Chasidic Military Strategy For Startups (and the Soul)
Tech Tribe Dispatch 135
💡 Think:
On strategy for confronting a challenge:
Days before his passing, Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi, the founder of the Chabad movement, called over his grandson and future successor, Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Lubavitch.
Fleeing Napoleon and his army, whom Rabbi Shneur Zalman viewed as a spiritual adversary to the Jews, the Chasidic leader, his family, and hundreds of fleeing Chasidim took shelter in the village of Pyena.
In the depths of the frigid winter of 1812 he recalled the spring of 1764. Visiting his mentor, Rabbi Dovber of Mezritch, he’d begun to study with Avraham der Malach, “the angel”, the son of Rabbi Dovber.
Der Malach shared a spiritual lesson (and the focus of this email)
The year before the cataclysmic Seven Years war had rocked Western world. During the Battle of Leuthen, fought on 5 December 1757, Frederick the Great's Prussian Army beat the larger opposing Austrian forces by outflanking and maneuvering them.
There was a lesson to be learned here: Within each of us there are spiritual attractions we have to the Divine - the love, awe and mercy we use in the service of our Creator.
Then there is the pull to the earthly base loves, fears and cynicism within us.
The key to addressing the inner challenges, is to outflank the animalistic urges. Like the troops of Fredrick the Great surrounding and destroying each larger, individual flank of the Austrian army, Avraham der Malach taught that we can use all three of our spiritual drives to isolate a single negative trait. Once isolated, we can refine and uplift it.
When we isolate the problems we need to confront, focus everything we have on an individual issue, we can overcome it.
Based on a handwritten note by Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Lubavitch, with insight and elucidation from Rabbi Shais Taub (see below)
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