איפה לגור

00:03 Speaker 1 And we are looking at a letter from Yud Tammuz, tav shin lamed gimel. So that is almost exactly fifty years ago. We're on track. The letter is Yud tav tav kaf beis, and here the Rebbe answers someone, or I guess a family, a couple, who are having a debate, maybe an argument, I don't know how serious it was, over where exactly they should live. So the Rebbe writes, "Vemaaina l'shelei sar," in response to the question that was asked. "Pashut, she'en kenai lafriah inyan ikari v'eseh v'shalom bayis al yede inyan she'ein bo esei chashivus klal makom hadira." The Rebbe says, "First of all, don't confuse what's important in life. Shalom bayis is very important, and where you live is not as important. It's simply not an ikar. Where a person chooses to live is not a m-- is not an inyan ikari with the same chashivus as shalom bayis." So we have to understand we're dealing with... And peop-people sometimes say, "Well, you know, I, on one hand, I have where I wanna live, and on the other hand, I have the happiness of my wife or the happiness of my husband." The Rebbe says, "You're, you're, you're putting two things on the same level that don't belong on the same level. Shalom bayis is enshrined as one of the top priorities in your life, and makom hadira, where exactly you're going to live, while it might be important, is not to be enshrined at the level of shalom bayis. So first of all, don't conf-

01:11 Speaker 1 don't confuse the two." And therefore, "Al echadam l'shanas daatai, ulehaskim b'lev av shalom," it is the responsibility of one of the two of you, husband or wife, to change their mind, "ulehaskim b'lev av shalom," and then to, and then, and then to agree with a complete heart, "b'lev ad sh'nas sheini," to what the other one wants, "l'asot es behetem," and then to do accordingly. So the Rebbe says, "You guys are gonna have to decide who's going to be the one who gives in and who's gonna be the one who gets their way. But don't forget, shalom bayis is the important thing here. Where you live, not so important. So one of you should just give in to the other one's request and, uh, and, and, and enshrine shalom bayis as the top priority." He then says in note two here that, "Nasiyach l'chol ha'aretz zeh ein keda'i klal," that they shouldn't travel to chol ha'aretz, and we really might one day do a share just on the letters that the Rebbe said, "I don't want you to travel to, uh, chol ha'aretz," 'cause it's like, it's like note two on half the letters that we look at sometimes. Um, but that's not what we're talking about today. Uh, and he says, "Diyuk min ha'netaras hamishpacha." That last line down there, uh, we can't-- we can never know exactly why the Rebbe writes things to people. We just don't. But I have a really good guess. In, I don't know, eighty percent, ninety percent of shalom

02:12 Speaker 1 bayis-related letters, the Rebbe puts something about checking your taaras hamishpacha to make sure taaras hamishpacha is in order. When families argue, uh, the Rebbe almost always, at least gently and sometimes very overtly, says that if you're fighting with your wife a lot or your wife's fighting with you a lot, it's a time to double-check and make sure that the mikvah's okay and that, and that, and that, uh, harchakahs are being done properly and that taaras hamishpacha is being observed the way it should be. So I believe the diyuk min ha'netaras hamishpacha is because it's implied from the first half of the letter that they're having shalom bayis problems. Okay. What I wanna focus on today, though, is this point that the Rebbe makes at the very top, that is makom hadira is not so important and shalom bayis is very important, and that in this particular case, he said one of them should agree with the other. This is not actually the Rebbe's conventional advice when it comes to where to live. If you look on the supplemental sheet i sent you, it's also available on our screen right now, I'll make it a little bit bigger, but you have a couple letters where the Rebbe lays out guidelines on where exactly to live. So if the couple's not arguing, if no one's having a fight, and they're just trying to decide where to live, all things being equal, the Rebbe has two priorities you'll find in many letters. I just pulled a couple examples,

03:13 Speaker 1 but they're all over the place. Priority number one is that it should be a place where there are people who keep Torah and mitzvahs. He wants you to move into a town full of frum people, to live in communities with other religious Jews. And the second thing that he puts in a lot of his letters is that people-- is that whoever's working should live close to their place of work because commutes can be a real pain, and commutes can get in the way of avodas Hashem. So I have two letters here that illustrate that. This one up here is, uh... I actually didn't write the volume, did I? I thought I did. Okay, I didn't write the volume. But it is letter Yud Mem Beis. Uh, I don't know what volume that's in. The Rebbe says, uh, "Zman hachasuna achas isha shiruch haraz mi mishubach." He's happy with the arrangements for the marriage. "Makom di yirasam," when it comes to where the young couple is going to live, "bisivah veshem b'torah and mitzvahs k'movan," it is self-understood that this should be in an area where there are Torah and mitz-- where there are people who keep Torah and mitzvahs. This letter is from Yud Dalet Ey Rav Tav Shin Lamed Alef. The letter is Yud Kuf Mem Ches. Uh, the Rebbe says, "Yudua maimar chakmei bazal she'adira tzarch li yesh v'shfonas Yehudim yirei shamayim b'kami Torah u'mitzvos." It is well understood and well known that Chazal said that a-- that people should be living in

04:14 Speaker 1 places where there are Yehudim, there are Yidden who k- uh, who fear heaven and keep Torah and mitzvahs. "Bechakam hazeh yiku makom di yirasom," and based on this, this is where you should live. Live in a place where there is yiras shamayim, where there is Torah, and there is mitzvahs. And he also tells them, "Check the mezuzahs." And down here in this letter, this is from Tav Shin Yud Dalet, the letter is Beis. "Tov, ayin, tes," the Rebbe says, "Ve sheiloso eidas makom sfiras hadira," if you're asking me where you should move in, where you should live, "henko moven she'eish li shtadl she'adira tihiye b'snikus lamakom avedasi." I think you should try to make sure that it's close to where you work. "She'zeh lo yak mirat tircha ba lichah makom lamakom." This doesn't only, uh, this doesn't only reduce the amount of time you'll spend getting from place to place. The commute gets cut down. "Ela k'zman ben hamushpa'yim haraz amese v'chizuk ba hashpaha k'movan." Also, in this case, he was talking to someone who was working, working in kedosh and saying he should live near the place where his, uh, students are, where the people he's having an impact are, because he can also affect them personally if he's closer to them. Uh, I just wanna point out one thing before I go on to the next thing, and it is, uh, it is this point up here where the Rebbe says over and over again to people they should live in places where

05:13 Speaker 1 there are frum Yidden. Uh, I, I thought I saw some people on the Zoom at least, I thought I saw some eyebrows go up. Obviously, there's the idea of shlichus, and obviously there's the idea that I've pushed very hard that our best and our brightest should go out to places where there is no yiras shamayim yet and no Torah mitzvahs yet, and make them places that are full of yiras shamayim and Torah mitzvahs. It is, uh, it is my strong personal opinion, and I think I can prove it from letters and from sifras, that unless somebody is on shlichus, they're not allowed to live in a place where there's not frum Yidden, that there's basically two kivunim here. A person can choose to be a shliach, and I don't mean in the sense that everybody's a shliach. I mean, they can choose to officially be a full-time shliach who's dedicated to changing their area completely, or they can set up in an Anash community. But I, I don't, I don't necessarily for a Hasidim see a middle ground here. One of, one, one of my first few weeks here, um, somebody brought someone to Kiddush. It was a guest, so it's not somebody I've seen since. And the guest told me that he was moving-- that he was, uh, that he'd just gotten married, and he was interested in moving to a place that was a little bit out of, out, out of town, um, near a shliach and wanted to know my advice on

06:09 Speaker 1 this. I don't know why he asked my advice. I'd only been here like three weeks. I guess somebody knew that I was from out of town, asked what I thought about such things. And, and I told him, "I-- first of all, the shliach doesn't want you. You're totally wrong. No, no shliach wants a mem-- wants, wants a Hasid moving next door to them. But second of all, I don't think it's what the Rebbe wants." The Rebbe, in every letter that he's not writing to shluchim sending them on shlichus, is telling people that ideally they should be living in a place that is full of Torah and mitzvahs, where there are yeshivas, where there are chaburans, where there are che-- where there are Hasidish or chabadim. I'm not sure there's a heter for someone to live out of town, uh, next to a shliach and not, um, not in a frum community unless they are themselves on shlichus. Okay. That's when it comes to general advice on where to live. However, frequently people disagree on where to live, and they write to the Rebbe about their disagreements Found a couple examples here of the Rebbe responding to that, and he has a pretty consistent answer you find in a couple places. You'll find this one in volume sixteen, page thirty-six. Uh, and the, the long story short is that the woman usually gets to win these arguments in the Rebbe's letters. Usually, he gives this one to the women. So in this letter, he explains, if

07:07 Speaker 1 you're asking me about the place you should live, that we generally it's brought in many places that we take into account what a woman wants more than what the man wants when it comes to where people live, when it comes to where to live. If you can, through , through, uh, pleasant ways, convince her to continue living where you're living right now, that's great. He's writing to a man. Especially since, as you tell me, you've been living there already for two years, and it's worked okay. But if you really can't convince your wife to stay in the place where you are right now, you should do what she wants because it's brought in a lot of places that when it comes to the , she gets precedence in deciding where people are going to live. There's a that I was able to find on so I don't believe this is in Igris yet, but it is a . This is the words of the Rebbe. This is the Rebbe-- or the Rebbe's-- the writing of the Rebbe. When it comes in general to where people live and where they buy a house, . Generally speaking, we don't force a woman to do, to do what, uh, to do what the husband wants because she is called the . So in a lot of cases, although in our letter, the Rebbe says that one of them is going to have to decide because shalom bayis is more important than everything else. When the Rebbe was called

08:24 Speaker 1 in to arbitrate and decide whether the woman or the man gets what they, gets what they want, assuming i, i, i bet, assuming most other things being equal, you know, if she wants to move to a, to, to a slum where there's no Yiddish guy, and he wants to live in Bnei Brak, I'm not sure that's the Rebbe's answer. But all things being equal, you're looking at two places that are valid for a Hasidish family to live, and they can't agree, the Rebbe very frequently sides with the woman on this particular issue. I do wanna point out that that's not exclusively the case. If you look in volume twenty-nine, page two eighty, the Rebbe says sort of the other thing back to a woman writing to him. She wrote to the Rebbe asking if they should keep living in Tzemach or to make Aliyah to Eretz Yisrael. They should certainly do what's best for the Yiddishkeit of their family. Says, uh, of course, the most important thing needs to be shalom bayis, which means that you will need to get the ascent of your husband. So we can only put a lot of these letters together, I think, is that the Rebbe's top priority, and I, I think even above shalom bayis, the top priority is that the house should be in a place that is matching to Yiddishkeit, that it should be a-- that the person should live in a place where they have a Jewish community, where they have people of Yiddish, Chabad,

09:33 Speaker 1 and Torah mitzvahs. Once that's been decided that we're definitely gonna live in a place that's frum, and the question is where to live, the main advice that the Rebbe gives us, don't fight over it. Because shalom bayis is f-- all things being equal, if both places are valid places to raise a family, valid places to live, then shalom bayis transcends everything else, and somebody should give in. But if somebody has to give in, it should be, it should be the guys. The men should, generally speaking, give in over the women because when it comes to where a house should be, this is something that is-- this is something that's given, uh, given mainly to the , given mainly to the . That said, it also has to be behetem of the entire couple, so they do have to ultimately agree on it. Um, that is a, that is a long piece of advice, right? But I think that that's the way that it works. If you had to put it in a sentence, they have to live in a frum place. If either way they're gonna live in a frum place, and they're just arguing about where to live, stop arguing. Shalom bayis is more important. If you really can't stop arguing, the woman's going to win, but she needs to make sure that her husband's okay with it because that will just cause more problems down the line. Is i think if you put it all together, the Rebbe's very consistent advice when it

10:31 Speaker 1 comes on picking-- when it comes to picking a house. I will point out that the Rebbe doesn't always side with the woman. Um, i was looking to... And we might, we might do this as the Shiur tomorrow. Just, uh, i, i was able to put together while preparing this a whole list of times that the Rebbe got involved in shalom bayis problems and who he sided with. The problem with that sort of Shiur and putting that together is it's hard to know the specific situation. Uh, but I have found a f-- couple consistent, uh, places where the Rebbe almost always seems to side with the man, and that is when it comes to inyanim having to do with the kedusha of his family. So when men wrote to the Rebbe saying that they wanted their women, that they wanted their wives to cover their hair a certain way, this wasn't between sheitel or non-sheitel. It was sheitel versus hat or sheitel versus tichel. Uh, the Rebbe generally let it follow the husband over the wife, even though it was her hair covering. When it came to cheder, when it comes to school choice, um, and when the, when the, when the wife wanted to send their children one place and the husband a different place, even when it seems the two schools are equal when it comes to Yiddishimayim, the Rebbe, generally speaking from the letters i've seen, says to go where the husband thinks the children should go because presumably he's the one who's

11:28 Speaker 1 most in charge of educating his children. So the Rebbe does seem to have a very subtle take on how you split who gets slight precedence in these arguments. But I think really the guiding light of all family arguments and all disagreements between a husband and wife is probably our first letter, the letter from Tuf Shin Lamed Gimel, that is our main letter for today, which is that don't forget these th-- uh, the-- every-everything's somewhat important, but nothing is as important as the most important thing. The most important thing usually is shalom bayis, not always the most, but it's up there. And a lot of these things are, are pratim. My, my, my mother has an expression that she used to say all the time in our house. I don't know where she got it from. It's not hers. But she used to say, "Don't, don't, don't sweat the small stuff. Everything is the small stuff." I don't know where she got that from. She says, "Don't get involved in the small things." The truth is, most things are small things. Uh, people that... While, while where a person lives is something that is relatively important, as mentioned in letters as being something that we have to look into, uh, a person can very easily get so absorbed in that that they forget that the most important thing in the house is not necessarily where the house is, but what's going on within the walls of the house and whether there is shalom bayis. Uh, ending

12:28 Speaker 1 a little bit early today, but that's all the letters i have for you. We can discuss.

12:33 Speaker 2 I have a-- go back to the first letter, an interesting about the first letter. When the Rebbe's talking to her, right? So when it's to a woman. When he says, he doesn't say about he doesn't say one of them should. He says, he should change his mind.

12:50 Speaker 1 I didn't notice that. That's really funny.

12:52 Speaker 2 Huh?

12:53 Speaker 1 I didn't notice that. That's great, Cyrili. That's a great-

12:55 Speaker 2 Yeah. The Rebbe's telling her, "Listen, one of you guys i-i-is-- he's gonna have to change his mind." Because which is the masculine, not in the "One of you guys is gonna have to change your mind. It could be either/or." He says, "No, no. ." That's, that's number one.

13:09 Speaker 1 It's an excellent number.

13:10 Speaker 2 Number two is in the similar, uh, vein, if you look at the last one, in the last, uh, thing over there, because the Rebbe before in earlier part says that it has to be right? You don't-- like the one before, he says, like, "Don't push her, don't force her." And if you go, I think earlier, the one a little bit earlier, scroll up a little bit, it has to be, uh, um, it has to be like or something. Yeah. Right? If you could do... So to the husband, he says, "You should do it ." But the final one when he says to the wife, he doesn't say he just says, "You have to get his haskamah." Which means that maybe not even the woman has to get the husband's haskamah somehow, and the way that women know how to get a haskamah sometimes even without that . Again, it's maybe a little tongue-in-cheek, but it's an interesting thing as i was picking up on as we were reading it