71. Reb Levik Rejoices On Shabbos In A Miserable Golus

00:16 I wanna tell you a story, kinderlach, about Reb Levi Yitzchok. But the story is about how great people like Reb Levi Yitzchok, the father of the Rebbe, he was the Rov of Yekatirinislav, how these people, they-- their enjoyment is not from physical things, from food. They enjoy spiritual things, and that gives them joy and pleasure in life. The story was told by the Rebbetzin Chana, the wife of Reb Levi Yitzchok, the mother of the Rebbe. She told this to the great Chassid, Reb Yalkev, that she remembers when her husband, as we know, was arrested by the communists, and they gave him a very hard time. He suffered a lot. Finally, they sentenced him that he must go into galus, into exile, and they sent him away far, far away from where Jews live, into some very, very primitive old village where people didn't even have normal houses. They had, like, shacks that were falling apart. It was extremely hot and muggy there, and it was very hard to live there. There was hardly any food there. It was a miserable, miserable place, but he was forced to live there. The Rebbetzin Chana, when she found out where her husband was sent away to, she decided to make the long journey and travel on train for a long, long time till she arrived in that little tiny village, and she joined her husband in that little tiny shack. And she tried to make him some food because Reb Levi grew older and he got sick, um,

01:58 from all the suffering that he had to go through in the prisons. And so she tried to get food as much as possible and give her husband, uh, the type of food that will keep him healthy and alive. She said that one time it was Friday and she wanted to prepare something for Shabbos, but she couldn't find anything. Nothing. Nothing. She couldn't find flour, she couldn't make bread, and there was nothing for Shabbos. Friday night came. The Rebbetzin was very sad. She sat down. She was also hungry, but she was very sad that she couldn't prepare anything in honor of Shabbos. And she saw her husband that he wasn't at all, not at all disturbed. He was happy. It was Shabbos. You could see he was delighting. He was rejoicing in Shabbos. He davened Kabbalah Shabbos with great simcha. And then when he finished Kabbalah Shabbos after a long time finishing the davening, he was walking the-- across the house and the Rebbetzin was sitting there very sad with her face down. And, uh, the Reb Levi Yitzchok, the Rebbe's father, saw that his wife, the Rebbetzin, was very sad, so he wanted to cheer her up and he said, "You know what the Gemara says? Our Chachamim tell us that there is a spice. Hashem says to the Jewish people, 'Tav lin echad yesh li.' I have this very special spice. Its name is Shabbos." Hashem calls it a spice. A spice is something you'd put into the food so you can enjoy the

03:37 food. He says, "Well, Hashem is giving us a good spice. Who needs the food? We have a spice. Hashem gave us. It's called Shabbos." And she realized that her husband was rejoicing in the Shabbos, in the kedushah of Shabbos, and for him the food wasn't so important. This is a great Tzadikim that were able to feel the world of Shabbos, the kedushah of Shabbos, and they loved it and they enjoyed it so much, but they didn't enjoy as much the, the gashmius, the food. That wasn't so important to them. Another interesting thing that illustrates how Reb Levi Yitzchok could feel and be sensitive to the great lofty kedushah of Shabbos. So once there was a Jew in Yekatirinislav, where the Reb Levi Yitzchok was the Rov, and the Jew used to keep his store open on Shabbos. He wasn't frum. And Reb Levi Yitzchok, as the Rov of the city, tried to get all the Jews to keep Shabbos. So he-- one Shabbos, he walked over to that Jew in the store and begged him. He says, "Please close your door on Shabbos. You're a Jew. Every Jew should know that at Shabbos you don't keep your door-- you don't keep your store open on Shabbos." The Jew said to Reb Levi, "Uh, Rebbe, I don't know the difference between Shabbos and other days. They all look to me the same. Shabbos, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, they're all the same thing. I can't tell the difference between one day and another. Why should I close my

05:05 door of my store on Shabbos? It doesn't seem like any other day." And Reb Levi got very excited and said to him, "You know that the Dnieper River is right near Yekatirinislav." There's a big famous river, and you could hear the sound of the water because it was such a big river. You could hear the sound. The water was very strong, you know, flowing and rushing very loud. You could hear it all over town. And the Reb Levi said to this Jew, "Don't you hear the sound of the Dnieper on Shabbos? It sounds differently." Of course, that Jew didn't hear that. But Reb Levi Yitzchok could feel in the air, in the river, this is a different day. Shabbos is a... He felt the kedushah of Shabbos. He could feel in the sound of the water of the Dnieper. Okay, so now I'm gonna tell you a third story which is related to that to show you how great Tzadikim- Like a Believic and other, for them when Shabbos came, they felt the, the, the holiness of Shabbos, and that's what got them excited. And the gosh, where is the food wasn't as important to them. I read this story w- written in a book which this... the person who told the story heard it from the person himself, who it happened to. So it's a true story. The story was heard by a man in a subway. He was in a train. He met a Jew there in nineteen sixty-three, תכ"ג. A man is

06:40 in the train, and he, and he starts talking to him, never met him before, and the man tells him how he survived the concentration camps. You all know what concentration camps are, where the Germans in the World War II put all the Jews in concentration camps like prisoners, and they killed many of us, unfortunately. Six million Jews were murdered by these terrible German Nazis. He says, "I was sent by the German officers into a room together with a great Rebbe, a tzadik. The name of the tzadik was Rab Huna Halberstam. Rab Huna Halberstam. He was known as the Koloshitzer Rebbe, the Rebbe of Koloshitz. Koloshitz was a city in Poland, Galicia, the part of Galicia, which is a part of Poland. And he had thousands and thousands of Hasidim used to come to him. In fact, I knew a, a Rebbe in where I grew up in Europe that was a Hasid of his, was very close to him. He told many stories about him. Unfortunately, this Rebbe, Rab Huna Halberstam, uh, was killed by the Nazis too. But this Jew who told the story in the, in the subway, um, you know, meeting this other Jew, he was in the same cell, in the same room. Before the Rebbe was killed, they had spent together for a few weeks in the same room. And so the Jew on the train tells his friend that he just met what he saw, uh, in, you know, when he observed this great tzadik, how he, uh, behaved

08:29 in the, in the concentration camp. You know, they were all dressed in these striped uniforms that the Nazis would give all the prisoners. So you couldn't tell one person from another, but he knew that this, this man is a great tzadik, even though he looked like everybody else. Now, he was a grandson of the famous Sandzer Rav. Rab Huna Halberstam was the great-grandson of Rab Chaim of Sandz. In fact, his grandfather was the famous Shiniver Rav, Rebbe Cheskel of Shiniver, who was the son of the Sandzer Rebbe. He says, "It was one Friday, it was getting close to Shabbos, and I see that the Koloshitzer Rebbe, the Koloshitzer Rav, is getting ready for Shabbos." Now, they're not closed for Shabbos. They all... everybody dr- wears the same striped pajamas that the Nazis gave them. But it didn't matter. To him, it was Shabbos, and he got very excited that Shabbos is coming. And he said, "I never saw anything like this. The man got ready to face some great joy and excitement. He knew Shabbos is coming. And I saw him getting ready for Kabbalah Shabbos. There were no siddurim, obviously, in the concentration camps, but he knew the davening by heart. So he started singing Lecha Dodi, and he was davening with such joy and excitement. I was, like, shocked. We're here in the concentration camps. Jews are getting killed every single day. Who knows when the Nazis are gonna kill them. And he's like, it's come Shabbos, he forgets about everything. He just

10:04 sings away Lecha Dodi with such joy. He's in another world, as if he's back in Koloshitz in the shul with thousands of Hasidim with him. Didn't matter to him. He forgot about the place where he was. He was completely in another world. It's Shabbos Kodesh. The Rebbe finished davening, and then he turns to... He sang... singing Shalom Aleichem. He sings Shalom Aleichem. It took him a half an hour to sing Shalom Aleichem. Then he turns to me, says to me, "Do you happen to have maybe a piece of bread, piece of challah?" And I said, "Yeah, I have a, an old stale piece of challah." And he said, "Okay, can you give me a tiny piece, a piece of your stale piece? I want, I want a piece so I can make kiddush." Because if you don't have wine to make kiddush, you make kiddush on bread. If you don't have whole bread like lechem mishnah, you make it on any bread. So it'll be a, a piece of, uh, of, of stale old bread, but I'll make kiddush on something. So I told him, "Good. Sure. No problem." And I broke off a piece of my piece of bread, and I gave it to him. And he started singing, saying Yom HaShishi with such excitement. I've never seen anything like it. You could think that he's like in Yerushalayim somewhere. He's in a concentration camp, and the Nazis are right here watching over their guns, and he's in another world. He said kiddush, and

11:29 he finished kiddush, and then he said, "HaMeitzel etchem min ha'aretz" with great kavana, and then he took off a piece and ate. And then I see him saying like this. He's closing his eyes. He says, "In my family, in my tradition of the Sandzer tradition, the Sandzer Rebbes, Shabbos Kodesh we eat fish." Was it Ian to eat fish? Not just, uh, because it tastes good. Because fish, so you know, has a meaning, you know. Fish means the, the, the spiritual world of the neshamas and malachim. It has meaning. So they used to eat fish l'kavod Shabbos Kodesh. But there's no fish here in the camp. So, but he wants to be yotzer the minhag to eat fish, so he breaks off another crumb from that piece of bread that he got, and he says, "This will be instead of fish." And he put it in his mouth, and he chews on it, and he closes his eyes. He's excited. It's Shabbos Kodesh, and he's eating fish l'kavod Shabbos. Then he took off another crumb and says-- he broke off another crumb and says, "You know, it's a minhag to eat kugel on Shabbos." And it says in the Seforim that kugel means something very special, spiritual, and holy, and he thought about the meaning of it, and then he took that piece of-- stale piece of crumb of bread, put it in his mouth. This should be instead of kugel. And he eats it with great excitement. Then he takes off another crumb. He says,

12:55 "No, there's also a minhag by us, by the Hasidim of Tzanz, to eat tzimmes." You kids know what tzimmes is? Tzimmes. Tzimmes is a famous food, a dish, a very delicious dish that Jews in Europe used to eat. It's like a sweet carrot dish. So it's carrots, which is cooked with sweet sugar, and it's all kinds of stuff, and spices. It tastes delicious. So he said, "Oh." He take off another crumb. "This will be instead of tzimmes." Now, the Jew is watching him, you know, eating all these little crumbs instead of this food and that food. And Kirsch, he- he starts laughing. He says, "Rebbe, what's going on with you? You have nothing else to think about. You have tzimmes in your head. You have tzimmes on your mind. Do you know where we are? We're in a terrible place. We're in a Gehenna. They're killing Jews every day here, and you're thinking about tzimmes." He says, "Sadat." When the Rebbe heard this, he turned very serious, turned towards me, and said to me, "I want you to listen carefully to what I'm gonna tell you now." He says, "Remember, anything that happens to you, you should know it comes from Hashem." It's Hashgacha Protis. And there's a reason for everything, and you have to trust that Hashem does the right thing. Don't ever question Hashem's ways. And then he said to him, "Here, I have a handkerchief in my pocket. I'm gonna give it to you. I promise you, as long as you keep

14:46 that handkerchief with you, no harm will happen to you. Nothing bad will happen to you. You will live. The Germans will not be able to kill you. But r-remember, always keep the handkerchief with you." I took the handkerchief, and I was in total awe. I was a-amazed. He gave me the handkerchief. I put it in my pocket. Unfortunately, a few days later, the Germans killed this great tzadik. But I continued to live for another few years in the concentration camp. There were many times when I almost died, I almost got killed, and then a miracle happened and saved my life, and I knew it was all because of that handkerchief that the Rebbe had given me and promised that as long as I have the handkerchief, I will not be hurt. At the end of the war, towards the last few month of the war, the handkerchief was already falling apart. I only had a few strings from the handkerchief left, and I was so afraid that I shouldn't have anything left from the handkerchief because I wanted to have that protection from the handkerchief. So I took the few strings that I had left. I tied it tightly on my finger, so I would not lose it. And here I am. It says, "I survived the war with great, great Nissim." Now, that's the story. But the story tells us how great people who have really, you know, they have really refined themselves, and they served Hashem with great devotion, that they have, they

16:28 have been able to feel the greatness of Shabbos no matter where they were. In a tiny and miserable village of Galus, of exile like Reblevych, which was the most miserable place to live, nobody wants to ever live there, with him, Shabbos was Shabbos. Or in a concentration camp where people, uh, you know, suffer and get killed every day, but when Shabbos Kodesh comes, they feel like it's a different thing. They're in a different world. They feel the Kedushah Shabbos. The Simcha that they feel is, is hard to understand, hard to imagine. So, kindele, remember, this is what we try to do. When Shabbos comes, we try to be more connected to the Kedushah of Shabbos, not so g-so much get the excitement of the gefilte fish and the kugel. It's okay to have that. It's a mitzvah. But remember, as Hasidim, we try to cherish and be excited more about the meaning of Shabbos, the holiness of Shabbos, the Kedushah of Shabbos, the Neshamah Yeseira.