Episode 124: Moshe, the Elderly Uncle of Avraham, Recalls the Days of His Childhood, Returning to Judaism and the Observance of Torah and Mitzvos

00:01 We continue with the remarkable story of Tzadok, of Shmuel Tzadok, his son Moshe, his sons Moshe and Yehudah Aryeh, and his grandchildren. At this point, the grandson Avraham Moshe is staying with his great-uncle Moishe on his estate and watching what happens there. After Minchah, Avraham Moshe saw two carriages arrive in his great-uncle’s courtyard, each drawn by four galloping horses. The coachmen and servants seated on the platforms in front and behind were dressed in finery, as was customary among the country’s noblemen. When the carriages stopped at the entrance, the servants, wearing coats with gold buttons, jumped down, opened the carriage doors, and helped the guests, men and women, alight. The guests walked along with their little dogs, which had silver collars around their necks and crimson leashes held by their owners, strutting as they went. A moment later, Avraham Moshe heard his great-uncle’s jubilant voice ordering wine and refreshments to be brought. After an hour, as the evening shadows lengthened, many candles were lit in the large room. The visitors raised their voices in song, reveling and celebrating, drinking and dancing all night and for several hours into the day. When they were all so drunk they no longer knew what was happening to them, their servants and the household servants carried them to their carriages, seated them inside, and drove away. Moishe, the master of the house, was also exceedingly drunk. The sound of his vomiting could be heard from afar. The servants carried him to bed, and he slept until after midday. Avraham Moshe sat in his room and heard all the abominations taking place in that house. He wept bitterly over the fall of his great-uncle’s soul into such depths of mire and foul, stinking filth. At midnight, he recited Tikkun Chatzos with a broken heart over the destruction of our G-d’s House, the exile of the Shechinah, and the lowly state of the Jewish people, and he wept from the depths of his heart. Afterward, he prepared himself for prayer and Torah study, continuing until two hours after midday. When Moishe awoke, he ate breakfast and sat down to study as he did every day, without

03:06 paying any attention to what had happened the night before, for he was accustomed to visits from his noble neighbors from time to time. Among the kabbalistic intentions and unifications of the holy Names that Rabbi Eliyahu Baal Shem had given his student Avraham Moshe was one intention and one unification for the verse in Tehillim, “They shall speak of the memory of Your abundant goodness and sing of Your righteousness.” When one performs this unification with its intention, it awakens the power of memory: the person for whose sake it is performed remembers everything he has seen since the first day he opened his eyes, and everything he has heard since the day he came to understand the language spoken around him. Rabbi Eliyahu Baal Shem instructed his student Avraham Moshe to perform this unification and have this intention when saying the verse “They shall speak of the memory of Your abundant goodness and sing of Your righteousness” after Tachanun and before the psalm “May He answer you” in Shacharis on the second day after his arrival at his great-uncle’s home. Avraham Moshe, of course, carried out every unification and intention exactly as his teacher, Rabbi Eliyahu Baal Shem, had instructed. When he finished his study sessions after davening, Avraham Moshe took the mezuzah Rabbi Eliyahu Baal Shem had given him and affixed it to the first doorway, as he had been told to do. When Moshe saw the mezuzah, his heart grew warm. “It has been about thirty years since I moved from the city to my estate,” he said with great emotion, “and in all that time I have seen neither a mezuzah, nor tefillin, nor a Torah scroll.” Tears streamed from his eyes. “I remember,” Moshe continued, “when I was about three years old, twice each day—when I got up in the morning and before I went to sleep at night—my mother, a most upright woman, would lift me up to kiss the mezuzah on the doorpost. Tears would run down her cheeks. My mother took care to do this every single day. My father would mock her and say, ‘Why are you kissing an animal hide?’

05:57 “When I grew older and was already going to cheder, I would climb onto a chair myself to kiss the mezuzah, and my mother would let me kiss the straps of Father’s tefillin. Once, when my father saw this, he made fun of my mother and said, ‘Is it not enough that you’ve taught him to kiss an animal hide? Now he has to kiss the straps made from an ox or calf as well!’ By ‘him,’ he meant me. He laughed heartily. When my mother heard those words, she would cry.” Avraham Moshe saw that affixing the mezuzah to the doorway had stirred something deep within his great-uncle through his childhood memories. He understood that this was the beginning of the Geulah: with Hashem’s help, his great-uncle’s soul would be redeemed from the forces of evil. He strengthened his hope that Hashem would grant him success. For many hours, Moshe spoke about memories of his childhood, adolescence, and youth. He spoke of his teachers, the great Torah scholars of that generation. The more he spoke, the more deeply moved he became. When he repeated one of the teachings of the great Rabbi Ephraim Luntshitz, author of Olelos Ephraim on ethical teachings, he grew especially fervent. Suddenly he said that these memories had awakened in him a longing to be the Jew he had been then, when his head and arm burned with fervor. He begged Avraham Moshe to give him his tallis and tefillin. He recited the blessings over the tallis and tefillin and davened Shacharis, weeping intensely. Avraham Moshe exerted himself in the unifications and intentions Rabbi Eliyahu Baal Shem had given him. That very day, Avraham Moshe went to the nearby town of Belz, about a parasang from the estate, bought a tallis and tefillin, and brought them to his great-uncle. About a week later, with a Shabbos in between, Moishe dismissed his servants and paid their wages, giving them additional gifts. He left his house, its furnishings, and his estate to the non-Jewish men and women of his household, took his books, and moved to Belz. There he bought a home near the syna-

08:53 gogue, hired a man to help him, and lived as a baal teshuvah. He ate no meat and drank no wine. From the day Moishe arrived in Belz until his final day, some nine months later, he did not speak a single word to anyone. Every week he gave the rabbi a large sum to distribute to charity, and nothing but bread, lukewarm water, and salt passed his lips. A few days before his passing, he gave everything he owned to the rabbi to distribute to charity. This is the story the Baal Shem Tov told the Maggid and Rabbi Chaim Rappaport about the pure soul for whose sake Rabbi Chaim Rappaport had gone into the forest. The Baal Shem Tov continued: For 117 years, the Heavenly Court had sentenced Moshe son of Shmuel Tzadok to severe torment in the furnace of affliction, to bitter and harsh punishments in Gehinnom and the depths below, and to various forms of tossing and upheaval. In the past month of Tammuz, the Baal Shem Tov related, Moshe’s 117-year sentence came to an end. On the appointed day, the words of Torah that Moshe son of Shmuel Tzadok had studied in impurity for about thirty years had to be purified and elevated. “I chose,” said the Baal Shem Tov, “the great scholar, Rabbi Chaim HaKohen of Lviv, to purify what was impure through in-depth study of the first four chapters of the Rambam’s Laws of Blessings and through Minchah.” Satan and his cohorts knew that Moshe son of Shmuel Tzadok’s suffering was nearing its end, and that his Torah teachings would be purified and elevated to holiness through the great scholar Rabbi Chaim HaKohen of Lviv. They did everything they could to disrupt the scholar’s journey. With Hashem’s help, our teacher the Baal Shem Tov turned to the great Rabbi Chaim: “You succeeded in the holy work and merited new insight into the holy Torah and an opening of the heart in the service of the Creator, blessed be He.” “Another great mission was accomplished on this journey,” the Baal Shem Tov told those gathered. “It is related”

11:59 The holy Zohar says, “The lower waters weep: We want to come before the Holy King.” In other words, the lower waters, the waters of this world, weep because they want to be before the Holy King, before Hakadosh Boruch Hu. Ever since Hakadosh Boruch Hu separated the waters from the waters during the Six Days of Creation, all the springs have wept: they want to be before the Holy King. That means they want something holy to be done with them and through them—washing hands before davening, immersion for a mitzvah, immersion for purity before davening or Torah study, washing hands with a blessing that mentions Hashem’s name, or drinking water and reciting blessings before and afterward. Ever since Hakadosh Boruch Hu created the waters and separated the waters from the waters, the lower waters have wept: “We want to be before the Holy King, to serve as instruments of mitzvos, holiness, and purity.” This weeping of the springs can go on for hundreds or even thousands of years, until a Jew passes by, washes his hands and recites the blessing on washing hands, or drinks to quench his thirst and recites Shehakol, and a blessing afterward as well. In the forest near the estate of Moshe ben Shmuel Tzadok, there was a spring that had been weeping for some five thousand five hundred and nineteen years: Why should its lot be any less than that of the other springs? Since Hakadosh Boruch Hu created it, no one had recited a blessing over its waters or used them for holiness and purity. But on that day of the mission, the spring found its salvation through him. The Baal Shem Tov said to the Gaon Rabbi Chaim, “You drank from its waters and washed your hands before Minchah.” This is the meaning of hashgachah pratis: every created thing has its time to be elevated, and a person through whom it will be elevated. And every soul has its own purpose—what it must work on and rectify, and where.