The Brothers Meet the Maggid

It is told that Rav Shmelke and Rav Pinchas first came to the Maggid of Mezritch on Erev Shabbos. They expected a long conversation, but the Maggid sent them off after only a few words. They had hoped to hear impressive Torah at his table, and they were deeply disappointed to feel nothing in his words, which, unknown to them, held deep secrets of Torah. Like the Maggid himself at his first meeting with the Baal Shem Tov, they decided to go home.

Rav Zusha, a talmid of the Maggid, sensed their intention and cautioned them. "We have learned, 'If the Rebbe is like an angel of Hashem, seek Torah from his mouth' (Chagigah 15b). Has any of us ever seen an angel? Yet if one came to you, you would not question him, test him or ask him for a sign. So it is with a true tzaddik. From him you should seek Torah."

The brothers returned and asked the Maggid to teach them the revealed part of Torah. The Maggid raised a very difficult question on a Gemara and gave an answer so simple and straightforward that they were amazed they had not thought of it themselves. A strong refutation followed, and then another solution. After nine such rounds the Maggid closed the Gemara and asked, "Why did you travel here? Do great men like yourselves need the likes of me?"

Through ruach hakodesh he knew of their ascetic way of life, and he told them, "A person who davens and ascends to the upper worlds, but at the end of the day remarks, 'You know, today I was not so bad,' finds his avodah cast out of Heaven." When they heard this, Rav Pinchas and Rav Shmelke said, "You ask why we came. We would have walked a thousand miles to hear such words."