Chapter 241 - The Story of Leib Pazin and Shmuel Berin.

00:01 Leib Pazin was in yechidus with the Rebbe Maharash after suffering two fires. He understood that they had happened because he had not prayed for his friend, and now the Rebbe Maharash explained it to him. The Mitteler Rebbe said in the name of his father, the Alter Rebbe, in explaining the saying, “One who prays for his friend is answered first”: If he needs something, he is answered first. And if at that moment he needs nothing, he still receives his reward: he is the first to benefit, and Heaven rewards him for his good conduct. Now the Rebbe Maharash told Pazin, “You will give three thousand rubles in cash to Rabbi Shmuel Brin as a loan, without any benefit to yourself, so that he can buy merchandise and send it by raft to Riga. Give it to him generously and gladly, and thank Hashem for granting you the privilege of doing good and showing kindness. You yourself should travel to Moscow to purchase merchandise for your store, and Hashem will make up your loss twofold.” Leib Pazin returned home and immediately went to Rabbi Shmuel Brin, carrying the bundle of money as the Rebbe Maharash had instructed. But Rabbi Shmuel Brin was not at home. His family told him that Shmuel Brin had left about two weeks earlier to look for a group of rafts bound for Riga and had not yet returned. A day passed, then two, then three, then more than a week, and still Shmuel Brin had not returned. Every day, Rabbi Leib Pazin waited for Rabbi Shmuel to come so he could carry out the Rebbe’s instruction and give him the loan. Each day felt like a year, because he needed to travel to Moscow to bring back merchandise for his store. Leib Pazin was afraid to change the order the Rebbe Maharash had given him: first to lend Rabbi Shmuel the money so he could buy rafts and send them to Riga, and only afterward to travel to Moscow to buy merchandise for his store. When Leib Pazin arrived at the shul for Kabbalas Shabbos, he saw

02:26 Rabbi Shmuel Brin standing there, with people crowded around him, some on the floor and some on the benches. His face was beaming, he was in good spirits, and he was telling a story while everyone listened. At that moment, Rabbi Leib Pazin envied Rabbi Shmuel. “Fortunate is the man,” he thought, “who can be like this. For more than two months his fortunes have been overturned, and he has lived in hardship and want. Yet he can forget it all, and right now he seems to be the happiest man in the world.” Reb Hirshman, the gabbai, banged his hand on the table and announced, “Shh! Rabbi Shmuel Brin will repeat the Chassidus he heard from the Rebbe shlita in Lubavitch.” This roused Rabbi Leib Pazin from his thoughts. “My dove, in the clefts of the rock, in the hidden place of the steep ascent,” Rabbi Shmuel began [unclear], and a hush fell over the shul. A special sense of pleasure rested on the faces of all the listeners. That Shabbos, everyone from the shul went to Rabbi Shmuel Brin’s home for kiddush. There he repeated the maamar for the third time, to the boundless joy of the chassidim. On Motzaei Shabbos, Rabbi Leib Pazin struggled with himself. Some say it is not proper to give money on Motzaei Shabbos or after Yom Tov, even for household expenses—how much less to someone outside the household. He did not know what to decide. But suddenly it seemed to him that the holy face of the Rebbe Maharash was before him, looking at him seriously. At that moment he took his bundle of three thousand rubles and went to Rabbi Shmuel Brin’s home. When Pazin arrived, he found Rabbi Shmuel Brin sitting and studying Tur Choshen Mishpat. Rabbi Shmuel welcomed him warmly and began to encourage him about the fires he had suffered. Rabbi Shmuel was not well-off at the time, yet he told him about, and explained, the familiar saying that after a fire one becomes wealthy. Leib Pazin listened, inwardly marveling at Rabbi Shmuel’s strength of mind

04:59 and courage of heart at a time when his own fortunes had been overturned. Nine months earlier, Rabbi Shmuel had planned to buy a large stone house; now he had sunk to the lowest point. He had lost everything he owned and was left with no home. He did not even have food for a single meal of his own. Yet he had traveled to look for merchandise, gone to Lubavitch, and returned with a maamar. He had repeated it publicly with joy and an exuberant voice. Now he sat studying Choshen Mishpat and still had the strength to comfort and encourage him. “What do you plan to do?” Rabbi Leib Pazin asked Rabbi Shmuel Brin. “About my situation?” Rabbi Shmuel replied. “As I said, on Motzaei Shabbos one should speak of happy things, so it is best not to discuss my present situation. I firmly hope that Hashem will help. I have done my part. I traveled to look for ready-made rafts. I inspected a great deal of good merchandise lying on the riverbank that needs to be tied into rafts. Hashem will do His part and provide me with the necessary sums, and He will grant His blessing abundantly. When I came to Lubavitch,” Rabbi Shmuel Brin continued, “I was glad to hear a maamar of Chassidus, and I heard it repeated three times by the sons and son-in-law of the Rebbe Maharash. On the first day I went in to the Rebbe for yechidus and stayed with him for over an hour. The Rebbe is very distressed by the complaints of the nobles, the estate owners, and the forest owners against the Jewish timber merchants. The merchants pay the non-Jewish rafters and transport workers well, so they will not work for the nobles at low rates. The Rebbe said that these complaints will fuel the fire of hatred against the Jews and the spirit of pogroms that has spread this year. Jewish merchants must take this into account, especially those who, because of this general situation, are buying estates and forests from the nobles at very low prices. At the end of the yechidus, the Rebbe asked about my situation, and I described it just as it was, very briefly. The Rebbe told me, ‘Shmuel, do not despair. Buy individual logs as loose timber. Purchase them on the riverbank and tie them together yourself. Hashem will provide you with good purchases and good merchants there and in Riga, as well as income on the side.’

07:34 “When I reached Rudnya,” Shmuel Brin told Leib Pazin, “and bought a ticket to travel home, I met Rabbi Aharon of Rudnya in the carriage. He was traveling from Smolensk in connection with a dispute that had broken out between the wealthy Mrs. Dina Weitenberg of Dvinsk and the wealthy Mr. Schwartz of Smolensk. They had each agreed to choose an arbitrator. In fact, each had already chosen one, and he was traveling to me in Vitebsk because the two arbitrators had agreed to choose me as the third. We both got out of the carriage and stayed in Rudnya to wait for the coach going to Smolensk. We worked for four days and four nights until we managed to settle the disputes, and I was paid a respectable fee of six hundred rubles. I received three hundred rubles from Mr. Schwartz in Smolensk, and Mrs. Weitenberg will send me the other three hundred here in Rudnya in the coming days. “Now you see, Leibele,” Rabbi Shmuel Brin said to Rabbi Leib, “the Rebbe’s blessing is beginning to come true. He blessed me with income on the side in addition to the profits from business, and thank G-d, I have earned some. Leibele, one must be a chossid, and then things go well materially too. And thank G-d, I already have enough to pay a little toward what I owe the grocery stores, and a few hundred rubles will remain for business expenses.” “But what about the advance payments?” Rabbi Leib asked. “You have to pay the raft owners, as well as the rafters and the people transporting the rafts. Especially if you buy the timber on the riverbank and tie it together yourself, it costs large sums—several thousand rubles.” “But the Rebbe blessed me,” Rabbi Shmuel answered, “that Hashem would provide me with good purchases. The Rebbe knows that one cannot buy with empty hands. So the blessing also includes Hashem providing everything needed to make those good purchases. This emunas chachamim,” Rabbi Shmuel continued, “runs through the veins of us chassidim. We do not need

10:03 Neither a sign nor a miracle. We see the sun in the sky. None of us has examined or studied it. None of us knows what that sun shining overhead really is, what its nature is. Yet we all know that the sun gives light and benefits every living thing; even the sick feel better when the sun rises in its strength. The Rebbe is the sun of the chassidim. He is our salvation and our hope. What can I tell you, Leib? We have known each other for some thirty years, since we were fellow students. You know that I have never grown proud in my successes or given in during my setbacks, because I have always known that the wheel turns, both in good times and in bad. But this time my heart sank within me, and I nearly fell into utter despair. Had it not been for the Rebbe’s instruction conveyed through Yisroel Nachman HaKohen, the teacher in the home of Shlomo Zalman Yerucham in Volizh[?], I would have abandoned business altogether and taken a rabbinic position, even in a small town. “About three days before Pesach,” Rabbi Shmuel Brin continued, “I received the first news about the business, and by Erev Pesach I knew I had fallen into the trap of dishonest sellers and lost everything I owned, along with everything I had borrowed and invested in that ill-fated venture. With tremendous effort I held myself together for the first two days of Pesach. Throughout the rest of Pesach I was beside myself, but I told myself that I would put it out of my mind until after Pesach. Hashem, blessed be He, helped me keep that resolve. On the night after the last day of Pesach, I took to my bed with a high fever for two days. On the third day I felt a little better, and toward evening Yisroel Nachman HaKohen from Dubrovna came to see me. He said he had arrived the day before and that the Rebbe had sent him on a special mission to me. When he arrived, he found me ill, so he waited until he could deliver the message as the Rebbe had instructed him, though he was in a hurry to travel to Volizh[?].

12:28 “This is what he told me: During Chol Hamoed Pesach, Reb Levik, the Rebbe Maharash’s attendant, told him in the Rebbe’s name that since he sometimes left Lubavitch without going in for yechidus, he must not do so this time: the Rebbe needed to send a very urgent message with him. ‘When I entered the Rebbe’s room,’ Rabbi Yisroel Nachman continued, ‘I found him sitting in his chair with two books open before him. As I entered, he spread his silk handkerchief over the open books and said to me, “When you reach Vitebsk, go to Shmuel Brin and tell him that I know everything, and I do not agree with what he has in mind. On the contrary, I instruct him to abandon that thought. Our Rebbe says that the mind rules over the heart by its very nature. That is how a person, as a human being, should conduct himself, especially when living according to the ways of Chassidus. When the heart follows the mind, it can absorb what the mind understands. Convey these words to Shmuel Brin,” the Rebbe told me, “and let no one else know of it. If you need to wait a day, then wait, and deliver the message exactly as I have said. I am warning you.”’” Rabbi Shmuel Brin said to Reb Leib, “I understood the message. When I got out of bed, I went to shul to daven. On my return, I met Rabbi Dovber Feigelson and borrowed thirty rubles from him to make my journey. And now,” Rabbi Shmuel concluded his story, “when I receive the three hundred rubles from Dannenburg, I can complete the business deal.” Leib Pazin, who had sat listening to everything Rabbi Shmuel Brin told him, did not know how to bring up the bundle of money he had brought. But suddenly, as if of its own accord, what was in his heart came out of his mouth. He said, “There is no need to worry about the rest of the money for the deal. I have brought you the full amount.” Before he had even finished speaking, he took out several bundles of banknotes, each containing a hundred and fifty rubles. Rabbi Shmuel Brin looked

15:02 first at Reb Leib, then at the bundles of banknotes lying on the table, and said nothing. He could not understand what had come over Reb Leib. He knew Reb Leib was someone who gave interest-free loans. One could always borrow fifty or a hundred rubles from him, but sums like these were another matter. “I have brought you three thousand rubles,” Reb Leib told Rabbi Shmuel, “as a loan until after the rafts are sold in Riga. Then you can repay me in full, without giving me any share of the profits.” “What are you talking about, Leib?” Rabbi Shmuel Brin protested. “I will not take an interest-free loan of that size from you, and you have no right to do this, either. Every business venture, even the finest and most promising, can go either way. You must not risk such a sum on someone else’s business as an interest-free loan. In any case, I will not take your money. How did it even occur to you to offer me such a thing?”