פרק מיוחד: תפילין דרבנו תם (חלק 2)

00:00 Speaker 1 Okay, let's start. Let's start. This is our Igrish here, and, uh, I mean, it is our Igrish here ostensibly, but in fairness to the fact that this is our Igrish here, uh, this two-parter has had a limited number of Igrish in it because in the Igrish, we don't just look at letters, we try to look at the Rebbe Shimon in general. That's how I'm justifying it. In any case, we did look at some letters yesterday. We're gonna look at one letter today. But right now we're in the middle of a series on Rebbe Noam Tefillin. We're going to finish that series today. I wanna recap very quickly what we did yesterday and then dive into today's materials. Yesterday, we discussed the Halakhic, the Kabbalistic background of Rebbe Noam Tefillin. We talked about what Parshiyyas go where, uh, what they correspond to in Kabbalah, the Me'ah and the Ima, Me'ah and the Abba stuff. We saw that in Shochan Aharav, the author Rebbe suggests that according to Rebbe Noam, at the very least, you've never put on Tefillin if you've never worn his Tefillin, which sounds pretty serious. And we saw a footnote from the Rebbe in a Sefer, which, uh, brings sources to this effect. Uh, I believe in the footnotes of the Sefer, he brought a, a Be'er Hetev Yesenem, I think that was the source, that said that somebody who's never worn Rebbe Noam Tefillin, mechalashet is a karkafta who's never put on Tefillin before, which is just quite serious. We generally think

01:02 Speaker 1 of Rebbe Noam as a hidder, and the Rebbe himself says in that footnote that it seems that the author Rebbe holds it's a hidder too, so don't get too nervous. But it does sound like there are at least opinions out there that somebody who's never worn a Rebbe Noam Tefillin has never put on Tefillin at all. We also saw a recurring theme in Igrish. This is where we did open some letters that Rebbe Noam gives you a leg up in Mis-- and, uh, in Mistor and then Chasidus, whereas Rashi gives you a leg up in Nigla. Uh, so there's an advantage, sort of a segula in wearing Tefillin Rebbe Noam. Most of all, if we had to sum up the entire class in a, in a word from yesterday, we saw that the Rebbe across both letters and sifres struggles with the custom that was prevalent at the time, prevalent well into the lameds for Hasidim and Sfardim to wear Rebbe Noam and basically nobody else, and for Hasidim themselves to begin wearing Rebbe Noam only at age eighteen or only after a wedding, only after marriage. Given the importance of Rebbe Noam, it would make sense for every boy from bar mitzvah age onwards to wear Rebbe Noam, and for us to be publicizing this and trying to encourage the, uh, the, the Ashkenazim and everybody else in our communities to put on Rebbe Noam as well. And the Rebbe simply isn't seeing this b'koil and wondering why not. He's grappling with this across

02:02 Speaker 1 letters, across sifres, everywhere. Um, nonetheless, well into the lameds, we have letters from the Rebbe telling Hasidim to only wear Rebbe Noam if they're keeping up with Hasidish customs, if they're going to mikveh, to learn in Chasidus. Uh, one case that we saw yesterday, the Rebbe actually told somebody no. They wrote to him saying, "Can I put on Rebbe Noam?" And the Rebbe said, "You're not ready yet. You s-- you're not good enough at focusing on your Rashis." So despite the fact that in theory, we should be pushing Rebbe Noam for everybody, we see the Rebbe's not doing this well into the lameds. So now today we're gonna talk about, uh, how it all changed, where we are now, what the Rebbe's shita is on Rebbe Noam for the masses. Now, spoiler, I guess, just to get it all up front, you know, people can always log off in the middle and then miss the final message. The final message from the Rebbe is that everybody needs to be putting on Rebbe Noam starting at bar mitzvah, starting at the same time you put on Tefillin before bar mitzvah. As a matter of fact, he clarified that in Mem Test, it turns out. That was clarified in Mem Test, that needs to be started at the same time as the Hanukkat Tefillin, and, uh, and that this should be spread everywhere. That we should be telling our Ashkenazi friends, we should be telling our buddies in the neighborhood, we should be telling the big Lithuanian

02:58 Speaker 1 Rashi yeshivas, and we're going to see the Rebbe himself did this in a discussion with Rav Moshe Feinstein. Okay. Before we do anything else, I want to focus on where it changed. It changed in the year, it changed in the year, um, Teshrin Lamed Vav. It was a sefer from Purim, Teshrin Lamed Vav. That's when the Rebbe first announced that everyone should be putting on Rebbe Noam Tefillin from bar mitzvah. That's in Teshrin Lamed Vav. So what is that? That's, uh, that's seventy-- s-sixty. Sixty-six. Yes? Sixty-six? No, that'd be chaf. Seventy-six. Seventy-six.

03:29 Speaker 2 Seventy-six. Seventy-six.

03:30 Speaker 1 Bad at decades. That's nineteen seventy-six. So nineteen seventy-six, prior to nineteen seventy-six, everything we talked about in the last class was in play. From nineteen seventy-six onward, the Rebbe's shita was very clear. Uh, the clarification that Rebbe Noam Tefillin should be worn by the time of Hanukkat Tefillin was not until Mem Test. You'll find that in the sefer Mem Test, volume two, page six thirty-two. The reason why I'm telling you these sources and not showing them to you is because the Rebbe kind of, uh, gives out his horaah about Rebbe Noam Tefillin across like seven or eight sifres, only some of them that are in easy print, some of them in typewritten print. In order to make everything significantly easy for all of us, um, Shochan Menachem was kind enough to collate them all in the Rebbe's lashon, just putting them in order into a single page or two. So I thought maybe we'd read that page together because it does capture the sefer. I'll tell you where the sefer's split, where it's talking about something from a different place. If you look up at the top of the page in front of you, Be'er Hetev Yesenem, you know where that's from? That's the footnote from the Kuntress that we looked at yesterday. So looking over here, we're now in Beis over here in Shochan Menachem. This is the, this is the exact lashon in the sefer from Teshrin Lamed Vav, where the Rebbe first introduced the concept of putting on Rebbe Noam Tefillin for

04:32 Speaker 1 everybody. He says, "Vayadin be-ze ha-she'ah echad le-tkufasenu." Specifically in our times, we need Rebbe Noam Tefillin, the Rebbe says. "Ach doma. Shinun Tefillin hu de-l'shavid ha-Kadosh baruch hu et ha-lev." The whole point of Tefillin is that your m-- is that your, uh, your heart should be under the control of your mind. "She-zeh lo rak b'kavanat ha-mitzvot, elleh gam chelek mi-kiyar mitzvat atzmah." This is not just the kavanah of Tefillin, it's part of the fulfillment of Tefillin itself, this basic kavanah. "B'gueretcha Tefillin, hein ha-cheftzah she-be-yeileh," since Tefillin are the object that makes this possible, that makes it possible to control your heart with your mind, "ha-rabuvin she-yeileh be-cheftzah, ei de-es isher mi-sevivin b'meichan gam sfillin d'rebbe Noam, mei'dyeileh be-pulah she-iv shibud ha-lev," that would show that if you do the cheftzah better, you're gonna be better at the shavid, uh, the shavid ha-lev ela me-ach. So, uh, the Rebbe's starting off by saying that we have an advantage here, that every time we put on Tefillin, we're subjugating our heart to our minds, letting our minds rule our hearts, and the better we are at Tefillin, the more mehader we are in the mitzvah of Tefillin, the more shibud we have in that regard, the more control we have, the more self-control we have is probably the best way to put it, that putting on Tefillin of Rebbe Noam should give us more self-control. Why is that important? "Be-kemitshat mitzvat ha-chesed kapha l'tkufasenu mur kasha tzedek v'hechefdach b'shibud ha-lev yesh me-asher b'deror shifneinu." The Rebbe says,

05:40 Speaker 1 "There's never been a more important time than right now for us to be able to exercise self-control." "Biglal rivai spach tus tomas hachamas chitzonis kol ol shelo be'eref l'gabedei shifneinu." Because nowadays we are steeped in nowadays we're steeped in secular studies and secular education in a way that we never were previously, and because of that, it is significantly more important than it ever was before for us to be able to subjugate our hearts to our minds. "Neisef idod chazak she-kol ach be-acheini yaf'am tefillin tzedek Rebbe Noam kim shmo chach or chaf laka panim v'kal ha-avim." The Rebbe says, "Nowadays, we need two sets of Tefillin because we need double the self-control that we needed in prior generations." And what's really interesting about this is that people who are most steeped in secular studies, who are frum, I mean, the, uh, are least likely to put on Tefillin of Rebbe Noam, and the Rebbe's saying here they need it the most That if there's anybody who really needs Tefillin de-de Rabbeinu Tam, it's Yeshiva University, right? There, there, there's no place in the world that needs Rabbeinu Tam more than a place that is studying secular subjects because the Rebbe says, in a world where secular subjects are so available, you need double the self-control, double the and in order to get the double effect, you're going to need Tefillin de Rabbeinu Tam. So here the Rebbe's hinting at the fact that maybe people outside of Lubavitch need Rabbeinu Tam even more than those who consider

06:48 Speaker 1 themselves Lubavitchers. The Rebbe says in addition to that, you get a boost in the basic school of Tefillin, which is that other people will be afraid of you and not hurt you. Certainly, this is more necessary nowadays where, uh, things are darker. The Rebbe's saying nowadays there's, uh, there's antisemitism. I don't know if it's worse than it was ever before, but it certainly isn't great, and we're, we're seeing this even nowadays, an uptick in antisemitism. The Rebbe says that Tefillin's job is to protect you, and the more Tefillin you put on, the more protection you get. So the reason why he's putting out this-- I'm putting out this idea now as opposed to in prior generations, is mainly because we need it more now. Uh, whereas Tefillin de Rabbeinu Tam was always a Hiddur and was always special, and according to some Shitas was always necessary, at least according to Rabbeinu Tam. It sounds like in this generation where we have both an antisemitism problem and more significantly, I think, a problem, a secular study, secular knowledge problem. Uh, it's crucial that we start putting on an extra set of Tefillin in order to double our protection from outside influences, in order to double our protection from people who wanna kill us. Now, that is the from Lamed-Vav. Starting here... I'm sorry. I believe this is still Lamed-Vav, and he's not gonna get into the Mem-Beit one for a second. Okay. This is still Lamed-Vav, excuse me. Lamed-Vav. Said although up until now it has

08:15 Speaker 1 been the custom that Hasidim don't start putting on Tefillin until they're eighteen or until they're twenty. or after their wedding. This is the custom among Hasidim, Tzadikim, and Gadol. The Rebbe says, "I have no idea why this Minhag started." Uh, I just as an aside, the, the, the Rebbe didn't exactly do anything to quell this Minhag as we saw in prior letters. He himself forbade it, but the Rebbe doesn't know why the Minhag started. The Rebbe says it is . It is my firm and my clear perspective that we should be putting on Rabbeinu Tam from the time that we start wearing Tefillin de Rashi. That parenthesis that the Shulchan Aruch threw in there is actually from Mem-Tess. So that's where they, that's where they snuck in the Rebbe's Maskana, which is this should not just be from the time of Bar Mitzvah, but also from the time before Bar Mitzvah that we start putting on Tefillin de Rashi. The Rebbe says, "From this point forward, don't write to me about this. From this point forward, I'm giving everybody the answer in advance." No one needs to ask anymore whether they can put on Rabbeinu Tam. Do it yourself, and that's great, and you should have a lot of blessings for putting on Tefillin de Rabbeinu Tam. Everybody should have their own set of Rabbeinu Tam's Tefillin so that they'll be able to put it on just like that right after the Tefillin de Rashi. Um, he's also saying here, and he says this in

09:34 Speaker 1 a couple other Sechas, the Rebbe specifically wants us to put on our Rabbeinu Tam's Tefillin immediately after Rashi, so we won't forget to put them on that day. That's also why you have to own your own set. But there is a custom, especially among those of us who've gotten a little lax over the years, in that, you know, we'll finish Shacharis and put on Rabbeinu Tam later. Anybody who's ever tried that game knows that eventually you miss it. It's not good. It is, uh, the Rebbe's firm advice, shows up in a couple places, that we should be putting them on immediately after Shacharis. And he adds in this last paragraph here that, uh, that along with putting on more Tefillin, uh, in, in quantity, there also has to be an increase in quality, that you should be focusing even more on the Kevanas of Tefillin, and then hopefully this will lift everybody up together. So this is in Tifta Lamed-Vav when the big change came and the Rebbe told us, "Don't bother writing to me anymore. Um, from now on, I want everybody putting on Tefillin from the age of Bar Mitzvah." Now, the Rebbe pushed this, and the Rebbe pushed this in such a way that a lot of people understood that this was a Mitzvah, and I believe that they're right about that. The Rebbe wanted people to talk to other and possibly non too, about the importance of putting on Tefillin de Rabbeinu Tam. One question I'm not going to answer today

10:31 Speaker 1 because I have no idea the answer to it is why this isn't something that is a regular feature of Mitzvah. Why on the Mitzvah mobiles we aren't putting on Rashi's and Rabbeinu Tams on people, given that it sounds like the Tefillin de Rabbeinu Tam is very important for that purpose. I don't know exactly. I have some theories. We're not getting into it today. What I do wanna show you is a later Seph-- Secha from the Rebbe. This is Secha from Mem-Alef, Volume two, page two eighty-three. And in, uh, and in Mem-Alef-- I feel like Mem-Alef might have been printed in nicer print. Can't believe I got the bad one. But in any case, here the Rebbe talks about a Rosh Yeshiva that he spoke to. Says he spoke to a certain Rosh Yeshiva, and he asked the Rosh Yeshiva, "Why are you not telling your students to put on Tefillin?" So you see, you can read it here. It says, uh, "I was talking with a certain Rosh Yeshiva, and I asked him why he hasn't been pushing Rabbeinu Tam's Tefillin on his students. And he answered me that, uh, if he does bring this up to them, they're gonna say back that the Torah is something like three and a half thousand years old. It's been given about three and a half thousand years ago, and that, uh, Rabbeinu Tam himself, he lived about a couple hundred years ago, and the Beit Yosef, he lived a little bit before that, and the Rosh Yeshiva

11:31 Speaker 1 himself, he himself has been living for quite a few years, and he learns with us, uh, all the time. Uh, he learns with us several times a month. Uh, furthermore, maybe several times a week, several times a day, and, uh, all this time he has not, uh... Why all of a sudden? Why all of a sudden is he talking about Rabbeinu Tam?" So the Rosh Yeshiva says back to the Rebbe that, uh, "Torah has been around for a long time. I've been around for a long time. My students are gonna say, 'Where the sudden where the sudden did your in-- did your interest in Rabbeinu Tam's Tefillin come from?'" And what's the worst part, says the Rosh Yeshiva, Uh, the worst part is the smile that the students will give him, the way that they'll look at him, the way that they'll smirk happily when they tell the Rosh Yeshiva that they got him. So he says, "I can't tell my students this because they're gonna laugh at me," which is just a horrible answer. The, uh, Rebbe goes on to say, the Rebbe actually had been talking about earlier in the sifra about not being afraid of other people when it comes to doing mitzvahs. The first thing in Shulchan Aruch is not to be embarrassed in front of others. But the Rebbe continues to say, he says this is brought in Sifrei Moser. I don't know where in Sifrei Moser this is brought because the footnote doesn't tell us. Says in Sifrei Moser,

12:33 Speaker 1 it says, "Kibah kam hargu isha vetzenim achru sher," that with their, with their anger, they killed a person. Says in Sifrei Moser that this means with the crinkling of a nose, with the, uh, with the kremete nose. And so when you crinkle your nose, that's be'apham, that with the crinkle of a nose, you can kill a person. Says in Sifrei Moser that's talking about the neveshe hakdes and the neveshe hamas, but it looks like over here that he was afraid to tell his students about tefillin deRabbeinu Tam because he was afraid they would crinkle their nose at him, and with a crinkle of a nose, you can kill somebody. So, uh, the Rebbe is not happy with this answer, and obviously wants this rasheshiva to be pushing tefillin deRabbeinu Tam, which I think is evidence of the Rebbe pushing this outside of Chabad. Also, the Rebbe gives an answer to the most common question on tefillin deRabbeinu Tam. If you try to talk to your friends about this, especially your knowledgeable friends who are not Lubavitchers, they will probably tell you that it is not their minhag. It's not our minhag to put on tefillin deRabbeinu Tam. The Rebbe does not accept this at all. Um, "De'nach ve'ata taina yedua as minhag avoseinu v'yadenu," when it comes to the well-known taina, I'm not gonna change things because "minhag avoseinu v'yadenu," it's our family custom not to put on tefillin. Um, "Mikvinin tzadik avoseinu z'al lo layin tefillin." Uh, I need to move things over.

13:32 Speaker 1 "DeRabbeinu Tam. Nit gezene, zein tate un zeide." I didn't see it by my father, I didn't see it by my zeide, I didn't see it by my alte zeide. They never put on tefillin. Uh, they never put on tefillin. So "Avoseinu aver oych nit gehat ken kar." Says your avoseinu, your fathers who didn't put on tefillin, they also didn't have a car. They also didn't have newspapers. They also didn't take, uh, photographs and put those pictures inside newspapers or inside multiple newspapers. They weren't modern people. When it comes to "Inyanei reshus," he says, when it comes to inyanei reshus and inyanei hevel, which are what all of these inyanim are, uh, he's very careful to make sure that he's always at the cutting edge. He always gets every minhag kadesh. The new iPhone comes out, he grabs it immediately. He doesn't worry about "minhag avoseinu v'yadenu." When it comes to hevel, when it comes to reshus, people are very excited about the newest, latest thing. When it comes to Rabbeinu Tam, suddenly you go, "I'm old-fashioned." "Minhag avoseinu v'yadenu," and the Rebbe completely rejects this argument. Don't tell me that it was your family custom when you're not keeping your family customs across the board. There's another sifra where he says something equally sharp, and he goes, "You know, your, uh, your, uh, your great-great-grandparents had beards, too, so maybe, uh, maybe put, maybe put those on before you tell me you're not putting on a Rabbeinu Tam tefillin." So the Rebbe soundly rejects

14:39 Speaker 1 the "minhag avoseinu v'yadenu" discussion. Based on this, Cha-Chassidim did go out and try to convince other people to put on Rabbeinu Tam tefillin. The most famous example of this is Rav Herschel Spritzer. Does-- do people here know Rav Herschel Spritzer? I don't. But, uh, Rav Herschel Spritzer was one time on an airplane, and, uh, and he was sitting next to a frum Yid, and he asked, "Do you wanna learn a little Torah together?" Which by the way, there is a Chassidim, we feel like it's our job always to be am ha'aretz, which it is. But in addition to that, if you find yourself on an airplane near, near a frum Yid, that means you should be learning Torah with that Yid, not just finding the non-frum Yid to put tefillin on. So this is a good Chassid. So he says he wanna learn some Torah together. It turns out this is Rav Moshe Tendler. It turns out this is Rav Moshe Feinstein's son-in-law, Rav Moshe Tendler, who lived in Monsey, Rav Moshe Tendler, alav ha-shalom, who died recently, uh, who, who I learned under. I learned, I learned under him, so, um, a personal connection. Okay, so he's learning with Rav Tendler. He tells Rav Tendler, "You know, the Rebbe has been pushing, uh, checking mezuzahs. He's been pushing things like this and that." And he tells Rav Tendler about them, and Rav Tendler becomes interested and tells him, "Fine, you can check our mezuzahs." Because of that, he made a connection with him, and

15:35 Speaker 1 later on in Lamov-Lavov, when the Rebbe came out with this Rabbeinu Tam sifra, the Rav Herschel Spritzer went to Rav Tendler and said, "I wanna talk to Rav Moshe about maybe getting you guys to all start with Rabbeinu Tam tefillin." Rav Tendler didn't think it was gonna go over, but he met with Rav Moshe, and Rav Moshe said that he would do it if it was to his specifications, but he wanted everything to go through the Rebbe. He wanted the Rebbe to choose the sefer. He wanted "Kesav Bei Yosef," which is the minhag Ashk'naz, oddly enough, and, uh, and there was nobody willing to write a Rabbeinu Tam tefillin nowadays. Good luck getting "Kesav Bei Yosef" and Rabbeinu Tam tefillin. They're hard to find. He wanted a bunch of interesting conditions on how exactly he wanted it written, a laundry list of ways he wanted it done, and, uh, he-- and, uh, Rav Herschel Spritzer ran back to the Rebbe and told him this. The maskiros woke Rav Eliyahu Zerkin at midnight to arrange this. They called him to the-- they called him to seven seventy at midnight, says that, "Rav Moshe wants Rabbeinu Tam tefillin. The Rebbe trusts only you. You go and take care of this." However, they forgot to tell him what time he was supposed to meet Rav Moshe. We know this from an interview in Kfar Chabad that Rav Tendler did. Rav Tendler says that the following morning at six o'clock in the morning, he knocks on Rav Moshe's door,

16:32 Speaker 1 which is when he used to go to see his father-in-law, and he sees a Lubavitcher sleeping on the floor in the hallway outside Rav Moshe's front door. And he says to him, "What are you doing sleeping there?" And he says, "I was told to come to Rav Moshe, but I didn't wanna wake him up too early. I didn't know what time he wakes up, so I've just been sitting here all night." So finally, they let him in. He arranged with, uh, with Rav Moshe exactly how to write the Rabbeinu Tam tefillin, and r- a week later, Rav Moshe had his tefillin, and this was specifically organized by the Rebbe. So, uh, in that, um, immediate after he received the tefillin, Rav Moshe wrote a long letter to the Rebbe describing his relationship with the Rabbeinu Tam tefillin and how important it was to him that he finally had a set, and, uh, that letter is incredibly long. I showed this off at the beginning of this year. It is, uh, it's out of print as far as I can... Oh, never mind. It's not out of print. You can find it in Igros Moshe. So you can find the letter in Igros Moshe. The Rebbe's response is what's out of print. The letter is in Igros Moshe. It's in volume six. I forget what page, but if you ask me on the WhatsApp group, I'll tell you. It is printed in the Sefer Shut Minchas Moshe. It's also printed in Shemen Sasson Lecha V'recha. I

17:25 Speaker 1 think you can find it there. But it's in Igros Moshe. It's long. It's a long letter. Uh, I read through it. I wanna just give you some of the highlights from the letter that Rav Moshe wrote the Rebbe. The Rebbe-- Rav Moshe writes that, "When I was notified that the, uh, that the great Gaon is promoting tefillin of Rabbeinu Tam, I thought that it was important that I should write down how grateful I am and also my reasoning in agreeing to put them on, too." He says, "When I used to live in the old country, I had a mehudar set of Rabbeinu Tam tefillin. I put it on every day after davening," says Rav Moshe. "I used to do it. And when I came to America, for a little while, I found a good set." But after a while, he says he was unable to get a set that he felt was reliable, and he stopped for something like fifty years. He tells a whole long story of how he started, how he stopped, how he wished he could have done it again. And he said, "Now, recently, I was notified in the name of the Rebbe that he has an expert sofer who can take care of my needs, so-- and do the parshios exactly the way I want." Said, "This is an incredible thing. I can finally fulfill the mitzvah the way that my minhag always was." The Rebbe wrote back to this letter, and this is, as far as I know, completely

18:15 Speaker 1 out of print. I was unable to find this letter anywhere except for this old book on my shelf that I think I've never opened before. So this is Hashkafah Presents that I've been sitting on for fifteen years, that I bought this book ago and never opened it. The Rebbe did write back to Rav Moshe. It is not printed in Igros. So since this is an Igros shiur, of course, we are going to end off with a letter from the Rebbe. Here is a letter from the Rebbe where the Rebbe writes back to Rav Moshe after arranging his tefillin for him and after receiving this letter from Rav Moshe Feinstein. The Rebbe writes Huh. After saying hello. The Rebbe says that I've received now a second letter from Rav Moshe, and I don't know what the first one was. I think the first one was where he was requesting the tefillin perhaps, and the second one was this long letter I told you about the printing of this Moshe. I wanna start with to, uh, thank you for all the and all of the greetings that you sent me. It's all over the place in the Torah. That anybody gives a berakhah called remember that year. Look at that. The Rebbe does his classic thank you for your berakhahs, you're gonna get even more back for giving them to me, and he says, "You'll find this in Masachas Berakhos." He brings the Maamar Ha'temim. You should have long life and good years. Says, "I also really

19:33 Speaker 1 appreciated your letter." In that letter, the parts that I didn't read to you are a back and forth halakhically on the So Moshe wrote this letter to the Rebbe. That's probably why the printed Niggas Meshech has a lot of halakha in it. So the Rebbe is thanking him for his Torah that he put in the and I'm thanking you for your Maskana, which is that people should be putting on Ribono tam tefillin. So, uh, I'm, I'm thankful for the Maskana that Moshe reached, and indeed, this is printed in Niggas Meshech. So I wonder if his students put on Ribono tam tefillin because the letter with him supporting it is clearly there. Certainly, somebody puts on tefillin, God pays them back in kind, specifically by giving them very long years. which is found in Berakhos nafdaled. The Rebbe is just throwing in Maamar Ha'temim. specifically when it comes to the arm, which is right next to the heart, and the reis, which is next to the mind. He gives Rav Moshe a berakhah that because he now has a better set of tefillin, an additional set of tefillin that allows him to connect to both his heart and his mind, that he should be an even better posek, and that he'll be able to a berakhah that was certainly fulfilled in who was arguably the posek gadol the Rebbe's holy signature. So what we have from the second half today, what we started discussing today, and what we've finished off with our inyan of Ribono tam

20:56 Speaker 1 tefillin, is that the Rebbe sort of grappled with the idea of having every-- by making a mitzvah, Ribono tam tefillin for everybody, starting at the age of bar mitzvah up until the year tamush lamad vav. In lamad vav, the Rebbe released a sicha explaining why he felt that it was time now specifically, specifically because of the darkness of Galus, because we're surrounded by more secular influences, and because we're sometimes in more physical danger. But now was the right time to really be pushing tefillin of Ribono tam. In response to this, people bothered the Rebbe about it. There were Rash Yeshivot said they were too embarrassed to talk to his students about it. There were Ashkenazim who said, we're not gonna change our custom. The Rebbe had answers to both of them that were quite convincing, and the Rebbe didn't just talk about it. The Rebbe himself was involved in this mitzvah, specifically with the posek adar encouraging Rav Moshe Feinstein to adopt tefillin de-Ribono tam, something that Rav Moshe was very grateful for and printed a letter in response to, in which the Rebbe, in turn, responded to with a, with significant berakhos. Okay. That's it.

22:02 Speaker 2 So bottom line, we're supposed to, we're supposed to get people to put on Ribono tam?

22:06 Speaker 1 Yeah, I think so. I think so. It's clearly a mitzvah to get people to put on Ribono tam tefillin. Um, I have a theory that the reason why we don't do this on, on mitzvah tanks, if you're curious, the reason why we don't do this widely to non-frum Yidden is because the Rebbe does say in a lot of places that he doesn't want anybody starting Ribono tam tefillin unless they have a set and will never miss a day. There's a real strong idea once you start to not stop. Whereas tefillin de-Rashi is sort of a one-off mitzvah that you can get away with, it sounds like Ribono tam is supposed to be a permanent thing. So I, I think that the mitzvah for Ribono tam is only for people who are shy of to getting a set and wearing it every day. But if somebody's shy of to getting a set and wearing it every day, yeah, we should be talking to everybody about it.

22:41 Speaker 2 So there's no mit-- there's, there's, there's no mitzvah to, um, to get a frum Yid to put it on once.

22:48 Speaker 1 You could think-- The mefarshim say that a kar-- that they're a karkafta until they do. You would think maybe, yeah. But in the s-- in the footnote from the Rebbe where he says that it's clearly not the Alter Rebbe shita that they're a karkafta, that would sort of settle it from our perspective. The Rebbe says it's very clear the Alter Rebbe doesn't hold that someone who's never put Ribono tam on is a karkafta. So, uh, given that that's our Maskana, I, I don't think there's any inyan to get somebody to put on a Ribono tam tefillin once. But it does seem there's a strong inyan to encourage people to put the-- to get somebody to put it on permanent.

23:19 Speaker 2 Um, it's interesting because I know in the-- in some Hasidic circles, only family, like, directly related to their Rebbes put it on. I have somebody that I provide services for in U-square, a few people, and they do it. They put on Ribono tam, but only because they're direct related to the Rebbe over here or something like that, and they only put it in in the afternoon right before Mincha or something. Just, just interesting too. I don't know where it comes from.

23:51 Speaker 3 I thought, I thought most Hasid, uh, most Hasidim do, uh, put it on after they get married.

23:59 Speaker 2 That could be true, yeah.

24:00 Speaker 1 I was gonna say that too, but apparently in U square they do it a little differently.

24:02 Speaker 3 He's referring to people that are bachurim that are not yet married, not yet .

24:06 Speaker 2 Bachurim that are not yet married, yeah.

24:08 Speaker 1 Ah.

24:13 Speaker 2 All right. Have a good day, everybody.

24:15 Speaker 1 Good day.

24:15 Speaker 3 One more comment I have is that, um, the story that you said about Rav Moshe and the tefillin, so I heard that story from his grandson directly, and it's almost word for word what you said. And actually, his grandson, who lives in Monsey, wears those Ribono tam every single day.

24:28 Speaker 1 Really? The same tefillin?

24:30 Speaker 3 He has the-- Yeah.

24:30 Speaker 1 Wow.

24:31 Speaker 3 Mor-Mordechai Tendler. Mordechai Tendler has the Ribono tam tefillin, and he wears them every single day.

24:35 Speaker 1 That is amazing.

24:36 Speaker 3 Rav Moshe's Ribono tam.

24:38 Speaker 1 That is amazing.

24:38 Speaker 3 He told me that himself. Yeah.

24:41 Speaker 1 I didn't know that. Wow.

24:43 Speaker 3 Yeah, he has them, so it's a good story. Except he said the story with him. He said that he was bringing his grandfather in the morning and, and, and he saw the Rebbe just sleeping on the floor, but-

24:53 Speaker 1 Ah.

24:53 Speaker 3 Whatever.

24:54 Speaker 1 In the-

24:55 Speaker 3 Anybody can take credit.

24:55 Speaker 1 In Machzot Chayil magazine, I believe it was that Moshe Tendler was in the interview. I wonder now if I misread it and it was Mordechai Tendler. I, I think it was Rav Moshe in the interview.

25:03 Speaker 3 It's all good. Have a great day. Thank you very much.

25:06 Speaker 1 Thank you.

25:07 Speaker 2 Thank you.