The Kid Who Put a Cat in an Aron Kodesh

Welcome to our weekly Mitzvah Shabbos program.

Since we're getting closer to the end of the summer — there's still a couple weeks left, but we're getting closer — we're getting close to the beginning of the year. Children are going back to Chadorim, to Yeshivas. So I want to share with you notes written by Rabbi Mindel. He wrote things down that he heard from the Frierdiker Rebbe about chinuch. You know, he was with the Frierdiker Rebbe all the time, so we can learn a lot from the notes that he wrote down.

Rabbi Mindel writes in Hebrew that the Frierdiker Rebbe said: if parents would take this to heart, and also teachers, but for the children — we would have nachas from children, and there would be kibbud av v'eim. Kavod es avicha — a prophet said, "Honor the father that is within you" — v'es imecha, and the mother. If you honor your father and mother, then the children will see honor where you are. The children see.

Same thing also with teachers. Honor the teacher. You have a zechus — you're doing holy work — but honor the teacher. Don't tell the children in school not to speak in davening, and then go to shul and the children see that you don't behave the same way. Honor the teacher. A teacher is a teacher 24 hours a day, not only during school time. A mother is not only a mother when she has to give the children food — when she goes shopping, she's a mother; whatever she does, she's a mother; he's a father.

So there was a story — that's what I heard — by the Rebbe Rashab of Lubavitch. There was a bochur. He was a troublemaker, a big troublemaker. He didn't let other kids learn. The Rosh Yeshiva told him many times, "You have to behave, otherwise you can't be in Yeshiva. This is a place to learn." But sometimes he listened, sometimes he didn't listen.

One time the bochurim were sitting and learning. All of a sudden they heard noise in the Aron Kodesh — a lot of noise. What can make noise in the Aron Kodesh? The Aron Kodesh is made to be a holy, safe place. So they opened up the Aron Kodesh, and they saw a little cat running around inside. Shver chok — how did the cat get into the Aron Kodesh? So they figured out it was probably this boy. He wanted to disturb people from learning, so he put a cat inside to disturb their learning.

Anyway, the kids found out and asked him, and he said, "Yeah, I did it." This was a terrible thing. So the Yeshiva said, "You have to leave, you cannot stay in Yeshiva." In those days in Lubavitch, before they could tell a child to leave, they had to ask the Rebbe Rashab, or tell him, or ask his permission.

So they went over to the Rebbe Rashab at the Yeshiva and told him the whole story of what happened. The Rebbe said, "Before you send him out, I want to talk to him. Call him over to me." They called him over, and the Rebbe Rashab asked him, "Did you put the cat in the Aron Kodesh?" He said, "Yeah." So the Rebbe told him, "Do you know that they want to send you out of Yeshiva?" He said, "Rebbe, if they send me out, they send me out — and they'll send my children out of Yeshiva, and they'll send my grandchildren out too."

When the Rebbe heard that this boy, the troublemaker, understood and realized that if he's out of this Yeshiva it's for generations and generations, he didn't want that. The Rebbe Rashab said, "He's staying." And later on he became one of the biggest Chassidim — a big Chassid.

Then Rabbi Mindel told me — that's where he heard it, I don't know from where — that the Rebbe Rashab called over the Yeshiva, or some teachers, and said, "If you would have been a better dugma chaya, he wouldn't have done those things. If you would have known how to handle children, he wouldn't have done this." That means it depends a lot on the principal, it depends on the teachers. What's happening — the achrayus is on the parents and on the teachers.

Then he wrote down here — these are notes of what the Frierdiker Rebbe told him. Some were written down later, I saw, but this is what he wrote down: that in a home in Europe, a child didn't have to learn in school that a Yid, a Jew, has to put on tefillin, or tzitzis, or keep Shabbos, or kashrus, or anything that a Yiddishe home does — children saw everything in the house. The father put on tefillin. They saw the mother light candles, and the way she lit candles. They saw the father going to shul every day. A father was busy with mitzvos, with Yomim Tovim.

But in America, the parents are so busy making a living — machen a leben — that the fathers who do daven, daven early in the morning while the children are still sleeping. This is what the Frierdiker Rebbe was saying. So a child never sees a father put on tefillin, because the father has to go make a living. That's what the Frierdiker Rebbe was saying then. So the child never saw the father in shul — the only time he saw him go to shul was on Shabbos; on weekdays, never. So he doesn't know. In general, the entire chinuch is in the hands of the teachers now in America. So the mechanchim, the Frierdiker Rebbe said, have a big responsibility, a big job.

This is what the notes say the Frierdiker Rebbe said, and he was speaking to Mindel. Years ago, he said, a father was busy before Sukkos, before Pesach, before Chanukah. Before Sukkos, you saw the father — what was he busy with? Sukkos is coming, after Yom Kippur he's putting up the schach, he's busy with the sukkah. That was his life — ma'asik with the lulav. Chanukah, the Frierdiker Rebbe said, he's busy making the wicks to get ready. Children learned about it before Chanukah. So Chanukah was something special — why? Because they saw the parents. I mean, nowadays — he didn't say this part, but I know — nowadays parents don't even do that. Parents go to the store and buy ready-made oil, ready-made wicks. The children don't even know the chinuch of making things for Chanukah.

The same thing also with Pesach — bedikas chametz. Children used to get ready for bedikas chametz. The father used to go with them and put out ten crumbs. Nowadays — I'm telling you — nowadays you go to the store, for two dollars fifty you can buy the crumbs already made, and you put them on the table. Children who came here lost what they had in Europe. In Europe, fathers told children stories of Rabbi Chaim [?]. That hominess is not here.

A Shabbos table, a Shabbos dish — the father comes home late on Friday, and the children are running around. In Europe, in Poland, every year they had respect for a Torah Jew, for a Yiddishe man, for a Jew of mesiras nefesh. But the children and grandchildren who came to America right away became Americanized — that a businessman, or a rich person, or a tummler, became more important than a Jew who learns Torah and keeps Shabbos. A Jew who lacks in Torah became more important, he writes. But a Yid whose middos and mitzvos are lacking a little — they don't look up to him in America, because when they came to America, they saw what America was. It became modern — they trimmed the beard. They had more respect for a person of money than for a regular person.

[The following section is somewhat unclear in meaning as spoken:] True American Jews value stock and wealth, he was saying, but this is not everything — we have to become truly... admire people who show restraint, who don't eat too much meat and sauce. Money must not be what impresses people. To be religious — parents should eat with their children. When you eat with the children, you should talk about what they are eating, put interest in the food, and when the children see that, they will grow up the way they are supposed to.

Now, the Frierdiker Rebbe was saying here — he writes down about money, that people should speak about the truth. Keep shop... women in those days shouldn't carry pocketbooks [unclear]. A rabbi, a spiritual leader, can demand from the people to keep kosher, to eat the right food — he's a spiritual leader, he's allowed to even give mussar. But in America, the leaders in the shul don't speak about these things. They speak about everything else — they even make jokes — but not about [unclear].

The difference between a European Jew and an American Jew, he writes, is that in Europe, if someone couldn't learn, he at least wanted a son-in-law who was a lamdan. Here in America, they are not lacking for a son-in-law who's a lamdan — they're looking for a son-in-law who has a lot of money, or who makes a lot of noise, not a Ben Torah. If he gets married, at least he has a son-in-law — and this is the coldness of America.

And this reminds me of parshas Eikev, where it says "midbar gadol v'nora, nachash saraf v'akrav v'tzimaon, asher ein mayim" — a great and awesome desert, with snake, serpent, and scorpion, and thirst, where there is no water. If you look at it, there's something very interesting — our Rebbe, I think it's in Likutei Sichos, explains about "midbar gadol v'nora."

The Mishnah says that when a person is standing in davening — b'amidah — and a snake winds around his feet, he should continue. But if a scorpion winds around his feet, he has to stop. What's the difference? They can both kill. The poison of a snake gives heat to a person — the person becomes hot. The poison of a scorpion, an akrav, is cold.

When a person is standing in the Amidah and in the middle of davening he gets worldly desires, ta'avos, in his mind — don't worry. You have a ta'avah? So through davening you'll turn the ta'avah into a good ta'avah, a ta'avah for Torah, for mitzvos. But when there's coldness — an akrav — when a person is standing in the Amidah and all of a sudden there's apathy, coldness to Torah and mitzvos, that's much worse. And that's America.

When the Frierdiker Rebbe came to America, he said, "America is a stick of ice, and we came to break the ice of America" — the coldness. That's much worse — the akrav is much worse, and that's what we have to get rid of.

And this is one of the things that Rabbi Mindel wrote down that he heard from the Frierdiker Rebbe — I think it was in a sicha, or also the Frierdiker Rebbe told him these things directly. So I wanted, since this is parshas Eikev, which speaks of the nachash and the akrav, to mention this. Next week we'll continue our weekly program. Thank you.