27. Hirshel The Goat

00:15 Hello, children. Here is an amazing story with the Baal Shem Tov. The Rebbe Rashab told that story. He heard the story in a dream. When the Rebbe Rashab was 14 years old, his father called him over and says, "Tomorrow is your birthday. You're gonna turn 15, and I'd like you to come early in the morning so we can study together a ma'amar Chassidus, because that's how you prepare for your birthday. You learn some Chassidus, and then you daven differently, and you, uh, do mitzvahs, and you are getting closer to Hashem. That's the best way to celebrate a birthday." So the Rebbe Rashab went to bed, and when he... And he prepared his, uh, maybe alarm clock. I don't know if he had an alarm clock, but he made sure to get up early in the morning, 4:00 in the morning, so he can go quickly to his father's room, and they would study together. But during the night, he had a very strange dream. He dreamt he was in a room, and there was this big, long table. At the head of the table, there were two tzadikim rabbonim who were sitting with long, white beards. He did not know who they were. Next to them, on the right and on the left, there were other rabbonim tzadikim, and then more on each side. He had no idea who they were. But then he did hear each one of them said words of Torah, a ma'amar or a sicha. And he remembered everything they said.

01:58 One of them also told a story. Now, he woke up in the morning, and he was, "Wow, I had this incredible dream." And he remembered everything they said, all the words of Torah that they spoke. He remembered everything. But he didn't have time to think about it because he needed to go to his father. His father was waiting for him to learn some ma'amar together, and he goes to his father's room, and his father sits down and learns with him for a little while, for an hour or two hours, and then he tells him a few more things about, about how to serve Hashem and how to daven, how to learn. And then suddenly, the father, the Rebbe Maharash, turns to his son, whose birthday was that day. He turned 15 that day, and he says to him, "My son, what did you see in your dream last night?" And when the Rebbe Rashab heard this, he started shaking. "Oh, my father knows about it." His father knew, beruach hakodesh, that his son had this incredible dream, and he asked him, "Tell me what you saw in your dream." The Rebbe Rashab was so shaken he couldn't speak because he was so, "Wow, this is incredible. My father knows everything I, I saw in my dream." But then his father calmed him down and said, "Come on, tell me. Tell me, tell, tell me everything you saw, and I will explain to you things." And so the Rebbe Rashab told him that he saw he

03:23 was in a room with a huge, long table, and there were this two great tzadikim sitting at the head of the table, and next to them were other great tzadikim. "I don't know who they were, but they all said words of Torah, and I remember everything they said." And his father says, "So tell me what you heard." And the Rebbe Rashab told over everything he heard. And the father, the Rebbe Maharash, told him, "I'll tell you who they were. At the head of the table, there was the Baal Shem Tov, and next to him was the Maggid, the Mezritcher Maggid. On the other side was the Alter Rebbe, and on the other was the Mitteler Rebbe and the Tzemach Tzedek, and the Maharil, the son of the Tzemach Tzedek." He gave him a whole list who was sitting at that table. And now he knew which Torah he heard from which tzadik, from which Rebbe. In that dream, the Rebbe Rashab heard the Baal Shem Tov also tell a story. Baal Shem Tov told a story that happened to him when he was 20 years old. As we know, the Baal Shem Tov, when he was a little boy, his... He lost both his father and his mother. He was an orphan as a very young child. He had no family left, but he was very quickly invited to be part of a group, a very secret group of tzadikim, because these tzadikim knew that the Baal Shem Tov had a very, very holy neshamah,

04:51 a very great neshamah, and they wanted to... Him to be part of their group. And so he joined that group, and they took care of him. They learned with him, and he went from town to town, and azoy, the Baal Shem Tov became older, and when he was 20, he was already very, very involved in that group. That secret group of hidden tzadikim had some very, very great tzadikim, but they were all hidden. They didn't show to the, to the other people, to other people how great they were. They pretended they're very simple and ignorant people, but really, they were huge, great tzadikim, and they knew the whole Torah ba'al peh by heart. These were great tzadikim. But they wanted to go from town to town, and they would speak to the simple people in the town, and they would tell them how much Hashem loves them and how much Hashem loves when they do a mitzvah. They shouldn't feel bad that they're so ignorant and they don't know anything, because Hashem loves them because when they do a mitzvah, they do it with so much love, and Hashem loves that. They should say Tehillim even if they don't understand what the words mean. Saying the words which they say with such excitement and love of Hashem is very, very precious in Hashem's eyes. Hashem loves those words of Tehillim, even if they don't know what they're saying. And so these hidden tzadikim would go to different towns, right? They would spread out into different

06:15 towns and e- and they would go to a town in the marketplace where all the simple people would hang out, and they would try to talk to them. They would gather groups and tell them stories from the Midrash, from the Gemara, and from the Zohar, and tell them stories about how much Hashem loves when he does a mitzvah, and says, says, "A pereg tehillim", and, and he really, really feels close to Hashem. The Baal Shem Tov was 20 years old, and he was also part of that secret group. Nobody knew that the Baal Shem Tov was really, really a g- a great tzadik. But he was doing his work, the work that all the hidden tzadikim from his group would do. And one day he says he and another tzadik, hidden tzadik from that same group, ended up in a city called Brody. Brody is a city in, uh, Poland, which is a big city, and there's a huge, big marketplace in the middle of the town. And the Baal Shem Tov went there every day and would meet a lot of simple Jews that would do business, and they would buy and sell things. But he would, like, encourage them, "Come, take a break from your business. Come, I wanna tell you guys a great story from the Gemara." And he would tell them these fantastic stories of how much Hashem loved when a Jew does a mitzvah simply because he loves Hashem. And he would tell them, "You guys can do it too.

07:37 You can do mitzvahs, you can learn, you can daven. And even if you're simple and you don't know much, Hashem loves it anyways." He says on the third day that he was in the city of Brody, he went again to the marketplace to meet Jews and to find a group of Jews where he can tell them all kinds of good stories so they would be excited to do mitzvahs and to daven and say Tehillim. And as he was talking to the people, Baal Shem Tov said, "I saw a sight, something completely unbelievable. I couldn't believe my eyes what I saw. I saw a man walking through the market carrying a huge bag of flour. It was so heavy, that bag was so heavy that his-- the body of the man was bent over because of the weight of the bag that was too much for him to carry. And the man was so skinny. He was so skinny, and his face was darkened from, from, from dirt because he was working whole day so hard. And there was sweat all over his face because he was carrying so heavy and so hard. It was very hard. He worked very hard. But then I saw something amazing. On top of the head of this man, there was this huge pillar of light, a very unusual light. It wasn't a physical light that everybody can see. It was a very spiritual light that only great tzadikim can see. It's a light that comes from Hashem, like Moshe

09:24 Rabbeinu when his face had a light and all the Jewish people couldn't look at his face." Remember that story in Chumash, that Moshe Rabbeinu came down from the mountain with the Luchos and people couldn't look at him because his face was shining with such an incredible, pure, powerful light that they couldn't look at him. And Mo-- And the, and, and the Baal Shem Tov says, "I saw a similar light on the head of this poor, simple man, and I couldn't, I couldn't understand. I've never seen such a bright, beautiful, powerful light. I've never seen anything like that. And I thought to myself, this must be a very great tzadik who is pretending to be a simple person carrying heavy packages for people. But then I heard people calling him by his name. They call him Hershel." His name was Hershel. Some people were even laughing at him. "Hershel Tsig, Hershel the Goat," they would call him. Why would they call him Hershel the Goat? Because Hershel, I found out later, had four goats. This Hershel was living alone in a house, in a small, dilapidated house, a house that's about to fall in and break down because he was very poor. He lives at the edge of the town, far away, by the very end of the town. And his wife died 10 years earlier. His wife's name was Rachel Leah. She was the daughter of Daniell. Reb Daniell was the guy who used to skin animals, used to sell the skin of a- of,

10:56 of dead animals and make from them leather and stuff like that. And so his wife died 10 years earlier, and he was living alone, and everybody knew that he had four goats. He also had two sons, but his-- both his sons were in yeshivas. They were not home. And he didn't have much money, so his, his wife's family took care of the sons. They gave them money. They gave them food. They took care of them. He was alone in this old, you know, falling down house with four goats. So everybody was convinced, everybody was sure that this Hershel, he just loves goat milk so much that he bought four goats, and all the money he earns during the day from schlepping such heavy, heavy, heavy packages, he, he buys food for the goats, so they would give him a lot of milk because he loves so much goat milk. That's what everybody understood. That's what everybody thought. The Baal Shem Tov looked at Hershel, Hershel Tsig. Tsig in Yiddish means a goat. Hershel the Goat. And when everybody would call him, "Hershel, Hershel, Hershel Tsig, Hershel the Goat." He'd go, "Come on." Carry well. Carry this really well. Come on, go on. And he would answer everybody with a friendly smile, "Yes, thank you. Thank you. May Hashem bless you, too." And people would laugh at him, this old, poor Hershel that loves goat milk so much, and he has these little goats, uh, you know, living in his house. It was so funny. People

12:38 thought it was funny. But he didn't care. He always was very nice and friendly and smiled to everybody. And then the Baal Shem Tov saw this incredible light. Of course, nobody else in the market could see this light. It's a light that only great tzadikim can see. But he has never seen such a bright light before. Even amongst tzadikim, he didn't see such a big light. Maybe only very, very, very big tzadikim. But this, Hershel the Goat, maybe he's really a hidden tzadik. So he went and asked his friends, Rebbe Efraim and Rebbe Mordechai, asked them whether they knew, "Maybe this Hershel is a member of our secret group, and I don't know about him, but maybe he's a member because he could, could be the tzadik nistar, a hidden tzadik." And they said, "No, we don't know him. He's not part of our group." So the Baal Shem Tov tried to sneak up on him and follow him every day to see maybe he's hiding and doing something like when nobody sees, he davens and learns like a big tzadik. But no, he's really a simple person. So it bothered the Baal Shem Tov, why does he have this incredible light? What special thing did he do to deserve such an incredible bright light coming from Hashem onto his head? The Baal Shem Tov said, "I was so bothered that I started davening." And in those days, he says, "When I ask something from Hashem, Hashem always gave me what I wanted. But this

14:07 time He did not answer me. I did not know what, what makes Hershel the Tsig, Hershel Tsig, Hershel the Goat so special. I decided I need to know, and I'm gonna fast." When you fast, then you really daven a special way, and you're asking of Hashem to help you. So he fasted for three days straight. Didn't eat for three days, and he davened a lot that Hashem should help him. He should find out who this Hershel is. Why is there this incredible light o- over his head? At the end of the three days, not the end, but after Mincha on the third day, it was towards the end, the Baal Shem Tov came out of shul just when they finished Mincha, and he sees Hershel walking. Hershel Tsig is walking in the streets. Baal Shem Tov walked over to him and says, "Hershel, Rebbe Hershel, you know I'm very hungry. I haven't eaten in a few days, and I think... and I feel very weak. I think a cup of goat milk would help me a lot. Can you sell me a cup of goat milk, p- please?" And Hershel said to Baal Shem Tov, "Oh, no, don't worry. Come to my house. I'll give you a cup of goat milk. Don't worry, you don't have to pay anything. You don't pay anything. Uh, it's a big mitzvah to do hachnasas orchim, to invite guests to your house and feed them for free. I'm not gonna take any money. Come, come." And the Baal Shem

15:29 Tov followed him. They walked for a whole hour because Hershel Tsig lived at the very end of the town, and it was the poorest pl- uh, section of the town. It was the poorest area of the town where all the poor people lived. It was a tiny little street full of mud and dirt, and that's where he lived. And they walked all the way to the edge of the town till they came to his house, and Baal Shem Tov saw the house. The roof was like, had holes, like the rain could come through the roof because there was big openings in the roof. The rain, all the rain could come in onto the floor inside his, his dining room. And the windows were all broken with big holes in the windows. And when Hershel opened up the door to his house, you could hear the goats cry with joy, and they would r- and they ran up to Hershel and licked his hands and his feet 'cause they loved him so much, and he loved his goats, too. Baal Shem Tov came in, and he sat down, uh, Hershel sat down right away to milk his goats and gave the Baal Shem Tov one cup of milk. Baal Shem Tov drank the milk, and he davened Maariv in that house, stayed there a whole night. And towards the morning, Hershel Tsig told the Baal Shem Tov that he wants to tell him his secret. He has a secret that he hasn't told anybody, but he-

16:56 he's gonna tell it to him. What is the secret? Baal Shem Tov sat down, and Hershel sat down too and told him the following story: "My wife, Rachel Leah, was a very big tzadekes. She spent her whole life, since she's a little girl, she would go to visit all the sick people that are in the city. Every sick Jew, if somebody was Jewish and sick, she would go and visit them. She would go and visit women that gave birth, just had a baby, and they, and they were sick because when you have a baby, you get a little bit sick. She would go visit them, make food for them, and take care of their kids, help them out, especially the poor families. Poor families and sick people that were very poor, she would go and visit them and cook food for them and take care of them and give them some, some different medicines to help them get better. She did this every day, a whole day long, from morning to night. And then she died 10 years ago. I was left alone because my sons went to yeshiva, and I didn't have anybody. And then a few days after she died, she came to me in a dream, and she said to me, 'My dear husband, Hershel, when I came up there in Shamayim after my neshamah went away from this world...'" They took me straight to Gan Eden. Why? Because there in Shamaim, they f- they, they, uh, they consider doing kindness with

18:39 other people as one of the greatest things you can do. Being kind to others, being kind to the sick, visiting the sick and helping them, and helping poor people, poor families that are sick, that is considered so special. Hashem loves it so much. And for that, which because I... all my life that's what I did, I, I was taken straight to Gan Eden. And she said to her husband, and Hershel is saying, "She told me that I should do the same thing. I should buy a few goats, and from the goat milk, I should bring to sick people and sick families and help them, and hopefully the goat milk will make them feel better." Hershel says, "I bought four goats, and all my money that I make in the market from schlepping these very heavy, heavy bags, I take that money and buy food for the goats." Now people thought that Hershel loved goat milk and that's why he has four goats, but they didn't know his secret. He actually didn't need the milk for himself. He took the milk and brought it to sick families. That's what he did with the milk, but he didn't tell anybody. He did it quietly, secretly, nobody would know. He says, "For 10 years I've been taking this milk, and every evening when I come home, I milk my goats and I take the milk to all kinds of families that are sick and that they're poor and they need help, and Hashem helps me 'cause I give

20:16 them my milk and they get better. From my milk they get better." Now Hershel continues and tells the Baal Shem Tov, "Last night my wife came again to me in a dream and she said to me, 'Listen, Hershel, tomorrow when you meet a man later after Mincha, he'll ask you for something. He'll ask you for a cup of milk. Take him with you to your house and tell him your secret. Tell him what you're doing with the milk of those goats. I want this man to know, 'cause this man is gonna save you. He's gonna make you into a new person. He's gonna make you into someone who's a Talmid Chaham. You're gonna become a big Talmid Chaham and a big tzadik.' So him you should invite to your house and tell him he's the only person you tell the secret." And Hershel said, "You, the Baal Shem Tov, you're the only person I ever told that secret, that I'm using the goat milk to help people. I'm not really drinking the goat milk myself." The Baal Shem Tov said, "Wow, that's an amazing story. Your wife came to your dream last night and told you to talk to me?" So the Baal Shem Tov asked his friends, the other tzadikim, hidden tzadikim, and they said, "Yes, we have a, um, instruction from our leader, the bottom-- the holy tzadik, Reb Holo- Reb Hodom Baal Shem, that we should take Hershel into our group and teach him Torah until he becomes a big Talmid Chaham

21:54 and a big tzadik." And so the Baal Shem Tov told Hershel he should come with us to become a member of our group, and we'll teach you Torah until you become a big Talmid Chaham and a big tzadik. And for five years, Hershel went and wandered around with all these tzadikim, and they taught him a lot of Torah. He became a different person. He became a big tzadik, a Baal Ruach Hakodesh. He became like a holy person. And of course, the Baal Shem Tov understood why he saw such a big light over the head of Hershel in the market, because Hershel did so many mitzvahs and nobody knew about it. And people were even laughing at him, and he didn't care. And thus he gave this a great light that would-- made him have such a huge, bright, beautiful, incredible light. But now Hershel was a different person. Now he was a Talmid Chaham and a tzadik, and eventually he moved to Annipoli and he became a big tzadik there. He, he, he helped and saved many sick people with his davening and with his, uh, uh, brachos, till one day he wandered. He was traveling to a city, and he passed through a town called Ostropolye. He came to the city of Ostropolye. Say Ostropolye. Ostropolye. He came to the city of Ostropolye, but nobody knew who he was. He didn't tell them who he was. And he acted like a poor person, like all these simple poor people that, uh, you know, was

23:41 traveling through the city. And he died. He died in Ostropolye while he was traveling through the city, and nobody knew who he was, and it was a very rainy day and a lot of winds and storm on the day that he died. So very few people went to the funeral, to the levaya to bury him. Only a minyan, ten people went, and they buried him. Says the Baal Shem Tov in the story that in Shamaim there was a huge commotion. A big commotion. How come a city of Ostropolye did not bury such a tzadik like Hershel with great honor? Everybody in the city should have gone to the cemetery and bury him together to give him a lot of honor. The more people, the greater the honor. So the malachim, who were the, the strict malachim, the harsh malachim, the malachim that wanted to get the city of Ostropolye into trouble, they almost succeeded at bringing a very bad decree against that city of Ostropolye. Chas v'shalom they would have been killed because of what they did, that they didn't give enough honor to Hershel. The Baal Shem Tov said, "I and my friends, the other tzadikim, davened very hard to help defend and protect the people of Ostropolye, but it didn't work." In the end, there was huge announcement,Make room, make room, make room in the heavens, in shamayim. And in front of the bezdin from shamayim came the neshamah of Rochel Leah, the daughter of the Reb Daniel. This was the wife

25:27 of Hershel. And when she came, she was followed by tens and thousands of neshamahs and malachim that followed her. And she came in front of the bezdin of shamayim, and she said to them, "I can't believe that we're gonna punish the city Ostropolye. They didn't even know who my husband was. How could they know that he was a tzaddik? He acted like a simple person, like somebody who's poor and ignorant and doesn't know anything. Why would they think-- In fact, they did a good job. Ten people buried him without asking for money. They didn't charge him anything, so they did the right thing. And if you punish the city of Ostropolye, it will be a punishment for my husband, because you're punishing them because of him. He'll be hurt if you punish them." And with that, all the malachim that tried to criticize Ostropolye got quiet, and the city of Ostropolye was saved. Now, kinderlekh, this is the end of the story that the Baal Shem Tov told in the dream of the Rebbe Rashab. And what we learn from this story, how important it is to be nice to another person, to be kind to another person. When you, kinderlekh, you're in a class, and you see a boy or a girl in your class that's not so happy, or the other children are not nice to her or to him, so what are you gonna do? Are you gonna go over to this child, and you're gonna go and say, "I wanna be

27:05 your friend"? You're gonna be nice to them. You're gonna share some of your sweets with them, make them feel better. Hashem loves it. Like the-- like Rochel Leah, the wife of Reb Hershel, she did this all her life. She was kind to other people. She helped people that needed her help. And look what she got, such a reward in shamayim. All the malachim got quiet when she started speaking, because everybody respected her, because she was such a tzaddekes. So now that's Chodesh Elul, let's get ready. Let's get ready. Let's do more mitzvahs. Let's be-- let's try to do something nice to someone else. Do a good thing. Do something kind, okay? When you see a, a boy needs help, go over to him, help him. Tell him, "I'm your friend."