0125 - Rebbe Rashab Told R' Shmuel Levitin

00:01 Rab Shmuel Witten was known to be a Baal Shemuel. He had all the stories, and he was able to repeat it beduyek. So I once asked him, why doesn't he write it down like other people wrote down the stories that they remember from Lubavitch? So why didn't he write it down? So he tells me, because when he started learning Yoreh Deah, he was very young. I think he was fourteen. I'm not sure. So it was hard for him to know to get everything, all the shitas straight. So he went to Yechidus to the Rebbe Rashab, and he asked the Rebbe Rashab what to do. So the Rebbe Rashab said to him that the etze is you should write it down. When you write it down, it clarifies it in your mind, and things get clear. Then the Rebbe said to him, "Ober zolst nisht machen ke chibur." Don't make a sefer. So therefore, he feels that he shouldn't make a sefer. That's why he doesn't write it down. That's one thing he said. Another thing, it took him a long time till he got glasses, and he only got glasses after he asked the Rebbe. And he said, why? Because when he had to go to priziv, it means he had to stand to go to the draft, and they looked all kinds of etzes to avoid the draft. So people would do things to themselves in order that they should be sick, so they should not go to the draft. One of the things

01:12 that people used to do is that they used to start wearing glasses. In those times, there was the law that if someone wears glasses, he's part of the army. So when he asked the Rebbe Rashab, the Rebbe was saying what he should do. So he asked, should he put on glasses? The Rebbe Rashab, I don't know what etze he gave him. I don't remember. But one thing he said, "Ober zolst nisht tun ken brion." That's not that he shouldn't put on glasses. So therefore, he felt that he shouldn't put on glasses. But at the end, when he was older and he needed glasses, he wouldn't put it on until he asked the Rebbe and the Rebbe, our Rebbe, and the Rebbe agreed that he should put on glasses. That's when he put on glasses. And another thing that he told me once when the day I think of my chasuna, he said that before his chasuna, the Rebbe Rashab told him, "Zolst trachten mamsh af zein makifim afen gantzn lebn." That by the chuppa, you're mamsh makifim afen gantzn lebn.