When the two holy brothers, the Rebbe Reb Melech and the Rebbe Reb Zisha wandered together in self-imposed exile to rectify the world and bring Yiddishe kinder to teshuva, they once entered an inn and found a group of elderly, idle Jews who sat around drinking and playing cards. Seeking to rouse their hearts and awaken them to teshuva, Rav Elimelech turned to Reb Zisha and said to him, “Zisha, zog! Say something!” Reb Zisha knocked on the table to get their attention and told them:
“Rabbosai, you should know that the yetzer hora quit his job and retired!”
“Why did he quit?” they asked.
Reb Zisha explained, “Once, the yetzer hora went to Gan Eden, and there he saw all kinds of neshomos of sinners and wicked people. In life, all these people were the yetzer’s gang, always living a krum lifestyle. When he saw them in Gan Eden, he wondered how they got there! He was told that they had done teshuva and mended their ways, and so they no longer belonged to him. Now their place was in Gan Eden.
“If so, all my hard work is for nothing,” he complained. “I spend all my time tricking people to sin, causing them to stumble and transgress, and here they just go and do teshuva and become upstanding, reputable citizens of Gan Eden! That’s it! I quit!” And he retired. In his place a different angel was given the job of testing and trying to tempt others to sin.
Later, the former yetzer hora met the new one and asked the angel how his job was going. “Oh, my job is just fine,” answered the new yetzer hora smugly.
“How come you are so satisfied?” wondered the old yetzer hora aloud. “If you expend all your efforts and hard work to get people to sin and transgress, and then they just go and teshuva and escape off to Gan Eden, what’s the point, eh?”
“Oh, that’s easy,” answered the new yetzer. “You see, I am smarter than you and I learned from your failures. Your mistake was that you went after the younger generation. Those youngsters have their whole lives ahead of them and so they have plenty of years left to do teshuva and go to Gan Eden. I go after the elderly people with no time left. Idle, sinful old geezers like these...” and so saying, Reb Zisha pointed at the throng of card players, having got his message across. “They,” concluded the new yetzer, “have no time left to do teshuva and you’ll never find them in Gan Eden. They will die wicked! (Needless to say, they internalized the message, did teshuva and escaped the yetzer’s clutches as well!)
(Otzar HaSippurim, Volume III - Chapter 10)
