In the Rebbe's Room

Sometimes there are people who are genuine ovdei Hashem, but when it comes to middos, they are not baalebatim, not in control of themselves at all..." This phrase "not baalebatim over themselves" was one the Rebbe would often use. To him, middos meant a complete mastery over one's expressions, instincts, and reactions

On one occasion, the Rebbe quoted these words of Chazal, One "Gadol haneheneh miyegio yoser miyerei Shamayim who benefits from his hard labor is greater than a yarei Shamayim," and explained them differently than they are usually understood. Great is one who benefits from his own hard labor - and yoser, it is even more admirable, when this laborer also possesses yiras Shamayim.

“There is no one more broken than the person who believes that he is whole," the Rebbe would say

She phoned her son and daughter asking them to come to the house and persuade the Rebbe to retract his decision. "A person who tormented you, even signing public proclamations against you back in Vizhnitz, and now you will welcome him to your house?" she asked her husband. The Rebbe spoke calmly. "This house is like Switzerland," he said. "It is neutral territory. Here there are no wars or agendas, and every Yid is welcome."

In recalling that period, Rebbetzin Ernster told R' Menachem Leizer about an Erev Shabbos on which opponents of the Rebbe hung up posters in the streets of Bucharest, proclaiming that the Rebbe was unfit to oversee the funds. She hoped her father would not learn of the signs, but then he left to go to the mikveh. When he came back home, she nervously asked if he had seen the printed signs. "Yes," the Rebbe told his daughter. "I read them all, from start to finish, every word - and then, when I toiveled in the mikveh, I left all my impressions and feelings from reading those signs there, in the water."

A Rebbe who led his court in Tel Aviv came to the Imrei Chaim, asking for permission to build a beis medrash in Bnei Brak. After the Rebbe encouraged him to do so, the visiting Rebbe pointed out that his presence might draw chassidim away from Vizhnitz, since there were several chassidim locally who were not affiliated with Vizhnitz but nonetheless davened there because it was their best option. A chassidishe shul closer to where they lived might be attractive to them. The Rebbe smiled. "Aderaba," the Rebbe said. "The opposite is true. In New York City, there is a diamond district, a whole street lined with jewelry dealers. Even if the stores are theoretically competing with one another, they end up helping one another, because the presence of so many stores brings customers to the area. People looking for jewelry know that they will find what they are looking for on Forty-Seventh Street, specifically because there are stores catering to various budgets, offering different styles. "Furthermore," the Vizhnitzer Rebbe continued, "we will help each other. If ever a chassid comes to me and it happens to be closed here, you will take him in, and I will do the same for you."

The Rebbe very much wanted R' Shea to reestablish the Dzikover court, and one time the Rebbe said, "If you become a Rebbe, I will send you half my oilam." R' Shea was clever. "Yes," he said quickly, "but I want the half that the Rebbe would keep for himself.”

The Rebbe told R' Menachem Leizer about a chassid who had spent Shabbos in Haifa, and he'd been horrified to see signs of chillul Shabbos: plumes of smoke rising from the smokestacks of the ships in the Haifa port as their wares were unloaded on Shabbos. In Bnei Brak, he had never beheld such an appalling sight, and he shared his pain with the Imrei Chaim. "Who asked you to look in that direction and see the smoke from the ships? You could have looked the other way, into the Sereter beis medrash, and seen the smoke coming forth from the way they say Hakol Yoducha and Nishmas!"

R' Mordche Chuna Fuchs was one of the renowned Vizhnitzer chassidim in Grosswardein, and chassidic practice and custom were inherent in his actions and words. One day R' Mordche Chuna came into the home of the Ahavas Yisrael water dripping from his beard. “Is it raining outside?" someone asked. "When I was outside, it was raining," the chassid answered, careful not to testify to any reality beyond what he had actually seen

The Rebbe quoted the words of the pasuk "Min hameitzar karasi Kah anani vamerchav Kah - From the straits did I call upon Hashem; Hashem answered me with expansiveness." Sometimes, he explained, a Yid is in a place of pain and despair and he does what is proper, calling out to the Ribbono shel Olam from there. But the Ribbono shel Olam prefers simchah, so the Yid, despite the challenge he is facing, toils to find simchah and lift himself up, davening with joy even though he also feels worry. Then, the Rebbe said, the end of the pasuk is realized: Hashem answers when a person is vamerchav, in an expanded state, having allowed the simchah itself to remove the feeling of being constricted

One year, a resident of Shikun Vizhnitz celebrated Yom Ha'atzmaut, Israel's independence day, by hanging a large Israeli flag from his window. There were bachurim in the yeshivah who found this offensive, and a group of them joined together to pull the flag down. The Rebbe heard about the incident and he summoned the bachurim. The bachurim were proud of their actions, telling the Rebbe how they had protected the sanctity of the neighborhood, but the Rebbe was unimpressed. He would not even look in their direction as he spoke, saying, "Show me where in the Shulchan Aruch it says that a person may enter the property of another without permission and take away his personal item!"

A yid must be shomer shabbos, the Imrei Chaim would say, translating the word shomer as "anticipate," as in the pasuk "V'aviv shamar es hadavar - And his father kept the matter in mind." Six days a week, one has the obligation to wait for Shabbos

"From my zeide, the Imrei Chaim, I learned that one can already be awaiting Rosh Hashanah months before it arrives," the Slonimer Rebbe once told R' Menachem Leizer. He recalled that when the Rebbe encountered a pasuk, whatever the parashah or topic being discussed, that appears in the nusach of Malchuyos, Zichronos, and Shofaros recited in the Shemoneh Esrei of Rosh Hashanah, the Rebbe would sing it in the tune of the Yamim Noraim. "And already in mid-Sivan," the Slonimer Rebbe testified, "you could hear that it was coming from deep inside him, that he was already holding there."

"This is the way of tzaddikim: All their avodah is in secrecy and stealth. It appears to others that they eat and drink, but this, too, is done with an inner, unseen deveikus. What is visible to others is merely the overflow, that which the vessel cannot contain"