Parshas Emor

My zeide por­trayed the Mit­teler Rebbe’s histalkus as it is de­scribed in Beis Rebbi, but added that the Tzemach Tzedek’s sons told him:

When we told our fa­ther, the Tzemach Tzedek, of the histalkus, he said, “My fa­ther-in-law could not en­dure a sin­gle mo­ment with­out re­veal­ing G-dli­ness to oth­ers; ac­cord­ingly, as long as his ne­shamah was in his body he spoke words of Chas­sidus.

“And now, as well, he is say­ing Chas­sidus — and chas­sidim are lis­ten­ing. ”

My zeide said that as a small child he was in Reb Aizel’s sukkah while the s’chach was be­ing piled up thickly. He asked Reb Aizel: “Doesn’t the ha­lachah state that the stars should be vis­i­ble through the s’chach?”

“Lis­ten, Yoel’ke, ” Reb Aizel told him, “I was with the Rebbe in Li­ozna when they put the s’chach on the sukkah. The Rebbe stood and sig­naled with his holy hands: Make it thicker…thicker.” And Reb Aizel cried out, “And I can’t do it any other way!”⁵

(My zeide told me some­thing that had al­ways puz­zled him. He was named af­ter his two grand­fa­thers: Reb Mordechai, a chos­sid of the Al­ter Rebbe, and Yoel, a busi­ness­man. Nev­er­the­less both the Rebbe — the Tzemach Tzedek — and Reb Aizel called him Yoel’ke.)

5. Sefer Haminhagim (p. 65) records that it is our custom to use a lot of s'chach. ↩

Reb Aizel re­lated that he once came into the Mit­teler Rebbe’s room. “Aizik, ” the Rebbe said to him, “I want to tell you a dream that my Frei­dka dreamt — short, but pro­found. She dreamt she saw our fa­ther, and looked at him in­tently. He said, ‘My daugh­ter, why are you look­ing at me this way?’ She an­swered, ‘Such a holy gar­ment!’ Our fa­ther replied, ‘The Rashbi’s [Rabbi Shi­mon bar Yochai’s cloak] is more lu­mi­nous. ’”

And he re­it­er­ated: “Short, but pro­found. ”

(My zeide told me, “See: from that point in time — and all the way back to the time of Rashbi — he didn’t sin­gle out any­one else. ”)