When The Lubavitcher Rebbe Spoke About Not Giving Up On Souls Buried In Rubble

SURFSIDE (VINnews) — This Shabbos, hundreds of thousands of Jews will learn in Daf Yomi the Mishnah in Yuma (83a) about the laws of clearing the rubble of a collapsed building to search for possible survivors.

88 years ago, at a “farbrengen” in Riga, Latvia, the young Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson zt”l, later to become the Lubavitcher Rebbe, gave an all night shiur and farbrengen on this Sugya in Shas, explaining it both in Nigla and Nistar. Some people remembered it, but there was no written record of it.

Several years ago, after the Rebbe’s passing in 1994, they found a personal journal of the Rebbe where he transcribed this shiur, published in a multi-volume set known as “Reshimos,” where the Rebbe explaons at length the Jewish law that we never ever ever give up on any soul. We never allow statistics to stop us from trying to save a life, even if there is the slightest glimmer of hope.

The Rebbe goes on to explain the entire halacha also from an emotional and spiritual perspective, applying these laws to people living in a chaotic and meaningless world. How do we deal with children who left Yiddishkeit? How do we deal with people stuck in a spiritual abyss and completely alienate us?

With the horrific tragedy in Surfside, Rabbi YY Jacobson presented this week a beautiful class sharing some segments of the Rebbe’s farbrengen about searching for souls trapped in the rubble.