211. The King That Had A Nightmare

00:15 Shalom Aleichem, kinders. It was the yurt site of the Arizal yesterday, hey of... The Arizal, there are many stories about him, but the Arizal was born in Yerushalayim. Then his father passed away as a young boy. He lost his father. His mother was very poor. She had a brother that was very rich. He lived in, in Mitzrayim, in Egypt, and he invited her to come and live in his house because he had a very big house. So she brought over her children, and the Arizal was one of the children, and they lived in their uncle's house. And later on, the Arizal became older, time for him to get married. He married his uncle's daughter, and, uh, that became his wife. And he learned in the great yeshivas of, uh, Egypt, the Radbaz and Rabbi Tzadok Ashkenazi, the Shitah Mekubetzet, and others that he was very close to, and he learned a lot of Gemara. Then he started learning Kabbalah and became very famous, and Eliyahu Hanavi told him it's time for him to move to Tzfat. He was only thirty-six years old when he moved to Tzfat and by... And he only lived there for two years. When he was thirty-eight, he passed away. Passed away very young, only thirty-eight years old. So one of the stories about the Arizal, amazing story. The Arizal would Friday afternoon get ready for Shabbos early, you know, because it says the kedushah of Shabbos, the holiness of Shabbos, already starts coming in slowly from noon, the middle of

02:12 the day of Friday. That's why in many communities, people would shut their stores by chatzos, by midday. They wouldn't work because they knew that the Shabbos, even though Shabbos starts at, in Friday night, but there's a little bit of the kedushah Shabbos that already starts coming in early. So many Jews would close their door, the, the, the stores and go home, get ready for Shabbos, learn something, go to the mikvah, get dressed in the beautiful clothes of Shabbos, and they would sit and learn and say Tehillim to prepare for the great guest. Shabbos is such a holy guest, and we're all waiting and preparing for a great guest. You usually prepare. So the Arizal would do this every Friday, and he would get early. In the late early afternoon, he would go to the mikvah, he would wash for Shabbos, and he would dress very special clothes. Then he would sit down and say words of Torah to his talmidim. And at that time, the talmidim said the face of the Arizal was so shining with such a special kedushah and holiness that, um, it was very special. People were, like, in awe of him when they saw him on Friday afternoon, could see already that he's beginning to feel the kedushah of Shabbos. That time, there was a country somewhere far away from Eretz Yisrael, where the king of that country made a very terrible decree against the Jews. He told the Jews in his country must come up with a massive, huge amount

03:49 of money by a certain date, and they must give it to him, and if they don't come up with the money by that date, he will kick out and drive out all the Jews from their houses, and he will throw them out of the country. That means they'll have nowhere to go, have no houses, no food. He'll just kick them out of the country. What a terrible thing. Now, the money was so much that the Jews couldn't even imagine that they could come up with so much money. So they decided to send a messenger to Eretz Yisrael, to the city of Tzfat, and to talk to the Arizal, ask his advice, ask him for a bracha, ask him to daven for them. So the, the, the messenger, the shliach, went to Tzfat, and he came on a Friday. He arrived in Tzfat on a Friday. He went straight to the shul of the Ari-- or the house, the house of the Arizal. He asked people in the streets of Tzfat, "Where's the house of the great tzaddik, the Arizal?" They told him, "Oh, over there, over there. Go over there. This is the, this is the house." So he went into the house, and he sees this, this awesome sight. The Arizal, surrounded by all his students, is dressed in Shab- Shabbos clothes, and the house is clean, and there's already a white tablecloth on the table, and the Arizal's face is shining with a special light, and all the s- students are sitting there

05:21 in awe, listening to every word the Rebbe is saying. When the man came in, he was, like, afraid to say anything because he saw the Arizal what looked like a malach, looked like an angel, and he was afraid to talk to him. So finally, then the Arizal interrupted his speaking and turned to this guest. He said to him, "What can I help you with?" And the guy said, "Oh, Rebbe, I'm sorry to d- I didn't want to disturb, but I'm coming from a very far country, and the king by us had made a terrible decree. He told the Jews that if they don't come up with a certain amount of, huge amount of money, then he'll kick all the Jews out, and we don't know what to do. We need someone to pray for us that this terrible decree will go away." The Arizal said, "Listen, it's Erev Shabbos. Now is not the time to be sad. Um, stay here over Shabbos with us, and after Shabbos, Ɣblein Hashem's help, we'll take care of it. We'll-- everything will be fine." So the, the Shliach, the messenger, stayed for Shabbos, and Motzaei Shabbos, right after Havdalah, the Arizal said to some of his students, "Come with me. We're gonna go somewhere." And also the, um, the Shliach who came from that country, he also told them to come with him. And they went somewhere outside into a forest. And there in the forest, there was this... In the middle of so nowhere, there was, like, this

06:53 big hole, huge pit, like very deep, deep. You couldn't see the, the bottom of it. The Arizal said to his students, they should get with them a rope. He told them before they left, "Don't forget to get a long rope." Nobody understood why he needs a rope. It was very strange, but nobody asked any questions. The Arizal said, "So we're gonna do it." They brought the rope, and when they got to the forest and saw the big hole, the Arizal said, "Listen, take the rope and start lowering the rope into the pit, into the hole in the ground, and lower it until you can no longer lower it because it's the end of the rope. So make sure to hold on to the end of the rope, and only the other end should go into the pit and go all the way down as far as it can go. And with the higher end, you will hold on in your hands." When they lowered the rope, the, the Arizal said, "Now pull it up. Pull up the rope." They realized when they tried to pull up the rope that there was... It, it was very heavy. It was hard. They couldn't pull it. And they started pulling, they-- The Arizal said, "No, no, pull it. Keep pulling it harder and harder." And it was very heavy, something... It's as if the rope was attached to something very heavy, and they're trying to pull up the heavy thing, but they didn't tie the rope to anything.

08:19 It was just the rope. But they kept pulling and pulling. It was very heavy. And finally, as they pull up the rope all the way to the top, they were amazed. They couldn't believe their eyes. Do you know what they saw? They pulled up a beautiful, royal-looking bed, like for kings. Kings sleep in such beautiful beds. And in that bed, there's a man sleeping. He looks like a king. People were, like, afraid. Who, who is this? How did they pull him up from a, from a hole in the ground? The Arizal went over to the bed and tapped the person, the king, and woke him up. And when the king woke up, he says, "Yeah. W-w-where am I? Where am I?" And the Arizal says, "Calm down, calm down. Are you the person who made a terrible law against the Jewish people in your country, and you made them pay a huge amount of money which they don't have, and you threatened you're gonna throw them out of the country, out of their homes?" And the king said, "Yes, it's me." He says, "Well, here, I have a cup for you." He gives him a cup which has no bottom. You know when a cup has no bottom, you can't... You gotta pour water in the cup, it's gonna go right through because there's no bottom. He says, "Take that bottomless cup and try to bring water from the well. Over there, there's a well. Go bring me water." He said, "Uh," he says, "I

09:52 can't bring any water in this cup. There's no bottom." He says, "The same thing with you," says the Arizal. "You ask the community in your country, the Jewish community, to bring you money which they don't have. It's impossible. Just as it's impossible to take water in a cup which has no bottom, it's impossible for that poor Jewish community to give you so much money. They don't have that kind of money." Now, the Arizal said to the king, "I'm warning you. You either promise that you're not going to do this, you're going to the ma-- you're going to destroy this, this law, and you're not going to charge the Jews. You're gonna take back the law and tell the Jews they don't have to pay, or else you're gonna die." The king says, "No, no, no, no. I wanna live. I wanna live. Please, please. I-I'll, I'll take back the law. I'll take back the law, and, and I'll, I'll want-- I'll tell the Jews they don't have to pay." So the Arizal says, "Well, I want you to sign your name on a little piece of paper where it says, 'I, the king of this and this country, um, no longer want the Jews to pay me that money. They don't need to pay me anything, and they should be living happily and safely in my country.'" And then the Arizal said, "Now sign right here." And then the Arizal took this piece of paper and gave it to the Shliach that came from that

11:12 country. Says, "You hold on to it and take it with you." Then he tells it... Then the Arizal turned to the king and said to the king, "Listen, you wanna go back to your palace through the hole the way we pulled you up? We can send you back to the hole, and you'll go in a second. You'll be back in your palace in that country far away through a nes. Or you can go without a nes. Just, you know, you can walk from here and take travel and go home, but it'll take you two months to go by boat and by this." He said, "No, no, no. Put me back into the hole and send me home in a second. Wanna be back in my palace, in my bedroom and, and finish up the night and sleep." So the Arizal did exactly that. He told the people, "Hey, guys, lower him into the pit as far as you can go. You'll see that suddenly you'll feel that this rope is no longer weighty. There's no more weight on it. You can just pull up the rope, and there's no bed there." That's what they did. They pulled up the rope, and they went back. The Shliach who came was amazed what he saw. Unbelievable. He went back to his country, and the king, in the meantime, he woke up that morning. He woke up, woke up in the morning, and he saw that he's in his bedroom, and then he remembered he had a dream.

12:35 He thought that everything that happened on the, during the night with the Arizal and he thought that it was just a nightmare. He said, "Oh, I had this terrible nightmare where this person, we were in, in a city in Eretz Yisrael, and this rabbi, uh, was threatened that if I don't take back the, the law against the Jews, I will... You know, he'll punish me." And he said, "Ah, it's just a nightmare. It's a dream, you know. Ah, forget about it. The Jews should pay." And he didn't do anything. He just let... waited and waited till it came the date when the Jews were supposed to pay their fine, the amount of money. So the king said, "Okay, where are the Jews? They need to pay their fine." So when the Jews came to heard this, and they were fasting and davening to Hashem all the time, He should save them. So the Jews said, "You know what? We'll send this Shliach who has this paper, this document, and show the king that he himself signed in Tzfat by the Arizal that he's taking back the law." So he, the, the man, the Shliach, took the paper and went to the palace. And when the king saw him, he recognized him from the dream, which he thought it was a dream, but it wasn't a dream. It was real. He remember seeing him there by the pit with the Arizal. And then the man showed him the piece of paper and said, "See? You signed

14:09 in front of the rabbi, and you signed that you are not going to take the money from the Jews." When the king saw this, he says, "Oh, no. I can't believe it. This actually really happened. It's not just a dream." And he said, "In that case, okay, I have to forgive the Jews the money. They don't have to pay me anything." And then he said to the Jew, the Shliach, he said to him, "Tell me, how can I meet this, this Arizal, this, this great rabbi? I wanna meet him again. He seems like such an amazing person." So he said, "Well, he lives in Tzfat, far away. You probably can't see him. You won't be able to go to him because he's too far." And that's the end of the story.