שוחט הוא משפיע

00:00 The Rebbe has an expression that he uses in a letter that is in today's letter. We are, of course, in the year Taf Shin Lamed Gimel, volume twenty-eight. Our letter today is Yod Tav Tav Peh, and the letter is from Chaf Menachem Av, and it is written to the Tamidi Yeshiva of, uh, what that's-- What-- Anybody know what yeshiva that is? Does it say down here? In Casablanca. There we go. It's a yeshiva in Morocco, Casablanca, a Lubavitch yeshiva, and they're learning Shchitah Gasas. They're learning to shecht, uh, big animals. They're learning to shecht sheep and, uh, and, uh, sheep are Gasas, are they? Anyway, cows are definitely Gasas, big animals, not just shechting chickens. So he writes to them, and in this letter, he's going to use an expression that, uh... Should I just read the letter? I'll read the letter. Let's not give everything away. Okay. He's gonna use an expression, though, that he uses everywhere, and that's what we're diving into today. Shalom u'bracha, the Rebbe writes. He goes, "Okay, I got your pan. I'm gonna send it to the aisle." Moving along. "Certainly, you all know what is brought in Poskim." I love this line because people think it's not true. So highlight it and remember the Rebbe wrote this himself. Says that, uh, people, people, some people don't know that our Rabbeim are Poskim in Nigla as well, that our Rabbeim are Poskim in Nigla by default. So the Rebbe frequently says things like that he's not a Posek and

01:17 he wants Poskim to do things, as does the Friediker Rebbe. However, the Rebbe here describes our Rabbeim as Poskim in Nigla. As we see from from the Alter Rebbe . They got-- They got Poskim in Nistar D'Torah. Look at that . And they're also Poskim in Nistar. So he says that our Rebbe is a Posek in Nigla and a Posek in Nistar, a final Halakhic deciser in both the revealed and hidden aspects of the Torah. And therefore, what do these-- What do our Rabbeim say? That a shekhitat needs to be excessively fearful of heaven. The shekhitat needs to be a real Yiras Shamayim, very God-fearing. Since from on high, we're given responsibilities. This is proof that everybody who's involved in the Shechitah program was given the to have Yiras Shamayim, was given the energy to potentially have Yiras Shamayim. And it is understood that based on the great responsibility is the great merit. The Rebbe says it should be God's will. You should all fulfill, it should be fulfilled through you the expression . The word vishachat only means to drag. As it is explained in Hasidus, that this means to drag the Nefesh Habhamas, to drag the animalistic soul and to elevate it. And he tells you to look in Sefer Metats , and the Rebbe gives a whole bunch of sources. We're coming to the month of Elul soon, which is the month of Rahamim, month of mercy. The Rebbe gives them a bracha. They should ascend and and in doing mitzvahs in

02:56 a, in the best way possible. And that we should have good news in all that the Rebbe discussed. I highlighted a phrase here, and that is , and I intentionally translated it poorly. I said that what it means is shchitah is only dragging. It's an expression from a Gemara, and the Rebbe says that everybody who is becoming a shekhitat, he's giving them a bracha that the blessing of the should be fulfilled through them. But what is that exactly? The Rebbe gives a very short summary in our letter. He says the Hasidic approach to this is that shchitah has to do with elevating the animalistic soul. What exactly is he talking about? In order to figure out what he's talking about, I wanna go, uh, way, way back, and that is to the Rebbe's original source. The source is on the page in front of you. I'm gonna make the screen a little bigger so you can see. It's a Gemara in Masechet Hullin. Now, this is a, uh, this is a classic example of Hasidus taking something entirely out of context, um, or giving us really the true context and say that that's how you like to say it. Another example that comes to mind is, uh, uh, what, what's the ? Paritz, finish the Gemara for me. There it is. So is something we use in Hasidus to describe song and the power of Niguna, and, uh, it is in fact a Gemara about whether a cow can walk out with bells on its

04:08 horns. It's, uh, I mean, you g- you gotta understand that a lot of the things that we use in Hasidus that are the state of these Inyanim, when you look at them back in Nigla, they don't necessarily reflect that at first glance. So you're gonna see this here too. Don't be too surprised. Gemara in Hullin thirty B says, the taught the following. V'shachat, when it says in the v'shachat, that he shechts, that he's, that he, uh, that he slaughters the animal, v'shachat means . It means to draw the blade across the neck as opposed to hacking the neck. This, the way, the way that we learn that we're supposed to draw a blade across the neck of an animal and drag it across and not hack the head off the animal is from the word shachat because shachat means . So he brings a couple of psukim that describe, or one pasuk that describes the word shachat being used to mean , and that's the Gemara. And then there is a taysis, and taysis does not give us a drash. Taysis just says this. Taysis asks a question. Says, Taysis says that earlier on in Hullin in we had the word v'shachat, and we had a different drash report. V'shachat there didn't mean to drag the knife across the neck. V'shachat there meant that the place to shecht is the place where the animal bends when it's drinking. So an animal bends at its neck. It's not telling you how to draw the knife, it's

05:22 telling you the location. And then Taysis says, Clearly, you can learn two things from v'shachat. The reason why I'm showing you this taysis is not to show off about how I can, uh, how I can find a taysis. Uh, you could have found the taysis too. It is to show you what the Rebbe says in this letter in Igrus volume twenty, which is also on your screen. So in Igrus volume twenty, the Rebbe uses both this Gemara and this taysis to explain the Hasidic teaching. the Rebbe writes. When it comes to shchitah, the, uh, message is only, is always The job of a shekhitat is not to shecht, but to draw down. That's how the Rebbe is reading this, not that a shchitah is only accomplished by pulling, but an alternate translation, that shchitah is only acc-- That the job of a shekhitat is to draw down light or to draw things upward. It can imply two things. It can imply its literal meaning and also can imply . It can also apply a spiritual meaning. So just to recap what the Rebbe did here, Taysis says that is a which means the Taysis tells us that we're allowed to learn two things out of this pasuk, and instead of learning the two things that Hullin is learning out of this pasuk, the Rebbe says the fact that I can learn two things out of this pasuk means I can also learn about a in Ruchnius from this pasuk. It's just a, a special kind--

06:33 It's a special kind of lomdus. What is the job of a shekhitat? A shekhitat is not just to kill an animal. That would be very That would be very, um, lowly based It says a shechitah's job is not just to kill something. A shechitah's job is to take an animal from a state where it could not be useful and turn it into a state where it can be useful. And also to take the behema that is inside each person, our nefesh habhamis, our animalistic soul, and to make it fit for consumption by the nefesh elokis. So the job of a shechitah is to make an animal fit for consumption by people, and to make an animalistic soul fit for consumption, k'viachol, by the godly soul. Et cetera, et cetera. Okay. So the source for this is not apparent. The Rebbe kind of, uh... I'm not sure. Uh, the Rebbe gives sources in the Chassidus, but I didn't find them. I think this is the, uh, very much the Rebbe's expression. I, uh, I wanted to bring you letters where the Rebbe talks about this. The problem with that is that there is almost no volume of Igris where the Rebbe does not at some point quote this expression when talking to a shechitah. So I tried to bring you just some of my favorites here. We, uh, already did the one in Tav Shin Lamed Gimel. So let me take you back to the very beginning. This is a letter from... I don't wanna do

07:48 this letter. I wanna do this one. This is a letter from Tav Shin Yud Aleph. A letter from Tav Shin Yud Aleph. So somebody writes to the Rebbe, he is a shechitah rubaydek. He is a shechitah, and he also checks to make sure the animals are kosher. And the Rebbe writes to him that, uh, Certainly, you're familiar with the expression of the Friediker Rebbe that he mentioned many times in his sichas, that a shechitah is not just somebody who has a knife in his hand. A shechitah is not just a guy running around with a knife in his hand. His job is to have an effect on the entire city where he is found, that a shechitah's job is not just to kill animals, but to change lives. And not just to change the lives of animals, but to change the lives of everybody around him. And his job is to be not a shechitah, but a mashgiach. To not just be somebody who slaughters, but one who drags, one who draws. Who draws from who takes physical things, the responsibilities of, the desires of the body, the desires of the animalistic soul, and brings them close to God. By leading them to the three big loves, love of God, love of Torah, and love of the Jewish people. As Chazal say, a shechitah's job is not just to shecht, it is to draw people close. So this is the Rebbe really, uh, bringing the expression home, tying it in with something that the Friediker

09:00 Rebbe said. A shechitah is not just somebody who waves around a knife. A shechitah has the job of bringing people closer to Yiddishkeit, of bringing physicality closer to spirituality, of bringing the animal soul closer to the godly soul. And among his avodas is literally killing an animal, which also accomplishes this. says the Rebbe says. This is also simply what happens. What is a shechitah doing when he shechts an animal? Once an animal is shechted, it can be eaten, and it's kosher, it can be eaten. That then allows the flesh of the animal to turn into the flesh of a person. When a person eats something, that becomes part of his basar too. So, um, What he goes on to say in this letter is that, and he says in a couple other letters too, that an animal is unable to elevate itself beyond the stage of animals. Things that-- There, there are four, uh, four qualities. You can have a mineral, vegetable, animal, and human, and they can't switch. Mineral can't become vegetable, vegetable can't become animal, and animal can't become human. However, a shechitah is one of the people who's capable of changing the dargahs of two things, is that a behema can elevate to be a, a human. That right now I'm walking around, and my cells, and my tissue, and my muscle is all made from the, uh, is all made from the meat that I ate on Shabbos, and that is an animal being elevated to the state of human. So

10:12 a shechitah literally takes an animal and elevates it and turns it into a human. And a shechitah is also supposed to do that in his area. A shechitah, a shechitah is supposed to be a positive influence on his town. As I'm sure you're all familiar with, 'cause it's something that we say in Lubavitch all the time, a shechitah in a town was usually one of the significant religious leaders of the town. Uh, whenever we had a choice, whenever a Chassidim had a choice between whether they wanted the rav to be a Chassidisha rav or the shechitah to be a Chassidisha shechitah, they always picked the shechitah, and they would allow the misnagdim or allow the other people who were living in the town to pick the rav. Because to us, the most important thing was having a shechitah who is Yirei Shamayim. Now, b'pashutut, that's because we wanted to make sure we had kosher meat. The, uh, having kosher food is the foundation of a kosher life. If, uh, if we're putting things into our body that are, that are impure, we can't be pure. But there's a deeper level to this, which is the shechitah is effectively the mashpia of the town. Whereas the rav, paskens halacha, what the Rebbe is saying here is that the shechitah's job is to shachat elul mashach, that a shechitah is a mashpia. So we were hire-- When we would, when we would pick a Chassidisha shechitah, we were picking a mashpia for the town. The rav never

11:05 wanted to get involved. The, the Rebbe complains in a lot of letters, I'm hoping to do this one day with you guys. The Rebbe complains in a lot of letters that rabbanim in America are social workers. That's the lashon he used. He says rabbanim in America are expected to be entertainers and social workers, and he doesn't like that at all. Uh, a rav's job traditionally was to paskin the shailas, and a shechitah/mashpia's job was to draw people closer to Yiddishkeit. So part of the wisdom, I think, of us picking a shechitah for the town and not caring so much who the rabbi was in our town, was because the shechitah had the job ein shachat elul mashach. He wasn't working in a factory standing on the line, or maybe he was, but that wasn't his entire life. His life, it wasn't just a guy who knew how to use a knife. As the Friediker Rebbe says, It's not just a guy holding a knife, it's a person who's responsible for drawing people closer to Yiddishkeit. We see this theme in a ton of letters. I'm gonna show you a few others. This one's in Tav Shin Yud Beis, the letter is Alef Tav Shin Yud Gimel, the Rebbe Shomer Habrach. And he says, "I was very happy to hear the announcement that you have received a kabbalah to be a shechitah rubaydek. I was very happy to hear that you're going to become a shechitah. You should have all of these successes in doing this

12:05 godly work." Uh, and you should be able to follow all the piskim of our Rabbeim. Asher shechezet lo tzarich lihiot yirei shamayim be'eseh. You should be very careful to be a yirei Hashem be'eseh because a shechezit needs to, of course, fear heaven more than anyone else. Ke'even sheha'kol hu bashgal ach pratis. And since everything's bashgal ach pratis, and in the , we all saw a letter very similar to this, very similar to our letter. The Rebbe's telling you you have to be a yirei Shamayim, but you clearly have the ability to be a yirei Shamayim, or you wouldn't have gotten into this business in the first place. Note that this is not the same as the expression people say all the time when you ask them whether you have enough yirei Shamayim to be a shechezit. There is a story, and I don't know if it's in a letter, I think it's just a story, that somebody asked the Rebbe one time if he had enough yirei Shamayim to be a shechezit, and then the Rebbe said back, "By dint of asking that question, you've demonstrated that you have it." I don't see that in any of the letters. What I see in these letters is the Rebbe saying, "By dint of you pursuing this trade, that shows you could have it." That, uh, going after shechitah and being interested in shechitah shows that you have the capacity for yirei Shamayim, not that you automatically have it. You still could be a non-yirei Shamayim shechezit.

12:58 But everybody pursuing shechitah, uh, the Rebbe's saying by pursuing shechitah alone, this shows that they have the capacity for yirei Shamayim, or God wouldn't have even let them in the door. So clearly, these are people who at least have a capacity for yirei Shamayim. Again, explaining why they make good mashpiyim. And in line with our favorite phrase of the day, the shechezit's job is not to shecht, it is to draw close. Just like the job of a shechezit in gashmius is to take the meat of an animal and r-raise it to the level of being something that can be consumed by people and incorporated into a human. You should also have success in drawing the animalistic soul, his animalistic soul, and the animalistic soul of those around you. It should be nullified and included within the godly soul, which is called Adam, Adam HaEleon, Uh, I think I just said this a second ago, but in case I didn't, I wanna repeat it. When I was looking for letters that have this expression in it, I didn't find a-- I think I found one or two volumes, one or two years where the Rebbe didn't use this expression. To give you an idea of how often the Rebbe says this, it's just everywhere. Trying to pull out the best ones. The Rebbe says over here, this is a letter from volume six. The letter is . The letter is labeled The Rebbe writes, "I'm very happy to, uh, hear that, uh, you tell, tell me

14:21 all these things that you know about shechezit your, your interest in the in his area." Yes. So he says, "I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, uh, I'm happy to hear that you've taken interest in, uh, raising the level of the shechitah in your area. I was upset to hear that there are some things that haven't been going on the way they're supposed to, but I'm happy to hear you're on top of it." Then he says, once again gives him this message. And he-- I don't think he's talking to a shechezit here. He's talking to somebody who's interested in shechitah. He says, "You do a that the job of a shechezit is not to shecht, but to draw people close and to draw an animal close to people. The job is to turn, turn a into This should also be done in spirituality. That our job of a shechezit, the job of a shechezit is to take the and raise it to Adam HaEleon. Um, this is a slightly different take over here. This is the Rebbe writing to somebody in . The letter is labeled . And here the Rebbe uses the expression again, but this time it's because this person has not updated the Rebbe, and the Rebbe doesn't know if he's still a shechezit. And the Rebbe wants to know if he's still a shechezit, and he wants to tell somebody who was once a shechezit that whether or not he's still a shechezit, he still has the responsibilities of So he says, You haven't

15:38 written to me, the Rebbe says, what your current job is. You haven't told me if you're still a shechezit or if you've moved on to some other line of work. If you do it is well known when it says that a shechezit is not just somebody who butchers things. A shechezit is someone who draws things close. Don't forget right? Here, see, he's doing a different thing. He hasn't done this one before. That is, that what is the job? What does it mean to draw close? It means that a person needs to take the behema that's within each person, the animal in within each person from from one 'cause is the of taking things from one property to another. So a person ta-- a person-- a shechezit's job is to take the from the which is, uh, the public domain, which is represented-- which represents, uh, urges and desires that are not okay. Um, and then to draw it into the private domain, private indicating which is also a word for singular, to take things from the side of taava, side of urge, and to bring things to the side of kedusha. But once again, right? The shechezit's job is to draw things close, and in this case, the Rebbe's saying a shechezit's job is to draw things from alien desires into holy desires. And this depends on what you do for a living. Uh, uh, yeah. Never mind. He doesn't say, uh, he doesn't-- it doesn't mean it depends on what you do for a

17:07 living. It's he-- it depends on what kind of animal you're shechting. If it is a small animal, it doesn't take a lot to kill it. So if it's a small desire, it takes very little to draw it into God's service. If it is a very big desire, you have to learn a little more. It's a little harder to kill larger animals. The same way it's a little harder to conquer harder urges. Nonetheless, the Rebbe says, "Regardless of what work you're involved in right now, I expect you to be involved in the work of a shechezit, which is I have a couple other letters here. There's no reason, I think, for us to read them right now, but I'll send them all to you in a packet so you can read all the different times the Rebbe says this, uh, the Rebbe says this phrase, uses this phrase. Um, there is a letter here that I don't know if we have time for so much, where the Rebbe breaks down the siddhis. Let's read it a little bit. It says, This letter is from And in this letter, the Rebbe spells out everything I'm telling you, but he says it in his own words. So I've kind of filled in the blanks here. The Rebbe keeps on saying, and then kind of doing a dot, dot, dot even in ruchnius. Uh, let's read the Rebbe's whole take. He says, Even when it comes to the nefesh, there's an idea of shechitah in ruchnius. Every Jew has

18:17 an animalistic soul and a godly soul. What is the job of the godly soul? The was carved out from beneath the throne of glory. So it came down from a very high place. Your godly soul comes from a very high place, and it's here to do what? to enclothe itself in the body and the animalistic soul. Why would God have sent such a lofty soul down into such a lowly body? He, why is it here? Because it needs to do Avoda, it needs to serve God with the , uh, specifically in its part of the world that it was assigned. And this is very similar to shechting an animal. Every, uh, every animalistic soul has a certain gishmak, a certain yearning, a certain fire for this world, a desire for this world. But our job is not to kill the animal. Our job is not to shecht it. Our job is , to bring it close. To take these, uh, take the desires of the and not, not get rid of them, not snuff out the desires of the but to direct those desires to and to direct them toward and the, uh, and things that are, and things that are involved in godliness. Last thing I wanna tell you is just there is an amazing sicha on schita that's in volume eight, page two thirty-one, and with that, we'll end for today. I have some notes here to remind myself of what the sicha says, but you should definitely check it out 'cause it's

19:41 just fantastic. There the Rebbe takes the five things that cause schita to be invalid and explains what each of them are in , uh, re-emphasizing or I guess, yeah, emphasizing, emphasizing the theme that we've talked about up until now, that the act of schita is a spiritual act, a shecht is a spiritual person, and somebody involved in elevating animals also needs to be involved in elevating themselves. We need to be shechting ourselves all the time. Please don't take that out of context, I didn't mean it. But we need to be shechting ourselves all the time, ourselves all the time, drawing ourselves closer as well. And there are five things that make a schita invalid, five ways to draw yourself closer to Yiddishkeit that would make you invalid. The same way there are five ways to shecht an animal that the animal wouldn't be kosher, there are five ways for me to come closer to God that will not work. They will render me, they will render me invalid. First one is shihia. So shihia is where I pause in the process. That is, in the process of schita, I start doing the schita, and then halfway through killing the animal, I pause. So that's one of the things that will make a schita invalid. The Rebbe says, "What's that in Avoda? That's a ." That is, I'm in the middle of Avoda, and I stop and I start making . I say, "Okay, I'm in the middle of davening, I'm having a great davening this

20:41 Shabbos, and things are feeling good." I go, "Really, you know, the kind of guy I was this week, I'm not shaiach to that kind of Avoda." When I second-guess myself in the middle of Avoda, that's an act of shihia. And even if I shecht myself, even if I shecht my , if I pause in the middle to make and ask if I'm really worthy of doing this, if this is really what I should be doing right now, should I really be doing something else? Maybe I'm learning the wrong things. Should I learn different material? These, uh, this second-guessing is so destructive that it makes the schita, the spiritual schita invalid. There's chalada. Chalada is when you stick the knife underneath the simanim and, uh, cut it from beneath the skin. So chalada is when, uh, is when the knife is hidden during the process of schita. This renders the, the animal, uh, invalid. Similarly, it will render my Avoda invalid. That is . That is when I'm only serving God in private. That is that, uh, I need to be proud. I, uh, shouldn't be embarrassed in front of Amalekim. One of the first dinim in Shulchan Aruch is not to be embarrassed in front of people, and yet I'm embarrassed. I'm hiding my Yiddishkeit, my, uh, my yarmulke is under a baseball cap, and my tzitzits are tucked in, and I'm afraid to be a Jew in public. That's chalada, and that also renders my Avoda no good. There's hagrama. Hagrama is when, uh,

21:42 r- hagrama is when you, um, i-- hagrama is... Parents, give me a hand. Hagrama is when there's a, uh, when there's a- Right. So what's that? That, that's like I shechted, like, too low on the neck. Too high, too high, yeah. Right. Too high or too low. Right. Hagrama is I shechted too high or too low on the neck. That's why I need a, I need, I need, I need a, I need somebody in the tradition of schita with me for this class. Hagrama is when I shechted on the wrong part of the neck, and that's . I don't know why exactly that's what the Rebbe says in the sicha, is that that's . That is, I went too far in my bitul. I tried to get rid of myself. I tried to get rid of everything. I tried to nullify absolutely. That also will render my Avoda no good. And then there is dzra and ikar. Dzra is where I smack the knife down. I sort of do it like a chopping block. Ikar is where I, uh, is where I kind of, uh, poke out the simanim, where I poke through. These are not valid forms of schita. And that is a schita where I am destroying the animal entirely. That is where I'm trying to destroy myself. I engage in fasting behaviors. I engage in segufim. I hurt myself. I fast, and I try to beat up my that way. That will also render my, my, uh, spiritual schita invalid. So what

22:45 we've seen today, in summary, 'cause we're over time already, but what we've seen today, in summary, is that pretty much every time you write to the Rebbe saying you're involved in schita, even if you're not the shecht, you're just involved in writing sefarim on schita, the Rebbe will write back, in- invariably write back that, uh, . There's a message in schita that anybody involved in this discipline, whether they are the shecht themselves or writing about it or learning about it, if you're-- or just learning the Sefer Sichot. If you're involved in the discipline of schita, then you need to remember that you have a double Avoda. That is . First of all, . An animal needs to be shechted by the knife drawing across its neck. That is and therefore we can learn two things from it. The second thing being that a shecht's job is not just to shecht. As the Rebbe says, a shecht's job is not just to wave a knife around. It is to draw people close, to draw things close, to draw the close. That is , to draw the soul of the animal itself close so that it can be used for human consumption and elevate it to a state of human . And also that, uh, people around us and ourselves, that we should be able to have an effect on our and bring it to kedusha and effect on other people's and bring them to kedusha using some of the methods described here or not using any

23:51 of the methods described that would invalidate the schita. Making too many , overthinking things, uh, being, being embarrassed by our Avoda, um, being too batel, and being too hard on our and trying to kill it through fasting. As long as we don't invalidate our own schita, this is part of our personal Avoda. And finally, we said that perhaps this is an additional reason why Chassidim were always so careful to make sure that they had Chassidisha shechtim in their towns, even more than Chassidisha rabbanim. 'Cause it sounds like from the Rebbe that the job of a Ch-- that the job of a shecht is really, uh, as much as it is to shecht animals, it is to serve as a mashpia. And effectively, we were hiring hash- mashpiyim for our community when we were being careful to make sure that we had an, uh, a shecht Yiddish . Okay, that's it.