15 of Shvat - In 5612 2/5/1852 passing of the great Chasid Reb Nechemyah of Dubravna.

00:00 Speaker 1 Tu B'Shvat. Of course, we have Tu B'Shvat. We know it's the, uh, special day. It's, uh, Rosh Hashanah for the trees. But this is in the Hasidic Yemei Chabad, the history of Chabad, in the year of taf reish yud beis. That's six hundred and twelve. It's February fifth, eighteen fifty-two. Uh, so this was the day that the great genius Hasid, Reb Nechemya of Dubrovna. Reb Nechemya of Dubrovna, who was the son-in-law of Reb Chaim Avrohom, who was the son of the Alter Rebbe. The Alter Rebbe had three sons, okay? And then, um, the Mitteler Rebbe and Reb Chaim Avrohom and Reb Moshe. So this Reb Chaim Avrohom, his son-in-law was the great Hasid, Reb Nechemya ben Dubrovna. He passed away, uh, on, um, on... And actually, uh, that, that... He-- And he was born, he tells us, just also, he passed away, this was in six twelve, but he, he was born on the fifteenth of Shvat in taf kuf mem Ches. It's interesting. He passed away, and he was born on this very same day. Wow, that's, that's amazing that- Like Moshe. Like Moshe, like the Mitteler Rebbe. Yeah, this was like, um, only, um, only very few have that very special privilege. Uh, it says here that he was born in the year taf kuf mem Ches, and then he passed away in the year taf reish yud beis, both on the fifteenth day of Shvat. Interesting. He authored a book. There's a book called Divrei Nechemya. And it was his second marriage

01:38 Speaker 1 that he became the son-in-law, uh, of Reb Chaim, of Reb Chaim Avrohom, the Alter Rebbe's son. That was the second marriage for him. Uh, he was a student of the Alter Rebbe, and he was also one of the great Hasidim of the Mitteler Rebbe. He was a unbelievable genius. Um, and notwithstanding his great scholarly level, he never earned his livelihood from being a rabbi. Uh, he actually had a, um, a, a, a, a, a company where they would manufacture talisis. They would make the talisis. That was his source of his livelihood. Before the Mitteler Rebbe became Rebbe, uh, he-- It's said Rebbe, he would learn as a me- as a, uh, chavrusa, as a, uh, a f- as a friend together, study together, study partner together with the Tzemach Tzedek. But, um, after the Tzemach Tzedek became, uh, Rebbe, Reb Nechemya did not go to the Tzemach Tzedek. Um, it was, uh... We have to realize it was very difficult for some of these great Hasidim who were great geniuses and, and, and scholars, it was very hard for them to transition from one Rebbe to another Rebbe. They sort of were totally dedicated, and they were so totally attached to a certain Rebbe, and with the passing from that Rebbe, it wasn't easy to just go and switch to another Rebbe, and especially when the other person was a young man, and perhaps he was a study partner as of theirs, and then all of a sudden from a study partner, the other one

03:23 Speaker 1 becomes the Rebbe, and you are just a Hasid. So he did not, um, he did not go to the Tzemach Tzedek, but it is related that during one of the nights, he had a dream that, uh, the Alter Rebbe came to him and says, "How come you have no Rebbe?" He asked Reb Nechemya, how come he has no Rebbe. "Who should I take for a Rebbe?" Reb Nechemya asked the Alter Rebbe. And the Alter Rebbe answered him, "Menachem, uh, yenachmenu behava ube'aasid. Menachem will comfort us in the present and in the future." That would be a reference to the Tzemach Tzedek, whose name was Menachem Mendel. Immediately, Reb Nechemya traveled to the Tzemach Tzedek, and he became connected to him like a Hasid to a Rebbe. The Tzemach Tzedek said about Reb Nechemya that he has the power to come up with new insights, new novelties in the Torah. Besides his book, Divrei Nechemya, he also has written footnotes on the, uh, code of law of the Alter Rebbe, the Shulchan Aruch Alter Rebbe. And also, he wrote, uh, to f- fill in some sections that are, uh, um, that are, um, missing or to complete in the Alter Rebbe's, uh, Shulchan Aruch. They are printed there as additions, addendums to the Shulchan Aruch. On the night before he passed away, he was sitting the entire night, and he was writing responses to questions that he were-- that were sent to him. In the morning, he listened to Baruch Hu, he listened to Kedusha, and

05:11 Speaker 1 when he finished davening, he all of a sudden, he passed away. And, uh, as mentioned, he was born on the fifteenth of Shvat in taf kuf mem Ches. And the Rebbe once said that on Tu Bish-- In a, in a fabrengen, our Rebbe said in taf shin mem beis, he said that Tu B'Shvat is both the birthday and the passing of Reb Nechemya of Dubrovna, who was from the great students of the Alter Rebbe. And based on this statement of our sages that Ha- Kodesh Baruch Hu, that Hashem fills the years of the tzadikim from day to day, we can understand the great elevation in this matter, that in a revealed and in a physical way, you can find that his days were actually filled, um, something which we only find by very select individuals, that they passed away and they were born on the exact same day. Uh, and in addition to that, it's connected to Tu Bishvat, which is the Rosh Hashanah for the trees, and we know the verse says, "Ki Adam Eitz Hashadah," man is like a tree in the field. So all these represent something very magnificent during his lifetime and his, uh, level of Dishon Nechem of the Ravna. Now, another thing in Tu Bishvat in the year Taf Reis Chof, that's in, uh, six hundred and twenty, in-- it's February eighth, eighteen sixty. Uh, that was the day that they began to write the Tor- the-- write and save the Torah before the birth of the Rebbe Rashab,

06:45 Speaker 1 which was born the following year. And we learned already earlier, we, we went through that, uh, there was a dream that his, um, mother, the Rebetzin Rivkah, had a dream, the wife of the Rebbe Rashab, uh, on the fourteenth of Kislev in Taf Reis Chof. And fourteenth day of Kislev is-- happens to be later on the marriage of the Rebbe, he got married on that day. But on that day in the year Taf Reis Chof, that she had the dream that her, her mother, the Rebetzin Shayna, the wife of the Mitteler Rebbe, and her, uh, grand-- and her grandfather, uh, the, uh, Mitteler Rebbe, instructed her to write a Sefer Torah, and they said that she will have a good son. And when the Tzemach Tzedek heard about this dream, so he heard about this dream of his daughter-in-law that she dreamt, so he instructed his son, the Rebbe Maharash, that he should do the Chalom. When before, she says, "Why didn't you tell me about the dream?" And we, we, we learned it earlier. So the Rebbe Maharash wanted that the Sefer Torah should be written on special parchment that are done from skin of shechted and kosher animals, and it wasn't easy to find that kind of a parchment. So till they were able to find it, it took several weeks. So that's why, uh, from the time it took till Tu Bishvat, after they were able to get the parchment, the Tzemach Tzedek instructed that the beginning of the writing of the

08:23 Speaker 1 Sefer Torah should be done in a very quiet way in his room in the fifteenth day of Shvat. Only his sons were there at the time that he started doing it. And the Sefer Torah was also done in a quiet way on the thirteenth day of Shvat in the Taf Reis Chof Alef in the room that Tzemach Tzedek... As we learned earlier, uh, that all these things were done in a quiet way. The Rebbe said that things that were done quietly lasted. We also find that, uh, the bris of the Rebbe Rashab was also done in a quiet way. Couldn't be done in time, it was done late, and he also said that it should all be done in a quiet way. The other in-- Another thing, this is in the year already Taf Shin. Tu Bishvat in the year Taf Shin. It's January twenty-fifth in nineteen forty. That was actually the day that the, uh, Rav Agon, Rav Achosi, the great genius and Chosi, the Reb Levi Yitzchak Schneersohn, the father of the Rebbe, was freed from prison, and he was sent to exile, uh, in Chialie. He was sent away to, uh, uh, with the, uh, for years in, in, in, in exile. Um, it took a month for Reb Levi Yitzchak to, uh, make this journey. Uh, he went in a carriage in which they carried people that were inmates. He went with a, uh, wagon of inmates from the prison in Yekatirinoslav until the train came to the last stop, which

10:00 Speaker 1 was in the city of Alma-Ata, which is in Kazakhstan. The trip was a very, very, uh, difficult, an impossible difficult trip. It was squished. The inhumane conditions that were in those, uh, wagons in the, uh, trains were-- did not really, um, affect him. The-- What bothered him most was there was a lack of water to wash his hands for Netilas Yadayim, uh, the morning. For eleven days, there was no water at all. Also, water for drinking was given just, uh, a dr- a little bit, very little. It did not suffice even to satisfy their thirst. Uh, Reb Levi Yitzchak, who notwithstanding in this difficult situation never, uh, forego even a very small halakha, he followed the halakha one hundred percent. He forwent, he didn't use the water for drinking that he received, and he used it only for washing his hands. So he didn't even have water for drinking at all. On the fifteenth day of Shvat, this, uh, trip, uh, difficult trip ended when the train came to the, at the end to the city of Alma-Ata, which is the capital of Kazakhstan. After ten months of fear and, uh, problems in the prisons where he spent in the prisons in Yekatirinoslav. Uh, in those days, what they try to, they try to take away the human dignity. They used to degrade the people so that they lose their human image of themselves. So the-- for the first time, the Rebbe felt himself as a human being. He's no longer in that, uh, in

12:03 Speaker 1 there over there. He was going by himself without having a guard, you know, shadowing him. He was on his own. The freedom that they allowed for the prisoners when they came to Almaty was very limited. As soon as they came there, the, uh, prisoners were sent groups, groups to fur- far places in Kazakhstan, into, uh, distant areas into Kazakhstan. Over there, they were needed to spend years, uh, several years in exile, not, not just in the main city. They were supposed to be somewhere. Uh, Reb Levi Yitzchok was sent to the furthest place that was called Chiili. And we'll see later on about, uh, the, the nineteenth of Shevat, we'll see about the-- his experience over there in this Chiili. This was like, uh, an impossible life over there. There's the description of the Rebbetzin. She came to be with him eventually, and she tried to ease his, his, his pain and his difficulties to the best of her-- uh, she, she could. She created ink for him. She created-- she brought him some books. She, she made parch-- she made paper, and she learned how to do the various different things, and she helped him out in all ways possible. And this was the, uh, unfortunate, um, um, I guess, lot of some of these great, great tzadikim, and they hadn't done the-- anything wrong. All their whole life was dedicated to doing good for people and helping people and, uh, and then, um, and a lot of times we don't understand, uh, why

13:46 Speaker 1 these people suffered like that. Uh, why would people who, um, were dedicated and, uh, devoted and, uh, only doing good, and why, why did they end up suffering so much? Why were they put in these situations?

14:01 Speaker 2 Because of the government.

14:02 Speaker 1 I understand, but why did Hashem allow that? Yeah.

14:04 Speaker 2 Yeah, the government was against religion.

14:06 Speaker 1 Yeah, I understand. Yeah.

14:07 Speaker 2 That was, that was, that was that, and then-

14:10 Speaker 1 But this is an age-old question that we've been asking. Right. The Holocaust, the same thing.

14:14 Speaker 2 Yeah, this is all because of control.

14:15 Speaker 1 But this goes back even-

14:17 Speaker 2 Oh, yeah

14:17 Speaker 1 ... goes back even to, um, the time of, you know, the Asar HaRugim Aluf. We had the ten of the most profound scholars of Jewish, um, history who were the basis of the oral Torah, and they were brutally murdered under the, uh, government for, for really total no reasons. And there was, uh, we read it in the, uh, Yom Kippur prayer. We see that they were- Oh ... they were saying, "Is this the Torah? Is this the reward what you get for the Torah?" Right. And Hashem says-

14:49 Speaker 2 These other religions too had the same problem. This is not unique.

14:51 Speaker 1 Well, yeah.

14:52 Speaker 2 It is not a unique situation in the history of the world.

14:55 Speaker 1 The history of the world. But the, the, um, the point over here is that we, we believe that, uh, we don't know and we don't understand.

15:05 Speaker 2 Why? Why? It's-

15:05 Speaker 1 We can't understand the secrets of creation and, uh, you know, we try to study and learn and to understand what we can. But at the end of the day, we don't understand God's plans and why God does certain things. We don't know. We don't understand. It happened to good people. We don't understand. And you've seen your share of being a doctor. Right. You've seen your share of suffering and people, you know, sometimes you see children- Right ... innocent children are suffering, and then you, you, you wonder why. Why? But we don't know God's plans, and we-- all we can do is accept it and try to move on and, and be strong in our faith and continue doing what we're supposed to do.

15:42 Speaker 2 Like, like this Reb Levi Yitzchok, now, if he was in the western part of Russia at that time, he would have been sent to the, sent to the camp and would have been gassed. So in a way, God saved him and brought him east, and he got away from it because they, they were totally invaded that part of the Soviet Union.

16:00 Speaker 1 It's another, another interesting thing that you're saying. Just, just, just by the way, I read and I-- that, uh, he had, um, a sickness, Reb Levi Yitzchok. Uh, he had a Yom HaMachlah. He had cancer, he had. And, um, he was-- he, he died at a-- he wasn't that old when he passed away. He was in his sixties. And, um, when he went back to-- when he was freed from Chiili, and he went back, and finally he was, he was allowed to go back on his own. Then the sickness came in, and he passed over very quickly. While he was suffering, it didn't, it didn't-- it was, uh- In remission ... it was in remission. Yeah. And when he went back... So who knows, I mean, in what way or, you know, sometimes those situations- Happen ... but who knows what, what is God's plan, and that's it. Right. And we have to accept it, and that's- Right ... that's just it, and we can do.