Episode 33: The Amazing Story of Rabbi Asher Yehonasan

00:01 To help us understand the stories, which sometimes go into details that take us across different times and places, let me explain something. Reb Moshe, the former head of the Pozna community and the Alter Rebbe’s grandfather, was, as we know, a descendant of the Maharal of Prague. We have told several stories about him recently. When he was young, he studied under a Jew named Asher Yehonasan, who was known as “the Iron Head.” This Asher Yehonasan, Reb Moshe’s teacher, was the son of a Jew named Yisroel Chaim. So we have Yisroel Chaim; his son Asher Yehonasan, known as the Iron Head, was also Moshe’s teacher. Our Moshe—the grandson of the Maharal and the Alter Rebbe’s grandfather. Now that we have that straight, let’s continue our story. We remember that a Jew named Rabbi Dovid passed away in a village called Eretz HaChaim. His widow, Tzviyah, sold his property there and settled with her son Kaddish in Pozna, where her brother-in-law Rabbi Boruch, her late husband’s brother, lived. She used the money she received for Rabbi Dovid’s property in the community of Kabbalists at Eretz HaChaim to establish herself and Kaddish there. Her brother-in-law was known throughout the area as “Rabbi Boruch the Idler.” Rabbi Boruch was no idler at all. Besides his greatness in Torah and righteousness, he was a major merchant and a wealthy man. Among scholars he was known as a genius; in the business world, as a successful merchant. Rabbi Boruch was also a man of fine character and an easygoing temperament. Scholars, merchants, and ordinary Jews alike were fond of him and held him in high esteem. Rabbi Boruch welcomed his widowed sister-in-law and her orphaned son warmly and with great care, and made sure they were well settled in their new home. He put the widow Tzviyah in touch with another woman and set up a joint business for them

03:19 selling women’s clothing. This assured both of them a respectable livelihood. Rabbi Boruch enrolled the orphaned boy Kaddish in a good yeshiva, made sure he had a good study partner, and also set a daily Gemara study session with him himself. Kaddish had already excelled in his studies in the community of Kabbalists, both in Gemara and in Kabbalah, and he soon impressed the heads of the yeshiva as well as his uncle Rabbi Boruch. His success in learning was extraordinary. Rabbi Boruch’s own son, Binyamin, who was a little younger than Kaddish, lagged far behind his orphaned cousin in his studies, his behavior, and his character. On the advice of the Baal Shem of Zamosc [?], Rabbi Boruch sent his son Binyamin to a yeshiva in Prague, while he himself devoted himself to nurturing his nephew. From his uncle Rabbi Boruch, Kaddish learned details about his late father’s family and about other well-known figures in Pozna. Kaddish was especially affected by the story of Reb Moshe, the head of the Pozna community whom we spoke about earlier. Rabbi Boruch later gave his daughter Rachel in marriage to Reb Moshe’s son Shimon Zalman. As we related, Reb Moshe had been a student of the gaon Rabbi Asher Yehonasan, known as the Iron Head. Rabbi Asher Yehonasan was himself the son of a Jew named Yisroel Chaim. Yisroel Chaim was distinguished more for his good deeds than for his scholarship, and Kaddish heard from his uncle Rabbi Boruch the story of Yisroel Chaim and how his son came to have his unusual name. Rabbi Yisroel Chaim was not one of Pozna’s prominent figures. The city was full of sages and scholars. Nevertheless, everyone spoke highly of him because of his good deeds, especially the affection and close attention he gave the city’s young children—the children learning Torah. Every Friday, before the children were dismissed from their cheders, Yisroel Chaim would come to each cheder and hand out sweets, cookies, raisins, and almonds, telling the children

06:19 that these were in honor of the holy Shabbos. At the same time, he would remind them to come to shul for Kabbalas Shabbos and, in the morning, for Shacharis and Musaf. Yisroel Chaim would be the first to arrive at shul. He would gather all the children around him and make sure they said “Boruch Hu u’voruch Shemo,” “Amen,” and Kedushah out loud, responded to Borchu, recited Shema, and took part in the davening as much as they could. When a woman in the city gave birth, Yisroel Chaim would take the children to her home to recite Shema Yisroel. He also made sure that the little children wore head coverings from their earliest years and behaved as Jews should. Whatever the parents and teachers had not managed to do in educating the children, Yisroel Chaim would complete with great love and with joy at the tremendous privilege of educating Jewish children and raising them to be good, G-d-fearing Jews. This was true of children whose parents were alive, but also of children who, sadly, had lost theirs. To those orphans, Yisroel Chaim was a father too. He and his wife cared for such children with great devotion in every area of their lives, and treasured them as the apple of their eye. But there was a painful contrast: Yisroel Chaim and his wife had not been able to raise their own children. None had survived. Every child born to them passed away soon afterward, may we be spared. Nothing they did to avert the harsh decree helped. The couple did not question the ways of Hakadosh Boruch Hu, and bore their pain with quiet inner strength. Whenever such a tragedy struck, they would say, “Hashem gave, and Hashem took away; blessed be the name of Hashem.” One of Yisroel Chaim’s children, a son named Simchah, lived to the age of five. His parents hoped that at least this child would live a long life, but little Simchah, too, fell ill when he was five and passed away. It happened on a Friday. So that day Yisroel Chaim did not go, as he usually did,

09:19 to the cheders. Instead, he went to his child’s funeral. All of Pozna was plunged into sorrow. Yisroel Chaim and his wife were known and loved in the city, and every resident’s heart went out to them. It was a funeral attended by a great crowd. All the people of Pozna, from the greatest Torah scholars to the simplest folk, took part. Tears could be seen in every eye. Only Yisroel Chaim and his wife held firm and accepted Hashem’s will with love. Among the large crowd accompanying the child to the cemetery, hardly anyone noticed an old man named Asher Yehonasan, whom everyone regarded as mad. Had this not been such a heartrending funeral, there surely would have been people who tried to mock the mad old man. Asher Yehonasan was very old. He had arrived in Pozna many years earlier and taken up lodging in the beis midrash. No one paid him any attention. He would daven with the first minyan, at sunrise. Afterward, he would climb up to a storage space built into the ceiling of the shul and remain there the whole time. No one knew what he did there, and no one bothered to find out. No one knew what he lived on, either, and that interested no one. He never asked anyone for food and never ate at anyone’s table, not even on Shabbos or Yom Tov. He did not speak to anyone at all. When someone addressed him, he would look at the person in puzzlement, turn his head, and say nothing. Everyone assumed he was witless and mad. As we said, Asher Yehonasan had arrived in Pozna about fifty years earlier. At the time, he was thought to be around forty. In those days, a bitter dispute was raging in the Jewish world between a number of great Torah scholars and Rabbi Eliyahu Baal Shem of Worms over the study of Kabbalah. Pozna, like all the communities, was divided into two camps. Even

12:09 No one imagined that the strange visitor who had come to Pozna and immediately begun behaving so oddly was connected in any way to this dispute, which in fact formed the background and prelude to the emergence of Chassidus. Before long, everyone decided that Asher Yehonasan was simply mad. In time, they grew used to his presence and his behavior and stopped paying him any attention. So it is no wonder that no one thought anything of it when ninety-year-old Asher Yehonasan came down from his attic and attended the funeral of Simcha, the five-year-old son of Yisroel Chaim, which took place that Friday afternoon, as we said. People were under pressure as Shabbos drew near, and hardly noticed the old man’s presence at all... Those accompanying little Simcha’s coffin reached the cemetery and gathered around the open grave. As the small body was lowered into the grave, everyone wept bitterly. Only the child’s parents, Yisroel Chaim and his wife, stood silently, accepting Hashem’s judgment with extraordinary strength of spirit. “True,” they said, “we thought we would merit to lead our child to the chuppah. But since Hakadosh Boruch Hu decreed that we should lead him to the grave, we must accept His will with love. Hashem gave and Hashem took away. May the name of Hashem be blessed.” But some in the crowd grumbled and questioned Hashem’s ways. Did people like Yisroel Chaim and his wife deserve such a punishment? Then, completely unexpectedly, the elderly Reb Asher Yehonasan—whom everyone regarded, as we said, as a man who had lost his senses—pushed through the wall of people surrounding the grave. He stood beside the freshly dug grave and raised his hands to quiet the crowd. “Gentlemen,” he announced, “please listen to what I have to say.” With growing astonishment, everyone turned their eyes and ears toward him and waited intently to hear what the strange old man would say... Asher Yehonasan continued: “For some fifteen years, the adversary, Satan, has been envious of Reb Yisroel Chaim the shopkeeper,

15:13 because of his good conduct and because he is a man of integrity and uprightness who fears G-d. What particularly angered him was Yisroel Chaim’s practice of devoting himself to the young schoolchildren and watching over them and their proper conduct. He was terribly afraid that, as a result of Yisroel Chaim’s work, Satan’s livelihood would suffer, and that in the end the good deeds of young and old would outweigh their sins. Satan appeared before the Heavenly Court and demanded permission to subject Yisroel Chaim to severe trials, to see whether he would still hold fast to his integrity. He demanded that Yisroel Chaim and his wife be made to suffer anguish over their children in the most terrifying and painful way, to test whether his faith in the Master of the World and his good deeds would remain as they had been before.” Here Asher Yehonasan paused his torrent of words, as though he needed to catch his breath after a great effort, and then continued: “I am ninety-four years old today. In two months I will leave this world, and I promise that in the World of Truth I will summon the adversary who has caused Yisroel Chaim and his wife so much sorrow and suffering. I will call him to a din Torah, because his accusation against these G-d-fearing, upright people was unjust. I will speak on behalf of Yisroel Chaim and his wife and work to see that Hakadosh Boruch Hu blesses them with a son who will live a long life, be endowed with great talents, and become a great figure among the Jewish people. But there is one condition: the son born to them must be named after me, Asher Yehonasan.” Old Asher Yehonasan finished his astonishing words and stepped away from the grave. The crowd remained where it stood, stunned and open-mouthed. The people were deeply bewildered, not knowing what to make of what they had heard. Had these words been spoken by a madman, Heaven forbid, or by a holy tzaddik who had concealed his righteousness from everyone until now? For a long while, they looked at one another in silence. Yisroel Chaim and his wife, too, were deep in thought. Eventually, the burial was completed.

17:57 The mourners and those who had accompanied them each returned home. All of Pozna, young and old alike, was now talking about what had happened at the cemetery. As usual, details upon details were added to the account of the event as it had actually occurred. Additions were made to Reb Asher Yehonasan’s words as well. The community split into two camps. Some were convinced that Reb Asher Yehonasan was a hidden tzaddik. Others argued that he was simply a madman whose words should not be taken seriously. Those who believed in him recounted wondrous stories and miracles about him, as well as his extraordinary Torah learning and his greatness, both revealed and hidden.