Go out into the street and shout that you need help!

In the early years of the nesius of the Rebbe, there was a family in Crown Heights that was struggling. Their financial situation was tight, and this resulted in their being unable to hire help in their home. It was a household that was blessed with many children BH, and the house was a constant scene of chaos. Needless to say, the frazzled mother was very harried.

The family were not Lubavitcher Chassidim (like the majority of the families in Crown Heights at the time), but they had heard of the “new” Lubavitcher Rebbe, and some acquaintances were encouraging them to seek his advice and brocho. The husband was against the idea, not believing that any benefit would come from it, but his wife was at her wits end, and, desperate for some solution, she decided to try it.

When she came into yechidus, she told the Rebbe about her problem, expressing the fact that she was desperately in need of help. The Rebbe turned to her and said: “You need help? Then go out into the street and shout that you need help!”

The woman left the yechidus rather puzzled, and called her husband to relate what happened. Her husband laughed at her. “You see”, he said, “I told you that there’s no point in going to the Lubavitcher Rebbe; if you wanted to do something crazy you could have done so on your own”.

The woman, however, had more emunas tzaddikim than her husband (or perhaps she was just more desperate), and she decided to carry out the Rebbe’s instructions. She went out into the street, and began to scream that she needs help.

Suddenly a black man came over to her and asked her what she needs. She told him that her house was in complete turmoil, that she wasn’t coping, and that she was in desperate need of help. “I can probably help you”, he told the startled woman, “let me just check with my Mum”. Sure enough, the next day, bright and early, their newly hired black worker was putting the house in order.

The things he did in the house were - for the woman - a lifesaver. But she was still very nervous; - who knows how much he’ll charge at the end of the week, and they, after all, could not afford to pay (which was the reason they hadn’t hired help until then).

At the end of the first week, the woman (with no small measure of trepidation) approached her shvartze and asked him how much she has to pay him. “Just buy me a bottle of whiskey” was his reply. The woman was delighted. She had had housework for a week practically for nothing.

However, as he began working the second week, she began to worry again. ‘This week he’ll surely demand pay’, she thought to herself, ‘and I’ll have nothing to give him’. But her fears were again completely unfounded. At the end of the week, the worker once again informed his grateful employer that all she owed him was a bottle of booze.

This went on for about 30 years! At the end of that period, the woman passed away. Shortly thereafter, the black worker passed on as well. [Some Chassidim remarked, regarding this story: The Maharal created a golem that couldn’t speak, but the Rebbe created one that could speak].