Why I Was Dancing at 5:30 AM • Rabbi Yossi Lew

I I'll share with you a story in that vein. Um when I was I I mentioned before when I was a young teen 13 14 I started going through all the hanas all the of the rebba that were not in you know they're hanas and I came to lit days I came to the rebb's 70th birthday and I remember that I remember the to I was only 8 years old just before my 8th birthday so I wasn't old enough to understand anything but I remember the the to I remember my father leaving for Shabas right before Pesak was like wow and I remember the Fabangan I was at that Fabang and I in in London I heard the the the hookup but I didn't know I don't know what was going on but there is a line in the Han that says after the mime they sang the something like that with a great inspiration and the Reb afterwards After listening, the Reb said the following. What did the Reb say? The Reb said that there's something that I wanted to introduce into Labavage. But the Reb didn't say introduce. The Reb used the word I wanted to basically hammer it in. I wanted to install it into Labavage. And I was waiting for a special moment. So the Reb called this a special moment. This niggan a special moment. That's why they wrote it in the Han. There's no other page of the Reb's that says anything close to this. It says that the Reb still look to dance and there's it doesn't say they sang a song with great inspiration. Like what what does that mean? And what did the Reb mean by that? So I read that and I said, "Wow, that's that's amazing. What what does that mean?" So I waited for my father to come home and I said to my I showed him my father. I said, "Here's a" He said, "Oh, it was amazing." I said, "What happened?" like what manana anig what was the difference between this niggan and any other niggan that they ever sang at the faba because you don't see this any other page he says it was indescribable it was amazing it was unbelievable it was a it was it was one of these moments it was like I said what what what happened and he has no answer he just didn't know how to answer it and so I was friendly with with the older bim at that time this is must have Less and I asked different people who were there 10 years older than me. Yasi Galitzki Y Richie Witness different people that I know and everyone answered the same way. Ah I was amazing. It was unbelievable. I said describe to me what happened and nobody could. Not one person. And over the years I kept on asking this in me gimal they started giving out the tapes. WLCC gave out the tapes of previous years. I bought that tape and the whole niggan is missing. It's just you hear the beginning of it and then they they didn't used to record then they couldn't took up too much space in the tape. So they they would stop it and then would open it up again when the Reb started speaking. So you didn't have it. Only about uh 15 16 years ago, a bach gave me a gift and the gift was all the available at that time available clips of the reb special moments. It was on CDs. It was it was a a case of of CDs probably pirated by this ba. There was about 25 I have I have one of those sets, right? I still have that set. It was 25 CDs. I I should say I don't know if I have it or I left it at my parents house because we don't have DVDs anymore. Right. Yeah. Right. So, I had I had a whole package of that and each one of them had the date on it. So, I came home and I opened this up. Wow. What a treasure of clips that I had never saw before. So, I went through the dates and the first thing I saw was So, I watched that. This is about 12:30 at night. till 1:30 in the morning. Then I took out the dollar from Islam base. They had the whole niggan on the video, the whole faban on the video. And I watched this this thing for the first time in my life, having for 20 years wondering what is going on here and why is this considered such a special moment that the Reb himself says, "I was waiting for a special moment." And um you see that the Reb is encouraging the niggan from time to time, shaking with the head and a little with the hand. And when the Reb would do that, the crowd would uh would liven up. And according to the um energy that the Reb was giving, that's how the crowd became energized. So the Reb was moving very very fast, the would go very fast. If it was a little slower, it wasn't a little, you know, it was the Reb was the conductor. In this case though, the is singing disproportionate to anything the Reb was doing. They were jumping up and down and you can see there's like you can't see the color. It's a black and white like a red in the face kind of thing. And everybody is just going there singing it over and over and over again. And the whole place is jumping up and dancing like this. And there were notorious non-s singers at the rebangans. People just didn't sing. Maybe they didn't know how to sing. Maybe they didn't want to sing. I don't know. Even though even the go old guys at the back behind the reb the old Vitten and then and then and then the Rifkin and the Simpson they were all moving up and down and the hands are moving and it at one point even the guys sitting were standing up and dancing. It was like it it was a crowd that was just you don't you just don't see that because at the reban you see the conductor part of it but you don't see how the the place is just going crazy by themselves. So I watched this it's about 20 minutes and then I rewound it. I started watching it again by the third time maybe even the second time. By the certainly by the third time I it suddenly hit me and I jumped out of my place and I started jumping up and down and I stayed up for the next thing I knew it was 5:30 in the morning. I had watched this maybe 10 times because I suddenly caught on to what was happening there. And this was a moment where the place was screaming three words, I love you. the the people who were there got so caught up in this that it just spilled out. There was no controlling it. And the Reb at the time there was no one saying that. Everybody was just singing and dancing. The Reb is moving back and forth. He's watching. He's looking. He has a slight smile on his face and he's like taking in at the same time is you knowb is is but but is and they're screaming out basically we don't know how to say this we love you and the rebba said wait oh you love me 71 new institutions please now you now you can take over the world if you love me it's not about dancing and singing it we need to dance we need to sing. But now you take this energy with you and take over the world. This is how this is my way of looking at it. But what I found amazing was that I jumped out of my chair and I found myself there. I wasn't there. I wasn't there ever. I didn't know what happened over there. Nobody else could tell me what happened over there. But when once I watched it and I saw it and I internalized it, I became part of that crowd. I was there. I transported myself there. My whole Mitsus was there. And then I understood that's what made me understand. And by the way, after that, I approached all these people from my father to Galitzky to all these people. And almost all of them nodded and said, "You're right. That's that's a good way of of describing how we felt at that time." So, I got it. You know why I got it? Because I was there. But you weren't there. You were just watching a video. I know. But somehow even watching a video and but focusing on what's going on, not just watching something that you memorized or you heard or you're thinking about, but actually being there, you could you could put it put yourself there and stop feeling what they were feeling. That's how I that that that that taught me an important lesson and that when you want to say something about the Reb, it's not just saying I remember the Reb. It's about saying you need to go and experience it