Accepting Shame Rather Than Causing Pain:
During the horrific years of “Tach V’Tat”, when many Jewish communities were destroyed in vicious pogroms, the Taz zt”l accepted upon himself to go into golus as a means of bringing a yeshua for Klal Yisroel. He traveled to places where no one recognized him and lived like a penniless pauper. In one city, he bumped into one of his students, but he warned him not to tell anyone who he was. The student saw that he had no money with him, and realized that he needed a job. He suggested that he work for the butcher, and arranged a job for him as menaker (one who removes the forbidden parts of the animal).
The Rov of that city was very stringent. When he was presented with a shailoh, he usually ruled that the animal in question was forbidden. After the Taz started working as a menaker, the butchers realized that he knew how to learn, and they began bringing their shailohs to him. After a few weeks, the Rov saw that no shailohs were coming to him, and he went to ask the butchers why this was so. They told him that the new menaker was ruling on their shailohs, which greatly upset the Rov. He declared, “The menaker is feeding people treif meat!”
He immediately placed the Taz in cherem and forbade him from setting foot in the bais medrash, and everyone accepted the Rov’s words that he had been permitting people to eat treif meat.
A few weeks later, a young girl brought a chicken with a shailoh to the Rov. As she left the Rov’s home, the Taz saw that she was crying. He asked her why she was so upset but she wouldn’t speak to him because he was in cherem. The Taz looked at the chicken and understood what the shailoh was. From her tears, he understood that this chicken was needed to feed her family and now that the Rov had said that it was forbidden, they would have nothing to eat.
He told her, “Go back to the Rov and tell him that Sefer Turei Zahav in such-and-such place says that the chicken is permitted.”
The girl did as she was told. The Rov looked up the source in Sefer Turei Zahav and saw that she was correct. He admitted his mistake but he asked her how she knew about this Turei Zahav. The girl tried to avoid answering but finally said that the man who had been placed in cherem had told her about it.
The Rov called the Taz to come inside and demanded that he tell him who he really was. He revealed that he was the author of Sefer Turei Zahav, and this is how his golus ended. Later, the Taz told his students that he had really accepted to stay in golus for longer, but in order not to cause pain to the girl, he allowed his exile to end.
From this story, we can see the Taz’s greatness. He accepted to give up his golus in order to avoid transgressing the prohibition of wronging another Jew. He couldn’t bear to see the girl’s pain when he had the ability to help her.
