A person has something good to be happy about. His child has done well, he has had a good evening with his wife, or he has managed to daven with more attention. For a while, that good fills his mind. The worries about parnassah, the trouble at home, the car that broke down yesterday, all stand to the side.
That can give him welcome relief. But what will happen when those other parts of his life return to his attention? Must he choose between feeling happy and remembering what is difficult?
Likutey Moharan II:23 begins with a circle of people dancing. Someone is standing outside the circle, sad and uninterested. The dancers seize him and bring him in against his will. The printed mashal repeats that forceful expression; the sorrow resists being made part of the joy. The dancing begins to affect him, and he becomes part of their joy. The application being developed is the inner work of drawing our own resisting sorrow into kedushah.
We have all seen something like this at a chasunah or on Simchas Torah. One person stands at the side, eating or talking, or sits with a sefer while the circle moves around him. He is outside the mood of the dancing. The rav recalls such a scene in his own shul on Shabbos. Several people tried to draw in someone sitting with a sefer; at times the dancers even circle the seated person until he feels conspicuous. The account makes the printed mashal vivid, without establishing a right to embarrass or physically pressure another person. Once someone joins willingly, his feeling can change. The friend who brought him in can let go, and he continues to dance.
Rebbe Nachman uses that picture for something taking place within a person. Some parts of me are already happy. Other parts are standing outside the circle. A fuller simcha involves bringing those parts into the joy as well.
The joy of being able to do a mitzvah
We have been learning about a basic simcha that remains available even on a difficult day. It gives us strength before a failure and helps us begin again afterward. This is part of the connection between Tikkun HaKlali, the ten forms of song, and the repair of the bris.
The rav introduces a letter of the Sfas Emes on the occasion of his yahrzeit, Hei Shvat. He does not know the identity of the avrech addressed by the letter. The original collected letter remains to be checked; the teaching below follows his reading, with matching later reprints as corroboration. It begins with a person who feels too distant to approach a mitzvah. He looks at his past and thinks that his avodah could never be wanted. The letter calls that conclusion a complete falsehood. Even someone who has fallen very low can do a mitzvah simply, intending to fulfill the will of the Creator.
Think about the return of the neshamah each morning. Chazal describe the oath taken before a soul enters this world: be righteous and do not be wicked. The Sfas Emes applies the renewal of that commitment to the soul's return each day. The rav explains the renewed morning in terms of trust: Hashem has returned the neshamah after that commitment, trusting the person to serve Him again. My previous failures do not erase the mitzvah now in front of me. This is the rav's explanation of the letter, not a claim that Niddah 30b explicitly describes a daily oath.
A physical act can therefore carry a happiness I have overlooked. I put on tzitzis. I put on tefillin. I learn or do an act of chesed. With the body and the circumstances I have been given, I can bring nachas ruach to Hashem.
We learned the Kedushas Levi's picture of the speaking bird. A few words from the bird can give delight because they come from a place where we would not expect them. So too, the struggle of a human being living in a physical body belongs to the preciousness of his avodah. The rav contrasts this embodied human mitzvah relationship with animals, non-Jews and angels. He emphasizes that a Jew can do many mitzvos in a day, while an angel has its particular mission. Rashi on Bereishis 18:2 does say that one angel does not perform two missions in the account there, while also describing Raphael healing Avraham and then rescuing Lot. The contrast must not become a claim that an angel can perform only one action throughout its existence.
The rav pictures all the angels waiting as a Jew picks up his tefillin, makes the brachah and fulfills the mitzvah, with a celebration in the heavenly court. This is his way of conveying the nachas ruach of that act, not an independently observed scene.
There is a further simcha in recognizing that I can give this nachas ruach. The rav recalls an old niggun built around the following words; the performer's name is unclear in the recording, so no composer or performance credit is supplied:
שׂוֹשׂ אָשִׂישׂ בַּֽה׳ תָּגֵל נַפְשִׁי בֵּֽאלוקי כִּי הִלְבִּישַׁנִי בִּגְדֵי־יֶשַׁע מְעִיל צְדָקָה יְעָטָנִי כֶּֽחָתָן יְכַהֵן פְּאֵר וְכַכַּלָּה תַּעְדֶּה כֵלֶֽיהָ׃
I will greatly rejoice in Hashem; my soul will exult in my Elokim, for He has clothed me in garments of salvation and wrapped me in a robe of righteousness, like a bridegroom who adorns himself with splendor and a bride who adorns herself with her jewels. (Yeshayahu 61:10)
Alongside the verse's plain meaning, the inward explanation here is: I can rejoice in the happiness I bring before Hashem through a mitzvah. That awareness changes the way I approach an ordinary morning. My tzitzis are no longer merely something I have put on many times before. I have another opportunity to fulfill His will.
The Sfas Emes connects that simcha shel mitzvah with resisting the yetzer hara. The discouraging voice says that my mitzvos are too poor to matter. Joy in the mitzvah answers the very claim with which it is trying to stop me. The rav describes the opposition as having no hold in simcha shel mitzvah, so that this joy drives it away. This is the teaching's strong account of a spiritual defense; it is not a promise that a person will become incapable of any later failure.
Reb Noson makes this very teaching an example in the introduction to Likutey Halachos. He points to the short instruction in Likutey Moharan II:23 about taking sorrow into joy, and explains how much he was able to develop from it. The length serves a practical purpose: bringing the instruction into a person's heart so that he can actually live it. The many connections should deepen the avodah of simcha, rather than allow us to forget the simple instruction.
The people still standing outside
The first movement of simcha is to notice what is good. Someone holds up a white sheet with a black dot on it, and everyone describes the dot. The rest of the page receives no attention. That familiar picture reminds us how easily one difficulty can fill our whole field of vision.
There is work to do in noticing the good we take for granted: waking up, breathing, being able to see, walk or speak. A good meal or encouraging news can also give a person something real to appreciate. He can choose to attend to that good for a while.
Rebbe Nachman then describes a maalah yeseirah, a further level. The sadness and suffering that were standing at the side are themselves brought into the simcha. The joy takes hold of them and changes their place within the person's life.
This raises the harder question. How can a part of my life that hurts become part of my happiness? Ignoring it was at least understandable. Bringing it into the circle requires a different way of seeing it.
We can hear the aim in Dovid HaMelech's words:
כׇּל־עַצְמוֹתַי ׀ תֹּאמַרְנָה ה׳ מִי־כָמוֹךָ מַצִּיל עָנִי מֵחָזָק מִמֶּנּוּ וְעָנִי וְאֶבְיוֹן מִגֹּֽזְלֽוֹ׃
All my bones shall say, “Hashem, who is like You, rescuing the poor from one stronger than he, and the poor and needy from one who robs him?” (Tehillim 35:10)
Kol atzmosai, all my bones. The application here asks how the whole person can take part in praise. The parts that are hurting or ashamed also need a way to come before Hashem.
What happens to the old failures?
Reb Noson gives us a practical example in Likutey Halachos, Hilchos Piryah VeRivyah 3:2. A person can rejoice that someone as distant as he is has nevertheless merited to put on tefillin, wear tzitzis and say words of Torah and tefillah.
Suppose I put on tefillin properly this morning. I give the mitzvah attention, and I am happy about it. Then I remember the other mornings. There were days when I was careless, when I spoke unnecessarily, or when I scarcely thought about what I was doing.
The rav pictures this continuing for six months, eight months, or all the years since bar mitzvah. Those memories seem to belong outside the present simcha. Yet they also tell me something about the effort it took to do today's mitzvah differently. I had a habit that would have carried me through the same pattern again. Today, I resisted it.
Someone with my history has now done this mitzvah with care. Precisely that distance can deepen my appreciation of what I have been allowed to do. The failed mornings remain failures, but their memory can help me recognize the significance of returning now. A part of my past that was being used only to accuse me has entered the work of teshuvah.
Likutey Moharan 10:2 gives a related picture through Yisro. It quotes the Zohar on the honor given to Hashem's Name when Yisro came and acknowledged Him:
עַתָּה יָדַעְתִּי כִּֽי־גָדוֹל ה׳ מִכׇּל־הָאלוקים כִּי בַדָּבָר אֲשֶׁר זָדוּ עֲלֵיהֶֽם׃
Now I know that Hashem is greater than all the powers, for in the very thing in which they acted arrogantly against them, He prevailed. (Shemos 18:11)
Rashi describes Yisro as someone who had known the different forms of avodah zarah. His acknowledgment therefore came from a particular distance. The greatness of his return includes what he was turning away from. The rav makes the comparison strongly: Yisro's acknowledgment, after knowing every avodah zarah, brought a greater joy than the response of those already close, even comparing it with Israel's naaseh venishma. The actual quotation in Likutey Moharan 10:2 verifies the honor brought by Yisro's acknowledgment; it does not itself state that whole comparison or settle when Yisro arrived.
He also invokes the teaching that baalei teshuvah stand where complete tzaddikim cannot stand. Berachos 34b:22 records that view in the name of R Abahu. The preceding paragraph gives R Yochanan's different view of the distinction. The rav is drawing on R Abahu's teaching to explain the preciousness of overcoming a difficult past.
That gives a person a way to understand his own effort. The resistance he has had to overcome can belong to the preciousness of the mitzvah he is doing now.
Teshuvah can change the account
Yoma 86b distinguishes teshuvah from fear, through which deliberate sins become like inadvertent ones, from teshuvah out of love, through which they become merits. This is teshuvah: a return from the wrongdoing toward Hashem. The teaching gives no permission to seek failures as a route to holiness.
Kedushas Levi, Haazinu, uses this distinction to explain the description of the first day of Sukkos as rishon lecheshbon avonos, the first day for the reckoning of sins. The Torah says:
וּלְקַחְתֶּם לָכֶם בַּיּוֹם הָרִאשׁוֹן פְּרִי עֵץ הָדָר כַּפֹּת תְּמָרִים וַעֲנַף עֵץ־עָבֹת וְעַרְבֵי־נָחַל וּשְׂמַחְתֶּם לִפְנֵי ה׳ אלוקיכֶם שִׁבְעַת יָמִֽים׃
You shall take for yourselves on the first day the fruit of a beautiful tree, branches of date palms, boughs of leafy trees and willows of the brook, and rejoice before Hashem your Elokim for seven days. (Vayikra 23:40)
From Rosh Hashanah through Yom Kippur, a person faces judgment and returns in fear. After Yom Kippur, he prepares the sukkah and the four minim, gives tzedakah, and serves with love and joy. Kedushas Levi describes that return as teshuvah meahavah.
Now there is a new reason to count the old sins: they are being transformed into merits. The rav illustrates this with someone who committed five hundred sins during the year. On Sukkos, his teshuvah meahavah requires a new accounting: those very entries now become merits. The number and the commotion he imagines in the heavenly court are his illustration, not a fixed detail in Kedushas Levi. In that picture, the account that seemed settled has to be opened again. What had stood on the side of accusation is becoming an advocate for the person who has returned.
This helps explain the circle. The difficult part has undergone a change through teshuvah. It can now contribute to the joy of coming close to Hashem.