108: The Poor Ignorant Tailor That Had Ruach Hakodesh

00:16 Speaker 1 The following is a story that is told by Rav Poliakm in his Sefer Shemuos Vepurim. There was once a wealthy man, very rich man, who had some sons and son-in-laws who were all talmidai hachamim, and every time by the Shabbos table, they would always talk about divrei Torah. Each one of the children would say another dvar Torah, and they would, uh, argue about the Dvar Torah and have discussions. And once there was a poor man, a guest at that house. He was a guest at this wealthy man's house, and when it came to Shabbos table, uh, there were all the children were talking divrei Torah. Each one of the children was offering a different Dvar Torah until they turned to the poor man and they said to him, "Maybe you wanna share a word of Torah." And the poor man says, "I don't know any Torah. Sorry, I have nothing to offer." So finally, they had nothing to offer. After the meal was over and everybody went away, they went to their rooms, people went to sleep, one of the son-in-laws of the rich man was sitting still at the table with the poor man, and he says to the poor man, "What is this? You didn't know how to say any word of Torah? Everybody was sharing a word of Torah, you couldn't do anything? What are you, an ama ha'aretz, total ignoramus, you know nothing? How come? It's not-- It's embarrassing." He was talking to him in a way that made him feel,

02:01 Speaker 1 the poor man feel bad. He, like, embarrassed him. So the poor man says back to the son-in-law, "What are you feeling so arrogant about? You know what you're gonna end up being? You're gonna end up being a rav in a small, tiny little town where they pay you two coins, two silver coins per, per week, which is very, very little. So why are you feeling so arrogant? You're only gonna end up being a tiny little rav, a little rav ela in a small, tiny little town with very little money they're gonna offer you. They're gonna offer you two coins every week." That's what the poor man said to him. When the-- this, this young man, the son-in-law of the rich man, heard this insulting thing that the poor man said to him, he got very angry. And he says, you know, his father-in-law was a very rich man and, and even the young man's father also was rich, and they both supported him so he could study Torah the whole day and never even thought he's gonna become a rav. He doesn't wanna become a rav. He can just sit and learn. He doesn't have to make money. He can, he can, uh, just sit and learn all his life and be supported by his father and by his father-in-law. And therefore, he said to this poor man, "Why are you insulting me like this that I'm gonna be a rav in some tiny little shtetl, tiny little town? You know, it, it is embarrassing

03:31 Speaker 1 to say this. I'm gonna sit and learn all my life." Now, the rich man in his room heard that there was some commotion and, and, uh, uh, talking loud in, in the dining room, so he came out and he asked the people-- he asked the, uh, the son-in-law and he asked the poor man, "What is going on? What are you guys fighting about?" And so they told him what happened, that the son-in-law said to the poor man that it's embarrassing that he's not-- he doesn't have any words of Torah, and the poor man then insulted the son-in-law of the rich man and said to him, "You're gonna be-- You're gonna end up being just a rav in a small, tiny town, and, and which is not even known. Nobody knows about this little town, and you're only gonna earn a salary of two coins every week, which is a very little, little amount of money. That means you're not gonna be an important person, so why are you being so arrogant?" This is what the poor man said to him. So they told the, the, the rich man all the-- the whole conversation. So the rich man became very curious and said to the poor man, "What did you mean? Did you mean to say he's gonna be a rav who only earns two, two coins a week? What did you mean by that?" And the poor man started speaking, and he said, "I wanna tell you something about me." And he tells them an

04:56 Speaker 1 incredible story. He says, "I am a simple tailor. I live in a small village. There's no minyan there, no shul. I had plenty of parnasah. I made a lot of money, plenty of money from the goyim that live in the villages, in my village and the villages around. They all liked me because they knew that I did a good job. So whenever they needed some suits or some, uh, some, uh, long coats, they would come to me because I did a good job at, at tailoring their clothes, and I made a-- quite a bit of money. And even the poets," he was the poets of the whole region, all the villages belonged to him, "um, he would, uh, often come to me and ask me to sew up clothes for him. Once the poets invited me to his mansion, to his big house, and he said to me the following. He says, 'I intend-- I have a lot of servants, a lot of servants. I wanna make sure all my servants look alike. I want them to wear the same uniform.'" And I need a good tailor to make for each one according to their size the same style, the same type of uniform. Can you do this? And I give you money and I pay you well so you can do a good job. So I said, of course I'm going to do it. He asked me, how much time do you need to finish up that job? I told him, and how much

06:30 Speaker 1 money do you need? How much money do you need to buy materials and everything? So I made a calculation. I thought about it and I told him, okay, this is the amount of time I need. This is how much money I would need to buy materials to make those uniforms. The poets knew me as a very good person, a person who's honest. So he gave me the money. He gave me all the money in advance. He says, here, take the money. You go out, take your time and, you know, finish up all the uniforms. So I, meanwhile, took the money and went from the village to the big city where I can buy a lot of the merchandise because you need a lot of merchandise to make dozens and dozens of uniforms. When I came to the big city to go and buy in the marketplace, it was a big marketplace where they sold all kinds of merchandise. And there I knew I could get everything for a good price. But as I came into the city, I heard a big commotion. It was very loud. Something went on in the city. I went quickly, rushed to the place where the noise was coming from. And I saw that they were carrying the police and the soldiers were carrying an entire family, you know, tied in shackles and chains, right? Tied up their hands and feet. And they're walking. It's a man and a woman and children. They were going to be taken by the

07:59 Speaker 1 local poets into the dungeon. Why? Because they couldn't pay the rent. It's been many months that they haven't paid their rent. And the poets decided to finally put them in prison, in a dungeon. So they tied them up. They took the whole family, the father, the tati and the mommy and the children. And they're all going to end up in the dungeon. And that's where they're going to be the rest of their lives. When I saw this, I felt very, very bad for them. And I saw these were Jewish people. And they were very, very poor. They couldn't afford to pay. And here, unfortunately, that the poets are going to punish them for being so poor. They're going to put them in the dungeon. So I asked the soldiers, how much money does this family owe the poets? And they gave me the number. And the number was very, very close to the number of the amount of money that the poets, my poets from my village, gave me to go buy merchandise so I can sew up all the uniforms for his servants. But I realized that I have enough money to pay off the debt of that family. And I realized what's going to happen to that family. That's such a beautiful family. They're all going to end up in the dungeon, terrible place. And they're never going to come out of there. So I went to the poets and I said, here, I'm giving you the money they owe. Please let them

09:29 Speaker 1 go out. And that's what happened. They freed the family and let them go back to their house. And meanwhile, the tailor tells the story to the son-in-law of the rich man and to the rich man. He's saying, I realize I don't have the money anymore. It's not my money. It's the money of my poets. So I decided to go back to my poets and tell them that on my way to the big city, there were robbers who came in the forest and attacked me at gunpoint. They pulled their guns and put in my heads. And they said, if I don't give them my money, the money that I have, they'll kill me. And they took all the money away. And the poets believed them. Right? They didn't want to tell the poets that they gave it away to save the life of a Jew. They said, hey, what business do you have to give away my money? So he told them, you know, I was robbed at gunpoint. Somebody, a bunch of robbers came and stole my money. The poets understood and he believed me. And he gave me another sum of money. He said, you go now. And the poets had plenty of money. They didn't need money. So for him, it wasn't a big deal at all. And he just gave him the money again. So the tailor says that I went back to the big city and I bought merchandise and I made the uniforms. And the poets was very happy and

10:58 Speaker 1 I got paid. Now, after this story, after this story with the family that was taken to the dungeon and I happened to save that family, turns out a short while later, the father of the family died. Now, then came the month of Tishrei. The month of Tishrei, since there was no shul and no minyan in my village, I would always go to the big city for Tishrei. And there I would spend Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and the whole Yom Tovim. So I would have a shul and a minyan where to go to. So that year I went to the big city on Chodesh Tishrei and celebrated Rosh Hashanah there and I said I made teshuva. Then it came Yom Kippur. Erev Yom Kippur I thought to myself, you know, a whole year in my village I don't have a shul, I don't have a minyan. So at least now I'm in a big city, I can go to a minyan and go to a shul and it's Yom Kippur. I'm going to go a little earlier. You know, Erev Yom Kippur I'll go a little earlier when nobody's there yet and I'm going to be with my talas and my kittle and I'm going to say some tehillim.

12:15 Speaker 2 I'm a

12:16 Speaker 1 you know, I can only say Tehillim. I don't understand much, but I know how to say Tehillim. So I went to shul early on Erev Yom Kippur and sat down. There was nobody in the shul, and I put the talis over my head and covered my eyes, and I took a Sefer Tehillim and started saying Tehillim. Uh, I sat down to the back of the shul, near the door, and as I started saying Tehillim, under my talis, I saw a vision. Who did I see? This tzadik nistar. It turns out that this family that I saved, the father was a tzadik nistar, was a hidden tzadik, and he's the one that I saved. And I see his neshamah. He came to me from Gan Eden 'cause he had passed away in the meantime, and I see him there right under my talis. And he said to me like this, "I wanted to pay you back for what you did for me and my family, but I don't have any money, anything physical to give you, so I'm gonna pay you back, um, for what you did with a spiritual, uh, reward." And he starts telling me, "Listen, I'm gonna teach you and give you, uh, an idea of what it's like to experience Yom Kippur in Gan Eden." And he began to describe to me all the ideas about the shamas and malachim in Gan Eden, how to feel Hashem's presence and the feeling of fear and awe and trepidation that the malachim feel and

14:03 Speaker 1 the neshamas feel, and the difference between neshamas and malachim. He gave me a long and long explanation, and I felt a t-tremendous excitement when I was listening to him, even though I didn't understand a word he was saying, 'cause I'm a simple man. I don't understand. I never learned much in my life. So I just listened, but I could feel like as if I'm in that Gan... That, that world of Gan Eden, feeling the, the, the, the, the very strongly Hashem's presence and the fear and the awe that the, the neshamas feel. I felt very strongly. And then when he finished explaining to me, he said to me, "You should know everything I told you till now is the lower level of Gan Eden. This is Olam Ha'aseh. Olam Ha'aseh is a level, a spiritual level of Gan Eden, which is the lowest of the Gan Eden. Now I'm gonna explain to you what it's like to experience Yom Kippur in Olam Ha'yetzirah. In Olam Ha'yetzirah, there's a whole other level of experiences. You can't even compare it to the first level. It's much, much, much more exciting and much more, more intense." And he described to me, gave me a whole explanation of what it's like in that world, and I could-- I felt like as if I was in that world. I was feeling that level of excitement and that level of, of awe Hashem. And the whole time he was speaking, um, I just had tears coming down my face. I was

15:40 Speaker 1 crying the whole time, even though I didn't understand what he was saying, but I felt something. And then he said to me, "This is Olam Ha'yetzirah, and now comes Olam Ha'briyah." And all of that I hear from this tzadik, and again, I didn't understand anything, but I was very, very, very emotional and very excited, and lots of tears coming down from my eyes, and I cried the whole time. Suddenly, I feel that s-some people are pushing me, like a whole bunch of people are pushing me. I thought, "Okay, I think Yom Kippur is just starting." See, I came early, before Yom Kippur started. I came Erev Yom Kippur when it was still daylight, early in the day, and now people are probably arriving for Kol Nidre. So I realized maybe people are pushing me because I'm sitting in somebody's seat, right? And the people that live in the big city, they each buy their own seats, and I'm coming and sitting in somebody's seat, so they're pushing me. So I decided to move back and back till I was standing in the back of the shul. But I still had my talis over my head. Till I hear a voice, somebody screaming and saying to me, "Just because I'm the shamash of the shul, I shouldn't go home and eat? I always have to go home and eat." And when I heard this, I took off my talis and looked up, and I see that the shul is empty again. Everybody left. It's already Motza'i

17:15 Speaker 1 Yom Kippur. You see, the whole vision that I had, I thought it only lasted for a little bit, for about an hour or so, and I thought Yom Kippur is now starting. It turns out that I was standing there the ent-- I was sitting there the entire Yom Kippur, and the vision took a whole day. And by Motza'i Yom Kippur, when I realized it was-- the day was over, is when I realized that, that it's, it's finished. I was listening to the entire Yom Kippur, the entire twenty-four hours to this p-- to this, to this nistar, this tzadik nistar talking to me. I became very, very, uh, confused, 'cause a lot of the things he told me was very hard for me to understand, but I felt something very special that I can't explain in words. And before that tzadik nistar left and I stopped seeing him, he said to me, "This is only the beginning." Now I want you to go to the tzadik, the Chozeh of Lublin, who lives in the city of Lublin, and by him he'll give you the rest of everything else that you need to know." Again, I was very confused because since I was a very simple person and not, not learned, I never learned much. So all the things that he talked to me, I couldn't understand. But at the same time, I was very, very excited. I felt an excitement. I went home. Uh, the-- I left the shul. I went to my house, to the

18:51 Speaker 1 place where I was staying with my wife, and she prepared already food and drinks. But I didn't pay attention to the food. I said to her, "Listen, I have to go to Lublin." And she said, "Why don't you eat and drink first?" I said, "No, no, no, no. I g-- I'm not interested in food. Food doesn't appeal to me. I don't have a desire to eat. I'm going to Lublin." I came to the Chozeh of Lublin, and it turns out the Chozeh of Lublin knew who I was. He knew everything about me. He gave me Shalom Aleichem, and he said, "Since you're not ready to understand and to receive all this learning that I'm going to give you here, so I think what you need to do is stay here for a year. Stay in Lublin for a year, and you need to daven with me every day in the same seder. You and I are gonna daven from the same seder for an entire year." And that's what I did. I was there for a year, and I davened with the Chozeh of Lublin from the same seder. After a year, the Chozeh told me, "Now you have to go to Galus for three years. Go wander from city to city like a poor man." Before I left to go into Galus, the Chozeh said he's giving me a gift, a present, and the present is that I will-- when I see a person, I'll be able to see everything that happened to that

20:16 Speaker 1 person from the day he was born and everything that's gonna happen to that person till the day he dies. And the poor-- and the, the, the poor tailor said to the rich man and his son-in-law, he said, "I'm now in middle of my Galus, and I can see on the son-in-law, on your son-in-law, that he will end up being a rav in a very small town, and he'll only get two coins a week as his salary. And I can see that." That's it. That was the end of the conversation. What happened at the end, years later, the rich man lost all his money, became poor, and his son-in-law could no longer learn Torah all day because his, his father-in-law couldn't support him anymore. So he had no choice and went to look for a position being a rav in a city where somebody would pay him a salary. So he was looking, and they offered him two places. They offered him to be the rav. In one city, they offered him three, three rubles, three rubles to be the rav. Every week he'd get three rubles a week. And in the other town, they said they'll give him two rubles. And he said, "I'm gonna take the town with the two rubles because many years ago I heard from a tzadik nister that this is going to be my place." And that's the end of the story. What is the moral of the story? You can never judge a person. A person tells you they

22:05 Speaker 1 don't know Divrei Torah, so you right away think, "Oh, he's such a stupid person." But you have to know that this is not the case. Certain people, even if they're not so learned, they may have a very, very big zechus. They may have done something amazing. Like this poor man, he was a tailor. He gave away all the money he had and, and gave it away to save a life. And who knows? The posek could have put him in prison. He was lucky that the posek gave him more money, but normally it wouldn't have happened. The posek could have put him in the dungeon. "You took my money, and now you tell me it's, it's lost." Right? He could have gotten angry, but he knew he had to save this family's life. And look what a reward he got. He became a great tzadik.