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Stories from As I Heard Them (Lesheima Ozen) by Reb Zalman Duchman · © The Duchman Family; please share this sheet as printed
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Stories for the week

Parshas Mattos

Fifteen Nights Without Lying Down

As I Heard Them, Vol. 1, pp. 168-169, no. 52

My brother Baruch, of blessed mem­ory,23 told me in Homil over a cou­ple of LeChaims that when he was study­ing in Tom­chei Temimim in Lubav­itch, the Rebbe Rashab in­structed him in yechidus to stay up (and study, “zitzen”) seven nights. How? “For ex­am­ple: when you awaken on Thurs­day morn­ing, you must not lie down that en­tire day; then stay awake the whole night and — for the en­tire next day — not lie down un­til the evening. ”

Each time he was ap­pre­hen­sive: per­haps he had dozed off? So he would do it again. In short, he stayed awake in such fash­ion for 15 nights.

  1. Author’s note: He arrived in the Holy Land on the tenth of Kislev, 5718 (1957), and passed away on the tenth of Iyar, 5720 (1960). ↩
Kabbolas OlTemimus (sincerity)Mesiras Nefesh

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"You Surely Had No Appropriate Thoughts"

As I Heard Them, Vol. 1, p. 316, no. 57

Some­one once dav­ened quite hur­riedly be­fore the amud, and Reb Aizel asked him why he dav­ened so quickly. “To avoid any im­proper thoughts, ” came the an­swer.

“I don’t know whether you had any im­proper thoughts, ” Reb Aizel told him, “but you surely had no ap­pro­pri­ate thoughts. ”

EmesTemimus (sincerity)

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The Baal Taivah Who Calls Himself a Non-Believer

As I Heard Them, Vol. 1, p. 244, no. 74

Once the Rebbe said in a maa­mar in Leningrad, “He’s a baal taivah and wants to sat­isfy all of his de­sires — but feels un­com­fort­able about it. So he says that he is a non-be­liever. ”

EmesEmunah

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Reb Hillel and the Innkeeper's Ten Rubles

As I Heard Them, Vol. 1, pp. 374-375, no. 12

I heard this story when I was in Lubav­itch:

Reb Hil­lel once vis­ited a farm­ing com­mu­nity near Niko­layev and, ac­cord­ing to the cus­tom, they col­lected money for him. One of the Yid­den who lived there, an “innkeeper, ” main­tained a house of ill re­pute — since we were young­sters, the per­son re­lat­ing the story spoke in al­lu­sion — and this innkeeper con­trib­uted ten rubles to the col­lec­tion.

When they brought the money they had col­lected to Reb Hil­lel, he took the ten-ru­ble coin and tossed it away.

The Rebbe Shlita com­mented in re­gard to “toss­ing the coin away”:

This re­quires close ex­am­i­na­tion con­cern­ing (1) the pro­hi­bi­tion of Bal Tashchis [Do not de­stroy]; and (2) ev­ery Jew is ob­li­gated to ful­fill the mitz­vah of tzedakah; and, on the con­trary, With tzedakah you will re­move your sin.23 And per­haps (1) he knew that the coin was of such that one may not ben­e­fit; or (2) the story is in­ac­cu­rate, and the cor­rect ver­sion is that he re­turned the money.

  1. Daniel 4:24. ↩
EmesSanctity of a tzaddik

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