ז

He went from there to the nearby inn [kretchma], and told the wonder before the non-Jews who were there at the time. The innkeeper heard his words. Afterward, the messenger himself also came to that inn, and the innkeeper asked him: "Who is sending you, and where are you going?" He told him he had been sent from Breslov to the Rav of Savran. The innkeeper told him there was nothing more to go there for, since it was already ruined beyond repair. And afterward, on the first day of Chol HaMoed (the intermediate days), the innkeeper traveled to Breslov and told there the entire incident, and the matter became publicized throughout the whole town. Afterward, when the time for Minchah (the afternoon prayer) arrived, an incident was caused by a man named Shlomo Reuven Zlatiss, who was completely estranged from Moharan"as, yet nevertheless had the practice of praying in the beis midrash of the people of Moharan"as, which was called the Beis Midrash HaChadash (the New Study House), for he was among the close ones of the Rav Rabbi Shmuel Ayzik — who was also a disciple of Admor. Yet even so he had some minor strife with Moharan"as, and this quarrel had come about through the aforementioned Shlomo Reuven Zlatiss. And Moharan"as said of him that he would not forgive him even in the World to Come.

It was fulfilled in him that "one sin draws another sin in its wake" [Avos 4:2], for this quarrel from the Rav of Savran also came about through him. The cause was that this man Shlomo Reuven Zlatiss was accustomed to speaking vertlech (witticisms and jokes). During the Minchah prayer, when he reached the words "Tanu Rabbanan — Pitum haKetores" (the rabbinic teaching about the compounding of the incense [ketores]), they struck him as apt for a witticism in light of the above incident — the non-Jew's biting of the pitam from the esrog. He positioned himself at the window of the beis midrash — through which those coming from the marketplace to pray in the Old beis midrash would pass by the window of the New beis midrash — and the aforementioned Shlomo knocked on the window for them and called out before them: "Tanu Rabbanan — Pitum" to provoke them. The people of Moharan"as were not in the beis midrash at that moment to restrain him, and he did this of his own accord. And it greatly angered them, for not only did they suffer from the incident itself; now this man Shlomo was provoking them further. In truth, the followers of the Rav of Savran should have understood that the people of Moharan"as bore no responsibility at all for this provocation, since the aforementioned Shlomo was not at all of their group. But since, even without this, they had been seeking pretexts to drive a wedge, and hated Moharan"as — it was fulfilled in them as Hashem Yisborach said: "On their lives, I give them opportunity to err, etc." [cf. Sanhedrin 38b].