A little background first but this is about a verse in Ki-Tavo, that Alter Rebbe focuses on its inverse message in Tanya Chapter 26, and Rebbe used to quote and emphasize this a great deal.
I was ten years old in 1983 when my Albany NY Maimonides School class fell apart. Chazzan Joel Cutler (my teacher)’s job dried up in Schenectady’s Beth Israel, and his son Dovid was a classmate. Also that year Rabbi Gershon Gewirtz of Albany’s CBAJ took a job as rabbi of Young Israel of Brookline MA, and his twin sons Henoch and Yossi were in my class. That left Razi Frankel and I. Razi’s father was a scientist at GE, he moved in NJ – and I was the only one left. So I went to live with my grandparents and study in Yeshiva in NY.
Many a Shabbos the Rebbe would farbreng, and the only spot I could get at the time was way up on the bleachers, literally “in left field”, high up in the nose-bleed section. You had a great view, but it was harder to hear the Rebbe’s voice from way back up there. And I was just starting to learn Yiddish so it was harder to make out what the Rebbe was saying. But my father told me that the Neshoma (the soul) hears, so I should stay at the farbrengen.
Towards the end of each talk, the Rebbe’s voice would rise, it would get louder and I was able to make out phrases. The end of the talks often had wishes and blessings, and some of them were repeated quite often so I’d become familiar with them, they became ingrained. I write more about this Sicha Ends on the 770 Bleachers experience in another post.
One of those wishes and repeated phrases that I heard from Rebbe a lot in my young years was “B’Simcha uvTuv Layvov – with happiness and goodness of heart!” This was a common wish and encouragement of the Rebbe, at the ends of Sichot and in response to individuals. Ironically it comes from the section of Torah in Ki-Tavo that has the harsh rebuke and curses, but from which Tanya 26 derives the critical essential necessity for joy in Judaism. At any rate, the Rebbe said and encouraged it a lot, and often used this expression. Rebbe said it quite a bit towards the end of Sichot, and on quite a few occasions it was the closing climax, the ending words of the Sicha-talk. It sometimes ended on this very note!
Earlier this Summer 5786/2026 I visited the Rebbe’s Ohel. As is customary I wrote a personal note before going in, jotting down various matters that were important to me, both in my communal and campus work and also in family life. As I finished writing the note I looked back at what I had written and I made a mental note realizing that unintentionally/subconsciously, I finished almost each paragraph with this same phrase: “B’Simcha uTiv Layvov” – may it be with happiness and a good heart.
Then I went into the Ohel, prayed my prayer, and went back into the Ohel Tent and House. Raizy likes to stop by to watch the Rebbe video playing in the house after visiting the Ohel, so I went to find her there, (she didn’t get back in yet) but the first words I heard the Rebbe saying on the video at that time were these very same words: “B’Simcha uvTuv Layvov!”
Indeed, may it be so!