Ver zainen zei

There was a Lubavitcher yungerman, we’ll call him Yossel, who had a neighbor and acquaintance who was of Hungarian descent, who – since the war – had become lax in his practice of Yiddishkeit. This neighbor was planning a simcha in his family – his daughter was soon to be wed – and he approached Yossel to ask if he could arrange for him a yechidus by the Rebbe. Yossel was surprised, not knowing his neighbor to be of the Rebbe-frequenting type; nonetheless, he was, of course, happy to oblige, and scheduled a yechidus for a few weeks hence.

A few weeks later, Yossel suddenly received a very curious phone call from the mazkirus of the Rebbe: “The gentleman for whom you arranged a yechidus did not complete his yechidus, he left, abruptly, in the middle. We are also calling to inform you that there is a check for this individual that he can pick up from our office”.

Yossel was, understandably, intrigued, and immediately set out to locate his acquaintance, in an effort to get to this bottom of this bizarre story. When he found him, and went into the room to speak to him, the fellow took one look at Yossel and burst into tears. “Your Rebbe”, he exclaimed passionately, “is like no other!”, and he proceeded to share the following remarkable experience.

“A you know, I am the proud father of 3, the oldest of whom is destined to get married in the near future. What you are, surely, unaware of, is the fact that recently my business suffered several significant setbacks, leaving me in debt, and overwhelmed by the financial burden of the upcoming wedding.

“Knowing from my pre-war experiences about the Chassidic way of dealing with difficulty, I decided that I would have no recourse but to approach all of the Rebbes, and beg for their assistance. I wrote a kvittel, describing the difficulty in which I find myself, and, armed with it, I proceeded to the doors of all of the prominent Jewish leaders in the country. However, in order to increase the impact of my story, I altered the facts slightly. Believing that being the father of a larger family would elicit more sympathy, I described myself as a father of 10 rather than three, and, in my kvittel, I added 7 bogus names to the 3 genuine ones of my existing children.

“Armed with this kvittel I made the rounds of all of the Rebbes (and here he proceeded to list for Yossel the names of all of the Rebbes then in America), and all of them expressed their sympathy and made some contribution.

“When I came to your Rebbe, however, I was in for the shock of my life. As I was sitting in the room, and he was reading my kvittel, as soon as he finished reading the first 3 names, he pointed to the remaining seven, and, turning to me, asked ‘ver zennen zei’ [and who are they]?!!’

I was so overcome with an intense feeling of shame at having been exposed, that I could not contain myself, and ran from the room!”