ב״ה או בס״ד בראש הדף

00:00 Speaker 1 We are in Igress from exactly fifty years ago, and today we are looking at a letter that we don't know when exactly it was. It's one of those ones at the end. At the end of every volume of Igress, there's a bunch of undated letters from that year. So we have here an undated letter from Tuv Shin Lamen Gimel. It could have been from exactly fifty years ago. Who knows, right? Here, the Rebbe responds to somebody who was announcing, I forget, let me take a look at the bottom again. He's announcing that they just had, I think, a successful annual dinner. Yeah. They just had a successful annual dinner, so the Rebbe writes back to this person a few points. He first of all says, "Thank you." We're looking at this letter, Yud Tav Tav Kuf Samech Vav. It's on page Shin Nun Gimel. I have it on your screen. The Rebbe says, "First of all, thank you very much for the Besuras Tovos, for the send- for sending me good news that you had a successful annual dinner, ." So he says, "I hope that it should be God's will, that you will have-- that it will continue to be good, and it should become even better." Second point, . The second point that says below the line, he'd asked about building a new building for some yeshiva that was over there, and the Rebbe said, "Leave that up to the Anhalo entirely. That's, uh, that's their job to decide how expansion should go

00:59 Speaker 1 and what expansions should happen." The part we're focusing on is point three, so let's jump to four then. We jump to four, , and three is of course what we're talking about. We're talking about , the Rebbe writes . The Rebbe, the Rebbe writes . It is shocking, et cetera, . They'd sent the Rebbe some sort of an album, and they-- and the Rebbe says that he's shocked that they didn't put a Beis Hey or a Beis Samech Daled or something. That's the . The fact that they didn't write Beis Hey or something like it on the top of the page of this album. The Rebbe's surprised . So based on this letter that we have here, I wanted to look into the practice of writing Beis Hey or Beis Samech Daled at the top of a page. Pretty conventional in Chabad circles to write a Beis Hey. Um, that's not necessarily the case everywhere. If you go outside of Chabad, you'll see I think the majority probably do a Beis Samech Daled. In Chabad itself, we don't exclusively write Beis Hey. Can anybody think of off the top of their head where they always see in Chabad writings a Beis Samech Daled? There's one consistent place it always shows up. I see Mendel, like, turning off his mute maybe .

02:05 Speaker 2 Igress Kadesh.

02:07 Speaker 1 Igress Kadesh you see a lot of Beis Heys, but in a-- in Maimon you see a lot of Beis Samech Daled. Every Maimon I think starts with Beis Samech Daled, right? I think every Maimon is Beis Samech Daled, then the Dear Master, right? So we, we have a-

02:18 Speaker 2 Maybe-

02:18 Speaker 1 Huh?

02:20 Speaker 2 Uh, I don't remember. Yeah. Could be.

02:23 Speaker 1 It's not the kind of thing you notice. If you-- N-now you won't be able to unsee it. Maimon say Beis Samech Daled and letters say Beis Hey, and, and I, I don't know if there's a rhyme or reason to it. Uh, spoiler at the beginning, um, I, uh, I did not find an answer to this question about what the preference is for Beis Hey versus Beis Samech Daled. I'll make a couple claims, but I didn't find a clear answer. What I did find is, uh, we're gonna do a bit interested the Rebbe is in us-

02:45 Speaker 2 I think Beis Hey is famous and Beis Samech Daled you kind of-

02:49 Speaker 1 We're gonna talk about that.

02:50 Speaker 2 anyway.

02:51 Speaker 1 We're gonna talk about that. That doesn't seem to be the Rebbe's shita, but it's, uh, it's definitely the shita of a lot of other puskim. So, uh, that, that is exactly what we're gonna talk about today. So let's, let's look into it. On, on one hand, before we get into any of the, any of the inyanim about the downsides, let's talk about some of the upsides. There is a beautiful shlah that says that, uh, writing a Beis Sa-- the writing Beis Hey or something like it at the top of a page shows that you believe in Hashem. I wrote it down in my notes, but I didn't give it to you. I'll just read you a little bit. Says on the pasuk on the pasuk that you should, based on the word of God, travel, and on base-- based on the word of God, rest. That's when we're in the Midbar. every single action or movement that a person does, they should always say or with the help of Hashem. He says, "This way a person shows in everything that they're doing, that they're thinking of Hashem in all of their thoughts and in all of their actions." The Ishlah wants us to say or, uh, or what was the other one? to show that we're traveling with God. excuse me, the shlah says you fulfill the mitzvah believing in Hashem by doing this, by constantly saying . This fulfills the mitzvah . This is one of the perpetual mitzvahs that every single Jew has

04:06 Speaker 1 to do all the time. That's a shlah. The Rebbe has a letter that I also didn't put on your screen. I put all the other ones up there. This is just our intro. The Rebbe also has a letter. Uh, this letter, as far as I know, is not printed in Igress anywhere. Hiskashrus has it and says that they have it as a michtav, and in other books, I found them quoting the Hiskashrus that printed it. So I don't know where this letter is. I did a search and couldn't find it, but here's the lashon of the letter. Lashon of the letter is the Rebbe learns from Reb Yehuda HaChasid that-- who learned from the Zohar, that we need to mention Hashem whenever we're writing a letter or a Maimon, whenever we're building anything, when we're building something, we should link this, this to Shem Shamayim, Shema Kadisha. And they learned this from the Zohar which says, that you're supposed to whenever you do anything, mention Shema D'Kadisha. He says that means in letter writing and in Maimon writing. So we have an idea that this is probably a pretty good thing. What could possibly be wrong with putting a Beis Hey or Beis Samech Daled at the top of the page? Mendel Sandhaus, uh, hit the nail exactly on the head. There is a potential problem with putting a Beis Hey on the top of a page. The Rogatchover is probably the champion of this position. The Rogatchover was quite against it. He has a

05:04 Speaker 1 tshuva. Uh, I wrote down where it is. It's in Tzanfas Paneach, Warsaw, Warsaw, page Kuf Tsadik Vav. I, uh, I'm gonna give you part of this, but not all of it. So the Ro-- um, you obviously, you have a new screen up now with more Mekaretes. This is also the one that I sent you guys privately. The Rogatchover in his tshuva, he's against writing a Beis Hey. He says that the Hey is Hashem's name. It's one letter from Hashem's name, so that's Baruch Hashem. That's not Baruch Hashem, it's Baruch Havayah, and he's very upset with the idea of this being on a page 'cause it could easily be erased. So you'll find that in Shiltei Tzanfas Paneach. The Rogatchover is not, uh, is not pulling this out of thin air. If you look down here at the makar I gave you in the Rama, in Yoreh Deah, the Rama says, it's also to write God's name unless you're writing it in a Sefer Latkila because it could get destroyed. So you put it on a letter, someone might destroy that letter, so we're very careful. we're very careful not to write Hashem's name in letters. some people are careful not even to write the word Shalom in a letter because that is one of God's names. they'll write Shin Lamed Vav and then a, and then a line or something, or Shin Lamed and then a line. they say that we're not careful about that nowadays, but it is a possible concern. Uh, in Piscat--

06:13 Speaker 1 In the, uh, in the-- I don't remember where this is But nonetheless, it's brought in a bunch of places that the Sfas Emes argued on this. The Sfas Emes wrote a letter arguing with the Rogatchover. I had to double-check. I didn't think they lived in the same generation. They did. They overlapped by like fifty years. The, uh, the dynasties are hard to keep track of. But the Sfas Emes wrote about the Rogatchover's Tshuva and did not agree with it at all because he said that the "hei" in Beis Hei does not stand for Havayah, it stands for Hashem, hei-shin-mem, which is not one of God's names. It's Baruch Hashem. You can write that on anything, and you can erase it all you want. I- is he right? He's sort of right. There's an Aruch HaShulchan that kind of says that. The Aruch HaShulchan says, that's also up here, "V'dash mashkesem mechtav makam Hashem hei." We write a "hei" sometimes instead of God's name, oiv ezras hei or im yirtzeh hei. The, the, uh, Aruch HaShulchan says, "Ein bazeh kedusha klal." So that sounds pretty good. "Miyu," however, he writes, "Lehishtamesh, lehishtamesh bizayon vadeh asur." To use it for a form of bizayon, that's certainly asur. So it would seem that you're still not allowed to throw away such a letter. "Keven sheyesh b'kavanah l'shamaim" because the intent is for Shamaim. "L'chen yitad l'sreif mechtavim keilu," so you shouldn't burn such letters. So I'm not sure, I'm not sure that the Aruch HaShulchan totally agrees with

07:16 Speaker 1 the Sfas Emes, and this is perhaps a pretty good reason to use a Beis Samech Daled when we're writing. And indeed, outside of Chabad circles, Beis Samech Daled is a lot more popular than Beis Hei for this very reason. Something I wanna show you up here that is so cool is that in nineteen twenty-five, the Rebbe wrote a long letter to the Rogatchover where he disagreed with a bunch of things the Rogatchover had published in this Tshuva. The m-majority of the letter is the Rebbe disagreeing on an Indian in Treifas where he apologizes profusely for disagreeing with the Rogatchover. He's v-he's very, very polite in the letter. But he says, "Despite the fact that I'm being very polite, uh, it's Torah, and I need to learn it, and I need to explain to you what I think." And the Rebbe is not happy with one of his Tshuva in Treifas. Near the bottom of the letter, though, the Rebbe mentions that he's not necessarily happy with this Tshuva either but for a different reason. The Rebbe agrees with the Rogatchover and wants to know how it came-- how it became a thing that the Minchag everywhere is to write Beis Hei because the Rogatchover makes a very cogent argument. Here's the Rebbe's logic. He says, "B'mechtav yaked," the Rebbe says, "In my previous letter. She'alti lefaneav, I asked the Rogatchover. I asked you, 'Im yesh limtzei makkar l'mashkesem mechtav Beis Hei o'Beis Hashem?' Can anybody find a makkar for the idea that we do write

08:18 Speaker 1 a Beis Hei or Beis Hashem at the top of a b- at, at, at the tops of letters?" The Rebbe says, "K'tasredai l'hefech." I can bring support like you to the opposite of this, that we shouldn't write it from Rosh Hashanah Daf Yud Ches Amei Beis and Rashi there. Uv'Kushi achi labat levichol and also in Sanhedrin Yud Alef ma sh'met kein. Just to fill in those Gemaras for you, in Rosh Hashanah eighteen B, the Yevanim forbade m- forbade mentioning God's name at all. They, they outlawed it completely. When the Chashmonaim finally won, in order to push back against this custom, they made a new rule that you would have to write God's name on everything you wrote, including shataris. So you had to write at every shatar. It would say, "Beshnas kaj v'kaj liyechinan kein gadol l'kel elyon." You had to write God's name on a shatar. The Hakhamim were very unhappy. They said, "L'mach zeh peidei escheiv," tomorrow this guy's gonna pay off his debt, "venimtza shatar mutav bashpar," and they're gonna find this, this, uh, this shatar, excuse me, "mutav bashpar." They're gonna find this shatar lying in the garbage. That's not gonna be good. So the Hakham nullified this decree, and that day was celebrated as a Yom Tov. No one's allowed to fast on the day that the Hakham decided we don't put God's name on shataris. So the Rebbe goes, "That seems to be a pretty good raya in your direction we shouldn't be doing it." The Gemara in Sanhedrin

09:17 Speaker 1 eleven B presents three letters from Ben-Gamlael in their entirety, and nowhere is God's name mentioned in any of these three letters, proving that Ben-Gamlael didn't seem to think this was a thing. So the Rebbe writes a letter basically supporting the Rogatchover but saying, "This is clearly the custom. Can you justify the custom given that I think you're right, we probably shouldn't be doing it. Can you justify the Minchag?" Uh, so the Rebbe then says, "Yes-

09:37 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

09:37 Speaker 1 Huh?

09:37 Speaker 2 I'm still.

09:38 Speaker 1 Yeah.

09:38 Speaker 2 Still.

09:38 Speaker 1 Yeah.

09:39 Speaker 2 Maybe what we're saying is either you cannot write anything or you could write and doesn't make matter really-

09:45 Speaker 1 You mean-

09:45 Speaker 2 Either way

09:46 Speaker 1 ...because-

09:48 Speaker 2 From the-- then what's the mashal from the Gemara, yeah.

09:50 Speaker 1 Yeah. The Re-- the Rebbe says, "K'tasredai l'hefech." Maybe that's why he only says it's a k'tasredai l'hefech. But the Rai-- the Rebbe says, "I can bring Rayas that you're right, the Rogatchover. We shouldn't be doing this." So, uh, the Rebbe writes at the end of this letter, "V'lepelish le-anali," uh, kavod ha- kavod harav Again, I believe, "me'uma azzer." That's appellate, you haven't responded to me anything about this because the Rebbe says, "I wrote to you about this previously, and I still haven't gotten a response." As far as we know, the Rebbe never got a response. So it looks like, uh, from-- at this point in the Rebbe's, at this point in the Rebbe's life, in nineteen twenty-five, it looks like he hears the Rogatchover's argument, we probably shouldn't have a, uh, a Beis Hei at the top of our page, and he's willing to even support that argument, but he wants to know how that matches the common custom to do so. So what did the Rebbe's position end up being? I think it's very clear from our letter what the Rebbe's position ended up being. The Rebbe says that it's appella that somebody sent him an album and didn't include a Beis Hei at the top. So clearly, this is where the Rebbe landed on the topic. I have a couple other examples here that I brought for you that we can look at. We have a letter that's printed, Likkutei Sichos volume twenty-four, page five ninety-nine. The Rebbe writes in this letter, "Gam

10:46 Speaker 1 l'haba yishlach lakan m'parsumav." M'parsumav I think is like your, um, your publications. "So in the future, please send me all of your publications. V'teiruf Beis Hei, please don't forget to include a Beis Hei on these things, v'kiytzeh bezeh or something like it bas hachalasah at the beginning." The Rebbe almost always says Beis Hei v'kiytzeh bezeh, which I think is his way of saying it could be Beis Hei or Beis Samech Daled or Beis Hashem or something that ig- that signifies that it's for Hashem. There's a Reshima that was recorded by a tamim on Adar Rishon in Mem Vav. Uh, he says, "Hayem havaye kavod haRebbe Shlita eis viyasru tseiner," that the Rebbe expressed how dissatisfied he was. "Vishal," and he asked, "Menayin have'ah minhag?" Where did this minhag come from? Oops, I just erased a word. "Me'amishuna?" Where did this mishuna minhag come from? This strange alien custom come from? "Sheim itzayin ba baruch Hashem am echtavim pesakim." Where did this alien custom come from that some people don't mention God's name at the tops of their letters? So the Rebbe at this point, it by, by, by Mem Vav was asking where the strange custom came from, like the Rogatchover, right? I mean, not literally like the Rogatchover. But he's so-- it's so firmly entrenched in the Rebbe Shlita that he wants to know where the strange minhag came from that some people don't do it. There was a Shliach who passed a letter from somebody in Panama along to the Rebbe. This is

11:54 Speaker 1 published in Heichal Menachem, that the Rebbe said back to him, "K'dai le'ilm lichtev v'reish mechtav sh'lechem baruch Hashem." He said to the Shliach, "Tell them that the next time they send me a letter, I wanna see Baruch Hashem at the top of the page." And then the Rebbe adds, "V'kama kama t'eliyos bezeh." There's a lot of good things that can come out of this. There's a lot of worth for this. There's one Sicha where the Rebbe talks about the importance of it somewhat significantly. I mean, at length, not significantly, somewhat v'arichas. In Likkutei Sichos volume six, page one ninety, the Rebbe has this Sicha We'll read it together. says every single Jew. Even when we're talking about optional things, you'll always find the on his lips. And it's certainly the case. When we're talking about writing, which is called the great action. It is the custom among all Jewish people, and it is so it is it's binding. That even when we write secular letters, we open with or some other thing at the top of the letter. Because the entire world is full of God's glory. And there's noth-- there's no area that's empty of him. so it is already firm by every single Jew, in a simple way. in a fundamental way. that everything that we're involved in will always be tied to Hashem. So I think this might be an answer to the Rebbe's struggle that he had with the, uh, with the Ragged Chavashit at the beginning here. Where, where did

13:19 Speaker 1 the Rebbe land on this? It looks like where the Rebbe landed was That if we were looking in the Nigla, we can make a strong case for not having at the top of the page. And at the end of the day, the Rebbe doesn't give a lot of reasons in Nigla how we get around it. Um, so as, as a matter of review, um, before we open the floor, the, uh, Ragged Chavashit was opposed to this because he is a letter of Hashem's name. We have a couple of ways around this. We have this who says it's not Hashem's name, it's Hashem. We have the that says that that's not a big deal writing the word Hashem, but nonetheless, the says you can't destroy such things, so that really would still kind of be a problem. You wouldn't be able to throw away these letters. Uh, so based on all this, there i-- there are grounds for saying maybe we should stick with something like . Uh, and we did find a letter from the Rebbe from the twenties that seems to defend the Ragged Chavashit's at least with many . On the other hand, we have a that tells us the importance of mentioning God's name on letters. We have the Rebbe thinking that was telling us to do it 'cause it fulfills something from the Zohar. And then we have the Rebbe's clear, uh, clear, uh, clear commands throughout the Nesius, which was to write . He always says very clearly demonstrating that

14:19 Speaker 1 he doesn't have a problem with it and wants to see it even on secular letters, as we saw in this final . Uh, that even there should be a . So that makes it abundantly clear he wants it on the page. He calls it when it doesn't show up on the page, as we had in our letter from, uh, from and also as we had from, uh, from this Reshimo, where the Rebbe says that he wants to know where this came from that people don't write this. So, uh, the reason , as far as I can tell, as far as the reason and as far as the reason, because we need to constantly be thinking about Hashem, not unlike the who says it's an of Emunah. Big takeaway, we do need to on the top of all of our pages, everything we write, secular or religious, needs to have something on the top of the page, a and, uh, that's how we're supposed to act. Why exactly we act that way and whether there are, uh, whether there are lingering problems remains, I guess, to be seen. So Rebbe told-

15:10 Speaker 3 What do we do about WhatsApp?

15:12 Speaker 1 What do we do about WhatsApp is a great question. I have no idea. I haven't thought about it. Has anybody heard anything specific about... We, we see people do it. I know people in their texts, in their WhatsApps, in their emails, um, the, the Rebbe's here in in volume six, the last one on the page, would suggest that anything I write, 'cause writing is called . So it seems like anything I write should have God in it at the top, right? Um, and if anything, that would make it a little bit safer because there's a-- there, there's definitely less of a, less of a problem with erasing emails than there is with, uh, with destroying physical letters that have God's name in it. I would think maybe you should. I would think you probably should. Has anybody heard anything?

15:47 Speaker 3 No, the art- the art- the art is that, that, that texting, that texting is even on Shabbos, that it's not a s-- a form of, of permanent . So it really depends on what it is. I don't think it's as much about the as it is about the recognition. It's about the recognition that what I'm doing is, is . So the same thing would be with your-- when you're writing-- when you're taking a Sefer and you're writing before, at the beginning of it, before you're writing your name on it. Uh, well, why is it necessary? Write your name. The minute you write because by writing you're again, you're indicating that everything that I do and everything that's happening is because . And I'll show it to you, I'll prove it to you. Here's a post-it from my desk in the corner, top right, . Here's my notes on a pre- presentation, corner right-hand side, the . My notebook-

16:32 Speaker 2 Yeah.

16:34 Speaker 3 every page. .

16:38 Speaker 2 So you're the everything?

16:40 Speaker 3 Uh, no, I'm just showing you that I do it. That's-- I'm proud of myself, and I always do it. I even write checks-

16:45 Speaker 2 Someone sent-

16:45 Speaker 3 When I write a check.

16:47 Speaker 2 Yitchel.

16:48 Speaker 3 Yeah.

16:49 Speaker 2 Someone sent a, a picture of . It's in the library, the Rebbe's library, and the Rebbe writes on top or I don't remember. It's been a long, long time ago. It's very interesting. I've seen it many times when-

17:06 Speaker 3 When I was studying in Yeshiva, in Yeshiva they taught us to write not but the Rebbe was to write seemingly on all the letters they started and then a lot of them on the first line says I received your letter.

17:20 Speaker 2 Right.

17:21 Speaker 3 but the before .

17:24 Speaker 2 Yeah. And if it was something that was able to be thrown out, he would just tear off the, the top part. You know, you-- the Rebbe would, uh, always use even excess paper that was empty, the Rebbe would tear it off and use it for .

17:38 Speaker 1 It's also by the way. It says if you're gonna throw away something with Hashem's name on it, you tear off the Hashem's name part and then throw it away. Yeah.

17:46 Speaker 3 That was until later-

17:47 Speaker 1 I-

17:47 Speaker 3 Until later when your grandfather and the rest of the would tear the paper prior to giving it to the Rebbe because they don't want the Rebbe to take his time to rip up the paper.

17:54 Speaker 2 yeah, yeah, yeah.

17:56 Speaker 3 I used to watch him do it. I used to see him take the letters and tear off the edges so that he can give it to the-

18:00 Speaker 2 Yeah.

18:00 Speaker 3 Give it to the Rebbe without the edges on it.

18:02 Speaker 2 He has like shoe boxes of little minus. And one, uh, one of the things in his Sefer he wrote that all his, uh, should get some .

18:16 Speaker 3 Yeah.

18:17 Speaker 2 Interesting. Yeah.

18:20 Speaker 3 Great topic. Great topic.

18:21 Speaker 2 Yeah.

18:22 Speaker 1 I wanna, I wanna say that I remember that when the whole, you know, phone thing came out with texting and pictures, I don't know, uh, what the source is, but I remember hearing since it's temporary, temporary, you could delete it. Meaning you have a Siddur on your phone. Are you allowed to delete it or not?

18:38 Speaker 3 Can you go to the bathroom with it?

18:40 Speaker 1 All right.

18:41 Speaker 3 Put a double covering.

18:42 Speaker 1 And another point-

18:43 Speaker 3 Put the app into another folder.

18:46 Speaker 1 That nobody mentioned, I think it became a very popular in thing to say thank you, Hashem. And maybe where, where does that come from? If that has anything to do with anything. It would seem to be in line with the . So the Rebbe doesn't say very much. I've seen him saying a lot talks about thank you, Hashem is, is not dissimilar. So I think it's included in the family.

19:12 Speaker 2 Is that considered ?

19:14 Speaker 1 I think it's at least included in the family. There's obviously different all kind of imply what I'm doing is with God's help, that I'm sort of attributing what I'm doing to Hashem. Thank you, Hashem. I guess is attribution also, right? in, in Siddurs is described as I'm attributing to you. So yeah, I, I, I think-

19:32 Speaker 3 Again, it's, it's, it fits into the that's for sure.

19:36 Speaker 1 Yeah. I think it's not materially different. No. Probably it's part of the .

19:42 Speaker 2 We have your stamp of approval, Yitchel.

19:44 Speaker 1 That's right. That's right. You have my bumper sticker of approval.