134. The Magid Looks In The Zohar And Reveals Who Did The Aveirah

00:15 Shalom Aleichem, kinders. I want to tell you a story, and a beautiful story, an incredible story that happened with the Alter Rebbe when he was learning with the Maggid. As you may know, the Mizitcher Maggid wanted very much that Alter Rebbe should learn with his son, with the Maggid's son, Rabbi Avraham. They called him Rabbi Avraham the Malach. The reason they called him the Malach because Rabbi Avraham was so not involved in physical things. He hardly ate anything and almost never slept. He was like an malach. Malach never eats and never sleeps. He was als- almost like a malach. So the Mizitcher Maggid knew that Alter Rebbe was a big goen, and he wanted him to st- to learn with his son, Rabbi Avraham, and also promised them that from time to time he will learn with the two of them privately. But in order to make sure that the other talmidim of the Maggid are not jealous that Alter Rebbe gets such special treatment by the Maggid, that he's teaching him and his son-- and the Maggid's son privately, so they would do this quietly, secretly. So they would go into a room and close the door and wouldn't let anybody in. This way, the other talmidim wouldn't know that the Alter Rebbe is having this special thing with the Mizitcher Maggid and his son, that they're learning privately. So, so one day they were learning in a, in a room, the Maggid and the Alter Rebbe and Rabbi Avraham the Malach, and somebody...

01:55 Suddenly somebody knocked on the door. The Alter Rebbe was closest to the door, didn't wanna open the door because he didn't want the person who comes in to interrupt their learning. He probably also didn't want anybody else to know that he's learning with the Maggid, so there wouldn't be any jealousy. But the Maggid told him that he should open the door. He said, "Go open the door." So the Alter Rebbe opened the door and a man walked in, and the Maggid opened up a Sefer Zohar, the Zohar, the famous Zohar from Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai. He put on his glasses and looked inside the Zohar. After a few moments of looking into the Zohar, he turned to the man and said to him, "Right now there's a big fire in your city where you're coming from." The man was very shocked. He knew the Maggid had Ruach Hakodesh, and he could see what happens far away. So he asked, "Rebbe, is my house also damaged from the fire?" And the Maggid said to him, "No, your house was not damaged because your house is next to a big warehouse which stores a lot of grain and wheat, and the grain and wheat belongs to the army of the Tsar. And there's a big army station not far, and they use the grain to feed the soldiers. So when the fire broke out, the soldiers came with water and protected and put out the fire next to this warehouse, and to protect the warehouse it shouldn't

03:34 burn down. And because your house is next to the warehouse, your house was also protected because of the soldiers. And so your house is safe." This man, how did he end up in Mizitch? He wasn't actually planning to come to the Mizitcher Maggid. He was traveling from his city, traveling to another city where he wanted to maybe buy and sell, do business, and make a living. He just happened to pass through Mizitch, so he thought, "Okay, I'll go and see the Maggid and get a bracha from him." So the Maggid said to him like this, after he told him about the fire, he said to him, "Go back home and you'll find your business, parnasah, there at home. You don't have to go to another city. But I wanna ask you, you should do something for me. Do me a favor. As soon as you get to the city, go to the house of the community council." The community council is the people who are leaders of the community, and they-- of the Jewish community, and they get together in that house where they discuss and decide things, what to do for the community. "I want you to go to that house where all the people gather, and you'll find a large group of people, a lot of Jews are gathered in that house. And what are they busy with? They're busy looking who in the city committed some very, very unusually big disgusting aveira." The reason why they're looking for such a person, because

05:10 at that time there was a massive epidemic that besides the fire, there was also an epidemic that killed many people in the, in the city, and it was like, uh, getting worse and worse. And Jews always knew that when something terrible happens, you gotta look that maybe somebody did an aveira and we're all responsible for that person, right? Hashem says that if one person in the community does aveiras, everybody else is responsible and you have to make sure to stop him and make him do teshuva. We're responsible for each other. So people would always... When, whenever it used to happen-- I mean, today people don't do it as much, but, uh, in the olden days people used to do this all the time. When if, chas ve'Shalom, an epidemic broke out or something terrible happened in the city that affected a lot of people and hurt a lot of people, then the leaders of the community would get together with the Rav- And they would try to see who in the city might have been the one who committed some especially big disgusting avera, and maybe because of him it happened, maybe we'll make him do teshuva. And if there are other people, then they were gonna look for other people. Maybe it's a lot of people that committed avera, but they would always search which avera do we need to fix and do teshuva for so that the epidemic would stop. So the Maggid says to him, "You'll come to the house, you'll see

06:37 people are, are arguing over who committed averas and who should we, uh, you know, make do teshuva and, and tell him he should stop doing the averas so that the epidemic would stop." So he says, "You'll see that everybody suspects one person. They all think that this one, this one person did this big terrible avera, and that's why this epidemic is happening. And they're really pressuring him and pressuring him that he should tell the truth that he did it and that he did it." So the Maggid says to this Jew, "When you go back there and you see what's happening, you see the person that they're accusing that he must be the one who did this big avera, you should know he's actually innocent. He hasn't done anything wrong. They're falsely accusing him. He doesn't have any averas. Do you know who has the-- who's done the avera and because of him this epidemic is happening? It's the person from all the people that are screaming and telling this man, 'Come on, tell us the truth. Admit it. You did it. You did it.' The person who's the loudest, screams the loudest against this person, from all... Everybody's screaming against the same person, but one of them is screaming especially loud, and he's telling this person, 'Yes, I know you did it. You have to tell us the truth.' He's, like, louder than everybody else. You should know that he is the one who did the avera. They knew that somebody did avera, but they

08:13 didn't know who, and everybody suspect this one person, and this one person who's screaming the loudest, accusing this innocent person, person who's not guilty that he did the avera, he's actually the one who did the avera. You should know that. And what you should do when you get into that room and you hear everybody screaming, and that-- you find out who is this loudest, who screams the loudest, then you approach him and loudly yell at him and say, 'You are the rosha. Admit it.' And you'll see he'll turn red, and he'll admit it right away. And then he'll do teshuva, and the epidemic will stop." The man listened to the Mezitcher Maggid's, uh, instructions. He went back home, and he saw that everything was true. First of all, he saw there was a serefah, there was a fire in the city. He'd noticed that his house was actually saved. Although most houses were burnt or were damaged, his house was not damaged at all. So he saw, he saw that the, the, the Maggid was, was a great tzadik and a baal ruach hakodesh. And this is the reason the Maggid told him this with the serefah, with the fire, because he wanted him to see that the Maggid knows what he's saying, so he would also do the other thing, right? The Maggid wanted to save the city from this epidemic, so he wanted this man to go and reveal who is the real baal avera, who is the real sinner that needs to

09:41 do teshuva. So this man will see that this is true, the serefah with the-- what the Maggid says about the serefah, about the fire, it was true, then he'll also be feeling confident to go to the, um, community council house and, and accuse the right person of doing the avera. And also to save an innocent person who everybody's screaming that he did a terrible avera that he didn't do. It's also a mitzvah to save somebody from being falsely accused. So he went to the house, the council house, and he found indeed that the house was packed with people, and everybody's shouting at one person in the crowd and saying, "Come on." They're putting pressure on him, and they're, like, yelling at him and screaming at him, "You must say the truth. You did this terrible avera." And then he sees that indeed the Maggid was also right, that there was one person in the crowd that's screaming louder than everybody else, and he's, like, very angry, and he screams and he yells and shouting over everybody else. The man realized that this is the man the Maggid wants him to, you know, accuse and say that you're the rosha. So he did exactly what the Maggid says, and he yelled at this man. He says, "Rosha, tell the truth. You are the sinner yourself. You're accusing him because you are the sinner, and you're trying to cover up. So you, you scream and pretend it's somebody else." The man, when he heard this, and everybody

11:16 heard it in the room, um, turned, like, red in the face, and he finally admitted that it's true. And that stopped the epidemic. Now, this... The Maggid, why did he open the Zohar when he told this man all the things that were g-- that are happening now far away in the city where the man came from? Why did he have to open the Zohar? He had the ruach hakodesh. So it says like this. It says that in the Zohar, there's a special light which great tzadikim can see. Most people cannot see it, but tzadikim can see a light. It's not a regular light. It's a spiritual light. It's a very holy light. It's a light that Hashem took from the first day of creation. The first day of creation, there was a very, very, very intense light where Adam HaRishon was able... Well, Adam HaRishon. A person could see from one end of the world to the other world. He can see everything that happens all around the world with that light. It's a very special type of light. And that light, Hashem took away from the world because people weren't worthy of it, and he put it into the Torah. And especially in the Zohar, which is the Pnim Yezirah, this is the, the, the inner light of the Torah. And so the Mezitcher Maggid opened the Zohar to find that light where he's able to see everything that goes on in th-this man's city. So, um, why did he put on his, his

12:51 glasses? It's in order so that he can... 'Cause this light is a very spiritual light. To see with that spiritual light physical things, he needed the glasses to sort of, um, concentrate the light so the light would be able to show him physical things as well.