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As I Heard Them, Vol. 1, pp. 488-489, no. 9
In Toronto the Rebbe encouraged R. Eliyahu to devote himself to education, and he took a position in a Talmud Torah. Friends repeatedly pressed him toward lucrative business ventures — some who entered them became millionaires — but the Rebbe answered him: being so qualified in education, is this why you had mesiras nefesh in Russia and endured everything to reach Canada, to become a businessman? He stayed in chinuch al pi taharas hakodesh for life, never arriving late once in thirty-six years, was honored at an Eitz Chaim Talmud Torah dinner attended by five hundred people, founded the first Chabad institution in Toronto with R. Yosef Assulski funding a shul and mikva, and served two decades as a spiritual guide in Gan Yisroel camp.
2 min to tellexcellent to tell
325 wordsR. Eliyahu Akiva Lipskar
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score 1.31 ·
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=0.62
As I Heard Them, Vol. 1, pp. 179-180, no. 68
R. Gershon Chein, the Rav of Alexandria, related in 5686 that when he was in Lubavitch, Mendel the attendant summoned him to the Rebbe, who told him that Koppel would be bringing the esrogim early the next morning and that he should be there to receive them, adding that he most likely would not sleep that night. He stayed awake in the zal all night, went to the mikveh at dawn, met Koppel's wagon and took the esrogim. When he brought the box inside, the Rebbe took it from him, set it on the table, clasped his hands, bent slightly and circled the table again and again like hakafos, with extraordinary deveikus, then carried the box into his room.
3 min to tellvery good to tell
405 wordsRebbe Rashab
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score 1.19 ·
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=0.78
As I Heard Them, Vol. 1, pp. 311-312, no. 50
Reb Aizel related that when they were yungeleit they would learn standing on their feet the entire night. In the morning they went out without fur coats — not for lack of them but by choice — took axes to chop through the ice, immersed, and only then davened. He added that this cannot be expected of yungeleit today, but learning and davening are still doable.
1 min to tellexcellent to tell
172 wordsRebbe Rayatz
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score 1.16 ·
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=0.32
As I Heard Them, Vol. 1, pp. 57-58, no. 39
Reb Aizel told his students that the Alter Rebbe once offered to show him a new path in Chassidus, and he replied that he was not yet finished with the old one. On another occasion the Alter Rebbe invited him, "Aizik, come into the mikveh" — an offer that would have brought him great spiritual benefit — and he answered that he wanted to do the work himself.
1 min to tellexcellent to tell
128 wordsAlter Rebbe
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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=1.00 length_suitability=0.25
As I Heard Them, Vol. 1, pp. 449-450, no. 50
Though he lived in America for over twenty years, R. Zalman never learned English and continued to live exactly as he had in Lubavitch. He slept from 11 pm until before 3 am and kept a fixed daily study program — Zohar on the parsha, Torah Ohr or Likutei Torah on the parsha, and the daily portion of Tehillim — always completing the full weekly cycle of each, followed by mikvah, more study, and shacharis. In his corner of the original 770 shul he would wait for kaddish, chazoras hashatz and krias haTorah and then daven for hours, on Shabbos until two or three in the afternoon. He devoted much of his day to maamorim and the Rebbe's sichos, attended R. Mentlik's weekly sicha shiur, and in old age enjoyed the bochurim's company, unhesitatingly asking a bochur fifty years his junior to repeat a sicha or learn with him as a chavrusa.
2 min to tellvery good to tell
302 wordsR. Zalman Duchman
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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, pp. 76-77, no. 3
On the way to Lubavitch the narrator's grandfather resolved to do three things: see the Rebbe right away, arrange lodging near the Rebbe's courtyard, and spend Shabbos in the company of the Rebbe's sons. They arrived on Friday and he was told the Rebbe could not be seen, as he had already returned from the mikveh, but he ran to the Rebbe's home anyway, and the Tzemach Tzedek came out and said, "No meetings now" — so the first resolution was fulfilled, since he had already seen the Rebbe. He obtained lodging near the courtyard, and because the Rebbe's son R. Shneur Zalman, the Rebbe of Liadi, had a father-in-law in Homil who had sent greetings through him, he was invited for Shabbos — and remained his guest for Shabbos and Yom-Tov for years afterward.
2 min to tellvery good to tell
243 wordsTzemach Tzedek
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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. 465, no. 75
Even in his final years R. Zalman Duchman remained steadfastly dedicated to the ideals of Chassidus. His son-in-law R. Eliyahu Lipskier related that during R. Zalman's last days, when his situation was not good, he came in from Toronto and visited him in the hospital on a Friday morning; R. Zalman immediately asked him to bring a question to the Rebbe that day and to relay the answer, saying it was causing him much agony. The question was that he had been careful for so many years to go to the mikvah daily and remain in a state of purity, but in the hospital, where purity mattered so much to him, he was attended by non-Jewish nurses. Though the son-in-law was uncomfortable asking and did not think it was a big deal, he went at once to 770, relayed the question when the Rebbe came out of his room, and the Rebbe considered it seriously and responded — and when the answer was brought back, R. Zalman's face shone.
2 min to tellvery good to tell
238 wordsR. Zalman Duchman
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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, pp. 323-324, no. 9
Reb Pesach Malastovker described to the narrator's zeide his yechidus with the Tzemach Tzedek. Asked what he does before davening, Reb Pesach answered that it is already written — in Likkutei Torah: mikveh, tzedakah and Zohar. The Tzemach Tzedek replied that tzedakah is a mitzvah extending through the entire day, that one is not required to have mesirus nefesh for mikveh, and that his zeide's (the Alter Rebbe's) intention in saying Zohar was Chassidus.
2 min to tellvery good to tell
218 wordsRebbe Rayatz
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score 1.01 ·
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=0.43
As I Heard Them, Vol. 1, p. 412, no. 47
On the morning of the narrator's bar mitzvah, his zeide took him to the mikveh very early. On the way back the zeide told him: mikveh is higher than fasting, because fasting unavoidably leaves a person with some element of yeshus (self-centeredness), whereas going to the mikveh has no relevance to yeshus at all — and is therefore higher.
1 min to tellvery good to tell
133 wordsRebbe Rayatz
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score 0.93 ·
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=0.25
As I Heard Them, Vol. 1, p. 398, no. 26
R. Michoel Dvorkin related that the Rebbe Rayatz said in Kostrama, "Why did I have to pay for the mikveh in Kostrama with blood?" R. Michoel also told that a few days before Yud-Beis Tammuz, while sitting in the shochet's courtyard and garden in Kostrama, the Rebbe remarked that a month had already passed in which he had not written about tishb"r (the education of young children) — for which one needs clean fingers — adding a few further words that the narrator did not wish to write down.
1 min to tellvery good to tell
113 wordsRebbe Rayatz
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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, p. 248, no. 82
On Purim, reportedly in 5687 (1927), the Frierdiker Rebbe remarked that a Jew goes half a year without going to the mikveh, and that if people realized what the mikveh is, they would not come to him without one, would not write any letters without one, and would not stand within his daled amos without one.
1 min to tellvery good to tell
103 wordsRebbe Rayatz
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score 0.90 ·
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=0.20
As I Heard Them, Vol. 1, pp. 442-443, no. 42
In the summer of 5703 (1943), R. Zalman Duchman, Chaya Grunya and fourteen-year-old Yisroel reached Tashkent, where Chabad chassidim fleeing the German advance had been gathering since 5701 (1941) alongside the large Bukharian Jewish community. Amid homelessness, bread lines, filth and typhus, the extended family of chassidim held together and helped one another, and because the authorities' attention was fixed on the front they were able to organize minyanim, chadorim, yeshivos and mikvaos without fear. The Duchmans moved into their daughter and son-in-law's one-bedroom apartment divided by a curtain; Yisroel learned Chumash, Gemara and Tanya with the chossid R. Yisroel Nevler (Levin) and committed thirty perokim of Tanya to memory before transferring to a more advanced yeshivah in Samarkand. R. Zalman's son-in-law R. Eli Lipskar organized four chadorim serving over eighty children, from siddur reading through Gemara.
2 min to tellgood to tell
317 wordsR. Zalman Duchman
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score 0.90 ·
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=0.60
As I Heard Them, Vol. 1, pp. 456-457, no. 62
R. Zalman was unwell and unable to immerse in a mikvah. He wrote to the Rebbe about the ailment, noting that he had gone to the mikvah before writing anyway, "since this is the way of chassidim." The Rebbe blessed him that the ailment should be healed as a result of this act, and that very day it left him.
0 min to tellvery good to tell
69 wordsR. Zalman Duchman
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score 0.86 ·
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=0.12
As I Heard Them, Vol. 1, p. 121, no. 5
When the mikveh in Lubavitch was being rebuilt, an architect — the Amliner Rav — was brought in for the work. The narrator recalls hearing from him that the Rebbe Maharash had told him that a maamar should be learned thirty to forty times.
0 min to tellgood to tell
70 wordsRebbe Maharash
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score 0.66 ·
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=0.12
As I Heard Them, Vol. 1, pp. 178-179, no. 66
While in Rostov on 2 Nissan 5695 (1935) as an emissary of Anash in Leningrad, the narrator was told by Shmuel Mendel, son of Yechiel the meshulach and a former attendant of the Rebbe Rashab, that he had witnessed something no one else had seen. On erev Shabbos, after immersing in the mikveh, the Rebbe would put on his shtreimel and review the weekly Torah portion with the Aramaic translation (maivir sedrah).
1 min to telltells with work
147 wordsRebbe Rashab
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score 0.54 ·
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=0.28
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