Hasidic Angst
October 23, 2009
I POSTED THIS in another forum and it received little interest. I’ll post it here, likely with similar results. Kind of ironic…also probably why I enjoy this brief anecdote so much. From Martin Buber’s ‘Tales of the Hasidim’ (1947):
“Once after the rabbi of Kobryn had ’said Torah’ at the sabbath meal, he said to the hasidim seated around his table: ‘I see that all the words I have spoken have not found a single person who took them to heart. And if you ask me how I know this, since I am neither a prophet myself nor the son of a prophet, let me tell you. Words that come from the heart go to the heart in all their truth. But if they find no heart that will receive them, then God shows mercy to the one who spoke them: God does not let them err about in space, but they all return to the heart from which they were spoken. That is what has happened to me. I felt something like a thrust—and they all thronged back into my heart.’
Some time after Rabbi Moshe’s death, a friend said: ‘If there had been someone to whom he could have talked, he would still be alive.”
Indeed.
