105. The Nanny Of Reb Motele Chernobyler Comes To Him In A Dream After Her Passing

00:16 Shalom Aleichem. Here's an incredible story, another story that I heard from the great Hasid, the Mashpia, Reb Wolf Gringlas, alav ha-shalom. There was a great tzadik, which I'm sure you all heard of him, Reb Mordechai of Chernobyl. Reb Mottel of Chernobyl, they called him. Reb Mottel of Chernobyl was the son of Reb Nachum of Chernobyl. Reb Nachum of Chernobyl was a talmid of the Baal Shem Tov and from the Maggid, and a colleague of the Alter Rebbe. Reb Mottel of Chernobyl had a nanny who raised him when he was little, 'cause his mother had died in childbirth. And because he didn't have a mother to nurse him, 'cause his mother had died as soon as he was ab-- he was born, so his father, Reb Nachum, hired a nanny, a woman, a Jewish woman, who would take care of him, nurse him, take care of him, feed him, dress him, clean him, and so on. Reb Nachum... At, at that time when the story took place, Reb Mottel was already a Rebbe of tens and thousands of Hasidim. And his nanny was still alive, but she was actually very close to the end of her life. She was getting very ill, and she realized that this is the last few days of her life. She didn't have a family. She wasn't married. She didn't have kids. So she called, sent a messenger, a shliach, to Reb Mottel of Chernobyl, the great Rebbe who had tens and thousands of Hasidim, and asked him to come to

02:00 her bed, to her death bed, 'cause she was dying. Reb Mottel of Chernobyl, uh, didn't hesitate. He took his coat, put it on, and went outside to go to the bed of his nanny, a Jewish woman. And when she got to-- he got to her bed, she said to him, "I want you to know that when your mother died, she died when she gave birth to you, your father hired me and told me to take care of you, and he gave me instructions how to take care of you. He told me that when you wake up at night to eat, I must go and wash your hands. I sh- wash my hands and wash your hands, and only then shall I feed you." And in those days, they didn't have sinks like we have now in, in every home. You had to go outside to the well to get water. And now to go outside to the well in the middle of the night when it's freezing, 40 below zero, in Russia it gets extremely cold, below zero degrees, and to go out every time you woke up, you had to go out in the freezing cold and bring water from the well and wash your little hands and my hands, and then I would feed you. And sometimes you'd cry three, four times a night. You'd wake up 'cause you wanted to eat, and every time I went in the middle of the night, didn't matter what hour it was, and I would go

03:33 to the well and get water so I can wash your hands and wash my hands so that I can feed you the way your father instructed me. And I did this for a few years. I took care of you. Now I'm asking you to return me a favor." She said she's... doesn't have a family. She doesn't have any children. There's no one to say Kaddish for her. She's asking Reb Mottel of Chernobyl that he should say Kaddish for her, 'cause she raised him like a mother. Reb Mottel said to her that he promises bli neder he will, he will, he will say Kaddish. And a few days later, she passed away. By the levaya, they buried her, and Reb Mottel of Chernobyl went to the levaya. And of course, if Reb Mottel went to the levaya, thousands of other Hasidim also went to the levaya. And when it came to the burial, you know, um, when we bury someone, uh, in the ground, we bury somebody in the kever, the, the, the, the children, the family say Kaddish the first time after they fill up the kever, right when they close the kever. They put the body in and they close the kever. That's when the children say the first Kaddish. And then they say Kaddish in shul every day by davening for the next eleven month. Reb Mottel of Chernobyl, when they covered the kever, said the first Kaddish like he promised her. And he said the Kaddish and they, they went back home.

05:13 Now came to-- This was during the daytime. By Maariv, Reb Mottel of Chernobyl came to the shul to say Maariv, and everybody expected him to say Kaddish after Maariv, like all these people who have, uh, somebody lost, somebody passed away, somebody died in the family, you say Kaddish after Ma'a-- after Aleinu l'Shabayach. So people were waiting that Reb Mottel should say Kaddish. He said Kaddish. Then the next morning, he came back for Shacharis, and they finished davening, and people waited for him to say Kaddish, but he didn't say Kaddish. People thought maybe it's a mistake, maybe he forgot, or maybe there's a reason why he didn't say Kaddish. They waited for Mincha. Mincha again, he's not saying Kaddish. Maariv again, he's not saying Kaddish. And then a few days like that, Reb Mottel of Chernobyl stopped saying Kaddish for this lady. Nobody understood. It's strange. He had promised her. So after a few months, people saw that that's it. He stopped completely saying Kaddish. Somebody had a little bit of guts to ask Reb Motola, "Why aren't you saying Kaddish for this lady? We, we know you said Kaddish by the kever, and the first day you said Kaddish, then the next morning you stopped saying Kaddish. But you promised to say Kaddish for her every single day." And Reb Motola said, "You're right. I promised to say Kaddish for her for 11 months like a child says after a parent. But the reason I stopped is because that night after we buried her, and

06:55 I said Kaddish by the kever, and I said Kaddish Friday at night by Maariv, the next-- That night when I went to sleep, she came to me in a dream and she begged me to stop saying Kaddish." She says, "Don't say Kaddish anymore." She explained that when he said Kaddish by the kever, you can imagine Reb Motola Tchernobler, adat tzadik, saying Kaddish, it's saying Kaddish with great kavana. And of course, his Kaddish had a big impact, had a big effect on the neshamah of this, of this, of this nanny. She says when he said K- this one time Kaddish for her, the malachim lifted up her neshamah to such a high place in Gan Eden that was too much for her. She can't take so much. She's a simple lady. She can't take such a high, lofty level, holy level in Gan Eden. It's too much for her neshamah. She's a simple person. So she begged him not to do it anymore, because if they lift me up even higher, I won't be able to take it. So Motola says, "That's why I didn't say Kaddish." What we learn from this story is, first of all, Kaddish is a very important thing. It does, uh, have a real effect, a real benefit. It helps the neshamah of the one you say Kaddish for. The neshamah goes higher. It's a very important thing to do, of course. But what we learn is that tzadikim, when they say Kaddish, the, the effect is so much greater because

08:28 of the way they daven, the way they learn, with the way they say Kaddish with kavana. So it makes the davening, the, the Kaddish even more important and more powerful. It elevated her neshamah to such a high level that she couldn't take more. It would be a simple person, like if she had a son and a son would say Kaddish for her, it'd probably be okay. He could have said a whole year Kaddish, she would be very happy. It wouldn't be too much, because his Kaddish would help her rise slowly. But with a tzadik, for the first Kaddish already, they gave her such a lift up so high that she said, "Don't say anymore because that's too much."