Letters of the Rebbe: "Even Greater Than Charity" (Class 25)

and good evening welcome to another letter 30 letters in 30 days and we are less than a week away from our 30th letter which will be learned at a special event earlier nissan monday night april 11th at the oil and i want to tell you something amazing absolutely amazing when we started to plan this hakona this preparation um we spoke about the idea of well let me just explain this class is not uniquely for women there's nothing specifically for women about the class and obviously it's online and thousands of people are watching it and listening to it on podcast platforms so men and women are listening to it but there's been a very special emphasis on the part of the notions of conus the righteous women all over the world who have made groups to have um i guess you would call it like parallel with the shooter with the classes they have these discussion groups where they get together and discuss the letters and talk about what it means to them and that's been going on all over the world i've been trying to give out shout outs and talk about the different groups that have been getting together um i think one just texted in just a second muncie is planning many small gatherings this shabbos by different locations yeah i saw the flyer like six seven different locations in muncie alone um getting together uh for uh discussing the letters which is amazing but what i want to say is yes there's been a special emphasis on the women here and we decided we're going to make an event a women's event yodaf nissan now i don't know if you understand how crazy that is you're aleph nissan uh in most years is four days before pesach okay and that's a joke it was a lame attempt at a joke you know if nissan is head of pesa okay and um it's tough to get people to go out of the house and do stuff especially women and yet we decided you know what let's do something crazy let's make an event a fabregan for women there are plenty of events for men by hashem king but let's make an event for women and make a special event let's make it at the aisle and there was a whole discussion will people actually come to the oil i mean nobody lives actually there they'd have to come in from other neighborhoods mostly in crown heights probably but um we said you know let's go for it let's do it okay so here's what i want to tell you uh the venue is almost completely sold out to capacity uh we only have room for 100 people to participate at this event and as of a minute before the class i was told there were 93 spots reserved so please do not wait until the end of this class please reserve right now there are literally seven spots left okay um and yes this is an event for women oh and i just got a text in chicago is making a second event yeah there was a kickoff event chicago did a big event on the first night and now they're going to do a uh they're doing another event okay fine so and if you have other events that i don't know about please submit them to thirtyletters30days.com and i should have given that url a minute ago 30 letters 30days.com that's 30 with a number numerically three zero letters three zero days.com and that's where the rsvp is and if you're watching this in a recording probably don't bother going there because um there are seven spots left okay let's go to tonight's letter getting toward the end of my book so sad what are we going to do when we get to the end of the book there's been a lot of discussion about it okay i'm getting texts coming in i'm only looking at it because this is my group for the 30 letters 30 days uh coordinators and guys 30 letters 30 days people uh maybe let's not text during the share because uh i get very distracted so unless it's something i'm supposed to read okay let's anyways aren't you guys watching this year okay let's let's let's take a look okay um this letter is in igris kurdish barack hashem brooklyn the 21st day of the month of shefat the year 5715 corresponding to 1955. and to whom is this letter written hawasikim varsidim annoshim this is written too the distinguished individuals the siddhim the god-fearing the honorable the exalted members of the free loan society the free loan society what free loan society is this this is an old free loan society that i was going to mention in the letter that they're having their 46th anniversary in 1955. so it's a it's an old organization and in the time-honored tradition of jewish communities everywhere the free loan society the uh havres that's the official name of the gamak for short it's like the cool lingo this is an old organization and at the time the administrator of the organization was gordon who was also the gabriel in 770 and a very distinguished cossid and the rabbit will mention jachen gordon in this letter this particular free loan society continued and continues to operate after rabbi uh gordon's passing his son-in-law rab shimon goldman took over administration of the free loan society and continued the tradition the debate would actually speak about the annual event that this letter is in reference to every year there would be an event the matsushab of matsushi was a partisan and as you'll see from this letter that's what the rabbit is writing in connection to and that it was writing about parshas mishpot them because in participating there can there is contained the mitzvah of actually giving loans interest-free loans to one's brethren so there was a tradition every year of having this event and that ebba would mention it without fail at the fabregan and in fact there was a there was a tradition where the administrator of the gamak would get up and put on a strimel at and make a fundraising pitch or appeal so to speak so that's a little bit of the history of this particular free loan society let's see what the rabbit has to tell them and this is in yiddish ich bin givens i'm very happy to receive the news through your secretary your administrator rabbi yochanan gordon as heint that today now at this point that ever takes the word heint today and in a parenthetical statement um packs in a whole lot of scholarly references that are almost impossible to literally translate so i'm going to slow down and unpack it and just to understand that that ebb is just um elaborating on one word the word heint that today hindi is a yiddish for today today the event is today and then the rabbit takes off on that word heint today and says which is originally from aposic it's a posiken in in sephir devoting but say some is often thought of as a maim hazal it's uh it's a gamora in aravind where our sages say hayem today to do the mitzvahs tomorrow not literally tomorrow but la maher means in haba in the world to come little sodom to reap their reward so often in siddhis we refer to that saying of our sages as the idea that today meaning this era this paradigm of reality is about doing it's about action and then after mashirch comes then it's about reaping the reward but until then it's about doing doing doing as long as we're in this phase la says and we got it got to just do so the debut takes that word heint today and says hayyam la says today today is about doing and what is today if you look in the the the the parsha that was that weak pasha's incasif taliber pasha's mishpotim is what's how we refer to the parsha the name of the partial we call it mishpotim but it's the parasha that contains within it the mitzvah in case of talva if you will and i'm going to translate it right now is if if because literally it's if if you will lend money to your people and then the rapper says but the word here if doesn't mean if a conditional statement rather it means an obligatory mandatory statement and not optional yeah so let me explain that let's unpack that and the pasek in case of talva so rashi says based on the megelta that here according to the tana rabbi ishmael is not translated and used as its normal meaning of if normally he means if but there are three places that abhishmal says in the torah where eem doesn't mean if it means absolutely obligatory not if you will loan money but rather when when you will loan money so that it refers to that valdez [Music] this is a parenthetical statement it's so rich leather then connects the word eem which doesn't mean optional it means mandatory and obligatory back to the word hayaim today you understand what we're doing we're flowing in and out we started with the word hayem today because they're eventus today and then today means to do what's today what are we learning in hamish of tal of it if you alone but if doesn't mean if it means when and that then that ever connects that back to today if you will listen to my voice so that's a story that's uh that's a gemura in sanhedrin that'd be ashore ben levy met elion of elijah the prophet and asked him hey when's my shirt coming and elio said today and then uh they'll be sure ben levy so leo later on and mashiach hadn't come and says he said you told me today why'd you say today so then elio novi invoked the words of of tehillim and he said today if you listen to my voice if you heed my voice if you do the mitzvahs so you hear what that em is doing here i mean i think i mean i am not the biggest scholar here but this is what it sounds like that i was doing in a little parenthetical statement the dev is saying that the word eem doesn't mean optional means mandatory and the promise is that meshich will come you listen to my voice but eem doesn't mean if either it means mandatory means we are going to listen to hashem's voice and hashem is going to send meshich it's not optional it's mandatory it's a for sure thing anyways that's just that i've been going off on one word hayend heint today okay sometimes i think to myself you know as a speaker and i don't want to say this in a way that's understood misunderstood but you know a lot of times when you're talking a lot of creativity is symptom it's self-filtering it's what you don't say it's easy to talk it's hard to not talk and you have to stop yourself sometimes you have a stream of consciousness that is for you is very interesting but it's just not the point right now and the listeners will only be distracted so when i look at stuff like this i think to myself you know every single word that ever says or writes an entire world of torah is opening up in his mind and he's holding it all back so that we can try to help cup so that we can try to to keep up with what he's saying but it's just it's just with one word that ever connects it to the parsha the mitzvah of giving alone and that mashiach has to come today just mind-blowing okay anyways i didn't even finish the parenthetical statement valdere and that's that's the middle that's not even like a full sentence that's like i said a parenthesis in the middle of a sentence okay so now we're back to where we left off we we left off before the parentheses we the last word was hind today okay what's today for there's gonna be what's gonna be an oyster or dent there's going to be in a special gathering yorkin in honor of the 46th anniversary of the free loan society okay and i hope as lightning in accordance with the saying of our sages that anyone who increases there will be an increase for him meaning again this is the law of reciprocity the way you act is going to be compounded so if you do something good then you're going to have more ability to do good hashem hashem is going to give you more opportunities to be successful in your holy work of giving free loans now here that ebba says and what you're doing giving free loans interest-free loans is even greater than the mitzvah of tadaka the myth of giving charity why how so now the deb is referring here to uh actually gives the source in uh in the next line sukkah memphis omid base but the rabbit is is obviously quite precise how he's alluding to the khazal there the gemara says that sodom is greater than tzedakah in three ways it says three ways one is that tsudaka is only monetary but gimmelskasadem kindness can be monetary or it could be bodily doing a favor actually getting up and going and doing something for somebody tsudaka is only given to the poor charity is for the poor for the needy but alone can be given even to a rich person and that's the one that i was going to focus on and then the third difference the gamora says is that zidaka is only given given to living people and kindness can even be for someone who's no longer living there is it there is providing for the burial and uh taking care of the the uh needs of the of the body that is of the person who has passed on but at any rate that ever focuses on on one of those three and that is the idea that a free loan can be given to wealthy people as well and it seems that i was saying that it makes it a happier mitzvah because when you're giving dhaka it's sad that somebody needs dhaka it's sad that somebody's in the position where they have to ask for their basic needs but giving a loan doesn't have to be in a sad situation you know some of the wealthiest people i know borrow the most amount of money and i think i don't know a lot about business but i think i understand a little bit that you know regular people they might take out a loan to pay a bill that's due next month but you know really really wealthy people sometimes they're wheeling and dealing and they got money tied up and they're just not liquid right now so they they need some what we call liquidity or cash flow so they go take out a loan not because they're starving god forbid no they're doing very well but you need money to make money with you what are you called uh you uh you turn money into more money or whatever it is uh you know you ask the ask the people who did it don't ask me at any rate the point is that i was saying that loans can be given it's a mitzvah that you can give when there's nothing sad happening it's all it's all happy everyone's doing well bar hashem the guy just isn't liquid right now so he says hey can you give me money for now so i can make this deal or whatever and then i can turn around and pay it back okay so the rabbit says that uh game is greater than docker sodium can design glycemic giving loans can happen at a time when the jews who are receiving the loans have parnasso and they even have wealth not just parnasso but they have wealth viewed virus and now here the rabbit gives the source that was the the gemara that we were referring to earlier can also be applied to a wealthy person in other words with dhaka there are qualifications you're you're asking for for a handout i don't know are you really needy do you really need it but alone is different there's no criteria to determine if someone is really needy a loan could be given to somebody just they don't they don't have the cash flow right now and so therefore it's a happy thing because nobody's poor everybody's rich everyone has parnosa and the end they're doing well they just needed some money right now so this is very happy and it's a great mitzvah and that in that way it's even greater than stukka not to to not to disparage stadaka but i'm just saying that here that i've been speaking about the myla specifically the unique virtue of giving loans okay the tickvasi virgosi my hope and my blessing as in them that your work in this this field with the phil latency now that when you do your work you should do it in a way that's infused with the spirit the feeling of the end of the verse that we mentioned earlier which verse we mentioned the passage of if rather when you will loan money okay that's the beginning of the verse what is the continuation of the verse the poor who is with you or the poor among you what does that mean what's the significance of those words okay so the dev is going to unpack this as there's the money that the borrower needs that in that moment relatively speaking he's considered a poor man he's not really a poor man like we just said maybe he's what he called house rich cash poor right okay so maybe he's got lots of investments maybe he's got he owns properties and he owns stocks but he doesn't have he's not look he's not liquid right now so in a relative sense we call that an ani but not shalom a real anima everyone here is doing well okay so but at that moment when he's in need of the loan that money that he needs is currently held in trust by the one who's going to loan him the money a very deep concept here the money that the borrower needs and is currently sitting by the lender actually belongs to the borrower and the lender is holding it in trust like a guardian until the borrower comes and claims it that's the mentality that's the way you're supposed to look at it and that's what those words mean as that is going to explain in in the next couple of lines okay why does hashem set it up that way that the borrower has to come and go get the money that's really his money but hashem put it by the lender temporarily and then the borrower has to go get it from the lender the comments because hashem set it up that way in order to give merit to the lender that he should be able to do a mitzvah in other words hashem could have given the money straight to the borrower but then and cut out the middleman so to speak but then the lender would have lost out on the schools of the mitzvah and it's beautiful here because if you say that about tsudaka like let's cut out the middle man oh no but we don't want the giver to lose out on disgust you know what let him lose out in disgust and let the poor guy not be poor anymore so that's that's that's an argument but here nobody's poor nobody's suffering you see okay um and without the borrower this lender would never have this merit and now that ebba says ain't shamba er makadesh go see the pirush the commentary of the holy arachim on this passage and over there the makadish explains very very clearly in his commentary on this passage that this is literally what's happening when hashem wants to bestow merit upon someone he takes money that really belongs to someone else and he puts it he puts shimon's money by ruvain so that reuven should have the skus to give the money to shimmy although the name of the administrator the free loan was shimon so maybe shimmy gives the loan to roofing at any rate and how do you know this that haim explains because when you have more money than you need for your basics then surely you can conclude that that extra money is only there for somebody else that's what the arkham says that when you have more money than you need for your family then that money it's not to to go and waste on extravagance or or or maybe i don't know to uh to to put another digit in your bank account no no the reason hashem gave you more money you paid your bills this month and you have money that's somebody else's money that hashem gave you an order that you can hand it over to the other guy and gain merit by doing this wonderful mitzvah which is even greater than stalker okay now one more level when fundamental from this feeling the feeling of hey the money that i have that's more than i need for my bills to cover my bills that money really belongs to so and so and hashem's giving me the the opportunity to be the lender and thereby have a merit have a mitzvah that's one that's one feeling so that ever says from that feeling zomen tsukuminsu now you can come to an even higher call it kavona a higher intention and this is this is even deeper okay this is an even deeper way of understanding your role as the giver or the lender in the relationship okay let's see leighton brimpton according to the very well-known saying from the old siddha the original and this you may recognize as a entry it is from ear and it says that the sedum of old the original is the rabbit says his father-in-law his rabbi transmitted the vort to us and what is this vert der stickelbright versus the piece of bread that i have is a diner the miner it's yours just like it's mine the hoyo magdimi milos diner and this is part of the original vort they used to say yours before mine diner v miner in other words you could say hey listen i want you to know something a piece of bread i have just like it's mine it's yours okay no but they used to say it even more they used to say just like it's yours it's mine meaning to say primarily the piece of bread is yours now what does that mean what does that mean the previous vort or the previous gefil that abba calls it based on the is the idea that if i have more than i need oh that must be yours but this is going deeper this is no no it's not just if i have more than i need then that part the extra must be somebody else's it's even the basics the shticklebright it's everything is primarily why do i have money the main purpose is to give sadako or gomez sodium oh yeah i know that you can also use money to buy stuff to live that's that's another purpose for having money that's in fact that's the secondary purpose of money the secondary purpose of money is to buy the stuff you need to live but the primary purpose of money is in order to do mitzvahs with it diner reminder you put the diner first by the way i'm i'm going over time but i i i want to just i have to say here there's a there's a story about uh somebody who ended up becoming a very big bouts daca big philanthropist in eretz israel and i'll say his name because it's a it's a good thing and he has an incredible story and he told it to jam and then my encounter and you can watch the video but he was a he was an israeli soldier and he was st i'm going to tell her very quickly he was stationed in uh in the sinai before they gave it away and uh one purim some uh lubavi said them come jumping off a jeep you know what their tits is flying and they come over and they're handing out shalach monus to the soldiers and this moshe he looks at it and he's like uh poor man and even though his porn today was that he was that far from yiddish kite and he sees it's a presence it says and it's a president from the laboratory so he's like oh it's a nicer present now it woke up something in him but you know how you know those israelis so not not everything all at once what happened is later on he left athol and he went to america and like very often happens to israelis when they go to hudslaug they feel more jewish or they they feel a need to feel more jewish so he started hanging around khabad and he was in chicago my hometown and he started hanging around rabbi daniel moskowitz all of a sudden and moscow says my card of him and finally he said let's go to the ben he brought him to crown heights 770 and moshe had uh hides and at the start asks him why did the abhishek put the heart on the left side like everything in yiddish kite is the right side you start everything with the right side you even you get dressed with uh you start with the right side everything's with the right side kabbalah the right disc has it you and the right is there's always first so how come hashem took the heart and put it on the side he put on the left side like the brain male or the brain is in the middle okay that so that makes sense the heart should also be in the middle and if it's got to be to the side okay put it to the side then put it to the right side but to the left side like what's up with that so moshe had no idea how to answer so he just he was dumbfounded so that eva says to him the purpose of the heart is that it's the seat of emotion and the primary emotion is love well love is the connection from me to you so my heart's whole function is to connect me from me to you in other words when i'm facing you in ava my heart is on the right side your right side as i'm facing you like i told you moshe became a big giver and uh you know he started off his journey receiving a gift when he was a soldier and after that he realized his mission was to be the giver of gifts and that the very anatomy of the human being testifies to this that we were built to be givers that my heart is on your right side so my piece of bread is your piece of bread it's just this funny thing hashem did he took your bread and put it under my watchful eye so that i would have the opportunity to give it to you and here's what the deb is about to say this is much deeper than the previous vote this is much deeper than the previous vote before we're saying the extra i have okay so that i can use for a mitzvah of giving to you here that ebb is saying no it's much more than that my money all of my money its primary purpose is to be used for doing mitzvahs you know one of my daughters she's 11 now but i remember when she was little like really little uh like you know a toddler we had uh she cost us a lot of money because every time she would see money she would say it's dhaka and she would take the money and put it in the pushka it didn't matter if it was a hundred 100 bill so and then what do you do when she puts it in you can't really take it out so she was costing us a lot of money but i was talking to my wife she said isn't that beautiful she sees money all she sees is the daca money is the docker that's it what's the purpose of money other than stukka so watch this a vort versus like tsufashtain so this vote about my bread is really your bread not as much but even more than it's mine so then why do i have it why did i ship if it's yours more than mine so why is it in my rashos right okay but the rabbit says that this vote is liked to hashtain it's actually easy to understand like them foreign according to what the altareba writes in many places inigiro circadish the fourth volume of tanya as big dates boys that in order to receive all the blessings from on high especially that it should reach all the way down to the physical world because sometimes those blessings they're flowing down but then there's a bottleneck and they they don't reach us all the way god forbid so in order to keep the wheel greased so that the blessings are flowing and they're reaching us they're getting down here the specific trick how to do it is by giving tadaka because dhaka has an effect where it pulls the spiritual flow from on high all the way down to the physical it has that effect so think about it what's the purpose of money oh yeah i know it's also to buy the things that i need but that's also the main purpose of money is to bring down all the heavenly flow so it reaches me and then it's like lather rinse repeat because when the heavenly flow reaches me that includes more money which i'll use to do more mitzvas and also yes yes also as a secondary thing take care of me and my family okay so what this means is your money is sitting by me because if your money went directly into your account i wouldn't be able to use it in order to accomplish what money can accomplish when it's given isn't that beautiful isn't that amazing so the whole purpose of your money sitting by me is so that the money can be a mitzvah when my money is sitting by me it's just money when your money is sitting by me it moves blessings through the universe such a powerful concept and this is what the rabbit says to encourage the people who are giving the free loans that they should understand the depth of this mitzvah that they're engaged in by vedas with blessings for success in their holy work [Music] and this should bring additional blessing into the lives of every individual says the men and the women including the women hain biguffam hain bamamanam both their persons as well as their possessions and i'm not sure if by the way that's a reference back to the idea of the gemara saying is both with goof and moment but could be based for them meaning the ones who actually are part of the free loan society and their families and then the rebbe writes his name and that's our letter tonight what a letter what a letter you could just write oh by the way i heard you're having your your yearly dinner uh you know i hope you have a lot of success and that if it turns it into such a deep explanation of what the purpose of material resources are it's just yeah yeah yeah it's mind-blowing absolutely mind-blowing okay we'll see you tomorrow night