207. The Rebbe Knew That There Was Something Wrong With The Child’s Heart

00:15 Shalom Aleichem, kinderlach. Um, uh, it's been a while, and I'm gonna tell you a few stories now, one after another, not in the same recording. But first, a story about the Rebbe because we had Gimmel Tammuz. Story I just heard recently from the person himself, an amazing story. First, I'll tell you a little introduction, and then you'll hear the, the amazing story. His name is Nachum, the person that told the story. He has a few kids, and now they're all married. But many years ago, he came... He was a little boy. He came to America, came from Russia with his mother. His father had died in Russia, and he didn't know anybody in Crown Heights, in Brooklyn, in New York. He was, um, a young child, and it was very hard for him because he didn't have any friends. But then he grew up, and he started working and getting a job. He started building. He was very good at building houses, and the Rebbe was very nice to him. The Rebbe knew that he was a child who didn't have a father, and he's from Russia and didn't have many friends and family members. So the Rebbe was very nice to him, and the Rebbe would tell people to look out for him and to be nice to him. Once, uh... Then he got married. He got married, had a few children, and he started a business. He had a business of building houses. He was very successful, made a lot of money. And

01:55 as you know, the Rebbe would every Sunday give out dollars to everybody. Anybody who wanted to come get a berakhah from the Rebbe, the Rebbe would give you a dollar from him, and you would use that dollar. You keep it to yourself, but you give, you give a tzedakah, another dollar. So the Rebbe used to give dollars so people will give tzedakah. This Nachum, um, was very busy with his work, with his business, and he almost never came to dollars. He came once or twice, and that's it. Why? Because he was working even on Sundays. And when you work in building houses, your clothes get very dirty with dust and dirt and, and mud. So you can't come to the Rebbe like this. Not nice to come with dirty, muddy clothes to the Rebbe. So he wouldn't come for dollars. But once there was a wedding in Brooklyn, New York, in Crown Heights, and he had to go to the wedding. It was Sunday. So he thought, "Okay, I have to change into nice clothes for the wedding. I'll go for dollars. I'll go get a dollar from the Rebbe." So he stood in line for dollars, and when it came his turn, the Rebbe asked him, "Where have you been? I haven't seen you in so long." Because he hasn't come for dollars in a long, long time. So he said, "Rebbe, yeah, ich bin shmutzig. I'm dirty. I'm dirty." That means, "My clothes are dirty all the time on Sundays. I can't come

03:22 like this to you." It's unrespectful to come with dirty clothes to the Rebbe. And the Rebbe said to him, "No, no, no. Come anyways, even if you're dirty. Come the way you are. I wanna see you." That shows the great ahavat Yisroel of the Rebbe. The Rebbe wants... You know, dirty can be your clothes is dirty, but it's also a spiritual kind of dirty, where your neshamah gets dirty from all the bad things we do, all the averot we do. Makes like a stain, makes like th-the neshamah filthy. But the Rebbe can see through our neshamah, but sometimes Hasidim are afraid to go in front of the Rebbe because the Rebbe can see everything they think, everything they do, and their neshamah is dirty. It's not nice to come to the Rebbe like this. So the Rebbe, "No, no, no. Come anyways. Don't worry about the way you look. I wanna see you anyways because I love you." This is just an introduction. Here comes the real story, the amazing story. This Nachum, when he got married, had a few kids. His youngest child was Yisroel, Yisroelik. Nachum lived in a beautiful house on President Street, and he had several rooms. Every child had a separate room. Yisroelik had his own room. One day, Sunday, Nachum goes for dollars. He goes to the Rebbe to get a dollar from the Rebbe and a berakhah. He brought his older kids but didn't take his youngest child. When he came to the Rebbe, the Rebbe asks him,

04:58 "Where's the youngest, uh, child?" The youngest child was a baby then. He said, um, so he said, you know... He says, "He's home." So, so Nachum says, "The youngest child, Yisroelik, he's home with his mother." So the Rebbe said, "No, he should have a long life, arikhus yamin." Nachum was a little bit surprised because the Rebbe doesn't usually give such berakhahs unless people are asking for it. Normally, by dollars, the Rebbe would say, "Berakhah ve-hatzlakhah." You should have success. You should be happy. You should have what you need. Or the Rebbe would give a refuah shlaimah if somebody's sick. But to say to someone, "Your child, the baby, should have a long life," it's not normal for the Rebbe. The Rebbe wouldn't normally say this. Maybe something is going on. The Rebbe sees something that he doesn't see, and the child maybe is gonna face... Is gonna s- have a dangerous situation where his life might get cut short, might be, might be... Might die, and the Rebbe is giving him a special berakhah to... That he shouldn't die, should have arikhus yamin. Why would the Rebbe give such a berakhah? He went home, he told his wife, he says, "I'm very concerned." His wife says, "Hey, don't be worried." But he says, "I'm worried." And now here's what happened a few months later. He realized that he was-- he had reason, good reason, to be worried. This cholic had a problem. It's called asthma. Asthma is when children or adults cannot breathe well. So

06:28 you need to have a little machine that helps you breathe. So many people have that, but it's not always dangerous. But this cholic, his asthma got very bad, so bad they had to take him to the hospital. And the doctor says he needs to do operation because he's in danger, 'cause he can't breathe at all. This is-- They need to open up, uh, certain arteries like blood vessels inside the body. There's like these little pipes, the little things that go to the heart, and we can't breathe well, there's not enough blood coming through. So they have to open up the artery so the blood would flow. This is a kind of treatment the doctors do to help somebody with this te-terrible illness. The doctor says they're gonna have to open it up all the way till near the heart. They're gonna stick in a needle, and they're gonna open it up. This is what they do in the hospitals, and they save a lot of people's lives. When the kid was in the hospital, Nahum wrote to the Rebbe a letter saying that his child is in terrible danger. And the Rebbe said he should check his-- the mezuzah. He should check the mezuzah. He should check the mezuzah. So he went and checked the mezuzah that was on the door of the child's cholic's room in the house, and he brought it to cipher, and they found Vedibarto Bom. You know what's in the mezuzah? Shema Yisrael Hashem Elokeinu Hashem Echad, Vahavta Et. And

08:02 what does it say then? Vedibarto Bom. The word Mem, the Mem of Bom. Bom is spelled Beis Mem. The final Mem, the shlos Mem, the end of Mem is-- was cut in half. That means there was some ink that came off, which makes the mezuzah pasul, not kosher. So he bought another mezuzah and put it up on the door, and he wrote to the Rebbe. Then the Rebbe said he should tell the doctors that they should check the heart of his cholic. They should do a test on his heart. The doctors weren't planning to go check his heart because there was nothing wrong with his heart. They thought he had a healthy heart. It's just that he can't breathe well. So they have to do something with his veins, where they open up the veins to make it to bring more oxygen so that he can breathe better, but not the heart. But the Rebbe said... So he went to the doctor, says, "I'd like you to check. I have a rabbi, he told me you should check the heart." He says, "Who is this rabbi? I mean, they just-- Why we, why we-- We don't check the heart for this. For this, you just check the veins to make sure that the veins are open and that he can breathe well." So then he went back, wrote to the Rebbe, and the Rebbe said, again, "Tell the doctor to check the heart." So he realized that the Rebbe sees something that even the doctor

09:19 doesn't see. The Rebbe's not even there in the hospital, but the Rebbe can see 坤透 view something is wrong with his heart. And the Rebbe sent a message to him through the, through the secretary, telling him the reason why there's something wrong with his heart is because the w-- the Mem of Bom is what was pasul in, in the mezuzah. And the Mem is this, the middle of the Aleph Beis. When you take the Aleph Beis from Aleph to Tav, Aleph, Beis, Reish, Gimel, Daled. What's the middle letter? The Mem. The middle is like the heart. The heart is like the middle of a person, and the Mem is the middle of the Aleph Beis. So the fact that there was something wrong with the Mem means there's something wrong with his heart. And the Rebbe tell them, tell the doctors they must check the heart. So they-- He kept telling them they must check, they must check, they must check the heart. So they did it, and they found there was a little hole in the heart that can be very dangerous, even more dangerous than the other thing he had, the asthma. This was very dangerous, and they realized they need to do a quick operation. They did an operation very, very fast, and they saved his life. And then this Nahum saw that the Rebbe saw from far away, and the Rebbe saw that his heart, something wrong with his heart. And the Rebbe showed him how the Mem in the

10:42 mezuzah is be-- is, is connected to the heart of the person. It shows us that the mez-- how important it is to have a kosher mezuzah. 'Cause your mezuzah, everything in your mezuzah, mezuzah is a protection. When the mezuzah is not kosher, you m-- there's, there's not a-- there's no protection there. You wanna have a protection.