The Rebbe's Ahavas Yisrael Campaign | Mivtza Ahavas Yisrael

this is a series on the campaigns the mitzvah campaigns that that have been launched and there are 10 in total of the campaigns historically speaking this is not the 10th class we have not been going in chronological order but this mitzvah is the tenth of the campaigns uh this was launched that means the 18th day of the hebrew month of ello in the year 5736 which is 1976. and uh that hebrew date has a special significance because it is the birthday of both the baal shamtiv who was the founder of the hasidic movement and the al-taraba who was the founder of the khabad branch of khasidism and both the baal shem tov and the al-taraba exemplified the love of one's fellow as well as were chief exponents in teaching and promoting the love of one's fellow so that ebba launched the campaign then at that fabregan at that gathering interestingly um a little bit later meaning the following shabbos that ebba spoke and clarified what the campaign was really to consist of the deb acknowledged that the campaign may have been a little bit abstract you see with the other campaigns it's pretty clear what action is supposed to be taken for instance fill in campaign put on philly shabbos candle campaign light shabbos candles mozzoza campaign put up a mezzosa tsudaka campaign give to dhaka and so on and so forth these were pretty tangible and actionable ideas back yes wow you see all right fine i don't want to be superstitious or anything but you see when the technology starts failing like that you start to think maybe we're doing something super important and certain forces don't want to let it through because this didn't happen on any of the this didn't happen on any of the other classes about any of the other mitzvahs and all of a sudden now we're getting uh opposition here okay so this to me is a sign that this is extremely important wow okay so i was i was giving a little bit of the history i was saying how um the rebel acknowledged that this mitzvah campaign was a little bit uh abstract you know what what's the action that you're supposed to do from it so that i've explained that actually obvious israel loving your fellow jew is such a fundamental principle that it really is all embracing so you can't really limit it you can't say it's this action or it's that action it really there's no aspect of our lives that it doesn't touch at the same time that ever wanted to give some type of uh tangible uh framework for people to act on so that ebba suggested free loan societies very interesting that ebba said that every shul should have a free loan society every group like every you know organization or social group should have a free loan society and that can be the the action item so uh if you're looking for a mitzvah to do it's a bigger mitzvah to give a loan than to give a handout um because you uh preserve the person's dignity and uh if that's something that you can get involved in or get a friend or get a friend or two or your uh get your shule involved in definitely it's a worthwhile activity um but let me go back to this idea that loving your fellow is this all-embracing and general mitzvah you know we have the dictum from rabbi akiva who was the great scholar he was like the moses of his time and he was the the the leader the foremost teacher of of his generation in the times of the uh of the second temple and afterward so rabbi akiva is one who famously said love your fellow as yourself which is the the verse from uh from the book of leviticus zach claus god del battero this is a big idea or a big principle in torah what does that mean well one interpretation is that any mitzvah you do whatever it is can and must be done in a way that shows love to one's fellow so whatever you're doing whether it's prayer or whether it's charity or whether it's not wasting things or anything or putting up a mezuzah or um studying torah whatever the mitzvah it is can be done and must be done in a spirit of love and that that is not just a like let's say icing on the cake like oh i'm following my religion's tenets plus i'm being a nice guy no it's a clown goddale batera it is a general principle an over arcing principle so that you should and you you can and you must do everything in your religious life uh with a spirit of loving another let's talk a little bit more about this what what what this means there's uh there's a passage in the jerusalem talmud that is talking about an oath it's an interesting uh passage a person made an oath he's mad at somebody else and he says i don't want to have anything to do with that guy i am swearing off any benefit from him if he makes a party i'm not going you know if he sponsors the kiddush i'm not attending and there's an idea i'm just going to give a little bit of technical background which is required to explain this but there's an idea in halacha that if a person makes an oath he's bound to keep it however it's preferable that he be released from the oath or the vow it's more of a vow actually it's preferable that he should be released from the vow now how do you be released from the vow you have to go to an expert a rabbi who is an expert in this specialty which is releasing vows a nulling vows and what has to happen is they have to find what's called an opening a pessah which means something if you would have known it at the time of the vow you never would have made the vow so for instance let's just make a silly example somebody says i'm not eating milks i vow i'm not eating milks again okay so it's a mitzvah to keep his word but it's also a mitzvah that he should get released from it and then he no longer has to keep the word until he gets released from it obviously he's bound to keep it but if he can go get released from it he should get released from it and then he won't have to keep it anymore so he goes to the rabbi and says i made a vow i'm never eating milks so let's say the rabbi says to him did you know that cottage cheese is milk hooks no i didn't know that i thought it was tofu if i would have known cottage cheese i love cottage cheese i would have known cod she used milk because i never would have made such a vow ah therefore you're released from the vowel so that's the basic background so let's say a guy got mad at his friend he says i'm making a vow i don't want to have any benefit from him i don't want to have anything to do with him okay so he goes the rabbi says i made this vow so the rabbi has to find a passage an opening something were you have were you to have known it at the time of the vow you would never have made such a vow so the jerusalem talmud says like this the rabbi is supposed to ask the guy to listen to a parable he says here's the parable there was a guy working in a workshop and he was using a sharp tool and as he was working the sharp tool he slipped and his strong hand dominant hand which was using the tool let's say his right hand slipped and it was holding the tool and it stabbed his left hand now his left hand is hurt should he grab the tool from his right hand and with his left hand stab the right hand so the person listening to the parable says no that's absurd of course he shouldn't so the rabbi is then to say well that is exactly what is happening now because our people are one body one single organism and when one member of our nation hurts another it is not only that two wrongs don't make a right but it's even more than that it's that the the same person has been twice wronged because you and him are not two separate people you're one person if i would have known that at the time i made the foul i never would have made such a vowel uh you're released from them from the vow now you can go to his party okay now i want to just play devil's advocate for a second because the truth is you know we are all one creation and there's a certain underlying oneness in all all of god's creatures um you know i remember during the crown heights riots which was such a contentious time uh the the the mayor at the time uh david dinkins came to uh crown heights and he visited the rabbit was in the middle of the the riots and uh he spoke about healing these two communities and and that eva actually said it's one community now there is such a concept obviously that we're all god's creatures and there's an underlying oneness to it all so you know in that sense we are to be at peace with and to promote the well-being of every living thing and even non-living things actually for that matter so what does it mean when we speak about specifically avas israel loving our fellow jew what is what does that mean you know there's a story that um of a blood libel a modern-day blood libel actually the most recent of the blood libels you know the blood libel was a very unfortunate very common uh accusation throughout the ages chiefly in the middle ages it was most common but there was actually a modern day blood libel in the 1900s i think in it was in the 19 teens 19 probably around around world war one maybe right before world war one um yeah it must have it was before the communist revolution yeah it took place in russia and it was the name of the defendant was mendel bayless and they accused him of the classic uh blood libel of killing a christian child anyways he was on trial and one of the things the prosecution said is that well the jewish people according to their talmud they don't value non-jewish life and i can prove it because it says in the talmud that which literally means you the jewish people are called adam what does adam mean well a prosecutor translated as human being in other words the jewish talmud says only jews are considered human beings they don't even consider non-jewish human beings and that's why they kill them okay now the words atim karim adam do appear in the talmud it's true but doesn't mean that but how do you explain that so the defender or what do you call it the uh the the the defendant's lawyer the the uh the attorney who was the defending uh mendel bayless he was in touch with uh various torah scholars at the time specifically for for this reason because a lot of the prosecution was trying to use religious jewish ideas um in a in a twisted way so he spoke to the the roshashiva um mayor shapiro from the lublin and he explained to the defense attorney here's what he should explain and this is what he said he said um there was a murder now my client the defendant did not commit the murder but there was a murder i mean they found a child a non-jewish child the ukrainian child was was murdered now for his family their life will never be the same but i have a question um in his village the the do the people in his village get up every single morning and say oh no it's so terrible this child was murdered i mean it was a year or two later already the trial went down a very long time no they don't the family does not the village in fact you know uh you know if you if you extend it out even more you look at the whole ukraine or you look at the whole uh russian empire you know the farther away you get from from that family the less it's even on people's radar they don't they don't get up every morning and feel that loss now i want to compare that or contrast that with something the lawyer said mendel bayless my my client is here on trial and do you know not only does every jew here in russia but every jew in the entire world whether they're in london or in new york or in buenos aires every single morning they get up and they look at the paper and they see what's going on with mendel bayless trial you know why because the jewish people for better for worse religious not religious doesn't matter we are interconnected to that extent and that is what the talmud means when it says atom cream adam adam doesn't mean human all them actually means a person singular in fact there is no plural of the word adam of them was the name of the first human and it is the word you use to describe a person so therefore when it says atom freedom of them you the jewish people are called a person you hear that not a people a collective the jewish nation is not considered a collective the jewish nation is considered an individual one guy because something that happens to one jew no matter where he is in the world no matter his level of religious observance it's irrelevant it's as if it were happening to all jews everywhere in the world so let's think aback about that talmud uh the jerusalem talmud that says about the guy who made the the oath that he's not going to have benefit from his friend and the rabbi says well if you were working in a workshop and one hand stabbed the other would the other then stab the one of course not why is that specifically a parable about jewish unity because that is actually the precise metaphor to describe the jewish people we are not a people we're a person a person one guy kabbalistically speaking this metaphor is used uh is replete in in the mystical teachings this idea of one organism one entity one one being not a collection of of beings who have some type of symbiotic relationship or or have some type of collective destiny but one single being and therefore the idea of you have to reach love your fellow as yourself it's really not a simile it's not as if they were yourself it's actually saying love them as yourself because got news for you charlie that is yourself we may be in many different bodies but as the kabbalah teaches and siddhis explains we are really one soul that's what it says in chapter 32 of tanya tanya is the famous book of khasidism especially chabad khasidism so chapter 32 which in hebrew 32 islamic base lamin base spells laive heart so the heart of tanya tanya is a book about piety about religious perfection but the heart of it chapter 32 pediglave as we call it is about love your fellow as as yourself and and the idea there again is that our bodies may be many but we are one soul sort of like imagine one sun is shining into a building with many windows so you see many different shafts of light but the spots on the floor that are lit up they're really they're they're they're directly coming from one sun there's a there's a joke about uh this uh teacher this grade school teacher was teaching singular and plural word forms to uh to her class so uh she she says uh to writes a word on the board um shirt so she asks one of the kids is that word singular plural shirt is uh singular she says yeah that's right shirt is singular and she writes down shoes she says to another kid what's shoes singular plural it says uh shoes shoes is plural so she writes down pants uh she calls on a kid what what's pants the kid says singular on the top plural on the bottom so what does that mean singular on the top plural on the bottom i mean that is a pair of parents right starts as one and then it splits off into two different legs but that's actually a pretty apt description of the jewish people that on the bottom meaning down here in the physical world we are in separate bodies but if you trace it up to our source to our souls you'll find that we're we're one entity one being and therefore we complete each other what does that mean we complete each other what that means is that we don't believe in tolerance i got news for you we don't believe in tolerance you know why because tolerance means yeah you're kind of weird you're kind of different you have nothing to offer us but we're nice we'll let you play with us we're tolerant that's not what we're into we're not into tolerance we are into inter connectedness interconnectedness means that you have something that we don't have your uniqueness is indispensable we require your contribution so you know think about it like this tolerance is sort of like you know you're different than us but you know we're tolerant we'll let you hang out with us uh inter-inclusion or interdependence means you're different than us and that's precisely why we need you because you're different than us you have something we don't have you know there was this interesting character who used to hang out at the fabregas at the rebels febrengans in the early 80s called the coach his name was abe zacks and he was the coach of the harlem globetrotters a jewish guy and it's a whole interesting story how he even came to lubovic he actually was watching one of the devil's fabregans on satellite and he lived out in long island somewhere i'm not even sure where but he saw the rebbe on tv and he became enamored and he came out to crown heights and he said i have to see the rabbi from the tv and they said well uh you know you can't really just walk in and see him but you know if you wait until the afternoon prayer you'll see him come out he says great he didn't understand decorum he didn't know the protocol he just figured rabbi is coming out for the afternoon prayer that's his chance to uh you know to accost him so he waited it was like hours he came in the morning and uh they said you know it's it's not not gonna be for hours he said i'll wait and he stood in front of his office and he waited finally the rabbit came out from minha for the afternoon prayer and this guy the coach he was an interesting guy just very vibrant and kind of like a character he makes a beeline right up to the dab but now it's interesting 770 you would see sometimes people run away from the rabbit you know like they were in awe said that they would go they would go hide but he he he went he ran right after i mean i wasn't there when this happened but my friend who was subsequently appointed to be the driver to pick up the coach in long island and bring him to every fabregan he was there and he saw he was standing right there he said it was the strangest thing this guy runs right up to the rabbit and he says rabbi my name is amez axe i'm the coach of the harlem globetrotters and everyone standing around was like whoa it's like okay this is very interesting right he's just running up to the dev and he's all loud and he's like telling debbie's a basketball coach like what's that i'm even gonna respond and of course you know the rabbit took it in stride because you know you'd expect that right that it didn't get you know uh the devil wasn't taken caught off guard or like uh you know uh that wouldn't uh you know show any type of discomfort or anything anything like that but even more than that that eva's response the devil's response was just so perfect without missing a beat that ever looks at this guy in almost like not mean but like a very serious kind of like facial expression and tone that eva looks at this guy says to him in english in a very like serious tone good i need a coach good i need a coach you understand the brilliance of that if you would have gone around 770 and taken a poll from everyone there hey guys what could we add to the fabregans to really you know liven things up to really take us to the next level i promise you no one was going to say oh let's get the coach of the harlem globetrotters to come to the fabregans and cheer and like you know no one was going to say that but this character shows up runs up to the web but mine is abe zac's i'm i'm the coach of hollywood globetrotters and the debit doesn't say to him okay somebody find this guy a place to stand no no that was like good i need a coach like almost annoyed like almost like you're the coach then where have you been till now if you're the coach that means every time we have a break until now we didn't have we didn't have our coach so that's the difference between tolerance and um interdependence tolerance says okay fine we'll overlook your differences we'll make room for you no interdependence means because we've spotted your difference we're intrigued we realize ah we've been missing something till now we were missing you i saw a sign i'm sure a lot of people saw this sign i don't think it's that original but it said uh s h space l and says uh all we're missing is you right sure s.u.l sure all we're missing is you maybe even i saw it at kabat so i saw it um anyways but it's a true statement it's not just cute it's a true statement the inter-inclusion or the inter-dependence of the jewish people one to the other is literally like the organs of a body so it's not like the heart tolerates the liver okay you're not like me you're not a heart but okay i'll let you be part of this body the heart depends on the liver and and not even vital organs even the little toe you know it's not like oh we'll tolerate the little no the little toe has a has a purpose it has a function and we depend on the little toe to do its job and that's really the most precise metaphor we are one organism atem kriyam adam you are a guy the whole jewish people is one guy and when we don't have any member present and involved and engaged so the whole organism is lacking so you understand it's not just like okay be nice to him you know be be play nice with others don't be mean don't don't don't be snobby it's much deeper than that my wholeness my integrity is impossible to achieve without a relationship with every single other jew even those jews that i don't like even those jews who have hurt me personally and they have hurt me and i won't pretend that i had that they haven't it hurts but what should i do now be hurt twice be hurt twice because to cut them off or to write them off is removing a part of myself and i cannot be whole so this is not simply uh you know about getting along with others and having a well-oiled social machine that's not what it is it's about the wholeness of each individual no individual jew can be whole without a relationship with every single other jew and that's why we were talking about earlier that the love of your fellow jew is a major principle in all of judaism because unfortunately although it is common it is actually a complete misunderstanding of the entirety of judaism that i should use religiosity in any way as a wedge between me and another jew because you're missing the whole point of course we have standards of course we believe in halacha and we have to adhere to obviously but at the same time we have to find the most loving and compassionate way to be halaq and not to write people off and not to be antagonistic or dismissive but to bring them in and to say well it's my observance that compels me to write off other jews no don't say that that's actually the antithesis of judaism the the essence of judaism is the integrity and the wholeness of the jewish people so if you're using religiosity to write off other jews you're actually missing the point of all the mixes that you're doing i'll tell you a story maybe i'll conclude here the altar that had a son dave bear who was his eventual successor known as the mit laraba and there was once a fabregan in uh in lyajna maybe it was in lyadi there was two different cities where the altered spent a lot of time at any rate at this fabregan the altareba was not present it was a fabrega themselves were gathering and one of the siddham got up in one of the the letters of the fiduciary says actually who the khasid was it was and those who are familiar with khabad history know that was a big my skill he was a a scholar he was uh without getting into the whole history he was he was a great scholar and very very erudite brilliant genius and and a a a devoted disciple of the altareb of the balatanya and it was this rap aaron was crying at the fabregan and saying hashem please give me ava he was weeping like he was like broken i want to have more love of god now i promise you whatever degree of love of god rib aaron had you know if we experienced it for two seconds it would blow us away this is a man who studied mysticism and meditated on it and prayed all day okay he never ate ice cream he never ate pizza his entire life there was nothing physical about his life it was all spirituality it was all spent meditating on the oneness of god and he's crying i want more avas hashem i want more love of of hashem and at that moment the mithler rabbit the altar son got up and he started crying and said hashem give me abs israel give me love of a jew give me love of a jew so the sin were a little perplexed you know they they were moved by both of these uh sites but they started discussing between them you know if aryan was crying he wanted more avas hashem more love of god and the mithla rabbit was crying he wanted more avas israel he wanted more love of his fellow jew which one was right you know the classic uh you know jewish debate you know jews always debate so you know it's not not like either answer is too shabby right loving god they're loving your fellow jew they're both neither of them is chopped liver but if you have to pick like who was right if aryan was crying for one thing the mittle devil was crying for another who who was right so after a few weeks they had an opportunity to go into the altar evan and uh they asked naltrever the question i don't know if they told the altar of the whole story in the context but they asked the altar the question they they said what is greater love of god or love of your fellow jew and the al-trebba said immediately it's a clear explicit verse in the torah ahaftiyas is a verse god says i have loved you speaking to the jewish people god loves the jews and therefore you must love whom your beloved loves so which is the greater of the two loves is loving the jews because god loves the jews so if you want to love god love the jews you're loving the one who your beloved loves in other words don't go to god and say god i love you so much but i don't like your kids get out of here don't you know you imagine saying that to a human being you know i like you you're good but your kids are they're rotten don't don't compliment me i don't i don't need your admiration better you tell me that i stink and that you love my kids so don't tell hashem oh hashem i love you i want to do your mitzvahs but i don't like hanging out with your children no tell hashem that you love his children and that is also telling him that you love him so you get the best of both worlds and really you know that's just such a simple it's difficult simple doesn't mean easy simple doesn't mean easy it's not easy but it's simple simple it's not complicated is what i'm saying simple means not complicated doesn't mean it's easy could be difficult but it's not complicated it's very simple we should always use the cloud godol battery the general overarching principle of torah as our guide whatever we're doing is it inclusive is it sensitive is it empathetic or at the very least at the very least sympathetic are we taking other people's feelings into account now we are human and we are imperfect and we will fail it will always happen that will end up getting hurt and hurting others but uh we try to get back on track and we keep ourselves on track by reminding ourselves it has to be loving it has to be inclusive whatever we do whatever we do if it's not inclusive we're missing the boat it has to be inclusive i just want to say also how touched i am about the the turnout here i see a lot of people came for the class and i know a lot of different there's a lot of different groups that came here for different reasons and you know that itself is beautiful and it's like a little taste a little microcosm of of what can be achieved and we got to just open it up more and you know god willing we'll have a zoom with the entire jewish people on it when mashiach comes we'll have you know it won't be zoom it'll be face to face we'll be in the holy land in the holy city of jerusalem with the with the holy temple and will all be united every jew of all stripes all flavors all backgrounds and we'll just all be together truly united down here as we as we are above so god willing let it be soon and and our love of each other helps to bring it about that it will be soon