190. How Reb Pinchos Koritzer Was Born

00:16 Shalom Aleichem, kinderlekh. I wanted to tell you the story of Reb Pinchas Koritzer, how he was born. Reb Pinchas Koritzer, I'm sure you heard of him, and I already told you stories about him. He was one of the great tzaddikim of the talmidim of the Baal Shem Tov, and the Alter Rebbe visited him several times and learned from him a way of serving Hashem. This Reb Pinchas Koritzer, uh, was-- well, his father and grandfather were before the Baal Shem Tov. So his grandfather's name was also Reb Pinchas, Reb Pinchas Shapiro. He was like the Maggid of Shklov. The grandfather of Reb Pinchas Koritzer was known Reb Pinchas Shapiro, the Maggid of Shklov. A Maggid is someone who gives drashes to inspire people to do, to daven, and to learn. That's called a Maggid. And he would also go from town to town, and people would pay him something, and he would give a speech and inspire people to do Torah mitzvahs and to daven well and so on. This Reb Pinchas had a very unusual minhag. This Reb Pinchas of Shklov, the grandfather of Reb Pinchas Koritzer, had a very strange minhag. He... All day long, he would look for Jews that nobody wanted to talk to because they were such bad Jews. They would do so many averot. They would do-- They, they didn't wanna do any mitzvahs. They, like, wanted to live like Goyim. They wanted to be like the Goyim. They wanted to forget even that they are Jewish. They didn't wanna

01:50 have anything to do with Torah mitzvahs. They would eat chazer on Yom Kippur, and they would do-- They wouldn't put on tefillin, nothing, no Shabbos, no tefillin, wouldn't go to shul. The Jews, they just lived a, a life of averot. And he would find these Jews, and he would talk to them, and he would tell them, "I wanna make a deal with you. You are going to say Shema Yisrael Hashem Elokeinu Hashem Echad once a day. That's it. That's all you have to do. Then you can do all your averot all day. You can be mechallel Shabbos. You can eat on Yom Kippur. I'm just asking one thing, that every day, every single day in the morning, say Shema Yisrael Hashem Elokeinu Hashem Echad. And I promise you," he says, "in return for that, that I will give you a big portion of my Olam Haba for you, that you will go to Olam Haba." This was a very, very strange thing to say because these people was... Did so many averot. How can you promise such a person he's gonna go straight to Olam Haba for just, for saying Shema Yisrael once a day? But he would tell them, "I'll give you my Olam Haba." And many of those people agreed to say Shema Yisrael once a day, and from that, they became baal teshuvas. Because when you do a mitzvah over and over again, it somehow wakes up the neshamah, and the neshamah suddenly wants to do teshuva and feels like it needs

03:24 to get rid of all the averot and start doing mitzvahs and get closer to Hashem. And many people like that did teshuva because of this. There was once a woman, she was a very wealthy, very rich woman. She was Jewish, but most people didn't even know she was Jewish because she was s-so evil. She did so many bad things. She, she was a... She, she did all the averot in the, in the Torah. And she... And more than that, she was like a paritz. She owned a lot of the villages, and she wouldn't talk to any of the Jews. She, like, acted like an antisemite, you know, who hated Jews. So that made a lot of Jews think that maybe she's not Jewish. But the Reb Pinchas of Shklov, the grandpa-- grandfather of Reb Pinchas Koritzer, he knew that she's Jewish, and he tried all kinds of ways of meeting her until one day he met her and he started talking to her. And he convinced her to say Shema once a day, and she agreed, and she became a big baalat teshuva who gave a lot of tzedakah from all her wealth. So this was a way, the way he... His way of avodat Hashem. He would serve Hashem by finding the biggest reshaim, making them do one mitzvah, saying Shema, and from that they did teshuva. And that's what the Rebbe does. The Rebbe tells us to put on tefillin on a Jew who doesn't even keep Shabbos, doesn't do anything. But by

04:50 this one mitzvah, you're connecting him to Hashem, and that mitzvah will hopefully wake up his neshamah, and he is gonna wanna do teshuva. And in fact, that's what happened. You see thousands of people that became baalat teshuvas, and many of them started because they... Somebody, uh, uh, some Lubavitcher bochur or, or a person decided to ask him to put on tefillin, and he put on tefillin, and that's made him become a baal teshuva. Another minhag this father, this grandfather of, of Reb Pinchas Koritzer had, the Reb Pinchas of Shklov, that he had a special, uh, rachmanus on animals. He saw many of the goyische peasants would beat their animals when the animals didn't act exactly the way they wanted. So when he saw, for example, a peasant, uh, using his bulls, his ox, his oxen to carry wood, and in the wintertime, the, the, the f- the, the, the soil was very muddy and v-very hard for the ox to, to, to walk smoothly and fast, and the p- Peasants, the Goyish peasants would beat their ox. He should go faster, but it was very hard. They had never rachmanus on the animal, and he, Reb Pinchas from Shklov, was a very, um... He felt very bad for the animals. Tzar baalei chaim, it says in the Torah, you're not allowed to cause pain to an animal. Hashem created those, those creatures. Hashem created those animals, and their pain is also important. So he would buy up all the wood from this peasant, and then

06:30 he would put the wood on the ground, spread them out so that the, the, the bull would walk on top of the logs of wood, so he wouldn't be stuck in the mud. And then the farmer wouldn't have to beat him, because he so much didn't like the fact that the farmer would beat these, these animals. The farmer, the owner of the ox, would beat his ox. So he put wood on the floor. He bought it from this, from this farmer and then put it on the floor, and the cow would be able to walk it. It says his Talmud, one of his talmidim, that one of the talmidim of Reb Pinchas Koritzer said that in that zechus, he married to have, um, a grandson, a tzadik like Reb Pinchas Koritzer. Now, the son of Reb Pinchas of Shklov was a man by the name Reb Avraham Abba Shapiro. He was the father of Reb Pinchas Koritzer. And Reb Avraham Abba was a rabbi in a small shtetl, and he was a very big Talmud chacham. But he was also a very, a big tzadik. One morning, he was going to shul. He met a Goy who had a piece of gold that he found on the ground. This Goy found a piece of gold, and he said to Reb Pinchas, uh, to Avraham Abba, the father of Reb Pinchas Koritzer. He said to Reb Pinchas, "I'd like to..." Because he knew that Reb Avraham Abba was a very honest person, and he knew that

08:04 he would sell him... If he sell him the gold, Avraham Abba would pay him the right price, what it's worth. Uh, the other Goyim would trick him and deceive him, and you know, they would steal it away from him. So he preferred to sell it to Reb Avraham Abba. So he saw Reb Avraham Abba, but Reb Avraham Abba was on his way to shul in the morning for Shacharis, and this Goy, uh, went over to Reb Avraham Abba and said to him, "I would rather sell it to you, and I'll sell it to you for whatever the cost is. I wouldn't charge you too much. Uh, but I'd rather sell it to you than to sell to my friends, the Goyim, because they're, they're gonna cheat me and lie to me, and they're gonna take my money away." Reb Avraham Abba had a minhag that before when he went... In the morning, he went to shul. On his way to shul, he wouldn't talk to anyone because he wanted to stay focused on getting up in the morning, now I'm going to shul to daven to Hashem, and nothing matters. You know, nobody, no business, no money. I didn't wanna talk about anything. First thing in the morning, you go and daven. So he wouldn't talk before davening. So he hinted to the Goy that he should come to him back in an hour when he's finished davening. In the meantime, the Goy didn't wanna wait. He sold it to another Goy. So after davening,

09:26 Reb Avraham Abba found out that the Goy already sold it. "Okay," he said, "fine." That night, Reb Avraham Abba saw his father, Reb Pinchas of Shklov, and Reb Pinchas of Shklov said to him... Reb Avraham Abba was already in Olam HaEmes. And he said to him, he said to his son, "Reb Avraham Abba, you should know that today you caused a big commotion in Gan Eden, in, in, in the higher worlds, in Shamayim, in the heavens. Why? Because of the, of the Mesirut Nefesh you had not to speak before davening. And even though you could have made a lot of money by buying this piece of gold, you didn't compromise, and you did go to shul, and then you lost the gold. You didn't get to buy the gold. So in, in, in, in Shamayim, it was a very, very big simcha. And, uh, and in that zechus, they decided in the, in the heavens, in Shamayim, that you should have a very, very great son who will bring light to the, to the world." And that was... The son was Reb Pinchas of Shklov. And it's interesting that once there was a big fire that burned down Reb Avraham Abba's house. This was before Reb Pinchas was born. His whole house burned down, and his wife, the wife of Reb Avraham Abba, her name was Rochel Sheindel Sara. She was very upset that the whole house burned down, but the reason she was upset was not so much for the house. She was upset

11:02 because she had a special book that she owned which shows her yichus. Right? She was a descendant and, and who she came from, and the great tzadikim and rabbonim that were her ancestors. She had a, a whole book with her yichus, and that was all burned in the fire, and she was very upset about it. So her husband, Reb Avraham Abba, comforted her and said, "You know, I want you to know that we will have a son. I was promised by my father in the dream. I will have a son that will be a great son, that will bring, bring, bring light to many, many Jews and be a big tzadik. And you know what? We'll start a new yichus from him. He'll be the big yichus because he'll be a big tzadik." And that's exactly what happened in the year Taf Peh Heh. Twenty-seven years after the Baal Shem Tov was born, Reb Pinchas Koritzer was born to his father, Reb Avraham Abba, and his mother, Rochel Sheindel Sara, and he became the famous, famous tzadik, Reb Pinchas Koritzer.