225. Reb Zushe Surprises The Magid And His Talmidim With His Learning

00:15 Shalom Aleichem, kinders. I share with you a story that the Freidiker Rebbe in one of his sichas mentions. This is a story with Reb Zusha, the great tzadik, Reb Zusha of Hanipoli. Once when Reb Zusha was by the Mezritcher Maggid—the Mezritcher Maggid was the rebbe of Reb Zusha, the rebbe of the Alter Rebbe, the rebbe of, of Reb Elimelech of Lizhensk, Reb Levi Yitzchok of Berditchev, all these great tzadikim were talmidim of the Maggid of Mezritch. There were also two talmidim who were brothers, are very famous, were also talmidim of the Maggid. The two brothers are Reb Pinchas Horowitz, who wrote the famous Sefer Hafla'ah, and was the Rav of Frankfurt, Germany. He was the rebbe of the Chasam Sofer and many great, great, great gaonim. He was a talmid of the Maggid, and his brother was Reb Shmelke of Nikolsburg, the great gaon and the great tzadik. So once these great talmidim of the Maggid, especially the great gaonim like the Reb Pinchas and Reb Shmelke, his brother, and a few other gr-great talmidim who were great gaonim in learning, had a very difficult question in a Gemara in Masechet Eru-- Erachin. Erachin is a difficult Gemara, and they had a question in the Gemara, and they were arguing about it, trying to answer the difficult question. And these great gaonim, as great as they were, couldn't answer the question. Every time somebody offered an answer, the other one brought a question against it and, and they had to find a new answer and

02:12 a new answer, and it was very difficult. Reb Zusha was usually not the one to get involved in, uh, discussions of Gemara and difficult questions in Gemara, um, so nobody would ask Reb Zusha for his opinion. But Reb Zusha himself saw that there was a whole commotion, there was a whole noise going on in the room that they were arguing about the Gemara, and he wanted to know what it's about. What are they arguing about? So Reb Zusha went over to the group of these great gaonim, the talmidi chachamim, the, the students of the Maggid, and he asked them, "Please, can you tell me what problem do you have? What is your question?" And they sh-showed him the Gemara. There's a Gemara in Erachin, and they just told him, "You know, look at the Gemara over there. We have a difficult question, and we don't have the answer." And they told him what the question was, but, uh, nobody expected Reb Zusha to come up with a, an answer because Reb Zusha was not known to be... Everyone knew that he's a big tzadik, but that he was a big talmid chacham and he knows Gemara so well. Nobody thought of him that way. So Reb Zusha went and took the Gemara and looked at the Gemara, and he understood the question that they had, and he didn't know the answer. So he went to his, uh, room and started crying. He said, "Hashem, Zusha wants to taste the sweetness of Your Torah. You gave

03:51 us a Torah that's so sweet, and I don't underst-- I don't know the sweetness. I've never tasted the sweetness of Your Torah. Please let Zusha feel and taste the sweetness of Your Torah." And he cried so hard. And then it came to him. He got the answer. But a few days later, these great talmidim of the Maggid, Reb Pinchas, the, the author of Hafla'ah, and Reb Shmelke Nikolsburg, and all the great gaonim who were arguing for days over this difficult Gemara, they were arguing for several days, and they decided, "Listen, we need to talk to the Maggid. The Maggid of Mezritch is not only a great tzadik, he's also a big gaon, and we'll ask his opinion about what he has to say about this difficult question in the Gemara in Erachin." And so the talmidim got together, and they went into the room of the Maggid, and Reb Zusha also walked in quietly in the back to hear what the Maggid is gonna say. And of course, they presented to the Maggid all the, um, the arguments they had. Uh, what somebody had this, uh, this, this way of answering the question that way, and then how people argued against it and had a question against it. And they were looking for the Mezritcher Maggid's answer. Mezritcher Maggid listened to them, then closed his holy eyes and went deep in thought. You could see that the Maggid was just in, like in a devakus. He was like in a spiritual world. He wasn't there.

05:44 He was like totally in a different world thinking for a while, and the talmidim were standing there in awe waiting for the Maggid to finally speak. The Maggid, after a while, opened his holy eyes and looked around the room at all the talmidim. And then he saw Reb Zusha, and he turned to Reb Zusha and says, "Reb Zusha, what do you say about this question?" And nobody in the room thought Reb Zusha was able even to understand the question, 'cause Reb Zusha was not known to be a big Talmid Chacham. So the Talmidim never expected the Maggid to ask Reb Zusha for his opinion, because this was not exactly what he would know. But the Maggid did turn to Reb Zusha, "Tell me, what do you think of this question?" Of course, the Maggid knew that Reb Zusha was crying in his room the, the day before, and he was in a, and a- and Hashem gave him an answer. So Reb Zusha started saying, "Rebbe," he said to the Maggid, Zusha used to speak about himself, he called himself by his own name. He said, "Rebbe Zusha doesn't know how to learn. I'm not a Talmid Chacham. I don't understand things. I don't know how to learn." But Zusha wanted to taste the sweetness of Torah, so Zusha cried and begged Hashem to let him understand, "And I feel the sweetness of Torah. And so here is the Gemara, the way I understand it." And he started explaining the Gemara, and the Talmidim of

07:24 the Maggid couldn't believe their ears. It was so amazing, the way he learned the Gemara. It answered all the questions, and it was so deep and profound. Everybody was like, "Whoa." Nobody thought of this explanation. So they were, like, surprised. But Reb Zusha explained, "I, I'm not a Talmid Chacham. I couldn't learn like this. It's just that I daven to Hashem, and I begged Hashem, 'Please let me see the sweetness of Your Torah,' and it came to me." So when the Maggid heard this, he said to the Talmidim like this: "It says in Iyyov, 'Nishmas Adam telamdem.' Sometimes the neshamah of a person teaches the person Torah. What does that mean? You know that your neshamah, before your neshamah came down into the world, it was still in Gan Eden. What is a neshamah doing in Gan Eden? It learns a lot of Torah. It learns Torah with the greatest tzadikim, with Moshe Rabbeinu and with all the big other great, the great tzadikim in Gan Eden. Then the neshamah comes down, comes into the, the stomach of the mother, right? You're inside the mother's tummy, and the malach comes. It says... The Gemara says the malach comes and teaches the baby, the neshamah of the baby. The neshamah learns the entire Torah, everything, the whole Chumash, and Tanakh, and Nevi'im, and Gemara, and Shas, the whole Mishnah, everything, Rambam, the Zohar, Kabbalah, Chasidus. The baby learns everything, but it's the neshamah of the baby. So the neshamah knows everything, but when the baby is

09:04 born, everything is forgotten, because when the baby comes out, the body of the person is so physical. All it wants is eating, and drinking, and sleeping, and having fun. It doesn't have any taste of the sweetness of Torah. It doesn't know what it is, how especially beautiful and sweet the Torah is. So the, um, the person forgets, but if a person is able to make the body more refined and not to, uh, do everything the body wants, right? Um, and you daven, and you ask Hashem like Reb Zusha did. So then Hashem helps the person that the neshamah, who knows the whole Torah, but the person forgot it because his body is blocking it and doesn't let him understand it. So the neshamah s- can reveal and speak to the person and tell him the Torah, all the Torah he wants." So this is what the Maggid said. Reb Zusha had the zechus. He was able through his davening and his desire. He had such a desire to know Hashem's Torah that Hashem helped him, that even though he never learned this Gemara well, he never learned that. Maybe he learned it, but he never understood it. But now his neshamah taught it to him. So it's a great thing when you can have your best teacher. Your best teacher is your own neshamah teaching you Torah.