221. The Terrible Secret Behind the Theft of the Mezricher Magid's Tefilin

00:16 Shalom Aleichem, kinders. I share a story with you about the great tzadik, Reb Dovid Moshe of Chortkiv. Reb Dovid Moshe of Chortkiv was the first Chortkiver Rebbe. He was the son of the Heiliker Rizhiner. When the Rizhiner was nistalek, the Rizhiner passed away, he left a lot of things that, um, the children of the Rizhiner were going to split up. Everyone is gonna get some of the things of their father. There was one thing that the father, the Heiliker Rizhiner left, was a pair of tefillin which belonged to his great-grandfather. Who was the great-grandfather of the Heiliker Rizhiner? It was the Maggid of Mezritch, the Mezritcher Maggid. The famous Mezritcher Maggid, who was the Talmud of the Baal Shem Tov and the Rebbe of the Alter Rebbe. He was the great-grandfather of the Rizhiner. The Rizhiner inherited, he got be-yerusha, he in-- he got it from his father, and father got it from his father, the tefillin of the Maggid of Mezritch. You can imagine how holy, how heilige the tefillin of the Mezritcher Maggid's tefillin were. And every one of the six sons, the Rizhiner had six sons. All were great tzadikim, and they became rebbes in different places in Russia and in Poland. So each one of the six sons wanted to have the tefillin. So when they're going to split up, uh, all the things that the Rizhiner left, it's called the yerusha, the inheritance which they inherit from their father. They wanted to split up. So each one wanted to have

02:12 at least the tefillin of the, of the, of the, of the Mezritcher Maggid. So they decided that everyone should put in a note, write down on a little piece of paper, what are the things in the house which their father left everything, uh, they want to have, and then they'll see what everybody wants, and they'll just split it up according to what people ask in that little note. But they realized that this is not gonna work because some people-- many people were asking for the same things. So you can't just split it up like that. If, um, two people want the same thing, what are you gonna do? So they decided instead of looking at the notes, we're going to make a lottery. Right? Every single thing that the father left, there'll be a lottery made for the-- for who should get it. Actually, not everything literally, but really the things that many people wanted, that we'll do a lottery. Right? Most things, they just divided. You know, if everybody wanted something else, they gave to him. But the things that many people wanted, many of the sons wanted, that they made a lottery for. And one of the, and one of the things they made a lottery for was the tefillin. Now, the tefillin is one thing that every one of the sons wanted because it was such a special thing. The tefillin that the Mezritcher Maggid put on every single day of his life and davened with them with great kavana. These were

03:52 special tefillin. When a tzadik davens with tefillin, it's-- the, the tefillin becomes extremely, extremely heilige and holy because his-- a tzadik is-- has very, very holy thoughts and kavana when he davens, and that makes the tefillin extremely, extremely holy. And that makes the tefillin extremely special. So everybody wanted the tefillin. So they made a special lottery who should get the tefillin, and it ended up in the hands of the Chortkover Rebbe, Reb Dovid Moshe. He was not the oldest son. The oldest son of the Rizhiner was known as the Sadiger Rebbe, Reb Avraham Yaakov of Sadiger. He was the oldest son. He also wanted the tefillin, but the lottery decided that it's the Chortkover, Reb Dovid Moshe, should get the tefillin. So later on, they looked at all the notes which they had written before. Before they decided to do it by notes. Everybody should write on the note what they want. So they checked the notes, and they realized that the Chortkover, Reb Dovid Moshe, had written on his note originally that he is willing to give up everything from the yerusha, everything from what the father left. He only wants the tefillin. Nobody else wrote this. People wrote they want the tefillin, but they want other things too. But he, Reb Dovid Moshe says he's willing to give up everything only to get the tefillin. That shows that Reb Dovid Moshe showed special desire. Special desire he wanted to have the tefillin of the Heiliker Maggid of Mezritch, and he's willing to sacrifice,

05:43 to give up everything else. The Rizhiner left a lot of beautiful things. The Rizhiner had a lot of money, a lot of, uh, silver and gold. And, and he said, "I don't want anything. I only want the tefillin." So the brothers realized the reason the goral, it came out that... It says a goral, when you do a lottery, it's all from Hashem. Because when you do a lottery, nobody decides, Hashem decides. We don't know what the lottery is gonna come out, right? When you make a lottery, nobody knows how it's gonna come out. So that means goral is min hashomayim. So why did Hashem decide that the Chortkover should get the tefillin? Because he so much wanted the tefillin that he was willing to give up everything. Everything from what the father left, all the precious things and the beautiful things. He didn't want... He wanted only one thing, the tefillin, and that's why he got the tefillin. But the other brothers so much wished they could get the tefillin, but that was decided min hashomayim. From Hashem it was decided through the goral, right, through the lottery, that the Tzaddik, that the Chortkover Rebbe, Rav Dovid Moshe will get the tefillin. Years later, one day the Rebbe of Sadiger, Rebbe Avrohom Yankele was sitting, uh, by the table. You know, it was a... It was the middle of the Yut Tes Kislev. Yut Tes Kislev is a big yontif by us, Lubavitcher Hasidim, Chabad Hasidim, because the Alter Rebbe came out of prison. But

07:24 as you know, Yut Tes Kislev is also the yahrtzeit of the Maggid. And the Rizhiner, who was the great-grandson of the Maggid, also used to make a big yontif on Yut Tes Kislev, um, not only because of the Alter Rebbe, but mainly because his great-grandfather's yahrtzeit, the Mezritcher Maggid, was on that day. So the children of the Rizhiner also celebrated and made a big yontif on Yut Tes Kislev because it's the yahrtzeit of their great-great-grandfather, the Mezritcher Maggid. So during a, um, a little farbrengen for Yut Tes Kislev, the Rebbe of Sadiger was sitting by the table and, um, he mentioned about, uh, the tefillin of the Mezritcher Maggid. It was the yahrtzeit of the Mezritcher Maggid, so he mentioned his tefillin. Says how much he and his brothers wanted to have this tefillin, but it seems that min hashomayim it was decided, Hashem decided that the Rebbe of Chortkiv was most worthy of the tefillin. He was worthy. His zechus, probably he must be greater than everybody, that he's the one who was, had the zechus to get the tefillin. But I wish he said, "Ach, how I would wish to get those tefillin." And when two Hasidim who were standing there saw how much their Rebbe, the Rebbe of Sadiger, is, wants to have those tefillin, they stood up and they said, "Rebbe, we wanna tell you a terrible secret. We never told you this, but this is a terrible secret we have, and we see how much you wish you had those

09:05 tefillin, so we're gonna reveal to you a secret." What's the secret? We saw in the past, a few years ago, how much you wanted those tefillin, and when we realized that the goral, the lottery, had decided that it should be going to the Chortkever's. But we knew how, how much you wanted, and since we're your Hasidim, we wanted to do something to make you happy. We thought we would do something terrible. Now we realize it was a terrible mistake what we did, but we did it. We snuck into the room secretly of the Chortkover Rebbe, and we opened up his tefillin. We took off the threads, took out the parshiot. You know, inside the tefillin, there's parchment, and on the parchment is written Shema Yisroel and a few other parshiot, four parshiot that are written in the tefillin. And the tefillin, the parchments are hidden inside the tefillin. You can't see them. But the main kedusha of the tefillin is in the parchment 'cause the, the black, the box, the black box is just a box. The real t- the real part, the most important part of the tefillin is the parshiot. That's where most of the holiness is. So we decided to take out those parshiot and put in regular parshiot inside, kosher, kosher parshiot. But the holy parshiot, special parshiot, which the Mezritcher Maggid davened with, we took out and we thought we're gonna bring it to you, but we didn't know how. As we finished doing it and we left the house

10:51 of the Chortkover, we realized it was a terrible mistake. This is terrible. We shouldn't have done this. You me- you, you, you f- you can't just mess around with, with such holy tefillin and take out the parshiot. It's a terrible thing, especially messing with, with the Chortkover Rebbe. So we, we wanted to go back and put it back in and correct our mistake, but we realized that if we do this, they, they'll catch us and it'll be terrible. So we're afraid to go back. We also were afraid to come to you and give it to you 'cause we realized it was a terrible thing. It was so embarrassing. We were also afraid what's gonna happen to us. So we kept it. We put it away in a, in a bag, and we didn't do anything. But now that I see how much, we see how much you want those tefillin, we decided to just give it to you now. And they took out the bag of the parshiot and put it on the table in front of the Sadiger Rebbe. Sadiger Rebbe opened up the bag, took out the parchments. He started reading the Shema in the parchments, all the four parshiot that are written in the tefillin, every word, every word. Then he rolled it up again. He closed it, put it back in the bag, and then- He started thinking. For a very long time, he was thinking and thinking and thinking. Finally, he opened his holy eyes and said, "You know, after

12:19 Yut Tes Kislev, when we're finished with the fabringen, we're gonna go travel to Chortkiv. We're gonna see my brother, and we'll see how things turn out." That's what they did after Yut Tes Kislev. The Sadiger Rebbe took the parchments of the tefillin in a bag, and he and some Hasidim traveled to Chortkiv. Sadiger Rebbe was the older brother. So when the Chortkiv Rebbe, Rabbi Dovid Moshe, heard that his older brother is coming, he was so excited, and he went outside to greet him and welcoming him. And, um, no, he thought his brother's coming just for a nice visit. No. So the brother waited for Shacharis when his brother's gonna put on that tefillin. So he came into his room to see how he puts on his tallis and tefillin, and he saw that on the table there were two pairs of tefillin. There was Toras Rabbeinu Tam's, which was the Chortkiv's own tefillin, which he got at his bar mitzvah or he got it from his father. And then there was next to it the tefillin from the Mezritcher Maggid. And the Sadiger Rebbe saw those tefillin on the table. He recognized this is the Maggid, Mezritcher Maggid's tefillin. That's the way it looked like. He remembered what it looked like. He saw that his brother, the Chortkiv, was taking first the tefillin of the Maggid and took them out of the bag, and he thought he's gonna put them on. But then you see he stopped and thought, and then he decided not to

13:54 put them on and put it back into the bag. Instead, he put on his own tefillin. So Sadiger was surprised that he's not putting on that tefillin of the Mezritcher Maggid. He didn't know that the parchments were changed, so why wouldn't he put it on? He thought it was the Mezritcher Maggid's tefillin, so why d- why did he hesitate and then put it back? After the davening, the Sadiger Rebbe, the older brother, asked his younger brother, the Chortkiv, "Why did you take out the tefillin and then you decided not to put it on?" So the Chortkiv said to him, "My dear brother, I'll tell you why. I got that tefillin a few years ago. You remember when we split up everything from our father? And I got, by a goral, I got that tefillin. The first few days when I put on those tefillin, I felt an, an incredible kedusha when I was davening with those tefillin. And obviously it wasn't surprising. That tefillin was such holy tefillin that when I davened with them, I felt like a very, very strong kedusha. But then one day, I took out that tefillin and I looked at them and I didn't feel that kedusha anymore. And I thought to myself, 'What could be the problem?' And I realized the problem must be in me. Maybe I made something wr- I did something wrong." You know when you... When a person does an aveira, you become insensitive to kedusha. You know, you can't feel the kedusha of anything.

15:28 The more a person, uh, works on themselves and doesn't do aveiras and overcomes the yetzer hara, the more you become sensitive to kedusha. You can feel kedusha more and more. But if you do something wrong, then that blocks you from feeling the kedusha of anything, of a mitzvah, of Torah, of Hashem. You come into a shul, you don't feel it because you have... There's aveira that's blocking it. So that's why when you do teshuvah for an aveira, it takes away the blockage and you can feel the kedusha when you put on tefillin, when you daven, when you do a mitzvah. "But especially for the tefillin of the Mezritcher Maggid, I must have done something so bad," says the Chortkiv, "that I, I couldn't feel the kedusha anymore. Because until then, I felt the kedusha every day." And he started searching, "What aveira did I do? What mistake did I make that caused me suddenly not to feel the kedusha of the tefillin? And I searched and I searched, and I couldn't find anything. And I thought maybe the fact that I couldn't find it, that itself is a bad sign. That means that I'm so... I've become so far from Hashem, that I can't even see my aveiras. And I... Every day, I started picking up, picking up that tefillin, and I didn't feel the kedusha. I felt like there's something wrong. And I became so saddened by it, and I tried to do teshuvah for whatever it is. I couldn't find what aveira I

16:45 did, but I knew something is wrong with me. So that's why yesterday when you saw me today, when I, by Shacharis, when I, when I took up, pick up that tefillin, I was trying to see if I can feel the kedusha, and I didn't feel it, so I put it back and I put on my normal tefillin, my, my own tefillin." So the Sadiger Rebbe, the older brother, said to him, "My dear brother, there's nothing wrong with you. The reason you didn't feel the kedusha, I'll tell you the story." And he tells him the story with what happened with these two Hasidim of the Sadiger Rebbe, his Hasidim, and what they did a few years ago, a terrible thing. And now they were moide. They, they admitted that they did this, and they gave back the parshios. And he handed the parshios to his brother, the Chortkiv, and says, "Here, take these parshios and have a sofer put it back into your, to those tefillin. I promise you, you will feel the kedusha right back." And that's exactly what happened. The Sadiger Rebbe put that tefillin back, put the parshios back into the tefillin, and immediately he felt the kedusha. And these tefillin went over to his son, Rebbe Yisroel of Chortkiv, um, who lived almost till World War II. And, um, he would put on that tefillin only twice a year because he didn't wanna put them every day. He felt the kedusha is too great. He only put them on on Purim and

18:23 Erev Yom Kippur. Two days a year he would put them on. Then when the war came, the, all the, the house was burned down by the Kazakhs, and the tefillin was robbed. All the stuff from the Chortkiv Rebbe were, were robbed by the, by the soldiers. And but then it was found again by the son of Rebbe Yisroel, who survived the war. Somehow that tefillin was found again, and now he still has it.