He Wanted a Better Way to Learn the Rebbe’s Maamarim, So He Built One

A new online project is making it easier for Anash to learn all 210 of the Rebbe’s mugah maamarim, the maamarim personally edited by the Rebbe and collected in the Sefer HaMaamarim Melukat series.

The Rebbe Discourse Project is the initiative of R’ Kasriel Warlow-Shill, a businessman originally from Australia who now lives in Efrat, Eretz Yisroel. It began as something personal.

“My original intention was to create a central place where people could keep track of their progress in learning the Rebbe’s maamarim,” he told Anash.org.

“Someone who commits themselves to learning every one of the Rebbe’s mugah maamarim should have a simple way to record which maamarim they have learned, when they learned them, and, by looking at the remaining list, which maamarim they have yet to learn.”

Learners create a free account and get their own progress page. They mark each maamar as learned, with the date recorded automatically, and can add personal notes and insights.

The maamarim are organized by year, starting from 5711, and a community view shows the combined progress of all learners. The site is available in several languages, including Hebrew, English, French and Russian.

As the site took shape, it grew beyond a tracker. “As I developed the website, I realised that there were other opportunities to support this goal,” Warlow-Shill said.

He began exploring adding shiurim from prominent mashpiim and lecturers on the many different maamarim, as well as hosting live shiurim on the site so users can stay updated.

A discussion section called the Beis Midrash lets users post questions, comments and answers on individual maamarim, organized into threads that can be filtered as open or closed. It is also a place for people to share their own resources and engage with each other’s learning.

The site has a lecturers page with public profiles of teachers of Chassidus, and a live calendar of shiurim that displays in the viewer’s own time zone.

Lecturers will be able to attach recorded shiurim and written essays to each maamar, and the long-term aim is to have live shiurim available around the clock, six days a week. The site also helps people find a chavrusa who wants to learn the same maamar.

There is an added bonus for anyone on the fence. Anyone who signs up and genuinely learns all of the maamarim will, bli neder, receive $50.

“The bonus is for those who are on the fence and not sure if they’re ready to commit,” Warlow-Shill told Anash.org, “though I’m sure one who has learned them all will likely have little interest in a reward in olam hazeh.”

Warlow-Shill stressed that he is not seeking donations. “At this stage, I am not looking for financial support. I am looking for people who share this vision and are willing to contribute their knowledge, resources, ideas, shiurim or time to help develop the project.”

“Ultimately, the objective is simple: to make it easier for everyone to learn the Rebbe’s mugah maamarim, to encourage people to undertake the goal of learning all of them, and to build a community that helps one another achieve that goal”, he added.

Those interested can sign up for free at rebbediscourseproject.com.