By Dovid Zaklikowski for COLlive and Hasidic Archives
He had given the Rebbe a note with all his questions. The Rebbe answered every question and then looked straight into Rabbi Ezra Schochet’s eyes.
“Is there anything else you want to ask?”
Rabbi Schochet froze. He had racked his brain before this private audience to think of any question he might have. Everything had been included on the note.
“Is there anything else you want to ask?”
His mind was blank.
“I want to finish answering your questions,” the Rebbe said, “before we discuss the matters that I want to deal with. My matters.”
Rabbi Schochet broke down. “Help me do teshuvah Rebbe,” he said, tears streaming from his eyes. “Help me return to G-d.”
But the Rebbe merely replied, “It looks like you do not want to do teshuvah out of happiness,” and moved on to other matters.
Later, Rabbi Schochet wrote to the Rebbe asking what he had meant. Remorse was an essential part of teshuvah, and no one could call remorse a joyful emotion.
“What is teshuvah out of joy?”
Every mitzvah must be performed with joy, the Rebbe replied. “Teshuvah is a mitzvah like any other and therefore demands joy.”
Not only that, the Rebbe continued, but the greater the mitzvah, the greater should be one’s joy. And teshuvah, which can correct past misdeeds, is the greatest of all mitzvahs.
Teshuvah’s power is obvious, the Rebbe wrote, when one considers that a single impulse, a single utterance— “G-d, I want to do what you want me to do”—is enough to bring a person out of wickedness and into righteousness.
A mitzvah that can transform a person in a split second is incomparable to any other, the Rebbe concluded, “so [its] joy must be incomparable to the joy of other mitzvahs.”
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