The Iyun Yaakov explains, "It seems to me that the chassid chose to sleep in the cemetery because he was afraid that if he remained home, he might quarrel with his wife on Rosh Hashanah. He didn’t go to someone else's house to protect his wife's honor. He slept in the cemetery so no one would know about their fight.
The crops that grew after the first rains will be tall and strong and break from the hail. The crops planted by the second rain will still be soft and flexible at the time of the storm and will survive the hail.
The Iyun Yaakov writes, "In the merit of tzedakah [that he gave to the poor] he was rewarded, and the spirits revealed to him the ideal time to plant..."
The Gemara (Brachos 18) relates a story of a poor chassid who gave tzedakah to another needy person on erev Rosh Hashanah during a famine. His wife was upset at him for giving away money to tzedakah, so he spent that night in the cemetery.
In the graveyard, he overheard a conversation between two neshamos. One said, 'My friend, let's float around the world and listen in from behind the curtain [of heaven] to know which punishments are decreed for the coming year.'"
The second soul answered that she couldn’t leave her grave because she was buried in a mat of reeds. The first soul went alone. When she returned, she told her friend, "Heaven decreed that all crops planted by the first rains of the season will be ruined by hail."
The chassid, having overheard their conversation, planted his field during the second rain. Everyone's crop was destroyed in the hail that year except for his.
The following year, on Rosh Hashanah night, he returned to the cemetery and heard the two souls conversing again. Once again, one of them asked her friend to float around the world to overhear heaven's decrees. The other replied that she couldn’t because she was buried in a mat of reeds. So, one soul traveled alone, and when she returned, she said that she heard that this year, the crops planted at the second rain will be destroyed by a disease called shidafon."
That year, everyone planted by the second rain (because they remembered from the previous year that only the chassid’s crops, planted at the second rain, survived). But a disease destroyed all the crops planted that year at the second rain. The chassid...
