Once, on the festival of Shavuot, several disciples of the Choizeh of Lublin gathered together; all of them great tzaddikim: Rebbe Dovid of Lelov, Rebbe Yitzchak of Vorke, and Rebbe Shmuel of Karov. As they sat together at an inn in the city of Lublin, they felt a desire to drink a little honey mead. There was a young man present, a scholar, who was generous and warm of heart. Hearing their conversation, he went and brought them mead and seeing how they praised the drink, he sent for more.
Several months later, as Rosh HaShanah drew near, the disciples of the Choizeh gathered again at that same inn in Lublin. On the eve of Rosh HaShanah, after they had already performed Hatarat Nedarim (the annulment of vows), Rebbe David of Lelov said: "If only we had that young scholar with us now, he who did us such good."
Rebbe Shmuel of Karov replied: "I searched for him but could not find him. And when I recited the Psalm of the day in the morning prayer and came to the verse 'They said: God does not see, the God of Jacob does not understand' (Psalms 94:7), the thought arose within me: perhaps he is among those who say such things, and no longer believes in the God of Jacob." Rebbe David heard this and said: "Even so, we are obligated to repay him for his kindness."
This young scholar had been accustomed to trading with prominent gentiles and had become deeply attached to them. In those very days before Rosh HaShanah he had resolved to convert to Christianity.
The day before his conversion, he was locked in a monastery, as was their custom. That day was the eve of Rosh HaShanah. And at that very moment when the disciples of the Choizeh were sitting together and remembering him, a stirring of repentance arose in the young man's heart. After repenting wholeheartedly of his intention to convert, he resolved to take his own life rather than desecrate God's Name by abandoning his faith. He climbed to the high platform within the monastery, threw himself from it, and died.
The following morning the priest came to the monastery and found the young man's body. Not wishing that those gathered there would know what had occurred, he pryed up a floorboard, concealed the body beneath it, and replaced the board.
On the night following Rosh HaShanah, one of the chasidim who had been at the inn returned to his home in a village near Lublin and found that his house had been robbed and everything he owned stolen. He returned to the inn in tears and related what had happened. At once Rebbe Dovid and Rebbe Shmuel accompanied the chasid to their master, the Choizeh of Lublin. The Choizeh said to them: "Go to the chief of police, and he will give you a letter stating that wherever you go, government officials must assist you in conducting a search to recover the stolen goods." They did as the Rebbe instructed and received the letter from the chief of police.
On their way they passed through the village where the monastery was located and where the priest resided. The chasid whose home had been robbed was afraid of the priest, so Rebbe Yitzchak of Vorka presented himself as the person who had been robbed. In fluent Polish, Rebbe Yitzchak demanded that the priest permit a search of the monastery. The demand aroused the priest's fury, but he was compelled to allow it. When they entered the monastery they at first found nothing. The priest cried out: "How dare you conduct a search in a holy place!" While he was standing there shouting, Rebbe Shmuel of Karov called out: "Look, this floorboard is not level with the others. The stolen goods must be hidden here."
The priest was greatly alarmed and offered them whatever they wished if only they would leave the board alone. The chasidim paid him no heed, lifted the board, and found the young scholar's body there. They took him to be buried in a Jewish cemetery. And the priest, not wishing the matter to come to trial, paid them the full sum that had been stolen from the chasid.
This peculiar story with all its twists, turns, and intertwining storylines invites reflection on a number of topics. First and foremost is the impact that even a simple connection with tzaddikim can have not just on one’s life, but even upon one’s memory. A simple act of bringing them mead saved a soul from descending to oblivion and its body from being lost. It also invites us to reflect on the way in which leaders of the Jewish people survey the condition of those bound to them on Rosh HaShanah and on the ru’ach hakodesh, the Divine spirit of inspiration present within the Choizeh of Lublin, who resolved both issues—the robbery and bringing the self-sacrificing young man to Jewish burial—with one act.
But let us begin by reviewing the connection between this bewildering story and the prayer of Shofarot recited during the Musaf service of Rosh HaShanah.
One of the central verses in that prayer is: "On that day, a great shofar will be sounded, and those lost in the land of Assyria and those cast away in the land of Egypt will come and bow to God on the holy mountain in Jerusalem" (Isaiah 27:13). What is the significance of this shofar? Of the shofar of Mashiach the Sages teach that it is the counterpart of another shofar, the shofar that sounded at Mt. Sinai at the giving of the Torah. Both shofarot (plural of shofar) are, according to the Midrash, the horns of the ram that Abraham offered in place of his son Isaac. It follows that the shofar of the giving of the Torah is the "smaller" one, while the shofar of Mashiach is, as the verse states simply, the great shofar.
An ordinary shofar—a small shofar—awakens those who are relatively close: those who, despite their distance, retain some connection to holiness. But to awaken one who has been cast away, or worse, utterly lost, a figuratively great shofar is needed. That is why the verse in Isaiah speaks of the shofar being blasted without mentioning who will be blowing it. Indeed, in Chasidic teachings, the verse from Isaiah is understood to be speaking of two types of Jews who have grown distant from God for two different reasons. There are "those lost in the Land of Assyria." Assyria is Ashur (אַשּׁוּר) in Hebrew, related to wealth (עוֹשֶׁר) and referring to those who became lost because of material or spiritual prosperity (אוֹשֶׁר), like the young scholar in our story, who drifted away from Judaism because of his wealth and his successful commerce with the non-Jewish landed nobility. But there are also "those cast away in the Land of Egypt." The Hebrew name for Egypt (מִצְרַיִם) suggest hardship and suffering and thus this refers to those Jews who were deprived of their Judaism because of the difficulties of life or the decrees of antisemitic regimes (like Soviet Russia).
Both groups are awakened specifically by the "great shofar" of the redemption, which is blasted as if by itself. This is the prophet’s way of saying that it will be God who will blast the Mashiach’s shofar that will call those who are distant back to Judaism and Divine service. When God is referred to in this way, it alludes to a level of Divine revelation so high that it cannot be expressed in words or grasped in any ordinary way. Thus, the Lubavitcher Rebbe explains that the word “will be blasted” (יִתָּקַע) is even greater than the first-person exalted “I” that begins the Decalogue.
In the time of the Redemption, we will all reach a level of awareness in which the commandments and our connection to God occur as if of themselves, spontaneously. This level is the effect of a corresponding revelation at the level of God Himself. If in the Torah and in familiar reality God is revealed as “being” (יֵשׁ)—as all that can be grasped by the mind—then in the time of the Redemption, it is the Divine non-being (אָיִן) that will be revealed. This means that God will not appear as an active agent but as the source from within which all actions unfold, without any possibility of pointing to where they originate.
Such a level within our own souls can be felt in moments of self-sacrifice, like that of the young scholar who returned to God. A person gives himself over as if without reason, without being able to point to anything that caused him to surrender his life. Yet it is utterly clear that even though he is negating his own being, it remains the most exalted expression of his own soul—of the part of God Above within him, which cannot and will not ever be separated from God.
Even though this level of expression of the soul is most apparent during moments that demand self-sacrifice, it does appear in ordinary times too. To understand how this might be, we look at the numerical value of “lost” (אֹבֵד) and “cast away” (נִדַּח), 7 and 62. Their sum is 69, the value of “pauper” (אֶבְיוֹן), revealing that when a person feels himself to be an utter pauper—by relinquishing all their achievements all their presence and giving it back to the Almighty—they arrive at a state of non-being (אין) that awakens the Divine non-being. Of the pauper it is said that they "yearn for all things" (Rashi on Deuteronomy 15:4). In this state, the soul yearns for God’s very essence (ousia), which is that which “all things,” because everything comes from it and everything is within it. It is precisely such total emptiness that awakens the desire and the sense to cleave to God, and to recognize that everything comes from Him.
