There are shitos that I think I will never understand, and quite frankly, don't even think it's worth using brain cells to try. The minyan I davened mincha at yesterday (not a chassdic minyan, mind you) skipped tachanun because it was the hilula of R Shayele Kerestirer. Now, I hate to jump the gun, but since I've davened there before, I'm pretty sure they will say tachanun on Yom haAtzmaut.
I am sure R' Shayele Kerestirer did wonderful things and is a big meilitz yosher for us, but I just can't wrap my mind around the idea of his yahrzeit being a better justification to skip tachanun than the establishment of the State of Israel.
I am also sure that there are other people who think this makes perfect sense and cannot understand how the reverse can be true, so I guess to each his own.
On a different note, it amazes me how history is so kind to some people's reputation, and other people who are giants languish in obscurity. Until recently, I barely had heard of R' Shalaye Kerestirer except in some vague way as being associated with keeping mice away. Similarly, a few years ago if you had asked me who the Zera Shimshon is, I would have had no idea. Now the sefer is available everywhere in Hebrew and English, there are parsha sheets, there are shiurim you can dial into. Could be that these tzadikim were famous and known to everyone else and I've just been living under a rock and am revealing my own ignorance, but my hunch is that a lot of other people feel the same way.
The Zera Shimshon is subject to a rumor that learning his seifer is a segulah. It is less luck than an active campaign. Although it relates to a berakhah Rav Shimshon Chaim Nachmani put in the sefer. The author was known by and praised by the Chida, and studied under the Ramchal's father-in-law (in Italy).
ReplyDeleteQuoting https://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/headlines-breaking-stories/1402235 :
In 2007, Rabbi Nachman Seltzer met a friend after shul. Rabbi Seltzer, a bestselling author famed for his true stories, was used to people sharing stories with him, but this one would change the Jewish world.
A middle-aged man, diagnosed with a dangerous illness, the doctors were grim…
Rabbi Seltzer had heard variations of this sad story many times before.
But then the story got different.
The sick man had gone into his local sefarim store for something and the owner, hearing about the illness, gave him a piece of advice. Learn the Zera
Shimshon. The owner told him about the author’s promise of great blessing to anyone learning his sefer. He opened the dusty volume and showed his sick friend the words in writing.
In the end the man recovered completely. It was an open and obvious miracle and the family attributed his recovery to the fact that he had learned Sefer
Zera Shimshon.