As you just heard and you probably know from before that the subject is מוסר, the דרך of מוסר and the דרך of חסידות, which means the school of thought that is called מוסר and the school of thought that is called חסידות. They're both approaches to יידישקייט, to Judaism, and from one point of view, both are trying to accomplish the same thing. The goal is the same, but nevertheless, they're accomplishing it through different approaches. And this is really what I'm going to discuss. Just to start as a small introduction, that we know that the basis of our life is the תורה and the מצוות, learning the תורה and fulfilling the commandments, the מצוות that were given to us by God. We know that God created the world, you all know that, and definitely he had a purpose in mind why he created the world. And it only makes sense that at one point he would tell the world what he wants of them, why he created them, what he expects of them. Doesn't necessarily mean that he said why he wants it, we don't know, but we do expect that at one point God would reveal to the world what he is expecting of the world to do. And that's actually what happened. In the year 2448 from creation, God revealed himself on Mount Sinai and he spoke to the Jews, gave them, said to them the Ten Commandments, the עשרת הדיברות, the Ten Commandments, and then he told them that the rest of the תורה, the rest of the story, \"I will tell משה רבינו, Moses, I will tell him. He will come up to me.\" And all this was said in front of all the Jews. All the Jews were close to 3 million people, because we know there were 600,000 men between the ages of 20 and 60, the same amount of women, then there were those under 20, those over 60. It seems according to the calculations that it would be between two and a half to 3 million people, and they all witnessed the revelation of God. And we know that is true because it was told to us by our parents who heard it from their parents, who heard it from their parents, going back all the way without any interruption. There was no missing link in between. That they stood at Mount Sinai and saw the revelation of God. They can't repeat exactly what they saw because this is something beyond grasp, beyond describing, and therefore they just told us there was a revelation of God, and he said to us the Ten Commandments. We also heard him say that משה רבינו, Moses, should come up afterwards and he's going to give him the rest of the תורה. The rest of the תורה was the תורה שבכתב, the written תורה, which means God dictated to משה רבינו the rest of the תורה, the rest of the Bible. So we know that it was written by God, because God said to the Jews, \"What I will tell משה, what משה רבינו will come and repeat to you, you should know is true and I'm telling it to him.\" So he dictated the written תורה, which includes the Five Books of Moses, the חמישה חומשי תורה, and together with that, he also gave him what we call תורה שבעל פה, the oral תורה. The written תורה, that's the five חומשים, the Five Books of Moses, and then he also gave him תורה שבעל פה, the oral תורה, which explains what the תורה שבכתב, what the written תורה means. And it's true that without having תורה שבעל פה, without having the oral תורה, we would never understand what it says in the written תורה. It cannot be. You cannot have the written תורה without oral תורה, because it means very little. Because when you learn in חומש, in the written תורה you learn, I'll just give you an example of a פסוק, of a verse where it says, וקשרתם לאות על ידך והיו לטוטפת בין עיניך, \"you shall tie for a sign on your hands and you should have frontlets in front of between your eyes.\" Exactly what it means it doesn't say. If we just learned a verse the way it's in the written תורה, we'd have no idea what he's talking about. What should you do? What kind of sign? Where should you put it? How should you put it? What does it all mean? So it only makes sense, besides the fact that we know from tradition, but it only makes sense that when God gave the written תורה, he also gave the oral תורה as an explanation to the written תורה, and that was handed down from generation to generation. And that is what a Jewish life is about. A Jew knows that he is a person who is a descendant or converted to the to יידישקייט according to the הלכה, so he is a person who is a continuation of what God said at Mount Sinai, and therefore this is what our life is supposed to be about, we're supposed to keep the commandments as we have it in the written תורה and explained through the oral תורה. תורה שבכתב, in Hebrew it's תורה שבכתב and תורה שבעל פה. And this is what we have to do. So really it's divided into two parts, it's learning תורה, learning the תורה, which is the knowledge, the understanding, the logic behind it, the words, the שכל, that's called the שכל, the intellect of it, and then the action. המעשה הוא עיקר, the main thing is the action of actually fulfilling the commandments. Now together with that, which this is what makes up Judaism, יידישקייט, together with that we have two approaches in how to go about it. Not when it comes to actually doing the מצוות, when it comes to actually fulfilling the commandments there are no two ways, there's only one way. There might be different customs in different communities, in small details which are not really part of the מצווה itself, but when it comes to fulfilling the מצווה itself, we're all the same, there are no two approaches. Everyone knows that תפילין is תפילין, when you got to take the תפילין and it has to have the four portions of the חומש written in it in a certain way as it was handed down to us in tradition, in תורה שבעל פה, in the in the oral תורה based on the written תורה, all coming from משה רבינו, handed down from generation to generation, we all do the same מצוות. We learn the same תורה. But there is nevertheless there are two approaches in surrounding and how to approach the fulfillment of תורה and the מצוות, which are the commandments. Now before I explain the difference between these two and what they are, let me first explain what is the need for it. In other words, if we know that we have a תורה that was given to us by God and the מצוות that were given to us by God, handed down through Moses, through משה רבינו, through all the generations to us, and as you noticed I use the term \"we know,\" it's not something that we just believe, but by being here and learning you'll see this is something that we know for sure, that this was given by God and this is what we're supposed to do. So the question that arises is: what else do we need? Why is it not enough that all we do is we follow the תורה, follow the instructions, and we do what we are told to do, and that's it? Why is there a need for something else, we say something more, which we would call מוסר or we would call חסידות, why is that all needed? Why can't we just follow the path of the action, of just doing what we are told? The answer is there is a certain goal that we want to reach, and that is the goal of מוסר and the goal of חסידות. I'll first explain in what they're similar and what their why their goal is one, and then the difference between the two. The reason is there is something that we will not gain or get by just learning the תורה the way we have it and fulfilling the מצוות the way we were given to fulfill the מצוות. Because the fulfillment of תורה and מצוות is supposed to have an effect on the person, it's supposed to refine the person. Besides the actual act that we're doing, which is the will of God, and we have to do it, it also has an aspect that it is supposed to refine the person. Actually, the מדרש says, the sages say, לא ניתנו מצוות אלא לצרף בהם את הבריות, which means the מצוות, the commandments, were given to refine the human being. So the purpose of the מצוות, besides the essential purpose of this is the will of God and this is what we have to do whether it brings you to anything or not, as we learn in all the different holy books, that this is the main most important part of the fulfillment of the מצוות, but at the same time there is also a need that the מצוות and the learning of the תורה should have an effect on the person, that it should refine the person, make the person into a better person. And that's possible that by just learning the תורה, learning the way the תורה explains all the מצוות and all these things that are written in the תורה, and fulfilling the מצוות, putting on תפילין and doing all the eating מצה on פסח and listening to the שופר on ראש השנה, you might be doing all these different things, and it doesn't necessarily have an effect on the person to refine the person and change the person's character. It's a possibility, it's a very strong possibility. And one of the things of תורה and מצוות is that it should refine the person and change the person's character to become a more refined person and a more spiritual being, and not always will that happen. The truth is, since the מצוות are godly and the מצוות are spiritual, which they are, even though they're physical מצוות that we do, but they are spiritual, We wake up in the morning and we put on תפילין on our hands, we wrap תפילין on our hands, there is no physical reason why we do it. It's not that we take our blood pressure or something with the straps. There's no reason, if you ask somebody, why in the world do you do it, what is the purpose? There is only a spiritual reason for it. So the מצוות are spiritual, but when you do the מצוות daily, for instance, you don't really feel the spiritual effect that it has on the person. And the מצוות are supposed to have a spiritual effect and make the person more spiritual and more refined. They say that once somebody told the previous רבי, the previous ליובאוויטשער רבי, about a certain human being, and he saw a certain person, and he said, \"You know,\" actually in English it doesn't even sound so good, it's a play on words, in Yiddish it sounds better, he said, \"This and this person האט געלערנט גאנץ שס.\" He learned the whole Talmud. And the פריערדיקער רבי says, \"He learned the whole Talmud. What did the Talmud learn him? What did the Talmud teach him? ער האט געלערנט גאנץ שס, וואס האט שס אים געלערנט? What did שס, שס which is Talmud is called the שס, what did the שס teach him?\" In other words, you're supposed to learn from the תורה, that the תורה should make you a better person, besides the act like, and again I'm stressing again that the most important part is the actual doing of the מצוה. No one should say that if it didn't have an effect on me and it didn't refine me and didn't make me more spiritual, there is no purpose in the מצוה. That is not true. The מצוות were given by God. God says, \"I want you to do these מצוות,\" and we have to do it. But there is another aspect to the מצוות, that the מצוות and the learning of the תורה should teach us, should make us better people. And just by doing the מצוות, it doesn't necessarily happen. So we have to have other things that we learn which are based on what it says in the תורה, it's not made up by human beings, based on what it says in the תורה that by learning those different things and by behaving in a certain way, that will change our character, that will make that the מצוות, we will start realizing how the מצוות will actually change our character. That is number one. That is why there is the movement, the school of thought of מוסר and the school of thought, the movement of חסידות. They're both trying to accomplish the same thing: to see how the אידישקייט, Judaism, will actually affect the person and to make the person a better person. Then there's another problem: we know that a person, a human being, is a physical human being, and therefore he automatically has a pull, or in Hebrew we call a נטיה, to physicality. That is only normal. It's no one's fault, it's not a bad thing, it's just normal. And therefore, since we have this pull to all kinds of physical, natural things, that constantly could pull us away from getting involved in these spiritual things. In other words, the bodily things are, so to speak, a contradiction, I wouldn't say a contradiction, but they try automatically to take you away. In other words, you'll always come up with an idea, why should I put on תפילין, why should I wake up in the morning and put on put on תפילין? So it's a spiritual thing, but spirituality is pretty far from us. Physicality is much closer to us. And therefore, the physical part of the world will have a greater influence on us than the spiritual. And therefore, as much as we do the מצוות, it's possible that the physicality will pull us away and we are not so sure that we will continue always doing it. We would call this the יצר הרע. We all know that we have an evil inclination. Now we think, some people think an evil inclination means there is some kind of angel within us that is trying to convince us to do evil things or to do something wrong, and then we have the יצר טוב, the good inclination. That's another angel, so to speak, that's within us. These are not angels. We have a body, and we are part of this physical world, and this itself tries tempts us to do things which are physical more than spiritual. We are closer to the physicality than to the spirituality. So that is that pulls us. Actually, the Talmud says, בכל יום ויום יצרו של אדם מתגבר עליו להמיתו. Every day the evil inclination tries to overpower us, and the expression the Talmud uses is to kill us, which means to take us away, it's a spiritual death, to take us away from the spirituality and from the performance of the מצוות. And every day, ואלמלא הקדוש ברוך הוא עוזרו אינו יכול לו. If השם wouldn't help us, we wouldn't be able to overcome him, because he is much closer to us. Which reminds me of a saying of ר׳ לוי יצחק of Berditchev, probably all heard of ר׳ לוי יצחק of Berditchev, the great Chassidic master, so he said, he always used to find virtues in the behavior of the Jews. And he would always speak to God and say, \"God, you see what the Jews are? You see how great they are? You see how loyal they are?\" with all the different things, so many, so many stories. So he once turns around to השם, to God, and he says, \"God, I don't know why you're so upset with the Jews, with your children. If you would take all the spirituality, all the spiritual things and put it in front of our eyes, and all the physical things would be written in a book that we have to believe, then you could complain, \"Why aren't they doing the מצוות properly?\" You know what you did? The spiritual things we have to learn in the ספר, we have to learn in the book, we have to learn in the תורה, we have to learn about it. And we have to start convincing ourselves. The physical temptations are all there in front of our eyes. And you're still complaining? You have to be happy the way they are.\" In other words, the physicality is much closer to us, and that is able to pull us. That's called the יצר הרע. The יצר הרע, which is the evil inclination and that's we call it evil, it's not evil. It's physical. And the physicality always tells you the physical things are important, the spirituality we don't see it, we don't feel it, and therefore it's very possible that we will not really stick to it. So we have to learn things and behave in a certain way that will, so to speak, guarantee, it's not a real guarantee, we always have to be on guard, but a certain to a certain degree will guarantee that you will continue in your spiritual way. In a nutshell, what it means is we always have to be on guard and always have to work on our יראת שמים. יראת שמים is the fear of God. Or sometimes we have an expression יראת חטא, the fear of sin. We always have to have that feeling of our our feeling of we call it in Hebrew the יראת שמים of the feeling of the presence of השם always, of God, and always the importance of the spiritual things. We always have to think and it's and it's very important. And by just learning the תלמוד, learning the חומש, performing the מצוות, in a very superficial way it has an effect, and it brings you to what we call יראת שמים, but there has to be specifically something that you do or you learn that will strengthen the person's יראת שמים to be able to feel the spirituality more. And the תלמוד itself says it's very important. The תלמוד itself says, gives an example. There was once a person who asked his friend, \"You want to go up to the second floor and bring me down a bushel of wheat?\" So he said, \"Fine.\" He brought down the bushel of wheat. He says to him, \"Did you add, did you put into this bushel a כף חומטין,\" the תלמוד refers to it. חומטין is some kind of chemical or whatever it was in those days, a certain small amount of this chemical, I don't know what it is. And he said to him, \"If you put in that כף חומטין, oh, very good that you brought it, because we will have use. If you didn't put in that כף חומטין, then why did you bring it?\" What does the כף חומטין The כף חומטין would keep it fresh. And if you didn't bring it in, if you didn't put in the כף חומטין, then it won't be fresh and it won't last. And the תלמוד uses this as a parable to יראת שמים, that the wheat that you brought, that's the תורה. It's an example of the תורה. And it says if you added your studying and doing things that will bring you to יראת שמים, to God to fear God, then it's worth it. Then you've accomplished. But if you didn't add it, then you're missing the point. You learned, you learned, and I'm not saying God forbid that you shouldn't learn, you should learn anyway no matter what, but you missed a certain very important point that this is not going to give you the יראת שמים. And this is what we're looking for. So besides the learning of the תורה and the doing the מצוות as they are, literally, and that's how it's supposed to be done, and that's what we're supposed to do, and that's the most important part, there is still something more that we have to know to bring us more to feel spiritual, to bring us more to be refined, to bring us more to יראת שמים. And that's where the two schools of thought come: How do we do this? What do we do to bring the person to feel that way? So there was a school of thought of מוסר and a school of thought of חסידות. Now, מוסר, there are books, ספרים of מוסר going back hundreds and hundreds of years, like the חובות הלבבות and ספרים, books like that. And it's all based on what it says in the תלמוד, what it says in the תורה. Then years later, which goes back about 250 years, I'm just giving vague number, started the Chasidic movement. And that was trying to accomplish the same thing as the מוסר movement, but with a different approach, as I will explain it soon. And that started, as we all know, by the בעל שם טוב, he was the founder of חסידות, and then it branched off into different groups of חסידים. One of the main ones is חב״ד חסידות, ליובאוויטשער חסידות. It all actually started much earlier, even though the official founding of חסידות started with the בעל שם טוב, but really it goes back much earlier, starting from the אריז״ל, the holy ארי. The אריז״ל was the master of קבלה, and he lived 200 years about before the בעל שם טוב. And in his time, he started, opened a school, a ישיבה, where he studied קבלה. And then his successor was ר' אליהו בעל שם, who also continued with a school in קבלה. And he had a successor called ר' יואל בעל שם, and he had a successor called ר' אדם בעל שם, and his successor was ר' ישראל בעל שם טוב, the famous בעל שם טוב. And it was all taken from קבלה, but the type of approach, as I will explain, already started then, but it wasn't so developed as it was through the בעל שם טוב, and later on through his student and successor, the מעזריטשער מגיד, and then his successor, the בעל התניא, the אלטער רבי. But it all came as a continuation. Actually, we all know that when the בעל שם טוב started this Chassidic movement, there was a great opposition, and they're known as the מתנגדים. But it's not that, like people think, that it started from the בעל שם טוב's time, that people started opposing the בעל שם טוב. This goes back a few generations. From the time of the אריז״ל already, there were two groups. There were some people who opposed the אריז״ל's statement that you have to start studying the secrets of תורה. And as time passed, this group turned into what they called later the מתנגדים against חסידות, because it's really all one. It's very important, I think everyone should read the ספר הזכרונות, which is the ליובאוויטשער רבי's memoirs, two volumes or three volumes, and there you will see the background of חסידות, just the history and the background, how it dates back all the way to the אריז״ל. But anyway, getting back to the point, we're trying to accomplish something. And this is where the Chassidic movement came in about, and the מוסר movement, to accomplish what we said before. Now, to accomplish it, there are two approaches. One, we know in Judaism, in תורה, מצות, there is what we call סור מרע ועשה טוב. סור מרע means go away from the evil, go away from the bad. עשה טוב means do good. There is positive and negative. They're both important. You have to stay away from things which are wrong, and you have to be positive, to do the right things. The question is, which one of the two do we stress? The מוסר movement stresses the סור מרע, stresses the evil if you do not behave and you do not follow תורה and מצות. Terrible things are going to happen. It is very terrible. They stress the idea, there's a verse, a פסוק that says רע ומר עזבך את השם, it's bitter and bad to leave God, to forget about God. And they stress how bad it is if you leave God, how bad it is if you don't listen to the מצות, how you will be punished, you will burn in גיהנום, and all kinds of things that they teach you, and they're all true. And this is what they stress. And even when they don't talk about punishment, what they stress also is they go into the details of how human nature is so bad. Naturally, you have these this a person has this bad attribute and that bad attribute, and all kinds of different things, and this is what they stress. And this is a way to get to the person, that the person should start getting scared and the person will start behaving and, like I said, will start thinking, \"Oh, I have to refine myself, because otherwise things are bad, and then if not going to do it.\" And this will make the person, so to speak, stick to תורה and not forget and become a little bit elevated and a little bit more purified, because he is told how bad the body is and how all things, this physical part of the world is bad. And this is what they stress. And based on that, there's another point that מוסר stresses, certainly in the early years of the מוסר movement, was how a person is supposed to fight, fight his natural instincts: to fast a lot, because when you eat food and you indulge, you're giving into your physical, your animalistic desires, you got to fight it, so they would fast a lot, They would do things to fight their physical body, and it makes sense, because the problem is, as we said before, is that we are physical. And since we are physical, we are will be pulled to physicality over the spirituality. And therefore we got to fight that. So do things to fight your the physical part of your body. Do things to go against it. And they stressed how bad these things are. And that would bring a person to start becoming better. And we know that before the בעל שם טוב's time, there were what they called מגידים, preachers, who would actually, this is history, which actually travel from city to city. And they would preach, and they would bring them down. The people wanted to hear. And what did they preach? They would preach all the different sayings of our sages and different verses in the חומש or all the other ספרים, holy books. And they would where it says how terrible if you do this and how terrible it is if you do that, and what can happen, to which which chamber in גיהנום you will go if you do this, or which chamber and they'll hang you here and this will happen, and all the terrible things that there are going to be. And this would get the people scared, and the people would get in this later way get awakened and aroused, and they would start becoming better. This was the way they would do it. חסידות has an opposite approach. The approach of חסידות is: Don't stress the bad, stress the good. When you learn חסידות, and אם ירצה השם you're here, you're learning חסידות, you will see חסידות describes the greatness of God, the greatness of השם, the true understanding of the unity of השם, the greatness and the the specialty of תורה, and how תורה is one with השם, and how great it is if you learn תורה, how great it is if you do a מצוה. Everything is positive. The whole תורה is The whole approach is a positive approach. And the approach is to show a person how lucky he is to be able to do a מצוה, how lucky he is to be a Jew who has a נשמה. And if you learn חסידות, חסידות is connected to קבלה, and in קבלה חסידות brings from קבלה what a Jewish נשמה is. No matter who he is and what he is, a Jew is a Jew and a Jew has a נשמה. And a נשמה is, as it says in the beginning of תניא, which is the main book of חסידות, foundation of חסידות, it says there that every Jewish נשמה, every Jewish soul is a חלק אלוקה ממעל ממש, is a part of השם Himself, part of God Himself. And if you learn deeper you see there are certain levels, there is God Himself and then His manifestation in different worlds. As קבלה goes in there's a whole what we call סדר השתלשלות, is a whole order of events how things come down, and the נשמה comes from the highest level. And the potential a איד has to connect himself to השם, to God, this is something that every Jew has, it brings out the beauty in it, the beauty in אידישקייט, the beauty in Judaism, the beauty in in doing what השם wants, rather than showing the negative part of things that are no good if you don't do. One of the different results is that if you follow the מוסר movement, you get ver- many times very depressed. It makes you very sad. It makes you sad because look who what who I am. I'm, you know, such a low creature and I got to work very hard. And sometimes, you know, you become feel bitter, and sometimes you even, you know what to do, you give up, you know, I'm so terrible and this, I can never get anywhere anyway. But if you learn חסידות, it makes you happy. As a matter of fact, in the time before they called the חסידים חסידים, know what they were called? They would call them in Yiddish, די פריילאכע, the happy ones. I think even in ספר הזכרונות, in the Lubavitcher Rebbe's memoirs, that book that I mentioned before, I think there he may call he he refers to it. I think it's there, maybe in a different letter of the previous Rebbe. But he says they used to be called די פריילאכע, cuz everyone knew that these are happy people. And it's not because they learned less or they did מצוות less, but they did it with happiness. And this is a difference between the מוסר movement when you do things, and you will accomplish a certain degree, but it's there it's a sad way, and here, the person is always happy that he's lucky that he's in such a level. And even if a person does something wrong, God forbid, so, you got to repent, you got to do תשובה, but you're still happy. How, you look at it and חסידות tells you: Look here, you did something wrong. God loves you so much that He even gave you a way out. You stress the point, you stress always the positive, and that's why you're always happy. It says עבדו את השם בשמחה, you have to serve God with joy. Through חסידות, you have the joy. And what's the joy? The joy in יידישקייט, in Judaism, not joy of going to, God forbid, a bar and drinking, joy of יידישקייט, because it brings out the שמחה, because it stresses the positive part. Now the question is, but isn't it important also to get rid of the negative? Isn't it that the body, you know, has its physicality, and as the פסוק says, if the verse says, יצר לב האדם רע מנעוריו, from birth, the person has this evil inclination. It says when God brought the מבול, the flood, He said, because human being is bad from beginning on, from the day he is born. So therefore we are pulled to How do we deal with that? So I'll tell you the answer is when you learn חסידות, and you learn the positive part of the ייד, of the נשמה, of תורה, of מצוות, of all these great things, automatically you drop anything that's against it, anything that's evil, all the negativity. And there's a famous משל, a famous parable given, very interesting משל, a very interesting parable. The משל is like this, משל in Hebrew is a parable. There was once a person walking in the street, and he was wearing a coat. There was an argument, this is only a משל, an argument between the sun and the wind. The wind said, \"Watch this, I can get the guy to take off his coat, I can get his coat off, I can get his coat off.\" And the sun says, \"I can do it better than you.\" So the wind started blowing, blowing and blowing, trying, and the coat started falling off. What did he do? He buttoned himself. He buttoned the buttons. Started blowing stronger, he went like this, he held his coat. Started blowing stronger, he went even more, put on a belt. The wind couldn't get it off. Then the sun turns around to the wind and says, \"Watch this.\" Started shining, guess what happened? The guy took off the coat himself. When you shine, when you go with light rather than being negative, than the fighting, because what מוסר does, it fights. It's fighting the person. It's fighting the body, and we The person who is learning מוסר wants it, but still he has to fight it. And the sun, which That's חסידות, that shines, that brings you the light, and when you see the light, automatically, any dirty clothes you might have, you will take it off yourself if you learn how important it is to be close to God and how great it is, and how אלקי you are, automatically you feel if anything that's stopping that, I definitely don't want it, and automatically you take it off. That's the מעלה of being positive, always positive. See, they say there's a story, not they say, there's a story which I heard from the person who it happened to. There's a שליח, an emissary of the רבי in Antwerp. His name is רב שבתי סלבטיצקי. He has a חב״ד house. I actually was there, I was once a speaker there for a certain event, a י״ט כסלו event. So I was there, beautiful חב״ד house, now I heard they built a new חב״ד house, beautiful חב״ד house. And there was this guy who was there for a while, and he became closer, started learning more and became closer to Judaism, started putting on תפילין, etc., etc. Then for a while he was missing. Didn't come, didn't know what happened. After a while, he comes back. After a few months he's there, and this rabbi, the שליח, sees there's something fishy, something wrong with him. Finally he speaks to him, he says, \"Yes, I have to tell you. I met this non-Jewish girl and I'm marrying her. And I know you wouldn't approve and you'd be upset, but I couldn't do it without coming and just letting you know. So I came back to let you know.\" So he said to him, \"I don't understand. How could you do such a thing?\" And he started explaining to him how terrible this is, and this is whatever, all kinds of terrible things. He says, \"No, no, this is what I want, and this is what I'm going to do.\" So he sent him to a few other rabbis in town, and he says, \"Go speak to\" He was ready, he was open to hear, but no one convinced him. And he came to other rabbis, and they all described to him that this is not for a Jewish boy, and this is what's going to be, it's going to ruin your life, and it's going to do this, and as and you know each rabbi has his own way of saying things, but they all said the same idea: how bad it is, and it's true, it's terrible. And he comes back and he says, \"Rabbi, after speaking to everybody, I'm not changing my mind. I'm doing it.\" Had no choice, he says, \"You know what, I ask you one favor. Go to New York and go to the רבי, go to the ליובאוויטשער רבי, and speak to him.\" He just he thought, \"What can he tell me? Tell me the same thing, I'm not going to change my mind.\" But you know what, he felt close to this Rabbi סלבטיצקי, so he said, \"I'll do you a favor, I'll go.\" He went to New York, and as you all know, the רבי used to stand on Sunday and distribute dollars that you should give for charity, and anybody who had like a question would for a blessing, request for a blessing, would ask the רבי, and the רבי would you could spend 30 seconds, a minute, 2 minutes with the רבי the most, but this was a opportune time. He went by dollars and he stopped when he got his dollar. I don't know if he told the רבי or the secretary, the רבי's secretary turned to the רבי and said that this is the boy, a boy or this is the boy who was planning to marry a non-Jewish girl. And he said, he told over the story, he's standing there expecting the רבי to tell him, \"What?! Such a terrible thing you're going to do? It's terrible.\" The רבי looks at him and the רבי says to him, \"You know, I'm jealous of you.\" He couldn't believe his ears. The רבי is jealous of him that he wants to marry a non-Jewish girl? Looks at the רבי, and the רבי says to him like this, \"You know, we know that God does not give a person a test unless He gives him the special power and energy to overcome it, to pass the test. If a person has a very, very hard test, that means that God gave him extra special power. The person who doesn't have such a test doesn't have that extra power. I don't have such a test. I don't have such a נסיון,\" in Hebrew it's a test, \"I don't have such a נסיון. So, obviously, I don't have such, so great, godly powers like you do. You have such a test, so you must have great godly powers that you have and I'm jealous of what you got, of your, of your powers.\" He walked away, and he started crying, and he dropped her. He did it not by hearing all the negative things. He heard it by the רבי looking at it as a, from the positive end. He looked at it as a positive thing. There is something positive there. You have a נסיון, you have a test? Yeah, that's good, that shows that you're so great! And he brought out the greatness, the potential that he has. And that's what did it. This is what חסידות, this is the approach of חסידות. Going back to that משל, that parable that I said, you know what that shows? The משל that happens to have a lot of details with the wind blowing. You know what it is? When you fight somebody, the nature is that you fight back. That's, that's the nature. In חסידות it says, which is a natural thing, this is a psychological thing, this is from psychology also, one of the strongest attributes a human being has is the attribute of victory, of נצחון. You always want to be the winner. It's connected to a person's ego, whatever it is, you always want to win, and if someone challenges you, you'll always try to fight. If he challenged you, complained, you'll always find, you'll always fight back. That's exactly what this משל was. The wind blows, fighting his coat. The nature is he'll close it, he'll fight back. That's the nature. And when you have no choice, you always fight back, that's what it is. The רמב\"ם, Maimonides, says a law that when you go to war against a city and you're going to make a siege around the city, don't do it from all four sides, only do it from three. Don't force them to fight you back, because if you're going to close them, they have no choice, they'll fight back. Give them a chance to go. They even say physically that when you're caught, see, a mouse is afraid of a human being, but if you're caught in the elevator by yourself with a mouse, be very careful, because the mouse sees it has no choice to go anywhere, even though it's scared of a human being, it'll attack you, it'll fight you, because it knows that it's in danger, it's going to fight you. The nature is that when you have, when you fight, you're going to get a fight back. When you fight your יצר הרע, when you fight your physicality, the physicality will fight back. But if you don't fight it, you work with it. This is one of the things of חסידות. I said before that in מוסר they tell you to fight your body, fast, don't give in to yourself, don't eat so much. חסידות also doesn't say to give in to yourself, but חסידות says work with your body. The famous statement of the בעל שם טוב on the פסוק where it says, it's a long פסוק to explain the whole, all the details of what he said, but the bottom line he said that don't think that you have to fight your physicality, use your physicality for holy matters. In other words, don't fast unless the תורה says there's a מצוה, a הלכה to fast. Eat, but use the food that you eat in a positive way. Eat לשם שמים, eat for the proper intentions, eat so you should be healthy, so you should be able to learn תורה and do מצות. In other words, don't fight your body. If you don't fight it, and you get the body, the physicality involved, that'll be much better And if you fight, you know, sometimes you win a war, sometimes you lose. But if you don't fight, then it's more chance that you are going to win and this won't happen again. If you fight, this time you might might win, next time not. The בעל שם טוב, once they asked the בעל שם טוב, what is the difference between מוסר and חסידות? And this is what he said. He gave a parable also, a parable of a thief who's coming to steal. So you have two approaches. One approach, you start screaming against him, he's going to run away. You'll be safe. Another way is get him, and sit him down, and teach him to stop stealing. Cuz what's the difference? If you scream and he runs away, he'll come back tomorrow. He ran away now, now you're safe, but tomorrow you're not safe. But if you work with him and you try to change him, that's completely different. Then you know you're more guaranteed that it's going to happen. Same thing here, when we're trying to accomplish, to make a person feel more spiritual besides just the actual doing of the מצוה, but to elevate a person, refine a person, and you will do it through מוסר, you will refine the body by getting rid, fighting this physicality and you will become more spiritual. But not always are you going to win, cuz you're fighting and the body fights back. And even if you win today, you might tomorrow might come back. But if you follow the דרך, the school of thought of חסידות, then what it does is it, through it, it shows you how the physicality is not fighting with you. It brings out that your that your body is holy, that your body, all the physical things that the body does, really it if you learn it and you understand it, it tells you that this is all good. And you could use it for good purpose, for a holy purpose. It becomes part of service of השם, of עבודת השם. Then, if the body doesn't fight, why would you expect him tomorrow to come and fight you again? So then you're more chance, I don't say it's guaranteed, I mean, you always got to be on guard, but it's still more chance and more times than yes than no that you will accomplish what you want to accomplish. And then there's another thing. When you fight with somebody, or in this case, fighting with your יצר הרע, with your evil inclination, besides the fact that you're not always win, when you don't win, you make it even worse. You make it even worse. Cuz when there is a fight and you didn't manage to win because your physicality overcame, the physicality becomes stronger. Becomes stronger, because, you know, it won. It's on It's I'm all speaking about the struggle with inside a person, but the that part of the person won, and that's going to be stronger, so it makes it even worse than before. We even see in two approaches of doing outreach work. There are a lot of people who do outreach work, all kinds of organizations and fine work. But there are two approaches. There's the חסידישע approach, and there's the approach that they do not in the חסידישע way, but it fits more to the מוסר way. And give an example. You have a שבתון. You have 300 people, mostly, all non-religious, and you get a speaker who gets up and tries to, you know, be מעורר, try to awaken, to arouse the feeling of אידישקייט in the people. So, the people of מוסר, they get up and they scream and they say how terrible it is if you don't do, and they go with all this and describe all the terrible things that are going to happen. And we know from facts that after such a שבת, you will have maybe five people who come out accepting upon themselves to become religious, completely. It has such an effect on them that they really really decide. Then there's another approach. You don't go with that way. You don't scream, and you don't say how bad it is. You just bring out the greatness of תורה and the greatness of מצוות and how great a Jew is and all the things, how important it is. Seldom do you come out after such a שבת with five people really becoming real שומרי שבת, keeping שבת, keeping the מצוות, very seldom. Might come out with one. So it sounds like the other way accomplishes more. Besides the fact that I don't know what happens to them later, because this is something that could wear off and the גשמיות, when they come back to their home and they do who knows what, fights back. But besides that, you know what happens here? Five people became completely observant. 295 people will probably never come to a שבתון again, and they will probably never, ever want to put on תפילין again unless you're going to have to work very hard. Why? Because if they didn't get affected, influenced by this type of approach, then it turns them off. Then it then it makes it even worse. It made it worse. The other approach, you might not get five people who become שומרי שבת, who become real keeping שבת and observant 100%, but you have 300 people who became closer to Judaism, 300 people who have a different approach to אידישקייט, and automatically, what will happen? This will make a next chance when they will meet another person and they got a certain warmth to it and they're going to get closer, and you have 300 potential people who will become observant. Why? Because if you go with this approach of fighting it, and if if you manage to win the war, you got it. But if you didn't, then you made it worse. And that's that's one of the dangers of going according to the מוסר approach. But if you go with the חסידיש approach, you go with the positive. First of all, you can never go wrong, but you because you only said positive things, and you will have an influence always, and you're not going to make it worse, even if you don't succeed. Whatever it is, to some degree you'll make it better, and it's a potential of becoming even better. Now, I do want to say that there are some times that we do have to come on to this idea of like, you know, not fighting, but going very harsh sometimes, very seldom, even according to חסידות, even according to Chassidic movement. The תלמוד actually says, לעולם ירגיז אדם יצר טוב על יצר הרע, he should always get your good inclination angry at your evil inclination, and it should fight it. Because sometimes, it is true, sometimes you see there is a person, or even yourself, when you try and you try in a positive way, and there is just some kind of blockade, some kind of barrier that doesn't allow the light to travel, to pass through. It happens sometimes. And when there is a barrier, you got to break the barrier. So sometimes, that's what you got to do, very seldom, but you got to be very careful when you do it if you do want to do it. But sometimes it is a time when you have to do it. Actually, the רבי explains an interesting מדרש. The מדרש says by אברהם אבינו, Abraham, and he tried to spread the understanding, the belief in God throughout the whole world. And one of the ways he did it was that he had in his house he had הכנסת אורחים. He would bring guests in, had a house, a tent with four doors from all sides. From any side a person came, wanted to come in, he was there. He would, and this was in the desert, and he would feed them for People could stay there for weeks, and he would feed them. At the end, before they left, they thanked him. So, he would say to them, \"Don't thank me. Thank the One above.\" Now, those people who said it, he said, \"Fine. Goodbye.\" Those people who said, \"No, no, we don't,\" because those people were idol worshippers. What did he do? He said, \"אזוי? Oh, so? I have a bill. You ate this, you ate this, and know how much each thing cost? In the desert, you know how much wine cost? Five times as much as in the city.\" And he gave him a bill, and he made it made it hard for them till finally they had no choice, and they said, \"Okay, we'll thank God.\" So, the רבי asked the question, \"What did he gain by just this lip service? So, they got he pushed and pressured them to say it.\" So, the רבי says that's not what happened. When they would come there and stay there for a while, he would talk to them, and convince them, and bring out within them to understand the true unity of השם, of God. And most of them got it. So, when they left and they thanked God, not because they just said it, they understood, and now they believed in God, and they thanked God. There were few people who, for some reason, the light that he shined did not penetrate, and there was some blockade. He had to break it! So, when he made it hard on them, that broke the shell, and now all the explanations that he gave them all came back, and when they thanked God, it wasn't just lip service. They actually thanked God because they believed it. So, sometimes you got to do, but even when you do that, have to tell you, even when you do that, it has to be done with warmth. There's a פסוק, the verse that says, שמע בני מוסר מוסר אביך, \"Listen, my son, the מוסר of your father.\" When you give somebody מוסר, מוסר means rebuke, and you follow this idea, this way of doing things, has to be done like a father to a son. A father does, loves his son. You got to show love. That's That then then sometimes even when you have to do it, it has to be done that way. The בעל שם טוב said that there He gave also another משל. Everything in חסידות we have a lot of משלים to describe and to explain certain things. So, he said, there was once a son of a king, a prince, who went to a far place, and after a while he went, you know, he he he he didn't follow He went off the path, and so, there was one of the servants of the king came and told the king, \"You know what your son did? He's this and he's that. He's terrible.\" And the king didn't listen to him. And somebody else came and said the same thing, and the king took it seriously, and he went to the went and found the son, and got him back. And they asked him, \"What was the difference? Why the first one you didn't listen to, the second one you did?\" He says, \"The first one I saw, all he was trying to tell me how bad my son is. The second one, I saw the way he told it to me, it hurt him. It bothered him. He felt bad for that person.\" He felt bad for my son. Oh, then I took it serious. Even when you give מוסר, and when you come you say things like that, it has to be with a feeling of caring about the person, a feeling of love to the person. And sometimes, it says, sometimes you got to be harsher, you got to speak in a negative way and tell them how terrible things are. But that's not the general way. And the truth is, whenever you have to do it, in חסידות we find it also. חסידות has everything. When you learn חסידות, you will learn certain things of מוסר also that is needed whenever it's needed. But it doesn't put the stress on it. Now, some people might ask, you open some books of מוסר, certainly the ones that were written in later generations, you see a lot of positive there, too. So why am I saying that מוסר is basically stresses the negative? I'll tell you. You know why these מוסר ספרים, these books of מוסר, have the positive approach, too? Because they were influenced by חסידות. That's why it's mainly in the later generations. Because they learned the חסידישע ספרים, they learned חסידות a little bit, and they took from חסידות. And that's why they have some of it also. But in that case, why go to them who took it from חסידות? Go directly to the source. In חסידות, you have that whole approach. חסידות tells you all these different things that are positive, and explains the greatness, the greatness of a ייד, the greatness of a נשמה, the greatness of תורה and the importance, and how everyone has a potential, etc., etc. Besides that, when you learn חסידות, you fulfill something very special. There is a מצוה to understand God, as much as a human being could. Actually, we just finished learning a cycle of רמב״ם. You know, the רבי instituted that we learn every year, we finish the whole learning of the whole רמב״ם, Maimonides. So we just finished and started a new cycle. The beginning of the רמב״ם, the beginning the beginning of the the first words of the רמב״ם's הלכות of the laws of the רמב״ם is: יסוד היסודות ועמוד החכמות, the foundation of all foundations and the pillar of all wisdom, of all knowledge, is לידע שיש שם מצוי ראשון, to know that there is this first being. And from this first being all the beings became. Note, the רמב״ם did not say that the foundation is to to believe that there is a first being. He said לידע means to know, didn't say להאמין to believe. The foundation of everything is to know. And when you learn חסידות, you know. There are ways חסידות explain. I think actually one of the classes in this here, I gave the class explaining how logically, שכל, you could know that there is a first being. You have to come to a conclusion logically, not only because of אמונה, because of blind faith that you believe. We could understand it, but you got to learn חסידות for it. And you could fulfill this יסוד, that the foundation of all foundations. There's a פסוק that says, דע, a verse that says דע את אלקי אביך, know the God of your father, ועבדהו בלב שלם, and serve Him with a complete heart. But you got to know. The מצוה is to understand the truth of God. To understand it. And that you will not get through מוסר. That you will not get through מוסר. If you learn חסידות, besides that it helps you overcome your יצר הרע, besides it refines the person and makes you feel more spiritual, and it brings all these things that I said before, you learn the understanding the wisdom of understanding God. That's the whole purpose of חסידות. חסידות is to describe the understanding of God. By the way, there's a saying that חסידים used to say, \"מוסר talks, deals with the human being, and חסידות deals with God.\" מוסר talks all about the human being, trying to refine the human being, trying to tell him how terrible he is if he doesn't refine himself, but you deal with the human being. חסידות talks about God, talks about השם, that's what it's about. It's learning about השם. And when you learn חסידות, you always remember השם, you always remember God. And therefore, when you do a מצוה, you have the feeling of knowing, not only knowing, but really, really internalizing that now you're connecting to God. That's what comes from חסידות. When you do a מצוה, we say the מצוה, the word מצוה means connection, besides מצוה meaning commandment, means connection. The blessing we make before we do a מצוה is, אשר קדשנו במצותיו וצונו, You made us holy and You commanded us to do this and this, it means also You connected us, we're connected to השם. But sometimes when you do מצוה, you could forget about it. When you learn תורה, every word of תורה is the word of God. And the רמב״ם, Maimonides, says that God and His wisdom are one, so the wisdom of God is really be one with Him, whatever that should mean, you learn חסידות, you get to understand it a little bit, not much, but a little bit. But sometimes when you learn that, you could forget. You could learn a משנה, you could learn a verse in חומש and forget that all this is really the wisdom of God. You could forget as it says the word the נותן התורה, נותן התורה means the giver. You learn תורה, but you have to remember there is somebody who gave it. And when you learn תורה, you connect yourself to השם. Actually we're coming from today was the last day of חנוכה. In חנוכה, it says what did the Greeks want? So we say in על הניסים, להשכיחם תורתך ולהעבירם מחוקי רצונך, they wanted to make us forget your תורה, and make us go away from the חוקים, the laws of your will. And the way the רבי explains that what they wanted was, they didn't care that Jews learn, people think that the the Greeks were against the Jew learning תורה, against the Jews doing מצוות. It's not true. That's a very cultured nation, they were the smartest people in the world at that time, and they understood the depth of תורה, they understood it. They understood the idea of מצוות. What bothered them is that you learn תורה not because it's so deep, because it's תורתך, it's your תורה. The יידן always keep in mind that it's God's תורה, you learn it not because it's a very interesting subject, because it's Godly, that's why we learn it. We do a מצוה not because it makes a lot of sense, many מצוות make sense, and even those that don't make sense, well, every community, every group, every religion has their things that they do. No, no, we do it because this is רצונך, God's will. That's what bothered them. And this you get from חסידות, knowing that it's so, that when you learn חסידות, you don't forget on the נותן התורה. I'll finish off with a story. Once the רבי הרש״ב, the fifth ליובאוויטשער רבי, met with one of the big ליטווישע גדולים from the other school, and he asked him, \"Why do you have to learn חסידות?\" רב חיים בריסקער, he asked him, \"Why do you have to learn חסידות?\" And he said, \"Because if you don't learn חסידות, you might forget on השם. You could learn a משנה, you could learn תלמוד, and forget about השם, about God.\" So he says to him, \"And when you learn חסידות, you can also forget about God.\" So he says, \"רב חיים, you should know better. It's a clear verse in תלמוד which explains why there's a difference.\" Says, \"תלמוד, which תלמוד?\" Cause this רב חיים בריסקער was a great, great, great scholar. He knew the whole תלמוד by heart. He's thinking, \"I don't know what you mean.\" It's it's I'll give you a hint: it's in תלמוד פסחים. \"פסחים, what does it say in פסחים?\" So he said, \"I'll tell you. We know there is one of the laws is to search for חמץ. Before פסח, we have to do בדיקת חמץ, we have to search with a candle to find if you find any חמץ. It says if you didn't search before פסח, you have to search on פסח. On Passover, on פסח you have to search.\" And the תלמוד asks, \"How could you do that? If you're going to search, you might find it. And if you'll find it, you might come to eat it. And eating חמץ on פסח, that's the worst thing.\" And the תלמוד answers, \"If the whole reason you're searching for it is to get rid of it, how could you come to eat it? The reason will tell you to search is to find it and get rid of it, how are you going to come to eat it?\" Same thing here: you learn חסידות, you're learning about God, how could you forget about Him? The whole purpose of learning is learning about Him. But when you learn other things in the תלמוד, then you might forget, because it doesn't directly talk about God even though we know that this is all the words of God. So by learning חסידות, besides that it's a different approach, you gain learning about God, you gain remembering God and it makes a person feel always holy, and it makes a person recognize the truth, and the truth is that God created the world, God gave us the תורה, and God wants us to behave a certain way, and the whole world is nothing but an extension of God's will. That's really you don't get to know that if you don't learn חסידות. And that's why the בעל שם טוב said that he went up, בעל שם טוב, such a holy person, in within his mind he would go up to the higher worlds, he went up and met משיח. And he asked משיח, \"אימתי קאתי מר? When are you coming?\" And he said, \"לכשיפוצו מעינותיך חוצה, when the wellsprings of your wellsprings will be spread in the world, what your teaching will be accepted by everybody.\" Why is that a preparation to משיח? Cause when משיח will come, see, we all talk about משיח, משיח when he'll come. What's going to happen when he comes? Ask everyone, they'll give you different answers. One person will give this answer, one person give that answer. Some people don't even know what why משיח? Why are they worried about what what's going to gain with משיח? But they even say a joke that there was once this guy was very poor and he lived in a little village, and finally after 20 years he managed to save up some money and bought a little house and a cow and he and now finally settled. Comes home one night from שול and he says, \"I heard a rabbi teach and he said משיח is coming soon and he's going to take it take us to the Land of Israel.\" She says, \"אוי וויי, finally we settled, we have to up-\" Uproot again to go? So his wife says to him, \"Don't worry, don't worry. השם saved us from Pharaoh, and השם saved us from Haman, and השם will save us from משיח, too.\" No idea what this is all about. Some people don't know, but even those that know, you know what it says, משיח will come, משיח will come, it says we're going to have a lot of money, we're going to have a lot of food, and we're going to have, and it's all true. But that's not really what it is. משיח will come, it says the truth of God will be revealed in the world. ונגלה כבוד השם וראו כל בשר יחדיו כי פי השם דיבר. The truth of God will be revealed. Obviously, if you want to prepare yourself to the coming of משיח, what are you going to do? Learn things which will get you closer to understanding it. If a person wants to go to a concert, a music concert, what's he going to do? Study music. If he wants to really appreciate it, he'll study music. If a person goes to an art exhibition, what's he going to do? Study music? He's going to study art in order to appreciate art. If we're getting ready for the coming of משיח very soon, when this will happen, how do you get ready? You get ready by studying the things which will give a person a deeper understanding in the truth of God, and the greatness of God, and the greatness of a נשמה, and the greatness of תורה, and all that will be revealed, and we will see it with our own eyes. With the eyes of flesh, we will see it when משיח will come. And this is why it's so important to learn חסידות, and then חסידות tells you how to behave, and it makes a person a better person. So השם should help, we should really have success, and we should do the proper preparation for the coming of משיח, and משיח should be here very, very soon, speedily in our days. אמן.