Hei Teves

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). ”

59. Berachos 34b. ↩
60. 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. " ↩
61. 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). ↩

On Yud-Beis Tam­muz, af­ter be­ing in­formed un­of­fi­cially that he was free, the Rebbe re­lated that on Yud-Beis Tam­muz in 5654 (1894 ) (Yud-Beis Tam­muz is the Rebbe’s birth­day, and in 5654 he be­came four­teen years old) they were on va­ca­tion and his fa­ther, the Rebbe Rashab, poured out LeChaims.

“Where did you see such a prac­tice?”² the Rash­batz asked him. “By your fa­ther? Or your grand­fa­ther?”

“Trust me, ” the Rashab replied.

“And I am grate­ful to him, ” con­cluded the Rebbe.

(When I was dis­cussing the sub­ject of birth­days in yechidus with the Rebbe Shlita, and I re­lated the above story, the Rebbe asked me, “Whom did the Rebbe have in mind when he said, ‘I am grate­ful to him’?”

I an­swered that I al­ways tell the story with the un­der­stand­ing that the Rebbe meant his fa­ther. “No, ” the Rebbe replied, “he meant the Rash­batz, who caused the Rebbe to say, ‘Trust me’ - this was the mir­a­cle of Yud- Beis Tam­muz.”)

2. I.e., celebrating a birthday. ↩

The Rashag, the Rebbe’s son-in-law, came for Shab­bos from Kos­trama, and, af­ter Min­chah, near the bal­cony in the large zal, told a few of us, in the Rebbe’s name, many ques­tions the in­ter­roga­tors had asked, the Rebbe’s re­sponses and, in gen­eral, what he had un­der­gone.

When he en­tered the in­ter­ro­ga­tion room an in­ves­ti­ga­tor with a stubby nose and a stut­ter was seated there. The walls were thin, made of ply­wood. Se­nior of­fi­cials sat fur­ther back in the room.

When Lulav and Nach­man­son came in, the Rebbe told them, “His­tory will record this dis­grace: who was ap­pointed to in­ter­ro­gate the Lubav­itcher Rebbe. ” When they be­gan to ac­cuse him of es­pi­onage, he re­acted sharply, “Re­tract this at once. Do you want to make an­other Beilis Af­fair?”²⁶ And when they started talk­ing about dis­sem­i­nat­ing Torah, he said, “I am not a teacher; I salute learn­ing Torah. ”

Un­til they re­turned his tefillin he would not an­swer any ques­tions.

When the in­ter­roga­tor gave him a glass of wa­ter and he put on his hat to re­cite the bless­ing She­hakol, they said, “You think you’re so im­por­tant; you don’t think you can be shorter by a head?”

“The whole earth is filled with His glory,”²⁷ he an­swered.

26. Menachem Mendel Beilis was a Ukrainian Jew accused of ritual murder in the notorious 1913 blood-libel trial known as the “Beilis Affair. ” ↩
27. Yeshayahu 6:3. ↩

When my zeide de­scribed how Reb Aizel would be­come ex­cited about the Al­ter Rebbe, it was awe­some: “He was the lofti­est of men — higher even than Adam HaR­is­hon be­fore the sin. ”

Reb Aizel would say, “If Moshe Rabbeinu came by with the Rebbe, and the Rebbe said, Do this, and Moshe Rabbeinu said, Do that; I would say, ‘ You can do what­ever you wish; but there is no way I’ll do any­thing other than what my Rebbe says. ’”

(Re­gard­ing this story the Rebbe wrote to me: As in the story of Rabbeinu Tam and Moshe Rabbeinu, in Seder HaDoros, Sec­tion 1, 49304.)