The Rebbe’s Opinion on 4 Matters

The following was culled and adapted from interviews with the Montreal Shliach and activist Rabbi Simcha Zirkind OBM with Dovid Zaklikowski of Chabad Lubavitch Archives. Rabbi Zirkind’s yartzeit is on the 24th of Tammuz:

I am a Yankee, the son of Russian immigrants, who arrived in the United States many years ago, before the start of WWII.

My personal connection with Chabad began when I started to attend the United Lubavitcher Yeshiva on Bedford and Dean in Brooklyn, New York. Later I went to the Pittsburgh Lubavitch Yeshiva.

I recall that once we wanted to go to the Rebbe’s farbrengens. The Yeshiva administration balked at the idea. They wrote to the Rebbe and the Rebbe responded (not the exact words), “You are dealing with American boys, so be careful with placing on them too many restraints. You should let them go.” They, of course, let us go.

1. A QUESTION ON A MITZVAH

In the year 1956, I began to study at the Lubavitch Yeshiva in Montreal. My father, who owned a butcher shop in New York, wanted me to assist him there. I did not know what to do. The financial situation was not good, and my father could not afford to hire anyone to work in the store. I was sort of his only hope.

It seems that my worries could be seen on my face. During the summer, when we were in New York for the Rebbe’s farbrengen, Rabbi Berel Baumgarten asked me, “You seem to be bothered by something, perhaps I could assist you?”

I told him the story, and he said that I should write to the Rebbe. I wrote in and the Rebbe suggested that I should schedule an audience for my father with the Rebbe. My father agreed and went to meet the Rebbe. I do not recall any of the details of the conversation, besides what pertained to my going to the Yeshiva.
After the audience, my father seemed to be very pleased and told me that I should gladly go to the Yeshivah in Montreal. When I asked what made him change his mind, he told me of his exchange with the Rebbe.

“Would you let your son study in the Yeshiva in Montreal?” the Rebbe asked.

“And what will be with honoring one’s parent?” my father replied. “How will my son be able to fulfill the Mitzvah in Montreal?”

The Rebbe answered: “If you command your son to travel to Montreal to learn, he will be fulfilling your wishes, and thus be fulfilling the Mitzvah of honoring his parent.”

“If the Rebbe opines,” my father told the Rebbe, “that he should travel, then I agree too!”

2. A QUESTION OF SCENES

I studied there for 7 years. During that period of time, I would spill out my heart to the Rebbe in private correspondence and audiences. These are several anecdotes:

During the summer months, we did not go to camp. Every day we had to go from the Yeshiva to the dormitory to eat. However, due to the lack of modesty on the streets, I did not feel comfortable walking outside during the summer months.

In 1957, I went into a private with the Rebbe. I asked the Rebbe for advice what to do about me seeing immodest scenes.

The Rebbe told me, that I should keep a photo of the Rebbe Rayatz in my pocket. “Before you go out onto the street,” the Rebbe said, “you should take a look at the photo.”

I put in my pocket a picture of the Rebbe and the Rebbe Rayatz and I would look at it before I left the buildings. It was good advice, it averted my attention. I would thus concentrate on their holy faces and not at what I saw in the streets.

3. A QUESTION OF THOUGHTS

In the winter of 1956, I wrote to the Rebbe several of my issues. One was a foreign thought that I felt was inappropriate for me to have. The Rebbe responded: “It is known the advice to this is, ‘that a little bit of light, pushes away a lot of darkness’. Therefore, you need to be immersed into thoughts of Torah and prayer. You should be fluent by-heart, several chapters of Mishnah, Tanya and at least several lighter, easier-to-understand, Chassidic discourses. This all helps liberate one from not good thoughts.”

My second question was about me doing good things for a personal gain. “You have to be very careful, for many times the evil inclination wants to refrain a person from doing good, telling the person that he is doing it for his personal gain [and not for altruistic reasons]. Therefore, the evil inclination says, ‘you should not do it at all.’

“However, this is in total contrast to what our sages, of blessed memory, state, ‘a person should do, even not for the sake of G-d, for through those actions, one will come to it for the sake of G-d.’ Therefore, it is understood that one should strive to work on himself that he should do his actions altruistically, in the meantime, if it is something good, one should not G-d forbid refrain from doing it because he lacks the proper intention.”

4. A QUESTION OF FAITH

At one point, I was struggling with questions of faith in G-d. I told the Rebbe about it in a private audience.

The Rebbe told me, that when I leave the office, “You should go down stairs and speak to the elderly Chassidim there about what they have been through. Even they, who have been through so much suffering and trials, they have not wavered in their faith in G-d.”

I feel blessed that the Rebbe guided me through my difficult times, taking the time to respond to my letters and queries. They may have been simple ones in his eyes, yet the Rebbe took time from his busy schedule to make me feel important.

It was always my dream to take the Rebbe’s guidance to the myriads of people who corresponded with him and publish them in books. Over the past few years, it has been my great privilege to publish the Advice for Life series, which have touched the lives of many.