Chapter 161: Rabbi Baruch Mordechai in Yechidus with the Alter Rebbe

00:01 We continue the story of Rabbi Baruch Mordechai of Bobruisk—an amazing story about an amazing chossid. Knowing how strongly the great Torah scholars of Vilna opposed the teachings of the Baal Shem Tov of Mezhibuzh, the Maggid of Mezritch, and his disciples, the holy fellowship, Rabbi Baruch Mordechai was surprised that in Slutsk people spoke of the Baal Shem Tov with such great reverence. They related that the Baal Shem Tov had attended the dedication of the large beis midrash and the yeshiva established by the two sons of Rabbi Baruch of Mezhibuzh. They even pointed out a large stone near the beis midrash on which the Baal Shem Tov had stood while delivering a Torah teaching. When Rabbi Baruch Mordechai reached Minsk, he became acquainted with a group of Chabad chassidim who had their own minyan, where they davened and studied. Among them he found young married men who were great Torah scholars and people of fine character. Many times he saw these chassidim accept insults without insulting anyone in return, and hear themselves maligned without answering back. This impressed him deeply, and he decided to become more involved with the chassidim. When Rabbi Baruch Mordechai returned to Vilna, he acted on that decision, devoting himself to the study of Chassidus and to following its path of avodah. At the same time, he longed to see his mother and meet with her. But knowing the great opposition and hostility of the head of the beis din toward the chassidim, he could not bring himself to go to his home, where, of course, his mother lived. During the months Rabbi Baruch Mordechai spent in Vilna after returning from Slutsk and Minsk, word spread that the young master of logical reasoning was in the city. The great Torah scholars of Vilna remembered well the novel Torah insights they had heard from him, and the head of the beis din also very much wanted to see him. But Rabbi Baruch Mordechai avoided meeting him. The head of the beis din, the great Rabbi Shmuel, had two married sons and a widowed son-in-law. All three were great Torah scholars

02:43 and held various positions in yeshivas. Rabbi Shmuel also had a youngest daughter for whom he was seeking a match. At that time, the well-known dispute between Rabbi Shmuel, the head of the beis din, and the Vilna community itself had flared up intensely. Nevertheless, he still had many thousands of admirers in Vilna and throughout the region. His Torah greatness was known in all the surrounding lands, and many of the great Torah scholars of Poland and Germany shared in his distress over the dispute. Some of those scholars, who knew the great author of the Hafla’ah, his brother Rabbi Shmelke, and other tzaddikim and Torah scholars of the holy fellowship—the disciples of the Maggid of Mezritch—attributed the dispute that had ruined the head of the beis din’s standing in Torah scholarship and his prominence to the ban he himself had once proclaimed against the teachings of the Baal Shem Tov and the holy fellowship of the Maggid’s disciples. Now, during one of Rabbi Shmuel’s conversations with his sons about possible matches for their sister, his wife heard them speaking about the master of logical reasoning, the prodigy from Svintzian. Their words struck her deeply: not long before, she had heard of the prodigy from Svintzian, and she had also heard that her son Baruch Mordechai, who had gone to study in Vilna, had stopped to study in Svintzian. She wondered whether the prodigy from Svintzian might be her son, Rabbi Baruch Mordechai. When the opportunity arose, she asked her husband’s sons for the prodigy’s name. How shaken she was to hear that his name was Baruch Mordechai! She then told her husband, Rabbi Shmuel, the head of the beis din, that she had a son named Baruch Mordechai who was exceptionally gifted. He had gone away to study several years earlier, and she had not heard from him in all that time. A few days later, Rabbi Shmuel invited Rabbi Baruch Mordechai to visit him. Mother and son recognized each other at once. Rabbi Shmuel asked Rabbi Baruch Mordechai to live in his home, but Rabbi Baruch Mordechai did not accept the invitation. Through the determined efforts of the great scholars

05:27 Rabbi Shlomo and Rabbi Avigdor, Rabbi Shmuel’s sons, Rabbi Baruch Mordechai agreed, with his mother’s consent, to a match with Rabbi Shmuel’s daughter. After their wedding, Rabbi Baruch Mordechai set up a home of his own and became head of one of Vilna’s large yeshivas. Vilna’s great Torah scholars held him in very high esteem. In 5551, ten years after Rabbi Baruch Mordechai’s wedding, Rabbi Shmuel passed away, and the leaders of the Vilna community decided not to appoint another head of the beis din. Meanwhile, the chassidim of Vilna greatly valued Rabbi Baruch Mordechai’s participation in their circle, and together they studied Chassidus with great depth and diligence. Over time, Rabbi Baruch Mordechai grew ever closer to the chassidim and became increasingly interested in the study of Chassidus. Thanks to the devoted efforts of several young married men in the chassidic circle, they frequently received the maamarim delivered by the Alter Rebbe in Liozna. At that point, the nearest center of Chabad Chassidus to Vilna was Polotsk. Nearly ninety percent of Polotsk’s Jews were chassidim, and its eight large batei midrash, along with many additional minyanim, were chassidic. Polotsk has a history of its own. In the days of Rabbi Yoel Baal Shem and Rabbi Adam Baal Shem, there was a group in Polotsk of Kabbalists and hidden tzaddikim. In the time of the Baal Shem Tov, Polotsk was the first city to accept his teachings, and its Chabad community, too, flourished and grew. Over the ten years from 5534, around the time Chabad Chassidus became established, until 5544, Polotsk and the entire surrounding area became Chabad chassidim. The students of the study groups founded by the Alter Rebbe in Liozna contributed greatly to this. As we related, in 5537, before the Alter Rebbe traveled to accompany Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Horodok on his journey to Eretz Yisroel, he too, as we recall, had intended to travel to Eretz Yisroel.

08:20 The Alter Rebbe was a remarkable organizer. From the very first day, he arranged and organized the work of spreading the teachings of Chabad Chassidus. He set up two groups of activists. One traveled from place to place, speaking to people and distributing written texts—the maamarim of Chassidus—wherever they went. The second group copied and prepared those texts. Thousands of copies of the maamarim were needed. At that time, in 5552, a special department was established in Polotsk. It worked diligently to spread the teachings of the Baal Shem Tov through the reasoned explanations of Chabad Chassidus, which were well received among Torah scholars in Russia. With the help of several wealthy young married men in Vilna’s chassidic circle, they would occasionally send a special messenger on foot to Polotsk to bring back the new maamarim. In one of the stories that the great scholar and chossid Rabbi Baruch Mordechai would tell about the life of Vilna’s chassidic circle in those days, he described the secrecy surrounding their contact with the chassidic circles in Svintzian and Polotsk through special messengers. It involved a genuine danger to life. The profound maamarim had a powerful appeal and left a strong impression on the gifted Lithuanian scholars. More than anyone else in the Vilna circle at that time, Rabbi Baruch Mordechai was drawn to them. With his gift for logical reasoning, he absorbed every word and spent many hours delving into the intellectual concepts of the maamarim. After years of studying the maamarim with great diligence and dedication, Rabbi Baruch Mordechai came to the Alter Rebbe in Liozna for the first time in 5553 and stayed for several weeks. During the three years between 5553, when Rabbi Baruch Mordechai first visited the Alter Rebbe, and 5557, when he came to him a second time, he had much to tell of what he had heard and seen among the chassidim studying in Liozna, and of what he had heard and seen from the Alter Rebbe. The Frierdiker Rebbe relates what they heard from the great Rabbi Baruch Mordechai when he came to

11:25 Lubavitch in 5611, when he came before his journey to Eretz Yisroel and stayed in Lubavitch for several weeks. Reb Baruch Mordechai recounts [unclear] [?]. Reb Baruch Mordechai was a handsome man, and for someone of his age—he was about ninety then—he was also striking in appearance. Wisdom and refinement were evident in his fair, clean face, his large, dark, lively eyes, his broad, high forehead, his full white beard, his curled peyos, his neat clothing, his mouth that poured forth pearls, and his strong voice, like that of a man in his younger years. Reb Baruch Mordechai relates: “The first time I visited the Alter Rebbe in Liozna was in 5553, after I had spent a long time studying maamarim of Chassidus. I had heard from several great Torah scholars in Vilna who had heard Torah insights from the Alter Rebbe when he came to Vilna with the tzaddik Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Horodok to meet the Gaon, Rabbeinu Eliyahu. I had also met young Torah scholars of great learning who repeated the Alter Rebbe’s Torah insights on several topics. Still, everything I had heard had not quite convinced me, and I went to the Alter Rebbe in Liozna only to hear the teachings of Chassidus. When I arrived in Liozna, I learned that the procedure was first to be examined by the Alter Rebbe’s brother, the Maharil, Rabbi Yehuda Leib. He was in charge of the young scholars who came to the Alter Rebbe in Liozna, arranging their lodgings and sending them to be examined in their studies. After the examination, they were given a schedule for studying the revealed dimension of Torah and a schedule for studying Chassidus, for a set period of two or three weeks. Only then was a young scholar received by the Alter Rebbe for yechidus. The examiners were the Alter Rebbe’s brothers, the great Torah scholars Rabbi Baruch—Rabbi Mordechai and Rabbi Moshe. Rabbi Mordechai’s principal expertise was in the Babylonian Talmud and the early commentators. Rabbi Moshe’s principal expertise was in the Jerusalem Talmud and the Rambam. Sometimes just one of them examined a student, and sometimes both did. After my first Torah discussion,” recounts

14:10 Reb Baruch Mordechai, “with the great Torah scholars Rabbi Mordechai and Rabbi Moshe, I was utterly bewildered and did not know what had happened to me. I spent two weeks preparing to enter yechidus with the Alter Rebbe for the first time. At my first yechidus, the Rebbe, the Alter Rebbe, did not answer my questions about avodah. He only asked whether I had any questions in the revealed dimension of Torah, and on which subjects. For more than a year, I had in fact had two difficult questions, one concerning the Jerusalem Talmud and the other concerning the Rambam. I had asked the Gaon, Rabbi Eliyahu in Vilna, for answers. He explained my questions to me very thoroughly, but did not give me answers. As I stood before the Alter Rebbe in yechidus, I put both questions to him. How shaken I was to hear him give an orderly answer to each of them! When I left the upstairs room where the yechidus took place and went down to Gan Eden Hatachton—the chassidim called the small shul in the Alter Rebbe’s house Gan Eden Hatachton—the chassidim and young scholars drew me into the yechidus dance. Among the early chassidim, and throughout the first three generations of Chabad leadership, it was customary for someone leaving the Rebbe after yechidus to join a dance, which they called the yechidus dance.” Reb Baruch Mordechai continues: “I saw and heard nothing. I was completely stirred and shaken by the superhuman genius I had heard from the Alter Rebbe and by his answers to my two questions. Three years passed between that first visit to the Alter Rebbe and my second, and throughout that time the Rebbe’s appearance, his holy voice, and his words of Torah in the revealed dimension and in Chassidus were before my eyes and ringing in my ears. When I returned home, I began studying maamarim of Chassidus with greater diligence, and my study of the revealed dimension of Torah also became more searching and profound. During those several weeks I spent in the company of those three noble men, I saw the great reverence with which Rabbi Mordechai treated a statement of Rashi, and how carefully he weighed

16:59 every ‘and if you ask’ or ‘one might say’ in Tosafos. I heard the logical, subtle lines of reasoning with which Rabbi Moshe analyzed the Rambam’s words and reconciled a passage in the Jerusalem Talmud with one in the Babylonian Talmud. And I saw Rabbi Yehuda Leib’s ability to bring a Talmudic discussion to its halachic conclusion, and how, with a fiery fear of Heaven, he esteemed a gloss of the Rema and a precise reading by the Taz or the Shach. All this, and above them all the Rebbe, the Alter Rebbe, opened within me a new channel of intellectual understanding and comprehension in Torah knowledge. With a truly broken heart, I took leave of the Rebbe and the three noble men.”