26. The Baal Shem Tov Is Mechaye Meisim

00:16 Hello, kindele. Here is a story with the Baal Shem Tov, an awesome story, an unbelievable story. In the city of Berditchev, there lived a man by the name Chaim. Chaim had an inn, a krachm, a place where people would come and buy some beer, some mashke, some vodka, and they would drink. It was like a bar, a bar with an inn where people could also sleep over. And there was this Ivan, this Russian peasant who loved drinking a lot of mashke. He would come very often to Chaim's inn, and he would buy beer and vodka and get drunk. One Friday, it was Friday late afternoon, a few hours before Shabbos, Ivan shows up into the inn and he wants to drink. He says, "Hey, Chaim, give me a little, uh, vodka. Pour me a cup." Now Ivan takes the cup and he gulps it down, of course, without a berakhah. And then he says to Chaim, "Chaim, that vodka is so good. Can you get me another cup, please?" So Chaim takes the cup and goes to the special barrel. He had a big barrel and he went to get some more mashke. As he's going towards the barrel, he hears behind him somebody... Like a strong noise of somebody falling down on the floor. So he imagined this must be Ivan falling on the floor. He's probably gotten drunk again, and he's gotten so drunk that he collapsed on the ground. So when he came back, he wanted to try to pick him up,

02:18 but he sees that Ivan is actually not alive. He actually died. He died right then and there on the spot. Chaim got very upset and he got panicked. He got very scared because now if somebody walks in, a Russian peasant, they'll see Ivan on the floor dead. He's gonna say that I killed him. Then he's gonna tell the police, and then everybody's gonna come and, and break my store, and all the Goyim are gonna come and drag me out, and they're gonna kill me. 'Cause that's what happened in those days in Russia and in Poland, that if a-- if, if, if they th-- they would accuse Jews t- that they killed Goyim, and then they would kill the Jew, which wasn't true even. So Chaim was very scared, "I gotta do something very quickly." And he took the body of Ivan, dragged him into another room quickly, quickly before somebody else walked in, walks into the store, and he put him under a bed in the other room and put a sheet over the bed so nobody could see anything that's under the bed, and he walked out. He walked out to the bar and he was shaking and shaking. He says, "What am I gonna do now? How am I gonna, you know, save my life?" Suddenly, an hour later, there's a knock on the door. Chaim is panicking. "This must be the police. They probably heard somehow that Ivan died in my store and they're coming to take me and put me in

04:00 the prison." So he's very scared, but he goes to the door and opens a crack and he sees two Rabbanim with long white beards are, are right at the door, and one of them he recognized. One of these people was Reb Liber. Reb Liber was a great tzadik in the time of the Baal Shem Tov, a very holy man, and he lived in Berditchev. And the other two men, he didn't know who they were, but they happened to be the Baal Shem Tov and the student of the Baal Shem Tov, Reb Ze'ev Kitzes-- Reb Wolf Kitzes. Apparently, the Baal Shem Tov and his student, Reb Wolf, came to visit the great tzadik, Reb Liber. And Reb Liber invited them to go to the mikveh with him before Shabbos, and after the mikveh, Reb Liber, Reb Liber would always stop by Chaim's inn and drink a cup of beer. That's what he did every Friday. So now that the Baal Shem Tov and his student, Reb Wolf Kitzes, were visiting him, he told them to come along with him to the mikveh and then go to Chaim's inn and have a cup of beer. And there they showed up. So Chaim invited them quickly in and gave them each a cup of beer. Then Chaim says to Reb Liber, "Rebbe, I'm in big, big trouble. I don't know what to do. You gotta help me. I don't know what to do." Reb Liber ignores him and says, "Come on, give us another cup." He pretends he

05:34 didn't hear what he said. "Just give us another cup. We gotta drink one other cup." So Reb Liber drinks the other cup of beer, and the Baal Shem Tov and Reb Wolf. Then Reb Liber turns to Chaim and says, "Now, Chaim, tell me, what's the problem? What, what, what kind of trouble did you get into?" And Chaim starts telling him the truth. "Ivan, he comes here every day and gets drunk. I don't know what happened today. He got drunk, and then he collapsed and died. And now the Goyim are gonna find his body here in my store. They're going to accuse me that I'm the one who killed him and they'll- Kill me. I don't know what to do. I'm so scared." Reb Lieber says to him, "Where's the body? Where's the body of Ivan?" And Chaim says, "Come, I'll show you." He w- takes him to the other room, picks up the sheet, and shows him the body of Ivan. So Reb Lieber calls the Baal Shem Tov and says, "Rebbe Yisroel..." The name of the Baal Shem Tov is Rebbe Yisroel. He says, "Rebbe Yisroel, come here and show what you can do. Show the great powers that Hashem gave you." Baal Shem Tov came and he said, "Listen, Reb Lieber, I'm not from here. I'm from a different city. For me to do something special, I need permission from you because you're the one who's living in this city. You're the rabbi in the city." And Lieber says, "I give you permission.

06:58 Do whatever you can to save this Chaim from this terrible danger." Baal Shem Tov walks over to Ivan's body and grabs the leg and picks it up and says to Ivan, "Ivan, this is not a good place to die. I think you should stand up and go." And so Ivan opens his eyes, and within a matter of a few minutes he got up standing on his two feet, and he walked out of the inn of Chaim. Chaim is watching this in amazement. He couldn't believe his eyes. He watched ‹foreign language›, how the Baal Shem Tov revived the dead. Ivan meanwhile walked out of the inn and finally stumbled all the way, he went home. And when he got home, he c- he opened the door and went into his house and closed the door behind him. He collapsed and died again. But this time he died in his own house, so now Chaim was safe. This story was not known to anyone except for the four: Chaim, Reb Lieber, Reb Wolf Kitzes, and the Baal Shem Tov, of course. But later on it became known, the story. The story became known.