Asiri Yehieh Kadosh: The Schapiro Farbrengen

As the Farbrengen with Rabbi Chaim Schapiro began he was talking in a relatively low voice, and I loudly said, "Hecher, Hecher!" He turned to me in the corner and said, "Next time have someone else say it, and I might actually do it." With that encouragement here is, unabridged and mostly the way he said it, our very own Morristown Smicha Farbrenegen. Remember, whenever it says "I" it's the Rabbi speaking. And if something doesn't make sense, it's undoubtedly my fault.

I had a conversation with a bochur regarding farbrengens, and I said that I wasn't a farbrenger or mashpia, I was a bullshover. I'm just older, the chief bullshover. Oh well, nichnas yayin, yatzah sod. Until the mashkeh kicks in I'm talking to myself, afterwords it's only to you. What, you want I should talk to myself then also? What are you, my shrink?

A farbrengen is Wednesday night for Morristown Smicha for obvious reasons. This is a hachana for Yud Shevat, because next week you'll all be in New York. So today is really bo bayom.

Since I'm a small little bochur I remember the Rebbe spoke about Hachanos for Yud Shevat on the 12th of Teves, '47. I see on everyone's application papers here, you were all born in '47. So you guys don't remember it.

Everyone's busy doing hachanos for Yud Shevat, an extra maamar or sicha, coming on time to seder, even learning nigleh.

What is Yud Shevat? Not that I know, but I suppose that it's whatever you make of it. That's what it is. If you make it important, then it's important. Otherwise...it might be Bentzi Shemtov's Asiri Yihieh Kodesh, and even though it's holy by itself, it's only as real as you make it. You can scream and shout all you want that it's important, but unless you make it real...and unless by somebody else it's real too, it's nothing. There's a klal that something that's wet makes something else wet. What's the chiddush? Isn't this obvious? The chiddush is that you make the other guy wet enough to make a third guy wet. In Osios of Yoreh Deah, Nat Bar Nat Bar Nat.

If all Chassidim were B'achdus, if they all had their chassidishe inyanim the way they're supposed to be...but the fact is, everyone is on their own. Before, by the Rebbe's farbrengens, you were schlepped in, at least b'chitzoniyus. But now you have to make it real yourself. And however real you make Yud Shevat, that's how real 11 Shevat is going to be. Nothing happens by itself. The hachona is important, and to make it real it must be a peulah nimsheches. That's got to be real. Otherwise you failed.
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A"KP, nu. So what do you make of Yud Shevat?
Some people say, "What's a true manhig Yisrael?" Obviously, he cares about every Jew, loves every Jew.
Rabbi Avraham Shapiro, the former chief rabbi of Israel, once said, "In every stage of life there's a different thing to learn. When you're a bochur you have to learn what a bochur has to learn. When you become a Rabbi, you have special sefarim for rabbis. When you become a Rosh Yeshiva, again there's a specific limud for Roshei Yeshiva. But what happens when you become a manhig Yisrael? Are there special sefarim for manhigei Yisrael? There are. The Lubavitcher Rebbe's sefarim. The Rebbe was the ultimate manhig."
This is al derech what Johnathan Sacks said, "The Rebbe didn't make chassidim, he made leaders."
What makes someone a real manhig? If they're able to relate to every single Jew. We saw this by the Rebbe. Everyone walked in and said that the Rebbe was like them. A zionist would walk out and say, "The Rebbe is the biggest zionist in the world!" A Satmar chassid would walk out and say, "The Rebbe is the biggest anti-tzioni out there!" An agudah guy would walk out and...ok, lav davka by agudah.
Every MK of Knesset, even Shimon Perez. The Rebbe related to him.
Is there another manhig out there right now? I've never heard of him.
So comes Yud Shevat, and every chassid out there is making hachanos, and he has the same cheshbon. Ephrayim Piekarski says, "The Rebbe's my Rebbe." It has to be a personal thing.
No chiddushim here.
A person's father turns 60, or he has a big wedding anniversary, he finds a present. He finds the perfect gift, because it's personal.
Yud Shevat is the same thing. It has to be personal. You have to make it personal. Has to be your Rebbe. Nowadays, not so b'galoi, or even b'galoi at all...but all that means is, there's no limitations, no boundaries.

The downside here is that all the people who felt the Rebbe was with them, that he relates to them, think the Rebbe is like them...they don't have to change. The Rebbe is their Rebbe.
You meet Israelis who say, "You think you know the Rebbe? I know the Rebbe!" I found my derech in the Rebbe. The biggest anti-religious in the Knesset, the Rebbe related to him. But still...
It's al derech a smart kid, his father loves him, but does he do what his father wants? Don;t be smart. Do what the Rebbe wants.
We as Chassidim, there's no me. Sure you can find in the Rebbe how he relates to you, but the Rebbe wants to know how you relate to him!
Everyone knows their father has a soft spot. Everyone knows how to manipulate their father. But do you do what your father wants?
The Rebbe did all sorts of things anonymously. When the Rebbe pushed for 71 new Mosdos for the new year Bobby Vogel came to the Rebbe and suggested that his new Machon Parnasa should be included in that number. The Rebbe said no. Why? Because maybe some satmar guy in London is looking for a job but if he sees the Machon Parnasa is Lubavitch he isn't coming.
The Rebbe told a non-Lubavitcher he'd make a lot of money, and he should give a lot of tzedaka. Not to Lubavitch.
If the Rebbe is my Rebbe, if the Rebbe loves me, if I have my maamar, my sicha, my reshimo, that's great. But it's all me. It's all ich.
Sure, the Rebbe is mine. But the goal is for the Rebbe to be able to say, "These are my chassidim!" Re'u Gedulim She'gedalti!
Could the Rebbe say that about all the other Chassidim with a shaychus? He was their manhig, sure, but were they his?

We forget about the nekudah. The nekudah is not the hachana. The nekudah is that we must be chassidim. To be the Rebbe's. It's no kuntz for it to be "My Rebbe". The Rebbe loves every Jew! You don't have to change! I'll even do the Rebbe a favor! I'll learn an extra maamar!
But can the Rebbe say, "This is my chassid"? Is this who the Rebbe wants? Hiskashrus means that we're miskasher with the Rebbe, not that we're schlepping the Rebbe with us.
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How do we be the Rebbe's? Is there one answer? Each mashpia will tell you something different. The truth is that you all know...
There's so many inyanim. I'll pick one nekudah that's nogeah to us in our lives right now. The Rebbe wanted for his Chassidim what all the Rebbeim wanted for their Chassidim. The Rebbe wanted we should look like the Chassidim of 1840. Ok, you can have money. And you don't need torn clothes. And no yellow tzitzis either. And teeth. Back then they didn't have dentists. But now you can have good teeth.
There's a story of a Lubavitcher Rav who was hired by a non-Lubvaitcher Shul, and they wanted him to wear an up hat. He wrote in to the Rebbe asking if he should take the job, if he should wear the hat they wanted him to wear. The Rebbe wrote back, "Lubavitchers aren't chitzonim".

A Chassid has to be a pnimi. What is as pnimi? You have to be one to know what one is.
One thing I remember, it's not the true inyan, but I remember the Rebbe would always say, "Avraham Zaken Bah Bayamim". In general, the older a person gets the less intense he is. But Avraham, though he was old, he didn't get less intense. He was Bah with his Yamim.

When you do an aveira that should be chitzoniyus. Your job should be chitzoniyus. But real inyanim? These have to be b'pnimius.
By a bochur, everything is pnimius. You eat, drink, use your cellphone so that you don't waste your minutes, but otherwise? (All right, I understand, some people have rollover.)
There's no downtime. At least there shouldn't be. All right, a little by Pesach and Sukkos. But even in downtime you have to do everything with emes, with full chayus, with a full shturem.
In Chabad there's no direct Kav, nothing specific. Whatever the Rebbe wants, that's what you got to do. At the same time as you can go on Mivtzoyim, you can learn. Or be a counselor in camp. And if you have to throw a football around, fine. No bochur says "is pas nisht". I didn't do it because it wasn't worth my time, 10 cents an hour, but still...if I had to do it, I would do it. I'd even throw a football around.

I know a shliach, back in the day, who had to send his kid to a day school because there was no local cheder. The kid was a big Chassid. He knew that the Rebbe disapproved of learning secular studies, so he didn't learn 'em. Just sat in class and did nothing. His father wrote in to the Rebbe and asked if this was proper conduct, and the Rebbe wrote back, "Absolutely not. Is it the ideal situation? No. But once you're there, it's all hashgacha pratis, you have to learn properly. A chassid can't waste his time!" Once you're there, the Rebbe wants you to learn. Do it properly.

It's very difficult. In other places a bochur can basically do what he wants. You don't have to all learn the same gemarah. You find your own chaburah, b'makom shelibi chafeitz.
But in Lubavitch...you can't decide at 7:30 to start learning Rambam. It's seder chassidus. A bochur has to be a pnimi.
Shulchan Oruch is difficult. The Rebbe wanted bochurim to learn a year before they got married. Why? Does it matter? The Rebbe wanted it. Bah B'yamim.
And Seder Chassidus by night? Bah B'yamim.
This is one of the inyanim of "I am the Rebbe's". No Hiskafia, no ishapcha, simple. There's no "is pas nisht". There's no saying, "This is not for me." There's no saying, "I'm not holding by Tehillim." Who am I? I'm supposed to be batul umevutal. It's hard. But it's supposed to be.
There's no "why not". If you know that it matters.
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Every seven years the Mossad has to get accredited to get money. So they bring in a Rosh Yeshiva to figure out what's happening.
One time the Bobover Rosh Yeshiva came to Morristown. He gave a shiur, the bochurim were prepped beforehand, they all came on time (probably because they were threatened with big knasim), he was impressed. He asked if the bochurim were always so perfect. We said, "Of course not, but when people come..."
He said, "In Bobov, the bochurim would never do anything because of the government." Why in Chabad do they?
Because they feel an achrayus, a responsibility. All right, it's only 99% of the bochurim. It's like an insurance company, they know there'll be x number of accidents, but who will be in them? That's Hashgacha klalis.

In Oholei Torah, thw Bobover Rosh Yeshiva came to look. He saw a full zal, all the bochurim there bluffing and trying to impress. Even the rabbis did it. Rabbi Yisroel Friedman gave a shiur then... And why did they do it? Achrayus.

You know what? Be a pnimi. Yeshiva is dependent on you. It's tough to wake up on time. Even tough to daven shacharis with a minyan. Mincha and Maariv, k'yadua, are not too hard. And it all has to be with a chayus. The Shach is hard. The Taz is hard.

A chassid doesn't look the future. Bocvhurim always ask, "Why learn gemara, what's the point?" You never have this question by chassidus. Maybe the kids are too embarrassed to ask it, or maybe they get it. They know they have to learn chassidus so that when they go on shlichus they can teach their mekuravim.
Guess what? You have to know how to learn gemara when you're on shlichus too. Because after you teach him two lines of Tanya and talk to him for an hour about his neshomah...he wants a daf Gemara.

In Moscow, they told me, a guy walks into Chabad, they talk about G-d. He walks into the snags, they teach him a daf gemara. Where does he feel more accomplished? The gemara.

Why do we need smicha? You're learning for a piece of paper? I can give you the whole argument, for and against. I can give you better arguments than you why you shouldn't be learning Yoreh Deah. And why should you be? If there's no paper at the end, how many people are going to actually going to learn?
But the point is, if you know that's what the Rebbe wants, then do it. Why do you have to sit in Yeshiva to learn? You're 22 years old! Go sit in shul and learn. In Lubavitch though, we sit in Yeshiva. That's what the Rebbe, not Shulchan Oruch, wants.

I remember a bochur came over to me, he had come late to yeshiva, he wanted to know if he could daven with the baalebaatim minyan and then start yoreh deah immediately afterwords. I told him fine. Later I found out that he got up at 5:30 every morning to learn chassidus, because how can a chassid daven without first learning chassidus? At first I laughed at his naivete, but then I realized that he's right. A chassid does have to learn chassidus before davening.
Ok, not everybody can do this without going to sleep every night at 8:30, but the point is, someone did it. The nekudah is that you have to be a pnimi.
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We mentioned before that a chassid has to be a pnimi.
But what can I do? I'm not a pnimi.
As Rabbi Manis Friedman once said, "You can't tell someone, 'Be happy.' You can't tell someone, 'Have seichel.' What can you do?"

So I'm not a pnimi.
A Misnaged bochur came into the Rebbe Rashab and asked him a question on Rashi. The Rebbe answered him, and later said, "It was my mazel that I had just happened to learn that Rashi."
My brother when he was 12 or so once asked me if I was baki in Shas. I told him that I was. He asked me a question from some totally random mesechta, and miraculously I had just learned that mesechta. I blew his mind away when I told him the page. I have mazel. Later I told him that I wasn't actually a baki in shas.
There's the story of the Steipler Gaon who felt bad that someone thought he knew a certain Ritva but really he only knew it from a Ran.

There's a story from the Alter Rebbe, that people came to him and complained, "You're chassidim are making themselves into yirei shamayim, baalei nefesh, there marbim b'mitzvos and ma'archim b'tefila. Who do they think they are?" The Rebbe answered them, "Aino Mais Min Hazikna Ad She'yiheh Ne'echad Mahem. (Perek 8 of Peah, Mishnah 9)" You're not a pnimi right now? Fake it until you make it.

The worst thing you can tell someone in Lubavitch is that they're a chitzon. Used to be, the worst thing in the world was to be a baalebaatishe bochur, but nowadays...they think it's ok.
Back in the day, because called a chitzon was a terrible thing. The truth is, if there's no chitzoniyus, then there's no pnimius either. "I'm a Jew at heart" means nothing. So obviously...
The issue is when there's a kuch zich in chitzinoyus. It has to be derech m'mailah. You can't be a chassid if it's not apparent on your face that you're a chassid.

How do you Daven B'arichus? The Rebbe Davened at 10:00, the Farbrengen was at 1:30...

When Yossi Nemess, who became famous because of Hurricane Katrina, was a young bochur he was almost Berel Lazar. He used to go to Russia, and he related once when he came back that he went to a Moscow baalei Teshuvah's house and the guy served him an apple. He noticed that his host wasn't eating, and he asked him why. Turned out he was fasting, as is brought down in Tanya. Yossi quickly explained why this wasn't necessary, how the Rebbe explained that this wasn't our avoda nowadays. The chassid took an apple and ate it. It was bigger mesiras nefesh for him to eat than to eat. But he did it. Why? Because it wasn't his fast day. It was the Rebbe's. He was the Rebbe's. He did what the Rebbe wanted.

A person shouldn't daven b'arichus. That's chitzoniyus. Daven b'arichus. Get the difference? Just do it. Don't give up a day too early. Last place you look, you always find it there.
Chitzoniyus is important. If there's no chitzoniyus, then there's no pnimius. So do it, eventually you'll do it properly. Even though now you're a chitzon...
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I'm the first call for shidduchim. People want to know if the bochur kept seder. I don't lie. But I do tell them that in Yeshiva he didn't, but when he was on shlichus or camp, when he had achrayus, he did it fine. By most people sleeping is not a chronic disease.

Avremel Shemtov was once farbrenging in 770 how the Rebbe is the rosh, we're the guf, and we build up the Rebbe. At that point Avraham Gerlitzky walked in and said, "The Rebbe depends on us?" They argued for hours. I'm not a big chikur. Who cares? Stupid philosophy. Means nothing. According to either, you have more or less Rebbe? Whatever.

You don't have to do anything. But...we found the truth, we're stuck with it. We got to do it. If we do it enough times it becomes natural. I saw in a sefer that you have to make sure to put your legs properly into your pants 22 times in order to accustom yourself to it. They asked the Rebbe, how does he survive on so little sleep, he said, every few weeks, decrease by 1/2 hour. I don't know what this story was, if this guy wanted to sleep very little too.

There's a famous polack joke, he jumps out of plane, at 5,000 feet they tell him to pull his parachute, he refuses, at 1,000; 500; at 20 feet they tried one more time, but when he found out he was only 20 feet from the ground, he said, "It's ok, from here I can jump!"

There's a story with Rabbi Chadakov, he asked a yungerman where he was by seder, the yungerman said there had been a farbrengen the night before...Rabbi Chadakov told him, "Next time make a kiddush Hashem and pick yourself up and leave in the middle, tell them there's seder in the morning. You have to have mesiras nefesh to do the right thing.

The Jews stood with mesiras nefesh a whole year by Purim. For four days they had it by Pesach. Sure, it was mesiras nefesh, but they had bitachon in Hashem, that he would save them. They had a tnuah of doing what's right, they weren't nispael. And who does this nowadays? Lubavitch.
Hain l'tov, hain l'mutav.
We excel in not being nispael. We don't care what anyone says. We have the truth. You explain differently to us 25 times, makes no difference. But when it comes to pnimius...
When the Rebbe came out with mivtzah Torah, the joke was that now everybody was going to run around and tell everyone else to learn.
We have to not be nispael by waking up on time for chassidus in the morning. We don't have the shtarkeit like by chitzoniyus. You have taanos on Lubavitch? We'll fight you hard. But when it comes to ourselves?
A chassid can't be nispael, outside or inside. Do what you have to do: mivtzoyim, chitas, rambam, do what your loved one wants you to do.

I heard a story from my shver, Schmerling from Switzerland. He went to yechidus, and the Rebbe told him to talk to Chadakov who would give him specific instructions. He went to Chadakov, who showed him a duch from agudah, from the thirties, and they had decided at their annual meeting to open an office in Germany for kiruv purposes. They never did it. Now they wanted to open a kiruv office in Italy to deal with all the Russians who went there before getting to America or Israel. By the next asifas harabbonim they called Schmerling and asked him for advice, as a Lubavitcher, how would he do it? So he said to them, listen, many years ago you decided to go to Germany. So go there! Don't go anywhere else in Europe!
Of course they didn't listen.
(Chadakov was called "my finance minister" by the Rebbe. When Merkos called you, they made you call back, save the Rebbe money. Once Chadakov started up to the Rebbe's room, the Rebbe shut off his lights because he wasn't doing anything in the room, then when Chadakov left the Rebbe turned them on again.)
Chadakov called Schmerling in again, told him there'd be another asifa, and told him to deal with the situation. Schmerling went there and told them they'd never be successful in Europe. Why is Lubavitch successful? Because they don't care if they have money or not when they start a program. If they have, great, and if not, fine. They'll find a way. But the agudah doesn't work like that. They'll never be matzliach.
Of course they didn't listen, and they opened up an office in Italy. Schmerling sent a message to the yungerman there and told him there was a kepeidah from the Rebbe on him. The office failed. The guy lost all his money. He went to his Rav, who was also the Rav of Schmerling's town in Switzerland, and told him about the kepeidah from the Lubavitcher Rebbe. The Rav asked him to try and help.
Schmerling went to Yechidus and told the Rebbe that, he had somehow possibly maybe implied that the Rebbe had put a kepeidah on this guy.. The Rebbe smiled, said he was maskim that the office shouldn't open, but he didn't want a Jew to not have parnasa, so he gave the yungerman a big bracha, and good thinhs happened from then on.
Later when they made the Schapiro-Schmerling in Switzerland Rabbi Schapiro's father was worried that the Rav wouldn't allow Lubavitch minhagim by the chuppah. Schmerling said, "Not to worry, he thinks I've got an in with the Rebbe, the wedding will go exactly as you want it."
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The Freidiker Rebbe said that a Rebbe never puts a kepeidah on a chassid. Sometimes a chassid thinks a Rebbe put a kepeidah on him, and then, if that's the case, once the chassid is mad at the Rebbe, then bad things can happen.