Letters of the Rebbe: "Should Unpaid Teachers Strike?" (Class 9)

again to another letter from 30 letters in 30 days tonight's letter is uh different in many ways from any of the letters that we've learned so far it's a letter it's about education which is a subject that we've spoken about in the past but it's coming at it from a different angle it's uh speaking about a teacher's strike when should teachers strike and uh you're going to see that eva's perspective very novel perspective on that issue before we go into the letter i want to mention there are groups specifically of the notions of conus of the righteous women all over the world really on all continents who are making gatherings as a sort of companion to these classes where they get together and have facilitated discussions on the letters that we're all learning here online i believe there was a meeting last night in melbourne australia last night in melbourne means like a day and a half ago two days ago uh in america where they got together to discuss the letters so shout out to melbourne i wonder what they thought of our letter we had the other day which was uh rich and it was all about yeshiva and melbourne also there's a group in crown heights anche lubovich in crown heights who have been getting together daily to discuss the letters a group of women who are discussing these letters and they're getting together tonight as well so shout out to anche lobovich also you should mention that tonight or today rather you'd adore is the york site of a very special hasid yeshua zelig katzman oliver shalom of whom the rebbe once said if i can't rely on zelig who can i rely upon and his descendants are getting together and learning the letters they're all learning the letters all along all the 30 days but there's a special gathering of them in honor of the york site and they are getting together to watch this year and to discuss the letters so we want to acknowledge the katzman family and relatives and in-laws and all of his children and grandchildren who are getting together to do that and also their sponsorship of tonight's class and this should be nishmas his nisham aliyah should have much from all of his children grandchildren great grandchildren who are continuing in his way of heartfelt devoted connection to their habit um okay let's somebody's saying we're having problems with the zoom being locked um i'm sorry someone's gonna have to deal with that other than me okay youtube works if you can't get on zoom go to youtube and uh we'll try better next time i see about uh 78 people on the zoom so i don't think it's actually locked at any rate okay tonight's letter letter number nine wow letter number nine border hashem you'd base my heisman tough shintasv this is the twelfth day of the month of khashvin brooklyn and it's written to haver hamerim maybe you translate that as the teachers union it's not not written to an individual it's written to a group we've had that before that i've been writing to groups this time it's a group of teachers specifically a teacher's union and you're going to see why that i was writing to a teacher's union as i mentioned before it's about the idea of a teacher's strike greetings and blessings in answer to your plural uh all of your letter ingram is writing to a group of people your letter is from the second day of this month of kashmir i only got it now that ebba says i just got it i'm advancing this letter's turn i'm pushing it ahead of the line we've had that before where the debbie said i'm answering your letter out of turn i'm answering it quicker because you asked me to do so also we had another letter with it ever said because the issue is painful and here again that i was saying because the issue is painful so from great pain i am i'm speeding up the response i just got it now really it should wait its turn until the other letters that i've seen already or i've received already uh have been answered properly but from my great pain i'm going to answer this one right now immediately okay so what's the dub is great pain here vesebus on hollis and then there's dot dot dot a blank um the the cause of my pain is that in the content of their letter the one that they just wrote to me um they say that the administration of the and the rabbit here i i presume in the original letter the name of the yeshiva was written i don't know if in the original didn't want to say the name of the yeshiva or if this is a redaction that was edited for privacy at any rate here it doesn't say the name of the yeshiva just says the administration of blank link yeshiva made him they owe a certain amount of back pay to the teachers so the teachers in turn told the administration they're going to do a partial strike it's not even a full strike yamato basho salimit means they're going to decrease the hours of teaching so they're not even going on a full strike it's just sometimes they call it a partial strike or a slowdown until they start paying off the back pay in other words not even the conditions of the strike are not even to be paid up in full the back pay but at least the the han hola the administration should start making payments so that ever says that's what you told me in your letter that i just got and i'm immediately responding but move on the pain that this causes is understood now i think i remarked earlier sometimes the devil will say something's understood or even self-understood or understood automatically or it requires no further explanation or would be superfluous to explain and then the rabbit does explain it and and i shared that my impression of that is basically the debbie trying to teach us something that should be abundantly obvious meaning maybe it isn't to us because of the way we're coming at the issue but that ebb is telling us it should be abundantly obvious and if we read the letter that way if we try to teach ourselves from the approach how to see things from the rebbe's eyes then the goal should be and this is just my humble opinion that whatever that ebba says is obvious should no longer be a hidden short bombshell or a news flash to us it should it should by the end of the letter or at least by the end of our meditating on the letter it should be obvious to us as well so that ebba says the fact that you told me this it's understood that it's very painful news now that ebba proceeds to give four points of explanation why it's painful one of the four points is redacted it's not there probably because of the private nature of it i can only conjecture at any rate the debit gives four points why this is such a painful thing even though the rabbi is saying it's understood why it's painful that ever proceeds to explain those reasons why it's painful okay let's go through it aleph the first reason who's going to suffer the girls and boys the students are going to suffer you're you're punishing the wrong people here the children are innocent the ima fellow also and there's a blank there and even if the administration of unnamed yeshiva is bizarre maybe they did something incorrect maybe they did something unjust yeah maybe they are to blame this administration that doesn't justify punishing the students okay let's say the the administration did something wrong let's say even they need to be i don't know if the word is punished but some they need some type of consequences but you're misdirecting the consequences because who's who's going to suffer here are the children now that ebba says even more particularly and what kind of punishment are you going to punish them with one are the worst things you can do to a person take away their productivity you know for this reason that ever was against imprisonment that ever said if you live in a society where incarceration is part of law and order so we can't make a revolution we can't fight it but intrinsically it's not not a jewish value why because sometimes you need to punish people and even in in some cases in in total law there's capital punishment and for sure there's corporal punishment but you don't take away a person's productivity this is a fundamental idea in the rebbe's worldview so wasting somebody's time especially a child who can't manage their own time so you're taking away the structure from them and and you're forcing them to to waste time this is this is a not just uh a punishment for the children it's a it's a it's cruel and unusual punishment it doesn't use those words but i'm i'm being liberal to to add that that emphasis that i'm just saying it's it's a terrible thing and it's even more terrible than i'm saying because the dab is about to elaborate first of all you're hurting the wrong people second of all how are you hurting them by taking away their time and productivity and third of all whose time and productivity you're taking away children remember children are in their formative years so a child's minute isn't just a minute it's a minute upon which his entire future is going to be built so when you skew somebody off on the trajectory where they're at the beginning of the route and then they get misdirected right because just a little bit is missing when you're laying the foundation or when you're starting to to plot the course so now the whole path is going to veer off course that little skewing just a little bit so let's look how the dab explains it okay so you're punishing the wrong people and especially what are you doing to them shall i tommy this is not something that could be fixed all the time i mean really it can never be fixed when ibudsman wasting time you can't get a minute back that was wasted kiasman who awaited time is something that once it's lost if it becomes an aveda if it becomes a lost object it's not like you you dropped your wallet in the street you can maybe have a chance to find your wallet but when you drop a minute you'll never get back that minute there's no such thing as a chavez aveda for lost time and now that ever says even more so you're robbing not just regular time but time of education of children this is a powerful statement every hour of the formative educational time of a child school he connected it's understood that it's disproportionately greater than a regular unit of time the same unit of time for an adult taking away a minute from i mean i just got to stop a second this is just you know if someone would ask you what's worse to waste an adult's time or to waste a child's time you might say well you know what's a child doing anyway but actually that ever says the exact opposite the child is in his or her formative years their whole future is being built on the direction that each moment is right now is leading up to so when you waste the minute of a child you have to extrapolate say lamar to go forth and extrapolate the the ripple effect in this case a terrible negative ripple effect that is going to come forth from that wasted moment of a child's formative years so that's the first reason why this is causing me pain you're telling me basically you're punishing the wrong people you're punishing them with a cruel and unusual punishment and especially you're punishing them in a way that there's no way to fix it there's no way there's no uh reparations here you're gonna rob these children of these hours you can never get them back and these hours that are missing not only you'll miss them but you'll miss everything that would have been built upon what would have happened during those hours so it's a real unfathomable corbin of destruction here okay that's aleph bass bass i'm sure it's obvious it's uh clear in your eyes as well that this this administration the one that hasn't paid money um they have not done as a dove or bizarre they didn't do anything intentional like you're not telling me that they've willfully maliciously done harm you're just telling me that they're not able to come up with the funds right no i think there's an old saying never a tribute to maliciousness that which can be attributed to incompetence so that ev is not concentrate on calling these people incompetent but he's saying look you yourself admit they're not purposely withholding money from you they don't have it watch the rebels spell it out up it is obvious and you would you would admit this as well shiimohoyomo if they had money in the account or if they had an easy way of obtaining it maybe they don't have it in their account but they could go fundraise you know the old joke the rabbi says to the congregation the good news and the bad news about the money for the new building project the good news is we have the money the bad news is it's in all of your bank accounts okay so the meaning the rabbi has to go collected he has to schlep it from from the congregants so if the hun holla had the money in the bank account for sure you know that they would be writing you your paycheck and even if it was in the bala the bala bottoms bank accounts where they could go to the people they're fundraising from and say we need money we have back pay that we have to make good on then you know that they would do it the fact that they're not paying you is not willful it's it's beyond their control they want to pay you let's continue uh you know that the administration would be very happy they would be more than satisfied the salah haives to get rid of to pay off their debts even if you'll tell me that the toyota's way is me the negative and you do you do measure for measure this is disproportionate this retaliation here is completely beyond because how are you going to methodically purposely do something against somebody who's the grievance that you have against them is something that they're doing that ebba says either the gig on accident or behind us uh beyond their beyond their ability to to control in this case it sounds more like the the latter that they're not doing it on accident they're not like oh does somebody forget to to pay the teachers no they they know they haven't paid the teachers it's an honest they they want to pay and they they don't have the money to pay so the debt is saying somebody is doing something beyond their control they don't want to be doing this they want to pay you they don't want to not pay you they want to pay you and you're going to retaliate with something calculated and and purposeful it just it doesn't doesn't add up okay let's uh reason number three out of the four like we said it's not here it's missing and i don't know what it was i can't even guess what it was but let's go to reason number four okay reason number four dalit last but not least it tops them all this is the biggest one of them all you don't realize the destruction you're doing to the world view of these children who are going to now observe how you are for monetary reasons for for material claims you are going to be comfortable with doing something that's going to cause irrevocable damage to children just think about this the children are watching and they're taking note and they're saying hmm oh okay so when you don't get paid and you have a monetary claim so then what are you entitled to do i guess it's totally acceptable to go and lash out and even in a way that's going to do damage to the wrong people and and and do damage to them spiritually and in a way that's irrevocable so that ebba says the main thing is the lesson that this is teaching the children who are watching this all transpire for cave and chaser michelle and since this behavior that the children are watching is the behavior of their teacher who teaches them judaism and teaches them good character traits in other words it's not just any adult they're watching behave like this they're watching the teacher who was entrusted with teaching them how to be a mensch and this is how the teacher teaches you how to be a mensch this is what he this is how he calls being a mensch it will not be it will not be understood by the children why can they not behave in exactly the same manner meaning if it's good for the adults if it's good for my teacher the one who teaches me ministry advice okay so this must be mr vice all is fair this is how you can act so think about that and now here that ebb uses a an expression from the gemara shitovya it's talking about one guy did a sin and the other guy came and told the the rabbinical court hey so and so uh sinned and then they said yeah he said yeah yeah he said okay you come here and and we're gonna we're gonna whip you he said why are you whipping me they said because you need two witnesses in a rabbinical court so if you're not coming with another witness you just stop saying so at any rate that's the punch line of a story in the devil actually here is using that expression in a different way he's using it like in earnest like this guy sinned and the other guy gets punished in the original story yeah because the first guy couldn't get punished because there weren't two witnesses against him the second guy was getting punished for slander because if you don't have two witnesses it's essentially just tail bearing but here that i was just saying it one guy sins and the other guy gets punished okay and like we said in the in uh point number one of the four points that who are who who's in the wrong the administration of the yeshiva and who's getting punished the children so this is what the children are going to see they're going to see when you are in a fight in a fight about money then collateral damage doesn't matter it doesn't matter innocent bystanders doesn't matter you know you're just going to start punishing people it doesn't matter you're punishing the wrong people you just do damage you cause pain until you get what you want this is the lesson the children are learning okay um now here's very the a very deep concept yeah the david bishdam there's a gemara in yuma of bay summit based that says shaw king saul did one sin he was supposed to obliterate a molek when he had the chance and he refused to do it david malek did two sins involving bashar although notwithstanding what it says in the modern shabbos stuff that david didn't really sin but let's set aside to go to shabbos for a second talk about the gomorrah numa did one thing wrong david did two things wrong shawl had his kingship stripped from him he lost his kingship over his error david did not lose his kingship okay so explain that to me so what's the explanation seemingly if people are getting impeached over here so uh david's uh impeachable or uh the word impeachable offenses are are more uh numerous than than saul so why did saul get impeached or not david i'm using lingo from america but uh you know what i mean okay so it explains had directly to do with his job and with his with his uh way of serving meaning he was a king and his sin was a lapse of being a king he messed up in things that have to do with rulership machine cane of shaldavid in contrast the sins of david ashmet said even though they were more egregious so not only there was two sins there was quantitatively more but also qualitatively more uh homer more egregious but his missteps had nothing to do with kingship they were private matters very interesting idea there what's the rabbis saying and that i was about to spell it out um when you mess up obviously it's not a good thing hence it's called a mess up but when you mess up in an area that's your whole job you know we had a letter a few nights ago about your zahir tv about your mitzvah that you shine with the one that really is your your shah your gate your portal through which everything that you accomplish goes up and all the blessings that you're getting from heaven come down everyone has that special uh signature mitzvah and it has to do with your mission in this world so obviously any error is undesirable but when you make an error specifically in the area where that was your life's calling i it's so much more egregious and unforgivable that's why shall he messed up once and it wasn't so humber so to speak it wasn't so uh such a a terrible sin relatively speaking but it was a sin that a king can can only make meaning it was something that came down to the leader and when the leader is not leading properly and he's supposed to lead properly and that's his whole purpose is to be the leader that's really unforgivable whereas a leader does something that's not directly connected to his leadership okay it's not great but if i could say my own muscle you know it's like getting poked in the in in in the chest or poked in the eye you know like you're gonna poke the chest not comfortable but getting poked in the eye can incapacitate you right something that's more sensitive something that's more um something that is special and meant to be cherished i'm saying relatively speaking each one of us has our special cherished mitzvah when there's when there's an insult or an injury to that mitzvah it's much more egregious and unforgivable so here the rabbit says you want the hasidic lingo we call it your main schliches your main mission in this world so that i was saying you guys are teachers this is what you this is your whole job is to teach and you're going to mess up in the area of teaching like if you would tell me that you were doing other evaders i it would be less painful but to hear that teachers who are supposed to teach and model good conduct are going to model for these children that when you have monetary problems you're allowed to go and just make any damage you need to make until you get your uh until you get your way that's that's particularly uh egregious okay let's let's finish up the letter um moving kane and therefore it is also understood that this that you're going to tell me well we only diminish the hours of lumu de choyl i'm not sure if the case was they were only taking away the moderate but that ebb is saying even if you're going to tell me that hold on a second where our partial strike is not going to affect the hours of lumu de koides of learning torah subjects it's only going to diminish from secular subjects so that ebba says it doesn't matter it's very interesting because we just had a letter last night where that ebba was really strongly saying um not to waste children's time with studying secular subjects and this is not a time to discuss but through the years different situations different settings different people uh called for different things this was obviously a situation where lumu de kyl was part of the curriculum and the dev is saying and in case you're going to tell me that don't worry we minimized the damage by only striking and only losing out the times of secular subjects that i was saying that's not really helping over here uh aimbazan afghamina that doesn't really make any difference practically the hezek the paula zoo as far as the damage that this is going to have you're still sending the same message to the children venezuela plus think about the fact that while they're not studying lumu de coyo what are they going to do they're going to be walking the streets they're going to be completely idle you're going to take responsibility for that so it's interesting that ebb in the previous letter was was discouraging lumu de queil but here if you do have lumu de queil and then you don't teach it because of money it's a terrible lesson you're you're teaching the children and plus if you have luminaire coil as part of the the schedule and then you cancel it for whatever reason you're turning the children loose into the streets to have nothing productive to do so this is that's a terrible thing i am hoping that these few lines limited in quantity will suffice i'm hoping that i'm going to get or i would be very happy to get some mail back from you with some good news hashem in advance i hope that i'm going to be informed soon i'm going to get a letter from you saying that you're going to voluntarily meaning until you settle the uh back pay issue you're going to do it voluntarily and you're going to go and teach the additional hours that are missing and that you'll do so i love this between a behavior slave with a good eye that means generously not begrudgingly and with a willing heart meaning you're going to be into it don't don't show up and be all you're grumbling under your breath uh you know i'm here uh you know i'm not even getting paid no i want you to go there even though you're not getting paid and i know that it bothers you but i want you to go there and when you teach i want your heart to be in it and i want you to be enthusiastic why why sh because upon this is dependent the success of influencing the children such a powerful line i mean there's a gem every every line here but this line think about that what ensures that the teacher will actually succeed in influencing the students the positive attitude of the teacher the teacher's excited and happy to be there i mean think about it think about it teacher's not happy to be there and you could say oh you want teachers to be happy to be there so pay them and you're right you're right in a perfect world yes but now what about a situation where the teachers are not getting paid and the deb is asking a very tall order which is i know it makes people unhappy not to get paid but i explained to you four reasons why it's not the answer to strike even a partial strike even even even a a slow down even if it's luminaire coil only you have to go in there and go in there with passion with excitement because that's what makes it that's what ensures that you actually influence the children okay and the i await good news the good news that i mentioned specifically the tadahama allah i thank you heartily a warm thanks for taking care of it quickly okay that's the end of the body of the letter here's a nun base a nick a ps a post script and this post script we could fabreg on this all night the letter's over postscript that means it comes after the rabbit's signature beholden now in all of the above meaning this whole letter i just wrote negati visas i didn't even touch upon the hillary issues involved in teacher striking because this isn't the place that cloud cloud the main thing is i'm sure you don't even need that at all this blew me away when when when i read this ps that epic could have written this ps as the entire letter whatever could have said this is halally problematic go ask if you're even allowed to do such a thing and that would have been it that ever could have written one word asur with maybe a mata making with a with a citation of a source that's all that i would have to say instead what did ebba do that ever explained logically why this is a terrible idea and at the end after explaining it logically and and appealing to the sensibility and and and the the compassion of these teachers only after all of that that abba said by the way i don't even think you're allowed to do this rabbit speaks about the difference between a shayfit and a yayats a shayfit is a judge and his relationship with the people's milo mata it's a vertical relationship because the shaykh is on a higher level he knows what we don't know he knows what we can't know so we just rely on him and he tells us do this don't do that and we just listen and there's a place for that shayft are fulfill a function within judaism the rabbi says meshech is going to be a shayphid but in this same secret that says there's also such a thing called a yayats a yayats is an advisor it's a horizontal relationship where somebody explains something to you in your language in ways that make sense to you and appeal to you i feel like in this letter what is the rabbit doing that ever is taking the approach of the yoyots that ever could have said at the very beginning they never could have functioned as a sheifit and said you're not allowed to do this but instead it ever functions here as a yayats gives logical arguments uh a lot arguments that appeal to intellect arguments that appeal to us a sense of of right and wrong ethical arguments uh emotional arguments and then at the very end the argument based on authority which is i don't even think this is i learned so much from that that is teaching us that is our yoyoids he wants us to learn how to think and he wants us to appreciate why things are the way they are and that ever could just say this is my final decision and we're not discussing it but then we would lose out on understanding things the way that understands it and that is time that ever writes in this letter how when you when you when you use a moment it's a moment that you don't get back whatever's time was precious you know when the rabbit was an oval lay eleno he was daving for the omit uh saying kaddish for his father when his father passed away it's known that the the the yeshiva minion 770 would dive in at 9am and uh the rabbit would come down and sometimes it would start at 902 or and frida kerabi this is in the years before the nacios it's in 1944 or 45. so the faith told rabbi in 770. my son-in-law the rabbit is very disturbed because the bachram they sometimes they start at 9 but sometimes they start at 901 902 903 and you don't understand that for my son-in-law every minute is precious you can't do that to him so i don't know how many extra minutes it took to debit to write this letter but think about that think about that the whole letter could have just been the ps and the fact that the debit took extra time to write all the four points of explanation that's a treasure and we have to be grateful okay we'll see you tomorrow night