איך החינוך ניצח במלחמה

00:03 Speaker 1 Okay, this is Igris, and, uh, today we're basically going to re-read every letter that we've read over the past month. That's more or less what we're doing, and there's a reason for it. Uh, the Rebbe's tone, excuse me, over the summer of Tammuz Shin Lammed Gimel is hard to miss. We've, uh, we've, we've pulled out aspects of these letters, but I wanna look at them all as a group because as a group, they're telling us something very important. In the summer of nineteen seventy-three, all the Rebbe was thinking about was Chinuch. That is, uh, very obvious. That in the letters that we've looked at, he keeps on talking about Chinuch over and over again. He talks about Chinuch in a strange way. He wants us to Chinuch Al Tarus Hakadish specifically in the summer, specifically in summer camps, and he specifically wants little children involved. We even saw one letter a couple days back where the Rebbe addressed the letter to children under the age of Bar and Bat Mitzvah. So the Rebbe's pushing this. Now, I will admit, when I first came across these letters, I wasn't really thinking about the year and the historical context, and I kind of figured that this is just what the Rebbe does over the summer, right? So during Hanukkah, the Rebbe talks about Hanukkah. During the summer, the Rebbe talks about Chinuch Al Tarus Hakadish and keeping our children focused throughout the summer. It turns out that's not the case at all. This is highly atypical. The

01:03 Speaker 1 Rebbe never talks like this. He only talks like this this year, and it's all over the place. And I think the letter that really points that out more than anything else is actually the letter that we saw yesterday that we used for a completely different purpose. I have it on your screen right now. Yesterday's letter was from Tes Vav Menachem Av, and the Rebbe writes to somebody. Somebody wrote to the Rebbe saying, "I've written you several times about the things I'm doing." The r-- this person's engaged in shlichus. They're engaged in building shuls and building libraries and shuls and giving shiurei Torah, and they're writing to the Rebbe again and again to tell him the good news, and the Rebbe's not writing back. And the Rebbe writes to this person. If you look at the letter on your screen, he writes to them, "No, I'm very grateful for it. Thank you for sending me all that good news, and I'm very happy with the things you're doing. The reason why I haven't had time to write back to you is is because I've been so busy with the ideas of Yinyei Chinuch Kayitz." So this is the, the Rebbe's pet projects, really. If you think about the Rebbe's big initiatives, things like shlichus, things like shiurei Torah, things like building shuls in far-off places. This was in Florida. I mean, a shul in Florida in a hotel. This is the Rebbe's inyen, and he's not responding to it because he's so busy over the summer

02:03 Speaker 1 with Yinyei Chinuch Kayitz. The question is why? The question is why does the Rebbe dive into this so much over the course of the summer? And, uh, I guess there's a few ways we could do this, but I think I wanna give away the ending and then build toward a louder ending. The reason is because the Yom Kippur War is about to break out, and we don't know that, and the Rebbe doesn't necessarily know that. But somewhere behind the scenes, the Rebbe is laying the groundwork for us to have merits to win the Yom Kippur War in a way of, uh, in a way of miracles, in a miraculous victory. And, uh, the Rebbe really says this only a long time later. If you look on your source sheet in front of you, I also have it on the screen right now. The Yom Kippur War broke out on Yumk- on, on Yom Kippur. That's why it's called that. It broke out on Yom Kippur of Tammuz Shin Lammed Daled of nineteen seventy-four. And what? Two days, three days after the war broke out... By the way, the war broke out on Yom Kippur, of course, and people already came to seven seventy and told the Rebbe that it had happened. So, uh, the- as the-- when the Rebbe arrived for Shacharis in seven seventy, uh, in nineteen seventy-four, uh, by Yom Kippur, the-- he w- he was aware. So I, I don't know who. It might've been, it might've been Rabbi Groner. Somebody leaned

03:06 Speaker 1 over and told the Rebbe that Israel's been attacked. The Yom Kippur War, the entire Arab coalition attacked Israel all at once on Yom Kippur. Uh, somebody leaned over and told the Rebbe that it had happened. The Rebbe said, "Ach veiz" and said, "I know." And then according to everybody who was there, the Rebbe didn't really act any differently the entire Yom Kippur. It was more or less a Yom Kippur as any other. He might have encouraged singing a little louder during certain parts, and, uh, he stood on a chair by uh, by uh, by, by, by the, um, by the end, by, uh, what's it called? By, uh, with the dancing at the end. He stood on a chair, but other than that, there wasn't a whole lot-

03:37 Speaker 2 Napoleon's march.

03:39 Speaker 1 Yes, by the march. Thank you. By the march, he-- by Napol- by Napoleon's march, he stood on a chair. But other than that, there wasn't really any, any visible sign that the Rebbe was dealing with this Yom Kippur differently than any prior Yom Kippur. And on Yud Gimel Tishrei, which is, uh, which is Shayech to the Rebbe Maharasch, he held a fabrengen like any other fabrengen, and he opened the fabrengen by saying, "I know that we're in the middle of a war that just broke out three days ago, but we may as well do a fabrengen anyway." And it's almost business as usual. And if you look at letters from the Rebbe in Yom-- during the Yom Kippur War, we're gonna look at a lot of them, uh, next year, hopefully, or when we move on to Tammuz Shin Lammed Daled to the next volume of Igris, this will be a major focus. But a lot of the Rebbe's letters in the Yom Kippur War are him telling people, "Don't worry, it's fine. I'm not really concerned about this. Everything's going to be okay." And when people told him that they were disappointed that they didn't see big miracles in the Yom Kippur War like they did during the Six Day War, the Rebbe said back, "Because everything was so organized and done so-- it was all-- God arranged everything so perfectly, you didn't necessarily notice the miracles." Anyway, in Yud Gim-- uh, on Yud Gimel Tishrei of Tammuz Shin Lammed Daled, the year the

04:34 Speaker 1 Yom Kippur War broke out, only three days after the outbreak of the war, the Rebbe writes this. I wanna read it to you. He says, the Rebbe says this in the Rashi says even shayach to small children. Everybody knows this Rashi. There is such an idea that a prophet sometimes or a person sometimes can say a prophecy, and they don't know that they're saying a prophecy, that they are unaware that God's speaking through them. Sometimes a person does things, and at the time they do them, he doesn't know what's going on. He doesn't know the reason why he's doing them. And only later on does he figure out that he was saying just the right thing at the right time. And then the Rebbe says, the entire prior summer, that's the summer that we're learning right now, the, uh, topic of from small children, you'll be able to strengthen the Jewish people, that you can avenge our enemies through the voices, through the breath, through the prayers of small children. And I connected that to a maimer from the Rabbeim, from the, from, from the from Taf Resh Pe Zayin. And the Rebbe writes or the Rebbe says, what pushed me to speak about something from the year Taf Resh Pe Zayin? We had reviewed this maimer over many years. There was no shturem associated with it. There was no excitement about it. what happened now? it's only now been explained. The Rebbe says, "I only realize now that the reason why all summer I

06:11 Speaker 1 was pushing Chinuch in a way I'd never pushed it before was as a preparation to help us destroy our enemies in the Yom Kippur War." So the Rebbe himself says this in a sicha, that he didn't realize at the time why he was saying all of these things. The sicha is the rest of it's on the page if you wanna look at it. Uh, the Rebbe himself says that he didn't realize at the time why he was pushing these inyanim during the summer, but it turned out that it was in order to prepare us to win the war. So everything we've been reading, we keep on seeing letters where the Rebbe's talking about Chinuch. This is the Rebbe preparing the Jewish people for war, whether he knew it or not I wanna now look at some of these letters. Almost every letter I'm gonna show you today we've read already, but I wanna now show each of these letters to you in a slightly different light, highlighting the parts where the Rebbe is clearly preparing us, with prophesying and not knowing what he's prophesying for a war that's going to break out a couple months later. So first of all, I wanna bring you back to the very beginning. The beginning of this push is in Erev Shavuot, that's the first time the Rebbe starts talking about this. There's a sicha on Erev Chag HaShavuot. It's on the screen in front of you, but let me make it a little bit bigger. On Erev Chag

07:11 Speaker 1 HaShavuot, the Rebbe starts, starts talking about camp, and he says there, that people sending their kids to summer camp, a person who's choosing a camp for their kid needs to choose the one that is going to have the most quality and quantity of Limud HaTorah and Yinayana Yadut, learning Torah and engaging in Jewish things. And then later on, they have to make sure that there's an open spot. So, uh, basically first ask whether the camp is full of Torah and mitzvahs, and then find out whether they have availability. And the Rebbe says, "We've spoken many times about the advantage of machne kayitz, of going to a summer camp, that all twenty-four hours they can be in an environment that is conducive for their learning if you pick the right environment." And he goes on to talk at length about the importance of summer camps. Later on, on Yud Beis Sivan, the Rebbe sends out two letters. The Rebbe sends two letters on Yud Beis Sivan. Uh, both of them are public. One is to all of the teachers, and one of them is to all the askanim, and it has more or less the same message. The Rebbe says, based on everything he said on Shavuot, before it and after it, about how we have to, uh, double down in the education of our children. I forgot to mention, but it's in the sicha on the page, that on Shavuot the Rebbe linked this to the idea of areivus, that our children are our guarantors.

08:36 Speaker 1 Based on the fact that Chazal say that the God didn't wanna give us the Torah until we guaranteed that our children would be our guarantors who were going to watch over it for us. The Rebbe says, "I'm permitting myself to add on this a very urgent matter right now. It is a holy obligation for every single person, person and anybody who has the ability to do this, and it's also a great merit, to make sure that every single Jewish child is educated in Jewish studies exclusively. Also when this is a time set aside for learning and also during other hours of the day and night, and Adar maybe then even more." And he pushes these teachers to, to, uh, to, to, uh, engage in this throughout the summer. There's another letter sent on the exact same day, and this is sent to the askanim and the anhalo of the different institutions telling them that he wants, he wants results. He says, for all the things that we've talked about. So the Rebbe says, "I've talked to you about a bunch of projects. I want you to make sure that there's education for the children over the summer in a way we've never seen before, in a stronger way than ever before, and I want results He says, "This is very urgent." Note in our previous letter, he also called it a very urgent matter. It's very urgent. And he says, "By Yud Beis and Yud Gimmel Tammuz, I want all these things to already be

09:55 Speaker 1 underway, and the more you can do, the better." So he writes this to all the askanim on Yud Beis Sivan. We're seeing an urgency, and we're seeing a push like the Rebbe has never had before. Again, on Yud Zayin Sivan, the Rebbe writes to students and tells students they need to be living examples for what a person should look like over the summer so that the younger children will be engaged. He says, "Now is the time to emphasize once again I wanna repeat again what we talked about on the pabregen of Shavuot, which is that our priority for the summer is gonna be It is obligatory and holy upon every single person, and certainly among the talmidim who are to do everything that is possible first and foremost by being a living example and by expressing themselves earnestly to ensure that over the summer, every single Jewish boy and girl is educated over the course of the summer, specifically in the month of the summer but obviously there's much more opportunity over the summer where secular society is not pushing us to put kids in schools, so we can do whatever we want with them. So now would be the time to really, to really overemphasize or more em-emphasize that to the greatest degree ever, to the greatest degree throughout the year, um, the importance of them learning Torah. We have a letter-- And, and you might remember, you might remember all of these letters. I believe every letter I've shown you so far we

11:20 Speaker 1 actually read together and used for something else. Uh, on Tes Vav Tammuz. On Tes Vav Tammuz, the Rebbe sends, I think, two letters on the same day once again, right? Let me check. Yep. These are both two letters sent on the same day once again, and here he introduces something that we haven't seen before that starts to bring a chill to the room. If you read diaries from the time, people say that at this point, they knew something weird was going on. The Rebbe had been pushing chinuch in a way he never pushed it before, but look at his lashon here. He writes in this letter, "I wanna emphasize once again the incredible merit and the incredible necessity and the incredible, um, importance of for every single boy and girl who is Jewish It should be emphasized ever stronger starting from the very youngest children." Now look at this. "Based on that which it says in the pasuk It says in the pasuk that when little children learn Torah, it helps us defeat our enemies. As the emphasized in his maimer, to, uh, Yud Beis, uh, to, uh, Yud Beis and Yud Gimmel Tammuz. This specifically is important right now due to the Bein Hametzarim, during the three weeks, uh, and that we should, um, the, the-- and that it's very important to make sure that there is that a cure is sent before a hit." What the Rebbe means in this context is that prior to, prior to Tisha B'Av, there needs to already

12:47 Speaker 1 be-- which is a time of destruction, there needs to already be a solution to that which is children learning Torah. But when you read this now in a different, in a different tone, uh, he may well be talking about the Yom Kippur War without knowing it. It says, "The way Chazal do things is they always send the cure before the disease, and this is the derech to send the cure before the disease, to make sure before the disease arrives of an im- of an impending war we'll be able to destroy our enemies by way of the voice, by, by the breath using the breath of the using the breath of little children learning Torah." We have another letter here sent on the same day, Tes Vav Tammuz, Tammuz of Where the Rebbe uses the phrase again. He says, "The children need to understand the incredible merit there that touches every single Jewish person, but is really on the little kids. as David said, as David Hamelech says, it is from the voices of small children that we are able to destroy our enemies." We destroy our enemies specifically during the he's talking about, and he applies it to the time of year. But, uh, he, but he once again is saying that we need to be pushing over the summer because it will help us destroy our enemies. A strange thing to say when at the time we didn't have any particular enemies we were looking to destroy. And I'm sure there were rumblings about

14:04 Speaker 1 a possible war, people were talking about it, but it certainly was not, uh, was not the forefront of anybody's mind. And here he introduces a part two to the campaign and says that since it says in the since it says that Zion will be redeemed with Mishpat and its captivity, its captives will be redeemed with Tzedakah. Mishpat is Torah, so you can redeem part of the Jewish people by increasing the Torah study with the small children. But the Rebbe says, "I also want the small children to increase in Tzedakah because this also seems to be a way that we destroy our enemies, that when we wanna get our enemies-- Uh, when we want to destroy our enemies, the way that we do it is by having small children learn Torah and having small children give Tzedakah." And the Rebbe says, The Rebbe says, "I wanna be a partner in this ." The Rebbe says to the small children, "I am telling the people who are-- I'm telling your, uh, your teachers to hand out from me coins that are in the currency of whatever country you might live in, so that you can hand out coins to Tzedakah." So the Rebbe is now pushing two things, starting at this point, starting in, uh, the Rebbe is pushing small children learning Torah and small children increasing in their Tzedakah. On the Rebbe has another letter that once again does this. This was an also one that we've seen before together, where he writes to all the

15:20 Speaker 1 kids who are in camps around the world. Uh, and he says to them, as a continuation of what I wrote about in which is that we need to be careful to, uh, make sure the children are learning a lot of Torah and giving a lot of Tzedakah because this destroys our enemies. He says, "This should be s-emphasized even further during the during the three weeks that our got destroyed because of our sins, and that the only for this is us learning Torah and doing mitzvahs." And so once again, he pushes this, uh, he pushes this on . The following day, he gives a about this and says all the things that he's been saying in his letters. So the following day, uh, the Rebbe has a this is a you can find printed in I have it on the page in front of you. He quotes the . He once again says that that means that the only way that we can destroy our enemies, he mentions the little children destroying our enemies and says the only way we can fight back against the enemies of the Jewish people is by having children who have pure breath that does not have-- yet have sin on them do be engaged in Torah study and be giving Tzedakah . And over here he says, in this next page of the says, "I would like everybody to organize camps and organize programs for kids to learn more Torah and do more mitzvahs and give more Tzedakah specifically right

16:33 Speaker 1 now." And he says, "Don't worry about where the money is going to come from. Certainly some generous person will give the funds you need. They're gonna give with joy. We're not gonna have problems. We'll raise whatever money we need. Really, uh, empty the banks on this initiative." The Rebbe is telling people to, uh, to go into debt. The Rebbe is saying, "Spend whatever money possible to make sure this initiative happens. This summer, right now, we need children learning Torah and giving Tzedakah." And so he says, "K-" and this is just an important message for everybody. "Since we are commanded to educate our children, and since God owns all the money in the world, nobody ever lacks money when it comes to tuition payments." You see that from the Rebbe? You can't possibly not have enough money for tuition. We can bring in any number of children. as Chazal say, our amount of money that we're gonna have every year is set aside. This does not apply to the money that we will have for educating our children. That is an, that is an addition. That's not part of the amount that we-- that is set aside for us every year that we cannot exceed. So if we try to educate more children, be more-- bring more children into these initiatives, we will find the money. And of course, in our own lives, we'll find the money if we put our children We have a letter from where somebody writes to the Rebbe saying, "I've opened

17:47 Speaker 1 up several camps. Um, you promised there would be money. I don't see any of it, and we're taking heavy losses. But, you know, we're doing what you want. We're enrolling children, getting them to learn, having them give Tzedakah. You're pushing this initiative hard, and we're doing it, but we're out of money." And, uh, the Rebbe writes back... Actually, I copied the wrong letter here. Um, this is not the letter I want you to have. It's not although that's a really cool letter that we might do tomorrow. In that letter, anyway, that I don't have on the screen in front of you, he responds that he will be giving a twenty percent, uh, he will pay for twenty percent of any of the expenses, that the Rebbe will pay for twenty percent of any expenses incurred by any of these camps or programs, provided that they give the Rebbe a clear accounting of how they spent their money. The Rebbe says, "I'm not gonna work in estimates, but if you give me a number of how much you sp-- of how much you're in the hole, I'll cover twenty percent." This continues throughout the summer, continues throughout Elul, and of course, then the Yom Kippur War breaks out. So this all rises to a fever pitch. And now I think we can return to this that we looked at the very beginning and understand it with a, with a new enthusiasm. He says that the Rebbe says, "All summer, all I talked about is ." The

18:47 Speaker 1 Rebbe says, this is again three days into the Yom Kippur War, "All summer, all I was talking about was small children being able to help us avenge our-- avenge us against our enemies, small children learning Torah and that taking our enemies down to destroy our enemies and to take revenge against them. And at the time, I connected it to a but what pushed me in the year-- what pushed me this year to talk about a from that year? What pushed me to take a that I knew well and make a about it this year?" The Rebbe says, "I prophesied and I didn't know what I was prophesying. I, uh-- It was only explained to me later that this was the reason that I was doing this. I only understood later," says the Rebbe, "that this was, uh, that this was in order to help the Jewish people win the Yom Kippur War." So what we've been looking at so far of the summer, a long series of letters where the Rebbe repeatedly in letters keeps on put-- hitting the same two points. He wants small children to learn Torah throughout the summer, and he wants small children to give Tzedakah throughout the summer. The Rebbe himself will later identify as the reason why we won the Yom Kippur War. The reason why the Yom Kippur War was such a miracle, why we won it, and why we were able to win it in such a miraculous way that people didn't even necessarily see the Nisan

19:51 Speaker 1 because it was so miraculously well done on the ground was, uh, was... Look, I, I, I don't wanna say solely because, 'cause I don't know. But I do know that, uh, that the Rebbe's initiative laid the groundwork for that sort of success. And the Rebbe himself didn't know that he was doing that in the summer when throughout the summer that we're learning right now, he was pushing these two inyanim so strong. That is it.

20:15 Speaker 2 That's how, uh, works.

20:19 Speaker 1 Yeah, I guess so. I wouldn't know firsthand, right? But

20:23 Speaker 2 No, I, I heard a story that, um, by the Rebbe Rashab, there was a, a Hasid-- a son of a Hasid, uh, decided he wants to go to Eretz Yisrael, and his father asked him to please go to the Rebbe Rashab to get a berakhah, and he was more like leaning Zionist, uh, direction, so he didn't wanna go. Anyways, the father went in and asked for a berakhah, and the Rebbe Rashab said he shouldn't go. But, uh, the son went anyway, and, um, the, uh, the ship, uh, sunk. And so the Hasid came running back to the Rebbe Rashab and said, "If you knew that it was gonna sink, why didn't you say?" He's like, "I didn't know that it was gonna sink. That's not... They were nogal to me. It's nogal that you asked what-- if he should go or not, and I said no." So, and he's explained that that's how works.

21:19 Speaker 1 Absolutely. You know, we, we also saw this regarding, um... Where did we see this? We saw this with, um, with, uh, mitzvah mezuzah. We saw this with mitzvah mezuzah, where the Rebbe again says in a, in a letter that he, he didn't know why he was being pushed to do this with-- being pushed to do this mitzvah, and he discovered it only later. So the Rebbe admits this when it happens, that he says, "I, I, I felt something pushing me." He uses the over here, that it pushed him. He used that same by mezuzah also. That, uh, that he felt something pushing him, so he followed his, he followed his spiritual instincts and ended up being, uh, ended up being the salvation of the Jewish people.