Episode 34: Asher Yehonasan's Return to Being a Hidden Tzaddik

00:01 The story continues with Yisroel Chaim, his wife, and the hidden tzaddik Asher Yehonasan. While the townspeople were arguing over Asher Yehonasan’s character, he himself returned to his former ways. He lived in the attic beside the beis midrash, where he stayed day and night. Even when he came down to the beis midrash for a short while, he did not speak a single word to anyone. Yisroel Chaim and his wife were among those who believed Reb Asher Yehonasan and what he had told them. They drew encouragement and comfort from his promise that they would be blessed with a son. To avoid committing any sin that might, G-d forbid, cost them the old man’s promise, the couple became more careful to avoid any unkind word or even the slightest wrongdoing, and devoted themselves still more to children, widows, orphans, and people in need generally. Yisroel Chaim and his wife looked for a way to become close to Asher Yehonasan. They wanted to bring him into their home and provide for him generously and with honor. They would also gladly have brought food, clothing, and bedding to his room in the attic to make his stay more comfortable, but they could not make contact with him. When Reb Yisroel Chaim spoke to him, he did not answer. Once, Yisroel Chaim’s wife waited for him as he came down from the attic. When she saw him, she began to cry before him. “Let Asher Yehonasan tell us: What will become of the child who will be born to us, and what will he do? How should I conduct myself during the pregnancy? And how should we treat the child when he is born?” Asher Yehonasan turned his head and went on his way, as though he had not heard her. People who witnessed the incident tried to use what they had seen as proof that the old man was indeed mad. The month of Menachem Av arrived. One morning after davening, while the worshippers were still in the shul, Asher Yehonasan went up to the bimah and, in a voice that rang out as though he had happy news to share, announced, “Fellow Jews! Today I am leaving you. Forgive

03:14 me, all of you, if I have offended anyone or caused anyone pain. I also want to thank the gabbaim and the worshippers for allowing me to stay under their roof for so many years.” He finished speaking and stepped down from the bimah. Many thought that the old man intended to leave Poznań and settle in another city. Asher Yehonasan then left the beis midrash, went into a nearby shop, and bought three candles. Afterward, he brought a barrel and filled it with water. When he had finished, he began to daven Minchah Gedolah at length and with tremendous concentration. His face showed signs of joy as he davened. When he finished Minchah, he approached one of the men sitting and learning in the beis midrash and asked him to go to the chevra kadisha and tell its gabbai that he, Reb Asher Yehonasan, was dying, and that the chevra kadisha should hurry so as not to arrive after his soul had departed. The man ran off in haste and alarm to carry out the errand. Reb Asher Yehonasan, fully alert, approached another man in the beis midrash and handed him the three candles he had bought a short while earlier. He asked that after his soul departed, they lay him on the ground and light the candles, placing one at his head, one to his right, and one to his left. Many young married men were in the beis midrash at the time, engaged in Torah study and davening. When they saw Reb Asher Yehonasan preparing for his passing, they were gripped by fear and dread. They had never seen or heard of such a thing. Some feared that this showed Reb Asher Yehonasan was not in his right mind: by all appearances, he was healthy and sound in every limb, with no sign that he was about to pass away. So they approached him and began arguing that he should stop talking and acting as though his passing was near. The old man said to them pleadingly, “Please, do not waste my time with arguments and disputes. If you help me

06:04 and fulfill my requests, I will still have time to give you a blessing before I part from you.” They immediately left him in peace. Reb Asher Yehonasan sat down and began saying Vidui in a clear, resonant voice. Every word came from his mouth with its full force. The young men fell silent. They watched what he did and hurried to fulfill every request. An hour later, the members of the chevra kadisha arrived. Reb Asher Yehonasan lay down on a bench and asked them to bring him the sack containing his belongings. He took out shrouds and handed them to a member of the chevra kadisha. Then he reached into the sack again and took out a tied bundle. He untied it and took out three gold coins. He gave the money to the gabbai of the chevra kadisha as payment for a burial plot and the burial, and asked them to dig his grave beside the northern fence of the cemetery. The ground there was strewn with rocks, and no one wanted to be buried there, so the chevra kadisha would lose almost none of its usable burial ground. At the same time, it would fulfill his wish to lie alone. “I cannot bear the smell of the dead that comes from their indulgence in food and pleasures,” he said. He designated the rest of the money for tzedakah. Reb Asher Yehonasan folded his clothes and asked that they be sent to his relatives in Prague. He also asked them to remind Yisroel Chaim and his wife that the son who would be born to them should be named after him. He then asked forgiveness from every Jew in Poznań and blessed everyone present. He further requested that they purify his body with the water he himself had prepared and bury him that very day. He called out, “Hear, O Israel, Hashem is our G-d, Hashem is One,” and his soul departed with a faint smile on his lips. News of Asher Yehonasan’s passing and its details spread through Poznań like lightning. No one dared say anymore that the old man had been mad, G-d forbid. Everyone understood that he had been a great hidden tzaddik who had not wished to benefit from

08:58 the world and had sought to conceal his righteousness so that people would not honor him. Because he had instructed them to bury him that same day, immediately after his passing, everyone in Poznań knew that the funeral would take place shortly. No one was willing to miss the funeral of such a tzaddik. Shopkeepers locked their shops, craftsmen put down their tools, teachers dismissed their pupils, and homemakers left their work. Everyone came to the beis midrash where the elderly tzaddik had passed away. Asher Yehonasan’s request before his passing—that Yisroel Chaim and his wife be reminded of the condition he had made with them—brought back to the townspeople’s minds what had happened at the cemetery when the couple’s five-year-old child was buried there. At the time, many had dismissed the old man’s words that the couple would have a son who would live a long life, provided they named him after Asher Yehonasan. Now that incident was seen in a different light, and public esteem for Asher Yehonasan grew still greater. All the streets near the beis midrash filled with people. It seemed that not a living soul had remained anywhere else in the city. The crowds followed the bier in deep mourning and reverence. As the funeral approached the cemetery gates, the sky was suddenly covered with clouds, and to the east it looked especially dark and gloomy. Lightning and thunder began at once. The lightning tore through the dark clouds and dazzled the eyes. The thunder shook the air and deafened the ears. The crowds were shaken by this tremendous, unexpected display of the forces of nature and saw it as a sign from Heaven of the departed man’s exceptional greatness. The grave was dug where he had indicated before his soul departed, and he was lowered into it. After the grave was filled, when the time came to say Kaddish beside the fresh grave, no one knew who would say it. The departed man had no relative or next of kin, and no one dared volunteer to say Kaddish for the tzaddik.

11:30 Suddenly, a man emerged from the dense crowd whom everyone called “the carpenter with the closed eye”; no one knew his name. Fifteen years earlier, he had come to Poznań from far away and begun working as a carpenter. He was a solitary man, and one of his eyes was always closed. Everyone knew him only by his nickname. Now he approached the grave and, without a word, began saying Kaddish. He continued to do so throughout the eleven months of mourning. He would say Kaddish at the Poalei Tzedek shul, where the craftsmen davened, and from time to time he also led the davening. No one asked about his connection to the departed man, and everyone assumed it meant nothing in particular. Several months passed, and Yisroel Chaim and his wife learned that she was pregnant. At first they kept it secret for fear of the evil eye, but after several more months the news began to spread through the city. The people of Poznań remembered the words of the departed tzaddik, Asher Yehonasan, and waited anxiously to see what would happen. On the first anniversary of Asher Yehonasan’s passing, the couple had a son.