everybody. Okay. There's a whole bunch of questions that There was one topic that I was going to talk about, maybe we'll move it over for another time. One of the questions that some of the bachurim asked, it's more an intellectual question that you deal with when you speak to people. And the question was: What do we tell people who ask you about the Holocaust? About the Holocaust. And the truth is that the Rebbe spoke about it twice very strongly. Besides, there are letters with the Rebbe, but the Rebbe spoke about it, because the main question that they ask is: How could the Eibershter do such a thing? And therefore people stopped, they claim at least that they stopped believing in the Eibershter, because if the Eibershter could allow this to happen, so they stopped believing in the Eibershter. So how do you answer it? How did the Eibershter allow this to happen? Why did that happen? So there are two points here to make. First of all, remember when the Rebbe spoke about it, he started giving the answer by saying that the question itself is a contradiction in itself. The conclusion that you come, because there is a kashya, the kashya is how could the Eibershter allow this to happen, is that either there is no Eibershter, pashut. Not that we need an answer to the question. The question makes no sense. Why not? Lichorah, it's a question that people ask. It sounds like a very good question. And this what the Rebbe said: The reason you're asking the question, if we טייטש אויס, we start analyzing the question. We analyze it like this: The Eibershter, you know who the Eibershter is? Such a Eibershter, such should allow this to happen? That's the she'eilah. If the Eibershter is not strong, and the Eibershter not so big, and the Eibershter is nothing, so is a kashya? He couldn't help it! איך ווייס וואס, it happened and he's not in control. That's not a kashya. If you hold that the Eibershter is not in control, and the Eibershter is not עפעס so great, you have no kashya. The whole kashya is, you tell, told me the Eibershter is so and so and so and so, and this Eibershter allowed this to happen? So the Rebbe said, mima nafshach, if you believe, you accept that the Eibershter is like this, then how could you think that because you don't understand what he did, then it's no good, and m'meila it's no good, he did something wrong, and if he did something wrong, we got a problem. Since we're accepting that the Eibershter is beyond what human beings are, so how could you expect that a human being should understand everything that the Eibershter does? It's impossible. Mima nafshach, if you don't believe lechatchilah in the Eibershter, there's no she'eilah. If you don't believe the Eibershter is so big, there's no she'eilah. The Rebbe used a lashon, I remember: If you believe the world is like a jungle and things can happen, people kill each other and people, all kinds of things, and then you have no קשיא לכתחילה. That's, you wouldn't have a kushya. The whole kushya is based because there's a Eibershter, and the Eibershter is like this and like this is so great, then how does it make, then how could he do this? But mimah nafshach, if you believe that the Eibershter is so great, and the Eibershter is the Creator, can you expect that somebody who's part of the creation should understand everything that the Creator did? Mimah nafshach, if he's the Creator, then he's beyond our understanding. Simple, putting it in other words, if everything in the world, everything that happens in the world, would make sense, would have a very simple explanation that me and you and all human beings could understand very clearly, know what that would mean? That the one that runs the world is in my level, והא ראיה, I could understand everything. If He is beyond our level, then I can't, then I can't expect to understand. The chidush is that there are certain things that happened in the world that do make sense to me as a human being. Lichorah, the Eibershter has different cheshbonot, and we don't know His cheshbonot and we can't understand His cheshbonot.

And the Rebbe used an example that how you can't complain. Lemashal, he says, if someone walks in to an operating room and has no idea and doesn't know any medicine, doesn't know what's going on, and he sees 10 people dressed in white, look like malach, malach hamavet, they look like like מלאכי חבלה, and they're standing around a person with a knife and they're ready to cut the guy, he'll scream at them, he's a meshuga, going, \"These are רוצחים! Look what's going on!\" Doesn't make any sense. You have no idea what they're doing. It's not you don't understand, you don't know what medicine is, you don't know what's going on, so how do you know if this is the right thing or the wrong thing? You have nothing to say. And you're going to come to a conclusion and say, \"Well, I saw these guys doing I saw this guy cut this guy, these guys have to go to jail, and these guys, they're they're bad.\" Well, how could you say they're bad? How do you know? Maybe it's good? So these are things that we have, ממילא, לכתחילה, the whole she'elah of trying to prove that because it doesn't make sense to us and we doesn't know we don't understand how it happened is a re'ayah that He doesn't exist, is a is a is makes no sense. What do you mean He doesn't exist? The whole kushya is because He's so great. Now, there are some people who give סברות why it happened, even try to understand it, so the Rebbe says a kushya why it doesn't work with that. And by the way, those that טענה that because of the Holocaust they became frei, which so many people said that, it's not true. They're just looking for an excuse. They were maybe they weren't frei before, but they were definitely looking towards that direction and this was a good excuse to them. Because if you're really a ma'amin and you really believe in the Eibershter, and you believe that the Eibershter is so great and He's so beyond our understanding, that this wouldn't lead you to this. If you're looking for an excuse, and the best re'ayah is that it's only from a feeling, and sometimes you can't blame them because a feeling is a feeling, but that not No one can איינרעדן that it comes from sechel. It's a logical explanation why you became frei, logically, because if this happened, you could say a guy is emotionally and it it affected him, and it's all because he was weak before. And the best re'ayah that it's not sechel, it's only emotion: the same person who claims he became frei, he learned in school, when before the war he learned in school about, let's say, the Spanish Inquisition. Why didn't that make him frei? The Eibershter could have allowed the Spanish Inquisition to happen? And it's not because they'll say, \"Well, I never believed that could happen. I think it never happened.\" Here, I know it happened. No one said that they deny the Spanish Inquisition or the crusaders that killed or ת״ח ות״ט that killed hundreds and hundreds of thousands of אידן, and we know it's true, and everyone believes it. So when you heard such a thing, you should automatically say, \"Well, if the Eibershter allowed the crusaders 10,000 900 years ago or a 1,000 years ago, a siman that there's no Oibershter, the Oibershter wouldn't allow this to happen.\" Why didn't he do that? Same thing! Logically, it's the same thing: the Holocaust, or חורבן בית המקדש, or the crusaders, or the Spanish Inquisition, all these different things. The chiluk is because here he feels it. Oh, so it's not the logic of it, it's not the seichel of it because it makes no sense, I don't understand it, and to me it seems wrong in seichel, so it's an emotional thing. Fine. Okay, so that So no one could have an excuse that this makes them it's or because they were weak before, and they were weak before, this made them. Well, one of the things that the That's what the Rebbe spoke then, and he even spoke that we don't know what's good for a Yid and what's not good for a neshamah. The Oibershter has His cheshbonot and we don't know. When a person has yissurim, when a person has yissurim, the Oibershter, gam zu letovah, you have to know the Oibershter does it for his benefit. Vadai, the Rebbe went into a whole arichut that we ask the Oibershter also always we should have only טוב הנראה והנגלה, only good that we could see. We ask the Oibershter for that. But on the other hand, when something bad happens, we have to say, \"gam zu letovah,\" which means we have we have a real emunah, we know that whatever the Oibershter does is for the good. Now, we can't understand why is this good. The fact that we can't understand makes no difference. Like a person will say an adult, a child will say of an adult, an adult says something and does something, say doesn't make sense to the child, mimela I'm not listening. There are certain things you have to accept by somebody who knows more than you, even by human beings. When you walk into a class, lehavdil in a college, you walk into a class and you see a professor start the first class, he'll start off and he'll give you certain formulas and he'll say, \"This is the formula, this So the guy will answer, \"What are you talking about? I don't believe the guy. I don't know what he's talking about, it doesn't make sense.\" You don't do that. Why? Because you know this guy studied this for many years, he's already very well, well-advanced, and he knows much more than me, and there's certain things you have to take for granted that he knows, even though it doesn't make sense to me. Why? Because I have to understand that he's more learned than me. A child has to understand that an adult knows more. And when a child sees a parent or an adult do something and it doesn't make any sense, so the child is going to say, \"Okay, can't be this guy...\" Or even because a child, a father gives a patch to a child, \"He must be not my father. Because if he'd been my father, a father doesn't hit a child, that doesn't make any sense to me.\" Whatever, I'm saying things like that. So that all doesn't mean that doesn't make any sense, because we don't understand what is good and what is bad. Now again, we have to ask the Oibershter, the Oibershter wants us to ask that it should be only good that we could see, but we know that whatever the Oibershter does is for the good, and this was good. Now we have to ask the Oibershter not to give it, but לאחרי המעשה (the Rebbe didn't even go into these details), לאחרי המעשה after it happened, we have to look back and say the Oibershter did this for the welfare of the Yidden. Before something bad happens, we have to ask the Oibershter that it shouldn't happen. Like a famous with the Frierdiker Rebbe, they once Frierdiker Rebbe explained how great it was the fact that he was in jail, how elevated ruchniyut, what great madregot it gave him, the fact that he's in jail. So the guy asked him, \"Rebbe, would you like to go back?\" So he said, \"For a million dollars, I wouldn't go back for one minute. But I wouldn't sell one minute of being in jail for a million dollars.\" So chas veshalom we hope, we ask the Oibershter in קריאת שמע \"ולא על ידי ייסורים וחולאים רעים\", we shouldn't have yissurim, even though ייסורים ממרקין, all the great things that happens. But when it happened already, we look back that way. So the point is we don't know what's good, and again the mashal of this doctor who's doing the operation, he's doing it לטובת the person. He's cutting the person because that's the best thing for the person. An outside person that doesn't understand will scream, \"What's this? You're a rasha, you're cutting.\" But you don't understand. So how do we expect to understand? Ela mai, we don't believe in the Eibershter? So great, then there's no kashya to begin with. Then the world, that's what it is, the world's a jungle, then then what's the kashya? So the kashya itself is a contradiction.

In a different time, this was in תשנ״ב, when Shach came out then with his crazy things, and he said there's going to be another holocaust, when there was a maaseh with the Arabs or this, the Rebbe came out full force, and he said just like the holocaust came for the aveirot, this is again... בכלל after תשמ״ח, after the Rebbetzin passed away, בכלל the Rebbe didn't react so much to things that happened in the world. Till then, anything that happened in Washington or this, the Rebbe would come out to say הוראות and avodah, this. After מ״ח, the whole derech became very much more not so with such, you know, that he would react to everything. There was one thing he always reacted to, בגאנצן תוקף, that was to Shach. When Shach came out with his משוגעתן, with his stupidities, so then that's when the Rebbe... So this is one of the things that got the Rebbe בכלל very very, you know, by farbrengens he spoke about it מיט א גאנצן שטורעם, and he spoke about the holocaust then. And he said, you cannot say that the holocaust was done as a punishment for aveirot. Can't be. And he said why? Lichora, what do you mean? Like this we know, we have to remember, no one should say \"לית דין ולית דיין\", that there is no cheshbon, and there's nobody taking care. There is a din and there is a dayan, and the Eibershter is judging, and whatever happens is because of it's because of as a cheshbon the Eibershter has. וממילא, how could you say it's not for aveirot? We always know the Rambam says that anything that happens to Yidden, any bad thing happens, you have to make a cheshbon hanefesh, and you can't say it just happened, and all the things. So the Rebbe said, but there are sometimes when it's higher than that, and he quoted the Gemara בנוגע to Rabbi Akiva, that by Rabbi Akiva it says that Rabbi Akiva when they did what, they killed Rabbi Akiva al kiddush Hashem, which was the worst torture that you could imagine. So it says in the Gemara, Moshe Rabbeinu asked the Eibershter, we say it actually the same lashon in Machzor on Yom Kippur, \"זו תורה וזו שכרה?\" This is the Torah? He learned Torah, he's representing Torah, the whole Torah Shebaal Peh is based on Rabbi Akiva, and that's the reward he gets? How could you do this? So you could imagine the Eibershter would answer him, \"Well, I'll give you the reason. The reason is because of this, because of that, whatever.\" You know what the Eibershter answered? Who remembers the lashon? \"שתוק! כך עלה במחשבה.\" That's all. \"שתוק\" in English, how do you say it? \"Shut up\", or \"Be quiet\". כך עלה במחשבה, that's what I want and that's it! And there is no explanation to it. This is part of the ratzon of the Eibershter which beyond our understanding. And we don't say, lichora it shows לית דין ולית דיין, there is no, things happen just by itself and there is nobody taking care, nobody judging it. So we see there are certain things like that. So the Rebbe said by the Holocaust, it was such a terrible thing that it's impossible to say that this came as a punishment for aveirot. This is what the Rebbe said. The torture and the the tzarot that the ימח שמם the Nazis did to the Yidden is nothing compared to anything that happened in Jewish history, bichlal in history. Something like that, you can't explain by saying it was because of aveirot. It wasn't because of aveirot. So why was it? שתוק! כך עלה במחשבה. Things that the Eibershter himself knows in his mind, and definitely it's good, 'cause the Eibershter does only good, and definitely it's for that, but it's not for any aveirot.

The only thing, when the Rebbe came out with the sicha and then the sicha was printed and the Rebbe was magiah and it's, so people came out with all kinds of kashyot. And the main kashya that they asked, if you look in the Frierdiker Rebbe's letters and sichot of the time of the Holocaust, he kept on saying, \"יידן, טו תשובה! טו תשובה, because it's a bad matzav, and look what's happening to our brothers in Europe. You have to do teshuvah.\" And he came out doing teshuvah, and doing teshuvah, doing teshuvah will help. Lichorah, according to what the Rebbe said, what do you mean do teshuvah? It's not it's not a punishment for aveirot. If you punish someone for aveirot, you say, \"Do teshuvah, it'll take away the punishment.\" But it's not a punishment for aveirot, so the Rebbe said. So what did the Frierdiker Rebbe mean? So the explanation must be, now I'm just saying a sevara, which I can't say it's true, but I know the Rebbe said this in a different time, a similar things. The Rebbe spoke about סיי בנוגע מיהו יהודי and סיי בנוגע מבצעים, he said it בנוגע that certain people got killed, there was a מעשה מעלות with three children, it's because the mezuzah, they didn't have mezuzot. The Rebbe said because of מיהו יהודי, because of the government's law of מיהו יהודי, this causes that there should be korbanot, that Yidden get killed in Eretz Yisrael. So, you know, the people, all those who are against Lubavitch, right away chapt zich on, \"או, how could the Rebbe say such a thing? How could the Rebbe say that because of not having a mezuzah you die? Where where does it say that the punishment for not having a mezuzah is is חיוב מיתה? And because of מיהו יהודי people die? I mean...\" So the Rebbe explained, \"Like you didn't understand what I meant.\" This is what the Rebbe said. He gave a mashal: somebody who's in an army and he's going to war, and he took off his helmet, and a bullet shot him. Had he had his helmet, the bullet wouldn't shoot. What's the pshat? That he got killed because of a punishment why he didn't wear a helmet? He was shot for whatever reason there has to be, if the enemy wants to shoot him, whatever it is. Had he had a helmet, it would protect him from what hap- from the guy's bullet. So if you look at this, someone wants to say, \"Why did the guy get killed?\" So I'll tell you why, 'cause he didn't have a helmet. That's that's how you would answer. So someone will ask you, \"He didn't have a helmet? You get killed for not having a helmet? It's a big aveirah not to have a helmet?\" So he said, \"No, he got killed, had he had a helmet, it would have protected him.\" So the Rebbe said the same thing. When he says that מבצעים, it's because of the mezuzah, people got killed, he said, \"I didn't mean, didn't say, I didn't mean that for the aveirah of not having a mezuzah you get killed. If you'd have a mezuzah, you would be protected from the bullet that's coming that comes for whatever other reason.\" And when he said, \"מיהו יהודי, if not for מיהו יהודי, you would be protected, because, in other words, if Yidden would be strong in this inyan, you'd be protected. That would be the helmet.\" And the Rebbe used in English the word, \"that would be the helmet to protect you.\" I assume the same thing would be here also. The reason why there was the Holocaust is the Aibershter's cheshbonot, we don't know. When the Frierdiker Rebbe went out and said, \"טו תשובה, טו תשובה, if you do teshuvah, then this will protect you that whatever the Aibershter has, which the Aibershter in His way could do it in all kinds of ways, it would have changed and it would have done it, the accomplishment of the Aibershter, in another way. You would have protected from the גילוידיקע disaster. But not that that because you didn't do teshuvah, because you did an aveirah, that's why it happened, 'cause the Rebbe said clearly, it's impossible to say that something like this should happen as a punishment for aveirot, 'cause whatever we find in the tochachah, and all the punishments the Aibershter says for aveirot, this is not it. This is worse than anything that you could imagine.\" The Frierdiker Rebbe said it about the Jews in America. Yeah, but... They were causing that. Causing, he didn't say causing. I can't tell you the words that the Frierdiker Rebbe said, you look at the letters, the קול קורא'ס. So the Rebbe, so it must be the taytsh. The Rebbe didn't in fact speak about that, but it must be that he didn't say this caused it because Yidden in America are not שומר שבת, that's why Yidden over there get killed. Okay, why? Because if you'd be you're doing teshuvah, if you wouldn't do it, that would protect them. It would be the helmet. And the helmet ברוחניות doesn't mean that they have to only do teshuvah. If another person adds in Torah and mitzvot, we know all Yidden are like one big body, so if you need to help one part of the body, you give an injection in a different part, and then they're all connected. So if the Yidden here would do teshuvah and start keeping Shabbos and טהרת המשפחה and all this, then these people wouldn't die there. But that's not that the reason is. The Rebbe said clearly, if you look in the sichah, in the Sefer HaSichot תשנ\"ב, it's a very clear sichah. And the Rebbe went on to say לגבי nowadays when most people are tinok shenishba, which certainly the Eibershter wouldn't do such a thing, all against what Shach came out with his meshuga'as that it's legabei in the Holocaust and this and that. But the נקודה'ס ענין is this:

I'll tell you the truth, if you talk to a person and the person is an akshan, you won't convince him. You won't answer him. Whatever you're going to say, \"No, but...\" If a person is not an akshan, if a person is really objective and wants to with a clear mind hear, cuz usually when a person has his opinion and you want to answer him, he doesn't even hear what you say. He listens to you, know what he listens to? To see which word could he chap to answer you back. He doesn't listen to understand. That's what the Rebbe said, never to have vikuachim, never to have dialogues with the Christians, never to have dialogues afilu with the Reform and Conservative. As a dialogue, it won't work, cuz you ain't going to gain anything. A dialogue, you never listen to what the guy wants to say, you listen because you want to come out the winner, you listen to what he says, every word, what's wrong with it, and you'll chap a word and then you'll come out. So therefore also, if a person says, \"I don't believe in the Eibershter because of the Holocaust,\" you're going to start explaining him, won't work. But if a person who's an intellectual person, he said, \"I want I want to hear,\" so you're not going to explain to him why it happened, that we never will know. And we shouldn't even the Rebbe said we shouldn't even look for explanations. Someone came to the Frierdiker Rebbe and tried to explain why the Holocaust was. So the Frierdiker Rebbe answered him: \"Don't find any excuses for the Eibershter. Let's leave it that He owes us one.\" Why find excuses? Let's tell the Eibershter, \"No, You owe us.\" If you have an excuse for Him, then He doesn't owe us anything, so that's not the way to look at it. But the Eibershter, I'm sure did what He did the right thing. But the bottom line is to say that the kashya is that how could the Eibershter do such a thing, if your person is trying to hear it and you're trying to explain to him that it's impossible to understand what the Eibershter does, and therefore the fact that I don't understand, and not only me, the whole world, nobody understands, we're all human beings, so does that make that He's not doing the right thing? It's like a whole class of children will say on the teacher, what the teacher did didn't do the right thing because we don't understand what he did. And as far as a teacher is from a little kid, the Eibershter from us a million times more. Which is similar to Torah and mitzvot, just to get into that subject. People claim, you come to a Yid and say, \"Put on tefillin, do this,\" \"I don't believe in this, it doesn't make any sense to me. I don't understand it, it doesn't make any sense, I won't do it.\" My answer is, if everything in Torah would make sense, I don't know if I would do it. To me it's farkert. Like I said before, if everything in Torah makes sense, that means that who made it? Somebody that's on my level, he's smarter than me. I don't have to listen to him. If somebody that's on my level made it up, I'm not going to listen to him, what is he, my baal habayit? The only reason because we know it's the Eibershter, and the Eibershter is so beyond, I have to listen to the Eibershter. So the fact that there are some mitzvot we do understand is a big chidush. If it's ritzono shel Hakadosh Baruch Hu, it's the Eibershter who is bli gevul and ein sof and all this, and His ratzon, how could I understand His ratzon? So really there should be nothing in the world that we should understand, not one mitzvah we should understand. Every mitzvah is the Eibershter's ratzon, the smallest mitzvah shouldn't make any sense to us because it's all the way up there. The Eibershter just knew our human beings, and if what would happen would happen, it would be very hard for people to do it, so He made it that we do understand parts of it and something. But it says, why did the Eibershter leave one mitzvah, one mitzvah that makes no sense whatsoever, which is פרה אדומה? So at least that should remind us that you should know that mitzvot don't make sense. We should want to remember. That's why the Chassidus says it says זאת חקת התורה by פרה אדומה, as if this is the Torah, cuz this is the whole נקודה of Torah. So the same thing with the world, if you expect every little bit in the world to be understood, it's impossible.

Okay, then there's another thing you want to talk about, which actually this was what I took out this piece of paper, I want to talk about it before, but I saw a person from the outside was in here and I didn't want to get into the subject when there's a stranger in here. So, because it's not really a subject to talk about, we never talk about these subjects. Someone wrote it, and there's another tzetl that someone wrote which is in the same line, and I don't know who it is, the person who wrote it wrote it in a way that you should never never ever recognize the handwriting, which I don't blame him. It's not a subject that we talk about. The whole certain there are certain words, not only subjects, certain words which are out of the vocabulary. You know what? I don't want this at this. How do you close it? Click the button.