Rebbe Avraham Yaakov of Sadigura used to tell this story on the night of bedikat chametz, when we search for chametz on the night before Passover:
In a village near the town of Kolbasov lived a Jew who leased the tavern from the village landlord. This Jew's business wasn't good, and he couldn't pay the landlord his lease payments on time. The landlord requested the lease money several times, but the Jew had nothing to pay. The landlord threatened him several times, to no avail. On Shabbat Hagadol, the Shabbat before Pesach, the landlord sent his Cossacks to go to the Jew's house and destroy his possessions, to punish him. The Cossacks went and wreaked havoc in the house: they spilled the waste bucket on the floor, took the Shabbat food from the oven and threw it outside, overturned and broke tables and benches, and mixed up everything in the house, turning things upside down, trampling and crushing whatever they touched.
After the Cossacks left, the Jew and his family sat dejected and traumatized from the great misery that had befallen them. The Jew decided to ease his sorrow a bit and went to town to hear the Shabbat HaGadol sermon that the town rabbi was giving.
In Kolbasov at that time, the holy Ga’on Rabbi Avraham Yehoshua Heschel, who later became known eponymously as the Ohev Yisrael, the Tzaddik of Apte, served as rabbi. When the villager came to the synagogue, he found that the rabbi was already standing on the platform preaching, and all the people were standing crowded, listening to the sermon. The villager squeezed into a corner near the entrance and opened his heart to listen as well.
He heard the rabbi say in the midst of the sermon: There are two similar blessings: Ga'al Yisrael, which refers to God as “He who redeemed Israel” (לֵאֲרָשִׂי גָּאַל), in the past tense and the other is Go’el Yisrael, which refers to God as “He who redeems Israel” (לֵאֲרָשִׂי גּוֹאֵל), in the present tense.
The past tense blessing refers to the past redemption from Egyptian exile, and present tense blessing refers to the redemption that always exists, at all times. And then the Rebbe added, “even if in some village there is a Jew who has no money to pay the lease, and the landlord sends his Cossacks to destroy all his possessions, and they come and destroy and ruin everything in the house, even for such a Jew, the Almighty provides redemption and salvation from his troubles.”
When the villager heard these words, he was filled with joy and went back to his house in the village, dancing and singing: “The Rabbi said 'Go'el Yisrael!’ The Rabbi said 'Go'el Yisrael!’” In the evening, the landowner sent his messengers again to the Jew's house to see what he was doing now, after the destruction. The Cossacks came and saw that the Jew was full of joy, dancing and singing. They were amazed at this strange sight and went to the landowner, telling him that it seemed the Jew had lost his mind from misery, as they found him dancing and singing joyfully.
In the evening, the landowner sent for the Jew. The Jew thought that surely the landowner wanted to punish him again with various punishments, but he remembered the Apter Rav’s words about Go'el Yisrael, and again he was not afraid or frightened at all but went with great joy.
He came to the landowner, who turned to him with words of rebuke: “Why Moshke are you such a good-for-nothing? You yourself are poor, and you have nothing to pay me either.”
The Jew said to him: "What can I do, my lord?"
"Listen, Moshke," said the landowner. "I'll give you a note for the distillery in town, and they'll give you vodka on credit for such and such an amount. You'll sell the vodka and make a little profit, and then do it again a few more times, and you'll have money to pay me the debt and also for your household expenses."
Needless to say, the Jew was delighted and immediately went to purchase the Vodka on the landowner’s credit. During the few days from Shabbat HaGadol to the eve of Passover, our villager managed to purchase and sell vodka several times and earned a large sum. He paid his debt to the landowner, bought all the holiday necessities abundantly, and on the eve of Passover, he wrapped a sum of money in a handkerchief and brought it to the Rabbi in Kolbasov, saying: "I brought the Rabbi Go'el Yisrael money."
The redemption from Egypt, the first of all redemptions, is also the root and source in which all redemptions are included and from which they emerge. Even the future redemption, which the Exodus from Egypt will be secondary to, is already seeded in the Exodus from Egypt. Therefore, despite the immense magnitude of the redemption after which there will be no more exile, the Exodus from Egypt will still be mentioned in the future. It will be recognized as source and the cause of the final Messianic redemption.
The verb in the title, “He who Redeems Israel” (לֵאֲרָשִׂי גּוֹאֵל) is “who redeems” (גּוֹאֵל), whose root is גאל. Regarding the Exodus from Egypt, the Torah speaks of the four Idioms of Redemption (הַלְּאוּגוֹנוֹשׁ): “I will free you... I will save you... I will redeem you... I will take you” (וְהוֹצֵאתִי וְהִצַּלְתִּי וְגָאַלְתִּי וְלָקַחְתִּי). Clearly, the third idiom “I will redeem you” (וְגָאַלְתִּי), stems from the same root, גאל. When we correspond the four idioms to the four letters of God’s essential Name, Havayah, “I will redeem you” (וְגָאַלְתִּי), corresponds to the upper hei and to the sefirah of understanding (binah). Indeed, the inner experience of understanding is joy, and the villager merited his own personal redemption through his genuine joy.
Moreover, the Lubavitcher Rebbe stressed time and again that we will merit the final redemption through pure joy—authentic joy expressed, as in our story, in song and dance with our hands and feet. This is specifically the commandment to be joyful on the three festivals (Pesach, Shavu’ot, and Sukkot). In fact, the Hebrew word for “festival” (רֶגֶל) literally means “foot,” alluding both to the pilgrimage made on foot to the Temple in Jerusalem, as well as to the joyous dancing with our feet on the Three Festivals.
Let us end with a numeric observation: the sum of “He who redeemed Israel” (יֵשִׂרְאֵל גָּאַל) and “He who redeems Israel” (יֵשִׂרְאֵל גּוֹאֵל) is 1156, which is the square of 34, the value of the root of redemption, גאל! May it be God’s will that from the power of the joy we experience over the revelation of God as the past-tense “Redeemer of Israel” we will merit the revelation of His present-tense “Redeemer of Israel,” immediately now, and in the future!
1. His yahrzeit is on the 5th of Nissan, the Thursday before Shabbat HaGadol, this year (2025).
2. We use the first, past tense version, in the blessing following the Shema and in the Passover Haggadah, we use the second in the seventh blessing of the Amidah prayer.
3. Other redemptions that affected the entire Jewish people were the unraveling of Haman’s plans, the return from Babylon and the building of the Second Temple, and the victory of the Hasmoneans over the Greeks and the rededication of the Temple.
4. Exodus 6:6-7.
