One Thursday, in a town quite a distance from where the Besht resided, a man sent his attendant to the local shochet with a chicken. The shochet slaughtered the chicken and thought it looked treif but he did not want to rule of his own, so he sent the attendant to ask the Rov. The Rov too paskened that the chicken was treif.
What they didn’t know was that this chicken had within it a gilgal of a neshama, which was waiting for a Jew to eat it l’kavod Shabbos as its tikkun. In truth, the chicken was kosher and the Rov had erred in his ruling. The neshama went to the Besht and told him that because of the shochet and the Rov’s mistake, it did not get its tikkun. It asked the Besht to travel to the city and let the Rov know he had been wrong.
On Friday, the Besht traveled to that village and davened Shacharis there. He then went to the home of the man who had sent the chicken to the shochet and asked if he could eat in his home. The man said that he could but informed him that he only had dairy food. The Besht told him that on erev Shabbos, his minhag was not to eat milchig, and he only would eat meat. The man said that he had no meat because the shochet told him that the chicken he sent to be slaughtered was treif.
The Besht asked to see the chicken. He examined it and said, “It is kosher.” The man asked who he was but the Besht did not want to reveal his identity. The man told him, “I don’t know you. I cannot rely on you to tell me that the chicken is kosher. If you want, I can send for the Rov to speak with you.”
The Besht agreed to this and when the Rov arrived, he began to discuss the matter with him. The Rov brought proofs from Rishonim and Acharonim that the chicken was treif and the Besht brought proofs that it was kosher. The Rov then said, “If we had a third party to create a majority opinion, we would follow the majority, but since it is just you against me, how should we decide whose opinion to follow?”
The Besht said, “We will get a sign from Heaven to determine who is correct.” The Besht asked for a plate to be brought to him. He covered it with a cloth and sat down a distance from the plate, while the Rov sat down near it. After 15 minutes, the Besht asked for the cloth to be removed and they saw written on the plate the words, “The chicken is kosher according to the ruling o the Heavenly Court!”
The Rov said, “Only the Baal Shem Tov would be able to do something like this.” The Besht then admitted who he was. The chicken was immediately cooked and eaten that morning. The Rov then asked the Besht to be his guest for Shabbos but the Besht said that he couldn’t stay there since he hadn’t brought his Shabbos clothes. When he got back home, the gilgal came to him and thanked him for providing his tikkun.
