Room one hundred and sixty-four in the hall of Hayom Yom.
Monday, 5 Iyar, 21 in the Omer, 5703.
Shiurim: Chumash, Emor, Sheini, with Rashi's commentary.
Tehillim, 5th of the month, say from chapter 29 to chapter 34 inclusive.
Tanya, we are in chapter 46. The daily shiur is from the words "vehineih zehu" on page 65, and ends on that very same page with the word "hamelech".
The source of the daily teaching is an interesting letter written by the Rebbe Rayatz. A previous teaching from that same letter was already cited, on 6 Adar I. In that letter the Rebbe Rayatz provides a very interesting description of how in the year 5673 he traveled to France - his father, the Rebbe Rashab, was staying in France at the time, in Menton, for health reasons, and the Rayatz the son traveled to be with him - and how he would walk with him on the seashore.
He provides a wonderful and very emotional description of how people stood to see the majestic countenance of the Rebbe Rashab, and details what his father discussed with him while walking, when he explained to him the virtue of hisbonenus prior to tefillah in the words of chassidus while wearing tallis and tefillin, how much elevation this brings about. And after all this he told him that all these virtues of which he spoke with him do not reach the virtue a Jew has when the Holy One, blessed be He, grants him the merit to acquire a feeling and delight in doing a favor for a Jew. The continuation of this point appears, as mentioned, in the daily teaching of 6 Adar I.
And then the conclusion, which is also the conclusion of the letter, is what is read in the teaching now. The Rebbe Rayatz concludes there with a teaching said by Reb Mordechai Hatzaddik. Who was Reb Mordechai Hatzaddik? He was one of the talmidim of the Baal Shem Tov, one of the hidden tzaddikim, and specifically one of the three talmidim of the Baal Shem Tov who brought and publicized the path and Torah of the Baal Shem Tov in White Russia. The Alter Rebbe heard from him all sorts of teachings and things he had heard from the Baal Shem Tov.
And so the teaching says - "Rabbeinu Hazaken received from R. Mordechai Hatzaddik who heard from the Baal Shem Tov: A neshamah descends to this world and lives seventy-eighty years". But what is actually the purpose for which this neshamah descended to the world? Over the years it has accomplished much: married, had children, worked and engaged in its affairs, etc., etc. However, it is possible that all his seventy and eighty years in the world, all of them entirely, were "in order to do a Jew a favor materially, and especially spiritually". That is to say, the preciousness of doing a favor for a Jew is equivalent to reincarnating in the world for eighty years, with all of life's adventures, just to do a favor for a Jew once.
Over the years the Rebbe repeated this teaching many times, emphasizing how much one must strive to bring another Jew close - since this also refers to a spiritual favor, bringing a Jew close to the ways of Hashem. It is possible that the entire descent of our neshamah into the world was for that one single time when we will meet a certain Jew and put tefillin on him, or bring him close in one matter or another - and this is our entire purpose in this world, for seventy and eighty years.