Kislev 10 in Chabad History

00:00 Speaker 1 Today we'll do the Yemei Chabad for the tenth day of Kislev, and this is in the year Taf Kuf Pe Zayin, uh, which translates the tenth of... The, um, tenth of Kislev, uh, the tenth of Kislev in Taf Kuf Pe Zayin corresponds to the tenth of December in eighteen twenty-six. Uh, this was the day that the Mitler Rebbe, the Rebbe Dov Ber, was actually freed from his incarceration, from his imprisonment. As we learned earlier that, uh, on the twenty-eighth day of Tishrei, they came to arrest him, and the reason they arrested him is because it's hard to believe, but these were, uh, people who had a grudge against Hasidim and against the, specifically against the Mitler Rebbe. It also had to do with a, mentioned before, with a Shidduch over there that the Mitler Rebbe did not want to, uh, sort of, uh, be with th-that group. But they went, they stooped to the lowest of levels to go ahead and slandered the Rebbe, make up stories, and forge documents, uh, to try to indict the Rebbe and try to make the r- uh, the Mitler Rebbe look bad. They arrested... This was from the, um, Misnagdish camp, from the opposition to the Hasidim. Misnagdish. Yeah. Um, what basically they said is that he was sending large amounts of money to Eretz Yisrael, and how did he get such a large amount of money? They actually forged the documents, uh, a letter that the Rebbe said. They just added like a number, like a one

01:44 Speaker 1 to, uh... It came into a very exorbitant amount, exorbitant amount of money. Um, and, uh, you know, that, that constituted su-big suspicions for, for the Rebbe, how he's, uh, providing all these funds for an-to another country, another government, and caused them to arrest the Rebbe. The pre-- The Mitler Rebbe was able to prove to the people investigating him that this is all entirely made-up story. It's false. It's not true, nothing. And that all the monies that he is sending to Eretz Yisrael, they are destined for the poor people. That's all what it is to it. And he also pointed out to them, he showed them how these slanderers, how they forged the document. They forged his letter. He showed to them. And these investigators went and reported back to the, to the governor, um, and they gave him all the answers that the Mitler Rebbe gave. He requested that they should bring the, for him, the Rebbe, facing up with the, uh, slanderers, and they'll go in front of him. They will see. He will decide who is the one that is saying the truth, who is the one who is right. So the out-- The Mitler Rebbe dressed up in his garments of Shabbos, which were white garments, and he went in a very, uh, beautiful carriage to the governor, and he looked like an angel, an angel of God. He was... Had this holy and this, this, this look on him. And the Hasidim were kind of a little bit worried in the

03:22 Speaker 1 beginning that maybe the Rebbe's look of such aristocratic look and would be something which would be looked negatively on by the governor. He might get angry over there. Uh, but that wasn't the case. On the contrary, when he saw the beauty and the gra-grandeur of the, uh, Rebbe, of the Mitler Rebbe, he found favor in the eyes of the, uh, governor, and he honored him v-very much, and he asked him to sit. He gave him a chair, asked him to sit down. And then the slanderer came forth, and he began to argue, put down his arguments. And while he was heated up in his discussion, so that slanderer said, and he says, and he used in his phrase about the Mitler Rebbe, he says, "Rebbe." So, uh, the Rebbe, uh, pointed out in, on, from the governor, he says, "Look, here he's saying that I'm a cheater, that I'm a thief, and I'm, uh, uh, rebelling against the government, and now he's calling me Rabbi." He says... So he said that. And that slanderer, he came from the city of Vitebsk. He was totally outdone. He couldn't find, um, his way out. He spoke totally disjointed. It was totally, uh, as the, uh, the extent that the officer, the governor himself told him, "Enough barking," he told him. As he told him. And the, uh, and the mouth of the slanderer went away with shame and with embarrassment, and the Rebbe traveled with great honor from that meeting that they had in front of the

05:13 Speaker 1 governor. When it came the month of Kislev, but he was still incarcerated, but the month of Kislev is known as the month of redemption because the Alter Rebbe was twice released from prison, once on Yu-Yates Kislev and then on the third day of Hanukkah. Uh, so, uh, so it was a special time, so- Why, why twice? Uh, he was in prison twice, two years after. Once in- Oh. It was two, two times he was in prison. Okay. And both of the times- Yes. Shkoyach Mendy. Both of the times he was released, it was in the month of Kislev. So Kislev has a special, uh, is a special month. So he, um, they sent a, uh, request. The Mitler Rebbe sent a request, and he asked his daughters to go to the, to the governor to ask him for freedom, to ask a request for freedom. And when they came to the governor... I call governor, they say tsar, I'm not sure exactly what the title is, but they called governor. So the daughters, they started to cry bitterly, and the office-- the governor, he read the request, and he said to the daughters, "Why are you crying? Go home in peace because your father is going to go out from prison." And that was the case. We learned earlier his prison wasn't like, uh, totally like a cell. He had a house there, and the Hasidim used to come in. They allowed him-- They allowed the several leniencies.

06:41 Speaker 2 Amen.

06:41 Speaker 1 They had several leniencies, so it wasn't like they learned Dava Raminion there. So he had... But he still-- he was like a house arrest or he was, uh, he was still in, uh, not free to go. Uh, so when they, um, when they came home, uh, to their father, the daughters, they actually saw that there was already a order given by the, um, by the governor, um, that the Rebbe is freed. And, uh, he instructed that the guards should leave. There were guards stationed by the house. They should leave the house. And the entire house was filled immediately with many Hasidim, and the Alter Rebbe sat down, and he gave Hasidism. He talked-- he taught, uh, Hasidism, uh, Hasidic discourse. So the Mitteler Rebbe was freed from his imprisonment on the day of the tenth day of Kislev. So it is related that the actual news about the redemption took place on Shabbos, on the ninth day of Kislev, during Mincha time in the afternoon. At the time that the Rebbe was saying Hasidism on the verse, "Atah Echad," which is part of the Mincha prayer, we say it in the Mincha prayer, "You are one, your name is one." And in the middle of the saying of that Hasidism that he was saying that, he sort of said, "Shah, quiet, make space. My father is here." He sort of invited the Alter Rebbe. Now, I think just to, uh, reconcile this with what we just said, I mean, it seems like maybe, maybe the,

08:16 Speaker 1 um, the daughters, they didn't know it because it says that it came on Shabbos. Now, it's kind of, uh, unlikely that the daughters went on Shabbos to, to, to-

08:29 Speaker 2 To plead.

08:29 Speaker 1 To plead. Uh, over here it says that when they came back, before we read that when they came back, uh, there was already, uh, that he was freed already. Um, I don't know. So, um, and here, why do we celebrate Yud Kislev? Um, it, it must be because, um, um, the actual-- Somehow the actual news and the freedom, um... So I don't know exactly what it means over here that the news of the reached on the ninth day of Kislev, which was on Shabbos. Um, I don't know, I have to sort of, sort of, uh, sort this out. But as we know that the following year, I mentioned already, a day before the day of redemption, um, he passed away. The Mi- the Mitteler passed away. So it was a very bittersweet that year. They were mourning the Rebbe's passing, and they couldn't celebrate the next day was the Rebbe's, um, uh, release. Now, it also somehow implies over here a little bit, I'm not sure, but that the ninth day of Kislev was also sort of meant to be his redemption. So then you have his birthday, his day of passing, as well as redemption. It actually took place on the tenth, but here it says that the news of the redemption re-reached him on the ninth day of Kislev during Mincha time. So that would mean that the redemption is also somehow connected to the ninth day of Kislev. It just, uh, seems like he was trying to... But in actuality, it, uh,

10:02 Speaker 1 took place the next day. We find the same, same kind of a, sort of a, a, of an idea. In this case, we only celebrate the tenth day of, of K- of Kislev as the day of redemption. Maybe because the ninth day of Kislev is also the day of passing. Maybe the official papers or when they removed the guards or something like that, the guards removed, that took place on the tenth day, but on Shabbos, that didn't take place yet or whatever. Or maybe when it says that they heard the news, it was from far away, but it didn't reach the Rebbe yet. That's why he sent his daughters or maybe... I'm not sure exactly. There's a lot of different possibilities that might have happened. But this whole concept of making two days happened both on Yut Kislev, which is the redemption of the Alter Rebbe. Over there too, he was-- We celebrate two days, Yut and Chaf. Two days. Why? Because he was technically released on the nineteenth, but he ended up in somebody else's house, in a Misnagen's house, and by the time he left that house, it was the twentieth. So it's like, so they make it two days, nineteenth and twentieth. Same thing as Yud Beis Tammuz with the redemption of the previous Lubavitch Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak. Over there we also have Yud Beis and Yom Tammuz. He was freed on the twelfth, but it was, uh, some sort of a, a secular holiday or the Russian holiday, so they

11:21 Speaker 1 couldn't give him the paperwork, so he had to wait the second day. So we have two days. But over here, it seems like it started on Tes, and then it went to Yud, but we don't find that you celebrate it on, on two separate days. But I don't know. That's, that's what it is.