Likkutei Sichos: Volume 3 - Yud Shevat
Likkutei Sichos, Vol. 3: Yud Shevat (Part 1)
Opening a foundational sicha from Yud Shevat 5712, this shiur traces the Baal Shem Tov's aliyat neshamah to Heichal Mashiach and Mashiach's answer that redemption comes when the wellsprings of Chassidus spread outward -- the source of the Lubavitch mission of hafatzas hamaayanos. A story about the Maggid hiding to watch the Baal Shem Tov's private avodah, and being caught, explains why the Toldos Yaakov Yosef was not chosen as successor despite his greatness. The shiur then uncovers how the word 'beri'sh' hints at the Baal Shem Tov, Rashbi, and the Arizal, before a wide-ranging digression on the Arizal's mixed ancestry and the surprising pre-Baal-Shem-Tov origins of the Chassidim-Misnagdim divide.
Likkutei Sichos, Vol. 3: Yud Shevat (Part 2)
Continuing from the previous shiur, this sicha explains why the remez to the three pillars of pnimiyus haTorah appears in Targum rather than in the verse itself: Targum transforms a secular language into a holy one, paralleling the future geulah's transformation of ra into good, unlike the exodus from Mitzrayim, where the Yidden had to flee because the evil within them was never actually reworked. The shiur then lays out the Rebbe's rule for legitimate remazim -- they confirm an idea already known to be true rather than manufacture one, illustrated through Purim Torah and the Rambam's account of the esrog -- and closes with a moving string of remazim tied to Yud Shevat itself, including a missing letter in the word shlita and a photograph of the Frierdiker Rebbe that fell at the exact moment of his histalkus.
Likkutei Sichos, Vol. 3: Yud Shevat (Part 3)
Closing the Yud Shevat trilogy, this shiur contrasts the Baal Shem Tov's method of concealing deep secrets inside simple stories with the Maggid's practice of teaching Chassidus openly but only to his greatest scholars -- among them the Alter Rebbe, the sole talmid able to absorb the Maggid's Torah from start to finish, and der Valfer, whose spiritual decline the Maggid had cryptically foreseen. It traces how the Alter Rebbe's innovation of dressing Chassidus in sechel gradually widened its circle until the Frierdiker Rebbe insisted on teaching Chassidus, translated if necessary, to Chassidim and non-Chassidim alike wherever he traveled. The shiur closes by quoting the Rambam's Hilchos Melachim on the precise sequence of the geulah as the culmination of the process the Baal Shem Tov began.