The Chabad Chassid Who Found “The Missing Dot”

A Story about Chabad Lubavitch Chassidic (Hasidic) Teachings

I had a young guy, a Chabadnik (a Hasidic Jew) from New York who told me: “listen…you know i just watched your lecture, your shiur about Gehinom this is not the way to teach in chasidut we learned that Gehinom is not a punishment it's really just to clean up”. He obviously didn't watch the whole shiur.

So i told him: “listen, you're learning the wrong chasidut."

He says: “what do you mean?”

I explained to him that he’s learning a chassidut that's missing information. But don't worry, I have it for you.

Gehinom: Learning Chasidut that Can Change Your Life.

We reviewed over 1400 sources from chasidut starting with the Baal Shem Tov all the way to the Lubavitcher Rebbe. Over 1400 books, 1400 sources we used to make a shiur about Gehinom based on chasidut. You'll actually see that the real chasidut the real hasidim, the Baal Shem Tov, Maggid of Mezritch, Rebbe Elimelech of Lizhensk, all of the giants of chasidut including the Tanya from Chabad, talk about Gehinom freely, normally no different than we do and actually worse than we do.

You didn't learn about Gehinom? You’re missing a bit of information that can change your life. Whatever you're learning has some truth in it but there's lies too.

The absence of information turns the information you have into null and void.

Are You Missing This Critical Part of Chasidut? Here’s What it’s Like.

If you have an important contract to sign and the client tells you: “listen, i'll sign the contract but please, email me the contract i'll respond to you right away but you have to do it before I fly on my trip for the next six months so you have to email me by 9am.”

No problem. You get the email, you work on the contract all night. At 3 o'clock in the morning, you send. Thirty seconds later, there’s an error message. What’s the error message? The Email's not working. Okay, you look and you don’t understand why, so you press send again. Maybe the email is wrong. Maybe Google's going out of business. You try yahoo. Yahoo’s out of business too and you get the same error message. So you go back to aol from the 1990s aol.com – not working. You try all types of things… not working, not working, not working. All night you're trying to figure it out. Nine o'clock comes, and you haven't been able to send the email.

You call and the guy’s secretary says: “I'm sorry he just left for his trip, he'll be back in six months.”

You have just lost a multi-million dollar deal because you couldn't figure out the email.

Six months later, you see the client again. He says: “yeah what happened to you? I thought we we're gonna do business.”

“No no I sent you the email I don't understand…”

He goes: “what do you mean you sent it?”

"I sent it 500 times but it didn't work because…”

He says: “nah nah come on you're not a serious person. I already got the deal somewhere else."

“No but I did it, please do something with me.”

The client responds: “I can't, I already bought it from somebody else. But I feel bad for you, let me see. Prove to me that you sent the email and maybe I'll consider it again.”

You show him your computer because it's been imprinted into your mind this email that you've sent 500 times. You show him the email and within five seconds he says: “you fool, you're missing the dot in dot com.”

You have the right email, but it's missing a dot. What's the big deal, it's only a dot? The big deal is that that dot makes the whole email either valid or null and void.

Mussar Makes an Impact

If you hear a speech about the weekly parsha without learning mussar from it that's going to affect you and change your life that's missing the dot in .com. That speech is worthless. If you're not leaving that speech with something to take home to impact your life, you have just wasted your time and better yet, you've actually hurt yourself and this unfortunately Rabbotai has been happening much more often than ever because of the internet. Just like a HaKodesh Baruch Hu is allowing a lot of kedusha to come to the world in an easy way, He's also allowing the tumah to come.

So make mussar an important part of your life.