A Dream in Izhbitz

It is told that the young iluy of Krinik, a brilliant scholar from a family that kept its distance from Chassidus, was travelling from city to city after the great sorrow of his first marriage. His journey brought him to Izhbitz, to the court of Rav Mordechai Yosef Leiner, called the Bais Yaakov, whose teachings on Hashem's hidden hand in everything were already known far away.

Somewhere in those days he lay down and fell asleep, and in his sleep he saw a dream about souls. Rav Tzadok himself records it in his sefer Divrei Chalomos. He was shown that the souls of the last generation, the souls of the time just before Mashiach, are the souls of the generation of the wilderness, the generation that followed Hashem into a land where nothing was sown.

Chassidim have long understood the message this way: those who live through the long, heavy exile before Mashiach carry the same faith as the generation that followed Hashem through the desert, and they are held dear for it.

He woke ready to stay. The visit that was meant to be one stop on a painful road became the turning point of his life, and he became a talmid of the Bais Yaakov. The scholar of nigleh became the master of nistar, and the dream stayed with him until the end of his days.