Hasidic Tales-Lesson Two

1. I. Re-cap and Introduction - a review of the first session, including a
brief discussion of takeaways from our previous study
II. This week’s Hasidic sayings
A. They asked Rabbi Aaron what he had learned from his
teacher, the Great Maggid. “Nothing at all,” he said. And when
they pressed him to explain what he meant by that, he added:
“The nothing-at-all is what I learned. I learned the meaning of
nothingness. I learned that I am nothing at all, and that I Am,
notwithstanding.”
B. The Rabbi of Berditchev saw a man hurrying along the street,
looking neither right nor left. “Why are you rushing so?” he
asked him.
“I am after my livelihood,” the man replied.
“And how do you know,” continued the rabbi, “that your
livelihood is running on before you, so that you have to rush

2. after it? Perhaps it is behind you, and all you need to do to
encounter it is to stand still – but you are running away from
it!”
C. 1. Before his death, Rabbi Zusya said “In the coming world,
they will not ask me: ‘Why were you not Moses?’ They will ask
me: ‘Why were you not Zusya?’”
2. Rabbi Heshel said: “A man should be like a vessel that
willingly receives what its owner pours into it, whether it be
wine or vinegar.”
D. Rabbi Shelomo asked: “What is the worst thing the Evil Urge
can achieve?” And he answered: “To make man forget that he is
the son of a king.”
E. Reb Mendel of Bahr once related the following:
When I was young, there was a time when I was praying with
passion, the thought struck me: How do I dare pray to God,
when I am so filled with sin?! This thought broke my heart.

3. For the longest time I couldn’t rid myself of it. I thought it
was…right thinking.
A while later, I asked myself: How come when I sit down to eat,
I never think, “How dare you eat when you’re so filled with sin
and never get brokenhearted?”
With that, I shoved the thought away.
Again, as with last week’s exercise, we’ll approach each saying with
a variety of questions, including: 1) what is the surface meaning
here?, 2) do we see deeper possibilities?, 3) what could the main
lesson be here?, and 4) how does it inform my life?
Also, there will be particular questions for each saying.
III. Conclusion