Hasidic Tales-Lesson Two

Hasidic Tales-Lesson Two

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  I. Re-cap andIntroduction - a review of the first session, including a brief discussion of takeaways from our previous study II. This week’s Hasidic sayings A. They asked Rabbi Aaron what he had learned from his teacher, the Great Maggid. “Nothing at all,” he said. And when they pressed him to explain what he meant by that, he added: “The nothing-at-all is what I learned. I learned the meaning of nothingness. I learned that I am nothing at all, and that I Am, notwithstanding.” B. The Rabbi of Berditchev saw a man hurrying along the street, looking neither right nor left. “Why are you rushing so?” he asked him. “I am after my livelihood,” the man replied. “And how do you know,” continued the rabbi, “that your livelihood is running on before you, so that you have to rush
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  after it? Perhapsit is behind you, and all you need to do to encounter it is to stand still – but you are running away from it!” C. 1. Before his death, Rabbi Zusya said “In the coming world, they will not ask me: ‘Why were you not Moses?’ They will ask me: ‘Why were you not Zusya?’” 2. Rabbi Heshel said: “A man should be like a vessel that willingly receives what its owner pours into it, whether it be wine or vinegar.” D. Rabbi Shelomo asked: “What is the worst thing the Evil Urge can achieve?” And he answered: “To make man forget that he is the son of a king.” E. Reb Mendel of Bahr once related the following: When I was young, there was a time when I was praying with passion, the thought struck me: How do I dare pray to God, when I am so filled with sin?! This thought broke my heart.
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  For the longesttime I couldn’t rid myself of it. I thought it was…right thinking. A while later, I asked myself: How come when I sit down to eat, I never think, “How dare you eat when you’re so filled with sin and never get brokenhearted?” With that, I shoved the thought away. Again, as with last week’s exercise, we’ll approach each saying with a variety of questions, including: 1) what is the surface meaning here?, 2) do we see deeper possibilities?, 3) what could the main lesson be here?, and 4) how does it inform my life? Also, there will be particular questions for each saying. III. Conclusion