There was once a man who came to a tzaddik, Reb Michel Z’lotchiver. Reb Michel Z’lotchiver was a chosid of the Ba’al Shem Tov, but was not yet, at the time that this story took place.
Anyway, the man who came to Reb Michel was crying. He said: “I did something on Shabbos that I am not allowed to do. I was mechalel Shabbos! What should I do?” The man was very upset with himself.
Reb Michel looked at the man and said: “You were mechalel Shabbos? Do you know how serious that is? It is like going against the whole Torah at one time! This is very serious!
“If you were mechalel Shabbos by accident, you would have to bring a korban in the Beis Hamikdash. If you did it on purpose and only Hashem saw you, then Hashem would punish you himself! If others saw you being mechalel Shabbos, and they warned you not to, you would have been thrown off a tower and stoned to death!”
Reb Michel was shouting at the man, telling him what a serious thing he had done—being mechalel Shabbos. “You will have to do teshuva!” Reb Michel said.
The man was very scared and he felt very bad about what he had done. “I’ll do anything!” he said. “I am ready to do teshuva. What should I do?”
Reb Michel said to the man: “You will have to fast all day, and at the end of the day, you will not be able to have good food. You will have to eat black bread and cold water.”
“Okay, okay,” the man said, frightened. “I’ll fast and do as you say.”
“No,” Reb Michel said. “That is not enough. You must fast for more than just a few days.
“That’s not it,” continued Reb Michel. “After you finish fasting and have your meal each day, you will not be able to just go to sleep on your nice bed. Do you think a person who was mechalel Shabbos can sleep on a bed? You will sleep on the floor—without pillows or blankets.”
The man was crying. He felt very bad about what he had done. “I will do everything that you say. I will fast, I will sleep on the floor without any pillows or blankets, and after I finish fasting each day, I will have only black bread and cold water.”
“That is not enough!” Reb Michel said. “You must say Tehillim!”
“I will say Tehillim,” the man said.
“So you think that you can say Tehillim in your house where it is warm when you were mechalel Shabbos?” Reb Michel asked. Without waiting for an answer, he said: “You will have to go outside in the snow where it is cold, without a coat, and say Tehillim there!”
After the man left Reb Michel, he felt very sad. He did not expect such a reaction from Reb Michel. He just wanted to do teshuva and did not know that it entailed so much. The man then went crying to the shul.
That day, there was someone traveling through Z’lotchev. It was the Ba’al Shem Tov. The Ba’al Shem Tov was at the shul, and he saw the man come in crying.
The Ba’al Shem Tov went over to the man and asked him why he was crying. The man said: “I was mechalel Shabbos, and now I want to do teshuva. I feel so terrible.”
“Sure, you have to do teshuva. Hashem accepts teshuva,” the Ba’al Shem Tov said. “Are you doing teshuva?”
“I want to, but I need to say Tehillim in the snow without a coat, fast for many days, and sleep on the floor without pillows,” the man said, crying.
The Ba’al Shem Tov asked the man: “Who told you to do all this?”
“Oh,” the man answered, “Reb Michel Z’lotchever told me to do that.”
“Reb Michel told you to do all these things?” asked the Ba’al Shem Tov. “With all due respect to Reb Michel, there is a better way for you to do teshuva.
“Instead of doing the painful and difficult things that Reb Michel told you to do,” the Ba’al Shem Tov said, “I want you to go home, buy a box of candles, and bring it to the shul, to be used on Shabbos. I see that you regret what you did and that is the main thing when one does teshuva.”
“Yes!” the man said. “I regret what I did, but is that it? Should I fast? Should I sleep on the floor?”
“No,” the Ba’al Shem Tov answered. “That is not for you. All you have to do is buy candles for the shul. So, go home, get the candles and then bring them here. I will have to continue traveling, but I will be back in a few weeks, and hopefully everything will be okay.”
With that, the Ba’al Shem Tov left the shul, and the man followed not far behind him. The man went to buy the candles, while the Ba’al Shem Tov went on his way.
The man soon returned to the shul with the candles. A few hours later, when Shabbos was about to begin, he lit them.
People started coming into the shul to daven. As they were about to start davening, a wind came and blew out the candles!
This wind was not an average wind. Usually, when someone came into the shul, even if it was a very windy day, you could not feel the wind inside the shul. Here, however, every single candle in the shul went out!
Well, the only light the people in the shul had was from the ner tamid and from the moon. Somehow, they managed, but to our friend in our story, this “little” incident meant something to him.
“It must be,” the man thought, “that Hashem doesn’t like my teshuva, so he sent a wind to blow out my candles.” The man now felt very sad because of this, and because he was mechalel Shabbos in the first place.
The next week, the man again brought candles to the shul, and he lit them just as he had done the week before. As the shul was filling up, a dog ran into the shul. The people in the shul tried to send the dog out, but the dog was running around in circles.
The dog then noticed the candles in the shul, and he ran over to them and began to eat them up! Finally, they were able to send the dog out of the shul, but there were no more candles left. Now the man was very sad, once again. It seemed that Hashem was not happy with his teshuva.
“I should be doing what Reb Michel told me to do,” the man thought. “What the Ba’al Shem Tov told me to do is not enough. I should be fasting, saying Tehillim out in the cold, and doing all the other things that Reb Michel told me to do.” The man started to cry. “I am not doing what I should be,” he thought.
Well, the next Shabbos came, and the man brought candles to the shul, as was becoming his practice. This time, nothing extraordinary happened to the candles, except that they burned down right away and did not last for long. This happened to every single one of his candles!
The man noticed that and he once again felt very sad. “Hashem does not accept my teshuva,” he thought. “I shouldn’t be taking the easy way out by listening to the Ba’al Shem Tov, and now Hashem is upset with me.” With that thought in mind, the man started to cry.
People in the shul reminded him that it was Shabbos and that he should not be crying, so he tried to contain himself.
After Shabbos, on Sunday, the man went back to the shul. There, he met someone who he had seen a few weeks ago, the Ba’al Shem Tov. The Ba’al Shem Tov asked him: “Why are you crying? Are you not the person who I told a few weeks back to bring candles to the shul for Shabbos?”
“Hashem doesn’t like my candles,” man replied. “Every Shabbos, something happens so that one way or the other, my candles get ruined or extinguished.”
The Ba’al Shem Tov understood that Reb Michel was upset that the man was not following his instructions, and that is why the man was having trouble with the candles. The Ba’al Shem Tov then told the man: “I have a feeling that next week you will not have a problem with your candles.”
The Ba’al Shem Tov then took a piece of paper out of his pocket and wrote a letter on it. He then gave it to the man and told him: “I would like you to give this letter to Reb Michel Z’lotchiver. It is a very important letter, so please deliver it as soon as possible.”
The man ran off to deliver the letter to Reb Michel, and the Ba’al Shem Tov went on his way.
When Reb Michel received the letter, he opened it and read: “…I would like to invite you to spend Shabbos with me…”
Reb Michel was very excited. The Ba’al Shem Tov was inviting him to spend Shabbos with him!
Since the Ba’al Shem Tov lived far from Reb Michel, Reb Michel summoned his assistant so that they would be able to set out immediately, and arrive at the Ba’al Shem Tov before Shabbos.
Well, Reb Michel, accompanied by his assistant and by his wagon driver, began their journey on Wednesday, and it seemed to them that they would have plenty of time to travel.
On their way, the axle of their wagon broke. That did happen sometimes, and it took a few hours to fix. Therefore, Reb Michel just sat off to the side learning, while the wagon driver and Reb Michel’s assistant were fixing the broken axle.
By the time they got back on their way, a few hours had gone by. By now, it was already the afternoon.
Well, a little while later, the other axle broke. It took them a while to fix, but soon they were able to continue their journey.
Soon, something more serious occurred—the weather started turning bad. The sky darkened and it started to rain. That did not bother the travelers, though. They just continued on their way.
It did not take long for the dirt roads to turn into mud. Now the wagon started slowing down a little; it could not go so fast in all that mud. Well, night came and they stopped off on the side of the road to spend the night.
By the next morning, the road conditions worsened and it was almost impossible to see anything, but they continued on their way. Soon, the wagon driver realized that because of the poor visibility, he had made a wrong turn and was traveling in the wrong direction.
What could the wagon driver do? They had no choice but to turn back, of course. They soon realized that they were wasting a lot of time. It was already Thursday night! They found a place to spend the night, and went to sleep.
The next morning, it was already Erev Shabbos. Reb Michel did not like to travel after chatzos on Erev Shabbos, but they still had a long way to go—and in the mud!
They continued, but they encountered even more problems. It was soon after chatzos, but they went on traveling.
Soon they realized that it was getting close to Shabbos, but they had a problem: how would they know when Shabbos started if the clouds were blocking the sun?
Reb Michel was getting worried, because not only was it after chatzos, but also Shabbos might have already begun! He was not sure of the time of day because it was so dark from the clouds.
Reb Michel, his wagon driver and his assistant finally arrived at the Ba’al Shem Tov house, and they rushed in, carrying their luggage. Reb Michel was so worried; did Shabbos start yet, or did they have a long time to go?
Well, Reb Michel saw the Ba’al Shem Tov standing at the table dressed in his Shabbos clothes, making kiddush! The candles were lit, too. When he saw that, he fell on the floor and fainted!
When Reb Michel was revived, he looked around to see where he was. Then, he saw the Ba’al Shem Tov smiling. “Why are you smiling?!” he asked. “Don’t you know that I did a terrible thing? I was mechalel Shabbos!”
“No,” the Ba’al Shem Tov said. “You were not mechalel Shabbos. I brought in Shabbos early, but you came right on time, with a few minutes to spare.”
“We had so many problems on the way,” said Reb Michel. “Our axle broke a few times, and we had a lot of mud. We left Wednesday so that we would arrive here early, but look how long our trip took!”
The Ba’al Shem Tov said: “I see that you are so upset just at the thought of being mechalel Shabbos. Is that correct?
“Yes, that right! It is a terrible thing to be mechalel Shabbos,” Reb Michel replied.
“The main point of teshuva is regretting what you did. You feel very bad that you might have done something against Hashem’s will. Is that not the main point of teshuva?” asked the Ba’al Shem Tov.
“Yes, I feel terrible that I might have done something against Hashem.”
“Now,” the Ba’al Shem Tov said, “do you remember that person who came to you saying that he was mechalel Shabbos, and you told him to fast, etc., but I told him just to bring candles to the shul?”
“Yes,” Reb Michel said. “I was upset about those candles. I did not think that it was enough.”
“I was able to tell that you were upset, because all sorts of strange things were happening,” the Ba’al Shem Tov said. “Now, however, do you think that that man needed to fast, sleep on the floor, and say Tehillim in the snow? Do you not think that it was enough for him to feel bad that he went against Hashem’s will? After all, that is the main point of teshuva!” Reb Michel replied: “Yes, that is true. He felt very bad about what he had done.”
“So now,” the Ba’al Shem Tov continued, “all he needed to do was just something to show Hashem that he wanted to make up. For that, don’t you think that bringing a box of candles to the shul was enough?”
Reb Michel realized the Ba’al Shem Tov’s point and learned a very important lesson from what had happened. He learned that sometimes you have to look into the person, because he may already be doing teshuva.
