Kislev 15 in Chabad History

00:00 Speaker 1 And we'll do-- This is Yemei Chabad for the, uh, fifteenth day of Kislev, and this is in the year, uh, Tet Kaf Yud. Fifteenth of Kislev in Tet Kaf Yud was the twenty-fifth of November in seventeen forty-nine. Okay?

00:19 Speaker 2 Yeah.

00:19 Speaker 1 So in any event, that day, the Alter Rebbe, Schneur Zalman, was accepted as a member in the Chevre Kadisha, that's the burial society-

00:32 Speaker 2 Society

00:32 Speaker 1 ... at the age of five years old. He was five years old at the time. And if you take a look, that was like a privilege that-- somebody to be taken in at such an age. Uh, this is what's found over there. They had a, um, a pikus, meaning the Chevre Kadisha, the burial society, they had their writings where they would put down the membership and all the other documentation over there. Um, this is in the city of Lyozno. It says, "Today..." This is what it says. "Today, the fifteenth day of Kislev in the year Tet Kaf Yud, um, the, um, the, the, the, the, the boy, Schneur Zalman, the son of Rabbi Boruch, has been accepted to the Chevre Kadisha, that he will become a, a Shamash, um, until his bar mitzvah," um, meaning, um, I guess-

01:32 Speaker 2 An associate member or something

01:32 Speaker 1 ... what is the Shamash? Yeah. Something till, till his bar mitzvah. So that his grandfather is going to give a certain amount of money. There's a membership you have to pay. It's called ten bruses. Each brusa is five klapters for the building of the shul, and every year, his grandfather has to give, uh, eighteen, uh... These are Polish, uh-

02:07 Speaker 2 Oh, it's Polish currency?

02:08 Speaker 1 Y-currency. G-G-Uh, um, I forget. The, the Alter Rebbe's gonna tell you to, um, uh... It's a name, it's a name for, for the

02:18 Speaker 2 Okay.

02:19 Speaker 1 And, uh, and once he gives this for all these years, from five years, I guess, to the thirteenth, by-- at his bar mitzvah, he becomes a full member. So now he's a member, you have to pay in-

02:30 Speaker 2 His initiation fee

02:31 Speaker 1 ... in an initiation fee, and then, uh, and then he becomes a full member.

02:35 Speaker 2 Grand-grandfather pays it, right?

02:37 Speaker 1 The grandfather paid for me.

02:38 Speaker 2 It's the grandfather.

02:38 Speaker 1 The kid didn't have any mother-- any money. That was Rabbi Boruch's father. It doesn't say the name.

02:43 Speaker 2 Okay.

02:44 Speaker 1 Okay. But I'm sure it's known, but I, I, I don't know it at the moment.

02:47 Speaker 2 So he was a follower of the Baal Shem Tov-

02:48 Speaker 1 Yes

02:48 Speaker 2 ... the grandfather, too.

02:49 Speaker 1 Yes.

02:50 Speaker 2 They all were.

02:51 Speaker 1 Yeah. Now, the grandfather, it says that Rabbi Boruch was one of the Hasidim of the Alter Rebbe-- the Baal Shem Tov. He used to go to Baal Shem Tov. The whole story, uh, we learned how the Alter Rebbe was born, and he came to the Baal Shem Tov, and he told him for his haircut, and he blessed him to have the baby in the first place.

03:06 Speaker 2 Right. Right. Right.

03:07 Speaker 1 But about his father, the Boruch's father, it doesn't say.

03:10 Speaker 2 It doesn't talk about it.

03:10 Speaker 1 I didn't see it here, but no, I'm sure it is, but it doesn't say.

03:13 Speaker 2 Yeah.

03:13 Speaker 1 You know.

03:14 Speaker 2 He must have been a disciple also. He must have also been.

03:17 Speaker 1 Yeah. Now, apparently, the reason we're telling you this also must have been that it was an unusual... I'm not sure if they accepted anybody who wanted to sign up. Maybe if you wanted to pay.

03:27 Speaker 2 Wanted money.

03:27 Speaker 1 If you... Yeah, they needed the money to build the shul, then maybe they'd accept out of anybody. But it doesn't seem that way. It seems like this had to do specially because-

03:35 Speaker 2 But you're saying this is Poland. This is when the-

03:38 Speaker 1 No, this is-

03:39 Speaker 2 The Pol-the Poland-

03:40 Speaker 1 No

03:40 Speaker 2 ... the border varied

03:42 Speaker 1 ... the, the money is-- the gimmel pe stands for Geduleh Polish, or I forget exactly the... But it stands for a coin, the Polish coin. Or I'm not sure if it's a Polish coin, but that's what it's called.

03:54 Speaker 2 Well, what it is, it is-

03:55 Speaker 1 It has-- It's a name. It's a name of, of a coin.

03:57 Speaker 2 Coin. Okay. But the-

03:58 Speaker 1 It's a name of a coin. But, uh, it's a name of a coin that they used to use in those days, which the Alter Rebbe uses also in the, in the Tanya, you know, when we talk about fasting, exchanging, and everything else.

04:09 Speaker 2 Fasting on a coin.

04:10 Speaker 1 So he uses the gimmel pe as the exchange about... And there is discussion of what the value of that is.

04:16 Speaker 2 Well, some of that is the borders were constantly changing, so the currency they were using was changing. So rather than talk about the Russian ruble versus that, they probably standardized everything.

04:27 Speaker 1 When did the ruble come in? When, when, when was the-

04:28 Speaker 2 No, but it's not that is. It's the b- the borders there were constantly changing and shifting because there was always, um, I wouldn't say wars, but more like, uh, little outbreaks between the Polish and, and the Russian government. Well, actually, it was Poland then. I mean, seventeen forty, it was Poland, but Poland then dissolved after the-- after Napoleon. Then there was no Poland until the end of World War I. It was technically wasn't Poland because they-

04:59 Speaker 1 Oh

04:59 Speaker 2 ... because of the, um, the wars over there, because Lithuania used to come all the way down into the Ukraine.

05:05 Speaker 1 Uh-huh.

05:05 Speaker 2 So everything was constantly changing.

05:08 Speaker 1 Okay. So in any event, in one of the talks, the, um, previous Rebbe in the, um, says that when the Alter Rebbe turned five-

05:21 Speaker 2 Yeah

05:21 Speaker 1 ... um, this is the fifth of his fifth, um, uh, the Alter Rebbe's birthday was actually in Chayel. This was, uh, a couple of, I guess, a couple of, uh, months after his birthday. He was already five and something. But in the Sikha, the Rebbe says that at turned five years, he felt that all the gates of the Torah were open in front of him. He's just had an open, an opening, and the most difficult topics in Torah, he was able to clearly grasp in all the details. Everything was, like, very clear to him, and he had a tremendous success in the knowledge of knowing Torah as As one can have a little, little idea if one studies a little bit some of the Alter Rebbe, uh, the Alter Rebbe's Torah, you see the greatness of the, um, of the Rebbe. After the passing, this is another thing on Tes Vov Kislev, uh, this is the passing on Tes Vov Kislev was the passing of HaRav HaChasid, uh, Rav Chaim Chaikel is the name, who was the brother-in-law of the Tzemach Tzedek. Um, a brother-in-law, he says, from his father. Um, the-- After the passing of the Rebbetzin Devorah Leah, the mother of the Tzemach Tzedek, the daughter of the Alter Rebbe. So the Alter Rebbe, the, uh, made a shidduch. Um, so what happened was that she, he, she, her, his daughter, the Tzemach Tze-- The Alter Rebbe's daughter, Devorah Leah-

07:14 Speaker 2 Right.

07:14 Speaker 1 -who was the wife of Rav Shalom Shabtai, who gave birth to the Tzemach Tzedek, so Devorah Leah passed away. So he was left a widow, her husband.

07:23 Speaker 2 Right.

07:23 Speaker 1 Rav Shalom Shabtai, Tzemach Tzedek's father, was left a widow. So the Alter Rebbe made a shidduch from his son-in-law, which is the-- who was married to his daughter, and then his daughter passed away. He made a shidduch, Rav Shalom Shabtai, with the Rebbetzin Rivka, who was the daughter of the great Rav Aaron of Karlin, Rav Aaron Karliner. So Rav Shalom Shabtai married the Rav Aaron Karliner's daughter. The second time, after the Alter Rebbe's daughter passed away, he married the daughter of Rav Aaron Karliner. Rav Aaron, the great Rav Aaron.

07:57 Speaker 2 Karlin, or was from the village of Karlin?

08:00 Speaker 1 From the village, the city of Karlin.

08:01 Speaker 2 Oh, okay.

08:02 Speaker 1 Now, they had, Shalom Shabtai and the Rebbetzin Rivka, from that marriage, they had two daughters. So those daughters happened were the brothers-- or sisters of the Tzemach Tzedek from his father because they were born from his father with another woman because Devorah Leah passed away. This was in the other wife, so they were half-- They were stepsisters-

08:24 Speaker 2 Right. Right, right, right

08:24 Speaker 1 ... of the Tzemach Tzedek. One of the daughters, uh, which is the Rebbetzin Devorah, which we'll mention later on, two hundred and whatnot, got married to HaRav HaChasid, Rav Chaim Chaikel. This was Rav Chaim Chaikel, who was the grandson of Rav Chaim Chaikel from Amdur, who was a student of the Maggid of Mezritch. So the passing of Rav Chaim Chaikel, who was the brother-in-law of the Tzemach Tzedek from his father, because they shared the same father, not the same mother, his yahrtzeit is also on the fifteenth day of Kislev. Okay?