81. The Jew Who Had A Din Torah With The Eibershter

00:16 Hello, kinderlach. Here is a ma'aseh. A ma'aseh that happened many years ago in the time of the famous tzadik, the Chozeh of Lublin. The Chozeh of Lublin had a Chassid, a rich man, not a big talmid chacham, but a rich man, a simple person. He was very wealthy, and he would give a lot of money to tzedakah. He also gave a lot of money to the Rebbe. The Rebbe needed sometimes money for poor families, for the yeshiva, for the school, for whatever. He would always give money to the Rebbe and always give generously. And the Rebbe liked him very much. He was a simple man. He lived in a city which was a big city, but there weren't many, many frum Jews there. It was like a city where there was not many Jews at all. It was mostly Goyim there. That means he didn't have a s- a community where there was Yiddishkeit, with Torah, and a lot of chachamim. So it was a city that's easy for a person not to feel strongly Jewish. Right? He wasn't a shliach of the Rebbe. Shliach of the Rebbe can go to a place where there's no Yiddishkeit at all, and he doesn't feel weak in his Yiddishkeit because he's a Chassid, he's a shliach of the Rebbe. But when you're not a shliach of a Rebbe and you go and live in a place where there's no Yiddishkeit and mostly Goyim, uh, then, uh, that's not a good thing because you get influenced by the

01:49 Goyim. So he lived in that town. He had a big business, and he was quite wealthy. And one day he lost all his money. Something happened in his business, he lost everything. He became literally a poor man. V- so poor that he needed to get a job to earn money so he could feed his family. He decided to become a bag, um, a package carrier. S- package carrier are people in the olden days when they didn't have cars like we have today, they didn't have trucks. So if you wanna carry a package from one s- place to another, from a store to the house, you either hired a person with a wagon and a horse, and if the person couldn't afford a horse and a wagon, he would just take it on himself. So people would pay him some money and said, "Okay, can you take my package?" Very heavy packages. They are 50 pounds of potatoes. "I gotta take it from the store to my house." And they gave him like a ruble, two rubles for carrying the bag, and this is what he did for a living. It was not a very easy living. Very hard because he pa- carry a lot of very heavy bags all day long, and by the time he got home, he was so exhausted. And how much money did he get? Very little. He didn't have enough money to feed his family, his wife and kids. Very hard life. It was a very hard life. In that

03:14 city, there was a galach. The galach was a nice man, but he saw this Jew who used to be so rich, and now he lost all his money, and look how hard he schleps these packages in order to earn a few rubles and so he can... But, you know, he went over to this Jew and said to him, "Listen. You know, listen, you, you're Jewish, and, um, you were once rich, but look, your God didn't help you much. Look, you became very poor. If you come over to my religion, I promise you everything will be good again. You'll be rich, you'll be-- have everything you want." Jew said, "Oh, no, I can't do this. I'm a Jew, I can't, I can't do this. No, no, no, no." Okay. The galach went away. The next day, galach came back and, and, and, and this Jew is schlepping these very heavy loads for a few rubles. Then he comes home, his wife is crying, the kids are crying. There's not enough food in the house. It's cold in the house because they can't afford firewood to make the house warm. So he doesn't know what to do. The next day, the galach meets him. He says, "Do you see, you see, wh- wh- wh- why do you stay Jewish? Come to my religion, I promise you, you'll get a lot of money, you'll get-- you'll be rich, you'll be-- have enough food to eat, your family will have enough food. Come, come. Your religion didn't give you

04:46 a lot of good things. Look, you, you believed in, in, in the Torah, and you followed the Torah, and look, you became poor anyways." This Jew, like day after day after day, the galach would come to him again and again, and every night he would hear the cries of the children. It would break his heart to see his children starving and cold, and his wife is crying, and he didn't have money. Then he worked so hard his bones were breaking from the heavy labor. And finally, he couldn't take it anymore, and he told the galach, "Okay, okay, you know what? I'll do it. I'll do it." Galach said, "Okay, okay." Said, "Yeah, well, give me a week, but in a week I'll come to you and we'll, we'll, we'll take care of it. I'll become like a Goy. I'll come to your church, and you make me into a Goy." The Jew went home, and then he thought to himself, "Oi. Yeah, but I gotta go and tell Hashem what I'm gonna do. It's a terrible thing I'm gonna do, but I have no choice. I need the food. I need the money." So he went to shul, opened up the Aron Kodesh, and he began to cry, cry, and weep hard. Says, "Oi, Ribono shel olam. You know that if I had parnasah, I would never even think of doing such a thing." But I don't have any Parnassa, my kids are crying, my wife is crying. So please forgive me. I have to

06:07 do it. I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna Shemad myself, do what the Galach wants, just so that I have food to eat, to survive. So then he closed the Aron Kodesh, and he said to himself, "Oh, I already appeased Hashem. I asked Him for forgiveness. I'm sure He's gonna forgive me. But my Rebbe, the Choize of Lublin, I have to go to him, too, and say goodbye to him. I'm leaving Yiddishkeit. I'm gonna become a Goy, a Christian, so I'm gonna have to say goodbye. So I have to go to Lublin to tell my Rebbe what I'm going to do, because that's only fair, right? It's only appropriate, the right thing to do. Uh, the Rebbe was so good to me, and I was so good to him, and we're so good to friends, and now I'm gonna leave him and leave the Yiddishkeit. I gotta tell him." When he told the Galach about his plans to go to Lublin, the Galach said, "Ah, no." The Galach was afraid that the Rebbe of Lublin is gonna, uh, you know, convince him out of this whole plan and, and not go, not become a Goy, not Shemad himself. So he said, "No, no, don't go. Don't... Try not to go. Go... No. Come, come. Let's do it quickly. We'll give you all the money. Imagine, tonight you're not even gonna be hungry. You're gonna have food on the table." And the Jew said, "No, I have to do it. It's not right. It's not appropriate. You

07:18 know, I gotta be a nice guy. Gotta tell my Rebbe that what I'm gonna do, what I'm gonna do." But he didn't have a wagon to go to Lublin. Lublin was far away. He couldn't even afford to hire a wagon, so he had no choice but to walk, go on foot. He walked all the way to Lublin. It took him weeks and weeks and weeks and months. Finally arrived in Lublin. He was totally, like, exhausted from the walking. And the first thing he did right away, he went to see his Rebbe. He said, "Rebbe, this is what I'm about to do. I came to say goodbye to you because I really appreciate you, but I have to do what I need to do in order to survive." Now, he thought the Rebbe's gonna yell at him. "Hey, you, are you crazy? You're Jewish. You're gonna be Shemad yourself, go to a church. Are you insane?" No, the Rebbe didn't do that. The Rebbe was very gentle and very nice. He says, "Oi, my dear son, I hear, I hear what you're saying. What you're really saying is that you have complaints against Hashem, against the Aibishter. You have certain complaints, and I understand your complaints. How come Hashem is making you so poor? If you follow the mitzvahs, He gave so much tzuker. Why would you deserve that? Let us make a Beis Din. I have a Beis Din with Rabbonim here. We'll make a Beis Din. You will invite Hashem to a Din Torah,

08:44 right, like a court case, and we'll see. We'll hear what your argu- what your complaints are." Says the Yid, said to the, to the, to the Choize Rebbe, "My holy Rebbe, I've never done things which you told me not to do. I'm gonna follow what you said. You said to make a Din Torah. Uh, good, I'm agreeing." So the Rebbe gathered a few Dayanim, Rabbonim, and they made a Beis Din. Um, and when... He said, "Now you come in to in front of the Beis Din. Tell us what your complaints are." And I understand. And he told his complaints, and the Rebbe said, "I understand you're complaining. Why did you lose all your money? But don't you know," said the Rebbe to this Jew, "that you did a lot of Averus, too? Maybe you deserve it. It was a punishment." So the Jew said, "Yeah, okay. So of course I did Averus, but a lot of very rich people who did even bigger Averus than me, and they didn't become poor. Why do I deserve to get this terrible punishment to starve like this, and my children would starve because I did Averus? Why are there so many rich people that did much worse Averus than me, and they don't become poor?" Rebbe said, "Okay, I hear you. Go outside the room." You know, normally in a Beis Din, when two people are arguing about money, he owes me money, he doesn't owe me money, usually the Beis Din listens to the two sides, then

10:02 they tell them to step outside, 'cause they don't want the two people to hear how the Dayanim are arguing between each other which one, who is right and who is wrong, right? Otherwise, uh, you know, the guy who is Dayan was against him would say, "Ha, oh, yeah, I hate this Dayan." We don't want people to have a personal thing against the Dayan, so we make them step outside. They wouldn't know anything what's going on behind closed doors, and the Dayan, they make the decision. So they told, uh, this, this Jew to go outside the room, and they'll call him in when they're ready to give him the Psak Halacha, the, the decision. So they send him out, and they deliberated, and then they call him in, and they said, "Okay. Here is the Psak Din that we came to. All of us decided that this Jew is for sure a sinner. According to the Torah, he deserves a punishment, but Hashem says to us in the Torah that we all have to act Lifnim Mishuras Hadin. That means we have to sometimes do not exactly what the Din says. We give... have to be kinder than the Din." You know what I mean? Sometimes Al Pi Din you don't have to do this to someone, but we should still go beyond the Din, and Hashem should go beyond the Din. And even though he doesn't deserve to be rich, Hashem should be nice to him anyways, to do Lifnim Mishuras Hadin because that's what

11:14 Hashem says in His Torah. And this Jew should become rich again. And this Jew, we say he needs to do Teshuva, complete Teshuva with his Averus, and that is our decision. Hashem will make him rich again, and he will do Teshuva for all his Averus. The Jew said, "I agree. I agree." And the Choize told the Dayan to write everything down, the whole Psak Din, and the Yid took out a copy, and he went home, went, went all the way back home to his house, to his town, and he, he wrote... showed his wife the Psak Din. Showed it, and his wife said, "What? Do you, you happy? This is just a piece of paper. You can't take this to the bank. I mean, you can't go buy food with this. We're still gonna be starving. Z- what does that help you that the Choize of Lublin and his Dayan said that Hashem d- must give you money, but you don't have money." But he says, "No, no, no, no. I trust that what my Rebbe says is going to happen one day." He went back to carry packages, you know, to earn a few dollars, a few rubles. One day he's in the market carrying a very heavy load, and a very important-looking minister or Politz came riding in his very fancy coach and, and four white horses. And he sees that this Jew is carrying a package, so he stops the coach and says to him, "Tell me, are you doing this for

12:35 a living? You ca- you carry packages?" He says, "Yeah, I have a very heavy box I need to carry to a certain house, 'cause I'm gonna stay there tonight. I'm rushing out of the city. I'll be back there tonight. You, in the meantime, can you take my box there, and I'll pay you?" So he says, "Sure, sure, no problem." He takes the box, and he travels all the way... He went... He goes with the box all the way to the house there, and he waits for the Politz to come. But the Politz doesn't show up. He waits and waits and waits till very late at night, and the Politz is not coming. Finally, it gets very dark. He realized the Politz not coming. He takes the box and took it home to him, to his house, and he drops it because he was so tired, so he dropped the box. But from dropping the box, the box broke, and out of the box kept flowing full of coins, gold coins, silver coins. He realized that this was the promise of the Rebbe. Rebbe promised me he'll be rich again. And he did Teshuva for all his Averus, and Hashem kept his promise, made him rich again.