Most of the following stories were passed down by the Chassid Rav Moshe Chaim Steinberg:

My first meeting with him was to see and meet up close the man whom many respected, while others held him to be a meshugener. I arrived on the East Side before Shacharis, wondering where to chap a minyan. No sooner had I entered the Bais Medrash than an elderly Yid came up to me and said to me straight away, “Go to such and such a Bais Medrash – there they are beginning to daven Shacharis.” This was none other than my first encounter with Reb Moshe New Yorker, and a clear example of his ability to “know” things, perhaps through ruach hakodesh, since I had never met him before, never spoken a word to him, and certainly not told him or anyone else that I was looking for a minyan and had not yet davened. I asked him how he knew I hadn’t yet davened, and he answered in his characteristic simplicity that “after davening you would look different – nuch davenen hot min an andere punim.”

HE KNEW THE QUESTION ALREADY

Two of my friends had similar incidents. One of them prepared a question on Sefer Yetzira. He approached Reb Moshe and before he could even formulate the question, Reb Moshe responded, “Ah, you are asking about the Sefer Yetzira?” And my other friend had a question on Rabbeinu Bachaya and the same thing happened: he approached and after saying the beginning of the question, Reb Moshe knowingly interrupted him saying, “Ah, the Bachaya?!” as if somehow he knew what question they were about to formulate and ask him before they had done so.

HOLY HINTS

One of my other friends who knew him explained that when Reb Moshe spoke, throwing around seemingly strange comments, that it was all related to the Zohar and Medroshim on that week’s parsha. Whoever studied them beforehand would make the connection and could see how Reb Moshe’s seemingly bizarre, irrelevant comments were all actually hints to the holy Zohar and Medroshim of that week’s sedra.

NO FOOLING REB MOSHE

One time before I took a new friend to meet Reb Moshe, I explained that we should prepare by studying a shtickel Zohar on the parsha in advance. We did so and when I came in I had the Zohar turned to the first page of that week instead. Reb Moshe approached and declared emphatically, “No, no, that’s not it,” and turned the pages knowingly to the topic we had in fact studied together previously as preparation! He then studied this shtickel with us and left behind hints and ideas related to it. My friend was absolutely amazed.

HEADLINES

When asked if he reads the newspapers he once remarked, “Yes, yes, I read the headlines and I know all the rest.” When he saw that no one got the hint, he stressed, “Head lines – the lines on your forehead! I read the lines on your forehead and there everything is clearly written and spelled out.”

NO PUSHING

Summer of 5746 and a Yid entered the She’eris Yisroel shul. He approached where Reb Moshe sat and claimed that he wanted to sit there and could Reb Moshe move. That’s how little anyone thought of Reb Moshe – they simply had no idea who he really was. Reb Moshe refused to just get up and move, and so this Yid pushed him aside roughly and sat down. A look of anger crossed Reb Moshe’s face. “What’s the matter? Why do you look so upset?” someone asked him. “You don’t just push me; when you shove me aside you are pushing up there,” and so saying he pointed up toward Heaven. Everyone chuckled and no one took him seriously…until the next day when that Yid who had so callously shoved Reb Moshe didn’t wake up. By then they got the hint – too late. They asked him, “What happened here? What have you done?” But he simply pointed up and said, “Up there,” as if to say, “I didn’t do anything. It wasn’t me; it came from On High. From then on no one messed with him and he sat and stood wherever he wanted.

GREATNESS HIDDEN AND CONCEALED

After davening, he seemed to simply wander about with no objective, empty day after empty day. However, anyone who paid serious attention caught him constantly secretly studying, so that he was truly a gaon. In fact, he made an annual siyum haShas on Bovli and Yerushalmi. Each day he learned seven blatt Gemora with the Mordechai besides his shiur Yerushalmi. This alone is a wonder – how he wasn’t noticed among people and how others failed to see his greatness and his learning that he managed to conceal. Some people saw him and came in close contact with him for a full decade, never knowing his name. One Jew who davened next to him for some forty years knew only the name by which he heard him called to the Torah: Reb Moshe ben Yitzchok Isaac; more than this remained unknown.

He seemed never to eat anything all week long besides to nosh on whatever food came into the shul and Bais Medrash at a l’chaim. Only one thing was noticeable: that on Shabbos and Yom Tov he drank a lot of wine at the seuda. He used to joke that no matter how much wine he drank it was veinig (Yiddish for “too little”; a play on words – the word vein means wine). Yet it never made him tired. Right after, he would go straight to the Bais Medrash to study until Mincha.

FOR THE BIRDS

Before chatzos he headed out of the Bais Medrash to the bakery on the same street, and collected the crumbs from the bread machine tray into a bag. With these breadcrumbs in hand, he made his way to the park. As soon as he neared, literally hundreds of birds came from all directions to greet him. He would feed the birds with outstretched hands, breadcrumbs direct from the palm of his hand. He used to say he was tipping them. We understood that they got a tip for uplifting all the tefillos among the inyonim he achieved this way. He once told us that the birds revealed to him the future and all things that would come to pass. When people wondered where he got certain astonishing information from and how he could possibly know it, he said the birds had told him. He had a special seder and avoda concerning which bird ate from which hand. Some birds he pushed away and they had to circle and come back. He would sometimes transfer the breadcrumbs from one hand to another and the birds from one hand to the other. Everything with a purpose in mind.

There was once an argument between two gentile nations and their bickering was reported in the press. The papers all had their theories of what war was brewing. Reb Moshe remarked, “They will say that the goyim fight and hit one another, and I say that it’s not the Russians or anyone else; it’s the Nazis!” People thought he was joking, but a few days later the newspaper headlines all confirmed what Reb Moshe had said. How did he know? “The birds told me,” is what he answered.

GOLUS YIDDEN

After feeding the birds, he went for a walk. This was not just any walk. No one was allowed to accompany him; no one was allowed to walk next to him, to honor him, or to show any respect. He fled from kovod as from fire. Instead, he walked in dveikus with his mind on his private thoughts. When he walked he never talked. You could not ask him anything; if he did need to speak or respond, he stood still, never talking and walking at the same time. He once explained, “When I go off on a walk, I cry in Golus, הלך ילך ובכה.” In fact, after his levaya one of those who had delivered a hesped remarked that he had once invited Reb Moshe to attend his chasuna. “I am sorry I cannot attend. I am one of the Golus Yidden and I am forbidden to attend any simchas.” In this manner he accepted this suffering on himself for all of Klal Yisrael.

Late at night after chatzos, he came home – if you could call it a home. It was a tiny hole in the wall, abandoned, filthy, and unkempt. There he continued his avoda undisturbed. He normally never let anyone into his tiny room. Only in his later years when the need arose we came in and saw what went on in there. The holy Zohar with the Ramak, Rav Moshe Cordevero’s commentary, lay alongside the Sefer Yetzira, Siddur Arizal, Noam Elimelech, and other sifrei Kabbola that he studied on a regular basis. In his pocket was always a copy of Raziel HaMaloch. His Siddur Arizal was filled with comments and glosses in the margins, things he wrote while others slept.

RECYCLED CANDLES

His other forms of strange customs were avodas Hashem. He used to gather the wax drippings from all the tapers and candles in the Bais Medrash. He collected the wax, melted it down, and fashioned new candles from it. He would sit beside the recycled wax candles and recite Tehillim until they melted down. He used to tell me that the neshomos ask that the wax get used up completely. Around where he sat the smell of melting wax was ever present.

He also smoked cigars, but never allowed anyone to see him do so. If someone knocked or appeared he immediately put out his cigar. When asked why no one was allowed to see him smoke he replied that the ketores was lit and smoked privately.

I once visited with Rav Shmuel Mordechai Portugal, the son of the Skulener Rebbe. I asked Reb Moshe to gave a berocha to the father of the yungerman who stood before him. He replied, “Sholom al Yisrael,” hinting at the Skulener Rebbe’s name, a person he had never met.

After my wedding I had children – girls but no boys. I once visited with my brother-in-law, who asked Reb Moshe to bless me with a baby boy. “He has a long way to go,” was the answer. It was true – I had my first boy only twenty years after my chasuna.

During Tishrei of 5789 people spoke about the condition of the Satmar Rav. Reb Moshe interjected that “they will let him live out the year,” and so it was that only on 26 Av, at the end of the year, the Satmar Rav passed away.

KLIPPOS

He had a special avoda with orange peels. He used to peel them off the orange in a special manner, saving them, wrapping them around bottles and producing an ashtray. When asked why he did so, he replied, “See how I transform a klippa into a kli – see how I transform the peel into a useful vessel.” When asked jokingly how long he held onto the peels, klippos, he replied seriously, “So long as they have even just a bit of orange moisture left, they contain sparks of kedusha and I am forbidden to throw them away.”

HINTS

THE HOLY BULBS

He used to hint to us deep concepts from mundane things, such as fluorescent bulbs. He claimed that they were invented because first they were round and that couldn’t last well and so they made them long. When we did not understand, he said, “They were round, igulim, and they broke, shevirah. Afterwards they made them straight, yoshor – and that was the tikkun!” He didn’t explain further; those who understood, understood.

THE BRIDGE OF LIFE

He pointed to a bridge and explained that it was invented to allow a person to travel over from one location to another safely, the bridge above, the churning waters of his tzoros below, transporting him to safety so that he would come to no harm. So too can we traverse life’s tzoros safely by crossing on a bridge.

Regarding such inventions and innovations of ruchniyus, he simply claimed them as his own – “Mein patent!” We later understood that he himself traversed life on such a bridge. He had no family, no life, no identity, nothing independent – we didn’t even know his last name at the time. He was the one crossing life using that bridge. It was his patent to make it across safely.

He knew all seventy languages. We saw him speaking Chinese to the Chinese and my friend once had an entire conversation with him in French. When he was sick he complained in the hospital that perhaps he was being punished for studying languages and other secular subjects in his youth. Afterwards, he consoled himself that Mordechai haTzaddik had known all seventy languages and had used it to help Jews and so would he, during the war years, help Klal Yisrael, using his knowledge of foreign languages.

The doctor asked me if I thought Reb Moshe was crazy. When I shook my head and said no, he replied, “You are right – he isn’t crazy; he is a genius!”

When they tried to give him intravenous medicine, he refused without being allowed to read the prescription. The doctor laughed to himself and agreed. What could this old Jew know about these technical medical terms? he thought. “Isn’t this ingredient non-kosher? Doesn’t it come from pork?” he asked after reading them through. “I myself didn’t know,” admitted the doctor, “and after looking it up I agreed with him” – it was in fact treif! Throughout his life he refused medicines, doctors, and treatments, living to the ripe old age of ninety, healthy and strong.

SHEM TOV

His nickname, Reb Moshe New Yorker, came about because of the following incident:

One day in the Satmar Bais Medrash around Mincha time for Rav Yoel’s minyan, in walked a stranger and went to the back of the shul, where he began reciting korbonos with the tzibbur.

Only the Rebbe seemed to notice him, and he approached the stranger and offered his holy hand in greeting. “Shulem Aleichem, vi’azoi hayst a Yid – what is your name?”

He answered simply and enigmatically, “Moshe.”

“Fun vi – from where?” continued the Satmar Rav to inquire.

“Fun New York – from New York,” was the simple reply! And as he did not elaborate any further, the nickname stuck – Reb Moshe New Yorker.

Onlookers present remarked how uncharacteristic it was for the Satmar Rav to have walked all the way to the other side of the Bais Medrash to greet a stranger, unless… implying he was a man of hidden qualities.