201. The Rebbe Maharash Reveals The Future To Rebbetzen Rivkah

00:15 Shalom Aleichem. I wanna share with you a story with the Rebbe Maharash and the Rebbetzin Rivkah. We just had the birthday of the Rebbe Maharash on Beis Iyar. The Rebbe Maharash used to go for a walk every day in the morning. He would finish davening early, and he would go for a walk. What does it mean for a walk? He wouldn't walk on his feet. He would... He had a special wagon driver, a baal hagolah, Ivan, and he would take the Rebbe all by himself. The Rebbe didn't want anyone to go with him. He would take him on a ride on the wagon outside the city of Lubavitch. There was a big forest outside the city, and the Rebbe, the Rebbe Maharash would tell the wagon driver, Ivan, to s-stop by the side of the forest, and the Rebbe Maharash would get off the wagon, and he would tell Ivan, "You stay here with the wagon and the horses, and I will go inside the forest for a little while, and then I'll come back, and you'll take me back home." He did this every single morning. He went to the forest for a few hours, then came back, and no one was allowed to go with the Rebbe Maharash. Only Ivan was the only one who stayed, uh, next to the forest, and he was able to see how the Rebbe goes inside the forest. Now, the Hasidim very much wanted to know what the Rebbe Maharash was doing. For several hours, he goes

02:02 alone into the forest, and then after a few hours, he comes back and goes home. What does he do in the forest? But of course, the Rebbe Maharash told Ivan he's not allowed to tell anyone anything. Anything he sees, he's not allowed to tell. Now, what is it? What did he see which nobody else knew, only Ivan knew about it? That the Rebbe Maharash would go into the forest, deep in the forest, and Ivan could see where he would stop near a tree, and the Rebbe Maharash would sit down by the tree. And suddenly, the Rebbe Maharash would start crying, would cry and cry and cry. And then he would motion with his hand, and ants, little tiny ants, would crawl all over his body, and he didn't do anything to push them away. He let them crawl over his body, and he just cried. Ivan couldn't see what he was doing, if he was davening. All he saw is the Rebbe was crying, crying for several hours like this. And then suddenly, the ants by themselves suddenly ran away and stopped crawling all over the body of the Rebbe Maharash, and the Rebbe Maharash didn't even push them away. They're on their own. Like they knew exactly when they had to stop crawling on his body, and they would just leave the area, and the Rebbe Maharash would get up and go back to the wagon and go home. And he did this every single morning. Now, the Hasidim didn't know that. They knew

03:49 that the Rebbe Maharash goes for a walk. They couldn't understand, where does he go for two hours? But Ivan didn't say a word. The Rebbe told him, "You're not allowed to say anything that you see." One day, the Hasidim, they wanted to know. They was-- They were very curious. They wanted to know. So the Hasidim were having a little farbrengen there, and they had some vodka, some mashke, and Ivan was a Russian goy who loved vodka. So when Ivan walked in, he saw the Hasidim were drinking l'chaim, so he really wanted to have a little l'chaim too, 'cause he loves vodka. So they told him, "Listen, Ivan, we'll give you a vodka." They gave him a cup, a full cup. Ivan drank the whole thing in one shot. And now, when you... People that love vodka, when they drink, they want it even more. They want more, right? Never stops. They just wanna keep drinking. So Ivan says, "Please give me another cup." So they gave him another cup. But after two cups, Ivan said, "I want a third cup. I crave. I so much want the vodka." And the Hasidim said, "Listen, Ivan, we'll give you a third cup on one condition. You must tell us what the Rebbe is doing on the daily walks that you take him out of the city every, every single day." Ivan didn't wanna say, but then he so much wanted the vodka, so they gave him another one for free without telling anything. Now, he was really

05:25 a little bit drunk, and he wanted again another cup. Now they said, "Now you have to tell us. You have to tell us. We're not giving you another cup until you're telling us what the Rebbe is doing." Ivan was a little bit drunk, and he so much wanted more vodka, so he started telling them, "I don't know. Your Rebbe is a very strange man. Every morning, he goes into the forest for two hours, sits by a tree, and lets suddenly all the ants crawl all over him. He cries and cries and cries for two hours, and then the ants suddenly, without doing anything, they just by themselves leave him, and he gets up and comes home." And I don't understand why is, why is the Rebbe, Rebbe crying? He has everything he wants. He's got a lot of Hasidim. He gets a lot of covet and honor from the Hasidim. He's got money. He's got horses. He's got a wagon. He's got a wagon driver. He's got everything. He's got a wife and kids. Why is he crying? I don't understand. Ivan couldn't understand that a tzadik, a Rebbe cries because of the tzoros of the Jewish people, the golus, the golus, and why Mashiach is not here. There are a lot of reasons a great tzadik cries. The great tzadik is not happy because he's got gashmius, a lot of gashmiyus-tige thing, a lot of physical things. A Rebbe is happy when he sees Mashiach is coming, or when he sees that the Jewish

06:53 people are having it good, and they're not sick, and they're not poor, and they're, they're not suffering. But Ivan didn't understand. He was a simple goy. So he said, "Yeah, you're a very strange Rebbe. Why is he crying? He has everything. I would have been happiest person in the world if I had what he had." The Rebbe Maharash found out that Ivan had told the Hasidim what he knows, and he called over Ivan. He said, "Ivan, listen, you're fired. I'm no longer having you to be my wagon driver because I can't trust you. You revealed my secret. I told you not to tell anyone." Ivan started crying and begging the Maharash for forgiveness. He says, "I'm sorry. I took a little l'chaim, and I forgot, and I-- And they pressured me, but I promise not to do this again." Finally, the Rebbe Maharash forgave him and let him stay. I'm only mentioning this part of the story because this story is very important. We know that the Rebbe Maharash, the Rebbe, the Rebbetzin Rivke, the Rebbetzin of the Rebbe Maharash, told this after the hishtalsvus of the Rebbe Maharash. When the Rebbe Maharash was hishtalvuk on Yud Gimmel Tishrei, Tov Heh Mem Gimel. After hishtalsvus, she said that the Rebbe Maharash, her husband, when he would go on these walks every day for two hours, he would see and speak to the Rebbeim from Olam Haemes, from the true world, from the other world, from Gan Eden. They would come and reveal themselves to him.

08:28 And she said that many times he would come home and tell me things that will happen in the future of what the Rebbeim revealed to him from Gan Eden. She also told that when the Rebbe Maharash would go to the Ohel of the Tzemach Tzedek, he'd always ask her first if she has any requests that she needs from the Tzemach Tzedek, and he would take the request and ask the Tzemach Tzedek, uh, for a response, and they would give her an answer. Said, "My father, I was at the Ohel of my father, and he would tell me, he told me to answer this and this and this to you, to your question." So that shows how great the Rebbetzin Rivke was that the Rebbe Maharash revealed to her a lot of the things that he heard from the Neshamas of the Rebbeim in Gan Eden, and he shared it with her. So I wanna share with you this, so that we know how great she was. Just something about her great middas. The Rebbetzin Rivke had a minhag, a custom. She would make special juices from many fruits. She would take a lot of fruits, make a lot of bottles. She would make these little bottles of juice, and whenever there was a sick child or a sick person in Lubavitch, she would go and send them a bottle of her juice. In those days, they didn't have a lot of medicine in the small towns, but juice is a natural thing. It's healthy, and

10:02 she would give them the juice so that it would cure them. Once there was a m-- a, a woman. She had a child. She had a few children, but she loved the juices of the Rebbetzin. It was so gishmak. It was so tasty. So she, she would come to the Rebbetzin and every other day make up a story that one of her children is very sick. Can she have a bottle of juice from the Rebbetzin to, to, to, to, to cure, cure her child? The Rebbetzin would always give her, always give her. But in the house of the Maharash, there was a shamash, a helper, and he was a little bit suspicious. He says, "Can't be. Every few days, one of her children is sick? What do you mean? You always sick children in the house?" He suspected. He had a little bit suspicion that this mother, her children are not sick. She just loves the juice, so she makes up stories. And he would tell this to the Rebbetzin, and the Rebbetzin said, "No, no, no, no, no." She comes, she says her child is sick. We don't ask any question. You give to a Jew. You give them the juice. You don't ask question. You don't suspect that they're, they're, they're lying. Chas v'Shalom, no. But this shamash, this helper, wanted to make sure that he knows, that he knows what's go-- He's gonna prove it to the Rebbetzin. So once this lady, this mother came and says, "Oi, Rebbetzin, oi, oi, oi,

11:34 my youngest child now, Yankele, he's, he's sick, he's sick. I, I, I need some juice for him." The Rebbetzin quickly ran to the kitchen, and she pulled out a bottle, and she gave it to this woman and says, "Here, take it for your son. Yishar koach."