There is no such thing as a half-truth by the Rebbe. * The Rebbe seeks one person in the world who really wants the Geula. This is what the Rebbe demands of us and he gives us the kochos for it too. * An inspiring speech given by R’ Zushe Silberstein, shliach in Montreal, at Heichal Beis Menachem in Kfar Chabad.
What stands out in the victory of the s’farim is the final decision of the judge; it was based on one letter of the Rebbe Rayatz, just as the Rebbe anticipated.
It is known that during the trial regarding the s’farim, the lawyers who fought a legal battle to get the s’farim back thought that they needed to take a different tack than the Rebbe. But in the end, it turned out that the Rebbe’s approach is what led to the final victory.
The Rebbe told the lawyers to base the entire case on a letter that the Rebbe Rayatz wrote to Professor Alexander Marcus, one of the great book curators in New York, dated Adar I 1946, in which he wrote “these s’farim are the property of Agudas Chassidei Chabad… the manuscripts and s’farim are great spiritual treasures, the property of the nation.”
The opposing side tried to claim that this letter was written under pressure. As a pretext, to get the American government to help save the s’farim, he presented the s’farim as public property, but he really maintained that it was his personal property.
The judge declared that it was out of the question to say that the Rebbe Rayatz would write something not true, even in order to save the s’farim. He based his decision on this reasoning—that the Rebbe is absolute truth and there is no such thing as half-truth.
THE GEULA CAN ONLY COME THROUGH TRUTH
After the victory with the s’farim in 5747, the Rebbe announced: Now we are starting a new era. What is meant by a new era? What about all the nice things that we did until then? As the Rebbe said himself, can it be said that “Lubavitch is not active?!” That is completely illogical. Still and all, the Rebbe said, apparently there is something that needs to be added and innovated.
What is that “something?” It is possible that what the Rebbe is asking of us is: truth.
Geula, teaches the Rebbe, is truth. As we saw with the judge’s statement: we cannot approach the Geula and real victory through lies. Geula can only come through truth. We need to think about where we are holding when it comes to truth.
I YELLED, “REBBE HELP ME,” AND ON THE LINE WAS THE REBBE’S SECRETARY
A story has been publicized recently about a man from France during the Holocaust and how the Rebbe would bring food for children. I personally know this man; he is my cousin.
A few years ago, on Chanuka, as I sat alone with the menorah (all my children had gone on mivtzaim), I decided to call my cousin who is older than me. I hadn’t spoken to him in a long time and I just wanted to say hello and see how he was, that’s all.
By the way, it’s a very important thing to call someone with whom you haven’t spoken in a long time. It’s Ahavas Yisroel …
I called him, his name is Aharon Dovid, and when he heard that it was me, after a long time when we hadn’t been in touch, he immediately asked, what do you need?
I said I was calling to wish him a happy Chanuka and to ask how he was. He insisted on knowing: What do you really need? Once again, I told him: Nothing.
If so, he said, I will give you Chanuka gelt and he proceeded to tell me fascinating stories. I will tell you one of the stories.
My cousin is a Vizhnitzer Chassid who knew the Rebbe during the war, in France. He became a successful businessman and was a big help to the Vizhnitzer mosdos.
One time, he went to Los Angeles to raise money. As he walked down the street he noticed a Lubavitcher Chassid who looked familiar to him. He suddenly remembered that he was his chavrusa in the Vizhnitzer yeshiva. So he asked him: Is it you? What happened to you? Where’s the Chassidishe levush?
He thought the man had changed what he wore because he was embarrassed to dress as a Vizhnitzer Chassid in Los Angeles.
“It has nothing to do with being ashamed of Chassidic garb,” his friend protested. “I changed my way of dress and have become a Chassid of the Rebbe!”
“How did that happen?!”
“Listen till I finish and I’ll tell you.”
This is his story:
After he married, he lived in Williamsburg. Half a year later he had a job offer in Los Angeles. Since he had no source of livelihood in New York, he decided to move to LA even though he knew nobody there.
After a few months he slowly became acquainted with people in LA but he still did not know anybody beyond those he worked with.
One day, his wife wasn’t feeling well and it seemed serious enough that they decided to go to the emergency room.
After a few hours of waiting, the grim-faced doctor came out and said, “From the tests that we did, her condition seems complicated and dangerous. It’s not certain, but according to what we see, your wife’s disease is quite advanced. I recommend that you go home and not tell her anything; don’t scare her.”
He did not know what to do, to whom to turn. He went home sadly and in confusion. At a time like this, a Jew takes a T’hillim and davens from the depths of his heart that Hashem help him.
At three in the morning, alone at home, he had the sudden thought, I am a Chassid and I have a Rebbe! He began to cry out: Rebbe, help me! Rebbe, help me! Rebbe, help me!
A few minutes passed and the phone rang. He figured (before Caller ID) that it was someone calling from the hospital and maybe there was good news; otherwise, they would not call at this hour. But when he answered, he heard someone with a Russian-Lithuanian accent who was speaking Yiddish and said: I am Chadakov. I am calling you because the Rebbe told me to call you to say that in the morning you should take your wife out of the hospital and go to this doctor and the Rebbe gave a bracha that all would be fine.
At the end of the conversation Chadakov asked him: Did you hear what I said? He must have said yes for the call ended.
While still in complete shock, he sat there and wondered: Did I really get that phone call? Where do I know Chadakov from? Maybe I’m daydreaming and hearing voices? Maybe it was a fantasy. I know what I heard but who is Chadakov?
He did not know who it was but he had a strong feeling that he was connected to the Lubavitcher Rebbe. Then he remembered that there was a Lubavitcher Chassid in LA named R’ Shmuel Dovid Raitchik. He had heard of him but did not know him personally. He knew he was a Chassid who was a baal chesed and who was reported to say the bedtime Shma all night. He hoped R’ Raitchik hadn’t yet gone to sleep.
After looking up the number in the phone book, he managed to find it. It was 3:30 and R’ Shmuel Dovid answered the phone. He began to tell him what had been going on. R’ Raitchik said: Fine, so do as he said.
Since he wasn’t sure exactly what R’ Chadakov had told him, he asked R’ Shmuel Dovid for the phone number of the Rebbe’s office. R’ Raitchik told him: It is 6:30 in NY now and if he called you, it was probably a night of yechidus. It’s possible that the Rebbe is still in 770 and if the Rebbe is in 770, then Chadakov is probably there too and will answer you.
He immediately called and the phone was answered by R’ Chadakov. He asked him to repeat what the Rebbe had said. So Chadakov repeated it: The Rebbe told me to call you and to say that in the morning, take your wife out of the hospital and go to doctor X, and the Rebbe gave his bracha that all would be well.
He asked R’ Chadakov, why did you call me? R’ Chadakov said, because the Rebbe asked me to do so. Bewildered, he asked, but I did not call the Rebbe so why did the Rebbe say to call me? R’ Chadakov said, I can’t answer that. That’s between you and the Rebbe. I did what the Rebbe told me to do.
What happened in the end? The Vizhnitzer turned Lubavitcher told him:
In the morning, I went to the hospital and told the doctor I was taking my wife out. I signed all the documents that said I take responsibility for her and I found the address of the doctor the Rebbe had referred me to.
I called the office and the secretary, who checked the appointment book, said the next appointment would be in a year! I tried explaining that the matter was urgent but that did not help. I decided to take my wife straight to the doctor. We went to the doctor’s office with no prior appointment, and I told him, “You have to see my wife now.”
The doctor was taken aback by my nerve and said that was not possible without an appointment made with the secretary. I said to him, but the secretary said the next available appointment is in a year. The doctor insisted that he would not see us. I then said to the doctor, “The Lubavitcher Rebbe referred me to you.”
Upon hearing this, he said, “I don’t know the Lubavitcher Rebbe but your story interests me. Come in, I want to hear more details. It doesn’t sound like a typical story.”
I walked in and the doctor listened closely, treated my wife, and that was the end of the story.
You are probably afraid to ask what happened, he said to my cousin, Aharon Dovid. Thank G-d, my wife recovered and we have five children and all is well!
But my cousin still did not understand. “But why did you become a Lubavitcher?”
His friend said, “In the middle of the night, when I cried out, ‘Oy Rebbe,’ who called me? The Vizhnitzer Rebbe or the Lubavitcher Rebbe? And you’re asking what happened to me? I saw that there are many Admurim but only one Rebbe, and since then, I am mekushar to him!”
WHEN YOU UNDERSTAND THAT THERE IS A REBBE, YOU NEED TO CHANGE CLOTHES
What did that Vizhnitzer Chassid do? After realizing that there is one Rebbe, he decided to change his mode of dress. What does it mean to change your style of dress? He understood that the Rebbe is not makifim, a Rebbe is not an outer garment. We need to remove the externals and become a p’nimius’dike Chassid. He could not remain on the sidelines.
That is what the Vizhnitzer Chassid understood; if you want to connect to the Rebbe, you need to be a Chassid who is connected in an internal way so that it even expresses itself in one’s outer clothing.
The Rebbe is looking for one Chassid, one Jew in the world, who truly wants the Geula. This is what the Rebbe expects and demands of us and he gives us the ability to attain it.
You cannot reach emes through sheker. You must work with emes, feel and learn with emes.
The Rebbe wants us to get out of our personal galus through true hiskashrus to the Rebbe, as the Rebbe wants it, not the way we think the Rebbe wants it. And we cannot explain it as though the Rebbe meant such and such … The Rebbe once said, I say what I mean.
At “dollars” before 27 Adar, a woman and her little boy went past and she said to the Rebbe that her son would soon be having his first haircut. The Rebbe gave her a dollar and then another dollar for the haircut and then yet another dollar and he said: give this at his bar mitzva.
She moved on but wondered why the Rebbe was mentioning a bar mitzva now. Her son wasn’t yet three! She asked one of the people standing there what the Rebbe meant and the person said, surely the Rebbe meant the haircut but said it was for the bar mitzva.
The story repeated itself that same day with another woman. The Rebbe also told her to give the dollar at the bar mitzva and she also asked why the Rebbe said that. She was given the same explanation but did not agree with it. She wrote to the Rebbe that she had asked for a bracha for her child’s haircut and had received a bracha for the bar mitzva and she wanted to know what the Rebbe meant by that.
The Rebbe responded: I said what I meant and I mean precisely what I say.
We need to know that every word from the Rebbe is utter truth. Don’t think about explaining it; just do as the Rebbe said. If we do as the Rebbe said, and with complete faith, in utter truth, surely we will merit the true and complete Geula through the Rebbe MH”M.