84. How Reb Berke Lit A Menorah In Prison Surrounded By Danger

00:17 A freilechen Chanukah. A freilechen Chanukah, kindalech. I just want to share with you a story about Chanukah. The story happened with a Hasid who passed away not so many years ago. His name is Reb Yerche Len. Reb Yerche Len came out of Russia in תשח. He happened to sit in a prison, in a Russian prison, a number of times. Once they arrested him and put him in a prison, in a very terrible prison, a prison where they put the most dangerous gangsters and robbers, killers. They put him together with those terrible people. And it was very scary to be with those people because those people were all killers. They could kill people with their bare hands. And there was one person in that prison that was particularly very scary. He was the leader of the whole gang. He was tall, big, and he had a big head and a big face, and he was scratched up everywhere. You could see, um... You know, you look at his face, you can see that he was in many fights. He killed many people. And everybody in the prison was afraid of him. He was their leader, and nobody, uh, did something which he didn't like. Whatever he said, everybody did. He was like the king. And people were very afraid because he can do whatever he wanted. If he didn't like somebody, he would just with his own hands strangle him and kill him. And here is this Hasid, Reb Yerche Len finds himself surrounded by all

02:24 these terrible people, and he's scared. What are they gonna do to him? They see a Jew with a beard. But pretty soon, he's-- he noticed that all these gangsters, these killers were very nice to him. They thought he was some kind of a holy person, and they were treating him with respect. They called him Rabbin, the rabbi. So this story happened shortly before Chanukah. Reb Yerche Len realized Chanukah is coming, and he just remembered that this is a time when families get together, we light the menorah, and we celebrate together. And here he's in a prison alone by himself. He's not even gonna be able to light the menorah. So it made him very sad. And so for a few days, he sat there thinking, "Oi, how sad it is that I can't-- This is the first year I won't be able to light the Chanukah menorah." Now, one of the gangsters in the prison noticed that Reb Yerche is very, uh, sad. So he walked over to him. He says, "Rabbin, why are you sad? Tell us." And Reb Yerche didn't wanna tell him. He shru-- You know, as he said, "Well, don't worry about it." A few minutes later, this gangster came to Reb Yerche back, but this time he had with him this big, giant, scary leader of the gang. And everybody was petrified, scared to death, you know, to talk to him because he was so big, and dangerous, and violent. So Reb, Reb, uh, um, Reb Yerche started shaking. "Why

04:31 is he coming to me? What did I do wrong?" But then the leader started saying to Reb Yerche, "What's going on? Why are you sad? What is the problem?" And Reb Yerche said, "Nah, don't worry." And the leader said, "Hey, in this prison, there are no secrets. You must tell us everything that you think and feel. We're friends here. You need to tell us. There's no secrets here." Uh, Reb Yerche realized that he has no choice 'cause, uh, if he doesn't listen to him, he might hurt him. So he started telling him the truth. You know, "We have a Jewish holiday called Chanukah, and we celebrate it, and I realized that this time, this year, I won't be able to celebrate it." So this big leader, this big gangster asked Reb Yerche Len, "Tell me, how do you celebrate this holiday?" He said, "Well, we need to light candles every night for eight nights, and the first night we light one candle, and the second night two candles, and so on till the eighth night we light eight candles. Now, obviously, here in this prison, you're not allowed to light a fire. It's forbidden to light a fire. And besides, besides, I don't have any oil, I don't have any wick. So I realize I'm not gonna be able to celebrate Chanukah." So the big chief gangster says to him, "Hey, you, don't you worry about the rules- Of this prison about lighting fire. I'll take care of that, and don't you worry. I'm gonna

06:05 work on it, and you'll be able to do your holiday." And he walked away. And Berke thought the guy was making a joke. That he wasn't serious. But then an hour later he comes back, says, "Listen, I told all the people, all the gangsters here in the prison, we'll all get a little bit of margarine every day, you know, for our meals, so to put on our bread. I told everybody, we must save up a little bit of margarine. We're gonna collect it from everybody, and this margarine we'll use as oil. And for wick, we're going to get every prisoner to give a piece of thread from his coat." You know, the prisons, they had special coats the prisoners had to wear, and inside the lining, you open up the lining of the coat, there's like a lot of thread, threads. "Whatever it is, take out a piece of thread from there and donate it to you. And now for cups, now you have margarine, you have wicks. But you have to put the margarine into something. So we'll find we have onions. They give us onions sometimes for supper. So we're gonna take out the inside of the onion and leave the outside like a cup. We'll put the margarine in those onions, and you'll have eight cups like that of onions, and then we'll put margarine in there that every prisoner must give, and then we'll collect all this margarine, and you'll be able to have your lights and celebrate your Jewish holiday."

07:49 Uh, Reb Berke heard this, and he couldn't believe his ears. He's actually gonna be able to light the menorah. But how are we gonna get fire? So he asked the chief gangster, "How are we gonna get fire? It's nice to have cups with wicks and margarine, but if you don't have fire, you don't have a menorah." So the chief, uh, gangster says, "Hey, you, Rabbin, don't you worry about this. Tonight when Hanukkah comes..." Tonight was the first night of Hanukkah. "Don't worry. We'll take care of that too." Reb Berke was very puzzled. How is he gonna make fire? There's no fire in the prison. They don't allow any fire. Nobody-- There's no matches. But he didn't ask any questions. Came the night, the chief gangster and all the gangsters followed him, and they said, "Here, Rabbin, here is your, your lights." And they put out eight cups of onions, and they gathered all the margarine which every single inmate of the prison donated, and they put it, they filled up the cups. And they said to Reb Berke, "Now you can light. Oh, you need a fire. Don't you worry." He told the, the, the gangsters, "Why don't you make a little, like, surround this Rabbin, right? So nobody will see him, because we're gonna have him light the menorah. We don't want that the guards who are there by the door, they should see that he's actually lighting a fire. So you guys make a wall around him and block everybody from seeing what

09:24 he's doing inside." And meanwhile, he, the gangster, the chief gangster, took a piece of cloth, went to the side, rubbed it against the floor for a few minutes, and lo and behold, it was on fire. He doesn't have any... Reb Berke says he doesn't have any idea how he did this. How do you take a piece of cloth and rub it against some wood, and then it, it's on fire? Then he came, he says, "Rabbin, here is your fire. Go light your, your, your candles." And the goyim, all the inmates, the gangsters, were surrounding him so that the, the guards wouldn't see, and Reb Berke started saying the brochos. Right? The three brochos the first night. "Asher kidshanu b'mitzvotav v'tzivanu l'hadlik ner Chanukah. She'asah nisim laavosenu." And then Shehecheyanu. When he came to Shehecheyanu, he says, "I burst into tears, crying hysterically. I was so happy that Hashem made such a nes for me, that in this prison, the goyim, these gangsters, these criminals, they're the ones who are helping me do my mitzvah of Chanukah." And so he lit the candles, and so every night they came back, they gave him margarine, they gave him some thread, and then this chief guy somehow did his magic and created fire. My friends, I want you to understand Chanukah is a special Yom Tov. It says on Chanukah, we're able with the light of the menorah to bring light to the most dark places in the world. And when I say dark, I don't mean only

11:01 dark, physically dark, like a room that's dark. I mean dark spiritually, in the most evil place. Even a prison like that, you can light the menorah. Even someone who is in the lowest level of uncleanliness, of averus, of tumah, it says the light of the menorah is so powerful, it can reach down even to the person who is in the most disgusting, evil place in the world. Something unique about the light of menorah, davka. The Shabbos candles, the light of the Shabbos candles are not as powerful. But the light of the menorah is very special, and that's why we see that all Jews light the menorah. Even Jews that don't keep Torah and mitzvahs, that don't light Shabbos candles, somehow Jews feel that the Chanukah candles, they wanna light. Because there's something about the light of the menorah that is so spiritually, in a spiritual sense, very powerful, that it touches Jews, even Jews that don't keep Torah and mitzvahs, but the light of the menorah does touch them. A freilechen Chanukah.