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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.
4 min to tellexcellent to tell
518 wordsRebbe Rayatz
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score 1.50 ·
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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.
4 min to tellexcellent to tell
560 wordsAlter Rebbe
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score 1.46 ·
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As I Heard Them, Vol. 1, p. 392, no. 18
The narrator's zeide, R. Mordechai Yoel, used to say that the Rebbeim disliked hearing about people's wrongdoings and preferred to speak Chassidus; yet at the Simchas Torah farbrengen of 5685 (1924) the Rebbe spoke at length about viduy devarim, and people became baalei teshuvah. A yungerman from Nevel, whose infant had suffocated in its sleep, chased the Rebbe from Leningrad to Moscow and finally to Rostov, apparently in the winter of 5683 (1923). At that yechidus the Rebbe told him that if people knew how good it is to tell everything — literally everything — once in six months or once a year, it would be truly good.
2 min to tellexcellent to tell
315 wordsRebbe Rayatz
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score 1.30 ·
person_role=0.00 topic_theme_strength=0.00 occasion_strength=0.00 keyword_fts=0.00 semantic=0.00 farbrengen_value=1.00 length_suitability=0.60
As I Heard Them, Vol. 1, pp. 221-222, no. 37
At the Lag B'Omer farbrengen of 5685, held in the dining hall after the maamar KaShemen HaTov, the Rebbe related that a relative of theirs, a rov in Velliz, was persecuted by two gvirim and a wealthy woman and wrote to the Mitteler Rebbe, who was then in Staraya Russa. The Mitteler Rebbe wrote back to each: to the first, have immediate remorse and G-d will forgive; to the second, take great care lest I go out to you with the sword; to the woman, a woman's wisdom is only in her spindle. The first gvir relented, the second mocked the letter and was beheaded that day by a passing Cossack, and the woman lost everything in a court ruling over unpaid taxes on her spirits factory. When this was later related to the Mitteler Rebbe, he was deeply pained that their punishment had come through him.
4 min to tellvery good to tell
553 wordsRebbe Rayatz
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score 1.26 ·
person_role=0.00 topic_theme_strength=0.00 occasion_strength=0.00 keyword_fts=0.00 semantic=0.00 farbrengen_value=0.80 length_suitability=0.93
As I Heard Them, Vol. 1, pp. 158-159, no. 37
R. Moshe Aizel Rabkin, a gvir from Homil, reported hearing the Rebbe speak at a farbrengen — the narrator thinks it was Purim in Menton — about the special qualities of Tomchei Temimim. The Rebbe recounted that a young man had come to Lubavitch seeking acceptance into the yeshivah, was rejected by the administration, and when sent in to the Rebbe was found to be filled with false ideas — yet the Rebbe instructed that he be accepted. Much later, after a levayah in Lubavitch, the Rebbe entered the small zal to recite Yoshev Be'seiser seven times and found that same young man standing there deeply engrossed in davening, oblivious to the commotion.
2 min to tellexcellent to tell
262 wordsRebbe Rashab
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score 1.25 ·
person_role=0.00 topic_theme_strength=0.00 occasion_strength=0.00 keyword_fts=0.00 semantic=0.00 farbrengen_value=1.00 length_suitability=0.50
As I Heard Them, Vol. 1, pp. 44-45, no. 23
Someone told the Alter Rebbe that his chassidim were only putting on a show ("tzvu'im," literally colored). He answered, "Good — they'll get what they deserve," citing the Sages that one who is neither lame nor blind but pretends to be will not leave the world without truly becoming so; so they will truly become chassidim. The same complaint was brought to the Tzemach Tzedek, who replied that it is a sign they are fond of this color, and on another occasion that when a person soaks himself in dye all day, some of it inevitably works its way inside as well.
2 min to tellexcellent to tell
200 wordsAlter Rebbe
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score 1.19 ·
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As I Heard Them, Vol. 1, p. 82, no. 9
In his later years the Tzemach Tzedek held yechidus with chassidim standing back-to-back, each audience beginning the moment the one before it ended. Reb Itzele Rover of Homil, a venerable chossid of the Alter Rebbe, came for yechidus and asked the Rebbe to bless him that he not die without doing teshuvah. The narrator's zeide, standing directly behind him, heard the Tzemach Tzedek cry out, "Reb Itzele, what do you want from me? — All your days are in teshuvah."
1 min to tellexcellent to tell
166 wordsTzemach Tzedek
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score 1.16 ·
person_role=0.00 topic_theme_strength=0.00 occasion_strength=0.00 keyword_fts=0.00 semantic=0.00 farbrengen_value=1.00 length_suitability=0.32
As I Heard Them, Vol. 1, pp. 82-83, no. 10
One of the yoshvim in Lubavitch was seized in the middle of the night by a longing to do teshuvah and ran to the Tzemach Tzedek, even though the fixed schedule in Lubavitch was to retire at ten and rise at four. He called out the words of the Rosh Hashanah Musaf, "He who opens the gate for those who knock in repentance." The Tzemach Tzedek opened the door.
1 min to tellexcellent to tell
141 wordsTzemach Tzedek
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score 1.14 ·
person_role=0.00 topic_theme_strength=0.00 occasion_strength=0.00 keyword_fts=0.00 semantic=0.00 farbrengen_value=1.00 length_suitability=0.28
As I Heard Them, Vol. 1, p. 106, no. 49
The Tzemach Tzedek once spoke about teshuvah, and when he lifted his holy head and looked at the chassidim, the entire crowd burst into weeping. He then said that teshuvah is a mitzvah like all other mitzvos, and a mitzvah without simcha is nothing.
1 min to tellexcellent to tell
83 wordsTzemach Tzedek
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score 1.07 ·
person_role=0.00 topic_theme_strength=0.00 occasion_strength=0.00 keyword_fts=0.00 semantic=0.00 farbrengen_value=1.00 length_suitability=0.15
As I Heard Them, Vol. 1, p. 101, no. 40
Chassidim relate that a question came before the Tzemach Tzedek regarding a woman accused of adultery, and he inclined toward ruling her forbidden to her husband. She traveled to the tzaddik R. Mordechai of Chernobyl, who said he saw no sign of the transgression on her face. The Tzemach Tzedek then wrote that perhaps the abundance of her tears had erased the sin from her face. A parenthetical note records that the Rebbe wrote, on 13 Elul 5709, that he had heard the halachic deliberation in this matter was with the Tzemach Tzedek's brother-in-law, R. Yaakov Yisroel of Cherkass, son of R. Mordechai of Chernobyl.
2 min to tellvery good to tell
246 wordsTzemach Tzedek
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score 1.04 ·
person_role=0.00 topic_theme_strength=0.00 occasion_strength=0.00 keyword_fts=0.00 semantic=0.00 farbrengen_value=0.80 length_suitability=0.47
As I Heard Them, Vol. 1, pp. 210-211, no. 20
One Yud-Tes Kislev the Rebbe lifted his head, looked up toward the assembled crowd, and spoke of someone who had been in Lubavitch in Tomchei Temimim and about whom it was now questionable whether he put on tefillin at the proper time — saying that even as a steward of a train carriage, at the brakes he would do teshuvah and melt like a candle. A parenthetical note records that the young man was later in Tashkent, critically ill and with a foot amputated, and told the narrator that he had become a different person years earlier when the Rebbe Rashab came to him and said, "Moshe, enough!"
2 min to tellvery good to tell
224 wordsRebbe Rayatz
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score 1.01 ·
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As I Heard Them, Vol. 1, pp. 333-334, no. 26
The narrator recalls how his zeide would speak of the greatness of the Rebbe Rashab, saying that he knew how dear the Rebbe Maharash was to the Tzemach Tzedek, and that since the Rebbe Maharash left such a son — a leader of the Jewish people — that son is granted whatever gashmius and ruchnius he needs. The zeide would also give the narrator a pidyon to bring when he traveled to the Rebbe for Rosh Hashanah. The narrator once read one of these pidyonos and saw that it was a request for teshuvah ila'ah, the higher level of return to Hashem.
2 min to tellvery good to tell
194 wordsRebbe Rayatz
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score 0.99 ·
person_role=0.00 topic_theme_strength=0.00 occasion_strength=0.00 keyword_fts=0.00 semantic=0.00 farbrengen_value=0.80 length_suitability=0.38
As I Heard Them, Vol. 1, pp. 55-56, no. 36
The Mitteler Rebbe dreamt of a footbridge over a stream that had to be crossed: his teacher the Maggid of Mezritch went first and stumbled, while his father the Alter Rebbe crossed without incident. When the Mitteler Rebbe later asked the Alter Rebbe about the dream, the Alter Rebbe replied, "How can you compare me with the Rebbe? Has the Rebbe made as many baalei teshuvah as I have?"
1 min to tellvery good to tell
163 wordsAlter Rebbe
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score 0.96 ·
person_role=0.00 topic_theme_strength=0.00 occasion_strength=0.00 keyword_fts=0.00 semantic=0.00 farbrengen_value=0.80 length_suitability=0.32
As I Heard Them, Vol. 1, pp. 494-495, no. 16
One of the baalei teshuva whom R. Eliyahu Akiva Lipskar brought closer to Yiddishkeit said of him, "he is like my father (spiritually)!" On Rosh Hashana night an unfamiliar man got out of a car outside R. Eliyahu's house carrying a satchel and asked whether R. Eliyahu Lipskar lived there. R. Eliyahu did not rebuke him for driving on yom tov or for the disturbance, but invited him in and included him in the yom tov meals, and the man ultimately became an observant Jew. Another baal teshuva connected to R. Eliyahu recounted that watching that Rosh Hashana incident shaped his own relationship with him.
1 min to tellvery good to tell
109 wordsR. Eliyahu Akiva Lipskar
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score 0.90 ·
person_role=0.00 topic_theme_strength=0.00 occasion_strength=0.00 keyword_fts=0.00 semantic=0.00 farbrengen_value=0.80 length_suitability=0.20
As I Heard Them, Vol. 1, p. 214, no. 25
At a farbrengen the Rebbe instructed that the Alter Rebbe's nigun be sung, with the last section repeated no fewer than seven times and no more than ten, and the ninth repetition running directly into the tenth. He added that everyone should have thoughts of teshuvah while singing.
1 min to tellvery good to tell
76 wordsRebbe Rayatz
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score 0.88 ·
person_role=0.00 topic_theme_strength=0.00 occasion_strength=0.00 keyword_fts=0.00 semantic=0.00 farbrengen_value=0.80 length_suitability=0.15
As I Heard Them, Vol. 1, p. 274, no. 117
The Rebbe related that when he came into the prison room he saw only heads there. "Ay!" he said — "such a place for teshuvah!"
0 min to tellvery good to tell
54 wordsRebbe Rayatz
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score 0.86 ·
person_role=0.00 topic_theme_strength=0.00 occasion_strength=0.00 keyword_fts=0.00 semantic=0.00 farbrengen_value=0.80 length_suitability=0.12
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