Episode 100: The Meeting of Baruch of Vyazin and Rabbi Shlomo, Head of the Yeshivah

00:01 Young Baruch hears from his friend Yitzchak Shaul the truly fascinating, remarkable story of another Jew named Baruch, whom we call Baruch of Ovizen. Baruch of Ovizen took a job with a widow who had a small trading business near the town of Ovizen. Twice a week he carried produce from her dairy to town and brought goods from town back to the dairy. It was a cold winter day. Baruch had brought the widow’s dairy products to Ovizen and stocked up on goods to take back to her. He reached the widow’s house late at night, tired and chilled to the bone. After resting a little and warming up, he davened Maariv, ate something, and prepared to return to town and spend the night in the beis midrash. The widow told him that it was late and bitterly, dangerously cold outside. It would be better for him to stay the night there and go into town in the morning. Baruch agreed. The widow made up a bed for him. Baruch recited Krias Shema with great concentration and lay down to sleep. But he could not fall asleep. To his great alarm, impure thoughts began troubling him against his will. For the first time in his life, thoughts of sin assailed him—something he had never experienced before. Baruch was seized with fear. He immediately sprang from his bed, rushed out of the house, and began rolling in the snow, only partly dressed, as an act of self-mortification he took upon himself then and there to atone for the sinful thoughts that had entered his mind. Frozen through, he went back inside, dressed quickly, and set off at once for town. He reached the beis midrash where he regularly slept after midnight. There, too, he did not lie down, but began saying Tehillim with tears and supplications. His heart ached that he had let himself be persuaded to sleep in the widow’s house, putting himself in a situation where yichud might be a concern, which had led to thoughts of sin. Baruch resolved to stop going to the widow’s house and to stop working for her. At first he also wanted to confess

03:02 to old Lipa Wolf, but he could not bring himself to do it, so great was his shame. Baruch needed to find a new source of livelihood, and he did so right away. He hired himself out to a villager named Eliyahu Shlomo. Eliyahu Shlomo also ran a dairy farm in a village near Ovizen, and Baruch’s job was again to take dairy products into town and bring goods from town to the village. This time, though, he did not have to carry the loads on his back: Eliyahu Shlomo provided him with a horse and wagon. Two days a week, Sunday and Wednesday, Baruch of Ovizen did the hauling for Eliyahu Shlomo, and on the other days he studied Torah in the beis midrash, day and night. Baruch would have remained content and fulfilled with this way of life. Adding to his satisfaction was the fact that his employer, Eliyahu Shlomo, was apparently a hidden tzaddik. More than once Baruch happened to see him sitting alone in his village home, studying Torah with great diligence. Yet Baruch longed for something beyond studying Gemara—something that would illuminate his soul with a greater light and give him a more open, tangible connection to Hakadosh Boruch Hu, to the Creator. Baruch of Ovizen felt that studying Gemara alone was not enough to serve Hakadosh Boruch Hu. This longing grew especially strong when a book called Avodas Hakodesh came into his hands. It kindled in him a desire to find a more spiritual, purer dimension in serving Hashem. Still, the book did not fully satisfy his longing, so he decided to seek a way to fulfill his deep inner desire. Baruch of Ovizen heard that in Brisk there was a yeshivah led and guided by the great scholar and tzaddik Rabbi Shlomo, where, people believed, he might find what his heart sought. So he set out for Brisk,

05:37 on foot, of course. When Baruch arrived in Brisk, he heard a great deal about Rabbi Shlomo’s yeshivah and the distinctive character of its head. Rabbi Shlomo was known not only for his Torah brilliance, but also for his distinctive path in serving the Creator. Sixty students studied in his yeshivah. All were older than Baruch, and some were already married and supported by their fathers-in-law. When Baruch arrived at Rabbi Shlomo’s yeshivah, he did not at first dare introduce himself to the head of the yeshivah and tell him that he had been drawn there by the distinctive path in serving the Creator about which he had heard so much. Baruch of Ovizen spent several days in the yeshivah without introducing himself to anyone. He found a special room there full of books, including some he had never even heard of. There were not only works of halachah and commentaries on the Gemara, but also works of Jewish philosophy, Kabbalah, and mussar. With his great abilities and diligence, Baruch was thus able to discover new worlds about which he had previously known nothing. Two books he found there made a particular impression on him. One was called HaMefuar, written by the Ri Baretz[?]. The other was Reishis Chochmah, written by Eliyahu de Vidas. These books opened a window for him onto a new world full of light. From the first, HaMefuar, he learned to focus on and carefully pronounce the psalms and prayers, every word and every letter, and to ensure that his prayers came from a pure heart and were spoken clearly, so that they would be worthy of ascending to the Throne of Glory. From the second book, Reishis Chochmah, he learned to serve Hashem in holiness and purity and to refine his character traits. In Rabbi Shlomo’s yeshivah, anyone wishing to be admitted had to be examined by Rabbi Chaim Uri, one of the yeshivah’s heads. Baruch therefore waited for his turn. While he waited, he listened to the classes given in the yeshivah and observed its routines. But most of his time

08:24 in the yeshivah was spent, as we said, in the room crowded with bookcases and shelves laden with books. He could hardly tear himself away from that room for most of the day. It was a small room with two windows, one facing the courtyard and the other the garden. Baruch of Ovizen chose the window facing the garden and would sit beside it for hours at a time, absorbed in one book or another. One day, Baruch was sitting there as usual, deeply absorbed in Reishis Chochmah. The great Rabbi Shlomo, head of the yeshivah, entered the room. Baruch was so engrossed that he did not notice. Suddenly he heard a voice addressing him: “Who are you, young man? And what are you so absorbed in?” Baruch lifted his eyes from the book and saw the head of the yeshivah before him. He was so startled, and so overcome with reverent awe, that he could not speak. It was the first time Baruch had stood face to face with the revered scholar about whom he had heard so much. Baruch of Ovizen was then studying chapter fourteen of Shaar Hayirah in the book we have been discussing. That chapter deals with awe and cites the teaching of the Mechilta on the verse, “And Moshe said: This is the thing Hashem has commanded you to do, and the glory of Hashem will appear to you.” Our Sages, of blessed memory, say of this: Moshe told the Jewish people, “Remove that yetzer hara from your hearts, and all of you be united in awe and in purpose as you sit before Hashem. Just as He is one in the world, so your service before Him should be single-minded.” Reishis Chochmah explains this teaching in light of the well-known idea that a person’s heart has two chambers, one housing the yetzer tov and the other the yetzer hara. It is about this that we were warned, “There shall be no foreign god within you.” What is the foreign god? The one in a person’s heart—the yetzer hara. Therefore, when the yetzer hara is there, every act of service a person performs contains a share

11:09 even to the yetzer hara, and therefore Hakadosh Boruch Hu does not dwell in it. So now comes the warning: your service must be devoted to Him with one heart, without any ulterior motive in serving Hashem. For any such motive becomes the reason for serving Hakadosh Boruch Hu, and that is called a foreign god. These words made a deep impression on Baruch, and he could not immediately take in what Rabbi Shlomo was saying to him. But as soon as he recovered, he answered the head of the yeshiva’s questions about who he was and which book he was studying. Rabbi Shlomo said nothing and left the room. All day, Baruch could not shake the impression left by his first meeting with the revered gaon. That evening, a startling surprise awaited him. Rabbi Avraham Shaul, the yeshiva’s attendant, called him aside and said that the head of the yeshiva, Rabbi Shlomo, was inviting him to his room. He added, however, that the matter had to remain secret. Baruch was stunned. When he entered Rabbi Shlomo’s room, the gaon began questioning him about his knowledge and understanding of Gemara, Rashi’s commentary, Tosafos, and the commentaries of the Rishonim. Rabbi Shlomo tested him on several tractates, and Baruch could tell that he was pleased with his knowledge. Rabbi Shlomo then asked Baruch how he supported himself: did he receive any payment from the yeshiva fund, or did he eat his meals at the homes of local families? Rabbi Shlomo also wanted to know where he slept. Baruch told him that he supported himself through his own labor and slept in the nearby beis midrash. He told the head of the yeshiva why he had come to Brisk: he wanted not only to study Torah, but also to seek a path in serving Hashem. He had already taken upon himself various forms of self-denial, spent many hours in solitude in fields and forests, looked up at the blue sky, and shed many tears. The gaon Rabbi Shlomo listened with interest. Baruch continued

14:12 his story. “For half a year I practiced various forms of self-denial, but this did not interfere with my studies at all. In Rabbi Shaul’s yeshiva in Ovizen, I reached the second table, even though I was the youngest of the students. But,” Baruch told Rabbi Shlomo, “I felt no satisfaction in my soul. My heart drew me toward a new path in serving Hashem. In Ovizen, I found no peace for my soul. The book Maros Elokim came into my hands, and when I studied it, fear came over me. I felt that great secrets were revealed in that book, but I could not grasp them. This distressed me. On the other hand, I was afraid to delve into those secrets, lest I be unworthy of them. I took upon myself further forms of self-denial—fasts and Tikkun Chatzos. I wanted thereby to purify my thoughts of every trace of evil and rise to a level worthy of grasping the secrets in the book.” Baruch of Ovizen went on to tell Rabbi Shlomo how all his efforts to penetrate the book’s mysteries had failed. So he shared his concern with two fellow yeshiva students, and the three of them tried together to grapple with the book’s secrets. All three worked hard to understand its contents, without success. The two friends gave up all hope, but Baruch’s desire to understand the book only grew stronger. He decided to seek a teacher who would lead him into the orchard of its mysteries and teach them to him. Here Baruch fell silent. He looked at the gaon Rabbi Shlomo as though trying to see whether he had said too much. “Please continue your story,” Rabbi Shlomo encouraged him with a warm smile. Baruch continued. “Then I heard about the yeshiva in Brisk, and I also heard about you, our teacher, from whom I could learn what my heart desires and my soul longs to know. I left Ovizen and walked from place to place. I fell ill on the way, but nothing stopped me from continuing until, with Hashem’s help, I arrived here. And now, thank G-d, I am in Rabbi Shlomo’s yeshiva, waiting for the right moment when I will merit to begin learning his path

17:01 in serving the Creator. Even so, I could not bring myself to approach you on my own, until, through Hashem’s kindness, I merited to be called into your private room.” Throughout the time Baruch of Ovizen poured out his heart before Rabbi Shlomo, the head of the yeshiva did not take his eyes off him. It was clear that Rabbi Shlomo was deeply interested in the nature of the young man before him. Baruch himself felt that the gaon’s gaze penetrated the depths of his soul, examining him from head to toe. Would the gaon find him worthy of becoming his student and learning the secrets of the Torah from him? Baruch of Ovizen felt as though his fate hung in the balance. It affected him so deeply that he burst into tears from the depths of his soul. “Why are you crying?” Rabbi Shlomo asked compassionately. “You have reached your goal and set out on the right path in serving the Creator.” Baruch of Ovizen desperately wanted to answer from his heart. He wanted to explain to the head of the yeshiva that he still lacked much to make his soul whole—not only in knowledge, but also in spiritual steadiness and confidence in his path. He sorely needed a guide of Rabbi Shlomo’s stature, someone in whom he had great trust. But his spirit was in turmoil, and tears choked his throat. He could not open his mouth to say a word. After a moment of silence, Rabbi Shlomo told Baruch to come to his room the next day after Maariv. Baruch of Ovizen left Rabbi Shlomo’s room by a back way, so that no one would learn of his visit to the tzaddik. Baruch took upon himself a fast of three full days—seventy-two hours, the numerical value of the word chessed—and prayed to Hakadosh Boruch Hu that he find favor and kindness in the eyes of the gaon Rabbi Shlomo. He also took upon himself a vow of silence and resolved not to sleep during those three days. He spent the night studying Torah and praying in the beis midrash where he usually

19:48 slept. He felt great physical weakness without knowing why. After all, fasting and self-denial were nothing new to him, and he was also accustomed to the hard work by which he supported himself. Baruch relates: “When I began to recite Tikkun Chatzos that night, I felt a kind of numbness in my heart. I exerted myself greatly, and after prolonged effort, I finally felt my heart open to serving the Creator. But from that moment, horrifying images unlike any I had ever seen began to appear before my eyes. When all my efforts to rid myself of the evil thoughts and terrible visions failed, I began pleading with Hakadosh Boruch Hu to take them away. A desperate cry burst from my lips: ‘Oh, Master of the Universe!’ It helped, and from that moment I was completely free of those thoughts. I recited Tikkun Chatzos in tears. In the end, I felt relief. At sunrise I prayed with the vasikin and went outside to rest a little.”