Once, the holy Rebbe Reb Zisha of Anipoli heard a wedding procession passing outside his window. Immediately, he rushed plained his behavior to them with outside and began to dance in wild abandon in front of the new couple to fulfill the mitzvah of simchas chasan and kallah. When his family members later remarked that this public display did not befit his station as a chassidic rebbe, he explained his behavior to them with the following tale:
In my youth I was a disciple of the holy Reb Yechiel Michel, the Zlotchover Maggid. Once, he was angry at me and he rebuked me. Later, he appeased me and I offered him my forgiveness. “Zisha, please forgive my angry rebuke and please forgive that I embarrassed you,” he said. “Rebbe, I forgive you,” I answered. Before I retired for the night, he visited me once more and asked again for my forgiveness, “Zisha, please forgive me!” “Rebbe, I forgive you,” I answered.
As I lay down to go to sleep, my Rebbe’s holy father, Reb Yitzchak of Drohovitch revealed himself to me. I was still awake when his soul visited me, coming down from the supernal world above. He declared, “I left just one son in This World below, one precious son! And just because he embarrassed you, you wish to destroy him!” “But Rebbe,” I protested, “I have already forgiven him with all my heart and soul! What else should I do?”
“You call that forgiveness?” he demanded. “I will teach you the proper way to forgive. Follow me.”
I got up and followed Reb Yitzchak until we reached the mikveh. “Now, go immerse yourself,” he said, “and with each immersion declare that you have forgiven my son!” I did as he asked, and when I finished and came out of the mikveh, I saw his face shining with a great luminescence, a light so bright I was unable to gaze at his face. I asked him the cause of so brilliant a light, and he explained that he merited such shining rays of light because he was always careful to fulfill the three dictums of Rav Nechunya ben Hakanah who said his longevity was due to three things: “I never took honor in my fellow man’s disgrace, I never went to bed having cursed my fellow that day, and I was easygoing with my money and possessions” (Megillah 28b). “You should know,” he added, “that what I was able to achieve following these three dictums you can also achieve through joy and simchah.”
Therefore, concluded Reb Zisha, when I saw an opportunity to rejoice together with the chasan and kallah in their simchah, right here on my own street, I hastened to join them in the simchah of a mitzvah!
