להתווכח עם יהודים על יהדות

00:00 This is Ignis, and today we're going to look at letters discussing whether and when it makes sense for us to be debating other Yidden about Judaism. Whether we should be involved in debating missionaries or members of other religions, however, is an entirely separate discussion. We might cover it in some future class. Uh, we're certainly not covering it today. Uh, this is specifically debating Jews about Judaism, and this comes up a lot. I, I think young people in Chabad are raised somewhat on the dream of saying something so profound in a Chabad house that it destroys every question every agnostic ever thought up and changing the world through debate and expressing a simple, compelling truth of Yiddishkeit. I, I get that feeling because my own students very frequently ask me for the magic tricks that make this work. They'll ask me for, uh, what amounts to debate strategies. How do you convince someone who's frum but not Chabad of the importance of Hasidism, uh, or of the importance of our customs and our lifestyle? How do you convince someone who's not yet frum that Yiddishkeit is correct? And a-as you're about to see in all of these letters that I have for you, and there are many that we left on the cutting floor, including a number of English letters that we're just not posting today because they're the same as the Hebrew letters. The Rebbe is very consistent on this point. The Rebbe's answer, simply put, how do you debate someone about Judaism? You don't.

01:05 That's the answer. You don't do it. Or if you can, if you, or if you can avoid doing it, you certainly don't do it because debates are not how you impact people. They're exactly how the Yetzer Hara wastes your time and digs you into holes. So the Rebbe pushes back real hard against the idea of debating people into Judaism. So today, we have some letters about debating non-Hasidim, Misnagdim, whatever they were, uh, et cetera, and we have other letters about debating Yidden who are not yet frum and trying to convince them to embrace frumkeit. We'll see both, but I think you'll find that the theme carries through all the way. We don't debate, we demonstrate, and we let truth speak for itself. So without further ado, I have on the screen, uh, our first letter is Vav Tav Kuf Heh Ches. This is from Ches Kislev, Tushin Yud Tes, and it's a tiny little letter. Actually, it's a longish letter. We're only, we're only going to read a tiny piece of it. And somebody wrote to the Rebbe saying, "Eh li misnagim elo medabrin al toras dach." This is written to a frum audience. People in their yeshiva or in their environment are speaking negatively about Hasidism, and this individual wants to know how to debate them, how to win a debate, how to convince them that Hasidism is a good idea. And the Rebbe responds, "Matzav mamadehu," in your current situation, "ein lelichanos imam b'dikuchin klal u'klal." I don't want you debating them at

02:10 all. No entry into debate whatsoever. "V'tmura zeh," in exchange for that, instead of debating them, "lehesez bas matav shkeda b'limud v'nigla v'chasidus." I want you to increase in your dedication and your sincerity, uh, your-- What's a shkeda? Uh, it likes severity, very seriousness. I don't know. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm missing English words today. So if you know the word, good for you. "V'limud v'nigla v'chasidus," basically take your l- learning of nigla and chasidus much more seriously. "V'yeda ufchach," and you should know that there's a guarantee. "Asher filum at er dera vecha har b'cheshef." You should know that there is a guarantee that even a small la-- amount of light banishes a large amount of darkness. If not harba, and especially when you have a lot of light, that certainly takes care of the darkness of the cheshef. So the Rebbe's answer here to people who are struggling with, uh, I think in their yeshiva, there are some people who don't like that they're learning chasidus. The Rebbe says, "Don't argue with them about chasidus. Don't debate them on the subject. Learn better. Learn chasidus very well. Learn nigla very well, and your light that you're producing through your learning will automatically solve the problems for you. Your problem is not solved through engaging in debates." Another letter, similar idea. This is labeled Hey Kuf Nun from Chaf Alef Shvat of Tushin Yud Zayin. We're gonna go all the way down here to the bottom of the letter. And here the Rebbe says, "Kamesh ksavti eleh

03:22 zeman anash." I've written to several of anash the same message, several Hasidim the same message. "Shelo yenuchan lamshich hazatman beshakla v'tarish u'mechamin m'nagdim." That people should not allow themselves to get into a back and forth with, a back and forth, a verbal war with people who oppose the ways of Hasidism. "Ki chaval al hazman," because first of all, and most importantly, it's a waste of your time. "V'vad ish zeh metachbulas halu maza," this is certainly one of the strategies of the other side of the Yetzer Hara. "M'baba avedas afas sarayanas," which is coming in just to confuse you and to, uh, disrupt your work of spreading the wellsprings of Hasidism outward. "Ad de'israel lamshich hazu ivdim bazal latanis manas mechlekes v'ribis evis kedushas toras ада" By, uh, getting into a discussion where you end up debating and, uh, having arguments about the holiness of the Torah of Hasidism, you end up, "u'meili ma'az man apana l'tachlis ha'avoda." There's no time left for the main avoda. "Ve'ekara chatzas limud ha'chasidus b'chamachim." So you end up spending less time teaching Hasidism and less time spreading Hasidism and more time debating what is Hasidism and whether people should be learning it. You end up, uh, giving right-- You end up playing right into the hands of the Yetzer Hara. So here, the Rebbe's answer is a little bit different. Um, back here in our first letter, the Rebbe said the best way to win a debate about Hasidism is simply to learn it and let it automatically speak

04:29 for itself rather than to debate it. Here, the Rebbe's saying there's a second angle, which is that the Yetzer Hara very badly wants you to debate the importance of Hasidism, the Hasidic lifestyle with other people because anything, anything but actually learning the stuff and teaching it. Uh, so if you sit down for a shiur with people who are not, uh, yet invested in Hasidism, and instead of teaching Hasidism, you talk about the importance of Hasidism, you end up wasting your time, and that's exactly what the Yetzer Hara wants you to do. Moving on to the next letter, we have Hey Shin Lamed is the label of this letter. This is from Tushin Yud Zayin, and we're gonna look just in the box over here. So the Rebbe says, "After a, after a delay, I received your letter. Vekama she'el," and you ask the following question: "Eich lashpia al avdeich pleni?" There was a certain young man who's a learner, a frum person, and you wanna know how to have an impact on him regarding Hasidism. "Muvan she'ein bezat klalim kluyim k'mesmadim." There's no, uh, firmly implanted rules for this, like nails in a wall. "Ki tolai de'avdeich mes nefesh isha laavdah etzel ashpia." It depends on the guy. So it depends on the person. So the Rebbe says, "First of all, I don't have, like, the quick and easy guide to convincing people. It depends on who the person is. You'll be able to have a hashpa'a. You'll be, you'll be able to have an

05:28 impact on them depending on who they are." "B'chol ha'ef," but in any event, there is one, uh, there is one very general rule. "Hishrai mu'achash," we see clearly, "berubah derubah," in almost all cases, "ein derech likuch im ayfen lashpa'a," that the way of debate is not the way of impact. If you want to impact people, the worst way to do it is to debate them. So the Rebbe says, "On one hand, I can't give you specific advice because I don't know the person, but I can give you pretty specific advice that works for almost everybody, which is that if you are debating them, you're not impacting them." "Haderach na'amira alka depashut maaleh tzei. Vafilu manau reitz l'vakeach, lihi savakeach." If they do truly want to debate you and they say, "I really wanna have this back and forth, have this discussion with you," push them off. Tell them this is not the time for it right now. We're at the beginning of our impact, of our, of our engagement with each other. We'll debate this later. And the impact will be by learning and explaining things using your words. And explaining sort of the, uh, environment. That's a bad translation, but the, uh, the all-in-all package of Hasidism and the environment of Hasidism. Certainly reach out to other people, figure out more about this person, and see if you can find out more about him so you can have a better impact on him. Certainly, the more that you consult with other people, the more

06:46 salvation you will find. But at the end of the day, the Rebbe says you're not gonna win on, uh-- you're not gonna... I don't know if you're not gonna win. You're not going to have much success impacting people if your way of doing it is with debating. I think I have one more for the Frum crowd before we switch over to the Chabad houses. So yeah, one more for debating Frum people about Hasidism, and by that I mean not doing it, as we're seeing from these letters. Uh, we have here the letter is labeled Hej Kuf Chaf, and it is from Yud Beis Chaf of Tav Shin Yud Zayin. And it's got a, uh, somewhat generic opening in that we've seen this already, and a real surprising conclusion. So we're gonna jump to the bottom after we read the top. Read the top first. I was pleased to receive your letter, and you wrote about . Wouldn't have guessed that abbreviation, would you? That one took me a while. Looks like Kabbalah. So time, believe it or not, that you're learning Hasidism someone in a regular way. and two other people, two people who are not yet, uh, knowledgeable about . This Hasid is learning with them. The Rebbe is very happy. The Rebbe says, "Certainly, I'm sure you're not debating them. I'm sure that you're just learning with them, and you're not getting into these pilpulim and tinus and minus. I'm sure that you're not getting into the nitty-gritty, uh, with them about the

07:53 debate of Hasidism itself." Because in the vast majority of these cases, all they do is-- all you do when you debate somebody is you encourage them to fight back. You raise up the midah of conquering in them. When you debate somebody, they immediately start thinking of ways to win a debate, even if they don't actually believe the other side. So I want you to, when you're teaching Hasidism, explain the thing the way that it is in a gentle way, and in a pleasant way. Don't teach Hasidism as somebody trying to conquer other people's minds. When you teach things in a way of conquering, people push back against you. When you teach things in a way that's pleasantness, the truth speaks for itself. By the way, I, I, I don't wanna . This is just good advice in general if you want to convince anybody of anything. When you try to debate people, they try to push back. If you tell them the thing that you think, if it's true, it'll just land, you know? Uh, so the way that you act will influence them automatically. Even if initially they're a little hostile, and they have this automatic urge to push back, you might have thought that if they have an urge to push back already, why not debate them? 'Cause I'm certainly not gonna make it any worse. The Rebbe says, over time, the more time you learn with them in a pleasant way, the more their resistance will, uh, weaken. In the end, their

09:09 resistance will disappear entirely, and they'll recognize the truth as it is. As we've explained in many farbrengens, that if you ever want to impact another Jew in a way of Torah and in a way of Yiddishkeit, you get great help from the fact that honestly they're on your side. That the truth is, and as we're gonna see, this is gonna show up in some of the later letters, uh, when speaking with people who are not yet Frum, that they already are on your side in their pnimiyus. The innermost part of every Jew wants to do Judaism. So it really is that you're, you're on-- they're on your side anyway. You just gotta peel back the layers that are blocking them. So you don't really have to debate them. You just have to let the truth shine through. as explained in Tanya the yeast inside the dough, which is the-- which a kinyan, it's a nickname for the yetzer hara, is covering over and not allowing them to reveal who they really are. in action and in speech but you are always having an impact on their innermost parts, the kal v'chomer. So here the Rebbe is saying to somebody who's impacting, who's having a, uh, who's having a chavrusa, who is learning Hasidism with two Frum people, that I don't want you to be debating them, even if they're pushing back already and they're, they're, they're, uh, they're-- they want to debate very badly, and they're pushing you, and they already have the nitzotzim in

10:18 them. Don't start with them because all you're going to do is make them fight back harder. What you should do instead is just teach. Uh, don't get involved in the nitty-gritty. Instead, teach the Torah, teach Torah and it will shine through on its own. And at the end of the day, they at the end of the day have neshamas, and their neshamas want to learn Hasidism, so you don't have to really push back very hard. I wanna jump you to the bottom of the letter where you get some of the most shocking stuff. So the Rebbe continues this. After a digression, the Rebbe says as a digression in the middle of the letter to discuss other issues, then he comes back to this again. And look what we have inside the box over here. So the Rebbe describes people who have these debates as people who want to make Mashiach take longer to come. To make it stronger, the galus that the Shechinah is in. by confusing The Rebbe says there are people who understand how important it is to spread . They get that it's important to spread Hasidism to bring Mashiach. What do they do anyway? They get involved in pilpulim and shakla v'tarya and they get involved in these They end up debating the people who oppose Hasidism. Excuse me. The Rebbe says, "Do you really think the final moments before Mashiach comes you should be spending your time, wasting your time on pilpulim, trying to push away , trying to push

11:43 away arguments that don't make sense anyway when you could have been using that time to spread the wellsprings of Hasidism?" And the Rebbe says, "Don't you think you should be invested in spreading Hasidism ?" And that's easy to understand. So to summarize, 'cause I feel like the reading went a little choppy, uh, the Rebbe's saying in this final point Do you think this is the best use of your time as Mashiach's coming when the-- we're at the ikvus of Mashiach, we're on the heels of Mashiach, Mashiach's about to come, uh, we have, uh, only a little bit left to do, and we're wasting our final moments debating people about the merits of Hasidus rather than diving directly into the teaching of Hasidus? And the Rebbe says that he's shocked that even people who seem to understand the urgency of teaching Hasidus to bring Mashiach are spending their time debating Misnagdim, debating Litvaks, debating Sefardim, I don't know, debating people who are not yet, uh, invested in Toras HaChasidus, and this just doesn't make any sense. So I have here, what is this? Four letters that we read that make it very clear the Rebbe doesn't want us doing this as far as frum people are concerned. Let's talk about shlichus, though. So a person, a, a Chassid goes out on shlichus, he's visiting a Chabad house, um, they want him to debate the locals and convince them that they should be frum. Uh, believe it or not, the Rebbe is not a fan of that

12:44 either for similar reasons, mainly because it doesn't work. So this letter is labeled Zayin Tav Kof Pe Zayin. It's from Gimel Adar of Tav Shin Chaf Alef, and we're gonna skip the first line, but other than that, we're gonna read just about everything. The Rebbe says, thank you, thank you, uh, Chassid, uh, based on what you wrote that you have started, uh, the, the outcomes that have come from your visits. This individual had been visiting, um, I think, Yishuvim in Eretz Israel. They were not yet frum, and he was just visiting them from time to time and bringing Yiddishkeit to them. So the Rebbe writes, move on. It should be understood that you should not be going to these places where they are not yet frum and debating them. I don't want that happening. That's not what a shliach does. First of all, it's a waste of time. We saw that lashon earlier. You only have a little bit of time with these people. You visit them, I don't know, for an hour, two hours, maybe for a Shabbos. You don't, you don't have that much time with them to have an impact on them. You have to spend that time doing the things that must be done, and the Rebbe clarifies what he means by the things that must be done. Down there, he says, You need to be spending your time with people who are not yet frum, explaining to them how important it is to keep mitzvahs practically, not to have intellectual

13:48 debates with them. He may write, we see, uh, clearly. We see that in most cases, uh, what happens when you do debate people is that they try to fight back. And people, in the effort to win a debate, will say things that they don't themselves agree with, and certainly things against God Himself, God forbid, because there's a natural urge to win debates. So if you start arguing with people, they will come up with arguments to prove you wrong just because they wanna be right, and otherwise, they might have already agreed with you. So the Rebbe says you make more trouble than you solve. The intent of you visiting these people who are not yet frum is not to debate them or do anything like that. The idea here is for you to explain our outlook and to do it in a way that is pleasant and a way that is peaceful. This I know is the deep concern of everybody, right? Uh, what if I don't-- if I don't debate them, they're going to think I don't have the answers. So he says in response to the question, um, in response to the difficulty, if I keep on dodging debates, aren't they going to think that I don't have good answers to this, or that good answers don't exist, and that I'm standing on a shaky foundation? The Rebbe says, You visit them more, you talk to them more, they're going to come to the conclusion that what you're saying is on solid foundations. You

15:08 don't have to worry about this. And if it does ultimately become necessary to have a debate, the minimum. The Rebbe says at the very least, make sure that it is only at the very minimum and very short. So in answer to this concern that if we refuse to debate people about Judaism, that they might think that we don't have good answers, the Rebbe says, "I'm not so concerned. Keep talking to them. Spend more time with them. I think they'll find automatically that what you're saying is valuable and that you don't need a debate." But if they really push you and they insist on the debate, there's room for debate as long as it is very short and kept to a minimum. This is certainly not the focus of a shlichus. A similar but shorter version of the letter, which is actually sent to the same individual. The same individual got the same letter from the Rebbe twice, except this one's much shorter. And here the Rebbe writes, having debates when you are visiting these settlements, okay, uh, grammar. Just trying to make the pair of Rebbes work. In most cases, it is, uh, it comes out that you lose more than you gain by having these debates. Because as soon as you make a debate, you make people wanna push back against you, and you just cause problems. And he says, "Therefore, I would like you to replace all debates as least as, at least as much as possible with lectures on the Hashkafa of

16:21 Chabad and things like that." Basically, if you have an opportunity to speak to people in a Chabad house setting, lectures are great. Debates, not so much. I have one more I wanna show you, and it's quite short, and with that, we will conclude. This letter is labeled Hey Tav Shin Ayin Gimel. I don't remember if I said the label in the last letter, so just in case I didn't, that last one was Zayin Tav Reish Lamed Beis. This one is Hey Tav Shin Ayin Gimel, and we are going to read half of this letter today and half of this letter with God's help later in the week because the second half of this letter is a completely different topic that we're going to be talking about in this shiur. But we're just gonna read the first part. The Rebbe writes, You wanna know how to deal with people who are n- they're, they're pushing back hard. They're, uh, they're insulting, they're, uh, they're pushing back hard against Yiddishkeit, against Judaism. And they, and they're Jewish. The Rebbe says it would be appropriate not to enter into any sort of back and forth or pilpul with them. Okay. This is something we haven't heard before, and it's amazing. The Rebbe says that in most cases, when people push back hard against Yiddishkeit, it is almost never because of something wrong in their minds. It's almost always because of something that went wrong in their hearts. That is, their hearts are hurt. It's not because their brains

17:26 don't agree with it. Usually the, usually their resistance to Yiddishkeit, their, uh, when people are, are actively anti-Yiddishkeit and are Jewish, that usually comes not from a place of intellectual honesty or intellectual dissatisfaction. It comes from a place of, uh, of lack of, uh, lack of satisfaction with the way that their life is going. It comes with emot-- it comes from emotional places. We're gonna read the rest of the letter later. The point here is, and, uh, I personally have found this in, uh, certainly the majority of cases, maybe even in all cases, that in most cases, when people have intellectual arguments against Judaism and Jews have intellectual reasons why they don't want to engage in Judaism, they're usually not purely intellectual. They usually come from some sort of hurt somewhere, uh, or some sort of, uh, some sort of lack of emotional satisfaction with the religion and with its ideals, and not necessarily with a legitimate intellectual, um, disagreement. And because it doesn't necessarily come from a legitimate intellectual disagreement, the Rebbe is saying, you can debate them all you want. It's not gonna fix their heart. If they're, if they're brokenhearted, if they're sad about something, if they're upset about something, if they feel that the lifestyle isn't for them because it didn't feel good when they were doing it, or because they're afraid to get involved in it, that won't have anything to... Your, your ability to debate them will not get them any closer because you've got to speak to their

18:37 hearts. So, uh, what we have here is, I think, eight letters, seven or eight letters that we looked at together. As I told you, there's many, many more that I didn't bring you. This is a constant theme that I did not find any exceptions to, that when, generally speaking, when we're debate-- when we're talking to other people about Hasidus or about Yiddishkeit itself, the Rebbe doesn't want debates. The Rebbe wants lectures. The Rebbe wants demonstrations. The Rebbe wants light to banish darkness, uh, for a lot of reasons. Partially because it doesn't work, because people automatically push back. Partially because, um, the Yetzer Hara is trying to get us to waste our time rather than doing our actual jobs. Part of it is because when you have debates with people, usually the thing that's really bothering them isn't intellectual in the first place, so you're missing the point entirely. But in any event, however tempting it is, the Rebbe very much does not want us, I'm quite sure, does not want us on a regular basis. He said in one letter to keep it to a minimum. So he does not want us on a regular basis to be engaging in intellectual debates about Judaism with other people or about Hasidus with other people, and instead demonstrating that a lot of light can banish, uh, that a little light and certainly a lot of light can banish any form of darkness. Thank you all very much.