Can a Rebbe Ever Make a Mistake

Welcome to our weekly Motzei Shabbos program, the Untold Story of Chabad in America. As I mentioned last week, Motzei Shabbos I begin with a story — that's the Jewish custom. But before I tell the story, I just want to say a saying: don't believe what you hear, believe half of what you see. There are stories, some people say, from the Baal Shem Tov — miracles. Not necessarily are they true; they could be true, but not necessarily. The same thing with stories from the Rebbe — miracles. Some of them are true, some of them are not true; they could be true. There's a saying: whoever believes that every story of the Baal Shem Tov is true is a fool, and whoever believes that all the stories cannot happen is an apikores, an atheist. And the same goes for stories of the Rebbe — they could be true for sure, but we don't know that it's true.

But I want to say, since it's Shabbos, a time to say stories — the story that I have in this program comes from the notes that Rabbi Mindel wrote, which I trust completely, because he wrote down what he heard from the Rebbe, or notes from — he was the Rebbe's secretary, and also my father-in-law. Even if I heard it from a speaker, I'll tell you who I heard it from — it could be true, it could not be true. But what Rabbi Mindel wrote down from the Rebbe — those are the stories that are true.

So today I want to mention a story that, even though I mentioned it once on my Thursday night program, maybe some new listeners did not hear it. First of all, I want to tell you what Rabbi Mindel told me: the Rebbe opens every single letter. No, the secretary doesn't open the letters — the Rebbe opens every letter; it takes time. So once somebody wrote to the Rebbe, "You're busy — why don't you make a stamp with your signature? You can look over the letters, and if you like the answer, just give it over to the secretaries. You have thousands and thousands of letters — why do you have to sit and sign every single letter? It takes time." So the Rebbe answered: "We live in a false world, so the signature should not also be false." And the Rebbe signed every single letter himself.

Now I'm going to tell you a story that the Rebbe told Rabbi Mindel. I said it once, and I'll say it again now for this Shabbos program.

A bochur wrote to the Rebbe that he was going out with a girl. He wrote to the Rebbe, "I don't think this is a very nice girl for me — I don't have a special feeling for her." The Rebbe always says one of the most important things is if there's no feeling — sometimes the Rebbe says to stop. But this time the Rebbe said, "Continue." So the bochur continued seeing her again. He wrote again — a third time — saying he still doesn't have the feeling, maybe it's better, but he wasn't happy. That's it — he married her. The Rebbe didn't tell him to marry her; he married her. Now he writes again, saying that he has complaints — he's going to divorce. He explains that the reason he married her was not because he had a feeling for her, but because the Rebbe had said "continue," so he thought the Rebbe meant that this should be his wife.

So the Rebbe says to Rabbi Mindel, "What do you say?" Rabbi Mindel just smiled — he didn't answer. What could he answer the Rebbe? He had nothing to say.

This reminds me of a story. There was a Rabbi [?] who was here at 770 after the wedding of his granddaughter. After the chuppah, he was standing by the Rebbe's room when the Rebbe came out to give out dollars. Before the Rebbe gave him the dollar, he turned to the Rebbe and said, "Can a king ever make a mistake?" — the Rebbe is called a king, he calls himself a king. So, as the Rebbe is giving out dollars, he wants you to give a dollar for everything — just give dollars, give dollars. So he's asking, in effect, "Can he make a mistake?" The Rebbe didn't answer — a few times he said nothing. The Rabbi stood and waited. The Rebbe didn't answer; how could he answer that? Sometimes the Rebbe gave him a dollar, gave him a blessing — but I just want to say that sometimes you don't answer.

So here, too, he asked Rabbi Mindel, and Rabbi Mindel did not answer. Then the Rebbe said to him — this Rabbi had seven children, a lot of grandchildren. One of his grandchildren — this means the Rebbe had given blessings for the marriage — and after three months they divorced. I don't know who it was, but one of his grandchildren, after three months, they divorced. So the Rabbi said to the Rebbe, "I don't understand — you gave blessings, and they divorced after three months?" So the Rebbe said, "Don't mention that" — [a Russian word, I believe, meaning something like "enough" or "full"] — meaning, you know, in the time of Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai, the Romans liked him, and they said, "Tell us what you want, and we will listen to you." He could have asked them not to destroy the Beis Hamikdash, and we would not have had this golus. Why didn't he ask that? So the Rebbe says: because sometimes the answer comes "from the back," and the mind becomes, so to speak, crooked — this is the answer. That's why he didn't ask. This is what it means.

Now let me tell you what happened after that couple divorced. Two years, or two and a half years later, they remarried. They have children, they live together, they are the happiest people. This is — two years later.

Now, what is the lesson from this story? People ask the Rebbe in different letters: can the Rebbe make a mistake? Can the Rebbe forget? The "mistake" of the Rebbe has to be like that. We have to be in golus; if he had told him not to destroy the Beis Hamikdash, we would not have gone into golus — but it had to be. And it had to come about in such a way that he should say it in such a way that his mind would be, so to speak, crooked — but this is how it had to be. So a tzaddik cannot make a mistake; his "mistake" is that it had to be this way. Sometimes the Rebbe says something and we don't understand what the Rebbe is saying — it's not that it's wrong; it is so, because the truth of the matter is that since the Rebbe said so, it had to come out this way. This person had to divorce, and he had to remarry — why, I don't know, but it had to be like that: he had to marry, to divorce, and then marry again. Why? We don't know, and maybe the Rebbe doesn't know either.

There's a famous story — this happened in the Rebbe's time — that someone asked the Rebbe whether he should go to Israel by plane or by ship, and the Rebbe said by ship. He went by plane instead — the opposite — and something happened to him, and it was no good. So the son came to the Rebbe and said, "If you would have told me that something would happen, I would never have let my father go by plane." The Rebbe said, "I didn't know myself." So we say — even if you see that the Rebbe made a mistake, this mistake comes "from the back," but the mistake had to happen like that; that's how it had to be. Before the war, I remember, the Rebbe gave out dimes, and then he said, "I didn't know myself — you don't know yourself." So this is the lesson that answers: a tzaddik cannot make a mistake. And the "mistake" that we see — we think it's a mistake, but the truth is it had to come down through this way, because this is the answer of G-d, whatever the Rebbe says.

I remember once — and I'll finish off with this. In the beginning years, when my father came to Cleveland, the Rebbe had told him to go to Cleveland. The Rebbe knew he was in Cleveland; he wrote to him many times — he knew. So afterward, the Rebbe used to give out bottles of wine to people who live out of town. So the Rebbe is giving my father a bottle of wine, and my father says, "I'm from Cleveland." The Rebbe says, "From Detroit?" My father says, "Cleveland." The Rebbe says, "Cleveland?" — as if he didn't know. My father says, "Cleveland, Cleveland." Yes — and the Rebbe knew very well that he was from Cleveland, but it seemed as if he didn't. It bothered my father very much that the Rebbe didn't seem to know Cleveland. So he was told, "You're going to mention it to the Rebbe tomorrow, because it's impossible that the Rebbe should make a mistake — he should know that you live in Cleveland."

So my father went in — this was in the beginning, my father had just come to Cleveland — and my father said, "Yesterday you mentioned Cleveland, right? That's what you said." So the Rebbe said, "There can be a Yid living in a city, but the Rebbe should [seem to] not know that there's a Yid living in that city." So my father understood that the Rebbe wanted him to do more. What he did then — he accomplished a lot; my father did a lot of things in Cleveland, and my father's mother also did a lot, brought a lot — but in the beginning... In other words, he can't say the Rebbe forgot that he lives in Cleveland. Maybe at the time the Rebbe said "Cleveland?" it seemed as though he forgot — he didn't forget, it doesn't matter — but that's the way it's supposed to be.

This is called — next week we'll continue our weekly program. Thank you.