לעזוב את הלימודים באוניברסיטה

00:00 Speaker 1 Okay, let's do it. This is Icarus. Today we're talking about something that is a, I guess a prat in a bigger claw. We've talked before about the Rebbe's approach to secular studies. We'll probably at some point do a proper share just on the Rebbe's approach to college, to college studies. Uh, to make a long story short, maybe make a short story short, the Rebbe is not a fan of college, as I'm sure many of us know, and, uh, I'm, I'm not here to, I'm not here to change that. Uh, the Rebbe from the beginning, um, across sichas, across letters, across all of his written material, across Yichidas, if you ask the Rebbe to go to college, he usually says no. That's the general rule. He has-- There are exceptions to the rule, but generally speaking, the Rebbe does not send people to college. In response to the claim that people can't make money without going to college, the Rebbe says that's ridiculous, and he, uh, he decries that in multiple sichas. In response to the idea that they need to be well-rounded, that they need to know this information, the Rebbe in at least one sicha refers to people who have secular knowledge as spiritual and faith-based cripples, that they are crippled because of the secular knowledge that they have. So the Rebbe has no particular love for college and, uh, no particular shitah that people should be going to college. However, what we're going to look at today is a series of letters where

01:06 Speaker 1 the Rebbe told people to stay in college and to finish and get their degrees. Because an important note about the Rebbe's shitah on college, a subtlety that I don't know that everybody's aware of, is that while the Rebbe was almost never a fan of sending somebody to college, once you were there, you could not leave. The Rebbe almost never gave anybody permission to leave college, as even if they wanted to go study Torah, even if they wanted to go to yeshiva, the Rebbe would give them permission to come for a couple of months or a year or so, and then he would tell them to go back and finish their degree. So once somebody was there, they were not getting out of it. This is, uh, very clear as far as the Rebbe's shitah goes. Today, we're gonna look at two letters in our volume, in volume twenty-eight from the year Tav Shin Lammed Gimel, that reflect this position, and then we're gonna-- I'm going to tell you stories from, I think something like seven yichidases, where, uh, where people asked the Rebbe for permission to leave college and were denied. So that's our, that's our, uh, g- those are our goals for today-

01:53 Speaker 2 My fa-my father, my father would be number eight.

01:55 Speaker 1 Oh, yeah? Okay, please add yours at the end. The p-- Yours, yours is not on my list. I would have told you if yours was on the list. I don't have that one. Like, it's not in my story yet, I guess. Okay. At the end, please tell me it. This is the year from-- this is, uh, from Tav Shin Lammed Gimel. The letter is Yud Tav Tav Ayin Alef. This is not somebody who's writing about wanting to go to yeshiva or anything like that. It's just somebody who says they don't wanna be in college anymore. So we're gonna skip the top of the letter and look right down at the PS. Uh, it's not really a PS here. They didn't put-- there's no nun beis. It's just the Rebbe signature. And then it says here, "Kidaish yamshich limudei chol ad sheyakabalah teudah." The Rebbe says, "I would like you to continue studying secular studies until you've received your certificate." Obviously, set aside time for Torah study every single day. The Rebbe says you must set aside time for Torah study every single day. However, this is the first time we see it in our share, at least, and this is, uh, this is from, uh, right around this time of year. This is Tes Vav Menachem Av Tav Shin Lammed Gimel. The Rebbe writes, "Kidaish yamshich limudei chol ad sheyakabalah teudah." It is appropriate for you to continue your secular studies until you've received a certificate. The major letter on this from the Rebbe is

03:02 Speaker 1 actually from our year as well, although it's a little bit later in the volume. There's no date on it, so they put it at the very end of Chaf Tes, but also in our volume from the year Tav Shin Lammed Gimel. The Rebbe writes to somebody who wanted to drop out of his PhD program so that he could, uh, go into the family business. Not so he could study Torah. He wanted to start the family business. And here the Rebbe reveals his, uh, his, um... How do I wanna say this? The Rebbe reveals his, uh, his hashkafa when it comes to getting a degree that I think will help inform a lot of our other discussions. So this frames things. Here, the Rebbe writes, "self-respect." We have English on the page. "In order to succeed in any particular topic, if you want to succeed, you're going to need self-respect. Shall respect . You also need to have respect from people who determine whether you succeed. Your bosses, people who will hire you, people who wanna work with you, they need to respect you, too. You need help with the things you need help with. You need people to-- you need those people to respect you if they're going to help you. business character . This certainly applies, even more so applies in the area-- in the field of business, where a person's character really matters. People make business deals based on the character of the people they think they're doing the deal with. With

04:13 Speaker 1 that introduction, the Rebbe says, "PhD." Everybody knows you're in the middle of your PhD program. Everybody knows you're working toward this. And the Rebbe says, "Chas v'Shalom," regarding leaving a PhD program. Remember, this is the same Rebbe who tells people that they are under no circumstances to go to college, tells people if they're in a program, "Chas v'Shalom," they should leave one. "If Chas v'Shalom you leave your PhD program now, ." Many people will find out. They will say this to your father-in-law. They'll say this to your wife. They'll say this to everybody. The rumor will begin to spread that you don't have the energy, to do things that require hard work. That you just don't have the, uh, you don't have the fortitude to make it through difficult things. You're somebody who starts things and doesn't finish things. This rumor's gonna spread about you. And why aren't you embarrassed that people know this about you, that you're not somebody who can finish the things they start? Because you have no self-respect either. You found a way out. Now you found an easy way out that you can go work for your father-in-law's business. And therefore, you dropped out of everything now just to get out of hard work. So your reputation's on the line. People are going to say that you can't finish things that you start, and the fact that you're not embarrassed is because not even you respect yourself, and that you just tried to take the easy way out

05:31 Speaker 1 by dropping out of your program to join your father-in-law's business. The Rebbe is not saying this is true. The Rebbe is saying this is what people will say, and that alone is a reason not to do it. Therefore, it is absolutely necessary PhD to continue your studies until you receive your PhD. The Rebbe is not letting him drop out. And after you've gotten your PhD, then you wanna go into business with your father-in-law, that's the time to talk about it with your father-in-law. Don't come to me or your father-in-law with this until you've finished your studies. Uh, if-- I guess this person had requested to come visit the Rebbe in person to discuss this, but Rebbe says in regards to your question, "Can we discuss this in person?" The Rebbe says, "" There's no point in talking to me about it in person. I've made myself completely clear. Uh, and as far as you're concerned about damage it might cause, I assume this means the damage that secular studies causes, which the Rebbe talks about often. I don't-- uh, in truth is I'm not sure what the is. I have no idea. But anyway, he says it would be better when it comes to the, uh, when it comes to you delivering this news that you're gonna remain in the program, it is much more-- it is much better that it come from you and that you tell people that you decided to continue the program yourself, and not that people will say that

06:47 Speaker 1 you wanted to drop out and that it was because of the Rebbe that I didn't drop out. That would not be a good thing because then again, that makes sense. He says , and it does make sense since the whole concern here is that people are gonna talk about him saying that he was ready to give up on something difficult until the Rebbe got in the way, won't make his reputation any better. So we do have a in this letter, though, and the is that people who start things are supposed to finish them. I don't think this just applies to education. I mean, obviously, if somebody's doing something horrible, if something's-- if somebody's doing something that's an , the Rebbe wouldn't say this. Which by the way, I, I-- this is, um, this is on pseudo-Yiddish territory, but notice no matter how the Rebbe says college is, the fact that he's not telling people to stop means that he can't possibly see it as an . Because if it's , would take priority over everything. If a person is in the middle of, of eating tray, from the middle of being , the Rebbe won't say, "Well, look, you started, you gotta finish." So obviously this doesn't have the same as other things. That's, uh, something to note. Um, the, uh-- in addition to that though, what I'm noting here that's most important is that, uh, is that the Rebbe feels that dropping out of college, dropping out of a PhD program, dropping out of

07:45 Speaker 1 studies, and really not finishing something you start shows a lack of self-respect because people will find out about it and you don't care, and shows that you're the kind of person who starts and doesn't finish. Even though the Rebbe's not saying that's who this person is, but that that's what people see, I don't think the Rebbe would raise an un-- a, a ridiculous, a ridiculous claim here. He says that's what it, that's what it shows. What it shows is that these people don't have that kind of fortitude, and that's not the kind of person that you want to be. Uh, these two letters, neither of them necessarily were talking to people who were interested in learning Torah. However, we have many, many stories of people who became baal teshuva through college or shortly before or after college. They were already involved in the programs, and they came to the Rebbe asking for a way out. They wanted to leave college or leave their PhD programs, or leave their graduate studies so they could go learn in yeshiva. And the Rebbe said, "No." I found, uh, seven examples, and Sruly's promising us an eighth at the end, so I gotta make sure I leave time for that one. I'm excited. The first one I have for you is Professor Albert Titlebaum. A lot of these are in Gem videos or on Gem write-ups. A bunch of them, however, are also in, uh, Taluskin's book, uh, on the Rebbe. Taluskin's book on the Rebbe, I think chapter

08:42 Speaker 1 twenty-four, he does the Rebbe's take on college, and in there he has a section of people who he spoke to who told him stories about, uh, about how the Rebbe wouldn't let them drop out of college. So Professor Albert Titlebaum grew up in Montreal. Did you know him, Sruly? He'd be before your time, I think. Maybe you knew him by reputation, though. He's a McGill professor. I know he-- he's in my days, too. He's, he's- Oh, yeah? He's the grandfather of the Titlebaums in Montreal. There we go. The, the- I know him well ... might know him. Okay, so Professor Albert Titlebaum, he grew up in Montreal. He went to the Rebbe shortly after getting married and, uh, when he went to the Rebbe and visited him, he was told-- the Rebbe told him in yechidus that he should connect with Nissim Engel. So he went back to Montreal, he learned with Nissim Engel for a while, and he taught him and brought him up to speed. Meanwhile, he got himself a master's in mathema- in mathematics at McGill, which is in Montreal for those Americans in the room. And, uh, after that, after he finished his master's in mathematics, he asked the Rebbe if he could go to yeshiva. He really wanted to. He'd been learning with Nissim Engel for a while, and he wanted to learn in yeshiva full-time. And the Rebbe said, "Absolutely not. You have to go get your PhD." Um, while he was working on getting his PhD, so the

09:38 Speaker 1 Rebbe didn't even let him go to yeshiva. Um, the Rebbe told me I had to go back and he, and he finished his master's, so he wasn't even in the middle of a program of study. This was the Rebbe saying, "You have to finish your program of study for mathematics, which ends in a PhD. I want you to get a terminal degree." So the Rebbe sends him back to get his PhD. He writes to the Rebbe repeatedly that the PhD is taking him forever and his advisor's no good, and he never seems like he's gonna finish. And the Rebbe repeatedly told him things like, "The thesis takes time. Don't get frustrated. Nobody thinks these things go quickly. You'll get it done eventually." And eventually he did finish his PhD. Uh, another one we have, Dov Ber Klein. Dov Ber Klein, uh, this is also in a Gem video, also in a Gem print under the My Story columns. Uh, he graduated college from the University of London in social anthropology. He has just a fascinating story. He was a social anthropologist, which means he was interested in learning about different peoples and societies. He went around the world, and he was studying, um, natives in different countries and learning about these strange religions and black magic, a lot of that stuff. Uh, every time he would go to these places, they would ask him, "What's your religion back home?" And he was like, "Jewish, but I don't know what that is." That frustrated him after

10:37 Speaker 1 a while, so he talked to some friends about where he could learn more about Judaism, and they told him, "You should try learning with Chabad because they seem to be the friendlier ones." So just don't forget, we're supposed to be the happy ones. That's why people come to us. So, uh, go to Chabad, they're the happier ones. So he went to go learn in Kfar Chabad, and then he went to see the Rebbe in nineteen seventy-four. His yechidus with the Rebbe that he records is, uh, is great because in addition to the question we're about to talk about, he asked the Rebbe a bunch of questions about social anthropology, including asking the Rebbe if it was possible that he'd been cursed by black magic at some cour-- at some point over the course of his studies overseas. The Rebbe told him, "You don't have to worry about, about, about black magic as long as you study Shulchan Aruch." So you heard it first here, the cure to black magic is Shulchan Aruch. Anyway, in that same discussion, he asked the Rebbe about s-- about staying to, uh, about going to yeshiva and staying there. The Rebbe told him he can finish the year in yeshiva that he's in right now, but then he has to go and get himself a teaching degree so that he'll be able to use his college degree from the University of London to teach social anthropology. So the Rebbe sending somebody again to a terminal degree, even though they're in

11:33 Speaker 1 between degrees. We're gonna do a couple names now that you might be more familiar with. This is very famous, Yaakov Hanoika. Han- Hanoka, excuse me. Yaakov Hanoka. Um, you probably know his story. He's like the Rebbe's first-- He, he really started the-- He started modern baal teshuva, is a good way to put him. Der Haer one time put out an entire article on him. He was kind of the, uh, he was the test case in Chabad for, uh, putting a baal teshuva through the system in a lot of ways. In any case, he wanted to withdraw from Penn State when he finished a master's in, uh, ceramic technology. He was a physicist, and he was already enrolled in a PhD program in physics. So he finished his master's, he's in the middle of his PhD at Penn State, and, uh, and he wants to go to yeshiva. So he fi-- They, they, they, they make him they bring him to the Rebbe, and the Rebbe tells him he can't come to yeshiva at all until he finishes his semester at school. And then he tells him, "You can come after the end of the semester. You can take a semester off to study with us in yeshiva, but only on the condition that when you finish yeshiva, you'll return to finish your PhD." He tells the Rebbe in yechidus, "I don't wanna do that with my life. I've decided that I want to study in yeshiva, get smicha, and become a campus rabbi. I wanna

12:29 Speaker 1 go back to the colleges and inspire Jewish students." And the Rebbe said back, "You'll do more with three letters after your name than you will with any sort of smicha." And the Rebbe offered him a loan to finish his studies. He didn't take the loan as far as I know, but the Rebbe was intent on him finishing his PhD You'll find in the Talushkin book in chapter twenty-four, if you happen to have a, a copy of it, that, uh, Bernie Rader tells a story that there was a boy in London who was working on his master's degree. He told the Rebbe that he wanted to quit and join Yeshiva, and the Rebbe told him back, the quote here is, "You must finish your master's, otherwise the effort you've put in up until now has been a waste. You've wasted everything if you don't finish it." So the Rebbe was intent on him finishing his master's degree. Ben Zion Bernstein, who's a lawyer, uh, he's also recorded in the, uh, in the, in the, uh, Gem My Story section. He's also mentioned in the Talushkin book. He had started law school, and he wanted to drop out and go to Yeshiva or maybe take a break and go to Yeshiva. The Rebbe told him he's building a task force of frum professionals. People are gonna wear yarmulkes in the workplace and inspire people by being frum and being good at their jobs. And so he begged him, "Please don't do it." And he said, "If money

13:25 Speaker 1 is a problem, let me pay for it a little bit." So the Rebbe lent him, or gave him actually, gave him as a gift three years of a regular salary for his family so that he could finish law school and told him not to pay it back. This came directly from the Chabad offices. So this is, uh, he, he called it a scholarship fund, but it wasn't. It was out of the Rebbe's pocket or out of, I don't know, seven seventy's pocket. I don't know where the money came from, but it came from us. It came from Chabad, and he paid for three years of law school for him or paid for his li- living expenses for three years. And later on, when Ben Zion Bernstein made money, he ended up paying the Rebbe back because, again, he'd started something and the Rebbe wasn't about to let him finish. The most famous story of all is probably Yitzchak Block. I saved it for the end because it's such a fun story. He studied in seven seventy for a little bit, uh, in nineteen fifty-two during a summer, during a summer break between finishing his undergrad at Vanderbilt and starting Harvard, uh, for graduate school in philosophy. He met with the Rebbe, and they talked about Plato. He apparently was very impressed with the Rebbe at the time because the Rebbe kept referring to Plato as Platon, which is apparently how scholars, uh, who, who know the original Greek, uh, um, talk about him. So he

14:22 Speaker 1 felt the Rebbe must know the original text. He was very impressed. He met with the Rebbe and talked to him, and, um, he went back to-- Then he asked the Rebbe, should he go on to Harvard? And the Rebbe said, "Of course." So he went to Harvard. Uh, in the middle of his time at Harvard, remember he'd been to Yeshiva for a little bit, now he's at Harvard studying, uh, studying philosophy, uh, for-- in a graduate program, in a master's program. He finds that it's very difficult. They're all a lot smarter than him. He doesn't wanna do this anymore. So he comes back to seven seventy, and the way that he puts it is that the students saw him, and they were all, like, dancing around him and cheering that he's finally come back, he's gonna learn in Yeshiva, and he's done with this secular studies stuff, and the Rebbe found out. So they told-- he told the Rebbe, and the Rebbe said, "You're not welcome here. Get out of here." The Rebbe sent him back and told him he had to go back and finish his degree at Harvard, and that he was not allowed to come back to Yeshiva now. He had to finish. And when he told the Rebbe that he doesn't want to and he's bad at it, the Rebbe told him to be brave. Said, "Don't be so-- Don't, don't, don't be, uh-- You have to show a little bit of courage." So the Rebbe sent him back. He got

15:10 Speaker 1 his master's degree, but then he failed. Yitzchak Block failed his PhD entrance exams, and at that point, he said, "Okay, this is a sign from above that I'm not supposed to be doing this." And he again goes back to the Rebbe and says, "Look, I finished my master's like you told me. I failed the entrance degree for the PhD. I'm not getting in. Can I finally go to Yeshiva? I wanna become a rabbi." And the Rebbe said, "No, you're smart. You can do it. I want you to do it again." The Rebbe pushed him to take the test again, and he took it again and got in. And then every time he tried to drop out to go to Yeshiva, the Rebbe would nudge him to finish his thesis until he finally finished it in nineteen fifty-eight. When he finally finished his thesis in nineteen fifty-eight, the, uh, he writes to the Rebbe or talks to the Rebbe, I guess, because I don't think we have the letter. He talks to the Rebbe and tells the Rebbe that he wants to go to Yeshiva and get Smicha finally 'cause he's finished his thesis. And the Rebbe said, "You can come to Yeshiva for a little bit, but no Smicha." And the Rebbe said, "Lo met an alef." That's an-- That's no with a, uh, no with a capital N. You're absolutely not permitted to get Smicha. The Rebbe wanted him to specialize in whatever he was-- whatever he had worked on. Okay. So, uh, we

16:02 Speaker 1 have here many, many stories that I think from Yechidas and a couple letters that all illustrate a pretty clear sheet from the Rebbe that while the Rebbe is no fan of college, not only not a fan of college, the Rebbe finds secular studies and college studies and the college environment to be detrimental, to be harmful, to be, to be horrible. I mean, to be-- to, to cripple people for life is the way that he puts it in some of his sifas. Nonetheless, when people were already involved in it, I think it's safe to say that the Rebbe, once he saw people involved in it, sugge- sus-suspected or knew that because they were already there, that that was bash taachas pratas. And since it was bash taachas pratas that brought them into that situation, the Rebbe wasn't ready to remove them from that and throw them into Yeshiva. The Rebbe wanted them to use that space and use that expertise to spread Yiddishkeit. So whereas the Rebbe would almost never give somebody a heter to go to college, I think it's almost as safe to say that the Rebbe almost never gave somebody a heter to leave college if they had already started. And, uh, that's it for me. Please, uh, Sruli, give me an eighth story.

16:54 Speaker 2 No, it's, it's, it's a simple situation where my father was, uh, coming to learn in Lubavitch, and he was in the middle of his college studies, and he wanted to drop his college studies and go to Yeshiva full-time, and the Rebbe didn't let him. The Rebbe told him he has to continue and finish his degree, and similar to the other letter where the Rebbe wanted him to continue with some sort of a seder limudim in Yeshiva, that he should have some sort of a seder there, whether a night seder or a morning seder, but at the same time, he should focus and con- and finish his degree. And I think my father says, I think he asked the Rebbe several times because as things went along, he still felt like he was, like, wasting his time, and he wanted to really delve into Yeshiva. And the Rebbe kept pushing him to finish his degree, and he did a degree in accounting or whatever it was. I don't know what level degree, but it's a master's or whatever. But he ended up with his degree, but, uh, all from the Rebbe's encouragement because he didn't want to, uh, he, he wanted to stop. So very similar to these stories. Nothing more fascinating than that.

17:49 Speaker 1 Get out of my father, please too.

17:51 Speaker 2 By the way, by the way, Professor Teitelbaum was-- is-- Is he around already? I don't know if he's still around. Um, the director of the preschool in Montreal for many, many years. It's a good question. Do we have situations like you have the letters or, I mean, you didn't bring the sifas of letters from the Rebbe telling people that dafka they should not go. Do we have ever situations where the Rebbe told someone to go? Not someone who was, who was, who was learning and, you know, wanted to finish their studies, but someone who was, let's say, the Rebbe encouraged them to go like a hakhelah besides Professor Block?

18:31 Speaker 1 Yeah. We have a couple of them. I found a bunch of them when it came to women who wanted to get teaching degrees. Uh, you have a bunch with women who wanna get teaching degrees. Um, the circumstances-- I, I don't wanna put together, um, I don't wanna put together a ready-made heter. At the risk of putting together a ready-made heter I've thought about this a lot and looked into this a lot, and it seems to me that there were certain situations where the Rebbe almost never, maybe even never said yes, and that was, first of all, an unmarried person. I don't know if the Rebbe ever sent an unmarried, an unmarried person to college . Um, he seemed to want them to be married, and he also wanted them to have a, a, a center in their lives that-- for them to be, for them to be grounded. There's even a story where somebody was, uh, where somebody very badly wanted to go to college, and, uh, the Rebbe told him, "I sense that you don't have a center." And he said, "No, I'm fine." And the Rebbe asked him, "How do you draw a circle?" Have you heard this story before? It's a great bit. Rebbe asked him, "How do you draw a circle?" He said, "Draw a circle." He goes, "What about a precise circle?" So he tells the Rebbe, "You need a compass." You guys ever seen a compass? It's like two pens. There's like a sharp part and the other part,

19:24 Speaker 1 and then it goes around. Yeah. So he said, "You need a compass." You know why that works? The reason why that works is because one thing is in the center, and everything else revolves around it. Says, "In life, you're trying to draw a whole lot of circles, but you're not placed anywhere, and if you don't have a center, you can't go drawing circles. They're all gonna turn out crooked." This guy didn't listen to the Rebbe and went to college anyway, and went and did other things anyway without ever finding a center, and, uh, and he said that he, and he said that he deeply regretted it, that he felt the Rebbe was spot on. So first of all, the Rebbe required people to be centered. The idea of, um... I'm saying this on a recording . One of the, uh, one of the recor-- one of the, um, majors, uh, not really a major, but a program that they had at Ithaca College where I was, where I was a shliach. One of the programs they had there was called the Exploratory Program, where you could, for a couple years, major in not knowing what your major was. You could try all the programs and see what you really like. This was, uh, a-- there's no way the Rebbe would have ever allowed such a thing. Um, if you wanted to get in, first of all, you had to be centered. You almost always had to be married, almost always had to be a little

20:15 Speaker 1 older. The Rebbe almost never let somebody go in their early twenties or in their, or in their teens. It was a late twenties, early thirties kind of thing or later. And, uh, also they had to know exactly what they wanted, and they had to be able to explain to the Rebbe why they couldn't get what they wanted without going to college. So you would have a, you would have a-- There's a couple cases where there was a woman who's married, and she already maybe has a couple kids, and she's, uh, teaching, but she wants to be able to get a better job teaching, and she knows that she can't get it without a teaching degree. So she comes to the Rebbe and says, "Can I go to take these classes to get this degree?" And the Rebbe says, "Absolutely." Um, you also have cases where they tried to wear-- We have a case, I think Sharfstein got a degree in psychology that was from the Rebbe because, uh, she said that she felt that she could do a better job as a teacher with it, and she was already married, and she had a plan. So, um, when the Rebbe does give a heter for college, it is almost always because they are married, they're not terribly impressionable, they're a little older, and they already have a center in their lives, and they know exactly what they're going to get out of it.

21:05 Speaker 2 Also, going back to that longer letter, the other letter over there. So there's two things. First of all, it's interesting that I think the, the is talking about in the second, in the second footnote, that . I think the is the Rebbe saying, "If you're gonna come and talk to me face-to-face about this, then people are gonna say that you only made this decision because of my pressure."

21:25 Speaker 1 That's what the-

21:26 Speaker 2 I think it's, it's-

21:27 Speaker 1 Definitely, right.

21:27 Speaker 2 I think it's a continuation of the says two reasons. First of all, you know what I think, and sec-second of all, Rebbe's gonna say that I convinced you.

21:37 Speaker 1 Exactly.

21:37 Speaker 2 The Rebbe, you sound a little doubtful if that was what the connection was, right? It seems like that's a clear connection. And same thing a little bit earlier. It seems like the Rebbe's not saying that if you're gonna make this decision, people are gonna think that, that you, you, you, you can't make decisions and you have no self-res-self-respect. The Rebbe seems to say you don't have self-respect, like very clearly. being that you are not embarrassed, not you won't be embarrassed, you are not embarrassed, means you do not have self-respect. It doesn't seem like a condition to the big... he says is one thing, but then the second one is a whole new sentence. self-respect.