התניא הדו־לשוני (חלק 2)

00:00 Let's go. This is Yigris, and by popular demand, instead of going on to another letter today, we are going to kind of continue what we started in our last letter. Uh, the last letter that we looked at was the Rebbe wishing, uh, Reb Zalman Jaffe from England incredible success in printing the Tanya that he'd been working on for a while. We took a big step in time because we're looking at the year, uh, tav shin lamed daled, exactly fifty years ago. And we look back to see why and what exactly Zalman Jaffe had been working on for so long, and a really quick recap of the story that we told, and then we're gonna spend the rest of the time talking about the rest of the story because we didn't get to finish it. Uh, in the year nineteen seventy, seventy, the Rebbe had asked Rabbi Sudak, who was then the head shliach of London, to print a Tanya in London to bring Moshiach, and it was supposed to be a nice and easy mission. You bring a machine to London, maybe if it's even-- maybe it's even a printer, I don't know, and you print it out. Zalman Jaffe heard about this, and this was not going to happen. Zalman Jaffe said , "You can't just do the same thing you've always done. Let's ask the Rebbe if we can print a Tanya that's never been, that's never been printed before." And that was going to be the first bilingual English edition of Tanya.

00:59 Now, important note, it was not the first English edition of Tanya. That had already been printed in the sixties, but it was in several volumes, and the English wasn't next to the Hebrew. It was just not terribly accessible to somebody trying to study the sources side by side. So they proposed that they would put the English Tanya on one side, the Hebrew Tanya on the other side, and people would be able to read them page against page. We saw a letter where the Rebbe doubted that this could be done, said maybe that it would be too difficult with all the footnotes and all of the, um, and all of the, uh, the English translation, which is a little longer than the Hebrew to fit page by page. But they made it work, and the Rebbe ultimately agreed on two conditions. Condition number one was that it had to be made entirely in England, and condition number two, you had to use Soncino. These two conditions proved to be more or less the reason, bedi'hasach then at least, why this entire project ended up taking five years. Uh, printing in England is, was more expensive, and printing with Soncino was an absolute nightmare. We heard a lot about that, uh, last sheer. We went through Rabbi-- we went through, uh, Rabbi Zalman Jaffe's journals to read about his constant problems with Soncino Press, specifically with a Mr. Block there, who was, uh, constantly bothering him. Uh, it took them five years. There were many mistakes, and,

02:01 uh, we saw a lot of letters where the Rebbe weighs in on various technical aspects of the book. We saw the Rebbe picking the page color and picking how to do the page numerations and, uh, telling Mr. Block that he could not call it the Soncino Tanya no matter how much he wanted to, refusing dedication pages. We saw quite a few letters where the Rebbe gave specific advice on this Tanya. Now, they finally plan-- uh, I, I remember one of the last letters that we saw was that, uh, Zalman Jaffe was saying that he hoped that his next visit to the Rebbe in tav shin lamed he would be with the Tanyas, and the Rebbe told him, "You sound very optimistic, but don't wait for the Tanyas to see me." The hanging implication being that you might never see me if you're waiting for the Tanyas. Nonetheless, the plan was Zalman Jaffe almost always, if not always, I think probably always, went to the Rebbe before Shavuos, and he planned to make a Shavuos trip with the Tanyas in hand. Two weeks before Lag BaOmer, he and his delegation received ten unbound copies, uh, to be sent to the Rebbe. Uh, they, they'd actually requested twelve of them. There were supposed to be twelve. Mr. Block kept two of them, which is just so typical of this story. Once again, our sources for just about everything are, uh, are Zalman Jaffe's journals from this time period. I read today, total agav, while I was looking

03:05 for more stuff on this, that, uh, Zalman Jaffe's main reason he kept such good journals, I hadn't-- I did not know this at all, was because his grandfather or great-grandfather was in Lubavitch. He used to go to Lubavitch Rebbes all the time, and all they know about him is that he went to Lubavitch Rebbes. They have no idea what his role was there, what he did there. His, he, Zalman Jaffe was always very upset that he knew that his relatives, that his ancestors, had gone to Lubavitch for the holidays and didn't know what they did there. So he determined that he would keep a notebook with him and make sure that his descendants knew exactly what he did when he went to the Rebbe. So this is, uh-- so that he does take, he takes a very good note. Um, I don't know for sure that he takes very good notes. He takes very extensive notes. Who knows how accurate they are? Only somebody who was there, but they sound accurate. Anyway, the, uh, two weeks, uh, two weeks before Lag BaOmer, they got ten unbound copies. Mr. Block kept two of them, and, uh, they bound them in leather for the Rebbe. Then five days before-- the, the-- I'm sorry. The leather-bound copies came back five days before their flight to New York, so just in the nick of time. Three days before their flight to New York, they were given from the Soncino seventy-four regular bound copies. So they now had a number

04:02 of copies they could bring for dispersion, dispersal. And, uh, they flew to New York City, and they arrived. When they got to the Rebbe, the Rebbe told them through a message to send in the ten leather-bound copies only after the seventy-four were finished. Now, the seventy-four were finished. They were bound already. So they scratched their heads until they realized that since in their haste to bind them, they had not put in the bookmarks and the jackets that we saw in a letter the Rebbe specifically wanted on these books. They were done, but the Rebbe had asked for dust jackets and bookmarks. Um, they went around looking if anybody could do it. I guess it was close to Shavuos, so all the book publishers were busy. They could not find anybody who would put markers and jackets on the books. So they went out to a store. They bought rolls of silk ribbon. They bought pieces of plastic, and Rabbi Sudak and the crew sat there all day putting it together themselves. They did it all in one day. And as a matter of fact, if you are a Tanya collective, there are seventy-four Tanyas that are around in the world right now, first editions, and you can tell them from all the other editions because the markers look funny. They, they, they're in two, uh, they're in two different colors, uh, and since then, there's on-- they've only been produced with brown markers. So if you're interested, you can find which ones they did by

05:01 hand because the, uh, the markers, the, the long-- the strings you use to mark the page look different. Anyway, Rebbe Grodner eventually sent a message to them that they were to present-- that they were going to present the leather-bound copies to the Rebbe at a farbrengen. The Rebbe very frequently, maybe even always, at least very frequently, did an erev Shavuot farbrengen, so the farbrengen wasn't a big surprise, but this feature was that they would be presenting it to the Rebbe in front of everybody. They noticed when the Rebbe walked into the room that a box with some of the Tanyas was going to be-- was placed under the Rebbe's table. So they saw that, uh, they saw that this was definitely going to happen. Near the end of the farbrengen, the Rebbe gave, uh, Rebbe Jaffe a signal. I don't know what the signal was. He just says he gave him a signal, and everybody came up. Uh, they handed the Tanyas to the Rebbe. They presented them, and he says the Rebbe looked very, very happy. The language that he has in the journals, the Rebbe was literally beaming with pleasure. The Rebbe accepted the Tanyas, and he said, "Agas in yashe kayach." And he gave everybody who presented him a Tanya a little bit of vodka and one of a, a mikhtah v'chlalim that he put out for Shavuos. Uh- Rabbi Groner was, uh, Rabbi Groner was, as usual, trying to make people move a little bit faster. So Rabbi Groner was bugging,

06:02 uh, uh, Reb Jaffe that he needs to hurry things up. There's ten Tanyas to hand out, and everybody's standing there like in awe, very slowly handing books to the Rebbe. So, uh, said Reb Zalman, he took two Tanyas at the same time and handed two of them to the Rebbe. Now, he writes in his journal, one of the things I love about his journal is that he, he always writes what's going on in his head when it's relevant. So the Rebbe says to him, when he receives the two journals, the Rebbe says, uh, "Two? Who's the other one for? One's for me, who's the other one for?" And Reb Jaf-- uh, Reb Zalman writes that he wanted more than anything else to tell the Rebbe that the other one was for him. That hoping that the Rebbe would, in front of everybody, give him a Tanya, but he thought he might get in trouble for that, so he said both are for the Rebbe, and the Rebbe thanked him, gave him vodka too, and wished him a l'chaim. After he handed out the Tanyas, they were still standing up there by the Rebbe, and the Rebbe gave a short sicha. Now, some of you who are on our WhatsApp group might have seen that about twenty minutes ago, I decided to frantically try to find the sicha. The reason why I tried to frantically find it was not because I didn't have it. I had the sicha, but it's only printed in Sefer HaSichot. And

06:55 Sefer HaSichot very famously is, first of all, very difficult to read, even if you're good at reading it, meaning that the typewriting is just impossible. But more than that, I had hoped, Teres Menachem, when they redo these sichas, they frequently include things like the context that I'm telling you here, and I was hoping to see it all in print. For whatever reason, they did not. You have this on your screen right now. Uh, I wanna give a special thank you to Eli Polterak, who went and found a copy for me. Um, this is the newest one, the one that just came out. So, uh, I don't, I don't have it yet. Um, they, they did not include the story. Basically, Teres Menachem, when they put this together, for some reason breezed over this entire story. They do include the sicha that the Rebbe gave afterwards, and like a word or two about the Rebbe interacting with the delegation from England, but I was, uh, I was disappointed, and I do not know why. They didn't include more details. Usually, they're great about that. Maybe in the next edition, maybe never. In any event, the Rebbe said a sicha. We're gonna read that sicha together because we do have to learn Torah today and not just listen to stories from me, but we'll do the sicha in one second. I'm gonna give you a little more context. Uh, after the sicha, the Rebbe then calls up all of the English citizens in the room. He, uh,

07:54 he calls out a few of them by name. He called out Typhon Brown by name, he called out Shmuel Lu by name, he said to bring the children up, too. And then he asked if anybody else was there, and, uh, Rabbi Chaim Farrow and, uh, Mendel Catch were both called up, so they came too. The Rebbe had to really, really prod people to come up, but eventually, he got the platform entirely full, the table entire-- table? I don't know. The area entirely full of the British members of the farbrengen. When everybody was there, uh, he had everybody up there. There were, uh... I don't think... He doesn't put the number. I guess he didn't count. Doesn't write the number in the journal, but it was a lot of them by the end. The Rebbe then turned to Zalman Jaffe and said, "You are the governor of the United Kingdom, so you have to bring everybody up here." So he dubbed him the governor of the UK. He gave everybody from Britain a letter and a vodka and some cake for the kids. He also asked that some cakes should be passed to the women who were from England as well. And then when they're all surrounding the Rebbe, the Rebbe started doing something that according to Zalman Jaffe, and I believe this is true, this was never done before, and I don't know if it was ever done after. The Rebbe himself began the singing of the Dalet Babus. Uh, and that was not, uh,

08:50 the Rebbe, I don't believe, ever began the Dalet Babus. Uh, according to Zalman Jaffe, he had not done it before, and he sang the Dalet Babus with everybody, the, uh, the most sacred Alter Rebbe Nigun, right there with all the British subjects up on the platform. Uh, and at the end of that nigun, he asked that the rest of the cake be given out to the women. He made sure that everybody else had gotten the vodka, or somebody-- he'd missed somebody. And then he started singing Reb Levik's Simchas Torah Nigun, and that's how the Rebbe left the room. So I want us to look at the sicha together. This is the sicha the Rebbe delivered during the time that he was receiving the Tanyas, right after receiving the Tanyas. It's about the importance of a Tanya translation. We have over here, I'm gonna start down here. "Matan Torah hi skhalon Torah shebichtav." You have it on your screen. "Matan Torah begins with Torah shebichtav. Torah shebichtav shel Chassidus b'nisgala p'nimis haTorah knaal hu Sefer Tanya." And what is the Torah shebichtav, the written Torah of Chassidus? That's Tanya. The reason the Rebbe writes this is not just something you hear at farbrengens. It is official Rebbe messaging that the Tanya is the Torah shebichtav of Chassidus. When it comes to Matan Torah, receiving the Torah. After Moshe got the Torah, he translated it into seventy languages. That Moshe himself was the one who did the translation. Basically, Moshe first completed the whole Torah and only

10:22 then translated it. Everything in the Torah is meant to be a lesson for every generation. It's also . Uh, that means-- sorry. The same way that everything in the Torah is something we're supposed to learn from, the fact that Moshe translated the Torah and didn't just translate it but explained it well into seventy languages is supposed to be something that we learn from too. So this is a herah for us that we are supposed to be translating things. The Rebbe says it's particularly historic to translate something into English because English is the language of the majority of the Jewish people. First of all, there's America, which was founded by those who came from England, he says. The Rebbe says it is very important to translate things into English specifically because that's the language that most Jews speak, most Jews are in America, and that it should specifically come from England, which is the source of American English, um, in, in, in a way. A source, a somewhat distant source of American English. I'm not sure how much the English would appreciate that, but we sure do. Uh, the Rebbe says it's not just important that things be translated like the Torah and Nach into English, but certainly the Torah shebichtav of Chassidus needs to be translated into English. Continuing in the sicha, the Rebbe says-- by the way, this is in Erev Chag HaShavuos of Tav Shin Lamed He. It is in volume eighty, which just came out from Teres Menachem. Sorry, one minute. Okay.

11:47 Calling it we have in Devan Deu. The Rebbe says everything when it comes to Torah and mitzvahs need to be done with, uh, with beauty. They need to be done in a beautiful way. is the best way possible. in the most beautiful way. Everything-- Every time you're serving God, do it as best you can. this also comes when-- this also applies when it comes to publishing, something that the Rebbe knows a lot about. The Rebbe, don't forget, was involved in publishing long before he assumed the Nazius, and he always took publishing and that it should be beautiful very seriously, and especially when it comes to translating things into other languages. you should do this as well as possible the first time despite the fact that it was done well the first time, if it can be done better, it should be done a second time. Basically, keep putting out printings till you can do it better. a third time . The Rebbe then lists all the things that he thinks makes a beautiful book, and if you'll remember from our letters, he was involved in ensuring every single one of these steps in the printing of this Tanya, that it should be, uh, there should be a nice translation, it should be a nice paper, it should be a nice, um... I don't know what the difference is between clap and near. I guess it's just-- Okay. Uh, different, uh, nice, nice ink, nice binding, and all of these other things, details that the Rebbe

12:53 was intimately involved in the printing of this Tanya. I don't even need to mention the Rebbe says, "Needless to say, despite the fact that I'm really talking up the value of translations, the- What'd I say? Good remember. You said we don't have to remember. Oh, I'm sorry. We absolutely have to remember. You know, this happens to you on Shabbos, really. Don't forget that the English translation is only . It is the outer garment of Tanya. So the Rebbe's talking to trans-the translation, but don't get too excited. It's a , it's a vessel, it's a can. But inside this , inside this new vessel, there is old wine . We can't change it at all. Once again, the Rebbe, it's-- this sikha is almost like if you were here for the last year, you know, every one of these things were mentioned in letters. The Rebbe's recapping his letters saying that it, uh-- we can't change a single detail. Remember, uh, that, that Rab Jaffe had written to the Rebbe that he was worried about that end of the first of Tanya, and the Rebbe told him, "First of all, don't change it, and second of all, they kind of deserve it." don't erase anything. See what he's talking about? This is almost certainly a letter. I mean, come on. This is the Rebbe saying exactly what the-- what he said to the-- to Rab Zamin in the letter. "Don't change a word of Tanya because you're worried that, uh, that non-Jews will be angry about

14:12 what it says." We never need to be afraid when we are giving over Torah in its legitimate way. without any compromises and without hiding anything. At the end of the day, even a non-Jew recognizes that Moshe is true and his Torah is true. The main way to make peace . The best way to make peace between people is to tell the truth about the Torah, and I would be remiss if I did not mention this is one hundred percent the Rebbe's shita regarding that if we are vocal and truthful about exa-- about the fact that we have a completely undisputed claim to that entire land, we'll make peace with the non-Jews in the land. And the reason why we're having so much trouble making peace is because we are-- we, uh, we, we... Well, you kind of have it, we kind of have it, you can have some of it. Uh, the Rebbe says that if we talk about Torah with no , we'll always have peace with the non-Jews. The non-Jews only have problems with us when we are not firm in our ways. He then gives a he says the Rebbe gives a bracha that everybody was involved in publishing the English Ta-- the bilingual English, English Tanya should be, uh, should merit a, uh, a greater urge and a desire, a yearning to be more involved in these things significantly more than they have been already. in quality, in quantity in all, all aspects of Yiddishkeit, Torah, and mitzvahs. He's hoping that

15:35 this, uh, that everybody was involved will be galvanized to be more involved in Yiddishkeit and in Torah and in mitzvahs. of course, it should be with happiness and with a panimias. should go onward and upward until that light that is within them or about them shines even more their own light shining and their light shining and wherever they live and that will increase the light in the entire world. and this should all be done in a way of m-m-mayar? Mayar? Mayar. in a way of joy until the remnants of Galus are burnt up and we're not in exile anymore. and the night will shine like the day in a, uh, shiny way, in a source of light kind of way . Then he says the Rebbe then says to everybody involved and to the great Nachas Ruach that he got through the printing of it, and then we have only a couple lines here where, uh, where the person who arranged describes the scene that we just described. Uh, down here, there's more brachas, I'm skipping through them right now, but you can see them right up there. Says, uh, that the Rebbe the Rebbe told many of the guests from Angu- from England who had been involved in printing Tanya to come and say l'chaim. each one got a to the children, he gave a piece of the matzo and he also sent matzo to the women. After that, the Rebbe started singing the uh, and on the he sang only one time, and

17:03 then right before they left, they sang the of Reb Levik. So as I said, they, they mention the notes, but I feel like they should-- I feel like they could have done a little more with that, but in any event, we know the backstory. That's the story, that's sikha on what the Rebbe said at that time. There's a little more left to our story, so let's finish things up. Uh, there was a yechidus after Shavuos at eleven forty-five PM, and once again, uh, Rav Zalman Jaffe is hilarious. Uh, a couple months earlier, maybe a couple years earlier, I don't know the date, uh, Rav Zalman Jaffe had helped the Rebbe make a shidduch. Uh, the Rebbe had asked for help, uh, matching two people, and he'd done it, and he told-- and the Rebbe told him, "I'm gonna pay you shadchanus gelt." And, uh, and Rav Jaffe said back to him, um, "I don't want money, but I want something qualitative. I wanna be able to ask a favor sometime in the future." So, uh, he'd been waiting for a while for this opportunity to arise. He goes and yechidus with the Rebbe, and he tells the Rebbe that if the Rebbe will personally give each of the four members of this Tanya committee a bilingual Tanya from his hand with an autograph from the Rebbe, then he would consider the Rebbe's debt repaid. And the Rebbe said back to him, quote from the journal, "I see you're not only a businessman in Manchester but

18:02 in America too." And, uh, he agreed that he would do it. So the Rebbe agreed to give each of them a Tanya, but he didn't do it yet. And, uh, as we'll see in the end, it took him a little while to do it, and they were worried it wouldn't happen, or they were worried it wouldn't happen the way that they'd hoped. Uh, sometime in between all of this, they had a chance to present a leather-bound Tanya to the Rebbetzin. It's kind of a beautiful meeting. He mentions it in his journals. He says that originally, they, they, they went to the Rebbetzin first just to talk about the Tanya before officially presenting it to her to ask if she wanted a, a, you know, a traditional presentation where the whole vad would come and give it to her. Um, during that visit, she said that, uh, that she said that Zalman Jaffe shouldn't listen to people who say that he spends too much time with the Rebbe and is taking up his time because the Rebbe comes home happy every time they have a long yechidus together. So she said, "Ignore the people trying to tell you to, uh, to use the Rebbe less. The Rebbe enjoys spending time with you." Uh, Reb Jaffe then asked whether she would receive a Tanya officially from all the members of the committee, and she said absolutely. The next appointment with the Rebbetzin was on Tes Vov Sivan. The Rebbetzin sat at a table, and in his words,

18:58 her personality filled the entire room, and that she looked like a queen receiving her subjects, is the way that he describes the Rebbetzin. Rabbi Sudak made a presentation. They put in the des-- in the, uh, in the inside of the Tanya, they wrote a beautiful inscription saying that it was to our gracious and esteemed Rebbetzin with best wishes from the Anash of England, and, uh, they each signed their names. They say the Rebbetzin was very, very happy with this. On the fourteenth day of Sivan, the Rebbe gave another sicha about publishing Tanya. We're not gonna read it together, uh, but what it says in short is he, he tells, um, he tells everybody h- the history of the translation of Tanya. I didn't know how far back it went. Did you know that the youngest son of the Rebbe Maharash, who was also named Menachem Mendel, translated Tanya for the first time? That was the first translation. He translated the first chapter into Russian. It was a big success, but they didn't do anything else, and the next time there was a translation of anything from Tanya, it was by the Friediker Rebbe. The Friediker Rebbe published a Yiddish version in the nineteen-forties. After that sicha, um, the Rebbe spoke with the committee once again, and when he spoke with the Tanya committee, he said that he wanted them to hand out Tanyas, uh, their new bilingual Tanyas to many organizations in Crown Heights, uh, to go to Machon Chana and Beis Rivkah and to

19:59 Hadara Terra. And then the Rebbe said something very interesting. This is great. The Rebbe said, "Do not give one to the central Lubavitch Yeshiva. I don't want them to have one." He said the bachurim there need to learn Tanya from the original. No bilingual Tanyas for the yeshiva of the Rebbe. So, uh, I think this is probably an indictment of the arts girl culture that probably-- that I'm certain pervades even seven-seventy these days. The Rebbe says, "Send English editions to everyone, but don't send English editions to the Tomimim in seven-seventy. They should know what they're doing all by themselves." Uh, when it was time to leave, the Rebbe made an outdoor farbrengen. This was not common. I'm sure it happened some other time, but it was not common at all to distribute the Tanyas and call everybody up. Uh, when Reb Jaffe was face to face with the Rebbe, having received the Tanya that he'd been promised with a signature of the Rebbe, he said that the British contingent have requested me to ask the Rebbe that Mashiach be revealed soon and speedily. And the Rebbe said, "Yeah, if you can make it come faster." So the Rebbe put it right back on him. The Rebbe handed out many Tanyas to everyone during this outdoor farbrengen. He, uh, he asked that one Tanya be delivered personally by the vad to, uh, to the chief rabbi at the time, which Jacobovits of England, uh, along with a personal letter that the Rebbe, I believe, wrote to

21:01 him, and he sent that delegation. And then the Rebbe gave one extra Tanya to the group and said, "Just in case you find someone on your way." And indeed, when they got to the airport, one of the people who had come with them from England had not made it to that farbrengen, and he was very upset he hadn't had a Tanya. And they said, "No, actually, the Rebbe did give you one." They were able to give that extra one to, to him. Uh, two things I wanna show you, and then we're done for the day, and I think we're done with this topic, is that I have a couple pictures you might find interesting. Um, this picture is printed in Der Heer. This is, uh, this is the signature the Rebbe put in each of the Tanyas that the individuals received. It's on your screen. The inscription says-- and I would not have been able to read it, so I'm very grateful to Der Heer for putting it out. It says, uh, Brooklyn, New York. And then it has the, uh, and then it has the Rebbe's signature. There's also a picture here as, uh, as, as Surly indicated, there were earlier years when Zalman Jaffe didn't have a beard, and later on he got one. Apparently, this story was before the beard. This is a picture of Zalman Jaffe asking the Rebbe to bring Mashiach speedily. And there you can see in the Rebbe's right hand a pile of the Tanyas that he's distributing.

21:58 This is a picture of the outdoor farbrengen, a picture of Reb Jaffe interacting with the Rebbe at this very moment. Okay. That's it. Questions, comments?