Dear Alumni Sheyichyu!
Sholom U’Brocho!
Mazel Tov to Mendy Myhill on the occasion of his engagement. May he use out the special period of Yokor Mikol yokor to its’ utmost! With tremendous gratitude to the Eibishter for His infinite kindness and brochos, I want to wish a Mazel Tov to our son in law, Rabbi Mendy Lieberman (and to our daughter Ittie) on the birth of their son (and mazel tov to the grandparents, and great grandparents vechulu). May they bring him up lTOveCHuMAA”T mitoch harchovo, and to be a true chayol! (If anyone is aware of any mazeltov’s that I omitted please let me know).
Thank you very much, as always, for the feedback, it is much appreciated!
During the farbrengen of Simchas Torah 5726, the Rebbe shared the content of a farbrengen of the Frierdige Rebbe that had taken place 30 years earlier (5696). On that occasion, the Frierdige Rebbe said that chassidim are complaining about the fact that their avodas Hashem is not affecting them. Once, learning Torah, davening and farbrenging would have a noticeable impact on the person, and today, they don’t seem to have any impact.
[The Rebbe added, as an aside, that then (30 years before) chassidim were at least complaining about this. They wanted their avoda to have an effect on them. Whereas today, no one is even complaining!].
The Frierdige Rebbe explained, at that farbrengen, that the reason for this is because they are not really into what they are doing with their etzem, with their true self. And the Frierdige Rebbe illustrated this with two stories, the second of which was the following:
“When I was a young child” – the Frierdige related (and the Rebbe added, that the fact that the Frierdige Rebbe shared such a personal story, after having already illustrated the idea with a previous story, is an indication of how important it was to him to clarify this idea) – “I used to have a habit, during cheder, of looking out of the windows, to watch what was going on outside”. [He added – that it was not even as if there was anything much to see in Lubavitch].
His melamed, the Rashbatz, wanted to impress upon him to change his behavior, so he said to him “It is better to stand outside, and look inside, than to stand inside and look outside!”
This story seems to raise a simple question: The Frierdige Rebbe was, after all, inside. Shouldn’t the comparison between someone inside looking inside and someone inside looking outside? Why the contrast between being outside and looking inside with being inside and looking outside? Why not say simply ‘You are better off looking inside than outside’?
[I know, Roshei Yeshivos sometimes get a bad rap. People think they make up questions, just in order to give answers, just in order to justify their existence. After all, before you listen to a shiur you understand the gemoro just fine. And in the shiur you hear a bunch of questions, and an answer that’s supposed to resolve them. And you think, ‘what was achieved, that the gemoro is understood? It was understood just fine to begin with, before all of the questions were introduced’.
But I really think the above is a legitimate question...].
You may say – perhaps we don’t need to be so medakdek in the wording of the Rashbatz. But, in this case, that is definitely not correct, since it is a line that was repeated by two of our Rebbeim (!), and it is doubtless that every detail contains a lesson for us.
I think that, perhaps, the key to understanding this story can be via another story, that I am sure we are all familiar with (and I surely recounted it here in the past), so I will retell it briefly:
