spent by him 15 months, and you know how much Torah the Alter Rebbe took from the Mezritcher Maggid. The Alter Rebbe once said that all the Torah he said, and he said thousands of maamarim and different things, he says, \"All taken from his from his Rebbe the Maggid.\" And he says that, and even in that, that is only, he says, what he heard by shalosh seudos. און אין דעם גופא האב איך פעק אויף פעק, I have still packages upon packages. From the first two meals, I didn't even start. You can imagine what he was able to absorb in a short time. The same thing with Rav Chaim Vital. So what we have, and written by Rav Chaim Vital from the from the Arizal, is is nothing. For instance, just to tell of of what the Arizal was managed managed to to be משיג, to understand: once Rav Chaim Vital came in שבת פרשת בלק to the Arizal, and he saw the Arizal laying on the bed or on the couch, sleeping. Shabbos afternoon, he took a nap. Wasn't a regular nap, you'll see. And Rav Chaim Vital walked in, he heard him mumbling something. So he bent down to hear, he was mumbling words that sounded words like kabbalah. After he woke up, he slept about an hour, he woke up, he says, \"What were you mumbling there?\" So he says, \"When I mine when I was sleeping, it says the neshamah goes up למעלה, so my neshamah understood different concepts in kabbalah and different spiritual things that are going on in the higher worlds.\" So he says, \"Can you reveal them to me?\" So he says, \"It would take me between 70 and 80 years to tell you what I saw in this one hour.\" Now how is it? So it says, depends how you learn. If you learn by hearing, it goes very slow. If you learn by seeing, if you learn בבחינת ראיה, the thing it goes much go much faster. For instance, if I want to describe, I give a look at this wall, now I want to describe what I saw, and now I want to describe every detail, it could take me an hour. I'll start telling you top is white and the certificate was this and had this line and that thing, I could describe and go on and on, and by that time this could take an hour, could take more than an hour just to describe the details of this one wall. And to see it, one glance. So when he slept, he saw in the form of ראיה, he saw what was going on למעלה, and that's the level of the Arizal. So he saw things which they did not see in the time of the Beit Hamikdash. Why? So the explanation here is because nowadays is the level of machshavah, the higher level, which therefore it's harder to see it, but those people who do see it, they see even higher. And the Arizal saw in the form, learned in the form of seeing, because it says the Arizal, in truth, had the time of Mashiach been, he would have been Mashiach. There's no question about that, the Arizal would have been Mashiach, it says. Actually, the fact that the Arizal started revealing the inner part of Torah is the beginning, it says, of the revelation of Mashiach.

When Mashiach will come, it says that the the learning of Torah will be in the form of seeing, not of hearing, because Chassidut asks the question, we know Mashiach is going to be the teacher of Klal Yisrael. How's it possible for Mashiach to teach millions and millions and actually probably billions of people? Imagine, all the Yidden and תחית המתים, all the Yidden from all generations will get up, and one person will teach them all. So it says he's going to teach them in the form of ראיה. I guess we're going to look at a screen, I don't know, and we'll see. Make a video. Yeah, something like that. So since it'll be in the form of ראיה, we'll be able to, we can have millions, billions of people see the same thing. But the Arizal, because he was the beginning of the sparks, it says, of Mashiach, so he already learned in בחינת ראיה, but the level he saw was higher even than them because it came from the level of מחשבה. Now as much as that, I'll finish the same way I finish every week, as much as we're learning here about how good it is in time of גלות, and it's really it's רחמים רבים, it's great רחמים, and the revelation of מחשבה, not of דיבור, all the things, we tell Hashem, \"Please, enough. We had enough of these great revelation. Now let's get into the real revelation, the revelation of Mashiach.\" Amen. A gute vokh. The

drink we drink is godly. All of the physical aspects of our life are have God within them, and it is up to us to use them in a godly manner. So if a Jewish woman gets dressed nice, she's using that in a godly manner, she's looking attractive for her husband. If a Jewish man or a woman makes a blessing over the food they eat, then that food is godly and holy. So I sit in a sukkah, taking all of the physical aspects of my life that I do in my own home, and I'm doing them right here, and it's a mitzvah, everything I do. I'm sitting in this Right now, our sitting in the sukkah is a mitzvah, enhanced more so because now we're studying Torah in a sukkah. But it's not only Torah that we do in a sukkah, we do everything here. Of course, nothing of a desecrating nature, that's what we go outside of a sukkah for. relegated to the realm of holy, such as eating, sleeping, drinking, celebrating, we do in a sukkah, and we should do as many physical acts in the sukkah as we possibly can. So the message of sukkah Sukkos is number one, loving our fellow man as we love ourselves. We all come from the same source, of Adam, of Adam Harishon. And number two, we take physical and we elevate physical to spiritual. We do not destroy the physical, we elevate the physical. That many people cannot understand this concept. They think that there's physical and there's spiritual, and the two have nothing to do with each other. And that's why in Chassidus or in in general, in the amongst Chassidim, people did not fast and they did not inflict pain on their own body whereas other Jews did. And the reason they they did it is again, they wanted to deaden and destroy the body so that the soul should flourish. You know, they say if one if one organ, if our hearing is weak, then it's compensated with our eyesight. A person has bad eyesight, it's compensated with his hearing is more attuned, is much finer. And so many people think that if they're going to destroy the physical, they'll fast, they're not going to they're not going to eat, they're not going to drink, they're going to go away from home, they're going to deaden all their physical desires, they'll be a more spiritual person. Chassidus teaches on the contrary: take all the physical acts that we do every single day, and elevate them to spiritual, cause they are godly. And that was a unique concept that was taught by the Baal Shem Tov, and then by the Maggid of Mezeritch, and then by the Alter Rebbe, who was the founder of the Chassidic movement, that was the third level that he brought out this great philosophy of taking physical, which is godly, and elevating it. Not destroying physical, but using it. And that is why you'll find many people that disagree with the Chassidic way. They say, \"Look at those Chassidim, they're dancing with abandon.\" They don't understand that they're not dancing with abandon. The dancing is elevating the the their feet and their bodies to a higher spiritual thing, why? Because it's bringing joy into your life. And we know that when we have joy in our life, we can do everything better. When a person is b'simcha, he eats better, he sleeps better, he davens better, he serves God better. If we're depressed, we lay in bed, we don't want to daven, we don't want to do anything, we don't want to see anybody. So that whole concept that the Chassidus, Chassidic philosophy tries to stress is take the physical, which is godly, and elevate it to the greatest spiritual heights. No, then there are different types of Chassidim. Within the That's why I said the Alter Rebbe taught that concept, that the physical should be brought to spiritual. Now, I want to just bring There's a There's a lot here, but I'm I'm having a hard time trying to get it out. But there's one concept that I must relate, because it's such a beautiful idea. We talked about the importance of loving our fellow man as we love ourselves. Now, that, if I

say to you, \"Love your fellow man as you love yourself.\" I mean, we can say it, but how are we going to do it? Emotionally, I cannot do it emotionally. On an emotional level, for a Jew to say, \"I love you like I love myself,\" takes a very great tzaddik. But we can do it on a certain level. On a practical, physical level, we can do it. Let's talk about the idea of self-love. What is self-love comprised of? Two main aspects: quality and quantity. I love myself so much that I'm going to go out of my way to do something for me, because I love myself. So nothing's too hard. I mean, if I want it badly enough, I'm going to go and get it, because I mean I want it. So if I have to drive miles to get it, if I want it and I want to satisfy that inner urge inside of me, I will nothing will be too hard or too or or too difficult or too tedious for me to attain that goal that I want. That's one aspect of self-love. Another aspect of self-love is I don't see my own faults. If I do something wrong, I don't even notice that I did it wrong. I don't notice it. And if somebody points it out to me and says to me, \"You know, you did something that was not right,\" what I will do then is I will not see it as a fault, but I'll rationalize it away. It's my father's fault, it's my mother's fault, it's my uncle's fault, it's my brother's fault, it's everybody's fault. see any fault, but if the fault is pointed out, I I have to get rid of it quickly. So I try to put it off on somebody else. And so we are told in the Chassidic philosophy that how can we love another person practically, not emotionally, emotionally it's very hard, but practically, physically, how? By practicing my self-love on him. So for example, if I want to do something for me, and then and I'll go I'll go ten miles to do this thing for me, and then somebody asks me to do them a favor, what I should do is say, if it were me that wanted it, I'd go the ten miles. So even up here and in my heart and emotionally I don't love him as much, I don't, but what I'll do is I'll drive the ten miles to do it for him because I would have done it for me. So that's one way I could do self-love. And that's not so hard. That's not so hard. Because I don't have to love you so much, I just have to do for you what I would do for me. So practically it's doable. I mean it takes a lot of work, but it's doable. Then the second aspect of self-love is I don't see any faults in myself. And even if I do see a fault in myself, I will minimize it as much as possible, and I'll rationalize as much as possible. So if somebody else does something that's wrong, I should look at that person and and not see it. Just as I wouldn't see it if I did it, I shouldn't see it. And if I see it already, פארפאלן, it's too late, I saw this person do something that's not right, what I should say is, oh they didn't mean to, it's not their fault, it's this one's fault, it's that one's fault, try to minimize the negativity that I see just as I would minimize it for myself. So if that's that's right. Rationalize their negative act just as you rationalize your own negative act, and we know that we do that all the time. And if we can do that, we will love them practically as we love ourselves. May not emotionally, but practically. So if we see our child do something wrong, what do we say? Listen, it's not so terrible. I mean after all, the teacher calls you up, your daughter or your son did this and this thing, so you start to rationalize and you find all kinds of excuses. But then you hear that your neighbor's child did the same thing, you'll say, kick that kid out of class, he's ruining the whole class! The teacher says, your child did it yesterday. My child did it yesterday, you know why? 'Cause this kid made him do it. So if what we will do is every time that we or our immediate family or those people that we really love emotionally, we should look at others as we look at ourselves, and then practically we'll be able to love every Jew, even if we won't be able to love them emotionally. And that's doable for everybody. It takes a lot of hard work, it takes a lot of practice, but try it like this. Somebody did something that was really nasty, they did something ugly and nasty, and you cannot say they didn't do it, they did it! The proof is that they did it. Take that act and say, what would I say to myself if I did it? I would try to rationalize why I did this horrible act. Take that same rationalization and transfer it to the other individual. In Hebrew it's called הוי דן את כל האדם לכף זכות. Judge every person in the lenient manner, rationalize his actions. And this brings to mind a

beautiful story with a great rabbi by the name of Rabbi Levi Yitzchok of Berditchev who always, whenever a Jew would do something wrong, he loved the Jews very much and he always would rationalize their act. One day there was a young man sitting in the synagogue, he looks out the window and he sees there's a man standing outside with a talis and tefillin, and he's changing the tire on his car and he's all greased up, disgusting. So he says to himself, what a horrible person this is! How dare he grease the car when he's wearing tallit and tefillin? He's desecrating the mitzvah! As he is thinking these thoughts, along passes this great rabbi, Rabbi Levi Yitzchok of Berditchev. And this young boy runs outside and he says to the rabbi, Rabbi, take a look at what he's doing, so horrible! And the rabbi looks up to God and he says, God Almighty, look at what beautiful children you have! Even when they're greasing their tires, they're praying to you! Even when they're doing the most mundane physical act, they're praying to you. It's how you look at it.

There's the optimist and there's the pessimist. The cup is half full or the cup is half empty. Or two people are traveling on a plane together. One of them is thinking about the great vacation he's gonna have, and he's all excited about it, and he can't wait, they're gonna land soon, and he has his family with him, and he's so excited about how he's going to relax, and what he's going to do, and how he's going to spend his time. And the other one is also going on a vacation, but he's sitting there and he's biting his nails, and he's a nervous wreck, \"The plane might crash, we may never get there, the weather might be lousy.\" He cannot enjoy any part of himself. There's the optimist, there's the pessimist. There's the one that looks at life with an outlook of sunshine, positive, and the other one is doom and negativity. If we want to practically love our fellow Jew, let us practice self-love that we know what it's all about on other people, and that is doable. It's not easy, but it's one of the greatest mitzvot that we have in the Torah. The whole foundation of Judaism stands on it. You know, sometimes somebody will come to me and tell me a story about someone. So I'll I'll go ahead and I'll find something positive about it. So the person will say, \"Don't do that, don't rationalize for them.\" So I say to myself, maybe deep down inside all the way in I know that what the person did was wrong, but I'd rather say to myself, and I'd rather try to feel, well, maybe it wasn't really their fault, maybe such and such happened, maybe the circumstances happened, it's not easy. But what we're told is continually practice to do it. Let me explain my my my my last line here. To turn over like that, and every time somebody does something that's negative to say, \"Well, they didn't really mean it, it's not their fault, circumstances were this, circumstances were that.\" Right off the bat, that is one of the most difficult things to do, because they hurt you, or you see this person's constantly doing these negative things. So you you do it once and you say, \"Well, all right, you know, listen, it wasn't it wasn't nice, it was wrong, but maybe maybe this, maybe that,\" same as I would do it for me. Every single time you start practicing as you leave this room. Every time you'll hear somebody did something wrong to you or to somebody else, try to find excuses for that person, and you'll keep doing it, you will get into the habit of doing it, you'll always do it. And then when you'll meet that person that you always hated, you won't hate them so much because you will have rationalized so many times for them in your brain that when you see them now, that anger will have lessened and dissipated a little bit until eventually it'll be totally gone. And the benefit to us is that all that wasted energy that we use up with negative feelings and negative thoughts we'll be able to use for the positive. And I want to tell you something: I do it very often and it really works. Somebody says, \"Do you hate anybody?\" I mean, I've been doing this for a long time, so I could say I really don't hate anybody. \"But this person this person did such a horrible thing to you, how could you like them?\" So I'll say, \"You know something, maybe they did a bad thing, but you know,\" I'll give you an example. Just recently somebody said something to me that hurt me. Whatever. It hurt me, it bothered me, I was upset, and it was a one-on-one confrontation, and I felt really badly as a result of this experience. And I I had gone to this person's house, and I went there for a specific purpose. When I left, this person had told me some things about her own youth, and I listened to this person's story of her own youth, and I said to myself, \"No matter what she ever says to me, no matter what she ever does, I forgive her a million times! It's a miracle that she is the way she is. She had no love at home when she was a child growing up, none whatsoever. She felt rejected and dejected from the day she can recall until she was an adult. She doesn't even know how to be nice. Is it her fault? She never saw anybody around her expressing that. For her to be nice is harder than for a nice person to be mean.\" Do you understand? So when I listened to what she was saying to me, I said to myself, \"Got in himl, I'm gonna be angry at her? How could I be? She doesn't know how to be nice, it's a rachmanut on her.\" So I made up my mind, I'm gonna be so nice to her. Every day I'll try to be as nice to her as I possibly can, maybe some of it will rub off. Some will say, \"But that's being a hypocrite. I don't even feel like being nice to her.\" Be nice to her, she needs help! So if you start to look Look at everybody that way, you can never be angry at anybody. Well, you can try to correct the person, or you have to if you can tell. Yes. You can try to correct that person, and look, maybe what you did was wrong. Good. And explain, maybe what you did was wrong, maybe what you did was not so nice. But sometimes the person will reject what you're saying. The person's not interested in what you're saying. So you try again. So you try again, and again, and again. And Mary Belle, the person may not receive you right away. The person may continue to do the same things. But if you keep pounding away the nice things, it will change. There is no question. I have an experience with a girl, and you all know who she is. She had a lot of problems with somebody in her family, and the other day she came and told me a beautiful thing. Her mother-in-law called her up on the phone and gave her compliments. She was she she was like on in the seventh heaven, she couldn't believe it. Her mother-in-law, who never had a smile for her, who never had a nice thing to say, all of a sudden, out of the clear blue, the mother-in-law called her up and said something nice. We don't have to be concerned so much with they, how they are. What we should do is practice self-love on everybody we meet, because practically it's doable. Emotionally,

that's on the level of a tzadik, but on practical, physical level, we can all do it, every single one of us can do it. Let's start practicing, and then we'll really be doing the mitzvah of what Sukkot represents, which is love of a fellow man. Thank you very much. Can you take one question? Now [Non-speech audio] There's a famous story from Rabbi Eli' Chaim Meisel. Rabbi Eli' Chaim Meisel was the Rabbi of Lodz. Lodz was a factory city, textile factory. There was one guy, he had 20,000 employees. He was rich. Lodz. And it was a terrible cold winter. And an almana comes to Rabbi Eli' Chaim Meisel crying that she doesn't have wood to heat her home, she's freezing. She has little yetomim in the house. Rabbi Eli' Chaim says, \"Don't worry, I'll take care of it.\" Rabbi Eli' Chaim Meisel puts on his heavy winter coat, and he goes to the richest person in Lodz, the gavir of Lodz. Knocks on the door. He hears the lock turning, turning, turning, turning, you know, rich guy, heavily guarded. Finally, the door opens, and there stands the rich guy dressed in his pajamas, or in whatever he's wearing in the house, in his robe, warm, cozy. Rabbi Eli' Chaim Meisel's standing outside, snow is falling, and the guy opens the door and he's shocked. The Rabbi of the city is standing at his doorstep. \"Shalom aleichem, Rabbi, come in, come in, come in!\" Rabbi Eli' Chaim says, \"No, I just have to speak to you for one moment.\" And they're standing right at the threshold, Rabbi Eli' Chaim outside, the guy inside with the open door. And Rabbi Eli' Chaim starts talking to him about A, B, C, D, and the cold air starts blowing in. The draft is unbelievable. It's subzero temperatures. The guy is, like, starts shivering in his pajamas, \"Rabbi, please come in!\" \"No, no, no, just one more moment.\" And Rabbi Eli' Chaim keeps talking to him. Finally, the guy is literally freezing to death. He says, \"Rabbi, please! Either you come in or I have to close the door! I cannot stand this cold!\" Rabbi Eli' Chaim looks at him and says, \"My friend, there is an almana with five little kids who is freezing the way you're freezing right now. The only difference is you have to walk into your living room and turn on the heat, and she has nothing to warm herself with. I need 500 rubles right now so that we can deliver wood to her house immediately.\" The guy pulled out the money, gave it to him, Rabbi Eli' Chaim walked away, they brought the wood. Rabbi Eli' Chaim Meisel understood you could tell a person from today till tomorrow that there is an almana that is cold. He's sitting in his warm living room, sipping hot cocoa, he's like, \"Yeah, nebach, it's so cold outside, it must be terrible for them.\" He doesn't feel it! To give 500 rubles, which was a fortune of money, a guy has to feel cold. When you feel cold, you give money. I'll tell you another famous story with the Chafetz Chaim. The

Chafetz Chaim once, somebody comes into the Chafetz Chaim, they tell him he was collecting for an אלמנה, or he was collecting for some cause, and he comes to the Chafetz Chaim's house, and the Chafetz Chaim says, \"Take my fur coat and sell it and give the money to that...\" His wife says, \"You can't do that, you're an old, sickly man, you need the fur coat!\" The Chafetz Chaim says, \"If I don't have the coat, I'll be cold. If I'm cold, I'll pray better for that person to get money, because when I'm warm, I don't feel it.\" If we want to feel, we have to put ourselves in that place of feeling. We

can't just be sitting here... We could learn all day long, Torah, Torah, Torah, Torah. What's missing is the empathy. What's missing is feeling other people's pain, crying for other people's pain, crying for somebody who's sick, crying for a יתומה who needs to get married, crying for someone who's going through some terrible tragedy. And you know what the hardest part is? You have to feel it to the point that it makes you cry. If we can't cry, then what are we? Are we rocks? How could you hear that a Yid is suffering and you're not moved to tears? How could you see somebody in pain and you don't care? That's not human, that's not Jewish. רחמנים בני רחמנים. To be a Jew means to feel another person's pain. To be a Yid means... [Non-speech audio] [Non-speech audio] [Non-speech audio]