Rav Dovid Oppenheim was a great tzaddik and talmid chacham who lived a few centuries ago. Rav Dovid was the undisputed gadol hador of his generation. He was extremely well versed in Gemara and Poskim, and when he ruled on a halachic scenario, none of the other sages would dare overrule him. His greatness was such that at the young age of twenty-three, he was appointed the head dayan of the large city of Nickelsburg.
In addition to his unparalleled grasp in the revealed aspects of Torah, he was also deeply acquainted with the hidden secrets of the Torah and kabbalah, including sheimos. Sheimos, the use of certain names of Hashem in a kabbalistic fashion, is not child’s play, and toying with them is akin to messing with fire. Even holy tzaddikim who are proficient in this area only use it very rarely, in cases of extreme emergency.
At that time, in a city far from Nickelsburg, there lived a fourteen-year-old boy whom we’ll call Naftali. Until the fateful moment when his entire life went haywire, there was nothing extraordinary about Naftali. He was a regular bachur just like any other his age.
One day, from one second to the next, everything turned topsy turvy.
The first indication that something was amiss took place on a calm winter morning, in the middle of the street. The streets were teeming with people, hurrying to and fro, the typical hubbub that took place every morning, when suddenly, there was an earthshattering shout. “Ashamnu! Bagadnu!”
Two men, chatting amiably on their way to the market, halted their conversation and turned to the source of the noise. A cluster of children on their way to cheder stopped short to gawk. Movement on the street ceased momentarily as people tried to digest what their eyes were seeing.
Someone was sprawled on the floor, weeping uncontrollably, shouting vidui at the top of his lungs in a voice that was much too deep to be his own.
“Naftali!” someone yelled, recognizing the prone figure. His voice was shaking with fear and concern. What had happened to Naftali?
Naftali stood up, but his eyes were unfocused. Instead of responding, he grabbed a large boulder, one that seemed much too heavy for a single man to lift, and smashed it, hard, against his chest. The unnerving sound of stone meeting bone echoed throughout the silent street, but despite the undeniable force of the blow, it seemed that Naftali was fine.
The boulder fell to the ground, and Naftali lifted it a second time, and then a third, hurling it at himself with extraordinary force. Despite his efforts, however, the terrible blows did not harm him. As he continued trying unsuccessfully to stone himself to death, he continued yelling out the words of vidui in an unnaturally deep voice that did not resemble his usual pitch.
The stunned passersby on the street soon understood that Naftali had been possessed by the spirit of a dybbuk. However, despite their pain and concern for him, there was nothing they could do or say that would calm him down. After a few minutes of torturing himself in this manner, however, Naftali lay down on the side of the road, completely spent. He fell into a deep slumber from which he could not be awoken.
For the next few days, Naftali was uncontrollable. For much of the time, he was in a state of semi-conscious delirium, drifting in and out of sleep and being completely unresponsive. Three times a day, however, he would stand up and leave the house, screaming vidui at the top of his lungs as he threw whatever he could find – stones, bricks, and wooden logs—at his heart.
His parents were beside themselves, not knowing how to deal with him. They tried talking to him and reasoning with him, but it was clear that he just wasn’t ‘there’. In the place of their good-natured son was an unrecognizable spirit that refused to communicate with them and was using Naftali’s body for its own ends. They were terrified for his safety, but they had absolutely no control over his actions.
And then came the day when Naftali left the house, never to return. He got onto a wagon and drove himself out of the city. Whenever the mood overtook him, he would jump off the wagon and try to stone himself to death as he cried out the words of vidui. Then he would continue on his journey for another little stretch. For the next six years, he wandered from town to town in the same terrible state of being, suffering for the sins of the spirit that possessed him.
When he was twenty years old, his travels brought him the city of Nickelsburg, where Rav Dovid Oppenheim served as rav. The people of Nickelsburg, like the others who had met Naftali over the course of his journey, were horrified to see what deep anguish the poor young man was in. Not knowing how to help him, they went to the rav of the city to discuss the situation.
Rav Dovid Oppenheim was an extremely busy man, and he didn’t have the time to chase Naftali around the city. The problem was that there was no way the people could pin the boy down and lead him to the rav. Naftali obeyed no one, not even his own wishes, and his every act was dictated by the spirit living within him.
“There must be a time when he stops running around,” the rav told the people who had come to see him. “When that happens, and he’s finally stationary, please come to call me, and I will go there immediately.”
A few hours later, someone came to inform the rav that Naftali was sitting on a chair inside the motel, acting almost lifeless. “He’s not sleeping, not exactly,” he reported. “He’s sitting, and he’s able to reach for food and chew a little, but he seems more like a puppet than a live person.”
Rav Dovid stood up and accompanied the man back to the motel to see for himself. Indeed, the young man whom the entire Nickelsburg was talking about was seated in a chair, a dummy-like expression on his face. He was moving his arms as though someone was controlling them externally.
As Rav Dovid took in the scene with his holy eyes, Naftali suddenly had an attack. He stood up aggressively, knocking things off the table, and began clawing on the floor for heavy objects to throw at himself. “Ashamnu, bagadnu, gazalnu!” he roared as he wacked his chest over and over.
Rav Dovid observed him for a long moment, and he understood exactly what was happening and what was needed in order to help Naftali. However, it was time for him to depart to Vienna for an important matter that could not be delayed, and he therefore did not have the time to deal with Naftali himself. Instead, he resolved to give it over to Rav Moshe Prager, a tremendous kabbalist and a very humble man who lived in Nickelsburg at the time.
Leaving the motel and the heartbreaking scene, Rav Dovid went directly to the home of Rav Moshe Prager. The mekubal was in the middle of writing his Torah thoughts, focusing intently on the pages before him when Rav Dovid came inside.
“Did you hear about the young man, Naftali, who came to the city?” the rav asked.
Rav Moshe gave a deep sigh. “Yes, I heard about him.”
“The way I see it, the way to remove the spirit from within him is through these sheimos,” Rav Dovid told the mekubal. He wrote down some names and pesukim on a paper, sheimos that Rav Moshe Prager had never known. “I must leave town and therefore cannot do it myself, but you are a mekubal, too. You must use these names to coax the spirit into leaving Naftali’s body. It’s the only way.”
Rav Moshe shuddered. “The Shulchan Aruch says that one who uses the sheimos will die,” he reminded the rav. This was an area that was dangerous to tamper with, and Rav Moshe was afraid to get involved.
“Rav Moshe, this boy is suffering terribly,” the rav stressed. “Despite the danger, if he came to our city, then we have a duty to help him. I would do it myself, but I cannot, and I am therefore making you my messenger to remove the spirit and relieve his distress.”
Rav Moshe nodded reluctantly, realizing that he did not have much of a choice to refuse. He sat with the rav for a while, going over the names and the pesukim, the Tehillim and the thoughts, everything that was involved in the kabbalistic ritual he would have to perform. When they were done, Rav Dovid Oppenheim left the city, leaving the mission of helping Naftali in Rav Moshe’s capable hands.
Rav Moshe Prager, as mentioned earlier, was a tremendous anav, and he was afraid that he wasn’t great enough to perform the ritual himself. He therefore asked two other mekubalim to join him, and the three of them went to the motel where Naftali was, sitting still as a statue in a chair.
Rav Moshe took a seat opposite the boy. “Pick up your head,” he commanded.
Naftali obeyed, lifting his head from the table.
“I see that you are suffering terribly,” Rav Moshe said suddenly, addressing the spirit that was dwelling in Naftali’s body. “From your behavior in this young man’s body, I can see that you are in tremendous distress from sins that you committed in your lifetime. You didn’t even merit to be cleansed in Gehinnom yet.”
Naftali, as was the spirit inside him, was silent, so Rav Moshe continued, “I’ll tell you what I can do to make things easier for you. I myself will recite Kaddish for your soul, and I also pledge to fast every single day for an entire year in your merit. Not only that, but I, along with the community here in Nickelsburg, will learn mishnayos in your memory for a year. But in order for us to do these things, you must leave this boy’s body.”
Rav Moshe turned to someone standing nearby. “Open a window,” he said quietly. If the spirit would leave Naftali, it would need to get out of the room and back outside. He turned back to the unmoving young man and addressed the spirit. “You must leave this boy’s body,” he commanded sternly. “You have tortured him long enough. It is time for you to go.”
Suddenly, a deep voice emerged from somewhere deep within Naftali. “Moshe,” the voice said scornfully. “What do you think, that you will command me to leave and I will obey you just like that? I’m not going anywhere.”
“I’m warning you,” Rav Moshe responded, his voice uncompromising. “If you don’t leave, I have sheimos, a ritual in kabbalah taught to me by Rav Dovid Oppenheim. I am going to use these sheimos to put you into cheirem, and you will suffer even more than before. Leave his body before you regret it!”
“Ha,” the voice mocked from within Naftali. “Rav Dovid Oppenheim isn’t in the city. He’s not here, and I’m not afraid of you.”
“He’s not here, but he told me exactly what to do,” Rav Moshe countered. “You’d better get out of this body before your pain is multiplied many times over.”
“I’m not leaving,” the spirit insisted stubbornly.
Left with no other options, Rav Moshe closed his eyes and began to perform the kabbalistic ritual. He didn’t use all the sheimos that Rav Dovid had left him, preferring to save some ammunition for later in case it was necessary, but enough to give the spirit a good scare and shake him up.
But even after he finished, the spirit refused to cooperate. “I’m not leaving,” it maintained. “Do what you want, but I’m staying right here.”
Rav Moshe proceeded to repeat the ritual, using more of the sheimos, but the spirit stubbornly resisted his efforts in coaxing it to leave. He tried a third time with the same results. At last, left with no other recourse, Rav Moshe told the spirit, “I’ll give you one more day to be here. However, if you don’t leave by tomorrow, I’ll bring seven sifrei Torah and seven shofars. With the blasts of the shofars and the power of the Torah, you’ll be forced to leave Naftali’s body. Your punishment thereafter will be exponentially more severe. I’m warning you not to try it.”
He got up and left the motel with the other mekubalim as his words caught on fire and spread throughout the city. A wave of anxiety took hold of the people as they contemplated Rav Moshe’s words. The spirit seemed incredibly stubborn. What if it continued to resist Rav Moshe’s efforts even in the presence of the sifrei Torah? What a terrible chilul Hashem that would be!
The following day, when it was clear that the spirit had no intention of leaving Naftali’s body, Rav Moshe returned, along with a vast crowd of curious onlookers. They bore the seven Torah scrolls and seven shofars, and as Rav Moshe instructed them, they stood ready to respond “Amen,” after he finished.
“I’m going to use these sifrei Torah, along with sheimos, to force you to leave,” the mekubal informed the spirit. “Leave before you bring even more suffering upon yourself!” They blew the shofars and Rav Moshe began concentrating on kabbalah.
When he was done, the crowd responded with a thunderous amen. The effect this had on the spirit within Naftali was immediate. “Stop, stop!” the deep voice cried out desperately. “Stop!”
Rav Moshe turned to the voice. “Leave right now, and we’ll help you atone,” he ordered.
“I can’t leave,” the spirit insisted. “You can’t see what I see, but just beyond the crowd are hundreds of thousands of menacing angels, waving fiery rods, ready to beat me terribly! I can’t leave! The torture awaiting me outside is too frightening!”
“You must leave,” Rav Moshe told it, “Because if you don’t, you will have to endure things a lot worse than that. And don’t you pity this poor young man whose body you borrowed? He’s suffering terribly because of you!”
“Don’t you pity me?” the voice demanded in response. “How can you force me to leave?”
“We’ll learn mishnayos for you after you leave,” Rav Moshe offered.
“I’m not leaving! It’s much too dangerous,” the spirit insisted. “Give me another few months, and maybe then I’ll leave.”
They continued negotiating back and forth as the sun slowly trekked across the sky. Shkiah was fast approaching, and there didn’t seem to be any hope in sight. “We will continue tomorrow,” Rav Moshe announced. “We need to daven Minchah now.”
They returned the sifrei Torah to the shul and put the shofars away, their goal unaccomplished.
The following day, when Naftali drifted out of consciousness, his arms and legs were tied down to restrain him, and he was carried to the shul. He was placed in front of the open aron kodesh, where Rav Moshe Prager and the other two rabbanim were waiting for him.
“I’m warning you,” Rav Moshe said, addressing the spirit that had hijacked Naftali’s body. “If you do not leave right now, I will begin to say sheimos in a way that will cause you tremendous pain.”
At first the voice inside Naftali was silent. When it finally spoke, it sounded less defiant. “Give me twelve more months,” the spirit pleaded. “I can’t leave him now. Give me another twelve months!”
“Absolutely not,” Rav Moshe exclaimed. “You must leave now.”
“Then give me twelve hours,” the voice begged.
“No,” Rav Moshe said firmly. “You must leave now. And if you don’t leave, I will be forced to perform a kabbalistic ritual that will put you in a much worse position than the one you are in now.”
“Please don’t do that!” the spirit cried out. “Please! My situation is terrible as it is. Please don’t make it worse!”
Rav Moshe closed his eyes in thought for a moment. “What is your name?” he asked the voice.
“Shmuel,” it responded immediately.
“What is your father’s name?”
“My father is Mendel, the son of Michoel.”
“And your mother?”
“Baila,” the deep voice said. Then, to the shock of everyone present, it began to speak negatively about its mother in the harshest of terms, sparing her no respect. “Everything that happened to me was because of her,” the spirit concluded bitterly.
“Tell us what happened,” Rav Moshe coaxed. “Perhaps if we know what your sins were, we’ll be able to help you atone for them.”
“I grew up in a very wealthy home,” the spirit began. “My mother would spoil me terribly, giving me anything I wanted. She spared nothing so that I would succeed beyond everyone’s wildest dreams. She didn’t care about the feelings of others or anything else; only that I would reach the top. I received whatever I wanted and never even heard the word ‘no’.
“In her efforts to push me to the top, she caused a big fight between me and another man. Then she helped me trample on his honor to increase my own. With my mother’s strong encouragement, I soon became one of the most influential people in the city, but I only reached this high place by stepping on tens of others. With my mother’s firm backing, I used my power to destroy anyone who tried to get in my way. No deed was too harsh for the ruthless, power-hungry man I had become.
“At one point, two rabbanim came to warn me that I needed to get off the terrible track I was on before it was too late. Instead of heeding their warning, I arranged with my henchmen to have the two rabbanim killed. This was a new low, even for me, and it signaled the beginning of my freefall into the lowest bowels of sin.
“Until then, as low as I’d fallen, I had my red lines that I would never cross, but once I had been responsible for the killing of two talmidei chachamim, there was nothing left to hold me back. I had breached a serious boundary, and now I had nothing to contain my evil inclination. I’m embarrassed to tell you what else I did, but suffice it to say that things only got worse, not better.
“At the end of the story, I succeeded in having all the Jews of my city expelled permanently. They lost their homes and their businesses, and had to wander around in search of a new haven to take them in. But through their homelessness, I solidified my power in the region, and I wasn’t even the slightest bit moved by their plight.
“Rav Moshe, you can’t even begin to imagine the enormity of my sins,” the spirit concluded sadly. “And now, in the World of Truth, I am being made to pay for them fully. There are menacing angels ready to rip me to shreds if I leave. At least here, inside his body, I have a small measure of peace. I can’t go!”
“You must go,” Rav Moshe repeated. Shmuel’s story was tragic, and the depths to which he had fallen was terrible, but Naftali was still very much alive, and he didn’t deserve the endless suffering of a spirit dwelling in his body.
“I will not leave!” the spirit insisted.
Realizing that it would take everything he had to get the spirit to leave, Rav Moshe began to concentrate on kabbalah again, using the most powerful sheimos he knew. When he finished, he remarked to those standing nearby, “The spirit will leave him within the next twelve hours. It won’t be able to withstand the pressure I just placed upon it.”
Naftali was brought back to the motel, where he was untied and left to rest. From a safe distance, a group of curious onlookers observed him, waiting to see what would happen next.
Early the following morning, Naftali suddenly stood up and began running at an enormous speed. He crossed the length of the long room in seconds and then turned around, running back the way he came. As he repeated his frenetic circuit of the room, people came rushing over to see what was happening.
“Get away,” the deep voice cried from with Naftali. “Get away from me or you’ll be harmed!”
The people hastily obeyed, backing off before the spirit managed to reach them, too.
Naftali seemed to be having an especially severe attack. He threw himself against the wall with terrible force and then raced the opposite wall and did the same thing. There was a terrible sound of screaming, and then he fell to the floor in a faint.
Blood began to gush from his toes. Moments later, the window shattered.
The spirit had left his body.
Naftali sat up groggily as the people cautiously came closer to inspect the situation. It was immediately evident that Rav Moshe Prager had been successful in forcing the spirit to leave. The voice emerging from Naftali’s voice was entirely different from the deep one they had come to know, and the new Naftali was docile and pleasant.
Someone rushed to bring Naftali a pair of tefillin, which he donned for the first time in more than five years. He put on a yarmulka, made brachos on his food, and acted just like the young man he had been before the spirit had taken him hostage. He could barely believe that his years-long ordeal was finally over.
Rav Moshe Prager was notified about the developments, and he was pleased that his efforts had borne results. However, he’d been forced to make use of very dangerous kabbalah in his attempts to coax the stubborn spirit out of Naftali, and he now wanted to take a careful look at everything he’d done to determine whether he’d acted properly.
That evening, he sat together with the other two rabbanim who’d joined him in the mission to help Naftali and together, they went through the various sheimos and pesukim that he’d made use of. They were in the middle of an intense analysis when they suddenly sensed the presence of another being in the room together with them. They could not see it, but they could definitely sense it, and they instinctively knew what it was.
The spirit that had been peacefully using Naftali’s body was now back to speak to them.
The spirit began to yell in the same deep voice they all recognized so well. “I’m out of Naftali’s body, but next I will go into each of you!” it threatened them angrily.
“Why?” they asked it.
“Because you put so many excommunications on my soul,” the spirit responded. “And even after I left his body, you did not release them. You used holy sheimos, and my soul is now trapped by your deeds.”
“We only said those things on condition that you remain in Naftali’s body,” Rav Moshe explained. “But now that you’ve left, the condition doesn’t apply, and the cherem, along with everything else, doesn’t apply either.”
“I need you to release me from them,” the spirit insisted. “You must say it out of your mouths. And you must recite kaddish for me and learn mishanyos for me.”
“It’s late at night now,” the rabbanim replied. “We can’t help you now, but we will do as you say in the morning.”
True to their word, the following morning, the three rabbanim stood up in front of the shul. Before the entire congregation, they nullified the excommunication and released the liens they had placed on the spirit’s soul.
But if they expected the story to be over, it wasn’t.
That night, Naftali went to bed when he suddenly developed a raging fever. His hosts immediately grew concerned, and their concern soon mushroomed into deep worry when they realized that his temperature was abnormally high, even for a fever. They had never seen anybody exude such severe heat, and they worried for his life. They hurried to call Rav Moshe Prager, who came rushing over.
“Naftali, Naftali,” Rav Moshe called to the feverish boy. “What’s going on? Didn’t the spirit leave your body?”
Naftali turned his flaming face toward him. “It did,” he said weakly. “But now, it returned. It’s standing here right before me, insisting that it will reclaim my body hostage. I can’t bear it. The fear alone is causing me to lose my mind. And that’s what this fever is from.”
Rav Moshe looked around, but did not see anything. To his eyes, the room was empty save for Naftali and himself. “Naftali, I can’t see or hear him. Tell me what he is saying.”
“He’s saying, ‘I want to come back inside you,’” Naftali moaned. “He’s telling me that for five years, he did me a favor. He lived inside my body, and not once did any ailment befall me. I survived terrible blows without a scratch; I walked barefoot on ice and did not get sick. He’s telling me that it was his power that protected me during these years, and because he did me this favor, I need to let him back in.”
“Don’t let him back in,” Rav Moshe warned.
“I told him that,” Naftali responded in a frail voice. “I told him that I refuse to let him in. But he keeps insisting. He told me that he was sentenced to seventy years of this wandering, floating around in the world and running away from the terrifying angels. He already did forty years, but he still has another thirty left. He’s saying that he can’t do another thirty years. He needs to come inside me to achieve peace.”
“But we helped him atone,” Rav Moshe exclaimed.
Naftali gave a small nod. “Yes, it seems that you did help him. Before you did tikkunim for him, he used to have judgement seven times a day, each time resulting in agonizing beatings. Now that you’ve intervened, his judgements were reduced to just two times a day, resulting in much less beatings. But even those beatings twice a day are too much for him, and he keeps asking me to let him back in.”
“Tell him that I will do the biggest tikkunim possible so that he merits complete atonement,” Rav Moshe told Naftali. “But only on the condition that he leave you completely alone. He has no permission to bother you anymore.”
Naftali repeated this to the spirit, and shortly thereafter, his body relaxed. The room was quiet, and for the first time in many years, Naftali was truly serene.
Rav Moshe kept his word and invested much time in doing tremendous tikkunim for Shmuel, helping him achieve peace in the Next World.
When Rav Dovid Oppenheim returned to Nickelsburg, he went to see Rav Moshe and to hear what had happened. He listened carefully to the entire story, making careful note of all the details, and then he wrote it all down. The entire story was then printed, in Rav Dovid’s handwriting, in his sefer, so that the future generations of klal Yisrael would understand how terrible averios are and how far astray it can lead someone.
In his sefer, Rav Dovid Oppenheim writes that Shmuel’s story didn’t start with murder, but rather with too much gashmiyus, with spoiling. He got whatever he wanted and never learned the meaning of “no”. As he got older, he didn’t magically begin to understand that he couldn’t always have everything he wanted. When the things he wanted were beyond the means of his parents, he did what it took to fulfill his whims, stopping at nothing to achieve his aims.
This is why it is so important to limit indulgences, even those that we can afford and can easily treat ourselves with. It is not just to minimize jealousy and keep the standards in our communities low; it is also to train ourselves to live without everything we want, so that we can know how to manage when we are unable to fulfill a whim we badly want.
Have a Wonderful Shabbos!
This story is taken from tape #TG56