"This is Education"

The writings and talks of Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneerson (1880-1950) contain the most comprehensive, vivid and passionate description of Chassidic life, from the days of the Baal Shem Tov (b. 1698) to our time. In the following excerpt from a talk delivered in 1945, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak speaks of his father's singular devotion to his, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak's, education:

On Rosh Hashanah of 1888, when I was a child of seven and several months, I visited my grandmother and she treated me to a melon. I went out to the yard and sat with my friends on a bench directly opposite my father's window and shared the melon with my friends.

My father called me in and said to me: "I noticed that while you shared the melon with your friends, you did not do so with a whole heart." He then explained to me at length the concept of a "generous eye" and "malevolent eye."

I was so deeply affected by my father's words that I was unable to recover for half an hour. I wept bitterly and brought up what I had eaten of the melon.

"What do you want from the boy?" asked my mother. "He's only a child!"

Father replied: "It is good this way: now this trait will be ingrained in his character."

Concluded Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak: "This is education."