143. The Maharal’s Wife Perel

00:15 Shalom Aleichem, kinderlekh. Here's a story of the Maral, the way it's told by the previous Rebbe in Sefer HaZichronos, in his memoirs. The Maral was born in the year, year реш айин בais. So today is תשפ"ד, that's, um, over 500 years ago. The Maral, at a very young age, was already known as a great Talmid Chacham. Great geonim of the time would come to Poznan, where the Maral lived in his f- with his family, and they would learn... Talk to him in learning. They would love to talk to him in learning because he was so impressive. He had three more brothers, and his father's name was Rabbi Tzaddok, was also a big geon. But Rabbi Tzaddok was very poor. He couldn't support his sons going to yeshivas and learning, didn't have any money. So he decided to marry his children very young. That means he would get them engaged to become a choson, and then they would go off and learning for five, six, ten years till the wedding. In the meantime, who's gonna support them? Their future father-in-law, right? The father of the kallah. This way, he wouldn't have to support them because he didn't have any money. So Maral got engaged, became a choson at 12 years old, before his bar mitzvah. Who did he get engaged to? To Pearl. Pearl was the daughter of Reb Shmuel Reich, a very rich man in Prague, who was, um, very close to the king of Prussia. He was very wealthy, helped a lot of Jews.

01:57 Whenever there was a decree of the government against the Jews, he would, uh, go to the, the palace of the king and talk to the king to try to abolish the decree. He was, uh, very influential, he was a very important man, and he had a lot of money, and he, of course, wanted to have the Maral as a son-in-law, and he was willing to support him for many years to learn before the wedding. The wedding wasn't gonna be till years later. They were still very young. So the Maral, uh, went to yeshiva, and his father-in-law supported him. He studied with the greatest rosh yeshivas and geonim and in the best yeshivas and became a huge, huge geon, Talmid Chacham. Pearl was only six when she got engaged, but she was very, very smart, and she understood and she heard that her choson is a big Talmid Chacham and a big geon. So she didn't wanna feel like she doesn't know anything. She wanted to be able to talk to him in what he learns. She was, was very... She very much wanted to be able to discuss his learning, so decided she also has to learn. And in those days, girls didn't learn so much. They learned how to read maybe. But, uh, she taught herself secretly. She didn't want anybody to know because in those days, it wasn't, uh, allowed for girls to learn so much. So she would learn secretly Chumash and Tanakh. She taught herself Rashi. Then she started learning Halakha,

03:26 Shulchan Aruch, and even Gemara and Mishnah and Gemara. She became very learned. Now, by the time the Maral came back four or five years later from, from yeshiva, from Krakow, um, she was... Maybe it was six years later, she was 12. He was already 18. He told his father-in-law that he's not ready to get married. She's still 12. She's very young. So he wants to wait a few years and go to yeshiva back to learn. But while he was in Prague, he met the kallah, and they talked, and she told him that for the last six years, she was learning Torah and, and, um, um, she was very, um, excited to learn. And he told her, "You know what? This is very nice. I like that." He was very happy that she was learning. And he even showed her how she should continue to learn. He told her what seforim to take and how she should learn. He gave her a whole way of learning and told her which seforim to buy and, and how she should learn, and, and he was very, very happy that she's learning. He went off to yeshiva again, and, um, after four years of learning with the Maharshal and the Rama, these were his chavrusas. They were a little bit younger than the Maral, but, um, Reb Shlomo Luria, the Maharshal, famous geon, and, uh, the Rama was a big geon olam. His father was, um, was a very rich, a meissaris, was, uh, very wealthy, and he built

04:55 a shul in Krakow, especially for his son, Moshe, who became the Rama. And the Maral and Reb Shlomo Luria learned in that Beis Midrash, and the father of the Rama supported them. He learned for a few more years, then he realized he's not ready to get married. He wants to learn a few more years. He has such great chavrusas he can learn with, and he got such great rosh yeshivas. So he wrote a letter to his father-in-law and said, "Listen, I, I'm sorry to say that I can't come back yet to get married. I wanna take another three years and learn. If you really don't want to, then it's okay with me if Pearl wants to cut off the shidduch and get married to someone else, and I won't be upset. I understand." But, uh, the father said, "No, no, no, no. You can go, and you can sit and learn. Learn another three years." In the meantime, Reb Shmuel Reich, something happened to him. He lost all his money. He had a lot of debts, and he had to sell all his houses and pay off his debts, and he was left with nothing. He wrote a letter quickly to the Maharal, who was in yeshiva, to tell him that the news, the terrible news, that he had no money left, and he can't support him in yeshiva anymore. And now he wrote to him, he said, "Listen, I'm sorry, but if you feel like you wanna marry someone else and cut off the

06:21 shidduch with my daughter, I... It's okay, I understand, 'cause I can't support you anymore. You wanna go marry a girl who's from a rich family, um, I understand, but, uh, I can't support you anymore." The Maharal wrote back a letter saying, "No, no, no. Chas v'shalom. I wanna marry Pearl even if you're poor. It doesn't matter if you have money or not." And he told his father-in-law to be, have bitachon in Hashem, that everything will be good, and he gave him encouragement, and he learned for another three years. Then he came back to Prague, and they got married. Maharal and Pearl got married. By the time the Maharal and Pearl got married, the Maharal was already 32 years old. Took a long time because he was in yeshivas, and there was a war in between. He couldn't get back home. And Pearl, by that time, was already quite learned, and she would continue to learn after they got married. She would learn with her husband, the Maharal, which was very unusual in those days. And, um, she had a store because she realized her father doesn't have any money. Father didn't have any income, any parnasah, so she opened a store, a grocery store, where she sold food. And from that store, she was able to bring money for her, for her husband, who was sitting and learning, and for her parents too. She supported her parents, and she supported the Maharal. One day, there was a war going on, as I said before, between

07:46 Bohemia and other countries, and the battlefield was right outside Prague. One day, she's sitting in her store, and a soldier comes running in. You could tell that he came straight from the battlefield. And, and he says to, to Pearl, "I need as much food as you have, 'cause we need to take it quickly to the battlefield. Just pack up all the food, all the bread and milk and cheese and fruits and vegetables. Whatever you have, just pack it up and give me. I have here bags, and we'll buy everything off." And Pearl, uh, packs up everything, the entire store, all the food, puts it in the bags, and then she hands the soldier a bill. She says, "Listen, you gotta pay for this." He says, "I'm sorry, I don't have any money with me, but I promise you I'll be back in a few days, and I'll pay you the bill." She says, "Well, listen, we don't have any money. You took all my food. If you don't pay me now, I will... We-- My family and I are gonna starve." So the soldier said to her, "Listen, I have a jacket in my, in my bag, a jacket. It's a very special jacket for me, and I'll leave it with you." And he give, he gives her the jacket, and he says, "I promise you, in two days, I'll be back, and I'll come and take my jacket, and then you'll know that I'm coming back because this will be a gu- guarantee that

08:58 I have your, that you have my jacket." She had no choice, and he took all the bags of food and left. A few days went by, and the soldier never came back. A week, two weeks, she told her husband, the Maharal, what had happened. There's no store, there's no food in the store anymore. The soldier ate, uh, take, took everything, and he promised to come back and pay, but he didn't. He just left her a jacket. So Maharal said to her, "Listen, this is min Hashamayim. We have to check." In those days, the officers of the army, when they went to war, they would go into the enemy's country and go into the houses of people, and they would take all the silver and gold and diamonds and jewelry. They would steal it. So often, what they would do is the diamonds they would steal, they didn't wanna lose it, and they didn't want anybody to see where they're hiding it. They would sew it into their jackets. It's possible that this jacket has a lot of diamonds in it. Who knows? Let's open up the seam and open up the, the, the, the, the jacket and see inside if there is, inside the lining, there's some, some diamonds. So M- Pearl did that, and lo and behold, Maharal was right. Tons and tons of diamonds came falling out. So many di- so many v- very, very, very expensive stones. They could become very rich from that. They waited a little longer, and the soldier

10:24 still didn't come back. They realized, min Hashamayim, they sent him like a malach, so... Like a soldier who, who just gave them a wealth of money, and they became rich again. She gave her father some money, and he started a business again and became very, very rich. Not only that, after the war ended, the government made a contract with Reb Shmuel Reich that he should be in charge of building all the houses that they destroyed during the war, and he will get a lot of money paid for building the houses. And he became extremely wealthy, and he became very close to the king, King Ferdinand, and, and he then supported Pearl and, and, and the Maharal. Pearl didn't have to have a, a store anymore. She helped her husband with his learning. She helped him publish his sefarim. Twenty-four sefarim the Maharal wrote. She helped organize the sefarim, the pages, and bring it to printing. She even corrected the Maharal in eight places where he cited what the Gemara says, and she said, "No, the Gemara doesn't say that way. The Gemara says it differently." And the Maharal said, "You're right," and he corrected it. Eight places she corrected her husband's writings. And whenever shailas came from people from all over the country, all over Europe, people would ask shailas about the Maharal and learning and Torah and Gemara and Chumash, she would read those shailas to her husband, and he would give answers, and she would write it down because she understood what the

11:46 shailas were about. She understood what the answers was. She was very learned. And so the Maharal and his wife, they had children. They had one son and several daughters. The son was Rebbetzalel, and, uh, the Alter Rebbe was a fifth generation from the Maharal, Ben HaBen. That's the story.