Spiritually Sensitive

לזכות רבי אפרים אבא בן מרים שושנה לברכה והצלחה הוא וביתו וכל אשר לו!


Rav Aharon of Belz [d. 1957] is known in the Chasidic world as "Reb Aharon Kadosh Hashem" and Kadosh he was.... There are many people today [some of whom I know personally] who saw and met Rebbe Aharon.

In 1930, he was in Vienna in order to receive medical treatment. At the same time, the Lubavitcher Rebbe [known as the Raayatz] was there for the same reason. The Raayatz was there with his two sons in law, one of them being Rebbe Menachem Mendel, the future Rebbe, who already had a tremendous mastery over the Torah in his youth [like knowing Shas by heart with the Rosh and I think Rif as well].

The two sons-in-law were walking down the street one day and they crossed paths with Rav Aharon who used to almost run down the street. They weren't dressed as chasidim [don't tell Lubavitchers this story...:-)] and didn't introduce themselves. First, Rebbe Menachem Mendel's brother in law said shalom to the Rebbe. Then Rebbe Menachem Mendel said shalom. The moment he felt the hand of Rebbe Menachem Mendel, he didn't let go. He held it with tremendous dveykus for TWENTY MINUTES on a sidewalk in Vienna.

He had acute spiritual sensitivities and the many stories are legend. He had a special hakpada [among many others] that nobody should touch the water before he was toivel in the mikva. One time they prepared the mikva for him with all of his hakpados. The moment his foot touched the water, he stepped back and refused to immerse himself. It turns out, that the person preparing the water wanted to check the heat of the water and touched it beforehand.

The Rachamestrivka Rebbe Shlita related that when he was going to his wedding with the daughter of the Skverer Rebbe in the United States, he went to Rebbe Aharon to get a bracha. The Rebbe offered much hadracha about marriage and also told him not to engage in any arguments about hashkafos with people who have different opinions than he does. The Rachamestrivker was a bit bothered by this piece of advice. It was against his nature to have such arguments so why did the Rebbe have to tell him this?

At the time, going to the U.S. from Israel was a long trip with numerous stops on the way. It turns out that a person with questionable hashkofos found this future tzadik and decided to try to convince him to his way of thinking. It was then that the Rachemestrivker understood Rebbe Aharon's hadracha. Who knows what type of bad mood he would have been in for his wedding had he started to argue with this person. [On one flight from the US, a secular-anti-religious-pro-arab-dog-loving-charedi-hating-woman from Tel Aviv engaged me in an argument and to this day I still have a bad taste in my mouth. I learned my lesson...:-)] 
זכותו יגן עלינו ועל כל ישראל אמן!