12 of Tamuz - On this day in 1927 the previous Rebbe was allowed to leave his place of exile.

00:00 Speaker 1 Have-- There is actually a book, uh, which is called Yemei Chabad. That's a book that collects all the days that have a special significance to Chabad, which talks about, you know, the different holidays, the different, uh, uh, occurrences that happened, you know, how that day's test spells out, you know, in history. There's a book about that. It's called, uh, Days of Chabad or Yemei Chabad in Hebrew. And that's basically a collection of all the different, uh, special days that, uh, you know, we celebrate. Of course, today is, is really special because we don't even say Tachanun. You know, Tachanun is part of the prayer. And today being the twelfth day of Tammuz, and also the thirteenth day of Tammuz, which is tomorrow, twelfth and the thirteenth, we don't say Tachanun because we, we celebrate the redemption of the previous Rebbe. So we talked a little bit about it, but, um, there are three actually particular events that took place today in the Hasidic community. Now, just to give you a frame of reference, so you know, there were six Rebbes and the Rebbe, which means there's altogether seven. It started, we call him the Alter Rebbe. The book we studied from the Shulchan Aruch, that's the Alter Rebbe. Alter Rebbe in Yiddish means the old rabbi. So he was called that. His name was Schneur Zalman. Now, you can remember by Schneur Zalman. There's a lot of Schneur Zalmans over there. He is the author of the Tanya, the author of the Shulchan Aruch. Now,

01:26 Speaker 1 the Rebbe, the-- our Rebbe now is the, the-- is, is the Rebbe, is-- that's his name. I'm gonna just say his name for the prayer. You know, we try not to mention the name, but you have all the Menachem Mendels, which are named after him. He was the seventh. His father-in-law. Right. That's not his father. No. It's his father-in-law. That's his wife's father- Right ...was the previous Rebbe. Now his name, just for your reference, his name was Yosef Yitzchak. So you got a lot. Thank you very much. You have also a lot of Yosef Yitzchaks over there in Chabad. There's plenty of Yosef Yitzchak and Menachem Mendels. You know, you have-- This is a very-- the most common name that you have. And Levi Yitzchak, that's the name of the Rebbe's father. But just so that you have the reference, we're talking about this day of Yud Beis Tammuz specifically is connected to the previous Rebbe, the sixth Rebbe, Rebbe Yosef Yitzchak, the father-in-law of the present Rebbe. That's the one. We call him the previous Rebbe because he came before the Rebbe, so we call him the previous Rebbe. So that is the Rebbe called the Rebbe Yosef Yitzchak. Three events in the life of Rebbe Yosef Yitzchak are connected to Yud Beis Tammuz, to the twelfth day of Tammuz. Number one, he was born on the twelfth day of Tammuz. That's his birthday. Number two, he was also brought in at the age of fifteen to become party to his father's work. He

02:59 Speaker 1 became his fa-father's personal sort of assistant and in charge of all his communal work and outreach. That also happened on Yud Beis Tammuz when he turned fifteen on his birthday. And this is actually also the day in which the previous Rebbe was freed from prison in nineteen twenty-seven. So these are three things as they relate to the previous Rebbe. There's also another, uh, event of this day which relates to one of the Hasidim, one of the older Hasidim, which was a, a great genius. But let's talk about that first, that's short, and then we'll go over to talking about the previous Rebbe. Also in the order of timeframe, the passing of this rabbi, his name-- he made a Sefer called Ohel Yosef, and his name was Rebbe Eliyahu Yosef Riv-Rivlin. That was his name, Eliyahu Yosef Rivlin from the city of Drhibel. And he was a great scholar, a, a brilliant man, and he was one of the leading, uh, Hasidim, um, of the Mitler Rebbe and the Tsama Chsadek. That's the Rebbe number two and number three. The Mitler Rebbe was the son of the Alter Rebbe, the first. The number two was the son of the first one. The number three Rebbe, the Tsama Chsadek, and we have some pictures over there. You can see some of them. You can see in the pictures on the, on the wall. Um, number three was the, uh, Tsama Chsadek. He's known. He's also Menachem Mendel. His name was Menachem Mendel as well, but he's usually

04:48 Speaker 1 referred to by the name of his book, which he called Tsama Chsadek. So they referred him as Tsama Chsadek. So this Rebbe Eliyahu Yosef we're talking about, he was a great Hasid. He was a great follower and one of the main, uh, outstanding Hasidim of the Mitler Rebbe and the Tsama Chsadek. Um, at first, he was in the city of Drhibel. He was over there a Rav, and he was a Mashpia, meaning a Hasidic guide, a counselor, a Hasidic counselor. And later on, he became, uh, the, uh, Rav and the spiritual guide... Thank you. And the spiritual guide for the people of the group of the Hasidim that lived in the city of Polotsk. By the way, my father, Alav Ha-Shalom, my father blessed memory, also learned in the Yeshiva Polotsk. One of the underground Yeshivas that he went to was the Yeshiva Polotsk. As I mentioned yesterday, when we make a-- when we have a Mizonna's and we have a Shahaku, first you make the Mizonna's and then you make the Shahaku. That's the rites. So now he said there was once that the Temach Tzedek expressed himself. He says, "I have two and a half Hasidim," he said. Meaning, you know, real Hasidim, two and a half. One of them was this Reb Yo-Yosef. Now, there's an interesting story. He ended up making Aliyah and going to Israel. So there's an interesting, uh, story about that Aliyah, when he took. It says like this, that he became sick with a very, uh, very

06:39 Speaker 1 s-serious sickness, and they, uh... Doctors could not find any way to heal him. Um, and it was-- His life was in danger. The doctor said that, you know, he's in danger. And the interesting is that type of a sickness, you know, we have in, in, in as far as the laws of kosher, an animal, in order for it to be fit to be eaten, has to be a healthy animal. Uh, it's known what's not kosher. We call it treifa. Treifa, when we say... We call-- Usually, when we say something is not kosher, we call it treif. Treifa, what it means is really that it can't live. So now in Halakha, we have various different opinions with regards to an animal. You know, sometimes you don't know when it's alive, but when you shecht it, and you open up, and that's the whole job, you know, of a badek. You know, he inspects the inside, and he makes sure that it's a healthy animal. Now, of course, you know, you're gonna argue that if it's not a healthy animal, we shouldn't eat it anyways. So that means that it could be something bad. But halakhically, we have to make sure that it's an animal that could live, that is not a, uh, not a sick animal, not an animal that would have died, uh, or else that would constitute... That would be treifa. Now, what exactly makes, uh, when you check the inside, you check the lungs, you check the different parts of the animal. Now,

08:13 Speaker 1 uh, sometimes there's a dispute in the Halakha about a certain, uh, type of a blemish. Was something wrong with the animal? Whether her life was in danger or not, could she live with this or not? So sometimes we have a Machlokes, we have a disagreement between the rabbis. In this particular case, there was a Ma- there was a Machlokes in one case between the Beit Yosef, that is the, um, author of the Shulchan Aruch, the Beit Yosef, Rabbi Yosef Karo, and the Rama, Rabbi Moshe Isserles, in which that-- if that sickness that this-- he experienced as a human, the doctors told him. So what is the status of an animal that has that kind of a defect? There's a disagreement in Halakha between Rabbi Moshe Isserles, between the Rama and the Beit Yosef. Now, Beit Yosef really is the Sephardim. They follow the Beit Yosef. The Ashkenazim, they follow the Rama. They follow... Now, he said like this. In Israel, the rabbi in Safed was the Beit Yosef. He was the... So he says-- Now, usually we have a, a, a ruling that when you are in a community where the rabbi rules, you have to follow the rules of that rabbi because he's the rabbi of that community. So the law remains like the rabbi in that community. So the rabbi said over there, "Listen, this sickness that I have is a dispute between the Beit Yosef and the Rama. According to the Beit Yosef, this animal is kosher, which means that it's a

09:49 Speaker 1 sickness which is not life-threatening. According to the Rama, it's a sickness which is..." And he says it's not good, it's treif. So he says, "I'm gonna move to Israel." In Israel, the Beit Yosef, he was the-- he lived in Israel, so the ruling is like here. That means that it's gonna be kosher. That means that my life is gonna be spared because he's going to be ... He is the rabbi of the community in Israel. And actually, that happens. He went to Eretz Yisrael because Beit Yosef is the rule, and he was actually healed. He asked the Rabbi the Temach Tzedek, the Rebbe, and he agreed, and he lived there for an additional eighteen years, he lived over there. And, uh, actually, when he went to Eretz Yisrael, he, he actually went and helped build over there the, the, the shul, the Chabad shul and the, um... It brings down over here that he, uh, built it. Okay, so that has to do with, uh, with him. Uh, he used to travel to the Temach Tzedek from Israel. He used to travel to the Temach Tzedek. And it is told that when he used to come, the Temach Tzedek would have two lit candles to go greet him. That's how much honor he would give him because he was such a, uh, special, great, uh, great me- great rabbi. And he, he, he built the Temach Tzedek. There's a shul today even in the old city. In the old city in Jerusalem, he built that

11:14 Speaker 1 city by the instruction of the Temach Tzedek. So today, if you go in there, you'll see the Temach Tzedek shul that was actually built by this Hasid that started there. Okay, so this is, uh, with regard... Yeah. What do you want to say? Go ahead. The ... The Yes. Uh, uh, the- It's not so much... Yeah. It's not so much his works that what you're reading about. It's his collection. The collection. The collection. He collected. But that's from all the previous rebbes. He's done. That's right. And that he got down through all the generations through. So that's that thing. Yes, go ahead. Why is there not a Jew then in our- Can you turn the mic that way around? That's beyond this thing, but if you- If I- If you're gonna wait till we finish- Yes ... then we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll try to address that. I'm not, not sure to your satisfaction, but we'll try to address that. I will. Okay. It was an innocent question. Now, there's also a thing. So now let's go over to the second thing that happened. Now we're going over to the birthday that we're-- was in the twelfth day of Tammuz in Taf Resh Mem. The way to always figure out the Hebrew date versus the, uh, English date is the Hebrew date is basically we have to add sixty years. So in other words, if we have a Hebrew date, uh, we have a Hebrew date of Taf Resh Mem, which is, uh, in the

12:38 Speaker 1 Hebrew, that would be six hundred and forty, okay? Five thousand six hundred and forty. Like today, we are five thousand seven seventy-three, okay? Five thousand from the creation of the world. Today, it's five thousand seven seventy-three. Uh, this is talking about-- this was five thousand six hundred and forty. That is when the-- it was created. If you minus sixty years of five thousand six hundred and forty, uh, then you will get, um, uh, eighteen, um... I'm just trying to figure out the, the date that you'll get the date over there. You have to, um... It's gonna be eighty, uh, so it's gonna be seventeen eighty, it's going to be. Uh, it's gonna be seventeen, seventeen eighty. Taf Resh Mem, uh... Okay, but, you know, we'll have to figure out the dates exactly when it turns out, uh, uh, uh... No, I, I mean, eighteen eighty, I'm talking about. I'm talking about eight-- this is like eighteen eighty, what I'm talking about. You're converting- I'm converting the- The Hebrew ... the, uh... So from eighteen eighty to, to, to there, that, that, that, that, that would be, uh, that would be the date. So the date is eighteen eighty. That would be the date, the English date, on the twelfth of Tammuz in the year eighteen eighty, okay, which is Taf Resh Mem. That is when he was born, the, the, uh, the previous Rebbe was born, okay, on that date. Now, this is a very interesting story that his mother, the, the, the Rebbe's mother,

14:19 Speaker 1 the previous Rebbe's mother, related about his birth. And she said that it was several years after their marriage, and she still hadn't had a child. She wasn't had the other child. By the way, the, the previous Rebbe, who, who was born on the twelfth of Tammuz, that we're discussing now, Yosef Yitzchak, the father of the Rebbe, he was an only son. Now we're talking about this was-- he didn't-- there was no other, there was no other children over there. He was the only son. This is one of the previous ones. The previous one. Oh. Yosef Yitzchak, the previous one, the father of the Rebbe, he was an only son. Now, his mother related to him the story about his birth, what we're going to say now. So that it was that it was several years after their marriage. She was married. His mother was married to his father, which was the Rebbe Rashab. He was the fifth Rebbe. The-- this is the sixth Rebbe we're talking about. His father and mother was-- his father was the fifth Lubavitch Rebbe, Shalom Ber, Shalom Dov Ber. Think about my kids, you know, there's-- you'll see. Everyone, every-everyone has a name over there of the Rebbe. Uh, so the fifth Lubavitch Rebbes was married to Sterna Sara, which was the mother of the previous Rebbe. Now, she-- after she got married for several years, they didn't have any children, and she was very upset about it, that she didn't, she didn't conceive, that she wasn't pregnant. And she

15:43 Speaker 1 also was very young, and she was far from home. She was like, uh, homesick, you know, to, to the... And in Russia, it's not like today. It was in those days, it was, you know, you didn't get to see each other, like, you know, a few times a year or even that. So she was, uh, was homesick. So sometimes it hap-- it happened one time, she relates, it was Simchat Torah, and her father-in-law, that was the Rebbe at the time, which was, uh, the, uh, Rebbe Maharash, okay? So now we're talking about this is the wife of the Rebbe Rashab, which is the fifth Rebbe. But the Rebbe at the time was the fourth Rebbe, which was the Rebbe Maharash. His name was the Rebbe Shmuel. Okay, are you still following? But in any event, she says the Rebbe was at the time Rebbe Shmuel, the Rebbe Maharash. And at the time, there was a Farbrengen. There was a, a Kiddush on Simchat Torah by the Rebbe Maharash, and they made a Misheberech. And they made a Misheberech for all the women and all the daughters that are part of the rabbi's household. And it so happened that for some reason, they forgot about her, and they missed her, and they didn't give me a bracha. And she was so in pain. And later on, they went back, and they made the Misheberech, but I was still so upset. He says, "How could they miss me?" Like, you know, that she didn't-- that she wasn't

17:16 Speaker 1 in the original group. And she, she went into her room, and she started feeling, you know, uh, bad that she's not pregnant yet and that she's lonely and, and, uh, and the story with the Misheberech, and she started to cry. She's cried uncontrollably. And while she cried, she fell asleep. And she falls asleep, and she has a dream. This is the mother of the previous Rebbe telling to the, to the Rebbe, to the previous Rebbe, the story was born. So during this sleep, I see that there was a res-- very respectable person coming in, and he comes to the room, and he turns to me, and he says to me, "My daughter, why are you crying?" And I told the person everything that was on my heart. And the person told me, he says, "Don't cry, my daughter. I promise you that this year you are going to give birth to a son." But I said, "I have a condition to make with you, that as soon as Yom Tov is over." This was some Hasara. He says, "As soon as Yom Tov is over, I want you to distribute to Tzedakah eighteen ruble." Eighteen ruble was a large amount of money. Give for Tzedakah eighteen ruble. "And that should be from your personal money." When he finished to speak, he left, disappeared, and after a few minutes he comes back, and this time he came along with two other people. And he repeated for them the condition that he made with me, and they

18:57 Speaker 1 agreed. And the three of them blessed me, and they left the room. After several hours, this was some Hasara, and I guess a lot of people had to drink. It was Freilach, it was coming. So my husband, which is the Rebbe Rashab, the father of the previous Rebbe, he returned, and he was happy, and he was very, uh- He's feeling okay. Really done. He's drunk. And he says, as he was walking in at the entrance to the ید, he made a tumble sauce, and he was, uh-- and he was in a very elated, uh, very good spirits. So I told him about the dream. So my husband quickly went to his father, to the Rebbe Maharash, and he told him about the dream that I had dreamt. So my father-in-law called me, and he asked me to tell him the details of the dream exactly. When I completed to tell him, is to relate it, so my father-in-law said, the Rebbe Maharash said like this, "The first one that visited you," he says, "that was the-- That, that was my father, the Tzemach Tzedek." He says, "That was my father, the Tzemach Tzedek. And the two other people were the Mitler Rebbe and the Alter Rebbe." Those were all the Rebbe. So you have this whole story. You have the Alter Rebbe and the Mitler Rebbe and the Tzemach Tzedek, the three. They were the ones that came in. The Tzemach Tzedek came in, and then they came back and made the blessings. Nu, uh,

20:31 Speaker 1 after the Yom Tov was over, I needed to fulfill the condition. Where am I gonna take eighteen ruble from my personal money to give? She says like this. She says, "I owned a sewn-up dress which was made in the latest style of their in-- in of those days." It was like a very special dress. However, I guess it wasn't too, uh, fitting with the Hasidic, uh, garb. She says, "My father-in-law didn't really want me to wear that." Uh, you know, it was like maybe too, uh, too modern. No, it's okay at the time. Yeah, it was modern, not in the, in the modern. But in any event, so I called a woman who was dealing in communal man-manners, and I asked her to sell this, uh, the dress. And from the money that I received for the dress, I was able to distribute eighteen rubles for Tzedakah. So the Rebbetzin Sterna Sara concluded her story that in that year, the Rebbe Rayat, the previous Lubavitch Rebbe, Rebbe Rav Yisroel Yitzchak, was actually born. So that is the story that took place when he was born. The next event that happened was in the year Taf Resh Nun Hey, fifteen years later, when the previous Rebbe turned fifteen. And this is the story about how- What age? When he turned fifteen. Fifteen. And that is the age in which his father, the Rebbe Rashab, has entrusted him and made him like his personal, uh, secretary, the one who's going to deal with all, all his affairs.

22:15 Speaker 1 And this is written, the following is written by the previous Rebbe himself. He says, "It was Thursday, the twelfth day of Tammuz, in which I turned fifteen." He says that, "We came fifteen years old. My father took me to the holy resting place of his father," which was the Rebbe Maharash of Shmuel, and also his grandfather, which was the Tzemach Tzedek, because at that point already, the Rebbe Maharash passed away and the Rebbe Rashab was the Rebbe. When we came to the resting place, to the Ohel, the holy Ohel, and there was a synagogue in front of the Ohel. There was like a place to pray, a synagogue. My father opened up the ark, and he said as follows, "I am bringing my son today to the Akedah." The Akedah is like Abraham took Isaac, and he tied him up to offer him as a sacrifice. He's saying, "I'm bringing my son to the Akedah." He says, "When you bring an Akedah, when you-- there is two. There is the one that is ti-- doing the tying and the one that is getting tied up. You have the sacrifice, the one, both of them." So he says, "Avraham Avinu, of blessed memory, he tied his son Yitzchak so that there should be no blemish. I, too, want that giving over my son that this should be properly." My father burst out in a very, uh, deep cry. I didn't know anything about it, and I just started crying together with him. He was crying, so

24:03 Speaker 1 I was crying as well. Afterwards, my father taught me in front of the open ark a half of a chapter in the Igeres HaKodesh, the Holy Letters of the Tanya over there, the opening that begins with the words, "Chagrah bo azmos neh," that they girded with strength her loins, which talks about the strength. And he turned to me and he said, "In front of our holy fathers, I'm forming a covenant with you," he's saying to his son. And my father placed me next to him. He put his holy hands on me and he said, "From today on, I am giving over to you the service of all communal in physical matters, spi-spiritual matters." And he explained to me with great length what does it mean, Mesirat Nefesh, self-dedicate-- self-negation, total dedication, to even give up your life for the purpose of this mission of leading and getting involved in communal work. Afterwards, my father entered into the, uh, gravesite, to the Ohel. He went the, uh, place, the resting place, and I remained in the, in the synagogue, and I was saying Tehillim. But when I heard the Tehillim that my father was saying with such cries and, uh, heartfelt cries, powerful, I also lost all control and I started to cry as well. In the meantime, my father opened the door and he signaled to me to come into the oil, to go into the grave site. "Come on in," my father said. Uh, and he said, "Your-- my father, which is your grandfather,

25:55 Speaker 1 the Rebbe Maharash," that's Rebbe Rashab's saying to the Fridiker Rebbe, "And my grandfather, the Tzemach Tzedek, they will bless you." I was trembling. Fear and awe came upon me. On the first instance, I was standing without being able to even move a foot or a hand. When I came to and I went into the oil, my father lit, lit seventy-two lamps of oil. He took me with his hands, and he brought me within four cubits, four ammas of the, uh, grave, holy graves. He placed his hands on my head, and he blessed me. When I heard his heartfelt cry, the inner emotional cries of my father, when I saw the tears that were running from his eyes falling on the floor, I-- my whole depth, I was aroused with... And when the Rebbe, the present Rebbe, when he related during a farbrengen, a Yud Beis Tammuz in Tov Shin Chai, this was, uh, some, uh, fifty years ago. Um, he says this appointment was the beginning of the leadership that the-- his father, the Rebbe Rashab, gave over to my father-in-law, to the Fridiker Rebbe, as much as you can be a leader during the leader-- during the life of the other leader. And the Rebbe related in another farbrengen that when my father-in-law was fifty years old, his father appointed him as his personal secretary in all communal matters. There was a certain gathering of the rabbis, uh, that took place then. So the Rebbe sent the Fridiker Rebbe, the previous Rebbe, as his,

27:48 Speaker 1 uh, his representative. But the Rebbe was very young. It wasn't, like, respectful maybe to go with all the rabbis over there sending, like, a, a young fellow. So he sent along with him also the Rashbaz. That was his basically teacher, was an older fellow. Uh, the Rashbaz was a very wise man. He was very, very clever. But the Rebbe Rashab told him, he says, "I'm sending you along with my son, but yet you should know that the less you mix in, the better." In other words, let my son be... He's the one that is authorized. He's the one that has the power. Well, because of the age thing, you gotta go along. But let him do it, and you just be there to sort of... So that was the second thing that took place. And finally, we have also the Yud Beis Tammuz Taf Resh Be Zayin, which is why we don't say Tachana today, which is the nineteen twenty-seven, which was the holiday of redemption, in which the previous Rebbe, Rebbe Yosef Yitzchak, was notified that he's free from exile. He was in the city of Kastramaw. This happened on the third day of Tammuz, which is how many days before Yud Beis Tammuz? That's, uh, nine days before. He, uh, at that time, the, the Friddik Rebbe was punished at the time that for three years he has to be in the city of Kastramaw. Is that a town then? No, that's in Russia. It's, uh... Now, the group that was set up

29:31 Speaker 1 to try to save the Rebbe, they were trying to, uh, you know, to, uh, re-reach the government officials and everything to try to see what they can do to save the Rebbe's life and to save him from the... So the people that were in that group, they decided to continue their activities, even though they successfully were able to save the Rebbe's life, and now he's only for three years sort of in, in, in exile. But they continued to work to try to find ways to completely exonerate, to completely free the Rebbe totally. So they turned... There was a certain woman who was... She was the head of the Russian Red Cross. You know, she was like the head. Her name was Pishkova. And she was the Russian head of the Red Cross, and she put in a lot of effort by the government officials, the Soviet government official, so they should free the Rebbe. But on the other side, there was the head of the KGB, or then known, the GePoU, that was known, that was known then, that they were in Leningrad, or today's Petersburg, um, and they would, um, hi-his name was Messing. He fought against freeing the Rebbe. He worked not to free the Rebbe. And he threatened that if the Rebbe is gonna be freed, and he's gonna go back to Leningrad, he's gonna arrest him again immediately. So when the previous Rebbe came to Kastramaw, he was instructed by the people of the Of the KGB or GePO. So every

31:07 Speaker 1 Tuesday he has to come to the offices of the KGB, and so there was also on the Tuesday of the twelfth day of Tammuz. When the previous Rebbe came, and he was... went along with him, was a Hasid known as Reb Eliyahu Chaim Altus. He came for his weekly, uh, reporting to the office of the, the KGB. The officer of the KGB received him with a very good confidence, with a smiling face.

31:36 Speaker 2 Yes.

31:36 Speaker 1 And he told him, "You no longer have to come and report anymore. From this point, there is-- come, we've gotten an instruction to give you a whole complete freedom, and I am lucky to be the first one to notify you of this new, uh, instruction, and you're free." But since on the twelfth day of Tammuz, there was some legal holiday in Kastroma, and the office could not produce the document that he was a free person, that document. So therefore, he needed to wait to give officially till the next day, till the thirteenth day of Tammuz, to, till he finally got the, the, the document. In his letter with regards to, uh, Yud Beis Tammuz, the previous Rebbe writes with regards to the... that, "It's not just me personally that God has granted a redemption on this day, Yud Beis Tammuz, but also everybody who loves Torah, our holy Torah, the people that keep the mitzvahs, and even those people that are just called by the name Yisroel." In other words, they just say they're Jewish, but that's the extent of their Judaism, which means they have-- it has nothing-- it doesn't express itself in any other way, just by the name, or it's not even a full name, it's a nickname as we learned earlier in the, uh, Yom Yom. Even that is. "Today," he says, "the twelfth day of Tammuz, is a holiday of redemption of all those who are occupied in trying to spread the Torah. Because in that day, it was known

33:23 Speaker 1 to everybody that the great service that I worked to try to spread Torah and strengthening our religion is permissible according to the Soviet law. There is nothing wrong against it, and that's why this is a day of redemption." And that's the reason why today, as well as tomorrow, we don't say the Tachana is to celebrate and to remember this. Now, as I said yesterday, a lot of the celebrations that we celebrate are things from a distant future. So even when we celebrate, for sure when we celebrate like, uh, miracles of Pesach going out of Egypt or Sukkot or from the Torah, those goes back thousands of years ago. And even Hanukkah and Purim are also long ago. Even Hasidic holidays, the festival of Yud Tes Kislev, which is a festival that, uh, the Alter Rebbe was freed of prison, which... But it's also a distant. It's what happened many years ago, like more than two, three hundred years, two hundred, over two hundred years ago. We don't relate so closely to that. But to this redemption of Yud Beis Yud Gimmel Tammuz, we are right the next generation. I mean, we knew people that were there at the time. I grew up with people. My father, Alav HaShalom, was there at the time. He was one of the Hasidim that worked along. And we know very directly, had God not made this great miracle of Yud Beis Yud Gimmel Tammuz, we would not be sitting today over here. We are directly a result of that

35:07 Speaker 1 great miracle that Hashem produced then. Because my parents were part of that, the previous Rebbe, the Rebbe, this is all a chain that later on produced what we have here today. So this is something that we can really, really relate to, and we should really be grateful because all of Judaism was impacted, as we know it today, by the previous Rebbe, then by the Rebbe, and we are all the outcome and the result of that great miracle that was experienced at that time in nineteen twenty-seven. So we shouldn't just take it as another holiday that goes by and okay. But when we don't say Tachana, we celebrate, we should really celebrate, we should really feel a thank you to Hashem for giving us the Rebbe, for giving us the previous Rebbe, for bringing us to this point that we should be able to, uh, to celebrate. Yeah, what were you gonna ask?

36:08 Speaker 2 Did you say that the document that the Russians gave said that it was not illegal for what the rabbi was-

36:15 Speaker 1 That, that document didn't say that, but the Rebbe said that it wasn't illegal. The, the Rebbe is the one that said that it was proven because they let him out, because there was nothing illegal in, in what they were doing. They were just trying to, uh, to stop them, but it wasn't illegal and, uh, that I'm not, I'm not saying the document, but the fact that they freed the Rebbe-

36:37 Speaker 2 Right

36:37 Speaker 1 ... means that they had no grounds of, uh, he didn't do anything wrong. You know, you know, he didn't do anything wrong. You know what I mean?

36:44 Speaker 2 That's a miracle in itself.

36:45 Speaker 1 He didn't, he did not, you know, do anything wrong. I mean, I mean, you know, it's a lot of times-

36:51 Speaker 2 He was teaching religion, and they were against religion.

36:53 Speaker 1 That's right.

36:53 Speaker 2 Okay.

36:53 Speaker 1 And that, that's all that he did wrong.