חג השבועות וקו התאריך הבין־לאומי (תשפ״ג)

00:00 This is a special episode of Iggros. We are not going to look at letters from fifty years ago. We're gonna look at letters from all over the place because it is, I think, the last year we're gonna do before Shavuos, because tomorrow is Erev Shavuos. And in honor of Shavuos, I wanted to do a series on, um-- Well, just not a series, a single episode, but a, a look at the series of letters, um, regarding Kavat HaArech, regarding crossing the international date line. This is, uh, one of the most famous questions and most famous comments from the Rebbe when it comes to Shavuos. I assume many of us are familiar with some of the broad strokes of this. There are great stories surrounding it. Um, in order to understand what's going on here, I, I, I thought about how to do this a lot, actually. As you can tell from the fact that you received a WhatsApp message from me today at, like, an hour before the shiur telling you what the shiur would be about. I've been thinking about it. This is no last-minute project. Um, I think what I wanna do is I wanna give you the scenarios and describe exactly what we're talking about and the Rebbe's final decision on every- on everything before we read the letters, and then go back and see in the letters how he's saying what I'm telling you, because I, I think a lot of this is very difficult to follow if you don't already know

00:59 what we're talking about. Every time anything happens in time, I get immediately confused. So I have here... I, I, I actually, in order to prepare this, I looked up, um, airline travel schedules, so I could find realistic times to give us a, uh, to give us real scenarios. So here is a real scenario, a real scenario that I made up. Let's pretend that you have just counted day thirty of Sefiras HaOmer, and it is Monday night. So it's Monday night, and you've just counted day thirty. At ten PM, so you finished counting, you finished Maariv, you finished the Ein Yaakov shiur, you made it, and then you ran to the airport. At ten PM, you leave from, uh, from the United States, let's say from Los Angeles, 'cause that was the easier flight. So I guess the Ein Yaakov shiur over in LA. You leave from LA to Sydney, Australia. So you leave at ten PM. You've just counted day thirty, it's Monday night. Fourteen hours later, your time in your head is going to be noon on Tuesday. So according to you in your head, it's noon Tuesday, and according to you in your, in your head, that night you would count thirty-one, okay? But unfortunately, when you land in Australia, because of the international date line, the silliness of which we are not going to discuss today, just trust me, it exists. When you land in Australia, it's going to be eight AM on Wednesday, and they, that night at Maariv, are gonna

02:07 count day thirty-two. So you are now one day behind everybody else because you traveled from the United States to Australia. Where your head is is day thirty-one that night, and where they're-- where they in Australia are counting is day thirty-two. What do you do if you are one day behind? So first of all, regarding Sefiras HaOmer, the Rebbe is going to hold that you should hear the beracha from someone else and count your day, which is day thirty-one, and then a couple hours later, count their day, which is day thirty-two, without a beracha, and continue doing this all the way until the end of Sefiras HaOmer. So you'll continue keeping your count and using someone else's beracha to keep your count, and you will, without a beracha, keep the local count. Are we, are we still with me so far, or is this too hard an opening? I mean, man, this is not how you not how you open a shiur. We need a miltsa divdei chutzah somewhere. What do you do on Shavuos? So on Shavuos, as we're going to see, the Rebbe has a very unique position that a lot of other rabbonim did not agree with. The Rebbe has a very unique position that, uh, the Rebbe thinks is Pashtan. We'll see that in letters too, that a person cannot keep Shavuos until they have counted, uh, seven complete weeks. Therefore, on Shavuos, since this person is one day behind everybody else, this person's Yom Tov will be on the seventh and

03:10 eighth of Sivan. I will remind you that normal Yom Tov is sixth and seventh of Sivan. So you will have the-- You will intersect their first day of Yom Tov. You'll be keeping, uh, seven and eight. The world will be keeping six and seven, and you're going to put on tefillin on the sixth day of Sivan, which is for everybody else, the first day of Yom Tov, which is very strange. That means you'll be in Australia and everybody else will be in first day Shavuos. You will be not keeping Yom Tov. You'll be putting on tefillin. You're not allowed to do any melacha in public. You're not allowed to get an aliyah during that day. But on the sixth of Sivan, it is a day of chill for you, and your first day is their second day. You'll be keeping the seventh and the eighth. They'll be keeping the sixth and the seventh. Okay. That's- Why no aliyah? Huh? Wild, right? Not, not a fun- Why, why no aliyahs? -Australia. Huh? Why no aliyah? Why can't you have an aliyah? This is probably bec-- I, I'm not sure exactly. The Rebbe says it explicitly in a couple letters. The Nitei Gavriel brings it too. They don't want anybody to get aliyahs, uh, on either day, on-- even on the day that they count. The Nitei Gavriel brings they shouldn't get an aliyah even on their proper day. I don't know why. I didn't look up why. Not a clue. It might have something to do

04:08 with, uh, with, with public displays, but I, I don't understand why you wouldn't be able to on the day that we all agree on. But it's brought in Nitei Gavriel that they shouldn't get aliyahs at all that Shavuos. Dunno. Okay. Let's do the other direction, 'cause the other direction is also very important. It gives us the opposite dinim. Let's say that it is day thirty on Monday morning, okay? You counted day thirty last night. You woke up for Shacharis. You went to the six thirty, of course. But first, you learned Mesilat Yesharim at six o'clock, and you have finished Shacharis, and you go to catch your flight at nine AM. It is day thirty for you of Sefirat HaOmer. You leave Australia to go to Los Angeles. Now, you're leaving Australia. It is day thirty. It is nine AM. Fourteen hours later, in your head, it will be eleven PM on Monday night, and you are ready to count day thirty-one upon landing. But when you land in LA, it is six AM on Monday morning, and they are still on day thirty. So now you are one day ahead of everybody else. You are holding at day thirty-one, and they are holding at day thirty. The same din here applies for how to count. The Rebbe says you should hear the beracha from someone else and count your day in your head, which is thirty-one. Later on in the evening, count their day, which is thirty, without a beracha. And on Shavuos, you are

05:09 now going to be one day ahead of everybody else. So your Yom Tov is going to be on the fifth and sixth of Sivan. I'll remind you that the world is having their Yom Tov on the sixth and seventh of Sivan. So at least in this scenario, first day Yom Tov, you are keeping Yom Tov with them. But on the seventh of Sivan, which is Yom Tov Sheni in America, you're gonna be wearing tefillin, and you're not allowed to do any melacha or aliyahs or, or in public or get any aliyahs during that period of time. Okay. So these, these are the dinim. This is the maskana of the Rebbe. I will note, and this is important to keep track of, that one direction is clearly better halakhically than the other. Did you, did you catch which one it is? I know it's, it's too confusing to quiz anybody. I wouldn't dare without having-- without you guys being able to write down notes. Um, note that Sydney to America, that going from Australia to America is always gonna be better because then you're not going to be violating a Yom Tov Rishon, you're gonna be violating the local Yom Tov Sheni. 'Cause if you travel from Australia to America, then your Yom Tov is five and six, and the world's Yom Tov is six and seven, so everybody, you and them, are all keeping at least the first day Yom Tov. The truth- true, you're going to be putting on tefillin on Yom Tov Sheni,

06:09 but that's not a huge deal. People in Eretz Yisrael also put on tefillin on the seventh of Sivan. So there's clearly a preference here that if you have to travel one direction to go from west to east. Having laid all this out, now I wanna look at some of the letters. Um, I, I don't think it would I might regret having done it in this order, but I've got to tell you, when I tried doing it the other way, reading the letters and then figuring out the Allah was a lot harder. So you should have on your screen right now, um, you should be able to see I put together all these letters in a document. If you want, you have links to all of the full letters across the top here, but, uh, which you can't use 'cause you can't use my screen, but I have them in the WhatsApp group. I brought just the excerpts we're going to read in this big document here. So this is from volume seventeen. This is letter vav, tav, tes, vav, and the Rebbe's writing to Shlomo Ze'ev, Rav Shlomo Ze'ev, who was the editor of the Encyclopedia Talmudit and an incredible Talmud Chacham. And I just brought this top paragraph here to show you there was more letter. There's three dots to signify this was a long letter that he wrote to him. He thanks him for sending over his books. He congratulates him on his accomplishments. He's very excited that Shlomo Ze'ev has been participating

07:05 in farbrengens and, and a shir Tanya. And then we have the PS. And as we have learned in our Igris year together, the PS is always where the meat is. The action's always in the PS. So down here, the Rebbe says, "PS," He has a shailah for Rav Ze'ev. And it's not really a shailah, it's more of the Rebbe asking for his approval for a psak that he thinks is correct. So the Rebbe writes, "Nizdam li adi shana zu." This year, something had happened. There was a shailah. There was a question that appeared to me this year. "Ach ad shava kava tarich." Somebody crossed over the international date line, "bem tzimah sefira," in the middle of sefirat haOmer, "melan le yom mispari," and by doing so, he added a day to his count. So which direction did he go to? If he is now, uh, "nisu le yom echad bemisparei," he has one extra day in his count, which means that he is going from Australia to America, I believe. I'll definitely get it backwards. Let's keep reading. "Ve staven gelem im yom labiracha." He didn't know how to count. He didn't know whether to make a biracha. "Vemes hemes es yom lach ad kavatarich." He didn't know what to do from this point on. Now, the Rebbe's going to say he was wrong about the big problem. That's not his biggest concern. "Arati esai." I, I, uh, I, I, I, um, I s-- I, I raised the... What's a good word for that? I

08:09 raised to him. I, uh, I, I brought to his attention, let's say. I brought to his attention, "She nagas ei yeioseh shailah." There is a much bigger shailah than how to count sefirat haOmer. "Ve nigeil chagas Shavuot." Who says when you keep Shavuot? "Le fi ha nihahti," according to my opinion, the Rebbe says. "Ni rebbe nigeil min ha nev lebiracha." When it comes to his counting and his biracha, I think, "She afshein safek shetzar ach lam shich dak bemidrassa shelo," even though certainly it is no safek, he has to continue in his personal count, "Shari mufrach lich vosfira achas pamim," because otherwise he-- because a person needs to "shari mufrach lich vosfira achas pamayim." He certainly can't count one sefirah twice, so he's certainly going to have to keep his count. "Ve yachol gam ken levarich," and he certainly can make a biracha, "im yeiesteh vkel ve yishma ha bracha me echad." He should, however, hear the biracha from someone else, "shebekan," from someone who lives here, "ve yikaven la'as es bah," and have kavana to be me- to be motzi through, uh, through that person's biracha for his count. And the Rebbe says in parentheses here that you don't have to worry about the fact that the biracha is going to be on the wrong day because the biracha is on the etzem ha-mitzvah. It's not on the number that we're counting. So that person can count with a mind to be counting one day, and you can end up counting a different day,

09:13 and that's fine. So the Rebbe-- here is where the Rebbe comes up with his idea that he wants people to still, uh, to, to have somebody else's biracha for their count and still keep their personal count. "Ve nigeil lechag haShavuot." When it comes to Shavuot, of course, things are much more pressing. "Ari kein sheeino toliumi im be yemei ha-chodesh, ve ein talui be bezdin." The Rebbe says, "It's very clear to me that Shavuot is not based on the day of the month, and it's not based on bezdin." Bezdin doesn't s- doesn't decide when Shavuot is, and also Shavuot is not the sixth and the seventh of Sivan. It is, uh, "teikev le acharei she kalah sefirat sheva shavuot." It is at the end of counting sheva shavuot. The date does not exist. There is no-- Here's a fun fact. There is no date for Shavuot. There's just seven weeks. "Ve'anam savr mem tes yim al pi tair avot yimas heim etzlei." This person, he counted forty-nine days, and they are complete forty-nine days by him. "So alav lechog chag haShavuot bemisparei," so he has to celebrate Shavuot on the day that he finishes his forty-nine-day count. "Zeis hamet him echad kein lemnei machim," one day before everybody else who lives here. "Ela sheminei hatmia beinin ha-olam." But since this is s-- But since, since this is strange regarding everybody else, "heras izen se hakanam ei shnayim meideh herash igam dat mihiyakana." I told him, since this is a strange conclusion, that he would be celebrating

10:19 Shavuot a day earlier than everybody else in the place where he is, I asked him to go talk to two other rabbanim and get them to agree. But the Rebbe's writing this kind of, uh, bouncing this off Shlomo Ze'ev. Uh, "Ve kemin shekavod harav ve kasher im avadasi be sifrei kanira sheavar al kamah shailot shetuvot meachrenim." Says since you, Shlomo Ze'ev, who's in-- you work in Sparn, you've come across a lot of shailot and teshuvot, "ve batech im inze shaku vatara bezei yadeini," if you found anybody else who's discussed this, I would love to hear about it. "Kum ve teif daktu," and I'd love to hear your opinion too. And he's a- and he thanks him in advance. So he's asking for Shlomo Ze'ev's opinion, but really he's asking for Shlomo Ze'ev's research, saying, "Can you give me anybody else who's talked about this?" Uh, shortly thereafter, this is in the summer, so this is only a couple of months later. This is also in kraf yud zai in the letters vav, tav, kuf, daled. Shlomo Ze'ev writes back. I don't have the letter that he writes back, although I'm sure-- I, I suspect it's available. I didn't find it, but you don't really need it for the Rebbe's response because the Rebbe writes what he's writing about from Shlomo Ze'ev's letter. Anyway, what you do need to know is that Shlomo Ze'ev did not like the Rebbe's answer. He, he was not a big fan of this response. He, uh-- I don't know how

11:18 much he disliked it because, again, I didn't look up his letter, but he calls what the Rebbe says a chiddush gadol, and he tells the Rebbe that he thinks it's gonna be a real problem because it looks like people have two Torahs. One group's receiving the Torah on one day, and this guy is receiving the Torah on a different day. It's like there's two Torahs. These are two things he writes to the Rebbe saying that he doesn't like the Rebbe's conclusion. The Rebbe writes back to him in the summer of that year. "Ve'anam legel ha-sfirah shemesh leha kishnei Torahs." When you wrote to me that you're worried that if we do things this way, it'll look like there are two Torahs, "lei zachi si lavin." The Rebbe says, "I do not understand you. I don't get what you mean." "She'erah Torah amrah." There's a Torah, and the Torah says, "beferish," explicitly, "shal kal echad ve'ach ли спать be'atzmecha," that every individual needs to count sefirat haOmer and then needs to tie into a tases that we'll talk about in a second. "Le kveia chag haShavuot be yom hanun," and that every single person needs to make their Shavuot on the fiftieth day. "Ve zeh ha derech echidis le kveias chag haShavuot." The only way to establish chag haShavuot is by the individual's count. "Umachale ken," oh, and the fact that you're asking is incorrect. "Ki im pleini." You're telling, you're telling me what should happen is "pleini yachod chag Shavuot mem tes lemunin." And according

12:17 to your opinion that we would have everybody celebrating the same Shavuot, no matter what day of sefirah they are up to, we would- One guy celebrating Shavuos on his forty-ninth day, another person celebrating on his fifty-first day. And another person celebrating on the fiftieth day, and that is clearly against Torah. There's also more questions than I could even count. There's problems with the that Rebbe says you're creating. If you're really worried about making two Torahs and making the world confused, the best way to do that is to have everybody celebrate Shavuos on the same day. You create bigger problems that way. And, uh, I don't know what the Rebbe's talking about here because he says that you brought Aleph Hamishnah and it is, uh, and it is not compelling. Finally, the Rebbe says, The Rebbe says, "You called my Mascana a big novel idea." The Rebbe says, "That's not the Chiddush. The Chiddush is not what I said. The Chiddush is how simple what I said really is, and the fact that people don't immediately understand this." Um, the Rebbe says that there's-- "I'm not making a Chiddush. The Chiddush is that this isn't obvious to everybody." I looked up the teses that the Rebbe says makes it very clear that the count is on the individual, not on Bezdin. I think I understand it. I'm not sure exactly. Look back at the parentheses for a second. We'll analyze it together. The Rebbe says, That when a person counts Sefiras HaOmer, it's not like the

13:33 way we count Shemitah and Yovel. And he says, "To see this, look in Teses ." So if you look in Menachos, the teses there is a short little teses. The Rebbe-- The, the teses there says, that when it comes to Yovel, it says in the that the, the Torah is saying it's Bezdin's job to count Shemitah and Yovel. Since it's Bezdin's job to count Shemitah and Yovel, um, that's not dependent on my count. I could cross the date line. It's not gonna change the Shemitah, Yovel 'cause Bezdin would have to-- Bezdin's in charge of the count. It's a, it's an established count, not an individual count. Uh, And then teses says, "Perhaps Bezdin would make a Berakhah when they counted for Shemitah and Yovel the same way that we make a Berakhah when we count our Sefiras HaOmer." I believe the Rebbe is setting up a dichotomy here within teses. The teses is clearly saying that our Sefiras HaOmer is not counted in the same way that Bezdin counts theirs. Maybe we both make Berakhas, but the difference is that Bezdin is for, uh, for, for, uh, for Shemitah, and we're for Sefiras HaOmer. So I think the Rebbe is just using this teses to demonstrate that it's not like Shemitah and Yovel, that we count differently, that the count for Sefiras HaOmer is totally on the individual. So the Rebbe's position here is fairly clear. There was a-- There's one more letter that I wanna show you before we talk a little bit about

14:40 bottom lines and some history. And that is there's a letter that was sent, that letter from much later. This is from The other ones were from what? Yud Zion, I believe, right? Were these from Yud Zion? Yud Ches, Yud Zion. Um, this is from Somebody writes to the Rebbe, and, uh, the whole letter I am not copying. You can find it in the original link I sent you. I have a dot, dot, dot. Look at the PS on this letter. The PS on this letter is that this person wrote to the Rebbe that they're thinking about traveling during Sefiras HaOmer, and that, "Don't worry, I know what to do because I know your psak on this issue. I know exactly when to keep Shavuos 'cause the Rebbe made his, his, uh, decisions very clear, not just in letters, but also in the decisions printed very clearly how the Rebbe wants somebody to handle these situations." So this guy writes to the Rebbe and says, uh, this guy, I think he's a Rav. He's a Rebbe, writes to him so he's a Rav. Writes to the Rebbe saying, "I know exactly what to do. Thank you for the information." The Rebbe goes, "No, no, no, don't do that. Don't do that." "This trip you have that you've told me about I am not into this at all. Do not make this trip. Don't cross the international date line during Sefiras HaOmer." "I'm not interested in this." "Although it is true that when it comes to the

15:43 din, my opinion has been made abundantly clear." "That Shavuos is only dependent on the amount of days you've counted and not dependent on anything else." "That that count is maintained by the individual, not by some institution of a That it-- That therefore, somebody who crosses over the international date line, they don't have to be at all concerned with when-- with how locals are keeping Shavuos." "He only keeps the Shavuos that is on his fiftieth day." "Therefore, he will be off by one day by everybody else." "Assuming he didn't go back the same way in the middle of Sefirah." I need to pause here, even though it's the middle of a sentence, to tell you this is a very important point. Did you catch that? He says, "This will only apply if someone didn't travel back during Sefirah." Note that if you lose a day going one way, and then you travel back and gain a day, and you do that all before Shavuos, you're absolutely in the clear and can celebrate normal Shavuos because whatever day you lost, you gained back. So one of the things we're gonna see that Rabbanim suggest if you do have to cross the Kavat Ha'aretz is to make sure to return before the, uh, the, the, before Shavuos because that undoes everything. "Everything I said is completely clear. My, my opinion is completely clear." "Because then nonetheless is very, very shocking." "Especially since my opinion is . It should be obvious to you that I don't want you getting

17:09 involved in this topic in the first place. No one should be traveling across the international date line during Sefiras HaOmer if it is at all possible to avoid it." Okay, so we have a few letters from the Rebbe. Now, I want to, uh, give you a, a rundown. Diane Raskin published a list of like essentials for the final halakha on these things. I'm gonna tell you the final halakhas, and then I think we'll have a moment to tell you a little bit of the historical context. So first of all, uh, first and foremost, you should not travel, uh, one way across the international date line during Sefiras HaOmer. You should find a way not to do it. Uh, if you absolutely must, we have ways to deal with it, but first of all, try not to schedule your trips then, especially not a one-way trip. If you do need to travel a one-way trip, then it should be done from west to east, not from east to west. We talked about this a little earlier because if you're traveling from west to east, at least you'll be celebrating first day Shvu-- You'll be-- Your second day Shavuos will be the world's first day Shavuos, and at least you won't end up violating any Yom Tov Richon. If you did cross the date line, you should make every effort possible to cross back before Shavuos comes. This is something the Rebbe references in this third letter because that would, that would solve all of our problems.

18:10 Uh, we said earlier that somebody who does cross the date line is going to count Sefiras HaOmer with a Berakhah on the same schedule as their point of departure, but they're going to chap someone else's Berakhah, and they're also going to count the local one later without a Berakhah. We talked about this at length at the beginning. Quick review. If you're going from west to east, your Yom Tov is going to be the fifth and sixth of Sivan, and you're going to wear tefillin on the seventh, which is different than everybody else who is six and seven. If you're going from east to west, your Yom Tov is seven and eight, and tefillin are gonna be on the sixth, which is everybody else's first day Yom Tov. That's why that's very much not ideal Um, if this is important more practically for people who aren't traveling to Australia, let's say you travel just like one time zone over, you travel to California or you travel to-- Well, that's like three time zones over, but whatever. You traveled less than the dateline. Let's say you traveled a little bit over . The is, is brought in . The Rebbe, the Rebbe, I-- The, the-- I don't know, I don't know if the Rebbe specifically said this, but this is definitely the din, everybody agrees on this. That if you traveled or sh-- if you traveled in a way that shortened or lengthened your day by any amount of time, um, but didn't lose or gain an

19:07 entire twenty-four hours, you just have a long day and nothing's wrong with your count, nothing's wrong with your Shavuos. You just-- So if you travel in such a way that you have a twenty-seven-hour day or you travel in such a way that you had a fourteen-hour day, that's fine. You just continue counting in the place where you arrive, and you have a normal Shavuos. This, these r- these weird rules only apply if you cross the international dateline and gain or lose an entire day. Um, we do not say on the fifth of Sivan or the eighth of Sivan, regardless of whether or not we're keeping those days, because that is not . Although, although Shavuos is not scheduled for the time of , it's scheduled for exactly fifty days after we started counting. The fact is the Torah was received on the sixth, seventh, not on the fifth and eighth, so you would not say in davening. Now, the Gabriel asked the Rebbe one time whether these rules apply equally to women and children who don't count traditionally. Truth is, women should be counting, but he asked the question anyway. And the Rebbe said these rules apply to anybody, whether or not they're actually counting . They're still going to have to act like they count . And finally, and perhaps most importantly, Dayan Raskin says that you cannot use anything I just told you by yourself. You have to call a Chabad posek if you are engaged in this sort of situation. The last

20:12 thing that I wanna mention before we open the floor and, uh, and head off to Shavuos enthusiastically is that, uh, the Rebbe's first letter on this subject was written before the Nesius. The Rebbe's first letter on this subject was written in, uh, Tes. What, what, what year is Taf Shin Tes? That would be forty-nine? Nineteen forty-nine? In nineteen forty-nine, there's a Rav Wilsheznsky, Wilsheznsky, I believe, in Australia, and, uh, he'd been sent there by the Rebbe and he wrote to the Rebbe/the Rebbe saying, "What do I do?" And, uh, the Rebbe has a very long letter. I think maybe I, I don't think I brought a-- I didn't bring a piece of it down here in this document. I have it over here. See if I kept it highlighted. Let's see if I can show you. Yeah. So it's a long, long letter. You should look at it on your own time. Um, but in this letter he says, um, The Rebbe's already developing this idea in this letter from nineteen forty-nine, that is based on time that passed . He says, therefore, the question is somebody who crosses the date line in a way that you would skip or add a day whether you should act like the place you arrived, like Australia, or whether you should act like the place you came from. And the Rebbe says in this last part down there that I have highlighted, um, I haven't found anybody writing about this. says therefore, I'm gonna have a pilpul here.

21:33 I'm gonna try to discuss the with you, but I don't have a-- I don't really have a final decision. So the Rebbe kind of leaves this one, uh, up for grabs in that letter. In that letter, he says that since he's besafek, since the Rebbe says he can't find anybody who says one way or another, he advises in that letter that the person should count, um, that the person should count, uh, that they should keep Shavuos of his count plus the local Shavuos. So that means he would keep s- like three days of Shavuos. He says to keep six and seven for that place and seven and eight for himself, and therefore, he's keeping Shavuos besafek from day six to day eight. This is not the Rebbe's maskana at all. He also says that he's keeping Shavuos on six, but putting d- but putting tefillin on and counting day forty-nine. It's a very strange decision. The Rebbe says, "I'm besafek, so I want you to kind of keep a little bit of everything and not take any aliyas on any of the days." Um, there's a fun story about this. This letter was not known. When Rabbi Leib Shapiro was, uh, putting together-- was helping put together Likutei Sichos volume seven, this is before the publishing of Igris, uh, in a, in a major way. I don't believe they were being published at all at this point, so just Likutei Sichos was coming out. They were including a couple letters from the Rebbe in each

22:31 of the volumes of Likutei Sichos, sometimes in the . So they, they, they were-- they were putting together the Likutei Sichos volume seven, and somebody sent in, I believe Rav Wilsheznsky himself, sent in this letter with Likutei Sichos volume seven, uh, because they knew that they were publishing the Sichos regarding . The team putting together the Sichos read this letter and said, "Uh-oh. This letter is exactly the-- This letter is not at all what the Rebbe concludes in the Sichos, what the Rebbe concluded in subsequent letters. This letter is, is a stira." On the other hand, this letter's fascinating. It has the whole back and forth that the Rebbe deals with the issues and the different Halakhic authorities. It is a real letter. So they wrote to the Rebbe. They wrote to the Rebbe and said, "We know this letter is not how you concluded. Should we include it?" And the Rebbe said that they should print it, and indeed it is printed in the of Likutei Sichos volume seven, but with a note. And here's what the note says. It says, This letter is a , it's an original thought, and it has the back and forth, forth. And later on, we revisited the topic, and we came to a final conclusion. So this letter does not-- You'll find this letter that I sent you does not match the Rebbe's conclusions, and the Rebbe himself writes that this was an early and his final conclusion is clear from the Sichos and from the letters.

23:37 Okay, that's everything.