Episode 18: The Rescue of Dovid from the Priest's Clutches

00:01 Gershon Yitzchak was under tremendous pressure. His son was in the priest’s hands. He and his wife were themselves in danger of being forced into servitude to the landowner. He had a very large debt to pay the landowner. It was a harsh winter, with frost all around. There was no one in sight who could help him. We continue the story from the Frierdiker Rebbe’s Sefer Hazichronos. Gershon Yitzchak had only a short time to give the landowner the money. But where could a poor, destitute man like him get such a large sum? He decided to sell the tavern he owned, but he needed to find a buyer. A wealthy non-Jew in the village was very eager to buy it. The amount he was willing to pay for the tavern, however, was too small to cover the debt. Gershon Yitzchak began putting all his household belongings up for sale. Naturally, he had to sell them for next to nothing. He did it all to raise cash as quickly as possible, so he could redeem his son Dovid and save him from being forced to convert. The wealthy non-Jew took possession of the tavern even before Gershon Yitzchak and his family left the village. But he did not know how to run the business. Within a few days, he realized that he had sold all the stock without making even a penny of profit. If Gershon Yitzchak had no longer been there, well, the non-Jew would not have been able to back out of the deal. But since the Jew was still in the village, he hurried to him, accused him of cheating him, and demanded his money back. Gershon Yitzchak, of course, refused. In truth, he argued, the non-Jew had gotten the tavern at a bargain price, far below its value, and his losses were entirely his own fault for not knowing how to run the business properly. But the priest incited the non-Jew to insist on canceling the deal. The priest’s intention

02:58 was to prevent Gershon Yitzchak from obtaining the money needed to redeem his son from the landowner and save him from conversion. The priest told the non-Jew that he should never have paid anything for the tavern: the Jew would have to leave the village anyway and abandon all his property. The deal, he said, had to be canceled whether the Jew liked it or not. If he would not agree willingly, the non-Jew should beat him soundly until he got his money back. The non-Jew did as the priest instructed, and Gershon Yitzchak was forced to give him back all the money, after all the stock had already been squandered. Gershon Yitzchak and his wife sat there, distressed and in pain, not knowing where help would come from. Suddenly, an idea flashed through Gershon Yitzchak’s mind: Yaakov Karpil, who lived in Shari. Gershon Yitzchak knew Yaakov Karpil well from his business visits to the village. On every visit, Yaakov Karpil would stop at Gershon Yitzchak’s home. Gershon Yitzchak knew what a kind heart Yaakov had and that his business had prospered. Following Hirsch Leib’s guidance, Yaakov Karpil had set aside time to teach Gershon Yitzchak a little Torah. But in this, he had met with no success: he could not get any of it into Gershon Yitzchak’s head. “My head can’t take in those little letters,” Gershon Yitzchak would say. “I’ve been an ignoramus all my life, and apparently I’ll stay one.” Now Gershon Yitzchak wondered why he had not thought of Yaakov Karpil sooner. He was the one person who could rescue him from his predicament. With winter at its height, the journey to Shari would not be easy. Gershon Yitzchak began preparing for the trip, but then, as if by the work of the Satan, armed guards sent by the landowner appeared at his home as soon as he finished his preparations. They told him they had been ordered to guard him from then on so he could not flee the village. Now he could not even

05:32 leave the house. How would he make the trip to Shari? The guards assigned to watch him were old acquaintances of his. He explained his problem to them: he had planned to visit a close friend and obtain the money, but with guards posted over him, he could not go. One of the guards advised him to go to the landowner, explain the situation, and ask permission to travel to Shari. Gershon Yitzchak took the advice and hurried to the landowner’s house. The moment he entered, the landowner attacked him and beat him cruelly. “This is just an excuse to find a way to escape!” he shouted. Gershon Yitzchak did not back down. He suggested that one of the guards accompany him. The landowner softened and eventually agreed. Gershon Yitzchak set out with a guard at his side. When he reached Yaakov Karpil and told him of his plight, Yaakov quickly consulted his wife. They immediately decided to gather together all their assets to provide the money needed to redeem the boy. Unable to raise the entire sum himself, Yaakov Karpil turned to other Jews in the town so they, too, could take part in this great mitzvah. He then took out a loan to make up the difference. Once he had the full amount, he accompanied Gershon Yitzchak back to his village. When they reached the tavern, Gershon Yitzchak’s wife greeted them with terrible cries. She had learned that the priest had beaten Dovid again for refusing to eat non-kosher food and, as punishment, had thrown him into the pigsty. The priest had declared that he would make Dovid convert no matter what, whether Dovid wanted to or not. Gershon Yitzchak hurried straight to the landowner’s house, money in hand, and paid him for the vineyard as well as the interest. He demanded that his son be returned to him. The landowner replied with cruel sarcasm that there was nothing he could do: the boy was already in the priest’s custody, and the priest was preparing him

08:00 for conversion. Seeing that all his efforts had been in vain, Gershon Yitzchak and his wife burst into wails. They began tearing at their hair. An uproar broke out in the house, and the landowner’s servants fell upon the couple and beat them. The two returned home empty-handed, battered and bruised. When Yaakov Karpil learned what had happened, he began devising a way to get Dovid out of the priest’s hands. He had many acquaintances among the village’s non-Jews, people with whom he had done business for years. Some of them were friendly toward Jews. Sympathy for Gershon Yitzchak was growing in the village. Many shared in his sorrow and recognized the wrong the priest had done to the Jews in general. In their view, he had gone especially far by imprisoning Dovid and trying to force him to convert against his will. Yaakov Karpil approached the landowner’s son, the young landowner, who had always been sympathetic to the Jews, and poured out his heart to him. “Look,” he said, “at how hard I worked to provide Gershon Yitzchak with the means to pay your father the debt and the interest, all to save his son from conversion. Yet your father claims that the boy is already in the priest’s custody and that he can do nothing. Is the priest trying to persuade Dovid with words and explanations? No—with force and coercion. He is abusing him and beating him mercilessly. This is an unforgivable crime. It is your duty as a human being to see that Dovid is returned to his parents.” The young landowner used all his powers of persuasion, drew on public opinion, and succeeded in forcing the priest to return Dovid to his parents. Dovid’s appearance when he was brought home was heartbreaking. His whole body urgently needed bandaging, and he needed medicines to restore his strength. Yaakov Karpil took Dovid to his home in Shari and gave him good food and rest. Once Dovid had recovered, he sent him to Borisov to learn Torah in the yeshiva there.

10:40 Meanwhile, because of the situation, Yaakov Karpil fell deeply into debt. To raise the money, he sold everything he had accumulated over the years, but he did not regret it. On the contrary, he was filled with joy at the great privilege of saving a Jewish soul from forced conversion and an entire family from disaster. No one in town knew about it, because Yaakov Karpil kept it secret. And so Yaakov Karpil and his wife, Tzipa Bracha[?], of the small town of Shari, remained mired in debt after taking upon themselves the burden of redeeming twelve-year-old David from forced conversion and freeing his father, Gershon Yitzchak, from his debt to the cruel landowner. The couple complained to no one. They were content to have fulfilled a mitzvah for its own sake, without seeking any reward. After a short time, Yaakov Karpil fell ill. This drew the childless couple even deeper into debt. His illness grew so severe that people cried out for his recovery before the open Aron Kodesh and added the name Chaim to his name. The couple accepted everything with love and never, G-d forbid, questioned the ways of Hakadosh Boruch Hu. Yaakov Karpil concealed his difficult circumstances even from his teacher, Hirsch Leib. In those days, guests began appearing frequently in the town, unlike the ordinary travelers who happened to pass through. They stayed in the beis midrash where Hirsch Leib studied, ate and slept. No one imagined that they were among the hidden tzaddikim, or that their visits to Hirsch Leib, who was himself a hidden tzaddik, were meant for discussing various secret matters. These guests followed Hirsch Leib’s example. They accepted no one’s hospitality, whether for food or lodging. They befriended ordinary people and told them how courageous Jews had stood firm in times of persecution without deviating in the slightest from Torah and mitzvos,

13:29 and from time to time the guests would teach the people verses of Torah and sayings of our Sages. These guests, the hidden tzaddikim, were disciples of the leaders of the fellowship of hidden tzaddikim: first Rabbi Adam Baal Shem of Ropshitz, and after him Rabbi Yisroel Baal Shem Tov of the town of Okop. The fellowship’s mission was to spread the new path, the path of Chassidus, with each member assigned a particular mission to carry out during his travels. These hidden tzaddikim needed no one’s help, since all their needs were met by a common fund established for that purpose and overseen by the fellowship’s leaders. The town of Shari was chosen as a secret meeting point where the hidden tzaddikim would gather and from which they would set out on their missions to establish the teachings of Chassidus. Chassidus was then only beginning to spread, and exceptional individuals were continually being drawn to it. To the masses, though, it remained a mystery.