I grew up hearing a famous story about Rabbi Schneur Zalman (known as the Alter Rebbe), founder of Chabad and his son Rabbi Dovber, his successor (known as the Mittler Rebbe), related to this week’s parsha Ki Tavo. The parsha includes a very harsh section called the tochacha (rebuke or admonition). In it Hashem spells out the troubles that await us should we fail to follow in the ways of the Torah.
The story, as told by the Previous Rebbe of Lubavitch, Rabbi Yosef Y. Schneersohn:
The Alter Rebbe himself was the regular Torah-reader. Once he was away from Lyozna on the Shabbat of parsha Tavo, and the Mitteler Rebbe, then not yet Bar Mitzva, heard the Torah-reading from another. His anguish at the curses in the tochacha (section …Read More »