Go back to the beginning of the tale and notice something easy to miss. There is never a dialogue between the king and the viceroy. The king never asks him to search. He never sends him. Machmas shera'ah shehamelech mitztaer me'od — because he saw that the king was in tremendous pain, the viceroy got up on his own.
That is where the whole journey starts. Not with a command. With compassion.
And then he asks for three things — a horse, a servant, and money for his expenses.
• The horse is the body. The servant is a companion — because you cannot cross this world alone
• And the diyuk: he did not say a servant to serve me or a horse to ride on. But money — money for expenses. Why those two words?
• Where is he going? Through olam hazeh, the place of lo tov. Not ra. Lo tov
Then we go back further than the beginning:
• The malach in Gemara Niddah who takes the tipah and asks tipah zu mah tehei aleha — strong or weak, wise or foolish, rich or poor. And the one thing he does not ask: tzaddik or rasha
• The neshama does not want to come down — and comes anyway, because from here it can rise higher than where it started
• And a thought of my own: perhaps that was Adam and Chava's logic too. Not nahama d'kisufa, not earning their keep — but that by going through the world of lo tov they could reach higher than they ever could standing in Atzilus
• We were one with Hashem before the beriah, and bayom hahu yihyeh Hashem echad u'shemo echad — we will be one with Him again. So what is all of this in between?
And then the part everybody leaves out of the Rebbe's promise:
• A pruta l'tzedaka, ten Kapitlach Tehillim — and l'kabel alav shelo yashuv od l'ivlato. Nobody talks about that third one
• So if I already did real teshuva — what do I need Rav Nachman for? What is the chiddush of I will pull him out by his peyos from She'ol Tachtis?
• Vos klekt ayer teshuva? Ich tu teshuva far aich — what is your teshuva worth? I will do teshuva for you. And yesh l'kel yadi — I can repair everything you damaged until now. And more: mikan u'l'haba, on shegagos I am not makpid
• The Rambam's question: you can fix what I already did — but how can you cover me going forward?
• And the chiddush, said as a chiddush and nothing more. Standing at the kever, he brings you to a place where you say never again and you mean it with your whole heart. Anybody who has been there knows. So Monday comes, and Tuesday, and Thursday you fall — that is shogeg, because he is the eid that your teshuva was real. He takes away the meizid.
• It is not a pass. Do you want to sin? No. Nobody wants to sin. And there is a Rishon who says that every aveira a Yid does is b'etzem a shogeg — we are in this world, the temptation gets us, and ein tzaddik ba'aretz asher ya'aseh tov v'lo yecheta
• Tzaddik yipol sheva pa'amim v'kam — you only become a tzaddik by failing and getting up. The failures are part of the journey
And into Yom Kippur:
• Itzumo shel yom mechaper — the day itself atones for bein adam la'Makom
• But bein adam la'chaveiro, Yom Kippur does not atone. You have to go ask
• And bein adam la'chaveiro starts at home. It starts with your wife. That is your real chaver. That is your real companion
• Mochel v'soleach — a person can forgive and still not forget. The Aibershter forgives and erases it completely
And we do not daven only for ourselves. Look at how the world is turning. We need rachamei Shamayim for gantz Klal Yisrael — and this Simchas Torah should be a real Simchas Torah, dancing with the Torah with Moshiach tzidkeinu.
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