ראשיתו של מבצע מזוזה

00:00 Okay, we are, uh, we are not going to talk about Mitzvah Mezuzah today. That's the first thing I wanna say is that although we are going to touch on Mitzvah Mezuzah, on the Rebbe's mission to put Mezuzahs on every door, that's really not our topic today. We're going to be saving that for later this year, maybe a little bit of next year. Uh, we're right on the cusp of Mitzvah Mezuzah. We're right around where, where the Rebbe started this campaign. We're in Tes Shin Lamed Gimel, exactly fifty years ago, and the campaign started in Tes Shin Lamed Dalet, right around the time of the Yom Kippur War, also right around the time of a bunch of serious terrorist incidents that happened right around then. Uh, that's when the Mezuzah campaign really gets underway. Today, I just wanna talk about how it started. I wanna talk about what happened before it started, uh, because the Rebbe is uncharacteristically vague about how he started Mitzvah Mezuzah. I, I think if you look at the way that the Rebbe starts other mitzvot- If you look at the way the Rebbe starts other mitzvot, you'll get the impression that he's very sure exactly what he's doing and why he's doing it. The Rebbe has a real plan for tefillin, can justify tefillin, exactly why tefillin's the right mitzvah for the right moment. Uh, when the Rebbe introduces Mitzvah Mezuzah, he does not use that language at all. I didn't give you the sicha because it's only a couple lines

01:01 that I wanna quote, but the Rebbe said a sicha in nineteen seventy-four, about a year after the letter that we're going to look at. It was right after a terrorist attack in Ma'alot, a ve-very famous and very horrible terrorist attack in Ma'alot. A bunch of Jewish children were murdered, murdered in their school. I believe twenty-one or twenty Jewish children were murdered in their school. Somebody wrote to the Rebbe telling him that they checked all of the Mezuzahs in that school, and the same number of Mezuzahs that were pasul were the number of children who'd been killed in that attack and, uh, th- and when the number that died went up, the number of Mezuzahs they found that were pasul went up, too. The Rebbe publicized this. He publicized this at a farbrengen, and in a-- in, in follow-up after that farbrengen, people complained and they said, uh, they said, "Are, are you saying that people get punished? They don't put Mezuzahs on their doors, children die?" And the Rebbe said, "I don't-- I don't mean that at all." The Rebbe clarified in a sicha that what he means and the lashon that he used, the example he used was that a Mezuzah is like somebody wearing a helmet when they're a soldier in battle, and taking off your helmet isn't the thing that kills you, it's the, it's the bullets. We blame the person who shoots the bullets, but if the helmet's not on, that could damage somebody in a way that it wouldn't necessarily

02:00 damage them if they had a helmet. So the Rebbe is quite comfortable saying that Mezuzahs protect people from dying. Um, and he says this in a sicha, and when he says that sicha, this is the line that I'm interested in, he says the following at the farbrengen. He says, "The kayets," back in that summer, "asku ba-lahat be-Mitzvah Mezuzah." We were talking a lot over the summer about Mitzvah Mezuzah. This is the summer of nineteen seventy-four. "Dechafuni velo yinichu li lishkot litbo le'dabair al-mezuzah." I was being pushed, the Rebbe says, "Dechafuni," I was being pushed. "Velo yinichu li," and nobody would leave me alone, "lishkot," that I could be relaxed, "litbo le'dabair al-mezuzah." No one would allow me to stop talking about Mezuzah. People were pushing me or something was pushing me, right? We don't know what it is. He says, "Da-dachafuni," something was pushing the Rebbe to talk about Mezuzah, and he didn't know what it was. The Rebbe then says, "Ani be'atshmi ein yaadei lama," I myself don't know why I was being pushed to talk about Mezuzah. "Ki sherati hakach hishtamash be-tamim shenim," when I became aware of the fact that I was being pushed toward Mezuzah as our next mitzvah, I began looking for other reasons. "Ach em shomer d'Asis Yisroel," I thought maybe it's because the Mezuzahs guard the doors of the Jewish people. "Ve'alama davka mezuzah," the Rebbe says in the sicha. Why specifically Mezuzah? "Ari ech mitzvat rabot neitzu va-aleicher," there are many other Mezuzahs involved that are-- that

03:08 have these fundamentals. "Ve-lechol achas yesh segula," uh, besides the fact that it's mitzvat Hashem. Every-- Most all mitzvahs have segulas associated with them. All mitzvahs help people in addition to the fact that it's mitzvat Hashem. "Vi-na achshav ro," the Rebbe says, now I'm seeing, "ech shme'ara za aka shvirat hamizuzot," now I'm seeing how this was all connected. This thing that happened in Ma'alot was connected to Mitzvah Mezuzah-- To the mitzvah of Mezuzah, excuse me. The Rebbe doesn't use the word mitzvah until a little bit later. So the Rebbe's im-- The Rebbe implies that he was getting a lot of push to start this campaign, and we don't know what that is. Um, as I, I looked in his teshuvot where they quote this sicha, a couple other places. The note put everywhere is that we don't know what pushes the Rebbe was getting, but clearly something was pushing the Rebbe toward this, and it's unknown what the meaning is of dechafuni. Uh, I'm not going to tell you that we have the only answer, but I found one answer. I found one thing that pushed the Rebbe toward it long before from our year, and the reason why I know this is something that pushed the Rebbe toward it is because he says in the letter, "I see this as hashgachat to push me toward a Mitzvah Mezuzah." So the Rebbe says this in the letter, and I looked all over the internet. I didn't find anybody, you know, in, in Ohr Hachaim, the teshuvot

04:08 and in other publications. I found nobody pointing out this letter as the beginning of Mitzvah Mezuzah. Uh, nonetheless, I think it might be. So we're gonna look at something very interesting today, what I think might be the beginning of Mitzvah Mezuzah and what the Rebbe is saying when he says that some force was pushing him toward Mitzvah Mezuzah. First of all, I wanna point out who the letter is written to, also somebody who doesn't get enough coverage in Chabad. I looked around, and we don't have like a-- He died in twenty ten. There's no big chabad.org obituary, but he had a lot of interactions with the Rebbe. This is Shabtai Ro-Rosen. Rosen, I believe, is how his name is stylized in English. Rosen with, like, two Ns and an E on the end. Uh, we have an Israeli here with us. Do our Israelis know Shabtai Rosen? Anybody familiar? You don't have to be. It's just I don't know if he's a big deal in Israel. He was a big deal with the founding of Israel. When, uh, he was, he was involved in the Royal, in the Royal Air Force in, uh, in London. He was involved in law in London. When the, uh, when the end of the British mandate was coming, uh, Rosen was appointed to the Legal Secretariat of the Situation Committee. So he was one of the people involved in helping to make the state of Israel in the first place. Once the state was declared, he joined the Israeli

05:05 Foreign Ministry, and he was a legal advisor to the Foreign Ministry. Then in nineteen sixty, he was appointed ambassador. He became the deputy permanent representative of Israel to the United Nations in New York from nineteen sixty-seven to nineteen seventy-one, and then he was Israel's permanent representative to the UN and all international organizations in Geneva from seventy-one to seventy-four, and then appointed ambassador at large in nineteen seventy-four. So he's a, he's a big deal in the ambassador scene, and he visited the Rebbe, according to this letter, and he wrote to the Rebbe, and he pitched the idea of Mitzvah Mezuzah to the Rebbe be-- a year before the Rebbe announced it. So let's read the letter together. This is written to Mar Shabtai Rosen. "Shalom u-bracha," the Rebbe says. "Hapta-- hapta nima," the Rebbe says, pleasantly surprised, "haile mechtavah" when I received your letter "Yom Lamed Nisan." I received your letter from the thirtieth of Nisan, and I was pleasantly surprised. "Achrei hefsek haaruch me-az p'ki shoseinu," it already been a long time since we met, again, proving that the Rebbe did meet this ambassador. "Ve'ode yesh mateiach hamichtav," at the time he was ambassador, I believe, um, or maybe he'd just-- he'd just become the ambassador to Geneva when the Rebbe met him. So I'm not sure what he was doing in New York, but in any case. "Ve'ode yesh mateiach hamichtav," even more-- I was, I was even more pleasantly surprised by the content of your letter. "Be'case" of in that letter you write,

06:13 "ades atach nit mitzvah mezuzah," you write about a plan for a mitzvah mezuzah, "vedugmas mitzvot tefillin" that would look a little bit like the mitzvot tefillin, that you have an idea to make a mitzvah mezuzah like the mitzvot tefillin that we have the whole This gives me, this gives me strong hope. That as far as your hand reaches, that you are doing You're spreading totally-- spreading Judaism and its values. Specifically in ways that do have a lot to do with the main points of mezuzah specifically. They're doing it in public. Because the place of a mezuzah belongs on the outside of a house where it can be seen in public. Which is the exact opposite of the well-known, I don't know, adage expression. That a person should be a Jew in their house and not when they're outside the house. The Rebbe has a biting comment on that expression. He says, the outcome of somebody who does this practice or the outcome of somebody who chooses to be a Jew in their house and not outside of their house comes quickly. It doesn't take long to see what happens. At the very moment that they make that decision, it tears their soul, I believe, in two different directions, one inside, one outside. And then after a little bit of time, after a little bit of time, we said we'd be a Jew in our home and not outside, we end up treating our home like the outside. The Rebbe then says, move on. It is

07:33 understood. It is understood that I'm going to think again about the plan for a mitzvah mezuzah that the-- that you mentioned in your letter. The Rebbe says, I say I'm going to think about it again. Because a couple of years ago, was that we tried such a thing. We encountered all sorts of unique problems with mitzvah mezuzah that we didn't encounter with the other mitzvot. In order to do this mitzvah, you can't catch a guy on the street. You gotta visit him at home. You have to have a mezuzah ready. Excuse me. You have to have everything necessary to put up a mezuzah. You have to have a hammer with you, nails. And in most cases, you also have to convince his family. It's not enough to just convince the person in charge of the house. Everybody's being impacted when you're putting mezuzahs up on their doorways. None of this applies to my mitzvah tefillin. No, a guy doesn't need permission from his family to put on tefillin. You can catch him on the street. You don't have, you don't have to have much with you besides your tefillin. There's no real planning necessary. So the Rebbe says-- the Rebbe's giving reasons why it might not work. He says, we ran into a lot of issues with mitzvah mezuzah. The Rebbe says up until now, only in unique situations did we make an attempt to put a mezuzah up in addition to our other mitzvot. Nonetheless, the Rebbe says, specifically according to that everything is

09:04 divinely ordained. And I've now received a letter from you which raises this-- which raises, which raises this issue. I see this as a . I see this as me being instructed, says the Rebbe, that I should be looking into this another time. Now, thinking back to our where the Rebbe says multiple factors were pushing him, and he wasn't sure exactly why they were all pushing him in this direction, I think we can very safely say this was at least one of the factors 'cause the Rebbe's saying right here that because of your letter, I'm going to look into this another time, and it's I wouldn't have done it otherwise. He says, this is just him finishing up. He goes, I don't know if you're still involved in the same task in that you were involved in when you were in New York. That is the, uh, the ambassador job. So the Rebbe goes, I don't know what you're doing as far as ambassadorship goes. The answer is that he was now doing the same thing in Geneva. There's certainly many-- There, there's certainly much interest in what you're able to tell me. If you are able to reveal the as much as you can specify, that would be great. I'm giving you my thanks in advance. So what I believe we have from this letter is one of the many factors, maybe even one of the main factors, that pushed the Rebbe to look at mitzvah mezuzah again and decide whether he was going to

10:15 become involved in it. Just as a sort of a end note to our story, the Rebbe did eventually explain why he chose mitzvah mezuzah, or at least the reasons why mitzvah mezuzah is so compelling as a mitzvah. In a sicha that same in Parashat Korach, he gave two reasons. One reason he gave was it says in the Midla Rebbe's siddur that, uh-- It says in the siddur, but it's a maimar from the Midla Rebbe. So it says in the siddur Im Dach from the Midla Rebbe that the mitzvah of mezuzah includes all other mitzvahs. It's all other mitzvahs, and the Rebbe says what this means to him is that it's a segula for keeping all other mitzvahs, that putting a mezuzah on someone's door in addition for being a segula for protecting them is also segula for them keeping more mitzvahs. So it's kind of the gateway mitzvah. That's not the-- Heh. Wait a second. That's very funny. The gateway mitzvah 'cause it goes on your gates. It's-- That's, that's brilliant. I didn't even write that down. I should write it down. Okay. And we see-- The Rebbe also says in that same sicha that we see from the story of Onkelos that the mezuzah works on your surroundings, outside you and your family, and it works immediately. Uh, I don't have time to do the story of Onkelos in all of its glory, but to tell you the short version of it, the story with Onkelos and the mezuzah is that Hadrian, his uncle,

11:16 discovered that he'd converted to Judaism. Um, Hadrian was very upset about this and sent an army to arrest him. Onkelos sat down and chatted with them. I don't know, he gave them challah or something, and over a discussion, they all became Jewish. So Hadrian didn't have his army anymore that he sent to arrest him, so he sends a second army, and the second army gets there, and he tells this army, "Don't talk to him 'cause if he talks to you, he's very convincing, this, this Onkelos. He can convince you to become Jewish." So the second army, the second legion shows up and, uh, they don't talk to him, but he talks to them. He says to them, "I have a question for you. Who carries torches for whom?" And he goes through a series and says, uh, the, the senior officer carries torches for-- I'm sorry, the younger officer is in front of the senior officers and the-- Basically, everybody below carry-- The, the, the, the, the governor carries for the king. Everybody below you ca-- You always carry a torch to light up the way for somebody who's senior to you. He said, "Don't you think it's kinda cool that in the Midbar, Hashem carried a torch in front of the Yidden? He's a king who chose to carry a torch in front of all of us." That's sort of subversive to the expectations of royalty, and they were so impressed that they converted also. So now Hadrian's out two legions. He sends a

12:11 third legion. The third one comes, and he tells them new rules. You can't talk to him, and he can't talk to you. Don't let him say anything. Just, you know No conversation. Arrest him and get out of there. So, uh, Onkelos perceives this when they arrive, and he says, "I don't want you to go against the command of the king. Certainly, don't talk to me, uh, and I won't talk to you." He puts himself in chains, and on the way out, he kisses his mezuzah on the way out his door. Kisses it. And they turn to him, and they go, "What-- why are you kissing that thing on the door?" And he said, "Don't you think it's kind of interesting the kings need to hide themselves in castles surrounded by armed guards, but God puts himself on the doorway outside 'cause he's not afraid of anything?" And they all converted. So this final message that it seems that through mezuzah, you can affect other people in a very serious way, and that this effect works immediately. These people converted on the spot. The Rebbe thought that that was a worthwhile mitzvah for that reason, too. Later, in Beha'ag Bechukosai, the Rebbe adds one more reason and that we should be doing mitzvah mezuzah, and that is that he says that when you-- when Yidden in America put mezuzahs on their doors, it protects the mi- the Yidden in Eretz Yisrael. Just to finish off with something that I don't believe the Rebbe said, but while

13:07 I was doing my research, I came across it, uh, and I thought that it was just cool. You should always end on an inyan of Mashiach when possible. It says in the Gemara, Mesacht Megillah, chaf tes amud alef, that all shuls will eventually travel to Eretz Yisrael, even when-- o-once Mashiach comes. In, uh, in Kedushat Levi, Yit-- Kedushat-- Yit-- in Kedushat Levi, which is Rebbe Levi Yitzchak of Berdichev. It's in Piskam Kedoshim, uh, twenty-one. He says there that this also includes any home that has a mezuzah on it. So one of the ways that we encourage all of our fellow Yidden to be part of the process that brings Mashiach and to make sure their houses come to Mashiach too, is by being involved in mitzvah mezuzah. Okay, that's everything I've got. I just find this letter fascinating, I think. First of all, Mendy, your background is, uh, you know, shtei zoltes fabrengen behind you. It's very nice to see. There's Coca-Cola on the table, so interesting background. Just wanted to comment on that. Uh, but the other is-- what I really find so interesting in this concept is to maybe look-- think of, think about the other mitzva'yim. Like, we always look at the mitzva'yim as the Rebbe's ideas that the Rebbe came up with that had these, like, very, very incredibly lofty spiritual things similar to mitzvah tefillin, and the Rebbe actually com-can compares it to mitzvah tefillin here, which was something that the Rebbe came up with, the Six-Day War, you know,

14:21 all this kind of thing. Obviously, very, very divinely inspired and changed the Jewish nation in an incredible way, I mean, across the board. Today, you have, you have kids from modern Orthodox high schools going to play basketballs and games in other, uh, non-religious high schools and putting on tefillin on, on, on the kids there. And they're not, you know, officially card-carrying Chabad members. So mitzvah tefillin has changed the world. So to think that even something like mitzvah mezuzah, where hundreds of thousands of mezuzahs have been placed on, on, on Jewish doorposts across the world, and yet it seems like it's an idea that came from outside. You know, are there other mitzva'yim that were inspired by, by, by others making a request to the Rebbe, whether it's Rambam or whatever it is? Yeah. G'zeirah. Huh? The g'zeirah on four. That's not a mitzvah. That's a g'zeirah. It was also inspired from the outside. And there's a reason why it's called-- there's a reason why it's called a g'zeirah and not a harah.