כיצד מוכיחים?

00:00 Speaker 1 Okay, we're doing Igress. We are on page Ayin Tes of volume twenty-eight from fifty years ago. We're looking at a letter from Zais Chanukah of Tav Shin Lamed Gimel, and this is our last random date letter 'cause starting tomorrow when we have Rosh Chodesh Nisan, we're gonna dive into the Nisan letters and the Pesach letters. There's a, a lot of them. So this is, this is our last freestyle day for a little while. We have letter Yod Tav Reish Lamed Vav, and there's a little bit of context on the bottom. We'll read that first. The rebbe is writing a response to a bachur who was living in a yeshiva, bachur in a yeshiva, and he'd, uh, come to a Chassidisha farbrengen, and he sensed that, uh, some of the people who were taking part in the farbrengen were daykrim, zez. That means to, like, spear somebody or to stab them. They weren't literally stabbing each other with the forks. I mean, maybe they were. I wasn't at the-

00:45 Speaker 2 How do you know?

00:46 Speaker 1 But, uh, right, I wasn't at the farbrengen. Maybe things got wild. But, uh, the implication here is that they were really going at, going at each other. We've all been to farbrengens. We know how these things go. Sometimes, uh, sometimes the giving of mussar is done a little, uh, aggressively. So he saw this happening. He saw somebody beating up somebody else at the farbrengen verbally, I assume, and he wrote to the rebbe asking whether it's okay to do such a thing. It didn't seem appropriate to him. So the rebbe writes back a very short letter. "Lepela gadol. I'm shocked. Mitzar, I'm pained. Shesh'el, shesh'el that he's asking, that he's even asking, That you would even ask whether it's mutar to humiliate someone and, in your language, to stab them in public. Is this the true Torah?" And I imagine, although it doesn't say anywhere in the letter, that the reference is that this might have taken place at the Yeshivat Har HaShem, and that's why the Har HaShem is in quotes, but I don't know for sure. It seems at least possible. In any case, the rebbe says, "Obviously, obviously we're not allowed to humiliate people at farbrengens. Um, it's a shock that anybody would even ask, uh, whether and painful that anybody would even ask whether it's mutar to humiliate someone else at a farbrengen." So clear answer from the rebbe, we're not allowed to do it. At the same time, here comes the but. At the same time, there's definitely room for admonishment

01:58 Speaker 1 and rebuke at a farbrengen. We all know this. The entire point of a farbrengen is, uh, is... Where do I have this? I have this in a lashon in, uh, Hayyim of Chaf Daled Teivus. Putting it up on the screen for you to see. Is this the right one? Chaf Daled Teiv-- Chaf Daled Tishrei. That's what I meant. But look at the lashon here, where the rebbe explains what a farbrengen is supposed to be. The person who's in charge of talking, that person who's speaking at the farbrengen, it's their job to demand from the people sitting there, that they should improve their ways and their paths. They should set aside time to learn Torah. They should keep track of their kfius in Torah. That their limud should be so that they are able to teach and to fulfill. If you really wanna know how to rebuke somebody, see the Maimonides I went looking, and it's a long Maimonides. I, I didn't get a lot out of it. We'll, we'll have to do a separate thing on just that Maimonides at some point. Everybody needs to learn it well. See, we all have to. This has to be something that doesn't humiliate people at all. You can't humiliate people while rebuking them. In the way that it was way back when, people used to rebuke each other, but only in a way of love and intense love. I'm translating chiba poorly. Hmm. So the rebbe does acknowledge that one of the main points, if not the

03:35 Speaker 1 main point of a farbrengen, is to rebuke each other. Rebuking each other is part of the process, but it has to be in a way that doesn't embarrass people. So the question is how to do that. How do you rebuke somebody without violating these other rules of I have another place. I found in a, uh... I'm trying to see this on my notes over here. page two six one five. The rebbe identifies the point of a farbrengen. He says, What's the point of a farbrengen? To accept good good resolutions, to strengthen and to increase in all manner of Torah and mitzvahs. So, you know, I, I always joke whenever I give a farbrengen that the opening line of every farbrengen is a mashpia telling you what a farbrengen is. That's usually-- You ever noticed that before? That whenever somebody comes to farbrengen, they go, "What, what is a Chassidisha farbrengen?" And they spend fifteen minutes telling you what they think it is so that they can justify the farbrengen they planned. But if you wanna know what a Chassidisha farbrengen actually is, there's only one correct answer. It's the one given in Hayyim, the one given by the rebbe in many farbrengens. A farbrengen is a place where we make, where we, where we make good haflichtas. It's a place of self-examination. It's sort of a group cheshbon nefesh, where we all decide together to be better. So there is definitely a way to do this properly. There's a way to do rebuke in a

04:47 Speaker 1 way that is not a way to, without being ever isurei Torah, to fulfill the needs of a farbrengen. Um, by way of introduction, there's a story that was mentioned recently at one of our farbrengens. Uh, Surly was sitting next to me, I think, when this came up. Or maybe, no, you were directly across from me at this farbrengen. Rabbi Werner told this story, but, uh, it's a well-known story. Rashambare Gordon told the story originally that a young rabbi one time asked the Friediker Rebbe how to rebuke his kilre. He wanted to know how to, uh, leave an impression on them that would last. The Friediker Rebbe told him, "I've never been to a Russian bathhouse, so I'm just trusting the Friediker Rebbe on this one." That in the Russian bathhouses, once someone gets very hot, they start smacking him with a branch, I think, is the way that it's mentioned in the Sikha. And I think it's-- I think I saw this in writing somewhere, and I think it was with a branch, but maybe it's with a towel. I don't know. They smack you when you're in a Russian bathhouse, and apparently it feels very good when your skin's very hot. Apparently, it doesn't feel so good if your skin's not hot. So the Friediker Rebbe told him, "You smack people in a bathhouse, they love it. But if they're walking down the street and you just walk up to them and start smacking them in the back, you might make an enemy very

05:44 Speaker 1 quickly. They're not going to appreciate that." So there needs to be a context to a rebuke. If you wanna rebuke somebody and you want it to feel good for them and have an effect, it needs to be within the context of their already being warmed. Uh, I wanna clarify that I don't think that, uh, warmth is a compliment sandwich. It's not that I say, "Hey, you know, you're really good at learning, but you're just a monster when it comes to davening, and I wish, you know..." That's, that's not the way we do it. We don't say something nice to someone, call that warming them up, and then smack them down. I think the warmth here is a context of love, a, uh, a situation where we're already been farbrenging for a while. People have been warmed up. They feel close enough to each other. They can talk to each other frankly. Going back-- going away from stories and into text though. It says in the volume one, page one hundred and eighty-two, this is a fairly, fairly famous said in the name of the that which is the passage that we learned that somebody has a to rebuke their friend from, means that you first need to rebuke yourself. There's a before a and only after them can you re-- only after that can you rebuke them. That's the only way to make it work. So until you have fixed your own problems, you can't go fixing anybody else's problems. There's actually a that says

06:45 Speaker 1 the exact same thing. There is a letter from the cool letter from volume two, page two hundred and ninety-one from . Apparently, in nineteen thirty-five or so, the had a surgery or an injection or some kind of a medical procedure. I don't know exactly what it was. He writes there that while he was having his procedure, he asked the doctors why they were sterilizing everything so carefully. He said, "I cleaned the, the surgical site or the injection site had been cleaned carefully, the tools have been cleaned carefully, they'd washed their hands and under the fingernails and everything. They checked very carefully to make sure that everything was sterile." And he asked the doctors, "Why are you going so overboard on the sterility? We, we know things are clean." And the doctors told him that they're gonna give him an injection or something that's supposed to make him better. It's supposed to give him medicine, but something that can make it worse than even if they'd never given medicine in the first place is if he gets an infection. If some bacteria get in, it'd be better than not giving the medicine in the first place. So he tells this story in this letter and then writes that giving rebuke is like giving an injection. It, it heals and it hurts. It hurts to get it, it heals the person on the inside, and it only works if everything on the side of the giver is completely disinfected. If the person giving it has a little

07:46 Speaker 1 bacteria on their hands and they deliver that rebuke, if they're not aware, if they have baggage with them, self-righteousness, a little bit of hate for the person, the desire to show off, the desire to knock down their friend, and that's on their fingers when they do the injection or do the surgery, it'd be better not to have gotten the medicine in the first place because that causes an infection in the recipient and, and terrible things happen. We have from volume fifteen, page one hundred and forty-three, that when the when it comes to rebuke is that you point out somebody else's problems. The Rebbe says that the way that a does it is a little different. He doesn't point out someone's problem, says the Rebbe. He points out areas that need to be improved, and he does it in a , in a pleasant way. He says it's more effective, and in addition to that, God doesn't ever get angry about it. Every person does regular rebuke and gives regular has to worry that how dare you say this about my ? How dare you say this about my child? We don't have to worry about that when we're not pointing out the problems and instead pointing out areas of possible improvement. There is one more that I wanted to remind you of, to show you. It's over here. Says before we're commanded in the Torah, it says that's the passage. I think maybe yeah, sure. That's a it's a condition. A condition of giving somebody

09:03 Speaker 1 a rebuke is at first you don't hate the person. and then after that, after I've fulfilled that condition of not hating the person, and then I've given the rebuke, then it says that you give them. If the rebuke you give them doesn't work, it's certainly your fault. because clearly what you said to them didn't come from the heart. This emphasizes the importance, first of all, making sure that you don't hate the other person. Second of all, making sure that what you say is, um, coming from the heart, is, uh... What's the word I'm looking for there? Coming from the heart. Uh, that it comes from the heart. That these things come from the heart. Yeah. I, I, I had, I had a word in English, but it just popped out of my head. I do words professionally, but, you know, I guess I'm-- this is our lunch break. It popped... So i-it has to be, it has to be, uh, sincere, and if it's not done sincerely, it's unlikely to work. So we get from this, uh, from this sort of review of different things that our Rebbe said about giving most, and we have, uh, thing number one, which we got from our letter over here, is that it's absolutely inappropriate to humiliate anybody. We also have this from the over here, from I'm opening the screen. From that although it is one of the main functions, one of the main points, one of the highlights for a lot of people of a farbrengen

10:17 Speaker 1 to rebuke other people in the room and to make people better, that's part of it. As a matter of fact, it's the whole point of a farbrengen is to make sure that there's and that people are improving themselves and making making resolutions. That's true. And that involves rebuke. That's true. It also can never cross the line until As the Rebbe says in letter that's Apollo, that he's shocked and pained that somebody would even ask this. And in where they talk-- where he talks about the value of a farbrengen, even there it mentions specifically that it can't involve any sort of humiliation of another person. So how that is accomplished exactly is apparently in which is in . So if you have the I opened it, I found it, it's long. There's a-- So the um, that has its own volume in the blue so it's will apparently tell you how to do that particularly well. We tried to draw it from a couple other places. We mentioned the story from Shalom Ber Gordon, which says that you have to warm them up first, which I think is not a compliment sandwich, but context, a context of love and of . There needs to be that you rebuke yourself first. You need to make sure your life and your situation is in order before you go after somebody else, which is, of course, almost never the case. One of the things that we love doing is rebuking people for the problems we have, right? You have

11:25 Speaker 1 to make sure there's no self-righteousness, no lack of love, no infection on you that could cause when you deliver this treatment of rebuke for it to cause more harm than had you not done it in the first place. That's the from his letter when he was talking to the surgeons or the doctors. We saw, we saw from the Rebbe that the way to do this is to mention what needs to be improved and not to dwell on the problem itself, because dwelling on the problem itself both is less effective and also can cause a to get upset with you for del-dwelling-- dwelling on somebody else's problems. And we mentioned from the that needs to come from, needs to come from the heart, and you need to love your friend first, or at least not hate them first, before you give them this kind of . Okay. Anybody else have other, uh, have other tips or tricks or comments, please? That I'm cur-- It's a total order. I'm curious to know if anybody ha- present has been at one of those farbrengens Asimismo rev 그리あた