אות - קפד

I heard that the Rebbe once said, “As soon as a man enters and shakes my hand, I know his entire past history.

He said this is alluded to in “ From hand to hand, his evil shall not becleansed ” (Proverbs 11:21) . That is, as soon as he shook hands with the Rebbe, placing ‘hand to hand’ in greeting, the evil was not cleansed. Everything was immediately revealed to the Rebbe.

I myself also once heard something like this. The Rebbe spoke in an offhand manner, as if it were very easy to know another’s past history from beginning to end.

The Rebbe said, “You can do this wisdom alone, without any special degree of spiritual perception. You can grasp much from the way a person speaks. If you know how to look, there are many other signs.

“You can also recognize a sexually immoral person by his nose ( Tikkuney Zohar #70, 130a; Zohar Chadash 36c ff ) . You can tell whether or not a man’s faith is pure by his belt. There are many other such signs.”

There are many cases where the Rebbe told people things they had done when they came to him.