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“The Fire of the Aish Kodesh: Remembering the Piaseczner Rebbe with Rav Shlomo Katz” is a moving collection of shiurim honoring the holy Aish Kodesh — Rav Kalonymus Kalman Shapira of Piaseczno, may Hashem avenge his blood (הי״ד).
From within the darkness of the Warsaw Ghetto, the Rebbe’s Torah burned with unimaginable light, teaching how faith, courage, and love of Hashem can endure even in the shadow of destruction.
Each year on his yahrzeit, Rav Shlomo Katz guides us into the Rebbe’s writings and spirit, bridging his words to the challenges and hopes of our own generation.
Ay yay yay yay yay yay. Ay ay ay da. Ay yay da, ay yay da. Ay ya.
Ay ya. Ay yay yay yay yay. Ay da da da ma yay ya. Ay yay yay yay yay.
Ay da da da ma yay ya. Ay. Ay day day ay day day ay day day ay da. Ay ya may ya may ya may ya.
Ay ay da ay da ay da da. Ay ya da. Day day day day day day da. Day day day day da ma yay ya.
Ay yay yay am. Ay yay ya. Ay ay yay ya ma ya. Ay da da da ma ya.
Oh ay yay yay yay yay ya. Ay day da da da da da da da.Okay, ברשות רב צבי היקר, that I have so much הכרת הטוב to. He asked me to come and also more than I express it, the inspiration to get deeper into the תורה and the world of the צדיק, of the בעל הילולא, the Piaseczna. I want to learn a little bit right now לעילוי נשמת, of course, the Piaseczna and also לעילוי נשמת one of, in my opinion, his greatest תלמידים who was my first teacher in, in, it was actually a בני מחשבה טובה.
I don't know who was רב נתן צביגלבוים or was רב נתן צפוני?
נתן דניאל.
דניאל בן, בן מלכה. Is that what I knew?
בן אברהם יצחק.
לעילוי נשמתו.So I've shared with my חבר'ה a few times already that, yeah, you can move back.
Don't, don't, don't get involved. We're about to talk. There's so much to share, but I want to try to, השם should help me just focus right now, גם במחשבה, just to gather. The, the personal struggle that many people have delving into the ספרים of the אש קודש is really because of the אש קודש, less about חובת התלמידים, בני מחשבה טובה, דרך המלך, צו וזירוז.
Because in an אש קודש we find, we find struggles in אמונה that at first seem that they oppose everything else about the basics of, of, of אמונה פשוטה. Because we know the outcome of the ספר. You know, we're here because of a יארצייט, not because the Rebbe lived a שיבה טובה, but because we don't even know where his burial spot is, למעשה, for sure. Although I heard there is a חברה that's trying to gather this year.
You saw this? They're trying to put it together to go to the area where they think the, even that's so beautiful, you know. We don't know though, we have no idea.But what was the Rebbe דאווענען? I always, I always think about this. What was the Rebbe's תפילה? What were the Rebbe's תפילות that weren't written, that weren't put in to writing? Specifically, I took a walk a few months ago with, with my Rebbe's son, Rav Lemberger's son, in ירושלים a few weeks ago, a few months ago. And I always say to him, I said to him, you know, I always wonder, like, I want to stand by the Rebbe right before, the second before he was killed and ask him, what's the תפילה right now? And he, being the son of a Rebbe says, it's funny, I always think about like the second after.
I want to ask him, what's your תפילה now? The second after you're taken into גנזי מרומים. What's that like? But I think that we actually have the answer to both those questions throughout the Rebbe's writings. I think.And you know, most of us have grown up in worlds where we've seen people come to שולן and דאווענען and really feel that they're יוצא ידי חובה of דאווענען by making sure they were in a מניין. Which is, of course, correct according to the פשט, יציאת ידי חובת ההלכה of תפילה בציבור, or תפילה בכלל, right? But then the Rebbe pushes us to a place where he will talk right now about חילול התפילה.
חילול התפילה. Which when we, when we read it in the Rebbe's saying, we're like, wow, I'm so glad the Rebbe said this because it's what so many of us feel so often when we go to different שולן and, and see that this just can't be what חז"ל had in mind when they said יידן have to come together and דאווענען together. It just can't be. So I want to go right inside the first piece is from the ninth chapter in חובת התלמידים.
The Rebbe says like this, and and because of קוצר הזמן, we're just going to kind of run through, run through this as as well as we can, as much as השם יתברך allows us.
יש חושבים שכל עצמה של התפילה היא הדאגה והצרות שעליה מתפללים. There are those who think that דאווענען, the essence of דאווענען, is is worrying about the troubles, the צרות that we דאווען over. I'm I'm lacking something, I'm scared of something, something's bothering me.
That's what דאווענען is for. That's what it's meant.
כמו שמבקש העני מן העשיר. Like a poor person asking from a rich person.
או כל איש ממלך בשר ודם. Or that דאווענען is like the way you would approach how any human being would approach any physical king, flesh and blood.
אשר בידו להושיע באיזה דבר, that the king can answer. As long as you appease the king, the king can give you what you're asking for.
And that's how many people approach the concept of דאווענען, the עצם התפילה, whether they whether they realize this or not. That's what דאווענען is like for them. And now the Rebbe says this line that makes me shake.
אבל רק איש בער ולא ידע יכול לחלל כל כך את התפילה.
And we talk about like a, people say like, you know, they they talk about their their failings in יידישקייט, so they'll say, you know, I was שומר שבת, and then I started to be מחלל שבת. And that word even like gives you like a little bit of חילול שבת, חילול השם, right?
מחלל שבת means you break שבת, right? Not literally.
מחלל שבת means there's emptiness of שבת in your life. There's a חלל, right?
חילול השם, it means that there's a vacuum, there's a there's an emptiness of this אלוקות, כביכול, not for real, because מלא כל הארץ כבודו, but in your world, and in your consciousness.
רק איש בער ולא ידע יכול לחלל כל כך את התפילה. You can cause such a desecration regarding the concept of דאווענען when you think that that's what it's, when you actually believe that this is what it's all about.
כביכול, this might seem לכתחילה to oppose a very basic יסוד in רבי נחמן. I'm a little bit sensitive to right now.
I just came back last night in the middle of the night from Uman, so I'm a little bit like sensitive to, you know, it happens when you go there and these things kind of like... Cause the Rebbe says there you have to come before like a child before his father, asking him for anything, anything in the world. But even the Rebbe would say that maybe that's that's the beginning. Eventually, a person has to understand the point of תפילה is so much more than that.
Here the Rebbe goes straight to the core and says, when that is your concept of תפילה, you're מחלל the דאווענען.
ולחשבה רק צורך הדאגות. And you think that דאווענען is only about taking care of worries.
ואלולי צרכיותו, לא היה מתפלל חס ושלום.
And if you didn't need to דאווען over worries, you probably wouldn't come to a place of דאווענען, you wouldn't even דאווען. And I was thinking about this, when was the last time one of us געדאווענט so hard, so strong, not from a place of מצר? Not from מצרים. Not from narrowness. Just because I was to me it's oxygen, it's, or some other experience that I felt, but that it wasn't דוקא rooted or emanated from a place of מצרים.
There's a lot to say about that but not for now. So the Rebbe continues over here in the fourth line.
כי באמת התפילה בעצמה, really דאווענען itself, היא התקרבות הלב והשתפכות הנפש להשם בתפילה.
התקרבות הלב, it's a very interesting choice of of language over here.
התקרבות הלב, you getting close to your heart or your heart getting close to you or your heart getting close to itself. I'm not a בקי right now in doing this literal translation except for me, just feeling what I feel with this.
והשתפכות הנפש, an outpouring of the soul להשם בתפילה, that my, I have an experience that my soul is pouring itself before הקדוש ברוך הוא in דאווענען. That is so much deeper and not necessarily felt when I'm crying over a little bit of צרות.
That's probably not what's felt. When I have worries and my worries lead me to דאווען to be asked to be taken care of, I don't know how much of my השתפכות of my נפש, the outpouring of my soul is what will be taking place. I might feel other things, but to say השתפכות הנפש, התקרבות הלב, Rebbe says זוהי העיקר שבתפילה. That's really what דאווענען is all about.
וראינו במדרש על יוסף, and look how the מדרש takes this further.
לא בלבד שאין התפילה.
המסובבת מן הדאגות והצרות, רק שלפעמים את הדאגות שולח השם כדי שנתפלל אליו יתברך. The classic מדרש that the Rebbe brings out here.
That I feel that when you when you kind of like have a strong sensory, when you're kind of more refined, I believe a person that taps more into this world of נבואה, the בלי מחשבה טובה energy, you can begin to sense when the רבונו של עולם is sending you like צרות only because of what the Rebbe brought down over here in the מדרש. That it's really a way that השם's saying, I want to hear from you. I want to hear from you.That's what the Rebbe is saying over here.
השם יתברך is saying, I want to hear from you, and you're not you're not understanding that in a normal way, so I'm going to send it to you through a worry, through a דאגה.
Just so that you can come and call out to me. What's this מדרש תהילים brings over here? He says a שמועס in ספר הליקוטים on פרק כ"ף א' ה'.אמר רבי יהושע בן לוי, למה הדבר דומה?
למלך שהיה בא בדרך. A king was walking down the way.
וראה איזה בת מלכים צועקת לו, בבקשה ממך, הצילני מיד הליסטים.
And a prince, a בת מלך, right? A princess was screaming, please, please save me from a, how would you say ליסטים in English? From uh, robbers? Robbers, thieves. Highwaymen. Highwaymen. I feel like I saw a bunch of them yesterday in Uman.
שמע המלך, שמע המלך והצילה. So the king hears this and he saves, he heard the he heard the צרות. He heard the outcry and he saves this בת מלך from the crying.
לאחר ימים, ביקש לישא אותה לאישה.
And after a while, this king wants to marry who he found, who he just saved.
היה רוצה שתדבר עמו, והיא לא רוצה. Nah, she's not she doesn't want to.
מה עשה המלך?
גירה בה הליסטים, כדי שתצעק וישמע המלך.
He remembered, wait a second. How did she, how did I, how was our relationship established in the beginning? There was some צרה, right? What was it? What caused her to come and what caused her to come and call and cry out to me? Oh yeah, I'm going to go to that same cause which caused the effect, right? Cause and effect. And I'm going to repeat that just because I want her to come and call out to me again. So he brings brings about, somehow, גירה בה הליסטים.
He summons, you know, these robbers and these. Listen, this is the way that I can get her to call call out to me again.עד כאן לשונו הקודש, right? So this is the לשון of the of the מדרש שמועס רבה. This הנמשל, the Rebbe says, בטח אתה מבין בעצמך. Now I love when the Rebbe says this.
This is really such a לשון which shows up in other places. He's like, look, you and I already knew that halfway through this משל, you were already starting to become embarrassed and מסמיק and blushing because you know exactly what we're going through. But just in case you want to like run out of שול now before the דרשה is over, I'm just going to read it, I'm just going to give it to you right now.This הנמשל, בטח אתה מבין מעצמך, הנפש שלך, בת מלכים, your soul, the princess.
רוצה הקדוש ברוך הוא לישא אותה.
God wants to marry it. What does that mean?
כלומר שתתקרב ותתייחד בקדושתו. That you should come close and become unified in its holiness. But in order for that to happen, which is what the נפש נשמה always, always wants, להיכלל.
Remember there's a famous statement by the Alter Rebbe. He says I don't care about גן עדן עליון, I don't care about גן עדן תחתון, אלא אני קוץ לזוהר להיכלל בגופא דמלכא. I just want to be included, I want to be, not included. It's not the right word.
Close? Not even close. It's really what the משל that you said before, absorbed. Like the טיפה מן הים that goes inside the ים and it's it's already now אי אפשר you can't be מבדיל and say, oh that's that, and it has a שייכות to the water. Like many of us like, we're we're we're into יידישקייט, and we have a שייכות to קדושה.
No. You are קדושה.
רבונו של עולם knows, this is what the נשמה really wants.
הנפש שלך, בת מלך, again, כלומר שתתקרב ותתייחד בקדושתו, וצריכה לדבר ולהתפלל אליו.
כי על ידי התפילה הפנימית הבאה מקירות הלב, הנפש מתעוררת משנתה. Through inner תפילה, not the שחרית מנחה מעריב ייד that has the additions of when things are hard I cry out to השם. Someone that understands that the experience of דאווענען is so much deeper than all of that. It's hard to describe even what that really means.
Because any of us that ever experienced real תפילה that the רבי is speaking about, if you're able to describe what it felt like afterwards, it means it was pretty שוואך. Like a lot of my friends that say, להבדיל, that they remember what Grateful Dead shows were like in the 70s and 80s, it means you probably weren't there, להבדיל. A lot of הבדלות, but when it comes to תפילה, real, real תפילה, real דאווענען, you're going to explain what it was like? There's a התכללות הנפש at that moment.So this נשמה, על ידי התפילה הפנימית הבאה מקירות הלב, הנפש מתעוררת משנתה. The soul is, it's enough with its שלאף.
אמר מתייחדת במלך, it becomes one with the king, מלכו של עולם.
והיא עיקרה ותכליתה של התפילה. This is what דאווענען is all about. To realize עד שישנן דאגות שהשם שולח אותן לאיש הישראלי.
Then in the middle of my דאווענען over צרות, I I have this moment of being like, wait a second, why am I suffering through what I'm suffering?
כדי שיתעורר על ידם להתפלל ולצעוק להשם מקרב לבו ונפשו. To bring a person to scream to השם not just, help me over here, but to scream from the inner chambers, walls of my, of my heart. Now, חובת התלמידים was written in 1932. So we fast forward now seventy years, right, to ת"ש, ת"ש.
The following piece is a piece, I stopped, I want to confess, I stopped learning אש קודש after learning this first piece for many years. Many years, because לא הסתדר לי משהו. Like I'm like sorry, I'm like חטאים אחי מזכיר יום, like. I can't, I still today, till today, I can't wrap my heart around the following piece.
Because what we just learned, but the רבי says that there is this place of דאווענען, there's in the consciousness of a ייד, in the awareness of what a ייד goes through, through אמת'דיקע דאווענען, through real תפילה, is a sense of, ah, you miss me. You פשוט miss me. And that is why you're putting me through what you're putting me through. And that's a very high level, but it's an attainable level that the רבי is speaking about over here.But this piece, this famous piece, it's the middle, it's a longer piece, but because we don't have that much time, I just wanted to get to the בשר of this piece.
It's a famous piece and I, as a resident of אפרת, who lived, who lives five minutes from ארי פולד, השם יקום דמו. But really, I don't need ארי פולד as an example right now for the following piece. Just today, two more יידן were stabbed in, you know, not not not killed, but by שכם, there was a פיגוע just a few hours ago. A חייל and a woman.
And it's just, you know, over and over again. Like the narrative, on a certain level, really hasn't changed, especially when we meet this thing called משפחת השכול. Yeah, interestingly enough, two days ago, wait, tonight's ג', right? Today was ב'. Yesterday was א'.
Seems like centuries ago.
א' is the יארצייט of someone who I knew who's named after the ספר אש קודש, whose name was אש קודש, אש קודש גלמן from חשמונאים מודיעין. 18 years ago, he was killed while he was being, he was a שומר in סניף ביטוח לאומי in מזרח העיר.
אש קודש גלמן.
And his wife took their daughter who's now 19 and a half to the family to pay a שבעה call before they went to the אזכרה yesterday. His wife, his widow ענבל took their daughter to pay a שבעה call by the woman, the family of the woman, the mother of the two-year-old baby who was killed a few days ago in ברקן in the אזור תעשיה. They first went to pay a שבעה call there and talked about how sad she was that these members were added to her family. Usually, we don't say those things when people are added to our family.
But there is a family called משפחת השכול. That's the רבי's family as well. And the רבי was in that family. The רבי might be like the אב המשפחה of that family for our generation in the greater context.
So what, if we just learned, I'll try to say this as clear as possible and also as short as possible. If we just learned that an element of תפילה is to get to the awareness that השם is saying, "I miss you," and that's the ability to go through the דאגות and the צרות that you go through in order to call out to השם, what happens when that gets blurred. When that vision gets blurred due to very, very, very human, human conditions, just normal human conditions. Now, what's what's quite frightening is that this is the beginning of the war.
Right? But look how the רב is writing in the beginning of the war. This is mind-blowing. And I have a lot of הכרת הטוב to Dr. Henry Abramson for the for the for the book that was recently published where he takes the רב, he takes the פרשיות every single, a beautiful work where he brings the context of what was happening in the war throughout the ghetto and does that פרשה בפרשה. But for me, this piece in חיי שרה is almost like my, it's been my תפילה אילמת that I've said since I'm a child being raised in ארץ ישראל.
Since I can remember the first, probably since נחשון וקסמן, who interestingly enough, the day, the date of his kidnap was right, it's either today or yesterday. The יארצייט's right around now as well. That was an, and that was a moment for my, in my upbringing that was a very definitive moment. And I think this piece in the אש קודש has been for me a תפילה אילמת.
It's like a, like when talks about the צעקה דממה. Like I feel very connected to this piece, and we'll see why.
והנה רש"י פירש, למה נסמכה מיתת שרה לעקדת יצחק? Why, it's a very famous רש"י where they write in the beginning of חיי שרה, the last thing that we learned in וירא is יצחק על העקדה. And the first thing we learn about in פרשת חיי שרה is שרה dying.
When did that actually happen? So according to the מדרש, that happened, we know that this, she, she was unfortunately received a vision from the מלאך showed her her son on the עקידה, and then didn't really show her the end of the story, but just that he was on the עקידה, right?
למה נסמכה מיתת שרה לעקדת יצחק? So רש"י says there, פרחה נשמתה. Her soul blossomed up. Blossom, it's very interesting, פרחה. It just kind of like, usually you say יפרח, to blossom, right? So it's a very interesting usage of words because פרחה of blossoming is like nature, beauty, beauty, trees, you know, flowers.
מה זה פרחה נשמתה? He says over here, כדי, בדבר זה הסמיכות, כדי להמליץ טוב בעדינו ולהראות שעל ידי יסורים חס וחלילה יותר מדי מה נעשה שפרחה נשמתה. So the literal translation over here is like להמליץ טוב בעדינו would be, I don't even know how to say that.
להמליץ טוב בעדינו. How would you say that? To be to advocate on our behalf.
How does that, how does that advocate on our behalf? The רב is saying our behalf.
יידן in 1939 Poland. Our behalf. To show us that through יסורים that are too much, what are we going to do?
פרחה נשמתה.
To show השם. Huh? To show, it says all a protest to הקדוש ברוך הוא. It's not to show us. I always say that this piece is basically the, the, the, to me, the, the most essential הפגנה that עם ישראל has to stand on street corners doing to הקדוש ברוך הוא, saying, רבונו של עולם, with עם כל הכבוד and this is the holiest חוצפה in the world, עד כאן.
עד כאן. Why? The רב is gonna say, why can we have the חוצפה to say עד כאן? And the רב says it in such a brilliant way.
ועוד אם כן נעשה בשרה, this was done with שרה אמנו. This ענין of this kind of protest death.
צדקת גדולה כמו שבת מאה כבת עשרים לחטא. We're talking about שרה אמנו who's such an illustrious צדקת.
שני חיי שרה שכוחן שוים לטובה, מכל מקום, לא יכלה לסבול יסורים קשים. It's almost saying שרה אמנו died in protest.
It was almost a voluntary death saying, you think a mother can see a vision of this and can continue to exist and function and live?
ומכל שכן אנחנו. If that's the case by שרה אמנו, how much more so us that are much lower level wouldn't be able to function on any level.
עוד אפשר לומר, שגם שרה אמנו עצמה שנתנה כל כך אל לבה מעשה העקידה עד שפרחה נשמתה. The רב is saying we can say by שרה אמנו, she took what she saw, her son on the altar, she took it so much to heart, so much so that she died.
Now this is where it gets a little bit, you know, not confusing, but... got to be a little bit careful because you could say that according to this שרה אמנו committed suicide. According to what the Rebbi's saying, right? One of the, her נפש just couldn't couldn't stay anymore. No, but in a second.
No, no, but in this context, that's true, according to the initial context, but in over here, these words that he just said over here, עשתה, עשתה means that she actively did something. It's not that she couldn't control her soul. It's that she had something to do with the fact שפרחה נשמתה. It wasn't כאילו, oh my god, I can't take this, look what's going to happen to me.
He's saying there was a conscious act over here, the Rebbi's saying, מצד שרה אמנו.
להראות להשם. What was this conscious act? She's showing הקדוש ברוך הוא, איך אי אפשר לישראל לסבול יסורים יותר מדי. How יידן cannot take too much.
You know, there's a story I heard from Reb Shlomo. I don't remember if it was Reb Berach Mezhbizh or Reb Zusha. I don't remember exactly who the two צדיקים were. But that one of them was crying, crying, crying, and they asked, one of them asked the other, said, why are you crying so much? So he said, because I see how much כח סבלות עם ישראל has.
I see how much we're so עם קשה עורף, we can last through so much צרות. So the Rebbe asked his friend, so so why are you crying over that? He says, because because of exactly what I just said.So the Rebbi ends over here, these last two lines. I think about these two lines all the time, since I since I saw this many years ago.
ואפילו מי שבחמלת השם נשאר חי גם אחר יסורים, and even someone with the compassion of Hashem remains alive through such יסורים, מכל מקום, nonetheless, חלקי כולו ומוחו ורוחו נשברו ונאבדו ממנו.
Basically saying they're like walking spiritual skeletons and physical skeletons.
מה לי קטלי כולו, מה לי קטלי פלגי? Meaning it's a phrase from the גמרא. What's the difference if a little bit of a person is left or or all of him is is is gone, right? So I feel that the Rebbi gave us this kind of like פתח השער to have a very holy חצפה during תפילה. That on the one hand, the first piece, there's an awareness I can work with to be able to establish the fact that when the רבונו של עולם puts me through something, but it's they are good that are in the framework of like, you know, normal הבלי עולם הזה, but they're still hard things of this world.
I can come to the רבונו של עולם at a certain place and be like, okay, I remember that you missed me and this is what it's all about, right? But then when we go this next שלב, this jump from 1932 to 1939, even us singing משפחות שחור today, this is our this is our תפילה.
רבונו של עולם, there are wounds and there are scars.
עם ישראל knows how to deal with a lot of wounds and heal them וכולי. But then there are scars, the רבונו של עולם, is this what you really want? Like do you want this people walking around with these scars and that's what their יידישקייט is going to be like afterwards? Because certain things, like mothers seeing their children on עקידהs, like the Rebbe was starting to experience non-stop over here, at the end of the day, we're we are a המשך of שרה אמנו and you don't want us to make these same decision, כביכול, that שרה אמנו made.
And this this this this kind of like dance between these two worlds of תפילה, I feel, make the אש קודש's words so much more relevant to what עם ישראל, specifically in ארץ ישראל, is going through day by day. So בעזרת השם, the Rebbi should be a מליץ יושר and should continue to be מליץ יושר בשמיים. And we should have to continue to bask in the glory of the Torah of this צדיק to be able to find the right words and the right מחשבות while we stand before הקדוש ברוך הוא. And בעזרת השם we'll be dancing soon with the Rebbe with משיח צדקינו במהרה בימינו אמן.