THE OPENING TALK1
Gut Yom-Tov!
Chai Elul is the pure and truly luminous G‑d-given date on which our Father and King, the Creator of all the worlds, lit up the world with “the two great luminaries:”2 our master the Baal Shem Tov – the tzaddik, R. Yisrael, the son of R. Eliezer – and our master, the author of the Tanya and the Shulchan Aruch, the tzaddik, R. Shneur Zalman, the son of R. Baruch.
The Baal Shem Tov was born on Chai Elul in the year 5458 (1698), which in the letters of the Holy Tongue is תנ"ח. When those three letters are transposed, they spell the word נַחַת, which means “peaceful pleasure,” implying nachas for G‑d and nachas for the Jewish People.3 The Alter Rebbe was born 47 years later, on Chai Elul in the year 5505 (1745), which in the letters of the Holy Tongue is תק"ה. When those three letters are transposed, they are the initials of the words קַרְנֵי הוֹד תּוֹרָה – “the glorious rays of the Torah.”
The Baal Shem Tov founded the chassidic school of thought in general and its distinctive spiritual lifestyle, and the Alter Rebbe founded the Chabad school of thought and its distinctive spiritual lifestyle.
People generally participate in joyful gatherings because they want to give their host pleasure, and they participate in commemorative gatherings because they want to express their deeply-felt respect for some personality. Alternatively, people may want to participate in a gathering because they themselves want to enjoy the pleasure of the joyful occasion, and they participate in a commemorative gathering because they perceive it as a privilege and an honor to be counted among its participants.
Today’s Chai Elul gathering is a classic instance of the latter kind of motivation. We are all here because we want to enjoy this occasion – a festive occasion both for G‑d and for the Jewish People – which celebrates the birth of the two great luminaries, the Baal Shem Tov and the Alter Rebbe. In addition, it is a privilege and an honor for us and for our families to be brought to mind, so to speak, by the One Above and to receive His blessings, in the merit of the birthday of those two luminaries.
In the language of Chassidus, a person’s birth is called yeridas haneshamah, the descent of his soul from its spiritual world Above to this earthly, material world.
This is neither the place nor the time for a broad and profound conceptual exposition of the revelation of a spiritual soul in a physical body. Indeed, it must be reckoned a truly great attainment for a spiritual soul to animate a body.
Souls are spiritual entities that are created, just as all other spiritual and physical entities are created. In fact, our praises of G‑d include the phrase, “the Creator of all the souls.”4 And the soul attains its tikkun, its ultimate state of perfection, when it animates a physical body. The 120 years in which the Creator grants corporeal life constitute the crucial period for the tikkun of the soul – whether it will be elevated to greater heights by one’s good deeds, or (G‑d forbid) debased.
The fact that the crucial time and place for the tikkun of a soul is the limited span of years that it lives in a bodily life – which means that it waited for a few thousand years until the Creator dispatched it to This World – is the greatest indication of the sheer luminosity of a physical life that is lived according to the Torah and its mitzvos. If so, why should the revelation of a soul in a physical body be called the descent of the soul?
The short and simple answer is that “all roads are presumed to be dangerous.”5 In the Heavenly world, the soul is responsive to Elokus without any effort, whereas [after it makes the journey to] this earthy world, it faces numerous distractions in its service of the Creator.
The Gemara (in Shabbos 105b) refers to the Evil Inclination, the yetzer hara, as a craftsman, a teacher, and an artist. He is a really industrious artist, teacher and leader, who devotes those gifts to causing a person to sin. He adjusts his approach to lure different kinds of people into his hands, developing a particular style of friendship to attract and fool each individual victim.
His crafty tricks are indescribable, for he attunes his flattery and falsehood to suit every individual.
It is this Evil Inclination that convinces elderly and balanced people, and rabbis, and Torah scholars, to seek honor and pride by virtue of their scholarship, and to harness it to think up unduly permissive halachic rulings.6 It is the same Evil Inclination who argues his way into the heads of donors and of laymen who love the Torah, making them feel attracted to modernized pseudo-yeshivos and various educational institutions with their freethinking male and female teachers. And it is the same Evil Inclination who deploys a variety of false arguments to convince middle-class Jewish businessmen to desecrate Shabbos and family purity.
G‑d created this physical world in all its splendor, with all the glorious beauties of nature – with its vast range of creations, the most beautiful gems, plants, birds, fish, and other creatures – that enable a mortal to learn and to attain some grasp of the greatness of the Creator.
He desires that whatever He has created, a Jew should utilize for His service, and every entity has an appropriate blessing with which one can praise the Creator.
Among my notes there is a substantial essay on a profound saying of the scholarly tzaddik, R. Shimshon Ostropolier: “Praiseworthy is isolation with people and solitude in the midst of one’s fellows.”7
These words do not mean, as is popularly understood from their plain meaning, that a person should isolate and segregate himself. It means that everything should be used for its intended purpose – and then8 one can attain isolation while together with people, and solitude while in the midst of one’s fellows.
However, the pervasive splendor of the physical world provides the Evil Inclination with abundant material to use in his persuasive endeavors to entice his victims to sin.
No one can consider himself safe from his hands, because he applies every faculty and every means to find his way into everyone, everywhere. He even has the insolence to flatter his way into influencing tzaddikim, oblivious to their intense rejection of him. This earthy world is a dangerous place, in which the Evil Inclination and Satan have G‑d’s permission to approach every Jew, even a tzaddik who is as great as Avraham Avinu. And that is why Chassidus calls the manifestation of the soul in the body yeridas haneshamah, “the descent of the soul.” Nevertheless, Chassidus explains that phrase briefly and simply, as a descent of the soul into the body for the sake of a subsequent ascent.9 By being enclothed in a body, the neshamah itself is enhanced.
The major disputation between the Baal Shem Tov and Heaven is common knowledge:10 he did not want to reveal himself to the Jewish world as the leader of Jewry and their guide in the service of the Creator. This recalls the disputation between Moshe Rabbeinu and G‑d, when he did not want to undertake the mission of becoming the one who would redeem the Jewish People from Egypt.
There is a certain statement that the Baal Shem Tov shared with his elder disciples in the wake of the following incident.
The Baal Shem Tov once sternly rebuked a certain Jewish tavern-keeper. Then, privately, he confronted him with a list of all of his sins in tough terms that his listener must have found painful. Since those sins were named in private, the disciples of course did not hear what was said, though they did hear the tone of the preceding rebuke – and that left them wondering.
Noticing this, the Baal Shem explained: “I had to reveal myself, and to fulfill the holy mission that was placed upon me from Above. Had I not done this, I would have been a robber who lurks in the forest, seeking to attack by-passers!”
One sometimes hears things that are beyond merely being not understood: they jar the listener’s ear, as in the present case. Is it not unthinkable that a leader of Israel, a gaon and a tzaddik – who from his childhood devoted himself self-sacrificingly to Torah and avodah for the benefit of Jewry at large, and for years on end exerted himself to the utmost to implant the most refined levels of ahavas Yisrael in the hearts of tens of thousands of Jews – should say of himself that if he had not revealed himself publicly as the Baal Shem Tov he would have been a robber?!
The Baal Shem Tov made that statement in response to the wonderment of his disciples at the [unaccustomed] severity of his words to the tavern-keeper. His message was that a leader among Jews11 should speak precisely and unambiguously.12 And when the times make it necessary, one must speak with unequivocal sternness, taking into account not the respect that should seemingly be shown to individuals, but only what will benefit the public.
It was the universally renowned chassid13 and lover of his fellow Jews – R. Akiva the tanna – who said: “In a court case, no pity is to be shown.”14 Where the question at stake is whether or not a law of the Torah is to be carried out, all considerations of compassion must be set aside. Indeed, if the issue involves a public observance of the Torah and its mitzvos, one must be stronger than strong and tougher than tough – in order to succeed, with G‑d’s help, in securing the public good.
A leader of Jews must adopt a robber’s heart towards himself as he goes about his tasks of disseminating Torah study in a G‑d-fearing spirit and disseminating the ideal of ahavas Yisrael. These tasks he must undertake in a spirit of self-sacrifice, both material and spiritual, disregarding the cost in terms of his standing, his health and his time. Moreover, if there is no option, he must be stern and tough with others, too.
Indeed, a leader among Jews must have a strong heart and a tremendously strong will. In all circumstances, and even in the greatest danger, he must execute in actual practice the holy mission with which he has been entrusted and for which he is answerable. It is for this reason that he must be (as it were) an unrelenting robber, not only with regard to himself but also with regard to others.
One must speak plainly and clearly. Concerning [for example] taharas hamishpachah, the laws of family purity, one must speak clearly and distinctly – not like those rabbanim who obscure the subject with their philosophical approaches. Rabbanim should state clearly what the Chumash and Gemara and Shulchan Aruch have to say about how Jewish family life should be conducted. They should inform all their male and female listeners of what the holy books write concerning the [dire results] of the neglect of the Torah’s laws of family purity.
Explicit speech is required likewise when rabbis speak of schooling. Parents must be told plainly that they should enroll their sons and daughters only in kosher Talmud Torah schools, whose administrators and male and female teachers observe the Torah and its mitzvos. They will then be able to hope that their children will remain Jews.
Both men and women must be told that if Talmud Torah schools are staffed by freethinkers who desecrate the Shabbos and do not put on tefillin or observe the laws of family purity and who are disbelievers and atheists, those schools are houses of apostasy. Rabbis must state publicly from their pulpits that parents who enroll their children in such schools are leading them, with their own hands, to apostasy.
In his Laws of Repentance,15 Rambam distinguishes between two kinds of resha’im.16 (a) Those who do not fulfill the positive commandments and who transgress the prohibitive commandments are punished in Gehinnom for each transgression according to the laws of the Torah, and are then granted a share in the World to Come. (b) Those who are atheists, heretics and disbelievers will never be cleansed in Gehinnom, and they will have no share in the World to Come because their sin is so heinous that they will never be released from Gehinnom.
Rambam delineates the above three terms as follows: minim (“atheists”) are those who deny the existence of a sole Creator Who regulates the world; apikorsim (“heretics”) are those who reject the prophets and who claim that G‑d does not know what mortals do; and kofrim (“disbelievers”) are those who deny that G‑d gave the Written Torah and the Oral Torah,17 and who do not believe in the Resurrection of the Dead18 nor in the coming of Mashiach, the Righteous Redeemer.19
The administrators and the male and female teachers at the treife Talmud Torah schools belong to all three of the above categories and transgress on principle. They are virtual descendants of Nimrod.20 They seek to cause the public to transgress and to uproot the practice of Yiddishkeit – yet it is to such irresponsible people that the education of Jewish children is being entrusted!
All the men and women who enroll their children in those treife Talmud Torah schools ought to know that those children will grow up to become (G‑d forbid!) haters of their fellow Jews, who will ravage synagogues and Jewish graves and demolish their gravestones. The bitter fruit of such enrollment will be that those parents will eventually be buried like animals, with no Kaddish21 and no Yizkor.22
The chadarim, the Jewish elementary schools, are surely in need of certificates of kosher supervision23 at least as urgently as stores that sell meat and other foods and beverages.
The Agudas HaRabbanim and the Vaad HaRabbanim24 should be assuming a role of leadership in the religious life of the Jews in this country. They are entirely responsible for every aspect of the community’s observance of the Torah and its mitzvos. On them lies the holy obligation to compile and publish an explicit list of all the Talmud Torah schools, indicating which are kosher and which are treif. That list must reach the broad Jewish masses in Yiddish and in English, via newspapers and pamphlets. Without any doubt, such a list will save thousands of Jewish boys and girls from the houses of apostasy.
Rabbis! So long as you do not fulfill your duty towards kosher education by publishing that honest listing, you will be guilty of enabling the calamitous misleading of all those children.
Let me address my brotherly request to you, the respected participants in the present assemblage, namely: Inform all of your acquaintances, and ask them in turn to inform all of their acquaintances, that parents who entrust their children to institutions whose staff members do not heed the obligations of tefillin or Shabbos or kashrus or family purity are leading them, with their own hands, to apostasy, and they will be left with neither a Kaddish nor a Yizkor.
Parents! Save your children from apostasy, and enroll your children in Talmud Torah schools that are staffed by men and women who observe the Torah and its commandments. And I hope that my request will be fulfilled by all concerned in the best way possible.
By virtue of the joy that the AriZal experienced whenever he fulfilled a mitzvah, he was privileged to be granted superhuman levels of understanding.25 The Baal Shem Tov was [similarly blessed, by virtue of his loving attention to his fellow Jews], and in particular to the cheder-children who attended their elementary Torah schools. In fact [his disciple], the Maggid of Mezritch, once said: “If only people would kiss the sefer Torah with the same love with which the Baal Shem Tov [who at that time was a teacher’s assistant] kissed the children whom he escorted to and from school!”
Jews are “a holy nation.”26 Jews are “believers, the sons of believers,”27 and the Divine Name is commonly heard from everyone’s lips. True, there are many kinds of obstacles that make it hard to observe Yiddishkeit as ought to be done. Nevertheless, Jewish hearts are open to receiving a word of truth, and they are aroused when they are told the unadulterated truth.
[By way of illustration:] A certain chassid once visited the Alter Rebbe – author of the Tanya and the Shulchan Aruch – and bemoaned the sorry state of his health and his livelihood. What he needed, he said, was that G‑d should send a recovery for his own ailments and for those of his wife and his children. He added that he also needed an income that would enable him to pay off his debts and marry off one of his children and renovate his home.
The Alter Rebbe’s response: “You are saying everything that you need, yet about what you are needed for, you say nothing…!”28
That teaching – that one should earnestly consider the question, “For what purpose did I come to this World, and what am I needed for?” – immediately roused the hearts of tens of thousands of Jews to love the Torah and its mitzvos and to love their fellow Jews.
As said above, the heart of a Jew is an eager receptor for a genuine, fiery appeal to cleave to the Torah and the mitzvos and to love every fellow Jew.
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THE CLOSING TALK
The Gemara explains that “the time of our rejoicing”29 during the festival of Sukkos is called Simchas Beis HaShoeivah (“the rejoicing of the place of the water-drawing”) because “from there, people used to draw ruach hakodesh, Divine inspiration.” Indeed, it was at that celebration that Yonah the son of Amitai received the gift of prophecy.30
Chai Elul, the eighteenth day of Elul,31 is our Simchas Beis HaShoeivah, our newly-acquired “festival of the place of the water-drawing,” for on that date G‑d lit up the world with the two great luminaries – our revered mentors, the Baal Shem Tov and the Alter Rebbe. On that day one ought to draw upon himself a spirit of purity.
Our revered mentors and their disciples, our holy Rebbeim,have bequeathed us an unbounded inheritance, the teachings of Chassidus and the spiritual lifestyle of Chassidus. Those two legacies – mastering those teachings and practicing that mode of conduct – are handed down from parents to children, but they demand toil and exertion, just as preserving a material inheritance requires hard work.
“By G‑d are a man’s steps made firm:”32 the steps of every Jew and Jewess are designated by Divine Providence. That statement should provide an answer to the question that every individual ought to ask himself: “What am I needed for?” The answer is simple: “I am needed, so that wherever I may be, I should be working for the cause of Torah and the awe of Heaven.”
Whether one wants it or not, every man and woman will ultimately have to give an account for every single step that they have taken. Surely, then, it is advisable for every individual to fulfill, out of his own goodwill, the duty for which he is needed. And the mighty merit of our holy forebears, the Rebbeim, will surely help us to succeed in the dissemination of Torah study in a G‑d-fearing spirit and in the buttressing of Yiddishkeit.
Our gathering today, in honor of the holy Yom-Tov of Chai Elul, resembles the joy that accompanies Birkas Kohanim, the obligation that G‑d entrusted to Aharon HaKohen and to his descendants throughout the generations – to bless us, the People of Israel, with the classic blessings of Yevarechecha…, Ya’er…, and Yisa…33 The difference is that before the blessing by the Kohanim, it is they who are obligated to wash their hands. At the celebration of Chai Elul, by contrast, it is us – who have gathered together to receive blessings and a spirit of purity from the holy celebrants of this occasion, the Baal Shem Tov and the Alter Rebbe – who [so to speak] wash our hands in order to be found worthy to receive that boost in our service of the Creator.
The prophet [Yeshayahu] tells us in G‑d’s Name: “Wash yourselves, refine yourselves, banish your evil doings!”34 One must do teshuvah. We, the entire House of Israel, are living in a time of distress.
A certain individual sensed both the approaching woes, and also American Jewry’s intense and confused disappointment with the complacency of prominent world leaders with regard to the calamities that Jews were undergoing, complacency not only overseas but also on this side of the ocean. Quite some ago, that individual warned, both orally and in writing, that American Jewry should realize that our people’s woes are not only abroad; they will swim across the ocean. He begged them to adopt the genuine means specified in the Torah, and not to put their trust in the misleading words and vain hopes of [Satan’s] prophets.
American Jews need genuine words of encouragement and consolation in the face of their current disappointment, and even more, in the face of the greater disappointment that is yet to come – when they are finally convinced that even here in this country, even the righteous gentiles will be complacent with regard to the suffering and disgrace of Jews.
Even the empty promises made by those who can in fact be called world leaders, about saving Jews in other lands, will last only until some upcoming date, only as long as they serve propaganda purposes – yet they will no doubt arouse noisy glee among those who prance around the idolatrous Golden Calf.
Fellow Jews! You have already been shamefully fooled by the misleading opinion makers who say that our salvation will spring from humanity’s triumphant victors. Any ordinary, sensible person can actually see how false is the assumption that those who battle in the cause of humanity will in fact show any interest in the suffering of Jews.
In the course of this year, the battle in the cause of humanity – a battle in which Jewish personnel and capital have participated – has shown promise. Nevertheless, the plight of Jews has worsened, in this country too. From this you can recognize the false hopes aroused by various opinion makers, and you can assume what lies ahead.
Fellow Jews! Realize that the present woes are the birth pangs of Mashiach. No one can help us and no one is going to help us. The only thing that can help us is teshuvah, making our way back to Torah and mitzvos – and that depends on us alone. Our teshuvah can enable the fulfillment of the prophetic tidings that “G‑d will rejoice in His works”35 and that “Israel will rejoice in its Maker.”36
“May this bring an end to this year with its curses,”37 making the current year 5703 the last year of exile, and “may there then begin a new year with its blessings,”38 making the year 5704 the first year of the sprouting of the Redemption through our Righteous Mashiach.
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My great-grandfather, the Tzemach Tzedek, once cited39 the statement in the Talmud Yerushalmi40 that “one who quotes a teaching in the name of another should regard the original speaker as if standing before him.” To this he added that the same applies to the Alter Rebbe’s Niggun of Four Themes, when it is sung in a spirit of repentance.
We need to be fortified in our teshuvah, for on this depends the remedy for the birth pangs of Mashiach and the Complete Redemption.
At this point in the farbrengen there was a pause, and all those present, in a state of spiritual arousal, sang together the Alter Rebbe’s Niggun of Four Themes. [The Rebbe Rayatz then concluded:]
Out of ahavas Yisrael, the obligation to love every fellow Jew, it is a great mitzvah and a holy duty for everyone to publicize the following message among fathers and mothers whose children are currently conscripted and on the battlefields:
The Gemara teaches (in Menachos 44a) that “he who puts on tefillin lives long, as it is written, ‘G‑d is upon them, and they will live.’”41 Rashi there explains: “Those who bear upon themselves the Name of G‑d by wearing tefillin will live” – for putting on tefillin, apart from its intrinsic value as a mitzvah, has the power to protect.42 The parents should all tell their sons that they should put on tefillin every weekday. G‑d will bless their self-sacrificing toil with victorious success and they will come home in good health.
Those soldiers who cannot possibly put on tefillin in the morning should do so in the course of the day, wherever they may be. May G‑d fortify them and their comrades and maintain their high morale, secure in their belief that G‑d will guard them from all undesirable events and enable them all to return to their homes.
May we all, together with our families and all our fellow Jews, be inscribed and sealed for a good year, both materially and spiritually.
May you all be inscribed and sealed for a good year!
