The Maggid Shiur That had Doubts in Emunah

Historic Treasures — Episode 28: "The Maggid Shiur That Had Doubts in Emunah" (י"ט בטבת תש"פ)

Welcome to our weekly program, The Inside Story of Chabad in America, through the Mindel archives.

Today I want to share with you a personal story. Two years after my chasunah, after my marriage — the first year I went, I was in kollel — and then afterwards I was looking for parnassah. The Rebbe always told me, and he told us, that I should look for a chinuch job. So I had offers from different yeshivas: overseas, in America, Chabad yeshivas, and also litvish yeshivas, in New York, in New Jersey. So I wrote to the Rebbe about seven offers, and I wrote the details of every offer that I had.

One of the offers was Yeshiva of Brooklyn, which was on Ocean Parkway. This is a litvish yeshiva. Out of everything that I wrote to the Rebbe, the Rebbe underlined twice "Yeshiva of Brooklyn," and he gave me a big brachah to be in Yeshiva of Brooklyn. And they wanted to have a Lubavitcher maggid shiur. The pay in Yeshiva of Brooklyn was not the best, but Rabbi Mendel — his name was Mendel — he was a talmid of Torah Vodaas, a very choshuve yid. He was the menahel, he was the principal, and he made sure to pay on time. I was there seventeen years — he never missed one day. He used to pay on the first of the month and the fifteenth of the month. And every Friday, if we left the yeshiva and he didn't have the checks ready, he used to come before Shabbos to the house and give out the checks. He would never leave the teachers a day behind. And he always used to say that after one hundred and twenty years, the first thing they'll ask him is, "Did you pay the teachers on time?" He didn't pay the workers, the janitors — the teachers came first. I think we should learn from that.

Now, the teachers in that yeshiva were litvish — Telshe, Chaim Berlin, they're from there. The talmidim were also from litvish homes, ninety percent, children of Rosh Yeshivas. Rabbi Mendel was litvish; he had to do with Chassidus, but he was mainly litvish. The Rebbe, in the 1940s, told him that he should open a school. He was American-born, a young man at the time. So he opened a girls' school — he had close to a thousand students. And then he opened a boys' school a few blocks away, all on Ocean Parkway.

And I got along with the maggidei shiur there, all litvish. One day, a maggid shiur came over to me — a ben Torah, a big ben Torah, his children went to Yeshiva of Brooklyn, to Bais Yaakov, didn't speak lashon hara, with a beard. He comes over to me and says, "I must talk to you. I was thinking, should I approach you, shouldn't I? But I decided — I want to talk to you, but it's very, very confidential."

I said, "What is it?"

"I need to see the Rebbe, the Lubavitcher Rebbe," he says.

I said, "I'm sorry, I don't think you'll be able to see the Lubavitcher Rebbe. I'm not a secretary, but I doubt it very much. Tell me, what is bothering you, what's the problem?"

So he tells me, "I have safeikos — doubts — in emunah, and that bothers me all the time."

We're talking here about a ben Torah. I said, "You're a Mirrer talmid, you learned in Mir. There are gedolei Yisrael — there's Chaim Berlin's Rosh Yeshiva, there's Mir — and in those days there were gedolei Yisrael. I think Rabbi Yaakov Kamenetsky was there then, Rabbi Moshe [Feinstein] — why don't you go to the gedolei Yisrael?"

And he says, "No, I have to go to the Lubavitcher Rebbe."

I said, "I'm sorry, I cannot help you, but I can give you advice. Maybe sit down and write to the Rebbe, and see what the Rebbe says."

He says, "How can I write to the Rebbe when this is very serious? I can't put this on paper. I have to speak to him, pun him, I'll speak to him face to face."

I said, "I don't know — try to write and then we'll see."

I convinced him, and he wrote to the Rebbe. Two days later he came back with the letter that he had written — it was four and a half pages — and he gave it to me to read.

Now, I'll tell you: the letters that were typed up, that are in Igros Kodesh, were done by Rabbi Mindel, who took dictation — or there was Rabbi Kvint also, and Rabbi Rodstein, in the early years. They would type it, the Rebbe would look it over, and if the Rebbe made corrections, they had to type it again. But these letters that we gave to the secretary were not typed. These were letters that we handed in, and the Rebbe wrote directly on them. Then the person came, and he wrote down the answer, and the letter was given back to the Rebbe.

So, the next day I come to the yeshiva and I tell him, "You have an answer from the Rebbe."

"Oh," he says, "just a minute!" He's b'simcha, and he says, "I'm going upstairs to my shiur, and I'm going to tell the talmidim that I won't be able to give the shiur today."

I said, "No, no, no, no, no. The answer is nine words."

He says, "Nine words? I wrote four and a half pages, and the Rebbe answers nine words?"

I said, "Yeah."

"What's the answer?"

"First of all, the answer is: Azkir al hatziyun."

So he tells me, "What kind of answer is that? I don't understand what that means."

I said, "That's a brachah — [the Rebbe will] mention it at the gravesite [of the Frierdiker Rebbe]."

"Okay. Then the Rebbe says: is he zahir, careful, in cholov Yisroel?"

So he looks at me and he says, "I live in Borough Park. I buy cholov Yisroel."

And I said, "Always?"

So he says, "Whenever I travel, or when my children and I go to the country, I drink cholov stam, and Rabbi Moshe Feinstein said that cholov stam is fine — especially when I travel. But if I'm living in Borough Park, I buy cholov Yisroel."

"So you do drink cholov stam."

"That's it."

So he went away not really understanding what the Rebbe was saying to him, and he didn't know why the Rebbe was talking about cholov Yisroel and Azkir al hatziyun. Okay, that's it.

A few weeks passed by — no, it wasn't a few weeks, it was about a week and a half. He comes in the morning and says to me, "Your Rebbe is a gaon! A big gaon!"

I said, "Okay, what happened?"

We started to learn Tanya. He found [out] that there is a G-d in the world, that there's a neshamah — which he had never thought about [that way]. His eyes — he became b'simcha, his eyes opened up. His wife told me, at a chasunah, that he said, "Do you know that our shalom bayis became much different?" He was always depressed. This [new understanding] bothered him before, but this opened up his eyes. This is a big limud that we can learn out from this.

Now, I want to tell you, before I finish, a story about Rabbi Mendel from Yeshiva of Brooklyn. One year I taught third grade, and every Sunday he used to farher — test — the children on Rashi. So in my class, we used to go to his office in the girls' school, his room, and after class he farhered them. He would put a child on his lap and test him on Rashi. Nowadays they would arrest him for that, but those days were better times. So he put a child on his lap and tested him on Rashi.

All of a sudden, a big gvir walks in — his name was Mr. Williger, a big gvir. So the secretary knocks on his door and says to him, "Mr. Williger is here." He says, "Okay, tell Mr. Williger that I'm almost finished with the Rashi, and I'll see him." So he was waiting over there in the outer room. Then, since he still wasn't finished, she knocks again. He says, "One more line." Mr. Williger left.

After Rabbi Mendel finished testing the boy, the secretary told him Mr. Williger had wanted to come in. He says, "He left already?" "Yes." He says, "Okay, he left, he left — what can I do?"

Tuesday, Mr. Williger called, and he said to him, "I'm a supporter of many yeshivas, many moisdos. What I saw over here — when I come into other places, as soon as I come in, they know I'm going to give a donation, they right away jump, they run to me. Here, the way you were testing the Rashi — and that this was more important to you — you are going to get double [the donation]." This was Rabbi Mendel.

Now, since this program [began], I get calls from my talmidim who are listening, and they started to listen since I got onto COLlive. They listen — these are litvish yeshivos, some of them also from Monsey. We have talmidim from Yeshiva of Brooklyn. And simply, this gives them a bit of chayus, a story from the Rebbe, a story from the Frierdiker Rebbe.

And this is the lesson today that I want to say — the lesson that when we learn Chassidus, as we spoke about a few programs ago, a couple of months back — that there's a chiyuv, the Rebbe says, there's a letter, a chiyuv for everybody to learn Chassidus. And when you learn Chassidus, you see emunah, you see the world, in a different way. When a person puts on blue glasses, the world is blue. You put on green glasses, the world is green. When you learn Chassidus, the world isn't blue, isn't green — it's a different world entirely.

And with the learning of Chassidus — zol Hashem helfen — that we should, and I'm talking to my talmidim in Lakewood and also in Monsey, that you should be matzliach in your limud haTorah, nigleh. And you should also be matzliach in Chassidus. And the Rebbe says, zol Hashem helfen, that we should mekarev the geulah bimheirah b'yameinu. Amen.

And next week, next Thursday, we will continue our weekly program. Thank you.