המזל שבמעבר דירה

00:02 Speaker 1 Okay, this is Igress. We have a really fun one today. We are-- Actually, I don't have the page in front of me 'cause I'm pulling up this one from chabadlibrary.org. Whatever it is, it's letter number Yud Tav Tav Kuf Gimel. It's from our year, so it's fifty years ago. And the Rebbe writes something that he writes all over the place, but I wanted to dive into it a little bit today. Somebody moves, and the Rebbe wishes them a Mishanah Makim, Mishanah Mak-Mish-Mishanah Mazal L'Toiva. And as is my luck, it's a letter in Yiddish. You know what my Yiddish pronunciation is like, but we'll, uh, we'll power through. He says, "Bracha v'Shalom," and indeed this is to a woman. Once again, following our rule that we introduced at the beginning of this year, that Bracha v'Shalom is how the Rebbe addresses wom-women. The Rebbe says, "Is zmir angekommen di yidiya," "I've, j-- I've, I've heard, uh, the yidiya has come to me." "Az ir hat zikh arangekleben a naye dyre," that you've now moved to a new apartment. So the Rebbe says, "I hear that you've moved to a new place." "Ze der Rebbe shtu gebn az iz zal zayn Mishanah Makim, Mishanah Mazal." So he says that, "Hashem should give you the gift," that Hashem should give you the bracha, that you should have Mishanah Makim, Mishanah Mazal. That you should-- a change in makim, change in your location should result in a change in your luck, that things should be better for you now

01:08 Speaker 1 that you've moved. And then he translates it in Yiddish in the parentheses. "Tsu gott un tsum bracha," that there should be in a way that's good, in a way that's a blessing. So it's a Mishanah Makim, Mishanah Mazal, uh, for good and for blessing. "L'tov u'livracha," as the Rebbe says in other letters. "Tsay v'gashmiy, tsay v'ruchniyas," both in physical matters and in spiritual matters. And then he says, "V'bracha l'chsimcha v'chsimcha l'tovah". And in this little section down here, he's just telling her-- I think he's attaching money for her. I think he's giving her some money. He says that what I'm attaching here is, uh, the same thing-- is for the same purpose as I attached previously. It's from the Philanthropist fund, um, and, uh, and you should use it in good health or for all good things. "In gezunterheit un gute zakhn." You should use it in good health and with all good things. So the Rebbe writes to somebody who's changing their apartment that Mishanah Makim, Mishanah Mazal, uh, for good and for bracha. This is a phrase that we're very familiar with. I think every time somebody new moves to Pomona, uh, Surly makes the announcement that, uh, Mishanah Makim, Mishanah L'Toiva, um, Mishanah Makim, Mishanah Mazal, L'Toiv U'Livracha. You hear it a lot, right? People move in. People say it all the time. When I moved, I got this all over the place. Um, I wanna look at a couple other letters that make this a little more mysterious. It sounds like

02:09 Speaker 1 it's pretty straightforward, right? It's a bracha that the Rebbe gives. Here, take a look. I have in, I have in your supplement. You can open it on your own screen, you can look at it on mine. Igress volume eight, page three OH seven. The Rebbe writes this. This is just cool. I hadn't seen this anywhere. The Rebbe says-- So obviously, this is in like a hundred letters. I'm pulling out a couple that are exceptional. The Rebbe writes, "Ana mechtaveh bemediya sh'hatikl ha'dyre hasem chadashah." You wrote to me that you've moved into a new apartment, a new house. "Heni hi rotzin, may Hashem yisbarach, v'sh'ivyi God's will sheyeh Mishanah Makim, Mishanah Mazal, L'Toiv U'Livracha." That's the go-to phrase. You change your location, you change your luck for good and for blessing. "Afilu mazlum shel Yisroel nikra beshem Ayin." I just thought this letter was interesting 'cause the Rebbe does, uh, acknowledge in this letter that we don't have mazal. It's a well-known thing that, uh, it's a Gemara. It's well known that the Jewish people don't have a mazal. We don't have some constellation controlling us. We don't really have luck. What we have is we have Hashem. That's why it says, "Ein mazal l'Yisroel." In Chassidus, this is explained as meaning that Ayin himself, that Hashem, who is called Ayin, the Yesh MeAyin, the, the, the, the great nothing, of course, he's everything. But you know what I mean. That Ayin itself is our mazal. So even we, who are Ein mazal l'Yisroel, uh, nonetheless

03:11 Speaker 1 we have-- we can benefit from change to our luck. So we too apply to Mishanah Makim, Mishanah Mazal, L'Toiv, L'Toiv U'Livracha. Mishanah Makim, Mishanah Mazal, L'Toiv U'Livracha. Here in Igress volume twenty, though, is what I really wanna talk about today. The Rebbe writes this: "Lechtaveh--" "Lechasvei." "Lechtaveh." "Lechtaveh et hazdire chadashi." You wrote to me about your new apartment, your new house. "B'chlal muvan." It is generally understood, "Shematim ha'inyon min hachein," that it's proper and it's right, "Vehare minag upiskam Yisroel terihim," and the customs of the Jewish people and the expressions of the Jewish people, they count as Torah. Now, I haven't actually seen that before. Have you seen that before? We always hear, "Minig Yisroel terihim." The Rebbe here says, "Piskam Yisroel terihim." It's not just the Jewish customs that count as Torah. Jewish expressions count as Torah. And then he quotes, "Mishanah makim, mishanah mazal, l'toiv u'livracha. Yevurach miyusen mayimaru chazal, m'furash min yin ze-- mei yin ze." Excuse me. And the Rebbe says, "Mishanah toiva, mishanah makim, mishanah mazal, l'toiv u'livracha." And specifically, we should take this seriously because it's based on Mayimaru Chazal and things that are explicit on this inyan. The Rebbe here seems to be hedging. Uh, he's saying that this expression, "Mishanah makim, mishanah mazal, l'toiv u'livracha," is a piskam Yisroel, it's terihim. It's an expression that has come into Torah because Jews say it a lot. He says that it's based on Mayimaru Chazal, but, uh, I would have thought, and I always thought up until now, that

04:20 Speaker 1 this is somewhere in Shas. That somewhere in Shas it is written, "Mishanah makim, mishanah mazal, l'toiv u'livracha," or in a Midrash or in Kabbalah. The, uh, the fact is, is that it's nowhere. It's, uh, it's not a m-- it's not an expression that's found anywhere in Shas and Poskim. It's a relatively new expression, and the Rebbe in this letter is more or less justifying it, saying that it's a piskam Yisroel, and it's based on things Chazal say. I wanna look today into where exactly this expression comes from and how it became so popular and what the Rebbe might be referring to when he says that it's miyused on Mayimaru Chazal, because he doesn't say which Mayimaru Chazal it is miyused on, this well-known expression. Why'd I bring this one here? I don't remember. Oh, look, 'cause I-- 'cause of this line. Another letter, this is from Igress volume sixteen, says there that I'm gonna end off with a, with a bracha for your dyre, and he says, "Mishanah makim, mishanah mazal, l'toiv u'livracha." And then look at this last line, "Ki nusach, ki nusach hamisurati", as the traditional nusach goes. Once again, not be-- not, not giving us a makar. "B'tevel nirav ha'nigleg ad le'inan habasit." So we don't have here any makar for this. The closest makar it looks like... Oh, I'm cutting off the page. Let me move it over a little. It looks like the closest makar for this is probably Gemara Masaches Rosh Hashanah. You'll find this on sixteen B. I

05:23 Speaker 1 brought the whole thing for you in your supplemental, so you can read it. We're not gonna read the whole Gemara together, I don't think. Rabbi Yitzchak says, "Arba devarim makarin, m-m-makarin?" I would have read that in makar. Okay, whatever. There-- Sometimes the vowels in Safari, uh, just don't match what my brain wants to do. "Makarin gezarat din shel adam." There are four things that tear up a gezarat din of a person. So the Gemara said earlier that on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, God decides what's gonna happen to you. The Gemara then goes on to say there's a couple ways around that, couple ways to avoid things if you don't like your gezarat din. "Eleh heyn", here's a few things that can undo a bad din on Rosh Hashanah. Tzedakah, we know that. Ta'akah, crying out. השינו את השם, changing your name. V'shinei ma'aseh, changing your actions. Changing your actions means doing teshuva. This is something that we say in davening, teshuva, tefilah, and tzedakah, more or less, right? Plus shine shem. So it sounds like you can do teshuva, tefilah, tzedakah, or change your name, and this might change a negative decree. Look at down there, I, I made something bold for you near the bottom of this Gemara. "Ve'eshem nim", there is an opinion that says, "Af shineh makom", that also changing your location can tear up a gezarat din of a person. Now, this does not say that shineh makom, shineh mazal, l'toiv u'livracha, but it's close. It does say in the

06:20 Speaker 1 Gemara Masaches Rosh Hashanah that one of the things that can undo a negative judgment is changing where you're located. And the proof for this is "Dichsiv, viyomer Hashem el Avraham, lech lecha me'artzecha", and then he says, "Ve'etzcha legoy gadol". So it says in the that Hashem told Avraham to leave his land, , and then later on he'll be able to make him a , that he wouldn't be able to have success until he left. There's a Mashal in this Gemara that says that the Ran writes-- So I guess I could have just looked at the Ran, but I found it in the Mashal. The Ran adds the . He says the reason why is because it's a form of teshuva, that moving is a form of teshuva. When a person leaves their location, their heart is . Their heart is subdued a little bit. So-some-- I don't know how to... What ? Subdued. Whatever. You get down-- You're, you're downtrodden when you change locations. You have to go to a new place, make new friends. People don't know you anymore. It's a form of teshuva. So the Mashal seems to think, and this would match the Gemara 'cause that's what they're talking about in the Gemara anyway, that when we change our location, we effectively are doing teshuva because we're forcing ourselves to suffer a little bit. Our hearts get downtrodden a bit, and that helps us, uh... That, that teshuva changes our luck. There is a Gemara in Masechet Sanhedrin 37B that kind of

07:24 Speaker 1 speaks to this. The Smag brings us to it in Berachot fifty-six A. Rabbi Yechanan says, , that when we get exiled, this atones for everything, presumably because when you're forced to go from place to place, this forces a sort-- a certain level of teshuva, a certain level of yesurin maybe, that, uh, that helps make your heart a little more receptive to, uh, to the needs of teshuva. There is another approach, though, in another Gemara, and that's Bava Metzia seventy-five B, and this is just an awesome story. It doesn't... An entirely different line of attack. Story goes, . There are three who cry out, , and they are not answered. These are the three people who cry out, and God doesn't listen to them. Some people, uh, and the-- I believe Rashi here explains these are three people who haven't helped themselves, therefore God doesn't help them. They're people who cry out for help, but they didn't do the basics. So there's some people. These are, here's the people who don't get helped. This is somebody who has money and lends them out without witnesses. They can cry out to God from here until tomorrow. If you're that wasteful with your money, God doesn't help you. You made your own trouble. Somebody who, uh, uh, acquires a master for himself, somebody who enslaves themselves. God goes, "I'm not gonna help you. You did this to yourself." And finally, . I don't know. We're not gonna get into this Gemara today, but the last one is someone

08:31 Speaker 1 who lets his wife run the house. So, um, hang on to that. Maybe that's another shiur for another time. the Gemara goes on to say. What does it mean that someone acquired a master for himself? And the Gemara brings a couple possibilities. One of the possibilities is this one. that this is a person who has bad luck, has a bad experience. Things are going poorly for him in one place. He doesn't move. Person who has bad luck in one place should be moving to somewhere else. So the Gemara says in Bava Metzia that a person who is having bad luck in one place and doesn't move is so responsible for his own problems that he can cry out to God from here until tomorrow and God won't listen to him. This also might be a , that when somebody changes their location, they are, they are getting themselves out of a tight spot, and somebody who doesn't are kind of keeping themselves in a tight spot. There is this Yerushalmi in Shabbos which is another-- This one's a totally different approach, uh, and it has a story with it. Once upon a time, Rabbi Yechanan was walking through the market. Once again, if you don't recognize this Gemara, that's fine. It's a Yerushalmi. Not all of our Daf Yomi guys have learned Shabbos Yerushalmi. Maybe next cycle, right? He was walking through a market. That's usually an Arab. So an Arab was . He was, uh, selling food. He was selling mezenut. Arab selling sweets.

09:40 Speaker 1 I don't know. So he said to him, Rabbi Yechanan said to this Arab, , "You live off of this? You're able to make a living off of this? Doesn't look like a very good livelihood." And he goes, "Yeah. Actually, business is great. Business is booming. I have no problems." Rabbi Yechanan left. Then later on, an hour later, Rabbi Yechanan walked back past the same Arab. and he said, this Arab said to Rabbi Yechanan, "Rebbe, , please daven for me, Rebbe. From the time you walked by and said this, I haven't sold a single item. You cursed me. From you walked by and said, 'Can you really make a living off of this?' And now I haven't been making a living. Can you please daven for me to help me get my living back?" and Rabbi Yechanan said back to him, , "Change locations." Sometimes you can change your luck by changing your name. Sometimes you change your luck by changing your, your location. This also seems to possibly be a . The last that I found that might be a , although it does have a strange context to it, is a Zohar in Parshas Vayeshev. There's a Zohar in Parshas Vayeshev, uh, you'll find it on Daf sixteen there. It says, someone who's not having luck in one place, they should go to another place and they'll be successful there. That sounds pretty clear-cut. It actually is almost exactly . However, it goes on to say some pretty strange stuff. I'll read you the

10:53 Speaker 1 rest of it just 'cause it's so interesting. What is this like? This is like a log, a piece of wood that's burning, but the fire is not catching. So it's in the fire, but it's not catching fire. What do you do? You remember, you remember this line from Tanya, right? A log that doesn't burn, you're supposed to break it. You break it up, and then the fire will be able to spread around the log and start burning. It says, wood is a person because a person's compared to a tree. This means that when a person's in this world, a person is living in this world and they're desiring things, and they're eating, and they're drinking, and they're having relationships with their wives, sometimes they still don't have any children. This is an example of someone who is a piece of wood, who the fire isn't catching. This is someone who in this body is not going to merit to have the fire catch, and rather they're going to exist in darkness. How exactly the rest of that Zohar applies to the idea of changing your place, changing your luck, it sounds like it's supposed to be a sort of spiritual thing, that when my soul changes bodies, I might have better luck. But in any case, this is somewhat on the books. Okay, so we have several for this that might be referring to what the Rebbe is saying up here when he tells us that this is based on . Where's that letter? Over

12:07 Speaker 1 here. I'm scrolling. I'm trying to find it. The Rebbe says, The Rebbe's clearly referring to one of these, I think, uh, maybe all of them. I found, though, a interesting note in from Tov Shin Samech. There's a Rabbi Baruch Oberlander from-- He's a in Budapest. I don't know him, but he wrote a very interesting, uh, he wrote a very interesting essay on this topic, and he notes that the Rebbe-- First of all, he just said something cool I didn't know. He says when the Rebbe's handwriting this , he writes it in a shorthand of mem, mem, mem, mem. What? Four mems? and then a lamed vav. So it's just the Rebbe's abbreviation. It's his shorthand. And he says that the Rebbe does this even when people are moving from one house to another in the same city. I have this on your notes too, so you can look at what I'm talking about. Uh, that appears to be against our Mekirtas, he says. There's a Shut Betzel HaChachma which says this specifically, and we'll read it together. The Shut Betzel HaChachma says, "Ein hamazul mishtane bebayis lebayis." Your luck does not change when you move from one house to another. "Ve'ein mazal talui bebayis." As a matter of fact, your luck is not dependent on your house at all. "Rak be'ir." It's dependent on your location, your city. And if you look back at all these Gemaras, none of them said it's about changing what house you live in. It's about changing what location you

13:12 Speaker 1 live in. So, "Shuvi tali rak be'ir. Sha'arei debishlei behu masa," somebody who's having bad luck in one place, "hatzrichu lalech mas achrit," he has to go to a different city, a different place, not a different house. "V'lo yasag li lech libeys achrit." It wouldn't be enough to move to another house in the same he-- s-same city, "behu masa gufa," within that same city. It wouldn't be enough to move to a different house in the same city. "Mi'keiv shehamazul tali be'ir shu darbai." Because your mazal is dependent on your city. Based on this, he asked the question, it looks like in a lot of letters that the Rebbe does nonetheless say, "Mishana makom, mishana mazal, leteivel livracha," when people move within the same city from one house to another, and he leaves it betzarich iyun. Because I don't know why the Rebbe does that 'cause it sounds like the Gemara doesn't say we can. Uh, I don't know for sure. So first of all, I, I'm not even sure he's right. I'm not sure he's right that the Rebbe does that because in the letters he's tying to, where the Rebbe supposedly does that, it's not at all clear from these letters that they didn't change cities. The Rebbe sometimes says, "I'm wishing you a mazal of a new dira." It doesn't say a new dira within the same city anywhere that I found. So I'm not sure he's right. But even if he is right, I guess the Rebbe can first of all override the

14:08 Speaker 1 Shut Betzel HaChachma. This is not, uh, this is not Terumas Hadeshen. It could be that this does apply more universally, but it is an interesting question that maybe we can contemplate in the group chat or talk about afterwards, um, why it would be that it seems that from the Rebbe's letters, we're completely comfortable saying that a changing houses, even within the same city, should change your luck when it looks like from, uh, from the Pashtut reading of these Mekirtas in Chazal, and certainly from the shailas in Shu"t Betzel HaChachma, that it wouldn't necessarily apply all in the same city. So it's possible we shouldn't use it. Then I think, though, the conclusion is that since the Rebbe does, we can. Uh, it's an open question whether the Rebbe even does. I, I can't tell from the letters. That's the real, that's the real question mark on this whole shiur. But I like that this one leaves with a question 'cause it gives us all something to dig into together. Anyway, big summary of everything we just talked about. The Rebbe tells people all the time, whenever they move, he always says, "Mishana makom, mishana mazal, leteivel livracha." I used to think it was a maamar Chazal. It is most certainly not. But the Rebbe promises me I'll find it somewhere in the Gemara. We looked at a bunch of Gemaras, a Zohar, uh, we-- a Yerushalmi. We were all over the place with Mekirtas that more or less say that you can change your mazal

15:06 Speaker 1 if you change your location, one of which says that somebody who doesn't do this is so, is so much causing their own trouble that they deserve what they get. And that's probably what the Rebbe's referring to. As to what exactly to do with the fact that these all imply that you have to change a city, and the Rebbe seems to think you can do it even from dira to dira, uh, we don't know. We don't know the answer. Okay, that's it.

15:29 Speaker 2 Yeah, great stuff. I mean, again, I think you're, you're pointing out very clearly the, the dira part that the Rebbe seems to say. I mean, I don't know if that shailah that the dira's in another city, but it does say dira chadasha. It doesn't say ir chadash. It doesn't say you moved to a new city. It says you moved to a new apartment, to a new place. I, I don't know. It's interesting. It's unclear, I guess, but very nice. Very good. Interesting stuff. I always wondered where it came from, the "Mishana makom, mishana mazal, leteivel." Now we know it's, it is a Mesorti, uh, it is a traditional saying, as the Rebbe calls it