A Jewish Story of Rabbi Tzvi Elimelech Spira of DINOV ZTL

0:14When you ask people what a Jew is, people really don't know what a Jew is. People really don't understand what a Jew is. They think a Jew is maybe somebody that wears a certain type of clothes or maybe a certain person eats certain types of food, or maybe a certain person that knows certain languages. But that's actually not what makes a Jew. One of the Gedolim in the world of Chassidut was Rabbi Tzvi Elimelech Shapira of Dinov. He wrote a sefer that no matter what kind of Chassid you are, if you're a normal type of Chassid, this is almost like your Torah of Chassidut, called Bnei Yissaschar, almost a little over 200 years ago. Now, Rabbi Tzvi Elimelech Shapira of Dinov... One time, on a Friday night, he had all of his chassidim with him. They had already performed Kabbalat Shabbat and were having the aruchat, they were having the meal. Suddenly, some messy, disaster-looking, drunk, smelly villager walked into the Beit Midrash. Some of the chassidim figured he got the wrong address.

1:43Rabbi sees him, leaves all of his chassidim, stands up, runs towards him at the front, and hugs him. "Come, come, come, come, sit." In those days, chassidim had great kavod for their rabbis. Great kavod for their rabbis. Still today. They see this guy is being brought by the Rabbi, this smelly, drunk-looking guy, and everybody automatically has some thoughts. Maybe this guy is Eliyahu HaNavi. Eliyahu HaNavi, it's known that Eliyahu HaNavi, when he comes to this world, doesn't come as Eliyahu HaNavi with wings and everything. He sometimes comes as a homeless person, sometimes as a soldier, all types of stories we've heard in the Torah. So people are saying it’s definitely Eliyahu HaNavi, but then they see the Rebbe taking him and sitting him right next to him, right next to him, and he gives him half of his food. He's protecting him. No one's talking to him, and he's talking to him and taking care of him. He's feeding him, and this guy's getting kavod. Maybe this guy's a malach. This is Michael himself, malach Michael. This is a malach of Am Yisrael. Has to be Gavriel, Rafael, somebody. The whole Shabbat, he's right next to him, right next to him the whole time. He's not moving.

3:06After he gives him his bed to sleep in, the villager is now wearing the Rebbe's clothes. Everyone's baffled. One guy figured, you know what, maybe he's not Eliyahu HaNavi, maybe he's not a malach, but for sure he's one of the hidden tzaddikim of the generation. Has to be. After Shabbat is over... He comes to the Rebbe. He says, Kevod HaRav, I just wanted to thank you for showing us the big secret that was right in front of us, sitting among us, one of the biggest hidden tzaddikim of the generation. Thank you, Kevod HaRav, for showing them to us. Rav Tzvi Elimelech starts smiling and giggling. He says, no, let me tell you a story. He said, "Years ago, I wasn't so famous. When I was young, I wasn't so famous. And when I would go to different places, people wouldn't know who I was. I would make it a point to go visit one of the Gedolei HaDor, the Chozeh MiLublin. I would go visit him. And on one of my journeys to go visit him, in the middle of the journey, please move the things; you can sit here."

4:34One of my journeys, it started snowing, a snowstorm. I said, because I'm on a mitzvah, on a journey of mitzvah, the mitzvah is going to protect me. I kept going and going and going, but the snow wasn't stopping. And all of a sudden, my legs started to lose feeling. I fell over. I couldn't move my legs anymore. I fell over. I saw that there was a light right behind the woods, right behind some trees over there. There was a village, and I saw the light. I couldn't get up, so I said I'll roll myself there. I rolled myself little by little until I got to the village, and... And as Hashem would have it, baruch Hashem, the first house I got to, I saw there's a mezuzah on the door. I said, baruch Hashem. I got myself up. I knocked on the door, and this villager opens the door, and he had a Tisha B'Av face on him. He wasn't happy to see me, and I said, dear Jew, have some mercy, please, please let me inside. It's snowing outside, please.

5:47The villager looks at me and says, "No, pah!" and closes the door in my face. I knew that if I didn't become a chutzpan (bold person) and push my way in, this was going to be my last night. So I knocked again. The villager opens the door again; his face is even nastier than before. I said, "Please, dear Jew, help me. I'm going to die outside." He says to me, "Listen, I don't have time for people like you. This is not a hotel. I have a barn for my horses. I have a tool shed. And I have the food for the animals. Pick one of those places; you can sleep over there. But inside my house, you're not coming in." What choice did I have? I rolled myself into the barn. The smell was so bad, I couldn't stay. I went to the tool shed, but there was no room. Simply no room. Where the food was for the animals, there was barely any room. And it didn't smell so good, but it was better than the horses. So I said, what are my choices? I'll go over there. And I spent the night over there. But it was so cold, I could not sleep the whole night. For a second, I was freezing.

7:13saw myself. What am I gonna do? I'm cold. I can't sleep. You know what? Let's learn Torah. Let's learn Torah. That's what we do. So I started crying to HaKadosh Baruch Hu, and then I started learning Torah. But because I was suffering in so much pain and agony from the cold and the journey itself, this was the type of Torah that came with Mesirat Nefesh, with major sacrifice, and There's a Torah that you learn while you're drinking a nice cup of coffee, a nice tea with some popcorn on the side, maybe a cookie, maybe a steak for some people. And then there's real Torah, Torah that you study with mesirut nefesh, with sacrifice. And that's the Torah that I learned. And he says, because I learned this Torah, throughout that night, suddenly all types of heavenly secrets were opened up. Heavens opened to me during that night, and I started discovering all types of secrets, powerful mystical things that I never had my whole life, which I still have to this day. So the chasid says to the Rebbe, "Rebbe, so what does this have to do with this drunk that came here?" He says, "He was my host."

8:39Because k'vod harav, he should have told us he's a host. We would have taken care of this guy. A couple of big Chassidim that had a couple of children would have taken care of him. He goes, no, chas v'shalom. I owe a big debt of gratitude to this guy. What gratitude? He lets you almost die outside. He goes, no. Only because of him was I able to raise my neshama to such a high level and learn pure Torah with mesirat nefesh. Else I would have never received those secrets from Shamayim. I owe him great gratitude for doing what he did. That is the difference between a Jewish story and a non-Jewish story. A Jewish story is one where you learn, "What could I learn from that story?" Jews always say, "Okay, the Holocaust—what could I learn from this terrible situation that happened to the Rebbe over here? What could he learn from that?" All types of stories—what can I learn from them in order to apply to my life? Non-Jewish stories—what's in it for me? How much money can this story make me? What can I sell it for? Can I write a book about the story and sell it on ArtScroll? Maybe I can.

10:02on Amazon or something. Not to compare the two, but you get the point. The reality is, Rabotai Haikarim, a Jewish story is a story that you learn something from. That's what makes you a Jew. If you're only going to look for things based on your benefit, that's not a Jewish behavior. But then you're going to say, "Wait a minute, the perception that the goyim have of us is quite the opposite." Perception of the goyim of Jews is the exact opposite of what I just said. The goyim look at the Jews and make all these caricatures of Jews as money-hungry. They're always involved in all these businesses, banking, and lending, in this and that, always behind everything. They always have a benefit in something, whether it's the government, missiles, or weapons. Why do you think that is? That's because their perception of Jews is distorted. Their perceptions of non-religious Jews are that they are Jews who don't act like Jews, even if they sometimes appear religious. They may have peyot (sidelocks). They may wear hats or not, but nonetheless, they're not acting Jewish. It's time for us to start acting Jewish publicly, privately, proudly, and unapologetically.