לימוד בכולל

00:02 Speaker 1 Today we're looking at a letter from Beis Nissan, Tuv Shin Lammed Gimel, almost exactly fifty years ago. As has been our tradition, we're on page Kuf, Ayin Vav of Igros. And we have here a, a harsh letter from the Rebbe where he's checking in with a kollel in Crown Heights and comparing them to a kollel in Yerushalayim. So if you go down to the very bottom of the page, you should all be able to see on the screen, it says that this is a copy that was written on a doch from Temach Tzedek in Yerushalayim. So Temach Tzedek in Yerushalayim was a successful kollel that was running, and they'd written to the Rebbe a doch that had, uh, that had a list, I guess, of the things they were up to and how, how much they had learned, what time they were spending learning. And the Rebbe writes this on the margins. And the Rebbe tells the maskirus to show the onhallah of the kollel that they have in Crown Heights and to have them answer the following question. He's showing the doch from Temach Tzedek to the onhallah of the kollel in Crown Heights and comparing them. And the Rebbe wants the following questions to be asked of the kollel in Crown Heights. Question number one, do we have anything like that over there? Or maybe we have something better than what they're doing over at Temach Tzedek in Yerushalayim. Is there anything like this or better going on in Crown Heights? It sounds

01:09 Speaker 1 like the kol-- the one in, in, in Crown Heights was established several years before this one. So since we've been around longer, I expect you should have. Is there something, uh, similar or better? The Rebbe then says, "Anybody who's into programming is gonna love this letter. It's a bunch of, bunch of if-then statements." If so, if that's-- if this is the case and our kollel's putting out things as good as this kollel over in Yerushalayim, then why has nobody told me the good news? I'd love to hear good news. But if not, is there anybody who is, uh, is, is handling this, who knows what's up with this? I think is the sort of a, a colloquial translation there. Does anybody know what's up with this? Why is it not the case? Or is there somebody in charge of this? Is there somebody who's, uh, who's going to look into this? If there's somebody willing to take responsibility for this happening, what can be done to fix the situation? So that is if it's the case that this is not happening there and we have somebody willing to look into it, then what can we do to fix it so that our kollel's as good as the kollel over there? And the Rebbe says, "I'm not looking for excuses, um, that should be put on somebody else. I want, uh, I don't want ." An excuse that someone else needs to do. And if not, if there's nobody here who's willing to take this responsibility

02:18 Speaker 1 and bring our kollel up to snuff, here's the real punchline. Uh, maybe the time has come. It's already been more than three years, which is how long a chazakah is. It-- maybe it's time Maybe it's time to close the kollel. Maybe we're done with it. Even according to you guys, maybe it's time to close the kollel. If those who are supposed to be in the kollel are supposed to be people who are-- their, their souls yearn for Torah, and if they're unable to do these sorts of things that I'm asking for, then what's the kollel right now? It's a tzedakah. It's a charity to cause-- to help people waste their money and waste their time. The opposite of that which it says in the Pasuk, that a person was created to do hard work. And the Rebbe says, "I want a response by Yud Aleph Nissan." So the Rebbe's saying in this letter, "People, if you're willing to make a kollel as good as the one in Yerushalayim that puts out the kind of things that make me proud, wonderful. I want s-- I wanna hear who's in charge and who's gonna make sure it's happening. And if not, then I think we all agree, you and me, that it's time to close the kollel and be done with this because the kollel's not meant to be a charity that keeps people afloat, gives people a little money so they can waste their time. That's not the job here. The idea of a kollel is

03:25 Speaker 1 that people should be very busy with it." That's in, that's in our year. Now, actually, Tuv Shin Lammed Gimel was a huge year for kollels for the Rebbe. When I was going through materials preparing this year, I would say at least half of what I found was from Tuv Shin Lammed Gimel. I don't know why this was a year of kollel writing for the Rebbe, but a lot of stuff's from there. One thing I did find, I can't be sure that this is the continuation of our letter, but looking over in the Google Doc, which is in your supplemental material, I think this is the continuation of the letter because there's sort of a part two to this. In the final days of Iyar of that same year, the Rebbe paid a surprise visit to a kollel in Crown Heights. I assume the same kollel. Why would it be a different one? And when he popped in, he looked around for a little while. The place was packed, so he was happy with that. People were in attendance. And afterwards, when he came back, he sent the following message. This is also printed in our Igros volume, uh, labeled Shilay Yahr, the last days of Iyar, Tuv Shin Lammed Gimel. He sent the following message to the Chevre kollel. And what he says there is... I'll read it a little bit. "I visited the kollel today. I saw a thing and I saw its opposite. There's all the good, let's say, body. There's a good

04:26 Speaker 1 body here. Everything here is great, but it's missing a soul. It's got a body but no soul. It's got all the right materials, but I'm not sure I see a, uh, a, a form. And usually, is the physicality and is the spirituality that enlivens it. It's missing the enlivening factor." And what does he think it's really missing? Is he wants, he wants exactly what he talked about in that first letter. He says that, uh, people need to be . He wants to see Okay. Where does he say the thing I wanted? Ah, at the top. Sorry, I missed a line. The Rebbe says, "Since since it's accepted a person who's a member of a kollel needs to be an adult. They need to be people who love Torah very much and are very invested in this. I expect a certain of what goes on here." And the Rebbe says that he wants there to be somebody watching over the Seudat Lemudim, still watching over the Shmirat HaZman, also Nekayim, that it should be clean, and all sorts of other things. And the Rebbe says that, that it should be handing out fines. There should be knassis if it's not, if it's not put-- if things don't happen properly, and the Rebbe wants somebody in charge of this. And then again, he makes this threat at the bottom, although it's in more veiled language, and I think if we didn't see the first letter, we might not have recognized the threat. There's nothing like this, nobody

05:38 Speaker 1 like this ready to take on those responsibilities. The Rebbe says, "I'm not going with Taynus ." I believe that's Al HaDrisha, also Al HaPrisha. This is a line about somebody who'd been, I forget who, in the Gemara someone was derash all the Es in the Torah. So one of the amoraim, one of the amoraim said, "Well, instead of making a drash out of every S. So I got a sar for all of the drashes that I made." And then they got to the Pasuk So God you should fear, and there should be a riboi there. S is a lashon riboi according to him. That would mean there's two Gods. At that moment, he said, "I'm not darshing the S's anymore, and I also got sar and prisha from not doing it anymore." So I believe this sentence is saying that the same way that you got sar for establishing the kollel, you'll get sar for closing the kollel if that's the way that it's gonna be Uh, that has a suffix. It's good to get rid of either way. Let's get rid of the suffix and decide whether you're ready to run a kollel or not. And if not, I want it closed back in and I want it at the earliest, uh, a-as early as possible would be best. Okay. So it sounds like the Rebbe wants a kollel, but only if it's done properly. We, we have this in a sicha from Parashat Ekev, chaf av, of also guess what year? Taf Shin

06:39 Speaker 1 Lamed Gimel, the year where the Rebbe talked about kollels a lot. Look at this sicha. I have the language on the screen. As , the Rebbe says, "I always wanted a kollel." In Lubavitch for a hundred and eighty years, there was never a kollel. Now, there were yeshiva, there were people who would come a couple years after their marriage and sit and learn in Chabad for a little-- in, in Lubavitch for a little while, but this was not a kollel. So there's never been a kollel. The Rebbe sort of invented the idea of a kollel. So Rebbe says, "I wanted it even though it never existed before." Because I want it to affect that a young married man is going to learn with a fire when it comes to learning Torah. The Rebbe says, . The Rebbe says that he has a in the learning. There are people who are learning. The Rebbe has a that there should be people sitting and learning in kollel who love to learn. So the Rebbe is not anti-kollel. However, the Rebbe wants the kollel done right. For example, we have this letter also from Taf Shin Lamed Gimel, also in our volume of Igres, which says very clear that if you're not sure that you're going to sit and learn properly with real, with that you don't belong there. Look at this. The Rebbe says it's famous already. It made it very well-known. If you're not sure, then I don't want you going to the kollel if you're

07:48 Speaker 1 not sure. Kollel is for people whose souls yearn for Torah. There's no suffix by these people whether they should be learning or whether it's gonna be whether it's gonna be serious. So anybody who's not sure whether kollel is for them, kollel is not for them. It's for people who, who, whose, whose go through life yearning for nothing but Torah learning. The Rebbe has a sicha on this, guess when? It's from Taf Shin Lamed Gimel. Just a recurring theme here. Um, the, the Rebbe says that a young married man doesn't wanna do . There's more than one line in the Shema. The Shema says, "You'll speak of Torah." It also says, "You'll go collect your grain." The Rebbe says, "If you're not somebody who wants to learn Torah, then go collect grain. There's nothing wrong with that." The Rebbe says in a logical way, It doesn't make sense that nor- working people should be working while some guy's sitting in kollel wasting his time. The Rebbe is not interested.

08:44 Speaker 2 His wife, his wife should work. His wife

08:47 Speaker 1 Excuse me. Thank you. It doesn't make sense to your w-- That's an important idea. Thanks, Tzurili. It does not make sense the model that we see in a lot of places in the world. We don't have to name names, but you know what I'm thinking of. There's no place for a wife to go out and work while you waste your time. There's a place for the wife to go out and work while you learn, but not while you waste your time. But if you're not in a state where you wanna learn very badly, what's he doing sitting there? Is, is it peer pressure at this point? You know, everybody goes, everybody goes to kollel. I have to go to kollel. The Rebbe doesn't want this. So we have from here that if you're not sure that you're somebody, somebody who's the Rebbe doesn't necessarily want such a person going. There is a degree of accountability that the Rebbe wants. We already saw this in the letters above, that he wants people who are in charge of the star. And there's another degree of accountability that shows up over here. As a matter of fact, I have in my notes over here one more sicha about the that I wanted to mention. There's a sicha in, uh, Nisan of Taf Shin Mem, where the Rebbe says that kollel is not just yeshiva for married people, and a lot of people think it is. And the Rebbe says, "If it was just yeshiva for married people, we

09:55 Speaker 1 could just call it yeshiva. It gets a new name because it's a new idea completely." He says, "Yeshiva, in yeshiva you have a job of fulfilling the Alter Rebbe's from that everybody has to learn kollel Torah kula. The Alter Rebbe brings us and that's the job of yeshiva. Kollel is for people who are ." So that's like back on the, uh, back on the desire to learn Torah. Now, under the accountability thing we have here, I have a letter here from-- I'm sorry, it's a sicha from Mem Gimel, ten years after Taf Shin Lamed Gimel. Says that the Rebbe wants them publishing Chidushai Torah at least twice a year. I don't think we have to read it. It's just what it says, that at least twice a year the Rebbe wants pamphlets coming out of these kollels, publishing, that's one of the forms of accountability that he wants. The Rebbe also has, um, a letter that I don't think I put here. I don't know where it is. I think I probably deleted it by mistake, where he says that he wants detailed progress reports, uh, one or two of them per year, and even better if those things will happen monthly. And of course, we have the prior letters that say that there should be an administrator who's gonna enforce the starim and the chanochos. There's a good deal of accountability the Rebbe wants with a kollel. Going down here, I have a section on when we should go in for how long. You

10:55 Speaker 1 might be familiar with this. Of, of the people on the screen, did people here learn in kollel after they got married for a little while? It's okay. Not everybody's supposed to. Look what it says up here. If there's a suffix, don't go, right? So over here we have a letter from the Rebbe from guess what year? You'll never guess. Taf Shin Lamed Gimel, again, where the Rebbe says to somebody, and he's writing about the pregnancy and things like in response to his question. The Rebbe says, The longer you learn in kollel, in or in whatever works better for you, the Rebbe writes to this person. It's that the longer you learn in kollel, the better. That this should be for two to three years after your wedding. So the Rebbe seems to feel that almost everybody, for two to three years after their wedding, should be learning in kollel. The Rebbe has exceptions that are on the books. This is the yechidas that I found where it says One time in yechidas, the Rebbe pointed out to Rabbi Efraim Ul about one avrech, a specific guy who had very powerful He was He had exceptional talents. And the Rebbe said about this exceptionally talented person in yechidas that he should stay in kollel for many, many more years, uh, more than two years. But generally speaking, the Rebbe wants two years of kollel after marriage. And this is an important point, 'cause it is only after marriage. I've never found-- I'd never heard of this

12:14 Speaker 1 before. This is apparently printed in Uh, I don't know where exactly to find it outside of there. But the Rebbe says, "Learning in a kollel," I think it was in yechidas I think it was in Yechidas. The Rebbe says, "Learning in Kollel, excuse me, ." The time learning in Kollel has to be immediately after the time you learned in Yeshiva. And if there has been time that has passed between learning in Yeshiva and Kollel, you can't go back to Kollel anymore if you've done Parnassah in between. Meaning that the Rebbe was responding in this, uh, in this letter, in this Yechidas, I don't remember the context. The Rebbe was responding to somebody who said that, uh, he was learn-learned in Yeshiva, loved learning, went out and got a job, and now while he's at work, he's thinking, "I really wish I could go back and learn in Kollel." We hear people do this all the time. The Rebbe at least once specifically said this is not to be done. The Kollel is for people who are continuing directly out of Yeshiva. The desire to go back and learn full-time after getting a job is one that you just don't, you just don't do. It's not appropriate. The Rebbe talks in several Sichas about the importance of Kollel stipends. I have one from Reish-Chesh-Nisan, which is from Tav-Shin-Mem. It's in Sichas Kodesh, page four hundred and eighty-six. The Rebbe says there that we have to pe-- we have to pay people who have . I keep--

13:22 Speaker 1 My tongue keeps twisting over these words. Someone who really loves Torah very much and is, is supposed to be in Kollel, someone who belongs there, we do need to pay them. And the reason why we need to pay them is the Rebbe says that the Torah was only given to the . Only people who eat manna in the desert, who aren't responsible for their livelihoods at all, are really able to fully delve in the Torah on that level. The people who are shy to that level, who should be learning in Kollel, should be paid to learn in Kollel. They should have stipends that take care of all or almost all of their needs. They need to be free of all tardos. They can focus on intense study. There is a letter here that was sent in Tav-Shin-Lamed-Beis. Somebody had written to the Rebbe that they were interested in learning in Kollel and not taking their stipend, and the Rebbe wrote this . There's no such thing. There's no such thing as learning in Kollel without getting paid. That the idea is that when you're in Kollel, you're supposed to be paid so that you can learn properly. That's part of the package. So we do wanna support Torah scholars. That's the end of my supplemental list. I do have one more Sicha I wanted to mention, that there's a Sicha in Lamed-Tess, volume two, uh, um, page two hundred and eighty-one, where the Rebbe says that in addition to all these other things we've talked

14:23 Speaker 1 about with the people who go to Kollel, the Rebbe wants them learning with locals. And he wants the locals who learn with them to see how invested they are in Torah, that they shouldn't like, you know, they, they learn the-- they learn with, uh, incredible, uh, enthusiasm during the day, and then at night, they do like a quick, uh, token sheer for the Baal Habatim. One of the ideas here is that the Baal Habatim should see their hislahavos when they learn with them as well. And the Rebbe says that doing that turns a Kollel into a Kollel. The word Kollel means something that collects all people together. So the Rebbe also wants them involved in some degree of hapaza. So to wrap everything up and put it all together, I have like a main points list over here, so we didn't lose all of our-- lose track. We had our initial letter, which showed that the Rebbe is very willing to close a Kollel that's not living up to his standards. We discovered the Rebbe does want a Kollel, that he has a taavah for it, uh, even though it never existed in Lubavitch before and it was an enormous Chiddush. This is something the Rebbe wants very badly, but it has to be done properly. One of the things that needs to be done properly is what we saw in our letters that we were focusing on today, our letter from Tav-Shin-Lamed-Gimel, although everything was from Tav-Shin-Lamed-Gimel. That was that a person needs-- that

15:19 Speaker 1 we need to make sure that the Kollel has a proper Seder and has proper output, and that someone's watching over the Seder to make sure that it's being run properly. We also saw that it's only for people with . That's the lesson the Rebbe uses over and over again. They have to be people who truly desire to learn. These are for special Yechidei Segula, I guess. These are for special people. It's not for everybody. When in doubt, don't go. It's not just Yeshiva part two. And a Kollel's, um, a Kollel is supposed to be a place where, uh, people who go beyond the to know Kollel Torah Kula. Uh, we mentioned that accountability is required. People have to pu-- The people in the Kollel have to publish Chidushim twice a year. The Rebbe wants detailed progress reports once or twice per year, and better if they come out monthly. There needs to be an administrator who's going to enforce Taharum, give out the Knosos. That's our letters again. When should the time be for Kollel is ideally after marriage, ideally for two or three years after most marriages. That's what the Rebbe says in h-- in a letter, that most people, he wants them for two to three years in Kollel. After that, they should go get a job. The Rebbe does have, uh, instances where he tells certain people who have particular-- who are particularly exceptionally talented, that they should be learning there longer. So if they're p-with particular talent and particular promise, people

16:22 Speaker 1 could stay in Kollel much longer. And the Rebbe said no to somebody who wanted to leave the workforce and go back to Kollel, explaining to him the Kollel is for people who are going directly from Yeshiva, not for people who have taken a break in between. Regarding the question of Kollel stipends, for people who should be in Kollel, the Rebbe definitely wants them to have a stipend. People who shouldn't be, he wants to close the Kollel down altogether, right? But for the people who should be in Kollel, the Rebbe wants them to have stipends. He says only pe-- only the , only people who eat manna in the desert, who have no daygas in Parnassa, can really learn Torah properly at the level that we're looking for in a Kollel. And to somebody who wanted to learn in Kollel and not take any pay, the Rebbe told him there's no such inyan. Let's not do anything like that. Uh, regarding hapaza, they do have the same requirements as every single Chassid. To be involved in hapaza samayones or hapaza in general, I guess, Mitzvah of some kind, whatever you wanna call it, they have a shlichus. But their shlichus is that they're expected to do the function of a Kollel, which is to collect all people in their community together and to learn with them every now and then, showing them the nafsham, chaskah, chaskah b'Torah that qualified them for the Kollel in the first place. That's it.

17:21 Speaker 2 And I've got two-- a few comments. First of all, go back to the original letter. There's, there's, there's two interesting things. In the original letter, he says there, um, number three, Gimel, he says, "If not, ." He wants to know, is there someone who this even bothers?

17:38 Speaker 1 Ah.

17:38 Speaker 2 Is this some-something that bothers somebody? I wanna know if this, if this is not happening, mean, if, if it's going on, you didn't tell me about it, fine. If it's not, does anyone care? Does it bother somebody? That's, that's a very huge line. That's number one. Number two is the fact that the Rebbe writes or says in the Sicha and the other one, the other things that Lubavitch didn't have for a hundred and eighty years, did not have a Kollel, is interesting. Like, where did the whole concept of Kollel start? Like, is this an American thing? Was this going on in Europe? This is a hundred and eighty years and Lubavitch did not have a Kollel. So just everybody went out to work. But it's-- it would be interesting just to maybe double-click on that concept of what happened to Kollels. And the third thing I wanted to bring up is that the Rebbe would very often, at least a few times I can note in my mind, where the Rebbe would use the Kollel yungerleit as shluchim for the community. When the Rebbe was giving out matzahs out of Pesach for the community, it would be distributed through the Kollel yungerleit. When the Rebbe was giving out Tanyas one time, the second time the Rebbe gave out Tanyas, the first time the Rebbe gave out by hand, the second time the Rebbe gave out Tanyas by a farbrengen. There's another third time later on by in, in the, in the late mems, early nuns.

18:46 Speaker 2 But the, the second time the Rebbe gave out Tanyas, I think it was in the mems, the Rebbe used the Kollel yungerleit to give out the Tanyas. So it's very interesting that the Rebbe, like, deputized them a lot of times. Also, when it came to dollars, sometimes the Rebbe would give the Kollel yungerleit and the people that, that went on, on Mevtzion, he would give them each a pack of dollars, and then they would go and distribute the dollars after farbrengen. The Rebbe wouldn't give each person hand by hand. So interestingly enough, the Rebbe was very, very machiv the Kollel yungerleit, and I guess he was assuming that they were people that nafsham chaskah b'Torah, which is why they're there, 'cause if not, they shouldn't be there.