קריאה דחופה לתשובה

00:03 Speaker 1 We are doing Igris. We are on page one hundred and eight. This is a letter from Yud Gimmel Shvat of the year that we're studying, Tav Shin Lamed Gimel, which was exactly fifty years ago, give or take, depending on what, on what, on what month we've chosen this time, which is Yud Gimmel Shvat. And, uh, this is one of those letters that does not look terribly impressive, but I had a hint that something interesting could be happening because if you look down to the bottom, I'm showing you on the screen, it says if you wanna know more about the person the letter's written to, you can check a Hiskashrus edition. That usually means that there's a backstory. So I went looking, and, and is there a backstory? Uh, there's a few ways we could do this. Why don't we not read the letter first? Why don't I tell you about the guy first, and I'll tell you where the letter appears in his story with the Rebbe. This is written to a doctor. I don't know how to pronounce his name. I think it's Golansky. It's-- I wanted to say Goldinsky, but the lam-lamed and the daled are in the wrong places. It's Golansky. This is Rabbi Golansky. He lived in Yerushalayim. I asked Rabbi Weber if he was aware of him or his story. He, he lived there in the seventies, so this would've been a little bit before Rabbi Weber's, uh, I don't know, adult time or maybe time. I don't know how

01:03 Speaker 1 old he is. He, uh, is ageless. Uh, but he says that he, he, he was not familiar with this individual. Anyway, Rabbi Golansky lived in Yerushalayim. He was not frum. He was a minister of transportation from the Mapai Party. That's the Democratic Socialist Party. Um, so not, not, not a frum individual, not a right-winger by any stretch of the imagination. He was a minister of transportation for many, many years. Uh, at some point in the middle of his term as minister of transportation, which again went on for, I think, decades, he somehow lost both of his legs. Yeah, I think he lost them in a terrible car accident, was the way that the story is told. He didn't lose all of his legs. He had some ability to walk, but he walked very poorly, and just because he was a strong-willed person, you you know what these old Israelis or old Israeli Democratic socialists are like, he's a kibbutznik. You couldn't, you couldn't keep him down. So he found a way to continue carrying out his duties as a, uh, as a minister of transportation for many years after basically losing his legs. He also used to travel the world to do random things for the-- random things, to do important things for the Israeli government, and at one point he was in America on a mission some summer. The summer was in 1972. 1972, he was in America on a mission, and shortly before he returned-- Hello. And shortly before he returned from his

02:11 Speaker 1 mission to America, a friend convinced him to visit the Rebbe. The friend said to him, "It'd be a loss not to go." And he didn't think the Rebbe was terribly interesting. He didn't think religion was terribly interesting, but he figured that he had nothing to lose, so he scheduled a yechidus. They scheduled him for one o'clock in the morning. His flight was supposed to be two days later, and when he walked into the room, the Rebbe stood up and helped him find a seat because he couldn't walk very well. So he sits down, and finally, they have a discussion. The Rebbe talks to him about the ministry, about transportation. Apparently, he talked to him about something going on with Breslov at the time, some controversy with Breslov going on in 1972. Uh, if you wanna look into the history, maybe you can figure out what it was. I'm not sure. But anyway, they discussed these issues, and then near the end of the conversation, the Rebbe says to him that he, he looks at him, the Rebbe, and says, "I'm concerned for your health. I think you're sick." This is very strange. He says, "I'm concerned for your health. I think you're sick. I'd like you to stay in America a little bit longer and see a certain doctor." The Rebbe then says that he'll personally cover all of the expenses of seeing the doctor. He'll schedule the appointment, but he needs to promise the Rebbe that he'll see this doctor in America before he

03:10 Speaker 1 leaves. Uh, the, uh, Rabbi, uh, Rabbi. Dr. Golansky is skeptical. He doesn't really know the Rebbe, doesn't really trust the Rebbe, and, uh, he gives the Rebbe's kind of a non-answer. The Rebbe then asks about his family and makes him promise to send him a letter on the day that right before his daughter gets married. He tells Rabbi Golansky, "I wanna hear from you right before your daughter gets married." Rabbi-- Uh, Dr. Golansky responds, "My daughter's pretty young. She's nowhere near getting married. This is like a distant possibility for me." And the Rebbe says, "Nonetheless, I need to hear from you right before your daughter's wedding, how-- no matter how far in the future that is." So Dr. Golansky leaves. He's not sure what to make of this, uh, of this Rebbe that he just met, but something tells him he should probably go see the doctor. So, uh, he does wait. He delays his flight a little bit, and the next morning, the Rebbe's already scheduled an appointment for him with the doctor. The doctor takes some images of his spine and finds a tumor on his spine. Says that the tumor would have killed him had, uh, had they, had they, had been left untreated, but now it's a, it's a highly treatable tumor, and he says it's a miracle they found it, and he can continue being treated back in Israel, and that he should go back to Eretz Yisrael. So now he's very impressed. The Rebbe somehow knew that he was

04:13 Speaker 1 sick, knew what doctor to send him to. He's, he's, he's won over. He runs back to seven seventy to tell the Rebbe. And the Rebbe says to him, "I'd really like you to come to my farbrengen this Shabbos. Push off your flight a little further. And, uh, again, I wanna remind you that right before your daughter gets married, I need you to send me a letter. I need you to let me know right before your daughter gets married." He again tells the Rebbe, "My daughter's very young. I just don't-- I don't know why you keep..." And the Rebbe, "I need, I need to know right before your daughter gets married." Anyway, he does agree. He goes to the farbrengen. At that farbrengen on Shabbos, the Rebbe spends a lot of time with him. Between every sicha, the Rebbe's chatting with him, saying l'chaim with him. The Rebbe shows him incredible kiruvim. Right before he leaves to finally take his return flight back to Eretz Yisrael, he goes into the Rebbe one more time. He sees the Rebbe actually after Mincha. He tries to go in, and the Rebbe's davening Mincha, so he waits till afterwards. And in that conversation, the Rebbe tells him that he wants him to connect with Anash in Yerushalayim to try to get involved with the Lubavitch community there. And once again, for a third time, "Please, when your daughter gets married, I need to know right before your daughter gets married, you need to send me a letter." So this,

05:10 Speaker 1 uh, Dr. Golansky does return to Yerushalayim. He connects with the Anash there. He doesn't become frum. He's not a, he's not a, he's not a flip story. He does-- he allows them to put up mezuzahs in his house, and he actually asks to be involved in putting up the mezuzahs. He does tefillin with them occasionally. They'll come by and put tefillin on him. But he's also an intellectual. He becomes interested in the haskala of Chassidus Chabad, and he decides that he wants a Chassidus class in his house, even though he's not frum, and they, they, they establish one. They open up a... One-- I forget who it was. One of the Anash living in Yerushalayim starts a class in his house, uh, taught by, to taught by that individual, and many people were influenced through this. Whenever they would come to his house, this Dr. Golansky would tell them about the miracles he saw with the Rebbe, how strongly he feels about the Rebbe's great genius, and how interested he is in Chassidus, and a lot of people were affected by this shir in the house. Never became frum, though. Uh, throughout the years, he had regular, uh, not regular. Every now and then, he'd write a letter to the Rebbe. The letter we have in front of us, which is from one year later, is a letter that- The Rebbe sent him, I believe in response to his letter. Yeah, in his letter from Beis Chvat. We should read it 'cause it's the middle

06:11 Speaker 1 of the story, and then we'll pick up after that. Here's the letter that's our letter of the day. The Rebbe writes from . I was very happy to receive your letter from Beis Chvat. It's been a while since we spoke. It could have been a whole year. Says, "I hope that since you're not writing about any particular problem," it sounds like Dr. Golansky just wanted to check in and say hi. Says, "You're not writing about anything specific, so I assume everything's fine with you and your family, and that's good to hear." When it comes to true shalom, true peace, that's always tied to true relaxation and a, a state of what's is better than-- What's a better translation than relaxation? A state of calm. A state of, uh, yeah, a state of calm. Comfort, calm, comfort, calm. Huh? What were you gonna say? Said comfort. Comfort, calm, comfort. He says, "A person will never really feel comfortable when they're standing still. They feel most comfortable when they are advancing." as Chazal say, "People need to constantly be increasing in order to feel comfortable." If this is true in all places and if this is true in all places in the world, it certainly is true in Eretz Yisrael, which the entire world calls Eretz HaKodesh. Just two interesting from this paragraph is thing number one, the Rebbe is upending the, the idea that I'm happiest when I'm standing still, which is what people think. "Ah, I finally get to relax." The Rebbe says, "No, no

07:37 Speaker 1 one's happy when they're relaxing. People are happy when they're advancing." And second of all, this line the Rebbe says in a couple letters, but whenever I see it, I highlight it, says that everybody, even the Goyim, call Eretz Yisrael the Holy Land, so that means something. It means something when the whole world recognizes that Israel is special. Okay, when it comes to the actual topic of your letter, the Rebbe says, and I've attached, uh, my letter to this, uh, in, in this letter. Uh, this is, uh-- He was asking what the Rebbe thought about the Mamzer case. Remember, this is like this is all over Israel that year. Remember the Mamzer case we discussed? There was a possible Mamzerit, Shlomo Carlebach was involved. This is something we brought up in, like, three Shiurim at this point. He wanted to know what the Rebbe's opinion on, on it was, and the Rebbe attached the letters that we've read previously. So the Rebbe says, "I've already written on this extensively. I'll, I'll give you my opinion." says the Rebbe. "I hope all things that need to be fixed get fixed, uh, rapidly and, uh, and peacefully, pleasantly." Okay, so he has a correspondence with the Rebbe. It is 1976 when-- Where's my thing? There we go. Can't open new things. It is 1976 when his daughter gets engaged. He has this shiur going on at his house. He's regularly telling about his story with the Rebbe, and he certainly remembers that the Rebbe repeatedly told him, "Before

08:53 Speaker 1 your daughter gets married, I need a letter from you." So he does write to the Rebbe and sends him an invitation. He joked with his friends at the time that he didn't really understand why he was sending the Rebbe an invitation because the Rebbe was definitely not coming to the wedding. But he sends an invitation to the Rebbe that his daughter's finally ready to get married. The Rebbe responds by writing what may be the longest private letter the Rebbe ever wrote, um, maybe outside of some of the stuff with Velvel Green. I mean, the Rebbe wrote back a five-page letter. This is an enormous letter to an individual. You see, I have it on the screen right now, and I'm just flying through it to show you the, the length of this letter. The Rebbe wrote him a very long letter in response. Uh, in the letter, he explains what a wedding is . He gives him some , and he gives him the things that he likes. But there's a theme in this letter, and it's a deeply uncomfortable theme. The Rebbe is telling him that he has to do Teshuvah. The Rebbe is telling him that he needs to become Frum, and he needs to become Frum now. And it's the strangest thing because the Rebbe never talks like this. This isn't the Rebbe's style. But in this letter, it's the Rebbe's style. The Rebbe's pushing and giving him more and more reasons, giving him more and more arguments. The Rebbe comes down

09:49 Speaker 1 hard like he's never come down before. "I need you to start right now keeping Torah and Mitzvahs lock, stock, and barrel immediately. I want you to change your life from one end to the other, and there's no time to waste." I, I, I circled a couple paragraphs that are interesting. We're obviously not gonna read a five-page letter right now. But take a look at this one that I have in the square. Says here-- Okay. Where am I? "I know that you can beat these challenges." "I know that you can succeed." "In a way that is, and this is most important," "I know that you can become Frum, and you can do it in a happy way, not in a depressive way." "I know for sure that if you'll just decide that at the very least you could help set up your daughter's life in the proper way." "Starting from her wedding ." Said, "You won't just not-- Not only will you not set-- will you not challenge your relationship with her, you'll end up being an example by which you-- by which she will also copy your example, and her family will become Frum, too." He really is pushing. he says. "You could say ." Said, "You could say that what I'm trying to do is to completely change someone's daily life, and not just anybody, but somebody who's a . I'm trying to take an intellectual person who has a real position and completely flip him." "And I'm trying to do it using just

11:14 Speaker 1 one letter." "You could say that this is a dream, that you can, with one letter, change the mind completely of someone so entrenched as you." "So entrenched and so intellectual as you." "The fact that you've written to me in the past I know that you're somebody who's able to, uh, beat challenges." He may be referring to his disability here. "Certainly, when you look around and see what's going on in Eretz Israel we see how much Israel's changed in fifty years or a hundred years. We've seen with our physical eyes ." Now this is the la-- the-- what is, what is that word he keeps on using? Something that's also a challim. Hephech metzius.

12:01 Speaker 2 Yeah. Hazaya, la hazaya.

12:03 Speaker 1 Hazaya.

12:03 Speaker 2 Hazaya means like movement. Hazaya means like a move.

12:06 Speaker 1 Because he keeps on knocking the hey off.

12:07 Speaker 2 That's how he moves. It's about-

12:08 Speaker 1 Yes. 'Cause it's a Yud Hey, so he keeps knocking the Hey off. There it is. Ad kedei kak she'ilish noldu beshanah acheret eyn reim behem kol chirush vekal. He said, "People being born now in Israel, they don't even see it as, as novel, as unique. You've seen miracles. Aren't you ready to become Frum?" Meaning he's pushing him. I have another one down here that I, that I put in a square that's just a strange language. Lecher ish makim levakasha selicha. Maybe I should be asking you for forgiveness. I-- obviously lechaim haprotim, I'm interfering in your private life of an individual. Be'tum kvia mar. People say that all the time about keven she'inyan hu ikari kalkach. But it's so important. Ve'chashuv kalkach, ve'tzini kalkach. And it's so serious. Ein li shals biadi. I don't have permission. Shelo le'abia machshavti ve'tikvasi. I don't have permission not to tell you my thoughts and my hopes. And he just keeps on going along this-- The, the Rebbe's, the Rebbe's hitting this again and again, and very aggressively. Very, very aggressively. Uh, I have the letter in the WhatsApp group for anybody who'd like to read it in full. It is a very aggressive letter. And then he tells him, the bottom line of the letter is, "I want you to commit right now to being Frum. I mean, sh'al Torah, al mitzvos. That's it. No, no sacrifices. Change your life now." By the time the letter arrived, this individual, this doctor, uh, this Dr. Golansky, had, uh, just had

13:17 Speaker 1 a heart attack, and he'd been admitted to the hospital for, for some treatment. The Hasidim brought him the letter, but they were afraid that if he read the letter, it might, it might hurt him. It's a very serious letter. Nonetheless, they stayed around and watched him read the letter, worried that it might harm his health and ready to take the letter away, I guess, if it was doing-- if it was, it was having a negative effect. He sat with this letter for an hour, he pored over it, and he finally told those around him, I have the quote here of exactly what he said. It's fuzzy, but here's what it says. He sat with it for an entire hour, thought about it for an hour, and when he finished reading it for like the nine hundredth time, he said, hamichtav hu me'od ritzini. This is a very serious letter. tzarych lekayem kol ma shekatuv bo. We have to keep everything that's written in it. He resolved to keep everything written in it, and at that moment, he died. At that moment, that was the end of his life. Those were his final words: "I accept the terms of this letter." Tshuva in his final moment, complete tshuva in his final moment, accepting every single word. Now, there's obviously, uh, a lot of ways to understand this story, but the way that I understand it is that the Rebbe knew something, that's for sure. The Rebbe telling him three times again and again, "We need to

14:28 Speaker 1 talk right before your daughter's wedding." And then when that comes, the Rebbe telling him everything all at once. Uh, giving him in a letter all of the tools that he needed to intellectually accept Yiddishkeit and, uh, recognizing that yesh mi'shechinah salama besha'achas. Some people are capable of doing a complete tshuva in a, in a single moment. So these were the, uh, final words of this Dr. Golansky, that he accepted the terms of the letter, and with that, his, uh, holy soul departed.

14:56 Speaker 2 Wow.

14:57 Speaker 1 Yeah.

15:01 Speaker 2 You know, I, I wanna go back to the letter for a moment because if you look at the, the end of the letter, look at that, the niftu betzidro there. The Rebbe writes very clearly that you're not telling me anything about your health, about the health of h- what you were-- your health as you were in this, uh, in this situation as we spoke before. Are you still connected to the doctors? Is there anything new in your health as we spoke before that, you know, this is, this is-- needs, you know, intensive research in many different areas of Refuah. It's very interesting that the Rebbe also, like, took that extra time to talk about his Refuah. And what I liked-- and also part, I didn't read the whole letter, but what you wrote, what-- one of the things, one of the quotes that you quoted earlier, what the Rebbe's writing over there, the Rebbe's saying, mashim chazeik oysi. What's giving me the strength to continue to write this letter to you. It's very interesting that lashon that the Rebbe's writing, that's what's like, almost like what's inspiring me and what's giving me the strength to write this letter to you. If you go back to, I think it was the first box that you, that you had over there. Yeah. If you go over there, yeah, third line, it says, "Even though you might think that..." The third line of the second paragraph. It says, "Even though you think that when I'm asking somebody to

16:05 Speaker 2 change their life, whatever, and through one thing, I, I think that's probably just a dream, so why would I even try?" mashim chazeik oysi liftd iskol ha'omer l'el. What's giving me the strength to write all of this, and it shouldn't be a derasha b'alma, and it's not just a hope, is... etc., etc., etc., etc. That because I know that you are capable of overcoming such incredible challenges, this is giving me the chizuk to continue to write something that someone else might think is just a dream to try to influence somebody through, through writing one letter. I found this, I find this-- Again, I don't know enough of the Rebbe's Igres to find this a interesting lashon that the Rebbe's writing.

16:42 Speaker 1 It's an utterly unique lashon, as far as I know, and it's a very-- a point very well taken.