63. The Man Who Saved A Family And Became Poor

00:15 Hello, kindele. Here is a great story, an awesome story. There was a man by the name of Rabbi Yosef. Rabbi Yosef Turim. That was his name. He lived in Germany. He and his wife, they were married for many years. They didn't have any children. This Rabbi Yosef had an inn, a krachmer, an inn where people would come and drink and eat some food, stay overnight, like a little hotel. And they made a decent living. Every once in a while, a very wealthy and rich and powerful paritz would come to the inn, and he became very friendly with this Rabbi Yosef. They became like close friends. And this, uh, paritz noticed that Rabbi Yosef was a very smart man. And so every once in a while when Rabbi Yosef... uh, when the paritz used to come visit Rabbi Yosef, he would-- and he needed advice on something in his business, he would always ask Rabbi Yosef for advice because he realized Rabbi Yosef was very smart. This Rabbi Yosef was really a talmid chacham. He used to learn Torah most of the day. His wife is the one who ran the inn. And, um, so he wasn't so much into the business, but his wife was mostly running the business, and he would learn Torah, but he would come into the inn the whole time. Um, so when the paritz would see Rabbi Yosef, he would always run over to him and ask him for advice. One day, the paritz comes into the inn, and he

02:03 looks very, very stressed, very upset. And, uh, Rabbi Yosef walks over to him and says, "What's the matter? It seems like you have some problems. There's some-- uh, what's going on?" And so the paritz tells him that he got into a very difficult problem in his business and, um, "You know, I need to run away because the police is gonna come and catch me and arrest me because there's a court case against me. And in order for me to save myself, save my life from the courts, from the judge and the police, so they don't put me in prison, I have to run away as fast as I could. But before I run away, I have so much, so much property. I'm very rich. I have so many houses and hotels and land and fields and farms. All belongs to me. I gotta sell it quickly so I can have money, cash. I can run away with the money. Can't run away with the fields and the houses. You can't put the houses in your pocket and run. I don't want it to get lost. I wanna get money for that. I wanna sell it. And I decided to sell everything very quickly. And because I have to sell it very quickly, I'm not gonna ask for a big price. I'm gonna ask for a little bit of money." And told Yosef, "Rabbi Yosef, listen, I decided to turn to you first. I give you the chance to buy everything I own. All the vast,

03:44 huge fields and houses and, and hotels and everything that I own, you can get it. You give me just a certain price." And when the paritz told him the price, Rabbi Yosef realized, what? That's such a little price. It's so little. The, the, the fields and the houses are worth a hundred times more than that. And Yosef realized that this is a great, great chance for him to become very rich very quickly. So Rabbi Yosef said to the paritz, "But I don't have so much money to pay for all the fields and everything, everything you own." So the paritz told him, "Listen, I'll give you a week. You go try and find money. Maybe you borrow money, but I want you to have the chance to buy this, my all-- everything I own, all my properties, because then you'll become a rich man because it's worth a lot more. I'm selling it for very little because I need to run. I don't have time. I can't wait around, so I gotta sell it quickly." Rabbi Yosef said, "Okay, great. I'll be back in a week, and I'll bring you the money." Rabbi Yosef told his wife what the paritz told him, and they decided to sell the inn and all their, their house, everything they owned, the cow, the horses, everything. They're gonna sell everything. And, and, and so they will have enough money because the paritz wants to have money, cash, actual money, so they need to get money. How do they get money?

05:14 They have to sell everything. He sold everything. She sold her jewelry. And, and, and they get-- they got quite a bit of money, but it wasn't enough, so they had to go borrow tens and thousands of gold coins they had to borrow to get just the right amount of money so Rabbi Yosef could buy all the land, everything that this rich, rich paritz owned. And so Rabbi Yosef, at the end of the week, finally got all the money together, and he goes over to the-- and he's decided to walk to the paritz's mansion, to his palace, and to bring him the money, and then the paritz would sign over to him everything, everything he owns, all the riches, so much money, so much land that is worth a hundred times more than the money Rabbi Yosef is gonna give him. As Reb Yosef is walking towards the mansion of the Poritz, he walks down the little streets of the town where he lived in Germany. He suddenly hears a very, very, very heartbreaking cry from a woman. The screams are coming from one of the houses at the edge of the town. So he decided, oh no, this is terrible. Something terrible must be happening. And he decides to walk to that house, to the edge of the town. He walks over, and when he finally reaches the house where the screaming is coming from, he hears that there are children also crying and screaming. And he said, oh no, I gotta go and help

06:51 them. What's going on? What's wrong? He decides to open the door. He opens the door, and what does he see in front of his eyes? A terrible scene, a terrible scene. The father, the husband of the woman that's screaming, and the father of the children that are crying, is lying on the ground. He had just died. And everybody's crying. The children are crying. The house is a very poor house. You can see the ceiling is almost falling in, and everything is empty. There's only boards. There's no beds. There's no tables, just boards. And there's no food in the kitchen. And everybody looks so hungry and so skinny because they don't eat enough. And Reb Yosef started feeling very sorry for them. He said, let's, let me help you. Let me help you. He had forgotten. Reb Yosef had now forgotten completely of the reason he was walking through this place. He was walking to go to the Poritz to bring him his money so Reb Yosef would walk out of there, of the house of the Poritz, a rich man. He would become the richest man in the whole area. But he'd forgotten all about that. All he could think about is about the woman and the children and whose husband died, and somebody needs to bury him. So he called the Chevrei Kadisha, and they buried her husband in the Jewish cemetery in a very nice way. And then he went to the kitchen, and he filled it up, went to the store and

08:16 bought a lot of food for the family. And he bought them furniture, made sure that they have a place to live, and tried to fix their roof. And he brought a builder to fix the roof and took care of everything. And then when they came back from the funeral, and they buried her husband, and they fixed the house, and they brought food to the kitchen, the woman started crying and told Reb Yosef, thank you so much for helping us, for burying my husband. Thank you so much for all the food you gave us. You literally saved our lives. We were like starving to death. But what are we going to do now? We have nothing. My husband died. Now there's nobody who can make money. And if we don't make money, we're going to be starving. You know, now we have a little bit of food, but soon the food is going to run out, and we're going to be hungry and starving. Reb Yosef listened to her and realized it's true. They're in a lot of trouble. They're not going to have what to eat. They're going to starve. So Reb Yosef right away came, had an idea. He took the bag of money of tens and thousands of gold coins that was in his pocket he was supposed to take to the Poritz. And he, in a moment, took it, put it down on the floor where the woman and the children were sitting. He said, here, and he ran out of the

09:43 house. The reason he ran out of the house, because he knew the woman would say, no, no, no, don't do that. This is too much. You should give us a little bit, but this is your money. This is too much money. He didn't want her to stop him. He gave away all the money now. He walked outside. This was all his money, everything he had. He had sold everything, his house, his inn. He sold his horse. He sold his cow. He sold everything, all the jewelry of his wife. They were left with nothing. He gave it all away to this family, to this poor family, so they wouldn't have to starve. And of course, he couldn't go to the Poritz. Not only is he not going to be a rich man, but he's actually became now a very poor man himself. No food, nothing. He had nothing, nothing. And so he went home, and his wife asked him, no, no, Yosef, what happened? Did you buy all the properties? And he said, Oy, I have to tell you the truth. On my way there, I heard these terrible, terrible screams of this mother of little children, and I felt so sorry for her. I realized that they're going to starve to death if I don't help them. So I gave them all the money, and now I have nothing. And all the money meant everything, including the money, our money. Now we have nothing. Now we are poor people. Now we have nothing to eat.

11:05 We have nothing to eat now. There's no food in the house. There's no money. We can't even buy food anymore. I gave everything away. What a Mesirus Nefesh that Reb Yosef did. In Shamayim, all the Malachim and the Neshamas in Gan Eden were totally amazed by this incredible act of Mesirus Nefesh of Reb Yosef. He gave away his own money, everything. Now he became a poor man instead of becoming the richest person in the whole area. Now he became the poorest person because he wanted to help this poor family. What an amazing act of Tzedakah he did. Mesirus Nefesh. And it was decided that we need to give, in Shamayim it was decided, Reb Yosef needs to get a special reward for this. But then the Satan came and told the Beis Din Shel Ma'alah, the Beis Din in Shamayim. He said, wait a second. You're going to give him a big reward? We got to test him one more time. You can't give somebody a reward like this without testing him really hard. Of course, this was a big test, but, uh, we need to give him even a bigger test. And it was decided in Shamayim to put Reb Yosef to another test. And who are they going to send to test Reb Yosef? None other than Eliyahu HaNavi himself. And so Reb Yosef first and his wife decided they can't stay in their town because they don't have anything. They all sold their house. They sold all their beds. They sold all

12:43 their furniture. Sold all their-- inn, everything. They have nothing left. Just clothes on their bodies, that's all they had. So they went to a big city where there were a lot of Jews, and they had no place to stay, so they went to the courtyard of the shul. There they found a bench, they sat down. Now, Reb Yosef sits and says to his wife, "Let me go inside the beit midrash and learn a little bit, some Torah." So he walks inside the beit midrash, opens up a Gemara, and Reb Yosef was a talmid chacham. He knew how to learn, so he started learning and learning, forgetting about all his troubles, and the fact that he has nothing to eat. Just sat there and learned and learned for several hours. And then suddenly he sees a person sitting down right next to him. Looked like a Jew, a very special Jew, sitting down next to him, and he strikes up a conversation with Reb Yosef. He sees Reb Yosef is not from this town, he's a guest. He's, he's, comes from another place. He asks him, "What are you doing here?" And Reb Yosef, "Uh, nothing important. I'm just, you know, traveling through." He said, "No, no, tell me, tell me the, the reason you're here." Finally, Reb Yosef told him the whole story, how he had an inn and a house and a horse and a this and a that, and he had to sell everything because he was gonna buy all the riches of

14:00 this famous Peretz. But then on the way, he saw this poor family that was starving to death, and their husband, their father, the father died, and, and I had to-- I gave them all my money, and I'm left with nothing. So now I have nowhere to go, so I decided to come here. So the man says to Reb Yosef, "You know what? I'm a very rich man. I have a lot of money. I can give you all the money you need to pay the Peretz for all his land and all his houses and everything. Just on one condition. If you sell me the zechus of your mitzvah, this great mitzvah you did, for tzedakah, you sell it to me, and I'll give you the money. I'll give you all the money. You can become a rich man again, and a very rich man. Become rich like the Peretz. But you gotta sell me the mitzvah you did." Reb Yosef says, "Hmm, no. I'm not selling that mitzvah. That mitzvah, you don't get a chance to do this every day. This is once in a very, very long time that Hashem gives you the opportunity, the chance to do such an incredible mitzvah. It doesn't happen every day. Don't get a chance like that every day." He says, "No, I'm sorry, I can't sell it." So the man sits and says, "You know what? I'll give you a better offer. I'll give you more money and a lot more stuff. I promise I will give you

15:24 all kinds of things that you never even thought you can have. Much more. Sell me the mitzvah. I wanna own your mitzvah." And Reb Yosef says, "No, no, no." And the man sits next to him for hours and hours, almost a whole night, trying to make him a better offer and a better offer. "I'll give you more, I'll give you more, I'll give you more. Sell me the mitzvah." And he says, "No, no, no." Towards the end of the night, the man who was sitting next to Reb Yosef suddenly breaks out in a big smile. He says to Reb Yosef, "You should know I'm Eliyahu HaNavi. I came to test you. In Shamayim, there was such a big commotion that you had had such mesirat nefesh to save the lives of such a family. But they wanted to test you one more time. So I put you to the test to see if you're gonna give up your mitzvah for money, and you were willing to stay poor and not to take any money, but not to sell your mitzvah. So I wanna tell you what it was decided in Shamayim, that you and your wife will have a son, and that son will be such a great tzadik. He will illuminate the world with his Torah." And that tzadik, do you know who this was? Rebbe Nachum Mendel of Rimanov. He was a student of the Rebbe Elimelech of Lizhensk, and after Rebbe Elimelech of Lizhensk passed away, was nistalek, he became the great,

16:53 a great rebbe in Poland with tens and hundreds of thousands of Hasidim. It was all in the zechus because his parents had such an incredible mesirat nefesh to save the lives of a family and give everything away, everything they had.