This One’s for the Books | Hei Teves Edition

[music] So in honor of hatis when we celebrate the the holy books one of the things the rebi recommended is that we purchase new books and we study from those books and here we're going to talk about some of the books we have at the soulwards house and maybe it might give you some ideas about some uh purchases you want to make. We'll put some links below in the description so that you can actually get those books in the in an easy way. But we're just going to take you through show you some of the the books we have and some interesting stuff. I do want to mention by the way that the books here at the Soulwards House were sponsored. It's a dedication actually the famous uh radio personality Michael Savage sponsored this photo here in honor of his grandfather Simka Ben Ley Sam Winer. So, you probably know the Jewish people are known as people of the book. And when we say the book, we're talking about the Torah, which means the five books of Moses. Here's the humish. Kumsh means the five books of Moses that we have here in the Sward's house. I chose everything here. You know, we don't have a lot of books. So, we were very selective. Um, not just things that look attractive. Obviously, it should be aesthetically pleasing on the shelf. And there is a concept by the way of bias males that the Reb encouraged people to just have your home full of holy books. That's aside from studying from them which obviously is a virtue unto itself but just having them around. So we chose things that look nice. This is one of my favorite versions of the Kish because this has in it and this was made by Kabad of California. This has commentary not just rashi which is the standard and when you're doing your we'll talk a little bit more later about learning every day but when you're doing it's it's helpful to have the rashi but in addition there's a commentary that's based on the teachings from the and my and that really brings everything to life. It gives deeper spiritual explanations to everything. This is really one of my favorite. Now, this is a Tanakh. Tanakh means Torah, Nvim, and Kufim. So, it's not just the five books of Moses, but it's also prophets and the writings. Now, this is interesting. This also has this is a but I want to tell you a little bit about this. Actually, I have another I have two of them. This is the large size kitas from Kahos which is modeled on the original kitas. Let's explain what that is. It's an acronym to Tanya. So you have your khm and you have your Tanya here. Now this is a large size version of the original kitas which actually has a has a story behind it. The study of Komishima goes back centuries, but when it became a daily study with a schedule for what you're supposed to learn every single day that was with publishing the hayy from theb here's actually the we have here and in the hayyam which with each day it has the we'll go we'll go back to the hay in a minute that has the daily study schedule but then in the 80s there was a rabbi in Jerusalem Rabbi Sloan who asked the Rebbe if we could for convenience sake put the Kish the Tum and the Tanya all in one book bound together and the Reb not only approved of it but encouraged it and since then I don't know how many thousands hundreds of thousands of books like this have been printed now this let me just show you for a second is also a see it says it's theas and it has English and this was sponsored by my good friends David and Shottenstein Shottenstein edition right here. Okay. Now I told you before that theas is the Kish Tamana all bound together in one book. I want to show you something by contrast here. We have I'm going to bring this out here. Okay, this is Kaser Shamv from the Balsham the magra from the mezrier magged who is the balshv's disciple and successor and the morana from the alterba who was the successor and disciple of the magid. So you have the first three generations of BMP alterb and the FBA said that every Jewish home should have these books that they should be together on the shelf but interestingly they should not be bound together in one volume. They should be separate volumes but next to each other so that's exactly how we have and it's a very spiritually powerful thing for every home to have on their shelf. Now, as long as we're mentioning Tanya, we mentioned Tanya in the kitas. We mentioned Tanya as part of the series of books from the first three generations of this. So, I just want to show you also we have here the lessons in Tanya. Gorgeous uh case over here, the lessons in Tanya. These are based on the scripts from the radio show that Rabbi Yasul Weineberg all of a shalom gave every mutzabas on Saturday night and when he would give his class he would write his script would give his class on the radio and he would write a script and he would submit it to the Rebe for the Reb's approval. So these notes that we have that explain Tanya come from that and it's a very fundamental commentary on Tanya. Highly recommend if you're beginning Tanya really the lessons in Tanya is the way to go. Now I mentioned before that theas the humilum Tanya daily study schedule first appeared in the hayim. So now I want to show the hayim. This is from the rabbi. So you see here the date tshin gimmel that means 1943. So this was the deba's first book and it has every single day an entry for the day. Look yud Niss it says leis on a person's birthday niss's birthday on a person's birthday a person should be by himself and he should think about everything from the past year and what he has to fix. Now I'll tell you something interesting about Hayyim. All of the writing in Hayyim are excerpts from the Fredba's teachings. The Reb's Reb's father-in-law who was his Reb. So they're from the Fredba's and letters. So what's very interesting is you know there's a custom that many rabbis have when they make a book you're supposed to put your name into the title of the book. So if you look here, it actually has the Reb's name, but before it actually has his Reb's name because Yud Yud is. That's the previous Reb's name. And then me, that's the Reb's name. So Yim is the Reb's name and the Reb's name connected with the VV. V means and it means connection. So the Reb's connection to his Reb is encoded in the title of the book, his first book. Now since we're talking about the Reb's teachings, the Reb's first safer, I just want to show you here two full shelves of uh it's actually more than two full shelves, but this is the egress, the Reb's letters. This is look, the edited talks of the Reb. many many more talks which are not edited. Now I want to talk a little bit about the egress. The egress are letters that the Reb wrote to whom? To everyone. Anyone who wanted to write to the Rebbit could write to the Reb. We're talking about men and women, young and old, religious, not religious, famous people, world leaders, um captains of industry, school teachers, mothers, fathers, every type of person would write to the Reb. And in the egress, you get a window into how the Reb would deal with real life everyday issues from all types of people. Now, what's interesting is in yud volume 12, there's a mo which means like an intro and it was written by Barl Leaven, who is the chief librarian of the Dubbas library. in this intro in volume 12. So it says something very very interesting which is that just like Tanya here here's our Tanya lessons in Tanya right just like Tanya we know the alter says in his preface to Tanya that he wrote Tanya as a way to give personal guidance to everyone who was seeking his mentorship. So too in our generation the egress kesh are like the Tanya of the ever heard that before that the egress just like the alterba wrote the Tanya so that you could have access to his guidance through book form the egress are how the rebba gives us guidance to be mentored and guided in our day-to-day lives from the reb now I mentioned that this whole book tour is in honor of hate and we're encouraging people to buy books of their I want to show you a beautiful set. Not just beautiful but extremely informative. This is called our days and this was published by Deair magazine which is one of my favorite publications. This is the article on heyis. They have articles on all of the important days in the kabad calendar. So here's the hatavis one. See here it says of the victory of the books. Hold on a second. want to show off some of the cool pictures. Here's a beautiful picture of this in boxes being returned to 770. Here's a really great book. This is Gate of Trust Shen from Rebaina and this became a movement. This is actually sponsored by my good friends Gatsina and Lisa Felig the Felic edition published by Cayeno. This is a wonderful version of Shaheen, the classic Shabbaten, because not only does it have the Hebrew and the English of the classic text, but has commentaries and it's full of insights from and especially from the many of you know that I have a Shir. I give a class on Shahaben. I think it's 45 classes, 30 minutes each. We went through the entire Shabbaten. That class was actually encouraged by a letter that the Rebba wrote to Shalom. And so if you're speaking about the egress and the and the Reb's letters to people, one of the effects of the Reb's letters was that I gained a personal interest in Shaheen and then I taught Shabbaten and uh what I always tell people is that in the letter that the Reb wrote to Mandal Shamv that you should learn Shabbaten a few times. So, I always encourage people, you don't have to study it with me, you don't have to re-watch all of my classes, but you should go through it a few times. And this book just makes it so fun and easy and enjoyable. One more thing about the Debb's letters. This collection here is really beautiful. What is this? This box set of two hard coverver volumes. This is called to the sons and daughters of our people Israel everywhere. There's something that wrote called a mikto which means a letter to the sons and daughters of our people Israel everywhere to the entire Jewish people and the would write these letters before holidays and usually the letters would have some type of holiday related theme. So in these two volumes you have the letters that the Reb wrote to everyone. One of the things I love about the Reb's style in the Mik of Cli is the footnotes. The footnotes are so thorough and really you could just you could spend days looking up all of the footnotes and studying them and the depth that's there in these seemingly very simple letters which after all are written to the entire Jewish people. So, it's written for scholars and not scholars, for regular people as well. But if you study with the footnotes, there's so much intellectual depth there. It's incredibly exciting learning. Now, let's go to the top shelf over here. Here we have the shisha Mishna and we have the Talmud Bavi. So, this is really the core of what we call the oral law. We know that when Hashem gave the Tory at Hari at Mount Si, there was the written the we spoke about that the Tanakh. But then there's also the oral commentary that brings out the meaning. So the core of that oral commentary is in the Mishna and in the gum. Here I got this nice set of Mishna with vowels in it. Really big letters with vowels. Regarding Mishna, I want to show you something else. So I'm just going to set this back here and I want to go back to the hayim for a second. Look at the hayim for tess the ninth day of the month of sivven. It says here Mishna is nishama. The letters of the word Mishna are the same as the letters of nishama which is soul. When somebody studies Mishna specifically by heart, when you memorize Mishna and you recite it and you recite Mishna wherever you go, it brings incredible benefit to the soul, to the nishama of the person who says it as well as the nishas of one's loved ones who are in the world of truth looking down. So that's an incredibly important thing to remember about Mishna. Now this gamura I chose, you know, some people have like a big gam like they call it shas. So we we we wanted to conserve space here. This a small area but this is a very beautiful Gumor and the study of Gumor that's really like the backbone of Torah study. I mean the the majority of time that one studies Torah really is spent on limit with Rashi and Tis and the other commentaries. So this is really every house has to have one of these. You can pick which set you want, but every house should have a gamora. Anyway, so this is the entire uh Talmud Bavi, the Babylonian Talmud. This entire expanse right here. Now, some people study a complete folio. That means both sides every day. It's called daf. It takes them seven years to complete it. I want to share with you though, let's go from here to here. This is the Mishna. Specifically, I have the Rambam la version of it. And I'm going to take out a safer mishbotim because that's where we are in the three chapters a day. So the reb started an initiative to study three chapters a day of Mishna and if you do that you finish the entire Mishna in one year or alternatively you can study one chapter a day and then you'll finish the entire Mishna in three years. One of the reasons that Eba asked for us to study Mishna is that it's something that we can all connect to. Not everyone is able to study and understand the gam but everyone can study the Mishna. And if you can't do that then you could also study the safer mitzvah which is also from the Rambam. And by doing this, it unites the Jewish people in the study of the entire [snorts] Torah because as the Raam said, he took the bottom line, not the whole discussion and debate that goes behind it, but the bottom line of every subject in Torah and he put it in Mishna. So when you go through Mishna, you're studying the entire Torah, at least the bottom line of the entire Tory, you're studying the breadth of Tory, all the subjects. So if all the Jews study it, so it's the entire Jewish people studying the entire Torah and it brings us together in that unity, that oneness, I highly recommend if you're not yet studying Rambam, either three chapters a day of Mishna or one chapter a day of Mishna or the safer mitzvah every day, definitely that's something to take on. And if you are studying, maybe you want to buy a nice book that'll make it easier and more fun. By the way, anyone know why we chose this version of Mishna? If you look at pictures of the Reba studying, usually going to the oil or coming back from the oil, you'll see the Reba has this version. So when you study Rambam every day and you're doing something that the Reba established and you look at this, which is the version of the book that the Reba used, it just it's a nice reminder. I do want to mention it's hat. So that means in a month and 10 days is the 15th of Shvat which is the new year of trees. Happy new year trees. But it also happens to be this year for this cycle the summarum where people from all over the world are completing the three chapters a day of Mishna and then the next day we'll start it over again. So definitely this is a good time to don't wait until the jump aboard now and you have momentum going already when we start again. So we mentioned which is meaning the bottom line law of how you're supposed to actually conduct yourself. On a similar note I just want to show you here we have the let me take this out here. This is theor which means it's from the alter the balatana zman is the alterb's name and that itself is very interesting. The name Schneer is Schne because the alterb not only wrote which is what we call pineia the inner secrets of the Tyrais but he also wrote the shar which is Jewish law which we call nigla the revealed portion of Torah the the legalistic or the practical and so he was a master of both areas of the Torah. Come with me over here. We have a nice kiter shanor kitser from Rav Schlagansfreed. A nice kiter. That's the abridged code of Jewish law. And here we have Hebrew with vowels on one side, English on the other side. Every home should have a kit. I mean, this is the basics of the basics. I'll show you a couple of these books. These are beautiful. books. A lot of scholarship and research went into these. These are both from gem from Jewish educational media. So the early years that is biographical here. Here's a map of Yakunlav. That's where the Reb grew up. Here's a young picture. That's the town of Labavich. And then this is Tish in Labavich. Also from gem from Jewish educational media. And this goes, look at these gorgeous photographs. Here's the Reb right after Yam Kipper. The Reb was wearing his kit. This is the Reb giving leak honey cake. You can see the cake, the box is in his suka in front of 770. Let me show you this. This is from in English. Sikhas in English literally started as translating the which would say at every English. Rabbi wasallam was empowered with that task but then it evolved into so much more which was translating all of this basically into English. So like for instance we have lessons and say for my let's take a look at this. So look you have these are classic from theb these are all from of thebani the last mimemer's first mimer the last mimer and then let me show you this I recommend to everyone who's getting married and anyone who ever got married this is lessons in and this is the wedding mimer this is what inavich the says at the kabal upon him and this is the foundations of everything. Look at this lessons init from the who is the grandson of the alterb who he raised from childhood and he was the third. So this is his book and it has explanations of different mitzvah. This is a a classic. Um the Reb recommend by the way for beginners of the is a great way to begin learning lessons in is from the that's the fifth of that's the grandson of the was the grandson of the alterb the was the grandson of the now if you don't know all of the names and the lineage and the dates and the relationships I have a brand new book. Let me show you this. This just came out called Seven Generations, a portrait of the Kabad Rebes. Look at this. This is amazing. So, for instance, go to the alterb his picture. Here are his famous books. So, we spoke about that Tanya and his popular Nunim where he lived, where he's buried. Here's the Tamakadic. Here's a here's his picture. And then look here. This is Derk Mitzvah. This is what the original Derk Mitzvah looks like. This is an amazing book. It has family connections, timeline, maps, famous popular neonim. Did you know like facts about the and stories has great stories in here. It's called seven generations. Also, here is a beautiful short biography of the Rabbi's mother. This is Kai Mushka. And of course when you come to the aisle you can also visit the resting place of the kana and of kayushka. Being that we're mentioning the reb's mother I want to show you this from the reb's father. This is gems from loot leitzk rabbis's father and this was published by our good friends and cayenu who promote the daily study of kish tim tanya and rambom and so much more for instance this book here and now I just want to show you this shelf alf through lammed alf and then wraps around lamemed all 39 volumes here to here are the [snorts] edited talks of the labavbe and this is the primary study if you want to enter the Reb's world of Tyra and to view all of Tyra and all of life through the Reb's lens this is this is where it happens and it just it opens up a whole new vista anyone who learns now we started here at the soulwards house just a half a block from oil a weekly class Sundays 10:30 in the morning we serve bagels and locks and coffee and it's [snorts] very comfortable and different people from all over the world actually come here and they learn with us we're doing alf that's the first volume the first volume and these are the first of these are the foundational these are the basics that everything else is built on and we learn this every week with hashem's help. And if you want to come join us, like I said, bagels and lots and coffee and join us Sundays at 10:30 and learn with us. Or you could watch online on soulwords.orgls or on our YouTube channel or on Spotify or all the other podcast platforms. The main thing is to do the learning and in general, let me just say that the are here to make our environment holier. Like I said bias mllyphod just having the books around us already accomplishes something but then additionally there's the idea of learning the is doing what the talk about putting it into practice in our day-to-day lives. So as we said at the beginning this is a day that that encouraged us to buy new books. So, we're going to have links below to buy all the books that we spoke about. It encouraged that those who sell the books should make it as accessible as possible around this time of year and to make sales to make a big sale. So, a lot of these books are steeply discounted right now. This is the time to do it. So I want to bless you that you should be able to purchase many and you should be surrounded by many holy books and you should study many holy books and you should do what the holy books say to do and have a life that is the living embodiment of all of the holy words in the holy books.