Since I was a young bachur and I didn’t know how to be subtle and beat around the bush, I went up to the rabbi and said, “I don’t understand. You’re a rav, you’re a Torah scholar. You know better. How can you let them get away with this?” * A transcript of a farbrengen held in Morristown, New Jersey in late MarCheshvan 5753, with Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak “Fitzy” Lipskier, of blessed memory. * Part 1
It’s so easy to say everything is treif. Why take the risk? It sounds like a frum attitude, but on the other hand, it’s a very stupid one. It’s not a good attitude. Frum is frum, but there’s also what they call “too frum,” “very frum” – and that means someone stupid who doesn’t know what he’s doing. There are some people who are so frum, everything is unkosher.
Suppose that there was an emergency; somebody drops to the floor. What would you do? Would your first reaction be to run to the telephone and call for an ambulance? “It’s Shabbos! Are you sure?” That’s probably what the reaction would be. Why is that? Because the person is “very frum” – even more than G-d. Can you imagine being more frum than G-d? That’s called being “too frum.” If you’re more frum than G-d, then you’re in trouble because you’re not even religious. That’s about it. It says in Shulchan Aruch, our handbook for life, that any rav who is asked a question about whether one should violate the Shabbos in such a situation is a disgrace. Why? Because it should have been common knowledge that the Torah says to violate the Shabbos even when you’re dealing with a doubtful case of pikuach nefesh. Thus, if they came and asked you, you have blood on your hands. That’s pretty heavy.
Furthermore, the Shulchan Aruch says “Mitzvah b’gadol.” You have a situation requiring immediate action, and you have the rav there, the big scholar. Who’s the one who should do it? You don’t say: “Send him, he’s not so frum anyway; he’s a baal t’shuva. Send the little guy; he’s not such a big chassid.” On the contrary, “Mitzvah b’gadol” – the rav should be the first one to run to the telephone and violate the Shabbos. This comes from a lack of knowledge, not knowing “the kosher ins and outs,” basically caused by stupidity and not learning properly. If you don’t learn properly, you come up with your own conclusions. You decide what’s right and what’s wrong, similar to the dog who became the posek. If you do that, you’re in bad shape.
The simple fact is that we are living now in a very strange time – a pretty sick situation from a layman’s perspective. Believe it or not, this is the world that you, your shadow, and everything that’s part of you are going to face one of these days. You’re going to face the music. Are you ready or not? The day is going to come, and the answer is simple: The time to prepare is now. You want to take it easy? No problem. You can take it easy now. But if you take it easy now, you know what’s going to happen later. Then, it’s going to be too late. Ay, the previous Rebbe says, “It’s never too late,” but it is in a sense. Sure, you can always throw this one away and get another one. That’s a very fine attitude, and it happens here too. You don’t like this chaver? Get another one, what’s the difference? If you can’t get along with a chaver for two hours, how on earth are you going to get along with somebody for twenty-four hours? Think about it. Maybe the time to act is now, not when you’re an old lady and retired. “I’ll make it up then.” It’ll be too late.
DOING T’SHUVA FOR THE REST OF HIS LIFE
This reminds me of a rabbi I met once in a synagogue on Merkaz Shlichus about twenty-four years ago, when we went to visit some hick towns in upstate New York. The local people there called it a “Conservadox” shul. Officially, it was Orthodox by charter, and the rabbi was in charge of the city’s “Vaad HaKashrus.” Yet, his shul was the only shul that allowed treif to be brought in by any caterer. That gives you an idea of what kind of shul it was. It was Orthodox, but the three or four religious Jews in the city called it “Conservadox”. Nice name.
The rabbi was clean-shaven, but he kept Shabbos, put on t’fillin. However, the members were basically non-observant, and they were taught nothing. They were led to believe that chillul Shabbos and eating treif was all right. Since I was a young bachur and I didn’t know how to be subtle and beat around the bush, I went up to the rabbi and said, “I don’t understand. You’re a rav, you’re a Torah scholar. You know better. How can you let them get away with this?”
“Listen,” he tells me. “I have about two more years until my retirement (he was about sixty years old). If I try to teach them something or institute some new policies, I’m risking my pension. But when I retire, I’m moving to Israel and I’m going to do t’shuva for the rest of my life.” He was going to spend his life in t’shuva. Isn’t that a good attitude? It’s good for nothing. Why is he going to do t’shuva? For all the harm that he’s done? There’s no t’shuva you can do for that.
The same thing applies here. T’shuva is not going to help you. When you mess up, you’ve messed up. That’s all. You can do t’shuva on aveiros; you can’t do t’shuva on blowing your life away. You don’t usually get a second chance.
BE HAPPY IF YOU’LL BE A “RASHA V’TOV LO”
You know what’s going on in the business world better than I do. It’s a real safe place to be. You also have the institution of marriage. It’s heavy duty stuff out there. The only thing is that as a Jew, you’re fortunate to have G-d and He gave us the Torah which guides us through life. Torah is the essence of life, and for a Jew, there is no better way. It’s the only way to go. You don’t see it? It’s difficult? Everything is difficult. Anything worthwhile is difficult. You have to pay for it; it takes effort. If you value your life, you’ll do something about it.
That doesn’t mean that from now on, you’re going to become a tzaddik – or even a beinoni. Don’t even try, there’s no hope. You’ll never be a beinoni until Moshiach comes. Ay, the Alter Rebbe says… Maybe I’m an apikorus for saying it: Be happy if you’ll be a “rasha v’tov lo” (a wicked person who prospers). Pretty good level? I’ll settle for that. But you can be a beinoni, if you want.
All this is before you get to Moshiach. If you can’t even do the basics, forget about Moshiach. First, be a mentch. Be a responsible human being, but much more than that, be a Jew. Then, you can talk about Moshiach. That’s a whole new ballgame.
Some of you may feel that you’re ready to retire. You can do that when you’re eighty years old. On his eightieth birthday, the Rebbe talked about the concept of retirement, in the sense that a Jew doesn’t retire. You know when you retire? When they retire your number. Until then, there’s no such thing.
Of course, you get tired, you run out of fuel, you get burnt out. Some people are very much into taking care of themselves, they have to get their beauty rest – sleeping at least nine and a half hours every day with a nap in the afternoon. Life is too short, there’s no time to waste on stupidities. I have an idea: Make a resolution so it will be easier for you to do what you have to do now. When you become about ninety years old, you can sleep twelve hours a day. But now, you’re young. There’s too much to do. By the time you’re ninety, you’ll have no more strength for anything except sleeping. Put off the sleeping, the resting, and the leisure until you’re ninety. You can’t be young forever. There’s an old saying, “Youth is wasted on the youth.” Use the energy that you have now, because soon you won’t have it. “If I would have known…” You know what you would have done if you had known? Probably the same thing. It makes no difference. You know now what you’re supposed to do.
You won’t believe how the secret to Creation is right in front of you. Today, the focus of a Jew, no matter what he sees or where he turns, must be on one central point that permeates everything he does – Moshiach.
L’chaim!
(After giving the bachurim a first-hand account of the historic banquet at the 5753 International Shluchim Conference, R’ “Fitzy” proceeded to elaborate.)
What’s really going on now? I don’t know. As we all understand, Moshiach hasn’t come yet. There may have been someone before now that people thought could be Moshiach, but no more than that. However, things now are slightly different. This is simply too heavy for the average person to digest. You have to understand the meaning. Confused? Join the crowd.
First of all, many of you don’t know much about what was happening when the Rebbe started the mitzvah campaigns back in the fifties and sixties. It actually started in the forties, when the previous Rebbe was still alive. There were very few Lubavitchers, if any, living in Crown Heights in those days. Most of them lived in Brownsville or East New York, about a thirty minute walk away. Since there was no mikveh in Crown Heights then – not even on Union Street – about four or five people, including the Rebbe, would walk to Brownsville on Shabbos morning to go to the mikveh.
YOU CAN’T JUST BE FRUM FOR YOURSELF
As he was walking, the Rebbe would tell the Chassidim accompanying him: You can’t just be frum for yourself. Today, that doesn’t sound like anything new. Back then, this was something unheard of. When did the whole baal t’shuva movement begin? It started a little before some of you were born, that’s all. The Rebbe spoke then about how you have to go out and talk to people about Yiddishkait. Of course, America was a free country, built on the theme of “mind your own business”. You have no right to mix into other people’s lives. To tell someone such things was out of the question. To go to another Jew and talk to him about Judaism was absolutely crazy. Not so, the Rebbe said. You can’t just sit selfishly and keep yourself warm; you have to warm up and illuminate the world.
When the Rebbe (in the days before Yud Shvat) saw that they couldn’t understand what he was talking about, he demonstrated. He walked up to a woman on Shabbos and said, “Listen, you know today is Shabbos. It’s not a day for work. Do your shopping before Shabbos; it’s a holy day. Light candles on Friday evening, especially since you want your son to come home in one piece (how the Rebbe knew that is another story). You have to do whatever you can to carry out G-d’s will.” The woman started crying, and she promised that she would keep Shabbos. This was a typical example of what the Rebbe wants us to do.
How do you get people’s attention? What’s the problem? You get up on a car, you wave a handkerchief, and everyone begins to gather around. Once people start coming, you speak. Those who were walking with the Rebbe probably hid behind some car, as they didn’t want to be associated with him.
GO OUT WITH SELF-SACRIFICE AND G-D WILL TAKE CARE OF THE REST
Years later, the campaign of sending shluchim began. Who would be so crazy to send someone to these places and who would be crazy enough to go? Nowadays, shlichus is a household word. Everyone’s looking forward to go out on shlichus and help other Jews. Not everyone thinks he can do it, but they wish they could. Back in those days, to go out to Nebraska, where there isn’t a single Jewish soul, you can’t get kosher meat, no Jewish school for your children? Are you nuts? What am I going to do out there? How am I going to support myself? What’s my Yiddishkait going to be like? Today, you don’t even understand what I’m saying. Forget about the rest of the world. In America.
It takes a lot of guts to send shluchim to the other end of the world. You need real broad shoulders for that. The Rebbe said: Listen, you go, I’ll take care of you. Your children’s education? Don’t worry; they’ll grow up better than if they sit in Crown Heights – which was a good place to live back then. The yeshivos were excellent. Nevertheless, the Rebbe said, “Don’t worry. Go on mesirus nefesh, and G-d will take care of the rest.” If you were lucky and listened to the Rebbe, you made it. Nobody suffered out there. It was difficult at first, but they came shining through.
Then, the mitzvah campaigns started. This was crazy altogether. Go out into the street and ask someone, “Are you Jewish? Come, put on t’fillin.” Today, what’s the big deal?
When it was first announced that the Rebbe had sent student shluchim to learn in Australia, people were stunned. Today, what’s the problem? You just buy a ticket. Then, it meant traveling for about two weeks. Traveling from Israel to America back in the fifties was unbelievable. I remember as a little shmendrick when the first plane came from Eretz Yisroel. All of Crown Heights would rent buses to go to the airport to greet them, and when they left, we were in buses to escort them to their return flight. We would dance around the El Al plane – can you get close to an airplane today? You don’t know what that means. We used to go inside the airplane and say goodbye to them. One plane came and it was something else.
Shluchim to Australia? I remember when my brother was chosen as one of the first six bachurim to be sent there. This was in 1967, when the T’fillin Campaign started, during Chanukah before the [Six-Day] War. That year, the first group of six students from 770 were chosen to go to Australia.
My brother came home and said, “Ma, I’m going to Australia.” I happened to be standing in the hallway. “What?? Are you crazy?” she cried. It was as if today you came home and said I’m flying to Mars tomorrow. That’s what it was like back in the sixties. Australia was the other end of the world. No fax machines in those days. He was there for two years. The parents were all crying – it was terrible. Now? It’s a different world. Things have changed a little bit. My son is going to Australia? Wow!! Fantastic! If only I could go! I can’t wait! I remember this – and it wasn’t that long ago. If you were here, you would remember. These are a couple of examples, and there are countless others.
HOLY QUESTIONS ON CONTAMINATING T’FILLIN
Mivtza T’fillin – go out and put on t’fillin with other Jews. The opposition was phenomenal. Look back at the old “Thoughts of the Week.” They sound like ancient manuscripts written for primitive cavemen, explaining why you should put on t’fillin with a secular Jew. What are you going to accomplish? Would you ask that question today? Today, you don’t ask questions like that because we know the answer. Take a look at the thousands and thousands of Jews who are observant now because somebody took the time to put on t’fillin with them.
Yet, in those days, the criticism was overwhelming, unreal. And who was criticizing? All the rabbanim throughout the world – every “Tom, Dick, and Harry” and his brother, too. “A disgrace to the t’fillin! You take a non-observant Jew and you contaminate the holy t’fillin! Can you imagine what kind of impure thoughts he has when he puts on the t’fillin!” (As if your thoughts are so holy when you put them on…) “Did he go to the mikveh? Did he wash negel vasser?” Holy questions – literally coming from G-d Himself…
And this went on and on. Books were written on it, newspaper articles criticizing the Rebbe were printed. Then came the Neshek Campaign. Can you think of something wrong with lighting Shabbos candles? You probably couldn’t for the life of you – whether according to nigleh, chassidus, or anything else. Yet, when the Rebbe came out with this mivtza, every Orthodox rabbi or so-called Jewish leader in the universe (as opposed to the non-religious who knew nothing, at least they didn’t campaign against the Rebbe) was up in arms: “What? Little girls lighting Shabbos candles – with a bracha? It’s going against the Shulchan Aruch! It’s a custom – and ‘minhag Yisroel, Torah hi’; you’re not allowed to make new customs…” And the list goes on, and this happened every time the Rebbe instituted a new campaign.
(To be continued be”H)