210. The Rich Man’s House Was Destroyed

00:17 Shalom Aleichem, kinderlekh. I wanna share with you a story with a great famous Gaon, Rabbi Akiva Eger, who was not only a great Gaon, he was also a big tzadik. He was not a Hasid, but he was not a Misnagid either. He liked Hasidim, and the Mitteler Rebbe visited him. Mitteler Rebbe, the Alter Rebbe's son, went to visit him, and he writes in a letter how he was very impressed with him. The Rabbi Akiva Eger was a big Gaon, and he also was a tzadik and a Anav. And, um, he writes great things about him. Rabbi Akiva Eger was a Rav in the city of Poznań. One day, there was a fire that broke out in the city, and a whole street full of houses were burned down. In those days, the houses were all made from wood. If wood catches fire, then it spreads very quickly, and it goes through one house to the next house. It was very terrible. Whenever a fire broke out in the city, it was very, very dangerous because the fire would spread very fast because it was all wooden houses. So many houses burned down, and everybody wanted to rebuild their house. So Rabbi Akiva Eger said everybody should build their house, and he gave them a brocha and everything, but they have to remember to tell the builders not to work on Shabbos. Because according to the Halakha, it's a Halakha that a Jew who has a house built, even if the builder is a goy, he's

01:59 not allowed to build the house on Shabbos for the Jew. Even though the builder is not Jewish, but because he's building it for the Jew, he's not allowed to do it on Shabbos. And he said that if the builders, um, wanna be paid, you can pay him something not to work on Shabbos. So all the people in Poznań, where Rabbi Akiva Eger was the Rav, listened to him, except for one person. He was like a very rich man. He was a Jew who was the head of the-- of the community. He was like the president of the community. Everybody had to listen to him, right? And he had a lot of money. He decided, "I wanna have my house fast. I don't have a house. I need to have it soon. If we're not gonna work on Shabbos, then it's gonna take much longer for me to get my house." He decided not to listen to Rabbi Akiva Eger, not to listen to the Rav of the city. And came the first Shabbos, everybody else told their workers not to build on Shabbos the house. But this rich man decided, "No, I'm gonna, I'm gonna build it on Shabbos." And the goyim build on Shabbos. Rabbi Akiva Eger heard this, so the next Shabbos, he sent his shamash, his helper, and told him to go and tell... Make an announcement in the city again before Shabbos not to build on Shabbos. He wanted to be sure that this rich man also hears the announcement that

03:36 you're not allowed to build on Shabbos, and he said that anybody who doesn't listen to the Rav will be punished by Hashem. This rich man didn't care. On the third Shabbos, uh, again, the Rav wrote a little announcement, and he said to the shamash to hang up posters and, and to announce to the whole city that the Rav said no one should dare allow the builders to build their homes on Shabbos. It's an Aveira. So the president of the community, that rich man who didn't wanna listen to the Rav, told the shamash, the, the, the helper of the, of the Rav, "Come here, I wanna talk to you." He says, "Listen, I'm the leader of... I'm the president of the community. Whenever the Rav wants to make an announcement, before you make the announcement, you have to come to me, and I have to approve it. I have to say, 'Yes, you can announce it. You cannot announce it,' because I'm the president. So next time you have to come to me." So the next Friday, the Rav again made an announcement, and he told the, the shamash, "Go and announce in the city." So the shamash said to the Rav, to Rabbi Akiva Eger, "But that rich man warned me. He said if I ever have another announcement to make, I have to go to him first." So Rabbi Akiva Eger said, "You know what? Go to him. Here, show him the announcement I want you to make, and you ask him what he

05:09 wants to do with this." So he went to this rich man. So Rabbi Akiva Eger, the Rav, said, "I have to announce again that anybody who doesn't stop working, stop the goyim from working on Shabbos on their house, is doing a big Aveira, and Hashem will punish him." So, uh, the, the rich man looked at the announcement and he said, "You know what? Uh, it said at the end that Hashem will punish him." So he said, "You know what? You can make the announcement, but you have to take out these words that Hashem will punish him." Right? "This you cannot announce." So the Rebbe's helper, the Rav's helper, the, uh, well, the shamash, went back to Rabbi Akiva Eger, and he told him what the rich man said, the president of the community. So the Rebbi Kivie said, "Okay, fine. Give me, give me the, the paper, the paper back," the paper which had the announcement on it. He says, "Okay, you can go." That Shabbos, the Rav gave a drashah, a speech in the middle of the shul, in the big shul, and he announced, "Anyone who builds his house on Shabbos, that house will not be around for long. It will be destroyed. Because if it's built on Shabbos, it will not be around. It will be destroyed." Okay. The Rav made a very strong drashah, and he made it very clear that he promised that if you build it on Shabbos, it will f-- it will not last. It will be destroyed

06:50 very soon. The rich man didn't care. He wanted to build his house because he wanted to have his house as soon as possible, and he kept building. He built a beautiful, beautiful home. He's a rich man. He has a lot of money, so he built this huge palace for himself. It was the nicest house in the whole city, and it was beautiful, and it was big, and he enjoyed it. And all the... Sooner or later, everybody else's houses was also built. A year or two passed, and suddenly, out of nowhere, the ceiling in the main living room of this beautiful, rich home of this president suddenly collapsed, fell down on the floor. Luckily, nobody was hurt. When the builder... He called the builders, and he says, "What's going on? Uh, it's only two years old. How come it's..." They looked, and they found that actually all the wood that they used to build the house is rotten, full of worms inside. And everybody was shocked because the wood was the same wood that everybody else used. Everybody else, everybody else's house was fine. Only the house of the rich man. And then the builder said, "No, no, no. You better leave the house quickly because I see that even the walls are gonna collapse soon. If you don't get out of here, you might get hurt." And so it happened that all the walls slowly started collapsing one after another, and the entire house fell down. And then everybody saw and remembered what the Rav

08:19 had said two years earlier, that if you build your home on Shabbos, he promised you your house will be destroyed. It will not last for very long. That's what happened. When the, when the rich man saw this, he realized the mistake he made. He rebuilt his house, but this time he says, "I'm gonna sell it to someone else." He was afraid to stay in that house. And of course, this time when he built the house, he didn't build it on Shabbos, so he realized what a mistake he made. He was still afraid to stay in the house, so he would sold it to someone else. And, and somebody else lived in there, and it was fine. Everything turned out fine. From here we learn, first of all, you gotta follow the Halakha. And when you build a house on Shabbos, when the Torah says you're not allowed to, the, the house is, is, is, the house is a bad house. It's a house that's built on Hillul Shabbos, right? So that's why it says that you shouldn't go into a house which was built for a Jew on Shabbos. So it says Rebbi Kivie, because he was such a great tzadik, when he said, actually it worked. He said that it's gonna fall down, it's gonna be destroyed, and that's exactly what happened.