התקשרות ממרחק

00:01 Speaker 1 By way of introduction, which I may end up chopping off the front of our, of our sheer, um, my two big insecurities. You guys wanna know my two big insecurities? My two big insecurities are my singing voice. I think those of you who have been with us Seder Nigunim with me have, uh, have figured out why that might be. And my other big insecurity is the way my pronunciation sounds when I read things in Yiddish. So that having been said, you have to understand how much I must love a letter in order to dare read it for you and then put it on a recording. It has to be, it has to be a deep love for a letter. I love this letter. Um, in fact, I found a translation of it into Hebrew, which I could read to you, but it would lose something. So here in front of you is the original letter in Yiddish, where the Rebbe complains about the cost of long-distance phone calls and advises somebody to stop having these long-distance phone calls with him. Uh, that's the topic of the letter. This is from about fifty years ago. The date actually isn't on the letter. It just says, This was near the beginning of the year nineteen seventy-three, fifty years ago. We're going back in time and reading about things that are a little bit before Nisan because I don't wanna get into the Nisan letters until Rosh Chodesh. With that, the letter says In the past couple of

01:05 Speaker 1 months It sounds like the Rebbe was calling this guy every Erev Rosh Chodesh for the past several months. He goes on to say, I've seen, says the Rebbe. special problems. I haven't seen particularly special problems here. It seems that things aren't exactly changing from month to month. So the Rebbe says, "I've been calling you every Erev Rosh Chodesh. We've had a phone conversation." As you'll see in a moment, it was a long-distance phone conversation, and things don't seem to change all that often. And he says, it is my hope. This particular year, I think started on Shabbos. I think it was a Shabbos, Shabbos Rosh Hashanah. I'm expecting that because it started on Shabbos, which is combined with Menucha. Shabbos is a Shabbos Menucha, that things are going to get even better. I think that things have been going good for you, and things are only going to improve. The Rebbe is very confident that this individual is going to do well. So the Torah does worry about Yiddishe geld, worries about Jewish people's money. long-distance telephone and stamah zoy. So it doesn't make sense, I think, to spend Yiddishe geld on long-distance phone calls. , especially when you take into account the that when you have one person thinking about another person, this makes them truly one. So the Rebbe says to this person-- By the way, any, any, any, any, any serious complaints about my, uh, about the letter? Oh, I got a thumbs up from Sroli. It means he wasn't listening. So

02:46 Speaker 1 the letter says, the Rebbe says, "I talk to you all the time. We've had a lot of interactions, uh, month after month." I think Did you say, Peretz?

02:55 Speaker 2 Nothing.

02:56 Speaker 1 No banana? For those listening or those here for the first time, Peretz receives a daily banana as part of his, as part of his salary, I believe. That's a lunch break thing. Okay. Uh, so the Rebbe is saying that I've, uh, that I've-- we talk every month, uh, and things are going well. I'm sure things are gonna keep going better, and I don't wanna have these phone calls anymore. And I don't wanna have these phone calls anymore, the Rebbe says on the surface because it costs money and because the Torah worries about Yiddishe geld and a long-distance phone call isn't appropriate. But that wouldn't matter to the Rebbe if it was necessary. The main key here is that it's not necessary. First of all, 'cause I'm sure things are going well, and second of all, and this bottom point is what I wanna spend all of our time talking about today, that, uh, with the Machshava, when two people think about each other, they become completely one. The Rebbe says, "I don't need to call you on the phone to have a relationship with you." And, uh, from here, you may see where we're going. This is a recurring theme at our Farbrengen in Shul. It's something I think about a lot. I think all of us think about it a lot after Gimmel Tammuz. The Re-- the Rebbe says over and over again, and he's not the only one. The prior Rebbe said this constantly, that being in the presence of a Rebbe physically,

03:53 Speaker 1 seeing a Rebbe physically, interacting with a Rebbe physically is just not a necessary part of the relationship. It sure might be fun, and it might be-

04:00 Speaker 2 Uh, uh, uh, I'll stop you there. I'm sorry. It's not enough.

04:03 Speaker 1 Let me bring some-

04:03 Speaker 2 Not enough.

04:04 Speaker 1 I know. Peretz, Peretz and I fight about this literally like every Shabbos. I'm gonna bring some raias, and then I'm going to open the floor and let Peretz thrash them all, and that's, that's everybody's entertainment for the afternoon. I'm expecting the pushback, but I'm gonna make my case anyway. I have more, I have more proof than usual. And nonetheless, I'm sure... Look, we all want the Rebbe in a guf gashmi. That's, that's, that's not on the table. But I maintain that a person can have as strong a hiskashrus as they had before Gimmel Tammuz, after Gimmel Tammuz if they follow the Rebbe's Horahs. That doesn't mean it's fun, but I believe it's equally possible. I don't think we-- I don't think we're incapable nowadays, and I'll tell you why. Uh, one just comes from a, a story. There's, there's several similar stories about that, that remind me of this letter. You've heard them before. Just to review them, there's a classic story of somebody from Eretz Yisrael who asked the Rebbe, "How can I have a stronger hiskashrus with you?" And the Rebbe said back that, "When I walk down the street, I think about Tanya. If when you walk down the street, you also think about Tanya, we'll be connect-- we'll meet. We'll meet. There'll be a meeting of the minds." So this isn't so much thinking about each other. This is thinking about a common thing, that if our thoughts are full of what the Rebbe's thoughts are full of, we're one with

05:02 Speaker 1 the Rebbe. I also remember-- I couldn't find any of these, but I'm sure I've read many of them. There are many cases where people wanted the Rebbe to come to their wedding, and after a certain period of time, the Rebbe didn't come to weddings. But his recurring thing that he would say to people is, "I'll be thinking about you at that moment, and then I'll be there." That the Rebbe understands that when he thinks about us, that, that, that he's there, and when we think about him, we're there. So this idea of minds connecting people is certainly not new. It reminds me of my two favorite Hayyimims. Uh, there's a Hayyimim from Chaf Daled Sivan and the one from-- Where'd I put it down here? Tes Adar Sheni. The one Tes Adar Sheni is fresher in your mind. The one Chaf Daled Sivan, I do wanna haz it briefly. It was about-- It's a letter from Frieda Kareba. The Frieda Kareba says, "How can this person have hiskashrus with me if I don't recognize what he looks like? I've never seen him before." And he says there, The real hiskashrus is when you learn Torah. when he learns my Maamar Chassidishe. When this person learns my Maamar. and he, he reads my sichas. When he connects to fellow Anash or with other Tumimim in the Yeshiva, uh, in their learning and in their fabric. And he fulfills what I say. They keep the yeshiva. They, they say . This makes his . This letter, I'm

06:21 Speaker 1 sure you're familiar. This is from . And there the Rebbe says that if you wanna connect with me, real is going to be through learning my Torah, that's my , connecting to my people, that's , and keeping what I say. That's keeping the in our days, that's, uh, that's , that's Rambam. That's all the Rebbe's . That's not to drinking more than four, whatever that means exactly. That's not, uh, that's, that's saying a before . That's, uh, . When we keep the Rebbe's , we connect to him. Uh, we see this idea long before the, uh, the-- long before . We have this already going back to the Rebbe Rashab. Oh, I forgot something I wanted to tell you. I skimmed right past it. Let me just go back a second. The Rebbe in the , he mentioned this and he added something to it. He says-- he said in almost a, a joking way. And it wasn't a joking way, but it was said in a, in a lighter way, in a lighter tone. The Rebbe said, "Such a person thinks that because the doesn't see him, that he can't see... That just because he can't see the , that the doesn't see him." The idea being that even if you can't see the Rebbe, the Rebbe can see you. And a lot of the physicality is not necessarily . Um, so I was gonna say, this goes back further. We have this from the Rebbe Rashab already. The Rebbe Rashab, one of the

07:31 Speaker 1 final things that he said before he was nostalgic on . He said, uh, "I'm going to Sham. I'm going to heaven. I'm gonna leave the with you." The Rebbe has a you'll find in the volume twenty-seven, page twenty-four, where the Rebbe says in this is obvious, this is very obvious. This is very obvious. If somebody, somebody wrote a lot of books and they announced to everybody, "I have a for you. I'm going to die, and the books are gonna stay." What? He thought they'd be taking the books with him? They were gonna put the books in the ground? He's not leaving. The Rebbe goes, "It doesn't make any sense." Says, so what the Rebbe Rashab was telling people is that he put himself in the and while I might be leaving, if you ever wanna find me again, I'll be right there. The part of me that is really me, the real me, says the Rebbe Rashab, will never leave this w-world. The real me is in the writings, is in the books, is in the which does explain why we saw in and in many other places that if we're learning the Rebbe's Torah, we're connected to the Rebbe 'cause that's where the Rebbe is. This idea really goes back even much further. It goes back to the Alter Rebbe in the where he says that he was using the Tanya as a replacement for Yechidus. Rather than connecting to me, I don't have time to see you anymore, read my Tanya. You have

08:30 Speaker 1 this in the letter by, uh, ma-- by, uh, by the where he says that, uh, where he says the are the way that we connect to our Rebbe. So this idea is quite old. It goes all the way back to the, the very, very beginning of the ideas of . Uh, we also have that other . The other that comes to mind is the one from . And there you have, uh, there's also a letter from the Rebbe. It's in Igros volume three where he brings both letters and ex-- and elaborates a little bit. But anyway, the Rebbe says the yearning for his . Where does the yearning for his come from? you can only satisfy it. So how do you satisfy the yearning for his ? It can only be satisfied Looking at a Rebbe's face will not be enough to satisfy your yearning for his . They can only be satisfied through learning the Rebbe's Torah. So what do we have so far? We have, um, we have-- we can unite with the Rebbe by thinking, by us thinking about each other. The Rebbe thinks about me, I think about him, and there's a . That's from our letter today. There's no need for phone calls. You don't need to hear my voice. We don't need to check in. If we think about each other, we're connected. As a matter of fact, save your money on the long-distance call. The Rebbe says, "I'll think about you. It'll be good enough." We know that

09:40 Speaker 1 we can do it by thinking about the same Torah subject, per the story about learning Tanya and walking down the street. We know that we can connect to the Rebbe by learning the Rebbe's Torah. We have this from a bunch of and I think defended very well going all the way back to the Rebbe Rashab and, uh, going back to the Alter Rebbe, the idea that a Rebbe is his is his and we connect to the Rebbe by learning his Torah. We have in that from Sivan, you can also connect to the Rebbe by hanging out with people that the Rebbe likes, the Rebbe's people, and doing what the Rebbe says, keeping his . And, uh, what we have finally is this one I'd never found before. I found this one for the first time. This is-- I saw this in Der Heer. Um, so I don't know if this letter's published anywhere else, but the Rebbe writes to somebody and he's attaching a . This is what I put in the supplementary in the WhatsApp group, so you can read it yourselves if you like. Um, somebody writes to the Rebbe. He says he's attaching a so he's gonna send him a from and also from, uh, and he says, "I'm, uh, they've just been published." And then he goes on, says the Rebbe, Certainly, you're going to use these materials I'm sending you to affect other people, to affect the masses in the best possible way, which means to make them completely one.

10:45 Speaker 1 but through connecting with the with, uh, the central soul of all souls, by way of Yechidus, that I expect you to be bringing them to Yechidus. Says that a Yechidus can be accomplished . So the Rebbe in this letter is saying that a person can achieve Yechidus through writing to the Rebbe. So this seems to be adding an additional dimension that I wasn't aware of up until now. Another way that his can happen without actually knowing the Rebbe, seeing him, interacting with him personally. It seems that writing to the Rebbe, going to the aisle, even not going to the aisle, sitting down and writing to the Rebbe and sending it to the aisle, or just writing to the Rebbe. Writing to the Rebbe is a good h-- a good habit, by the way. Uh, writing to the Rebbe is also a form of that seems to unite a Rebbe with a and this is certainly something that works, uh, just as well after . So, uh, in conclusion, and then of course, I'll open the floor. I know you're all itching. Uh, I'll, I'll open the floor in a second, but in, in conclusion, what we have from our letter is our, our letter was just the Rebbe telling somebody, "Look, your job is going well. Things have been going well. I'm sure they're gonna continue going well. It doesn't make sense for us to have phone calls anymore because everything that could be accomplished through a phone call is accomplished already through the fact

11:52 Speaker 1 that we're thinking about each other." This launched us into the idea that when a Rebbe and a think about each other, they are together, whether or not they're in the same physical space, and that there doesn't seem to be an so much so that it's worth, you know, saving the dime. I think back then it was a dime for these calls. At least that's the expression people use. We then launched into a larger discussion of what other things unite us with the Rebbe without us being in the physical room with the Rebbe, and that includes learning the same Torah subject, learning the Rebbe's Torah, keeping the Rebbe's , hanging out with the Rebbe's people, and finally, writing to the Rebbe. I think, of course, that this is particularly applicable to us in a time where the Rebbe's not physical body easily available to us In a physical way, we can't have Yechidut, we can't hear regular Ma'amarim, we can't-- why we can't go to a farbrengen in body. Uh, it seems to me that the Rebbe left us a, a significant body of work demonstrating that our relationship with the Rebbe does not need to suffer because of it. That these are all connection points, in some cases, connection points that Rebbe the Peiter says work just as well. Okay, I'm done. Please, floor is open. Have at it.

12:49 Speaker 2 How much time do we have? So I see the letter from, from Chele Gimel that you were talking about. I, I put that on the chat, actually.

13:01 Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, that's a good one. He brings both Hayyimim and kinda puts stuff between them.

13:06 Speaker 2 Right. It seems like the emphasis is like basically that, meaning not the discount. The Iyus Ponim, the Iyus Ponim is sup-- is definitely important, and the Iyus Ponim has value. But two things. First of all, the Iyus Ponim itself is not enough. So you can't say, "Oh, I see the Rebbe, I follow Rebbe, I clap by the Rebbe, and I'm Mekusher." Because if you don't actually act on it and learn and do the Tikkuness, then you're not gonna be Mekusher at all. And the second thing is not just that, not just that it's not enough. I guess it's another, another angle for the same thing. The Askashas Hamitis, meaning, A, seeing it itself is not enough, and B, yes, you could be fully Mekusher without it. Doesn't mean there's no value to it. It adds-- the Iyus Ponim, like, you know, the, the Hayyimim of the Shpal Zeida, I think. The Shpal Zeida when Rashashna put his hand on his heart and Venihemot had his Mivara. The Tenua of a Tzadik, that things affects a person immensely. But even without it, you could still have a real Askashas. It's not-- Y-Your Askashas is not lacking if you haven't seen it. It maybe makes that way the much harder and much more real and much more deep.

14:19 Speaker 1 Thank you.

14:20 Speaker 3 I think, I think that, I think that what you're saying is correct, and I don't think they-- they're slice of these two things. Not only that, if you take it within the context of the letter, the Rebbe's saying exactly that. I don't need to call you.

14:30 Speaker 2 Right.

14:31 Speaker 3 I don't need to call you. I don't have to make-- forget about the fact that we're focusing on whether it was a long-distance call or short-distance call. I don't need to call you in order to, to, to have a good connection with you. Could have good connection with Mashava. Now, would it be better if you got a phone call from the Rebbe? Of course. It'd be beautiful to get a phone call from the Rebbe. But I don't need that. That's not-

14:50 Speaker 2 And, and-

14:50 Speaker 3 Mission does but state the, the relationship.

14:54 Speaker 2 The other thing is love that for the Rebbe adds everything, but, you know, it could be that also the, the time factor. The Rebbe was-- time was very, very limited. Um, now-

15:02 Speaker 3 Then the Rebbe would have said that. Then the Rebbe would have said that. The Rebbe, the Rebbe is very clear in, in other places where the Rebbe says that because of a lack of time, I can't elaborate, or because of a lack of time, I can't respond, and because of a lack of time, I can't do X, Y, and Z.

15:12 Speaker 2 Right. Right.

15:13 Speaker 3 This is not about a lack of time. This is purely about, well, maybe the cost of long-distance phone calls, number one, um, and, and-

15:19 Speaker 2 It was way more than a dime back then.

15:21 Speaker 3 Maybe it was after, maybe it was one of those, you know, times that, you know, maybe Chabadka came to the Rebbe and told the Rebbe, you know, he's spending too much. You know, the famous Maisie, the Rebbe when, uh, the Rebbe would turn off the lights when Chabadka came in line. The Rebbe would reach in and turn off the lights because the Rebbe-- because Chabadka would complain about the electricity bills. So you never know if this was something that came after that. But, but the point of it is that the Rebbe is saying over here that, uh, you know, I guess he's hanging it on the fact that, that it costs too much money, but Ma- the Mashava is been Einer Mitten Zreyten, is been Be'emes Tzazamen. Be'emes is not like lack of this, and maybe it's a way to dretz ech out of it.

15:55 Speaker 2 Right.

15:55 Speaker 3 It's Be'emes Tzazamen.

16:01 Speaker 2 Right.