Parshas Tazria–Metzora

The Tzemach Tzedek had a not overly wise shadar (an emis­sary of the Rebbe en­gaged in fundrais­ing) who once told him: “I no longer want to be your shadar. You think that the chas­sidim are dis­cussing Chas­sidus?! They drink mashkeh — and not only one quart, but two or three!”

“Why does it is bother you?” asked the Tzemach Tzedek. “It comes out of my own funds. ”

“It doesn’t mat­ter, ” he an­swered, “I don’t want to do this any­more. ”

“I can’t be­lieve, ” the Tzemach Tzedek replied, “that our chas­sidim gather to­gether with­out men­tion­ing my zeide’s (the Al­ter Rebbe’s ) name; and when they men­tion my zeide’s name, there is ruch­nius. “Fool, fool; go travel!”

My zeide re­counted in the name of Reb Aizel:

The Al­ter Rebbe once came out to the chas­sidim and passed around mashkeh. “Why are you cel­e­brat­ing?” asked Fet­ter Leibele (the Al­ter Rebbe’s brother).

“To­day I have ful­filled what I wrote in my Tanya,” the Al­ter Rebbe an­swered, “‘One should hum­ble one­self…even be­fore the lowli­est of men,’ and I added the word ma­mash (lit­er­ally).¹⁰ And when some­one who trans­gressed the en­tire Torah came to me to­day, I thought to my­self, ‘Nu?’ I put my head down for three min­utes, and found seven ar­eas in which I was in­fe­rior to him. ”

When Reb Aizel re­lated this story, he pounded the ta­ble and said, “Only the Rebbe could do some­thing like that!”

10. Beginning of Chapter 30; Avos 4:10. ↩

It once hap­pened that one of the zitzers [yoshvim, young mar­ried men who ded­i­cated them­selves to Torah-study and dav­en­ing], was over­come by a long­ing to do teshu­vah. He raced off in the mid­dle of the night to the Tzemach Tzedek — though the reg­u­lar sched­ule in Lubav­itch was to re­tire for the evening at ten and to start the day at four — but he ran off, shout­ing out the words from Musaf of Rosh Hashanah: לדופקי שער הפותח בתשובה He who opens the gate for those who knock in re­pen­tance…

And the Tzemach Tzedek opened the door.