WHEN THE REBBE SAYS: IT SEEMS TO ME...

A compilation of stories about the Rebbe, written by R’ Boruch Aharon Huss, of Anash of Montreal, as he heard them from reliable sources, usually from the protagonist himself.

SAVED FROM 
CERTAIN DEATH

R’ Boruch Aharon HussR’ Mendel Morosov told how he once met an immigrant from Russia to the US, who told him that his son still lived in Russia, and was in great danger. They wanted to send him to deal with the radiation at the nuclear reactor in Chernobyl. All knew that those who went there became sick and died.

R’ Mendel suggested that he go to the Rebbe on Sunday to get a dollar for tz’daka and a bracha for his son. When he passed by the Rebbe and mentioned his son, the Rebbe blessed him that his son return home safely. The man, who did not understand what the Rebbe said, stood on the side and cried. The Rebbe turned to him and said: Why are you crying? I told you he would return home!

Some time later, the man told R’ Mendel that not only hadn’t they sent his son to Chernobyl, but they had even allowed him to leave Russia and he had come to the United States. Apparently, the soldiers who were recruited were gathered in a certain place in order to take a bus together to Chernobyl. His son showed up, but when the commander read the names, his name was omitted. He went over to the commander and asked: What about me? The commander said: Idiot, get out of here! And that is how he was miraculously saved.

The father went for dollars again in order to thank the Rebbe for his blessing. R’ Mendel stood behind him and heard the man express his gratitude. The Rebbe said: Thanks is owed to G-d.

I heard this story from R’ Zalman, R’ Mendel’s son.

THE REBBE GAVE A DATE

One of my friends, who wishes to remain anonymous, told me that he did not have children for nine years. He was constantly in touch with the Rebbe.

One time, the Rebbe told his secretary, R’ Binyamin Klein, to tell him “to stop the medical treatments because it will be fine.” He stopped treatments as he was told to do. A year and a half later, he received a letter from one of the doctors which said advances had been made in the area related to his situation and he should come in for a consultation. He asked the Rebbe and the Rebbe said he should get a second opinion. After consulting another doctor, it still wasn’t clear what to do. So he decided to let things be, as the Rebbe had told him previously to stop treatments.

In Elul (I think it was 5749), he mentioned his situation to the Rebbe and the Rebbe told him to wait until after the Yomim Tovim. After Yom Tov, he mentioned it again, and the Rebbe said to wait until Kislev. In Kislev, his wife became pregnant with their first child and today they have a large family.

IF THE REBBE SAYS A DAUGHTER, IT WILL BE A DAUGHTER!

When I lived in Ganei Tikva, someone by the name of Moshe Brandler lived there (late he moved near Kfar Chabad). At that time, he was sixty and his wife was fifty. They had four sons with the youngest being twenty years old. He and his wife went to the Rebbe for dollars and the Rebbe gave him a dollar for each member of the family. Then the Rebbe gave his wife an extra dollar and said, “This is for a daughter.”

The woman asked R’ Groner: What did the Rebbe mean when he gave a dollar for a daughter? R’ Groner didn’t know what to say and suggested maybe it’s for a daughter-in-law.

A while later she started experiencing discomfort. She went to several doctors, but none of them could diagnose what was wrong with her. Due to her age, nobody thought of doing a pregnancy test. It was only after her discomfort persisted that they decided to do a pregnancy test. Lo and behold, she was expecting a baby. Due to various concerns, the doctors said she should abort it.

The woman asked the Rebbe what to do, and the answer was: You’d be better off going to the women’s section of shul and saying some chapters of T’hillim and stop going to all those doctors.

The woman listened to the Rebbe and gave birth to a healthy baby girl. I lived across from them and saw him and his wife walking down the street with a new baby carriage like a young couple. Since everyone had heard this amazing story, I went over to him and heard it directly from him.

WATCH WHAT YOU SAY

My nephew, Berel Gross, told me that he was once sitting in a certain beis midrash where a group of men were discussing the Rebbe. One of the men commented about the Rebbe, noting that he went to college.

Another man who was sitting there said: Listen to my story and you’ll see what kind of college it was. During World War II, my father-in-law was in Paris and ran a kosher restaurant. Once, a distinguished looking man walked in and asked two questions: Does his wife cover her hair, and do any gentiles work in the kitchen. When told that all was well, he said, “Then I can eat here,” and he bought bread and coffee.

The man would stop in now and then and buy bread and coffee. Sometimes he bought vegetables. My father-in-law asked him for his name, and the man always said: What difference does it make?

One time, he walked into the restaurant and bought some food and was followed by some distinguished looking Chassidim who sat down next to him. When one of the Chassidim went over to my father-in-law, he took the opportunity to ask for the name of the man they were with. But just then, the man got up, grabbed hold of the Chassid and said: Come, let’s go.

One day, the man came in and told my father-in-law that he would be leaving the city and he wanted to say goodbye and thank him.

My father-in-law asked: Why do you thank me? Didn’t you pay me?

The man said that in the Chasam Sofer on Torah he writes that there are two kinds of thanks and one of them applies to this situation.

My father-in-law, who was learned, said there was no such Chasam Sofer. The man did not argue with him, but just said goodbye and turned to leave. My father-in-law asked him: Can’t you tell me who you are?

The man said: What difference does it make? With Hashem’s help, we will yet meet and then you’ll know.

Many years went by. My father-in-law, who lived in Eretz Yisroel, had to travel to the US in order to undergo serious treatment for his heart. He went with his son. While they were in New York, the son went to three Admurim to ask for a bracha. One of them was the Lubavitcher Rebbe.

When the Rebbe saw the pidyon nefesh with the name of the sick man, he asked: Did your father have a restaurant in Paris? When the son said that he did, the Rebbe told him to wait with the treatment until he heard from the secretaries how to proceed.

A short while later, he got a phone call from the Rebbe’s secretary telling him to contact a certain doctor. The son did so and the doctor took care of his father in the best possible way and with unusual warmth. When he was done, my father-in-law asked the doctor what he did to deserve such outstanding treatment. The doctor said he had been called by the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s secretary and was asked, in the Rebbe’s name, to take good care of him.

The man, who was grateful to the Rebbe, went to the Rebbe to thank him. As soon as he walked in, the Rebbe greeted him like an old friend and said, “We’ve met,” and then, “By the way, when I said that it’s in Chasam Sofer on the Torah, it’s there but at the back of the volume in the additions compiled from other works. Apparently the edition you had at the time did not have these additions.”

The son-in-law finished his story and said, “See what kind of ‘student’ you’re talking about. Watch what you say.”

WHO TAKES PRECEDENCE?

R’ Aharon Shapiro of Pardes Katz told me that one time, when he was in the United States, he went over to R’ Yaakov Friedman, the gabbai tz’daka, and asked him for money for hachnasas kalla for someone who needed it.

R’ Yaakov, who knew R’ Shapiro, asked him: Why are you worrying about others and not for yourself? You have a Chabad house and a large family, worry about them first!

After this talk with R’ Yaakov, R’ Shapiro went to the Rebbe for dollars. As he waited on line, he kept wondering whether R’ Yaakov was right.

When he stood before the Rebbe, R’ Groner said to the Rebbe: This is R’ Shapiro of Pardes Katz.

The Rebbe said: He is involved in hachnasas kalla.

HIS IDENTITY WAS KNOWN

R’ Zushe Horowitz of Yerushalayim told me:

In the kollel that I learned in, there were some members of the kollel as well as the roshei kollel who spoke against Chabad. I wrote a letter to the Rebbe and asked whether I should continue learning in this kollel. If yes, should I debate them? I also wrote that one of them had been a talmid in R’ Chaim Shaul Brook’s yeshiva in Tel Aviv when he was younger.

I sent the letter around Pesach time. Half a year later, in Tishrei, as I passed by the Rebbe for kos shel bracha, the Rebbe said to me: Regarding whether you should debate with Shaul Brook’s talmid, don’t argue with him, “a little light pushes away a lot of darkness.”

The amazing thing was, said R’ Horowitz, that I had never been to yechidus by the Rebbe and there was no natural way for the Rebbe to know who I was.

THE REAL MIRACLE

R’ Tzvi Hirsch Chitrik related that when he was a shliach in Brazil, there was a Jew living there who had connections in the government and was a mekurav of Chabad. It once happened that his wife was caught at US customs with illegal goods and was in big trouble. Even her lawyers said she would have to sit in jail and the question was only for how long. Maybe they could do something in that regard, to minimize her sentence.

At R’ Herschel’s recommendation, the man wrote to the Rebbe and asked for a bracha. The Rebbe’s answer was: It seems to me that someone should go to Miami, Florida.

When he got this answer, he didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t go, because he was busy with his young children, so who should go? And where should he go? And what should he do there?

But since the Rebbe said what he said, R’ Herschel urged him not to be a fool and treat the Rebbe’s words lightly. They decided that the only one who could go was his brother-in-law, who wasn’t a Chassid, but after much importuning he said he would go.

When he arrived in Florida, he went to daven in the shul closest to the hotel he was staying in. In the middle of the davening, he began to cry. People around him noticed this, and asked him after the davening whether they could be of help. At first he declined, but when they pressed him, he told them the situation. One of the people wanted to know all the details of the story, but nobody was actually able to help him.

A few days later, the brother-in-law returned home in despair and thought he had accomplished nothing in Florida. On the day of the court case, after the prosecutor and defense lawyers said their piece, the judge told the courtroom that several weeks earlier he had visited a shul and heard the entire story from someone. It was apparent from what the person said that the woman was not guilty, since she had no knowledge of the matter. The person who told the story, emphasized the judge, did not know that I am a judge and had no idea who I am, and simply said the story as it happened. Therefore, I declare her innocent!

The story rocked Brazil at the time and was printed in the papers. When R’ Herschel had yechidus and told the Rebbe that the entire country was talking about the miracle, the Rebbe smiled and said that the biggest miracle was that the man actually went to Miami.

REBBE, HELP!

I heard the following from R’ Zushe Silberstein, who heard it from a relative of his who belongs to a different chassidic group. This relative went to Los Angeles and met a childhood friend who had become a Lubavitcher. He asked him: Why did you become a Lubavitcher? The man said, I’ll tell you what happened and you tell me what kind of Chassid I ought to be.

This is what the man said:

Shortly after I moved to California, my wife did not feel well. Tests were done and they discovered she has cancer. The doctors said she had a few months left to live. I was shaken up and I began to say T’hillim in tears. In the middle of praying, I cried out: Rebbe, help!

Naturally, I was referring to my own Rebbe, but a short while later I received a phone call from New York. The man on the line said he was R’ Chadakov and he said: The Rebbe said you should remove your wife from the hospital and take her to a certain doctor.

I was so shaken up that I did not pay sufficient attention to what he said. After I recovered from the initial shock, I began to wonder who this R’ Chadakov was and what connection he had to me.

When I met R’ Shmuel Dovid Raichik, I asked him whether he knew a R’ Chadakov. He told me this was the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s secretary. I asked R’ Shmuel Dovid for R’ Chadakov’s phone number. When I reached him, I asked: What is this about? I didn’t ask the Rebbe anything.

He said: I don’t know anything about it. I just did what the Rebbe told me to do. R’ Chadakov warned me that if I wanted it to work out well, I should do as the Rebbe said.

Considering this is a Baal-Shemsker story, I went to the hospital and took my wife out against the doctors’ orders. Then I called the doctor whom the Rebbe had recommended and asked for an appointment. The secretary told me that I should come back in a year.

As I didn’t have a year to wait, I simply went to the doctor’s office and knocked on the door and said that I needed an appointment. After the doctor tried sending me back to the secretary, I said: I want to tell you something incredible. I told him what happened. After hearing this he said: If that’s the situation, bring her in tomorrow. I brought my wife and he treated her and she was cured.

Concluded the Chassid: Years have gone by and my wife and I and my children are Boruch Hashem all well. Now tell me, whose Chassid should I be?