How the Previous Lubavitcher Rebbe Turned Prison Into a Path to Redemption

In a deep teaching released for 12 Tammuz, the Chabad “Festival of Redemption,” speaker Rabbi Asher Farkash explains the inner meaning of hardship through Chassidic thought. The article focuses on the Previous Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneerson, and the idea that in this generation the central spiritual task is not only refinement, but confronting trials that confuse and try to break a person.

According to the teaching, the way to face such tests is not by fighting them head-on or entering into argument, but by awakening the person’s inner Jewish core. The message is summed up in the resolve, “I am a Jew and nothing will move me.”

The article also stresses the Chassidic idea that the Hebrew word for trial, “nisayon,” is related to “nes,” a miracle or banner, meaning that the challenge itself can become a force for elevation. In that framework, what looks like a wall or a collapse can actually conceal the greatest strength.

The lesson is tied directly to the Rebbe’s imprisonment and eventual release, presented here as an example of how redemption can emerge from confinement. The teaching asks readers to understand difficulty not as senseless suffering, but as a spiritual opportunity that can lift a person higher.