There was once a Yid who knocked on his Rav’s door, panic stricken and disturbed. He told the Rav that this past Friday afternoon he was traveling to a neighboring village where he was going to spend Shabbos, and there were issues on the road and his horse and wagon kept getting stuck and delayed, until the sun set and he was still traveling. He felt like staying on the side of the road was dangerous, and he kept going until he made it to his destination. He was mechalel Shabbos! Never in his life had he violated the laws of Shabbos and he begged the Rav to give him some kind of pathway to teshuvah, to come back from this sin.
The Rav wasn’t sure what to say. He acknowledged the severity of the sin, and even if it was justified to desecrate Shabbos if it was a life threatening danger to stay on the side of the road for Shabbos, it was not justified that he wasn’t more cautious to avoid traveling on a Friday afternoon, since delays are bound to come up. The Rav said he needed to start some serious teshuvah, and gave him a whole regiment of things to do including: fasting every Monday and Thursday, saying Sefer Tehillim every day, learning more, davening more and so on. The Yid is listening to this whole long list of things the Rav is telling him to do, and starts to think maybe he should get a second opinion…
A week or two later, this Yid finds himself near the Baal Shem Tov, and tells him what happened. The Baal Shem Tov responds by saying that the teshuvah that he needed could be accomplished by simply donating the Shabbos candles for the shul. This would be how he would achieve a tikkun for his neshamah. The man was more than happy to follow this suggestion, and ran off to tell the gabai of the shul that this week the Shul candles are on him! On his way out, the Besht tells this Yid, that when he gets home, he should please tell his Rav that the Baal Shem Tov invites the Rav to join him for Shabbos…
The Rav is honored to have an invitation from the holy Baal Shem Tov, and that Friday, he sets out in his horse and wagon to travel to the village of the Besht. Lo and behold, the weather turns bad, the roads fill with water, there is traffic, the hour gets late, and the sun sets. The Rav has no choice but to desecrate Shabbos in order to make it safely to the home of the Baal Shem Tov. He arrives a broken Yid, crying to the Baal Shem Tov that he desecrated Shabbos for the first time in his life!
To his shock, the Besht tells him that he was the one who orchestrated from Above that he get delayed and be forced to desecrate Shabbos. He explained as follows: “A few weeks ago, when that Yid came to you looking for a tikkun for his sin of traveling on Shabbos, you gave him a full regiment of things he needed to do to fix his soul. You know why you did that? Because you never experienced the terrible regret that this Yid felt due to his sin. Had you known what he was truly feeling, you would have understood that, in the Heavens, the terrible pain and regret that this Yid had over his sin, already wiped away 80% of the “damage.” When he came to me, I understood he hardly needed any tikkun, but I told him to buy Shabbos candles so that he’d feel good that he was doing something to help himself, but in reality he didn’t need much help at all. Now that you experienced this deep and powerful regret over your sin, the next time a Yid comes to you with regret over something he has done, you’ll understand that your role is to just help him get over the last little bit to achieve a full teshuvah.
There is a profoundly important lesson from this story! When we feel regret over the spiritual mistakes that we make, we should be proud of that regret and embrace those feelings and understand that because we feel bad about it, is already three quarters of the job, and know we just need to complete the final part, to try to fix our error and improve a little bit for the future.
This article was found in Nekuda Tova Issue 6.