A Soul Sent Down Through a Widow

Chassidim relate that a Spanish Jew, Rav Yosef Yozpa, came to Cracow, already about fifty and still unmarried. He kept to himself, and the community revered him for his righteousness. His days were spent in learning and davening, and they say that Eliyahu Hanavi himself used to learn with him.

Decades later a young merchant of the city was murdered, leaving a widow without children. Eliyahu Hanavi told Rav Yosef Yozpa that he must marry her, for through this union a pure soul would be brought into the world, one whose mission would be to help every Jew. Half a year went by before Rav Yosef Yozpa stood before the beis din and said he wished to marry her.

They summoned the widow. When she heard, she wept with relief and told them why. Again and again her late father had come to her in a dream, wearing his Shabbos clothes, blessing her and commanding her to marry Rav Yosef Yozpa. The whole community came to rejoice at the wedding, and a year later a son was born, who was named Eliyahu.

Rav Yosef Yozpa taught him from the age of two, in holiness and apart from worldly concerns. Two weeks before the bar mitzvah, he told his wife that his soul was to be returned to its Maker, asked her not to mourn too deeply, and told her to let their son choose his own path. Soon after his bar mitzvah, the boy told his mother he wished to wander, and she let him go. For many years no one knew where he was, until he appeared in Worms already known as a Baal Shem.