Tu B'Av

In the sum­mer of 5675 (1915) I was in Pinsk, lodg­ing with R. Yis­roel Yitzchak Lu­bin­sky, the cel­e­brated chos­sid known for dav­en­ing in Yid­dish trans­la­tion ev­ery word of ke­tores, and I re­mem­ber hear­ing this story from him:

The Rebbe Ma­ha­rash would al­ways say that ev­ery mat­ter should be heard as it seems ( azoy) and an­swered as it seems, that is to say, in a gen­eral man­ner.

Once in Se­myanovka, in the prov­ince of Chernigov, the gov­ern­ment found out that they were ap­pro­pri­at­ing al­co­hol from the fac­tory, that is, with­out pay­ing any taxes to the gov­ern­ment. A ma­jor trial was sched­uled for thir­teen de­fen­dants, and R. Yis­roel Yitzchak was to be a wit­ness. To run the trial, a well-known in­ves­ti­ga­tor, Stal­ietov, was com­ing up from Pe­ters­burg.

R. Yis­roel Yitzchak trav­eled to the Rebbe Ma­ha­rash in Lubav­itch and ex­plained that, since many Yid­den were fac­ing five-year prison terms, he re­quested that the Rebbe lis­ten to him in de­tail. And he started recit­ing: If Stal­ietov asks him this, then he will re­spond with that — in short, a num­ber of ques­tions which he knew to an­swer. But if he were to ask him such-and- such a ques­tion — then what should he an­swer?

The Rebbe Ma­ha­rash replied, “You are a young man with in­tel­li­gence (guteh kup ), and you are a Yid, who is not caught up in plea­sures. Stal­ietov is a goy, and with­out a par­tic­u­larly good mind, and he is caught up in plea­sures — it will never oc­cur to him to ask such ques­tions. ”

And so it was. The trial ended fa­vor­ably.

Once at a far­bren­gen it was quite hot and cramped, and some rav there, want­ing to get up from the ta­ble, was un­suc­cess­ful. “They won’t let me out, ” he said.

Over­hear­ing him, the Rebbe — the Tzemach Tzedek — said, “Who would dare not let a Yid out? Who would dare not let a Yid out?”