Answering the WICKED son | When the Lubavitcher Rebbe reached out to Bobby Fischer | Parsha Bo

um I want to read to you a letter that Bobby Fischer wrote to the encyclopedia encyclopedia Judaica you guys know encyclopedia um so Bobby Fisher you guys know Bobby Fischer the great chess champion protege wunderkind he was a chess genius and champion at a very very young age he was also known at a time of Russian dominance of Chess so he was one of the few Americans who were competitive and uh in his later life he became a recluse and he had a very sad life he sort of dropped off the map and um it's it's a it's a sad story very sad story about how he never really adjusted to normal life he was a genius at chess and seemed to be very very angry and frustrated and not very well adjusted for anything other than being a a grand master at chess but at any rate um so here's a letter that he wrote June 28 1984. to encyclopedia Judaica offices in Manhattan gentlemen knowing what I do about Judaism I was naturally distressed to see that you have erroneously featured me as a Jew in encyclopedia Judaica please do not make this mistake again in any future editions of your voluminous pseudo-authoritative publication I am not today nor have I ever been a Jew and as a matter of fact I am uncircumcised I suggest rather than fraudulently misrepresenting me to be a Jew and dishonestly abusing my name and reputation as a kind of advertising gimmick to improve the image of your religion you try to promote your religion on its own merits if indeed it has any in closing I trust that I am not being unrealistically optimistic in thanking you in advance for your anticipated cooperation in this matter truly yours Bobby Fischer the world chess champion so that's how Bobby Fischer felt about being described as a Jew okay if you were to ask me not my personal opinion but what does halacha say meaning what does Jewish law say if you would ask me I mean he since passed away but if you would ask me is there any question of Bobby Fischer was Jewish the answer is there's no question I mean he was born to a Jewish mother he was that's it I mean that's that's the there you go Bobby Fischer was Jewish but apparently being referred to as Jewish was a very sore spot for him and in fact I think it was in the 70s already he joined some type of a Christian cult my point just is that here's an example of somebody who vehemently denied his his Jewish identity I'm telling you for halachic purposes um wow I don't like how that sounds for her local purposes that makes it sound like like I'm minimizing it Allah means Torah Torah law is the reality God's law determines the reality in God's world so let me take out those scare quotes purposes and just say in all reality in God's reality Bobby Fischer remained a Jew even a wayward Jew a rebellious Jew a self-hating Jew whatever you want to say but he remained a Jew and remains a Jew um why am I talking about this so um it is not a new idea that Jewish people would disassociate from the Jewish people from the Jewish um Nation um this week's buddy is the third Torah reading in the book of schmeiss of the book of Exodus and we're reading about the Exodus from from Egypt so I just want to read to you from [Applause] from this week's Parsha Valley Maisha Moses held out his hand toward the sky there was a thick Darkness behold upon the entire land of egyptus yamim that endured for three days lasted three days time okay so Rashi who's our foremost commentary explains what was the deal with this is one of the ten plagues the plague of Darkness so he explains a few things but I just want to Jump Ahead to uh just one part of it or Rashi says why specifically did God bring upon the Egyptians darkness in other words could have done a lot of things to them so why what was the purpose of high Shack of darkness and Rashi explains it wasn't just that the darkness was meant to inflict discomfort or Terror upon the Egyptians there was a functional purpose as well to the darkness he says that there were among the Jewish people in that generation Wicked people they didn't want a leaf they didn't want to leave they knew that the Exodus is coming they didn't want to take part in it umesu and they died in Egypt they never left indeed they didn't want to leave they didn't leave they died during the three days of darkness why during that time so that the Egyptians shouldn't have the satisfaction of seeing their downfall of the yemro and say afang Lake and kameenu they are being struck down along with us in other words it was A Private Matter that uh there were those who were not going to leave Egypt but that was none of the Egyptians business so it was done under the table so to speak now you might ask how common was how what are we talking about numbers wise so I want to skip ahead to next week's Parsha the parsha's bashalach so it says um Hashem made the people go round about circuitously by way of the Wilderness of the Sea of reeds Royal and the Jewish people went up out of the land of Egyptian what is mean so again Rashi our foremost commentary explains what this word hamushi means and he gives us a couple of explanations not entirely satisfied with either of them that's what Rashi does when he doesn't feel feel that one answer is completely satisfactory so he gives another so one meaning is um that they were armed they were armed but then he gives another explanation means alternatively the word hamoshim means one out of five one out of five one-fifth yotsu left one out of five left him and four parts of five meaning eighty percent died during the three days of darkness so how she gets this from the mothers from merkelta and uh it's a wild concept that 80 percent of the Jewish people at that time didn't want to leave and therefore did not leave and they quietly passed away during the three days of darkness that's just absolutely Wild now yeah so not to scare anybody especially the balabastas but pesach's in a couple of months so uh yeah it's in uh 10 weeks yeah start cooking start cleaning at least start getting nervous um who had the class about anxiety we took away everyone's anxiety so now pace is coming to return the anxiety yeah um in the Haggadah we famously have the four Sons Okay negative the title speaks famously again uh corresponding to four children that's referring to four different places in Torah where a where a father is responding to a child and explained it explaining to him the significance of uh of the observance of Passover so our sages took those four uh verses and said they they there's there are four different verses because you need four different ways of responding to four categories of children there's much to be said about the four children um but I just want to focus on the one who's called the Ben rosha the The Wicked Child it says Russia the wicked one what does he say he says what is this service he's referring to the Corbin pesach to the the sacrifice of the of the Paschal Lamb and in our days when we don't have that because the temple isn't standing then he would be referring to the other rituals of Passover observance the matzah and the bitter herbs and the wine so at any rate he says what's this what's going on here uh what is or rather what what what's this for you lochem what does this mean to you to you not to him in other words in his question already he's um standing apart from what's Happening and he's saying what does it mean to you guys what is this that you guys have going on meaning he doesn't include himself how late is reading from the hagoda and because he excludes himself from the group covered by Iker it is tantamount to the most uh heretical statement basically by denying that he has any part in the Jewish people he's denying all of Judaism of the MLA and you should blunt his teeth and there are different explanations if that's a figure of speech if it's poetic we're not going to get into this you should blunt his teeth let's just say you should answer him harshly the Emma line you should tell him why am I making this observance because of what the Lord did for me when I left Egypt leave a light the father says from for him for himself from for me not not for him not for the son meaning you want to exclude yourself fine you're excluded this happened to me it didn't happen to you no problem as you please foreign if you would have been there you would not have been redeemed and of course we know that wasn't uncommon in fact that was more common than uncommon so the father tells this son who's sort of questioning his Jewish identity yeah no problem this is not a new issue that we're facing as Jews we had people like you back in Egypt and you know what none of them left so with your attitude you would have been one of those who didn't leave that's it so congratulations now I'll ask I'll ask an emotional question then I'll ask a more Scholastic question the emotional question is ouch like that that's painful like why is a father speaking to a child like this but I'll ask a more Scholastic question which is the hagada is uh is educational it's teaching us about the Redemption from Egypt and in fact the way that we do the Mitzvah of talking about the Exodus is by following the Haggadah so the question really is this little extra Zinger that Twist of the knife like where he says don't don't worry it's not you it's me yeah yeah it's me it's my thing not your thing but then that extra and by the way if you would have been in Egypt you wouldn't have gone out why does it have to be included forget about the fact that it's it's hard to forget but set aside for a moment that it's so harsh to even to read these words but just from a from from a teaching point of view what is that God is teaching Us by including those lines is there anything there's is there anything didactic are we is there a lesson that we can glean from these words so the answer is yes yes we can glean quite an important lesson from these words and and that is first let me preface by saying that the Exodus from Egypt was the first Redemption of the Jewish people it is the archetypical Redemption of the Jewish people but it is certainly not the ultimate Redemption and the proof of it not being the ultimate Redemption is that after we were redeemed from Egypt and we were no longer slaves to Pharaoh but we ended up being exiled by other world powers the the Babylonians and the Romans and the Persians and the Greeks so uh it's not the ultimate but it is the archetype and it is the precedent that sort of establishes what Redemption means but it's not the ultimate meaning it's not everything that a Redemption could be the ultimate Redemption the Redemption which is everything that you would ever want from a Redemption and more what we call the gulaima the complete Redemption the complete Redemption is that is to our righteous anointed one who is a descendant of King David and he is the sort of Moses figure of just like Moses was in the Redemption from Egypt so mashiach the descendant of King David is the Redemptive figure and leader in the ultimate Redemption the amitus the true and complete Redemption and that's what makes it true what makes it complete is that there's no gaulus after it it doesn't lapse it's permanent it's eternal um in fact metaphysically if we can speak metaphysically for a second the the ultimate Redemption is a revelation of infinity within the finite world um and part of that is it's eternality it's infinite another part of it by the way is that a subsequent stage of the Redemption is the resurrection because at that point even physical life will be shown to to be permanent not fleeting not not uh ephemeral but rather Eternal as an expression of of God's Infinity at any rate the point is that whenever we learn about the Exodus from Egypt we're not just learning history we're learning about a template and how it sets patterns for what is going to happen but also significantly the way that the ultimate Redemption being the ultimate Redemption meaning being greater than any of its predecessors the way that the pattern will actually uh be different because when mashiach comes it will be different I mean it's it's categorically different it's it's a Redemption from which there is no subsequent uh going back into Exile or slavery so it is categorically different one of the ways in which the true and complete Redemption is different than the Redemption from Egypt or any other redemption in our history for that matter is who gets redeemed who experiences Redemption um in Sanford Florida in the book of Deuteronomy towards the end of of Moses's life he is preparing his flock and he tells them about the end of days tells them what it's going to be like when things sort of all fall into place and the purpose for which the world was created becomes revealed and we experience a fulfillment of of the Perfection that was the the original plan from the outset so one of the things that we experience is the Lord your God will return your captivity um and Rashi again we we go to Rashi tells us some fascinating things about this including I don't want to go off on this uh as a tangent but from the wording of this verse it implies that not only will Hashem return us from our captivity but Hashem will return from captivity it's a it's an intransitive verb not he'll make you return but he himself will return because Hashem himself as it were was exiled from his world so to speak and when his people are reinstated when they are taken out of Exile so too is Hashem himself coming home I think we have to mention that uh judge fat the tenth day of the Hebrew month of shwat is coming which is the anniversary of the passing of the sixth and then I one year after that the seventh rabbit assuming leadership on the on the yard side of his predecessor and the Deb is first mimer's first discourse his inaugural address was basiligania which are words from the song of songs of malach of King Solomon and that line is Hashem speaking Hashem says bossy legani I've come to my garden and as the magic explains when they built the mishkan they built the physical Sanctuary for God in the in the desert he called it a homecoming because he said now I can return to my he called the world the physical world my garden he said I was expelled through various different sins which repelled me but now you've brought me back to the world and I'm coming home this is this is where I this is where I yearn to be and of course uh that was only the revelation of God in the physical world in one very specific location in the holy of holies of the sanctuary which traveled in the wilderness and then later on when they built a permanent uh structure in Jerusalem But ultimately when mashiach comes in again the the Gula shlema is is a complete ghoul in so many ways another way in which it's complete is that that revelation of God will not just be in a place in the physical world it will be in the entirety of the physical world so the entire world the entire physical plane will become God's home um that's that's what we refer to as that's what the magic time Kumar refers to as a Dwelling Place in the lower Realms which is what Hashem desires at any rate so Rashi tells us that this this verse here uh means that Hashem will return the Jewish people will return um but I what I want to read you from the Rashi here is one particular um yeah so first he says Hashem himself is returning because Hashem himself is in Exile says as I say just put it the divine presence itself is is an excellent but there's another explanation Rashi says she that the day of the in-gathering of the Exiles will be so great and so difficult IES as it is as if he himself will need to hold by the hand each each individual Jew mean from their place meaning from their place in golus in other words it's not just going to be something where uh hashem's gonna say all right everybody let's go and then everyone's gonna come rushing to return to their Homeland no there are people who are going to need coaxing and we call it hand-holding that's the idiom in English but Rashi literally says he's going to have to hold there she's going to have to hold them by their hands there will be Jews when the moment of the true and complete Redemption comes and we're like I I don't know I mean I don't even have a shoe membership are you sure are you sure this is my it's okay you know let me know how it is when you get there maybe I'll visit once in a while and Hashem himself or how she says is gonna I mean obviously this is poetry but whatever it means it's equivalent to the idea of Hashem himself taking each individual by the hand and saying come come let's go quotes a verse like it says in the the book of Isaiah Isaiah 27 13 yeshio the atem to look to Bene which means this this verse in Isaiah is talking about the day of the Redemption he says that you're going to have to take them one by one yeah so let's go back to the band Russia to the wicked son the estranged Sun the disenfranchised son at the Seder we tell him that okay no problem leave a Loyola it happened to me not to you and then we add that knife twisting comment if you would have been there you would not have been redeemed what's the purpose of this what are we supposed to learn what is the Haggadah trying to let us in on an important piece of information about how the true and complete Redemption will differ from the Redemption from Egypt and every other Redemption that is the father tells the son your attitude is not a new attitude in fact the majority of our people in Egypt had such an attitude and they didn't leave Egypt and in fact as terrible as this is to say if you would have been there you wouldn't have left but there's an implication in that statement if you would have been there if you would have been there you would not have been redeemed and the true and complete Redemption through our righteous Redeemer you can keep up this ad I hope you don't keep up this attitude I hope you have a change of heart but even if mashiach will come and say let's go and you're going to say I have nothing to do with you and if you put me in the encyclopedia Judaica I'm going to sue you you can say whatever you want you're coming with if God himself has to hold you by the hand and bring you into a Redemptive state now let's let's talk a little bit more about this why is it different why is the Redemption different than the uh and all other previous redemptions so I'm gonna do my best to try to explain it to you but I want to admit before I start I don't completely get it and even though I don't completely get it I didn't want to I didn't think it was fair that you should suffer because I'm not a hundred percent clear on this idea and I just want to explain something there are ideas I mean most of the ideas I teach are pretty deep not that I'm a deep thinker I didn't come up with the ideas that I teach I I learned them from the from the holy books and most of the ideas are pretty deep in the Holy books and they take me years sometimes to figure them out to a point where I even feel competent enough to dare to speak about them publicly this idea I don't really feel like I have a handle on it so well but I'm going to speak about it anyway because well mashirk is coming so at least I should do my best to tell you what's about to happen um so here's the deal when the Jewish people were redeemed from Egypt Hashem described us even prior to the Redemption he told Moses to tell pharaoh that we are binib khairi Hashem called the Jewish people my my son my firstborn so Hashem metaphorically compared us to children and elsewhere in the story also says you the Jewish people are called hashems children um but that was before the Redemption and more specifically before the Revelation at Sinai when we speak about chosenness when we speak about you chose us as a nation what what event signifies that choosing it's the event of the Revelation at Sinai at Sinai every single Jewish Soul was present even those of all future righteous converts from subsequent Generations so literally every Jew was present not just all of those who made it out of Egypt but every future Jew and um that's when we were chosen and it's funny because we were already his children but then we got chosen seemingly you don't have to choose your child you're stuck with your child like this is this is family what can you do I can't change that fact but I'm going to tell you what the lab explains in uh and uh I don't entirely get it he says that a father's relationship with a child is natural and as such it's sort of a lower level relationship relatively speaking because it's nature which compels you to have this connection but choosing comes from a deeper place now choosing is not what we normally when we say we translate it as choosing usually in English when we say choosing we mean choosing something based on merits like pros and cons and that kind of stuff which is a an informed choice you get the consumer reports and you then you figure out which which card to buy that's not what berkira that's not what choosing means choosing actually means random Choice like random selection I think is the closest you can get to it except it's not machine generated Randomness it's true Randomness that comes from the deepest depths of the Soul that's how this explains it if I choose something based on a reason it's coming from my intellect if I choose something seemingly randomly it's coming from my essence so if I choose to be loyal to my kin either it's because I see that it's expedient and therefore it's an intellectual choice so it's coming from an intellect or even if I don't see that it's expedient but I can't fight it because there's this nature compelling me okay but that's nature nature is not my Essence nature is sort of like a a software that's put into the system that makes I mean you see it even in the animal kingdom that that there's a certain loyalty uh at least in many species between children and parents um but when something is selected and make no mistake we understand that the the chosenness is not an indication of superiority to the contrary if we would have been chosen based on any virtues then that's not true random selection then it's an informed Choice based on reasons and then actually our relationship with God would be as tenuous as those reasons in other words maybe we were really something special 3 300 such years ago but then you know uh what have you done for me lately and that we don't have those virtues anymore so God would stop selecting us or maybe some other nations who were uh you know the Cinderella story they came up from behind and they emerge and they surpassed us and now God would choose them but the point is that the choosing was never based on rational reasons and it wasn't even based on the nature the natural pull of a father to a child it was again this is such a clumsy language but the closest I can I can get to it is to say true Randomness just to say this is what I'm that's what I'm choosing this is what I'm choosing and service explains that that choice is the essence it's the revelation of the essence it's the one way to express your true your deepest self-hood so when God chooses the Jewish people he connects them to his essence which means that as long as we were a family as long as it was just like it was in Egypt about well naturally a Jew gravitates to God because he calls us his children we call him our father so that's pretty compelling but it's not Fail-Safe it's not foolproof and in fact a person can choose to go against their nature and they can renounce their family yeah but once we were chosen once the essence of God himself connected to us and changed our essence now you can renounce it but it has Zero Effect ultimately inevitably the essence will have to come revealed it is impossible and therefore we say really ludicrous things like and and I'm I'm not trying to be funny when I say ludicrous these are crazy statements that inevitably every Jew will do teshuva they will they will all repent every Jewel repent well how can you guarantee a thing like that why would you even make such a such an assertion and and the closest thing again I'm not I haven't mastered this idea yet but what so this is explaining is that because it's not just a relationship not even a really really strong relationship like like uh like a kinship relationship but because it became the essence of the Jew ultimately you can deny your essence you can lie about your essence you could be angry about your essence but you can't do one thing to change it and ultimately it's going to come out and you're just gonna have to accept it and you're going to have to own it and there's nothing you can do so what we're saying is that the true and complete Redemption another way describe to describing the true and complete Redemption is the true and complete Redemption is the event or perhaps series of events in which the essence of every Jewel will be forced to come to the fore IGN and it will no longer be possible for any Jew to live in denial of their essential identity you could have done that in Egypt you could have said I don't identify with my family but when mashiach comes there's there's no denial that will be effective anymore because essentially now your essence is that you belong to Hashem and you can't deny that fact any more than you can deny being yourself so for a Jew to say well you got the wrong guy I'm not Jewish is like somebody that's saying I'm not me well you are you you can't not be you I mean I'm not trying to play semantic games you can't you cannot not be you and and you can do whatever you want to try to disprove that you are you but ultimately you are you you know the the story in column about the guy who went to the bath house and he was getting undressed and he got scared because he said you know in the bath house if I don't have my clothes on how will I recognize myself because everyone looks the same undressed so how am I supposed to know who I am so he says oh I got an idea he had a little red string in his pocket he pulled out the red string he tied it around his toe so he says when I get out of the bath and I want to find where my clothes are and I'll know which clothing to put on in which home to go home to and I'll look for the guy with the red string on his toe and that that'll be me because I'm gonna put it on right now so he tied the red string around his toe and he went into the bath but obviously in the bath the red strings slid off and he came walking out and he's looking around for a guy with a red string and he looks at himself he looks at others he doesn't see any great oh no he starts panicking how am I going to know who I am how am I going to find the right home well the red string in the bath somebody else stepped on it and it stuck to that guy's foot so all of a sudden the guy looks around he sees another guy with a red string on his toe the guy who stepped on the red string so the original guy runs up to this guy and he says sir can you help me I know who you are but do you have any idea who I am so it's a it's an absurdity because the one thing you can't not know is who you are because whoever you are that's who you are you can't change that fact you can't not be you you can act in a way that's self-betrayal you can behave in a way where you're where you're you're you even behave opposite to your own interests and your own identity but it doesn't change your identity to another home store is a guy from hum one on a business trip maybe this is what's so foolish about the film people is that they it seems there's a lot of stories about them having an identity crisis by the way should I think it was Eric Erickson who innovated the identity crisis so maybe we should uh take a look at Erickson again but at any rate so this this guy from com was on a business trip and he stopped off at uh oh that no they made him get off the train because there was snow on the tracks so everybody from the train had to get lodging in a hotel I went to the hotel and all the other passengers had already rented up all the the rooms so he's begging the clerk please give me a room I just need to because I need to sleep a few hours and I want to go back to the train station the the next train is in the morning at dawn so I was like I don't have any more rooms I don't have he says please please he says you know I have one room but there's a Russian general staying in that room and he he doesn't want any roommates he says listen I'll sneak in I'll sleep for a few hours and you come and just tap me before Dawn and I'll leave I'll tiptoe out of there and the general won't even know that I was in the room so um the the clerk says fine okay fine I'll do it so the helm guy goes into the room and he gets undressed and he gets into bed and he sleeps for a few hours and Before Dawn the desk clerk comes and Taps him silently gets up silently in the dark he gets dressed and he doesn't realize in the dark he didn't put on his own clothes he put on the Russian General's clothes he didn't realize that because it was dark now he's walking down the street and he sees some soldiers walk by and they salute him so wow it's pretty interesting I'm getting saluted he gets to the desk of the the what he called the train station the depot and he was a ticket they said sir we're not going to charge you of course uh your ticket is paid for and he's thinking why is everybody treating me so nicely and he turned around he he passed a window and he could see his reflection in the window and he sees the uniform he's wearing this full General's uniform he says oh no that stupid death clerk he woke up the general now I'm back in my room sleeping and I'm gonna miss the train okay so again even if you're dressed like a general you didn't become a general and you're not back somewhere else sleeping you're exactly right here where you are but that's what I'm saying you can live in a way that is a complete war against your identity it won't change your identity and when mashiach comes that war is going to be over and there will be there'll be peace inner peace that every Jew will be able to be at peace with his or her Essence which is their Jewish identity that was that was established when God chose all the Jewish Souls at Sinai so here's what I want to tell you Bobby Fischer was looking for Bobby Fischer he tried to get to him but ever tried to get the Bobby Fischer you ever heard of rashevsky Sammy rashevsky he was one of the Great Grand masters of chess he was one of the few Americans who was competitive at that level on the world class level in the 20th century and he competed against Fisher was also a Jew he was born in Poland from a family of Garrix but as a child he moved to America and he actually grew up in Crown Heights Brooklyn in fact in the 1940s he had yechidus with the sixth of Chabad and after the Frida karabas passing he continued to have a relationship with the seventh rep and roshovsky was famous for being Shema Shabbos he kept Shabbos yeah he would not compete on Shabbos and that was like a well-known thing so in he turned 70 and he wanted to retire you know in general the rabbit was against retirement could have been never retired spoke about it's not good to retire so rashevsky was 70 already in 1982. and uh he wanted to retire the debit told him don't retire you should continue to compete because when you compete it's a kidish Hashem it's a sanctification of God's name why because he didn't compete on Chavez it was a known thing in fact I'll tell you a story in a second where he competed with Bobby Fischer and his Shabbos observance actually factored into the story um there was a I want to go back in time a little bit to the 60s um there was an incident that took place at the Beverly Hills Hilton called the match of the century in 1961 between Bobby Fischer and Sammy rashevsky both American Jews and um it was Friday afternoon and it was still tied and they had to stop because of Shabbos so they told Bobby Fischer we're going to continue on Sunday morning Bobby Fischer was not a morning person they say he had the Circadian rhythm of a bartender so he slept in and he missed the Sunday match and then they scheduled another match he slept in for that too and he forfeited and then he sued the World Chess League but at any that's not even the main point of the story I told you so rashevsky was going to retire in 1982 at the age of 70 that Abbott told him continue to compete because you make a killer Hashem when you compete because you keep Shabbos so what happened is in 1984 at the age of 72 rishevsky went to the Reykjavik open in Iceland and he tied for first place and afterwards he got a letter from the rabbit congratulating him on winning in PS of the letter and I'm going to read to you the PS of the letter the following lines may appear strange but I consider it my duty not to miss the opportunity to bring it to your attention this is 1982 the Deb is told uh or 1984 I'm sorry 1984 rashevsky is 72 years old that I was told him not to retire and now he just tied for first place at the Reykjavik open the number writes words of congratulations and then a PS and says you may find this strange but I'll I'll feel remiss in my duty not to mention this you are surely familiar with the life story of Bobby Fischer of whom nothing has been heard in quite some time this is the early 80s Bobby Fischer dropped off the map in the 70s became a recluse became a hermit his his strained relationship with his Jewish identity was one of many issues he became very combative and very uh I mean he he was he was thank God in those days the paparazzi were not as uh in full force as they are today because he was a he was a he was a spectacle he was somebody who had been a great uh hero of of American culture I told you during the Cold War he was the only American who was really competitive against the Soviets and he had this tragic fall so the devil says nothing's been heard where's Bobby Fischer unfortunately he did not appear to have the proper Jewish Education which is probably the reason for his being so alienated from the Jewish way of life or the Jewish people so the W here is giving a probable narrative and he's stating it mildly that Bobby Fischer is estranged from the Jewish people but then I was saying what do you want from him he didn't get an education he grew up going to a public school in Brooklyn and he he didn't get the right education however being a Jew he should be helped by whomever possible is sitting in Brooklyn running his entire organization and he has an entire community he has to see them schools and and and and and congregations and community centers and any regular leader like that in that position would say you know what Bobby Fischer he already chose his lot Bobby Fischer has renounced the Jewish people he's not our problem anymore it's not our problem is writing to Sammy rashevsky and saying listen 72 years old he's giving him work that's very difficult than ever saying I want you to go find out where's Bobby Fischer because he just he received the poor education that's all it is that's all it is and he's Jewish and he's because he's Jewish we've got to help him I'm writing to you about this since you are probably better informed about him than many other persons and perhaps you may find some way in which he could be brought back to the Jewish fold either through your personal efforts or in some other way and roshovsky actually took the schlichus very seriously and he went to LA where Fisher lived I think he lived in Pasadena and they met and they spoke for three hours now you're going to say so then Bobby Fischer stopped renouncing his Judaism and then he put on fill in and became Shabbos observant and he and proud observant Jew no no he didn't say it's not Hollywood this is real life story happened in LA but it's not it's not Hollywood it's real life and in real life sometimes we don't see the end of the story you know I had a dear dear friend who was one of the most intelligent people I've ever known in my life and he was a Buddhist priest and we used to study Tanya together because he was Jewish and when a Jew becomes a Buddhist he can't be a regular Buddhist he has to be the Buddhist priest right but we used to study Tanya together and he was such a genius we I really enjoyed studying with him but whenever I talk about him and then people say well where is he now I said well he passed away and they say well did he become religious before he passed away and I say no this isn't Hollywood he he was cremated and his ashes were scattered in Tibet okay because that's what happens in this gullus that's what happens in this in this crazy Exile that's what happens but that doesn't make the truth any less true the truth that remains true and eventually will be revealed to all as true is that even my friend who was cremated thinking that he was a Buddhist and even Bobby Fischer who renounced his Jewish identity and any other example you want to come and you want to bring to me and say even him and even him and even her yes yes and it's sad and it's tragic when somebody is so divorced from their own Essence could there be a greater dysfunction than someone who is divorced from them from their own self but what do you think Redemption means it means a lot of things it means World Peace it means an end to hunger it means an end to disease it means a lot of things but one of the things that also means and all these things are are connected is that the essence will no longer be able to be hidden or or distorted and and the the true identity of every single Jewish person is going to be brought to the fore even if Hashem himself has to go on a case-by-case basis and take by the hand and and bring with him and coax every individual Jew and say it's okay you can come home now you can come back to yourself now so bottom line here's what we have to know first of all if you think that you're the Jew who's the wicked son and that there's no coming back and that you already wrote yourself off and you're even worse than Bobby Fisher I highly doubt anyone sitting here tonight feels that way I mean maybe if I'd see someone brand new I never recognized they would say oh maybe just wandered in but uh I highly doubting with sitting here feels that way about themselves maybe someone watching online right now accidentally the algorithm did something weird and sent you to a rabbi and somehow you got almost an hour into a talk from a rabbi maybe you like chess and you saw it was about Bobby Fischer and you just started watching and you got to this point so what I want to tell you is come back to yourself come back to the truth own who you are you cannot undo Who You Are okay that's one but here's here's the I think the more important lesson and this is the call of the hour and this is the work we have that we have to do until mashiach comes and that is when you meet one of your brothers and sisters who claim to not be a brother or a sister you can tell them that's fine because you know what back in Egypt it was a clannish type of thing it was brothers and sisters and you could denounce the family and you could say I don't want to be part of this family and it would work back in Egypt if you would say I am giving up my my membership to this family and it would work and in fact four-fifths of our people made that choice and and they're gone but once God brought you to Sinai and I say you as an individual he brought your soul to Sinai and he gathered you with all the Jewish Souls around that that mountain and and he revealed himself to us in his holy Torah and his will and his plan for the world that's it your essence was changed and there's no going back there's no way there's no way to set back the clock and go back to the way things were back in Egypt so we have to have this message ready we have to be clear about it we can't get confused about it I'm getting very very concerned about the fact that in the Orthodox Community I'm seeing confusion about this where people feel greater fellowship and affinity for people who share their ideological views then they feel an affinity and an essential connection to those who are fellow members of the Jewish people okay I know it's my friend Assi Spiegel from was in town last week he came to soulword Studios and we sat down we spoke and he was talking about the fact that you know uh nowadays we uh we were reminiscing when we were welcome and we were Shiva boys it was understood that most Jews you speak to are going to have a standoffish attitude and they're going to ridicule religion and they're gonna they're gonna they're gonna be at odds with you ideologically but that was all part of the fun we loved that and we were kind of lamenting the fact that in today's day and age in 2023 it seems like a lot of our colleagues have become comfortable with just associating In Pockets of ideologically similarly thinking people where it just became sort of like you know you hang out with your the people who you can discuss politics with without arguing and it's like that's that's you're missing the point you're missing the point like a Jew is a Jew as a Jew as a Jew and and if there's a Jew who disagrees with everything that you believe is Jewish and let's say you're right not only you believe it's Jewish you're right you know what's Jewish and you met a Jew who who's antagonistic to every single idea that's a Jewish idea okay fine so don't talk about anything with them so give them chicken soup so say look him so so sing a song so so dance and dance so give them a hug but it doesn't change the fact that the essence is the essence and so very very very soon Sheikh comes every single Jew even Bobby Fischer he'll come back and he'll be at peace and he'll be able to embrace who he is and everyone else every other Jew who was confused about who they are they're going to have Clarity and the whole world is going to have clarity and it should be really really really it's it's been long enough it should be all ready now should be tonight