אידאולוגיות וכל מיני ״איזמים״

00:01 Speaker 1 This is Igris, and we are continuing a letter that we started last week. We started this letter from Chaim Grad or to Chaim Grad, excuse me. Chaim Grad was a famous Yiddish writer, and his wife had written to the Rebbe. And in the letter that his wife had sent to the Rebbe, she said the magic words that set off the Rebbe. She said the magic words. Look down here. I'll highlight it for you. She said that her husband was a Yehudi moderni mesiras litai misnagdis. That her husband is this Chaim Grad. She described her husband as a modern Jew, a Yehudi moderni, with a mesirah of the Lithuanian misnagdim. So he called-- she called him a misnagdim, and she called him a modern Jew, and these are two things that the Rebbe cannot, cannot stand as monikers. Um, he explains why in the letter. In, in-- he says in the letter that he's using the letter as a, uh... the fact that Chaim Grad's wife wrote to him is giving the Rebbe an opportunity to write to Chaim Grad. And what does he spend his whole time doing? Critiquing the words that his wife used to describe him. So he spends the first half of the letter explaining that there is no such thing as a misnagdim, that you can't call yourself a misnagdim anymore because they don't exist, because the entire idea of misnagdis is that you're opposing something and there is nothing to oppose in Hasidus. We explained this at length in the

01:06 Speaker 1 previous year. I am Sham. If you look in the second half of the letter, the Rebbe does not let up. Beday m'lacha is what we're looking at today. It's at the top of the page. You should have it on your screen. Beday m'lacha ani neket amada, the Rebbe says, "I also have to make a stand about the following." Gam nigeh lach las kalas apita nisge Yehudi moderni. "I'm also going to make a statement about the fact that you are called a modern Jew, that you're known as a modern Jew." I will remind you that Chaim Grad, being a Yiddish writer and being the Yiddish writer that he was, we talked a little bit about his life history in the last class. He was, by all intents and pur- for all intents and purposes, a modern Jew with a, with a Lithuanian misnagdis mesirah. He was a, uh, son of a maskil, uh, came from maskilim. He wrote about maskilim. He was invi-- he was involved in the Haskalah pretty heavily. He was involved in the art scene in Vilna and, uh, in Vilna, which gives it the Lithuanian. And he was a talmid of the Chazan Ish. So you have here definitely somebody who, uh, who if we didn't know any better, we would have accurately described as being a modernist with a Lithuanian misnagdim tradition. The Rebbe already shut down his misnagdim tradition. Let's watch him shut down his modern tradition. So he says, "You also called him a Yehudi moderni." Sh'ken a musa

02:09 Speaker 1 Yehudi moderni. "This term, Yehudi moderni, a modern Jew." Sh'netzerade mecheneh maskalas bas hashamayim. "If anybody knows what that is, please tell me." I, I went looking everywhere. I cannot figure out what maskala bas hashamayim is. I think it was a phrase people knew then that, that has fallen out of favor, but it was a form of Haskalah. From what I could find by poking around, uh, some articles from the, from the '40s, from the '50s, it, it, it, it looks like this is what-- this was a school of Haskalah that was supposed to be more attractive to yeshiva students. I, I don't know. Sh'netzerade mecheneh maskalas bas hashamayim. Anyway, there was the Haskalah movement. The i- the idea of the Jewish Enlightenment was, was where the notion of a modern Jew came from. Sh'kar mizman yatze min ha'etnah. "This has already gone out of style. It's not cool anymore to be a modern Jew," he says. V'ad rabba, "the opposite." Modernity isn't cool anymore. What does he mean? Ad kam meshe emes moderni Yehudi kayem. "The more a Jew is modern nowadays," Kach rechik yesh humedenish yatsra kera ben Yehudi be'alecha v'adam metzey safa. He says this is even more distant. The more modern a Jew is nowadays, the more distant he is from the original roots of modern Judaism. That is the notion of the reform, which was that a per-- that a Jew should be a Jew in their house, and they should be a normal person when they're out in the streets.

03:12 Speaker 1 He's saying, what the Rebbe is gonna continue saying, what he's saying even right here is that a current modern Jew, if you were to pull over a Jew right now and ask them, "Are you modern?" And he said, "Yes." And you were to ask him, "What's your life like?" He would be further from the modern Jews of that era than a non-modern Jew today would be. There's no-- there's a rift between the modern and the modern, the new modern and the old modern. Kokach milchamah. This is a typo here 'cause it's an English translation. It's-- I'm sorry, a Hebrew translation. Kokach milchamah, 'cause if you look in the Yiddish, it's, it's, it's the word milchamah. Kokach milchamah Yehudi ve'alecha. They've-- this, uh, this caused fights with the Jews who st- chose to stay in the tents. Ach shi asam Yehudi mesharis venesei kelev shel goy lehavdil. The end game, of course, of the-- the end result of the Jews separating themselves and saying that they wanted to be a, a Jew in the home and a person in the street, these old-- the old form of modern, of modern Judaism resulted in the becoming nothing but tools for the goyim lehavdil. Okay, Vayehudi kayem, the Rebbe continues developing this idea. Yehudi kayem. Hu, hu dafka yudi gea. "Who's a modern Jew nowadays? A modern, modern Jew nowadays is the proud Jew, is yudi gea, is a proud Jew." Mistadif yesh viyesh letarah yeshana chadasha. "He's becoming closer and closer to the old new Torah." Why

04:19 Speaker 1 is the Torah old and new? Sh'lamar, sh'lamar, sh'lamar shehi nitna lifi be'erech thirty-five hundred shana. "Even though it was given, the Torah was given about thirty-five hundred years ago," Ki adayin chadasha v'taria. "It's still new and it's still fresh." Vefi bitah chachamen hazakron l'vracha b'chol yom im y'nachu k'chadashim. "As the Chazal say, the Torah will be new in our eyes every single day." V'zeh s'doyim b'miyuchad. Etzel Yehudim sh'hayu nirdafim tachas hashilton hakomunisti l'maimim v'yad hashanim. "We see this particularly when it comes to Jews who are under the, under the, um, under the dominion of the communists, of the communists for, for the communists for fifty years or more than fifty years." Veneisi Yehudim v'yatzu misham Yehudim. "They remain Jews, and they left their Jews." Sh'letareinu leikach hayyim eilish achaz b'ismim shaynim. "This does not apply to those who hung on to various isms." And this is something we're going to develop at length in this year, so hold that thought. The Rebbe is saying here that we see that, uh, that the, that the Jews who are most, uh, the, the modern Jews nowadays are people who are very interested in the Torah. So to-- it's a subtle point. What he's saying is that the old-- the way that people used to use the word modern Jew in the time of the Haskalah, which is what Chaim Grad considers himself as a modern Jew in the Haskalah thought, is actually quite outdated, that modern Judaism is outdated already, and that the modern modern Jew, the

05:31 Speaker 1 new modern Judaism, uh, wouldn't recognize the old modern Judaism because the new modern Judaism is actually quite interested in Judaism and quite proud of Judaism. And, uh, we see this specifically among those who are leaving the iron fist or the Iron Curtain, as it were, of communism and are deeply passionate about Judaism, whereas those who hung on to various other isms, which are the trappings of modernity grabbing an ism, uh, they did not turn out so well. Megamed emoreim gam b'tichum amada. "We also see this in the field of science," the Rebbe says. Sh'daf kemizmanim modernim hu neked gisha chadasha b'kivun shel chirus kama sheyes en achtis b'chol haolam. "Lately, what science has been doing," and of course, science has continued to do this, by the way. Science has continued over the-- Modern science is the effort of showing that everything is completely unified. I don't know if the Rebbe is referring to, uh, to the unified theory that physics was always going after. That certainly was his field, but this is something we see in biology and in chemistry, is that the, the thrust of modern science since over the past hundred years or so really has been that, uh, we used to think that- More than 100 years ago, we used to think that everything was completely separate, that there were, uh, that, that there were, there were different, um, uh, humors and that there were different foundations of the world, and that everything was split up into different parts. And lately, what

06:37 Speaker 1 it's all about is incorporating biology and chemistry and physics all into one thing, and that really the chemistry doesn't work if it-- there's no physics happening at the atomic level, and that the bio-biology only makes sense because of the chemistry and the physics. The idea that everything and even that organ systems all work together, that a disease in the hand is really caused by a problem in the nervous system in general. The, the idea of the unification of science is something that's quite new. Uh, 100 years ago, they used to think that the-- that s-science used to see the world as totally split up, and now it's unifying everything together. The Rebbe says an additional list. Modern archeology. Modern archeology is affirming the truth of the stories of Tanakh. It's in opposition to those who once called themselves Maskilim, or those who were proponents, strong proponents of Jewish science. These people came out of Germany, and they were wrong. The original Maskilim-- What, what the Rebbe is saying here is very interesting. I haven't heard anybody else make this point, but it's a great one. Is that the, uh-- one of the main arguments of Haskalah, of the original idea there should be a modern Jew, is that Judaism is antiquated. It's got these old, ridiculous ideas. We believe in a history that didn't happen. We believe in a world that is supernatural, that isn't happening, and that if you wanna pull Jews out of their superstitious nonsense and the Torah that is wrong, you

07:51 Speaker 1 have to bring them into the science which is, which is right. And what's the Rebbe saying here? The science of the 1800s was wrong, and the Torah is only now being proven right by the science of the modern era. So the entire idea of Haskalah, which was, uh, s-- freeze-frame in the year 1800 and decide that science is true and Torah is false, has been turned on its head. The science of the 1800s was wrong, and the Torah of the 1800s is just as true then as it is now, and who's proving it? Science. So the entire basis of Haskalah doesn't really exist. This is very much what the Rebbe did with the idea of Misnagdim, if you'll remember. What he did with the idea of Misnagdim is that he can't be a Misnaged because the basis of the idea of the Misnagdim is something that was never there in the first place. The Rebbe has now done this with the idea of Maskilim, that the Haskalah never made any sense in the first place either, because the whole idea of Haskalah was to take, uh, was to take religion and replace it with science, and the science of that era was wrong, and the religion of that era remains correct. Uh, the Rebbe also has a really nice dig here and says, He says, "These same people, where did Haskalah come from? It came from Germany, the same place that produced the German culture." And what is the German culture? Hitler and those who

08:56 Speaker 1 inherited him, Yamach Shemam. So, uh, the Rebbe is not a fan of German culture in general. Uh, the Rebbe then says in the rest of this letter that I've gone on longer than maybe I should have, but then he says, "Maybe it's actually shorter than it should be, and I need to elaborate upon these points." He ends up by wishing them a, a, uh, a happy Shavuot, and he goes on in the PS, which we're not gonna read today, to say that he'd like him to reach out to Shazar and just make sure he's okay, because as you'll recall from what we're doing historically in these letters that we've been going through in 1973, Sha-Shazar had just ended his tenure as president, and he was kind of spinning his wheels, so he asked him to check on Shazar for him. Anyway, what we have here from the letter is, uh, I have three main points I think we can pull out from the letter. Uh, um, or maybe more than three, four points. I have four points on my little notepad here. Uh, four points. The first one is that the word modern used to mean a timid Jew with limited interest in Yiddishkeit, and now it means a loud and proud Jew who's interested in Yiddishkeit. So when you call yourself modern in the tradition of the Maskilim, like modern like they used to be in the 1800s in Germany or even the 1700s in Germany, that's kind of silly because that modern is

09:55 Speaker 1 the old modern. There's a new modern. These new modern Jews are very into Yiddishkeit. They're leaving Russia and, and, and running to Torah and Mitzvahs. Then the Rebbe says that modernism is just another failed ism. That's what he's saying when he goes after the ism meme over here. He said, "Just another failed ism." Only those who cling to Yiddishkeit and, uh, throw away all the other isms end up surviving exile and, and coming out interested in Yiddishkeit and part of Yiddishkeit. He then says that the modern Maskilim built their arguments on the notion that religion is old and wrong and science is right and new, but the science that they base that on is now old and wrong, and modern scientific thought supports Torah. And then, of course, he adds, "Don't forget the roots and the outcomes of the Maskilim's favorite ism, modernism, um, German culture and Hitler." The, uh, the isms captured, captured my imagination a little bit. I, uh, I, I have been railing about isms forever, but not because I knew the Rebbe talked about them. I heard Mashpiyim talk about them so often that it became one of my things. Um, actually, I, I have a WhatsApp group still that I keep with my students from, uh, from Ithaca College, and, uh, I sent them things, uh, last week when I discovered all these letters. I was sending them thing after thing going, "Look, all-- The Rebbe talks about isms all the time. I didn't make it up." Um, if, uh--

10:58 Speaker 1 Have people here, have people here come across this, have been at farbrengens where isms have been thrashed, the idea of an ism? Has this been a-- Has this been on your radar before? Okay, well, it's, uh-- It-- Now it will be. The Rebbe goes after the idea of isms. When I say isms, I should define our terms. Ism is anything that ends in the word ism, an ideology. That is communism. That is, uh-- And it doesn't have to end in ism to work. That is that people-- There, there are some Haredim who consider themselves Republicans, some Haredim who consider themselves Democrats, some who consider themselves involved in, uh, in animal rights, involved in vegetarianism, involved in, uh, involved in gun rights. I mean, uh, pick your, pick your poison. If you're involved in something that's not Judaism, and it's an ideology that you consider part of your identity enough that you would attach an ism to it and say that you're a card-carrying member, the Rebbe is not happy with it. We have here a, uh, a from the days of Selichos of and it is written to the entire Jewish people, and it sure is harsh for a letter written to the entire Jewish people. This is again from during the days of Selichos, and here the Rebbe drills down into some of his issues with isms. Let's jump to, uh, the second paragraph here. Now, a short introduction, which is just a disappointing introduction. The Rebbe's gonna say in this letter three or

12:13 Speaker 1 four times that we all know what happened in 1954 And since we all know what happened in nineteen fifty-uh-four, we all know that we're very disappointed in ideologies and isms, and I don't know what he's talking about. I, I looked up things that happened in nineteen fifty-four. I asked our resident historian, Meshuga Reuben, uh, what had happened in nineteen fifty-four, and neither of us are sure what he's referring to. Meshuga Reuben thinks perhaps he's referring to the real rise of, uh, of the Cold War, the real start of communism and the Cold War. Although obviously these things had roots much earlier. The Korean War was right around then, so it's possible this is when, th-this is when the Cold War was feeling particularly harsh. Possible something was going on in Israel. Uh, I thought maybe it was the end of McCarthyism. That's when McCarthy got prosecut-- It's hard to know what he's talking about. But anyway, as all of us who lived in nineteen fifty-four know, nineteen fifty-four was a rough year for ideologies. One of the things that every Jew must reflect upon when they think about the past year, It was very clear to us this past year in an obvious way. The, uh, it was-- it became clear to us how inappropriate it is to rely on any of these ideologies and the hope that they claim to have. All these ideologies have certain hope to them that they promise us a better life, and we've seen they don't work out. And

13:29 Speaker 1 it's become clear. It's become, it's become clear that a Jew cannot rely on any ideology. The ideologies, the isms, and also the groups of people who are promoting them. They have led to, once again, to incredible disappointment, bitter disappointment. By those who had hung their hopes on them. It certainly does sound a little bit like the failure of communism. In this year, we became convinced, even among those who are a little bit distant from Yiddishkeit, It says that the, uh, we became convinced in this past year that the only way that the Jew-- that the Jewish people can survive, the only thing that keeps us around, is hanging on strongly to Torah and to the way of life which it explains, with the Torah-- which the Torah teaches us. Also, sometimes people have this compromised position where they'll open an organization and say that it has two or three founding principles, and that they are equal founding principles, and that one of the foundations of their, of their organization is Torah, and then they also have other things that are making up their foundation. For example, Torah, Umada. I don't know. But Torah, you know, they're-- it's not just Torah, Umada. There's many organizations that say that one of their founding principles is Torah. Um, I, I, I, I don't, I don't remember where I saw this. I remember seeing a letter from the Rebbe where, where they'd made a role in the shul or something like that. They'd made like a, uh, a, a

15:00 Speaker 1 role in a shul for like the, um, a board member who was in charge of, of Torah for the shul. And the Rebbe was like, "I, I don't understand how Torah is just one role in a shul." So the idea that Torah and mitzvahs can be just one leg in the table that holds up the Jewish people, that can't be right. The year, once ag-- The year once again demonstrated that compromises like these are just bridges that bring the Jews from the right to the left. Which distance us from authentic and original Judaism. In a way that we can act on them every single day. The only thing that has kept us going is the Torah and mitzvahs and practical Torah and mitzvahs. That's the only thing that can keep us going since Har Sinai, the only source of our strength. The Rebbe says it is a stupid mistake to make. And also an astounding mistake. That we would be satisfied with fancy speeches, uh, that, uh, that, that then, that then, that act-- in a way that act like all of the other Goyim. Or that we would be satisfied with infusions of Judaism. Certain years, certain days of the year or specific times in our lives. It's ridiculous to believe that Judaism can be something that we have some days of the year or at certain life stages, that Jud-Judaism is a bar mitzvah or a Yom Kippur. Says, Torah and Judaism needs to completely absorb us at all times. He goes on

16:33 Speaker 1 to say here in the rest of the letter that just like a person wouldn't be satisfied being only half healthy or being surrounded in a situation where they were only half healthy, similarly spiritually, we can't be in a situation where Torah is only one of our values and we have other isms mixed in there. There must be exactly one ism and, uh, and that J-- ism must be Judaism. So some summaries, some basic points that come out of this letter is that, uh, all the isms have disappointed us, especially this year, and I don't know why. He says compromises, uh, organizations that have Torah as just one of their pillars, those would be some of the Jewish isms, I assume, like, you know, the Jewish Republican Party, the Jewish Demo-- the Jewish Democrats. They're people who say-- make Judaism a value, but not the only value. They have only distanced people from Yiddishkeit. It has not helped. And infusions of Yiddishkeit are not enough, just like being half healthy is not enough. The last thing that I wanna show you, I don't know if we'll have time to do properly, which is such a shame because it is incredible, is that we have a siddur from the Rebbe where he really dives down into his problem with isms and describes them in detail. I do wanna tell you at least outside what he's saying, then we'll read some of it inside. Uh, what he's saying outside here, what he, what he's gonna say in the

17:33 Speaker 1 siddur, and the siddur is, uh, let me tell you where it is. It's and you have the PDF, so you can take a look at it when you get a chance. Here the Rebbe says that what is the guiding principle of modernity? What makes us one-- W-what, what, what does modern mean? Modern means that we're embracing the idea that things could get better if we did things differently. That's what modern means. That's what, uh, that's what the idea of, of modernism is, whether you're Jewish or not. Uh, is that modern means that things would be better if we did things a little bit differently. So what's the idea of an ism or an organization, one of these isms or ideologies? The idea of an ism or an ideology is here's a way to make my life better. So m-modernism and, uh, modernity and isms are closely intertwined in that the idea of a modern person is that I can use ideologies and isms to make life better. Now Jews invest in isms. Why? Because they believe that they can make the world a better place. That's what a modern Jew is. A modern Jew is someone who invests in various new ideologies and various new isms and throws themselves into them entirely because they believe they can make the world a better place. Ask any politically involved Jew, right? Ask a Jew who is a strong and, strong and vocal supporter of the Republican Party or the Democratic Party. They'll tell you that the reason

18:35 Speaker 1 why they're interested in that is because they think that by investing in these things, they can make the world a better place. The Rebbe in the Sicha tells us that by now we've tested every ism, that we've been around a long time. He says in one place in the Sicha, he'll say that, uh, when we were at Har Sinai, we had-hadn't seen all the other isms yet, so we just had to trust God that He'd given us the best ism. But we've had thirty-five hundred years since then to investigate all of the political ideologies, all of the social ideologies. We've seen every movement rise and fall. We've tested every ism at this point, and all of the big political and social experiments have failed horribly and disappointed us terribly, and usually put us in a worse place than we were in the first place. The only ism, he says, that is worth investing in is Judaism. All the other isms and ideals, even those built on the best intended foundations, they end up being worthless. Um, we are just about out of time, so I don't think we'll necessarily read the Sicha, but that is the title of the Sicha. Please do read it when you have, uh, when you have some time throughout the day. Take a look at the Sicha. It's, it's, it's fantastic. What are you saying, Perez?

19:32 Speaker 2 I'm listening.

19:33 Speaker 1 We'll do the Sicha. Okay. When we want to test out different paths, different ideologies, different ways of doing things, well, one way or another, all the paths that we might try out, all the isms that we might find, this particular ism, believe it or not, you might think it's new and modern, but they tried it twenty years ago. And this idea, you might think it's brand new, but you know what? They tried it forty years ago, they tried it fifty years ago. And they saw the outcome. They've done poorly for the individuals, and they've done poorly for the entire Jewish people. Every, every kid thinks he has a brand-new idea. The truth is they've tried all these ideas before. The day after Matan Torah, we had to trust what we'd seen at Har Sinai. We'd never tried doing things another way. When it comes to our generation we live in now, we've tested all the other Drach, and we know that there is no path, none of these isms work besides Judaism, besides Torah, besides mitzvahs. We know that the other ones are not reliable. The idea that maybe we could be involved in Judaism without doing practical mitzvahs we already tried this, believe it or not. This is not a, this is not a new idea of the, of the reformer, of the conservative or of any movement in Judaism now. They tried this idea. I don't know who he is, but we tried it in his day. They thought back then maybe they

21:11 Speaker 1 could remain Jewish if they only were Jewish in their minds, that they thought like Jews. They went to bagel brunches, and they had Jewish ideologies. Um, I believe that's sort of a, that's sort of a knock on the humanist Judaism. So the idea of humanist Judaism is that you can have a Jewish way of looking at the world without acting like a Jew. And that's a, that's a movement that exists now. When it came to practical mitzvot they could just hint to them with, uh, with vague reminders. Yes, this is very much the, uh, humanist approach that exists now. This existed in the times of, uh, of the Alexandrium. So this was in the times of the, like the, the Greeks. We did-- We tried this thousands of years ago. there's not a single one of them who still exist. They're gone. Some of them returned to Yiddishkeit, and they're now, uh, absorbed within the rest of the Jews, and we don't have any trace of them. And they're doing mitzvahs. And some of them remained Greeks. where they stayed in Alexandria and we lost them to Jewish history. It's the idea that you can be a humanist Jew, that you can think Jewish, and you can act vaguely Jewish, but you don't have to do mitzvahs. You think this is a new idea that was introduced in modern America? Nope. It's a very, very old idea that failed two thousand years ago, and people don't learn their les-their lesson. What about another idea? People

22:19 Speaker 1 think they have this brand-new idea that just started now, and the brand-new idea is that we can split up the Torah, and we can mess with the Torah and bend it to meet the needs of the time, that we need to make it modern and timely. You think that was started by modern Jews? Nope. That was not-- That's not new at all. This isn't something new that came up, that came up be-- about a hundred years ago. They already had this idea in the Beis Hamikdash Harishon. Two thousand years ago, we tried this. Also in the second Beis Hamikdash. We tried it in Babylonia. We've been trying that one for thousands of years, and it has never worked. And the idea that people think is also relatively new, maybe we should try acting like the rest of the Goyim, and then they won't hate us so much. That's also not new. They tried that in the times of Yechezkel. And it didn't work then either. This must be what he's referring to as the Yiddishists. Right? The idea of the Yiddishists, that perhaps we can, um, that perhaps we can tie Yiddishkeit, or maybe the i-- or maybe also the Zionists who tied Yiddishkeit in a lot of ways to the Hebrew language. The idea that perhaps we can tie Judaism to a language instead of to a religion. Is there anything else besides Torah, mitzvahs? Maybe nationalism. We've al-- We've tested that too. There were Yidden in the times of the Beis Hamikdash who

23:42 Speaker 1 spoke Aramaic, and also in the times of the second Beis Hamikdash who spoke Ashdodite. I don't even know what that is. I think it's the language of the Philistines. Moavite. They spoke Moavite. They tried all these other . They also spoke Hebrew. But it was never the language that made them stronger. The language never created an identity. Also the idea that maybe we need to make the Goyim around us happier. Maybe if we're nice to the Goyim, they'll be nice to us. The Rebbe says, "We tried that. We know it doesn't work either." In the rest of this paragraph, he says, "Every time we try it, they just hate us more." He says-- That's it. We should read it because it's such strong language. Um, okay, here's the part I want to read. Sometimes Goyim straight up tell us we're never gonna like you. Sometimes the Goyim keep it to themselves. They just tell each other that they're never gonna like us. In our generation, in our generation, the Rebbe says, they told us it, befeyrish that they didn't like us. And the Rebbe says only ten years ago I think he's talking about the Holocaust. The whole world stood by and watched them murder us. The fact is, they don't like us, and sometimes they tell us, sometimes they don't. But whether they're obvious or not, that has not worked either. All of these great ideas on how to make the world better, all these modern approaches to Judaism, they have all been tried,

25:07 Speaker 1 and they all have failed. What is the only approach that works? We have to tell people is only one path of-- There was only one path in Judaism, and it's the only way, and it's never changed. That's the way of the written Torah and mitzvahs. Obviously, he goes on along this path, but I'm glad we got to talk about it a little bit because some of these ideas are just, uh-- The Rebbe puts them so nicely. What the Rebbe is saying, of course, over and over again, is that one of the reasons why we're not invested in isms is because not a single-- We, we've tried them all. We really have. People think they have these brilliant new ideas. They've all been tried, and they've all failed the world at large and failed us specifically. And all we have, what, what do we have to lean on? Only our God in heaven, only Torah and mitzvahs. Okay. Thanks, everybody.