Two Souls Talking: The Maamar of Shabbos Teshuvah 5673
As I Heard Them, Vol. 1, pp. 134-135, no. 4
A third picture:
While the Rebbe Rashab said a maamar, the Rebbe Rayatz would stand opposite him. In the middle of the maamar the Rebbe would stop and they would look into each other’s eyes.
On Shabbos Teshuvah 5673 (1912) the maamar was extraordinary. The Rebbe paused frequently and rapped on the table, and at each pause they would look into each other’s eyes. It is similar to what I wrote in the name of my zeide — regarding his description of the Tzemach Tzedek and Reb Aizel of Homil — that he saw how Two souls were talking with one another.17 I can only say the same, for each pause lasted a while and was extraordinary. Thank G-d that my memory retains this as though I saw it yesterday.
Two Souls Talking: The Maamar of Shabbos Teshuvah 5673
As I Heard Them, Vol. 1, pp. 421-423, no. 5
Continued from the biography of R. Zalman Duchman:
His deep perception and feeling are apparent in this depiction:
“While the Rebbe Rashab said a maamar, the Rebbe Rayatz would stand opposite him. In the middle of the maamar the Rebbe would stop and they would look into each other’s eyes. ”
“On Shabbos Teshuvah 5673 (1912) the maamar was extraordinary. The Rebbe paused frequently and rapped on the table, and at each pause they would look into each other’s eyes. It is similar to what I wrote in the name of my zeide — regarding his description of the Tzemach Tzedek and Reb Aizel of Homil — that he saw how Two souls were talking with one another.56 I can only say the same, for each pause lasted a while and was extraordinary. Thank G-d that my memory retains this as though I saw it yesterday. ”
He would also spend time in the Rebbe’s home, and he recalls various memories of the Rebbetzins.
During his stay in Leningrad the Rebbe Rayatz once spoke of teshuvah and used the example of a talking bird. “When a person offends the King and seeks his forgiveness, he takes a bird and teaches it phrases requesting pardon. Imagine, now, how deeply his remorse and repentance must penetrate, until he is able to teach the bird these expressions. ”
My zeide once told the above story to Rav Tzvi Auerbach (Hershel Tsurivetzer, a chossid of the Tzemach Tzedek) and said, “You’re surely thinking, Isn’t it forbidden to serve a person of flesh and blood? Nevertheless, that’s what he cried out!”
After Rosh Hashanah, 5673 (1912) — when the Rebbe had said the maamar beginning Shuvah (not a difficult maamar) — I returned home from Lubavitch and reviewed the maamar in public. When the above mentioned R. Tzvi, a “Shas Yid” (an expert in every part of Talmud), heard about this he came to us, and I had to repeat the maamar for him. Such was the bittul of a great chossid!
Continued from the biography of R. Zalman Duchman:
On Shabbos, 8 Tishrei 5689 (1928), Chaya Grunya gave birth to a third son, Yisroel. R. Zalman received a letter from the Frierdiker Rebbe, who was in Riga at the time, with a bracha for their newborn son.
The Frierdiker Rebbe kept R. Zalman and his family in mind even when they were physically distant. At the end of 5689 (1929), R. Zalman received a letter from his brother Yisroel Noach HaLevi, who lived in Eretz Yisroel, in which he described his yechidus with the Rebbe on his visit that summer. The Rebbe inquired about their mother and then said about the brothers [Zalman and Boruch], “I know quite well what is happening with them. Send them my regards; write to them that I do not forget them. ”
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?”
The Alter Rebbe once said about teshuvah, “True teshuvah is akin to what the goy in Vitebsk felt.”
What was the story?
A river runs through Vitebsk, dividing it into two. There was no bridge in those days and people went across the water in a small boat, a lodke. A powerful wind was blowing one day and the people standing beside the river told the fellow: Don’t go. It’s too dangerous. But he paid them no heed, set off in his boat and drowned.
“In the very moment when he saw he was going to drown, ” the Alter Rebbe commented, “how distraught was he for not having listened to his friends, and for setting off instead. That is true teshuvah.”