86. The Boy That Couldn’t Understand The Torah

00:16 Hello. Shalom Aleichem, kinders. Here is a beautiful, beautiful story. A story that involves the Rabbi Kivie Eger. Rabbi Kivie Eger was one of the greatest gaonim of his time, and until today, people learn his sefarim. One of the greatest gaonim of the time. It was the time of the Alter Rebbe. So this story involves the Alter Rebbe and Rabbi Kivie Eger. Rabbi Kivie Eger once traveled to the city of Lomza. Lomza is in Poland. Rabbi Kivie Eger himself lived in Austria, a different country in Europe. But he went to visit the city of Lomza, and on the way, uh, when he came into the city, the whole city left their houses, and they went outside the city to meet and greet and welcome the great gaon and the great tzadik, Rabbi Kivie Eger, to their city. It was such a zechus to have such a great person like Rabbi Kivie Eger to come to visit them. And of course, the most important people in the community went over to Rabbi Kivie Eger, and they said to him, "We have a most amazing place for you to stay. The richest person in the community has a big, beautiful mansion, and he's willing to give away a part of his house for the great rav, the great gaon." Rabbi Kivie Eger said, "No. I, I'm very-- I appreciate what you did for me, but I have a relative who's a very poor man, but he's my relative. He's a second cousin or something, and I'd rather stay

02:02 with my family because it says you should always be close to your family." And he chose to go and stay with this poor family member, cousin of his, and that's where he stayed for the whole time while he was in Lomza. When people in the city heard that the great Rabbi Kivie Eger arrived in Lomza, you can imagine what happened in that city. People stayed a whole day in line. People tried to, you know, talk to him. The great talmidei chachamim in the city wanted to talk to him in learning. Everybody had a question in the Gemara. This one had a question in Tractates. This one had a question in Rashi. And they want to present their questions to Rabbi Kivie Eger because he was known all over the world as an incredible, amazing gaon that knows the whole Torah. Then there were simple people. They didn't have good questions to ask Rabbi Kivie Eger, but they wanted a bracha from him to know he's a tzadik. So amongst the people that wanted to see Rabbi Kivie Eger, there was a woman who waited in line for many hours. Finally, she was able to get inside and speak to the great gaon, Rabbi Kivie Eger. And when she w-- came in, she burst into tears, and she cried and cried and cried. She says, "Rebbe, I have Baruch Hashem nine children. Eight of them are talmidei chachamim. They're learning well. They're learning a lot of Torah. They're yerei shamayim. They're very good kids. One of

03:38 my children, my youngest one, he tries, but he doesn't understand anything. He's already fifteen years old. He's learning Torah. He goes to yeshiva, but he, he doesn't understand anything. It's like he's got the sechel, the mind of a five-year-old kid. And no matter how much we try and try and try, nothing goes into his head. He can't understand anything. We don't know what to do. We went to many rabbonim and asked them for advice, and the rabbonim told us what to do. Maybe do this, maybe do that, but nothing worked." Rabbi Kivie Eger listened to the story, and he thought for a while, and then he said to her, "I believe that your son must have eaten something not kosher. Not kosher for, uh, when he was a young, young child. Because it says that when you eat a treif, it makes your head closed, that you don't understand Torah. Torah doesn't go into your brains. It doesn't go into your mind. You're not able to understand it because the treif food goes into your body, it becomes part of your, your body, your, your blood and your body, your meat, your flesh, everything. Becomes part of you. And it doesn't allow the holiness, the kedushah of Torah to go into your head. So maybe that's the reason, and I have a feeling that that's what happened." The mother, her name was Ethel, was horrified when she heard this, and she said, "Rebbe, I can't imagine my son ever eating treif. Uh, I mean, uh,

05:21 we've always kept kosher. Everything was kosher, and he never-- we never go out. We never, you know, you know, eat anywhere other than in the house, and our house is a hundred percent kosher. My husband, Hirsh Leib, is a great... Is a, is a, is a talmid chacham, and he's yerei shamayim, and we only keep the highest standards of kosher." Rabbi Eger said, "Listen, why don't you investigate and see what you can find because I believe something that he ate when he was a young, young child that was not clean, that means spiritually not clean, it wasn't it wasn't kosher, it wasn't completely kosher, and, and that's why he's unable to learn Torah." So the father of Hirsh Leib started sitting-- sat down his son and, um, his name was Moshe Noyach. Moshe Noyach, the boy, fifteen-year-old boy, nice kid, but he's not able to understand anything. They sat him down and started asking him questions. "Do you remember ever eating something not kosher?" Moshe Noyach says, "I don't know. I never, ever ate something not kosher. It's not possible." So they said, "But maybe you remember something that happened, maybe you didn't know wasn't kosher. Try to think of something." So he thinks and thinks and thinks and he can't think of anything. Then finally he says, "You know, I remember once, it was during Hanukkah time, I and my friends, we were coming back from cheder, and we were passing by a hotel, a Jewish hotel in the city. And at that day,

06:59 there was a wedding, a Jewish wedding in that hotel. As we were passing by the hotel coming from cheder to go home, one of the, uh, relatives of the chassan, uh, s-saw us and he said, 'Come inside. Enjoy, enjoy some f-good food from the wedding.' And so we went in, and we had a great time. We had a blast. We had such wonderful food. Wow. Haven't eaten such good food in my entire life." He says, "This is the only time I can remember eating outside our house." And they asked him, "What was on the menu? What did you eat?" He said, "Well, I remember there was like a, like a soup, a lentil soup which also had chicken in it." Nu, Rabbi Hirsh Leib, the father of Moshe Noyach, hears what he says, says, "Hmm, I better find out about this wedding. But this wedding happened many years ago. How am I gonna find out?" So he went to the owner of the hotel, and he a- he went to ask the hotel owner, "Tell me, do you remember a wedding like eleven years ago or ten years ago on Hanukkah that was here in this hotel?" So the owner of the hotel says, "Oh, I have a notebook where I write down every wedding that happens in my hotel. I can look it up." He looks and looks and looks and finds the notebook from twelve years ago, and he finds on Hanukkah, yes, there was a wedding. The chassan was a man by

08:36 the name Yekusiel Alpert. Yekusiel Alpert. He was not married for the first. It was second time he was married. Right? His first wife, he divorced and he got married again. And that was the day of his wedding, the second day of Hanukkah. And he pa-- "I looks on my notebook that he paid everything and everything is good. And it was, of course, a kosher wedding. This is a kosher hotel, only kosher food. The shochet of the city of Lomza, he was the shochet who shechted all the chicken for that wedding." Rabbi Hirsh Leib knew this Yekusiel Alpert, and he knew that he was not a very, very nice guy. Yekusiel Alpert was like, um, a little bit of a, you know, chutzpenik, a guy who didn't always do the right thing. Sometimes he did some averes, sometimes he did things that he wasn't supposed to do. He was a grobe yong, as we say in Yiddish. A grobe yong, that means a coarse, crude person, not a very nice person. So Rabbi Hirsh Leib, the father of Moshe Noyach, he wanted to find out more what happened at that wedding. Why is the great Rabbi Kivie Eger saying that my son, Moshe Noyach, must have eaten at some point in his life when he was very small, he must have eaten something not kosher, which is why he can't learn anything. So Hirsh Leib went to the house of the shochet. Asked the shochet, "Tell me, do you remember that twelve years ago on Hanukkah,

10:18 there was a wedding by-- for this guy, Yekusiel Alpert, he was the chassan, and you were the shochet. Do you remember anything about that wedding?" As soon as Rabbi Hirsh Leib mentioned this, uh, this wedding, he became white in the face. He says, "Oi, oi, please don't remind me of this terrible story what happened." Asked him, "What happened?" Hirsh Leib asked the shochet, "What's wrong? What's wrong?" Shochet said, "I'll tell you what happened. That wedding, I did something which I wasn't supposed to do, but I didn't know. I made a mistake." So the-- Rabbi Hirsh Leib asked him, "What mistake did you make? Tell me." "Well, I made a mistake with my shechita." "What do you mean? You, you, you, you... It was all treif, and you fed everybody treif?" He said, "No, no, no, no, no. I made a good shechita. I shechted well. I shechted according to Halakha. I followed everything right according to Shulchan Aruch. There was a good shechita. I shechted the, the chickens the way the Torah says. Everything was right. But a day after the wedding, I didn't know anything. I shechted a lot of chickens for that wedding, and I followed everything right. But the next day, I meet a Hasid of the Alter Rebbe who lived in Lomza. And he looks at me and he says, 'I can't believe that for a little bit of money, because Yekusiel Alpert gave you money, you were willing to shecht for his wedding? So he can pay you money, so

11:52 you can make money?'" I said-- The shochet says, "I said to this Hasid of the Alter Rebbe, 'What? What happened? I don't know what you're talking about. I, I, I, I... I didn't do anything for money. I did it because I'm the shochet and he asked me to shecht for his wedding.'" So he said, "Let me tell you. This Yechusiel Alpert," as we said before, was married before. He gave his wife a get. But the get had a problem. According to Halacha, there was a big question whether the get was a kosher get, because a get has to be written in very specific ways. There's so many Halachas, hundreds of Halachas, that, you know, tell you how to make a get that's 100% kosher. And if one of those Halachas is not, you know, met, is not followed, then the get is not kosher. And if the husband gives the get to the wife, she's not divorced. She's still his wife. According to Torah, you know, if a, the man and woman are married, they're married until he gives her a get or until he dies. But Yechusiel didn't die. He gave her a get, but the get had a problem, which means the get wasn't kosher, which means she's still married to him, which means that Yechusiel cannot get married again because we have a very important law, a very important Halacha, that a husband, a man cannot marry two women at the same time. Cherem Derabbenu Gershom, many, many years ago, over a

13:35 thousand years ago, Rabbenu Gershom made a rule that a man should not be married to two women, and this Yechusiel Alpert was still married to his wife even though he said, "No, I divorced her." But the Alter Rebbe had written a teshuvah, had written a letter at that time. People asked him about the get, whether the get is kosher or not. They asked many Rabbonim, and the Alter Rebbe said in a letter, he says, "I was shocked to see and to hear that they used a get which is not kosher al pi Halacha to divorce this woman. This is a terrible thing. This is not a kosher get. The woman is still married. She can't marry anyone else because she's still married." And then the Alter Rebbe continued in his letter and said, "I'm telling you..." He told the community in Lomza, "I'm telling you that you are not allowed to help Yechusiel get married again until he doesn't divorce his wife with a get which is kosher al pi Halacha." And Alter Rebbe says in the letter, "I make a, a decree. I rule as a Rav who paskens this shailah. I am paskening that no one in the city is allowed to shecht for his wedding until he doesn't give a kosher get to his first wife." And then the Alter Rebbe says, "And if they do shecht, then they should know that their shechita is treif." Even if they follow all the Halachas in Shulchan Aruch, that their, all the shechita is

15:15 right, but if they shecht for this, it's like, "I decree it should be treif. It should be considered treif because he's not allowed to marry her. He's not allowed to marry his second wife because he's still married to the first wife." Now, the shochet said, "I didn't know about this letter of the Alter Rebbe." Now this Chabad Hasid, this Hasid of the Alter Rebbe is telling me something that happened many years earlier, and I didn't know about it, and I shechted for that wedding, and I felt so terrible. After seeing the letter of the Alter Rebbe, I felt like, "Wow, what did I just do? I shechted and everything I shechted became treif because the Alter Rebbe..." You know, a chacham, a tzadik can make a gezeira, can make a law that something should be treif. Even if they followed all the Halachas in Shulchan Aruch, it's still treif because you went against Halacha. So he said, "I felt terrible," says the shochet, "and I used to fast and do teshuvah for this. I've been, been doing teshuvah for years and years for this terrible thing." And now Reb Yerchleib understood that his son, Moshe Nayech, when he was invited by the relative of the choson to come into that wedding and to eat that soup with chicken, he actually ate treif chicken soup. Not because the shochet didn't do the shechita right, he did everything right. Because the Alter Rebbe made a rule that this should be treif because you're not allowed to shecht

16:48 for this guy's wedding because he's still married to another woman. And the whole city of Lomza heard about this story, and everybody realized how great the Alter Rebbe is, and they also realized the Ruach Hakodesh of Reb Akiva Eger. Reb Eger saw with Ruach Hakodesh that this boy had eaten something not kosher. He couldn't say exactly why or what, but he knew there's something wrong with what this kid ate, and nobody could find out what it was until they found out that the Alter Rebbe wrote this letter, and that's what made it treif. Reb Akiva Eger saw. Here we learn importance, first of all, to be very careful with kashrus. If we want to be, grow up to be talmidi chachamim or yerei shamayim, we have to be very careful with eating. Everything should be 100% kosher. And another thing what's very important, the power of tzadikim and great chachamim, that they, if they say something, we need to listen. We can't disobey them. L'chaim.