Aseres Yemei Teshuvah

His deep per­cep­tion and feel­ing are ap­par­ent in this de­pic­tion:

“While the Rebbe Rashab said a maa­mar, the Rebbe Ray­atz would stand op­po­site him. In the mid­dle of the maa­mar the Rebbe would stop and they would look into each other’s eyes. ”

“On Shab­bos Teshu­vah 5673 (1912) the maa­mar was ex­tra­or­di­nary. The Rebbe paused fre­quently and rapped on the ta­ble, and at each pause they would look into each other’s eyes. It is sim­i­lar to what I wrote in the name of my zeide — re­gard­ing his de­scrip­tion of the Tzemach Tzedek and Reb Aizel of Homil — that he saw how Two souls were talk­ing with one an­other.⁵⁶ I can only say the same, for each pause lasted a while and was ex­tra­or­di­nary. Thank G-d that my mem­ory re­tains this as though I saw it yes­ter­day. ”

He would also spend time in the Rebbe’s home, and he re­calls var­i­ous mem­o­ries of the Reb­bet­zins.

56. Expression in Berachos 18b. ↩

The Tzemach Tzedek once spoke about teshu­vah. When he lifted his gaze the chas­sidim broke into sobs.

“Teshu­vah is a mitz­vah,” he said, “like ev­ery mitz­vah. And a mitz­vah with­out joy is noth­ing (gor­nisht).”

Dur­ing his stay in Leningrad the Rebbe Ray­atz once spoke of teshu­vah and used the ex­am­ple of a talk­ing bird. “When a per­son of­fends the King and seeks his for­give­ness, he takes a bird and teaches it phrases re­quest­ing par­don. Imag­ine, now, how deeply his re­morse and re­pen­tance must pen­e­trate, un­til he is able to teach the bird these ex­pres­sions. ”

My zeide once told the above story to Rav Tzvi Auer­bach (Her­shel Tsuriv­et­zer, a chos­sid of the Tzemach Tzedek) and said, “You’re surely think­ing, Isn’t it for­bid­den to serve a per­son of flesh and blood? Nev­er­the­less, that’s what he cried out!”

Af­ter Rosh Hashanah, 5673 (1912) — when the Rebbe had said the maa­mar be­gin­ning Shu­vah (not a dif­fi­cult maa­mar) — I re­turned home from Lubav­itch and re­viewed the maa­mar in pub­lic. When the above men­tioned R. Tzvi, a “Shas Yid” (an ex­pert in ev­ery part of Tal­mud), heard about this he came to us, and I had to re­peat the maa­mar for him. Such was the bit­tul of a great chos­sid!

On Shab­bos, 8 Tishrei 5689 (1928), Chaya Grunya gave birth to a third son, Yis­roel. R. Zal­man re­ceived a let­ter from the Frierdiker Rebbe, who was in Riga at the time, with a bracha for their new­born son.

The Frierdiker Rebbe kept R. Zal­man and his fam­ily in mind even when they were phys­i­cally dis­tant. At the end of 5689 (1929), R. Zal­man re­ceived a let­ter from his brother Yis­roel Noach HaLevi, who lived in Eretz Yis­roel, in which he de­scribed his yechidus with the Rebbe on his visit that sum­mer. The Rebbe in­quired about their mother and then said about the broth­ers [Zal­man and Boruch], “I know quite well what is hap­pen­ing with them. Send them my re­gards; write to them that I do not for­get them. ”

My zeide re­counted in the name of Chaim Meir, the care­taker of the Al­ter Rebbe’s ohel:

Two young men turned up and asked to be al­lowed within the holy ohel. They came in­side and cried at length. As they left he asked them why they had cried so much. Years ear­lier, they said, the Al­ter Rebbe had shown them com­pas­sion and led them back to the true path.

They were tai­lors, work­ing in dis­tant vil­lages in the re­gion of Kursk, and they went astray from Yid­dishkeit — eat­ing treif and do­ing ev­ery­thing they shouldn’t have. A few years passed and they de­cided to re­turn home. Pass­ing by Piena [the vil­lage where the Al­ter Rebbe passed away], they came to the house of a non-Jew and asked for some­thing to eat.

“I don’t have any­thing for you, ” the goy said.

“Maybe you have a sausage?” they asked. He led them to a room and, af­ter lock­ing the door, told them he would take their money and kill them. Their pleas for mercy went un­heeded, but he agreed to let them pray and re­cite Vid­duy. In brief, they cried and wailed an en­tire day un­til… he came back and re­turned their money.

“A great tzad­dik stayed with me, ” he told them, “and passed away here. He told me that two Jews would come to my house and ‘This is what you should do’ — namely, cause them to re­pent. ‘How will I know who they are?’ I asked the tzad­dik, and he an­swered that they would ask to eat treif.”

“Nu,” con­cluded the two Jews, “when so many years ago, the Al­ter Rebbe gazed ahead to save us — how can we not cry?”

The third story:

It was not sur­pris­ing, my zeide com­mented, to see the tears of Reb Aizel’s stu­dents when he passed away. But some­one else, not among Reb Aizel’s stu­dents, also cried un­con­trol­lably.

“Why are you cry­ing?” they asked him.

“He saved my life, ” he an­swered. “When I was young it came to my mind to com­mit a trans­gres­sion. As I walked along, Reb Aizel — who had left the Lubav­itcher shul af­ter dav­en­ing — was walk­ing be­hind me.

“‘Where are you go­ing!?’ he shouted. I didn’t an­swer a word, and con­tin­ued walk­ing. “‘Where are you go­ing!?’ he shouted again. ‘Go to shul and re­cite some Tehillim!’

“He saved my life, ” the man con­cluded. “How can I not cry over such a tzad­dik?”

“You have mazel!” Reb Aizel would tell him. (And when that Yid passed away, my zeide told me who he was.)