122. The Fancy Mirrors Of The Holy Riziner

00:15 «גמר חסד וטובה כן דלך» it's the 10 days of teshuva, and I'm going to share with you a story about the meaning of teshuva. The Tzemach Tzedek had a Hasid who had a son who had some problems. His son grew up going to cheder like a regular Hasidic home, Hasidish home. He went to cheder to learn Torah. And then when he grew older, he had bad friends and stopped going to class. He always played outside, never wanted to go into class to learn Torah, and he started playing outside until he got worse and worse. And when he got older, he stopped going to cheder altogether. And then slowly, slowly he stopped doing one mitzvah and another mitzvah. Stopped keeping Shabbos, eating kosher, till he left completely the whole way of Torah and mitzvahs. But he stayed at home. His father was very upset, and no matter how much the father talked to him that he needs to do teshuva, it didn't work. When he got older-- His father was a very wealthy man. He had big businesses, a lot of businesses, was very rich, and his son joined the business. He helped his father in the business, but he didn't wanna do teshuva. He didn't wanna, you know, follow the path of Torah and mitzvahs. The father was very upset about it, but he couldn't do anything about it because he tried, and his son was with him in the business and helped him, but he didn't wanna do any mitzvahs, nothing. One time, it

02:14 was the night of the Seder, and the son was at the Seder with his father and the whole family. In the middle of the Seder, the son wanted to eat bread, so he had a little bag next to him and pulled out a loaf of bread. It's-- To everybody's surprise and shock. "How did he bring in bread here? It's Pesach." Everybody was so shocked. When the son saw how the father was like white... He turned literally white from shock that the son would take out a loaf of bread in the middle of Pesach, middle of a Seder. It was terrible. The father almost fainted, almost had a heart attack. So the son put away the bread, and he was very little bit embarrassed that he caused so much pain to his father, and they didn't talk about it. After Pesach, the father realized he can't take this anymore. He went to the Tzemach Tzedek and cried. He said, "Tzemach Tzedek, I don't know what to do about my son. I don't know how to bring him back." He did this terrible thing. He-- That it-- That far-- He would go so far to take bread in middle of the Seder. So the Tzemach Tzedek said to him, "I can't help him, but I think you should go to the Rizhiner, the holy Rizhiner. The Rizhiner might be able to do something about it." So that the... "Go to the Rizhiner, tell him that I sent you, and that you... And take your son with you.

03:55 The Rizhiner might be able to change him." So the Hasid thought himself what the Tzemach Tzedek is telling him, this is nichitas. "How's my... My son is never gonna agree to go with me to see a tzadik, a Rebbe. He doesn't wanna go to Rebbes. He doesn't... He's not interested in Torah and mitzvahs. For sure not gonna come with me on a trip." As he's thinking that, the Tzemach Tzedek says to him, "Okay. If you wonder how to take your son and get him to come with you to the Rizhiner, don't tell him you're going to a tzadik. Tell him you're going to see, um, a, a big, very rich man, and we're going to discuss business with him. I need you to come with me, so maybe we can do some business with this very rich man in the city of Rizhin. And this way he'll go with you." Now, the, the Rizhiner used to have a fancy house. You know, the Rizhiner, his-- The way he served Hashem, he wasn't interested in money. He wasn't into gashmius, into physical things. He was a tzadik. He was a holy man. He couldn't care less about the whole world, about ha-olam hazeh. The physical world didn't interest him. He was a man who was a, a holy person, a very big tzadik. But he served Hashem by using a lot of stuff in the physical world to show the Jewish people that the whole world was created for a Jew, for a tzadik. That people

05:22 shouldn't think that the physical world... Because Jewish people in those days were very oppressed. They were... You know, they suffered from the goyim. They, they didn't have a lot of money. Jews were deprived. They couldn't have the t-- Or the types of jobs that the goyim were able to have. And, and, and many Jews lived in poverty, and they felt like very down, you know, that we can't... You know, we have to starve. We don't wanna have all the physical things 'cause we're in galus. And he wanted to lift people up and say, "No. When Hashem created the physical world, He created the physical world for, for a Jew to, to be able to use it for Torah and mitzvahs. That is the purpose why Hashem created the physical world, not so that the goyim can, can, can become full of themselves and be very proud how rich they are. That's not what the purpose is." So he wanted to show this, so he would, you know, have a fancy house, and he had a big wagon, very fancy wagon with, with like four horses, very expensive horses, and he would wear like golden buttons on his, on his, on hi- on his, on his clothes and, and fancy shoes. But as they said, that is only on the outside. It looked like he's behaving like somebody who is like a puppet, so he has a lot of money and showing off his money. But that's not really truth because when people checked his shoes,

06:47 they noticed that the shoes don't have the sole, the bottom of the shoe. He would have fancy shoes. On the outside they looked like fancy, but on the bottom where you walk on, right, the floor of the shoe wasn't there. And when he walked outside in the winter, people noticed drops of blood coming out of his feet. They didn't realize why till somebody checked the shoes, saw that there was like a huge hole in the bottom, which means his feet would touch the ice outside and would get stuck, and sometimes it would cause bleeding in the feet. So on the outside, he looked like very fancy and very rich and like... And, and a lot of... And, and there were people that didn't like Hasidim and didn't like religious Jews, and they went and told the tsar that the Rizhiner is behaving like a king. He has a palace, and he has horses like a king, like a fancy, fancy wagon, and that's what got him into trouble. In the end, the tsar a-arrested him because people made up a, a, a false accusation. They said that the Rizhiner wants to become the next tsar. He wants to overthrow the government, which is ridiculous. Why would the, the Rizhiner would want to become a tsar over a bunch of goyim? They would become a king. But anyways, he-- the Rizhiner had like fancy, fancy stuff, beautiful stuff, huge house, and inside was like very expensive furniture. It looks like the, the palace. So the father

08:20 was gonna tell his son, and he told his son, "Come with me. We're gonna go to see a rich man, and maybe we can have some business with him that will make us also-- we'll, we'll be able to make a lot of money this way." When the son heard that, he said, "Okay, I'll go with you, yeah. So maybe we can do some big business with this rich man." But he didn't tell him, the father didn't tell him that this is the Rizhiner, right? So this way he's gonna trick him to come to the Rizhiner, and we'll see how the Rizhiner can maybe change him. They traveled to Rizhin, and when they got to the house of the Rizhiner, the son saw it like a huge, like a mansion, a palace. He was like amazed. "Wow, who can afford such a, an expensive home?" And they walked inside, and they see like the rooms, and they're like decorated with such fancy, fancy decorations. It looks like, like a very fancy house of a very, very rich person. So the father says to the son, "Listen, you see this fancy house? This belongs to a very rich person. Um, I'm gonna go inside his office." It's deep inside the house. You have to go to his office. "I'm gonna talk to him first about business. You wait outside, and then I will discuss who we are, and, um, yeah, and then I'll come out, and then you'll go in and finish off the deals with him,

09:42 right? You, you'll discuss with him the actual deals we're gonna make together." Okay, so the father walks into the Rizhiner's room, and he says to the Rizhiner, "I was sent to you by the Tzemach Tzedek." And he starts crying. He says, "I have a son who is completely not interested in Torah and mitzvahs, until the point came when, at the night of the Seder, he pulled out a piece of bread in front of everyone, in the middle of the Seder, and ate a piece of bread. And, and I don't know what to do. This is a terrible thing." And he's crying and crying and says, "Rebbe, maybe you can help me. The Tzemach Tzedek says that you may be able to help him." The Rizhiner comforts him and says to him, "Stop crying. Listen, every Jew has a neshamah, and a neshamah is a chelek Elokah, is a, is a spark of Hashem, a part of Hashem. It's just that it's covered up with many layers of dust and all kinds of nonsense, and that doesn't let the neshamah shine openly. But with a, with a little bit of help from Hashem, we're able to clean up all the dust, and then his neshamah will begin to shine again, and he'll want to do Torah and mitzvahs. Tell your son to come in." Father walks out and tells his son, "Okay, now it's time for you to go into this rich man and finish your business." So the son walks in, but as he opens

11:09 the door and takes one look at who is sitting in the desk, and who is there? It's a tzadik, a Rebbe. He's-- he realized he was fooled, so he deci- decided to walk out again. But the Rizhiner took a look at him and looked at him straight in the eyes and said to him like this, "You come here." And the penetrating look, when a tzadik looks at someone, it can... The look can go into your kishkes, right into your heart, and change you, right? It's the look of a tzadik. The Rizhiner stared at him so deeply that he just listened to what the Rizhiner said. The Rizhiner said, "Come with me," and he takes him to, to another room. And that other room was covered with very expensive mirrors. The-- all the walls were covered, one mirror, another mirror, another mirror. Very expensive mirrors. It's famous that the Rizhiner used to buy very expensive mirrors in Peterburg Right? With Leningrad, which is the, the, the capital of Russia, where all the fancy stuff used to be. And he used to have a custom, go to Peterburg to buy very, very expensive mirrors, and many people would wonder, why would a tzadik need mirrors on the wall, right? He's a tzadik. I mean, a tzadik doesn't look in the mirror to see if his tie looks straight, right? Or his shtreimel looks straight on the head. Tzadikim, uh, you know, don't look in mirrors. Why he needed not only mirrors, he needed fancy, fancy, very expensive

12:45 mirrors. Like, they're very expensive. They're the best, the nicest. Only, like, kings have these types of mirrors. They're so beautiful and so fancy. But nobody understood that this was all a deeper thing. And, uh, so he takes this, this young man with him to that room with the mirrors. It was the room with the mirrors. And he said to the young man, "Look at this mirror first." Take the first mirror, he said, "Look inside the mirror." And the boy starts looking in the mirror and says, "Well, I see myself." He says, "Now look a little more, a little longer." Suddenly the boy sees like a movie, uh, coming, developing in the, in the mirror. He sees, like, a scene. He sees himself as a little child. When he went to cheder, he's sitting there in the classroom and learning Torah with the teacher, and he seems to daven with everybody, doing the, the right thing. Everything was good. Then the Rizhiner shows him, "Now look at the second mirror." Takes him to the second mirror, and he sees when he gets older, and how he suddenly, he doesn't wanna go to class anymore, and he wants to hang out outside class all day with other boys who are not also like him. They didn't like learning. And then he, he's beginning to feel like, "Oi, why did I do that? It was so beautiful when I learned Torah." And he feels a little bad, you know. "Why, why would I, you know, suddenly stop going

14:22 to, to class and stop learning Torah? It was so beautiful to learn, and to learn with my rebbe and, and, and daven so nicely. It was so nice. I don't... Mm, this is strange that I did this." And then he says to him, "Come, look at the third mirror now." Now he sees where he gets even older. He's already passed his bar mitzvah, and now he's starting to go hang out in the streets with Goyim and with other kids that are doing bad things. And you know, one Goy offers him a candy or something which is not kosher, and he takes it and he eats it. And it's the first time he eats something which is not kosher. And then he sees how he's starting to do more averus, more averus. And then the Rizhiner takes him to a fourth mirror and says, "Look. Look in that mirror." And here he sees where he gets even older. Right? He's already eighteen, seventeen, eighteen, and he's beginning to do a lot of averus until he stops doing all mitzvahs. No tefillin, no Shabbos, no kosher, nothing, nothing. He's leading a life like a Goy, doing every, every possible averah in the world. And he's beginning to feel inside really, really sick. "Why did I do that? Why, why, why would I do this?" Until he got to the last mirror, and there he sees suddenly in that mirror how the family is sitting down by the Seder on the night of Pesach, and how he's sitting...

15:44 He watches himself sitting at the Seder with a bag next to him, and in the middle of the Seder, he decides to take out a, a loaf of bread to eat the bread because he wanted to eat bread at the meal, you know. He doesn't like eating matzah crackers. He wanted to eat bread. And his father, he sees his father's face turning white in such shock that his son would do such a thing. And finally, the boy says, "Wow, I can't believe I did this. I made my father feel so bad. And why would I do such a thing?" And he gets so sick inside, he starts throwing up. Right there in the middle of the room with the Rizhiner, he starts throwing up. And he turns to the Rizhiner and cries. Says, "Rebbe, I can't believe this is my life. Can you please help me do teshuva?" And the Rizhiner says, "Come with me. We'll sit down in my room. Let's go back to the room, and we'll talk about your teshuva." He gave him a way to do teshuva, and this boy changed completely his life and became very close to the Rizhiner. He used to come to him a lot and, and be his Hasid. This is the amazing s- thing about this story is, something we can learn from that. See, very often we do something bad, but we don't realize how bad it is. When somebody else does it, it's easier for us to see how bad it is. When

17:11 we do it, we don't see it. Sometimes if you think-- If you, if you watch yourself in a movie, what you did as if you are somebody else watching it. Like this boy, he was watching his own life like he was watching a movie in the mirrors of the Rizhiner's, of the Rizhiner's house. Suddenly he began to realize how awful is what he did. When he did it himself, he didn't feel it was awful. "Eh, it's hard. I like to do it. It feels good." But when you watch yourself doing it as if you're somebody else, you're a spectator, you're watching it, it... You, you realize how awful or terrible it is. So this is the... We can do teshuva. We can do teshuva today. In the ten days of teshuva, try to think and go through your mind the kinds of things you did that you know were not supposed to, you weren't supposed to do, right? They were bad things, not good things. But imagine that you are somebody else watching yourself do it. Sometimes it can give you a feeling, "Oi, I wish I didn't do it." And that's teshuva. When you get that feeling, "I wish I didn't do it. Oi, I can't believe I did that. This is me? I actually did this? It's hard to believe." And that's teshuva. Teshuva means that you feel regretful, and that's what this boy went through. A geimar chasim u'tevim, and this is a special time. As the, the Rebbe says, "Hashem is

18:46 closer to us during these ten days." Hashem draws very close to us. It's much easier for us to watch our averus and see how awful they are, because the closer Hashem is to us, the more these averus begin to look awful. And so we should all be doing teshuva b'simcha. As the Rebbe says, "Teshuva has to be with a simcha." A good freilechen geimar chasim u'tevim.