Two Strangers Without Garments
Rav Moshe Lelover and his nephew, Rav Nosson Dovid Shidlovitzer, were close friends. Each year before Pesach they exchanged gifts. Rav Moshe sent wine and brandy, and Rav Nosson Dovid returned shemura matzos.
In one of those years the messenger from Lelov arrived with the usual gift. While the gabbai was counting out the fee, the messenger asked for a larger sum. The gabbai was unwilling, but Rav Nosson Dovid told him to pay whatever the man asked. Only then did the messenger hand over the wine and brandy. What follows is the story the messenger told, which he had heard from Rav Moshe himself.
The Noam Elimelech of Lizensk was sitting among his circle of chassidim when two Jews stepped into the doorway of the beis medrash. Guests were normally welcome in Lizensk, but the Rebbe looked at the two men and remarked that he had never seen so strange a sight, two Jews with no garments at all.
The talmidim were bewildered. They studied the visitors closely, but both men were dressed like anyone else. When the Rebbe called the two forward and asked how it could be that they wore no garments, one of the talmidim protested that they were dressed like everyone else in the room.
The Rebbe answered that his talmidim did not see what he saw. He was not speaking of clothing of cloth. These two had lost their spiritual garments, and they stood stripped of all mitzvos.
In distress the two men cried out that it was true, and that if the Rebbe's holy eyes saw it, then it was so. The Rebbe asked them what they had done to leave themselves without any spiritual covering at all. They answered that their sin was against the holy Rav Michel of Zlotshuv, and the Rebbe pressed them to explain. This is what they told him.
They had once been business partners in Zlotshuv, men of great wealth, living in a large house for two families near the city wall in the finest quarter. They kept a bookkeeper who held all their accounts, records, contracts and papers. He was also their neighbor, with a handsome home right beside theirs.
One day the partners decided they must have his house, so that they could enlarge their own and lay out a garden for their enjoyment. They made him an offer, and he refused flatly. He told them his house was worth at least six hundred gold rubles, that their generous bid meant nothing to him, that he was comfortable and content, and that they should be ashamed of their greed.
The partners were furious that a mere employee would call them greedy. They threatened to dismiss him and cut off all business with him. He replied that he would not yield to extortion. If they let him go, he would open a business of his own, and he did not fear them. They did let him go, and he opened a shop in his home. But his fortunes turned, the shop failed, and he fell deep into debt.
To satisfy his creditors he turned to friends and relatives, but his situation only worsened until he was utterly bankrupt. His relatives then asked the partners to take him back as the faithful accountant he had been. The partners saw their chance and agreed on two conditions. He would return at a third of his old salary, and he would sell them his house for a third of its true value. With no other choice, he accepted. He drew up the contract of sale, and the partners congratulated themselves on a fine bargain.
But the accountant was shrewd. Where the standard contract says that the sale is made willingly and without pressure, he wrote that it was made against his will, under coercion and duress. The partners never read the small print. They saw only that the price was as agreed, and they signed, and the house passed into their names.
Within a month the accountant was dead, broken by heartbreak and despair. The partners rejoiced, ready to pull down the house and rebuild. But then his relatives began arriving from distant towns to claim his estate. They lived far away and had heard nothing of his dismissal, his poverty or the sale of his home, and they still believed he had left them a great inheritance. The townspeople pointed them to his former employers, and they began to look for his will and the deed to his house.
The partners mocked them. Their father, they said, had left only a few rubles, because everything went to pay his debts. As for the deed, there was none, only a bill of sale showing that he had sold the estate to them for two hundred rubles, of which hardly anything remained after his creditors were paid.
The relatives shouted in disbelief, and soon the partners were seated across from them as defendants, summoned to the court of Rav Yechiel Michel, the Rav of Zlotshuv, a holy man and a miracle worker. He presided over the case.
The relatives stated their claim, that the partners had taken the estate at a third of its worth by trickery. Asked for their answer, the partners confidently produced the bill of sale, signed and dated, and declared the property rightfully theirs. The Rav studied the document. When he reached the small print, he pointed to the clause saying it was made against the seller's will under coercion and duress.
He was outraged at the injustice. He demanded to know whether this was what they called fair dealing, and he called the document a sham. Falsehood, he said, has no feet to stand on. Then he fixed his holy gaze on the offending line, and the partners watched, stunned. The letters, written in service of a lie, rose from the page and ascended, until the contract was a blank white sheet. The tzaddik smiled.
Then, in righteous anger, he turned on them. Did they think they could fool this court and act like Lavan, the swindler? He stressed the name Lavan, which also means white, and held up the empty page before them and the whole courtroom. What kind of contract is blank, he asked, and what bill of sale is an empty sheet? With that he tore it to pieces before their eyes.
The accountant's children cheered, and they took possession of the estate. When the partners recovered from their shock, they were angry. They had seen a miracle and could have taken it as proof of the Rav's holiness. Instead they hardened their hearts and plotted revenge for the shame and for the loss of their ill-gotten property. They went to the local duke and presented themselves as wealthy merchants of Zlotshuv.
The duke greeted them with a tirade. Jews, he said, were thieves and liars who robbed him, claimed every year that they could not pay their rent, and yet renewed their leases year after year, asking each time for lower rates. This was exactly the opening the partners had hoped for, a way to slander Rav Michel. They told the duke they knew the cause of all his troubles and had come to help him recover his wealth.
They told him that the Rabbi of Zlotshuv, Rav Yechiel Michel, ran the affairs of the Jewish community and forbade any Jew to compete with another Jew in business. By crushing competition, they said, he forced the duke's hand. No Jew dared bid against a fellow Jew who already held a contract, so the same tenants kept their leases and paid less each year, with no rival to push them to profit or to meet his demands. They added that the same ban held across the whole district.
The duke was enraged. His tavern, inn, flour mill and farms were all failing because of this Rabbi. He summoned all the Polish noblemen, squires and landowners of the district to a lavish celebration two months away. The invitation promised a spectacle, the execution of the local rabbi, the root of all their financial losses.
The partners were overjoyed to be rid of the troublesome Rav. Meanwhile two Jewish peddlers came to the duke's estate to sell their wares. The cook liked a pair of earrings and, thinking the kitchen staff might know something useful for his business, one peddler offered the earrings in exchange for news. The cook, pleased with her own importance, told him the household was busy with preparations. She was cooking day and night for a hundred hungry nobles, and the evening's entertainment was the execution of the Jews' rabbi.
The peddler was horrified, though he feared it might be an invention of some imaginative servant. What if it were true? He rushed to warn the Rav. But the faithful gabbai barred his way. The Rav had just lain down to rest, he said, and no one would disturb him with a foolish tale. Who ever heard of a duke taking an interest in the affairs of a rabbi? The peddler accepted the gabbai's doubt and was relieved that his story had not been believed. He even wished he had his earrings back. But the Rav, in his study, had heard the noise and had overheard the whole story. Now at least he could prepare.
Two months later the noblemen, squires and landowners arrived at the duke's palace with their wives and servants, and the partners came as well to watch the Rav's downfall. The celebration was a drunken revel of loud music, gluttony and debauchery. The guests jeered and called for the Rav's death as they stuffed themselves and drained mug after mug.
Meanwhile the Jewish community sat in mourning. An armed guard from the duke had come to bring their dear Rav to the palace for his trial, which amounted to a death warrant. They knew well that such a thing was often followed by pogroms at the hands of the peasant mobs. The Rav himself walked calmly, comforting his flock. He told them to keep their faith and hold strong, to have emunah and bitachon, and to trust in Hashem's salvation.
The duke withdrew to a private chamber, set apart from his noisy guests by fifteen halls, rooms and corridors, since the law of the land forbade the one who passed a death sentence to see it carried out. The executioner sat honing his blade, and the duke's daughter waited to see the spectacle. She had heard about the Rav's handsome face and wanted to slap it before the head was cut off.
But their wicked plans collapsed at once. The Rav climbed the platform. The executioner raised his axe, the duke's daughter stretched out her hand, and the eyes of the crowd were fixed on their victim, when suddenly they all froze as if turned to stone. The axe hung above the Rav's head. The daughter's hand stopped in mid-swing. The jeering faces of the guests stayed fixed in their twisted expressions like statues.
The Rav walked on, unhurried, through the rooms and halls one after another until he came to the duke's chamber, and he opened the door.
The duke demanded to know why it was so silent outside and who dared enter unannounced. The Rav answered that he was the duke's guest, Yechiel Michel of Zlotshuv. The duke cried that it could not be and ran through the rooms and halls, screaming louder at each frozen figure. At the sight of his daughter he cried out in anguish. She was his only child, and he begged to know what had been done to her and to them all. He pleaded with the holy Rabbi to undo his spell, and he promised him anything, gold, silver, riches, honor and glory. He would even name the Rav's accusers and hang them in his place.
The Rav told him to stop. First he was to release the accusers. Second, he must swear an oath to Hashem that from now on he would harm no Jew in his lands. He must let them rent his property and pay their taxes fairly. If the duke promised that no Jew would come to harm, the Rav would pray that his daughter and guests be restored. It was no spell, the Rav said, but the wrath of Hashem Himself that had turned these people to stone, and only He could release them. The duke swore and begged him to pray.
Rav Michel prayed, and the frozen people came back to life. The partners were set free and fled in shame. The Rav had repaid their wickedness with mercy, and they had been left as the Rebbe now saw them. Their punishment on High was that all their good deeds were taken from them, leaving them stripped of any spiritual garments.
"Now do you understand, my talmidim," asked the Rebbe Elimelech, "why these two stand before me with no garments of mitzvos?" Then he turned to the two men. They had now confessed their crime, admitted their guilt and shown remorse, which is the formula for teshuva. Their path of return had begun, he told them. They would no longer wander without garments, because their tikkun would start and they would once again earn mitzvos and good deeds. Their shame and repentance had been accepted by the beis din shel maalah through their confession, and he himself would guide them back to teshuva and tikkun.
When the messenger finished the story, Rav Moshe Lelover let go of his hand. Rav Nosson Dovid told him, "You see, I told you it was worth paying extra to hear such a story." That, he explained, was why Rav Moshe had held his hand for so long. He must have imbued the messenger with every detail of the tale, with the full force of its lesson passing through his hand to the messenger's, so that he could retell it faithfully, word for word.
As a farewell present for his dear uncle, Rav Nosson Dovid gave a fine silver kos shel beracha. Around its rim was engraved, in handwriting, a request that his uncle daven for him: for healing for Noson Duvid ben Golda's eyes, for his wife Devorah Perel bas Yuta, and for their two children, a son, Tzemach Baruch, and a daughter, Sarah Yuta, that she deliver easily and bear healthy children. A photograph of this silver becher appears in Toras Rebbe Noson Duvid, p. 182.