Behar: 5782 - Why did Rabbi Akiva's students die? A special story told by Rabbi Avraham Zaltzman, who was a student in Lubavitch, about Rebbetzin Rivkah, the Rebbe Rashab, and the Rebbe Rayatz. Presented by…

00:00 Avraham Salzman once told a story at a farbrengen. When he was a child, before his bar mitzvah, he studied in Lubavitch. There was the zal, where the older students learned, and there were classrooms for the younger children. That was where he studied. He was a mischievous child, and once he and a friend got up to some mischief. The matter reached the Frierdiker Rebbe, who was running the yeshiva in practice, and he expelled them. “You have no place in the yeshiva.” Avraham desperately wanted to return. How could he get the decree reversed? He thought of asking Rebbetzin Rivkah, the Frierdiker Rebbe’s grandmother. She was very devoted to the Temimim, and he would ask whether she could get him readmitted. So he went to her, cried, and told her that he had been expelled and wanted to stay in the yeshiva. Rebbetzin Rivkah told him she could not help, because she did not interfere in yeshiva affairs. “But I can give you some advice. My son, the Rebbe Rashab, comes to visit me every day to see how I am. He makes me a cup of tea. Stand here in the hallway when he comes, and plead with him to let you back into the yeshiva.” That is what he did. He stood in the hallway, and when the Rebbe came, he approached him, began to cry, and pleaded that he wanted to study in Lubavitch but they wanted to expel him. The Rebbe Rashab said to him, “There are many yeshivas. There’s Slobodka and there’s Kamenitz. There are other large yeshivas. Why don’t you go study somewhere else?” He began to cry. No, he wanted Lubavitch specifically—Lubavitch and nowhere else. “All right,” the Rebbe Rashab told him, “we’ll see what can be done.” But he did not move; he just kept standing there. The Rebbe asked him, “Well, what now?” So he

02:01 said, “They want to expel my friend too.” He was asking that his friend not be expelled either. The Rebbe smiled broadly and said, “I’ll see what I can do.” Afterward, he readmitted them to the yeshiva and imposed a penalty: they had to learn chapters of Tanya by heart, among other things. But he let them back in. At that farbrengen, one of the chassidim was sitting there—I don’t remember who it was, perhaps it was the Rebbe from Kotzk [?]. He said to Avraham, “Do you think the Rebbe Rashab let you back into the yeshiva because of your pleading and crying? That was nothing. He let you back because you asked on behalf of your friend. That is what it means to treat one another with respect. You cared about your friend too, and that is why the Rebbe let you back in.”