מנהג לבישת הקיטל

00:00 Speaker 1 Okay, this is Igress, and this is our last Shear before Yom Kippur, I believe. Our last Shear before Yom Kippur. So once again, what we've been doing these past couple classes is we're not sticking to one volume of Igress. We're more picking topics that are , specifically topics that are Yom Kippur, and then going through Igress and and wherever we wanna go, really. But of course, launching from Igress to figure out, um, or ideas in , things like that. So today, for our last one before Yom Kippur, we're gonna talk about kittel. We're gonna talk about why we wear a kittel in the first place on Yom Kippur, uh, why we didn't wear one on Rosh Hashanah, and why a in their first year of marriage doesn't wear a kittel according to . So we're going to look at all three of these ideas. I wanna start us with a letter because this is an Igress Shear, and you know, if I could have it my way, a lot of this was in . I might have just given this as a Shear, but it is an Igress Shear, so we have to do it in the Igress way. So this letter that does capture the idea is in volume nineteen. It is letter . If you scroll all the way to the bottom of the letter, you know, there was a time when people didn't scroll to the bottoms of letters. They, uh, they flipped to them, but we'll scroll all the way to

00:57 Speaker 1 the bottom of the letter. And the Rebbe writes in his PS, he says, "It is known and it is famous." It's very well known. that a under his , he wears a kittel. and because of that, when it comes to the Yom Kippur of the year of his wedding, that is the following Yom Kippur after he gets married, and he does not wear a kittel that following year. And he starts wearing it only the year afterwards. Okay, so we have here the stated clearly is that we do wear a kittel by our . We do wear a kittel on Yom Kippur. That's also implied from this line by the fact that the Rebbe says that eventually we're going to be wearing one. However, in that first year after, we do not. Also, the Rebbe here says that we only wear it on Yom Kippur. So you have here, actually, e-every aspect of this year is captured in one line from the Rebbe. That is the Rebbe saying that the kittel is worn on Yom Kippur, it's worn under the , and it's not worn by the . We're now gonna break down each of these ideas across multiple letters in to get an idea of where these come from, why we do the things we do. The first one's a little-- The first one's the easiest one. The first challenge is why we wear a kittel on Yom Kippur in the first place. Anyone wanna take a stab at it? We have a couple conventional

02:03 Speaker 1 ones, and then there's a couple less conventional ones. Anybody remember the basics?

02:07 Speaker 2 Um, .

02:11 Speaker 1 .

02:11 Speaker 2 One second. There's a few. There's, there's , the concept of turning the, um, into white.

02:19 Speaker 1 That's a, that's a one. That's a . Yeah, you don't see that a lot of places. Great.

02:23 Speaker 2 There's also li-- There's also .

02:26 Speaker 1 Yep, that one's brought in. That one's, uh, that one's originally a , I can't remember, but the Alter Rebbe brings it. So yes. Yeah. Great. No, I think, I think you got, I think you got the major ones. Yeah. Very good. Of course, one of them is much more famous than the other one. That's the angel one. Let's read. . I'm bringing you because he mushes together a whole bunch of the , and that's easier than bringing . So , you'll find this in the Alter Rebbe, six ten nine. He says the to wear clean white clothes on Yom Kippur. Not kittel, just clean white clothes. He will look like a . they also wear white clothes. That's what it says in at least one of the places in where they saw , they were wearing these white linen garments. That is the in our countries. There we go. That's why we wear a kittel, because the is to wear white clothes. Because a kittel is hopefully a white and clean garment. This, by the way, does imply to me that if your kittel is dirty, it might not fulfill the . The is not gonna wear white, clean clothes, and a, uh, and the only reason we wear a kittel is because it's un-usually white and usually clean. But if you have, I guess, a multicolored kittl-kittel or a stained kittel, might wanna get a new one. You only have a couple of days. There's another reason for the kittel, not just because we

03:38 Speaker 1 want to look like a . That was the other one that's really mentioned. When a person wears, it's the, it's a funeral shroud. It's a funeral shroud, a . Um, I think there's a better word for that in English than shrouds. I don't remember, though. Uh, . It's the things that people wear when they're-- that, that bodies wear when they're not alive anymore, when they go into the ground. When a person puts on the clothes of a dead person, that definitely, uh, that, that, that subjugates their heart a little bit. This inspires them to do because they think about the day of death. Thinking about death is actually one of the main ways to do according to the Gemara, at least one of the main ways not to do and the Gemara is suggesting ways not to do sins. On the list is to think about . So thinking about the fact that we're, uh, wearing dead people's clothes is definitely something that puts you into the Yom Kippur mood. And because of this, it is because of this that somebody who is in mourning is allowed to wear a kittel. That's just an interesting detail that you find in the that the Alter Rebbe is bringing out, which is that if the whole point of a kittel is just to look like a , then it is an adornment and an wouldn't be allowed to wear it. But if the point of a kittel is to put you into a depressive state, then an

04:42 Speaker 1 is welcome to wear it. So because of that second reason, an can wear it because the kittel isn't just one or the other. It's not that there's two opinions here, it's that both, it's that both are true. It's that the kittel is both an adornment of the mala-- of like the and also a of death. And since it's also a of death, even an can wear it. So those are the two reasons brought in the Alter Rebbe's . There is, um, a couple interesting side notes here I just wanted to pull out. One is . So, uh, they can, women can wear a kittel if they want to, if they want to have on because they want to wear white. But, uh, they cannot wear other that are similar, so that they'll look like . They shouldn't wear it. I'm sorry, I didn't wear that. I didn't read that correctly. It doesn't make sense for them to wear other kinds of white clothes so that they will look like . What that sentence means, now that I've read it twice, poorly twice, let me just tell you in summary. What he's saying is that they can wear the kittel if they want to. That's . If they, if they want to , if they want to, uh, subjugate their heart. So a woman can wear a kittel if she wants to feel like she might die, because Yom Kippur is a day of, uh, a day of atonement for everybody. But if she's wearing it

05:47 Speaker 1 to look like a , that is a waste of her time. Women cannot look like . How? Why can't women look like ? says in the . is that look like men, apparently. have masculine features, and so it would not make sense for a woman to wear a kittel to look like a because that's like her putting on a mustache. She's not gonna convince anybody. But if she is trying to, uh, look like, if she's trying to look like , totally welcome to. So it sounds like there is room here for a woman with the right to put on a kittel if her is specifically to feel like it's . Uh, noteworthy here, it sounds like then I should put on anything that makes me feel like it's the day of death. Shulchan Aruch says, "No. . Let's say I put on sack, I put on sackcloth because I wanna get myself into the teshuva mindset." You would think that would make a lot of sense, especially since that's one of the functions of the kittel. Nope. . We have to take that off for Yom Kippur. because Yom Kippur is a Yom Tov. So the idea of Yom Kippur is not to be depressed. The idea of Yom Kippur, though, is to recognize the gravity of the day. and you have to honor it with clean clothes. So a sackcloth would be a bit too far, but a kittel is just right. We mentioned a third reason, Sruli mentioned a third reason. I told

06:51 Speaker 1 him it was a Bach, indeed it is a Bach. The Bach says there's a third reason that's not brought in the Ateret Zekenim Shulchan Aruch, and that is . It shows forgiveness. as it says in the Pasuk, "If your sins will be like red, they will be whitened like snow." So we have three reasons brought in Halakha why we wear a kittel on Yom Kippur. One is to look like the malachim, one is to remind us of the day of death, and one is to signify the forgiveness of sin, our red sins turning white. Now, the Rebbe in most sichas only mentions the malachim issue, and then in one sicha he mentions something that I found nowhere in Halakha. So I'm gonna show you these quickly, and then we're gonna move on to the main part of the shiur which has letters and such. But we have in Toras Menachem, the year is fifty-seven forty-three, volume one, page eighty-three. The Rebbe says, on Yom Kippur we're just like angels. why are we like angels? We're not eating, we're not drinking. The Rebbe says this is indeed one of the reasons they wear a kittel. The Rebbe quotes that line in Shulchan Aruch that they should be-- that they, that we're similar to malachim. We're wearing them to look like angels. You also find in Toras Menachem, volume fifty-four, page thirty, that the Rebbe says that on Yom Kippur we do say Viddui. Uh, nonetheless, it is an inyan of Yom Tov. It's a Yom Tov

08:02 Speaker 1 even though we're saying Viddui. that the Satan is not on Yom Kippur, which is something I hadn't really thought about before. I feel like I've seen it somewhere, but it's certainly not in the front of my mind, that the Satan is not on Yom Kippur. There's a from the Satan that he prosecutes on Rosh Hashanah, but he's not allowed to talk on Yom Kippur. Therefore, we wear a kittel because we're in a state like malachim, we're like angels, nobody has anything negative to say about us. There's in Toras Menachem, volume twenty-four, page sixty-six, that we see . We see clearly on Yom Kippur on Yom Kippur we're in shul all day. So we wear a kittel all day, and we wear a tallis and a gartel all day just like malachim. So the idea is here that it's less that we're not eating and drinking, and more that we're spending the whole day in shul, the whole day praising God. We see there that it's much easier to do our avoda . It's much easier to be a good Yid on Yom Kippur than it is when you have to go to work, 'cause you're in a kittel all day like a malach. And since it is harder during a normal weekday to be a good Jew than it is on Yom Kippur when you're wearing a kittel, that's how you can tell it's ikar avoda. Just know we've seen this a lot in Igris from the Rebbe, we've seen this a lot in sichas

09:08 Speaker 1 from the Rebbe, that the Rebbe says if you ever wanna know your place in the world, that the thing that's most important for you to be doing right now, ask yourself what is most difficult for you. The things that are-- that you meet most resistance in are where you belong usually. So the Rebbe says, "Yom Kippur is actually not the ikar avoda of a Jew. The ikar avoda of a Jew is a, is a Thursday, is a Thursday in the office." But that's, uh, obviously tangential to what we're talking about. I'm bringing this last one just because it's a little bit out of left field. I was unable to find a source for it besides the Rebbe. Uh, in Toras Menachem, this is the year, uh, mem zayin, volume one, page eighty, says that on Yom Kippur we wear white clothes, a kittel, that it's supposed to look like the Kohen Gadol on Yom Kippur who would wear white 'cause every time he did the avoda of Yom Kippur, he would have to put on the white clothes and switch out of the gold clothes. I found this nowhere besides the sicha. Um, if anybody else can find a source for it, please let me know after the shiur. Anyway, we put it on because we're . We're sure we're going to turn out okay in the jud- in the judgment. certainly since it's after Rosh Hashanah and after most of the esser yemei teshuva, because obviously the last of those esser yemei teshuva is

10:10 Speaker 1 Yom Kippur itself. We're pretty confident at that point, so we put on a, a, uh, we put on big day love. Okay. So we have here, I think, three point five, maybe four reasons why we wear a kittel on Yom Kippur. Just to summarize, the first reason was because we wanna look like malachim, because we're acting like malachim all day. Reason number two was because it reminds us of Yom HaMiza, which is one that you don't hear a lot in day schools, but, uh maybe it should be taught in yeshivas. I don't know. The kids don't come home with that one. My, my, my children don't come home hearing that, uh, that, uh, that you wear white, uh, you wear white because you wanna remember that you're gonna die. But that's another one of them, is just to remember Yom HaMizahs, funeral shrouds. The third one was the Bach, uh, and that was that it reminds us of selichah, that red will turn white, and that our sins will be white, and that we, uh, won't have to deal with them anymore. They'll be gone. We'll be forgiven. And the fourth one that we saw was from the Rebbe that, uh, and I don't know any other source for it, that it reminds us it may-- it, it's like we're, we're, we're dressing like the Kohen Gadol on Yom Kippur. Now, the question is, why didn't we wear it on Rosh Hashanah? Uh, there's a smack to this effect. Uh, the smack mentions that we

11:06 Speaker 1 don't wear it on Rosh Hashanah. He says that there is a malbush that is called shrangnish, shranganish, shranganish. I, I think it's a kind of shroud Uh, that they wear, they wear this thing on Rosh Hashanah because it has great simcha with it. Since Rosh Hashanah has great simcha associated with it, we don't want to, we don't wanna, we don't want to, uh, do-- to lose our minds over it. Basically, he says that the funeral shroud be worn on Rosh Hashanah because Rosh Hashanah is a happy day where you rejoice, but it also is a serious day where you can't rejoice too much. So he suggests putting on a kind of kittel or funeral shroud over your Rosh Hashanah garments, so you won't lose your-- so you won't get, uh, you won't get, um, get, uh, out of control on Rosh Hashanah and celebrate Rosh Hashanah too hard. So this is one of the reasons that show up in Poskim for why we would wear a kittel on Rosh Hashanah is to keep us in the shuva mood even though Rosh Hashanah is a day of celebration. Nonetheless, it is not our minhag to wear a kittel on Rosh Hashanah and the Rebbe has a sikha. It's actually not a sikha, this was a table conversation that's brought in Taries Menachem volume forty-eight, page eighteen, where the Rebbe discusses why we do/don't do this with some interesting points and with a famous Yechiel. We haven't had one in a while. We're about to have a

12:11 Speaker 1 famous Yechiel from Lubavitch. Who knew? The Chasan in Lubavitch was named Yechiel. So, uh, so really if you're looking for somebody to, to take up the, the role around here, I'm just saying the Chasan in Lubavitch was Yechiel and, uh, he maybe, maybe he sang as well as I do. I don't know. They have, they have a point out. It is when it comes to wearing a kittel So the Rebbe pointed out at the table that the idea of wearing a kittel since the Alter Rebbe says we wear a kittel to be like a malach, that only makes sense on Yom Kippur, it doesn't make sense on Rosh Hashanah. Rosh Hashanah, we are not like angels. So we don't wear a kittel for Tekiah Shofar because we are not like malachim on Rosh Hashanah. So that's the Rebbe's answer. We don't do it 'cause the whole reason is to be like a malach, and we're not like malachim on Rosh Hashanah. We're eating, we're drinking, et cetera. So why does the chasan wear a kittel? Now that's interesting. The chasan doesn't wear a kittel in Minchabed, as you know, but those of you who daven some years in seven-seventy know that some years the chasan in seven-seventy did wear a kittel. Um, some years he did, some did, some years he didn't. This is not because this is Minchabed, this is just a fact that some chasanim wear a kittel. We'll see in a second that the Rebbe davka didn't mix in in these zinyon.

13:17 Speaker 1 But it seems the Rebbe felt that a chasan should not wear a kittel on Rosh Hashanah either. Anyway, if that's so, why does the, why does the chasan wear a kittel? So when it comes to-- I think this was asked sort of as a smia, why should he be wearing it? Because of the that the-- even if-- even the balka, even one blowing shofar isn't going to wear a kittel, certainly the chasan shouldn't wear a kittel, given that the whole point of the day of Rosh Hashanah is the shofar. So if the main-- the-- who's the main character on Rosh Hashanah? The guy blowing the shofar. If he's not wearing a kittel, nobody should wear a kittel, and he doesn't wear a kittel. When it comes to Gesher Mintal, Teillas Gesher, Teillas Tal, sometimes they wear kittel, but that's not our minhag. So the Rebbe says this is hard and fast, Yom Kippur and no other time. Somebody sitting there, don't know who, said that there was a Rav Yechiel who was a shliach Tsibur in Lubavitch. Told you, there was a Yechiel who was the chasan in Lubavitch, and he wore a kittel, and he wore a kittel in Lubavitch. So isn't that proof? And the, and the, The Rebbe Rashab never protested to the fact that Rebbe Yechiel, the chasan in Lubavitch, would wear a kittel. The Rebbe gives a fascinating answer that I think we all can take to heart . The Rebbe says that the Freda Rebbe told him that his

14:29 Speaker 1 father, the Rebbe Rashab, would never mix in, in Balabatishkeit of the Beis HaKnesses. He wouldn't mix into the, uh, the mundane, uh, daily back and forth of normal people in how they run the shul. "Ah, it should be done this way. It should be done this way. This is the one stands, this one goes this direction, that direction." These were not things that interested the Rebbe at all. Even if he disagreed with them, he didn't mix in with them. He never mixed in with the, uh, with the, with the order of how people walk around and do things in a shul. Guy wants to wear a kittel, the Rebbe's not gonna bother him. I, I think there's a, I think there's a lesson in there somewhere is that maybe nobody should be involved in the Balabatishkeit of a Beis HaKnesses, even if it's not L'fi ruchak. So, uh, L'cheira, the reason why the Rebbe allowed this in seven-seventy-two was because he was following the same herah, the herah that he got from the Freda Rebbe and from the-- by that way from the Rebbe Rashab, that a, a Rebbe does not mix in with the Balabatishkeit of a shul, even if it's not L'fi ruchak. And L'cheira, that's why there were kittels in, uh, in-- among the chasanim in seven-seventy, even when the Rebbe was there. But it's not our minhag and that's the reason why, 'cause we're not like malachim on the, on those days. We don't have a lot of time left, but

15:26 Speaker 1 we're finally getting to the letters. I think we can do it. Why doesn't a chasan wear one the year after his chasuna? The Rebbe answers this in a few letters. We have an Igress volume five, page eighty-seven. The Rebbe says, I'm giving you a herah pratis, a spr-- a private herah, the Rebbe writes to this chasan. You certainly know we wear a kittel under the chuppah. But I want some kind of jacket over it. Why? so people won't notice that it's there. They won't be able to see it clearly. And then he adds, on the Yom Kippur of the chasuna, of the year of the chasuna, that year, the next Yom Kippur, don't put on a kittel. Since he already wore it on his Yom Kippur of that year, that is the day, the day of your wedding is your Yom Kippur, and therefore you already had a Yom Kippur this year and already wore it on that. So it sounds like the Rebbe is enforcing this idea that you only get one shot per year of wearing the kittel, and you already used it. I will tell you right now that although I have other sources for the idea that a chasan doesn't wear a kittel on the, um, on the year-- on the, uh, Yom Kippur after his chasuna, I was unable to find anybody who expands about this opinion or explains this opinion. The Rebbe says that for some reason, he got this from the Freda Rebbe, who says this too, that

16:36 Speaker 1 for some reason, after you've done this once, you've maxed out your kittel, your Yom Kippur kittel for that year, and that's not brought as far as I can tell in other places, and also not really explained. I don't have an explanation, but I will show you a few more letters. This letter is Igress volume six. You'll find it on page one seventy-two. The Rebbe says there, Somebody wrote to the Rebbe and said, "I'm not allowed to wear my kittel. Can I wear the jacket that I wore on top of my kittel at my wedding? Or are, are all of my wedding clothes off-limits for Yom Kippur?" The Rebbe says, that only applies to the kittel. It's not like you can't wear your wedding outfit twice, just the kittel. The Rebbe adds a rule. Maybe it's, it's not-- that's not davka that kittel. Any kittel cannot be worn in the year after the wedding. So this one, I guess this-- the writer was trying to be a little clever. Said to the Rebbe, "Okay, I can't wear my kittel that I wore under the chuppah. Can I wear someone else's kittel on Yom Kippur?" No. No kittel for anybody, doesn't matter which kittel. Igress volume nineteen, page one ninety-nine is the one that we looked at together at the beginning of this year, where the Rebbe says that, um- That, uh, you will not be wearing the kittel in the following year. So we have a reason for this, but it's kind of a vague reason.

17:40 Speaker 1 It's because he wore it already. He already had his Yom Kippur. Uh, in the Sefer Chokim and Minhagim, which is just a really interesting book, Chokim and Minhagim. I have it on my table here. Cool stuff. Yeah. They did a really nice job on some of the Chabad minhagim. Says there, , that, uh, maybe this is one of the reasons why the Rebbe doesn't like kittel on Rosh Hashanah, 'cause it sounds like the Minchas Chabad is that you can only wear a kittel once a year, and if you only get one shot at wearing kittel per year, that means if you get married that year, you can't wear it Yom Kippur. L'chayim, if you're gonna wear it Yom Kippur, you wouldn't be able to wear it Rosh Hashanah. It's an idea from the Sefer Chokim and Minhagim, take it or leave it. I will point out with the time that we have left, that there are some people who strongly oppose this custom, that say that a chassan absolutely should wear a kittel in the year after the wedding. The, uh, chief among those, probably the Ketzot HaMatteh on the Matteh Efraim. He has some very strong words against this minhag. I wanna read it to you as much as we can before we run out of time. This minhag that the Rebbe talks about, that he says it's clearly our minhag, our minhag, our minhag. Say-- he says, "I'm very pained. I have no idea where this minhag came from." "In my smallness, in

18:44 Speaker 1 my humbleness, I did not find any makar or sharash for this minhag." He says there's no-- there's no root for this minhag. It makes no sense at all. There are two reasons for wearing a kittel. They're both brought in Shulchan Aruch. We learned them together. They are to remember the Yom Misa, or to look like malachim and they apply equally to a chassan, he says. A chassan is like a malach on Yom Kippur, and a chassan needs to remember that he's going to die one day on Yom Kippur. It's no different. So he says . The Matteh Efraim brings like every minhag, he says, and he doesn't bring that one. Because it was such a weak minhag, such a, such a, uh, such an inadequate minhag. But then I found, he says, then I found the Maharram Shick. The Maharram Shick does give a reason for this minhag and . And he concludes by saying that somebody who does not-- that, that wears a kittel He says that obviously, don't yell at somebody who puts on a kittel because we don't find the custom to not wear one among any Pesach, but he does have a reason. So there's a Maharram Shick, which we're gonna see in a second, which does have a reason. He says, fine, I hear what he's saying. Unclear what he's talking about there until we see the next line, but, uh, hang on, I'll show you what he-- I'll show you what that is, and then you'll understand what he

19:55 Speaker 1 means. Anyway, we see that the Ketzot, Ketzot HaMatteh is not thrilled with the minhag, but he does say there's a Maharram Shick. So the Maharram Shick says basically that a person prior to twenty shouldn't wear a kittel. We're not gonna read this inside, but I was-- uh, you have this in your link, and you can see it on the screen. He basically says that somebody who's under twenty shouldn't wear a kittel because under twenty, they're not gonna be punished for the aveiras that they did. They're not ready to take life seriously enough yet. They won't take the idea of death seriously either. They're not really in the Parshah of Yom Kippur until after age twenty, he says. So first of all, he says the minhag is a strong minhag, that nobody wears a kittel until age twenty. And then he says that in order to strengthen the fact that it's very clear in Chazal that everyone is supposed to be married by age twenty, they think that this makes sense to make sort of a minhag slash gezeirah, that people in their first year of marriage don't wear the kittel to remind them that they really should be before age twenty in their first year after marriage. That is, that if i-in theory, if a twen-- in theory, in theory, if a nineteen-year-old gets married, he wouldn't wear a kittel that year because, not, not because of our minhag, but because a nineteen-year-old doesn't wear a kittel. So I think he's saying that, uh, the

20:53 Speaker 1 Maharram Shick's idea is the minhag is that a chassan started-- we started the minhag of a chassan not wearing a kittel after-- in the Yom Kippur after his wedding to remind everybody that a chassan should be young enough that he's not in the Parshah of kittel a year after his wedding. Uh, this is, uh, this, this reason the Ketzot HaFra-- the Ketzot HaMatteh is very happy with. That's why he says, especially in our s-- in our generation, where most people get married after twenty, it's a good reminder. So it seems that in a lot of Acharonim, they think that our minhag to not wear a kittel the year after the, uh, the after Yom Kippur is actually a minhag that exists to remind us that we should be getting married younger and has nothing to do with the fact that we already had our own Yom Kippur. Um, there's another reason here. Let's see. Yeah, we have, we have a minute to look at this other reason. This is from the Shulchan Aruch. So there's another reason this minhag, and that is Negiah bekavod ha'isha. I like this one, so I brought this 'cause I think this is kinda nice. Negiah bekavod ha'isha. That, uh, he says maybe we don't wear a kittel the first year after marriage because, uh, because it, it, it, uh, damages the honor of the wife, and that is that, uh, this guy is supposed to be making her happy all the time, and here he, he comes home in

21:54 Speaker 1 a funeral shroud saying he's thinking about the day he's gonna die. He's not going to fulfill the . The man is obligated the first year of marriage to make his wife happy, and he's gonna come home wearing a funeral shroud telling her that he's pretty sure he's dying. That's just not, that's just not in the spirit of it. So because of kavod isha, because of the kavod of his wife, he doesn't do sort of funeral practices, too serious practices the first year after he gets married. In any event, these are two other reasons we found Acharonim. None of them match the reason of the Rebbe. The Rebbe's reason is from the Frieda Kereb, and it appears to be completely unique, which is that we don't wear it because somehow the first time you have it per year, you get one kittel on Yom Kippur per year, and on-- by the wedding, you already had your one time per year that you wear a kittel. So to do the fastest ever summary of everything that we've done today, we learned that the reason why we wear a kittel on Yom Kippur is to look like a malach, to make our sins, uh, to, to rec-recognize the forgiveness of sin, and to remind us of the day of death. We saw a bunch of sifrehs that show that the Rebbe is very partial to the idea that we're like malachim, but then we had a third one that comes in from the Rebbe, that it might also

22:49 Speaker 1 be because it's to rem-- to make us dress like the Kohen Gadol on Yom Kippur. We mentioned that we don't wear the kittel on Rosh Hashanah, although there is a smack that kind of s-- that defends the practice, says that you should wear a kittel on Rosh Hashanah to remind yourself of the gravity of the day. The Rebbe says it doesn't make any sense 'cause we mainly wear a kittel to look like a malach, and we do not act like malachim on Rosh Hashanah. The fact that there was a chassan and Lubavitch used to wear one is not any proof because Rebbeim and maybe us too shouldn't get involved in the Baal Habotish Sheit of a shul, even if it's not Lefi Ruach. And finally, we saw that we have a very strong minhag from our Rebbe that we do not wear one the first year of our weddings. We saw the Rebbe's reason why is one that's a little bit arcane. He says that it's because the, uh, you only get one Yom Kippur per year to wear a kittel, and you already had yours at your wedding. We saw that there is a Ketzot HaMatteh that does not like this minhag at all. We saw a couple Acharonim that explained the Maharram Shick, uh, told us that the reason why is to enforce a younger age of marriage, and we also saw, saw a Shulchan Aruch that said that the reason why is because it should-- because wearing a kittel would be negeah,

23:42 Speaker 1 uh, would be, uh, would be against the kavod of his new wife. Okay, that's it.