This a special Bar-Mitzvah tradition in our family. At each of our Bar-Mitzvahs my father (Rabbi Yisrael Rubin) would read this story from the Freidiker Rebbe’s (Rebbe Yosef Yitzchak, 6th Rebbe of Chabad) talks. It has a valuable Bar-Mitzvah message (and also is an interesting intro to Tanya).
In 1904, the Freikder Rebbe (Rebbe Yosef Yitzchak) met an old chassid, Reb Yosef-Binyamin Volik-Klapper (felt-banger, he made the warm felt linings for boots) in a little Shtetl near Raynfal called Horoditch.
R’YB’s grandfather R’ Elya Ruvain was a prominent chassid of the Alter Rebbe, his grandfather was a learned Jew who the Alter Rebbe hired to teach his youngest son Moshe for 10 years, between age 8 & 19. R’ER, was also part of the famous minyan of Chassidim to whom Devorah Leah told that she was going to have mesiras nefesh (self-sacrifice) for the sake of the Alter Rebbe. And when Devorah Leah passed away, R’ER was the one who carried the young orphan Menachem Mendel (later the Tzemach Tzedek) to her funeral. R’ER was also the one who taught the Tzemach Tzedek to say kaddish for his mother.
Says R’YB to the Freikder Rebbe: This Shavuos (this story happened around this time of year) will mark 65 years, that each day, day in day out, I have studied 2 and sometimes 3 lines of Tanya, every day. (By the way, this tells us that he was 78 years old when he met the Freidker Rebbe, and he was still working at his felt, when the average life expectancy was 54 years!!) He then pulled out an old, weathered well-used Tanya, and said, this is the very same Tanya that my grandfather gave me by my Bar-Mitzvah, and encouraged me to learn 2-3 lines a day, until chapter 39 and no further. These 2 lines have been my daily sustenance. (nowadays you’d say RDA – recommended daily allowances).
The Freikder Rebbe turned to the Chassidim (who he was telling of this Volik-Klapper, on a Sheviyi shel Pesach in 1940) and said: What should we say, between us!? We who have heard so much Chassidus, and who have studied so many Mamorim (Chassidic discourses)- we must be ashamed of this simple ordinary chassid, a felt-banger, who for tens of years lived alone in a distant village. This chassid has the deep, limitless chassidus neshoma (soul) power to consistently for so many years to keep up a tradition of learning, without a break, for 65 years each day!
Then R’YB told the Freikder Rebbe of a Yechidus he had by the Tzemach Tzedek for his Bar-Mitzvah. His father and grandfather came along.
His father asked the Tzemach Tzedek a bracha that young R’YB should fear heaven and not love earth (he loved to work the earth in a vegetable garden outside their home). (There either was no response to this request, or it wasn’t recorded, either way it is telling).
The grandfather R’ Elya Ruvain asked that his grandchild Yosef Binyamin be blessed with a good memory, so that all he hears and sees in his (the grandfather’s) chassidic home should remain with him, and therefore he would automatically be a chassid.
R’YB did not remember everything the Tzemach Tzedek said. But he still treasures the yarmulka he wore when the Rebbe the Tzemach Tzedek put his holy hands on his head and blessed him. Much of the blessing he doesn’t remember, but he heard: “You should have long, healthy years”.
To his grandfather, the Tzemach Tzedek said: “It is now 50 years that my grandfather (the Alter Rebbe) my father-in-law (the Mittler Rebbe) and myself have toiled that Chassidim should be avoda-dike Chassidim (Chassidim through effort and toil) and NOT b’mayle-dike (automatic) Chassidim.