Episode 282 - The Beginning of the Rav of Berditchev's Journey.

00:01 We continue describing the advantage and special quality of a person’s power of visualization. In this connection, we bring a story the Rebbe Rashab told in the name of the Tzemach Tzedek. Apparently, he heard it from his father: the Rebbe Rashab heard it from his father, the Rebbe Maharash, who heard it from his father, the Tzemach Tzedek. And here is the story. One summer day, the tzaddik Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev rose early to daven. This surprised his students. The Rebbe finished davening in the early morning hours, called several of his students over, and instructed them to hire a wagon driver for a trip to a settlement thirty or forty kilometers from Berditchev. Neither the driver nor the students knew who was there that the rabbi of Berditchev was making this long journey to see. A certain Christian landowner had a large estate near Berditchev. Everyone knew about the estate. Everyone knew the landowner, who often came into town. Several Jewish merchants bought grain and other produce from him, and various Jews leased the estate’s flour mills and waterways. Now, a man from Germany once came there and bought a tract of land from the landowner that included a forest, farmland, and a small stream running through them. On one side of the stream was a beautiful young pine forest, with a grassy hill beside it; on the other side stretched fields of fertile soil. Nobody knew the German who bought the property, and apart from business dealings with him, it was of no concern to anyone. This German put up beautiful buildings on the most scenic part of the land he had bought from the landowner. He lived there with his family and had various people working the land. He also established a fine farm and an advanced flour mill—a mechanized mill, which was something new in those days—and employed

02:31 various people to run the farm. Many Jews earned a plentiful living from his estate. Some time passed. The flour mill produced large quantities of flour, and the estate’s crops did very well. The German landowner brought in a new manager who knew very well how to run the estate and the flour mill. The new manager was a Jew who lived alone, without a family. Who was this Jew? Well, the estate manager had been born in Germany to a respected Jewish family. But because he grew up in a nonreligious environment, he was far removed from Judaism. As an adult, he served in the army. Little by little, he forgot his Jewish origins. The people around him did not even know he was Jewish. He was handsome and healthy, hardworking, quick, energetic, and intellectually gifted. He rose to a high rank in the military, to the point that he joined the king’s royal guard. Because he was exceptionally devoted to his work and performed it with particular success, he rose from strength to strength. His private life, however, was in a very bad state. He drank and got drunk and was immersed in his desires. He completely forgot his Jewish origins. He married a non-Jewish woman and had children with her, while continuing his unrestrained life of indulgence. One of his close acquaintances introduced him to the German landowner, and he became friendly with the landowner’s family. An evil thought arose in his mind. Because of it, he left his work at the royal court, cut himself off from his family, left them all his property, traveled with his acquaintance, and was appointed chief manager of the estate. When the new manager arrived, new rules were established on the estate. First and foremost, the Jews began to suffer great humiliation. They were driven off the estate, business with them was stopped, and all the Jews who had until then been connected with the estate were expelled. And it was because of this Jew, mired in his wickedness, that the tzaddik Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev was now making his journey to that estate. Let’s return to the journey. The rabbi of Berditchev gave directions for the route. They traveled for several

05:27 hours. The road was very good. They reached a forest. In the forest, the Rebbe instructed them to stop and told the wagon driver to feed the horses. The Rebbe himself went alone deep into the forest. The students waited where they were, not far from the wagon. From a distance, they heard the rabbi of Berditchev saying Tehillim, and they remembered that the Rebbe had not eaten anything yet. Only then did they realize that he was actually fasting. But they did not dare approach him. About two hours passed. Suddenly, the rabbi of Berditchev rose from his place, hurried to the wagon, and told the driver to harness the horses and continue the journey. The students thought that the rabbi of Berditchev would surely daven Minchah in the forest, but they said nothing. The rabbi of Berditchev said to them, “Not far from here is a small settlement belonging to a landowner. There, with Hashem’s help, we will daven Minchah.” The journey continued. Nearly another hour passed. In the distance, they could see the top of a very tall building with a balcony attached to it, enclosed by a sturdy railing and furnished with benches. From up there on the balcony, one could see the entire surrounding area for miles. Before they reached the settlement, the rabbi of Berditchev said, “There are surely several houses there. Don’t hurry to approach any of them until I show you which house to go to.” They entered the courtyard. The dogs began barking. The rabbi of Berditchev said, “When the Children of Israel left Egypt, it says, ‘Not a dog shall sharpen its tongue.’ But when one enters Egypt, the dogs do bark.” The rabbi of Berditchev continued, “Egypt is a place of grievances and demands. Even when Yosef the tzaddik was in Egypt and the first Jews, Yaakov’s sons, arrived there, Yosef the tzaddik had grievances and demands of them. Egypt is a place of grievances and demands.” The rabbi of Berditchev pointed out which house they should approach. He instructed the wagon driver to go inside and say that a tzaddik, the rabbi of Berditchev, was passing through, that he needed to daven Minchah, and that he was asking permission to daven there.

08:10 Before the wagon driver could climb down, a man in his middle years came out of the house: tall and powerfully built, bareheaded, with long curly hair, clean-shaven except for a black mustache, splendidly dressed like a general, with a whip in his hand. He wore a broad leather belt, with a pistol hanging on his right side and a bayonet on his left. His face was red with anger. His eyes glittered; he was completely drunk. He began to shout. At the same time, a black dog came racing out of the house and began barking and lunging at the horses and the wagon. The wagon driver removed his hat, leaving his velvet yarmulke on, and tried to say what the rabbi of Berditchev had instructed him to say. But the burly man would not listen at all and was seething with murderous rage. Meanwhile, several windows in the house opened. The faces of drunk men appeared in them, shouting, “Ah, a wagon of whores!” The rabbi of Berditchev began to rise inside the wagon, intending to put his head out. The students did the same. At that moment, the burly man was seized by murderous fury. He grabbed his pistol and aimed it at the wagon. He pulled the trigger. He fired, but no bullets came out of the pistol. When the dog heard the commotion around the wagon, it lunged at it and barked even louder. The burly man fired again. The pistol would not fire. His anger grew still fiercer. He took hold of the pistol to check whether it was broken. But the pistol was in perfect working order. He tried to fire again. The pistol would not fire. Without intending to, almost as if of its own accord, the burly man turned the pistol toward the underside of the wagon. He fired two shots, hit the dog, and killed it on the spot. When the burly man saw that he himself had shot his most beloved dog, he became so confused he could not speak, as though he had lost his tongue. He stood rooted to the spot, paralyzed with shock, and meanwhile one of them came down

10:30 One of the students, from the other side of the wagon, approached the burly man and told him that the famous tzaddik, the Rabbi of Berditchev, was traveling with them. He needed to daven Minchah, wanted to do so in the man’s house, and was asking permission. When the man heard the name of the Rabbi of Berditchev, who was known and respected throughout the area, even among non-Jews, he changed completely and said they could come into his house to daven. The Rabbi of Berditchev entered the house, and he and the students began preparing for Minchah. The wagon driver took the wagon around to the back of the yard. The Rabbi of Berditchev instructed them to tell the driver that if anyone came out of the house to offer him feed for the horses, he should not accept it; if necessary, he should buy feed with his own money. The burly man, the owner of the house, paced about, preoccupied and stunned, not knowing what was happening to him. The men who had been sitting and drinking with him before the Rabbi of Berditchev arrived had seen everything that happened. They began urging him to take revenge on the Jews, saying that those “Jew-boys” who had come there had caused him the terrible loss of his best dog. But the man was still deeply confused and could not collect himself. When he calmed down a little, he said that the moment he saw the tzaddik’s face, he was overcome by such awe and deference that it was as though he had seen the German emperor. It shook him so badly that his pistol shifted and went off by itself. Since he had once served in the German emperor’s guard, the mention of the emperor prompted him to tell his friends about standing guard outside the emperor’s room. He described the awe and fear that came over the royal ministers when they had to enter the emperor’s presence. His drunken friends had never heard what the procedure was for entering the emperor’s presence, and they asked him to tell them about it. So the man began to describe and explain it to them.