The palatial home of the Rebbe
Once before Pesach the chassidim bought a beautiful golden dish for the Rebbe as a present. The dish had cost a fortune and the chassidim wanted very much to hear the Rebbe make a bircas Shehecheyanu (which one recites on receiving an expensive gift) in appreciation of their efforts. The Rebbe, however, refused to recite the brocho and said that the dish should be placed on the table at the Seder and when he then recites the Shehecheyanu, he will also have the dish in mind.
At the Seder before the Rebbe recited the brocho he whispered a few words in his son's ear. The chassidim later found out that he had said: "Gold and silver have no value to me!"
With the approach of the yomim noraim the Rebbe's avoda intensified even more, and his fear and dread could be felt by all around him. Once on Erev Yom Kippur the Rebbe was sitting in his room, hot tears running down his cheeks, as he reviewed his actions during the past year. When the Rebbe's son Reb Yisroel entered the room, he was taken aback by his father's sobbing and his white and ghostly appearance. "You see, my son," Reb Dovid Moshe exclaimed, "this is how one must cry when one isn't ehrlich!"
The Rebbe's intense fear of Heaven governed all his actions and thoughts. A Yid once came to the Rebbe and told him about a brilliant deal which he had just been offered. A poritz wanted to sell him a vast forest for a fraction of its real value. The Yid had carefully thought through the offer and decided to purchase the forest. Before completing the deal he came to the Rebbe to receive his brocho. He explained to the Rebbe that such a good opportunity could not be wasted and the wood could be chopped down and sold as timber for many times the price he had bought it for. From the profit he would be rich until the end of his days and all his financial worries would be at an end. He had already tested the wood for worms and decay, and found it to be of the highest quality.
The Rebbe listened carefully to the man's story and when he had finished, the Rebbe told him not to buy the forest. The Yid left the Rebbe's room in shock. He could hardly believe his ears. He hadn't come to seek the Rebbe's advice, he had come just to receive his brocho and now he would have to let this marvelous opportunity slip through his fingers. In the end the Yid decided not to listen to the Rebbe and he bought the forest from the poritz.
After the trees were chopped down ready to be made into timber, disaster struck. Almost all the trees were wormy and rotten, and were totally useless. Obviously the test hadn't been done properly. The Yid, who had invested all his money in the deal, became a pauper overnight. Feelings of shame and guilt overcame him on having disobeyed the Rebbe's words and for a long time he didn't show his face in Chortkov.
When he finally plucked up courage to see the Rebbe, he begged his forgiveness. At the same time he asked the Rebbe how he had known that the trees were wormy, surely it must have been either Ruach Hakodesh or a mofeis!
"It was neither," the Rebbe told him. "I did not know that the trees were wormy. It was just that when I heard how you were speaking about this deal— with such an air of confidence as if it was impossible for you to lose money on it, I thought to myself: If, in such a deal, even before it has been made, you forget totally about Hashem, that He is the one who decides who will be rich or poor—such a deal can't be a good thing. Therefore I told you not to go ahead with it."
Now that the Yid had learned his lesson, the Rebbe blessed him that he should regain his money and indeed not long afterwards he regained his lost wealth.
Lessons in Anivus
The Rebbe was once learning the posuk in the Torah where it is written that Moshe Rabbeinu was the most humble person alive, more than any other person on the face of the earth, when he suddenly burst into tears. "You see what's written," the Rebbe told those around him: `Moshe Rabbeinu was the most humble person on the earth.' Now how is it possible that Moshe Rabbeinu who spoke to Hashem `face to face' and wrought so many miracles could possibly be so humble as to think that he was the lowest and the most insignificant of all the Yidden?"
"The answer is that Moshe thought to himself: it is not surprising that I serve Hashem properly for I was on Har Sinai for 40 days and nights where I saw things that no one else has seen and heard, and therefore I am not tempted any more by ordinary mundane matters. A simple Yid who doesn't understand much and his yetzer hora is constantly trying to win him over, and even so he doesn't give in and carries on keeping the Torah and mitzvos, such an avoda is much more precious to Hashem than mine."
The Rebbe was convinced that he was just a simple ordinary Yid. The fact that he lived in a palatial villa surrounded by thousands of chassidim made absolutely no impact on him. He remained convinced of his insignificance as if he were no different from anyone else.
In his memoirs HaRav Mordechai Arye Horowitz writes, "The first time I was zoche to see the Rebbe, and to hear him recite Sholom Aleichem and Kiddush was when I was eleven years old. Even the most simple people there were overcome with emotion as they heard the words flowing from his holy mouth.
"In truth, it was enough just to see how the Rebbe entered into the large hall in preparation of Kiddush. Due to his amazing humility on one hand, and his deep deveikus on the other, he never even noticed the thousands who hung onto his every step. It was quite apparent that if the whole crowd would go outside and leave the Rebbe alone by himself, he would not even notice!"
Although the Rebbe usually did not daven as a chazan, a few times a year he would lead the tefillos and act as the shaliach tsibur. On those occasions, thousands of chassidim would converge on Chortkov to hear the Rebbe's davening. One of these was during Selichos when the Rebbe would recite the paragraph "Aneinu" aloud at the end of the Selichos.
One year, amongst the large crowd assembled to hear the Rebbe were two of his nephews Reb Shlomo and Reb Nochum Ber of Sadiger. Surprised by their sudden arrival the Rebbe asked them why they had come, to which they told him that they came to hear him say the `Aneinu's.'
"I only daven to Hashem, and not for people to listen to," the Rebbe told them and that year he refused to lead the davening. Until someone told him that people journeyed to hear his davening, it hadn't occurred to him that all the thousands assembled had come specially to hear his tefillos!"
When the famed poseik, Reb Meir Arik was in Chortkov for the first time, he was upset by the beautiful gardens surrounding the Rebbe's house. Most of the rebbes of the time lived in dire poverty and the Rebbe's luxurious surroundings were not what Reb Meir had expected. Noticing his concern the Rebbe asked him what was troubling him, to which Reb Meir answered him that he wasn't used to the idea of a Rebbe being surrounded with beautiful gardens and flowers. "What gardens? What flowers?" the Rebbe asked him. "I don't know what you mean!"
Reb Meir later related that when he heard how the Rebbe could honestly say that he didn't know that the gardens existed even though he walked through them a few times a day, that made him into a fervent Chortkov chassid.
The Rebbe secluded himself totally from everything around him. Even at his grandchildren's weddings, when thousands converged on Chortkov to participate in the joyous events and celebrations, the Rebbe remained in his room quite unaware of the goings-on. Only when the chosson and kalla were already on their way down to the chuppah did he finally take off his tefillin and don his Shabbos clothes. As soon as the chuppah was over, he would return straight to his room to carry on with his avodas Hashem.
The Rebbe once commented that he had managed to achieve three madreigos: Never to move a limb unless it is lesheim Shomayim, to truly love every Yid, and to feel the pain and suffering of every Yid who gave him money, irrespective of where the Yid was later situated.
Zechuso yogeyn aleinu.
End of Part 2
