Not at all, but I'll start before I even go with these papers. There's a question that someone asked me that he didn't write down on the paper, but he was going to write down. So I said you don't have to write it down, you could just tell it to me baal peh. And the way the question was expressed was the inyan of people shaving the beards. Is this something that happened the last few hundred years, something new, or hundreds of years ago, thousands of years ago people did that too and there was a whole controversy? So the bottom line the question this question itself is not so important, it's not a historical question, but it touches the whole idea of the beard. And I think it's a very important question to ask. Not it's not a question important question to ask, a important question to answer. Because before I even say anything about it, I just want to say the facts. The facts are that till lately, when I say lately I mean the last 10, 15, maybe 20 years, when unfortunately, and I'll say unfortunately once and twice and three times and twenty-five times in big words like the Rebbe once used the expression, I'm only used to say when you want to say very clear, פעסטן זאגן אמשטרדאמער אותיות. So the Rebbe said when Amste, what's אמשטרדאמער אותיות? There was a printing press in Amsterdam that had very big letters that they used to print with. So I'm saying in אמשטרדאמער אותיות that unfortunately in the last maybe I said 10, 15, 20 I don't know how back it goes, started this, and maybe some people might think I'm too extreme, started this מחלה, this sickness in Lubavitch that people or cut their beards or people pick their beards and it became thing. Till then I have to tell you, Lubavitch was the one group of Klal Yisrael that was machmir in the inyan of beard more than any other group. Bichlal it was known that by the ליטווישער, let's go by the misnagdim, they were not, they didn't machmir. A lot of people had beards, some people didn't have beards. Take the yeshiva in Radin by the Chafetz Chaim. All had beards, you see pictures, you see pictures of the yeshiva Chafetz Chaim. And they were without beards. And the Chafetz Chaim asked the Rebbe Rashab once what can I do to get my talmidim to grow beards, how do you do it so fast in your? So the ליטוו, but afilu by the chassidim which chassidim had beards, but it wasn't afgefragt. Afgefragt in English is what? Out of the question? Let's not, that doesn't even translate rightly. But that's what it means. It wasn't so out of the question for a person who's considering himself a chassid of a ראדזינער חסיד, all kinds of chassidim not to have a beard. The majority of chassidim all had beards, but it wasn't afgefragt. In Lubavitch it was afgefragt. Now doesn't mean there weren't יחידים that had, didn't have beards. There were always יחידים that didn't have beards. We can't compare to the time of the, right in the time like before תשי\"ד and the שי\"נס when the people came out of Russia and there were a lot of ליובאוויטשער that didn't have beards. And that is pashut because the matzav brought so that they didn't. But the צוגאנג of Lubavitch was to go im mesirat nefesh, pashut go im mesirat nefesh, put your life on the line not to have anybody touch your beard. Because the beard besides the halacha part of it which we'll get into in a second, besides the halacha part of it the רוחניותדיקע part of it is that it was something that was out of the question to touch your beard in any form or shape. It just became in the last those years that it became some kind of שגעון, some kind of meshugas that it crept into Lubavitcher circles that people do it. And it starts off with some people they don't, they just pull it. Pull it means you know I have a habit, all these bubbe maasiyes that people say I got into a habit and I can't I can't help myself. דאס נארישקייטן. There's a עצה not to do, to wear gloves, so you won't be able to pull your beard. Like someone asked the Rebbe he has a habit of biting his nails, what should he do? So the Rebbe said, I think I saw in the video once, the Rebbe said wear gloves. And Fridin who was the photographer then told the Rebbe there's another עצה. שמיר אן גארטשיצע. גארטשיצע is mustard. Put mustard on your fingers and then you won't bite. So maybe you put mustard on your fingers and you then you won't do it. But anyway this idea, what's the inyan behind it? There is a halacha question here and then there is a deeper question, a kabbalah question, a chassidus question, which is a רוחניותדיקע question.

In halacha there is a machlokes. In our eyes there is no machlokes. I mean we have a machlokes but in our eyes we don't care about the machlokes. Because the halacha is באתרא דרב הלכה כרב. If you belong to a community and this and this Rav, like in the time of Rav a מחלוקת רב ו... Shmuel, the people who lived in Rav's city were מחוייב על פי הלכה to follow the psak din of Rav. The people who live in a city of Shmuel had to follow the halacha of Shmuel. And Lubavitcher lives in the city of the Rebbe, and of the Rebbeim. So the Tzemach Tzedek פסק'נט לפי הלכה that to cut your beard is a issur d'oraita. Now let me explain it, not to go into detail, because a long teshuvah. Everyone agrees that to cut your beard with a razor, that's from the Chumash, from the pesukim, and peshute peshat the Gemara, that's not a she'eilah, is a issur de'oraita with a razor. Not only that, if a person cuts his beard with a razor, he is over chamishah lavin. Five lavin, that means if he does it b'mezid with hatra'ah, he will get five times malkot, five times 39 lashes for cutting once his beard with a razor. What's the cheshbon of five? Not because it says in the Torah five times לא תשחית. It's because there are five pe'ot. For every pe'ah, just like פאת הראש, there are two pe'ot on the side, there is פאת הזקן. Exactly where the pe'ot are, we're not sure. There's a big machloket, not clear. Here, to here, here, and here. It's not exactly clear, but there are five pe'ot. For every pe'ah that you cut with a razor, which could take you two seconds. Give one cut, for that one second cut you will be chayav 39 malkot. If you cut the whole beard, it's 30 it's it's five times malkot. That's not a question. Pe'ah is a corner. The word pe'ah means a corner. Just like this is called a pe'ah because it's the corner of your hair, there are corners to the beard, and the five corners you are chayav malkot for every corner. But that's no question, that's certain, that's everyone agrees. The she'eilah is if it's not with a razor. Now, some of the machines that they use, many poskim will hold that this is like a razor. What's the gantze taytsh of a machine? You think a machine is different than a razor? A razor is take a knife, and you go down and it cuts What's the inyan of a razor? It cuts it so close to the to the to the skin that it mamash becomes very smooth. When you take these machines, what how does a machine work? You think a machine is different? There's a blade there. And the machine, like, electrically the blade turns, and when you go down your face, or wherever you wherever you'll do it, it's going to cut the hair. Why is that different than a razor? The chiluk is a razor you're holding the blade in your hand. Here the blade is stuck into something else and the blade is going. So some poskim, and so some razors are, for sure, some machines I mean, for sure are a איסור דאורייתא לכל הדעות without any question, because it's סמוך לבשר, it's mamash close to it's it's a razor. It's just a different looks of a razor. But many machines are not like that. So sometimes it will not fall into the category of hashchatah, because the Gemara says, and the pasuk says, לא תשחית פאת זקנך, to not destroy. The Gemara, this is Gemara, this is Gemara in שולחן ערוך, לא תשחית, איזו היא הש איזו גילוח שיש בו השחתה? What's called cutting which is called hashchatah? That is if it's done with a ta'ar, with a razor. The question is if it's with a מספרים. מספרים is with a scissor, so then it's not a razor. Or if you do it with powder. I don't know how how common it is nowadays, but years ago they used to do it with powder. When the Frierdiker Rebbe came to America, he saw these Rabbanim, American Rabbanim, had no beards. A joke, they say a joke that there was a, it's not a joke, they say there was a אסיפת הרבנים in Europe before the war, and they brought Rabbanim from all the cities, a few Rabbanim from America came also. Imagine in Europe they looked at the American Rabbanim: big, husky guys, they looked more like like basketball players, without beards. So I I forgot who, I think it was Rabbi Meir Shapiro got up, I don't know if it was him, maybe somebody else got up and couldn't take it. These are also represented as Rabbanim. So he got up and he said, it says ויהי שם לגוי גדול, it's a פסוק. So he says ויהי, ס'איז געווען, שם, there. Where's over there? Over there in America. ויהי שם, what's over there? It says לגוי גדול, עצום ורב. ויהי שם לגוי, מ'איז א גוי, גדול, א גרויסער גוי, עצום, א שטארקער, strong גוי, ורב, ער איז נאך א רב אויך. So the American So the Frierdiker Rebbe couldn't take it, so he once told Rabbi Jacobson, on Yechidus he told Rabbi Jacobson, \"How come the American Rabbanim shave cut their beards?\" So he says, \"They don't cut it with a razor. They do it with powder.\" So the Frierdiker Rebbe said to him, \"You got to tell them, see it says in Shulchan Aruch a din that when you eat fleishigs with חלב שקדים, with milk made of almonds, there's marit ayin. People see milk. So you must have a little bit of שקדים laying on the table, a little bit of of of the almonds. So these guys, tell these Rabbanim, they should wear a little bit of on their neck a bottle with a little bit of powder, everyone should know that it's it's with powder.\" Anyway, so that's another way. So here goes into a different shaila. Here it's not a שאלה בהשחתה. Think: Not every machine is is not השחתה, some machines are mamash razors, which is machines which are not razors, which על פי הלכה is not a razor. Here comes in the Tzemach Tzedek, and we who belong to the Tzemach Tzedek, we belong to the, to Lubavitch, so to us that's the rav and there is no other way about it, there's no two ways. Says that there's another issur. There's an issur of לא ילבש גבר שמלת אשה. It says a man is not allowed to get dressed in women's clothes. And the Gemara darshens from this פסוק that you're not allowed to cut, a man is not allowed to cut, besides the fact you're not allowed to put a dress, a woman's dress, you're not allowed to cut the hair שער בית השחי ושער בית הערוה. You're not allowed to cut the hand, the hair, underarm hair, that's issur de'oraita, I mean that's no shailos, and שער בית הערוה is the hair that's in the private places, you're not allowed to cut mid'oraita. If a person cuts it, he's עובר on a lav of לא ילבש, that the Gemara says. The Tzemach Tzedek brings out ראיות על פי הלכה that this includes also the hair of the face. Mimela he says it's included in the issur d'oraisa of לא ילבש to cut your beard. Actually, if you look in the Targum Yonasan ben Uziel on the פסוק לא ילבש, he says a few things there, and one of the things the Targum taytshes the פסוק, לא ילבש, you should not cut hair, שער, or in Aramaic he says שער בית השחי ושער בית הערוה ושער בי אנפי, and not to cut the hair of your face. And the Tzemach Tzedek brings out these ראיות, and even the goyim understood that a Lubavitcher is not allowed to cut his beard. What do I mean the goyim understood? Because there was in time when they drafted, it was still the draft and it was in the Korean War, they drafted a Lubavitcher bachur, and they wanted, מצד the regulations of the army, for him to cut his beard, and he claimed that it's religion, and you can't discriminate against his religion, and there was a whole court case, I think it went all the way to Supreme Court, and the shaila there was that how could you say it's religion when there are so many frumme Yidden, religious Yidden, יראים ושלמים, that cut their beards? How could you say it's religion? So they told him that the Tzemach Tzedek paskens, so there was a whole דיון in court about the teshuva of the Tzemach Tzedek. On the table of the judge was laying a Tzemach Tzedek, Teshuvos Tzemach Tzedek, and the psak din, the verdict of the judge, was that any Lubavitcher who comes to the army doesn't have to cut his beard, because to him it is his religion and you can't, you can't fight with his religion, you can't force him to go against his religion. So even the goyishe judge understood that a Lubavitcher, actually I don't know if they used the word any Lubavitcher, the לשון was 'any follower of the Tzemach Tzedek', I think that's what the, the verdict was, any follower of the Tzemach Tzedek is not, you can't force him to cut his beard, because it's his religion. So the Tzemach Tzedek says על פי הלכה that it's pashut an issur d'oraisa from לא ילבש. Now there are דרגות, there's a דרגה if it's מספרים סמוך כעין תער, if a scissor, מספרים is a scissor. There's that, two דרגות in a scissor. There's a דרגה in a scissor that you cut all the way down to the face, but it's not a תער, because it doesn't, a scissor will never cut smooth. And then there is a מספרים once you cut not so close. I don't want to even show it, I don't want to even make a hava amina to show it on my beard. But if a person, you have a beard, a long beard, and you want to cut the bottom of it. So you're cutting the beard, but it's not סמוך לבשר, it's not close, it's not כעין תער. So here goes into also, and according to the Tzemach Tzedek this is also somehow, it's not the same, but it's also included in לא ילבש.

Then you have a teshuva of the Minchat Elazar, where the Minchat Elazar backs the Tzemach Tzedek, and he goes full force that the Tzemach Tzedek is right and there's an issur d'oraita. We find a pasuk in Tanach, pesukim, where there was a case where the גוים, I forgot already exactly which story it was, chapt some Yidden, and they wanted to make fun of them, so they cut off half of their beards. So half of the face they cut off, and they left them half. You know how stupid that looks, how funny that looks? So they went around, they covered their face with towels, not to look stupid. So the shayla is: What do you mean? Cut off the other half! What's the problem? Cut off the other half of your beard, so m'meila you now look normal! Obviously, in those years, that answers that question in the How long ago did they... in those years no one cut their beard! It was a normal thing. So they didn't want to cut the beard, they couldn't cut the beard. So what they had to do is until it grew in, they put themselves with towels. But according to the Tzemach Tzedek it's mamash an issur d'oraita. So to us it's issur d'oraita. I always had a shayla, and I still have no answer. If a non-Lubavitcher comes to you and asks you, 'Are we allowed to cut our beard? Is it an issur d'oraita?' Ah? Who? Can you make a ger? Okay, that's a shayla. Good. Can a Lubavitcher be megayer if he's not going to keep his beard? But I'm asking you more even a simpler shayla: if a non-Lubavitcher comes and asks you, \"Are you allowed to cut your beard?\" So if you have a מחלוקת הפוסקים about something, and someone asks you the shayla, you could tell him, according to this posek it's like this, according to this like this. But when the posek who says it's asur is the Rebbe, can we make a מקום to say that, you know, there are some poskim who say it's mutar? Can we say that? Because to us, what do you mean some poskim? We don't take in consideration the other poskim. Not that we disregard their opinions, I mean they're other poskim, they're poskim, but לגבי us, where the Tzemach Tzedek פסק'נס באיסור, can we give a מקום and say, you know, if you want to be follow the מיקלידיקע שיטה you can cut your beard, if you don't want to follow the, you want to be machmir, follow Tzemach Tzedek? Is it an option for us even to say that? I I don't know. No, but could you tell him, it's a good idea, for sure I would say go lechumra is is, but can I give him a makom to say, if you want to be mekel, you're able to be mekel, because there are shitos like that? Can we say that? Yeah, ein hachi nami, but that's, but there are other opinions, which is al derech of חלב עכו״ם, al derech, can we tell other people, you know, חלב עכו״ם, which is I think I the only few lines, the little papers I saw was about that. No, that's, yeah, and that's that's you want to go to a higher standard, but you could tell him that there's another nusach. So you teach him Nusach HaAri. Yeah, and that's, yeah, but that's that's like nusach. We're talking here by איסור דאורייתא, which to us is a איסור דאורייתא. See, I heard, I didn't see inside, I heard that the Chafetz Chaim writes that to avoid the Tzemach Tzedek's problem, leave a mustache or leave a קמצל. You know what a kamatz is? A goatee is called in, יידן used to be a, this is a patach, this is a kamatz, have a mustache, because no one has this without a mustache, so you have this with a mustache, so you have a קמצל, that's what they used to call it by יידן. So you have a קמץ בערדל, or some people would call it a קאזע בערדל. קאזע is a goat. A קאזע בערדל. So he writes that this could be yotzei. The truth is that's not the pshat. The pshat is not that you look like a woman. Some people think if you shave your beard, you look like a woman. So if you only cut half of the beard, a woman doesn't have a half a beard either, so you don't look, it's not looking like a woman! If you cut the hair under your arm, you look like a woman? Cutting your hair under the arm is something that women do. Women take away extra hair. Cutting the hair of your head is something that everybody does, actually women don't do it! But cutting other hair of the body is a woman thing. Now the women don't happen to have hair on their face, but the concept, that's what the Tzemach Tzedek brings out, just like saying cutting שער בית השחי is over on לא ילבש, and that's the Gemara, that's not a question. Why? Does it make you look like a woman? It's a woman thing to cut your beard. So the same thing here, it's a woman a woman to cut your hair, extra hair. So this is going to the halacha part of it. So he brings out, he explains, it's a long teshuva, and he explains that the Gemara includes it, it's part of it, and the best re'aya is that the Targum Yonatan spells it out, says it very clearly, but in the Gemara it's included, and he says when the Gemara gives this, it's only examples, any extra hair is, I mean he talks, look at the whole teshuva, it's a very hard teshuva. Actually there are he'arot of the Rebbe on this teshuvah. The Rebbe writes that the shver, the Frierdiker Rebbe, told him to write הערות on the teshuvah, and he wrote הערות on the teshuvah with kushiyot on the Tzemach Tzedek's pesakim, but kushiyot, things like that, but it's a long teshuvah. So there he brings anything that you could take there, and if you look in the teshuvah of the Minchat Elazar, he even goes in further in based on the Tzemach Tzedek, he brings the Tzemach Tzedek, and he goes into it. No, no, for sure not, for sure not, in Shulchan Aruch it's not mentioned. First, the Alter Rebbe's Shulchan Aruch doesn't have these halachot, but the fact that they didn't mention it doesn't mean it's allowed. They mentioned לא ילבש regarding שער בית השחי, שער בית הערוה, but they didn't, just like the Gemara didn't mention. You can have the same kushya: Gemara. But whatever the Gemara didn't, so like always, every a lot of halachot that certain poskim came up later, they didn't make new dinim, no one could make a new din, they learned peshat and they showed that this is the peshat always. In a in a beard? No. It's not over on hashchatah. It's not over on on lehashchit. It speaks about cutting cutting your hair. See, one of the re'ayot they bring, I think I'm afraid that this will take up the whole time, so we'll have to maybe keep this for later, for next next time. What, the the there is, one of the re'ayot is, it says in Midrash, brought down in the Tur, ערב ראש השנה, this is the לשון, ערב ראש השנה ישראל, you're so sure that we are gonna get a good year from the אייבערשטער, ישראל, it says, לובשים לבנים, מתעטפים לבנים, you get dressed with white and you cover yourself with white, ומגלחין זקנם, and they cut their beards to show that you prepare yourself for Yom Tov in a nice way, you cut your beards. So and to be show that you're really sure, you're happy already that the אייבערשטער gave you a good year. So they bring, these guys all bring, see, the Midrash says clearly ומגלחין זקנם. So if you look further around you see in the Rosh and other places that this is a wrong גירסא. Some have a גירסא ומגלחין ראשם, and some have a גירסא ומתקנין זקנם. What does מתקנין זקנם mean? You fix it, you comb it, you make it look nice, like you do when you plan to go out to a chasunah, you make your beard, you make yourself look nice. So you don't look in the mirror because in the mirror you're not allowed to, לא ילבש. Okay, it says nowadays it's לאו דווקא, because men also look in the mirror, so it's not לא ילבש anymore, but like this in Shulchan Aruch it says you're not allowed to look in the mirror. It's one of the famous shailos. Heichi timtzi, ישיבה בחורישע שאלה, a heichi timtzi, where do we find two issurim, if they come together they both become mutar? Two aveiros, if they come together they come mutar, both of them? So the answer is, you're not allowed to look in the mirror. It's an issur, לא ילבש. It says another, you're not allowed to take a haircut by a goy. It says, why? Because he might kill you. It says if there's a mirror in front and you're watching in the mirror while he's giving you a haircut, you're allowed to. So then the issur of the mirror together with the issur of taking a haircut by a goy, they come together, they're both mutar. Anyway, so that's the pshat. מתקנין זקנם means that they fix their beards. But לפועל, there's nowhere in the Gemara that it's mutar. The Gemara talks about השחתה, and when it talks about cutting, the main thing is cutting the hair, but in אבלות, it is all extended. If you're allowed to cut after שלושים, an אבל is allowed to cut his hair, he could cut any hair, he could cut his beard, he could shave his beard also if that person shaves his beard. This is all the הלכה part. Because we're talking lemaaseh. אלו ואלו דברי אלקים חיים is in לימוד. Lemaaseh there is only one way. So to me, to us, the maaseh is our way. Can I as a ליובאוויטשער tell him that there's another way to do? I could tell him there's a lot of לומדות here. Sometimes we talk about Beis Shammai and we tell him, but is there, can I tell a person, you know in this and this ענין, it's a מחלוקת בית שמאי ובית הלל, so if you want to be מקיל like Beis Shammai, it's your business, but I think you should be machmir like Beis Hillel? In a case, let's say Beis Hillel is machmir, does it make sense? I mean you could tell him there's a machlokes, you tell him, but l'maaseh, you can't tell him that, because Beis Shammai is not halacha. So there it's not halacha for everybody. I'm saying does that apply here also, that it's not halacha to us, m'meila I can't tell him l'maaseh. I could tell him look in this and this teshuvah, look over there, they write it's okay, איך ווייס וואס, אלו ואלו דברי אלקים חיים. But that's the chiluk. אלקים חיים is in sevara, in Torah, but in maaseh there's only one way to each person, you can't do both. Yeah. The same thing. Yeah, because by them it's a פסק דין that that's how they should do. Hold on a second. By them, if the פסק דין, they פסקנ'ד that they have to do that, so I could tell him what you have to do. There's no way that there's a פסק דין that you have to cut your beard. There it's it's usually a chumra that they have, let's say. Yeah. Actually, you're bringing up in this case, you're bringing up a good point. Maybe could be you're right, that you're allowed to tell him. Like I said, I'm not sure if you're allowed to or not, but you're he's bringing up a good sevara. We see in this case we definitely, if you tell if a Sephardi asks an Ashkenazi or an Ashkenazi asks a Sephardi, so he could tell him, you as a Sephardi are allowed to do this even though I'm not, or farkert. There's actually a letter from the Rebbe that someone asked the Rebbe about marrying a second wife, because he didn't have children. And the Rebbe writes to him, בכלל אני בתור אשכנזי, that's what he writes, בתור בתור אשכנזי cannot answer you. You have to go to a Sephardi Rav. In other words, I can't tell you yes. He says b'feirush, I can't tell you yes. But he didn't tell him no. Go to a Sephardi Rav. The same thing with farkert, where the Ashkenazim are machmir, which sometimes it's either way, it's a problem. Anyway, let's get back. I'm saying this is all על פי הלכה, yeah? Why are you allowed to cut the hair on over here? I guess that's not really called קיבוץ. It's not called part of the beard as a מקום מיוחד of hair. I guess so. I mean, I know even לא ילבש is only if it's a מקום קיבוץ שער. That's why it's a beard. Like I said, why is it not the hair of your hand? So, by I guess it's not because actually there is a Mishnah that says if it's מעכב את האכילה, you're allowed to cut it. So, one guy told me once, \"My beard is מעכב האכילה. My beard takes away my parnasah, so it holds back my achilah, so I have to I'm allowed to cut my beard, it's מעכב האכילה.\" Well, anyway, this is על פי הלכה, this whole discussion.

Then there is על פי קבלה. על פי קבלה, there is no question about it. I know there were once I could tell you there's two three brothers, their name was Stern. They live in Lower East Side. They lived actually on the same floor as Rav Moshe Feinstein in the in the co-op in the East Side. They were mitkarev, they used to come to my shiur in Chassidus, I used to give a shiur in Chassidus for bachurim when I was still a bachur, in RJJ yeshivah. Used to have sometimes 25 bachurim, Litvishe bachurim come, and these guys, they became mitkarev. The Rebbe was mekarev them later. They went into yechidut, I got them to go into yechidut. When they came out, they told me they gave the Rebbe a tzetl with five questions, very major questions like about Zionism, all, you know, things: what was our approach to this and that, five questions. One of the questions was: what about the beard? Because they didn't have beards. Do you have to have a beard? So, when they came out, they told me over what the Rebbe said, and I actually wrote it down. If you look in the Sichot Kodesh, it must be כ\"ז or כ\"ח in the hosafot in the back, they have a yechidut of shnei bachurim. What it says there, I wrote it from what they said. So, again, it's all based on what these they repeated. They were in yechidut for 45 minutes, and it's two-three pages, I mean it's only the nekudah. So, the Rebbe, when they walked in, the Rebbe looked at the tzetl, so he said, \"Five questions כנגד חמישה חומשי תורה.\" Then he said to them, \"Each question you can write a whole sefer on, and you're asking this question.\" But he answered them, he answered them all the questions. On this question about the beard, so the Rebbe said to them, if I remember correctly, you can look it up to see if I'm saying it from my memory, the Rebbe said to them, first of all, the Tzemach Tzedek says you're not allowed to. And then he says על פי קבלה we know that the beard is called י\"ג תיקוני דיקנא, and the י\"ג תיקוני דיקנא is כנגד י\"ג מדות הרחמים למעלה. Now, we all know י\"ג מדות הרחמים למעלה shows on the highest madreigah, and when you reach the י\"ג מדות הרחמים, the Eibershter listens to you and that's the highest madreigah. So, having a beard is connected to י\"ג מדות הרחמים על פי קבלה. And therefore, if you cut the beard, you're tchepping zach, you're you're affecting your connection to י\"ג מדות הרחמים. So, they asked the Rebbe, \"So how come there are so many Litvishe people who cut their beards?\" \"Nu, what should the Rebbe answer such a question?\" So, the Rebbe smiled, I mean there are more things there, but I'm just saying some of the words, the Rebbe smiled, and the Rebbe said, \"Nu, I guess they feel they don't need to come on to the י\"ג מדות הרחמים.\" What else I'm saying, what else should the Rebbe say? Should the Rebbe say they're takeh wrong? There's another story, again, with another bachur that from that class, from that group that I he taught, his name actually is Krupnik. Now he's it's a big man, I think in Montreal he's in the כשרות and At that time, he actually became a full-fledged Lubavitcher for a while, then he became he's still shayach to Lubavitch. He was actually on JEM, they they interviewed him. I remember he even mentioned my name in the interview that was when he said that I learned chassidus... Whatever, but so I got him yechidut. What happened with him, he learned in RJJ, the rosh yeshivah in RJJ, and he started becoming close to Lubavitch, he started growing his beard. So, he called him over and said, \"It's not nice. Don't grow a beard. You have to cut your beard.\" That's Now, now I don't think it's such a shitah, but it used to be a shitah that the talmidim should not have beards. No, bedavka, no, they wouldn't let them. And the reason was, it's pashut not nice, because it's the rosh yeshivah has a beard, mimela, but you have a beard? Who are you to have a beard? When you reach a certain level, you might have a beard, so some of them when they get married. So, he told him not to have a beard. And he added, this was in the '60s, when you had all these hippies and these beatniks, they all had beards. So, he says to him, \"You make a chilul Hashem. You're going in the train with a...\" beard, and you look like these these hippies, you make a chilul Hashem. You have to cut off your beard. So, he went into yechidut, and he asked the Rebbe, and the Rebbe said to him, so same ווארט, י\"ג מידות הרחמים it's a, and the Rebbe then he said to the Rebbe that my rosh yeshivah told me that it's chilul Hashem, hippies wear beards. So look at the difference of the look of a of of of a Misnagedishe rosh yeshivah, and look at the Rebbe. That guy said it's a chilul Hashem. The Rebbe said, \"I'll tell you. If any of these hippies are Yidden, and they have beards, so they're doing with one aveirah less.\" So adrabah, these hippies are doing with one aveirah less. So it's good. It's good that they have beards. If they're Yidden, if they're Yidden they're doing with one aveirah less. And this guy said, actually said it on the video, he said that as much as he doesn't keep ליובאוויטשער מנהגים now, but one thing, never touch his beard. After this yechidus, he will never touch his beard again. So the Rebbe said it's noge'a to the מעלה to the י\"ג מידות הרחמים.

The Rebbe writes many letters, he writes to somebody, \"Isn't it isn't it interesting that when the velt calls it, I don't know the Rebbe doesn't write a מקור, the velt calls the beard the צלם אלוקים.\" Says a person was born with it was created in צלם אלוקים, the beard is called the צלם אלוקים. Besides the fact that the beard is called הדרת פנים. The Gemara says הדרת פנים זקן. What's the beauty of a face? And it's true, you look a person with a beard, he looks distinguished. Oh, not a beard, he looks like his mother, you know? With a beard you look distinguished. No, you look it looks it makes you look chashuver. Some people make make look older, איך ווייס וואס, but it makes you look No, you have it's a certain It's called הדרת פנים, but that's not a הלכהדיקע זאך. And the Rebbe something else, well, a דבר! Isn't it interesting, if ask any person in the world to draw you an imaginary picture of Moshe Rabbeinu, they'll make it with a beard. Why? If a beard is nothing, why What makes you so sure that Moshe Rabbeinu had a beard? Maybe Moshe Rabbeinu didn't have a beard? How do you know? Everyone will say the Gra had a beard, no question. I don't know, maybe he shaved. If there's no problem to shave, maybe he cut his beard? No, everyone knows that. There's no שאלה that if there's any Yid that's a little bit of is a better, definitely had a beard. So everyone agrees that a beard is something. And the Rebbe says, not this is not halacha, this is not Kabbalah, this just shows that it's understood by everybody that a beard is the thing for a Yid to have. Somebody once came to the Rebbe Rashab, nebach, Yiddish we say, קיין קינדער האבן זיך ביי אים נישט געהאלטן. His children האבן זיך נישט געהאלטן, or they were born stillborn, not alive, or as they were little kids, they passed away, few of his kids, and he came to the Rebbe Rashab, he didn't have a beard, came to the Rebbe Rashab for a bracha. So the Rebbe Rashab tells him, you know, kids, a lot of time you hold little kids on on your lap, האלטן זיי זיך אן ביי די בארד. You know, they pull your beard, they hold on the beards, they have something to hold on. He says, you don't have a beard, האבן זיי זיך נישט וואס צו האלטן. It's a play on words, cuz in Yiddish the word is האבן זיך נישט געהאלטן קיין קינדער. So he says, זיי האבן זיך נישט וואס אנצוהאלטן, you have nothing to hold on to. You'll grow a beard. So he grew a beard, and his next child was born and the child was So I'm not saying chas veshalom, chas veshalom this is not saying that someone doesn't have a beard is chas veshalom a קללה, it's just I'm not I don't mean that at all, but I'm just saying definitely this is something that is a segulah, and it's all connected to this inyan of י\"ג מידות הרחמים. Cuz the beard has to do with י\"ג תיקוני דיקנא which is י\"ג מידות הרחמים. And therefore the Rebbe in many letters writes, and I got a letter lately from the מחבר of the Sefer Hadarat Panim Zakan, Rabbi Wiener, gave out a sefer, this thick, then he made a second מהדורה, this thick, and every few months he sends הוספות, I just got a few weeks ago another kuntres, הוספות, and the Rebbe pushed him to write this sefer. It doesn't say anywhere it's Lubavitch, the Rebbe gave him a haskamah to his sefer, never ever the Rebbe did it, didn't call it haskamah, and the Rebbe says that talmid Where did he learn? He learned in Torah Vodaath, Lakewood, Mir, Mir! A talmid of Mir gave out the sefer, cuz the Rebbe didn't want it to be Lubavitch. It shouldn't be that it's Lubavitch, automatically, you know, a collection of hundreds and hundreds of opinions of Gedolei Yisrael of all generations in what that they have to have a beard. So he writes to me in a letter, I guess it's not only to me, but he sent it out to different people, that he feels that it's important that in the yeshivot this subject should be discussed. He actually write he thinks it should be discussed also in the seminaries, in the girls' school, that the girls should learn to know what it means to have a beard, that when they look for a shidduch, they should know that a beard is a must. A bachur without a beard is out of there. Just like a Lubavitcher girl will know you only marry a Lubavitcher bachur, there's no I mean and that's איינגעקריצט, no I mean how can you say, a Lubavitcher bachur. So, should know that a beard is a must. But how will they do it? Some hold, what, did he ever talk about it? I mean, like it's, in Lubavitch to talk about a beard was like to talk about putting on tefillin every day. Exactly, maybe even you could have a Lubavitcher maybe wasn't so makpid in saying every word in tefillin, he would take it off early, but the beard? It was, but nowadays he, he writes in this letter, nowadays it became so, he says he gave a class in one yeshivah, spoke about it, and he spoke that Lubavitch has always, and some guy, he tells him, a bachur gets up from the crowd and he says, \"It's not true. You're saying Lubavitch is so makpid in beards, it's not true. Look around, we see not.\" And then the guy adds, \"My father has a half a beard and he's just as good a Lubavitcher as you are.\" It became so that it's, since it's the last maybe 20 years or whatever that it became like that, so in Lubavitch also there's a certain mis- צוגעדרייטע השקפה that there's a possibility. And sometimes it comes, you know from what? Because Lubavitch is so tolerant of everybody. So we're tolerant of people, doesn't, no one is going to make him feel bad or anything, so it became, when you're tolerant of things, it becomes as if it's acceptable. It's not acceptable, but we're still tolerant. And if it's a person that's from outside, certainly you have to mekarev him, but even a person from the inside who does it, no one is going to not mekarev, no one, we're tolerant, but it shouldn't lead a person to say, \"Well, that means that this is part of Lubavitch.\" Lubavitch, some people have beards, some people don't have beards, but you're still a, it's no difference. I mean, there's different, this guy follows this minhag and this guy follows this minhag, just like some Lubavitcher wear a sirtuk, some Lubavitcher don't wear sirtuks. It's not the same. This is עד כאן concerning beards, bekitzur.

What's the deal with חלב עכו\"ם? Stam. Okay, guess we have 5 minutes, or smart to leave it for the next time. This someone's, maybe you'll hold these papers, no really, for next time. I had a question whether we'll have a next time, but looks like we will. So, what's the story with חלב עכו\"ם? Stam. I want to tell you one thing. This whole word חלב סתם is a בבא מעשה. There's no such thing as חלב סתם. Dos iz a new invention, that's a new invention in the last 25 years, the word חלב סתם, or maybe 30 or 40 years, I don't know, חלב סתם. וואו געפינט מען אין שולחן ערוך? וואו איז דא אין שולחן ערוך אזא לשון? אין שולחן ערוך, אין פוסקים, חלב סתם? What is חלב סתם? There was all חלב ישראל or חלב עכו\"ם. But R'' Moshe came with his heter of being able to drink חלב עכו\"ם, so if you call it חלב עכו\"ם, there's no such thing, you can't drink R'' Moshe is never going to say that you can't drink חלב עכו\"ם, that you could drink חלב עכו\"ם. חלב עכו\"ם is a איסור דרבנן, mamash like every איסור. You know what חלב עכו\"ם drink like is? Like eating chicken with with milk. It's איסור דרבנן, בשר בחלב. חלב עכו\"ם is So if he says it's mutar, you can't call it חלב עכו\"ם. So what should you call it? חלב ישראל. You can't call it חלב ישראל, because then we know that there are people who have who drink only if it's watched by a Yid, so what are you going to do? So you're going to have to get find a new name, so it's חלב סתם. חלב סתם means it's not חלב עכו\"ם, because חלב עכו\"ם you can't drink it, but you can't call it חלב ישראל because חלב ישראל is what the companies show that The nekudah is like this: The Gemara says, this is what the Mishnah says, חלב שחלבו עכו\"ם ואין ישראל רואהו, you can't drink, which means חלב that milk that was milked by a goy and a Yid wasn't watching, it's asur to drink, מדרבנן. Why? רבנן were afraid since no one was watching, maybe he mixed in חלב טמא, milk from a non-kosher animal. And I guess those days it was common to do that, so you have to have a Yid watching. Now it doesn't mean he has to stand and watch every second, it could be a יוצא ונכנס, as long as the goy knows that at any moment the Yid can walk in and if he's mixing חלב טריפה milk he'll catch him, so he's afraid, and Came R'' Moshe with this היתר that it doesn't mean you actually have to have a Yid there. You have to have a proof somehow that it wasn't mixed with חלב טמא, with milk from a chazir, milk from a camel, milk from a from a from a donkey. So he says since in America there's government supervision, and if a company will be caught by the government mixing in other milk besides cow milk, will be fined, that's enough proof that they didn't mix in, and memeila it falls into the category of what the Gemara says it's like a Yid seeing. Which the לשון he says is, I think the לשון, that you don't need עדי ראייה, you need עדי ראיה. ראייה means pashut to see, ראיה means you have to have proof. So first of all, he himself writes it's only b'sha'at hadchak. Number two, it's only in America, even according to him. Why? Because in America So he drinks others. He came to Hong Kong and was sitting in the restaurant there, in the lobby of his hotel, and they had coffee machine and they had a little thing of milk. And he says I'm not careful chalav Yisrael, so I took the coffee and I poured took the thing and I poured in the milk and it had have this good taste with geshmaka coffee. So he asked the the guy there what is what is here that is so geshmak? So he said because here we put in a little camel's milk that we have and that has a different taste, it gives it like a sweet taste. So there's no she'eilah that you're not allowed. This is pashut even according to Rav Moshe. Here most of the חסידישע אידן, I mean besides the מתנגדים are looking for heterim, did not accept this heter. He's a דעת יחיד. He's a דעת יחיד. And therefore we don't accept this heter and therefore to us and from the Rebbe we also know, I don't know if the Rebbe wrote clearly but the Rebbe that does know we don't rely on it. There are places, cities in America where they didn't have chalav Yisrael. Nowadays no problem because they deliver, they from New York. So the Rebbe worked hard that they should make chalav Yisrael there. And in order to make chalav Yisrael is a big problem because the dairies, how do you make chalav Yisrael? One day you go to the to the farm and you watch them milking. And then you take it to the dairy. But the dairy to pasteurize the milk, to pasteurize the milk it has to go through a machine. It heats up to 160 degrees, it boils the milk to a certain point that pasteurize it. You can't use those machines because those machines are used with חלב עכו\"ם. Mimela what is it? It absorbed, so it's treif. A keli that absorbed that had חלב עכו\"ם is treif. Mid'rabbanan, but it's treif, you can't drink it. So you have to kasher it. So how did they kasher it? Well so how did they kasher it? The nes is that every dairy has a law, there's a law that one day a week the machine must be idle. In other words, there's one day a week they don't use the machine. Because you can't kasher a בן יומו, you can't kasher something that was within 24 hours when it was used for treif. You have to wait more. So what they do is they would wait and the kasher milk would be passed through the pasteurizer the first thing after the idle. So what do they do? It was idle for a whole 24 hours. They let through hot water instead of milk and the water heated up and it heated up kasher the machine and then you could let in the milk and it pasteurize it. So I know that and and the Rebbe was makpid it should be 212. That because to kasher you have to kasher with boiling water. The machine only pasteurizing in 160-170. So some רבנים פסקן כבולעו כך פולטו. If it got treif through 170 degrees you can kasher it and Lubavitch didn't hold of that, Alter Rebbe doesn't seem to hold of that. So I know my father who lived in Cleveland the Rebbe told him once to work on getting chalav Yisrael. So later he spoke to the Rebbe in יחידות and told the Rebbe that there's a problem with kashering and we can't get you can't get the machine up to 212. Can we do it with less? So the Rebbe looked at him and he said yeah 211. So he said but it's still not 210. So it went down to 210 as far as he went. So what did they do in many places? There's a certain little part of that machine that breaks if it goes to too high degrees. But it's not an expensive part. So every week they would heat it up, the part broke and they would pay for a new part which איך ווייס 25 dollars I mean it wasn't a big deal. So that was, but that's what it is. So חלב סתם is not what we're talking about, there's no such thing, it's חלב עכו\"ם. Ela mai he was מתיר חלב עכו\"ם based on this heter which was not accepted so for us it's definitely not a heter. Can we rely on it for the kelim later that the יהודי uses? Because you have the source that the...