23. Yankel And Zundel

00:16 Hello, Here is another story, a story from the Baal Shem Tov that teaches us such an important lesson about how to be a good person. Once in a small town, there lived two Jewish families. The, the father of the family, one of them his name was Zundel, and the other guy, his name was Yankel. Zundel and Yankel was neighbors, and they were such good friends that Zundel, a- and Yankel and their families would walk into each other's house and without knocking because they were like family. So you walk into somebody's house without knocking. You're like, you know, you feel like at home. They were so close, such close friends, and they cared about each other. They took care of each other. One day, Zundel walked into Yankel's house, and he walks in, he sees, uh, Yankel is not there. He walks over, he sees, opens the closet, and he sees the closet is a huge pile of money, lots and lots of money. You see, Yankel went recently on a business trip. He went to do business, to buy and sell stuff, and he made a lot of money. It's all the money he had to give food for his children and to buy clothes and to take care of the family. But, but Zundel was very upset that Yankel keeps his money in an open closet. Isn't he afraid some thief is gonna come into the house and open the closet and then see the money and to walk away? It's not a safe

02:01 thing to do. You're gonna lose your money. But Zundel decided to teach Yankel, Yankel a lesson. He decided he's gonna pretend he's stealing it. He's gonna take the money away, take it to his house, and when Yankel comes into the house, he's gonna open the closet and look for the money. He's gonna see the money's gone. And of course, Yankel is gonna say, "Oi vey, what did I do with my money? My money is gone." He's gonna be so upset. And then when he tells me how upset he is, I'll say, "Yankel, I took the money, and I took the money to teach you a lesson. I wanted you to learn to be more careful with the money that Hashem gives you. Hashem gives you money, so much money, so you can feed your family and can take care of your family and also give tzedakah. And now you leave it like this for anybody to come in and take it? Don't you know there are thieves out there that will come in and take all your money?" That's what Zundel thought to himself. So he grabbed the money, put it in a bag, and went quickly out of the house, went to his house, and put it away in a safe place, in a closet, and locked it up. He was waiting for Yankel to come home and start screaming, "Where's my money? Where's my money?" But guess what happened? Something happened that Zundel did not expect. When Yankel came home and opened the

03:32 closet and saw all the money was gone, he cried and fainted. He fainted. And you know, when you faint, it can be dangerous. He got very sick, and he fainted, and they called the doctors in the whole town. Everybody came to the house. The house was full with people who heard the cries of Yankel. And then they saw how he fainted, and they had to call the doctors to wake him up again. And he was so sick. And Zundel hears there's a commotion, a lot of people by the house of Yankel. He runs over, "What's going on?" Says, "Didn't you hear? Yankel s- lost his money. Somebody stole his money. And look, he's, like, s- so upset that he fainted, and now he's sick in bed." And the doctors had to come to give him special, uh, medication. When Zundel heard this, he felt so bad. Oh my God, I didn't expect this to happen. I didn't think that Yankel would be that upset. I just thought he'll be a little bit upset, and then I'll tell him, "Here's the money." But now what am I gonna do? If I go and tell him that, "Oh, I have the money. I just joked and pretended," then oy, people are gonna say, "What? Why would you make such a joke? This is a terrible joke. Look, he almost died from the shock of seeing that his money is being stolen, and you did this? You don't do such a thing to someone." And Zundel thinking to

05:00 himself, "Oi, no. Uh, if I give it back now, people are going to yell at me and embarrass me, and I'm gonna... Everybody's gonna look at me very bad." So he decided, "You know what? I'll wait a few days. When Yankel gets a little better and he's not sick and everybody's gone home, it's just me and Yankel, I'll go over to Yankel's house with the bag of money. I'll say, 'I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to upset you that much. I didn't think you're gonna faint and almost die. No, I didn't think that.' So, uh, but, "Uh, here's the money.'" So Zundel thought to himself, "You know what? I better wait a few days, and then I'll sit quietly and privately, me and Yankel alone in a room, and I'll sh- quietly share with him what happened, that I really didn't want to steal it. I just made it, pretended to steal it to teach him a lesson." But then a few days went by- And Zundel thought to himself, "Oi, now three days later, you know what? If I give it back now, people are going to say, 'You waited three days to give it back? And meanwhile, for three days he's been so upset, and you didn't care?'" It'd be even more embarrassing. He said, "Oh, no. You know what? I need to wait a little bit. I can't do it now. I don't know. I don't have the, I don't have the courage to do it." And so he waited another week.

06:29 But then as he waited another week, another thought came to him, "I'm already t-- a week and a half away from the time I st- stole it, and now I'm gonna give it back, and they're gonna say to me, 'What? You waited a week and a half? That's so long.'" So he said, "Okay. No, I can't do it today. I'm gonna have to wait a little more." But as time passed, it got harder and harder for Zundel to give the money back, 'cause the longer he waited, the more difficult it became because that means he waited so long, and now he thought people are really gonna yell at him and embarrass him. And so Zundel kept waiting and waiting, and he kept putting it off for later, for later, for later. Until one day, after many, many months of waiting and waiting, he said, "I can't do it now. If I do it now after a year, the people will say, 'What? You waited a year? That's unbelievable. You-- Can't believe you did such a terrible person.' I can't do-- I can't go and do teshuva and give it back to him." And he decided, "You know what? I have to wait for a day when it's right. I don't know when that will be, but I can't live in this town because every day I see Yankel in the street, I'm reminded that I took his money and I don't know how to give it back, and it's so terrible. I feel so bad

07:57 inside. I'm gonna have to move to another city." And so he, uh, decided to told his family, "We're going to move to another city." "But why? Why?" "I can't tell you. It's a secret. I, I have a reason why, and we're all gonna..." And the next day, Ya- Zundel took a wagon and a horse, two horses, and packed all his stuff on the, on the wagon, took his family on the wagon, and they all rode off away from town. He told all the people in the town that, um, he's sorry to, to go, but he needs to leave, and everybody was saying, "Oh, no." Even Yankel said, "Oh, I feel so bad you're gonna leave us." But that's it. Zundel said, "I have to leave." Nobody knew why, 'cause nobody found out that Zundel took the money yet. Zundel kept waiting and waiting and waiting, and still didn't tell anybody. And so they're riding outside the city, and as Zundel is coming on the road, he's riding, riding far away from the city, he sees a wagon, another wagon coming towards him from the opposite direction. And as he approached that wagon, the wagon-- somebody came out of the wagon and stopped his horse and said, "Stop, stop. Don't go anymore." Zundel said, "Why is he stopping us?" And then he sees a very, very important rav came out of the wagon. He looked like a very holy person. And the rav said to Zundel, "Come off the wagon. I need to talk to you

09:41 privately. Let's talk alone. I don't want anybody to hear. I have something to say to you." And he walks away together with Zundel and he says to him, "Zundel, go back to the city you came from. Go back home. Don't move anywhere. Just go back home and take the bag of money out of your closet and go over to Yankel's house, sit down with him alone in a room, and say to him, 'Yankel, I'm so, so sorry. I really didn't wanna do this, and especially for that long. It was all... In the beginning, I thought I would just do it as a pretend, but right away give it back. But then I saw what happened to you, and I-- and it got longer and longer and longer.' Just do it. Just give it back to him. Don't worry about what's gonna happen. If you do an averi, you'd make a mistake, you just fix it." And Ba'al Shem Tov, the, the man who told him this was the Ba'al Shem Tov. Ba'al Shem Tov said to him, "Go back home now. I'm telling you, it's gonna be, gonna be good." And Zundel got onto his wagon, turned around, made a U-turn, turned around, went right back home, and did not move after all. The next morning, he went over to Yankel's house, says, "Yankel, I need to talk to you privately. Very privately. Nobody should be here. Uh, just you and I alone." And when they sat down privately, Zundel began to cry. He was

11:15 crying and crying. He says, "Yankel, I'm so upset at myself. I'm so disappointed in myself. I did such a terrible thing. I was-- really, really tried to only teach you a lesson. I didn't really for real wanted to steal. But I ca-- saw how much you, you, you, you, you were upset and how much you were crying and how much you were, you know, fainted. I, I, I was afraid to give it back to you. I was afraid. And the longer, the more time that went by, uh, the more afraid I became. But now there was some holy tzadik that met me on the way, and he knew my secret. I didn't know how he knew it. He came over to me and he knew it. He must be a big tzadik that has Ruach Hakodesh and knows. And he told me to just come back and everything will be good." And Yankel heard that story. He couldn't believe it. First of all, he got his money back. But there was a tzadik who saw from far away what is happening in this town. And he went to meet Yankel, Zundel on the way to tell him not to worry about it, just to go give it back. And so Yankel says, "Come here, Zundel. I wanna give you a big hug. Don't worry, everything is good. I forgive you." And Yankel and Zundel remained friends forever, ever after. And what we learn from this story is a very important lesson. If you make a

12:45 mistake, you say something nasty to someone, you get them upset, a friend in class, you hurt them, you hurt their feelings, say sorry right away. Don't wait, because it gets harder and harder as you wait longer. You know what it says in the Gemara? The Gemara says, whenever the Torah wants to talk about teshuva, it says, "And now. And now do teshuva. And now do the mitzvahs. And now." Why now? Whenever you say-- When, whenever Hashem talks about teshuva, it says now. 'Cause the time to do teshuva is when? Tomorrow? The next day? In a year from now? No. The time to do teshuva is now. Don't wait a minute longer. Just do it right away. Do it even if it's gonna cause you embarrassment. Don't worry about it. Just-- Even if it causes you embarrassment. Embarrassment is not fun. Nobody wants to be embarrassed. But you know what? Every aveira a person does is like a stain on the neshamah. It's like a bad thing on the neshamah. You know how Hashem washes off the bad thing from the ne-- from the averas, from the neshamah? He gives the person sometimes a little bit of embarrassment, and the embarrassment washes away. Just like when you have a, a, a dress or a shirt and it has a stain on it, what do you do? You rub it with soap. You rub it and rub it and rub it. Nu, Hashem rubs off the stain from the neshamah that, that was created because of this,

14:20 the aveira. And how does He do it? By, you know, making you feel a little bit uncomfortable, making you feel a little bit embarrassed. So it's okay to be a little bit embarrassed. But do it right away. Don't wait longer because it's gonna get worse. Have a great Shabbos.