Emunas1

I am disgusted not by people watching somber and appropriate videos on Tisha B’Av. I think that’s fine. But I am absolutely disgusted that the vast majority of these “must-watch” videos cost good money to view.

I understand that videos cost money to make; but the idea that anybody would attempt to make money off of Tisha B’Av is absolutely horrifying to me. If you want to make a video, that’s fine. But don’t charge for it on Tisha B’Av.

Breslov is not doing fine.

Lubavitch is also not doing fine. They’re both a hefkervelt, with some really heilige people who follow the chassidus and others who do not and sow chaos.

They both need a Rebbe who is living and in touch with the times.

If they’re smart, they’ll inject them with subcutaneous tracking devices.

Rav Aharon wrote the following:

1) שערי היחוד ואמונה – first published in תק”פ, approximately seven years after the death of the Baal HaTanya. This sefer discusses many of the basics of the הקדמות that you need to properly understand the kaballah behind the Baal HaTanya, and it can also serve as an introduction to עץ חיים for those more kaballah oriented. It was recently reprinted (just this past year) after being out of print for a long time. The reprinted version is truly a pleasure to learn from.

2) The continuation to that sefer is called שערי עבודה. It takes the hakdamos from the שערי היחוד ואמונה and brings them into the realm of actual avodah. Having a basic understanding of Tanya, in addition to the first sefer, is important in this sefer. It has not yet been reprinted, but I believe that it will be soon IYH.

3) He has what was originally a 3-volume sefer called עבודת הלוי which are maamarim על התורה. Until recently it has been very hard to come by, but it is in the process of being republished. My information may be a little out of date, but I believe they have published two of what will ultimately be a four volume set.

Please tell me the specific place where The Baal HaTanya allegedly poskins that you are not supposed to learn more than a half hour of chassidus per day.

Since you’re not asking a question, but giving me a lecture, I don’t really feel like you’d take any answer seriously. Nevertheless, i will respond. Comparing mussar to chassidus, and especially to kaballah is fundamentally flawed. Chassidus is not a replacement for mussar, and learning mussar does not patter you from learning kaballah.

The Baal HaTanya says that as the generations have gone on, people need additional things to maintain a kesher with Hashem. He says this is the reason that the earlier tannaim sometimes davened very quickly, a portion of shema and that was it, while for us, we need pesukei d’zimra and all of the tefillah to do a proper hisbonenus and maintain a kesher with Hashem. As the generations have fallen further, it is completely understandable that people would need to learn more chassidus and kaballah simply to maintain a kesher with Hashem that the earlier generations (and you, obviously) take for granted.

the Arizal already stated that the main avodah in our generation is tefillah, more so than Torah, even though talmud torah k’neged kulam. This is the reason. All the more so in our generation, where we have fallen to the depths of the kelipos, that without learning nistar, we are at even more of a disadvantage against the kelipos and tumah.

Now as for the gedolim question, as I have already said, the gedolei hamekubalim are of one mind that the kaballah was passed on from R. Shimon Bar Yochai, elucidated by the Arizal (and decoded by the Baal Shem Tov) specifically for our generation. If you want a brief overview of the topic, check out R. Daniel Frisch (the baal masok mi’dvash) sefer shaarei zohar which gives a brief but compelling summary of the topic.

As for your quotes from Shulchan Aruch HaRav, that sefer was written much earlier in the Baal HaTanya’s life, and includes significant differences between what he held at the end of his life. I am not saying that the Baal haTanya would say that people should spend all day learning chassidus; he would not. I’m just saying that you cannot bring a definitive proof from this.

Now, if you want to ask an honest question, let me know. But please stop lecturing and calling me a halacha-breaker.

OK, sure.

The Baal HaTanya explains that when you do a mitzvah in the physical world, you are taking something which is part of the kelipos (k’klipas nogah) and elevating it to Kedushah. On a simple level, this is because this item appears (to us) as separate and distinct from HKB”H, and it can be used for any matter of things which is not for Avodas Hashem. By using it for Avodas Hashem, that item is raised to Kedushah. The mitzvos, in general, are rooted at a higher level in the סדר השתלשלות than לימוד התורה.

Nevertheless, the mitzvos are compared to a levush for your neshama, and learning Torah is compared to מזון for your neshama. מזון goes to the inside, into the פנימיות, while the mitzvos, even though they are rooted in a higher place, only go to the חיצוניות of the neshama. [As with many things in Chassidus and Kaballah, you will find over and over again that it is wrong to ask the question, “which is on a higher level of kedushah?” Generally speaking, each has a מעלה that the other does not have].

The יסוד of limud hatorah going into the פנימיות of your neshama is based on the idea that it is the פירוש of the mitzvos (i.e. the peirush is the פנימיות). This is discussed at length in Torah Or and other places. A good starting point would be תורה אור ד”ה יביאו לבוש מלכות.

Anyway, this reasoning is not relevant to קבלה in the same way as nigleh. on a deep level, kaballah is meant to add a neshama to your avodas Hashem, not to explain the mitzvos. As a result, Reb. Aharon Strusele explains in his seforim that I discussed above that the idea that Torah is מזון לנשמה only applies to nigleh, not his seforim. As a result, he specifies that the main limud should be nigleh, not nistar.

I hope that this was somewhat understandable in the way I explained it.

That being said, different people have different שרשי הנשמה and as a result, they have different חלקים in Torah. I myself can DEFINITELY relate to Chabad’s desire to spend the day learning Chassidus, as this brings one extremely close to Hashem in a different way than regular limud torah. That’s why I said earlier that everybody needs to find a balance for himself. Even a person whose שרש הנשמה requires more chassidus and/or kaballah still needs to learn nigleh. And I definitely disagree with a blanket rule that one should only learn it for a half an hour a day.

One Rav who I am close to, who was the first person I learned שער היחוד ואמונה with, suggested that perhaps 2/3 nigleh and 1/3 nistar, and this has always felt like a good balance to me.

ARSo: I agree with you regarding the dangers of Hagshamah. For the most part, chassidus solves this problem by clothing the kaballah in language that is not dangerous. The Baal haTanya was generally very carefull how he worded things. Of course, the second and third rebbes of lubavitch are much more in depth than the first, and assume a lot of kaballah knowledge, but the average modern-day lubavitcher probably doesn’t learn these deep maamarim. I am willing to be דן לכף זכות for most modern-day lubavitchers in this matter, even though I have no love for the direction of modern-day lubavitch.

Regarding your second point, I stand corrected. You are right. Although I did not intend for the statement I made to mean what you took from it, after rereading it I definitely understand that I should have worded it more carefully. There are שבעים פנים לתורה. I am sorry.

Yeah; you can spend a lifetime learning only Lubavitch seforim and still not know it all. It’s pretty incredible.

You mention learning more Halacha. The Lubavitch shita would seem to be that the ikar should be halacha/nigleh as opposed to chassidus. It’s important to have a balance between nigleh and nistar.

CS – I’m impressed that you would consider learning Reb Aharon, as many Lubavitchers would not. If you’re interested, you should know that שערי היחוד ואמונה was recently reprinted but שערי עבודה has not yet been reprinted. I hope that it will come out soon, as the new reprinted volume is a pleasure to learn. You might want to consider picking it up.

Hi CS,

Regarding your first point, modern-day Lubavitchers DID go off the rails. And it didn’t take five years, either. Most Lubavitchers still believe that he is Moshiach, which is bordering on apikorsus, as I’ve discussed at length in other threads. The ones that don’t believe this are afraid to speak up and correct this edited.

Regarding your second point, yes, Achdus Hashem is what it’s all about. The Arizal was the one who translated the kaballah of R. Shimon bar Yochai into an elucidated system, but he purposely clothed it in משלים. the Baal Shem Tov was מגלה that the whole purpose of Kaballah was to bring out the Achdus of Hashem in the world. All of our avodah, יחוד קב”ה ושכינתיה is based on this Achdus Hashem.

This was brought out by none other than one of the Baal Shem Tov’s big talmidim, R. Aharon Halevi Strusele, which the Mittler Rebbe ostracized. I heard from a Lubavitcher who was close to the Rebbe that The Rebbe wanted to reprint this sefer in addition to all of the other Chassidus he brought into publication, but was afraid of what the old-time Chabadniks would say. In any case, I strongly recommend that if you want to understand the entire system of Chabad the way that the Baal HaTanya himself envisioned it, that you read שערי היחוד ואמונה and שערי עבודה by R. Aharon Halevi. You will see that all of the Tefillah, especially Shacharis, is intended to be a form of התבוננות into יחוד השם. This was the vision of the Baal HaTanya, and it is THE fundamental יסוד of the original Lubavitch chassidus. Virtually every maamar that the Baal HaTanya gave discusses hisbonenus in some form.

In terms of my own learning, I own the maamarim of the Baal HaTanya, and the MIttler Rebbe, and the Tzemach Tzedek ( except the ones that are out of print). The latter two both knew the Baal HaTanya personally and their primary focus in all of those volumes of maamarim is to elucidate and explain the maamarim of the baal hatanya.

I am sure that the other, later Rebbes have also written excellent chassidus, up to and including the late Lubavitcher Rebbe, may his memory be a zechus for Klal Yisroel, but they are absolutely not required to understand the Baal HaTanya’s Torah.

The עיקר of Lubavitch Chassidus (and I do not consider myself a Chabadnik) can be summed up in a word: התבוננות. This means deep thinking about how Hashem is ממלא כל עלמין and סובב כל עלמין, taking these concepts and applying them to your daily life. These ideas are explained in Tanya starting in Perek 35 until the end of ליקוטי אמרים. That’s where it gets pretty complicated, and you have to go slowly.

The purpose of understanding the difference between a צדיק and a בינוני is not so that you’ll know, as your question suggests. Rather, it is brought down in Tanya for the purpose of describing two completely different types of עבודת השם. The Baal HaTanya’s system explains the difference between the two in the first 14 or so perakim. Between then and perek 34 or so, he describes in great detail the עבודה of the Beinoni, explaining that this is מידת כל אדם. This עבודה includes סור הרע ועשה טוב to keep from doing aveiros, it includes being מחשיב the נשמה האלקית which is present in every Yid, and it includes being מתבונן in the nature of Hashem, his greatness, his holiness, etc in order to bring one closer to Hashem.

In short, I completely agree with you that it is not important in this world to understand the difference between a צדיק and a בינוני for its own sake. But if you learn Tanya, you understand that this is simply a jumping point within a whole system of עבודת השם. It is this עבודה that is the purpose of the Tanya, not primarily to explain the difference between a Tzadik and a Beinoni.

For loshon hora, so if you do this unintentionally, it’s an עבירה בשוגג. It would, מסתמא, require teshuva like any other aveira b’shogeg, and once the teshuva is done, a person returns to being a beinoni.

The difference between מחשבות זרות and לשון הרע is that the first is only in a person’s מכשבה, which is not fully under the control of a beinoni, while לשון הרע is much closer to a מעשה than a מחשבה. (Although, it would be an interesting side topic to explore whether לשון הרע is different between דבור is not quite the same as a מעשה גמור for all things).

Yes, I agree. My main point was that this person is not called a tzadik until he destroys his Yetzer Hora.

Every Yid has the ability to be a beinoni at any time. If you’re thinking these thoughts of what they call סור מרע ועשה טוב בפועל ממש, then there’s no teshuva gedolah mizu, and the person is a beinoni at that time. If, C”V he goes back to an aveira, then he falls to a rasha at that moment.

OK. The Baal HaTanya says specifically that every Yid can be a beinoni בכל עת ובכל שעה. He also says that if a person C”V does an aveira, he is a rasha at that moment. He says that if a person does Teshuva, he is then a beinoni.

Every person has the ability to be a beinoni at all times. Everyone. And everyone is supposed to look at themselves as a Beinoni.

This is poshut if you have any basic understanding of the Tanya.

By the way, I forgot to mention – Chabad does NOT have a monopoly on Kiruv, unlike what many would believe.

I have objections to the entire shorthand BDE. If you care enough to say this, then it’s not too much to ask to write out the whole thing.

sechel,

The paste in the Hebrew was taken literally out of the sicha which is posted online. https://www.chabad .org/therebbe/article_cdo/aid/2988061/jewish/page.htm

As for a source, see vikuach haramban: https://hebrewbooks.org/22088 p.34 (page 35 of the PDF), the large paragraph starting in the middle of the page. If you read it carefully, then you understand that his entire argument is based on this idea that moshiach can’t be J-s because he died and the world is still not peaceful, etc.

As for your argument that this can’t be a source because it is a discussion because it’s a discussion with the goyyim, this would be true if it were second-hand. But when the Ramban published it himself in לה”ק, he made it into a valid source.

I’d be happy to respond within the limited confines of this forum:

1) For thousands of years, Jews have argued with Christians against J-s being moshiach. One of the major arguments was that he died without a redemption. The Christians respond that he will come back a second time to complete it. This is precisely the argument that the modern-day Lubavitchers are making regarding the Rebbe, z”l. If you combine this idea with the Rebbe’s statement רב” – הוא זה שמקושר עם עצמות ומהות א”ס ב”ה, and that we do not have to connect to Hashem, but only to the Rebbe, we’re not too far off from the Christian belief.
This is not to say that a Rebbe is not a vehicle to bring a person closer to Hashem, because he is, and this is likely what the Rebbe meant. But the language in the Maamar can be quite dangerous.

2) Even if we do accept that Moshiach can be someone who has died, the argument that there are much greater people among the dead than the Rebbe is very strong. The common Lubavitcher argument is that Moshiach needs to come from the generation of Moshiach. This argument might have worked in 1995, but we’re 25 years later. Many, if not the majority of Lubavitchers today have never seen the Rebbe. In another twenty years, if Moshiach has not come yet, C”V, the situation will be even worse. Will they continue to say that the Rebbe is the gadol of their generation, having died 25/45 years prior? That’s absurd, and it against everything the Ba’al Shem Tov stood for.
And by the way, עקבתא דמשיחא started with the Baal Shem Tov, although there are references prior to him as well. If you’re going to say that we are still in the generation of the Rebbe, then you can very easily say that we are in the generation of the Baal Shem Tov. He was much greater than the Rebbe; as the Beis Avrohom said, if he had lived during the time of the Avos, there would have been four. But people don’t go around saying that the Baal Shem Tov is Moshiach.

3) Gedolim, including gedolei hador, mekuballim throughout the generations, have been wrong about Moshiach’s arrival. Countless people have made calculations and been wrong. The Rebbe said that Moshiach’s arrival is imminent. But for Hashem, who lives outside of time, imminent is a relative concept (a thousands years being a day, for example; of course this as well is only a moshol). If all those gedolim who predicted Moshiach’s arrival were wrong, the Ramban and others, why can we not accept that the Rebbe was wrong as well?

Anyone who argued that the rambam doesn’t rule out having moshiach be a dead person can’t read, and is most certainly not dispassionate. The reason he says killed as opposed to died is because he was referring specifically to yoshka.

Why no names of hospitals? I know of one particular hospital that is responsible for many deaths. Sharing the name of that hospital might actually be a mitzvah.
My wife has a dying appendix 18 years ago. Severe acute pain for many weeks. Overcrowded hospital kept her in triage alone for five hours. Eventually drive to NJ where they had trouble diagnosing the exact problem but did emergency surgery and took out her appendix which was going gangrene. If she had stayed in the first hospital, we joke that we’d still be waiting (this was 18 years ago). In reality, of course, she would have died.

I know two others who died at the same hospital. One possibly preventable, and one almost certainly preventable.

I would take any vaccine after we know for sure that it’s safe. We do not currently have any way of getting if it’s safe. Even a US Vaccine would need time to prove safety in my mind before I would be willing to take it. But after it’s proven safe, I don’t care if it was made by the Russians it anybody else, sure if take it.

Because it’s the stupidest idea in a very long time. Socialism will destroy our country. And BTW, we have a fabulous president.