Parshas Bereishis

The Rebbe once asked, “Our Torah — such a holy, such a beau­ti­ful Torah — and its first mitz­vah is: Be fruit­ful and mul­ti­ply?! The an­swer is: You are a Jew; make an­other Jew!”

On Gim­mel Tam­muz, when the Rebbe came out of Sh­palerka,¹⁸ he went into the study hall and sat on a bench near the aron hakodesh. He said, “It’s a plan and we must know this. It’s a li­bel from ‘there. ’”

Then he said, “I saw Hash­gacha Pratis around the door at Sh­palerka and thought at that mo­ment, ‘Do I take upon my­self to con­tinue writ­ing about chil­dren’s ed­u­ca­tion and Torah schools? If so, it will be good. Oth­er­wise, there will be reper­cus­sions. ’¹⁹ A sec­re­tary asked, ‘Rebbe, per­haps you need to com­mu­ni­cate some­thing to your home?’ Since she of­fered I de­cided to refuse. ”

18. The notorious prison on Spalerno Street. He was released from prison and was to leave immediately for exile in the distant town of Kostrama. ↩
19. In the original: at the entrance… See Bereishis 4:7. ↩

A Jew from the vil­lage of Pokolovitch de­scribed his suf­fer­ing to the Tzemach Tzedek. “My wife rules over me, ” he com­plained.

The Rebbe an­swered, “There is a po­suk in the Torah which states: And your de­sire will be for your hus­band,²⁶ and the po­suk con­tin­ues, and he will rule over you. But when the first part is re­versed, the sec­ond part is re­versed as well. ”

26. Bereishis 3:16. ↩

At one point dur­ing Sim­chas Torah , 5685 (1924 ), in Leningrad, the Rebbe Ray­atz ex­claimed pas­sion­ately, “What sort of chos­sid sleeps un­til nine in the morn­ing and, al­ready by ten, has fin­ished dav­en­ing, eaten break­fast, and is strolling along Nevesky Street (Leningrad’s main thor­ough­fare), di­rect­ing his eyes at the wrong places? With the no­tion that by wear­ing a kapotah and gar­tel he is a chos­sid. Or, he imag­ines, by giv­ing three rubles [to the Rebbe], he is a chos­sid. Now three rubles are three rubles — but that won’t do it.

“R. Hil­lel (Par­itcher) once said that he doesn’t like one who strayed and did teshu­vah — such a per­son went far astray, and who knows what sort of teshu­vah he did?

“For sure, strip­ping one­self naked is not the in­ten­tion; but there is a con­cept of con­fess­ing one’s mis­deeds.

“In truth — there’s a ques­tion: How can we un­der­stand the pre­cept, In the place where baalei teshu­vah stand, per­fect tzad­dikim are un­able to stand?⁵⁹ This one ate pupiks (giz­zards ) — while the other one learned Torah and dav­ened! The an­swer is: He is not the same per­son; he is some­one else.”⁶⁰

And the Rebbe turned to a young man from Kher­son liv­ing in Mos­cow: “It’s not you ... You must take upon your­self ‘di­vrei chavrus’;⁶¹ you will give a Kid­dush on Shab­bos Bereishis.

“Ev­ery­one must take upon him­self ‘di­vrei chavrus’ that he will not sleep past seven in the morn­ing (an early hour for Leningrad’s win­ters, when sun­rise is at nine). ”

59. Berachos 34b. ↩
60. He has transformed himself entirely. See also Rambam, Hilchos Teshuvah 2:4: "The way of teshuvah is … saying, 'I am someone else and not the same person who did those actions. " ↩
61. A term borrowed from the days of the Mishna, when there were conditions to be considered a "chaver" (a Jew of integrity who could be trusted regarding maaser [tithes] and ritual purity). ↩

My zeide of­ten said that a Rebbe is a like­ness of Heaven. In Leningrad right af­ter Sukkos — I think it was 5686 (1925) — Chatzya Lukovir (R. Yechezkel Fei­gin, may G-d avenge his blood, who was then the mash­pia and men­tor of Tom­chei Temimim in Nevel) told me that when he went to speak with the Rebbe about Tom­chei Temimim , the Rebbe told him, “I can­not talk to you about Tom­chei Temimim ; things are in a state of Tohu now. Af­ter Shab­bos Bereishis, with the start of Par­shas Noach and the birth of Avra­ham — Tikkun — then we can dis­cuss mat­ters. ”⁵⁷

57. Tohu and Tikkun: “chaos” and “rectification. ” Kabbalah explains that at the beginning of creation — described in Parshas Bereishis — the world was in a spiritual state of Tohu, a lofty realm of existence which, lacking balance and order, “collapsed” in an event called "sheviras hakeilim" (the "breaking of the vessels"), when their light departed from them. This “break” — orchestrated by G-d — enabled the existence of the orderly world of Tikkun, possessing lesser light, but with abundant vessels. ↩

In his old age Reb Aizel was ex­tremely self-dep­re­cat­ing. Once he com­mented that he had noth­ing to bring along to the next world, ex­cept for one thing: his ser­vice on be­half of Torah sages.

What was the story?

He was walk­ing along the street in Li­ozna one sum­mer and no­ticed the Al­ter Rebbe sit­ting at home by a win­dow. A sud­den breeze car­ried off a page of the Al­ter Rebbe’s writ­ing, and Reb Aizel picked it up and brought it to the Rebbe. When some­one lis­ten­ing to this ac­count smirked, Reb Aizel asked, “Why are you laugh­ing? Ac­cord­ing to ha­lacha this is true ser­vice to Torah sages (emese shimush talmidei cha­chomim)!”

My zeide de­scribed what he heard in Lubav­itch, that when the Tzemach Tzedek be­came the Rebbe, R. Binyamin Klet­zker — the ven­er­a­ble chos­sid of the Al­ter Rebbe — came to Lubav­itch and chal­lenged him: “Mendel! You have be­come a rebbe?! — if that’s so, then say some Chas­sidus from your zeide (the Al­ter Rebbe)!”

“Fine, ” he an­swered, “but you must not look at my face. ”

R. Binyamin low­ered his head, and the Tzemach Tzedek re­cited Chas­sidus.

“He will grow, ” said R. Binyamin, “he will grow. ”

Dur­ing his stay in Leningrad the Rebbe Ray­atz once spoke of teshu­vah and used the ex­am­ple of a talk­ing bird. “When a per­son of­fends the King and seeks his for­give­ness, he takes a bird and teaches it phrases re­quest­ing par­don. Imag­ine, now, how deeply his re­morse and re­pen­tance must pen­e­trate, un­til he is able to teach the bird these ex­pres­sions. ”