Vov Tishrei

Af­ter the pass­ing of his mother, Reb­bet­zin Chana, the Rebbe be­gan say­ing si­chos on a Rashi of the par­sha at the far­bren­gen . The Rebbe would no­tify R. Zal­man of the cho­sen Rashi, and R. Zal­man would an­nounce it be­fore dav­en­ing, so that peo­ple could re­view the Rashi be­fore the far­bren­gen.

On one oc­ca­sion, a young bochur tried to play a trick on R. Zal­man. On an or­di­nary Shab­bos, when no far­bren­gen was planned, he told R. Zal­man that there would be a far­bren­gen and spec­i­fied a cer­tain Rashi that the Rebbe would dis­cuss. R. Zal­man, in his in­no­cence, trusted the bochur and made the an­nounce­ment. The Rebbe looked at him in won­der­ment, and no far­bren­gen took place.

R. Zal­man felt ter­ri­ble about what had hap­pened, and he penned a long let­ter of apol­ogy to the Rebbe. The Rebbe as­sured R. Zal­man that it wasn’t his fault, and that it was meant to be b’hash­gacha pratis. At the far­bren­gen of the fol­low­ing Shab­bos, the Rebbe dis­cussed the in­ci­dent, and even of­fered an ex­pla­na­tion on the Rashi that R. Zal­man had an­nounced.

Af­ter Reb­bet­zin Chana passed away, the Rebbe asked R. Zal­man, R. Yis­roel’s fa­ther, to watch over her apart­ment so that noth­ing would be taken by over-zeal­ous sou­venir seek­ers. Then he turned to R. Yis­roel and asked him to watch over his fa­ther, say­ing, “Your fa­ther will watch over the apart­ment and you will watch over him. ”

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. ”