האם חסידות היא טיפול?

00:03 Now this is Igros, and this is a special episode today. The special episode was inspired by a discussion in our WhatsApp group. The reason why I'm calling it a special episode is because try as I might, I was unable to find a letter from our year, , that directly addresses this, although there are letters from many other years that do. The question that we're going to address today is, in a word, whether Chassidus i-- can be used as therapy, whether Chassidus is a form of therapy, or put in less, uh, pop terms and in more practical terms, am I supposed to be fixing my Middos with Chassidus? Is Chassidus supposed to be there to make me a better person? Uh, if it's not making me a better person, am I doing something wrong, and do I have to fix it? Do-- does Chassidus automatically make us better people? Uh, should it be used to make us better people? All these sorts of questions. Uh, am I misusing Chassidus if I'm trying to make it a better person? We've discussed this at length in our chat, and I wanted to bring some letters and some sichas that speak to the issue. So we have a lot on our screen today, a lot to get through. I will give you a little introduction. A lot of the things that you're going to hear, if you're in the chat, are things that I've posted in the chat because, of course, while building a shiur, you post your favorite

01:02 ideas. So if some of these things you've heard before, that's fine. It's a good chazarah. And for people listening who aren't worthy , who have not zechah to be in our chat, they're getting it for the first time. There is a story that's brought in Likutei Debarim in Chelek Alef. It's on page kuf tzadik ayin that uh- Or for the people who are- Huh? Or for the people that can't keep up with the chat while they're working. Or for the people who can't keep up with the chat because they have jobs. Yes, for them too . This is your, this is your, uh, this is your fifteen, more like twenty-minute rundown, right? So Likutei Debarim Chelek Alef, page kuf tzadik zayin, the Friediker Rebbe tells the story of Rab-- of Reb Hendel. And he says that Reb Hendel told him that for ten years he studied Reishis Chochma, Chareidim, Shaarei Teshuva, that's of the Rabbeinu Yona, and Pekeachei Ivrim, that would be from the Mitler Rebbe. He reviewed Igeres HaTeshuva dozens of times and also chapters of Derech Chaim from the Mitler Rebbe, all in order to get rid of his negative Middos and to rid himself of all of the body's natural behaviors. And only then, only then did he finally... And only then and with the approval of Alter Rebbe Chassidim did he finally feel that he was worthy to visit Lubavitch. He wasn't willing to visit Lubavitch. He wasn't willing to look at the Rebbe's face until he had first engaged in

02:02 ten years of Middos work, in ten years of Mussar. A lot of these sefarim not even being his, uh, Sifrei, Sifrei Chassidus, many of them being Sifrei Kabbalah, the Reishis Chochma, Chareidim, the Shaarei Teshuva, Rabbeinu Yona. That's a Rishon, but it's Mussar, straight Mussar. Pekeachei Ivrim, some of the Mitler Rebbe's works. Until he had fixed his Middos, he wasn't ready to go to Lubavitch in the first place. This definitely gives the idea that, uh, that one of the bases of Chassidus is first fixing your Middos, and that you're only really worthy of stepping into Lubavitch and engaging in the fun and the adventure that is Chassidus once you've first made yourself a decent person, once you've cleaned out your vessel. That's sort of the implication of this story. Um, when the, uh, when the Friediker Rebbe told this story, he ended up by saying that the young Aleich should listen to this and see that Alter Rebbe Chassid Reb Hendel is saying how to become a Chassid because for ten years, a younger man toils, t-toils, toils, excuse me, to attain Middos Tovos, and during that time, he doesn't travel to Lubavitch until he is, uh, until he has attained Middos Tovos. This was a Chassid of the Tzemach Tzedek. Okay. That's my introduction. Um, looking at it exactly whether Chassidus is supposed to be used to make our Middos better or whether supposed-- we're supposed to come in knowing good Middos, I found contradictions, and I'll show you the contradictions. I have it on

03:10 the page in front of you. If this is in Likutei Debarim, this is the first Chelek. It is Likut Gimel. Just read this top line here. Chassidus, uh, uh, excuse me, preten-- the second line. Um, where is it? First line here. . What is the whole point of Chassidus? is the . The point of Chassidus is to change your Middos. It's open and closed. That is, Chassidus' job is to make you a better person. Chassidus' job is to change your Middos. That's what it's for. That's what it was made for. He says, "I don't have to explain what I mean by fixing your Middos." Says, Chassidus demands that we change the nature of our Middos. Chassidus demands from all those who learn Chassidus that they use it to change their Middos, that they... He doesn't say that, that they change their Middos. Not necessarily that they use it that way. Chassidus demands that anybody who learns it changes their Middos, makes them better. And this last bit's a real kicker. He says, "Chassidus also teaches us how to change our Middos." So Chassidus demands that we change our Middos. It demands anybody who learns Chassidus changes their Middos, and it demands and it explains how to change your Middos. So if you were to go from this section of Likutei Debarim alone, you would definitely conclude that Chassidus' whole point is to change our Middos, to make our Middos better, and to show us how to do it. And in that way, Chassidus is very

04:32 much therapy. It's a kind of therapy. It's a much more effective therapy maybe than regular therapy, a holier therapy than regular therapy. But the way Chassidus is described in this Likut, its entire job is to make my Middos better. But then if you look at this, it's also in Likutei Debarim, also in Chelek Alef. This is, uh, I don't remember what Likut it is. I have to look it up. I didn't write the page down here. But anyway, I'll, I'll, I'll-- If you ask me afterwards, I'll tell you the source. It's here on the page. Says here, that Tikkun HaMiddos is nit shayach tsu Chassidus. You hear that? Tikkun HaMiddos has nothing to do with Chassidus. Fixing your Middos, becoming a better person, nothing to do with Chassidus. Tikkun HaMiddos darf zayn frier. Says Tikkun HaMiddos needs to happen first. You can't come into Chassidus without Tikkun HaMiddos. You have to be a good person who's fixed their Middos already, and then you come into Chassidus, and Chassidus adds things on top of it. How do you reconcile these two Likutei? In this Likut says that the entire point of learning Chassidus is to fix your Middos, that Chassidus demands you fix your Middos, Chassidus shows you how to fix your Middos. And down here, also in Likutei Debarim, we have that Tikkun HaMiddos darf zayn frier, that Tikkun HaMiddos needs to happen first. And the Tikkun HaMiddos is nit shayach tsu Chassidus and has nothing to do with Chassidus at all. More on that

05:36 after the story of the Reb Hendel, that he studied Mussar at length before he was ready to start learning Chassidus. So our job today is to try to reconcile these two ideas, where it sounds like on one hand we'll find you'll-- If you look through the works of the Friediker Rebbe especially, you'll find this sort of push and pull, that on one hand, Chassidus is supposed to be fixing our Middos, and on the other hand, that's not what Chassidus is for. What do I wanna show you first? How about a sicha? This sicha is from the . You'll find this in Sefer HaSichot tav shin. And after the sicha, we're gonna do a whole bunch of letters because this is an igras here, but we're framing everything using sichas. This is a sicha from Sefer HaSichot. It's collated. I have it collated in a book called Darkei Chassidus, just an amazing book if you can get your hands on it. They took a bunch of sichas from the letters and put it into Darkei Chassidus, like a book of how to be a Hasid, very interesting. So when it comes to Darkei Chassidus, at one of the farbrengens that happened, uh, during the tana'im, you have tammuz taf resh nun vav, uh, the Rebbe Rashab is describing the . The Rebbe Rashab talked about tikkun ha-middos, and he said that it can only happen by havdishe beleib, that the only way to fix your middos is through davening. That tikkun ha-middos does not happen through

06:42 learning Chassidus. It doesn't happen through haskala. It doesn't happen through thinking. It happens only through davening. You can only become a better person through davening. If you go down over here, at that same farbrengen, um, the Razah, who was his uncle, was the his uncle, talked about tikkun ha-middos. The tikkun is talking about . He says that maybe the way that this works, uh, proposed his uncle, is that a person needs to use their brain in order to fix their middos. They need to think about Hashem. They need to have hisbaddutus. They need to daven. That's a brainy kind of thing. And that the way that this works is like someone who's walking on a narrow ledge, the only way they don't fall, it's not really because they've trained their feet not to fall, it's because they've trained their head to balance themselves properly. So maybe what we're talking about is havdishe beleib, davening balances us and makes our middos, makes us, uh, able to control our middos by balancing us out. The Rebbe Rashab didn't quite agree with this. So the Rebbe Rashab said, that's only middos that are intellectual. What me-- what sechel does is it, is, uh . The job of sechel is to stand guard, so that the middos don't go and do whatever they want. Look at that. The job of our intellect is to guard our middos, not to fix our middos. So this might be one answer to the question of what is Chassidus' job exactly, and how

08:07 is Chassidus inspiring us to become better while also not being there for tikkun ha-middos? He's mechalla here. The is mechalla. That the job of Chassidus and the job of haskala and the job of thinking in general, the job of great intellect, is to help us, uh, watch over our middos, to control our middos, but not necessarily to fix them. The legwork of fixing them goes down to davening. So to use a mashal, I guess, a person might be able to fix their middos by working very hard at overcoming anger. Chassidus won't teach them to overcome anger, although we do have a sicha back here that says that Chassidus can teach us how to fix our middos. The way that we're understanding this right now is that Chassidus' job isn't really to teach you how to not be an angry person. What Chassidus' job is to do is to, is to give your brain the capacity to employ that which you've already decided. So I've decided I'm not gonna be an angry person anymore. I've rooted anger out of my personality, and now Chassidus is the shomer on that. Chassidus is the guardian. It's my intellect which guards me from going back to the middos that I used to be involved in and guards me to make sure that I continue on the straight and narrow. If you think about it another way, Chassidus inspires good middos. It inspires the legwork of good middos. That Chassidus inspires us to put in the work that makes our

09:08 middos better, but does not automatically fix our middos. You have a letter that is very much like this from the . Now we're back finally in igras. This is an igras share, after all. So from now on, only igras. We have this in igras. This is the letter tav shin lamed alef from the and he writes about somebody who's going to be teaching. He says, first of all, we learned this, uh, we have a whole, we have a whole class on this, on how the, they really pushed that when Chassidus is taught, it needs to be understood. This excuse that you hear at farbrengens, that when someone explains Chassidus poorly and sticks to the lashon hará and uses the original language and no one understands them, or they pick a real deep inyan that nobody gets, that somehow the neshamah understands. This is, uh, this is an excuse. The fact is that if you're teaching Chassidus, people need to understand what you're saying, um, and otherwise you're not doing your job very well. So right here, the says that when you're teaching Chassidus, you need to be able to, uh, you need to do in a way that they're able to understand . Especially, they should be things that inspire them to aveida. And the is saying when you teach Chassidus, I want you to teach them Chassidus that inspires them to one of two things. First of all, . One thing you can teach people is giving guidance here of how to farbrengen or

10:16 how to talk to other people about Chassidus. When you're teaching Chassidus, either the goal should either be to inspire a chayus in learning Torah and keeping mitzvahs or look at this, tikkun ha-middos. It should be about tikkun ha-middos. First of all, it should inspire them to keep far away from bad middos like jealousy, like hate, like, uh, like, uh, like jealousy, like hatred, like anger, like falsehood and ego, and machlikos and causing arguments. And two, accustoming people to get used to good middos. So first of all, to distance themselves from bad, and then to become accustomed to good middos, like loving their friends and, like, bringing them close to Torah and mitzvahs. To enjoy, to feel joy along with their joy. To take part in their ang-- to take part in their suffering and to, uh, and to help comfort them and to, uh, strengthen them. And to do acts of kindness. Then gimel, And gimel, the third thing is to subjugate the brain so that it would that will understand because this is a kind of control over our middos. What we get from this letter is that when somebody teaches Chassidus, it should be inspiring people to improve their middos, but not necessarily that Chassidus itself improves middos, that Chassidus is once again sort of the catalyst for the improving of middos. That might be the right way to put it 'cause it also lines up nicely with this sicha, and I think it fits with the other likutim, is that what we're

11:39 getting here is the idea that Chassidus is not here to fix our middos, and Chassidus is not therapy. Chassidus is the thing that talks us into therapy. Chassidus is the thing that, uh, is a, is the catalyst that inspires us to fix our middos. And the way that it inspires us to fix our middos is, first of all, by reminding us that we need to stay away from bad middos. Second of all, by reminding us that we need to embrace good middos. And third of all, by accustoming us to have our brain conquer our heart. What Chassidus does is it constantly teaches us to have our brain be shelet on our lev, not just when it comes to our middos, but even when it comes to our distraction. Focusing on Chassidus is a, is a, is an act of discipline. So Chassidus teaches discipline that then can be applied to tikkun ha-middos. But once again, we're really not saying that Chassidus' job is to fix our middos. We're saying that Chassidus' job is to facilitate tikkun ha-middos, not to be the solution, but to facilitate the solution. Moving on to letters from the Rebbe. We have here a letter from Tuvshin Tes Vav. This is level-- letter Gimel thingy Daled. This Ɣapaltia pan, he says, "I've received the pan and I will be handling it as necessary." As mentioned by Hashem has given you a Ɣatslacha like opening a pisheshel ulam like a wide hall. But Adam, this is a really funny turn of phrase,

12:49 'cause normally the turn of phrase is the opposite. The way that the expression goes is that if God opens a needle-sized hole for you, then you, then, uh, then, then if, if you open a needle-sized hole, then, uh, God will open up a pisheshel ulam like a hall. Uh, here he says that God has already given you a hall, but it's still your job to put in a little bit of work. Okay, Here's the part we're here for. Specifically when it comes to fixing your midas. The whole point of coming down into this world is to fix your midas. So it's very, very important. He says, "How should you do it? I'm giving you some advice. I want you to learn very well. I also want you to learn, Aves Israel Until you are an expert in them, and that they should at least be That they should at least be things that you've memorized. This will ease. The This will ease the fight that you're having with the Yetzer Hara To allow you to fix your midas. Look at the That the Rebbe's using here. The Rebbe, the Rebbe is not saying, "I'm suggesting you learn Chassidus, and this will fix your midas." The Rebbe is saying here that if you learn these parts of Chassidus, This will make it easier for you to fight your Yetzer Hara and start to fix your midas, which once again suggests, this is now our fourth example suggesting this, and I think we're gonna find this as

14:10 a theme, is that Chassidus' job is not to fix our midas, but Chassidus' job is to make it easier for us to fix our midas, to lessen the fight with the Yetzer Hara, so that we have an easier time beating our Yetzer Hara, so that we can fix our midas, to inspire us to fix our midas, to give us reasons to fix our midas, but that Chassidus in and of itself once again is not the therapy, but the catalyst for the therapy, the catalyst for the legwork. We also have a letter, I didn't bring it on your screen, but I think I put it in your There's a letter in, um, in Tuvshin Yud Ches, where the Rebbe suggests a few other... Do I have it here? Yep, here it is. This is from Tuvshin Yud Ches. In this letter, the Rebbe suggests a few other Sifrei Chassidus or focuses in Chassidus that can help be a catalyst for Tikkun HaMidot. He says, He says, yes, Kuntras HaMayim from the, from the Rebbe Rashab. Igeres HaTshuva, of course, from the Tanya. Also from the Tanya. And He's just suggesting three Halakhin from Tanya, along with, uh, Kuntras HaMayim of the Rebbe Rashab. Point is that these suggestions the Rebbe's making are not suggestions that will instantly fix our midas. There is no That is not the way we do things. There is no automatic leap in addition to that. The goal here is not that I should learn Chassidus and then somehow my Nefesh Elokis

15:15 will become overwhelmed and I won't have Midat Yisrael anymore. The idea is that Chassidus can be used as a catalyst, as an inspiration to ma-- or as a, as a Hadraha even, to help me then put in the legwork to fix my midas. This is a long letter that we're not gonna read all. We're just gonna read a paragraph of it. It is in volume eighteen, and the letter is Zayin Tes Vav. It's from the year Tuv Shin Yud Tes. It's from the year Tuv Shin Yud Tes. Down here he says, Somebody wrote to the Rebbe asking for a Seuder in Tikkun HaMidot, how they can fix their midas. And the Rebbe, you'll notice here, does not once suggest learning Chassidus, which is just very telling, I think, for the question of whether Chassidus is there to fix our midas. If Chassidus is there to fix our midas, you'd think that would be on the list. But the Rebbe says, I can't give you generalizations. I can't give you strict rules on how to fix your midas. It really depends on what's wrong with you. Not everybody has the same Dasi, and not everybody has the same way of looking at things. Therefore, you should consult with elder Chassidim who are living in your area. Consult with older Chassidim. Talk to a Mashpia, Ideally one who knows you. By the way, that is an important, uh, prerequisite, I believe, for a Mashpia. People call up, they decide they wanna get a Mashpia, which is great

16:24 because they absolutely have to. It's one, the only b-- one of the only two Bakashah of the Rebbe. But then they go looking for a Mashpia, so they look up the name of the most important Mashpia they can think of, someone who's never met them before, and call them and say, "Will you be my Mashpia?" And they might say yes, but they're not gonna do a very good job. The fact is your Mashgia-- your Mashpia needs to know you. So This is somebody who knows you as well. The Rebbe says you also can say in Yiddish, you can say what's going on in front of them and try to catch them up, And then they will tell you what to do. The main Nekuda when it comes to Tikkun HaMidot, the Rebbe says there is a general rule when it comes to Tikkun HaMidot, and that is fixing your personality, becoming better, that is To take it step by step, From level to level, Don't jump. So the Rebbe says although there is no one hard and fast rule for Tikkun HaMidot, there is an overarching rule which is it has to be done step by step. It can't be a big jump. This is only a Every now and then you have to make a big leap, but that is not for, um, that is not for fixing your midas. That is a gradual process. The Rebbe says, and this is something that I don't think any Chabad house is aware of, so this

17:29 is just really interesting. Um, bring the, bring this out and show your friends. Um, I-- this, it doesn't have to do with what we're talking about, but I can't not read it 'cause it's so, it's so counterintuitive. He says that this does not apply. This applies only to Prishus. This applies only to making your midas better. What I said does not apply to something that is Asur. The Rebbe says when it comes to things that are actually Asur, you're not on a journey. This is not a process. When it comes to Asur, you need to separate from it immediately with a With a No step by step, no easy, easy, no let's take it one step at a time. That whole idea, it only applies to Midat Tovot, the Rebbe says. It does not apply to Asur. When it comes to Asur, you can't stand it for even a second. It's not to It's not just jumping and skipping you have to do. It's a You gotta remove yourself from it entirely. You gotta go entirely from where you were to a new place. So when it comes to th-- We, we tell ourselves, I think, when we're working on ourselves, especially this time of year, we're already starting to think about Tshuva, becoming better people. We generally tell ourselves that the rule of thumb is that everything's step by step. Note that the Rebbe says that if you are doing something that is Asur, it's not step by step. If you're doing something Asur,

18:33 you have to stop right now. Point is though, what we're taking away from this section is that we should ask a Mashpia to fix our Middos. It's step-by-step. If it's a Mutar activity, it's complete Dilug, if it's an Asur activity. Also, you'll find there's a couple letters in, uh, Taf Shin Chaf Alef, where the Rebbe says specifically that the way to fix Middos is to ask a Mashpia. But once again, we're seeing that if the way to fix Middos was learning Chassidus, I think that he would say that somewhere. He doesn't mention it anywhere. He says, "Talk to other Chassidim. Uh, g-go to, g-go to therapy. Talk to somebody else who knows you, can talk you through your issues. That's how you fix your Middos." That's not what Chassidus is for. Chassidus, once again, is a catalyst for it and, uh, many other things. Chassidus is, uh, is Elokus itself, um, Deveiku L'Chaim. But it's not, uh, it's not therapy. It doesn't sound like it's therapy. It sounds like it's something that inspires therapy, but not therapy itself. We have another letter over here. This is sort of a, uh, I brought this as kind of a case study in what the Rebbe just talked about. This is kind of a case study. So here the Rebbe says, somebody wrote to him saying that they have an anger problem. They, uh, they have, uh, they have anger and they have ego. The Rebbe says, as the Rebbe said in the prior letter, that when we're

19:39 fixing Middos like that, it needs to be step-by-step. First of all, to, uh, to, to try not to say things when you're angry and just think the angry thoughts, and then slowly, slowly to conquer even your mind. And the Rebbe says here as well that you should be consulting with, consulting with your elders. So I brought this letter mainly, it's in your source sheet, but I brought it mainly to show you how this might play out against a specific Middah. Here, he does suggest learning Chassidus. Look at this. He says, "Learn a little bit of Tanya ." Why? Because this will help you on your journey to fix your Middos, but not because learning Tanya will fix your Middos. The Rebbe never seems to-- I never found a place where somebody said they had bad Middos and the Rebbe then suggested a piece of Chassidus to fix their problem. I found many places where somebody said they had bad Middos, the Rebbe told them how they should work on fixing it, and then said to learn Chassidus as a way to bolster that activity, which I think fits very nicely into the paradigm we are presenting. We have here, this is our last letter for the day. Our last letter for the day is just, uh, fascinating. It is from Taf Shin Yud Daled. Somebody writes to the Rebbe saying that he davens BeArichus, he davens at length with great Hisbonenus. He thinks a lot about Chassidus before davening, and then davens at length, and

20:43 he hasn't noticed that he's become a better person, and he's wondering if maybe he should stop. So he says, from Hey Alef, if he should continue to daven at length and with Hisbonenus when thinking about Chassidus, about He says it, as far as he can tell, it's not fixing his Middos at all. So So his question therefore is, should I continue davening BeArichus? Should I continue doing Hisbonenus and thinking about Chassidus if it's not making me any better? So the Rebbe writes, this is a very surprising question. The Rebbe just loves flipping things. Says here, "Can you imagine what kind of a rotten person you'd be if you weren't davening BeArichus? Can, can you imagine how bad things would be? And clearly, the Chassidus is one of the only things holding off your problems." Here the Rebbe says it should be understood in Sefer HaPashut that davening at length and thinking about, think- and thinking about Chassidus at length, this will help fix your Middos, and safe, safe it'll come not to just to . Now, this is not a contradiction to anything we've been saying because as a matter of fact, you might remember from back here in the Sicha, the previous Rebbe said, "Chassidus doesn't fix Middos, davening BeArichus fixes Middos. Hisbonenus fixes Middos." That's not learning Chassidus, that's davening, Avodah SheBalev. So once again, the Rebbe's saying here that what, what does fix Middos? Not learning Chassidus. What does fix Middos is davening at length. And if davening at length is not

22:04 doing it, first of all, it is. Imagine how bad you would be otherwise. And second of all, he says, "If it's not working, maybe you should check your Tefillin." He says, "Check your Tefillin, give some money to Tzedakah." He says, uh, "Also, you should say Tehillim, uh, the way it's split up according to the month." And then he says that you're going to see it fix your Middos. What the Rebbe is saying here when he says, "Check your Tefillin, give Tzedakah, and say Tehillim," is that it should be working. Is that under almost all circumstances, davening does fix your Middos, and if it's not working, something else in the pipeline is broken because the tool we were given by Hashem to fix our Middos was not Chassidus, it was davening. Now, davening is done after Hisbonenus on Chassidus. So it would be a little disingenuous to say that Chassidus isn't part of that puzzle, but that's not really what Chassidus is for. What Chassidus is for, uh, we, if we have time, we'll see in the Sicha over here. What Chassidus is for is a completely different question, but, uh, what davening is for is to fix our Middos And he also says to let me know about your wedding. That's what it says at the bottom of this letter. So we have from here, if we were to put all of these, uh, all of these different letters and Sichas together, I think a picture forms, and that picture is that Chassidus is a

22:59 lot-- A, a lot of fixing our Middos does come down to Chassidus at the end of the day. Is that Chassidus inspires us to fix our Middos. It can sometimes give us a Derech in fixing our Middos. It can sometimes be, it can be the, uh, it's the motivation for the Tefillah, which actually does fix our Middos. In a lot of ways, Chassidus helps make us a better person. However, Chassidus is not there to make us a better person, and Chassidus is not, is not the legwork, I think is the best way to put it. The work of fixing our Middos is not opening a Sefer and learning. Opening a Sefer and learning can help us become the kind of people who then are willing to put in the legwork to fix our Middos. A way that we put it earlier is that, uh, is that Chassidus is a catalyst for real Birur Middos. And how are real Mi- Birur Middos accomplished? The Rebbe gives us a few answers. One is speaking to a Mashpia, and the other one is davening. I didn't see a lot of other answers besides that. So I think that the way that we fix our Middos is by talking to other people about it, which is therapy, for lack of a better term. So therapy fixes Middos. Talking to people who know us, who to, i-ideally, Zichnei Anash, Chassidim, people who understand Chassidus as well, this does fix Middos. Davening at length, this does fix Middos i-itself. It doesn't

24:00 lead to fixing our Middos, it fixes Middos. However, when it comes to, uh, when it comes to Chassidus, Chassidus is not something that automatically cures our Middos problems. We have a second left. I wanna just show you this, uh, this Sicha over here. I don't think we'll have time to read it at any length, but I'm gonna toss it in the chat so you can look at it yourself. It's in The previous Rebbe kind of makes this Perek in an answer that we see from the Tamach Tzedek. So the Tamach Tzedek was once by the Alter Rebbe and he asked him, So the previous-- the Tamach Tzedek one time asked the Alter Rebbe, "What is the Inyan of Chassidus?" And the, the Alter Rebbe said back, The whole Inyan of Chassidus is to change a person's Middos. Now, that seems to contradict everything we've been saying up until now. It looks like the whole Inyan of Chassidus is to change a person's Middos. However, the previous Rebbe's Medayak here and says that that's not the answer to Ma Hu Chassidus, it's the Ma Hu Inyan Ha-Chassidus. That this is the Inyan of Chassidus, but not Chassidus itself. And the previous Rebbe says that Chassidus itself is That's what it is. Chassidus itself is godly wisdom. It is the innermost dimension of the Torah. It is not your therapy program, and it's not there to fix your Middos. It's not there for any of those things. But then, but that's not what the Tamach Tzedek asked.

25:04 The Tamach Tzedek didn't ask, "What is Chassidus?" He asked, "What is the Inyan of Chassidus? What is the goal of Chassidus? What is the product of Chassidus? How can I tell if Chassidus on someone's face?" And the answer to that is So the end game of Chassidus is to, is to, uh, is to improve our Middos. You can tell when someone is engaging in Chassidus properly by the fact that they have better Middos. But Chassidus is not Birur Middos itself. Chassidus is not Tikkun Middos itself. Chassidus is the reason for fixing the Middos, the inspiration to fix the Middos, the, uh, the outcome of what somebody can do once they have fixed their Middos, but it is not the Tikkun Middos itself. Okay. Questions, comments?