165. The Baal Shem Tov Saves a Neshomo Who Learned Torah While Eating Treif

00:15 Shalom Aleichem, kinderlech. If you remember a while ago, there was a story that I shared with you. It's called The Galach That Broke His Arm and His Leg. That story is part of a double story. That story was told by the Alter Rebbe to the Tzemach- his grandson, the Tzemach Tzedek. The Alter Rebbe heard it from the s- from the Reb Moshe Mashal, who was a schliach of the Baal Shem Tov, one of the youngest talmidim of the Baal Shem Tov, and he was a schliach of the Baal Shem Tov to perform this amazing story. The Alter Rebbe heard half the story from him, from Reb Moshe Mashal. The other half of the story he heard from the Mezritcher Maggid, his rebbe, and the Mezritcher Maggid was there at the time. The first half of the story I already told you in that story of the Galach that bro- broke the arm and the leg. Yes, as you probably remember, the Reb Moshe Mashal was sent by the Baal Shem Tov to carry out two missions, two shlichas. One shlichas was to go to Reb Chaim HaKohen Rapaport, the Rav, the big goon who was the Rav of the city of Lviv, and he send to give him a letter with a special mission that this Rav, Reb Chaim HaKohen, needs to carry out. But then he also gave him another shlichas, a letter he has to give to a tzadik nistar, a hidden tzadik. His name is Reb Chaim Yisroel, the pot maker. Nobody

01:46 knew who he was. People knew that he was just a simple Jew, a pot maker, but really he was a big tzadik, and he gave him a letter too. And Reb Chaim Yisroel is the one who went to the Galach, um, Dombovsky and then Mikulski. There were two Galach. You remember the stories that I told you, how one of them wanted to burn all the Seforim, the Gemaras that Yidden had. And, uh, and, um, Dombovsky, and this was, and there was Mikulski in Lviv. He wanted to burn Tehillat Ha'olam u'LeShabeach from the Siddurim. Anyways, one of them died. The other one broke his arm and his leg. That story I already told you. This is the story the Alter Rebbe heard from Reb Moshe Mashal. Now comes the second part of the story, which the Alter Rebbe heard from the Mezritcher Maggid, who, uh, the Talmud of the Baal Shem Tov, who was there at the time, which is the story about the Rav, Reb Chaim HaKohen Rapaport, and what was the shlichas the Alter Rebbe, the Baal Shem Tov gave him in this letter. So let me tell you that part of the story. It's an amazing story, and there's so much to learn from that story. Rebbe Chaim HaKohen was the Rav of Lviv. He was a big goon. He had a big city, a lot of Jews, big talmidi hakhamim in the city, and everybody respected him. And when this gezeira of the Galach, Mikulski, which I told that story to you

03:06 before, uh, he was very, very upset, and everybody was very upset, and they tried to fast and daven to Hashem to help them. And of course, then they saw the big miracle that the Baal Shem Tov performed when he sent a letter to Reb Chaim Yisroel, and Reb Chaim Yisroel was a schliach to go to the Galach, and that's, we know the rest of the story. After the miracle with the Galach, and everybody in Lviv was so happy and, and people were making a big Yom Tov, and they were, were making a big seudah to thank Hashem for the big miracles. Now came the second shlichas, the second mission the Baal Shem Tov asked Reb Chaim HaKohen. What was the shlichas? What was the shlichas? A whole different story. A whole different shlichas, a whole different story. In the letter that the Baal Shem Tov sent to Reb Chaim HaKohen through this Reb Moshe Mashal, he told Reb Chaim HaKohen that, "I want you to go on a Wednesday morning." This was the Wednesday after the Galach broke his leg and his arm. Few days later, the Galach broke his legs and his arm on a Sunday. On that Wednesday was the middle of Chodesh Tammuz, like this month, this month that we are in now. And he said, "You must go, uh, take a wagon and horses and go into the forest. Outside Lviv, there's a forest. Go a few miles into the forest. You'll travel and travel, and you'll get to a place

04:37 where you suddenly you'll see me standing," the Baal Shem Tov. How the Baal Shem Tov is gonna appear in the forest, nobody understands, but that's a moefes of the Baal Shem Tov. He says, "You'll see me standing there, and you'll know that this is the place you need to stop. I want you to bring with you a Rambam, the laws, the halachas of tefillah, of davening. In the first four perakim, you must sit down in that place and learn the first four perakim of Rambam. And I want you to know that you must go that Wednesday morning, and nothing should stop you. Even if it's thunder and lightning and rainstorm, it's terrible, don't stop. You must go there." Now, Reb Moshe Mashal was the messenger that the Baal Shem Tov sent to give the letter to Reb Chaim HaKohen, and he told him, "You must travel with the Rav to the forest, and you must make sure that the Rav, even if he's extremely tired, exhausted on Wednesday morning, he might go to sl- wake up in the morning and then fall asleep again because he's so exhausted. You must wake him up and don't let him go back to sleep. Make sure he eats breakfast, and make sure he gets on the road on time. He-- I need him, and he said, 'Daven, eats a breakfast, and then go on the road, and you go with him. And the entire time you go with him on the road, on the wagon, I want you

06:01 to say the following. I want you to read- The first Parasha of Bereshis, Baal Peh. Then you must read also Oz Yoshir. This is the song the Jewish people sang when they crossed the Yam Suf. And then you must also sing Baal Peh, the Shira, the song of Hazinu HaShamayim V'dabera, which Moshe Rabbeinu wrote for the Jewish people at the end of his life. And then after forty years in the Midbar, right before Moshe Rabbeinu passed away, he wrote a Shira, Hazinu HaShamayim. It's an amazing Shira. And he said you must say that as well, uh, during the entire trip till you get to the place where Rab Chaim HaKohen will know that he must stop there. And he told Rab Moshe Meshel also, "Please make sure that nothing will stop him, evil rain and thunder and lightning, nothing. Winds, storms, nothing should stop him. He must go." That was a very strange mission because it was the middle of Tammuz. Why would there be so much rain and storms? There was no, there was, there was no storms or rains in the middle of Tammuz, the middle of the summer. And also, Rab Chaim HaKohen used to get up every night at midnight to do Tikkun Chatzos. You know, great tzadikim, they get up in the middle of the night and they cry, sit on the floor, they cry for the Churban Beit Hamikdash. This is what great people do, and Rab Chaim HaKohen would do this every night. Then he wouldn't go back

07:19 to sleep. He would sleep the first half of the night. Middle of the night, he would get up, say Tikkun Chatzos and cry for the Churban Beit Hamikdash. Then he would lea- learn till the morning, and then he would daven. But he wouldn't, uh... Here, the Ba'al Shem Tov said to Rab Moshe Meshel, "You know, make sure that in the morning he gets up and he doesn't... So he doesn't, he doesn't fall asleep again." Rab-- Says the Ba'al Shem Tov to Rab Moshe, "I know he gets up at Tikkun Chatzos every night, but I want you to realize, I want you to realize that, um, he may be very tired. That day, he may have a very long day the day before, an exceptionally very difficult day. It might make him very tired, and therefore that morning, Wednesday morning, he might be ex- exceptionally in a very unusual way, very, very exhausted, and therefore he might fall asleep again, and you must make sure he doesn't do that." Uh, and that's exactly what happened. That Wednesday morning, uh, Rab Moshe Meshel realized that the Rab Chaim HaKohen was very tired. He went back to sleep in the morning, early, early morning because he was exhausted. And then came the time to get up. He woke up and he went back to sleep. So Rab Moshe Meshel stopped him. So exactly as the Ba'al Shem Tov predicted that he will be exhausted, and he was exhausted in unusual ways. Very unusual. Never happened to him before,

08:41 that this morning he was exceptionally exhausted and he couldn't get up. And Rab Moshe Meshel had to really, really force him to get up. And the Rav got up and he davened, and then he ate breakfast. And then when he was about to go out to the wagon to travel to the place where the Ba'al Shem Tov is gonna show up and he's gonna have to stop there and learn his Rambam, uh, suddenly the skies got covered with clouds, very dark clouds, and it began to pour and pour so much that it was flooding, flooding everywhere. And then there was thunder and lightning. And the horses, they got onto the wagon quickly. Ba'al Shem Tov said not to stop for anything, right? So the wagon driver whipped the horses and it kept moving, and then suddenly there was such a strong lightning and such noisy, noisy thunder that the whole trees, all the trees around were shaking and trembling, that the horses were so-- The horses were afraid. The horses were in such a-- so terrified that they didn't move. They didn't move. They stopped. And, and, and, and the wagon driver tried to whip them and they wouldn't move. They was-- They were like frozen from great fear. Finally, uh, Rab Moshe Meshel said to the wagon driver, "You know what? You go back. I'm gonna ride the horses." Because the wagon driver was also scared, and he was like screaming in fear because it was such unusual thunder and lightning that anybody there

10:07 would be scared, terribly scared. And so Rab Moshe Meshel kept whipping the horses until when it got a little bit less intense, the rain and the thunder and the lightning, the horses began to move. And so it took them a long time to travel. It was only a few miles. It took them hours and hours because in the middle of the road a w- a wheel broke down. They had to change the wheel. And then, uh, uh, um, something else broke in the wagon. They had to wait and go fix the, the, the wagon again. And then the horses wouldn't move. They got scared from something and they wouldn't move. Constantly problems and problems on the way. And then Rab Moshe Meshel, by mistake, the wagon fell into a ditch. It took them a long, long time to pull out the, the, the wagon and the horses from the ditch, and, uh, it was such a terrible time. It was-- took them till two in the afternoon. They left it early in the morning after Shacharit and after eating breakfast, but they arrived at two in the afternoon to a place was only a few miles away from Lviv. And Rab Chaim HaKohen said, "Oh, I see the sign that the Ba'al Shem Tov gave me, and this where we need to stop." And as they got off the wagon, Rab Chaim HaKohen stepped off the wagon, an incredible, scary, terrifying thunder, whoa, struck so hard that the horses started running away. They got so

11:35 scared that they're like running like mad. And, and the wagon driver started crying, "Rebbe, Rebbe, Rebbe," he said to the, the Rab Chaim HaKohen, "I'm so scared. I'm afraid. I'm afraid." Rab Chaim HaKohen said to him, "You know what it says in the Gemara? Hashem sometimes does lightning and thunder very loud so people would remember that He exists, that Hashem is here. We'll be afraid of Hashem, but we shouldn't be afraid of the thunder. You be afraid of Hashem." Finally, the Rab Chaim HaKohen took out his Gemara, his Rambam, and as he sat down to learn- The skies cleared and the rain stopped, and all my thunder and lightning suddenly all stopped. And the place where he stopped and sat down was a place that was an open space inside the forest, a lot of trees around and around. And you could see that there's some pieces from an old buildings, houses, like one or two houses, maybe one big house, a big mansion that used to be here, but it's no longer there. You only see in the ground like little pieces of stone which were left over from a house, from a huge big mansion house that used to be here. Now, before they left, the Baal Shem Tov also said to Reb Moshe Meshel to make sure you should bring a cup with you on the way, because when the Rav, Reb Chaim Mekorin gets there, first he's going to have to daven Mincha. Before you daven Shachris, Mincha, Ma'ariv, you have

13:09 to wash your hands. I hope, kinderlach, you know that, that before you daven Shachris, Mincha, Ma'ariv, it says in Shulchan Aruch, you've got to take a cup and wash your hands six times. That's the halacha. So the Baal Shem Tov said, take the cup with you. Make sure that if the Rav wants to daven Mincha, you'll find a well somewhere and you give him water so he can wash his hands. And also, the Rav might become very thirsty from learning so much, so you give him, you bring him some water so he can say a bracha. And that's exactly what happened. The Rav learned for four hours. The first four perakim, he completely forgot what goes on around him. He just sat there and learned and learned and learned. And in the meantime, while the Rav was learning the Rambam, Reb Moshe Meshel was told by the Baal Shem Tov before, before he left, he should say Tehillim. He said Tehillim once, twice, three times. It took him a few times. He learned the whole Tehillim while the Rav was learning the Rambam. And after learning four perakim, he finished. The Rav said, I'm very thirsty and I want to drink. So the Moshe Meshel and the Balagola, the wagon driver, went to find a well. They found a well not far from that place where they stayed. And they brought him the cup of water. The Rav made a bracha, Shehakol, and they said Amen. And he drank. And then he washed his hands

14:27 with the same cup and davened Mincha. And when they were done, they drove back to Lviv and they came back home. It was Wednesday night already now. And the Rav said to Reb Moshe Meshel, maybe stay to me by me for Shabbos. The Moshe said, no, the Baal Shem Tov gave me strict instructions to come right back. And he told me to come right back to Mezhirich. And so I must leave tonight. Reb Moshe Meshel left that night, went back to Mezhirich. As he arrived in Mezhirich, oh, the Baal Shem Tov told him, how are you going to go back to Mezhirich? He told him, you go in Lviv, you go a little bit outside Lviv, you'll see a wagon will be waiting for you. Don't talk to anybody in the wagon. Don't ask who the wagon driver, the people that are in the wagon. Just keep quiet. Don't speak to them. And they'll drop you off by Mezhirich and you'll get off. When he came to Mezhirich, he saw, came to the shul of the Baal Shem Tov. He saw the Baal Shem Tov behind the window. And he motioned to him to come closer and said to him, listen, now what I want you to do, he arrived in the morning. So he said to him, I want you to say Tehillim three times. Don't talk to anyone until you finish all three times of Tehillim. It says two times before davening and one time after davening. And then he says that then

15:50 you can talk to people. And the Baal Shem Tov, that's it. That was the shlichas, the whole shlichas of Moshe Meshel. Nobody knew what was the mystery behind this strange shlichas that the Baal Shem Tov sent Reb Chaim Mekorin into the forest. But a few months later, Reb Chaim Mekorin showed up in Mezhirich, came for a Shabbos. And he told the Baal Shem Tov he wants to thank him for giving him this shlichas. Because after, since he was there in the forest and learned the Rambam, the four perakim of Rambam, something happened to him. He's changed. He's not the same person. His learning has changed completely. He feels like he can understand Gemara Torah so much clearer than he ever before. And his davening and learning his mitzvahs, his avodas Hashem is with so much greater excitement. He never had such excitement before. He doesn't know what happened. There must be a very holy shlichas that he had, even though he doesn't understand what that shlichas was about. But he said, I can feel, he says, that I'm a completely different person. Baal Shem Tov listened, didn't say anything. But on Shabbos by the meal, the Baal Shem Tov told the story and he revealed the story behind this shlichas. And here is the story. Baal Shem Tov said like this. This story with Moshe Meshel and Reb Chaim Mekorin and the Baal Shem Tov, Tov Ku Futas. 160 years before Tov Ku Futas, there was a Jew by the name Reb Shmuel Tzadok. This

17:26 was in the year Shin Nun Tes or Shin Samach, around that time. This Reb Shmuel Tzadok lived in Lviv, in Lemberg. Before he moved to Lemberg, he lived in Prague and he was a Talmud of the Maharal. This Reb Shmuel Tzadok was a big goon and knew a lot of Torah and ruled a lot of chidushim Torah. But he had one problem. He was a misnagid to the limud, to the learning of mussar and the learning of Kabbalah. As you know, the Maharal was teaching not only Gemara to his talmidim, he also taught him Kabbalah. And he was against it, and especially learning mussar. Mussar is where people learn seforim that deal with how to become an anav and how to be a patient person and how to be jealous, how to love every person, how to improve yourself to become a good person with good middas, how to make your middas good middas. And this is a study which many Jews learn. It's not only they're learning Gemara and they understand deep concepts in Gemara, which is a lot of fun for people that are very smart, but they also learn how to be a good person. But this, Shmuel Tzadik, didn't like learning Mussar, and he actually would laugh at people who have learned Mussar. He said, "The main thing is learning Gemara. Be very smart and write Chidushim." He... That's all he cared about. And another thing that's very interesting, that Shmuel Tzadik, because he didn't like learning Mussar and didn't like

18:51 learning Kabbalah, which makes you more of a Yiras Shamayim, he was actually not such a Yiras Shamayim, and he loved learning other Hochmas, other philosophies, like engineering and mathematics and other stuff that the Goyim learn, that he was more interested in that. And also whenever there was a Shaila in Halacha, he would always be lenient. "Yeah, it's probably right." If there was... You know, he never was Machmir, never was strict. He was always more lenient. And sometimes he was a little bit too lenient. And one time, actually, he was so lenient that, uh, he paskened to someone a Shaila, and he said that, "This is good, this is kosher, this is fine." And then they found out from the Rav in the city that it actually wasn't fine. And Shmuel Tzadik was just being very, very lenient and very, you know, he wasn't a big Yiras Shamayim. He wasn't afraid to pasken things which are not true. And the Maharal called him over, and the Maharal, his Rebbe, was so upset by this that he, he gave him, he gave him over the head and said to him, "How can you do this? This is terrible." And Shmuel Tzadik said, "I'll prove to you that I was right. The Psak Halacha was correct." And the Maharal was very upset with him, and, and, and in the end, Shmuel Tzadik had to leave Prague. He left Prague with his two sons, Moshe and Yehuda Aryeh. He had two sons. Maharal was upset with him, so he

20:10 had to leave. He moved to Lvov. In Lvov, he, uh, Shmuel Tzadik was also a very rich man in big businesses. So in Lvov, he started-- also continuing the business, and his son, Rabbi Yehuda Aryeh, was the one who was mainly running the business. And he, Shmuel Tzadik, would learn. And also his son Moshe was very, very smart. He loved learning. He was a book in Shas, Bava, Yerushalmi. Rabbi Moshe, the son of Shmuel Tzadik, was also very, very smart. But he was like his father. He hated Kabbalah, he hated Mussar, and he was, like, very... His Yiras Shamayim was very, very weak. Like, he was always very lenient about everything. "Oh, yeah, it's probably okay." If he wasn't sure, if he wasn't sure if something is kosher or not, he would say, "Eh, probably it is kosher," because he wa- he didn't have Yiras Shamayim. Uh, Yehuda Aryeh was different. The other son, Yehuda Aryeh, was much more Yiras Shamayim, and he loved Kabbalah, and he... Even though he wasn't as smart as his brother Moshe and didn't know how to learn so much, but, but he was more of a Yiras Shamayim, and he was-- learned a lot of Mussar, learned Kabbalah, and he... So, um, when, when Shmuel Tzadik died, uh, Rabbi Moshe decided to move out of Lvov, and he moved into the forest. This is the-- And he built himself a big, big house. He had a lot of money. His father was a rich man. Built a big house,

21:38 and he settled in that house, and he learned Gemara, Tosfos, Rashi, Rambam all day long. But he slowly, slowly stopped keeping Torah and mitzvos until he stopped being Mechallel Shabbos and didn't put on tefillin, no mezuzah on the door. He became eats, uh, treif, chazer, mamish chazer. His wife, the wife of Rabbi Moshe, was actually a very good woman with Yiras Shamayim, was very upset by this, and she would get sick, and she got a heart attack, and she died of a great pain of seeing her husband becoming... But they didn't have any children. So Rabbi, Rabbi Moshe married a, a, a non-Jewish woman, and he continued to eat treif, Mechallel Shabbos, and he stopped believing in Hashem. And he, since he had a lot of money, he had a lot of parties. He would invite the pritzim, the pritz and then the pritzess and their wives to come and celebrate and party, make a big party and drink treif wine, and they would get drunk like, like the Goyim. Yehuda Aryeh, the brother of Moshe, saw his brother's behavior, he got very upset, and he decided he can't stay in Lvov, and he moved back. He told his son, he already has grandchildren then, Rabbi Yehuda Aryeh, and he ran-- he had a big business. So he told his sons, "Listen, I'm gonna move back to Prague because I'm hurting for my brother. I can't watch him like this." Uh, Yehuda Aryeh got sick from it. So his sons told him, "Yeah, you're right.

23:16 You should move back to Prague so you won't see how your brother behaves." And when he took with him a few of his grandsons, so they would also go to Prague, and they would learn in the yeshiva of Rabbi Eliyahu Bal Shem. At that time, Rabbi Eliyahu Bal Shem was in, um, in Prague. Well, he came to Prague later, but at first he was in another city. But-- And he ended up coming to Prague, and the grandsons of Rabbi Shmuel, Rabbi Yehuda Aryeh, learned in the yeshiva of Rabbi Eliyahu Bal Shem. Eliyahu Bal Shem was one of the great, great Mekubalim that started teaching in his yeshiva not only Gemara, but Rashi and Tosfos and Rambam. He also taught them Kabbalah. Many were against him, of course. Many Rabanni were against him. But the Tosfos Yom Tov and the, and the Maharal, they all supported Rabbi Eliyahu Bal Shem, and they said, "No, what he's teaching is very good, and great, uh, tzadikim and Yiras Shamayim will come out of his yeshiva." So the yeshiva started in-- was in Prague, and Rabbi Yehuda Aryeh's grandsons were talmidim of Rabbi Eliyahu Bal Shem. Now, Rabbi Yehuda Aryeh forgot about his brother, Rabbi Moshe, after a while, and he felt better. He wasn't... He, he recovered from his sickness. But after a while, an old man in Pra- in, in Prague who still remembered Rabbi Shmuel Tzadik went over to Rabbi Yehuda Aryeh and says, "Listen, I still remember your father, Shmuel Tzadik, and how he was

24:38 lenient about Halacha, and his Yiras Shamayim wasn't so great. And even though he was a big Goan, but he was... You know, he got into fights with the Maharal, and, and I, I feel so bad." And he kept reminding Rabbi Yehuda Aryeh about his father and also about his brother Moshe. One day, one of the grandsons of Rabbi Yehuda Aryeh was in the room when this old man kept telling Yehuda Aryeh, reminding him of his father, who was, uh, lacking Yiras Shamayim, and, and then his brother became completely not from... And this, uh, Moshe was horrified. "What?" M- He was so pained by this, and he told his grandfather, "What happened? What happened to your brother, to my granduncle?" And he told him, "Yeah, he's not firm. He's, he's, he's, he's chaser in everything." And Rav Moshe was so hurt by this, he went to Reb Eliyahu Bal Shem, his Rosh Yeshiva, and he said to him, "What can I do to help my granduncle?" And, and the Reb Eliyahu Bal Shem told him, "You go to Lwow. You go to his house." You see, Reb Moshe, even though he wasn't firm, but whenever Talmud Chacham came by his house, he would be machnis orch, achlasat orchim was-- He was big in achlasat orchim. He would invite him, give him a special room. He's like, "You can't eat in my house because I'm treif, but you can sleep in my house as long as you want." He would really take care of them. And he

26:00 was a Talmud Chacham. He would talk to them in learning. He loved learning, talking to them learning. 'Cause you have to understand, Reb Moshe loved learning Gemara. So even though he was a Rosh Yeshiva, but he learned Gemara all day. He even wrote Chidushim on Shabbos. He had Chidushim, so he would write it down on Shabbos. So this Rav Moshe, the grandson of Yehuda Aryeh and the grandnephew of, of Reb Moshe, went to the Reb Eliyahu Bal Shem and said, "What can I do?" He says, "You-- I'll give you special kavanot you should think about in davening when you... I want you to go to the house of Reb Moshe. Don't tell him that you are his nephew. He won't know who you are. And you tell him you wanna stay there for a while. He'll-- He's gonna give you a nice room. And I give you a special kavanah that you should have when you daven in his house. You say, 'Zecher avot uvcho yabiu, v'zidkotcha yiranenu.'" In Ashrei that we say, we say twice Ashrei in Shacharit, once before Borchu and one Ashrei after Shemoneh Esreh, after Tachnun. The sh- the Ashrei after Tachnun, that's where you should have this kavanah. Zecher avot uvcho, this is a kavanah. When you have this kavanah and you think about a person, uh, during the kavanah, then that person suddenly brings back his memory. He begins to remember everything that happened to him from the day he was born until that day. It's a, it's, um,

27:18 an amazing thing, uh, which great Mekubalim know about. They know how to do this. He taught him the kavanot and then told him also, "You should put a mezuzah on his door, and you'll see changes in him." And so Rav Moshe traveled. He learned the kavanot that his Rebbe taught him and traveled to the place outside Lwow, came to the door of his granduncle, didn't tell him who he was. And when the Reb, Reb Moshe saw a guest, a Yid, a Talmud Chacham, he invited him very friendly. He was very nice to him. He says, "Give him a bed. Please, sit down. You can't eat in my house. I'm treif, but, but you can sleep here. No problem." And Rav Moshe says, "Don't worry. I have food. I don't need food from you." Reb Eliyahu Bal Shem told the Rav, Rav Moshe before he went to his granduncle's house, "You shouldn't-- Now you shouldn't eat there, even water. Don't drink even water in his house. Nothing. Nothing." He gave him a mezuzah, and he should put the mezuzah on the front door. Rav Moshe went into the... When he came into the room where his granduncle was sitting, he saw him learning Gemara, Gemara Sanhedrin. And he was sitting without a yarmulke. No beard, no yarmulke, nothing. And he said to his uncle, "Aren't you ashamed to learn Torah like this without a yarmulke, nothing? With long hair like this? I mean..." And, and Rav, and Rav Moshe said to him, "Why? What's wrong with

28:42 that? I love learning." He said, "But it's a chutzpah. Sitting, sitting before Hashem learning His Torah, and you're not wearing a yarmulke on your head." He said, "Well, why chutzpah? Uh, it's only a chutzpah for somebody who believes in Hashem. I don't believe in Hashem, so I can sit like that. It's fine." Rav Moshe, Rav, Rav Moshe, the nephew, heard this. He was so shaken. He couldn't believe his ears. That means the guy said he doesn't believe in Hashem? He was so pained inside. He felt such pain inside. Oy vey, that means his granduncle fell so low. He's such a low, low, low place of tumah and, and is a rosha. Ach, how terrible. He, he, he like he went to his room and cried. He cried. Then he saw towards the evening this noise outside. He looked out, out through the window, and he sees two f- two fancy wagons, but every wagon has four white horses. And there's these, uh, noblemen like, uh, princes and their wives and the family who are stepping out, and there are servants jumping off the, the, the wagon to help the princes get off the wagon. And these are fancy, rich people that are coming to visit Rav Moshe. He couldn't understand what was going on here. Well, Rav Moshe invited them. Every night they would come and s- and party with him. And Rab- Rab- Rab- uh, Rav Moshe, the nephew, sat in his room, and he listening to the noise, the singing, goyische music, and

30:11 the drinking, and the screaming, and they're all drunk. And late at night, like one o'clock in the morning, everybody's goes home, and the, the, the, the, the servants are carrying their masters, the rich people, on their, uh, on their hands because they're so drunk they can't walk, and they're carrying them to the wagons and taking them home. And then he hears Rab- Rab- Moshe, his granduncle, vomiting and throwing up from so much drinking. Rab- Rav Moshe, the nephew, heard this. He was so crying so hard. Said, "Oi, Tata, what, what, what, what happened to him?" And Rav Moshe kept learning Torah the rest of the time. When he had free time, he learned Torah the whole day. Anyways, came to Ashrei. The Bal She-- The Reb Eliyahu Bal Shem told him what to have kavanah, yed kavanah in Ashrei. "Zecher avot uvcho yabiu, v'zidkotcha yiranenu." And he thought about the kavanah. And then he went quickly, took a mezuzah and put on the front door. Rabbi Moshe, the granduncle, saw the mezuzah, suddenly started crying. He said, "Oi, so thirty years I haven't seen a mezuzah. I haven't seen tefillin, I haven't seen this." And suddenly Rabbi Avraham Moshe see that his granduncle, Rabbi Moshe, is beginning to remember things. He starts talking about things that happened when he was very, very young. "I still remember my mother, who was a very, very big yirat shamayim." He said, "My father was not such yirat shamayim, but my mother was very much, and she would pick

31:40 me up every morning when I got out of bed, and every night before I went to bed, she would make me kiss the mezuzah. And my father would laugh at her and say, 'Why kiss a mezuzah? Mezuzah is just made from the parchment, from the skin of a behemah, of an animal. Why you should kiss the skin of a behemah?'" Like he didn't believe there was kedushah to a mezuzah. He was-- Uh, and, and, and his mother was very, very upset that the father said such things. And, and he w-- And, and but he still remembers his mother would make him kiss the mezuzah every single day. He rem-- And then he started remembering other memories of his mother, that his mother taught him things. And suddenly he began, like, to cry and cry and cry from all his memories. He remembered the beautiful times when he, when he would go to cheder and, and, and, and the Shabbos and, and, and, and everything else in Yiddishkeit. Until he said to his nephew, Rabbi Avraham Moshe, "Please, can you give me your tallit and tefillin? I wanna daven." Out of nowhere. Rabbi Avraham Moshe was shocked. He quickly brought his tallit and tefillin and gave it to him, and he heard from behind the door that Rabbi Moshe, his granduncle, was, was davening with great, great, great kavana and is, uh, very emotional. He's crying and crying hysterically. That's when Rabbi Avraham Moshe realized that the kavana he had by the pasuk really worked, and

33:02 that Rab-- his uncle, Rabbi Moshe, is feeling a change. Something is happening in him. Something, a major change. He's feeling this incredible sense of teshuva. And Rabbi Aveh- Rabbi Moshe stayed in the house for a little while, a few more days. After a week, Rabbi Moshe said to Rabbi Moshe, "Um, I, I need to sell the house. Um, I give away my dog." He's gonna divorce his shiksa wife, and he's gonna send away all the servants and, and sell the house and go to Lvov, back to the city. He wants to become a baal teshuva. He was already in his eighties. Rab- Rabbi Moshe was already in his eighties, an old man. He went, and that's what he did. He went back to Lvov, sold everything, and got himself a house next to the shul. He didn't speak to anyone, just learned all day and davened and said Tehillim. And he gave a lot of tzedakah to different places. And a few months later, he died. He died a baal teshuva. And then Rabbi Avraham Moshe went back to, um, Prague, to Rabbi Yisroel Ber Odesser, and told him, "I fulfilled your mission, your shlichus." And, uh, he told him what happened. The Baal Shem Tov finished to tell this whole story that happened a hundred and sixty years earlier, and told to Rabbi Chaim HaKohen Rappaport, "It's been a hundred and seventeen years since Rabbi Moshe died. His neshamah was suffering in Gehennom for a hundred and seventeen years. He couldn't get a tikkun.

34:40 He couldn't be-- His neshamah couldn't go to Gan Eden because there was so much evil and so many aveiras that he did. But now is the time has come where he finished. His neshamah has been cleansed finally, and he can go to Gan Eden. But the-- all the Torah that he learned..." Torah, even a rasha learns Torah, there's kedushah to the Torah, but, but the k- the, because he's a rasha, the, the, the Torah is, is steeped and sunk into tumah, and it can't come out of the tumah. We need to free and redeem the, the, the Torah from the tumah. So that's why he sent Rabbi Chaim HaKohen, that he should go to that place which used to be the house of this Rabbi Moshe, and you could see the remnants, the pieces on the floor, which was still the leftovers from the house. And I want that Rabbi Chaim HaKohen, through his learning of Rambam, Hilchot Tefillah, he will elevate all the Torah that Rabbi Moshe learned there that was stuck, couldn't go up to Shamayim, back to Hashem." Which is Torah, when a Yid learns Torah, all the kedushah goes up to Hashem. But because Rabbi Moshe was so evil, was such a rasha, all this Torah he learned got stuck down here in klipah, the, the, the forces of klipah, of tumah, didn't let the Torah go up to Hashem. And when Rabbi Chaim HaKohen learned the Rambam, he was able to get all the Torah out of the, the prison

36:05 of tumah and klipah and bring it up to Hashem. And then the neshamah of Rabbi Moshe will be able to go to Gan Eden. Then the Baal Shem said one more thing: "Independently of Rabbi Moshe's neshamah, I need Rabbi Chaim HaKohen to do another mission. There is a well not far from the property of Rabbi Moshe. That well has been there from the time of creation, five thousand seven hundred and nineteen years, kuf-yud-tes. And that ha-- Five thousand five hundred and nineteen years, right? Kuf-yud-tes, the time of the Baal Shem Tov. And, and that well had water in it for so many years, but nobody, no Jew, has ever done a mitzvah with it. Done a mitzvah like washing hands for, for davening or drinking and saying a bracha first, and that water couldn't be elevated to Hashem." You know what it says in the Gemara, that the water down here on the wa-- on the earth is crying to Hashem, "Hashem, we wanna be elevated to you." And that well was never, never, never used for a mitzvah. All over the world, wells, you know, a Jew comes by and uses the well and drinks, says a bracha, you elevate the water in the well. This well has never been, never been used for anything of kedushah, of holiness, of a mitzvah. "So I wanted Rabbi Chaim HaKohen to also help this well. So I knew he's gonna be thirsty, so I want him to get water from that well and say a bracha,

37:36 and also wash his hands for Mincha, so this will also be used, the well, for a mitzvah, and that will elevate the well for after five thousand and five hundred and nineteen years, the well would finally be elevated to kedushah."