And how does it work? There are various ways to charge: You can click on a little paypal button on your computer, you can swipe your card in the store or you can use “payd” (the little gadget that you attach to your “smart” phone, which didn’t work for me for some reason when I tried it out . .)
In this case the mechanism that activates the credit is also clear; - we do it with our feet. We dance and sing and rejoice, and this is how we will be swiping our cards and making all of our acquisitions.
So we know what we’re looking to purchase, we know how to activate our credit. What’s left? Oh, we’ll have to eventually pay our bills (we don’t want to create ch”v a situation of credit card debt). So, how do we pay up our accumulated bills?
Well, to begin with, here’s another story:
In the early years of the Rebbe’s nesius, a yungerman came into yechidus to the Rebbe. During the course of the yechidus, the Rebbe remarked to him: “ Du kumst mir doch a choiv ” (You owe me a debt).
The chosid didn’t know what the Rebbe was referring to (and it wasn’t customary for chassidim to ask questions of the Rebbe). The only possible explanation that came to mind was: Once when he was a bochur, he was in the room upstairs where the Frierdige Rebbe was farbrenging. The Frierdige Rebbe’s farbrengens were severely restricted, with only a select few guests allowed to attend. Bochurim, specifically, were generally banned.
During (or just before) that particular farbrengen the people in charge were “bouncing” any uninvited guests, and this bochur was at risk of being evicted. The Rebbe (who was known then as the RaMaSH), who would try to help bochurim participate and smuggle them in in various ways, hid this bochur in a closet until after the “inspection” so that he avoided detection. This was all that he could think of regarding a “choiv” that he owes the Rebbe.
But while he had an idea that this could be the only “choiv” that the Rebbe could be referring to, he had no idea what form of payment the Rebbe was expecting. At a 2nd yechidus the Rebbe repeated the same remark, and the yungerman was in a quandary, not knowing how to react.
Around that time he was in Montreal, and during a farbrengen there, he heard a story: The Rebbe Rashab once said to a chosid “ Du kumst mir doch a choiv ” (that particular chosid owed the Rebbe Rashab something or other). The chosid replied: “In that case, I’ll need to have arichus yomim (since it will take me a long time to repay this debt). The Rebbe Rashab smiled, and – apparently – the chosid indeed enjoyed a long life.
As soon as the yungerman heard the story, he felt certain that this was the response that the Rebbe was seeking from him! So, by the third yechidus, when the Rebbe again mentioned the choiv, he said to the Rebbe “ Ober ess vet nemen a lange tzeit ” (but it will take a long time).
The Rebbe accepted the answer, and never mentioned it again.
Some years later, the yungerman was diagnosed lo aleinu with an advanced and aggressive tumor, and the doctors didn’t give him hope of surviving beyond a few months r”l. They gave him the option of undergoing chemo, but they didn’t see much chance of it making a significant difference at the stage that the disease was in. The chosid said that he had kept his beard with mesirus nefesh through the war, and he wasn’t about to lose it now through his own doing, and he rejected the chemo (which the doctors didn’t advise very strongly in any case).
But, somehow, the disease left him. The doctors had no explanation, and in all the medical papers they referred to him as a walking miracle! He went on to live many more healthy years (I don’t recall the exact amount, but over a decade). The son of the yungerman, who shared the story with me, told me that in his mind the two incidents were connected, and that he felt that the Rebbe brought up the matter of the choiv to elicit the response and to ensure his father’s arichus yomim!
