166. The Arizal Saves a Community From Testing Poisonous Fish

00:15 Shalom Aleichem, kindalech. Morgen is the yortzeit of the Ari z"l. I'll share with you a story of the Ari z"l, an awesome story, heard, told by a Mekubal, Rabbi Moshe Yehudah Weinstock. He tells the story the way he read it in a sefer. In the days of the Ari z"l, there was a rich man that, um, didn't have children for many years, and Ari z"l finally gave him a bracha, and he davened for him. In his old age, this rich man, in his old age, got-- had a new-- had a baby boy for the first time. He invited the Ari to come to the bris. And because he was very wealthy, he was very rich, he prepared a very large seudah, big meal to cover the bris. On the day of the bris, all the guests gathered, and they waited for the Ari to show up. The Ari z"l promised to come to be the sandek, but the Ari z"l didn't show up. They waited for hours and hours and hours. The Ari z"l showed up literally mamash almost by the evening. You're not allowed to do a bris at night. You have to do a bris during the daytime. That's the halacha. So they showed up a little bit before sundown, so they could quickly do the bris before the sun sets and it's too late. So everybody was very surprised that the Ari z"l came so late in the day. People waited for many hours. After the bris, they sat down for the

01:54 meal, and the Ari z"l said that he's gonna tell the story why it took him so long to get to the bris. He says, "When I wa-- w-when I came to the bris, a long time, it was hours ago, I tried to come to the bris much earlier. Suddenly on the road, on the street I was walking, a dog came running towards me." It seems the Ari z"l was a big tzadik, and he understood the language of animals. As we know, great tzadikim were able to understand what animals say. And this dog was s-- telling the Ari z"l that he is a gilgul of the neshamah of Gehazi. You guys know who Gehazi was in Tanakh? He was the shamash, the helper, the aide of Elisha HaNavi. Elisha HaNavi was the talmid of Eliyah Hanavi, was a very famous navi, in the Sefer Melachim. Gehazi was his shamash. You guys know the story with Elisha HaNavi, where there was this woman who Elisha promised her a son, and she had a son, and then after a few years, the son died, and she came crying to Elisha, "You promised me that I'll have a child, and he will live, and now my son died suddenly." What did Elisha do? He told Gehazi, "Here's my staff, my stick," right? "With which he walks. You go and-- with the woman, you go to her house and put the staff on the baby to wake him up. 'Cause this staff, this stick, this cane can, can-- will wake

03:36 him up from his... He, it may bring him back to his mesim." What Gehazi do? He went, and it didn't work. So finally, he went back to Elisha, and Elisha came, and he himself lied down on top of the child and was breathing inside of him till the ba-- the child came back to life. But this Gehazi, as we know from Tanakh, was not a very nice person, was not a very good person. This dog that came running towards the Ari z"l said, "I'm, I'm a gilgul of the neshamah of Gehazi." Sometimes big resha'im who do a many big averos, uh, when they come up to Shomayim after a hundred and twenty years when they die, sometimes the only way to fix their neshamah, to clean their neshamah from all the averos... Because every avera creates like a very nasty, disgusting stain on the neshamah. That's why it's not worth doing averos. Avera leaves a very, very, very despicable, disgusting, uh, blemish and stain on the neshamah. And if a person does a lot of averos, sometimes the only way to clean his neshamah is to make the neshamah go down into the world again, but not to be born in the body of a human being, of a person, but to be born in the body of an animal. And that's very painful to the neshamah 'cause it's an animal, especially a dog. A dog, it's very... It's not... It's like taking a person and put him in a stable with cows and says,

05:15 "This is gonna be your home. These are gonna be your friends, the cows." I mean, it's very, very, very painful because it's not-- animals are not your equals. They're not someone you can be friends with. Anyways, he, he, he-- the, he says that there's such a thing in Kabbalah that big resha'im sometimes, they-- sometimes their neshamah have to go into the world back in the body of an animal. So this dog came running to the Ari z"l and says, "My neshamah is neshamah of Gehazi, and I have to please..." He knows the Ari z"l is a big tzadik, and he can help fix his neshamah, so he wouldn't be suffering again, uh, further, have to suffer i, in the body of this dog, so he can-- the good-- neshamah can go back up to, to Shomayim and be cleansed and clean and go to Gan Eden. So he asked the Ari z"l to help him, 'cause great tzadikim can do that. And, uh, so I asked him, "Why were you, um, brought back into the, the body of a dog? Why a dog?" He answered, "Because I'll tell you something that's not written in Tanakh. When my rebbe, my, uh, master Elisha sent me with his cane, with his staff to go and bring back to life the boy of the Shunammish..." That's w- what she was called in, in Tanakh, she's called the Shunammish, the mother of the child who E- for Elisha promised the child, and a, and a nurse happened, she had

06:47 a child, and then the child died when he was very young. So he told Gehazi, "Take my staff and put it on, on the body of the dead child, and the child will live." I was amazed. I said, "I, my, my, my master, he has a stick, a cane, and he can revive the dead?" So on his way to the, to the woman's house, he said, "Let me test it out." He saw a dead dog and took the staff, the cane of Elisha, and put it on the, on the body of the d- the dead dog, and look what happened. The dog came to life. And Gehazi says to the Arizal, "I was amazed. I couldn't believe my eyes. But because I used it..." You weren't supposed to use such a holy cane of the, of Elisha Hanavi for a dog. He didn't tell him to use it for a dog. This was... So because he did this with the dog, it no longer worked for the son of the Shunammish. That's why when he went to the house of the Shunammish, he put it on the child's body, it, it didn't, it didn't bring him back to life. So that's why he had to go back to Elisha, and Elisha had to come personally himself. He himself came to the house of the woman, went and took the child and, and made him alive, and then he gave him back to the mother, and the child was alive again. So he said, "Because I

08:09 had taken the, the cane from my master and I abused it, I, I d- did something terrible. I, I took, uh, I used it for a dog, which I wasn't supposed to do." So that's why he's was punished, as his neshamah came back in the body of a dog. So the Arizal told him, um, "So I told this dog, I told Gehazi, the neshamah which was in the dog, the way to fix your neshamah so you wouldn't have to suffer more in this body of the dog, so you could go back to Shamayim and go to Gan Eden, is that you will give... You have Mesirat Nefesh for the Jewish people. Give your life to the Jewish people." And he didn't tell him how. Now, the Arizal told this story when he came to the Bris late, and he says, "Why I came late, because I had this whole story with the dog. It had kept me away from the Bris, and it took me a long time to get here." As the Arizal finished telling the story, a big commotion was heard in the other room of the house. In one room, they were sitting and eating their meal, and the Arizal was telling the story, and in another room, there was a huge scream, and people were, like, making big commotion. And when they went out to see what's happening, they saw a dog burst into the house, and f- there was a big pot with fish being cooked for the meal, for

09:40 the big, uh, seudat mitzvah of the Brit Mila. And the dog jumped into the pot and died from the boiling pot, and of course, it spoiled all the fish. The fish became treif because the dog was cooked in that pot, and nobody could eat the, the fish. It turns out later when they checked that one of the fish, uh, uh, actually a lot of the fish, had poison in them. There was somebody, an anti-Semite, who wanted to kill the Jews, so he secretly managed to get fish f- filled with poison, and he sold it to the Jewish people who wanted to buy fish for the mitzvah of the seudat mitzvah of the Brit Mila. And Chas ve'Shalom, if everybody ate from that fish, people would have died. So this dog, when he heard from the Arizal earlier that if he's mesir nefesh to save the Jewish people, that will bring a tikkun to his neshamah, the neshamah of Gehazi will be able to go up to Shamayim and be cleansed from all the terrible things that he did. So he burst into the house and jumped into the boiling pot so nobody would be able to eat from the fish. And with that, he got... When the Arizal went outside, he said he wants to see the dog, the dead dog, and he saw the dog. He says, "This is the dog that I met on the ro- on the way earlier when I came to the Bris."