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Farbreng.ing
בס״ד
Simchas Torah · Stories for the season
Shemini Atzeres
כ״ב תשרי
22 Tishrei
"Here He Is Not a Guest, But the Baal HaBayis"
As I Heard Them, Vol. 1, pp. 458-459, no. 66
Continued from the biography of R. Zalman Duchman:
At the evening seuda of Shemini Atzeres 5729 (1968), R. Zalman began by telling the Rebbe that he had recited kiddush upon mashkeh (liquor). The Rebbe replied, “Very well! Today is Shemini Atzeres. ” The Rebbe then added, “You are older than forty, and that should be made clear, since otherwise everyone will go ahead and recite kiddush upon mashkeh.”
Later during the meal, R. Zalman asked the Rebbe to say something about the Frierdiker Rebbe, since on Shemini Atzeres he is the “ ushpizin” (holy guest). The Rebbe replied, “Here [in the Frierdiker Rebbe’s home] he is not a guest, but the baal habayis!”
My zeide told me that the Rebbe Maharash knew how he spoke (after a few LeChaims) of the Chassidus of Reb Aizel of Homil. For although he referred to Reb Aizel as Der Hieger 30 or Der Homiler, and reserved the term “Rebbe” for the Tzemach Tzedek, nevertheless — as Reb Aizel’s outstanding disciple — he had high regard for his Chassidus.
Early one summer morning as he walked through the Rebbe’s courtyard after a late-night farbrengen and a generous measure of mashkeh, he looked up to see the Rebbe Maharash standing by the window.
“Mordechai Yoel, come here, ” the Rebbe said, and began talking with him.
When the conversation reached the topic of Reb Aizel’s Chassidus, my zeide said (with a nigun), “The Rebbe doesn’t need it, nor do the Rebbe’s children need it. But the Rebbe’s grandchildren and regular chassidim 30 "The local one. "
should learn Reb Aizel’s Chassidus. ” Concluding his words he glanced upward and there, in the second window, saw the Tzemach Tzedek. “I was sober in an instant, ” my zeide recounted, “and fled. ”
Sanctity of a tzaddikHafatzas HamaayanosHiskashrus
My zeide described the time when a young man, bursting with joy, came out from yechidus with the Tzemach Tzedek and turned somersaults in the courtyard — for the Rebbe had said Chassidus in the meeting!
“How did that happen?” they asked him.
When he entered yechidus, the young man related, he said, “Rebbe, say Chassidus for me. ”
“What do you need Chassidus for?” the Rebbe asked.
“I need something to daven w ith.”
“Meditate on how Hashem fills all worlds, how He encompasses all worlds, and how everything is utterly nothing before Him, ” replied the Rebbe.
In the course of a farbrengen at his mother’s house, the Rebbe related that a chossid dreamt that his previous Rebbe had told him, “In the coming year one of your children will pass away. ” When the chossid went to his Rebbe for Rosh Hashanah, the Rebbe told him, “Tracht gut vet zein gut” (Think positively, and it will turn out well). But, unable to shake off what the previous Rebbe had told him, the chossid was deeply apprehensive and returned home.
On Simchas Torah, when everyone was dancing, he stood to the side and wept. But then came the thought: “Nonetheless, it’s Simchas Torah!” And he jumped into the dancing.
When he went back for yechidus after Sukkos, the Rebbe asked him, “What did you do on Simchas Torah?” He described what had happened, and the Rebbe told him that his exuberant “Tracht gut vet zein gut” nullified the decree.
Reb Groinem, the mashpia in Lubavitch, told how one Simchas Torah , when they called the Alter Rebbe to recite the pesukim of Atah Horeisah , they used the terms: “Adoneinu Moreinu VeRabbeinu – Our Master, Teacher and Rabbi. ” The Rebbe’s face glowed, so, later on they repeated the phrase.
The next day they overheard the Rebbe pacing in his room. “ Adoneinu Moreinu VeRabbeinu, Adoneinu Moreinu VeRabbeinu” — he repeated bitterly, again and again. “If I had had a pit I would have buried myself alive. ”
“What’s this?” they later asked him. “Everyone saw the Rebbe’s face light up!”
“When afflictions are sent from Heaven, we must accept them with love, ” came the answer.
At one point during Simchas Torah , 5685 (1924 ), in Leningrad, the Rebbe Rayatz exclaimed passionately, “What sort of chossid sleeps until nine in the morning and, already by ten, has finished davening, eaten breakfast, and is strolling along Nevesky Street (Leningrad’s main thoroughfare), directing his eyes at the wrong places? With the notion that by wearing a kapotah and gartel he is a chossid. Or, he imagines, by giving three rubles [to the Rebbe], he is a chossid. Now three rubles are three rubles — but that won’t do it.
“R. Hillel (Paritcher) once said that he doesn’t like one who strayed and did teshuvah — such a person went far astray, and who knows what sort of teshuvah he did?
“For sure, stripping oneself naked is not the intention; but there is a concept of confessing one’s misdeeds.
“In truth — there’s a question: How can we understand the precept, In the place where baalei teshuvah stand, perfect tzaddikim are unable to stand?59 This one ate pupiks (gizzards ) — while the other one learned Torah and davened! The answer is: He is not the same person; he is someone else.”60
And the Rebbe turned to a young man from Kherson living in Moscow: “It’s not you ... You must take upon yourself ‘divrei chavrus’;61 you will give a Kiddush on Shabbos Bereishis.
“Everyone must take upon himself ‘divrei chavrus’ that he will not sleep past seven in the morning (an early hour for Leningrad’s winters, when sunrise is at nine). ”
He has transformed himself entirely. See also Rambam, Hilchos Teshuvah 2:4: "The way of teshuvah is … saying, 'I am someone else and not the same person who did those actions. " ↩
A term borrowed from the days of the Mishna, when there were conditions to be considered a "chaver" (a Jew of integrity who could be trusted regarding maaser [tithes] and ritual purity). ↩
Continued from the biography of R. Yisroel Duchman:
In 5749 (1988), the last Simchas Torah of R. Yisroel’s life, he came to the Rebbe’s hakafos after many l’chaims. As always, he and the Rebbe shared a lively interchange, and at one point, the Rebbe handed him his handkerchief. (When his son Sholom joked later that he would now have a precious inheritance after 120 years, R. Yisroel replied, “No, the handkerchief will go with me. ” When he unexpectedly passed away later that year, it was indeed laid over his face in his final resting place.)
"If People Knew How Good It Is to Tell Everything"
As I Heard Them, Vol. 1, p. 392, no. 18
My zeide said that the Rebbeim disliked when people spoke to them of their wrongdoings, but preferred instead to discuss Chassidus. Yet in a Simchas Torah farbrengen in 5685 (1924 ) the Rebbe spoke at length about viduy devarim (verbal confession) — and people became baalei teshuvah.35
A yungerman from Nevel told me that his infant child, asleep at home, suffocated one night (may G-d protect us ). The Rebbe was in Leningrad, they told him. Arriving in Leningrad the yungerman was informed that the Rebbe had already left for Moscow. And in Moscow he learned that the Rebbe had gone home to Rostov. (This was, I believe, in the winter of 5683 (1923).) When he went to Rostov for yechidus, the Rebbe told him, “If people knew how good it was to tell everything — literally, everything — once in six months, once in a year, it would be truly good. ”
Simchas Torah 5679: "For My Son It Should Be Good"
As I Heard Them, Vol. 1, p. 191, no. 83
On Simchas Torah 5679 (1918) a farbrengen was held at the home of the Rebbe’s son, the Rebbe Rayatz. The table had already been broken and the Rebbe Rashab was sitting in the middle of the house on a round stool, a kresleh. “Quiet!” he called out. “We are talking of the loftiest matters!”
In middle, his daughter-in-law, Rebbetzin Nechama Dina, approached him and asked, “Shver, is anything bothering you?”
“I’m doing very well, ” the Rebbe told her. “I want that for my son it should be good. ”
The last dance engraved in my memory took place on the last Simchas Torah during the day.5 The Rebbe held his holy hands up high and sang Nye Zhuritze Chloptzi.6
In the middle he stopped and said, “A gift has been given, but if the recipient had not pleased the benefactor, it would not have been given to him. ”7 And he spoke lofty words which I could not understand.
Simchas Torah 5688 (1927) was the Rebbe's last in Russia, before leaving on the following day, on Isru Chag. ↩
“Friends, don't worry about what will become of us…” ↩
Gittin 50b. Perhaps the intention here is that the recipient must ensure that he is actually pleasing the benefactor so that he is worthy of receiving the gift. ↩
Continued from the biography of R. Zalman Duchman:
At the end of the Simchas Torah farbrengen of 5726 (1965), when it was time to begin hakafos, the Rebbe instructed R. Zalman to announce “ Sha, shtiller!” and get the crowd quiet. After several attempts, the Rebbe asked him to announce three times, “Kol mevaser, mevaser v’omer!” (“a voice announces and says” – from the Hoshanos liturgy). As he did, the Rebbe smiled.
When the Rebbe requested at one Simchas Torah farbrengen for the children to sing “Hamal’ach Hagoel,” R. Zalman led the singing, to the Rebbe’s great delight.
The last Hoshaana Raba8 during the late afternoon I was standing near the Rebbe’s door, and out came R. Eliyahu Chaim Althoiz (may G-d avenge his blood), and he repeated what the Rebbe had just told him: “I am a bit afraid — though there is no reason at all to be afraid. It seems to be my mother’s influence; she is easily frightened. ”
My zeide recounted in the name of Chaim Meir, the caretaker of the Alter Rebbe’s ohel:
Two young men turned up and asked to be allowed within the holy ohel. They came inside and cried at length. As they left he asked them why they had cried so much. Years earlier, they said, the Alter Rebbe had shown them compassion and led them back to the true path.
They were tailors, working in distant villages in the region of Kursk, and they went astray from Yiddishkeit — eating treif and doing everything they shouldn’t have. A few years passed and they decided to return home. Passing by Piena [the village where the Alter Rebbe passed away], they came to the house of a non-Jew and asked for something to eat.
“I don’t have anything for you, ” the goy said.
“Maybe you have a sausage?” they asked. He led them to a room and, after locking the door, told them he would take their money and kill them. Their pleas for mercy went unheeded, but he agreed to let them pray and recite Vidduy. In brief, they cried and wailed an entire day until… he came back and returned their money.
“A great tzaddik stayed with me, ” he told them, “and passed away here. He told me that two Jews would come to my house and ‘This is what you should do’ — namely, cause them to repent. ‘How will I know who they are?’ I asked the tzaddik, and he answered that they would ask to eat treif.”
“Nu,” concluded the two Jews, “when so many years ago, the Alter Rebbe gazed ahead to save us — how can we not cry?”
When we were yungeleit,” Reb Aizel related, “we studied, standing up, the entire night. And in the morning, without fur coats (not because we didn’t own them, but because we didn’t want to wear them) — we took axes to chop through the ice and toivel [immerse]. Only after that would we daven. We cannot expect this from yungeleit today, but learning and davening are doable nowadays, as well. ”
Concerning the levels of ruach hakodesh, Reb Aizel would say: “The Alter Rebbe’s ruach hakodesh never left him for even a moment; the Mitteler Rebbe had ruach hakodesh whenever he wanted — there were times when he neither had it, nor wished for it. The Rebbe (the Tzemach Tzedek) has it two or three times a day. ”
Reb Aizel once told this to Reb Hillel [Paritcher],3 who asked him in reply: “And you have ruach hakodesh?!”
“No, ” he answered.
Reb Hillel then said, “If you don’t have it, then how do you know?”
“A mayvin I am, ” said Reb Aizel.
R. Hillel Molisov of Paritch was a leading chossid of the Mitteler Rebbe and the Tzemach Tzedek, and an outstanding oived. He served as Rav in Babroisk until the Tzemach Tzedek appointed him to travel trhoughout the agricultural settlements near Kherson and teach Chassidus. ↩
Farbrengens among chassidim begin with an introduction. Once, at a Kiddush commemorating R. Leivik’s hilulah (passing), I said that my zeide heard first -hand from the Tzemach Tzedek that the Alter Rebbe had said, “On whom are you relying? My door in Gan Eden will be concealed from you. ” And the Rebbe Rashab said, “I’m going to Heaven; I leave you the writings. ”
(When I came to Rostov I heard a different version: “The writings and my son I leave with you. ”)
And Yosef Nemotin4 (grandson of the venerable R. Yehoshua Nemotin5) told me that R. Leivik said before passing away, “It will take a little time; it’s necessary to journey to another world, a higher world. ”
Reb Hillel Paritcher: Learn Tanya With Small Children
As I Heard Them, Vol. 1, pp. 329-330, no. 19
My zeide related the story of a farbrengen with Reb Hillel Paritcher in Retzitza:
“Baalei batim,” Reb Hillel said, “I have something to request from you: your children must study with proper teachers. You have no idea of the strength they impart to the children. ”
Afterwards Reb Hillel continued, “Learn Tanya with small children; the result will be that they never become apikorsim.”