בס״ד
Farbreng.ing
Stories for
Ki Sisa
"Quite the Contrary" — The Rich and the Poor of the Half-Shekel
As I Heard Them, Vol. 1, pp. 401-402, no. 30
אדמו"ר זי"ע אין לענינגראד האט געזאגט אויפן פסוק "העשיר לא ירבה והדל לא ימעיט", בזה"ל: עס איז גאר ניט דער סדר אז דער עשיר זאל מרבה זיין און דער דל זאל ממעיט זיין, עס איז גאר אדרבה...
The Rebbe Rayatz once commented in Leningrad on the posuk, The rich shall not give more, and the poor shall not give less:40 40 “… than half a shekel”: Shemos 30:15.
“It is not at all the case that the rich give more, nor that the poor give less. Quite the contrary … ”
Parsha: ki_sisa (5/5): The vort is a direct comment on the half-shekel verse, Shemos 30:15, read in Ki Sisa.
Also this week
The Knot of the Tefillin
As I Heard Them, Vol. 1, p. 53, no. 32
Reb Aizel related that the Alter Rebbe once told the Mitteler Rebbe he was lying down and asked him to stand by the door and wake him for Mincha. Standing at the door, the Mitteler Rebbe saw the bed begin to move about, and suddenly the Alter Rebbe came out and told him to run and call Reuven the sofer to bring a leather strap, whereupon the Alter Rebbe showed him how to tie the knot of the head-tefillin. Der Zeide would add that this was the equivalent of 'Hashem showed him the knot of the tefillin.'
Sanctity of a tzaddikEmes
Read in full →
What Sort of Chossid Sleeps Until Nine
As I Heard Them, Vol. 1, pp. 204-206, no. 12
At Simchas Torah 5685 (1924) in Leningrad, the Rebbe Rayatz spoke passionately against the chossid who sleeps until nine, has davened and eaten by ten, and then strolls Nevsky Street looking where he should not, imagining that a kapotah and gartel or three rubles given to the Rebbe make him a chossid. He cited R. Hillel Paritcher's remark that he does not care for one who strayed and did teshuvah — who knows what sort of teshuvah it was — and explained the teaching that baalei teshuvah stand where perfect tzaddikim cannot: the baal teshuvah is not the same person, he is someone else. He then turned to a young man from Kherson living in Moscow, told him "It's not you," and instructed him to accept divrei chavrus and give a Kiddush on Shabbos Bereishis, adding that everyone must accept upon himself not to sleep past seven in the morning.
thematic
EmesKabbolas OlTeshuvah out of love
Read in full →
The Tailors the Alter Rebbe Saw Coming
As I Heard Them, Vol. 1, pp. 48-49, no. 26
Chaim Meir, the caretaker of the Alter Rebbe's ohel, told the narrator's zeide that two young men once asked to enter the ohel and wept there at length. They explained that they had been tailors working in the villages of the Kursk region who abandoned Yiddishkeit, eating treif and worse; on their way home they stopped at a non-Jew's house near Piena and asked for sausage, whereupon he locked them in and announced he would take their money and kill them, allowing them only time to pray and recite Vidduy. After a full day of weeping he returned their money, explaining that a great tzaddik who had stayed with him and passed away there had instructed him to bring to teshuvah two Jews who would come asking to eat treif.
thematic
Sanctity of a tzaddikCompassionHashgacha Pratis
Read in full →
"I Think About Him More Than He Thinks About Me"
As I Heard Them, Vol. 1, pp. 476-478, no. 9
R. Yisroel Duchman worked to train his children in hiskashrus, and several of his most significant exchanges with the Rebbe concerned them. When his young son Yossi swallowed an open safety pin lodged dangerously in his esophagus, the Rebbe opposed the planned surgery and instead instructed the head of the emergency room by phone to remove it with a magnet lowered down the boy's throat; the surgeon who had refused to speak with the Rebbe afterward told the Duchmans it was possible only because of "your holy Rebbe." The Rebbe later sent Yossi a blessing with the message, "I think about him more than he thinks about me," and gave shmurah matzah for his son Boruch in Miami. In 5736 the Rebbe declined a matzah request for his son Sholom, a shliach in Eretz Yisroel — "He's my shliach... I don't need an intermediary" — yet in 5737 asked R. Yisroel why he had not requested one, and gave it.
thematic
HiskashrusEmunahSanctity of a tzaddik
Read in full →
|