The hat seller who lost his whole stall
The Baal HaTanya compares the struggle with the yetzer to two wrestlers. A stronger fighter can still fall if he is weighed down by heaviness and sadness, while his opponent acts with energy. Tanya, chapter 26, therefore emphasizes the alacrity that comes from joy and an open heart.
The rav uses a team’s huddle to make the point familiar. When players feel beaten, the coach tries to restore their confidence and desire to fight. Their physical ability has not suddenly been created; they have recovered the willingness to use it. The rav puts the importance of morale very strongly. The analogy illustrates the need for heart in a struggle; it is not a literal guarantee that confidence wins every sporting event or removes every disadvantage.
He then repeats a parable attributed to a teacher whose name remains unclear. A man sells hats in the market. A thief grabs one and runs. The merchant thinks of the fifty dollars it is worth and chases him. While he is away, the thief’s two companions take the rest of the hats and the cash register. He wins back one hat and returns to an empty stall.
The first loss has become the means of a much greater loss. That is what can happen after an aveirah. A person becomes so absorbed in the fact that he fell that he gives up the strength, time, and other mitzvos still available to him. The yetzer has gained more through the despair than through the original fall.
The rav does not conclude that the stolen hat no longer matters. His continuation is essential: first secure the stall. Once the rest is safe, a person can pursue the loss properly, file a report, use the available evidence, and deal with what happened. In the spiritual application, return to a steadier place and then do teshuvah. Do not let the demand to repair yesterday become the means of destroying today.
His second image is a soldier grazed by a bullet. If the soldier sits in the exposed battlefield examining and cleaning the wound, further shots may reach him. He needs to get to a place where the wound can be treated. The rav imagines the medical tent as that place. This is a spiritual parable about escaping an immediate danger before dwelling on a failure; it is not practical battlefield treatment or a guarantee that a medical tent will be safe.
Both images give an order to the work. Get out of the place in which the next fall is being prepared. Recover the knowledge of who you are. Then address the wound rather than using it to remain in the line of fire.
Dignity, kedushah, and the value of a sigh
This brings the discussion back to Tikkun HaKlali. The rav links its ten kinds of song with the movement out of sadness. In the earlier teachings, the force opposed to holiness is described through wailing and atzvus; holy song belongs to the work of repair. He sees sadness and joy as especially consequential in the struggle over shemiras habris, guarding the covenant and the holiness of intimacy.
He distinguishes this struggle from some other desires. A person may pursue money, honor, or food while feeling confident about himself. In the struggle over kedushah, the rav particularly emphasizes the damage done by feeling worthless. If I believe I have no dignity, I more easily accept behavior beneath my dignity. Afterward, the shame can feed another fall.
He recalls Rabban Gamliel’s explanation in Mishnah Sotah 2:1, also on Sotah 14a: the sotah’s offering is barley, animal food, corresponding to the animal-like conduct being addressed. The offering is a minchah, a meal offering. The rav uses the Mishnah’s image to contrast an impersonal surrender to appetite with the dignity of a human relationship.
A person is a speaking human being, capable of a deep relationship that requires time, work, respect, and communication. The rav contrasts that with attaching oneself to whatever happens to catch the eye, including an image on a screen. A ben melech or bas melech can seek a relationship that reflects the soul’s worth. His appeal is to remember that capacity before accepting a lower substitute.
He borrows a phrase about Yehoshafat:
וַיִּגְבַּהּ לִבּוֹ בְּדַרְכֵי ה׳ וְעוֹד הֵסִיר אֶת־הַבָּמוֹת וְאֶת־הָאֲשֵׁרִים מִיהוּדָֽה׃
His heart was elevated in the ways of Hashem; he also removed the high places and the sacred poles from Yehudah. — II Chronicles 17:6
The plain verse describes the king’s courage in Hashem’s ways and his removal of places of idolatrous worship. The rav applies its opening words to healthy spiritual confidence: enough dignity to serve, resist, and return. It is not a license to look down on another person.
His strong connection between feeling low and falling in kedushah is the avodah framework he is teaching, not a diagnosis explaining every addiction, sexual difficulty, or mental illness. The intended response is to restore a person’s ability to act, rather than increase the shame he is warning against.
The challenges of the surrounding world make this preparation urgent. The rav speaks of a generation repeatedly confronted by material that tests kedushah, even in ordinary public life. In his reading of the king’s warning, Hashem knows the terrain into which the person has been placed. The fall should be faced without concluding that the Father no longer understands or values the son.
Likutey Moharan I:8 opens by calling a Jewish person’s sigh precious and explaining it as drawing life toward what is lacking. The rav uses that teaching to change what follows the sigh. When I ask, “Where am I?” and ache over the answer, the ache already contains a turning toward Hashem. I should recognize its value instead of turning it into evidence that I am beyond repair.
There is still a time to review the conduct and make teshuvah. The rav explicitly says to do that at the proper time one has set aside, rather than whenever a destructive thought chooses to knock the person down. As additional source context, Sichos HaRan 41 distinguishes a living broken heart from atzvus and advises setting aside a period for the brokenhearted conversation while striving for joy during the rest of the day. That printed guidance supports the distinction; it does not prescribe a reader’s personal schedule here.
Two unfinished ends of the story
The king’s son remains caught in the loop. Rebbe Nachman does not reveal how his story ends. Nor does he reveal the seventh beggar’s wedding-day teaching. The rav sees a connection between these two unfinished ends.
Sefer Yetzirah 1:7 describes the end as rooted in the beginning and the beginning in the end, like a flame bound to a coal. That is the wording relevant here; it should not be replaced by the different familiar phrase about the final deed being first in thought.
The rav connects the seventh beggar, who seems to have no feet, with Dovid and Mashiach, and with the capacity to dance even when a person sees no reason to dance. Likutey Moharan I:10 opens with the spiritual effect of dancing and clapping. His suggestion is that such joy would supply the secret the fallen prince needs.
He briefly associates the legs with the language of Netzach, Hod, Yesod, and Malchus. He does not develop that structure in this shiur. Neither that allusion nor the connection between the two endings permits us to write the missing ending ourselves. The account of the sixth beggar’s healing also remains ahead.