Why are Jews getting excited about this book?

we completed the study of the The 53 chapters of Tanya Very timely. Uh in one week from tonight is the nineteenth of of Kislev. Which is the anniversary of the what's known as the Rosh Hashanah of Hasidas. So this is a very timely time to be talking about to be summarizing or getting a fresh perspective on on the and I recently heard Rabbi Zimmerman speak about Tanya and I liked what he had to say. So I ambushed him. And he very politely agreed to to be laywayed and brought into our conversation. So Rabbi Josh is primarily, you'll correct me if I'm wrong but primarily the adult education in Chabad of the Tri Valley in Pleasanton. And I'll share some of that wealth with us. Rabbi Zeverman, it's all you. Okay, it's an honor and a pleasure to be part of this celebration, culminating celebration. the the Tanya is I I use this word lightly, but the word life changing, the word life changing is scary, really is a scary word, and especially when you hear it from a rabbi, right? It's like, it's really bad for marketing. It's one of those words rabbis don't want to use in any of their marketing material. But, but I really think the, Tanya is life changing or perhaps life clarifying. Little less intimidating, right? It clarifies what life is all about. About nine years ago, I was working in a Yeshiva, a Jewish educational center in Florida. It was a Yeshiva for young college-aged students who didn't have a formal education growing up and they wanted to kind of catch up. These were students between, you know, 18 to like thirty. There was this one student there. He was twenty-four years old at the time. And he found out he was Jewish 6 months prior. He didn't know he was Jewish growing his whole life growing up. He had a wacky He grew up in a he was part of a gang Um in Los Angeles. had this whole epiphany. He was able to escape the gang. Was raised as a Christian by his parents. And he ended up leaving the gang. He ended up moving to Vegas getting his life on track. And he always felt like he was connected to God. He always felt like this and and his connection to God felt different than everybody else. Everybody else is like dude why you're talking about God all the time? And he always just felt this, this, this deep connection. and what happened was his mother unfortunately got ill. Um at the time when when this was taking place she thanked God got better. But she had a tumor. and the the doctor told her that, you know, her time is coming near, although thank God it wasn't. Uh, I guess that was God's decision. The doctor told her her time was coming near and she was adopted, She didn't know her her her real parents were and the adoption agency decided to release a packet of her entire genealogy. She finds out she's Jewish. This boy finds out he's Jewish. He goes off to Yeshiva. I'll be honest, it wasn't like, I'm Jewish. Let me start embracing everything. That wasn't his perspective. Everything was, you know, starting from scratch. Like, what is that squirrel that you're pulling out of that closet? In the sanctuary. What are those boxes on your head? It it really challenged me to think to answer questions that, you know, kind of grew up with and it's like, no, you really gotta go back to basics. To, you know, to, to raw Judaism. And by the he was out of there. He ended up moving to Israel and he was on fire. He was passionate about his Judaism. He was always passionate about God. But he didn't understand. He had a hard time with understanding the framework of Judaism. Why the structure you know why can't they just connect to God? But eventually he got it. And he was on fire. The guy gets married. And he's living in Tel Aviv. We have somebody here from Tel Aviv, right? Visiting us from Tel Aviv. We have a Tel Aviv visitor. So he's living in in Tel A and he's working at a security company. And this is a fellow, again, just just to give you the imagery here. he's a nice Jewish boy chick. He really is. But he didn't grow up that way. So he grew up as part of a gang. A Mexican gang in Los Angeles. So he's covered in tattoos. He has a stellar vocabulary. If you know what I mean. Um which is why he prefers speaking in Hebrew because he's able to speak a little bit more refined in Hebrew. Because you know he's kind of starting over. And he's wearing a Kipa in seat seat at work in Tel Aviv. And there's a co-worker there that's kind of trying to read him. Trying to figure out what his deal is. And he says can I ask you a question? I'm I'm I'm sorry. I hope this doesn't come off judgmental but who are you? Are you are you religious? Are you secular? What like what what are you? He says, I'm certainly not religious. Says, you're not religious. He says, why are you wearing a Kipa and CT? He says, look, I wear a Kipa. I wear its teeth. I put on the filling every day. I keep kosher. I celebrate Shabbat. I celebrate the holidays. But I'm not religious. So, the guy says to him, you're not religious. Why are you doing any of this? Why would you put yourself through all this? You're not even religious. He says, I don't have to do this. I get to do this. I'm in love with god I'm not in a religion. I'm in a relationship. This Israeli fellow who is trying to figure out who he was was just floored. His mouth was dropped. He says, whoa. He says, can I put on filling with you? That's what he says. This gentleman had filling in his car and they ended up putting on film together and he was able to to share the embrace, the love, the warmth of Judaism with this other guy. It it to me, this is exactly the message of what the Tanya is. I'm not in a religion. I'm in a relationship I don't have to do mitzvahs although I do. I get to do mitzvahs. I get to be a part of this relationship. You know what this reminds me of? Chapter 33 of Tanya. Chapter 33 of Tanya talks about faith. And it quotes the famed prophet Havakuk. Havakuk says wait a minute. There's a lot of mitzvahs. 613 mitzvahs. That could seem like a that could that could seem pretty heavy and by the way, each mitzvah has so many details. Each mitzvah has hundreds and maybe even thousands of details on how to do it right. That's pretty burdensome or could seem burdensome. So, says and this is what it says in the Tanya the says, I have an idea. Let me just narrow it down to to the core, one mitzvah. If you really analyze it, it's really all one mitzvah. It's not 613 mitzvahs and that's faith. There's really one mitzvah, faith, our connection to God. There's 613 ways of expressing those mitzvahs. And the Tanya there says adapt that attitude and now you've you've brought life To our observance. We've brought life to the relationship. The Tanya is an incredible paradigm shift from seeing Judaism and by the way you see this immediately in chapter one of Tanya. Where he tells us that there's this shift. From Juda him being a point system Focusing on how I'm rewarded to a relationship. Focusing on who I am at my core. It is a relationship but even the most beautiful relationships can have tension. And one of the functions of the Tanya is to help us resolve that tension. There's this tension between what I value and the reality of, of, of how I seem to what I seem to be drawn toward. I value God. I value his Torah. I value what seems to be a higher purpose and a truth and a mission in life. But that doesn't seem to be what I crave. So between my values and my cravings, there's this incredible tension. and that hurts. That's painful. And then the Tanya was actually authored originally Natanya wasn't originally written as a book. It was it was Rabbi Schneider Zaman of the Hadith, the author. People would come to him for advice. Cuz people were experiencing inattention. and he would give them advice based on Torah wisdom and eventually put it into a book. So, it could be meaningful to us from generations, you know, many many generations later and relevant to to generations, the future, in the future to come. One of my favorite analogies of this is you have a rubber band. Imagine you had a rubber band. I don't have a rubber band here so I can't give you the actual imagery. I was giving a class on this couple couple years ago and like I don't have a rubber band and somebody says oh I have one and they literally pulled the rubber band out of their back pocket. Like no way. Um so, if anybody is a rubber band in their back pocket, no, I'm kidding. But imagine you have a rubber band, right? The inside of the rubber band represents, let's say, your internal self, the outside of the rubber band is your behavioral self. And as you in Jewish observance. If that doesn't in line with who you feel on the inside, what are you going to have? Right? That tension gets tighter and tighter and tighter and one of two things are going to happen if we don't deal with this. Either we're going to slowly revert back because we can't handle that kind of pressure or we're going to snap. but there's a third option. And the third option is pick up the inside. Tanya helps us relieve that tension by picking us up from the inside. By helping us become more comfortable with the soul, with the divine soul. In 1906, Rabbi Shalom Dover of Labovich. He was the rabbi of the Chabad movement back then. He had health complications. So he went to have a meeting with Doctor Freud. Doctor Sigman Freud who was a Jew by the way. That's why all psychologists are Jewish, I think, and many of them are Jewish, right? Doctor Sigman so he went to a meeting with Doctor Sigman Freud. He was having health complications. It's unclear what these complications were. But he went to Doctor Sigman Freud for a meeting and Freud wanted to get a good understanding of what his daily schedule was like. So, he could kind of, you know, if you want to help him, see what, see where he's, what are you up to all day? A big chunk of his schedule revolved around learning acidic teaching, teaching Hacidicism such as the Tanya and and had many of his own works and other things like that. And it it very much intrigued Freud. Freud was again was a Jew. He was somewhat alienated. From his from his Judaism. There's a fascinating article about that on Chabad. org. He's never heard of acidic teaching. He wants to know what it was. And the rabbi saw this as a perfect opportunity to explain what Hasidic teaching was but he knew he had to be succinct. He knew it had to be an elevator pitch. He didn't have, you know, he wasn't wasn't going to be a a lecturer. So, he had to really succinctly tell him what it was. So, he said, Hasidic teaching, unites the mind and the heart. so that the mind directs the heart. Which means what I what I feel should be a product of how I think. Rather than a rather than control how I think. I should see truth objectively and that should impact what I'm passionate about As opposed to becoming what I'm passionate about becoming the truth. Right the other way around. Freud didn't understand. He said the psychologically these are two different worlds. How could you unite the two? And the rabbi told them they are two different worlds. And that's what we're here to do. We're here to either build a bridge between the two. And if we can't do that that that's kind of advanced. at least a telephone wire between the two. Guessing telephones came around right around before. When did Alexander Graham Bell exist? I think around the late 18hundreds, right? So this was nineteen oh six. So he said at least put a telephone wire. At least there should be some sort of communication. Between objective truth and passion. And we should be passionate about the truth. As opposed to making our passions true. Freud was was was enlightened by this idea. this is a, this takes a, this is a simple paradigm shift. Switching from body to soul. If you look on the very first page of Tanya, the cover page of the Tanya. Where he tells us what the goal of Tanya is. It's a couple of lines. When we were in Rabbinical School, we were studying this, our our rabbi gave us like a three-hour lesson on those couple of lines. He tells us that the entire Tanya is based on one biblical verse. Moses is about to pass away and he's giving a pep talk to the Jewish people toward the end of Deuteronomy and he tells the Jewish people that you don't have to travel far. You don't have to travel across the street of the sea for a relationship with God. You don't have to go across go to heaven for a relationship with God. This matter is actually very close to you. This relationship with God is very close to you. And the Tanya is here to explain how it's close. Because it's within us. We just need to make a paradigm shift. A shift from being more body oriented to soul oriented, right? Chapter 32 of Tanya. When we shift from being body oriented. The soul oriented. When we make that shift we become more comfortable with our values, less comfortable with our cravings We identify more of what we value than what we crave. Ultimately, we crave what we value. Because our values are stronger. With the mind rules the heart. about a year and a half ago, two years ago, I was counseling a couple coaching them. And I was trying to coach them in becoming more essentially soul oriented. Which in that context of their relationship meant don't focus on what you experience from your spouse. Focus on what your spouse is experiencing. How is your spouse feel about this? Not how do you feel about this? Like the body is what you see, the souls, what you have to believe in. Try to believe in a deeper part of your spouse. Not just what you get from them. and they said to them, this is just a shift from body to soul. They said, Rabbi, our our issues are so complicated. Isn't this just a so oversimplification? Aren't you over simplifying this issue? And I told them, yes, I am. I am over simplifying this issue. Because it's simple. It's not easy. You know, so I'll give you that. It's not easy. This is so difficult. This is challenging. This takes work. This takes effort. This takes exertion. But it's simple. It's in the sense that this is all you need to do. It's it's hard because it unfortunately is is going to take work or not unfortunately. Fortunately, it's going to take work to get there. and what if I don't get there? Okay, we talk about that in Tanya as well. We talk about that in chapter twenty-seven. We talked about that in chapter thirty-five. Value in the action itself, value in the effort itself. Bottom line, what is the ultimate goal of Tanya to serve God with joy. Which in English means become more comfortable with our soul, with our relationship with him. To relieve that tension. I'll tell you two stories. Conclude with two stories. Story number one Rabbi Friedman's father, Rabbi Manis Friedman, tells this story. He had a friend back in Minnesota, who was a Holocaust survivor. He unfortunately was quite hostile toward Judaism. Understandably so with what he went through, right? No judgement there. He had a close relationship with Rabbi Friedman and but you know, he he he liked Rabbi Friedman. He didn't particularly like Judaism. given, you know, he was burned. I get it. He was flipping to the TV one evening and this was in the 80s and he sees the from Chabad World Headquarters. Being broadcasted. Teaching Torah. In Yiddish. And the guy was mesmerized. He's just watching it. Watching, watching. And he calls up Rabbi Friedman. He says, you'll never guess what happened I'm flipping through the screen and I see mister Rabbi and his teachings were so inspiring and this was so enlightening and Rabbi Friedman says, wait, wait a minute, what, what, what changed? What happened? You used to be so hostile toward Judaism. He said, for the first time in my life, I see somebody who's so public about their Judaism. And so comfortable with their Judaism. They're just comfortable in their own skin about. It's just natural, it's seamless. It's not forced That's some, that, that's what we aspire toward to become comfortable in our own skin comfortable with our own souls. I'll tell you one more story. And this story really really hit home for me. I I was almost in doubt whether the story even, you know, like something happens and then a couple years later, did that really happen? It did happen. You'll soon see why. About seven years ago, six years ago, seven years ago. I was living in Los Angeles and I was studying in what's called a Koelel. Koelel is an educational center. Where, you know, like us, we're we're kind of like a synagogue but it's open for study. It's like a live, basically like a Jewish library where people come and study. the the attendance of this and the people that ran it, the study center, were not Chabad by any means. They were traditional Jews but not Chabad by any means. And they were unfamiliar with the study of the Tanya. and I I don't want to use the word hostile toward Tanya. Cuz that that's a little extreme but they were a little bit I would say apprehensive toward Tanya because they didn't know what it was. They came you know they they weren't familiar with Hasidic tradition although they although they were traditional Jews. and things that you aren't familiar with can be scary sometimes. I get it I was there studying Tanya with somebody at this educational center and this young man at the time twenty-four years old overhears us and he's intrigued. And he just says, can I interrupt you? Can I talk to you afterward? I said, sure. Afterward, I go up to him. What's going on? He says, what you're studying is is quite intriguing. Can we study together? Sure. Love to. I said, when are you available? Can can we do mornings? Services at that point, there was a daily services there at 8 o'clock. I said, maybe we can do like 7 30. He says, I'm not a morning person. I said ehm what time are you up in the morning? What's the earliest we can do? He says let's not talk about that. Let's do something in the evening. Said okay. We ended up doing it. We ended up studying in the evenings together. I met and and by the way, as we started studying, I I said to him like, well, we got in conversation, you know, what are you doing these days? Not much. Okay. I'm at one of the morning services at 8 o'clock. An older gentleman comes up to me and says, excuse me, sir. Are you the guy who's studying Tanya with my son? Said, yeah. like what's going to happen now? He says, I need you to do me a favor. I don't know what you're doing but you gotta continue. So, what do you mean? He says, there's something you don't know about my son. He's clinically depressed. He's going through a really hard time. I don't know what it is but he dropped out of school. He's not in any Yeshiva in any formal Jewish educational center either. He was dropped out of college too. He's not he he can't hold a job. He literally sits in bed every single day in the dark. At least till noon. And for whatever reason I don't know if he wasn't taking medication or the medication didn't agree with him but for whatever reason, medication wasn't an option. He says, you started learning Tanya with my son the past few months, past few weeks. And I've seen a light bulb go on in him. The guy has life. He's coming to the services in the morning. He didn't even wake up in the morning. He's literally out at synagogue in the morning. He says, my son bought an English Tanya from Amazon with his own money. He says, my kid never bought a book in his life. He says, I don't know what you're doing but I need you to please continue. You're saving my son's life. I said, whoa. Several years go by. and I I kind of forgot about the story. and I find out a year and a half later, actually, I find out that this guy is in Israel studying in Yeshiva. He ended up getting his life together and he's back and and he's in Israel and he's studying and he's taking a study seriously and he actually called me to reach out the father. The he he called me to let me know how he's doing. A year or two after that. I went back to that same educational center. I went there to pray in the afternoon. And I showed up the services a little bit early. It was a mistake. Um showed up a little bit early. Since since when are we early at the no. I'm a Jew. I don't do things right. So I showed up a little bit early. And right before the service there's a a group of like six people studying. And there's somebody leading studies. I couldn't see who it was because I walked in and his back was to me. I see afterwards when the service starts, it was this guy. He was leading a study session on his own. He was teaching other people Torah. The guy pulled himself through law school and he's now a lawyer working in a firm and to me, that was just like, wow. The the Tanya literally turned, yeah, they gave this guy life because he he made this shift in his life from being body oriented to soul oriented. It really really hit home for him and that to me, that was something that was was quite inspiring. I want to just end off with perhaps a suggestion. If I may, The new Tanya cycle. There's a Tanya cycle every day. Daily Tanya cycle and you end up finishing study a little bit 10 minutes a day, and you end up finishing the whole Tanya in one year. And that cycle is coming up in just about a week from now. Starting next Monday or Monday night. So that's my story and I'm sticking to it. Yas My pleasure. Your the story about that guy reminds me of an incident. Um Those that know me here know I work in in the prison system. So there was a Jewish fellow who got into a little bit of a tussle with some of the prison staff and he ended up in solitary in the segregating housing unit for about two months. And after that from there he was transferred to immigration and I don't know what happened to him after that. But while he was in the segregating housing. Segregated housing unit. I would come to see him two or three times a week to do to put on to film with him which he had he had been doing every day. But there he wasn't allowed to have us feeling with him. and every time I would come to see him, he would be, he would be stand, you know, waiting for me to get there. He had questions. He wanted to ask me because he was doing a lot of reading and he was always reading The Daily Tanya. Questions and I would say, I haven't read the Tanya for today yet that you're ahead of me. I don't. But in one of the conversations I had with him about Tanya, he said We need to teach this to kids. He said, I swear on my life if I had learned this when I was younger, I wouldn't be in prison now. Wow. Tanya's powerful stuff. Wow. and we thank you very very much. This is it's a beautiful treat. I'm going to disconnect from the live stream and we'll take the rest of