Episode 101: Continued - The Meeting of Baruch of Vyazin and Rabbi Shlomo, Head of the Yeshivah

00:01 The story of Rabbi Baruch of Vizhnitz continues. Baruch spent the entire day studying Torah and serving Hashem. For him, this was preparation for the fateful meeting with Rabbi Shlomo, when it would be decided whether he would be accepted as his student. After Maariv, the attendant signaled that it was time to enter the rosh yeshivah’s room, though he had to do so discreetly. Baruch’s heart pounded, but he was immediately reassured when he entered and saw the tzaddik’s friendly expression. Rabbi Shlomo began speaking to him in a warm, fatherly tone. First, he asked which chapters Baruch had studied in Avodas Hakodesh and Reishis Chochmah. Baruch said that in Reishis Chochmah he had studied Shaar Hayirah and reached chapter 14. In Avodas Hakodesh he had already finished all 44 chapters of the second part. Still, Baruch added, despite the effort he had put into understanding what he learned, much remained unclear to him. Then Rabbi Shlomo surprised him. “Tell me now: Does studying several chapters of Avodas Hakodesh and Reishis Chochmah mean one should undertake fasts and self-denial? Who instructed you to do that? Our Sages said, ‘Make yourself a rav,’ so that a person will not act on his own judgment. Things like fasting and self-denial may be the work of the yetzer hara, intended to keep a person from studying Torah and to make him feel that he is a tzaddik.” Rabbi Shlomo continued, “This time I will not object to your fasting for 72 hours straight. But in the future, you must not do so without permission from a qualified rav. Our Sages say,” Rabbi Shlomo went on, “that the yetzer hara is a great craftsman. It entices everyone to go against the will of the Creator, but approaches each person according to his situation and level. So every approach to serving the Creator

02:53 carries a certain danger: however sound the approach may be, the yetzer hara can exploit it to lead a person astray, G-d forbid.” Baruch tried to collect himself. He could clearly see that Rabbi Shlomo knew everything through ruach hakodesh. Rabbi Shlomo spoke as someone who knew Baruch’s thoughts and his entire history. Did he also know what had happened in Vizhnitz? Rabbi Shlomo did not leave him wondering for long. “The way you stood up to the test you faced in the widow’s home, and especially your correct and immediate decision to leave your job there, led the Heavenly Court to rule that your heart had been awakened to serve Hakadosh Boruch Hu in the right way.” Baruch was stunned. Had he really achieved his goal? Rabbi Shlomo continued, “Now it depends on your willingness to accept the conditions I will set out, so that I can guide you in serving Hashem. First and foremost, you must study Torah and daven with a whole and sincere heart, and you must conduct yourself with humility. One essential condition is that no one may know that I study with you—or, for that matter, that you have any special connection with me.” Baruch immediately accepted all the conditions. In Rabbi Shlomo’s yeshivah, it was customary that as soon as a student was privileged to be invited into the gaon’s room for a conversation, all the students, from the most senior to the youngest, would gather around him when he came out and wish him mazel tov. The student was then expected to repeat the Torah teachings he had heard from the rosh yeshivah. Being called into the gaon’s room was rare; some students had studied at the yeshivah for years and had never had that privilege. Baruch’s visit to Rabbi Shlomo was supposed to remain secret, like his first visit. Somehow, though, word got around the yeshivah, and as soon as he came out

05:40 of the rosh yeshivah’s room, all the yeshivah students greeted him with a heartfelt mazel tov. Baruch was taken aback. The students began asking him to repeat the Torah teachings he had heard from Rabbi Shlomo. Baruch did not know what to tell them. He found himself in a very awkward position. Among the students waiting to hear him was the yeshivah’s most distinguished student, Shmuel Gedaliah, the prodigy from Pinsk. It was said that Rabbi Shlomo had more than once honored him with delivering the general shiur to the students. Another distinguished student there was Yechiel Gershon. Baruch clearly remembered how, not long before, Yechiel Gershon had come out of Rabbi Shlomo’s room and all the students had wished him mazel tov. He remembered how Yechiel Gershon had repeated for them the Torah teachings he had heard from Rabbi Shlomo. Now Baruch, too, was being asked to repeat what he had heard, and he had no idea what to do. Meanwhile, the students expressed their great surprise that Baruch, the youngest student in the yeshivah, who had arrived only recently, had already merited a private meeting with the rosh yeshivah. They told Baruch that Rabbi Shlomo had invited new students to see him only a few times. On one occasion, it was an extremely shy student, so shy that he would hide from anyone he encountered. When he emerged from the gaon’s room, he was a different person. It turned out that he had lost both his father and his mother, and that his father had been a great tzaddik. After his meeting with Rabbi Shlomo, the young man became one of the best students in the yeshivah. On another occasion, it was a young man with very poor character traits. He ate and drank to excess, was arrogant and quick-tempered, and also lied. He was highly gifted. After this student went in to see Rabbi Shlomo, he changed completely and became a different

08:14 student. Baruch was caught in a bind. What could he say? He was forbidden to tell the truth about his visit to the rosh yeshivah, but he did not want to lie. What should he do? Baruch thought it over, then told the yeshivah students, who were waiting intently to hear him, that after seeing how great a tzaddik Rabbi Shlomo was, he had felt a strong desire to receive guidance from him on how to do teshuvah and make amends for a sin he had once committed. After much effort, he had managed to meet the gaon privately and hear his words of guidance and rebuke concerning humility and truthfulness, both of which prepare a person to serve the Creator properly. Baruch also shared with the students some ideas from what he had previously studied in Reishis Chochmah and Avodas Hakodesh. The students were deeply impressed. In this way, Baruch managed both to avoid telling a lie and to conceal the special connection that had formed between him and Rabbi Shlomo. When he returned to the beis midrash where he usually slept, Baruch went over in his mind everything he had heard from Rabbi Shlomo. He concluded that he needed to devote himself to cultivating humility and keeping away from falsehood. From Rabbi Shlomo’s words, he gathered that he was still not free of arrogance and falsehood. Our Baruch, Baruch of Vizhnitz, could not understand how those negative traits could still be present in him after he had undertaken so many fasts and endured so much self-denial. So Baruch began berating himself, calling himself a liar and an arrogant man, and shedding many tears as he did so. He gathered the tears in his palms and washed his face with them, to wipe away the traces of his sins that had become imprinted on it. In this, Baruch followed the ways of the mussar adherents of that time. He had heard about it from his older brother, Zalman Leib, who was a man of mussar. He had also once heard about Zalman

10:59 Chaim Shraga, the elderly ascetic, had lived in seclusion for seventy years. When he recited Tikkun Chatzos, he would collect his tears and wash his face with them. Baruch’s own grandfather, the righteous Yisroel Eliyahu, told him that Zalman Chaim Shraga had been known as an ascetic even when Yisroel Eliyahu was a young boy, and everyone regarded him as a holy man. Although he was already extremely old at the time, he looked about sixty. Baruch’s grandfather explained that when a person washes the stains of sin from his face, even at a hundred years old he looks only sixty. The three-day fast Baruch had undertaken was due to end at midday on Friday, erev Shabbos Parshas Bechukosai. The fast had greatly weakened him. Nevertheless, he sat up all Thursday night learning Torah diligently, and on Friday he made the necessary preparations for Shabbos. He sat down to read the weekly parsha, twice in the original and once in translation, with such fervor and devotion that no one could have guessed he had just fasted for three days. It was customary in the yeshivah for Rabbi Shlomo to choose one of the new students each term to serve him in his home. That student would sleep in the rosh yeshivah’s home and eat at his table. On Sunday after Shabbos, Baruch was informed that he had been chosen to serve Rabbi Shlomo for the current term and should report to the rabbi’s home on Tuesday. We can imagine how elated Baruch felt. On the other hand, he was troubled by how he could avoid eating at Rabbi Shlomo’s table, as the other students who served him had done. As we recall, Baruch had resolved from the outset not to benefit from anyone else’s table, but to support

13:29 himself solely through his own labor. Baruch did not know how he could keep to this practice while living in Rabbi Shlomo’s home. On Tuesday morning, Baruch davened Shacharis with the first minyan and hurried straight to the rosh yeshivah’s home, ready to carry out any task assigned to him. Rabbi Shlomo was then about to finish his regular daily study of Mishnah and Gemara, which he studied alone after davening. When it was time for the morning meal, Baruch was not invited to the table. He felt a measure of relief: he understood that his teacher wished to spare him embarrassment and avoid making him do anything against his wishes. This also allowed Rabbi Shlomo to keep his promise to study privately with Baruch the subjects his heart desired, without anyone knowing. Baruch’s stay in the rabbi’s home as his attendant provided a natural cover, since many students before him had served in that role. During this time, Rabbi Shlomo studied many books with Baruch, especially works offering guidance and inspiration in the service of Hashem, ethical conduct, and good character. Baruch still had some money saved from various jobs he had done before coming to Brisk. It covered his essential needs, and even after he gave a tenth of it to tzedakah, he had enough left that he did not have to worry about going without for quite some time. In general, Baruch of Byazin loved solitude and tried to avoid conversation with others. He did, however, study aloud. He had a pleasant voice, and when he learned, it could be heard throughout the beis midrash. As he studied, he liked to explain the sugya to himself with great clarity and precision. The Tannaim and Amoraim seemed to stand alive before him as he discussed Torah with them. He would say each one’s arguments and reasoning aloud and listen to them as though hearing them from the Tanna

16:04 or Amora who had said them. He did the same with his own reasoning, expressing it in a clear voice as though speaking to his imagined companion. Many people liked to find a place some distance away and listen with great interest and enjoyment to Baruch’s debates with the sages of the Talmud and its commentators. Behind Rabbi Shlomo’s house was a garden. Baruch would spend an hour or two there alone each day, settling quietly into one of its corners and becoming absorbed in thought. In truth, he preferred solitude in the fields and forests outside the city, but his new duties did not allow him to go far from his teacher’s home, so he had to remain in the yard. Still, he hoped to find an opportunity to spend a little time alone outside the city. Before long, such an opportunity arose. Rabbi Shlomo took him along to the wedding of the daughter of his younger brother, Rabbi Chaim Yisroel. Chaim Yisroel was the son-in-law of a wealthy leaseholder whose estate lay thirty versts from Brisk. Although many years had passed since his marriage, Rabbi Chaim Yisroel continued to receive his food and support from his father-in-law while devoting himself diligently to Torah study and the service of Hashem. When his daughter reached marriageable age, Chaim Yisroel chose Shmuel Gedaliah—the gifted student of Rabbi Shlomo’s yeshivah whom we mentioned earlier—as her groom. Rabbi Shlomo traveled to Shmuel Gedaliah’s wedding with his niece, accompanied by a group of his students. Baruch was among them at Rabbi Shlomo’s special request. Rabbi Shlomo stayed at his brother’s father-in-law’s estate for ten days. Baruch made use of that time to fulfill his wish to be closer to the G-dly creation he loved so much. Each day, he spent many hours in the fields and forests of the sprawling estate.