18 of Iyar - Yahrtzeit Hilula of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai - ח"י אייר הילולא רשב"י

00:00 Okay, we'll do in Yemei Chabad, we'll do today for the eighteenth day of Iyar. Of course, eighteenth day of Iyar is also Lag BaOmer. That's the thirty-third day of the Omer, and that's the day when we make the, uh, various different celebrations to, A, commemorate the fact that the students of Rabbi Akiva ceased to die, uh, at some level at that day, and also the fact it was the, uh, day of passing of the great godly saintly tzadik and tanna, uh, Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, who asked that during his, uh, passing to make actually a celebration because that was the day he connected with God, and that's why it's considered to be a special day. So on that day, and, you know, during the Sefirah, there are various different traditions, but, uh, uh, the most stringent tradition is that you do the entire Seferet HaOmer, you do the entire counting of the Omer during those days till right before Shavuot. We don't do any joyful activities, which is like a wedding or even, uh, uh, some cases, um, people don't even make, uh, other kinds of festivities. And this would be like, uh, a shidduch, you know, like to, uh, make a, uh, an engagement party. Um, although that is technically according to some permissible to do during the thing, an engagement party. But, um, this-- we're talking about engagement party. This took place, the engagement of the Rebbetzin Shenna, which was the, um, daughter of the previous Lubavitcher Rebbe. This took place on the

01:39 eighteenth day of Iyar in the year taf reish tzadik beis. Uh, that is, uh, nineteen thirty-two approximately. I think it's nineteen thirty-two. On the eighteenth day of Iyar, um, she, uh, got engaged to the, um, uh... She was the youngest daughter. The previous Rebbe had three daughters. He had, uh, the Rebbe's wife, which was Chaya Mushka, as we know, and then the older sister was Chana. She was married to Rabbi Gurary. And then the, uh, youngest one, Rebbetzin Shenna, she was married to, uh, Menachem Mendel Horenstein, and, uh, we already learned he was a grandson of the Rebbe Maharash, and we already learned a lot about his history and the way he-- unfortunately, the family was left in Europe, and they were murdered by the Nazis, Yimach Shemam, and they never made it out of there. But their engagement party took place on the eighteenth day of Iyar, Iyar, on the year six hundred ninety-two, which translates to, in the English date? We figured it out. It's eighty years ago. May twenty-fourth. What? I think May twenty-fourth, nineteen thirty-two. It was on May, May twenty-fourth- Nineteen thirty-two ... in nineteen thirty-two. Okay. Now, uh, the, uh... Of course, that was a festive a-a-occasion. The Rebbe has already come out of, of Russia during that time. A couple of years before that, he came out in nineteen twenty-eight. In Poland. In twenty-seven, this was in Poland, yeah. And I guess this was still, you know, before the war. Jewish life was flourishing at the time. It

03:12 was, it was this peak over there. And, um, the Rebbe on the day that there was the, um, engagement, uh, uh, they call it the tenaim. Uh, tenaim is means conditions. They fill out a document. Um, no, today they, they do the tenaim, they do it at the day of the wedding. They don't do it any earlier. Uh, uh, generally, there is three processes in the procedures of the, uh, of a marriage. Uh, two of them are from the Torah, and one of them is from the rabbis. Uh, the Torah requires one to betroth first his wife and then to marry her. Betrothal basically is the kiddushin. That's when he gives her the ring. And in the olden days, that betrothal would be done a long time, maybe a year, before the actual marriage. During that time, she was betrothed to him, and she was still, uh, mean that she's going to be her wife, and, and, and, and there was a, a connection, but they didn't actually move in together till the time of the marriage is when they moved in together. That was the actual marriage. But today, we do the betrothal together as under the chuppah. We do the betrothal, and that's why we make a little bit interruption. We read the ketubah, other things, and then we do the actual marriage, the canopy, and the yichud, and we do the, the seven blessings, and then they go into the, uh, uh, room where they're alone. That consummates, that makes the, uh,

04:38 marriage. Um, but then there's another step which is really a step from the rabbis, which is not from the Torah, that is called shidduchim. That is the engagement, basically. Because the rabbis prohibit it for a person just to meet a, a woman in the street and give her a ring and say, "You're betrothed to me. You're my wife." Even if she accepts it, we're not told. Of course, she has to accept it, but that's not the right way to do it. The way to do it is first have an agreement, first have what they call shidduchim, have an engagement. So, but today, the official during the time of the engagement, so they would also write, you know, certain, uh, obligations of the families, you know, to make sure that they'll provide for the children, that they're gonna get married, that they're gonna have, uh, their needs, and when the marriage is gonna take place, et cetera, et cetera, just to figure out the various different things. So in the olden days, they would actually write a, a document at the time of the engagement. That would be the engagement part. It's called the tenaim. They, you tie yourself up. It's an engagement through these conditions in which people, uh, make that shidduch. But, um, again, like I said, today, we, we leave it all for the day of the wedding. Uh, because part of the problems is that, you know, you're not allowed to really break up a shidduch, you know. So people are worried

05:55 that if you write these conditions and then sort of you break it up, that would be, like, bad. You know, a marriage you can break up through a divorce, but to break up a engagement, you don't need a divorce, but it-- sometimes it has- Uh, you know, a, a commitment that has been broken. So today what they do is, uh, we don't do mostly tana'im today. Today, you know, you make a l'chaim, and, uh, what we call... You make a, you say, uh, wishes, and then sometimes what you do is, uh, you know, you make a kinyan. You know, you just make a verbal commitment. Like, you know, you, you raise some sort of a cloth, and you make a commitment that to... It's a kinyan chalipin. Shmuel is going to, right? I don't know the father. Is that the one where you break the plate? And some people break a plate at the time too. You know, the breaking of the plate is symbolic of the fact that, you know, it's done, like, and you can't sort of... A plate that is broken, you can't put it together. Yeah. Sort of, it's symbo-symbolic that the commitment here is an unbreakable commitment. Even though you break something- I remember ... yeah, but the breaking shows that it's done. I remember. It's a done deal. I remember. You can't put it together. You know, once it's been broken, you can't put it together. You're going, right? Go with them, and I'll bring you your stuff a

07:00 little later. Um, Rabbi, were tana'im around the time of the Mishnah or the Sanhedrin? No, it was probably started at the time. I can't tell you exactly the places in history, but it, it certainly went on for a long time during... I mean, till even more recent times there was the tana'im. They do-- And they still do the tana'im. All what I'm saying is the tana'im is done at the wedding date. Yeah. They don't make it earlier. Yeah. So we still go through the processes we still go through, but we just don't do it earlier. We don't give a chance for it, for somebody to renege on the, the tana'im. But some people do it. In some communities, they still do today. You know, when there's- It's still in the practices, you know ... when there's an engagement, they have these, uh, this tana'im over there. Okay. So but in any event, uh, this is the, um, this was the day that the tana'im of the... And like I said, unfortunately, uh, they didn't make it out of Europe at the time. And it was, as we learned, uh, he was actually dedicated to his father. This is Rabbi Nachman ben HaKohen Horenstein, who was actually a Kohen. It doesn't say here, but he was a Kohen. Wow. And he was, um, taking care of his father, who was ill. And, um, he didn't wanna leave him by himself. He had an opportunity to leave because, uh, when the Rebbe left, he could've left also

08:15 with the family, but he didn't wanna leave his father. And by the time then his father died, not too much afterward, I think he died, like in, right in the beginning of the war, maybe in 1941, maybe he died in, uh- Maybe he died- They couldn't get out ... uh, about- It was '39 was the war in Europe ... or maybe it started in '39 even. I don't know. But he died very shortly, maybe a year afterwards, but it was too late already. That time he couldn't-- It was too late. And his wife stayed with him until she passed? Yeah. They were together, the family. Yeah. You know, they were all, you know, they were all living, yeah. Uh, sometimes when, you know, when people would say to the Rebbe, you know, uh, about the Holocaust, about the Holocaust, about how they, they don't believe in God and everything else, the Rebbe said, "Well, I lost plenty of my family too over there." It's not like the Rebbe wasn't immune to, uh, to all the horrors. The Rebbe himself just narrowly escaped. So it's not like you have to, uh, tell the Rebbe what about, you know, the, the, the, you know, the travesty and what took place over there. He witnessed it firsthand and the... But, um, guess the, uh, Jewish people's, uh, belief and trust in Hashem is unshakable even, even despite all the terrible things that happened