92. The boy That Was Locked Up In A Shul Late At Night

00:16 Shalom Aleichem, kinderlach. I'll tell you a story that I heard from a Rebbe, a tzadik in Europe when I grew up in Europe. He told many stories, stories that he heard when he grew up in Poland. He heard it from reliable sources. He heard the following story from a Rav who heard it from the person himself who it happened to. There's a city called Diklis. Diklis is in Poland. There was a Rav in the city. His name was Rabbi Vigdor. Rabbi Vigdor was the brother of the famous tzadik, Reb Chaim of Sanz, known as the Sanzher Rav. In the city of Diklis, there was a big shul. In Europe, in the old countries, they used to have these big shuls where people used to come and daven, but there were-- people wouldn't learn there, only for davening. It's called in Halakha a Beis Haknesses. A Beis Haknesses is a shul where people only daven. They don't eat there, they don't drink there, they don't sleep there. There's only davening and no learning there. A Beis Haknesses like that where you don't daven or learn-- where you don't learn and you don't eat, you don't sleep there, is patur from mezuzah. You don't have to put a mezuzah on it, 'cause the Torah says you have to put a mezuzah on your houses. A house is a place where you live, you sleep, you eat, you drink, you learn. Now, there is another type of shul which is called a Beis HaMidrash. Beis HaMidrash is a

02:04 shul where you daven, but you also learn Torah. People learn Torah all day. People also make a kiddush, they eat there, they sleep on the benches. In a Beis Midrash you're allowed to eat, sleep. In a Beis Haknesses you can't eat and sleep. You just daven there. And that's why a Beis Haknesses doesn't need a mezuzah. A Beis HaMidrash does require a mezuzah. Most of the shuls that we know today is-- are Beis HaMidrash, not a Beis Haknesses. That's why you'll see a mezuzah on the doors of all the shuls, 'cause people learn there also, people eat there. But a Beis Haknesses is a very special place which, um, they have a lot in Europe, especially used to have a lot of that in the olden days, and those types of shuls don't need a mezuzah. Now, the shul in Diklis had a shamash by the name Reb Tzadik. Reb Tzadik had a nine-year-old boy. Reb Tzadik's job was every night after Maariv, he would clean up the shul, put away all the sefarim, and make sure the shul is neat for the next day, so when people come for Shacharis, they'll find a neat and clean shul. Usually after Maariv when people went home, Reb Tzadik would stay around for a while to make sure the sh- the shul is clean. He would put away the sefarim. He would work hard. One night, Reb Tzadik waits for everybody to go home, and he starts organizing the shul and putting away all the sefarim and

03:43 cleaning the shul, and his son was also there. But his son, you know, got a little bored and he got a little tired, so he laid down on the floor next to a bench somewhere in the shul. Shul was very big. So he laid down somewhere next to a bench and he fell asleep. The father, Reb Tzadik, who finished cleaning the shul, putting away all the sefarim, it took him a long time, like an hour or two hours, he decided to go home. He forgot that his son was somewhere in the shul because his son was running around and sitting somewhere on a bench, so he didn't notice him. He didn't realize that he was on the floor sleeping somewhere. So he just shut off all the lights and locked the door of the shul and went home. As he got home, he talked to his wife. His wife said, "Where's, where's our son?" He said, "I, I, I don't remember. I don't know where he is." So they start looking first in the house. Maybe he's somewhere in the house. So they look in his room and they look on the bed, under the bed, in this closet, in that room, in that room. They can't find him. So they got very scared. "What happened to our boy?" So finally the father and mother decided, "We'll go to the shul and see maybe he's there." So it's late, late at night and they're going on their way to shul to find out whether the

05:12 son is, is in shul. Now, what happened in the meantime in the shul? While the parents were looking for him, what happened in the shul? This boy woke up. It was late, and he saw that he is in a dark place. He realized he was in the shul. There was nobody there. He went to the door. He wanted to get out, but the doors were locked. He couldn't get out. So he got very scared to be alone in the shul. He also knew what it says in the sefarim, that in the middle of the night, neshamas from Gan Eden come to the shul to daven. Many neshamas come. They come only to a shul that has no mezuzah, but not a Beis HaMidrash. 'Cause a mezuzah, they don't come in. If there's a mezuzah, the mezuzah stops them from coming in. But when there's no mezuzah, these neshamas come into the shuls, and they come at midnight and daven. There's a saying from Machzor Vitri, from Rashi's Talmud, Rabbi Yehuda Hanasi in Sefer HaChassidim mentions it, that neshamas come in the middle of the night to those beit haknessets, batei knessets which have no mezuzah, and they daven in the middle of the night. Rebbe Zachar even mentioned there was a story of a man who was also trapped in a shul. They locked the shul by mistake, and he was stuck there a whole night. In the middle of the night, he sees suddenly the shul is packed with people with tallisim, till he

06:48 realized they must be neshamas. This boy realized that. He says it's almost midnight, so pretty soon the neshamas are gonna come. He's gonna be terrified. The neshamas coming into the shul and davening, be a terror to-- He was scared. So he decided he needs to escape from the shul before it gets midnight, before it becomes midnight, before the neshamas come to visit. So he tries to climb out of the window. He managed to open a window, but he looks down on the out-- to the outside. He sees it's pretty high. It's pretty dangerous to jump out of that window. So that's not an option. That's not a good solution. So he doesn't know what to do. The door is locked. The windows are too high. Can't jump off the windows. He decided to go and hide under a bench, so when the neshamas come, he'll just stay stuck there under the bench. In the meantime, as you already know, the father and mother who were looking for him decided to go to check the shul. The father had a key with him. Of course, he's the shamash of the shul. And, uh... But he knocked first 'cause just in case it was already midnight, and just in case neshamas are there, you knock first to let them know that somebody's coming in. So if the neshamas wanna leave, they can leave. So he knocks on the door, and then he pulls out the key and turns the key to open up the door. He walks

08:19 in with his wife, and his wife waits by the door, and he goes inside, um, trying to look for his son. But he calls his son's name, and there's no answer because his son was so terrified, so scared to answer him. He thought maybe these are neshamas that are calling his name. So he didn't answer. So the father thought, "Okay, I guess my son is not here." He tells his wife, "I don't think he's here because I don't hear him answering." But then the mother, the mother is speaking to the father, so the son recognized the father's and the mother's voices, and he says, "Yeah, I'm here. I'm here." And they went to take him, and they took him home. But as soon as he finished saying, "I'm here, I'm here," he couldn't say another word. He became totally speechless. He couldn't speak. He lost his speech. This is all from the shock and the fear. He lost his speech. They took him home, and they took him to doctors, and they tried to give him some time to calm down. Maybe he needs time to relax, to calm down. But still, he couldn't speak. He wasn't speaking. They went to the Rav of the city, Rebbe Avigdor. Rebbe Avigdor happened to have, like, a hat which belonged to a great tzadik, um, who has passed away. He was nistalik. It was Rebbe Zvi Hirsch of Zidichov. He was a tzadik in Poland, and he had-- he received this as an inheritance. He got, uh,

09:53 this hat. He decided, he said, "Listen, bring me your son, and I'll put this hat on his head, and the kedusha of that hat will heal him. Maybe it will drive away the, the fear from him, and he'll start speaking again." And he did the hat, and it didn't work. The boy still couldn't speak. So Rebbe Avigdor, the Rav of Diklis, decided to write a letter to his brother, his saintly, holy brother, Rebbe Chaim of Tzanz, and, uh, s- writes in the letter, "Listen, I've got a-- My shamash of the shul, his son was stuck there late at night, in the middle of the night in the shul, and he was so scared that he stopped speaking. And I don't know what to do with him. I gave him the, uh, the hat of Rebbe Z-- Rebbe Zvi Hirsch of Zidichov, and it still didn't work." So he gets a letter from the-- his brother back, from, uh, Rav Chaim of Tzanz, and it says there, "Listen, my dear brother, I'm gonna come to Diklis anyways in a few weeks, so when I come there, you'll bring the child to me." So a few weeks went by, and Rebbe Chaim Tzanzur, the Tzanzur Rav, came to visit Diklis. And so the father, Rebbe Tzadik, and the son came to the Tzanzur Rav, and the Tzanzur Rav says to the boy, "Nu, start speaking." And the boy, of course, didn't speak. The Tzanzur Rav took out his little pipe. He had a pipe that he smoked

11:28 from time to time, and he hit his son on the right shoulder three times. Not his son, the son of Rebbe Tzadik. The boy, he hit him three times on the shoulder, on the right shoulder. He said to him, "Nu, now speak." And the boy still couldn't speak. So he took his pipe and hit him three times on his left shoulder. Still couldn't speak. So then he hit him on his back three times, and now he started speaking. From that day on, he was able to speak. Now, there were Chassidim that told the story. They added, they added to the story that the Tzanzur Rav said to the father, Rebbe Tzadik, "You are lucky that your son was under bar mitzvah when he was in that shul late at night. Because if he had been over bar mitzvah, these neshamas that were there gathered, they could have called up your son to the Torah for an aliyah, 'cause he was over bar mitzvah. If that were to happen, he would have been so scared that he would have died from so much fear. So you're lucky that he was under bar mitzvah, so they didn't call him up to the Torah."