התניא הדו־לשוני (חלק 1)

00:01 Speaker 1 This is Igris. The letter we're looking at today was sent on Yud Dalet, Marcheshvan of Tav Shin Lamed Dalet, give or take exactly fifty years ago, and the letter is labeled Yud Tav Tav Kuf Tzadk Alef and is written to Zalman Jaffe, a, uh, a character really, a, a, a historical character in, uh, in modern Chabad history, and also, as we're about to discover and as I'm about to rely on heavily, the author of comprehensive diaries. He wrote journals all the time. He wrote about everything that happened to him. And if you read those journals, you really do-- not only do you get the entire story, but he is kind enough, I guess kind enough is the word, to put in his personal opinions and feelings at the time, which are frequently hilarious and very relatable. So, uh, I spent a good deal of time today going through Zalman Jaffe's journals. We're gonna talk about them a lot. I'm gonna tell you a lot of the highlights from them. But, uh, this letter is written to Zalman Jaffe. Of course, it's mentioned here as, uh, "Schneer Zalman Shichya, Shalom Uvracha," that I wrote. "Mevasheni Kabbalah-- Kabbalas Michtav. Kabbalat Michtav. Ubeva Kachas-" Sorry. Can you, can you give us a, uh, background of who this person was? We will in a second. I'm gonna go backwards. I'm gonna go forwards then backwards. But yeah, I will. I will. Uh, "Shalom Uvracha. Mevasheni Kabbalas Michtav Ubeva Kachas Bracha, uh," what's that? "Apan. Bimei Veshabas Kodesh Parashas Lech

01:13 Speaker 1 Lecha." The Rebbe says, "I've received your letter and yourapan. Ubeias Hadatzein. Yikra Letien. Kabbalas Michtav Ad Mer." With all of the honorifics after the name. "Nishmasa Beginzim Uneymim." So the Rebbe says, "I've received your letter. I've received yourapan. I will be reading it by the oil." "Ubecheras Hatslacha Besrois Teves." And then there are three lines and three words at the end that would come to define about five years of Zalman Jaffe's life. "Ubeni Na Tanya Gam Ken," the Rebbe's signature. So the Rebbe says, "I hope to hear. I'm giving you a bracha vehatslacha. I'm giving you a bracha for good news, and I would like to hear more about that Tanya. I would like to give you a bracha vehatslacha in that Tanya." Now, what is that Tanya? So if you go below the line, um, if it'll let me scroll down there. If you go below the line, the note below indicates that this is "Madurim Targum Angli. Chazak Babesi Yam." That this is an English Tanya that Zalman Jaffe was working with at the time. Uh, despite my earlier promise to Ruby that I would do a comprehensive Zalman Jaffe, that's not today's thing. We are gonna talk a lot about him, enough that you'll get an idea. Zalman Jaffe was heavily involved in Lubavitch in London, uh, and he was particularly from Manchester, and he was known for being from Manchester. Was a-- I believe that they called one of the books about him Mr. Manchester, so he was, uh, he was

02:17 Speaker 1 known for this quality. And he worked very closely with Chabad in London and in, uh, Manchester and other parts of England to carry out the Rebbe's requests. He was, uh, very close with the Rebbe. And we'll talk more about him. I think we'll probably do a whole Zalman Jaffe share at some point. What we need to know today is that what was going on with this English Tanya, our goal is to talk about the English Tanyas, look at some of the letters the Rebbe wrote advising about the publication of the English Tanya, and most importantly, to open with the fact that this was not about the English Tanya at all. So I'm opening with that to let you know that the English Tanya had been printed many years before. The English Tanya came out in nineteen sixty-two. Most Tanyas had already been translated. The Rebbe was not interested in another English Tanya. This was Zalman Jaffe's fault. He doesn't necessarily word it that way in the journal, but it was his fault. In the year nineteen seventy, the Rebbe asked Rabbi Nachum Sudak, who was, uh, then the head of, or maybe still, I have no idea how old people are and how long they live, head of Chabad in London to print a Tanya in London to bring Mashiach. So all the Rebbe wanted was a simple request. You know, when I was on shlichus, we printed a Tanya. Everybody prints a Tanya. The Rebbe had a simple request: go to London, print a

03:14 Speaker 1 Tanya, bring Mashiach. Oh, I have a note here from one of our listeners live saying that, uh, it's possible, at least likely, the Rebbe himself gave him the title Mr. Manchester. So maybe that would explain why, why he was called that all the time. Okay. Uh, so the Rebbe asked Rabbi Sudak to do something very simple, just print a Tanya in London. Rabbi Sudak approached Zalman Jaffe, and Zalman Jaffe said back, "I don't think it makes any sense to print something that's already been printed. They have Tanyas everywhere. They print Tanyas in every city. They're all over the place. Let's do something creative," said Zalman Jaffe. There is an English translation of Tanya, but first of all, it's in five volumes. The English is not anywhere near the Hebrew. You can't really read Tanya with English yet. What we really need is a bilingual edition where on one side of the page you'll have Hebrew, and on the other side of the page you will have English. Ask the Rebbe if he's willing to make that our project, that instead of printing any old regular Tanya in London, we're going to print a bilingual edition. The first time, not that it's been translated, they had an English translation, but the first time the English translation was accessible to somebody learning Tanya in the original language, where you could look on one side of the page and see on the other side of the page the English. So he requested this, and the Rebbe eventually allowed

04:22 Speaker 1 it, but not immediately. I wanna show you a letter from before the Rebbe allowed this. Most of these letters we're gonna look at today are in English because they are written to people in England. This letter is from the year nineteen seventy. It was written on Hey Nissan of nineteen seventy, and the Rebbe writes, "Greeting and blessing," which is our Shalom Uvracha. And he wishes a bracha for Pesach and liberation and all of those things. And then comes the PS. "PS. Thank you very much for your report about the state of affairs. With regard to Mr. R," I'm not sure who that is, we're gonna skip this paragraph. "Referring to the matter of republication of the Tanya with the English translation, I do not think it will be possible to make it page for page. Since in English translation the text is considerably longer, there are also footnotes to take into consideration. However, you undoubtedly discuss all aspects with the printers, and you will surely let me know." So the Rebbe initially when he heard this said, "Nice idea, but the English is long. There's considerable footnotes, and we just can't fit everything that translates from one Hebrew page of Tanya onto the other side in English." The, the, the, uh, logistics of the bilingual edition don't quite work. However, through multiple conversations and through guarantees that they would make a committee and figure it out, the Rebbe eventually agreed on several conditions to allow them to try to make a bilingual Tanya that would

05:24 Speaker 1 have an English side and a Hebrew side. Once again, I'm talking a lot today, a little bit less reading, a little more talking. I do wanna let you know that you can find all of this information, uh, actually, on chabad.org. They've printed the majority of, uh, of Rabbi Jaffe's available journals. Um, his journals are available everywhere. A lot of what I'm telling you, all of what I'm telling you pretty much, comes directly from Zalman Jaffe's journals. A little bit from, from various sifras. I'll, I'll point out the-- I'll point those out when we get to them. Anyway, eventually, the Rebbe did agree on the following conditions. Condition number one is that it had to be made in England specifically. He didn't just want it printed in England, he want the whole-- he wanted the whole thing from beginning to end made in England. Now, this was, this was difficult. Uh, everything in England was more expensive. At the time, they were sending most of their publications out to Holland to be made, and then they were, you know, I don't know, put together in England, but they were printed in Holland or in other places where it was less expensive. The Rebbe insisted to be made in England because he felt that would give it a professional air. Second of all, it had to be printed by the Soncino Press. The Soncino Press was one of the best publishers in Britain and also very expensive and difficult to work with And the Rebbe wanted these

06:20 Speaker 1 two things to happen, though. That it should be in England and that Soncino should print it. They immediately scheduled, uh, Rabbi Jaffe and Rabbi Sudak and a couple of people who were involved in this vad. They scheduled a working lunch with a Mr. Bloch. Mr. Bloch is the major antagonist of, uh, Zalman Jaffe's journals. He is the bad guy constantly until the final page, where he becomes the good guy. At the end, he becomes the good guy. But if you, if you're reading the journals as a story, Mr. Bloch becomes, uh, becomes Zalman Jaffe's biggest antagonist for five years. So they have a lunch with Mr. Bloch. He's the owner and managing director of Soncino Press, and he tells them that, "I can do this project, but it'd be better if you sent it out to Holland. Better if you don't use me." They said, "The Rebbe insists if we use, so we're kind of stuck." He said, "Fine, it's gonna take me three years." They were shocked. Three years to print a book was not what they had hoped. However, what they would find out later is it would eventually take five years, and three years was a conservative estimate. The first problem they encountered was that, uh, m-- was that Mr. Bloch told them that the texts of Tanyas that were available that were being printed then were, uh, were not able to be used to put together a new Tanya. The text was too bad. The quality had really been degraded because

07:16 Speaker 1 the ones printed in Brooklyn and Kfar Chabad had, uh, had already been, uh, degraded from several generations of photocopies of photocopies of photocopies. Mr. Bloch said, "I can't work with this." He said, "I can only work with an original Vilna Tanya that was printed in the year nineteen hundred. The originals." Now, now, there weren't a lot of those around. He promised he would return it after he finished taking pictures of it. So Zalman Jaffe approached the Rebbe's secretaries. Do we have a, do we have a, do we have Mendel on the call today? I don't think we have Mendel on the call today. He approached Rabbi Groner, Mendel's grandfather. He approached Rabbi Groner, and he said, uh, "We're going to need a Vilna Tanya, and nobody pretty much has this besides the Rebbe and his personal library." Rabbi Groner gave him a priceless Vilna Tanya on loan, and he said to him, this is a quote from the journal, "Please, Zalman," he begged me, "be careful and let me have it back in the same impeccable condition." This is the words from the journal. Um, he gave it to Mr. Bloch, and Mr. Bloch massacred this Tanya. Massacred it. Uh, it turns out that when you want to copy a Tanya like that, you have to take the entire volume apart page by page and copy it. So he returned a pile of disha-detached pages without the binding to the Rebbe. So they did, they did not maintain the quality of this Vilna Tanya. In

08:17 Speaker 1 any event, Mr. Bloch copied everything, and they started their work. As the project was going on, many technical questions came up, and the Rebbe weighed in on most of, if not all of these technical questions. I wanna show you a couple letters where the Rebbe weighs in on the technical aspects of Tanya. Once again, they'll be in English. This one was from eleventh Sivan of Tav Shin Lamed Alef. So now a year has gone by, and this is written to one of the members of the Va-vad, Dov Ber Perrin. I will note, 'cause I don't think I have a letter on it, but it's just mentioned in the journal, that Dov Ber Perrin had donated a substantial amount of money to this project and had hoped that they would be able to make a dedication in the Tanya to the memory of his father, I believe. And eventually, the Rebbe says in the letter that he's not allowing it. The Rebbe does not allow Perrin to put a dedication to a parent inside this, uh, Tanya. So he writes to Mr. Perrin, "Shalom u-bracha. I've received the report about the Tanya project. With regard to the color of the paper, follow the accepted practice as in the printing of scientific books, particularly in the field of religion and philosophy." The Rebbe wants Tanya to look like the average religious or philosophical book in the UK. He said it's important that there should be a bookmark in the book, and it's not like, you know, one

09:15 Speaker 1 of those string bookmarks that's attached to the binding. And it's also advisable to have a certain quantity printed on Bible paper, but good quality Bible paper, not the transparent kind you see in some of the really old Bibles. I don't know, did you guys have these old things? I, I had all these old Bibles in my house, and they were, they were called Bibles, and the papers were transparent, very thin paper. The Rebbe doesn't want that, but he wants Bible paper. When it comes to pagination, how you do the page numbers, the Rebbe says, "I mentioned this, I think, but I'm gonna repeat it to you, that the same pagination should be followed as in the standard editions of Tanya in Hebrew because that's where references are made." So if you mess up the page numbers, then every other book that references Tanya, you won't be able to find things. But since the English pages also have to be enumerated, the page numbers should be given in brackets next to the regular page number, and then he wishes them, uh, he says, "I hope you had a good Yom Tov and Kabbalat HaTorah b'simcha u-v'pnimiyut." We have a couple other instructions from the Rebbe that were given in yechidas or that were clarified over time. I'll give you a quick list of the instructions as they came out in their final form. The Rebbe ultimately said that he wanted off-white paper, not white paper. I do not know why. The Rebbe said the Hebrew pages

10:09 Speaker 1 should all be on the left side and the English page numbers all on the right side. Um, I'm sorry, not the page numbers, the pages. That this would allow-- this would make sure the per-person finds the Hebrew text first when they're flipping through the page. He also wanted the first word on the English page to always correspond to the first word on the Hebrew side. Obviously, as the translation goes, you're not gonna have every word line up with every word. But the Rebbe wanted at least that on the first word of every page of Tanya should correspond to a word in English that is that same word. The Rebbe said you're not allowed to change anything in the Hebrew section, and you're not allowed to change any of the Torah Sadah of the Hebrew section. Uh, certainly not the, um, the S-Sadah Pashar either. On Hebrew side, change nothing. The Rebbe ultimately asked for two silk bookmarks to be put in every volume and a plastic jacket over the book. You know, those plastic jackets that cover the book, a dust jacket. He wanted them on top too. The Rebbe also gave instructions about the thickness of the paper, the type of binding. Uh, if they did a two-volume edition, he told them where to make the split between the two volumes. And the Rebbe responded to two requests, as I told you. One of them was from, uh, Mr. Perrin to make a dedication page in the Tanya for his father. The Rebbe said

11:06 Speaker 1 no. And the other one was Mr. Bloch said that he was only gonna do this if it was called the Soncino Tanya. And the Rebbe said no. So Mr. Bloch said fine. So it ultimately was not called the Soncino Tanya, but this was a, this was apparently a, a, a deal breaker for Mr. Bloch, and the Rebbe just said no, and it, uh, it went, it, it, it worked out okay. Uh, so this is nineteen seventy-one. Only a year has passed. Uh, years and years and years went by. And, uh, we have here a letter, uh, also to Mr. Perrin, where the Rebbe is very disappointed about how long this has taken. This is from nineteen seventy-three. So at this point, it has been three years since the project began, and the Rebbe writes, "Shalom u-bracha. I received your correspondence. Without desiring to dwell on a painful matter, I'm impelled to impress my disappointment at the delay in the publication of the Tanya in the hope that this may spur you and your associates in this endeavor to expedite it." The Rebbe is not happy. He wants it sped up, "especially as we're now in the auspicious month of, auspicious month of Elul, followed by Tishrei. Prayers for a ksiva v'chasima tova to you and yours." The Rebbe's signature. They were coming-- they, they were encountering problems. Behind this letter is a history of back and forth with the publisher. Uh, every time they were sent a proof of any page, says Zalman Jaffe, there

12:07 Speaker 1 were at least a dozen mistakes on every page, at least twelve mistakes on every page, probably more. And every time they corrected one mistake, they would send it back and say, "Okay, these mistakes are fixed," and they would send back a copy, and there were new mistakes that hadn't been there the previous time. They were constantly arguing with Mr. Bloch. He claimed they were holding up progress. They should just let the mistakes go by. They wrote to the Rebbe saying, "Can we let through a few mistakes?" You can imagine the Rebbe said absolutely not. So Mr. Bloch would sometimes say, "Fine, I'm not working with this project for months," and not respond to them for a while. There were sometimes months that, uh, months that would go by, and they would call him every day, and they couldn't get a response from him. And meanwhile, the Rebbe's getting more and more, the words of Zalman Jaffe, impatient. Uh, one occasion, according, according to Zalman Jaffe, the Rebbe on one-- the Rebbe on one occasion said to him that, uh, quote, "You are not a good businessman. Many people are unable to study Tanya properly because of this delay." So the Rebbe was very harsh with the people involved in this and the fact that it was taking so long, but they simply weren't able to keep it moving. I'm gonna show you a letter over here that I was able to find nowhere except for Zalman Jaffe's journal. I, I don't know why. I, I

13:05 Speaker 1 grabbed text from it, uh, in English, tried it in Hebrew. I'm not sure there's a source of this outside of the journal itself. But, um, one of the things that came up in the middle of the process in nineteen seventy-two, this is from Chof Gimmel Kislev of Tav Shin Lamed Gimmel. Obviously not, not printed in Yiddish, so we would have found it, and, uh, not printed anywhere else as far as I can tell. Zalman Jaffe wrote to the Rebbe and said that they were moving, they were moving along nicely, but they were worried about the end of chapter one. And if you've ever opened a Tanya, you know why they were worried about the end of chapter one. This is a-- Shluchim talk about this all the time. Campus Shluchim. We have like, we have like, uh, we have group discussions as Campus Shluchim on how to teach the end of chapter one of Tanya. The chapter one of Tanya is beautiful, it's nigla dic, it also has some inspiration in it. It really has just about everything. And then at the end it says that all the goyim are basically rotten. And it's a very difficult section to read. And so Zalman Jaffe suggested that since this was a bilingual Tanya, where it's gonna be side by side, it wasn't the same as the multiple edition one. People are gonna really be reading this using this. Maybe we should change the English side to be a little more acceptable, uh, and not be so

14:01 Speaker 1 harsh on the goyim. The Rebbe is not happy with this at all. Uh, so the Rebbe says, "I wanna begin with a good thing. I was pleased to see your daughter and your two grandchildren. Hashem, God should bless them before they return to England. Uh, no doubt she will convey my personal regards and also report on the test of Shema Yisrael, which she passed with flying colors." Just if you wanna get an idea of how close the Rebbe felt with this family, the Rebbe is invested in the test on Shema Yisrael that she passed with flying colors, this, uh, his granddaughter. In any event. "Regarding your remarks about the translation of the concluding passage of chapter one of Tanya, where it speaks of the souls of the nations of the world, raising the question of resentment that it may call for forth in certain circles, offering suggestion in this matter. My obvious answer, if I may borrow your own phrase, is we cannot do anything without the Rebbe's permission," meaning, of course, the Alter Rebbe's author's permission. So Zalman Jaffe had written to him, "I'm interested in changing this, but I won't act without the Rebbe's permission." He goes, "Okay, don't act without the Rebbe's permission. The Alter Rebbe does not give you permission to change what he said, even in English. Let me also add, with no off-- with no offense intended, your suggestion comes too late, for the passage has already been translated into Yiddish, English, French, Italian." He goes, "Look, it's out

14:59 Speaker 1 there in accordance with the intent of the author. There's no point to attempt to retract or forestall anything at this stage. Damage control does not work when it's already out there. It just looks like you're covering yourself," is what the Rebbe says here. "As a matter of fact, if any changes were made, it would only accentuate the matter and provide an opportunity for anyone in any part of the world whose eye will catch it to make a fuss about it." When you put something out and then you put out a different version, that's when people notice that you're, that you're uncomfortable with the stuff you put out. Don't retract, you're just gonna make it worse. A further point, and this is the crux of the matter, and this unfortunately hits very hard right now. In our day and age, one does not have to be a Hasid or even a Kabbalist, uh, for this adoption of the Alter Rebbe is based on Kabbalah and Talmud. Not even a confirmed believer. You can be, you can be an agnostic as long as one does not close one, uh, one's eyes to the stark facts to see what kind of souls the nations of the world have. This is harsh. The Rebbe goes, "Oh, you have a problem with me saying the nations of the world have rotten souls? You don't have to be a Hasid. You don't have to be a Kabbalist. You don't even have to be a believer. If you're not closing your eyes,

15:48 Speaker 1 you know the nations of the world have got some rotten souls. For all the nations of the world were witnesses to what was going on in Germany and in the countries it overran during World War II and the Holocaust, yet remained indifferent. In light of this, the words of the Alter Rebbe, incidentally not original to him, as mentioned above, it's from Kamaran Kabbalah, may even be an understatement," says the Rebbe. The end of chapter one is an understatement in the quality of the souls of the nations of the world. "To allay your apprehensions further, let me say this: if a goy, non-Jew, wants to keep his feelings to himself and not make trouble, and there are such, he will not make an issue out of it. If he's the kind of goy that wants to make trouble, and there are also such, he can create issues without looking for them in books as the case of the blood libel which you cite in your letter." He goes, "Look, goyim who wanna get you, they're gonna get you without the English Tanya. English Tanya is not gonna be the thing that causes the goyim to attack the Yid. If they're looking to hurt you, they'll find plenty. They don't need books. And if they're not looking to hurt you, this isn't gonna make them hurt you. I trust you all as inspiring your test case of observance and the Farbrengen there, which I'm told relayed also to Manchester with a hookup did not completely rob you

16:41 Speaker 1 of a night's sleep on Motzei Shabbos." Which is very familiar the way the Rebbe talks to Zalman Jaffe. "The important thing is that inspiration should be lasting and permeate each and every day of the year." So they got a lot of guidance like this from the Rebbe. This is just an incredible example of the Rebbe giving them guidance on what to do with the English Tanya. Now, let me find where I was in my, uh, in my private notes of Zalman Jaffe's history. Uh, they, uh-- Okay. They decided they were gonna go to the Rebbe for Shavuot, Tu B'Shevat Lamed Gimmel, and, uh, he always went for Shavuot, Zalman Jaffe. He always went for Shavuot and, uh, that was his traditional time to come to the Rebbe. And before Tu B'Shevat Lamed Gimmel, this is n-- this is nineteen seventy-three, so now what? Only three years have gone by, uh, since they've started the project. Bloch announces-- Mr. Bloch from Sensino announces that he is going to deliver a thick bound copy of the new production. He goes, "Great. Three years, I finally have something to show the Rebbe." It arrives, and he's about to get on the plane and he opens it and it is empty . It has one page. One page of Tanya has been printed, a sample page, and the rest of it was blank to show what the final binding version would look like, but he's only done one page. So he, uh, he, he also said that it, it

17:47 Speaker 1 to-- it, it ultimately wasn't even a good copy because it ends up looking nothing like the book that Mr. Bloch eventually produces. But he has a, he has a thick bound empty Tanya with one page done, and he is not thrilled at all. Uh, when he goes back to the Rebbe for Shavuot in nineteen seventy-four, it is still not printed, and the Rebbe told him to come again before the next Shavuot, before nineteen seventy-five, uh, before Shavuot in nineteen seventy-five. The Rebbe-- Mr. Jaffe said to the Rebbe that, of course, he would come back earlier. He'd love to come, and he expects to be coming with the new Tanya. The Rebbe said to him, y-- this is a quote from the journal, "You must be an optimist. Don't wait for the Tanya." If you wait to come next time until you have a Tanya, I don't know when I'm gonna see you next. So you see the Rebbe losing faith in the project a little bit. Kivia. Uh, the year went on, Tanya was still not ready and, uh, they planned a trip to come to New York for Yud Shvat of Tu B'Shevat Lamed He without the Tanya. They would not eventually pre-present the Tanya to the Rebbe until the year, uh, Tu B'Shevat Lamed He on Erev Shavuot, and they present it with incredible fanfare Uh, I haven't decided yet if I'm going to tell you the story of the presentation of the Tanya tomorrow as a part two to this, or whether

18:49 Speaker 1 I'm going to save it for when we learn Tafshin Lamed He and study it there. The Rebbe, to make a very long story short, the Rebbe received the Tanya with incredible fanfare, he made a farbrengen about it. They presented the Tanyas to the Rebbe. The Rebbe had a-- The Rebbe, the Rebbe put together all of the delegates from England at the time. It is a wild sikha with wild giluyim, and they, they got to present a Tanya to the Rebbetsin. There's, there's much story after the Tanya arrives about the presentation and the handing out of the Tanya. But I do think this concludes the story of the creation of the Tanya in the first place, gives a little bit of context to our letter that we looked at today from Tafshin Lamed Daled, where the Rebbe gives him a bracha v'ratzah ham vesuras toivos when it comes to the Tanya gam kem. And we have a lot more to back this up now to understand that this was really a continuous project for Zamand Jafri from the year nineteen seventy until nineteen seventy-five, one that the Rebbe was constantly involved in. Okay, thank you all very much.

19:39 Speaker 2 Zamand Jafri indeed was an incredible character. I remember him well. Um, for many, many years, he didn't have a beard. And then at some point, there's a story somehow, I think the Rebbe encouraged him to start growing his beard, or the Rebbe spoke with farbrengen about growing beards, and from then he started to grow his beard. Um, so I remember him both stages, both without his beard and then with his beard. I'm sure, uh, Rabbi Wittkus remembers him too very well. Um, he's, he's actually the one who started singing Adir U'Melech by the Rebbe. Adir U'Melech was never sung. When he would come, he would sing Adir U'Melech, and, and the Rebbe would encourage Adir U'Melech singing. Somehow it became now that they sing Adir U'Melech, but Adir U'Melech was never sung. He's actually the one who started it, to my knowledge. And I know a funny story about him, just to equip the story. I don't know how accurate or true it is. Story I heard is that he came just to talk about the relationship he had with the Rebbe, is that he came one time for one of the Yamim Tovim, and he passed by the-- I think it was for, before Rosh Hashanah or something, 'cause he passed by the Rebbe, and he told the Rebbe, "I brought you..." And he brought the Rebbe a bottle of whiskey from duty-free. "I brought you this really nice bottle of whiskey." And the Rebbe smiled, and the Rebbe laughed, and the Rebbe told

20:45 Speaker 2 him, "My wife doesn't want me to drink." So he told, so he told, he told the Rebbe that he, that, uh, sh-sh-- that he should give her some of the whiskey also, and then she'll be more amenable to his drinking . That's a type of like, uh, back and forth quipping that he used to, uh... He used to actually hand-deliver to the Rosh Hag his, his, um, his, uh, his, uh, diaries. So he used to get like the first fresh copy. Like he would give it downstairs, downstairs on the first floor to the Maskirim to the Rebbe, then he would come upstairs to the third floor and give it to the Rosh Hag. So I used to, I used to really enjoy reading his diaries when they came out when I was a bachur. It's very cute.