Parshas Vayeitzei

The sec­ond story:

When an agu­nah came to the Tzemach Tzedek in Lubav­itch to ask about her hus­band, the Rebbe sent her to Reb Aizel in Homil.

“How should I know where your hus­band is?” he asked.

She stayed in Homil for sev­eral weeks, came to Reb Aizel ev­ery day, and wept. Reb Aizel would send her away.

One day she came as usual, but stood her ground. Reb Aizel be­gan to drive her away — but she wouldn’t budge.

Now Reb Aizel had a me­shares, Mot­tel Gabeitzik (I still re­mem­ber him: he de­liv­ered meat to peo­ple’s homes; a Yid with long untrimmed peyos) — and Reb Aizel be­gan shov­ing Mot­tel, and Mot­tel started shov­ing the woman un­til he suc­ceeded in push­ing her through all the rooms and into the street (the Kiev-Pe­ters­burg high­way, which ran through Homil). And at that ex­act mo­ment a wagon car­ry­ing her hus­band passed by. She screamed, the wagon halted — and a set­tle­ment was con­cluded.

I heard the story in Lubav­itch that a yunger­man opened his heart to the Rebbe Ma­ha­rash.

“Yunger­man,” the Rebbe said to him, “tell me what you don’t want to say. ”

(And as the chas­sidim added the words, “You can­not hide from me!”)

The Rebbe Rashab

In his last year, when his stu­dents asked him to say Chas­sidus, he would an­swer, “To put my thoughts into words — I can­not. And to just ‘say’ — I also can­not. ”