Hoshana Rabbah

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?”

When we were yun­geleit,” Reb Aizel re­lated, “we stud­ied, stand­ing up, the en­tire night. And in the morn­ing, with­out fur coats (not be­cause we didn’t own them, but be­cause we didn’t want to wear them) — we took axes to chop through the ice and toivel [im­merse]. Only af­ter that would we daven. We can­not ex­pect this from yun­geleit to­day, but learn­ing and dav­en­ing are doable nowa­days, as well. ”