This week I have more stories than I can tell but let’s try one or two.
R’ Yosef Leib Bloch ZT"L, before he became Rosh Hayeshiva in Telz, served as the rabbi in a city called Shodova. As you know, in those days ( mid 1800’s ), the ’haskalah’ movement was quite prevalent in Eastern Europe. These were Jews who discarded the great heritage of Torah Judaism in favor of the philosophical, anti-religious trends of then modern- day Europe. They often openly mocked the religious community and even at times made life quite difficult for authentic Jews. The leader of the Maskilim in Shodova was a man named Velvel. He had a kind side to him as well and when he heard of a poor ( Jewish ) student in St. Peterburg who was very depressed and needed some r & r. he invited the student to come to Shodova and stay with him and his family for a few months of recuperation. They gave him a room in the attic and he took walks and relaxed in the fresh summer air. Unfortunately though, his feelings of depression were too strong to supress and one day when he didn’t come out of his room, Velvel went up and was shocked by the gruesome discovery of the boy’s dead body in a pool of blood - the boy had committed suicide and had bled to death. Funeral arrangements were made and Velvel and some of the haskalah community buried the boy in the Jewish cemetary.
From that day onward, strange things started to happen in the Velvel home. In the middle of the night doors and closets would open and slam shut for no reason, pieces of wall and ceiling would fall off and strange, sometimes chilling noises and voices were heard throughout the night. The family was terrified and traumatized and Velvel was beside himself. He arranged a meeting with his haskalah comrades, and not being believers in any spirituality they decided to evacuate the family and they would spend a night in the house in search of what they were sure was a scientific explanation for the unusual phenomena. They came the next day and from early afternoon, looked in every nook and cranny of the house but by 11:30 pm they had found nothing. They sat down to rest and put their heads together but at the stroke of midnight, the house came alive once again - doors, closets, paint chips and the spine-tingling noises. The ’brave’ young scientists ran out too scared to even turn around to look. Anti-religious Velvel, in desperation, looked to Judaism and whatever he percieved as having anything to do with kedushah - spirituality and the occult, he tried. He went to R’ Bloch and got Mezuzahs and installed them. He had his children wear Tzitzis and made sure they all washed ’ neiglevasser ’ every day. After all that, nothing helped. He went to R’ Bloch and asked him how he could excorsize these ’demons’ from his house. R’ Bloch said to him that he was not someone who even dabbled in these types of things - he was just a man of halacha. However the halacha says that if someone dies and there was a loss of blood, the blood too must be buried as much as possible. This boy had died from bleeding to death and his blood had certainly got soaked into the floorboards of his room and who knows where else it had dripped. Velvel understood what needed to be done. R’ Bloch writes that the next day, a large funeral procession from Velvel’s house made its way through the streets of Shodova with bloodsoaked pieces of wood and carpet to the cemetary. They opened the grave of the poor boy and placed the remainders respectfully inside. From that day on, the house was quiet and back to normal. The epilogue is that after having witnessed all this, not one of the maskilim changed their attitudes or their lifestyles to orthodoxy - even Velvel.
A taxi driver told R’ Vallach the story of another taxi driver friend. A while back, this cabby sufferred a massive heart attack (lo aleinu) and was rushed to the hospital where he had a second attack. Laying on the gourney clinically dead he sensed himself going up to heaven and facing the ultimate court. Just as they were about to pronounce his death sentence, his grandfather appeared and began to plead for his grandson; "please don’t take him yet, he is too young and has much of life to live", he cried. The court clerk answered him that just the opposite - they were doing him a favor - this man did not keep Shabbos or kashruth or tahara and was doing all kinds of sins - the longer he would live , the worse would be his punishment after death so better to end it now and save him the grief. The desperate grandfather said, "I will guarantee that he will change his ways and do t’shuva - can he please have another chance? " The court agreed and suddenly the man got his life back and started to recover. After a few weeks , he was back driving his cab. R’ Vallach asked if the guy in fact did t’shuva. The reply - no not yet. R’ Vallach pointed out that who told the story in the first place - the heart attack victim himself - and yet knowing that he was only alive because of his grandfather’s promise, still remained the same.
There are many stories about people who become inspired but there are also many like these of people who witness and experience extraordinary things and still do not get inspired. R’ Leib Chasman said that if you go through these parshios without learning from par’oh about human nature and the stubbornness of man, you haven’t been yotze the mitzvah of reading these parshios. Par’oh and the egyptians lived through the most amazing miracles in history and were not affected. Hashem always ensures that we have free will and we will only be affected if we WANT to. All the logic and knowledge and experience will not change us if we don’t want to change. May Hashem grant us the strength to not be students of Par’oh but rather to open our hearts and minds to desire goodness and righteousness. May we all make good choices always.
Have a wonderful and inspiring Shabbos and may it propel us to ever greater heights. I love you all,
Important Numbers
