155. The Rebbe Maharash Causes The Russian Governor To Die

00:15 Shalom Aleichem, kinderlach. It's going to be Beis Iyar, which is the birthday of the Rebbe Maharash. So I'm gonna share with you an incredible story with the Rebbe Maharash. That story was told, uh, by Rebbe Nisan Nemanov, the great Mashpia in the Yeshiva in Brunoy. Um, he told it that he heard it from the previous Rebbe's secretary, Rebbe Cheskel Fagin in Russia, who was also a Mashpia. And he said he heard it from the Friediker Rebbe himself. The previous Rebbe himself told it to him on Pesach of tav-resh-pe-vav, and the story is like this. In Russia, everyone, every boy that turned twenty-one had to go to the army. There was no, uh, question whether you go or not. You have to go. If you don't go, you go to prison, and they punish you very harshly. So when the Rebbe Rashab turned twenty-one, he was supposed to go to the army, and they send a special message to the Rebbe Maharash and the Rebbe Rashab that the Rebbe Rashab has to go to the army, in the Russian army. And you, you can imagine that for a Jew, even for any Jew to go to the Russian army is very dangerous. It's dangerous for his neshamah because he can't do Torah and mitzvahs in the army, but it's also physically dangerous because for a Jew to be in the army could be very bad. But for the Rebbe Rashab especially, that he should go to the army, that'd be terrible. So the Rebbe Maharash knew

01:53 that there was a rule that, uh, certain people who had a lot of money could, uh, buy a special piece of paper, and it cost a lot of money. If you-- The piece of paper means that you're exempt from going to the army. You don't have to go to the army. That piece of paper from the government costs a lot of money. It costs twenty-five thousand rubles. You had to pay twenty-five thousand rubles to get a special piece of paper from, from a government's office, and there it, it says that, okay, this person does not have to go to the army. The Rebbe Maharash decided to buy such a piece of paper, and he made sure that the Rebbe Rashab would have this paper. He would not have to go to the army. But then when he turned twenty-one, they send a special message that he must come to the army. So the Rebbe Maharash showed the, the officials who came to, uh, uh, take the Rebbe Rashab to the army, "Here, w- I bought a special ticket, a special piece of paper that... And I paid a lot of monies to, to make sure that my son doesn't have to go to the army." But what turns out that the governor who was-- had his office in Vitebsk. Vitebsk was not far from Lubavitch, and he was in cha-- He was the governor of the entire area. You know, not only Lubavitch, Vitebsk, many, many cities. W- w- he was the governor of the

03:30 entire province, right? Like New York State. It was like a whole state. He w- he was the governor of all of the different cities. He was very, very powerful and very important, and he is the one who insisted that the Rebbe Rashab should go to the army. And he told the, the biggest general in the army, he was the main general of the army that made sure that everybody comes to the army and is trained as a soldier. He told the big general of the army that, "I think that even though this rabbi, this rabin in Lubavitch, means the Rebbe Maharash, bought a special piece of paper that made the Rebbe Rashab exempt, but I think here it's different. 'Cause since the Rebbe Maharash is very famous and all the Jews love him and they respect him, so if everybody's gonna hear that this rabbi's son was able to get out of the army and not serve in the army, then everybody's gonna do what he does. They're also gonna buy tickets and gonna buy special pieces of paper, and then nobody, no Jew is gonna serve in the army. That's terrible. We can't do that, so we need to do something. We need to make sure that this Rebbe Rashab, the son of the, of the rabin of Lubavitch, should be taken to the army. Maybe we won't make him stay the whole time in the army. He'll have to come at least for a few weeks and put on a formal uniform of

04:57 a soldier, and everybody will see that he served in the army. Then, uh, we can release him and let him go home and free him from the army. But at least for a few weeks, so to give the appearance for everybody else, they should know that even the rabbi's son serves in the army, so no Jew should try to get out of the army." So that's what he said to the main general, and the main general accepted it. He said, "Yeah, you're right. In this case, we should not accept his special exemption, that piece of paper which tells him he doesn't have to go to the army. We're not-- We're gonna make him go anyways. We're gonna make him go at least for a short while." When the Rebbe Maharash heard this, he said, "No. Absolutely not. My son, the Rebbe Rashab, will not go for, even for a second to the army." So the Rebbe Rashab, the Rebbe Maharash, turned to the Rebbe Rashab and said to him like this: "First of all," he said, "we need to learn from this whole thing." The Rebbe, the Ba'al Shem Tov said you gotta learn from everything something. Everything you hear, you see, everything you experience in life, you have to learn something. What have you lear-- The fact that they called you to go to the army, maybe we can learn something in avodas Hashem, how to serve Hashem better. Because a Jew is an essentially a soldier. So what we learn from this is

06:15 that they tell you they want you to be a soldier in the Russian army. Well, what we need to learn from this, how to be a soldier to Hashem. And the Rabbi Maharash said to the Rabbi Rashab, "A soldier is a type of person that is, is everything, every moment, twenty-four hours, the entire day, the entire night, the whole time, he's completely, uh, serving and fulfilling what he's being told to do. He doesn't think twice whether he understands it, it makes sense to him. Tell me, he only has one thing in his head. He's gotta do what he's told to. He's completely, um, given over to do what, what the general or his bigger officer, his general tells him to do, and that's all he needs to know, and that's all he cares about." And not only that says the Rebe- Rebbe Maharash, a soldier is someone who's always a soldier. He never stops being a soldier. He wears his uniform the whole time. He never stops wearing a uniform because he's always a soldier. And even when he sleeps, he sleeps like a soldier. You can tell that this is a soldier sleeping. He sleeps differently than other people. Same thing a Yid, a Jew. Jew is to know that he's always a soldier of Hashem. Even when he eats and drinks and sleeps, he's at that moment serving Hashem. You never stop serving. Even when you sleep, you sleep-- you serve Hashem with sleeping. You serve Hashem with, with eating. And when you

07:40 sleep, as they say about great people, when they were little children, when they were very small, when the yarmulke would fall off their head in the middle of the sleep, they would wake up and put the yarmulke back on. Because even in their sleep, they were-- they didn't wanna have the yarmulke fall off. They, they, they felt it, and they would wake up. That means he's always a soldier, always aware that we're serving Hashem. We're connected to Hashem. There's not a moment, whether it's day or night, that you feel disconnected from Hashem. Oh, now I'm doing something else. No, we're always serving Hashem, everything, in everything you do. Even when you play with your friends, you're also serving Hashem. Now the Rebbe Maharash says to the Rebbe Rashab, "We learned our lesson in Avedus Hashem, and now you take your tallis and tefillin." The Rebbe Rashab was already married. He had tallis and tefillin. Go to Petroburg, the capital of Russia, and there you're gonna go to some place, he told him where to go, and hide, so they wouldn't find him. He says, "Don't be afraid. Don't be nervous. Everything will be good." He sent him there. Now, the governor, uh, saw that the Rebbe Rashab didn't show up to the army base. You know, he was supposed to show up to the army base at a certain day. Didn't show up. So he sent some soldiers to go find him. They went, came to Lubavitch, and they came into the house of the

08:57 Rebbe Maharash and said, "They're looking for the Rebbe Rashab." But obviously, they couldn't find him because the Rebbe Rashab was in Petroburg, in the capital, hiding somewhere. So they went back to the governor and says, "The Rabbin's son is not-- is nowhere to be found." Um, so the Rebbe, so the Rebbe Maharash decided to go to the general, the main general of the army, the chief of the army, and went to him with, with, uh, two Hasidim, and he said to him, um, "I think the fact that you sent two soldiers to search for my son is wrong because my grandfather-- my father, and also my grandfathers, they were all honored by the king as being special honored citizens, and, and you are not supposed to come into the house and search. If you wanna know if somebody's there, you have to knock on the door and ask if this person is there, but you can't just walk in like you walk in in everybody else's house. We're considered a family of very honored people by the king." That's one thing he said. Then he said, "I don't understand. I bought for twenty-five thousand a special paper that allows him not to go to the army. Then why are we bothering him?" So the, the general says, "Listen, it's not up to me, but the governor is right. I-if we let your son not go to the army, then all the Jews will do the same thing." So the Rebbe Maharash left and decided to

10:32 go to the governor 'cause he realized the governor is the one who controls the whole thing. And he took two Hasidim, and he went to the governor. He went to the governor dressed in his Shabbos clothes. And when he showed up, the governor was very respectful and, uh, made him sit down. And the Rebbe Rashab-- Rebbe Maharash said to him, "Listen, I want you to leave my son alone and not bother him. He cannot go to the army." So the governor says, "I'm sorry. I can't allow this. He's gonna have to go." So the Rebbe Maharash turned to the two Hasidim and said in Yiddish, "You mean he's not even considering giving covet to the Torah? He knows that I'm, I'm a Rav, and he doesn't even care about that? He has no respect at all?" So then he turned to the governor and said, "Do you know who I am?" And the governor says, "Yeah, I know who you are. You're Rabbin Schneerson." So the Rebbe Maharash said, "Okay, in that case, you will remember me, and you will regret it." And he got up, and he was about to leave, and the governor realized that he's now messing around with a great tzadik. And he knew that the Rebbe Maharash was a great man, a ˈHalikhes tzadik, and that if you mess with him too much, he can cause some problems for you. So he said to him, "Listen, Rabbi, Rabbin, maybe we can talk about it later." And the Rebbe Maharash said,

12:08 "No, I'm sorry. I've got nothing to talk to you about it." And he left. Within a few hours, a short time, the Marash left, the governor suddenly got very, very sick, and he had a very high fever. And the governor realized that this happened because he was messing with the Rebbe Marash. He didn't realize what Chazal was saying, our sages tell us in the Mishnah that you have to be careful with great tzadikim, with great chachamim, because you can get burnt, you can get hurt, because Hashem listens to them. When they say something should happen, it happens. He realized that, and he realized that he's getting sicker and sicker, and the fever is getting higher and higher, and the doctors can't cure him. They tried to give him medication, but nothing worked. He realized that means is he may die. So he sent a special messenger to the Rebbe Marash, and he says, "Rebbe, please forgive me." And then he said-- He sent a message to him, he said, "Even if he says if he has to die," the, the, the governor, "please make sure that I, uh, uh, in the next world, I won't be punished for what I did to you and to your son." Because the goyim in those days believed in the other world. They believed in Olam Haba, in another world. But of course, they had the goyishe Olam Haba. But they, they believed in, in that there's something after you die. And so he was afraid what's gonna happen,

13:36 that he knew he messed around, and he was, was, uh, causing a lot of pain and grief to a great tzadik. And it seems like instantly, like as soon as the Rebbe Marash left, boom, he got very, very sick. And with less than twenty-four hours after the Rebbe Marash visited him, this governor was dead. He died. Now, this is a, um... This is-- shows the greatness of people like the Rebbe Marash that when, when, when somebody, a goy or a rasha, try to get in the way with a, a way of the tzadik and try to hurt him, a tzadik can with his thoughts and with his words can destroy the person. Like the Gemara says of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai when he saw a rasha who hurt him, somebody who told on Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai to the Roman governor, the Roman king, that Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai spoke against the government, and Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai had to run away for his life because the, the Romans were gonna kill him, and he spent, what, thirteen years in a cave. When he came out of the cave and he saw the man who caused him all this trouble, he was-- he's the one who told the king. And Shimon bar Yochai saw him, and he looked at him, and the man died on the spot. Great tzadikim, it says the look, the lichesh says, a tzadik can look and can destroy a person. He can look and can elevate, lift up a person

15:18 to kedusha, make him very special. The look of a tzadik is very, very powerful. Anyways, L'chaim, l'chaim ul'bracha.