Letters of the Rebbe: "The Power of Accountability" ( Class 22)

good evening welcome back to 30 letters in 30 days class number 22. we're in the home stretch today was bass nissan bass nissan of course is a very important day on the chabad calendar base nissan means the second day of the hebrew month of nissan but why is that an important day that is the yard site hilullah of the rebel shop the fifth rabbi of khabad and we have a [Music] a story that is told not only it was told but the rabbit told about the last moments of the rabbit shop when he conveyed the message i'm going now into heaven and i leave for you the writings all of my hasidic writings and the rabbis spoke about the deep meaning of that last will and testament so to speak of the rebel shop but i'll just bring out one point that that amplifi amplified upon and that is the specific word laws leave i leave you the writings didn't say that the writings are being given to you the writings are being transferred to you bequeathed to you there are many different ways that you can convey a transfer of ownership rather that ebert ashab said i leave it for you in other words come and get it it's available if you want it it's yours but you have to make it yours and i think we've seen that throughout the 30 days that the rebbe left us absolute treasures in the egress but you have to come and get it and you have to make it yours you have to actually put in a little bit of work a little bit of sweat equity in order to start to see the depth of it but once you do boy oh boy it's just endless so it's been really meaningful to me to put in some extra thought and extra time and extra focus and extra concentration into these letters and it's always rewarding always rewarding whenever one does so so thank you for giving me the impetus to do so these past uh 21 evenings and for the next uh tonight including tonight what nine evenings until uh dolph nissan okay letter number 22. barak hashem shintasv brooklyn shalom of rakha the date is the fourteenth day of shefat greetings and blessings which means that is writing to a man as we've said before here it is apparent that the rabbit is speaking to somebody who it seems maybe a rabbi it seems he may have something to do with a shul it's not entirely clear but we'll we'll read the letter and we'll uh we'll try to piece it together niskabal mikhtove i received your letter from the eighth day of shvat along with the pawn from the day of the yacht site the passing the anniversary of passing which of course that means yujvat which we've spoken about before in previous letters that is the yard site of the frederick rabbit that is father-in-law and we've also spoken about what a pan is a pidyanephish that is a special type of written communication that akhasid submits to a rabbi asking for prayers on his behalf so that abba says to this person i received your letter and also the pawn now regarding this that you say to me that you have no excuse for the lack of your writing to me now we know this that this is something that comes up often in the debit correspondences that abba will ask people why are you writing so infrequently why don't you write more often apparently or possibly that ebb asked something like this to this letter writer or perhaps it was unsolicited but what's apparent is that this person wrote previously i know i haven't written a long time and i have no excuse for it okay so in other words the person's feeling guilty i think this is probably useful for us right now because uh if you've been following along with how often that ever asks for people to write to him um maybe one or two people out there considered feeling guilty now i'm just gonna ask you um do you think that everyone wants people to feel guilty about not writing to him what do you think you're right he doesn't want you to feel guilty about it okay so then why does he mention it you know i feel guilty when you mention it okay let's find out i've written to many people who correspond with me in other words that ev is saying this is something that comes up quite often that i have to clarify this point shalom this is not my intention that's not my point i'm not trying to lay a guilt trip on you that's not what i'm saying so then why why does that ever say write more often now last night if you remember last night's letter we had a beautiful explanation of why writing to the debit with good news is going to improve our subjective outlook on life as well as because of the kabbalistic mechanics of how our thoughts affect reality it will improve our objective experience of life as well that was last night now we're going to learn something different and it's not a contradiction that can both be true it's just a different angle you know by the way we we encounter this all the time that there are multiple reasons for things so it's not a contradiction it's just another perspective all right so last night we learned one perspective why it's good to write to the deb tonight we're learning another perspective why it's good to write to the device so here hear that eva says people feel guilty about it they say oh i'm so sorry and and that i was saying that's not my point that's not what i'm trying to do the indian accept so what's the point what's the point of writing noise in addition to the fact that in these days we live proverbially speaking in a parched wilderness in a desert so it's it's so rare to hear good news and we just we we we thirstily drink in the good news when we hear good news so that that's one thing that i was saying but this is in addition to that it is very nice to get good news okay that's that's one thing but in addition to that and this is the main thing that ebb is going to say in fact he says the main thing the main thing here who aldera is along the same lines as the saying of our sages it's actually a madrish if ruvain would have known that his act was written meaning written in the title and that gives the source vayikra pediglam at aleph i actually think it's dalit it might be a typo in chambia fast tire and also look in the commentary on the medusa called y'fast toyar okay let me explain a little bit here uh ruvain here means the biblical ruvain it means joseph's brother ruvving um if you remember ruvain was the one who said let's not kill him uh let's uh sell him into slavery he pulled him out of the pit and instead of killing him he sold him into slavery so um the debbie says that there's a medusa that says that if ruvain would have known that his act was going to be recorded he would have done the job more fully meaning and the medish actually says he would have put yesef on his shoulders right like he would have put yes on his own put his little brother on his shoulders and marched him back home to his father right see ruvain did a good thing he saved his brother's life but if he would have known that this is being written in the toyota and recorded for posterity he would have gone the extra mile and he would have put yes on his shoulders and marching back home the message continues and gives a couple more examples of similar things it says if aharen would have known that when maisha after the mission had his burning bush experience and he said that i can't be the one to redeem the jews because i have an older brother and really he should be the one to redeem the jews and and hashem tells masha no no aaron's happy for you go out and see him you're going to see he's happy and he went out and aaron was all happy oh yay baby brother you're going to be the redeemer but which was very nice but the mother says if aharin would have known that that episode was going to be recorded for for eternity in the toyota he would have come out with a marching band that's what it says with uh with um what he called tambourines and with flutes with a marching band so uh he would have done it even more fully it also says the third example says about bayas bayas was the the the the chieftain the head of the the tribe in the time of russ in the book of rus the story of ross so she was impoverished and he fed her roasted grains which was very nice but the matter says if he would have known that this is being written down for posterity then he would have served her fat veal which is uh you know a delicacy at any rate um it's interesting all of these examples in the madras that the rabbit is referring to are examples of people who did who did good things and they would have done it even better had they known it was going to be written down or like we say and that ever said many times as good is good is best if good is good isn't better even better of course it is so that ebb is not saying that if you knew you had to write what you're doing and be accountable in writing then you'd stop doing bad stuff no no that's not what i was saying but i was saying you're doing good stuff already you're doing good stuff already but if you knew that you were gonna write to me about all the good stuff you're doing then you would do your good stuff even better just like these examples in the madrush by the way the rabbit says to look in the afast tire there which is the the one of the commentaries on the maddish so if you look there it's interesting the faster asks a question which is why would these tsadikim be so concerned with kavit with honor like oh if it was anonymous and no one would know about it so they would do it kind of halfway but once they know it's there's going to be pierce some it's going to be written in the title now they're going to do it more fully like doesn't sound very righteous the apostle explains a few different very legitimate explanations that have nothing to do with being corrupt or or looking for attention legitimate reasons why a person would do something more fully if he knew it was being written he says one thing is that um you know there are things that when you do them in public when people are watching toyota demands that you take extra care like the idea of madison right where you're not doing anything wrong but it could look to give an impression that you're doing something wrong so you have to be extra careful and there's such a concept in total in halacha that you have to be concerned with outward appearances so and that's a legitimate reason for doing things even more carefully more meticulously when you know that people are observing okay that's one explanation faster gives another explanation he says sometimes that a person does something good but he's embarrassed of the people or even afraid of the people around but if he knows that it's not just the immediate people who are watching him this is all generations who are watching him so to speak then it emboldens him to do it more uh with more uh panache he puts himself more into it so like for instance jasef was i mean not yes but um ruvain was a little bit concerned about the other brothers that they're gonna thwart his his plan to save yasef um ahring was a little bit uh embarrassed or he was thinking you know like well i don't know how i should make a big tim is from this right and and and by us also he was sort of like look what are people going to say here's this uh young widow and i'm giving her nice food they're going to think i'm like coming on to her like i don't want to give that impression right but if you would have known that this is for eternity you would said you know who cares about the impression that the people looking at me right now have this is for all generations this is for eternity let me do it right so that's another explanation that euphosi uh gives and and another one i'll just mention one more and we'll move on is that sometimes people think something is insignificant they themselves don't realize the profundity of what they're doing they know it's a good thing they just don't understand the ramifications the big picture and if they were to understand that this is going to be recorded and studied by future generations it hits them how massive the action is that they're involved in and that it didn't register with them before that okay at any rate the point is that refers to a madras which basically says it's human nature it's human psychology that when you know something is going to be recorded then you do things even better even better than you're already doing them currently and that's what deb is saying here i want you to write to me because i want you to have that accountability that the medici describes and it's just sort of unavoidable that's the way that that accountability affects the human psyche it it it will pull more productivity out of you and whatever says it pretty explicitly right here let's let's continue we see for ourselves it's empirically evident [Music] when a person knows that he has to report about what he's doing um if he doesn't report he's going to be asked hey what's up with that why you're not reporting so then he has to he knows for sure he's got a report without any cosmetics without any massaging without really called spin without any spin so this automatically forces him it arouses in him to up his game to do things with greater intensity with greater vigor um until sometimes it even pulls out hidden abilities that were unrevealed and it makes them revealed meaning there's potential that you have that you didn't know you had but when you have to write and report that potential is going to come out and you you wouldn't be able to summon up those potentials otherwise but somehow this this phenomenon of accountability automatically elicits those hidden talents bahamas things that are so evident and obvious don't really need to be elaborated upon at length at any rate so another reason why accountability is so important and writing to the deb is so important all right now another point masha kasif this which you write you don't know about an appropriate place i'm not sure exactly what this means um it sounds like it means a place to maybe set up a shul maybe to give classes but i'm not certain at any rate the person says i'm in a new neighborhood i moved are relocated and i don't know about a good place a good location where to get situated says listen everything that has to do with titan mitsubis has to come through toil only when we're talking about the other side that means the clippers negativity do we say uh you know this is a this is a the phrase from uh the the jews when they were regrettably nostalgizing or reminiscing about the good old days in in egypt what was so good about egypt they were they were they were slaves they said oh remember back in egypt when we ate bread for free you weren't eating for free you were slaves free from mitzvas free from it was before mountain toyota they didn't have mitzvahs so they were nostalgizing about before they had those moral obligations placed upon them so that's the side of negativity over there the the negative side gives free lunch as we call it in uh in our vernacular but in the side of kedusha there's no free lunch or like uh if shimka lazarov the uh from texas says there's no no free lunch even if somebody tells you such a misha gas believe me i tried it no matter what there's no free lunch he sings it better than me but there's no free lunch on the side of kedusha if there's a there's there's a free lunch that's the sitra so this guy apparently he was writing to the rabbit and saying well you're going to see he actually i think he either wistfully expressed the desire for a miracle or perhaps he even went as far as to ask their habit to perform a miracle and that ebb is telling why would you do that like it's good to work hard in anything that's holy anything that's that's pure is going to entail toil and work i'll tell you just very briefly there's a story that a father brings his little boy to the mikvah for the first time but this is in the the al-dahim so the mikvah means that means the river and it's frozen there's ice so you have to smash a hole in it so the the father takes the little boy and he dips him in the in the cold river a little boy squeals and then the father takes him out wraps him up in a warm blanket and the boy says ah the father says to him i want you to learn a lesson in life see the mikvah is holy okay so it starts with the e with a squeal but it ends with ah because that's how holy things are but then there's other things in life they start with an aha but they end with the e with the squeal and that is the stuff that's not holy so if it's holy it's gonna start with toil but that's all part of it and and let's look here what the rabbit says and if you look in zayer volume two um that means the book of shmeice and on page 128 a which is parshas truma you're going to find over there what it says and it's interesting i was just i saw that maramakima says oh zaya we had a zoya last night which i recognized because of lakota circles trust me i'm not a student of zayer at least not directly but when there's a when there's a source in the rebels toyota for azaria i'll go look up desire so last night there was a zai that sent us to uh the sikha about to be talking about mishra manu i think somebody wrote in asked i believe it's at any rate um the fact checkers will let me know that's just off the cuff but this zohar i recognized i was like oh i know this where do i know this from i'll tell you where i know it from so uh shabbos i was relearning my favorite mimer by yamash deosar which is a a minor that ever said on his birthday of nissan and so i was learning you know i've been not only doing the 30 letters in 30 days that's my honor for you often so shabbos i was learning with my wife we were learning uh sir and over there that ever speaks about uh it's a whole explanation about why the jewish people uh they choose a relationship only with hashem and not with mazzolis not with the intermediaries why would you choose a relationship with the intermediaries and explains over there because when when you have a relationship with the king it's limited why because in kedusha you have to work hard you have to work hard there's no free lunch there's no free lunch okay but in clipper if there's a machiff of it's just like you can't internalize it because it's not compatible with your system it just sort of washes over you um but it it feels good at least at first and it feels like you're getting you know it's like when the credit card companies send you the the envelope with the checks and you're like oh free checks blank checks money they're giving me it feels feels so good it feels like they're just giving you free stuff they're not giving another they're there to make you an indentured servant for the rest of your life to pay that apr but at any rate so over there in the mesh day officer which was my favorite i mean personally it's my favorite mimer from the rabbit so he explains over there that in clipper yeah they give it to you for free and you know they come back and then they bite you in the end you know that's how they get you but at any rate so he's midsigned to that zayer and i saw the zayer in tonight's letter like i said to my wife is that the same zayer that we we looked at on shabbos she said go go look there's a bookmark still in desire open it up and see i said yep that's it okay um so why are you daving for a miracle and the miracle's gonna come and give you an easy way out and spoil all the hard work for you shim tsa mockingbird gear that you're gonna find a place without toil no no everything with tater mitsub has to be with toil so yeah it's good it's good it should be hard to find the right place to get situated in your new neighborhood that ever says what is that that's a good morning shabbos talking about a guy it's an interesting miracle that happened for him he he his his wife died la eleno and he had a child who was still nursing and he darvened and a miracle happened he was able to to nurse the child he became he was able to lactate to nurse the child so there there was a macholicus there that i think was a vasef and abaya about whether it was a good thing or a bad thing but uh i said well how is this something how this is a good thing he he did it he had a miracle done on his behalf that's not good you're supposed to toil you're supposed to do things naturally that itself needs to you know famous story about the altarebin when he was uh in prison he used to take him back and forth from the prison to the courthouse for interrogation and they would take them across the river and uh what's called the never river in peterborough so they would take them across the river and he wanted to make kirish lavonna and you know sanctify the new moon and he told the riverboat captain to stop the boat and the guy wouldn't stop and although it did something you know mystical stuff and made the boat stop but then alternate released it and said now you stop it the guy wouldn't do it they went back and forth like that a couple of times finally the guy realized the altitude can stop the boat you know i better but then actually he told the altar i'll stop it but you have to give me a bracha you have to put it in writing which he did at any rate so then the the non-jewish riverboat captain stopped the boat the altar made kiddish lavana and then he released the boat um so the the physical says i heard the story since i was a kid i never understood if the altar could stop the boat miraculously then just you know what does he have to ask the the captain to stop it he said but then i learned more citizen i realized everything has to be done within nature hashem created nature and the ultimate is not to sidestep nature because that's not it to make a dwelling place for hashem in this world means to work within the parameters of the world anyways that's the mother shabbos base islamic base that's another gemara also from from shabbos but uh different over there and it's talking about uh alanis that we don't rely on a miracle a person shouldn't rely on a miracle and what about someone who says oh but i did it and i got away with it he didn't get away with it because it depletes from your account you think you got away with it you didn't get that's i was speeding all day i didn't get pulled over and then you wait two weeks and you get the the red light camera ticket or the speed and camera ticket you didn't get away with anything so if you rely on a miracle it'll uh what he called deplete or it'll uh detract from your merits so don't do that at any any rate that ebba tells him why do you want a miracle to find a new place to i think set up a shul or start giving classes or something like that it's good that it's hard work go through the natural channels that's the way everything holy works okay nanaisi now another subject i enjoyed my mashike i'm not sure the translation here there's a few places i'm not sure about the translation i believe here means a job okay it's the translation says something different please ignore that it means a job i'm glad that you found employment that's what i think it means the fact that you have a job is going to be good for your relationship and you and your wife uh with the local jews in this place again i think this person had some type of uh influential position in in his in the place that he moved to and the fact that he has some type of side employment that ever saying is going to be good for your relationship with the people there the safe safe gam and then in the end you know the money will also come you know first of all it's good it's just good for your reputation as an upstanding citizen that you have this job it's good for your networking and your relationships with people but also it's going to bring in money [Music] and not only will the money come but a lot of money you're going to be comfortable with the time how you shame in parentheses if you had listened to my words about the thirteen strands of the beard it's a kabbalistic description of the mystical beard the yid gimmel kuni dikna the thirteen strands of the beard which correspond to the thirteen and as the rabbit explains here in the source over here that the beard draws down the mystical beard and say that esthauslas brings down and so too down here the actual beard of the person is a channel to bring mercy into his life so the rabbit says if you would listen to me about the beard apparently this person had no beard so that i was saying first of all it's good you're going to have parnosa and you're going to have lots of parnosa so that he gives him that bracha yeah it's going to be good you're going to get you're going to have money okay but by the way if you would have listened to me about the beard already so if you would listen to me it explains that the temperature explains over there that the ud gimbal to kuni dikna the beard is corresponding to the gimbal to the channels of divine mercy um and if your wife would listen about wearing a shaytar covering her hair with a shaytan aleph over there in that desire it says actually that the sustenance the material sustenance of the home can be affected or even to the extent of being dependent upon the woman following this mitzvah of covering her hair so that ebba says you're going to have parnosa you can have a lot of parnosa but by the way if you would grow a beard and your wife would cover her hair you would have had the parnosa already kvar hoya you would already have seen a change in your livelihood that is readily observable to physical eyes that's even discernible to physical eyes yeah um what can i do about those two things other than speak about it so here i mentioned it again that makes clear he's mentioned it before and i'm mentioning it again what else can i do i i can just mention it i mentioned it again okay a punch light remember at the beginning of the letter that abba said that the person wrote uh a miktov and upon so hapan chile the the pidyanesh the special petition for prayer is at a propitious time at the aisle at the resting place of my father-in-law my rabbit that's hashem should cause your wife may she be well that her pregnancy should proceed properly and easily and she should properly and easily give birth to healthy children at the right time apparently this man's wife was expecting with blessing and that's our letter for tonight and uh we'll see you tomorrow it's no free lunch