R. Yitzchak Yoel Rofolovitz9 from Kremenchug was arguing with the abovementioned R. Shmuel Gurary late one Friday afternoon. “We need to drink tea, ” he said, “and daven Mincha — which should we do first?” The Rebbe passed by then, and they told him what they were discussing.
“If you want to drink tea in a relaxed manner, ” the Rebbe told them, “you should daven Mincha first. But if you want to daven Mincha in a relaxed way, you can drink the tea first. ”
The rov of Kremenchug, a chossid of the Rebbeim Maharash, Rashab and Rayatz. At the end of his life he moved to Eretz Yisroel. ↩
R. Pinchas, the son of R. Eliyahu Chaim [Althoiz] (may G-d avenge his blood), told me what he heard from the Rebbe Rayatz: “Late one erev Shabbos afternoon in Lubavitch, my father gave instructions to bring him the large blue teakettle, and he, himself, placed it between two cushions.
“R. Asher, the shochet from Nikolayev, was there on that Shabbos, and when my father finished saying Chassidus he instructed R. Asher to come to the Shabbos table. My father told him to make Kiddush over liquor, wash his hands for Hamotzi and eat a kazayis of challah. Then he instructed him to drink all the tea in the kettle.
“Afterwards my father told me that Asher had been thinking of fasting from Shabbos to Shabbos — but how can one decide that unilaterally? So he decided to travel to Lubavitch [to ask the Rebbe]. He came to me and told me that he had already fasted through Wednesday, so I instructed him to complete the fast. ”
Purim on Friday: Kiddush Before Maariv in Leningrad
As I Heard Them, Vol. 1, pp. 227-229, no. 45
It was Purim in Leningrad — 5686 (1926), I think — and it came out that year on Friday. It was getting late and they asked the Rebbe to make Kiddush before Shabbos Maariv13 so he could farbreng. But the Rebbe demurred. When they implored him, he said, “It is not appropriate for you to want this, ” and told a story about his father, the Rebbe Rashab:
One Simchas Torah in Lubavitch — he mentioned the year — was on a Friday, and when it became late and time to make Kiddush, my father said, “Although it is written that at least one person in this world must conduct himself in accord with Kabbalah and, according to Kabbalah, one should not make Kiddush before Maariv, nevertheless, I’m not alone — there are great rabbis, there are ‘gute Yidden’” — and he made Kiddush before Maariv. On Simchas Torah, 5680 (1919) — a Friday — my father also made Kiddush before Maariv, but after Yom-Tov he told me, “It pains me greatly that I made Kiddush before Maariv.”
“So, ” concluded the Rebbe, “It is not appropriate for you to want this. ”
When they finished davening Maariv, people thought that the Rebbe would continue the farbrengen, but his son-in-law, the Rashag, came out of the Rebbe’s room and related his words: “Just as after Ne’ilah all of the supernal lights of Yom Kippur depart, so, too, when we davened Maariv now and entered Shabbos, all of the lights of Purim departed and it is already Shabbos. ”
And the food that was left over from Purim became the Melaveh Malkah after Shabbos. The Rebbe sat at the table, but no matter how persistently they asked him to say Chassidus, he was silent. R. Meir Simcha of Nevel even complained, “It’s a Poilisher tisch…”14 — but nothing helped.
I.e., to poress mapa (spread a cloth over the meal) and make Kiddush. ↩
My zeide passed away at four in the morning on erev Shabbos Kodesh, the fifth of MarCheshvan, 5679 (1918). We stood there throughout the night as he turned from side to side, holding his yarmulke on his head, not letting it fall. As his soul departed my father cried out to us, “The crown of our head has fallen,”19 and so he wailed in anguish for six hours uninterruptedly.
I heard from my zeide that Rebbe Michel of Zlotchov26 gave his students their Shabbos expenses every Friday morning. It would be preferable, they told him once, to give it to them on Thursday. “Good, ” he told them. “I’ll ask. ” Afterwards he told them, “They answered me from Above: A petack (c o i n) is not money, but suffering is precious. ”27
A disciple of the Baal Shem Tov and the Maggid of Mezritch. ↩
Although he could arrange for the money a day earlier, their distress and humility over their circumstance was treasured in Heaven. ↩
The Rebbe arrived in Leningrad on Friday, the 15 th of Tammuz. Before Kabbalas Shabbos he gave the handwritten text of HaGomel to his son-in- law, R. Shmaryahu Gurary, to be studied before Kabbalas Shabbos. Eliyahu Chaim related that when he asked whether there would be Chassidus on Shabbos, the Rebbe replied that “they are giving me one Shabbos. ”4
A Kiddush was held on Shabbos. The Rebbe’s davening extended to a late hour and we heard through the white door that he davened with the nigun of Avinu Malkeinu.
At the table he said, “This is the Seudas Hodaah,” and a number of times during the farbrengen he repeated the words, “This is the Seudas Hodaah” — for here, in Leningrad, the Rebbe said the bracha of HaGomel.
Everyone was surprised at this, for the conventional approach ( daas baalei batim) would have been for him to say the bracha in Kostrama, particularly since we knew what had happened — as the Rebbe himself said — that events unfolded “above to below, ” namely that the original decree was death, which was then commuted to ten years in Solovki5 — as stated in the official records — and reduced afterwards to three years of exile in Kostrama.
When I was in Rostov on the second of Nissan 5695 (1935) on behalf of Anash in Leningrad, one of the Rebbe Rashab’s attendants, Shmuel Mendel39 the son of Yechiel the meshulach, told me, “I saw something that none of you have ever seen. On erev Shabbos, after immersing in a mikveh, the Rebbe would put on a shtreimel and review the weekly Torah portion with Aramaic translation (maivir sedrah).”
He was a student in Tomchei Temimim and the Rebbe's attendant in Rostov. ↩