Here’s My Story: The Heart Counter-Attack

Rabbi Nachmon Schapiro

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I don’t know of any Jewish leader who publicly taught Torah as much as the Rebbe did. It was our great fortune that we heard the Rebbe speak at his public farbrengens for thousands of hours: On the Talmud, on chasidic thought, on the philosophy and ideology of Judaism, on Rashi’s commentary on the Torah, on mysticism, and even on worldly affairs – which were, as the Rebbe would show, also connected to the Torah.

However, while previous Chabad Rebbes would write or publish their own teachings, the Rebbe did not. Instead, all his public remarks were recorded by a team of chasidim, known as chozrim, or “reviewers,” led by

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the scholar Reb Yoel Kahn. Later, another team would prepare a particular talk, or “sicha,” for publication and submit it to the Rebbe for review. Instead of a word-for-word transcript, one such sicha might even be prepared from multiple talks on a given subject that the Rebbe had delivered on different occasions. After appearing intermittently in the previous two decades, in the ‘70s, these talks began to appear on a regular basis, before every Shabbat, in the form of a pamphlet known as a “likkut.” This system stopped and started a couple of times, but over the years, the Rebbe edited and gave out one thousand or so of these talks, and now they have been published in the thirty-nine volumes of Likkutei Sichot.

Likkutei Sichot contains countless in-depth explanations of a vast range of Torah subjects, but it is even more than that. Learning these talks is like putting on the Rebbe’s glasses; they give a sense of his perspective on the world. Through learning Likkutei Sichot one comes to a different understanding of their connection with G-d, a deeper insight into the Torah, on what it means to do a mitzvah and the purpose of creation.

Now, there were many Torah scholars who worked on these talks over the years, chief among them Reb Yoel Kahn and in 1972, I also became involved, along with Rabbis Leibel Kaplan and Leibel Schapiro. Then, from 1973 until 1992, Rabbi Leibel Altein and I were the main people working on Likkutei Sichot.

On Shemini Atzeret of 1977, during the traditional hakafot dancing, the Rebbe had a massive heart attack. Somehow – even the doctors later said they were unsure quite how – the Rebbe managed to complete the service, go outside to the sukkah to make kiddush, and walk upstairs to his room. A couple hours after that, at about 5:00 AM, he then had yet another heart attack.

Some doctors were present by then, and since the Rebbe didn’t want to go to the hospital, his office was soon turned into a makeshift ICU. Given the severity of the situation, the Rebbe was supposed to rest: No talking, no working, no doing anything.

Of course, after the holiday, we didn’t even think about submitting the next week’s talk for the Rebbe to review. We knew how much work the Rebbe put into them; we often heard from his secretaries that he would work on a given likkut for between five and ten hours. And it wasn’t just the time: It was the devotion, the effort of making corrections, rewriting sections, looking up books, and adding sources; the Rebbe put his life into Likkutei Sichot. G-d forbid that we would burden the Rebbe with this kind of work in his state.

But then, his secretary Rabbi Leibel Groner called us up: “The Rebbe is waiting for the sicha.” It was just a couple of days after his heart attack!

“You know,” we demurred, “we could give it in a little later. It can come out next week – it doesn’t matter.”

“No. The Rebbe wants it right away.”

Usually, when we had a talk for the Rebbe to review, he would take it with him at the end of the day and work on it at home. Then, when he came to 770 the next morning, he would send the edited draft out to us.

But now that the Rebbe was staying in a hospital bed in his office, it was like there was no night or day. The secretaries stayed on call 24/7, and as it turned out, the Rebbe kept on working 24/7 too.

At 4 or 5:00 AM, the Rebbe pressed his buzzer to summon his secretary: He was finished with the sicha. Lo and behold, not only had he edited the talk, and changed a few words or lines here and there, but he had even added an entire section of several paragraphs!

The major point of that talk, which is based on a passage in the Zohar, is that everything that exists is ultimately there for the sake of bringing G-dliness into the world. Even secular wisdom, science, and technological development do not contradict the Torah, but precisely the opposite; they are all there to help us serve G-d, and to reveal G-dliness.

In the paragraphs that the Rebbe added, however, he notes that this doesn’t mean that a person must go to university in order to study science. Aside from the fact that the culture on most college campuses encourages immodest behavior – and disdain for those with more traditional values – in practice they often teach just the opposite of what science is supposed to be. They deny Divine Providence and teach a purely materialistic worldview; rather than acknowledging that G-d is running the world, the denial of any entity outside of the natural order is an axiom. This is what the Rebbe was writing in the middle of the night, just days after sustaining a massive heart attack.

During that period, chasidim avoided burdening the Rebbe. They would not write questions to him that he would have to respond to, and even after his recovery and return to the public eye, his secretaries tried their best to restrict his public engagements. But in this case, there wasn’t anything they could do: The Rebbe himself had specifically requested the sicha.

Initially, the concept of Likkutei Sichot had been something that the chasidim initiated: They begged the Rebbe to edit his talks and allow them to be published, so that they could study his ideas and teach them to others.

From this point on, a new likkut came out every week for the next fourteen years straight; until then, the longest run had been under three years. But what made this episode so special is that it didn’t come from the chasidim; it was the Rebbe who asked us. It was the Rebbe’s own sacrifice, not only spiritually, but physically too. We saw then how he dedicated himself to his chasidim and to the entire Jewish people.

A senior lecturer and chasidic mentor in the Oholei Torah yeshivah in Crown Heights, Rabbi Nachmon Schapiro is a member of Vaad Lehafotzas Sichos, the team that wrote and published the Rebbe’s talks. He was interviewed in December of 2021.