21. The King And The Mirror

00:15 Here is another story with the Or HaChaim HaKadosh. Rab Chaim ben Atar, as I told you already before, the story with the lions. Rab Chaim ben Atar was such a great tzadik that he was able to sit in a pit with lions, and the lions wouldn't touch him because the Torah that he learned protected him. Here's another story to show what a great tzadik he was. This story was told by a very famous rav and a tzadik. His name was Rab Tzadok Hakohen of Lublin, and he heard it from, uh, an old man who heard it from the Chida, who was a Talmud, who was a student of this great Rab Chaim ben Atar. So it has a story. This-- we know where the story comes from, so it must be a real story. In the time of Rab Chaim ben Atar, there was a king, a very powerful king. He was a king over many, many countries. He was also the king over Morocco, and he believed in looking at the stars. You know what looking at the stars means? Many people believed if you look in the stars, you can tell the future. You can tell what's gonna happen. So in his palace, he had many of these special people that could look at the stars, and they could find out things in the future. They could find out hidden things that nobody else knows. And they-- he wanted to know if they can look in the stars and find out a person

02:04 that's born exactly the same second that he was born. You know, when two people are born exactly the same second, um, he believed that these two people are very much the same. They're like twins. They may be-- they look the same. Maybe everything that happens to one of them happens to the other. If one is smart, the other one will be smart. If one is rich, the other one will be rich. So the king wanted to know who is the other person that was born in the same second that he was born, which means that they have a very same life as he had. That mean he's like him. They look similar, and they are similar. He wanted to know who that is. And so his stargazers, the guys that were looking at the stars, one night they were looking on the stars, and they were looking and looking and looking, and they said, "Oh, we found that person. That person is some rav. His name is Chaim ben Atar, and he lives in a city somewhere in your kingdom. And if you wanna meet him, you should go there and f- and meet with him." And so the king decided, "Yeah, I would like to meet him. I wanna see if he is really the person that was born in my, in my second, the same second as I was. That means he was born under the same luck, under the same star as me. I wanna know who that is." And he traveled

03:38 to the city. And when he asked the people in the city, "Where is this rabbi called Chaim ben Atar?" They showed him a little shack, a tiny, old, dilapidated house. Well, the king was very surprised. "You mean that that person who is supposed to be like my twin, like my twin brother, is very poor? How could he be poor if I'm so rich? I'm a king." But he went to that house. He knocked on the door, and out came the wife of the, of the rav, Rab Chaim's wife. And the king said-- Uh, he-- The king didn't dress like a king. The king dressed up like a simple person, so nobody would know he's the king. Okay? So dressed up like a regular person, a simple person. Nobody knew he was the king. He just knocked on the door, and his wife opened the door, and she said, "Oh, my husband. You're looking for my husband. He's in-- He's out in the field somewhere, and he's coming back in the afternoon." And so the king said, "Okay, I'll, I'll wait for him. Can I wait for him here?" She said, "Sure. No problem." And in the afternoon, Rab Chaim came home, and the first thing he said, "Oh, um, welcome, Your Majesty." Like he called him a king. And the king was very surprised. "How does he know that I'm a king? I'm not dressed like a king, and he's never seen me before." So he asked Rab Chaim, "How did you know I was

05:06 a king?" He said, "Because a- every king has a malach in Shamayim, in-- up, up in the heavens, that watches over him. And I saw a malach behind you that looks like a malach that watches over a king, so I knew you were a king." So the king was very impressed that Rab Chaim knew this. So then the king said to Rab Chaim, "I-- my stargazers, my advisors who looked in the stars, they say that you are my twin. You're like this person that's born in the same second as I was born, and we should supposed to be similar, but we're not similar. Look, you're so poor. You have no money. You're not important, and I am a king, and I'm powerful and have money. How could we be both like twins when we have such different lives?" And Rab Chaim said, "Because you, you're not seeing the truth. I am more powerful than you. I'm greater than you." And the king said, "Really? How could you be greater than me when you have no money, no power? I'm a king." He says, "Well, come with me," says the Rab Chaim. And he invited the king to come inside a room, and he took out a mirror, and he said to the king, "Can you look in that mirror?" And the king looked in the mirror, and he sees the entire world. Now, the entire world is round. He sees the whole globe, the whole world in the mirror. So he says to, Rab Chaim

06:43 says to the king, "Can you see your country?" He says, "No. My country is so small because I see the entire world." Um, so the Rab Chaim says to him, "You know what? Look away from the mirror for a second." And the king looks away, and he says, "Now you can come back and look again." And he sees his country. He sees his country. So Rab Chaim asked him, "Can you see the city where you live in, the capital of the country where the king has his palace? Can you see the city?" He says, "No, the city's too tiny." So he says to-- Rab Chaim says to the king, "Look away." He looks away, and he says, "Now you can look again." He sees his city there, the entire city. He sees all the streets. He says, "Can you see your palace?" "No, it's too small. I can't see it." So he says to the king, "Look away." The king looks away, and then he says, "Oh no, now you can look." And he sees his palace. He says, "What do you see in the palace? Let's go inside the palace. Look. Look inside." And the king sees that in the palace there is a room where the queen is sitting, and in comes to the room the viceroy. You know what the viceroy is? Viceroy is the person who is the second to the king. He's the most important person after the king. He's the closest advisor to the king, and he comes into

08:13 the room where the queen is, and he says to the queen, "I want to marry you. We are going to kill the king. I'm gonna put poison in his coffee when he comes back from his trip. I'll put some poison in his coffee. He's not gonna know who put it in there. Nobody's gonna know, and he's just gonna die. And I'm gonna marry you, and I'm gonna be the king. I'm gonna be the next king, and you're gonna be the queen. And we're gonna have a lot of countries. We're gonna be very powerful. We're gonna be very rich." And the queen says, "No, no, no. Please don't do that. I like the king. I want the king to come back. Don't do that, please, please." And he said, "No, no, no, no. We're gonna have to do it. You have to work with me. You have to do this together with me. We're going to do this." And she said, "No." She starts crying, and he says, "Hey, if you don't do this," he says to her, "I'm gonna have you killed." And she starts crying and crying and crying, "Please, please, don't, don't." And the king was watching all that in the mirror. He can see all of that happening in the mirror, and the king is thinking to himself, "That's just, uh, uh, it's just magic. The, the rabbi, the Rav Rab Chaim is making magic. This is just a mirror. I mean, uh, this is not really happening." And the Rav says,

09:35 "No, no, no, no. This is actually true." And he says to the k- to the, the, the king, "Take your gun." He have a gun. "And shoot inside the mirror in the direction where the viceroy is standing in the room, and, and you kill him." The king says, "Ah, you're making f- you're making a joke. This is not real. This is just magic you're doing." And the King Rav says, "Hey, what can you lose? Just shoot." So he shoots inside the mirror with-- in the direction of the viceroy, and the viceroy, he gets shot, and he falls down and dies. But it's all in the mirror, and the, the king still didn't believe that this is for real. And the Rav says, "You better go home right now. Go back to your palace. You'll see that everything that you saw in the mirror really happened." In the meantime, they look in the mirror again, and he sees that the queen is screaming because she saw... She heard a shot. Somebody was shooting a gun and killed the viceroy, but she couldn't see who the person was. She, she's screaming, and she, and, and, uh, she calls the priest, the galach. The galach comes in. He sees the viceroy is dead, and they're seeing this all in the mirror. And in the mirror you could see how the galach says to the queen, "Don't worry. We're gonna bury the viceroy in the cellar, the wine cellar of the palace. We'll put him in the ground, and

11:05 we'll se- we'll, uh, we'll tell the king when he comes back that the Jewish people killed the viceroy. This way the king will, uh, kill all the Jews, and we'll be able to take all their money and all their houses." And he says, "I'm gonna get two witnesses, two people. They're gonna lie to the king. They're gonna say that they saw the viceroy walking into a house of a Jew, and he never came out. That means that they killed him in the house, and they buried him." And the king is seeing all that. He's listening to this conversation, the talk in the mirror, and the king is still not believing this is real. He thinks this is all just a magic that the rabbi is making. And the rabbi says, "Now you go back home quickly and save the Jewish people because you can see the truth. You see that this whole thing is not true. They're gonna make up a story, a lie against the Jews. They're gonna want you to kill all the Jews, but now you know the truth." Of course, the Rav did all of that only because he knew that the Jewish people are in danger in that city, and he wanted to save them. That's why he invited the king to come into the room and to show him this whole thing in the mirror. He did all this miracle in order to save the Jewish people 'cause he knew Ɣruach Hakodesh. He saw that the Jewish people of

12:32 the capital are in a big danger. So now that he showed the king the true story, he said to the king, "Go back home quickly, quickly and save the Jewish people." The king went back to his capital. He pretended he doesn't know anything. When he came to the palace, he saw... Wait a second. First, he saw that the viceroy is not there. He asked, "Where is he?" "Oh, we think he got killed by the Jews," they told him. "Oh." But he started seeing that there's actually truth, truth to the story. So they began to ask questions. "How did he die? How come he was killed?" And they all say, "Oh, it's the Jews, it's the Jews, it's the Jews that did it." So the king went to the queen, and he s- talked to her alone when nobody was there. He said to the queen, "Tell me the true story. How did the viceroy die?" She says, "Well, well, the, the, the galach told you. It's, it's the Jewish people." And the king said to her, "Don't tell me that. You tell me the true story, and if you don't, then I'll have you killed." And the queen started crying and said, "You're right, you're right, you're right. Actually, he died in this room. I don't know who killed him. I just heard a shot and, and, and then he died. I don't know how it happened." And the king said, "Aha. Okay, I see what I saw in the mirror was actually true." He

14:09 didn't tell her that he killed him, 'cause it was the king himself who killed him by shooting in the mirror. But now we have to find the liars, the, the, the galach and the witnesses who made up a story. We're going to show that they're liars. So the king made an announcement in the whole country, "This is a terrible thing. The Jews killed my viceroy, but we're not sure yet. Let's find out the truth. We have to make an investigation. We have to search and find who really killed the viceroy. And if the Jews killed him, they'll all get killed. But I suggest we invite judges and leaders from different countries who will come here, and they will together search for the truth. And I suggest we get from every country one representative from every country, a smart person, a wise person who can, um, make to... Can really find out the truth. And also, I suggest that there should be a leader from the Jewish people, too, who should represent the Jewish people." And you know what? He suggested we take Rav Chaim. We invite this rabbi from far away. He should come, and he should be together with all the other people from different countries, and they will decide who really killed the viceroy. So everybody came together from all different countries, including Rav Chaim, and they all sat in the palace. And the king decided to make a big banquet, like a meal, a feast, a fancy party, and everybody was invited.

15:55 And then Rav Chaim got up from his seat, and he said to the king, "Your Majesty, since we're all having such a great time here, we have a feast." And of course, Rav Chaim didn't eat anything because it wasn't kosher, but he just sat there with everybody, and he said, "Why don't we go downstairs to the king's, to the king's, uh, wine cellar, and everybody should drink some wine from the cellar. Let's invite everybody down there." So the king said, "Yeah, what a great idea." And of course, this was a plan. The rabbi and the king knew, understood the plan. We're gonna go downstairs, and we're gonna start looking and find the body of the viceroy. So they went downstairs to the cellar, and the galach also was there. He was invited to the party, so he also went downstairs, but he was afraid they're gonna go to the part of the cellar where the viceroy was buried. You know, when a dead body is there for a long time, it smells, so everybody's gonna smell there's something here. He didn't want people to find out that he was buried over there, so he told people, "Guys, the good wine is the other side of the cellar. Let's go all the way to the other side." And Rav Chaim said, "Oh, no, no, no. I know where the good wine is. The good wine is the opposite side, all the way there in the corner." Of course, it's the corner where they buried the viceroy.

17:21 And the king says, "Yeah, I agree. This is the best wine over there." And everybody walked over there, and they started smelling. "Oh, ugh, what's the smell? What's this smell?" And they finally dug there, and they found the body of the viceroy. And the king said, "Oh, we found the body of the viceroy. That means the Jews did not kill him because if the Jews killed him, how could they come into the palace and bury him in, in the cellar? Jews can't come into the palace. It's impossible that the Jews killed him. If they had killed him, how would they take his body into the palace? The palace is closed, and there are guards all over. No Jews can come in here. Somebody else must have killed him. Definitely not the Jews." And the galach says, "No, no, no. It's the Jews, the Jews." The king says, "What? How could it be the Jews? Look, he was buried in the palace. Now tell me the truth." And he told the guards who knew the truth, and he told the galach, "Tell me the truth right now, or I'm gonna have you killed." Finally, the guards one by one came forward and told the king the truth. He was actually killed in the palace. They don't know how he was killed. All they know is that he- somebody shot a bullet and killed him, but nobody knows how. But that the galach then decided to tell, to tell a lie, that the Jews killed him. So

18:51 when the king heard that, he says to the galach, "Ah, you made up that lie, and you wanted to kill all the Jews in my kingdom. I'm gonna have you killed now." And that was the story. He had the same end as Haman. Remember Haman wanted to kill the Jews, and what did Hashem do? He ended up dying. He ended up being killed by the king. Same thing happened to this galach. And that shows the greatness of Rav Chaim Ben Attar. He had Ruach Hakodesh. He saw from far away that the Jews from the capital were in grave danger. They were in big danger, that they, that the galach was plotting and trying to make the, uh, you know, get the Jews to kill... He knew this is gonna happen, so he wanted to make sure that the king knows the truth, so he showed him all that in the mirror. And now that's the end of the story.