215. A Melamed Who Saved A City

00:15 Shalom Aleichem, kinderlach. Chai Elul is almost here. Chai Elul is also the birthday of the Ba'al Shem Tov. So I'm gonna share with you a story from the Ba'al Shem Tov. The story was told by a great Hasid, Reb Moshe Wishetsky. He was a Hasid who lived in Russia, had Mesirut Nefesh in Russia, and sat in prison because of Yiddishkeit and spreading Yiddishkeit. And, um, he was a great Hasid. He came out of Russia eventually, went to Eretz Yisrael, and came to the Rebbe. He told that story and I learned a great lesson from that story. Once a group of Jews came from a certain town to the Ba'al Shem Tov and they complained and they cried that the, the minister of the-- of that area where they live in the city and the whole region is, um, being very mean to them. He wants to drive out all the Jews from the whole area. Jews were not allowed to be living there, where they have to leave their homes and everything they own behind and go just with the clothes on their bodies, with the men, women and children, everybody has to leave and go to another place. That was terrible, terrible. To leave like that with nothing, wouldn't have any money, any nothing, no house, nowhere to live. But that was the, the gezeirah, that was the decree. They came to Ba'al Shem Tov to ask him to, to help them. A bracha or the-- or give us some advice. And Ba'al Shem

01:56 Tov said, "I'm advising you to go to a particular town, very small town, and there there's a teacher, a melamed, a Yid who, who, who taught children Alef Beis and Chumash. And you should say to him that you wanna-- y-you want him to join you to go together as a, as a group to the minister who is making this terrible decree, and to plead with him that he should take it away. But you want this melamed, this teacher to be with you. He should be the head of the group. He should lead the whole delegation, the whole group in front of the minister." So they went to this town and they asked the people, is there a melamed by this name? Nobody remembered a melamed by that name. Couldn't remember. So they kept asking and asking. Finally, they remember, oh, years ago, there was a melamed by that name, but we haven't seen him in a while. So they went to his house where they knew he used to live. They saw he was there. He was living alone. He was very, very old, so of course he couldn't be a melamed. He was so old and so weak that he couldn't even stand up on his feet. Even sitting was hard for him. He laid down in his bed most of the time. So they came to him and they said to him, "The Ba'al Shem Tov told us to take you with us on a trip to, to the mansion of the big

03:29 minister, so to ask him to, to take away the, the bad decree, the gezeirah against the Jews, to drive out the Jews from the-- from his area." Melamed says, "I can't even stand on my feet. How am I gonna go with you?" Said, "Don't worry." They picked him up by his hands and his feet. They carried him on a wagon and they put him on a bench. And that's how they traveled to the minister's palace, a mansion. When they came to the minister, they carried the old man in, in their hands. And the minister already knew. They told him in advance they're bringing a very important group of Jews to ask him and explain to him why he shouldn't do this. When they saw him dragging this old man who can, can't even sit, sit or stand, he got very upset. You call this a, a very honorable and very special, important group? This guy can't even sit and stand. This is like an old man. What are you bringing him here? And the, the, the, the, the, the minister said to his guards, "Take this man and put him into prison." And not only that, the minister, who was a Christian, told, um, his galach to go to the prison cell and ask the old man to convert to, to Avodah Zara, to his religion, to the Christian religion. Of course, when the, when the galach came, the, the Yid said, "What? I'm, I-I'm a Jew. I'm not gonna become a, a goy. I'm

04:55 not gonna be-- become a, an idol worshiper. I'm gonna go to church? Chas v'Shalom. I'm a Jew and I'm gonna die like a Jew." So the galach came back the next day and the next day, and it didn't work. The Jew kept saying no. Finally, the minister hears from the galach that the, the Jew refuses to convert, so he told his guards, "Go bring the old man. Carry him to me. I wanna talk to him." So they bring him to the minister, and the minister says to him, "What? What? I wanna save your life. If you convert to, to, to our religion, I will not kill you. But now that you don't wanna convert, I'm gonna have to kill you." So the Yid says, "Okay, then I, I'm gonna have to die. Al kiddush Hashem. Can-- Let me first say my, my, my prayers. I wanna daven. I wanna say Shema. I say Vidui, these things that you say before you die." And so the priest says, "Good. Go ahead. Do, do whatever you need to do." And this old melamed started, uh, saying Shema and Vidui, "Ashamnu, bagadnu, gazalnu". You know, you, you do teshuva before you die. So you come up and, and up there in Shamayim, you go straight to Gan Eden. He did, he said Shema with tears and, and said "" finally he said, "I'm finished. I'm done." So the poets... The, the mini- minister, the minister says to him, "Okay, now I'm gonna tie your hair, uh, tie your

06:23 eyes up so you can't see and, and I'm gonna tie your hands, and you're gonna open your mouth because I'm gonna pour down and I will pour down your throat something very hot and poisonous that will kill you, and that's how you're gonna die." The poor Melamed had no choice. He opened his mouth, and they blinded his... blindfolded his eyes. He couldn't see anything. Opened his mouth, and the po- the minister took the, a spoon, and instead of pouring down the hot poisonous, uh, fluid, the drink, he poured down some honey. Regular honey. The Melamed was like, "What? I wanted to go on Kiddush Hashem. I, I was ready to go on Kiddush Hashem. Well, I was supposed to go on Kiddush Hashem, and now you, you're just sending me honey?" So the minister took off the blindfold and untied the hands of the Melamed and he said to him, "Listen, you don't recognize me? Don't you recognize me?" He says, "No. Who are you?" He says, "When I was a little boy, I was, like, six or seven years old. My parents both had died, and I had no home. I was wandering the streets. Had nowhere to go. Nobody took care of me. Nobody cared about me. But you, you were much younger then. You, you had pity on me, and you invited me into your house, and you gave me food. You gave me to eat. You gave me a bed to sleep in, and you raised me, and after a few

07:53 years, I was able to leave your house and become alone, independent, and now I've become so good at what I'm doing, I became a minister." So the Melamed said to him, "So why did you wanna kill me first? Why did you tell me you're gonna kill me?" And the minister said to him, "Listen, I will, I will explain to you. When I was a little boy, I was li- I was living in your house, and you were a Melamed. You were a teacher, and in those days, they didn't have a cheder in a separate building. If somebody was a Melamed, was teaching children, the children would come to his house. So all the children in the, in the town would come to your house, and you would teach them. I remember you... I used to sit, I used to sit on the side and listen in to what you were saying to the kids, and I remember once you said to them that we have to love Hashem with, with all our soul, with all our heart, so much that even if, chas v'Shalom, a, a goy wants to kill us because he wants us to do avodah zarah, we're not supposed to. We're supposed to let him kill us. You should love Hashem be-til mesirus nefesh, and you explained to them how great mesirus nefesh is, that people that were in mesirus nefesh, it says in the Gemara this, nobody can be as close as they are to Hashem in Gan Eden because, just

09:13 because they died al Kiddush Hashem. When I heard this, I said, 'Wow,' and I saw that you, the Melamed, the greatest m- gift I could ever give you is help you get Kiddush Hashem. That means you die. So that's what I did. I told you I'm gonna kill you. First, I send the galach to see if you're gonna do avodah zarah. You said, 'No, no.' You were willing to die for it. Now you have the zechus of going Kiddush Hashem even though you didn't die, but you were ready to do it, and that's just as good, or almost as good. So that's why I did this, to give you the present that you always wanted." Rabbi Moshe Bashevski told that story, and he said, "Here we learn an important lesson. When a teacher teach... When you teach other kids, even if you're a child, but you teach another child Torah 'cause he doesn't know anything, because he has never learned, his parents never taught him, y- you should teach it to him with such excitement that what you teach, you really feel inside that even a Goyishe child who sits on the side will see how beautiful it is to you, how much it means to you. Even he can tell that you love what you're teaching. When you speak about Kiddush Hashem, you love the idea of Kiddush Hashem." And that's the story.