More stories of vim and vigor

Here are some more stories from the Shavuos Farbrengen of Rabbi Yisroel Wilhelm. Most of them are written in a shorter manner than I would normally encourage for consumption. Anyway, enjoy.

When Yisroel's brother was a Shliach in the Yeshiva in New Haven he Farbrenged with the Bochurim about viewing the Rebbe as their father, and telling him their problems. One of the Bochurim had many spiritual problems, and he was persuaded by the Shliach to write a letter to the Rebbe detailing them. This was in the days when people were lucky to get a "yes" or "no" to their letters, so the Shliach cautioned the Bochur not to write too much. The Bochur wrote a nine page letter. The Shliach was inspired, but managed to convince his young charge to shorten the letter; after all, the Rebbe was extremely busy, and it really wasn't fair to him to receive such a big letter. The Bochur managed to shorten it down to seven pages, and he couldn't cut any more out. The Shliach mailed it off, and told him not to expect anything to big in response. He was picking up the mail a couple weeks later, and he was shocked to see a letter from the Rebbe, addressed to this Bochur. And the letter was a whole page, dealing at length with the Bochur's problems.
Sometimes...Just lay it out there.

In a slightly different story, Rabbi Wilhelm told of his uncle, who was a bit of a bum. Bochurim used to go into the Rebbe to yechidus once a year, for their birthday. This Bochur wrote to the Rebbe that he was a bum, and basically said, "Sorry, that's just the way I am." The entire upstairs 770 heard the Rebbe screaming at him for being a bum during his birthday yechidus.
Sometimes...Don't be an idiot.

There was a Chassid by the name of Deitsch who came out of Russia and settles in Crown Heights. He got cancer, but since he didn't want to make the Rebbe worried about him he stopped coming to Farbrengens. Eventually things got really bad, and he realized that he had to ask the Rebbe for a Brocha. He managed to finagle a quick Yechidus, but it was on condition that it was only to ask for a Brocha. The Rebbe's door wasn't even closed, which is how this story is known. The Chassid came in, but he was so petrified that all he managed to say was, "I ask the Rebbe for a Brocha that the Rebbe should be healthy." The Rebbe responded, "When I hear good things from you, then I'll be healthy."

Rabbi Wilhelm related a story about himself; he got a phone call from a student at the university who had just found out that he was Jewish. He was dating a Muslim, and his mother told him, "How can you date her?" He replied, "Who cares?" She said, "Well, I never wanted to tell you this, but we're Jewish." The student looked up things, and found out that his mother's mother's mother was in fact Jewish, and therefore, even though his mother, and her mother before her, had intermarried, he was Halachicly Jewish. The student came by, and started to learn about Judaism. He lapped it up, but was bothered by one thing: What is with this whole Jewish soul thing? How is it that he, someone who didn't even know he was Jewish, was a Jew, while someone could keep all the laws of the Torah and still be considered a gentile? It just didn't make sense to him. Eventually he drifted away from the Chabad House because of this. A couple of months ago Rabbi Wilhelm invited this student to join some other students on Birthright. The student agreed; after all, who wouldn't take a free trip to Israel? About a week after they got back Rabbi Wilhelm received a phone call. The student told him, "You're 100 percent right about this whole Jewish soul business. You know how I know? When I was by the Western Wall I felt spirituality for the first time in my life. When I got home I told my mother that I wanted to keep Kosher, at least a little, so would she please keep meat and milk separate? My mother told me that she always kept milk and meat separate, because that's what her mother did and her mother before her. She wasn't sure why, she just did it. Rabbi, my mother has a Jewish soul, and so do I."

There was a young guy in Crown Heights who was a bit of a bum. Nevertheless, he was still a Chassid, and he and his wife wrote a letter to the Rebbe asking if they should buy a house on Crown Street or on Montgomery. The Rebbe wrote back three words, "Lamah Lo Shlichus?", "Why not Shlichus?" As this guy will tell you himself, he barely reads Hebrew, and no one thought he would be A Shliach. And now? He's a Shliach.

For many years the Rebbe spoke about Mi HaYehudi, "Who is a Jew" in Israel. It's said that his beard only turned white because of the pain the whole issue caused him. And yet the Rebbe once said to someone in Yechidus, "One Bochur in Lubavitch matters more to me than the the whole Mi HaYehudi."

Rabbi Meir Lau, former chief Rabbi of Israel, once came to visit the Rebbe, who asked him to tell a story of Israel. Rabbi Lau obliged: "Right after the Yom Kippur started I was approached by a man and woman who wanted to get married before he was sent off to fight. I hastily got together a Minyan, and made the wedding in a bomb shelter. As I was finishing a woman approached me and asked for a Brocha. She had lost her whole family in the Holocaust, her husband had died in the Six Day War, and now she wanted a blessing that her two sons, who were going off to fight, should return safely." When Rabbi Lau finished telling the story he saw that the Rebbe was crying.

The Pentecost Review

I know that everyone's been waiting with bated breath to find out how my Shavuos was. What? They're not waiting with with bated breath? Horrors! Oh well, I won't let a bunch of lackadaisical types ruin my triumphant return to the blogosphere.
On Sunday, I did a lot of things, none of which included taking a nap, which was the big sin last year. Sure, this time around I didn't have to wait for two hours in the Moshiach barbershop to get my hair cut, but that was replaced with some slaving away on a roof cleaning the gutters. This year, B"H, the trees have blessed us with a bountiful amount of seeds and other shtuff, which means that instead of having to clean the gutters at six month intervals, I had to do it just two months after the last time. Point is, I didn't manage a nap, which didn't bode well for my plans for world domination--oh, wait, I mean staying up all night.
So there I was, sitting calmly and collectedly, just starting Shemos in the Tikkun, when the first Bochur arrived, "My father said he was going to send me a Tikkun, but it never came. Do you have an extra one?", "I have a Tikkun in Crown Heights, of course I wasn't going to pay for another one, do you have any extra?", "I have fifteen in my house, my father was supposed to bring one when he visited, do you have any extra?", "I asked you to order one a couple of days ago, where is it?", "I forgot to order, any extra?". You get what I'm saying? Anyway, I had to tell all of these fine people that not only did I not have any extra but that it was their own fault. They lived.
When I was just finishing the Chumash the drinks began to appear. One of the things that happen when you don't have much money is that you have to skimp on essentials. I refer, of course, to Coca-Cola on Shavuos night. There are few things that are better in life than a cup of cool and refreshing classic Coke. Imagine my shock and awe when instead of that most delicious elixir of life we instead got 3 liter bottles of Supervalu artificially-flavored garbage. All right, so it kept me awake, but I'm not sure if that's because of the caffeine or because of the horrid taste. Anyway, with the help of some pretzels, I managed to finish the Tikkun this year, much to the joy of everyone involved in the operation.

In other news, the Bochurim of YHSTC heard a bunch of cool stories from Yisroel Wilhelm, brother by law of our retiring leader and Shliach of the Rebbe at the University of Colorado-Boulder. Here's the ones I can remember:

A non-Lubavitch Bochur was looking around for a group to belong to, and he came upon Lubavitch. He did his research, arranged a Yechidus with the Rebbe, and put together seventeen questions that he had on Chabad Chassidus. He knew that most people only got a minute or two for their private audiences, but he figured that his seventeen questions would merit a long and involved discussion. The appointed night arrived, and he came in. When he first saw the Rebbe he immediately regretted his ideas, because he realized that he was standing in front of a person who was a little bigger than all the previous Rebbe's he had visited. The Rebbe took about 10 seconds to scan the letter with the seventeen questions, and in that time managed to look at the Bochur three of four times. He then said, "The first sixteen questions are answered in Kuntres U'Maayan, which can be purchased from the Kehos Bookstore for 45 cents." While the Rebbe was saying this, he pointed in the direction of the store. The seventeenth question was regarding the famous statement of Moshiach to the Baal Shem Tov. When the Baal Shem Tov ascended to Moshiach's digs up in heaven he asked him, "When are you coming?" Moshiach answered, "When your wellsprings spread forth, and when everyone is able to unify divine names like you". The Bochur wanted to know why the Rebbe only focused on the first part, but not the second? The Rebbe answered (I've forgotten the first part of the answer, but it's not really so important), "Look outside. Do you see a world existing? It says that if there are no holy Tzaddikim constantly unifying divine names, then the world will cease to exist. As you can see, the world exists. We have to take care of the first part of Moshiach's instructions, and the rest will be taken care of."

The Baal Shem Tov always taught that a lesson can be learned from everything one sees, and even more so, that the only reason a person sees something is to learn a lesson from it. Reb Mendel Futerfas took this to heart, and he learned a very important lesson from the following story: Reb Mendel spent a lot of time in Soviet work camps, and he noticed that the prisoners were obsessive poker players. Card playing was against the rules, and every so often the guards would come in and do a search of the rooms where the prisoners played. Reb Mendel saw that the prisoners would be playing one second, and then when the door opened the cards would disappear, as if by magic. They guards knew that poker was being played, but they never managed to find any incriminating evidence. After a couple of weeks Reb Mendel grew quite curious; he too couldn't figure out where the cards were going. Eventually one of his fellow prisoners took pity on him, and explained, "Among the prisoners here are certain individuals who are excellent pick-pockets, which is why they ended up here. When the guards come they stash the cards in their back pockets, and later take them out when he leaves. The guards never suspect that the cards are in their own pockets!"
Reb Mendel explained the lesson in our service of Hashem: Whenever we have problems we tend to blame everyone else. We search around for a scapegoat, and are convinced that the problem is to be found outside ourselves. The truth is though, if we only looked at ourselves, we would discover that we are the problem!

There was once a Shliach who got into some trouble with the IRS. Basically, he was money laundering. Another Shliach ran away to Israel, but this Shliach was indicted and was being brought to trial. He wrote to the Rebbe, but received no answer. He called. No answer. He begged, borrowed, and stole, but nothing. Things were getting desperate. The Shliach knew that another Shliach, Rabbi Moshe Herson, would write a report of his activities to the Rebbe every Friday afternoon, and he was always answered. So the Shliach called up Rabbi Herson, and he asked him for his help. Rabbi Herson agreed, as long as the Shliach would tell the Rebbe the whole truth and nothing but the truth. The Shliach, having no choice, agreed, and Rabbi Herson sent in the letter that Friday afternoon. Just a couple hours later, on Friday afternoon (!), the Shliach received a message from the Rebbe that he would have the full backing of Merkos in the case.
The lesson? Tell the Rebbe the truth. He knows who his Chassidim are, he knows who he made his Shluchim, there's no need to beat around the bush. Just tell it like it is.

Fiery Mountains

Tonight is Shavuos, anniversary of the giving of the Torah. It's been a long time. 3320 years. That's a lot of time. Yet we're still supposed to hear the words being spoken today. Just imagine, you're an average guy standing in front of a mountain, and suddenly you're not standing in front of that mountain anymore. That mountain is standing on top of you. Sounds crazy, eh? Soon you start seeing thunder, and before you can even say "Kevin" the sound of lightning begins to reverberate in your ears. I remember learning a Maamar, or maybe it was a Sicha, that dealt with the philosophical implications of audible lightning and visual thunder, but I really don't remember what it said. Suffice it to say that the people were trembling in their robes, or whatever it is they wore back then. The question is, which did they experience first? We see lightning before we hear thunder, because light travels faster than sound. Did they hear the lightning after they saw the thunder, or maybe it was the opposite way 'round? This is the type of question which will keep me up tonight. I hope. Last year I was saying the Tikkun in 770, but fell asleep, so I walked home and after reading four or five more pages fell asleep again. This year of course I'm in a position of responsibility and authority, so I daren't doze off for even a moment, lest my ego come crashing to the floor in a fiery embrace with itself.
Anyway, you've got all these pyrotechnics and shtuff going on, and then G-d gives the Torah to the Israelites, and then they're walking around with a couple of crowns on their heads eating cheesecake. Sounds pretty good to me. Where they got the graham cracker for the base I don't know. In fact, where did they get strawberries for the top from? These are more of the types of questions which keep people like me awake at night. No snotty comments about people like me, ok? Good.
So as I was saying, there's a whole host of questions that can be asked on Shavuos, known as Pentecost by all our Pope friends. Oh right, I forgot, I'm not allowed to write about them anymore.

Just before the battle, mother...

One of the greatest joys known to man is sitting late up into the night reading articles on Wikipedia, that great fount of knowledge and editable pages. Last night I spent, let's see, about four hours reading up on Vice-Presidents and Popes. They're really fascinating topics. The Popes especially are interesting, because each one gets to make up a whole new way of doing things when they're elected. It's a pity that they've gotten rid of most of the ceremonial shtuff. If I wanted to be austere and boring, I could just be a Protestant. The whole fun of being a Catholic is that you get to dress up in all sorts of cool costumes and have red hats hang over your coffin. The fisherman ring is also pretty snazzy. Maybe us Jews should get rings with circumcision type things going on. All right, that would be pretty weird, disgusting, and possibly illegal, though I notice that none of these three things have stopped too many people in the past. Perhaps a tie-in with the recent Kosher giraffe announcement is in order? Maybe every Rabbi should be presented with a ceremonial golden giraffe slaughtering device, inlaid with expensive rubies, diamonds, sapphires, and those cool-looking devices from Apple computer. Though this would preclude them being used on Shabbos, I think that this downside is well worth the potential upside. Unscrupulous people would no longer contemplate selling their Smicha certificates for obscene amounts of money; with the new personalized giraffe slaughtering devices indicative of Rabbinical achievement, if not scholarship, the age of phantom Rabbis would soon come to an end. Obviously, the better the Smicha, the better the slaughterer. People who get a Europass would only get iPod Shuffles, while LA graduates would receive iPod Nanos and Morristown Bochurim would get top of the line 3G iPhones. Just imagine yourself walking down Eastern Parkway with a large gold knife, headphones plugged into the top slot, listening to all your favorite Lipa Schmeltzer tunes. If you happen to be of black persuasion, we could even arrange for speakers to be included, for a slight extra fee of course. And if any Shmira or Shomrim people tried to wrest the device from your hands, why, it is a knife after all! One mighty swing and the scooter-riders will never bother you again! Oh, the joy!
Of course, I understand that the price of Smicha programs will need to rise a little to pay for the increased costs associated with my proposed idea. Maybe the Bochurim should start running car washes every weekend, to fundraise, instead of gallivanting off to Crown Heights, which is only a worthwhile endeavor in the spring when the trees conceal all the trash bags on the street and make it look nice.
Perhaps we should consider birds of a different feather flocking together? What do I mean by this? Have you ever noticed that when two Bochurim of different persuasion get on a plane together, they have no idea where the other is studying? If you're Lubavitch, it's either 770, or maybe Morristown. Snags are limited to the Mir and Lakewood. I think that now is the time for change. We should make a limited-edition of trading cards that feature the Yeshiva systems of four different groups with the King going to to the leader of that particular sect. I'm thinking that this should be customizable, but the basic set would feature Lubavitch, Chassidish Yeshivas, Snag-America, and Snag-Israel. The jokers could be the Hebrew Theological Seminary in Cincinnati and that liberal Chovevei Torah school in New York. Now when Bochurim are caught playing poker they can reasonably claim to be leaning the names and locations of other Yeshivas. A perfect Ahavas Yisrael project! Besides, the politics engendered would soon become legendary. Who should be King for Snag-Israelis, Lakewood East or Mir Yerushalayim? Would Ger or Bobov be on top of the Chassidishers? And of course with Lubavitch, who's the queen, Ohelei Torah or Lubavitch Yeshiva? Let the playing begin!

Teenage Polygamy and Jews: Why Bar Mitzvahs are so boring in the 21st Century

Well folks, it's that time of the week again, when I can't think of anything too interesting to write and instead I present to you Random Halachos! Woohoo! Once again these will be mainly coming from Sefer Taamei Minhagim which is not only a seriously cool book but is also sitting on my lap, ready to serve all the loyal TRS readers once again.
Have you ever wondered why there wasn't any punctuation or vowels in the Torah? The answer is that Judaism demands that all boys seeking to become men must go through a horrific ordeal, and the best way to accomplish this is with forcing them to read an ancient text without any vowels or punctuation. Back in the day, the law was that a boy had to slaughter thirteen cows in a single hour, but about 1000 years ago, PETA's predecessor, LUETP (Liars for the UnEthical Treatment of People) came on the scene and demanded that this ritual be stopped. They claimed that it was A. Not very nice, and B. No one was giving them any steak. The Rabbis, for the first and only time, capitulated to the group, and decided to come up with an appropriate substitute. Rabbeinu Gershom, leader of the Jews at that time, at first wanted to mandate polygamy, figuring that anyone who could deal with two wives could certainly deal with all other demands placed on Jewish men. A trial run of one hundred (Couples? Triples?) "Marital Units" worked well for about six weeks, but then everyone started reading everyone else's mail and the boys in the trial decided to divorce all the wives and start over from scratch. Unfortunately for the males, the females weren't too happy with these arrangements, and all 300 people eventually converted to Catholicism. In order to make sure that these things never happened again, Rabbeinu Gershom forbade A. Polygamy, B. Reading someone else's mail, C. Divorcing a women without consent, and D. He changed the rules relating to apostates.
After this experiment went wrong the Rabbis figured that they might as well go back to the old way of doing things. LUETP again jumped in, and declared that they wouldn't stand for a renewal of the age old laws, seeing as they still weren't getting any steak, and anyway, how much talent did it take to slaughter thirteen cows in one hour? The Rabbis next came up with the idea that every boy should be given a little dog to love and protect, but LUETP was still not happy. After all, how many steaks can you get off a little dog?
At this point the Rabbis were getting desperate, and one of them came up with a truly inspired plan. He theorized that since the whole problem was a bunch of environmental crackheads with brains the size of bread and butter pickles, they should just switch the Jewish standard to dill, or even sour, and then everything would be all right. This was done, and for a while everything was truly all right, the boys slaughtering their cows and the LUETP trying emergency pickle-alteration surgery without success.
All was well for several years, and then, once again, disaster struck. The LUETP, having finally given up on becoming sour pickle-brain sized, began to inform on the Jews to the government. The government collected evidence for nearly two years, and then struck, catching over a thousand boys performing the ancient ceremony at a mass Bar-Mitzvah celebration in Paris. The event had been organized for survivors of the deadly Prussia mushroom affair, which had spread disease and sickness throughout Germany with its vast clouds of mushrooms choking the very life of Berliners and Frankfurters in all corners of the land.
After the government arrested the many participants they tried to, in a cruel twist of fate, feed the boys hamburgers and jelly doughnuts, but the boys preferred death to such inhuman treatment and were therefore shipped off to Manchester, England.
The government raid, carried out by the DRY ICE (Dogged and Ragged Yentas In Elegant [they were French, and didn't know how acronyms work] Clothes) netted well over 13,000 cows, but they were all useless for steak-eating purposes; no one, to this day, knows why.
The Rabbis were once again thrown upon their own resources to come up with an idea. The dead cows had been returned to the community which had paid for them, and the Rabbis figured that they might as well use the hides for something useful. They wrote the Torah on them, and started to teach all the boys who were left. None of these boys knew how to read, and the Rabbis finally made the decision that the new regime was going to include mandatory Torah-reading/torture as part of its Bar Mitzvah preparation schedule. Some complained that this was too easy, and so thank you letter writing was also legislated, though this custom has been to disappear among the more conservative Jews.

Good answer, no? The real answer, of course, is that the Torah has no signs of any kind in order to allow multiple interpretation. If the words had vowels, then there could only be one meaning, but this way, everyone gets to make up their own shtuff. Well, kind of. Anyway, I like my answer better.

Pictures!

Here are those pictures I promised a bit earlier. For more, and some videos, check out TC's site. He took the photos, so he's entitled to some credit, right?

Here's the Karkafta...


Group Tefillin...I'm wearing his baseball cap while he wears my Yarmulkeh (If that explains anything)


Shema


Part of the Line...


Barack Obama moments before I didn't shake his hand...


While we were in line I figured we should have a group photo, hence:


A random reporter from Fox who we met (and TC harassed)...

Barack!

Yes, tonight I went to the Obama speech in downtown S. Paul. It was pretty wild. We parked at 6:55, and encountered a line that was, oh, ten blocks from the Xcel Energy Center. We tried to find the end of the line, which took us another six blocks. Another four blocks formed after us. It was incredible. Literally tens of thousands of people all waiting in line. (Quick note: I just read these lines on MPR's website "You're noting the diversity of the crowd, right? As it wound down Cedar, there were Somali women on cellphones walking with men in yarmulkes." That was us! The only Frum Jews in a crowd of 40,000! Anyway, back to the story). We took a bunch of pictures, which will be going up tomorrow, and generally had a really great time in our two hours of standing on line. It was pretty funny, because all the people there were of course huge Obama supporters, and then there was us, four schmendricks who wouldn't vote for a Democrat for anything less than thirty-thousand in cash. Not that we broadcast our political views of course. After winding our way to, oh, five blocks from the arena, the cops came and told us that there was no more room. Officially Barack was only going to speak at 9:30, and like I told several people, now that he had said that his name was kind of Jewish it meant that he was on Jewish time and he'd speak at 11:00, earliest. It was only 9:10, so instead of giving up right then and there, like most people did, we ran the five blocks to the entrance, and encountered another line which was slowly snaking in. We hopped in, and it was there that the whole point of the evening was manifest. I somehow got into a conversation with a teenage kid, and asked him if he was Jewish. Of course he was. I happened to have my Tefillin with me, and asked if he'd like to put them on? Of course he did. So we made a Bar Mitzvah, right there in front of the Xcel Energy Center, with a large crowd looking on, and it was really wild. As I wrote, there'll be pictures up tomorrow. Who would've thought I'd get a Karkafta in the middle of a Barack Obama rally?
Anyway, we heard Barack begin to speak just as we made it past the Secret Service (they took away my laser pointer :(, but don't worry, I'll get over it) and up the escalator to the nosebleeds. At first we found seating in the stairs of the aisle, but then we were told to move for safety reasons and spent the rest of the speech standing, trying to see.
The man is a great speaker, but you already knew that. As pointed out in some article I read earlier this week, he has an incredible talent for cursing out McCain like there's no tomorrow and then accusing McCain of cursing him out, and this all being very unfair or something. And the crowd loved it. I couldn't hear several lines in the speech because the cheering was so loud. I myself didn't even clap my hands once, because why would I want to do that?
After it was all over we ran downstairs, and I came this ( - ) close to shaking his hand. Dang. Michelle came over, but I quickly withdrew my hand, because after all, though they may be pathetically low, I do have standards. We finally left at 10:30, after waiting for twenty minutes outside the X for him to come out.

So why did I go? It was really cool, a chance to see the next President, and oh yeah, that Karkafta. My first one too.

Devarim Shonim

Happy Yom Kippur Katan everybody! Today I had three or four half-baked ideas about what I wanted to blog about, and then I came up with this great idea; blog about Yom Kippur Katan. I did a quick search of the internet, and lo and behold, there's already a ton of sites that'll tell you all you want to know about it. So maybe I should just blog about various random-style tidbits?
A. For example, why is it that after you finish doing laundry there's always one sock that is still wet? It doesn't make any sense! Everything else is already beginning to burn, but this one sock has to decide to remain damp. And it's not like you can just put it back in the dryer, because who turns on a dryer for just one sock?
B. Why do we fast on the day before Yom Kippur? Because the moon is small. What does this mean? There's a story that in the beginning, the sun and the moon both shone, but the moon complained that two kings can't share one crown, so Hashem told the moon to go and lose its light. Asks the sefer "Chiddushei Shnei Hameoros", what does it mean that the moon should "go"? And how does the moon make itself smaller? He explains that in the beginning, the moon really didn't have any light of its own; rather, the moon shared a window (whatever that means) with the sun, which shone for both of them and made the moon think that it was shining. The moon complained, so Hashem told it to get out and find its own window, and automatically the moon became smaller.
C. Erev Rosh Chodesh is known as "Yom Kippur Katan" because it atoned for all a person's sins of the past month. Artscroll thinks you should all be fasting. Merely out of a deep sense of loathing for everything they stand for, I'd advise you to eat several slices of pizza today. Yes, I use four five Artscroll publications every day, but does that mean I shouldn't spit in the well which quenched my thirst? I think not.
D. Barack Obama is giving a major speech tonight in S. Paul's Xcel Energy Center. I'm trying to find a way to go. Why would I want to go? Mivtzoyim of course! But seriously folks, I think it would be cool to go hear the future President of America.
E. Is it really possible to always divide humanity into two parts? No matter which criterion is used, is it always haves and have-nots, hungry and satiated, exhumed and still-buried, hunter and hunted, bored and not yet bored, etc. ad infinitum? You get what I'm saying? That I have nothing more to write? Yeah, I figured.

Some nice stories

This morning on the way to Mikveh I was listening to a tape from an old class of Rabbi Sholom Ber Gordon, grandfather of both of our leaders here at YHSTC. He told a couple of stories which I'll try to reproduce here for your reading pleasure. The first concerns the oldest son of the Tzemach Tzedek, Rav Baruch Shalom, who along with Reb Yaakov did not become Rebbeim, unlike the other five sons. Anyway, the Tzemach Tzedek told Rav Baruch Shalom, or maybe it's a letter, I wasn't paying attention too closely, that since he was the Bechor, the oldest son, he was entitled to a double portion of his father's inheritance. What was this double portion that he got? He didn't have to become a Rebbe. His great-great-grandson was the Rebbe, but whether that has any connection to the story I don't know.
The second story concerns the Baal Shem Tov. One of his students would stay up all night reciting Mishnayos in the his room while he slept, or something like that. The Maggid of Meziritich wrote of his night to Reb Yaakov Yosef of Polnoy, author of the Toldos Yaakov Yosef. While he was saying Mishnayos the Baal Shem Tov woke up and told him to go to his closet, take out a staff, and hand it to the guy in the room. The Maggid took out the staff, and looked around to see who was coming to get it. There was no one there, and the Maggid told this to the Baal Shem Tov. "No worries," (I paraphrase) the Baal Shem Tov said, "just hand it out." The Maggid handed the stick into the thin air, and it disappeared. The Maggid writes that his feet were shaking, and he was quite perturbed by the whole situation. The Baal Shem Tov noticed this, and told the Maggid the whole story. Basically, there was a Ben Bayis, a guy who hangs out and helps around the house, by Reb Yaakov Yosef. This guy once gave the Baal Shem Tov a staff. He was also a big sinner, and did all sorts of bad shtuff. He died, but his soul found no peace, and he came to the Baal Shem Tov, begging the great man to release him from his misery. The Baal Shem Tov tried, to no avail. Nevertheless, the soul continued to bother the Baal Shem Tov, mentioning the gift of the stick. So the Baal Shem Tov gave back the stick.
Rabbi Sholom Ber Gordon says in the tape that when his father, Reb Yochanan Gordon, told this story he mentioned three lessons that can be learned from it, but he (Rabbi Sholom Ber) only remembered two of them. The first is that just because someone's a Ben Bayis by Reb Yaakov Yosef of Polnoy, it doesn't mean that they're all holy, and secondly, that if the sinner had given a month's living to the Baal Shem Tov, which the Baal Shem Tov couldn't give back, then he would have tried a little harder to rescue his soul.

After writing these stories I remembered a couple of others. I thought I had already transcribed them on this humble little blog, but a quick search didn't turn anything up, so I guess I'll just write 'em now. I heard them last year from Rabbi Wilshanski in Morristown at a Melave Malka. Here goes:

The Maggid of Meziritch was the youngest of the students of the Baal Shem Tov, and it came as a surprise to the rest of the students when he was chosen to be the next leader of the burgeoning Chassidic movement. Rabbi Yaakov Yosef of Polnoy, one of the oldest of the students, and the first to publish the Baal Shem Tov's teachings, came to visit the Maggid for Shabbos a few years after the latter's ascension to leadership. After Shabbos the two holy men went into the Maggid's room, locked the door, and commenced to talk. One of the more enterprising of the Maggid's students somehow managed to listen in to the conversation.
Rabbi Yaakov Yosef asked the Maggid, "Tell me, what special merit did you have that you became the leader?" The Maggid replied that as far as he knew there was nothing he had that no one else did. Rabbi Yaakov Yosef insisted, "You must have at least seen or heard something that none of the others heard; can you remember what that was?" The Maggid thought for a few moments and then said, "Do you know the story of the towels?" Rabbi Yaakov Yosef said that he had no idea what the Maggid was talking about. "Well that explains it," said the Maggid, and he proceeded to explain.
I noticed that the Baal Shem Tov had two towels hanging in his room. I wondered what these were for, and kept an eye on them. I noticed that the Baal Shem Tov never used them, and my curiosity grew. I determined to find out what these towels were for, and began to keep to a careful tab on the Baal Shem Tov's movements. I realized that the only time the Baal Shem Tov was alone was on Friday afternoon, after mikve, when he would lock himself in his room for a couple of hours. I figured that this must be the time he used the towels, because they were never otherwise touched. That Friday afternoon I hid under the Baal Shem Tov's desk and waited for him to come in. A few minutes later he did, and, locking the door behind himself, he walked over to the two towels and started to wipe his hands in them. He stopped, looked around, and then started again. He stopped again, looked around, and I realized that he knew there was someone in the room. I crawled out from under the desk, and started to apologize profusely for coming in. I said that I'd leave immediately, and began to step towards the door when the Baal Shem Tov told me that once someone was in the room there was no leaving. He then asked if I had been to the Mikveh, and when I replied in the affirmative he told me to come over, handed me one of the towels, and...I can't tell you what happened after that.
Rabbi Yaakov Yosef was satisfied with this answer, but he wanted to know one more thing, "I noticed during this afternoon's Shalosh Seudos that an old man walked in, but no one noticed. A young man in the front stood up, and gave the old man his chair. Who were these two guys?" The Maggid answered, "Did you ever see the old man before?" Rabbi Yaakov Yosef said that he had not. The Maggid continued, "The old man used to come whenever the Baal Shem Tov when tell Torah. He is the Arizal. The only person in the crowd who saw him today, who gave up his seat for him, is Rabbi Schneur Zalmen, the Litvak (the Alter Rebbe)."

Nice stories, no? As I've mentioned before, when it rains, it pours, and today is no exception. Should I have saved these latter two for tomorrow? Possibly. But hey, maybe I'll have a lot to say tomorrow too!

A Chitas Saga

Teachers work very hard. Included amongst all their other drudgeries are substitute lesson plans for when the teacher is sick or at a wedding or something like that. Teachers generally like to make these lesson plans self-contained, so that their replacement has no trouble and the teacher doesn't have too much of a headache when they come back and find out that the substitute told all their students that black is white, the sky is orange, and their regular teacher has horns on the back of their legs. But I digress. My aim in this whole introduction was merely to explain my decision to write today's post today. My brain has decided to take a bit of a vacation, and it's being replaced by the backup, which is slightly more brilliant but also slightly more unbalanced. So here goes...

G-d is a really great, um, well, G-d. I was considering saying that he was a guy, but that would be A. Inaccurate, and B. Disrespectful, not to mention C. Foolhardy, and D. Possibly humorous. (See, I told you this alternative personality was kind of strange). Way back when, in the beginning of time, G-d created the world. Yeah! He wrote about it in the book of Genesis, available for the last several thousand years from your local scribe. G-d later sent Jacob and his children down to Egypt-land, and even later then that he told Moses to tell Pharaoh, "Let my people go." The Israelites got out of dodge, and went into the desert to get the Torah. While they were there they also got a whole ton of laws relating to sanctuaries and sacrifices, and later fought some battles, had some rebellions, and generally did things any nascent people do when they're wandering around a wilderness for forty years and don't have even one stick of deodorant among them. Later they got some more laws, a recap of the whole adventure, and were poised to go into the land when BOOM! Moses died and that was that. The bible ends. Everyone goes to sleep, and later the Jews go in to the land, go out of the land, go back in, go back out, go back in, get rockets rained down on 'em from snot-faced little brats in Gaza, and generally have a great time being killed by people who don't like long noses. All that shtuff isn't included in the Torah; I just put it in to get you caught up on the history of the world.
It's Rosh Hashanah, and all are a'feared; Yom Kippur they're hungry, and Sukkos they're imbibing. This a pretty good month for Jews; everything's idyllic, and everyone expects to be joyful for the rest of eternity. And then the unthinkable happens. Cheshvan hits, the most boring month ever conceived by divine intelligence. Fortunately, every day is (mildly) exciting, because we're in the middle of Genesis, renowned for it's stories, wit, wisdom, and pretty wild passages in the Meam Loaz.
Chanuka is the final hurrah for Kislev, a month that rivals for Tishrei for joy and other fun shtuff. Next up is Teves, a month which by itself is not too exciting, but is redeemed by A. Preparations for 10 Shevat, and B. The beginnings of the enslavement in Egypt. Yes, being enslaved isn't much fun, even with the free fish, but learning about it is pretty cool. Continuing along in this chain of musical months, we hit Shevat, which of course has several days of importance, including the Rebbe's ascension to the throne, my birthday, the new year for elks, elms, and other varieties of tree-like vegetative manner, and of course the Rebbitzen's Yahrtzeit, which always feels like a bit of a letdown when commemorated outside of Detroit. Chumash in these days begins to become, dare I say, a bit tedious, with all this talk of the Mishkan and its assorted implements. Nevertheless, hope springs eternal in the human breast, for up we come to Adar, with all its attendant happiness and cleaning for Pesach. Who has time to think about the sacrifices of Leviticus, with its dearth of stories and overload of priestly function. But as I say, there's no worries, because everyone is busy purging their homes of Coke, rum, and other leavened entities. After Pesach comes the hard times, with no music and quite boring Chumash. Yes, I'll probably be stoned for writing that, but, in my humble opinion, it's true. At least we have cheesecake to look forward to, and Numbers. Yes, the book of Numbers, renowned for it's interesting and enlightening episodes, known throughout the known world as being a much more entertaining yarn than the one presented in the previous book of the Jewish Bible. And it's at this point where we stand now, ready to eat all those cheese crepes and discover again the joys of spies, Korach, wells, and the occasional law or two. I was really looking forward to Numbers, and when I found not an exciting tale in all of the first Parsha I comforted myself that in Nasso we would have our fun. But it is not to be, and this whole week I lie desolate, abandoned by the books which once strove to light the way. Um, that was a bit melodramatic. Sorry. Truth is, I can deal with the pain, especially with the promise of a new Lipa Schmeltzer CD in a week or two.
The rest of the year also has some cool stuff going on; Deuteronomy isn't the most vibrant of books, but there's always the three weeks and Elul, month of repentance, to make up for any shortcomings. And after Elul comes Tishrei, the whole cycle starting anew with much singing and gnashing of teeth. If you want to read about it, then just scroll up! Oh, the joy!