The great Rebbe of Radzhin, Rav Gershon Henoch of Radzhin, was a grandson of the Ishbitzer Rebbe. Rav Gershon Henoch, even as an adult, was a very fiery, creative, and confident personality. As a child, the combination of these character traits, together with a holy and special neshamah, showed themselves in his behaviors in a way that could sometimes have been hard to manage… as this story demonstrates.
As a child, Gershon Henoch was once crossing a very narrow footbridge over a stream in the village he grew up in. It was so narrow that only one person could cross it at a time: two people could not fit side by side. In front of him was an elderly chassid who was walking very slowly, and the boy started to push and nudge the chassid to try to get past him. The chassid turned around and said to the boy, “How dare you try and push me, do you know who I am? I am a grandson of the Chozeh of Lublin!” Without missing a meet the boy responded: “So what, who cares? The Chozeh of Lublin is dead! My grandfather is the Rebbe, and he is alive!”
The old man was very disturbed by the way the boy talked about the Chozeh, and later that day he went to the Ishbitzer to complain about the disrespectful way his grandson behaved. The Ishbitzer was bothered to hear this and called in Gershon Henoch and asked him if this was true. At first the Ishbitzer was expressing his displeasure, telling his grandson that he himself is nothing compared to the holy Chozeh of Lublin, and that he should not have spoken that way. But after a minute or two, he calmed down, and his expression changed. He said to his grandson, “The truth is, the Chozeh is dead. But I am alive! As long as I am alive, I could become as great as Rav Shimon Bar Yochai!”
We can learn an important lesson from this story! Of course we must be very respectful about the way we talk about tzaddikim. But as long as you have a spark of the Infinite One Himself giving you life, the sky is the limit! Why limit yourself to the Chozeh of Lublin if you have the potential to become as great as Rebbe Shimon Bar Yochai! The Chozeh passed away, and the Ishbitzer passed away, but we are alive! As long as we live we should and we could aspire to be great people; even greater than them!
This article was found in Nekuda Tova Issue 11.