Sparks of Light for Shavuot

Below you can view and download the Shvivi Or newsletter for the holiday of Shavuot 5780.

A story from Rav Berland from Sunday of Parshat Bamidbar

There was Reb Michcha. Reb Michcha was a hundred-year-old Jew; no one looked at him, they had forgotten he even existed. In Warsaw, it is minus forty degrees; in Uman, there are days of minus thirty. I have immersed in minus thirty before. In Warsaw, half the winter is minus thirty. Reb Michcha lived in Warsaw, or Lodz, it is the same thing. He was a grandson of the Baal Shem Tov, and he had no Chassidim—back then there were no Chassidim, they just sat and learned. It reached minus thirty, and there was no way to heat the house. He would cover himself under ten blankets, shivering from the cold.

Reb Getcha arrived, having traveled three hundred kilometers from Uman to serve him. He heard that 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. Suddenly, he bought him some wood, some planks—it was damp wood, because damp wood is half the price. Within a second, smoke rose up. Like that, he—Reb Michcha—got up from the blankets, made himself a cup of tea, and then he, Reb Michcha, the grandson of the Baal Shem Tov, told him: "Listen, you are Breslov, I have a story for you from when I was four years old." Now he was already a hundred years old, Reb Michcha. "When I was four, I sat on the knees of Reb Baruch of Medzhybizh, my grandfather. I sat on his knees, and all the greatest of the generation were sitting there, making fun of our holy Rebbe. I could not protest; I could not say anything. But he said to me, 'My grandson, Michcha, what he has in his sole, they do not have in their heads.'"

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Naftali Bensanson, Publisher of Shvivi Or