This is the first of a series of a text-based class on a Chassidic discourse, Maamar Basi Legani 5724 (1964), which was said by the Lubavitcher Rebbe 60 years ago at the Farbrengen of Motzei Shabbos Beshalach, 11 Shevat, 5724, January 25, 1964. Rabbi YY Jacobson gave this class on Monday, 20 Teves, 5784, January 1, 2024, in Bais Medrash Ohr Chaim, Monsey, NY.

The theme of the first class of the maamar is how we are charged with the work of fusing all part of our life and our world with the Divine truth, and how we repair the insanity of our dark reality only with holy "insanity," transcending our intellect. This is why the Jewish people are called “the army of Hashem,” because the soldier going to battle must transcend every last vestige of ego and calculations, committed unwaveringly with every fiber of his being to the mission of victory. The class explored the war between Hamas and Israel and the extraordinary sacrifice of the Jewish soldiers waging battle against Jihad; and how we can only defeat Jihad not through rationality, but through the unbridled passion of the Jewish soul.

The class explains the power of “enlightened ignorance,” which allows one to be a conduit for infinity, and the difference between a cult and transcendence. One if afraid of the mind, the other has graduated and seeks that which rationality can’t define or control.