ט״ו בשבט: שלושה רעיונות מרכזיים

00:00 This is Igress. As is becoming habit for us, perhaps a bad habit, we are not looking at letters which say from fifty years ago. Today, we are looking at letters having to do with Tu B'Shvat, as it's called in the world at large. Rosh Hashanah l'Ilanot, today is the fifteenth day of Shvat, which is the Rosh Hashanah for trees. And because of that, I wanted to look at some letters where the Rebbe talks about what we can learn from Rosh Hashanah for trees. I've always found the day, uh, a little less than exciting. Um, it's not a big holiday in Chabad, and I'm-- I would like to propose that it might have once been a bigger holiday before Yom Shvat eclipsed the rest of Shvat. 'Cause if you look at all of the Rebbe's early letters, uh, I mean, letters prior to Yom Shvat, the Rebbe makes a pretty big deal about it in Igress, and then starting from Yom Shvat onwards, he starts defining it, Yom Shvat, in some letters specifically saying the main thing happening in Yom Shvat is the but in some of his older letters, he says the opposite. In some of the older letters that I found, he'll say the, uh, the the big day that happens in Shvat is Tu B'Shvat. So I think it's possible that Yom Shvat eclipsed, uh, Tu B'Shvat and kind of, uh, kind of put the day on the back burner, but I'm here to bring it back. So the first letter that we're

01:01 looking at, we have-- I, I pulled out four letters that I think give us, uh, big picture ideas of how the Rebbe would about Yom Shva-- about Tu B'Shvat, about, um, what we can learn from the day. So four big picture ideas. And, uh, the first one's a very old letter. This is, I think, from volume one of Igress, volume one or volume two. Volume one, yeah. Vol- volume one of Igress is an old letter, it's in Tav Shin Daled. So what's that? Uh, 1944, right? 1944. It's an old letter. Long before the Moshiach. Yeah, long before the Moshiach. Almost ten years before the Moshiach. And the Rebbe so this letter is labeled Kuf Lamed He. You can tell it's an early letter 'cause there's no, uh, there's no initial in the front. This is the hun- one hundred and thirty-fifth letter that exists. I'm gonna jump all the way down, though, to, uh, see that ? Can you imagine a time where that was the day-- that, that was the day of Shvat was, uh, Yom Shvat. Something to be aware of is that the big day in Shvat is Rosh Hashanah l'Ilanot, the Rosh Hashanah for trees. There's a lot of things we can learn from it, says the Rebbe. A person who pays attention to everything going on around him. Every time that he sees something, he can use it to increase his wisdom, whether, whether it's the that he has between himself and Hashem or between himself and his friends. So

02:29 he says, a person who's intelligent can learn anything from anyone, especially, uh, not just from things that are out of the ordinary, not just from burning bushes, you know, from looking at the grass, from looking at the trees, regular things you can learn from. the Rebbe says, I'd like to point out one of them to you is something that we can all learn from trees and from things that, uh, come out of the ground. Generally speaking, things that grow from the ground, including trees, but really almost everything that grows from the ground, has three main parts. It has roots, it has a body of the tree, which he says could be a could be a could be uh, that's sometimes leaves, sometimes it's branches, sometimes it's the trunk. Whatever it is, we have the roots, we have the body of the tree, which is made up of something depending on what it's made out of, and then there's then there's the fruit on the tree, which has that is that it has the shell, it has the fruit, and then it has the seeds. So we have three major parts of a tree: the root, the body, and the fruit. says the Rebbe. The differences between them, the the root of a tree is you can't see the you can't see the root of the tree. But this is where the tree gets most of its life from. And then the Rebbe puts in parentheses something that I don't know how new this science was,

03:43 but the Rebbe makes a scientific point here. He says, that, uh, they also pull life in from the leaves, that the tree is not actually entirely nourished by its roots. It's nourished by its trees, too. That's, um, sorry, by its leaves, too. That's the site of photosynthesis, which is really what he's saying over here, is that although the tree photosynthesizes through its leaves, most of its life comes from its roots. And furthermore, the root isn't just the main thing that gives the tree its life, it also is the thing that keeps it standing up. If it has strong roots, says the Rebbe, you can have wind coming from all directions, and it won't get uprooted. Of course, he's using the from Pirkei Avos. So the roots, that's the thing that keeps the tree in place. Then we have the then we have the body of the tree. that's the thing that makes up the majority of the structure of the tree. And from time to time, it will get thicker and thicker, and then at some point, you can actually count, says the Rebbe, the age of the tree by looking at the trunk. As I'm sure we're all familiar, when you look at a tree stump, you can count the rings to see how old the tree is. But what is the whole point of a tree? The whole point of a tree is that it's able to make fruit, because by way of putting its seeds into the ground, it's able to have

04:48 new trees grow from generation to generation. So we have the root, which is what keeps it upright and what keeps it nourished. We have the trunk, which represents most of its life's work, and we have the fruit, which is the outcome of a good-- of a life well-lived as a tree. We're gonna see this theme a lot, as you can imagine. A person is just like a tree from the field. I will note that somebody sent me a message asking if I could do a share on uh, which I wasn't able to find a lot of sources on his particular question. He wanted to know, it's a good question. In the Torah, at least the way Rashi reads it, uh, the is a rhetorical question, meaning the passuk means, what do you think a-- do you think a person's a tree? Obviously, a person's not a tree. And of course, we take this very literally to mean a person is a tree. Um, I might prepare that at some point in the future. I've not found an answer to that very good question. But in any event, uh, because the passuk says, "Is a person a tree?" We say, "Of course, a person is a tree." Uh, a person is a tree in a lot of ways. A person is similar to a tree. In many ways, my life is similar to that of a life of a tree, also in spirituality. And here's a couple ways, uh, that they're divided across these three points:

05:55 root, body, and fruit. Across the root, the . What is the root of a person? That's their faith. This is what connects you to Hashem and also connects you to the source of your life, which is Hashem, of course. And that is the creator. May he be blessed. Even though a person does grow in wisdom and in Torah and in mitzvahs, at the end of the day, their life is dependent on their emunah Hashem, their Hashem's das and Hashem's Torah. That is-- I think that's how you read that. Yeah, or his life. In any case, a person is, uh, is ultimately held upright and ultimately fed and nourished by their emunah, no matter how strong they get. You know, can have these very big trees, and they can have these great trunks and strong leaves, but if they don't have roots, they're falling over, and they're not being nourished. So the faith is the basis of it all. Then there is the trunk and the body of the tree. That would be acts of kindness or good, good deeds. What should people be spending most of their time on? I think this is a really interesting point. A lot of people think that they should be spending most of their time on questions of faith or on theology, as it were. The Rebbe's very clear here. I mean, Torah is very clear, but I like when it's pointed out that the majority of a person's time should be spent on doing. That is, the majority

07:06 of a person's time is spent on Torah and mitzvahs. It's not really spent on faith. You have faith, and then you spend your life building Torah and mitzvahs on the basis of that. So the majority of the structure of a person's life and also the way that you count their years, the rings in their trunk, is their Torah and mitzvahs. You can track a person's life, the years that are passing, by the Torah and mitzvahs . This is a life that is full of techeles, of, of a substance, of wisdom, and of action. And then, of course, there are the fruits, the peiros. What is the whole point of a person? What is the, uh, apex of what it is to be a human? In addition to the fact that he's taken care of everything that is his responsibility, he also has an effect on his friends, on his surroundings, that they also can have a completeness to themselves. The idea is that a person should have fruits. And what happens with a fruit? A fruit falls on the ground, and it makes a tree just like it, a tree that has its own roots of faith, its own structure of Torah and mitzvahs, and its own fruits to spread, uh, Torah and mitzvahs further and wider. So the idea is that it can't just be that I have good faith and that I do Torah and mitzvahs. I also have to make other trees. What comes out of all this? the root of a

08:19 person and his is his complete faith. Uh, even a very big person, even a very powerful tree, he would be at risk if he lost his roots, which means, first and foremost, a person needs to make sure that their faith is intact. We talked about that earlier in the week. But what do I spend most of my time on? Those are my and I increase in my Torah and mitzvahs constantly. So, but the, but the completion of a person, what is the apex of a person, is . That is affecting other people. That is you have an effect on the masses, you give, bring merit to them, so they can fulfill their as well, and fulfill their purpose of creation. This is a complete and beautiful, I think, description of how that a person needs to have roots and faith, a body of Torah and mitzvahs, and an effect on the world around them. This is probably the Rebbe's earliest letter. This is the earliest letter that we have from the Rebbe on written in the year nineteen forty-four. I have a couple others that I wanted to show you. Although I don't think we'll have time for this one, so I'm gonna save it 'cause I really wanna show you these two. So I'm sa-- I've sent you all the letters, but I'm not necessarily gonna do all of them. Let's do this one. This one's really interesting. This one the Rebbe wrote to small children. Uh, this is written to . The letter

09:37 is labeled And I guess last time we had sort of the scholarly, uh, adult approach to, to . This is the way to explain, uh, to children. And it really is, uh, I, I think it's, I think it's very-- I think it's immediately applicable. I think a cheder rebbe could take this letter straight out of the box and use it as their discussion for small children on how to relate to the mystical side of the Rosh Hashanah for trees. So this letter is from and it's on Erev Tu B'Shvat. And the Rebbe writes, "To dear children, to all the children, Shalom Ubraha." And the Rebbe's responding to something they did for him. They sent him pictures, uh, which makes me feel good. My kids are always sending the Rebbe pictures. I, I didn't know that this was always the custom . They, uh, they-- My kids go to the aisle with, with all their drawings. So apparently this was always done. So the Rebbe's writing to, I think, an Israeli, uh, cheder. They sent a bunch of pictures that they'd drawn and also a letter to the Rebbe. And the Rebbe says, "I looked at your pictures." The Rebbe says, "I got your pictures and your letter before Yud Shvat, and I'm writing to you on Erev Tu B'Shvat, ." And now the Rebbe says, "I looked at your pictures." "What'd you draw? What do kids draw when they draw pictures? You drew boys and girls and trees and flowers. That's what you drew to

10:55 me." So the Rebbe says, "As long as you drew me boys and girls and trees and flowers, let me tell you how a little boy and a little girl needs to act vis-à-vis trees and flowers." In order to connect all of these things that I saw in the pictures you drew, I cannot stress this enough. The Rebbe is making a letter that is a drush in Tu B'Shvat based on the doodles that children sent him of boys and girls and trees and flowers. I love it. I wanna connect all of these things, says the Rebbe. I wanna use this to express to you the great love that the free the Rebbe has for every single boy and girl, every single Jewish boy and girl. the big ones and the little ones, but especially the little children. He always worries about their and about their g- and about good things for them in all places that they may be. He saw every boy and every girl as a sapling, whereas a, uh, yeah, sapling is a good translation. A sprout that will one day grow to be a fruit-bearing tree. That will be able to hold many good and delicious fruits. So he saw every small child as a, as a seed of potential, or in this case, a sprout of potential. Um, now, The Rebbe is not going to let anybody off the hook, not even small children. He's not just gonna give them a happy message. He tells them they have work to do.

12:13 Even the small children have work to do. And what's the work they have to do? Uh, everything, all of this depend-- The idea of a sapling growing into a strong tree or a child growing into somebody worthwhile is, uh, This is dependent on the will and the hard work of small children. If you wanna understand this children, you're going to need to look at the tree itself. When you take a seed or a young sapling and you put it in the ground, you have to keep it away from weeds. You have to keep it away from pests that will damage it. You have to make sure that it has water and things like that so that it'll grow big and strong. Until it gets big enough that it can have its own fruits. This applies to every little boy and girl. We say that the, the way of the Navi, that every one of them is the, is the sapling of the handiwork of God that he, uh, is Hashem gave you each a holy neshamah. A literal piece of God. And you need to guard this seed, this holy seed. You have to guard it from weeds and from pests. What do I mean specifically? I want you to watch out not to make friends with people who are not good for you. This is, uh, the Rebbe telling a bunch of small children, "Pick who you're friends with." You have to make sure that you keep on watering this seed that's inside you.

13:39 And that is Torah. Torah is time to make sure that you have a constant supply of Torah and that you stay away from bad friends. And also mitzvot. The Torah mitzvot are life to those who do them, so it's like water to a sapling. Then Hashem will give, and he will give again. Again, and again, he will give great success so that you will be like trees that are able to have fruits, good fruits and praiseworthy fruits. To give joy to your parents and your teachers. To be a pride and a, uh, and a beauty to our nation, the Jewish people. So I-- So the Rebbe is giving a, uh, a tall order to the children. He's telling them, "You gotta be careful the same way saplings are careful." Uh, big trees, it might be okay for a big tree to have a couple weeds around it. You don't get a lot of parasites that can take down a tree. But when you're dealing with small trees, they need to be sheltered to a large degree. And, uh, part of that sheltering means to make sure that you watch who you associate with and make sure you get a lot of Torah in your system, which is the Rebbe, again, talking to small children, telling them that your, your job right now is to be a healthy sapling, and that means stay away from the people who are bad influences on you and make sure you take in a lot of Torah and mitzvot, which

14:43 will give you life and make you grow big and strong. One more that I wanna show you with our time left, and that is a letter that is labeled Zion tuff, tuff, gimmel. It's from the year Tishrin Tov. So again, a very old letter. This should be nineteen forty-six. And I told you, if you look before, before Yud Shvat, you have letters from the Rebbe all over the place, They basically disappear after Yud Shvat, largely because Yud Shvat ends up co-- eclipsing it. But a lot of our best stuff or a lot of our most, our longest stuff is these, uh, is these old letters. Also, just by the way, the Rebbe before Yud Shvat writes very long scholarly letters. You don't get that as much after Yud-- after, uh, after, uh, Yud Shvat of Tishrin Yod, Al-- Tishrin Yod, I guess, either. Um, so this is from Tishrin Tov, and here the Rebbe ties the idea of Yud Shvat to Mashiach. So I think that'll be a good package for us today. We have one that tells us how to be good Yidden, one that tells us how to explain it to our children, and one that talks about Mashiach. That'll do it. And this fourth one, which I'm not gonna have time for, I put in the chat, and you definitely should read it. It's really cool. It's just long. Okay. So this is of Tishrin Tov, the letter is labeled Zion tuff, tuff, gimmel, and, uh, I'm gonna go all the way

15:43 down to here. That's always a good sign. Let's end off by talking about what's going on today, Yud Shvat. The sages have told us, the have told us that when Mashiach comes, that's going to be the the absolute, uh, completion and perfection of the creation of this physical world, and that's why it was created in the first place. And because of that, So what does that mean? If the whole point of the physical world was that it should look like Yemait Mashiach, and it doesn't look that way right now, that means that there has been a rotting of this world. The world has gone sour. And the way the world has gone sour is ever since the ever since the tree of knowledge. Since then, the physical world has not been what it was supposed to be 'cause the goal of the world is to be what it looks like in Yemait Mashiach. So clearly, we're living in an imperfect nature right now. We wanna bring nature itself back to its or at least back to the way that it was when it was first created. We were-- We need to first remove the curse. We have to have kefira of Excuse me, kefira, no, it's kaparat. Oof, that's a bad mistake to make. By, uh, by doing a kapara for the we need to atone for the sin of the tree of knowledge in order to bring the world back to the way that it should be. And this will happen when Mashiach comes,

17:05 when the promises fulfill this I'm gonna remove the spirit of impurity from the land. We can skip that parenthesis and go right down here. In order to bring Yemait Mashiach, the only way to bring Mashiach now is to do our avodat now, is to do our work in this world. And that means to bring the Shekhinah into Elok Maza. And here he talks about the, uh, the theme really of Basse Lagani, which is just so interesting because this is a, this is a sikuma Basse Lagani in the year nineteen forty-six. Before this was a-- I, I'm sure the, the minor came out and then was put out again, but it is a, an interesting sikuma Basse Lagani for the year. You wouldn't have thought in nineteen forty-six in Shvat the Rebbe would be thinking heavily about Basse Lagani. But anyway, he says, said that the Shekhinah was mainly down here and it left. We're gonna go right along to this part. What was one of the major changes that happened when the sin of the, uh, when the sin of the tree of knowledge happened? It used to be that every tree was a fruit tree. Um, the So that means that if the entire idea was the world was supposed to be a certain way, and then because of that avera by, in the garden, it goes to being a different way, that means that when Mashiach comes, it should go back to the way that was in Gan Eden, which means that one

18:13 of the things that should happen when Mashiach comes is we should expect all trees to be fruit-bearing. Or maybe as it actually says in the Chumash, that the fr-- tree itself will taste like fruit. But in any event, all trees will be able to produce fruit. There will be no fruitless trees anymore All right, . That's what's gonna happen when Mashiach comes. tree, even fruitless trees will be trees that are fruit-bearing as Chazal say . Um, and then he says, and I would love to look that up. We have to look that up sometime. How do we apply this to the service of our creator? We say that a person is . A person is supposed to be like a tree. And then says that what are, what fruits are, is mitzvahs. Now, remember, that's not exactly like our letter before. We made a, we made the, the body of the tree the mitzvahs, and we made the fruit the, uh, spreading of, uh, making more frum people. But in any event, uh, and right now we're gonna go back to the Gemara Mesacht-- that says that mitzvahs are the . So what does that mean then? That means that the-- If we say that a person is like a tree and that fruit is like mitzvahs, what that means is that it used to be that everybody did mitzvahs. That's the way that it was back when all trees were fruit trees, when all people were fruit trees, all people were people who were

19:28 involved in mitzvahs completely. Every single tree used to be in a state before the sin of the . Uh, it used to be that everybody was able to carry fruits around. But then the sin came. The consequence of the is that there are now some trees out there that are not fruit trees. There are now some people in the world who are not carrying mitzvahs around. What is our job right now? Our job is to return the world to the way that it was before that sin. That's the lesson of the Gemara. Mitzvahs. Um, that everything around you should give forth fruits. And what are fruits? These are mitzvahs. Then we'll all ful-- Then we'll all see the fulfillment of the promise that the fruits of the field will give forth their fruit. I'm sorry, the trees of the field will give forth their fruit. And then we will go with Hashem, and Hashem will go with us. Upright, in physicality and spirituality. So what the Rebbe is saying here is that with Mashiach coming, our job is to prepare the world to be the way that it was in Gan Eden. And one of the ways that the world was in Gan Eden was that all trees used to bear fruit. And in I guess, what that means for people is that all people used to bear mitzvahs. And when we influence our entire surroundings that everybody is involved in mitzvahs, this brings us closer to the fulfillment of multiple Messianic promises, all of

20:47 which seem to involve fruit from trees. We have a . We have all these promises when Mashiach comes that finally you'll have fr-- You'll have trees that have fruit on them. What the Rebbe says is there's something much deeper here. There is that since a person is a , finally people will be fulfilled, people will have fruit, people will have mitzvahs. And I think when we go back to our first letter, perhaps people will be able to influence other people. People will have a which is what fruit represents in the first place coming off a tree. So the promise of, uh, of us fixing creation and turning it back to the way that it should be is not just that one day every, uh, pine tree will be like an apple tree. It's that every person will be somebody who's capable, first of all, of filling their lives with Torah and mitzvahs. And second of all, I think if you add from the thing that we learned in the first letter about spreading their influence far and wide.