Letters of the Rebbe: "Suggested Program for a Women's Gathering" (Class 18)

okay shalom aleichem good evening welcome back to another evening of 30 letters in 30 days letter number 18. before we start our letter for tonight i wanted to again give some shout outs to incredible activity that's going on all over the world it's exciting to hear about how much involvement there is right now in learning the egress and uh i want to give some specific acknowledgments to some groups tonight there's a group in seattle chabad of washington state is getting together in seattle so uh i don't know if they got together yet it's only 7 p.m out there right now uh the girls in haiti in sydney little girls i saw a picture of it actually little little kids are learning the letters absolutely inspiring kids are doing it adults got to do it too uh lebowicz girls high school that's always girls high school in chicago the students there have made a buddy system to learn the letters together style and the girls who go through all 30 letters are going to be entered into a raffle to come to new york for yodaf nissan and kanamakum here's the place to remind everyone there is a special women's event we've secured a venue one block from the ihel for a women's fabregan which will be also the same of this 30-day we'll learn the 30th letter of the 30 letters in 30 days at this fabregan for women uh the as i've mentioned repeatedly the venue is enough to accommodate only about a hundred maybe slightly more women so you must rsvp at 30 letters 30days.com i want to just read some feedback that we've gotten here we go and they must say that any and every person i've spoken to has participated in this who i've spoken to who has participated in this hakona has enjoyed tremendously the impact is huge i've also been thoroughly enjoying and love how easy it is to take it up a notch with the addition of rabbi taub's background and comments nice i've so enjoyed this so thankful for you providing these classes a whole new way of learning egress not just reading it yes exactly learning the egotis not just reading it i love this program 30 letters has helped me connect to the device so much i wish to continue to learn the device letters on such a level even after the completion of this project okay uh a lot of people have been saying that to me how are we going to continue after udalif nissan it's definitely a thought that's something that we need to discuss and to consider and um hashem will update you if there's any uh developments about that when there are developments about that um loving it thank you really exceptional and and inspiring here's here's here's a here's a beautiful one it's simply phenomenal it's like the deba is still with us like the deb is going to say in the the letter that we're about to learn tonight that divrei said that the words of tsadikim live and endure forever so here we have the deb is words that have his timeless messages wisdom compassion advice guidance encouragement and it's it's just so relevant it's undeniable how present and how uh current that ebba's influence is so barak hashem we have we have the egress and that's uh just a unique way to connect and like i've said repeatedly it's it's not just knowing what that ever said to this person or what the devil said to that person because who knows if it applies to you but it's opening your mind and allowing yourself to be trained how to see things from the rebbe's worldview and you can't get a closer connection than that okay um i wanted to share something that you know everything's ash gacha protest so today i was learning rambam you know uh that made a system for going through the entire mishna toyota once a year in fact we have a seam of mishna toyota coming up on lag blamer we're finishing another max or another cycle of the three prokim three chapters a day of rambam there's also a study track for learning one chapter a day and it takes three years to finish and then there's the cycle of learning say for mitzvahs instead of learning mishna toyota alerting the sephirah mitzvah's mitzvahs that correspond to the chapters being studied in the three chapters a day track at any rate we're learning right now in the three chapters a day tracked the laws of renting and it said something very interesting in uh in the first chapter of today's uh procum i think is uh pedexing i think today's proclamation has test so it says that if a renter rents for a year or longer and it ends up becoming a leap year and in those days they didn't know it was going to be a leap year until the the bes didn't murder would declare that it's a leap year so let's say he rents for a year or longer and all of a sudden they declare it's a leap year so now his year lease instead of being 12 months it becomes 13 months if you want to go by the calendar date of of the rental so uh the rambam poskins there that if that was the term if he was renting for a year or longer so it benefits the renter and yeah he gets that extra month for free doesn't have to pay for an extra month it's just included in the year if he were to have paid or made an arrangement where he's paying renting month by month he's a month-to-month tenant then if they add a month to the calendar he's got to pay for that extra month but if he's renting by the year or longer then the fact that there's an ac there's a 13th month in this year that's a bonus to the to the renter and uh it's it's it's his good fortune his good mazel okay so i heard that and when i heard that the first thing that i thought of was our letter uh on i think it was the night going into purim the letter to rabbi schusterman from chicago and that ebb was talking about the talks and tales and that although the talks and tells are written for children that it's got great material and you can use it for your classes and your speeches to adults and i mentioned a story at in that class that rabbi krinsky contacted the postmaster general and said you know the permit that we have is it allows us as a non-profit to send out these mailings 12 times a year as monthly mailings but for us monthly in some years like this year adoption pay base it's a leap year some years for us monthly doesn't mean 12 times a year it means 13 times a year when there's a jewish leap year so uh the postmaster general granted it and made a special uh exception that the talks and tales should be able to be put out and mailed with that same permit 13 times a year so it just struck me i'll tell you a little bit more of my thinking that everyone's told a story uh i think it was matsushabus beresha's tough shin mehmaelith about uh the raga chaver the traveler going and the arabic the reason that i would told that story was that i was saying that rabbonim should pass in that you're not allowed to give away land in eretz isro so then the never asked some people are are going to say well the people giving away land aren't necessarily so religious they're not going to listen to up sock from arov so what's the point of making such a rabbinic ruling so the devil said this is the torah that when or of poskins it gives a certain reality to something in this world and then the rabbit told the story that the raga was that of in dwinsk but uh at some point he was living in leningrad in the city of leningrad right after the communist revolution i think in the early 20s and uh so this is right after uh the bolsheviks took over and they sent them a tax bill they sent everyone a tax bill and you don't play around with the communists you know but he got a tax bill and uh his grandson who was also brilliant uh but very well versed in secular matters that argentiva asked his grandson could you look over this bill so he looked it over and he said there's two taxes here and then sheriff said what are the two taxes for and the grandson explained he was able to explain very well what the two taxes are for senator heard this he says to his grandson one of those taxes is a legitimate tax and you're not allowed to be not allowed to try to not pay that tax so you alphish i have to pay it but that other one is totally illegitimate and it's geneva it's the the the state is stealing from the citizens they're not allowed to take that tax so send them a check for the amount of the first tax and don't pay them for that tax that's not legitimate because that's what peter poskins and you don't play around with uh with the bolsheviks but that's that's what he did and then a few days later he got a letter in the mail with uh like a correction saying oh by the way you were sent the tax bill in error one tax is legitimate the other one you don't have to pay it was the one that he had passkind alpi toyota one does not have to pay so that ever told that story and said you see what a psoc din can do it has an effect so the fact that al-pitera when you have an agreement for a year or longer it benefits it's on the side of the renter in his favor if there's a leap year apparently uh you you can see that in the agreement of the postmaster general to uh to grant talks and tells 13 times a year being mailed and what's lovely about that story to me and actually confirmed this with robert krinsky through his family today is that it wasn't contentious it wasn't adversarial abby krinsky approached the postmaster general and he was very forthcoming he said okay no problem we could accommodate so you see meshiach's titan that we're getting so close to uh the perfect days that the world is conforming more and more with the reality as torah dictates okay well we got to learn a letter tonight i could go on and on and on but uh a little kay had symptom i think is in order all right letter 18. brooklyn new york a goodis chabad sniff dot dot this letter is addressed to a chapter of or a a group of and it says that meaning i don't know which local chapter of a goddess nishay ubenese khabad the jewish or khabad women's organization okay before i get into the letter i just want to give a little bit of history and background about a good ass niche chabad this letter is tough shintasvar 1955. this is in the first few years that this group this organization even exists i'll give you a little history the rabbit actually started nishay khabad as an organization first in eretz israel why it started first nerds israel and not in america i don't know but that is the fact that is the historical fact starting just a few months after the nacios a few months after yusuf tough shannon from the assumed officially assumed leadership the rabbi was already writing to the goddess and telling them there's a letter actually from uh sivan you're talking just a few months after the rabbi assumed leadership and the rebels talking to a goku and arts israel about their business and about adding certain members and which members to add and also about voting in israeli elections and other issues and one of the things that ever mentions is the need to establish an official organization for nishayu binesh khabad so that's the inception of it that's where it really starts and that letter by the way from dalit sivantos is printed in the igor scala dalit um okay so then tishrei touching good base meaning at the end of that summer beginning of that autumn there was the first women's gathering chabad women's gathering in yerushalayim and then they also later that that same year in tamils of that year tough chinese base that ever wrote two letters actually on the same date has thomas toshin your base to nishikabad in er cesaro outlining the purpose of the organization what they're there for their charter what it is they're supposed to accomplish very interesting some of the things that ebba says there but a lot of it is emphasizing torah study and specifically the a word that jumped out to me was kivvius which we often associate with men and the biblical obligation for a man to study torah which is different than a woman because women are generally exempt from positive time-bound commandments but the rabbis speaks there about promoting vias fixed times established set times for torah classes and that women should be studying they should be studying this and studying they should study the the laws of the of the mitzvahs that are practical and uh pertinent to them among many other things that ever mentions there so that's that's uh the summer of tough chinese base and then finally where does uh where does america come into the picture so simchas torah at the fabregan of simchas toyota top shin yud gimo okay so we're talking now two years or a year and a half after things have started in their cisro that ebb is now speaking to the americans and says we need to have an agudas the sheikh bines khabad here in the united states it was at the simcha street of abraham and the rabbi said and since the men who are the husbands and the fathers of the nishaya binez khabad are here i want to tell them they shouldn't wait around until they get invitations until they get uh not till they get invitations they should get on this right away and organize an official group and it should be done by shabbos braces okay this was impressed by this means the next job is to by you know you have a few days to get it together and i want the organization to be put together and that's what happened and then you find that uh the first letter where the rabbit actually writes to this new group is reshadish of that year meaning probably a few days or a week no more than you know like a week and a half after i have to look and see the exact what date was shabbos beratious but i'm saying relatively within days of yeah that ever said that the group should be formed by shabbos bereishish the group was formed and then by reshredish venderaba was writing the first official letter addressed to a goodis khabad now another thing to mention in addition to the latter with the first official letter this is something extremely important and unique to the rabbi the first sikha specifically to nishi benes a lot of people don't realize this but there were several times a year where 770 was cleared out the men had to leave and that ever would speak to gatherings exclusively of women the women would come into to to show and the the rebel would speak circus directly addressed to the women and for the women and then these these circles are transcribed and written and many of them are edited there are hundreds of the sikhs from throughout the years the first time that that happened was reshaded thomas tafsinyud gimmel meaning to say in the same year the first year that nishay khabad started in america remember it started the sim crested for bringing of your gimmel so half a year later that summer reshredistamos that was the first time 770 was cleared out and it was just the women and that ever spoke to the women okay um what can i tell you you know uh you're gonna see from this letter that and we've had this before in previous letters that approach to women is very egalitarian it's not that women are accessories to their husbands and that they uh ride on right in on the coat pals of their husbands the women are also them there ever says that actually explicitly in this in this letter that among mike sidim are also the women and then the deb actually says and that should go without saying it's an obvious thing we'll we'll get to it let's just let's start the letter and this is in yiddish and it's in a real yiddish this is not a liquid there are different types of yiddish so this is a real this is uh in fact in the letter that ebb actually references the idea of using the vernacular the real heimisha yiddish in order to be more accessible to women which obviously at that at that time that was the way of being more accessible as opposed to los angeles remember the date of this letter was uh what was the date right okay so it's ten days before judge fat which is the york site of the previous rabbit so into zamen hang with them your site hilullah tag from them caduceus admiral in connection with the yard site the hilula of the previous rabbit it's coming up on the tenth day of the month of schwartz i turn to you with the following i think it is superfluous to mention to you what a propitious time the art site is we know that the time of a york site we had it actually i think in yesterday's letter that ever spoke to someone says your trots coming up and the the deb is going to have an aliyah because it's his your side and the aliyah is going to pour pour forth spiritual love energy upon everyone connected to him but you got to make a kali you got to make a vessel to hold on to that spiritual energy so that i was referring to the same concept here i it's superfluous i do not have to mention how this day the day of the year of the york side is a shasta and a strat saying a propitious time a special time for the siddhim and and and here's the phrase i just want to underscore shay ubene which it is self-understood that the women and daughters of chabad are a part of this part of what of hasidim so that ebba said this is an important day for anas says in itself understood that when i say anash and siddhim women and girls are a part of that phrase i've said this before when the rabbit says something yourselves for stand up and it's uh moving me a love and it's a wonder that you didn't know this a lot of times well i didn't know it it's such a wonder i didn't know i didn't know it but the dev is teaching me that it should become with appshittus it should become obvious to me i should train myself until that goes without saying so i think this is something that actually that ebba um accomplished which is that it does go without saying think about that i think it does go without saying i think today have you heard that that ever asked lebovators to do something you wouldn't ask the men or also the women self understood that when the rabbit says it means the men and the women so i think that actually uh maybe was something that when the rebbe wrote it here in 1955 needed to be explained or at least it needed to be stated i think today by hashem um that we're on the same page with the rebbe in that regard i think we do think that way that when we say la babachar that's not a gender specific term at least i hope that it's not a gender-specific term in our minds okay asylum huffington from covey is made of admire on strabbing it means sveva apparently it means sveva environment okay so we know i don't think i saw um at any rate um says it is known the hope and the toil you could make a whole diok about the difference between the hope and the toil uh of the frida keraba in seeing to it that women take an active role in the efforts to strengthen and spread siddhis the lifestyle siddhis and its way of raising children both in their own homes and in the um in the environment around them okay in fact that is one of the main reasons why the rabbit started many years prior giving out talks and that ever mentions the title de burum which we've actually mentioned in previous classes here liquidity which are compiled secrets of the fiduciary that one of the main reasons why the vedic rabbit came out with books in yiddish why because that ever wanted it to be accessible now in 2022 probably the way you would translate that is it's important to have siddhis in sfasa medina whatever medina you're in so whether that's uh english or russian or french or spanish and we see that pushed very very much that siddhis should be available in every single language that there shouldn't be a barrier a language barrier for anyone to learn see this you know but the guy came to the rabbi and he said uh how much does it cost how much do you charge to teach torah the other says hashem i can't charge you to learn tighter with me today was given in a wilderness in a ownerless land because it belongs to everyone equally says oh great so thank you for not charging me so the rabbit says here uh dick this homich open up start reading he says i i can't read he says why not just read it says i can't it's in hebrew he says oh hebrew lessons are two hundred dollars an hour okay and anyway there shouldn't be a language barrier so the frida grabber pushed out lots of siddhis in the vernacular in the everyday language in yiddish and the rabbit you see went and took that even to many many many more languages and by the way i should mention you know how much we're enjoying reading these letters from the egress the egress only printed the letters in lash and hakkadesh and in yiddish you know that there are thousands of letters of that have written originally in english yes there are how would you like that would that be fun maybe we maybe just maybe we could start a class we could learn letters of that in english that were translated into english that the dictated and edited in english you can see by the way that ebba would make whatever would make editing marks in english on the english letters so it was it's english it came from the rabbi and that ever signed it it doesn't matter what language it was in it's it's the rebe's words and for someone like me an american boy who's never speaks english and i'm hearing that ebba is speaking in english it just it hits my heart in such a special place so yeah maybe we should do that okay anyways yeah i mentioned before the rabbit says this in this letter the words of the righteous live and endure forever the bald dust is given since this was the previous rabbis hope and well now it flips it before it's at huffington street now it's just his toil and his hope so since this was what's something the fedor could have hoped for and invested effort into there it's there it has an effect even now because the work of tadhikim is timeless it doesn't matter that he did it years ago it's as if he's doing it right now as venman the passenger for caleb this is very similar to what we had last night that the yardstick's coming it's going to give you a spiritual boost but you've got to put out a container to to channel it so the rabbit says that what the furika rabbit did is continuing now the spiritual energy is available now but what do you got to do we gotta you gotta prepare with the proper channels and vassals vert gabin from aben espaciela hatzlajo as the arabic so sign with grace so then if you prepare the special vessels or if you prepare the vessels then from above will be given a special success great success special atsloja for great success okay der therefore i suggest the following and here the rebbe is going to actually give a program for a nishi benefit gathering how you like that is going to tell us exactly how a you fought shaybanic event should go here we go in them he on the day of the york site or on an appropriate day near the york site zones from ida sniff all of the members of your branch remember this was a local branch of nishibanes kabat all of the members of your branch should gather together zomen einladen he should also invite women who are not members abrahavos yiddish but for whom judaism is is near and dear to them non tun tire near and dear menzol for learnin you should learn or teach in before the the assembled sugar paste [Music] you should learn excerpts i guess is the best translation pieces parts sections of the writings and talks of my father-in-law interesting you should learn with them excerpts of sovereign writings which i assume could include igress letters and secrets transcriptions of talks that he gave okay so that's one thing you should learn a bit of a writing or a teaching of the video um you should also tell some stories about him specifically about his self-sacrifice for judaism and torah and mitzvos and that if you follow those instructions will help will facilitate accomplishing the primary purpose of this gathering and now that i was going to say what is the primary purpose of this gathering i would like to know what you'd like to know okay so we're going to learn some excerpts of some of the devas teachings you can tell tell some stories about the deba and that's going to help us accomplish the primary purpose of the gathering what which which is atsugab in tasteful series we're going to increase and arouse a greater strengthening in the work of this organization a good in pursuing the different avenues for strengthening judaism in general and in particular spreading the teachings of siddhis and its customs and its ways and especially there should be a focus on matters that are uniquely relevant to the women of chabad and regarding this it's already been written about many times things that are particularly relevant to women i should just mention that is not saying what those things are but that ever says has been written about many many times not that this would apply in 1955 but in 2022 if you look at the the complete body of his work i can i'll just take i hope it's not too much liberty mentioning when the rabbit would speak about women uh especially when the reb would speak on his mother's yard site his mother being an archetypical jewish woman rabbits in khanna he would speak about how that name khan is my ancestor said that khan is referring to the biblical khana of course but also her namesakes naders so khala is not just oh by the way i did have frosh scholar today i went to the albany bakery not the regular albany bakery the the matzo bakery in albany has no sign out front i went to go get matzo and he didn't have matzah for me i'm supposed to call back on friday but some bakram a group of uh buddha of bahrain were making matza and they let me be my fresh and i did i made the bracha it was so cool and they did the hoshi bona bisa magdesh it was great um i didn't steal the mitzvah from a woman there were no women there was just a bunch of bakram doing matzo baking um what was i talking about yeah so khala is not just afroscala it's also casserous in general and nida is not just the actual uh you know the immersion in a mikvah it means the sanctifying the the the marital life and hadlochus natis is uh is obviously lighting shabbos candles on shabbos and yamcha but it's it's more than that it's about bringing in a a warmth and a light into the home in in and bringing spiritual clarity into the home okay so uh because the rebbe says things that are specifically pertinent to women have been written about many many times many places so i'm trying my best here to suggest what some of those might be okay hashem should help translates here all the good resolutions i'm assuming that means that at the fabregan they're supposed to make good resolutions should come into actuality actually was not familiar with that word tatsachen that means practical i guess related to tun there was a zionist yiddish newspaper in warsaw before the war called yertat so practical stuff this should be without any difficulty pretty nice and with great success with blessing i await good tidings and then rebecca's name okay that's our letter tonight we'll see you tomorrow night tomorrow's thursday night la shishi we got a double dose two letters one for thursday night and one for friday night that you'll be able to remember and recall and you could look in your booklet in order to bring to mind on friday night at the shabbos table and also we'll have your manchester um also those pdfs that you can print out with discussion questions uh of all of the letters that we learned this week so at your shabbos table you can share with your family and your friends and your shabbos guests about some of the things that these letters have been getting you to think about okay see you tomorrow night