um, stimulated the shaila about people buying jars of, uh, coffee. And then let's say you want to use the jar later

1:11:59 Speaker 5 to use it for storing rice. Now, since, again, with the focus on the Rebbe Rashab, so we have actually a story of the Rebbe Rashab, and this is at the bottom of your sheet. Is the, um... Can you see? Did I, did I share it with you yet? No. Okay. So sorry about that. Okay. Share. There we go. Ah. Yeah.

1:12:26 Speaker 4 Yeah.

1:12:27 Speaker 5 Ah. So now we have here a k- this is a quote from the Ksav HaShulchan written by Reb Chaim Noah, who, uh, passed away some sixty years ago. He had occasion a couple of times, once for sure, he traveled from Eretz Yisroel, where he lived. He traveled to, uh, to the Rebbe Rashab in Lubavitch, and he, uh, he, he sometimes mentions it. He also became, was appointed as a-- some time he spent in Bukhara as a Rav there, a shlichas of the Rebbe, uh, Rashab. Um, he also spent some time as a Rav in Cairo. But meanwhile, he writes the following a-um, anecdote. Talking about new Keilim, he's actually talking about opening Keilim on Shabbos, whatever. But he says, "I heard from Reb Refoel, the son of the Chasam Sofer, boch shalom." We know him as Refoel Kahn. So he says, "What I heard from Reb Refoel Kahn, a ma'aysei that the Rebbe Rashab was traveling on the train, and by one of the stations, he bought from a goy, he bought a, a cup with some water." And so then the-- he's on the train, and the train goes, uh, he's with the cup. After he finished drinking, he threw the cup out of the window. Now, this he mustn't say too loud because it now is illegal to do this, yeah? But the Rebbe, he, he finished the cup of, uh, the glass of, uh, thing, of, of, uh, the drink. He threw it out of the window of the ca-- of the

1:13:52 Speaker 5 train. And the Rebbe Chaim Noah says the pshat, "Because there's a shaila, how can you drink from a glass which hasn't been toveled? The only reason is because when you take the glass, you didn't intend to be koain of the glass. You only wanted to buy the g-- I, I paid for the drink. I didn't pay for the glass. I never, never... I, I ne- it never became mine." And if that was his kavana, so then to, to, to confirm that indeed when he bought the glass of drink, he didn't mean to buy the glass, just the drink. So bepoel, he threw the glass out of the window. So this is a very interesting thing because lots of us are buying, um, we buy the jars of coffee, et cetera, and we don't tovel them. Um, we don't-- Oh, sorry. We don't empty the coffee, run along to the mikvah, and then put the, uh, coffee back in the jar. And the reason for this is that, uh, you could say in the Sefer Tefillas Keilim, it's a Sefer which the Rebbe mentions in the Sicha, in Likkutei Sichos. Um, so he mentions the re-- he brings from lots of poskim. The reason is that when you buy the, when you buy the g- jar of coffee, you're not interested to buy the jar. You're buying the coffee. Okay. Uh, now let's, let's, let's, let's look at this more carefully. Does... I'll tell you, I, I used an example of a jar of coffee. It

1:15:11 Speaker 5 may not be the best example. Does a jarjar of coffee need to be tevilled? Let me give another illustration. In many kitchens, you'll see a set of canisters. One that says coffee, one says flour, one says sugar, one says teabags. Do these kind of containers need to be tevilled? Let's say if they're made of metal, do they need to be tevilled? So here we have a term called kli oitzer. Now, I'm going to point to the place, and this is in the Dinim of Tevilas Keilim, which is in Yoreh De'ah Simon Kufch, if I'm not mistaken. So we have here a comment of Rabbi Akiva Eger. And here he writes, where I'm pointing to, :"כוס ולא וחוכמה לי נראה שלא צריך טבילה דווקא כלי סעודה בו טבילה." He says here that the mitzvah of tevila applies to keilim which are used for serving at the table or, or, very important, a keili which you cook food, for example, and you make the food ready. But what about a keili... Let's say if I was a farmer and I had a sickle to cut grain, does the sickle to cut the grain need to be tevilled in the mikvah before you cut grain? Let's rephrase the question. As a shochet, the knife for shechita, does that need to be tevilled? It's making food edible. Actually, it's in this week's sedra, as a ma'acheles. Ma'acheles is the knife which makes the food edible, makes the meat edible. Now, here's- The food, the food is not edible,

1:16:55 Speaker 5 though, when you shecht it. Oh, oh, the answer is it's not edible right away. It's o- only edible afterwards. It's, it's, it's a stage before. There we are. And here we have, the Mechaber writes, "סכין של שחיטה או סכין שמפשיטין בו," the knife which is used for shechting or the knife which is used for skinning, flaying the animal, "יש משועי משעני צורך טבילה." There are those who say it doesn't need to be tevilled. Ah. So here we're seeing this yesod, that although a knife for shechita is obviously used as a stage in preparation of food, but it's not going to be edible right afterwards. It's going to have to go then through roasting or cooking and nevermind the kashering in between. Therefore, the סכין של שחיטה, יש משועי, there are those who say it doesn't need to be tevilled. Okay. And the same thing with the knife being used for, for skinning the animals. However, then we have the Rama. "ויש חולקין," there are those who disagree. "וטבלו טבלו בלא ברכה," it's recommended to tevil this knife without a beracha. And then the Rama continues talking about the "ברזלים שמתכין בהם המצות," about the... You'd have a kind of roller which has, uh, pricks, how do you say, points, and it would be used for piercing, for, um, for piercing the matzahs. I know, you know, anyone who's been to a matzah bakery knows that you have a special roller to make, uh, holes in the matzahs, so the matzahs shouldn't, um, shouldn't blow up,

1:18:27 Speaker 5 shouldn't, shouldn't inflate. So the Rama says, also they don't have to be tevilled. So some, the, the, the meforshim, the She'unah's Nosé Keilim tr- ask, are the barzelim, this, the, these ni- these rollers, these prickly rollers, are they the same halacha as the knife of, of shechita, et cetera, which he recommends to tevil without a beracha? And they say, "Ashur not." And they say the reason is that the knife... In other words, let's, let's understand what's happened here. The Ra- the Mechaber, the She'unah, has said a shechita knife doesn't need to be tevilled. Then the Rama says, you should tevil without a beracha. And then we're talking, then we are talking about these, these rollers for the matzahs. What's the reason that you should tevil the knife of shechita, and is the matzah rollers the same thing? So some of the meforshim say that there's a difference. The knife of shechita is takeh made for shechita, but you could cut a, cut a sandwich with it. You could cut, you could cut, um, fresh me-- uh, cooked meat with it. In other words, it's a knife takeh designated for an early stage of food, but it could be used for ready food. By contrast, the, the rollers of the, uh, the matzahs, you're not gonna... They're nothing to do. You can-- They're nothing to do with for fresh, edible food. And that's, it, it's useless for that. And therefore, what they're saying is that even a jar, even a, even a knife, which its designated

1:19:50 Speaker 5 purpose is not for immediate use, it's for the, for, for only for an earlier stage, since it can be used for, for immediate use of food, then it should be tevilled. That's the Rama's chiyuv. So coming back to our jar for storing. So I'm, I'm gonna illustrated an empty jar of coffee to store rice. Does it require tevila? So you, you can start off and say, "כלי אוצר do not req-" In other words, if it's a keili just for storage, it's not the kind of thing where you put in ready food. You're storing rice. I just, I suppose, chose that as an example because rice in its uncooked state is inedible. At that stage, it doesn't really need tevila. But according to the Rama, who says since it can be used for other food, you could use the same jar of, of, uh, of coffee now for rice. You could now perhaps use it for storing biscuits, for storing pretzels, and therefore it is ro'i to store, uh, it's, it's not so far-fetched that it will be used for other foods. And therefore, one would tevil it, but without a beracha. Generally, glass should be tevilled with a beracha. It's a chiyuv derabanan to tevil. But here, because it's a sofer, so it should be tevilled without a beracha. And I want to throw in what the Shach says. On the margin, he says- When the Ramah says toivel without a bracha, he says, "Or better still, toivel it together with other keilim, which require

1:21:11 Speaker 5 tevila without any question, and then the bracha will be for both keilim." And in other words, we're seeing from the Shach, he says, "If you have nothing else, okay, you'll do it without a bracha. But if you could do a mitzvah with a bracha, so don't, don't miss out on the bracha." Um, I just want to throw in one more, uh, observation, then I'll take, I'll go to the chats. And that is... Where's the chats? Okay. My question is the following. Why, when I go to the shop and I buy a can, I buy, I buy a, a, uh, let's say a, a glass bottle, a glass bottle of beer. May I drink straight from the... No, no, no, it's not respectable to drink straight from the bottle, but I'm talking about when no one's looking, yeah? So am I allowed to drink from, straight from the bottle that hasn't been teiveled? So then, so the, uh, we, so the answer is, I didn't buy the bottle. I bought the beer. No one's interested in buying the bottle. So now I'm asking the following question: What happens if I buy a food in a nice jar, and I definitely, I want to keep the jar. And I'm thinking of a, a, a practical example. Don't see them very often, but you can buy tins of biscuits from... They used to be from Denmark, these fancy tins of biscuits, and perhaps you paid even a bit of, but more, uh, more for the, for the, because

1:22:40 Speaker 5 you're buy, buying a nice tin. And many people would keep the tin for afterwards putting in fresh biscuits. My shailah is, how can you use the tin before you remove the biscuits? Before you use the first batch of biscuits. It's a keili. The whole heter is, the whole heter for not having to toivel is because I didn't buy the jar. I only bought the con- the contents. But if you beferish did buy it because you wanted the jar, so then you have a problem, you have of tvilas keilim. Now, according to the Mishnah Berurah in Halachas Pesach, he says that what happens if a goy comes with a delivery, if a, uh, if a, if a goy come with a d- um, uh, on, on Shmini Atzeres of Pesach. He knows that you, for six, seven days, you haven't touched a piece of chametz. So he says, "Rabbi," or whatever, "my dear Jewish friend, here I brought, brought you a fresh roll of bread that right at the end of your festival, you should be able to..." He brought on Shmini Atzeres of Pesach. No, it's gonna be a, if I own it, it's gonna be a chametz she'aveir al Pesach. So, the Mishnah Berurah says, you can tell him to put it down, and you say, "I don't want to be koine." That's what Mishnah Berurah says. I have strong roof- proofs that that doesn't work, um, from Ramah. Ramah means the teshuva that saying to... In other words, when you want to have

1:24:02 Speaker 5 it in the long term, you don't want it now, but you do want it, so that doesn't work. According to the Mahari Minz, that doesn't work. So therefore, according to Mishnah Berurah, you have a eitzah. You buy this tin of the... And you say, "I don't want to be koine. I want to be koine later." According to, uh, the other poskim, I don't think that works. So if you are in the position of buying one of those, um, cans of or, you know, tins with, with these biscuits or, or whatever similar example, you're buying a, a, a d- a f-food, uh, in a, in a, in a container, which you want to use the container subsequently. So then I see you have a, a problem of tevilas keilim, and there's one simple eitzah which you have, that you give it b'matana to a goy. And you say, "I'm giving it to you matana, and I'm borrowing it from the..." And then once you've emptied the biscuits and you want to reuse it, at that point, you will be able to, uh, get it back as, re-regain your gift from the goy, and then you'd be able to toivel it and acheir with a bracha. Um, and I'm, I'm not just now looking at the, at the, uh, chats. So someone is asking here, when this fellow was ohel, the Rabbi, um, Danziger, mentioned about a boy who had an, a non-Jewish father, and he said he was called up Ben Avraham, but he di- has

1:25:16 Speaker 5 a Jewish grandfather. So you should use the Jewish grandfather's name. Uh, y- I think you're right. The tragedy, though, in Russia, is that often the gra- the grandfather was also not Jewish. There's no, no Jewish grandfather. It's all just on the maternal side. So yeah, but you're right. That if the, there is a Jewish grandfather, uh, even on the maternal side, that he should be, um, his name should be c- um, used in, um, calling the Torah. Let's move on. Someone's is pointing out that the saken, the knife of shchitah is not kosher. Um, okay. Because it's used for cutting for, for, with blood, et cetera. But what would happen if you wanted to cut something cold with that knife? So then you'd have the question of having to toivel it. Someone's asking about bottles and et cetera. Well, if, you know, actually, in England, we all used to have to put, put a deposit. I, I, I, and, uh, I hadn't thought about it. Let's move on. Um, s-someone's asking, can you refill an almost empty ca- jar of coffee with more coffee? There are those who allow it, yes. There are i- in the Sefer Tevilas Keilim, there are those who say that it is okay. Let's move on to the next question, though. Okay. So now I've got here three questions, if you looked at the, on the list. Three of them relate to the same topic, and that is about doing business, trade, with Dvorim O Hasorim. So here we have

1:26:51 Speaker 5 a Mishnah. It's a Mishnah in Sheviis, and if you can see, it's on the sheet, on, on the, on the screen. She'ein oisin schodor b'peirus Sheviis, the fourth line. You're not allowed to do trade- With fruit, with produce of Shvis, neither with Bechoiras nor with Trumas. V'lo be'neveilos v'lo be'treifos. You're not allowed to do business by selling non-kosher meat. V'lo be'shkotsim v'lo be'remosim, nor are you allowed to make business out of selling, um, shellfish, uh, whatever, creepy crawlies. So now, someone asks the following shailah. Because of Corona, echves was... So now there are-- he re-recognize an opportunity of exporting meat to somewhere in the Far East and exporting chicken there. Perhaps for some reason there, there's no chicken there. And so he can make a lot of money of sending ki-- um, sending chicken there, obviously non-kosher chicken. Probably the margin of making it kosher would be make it, make it not, not profitable. So now, here's the question. Is he allowed to go into a business of exporting non-kosher meat to, to an-another country? Well, doesn't matter. This country, that country. So here's a, here's the shailah. There's a isur of to do shechura be'dvorim ohasurim. To do business, and it's a clear halacha in Shechu-norach, siman kuf yod zayin, that you're not allowed to trade with dvorim ohasurim. Of course, if it's incidental, which means that I am a kosher trader. So for example, Frohwein's meat had a sideline, another line called canine meat. Because the ko-kosher line or in-inevitably also involves that

1:28:39 Speaker 5 there's gonna be non-kosher. So what are you gonna do with all the non-kosher? You can't put it in the, in the, in the, in the rubbish. It's gonna be, uh, make, it'll make the kosher meat go, um, uh, sky high in price. So you have to sell it off to goyim. So there, but you, you... So how, how do you... So you have a sideline. So this is called incidental. I am trading in kosher meat. I also have treif meat, so I have another, I have another line. I sell treif meat also. Fine. But here, this fella is going to, l'chatchila, to go into a trade to buy treif meat, to sell treif meat. So this is a problem. Now, the, the, what, um... Now, we read a Mishnah that you're not allowed to trade in treif, uh, neveilos or treifos. What's the reason for that? Is the reason shemo yavo li-ochlo, that you might come to eat from it? Or is it, uh, ps-uh, psagzeira? Is it de-din de'Rabbosai or is it din rabonon? So here you have a Tshuvas HaRashba, and towards the bottom of the page, you can see here a fascinating lashon. It says, it says in, uh, um, you have the Gemara, the Yeshalmi in Shvis, uh, on that Mishnah. Tmeim heim, ma tamid loimer, u'tmeim yihiyu lachem. Tmeim heim, the animal is, is shrotzim. Uh, tmeim heim, what? Tmeim yihiyu lachem. So Yeshalmi says, echad isur achilo v'echad isur hanuah, pilush isur hanuah derech shechura. It's a isur hanuah

1:30:03 Speaker 5 in the form of trade. Very, very interesting. So it's not a pshat that, you know, I'm not allowed to take bugs, uh, worms, and use them for fishing. It is mutar be hanuah, but to have hanuah from shkotsim or remozim in the way of trade, that's the isur, which we learn from the pasuk, "U'tmeim yihiyu lachem." Interesting, there's a Rashba elsewhere which says that the pasuk is a nachsmachta. So it's not so clear whether it's isur de-Rabbosai or isur d'Rabonon. But even if it's isur d'Rabonon, there's also r-- two ways of learning. Is it because of shemo yavo li-ochlo, or is it because of, of, of, uh, isur, isur shechura per se, not allowed to trade? Another nafkimina, another consequence of this is, as is a Jewish boy or girl allowed to work in a non-kosher establishment, selling, uh, behind over the counter, selling, uh, meals, selling, uh... Customers come in, and they'll sell, sell, sell them my meat. If you say shemo yavo li-ochlo, then there's the isur of shechura goes that you're not allowed to be, uh, working in a non-kosher establishment because shemo yavo li-ochlo, you might come to eat. In any case, it's not a welcome environment, I would imagine, but fine. Dayan, can I ask you something? With shechura, today you don't need to touch the food. You can buy and sell. Oh, I'll come to, I'll come to, I'll come to that. I'll come to that. Okay. I'll come to that. But then if you say it's with, said

1:31:26 Speaker 5 isur shechura, so then, uh, he doesn't... The, the guy working in the, in the shop, halavai he would own the shop. He doesn't own the shop, and he doesn't have a problem of isur shechura. Fine. The Chasam Sofer was asked this as very similar shailah about exporting meat, tra-neveilos or treifos, to another community, et cetera. And he says, "It's isur shechura, but I have a way, I have a, a, a solution." It was like one of these kind of situations where you don't even have to touch it. You, you get an order, a delivery from here, and it's kind of you just direct. You're sitting in your office, smoking your cigar, and you tell, and pick up the telephone. "This, deliver from here to here," and you make the money, comes into your bank account. Says, "Ma mishgevaldik." So now, so the Chasam Sofer says, "Instead of you buying from this one and selling to this one, instead you become an agent." You're just like the, the shadchan. You will say, uh, and for your agency, you'll also charge the same money. But instead of becoming an owner, you just become a, a, an agent introducing one to the other. That's how the Chasam Sofer says, uh, that's a solution. But even that he says, uh, but, uh, yerei shamayim should keep away from this. So, so coming back to, so this shailah. So if you're not touching the stuff, it's just everything is remote, so the, the, then, then there is still, if isur

1:32:54 Speaker 5 shechura is isur shechura per se, regardless of shemo yavo li-ochlo, then you're not allowed to trade in it. But there is a, there is a way around it. But as I said, the Chasam Sofer, he says, "She menafshe yurchak mizeh." Now- Let's go on to the next question which we have. I have, um... I-I'm, I'm-- He's a shochet. He works in an abattoir, and so you have access for m-meat for cheap. Okay. He has a non-Jewish cleaner who, Allah knows that he's a shochet. She's, uh, very happy for him to bring her fresh meat, because everything you buy in the s- in, in the supermarket is, is, uh, a few days old. Fresh meat, apparently, is-- I don't know how they know what ganeyden tastes like, but fine. They Fresh meat. Sh-fresh. So she asks the, her, her, the, well, the, the, the balabos there, "Can you bring me fresh meat?" So here, here we sh-we, and we have, uh, this shailah. Um, the Rama in Shulchan Aruch... Let's see. Do I have, uh, the Rama here? I don't know. No. So the, the Rama in Shulchan Aruch talks about you're not allowed to buy treif sandwiches for your workers. You have goyische workers. You're not allowed to... And you need to... It's part of your duty that you have to br-provide them lunch. You're not allowed to go around to Sainsbury and buy a, a, a ham salami or something. You're not allowed to do that according to the Rama. No, it means you

1:34:30 Speaker 5 have to fork out for kosher, yeah? They, uh... But the Shach disagrees, and he says, That they would buy treif, uh, sandwiches for their, for their goy-goyische workers, and so he's mekil. But even then, the heter, which they say, is the following. There's a Means I'm buying from him and selling to him. But they're, they're, they're buying for my workers. I'm not a agent. I'm not selling. I am a user. I am a consumer. I have, lahavdil, I don't know, lahavdil, I have, I have animals which I feed. I have workers I have to feed, but I'm not buying it to sell. That's what some say. That's why the Rama was not followed, la-halacha. But here I'm more concerned because here you are taking it from A and giving it to C, so you are a trader. One, one, uh, s-saving factor, if you can see on the, on the screen, the... This is the, um, Aruch HaShulchan. Aruch HaShulchan is... Well, he's quoting the... Following the Shach, that the meaning is that they would buy non-kosher meat for their tr- workers, and he says a very interesting definition. He says, What does it mean? You're not here into trading with meat. You've got here goyische workers. They need to be serv-served lunch. So you're, you're, you're... It's not a s... It's not your, it's not your line of business. It's, it's a side... It's very much a side... It's a sideshow. And then he says a very powerful lashon over here. The issur is

1:36:08 Speaker 5 to make profit on it. And not that you have to lose because of this. And for him to have to fork out for kosher sandwiches for his goyische workers is obviously gonna be a loss. And so, therefore, he... That's why he, he's ma-he's me-mekil. So according to Aruch HaShulchan, we have, uh, room to be mekil. If he's going to just pick up the chicke... the chi... the treif chicken from the abattoir and give it to her for exact pri-price, not to make a penny on it, not even to pay five pounds and give it to her as if it were six pounds, and she's happy to take it as part of her, you know, uh, payment. But not to make any profit on it at all, then one could say that it's, uh, that then you have a heter according to Aruch HaShulchan, at any rate. Um, you're not making any money on it. Dan, why isn't there a chashash that he would eat it if he's giving it to his workers? Yeah. Yeah. You're, you're absolutely right. And th-that-therefore, I'm just seeing here that Aruch HaShulchan, he seems to be saying, "If you're not making your money on it, it's, it's... If you're making money, if you feel perhaps more balabos of it." Here, it's, it's just a side... I don't know. I'm not, I'm, I'm not, I'm not so confident with it. Shema Yisroel, that's why I was really concerned about it, and for that matter, also the next question. If my next-door

1:37:23 Speaker 5 neighbor, who's non-Jewish, and I'm, uh, we're very friendly, and I'm going to the sh- to the, to the, to her shopping trip, and she asks me, he asks me, "Can you buy me some treif food?" And so according to the Aruch HaShulchan, then we do have a heter. But if you say Shema Yisroel, then you don't. Now, I just want to share with you just one further point. When, when, when, let's say, my neighbor does give me cash in front, up, up front to go... He gives me a fiver and, "Go and buy me some, uh, ha-some ham when you go to Sainsbury's." Wh-who does the ham belong to when I buy, buy it? So here we have... This is actually in Chukas Pesach, talking about a goy asking you to buy chametz for him on Pesach. And the Alter Rebbe is quite clear here. Even though the goy gave you money, af-- E-even if the goy gave you money, um, it's doesn't make any difference. Since the money, And the, the, he gave him, uh, it's as if the goy had himself paid for it because there's no shlichus. So when you're buying it, even with the goy's money, it becomes yours. And so the same thing back over here. Obviously, with chametz on Pesach, it's a much stricter halacha. Et cetera. But to say that because the goy is paying you, therefore it's not yours, that doesn't really work. It actually does become yours. According to Aruch HaShulchan, you got a heter because

1:38:51 Speaker 5 you're not making any profit on it. But, uh, otherwise, um, you know, it, it, it does present a problem. Now we have to go to the chats. Okay. So this is Right. Someone's asking, "Do disposable foil containers, uh, used more than once, do they need teviling?" So I would s- I would say it's recommended to do so. Generally, I would say teviling without a brocha, and I'll tell you why. When I was, uh... I had the merit to be, uh, have shmush by Rav Padwa, and I'm not gonna cover the whole story how Reb Mendel Futerfas was in-instrumental in getting me in there. But, um, we once had this discussion, and Rav Padwa's, Reb Henoch, chinuch v'bracha, he was of the opinion that s-aluminum does not need to be teveled, does not require tevila. He was actually also mekil with china, which is glazed, but that's another discussion. But, uh, aluminum, he says like this, "The mitzvah of tevila we learn from the pasuk," "Silver and, and, and, and gold," "Gold and silver." "Which means copper and iron." "Tin." "And lead."

1:46:06 Speaker 6 good good? North Very, very interesting. It says in the Gemara, in Gemara Berachot: . Dates, which were made into truma. So the beracha is by pri ha'eitz. They are still the same as they were at the outset. Says Rashi, "That's in, in the Gemara earlier. . It's crushed, but it's not, it's not pureed, and the beracha remains so eitz. So here we have... And I, I mean, I haven't dissected one of these packets, but I, I'm, I s- seem to recall that it's like a kind of paste. Uh, it's, it's, it's, it's harder than a paste, but it does... It's kind of a thick paste made of, um, uh, how, how do you say? You wouldn't say... You don't crush dates. You... It's not pureed either. What would you call it? It's like, um, squashed. Yeah. So that's what we have it- Ground. Ground, grinding. It's not ground. No, ground means it comes into particles. It... That's the thing, you can't make dates into particles. Mashed. Mashed, says Efsha. But, okay, fine. Mashed or minced meat. Yes. Okay, okay. There we go. So there we have, . If you took dates and you've kvetched them... Oh, that's a nice Yiddish word. You kvetched them and you took out the, the garinin, took out the pits. Um, in England, we call them pips. In America, they call them pits, yeah. Um, and they're made from it, a iso. You made a, a mush from these, um, kvetched, uh, dates. Even though that's the nor- not

1:48:00 Speaker 6 the normative use for g- dates. They do not forfeit their privileged beracha. And the beracha is, , because their appearance hasn't been totally distorted. So that's really the answer. That you look at this bar, and you see it is a... It's, it's mashed dates and raisins, and therefore it remains bere pri ha'eitz, and the nuts also, the pistachios are also eitz. But I would also go further. It still also remains from sheva saminim, and therefore, the beracha achronah would be either eitz or pri eitz. That's... This is the truma which is mentioned here in the Shulchan Aruch. The Shulchan Aruch, this actually, this quote is from the Alter Rebbe's, it's, uh, Beis HaBechoseh Eden, but it's the same thing as Shulchan Aruch. It's the same halacha. Okay. So then, ha- shailas come, uh, I've noticed often shailas come in pairs. So someone un- unrelated to this question of this, um, sh- these, these bars, these energy bars. So someone's asking me about a vegetable soup. Now, everyone who learned a bit of Ibra HaAsanen knows that the beracha on vegetable soup is bere pri haadama. So now he's asking the question, what's the beracha on the, on the veget-... Now he, uh, what about a pureed vegetable soup? So let's read the two halachas. Here, this is from the, again, from the Alter Rebbe's Bechor HaAsanen from Peir Zayin. . Vegetables which are normally eaten cooked, . So the juice in which they're cooked, the liquid, is also, is also the same beracha. . That

1:49:43 Speaker 6 is the intention. When you plant those vegetables, they are planted with the intention that they will be cooked. . The j- the, the liquid. Let's say, uh, pumpkin. It's normal that you make a pumpkin soup. So... Or, well, why not kind of... I don't know, potatoes or, uh, carrots. It's normal that they, uh, the, the people make, uh, pota- uh, um, soups with these, with these vegetables, and it's normal to have the soup together with it. In other words, peas, by, by contrast, let's say, I'm just throwing an example. Peas, people cook peas, and they serve peas without the, have a special, uh, serve ladles before they... The juice to drain off. But there are, there are... Perhaps sometimes you do, we do put peas in a vegetable soup. But there are vegetables which is common that to eat the vegetables together with the soup. Then that soup is taka bere pri haadama. . Therefore, the vegetable soup is bere pri haadama. . Even if you're drinking it on its own. Now, here's where it's a bit confusing. When you have vegetable soup, which has got pieces, diced potatoes, and carrots, and, and peas, or whatever, and there's also a juice with it, a liquid. That liquid is haadama, and even if you're having that liquid without any potatoes, without any pieces, then it's, the beracha is, is taka haadama. That's true. Now, let's take a look at this table. Now, this is in the new- newest edition or almost newest edition of the Bechor

1:51:20 Speaker 6 HaAsanen of the Alter Rebbe, um, put out by Rabbi Avrom Alashvili through Kehos. And so in the back of the, uh, Bechor HaAsanen, he's got a table. So here we have, . And see, when I make a psak, I feel so much more, uh, confident when I see someone else has said it, so I can blame someone else, yeah. , the kitnios. A f- a, a, a soup made from fruit or vegetables, beans, or grain, , which have been pureed. . And the appearance has totally d- been distorted. You can't recognize it. Then what does he say? The beracha is shehakol. It gives a reference. Okay, so that's your answer. So when the, the vegetable soup is with pieces, and the vegetable pieces are recognizable, so then not only is the... Are the pieces haadama, the soup is also haadama, even if you're having the soup on its own. But if the- Soup has been pureed. If the vegetables have been pureed. Everyone knows that when a, a food has been totally pureed beyond recognition, and it's not the normal thing to do with that food, then it forfeits its, its privilege, and it's down, down... It's degraded, downgraded to, uh, to shehakol. And therefore, pureed vegetables become shehakol, and therefore the, the soup is-- So therefore, that's the answer. A pureed soup, a pureed vegetable soup. Vegetables are shehakol, so the soup is also shehakol. If the vegetables are still in, in, in, uh, full form, you know, not in full, you know, you

1:52:53 Speaker 6 know, you recognize them, so then the soup is ta'am odem. Okay. Now, someone asks about what happens if you put, um, uh, barley in the soup. If the barley is whole, that's another whole headache because whole grains is a ma'aseh betar domah. It's a whole, whole shailah. Uh, if they're pureed, then, then the bro... He said, uh, he says over here clearly in this, uh, table, if it's pureed, then it's, uh, it's shehakol. Okay. Someone else asks, uh, what about if you have croutons in the soup? And the answer is, the croutons in, let's say, in chicken soup, yeah? Um, as I've said perhaps before on this shiur, that the whole week is, is provided for by Shabbos, yeah. So on Sunday, you have the leftovers of Shabbos. And if you had not so many guests on Shabbos, on Mondays also you have leftovers of Shabbos. So if tomorrow for lunch you're gonna have some chicken soup and you put in some, some, um, croutons, so the chicken soup is shehakol. Uh, and the croutons are mezonos. The-- Because they're not cooked together, so the croutons remain mezonos. It becomes like two separate entities, and you'll have to make two brachas. And the, the order would be first make a, a, mezonos on the croutons, and then you make a separate bracha shehakol on the soup. Okay, let's go on to the next question. Um, I know there's-- someone's asked if it's the der to make, if it's the der to make a soup from

1:54:28 Speaker 6 this. Yeah, I mean, um, what's the, what's the story? What's the bracha on mashed potatoes? It's mashed potatoes. Everyone knows this. This is how-- It's normal to pound potatoes to mash them, and therefore the bracha is, is, is, is boreh pri ha'adama. I remember I was a bocher, and I asked Rabbi Solomon Shimon. Um, it was in seven seventy. I asked him what bracha do you make on chocolate. Famous, uh, discussion. So he says shehakol. So I go, "But chocolate is made from, from, uh, boreh pri ha'etz." So he says, he points out, He points all around seven seventy. Who knows that it's made from a pri ha'etz? Which I'm not so sure. Uh, you have in the Sefer from Dayan Kraus from Manchester, zal zei gezunt, in Mekor HaBracha, he has a whole discussion. Uh, he's more noted to say that bracha on chocolate is za'et, but the minhag is to say shehakol. Let's move on. Um, here is a question. A child was megayer. A child was megayer, um, with the mother. This is back in Ukraine. And now the child is-- the girl has now turned, turned bas mitzvah. Is there a need for some kind of... So what you have is a child is teveled as a guer. It's called guer al das bestin. And there is a concept that the child can actually be moiche. Can, can, can, uh, when they turn, come of age, they can say, "I don't want this." And so is there a need for... This

1:55:52 Speaker 6 was the question. Is there a need for the child to formally, uh, accept their Yiddishkeit, or does it just happen automatically? So here we have, this is from the end of ˈhirḥas ɡeɪrɪs. You have the note. It says it's siman reish samech ches. So let's midalokhe inside. We have another couple of minutes. Goy koton. If a non, a non-Jewish bo-- child. The father, I guess the Jewish father, I guess. Um, if he doesn't have a father, perhaps it means a Jewish father. I'm not, I'm not sure. I didn't think about it. If he wants to be mezayer, or the mother brings him to the, the bestin, so bestin can be megayer the child. Shezchus hu lo. A child doesn't really have the power of decision, but w-- the mother and the bestin can do a, an act of merit for, on behalf of the child. As if it's, if it is his absence, they can do to, uh, a favor for him, and they can make him a Yid. Then it says, When this child becomes of age, they have the option of saying, "I don't want it." And if the child at turning of age says, "I don't want it," then it is not, it's not considered like a Jew who's become a heretic. He's a goy. So now what we're seeing here in Shulchan Aruch is that there's no need for the child to make a formal declaration, "I am accepting Yiddishkeit." It's not necessary. So long as the child is not moiche,

1:57:35 Speaker 6 he doesn't say, "I, I want to go away from this," the child remains a Yid. And so by default, the child is a Yid. So there's no formal need. And actually, um, I once had this conversation with Dayan Ehrenfreund, zal zei gezunt, and he also said similar. There's no, there's no, um, need for a formal, um, procedure to confirm their Yiddishkeit. Now, as I said, shailas come in droves. So on Friday, I got a call from a shliach somewhere in Europe, and here's, here's the interesting story. The, um, before I go further, tell you that, that story, it says in the Nosek Halim that this idea that a child can be megayer, can, can be moiche, is only if he was mezayer without a parent. But if he was mezayer with a parent, brings him teshuvah, then he cannot be moiche. So here the sheilah which I got on Friday after I'd already typed up this list was a couple, he is an American Jew, she wasn't Jewish. They went through a giyur ten years ago, and because he... And, and, and, uh, now they're not keeping anything. Now, they want to make a bar mitzvah. Well, they want to have a bar mitzvah. So they're traditional, you know, three day a year. That's, that's the level. So now they want to make a bar mitzvah for the boy. Now, this boy was, was born not Jewish, and there was a giyur al daas beis. Now, l'chatchila ein lachem mechuyav gedolah mizei that he's not

1:59:04 Speaker 6 living a Yiddish life. So here becomes the question. Can now, now here the me'ach kimina said, "Iddinim omunis, can the shliach make a bar mitzvah?" A big sheilah, yeah. So this is, uh... So my-- which I, I, my, I asked him, "Bimei varer, if right after the giyur, were they keeping Yiddishkeit at all right after the giyur? If for the first couple of years, first whatever, the first short period even after the giyur, they were keeping talum mitzvahs, then the giyur was an authentic giyur of the pair-- of the mother. And then if the giyur of the mother was authentic," so we just quoted from the pesach teshuvah from Poskim, "that then the child cannot be mohel. So the child that the bar mitzvah is a legitimate bar mitzvah. If they never kept anything, then, uh, then, then the, then they should be making a bar mitzvah." I'm told, I'm here on the chat, there's someone telling to me that the Manchester Bais Din makes a point of contacting the child converts at bar mitzvah, bat mitzvah to give them the option. Okay, they're going l'chatchila lefni mishur sadin, but, um, min hadin l'chatchila they have, uh, it's by default. It's not, it's not necessary. In general, after-sale service is not a bad idea, yeah. Let's go back to the next question. Um, okay. So someone asked me, this is the last question. I'm sorry if I go another topic a couple of minutes. Um, bimashlim, uh, the minutes which I f-- I always say

2:00:28 Speaker 6 in the lesson when the children are talking in the lesson, I say, "I'm, I'm going to have to take the minute lesson, another two minutes." But then the bell rings, but here there's no bell. So you got another two minutes. All right. So here the question I got was, a person is writing a will, and he's asking does he, uh, sh- does he, uh, need to set aside a tenth of his estate for tzedakah? And I, I felt I wanted to address this. It's a common, you know, question, uh, people are asking. So I want to explain something. The mitzvah or the idea of maaser, is it a chiyuv? Uh, there's a discussion in Poskim, is it deoraisa, mid'rabbonon, is it a mineg? Well, there's another s- way of looking at it. I have a mitzvah of tzedakah. People are knocking on my door and asking me for help. How much am I expected to give tzedakah? And the maaser is my budget for tzedakah. This is my ceiling. I ca-- I'm allowed to draw a ceiling and say, "This is how much I'm expected to give tzedakah." Then you have chomas is lefni mishur sadin, that you put aside, you, you, you, you put aside twenty percent, that's your budget for tzedakah. So it's, it becomes almost academic in this part of the world, is it a chiyuv to give maaser or not? You've got people knocking on your door. The question is, how much are you mechuyav to take out of your pocket?

2:01:47 Speaker 6 And when you, you have a ceiling. You have, you, you can say up till ten, ten percent. So here we have hilchas tzedakah. And so it says here in Shulchan Aruch, this is in Hilchas Tzedakah, you can see Resh Mem Tes in Yoreh Deah, you should give as much as the aniym ne-need. If you cannot afford to g-- to cover their needs, then you give up till chomas, which is mitzvat amuchah, a tenth, midat beinonis. But then, uh, then it says here in the Rama, "Vedavka kol yemei chayav." Oh, let me get that arrow in the place, this cursor. "Vedavka kol yemei chayav. Hablashas moisi yochel od ham liten l'tzedakah kol ma she'yirtze." So this, uh, the, the ceiling limit that limit yourself to maaser or similar is during your lifetime. When a person is, is preparing for afterwards, so then he can... He's not limited by the shiur of maaser. That doesn't mean he has to put aside tenth of the estate. But meanwhile, what we're seeing is you ask maaser, now right after maaser, right after maaser again, the concept or limit of maaser doesn't apply in atzavo. You're allowed to give more. But then that's in hilchas tzedakah. Now I'm going to the Alter Rebbe's Shulchan Aruch. It's, this is in hilchas, um, mechiro matanot. It's, uh, but he says here, um, "Sifches ein liten machach chachas matan lacheim afi l'tzedakah ulayiliten honiach ha'yorishim cach." A person shouldn't give away all of his property to tzedakah and leave his, his yorishim, his

2:03:18 Speaker 6 heirs, leave them without anything. And who- whatever does so is ein ruach chacham lecheimanhu. V-- Even if the yorishim are not behaving, um, as, in a worthy manner. It goes to... And then he says, "But if you leave for the yorishim, davo hamaspik lahem, you leave a sufficient amount for them to manage, then you can give out, uh, the rest, you can give as much as you want to tzedakah," as this referred to, uh, he refers to hilchas tzedakah. So my advice to this person who asked me this question, and I'm sharing it with you, is you're writing a will. First of all, think about are there anyone, any p- any, any, uh, do you have any dependents who need to have your support, your financial support? And that's, that's your first priority. That they, if you're, if you're not gonna be here physically, but you should ensure that they have a, a reasonable source of, uh, of support, of financial stability. And once you've do-done that, then it seems to be, what I'm gathering, and I s- and I believe that's a common mineg also, to take it, to designate a certain amount. And there's no-- I don't see any clear, um, any clear instruction to davka do maaser, davka chomas. It's up to the way you see, but you, you, you, there is, it seems to be a recommended practice to designate part of it that should be, uh, it should be used for tzedakah. And the, it's, it's a well-known thing that

2:04:42 Speaker 6 doing the, preparing atzavo, preparing a will. And I would just want to throw in, if you are preparing a will, use a, a, uh, frum, uh, solicitor because it's not so pashut halacha, and it should be done in a way that's kosher la, la, halacha. Uh, and, uh, it, it's known that it's a segula for arichas yamim. And so I wish everyone, uh, a gut vokh and arichas yamim veshanim tovos. And thank you for joining us, and, uh, sorry for overstepping the, um, the margin by a couple of minutes. And we zoch sich alle zein gezunterheit, freilicherheit, and we should go with Mashiach tzedkenu. Let,. Thank you. .

2:05:21 Speaker 7 . .

2:05:22 Speaker 6 .

2:05:22 Speaker 7 .

2:05:22 Speaker 6 . . . .