3050 —על הכרת הברכות ושמירה על שמחה למרות קשיים

B"H, 23 MarCheshvan, 5715.

Brooklyn.

Greetings and blessing!

At last your letter has arrived with the good news of the bris of your son, may he live. It is surprising that you delayed this news so long.

I will read the pan enclosed in your letter at the holy resting place of my revered father-in-law, the Rebbe. And I am surprised at you, for I have written to you many times of the very great necessity of being joyful, yet each and every letter received from you begins and ends in the old version. The point is that everything is not as it should be: your health and that of your wife and children, livelihood, nervousness, etc., and despite all this you see tangibly open miracles. (Evidently you do not wish to remember what the doctors said at the outset, and how the pregnancy and birth, etc., came about in complete opposition to their words.) Now, we have grown used to the time of exile, with concealment and hiding, a darkness doubled and redoubled; but even this darkness must have a limit. As regards you, all the good they show you has evidently not touched or reached you.

Although seemingly this is your own affair, it is painful to see how a Jew torments himself over things with no basis, and thereby damages his own health. And surely it cannot but affect the health of your household, may they live, since, as you write in all your letters, you are in great pain and worry.

As for your asking that they bless you, etc., etc.: free choice cannot be taken away from a Jew (since its source is in the fact that the G‑dly soul is truly a part of G‑d above, for only there is there free choice with no compulsion at all; and so it is also in a Jew). If you wish to insist, contrary to reason, on seeing in each situation specifically things that are not as they should be, and to distract your mind entirely from all that they show you from Above in visible and revealed good, then who can tell you what to do.

I hope that despite all this, since our Sages have ruled (Bava Basra 12[b]) that whoever is given good, it is for long days, such conduct will be with you too. Nevertheless, look once more, as it applies to your own soul, in the holy Zohar, part 2, 184b, the passage beginning "Ta Chazi."

The precise wording is known: in the revealed part of Torah the usual expression is "Ta Shema," "come and hear," hearing alone, but on the other hand understanding; and in the hidden part of Torah the usual expression is "Ta Chazi," "come and see," sight, which hearing cannot resemble, although one does not always understand and grasp.

With blessing that at last you will devote yourself to the directive of the Baal Shem Tov and the Nesi'im after him: to the service of G‑d specifically out of joy, and with proper health, for you and all your household, may they live.

Publisher's notes

Printed in Likkutei Sichos, vol. 19, p. 522.