The Chassidic Story Of The Little Girl Who Couldn't Grow

0:04Noam Elimelech, his book Noam Elimelech, Parashat Noach, explains that in every generation, there's one mitzvah that's akin to the tikkun, a rectification for the entire generation. This means that the entire generation needs to exert themselves on fixing this one specific thing. Everybody has a deficiency in this mitzvah that if everybody does it, they could literally bring Mashiach. Every generation, it's not the only thing they do now. Oh, you just do this one mitzvah, Mashiach is gonna come. No, if you stay mechallel Shabbat, it's not gonna help. If you're gonna stay omeid, it's not gonna help that you did something. So, for example, he says in his generation, the mitzvah was the mitzvah of tzitzit. In his generation was the mitzvah of tzitzit. He's a Hasid who knew exactly what was happening in Shamayim. These are not regular people you can compare. I've told you a couple of stories in the past about Rabbi Elimelech of Lizhensk, just to remind you a little bit. One time, there was a father who wasn't one of his Talmidim, but was encouraged—or, in a nice way, encouraged, but more clearly, forced by his wife—to go to Rabbi Elimelech.

1:31Why? They had a daughter who stopped growing at the age of two. She stopped growing. By the time she was 16 years old, 15 years old, she still looked like she was two years old. The poor little girl couldn't move. She's 16 years old, but she looks like a baby. So, the wife kept telling the husband, "Go, take, go. He's a giant, he's a tzaddik, he's Kodesh Kodeshim. Everybody knows that he makes miracles. HaKadosh Baruch Hu, mamash, talks through his throat. Go to him." Eventually, the husband went. When he got to his house, he saw that the Rabbi wasn't there, so they said, "Just wait here." And he waited, and the little girl was placed on his bed. So as soon as the Rav came inside, he saw some girl lying on his bed. He said, "Chutzpanit, rude little girl, get off my bed." Now the girl couldn't move. She couldn't move before this. But as soon as Rabbi Elimelech said this, the father was surprised. He saw her get up.

2:52Stand up off the bed and fall. First time in his life he saw this girl do this. He starts crying to Rabbi Elimelech, saying, obviously, this is the Ish Kadosh. He makes this kid that hasn't moved in 15 years just get up and get off the bed somehow. This is the Ish Kadosh, this is a holy person. He says, please, Rabbi Elimelech, please help us. He goes, what? What's wrong? Who are you and why are you on my bed? He tells them the whole story. She's really 16 years old. She's not two. So how come she's not growing? She has a disease, this, that. He says, "Okay, grow." And the kid grew. He says, "Grow," and the kid grew. And in a matter of seconds, she grew to be a 16-year-old girl. Now, you can believe it, you cannot believe it, it's up to you. This is eyewitnesses. They had this, saw this, and this is one of countless stories. Now, how did somebody become so holy? One time, Rabbi Elimelech of Lizhensk heard from his Rav that in Shamayim, the Om HaDin, the depth of judgment, is so critical, we have very little understanding of it.

4:20to such an extent that one of the students of Rabbi Yisrael Salanter and his friend, his chavruta, They promised each other as a side story. They promised each other that whoever died first would come back to the other one and tell him what's going on in Shamayim. So when one of them died, he came to him after 11 months. "What happened to you? How come it took you so long to come to me?" He said, "Listen, I've been judged every single second for the last 11 months." He said, "Okay, so tell me, tell me how it is." He replied, "I can't tell you." I can't tell you what's going on. I don't have permission to tell you. Can you tell me anything? He says, "You know how we've worked our entire life—70 years—on fixing our middot, fixing our mitzvot, fixing everything to make sure that we're good?" He said, "Yes." He says, "The depth of judgment in Heaven is much more critical than we thought. These are people, by the way, that you could just look at them and think this is a Malach Hashem. This is like an angel. This is not a human being."

5:24And they said it's this. So Avimelech heard something similar from his Rav. He was from the previous generation. He heard from his Rav that the Omer KaDin is critical. To such an extent that if you hit your mother when you were little, three years old, there's judgment on that. Judgment on it. Oh, two-year-olds, three-year-olds, really mean status out. That's how two-year-olds are, they hate everybody. They don't know it hurts, they don't know it doesn't hurt. When the Beit Din heard this, he remembered, his mother walking across that one time when he was three years old. He hit his mom. He took his hand and put it in the fire, burned his hand, lost complete feeling of his hand. I He said, I'd rather have it here than over there. This is not recommended. Why? Because he's an Ish Kodesh. We are, b'ezrat Hashem, hopefully we'll become Ba'alei Teshuva one day. But to show you how, what they understood of what's happening in Shamayim. So the person that he cured his daughter, if you will, they asked him, which hand, which hand did he do it with?

6:41Says it's the hand, not the one that was burned, because yeah, he lost feeling in it. I don't know. That's the hand that made her grow. A hand like that, that did such teshuva, is holier than the other hand that hasn't done teshuva yet. So this same Rabbi Elimelech says that every generation has a tikkun, has a rectification. that if they do it, they could literally bring Mashiach. So one of the Chassidim that just left us in the last year, Hashem yinkom damo, zichuto yagen aleinu, Rabbi Steinman. Rabbi Steinman, alav hashalom, was someone that completely removed himself from what we call reality. from materialism, from anything physical. I mean, just an extraordinary life. People would literally just go to his house. You just go to his house, see his house, see how people are giving him millions and millions of dollars. He lives in a bed that has some mattress from the 1920s.

8:03Probably some jail or something was throwing them out on top of milk crates. That was his bed. Now people are giving him millions of dollars for his yeshiva. But he himself, his house is worth five dollars, maybe. You go to his house, you do teshuva. Why? You see how removed from reality he was. He gets up, right as soon as he gets up. He has the sefarim right there, finished. There's the bed, there's a chair. There's a table. There's a house. So they asked him, one of the other Gedolei HaDor, Rabbi David Abuchatzeira, from the Baba Sali family, asked him, if Rabbi Elimelech said such a thing about his generation, if he said such a thing, what's the tikkun for our generation? Rabbi Steinman and Rabbi Shalom said, For our generation, the tikkun (rectification) for the entire generation is bitachon, confidence in HaKadosh Baruch Hu, to the level where you have zero, zero reliance on anything material, any human being, anyone but HaKadosh Baruch Hu. That's the tikkun.

9:24If you can get yourself and work on yourself to simply go to HaKadosh Baruch Hu for everything, Don't rely on your boss. Don't rely on your customer. Don't rely on your parents. Don't rely on your kids. Don't rely on anyone. Not your wife and not your husband. Only rely on HaKadosh Baruch Hu. Now, of course, all of these things are still part of your life. You still have a boss. You still have customers. You still have parents. You still have a wife and a husband, and so on and so forth. You still have all of those things, but you don't rely on them. You know that everything comes from HaKadosh Baruch Hu. But not, you know it, like when everything is good. You know it when everything is as dark as night. You know it's coming from HaKadosh Baruch Hu. That's the tikkun. If we can do that, we can rectify the entire generation. Why? Because if you have such bitachon, Of course, you fixed all of the other major areas too. Because you cannot achieve such bitachon, such confidence in Hashem, while constantly sinning against Him. You cannot reach such bitachon if you are a mechalel Shabbat or an immodest woman causing others to sin, a machtiah rabbim. Or being someone who is a parutz, immodest, and promiscuous. You simply cannot.

10:50You can only get to that level of bitachon if you fix all of the other major areas too. But if you can do it, you can fix your whole tikkun. So, if I said it, it's a nice thought. But when Rabbi Avraham Yehoshua Heshel of Mezhbizh says such a thing, you can understand that this carries a lot of weight in Shamayim. As a rabbi, I must emphasize that this mitzvah is mandatory for every Jew, as it ensures all members of Am Yisrael can properly celebrate the holiday with dignity and joy.