28. Shofar Saves A Sinking Ship

00:16 Here is a story for Rosh Hashanah. An amazing story, kindalech. 400 years ago, in a country called Holland... Do you kids know where Holland is? Holland is in Europe, far away from here. There's a city in Holland called Amsterdam. You remember we had a story that involved the city of Amsterdam, and I made you repeat it, you remember? Amsterdam. That's a city in Holland. Now, in Holland, there are not that many Jews, but 400 years ago, the city of Amsterdam had a lot of Jewish people. And not just regular Jewish people, a lot of very big talmidi hakhamim, learned Jews, tzadikim. In fact, the rav of the city of Amsterdam was a very famous rav and a tzadik. His name was Rebbe Elazar Rokeach. Rebbe Elazar Rokeach was a big gaon. Gaon means as a big talmid hakham who knew everything ba'al peh. He learned Gemara and chasidus and Kabbalah. He knew everything. In fact, his name is Rebbe Elazar Rokeach, and from him came a very famous family of great tzadikim, the Belzer Rebbes. He's the great-great-grandfather of the first Belzer Rebbe. So Rebbe Elazar Rokeach was the rav of Amsterdam, and he was beloved not only by the Jewish people from Amsterdam, but even the goyim loved him, 'cause he was very wise, very smart, very intelligent, and very kind to everybody. At the end of his life, Rebbe Elazar Rokeach decided he wants to move to Eretz Yisrael. He wants to move to Eretz Yisrael because he wants to live the rest

02:23 of his life in a special country like Eretz Yisrael, in a holy land, and live there and learn Torah all day. When the Jewish community of Amsterdam heard that their rav, their beloved rebbe, their beloved rav, wants to go to Eretz Yisrael, they became very sad. Didn't want him to leave. They want him to stay with them. But he told them, "Listen, I'm getting very old. I don't know how long I'm gonna live. I'd rather live my last few years in Amsterdam, but don't you worry, Hashem will send you a great rav that will take my place." Even the goyim heard that the rav, Rebbe Elazar Rokeach, wants to leave Holland, and he wants to go to Eretz Yisrael, so everybody spoke about it. Even the goyim spoke about it. So much so that the king of Holland heard that the great rav, Rebbe Elazar Rokeach, is leaving to Eretz Yisrael, and you know what the king did? He wanted to honor the rav, which he was very respectful of. He loved the rav. He respected him. He'd met him f- many times, and he decided, "You know what? We're going to make a coin." You know, every country has money, has coins, right, which you buy s- food in the store, you buy all kinds of stuff in the store. So he, "We're gonna make a special..." Did you notice that some coins have the face of a person on them? Because many countries, they like to honor a special person by putting the

04:02 face of that person on the coins. The money that people buy with, you have the face of that person on the coin, so everybody, whenever you have money, you can see that person, you remember that person. That's a way of honoring a special person. So the king decided they're going to make a special coin in Holland that will have the face of the great tzadik, the great rav, Rebbe Elazar Rokeach. In those days, if you wanted to go from Europe to Eretz Yisrael, you couldn't take a plane. There were no planes yet in those days. You had to take a ship, go on the water. And to go on the water from Europe to Eretz Yisrael meant you had to cross the ocean, a very, very long journey. It would take months to get to Eretz Yisrael. But it didn't stop the rav, the great rav, and he went and bought a ticket and went on the ship with his family to go to Israel. In fact, his wife had already died. His children had grown up, so he was all alone. So it wasn't his family. He was the only thing of the whole family that was left and went to Eretz Yisrael. The ship took off from Holland. Holland is right by the ocean, and it traveled through the sea day, night, and day, and night. There were many other Jews on the ship also. They made a little shul, and they davened Shacharis, Mincha, and Ma'ariv, and then they had, uh, fabrengens,

05:42 and Shabbos, they had all Shabbos meals. They had everything they needed on the ship, and the ship traveled for many days, many days. Weeks and weeks went by, even a few months. But then it became close to Rosh Hashanah. No, Rosh Hashanah is a Yom Tov. So of course, everybody's gonna get together on Rosh Hashanah, and we're gonna daven the special davening of Rosh Hashanah, "Uvechein tehi pacht d'cho al kol maasei echo." And they daven with a big chazan. They had a very special chazan there. Everybody was going to Eretz Yisrael, but in- in the meantime on the ship, they were having a shul, and they had a chazan, and they davened, and they learned Torah. And the Rav, Rab Elozor Hachiyah, was giving drashas, speeches. You know, he was giving shiurim. He was teaching Torah on the ship. The first night of Rosh Hashanah. It was late, late at night. It was already 3:00 in the night, in the morning. Some people call it the morning, but it's very early. It was still very dark outside. The weather became very nasty. It became almost like a hurricane, very wild. And when the winds blow very wild, the ocean, the water gets also very wild, and the water begins to go up and down, and the waves get very huge, huge, huge. They're like high, almost like this... Or almost up to the clouds, so big are the waves. And you know, if a ship is in this ocean at that time, very dangerous. 'Cause

07:23 the waves get so wild and so tall that they can throw the ship into the water, and the entire ship might drown. So of course, when the ship started wobbling and jumping back and forth from the wild waves, everybody woke up. Because how can you sleep through a ship? You're inside the ship, and the ship is, like, jumping up and down from the waves, going wild and going to the sides, back and forth, and up and down. And everybody woke up vomiting and, and saying, "Oh, nauseous," feeling nauseous from the jumping, bumping up and down. And everybody fell out of their beds, and they fell on the floors. And finally, the captain was calling out on a loudspeaker, "Everybody come to the deck." The deck is the out... The, the, the front where you face the water. "Everybody should come up because it's the safest place to be. Don't stay in your rooms." And everybody came upstairs to the deck, and they saw this, the huge waves splashing water on the deck, and everybody got wet. And the ship was wobbling and wobbling and, like, in a f... And the captain said, "Listen, we're all going to drown soon. I don't know what's gonna happen. We're in the middle of the ocean, far away from any country where there's nothing, just water around us, and we're gonna drown. Say Shema, daven to Hashem. Find all your family, if you have family, children, wife, kids, grandparents. Bring them together so you can be one final time

08:58 together before the ship drowns." But one person on the deck looked around, and he says, "Oh, there's somebody missing. Somebody is missing from the deck. Who is that? The Rav. The Rav, Rab Elozor Hachiyah. He's nowhere to be seen. Where is he? What, he didn't wake up? How could anybody sleep through this wild trip, this wild journey? This, this ship is going up and down like crazy. It, it couldn't be that he's, he's still sleeping. But let's go see where he is. He's not here." He went to the room where the Rav was staying in the ship, knocked on the door. Nobody's answering. Knocked again, knocked harder. Nobody's answering. Finally, he had no choice but open the door. He opened the door, and he sees that the great tzadik, the great Rav, Rab Elozor Hachiyah, is sitting by a table on a chair, and his eyes are closed, and he's thinking very deeply about, about Torah. It's Rosh Hashanah. He's such a tzadik, he didn't go to sleep the night of Rosh Hashanah. He was up all night learning Torah and thinking about Hashem. So he was so deeply thinking about Hashem and the Torah and, and all the things about Rosh Hashanah that he had learned that he didn't even feel that the ship was going wild. He didn't even feel it. So this person is watching the Rav. His face is red, and his eyes are closed, and there are tears coming down from his eyes because he's so excited about the great

10:45 ideas that he's learning. So this Jew tapped the Rav on the shoulder and woke him up like... The Rav said, "Oh. What's going on?" And he said, he said, "You know what? Rebbe, we're going to die." "Really? Why?" "Don't you see this ship is wobbling up and down? It's going to drown soon. We're all going to die soon. We need to get ready. Do teshuva. What do you do before you die? You do teshuva and daven to Hashem, and that your neshama, it goes up there, it's clean, right? When you do teshuva for all the averas, your neshama gets clean. Rebbe, let's get ready." And the Rab Elozor says, "Wait, wait, wait, wait. Can you do me a favor? What time is it now?" He says, "It's already 4:30 in the morning." He says, "Can you go check outside, see if there's already the beginning of daylight? Is already getting morning? Is already getting morning light outside?" And the guy goes outside. "Yeah, yeah, it's beginning to get light." "Oh, that means we can already blow the shofar." 'Cause you have to blow the shofar during the daytime, not at night. You can't blow a shofar at night. He said, "Bring me my shofar quickly. Quickly, quickly." And the ship is wobbling back and forth and jumping up and down, and the whole ship is getting wet, and everybody's getting splashed with water. Their clothes were soaking wet, and everybody's screaming and screaming and screaming, "Hashem, help us. Hashem, help us." And the Rav says,

12:16 "No, no, no, bring me my shofar. I need the shofar." They brought the shofar, and he blew all the shofar. He made a big, big sound of the shofar. Tekiah tu-tu-tu-tu-tu-tu-tu-tu. He blew the whole shofar. He said the berachos first, of course, and as soon as he finished blowing the shofar, the weather calmed down, and the waters calmed down, and the ship calmed down, and everybody was saved. Now, kinderlach, what do you think the Rav was doing? Now, many people think that the Rav thought, "How can I save this ship? Maybe if I do a big mitzvah, it's Rosh Hashanah, we'll blow the shofar, that will save the ship, right? Hashem will see we do such a big mitzvah, and He'll help us all and save us." No, that's not what he was thinking. A great tzaddik once told that story and said, "You know what the Rav was thinking? Well, if we're going to die, so let at least let's do a mitzvah before we die." See, everybody was screaming, "Where's my family? Where's my children? Where's my brother? Where's my sister? Let's hug each other and say goodbye. We're going to die." The Rav said, "No. If you only have five minutes to live, try to do another mitzvah." And Hashem saw that this tzaddik, the only thing he cared about in these last five minutes before he thought he was gonna die is to do a mitzvah, the mitzvah of shofar. He said, "Ah, in the zechus of this great tzaddik, I'm

13:59 gonna save the ship."