What's Chai Elul? History and Reality - Rabbi Chaim Dalfin

so tonight actually today is a very special day in the Jewish calendar it's the 18th of Ellen everyone here knows what's special about 18. hi what does high mean life to life to life right so today we celebrate the 18th day the high day of the month of elul the month of elul is the preceding month to the high holy days and on this day in 17 in 1698 a very great rabbi and Sadiq holy person was born his name was Rabbi Israel bao shemtov right we call him he's known as the bow shemto of the Holy balchemtov sometimes we call them as the best because the Hebrew letter is shintek spell out belshamptov the best in English b-e-s-h-t okay so he was born in 1698. and there's another great Rabbi that was born today and take a look at the picture on the left or the right whatever the rabbit with a big beard here is the name Schneider Zalman borokovic his father was Baruch known as the first Chabad rebe re rep Schneider Zalman the founder of this Chabad house because his great-great-great-grandson the rebbe sent Rabbi Zach Williams was a friend of mine from Yeshiva to hear to make a shoe and a Chabad house an institution and now his son label and others are involved the whole family so it's all an extension of the founder of this scripture salmon and he was born on the same day on the same day in 1745. so we celebrate two birthdays so first I would like to say look I am everyone say little hi I'm on water whatever whatever you have the high we should have a blessed year with good health okay number one Health good health Better Health good health we should also have parnosa sustenance livelihood we should also have Jewish Pride from children grandchildren family and friends and everything else that anyone here needs that the heart desires God should give it to you because God has so much up there he doesn't have any shortages of anything so he's just open up the floodgates of blessings for each and every one of us and may this upcoming year five seven eight four tough Shin pay valid which represents pigeon Redemption the haitianas pay dalid is the first letters of the Hebrew word pigeon which means Redemption may this year we not only talk about mashiach but we live to see the mashiach and to experience the mashiach and mashiach will take every Jew to the to the land of Erich Israel Jerusalem and he'll bring World Peace to everyone the non-jews to everyone so may it be so in our days now before we go into hail we have to Singapore Hasidic Gathering if I'm bringing we sing the good name right away he's going for broke right from the beginning okay yeah yeah this is from where from the hallelu now we're going to say during the holidays right Hallelujah okay again [Applause] [Music] I can't leave [Music] I'm so what is special about these two individuals that the rabbis here took a Labor Day and a six o'clock or 6 30. they decided to make Hasidic fabrenkin the first time I must tell you it's the first time I've ever started off a brain in this early I gotta say I told him I said the for bringing starts at six he said six I said yeah six he said six he said yeah six six o'clock I said yeah six because in Brooklyn they start like 10 p.m even last time we were here I think we started eight or eight thirty but anyway the the fact is that it's still the special day the energy of this day of hialo it's before dark it's right now very very present here so what is special about this day so let me give you a little history and then we'll we'll get more into it okay the Jews the Jewish people were always persecuted okay it's nothing new the persecution of today goes back thousands of years in 1648 and 49 there was a tyrant then I think Bogart hellmanninsky or hellmanninsky and he was in the podolia region with Poland is part of and he made pogroms against our people ravage death starvation illness all kinds of things came about because of this Terror the Jewish people were picked at and became very very depressed why do you become depressed because no one wait wait at that time they were depressed the day but Hashem were not the Press but at that time they were depressed why were they depressed I'm not talking about clinical depression I was talking about sadness Melancholy and basically they asked themselves a very important question that I'm sure people sadness forget about the sadness being sad feeling there's no end to the persecution where are we going to go from here right we're always running we're always on the run I'm sure some of you are here from Brooklyn you know I grew up in a neighborhood called East Flatbush which is near Crown Heights and before that the Jews were in Brownsville and when Brownsville turned not Jewish to put up mildly they ran to East New York if the east of Europe they ran to East flatbushed and they ran the klanites and then they ran to boroughbrook where I lived today right we're always running so what what happened from 1648 to 1698 going into the 1700s when the belshanto came onto the scene what happened was that the Jew asked himself and herself a question where is God where is God God you say with the chosen people were your people and this is what happens to what us that's a very good question it's a difficult question and because of this it left an overall despondent feeling amongst many Jews that's what I mean by depressed okay so besides being killed hurt ravaged and everything else there was this overall feeling just like Jews had after the Holocaust after the Holocaust many people who were more involved in Torah observance of Judaism in Poland Hungary Russia etc etc what happened they threw off their they threw away the jewishness the Judaism and they said we don't want this anymore we don't need it because it doesn't help us anyway okay and this was a very very difficult period for us so God did us a favor and he and he sent an individual called Israel balsamtebristro the belshamptov who said if you measure God and what God wants for the world by the physical you have a very good question but if you look at God and what God brings to the world is spiritual right with love and soul in Hebrew the nishama so then it's a whole different bowl game and he started to teach the idea of of a soul that every Jew every person every Jew has a soul and a shama and the beauty of the nishama and that the soul is not measured by how much you know but rather by what you do and who you are right and for that matter the belsanto said even if you practice little and the soul never leaves a Jew and the soul is always pristine and the soul is always perfect it's a matter of revealing the soul and another teaching of the belshem was to do it with joy as label said who's depressed right he started to teach us that because we don't understand the soul and and we don't have any perception of what soul is soul is happy soul is good Soul doesn't get fathomed by hellmanitsky's pogroms even though there were programs and there was a holocaust and there is Despicable people in the world who want to harm us but the soul is not fathomed the soul will go further if you access the soul and you live with the soul this was a basic teaching and what did the balship do he brought together the common person you know there were many people most Jewish people at the time were not learned we didn't have books in English translating Torah Judaism you know and at that time if you were studied in talmud and in Torah you were a Jew but if you could barely read then you didn't know any Torah many people looked down upon you nah it's nothing you're saying either she's cornished in other words means in Spanish nada Fs in Hebrew zero nothing right balsamtov says you have it all wrong your equation to begin with to begin with is a non-secuador we say in in advanced mathematics and the theory of relatively in such studies it's it's ridiculous because you're trying to understand God and soul and trying to understand God from a perspective using a measuring stick of the physical spirituality is not measured by the physical spirituality is measured by the Soul by the spiritual and that's what he introduced and that was a novelty a big big change a radical change and that's why initially he was chased and bothered and looked upon as the villain But as time went on it became the accepted mode of Jewish experience however when the second Rabbi who was celebrating his birthday the founder of the Chabad movement he not only took this idea of soul and he brought it to the common Folk he said that everyone can have a deep relationship with God and understand God in other words dancing is good and singing is good and clapping is important it's all wonderful but how about understanding God and when you understand God then you can become more Divine more Godly so he opened up the study of hasidism the Hasidic movement you've heard of the Hasidic movement hasidism is the philosophy that the Hasidic movement studies and in our case it's this top word called Tanya Tanya is the Bible kind of of Hasidic Judaism of Hasidic Judaism it's the book called Tanya and in the Tanya it talks about all issues and you know I I I I teach day and four days a week students who live in Israel actually online and Tanya and it's fascinating to see the the ideas that this Rabbi touches upon from the metaphysical to the psychological so right now you know what you know what we're learning about now sadness that a person has in their life from various for for various reasons be it you know material reasons be it spiritual reasons then he looks at the the same Rabbi looks at this sadness is it causing a psychological um contradiction in you where you feel on one hand hey I pray I learn I do what I'm supposed to and all of a sudden I act like an animal who am I well the real self stand up you're all adults here I hope so I'll tell you an adult story but it sounds exciting it's a story we heard in the Yeshiva by our teachers it's not even a story it's a kind of you you've heard of the great philosopher Aristotle Aristotle oh my gosh father one of the fathers of philosophy this Aristotle who preached intellect that the epitome of climbing the ladder is to intellectualize to use your mind right I'm I'm just I'm watering down Aristotle's full philosophical beliefs but that's pretty much in a nutshell one of his main ideas so this Aristotle who every day taught students and he taught them to be intellectual and to study and to think and to intellectualize one day they caught Aristotle doing something very unkosher I'll leave it to your imagination that's it what was it I didn't drink enough to tell you what it was so they came to this stuff and they said Aristotle Aristotle you'd understand you're the man and here you act like Caillou course grub individual you at one man you listen to his answer his answer was I am really Aristotle the intellect and the great philosopher but just at that time I wasn't acting like Aristotle but but really I'm Aristotle now if you believe that I'll sell you the Brooklyn Bridge okay my dear friends philosophy does not lead you to divinity Divinity godliness being a Godly Man is a whole different experience not that philosophy is not important not that intellect is not important but it has an end Torah yeah this guy Judaism Soul nashama that's the that's that's Emma's that's the real truth because if a person lives that way you won't find them in an uncompromised position doing all kinds of foolish things it's one we don't act Godly that we can end up in big trouble so so hear it listen to this it's not that there's a question like I asked the question about Aristotle now you understand that Aristotle was being himself a human being and a human being is apt to failure that's the way it is and God understands it but at the same time God says there's a way to re rise and overcome human animalistic Tendencies of All Sorts from eating sleeping and everything else and that's by learning Torah especially the teachings of khasidas that the balship and the balakanya Salman the author of Latonya introduced and this is something one should pursue you know why you should pursue it because it's going to bring you goodness and more happiness and more success and the most important thing you'll really be a mensch you'll really be a mensch you know we say during the prayers in the morning one of the Praises which means forever for eternity one should always be a man a God-fearing man that's the literal meaning there is an interpretation the first thing hey Adam be a mansion God-fearing religious is the expression of being a mensch not that religion takes a second seat it doesn't but the idea of being a mensch is is most important I'll give you an example I had a teacher who's passed on he was the the greatest understanding of in our generation and maybe in most Generations his name was Khan so I heard a very nice no after his passing I wrote a few books about him very special person so listen to this he wasn't blessed with children so people would ask him to to come to their bris if they had a boy or to name name a child and also to to there is a ritual called opinion haben 30 days after a baby boy is born first born only the firstborn boy you you do a ceremony called pigeon Redemption of the Sun where you give the kohane amount of money and and you pick up the baby the baby has a whole process a very beautiful process anyway listen to this someone came to him and asked him if he could be you need a Cohen you need to write the Cohen is the Jewish priest you need a coin to do that ceremony Rabbi Khan was a Cohen so he was a fifth you know if you go to a levite or an Israelite they can't be the individual Redeeming the baby you need a coin so someone comes to his office with the baby I guess they had arranged it before and he says I'm here and I have the baby I'd like to come in for us to do the ritual you don't need a menu for it by the way you don't need a million usually there is a million but you don't need a menu for it so he says one moment and he asks him to go out and he walks out of his office and he does the ceremony it took three minutes four minutes a very quick ceremony outside in the hallway to his office so later somehow I don't know how someone asked like why did you do that like you know your office a little more spacious why do it in the hallway so he said that there was another individual in the room who he worked with who also wasn't blessed with children and he didn't want to embarrass him now you understand he himself didn't have any children so about himself he wasn't thinking other individual who worked with him who also didn't have children if he's doing a ceremony of redeeming a child in front of the other person he felt it was an insensitivity you see isn't that tremendous lesson immensely kite and human decency and sensitivity and I know both individuals the other person I would not be embarrassed but Rabbi Khan felt this is not appropriate I'm just showing you that yiddishkite Judaism observance of Torah leads a person to being kind of the perfect man the perfect match hi