Vayishlach

The sicha for parshas Vayishlach is in Vol. III of Likkutei Sichos, and it is actually a sicha for Yud Tes Kislev. 

Yud Tes Kislev is related to parshas Vayishlach in that the Maggid, the Shabbos before he passed away, which was on Yud Tes Kislev, said, “ vayishlach Yankov malachim el Esav,” that Yakov sent angels to Esav, that Yakov sent the mamush, the body of the malach to Esav, but not the essence. The essence of the malach remained by Yakov.

 Now Rashi says that Yakov sent angels mamush, meaning he literally sent the angels. So the way Rashi understands it, and the way the Maggid explains it seems to be contradictory. Rashi is saying the word “mamush” implies that it was really the angels and the Maggid is saying that the word “mamush” implies that he didn’t send the real angel, he sent only the “mamush”, the physical part, the body of the angel but the essence stayed with Yakov.

 The Rebbe explains that this contradiction is only on the surface. When you stop and think about it, an angel belongs in essence by Yakov, not by Esav. The fact that when the angel went as a shliach, on a shlichus from Yakov to Esav, the essence of the angel remained connected and devoted to Yakov and not to Esav, because the shliach in essence remains with the meshalayach. So that by the very fact that the body of the malach related to the shlichus and the effect it needed to have on Esav, but the soul of the angel, the mind and heart and the devotion of the angel remained with Yakov, that’s why it is mamush an angel that went to Esav. Because that it was an angel is really all about, that the heart and soul belongs to Yakov, and only the body deals with Esav.

So in this connection between Vayishlach and Yud Tes Kislev, there is a sicha in Vol. III of Likkutei Sichos which was actually said in 1923, and the Rebbe says as follows:

 The Freidike Rebbe who transplanted Chabad Chassidus to America, told many stories about the Alter Rebbe, and one of them, which is very relevant to our times, needs to be mentioned. This is the kind of a story brings out and shows the essence and character of the style and philosophy of Chabad Chassidus.

 This was in the time when the Mitteler Rebbe, the Alter Rebbe’s son, who later became his successor, was with him in the same house. The Mitteler Rebbe already had children at the time, and among them was an infant. The Alter Rebbe lived on the second floor and the Mitteler Rebbe lived on the ground floor. One time when the Mitteler Rebbe was sitting learning, and the infant was sleeping nearby in a crib, the crib turned over. The Mitteler Rebbe was so deeply immersed in his studies that he didn’t hear the crib fall nor the baby crying. The Alter Rebbe, although he was upstairs on the second floor, and he too was immersed in learning, yet he heard the baby crying. So he interrupted his learning, came downstairs, picked up the baby and quieted him down, and put him back into the crib.

 Afterwards the Alter Rebbe said to the Mitteler Rebbe, that when a child is crying and you are immersed in the learning to such a degree that you don’t hear the cry, this is not an acceptable way, this is not an acceptable behavior.

 The Freidike Rebbe explained and elaborated on the story, saying that as deep and as devoted as we are in the world of Torah and mitzvahs, when a child is crying and needs attention, we have to tear ourselves away from the study and the mitzvahs that we are doing for ourselves, and attend to the needs of the child. Because when a Jewish child expresses a need and a feeling, an emptiness and wants and needs to be taught and elevated in his Yiddishkeit, we have to put everything else aside and take care of the child. 

This is particularly relevant to us in our time, the Rebbe says, because we live now in a time, where we can see a very strong desire, an awakening among Jews in general and young Jews in particular. That even among teenagers and younger, thirteen year olds and even younger than that, we see a desire and a yearning to grow in Yiddishkeit.

 We find also in young married couples who have young children, even four and five year olds, the parents have also developed a strong desire and thirst for Yiddishkeit. And it is not for some kind of entertainment Yiddishkeit but a desire for Yiddishkeit in its truest, original, authentic form without compromises and without sugar coating. Only when we give our children that kind of education, that kind of upbringing, which is based completely and totally on the truth of Torah, only then is their desire and their need satisfied.

 And this is what we learn from the story mentioned before, that whatever a Jew may be involved in, and all Jews are involved with good things and important things, in pursuing a livelihood, or in community projects and so on, when it comes to the needs of a Jewish child, that must be given priority treatment and it must come first before all other projects. We have to make the greatest effort and put in the greatest amount of work to make sure that every Jewish child receives a Jewish education, a Torah education, particularly with the condition in which the world is today, that many children are left out of the yeshivas and of Jewish education because of financial problems, or other such things, so we have to make sure that every child’s desire for Yiddishkeit is satisfied.

 Unfortunately there are also those kinds of children who are lacking in Yiddishkeit and lacking in a Torah knowledge but they are not crying, we don’t see in them, we don’t hear from them a thirst and a yearning for Jewish values, for Jewish awareness.

 That gives us an even greater obligation. The very fact that they are not crying shows that their lack is so deep, their hunger is so deep that they no longer feel it as hunger. When a person doesn’t know that he is sick, that is an even worse sickness than when a person feels symptoms. And this is one of the things a yeshiva, all yeshivas, should devote themselves to, to make sure that they accept and bring in every kind of Jewish child, without any restriction whatsoever, without any discrimination whatsoever, regardless of what family background the child comes from, and regardless of what attitudes the child displays at the moment, every Jewish child should be absorbed and surrounded in an environment of Torah and mitzvahs, so that they will be blessed in their physical life as well as their spiritual life.

 One other point that needs to be made concerning the world in general. The world finds itself in general in the position of a baby who has fallen out of its crib. Because the world has in general left its track, fallen out of its cradle so to speak, and is totally confused in terms of its direction and its future. So it is seeking, searching desperately to find ways to harness the human potential in a way that it will contribute to the building and the improvement of life and the world, rather than the opposite, the destruction and the deterioration of life.

 And here also a person might say, he has his own problems, he is busy with his own affairs,  and he has  no time to devote himself to the direction of the world in general or the society in general, to worry about what is going on in the world, particularly in another country.

 But we now know that in spite of the distance between one country and another, and one neighborhood and another, we now know that what happens in one corner of the world, actually affects the rest of the world as well.

 Then there is another claim that a person might have and that is “ mi ani, u ma ani”, if there are problems in the world, who am I and what am I that I should be able to make a change, to make a difference in the world. However the truth is that every person can have an effect on the entire world, as the Rambam says that the world is balanced and one more deed can change the world. We find also in other seforim that whenever a Jew does a mitzvah in one place, one little corner of the world, and he creates there a Divine light, the light of truth, the emes of Torah, that light, the Torah and the mitzvah, has the ability to effect the entire world, and G-d promises that it will effect the entire world, in that it will become better and easier everywhere in the world to be good.

 So when a person in his own limited space creates that kind of a life, the result is that everywhere in the world, people are moved and are inspired to righteousness and justice, goodness and holiness that dispels and removes all the forces of evil and war, the destructive forces, and replaces it with the force of good and of light.

 Among the activities that a person can do in his little corner of the world that effects the rest of the world, is as mentioned before, strengthening the true Jewish education of Jewish children wherever they are, and by having an individual  Jewish child  educated  and  inspired  by the  light and  the  G-dliness of Torah. This causes the light and the G-dliness of Torah and mitzvahs to spread throughout the whole world, ner mitzvah v’Torah ohr, it lights up the whole world. And then we have G-d’s guarantee, G-d’s promise that this will bring great blessing to all those who are involved and participate in this activity in that all the good in the world will become stronger until finally the powers of good will be victorious and will conquer the evil, and we will be zocher among all Jews and the whole world with the coming of Moshiach, to take the world out of golus, and to bring the true geulah which is lasting and permanent.

 And the Rebbe ends with a bracha that G-d should bless us all with true health, with happiness and enthusiasm which will help us in all our activities so that we will do it with the greatest success. Because as we see that the circumstances in which we are now in as much as we strengthen the yeshivas, the bigger the yeshiva becomes the more students we will find, and all the facilities will be filled, and overfilled, and all the classes will be filled and this will happen when we work with enthusiasm and with simcha and good health, and this will also increase  G-d’s bracha in the hatzlacha of all our activities.

 Now we might add that if this was true in 1923 that the Rebbe saw already then that there was an opening, an awareness, a thirsting, a desire among young people, even among children, for not only some parts of Torah, not only some parts of Yiddishkeit, but for the true, complete, essential, authentic Yiddishkeit without any compromises, how much more so today, all these years later when the world has so obviously become conscious and concerned with values and with ethics and with truth.

 Now certainly the time has come when we have to speak out and offer the message of Torah to the whole world, beginning of course with Jewish children whom we don’t have to convince and we don’t have to argue with them.  In fact they are knocking on the door and asking that we teach them true Yiddishkeit and give them a way to live on a daily basis from morning to night and throughout the entire year, that they should know and feel that they are going in the path of Yiddishkeit, they are doing what they were created to do. This goodness that is now coming from them, this desire, this openness and this willingness not only from Jewish children but from non-Jews as well, from the entire world, contains within  it a  potential  for G-dliness that has never existed before. In addition every year, since creation, there has been a greater G-dliness in the world, a greater gilui in the world, but particularly now, the generation of geulah, the time is now ripe and we are seeing it with our own eyes that goodness is coming from the earth, not from heaven, from the mekabel, not the mashpia, that goodness is a higher and greater good than anything we have ever experienced in the past.

 As we learn in the parsha of Noach, Avraham came and gathered the reward and the zchus of all previous generations from Noach until Avraham. The  Rebbe  says  there  that  there  are  many  qualities, many  forms of  G-dliness that were produced in the world but never revealed to the world, like the goodness of the generations from Noach to Avraham. They produced goodness, but it wasn’t revealed to them and they didn’t benefit from it. But when  Avraham  came  along,  and  served people and brought them to         G-dliness, elevated them to an awareness of G-dliness, he reaped the benefits, the zchus, of all previous generations.

 And so it is with our generation, that we reap the benefits of all previous generations from the time of creation, that all the zchusim that were created by Jews and l’havdil non-Jews in their goodness that was not revealed and not appreciated, we now can benefit from all of that, if we tap into it, by adding the little bit of goodness and the little bit of effort that we have to do to bring the world to an awareness of emes Hashem l’olam, that we then not only get rewarded for our own efforts but also for all the efforts of previous generations that remained hidden and were being collected and gathered, waiting to be revealed.

 These zchusim, which is when a person does a mitzvah, what zchus does he accumulate? He accumulates the zchus that his children, future generations will find it easier to keep Torah and mtzvahs and to serve G-d with a whole heart, and  mind, and a true devotion, easier than it was for the grandparent. That is the ultimate zchus.

 So with all the parents and ancestors of the past who have accumulated zchusim, it should now become easy for us and natural for us to be able to serve G-d with a whole heart and a whole mind without any interference, without any resistance at all. Not from the outside world and our own yetzer hara, but that we should have a zchus in Torah and mitzvahs, that we should be able to serve G-d effortlessly, painlessly, and therefore with great joy, by reaping all the G-dliness that was planted in the earth, in the lowly, outside world, that is now offering itself back to holiness and coming and knocking on our doors and saying, I have good intentions, I have good feelings, show me how to use them, show me how to serve G-d and express this desire to be connected to the emes.

 In Vol. XV of Likkutei Sichos, the third sicha on parshas Vayishlach is also connected with Yud Tes Kislev. Here the Rebbe says on the posuk, Yakov remained alone and then he crossed over the river and he wrestled with the angel, that the Gemarrah says, what does it mean that he remained alone. And the Gemarrah gives the answer that he was separated and remained alone by crossing over the river, because he went back to get some left-over utensils, little pots and pans. The Midrash gives another explanation, that just as it says that G-d remains alone, stands alone, the same is true by Yakov, that Yakov also stands alone.

 And as we have spoken many times, when there are two explanations for the same thing, there must be a connection between them. But here we find two extremely contradictory explanations. According to the Gemarrah, the reason why Yakov was alone, was over small, insignificant utensils. On the other hand, the Midrash says that this aloneness is of the highest sort, comparable to the aloneness of G-d, particularly the aloneness and the gilui of the oneness of G-d as it will be in the world to come, as the posuk ends, on that day, after the coming of Moshiach, then this aloneness of G-d, this oneness of G-d will be revealed. So here we are comparing Yakov’s oneness to the oneness of G-d.

 This is also connected to Yud Tes Kislev. Concerning Yud Tes Kislev, we find two extremely contradictory explanations. In answer to the question, why Chassidus was revealed at such a late stage in history, only in the last few generations, we find two answers.

 On the one hand we are told that Chassidus came in our times late in history, because of the extreme darkness of the generations before Moshiach which began with the Baal Shem Tov. Because of this double and quadruple darkness, there was a need to illuminate the world with the light of Chassidus, and the other explanation, again the extreme opposite, is what’s written in the writings of the Arizal, which the Alter Rebbe mentions in Shulchan Aruch, that Erev Shabbos you are supposed to taste from the foods that were prepared for Shabbos.

 And so it also in terms of history, that the days, each thousand year period represents a day, that in the last generation before Moshiach, in the Erev Shabbos, in the six thousandth year, beginning from the year 5501, you are supposed to already taste, since it is now Friday, the foods of Shabbos, the foods of Moshiach. And so Chassidus is the taste of the teachings of Moshiach while it is still Friday, Erev Shabbos.

 Here also the explanations are extremely contradictory. The first explanation is that Chassidus was revealed in the later generations because of how lowly and dark those times are, and the second explanation says that we are giving a taste of Moshiach before Moshiach comes because of the greatness of it.

 So the explanation of this contradiction is that Yud Tes Kislev was the beginning of the time of yafutzu maayonasecha chutza, the spreading of the wellsprings to the outside. When the Alter Rebbe came out of prison that was when he was really able to spread the teachings of Chassidus, even to the chutza, the outside. And the idea being that the maayon, the well, itself should reach chutza. Because there are times when one can have an influence on the world around him, but the person himself remains aloof and separate from the world around him.

 The expression yafutzu maayonasecha chutza, means that the well itself reaches outside, not that the well has influence on the outside, while the well itself remains inside, The well itself spreads to the outside. And when we say yafutzu maayonasecha chutza, it means that when the well itself comes to the outside, it is absorbed into the outside, like we learned in the sicha of Bereishis, that the Torah begins with the story of creation and all the stories of Chumash Bereishis, all to explain to the nations of the world, how Eretz Israel belongs to the Jewish people.

 And the Rebbe says there, that the explanation has to be not only an answer that we have to present to the non-Jew for our own satisfaction, but the answer has to be so convincing, and so thorough, that the non-Jew to whom we give this answer will understand and agree that this is correct, and be moved by it to change his behavior.

 So the reaching out of the maayonos to the chutza is not that it should have an influence from a distance, but that the well itself should come into the chutza, and when the well comes into the chutza, it should devote itself to the chutza to the point where the chutza itself begins to understand and think in a holy fashion.

 Now this yafutzu maayonasecha chutza began the revelation of the essence of Torah, of pnimiyus haTorah. It began when the hidden part of Torah was revealed in the revealed part of Torah, in the nigleh of the Torah. Because before Chassidus there were may tzaddikim, many great scholars and sages who were genii in both fields of Torah, revealed part of Torah and the pnimiyus, the soul of Torah, but those two subjects remained separate, two distinct subjects. And although inevitably one had an influence on the other, the influence was from a distance and they remained two separate subjects.

 But with the beginnings of Chassidus, with Yud Tes Kislev, was the time when the Alter Rebbe was the first to bring together, to merge the two parts of Torah, bringing the soul of Torah into the body of Torah. For example, understanding a mitzvah with all of its details, the halacha of a mitzvah, according to its inner meaning, according to the neshama of Torah.

 Now just as it is with Torah, that you join, bring together the maayon, the well, the essence of Torah with its body, with the chutza of Torah, the same is true also with the neshama. The neshama has an essence and a body, an external part. Prior to the Alter Rebbe, there was a division, a separation, there was the etzem of the neshama, the essence of the neshama, and that was for example faith and obedience that was superational, above the rational level, and then there was the rational function, the human function of the rest of the system of intelligence and emotions.

 The Alter Rebbe brought the two together so that even that which is above intelligence and above the rationale, the faith, the emunah and the superational obedience, the mind should be able to appreciate and approve of the emunah and the acceptance of the obedience. That which was above intelligence should be felt in intelligence and the intelligence itself should rationally approve and almost demand the qualities that are superational – the faith and the obedience.

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