Three Psychiatric Stories from Rabbinic Lore

Number 181. A woman was once brought to Rabbi Joshua Leb Diskin. She had a strange disease. She seemed physically in perfect health but she had persuaded herself that in whatever she ate or drank she tasted tallow (the taste of forbidden fat). Soon she ceased entirely to eat and became more and more emaciated. They brought her to the most famous doctors and none could find healing for her. Finally they brought her to Rabbi Joshua Leb who was known as a Zadik (a Zadik, literally, a righteous man or saint, came to be used specifically for the Hassidic wonder-working rabbis).

Rabbi Joshua Leb began to ask her concerning her youth, and whether anything exceptional had ever happened to her. In answer to these questions she told the following story:

In her youth she was a servant in a family which possessed a cow. It was her task to milk the cow by the light of a tallow candle. It once happened that the tallow candle (which was, of course, made of forbidden fat) fell into the bucket of milk. She was afraid to tell her mistress of the accident (since the tallow candle being made of forbidden fat had made the whole bucket of milk non-kosher). She brought in the bucket of milk and thus caused the entire family to eat non-kosher food.

Rabbi Joshua Leb understood then at once the source of her sickness (i.e. the sense of guilt). He immediately questioned her as follows: “How large was the bucket?” She indicated its size. “If that is so,” said the Rabbi, “then the milk was kosher and you have committed no sin at all” (the law is that if the forbidden portion is less than one in sixty then it cannot spoil the kosher portion). It seemed to the woman as if a stone had dropped away from her heart. She began to eat and drink and soon was in perfect health.

II. Rabbi Smelke of Nikolsburg

Number 511. Rabbi Smelke of Nikolsburg (Moravia) had in his youth a fellow-student, a genius of a scholar. This fellow-student