אינך מתנגד

00:00 Speaker 1 We have a really interesting and really long letter today. We're not gonna read the whole thing today. What we're gonna do is we're gonna split this letter over two sessions, so we'll talk about the next one on Monday. We're gonna read half the letter now and half the letter next time. The reason why we're doing this is because somebody, somebody dared to write to the Rebbe the wrong words. You say just the wrong thing to the Rebbe, and you can really get, you can get a very instructive letter. I'm gonna highlight it right here on the page because it's, uh... Actually, I can't highlight with what I have here 'cause it's a PDF. But if you look down there, someone wrote to the Rebbe that they are a Jew, a modern Jew, a Yehudi modernei im mesoras litai misnagdis. They wrote to the Rebbe that they are a modern Jew with a Lithuanian Misnagdic background. And if you know anything about the Rebbe, even the very basics about the Rebbe, if you write to the Rebbe saying that you are a Reformed Jew, a Conservative Jew, if you put anything in front of or behind the word Jew, you're gonna get a response, at least in a PS. But this person, they just did the trifecta. I mean, they, they declared themselves Modern, Lithuanian, and Misnagdic. And the Rebbe spends the entire letter addressing these points, addressing why he doesn't think that anybody should be calling themselves a Misnagdic, why he doesn't think anybody should

01:00 Speaker 1 be calling themselves Modern. He, uh, he, he knocks both phrases, and he knocks both phrases not as just a throwdown. He, over the course of, over the course of several pa-- over the course of, course of a page each, he gives a page each to the discussion. The first page is all about why he doesn't believe anybody is able to call themselves a Misnagdic nowadays, and the second page is a whole page on why he believes nobody is allow-- is able to call themselves Modern nowadays when it comes to Judaism. So he doesn't believe in the idea of a modern Jew and doesn't believe in the idea of a Misnagdic, and he breaks down both. These-- And this one letter is sort of a core letter that, uh, from which I see it as kind of a root letter for many branch letters where the Rebbe talks about similar things. So what we're going to do today is we're going to talk about the first half of the letter where he takes down the idea that anybody could be a Misnagdic, explains that Misnagdim cannot exist nowadays and explains why, and we're gonna look at that in depth today. And next time we're gonna look in depth at the idea that the Rebbe says nobody can call themselves a modern Jew nowadays, and how he takes down the idea of modernity. Uh, this is, of course, a letter from our year. This is, it is in volume twenty-eight. It is on page two hundred and

02:01 Speaker 1 twenty-five. That's where you'll find it. The letter is Yud Tav Shin Tzadi Vav. It was from, uh, right about fifty years ago, so And you will notice the letter that I have in, in front of you as a PDF is a translation of the letter. If you'd like the original Yiddish, I told you where to find it and can also send you a link. Fact is, the Rebbe is writing to a famous literary Y-Yiddish writer and, uh, and his Yiddish is, uh, is, is long and complicated and beyond what I think I'd be able to handle for this year. So I pulled the translation that they have here into Loshon HaKodesh, but, uh, please feel free to check out the Yiddish. But from what I was able to understand, it is, uh, the Rebbe's writing flowery. I mean, the Rebbe really pulls out all the stops for this particular Yiddish writer. Okay, so the Rebbe writes a letter to Mar Chaim Grade, and I'll tell you in a second who he is, but let's start with the introduction. Shalom u'bracha, the Rebbe says to Chaim Grade. That I haven't heard from you directly for a very long time. I received regards from our mutual friends. Who is, who are the mutual friends between the Rebbe and, and Chaim and, and... Excuse me, the Rebbe and Chaim Grade? Probably Shazar. You know, we've done a couple of shiurim on Shazar. Shazar, Zalman Shazar was quite close with Chaim Grade, and there's a good chance he's referring

03:08 Speaker 1 to Shazar here, although we don't have proof. Anyway, when it comes to receiving a, uh, a drisha shalom, when it comes to receiving regards from someone who is a talented writer, that one of the best things to do is to start off by checking out what he's written most recently. This is not, this does not rise to the level of a direct and personal, uh, personal form of regard. So I was looking forward to speaking to you personally. I was very happy then when your wife sent a letter to the maskiras. This gave me the opportunity to finally write to you. I was waiting for the opportunity, and your wife gave me the chance. She wrote to me, so now I can write to you. I want you to please, uh, send along my thanks to your wife. for giving me the opportunity to write to you. So please thank your wife for writing to me. I'm now using this as an opportunity to finally write to you. The Rebbe says, "I'd like to start off," and the Rebbe says he wants to start this way, but between me and you, this is the entire letter. "I'd like to start off by referencing, by, by, by, by noting the way that your wife, uh, an expression your wife used in her letter, and I wanna comment on it." I expect you will ex-- you will pass this along to your wife as well. And you'll explain it to her and add-additionally explain it to her

04:40 Speaker 1 if necessary. Even though, based on what I understand, she does not need further explanation. I would like to comment on the fact Your wife wrote to me that she is or that you are, excuse me, I think that you are, that you are a modern Jew with a mesorah that comes from Lithuania and from Misnagdim. So the Rebbe's writing very familiarly to this individual. He's called him a writer. He's referred to his wife. I wanna tell you who we're dealing with here. Uh, as you know from the top of the letter, we're dealing with Chaim Grade. Does anybody, without me telling you, without me throwing Wikipedia entries at you, does anybody, uh, offhand know Chaim Grade? Anybody familiar?

05:18 Speaker 2 Yes. Yes.

05:20 Speaker 1 Yeah, who's saying yes? I can't see everybody.

05:22 Speaker 2 It's Peretz.

05:23 Speaker 1 Peretz.

05:25 Speaker 2 When I was back in yeshiva in Vancouver, there was a JCC next door, and I borrowed a couple of his Yiddish books. Fascinating Yiddish.

05:32 Speaker 1 Me as well. I considered one of the greatest Yiddish writers of all time, and if you rece-- if you get Lubavitch International in the mail, they just did an article on him. So I... This is fresh in my mind because they just did an article on one of his works. It was translated into English, his, uh, his famous novel about, uh, two Holocaust survivors who meet each other on a subway train, one who's frum and one who isn't, and the argument they have. He, uh, he-

05:51 Speaker 2 Interesting, interesting that they don't, they don't know who the Michah Melio is, but they know this writer. Okay.

05:56 Speaker 1 Ah, somebody listens to, somebody listens to the Ayagush here. Now Chaim Grade was born in Vilna, so he is well justified and lived his, lived his entire childhood in Vilna. So he's well justified in claiming that he has a Lithuanian background at the very least. Uh, he died in nineteen eighty-two in the Bronx. He's widely considered one of the greatest Yiddish writers of the twentieth century. Elie Wiesel called him one of the great. This is a quote, "One of the great, if not the greatest living Yiddish novelists." Obviously, this is when he was living, but you know. Most of his poetry focuses on re- on rebuilding after the Holocaust. Uh, that's where he lost his first wife. It's where he lost most of his family. His novels focus heavily on life in pre-war Europe and on the Novardok School of Mussar. So he is, uh-- he was raised in the Novardok School of the-- of Mussar thought, very much a Misnaggid, Lithuanian background. So when his wife claims that he is, uh, from the Misnaggid Lithuanian school, she's not pulling this out of nowhere. Uh, he actually has a very unique background. His father was a maskil. So his father is a, is a member of the Haskalah, which we generally think of... I think, you know, uh, history is never as black and white as we tell it. Uh, we'd like to imagine they're in the maskilim and the frum, but they were people who were kind of both, and his father was kind

07:00 Speaker 1 of both. His father was a maskil, but his father also really wanted him to become a big Litvish rav. So he gave him a secular education and sent him to learn under the Chazon Ish. So go figure. You just don't hear a lot of stories like that, but that was who this guy was. So, uh, so Chaim Grade ended up learning under the Chazon Ish for many years. He married a daughter of a prominent Litvish rav and also became one of the founders of the art scene in Vilna, which was promoted by the maskilim. Like I said, sometimes history is a little grayer than you might accept-- than you might expect. Um, he escaped by way of Russia and a whole bunch of other countries. I don't remember them all. Uh, and, uh, his, his family did not. His wife died, his, his family died. I don't know if much of his family made it out of the Holocaust. He eventually marries his second wife, Inna Heck-Hecker was her name, but of course, she became Inna Grade, and she is the one who the Rebbe is addressing in this letter. She is, by the way, the translator of all of his works into English. So when the Rebbe says over here, "Uh, you can explain this to her, but I doubt she needs more explanation from you," this may be the Rebbe recognizing that this is not a woman who needs explanation from the guy. She's his translator. Uh, she certainly understands what, uh-- she

08:00 Speaker 1 certainly understands what people are saying very well, um, and doesn't need any help with the Yiddish either. Uh, Chaim Grade also has some stories with the Rebbe. He has several stories with the Rebbe. The most famous is that he's the reason-- I don't know if he's the reason. He was the one who pushed Sharon to meet the Rebbe. Remember our share from a couple times ago that, that, that Sharon was going back and forth whether he should go visit the Rebbe personally. The Israeli government really pressured him not to because they thought that it wasn't appropriate for a sitting prime minister to go visit a Rebbe, that the Rebbe should come to him, at least to his hotel room. Apparently, Chaim Grade said, "You must go to the Rebbe, uh, for if you go, there will be some turmoil on the outside, which will subside at some point, but if you don't go, you will have an inner tur-turmoil that will never subside." This is what Chaim Grade told him. That you might cause trouble on the outside by going, but you'll have an inner trouble that you'll never get rid of if you don't go. Uh, Chaim Grade wrote to the Rebbe in, uh, nineteen seventy-six. Uh, this is a couple years after our letter. He, uh, wanted to greet him on Erev Pesach. He wrote him a whole, a, a whole poem dedicated to how wonderful the Rebbe is. I don't know why they haven't turned it into a song yet. This feels

08:58 Speaker 1 like prime for Gan Yisrael. But Chaim Grade wrote a, an, a, uh, a Yiddish poem explaining how wonderful the Rebbe is. He says the Rebbe drew, drew him out of dark places, and that he wishes the Rebbe a long life as the leader of Chabad. Uh, and of course, of the entire world, although I'm not sure that's how the poem goes. Okay. So that's who we're dealing with here. We're dealing with Chaim Grade, and his wife dared to call him a Lithuanian Misnaggid modern guy. And honestly, if you were to ask me based on his Wikipedia page and what I know about him, the best explanation-- the best moniker for Chaim Grade probably would be a and that pretty much fits. We're talking Chazon Ish Novardok Mussar school with a modern twist, uh, son of a maskil who ran the literary scene in Vilna before he was kicked out and became a prominent Yiddish writer and secularist. So we, uh, we do have here a modern guy who's a Lithuanian Misnaggid. The Rebbe is not going to allow it. Let's see what he does with Misnaggid. So my approach to this is as follows. He goes, "What's a Misnaggid?" A Misnaggid is a negative term. Not a negative term, I don't mean that. What am I looking for? What's a better translation of ? Um, it, it, it negates. The term of negation is a better term than negative 'cause what the Rebbe means here is not that it's a bad word, it's that it's

10:09 Speaker 1 a term that means I oppose something else. I'm a term of negation. So the word Misnaggid can only exist-- You can't oppose nothing. You can only oppose something when there's something to oppose. So this is a, uh, approach of negation towards something. based on this it is understood. When you realize that the thing that you were opposing, you were wrong about, and in fact, it is obligatory when you realize that the thing you were opposing is something that is deeply necessary. This does not mean you should change the way that you oppose it. You go, "Oh, look, we're Misnaggid, we still oppose. We gotta oppose differently." When you realize you were opposing something good, you don't change how you oppose it. You stop opposing it. The opposition ceases. There's no such thing anymore. So Misnagdim who try to be different kinds of Misnagdim nowadays in a world where it's clear that a Hasidism isn't so bad, the Rebbe says that's not an option on the table. You opposed something that wasn't wrong. You found out that it wasn't wrong. You don't exist anymore. You're There's no such thing anymore as a Misnaggid simply because there's not-- they're not-- the thing that they were opposing doesn't exist. The only thing you need to do is find within yourself the power, this-- the internal strength to say this openly, to declare that Misnagdus doesn't exist anymore. So we always say, you might have heard thrown around the idea that there aren't any Misnagdim anymore. The Rebbe's taking

11:28 Speaker 1 this idea very seriously and saying there can't be Misnagdim anymore because they automatically were the moment it became clear that Hasidism was not going to be a challenge to the faith. Even though you were raised in an area where they focused on a preconceived notion about what a Hasid is and what a Misnaggid is, when you see the truth, you're now, you're now required to act on the truth. So the Rebbe says the idea here isn't so much that Misnagdim died out. The idea is that Misnagdim ceased the moment what Hasidim were became completely clear The Rebbe continues, and we're just gonna do this one more paragraph, then we're gonna talk about some of the other things the Rebbe says about Misnagdim. And then I heard about you. When it comes to your, uh, your writing and when it comes to your literary work. I have no doubt says the Rebbe, based on meeting you, based on hearing about you, based on your letters, based on the-- based on your books. I have no doubt at all. Even though you do come from a tradition of what you call Misnagdim, your writing is completely, uh, saturated with the warmth of the feeling of Hasidishkeit. Because you might call yourself Misnagdim, you don't even act like one. You don't write like one. I, it is-- I believe then I believe you yourself feel this, that you aren't quite a Misnaged. What is much more the truth is your readers, they feel it too. Yeah. What's much

13:01 Speaker 1 more important, much more relevant is that your readers sense it too. Your readers sense you're no Misnaged. They see that the writing of a Misnaged in quotes They see that the writing of a Misnaged, of a guy who claims to be is a Misnaged, sure feels a lot like it comes from the wellsprings of Hasidus. Your readers aren't fooled either. So the Rebbe here is saying two things. The thing that he says in this paragraph up here is that you can't call yourself a Misnaged because Misnagdim ceased to exist, uh, quite some time ago automatically. And that the idea that some Misnagdim have that, "No, we're still Misnagdim. We're just, you know, different Misnagdim. Misnagdim that don't hate all Hasidus. Misnagdim that have a, that have a different tradition, a different hat they wear, a different way they daven." The Rebbe goes, "No, you can't be Misnaged, but you can be Lit, you can be Lithuanian, you can be Litvaks. But a Misnaged can't exist anymore because there's nothing to oppose anymore." And then down here, the Rebbe says, "In addition to the fact that this, that this lay- literally doesn't exist, this this expression you're using for yourself, Misnagdim don't exist. In addition to that, you're not much of a Misnaged. I've, I've-- I know you, I've read your stuff. You sound like a Hasid. Your readers are not fooled either. And as a matter of fact, it just leaves a more positive impression when a guy who calls himself a Misnaged talks exactly

14:08 Speaker 1 like a Hasid." So I wanna look at, uh, some other approaches here to-- I think when we look at these other excerpts from letters, we're gonna get an idea of what the Rebbe's saying more clearly, 'cause the Rebbe in this, in this long piece is actually saying stuff that he said over many other years, uh, in different ways. So I, I wanna start back here in volume twenty-seven, page sixty-five. This is an excerpt from a much longer letter, so I'm just bringing you the text. It's a PS. The Rebbe writes in the PS down here, "Where did the idea of Misnagdim come from in the first place?" And the Rebbe writes, That when they declared-- when they originally declared, when it was, uh, when it was publicized that Misnagdim opposed Hasidim and Hasidus, there was a mistake that they made. What was their mistake? They were concerned that maybe the of Hasidus would lead to, uh, leniencies when it came to keeping mitzvahs. More than regular . The Rebbe goes, "If you read what the Misnagdim were worried about in that day," I don't mean now, I don't mean even a hundred years ago. We're talking the time of the Alter Rebbe. In the time of the Alter Rebbe when Misnagdim were putting out their statements in those days, what they were most concerned about is that people would follow the path of Hasidus and then be more lenient in how they kept Yiddishkeit. Says the Rebbe, this is to say that means that at

15:25 Speaker 1 the time, they already understood. The Misnagdim of the Alter Rebbe's era understood that if their reason had no reasoning, they would not oppose it anymore. They had a reason. They said, "We oppose Hasidus because we think Hasidim are going to be ." Which means that they understood from the beginning that if Hasidim were not that they wouldn't be Misnagdim. And now two hundred years have passed, and we can look at what happened. It's very clear what's going on. What is, uh, somebody who's a Hasid? What's a Hasid? Someone who's not satisfied with one pair of Tefillin. He needs two. There's someone who puts on . What's a Hasid? Someone who spends extra time davening. This is someone who's more careful about . You know, most Hasidim, they keep manner. They're very careful about at least adding some time to Shabbos. They're people who are more careful about . When it comes to their food they do more Hiddan mitzvah. So he says, "Look, the Misnagdim, they were worried we were gonna be more lenient. Nowadays, the main way you can tell a Hasid from anybody else is the fact that they're twice as strict, which means that the was a ." When the Rebbe says back in our letter that is automatically null and void because of what ended up happening, this is what he's talking about. It ended up being clear that we were going to be more strict, not less strict, so the entire premise of opposing Hasidus, uh, was retroactively nullified. It

16:41 Speaker 1 does-- It never-- It, it-- Maybe it never existed. It certainly doesn't exist now. Uh, the Rebbe has a letter here where he writes specifically that they don't exist anymore, that we don't have them anymore. He says, uh, "I was surprised to hear that you were worried about, uh, sim-- about worried about teaching..." I don't know who's writing this to the Rebbe 'cause it's a weird letter. They write, "You're worried about teaching simple people and Misnagdim." You can't learn with Misnagdim and . The Rebbe's unhappy with this, obviously, in this letter. This is a letter from, uh, volume sixteen, page one forty-eight, where somebody writes to the Rebbe saying they can't work with simple people or Misnagdim. I don't know. The Rebbe writes back to him, um, "I'm upset about this because you know that simple people, the Rebbe loves them." But then he adds, "You write about Misnagdim. " He goes, "They don't exist. There's no such thing as a Misnaged. We don't have them." "Even those who are verbally Misnagdim, who say that they're Misnagdim," it's just the fact that they don't know very much. They don't know much. If they knew more, they wouldn't be Misnagdim. We don't have Mis-- We don't have knowledgeable Misnagdim nowadays. When you explain to them what, what's what. When you explain to them what's what, when you do what the Rebbe did in this letter to Chaim Grade and you lay down exactly the facts, you won't just stop the fact that-- You won't just stop them

17:53 Speaker 1 from being Misnagdim. You'll turn them into people who love us, people who help us. If you explain to them what's what, not only will you find that they're not Misnagdim anymore, you'll find that they're going to wanna help you. All you have to do is make sure to explain things to them in a way that has and that comes from the heart, and then , you'll have a positive effect. You can, you can get-- Th-there is no such thing as a Misnaged says the Rebbe in this letter, and anybody who acts like a Misnaged, you can undo it real quickly just by explaining to them the truth. What does it mean to explain things to them? What should we be telling them? In volume thirty-three, page fifty-two, the Rebbe here says, Uh, okay. Wait, where am I looking for it? Here we go. See that sentence? Says here that what is a Misnaged? A Misnaged is defined as someone who you have not yet succeeded in explaining Chassidus to them properly because anybody who ex-- who Chassidus is explained to properly, their cease to be a Misnaged. They'll, uh, they'll leave those camps behind and they'll end up absorbing what we're doing here. They're, they're going to be interested in . You can't be a Misnaged to a part of the Torah. If you were just, if you just were to teach them Chassidus properly, they wouldn't be Misnagdim anymore. We have here in volume thirteen, page three twenty-six, a further explanation that I just

19:16 Speaker 1 kind of hinted to about why this works so well. The Rebbe says, It is hard to understand how someone can be a Misnaged to part of Torah Hashem. So what's a Misnaged officially? A Misnaged is a Misnaged to a and . So if nowadays they don't oppose the anymore and just our school of thought, they're opposing Torah Hashem, and that's hard to imagine. A Jew can't oppo- uh, can't oppose Torah Hashem. So what is a Misnaged then? The fact is they don't understand Chassidus. If they knew what Torah was, they wouldn't dare oppose it because it is a, uh, a piece of Torah Hashem. The Rebbe says, "Don't debate them, but spread Torah right in front of them." So the Rebbe says we shouldn't be sitting down with Misnaged and line by line explaining how and, uh, Tanya don't necessarily and how to explain their school of thought versus ours. What's the difference between and Chassidus? These things that love to do. The Rebbe says, "I don't want you in debates with them. Just talk Chassidus to them, and they'll be ." Uh, this is the Rebbe's understanding, the Rebbe's approach to how, uh, to how, uh, work. The Misnagdim cease to exist the moment that the art of Chassidus is present around them. This last letter that I wanna show you on this topic, and then we'll break and talk a little bit, is, uh, with whatever time we have left, is in volume ten, page two twenty. And here the Rebbe kind of

20:29 Speaker 1 combines everything that we just said into one very easy to understand sentence or two, maybe two sentences. Okay. So the Rebbe writes about this up here. Let's go to it. You write that you have a bunch of real Misnagdim with you. The Rebbe says, "We already know that nowadays there's no such thing as Misnagdim." Uh, and remember, the Rebbe is not saying this as like a, as like a f- as, as an article of faith. He already explained to us logically why there's no such thing as Misnagdim. The thing they were opposing doesn't exist. All you have to do is have a proper, um, meeting of minds with them. Uh, and when you explain to the -- Excuse me. When it becomes clear that you are not trying to get rid of their Matzias, when you don't come down-- when you don't come at a Misnaged saying, "Let me un-Misnaged you," and say, "Look, I just wanna tell you some stuff," they will receive what you're saying. They won't suspect anything. They'll still see it as a-- They'll, they'll receive it generously. And then there's a then anybody who tries very hard will never return empty-handed. And, uh, one of the proo-- And I'm sorry, I'm not gonna keep on going with the letters. I'm just gonna end the sentence there. And obviously, anybody who tries very hard, they're not going to come back empty-handed. So the Rebbe says, "Explain Chassidus to Misnagdim, and they will come around." So we have here from all of

21:46 Speaker 1 the Rebbe's statements on this kind of three big points. One big point is that Misnagdim don't exist, and that anybody who claims to be a Misnaged, it's simply from the fact that they don't understand that the school of thought of the Misnagdim either never existed or ceased to exist as soon as Chassidim started being . Those who do still act like Misnagdim or speak like Misnagdim, there's a solution, and that is to explain to them that they don't exist. However, not directly, not to get into a debate with them, and not to tell them, "Hey, you don't exist," and knock them down, but instead to-- or to tell them the merits of Chassidus over other things, but rather just to explain Chassidus to them without comparing it to anything. When you teach Chassidus to a Misnaged, you're 'cause there is not-- there's no room for opposing Torah Hashem. So that's sort of a summary of the Rebbe's take on Misnagdim and why they don't exist anymore. Uh, I've heard for years, for years they told me in Yeshiva that Misnagdim don't exist anymore. This is a common thing you hear in Chabad . I never understood it really to be so deeply logical and so deeply based in Torah. I understood it to be more of an expression that was kinda like, you know, there's no Misnagdim anymore. They they died out, or the Rebbe said it, so it must be true. The Rebbe here is giving us a logical, a, uh, a Halakhic a

22:50 Speaker 1 Hashkafic reason why there is no such thing as a Misnaged. We go back to our letter from and the Rebbe says, "Your wife wrote to me saying you come from a Misnaged background." The Rebbe says, uh, "This doesn't exist, and it certainly doesn't describe you." Okay, let's talk about Misnagdim.