What I Learned From the Rebbe on How to Impact People: Meaningful People Interview With Rabbi YY

Today's Gimmel Thomas. People are watching this probably in Gimmel Thomas. Maybe they're waiting in the line with a few hours trying to get there. Uh what is on the line? I'd probably say to hell. Yeah. Or listening to a podcast. Depends how old they are, you know. Um what what does the day mean to you? What does it bring up for you? For me, it's a day of gratitude and empowerment. Gratitude for the gift of our generation that God has given our generation with the soul of the labba. I once heard from the late Rabbi Jonathan Saxs, chief rabbi of the United Kingdom and he said that after the devastating concealment of Hashem's face in Awitz, Hashem gave the Jewish people a few smiles. He said and one of his smiles was the leadership and the presence of the Labava. So there's a lot of gratitude for the gift of the Reb's wisdom, love, direction, perspective. Yeah. Empowerment I would say is equally important and that is I have been privileged to have been empowered by the reba throughout my most formative years to be able to be an ambassador of light and love and hope and healing and redemptive consciousness. And I think on such a day, you know, I reflect mostly on how myself as an individual and I think all of us as a collective can become those uh ambassadors to change the world and light up the world. Yeah. And on a personal level, uh I I myself was I'm named after the Reb. I was born in '95. So I I did not live in the world where where the Reb lived uh physically. Um, but you did and you had I imagine you had close close quarters with the Reb as I as I take it. Is there an interaction or or something that you remember from your younger years um like an an encounter with the Reb that you recall? So I grew I was born in 1972. So I really grew up at I would say in the four cubits as we call in the Dalamas or at the feet of the Reba. Yeah. And those years though because the crowds were already much much larger. You're dealing with thousands and thousands and sometimes tens of thousands of people that were coming. So I didn't have that personal relationship in the sense of uh going to his room and having personal conversations and I will tell you though uh I guess it's a cute story. I was four years old and my older brother Barak was having his bitzvah. was 1976 in the month of so before bar mitzvah families would go into the reb for a private audience which they callus is like a one-on-one private exclusive so my father my mother and the siblings some of the siblings four of us went into the rebba and I was the youngest still the youngest it's called the misin the baby of the family same here yeah we still remain the youngest always even uh when we grow older and uh the Reb turned to me and he asked me in Yiddish if I could tell him a story and then he turned to English. He thought maybe you know even though my family we all spoke Yiddish. That's what my father did for a living. He published a Yiddish newspaper where your grandfather Gordon was uh one of the great uh essaists and columnists and a celebrated Yiddish writer. But uh I don't know maybe the Reb thought that my parents were doing a bad job in teaching the Yiddish. So he asked me in English, you know, he said, "Can you please tell me a study?" The Reb had a heavy Ukrainian accent. He spoke a good English, but he had a heavy Ukrainian accent. That's where he grew up in Ukraine. Would you tell me? Could you please tell me a study? I was a very shy kid. Very, very shy. Really? Yeah. Extremely. And uh Are you still shy? I'm still very shy. Okay. Or at least a part of me is shy. Yeah. So I did not say a word. I didn't say Yeah. I didn't say no. I just had this blank stare and I was probably afraid and shy and afraid of saying the wrong thing and maybe disappointing. Well, I don't know exactly. I'm not gonna now psychoanalyze the four-year-old boy. I'll allow my therapist to do that. So, they try it again like, you know, very nicely with with with kindness, with a smile, with generosity of spirit, like would you please tell me a story? And he said, "Maybe you could tell me a story about Adam. Maybe a story about a maybe a story about Noyak." He went from Adam to Ara back to Nyak. And uh I refused. I was just quiet. I did not say a word. And after all of his attempts, he smiled and he moved the conversation, you know, to my parents, to the Bitzvah boy and so forth. My brother Barak, for whose bitzvah we went there, tells me, he says, "You didn't say a word in the Reb's room." But from the moment you walked out of that room, you have not stopped telling stories. All you do is story and another story and I have this story and that story and that story and story stories and I'm watching and hearing you stories all over the place and everybody's forwarding me stories. And then my brother looks at me says, "You know what? Maybe because you were quiet in that room, maybe that's why you have what to say outside of that room." Wow. Very interesting. That's uh that's really interesting. I think that was probably the first conversation I could remember remember with the Reba. There was another uh for me it was a very meaningful experience. I was also before Bitzvah and I was a young child and the Rebba would conduct fabangans almost every shabas and these fabangans you know were large gatherings. You had thousands of people there men and women and children and they would go on for hours. The Reb would begin the fab in 1:30 shabas afternoon and it can go easily for three, four, five, 6 hours. There were times it went for seven or eight hours until until if it was the summer Shabbasim sometimes all the way till m sometimes all the way almost till the end of Shabas. Yeah. Wow. Almost. If it was the summer shabbasim it could be many hours long and even the winter could be a few hours. So as they used as a you know as you always tell people didn't sleep himself nor did he allow anybody else to sleep because the whole concept of taking a nap shabas afternoon did not exist. Son not Lavich is not no naps in my youth it did not exist 1:30 we finished aing you barely got some time to to make would your father take a nap shab this afternoon or no there was no nap there was a fabang no naps unless you wanted to miss the fabang okay which was a foolish move it was a foolish move it's like uh you know Moses coming down from the mountain and sharing with you you know words of of priceless value and you're napping and I'm napping I mean there were people who did that. I'm not going to deny that. But, uh, it was inconceivable. I want to speak to them. I want to ask them what they were thinking. So, I'm just saying when I grew up, there was no, you know, long Shabas lunch or or a nap, right? Uh, and the Reb would for hours and after this wasn't a 20 minute sermon with a joke in the beginning, a joke at the end, and a story half the time. That's not how it went. Each each faban was divided into could be is a talk, an address. could be a sik of a half an hour, an hour, an hour and a half or 2 hours or 25 minutes. And each sik was self-contained and it was filled with there was a that was dedicated to a raam to a rashi to a zar to a pilpus a and each bringing would be one. No, each was many. So it would begin a sika maybe for a half an hour or an hour or 40 minutes or 25 minutes and they were profound and intricate and the reb would cover topics whether it's the parish or the yum or sometimes he would make a on sometimes make a and he didn't give out notes before what he's going to talk about no no and he didn't have notes and this went on for hours and hours and then after there was a song for a few minutes people would say they would sing dance and then would begin the every which is aidic discourse that deals with a topic in Were these previously written down or they written down only once he said them? No, they were never written down. These were new ideas just fresh fresh from the Reb's flow of consciousness. Wow. And they were often astounding constantly and and the Reb also called from every aspect of Judaism. In other words, it wasn't unexpected he would discuss Arash. He would go but he can bring in over there. Yeah. From and then apply it to current events and apply it to psychology and then bring an example from physics. So you had there from the whole and the rebba had a a knowledge and a mastery of that was beyond what what people could imagine. I mean he knew every by heart all the writings of the vagon and kabala and all the writings of the malb. So he had a mastery and he would cull from all of it and then bring it out practically what it means practically to people and then there was dedicated to education or with the situation. So uh in the later years the Reb's last years when I was already a yeshiva how was all this transcribed? So there was a group called oral scribes that their job was to memorize and transcribe the reb's talks. So my and my brother was part of that. So I was later brought into that group and the last few years I was from that group to memorize it and transcribe it. But you have to remember Yamtiff the Rebang three four days. So you're talking about between 10 and 20 hours of talks. How many how many were on the team? The Kaiser was Rabel Khan. Yeah. Rabel Khan took a boat from Israel to come learn by the previous the sixth lab and he left the port in Kifa Sunday morning the 11th of 1950 a day after the dayat passed away but he didn't know so he leaves Israel to come learn 770 by the previous rebba a day after he passed away and by the time he gets here by the time he gets here 2 weeks later he finds out that passed away. So he tells the Reb, who's not a Reb, they call him the Raash Rebnes, and he was the son-in-law of the previous Reb Ramsh, the second son-in-law, and he says he wants to go back, you know, there's nothing there's nothing here really. You have to remember this is 5 years after the Holocaust. This must have been this must have been a a very interesting time for Kabad where I it's my understanding the Reb didn't take the yoke of leadership until the yard site, the first yard site, a full year. They not only didn't take it, refused it adamantly. Right? So what was going on in in the in the movement? It was it was it was a time of crisis. It was like turmoil. It was it was a turmoil and crisis. And it wasn't just the kabat crisis. This was a crisis that the entire Jewish world was facing. Each community in its own way. Remember everybody was wiped out. A third of our people was wiped out. Especially in the world of theidic world, right? You had a few a few survivors and kabad remember they were also under Stalin. So even those who survived and remained back in the Soviet Union, they were under tyranny and oppression. All of Judaism was crushed in the Soviet Union and that was the center of Kaban. They so badly seek leadership and their leader and their passed away. He had no sons. He had three daughters. One was gazed in trebling with her husband and her mother and his mother. Her name was Shaina. This was his his youngest daughter. There were two daughters who survived. Mrs. Gerari Kanaari that was his oldest daughter and Kayushka. Krishna who married the Rebba and the Rebba was also a very very quiet person. He remained that way. The Rebba was extremely uh in Hebrew they say Muam introverted. The Reb was not a talkative social uh personality by nature and most people did not know of him because he didn't speak a lot. He wasn't public. He spoke a little bit. His father-in-law wanted he should sometimes give a faban or a she so he did that and he wrote but not in a very public way. The Rebba by nature was very to himself. You know, he spent time with himself. And I heard from Khan directly, he told me that in 1950 when they were pleading with the Reba to become the new labba, he said, "It's not for this is not my thing. It's not it's not me. It's not me. And if you nudge me, they were nudging him." So he said, "If you continue to do this, I'm going to take my wife and we're going to move away to an island. We're going to be anonymous. Nobody's going to know where we are. That's where we'll live our lives." And he meant it. Debb was not a dramatist. He was very very authentic. Like every word when he said what he meant, he meant what he said. He really meant that. So it was really a year of uh of I would say of of of ambivalence, a year of uncertainty, a year of, you know, people not knowing exactly what's going to be the future. You're also talking about a very very small community. I mean, there were very few people lived in Crown Heights. Yeah. Very few. Wasn't what it is today. No. Extremely few. and even around the world it was very very small community even those who survived many were still in the gulag in Stalin's gulag or were murdered murdered in the Soviet Union um so what happened then was raiel wanted to go back and he told the rebba he says you know the rebba passed away like so the who would become tells him I heard this from he said the rebba told you to come told you and he knew what's going to be and and he told you to come so you shouldn't go back right and by providence Rabiel had in mind that when the reb started to talk the first time there was a Kaiser there and he from 1950 from the Reb's first public faban as the labavatureba he began to transcribe and he always gathered around himself a team of bakim or yungalite who had the kashrinas who had the intellectual uh you know abilities and the education and were lumed them to help him out. Yeah. So every few years he had a but it was a very small group. It was a group of I would say between four and six or seven people. So I was in the last years the last few years of the rebba until 1992 when the rebba fell ill and he couldn't speak anymore. The rebba had a stroke right in March 92 alf of 92 and then he had a second stroke the same day two years later mish the same day and then he passed away that year 94 30 years ago. So uh so that was that was quite an intense experience. you know to transcribe that. But I was telling you this when I was a little kid my father which slept me to fab in every shabas and I have to say as a little kid it was very boring because they went for hours. I did not understand what the reb was talking about. A lot of my friends were playing on Eastern Parkway you know doing what good Brooklyn kids do on Shabas fight with each other. Stick ball maybe whatever they were doing on Eastern Parkway. What happens on Eastern Parkway stays on Eastern Parkway. I don't know if any Ebottzfield was right there. No was still there. Field was was there but uh the the Dodgers have left I think in 1958. So it was just they left to Los Angeles. So in the olden days my mother told me that when she came to America in the 50s you know that was an attraction and there were people who lived in Crown Heights who told me that they would get tickets before Shabas and hide them by the gate so they can go to the Shabas games. It was a very big thing at Bitzfield but in my days you know the team was already gone. They were in California. Yeah. Anyway, so it was one Shabas and the Reb was talking. It was a long for and I have to say the truth, I was not listening. I was just doing my own thing. And in the middle of one of the talks, I'll never forget. I had a place I would stand literally right in front of the Reb. The Reb sat at the table and there was a there was an aisle in front of him so people can go in and out if they needed to uh you know use the men's room or go out for a moment. And I was at the end of that aisle. I literally as a child I faced the Rebba literally face to face. The Rebba spoke with his hands under the table. You never saw his hands. He would make with his he would sway with his hands a lot and once in a while it would come out but usually was under the table. And suddenly I see he's talking and his hand comes out and his index finger he was shaking a little bit. I still remember starts pointing. I don't know who he's pointing at in the middle of a talk. This was very uh rare. Yeah. Because he never addressed an individual. He addressed the audience and I see him pointing to me. It was clear he's pointing right at me and he asks a question and his question was in Yiddish and I could still hear the question and see it in my imagination. And the Reb says to me, "How do you know that the universe exists?" It's not unexpected. Who asks a kid, "How do you know the world exists?" He knows from from the bar mitzvah that you're not the one who's you you didn't say a word in the office. This was a followup, right? And 5,000 eyes are looking at me and the Reb is waiting for an answer. And guess what? I did what I did when I was four. I did not say a word. You melted in your spot. I melted. I blushed. I freezed. I still remember my face changing colors. And all I can think is why Kendra just continue his talk, you know, live and let live. But he was waiting. He was waiting for an answer. And I didn't know what to say. Again, I didn't want to disappoint, right? What am I supposed to say? How do I know the world exists? I never thought about it. How does anybody know the world exists? How do I know that I exist? How do I know that you exist? He was waiting was probably 10 or 15 seconds for me. It seemed like eternity, right? Like a year. Thousands of men's eyes are glaring at me. I don't have to see it to know it. I know it. I'm just looking at the Reb and he's looking at me and he's smiling and he's waiting. And then when he saw that I'm not answering, so the Reb decided to answer for me. And the Reb said, "This child answers, you know how I know the universe exists?" And he gave a scream [Music] because the opens up with the verse in the beginning. Hashem created heaven and earth. So that's how I know the world exists. The Tyra says that God created the world. Obviously, it exists. And then he moved on. The next Shabas, I listened because I was afraid he's gonna ask me another question and again going to be caught not knowing. So the second the next week I listened and actually started to listen to Fabreans and it became something that I got very immersed in and evolved. As I grew up I went back to the transcript to see what was he talking about? Why did he ask me the question? The Reb was talking about the the ability of a Jew to look at the world from a very pure place that how does he or she know the world exists? Not from the newspaper, not from WhatsApp but actually because the Tyra says that the world exists. And he said children have that innocence. They could see the world from the prism from the vantage point of And he said let's try. We'll ask a child. And today you know people ask me why do you think the Reba asked you that question in the middle of the I said I can't say for sure but maybe it was a it was an empowerment that as I go and I travel the world and speak to audiences all over the world to remember that my most sacred mission is to teach them how to look at the world from the perspective of Basar that God created the universe and every individual soul which means that every person ultimately is an empowered ambassador of Hashem to light up the world. And that changes everything. It changes how we look at our struggles, how we look at our adversity, how we face our different issues, and how we generally, you know, relate to existence. Yeah, that's very that's remarkable. And and in general, for the because have since been published and now they just made it into English. They made in English. which I just received set over there. All the in English. So all the works the Reb did not write almost any of it. All of it was written by the after Shabas. So it was a lot of work. It was a weeks of work. Very often there were debates between the what did mean? What did he not mean? Rabiel would often get Rabel was a genius and he would get very sharp sometimes. You know middle of Mai Shabas he would bring the group together in 770 downstairs. those days he was a chain smoker and cigarette after cigarette we'd go through the whole fangan you know there were debates no the rebba said this the rebba meant this he would often get very he's like employed it which means you you're nonsense you did not get it you did not understand the rebba's talks were very very intricate extremely intricate and they had a very intricate and profound structure they were built literally there there was architecture there there was a foundation and then he would build one story and another story another story until he got to the roof until he got to the attic and they were called from all the different aspects of as I said before and they were also extremely extremely profound and amazing ideas. So it really it really was incredibly uh powerful and hard work to to remember it and transcribe it. Sometimes there was something really unclear. So they would write a letter to the Reb in the middle of the week to clarify and he would give answers or the next chabas he would continue the the discussion and sometimes even the next one and the next one. So sometimes there was a series where he would go back and he said you know I got a letter and people didn't understand and uh and then sometimes the Reb would edit the there were the Reba edited himself. They would prepare it and give it into the Reb and then the Reb would edit it and sometimes rewrite and erase. He was a very very scrupulous and tough editor. And that's what's known as a set of which are the talks that the Reb edited later. That's what we have today. It's it's incredible and it's what's learned on a so so there's the talks that will say on top not edited by the Reb was just written by those who heard it. is the one is the transcripts that were then given to the Reb and the Reb put his stamp on it by editing it and the Reb would add footnotes and sometimes erase a lot of things that were written and rewrite it, you know, and edit all of the all of the text. That's called. So for for a world today in 2024 that many of which didn't grow up in the times where the Reb was around and people listening to this could have zero relationship with Kabad, have not known the Reba, what what do you think um Gimlas should mean to the world at large and and what were the Reb's marching orders for humanity? Yeah. So I think that uh at least one aspect of it is you know when the rebba began his leadership you're talking about five years after the holocaust five years after awitz and the Jewish people were broken they were devastated there were mounds and mounds of ashes in Maidanic and Shrebinka and Dha and Belzik and Bergen Belin and of course Awitz you know Burkanau so there was a devastation that has overtaken the Jewish world and I think one of the greatest contributions and gifts of the Reb was that the Reb um he introduced a stamina he revived like you know he resurrected the Jewish people I'll quote again Rabbi Saxs he once said you know in parishes Kak there's that moment when Aaron's priesthood is challenged and what does God do he has all the tribes put in their staffs their sticks into the holy of holies and then Aaron's staff blossoms into almonds and that's the demonstration that he was chosen as the kind God as the high priest. Why that miracle from all miracles? Rabbi Sax said something very profound and later I saw that the Reb actually said it to a group of girls once in 1983 but he said as follows. How do you know what a high priest is? How do you know what a kind God is? How do you know what a leader is? What's a who's a real leader? And the answer is someone who could look at a dead staff, a lifeless stick and identify its potentiality to blossom into a garden. The first discourse of the Reb was I think he had that unique uncanny ability to see crisis as opportunity. Where other people saw the end, he saw the beginning. Where other people saw disintegration, he saw an opportunity for renaissance. And I think in the Jewish world then that was so devastated and broken, the Reb's gift was to give the Jewish people the confidence and the empowerment to realize not only is their mission not over, but they can embark on a journey that will create the greatest renaissance in Jewish history ever and bring redemption to the world. And those marching orders, I think, remain and remain in even a more relevant and powerful way. It's very easy to look at the world today and go into a place of despair or fear or cynicism or even retreating into my little life and just doing my own thing. And I think one of the greatest gifts of the Reb was to really teach a generation, teach people individually and collectively about their power to change the world. Beginning with their power to change themselves. I don't change the world without changing myself. you know, confronting my stuff, my flaws, my challenges, my fears, my insecurities, my anxieties, and really be able to access my own divine soul, my flame inside, and use that flame to light up the world. This may have been one of the more enjoyable episodes I had the honor to record. Uh, delving into my lineage, to the teachings of the Reb, of Kabad. It was just so deep. It sent me into a into a uh free-for-all, I guess. But in a good way of just learning and understanding what the Reb was about, what his teachings were about, what his marching orders are about. The Reb did not, you know, tell anybody, oh, be labavich. The Reb was all about do good things, do mitzvah, rapin. It wasn't about labavich or kabad. It was about being a good person, being a good yid. Those marching orders are are things that we need to heed right now. Today, 30 years later, after the Rebel left this world, his legacy is being felt more than ever. And I just saw recently a clip from the last day that the Rebel was giving dollars. And an editor from the New York Post was on that line and he told the editor, the Reb told the editor of the New York Post, this is the day before the Reb had a stroke and he stopped having those lines of giving dollars. He told the editor of the New York Post, he said, "Make sure to write in your column that Messiah is coming." And then editor of the New York Post said, "Okay." And he called them back. He said, "Not only that he's coming, that he's on his way." And those words shall ring louder now than ever. We should greet Messiah of Yemenu. Amen. See you guys. [Music]