חסידים ומתנגדים

00:00 Speaker 1 Hope you're all having a wonderful day at work. The letter that we're looking at today is on Mem Aleph, page Mem Aleph, and it's written to, uh, Nachum Sheycha Lam. People know who that is? That would be Norman Lam. I knew Norman Lam of blessed memory. He was the, uh, he was a Rosh Yeshiva, and he was the president and a chancellor at Yeshiva University. He was at YU for, for sixty years, and he was one of the major thinkers who shaped modern Orthodoxy and really shaped Jewish thought in general. He wrote some really important sefarim. He was a special guy. I wanna give you an idea before we start of just what he thinks of our Rebbe and what he thinks of Lubavitch. He was very friendly to us. Um, they did an interview in twenty twenty with him, trying to figure out what his shitah was regarding Hasidim. I wanna just read you some of the things that he said. These are direct quotes. He says, "I'm not a Lubavitcher Hasid. However, in general, I'm very kindly disposed to Hasidus, and I have a special respect and affection for Lubavitch. It does not mean that I'm a Hasid, because if I were a Hasid, I would accept everything the Rebbe said with no questions asked." This is a person who understands what a Hasid is and understands that he's not. He goes, "Look, I respect him a lot, but if I'm not willing to do everything the Rebbe says blindly, I'm not a

01:02 Speaker 1 Hasid." I think that's incredible that he said that. He says that, "It happens that I disagree with the Rebbe on almost every major policy decision that he made. However," he says, "I consider the Rebbe the preeminently the most distinguished, the most important Jewish manhig in my lifetime." This is somebody who lived in the time of the Rebbe and was one of his most significant students. So, uh, Rav Selivanchik. This is, this is Norman Lam saying that the Rebbe was the most distinguished, most important Jewish manhig of his lifetime, and probably in the last century, because his contribution to Yad Vashem was incalculable. These are, these are quotes from him. So we're dealing with-- We're, we're with a friend here. Another thing to know about Norman Lam is he wrote quite a few books that touch on, in one way or another, the, uh, the original debate between Hasidim, Misnagdim, as it had merit. Obviously, there were parts of it that didn't have merit. A good deal of the debate between Hasidim, Misnagdim was financial in nature. If there was one shekhita in town and Hasidism started, now there were two shakhitim in town, and they were taking money away. A lot of the debate initially was financial, and a lot of it was just fear of change. However, there were some, there were some geniuses involved who were-- who debated the, the principle, and those who debated the principle fascinated Rabbi Lam, and he spent a lot of his time studying it historically. When he

02:07 Speaker 1 did that, he always used Rav Chaim Volozhin as his model of what the, of what the Misnagdic camp looked like. It was much-- His work is much more developed, Rav Chaim Volozhin, than the things that we have from the Vilna Gaon on this sub- on this subject. Rav Chaim Volozhin very much shaped modern Lithu- modern, uh, Litvish approach. The modern Lithuanian yeshiva style is almost entirely attributed to Rav Chaim Volozhiner. When he had to pick a side in Hasidus, he always chose Chabad. I mean, Chabad was always his representative for what Hasidus looked like versus the Misnagdim, and he explains why, uh, in this interview. They asked him, "Why do you always refer to Chabad? There's a lot of Hasidus out there. Why don't you quote the Baal Shem Tov? Why are you always quoting Chabad sources?" He says, "Chabad obviously has the most articulate exposition of Hasidus." Nobody does it better than us. Almost all the others are drashas, a good vort, which was said at Chalos Chudas, which a Hasid recorded. The leaders of the Chabad movement, they themselves wrote their sefarim directly on mashava, Jewish thought, and divre dekimchaim, Kabbalah, and Hasidus. So here you have it straight, and it's much more systematic, much more organized. So he used us because he valued what we have to offer over, over all other forms of Hasidus. This is, I think, necessary background going into this letter where the Rebbe writes to Norman Lam about his most significant book on the topic, which was

03:14 Speaker 1 originally published, I believe, as his PhD thesis and then, and then republished as a proper sefer. So we're diving into the letter right now. This is the Rebbe writing to Norman Lam, who had, according to the first line, sent the Rebbe a letter along with a copy of his book. We have, The Rebbe says, "I've just received your sefer, Torah LiShma." That was the name of the book. "I've also gotten your letter, and thank you very much for, uh, for bringing it to my attention and sending to me the fruit of your, of your pen and of your time." That's a really nice lashon there. The fruits of your, of your pen and of your, and of your time. So the Rebbe thanks him for the book. Um, we should talk about the book a little bit. I went looking. I don't know the book terribly well. I, I read some reviews of it, and I also read little pieces of it. Um, the book is, uh, is, is trying to figure out what Rav Chaim Volozhin was really doing. That's the, that's the point of the book. What was Rav Chaim Volozhiner's goal in building out Lithuanian Jewry the way that he did? And he says that the Rav, Rav, Rav Chaim Volozhiner had two goals, really. First of all, he felt that Torah study was in decline, and the reason Torah study was in decline was because of poverty. People were too poor to be studying well, and he wanted to see more

04:26 Speaker 1 scholarship, like in the olden days. For him, the olden days were for us, the olden, olden days. He wanted to see better Torah scholarship. The other problem was that-- was the Hasidim, and his problem with the Hasidim was not the one that prior Misnagdim had. Prior Misnagdim felt very strongly that Hasidim needed to be marginalized and excluded. Rav Chaim Volozhin was welcoming Hasidim into his yeshivas. His problem was that the Alter Rebbe had done too good a job. This is the way that Rav Chaim Volozhin expresses himself in some of his work, that the Alter Rebbe did too good a job with Hasidism. Uh, Hasidism, uh, Hasidic practice diverged from Misnagdic practice. We were doing things differently, the Hasidim, and the Alter Rebbe had taken the things we do differently and established an enormous framework to justify it within the Arizal's Kabbalah. That it used to be the Hasidim acted differently and everybody could just shove them aside, and now you had Tanya and other fundamental works of Chabad Hasidus that were making that impossible. You couldn't throw this away anymore because the Alter Rebbe had based our, our new practices on very old sources that everybody agreed with. So since there was this incredible intellectual framework behind Hasidism, this did not exist for the work-- for the things that Misnagdim were doing. He felt that Misnagdim also needed an intellectual framework, and that's why he wrote the Nefesh HaChaim. And in response to the lack of yeshivas, he opened his own yeshiva, the Volozhin

05:34 Speaker 1 Yeshiva, which would become the blueprint for all subsequent Lithuanian yeshivas. So that's the stuff at length in his book. He talks about the different emphases between the Alter Rebbe and Rav Chaim Volozhiner. He says that in his book, he says that the Alter Rebbe really emphasizes, uh, in Tanya and in other places, the importance of kavana, the importance of devekus with Hashem, connecting to Hashem through mitzvahs. The Alter Rebbe lists mitzvahs as all being equal in value and celebrates maaseh hu ekar. These are all things familiar to you. What you might not know is in Nefesh HaChaim, Rav Chaim takes these three principles and specifically thrashes each of them. That's his goal in Nefesh HaChaim is to take down these three ideas as, as central to Judaism. He says that when you observe a mitzvah very, very carefully, that, uh, that this causes the devekus that the Alter Rebbe's trying to accomplish through his kavanahs. You don't need these deep kavanahs. All you need to do is be very careful about the prat de'ah mitzvahs. The, uh, Rav Chaim Volozhiner also says that Kabbalah, if you read it properly, puts mitzvahs in a hierarchy, and guess what's at the very top? Talmud Torah, not . So Rav Chaim says using the same, using the same language, the same sources, and the same style builds a framework to defend his approach. This is all discussed in Norman Lamb's book. The central thesis of the book is that the Alter Rebbe and Rav Chaim Volozhiner had a

06:40 Speaker 1 difference of opinion when it comes to what Torah lishmah is. The Alter Rebbe's Torah lishmah is actually not much of a and Rabbo-- and Rabbi Norman Lamb writes this in his book, that the Alter Rebbe's Torah lishmah is less of a than Rav Chaim Volozhiner's Torah lishmah. The Alter Rebbe's Torah lishmah is that I'm learning Torah so that I connect to Hashem. Uh, and that, that's pretty much it. The Alter Rebbe has in says it means learning . Um, in Tanya, in, in the fifth chapter, he talks about how, uh, we're doing it to connect ourselves to Hashem. The, the Alter Rebbe's is pretty straightforward what Torah lishmah looks like. Rav Chaim Volozhiner does not say that. Rav Chaim Volozhiner says that there is nothing but the cognitive understanding of Torah. Uh, understanding Torah without thinking about love or fear, without thinking about devekus, without thinking about anything. Simply absorbing yourself into the Sugya is what Torah lishmah means. I'm not doing it for the wrong reason, I'm not doing it for the right reason, says Rav Chaim Volozhiner. I'm learning because God wants my brain to be nowhere else. And in deference to the fact that someone must learn Torah with Rav Chaim says, "Before you start learning, you should sit down, have a moment of thinking about how much you have for Hashem, and then dive into the Torah study and periodically stop to remind yourself." But he doesn't want any of this, this devekus stuff mixing with Torah stuff. Uh, incidentally, a

07:45 Speaker 1 lot of later Hasidic works also talk about this approach, so I think that there's probably a point at which we all were saying the same thing. But in any case, this was, uh, this is what the topic of the book is. To the letter. The Rebbe says, "In general, I'm very interested in this." I'm very interested in the fact that you deal in many places in your book things that stood at the very apex of the between the . The Rebbe goes, "I'm very interested in this entire topic." So if you were bored a second ago with me going through the entire topic, you can now say to yourself, "The Rebbe was not bored with this. The Rebbe was very interested in everything I just said." The Rebbe says, "I haven't had time to read your Sefer very carefully." and we know what it means if the Rebbe flipped through the pages. He knows every word of it. I looked at it in general, the Rebbe says. I saw something that's not in there that I think should be in there. And if it is in there, the Rebbe goes, "Certainly it was not emphasized, and I believe you may wanna emphasize this point." is the all, the all-important fact that the Alter Rebbe . The Alter Rebbe only published two in his lifetime himself. The only two are where he discusses the laws of Torah study and Tanya. The Rebbe says, "I want you to know and emphasize that the Alter Rebbe published years

09:14 Speaker 1 before he published Tanya, which gives us an idea of the Alter Rebbe's emphasis." So I, I don't know exactly what the Rebbe's doing here. Uh, how can we? But definitely there's an idea in the book and in other places too, that the Alter Rebbe, what he was really doing was building a, a, a, uh, a kabbalistic framework to back up and that Torah study was not an emphasis of, of the Hasidic approach. Certainly, one of the things that the Alter Rebbe pushes a lot in Tanya that was a big at the time is that gets higher than Torah study, that simple Jews doing mitzvahs are greater than the greatest Torah scholars. These were the of Hasidus, and there's an implication hanging in the air that Hasidism, and specifically the Alter Rebbe's Hasidus, would not be Torah study centric. Says the Rebbe, "I'd like you to point out that the first book the Rebbe published, and the one of the only two he published in his lifetime, was which I think says something about his emphasis." I think that's what the Rebbe's getting at, but I don't know. Excuse me. The Rebbe says, "True, the Alter Rebbe initially published anonymously." The Hasidim knew who wrote it. and that's why I think this is what the Rebbe means. Listen to this line. He-- the Rebbe says, "I think the under-- the Hasidim understood by the fact that the Alter Rebbe put this book out first, that his emphasis was really on . That you do first what,

10:33 Speaker 1 what matters first. So the, the Alter Rebbe, by publishing first and making it one of the only two he published in his lifetime, was saying, "My emphasis is really ." So the idea that Hasidim emphasize mitzvahs over doesn't really match the history of the Alter Rebbe's publishing. And it's true, after that, the Alter Rebbe would end up expanding into other spheres, but for the time, his initial work was-- his, his initial message to Hasidim was, "Let me tell you the of learning Torah lishmah," which gives you an idea of where the Alter Rebbe's emphases lie.

11:06 Speaker 2 Is that correct? I think he's saying that af-- in the beginning, only the Hasidim knew who was, and afterwards, the, the name of the was also more well-known publicly. Not that he, the -

11:16 Speaker 1 Yeah. Absolutely .

11:16 Speaker 2 Not that the expanded, that the name of the was made notified.

11:20 Speaker 1 Yeah, I think, I think, I, I think you, I think you're probably right. Uh, th-this phrase means, like, spheres of influence. So I don't know. Right. There we go. I got the... The noun helps. After a little while, the like, like, like Parrots. After a little while, the reputation of the Alter Rebbe ended up spreading to other spheres, but initially, only the Hasidim understood his influence. Yes, I agree with Parrots. Okay. And he says that the Alter Rebbe, throughout his life and throughout all of his work, continued to emphasize the great importance of learning Torah lishmah. So it would be incorrect to, uh, to put the Alter Rebbe in the camp without, without emphasizing strongly how, how much the, how much, how important it was to the Alter Rebbe that, uh, that be done and be done lishmah. The Rebbe says, "I don't know if you have of the Alter Rebbe." Uh, apparently the Rebbe had recently put one out that had and he's like, "I just... Norman Lamb, I don't know if you have a copy. So, uh, I-I'm, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna send you a copy or I'll ask to send you a copy." And the Rebbe says here, that you, that you wrote. Uh, the Rebbe says here that there-- I, I hope you'll act like many authors have acted in the past. The Rebbe says, "I hope that like many others authors, uh, many other people have written sefarim, you'll send your sefarim to me." This is something I've

12:45 Speaker 1 seen in many letters, and I was flipping through trying to find other examples, but I don't have them. But the Rebbe writes this to a lot of authors saying that there's, there's a trend to send letters to my library, and I'd like that to continue. I'm sorry, to send books to my library, and I'd like that to continue. The Rebbe says, "It's really for the public benefit." I guess his, his library is wide open. It's good for everybody that the Rebbe has the books. The Rebbe says a compliment here to Norman Lamm. He says that, "Based on the paragraphs that have reached my hands, ." He says that, uh, a lot of what you're writing about seems to speak to the problems of the generation and the time we're living in right now. Your stuff seems really relevant, says the Rebbe. I'd love to have it in my collection. And also seems to talk about k-keeping mitzvahs, which is something obviously that's very important to the Rebbe. Look at that last line. After all that talk about how the Alter Rebbe does indeed emphasize Torat Lishmah, I'm very interested in the fact that you're writing about mitzvahs because, after all, which is definitely a callback to the sefer. The Rebbe is ref-- was without a doubt referencing Norman Lamm's sefer in this last line. And he says, . Um, I-- while I didn't find other examples that I was looking for of the Rebbe asking for sefarim, I did remember something I read in Der

13:52 Speaker 1 Haer and went and looked it up because it's just a wild story, and with that, we'll, we'll finish. Uh, Yodel Krinsky has a diary entry about the time that he drove the Rebbe to visit the Novominsker for one of the-- for a, for a shiva, I think for the Novominsker's wife, the Novominsker Rebbe. So, uh, Yodel Krinsky talks about the ride. It's, it's, it's a great story. You should look it up in Der Haer. Um, it's not clear, it's not clear who knows how to drive. It's a whole thing. But anyway, in the story, the, uh, the Rebbe s-makes-- the Rebbe speaks with the Novominsker, and he asks him if his father, the previous Novominsker Rebbe, had any chidushai Torah that were printed, and, uh, he was told that only handwritten copies existed. So the Rebbe says back, "You really should print them, um, because everybody should get a chance to read these things. And, uh, even if the previous Novominsker Rebbe had instructed him not to print his work, he should override it and print them anyway." The Rebbe wants these things in print, and please send me copies. And then the Rebbe says, "Do you have any sefarim of your own?" to the current Novominsker Rebbe. Novominsker Rebbe says that he has two sefarim, and the Rebbe says, "I, I would love to receive them. Would you please send a copy to my library?" As the Rebbe asked all the time. Now, here's the fun part. When he mentioned this, the Gabbai of

14:53 Speaker 1 the Novominsker Rebbe says... I, I, I don't know what he was thinking. The Gabbai of the Novominsker Rebbe says, "Kicha. If you want to acquire something, kicha is always with money." It's a Gemara, that you can't acquire something, you can't grab something without money. So the Gabbai implies that the Rebbe should pay for the book. The Rebbe, according to Yodel Krinsky, looked at the Gabbai with some surprise and didn't say anything, but kept talking to the Novominsker. Afterwards, when everybody was going to the next room for Maariv, the Rebbe corners the Gabbai and says to him, "I wanted to respond to what you said earlier, that you have to buy things with money. You should know Ephron said that too, and he was punished, and he lost a vov from his name." Now, if the Rebbe says that to you, you're in enormous trouble. The Gabbai realized he needed to ask mechilah, and, uh, and he comes to the Rebbe and asks him to please forgive him for, for speaking out of turn. And the Rebbe asks for this Gabbai's name and his mother's name and says in order on the Gabbai that, uh, this is how special Yid is, that whenever Yid has a chance to quote a Gemara, even if it interrupts the conversation between Rebbe and me, he can't just-- he can't hold himself back, and he spits out a Gemara. So the Rebbe delivered a little mitzvot on the guy, and I, I assume he went on to live a, a

15:54 Speaker 1 healthy and productive life. In any event, people regularly sent sefarim to the Rebbe, among them Rabbi Norman Lamm, and we now have a letter with the Rebbe's, uh, reading of, appreciation of, and slight critique of the discussion of the, uh, of this era in the-- among the Hasidim Misnagdim in this book that was, uh, significantly important to the development of Jewish thought, particularly in minor Orthodox communities. I think that's it for us. Good?

16:16 Speaker 2 In general, I've, I've seen a few times by dollars where people gave sefarim to the Rebbe. The Rebbe would say, and would give an extra dollar.

16:23 Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah. But-

16:24 Speaker 2 I'm not sure if it's related to that story.

16:26 Speaker 1 I don't think the Rebbe appreciated being told that he had to pay for it. I think that it was quite a chutzpah. I mean, the Rebbe's talking to the Novominsker, and the Gabbai goes, "Hey, you know, it's a little bit of money." It was-- really was a chutzpah. I, I don't know what the guy was thinking.

16:36 Speaker 2 That's what Gabbais do.

16:38 Speaker 3 On, on a harder to, uh, what you said-

16:39 Speaker 2 Not this Gabbai, other Gabbais.

16:43 Speaker 3 On, on what you said earlier about, about, uh, Norman Lamm basically and his not calling himself a Hasid. So I don't know if I shared with you the story that I had when I used to, uh, daven to the Amid for Esther Jungreis. Rebbbetzin Esther Jungreis, which is a whole organization called Heneni. So I asked her if, you know, she's written many books, I'm sure you're familiar with it. I asked her if she ever went to the Rebbe. You know, she's a Holocaust survivor, and she said, "Nope." And I said, "How could it be that you didn't go to the Rebbe? Right? You talk about you working in outreach, you know, how could you have not gone to the Rebbe?" So she said, "Because I knew that if I would go to the Rebbe, I would have to be his Hasid and listen to everything that he says. And I have my own da'at, and therefore, I couldn't, I couldn't do it." I, I told it over to her daughter over, over Shabbos. I saw her daughter at the, this Nefesh conference. I sh-shared it with her daughter also. So this is what she told me. She went, "I knew that if I go to him, I would have to listen to everything he says, and I would have to become his Hasid. I didn't go to him."

17:33 Speaker 1 Great story. It's a great story.