The Baal Shem Tov once chose a few of his students to go on a trip with him. They traveled for a long time and at some point found themselves in front of a frozen lake, deep in the plains of Russia. There was a custom then among local Christians that they would come out to the frozen lake during their winter holidays. The kids would play on the ice, and they would engrave crucifixes in the ice, after which their priests would lead mass prayers with the whole community. This is the scene that confronted the Besht and his chassidim. The students tried to dissuade him from staying around, but the Besht just continued walking. The Baal Shem Tov adjusts his shtreimel and gartel, and with passion and excitement, he walks out to the ice, and starts to shuckle and daven. He remained in this state of dveikus for around half an hour. Then the Baal Shem Tov finished, and they got back in the wagon and returned home.
The chassidim couldn’t resist asking the Besht to explain what just happened. The Besht explained that Hashem created the world in a way that water is the source of life. Water gives life, sustains vegetation, brings purity to the mikvah, and so on. But when water freezes over, like it did on that lake, that’s when it can become evil, and be used to engrave crucifixes and serve idols! I came to the world to try to fix that issue – that there should never be such a thing as water, the source of life, freezing over and used for idolatry. So what can he do? Is he going to make the entire planet warm, to prevent any water from freezing? The Besht explained that even though it was cold, the main reason the water froze is because the water was still – had the water been moving it would not have frozen despite the cold environment.
The lesson the Baal Shem Tov was teaching his students was that in Yiddishkeit we always try to stay warm! But sometimes it’s cold, and it’s hard to stay warm. It could be our environment that is ‘cold’ or perhaps the cold comes from within us. Then how do we stay warm? You keep on moving: Shacharis, Mincha, Maariv; mitzvos, chessed, emunah! We stay in perpetual motion, moving from one mitzvah to another, serving Hashem as much as we can. Moving waters don’t freeze, and the neshamah of a Yid, who is always running from one mitzvah to the next, will not freeze. That is my mission in life, taught the Baal Shem Tov: to keep Yidden warm!
My fellow Yidden, stay warm! If you find yourself getting cold inside, or in a freezing cold environment, keep yourself warm through constant motion: from mitzvah to mitzvah, chessed to chessed, tefillah to tefillah, faith to faith, and level to level! May the whole world be encompassed with the warm Spring, the time of geula, speedily in our days, Amen.
This article was found in Nekuda Tova Issue 1.