Vayigash
Parsha
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Strong thematic connections
thematic
Stories carrying the themes this occasion is about, though not tagged to it directly.
As I Heard Them, Vol. 1, pp. 140-141, no. 12
In the summer of 5674 (1914) the narrator's brother fell ill with tuberculosis of the bone and was taken from Homil to Kiev for surgery, then a second and a third operation, after which he was very weak. The narrator wrote a pidyon and sent it to the Rebbe's summer dacha in Zalsha; an opening formed at the site, the phlegm drained, and the doctor, Kostritzky, said he had never seen such a thing. The narrator brought his brother to Lubavitch for Rosh Hashanah 5675, but with the war having begun on Tisha B'Av and the crowds immense they could not obtain yechidus, and lacking money to stay through Sukkos they had to leave on motzaei Yom Kippur; the Rebbetzin let him wait in the small room outside the yechidus room, and when the Rebbe finally emerged very late and the narrator said "This is my brother," the Rebbe asked, "This is the one whose leg hurt?"
4 min to tellexcellent to tell
534 wordsRebbe Rashab
story_000151
As I Heard Them, Vol. 1, pp. 119-120, no. 4
In the summer of 5675 (1915), lodging in Pinsk with R. Yisroel Yitzchak Lubinsky, the narrator heard this from him. The Rebbe Maharash would always say that a matter should be heard as it seems and answered as it seems — in a general manner. When the authorities in Semyanovka, Chernigov province, discovered untaxed alcohol being taken from the factory, a major trial was set for thirteen defendants with R. Yisroel Yitzchak as a witness, and the well-known investigator Stalietov was coming from Petersburg; R. Yisroel Yitzchak went to the Rebbe Maharash in Lubavitch and, because many Yidden faced prison, asked the Rebbe to hear out his prepared answers, ending with one question he did not know how to answer. The Rebbe told him that he is a Yid with a good head who is not sunk in physical desires, while Stalietov is a goy without such a mind and caught up in desires, so it would never occur to him to ask such questions — and so it was: the trial ended favorably.
4 min to tellexcellent to tell
488 wordsRebbe Maharash
story_000122
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
story_000026
As I Heard Them, Vol. 1, pp. 492-494, no. 14
A member of Anash phoned R. Eliyahu's house asking Mrs. Lipskar to host a family arriving in Toronto with nowhere to stay; things were difficult for her then and she did not answer at once, but when the husband himself called the next day from the road, travelling with his wife and small baby, she gave him her address and prepared her home. After they had rested she asked about their origins, and the guest, whose family name meant nothing to her, said his grandfather was Yisroel Konson of Leningrad and Tashkent — the R. Yisroel Konson who had risked his health to help her and her husband when they hovered between life and death. She was left speechless, and all who heard of the meeting were astounded by the Divine providence; the Lipskars then attended to the family's every need and offered them loans to buy a home in Toronto, so she was finally able to repay a debt that had weighed on her for years.
3 min to tellexcellent to tell
427 wordsR. Eliyahu Akiva Lipskar
story_000673
As I Heard Them, Vol. 1, pp. 306-307, no. 41
An agunah came to the Tzemach Tzedek in Lubavitch to ask about her missing husband, and the Rebbe sent her to Reb Aizel in Homil, who said he had no way of knowing where her husband was. She stayed in Homil for weeks, coming daily and weeping while Reb Aizel sent her away, until one day she refused to budge. Reb Aizel began shoving his meshares Mottel Gabeitzik, who in turn shoved the woman through all the rooms and out into the street — the Kiev-Petersburg highway that ran past the house — at the exact moment a wagon carrying her husband was passing. She screamed, the wagon halted, and a settlement was concluded.
3 min to tellexcellent to tell
391 wordsRebbe Rayatz
story_000400
As I Heard Them, Vol. 1, pp. 462-463, no. 72
In 5712 (1952), when chassidim were still unfamiliar with the significance of the Rebbe's answer "I will mention it at the Ohel," R. Zalman Duchman met a couple in Toronto who had been married seven years without children and promised to request a bracha for them. Back in New York he approached the Rebbe, who replied that he would mention them at the Ohel of the Frierdiker Rebbe; feeling this was short of a bracha, R. Zalman pressed, "But Rebbe, why can't the Rebbe give them a proper bracha?" and the Rebbe did not respond. The following year he found the couple in Toronto holding a baby girl, and they attributed her birth to the Rebbe's bracha and gave a substantial donation despite their means. Returning to Crown Heights he reported the news to the Rebbe by the elevator, in the same spot as the year before, and the Rebbe turned at his door and said with a smile, "Nu, Reb Zalman, 'I will mention it at the Ohel' is a proper bracha!"
3 min to tellexcellent to tell
386 wordsR. Zalman Duchman
story_000628
As I Heard Them, Vol. 1, pp. 476-478, no. 21
R. Yisroel Duchman sought to teach his children hiskashrus, and some of his most important interactions with the Rebbe concerned them. When his second son Yossi was a young child he swallowed an open safety pin that lodged in his esophagus beyond the reach of instruments; doctors planned surgery, warning of possible negative consequences while saying that leaving the pin could be life-threatening, and R. Yisroel said he would consent to nothing before consulting the Rebbe. The Rebbe objected to the surgery and asked that the scheduled surgeon speak with him; the surgeon refused, so the Rebbe spoke by phone with the head of the emergency room and gave precise instructions for removing the pin by lowering a strong magnet down the boy's throat, which worked without difficulty. Afterward the original surgeon insisted on telling the Duchmans that had his own father, himself a doctor, claimed to remove such a pin without surgery he would not have believed him — it was possible only because of their holy Rebbe; and years later, when the grown Yossi asked his father to request a blessing, the Rebbe gave a generous bracha and added, "You can tell Yossi, I think about him more than he thinks about me."
3 min to tellexcellent to tell
361 wordsR. Yisroel Duchman
story_000655
As I Heard Them, Vol. 1, pp. 307-308, no. 42
The zeide related that when Reb Aizel passed away, one man who was not among his students wept uncontrollably. Asked why, he explained that in his youth he had set out to commit a transgression, and Reb Aizel, walking behind him after davening in the Lubavitcher shul, shouted twice, 'Where are you going!? Go to shul and recite some Tehillim!' He said Reb Aizel had saved his life, and asked how he could not cry over such a tzaddik. Reb Aizel used to tell him, 'You have mazel,' and the zeide revealed the man's identity only after he passed away.
3 min to tellexcellent to tell
337 wordsRebbe Rayatz
story_000401
As I Heard Them, Vol. 1, p. 224, no. 40
On Purim a young man submitted a pidyon nefesh through the gabbai R. Elchanan for a relative in Homil who suffered from heart disease, and at the Purim seudah that stretched into a farbrengen he asked the Rebbe aloud for a bracha for Zalman. The Rebbe spoke into his ear that he had already read the pidyon carefully, and that if the sick man would take upon himself the support of a cheder, the Rebbe would take his illness upon himself, striking his own heart and saying that a person can live with a heart defect. He added that ordinarily in yechidus he sits with a cigarette and says nothing even while his insides churn — but this time he was telling him.
2 min to tellexcellent to tell
318 wordsRebbe Rayatz
story_000271
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
story_000517
As I Heard Them, Vol. 1, pp. 438-440, no. 38
Rochel, R. Zalman's only daughter, was sent by the school district with five hundred other students to dig trenches on the outskirts of Leningrad, and the grueling work left her feet numb and swollen and her fingers bleeding. Two boys in the group, one Jewish and one gentile, took pity on her and set out to bring her back to Leningrad for care, but found the local train station bombed beyond recognition. The stationmaster told them that although passenger trains no longer ran, freight trains slowed as they passed, and the three managed to jump aboard a moving train while holding the ailing girl, reaching a hospital in Leningrad where she fully recovered. Word later came that the area where they had been working was bombed by Nazi planes, and of the five hundred students only Rochel and the two who carried her survived; R. Zalman attributed the miracle to the bracha she had received from the Frierdiker Rebbe in Tishrei of 5688 (1927), before he left Russia.
2 min to tellexcellent to tell
318 wordsR. Zalman Duchman
story_000594
As I Heard Them, Vol. 1, pp. 255-256, no. 94
A note written by the Rebbe was found on the high table in his room after his arrest on Wednesday, 15 Sivan 5687 (1927) in Leningrad, and was later printed in Kuntres Yud-Beis Tammuz 5708. R. Pinchas, son of R. Eliyahu Chaim [Althoiz], kept the note hidden in Leningrad and would take it out, together with two letters the Rebbe wrote on Yud-Beis Tammuz, at the farbrengen held in his home every Yud-Beis Tammuz, and they would be read aloud. In the note the Rebbe instructs that in every chassidishe shul the daily portion of Tehillim be said with a minyan after Shacharis, including Shabbos, followed by Kaddish, and that shopkeepers and businessmen come to daven and to the Ein Yaakov class, promising Hashem's help with abundant livelihood. He tells chassidim to say that he instructs them, and other Yidden that out of Ahavas Yisroel and their well-being he begs them, closing with a blessing for a good year in ruchnius and gashmius and the complete Redemption through Moshiach.
4 min to tellvery good to tell
502 wordsRebbe Rayatz
story_000325
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