How a star looks from far away
A mashal attributed here to the Baal Shem Tov compares our view of our good acts to the way we see a distant star. From where we stand, it looks like a tiny point. Its actual size is very different from its appearance at that distance.
A person can look at his own effort in the same way. He sees a small point and assumes it has little significance. Hashem knows what that point really contains: the history, the resistance, and the effort needed to make the movement.
This is an image about perspective. It helps us question the assumption that an act must feel impressive to us before it can matter to Hashem.
The same shiur uses a picture reported from the Baal Shem Tov and actually recorded in Kedushas Levi,Shemos 27. A father teaching his little child to walk steps back after the child has taken two or three steps, so that the child will come farther toward him. The child wobbles, moves, falls and tries again. The lack of steady support can feel frightening to the child, while the parent is watching the beginning of something precious.
The rav adds the familiar picture of letting go as a child learns to ride a bicycle; that extension is not in the printed paragraph. The shared point is that apparent withdrawal can be part of encouraging a new movement. Kedushas Levi applies the walking picture to the tzaddik who continually senses a further level beyond the one he has reached. The rav brings it to the person struggling to take another step. The picture encourages persistence; it does not give us a complete explanation for another person's suffering.
Compassion where the struggle is greater
The rav tells a story about the Lubavitcher Rebbe, before he became Rebbe, bringing a question to his father-in-law, the Rebbe Rayatz. He had been reaching people who were distant from religious life and had received criticism for it. Should he narrow his attention to a more select group?
In the account, the answer uses the picture of parents caring for a child who is ill or has particular difficulties. The rav initially describes a special additional love, then qualifies it: the parents love all their children, while the struggling child calls forth added warmth, attention and care. He gives the painful example of a very young child undergoing cancer treatment, with an IV pole, to convey how intensely the parents want to help. The story applies that added care to a neshamah struggling in its relationship with Torah and mitzvos. In the rav's telling, the Rebbe Rayatz tells his son-in-law to continue and intensify his outreach. The greater distance calls for greater love and help.
The exact printed source for this reported conversation still needs checking. Its application here is clear. The rav asks us to direct that compassion toward ourselves as well. He extends the picture to a person feeling as though he is dragging himself along with crutches or a wheelchair in his avodah. On that day, he says, I should have more compassion for myself, taking account of the weight I am trying to overcome.
The example of a child's first word makes the point. A child has worked for years with help and therapy and finally says a word. The parents hear much more than the sound. They know the effort behind it. The same word spoken easily by someone else does not carry that particular history.
These images do not equate a physical disability with wrongdoing. They help describe the need for care and the significance of effort under difficulty. I can acknowledge that I am struggling and still recognize that a little response from me matters. Compassion can make it possible to try again.
Why the king treasures a speaking bird
Kedushas Levi, Tazria 4, gives a mashal about a bird taught to speak. A few words from that bird can cause delight and wonder, although a human being can say far more. The surprise lies in speech coming from a creature that does not ordinarily speak in the human way.
The rav expands the picture. A king has brought a parrot from far away and paid for its training. The rav imagines a cost of ten thousand gold coins, a trainer brought with the bird from Africa, and a few greetings such as good morning and good night to the king. He himself is unsure about the breed and says that the specific African-grey description is not in the sefer. The king is delighted with the few phrases. An old acquaintance visits and cannot understand the excitement. He has been speaking intelligently with the king for hours. Why is the king impressed by three or four phrases from a bird?
Because the acquaintance is doing what a human speaker can naturally do. The bird's few phrases come from somewhere unexpected.
Kedushas Levi uses the mashal to ask why human avodah can be so precious when Hashem has hosts of angels serving Him. The person is living within a physical body and nevertheless turns his attention toward the Creator. That struggle belongs to the value of his service.
The expansion in the shiur imagines the angels questioning an imperfect Shemoneh Esrei. This man thought about vacations and restaurants while he was davening. His learning was not free of distraction either. Why take pleasure in his avodah when the angels' praise is so pure?
The answer brings us back to the speaking bird. Human beings have resistance to overcome. When a person turns back toward a word of tefillah or an act of learning, something precious has happened within the conditions of human life. We are not being told to welcome distraction. We are learning why the effort to return from it counts.
A joy that an accusation cannot take away
The conversations printed after Sippurei Maasiyos tell of an unnamed tzaddik who became overwhelmed by atzvus and heaviness until he could not move from his place. The rav emphasizes that Rebbe Nachman calls him a real tzaddik; this was not simply an inexperienced person's difficulty. The picture of being unable to get out of bed is the rav's way of making the printed account's immobility vivid. The tzaddik wanted to lift himself, but every reason for joy became another occasion for accusation. Whenever he looked at something he had done, he could find a shortcoming within it.
The rav brings that pattern close to our own experience. I learned a great deal, but how much do I remember? I davened for a long time, but how much attention did I give it? I put on tefillin, but did my thoughts and words fit the mitzvah? Every accomplishment is answered with a criticism, until there seems to be nothing left with which to begin.
The tzaddik then rejoiced in shelo asani goy, thanking Hashem for having made him a Jew. This was a gift of Hashem, rather than an accomplishment whose quality depended on his own performance. The accusation could point to defects in his actions; it could not turn Hashem's gift into a failed human achievement.
The printed story makes a strong comparison between the kedushah of even the lowest Jew and the tum'ah of ovdei kochavim, idolaters. The rav extends his oral comparison to a Jew who has never put on tefillin or said Shema and even the most intelligent, honest or Hashem-fearing non-Jew. In his account of the neshamah, the Jewish covenant is a distinct gift whose kedushah cannot be measured by those achievements. That is the particular religious claim on which he bases gratitude; replacing it with generic self-esteem would lose his argument.
His dated illustration contrasts the public acclaim for a powerful leader at an inauguration with the covenantal standing of a Jewish son-in-law, then with a Jew who scarcely knows about mitzvos. The recording does not establish the date, identity or genealogy, so none is supplied here. The example asks the listener to value Hashem's gift even when his own conduct has not yet expressed it.
This gives simcha a foundation that does not collapse every time the day goes badly. If all my happiness depends on how well I learned or davened today, then a poor day can remove the whole foundation. But my basic gratitude for the relationship Hashem has given me can remain while I work on what I have done badly.
The shiur compares this with the Mishnah's distinction in Avos 5:16 between love dependent on a particular thing and love that does not depend on it. The Mishnah is speaking about love. Its application to simcha here is an analogy: build happiness on a foundation that a change in today's performance cannot take away.
I can then add the joy of a good seder, a concentrated tefillah or a particular victory over the yetzer hara. Those achievements deserve appreciation. They are built on the foundation; they do not have to carry its whole weight.
The same movement seen from two places
The story continues with the tzaddik slowly lifting himself through that joy. It describes a great spiritual ascent, and then his astonishment on discovering that, down here, he had barely moved at all. The source explains that the tiny movement of a person in this world can be extraordinarily precious in the higher worlds.
The rav connects this with the account in Chayei Moharan 85, told on the first night of Chanukah. A visitor takes a man with him on a flight, while the man also finds himself at home, speaking and living as usual. The account moves between the two perspectives. It is a separate story that helps picture a difference between what a person sees here and what may be taking place beyond his sight.
We do not need to imagine ourselves having such experiences in order to use the teaching. The question before us is often much smaller: will I dismiss the next good act because it feels so slight?
Rebbe Nachman's answer in II 48 is to strengthen ourselves in the joy of that movement. The passage calls atzvus at the beginning of avodah a great transgression and says that Hashem hates it. The grammatical object is atzvus itself. The rav's oral expansion speaks about a person in that state; it should not be substituted for the printed wording, or turned into a verdict that Hashem rejects a person with depression. The teaching is fighting the force that stops avodah. Its warning should not become another accusation with which to crush a struggling person, or a claim that spiritual renewal replaces care for an illness.