164. The Power Of The Rebbe Rashab’s Tallis

00:15 Shalom Aleichem, kindalech. We just celebrated Yud Beis Tammuz, the Mesirus Nefesh of the Friediger Rebbe for Yiddishkeit in Russia. I want to share with you a story the Friediger Rebbe himself told about something that happened with him before the Yud Beis Tammuz story, when he was still a young man and his father, the Rebbe Rashab, was the Rebbe at the time. At that time, there were Maskilim. Maskilim were Jews who studied a lot of science, philosophy, and they thought that Torah and mitzvahs was not as important today. You know, this was in, in the olden days when people didn't understand what the world is like. People didn't study science, people didn't understand philosophy. That was a good time for them. But now that we understand so many things about the world with science and, and, and, and with philosophy, we were so smart today. We discovered so many things in the world. We don't need Torah so much. I mean, we should do it just because it's nice, you know, to keep up what we used to do, but, but not because it's so important. They began to sort of slowly, slowly be very weak in their Torah and mitzvahs. Now, they also wanted all Jews to be like them because they felt that if Jews keep their old fashion, their old ideas, their old practices, the, the traditions the way they always kept, and especially when they teach children in cheder the way they always taught, Alef, Beis, Gimel, Daled, instead of just teaching

01:51 them like the Goyim teach their ABC, right? You teach them words and letters. Here we say, "Kamatz, Alef, O. Kamatz, Beis, Bo." Why don't you just say O, Bo, Vo, Go? Why do we have to say Kamatz, Alef, O? This is the way Jews for thousands of years used to teach children, and the reason is because we believe that the letters themselves of the, of the Alef Beis are heilig. There's heiligkeit, there's kedushah in the letters, and even in the nekudos, the kamatz, the patach, they all are things connected with the deep, deep heilige ideas connected to HaKadosh Baruch Hu. So we want children to learn and to pronounce the letters. So these are things that Jews have been doing for thousands of years, but these Maskilim said, "Hey, you know, we Jews should stop being so, you know, closed-minded, like, you know, fanatic. We-- Let's try to-- Let's do things more like the Goyim do." And so in, in the other things that we should teach the children more, the, the science and more, and more philosophy, and be less, you know, use less time for teaching them Chumash with Rashi and Gemara and Mishnah. A little less time. Let's spend more time teaching them Goyische stuff. So, but, but of course, the, the Yidden, the frumer Yidden, especially the Hasidim, uh, were very against that, of course, because we knew that the way the Jewish people educated their children for thousands of years is very heilig. This is the way Moshe Rabbeinu taught

03:20 us to do things. Now, in Russia, the Tsar always was afraid that the Jewish people do certain things that are against the government. He didn't know what the Jews are doing. He knew they're practicing, they're following Torah and mitzvahs, but, but, but maybe they do things that are against the government, like bad, mean to the government, or hateful to the government. So they hired one of the Maskilim. He called himself a rabbi. He wasn't really a rabbi. He was just a guy who went to university. He got a degree in philosophy and science, and he learned a little bit of Torah, and he called himself a Rav. But of course, he was no Rav. He was just a, a, a Rav, which the government called him a Rav. The Goyim called him a Rav. The Yidden didn't think he was a Rav at all. But he was hired by the government, by the Tsar, to give advice to the Russian government as to how when the Jewish people do things that are not good for the country and how to change things. So this, his name was Rav. They called themselves Rabbi Krebs. Krebs, and his last name was Krebs. This Krebs was a Maskil. Yid was not such a frum Yid. He stopped being frum when he re-- when he started learning science and philosophy, and thought that Jews should learn more philosophy and be more like the Goyim and less separate from the Goyim. So he was very interested in helping the government

04:52 change some things that the Yidden are doing, especially when it came to teaching children in the chederim, how they should teach children, what they should, what they should change, and how they should start teaching kids other things, not just Torah, and so on and on. This Krebs was hired by the government of Russia to s-- make a suggestion and to tell the government what they should ch-- force the Yidden to change. Of course, that was very dangerous because he was gonna make suggestions that are terrible, terrible for Yiddishkeit, terrible for Torah, mitzvahs, terrible for the children. But he was given a job by the government, and they paid him to do this. So he and his friends said, "Ah, this is great. Now we have a chance to change the way the Jewish people teach their children. They'll be more like the Maskilim and more like the Goyim, and we're gonna make-- tell the government we'll make-- we'll write a big, long, long, long thing. We're gonna write up many, many pages, explain to the government what Yidden do, what they study." And especially they said- We're gonna tell the government that these Hasidis, th-th-when the Hasidim teach Hasidis, that is the biggest problem because in Hasidis they learn about how heilik the oasis of Torah is, Alef Bet is. They learn about the heilik of mitzvahs. So they-they-- That's why they keep doing things the way they used to do in the olden days. But if we want them to change, they'd be more

06:21 like the Russians, then we need to s-s-- make them f-stop learning Hasidis. So we should force the Hasidim to burn all their Seferim, get rid of all their Seferim of Hasidis, and stop printing them, and then they will stop learning Hasidis, and it will be easier for them to become slowly, slowly more like the Goyim. And so that was very dangerous. The Rebbe Rashab heard about it, and he was very, very upset, and he knew that this Krebs was working for months and months and months to write a very long, long document. It's like a paper which he's gonna write for many, many pages to prove to the government that the Hasidim are a danger to the government, and the way they teach the children is very bad, and the Hasidis they learn is not good. It's against the government. And so it took him many, many months to write. He wrote, like, maybe a hundred pages, and this was supposed to go to the government, and they were supposed to look at it, and then they were gonna change things, Chas ve'Shalom, force the Hasidim to change and stop printing Hasidish Seferim and so on. The Rebbe Rashab called the Friediker Rebbe. He said to him, "Listen, this guy, Krebs, he's about to bring to the government his written, uh, uh, paper, his written document, which is hundreds of pages, and in there he's gonna tell the government how to make changes in the Chadorim, in the schools, and, and also change in what

07:59 Hasidim can learn, what they shouldn't learn, and, and so on, and it's gonna be very dangerous." So he told the Friediker Rebbe, "I want you to go to Petersburg, the capital of Russia." This is where the government was. "And I want you to stop it. I want you to do something, something." He didn't tell him what to do, just told him, "I'm, uh, giving you a mission. I'm giving you a job. You just go to Petersburg, find a way to stop this from happening, and whatever-- the way you think, you, you should decide how to do it." He didn't tell him how to do it. Now, it was v- top secret that the Friediker Rebbe was going to Petersburg to stop Krebs and his friends from bringing this piece of paper to the government and forcing the government to make these terrible changes to the Jewish people. So i-- because if anybody finds out that the Friediker Rebbe was on his way to Petersburg to disturb the whole thing, then of course it's gonna be a problem because then Krebs is gonna do things it was not gonna work. He's gonna, he's gonna d-do-- make sure that the Friediker Rebbe can't stop it. He was gonna protect himself. But it was very important that Krebs wouldn't know anything about it. He wouldn't know that Friediker Rebbe is on his way there, so he wouldn't do anything to stop the Friediker Rebbe. So the Fried-- the Rebbe Rashab said to the Friediker Rebbe, "Listen, uh, if

09:17 you go to Petersburg, even here in Lubavitch, I don't want anybody of the Hasidim to know that you're going to Petersburg. Um, and in order to make sure that people think, eh, you're just going on a vacation, or you're going to visit a doctor, then take your Rebbetzin, your wife, with you. This way people will think, oh, why is he taking his wife? Oh, he's probably going to visit a doctor, and, and, and-- but he's not going for important things to help the Jewish people, 'cause then why would he take his wife? So he said, "Take your wife with you so people will think, oh, he's going for a vacation, so nobody in Petersburg will stop you. Right? They'll, they'll-- they just won't suspect you that you're trying to stop the whole thing." So he went to Petersburg, spent a few days there with his wife, with his Rebbetzin, tried every possible way to stop the whole thing, and he couldn't. He couldn't. So he came back to Lubavitch and went straight-- It was in the morning. When he arrived, it was in the morning. He went straight to the room where the Rebbe Rashab davened every day, and the Rebbe Rashab was then right before davening. He didn't start Shacharis yet, but he had his tallis on his shoulder. I don't know if you know, but your tatties or your zeidies, whoever puts on a tallis every morning, uh, the m-- the, the custom is, the minhag is that you check your strings first.

10:45 You fold the tallis, and as it's folded, you put it on your shoulder and make sure that the tzitzits are hanging in front of you, and that's how you check your tzitzits, making sure that all eight strings are there, that they're separated from each other, not entangled. This is a minhag that says in Shulchan Aruch. And the Rebbe Rashab did that in the morning. When the Friediker Rebbe came into his room, he was in the middle of checking his tzitzits. Now, for, for a tzadik, a Rebbe, this, this special, the minhag to check the tzitzits and to separate them, he does it with great kavana, right? As you know, it says in Kabbalah, in Hasidis, that a tallis, the mitzvah of tallis, um, has a lot of light in it, holy light, kedusha light, spiritual light. It's a light that if a Jew who is a tzadik is able to make it shine in the world, the evil of the world will, will go away. It will, it will fall apart because it's a very, very powerful light. That's what it says in Kabbalah. Now, as the Friediker Rebbe walks into the room, he sees his father checking the tzitzits. Father says to him, "No, what happened?" He says, "I tried for two, two days. Nothing worked." So the Friediker Rebbe-- the, the Rebbe Rashab says to him, um, "I'll tell you something. I'll tell you a story." The Alter Rebbe once sent his son, the Mitteler Rebbe, also to go on a shlichus, on

12:11 a mission, to, to do something very important in another city. And the Mitteler Rebbe went, and he couldn't do what he wanted, what he needed to do. Didn't work. He tried everything. It didn't work. So he came back to Lyozno, to the Alter Rebbe. And when he came in, he found the Alter Rebbe the same way you found me. The Alter Rebbe was then before Shacharis, and his tallis was on his shoulder, and he was checking his tzitzit. And the Alter Rebbe told the, the Mi- the, the Mitteler Rebbe, he says that the tallis, the tallis is a special thing. Says that when you put on tallis with special kavana, then you bring a light to the world that is so powerful that all the evil, they fall apart because of the great G- Hashem's light that's shining. And when the Mitteler Rebbe heard this, he understood the hint. He ran over to the Alter Rebbe's tallis, grabbed the tzitzit, and kissed it, kissed the tzitzit, and went straight back to the city where he was supposed to do the shlichus, and then he succeeded. It worked. And the Rebbe Rashab is telling this to the Friediker Rebbe. And the Friediker Rebbe heard the story, he understood what the hint was. So he also ran over to the Rebbe Rashab's tallis and grabbed the tzitzit, kissed them, and went straight back to Peterburg. When he went back to Peterburg, he knew that this time he's gonna succeed because the Rebbe Rashab told him that the

13:41 power of the tzitzit, the power of, of, of tallis can destroy evil. So he heard when he was in Peterburg that this Krebs, this Rabbi Krebs, is now in Peterburg. He's going to soon, in a, in a week or so, he's going to deliver, bring this whole, uh, pages, it's almost a whole booklet, with all his proofs of what the Jewish people do, what the Hasidim do, and how the government must change all these things. And he's staying in a very fancy hotel which the government is paying for, and he's staying there. So the Mitteler-- the Friediker Rebbe thought, "You know what? Let me go see if I can visit him. Let me try to visit him." He, uh, called up the phone in the hotel and asked to speak to Krebs. They handed the phone to Krebs. He says, "My name is, uh, Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn. I'm the son of the Lubavitcher Rebbe." Krebs knew who he was. He says, "I would..." So, so Krebs said, "Oh, it's nice, nice," said, "that you came. What, what can I do for you?" He says, "I'd like to meet with you. Is that okay? Can we meet in your hotel room?" And Krebs says, "Sure, no problem." So they made a time. The Friediker Rebbe went to the hotel room. And Krebs was nice to him, made him sit down on a chair, and he says, "So..." They start talking a little bit. And while they're talking, Friediker says to him, "Oh, so tell me, how

15:18 is your work going? I heard that you are writing a very long paper with a lot of pages for the government, and to tell the government, um, how they should change the way we, we, we teach Jewish children, and how to, to change the, the printing of Hasidic seforim. You wanna make changes, you know, so tell me how it's going." Krebs says, "Oh, I, I worked on it for many, many month. It's a long piece of..." And he was very proud of what he did. "I did so much research. I, I, I, I, I found so many proofs and, and, that, that, that, that this needs to be changed and that needs to be changed." And, and Friediker says, "Oh, that's very impressive. Can I see what you wrote? Can I-- Can you show me what the papers that you worked on?" He says, "Sure, sure, sure." He was very proud. He wanted the Friediker Rebbe to see and be impressed with his work. So he gave the Friediker Rebbe the paper, and he sat down on a chair. And Friediker Rebbe was sitting on the chair opposite him, a little bit further from him, and he just pretended that he's looking at the papers, and then suddenly out of nowhere, grabbed the papers, started tearing them in tiny pieces one after another. And Krebs was so shocked that he, he, like, couldn't move. He says, "What? What's going on here? What? What are you doing?" And before he was able to realize what happened,

16:41 the entire paper, all the documents and all the pages were shredded into tiny pieces. And Krebs got up. He was so mad at the Friediker Rebbe that he started screaming at him at top of his voice. He says, "How dare you do this? I worked for so many months, day and night, on this document, and look, you destroyed everything, and I have nothing left. I can't even give the government anything anymore." And he got so mad at the Friediker Rebbe that he slapped the Friediker Rebbe in his face. Gave him a huge slap in the face. Now, to give a slap to the Friediker Rebbe, that's-- You know, to give a Rebbe, a tzadik, a slap like this? But he was so mad at him for destroying the work that he did for so many month. And the Friediker Rebbe just got up and left the room quickly, went back to Lubavitch, went in to see his father, and told him what he had done, and that he doesn't think this is gonna happen. That's it. It's all destroyed. That he's not gonna be able to give it to the government, and everything will be fine now. Okay. Fried-- The Rebbe Rashab was very happy to hear this. A few days later, Krebs, who struck the Friediker Rebbe, gave him a real strong punch in his face, suddenly got very sick, and he got sick only for a few days, and then died. You, you mess with a tzadik, you slap a tzadik in the

18:16 face, that's it. In a very short time, he was dead. That shows the Mesirat Nefesh of the Friediker Rebbe, even when he was younger, and also shows us the great power of tallis. It says in the Zohar that the tallis has great power from Hashem. There's a great light in the tallis, and when you took the tallis and you put it around you... If you've seen your tatties and your zeidies, when they wrap themselves in the tallis in the morning before they put it on normally, they first wrap themselves around to say the beracha. That's a very special moment. This is when you wrap yourself in the kedushah and the holy light of Hashem. And that's the story.