17. A little boy’s brave act

00:15 Hello, kinderlach. It's Yud Beis Tammuz time. As you know, Yud Beis Tammuz is the day the previous Rebbe came out of prison. Why was he in prison? Because he had Mesirat Nefesh. He risked his life, put himself in danger to teach Torah Chassidus to all the Chassidim in Russia, to all the Jewish people. He made cheders for the little children, and the Russian government did not like it. They said, "You're not allowed to have Jewish schools. You're not allowed to have a cheder where Jewish children learn Torah." And he did not listen to them. He made a lot of chadorim, a lot of cheders all over Russia. Children were learning Torah in hiding, in basements, secretly so the police wouldn't see them. And because of that, when they saw how the Friediker Rebbe was doing these amazing things, he was teaching Torah, making sure the Jewish people and the Jewish children learn a lot of Torah, and they keep the mitzvahs, and they don't listen to the police, and they don't listen to the government, to the... And so they put him in jail, 'cause they saw that he was the one who was encouraging everybody to learn Torah, so they took him and put him in prison. And you know what? They put him in a terrible prison, in a prison where they killed the people that got into that prison. They wanted to do this to the Friediker Rebbe, too, but Hashem made a big nes. And after a few weeks, they let

01:48 him out. It was a big nes, and that's why Yud Beis Tammuz is such a big yontif. But you should know that the Friediker Rebbe was in prison many times. Seven times total. He was seven times in prison. The first time he was in prison, you know how old he was? How old was he? 11 years old. He was a little boy. 11 years old, before his bar mitzvah, he was already in prison. What did he do? Why did he end up in prison? Here is the story. Here comes the amazing story how the previous Rebbe was a little boy, 11 years old, ended up in prison, and what happened. Why did he go to prison, and how did he get out? This is the amazing story. The Friediker was a little boy. He learned in cheder every day from morning to night. He would study Torah with his friends and with his teacher, and they would learn and learn, learn. Now, one of the things the Friediker Rebbe did a lot, 'cause his father told him to do it, was that he learned Mishnah is ba'al peh. The Rebbe Rashab, who was the father of the Friediker Rebbe, told his son, the Friediker Rebbe, that he must learn Mishnah is ba'al peh, and for every perek Mishnah he learns ba'al peh, he will get money. He gave him, like, five kopkes, five coins for every perek Mishnah. And the Friediker Rebbe learned Mishnah all the time. Every day he learned another perek Mishnahs and

03:19 another perek Mishnahs until he saved a lot of money. You know how much money he saved? 30 rubles. 30 rubles is like having $500. It's like a lot of money. Now, when the, when that story took place, the Rebbe's, the previous Rebbe's father, the Rebbe Rashab, and his mother, they were both traveling somewhere. They went away. They had to go away. And they left the previous Rebbe with his grandmother. He stayed and was eating and sleeping in the house of his grandmother, the Rebbetzin Rivkah. And he would go every day to cheder. He missed his Tatty and Mami, but they were gonna come back in a few days, but they had to leave, so he stayed with his grandmother. He went to cheder every morning and learned. Now, in those days, when you went to cheder in the city of Lubavitch, you had g- you went home for lunch. You went home for lunch, and after lunch you went back to cheder. You learned till the night, every day like that. At that time, the Friediker Rebbe already had learned, you know how much Mishnah is ba'al peh? He knew the whole Seder Zeraim and the whole Seder Moed. You know how many sedarim the whole Mishnah has? Six. He knew two out of the six. That means a third of the entire Mishnah, a third. Two sedarim, that means it's a huge amount of Mishnah he already knew ba'al peh. He knew by heart when he was 11 years old. And from all the

05:05 money that he made from the Mishnah is ba'al peh, you know what he did? He decided, um, his father gave him the idea to make a fund. That means he would have money, and instead of just buying candy and buying toys, you know what he did with his money? He did mitzvahs. What's the biggest mitzvah you can do with money? What's the biggest mitzvah you can do with money? You give it to tzedakah. But you know what's even a bigger mitzvah than tzedakah? Tzedakah you give to a poor person, and that's it. You give, you give it away, you never see it again. The poor person takes it and buys himself food and he eats. But there's an, a bigger mitzvah than tzedakah. You know what it is? You give people that need a loan, they need to borrow money. 'Cause let's say somebody, a poor person, he's trying to make money so he can feed his family, so he needs to buy something. So in Russia, you know, in the small towns, people would buy, let's say, a chicken. A live chicken, and you would come to the marketplace and sell it, and sell it and make a little bit of money. You sell it for more money than you bought it for, so therefore you make a little profit, and then you can buy without money. You can buy food. So but sometimes these people didn't have money to buy a chicken or to buy a sheepsala, a lamb. They would have to

06:27 borrow the money, and when they sell it, they can pay back the loan. So the f- that it says in the Gemara that giving loans to people that need the money so they can buy things, and then they can sell it and make a living, so they can make money so they can live, that's even a bigger mitzvah tzedakah, 'cause you're helping those people make their own money. You give them money as a loan, but... And then when they make the money, they, they pay back the loan. And the Friediker Rebbe took all his 30 rubles and made it like a loan. Everybody who needs money, they need to buy something, but they c- don't have the money for now, "I'll give you a loan, and you pay me back whenever you have the money." And especially the Jews in Lubavitch that were simple Jews, but they're people who made who, who, who worked very hard, and they needed to buy things for their work, and so they can sell things and make money. He would give them loans. The Friediker would give them, like, five rubles, 10 rubles, three rubles. This guy wanted to buy a cow, so he didn't have any money, so he can then make... take the milk from the cow and sell it, and then make money from this. But Friediker would give him, like, 10 rubles. "Here, you can buy yourself a cow." And then when they made enough money from the milk, they're paying back the 10 rubles.

07:53 And that went on for a long time. One day, the Friediker Rebbe was 11 years old, as I said, and he came home to eat lunch from cheder. He had learned the whole morning a lot of Gemara and a lot of Chumash, and he learned really well, and then he went home with his friend Shimon. His friend Shimon and, and the previous Rebbe were walking together. And when they were walking, they were walking through the marketplace, and the marketplace was in the middle of the town of Lubavitch. There was... Once a week, there was a market day when everybody came from all over around Lubavitch, and they would sell chickens, they would sell cows, they would sell leather, like little pieces of leather. They would sell onions and eggs and cheese and all kind of fruits and vegetables. So when the Friediker Rebbe had to go home for eat lunch from cheder, he had to pass through the market, and the market was full of people. Many, many people were, uh, going through the market and, um, you know, selling and buying stuff. The Friediker Rebbe saw that, uh, there was this guy, Dovid. Dovid was a very simple Jew. He was, like, 50 years old. He had six children. He was very, very poor. And he did a lot of hard work in the marketplace so he can make a little bit of money so he could feed his six children and his wife and himself. They would have a little bit of food

09:27 at home. And this Reb Dovid would do anything just to make a little bit of money. He... Anything. You want him to schlep a big bag of, of, of apples to a store, and they paid him for that, he would make that, do that work. Or he would buy a chicken and sell it in the market and make a little bit of money. He would buy a c- a, a, a sheepsala, and he would sell it. He would do anything. And he often needed money loans from the Friediker Rebbe because the Friediker Rebbe was a little boy, but he had a, a 30 rubles that he would give out for loans. And Dovid wanted to buy a chicken, didn't have any money because he was very poor, and the Friediker would give him 10 rubles. "Here, Dovid, when you sell your chicken and you make your money, you can pay me back then." He would work very hard, this Dovid. Uh, he would work in the summer, in the winter, even it was snowing. He needed to work because otherwise he couldn't have food to eat. This Dovid was very simple. He didn't know how to learn Torah much. All he knew is how to read. He would daven every day. He knew Tehillim by heart, and he would s- uh, say Pirkei Avos, uh, but he didn't know much. All he knew is how to read, and he would daven. He would get up very early every morning and be from the first people

10:46 to go to shul, and he would say the whole Tehillim every morning, and he would daven very early. He was a very good Jew, a very good Jew, but he wasn't very learned. He was just very simple. The Friediker Rebbe says that this simple Reb Dovid was such a special Jew, that he was... He would enjoy a mitzvah. He would... The Friediker would love to watch this Dovid. Whenever he came Friday, before Shabbos, he would go to the mikvah, especially for Shabbos. And when he walked out of the mikvah to go home, like an hour before Shabbos, this Dovid, his face looked so beautiful. You could see he was so happy that Shabbos is coming. He really enjoyed the Shabbos, even though he didn't know how to learn, but he loved mitzvahs. The Friediker would love to see his face when he came out from the mikvah to go home for Shabbos. His face was, like, all soft, excited, and he had his children walking with him. Then he would go to shul after he went home and, and he was finished getting ready for Shabbos. He would go home for, for Shabbos to the shul, and he would, like, be so excited. This simple Reb Dovid was once walking through the market exactly when the Friediker Rebbe was walking through the market to go home from cheder. It was lunchtime. He and his friend Shimon were walking Through the marketplace to go home to eat lunch, and they saw Reb Dovid. Reb Dovid, Reb

12:20 Dovid was called Reb Dovid the butcher, because Reb Dovid would always sell meat. He would find a, a shapsela, and he would buy the shapsela, and then he would have the shocheit shecht the shapsela. And from the meat that he would sell, he would make a little bit of money, then he would have food for his family. He sees this Reb Dovid. The Feldgeber was walking through the market, and he sees Reb Dovid, whose face is dark because he was filthy from... Well, you know, when you work with animals, and you pick them up, and they're full of dust, it goes all over his face. But he didn't care. He was carrying a, a, a shapsela in his hand, on his shoulder, actually. And in his hand, he had a whole basket full of chickens, and in his other hand, he had something else. He was f- was trying to sell things so he would make money. And when the Feldgeber saw him, this Reb Dovid was looking at the Feldgeber with a smile and says, "Ah, I hope Hashem will m- help me that I will make a little bit of money from selling these things." Can you imagine carrying a shapsela, a live shapsela on your shoulders, and a whole basket full of chicken, live chickens in your hand and y- on your arm? And in his other arm, he had something else. I think it was a little lamb, a living... He was carrying so many things. It was very hard work,

13:39 but he was happy, always happy. He never complained. He always had trust in Hashem. Hashem will help him, and he'll make a little bit of money. As I... As... Before Reb Dovid, when Reb Dovid saw me, and he was so happy and told me Hashem will help him to make some money, an officer, a Russian mean officer approached Dovid, slapped him across the face so hard that his nose began to bleed. When the Feldgeber says, "When I saw this, I couldn't stand it. I screamed. I screamed at the officer. I said, 'You drunkard, you stupid drunken person.' And I pushed him so hard that his little, you know, medal..." He had a little medal on his uniform, you know, that the officers carry, that the government gave him a medal that he's a special officer. It fell off, and it fell on the ground and got all dirty. And this officer saw me, a little boy, pushing him and cursing him and calling him drunkard, "You drunk, you stupid drunk. What are you doing to this Jew? What did he do wrong? This is a special Jew, Dovid. Why are you slapping him in the face? Why are you making his nose bleed like this?" When the officer saw this, he got so angry at me. He grabbed me. And what did he do? He took me by my shirt and pulled me, and he told one of the other officers, "Here, take him quickly to the, to the police station. You have to take

15:12 this boy to police station because he did something terrible." And the other officer, a big, strong Russian peasant who was supposedly an officer, who was also half drunk, you could smell the mashke from his mouth. He's grabbing me with his strong hands, and he's pulling me through the market. The market was so full of people with wagons and horses. People come from all over trying to sell and buy stuff. So nobody noticed me because there was so much noise in the market. And I, I was dragged by this officer so, with such cruel hands, and he took me to the police station. When I came to the police station, the big officer who was in charge of the police station said, "Aha. What did you do?" And the police officer said, "This boy pushed me, and I was trying to take away a, a lamb, a shapsela that Dovid was carrying, which I know he stole. Dovid must have stolen it, and that's why I slapped him. And he, this boy, came and pushed me away. He should go to jail." Well, the head of the police station said, said to me, "Okay, we're gonna put you in jail." And they grabbed me. First, he gave me a slap across the face, says, "You bad boy. What did you do?" And then he grabbed me by my ears, and he schlepped me into one of the prison rooms. It was a dark, dark room. You couldn't see anything. There were no windows. It was pitch

16:52 dark. And he closed the door and left me alone in that pitch dark room. It was scary. And also, I was very hungry. I didn't eat lunch. I was on my way to go home to eat lunch, and I didn't eat, so I was very hungry. And I was alone in this dark room, very scared. There was no chairs. You had to sit on the floor. But then I had an idea. You know, I heard from my father, the Rebbe Rashab, that, you know, all the Rebbes of Chabad, all the Rebbes, they all sat in jail. The Alter Rebbe was in prison, and he came out on Yud Tes Kislev. The Mitteler Rebbe was in prison. He came out on Yud Kislev. Every one of the Rebbe was in prison, almost every one. And I thought, "Ah, I am also sitting in prison like my ancestors, like my forefathers, like the Rebbes before me." And why am I in prison? Because I helped another Jew. What a special thing it is to sit in jail because you did a mitzvah. You tried to save a Jew from a mean officer. And I was very happy to know that I also had a special, special, you know, uh, joy that I could be in prison for a mitzvah. But then I thought, "You know, I know Mishnayos Ba'al Peh. Why should I waste my time here in this dark room? I'm gonna start saying Mishnayos. I don't have books here. I don't have seforim here. I

18:24 can't read here anything, but I can-- I have it, I know it by heart. What a great idea. You know Mishnayos Ba'al Peh, and you can always learn Torah even if you're in a dark room without any Mishnayos, without any books." So I started learning Mishnayos Ba'al Peh, and then suddenly I hear a noise in the room from the other corner, the far corner on the other side of the room. It's dark, I can't see what it is, but I hear something moving. And also I hear, like, this thing that's moving is also making a sound. It's going, "Ah, eh." And I got very scared. What is this in the room with me? I can't even see it. But then I decided, you know what? I gotta just focus on my Mishnayos. I shouldn't worry. I should trust in Hashem. And I started again reviewing Mishnayos and continuing with my Mishnayos, and I tried to go as far away from that corner where that noise was coming from. And I continued with my Mishnayos on and on and on. And then I remembered it's the afternoon, and it must be already Mincha time. I have to daven Mincha. And I thought I should daven Mincha now. Well, um, okay. He knew Mincha by heart. Friediker was 11 years old. He knew the whole Mincha by heart. He stood there and davened, and davened. And then he thought, "Oh, should I daven a special davening?" You know, when Jewish people have trouble and a lot of

20:05 problems, we, we fast and we say Anenu, special prayers. Maybe I should say a special prayer because I'm in trouble. I'm in prison. Then I said, "No, no, no, no, no. This is a special day that I ended up in prison because I tried to save another Jew. I tried to protect another Jew. That's a, a Yom Tov. I should celebrate today, and instead I'm not gonna say Tachnun, because on a Yom Tov we don't say Tachnun." And Friediker davened Mincha without saying Tachnun. And when he finished Mincha, he went back to his Mishnayos. He finished the whole Seder Zeraim, and he started learning Seder Moed. But as he started learning Seder Moed, he heard again a noise coming from that corner where the thing was moving, like, wildly. So then, again, my, my knees were shaking from fear, from all this noise. What is this thing on the other side of the room? And then I remembered that my friend Shimon had left-- showed me a box of matches that he bought for his friend, Laib. His friend-- His brother, Laib. Sorry. He had a brother, Laib, that wanted matches. Uh, he bought matches for him, and he wanted to show it to me, so he gave it to me to hold. But then when the police officer came, I didn't-- I forgot to give it back to, to my friend Shimon, so I still have the matches in my pocket. And I said, "You know what? Let me light a match. That will

21:31 create light in the room, and I'll be able to see what's on the other side of the room." So I lit a match, and I saw what was on the other side of the room. Guess what? That shepseler, that shepseler that the police officer took away from Dovid in the marketplace, was there in the corner of the room, tied up with a muzzle on his mouth, right? So he couldn't eat anything, couldn't open his mouth, and that's why he was making sounds. He was, like, moving. He was restless. So then I calmed down, 'cause then I realized it's not something dangerous. It's just a shepseler. So I sat with the shepseler in the same room, and I finished Mishnayos Zeraim, and I did Moed. And before I could finish the whole Seder Moed, which is a long seder with lots and lots of Mishnayos, I hear footsteps, footsteps outside the room that's coming into the room. And when the door opened, I see that the officer, the police officer, is at the door, and he said to me, "Please, please, please do me a favor. I didn't know you were the nephew of the Razor." Razor means Rab Zalman Aaron. Zalman Aaron was the brother of the Rebbe Rashab. He was the uncle of the previous Rebbe, and he was very important. Even the Goyim respected him, and even the police respected him. He said, "Oh, I didn't know you were his nephew." Apparently, the Rebbe's unc- the previous Rebbe's uncle, the Razor, heard that

23:13 his nephew was in prison, so he immediately, uh, to send a message, a message to the police that they must let him go. "He's my nephew." The police officer who slapped the Friediker Rebbe in his face... Remember when he came to the police station, the head of the police station gave him a slap in the face and grabbed him by his ears and put him into the prison room? Well, that officer came to the door a- and as he begged, he begged the Friediker Rebbe, "Please, please don't tell anyone what I did to you, that I slapped you in the face and that I pulled you by your ear. I, I, I'm so sorry. I, I, I didn't mean to do this. I really did it only because I do it to everybody. Please don't tell anybody. And after all, you know, when I slapped you in the face, there was no blood coming from your nose, and your teeth didn't fall out when I slapped you, so it's okay. Don't worry. Just forgive me. Don't, don't do-- Don't say anything about it." When I came into the police station in the main room, I saw Rab Dovid, the butcher, who I tried to protect, was, was right there in the room. And the officer who slapped him across the face and caused his nose to bleed was also standing there. And there were two witnesses, Rab Yael, the one who used to make tin pots. That was his job. He would make tin pots

24:32 and sell them. And Shaul, the wagon driver. Yael and Shaul were there as witnesses to testify what happened, that they saw the officer slapped this Dovid in the face and grabbed away his, his shepseler. The officer said, "Well, I didn't do anything wrong. I took, I took away the shepseler from Dovid the butcher because he stole this from Meir the butcher." 'Cause we know Meir the butcher lost his shepseler. Somebody had stolen it. "So I noticed that this is Rab Dovid. Dovid the, the butcher stole this from Meir the butcher. And Meir the butcher bought this from his brother. And so when I saw Dovid carrying that shepsela, I recognized this is the shepsela for Meir. Dovid must have stolen it from him, so I tried to take it away, and that's why I slapped him across the face because he's a ‹ganef›, he's a thief. And then this long bunk boy," he points to the Friediker Rebbe, "this boy came and, and, and pushed me and, and grabbed my medal off my uniform." That's what this officer was saying. The witnesses, Reb Yael, Reb Yael and, and, uh, and Shoal, the wagon driver, they're saying, "No, no, no, no, no. They... We know for sure that Dovid bought this shepsela. He didn't steal it." And then as they were talking, the, the servant of the Hazzan came and said, "I're here to collect and to take this boy," the Friediker Rebbe, "out of prison." And the head of the prison, of the, the s-

26:16 of the police station said, "Okay, take him home. He's free to go." So now all my friends from cheder were waiting outside the police station to walk me home, and I walked home with them and I told them everything that happened. So when I heard and we heard that Meir the butcher had his calf stolen, they went to Meir and tell him, "You know, we have a calf, a shepsela, in the prison. Maybe that's yours." So Meir came running quickly to the police station and he told the head of the police station, uh, "I lost my... You know, my shepsela was stolen. Can I see the shepsela in the prison?" And they all went inside the room, and indeed, it was the shepsela of Meir. That was the stolen shepsela. Oi, did Dovid really steal that shepsela from Meir? It is. Meir recognized it. Well, they started searching and investigating. You know what investigating means? You start f- asking questions, a lot of people and thing. Who is the real thief? Who really stole this shepsela from Meir the butcher? And it turns out, you know what? That police officer that slapped Dovid in the face and made his nose bleed, he's the one who stole it. A week earlier, he stole it from Meir, and then he sold it to Dovid. And then he met Dovid in the market. He, he, "Ah, you stole the shepsela from Meir." He pretended that Dovid stole the shepsela, but Dovid did not steal the shepsela. It was

28:01 this officer himself who stole the shepsela. And what did they do to this officer when they found out the truth, that Dovid never stole anything? It was this officer who slapped him in the face and pretended that he's angry with Dovid because he stole, Dovid stole the shepsela. In fact, the officer did it himself, and they put the officer in jail, and then they found out he did a lot of other bad things and they said, "You can no longer be a police officer." And he became a poor man. Then the Friediker Rebbe went home and everything was good, and Reb Rashab came back from his trip, and they told everything that happened to the Reb Rashab. Friediker Rebbe told his father what happened to him in the jail and with Dovid and, and, and how his, his nose was bleeding and they took him to jail. And the Friediker Rebbe said, "Ah, I'm very proud of you. This is nice what you did. You protected a Jew who was, w- w- was wrongfully, uh, beaten and accused that he, that he's the one who stole the, the shepsela and it wasn't true, and you s- suffered several hours of being in prison. But you know what? It's worth to suffer for a mitzvah like that." And then his father told him the following. "I want you to see. Look what happened to you. You were in the prison with the shepsela. You're in the same room with the shepsela. What would be the difference

29:33 between you and the shepsela if you didn't know Mishnahs? If you didn't know Mishnahs, you'd be sitting doing nothing, just like the shepsela was sitting and doing nothing, just moving around a little bit. But thank Hashem that you knew Mishnahs by heart, so you were able to use that time to learn Torah even in prison." So from that day on, the Friediker Rebbe saw the importance, the importance of learning Mishnah, and also the importance of protecting another person, even if sometimes you're doing something dangerous to yourself, but you're so upset that another Jew is being hurt by, by somebody, a villain, by a bad person, and you're doing it to protect him, then that's a great mitzvah. And at that time, his father, the Reb Rashab, said, "Because you did this amazing mitzvah to save a Jew, and because of you we found out the truth that who is the real ‹ganef›, the officer, I will give you 10 rubles. You can add this to your 30 rubles." And now guess how many rubles the Friediker Rebbe had after this. I'll let you figure that out. Good ‹Yontif›.