R' Chaim Moshe Alperowitz (and the Niggun "וקרב פזורינו")

00:04 Reb Chaim Moshe Opperovich was one of the 转变tmimim in Lubavitch. Later years, he moved to Eretz Israel in the year 5688. He first settled in Yerushalayim. 转变59 he moved to Ramat Gan, and in his last years he lived in Bnei Brak. Chaim Moshe was famous in Lubavitch to be a big 转变who davened for many hours. Reb Mendel Futerfas once related that when he was a kid in Kremenchuk, he used to like listening to the conversations of the older tmimim who came from Lubavitch. "Every Shabbos afternoon," says Reb Mendel, "I would come with my friends to yeshiva, and we'll hang out listening to the tmimim. One day, the news came that the tsar was murdered, and the whole entire city was talking about it, and people were scared and were talking about what's gonna happen now. That Shabbos, I walked to yeshiva as usual, and I bumped into two tmimim in the courtyard speaking to each other. One of them was Chaim Moshe. So the other bocher asked Chaim Moshe, 'Chaim Moshe, did you hear? They murdered the tsar and there is no king anymore.'" So Chaim Moshe's natural reaction was, "What? Where are we gonna have mashal in Chassidus for sefirat haMalchus now? Now that we don't have a king, we're not gonna have a mashal for Malchus anymore." That was his natural reaction. The only thing that bothered him about the fact that the king was killed was the fact that there's no mashal for, for Malchus. Reb

01:30 Yechiel Kahn once related, Chaim Moshe was a shochet. When he came to Eretz Israel, he refused to shecht 'cause he di- he didn't wanna be masseh gvul. He didn't wanna take away parnasah from other shochtim who were there already. People tried to convince him, but it didn't work. Only after the local shochet came over to him and he told him that he actually needs help because there are too many people who want to shecht stuff and he doesn't have enough time to shecht for everyone, only then he agreed. Eventually, when everybody noticed the yiras Shamayim of Chaim Moshe, so everybody wanted that he should shecht for them, so people started to move to Chaim Moshe instead of using their regular shochet. When Yom Kippur came, there was a long line of people standing by Chaim Moshe's house waiting for him to shecht their kaparos. Chaim Moshe asked his son that he should go to the other shochet's house and check out what's happening over there. And the son came back and he told his father that over there, there is no line. There's barely anyone there. So Reb Chaim Moshe took his knife and he damaged it, and he said that he's not shechting anymore. And people tried to convince him otherwise, but nothing helped. And for the rest of his life, he never shechted anymore, and he became a worker in, um, in construction sites. He would, uh, carry heavy bricks, stones. Eventually, the manager in the company, an Israeli company, saw that, uh,

02:53 this worker, Chaim Moshe, together with another Lubavitcher who worked for him, were very, uh, serious people, and he had some respect and admiration for them, so he decided to give them a little bit of a lighter job and he told them that they should just be in charge of a certain machine, which was much physically easier. However, after an hour or two of Chaim Moshe working there, he came back to the manager and he said he wants to go back to the old job. Said, "What happened?" He says, "This work, now running the machine, occupies my mind, so I can't chazer any learning in my mind while I'm working. In the old job, I was able to think the whole time, think divrei Torah." Another thing is that Reb Chaim Moshe was very careful not to ever speak during his work because of a chashash of gezel, of stealing, 'cause maybe if he will speak, he will do his work a little bit slower. During the War of Independence in Eretz Israel, he was, uh, drafted to help with making the walls of the city stronger, the city of Yerushalayim, and he later on told Reb Zvi Greenwald that, "In regular times, like in usual times, I usually finish a Tehillim in two hours, but now because of all the bombing, it takes me longer." In other words, the whole entire time during work, he's chazering Tehillim. Reb Sholom Feldman once related, Reb Chaim Moshe was once in a bar mitzvah in Kfar Chabad, and

04:17 when they kept serving more and more fancy food, his face changed, you know, an expression of the opposite of happiness. He was not very happy from all the taivas that were being served. Then eventually, when they brought ice cream to the table, he completely lost it, and he got up and he screamed like s- as if they brought chazer to the seudah, and he screamed, "Marozhinke ad kam!" Reb Sholom Feldman also once related that Reb Chaim Moshe once farbrenged with the bochurim in 770 when he came to the Rebbe, and he demanded from them to serve the Aibishter not only with ahavah zutah, the lower level of ahavah, but it should also have the higher level of ahavah, ahavah rahbah, which in Chassidus explains which, which is a very high level of ahavah which usually belongs to tzaddikim. So the bochurim were smirking from the fact that he was so, um, I guess naive from the fact that he's expecting from them such high levels. However, since Chaim Moshe was such a sincere person and he interpreted their smirking in his mind as if they were arguing with him on the fact, as if they were disagreeing on the fact that ahavah rahbah is an important thing. So he started to quote to them different ma'amarim Chassidus that prove that ahavah rahbah is an important thing and ahavah zutah is not good enough. In that same visit in 770, Reb Sholom Feldman relates, Reb Chaim Moshe participated in the gathering of Tze'irei Agudas Chabad, and

05:46 he was honored to speak. Now, at that time, Reb Chaim Moshe had a hard time hearing, so he couldn't really hear the speeches, but he assumed, his Chassidisha assumption was that all the speeches before him were probably about- Um, Ahavas Hashem and Yiras Hashem. So when he was invited up to speak, he, he assumed that the speech before him was probably about Ahavas Hashem and Yiras Hashem. So as a continuation to the previous speech, he said, "Oh, we'll just continue on the same topic," and he went on to list three dargas in Yira, three dargas in Yiras Hashem. His speech was actually not very long. It was short, but it came from the depth of his heart, and during his speech, he screamed out, "The Rebbe was me'oreir in his last maimar about tintum hame'ayach vehalev. We have to take off. We have to remove the tintum hame'ayach and tintum halev and clean up our mind and heart." Reb Pinny Altois once asked Reb Nachum Goldschmidt, which Reb Nachum Goldschmidt was also from the TMIMIM back in Lubavitch, later on in Eretz Israel. And he asked him, "Why is it that all the TMIMIM in Lubavitch, eventually when they left Lubavitch and they got married and went on in life, they changed? They stayed Chassidishe Yidden, but they changed, and they were not exactly as they were in Lubavitch, except for Reb Chaim Moshe. Chaim Moshe stayed on the same level his whole life, just like when he was in Lubavitch." That's what Reb Pinny

07:06 asked Reb Nachum Goldschmidt. So Reb Nachum answered, "All the TMIMIM, when they were in Lubavitch, they heard and internalized Lubavitch, and then when they went out to the world, they heard Olam HaZeh, so Olam HaZeh affected them. However, Reb Chaim Moshe, when he was in Lubavitch, he heard Lubavitch, but when he left Lubavitch, for the rest of his life, he never heard anything else, so he stayed the same." Reb Chaim Moshe's son, Rabbi Yerachmiel Alperovitch, once related, "My brother, Rav Gershon, was, uh, sick with typhus before we left Russia, and his fever was, uh, skyrocketing, and it went worse and worse. And one day, the doctors back there in Russia told my parents that you need to prepare yourself for, for his passing, Chas v'Shalom. So the whole family were in trauma. However, my father completely disregarded the doctors, and he told them, 'If that's the news that you have to tell me, you could go back to your work.' And when the doctors left, my father turned to the family and he said, 'These doctors are, are garnish. They are nothing. Since when did they become balabatim over a Yiddishe life? The only balabos is the Ribono shel Olam.' My grandfather, who was present then, and he was very tense from the whole situation, he screamed, 'This kid is about to pass away, and you're playing games of, uh, Chassidishe games.' But my father just repeated his words and he said, 'I will send a telegram immediately to the Rebbe Tata,' to the father.

08:34 That was the code name for the Rebbe. 'And I'm also accepting on myself right now 18 fasts.' And my father left the house, and he sent a telegram to the Rebbe, to the Frierdiker Rebbe, and then he came back completely calm and he said, 'The healing will come.' And take it, the Frierdiker Rebbe telegrammed back very quickly a bracha for Refuah Shleima, and my father was very excited, and he started to fast his 18 fasts. And gradually, the fever of my brother, Rav Gershon, um, decreased, and my father kept fasting and davening, and within a few days, my brother was completely released from the hospital." Rav Gershon, the brother who was sick, once related that, "Later, when we lived in Eretz Israel and my father worked in that Solel Boneh company," it's the construction company. "So my father used to buy mezuzahs and put them up by the entrances of the homes of the other workers, the Yiddishe workers who worked with him. Once, a group of not frumer workers walked over to my father, and the biggest one was leading them, and that biggest one was a big, strong guy, not frum at all. He was half not dressed, and he wan- went over to my father with all these big guys, and he demanded from him to take down all the mezuzahs. So my father picked up his eyes and he told him in a low tone of voice, 'If you remove the mezuzahs, I'm not responsible for your life.' As soon as

10:01 my father said that, this big guy who came with this demand started to shake and disappeared with his whole group in a moment. So I went over to my father and said, 'Father, what a miracle.' So my father said, 'It's not a miracle. It was d'varim hayotzim min halev, was words that came out of the heart.'" We'll finish off with something Reb, that Reb Chaim Moshe once said that projects, that shows his high level of ruchnius. And he once said, "Mei'ileb dibur. It's understandable that when it comes to speech, to speaking, a person could be nishtel, Chas v'Shalom, because sometimes you could get into a conversation and somebody might ask you a question and you will answer, and without knowing, you might, Chas v'Shalom, say a loshon hora or a vak loshon hora. But machshava, thought, I am the only balabos. I'm the only one in charge of my thoughts, and I have complete control over it." In other words, that it's easier to c- control your machshava than to control your dibur. And take it on his matzeiva, it is written, and it was edited by the Rebbe, "Hoya zahir bemachshava dibur u'maase kol yemei chayav." He was careful with machshava dibur u'maase for his whole life. We'll finish off with a nigun, a hartzike nigun from Reb Shalom Charitonov, which is called Va'lach Vekorev Pezureinu. I have asked his, uh, family members if they know for a reason why it's called Vekorev Pezureinu, and they said that they don't, so I don't know

11:29 the reason for the name. It's a geshmake nigun, and it's sung by Reb Shalom's son, Reb Sholom Charitonov, alav ha-shalom.