40. The Crazy Doctor

00:16 Hello, kindalakh. Here is an awesome story. The story was told by a famous Hasid. His name was Rebbe Yehuda Leib Hoffman. Rebbe Yehuda Leib Hoffman was one of the great Hasidim of the Rebbe Maharash, and he told a story that he heard from the person himself. Rebbe, Rebbe Yehuda Leib Hoffman once visited Lubavitch by the Rebbe Maharash, and on his way back home, he went to the train station to take a train to go back home. He had spent Shabbos by the Rebbe Maharash and heard a lot of of Hasidus, and now he was ready to go home. As he's waiting by the train station, he sees a person, looks like a Jew, Jewish person, who is walking back and forth by the station, and he's very anxious. He's very anxious. And every time he walks closer to Rebbe Yehuda Leib Hoffman, the person, like, looks very, very, very strongly at Rebbe Yehuda Leib and, and walk... And, like, thinks. You could see that he was thinking. And Yehuda Leib felt that this man wants to talk to him. So a few moments went by, and then the man walked over to Rebbe Yehuda Leib and said to him, "Are you a Hasid of the Rebbe Maharash of Lubavitch?" And he said, "Yes." He said, "I want you to know that your Rebbe is like a navi. He can see things in the future. H- he can see things that will happen later on in time, and he can see everything that happens to a

01:58 person. He has Ruach Hakodesh." And Rebbe Yehuda Leib says, "Uh, w- tell me the story. What's going on?" And the man said, "I'll tell you my life story." He says, "I grew up in a house. My father, my mother were... They kept Torah and mitzvahs. It was a very, very nice house, a very loving house. But I was very young, and I decided I wanna study other stuff, science, not Torah. I wanna study medicine. I wanna study other things." He said, "When I get a little bit older, I decided to leave the house, and I didn't tell anybody where I'm going. I left the house, and I went to the capital of Russia to Peterburg, the big city, and there I found a place, a school, a university, and I went to study medicine. And I started studying medicine. I became very good at this. I was one of the best students at the whole university. I was studying medicine so much. I became so good. I got the best marks, the best grades in the class. I was like the most, the smartest, and the best student in the whole university. And I became a doctor when I finished, uh, studying medicine. I became a doctor, and all my professors and teachers were saying, "Wow, you will be one day one of the greatest doctors in the world because you're so smart." So I became a doctor, and I decided, listen, if I'm gonna be a fancy, famous doctor, and everybody's gonna respect me,

03:36 all the goyim in Russia are gonna respect me, I can't be looking like a Jew. So I started taking off my beard and my payos, and I took off my yarmulke, and I slowly stopped putting on tefillin and stopped keeping mitzvahs and Shabbos and kashrus. Little by little, I started living a life like a goy. I stopped doing any mitzvahs, no mitzvahs at all, 'cause I wanted to be like the goyim so that they can respect me. Everybody's gonna be nice to me and say, "Wow, you're such a great doctor." And I became really a very, very, very, very great doctor. I first, I worked in the biggest hospital in Peterburg, and I became, like, the best doctor in the hospital. And then I met a very, very good doctor, a young guy like me, and we decided to start our own office, um, a doctor's office, and we became very, very successful. We had so many patients. Everybody heard about us, even the kings and, and ministers, very important people, rich people. Everybody wanted to come to us. And whenever somebody had a sick person in their house, they came to me because they heard that I was the best in, in, in that s- field and whatever I did, and everybody wanted to... A- my name became famous all over Russia. I was invited to give talks and lectures far away to other countries about medicine. Everybody... I became very famous known, and everybody heard about me. And the more I became famous,

05:14 and the more I became successful, and I became very rich. I made a lot of money because a lot of people paid me a lot of money, so I would come to their house a- a- and cure a- and give medicine to their, to their sick children. I became very famous and lots of money. And the more I became famous and the more I became rich, the less I was Jewish. I did not keep mitzvahs at all now. And even more than that, one day when they invited me to parties where they had treif food, and they were playing all types of Goyishe music, and people were dancing in a non-Jewish way in a very... And, and, and I became like one of the goyim. I, I, I acted like one of them, and I did everything they did." And then I got married to a non-Jewish woman. Oy. I had four children, two boys and two girls, and a very fancy house, a beautiful, beautiful mansion of a house because I was so famous and so rich. And many, many great, great pritzim and ministers and kings would come to my house and respect me and ask me to come to their palace to treat their families who were sick. And so I became more and more famous and more and more rich and more and more respect and covet. People were respecting me from all over. Till one night where everything changed. What happened on that night? One night, I was traveling with

07:14 my whole family far away to a beautiful, beautiful place by the ocean. I was invited by some university to give a very, very important lecture, a talk, a class about some medicine, medical thing. And I took my whole family with me. It was a very beautiful place where it cost a lot of money to go there. But, you know, I was able to go with my whole family and we had a great time. And when I came back, after having a wonderful, wonderful time with my goyishe wife and my goyishe kids, I went to sleep that night very happy that I had such a good life and I had so much money and I have so much good things in my life. I fell asleep and then I saw in my dream an older person, very skinny. He had a beard and peyos and his face was very wrinkled and he turned to me with a very loving voice and he said, pleading with me, begging me, begging me, please, my son, my dear son, I love you so much. Do you know that you're a Jew? Do you know that no matter how much you try to hide from all the goyim that you're Jewish? Because he never told anybody that he's Jewish. He didn't want them to know that he came from Jews. Do you think the father said that you're going to hide from all the goyim that you're Jewish? You will always be a Jew. You cannot run away from being

08:57 Jewish. Your neshama is Jewish. You can't run away from your neshama. Please, please, I beg you, have rachmanus, have pity on your neshama. Do teshuva. Come back to the Torah and to the mitzvahs as soon as possible. He begged him. And then he woke up from the dream. He says, I woke up from the dream. It was a strange dream. And I saw my whole body was covered with sweat because my body was shaking from this dream. I was so scared. I tried to go back to sleep. It was still in the middle of the night. But then as I fell back asleep, I saw again my father, which I hadn't seen since I was very young. But I recognized him. He was in my dream again. And he said, he said, no, no, he didn't give me, he didn't let me go. He said, listen, I beg you, please, please do teshuva. Come back to Torah and mitzvahs and be like a Jew, like a good Jew. And again, I woke up and then I couldn't fall asleep again. The next morning when I got up, everybody saw that my face was very pale. I looked like I hadn't slept. And people were like wondering, why you look so sick? You look like you're not well. So I said, you know, maybe because of traveling. I was traveling so much. I didn't want to tell them my dream. And I decided to forget about the dream. I went back to work and I worked

10:41 very hard and I made a lot of money and I was very famous. After a month, I went back to sleep again one night and the dream came back again. The same Jew, that skinny, skinny Jew with a beard and peyos and a big yarmulke. And he says, I'm your father and I beg you, please do teshuva. Please, I beg you. I have no peace in Olam Haba. My neshama is in Gan Eden, but I can't find any peace when I know what you're doing. When I woke up, I was very, very nervous. Very nervous. I didn't go to work that day. I woke up in the morning and I stayed at home. I tried to, I was very nervous and shaking from the dream. And I tried to forget the dream, but it was very hard. It came back the next night and the next night and the next night. And I was very tense and very stressed. And I couldn't go to the office to work because my mind was so disturbed by the dreams. I couldn't, I couldn't do anything. I couldn't go talk to anybody and meet people. I wasn't able to go out of the house. I stayed in the house and just thinking about the dream all the time. Wherever I went, I could see the dream in front of my eyes. One day, I was invited to a party, a goyishe party with goyishe music and all the pritzim, the pritzes, right? The f- famous, rich, powerful, uh,

12:29 people that, that run the country, the very famous and very important people, like people that are close to the king, and they all had a big party, and they invited me to come too and have fun and, and drink and eat treif food and dance to goyishe music and, and l- just doing w- everything like, like a goy. And I went. We had a big p- p- party with lots of food. We drank lots of non-kosher wine, and we got a little bit drunk from all the wine. And then at the end of the meal, everybody started dancing like in a wild way, like goyim in a party after drinking a lot of wine. They get, get very wild and rowdy and dancing to, to stupid music. And as I was dancing with all my goyishe friends, I see in the middle of the circle where we were dancing, I see my father, my father's image right there. He's standing in front of me. Nobody else could see him, only I. And I see him begging me, begging me, "Please, my son, my son, please, please, please stop this. Stop this. Go home. Do mitzvahs, please. It's giving me a lot of pain, a lot of grief in Gan Eden. I can't find any peace." And I was so, I was so shocked that my father came here in middle of the party. I, I, I lost my head. I, I like became like confused and, and, and without thinking, I pulled my gun. You

14:12 know, in those days in Russia, everybody was wearing a gun. It was normal. I pulled my gun, and I just shot in the direction of my father, where my father appeared, which again, nobody else saw, only I saw, but I, I, I, I, I wanted him to go away because he was interrupting my party, my fun. I was having so much fun with all these goyim, and my father didn't let me have the fun. He was begging me to become Jewish again, and I shot a bullet with my gun at my father. Now, of course, nobody in the room saw my father. They just saw me shooting bullets in the air. It made a lot of noise, and all the people that were dancing stopped. The music stopped. Everything stopped. And all the eyes of the people were turned to me. Everybody stared at me. "What's going on here? Is he gone crazy? Why is he shooting bullets? He could have killed somebody." Luckily, nobody got killed. "Well, wh- why?" Because they didn't see what happened. They didn't see what I saw. I was so embarrassed. I didn't know what to tell people. What, what was I gonna tell them? "I saw my father"? They'll think I'm crazy. I went, took my coat, and left the mansion of this pritz where the party was, and everybody stared at me like something crazy happened with this guy. I went back home, and I collapsed in my chair, and I began to cry hysterically. I was crying

16:00 so hard, my tears were coming down my face, and inside I was like crying. How could I shoot my gun at my father? How could I like... Of course, you can't shoot a neshamah. Of course, his father wasn't there physically. His father came down from Gan Eden to appear to him because he wasn't having any peace in Gan Eden because of his son's behavior and the way he lived. But still, I was trying to shoot at my father. This is a terrible thing. And he was begging me with such love, and I was just shooting at him because I didn't like to hear what he had to say to me. And I was crying and sobbing all night, all night. The next day, the rumor in the city, in Petersburg, the most important city in Russia, where all the very important people were, the rumor spread all over that the famous doctor, the famous doctor that everybody loved so much and respected so much became crazy. He became crazy. Everybody, in all the newspapers, they were writing the news, "Doctor so and so, he's become crazy last night at a party. He suddenly pulled his gun and sh- shot in the air, and nobody knows why he did it, but he must've gone crazy." Uh, anyways, nobody-- everybody thought something went wrong. Something went wrong with me. And I told my wife, "I need to take a vacation. I need to go away for a little bit. Can you please stay here with my children,

17:53 and I'm gonna go away. I need to rest up." And I have to wait till everybody was quieting down and people stopped talking about me because the whole city, everyone's talking about him. I went out of the house, and I went to straight to a shul, and I met a Jew with a long white beard, and I said to him, "I have a very, very serious question I need an answer for." Do you know somebody of the biggest rav that I can find that can answer my question? Can you tell me where the biggest rav is? So he said to him, "The biggest rav is in the city of Vilna. Go to Vilna." I went to Vilna. I traveled there, and I came to the Rav of Vilna, to his house. I told him about my dream and everything I did, and he said to me, "Listen, in Vilna, we are not Hasidim. We don't know about dreams. We know how to give you the Halakha. If you're not to know-- You need to know if a chicken is kosher or not, then we can tell you the Halakha because we know how to... We know the Gemara, we know the Halakhas, but we don't know about dreams and Shamash. These types of things, you have to go to Lubavitch, to the, to the Rebbe Maharash. There, he probably can help you." So I came to the Rebbe Mahara-- to the Lubavitch, and I asked them, "Where's the Rebbe Maharash's house?" And they showed me

19:19 the house, and I went inside and I told the Shamash, "Please, can you let me into the Rebbe?" I was very nervous and very stressed. I said, "Please, please, please, I need it. I need it very badly. I have a very, very important question for him, for this great Rebbe, the Rebbe Maharash." And I looked like a very important person because I was-- came from an important place, from Peterburg. So the, the Shamash saw me that I looked like a very important person. So he, so he went into the Rebbe's room and he told the Rebbe that is a very important person, looks very dressed like a, like a nobleman. Um, he wants to see you. To my surprise, instead of telling me to come in, the Rebbe opened the window of his room and said and yelled, "What is a murderer who killed his father do in my house?" And when I heard this, I saw the Rebbe knew everything without me telling him. I burst out crying hysterically. I cried and I cried and I begged the Shamash, "Please go back to the Rebbe. Tell him I, I, I, I need to go into him. I know I did a terrible thing, but please tell him to, to, to accept me and, and to welcome me into his room." In the end, the Rebbe agreed. I told the Rebbe all my life everything that happened. I didn't hide anything. I said, "Rebbe, Rebbe, please," I cried. "Show me how to do Teshuvah. I

20:49 realized what a terrible life I had. I must change my life. I must go back to Torah and Mitzvahs and be a good Jew." The Rebbe listened to me and started thinking very deeply, closed his eyes, deep in thought. Then he turned to me like this and said, "Go back home. Take as much money, gold and silver and diamonds, whatever you can find that's worth a lot of money, take it and do it quietly, secretly, and put it in your bags, okay? You're gonna leave your house for good. You can't stay with a Goyish wife. You can't stay with that family. You have to go away. If you wanna be a Jew and follow Torah and Mitzvahs, you can't be married to a non-Jewish woman. You have to take all your money, leave the house, and pretend, tell your wife you're going on vacation, and go to Vienna. Vienna is in a country called Austria." Vienna was an important city o-outside Russia. It was in, in Austria. "And go with that letter. See there's an address on that letter. You go to that address. There's a rav that lives in that house where you're gonna go, and you're gonna show him the, the envelope. He's gonna read it, and he's gonna show you how to do Teshuvah and how to fix all the evil things that you have done. You have to do everything that he tells you. You have to follow everything he tells you. He will teach you Torah too, and you'll stay

22:16 in his house, at least for a while." I asked the Rebbe, "Rebbe, how will I know that Hashem accepted my Teshuvah? When will I know? I mean, I will do everything you say, but I wanna have a sign that Hashem accepted my Teshuvah." So the Rebbe said, "When you hear that your house has gone up on fire, a fire broke out in your house and burned the whole house down, and then you hear also that your wife and the children, they died, and all your belongings, all your furniture, everything was not, is gone up in fire, then you'll know that from Shamayim, from Shamayim, Hashem made it that your Teshuvah should be accepted. All the things that you had when you were living your life like a Goy, you were living your life not, you know, not according to Torah, will all be burned. And your wife and children will never-- will not be part of your life anymore. You'll know that Hashem accepted your Teshuvah." I left the Rebbe's room and went quickly back to Peterburg. I traveled with a train, and then I gathered all the money I got and I went to Vienna also on a train, and I found the address in Vienna. I went, uh, to the house of this rav. In Peterburg, rumor had spread that, um, I became crazy, and I left Peterburg and nobody knows where I am. I disappeared. It's probably part of being crazy. You know, you leave the house, you leave everything. Nobody... Rumor

24:26 started spreading what a crazy thing this is, that I became... This great, great doctor became totally crazy, and he left and nobody knows where he was. He says, "I left the house with all the money I could find, and I went to Vienna. When I came to Vienna, to the rav, the rav looked at the letter and he read it. He said to me, 'Come into my house. I'll take care of you.' And I sh-- I did Teshuvah, complete Teshuvah. I went back to Torah and Mitzvahs, and I davened, and I learned, and I begged Hashem to forgive me for everything that I did. And so I spent a lot of time in this rav's house. He taught me Torah and everything. Uh, two weeks ago, I started thinking, "Did Hashem accept my teshuvah or not?" And I decided I need to go back to Peterburg to see what happened. Yesterday, I came to Peterburg. Nobody recognized me now because I had a beard and payos and a big yarmulke, and nobody... I completely changed, so nobody knew that I'm the same person, the, the, the guy who used to be the famous doctor. Nobody knew that it was me. I started asking, "Hey, did you guys..." Asking people in the street, "Did you hear about this famous doctor, um, uh, that lived here in, in Peterburg?" People said, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, he, he, yeah, he became crazy. A few years ago, he became crazy, and then he left town, and nobody knows where

26:14 he is. And matter of fact, two days ago, his house went up in flames. Like a fire happened, and, and, and the entire house is burned down to ashes. All the furniture is gone." I was so happy. Wow, what the Rebbe Maarash was predicting really happened. Hashem accepted my teshuvah, and I decided to go back to Lubavitch to tell the Rebbe Maarash what had happened and to thank him for making me about teshuvah. And this is the story this man is telling Reb Yehuda Leib Hoffman in the train station near Lubavitch. Reb Yehuda Leib was going back home from Lubavitch. This man says, "I just came with a train to go to the Rebbe to tell him the news of what had happened." And that's the story which tells us a Jew is always a Jew. You can never run away from who you are, and the right place of a Jew is Torah and mitzvahs in the, in the Beit Midrash, in the shul. And yes, we do a lot of things. You know, we, we, uh, have to eat, we have to drink, we have to live life. We can have some fun playing games, but we have to do it according to Torah. We do it the way Jews do it, and Hashem wanted us to be different, separate from the rest of the world. Live a holy life, a life of kedushah. So you can have fun, you can play games, you can play sports, you can do all kinds of

27:54 w- and listen to beautiful Chasidisha and Jewish music, but do it in a way that is full of kedushah like a Yid. A Yid who Hashem, you know, has given a Torah and special gifts of mitzvahs. Kinderlach, zeit gezunt and be well, and enjoy your day.