#467 (s5767-06 / 10 Cheshvan 5767)

Dipping Together

The Tzemach Tzedek requested that the wagon driver join him for breakfast the next day.

Dipping Together
Ezra Rebhun

 

A known righteous woman, called "Bubbie (grandmother) Chein," told the following story about her grandfather, Reb Efraim.

Reb Efraim was a wealthy man, and a chasid of the great tzadik, the Tzemach Tzedek of Lubavitch. Once he rented a wagon and its driver for a trip to his Rebbe. After their private meeting, the rebbe told him that he would like for the wagon driver to stay overnight, and eat breakfast with him and his sons together. A chasid doesn't ask questions, and so he requested this from the wagon driver, even though he couldn't explain why. The latter, a big, burly man who was far from being a chasid, got annoyed. "What does the Rebbe think, I don't have anything better to do than hang around here? I have to work for a living."

In order to fulfill the Rebbe's will, Reb Efraim was forced to pay him a substantial amount for his loss of time, for only then did he agree. The next morning, when they ate, the Rebbe had everyone dip their bread in the same bowl. After the blessings that concluded the meal, the Rebbe thanked the wagon driver and blessed him, and that was it.

But the chasidim were not going to let such an episode slip away easily. They cross-examined the driver mercilessly. How much does he learn in a day? When, how, where does he pray? Maybe he does special good deeds? Maybe he gives unusually large amounts of money to charity? They were sure he must be some kind of hidden tzadik. But to no avail; his perplexed denials proved that he was exactly as he looked -- a simple Jew.

But then, one of them asked him is something special ever happened to him in his life.

"This," he said," I can affirm. As a wagon driver working in the villages, often I am requested to bring a mohel (circumciser) from far away towns; and often I would not get back until after the eighth day, when the brit mila is to be performed.

"This caused me great anguish. So I took upon myself to learn to be a mohel. Then, whenever they would think to send me to bring one, I could save them the delay and do it myself. And that is what I did.

"Once, while passing through a gentile village, I heard a women sobbing and crying in Yiddish. 'How wretched is my life!' she wailed.

"I asked her what happened. She told me that her infant son is now eight days old, and there is no one to perform the brit nor any money to bring in a mohel from elsewhere. I told her, 'Don't worry, G-d has helped you already--I am here, I am a mohel, and I will be happy to do it. Just, I need someone to hold the boy on his lap. Where is your husband?'

"But he had been in bed, paralyzed, for the last half year. And she was not able to do it either.* So I asked her if there were another Jew in the town, but she said there wasn't. Still, I took off to the streets to look for one.

"After a long search, I finally found someone on the edge of town--a short, bowed-over elderly Jew. I approached him warmly and asked him to come participate in the great mitzvah. But he rudely said that he had no time. I tried to persuade him, to no avail.

"So I decided, 'If he won't come willingly then he will have to come by force!' I grabbed him by the collar and tried to pull him. He shrugged me off with such a shake like I never felt in my life! 'How can this be?' I muttered to myself.

"Well, with good it didn't work, nor did it with bad. I felt stuck. And frustrated. I started to cry. Is it possible to be a Jew and not have mercy? After listening to me sob for a while, he agreed to come.

"We made the brit. Then the old man said, 'It is customary to make a festive mitzvah meal after a brit. What do we have?'

But the poor woman had no food in the house and all I had was a bottle of 96% spirits, which I use to help stay warm enough on winter drives. I went out and bought some bread.** We poured the liquid in a solitary bowl, and dipped our chunks of bread in it together. This constituted our mitzvah meal.

"Before the Blessing After Meals, he said, 'It is customary to bless with at least three Jews together, if there aren't ten. Where is the father of the infant?' I told him that he was in bed, paralyzed, and he asked to see him. He went into his room, wished him mazel tov. Then, in nearly the same breath, he told him to get up and to come eat and bless with us!

"But how could he? And yet, not five minutes passed, and the father was on his feet as though nothing had ever happened to him. We ate the bread dipped in the spirits, and blessed together. How this happened I cannot understand until today."

Later, the Rebbe said to the chasidim, "Such a Jew who had the privilege to eat with Avraham Avinu (the patriarch Abraham) from one bowl, I wanted me and my children to have the privilege to eat with him from one bowl too."
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Author's notes:
*It is written not to let the mother hold the baby for the circumcision, lest she flinch and the knife may cut where it shouldn't.

**Then it was permitted to buy bread from gentiles if there was no Jewish bread. Today's bread has many additions besides flour and water, and is therefore never permitted without rabbinical certification.

[Adapted by Yerachmiel Tilles from geocities.com/theholypeople/ . Ezra Rebhun, an American-born graduate of Brandeis University, is today a chasidic Jew living in the holy land, in Tel Aviv. He heard this story from a well-known Belzer chasid.]

Biographical note:
Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneersohn [29 Elul 1789-13 Nissan 1866], the Third Rebbe of Chabad, was known as the Tzemech Tzedek, after his books of Halachic responsa and Talmudic commentary called by that name. He was renowned not only as a Rebbe, but also as a leading scholar in his generation in both the revealed and hidden aspects of Torah.


Yrachmiel Tilles is co-founder and associate director of Ascent-of-Safed, and editor of Ascent Quarterly and the AscentOfSafed.com and KabbalaOnline.org websites. He has hundreds of published stories to his credit.

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