Rav Aharon Perlow of Karlin

The Wedding Dress

One day a woman came to Rav Aharon and cried that her daughter had been engaged for several years, but that her family could not meet its financial obligations and the groom was threatening to break the match. “How much do you need?” asked the Rebbe. When she named a sum, he took out that amount and gave it to the distraught mother.

The next day the woman returned. “Thank you, Rebbe,” she said. “You saved the match, but I cannot afford a wedding dress.” Again Rav Aharon asked how much she needed and gave her the sum she named.

After she left, the Rebbe's wife questioned him. Why, she asked, could the girl not marry without a wedding dress, when there were poor people who had no bread to eat? Rav Aharon answered that at first he had thought the same. “But then I asked myself why I had not thought of it until today. If I truly care about hungry paupers, why did I not give that money to them yesterday? So I understood that it was the yetzer hara that was advising me not to give the bride's mother money for a dress.”

A Blessing at the Bris

After Rav Shlomo of Karlin passed away, two of his talmidim, Rav Osher of Stolin and Rav Mordechai of Lechovitch, would make the trip to Rav Boruch of Mezhibuzh together. On one visit Rav Boruch sent them back home after only a few days. Soon afterwards, as Rosh Chodesh Sivan approached, Rav Osher's wife bore a boy.

At the bris, Rav Mordechai was given the honour of the berachos and of naming the child. He named him Aharon, after the baby's illustrious grandfather, Rav Aharon HaGadol of Karlin. Then he laid his hands on the child's head and blessed him threefold: “You should not fool yourself, you should not fool Hashem, and you should not fool others.”

A Neshamah of Simchah

Rav Osher used to tell that he and his wife went to many tzaddikim for berachos before they were granted their only child, Rav Aharon. He declared that he had brought down Rav Aharon's neshamah from its source above, the root of the mitzvos of sukkah and the four species. All his life, Rav Aharon's holiness and avodah were widely known, and he was always full of simchah, as befits Sukkos, the season of our joy.

A Letter to Heaven

A young chassid of the Rebbe made his living by travelling from place to place as a merchant. Each time before setting out, he would come to Rav Aharon for a parting berachah. On one such visit, before giving it, the Rebbe asked him what he was bringing along. Confused by the question, the man began to list his belongings: his clothes, his tools, his bags, his food and the goods he planned to sell. Rav Aharon pressed him further. “And what about tachrichim, burial shrouds?”

Shaken, the man grasped that the Rebbe was alluding to his coming death, and he stood rooted to the spot, unable to speak. The Rebbe calmed him. “Do not be afraid. When you travel, you need to take along whatever you will need for the road ahead.” Then Rav Aharon sat down, wrote a letter and addressed it. He sealed it in an envelope and slipped that envelope into a blank outer one, so that no address showed. He told the man to take the letter with him and to ask that it be laid beside him on his last journey.

In the town of Kriminchik the merchant became gravely ill. There he met Rav Yitzchok, also a chassid of Karlin, whose task was to gather the Maamados, the monthly stipends that chassidim gave to support the Rebbe's household and court. Rav Yitzchok, who later told this story, heard that a fellow chassid lay on his deathbed and went to see him.

The sick man told him about the letter, and Rav Yitzchok asked to look at it. He took it out of the outer envelope and saw the name of Rav Osher of Stolin on it. This was the Rebbe's father, long since gone from this world. Rav Yitzchok understood what it meant: the Rebbe had known that this man would soon depart and could carry the letter there. He offered to take it himself and to lie down in the man's place. The merchant would not hear of it. The Rebbe had given the letter to him, he said, so seeing it through was his duty and no one else's. He asked Rav Yitzchok to stay at his side and to make sure the chevra kadisha put the letter in his hand.

Rav Yitzchok agreed on two conditions. The man must come back and tell him what happened after leaving this world, and he must hand the letter only to the person it was addressed to, whatever happened. Rav Yitzchok stayed until the man's last breath. The chevra kadisha prepared the body and placed the letter in his hands at the burial, and Rav Yitzchok repeated his warning once more.

Some time later the man appeared to Rav Yitzchok in a dream. He had felt no pain, he said, and an angel had asked whether he carried a letter for Rav Osher of Stolin. He did, but he told the angel that he must give it to Rav Osher himself. The angel led him through chamber after chamber of the heavenly realms. Each time, a new group of angels met them, the previous angel said he could go no farther, and the new angels demanded the letter. Each time the man refused, remembering the warning. At last he came to the chamber of Rav Osher of Stolin. “More than this I am forbidden to reveal to you.”

A Dream of a Funeral on Har HaZeisim

It is told that in Sivan 5632 a chassid named Rav Ze'ev Pinsker, who had once been close to Rav Aharon and then moved to Eretz Yisroel, settling in the Old City of Yerushalayim, fell asleep on Motzei Shabbos of parshas Behaaloscha and dreamed that the streets were packed with Jews following a funeral bier. He joined the crowd. They went up to Har HaZeisim and buried the niftar beside the tziyun of the Ohr HaChaim HaKadosh.

When it was over, Rav Ze'ev asked whose funeral it had been, and was told that the niftar was Rav Aharon of Karlin, the Rebbe. He woke with his heart pounding. In the morning he told his dream in shul, and the others dismissed it, until the sad news arrived that Rav Aharon had indeed passed away that Motzei Shabbos.

Every Tzaddik Holds a Portion of Moshiach

In a maamar for 22 Tammuz, the hillula of Rav Shlomo of Karlin, Rav Aharon taught that Hashem sends tzaddikim in every generation who suit that generation, and each generation suits its tzaddik. When a tzaddik comes back to this world, it is not because he failed at something. Each tzaddik repairs the middos and levels connected with the reason he came into the world. On account of the tzaddikim, Moshiach could already have come, but Hashem alone knows that not all the attributes have yet been completed. So each tzaddik holds a portion of Moshiach, according to the trait he repairs. This explains why the Gemara says that Moshiach's name is Chizkiya, Yannai or Menachem, and why the Ohr HaChaim HaKadosh said that it is Chaim: each of them completed his own portion, and each spoke the truth. All are the words of the living G-d.

Beis Aharon, maamar for 22 Tammuz (hillula of Rav Shlomo of Karlin)

The Love of a Good Jew

Rav Aharon said, “I wish I could love a good Jew as much as Hashem loves a wicked one.”

Saying attributed to Rav Aharon of Karlin