ספקות באמונה (חלק 1: אדמו״ר הריי״צ)

00:02 Okay, this is Igress. I have two goals today, and, uh, we're gonna do them in one letter, uh, in one or two letters. Either way, the entire shiur accomplishes two separate goals. Uh, one goal is that we're preparing for Yud Shvat over the, over today and over tomorrow, getting ready for Yud Shvat, which will be, uh, on Shabbos. So in order to prepare for Yud Shvat, I wanted to look at the letter from the Friediker Rebbe, and, uh, I've been saving a couple of them. Every now and then when I'm doing searches, I come across a Friediker Rebbe letter and figure that we're gonna bring it out on a rainy day. But the reason why I wanna bring out this letter specifically is that last weekend, last Shabbos specifically, I was at the, uh, Chabad Young Professionals, uh, event, the Encounter they called it, some sort of a Shabbaton. Everybody comes up with a name. This one was called the Encounter. And, uh, the question I got there the most was also maybe the most tragic one. I was asked a lot of questions, and one kept on coming up again and again, and it was young people, I don't know, between the ages of probably their young twenties up to around forty, I would guess, on the, on the, on the older end. And the most common question I was getting is what to do about the fact that they're not sure they believe in God. And this is something that was bothering them.

01:04 They weren't trying to be talked into belief. They were, uh, they were people who wanted spiritual experiences and were spending time in Crown Heights and spending time doing holy things. And, uh, they were bothered by the fact that they, that they had doubts about their faith. Sfeikas En Emunah, as we call it in our culture. They weren't sure they believe in God, weren't sure they believe in anything. And, uh, there is a letter from the Friediker Rebbe about this, and I told them the contents of this letter in so many words over and over again over the weekend. I was surprised how many times I found myself saying the exact same words. So, uh, there is a lot of very good guidance from our Rebbeim on this question, and I thought we would, uh, look specifically at how the Friediker Rebbe handles this as a Halakhah for Yud Shvat. And because there are so many letters on this topic, and I really want us to do a good job on it, we're probably gonna do this today and tomorrow, and that'll lead us into Yud Shvat with an idea of the Friediker Rebbe and the Rebbe's yeshitha on how to handle Sfeikas En Emunah, what to do when somebody has doubts about the faith, doubts about the existence of God, doubts about Godliness in the world. That's what we're gonna look at right now. And this letter that we're looking at is a super long letter from the Friediker Rebbe. It might take us the

02:01 entire time, and that would be fine because then tomorrow we can do all the short Rebbe letters. But, uh, if we have extra time, we'll start the Rebbe stuff today too. There are a handful of segulas. Some of them you're familiar with. You probably know the famous stories that are trafficked in Hasidic circles about chalav akum, how eating milk that's not watched carefully enough or not watched at all for, uh, for its kashrus can cause doubts in faith. We're gonna see a couple others, but most of this is not segula stuff. This is simple, uh, simple or simple or sometimes complex logic stuff, uh, things people need to think through. So we have a letter from-- This letter is labeled Alef Shin Chaf. That's the letter from the Friediker Rebbe, so you have to find this in the Friediker Rebbe's Igress. It is in volume-- I wrote down the volume, uh, so we-- you guys could find it later. It is in volume five of the Friediker Rebbe's Igress on page two hundred and twenty-two, two hundred and twenty through two hundred and twenty-three. And the letter is to a certain s- certain student, HaTalmid Mar dot, dot, dot. We don't know who the student was. Doesn't say below the line, but a student was having trouble. So the Rebbe writes, the Friediker Rebbe writes, "Shalom u-bracha," his greeting. I'm responding to your letter from the twenty-second of the month. What was the month? It was Hanukkah's, twenty-second of Kislev. So I'm writing to you

03:17 about the fact that you wrote to me. You're having machshava zarot, you're having these alien thoughts, you're having, uh, evil thoughts. These things are, uh, they're bothering you, they're damaging you already for a long time now, and they're already affecting your health. It's getting to the point where your health is a problem. And when I first read this line, I wasn't sure what he was dealing with, but as the rest of the letter becomes obvious, um, it makes very clear, um, this is, uh, the, the thoughts that were bothering him were thoughts about lack of faith, uh, thoughts about the existence of God. The Friediker Rebbe is going to essentially teach Hasidis. This reads-- The first half of this letter reads a lot like a maimer, and he only starts applying it halfway through. I had the thought to skip it with you, but I think it's, uh, in, in, in honor of the upcoming Yud Shvat, it makes sense to actually read the, uh, the Hasidis behind the statement 'cause the Rebbe, as we'll see later, is gonna make these statements over and over again, but he never explains the Hasidis. The Friediker Rebbe is gonna explain why the basic advice that our Rebbeim keep on giving works. So we're gonna do the background. So far, so good. Machshava, let's talk about thought. If we have problems with thought, let's begin by talking about what thought is. Thought is machshava. That's not the same thing as sechel. That's not my intellect. That's the thing

04:20 that processes my intellect. So I have an internal intellect, which is my capacity for thinking, and then I have my actual thoughts, the thoughts that I'm thinking right now. Right now, I'm thinking about the words I'm reading or about the fact that, uh, that there are people listening. That's probably the-- Those are the major thoughts at the moment. So that is not my sechel, that's not my intelligence, that's my machshava. Machshava is one of the three garments that the soul wears. That is machshava, dibur, ma'ase, the three: thought, speech, and action. What this means is that these shaloshe idol, these three things, they don't actually exist. This is a thrill to read on paper. Machshava doesn't exist, dibur doesn't exist, and ma- and ma'ase doesn't exist. They don't have their own existence. Uh my intellect and my attributes, they have their own independent existence. I have sechel, and that sechel that I have will never not be there. And I have midas, and the midas that I have will never not be there. They are they exist whether or not I'm using them. That is, machshava, thought, speech, and action, they only are garments for my intellect and for my attributes and for my midas, my emotions. And what that means is that they only show up when they're doing something that I tell them to do. That is, that I don't speak when I'm not speaking, I don't think when I'm not thinking, and I don't act when I'm not acting, but I always

05:35 have my intellect, and I always have my attributes. So there's some parts of us that we can change and some parts of us that we can't, and we need to know what's changeable. Midas, as we've talked about in a couple prior classes a long time ago, I don't know, maybe six months ago, we talked about the fact that midas are almost impossible to change, and on the rare occasion that you change them, it's usually a very incremental change, the fundamental emotional makeup of a person. Same thing with intellect. The fundamental intellect that makes a person up is almost impossible to change. But thought, speech, and action are super easy to change. We change them all the time. We switch our thoughts, we switch what we're saying, we switch what we're doing. And the reason why is because they don't really exist in the first place. They don't have their own individual identity. So the Friediker Rebbe goes on to say, , let's zoom in on thought. When it comes to thought, speech, and action, these are the garments that the wear. And what this means is that they are . They are the things, they're the servants, they're the slaves. They work for the . are in charge, and thought, speech, and action just work for them. Excuse me, excuse me. . Confusing when he does that. Every intellectual revelation for any or any is going to come by way of the . That is that if my emotions feel something, I'm going to process

06:44 this, process that through my thought, and if my mind thinks something, I'm going to process that through my thoughts. My thought is the is the processing center for my emotions and for my intellect. It's going to work. My work with the, uh, internal attributes that really do exist to me. So I have this sort of, um, I have thought, and thought's job is to work for my intellect and my attributes to make sure that they're able to find expression and that I'm able to think about them. What's really interesting about this is that, uh, people very much, very, very seriously confuse . Not so much with the other . But, uh, if I tell you that I'm feeling generous today, is that a, is that an attribute? It's not really. It's not my . My was generosity. The fact that I'm feeling generous today is that my decided to process it today, is that my is processing that feeling. If I decide not to focus on something that I am, I won't feel it. So I might be inherently both jealous and stingy, and if I'm feeling generous to-- excuse me, generous and stingy, and if I'm feeling generous today, that means my is processing my generosity instead of processing my stinginess. So there are certain parts of me that are real and always there, and my decides, um, my works for my to decide what comes forward. This will all matter in a second for our question, but right now it's just a really

07:59 interesting dive into of what is. Now, you need to know that the thought, speech, and action, these garments, they are spiritual . They live all the time. They're always around. Thing is, they're working even when they don't have any job to do. They're spinning their wheels. So when they don't have anything to do, they just do whatever they want to do. This is the difference between . That something that is in when it rests, it stands still. What, uh, resting looks like for something that's living is that it stops moving. That's what rest looks like, or it moves less. Uh, but in any case, what it looks like when life is, when life is at rest, it's because it stops moving. However, when it comes to spiritual things at rest, they start moving, is that they start jumping from place to place. The problem is they move around erratically, they, uh, do things out of order, and sometimes they can cause damage. Starting to get closer to our point, as you can see. when it's not doing its job is going to be running around willy-nilly, amok, and disorderly. also do not have any biases. They don't analyze the information. They don't care if you give, you give them a good idea or a bad idea. They will work them over, think them over. Your speech does not step in and say, "Hey, maybe I shouldn't talk." Your mind might tell you not to say something sometimes. Hopefully, your mind tells you not to say

09:24 something sometimes. But speech is indiscriminate. Once I've decided to say something, my mouth will process it whether or not it's a good idea. Once I decide to do something, my body will process it whether or not it's a good idea, my . And once I decide to think something, my thought will process it whether or not it's a good idea. My thought does not distinguish between my dumbest ideas and my most brilliant ideas. And also it doesn't distinguish . It doesn't distinguish between my most noble thoughts, or my most ignoble thoughts. The acts, your thought will do whatever it is supposed to do, whether it is great wisdom, great stupidity, great kindness, or great cruelty, your is on board. Even though it's true, now this is an interesting side point here that really isn't so much about our letter, but is just pure . Says that I'm gonna summarize this paragraph 'cause no need to read something that is a, a little bit of a sidetrack. But he says here that you could ask the question that since are opposites, it must be that is not so non-biased and not such a blank slate because is going to have to adapt to express a thought differently than adapts to express a feeling. And the Rebbe answers, that's not actually what happens at all. The is a blank slate, and it's just very adaptable to all situations. Point being, thought is a blank slate. It does the work of the . It does the work of

10:48 my intellect and my emotions, and it doesn't get involved. It's not biased. It's usually very busy. But sometimes it doesn't have anything to do. Sometimes my mind has no job to do it. Uh, my intellect does not demand expression, and my feelings do not demand expression. And at those moments, what does my thought do? It does what all things do when they are resting, and that is act erratically and sometimes cause damage. Namely, it's going to think, it's going to contemplate It's going to think about anything, even the most stupid things that go far beyond any sort of human intellect. The Rebbe says, the Friediker Rebbe says that this also actually applies to speech and to action, but we're not talking about that right now, so we're not gonna get into it. That's not me talking, that's him talking. The Friediker Rebbe says, "Although I have explanations for the other two I'm not doing it right now 'cause that's not the topic of your letter." These should be words of relief for those of you who are not enjoying the tour. Uh, what comes out of all of this in practicality? What is the practical outcome? When it comes to actually thinking, it should be, it's, uh, should be understood and we're going to, and, and we've explained it well. But of course, the Friediker Rebbe is going to explain it for us. Where do alien thoughts come from? Where do thoughts of Where do thoughts about doubts about God? Where do thoughts, uh, negative

12:12 thoughts, where do they come from? One place, they come from one place only. It comes from an empty mind. Now, uh, this is an empty mind. When is busy, the has a job that it has to do. There's no room for stupid ideas and empty ideas that don't have any worth to them. This is such a, this is such a shift in perspective because if you ask most people who have gotten themselves into a faith pickle of some kind, what happened is they'll tell you that they thought and thought and thought, and because of their many deep thoughts and their deep engagement in they have, uh, they have They have introduced into their lives confusing thoughts, or they've intro-introduced into their lives doubts in faith, when in fact, uh, the only place that a doubt in faith can come from is from Rekha Sameach, from the lack of thought, from not using your brain all that much. When the brain is not used, it's allowed to run on autopilot, and a brain on autopilot causes chaos. So Sfechas and Emunah come from the chaos of an empty mind, not from the deep thoughts of a very deep mind. And, uh, that is, of course, deeply unsettling to all of the very deep, thoughtful people who have doubts in their Emunah, but it also is the words of the Frieda Kereb exactly. The Frieda Kereb is saying that, uh, "I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but you didn't get here by thinking very deeply. You got

13:27 here by having a relatively empty mind." Is that only an empty mind can dabble in things that are so ridiculous. What's the reason? There's Now, of course, an empty mind doesn't always default to its worst nature. Sometimes an empty mind thinks about butterflies and rainbows. Why is your mind, the Frieda Kereb says, defaulting toward, uh, doubts about God? That's gonna be because of the way you're living your life. Either in your house or in the surrounding area. It might be your friends who you learn with in Yeshiva. It might be your friends from the outside, your acquaintances. The Frieda Kereb speaks in such flowerly language, but he says here is that in a time where the, uh, current of heresy is spreading everywhere and everybody is always, uh, tempted and thrown into their temptations, physical temptations, and, uh, there's incredible, um, azuz, there's incredible, uh, uh, brazenness to it all, uh, we need to be very careful not only who we become friends with, but also even who we hang out with. Uh, even among your friends who learn Torah, you would think would be safe to hang out with. He's saying basically that even when it comes to your friends who learn Torah, uh, if you're-- y-you, you've got to be careful. Not everybody's a Yiddishmaim, and somebody who's a Yiddishmaim is gonna be careful about who they hang out with, even among the more religiously accomplished circles. So the Frieda Kereb has said here two things. Thing number one is that an empty

15:04 mind is going to cause trouble, and thing number two, the direction of the trouble it causes is based on what you've surround yourself with up until now. So when you empty your mind and it doesn't have any work to do for Sechel Hamides, it will default to the most chaotic thing in your life. And if there is heresy in your life, people you hang out with who are causing this or are in-- or who are, uh, knowingly or unknowingly pushing this on you, then that's the chaos in which your mind will develop when it's left empty. The thing that's bothering you right now, Now, it says the Frieda Kereb, regarding the question you have that's bothering you right now, you don't know whether it is Elikos Velom. Uh, is there Getlekite in Velt? Is there Elikos in the world? The Frieda Kereb says, "I am here to tell you it's not a question at all. It is a full-on shtus." Everybody with their physical eyes can see that there is godliness in the world. All a person needs to do is open their eyes to see the truth. Then the seer will see that there's nothing but Hashem. Everything is Hi- everything is Him, and He is everything. You'll see that as soon as you open your eyes. And why is this paragraph important? It's really important because the Frieda Kereb has said back here that the only way you can come to these thoughts is if your mind is empty, because an empty mind

16:22 will default to something that is, that is foolish and also chaotic. So we explained why the chaos is leading in the direction of Milos, of heresy for this individual, but we haven't explained why it's a stupid thought. We explained earlier, we said earlier that, uh, a lot of people who think their way into some degree of atheism or agnosticism, they get there through, uh, through what they think is very deep contemplation. And the Frieda Kereb is telling them they actually got there through empty-mindedness. But isn't it a relatively deep question with a relatively deep idea? Says the Frieda Kereb, not at all. The question of whether there's a God is not a deep idea. It's not a deep question. It's not something worth contemplating at all. As a matter of fact, you open your eyes, you see it obviously. This is something that only a con- only a, only a confused mind could come up with, and therefore, by definition, only an empty mind, because depth doesn't arrive in a question about whether there's God in the world. As he'll say in a second, depth, uh, wanders into the question of what God is doing in this world, what God is, what He's like, what exactly His attributes are. That's where depth leads you. A real deep mind will begin questioning not whether there is a God, but what is God. So the idea is that says you'll find a lot of those answers in Hasiddis, what God is. And those who think that Yadiahs

17:28 Elikos, whether there is Getlekite, uh, whether they see Getlekite or not, says, "But don't get confused for even a moment. There's a lot of depth to the question of what does it mean to know God and what exactly is God and how exactly does God act, and you really can, with a full mind, end up, uh, down a rabbit hole when it comes to what God is and how He acts. But the basic question of whether you believe that there is a God or not, that shouldn't be mixed up with this. You're only-- you're erring if you confuse these two ideas. Somebody who connects what God is with whether He is, is making a mistake. They're mixing up Emunah and Yadiah. They're mixing up belief in God and Yadiahs of Elikos and knowing what God is. They're separate mitzvahs. Mitzvah is Emunah, and mitzvah is Yadiah. When it comes to Emunah, this is something that a person doesn't have to acquire. There's no hard work to getting Emunah. There's no, uh, there's no, uh, there's no, there's no process for it. There's no books to read. I was asked this so many times over the weekend. Are there books I can read to, to increase my faith? Are there things that I can do? The answer is absolutely not. There is nothing that a person can do, um, book-wise. They can't be talked into faith. As I think we all know, you can't talk somebody into faith. It's not an intellectual endeavor. It is a

18:36 sub-intellectual endeavor, as the Frieda Kereb describes it. Sometimes an empty, chaotic mind will come to ridiculous conclusions, but a s-- a clear mind, a straight mind will certainly come to the conclusion that there is a God. If you wanna know about Yadiah, though, you're gon- you might have to put in the legwork. Exactly what that is, yeah, that is, that i- I can give you some books for that. There's all the Hasiddis. Uh, all the Hasiddis is, is focused on Yadiahs Elikos. Now, he uses the here, the here, but he doesn't mean it, uh, because here he's talking about Emunah again. So going back to Emunah, he says that the truth is that it will be clear to anybody, anybody, uh, who has in their Emunah, who has doubts in their faith, it should be as soon as they open their eyes completely clear to them that there is a God, and then because they're uneducated, they might need time in to figure out what exactly God is. However, it's not clear to everybody, and the question is why? Put another way, and put the way that it kept on coming up at the, uh, over the weekend, if, uh, if if every Jew is a believer, the child of a believer, then why is it that so many of them don't believe? Does that mean that they're not Jewish? God forbid, of course not. So how is it possible that people who we're saying here are pre-programmed to believe sometimes don't? And the is

19:43 going to give something like ten reasons or ten things a person might have to do in order to make that belief come to the surface. And the best way to think of this, because this is how it's explained in other places of is that every Jew fundamentally believes, and that is the state of their soul, because they are . If you are something, you know about it. That's that. If you are a piece of God, then you know that God is there. At the same time, that doesn't always translate into our minds. There's a divider between them. He's going to give ten pieces of advice to remove that divider and allow a person's thoughts to process what their soul knows. And here are his ten pieces of advice. Number one, Number one, live a life That's a big one. Number one is like, number n- number one is the work of a lifetime, but that means more investment in life according to Know Halakhah. At the very least, I, tongue-in-cheek, when somebody over the weekend asked me for a book that would help them with their faith, told them to learn straight out of this letter. I was a little tongue-in-cheek, but the fact is that, uh, without adherence to Halakhah, the mind is simply not able to process what the soul knows. So step one is to be more careful with Halakhah. Step number three, though. So number one and two was to be more careful to live your life according to Torah, specifically

20:57 to check out and make sure you know what to do on a daily basis according to Thing number three, be more careful who you hang out with, both within yeshiva and outside of yeshiva, both within the aisle of Torah and outside the aisle of Torah. This does not mean, of course, God forbid, that we don't reach out to other people and show them love, but is a different . To become friends with someone means that there's a give-and-take in both directions. I'm not just giving, I'm also receiving. We do not distinguish at all over who we give to, but we certainly should be a little more discerning about who we receive from, and that is what it is to have a friend, to both give and receive, and that does require some discernment. We shouldn't be receiving, we should be giving to everybody, and we s- probably shouldn't be receiving from everybody. Number four. Be careful with Shema before you go to bed at night. If you're a man, to go to bed wearing a yarmulke, which is of course a, uh, a of the, uh, right? So on top of a But he says to sleep with a yarmulke. Be careful in the in the morning by when, when you wake up in the morning, there should be a cup of water next to the bed. These are sounding a lot like Segulas at this point because they're not straightened, and these are all, these are all, uh, That is, is a little bit

22:04 of a Uh, sleeping in a yarmulke certainly is a and keeping an right next to your bed is also, it's a To daven out of a siddur, not by memory, and to do it, uh, deliberately, slowly, in a deliberate, slow way, uh, out loud while standing in one place from the beginning of the tefillah until the end. No pacing, no sitting, no walking around, and no rushing. Keep your mind busy with Torah studies, specifically in the case of this yeshiva student with learning Gemara. Every week to learn one more Perek of Mishnayos Baal Peh. This was a big Indian from the We don't see it so much in our generation, but the Rebbe certainly holds of it as well. I mean, a Perek Mishnayos is a powerful thing, but he's giving him a schedule. He wants him to learn a Perek Mishnayos Baal Peh every week and in all of his free time to review it. Once again, we're keeping his mind busy. And finally, Says every single day, I want you to learn a half an hour of Chassidus and then to think about it for a half an hour, and every Shabbos, I want you to learn an hour of Chassidus and think about it for an hour. These ten pieces of advice are all doing the same thing. The Jew that we have here fundamentally does believe, but because his has been, uh, has been left alone for a while, it's become chaotic, and it's cha- and it's chaos, and it's, uh,

23:28 and it's, uh, stupidity, has leaned in the direction of the negative people in his lives. So he has a problem of an empty mind, bad influences, and a different, and a separation between his So the tears these three things down across ten points. He gives him a life of fills his mind with Torah, has him rededicating himself to davening, and has him learning Chassidus a little bit every day so that he can work on the as well, and also tells him to stay away from rotten friends. So the has, uh, assessed the problem, explained it explained it really is what happens in the middle, and then in the end, given him very practical advice, step-by-step on what to do to feel the things that he should be feeling. Finally, he says, "Your doctor tells you that maybe you should stop learning in yeshiva because you're, because you're so sick from your As he said at the beginning of the letter, he's so upset about his doubts in faith, he is starting to become, uh, starting to become sick. It's affecting his health. So you write to me that the doctor says maybe you should stop learning in yeshiva because these are bothering you so much that you're sick. And the says, "I have no idea what he's talking about. That makes no sense." Hashem will, uh, Hashem will, uh, strengthen your health and give you the power to invest yourself more in your learning of Torah and your growth in The order, order he does

24:37 it in is a And, uh, that is the end of the letter from the and that is more than all the time we have today. So all of the stuff that the Rebbe adds on this, we're gonna cover tomorrow. We'll do the Rebbe's spin on this tomorrow. But for today, we have a, a really comprehensive look from the about how to address a I think across almost every realm of Torah, really. He took us through the whole part of this. We have a we have practical input, and it, uh, is for one of the most common questions people get. So thank you all very much for now. Next, uh, tomorrow, more.