"I Couldn't Protest but Rabbi Baruch Told Me the Truth" - A Story of the Righteous Rabbi Eliezer Berland shlit"a

A story passed down in the Breslov Chassidut tradition, relayed by Rabbi Levi Yitzchak Bender zt"l and recently recounted by our teacher, the esteemed Rabbi Eliezer Berland shlit"a, from Tzalmon.

"Reb Micze was a hundred-year-old Jew, no one paid attention to him, they forgot he even existed. In Warsaw, it's minus forty, in Uman, there are two days of minus thirty. I've immersed in minus thirty once, in Warsaw half the winter is minus thirty."

"Reb Micze lived in Warsaw, in Lodz, it's the same thing. He was a grandson of the Baal Shem Tov, and he had no chassidim. In those days, there were no chassidim, they just sat and learned. When it was minus thirty, there was no way to heat the house, he covered himself under ten blankets, shivering from the cold."

"Reb Getze came three hundred kilometers from Uman to serve him. He heard there was a grandson of the Baal Shem Tov lying under a million blankets, shivering from the cold, with no one to heat his house. Reb Getze bought him some wood, some planks. They were damp wood because damp wood is half the price. In a second, smoke rose."

"Reb Micze got up from the blanket, Reb Getze made him a cup of tea, and then Reb Micze, the grandson of the Baal Shem Tov, told him, 'Listen, you are a Breslov chassid, right? I have a story for you! When I was four, now he is already a hundred, I sat on the knees of my grandfather, Rabbi Baruch of Mezhbizh. I sat on his knees, and there sat all the great ones of the generation, mocking our holy Rebbe - I couldn't protest, I couldn't say anything, but my grandfather Rabbi Baruch of Mezhbizh told me, my grandson Micze, what Rebbe Nachman has in his sole, they don't have in their heads'."

Naftali Bazanson, Publisher of Shivei Or