22 Shevat: Rebbetzin Chaya Mushka Yartzheit

Here are two precious stories about Rebbetzin Chaya Mushka: 

The Rebbetzin, Chaya Mushka, loved flowers. On her 50th wedding anniversary, a women's organization sent an extravagant bouquet of flowers to the Rebbetzin and included a card with requests for blessings for women who were unable to have children. The organization brought the flowers to the Rebbetzin, but took out the card to take to the Rebbe. The Rebbe looked at the card and when he saw that it was addressed to the Rebbetzin he said “this is addressed to my wife; please take it to her.” The Rebbe was informed that these were requests for blessings. So the Rebbe said, “she too can bless”.

The Rebbe explained: In Chassidus there are two kinds of light, memale kol almin and sovev kol almin, a light that fills the worlds and a light that “surrounds” the worlds. When the Rebbe blesses his blessing are a level of "memale," and a person has to do something in this world like a good deed in order to get those blessing to manifest in this world. When the Rebbetzin blesses, her blessings are on a level of sovev and when she blesses a person does not even have to do anything and the blessings materialize in the world.

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Rabbi Chessed Halberstam recounted the following story of an act of ahavas Yisrael of the Rebbetzin Chaya Mushka.

The Rebbe instructed Chessed to take the Rebbetzin to the park, and she used to take bread and feed the birds. The park was in Long Island and they would travel along the Long Island Expressway to get there.

Once the highway was blocked off and they made a detour through the local streets. The route was congested and the traffic moved very slowly. As they were driving, they noticed a group of people gathered outside a house and a number of people crying. After passing the house, the Rebbetzin told Chessed that her father, the Previous Rebbe, told her that everything one sees is by Divine Providence and she asked him to return to the spot where the people had gathered.

They returned, and after a brief inquiry found out that a poor Russian family was being evicted from their home because they were in arrears for the rent.

The Rebbetzin asked how much they were in arrears, and the bailiff answered approximately $8000. The Rebbetzin asked the bailiffs that if she would write a check for $8000, would they allow the family to continue living in the apartment, and they answered in the affirmative. The bailiff asked how he would know if the bank would honor the check and the Rebbetzin told him to call the bank. He called and the bank gave the approval. The Rebbetzin wrote out a check, gave it to the bailiff, and asked him if the same men who took the furniture out of the house could bring it back in. She then quickly took leave of the scene before the family would recognize who their benefactress was. She also instructed Chessed not to tell anyone about what had transpired. Only after the passing of the Rebbetzin was the story revealed.

Tehiyeh Zichra Baruch