“Next time you come, travel here with a certain wagon driver,” the Rebbe the Tzemach Tzedek, Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Lubavitch, told one of his chassidim. The chassid, a wealthy and respected Jew, did not ask the reason for the request, even though it seemed strange to him. He nodded and left.
A few months later the chassid returned to the Rebbe’s court. As the Rebbe had instructed, he had made the journey to Lubavitch in the wagon of that same driver. When he entered the Rebbe’s room, he told him he had fulfilled his request. “In that case,” said the Rebbe, “please invite him to come to me.”
The chassid hurried to the inn where the driver was staying. He was moved by the very fact that the Rebbe was inviting a simple wagon driver to see him. But the chassid’s excitement did not rub off on the driver. He wasn’t one of the chassidic crowd, and he didn’t feel comfortable going in to see the Rebbe.
Seeing that the driver was refusing, the chassid slipped a threat into his words: “If you don’t come with me to the Rebbe right now, I won’t hire you for the return trip.” The threat swayed the driver.
A Visit to the Rebbe
“Shalom aleichem! Shalom aleichem!” The Rebbe received the driver graciously and with great warmth. The driver, who was already surprised by the Rebbe’s attitude toward him, was even more surprised when the Rebbe invited him to come back the next day to share the midday meal with him.
As the driver left the house, the Rebbe turned to the Rebbetzin and asked her to prepare special delicacies for the next day’s midday meal, the kind reserved for festivals and holidays.
Meanwhile, word spread about the driver who had merited such royal honor from the Rebbe. The first guess was that the man was none other than one of the thirty-six hidden tzaddikim.
Soon a group of young chassidim surrounded the driver and pressed him to reveal what he had done to deserve such great honor from the Rebbe. “I don’t know myself,” the driver repeated. “I’m not a Rabbi and not a tzaddik. Just a simple wagon driver!”
But the young men would not let up. “Maybe you can recall some unusual incident that happened to you recently?”
The driver shifted anxiously. “Uh, well... something,” he mumbled. The eyes of the young chassidim sparkled with hope. “Tell, tell!” they urged him.
And so he told the following story:
The Story
“On my many journeys I reach remote settlements where a lone Jewish family lives among the gentiles. More than once Jews asked me whether I know how to perform a circumcision, since their son’s eighth day had arrived and there was no mohel nearby.
“So I learned the laws of circumcision and completed a mohel’s training. I carry circumcision tools in my wagon, thank G-d, and I’ve already had the chance to perform quite a few circumcisions in several remote settlements.
“A few months ago I went into a forest and lost my way. Suddenly the sound of heartbroken weeping reached my ears. I followed the sound and came to the hut of a Jewish forester. The weeping was the sobbing of the lady of the house.
“She told me her husband had been struck by a severe illness and lay in his bed, unable to move or stir.
“She shared that today was the eighth day since the birth of their baby boy.”
Looking for a Sandak
“‘My husband was supposed to travel to the nearby town and bring a mohel from there. Now he can’t move, and I don’t know where help will come from,’ the woman cried.
“‘Don’t worry, I’m a mohel myself!’ I calmed the astonished woman.
Now I had to find a sandak. Since the father couldn’t move a limb, I went out to the main road, almost despairing of finding a Jew who might happen by.
Yet suddenly, shortly before sunset, a Jew happened by.
“I pounced on him like a lucky find and told him about the honor that had fallen to him, to be sandak at the circumcision of a Jewish child. But the man didn’t come so quickly.
“I fell to my knees and begged, ‘a Jewish baby is waiting to enter the covenant of Abraham our father! The father lies dying, and the mother weeps. How can you ignore this and go on your way?’ My words reached his heart, and he agreed to come.
“After the brit I suggested we hold a festive meal together. There was nothing at all in the house, so I took bread and a little cheese out of my pack. We washed our hands and sat down to the meal.
Dining with Abraham
“At the end of the meal, the wayfarer suggested to ask the father to join in the zimun that is said before the Grace after Meals.
“I looked at him like someone who has lost his mind. ‘Don’t you see he is dying?’ I asked. But the stranger approached the father, who lay there like a stone, and a moment later he got him up from his place and brought him to the table. At the sight of it, my tongue froze.
“After we recited Grace after Meals, I stepped away for a moment to my wagon. When I returned to the house, I didn’t see the wayfarer. The man had vanished!”
“That’s my story,” the driver finished with an embarrassed smile.
The next day the driver came to the Rebbe’s house and shared a festive midday meal with him.
Later, the secret that completed the picture became known. One of the Rebbe’s household said that at the end of the meal the Rebbe had said, in their hearing, that “a Jew who merited to dine at the same table as Abraham our father, I yearned very much to dine with him too...”