Keep Your Wheels On-Der Aibishter Veit Zicher Helfin!
By Rabbi Shimon Raichik
I recently heard the following story at a fabrengen told in the name of Abba Pliskin. He told it to a person was having difficulty with giving tzedaka.
There was once a wealthy businessman who would spend his summers at the fairs in different cities in Europe to purchase supplies for his business. Usually he would start his journey at the beginning of each summer and return before its end, getting off the roads before winter arrived. One year he was delayed and started his trip later in the summer. As it turned out, winter arrived early that year. As he traveled home with a wagon full of merchandise it started to rain. Eventually he and his wagon full of merchandise ended up in a ditch. The driver got out to survey the problem and found that two of the large metal wheels were firmly lodged in the ditch. He told the businessman that the wagon was overloaded and there was no way the two of them could pull it out themselves, even with the help of the horses. The only way to go forward would be make the wagon significantly lighter by unloading some of the merchandise and leaving it in the forest. Without the wagon becoming lighter they may never get to their destination. The driver waited inside the wagon while the businessman thought over which packages to unload. Suddenly the driver felt the entire wagon shake. He jumped out only to see the businessman trying to remove the wheels from the wagon. The driver asked what he was doing. He said; “The merchandise I need. The wheels are made of heavy metal so I’m removing something heavy I don’t need”. The driver told him that without the wheels they couldn’t move!
Abba Pliskin then turned to the man (having difficulty giving tzedaka) and said; we all go through difficult times. We are often weighed down with our heavy baggage, the things we need and the things we think we need. When we get stuck, we feel overwhelmed and we begin to find things to eliminate to lighten our load. If we have slow month in business we think about cutting down on tzedaka. If we need to build up our business, soon enough we don’t have time for mincha-maariv. Others feel they need to change their appearance. It’s harder to find a job with a full beard. For others it’s tznius. We think that by cutting these things out we will lighten our load. It will help us with our baggage, to have the things that we want or think we need, be it the lifestyle the social status or the financial worth we seek. The truth of course is the opposite. Our emunah and bitachon in Hashem, the davening and our hiskashrus are the wheels that get us where we need to go.
Some say that these wheels are so heavy! It requires so much time and dedication to be a proper chosid. Don’t you have a thin light spare tire that we can use instead? The truth is that Chassidus isn’t making it harder; it’s strengthening and lubricating the wheels to move faster and better to get us out of the hole.
Often I hear people say that they don’t feel that they and their unique struggles are really understood by others. It’s true there are many challenges today and there is a lot on the line. Especially in our times we can take incredible strength and inspiration from the previous generation to keep our wheels on and keep moving forward; even in times like these.
Take, for example the lives of my parents. We should never know what they lived through. Even though they survived the Holocaust the horrors went with them. My father listened to the Previous Rebbe’s instruction to run away from Poland. He escaped to Shanghai and was in charge of the yeshiva throughout the war. When I look through many his letters to the Rebbe from those times one theme runs throughout. He would always ask that he should be a Tomim as it should be, he should fulfill the purpose and he shouldn’t stumble. We found many pidyonos placed in his Tanya in the times that he could not send them because of the war. They said; I’m here for a purpose, to serve Hashem.
When my father arrived on the shores of America, it was with the knowledge that his entire family had been wiped out. He found out from his Aunt (his father’s sister) what happened to them. He was the sole survivor. In his notes we found written to Rebbe that he’s asking; “To fulfill the intention for which I came here (America)” He had one focus, it was the wheels of emunah and bitachon in Hashem that everything would work out well. “Der Aibishter veit Zicher Helfin! (Hashem will certainly help)” was something we would often hear him say. Hiskashrus, davening, learning Torah and Chassidus gave him the strength to pull through in his life.
My mother was raised in a wealthy warm chassidishe home. Her father was Abbela Rappaport a wealthy Gerrer chosid. She was ten years old at the outbreak of the war. Her father passed away 6 months later. She ran and hid, along with her mother and three siblings in the barn of Polish peasants. There was a trench that they used to get in and out of the barn. One day the SS came to search the barn. They heard one officer say that the barn is free of Jews. The other said maybe they were hiding in the hay and ran his bayonet through the hay to be sure. Luckily they had gone into the trench and were behind the barn at the time.
After the war she came to America as a teenager. When talk of possible shidduchim surfaced she had to make a choice. She was in a new country staring a new life. She could marry a good Jew without a beard and a long coat, someone educated that spoke English and have simpler life. Nevertheless she chose my father, a chosid with a full beard, who spoke a broken English and wore a long coat all week. She explained that when pictured her father she knew that he would want that she should marry a chassidishe bochur. From the warmth of her father’s home she took a feeling of Chassidus and emunah in Tzaddikim. After being married for six weeks, when the Previous Rebbe told the young couple to go to Los Angeles California on shilchus, she went without hesitation. She went to a place that did not have the basic necessities for raising a Jewish family because the Rebbe told them and she had emunah.
We need to learn from their example to our lives. We cannot take off the wheels and we should not look for other things to replace them. Our Chassidic lifestyle is what makes us move and gives us the life in the Torah and mitzvos we do, and gets us out of the hole. Yes it’s 19 years after Gimmel Tammuz, true its difficult. But we will not get ahead by removing the wheels. The Rebbe said that we are here to bring Moshiach. The Rebbe is giving us strength to be an inspiration to our families and to others. Let’s stay focused on fulfilling our purpose. Der Aibishter Veit Zicher Helfin to bring Moshiach Now! This is what I think of when I look at the Rebbe’s picture and the picture of my father.