97. The Amazing Tefilin That Was Written by Reb Elimelech

00:15 Shalom Aleichem, kinders. Here is an amazing story the Rebbe Rashab told in the year תשס on Purim in Hasichah. Rebbe Elimelech and Reb Zusha, as we all know, used to travel. There was a time when they traveled together like poor people. They would dress in ragged clothes, and they would travel with all the other poor people that would go from town to town to collect money so they could have something to live from. They didn't have a home. They would just go and live in the shuls. Which- whichever town they came, they would sleep in some little r- a little room. It was called a hekdish, where all the poor people would sleep. And they would go around collecting money so they could live. Rebbe Elimelech and Reb Zusha decided they wanna go on galus. Galus means wandering like poor people, and nobody would know who they are, and suffer the, the suffering of galus. They wanted to refine themselves. Maybe they did it for the Jewish people, that Hashem should forgive the Jewish people for their averas. They did it for, for all kinds of reasons. So one day they came to Boddytshev, and, uh, they went into an inn, and the inn was owned by a Jew, a simple Jew. Rebbe Elimelech and Reb Zusha had a minhag. When they saw a Jew, and they saw ‹z"l that this Jew has done an avera, they wouldn't tell him, "Hey, you did an avera, you gotta do teshuva." Maybe the person's gonna be embarrassed,

01:44 so they didn't wanna embarrass him. They would, like, pretend. They would, like, talk to each other loud so the person would hear. Rebbe Elimelech would say to Reb Zusha, "Reb Zusha, Zusha my brother, I did this and this avera." And he would say exactly the avera that this person did. And he asked Zusha, "Please help me. How can I do teshuva?" And Zusha would say to Elimelech, "Here's how you do teshuva." And he told him how to do teshuva. And that person would listen. Then he would say to himself, "Wait a second. I also did this avera. Oh my God, I gotta do teshuva." And now he heard from Reb Zusha how to do teshuva. This is how they did it every town they came. Once they came to Boddytshev, and this is the inn that they came in, right? As I mentioned before, they stayed in this inn, and there was an innkeeper, and they saw on his face that the tefillin he's wearing is actually phony tefillin. There's no parchments inside. You know, tefillin has parchments with Shema Yisrael, all kinds of parshiyos from the Torah, and there was no parshiyos inside. There was, uh, it was just wooden blocks. Somebody who sold him the tefillin or sold it to his father when he was bar mitzvah, um, instead of putting parchments and parshiyos, he put in wooden blocks. It's empty inside. There's no parchments, just wooden blocks. And this man was such a simple person, ignorant, he didn't know. Never, never checked

03:11 his tefillin. He was already in his seventies. That means for over sixty years. Almost-- for sixty years he hadn't put on tefillin. Never put on tefillin in his life 'cause he never bothered checking. According to Halakha, you gotta check the tefillin every three, three and a half years at least. The Rebbe said according to some opinions, you gotta do it every year, once a year in Elul. But he didn't know. He never checked his tefillin, so he lived with his tefillin with blocks inside for the rest of his life, his entire life. Rebbe Elimelech and Reb Zusha saw this, and they were horrified. This Jew never put on tefillin. He, he thought he put on tefillin. It's not his fault. He didn't know. So Rebbe Elimelech started talking to Reb Zusha in front of this innkeeper. Elimelech says to Zusha, "My brother, listen, I never, never checked my tefillin since my bar mitzvah, never checked my tefillin, and today I decided to open up my tefillin, and guess what? I found wooden blocks in my tefillin. There's no parchments in there. What do I do? I never put on tefillin. I never really did the mitzvah of tefillin properly." And, uh, Zusha says to Elimelech, "Oi, Elimelech, this is terrible. We gotta get new tefillin for you." Now, this innkeeper hears this, and he thinks to himself, "Wait a second. I also never put on-- I also never checked my tefillin. I'm already in my seventies. Sixty years, I never, never checked my tefillin. I

04:41 should open up my tefillin." He opens up the tefillin himself to see what's inside, make sure there's parchments there, and he sees these wooden blocks inside. Wooden blocks. He was shocked. He runs to Rebbe Elimelech and Reb Zusha and says to them, "Hey, uh, you know, I just heard you say that you never checked your tefillin and that you opened it up today and there was wooden blocks. Guess what? The exact thing happened to me. I never checked my tefillin, but I heard what you said that we need to check the tefillin. I didn't know, so I went and opened my tefillin and I saw wooden blocks inside. What should I do?" And he started crying and crying and crying. He said-- And he was a very simple man. He's a, an Am Ha'aretz. He didn't know much, but he had Yiras Shamayim, so it bothered him that all his life he never put on tefillin. So he cried and cried. And Rebbe Elimelech says to Reb Zusha, "You know what? This Jew deserves we should get him new tefillin. It's not his fault. He didn't know. He thought he was putting on tefillin, but he didn't. I am gonna s- write-- sit down and write parchments with tefillin, kosher tefillin for him, and I'll have special kavanas when I write the tefillin so that..." Normally, when you put on tefillin, every time you do a mitzvah, you bring down- A certain light of Hashem into the world. Certain Kedusha of Hashem in the world.

06:05 First on the person himself, the person becomes enveloped by the Kedusha of Hashem, by the light of Hashem, and also the world gets affected by it. What if a person misses a mitzvah, didn't do the mitzvah? Of course, he did an Aveira because he didn't do the mitzvah, right? If you don't put on Tefillin one day, it's like an Aveira. But more than that, you missed an opportunity to bring the holiness and the light of Hashem, Elokus, the light of Hashem in the world. So Reb Limelch says we're gonna have to help him. I'm gonna write the Tefillin with such Kavanas that I'll be Mamshich. I'll bring down so much light into those Tefillin that it will fix all the, all the thing, all the days that he missed. The Tefillin, it will make up for that. It'll bring down everything that he missed. Now only Reb Limelch could do this. He sat down, wrote it, wrote the Tefillin, the whole parchments for the Tefillin with great Kavana and put it into his box, and now he had Kosher Tefillin. Unfortunately, this innkeeper, he was very excited, but he didn't have a chance to put them on because he died shortly after that. Now in those days, there was a Minag that if a person dies, the Chevra Kadisha would take his Tefillin as a, as a guarantee, you know, because they wanna make sure the family pays for the cemetery, the, the plot and so on, and the Levaya. So they would take the

07:26 Tefillin and they would keep the Tefillin. They had a special box where they put all the Tefillin from all the people that died in that box. When this innkeeper died, they took his Tefillin and put it, put it in the box. They didn't think there was anything special. He was just a simple person. What kind of Tefillin could he have? Simple Tefillin. They put it in the box. One day, and now Reb Limelch already left. One day, Reb Leiv Yitzchok Berditchover, who was the Rav of Berditchov, he couldn't find his Tefillin. He lost his Tefillin. So he decided to go to the Chevra Kadisha and say, "You know, maybe you can loan me one of the pairs of Tefillin, or you can buy a pair of Tefillin from the Chevra Kadisha." So they said, "Yes, come, come." They opened up the box and they said to Reb Leiv Yitzchok, "Choose, pick whichever Tefillin you want." Reb Leiv Yitzchok started looking at each pair and opened it, looked at it, and he said, "No, not this one. No, not this one. No, not this one." Each one he looked at, he said no. Finally, he picked one, which was the innkeeper's. He says, "Oh, this one I want." Reb Leiv Yitzchok Berditchover felt the great Kedusha holiness and light that Reb Limelch was Mamshich, brought down on these Tefillin. And because he had Ruach Hakodesh he could feel the, the vibrations. He could feel the, the, the light of the Kedusha of, of the Tefillin of

08:52 Reb Limelch, the Kavanas that he put in there. So he was able to feel it, and he took the Tefillin and he put them on. Uh, the Reb Rashab says this is because it says, the Mitteler Rebbe says that when a Sofer writes Tefillin, he's not just writing words. Because it's a mitzvah, Tefillin has the Kedusha. The Sofer, by writing the Tefillin, he brings down a certain level of light and Kedusha into the Tefillin. It's called in Kabbalah, Mochel. If you learn Chassidus, you'll understand it. And the greater the Sofer, the more Yiras Shamayim, the more Tzadik, the higher the level of, of Kedusha that he can bring into this Tefillin. And Reb Limelch wrote it with such Kavanas. There was such an intense light there that it was able to repair all the days that he wasn't putting on Tefillin, this, the simple innkeeper. And, and, and that Reb Leiv Yitzchok was feeling. He was sensing there's a light coming from that Tefillin that was very special.