One of the most beloved and celebrated figures in nineteenth-century Ukrainian Chassidus was Reb Dovid'l Twersky of Tolna (1808–1882), known simply as the Tolna Rebbe. He was a towering spiritual leader whose court drew thousands of Chassidim from across the Kiev district, and whose wisdom extended into domains that modern society would today recognize as psychiatry and mental health.
Reb Dovid Twersky was born in 1808 in the Ukrainian town of Chernobyl, the sixth son of Reb Mordechai Twersky, the Maggid of Chernobyl. His grandfather was the great Reb Menachem Nachum, the Me'or Einayim, one of the foremost disciples of the Baal Shem Tov and the Maggid of Mezritch. The Twersky dynasty became one of the most illustrious in all of Chassidus: Reb Mordechai's eight sons each went to different towns throughout Ukraine and each founded his own dynasty — among them Skver, Trisk, Makarov, Rachmastrivka, and Tolna.
Around the year 1835, Reb Dovid’l settled in the town of Tolna, in the Kiev district of Ukraine, and established his court there. The town of Tolna rapidly became one of the most prominent Chassidic centers in all of Ukraine. The Rebbe was famed not only for his piety and Torah scholarship — he authored three major works, the Magen Dovid, the Birchas Dovid, and the Kehilas Dovid — but also for his deep love of Niggun (music).
Reb Dovid'l' had many remarkable and unique qualities including an extraordinary skill in dealing with those suffering from mental illness. His great-nephew, Rabbi Dr. Abraham J. Twerski, the renowned psychiatrist and author, recorded several accounts of Reb Dovd’l’s treatment of those with mental illness and noted that they served as a formative influence on his own approach to psychiatric treatment.
One account describes an individual, possibly experiencing paranoid psychosis or bipolar disorder, who demonstrated a persistent belief that he was the Moshiach, which he actively shared with those around him. His family and community were at a loss. No amount of reasoned argument could penetrate the wall of his conviction. Logic, rebuke, and gentle persuasion had all failed. In desperation, they brought him to the Tolna Rebbe. The Rebbe did not argue with him. He did not challenge his delusion head-on. Instead, he began with a disarming question.
"Do you know who I am?" the Rebbe asked.
"Of course," the man replied. "You are the great Rebbe of Tolna."
The Rebbe proceeded calmly. "Do you not believe then that I am Divinely inspired?" he asked.
"Of course," said the man.
The Rebbe continued: "Then would my Divine inspiration not reveal to me the truth — that you are the Moshiach?" The man, confident in his delusion, agreed that the Rebbe would surely know that he was Moshiach.
Then came the masterstroke. "But you see," said the Rebbe, "I have taken an oath never to reveal that. You must do likewise. Never reveal to anyone that you are the Moshiach."
The man, bound now by the weight of a sacred oath — and, crucially, feeling that his identity had been acknowledged rather than denied — promised solemnly that he would never reveal it. From that day forward, he ceased speaking of being the Moshiach.
On another occasion, a young man was brought to the Rebbe because he was terrified to sit down. He suffered from a severe somatic delusion: he was convinced that his back was made of glass, and that if he sat down, it would shatter.
The Rebbe did not try to reason him out of the delusion by explaining the anatomy of the human spine. He listened, took the fear seriously, and told the young man to come back later. In the meantime, he instructed his aide to procure a large glass bowl and a hammer.
When the young man returned, the Rebbe seized him and sat him down firmly. At that very moment — as arranged — the aide brought down the hammer on the glass bowl with a resounding crash. The Rebbe then calmly showed the young man the shards of glass on the floor.
"Your glass back was broken," the Rebbe said, "and now you have a normal back like everyone else."
The young man was elated. The delusion was resolved — not by argument, but by a theatrical enactment that met the patient's delusional logic on its own terms and then redirected it toward a healthy outcome.
The Torah's prohibition against falsehood is serious and far-reaching. Midvar Sheker Tirchak — "Distance yourself from falsehood" (Shemos 23:7) — is formulated unusually stringently. The word Tirchak, "distance yourself," implies a heightened level of caution beyond the standard prohibitory formulation. Rashi and the Rishonim understood this as a call to avoid even the proximity of falsehood.
Nevertheless, Halacha has long recognized that there are certain situations in which altering or withholding the truth is permitted, as Reb Dovid’l did to cure mental illness.
