73. The Jewish Boy Who The Mezricher Magid Saved From Shmad r”l

00:15 Hello, "." I have an amazing story for you. It's a story about the Mizritcher Maggid. A story that gives us the power of teshuvah. We're it's a time for us to think about how we can do teshuvah for all the bad things we did. And so this is an amazing story about the power of teshuvah. Involves a boy... He was a young boy. He was in his, uh, teens. He was maybe 16, 17, or 18 years old, but a yeshiva boy. He learned a lot of Torah. He was very smart and very bright, and everybody loved him. And then one day he was walking somewhere and he met a person. Didn't know who that person was, but the person struck up a conversation with him. Turns out that this person was a priest, a galach. And the galach loved this boy. He saw he was very smart, so he started talking to him. And the galach had this secret plan, "I'd like to get this boy to convert to my religion, to become a Christian." He should start worshiping . He should shmad himself. It's called in Yiddish to shmad yourself. But he didn't tell him right away because the boy would run away from him. But he just became a friend and started talking to him about all kinds of things. And slowly he turned the conversation to things about religion, about Torah, and about Hashem. And he started telling him how he believes in Yoshke, um, Mirt- Mitchaske, and he believes in

01:52 all kinds of things. And he started explaining to the boy why he believes in it. Then he told him, "You know, you're such a smart boy." He gave him a lot of compliments, told him how great he is, and that if he were to convert to his religion, he would become very famous. He would become, like, well respected by everyone. He would have a lot of money. Everybody would bring him money and give him... He would be so famous and powerful. And he started telling him all kinds of things about how great it is to be part of this goyishe religion. The boy at first didn't listen, but he, he loved talking to the priest, so they talked every day and they met and would schmooze of all kinds of things. And then finally, finally, the boy started thinking, "Maybe, you know, this is very tempting. I can become a priest and the head of all the priests, and they're all gonna give me a lot of money, and I'm gonna be very respected in all over the country. Everybody's gonna know about me. Wow, that's amazing." And so slowly he started thinking about it till one day he told the priest, "Okay, I'll come and visit your church. Let me see what it's like." And so the priest said, "Wow, great. You'll meet my friends, the other priests, other galachim, and, and, and you'll see they're such wonderful people and you'll have such a wonderful time, and everybody's gonna love you. They're gonna think

03:15 you're so great." And so he introduced him to the other priests. And then one thing led to another thing. Another week later, he came again to visit and again to visit until he started loving it. He loved the priests. He loved the galachim because they were so nice to him and they were so flattering him. They were telling him such praises about him, how great he is, how smart he is. And finally he said, "You know what? Um, I- I'll do what you say. I'll, I'll, I'll become like you. I'll, I'll shmad myself. I'll become a galach like you." And he said, "Oh, great, great. We'll make a big party and we'll advertise everybody's gonna come and celebrate with us, and you'll become so famous and so great. Everybody's gonna come and learn from you. You, you're so amazing." And so they put him into the church in a room. They were afraid that he's gonna change his mind, right? Because, you know, maybe he's gonna say, "Oh, no, I'm Jewish. How can I do this terrible thing?" He'll change his mind. So before he changes his mind, they put him in a room high up on a high floor and locked him up there in a tower, right, far away so he wouldn't be able to escape. So now he was happy to do it, but then tomorrow if he changes his mind, he wouldn't be able to get out. So he'll be forced to stay there until he's actually gonna convert to their

04:38 religion. He wouldn't be go out... He wouldn't be able to go out of the window because the window's very high up. It's like many, many floors high up. He wouldn't be able to jump out. Meanwhile, his mother found out what happened to her son. She was terrified and so upset. She was crying and crying, crying hysterically. She said, "What happened to my son? Oy, oy." And she went quickly to the Mizritcher Maggid and told him what happened to her son. This special boy who was learning Torah and was doing it and suddenly fell into this terrible, terrible thing. He-- The, the, the galachim are gonna convert him and he's gonna become a galach. She was crying and crying, crying. The Maggid told her, "Listen, calm down. Go home. We'll do something about it." As the woman left, the Maggid sent a message to all his talmidim and said, "You guys all come here. I need to talk to you." And all the, the... The Maggid brought the talmidim and he said to them, "I'm gonna say a word of Torah. I'm gonna say some divrei Torah to you, and you listen." The Maggid began to speak about a passuk. There's a passuk that says, um, "A soul that will sin." The Torah talks about if somebody does an aveira by mistake, he has to bring a carbon. But the word is nephesh, a soul that will sin. How can a soul sin? The Zohar asked the question, "How can a neshamah sin?" A neshamah

06:17 never sins. A neshamah always loves Hashem, is afraid, terrified of an aveira. A neshamah runs away from aveira like from a, from a, from a, from a, from a monster, from an animal. It, it just can't stand it. It's, it's afraid of it. So for sure the neshamah doesn't do an aveira. It's just the guf, the body, and the yetzer hara. But the, but the neshamah can't do an aveira. So that's what the Zohar asks. Why is the Torah saying a neshamah that will... And the Maggid gave a whole long Torah, Dvar Torah on this pasuk and on this Zohar. He did that Friday afternoon, and all the talmidim were very, um, surprised. Why is he giving them a Dvar Torah on Friday afternoon? He never did that before. Normally the, the, the Maggid would say Torah on Shabbos. But Friday afternoon when everybody gets ready for Shabbos, he's suddenly calling them to say Torah. It was a little surprising. But then when Friday night came, again, he gathered them again. He says, "Guys, I'm gonna say another Dvar Torah on the same pasuk, a soul that sins, a neshamah that commits an aveira." And again, he spoke a long time about this pasuk and this, and this Zohar, and he did that three more times. That means a total of four times. The last time was by Shalashudis. Shabbos, late afternoon by Sodh Shalishis, the Maggid said the Torah again on the same pasuk, and then three more times. Seven times in total. When

07:51 he said the seventh time the Torah, Dvar Torah on that pasuk, suddenly people saw outside a huge storm, like a wind, like a tornado or something. Something like, like that was, you know, could break houses, and people got very afraid. It's like this strong wind, like terrible wind that were like breaking down trees in the middle of the street, and it was like very, very loud. It was a noise outside that was terrifying. Everybody was afraid. And suddenly in all this noise and terrifying wind, suddenly people see, they look in the shul where the Maggid was sitting saying Torah for the seventh time, and the boy that, um, was missing, was in the church, walks in. And they asked him, "What are you doing here? What happened to you?" And the wind stopped. Suddenly when he showed up, the wind stopped, and he told them what happened. He says, "I was in that tower in a high floor in a room locked up, and the galachim didn't let me leave. And at first I wanted to become like them. I wanted to become a galach and convert to their religion. But then one day, actually today, this morning, I woke... I decided this is crazy. What am I doing? What am I doing? I'm a Jewish boy. I learn Torah. How can I even think of doing such a terrible thing? And I started thinking, I don't know what got into me. Why did I agree to do this? This is crazy." And he started

09:33 fee-- "I started feeling," he says, "such regret. Why did I agree to the galachim when now I'm locked up?" He tried very hard to get out, but he couldn't. All the doors were locked with many locks. No way he could break through. He tried. He kicked the door. He kicked and kicked and pushed the door. Nothing worked. He was locked up. He started crying. He was very upset, and he wanted to get out, but he couldn't. And that took for hours and hours. "I cried to Hashem and says, 'Please get me out of here.' And finally I saw that I can't get out. And I said there was a window, but the window was very high up, like 20 floors high. And I said to him, I said, 'You know what? I'll jump out the window, and if I die, so I'll die because I'd rather not convert to, to, to, to avodah zarah.' A Jew," he says to himself, "should maybe should even die not to worship avodah zarah. And maybe Hashem will then forgive me for my terrible aveira of thinking even to become somebody who worships avodah zarah." So he says, "I went and I jumped out the window, and I thought I'm gonna fall to the ground and die. But suddenly as I flew out of the window, I saw a terrible wind started blowing like this tornado, and all the trees started moving back and forth and started breaking and falling down, and the wind suddenly grabbed me. It like

11:02 blew me away. I flew away with the wind, and I didn't fall on the floor because the wind carried me away until I came here to the shul. It dropped me off right outside the shul, and then the wind stopped. And that's how my life was saved. And here I am, and I need to do teshuva." And the Maggid showed him how to do teshuva for what he did. And everybody saw how the Maggid saved this boy with his Divrei Torah. He said it seven times, so he broke all the evil and all the kelipahs, all the tumah that was surrounding this child's life in the tower in the church. And through that he was able to re- to release him, to release him and to relieve him and bring him back. Here, my friends, you see the power of teshuva. Teshuva is all you have to do. He says, "I want to do teshuva." Hashem says it doesn't take much. Teshuva is not so hard. All you have to do is say, "Hashem, I want. I badly want. I wanna leave this, th- this, this imprisonment. I don't wanna be in my prison of my yetzer hara." Yetzer hara is like this tower where you're locked up and you feel like you can't break free from the yetzer hara. He's like keeping you like a prisoner, making you do the same aveiras over and over again. And when you cry out to Hashem and says, "Hashem, I wanna jump out of this prison," then

12:25 Hashem brings a wind that blows you straight into the Beit Midrash and says, "Okay, here is the month of Elul." All you need to do is say, "Hashem, you're in the field. You're here. You come down to us to ask us to..." You know, to do teshuva, to come closer to Him. He's coming down to us, coming to where we are and says, "Please, I wait for you. I want you. I want so much that you do teshuva." So all we need to say is, "Hashem, we want." And in that, in an instant, Hashem makes a tornado. He makes anything to bring us closer to Him. Guys, have a happy Elul and utilize every day, and Hashem will bless us with a good, happy, sweet Shanah Tovah U'Mesuchah.