The Lubavitcher Rebbe and the History of Aviation

what a an unbelievable evening this has been and uh yes as the introduction mentioned i've spoken in a few places and seemingly i shouldn't be too nervous about this this is right at home this is it's 25 minutes from my house but i'm i'm kind of awestruck by the job they gave me we're celebrating that ebb's 120th birthday and they told me to speak about the rabbi in less than 10 minutes i don't know how to describe anyone's life a life a person's life in 10 minutes let alone someone who was and continues to be larger than life so i'll tell you what i what i decided to do we're in the cradle of aviation museum in case the people watching online don't know we're in the imax theater cradle of aviation and amazing it's actually very breathtaking here so i wanted to talk about uh aviation history if that's okay with you okay all right so uh we have some brought some visuals okay so this is uh kitty hawk north carolina december of 1903. orville and wilbur wright the wright brothers flew their first flight for for ages human beings had looked to the skies and seen the birds fly and dreamt of human flight and it was an impossibility it was fantasy until that fateful day and their plane flew olive 12 seconds 12 seconds now the same time this was happening in north carolina a little boy was about a year and a half old he was born in imperial russia as arest russia the son of rabbi lady yitzchak and rabbits in kana schneerson great jewish leaders proud jewish leaders descended from a long line of jewish leaders and apparently they raised their young son menachem mendel to dream to dream big to think big and and how do we know this because in a very rare glimpse that the rabbit once revealed about his personal life and about his childhood actually it's a letter that ebb wrote in 1956 to then president of israel yitzhak benzvi and the rabbi actually explains that when before he was even taken to haider we're talking about as a toddler he said i was already imagining i talked about a toddler i was already imagining a vision of the complete and final redemption of this world i was already dreaming of and seeing what this world would look like look like when it was perfected i i wanna i want you to understand this little boy when he was that age he was hiding in a cellar from the cossacks who were coming through on in a pogrom and and as as his mother but hannah related he would soothe the other children they shouldn't make noise they shouldn't be discovered and he used to give the little other little children candies and he would calm them so this was what the reality was going around him but this little boy was already dreaming of a perfect world okay 1927. here we have the spirit of st louis famous airplane flown by charles lindbergh actually it took off about a mile from this very spot that's why this is one of the reasons why this is the cradle of aviation and that was the first successful solo transatlantic flight now a year later the rebbe would marry his partner in life rabbits was not only the daughter of the rebels but she had been her father her father's uh confidante and had power of attorney during the darkest days of stalinist depression robertson kayamushka was actually running much of the operation underground for her father and she married and they uh built a home together they did not have biological children but in many ways an entire generation are their sons and daughters okay let's go to the uh the jet age modern aviation yeah okay now planes are going very very fast this is the modern era and at this point 1941 the rabbit comes to america and in america the rabbit is settles in brooklyn and he's working for his father-in-law and he is managing directing the three large organizations which were put together to as the framework for chabad activities in america america's and things are now becoming more official it's a whole operation and there are representatives all over the country all over the world affiliates the shlochem are spreading out starting to spread out next uh we come to uh what's the next picture i brought oh yeah uh breaking the sound barrier yeah i think that's chuck yeager's plane there and that's uh going faster than speed of sound can you imagine that and around this same time talking in the 1950s now and the rebbe is breaking barriers and he calls it breaking barriers the slogan of the rabbit during this time is ufaratsta which has got almighty's charge to our forefather jacob he tells him burst out breakthrough boundaries and the deb is breaking through social boundaries and psychological boundaries telling people get out of your box especially american jewelry which in many ways is apathetic and and and that ebb is encouraging every single person who will listen to his voice break out break through the barriers reach out to another jew and uh inspire them okay uh next we have i think we have the space age yeah okay space age space race nasa man on the moon all that stuff and what's happening what is the debit doing the debit is reaching for the moon and uh things are going at a fever pitch at this point um [Music] are spreading out more there are the the mitzvah campaigns where young people are standing on the corner excuse me sir are you jewish excuse me ma'am are you jewish you know guerrilla and judaism right there on the corner would you like to put on filling would you like to light chavez candles um the mitzvah tanks you know the repurposed rvs the recreational vehicles that all of our kids refer to as tanks and uh going out hitting the streets uh chabad houses and the rabbis tapping into the the zeitgeist of the counter-culture and the ebba says i'm gonna make my own spiritual peace corps and uh that i was sending out young couples to go and turn over the whole world okay what do we have next oh concord jet yeah the concord jet now uh yeah so i i mentioned they broke the sound barrier a couple decades earlier that was chuck yeager that was like elite military now regular civilians are breaking the sound barrier meaning it's becoming democratized it's becoming something that anybody can do and they're they're flying the concord from new york to london and i think two hours and 50 minutes something like that absolutely wild and as sonic booms are being heard over long island the dev is making a boom we're talking the same era as the conqueror talking in the 1970s and in the teldens come out to be the first shliya couple on long island and they make a boom here in long island okay yeah okay now what do i got before the international space station it looks like okay fine all right international space station whole new era i mean now we're we're up to the 90s already and the rabbit is tapping into technology the satellite h this is uh this picture here that uh show the picture of the rabbit with from hanukkah live that i was using technology that i was using using satellites and the fabregans are being uh are being broadcast in a satellite feed and there's haba.org you know before google before facebook before youtube there was kabat.org already you yeah it's amazing using all of the the the advantages that modern technology are giving us just absolutely like sci-fi but it's not sci-fi it's really happening okay now we know that in 1994 the devil passed on but i want to explain that the debba's vision that ebba's dream the dream of that little boy of a perfect world that dream did not stop the dream only kept growing because you see it was always part of the dream that this was not about him this was about you tell you the rabbit didn't just have belief in an infinite god that had belief in the infinity of you so now go ahead this picture is from a month ago uh breakthrough in aviation that is an entirely commercial crew civilian crew going to the international space station and i should add that the captain of that entirely civilian crew is a nice jewish boy by the name of eitan stibe and when he spoke live from the international space station he spoke in hebrew so now we're living in an era where civilians can go buy a ticket to the moon to mars why not what did did abba do that empowered his emissaries and not just his official emissaries every single one of us that ebba's vision lives on through us this is just the shlokhim that's not the shloch ice okay and and those are just the shlokhim who made it into the picture okay so yeah yeah now now we're talking about the current day and we have four thousand nine hundred shlokam couples in over 100 countries all over the world okay and that's how the rabbi's vision continues so here's what i want to explain to you when the rabbit was born no one had flown the wright brothers hadn't even gotten off the ground for their little 12-second flight it was a dream it was impossible it couldn't be done and today as we celebrate that ebba's 120th birthday civilians are buying tickets into outer space the same exact revolution happened in judaism with the rabbi's vision that ebb is dreaming the little boy who was hiding from the cossacks but wasn't afraid and dreamt of a perfect world where every man woman and child would know god and see the truth and live in peace and prosperity and safety and health i'm telling you what was science fiction once upon a time is reality today we see it with our own eyes it's undeniable just want to tell you one more thing as i was standing outside in the lobby i asked one of the workers here for the wi-fi code and i don't know if anyone else here asked for the wi-fi code but if you did you can corroborate i didn't make it up for this speech i asked him what's the wi-fi code he told me here at the cradle of aviation museum he said future is now exclamation point [Applause] future is now we want meshiach now that which our people dreamt of that which they thought was absolute fantasy that little boy saw as a possibility as a reality as a reality not just for himself but for each and every one of you so if there's something that you think is beyond you something that you think is too far of a reach i want to tell you you got to think big like the lava charab there are no limits today there's nothing holding us back dream big and live big put on filling bring koshers into your home bring mikvah into your marriage give your children a jewish education take a torah class whatever it is add something and that one thing that you add like maimonides said and that ever would say this so many times in maimonides name maybe thousands of times that one good deed the next good deed could be the one to tip the scales for the entire world you are mitzvah the future is now you