222. How the Tzadik Knew That One of the Children Who Spoke Yiddish Was Not Jewish

00:16 Shalom aleichem, children. I want to tell you a story from a book called Nachalas Devash, written by a great rabbi named Rabbi Shmuel Friedman. He tells a story that happened in the city of Brody. Brody is in Poland, and a tzaddik, a Rebbe, lived there. His name was Rabbi Shmuel of Brody. People respected him very much and came to him because he was a great tzaddik. One thing he used to do on Shabbos was welcome people who came with their children and test the children on what they had learned during the week. He loved the children. After testing them, he would always give them candies, sweets and fruit. He showed them a great deal of love. Once there was a misnaged there who did not like chassidim. Rabbi Shmuel was a Chassidic Rebbe, and the misnaged wanted to make fun of the tzaddik. Now, Brody was a city where most people were Jewish, and everyone spoke Yiddish. There were also a few non-Jews, but because most people in the city were Jewish and spoke Yiddish, the non-Jews learned Yiddish from them and spoke it too. So even a non-Jew spoke Yiddish there. Now, there was a six-year-old boy, and the misnaged wanted...

01:57 to embarrass the tzaddik, Rabbi Shmuel. The non-Jewish boy was not Jewish, but he knew Yiddish, just as all the non-Jews in Brody did. So the misnaged took the boy and taught him a Mishnah in Bava Kama to recite by heart. When Shabbos came, the children went to Rabbi Shmuel, as they usually did. Each brought his Gemara, and Rabbi Shmuel tested them on what they had learned and then gave them candies and sweets. The misnaged brought the non-Jewish boy to Rabbi Shmuel too. He wanted to see whether Rabbi Shmuel would give him candies and say, “Oh, you learned beautifully.” Then he would tell Rabbi Shmuel, “Aha, he wasn’t Jewish, and you thought he was!” Right? That way, he would embarrass him for giving candies to a non-Jewish boy who had studied Torah. He was not allowed to study Torah; he was not Jewish. So the children came, a whole line of them, and went up to Rabbi Shmuel one after another. He opened the Gemara they brought him, tested them, and then gave them candies. A few minutes later, the misnaged sent the boy in, telling him, “Go into the room with all the other children, and he

03:28 will test you, and then he’ll give you candies.” So the non-Jewish boy thought, “Good, I’ll get candies. He’ll give me candies too, because I know the Mishnah by heart.” But a few minutes later, the boy came out of the room and began to cry. The misnaged asked him, “Why are you crying?” He said, “Because he didn’t pay attention to me. He paid attention to all the other children and tested every one of them. But when it was my turn, he told me to leave, to go outside.” The people were very surprised. That is, Rabbi Shmuel had known through ruach hakodesh that this boy was not Jewish. That was why he had not tested him or given him candies: the boy was not supposed to be there. So they asked Rabbi Shmuel, “How did you know? You must have ruach hakodesh.” He said, “No, no, no.” He was [unclear], and he did not want to say that he had ruach hakodesh. He said, “It’s very simple. All the Jewish children, when they learn Gemara, when they recite it, sway back and forth. You know how they sway.” Right? Like people do when they daven or learn Torah. When a Jew learns Torah or davens, he moves his body back and forth. We call it “shuckling”—swaying. He sways, right? He moves back and forth. Why do we do that? The Rebbe explains in a sicha that a Jew has a soul, and the soul

04:57 always becomes very excited when it feels Hashem’s presence. When a Jew learns Torah, the soul suddenly feels Hashem’s presence, because Hashem is in the Torah. Hashem put Himself into the Torah. So when a Jew learns Torah, the soul feels Hashem’s presence and becomes so excited that it starts to tremble. That is why the body also starts moving back and forth. There is another reason people sway back and forth when they daven and learn. At the Giving of the Torah, the Jews heard all Ten Utterances—the Ten Commandments, right? And they trembled with fear. When they heard the Torah from Hashem, their bodies trembled. That is why, when we learn Torah, we sway our bodies back and forth. There is also a verse about davening: “All my bones shall say.” It says that when we learn—when we daven—we should daven with all our bones, with all our limbs, with our hands and feet. The whole body should tremble when we—when we daven to Hashem. But Rabbi Shmuel said, “All the Jewish children, when I test them and ask them to read the Gemara, begin swaying back and forth like Jews. When this boy came to me and I asked him to recite, he stood perfectly still. He just recited the Mishnah without moving. That’s how I knew he couldn’t be a

06:22 Jewish boy.” Because a Jewish child would immediately become excited, and his body would begin to sway back and forth.