This class, the second on the discourse V'Eisha Ki Tedor by the Alter Rebbe, Likkutei Torah Matos, was presented on Thursday, 19 Tamuz, 5784, Parshas Pinchas, July 25, 2024, at Bais Medrash Ohr Chaim in Monsey, NY.

This class was presented on Monday, 16 Tamuz, 5784, Parshas Pinchas, July 22, 2024, at Bais Medrash Ohr Chaim in Monsey, NY.

This class was presented on Thursday, 12 Tamuz, 5784, Parshas Balak, July 18, 2024, at Bais Medrash Ohr Chaim in Monsey, NY.

This class was presented on Monday, 9 Tamuz, 5784, Parshas Balak, July 15, 2024, at Bais Medrash Ohr Chaim in Monsey, NY.

This class will be presented on Thursday, 5 Tamuz, 5784, Parshas Chukas, July 11, 2024, at Bais Medrash Ohr Chaim in Monsey, NY.

This class was presented on Monday, 2 Tamuz, 5784, Parshas Chukas, July 8, 2024, at Bais Medrash Ohr Chaim in Monsey, NY.

This class, the first of a series in the Maamar Zos Chukas HaTorah, Likkutei Torah Chukas, was presented on Thursday, 28 Sivan, 5784, Parshas Korach, July 4, 2024, at Bais Medrash Ohr Chaim in Monsey, NY.

This class was presented on Thursday, 21 Sivan, 5784, Parshas Shlach, June 27, 2024, at Bais Medrash Ohr Chaim in Monsey, NY.

This text-based class on Likkutei Sichos vol. 23 Shlach was presented on Monday, 18 Sivan, 5784, Parshas Shlach, June 24, 2024, at Bais Medrash Ohr Chaim in Monsey, NY.

Something very disturbing emerges during the story of the spies. When G-d tells Moses He will annihilate the entire nation, Moshe argues that this will cause the Egyptians to claim that G-d was incapable of bringing the people into the Promised Land. Could Moses not find any other rationale to influence G-d not to annihilate an entire nation of some three million people, men, women, and children, save the fact that it won’t look good for the neighbors?!

Moshe should have said: “These are Your creatures, which you created. These are Your children, Your nation, which You have taken out of Egypt and chosen as Your people! Have compassion for them!” This is exactly what he said at a previous disaster when the nation constructed the Golden Calf, and G-d wanted to annihilate them.

At the Fabrengen of Shabbos Parshas Shlach 5740 (1980), published in Likkutei Sichos vol. 23 Shlach, the Lubavitcher Rebbe offered a paradigm shift in understanding rewards and punishments in the Torah.

This class was presented on Monday, 4 Sivan, 5784, June 10, 2024, at Bais Medrash Ohr Chaim in Monsey, NY. This is a text based class on Likkutei Sichos Vol. 18 Shavuos, an address presented by the Lubavitcher Rebbe on Shavuos 5737, May 24, 1977.

Shavuos is linked to three gigantic persons in Jewish history—who all embodied, more than anyone else in Jewish history, royalty and aristocracy. Moses, David and the Baal Shem Tov.

And all of them gleaned this royal energy from Shavuos—the day of the giving of the Torah, when G-d declared: “You shall become for Me a kingdom of princess and a holy people.” Torah turned the Jews into royals. The Jew is no longer just a citizen of the world; the Jew is not anymore only a victim of nature and its fluctuations. The Jew is an ambassador of the Almighty, a carrier of Divinity, a representative of infinity. He or she is not chained down by the shackles of a vast, scary world. He is a king. She is a queen. He looks at the world and knows that it was all created, as Rashi says in the opening of the Torah, “for the Torah and the Jewish people.” 

Yet Moses, David, and the Baal Shem Tov lived in three very distinct generations. It is easy to feel like a king when you are in a desert eating manna, surrounded by clouds of glory. It is also possible to feel like a king when you are living in your own homeland with a powerful leader who defeated all of his enemies. But it was the Baal Shem Tov who taught Jews how to live as kings in the depths of the dark and bitter exile. How?