Chapter 239 - The Birth of the Rebbe Maharash.

00:00 We’re beginning the stories about the Rebbe Maharash, Rabbi Shmuel, the Rebbe who led Chabad after the Tzemach Tzedek. He was apparently the Tzemach Tzedek’s sixth and youngest son. We’ll begin with the events of his life. On 2 Iyar 5594, the Tzemach Tzedek’s youngest son was born in Lubavitch, and he was named Shmuel. The Rebbe shlita, Melech HaMoshiach, relates in one of his sichos that the Rebbe Maharash was born on 2 Iyar, the day of Tiferes shebeTiferes in the counting of the Omer. This is what is told about his birth and bris. After the fire that broke out in Lubavitch in 5592, although it had not touched the Tzemach Tzedek’s home, he decided to buy a plot of land and build a large house with a beis midrash. The landowner, Lyuba Mirsky, instructed his estate manager to supply everything needed for the building from his forest: beams and boards. The peasants would transport them, and the landowner’s builders would do the work free of charge. So construction began. The Tzemach Tzedek wanted to dedicate the house on Shavuos, but the Rebbetzin wanted to give birth in the new dwelling. When her labor pains began, she went there. In the rooms that had not yet been used were the Pesach utensils, including the wooden bed on which they had sifted the flour for the shmurah matzah. In those days, the custom was to buy a new, plain wooden bed. Two long poles were placed across its headboards, and the sieve was moved back and forth along them, so that the sifted flour fell onto a sheet spread below. After Pesach, the bed was used for household needs. In any case, the Rebbetzin went there. They brought straw, spread it over the bed, and she gave birth there. When the Tzemach Tzedek was told, he hurried over. He stood in the room facing the wall throughout the birth.

02:45 He instructed his sons, Rabbi Baruch Shalom, Rabbi Yehudah Leib, and Rabbi Chaim Schneur Zalman, to recite chapters 1, 2, 3, 39, 21, 22, 23, 24, 33, 47, 72, 86, 94, 91, 104, 112, 113, and through the end of Tehillim, in one of the rooms of his house. He instructed the midwife to immerse in a mikveh before receiving the baby, and to receive him with a special piece of white cloth that the Tzemach Tzedek had provided. And on 2 Iyar, as we said, the day of Tiferes shebeTiferes, one hundred years after the revelation of our teacher the Baal Shem Tov, Rebbetzin Chaya Mushka gave birth to a son. On the eighth day, the Tzemach Tzedek instructed everyone to rise early for Shacharis. By ten o’clock, all the family members had arrived, led by Rabbi Chaim Avraham, the Alter Rebbe’s son. Who was Rabbi Chaim Avraham? Rabbi Chaim Avraham, the Alter Rebbe’s son, spoke little. His face and bearing were strikingly beautiful. He was tall, and his face resembled that of his father, the Alter Rebbe. A gracious expression was always on his face. “When you looked at Uncle Rabbi Chaim Avraham,” related Rebbetzin Rivkah, the Rebbe Maharash’s wife, “you felt good at heart.” He had remarkable gifts, studied Torah diligently, and spent a long time in prayer. He never took an interest in anything besides Torah and the service of Hashem. He had wonderful character traits and greeted everyone warmly. His father, the Alter Rebbe, was especially fond of Chaim Avraham. Once, Rabbi Chaim Avraham was late arriving for a public discourse. No one noticed, because he always stood among the chassidim. As is known, before the Alter Rebbe began to deliver Chassidus, he would sit for some time—sometimes half an hour or more—in deep dveikus, and only afterward begin. On that occasion, before beginning the maamar, he asked, “Where is my son

05:21 Rabbi Chaim Avraham?” Then the Alter Rebbe added quietly, “The hidden sun—the sun of the world of thought.” Rabbi Aharon of Sleshel[unclear] related: “When I attended Rabbi Chaim Avraham’s bris, I heard in the Alter Rebbe’s name that he had named him Chaim Avraham: Avraham after his teacher, the holy Rabbi Avraham the Angel, son of the Maggid of Mezritch. But he did not want angels; he wanted the service of a soul. That is why he called him Chaim Avraham. Avraham Avinu was first called Avram and only later Avraham. The son of a rebbe, himself a rebbe, was called Avraham from the start, yet he was called an angel. Chaim Avraham, though, is a soul—the life of Avraham.” Time passed, and it was nearly two hours after midday. Everyone was waiting for the bris, but the Tzemach Tzedek was still shut in his room. The gathering began to grow anxious. Rabbi Chaim Avraham spoke up and said, “Surely he is occupied with guests more distinguished than we are,” and sighed. Half an hour later, the Tzemach Tzedek emerged from his room, his holy face joyful, his eyes red from crying and a red handkerchief in his hand. “The bris will take place today,” he said, and went back into his room. Rabbi Chaim Avraham remained where he was, then approached the window, rested his head on his hands, and became lost in thought. The Tzemach Tzedek’s sons discussed Torah and Chassidus. The guests grew increasingly anxious. The Rebbetzin sent to find out why the bris was being delayed so long and instructed someone to go to her husband’s room and ask him, but Rabbi Chaim Avraham stopped the messenger. Then, after three o’clock, the Tzemach Tzedek emerged from his room again, looking joyful, and told the guests to refresh themselves; the bris would take place that day. Once more he returned to his room. At four o’clock he came out a third time and said that they should not daven Minchah yet, as the bris would be soon. A little later he left his room, went to speak with the mother about naming the child, instructed them to prepare

07:47 the baby, and went to the minyan, where the bris began. Rabbi Dovber son of Rabbi Yosef related that he was there when his father served as the mohel and performed the Rebbe Maharash’s bris. At the moment of the incision, the baby cried out loudly. The Tzemach Tzedek brought his left hand out from beneath the pillow on which the baby lay, placed it on the baby’s head, and the baby began to laugh and cried no more. When the blessings were finished, the Tzemach Tzedek began to say Ashrei and instructed them to hurry with Minchah. His brother-in-law, Rabbi Menachem Nachum, son of the Mitteler Rebbe, led the prayers, and immediately afterward they sat down to the meal. During the meal, Rabbi Yehudah Leib, the Tzemach Tzedek’s son known as the Maharil of Kopust, asked whom the baby had been named after. In other words, Rabbi Yehudah Leib, known as the Maharil of Kopust, asked whom the baby had been named after. “I don’t think,” he said, “that anyone in our family has that name.” He added quietly, “Perhaps after Shmuel the Prophet?” The Tzemach Tzedek said, “The name is after a water carrier from Polotsk named Shmuel—and a sage is greater than a prophet. ‘The days of our years are seventy years’—there are several levels: eighty days, seventy; ‘in them,’ including its letters, has the numerical value of fifty.” Then, fifty years later, at the end of Sivan 5642, the Tzemach Tzedek’s son, the Rebbe Maharash, said, “Father said ‘in them, including its letters’—that means fifty,” and sighed deeply. Elsewhere it is related that at the bris, the Tzemach Tzedek said of his newborn youngest son that he had heard from his grandfather, the Alter Rebbe, that “Shmuel” is two words: “His name is like G-d.” And so the Rebbe Maharash grew into a child. During his childhood, the chassidim loved to play with him. When he was five or six years old, a chossid made a remark about Shabbos Bereishis. The Rebbe Maharash said to him, “Chassidim know what Shabbos Bereishis is, but misnagdim don’t want to know. This Shabbos,”

10:42 Shabbos Bereishis has a special charm. A chossid asked him, “What is the difference between chassidim and misnagdim?” The Rebbe Maharash answered as a child, “A misnaged fears Hakadosh Boruch Hu; a chossid loves Hakadosh Boruch Hu.” When the Tzemach Tzedek was told that his son, the Rebbe Maharash, had said that Shabbos Bereishis has a special charm, he said… that this charm comes down from Above. At the age of seven, the Rebbe Maharash studied with his second teacher, Rabbi Pesach. He knew the Torah and much of Nevi’im and Kesuvim thoroughly, was already learning Gemara with Rashi and Tosafos, and would recite Tanach by heart while playing with his friends. There was a chossid there, Rabbi Yitzchak Aizik of Vitebsk, whom we have mentioned several times. He was born in the town of Smilovitch. There was great affection between the Rebbe Maharash and Rabbi Yitzchak Aizik, because the Rebbe Maharash’s father, the Tzemach Tzedek, held Rabbi Yitzchak Aizik in high regard and called him “the authority on halachic rulings, the posek Rabbi Yitzchak Aizik.” Why? Because Rabbi Yitzchak Aizik would sit with the Tzemach Tzedek specifically to clarify every question about practical halachic rulings in all four sections of the Shulchan Aruch. “When I was about eight years old,” the Rebbe Maharash told his son, the Rebbe Rashab, “I saw the chossid Rabbi Yitzchak Aizik of Vitebsk for the first time. It was in Kislev, when Rabbi Yitzchak Aizik came to Lubavitch for the celebration of 19 Kislev, the Rosh Hashanah of Chassidus. There was deep snow in the courtyard. Only specially cleared paths led from my father the Tzemach Tzedek’s house to the large shul in the courtyard, and there were paths through the deep snow between the other buildings as well. When I saw that the candles had already been lit in the courtyard shul, I hurried over, thinking they had probably begun celebrating 19 Kislev. When I arrived, I saw my elderly uncle, the chossid Rabbi Chaim

13:38 Avraham, and my uncle Rabbi Menachem Nochum, the Mitteler Rebbe’s son, dancing in a circle with three elderly men. Many dozens of people, including all my brothers and their sons, stood around them, singing, making music, and clapping in time. I loved my uncle Rabbi Chaim Avraham dearly, as well as my uncle Rabbi Menachem Nochum. They would always tell me stories about what they had seen in the homes of the Alter Rebbe and the Mitteler Rebbe, and what they had heard from the elder chassidim. More than once, when I came to my father, the Tzemach Tzedek, after visiting my elderly uncle Rabbi Chaim Avraham, he would ask me, ‘Where have you been?’ I would tell him what I had heard from my uncle. My father, the Tzemach Tzedek, took great pleasure in it and would tell me to visit him more often. My uncle Rabbi Chaim Avraham was in poor health then. He was not so old—perhaps about sixty-four or sixty-five—but he sometimes suffered from heart pain and could not bear to wear many layers of clothing. Several times I found him sitting in just a coat, with a yarmulke on his head. But when he was about to tell a story about his father, the Alter Rebbe, or about our teacher the Maggid of Mezritch, our teacher the Baal Shem Tov, or his brother the Mitteler Rebbe, he would put on a gartel and a hat over his yarmulke. Before every story he told me, he would say: ‘I heard my father, the Alter Rebbe, say many times that when we heard words of Torah from my teacher and Rebbe, the Maggid of Mezritch, they were like the Oral Torah to us. But when we heard a story from my teacher and Rebbe, it was like the Written Torah to us.’ My uncle Rabbi Menachem Nochum would say the same thing before every story he told. When I saw my uncle Rabbi Chaim Avraham and my uncle Rabbi Menachem Nochum dancing, I made

15:59 my way through the crowd, ran over to them, took hold of one of the elderly men’s gartels, and danced with them. I saw that my nephew, Rabbi Schneur Zalman, who was four or five years older than I, envied my eagerness and boldness in joining the dance, but I noticed it. The previous month, in Cheshvan, I had been a little ill with a throat ailment and was left with weakness in my legs. After dancing for a short while, I felt pain and stopped. I stood to the side and watched the dance and the dancers. I looked up at my uncle Rabbi Chaim Avraham and saw tears running down his cheeks. His eyes were closed, his brow was furrowed, and his lips moved as though he were recalling old memories. When the dance ended, one of the elderly men—the chossid Rabbi Yitzchak Aizik of Vitebsk—went over to my uncle Rabbi Chaim Avraham, and they embraced and kissed each other. He also embraced and kissed my uncle Rabbi Menachem Nochum. Holding on to both of them, he said, ‘We are rejoicing in a joy we saw with our own eyes.’