The sixty-sixth "cheder" in the palace of Hayom Yom.
Thursday, 6 Adar I, 5703.
Shiurim: Chumash, Terumah, chamishi, with Rashi's commentary.
Tehillim, 6 of the month, from chapter 35 through the end of chapter 38.
Tanya, still in chapter 27, from the words "velo od" until page 68, which ends with the words "le'eila harbeh".
Today's shiur brings a saying spoken by the Rebbe Rashab. Let us first give the background - when it was said and in what context - and then we will read the saying. The source is a letter written by the Rebbe Rayatz on Rosh Chodesh Nissan 5695, to the chassid Mordechai Chefetz of Riga.
The Rebbe Rayatz describes to him that quite a number of years earlier, in 5673, he traveled from Russia to visit his father. At that time the Rebbe Rashab was staying in Menton, France, apparently for medical reasons, and the Rebbe Rayatz traveled to visit him. He relates that he would stroll with him along the seashore for several hours each day, and merited to hear from him things that no one else had heard - how our Rebbeim, the nesi'im, would conduct themselves, matters transmitted by tradition from generation to generation, stories, deep matters in chassidus, and so on. He relates that he was there for more than two weeks, and describes how wondrous this meeting with his father was.
Among the things he relates is that once his father spoke with him about something very special: when a person, every morning before beginning Shacharis, while wrapped in a tallis and adorned with tefillin, thinks chassidus before davening - there are tremendous benefits in this. The Rebbe Rashab detailed for him eight benefits that this accomplishes: how it refines the body, washes the soul, cools the nefesh habahamis, washes the natural soul, settles the intellectual soul, illuminates the world, and changes one's character traits. And he says: with simple people it has this effect, and with tzaddikim - all the more so.
After hearing all this, the Rebbe Rayatz describes in a few lines how wondrous it was to see his father at those moments; one simply saw a divine sweetness. He says that only then did he understand the words of the Alter Rebbe in Tanya about the holy Avos, that all their days they did not cease even for a single hour from being bound in their minds and in their souls to the Master of the World. To see the beauty of nature - his father at his side by the sea - and together with this to see his father's absorption in G-dliness, he says that this is something that can only be found by a Rebbe the son of a Rebbe, a tangible man, one for whom it is tangibly felt that "the eyes of Hashem stand over him".
He continues and relates: we went on walking for a long time in silence, without saying a word. All the passersby saw the sight, and noticed the great light on his face. And then - and here comes the daily saying - the Rebbe Rashab turns to the Rebbe Rayatz and says to him: all the benefits I enumerated earlier regarding one who thinks chassidus before davening - they do not compare to a further benefit that a person receives, a benefit that is beyond comparison, infinitely higher than all the previous benefits we described.
And in order to reach this, he says further on, one needs many hours a day of toil and exertion of soul and exertion of flesh in the study of chassidus. And what does one reach? What is the great benefit? This is what the daily saying addresses, and this is its heading: "From the talks of my father, my teacher and master [the Rebbe Maharashab] of blessed memory" - referring to that same occasion when he heard this from his father. He said it to him in Yiddish, and in translation: "It is a wondrous benefit when the Holy One, blessed be He, grants one the merit, and one is blessed with a special sense and taste in doing good for a Jew, to the point that the other is more precious in his eyes than he is in his own eyes".
Until he reaches a state in which the other is more precious in his eyes than he himself is in his own eyes. And how is such a state possible, that another person is more precious to him than himself? He explains: "for regarding himself he can find several reasons why it was decreed that his situation should not be a good one, G-d forbid, but regarding another this is not applicable at all". When a person makes a reckoning about himself, he can find quite a number of reasons why he deserves that things which are not good should happen to him; but with respect to another person, this entire reckoning is not applicable at all. About another person there is no room to say "he deserves such and such because of such and such", rather one must have a sense and a delight that the other should have good, to do good for him and to think good of him.
This is the benefit that one merits - receiving this sense. About this the Rebbe Rashab said there that it is a benefit more wondrous than all the other benefits a person can have; for although he detailed eight benefits which are themselves wondrous things, this benefit surpasses them all in its wondrousness, in the most wondrous way.