18 of Nissan - תרל"ח - Birthday of Rabbi Levi Yitzchak Schneerson

00:00 Speaker 1 So we'll do for the eighteenth of Nisan in the year Taf Reish Lamed Ches, that's six hundred and thirty-eight. Uh, that's the birthday of the great genius, the great Chassid, the Kabbalist, Reb Levi Yitzchok Schneersohn, the father of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, uh, Reb Levi Yitzchok. The English, uh, date for the eighteenth of Nisan, six thirty-eight, April twenty-first, eighteen seventy-eight. Okay. Now, the, uh, Reb Levi Yitzchok, he was born in the city called Pudubranka, which is next to the city of Homel. Homel is more of a, a larger city. And his parents were, uh, Rabbi Goen, the great genius, and the great Chassid, Reb Baruch Schneer, and his mother was, uh, the Rebbetzin Zelda Rochel. Um, they named him Reb Levi Yitzchok for his father's fathers. Reb Baruch Schneer's father was, uh, Reb Levi Yitzchok. And then Reb Levi Yitzchok's father was actually Reb Baruch Sholom. That was the son of the Tzemach Tzedek, okay? So he was named Reb Levi Yitzchok, and, uh, who was the son of Reb Baruch Sholom, who-- he actually passed away at an early age. He was only forty-four. This, uh, Reb Baruch, um, this Reb Levi Yitzchok, um, died at, uh, passed away at forty-four. So they named him after his grandfather. The, um, again, his father was Reb Baruch Schneer. Okay. Now, Reb Baruch Schneer, the father of the, uh, of Reb Levi, was a, a great, uh, also a great genius. He was a, just a outstanding memory. He, and, uh, he knew the entire Shas by

02:03 Speaker 1 heart, the entire Talmud by heart. Just, you know, to know the entire Talmud, just imagine, you know, people, uh, just, just, just to give you an idea, people study today, uh, page a day. So now a page a day, most ever, it takes them, uh, it takes them about an hour a day if they have the English interpretation over there. I mean-

02:22 Speaker 2 How many years?

02:23 Speaker 1 It takes seven years.

02:24 Speaker 2 Seven years.

02:25 Speaker 1 It takes seven. So can you imagine what it takes a person to learn for seven years to know it all on your mind? You know, that, uh-

02:31 Speaker 2 Three hundred and sixty-five.

02:32 Speaker 1 What?

02:33 Speaker 2 So it's three hundred and sixty-five pages a year.

02:35 Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah.

02:35 Speaker 2 Times seven.

02:36 Speaker 1 Times seven, yeah. Approximately, yeah.

02:38 Speaker 2 That's twenty-one-- so like twenty-three thousand pages.

02:40 Speaker 1 Pages, you know. And there's various sizes of those pages. Mostly they're big.

02:44 Speaker 2 But still.

02:45 Speaker 1 A lot of words in there. But in any event, um, he, he was, Reb Baruch Schneer, uh, he was a Chassid of the Rebbe Maharash, as well as the Rebbe Rashab and the previous Lubavitcher Rebbe. The Rebbetzin Zelda Rochel was the daughter of the Chassid Reb Zalman Chaikin, who was a, uh, connected to the Tzemach Tzedek and the Rebbe Maharash. Um, when he was young, Reb Levi Yitzchok studied, uh, Torah by his, uh, grandfather's brother, his, his, um, um, this Reb Zalman Chaikin's brother, uh, that's his mother's father's brother. Um, that's his uncle. Um, his, um, his, his mother's father's brother, Reb Yeruch Chaikin, he was the rav of the city of Pudubranka, which he was born. And while he was very young, you can tell that he was really a genius, this kid. And the previous Rebbe, who was his mechutan because the Rebbe's, uh, married the Rebbetzin, uh, wrote about him that from his young youth, you can tell that Reb Levi Yitzchok, uh, had these, uh, outstanding talents, uh, above, way above the, uh, the, uh, average. And at a very young age, he has been, uh, ordained by the great geniuses of his generation, such as Reb Chaim of Brisk, uh, which was a renowned, uh, scholar of that day, and Reb Eliyahu Chaim Mazal of Lodz, of Lodz. And, you know, we, we have a little bit of a glance of the Rebbe's, uh, the previous Rebbe-- the Rebbe's father's genius, the Rebbe's genius, just by looking at some of

04:34 Speaker 1 his letters and then later on the Kabbalah, uh, the, uh, the various, uh, works that has been saved and brought out by the Rebbetzin Chana, his wife, the Rebbe's mother, when she took it out, and then they published it over here. And you see, uh, uh, uh, a flow of endless, uh, you know, mentioning of all kinds of sage, uh, uh, statements of the Talmud and of the, uh, Kabbalah and everything, and all the Gematrias and all the various different interpretations. So you see, um, uh, various-- you can see how we can see, um, you know, that he was an outstanding, outstanding memory and phenomenal genius. And it's interesting that in one of the letters he writes to the Rebbe, as the Rebbe was a youngster, a young man then, and, uh, I guess the Rebbe used to write him back some of his ideas and the different than the previous Rebbe. The Rebbe writes to him, he says, "I see, I thank Hashem that you have such great talent, that you can come up with such beautiful insights in the Torah. Very much, you know, reckon I appreciate that." However, he cautions him, he says, "You always have to see that what you say in the revealed part of Torah, you have to make sure that it also matches with the inner part of Torah, with the Kabbalah. So that way you will have a whole, the thing matching up all sides." So that gives it more validity. It's not just, you know, trying

06:02 Speaker 1 to match it up on the external level. And that was actually something that the Rebbe always did. He, he, he, he did things basically, if you can say, on the three levels. One on the revealed level, an outstanding insight and coming up with, you know, just, uh, ideas, you know, that brilliant, you know, ways of, of answering and interpreting things. That was on the simple level. And then he would also go and tie it in, you know, with the Hasidic, uh, interpretation. But then he would also bring it down in a person's service to Hashem in day-to-day life. So not to just leave it in a thought, in a-- an idea, but also to give a lesson so that we can take out from all these different things a lesson in life. And that was, you know, always in a very beautiful and a very brilliant way that, uh, the Rebbe, uh, put together, you know, all the different teachings from the Rebbe.