The two hundred and sixty-eighth "cheder" in the palace of Hayom Yom.
Sunday, 21 Menachem Av, 5703.
Shiurim: Chumash, first parashah with the commentary of Rashi — we begin a new parashah.
Tehillim, on the 21st of the month, one says two chapters — chapter 104 and chapter 105.
Tanya: On this day we begin the sixth letter in the section "Iggeret HaKodesh" of Tanya, from the word "zorea." The lesson concludes on page 220 with the words "ish eino ku'."
The daily teaching is brief, and it is taken from a letter that the Rebbe Rayatz wrote on this date, 21 Menachem Av 5698, five years before 5700. The letter is addressed to a chassid named Rabbi Michael Yehuda Leib Cohen. Apparently the chassid asked the Rebbe Rayatz how the proper path of a chassid who occupies himself with the ways of Chassidus is to be expressed, and how it comes to manifest itself; and the Rebbe guides him and writes to him, in the quote from the beginning of the letter: "The occupation with the ways of Chassidus is such that even while he walks in the marketplace, busy with his affairs."
Why is he walking in the marketplace? Because he is going to conduct business, and his mind is preoccupied with it. But he is a chassid, and therefore he must be different from others: "he should think" — in the midst of his business preoccupations — "what he can do for matters of Chassidus and the welfare of chassidim". And where does this find expression? "And when he meets someone from the marketplace, an acquaintance of his in matters of commerce" — when he encounters in the marketplace a person he knows, not a friend from the yeshivah nor the one who sits beside him in shul, but someone with whom he does business — "he should speak to his heart, that he come to the Torah classes and words of the living G-d", and persuade him to come to classes in Chassidus "or to some farbrengen". This should be the thing that occupies your mind: where can I awaken and reveal and disclose to another Jew the light of Chassidus.
Further on in the letter, the Rebbe Rayatz writes that if one encounters a friend, the conversation should be about how to improve one's studies and how to make the farbrengen warmer — to upgrade it already. In other words, every meeting, even one in the marketplace, should be about this matter.
Before the passage that the Rebbe cites at the conclusion, there is in the letter another interesting section that the Rebbe Rayatz writes to that chassid: "Surely you remember your father" — the father of the chassid, Rabbi Baruch Shalom HaKohen — how he would conduct himself when he would meet someone in the marketplace, that he would first of all speak with him and awaken him toward the ideas of Chassidus. And there was a saying among the chassidim in Moscow concerning his father: "Baruch Shalom makes chassidim on Nikolska Street" — the main street in Moscow, where the stock exchange was located. When he would go to the exchange, his father went like all the merchants, but while everyone was occupied with their business dealings, he was in the meantime occupied with Chassidus, drawing another Jew closer to Chassidus and the like.
And then comes the conclusion that the Rebbe brings in the saying: "Engaging in the ways of Chassidus is a personal obligation, without distinction between one who is great or small in knowledge of Chassidus (dach)." This is a personal obligation: it is not enough for us to think that this year we wish to add a quota of another fifty Jews to Chassidus classes, and it does not matter who will do it, as long as another fifty are added. Rather, it is your personal obligation — what are you doing about the matter. And "without distinction between one who is great or small in knowledge" — it makes no difference whether we are speaking of a person who knows a lot of Chassidus or a little; if you belong to the Chassidim, your "business" must be how you strengthen the affairs of Chassidus and what you do for the benefit of the Chassidim. This is the message that the Rebbe Rayatz demands here — a very great demand upon each and every one.