Chabad connections

Rabbi Lipszyc's Story of the Week.
Dedicated in honor of Adina Perel's Birthday

Second Story:

Nobody is born into a vacuum. And there is a saying amongst Lubavitcher Chassidim, that if one merits to become a Chabad Chossid it must be because of something spectacular which one of his ancestors had done. Therefore, in reality I probably should have begun with the following story about my father and how he became connected with Chabad. 

My father was a shochet. In the 1930s he lived in Paris. He was very friendly with Rabbi Zalman Schneerson a”h, who was a cousin of the Rebbe Rayatz, also known as the Previous Lubavitcher Rebbe. Reb Zalman and my father would learn together on a regular basis. One day, Reb Zalman showed my father a telegram which he received from the Rebbe Rayatz. The Rebbe Rayatz wrote that he would be coming to Paris to meet with a foot specialist. He asked that Reb Zalman should arrange for a heimishe yid to pick him up at the train station and take him wherever he needed to go. He specifically requested that it should not be a Chabad chossid because he did not want it to become a balagan. Being that my father, was a Gerrer chossid, and came from a long line of Gerrer Chassidim, Reb Zalman asked my father if he would be willing to be that person who would meet the Rebbe at the train station and take him around. Of course, my father agreed to this. When my father picked up the Previous Rebbe, the Rebbe asked my father his name to which my father responded Yoel ben Yitzchok Meir HaKohen. These actually were the only words my father said to the Rebbe during the whole time that he spent with him. 

At the hotel where the Rebbe was staying, they gave him two rooms. One room on the second floor was for his personal use while one room on the ground floor was for him to be able to pray with a minyan. Since the Rebbe had trouble with his feet and could not walk up the stairs, the hotel management took out the big picture window on the second floor and made up a contraption - a pulley with a box in which the Rebbe would sit and people would pull the box up to the second floor in a makeshift elevator. On the one hand, they did not want the Rebbe riding up in this box alone, on the other hand, they didn’t want it to be too heavy, so they asked my father, who was wiry, very powerful, skinny and short, to join the Rebbe in the box while being transported up and down between the two floors.

During the Rebbe’s stay in Paris, word did get out that the Rebbe was there, and people asked for yechidus. The Rebbe agreed to have one general yechidus. Reb Zalman told my father that this would be a terrific opportunity for him to also enter the room for yechidus. My father refused, saying that he didn’t feel it would be right for him, a Gerrer Chossid, to go to yechidus with a Rebbe not his own. Nevertheless, Reb Zalman encouraged my father to enter the room with the group in order to at least receive a blessing from the Rebbe for his wife who was pregnant. To this my father agreed. After the Rebbe finished speaking to the whole group, he motioned for everyone else to leave the room except for my father. Everyone left the room except for my father and the gabbai, for such was the custom that since the Rebbe had had a stroke, and it was hard for people to understand what he was saying, the gabbai would stay in the room and translate the Rebbe’s words. However, the Rebbe then motioned for the gabbai to leave the room as well. My father became nervous for two reasons: first he was afraid perhaps would not understand what the Rebbe wanted to say to him; secondly, he was thinking why would the Rebbe have the gabbai leave unless he wanted to rebuke my father for something he had done wrong and did not want to embarrass him. The Rebbe saw that my father was nervous and he motioned to him with a smile not to worry. After the gabbai left, the Rebbe turned to my father and said in a very clear words, “tell your wife that the lightning is not meant for her.” My father did not understand what the Rebbe was referring to, but the words he heard very clearly. What was clear was that his private audience came to an end. 

My father left and continued his regular daily schedule which included learning prayers etc. He did not get home until five hours later. By that time he had forgotten the message the previous Rebbe gave him, especially since he really hadn’t understood what was meant with the message. Four months went by. One day my father was in Reb Zalman’s house, upstairs with him in his room, while my mother was downstairs with Reb Zalman’s wife, the Rebbitzin. Suddenly, the Rebbitzin began to shout for my father to come down. Both my father and Reb Zalman quickly ran down the stairs and they found my mother standing still as if in shock. The Rebbitzin pointed to a hole in the window and explained that a lightning bolt had come through the window, went around my mother, stopped went back around the way it came and went back out the same hole in the window. The lightning did not touch my mother. At that point my father understood the message that the Rebbe had given him four months earlier, “The lightning is not meant for her.”

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