Chapter 244 - The Man from the "M" Family Tells the Story of His Life to the Frierdiker Rebbe.

00:00 The continuation of the Rebbe Maharash’s story about the M. family and the chossid who had begun to lose his way. At eleven o’clock at night, the train reached Frankfurt am Main station, where it stopped for a short while. “I stepped out of the carriage,” the Frierdiker Rebbe relates, “to get a little fresh air. I saw the man in question coming toward me. He approached and said he wanted to tell me something remarkable. At once he became deeply emotional, and tears began falling from his eyes until he could not speak. Meanwhile, it was time for the train to depart. I boarded my carriage, and he boarded his. Early in the morning we arrived in Berlin. When I stepped out of the carriage for some air, the man approached me again, wished me a good morning, and complained that he had not slept a wink all night. After the train left Berlin, I began to daven. Before then, it had not been possible to daven, because day had not yet broken. Before I had finished davening, the carriage attendant came into my compartment and said that one of the passengers was asking permission to come in. I told him to apologize on my behalf and say that he could come in half an hour. Half an hour later he entered, apologized for disturbing me, and said that he was still so overwhelmed that he could not speak. He wept aloud, which made a powerful impression on me. Here was a man of fifty or more, dressed like someone from the upper ranks of society, clean-shaven, with a neatly groomed mustache and a handsome, pleasant face—and suddenly he covered his face with his hands and burst into bitter tears as he spoke. I was at a loss. I did not know whether to comfort him or leave him alone. I looked at him; he was trembling all over. For a moment I wondered whether he was mentally ill, or perhaps some disaster had befallen him. I could restrain myself no longer and began to calm him. After a few moments, he started speaking in a trembling voice and said, ‘Do me a kindness for my soul: lend me your tefillin.’ I could not believe

03:26 my ears: he was asking me to do him the kindness of lending him my tefillin. Before I could ask him again, he added, ‘Oh, my Father in Heaven, I can no longer remember how many years it has been since I put on tefillin,’ and wept without pause. I opened my bag, took out my Rashi tefillin and a siddur, and handed them to him. I told him he could daven in my compartment. I stepped out so as not to disturb him as he poured out his soul before Hashem. He spent a long time davening. When he finished, I returned to my compartment. He gave back the tefillin with profuse thanks and asked to borrow the siddur. I understood that he wanted to say Tehillim and also to have something from which to daven Minchah. He went back to his carriage without telling me who he was. I understood that this man was going through some inner upheaval, but I did not know who he was or what had happened to him. At three in the afternoon, the carriage attendant came again and told me that the passenger who had visited me that morning was once more asking permission to come in. I gave permission, and he entered. His face was pale and etched with sadness. In a whisper, like a sick man, he began to speak. This is what he told me: ‘My name is Y. I am the son of one of your grandfather’s chassidim’—that is, of the Rebbe Maharash. ‘My father’s name was Reb Leib, of the M. family, a native of the town of S.’ He continued: ‘As a child and a young man, I learned in cheder with good teachers, chassidim and men of good deeds. Chassidim would gather at my father’s house every day until the break, and of course I was among the first to join them. But one year my father moved from the town of S. to Petersburg. Though there, too, he established his home on the foundations of Torah and the ways of Chassidus, and chassidim regularly visited our home, the children of the various neighbors in our area drew me to follow their example. One day in late summer, while we were staying in the countryside around Petersburg, my father told me

06:30 that when he traveled to Lubavitch for the coming Rosh Hashanah, he intended to take me along. I was about fifteen then, and I had already had a taste of the lives of the young people around me, who did not wish to restrain their desires. So my father’s wish to take me to Lubavitch gave me little pleasure. The time came, and my father traveled to Lubavitch with two sons of chassidim, and I went with them. Members of the A. and T. families, well known among the chassidim, traveled too—about ten people—as did another five or six whose expenses were paid by the wealthy K. brothers, who were also traveling to Lubavitch. When I arrived in Lubavitch and saw your grandfather, the Rebbe Maharash, his face made an impression on me that I cannot put into words. When I went in to the Rebbe with my father, the Rebbe gave me an explicit blessing to succeed in everything I would do, but told me to remember that I was a Jew, because the environment I was in was dangerous. For a long time after we returned to our home in Petersburg, the impression of my time in Lubavitch kept me from socializing with our non-Jewish neighbors’ children. Even on their holidays, to their great surprise, I took no part in their celebrations or the games I had joined in previous years. This continued until summer came and it was time for us to go to the countryside. While we were staying at our summer home—I had already entered a school of higher education—I gradually befriended young people my age. Some were educated and of good character; others loved a life of pleasure. All of them, together, drew me away from the ways of life in our home. The first time, I came home late and did not daven Minchah or Maariv. The second time, I did not daven Shacharis because I hurried to meet my friends, who were waiting by the river to go boating together. The third time, I ate together with my friends. Over the summer months, I abandoned the religious life I had been accustomed to in my father’s home. When we returned to the city from our summer home, my father prepared to travel to Lubavitch for Rosh Hashanah, but I stayed at home

09:36 I remember as though it were today that when I came to shul on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, those surroundings already felt strange to me. During the Christian holidays, I spent my time with friends my age and hardly came home. I came home once to ask my mother for several hundred rubles, and twice I went to my father’s office to ask his agent for the money I needed. When the holidays had passed and I came home, my father rebuked me. He said he was prepared to give me as much money as I needed, but he insisted that I break off all contact with my peers, the students of the [unclear] school. I answered my father that I was grown up now and would live as I chose, and that parents had no right to interfere in my private affairs. In protest, I left my parents’ home. I took a place of my own wherever I chose, and so about six years passed. I completed my higher education, married, and settled into the free way of life I had adopted. I had almost completely forgotten the ways of my father’s home. At that time, a secret society of young people called the Progressists—those striving for progress—was founded. Its aim was to stand up for the oppressed and downtrodden, take an interest in their circumstances, and help them both morally and in practice. A major part of the society’s work was to take an interest in the economic condition of our Jewish brethren. One day in December 1881—5641 by our reckoning, of course—I met an acquaintance who told me in the course of our conversation that the Rebbe of Lubavitch was staying in Petersburg and had visited several senior government ministers to discuss the economic condition of the Jews. Since, as I have told you, I was one of the young members of the progress movement, I wanted to know what your grandfather had accomplished for the community. For that purpose, I went to the Serpinsky Hotel on Zablokovsky Street—Zablokonsky Street—where your grandfather was staying. When I reached the hotel, I found several sons of chassidim whom I had not seen in all the years since I left

12:47 my father’s home, and how delighted they were to see me. Then, for the first time, I saw the warmth of the chassidim’s affection for a fellow chossid’s son, even one who had gone astray. I remembered the great uproar in my father’s home in the early days after I left to live in a place I had rented on Pushkinsky Street with my circle of young friends. As if they were before my eyes, I could see two of my father’s friends visiting me to persuade me to return to his home. How deeply I was moved by the love and affection they showed both me and my father: they shared my father’s sorrow so deeply that they wept bitter tears. It was clear to me that over the years they had spoken about me more than once and had taken an interest in how I was living. I had no doubt, not even for a moment, that my way of life at the time had caused them pain. Yet as I approached the hotel entrance, they met me with open arms and a warm greeting, as though I were one of their own.