A burden can become heavier with the years
The eitzah of milei dishtusa follows Rebbe Nachman's description of human nature. The troubles of life draw a person toward heaviness. Parnassah, shalom bayis, finding a shidduch, raising children and wanting to serve Hashem better can all become sources of worry.
The discussion recalls the Sfas Emes's explanation of drawing simcha from Sukkos into the rest of the year. An occasion of joy can give a person something to carry forward. The ongoing work remains difficult; the recollection in the name of the Grah describes even maintaining the joy of Sukkos as a demanding mitzvah. Here, the question is how that effort can continue through ordinary life.
A child can show us another side. He may be curious, playful, readily delighted by being alive. In bringing up children, we should be careful with that joy.
אַֽל־תִּגְּעוּ בִּמְשִׁיחָי וּבִנְבִיאַי אַל־תָּרֵֽעוּ׃
Do not touch My anointed ones, and do no harm to My prophets. (Divrei HaYamim I:16:22)
Shabbos 119b identifies the anointed ones with tinokos shel beis rabban, children learning Torah. The educational application here is to protect a child's curiosity and happiness, rather than needlessly extinguish them. That application is additional to the Gemara's identification; the verse does not itself give a complete method of chinuch.
As a person grows older, disappointments accumulate. Torah 24 expects an active effort to renew simcha. Some of that effort will involve remembering the value of a mitzvah. Some may involve a simpler means of loosening the heaviness.
Sichos HaRan 43 gives an example involving another person. Someone may be carrying great suffering that he cannot tell anyone. A person who approaches with a smiling face can give him life. We do not always know what another person is carrying or what a little warmth may do for him.
The rav pauses to describe the attraction of Likutey Halachos through a saying about the Shelah and Gan Eden. A recorded tradition from R Levi Yitzchak Bender, printed in Taam Zkeinim 105, page 9, contrasts the Shelah as Hashem's estate with Reb Noson's book as Gan Eden itself. The rav recalls an entrance-to-Gan-Eden version. These are received versions of a saying, rather than a checked quotation from Reb Noson's own writing. His point is the depth that a few familiar words can open when we learn their explanation.
The prince and the villagers
Toldos Yaakov Yosef, Ki Savo 38–41, brings a mashal heard from his teacher, the Baal Shem Tov.
A prince is sent to a distant village. The rav emphasizes that he has been sent on a mission; the mashal does not say he was expelled. In his retelling, the village is thousands of miles from the palace, and its simple inhabitants cannot even read the letter. After a long time, a letter arrives from his father, the king. He is filled with joy. But he is surrounded by villagers who do not share his feeling. If they see him suddenly celebrating, they will make fun of him. They cannot understand what this letter means to him.
He invites the villagers to the tavern and announces that the drinks are on him. Now they have a reason to be happy. They enjoy their wine, and he rejoices over his father's letter. The prince does not need a drop himself; the letter has given him his joy. They can dance together without the villagers questioning him. The distance, illiteracy and tavern scene are details in the rav's expanded telling; the Toldos itself gives the central letter, mockery and wine mashal.
The Toldos applies this to the neshamah and the body, especially in the pleasure of Shabbos and Yom Tov. The neshamah wants the joy of closeness to its Father. The body does not naturally appreciate that joy in the same way. Giving the body its permitted pleasure can make room for the neshamah's simcha.
In the original nimshal, the neshamah yeseirah of Shabbos is the letter of greeting from the Father. The person has received something to rejoice over inwardly. The pleasure given to the body allows that happiness to be expressed with more of the person taking part.
The application here extends the picture to ordinary moments of avodah. I understand a good sevara in Gemara. I hold back my anger. I wake up in time for Shacharis or say Kriyas Shema before sleeping. My neshamah has a reason to be happy. Yet another part of me dismisses the whole celebration as silly.
I can give that part a way to join. At a siyum, we serve good food. The meal gives the body something to enjoy while the neshamah rejoices over the Torah that has been learned. The physical pleasure is serving the celebration rather than competing with it.
The rav imagines the joy of finishing a masechta becoming so real that a person would want to dance in place for three or four hours, without music, wine or meat. In practice, he may not be able to enter that feeling directly. The food, friends and gathering can help him express the joy he already recognizes as valuable.
He brings an aphorism in the name of the Kedushas Levi: a Jew makes a siyum over a mitzvah, not over an aveirah. Its exact printed location remains unverified. He uses it to describe the neshamah's deepest orientation toward good, rather than to make an empirical claim that no Jew ever enjoys wrongdoing.
The rav recalls hearing a teacher at Aish HaTorah, whose name is unclear in the recording, encourage a similar response to an effort in shemiras einayim. In introducing it, he describes the spiritual strain he feels when the kedushah of the Kotel meets distractions in the surrounding tourist setting. His remarks about visiting at night and tearing kriyah belong to that situated discussion; they do not supply a ruling here about visiting hours or the conditions for kriyah. A bochur has made the walk through the Old City while guarding his eyes. That effort also deserves appreciation. If making an announced celebration feels unnatural, he can enjoy a permitted meal with friends. He need not tell everyone the private reason for his simcha. The body's pleasure can give his inner gratitude room to emerge.
Giving the two friends time together
A related mashal is recalled in connection with Rav Hutner's Purim teaching. The rav remembers going to Chaim Berlin on Purim as a child growing up in Flatbush and enjoying its atmosphere. He explicitly says he was not there with Rav Hutner; he remembers the atmosphere under a later rosh yeshiva. Published notes from Rav Hutner's table preserve a version with two former yeshiva friends and a wagon driver. The retelling here makes it a train journey.
Two close friends have not seen each other for twenty or thirty years. They meet at a station, embrace and want to sit together, hear about each other's marriages and children, and catch up. But one has only ten minutes before his train leaves. In this retelling it runs once a week, and he cannot miss a week of home and work.
In the story, they obtain drink and give it to the person responsible for the journey until he cannot hurry them away. Bringing a replacement from the city takes three or four hours. The friends have gained time to be together. The weekly train and replacement timetable belong to the rav's retelling, rather than the published wagon-driver version.
The mashal pictures the body pressing the person onward. A few minutes of davening, a little closeness, and then it says: enough, it is time to go. Purim's drinking is used in this teaching as a picture of quieting that interference so that the neshamah can dwell in its joy.
This is the point of the mashal. It is not an instruction to impair someone responsible for transport, nor does retelling it establish a practical amount of drinking. The everyday eitzah being developed is broader: give the bodily part of yourself a permitted way to enjoy the occasion, so it can stop resisting the simcha of the neshamah.
The rav tentatively suggests that the same mashal can help us understand milei dishtusa. The body may not respond to another explanation of why a mitzvah matters. It may respond to something funny. Once it loosens a little, the person can find room for a happiness that was being held back.
The language of an inner place of joy also brings us to Chagigah 5b. The Gemara distinguishes between inner and outer chambers in its discussion of Divine joy and weeping. Rashi and Rabbeinu Chananel differ over which belongs to the inner chambers. The application being recalled here understands the inward pull of the neshamah as a pull toward joy, while the body can weigh it down. It is a way of explaining the person's avodah, alongside those different readings; the tentative recollection of Rebbe Nachman's particular explanation should remain tentative.
Being too mature to help
Milei dishtusa need not contain a hidden Torah explanation. A clean joke can simply be funny. The rav recalls his daughter's book of a thousand kosher jokes. A joke book, a harmless piece of slapstick or a playful movement can make a person laugh without making an argument.
That can seem strange. We want our lives to have meaning. Why spend time on something whose content, taken by itself, is so slight?
Its purpose lies in what it makes possible. The silliness is helping a part of the person enter the simcha. He may then become more able to appreciate the mitzvah, to daven or to approach someone else with warmth.
The rav remembers Ari Dembitzer saying at Camp Simcha that it is immature to be mature. The setting explains the words. The counselors' task was to help children be happy. A counselor who was too concerned with looking dignified to put on a costume, dance or act playfully was allowing his own image to interfere with the children he had come to help.
The same question can be asked inwardly. Am I so concerned about appearing mature that I cannot do something simple to help myself? I need not act in front of an audience. I can dance in my own room, put on headphones, or enjoy something clean and funny without announcing it to anyone.
The rav recalls someone describing a great deal of anxiety. He suggested dancing privately, with headphones and the door closed, so the person would not have to worry about an audience. It is an example of a possible small support for joy, rather than a diagnosis or a claim that anxiety always yields to that exercise.
We already understand something like this with children. A three-year-old is upset, and we make a funny face. A six-month-old laughs at peekaboo. A parent dances with his children or does something playful to draw out a smile.
There need not be an important message inside the funny face. We are helping the child make a movement toward happiness. We can allow ourselves a little of that same kindness. The part of me that is pulled down may need a simple beginning before it can respond to a serious explanation.
A simple tool with a serious purpose
Sichos HaRan 20 puts the need for this eitzah sharply. Rebbe Nachman says that, as it appears, a person cannot reach simcha except through matters of laughter and silliness, making himself act like a fool. The words follow his description of how difficult it is to reach joy.
The qualification “as it appears” belongs to the source. So does the strength of the eitzah. Torah 24 says even through milei dishtusa; Sichos HaRan makes clear how central a means it can become.
The explanation here connects it with both teachings we have been learning. In Torah 23, the reluctant parts need to be brought into the circle. In Torah 24, the work needs to be renewed through the different moments of life. Lightheartedness can help with the resistance that keeps those parts outside.
The joy of being a Jew and of being able to do a mitzvah remains central. Sichos HaRan 43 asks a person to rejoice in his Jewishness even when his actions have left him far from where he wants to be. A little playfulness can help him become more able to feel that gift and appreciate the mitzvah in front of him.
Shabbos 30b describes Rabbah beginning his teaching with a milsa dibedichusa, something humorous, which made the scholars laugh. Afterward, he sat with awe and began the learning. The humor has a place in preparing the people to learn.
The rav remembers hearing Rav Shalom Arush begin a shiur with a simple, clean joke; he does not know whether he does that every time. He also says he does not know precisely what Rabbah's joke was or whether it contained deeper Torah. The practical point is that an ordinary clean joke can help people relax and laugh, even without their discovering a hidden explanation in it.
The deeper Zohar and Likutey Halachos discussion, including the image of Dovid as a badchan before Hashem and Rebbe Nachman's conduct on his journey toward Eretz Yisrael, lies ahead. The rav presents Purim's playfulness as a deep avodah, even speaking of an ascent beyond Yom Kippur. Costumes can look merely silly while serving that inward purpose. He explicitly includes someone who does not drink.
He hopes that something of Purim's ad delo yada, its release from the usual resistance, can illuminate the whole year. This is his inward application of the teaching, not a direction to drink throughout the year. The simple starting point is to give the bodily part of ourselves a permitted way to be happy, so that the joy of the neshamah has room to emerge.