0596 - The Rebbe Saw Young Bochurim Throwing Snowballs

00:01 Whenever the Rebbe would come from his house, from President Street, and he would walk, those years that he would still walk to seven seventy. So any bocher, a bochur, even a younger man, who would be standing outside by seven seventy, and he saw the Rebbe coming, would run away and hide. The chalom would try to hide that the Rebbe shouldn't look at you, shouldn't see what's going on with you. And it's all based ac-actually on Yerushalmi. Yerushalmi, it says, "Re'unin," and the posek, "Re'unin, Norim v'Nechbo," that the Norim saw me and they hid. That it's a inyan to hide when the Rebbe comes. So everyone would hide, trying to see. And sometimes what happened that you didn't notice the Rebbe coming, and then all of a sudden you see the Rebbe coming, you felt very uncomfortable. You would try to go to the side, et cetera, et cetera. So I remember once, it was a Motzei Shabbos, that I think it was Tov Shin Chof Daled, which was the first year that our kiddush was at seven seventy. 'Cause we came to seven seventy at the end of Chof Gimel, Tammuz Tov Shin Chof Gimel. We were just about sixteen years old, and it was a Motzei Shabbos, and we came to Seder, the Seder Motzei Shabbos in the middle of the winter. But we came a little earlier. It was... There was a heavy snow. So we were still very young, and we were standing outside and throwing snowballs, 'cause we were still kids.

01:14 We were just sixteen years old. And then all of a sudden, we see that the Rebbe's walking. I don't know why Motzei Shabbos he was walking to seven seventy, came back to seven seventy at night. And we saw the Rebbe, so we all ran away and hid. But the Rebbe definitely saw us throwing the snowballs. And we thought, "Who knows what's gonna happen later? Maybe he'll give a gan hola with our bochur drinks-- throwing snowballs." Anyway, we were afraid. Whether there's what to be afraid or not, I don't know. But we as younger bochurim, we were afraid. The pel mamish, the Rebbe walked in, didn't say anything. We didn't hear again about it, so we felt much better that doesn't seem like the Rebbe felt that this was a terrible thing. Even though maybe even if it was, the Rebbe wouldn't say it. Not for every little thing the Rebbe would comment. But this is the feeling. Just wanna bring out the feeling that we had when we saw the Rebbe coming, and he saw us throwing snowballs. We felt pretty, pretty uncomfortable.