69. The Holy Riziner Says Kiddush Levono Outside His Prison Cell

00:16 Dear children, here's an amazing story with the Heiliker Rizhiner, the Holy Rizhiner. As the Tzemach Tzedek would refer to him, the Holy Rizhiner, 'cause Rizhiner was a very holy person, a heilike Yid. The Rizhiner, as you know already from previous stories that I told, was in prison for s- for almost a year and a half. He had to sit in prison for false reasons. People made up stories about him. It wasn't true. They told the tsar, the government of the tsar, things about the Rizhiner which weren't true, but, uh, in the end, they arrested him. And I already told you the stories that happened, how he escaped from the prison in middle of the night and so on. Now I'm gonna tell you a story that happened while the Holy Rizhiner was inside prison. The government allowed the Holy Rizhiner to have a shamesh, somebody, a Hasid that would take care of him in prison. He would be with the Rebbe in prison, so he can take care of the Rebbe's needs. Now, there was a soldier who was one of the guards of the prison who was Jewish. He was one of those children that were taken away by their parents, uh, from their parents by the Russian army in a very early age, as you already know the stories with the cantonisten. And he was one of those cantonisten that was taken away at a very young age, torn away from his family, with his family crying, and he was crying. But they

01:54 took him away, and they raised him in the Russian army for, like, twenty-five years. Then he became an, a very, very important soldier in the army, and he was put to be-- He was assigned to be the guard of the prison where the Holy Rizhiner was, was, was kept. And he knew that there's a great tzadik in that prison. And since he was a Jew, and he had a very, very strong, warm feelings for Torah, for Yiddishkeit, even though he didn't know anything 'cause he hadn't had a chance to learn because they took him as a very young child away from his family and away from his Jewish community, and they put him into an army base with Goyim. He never had a chance to learn, but he felt very strongly that he wanted to help this tzadik, the Holy Rizhiner, while he's the guard of the prison. So he used to always tell the shamesh, the guy who helped the Rizhiner, that if you need anything, the Rebbe can help him with anything while I'm the guard, I'd be happy to help him. And the shamesh would tell the Rizhiner, and the Rizhiner said to him, "Listen, tell the guard that right now I don't need any help, but there will be a day, like in a few weeks, one night in the middle of the night, I'm gonna need help because I wanna say Kidush Levana, and I wanna make sure that I can go outside and do Kidush Levana under the sky

03:24 and look at the moon, as we... The minhag is to look at the moon first, and then we say Kidush Levana outside, under the sky." So the soldier said, "Please, uh, uh, tell the Rebbe that I will do whatever I can to help him." Now, this soldier's realized that, uh, the time when the Rebbe wants to say Kidush Levana in the middle of the night, this is not the time when he is supposed to be there. Another soldier is supposed to be guarding, uh, the prison at that time. So he needed to find a way where he, the Jewish soldier, can be instead of that other guard. But how do you do that? So he went to the other guard and gave him a present, a big bottle of vodka, which of course Russian soldiers loved a lot. And he said to him, "Listen, can we switch? I will take your shift, and I will stand guard around the prison, um, that night, you know, between, uh, ten o'clock and, and two o'clock in the morning. I'll be the guard. Here's a present." He says, "Yes, no problem. For a bottle of vodka, I'll do it." And so this, um, soldier, Jewish soldier was able to get that shift, that he was able to guard the prison during the nighttime of that night when the Rizhiner wanted to say Kidush Levana, so that he could-- the soldier can a-allow him to go out 'cause he's the guard. So that night came, and the soldier was

04:57 hoping the Rebbe would say Kidush Levana. How long does it take to say Kidush Levana? Ten minutes, fifteen minutes, twenty minutes, maybe a half an hour at the most. But when the Rebbe came out in the middle of the night, he started saying Kidush Levana, and he was in deep, deep thought, in deep tefilas. He kept saying Kidush Levana for a long, long time. It took an hour, another hour, and another hour, and four hours, and the soldier's getting very nervous because in about another half an hour, the shift is gonna be over. Another guard is gonna come, and they're gonna see him, uh, that he allowed the Rebbe, the tzadik, the Rizhiner, stand outside. You're not supposed to... If a guard allows a prisoner to go outside of the prison, the guard gets killed. That was the law of the tsar. If you let any prisoners outside the prison, then you, the soldier gets killed. So the soldier is getting very nervous because the Rebbe is still saying Kiddush Levana with great kavana, with great zechus. And the guard is getting very nervous because he's worried when they come, they'll catch him, and look what he did, and then they're gonna kill him. So he didn't know what to do, and he's very nervous and worried. He says, "Why is he saying it for so long?" So he went over to the Shamash. The soldier went over to the Shamash and said, "I don't know what to do, but, but if the Rebbe doesn't

06:30 finish soon, I'll be in a lot of trouble. Maybe you can tell the Rebbe." The Shamash says, "No, I can't. I mean, the Rebbe, when he does something, it's, uh... You know, you don't tell him what to do. I'm afraid to tell him." So the soldier was, like, so afraid. He was, like, so afraid. They're gonna come any minute now and catch him. But another hour went by and nobody came, and the Rebbe's still saying... He said it for five hours. He said Kiddush Levana, and then he told the Shamash, "Now we can go back into the cell, the room where the Rebbe was kept." And about two minutes later, the soldier hears-- This is after he locked the door of the cell of the Rebbe. He goes outside, he's, uh, standing on guard, and he hears the noise of, of footsteps of, of horses coming in, and he sees that the guard and some other, uh, officers who were also supposed to help the guard watch the prison are coming to take over. And as they get off the horses, they come over and they said, "Please forgive us." They say to the Jewish soldier, "Please forgive us. We've been trying to get here an hour ago when we were supposed to be here, but we got lost. We don't know what happened. Every day I come here and I'm never lost. Today, I was coming here and suddenly we got lost. I don't know how that happened. I went into a forest. I

07:58 don't know, there's no forest here, but I, I somehow I, I ended up in a forest that I couldn't... You know, it's literally an hour and a half I'm looking for how to get here, and finally I found the way, and I'm so sorry that I kept you here for an extra hour and a half." But the soldier inside was very happy because he realized that the great tzadik was protected min Hashamayim, and they protected him, the guard, because he did such a mitzvah to help the great tzadik to say Kiddush Levana. So a-- this soldier was-- saw the great nes that happened to him.