חלומות וסיוטים

00:01 Okay, this is Igeris, and today we're going to look at the Rebbe's position on dreams. We're going to look at the Rebbe's advice, some segulas that the Rebbe gives people for when they have bad dreams. We're going to look at cases where the Rebbe says people should ignore their dreams entirely. Uh, we're going to look at certain interpretations the Rebbe offered for isolated dreams, some not so positive. So, uh, buckle up. We are going to look at what the Rebbe says about the Rebbe-- about the Rebbe or other Rebbeim appearing in your dreams, and altogether we should get a pretty comprehensive shihta on dreams. Uh, this is one of those classes that isn't really gonna give us a shihta, to be perfectly honest. This is one of those classes we're gonna look at a bunch of letters, and we're probably going to all collectively conclude that the Rebbe was answering each individual based on his knowledge of what their dream happened to mean. So I don't know how much, how much as far as, uh, hirah for shihta we're gonna get out of this. Certainly, some of the segulas don't hurt. They involve doing mitzvahs. But, uh, this one, this one comes with that footnote that we put on some of our Igeris shiurim, where we're seeing here a lot of personal answers. So unclear that anybody should follow any of the advice in any of these letters. As always, consult with your local Orthodox mashpia, your lam. Now, the first letter we're looking at

01:00 today is labeled Aleph Resh Samech Vav. We're gonna start off with the Rebbe's advice for bad dreams as far as segulas go. We're gonna s-- we're gonna collect some segulas. So this is letter label-- let-- this letter is labeled Aleph Resh Samech Vav. It's from Tuv Shin Yud Beis, and somebody writes to the Rebbe saying that they are having bad dreams. Never mind, it's actually Aleph Resh Samech He. I had scrolled down too far. Aleph Resh Samech He of Gimel Kislev Tuv Shin Yud Beis. The Rebbe says, "I received your letter, and you asked me for advice about painful dreams, dreams that are bothering your wife." "First of all," "pretty straightforward, check the mezuzahs in your house." This one's unique. Says, "You should ask your wife if maybe she insulted a Jew. Maybe she insulted a Jewish boy, a Jewish girl." "Over those days." "If one of those people was in fact insulted," "if you can't find that person anymore, then you should ask for forgiveness in front of three Jewish people." He gives her the nusach to say. "Say in front of three people that if I insulted any Jewish person by mistake or on purpose," "I regret it with a complete heart." "And I ask for forgiveness." "The Rebbe says, 'I also believe I've told you I want you lighting candles and giving tzedakah before you light candles on Shabbos and on Erev, on Erev Shabbos and on Erev Yom Tov.' Of course, according to your minhag v'halacha." "Don't, don't pressure yourself to

02:27 give too much money, but a couple coins before you give, uh, before you light candles, that one would work too." "I'm sure that if you do all of this, then bit by bit, all of the bad dreams are going to go away." "It would also be appropriate" There the Rebbe says something that I heard in yeshiva, but I hadn't seen a lot of sources for it in straight Igeris or, or sichas. But, uh, here the Rebbe says that another piece of advice for avoiding bad dreams is to learn a little bit of the Friydige Rebbe's Sefer Zichronos before you go to bed at night, whether it's in English or whether it's in English, whichever-- excuse me, whether it's in Yiddish or whether it's in English, whichever one is easier for you. This is printed as The Lubavitcher Rebbe's Memoirs in English, and it's even an audiobook. And, uh, the Rebbe says that you should read it before you go to bed at night in this particular letter. And since it's an audiobook, you can even listen to it as you are falling asleep. Free advertisement for the audiobook. Okay, so we have a couple segulas here. Let's keep on going. We'll sum them all up at the end. This letter is labeled Daled Shin Lamed Gimel. Um, yes, and it is from Tes Vav Ear Tuv Shin Tes Zayin. Somebody writes to the Rebbe once again saying that they have some bad dreams. "You wrote to me about your dreams." "Check the mezuzahs in the

03:37 house you live and in the room you sleep in." Here the Rebbe says another piece of advice, when you sleep, to obviously check your mezuzahs, but in addition to that, if you are a man, of course, make sure you're sleeping in a talis cotton and that the talis cotton you sleep in has kosher tzitzit. A lot of people have, like, a sleeping pair of tzitzit, or they switch between two pairs. Could be the pair that you've been sleeping in. Its tzitzit aren't perfect, so check those tzitzit. And also make sure you're wearing a yarmulke when you go to bed to sleep at night. We have a third letter that has a segula in it. This is ta-- this is Daled Taf Resh Samech Zayin. Unless, again, I picked the wrong letter. I did. Too many scrollings. Daled Taf Resh Samech Vav, there it is. And, uh, somebody writes to the Rebbe saying, "She had a dream. A bad thing happened." I don't know. "First of all, don't think about it too much." We'll get more into that later. The Rebbe says, "I'm certain that not all of the mezuzahs in your house are kosher." He says here, "Certainly, the mezuzahs in your house are not all kosher." "You're going to have to check them." So he's writing to a woman. He says, "Why don't you have your husband check his tefillin 'cause you are having bad dreams?" Which means, guys, if your wife is having bad dreams, you have to check your tefillin. "Once again,

04:51 the advice before you light Shabbos candles and Yom Tov candl-candles, make sure to give some money to tzedakah. Also, your husband, every day of the week, at least on Mondays and Thursdays, he should make sure to separate some coins to tzedakah before he davens." Also the Rebbe adds, "Also strengthen your bitachon, your trust in Hashem, who is the creator of the world and the one running it, who..." "who is fundamentally good." "And all he wants to do is do good things." "For every single person, and all you have to do is make a kliyamat him libiracha." So here we have even more advice on the segula front. Don't worry, I have a list. We'll review them all in a second. Our final segula letter is over here. It's labeled Heh Tzaddik Vav. And this letter is... Where is it? Ah. "Regarding dreams that confuse you," "it's known from the Ma'amar Chazal a person ends up dreaming about things they thought about during the day." "That dreams come from your . They come from your, uh, idle thoughts you had during the day." "And we know this to be true. If you think about something during the day, it does seem to appear in your dreams." "So if you wanna get rid of a bad dream, stop thinking about bad things during the day." Specifically says the Rebbe in this case, "Therefore, you should be careful when you do kriyat shema shalamita." "You should make sure that you have a-" a, uh, pure body. The Ɣazar

06:12 b'Tfilas Ezra, and you're careful about Tfilas Ezra, that is going to Mikvah specifically for men, uh, et cetera. The Mezuzah of Pasachek Deksera, and make sure the Mezuzah on your door is kosher. So to sum it all up as far as our Segulas go, I made a list so it'd be a little easier to follow. What we saw in our letters were for somebody who has bad dreams, the Rebbe has given the following pieces of advice, and I know I said this already, but let me say it again. When you see Segulas like this in letters, a lot of times they're specifically for that person, but some of these are just good tips for everybody. Checking your Mezuzahs can't hurt there. If you insulted someone's honor, ask for forgiveness. That was in one of the letters for somebody who has a bad dream. On several of the letters, we had give Tzedakah before you light Shabbos or Yom Tov candles. We had in a, a couple of them saying Shema before you go to bed. In one of them, we had learning Sefer Zichronos before you go to bed. That's the memoirs of the Frieda Kedaha, basically Chassidish stories. Learn Chassidish stories, read Chassidish stories before bed. We had advice to sleep in Tzitzit and in a Yamaka. We had advice to check your Tefillin or your husband's Tefillin. We had one about strengthening Bitachan. It was about strengthening our trust in Hashem. And finally, we had Guftar and Tefillas Ezra to be more careful

07:08 about our general, uh, our general, uh, purity, uh, specifically when it comes to men going to Mikvah Tefillas Ezra. We're now moving on from Segulas to the Rebbe's main advice on dreams 'cause that's really-- I, I tried to collect a good sampling of the different things the Rebbe says, but the Rebbe's main advice, especially from the Chaf's onward, I don't know what changed, but it seems to me that in the f-- in the Yud's, the Rebbe gives a lot of advice for letters. From Chaf onward, he tends to say, "Ignore your dreams." So we have a lot of letters. I'm giving you two examples here. I, uh, I found something like thirty of them. Examples where somebody writes to the Rebbe, "I had a bad dream," and he says, "Hesed Chadas," and just moves on. Just ignore the dream. So I'm gonna show you a couple examples of that, but, uh, this is all over the place. Definitely from the Chaf's onward, the dominant thought by the Rebbe seems to be ignore your dreams. The Ish Machom L'Misha Din and Kamozuz Kashera. So the Rebbe says, "You wrote to me about the concerns you have. You've been having some bad dreams. There's room to say that your Mezuzahs might not be kosher." "Maybe you put your Mezuzahs up wrong." "But, but that's not really the point," says the Rebbe. So here you can see a transition. Rebbe says, "Mezuzahs are a problem. Check them, but that's not my point." "You should ignore your dreams entirely

08:08 because there is no substance to them." "It says in the Gemara that dreams do not raise someone up, nor do they drag someone down. They don't change status of anything." "Strengthen your Unchagas. You should act in a way that is befitting." So the Terr-- the, the rules of the Torah, the Torah of life and Kiam mitzvahs and fulfilling mitzvahs. Basically, the Rebbe says, "Strengthen Torah and mitzvahs and ignore the dream. Don't think about it." We have several of these. Um, we also have Tefshin Lamed Beis. This letter is labeled Yud Shin Chaf Ches, and here there's a PS, so it's a basic letter to, uh, to somebody with a lot of very good titles. Let's see who it is. Um, I don't know. Okay. Anyway, uh, the PS down here says, "I received your letter and" "I want you to entirely ignore, put out of your mind the dream that you had." "It has no substance to it," "at all." It seems she had-- she, she was expecting a baby. I guess she had one of those terrifying children-related dreams. And the Rebbe told her, "Don't worry about it at all. I don't want you thinking about it. Obviously, you're going to raise-- Everybody who is-- comes from you will be raised to" "Don't worry about your bad dreams." One more just to give you a nice wide sampling of ignore your dreams. This is from a letter that is labeled... Actually, I think I cut it off. It would be Yud Alef Tov Lamed

09:30 Gimel. And this letter says, uh, "Ignore dreams entirely because" "they, they, they, they speak only falsehood." "I'm gonna mention you by the Tzion, but really don't worry about your dreams. When you see things in dreams, they are all falsehood." So certainly the Rebbe gives that answer often. In this letter, this is, uh, Beis Kuf Mem Tes. Here, the Rebbe is going to talk about dreams and how you should ignore them, but also give a reason why to ignore your dreams. And his advice here is that you should ignore your dreams because frequently they are the way your Yetzer Hara chooses to try to get you down or upset you when in fact you should be focusing on Torah and mitzvahs. So the Rebbe says here, "I received your letter. You wrote to me that you had a bad dream, and you asked me about your dream." And the Rebbe says, "I want you to stop getting into this entirely. You're trying to interpret dreams. Stay far away from dream interpretation." "I don't want you absorbed in your dreams." "It's explained in many books," says the Rebbe. "So the Rebbe says it's explained in many holy books that people whose entire being is Torah and mitzvahs and Hashem, somebody who's entirely absorbed in Yiddishkeit, obviously even their dreams are going to have some emis to them, and they can't afford to ignore them. So that's why" "take dreams very seriously." "And even in that case, even for people who are perfectly holy, who every thought is

10:50 holy, and therefore their dreams must be holy too, even in those dreams, there are some things that make no sense. There are always Devarim B'Teylim. There are always details that make no sense, even in those dreams." "But that regarding people in our generation," "but by people in our generation, their minds are full of other things too. They have all sorts of idle thoughts they think, all sorts of ridiculous ideas," "things that have no substance to them." "How many times a day do you think of something that's not Torah and mitzvahs? If it's even once, you're not in that category." "Regarding these people," "they're just dreams." "And a lot of times the dreams are coming from the Yetzer Hara." "To take them away from things of worth." "Therefore, I am repeating myself," says the Rebbe. "You should not permit yourself to think about dreams at all." The Rebbe's point here being he actually does give some of the classic dream Segulas in the second half of this letter, uh, check your Mezuzahs and the like. But the Rebbe's point here being that unless you're somebody who's entirely absorbed in Kedusha, when you have a dream, it's usually completely worthless. A person who's entirely absorbed in Kedusha, their dreams are mostly kosher, and they have parts of it that are worthless. Uh, people like us, uh, who think about other things during the day besides nothing but Torah, who think about anything besides Torah during the day, our dreams mean nothing. They're just the Yetzer Hara. They're

12:05 just Devarim B'Teylim, and they generally should be ignored. So perhaps we get from this letter some of the reasons why in a lot of cases the Rebbe just says ignore the dream no matter what it is. Uh, that Said. That having been said, the Rebbe does have times that he interprets dreams. And, uh, I guess these again, are on a case by case basis. Sometimes he seems to feel that dreams have a good deal of substance. This letter is labeled Hey Tuf Tuf Mem Aleph. It's from the year Tuf Shin Yud Ches. And here the Rebbe writes, "At the end of your letter, you asked the interpretation of a dream that you had." The Rebbe says, "First of all, it's a Maimon Chazal. It's brought in Masach HaBrachos that all dreams follow the way they are interpreted." So if one of you who's watching this shiur right now, Chas Veshalom, had a bad dream, and you told me about it, what i would be obligated to do is to say, "It is a good dream, it's a good dream, it's a good dream," and then it would be a good dream. Excuse me, The Rebbe says, "Therefore, I hereby declare your dream positive," and doesn't go into any particular details. Some of them are a little darker than that, and the Rebbe does not seem to feel obligated to interpret a dream positively if he doesn't think it has a positive interpretation. A case where this comes up at least twice in Igris is when

13:13 people dream of their deceased relatives. If a, if a Rachmana Litzlan, a person's lost a mother or a father and that individual comes to them in a dream and bothers them, it's an unpleasant dream, the Rebbe seems to give a relatively consistent answer that you might have done something wrong. So this is a letter labeled Hey Tuf Shin Samech Ches. It's from Tuf Shin Yud Zayin. And somebody writes to the Rebbe, "Your mother came to you in a dream," and the implication of the letter, I think, is that she came to the dream and it wasn't like a big hug from the deceased mother. It seems like it was a negative dream about her mother appearing to her in a dream, and her mother wasn't alive anymore. The Rebbe writes, "You should check and see whether she was buried properly." Um, "You have to see whether after she, uh, whether after she died, everything went the way it was supposed to. And also, check mezuzahs in your house." So he says here, "Be careful. I-I'm not sure your mother was buried quite right." Unless you think that's a one-off, let me show you another letter just like it about deceased fathers. This letter is labeled Hey Tuf Kuf Tzadik Vav. It's in the year Tuf Shin Yud Zayin. And here the Rebbe writes, you-- along with-- he writes a letter and there's a PS. So this person had written about a member of his community. This person wrote about a-- about his father coming to

14:19 him in a dream. And again, it-- you get the sense that it wasn't a positive interaction. "You should get ten people together and ask for your father's forgiveness." "For anything you might have done during the one year of aveilus, during those twelve months that was not appropriate." I don't know, you missed a Kaddish, you may have disrespected him. Whatever it is, says the Rebbe, if your father's appearing to you in a dream and he's not alive anymore, and he's angry, you'd better, uh, you'd better get ten people together and ask for forgiveness. The psak din is that a father who forgives somebody who has a child who has, um, dishonored him, he is, uh, allowed to do such a thing. He also says, "Check your tefillin and mezuzahs." But here the Rebbe is giving pretty stark interpretations to two dreams. People saw their deceased relatives, and the Rebbe says, "I think maybe you dishonored them. You'd better talk to them about it." Uh, I'm gonna switch over and show you a couple English letters. Let's see how this goes. I'm gonna try a screen switch. Aha. Do you see it? Nope, that's my-- that's the wrong one. Okay. Hang on a second. I thought I was doing it right. That's this one. This is this one. How about that? Aha. Dreams. Okay. This is from, uh, the first day of Adar bays of five seven four four, and it is an interesting letter. It's in English. Uh, the Rebbe writes, "Greeting and blessing. With regard

15:41 to the matter of dreams, it is general-- in general, it is well known from various sources that there is no dream without some nonsense, even dreams that otherwise have some substance." So the person wrote to the Rebbe about their dreams. The Rebbe starts out by saying, "Part of it's gonna be good, and part of it's gonna be not so good. This is the answer to your question regarding the dreams that you mentioned in your letter and whether they should be taken seriously in every detail concerning your activities to spread and strengthen Yiddishkeit, Torah, and Mitzvahs. Of course, a Jew does not require to be reminded in a dream about this great-- about his great privilege and responsibility to spread Yiddishkeit to the fullest extent of his abilities in fulfillment of the great principle of the Torah, "Ve'ahavta Lereiacha Kamocha," loving your neighbor as yourself. But it does have significance when one is reminded in a dream to increase such activities, especially as you write you have the desire to dedicate yourself to this cause even more than before. However, that detail which you mentioned about going to Great Britain, et cetera, to work there in the said direction, belongs to the part of dreams which, in the words of our sages, is nonsensical and has no validity. For every Jew has the opportunity to increase his activities in the area of spreading Torah and Mitzvahs and all other good deeds in his own place and does not have to spend money and time to travel

16:41 overseas to do that." So the Rebbe says here, this person apparently had a dream where he was told, uh, that he should spread Yiddishkeit, that he should be more involved in Afatz Amayanos and helping Yidden come close to the Yiddishkeit, and that specifically he should leave New York-- or excuse me, he should leave, he should leave, uh, he should leave Minneapolis, and he should do it in Great Britain. And the Rebbe says, "You wanna know what part of your dream was valid? The part that tells you to do Torah and Mitzvahs." Absolutely. If you're gonna strengthen Yiddishkeit, that is God telling you that this is your job and giving you even further strength for what we already know is the right thing. You know what makes no sense? Moving. That's never the right thing. You're supposed to strengthen Yiddishkeit where you are. So that part of your dream, that's the ridiculous part. I'm sure this was a disappointing letter to receive. You get a dream that you're supposed to go be a shliach in Britain, and the Rebbe says, "Shliach, just, you know, not Britain. Locally." Must be disappointing to receive. But in any event, the Rebbe says that's the ridiculous part of the dream. I only have one more English one I want to show you, and this one's, uh, scary. A certain woman from London, England, wrote to the Rebbe, and here's the Rebbe's PS. We only have the PS. It's in English once again, and it's not dated, so I can't tell

17:37 you anything besides that it's published in The Letter and the Spirit, Volume Two, page four seventy-four. And the Rebbe writes, "PS. In reply to your question about the significance of your dream," and it seems from this dream that she had a monster dream, that she had a dream that monsters were chasing or attacking her, "I would suggest the following. Where the body with its physical aspects does not obscure the soul, the divine soul which every Jew possesses, then transgressions committed, even unknowingly, can be seen with the eyes of the soul in their true light as monstrosities, and the person committing them as monsters. Thus, the dream or nightmare which you describe should be seen as an indication that certain things in the daily life have to be rectified by teshuva. You should therefore review your daily conduct and strengthen your adherence to the way of Torah and then completely dismiss the dream from your mind, and God will surely bless you with hatzlacha." So here, this somebody writes to the Rebbe saying, "I had a monster dream." And the Rebbe goes back, "Yeah, because aveiras are monstrous, and you did something monstrous, and you're the monster. The thing chasing you is yourself." Uh, which is, by the way, very, uh, very-- dare I say Freudian. The idea that when we, uh, when we're haunted by something, it's usually ourselves. But here, of course, is much more spiritual. Lehavdil. Alef av dalet. But what the Rebbe is saying here is that when somebody has a dream

18:39 about monsters, sometimes that's their nefesh elokis running away from their nefesh behamis and the things that it's done before, and this is a sign a person has to do teshuva, which might give us some insight into some of the answers that the Rebbe gave about other letters. There's two more things that I want to show you. Let me transition back to that window with God's help. Aha, we did it. Okay. Want to see a harsh sicha? We'll do a harsh sicha. This sicha is from Simchas Torah, Tav Shin Tes Vav. And in my personal experience with Simchas Torah farbrengens, they sometimes have some really harsh things in the middle of them. It seems that when the crowd-- when the, when the Rebbe really farbrengs with the Hasidim and gets into it, the Simchas Torah farbrengens are long. He starts to, uh, he starts to drill down to some things that aren't always pleasant to hear. Uh, there's a surprising amount of crying in Simchas Torah farbrengens, just an observation. Uh, in any event, uh, let me read something to you. It says here, "Pam Sifre Kabbalah k'dinim m'erech hameimar." The Friediker Rebbe one time told a story. The Hasid, Rabbi Zalman Zlotopol-- Zlotopolsky, Zlotopolsky. "Shehayah Hasid shel Kabbalist, Rabbi Maharash." This Reb Zalman, he was a Hasid of the Rebbe Maharash. "Hishtakech me'od lireis Reb Maharash l'achor y'sai kulai." He wanted to see the Rebbe Maharash in a dream so badly. "Veyesayaes v'yin zoin kabalist Reb Maharash av od nishmas aden." He asked the Rebbe

19:45 Maharash Av, "How can I see your father, the holy Rebbe, the Rebbe Maharash, in a dream?" "Achen lache kam ve kam in yonim v'chanus, rabis shihur l'kabbalist Maharash nishmas aden v'ach me'am lishan k'shichuchagav av neit vailav Maharash b'chalom." So the Rebbe Maharash Av gave him all sorts of preparations. One of-- the only one, the only one the Rebbe is willing to tell us is that he was told to sleep in a gartel for this purpose. He prepared himself. He prepared himself spiritually to see his Rebbe in a dream. Finally, the Rebbe Maharash appeared to him in a dream. "Zehu sipur she'irah im chasid sh'derei z'manim altei chasid." An alten chasid, excuse me. The Rebbe says this is what the prior generations of Hasidim were like. This is a story about, about an alten chasid. "Ve'inei atah misrachsh sifriim avreich toire." Now the Rebbe is gonna draw a contrast. "Let me tell you about our Hasidim," says the Rebbe. There was a young guy in, uh, in our community. "Sh'misnag sh'leicheh b'bayis inyin." He did not act appropriately in a certain inyin. He did some averah. "HaRebbe maser chu lo v'dibur imai al kaach v'lo hayal." The Rebbe, while he was b'guf gashmi, spoke to him about this, and it didn't work. "Ach sh Rebbe atzmei bailav b'chalom," and then the Rebbe came to him in a dream. "V'al pi ken makom sh'davar zeh yigin b'lev lashpia gam azulasai harei gam hu atzmei," dot, dot, dot. There's something missing in the sicha, it says. There's something

20:52 chasid, but let's keep on reading. "Yisbanin esai avreich." This avreich should think about the following. "Ad kamai yisageh u'Hasidim meshech shanam k'dil laschos l'reis his Rebbe." This, this young Hasid should think how much people used to work to get an opportunity to see their Rebbe. "V'ilu hu," but regarding him, "meshech Hasid Rebbe eilav." He dragged the Rebbe to him. "L'teichabuch sheba hu shakuach," into the, uh, into the blat v'er gefin zich. He dragged him down into the mud where he found himself. "V'ilu zacha," had he merited, "harei zchusu sh'reis penei Rebbe shehayei zeh b'yadei." The merit of seeing the Rebbe in a dream, "hayei zeh nasas befan acher," would have come a different way. "Aval atah bailav Rebbe k'dil ladaberi imai eis inyin pachos." But here the Rebbe has to come to talk to him about an averah he's doing. "Sefichal davar," dot, dot, dot. Um, just to summarize, in case you didn't catch it as I was reading it, the story here is that a young Hasid had done an averah, and the Rebbe had spoken to him about, you know, doing teshuva and not doing that averah anymore, and the Hasid hasn't-- hadn't listened. The Rebbe is not gonna let-- is not gonna let-- hang one of his Hasidim out to dry, so he ultimately has to come to him in a dream in order to inspire him to do teshuva and do the right thing. The Rebbe says that is not the same as the story w-with Reb Zalman. Used to be

21:51 Hasidim prepared themselves properly and met the Rebbe in a dream at a spiritual level. Here, a person does so many averahs that the Rebbe feels he has to come down into the mud to rescue him from himself, and what a shame that is. The Rebbe gives one final, uh, one final word of comfort before he concludes this section of the sicha. He says, "V'ad du bil il eis hamashal b'koivan." Says, "I already have spoken to you about hat makers." Now, this is a mashal from the Tamim Delek. Tamim Delek once time-- one time said, "I'm like a hat maker. I make hats. I hang them on a peg in the wall, and then people come by and they try on different hats to see which one fits them." Meaning a Rebbe says something, it's not shayach to everybody in the room, but you should try on the hat and make sure I'm not talking about you. So that's what the Rebbe's saying here is that I'm not, I'm not talking about everybody here, but there are some people in the room who need to hear this story. You should try that hat on and make sure you're not the one I'm talking about. "V'chal yadu apis gam she'ein adam merameh ela es atzmei." The truth is, the Rebbe says, it's well known the expression a person can only really fool himself. "Ve'ein zeh kunst l'rames sheyta," and it is no great thing to fool a fool. In any event, uh, that was a somewhat negative

22:46 take on seeing the Rebbe in a dream. I wanna end with a positive take on seeing the Rebbe in a dream. This is a letter that we have from the Rebbe that is in Yiddish, and the Rebbe says-- We have it on the screen. Here we go. Somebody wrote to the Rebbe saying that they had seen the Rebbe in a dream. Uh, they might, they might-- uh, given the year, Tav Shin Yud Zayin, I bet they said they saw the Friediker Rebbe. Actually, I know for sure from the middle of the letter. They had written that they saw the Friediker Rebbe in a dream, and they wanted to know if it was a good sign or not that they saw the Friediker Rebbe in the dream. And the Rebbe says, "What's brought in the Gemara is, uh..." Oh, I made the screen too small. Hang on. Uh, bring it back. "It's bavust vas die Gemara zochen nigeyr tzu cholemes." It's known what the Gemara says-- well known what the Gemara says about dreams, that a person sees what they think about during the day, and what they thought about during the day, that appears in their dream. I keep on losing the screen. Just a moment. There. Can everybody see? Okay. "So when we're talking about a Reu Yisrael," which is like the Rebbe, the Friediker Rebbe, uh, with all the honorifics after his name, "nishmas v'ginzim v'neim," uh, whose entire, uh, whose entire job, everything that he worked for, was to do good for

23:44 Yidden in both physically and as well as spiritually, uh, "then certainly what you saw was definitely a good dream. The dream is a sign that you should increase and do even better from the things that you are already required to do. Specifically, you and your wife should raise your son and daughter in a Yiddishe and Chasidishe direction." The Rebbe then gives a bracha for real nachas, Chasidishe, Yiddishe nachas, Chasidishe nachas, uh, long joy, joy, full, full of joy, healthy life, and, uh, you should give more Yiddishkeit to your children, warmth and Chasidishe, I don't know, enthusiasm. Then the more that you do that, the more nachas you will have from them. And more importantly, it's going to bring more joy and goodness into their, uh, emese glayk-- emese glik in zir leven. It's gonna bring more, uh, goodness into their lives, more joy into their lives. So we have here from the Rebbe that if a person sees the Rebbe in a dream, this is a positive sign because first of all, what you see in a dream is what you thought about during the day, and this shows you've been thinking about the Rebbe. And also, when you see the Rebbe, could it possibly be a bad sign? All the Rebbe cares about is good for his people. All the Rebbe cares about is brachas and gashmiyus and ruchnius. So if there's one sign that a good thing is about to happen to you and that you've been g- you've-- and that you've been

24:48 up to good thoughts, it's that the Rebbe would appear to you in a dream. So on one hand, uh, we have a somewhat negative, I don't mean to say negative, but somewhat, I, I guess, not so positive sicha where the Rebbe says if a Rebbe has to appear to you in a dream to get you to stop doing averahs, that's a real shame. Hasidim used to-- We also have in the sicha itself that there was a madrega of Hasidim who worked on themsel- hard, um, worked on themselves hard enough to merit to see the Rebbe in a dream. And the Rebbe speaks to somebody who seems to have merited it in a positive way, that sometimes when you see the Rebbe in a dream, uh, it seems that this is, I would say, much more common. When a person sees the Rebbe in a dream, it's a sign that good things are coming for them because the entire mitzas of the Rebbe, everything the Rebbe is, is goodness and, and gashmiyus and ruchnius and bracha for everybody, certainly including those who see him in a dream. Okay, that's our summary of everything I could find about dreams. Thank you all very much.