Episode 218 - The Tzemach Tzedek - Stories of Chassidim

00:00 We continue with stories about the Tzemach Tzedek, the third Rebbe of Chabad. Before telling his life story, we are sharing chassidim’s stories about the Rebbe himself. A teacher from the town of Klimovitch decided to travel to the Tzemach Tzedek for Shavuos. He had never been to the Rebbe for Shavuos, and he had no work during those days, so he decided to go. He stayed in Lubavitch for several days after Yom Tov as well. He was in no hurry to return home and stayed with a relative there. One day, he heard some interesting news in the Rebbe’s courtyard, and afterward he told the following story. A childless woman had been widowed. Her husband’s brother was mentally incompetent, but he needed to perform chalitzah for her. She took him to a number of great rabbis to see whether he could be deemed capable of performing chalitzah. They discussed the problem and exchanged letters, questions and answers, but none permitted her to perform chalitzah. The woman spent a great deal of money on travel and on people to watch over and care for her husband’s brother. She also paid people in the marketplace for all the damage he caused them, breaking their carts and so on. Eventually she came to the great Rabbi Eliezer Moshe of Pinsk. Rabbi Eliezer Moshe studied all the questions and answers written by the rabbis before him on the matter, and he too wrote what he thought, but he did not permit her to receive chalitzah from the man. Seeing the woman’s distress, Rabbi Eliezer Moshe felt compassion for her and said, “Listen to my advice: travel to Lubavitch, to the Tzemach Tzedek. First of all, he is a great Torah scholar. In addition, he is a tzaddik. I think you will find your answer there.” The woman followed his advice and traveled to the Tzemach Tzedek. When the Rebbe was told the story, he instructed his attendant to bring in all the guests who were there for yechidus quickly

02:53 so they could each return to their work, and then to bring the woman and her brother-in-law in for yechidus together. The teacher who related the story continued: “When I heard about this woman who had come with her husband’s brother, before I went in for yechidus, I decided to stay and see how things would unfold and how it would end. The Tzemach Tzedek said they should try to bring the brother-in-law to him, and they did. When he came in, the Rebbe asked him, ‘What is your name?’ ‘What do you care?’ he answered. The Rebbe asked again, ‘Tell me, what is your name?’ The brother-in-law replied, ‘You tell me your name, and then I’ll tell you mine.’ The Tzemach Tzedek told him his name. ‘And my name is Moishe,’ said the man. The Tzemach Tzedek said, ‘Listen, Moishe, I’d like to ask you to do something for me. Do you know where the marketplace is?’ ‘Yes,’ Moishe answered. After all, he had already been there and caused a great deal of damage. ‘Well then,’ the Rebbe said, ‘go to the marketplace. Here are ten kopecks. Buy me two kopecks’ worth of tobacco to smoke, two kopecks’ worth of paper for the tobacco, two kopecks’ worth of matches, and two kopecks’ worth of snuff. Bring me back the remaining two kopecks. Well, Moishe, can you do that?’ The brother-in-law answered, ‘What, do you think I’m a thief? Don’t worry, I’ll bring back the change.’ He immediately leaped past everyone standing there and went out through the window, as he always did. He ran to the marketplace and came to a shop. They already knew him in the shops. ‘Quick, quick, give me a two-kopeck box of tobacco!’ he shouted, and listed everything else he needed. He took the change, ran back to the Tzemach Tzedek and said, ‘Here, I brought you this and this, and here are your two kopecks. I’m not a thief.’ Then he ran off. The Tzemach Tzedek said to set a time for the following Wednesday, when he would conduct

05:36 the chalitzah ceremony. The woman was overjoyed, and after the ceremony she distributed a great deal of tzedakah to the poor. She then approached the Rebbe and said, ‘Rabbi Eliezer Moshe of Pinsk asked that the Rebbe write him his opinion on this matter, and I will deliver the answer to him on my way home.’ She assumed the Tzemach Tzedek would tell her to wait a few days while the answer was prepared, as had happened with all the other rabbis she had visited. But this time it was different. The Tzemach Tzedek said, ‘All right,’ immediately took a small piece of paper and wrote: ‘It says in the Talmud Yerushalmi: A mentally incompetent person who knows how to make change is not considered mentally incompetent.’ That was the entire answer. It is worth noting that all the rabbis she had visited had studied the answers of those before them and then written their own. The Tzemach Tzedek, however, was not shown any of the answers she had with her. On her way home, she passed through Pinsk and visited Rabbi Eliezer Moshe. When he saw the note and learned how the whole matter had unfolded with the Tzemach Tzedek, Rabbi Eliezer Moshe took his head in both hands and said to the people there, ‘Well, what do you think? How many times have I studied the Talmud Yerushalmi? But only when one studies Torah for its own sake does one have light in one’s eyes.’ And another story. Rabbi Aharon Yaffe, who was a shochet and bodek in the town of Usvei, related: ‘When I was young, I was a teacher in a village, and also a shochet and bodek in the surrounding villages. Once we heard that the Tzemach Tzedek would pass through our village and might even stay there, so we made extensive preparations. When the Rebbe arrived, I needed to slaughter a chicken, and I went to show him my shechitah knife. He approved of the knife and ate meat from my shechitah throughout his stay there. When the Rebbe received people for yechidus, my turn came too. The Rebbe asked me, “What is your request?” I said,’ Aharon Yaffe related, ‘“I want to ask something. There are all these stringencies introduced by the later halachic authorities,

08:37 concerning things that had previously been entirely permitted but were later forbidden. This troubles me. Did the earlier generations, G-d forbid, eat forbidden food? How could that be?” I asked the Rebbe to explain it to me. The Tzemach Tzedek said, “Do you know what the words mutar, ‘permitted,’ and asur, ‘forbidden,’ mean? Asur means that something is bound and held captive by the kelipos and sitra achra, and it cannot be elevated to holiness, even if one eats it for the sake of Heaven, as it says in Tanya, chapter 8, as we recall. Mutar means that it is not bound, and it can be refined and elevated if one eats it in accordance with Torah law, for the sake of Heaven.” The Tzemach Tzedek continued, “There are things that were originally in the category of mutar. In other words, the souls of those generations could elevate them because they were loftier souls. But in later generations, when souls are on a lower level, these things too were forbidden to us.” That is, we cannot elevate those things, and therefore—and this is my own addition—they are forbidden.’ Raphael Cohen himself relates: ‘My grandmother Sheina Helka[?] would proudly say that she had been to the Tzemach Tzedek twice. Once, her son was ill, and she traveled with him to the Tzemach Tzedek in Lubavitch. On the way, they visited Dr. Spector in Vitebsk. He was a renowned doctor. His practice was to have all the patients who came to him sit in a row. He would go from patient to patient and ask, “What hurts? How do you feel?” He would look into the patient’s eyes, examine his tongue and write a prescription. When my grandmother arrived with her sick child, he looked into the child’s eyes and at his tongue, heard what was troubling him, prescribed medicine and said, “Do not eat anything except half a piece of toast a day.” My grandmother and her sick son continued on their way to the Tzemach Tzedek. When they arrived, they went in for yechidus. The Rebbe blessed him that he should be healthy. Then, on their way back, they went to see the doctor again, Dr.

11:22 Spector, and the child sat among the other patients. When his turn came, the doctor examined him and said, “You must have been to Lubavitch. You’re healthy now; you can even eat a whole loaf of bread at one sitting.” And another story. There was a cornerstone-laying ceremony at the Tzemach Tzedek’s. The farbrengen was held in the courtyard. Long tables were set up there, and all the chassidim came. Finally, the Tzemach Tzedek arrived and sat down. He asked the chassidim, “What would you like? Should I say some Chassidus for you, or tell you a story?” The chassidim said, “We want to hear a story.” The Tzemach Tzedek began: There was a Jew named Yaakov, a chossid of the holy Ruzhiner. In parentheses, it says that these were the Tzemach Tzedek’s very words: “the holy Ruzhiner.” This Reb Yaakov rented a tavern from a Jewish estate leaseholder—that is, a Jew who apparently leased the entire estate from the landowner. The leaseholder was also named Yaakov, and he was an honest, upright man. He leased the landowner’s property, including land and taverns, and rented it out to individuals. The tavern tenant, Yaakov, was poor and had not paid his rent for a long time. Reb Yaakov, the leaseholder, asked him once, twice, three times for what he was owed, but the tenant had no way to pay. The leaseholder wanted to evict him. When the tenant heard this, he traveled to his Rebbe, the holy Ruzhiner, and told him that Reb Yaakov the leaseholder was about to evict him. The Ruzhiner sent for the leaseholder, spoke with him, and asked him to forgive the tenant’s debt. Since Reb Yaakov was an honest, upright man, he listened to the Rebbe and forgave Yaakov the tenant the rent he owed. Not only that, he also lowered the rent from that month onward, but asked him to pay on time from then on. Yet the tenant, as we said, was destitute

14:28 and could not possibly keep his promise. He did not pay the rent this time either, the Tzemach Tzedek continued. Reb Yaakov the leaseholder kept asking for what he was owed, and when he saw that the tenant was not paying, he wanted to evict him immediately. The tenant traveled to Ruzhin again and told his Rebbe of his terrible predicament: he was about to be evicted. The tzaddik summoned the leaseholder again and spoke with him at length, until he persuaded him to forgive Reb Yaakov once more. Reb Yaakov the leaseholder, being an honest, upright man, accepted the holy tzaddik’s words. He forgave the tenant a second time, lowered the rent still further, and gave him longer to pay, to make things easier for him and enable him to pay on time. But even after all these concessions, he received no rent from the tenant and was about to evict him from his home at once. Reb Yaakov the tenant traveled to the tzaddik of Ruzhin yet again, for the third time. Once again the tzaddik summoned the leaseholder and spoke with him. This time, however, the leaseholder would not listen to the Rebbe. He said, “I’ve done a great deal to make things easier for him. I forgave his debts once, and then a second time. I won’t give in any more.” The holy tzaddik began pleading with him to forgive the tenant despite everything. The leaseholder answered firmly, “The Rebbe is not in charge of my money.” He did not heed his words, and he evicted the tenant from his home. The Tzemach Tzedek continued: After Reb Yaakov the leaseholder passed away, he arrived in the World of Truth, where they began to examine his case. Accusers came forward and said, “This man evicted a Jew and his entire family from their home and deprived them of their livelihood.” The leaseholder said, “What did I do wrong? Didn’t I do enough for this Jew? I forgave him several times, gave him more time to pay, and lowered his rent. What more was I supposed to do? Could I give up my money altogether?” And Reb

17:08 Yaakov the merchant told them, “The Heavenly Court doesn’t know what money is. They don’t know how costly things are, how valuable money is, or how important it is in this world. So I ask that my case be given to souls who have been in this world and know what money is. I want them to judge my case.” In Heaven they granted his request and gave his case to Rabbi Yoel Sirkis, known as the Bach, and Rabbi Yosef Karo, known as the Beis Yosef. They examined his case and ruled against him. Yaakov the merchant argued again: “The Bach and the Beis Yosef left this world long ago. They’ve already forgotten what money is. So I ask that my case be given to souls who are in this world now, and let them judge me.” That was where the Tzemach Tzedek ended the story. When the Rebbe finished, he asked all the chassidim gathered there, “What do you say?” Everyone remained silent. The Tzemach Tzedek continued, saying in Yiddish, “I say Reb Yaakov is right. What do you say, eh?” In other words, the Tzemach Tzedek was saying, “I say Reb Yaakov is right. What do you say, eh?” The Tzemach Tzedek repeated it with everyone three times: “Right, right, right.” Then all the chassidim understood that the Tzemach Tzedek was, in fact, ruling on the case of Reb Yaakov, the honest man, and finding in his favor.