Find a story
26 stories
Add the stories you want to your picks as you browse, then build
a newsletter or farbrengen sheet from them.
As I Heard Them, Vol. 1, pp. 48-49, no. 26
Chaim Meir, the caretaker of the Alter Rebbe's ohel, told the narrator's zeide that two young men once asked to enter the ohel and wept there at length. They explained that they had been tailors working in the villages of the Kursk region who abandoned Yiddishkeit, eating treif and worse; on their way home they stopped at a non-Jew's house near Piena and asked for sausage, whereupon he locked them in and announced he would take their money and kill them, allowing them only time to pray and recite Vidduy. After a full day of weeping he returned their money, explaining that a great tzaddik who had stayed with him and passed away there had instructed him to bring to teshuvah two Jews who would come asking to eat treif.
4 min to tellexcellent to tell
560 wordsAlter Rebbe
story_000026
score 1.46 ·
person_role=0.00 topic_theme_strength=0.00 occasion_strength=0.00 keyword_fts=0.00 semantic=0.00 farbrengen_value=1.00 length_suitability=0.93
As I Heard Them, Vol. 1, pp. 462-463, no. 72
In 5712 (1952), when chassidim were still unfamiliar with the significance of the Rebbe's answer "I will mention it at the Ohel," R. Zalman Duchman met a couple in Toronto who had been married seven years without children and promised to request a bracha for them. Back in New York he approached the Rebbe, who replied that he would mention them at the Ohel of the Frierdiker Rebbe; feeling this was short of a bracha, R. Zalman pressed, "But Rebbe, why can't the Rebbe give them a proper bracha?" and the Rebbe did not respond. The following year he found the couple in Toronto holding a baby girl, and they attributed her birth to the Rebbe's bracha and gave a substantial donation despite their means. Returning to Crown Heights he reported the news to the Rebbe by the elevator, in the same spot as the year before, and the Rebbe turned at his door and said with a smile, "Nu, Reb Zalman, 'I will mention it at the Ohel' is a proper bracha!"
3 min to tellexcellent to tell
386 wordsR. Zalman Duchman
story_000628
score 1.38 ·
person_role=0.00 topic_theme_strength=0.00 occasion_strength=0.00 keyword_fts=0.00 semantic=0.00 farbrengen_value=1.00 length_suitability=0.75
As I Heard Them, Vol. 1, pp. 195-196, no. 91
R. Yisroel Neveler related in the name of the gvir R. Nosson Gurary that R. Nosson traveled with the Rebbe Rashab to the Alter Rebbe's ohel in Haditch, where both gvirim and melamdim were to enter yechidus. The Rebbe instructed that the melamdim be admitted first and the gvirim afterwards, but R. Nosson reversed the order and told the gvirim to leave their contributions on the table. At the train station the Rebbe asked R. Nosson whether he had money for the tickets; when R. Nosson, who knew the gvirim had left money, was astonished, the Rebbe explained that since the melamdim came in afterwards there was money on hand, and he gave them whatever was in his pocket.
2 min to tellexcellent to tell
277 wordsRebbe Rashab
story_000230
score 1.26 ·
person_role=0.00 topic_theme_strength=0.00 occasion_strength=0.00 keyword_fts=0.00 semantic=0.00 farbrengen_value=1.00 length_suitability=0.53
As I Heard Them, Vol. 1, pp. 149-150, no. 22
It was told in Lubavitch that the Rebbe once came to the ohel. A small door led into the ohel from the adjoining shul, one of whose walls formed a wall of the roofless ohel. On that occasion the door was found locked, and the flustered shamash came running with the key. The Rebbe said to him, “If a pile of earth doesn't obstruct, will such a thin door?”
1 min to tellexcellent to tell
155 wordsRebbe Rashab
story_000161
score 1.15 ·
person_role=0.00 topic_theme_strength=0.00 occasion_strength=0.00 keyword_fts=0.00 semantic=0.00 farbrengen_value=1.00 length_suitability=0.30
As I Heard Them, Vol. 1, pp. 35-36, no. 10
R. Chaim Meir was the caretaker of the Alter Rebbe's ohel in Haditch; his son-in-law Zalman Ber Klimavitzky held the post in the narrator's own time, and the narrator often sent him two or three rubles from his grandfather to help him and to buy olive oil to burn near the ohel. R. Chaim Meir told the grandfather that all the directives concerning the ohel were issued by the Mitteler Rebbe. Once, hurrying in with an urgent pidyon nefesh, he apparently forgot to knock before entering and was hurled out; lying in the courtyard he dreamt that Freidka told him he had not knocked, that the birds he saw were neshamos coming there, and that since chassidim have little regard for dreams he would be given a sign. On waking, a bee stung him in the ear, and he was deaf in that ear for the rest of his life.
3 min to tellvery good to tell
332 wordsAlter Rebbe
story_000010
score 1.12 ·
person_role=0.00 topic_theme_strength=0.00 occasion_strength=0.00 keyword_fts=0.00 semantic=0.00 farbrengen_value=0.80 length_suitability=0.65
As I Heard Them, Vol. 1, pp. 170-171, no. 55
In 5685 (1925) the tomim R. Yisroel Zuravitzer — R. Yisroel Jacobson, who lived in Homil — was in Leningrad, and the Frierdiker Rebbe sent him to Rostov for Beis Nissan. Coming out of yechidus he reported that the Rebbe had told him to speak at the ohel as one speaks in yechidus — "Rebbe, I am a shliach of my mother, you know her name, and of myself" — and to go to the ohel early, since for him it would be after davening while for the Rebbe it would be before davening, "maybe as a result I will daven better." The narrator testifies that on that Beis Nissan, after Shemoneh Esrei and before chazaras hashatz, the Rebbe signaled him to bring a chair and sat down, so exhausted was he from his davening.
2 min to tellvery good to tell
322 wordsRebbe Rashab
story_000194
score 1.11 ·
person_role=0.00 topic_theme_strength=0.00 occasion_strength=0.00 keyword_fts=0.00 semantic=0.00 farbrengen_value=0.80 length_suitability=0.62
As I Heard Them, Vol. 1, pp. 424-425, no. 13
Half a year after the deaths in his family, on 2 Nissan 5680 (1920), the Rebbe Rashab passed away in Rostov — a difficult period for R. Zalman Duchman, who had been so connected to him. His love for the Rebbe Rashab drove him to make the long and arduous trip to the Ohel for the yahrtzeit every year. Before Beis Nissan he would board the train to Rostov without knowing what lay ahead, even though Communist spies rode the trains watching for "suspicious persons" and anti-Semitic thugs regularly attacked anyone they recognized as Jewish. His burning desire to be by his Rebbe on that day made him ignore those fears.
1 min to tellexcellent to tell
118 wordsR. Zalman Duchman
story_000569
score 1.11 ·
person_role=0.00 topic_theme_strength=0.00 occasion_strength=0.00 keyword_fts=0.00 semantic=0.00 farbrengen_value=1.00 length_suitability=0.22
As I Heard Them, Vol. 1, pp. 133-134, no. 3
On erev Rosh Hashanah 5667 (1906) or 5668 (1907), while at the Ohel of the Tzemach Tzedek and the Rebbe Maharash, children told the narrator he could see the Rebbe standing inside by climbing the wall, since the ohel was open to the sky. He saw the Rebbe in a silk hat and black coat with a white silk scarf, holding a long pidyon sheet in one hand and a bundle of further requests in the other, his face extraordinarily pale; seized with terror, the narrator leaped down. He always regretted having jumped, until the Rebbe Rayatz's notes printed in Kuntres Beis Nissan 5710 extolled the merit of gazing at his father at the ohel, which filled him with joy.
2 min to tellvery good to tell
298 wordsRebbe Rashab
story_000142
score 1.09 ·
person_role=0.00 topic_theme_strength=0.00 occasion_strength=0.00 keyword_fts=0.00 semantic=0.00 farbrengen_value=0.80 length_suitability=0.57
As I Heard Them, Vol. 1, p. 192, no. 85
The narrator recalls the immense tumult in Homil in the winter of 5673 (1913), and what he heard from his brother Baruch about the events in Lubavitch. The Rebbe Rashab established Orach LeTzaddik so that people would travel to Haditch every year on Chof-Daled Teves, the Alter Rebbe's yahrzeit, and the first shluchim sent were R. Moshe Zhebiner and R. Moshe Rosenblum, whom the narrator's zeide addressed in writing as 'To the two Moshes.' His zeide explained the reason for the directive: a tzaddik's connection to the world grows distant after a hundred years, and visiting his holy resting place strengthens his influence in this realm.
2 min to tellvery good to tell
248 wordsRebbe Rashab
story_000224
score 1.04 ·
person_role=0.00 topic_theme_strength=0.00 occasion_strength=0.00 keyword_fts=0.00 semantic=0.00 farbrengen_value=0.80 length_suitability=0.47
As I Heard Them, Vol. 1, p. 43, no. 21
The chossid Mordechai Yoel related in the name of the caretaker of the Alter Rebbe's ohel that the Mitteler Rebbe once came out of the ohel and said, "Areleh was here, and they didn't let him in — and Father is very upset!" The background: when Reb Areleh Strasseler came to visit the ohel, the Mitteler Rebbe's chassidim in Haditch refused him the key, so he set a ladder against an upper window of the ohel and cried out, "Ay, Rebbe! Ay, Rebbe!"
2 min to tellvery good to tell
233 wordsAlter Rebbe
story_000021
score 1.02 ·
person_role=0.00 topic_theme_strength=0.00 occasion_strength=0.00 keyword_fts=0.00 semantic=0.00 farbrengen_value=0.80 length_suitability=0.45
As I Heard Them, Vol. 1, p. 45, no. 24
Until he reached the age of seventy, Reb Aizel traveled every year to the Alter Rebbe's ohel in Haditch and the Mitteler Rebbe's ohel in Nezhin; after seventy he said he had taken leave of them and told them he would not be coming again. The narrator's zeide related that when he asked Reb Aizel about traveling to the Alter Rebbe's ohel, Reb Aizel told him that traveling to a Rebbe one knew is not the same as traveling to a Rebbe one did not know — but even the latter makes one's avodah easier.
2 min to tellvery good to tell
196 wordsAlter Rebbe
story_000024
score 0.99 ·
person_role=0.00 topic_theme_strength=0.00 occasion_strength=0.00 keyword_fts=0.00 semantic=0.00 farbrengen_value=0.80 length_suitability=0.38
As I Heard Them, Vol. 1, pp. 193-194, no. 88
Even after the Rebbe Rayatz left Russia (settling in Riga in 1927), a shliach was sent every year from Leningrad. The shliach was generally chosen by lottery, but because of the hardships of the times R. Michel Dvorkin would usually travel, and afterward Shimon Ber, the Karyokovker Rav's son, would go. Shimon Ber was once arrested; since punishments were not yet severe in those days he was given a 'minus six' verdict barring him from six major cities, and he chose to spend the three years in Haditch.
1 min to tellvery good to tell
188 wordsRebbe Rashab
story_000227
score 0.98 ·
person_role=0.00 topic_theme_strength=0.00 occasion_strength=0.00 keyword_fts=0.00 semantic=0.00 farbrengen_value=0.80 length_suitability=0.35
As I Heard Them, Vol. 1, pp. 46-48, no. 25
Leaving the Alter Rebbe's ohel in Haditch, the narrator's zeide is invited by Reb Nochum, a son of the Mitteler Rebbe, for mashkeh and blintzes, and asks why Aunt Freidka is buried there. Reb Nochum relates that after the Alter Rebbe's passing the Mitteler Rebbe lost consciousness repeatedly for twenty-four hours, and that Freidka, already frail, weakened further and was taken to Serotina. When her health failed she asked the Kremenchug chassidim to bury her in Haditch at her father's right side; they hesitated because she was a woman, but after she summoned them, stood them around her bed in a burial shroud, recited Elokai Neshama, raised her ten fingers and cried "Tateh, wait!" as her soul left her, they understood they must obey. Still uncertain at the crossroads between Kremenchug and Haditch, they dropped the reins — and the horses took the road to Haditch.
7 min to tellvery good to tell
868 wordsAlter Rebbe
story_000025
score 0.96 ·
person_role=0.00 topic_theme_strength=0.00 occasion_strength=0.00 keyword_fts=0.00 semantic=0.00 farbrengen_value=0.80 length_suitability=0.32
As I Heard Them, Vol. 1, pp. 147-148, no. 19
After Shavuos, the narrator and R. Shmuel Leib Paritcher were walking back from the ohel when R. Moshe Rosenblum, sitting on his porch, invited them in for a LeChaim, and they sat and farbrenged. R. Shmuel Leib recounted that he had once asked the Rebbe what the rationale for mashkeh is and who needs it. The Rebbe answered, “You don't know? You don't know? Really...?!” and laughed a great deal.
1 min to tellvery good to tell
174 wordsRebbe Rashab
story_000158
score 0.96 ·
person_role=0.00 topic_theme_strength=0.00 occasion_strength=0.00 keyword_fts=0.00 semantic=0.00 farbrengen_value=0.80 length_suitability=0.32
As I Heard Them, Vol. 1, pp. 421-423, no. 4
Zalman records that on erev Rosh Hashanah — 5667 (1906) or 5668 (1907) — while they were at the Ohel of the Tzemach Tzedek and his son the Rebbe Maharash, some children told him that if he wanted to see how the Rebbe stood inside the ohel he should climb up on the wall, since the ohel was open to the sky. He saw the Rebbe in a silk hat and black coat with a white silk scarf at his neck, holding a long pidyon in one hand and a large bundle of further requests in the other, his face extraordinarily pale. Terror seized him and he leaped down to the ground.
1 min to tellvery good to tell
138 wordsR. Zalman Duchman
story_000560
score 0.94 ·
person_role=0.00 topic_theme_strength=0.00 occasion_strength=0.00 keyword_fts=0.00 semantic=0.00 farbrengen_value=0.80 length_suitability=0.28
As I Heard Them, Vol. 1, pp. 423-424, no. 9
In the winter of 5673 (1913) the Rebbe Rashab established Orach LeTzaddik (The Way of the Tzaddik), so that people would travel to Haditch every year on Chof-Daled Teves, the Alter Rebbe's yahrzeit, and the news caused a great tumult in Homil. In the narrator's recollection — partly from what he heard through his brother Baruch about the events in Lubavitch — his zeide, his father, the wealthy men Alter Shur and Moshe Leviant, and other chassidim from Homil joined the Rebbe's two shluchim who were passing through Homil by train; he thinks they were a minyan. They established the practice that every year people would learn a chapter of Tanya in Haditch.
1 min to tellvery good to tell
139 wordsR. Zalman Duchman
story_000565
score 0.94 ·
person_role=0.00 topic_theme_strength=0.00 occasion_strength=0.00 keyword_fts=0.00 semantic=0.00 farbrengen_value=0.80 length_suitability=0.28
As I Heard Them, Vol. 1, p. 127, no. 15
Before he passed away, the Rebbe Maharash gave instructions to harness the horses so that he could visit the resting place of his father, the Tzemach Tzedek. He went outside and put one foot on the carriage step, but could not lift the other. He turned back into his home and did not travel — and a word to the wise is sufficient.
1 min to tellvery good to tell
122 wordsRebbe Maharash
story_000133
score 0.91 ·
person_role=0.00 topic_theme_strength=0.00 occasion_strength=0.00 keyword_fts=0.00 semantic=0.00 farbrengen_value=0.80 length_suitability=0.22
As I Heard Them, Vol. 1, pp. 459-460, no. 69
In 5727 (1967) a delegation of elder chassidim, R. Zalman Duchman among them, came into the Rebbe's study to voice their concern for the Rebbe's health, because he went to the Ohel often even in bitter cold. The Rebbe refused to hear of it, saying he cannot work without going to the Ohel and that he must carry the load, and added that as for their claim that it is cold at the Ohel, they should ask R. Zalman Duchman, who goes there often and will assure them it is very warm there. R. Zalman himself traveled to the Frierdiker Rebbe's Ohel every month, a trip that took several buses and trains and many hours.
1 min to tellvery good to tell
115 wordsR. Zalman Duchman
story_000625
score 0.91 ·
person_role=0.00 topic_theme_strength=0.00 occasion_strength=0.00 keyword_fts=0.00 semantic=0.00 farbrengen_value=0.80 length_suitability=0.22
As I Heard Them, Vol. 1, pp. 459-460, no. 68
After Rebbetzin Chana passed away, the Rebbe asked R. Zalman and his son Yisroel to watch over the Rebbetzin's home and possessions. R. Zalman organized a minyan to daven at her gravesite on the day of the hakamas hamatzeiva, and on her shloshim again arranged a car of chassidim to visit the gravesite and recite the special chapters of Tehillim; when he notified the Rebbe, the Rebbe thanked him deeply. In a heartfelt letter afterward R. Zalman reported what he had said at a gathering -- that the Rebbe's father, and near him in Gan Eden his brother R. Leib, and his mother are together, as the Zohar says that the women have 'their chambers' -- adding that he had thought this was written in parshas Naso but could not find it there, and that the Rebbe's mother had told him secret matters, how the Rebbe was born from a bracha of the Rebbe Rashab. In the margin the Rebbe noted the sources in Zohar and asked R. Zalman to please write whatever he had heard from Rebbetzin Chana.
2 min to tellgood to tell
213 wordsR. Zalman Duchman
story_000624
score 0.80 ·
person_role=0.00 topic_theme_strength=0.00 occasion_strength=0.00 keyword_fts=0.00 semantic=0.00 farbrengen_value=0.60 length_suitability=0.40
As I Heard Them, Vol. 1, p. 246, no. 79
The Frierdiker Rebbe related that his father, the Rebbe Rashab, told him that on erev Rosh Hashanah 5673 (1912) he stood at the ohel of his father, the Rebbe Maharash, and said that he had always labored in Chassidus itself and not in what is peripheral to it, and therefore asked to be granted this shleimus (wholeness). The Frierdiker Rebbe concluded that from that time onward he began hearing a great many stories from his father, and that he never asked his father where he had heard them.
1 min to tellgood to tell
169 wordsRebbe Rayatz
story_000310
score 0.76 ·
person_role=0.00 topic_theme_strength=0.00 occasion_strength=0.00 keyword_fts=0.00 semantic=0.00 farbrengen_value=0.60 length_suitability=0.32
As I Heard Them, Vol. 1, p. 170, no. 54
Rebbetzin Shterna Sarah wanted to be buried near her husband, the Rebbe Rashab. When the well-known chossid R. Michoel Dvorkin traveled once from Leningrad to Rostov, she asked him to drive a marker into the ground beside her husband's resting place in order to acquire the plot.
1 min to tellgood to tell
85 wordsRebbe Rashab
story_000193
score 0.69 ·
person_role=0.00 topic_theme_strength=0.00 occasion_strength=0.00 keyword_fts=0.00 semantic=0.00 farbrengen_value=0.60 length_suitability=0.18
As I Heard Them, Vol. 1, p. 380, no. 1
The narrator's zeide (רמ"י) would write pidyonos to Haditch, to the Alter Rebbe. In them he would write "The Thirteen Attributes of Divine Compassion of Moshe Rabbeinu and of the prophet Michah." He explained that the Attributes of Moshe Rabbeinu are for gashmius, while those of Michah are for ruchnius.
1 min to tellgood to tell
88 wordsRebbe Rayatz
story_000500
score 0.69 ·
person_role=0.00 topic_theme_strength=0.00 occasion_strength=0.00 keyword_fts=0.00 semantic=0.00 farbrengen_value=0.60 length_suitability=0.18
As I Heard Them, Vol. 1, p. 126, no. 14
The narrator heard in Lubavitch that the Rebbe Maharash pounded a marker into the ground beside the Tzemach Tzedek's resting place, saying that he was acquiring that plot.
1 min to tellgood to tell
82 wordsRebbe Maharash
story_000132
score 0.68 ·
person_role=0.00 topic_theme_strength=0.00 occasion_strength=0.00 keyword_fts=0.00 semantic=0.00 farbrengen_value=0.60 length_suitability=0.15
As I Heard Them, Vol. 1, p. 194, no. 89
The shluchim from Lubavitch for the second year, 5674 (1914), were R. Shilem and R. Elchanan Morozov. The narrator greatly wanted to travel as well, but his zeide told him that a yeshivah student should not go. Afterwards there were always obstacles — even when he once won the lottery in Leningrad he was still unable to travel. He was able to go only to the Mitteler Rebbe, in the summer of 5686 (1926).
1 min to telltells with work
151 wordsRebbe Rashab
story_000228
score 0.55 ·
person_role=0.00 topic_theme_strength=0.00 occasion_strength=0.00 keyword_fts=0.00 semantic=0.00 farbrengen_value=0.40 length_suitability=0.30
As I Heard Them, Vol. 1, pp. 192-193, no. 86
People from Homil — the narrator's zeide, his father, two wealthy men named Alter Shur and Moshe Leviant, and other chassidim — joined the Rebbe's two shluchim as they passed through Homil by train. The narrator thinks they numbered a minyan. They established the practice in Haditch that every year people would learn a chapter of Tanya.
1 min to telltells with work
106 wordsRebbe Rashab
story_000225
score 0.50 ·
person_role=0.00 topic_theme_strength=0.00 occasion_strength=0.00 keyword_fts=0.00 semantic=0.00 farbrengen_value=0.40 length_suitability=0.20
As I Heard Them, Vol. 1, p. 193, no. 87
When the Rebbe Rayatz was in Leningrad he would also send a shliach; it was usually the chossid R. Michel Dvorkin.
0 min to telltells with work
48 wordsRebbe Rashab
story_000226
score 0.46 ·
person_role=0.00 topic_theme_strength=0.00 occasion_strength=0.00 keyword_fts=0.00 semantic=0.00 farbrengen_value=0.40 length_suitability=0.12
|