Having dedicated a good portion of the previous issue of Wonders and the present issue to the topic of the intermediate nogah inclination fueled by our sense of curiosity, we present this story which deals with the topic from an almost unbelievable perspective. At first glance, this story sounds like a myth, a distant legend: demons and sorcerers, kings of nightmares and forced servitude. But in fact, in modern times, we who are struggling with our inclinations old and new can identify with the narrator.
If we reflect a bit, a disturbing similarity is revealed between the narrator’s situation in the story and the modern condition so prevalent today, namely the addiction to screens. Like the narrator, so many people today spend night after night locked into a fantasy world, which provides dubious pleasures while taking a heavy toll on our mental and physical strength. It is not only screens that people have become addicted to. Every fall into cravings and bad deeds can lead to a form of servitude to a foreign power that blemishes our Divine soul.
So how do we escape from these worlds of fantasy and our enslavement to them and what they offer? Many things can be learned from the story, but we will focus first on the most significant detail: The narrator and his family, even when they are clearly afraid and troubled by the situation, all focus on the superficial problems. They are troubled by the narrator’s weakness, by his daytime fatigue, his inability to function, and even deteriorating external appearance. Rebbe Aharon of Strashelye, on the other hand, is shocked by something completely different. He also makes sure that the narrator realizes what the real issue is: How does a blemish pierce through and affect the Divine soul?!
The tzaddik sees the real issue. He focuses on the heart of the matter. A Divine soul is being blemished and desecrated. Rebbe Aharon understands how absurd and terrifying such a situation is. Powers that are peddling fantasy have taken control of the Divine. The young man himself, who came to seek his advice on the matter, is shocked by the sight of the rebbe’s pain and weeps. He does not weep for himself (he is still unable to understand the true gravity of his situation). He weeps because he sees how pained the tzaddik is because of his plight.
This is the first step out of addiction—a penetrating understanding that the sin blemishes something holy and exalted and that this blemish is infinitely worse than the superficial problems of a wasted tomorrow or a worn and tired appearance. In fact, the narrator himself testifies that, after a while, he had learnt to enjoy his predicament.
MY FALL NEEDS TO BE JUSTIFIED
In Chasidic psychological terms, when I am shocked only by the fact that “I have fallen,” this type of shock, which is actually saying, “how is it possible that I, me, the great illustrious me, has succumbed to desire and cravings,” actually tends to lead to a deeper entrenchment in sin. A deeper entrenchment acts as a justification for my behavior; after all, if this was just a simple test, I would not have failed it, I would have emerged from it already. But, by staying enslaved to my desire, I justify just how difficult it is to break free. Like the narrator, I do not find the strength needed to resist temptation. The sense of compulsion, the feeling that only deepens from one realization to the next that I am still enslaved by my desires, demonstrates just how powerful this craving, this king of the fantasy world of terror, really is.
But if the pain is for the holy soul within me, it opens a path to realizing that within I am not related to these sins, to these addictions. My Divine soul is not like my body and my animal soul, whose fall no longer surprises or shakes me up. When I begin to see the inherent freedom my Divine soul has from enslavement to desires and addictions, while at the same time realizing how painful it is that such a holy and pure soul should not be able to express itself and exercise its will to serve God alone, there is a chance that this pain will motivate me to break free and identify with my Divine soul.
AWAKENING GREAT COMPASSION
Another crucial element for rectification is the great compassion with which the tzaddik looks upon one who has fallen into the net of the “other side.” When we feel, as the young man felt through Rebbe Aharon, how much mercy God has on us and how much the tzaddik (like God) desires to help us, shame and guilt cease to paralyze us and begin to become a drive for rectification. This compassion is actually the result of the deep pain over the Divine soul’s fall, which awakens great mercy from Above for the individual. When we feel God's mercy and know that there is nothing outside of Him, we can decide to free ourselves from the grip of the other side.
CONNECTING TO TORAH AND THE TZADDIK
Finally, there is the liberating power of Torah and tzaddikim. The word Torah also means “to free” (הָרָּתַה). When one opens a book to learn before falling asleep, one frees himself, like the narrator, from the choking grip of the kings of nightmares, and in our age, one is freed from the need to bring a screen into bed. But using Torah to free himself is not enough. To prevent the other side from enslaving him (or her) again, from retaking control of his soul, the individual is required to do something that neither he nor his elders did: Connect to a tzaddik. As he declares time after time that he belongs to the rebbe and that he has faith in him, the enslavers back down and eventually leave with the slam of a door and do not return. Only the connection to the tzaddik remains, and it lives and pulsates today, even years after Rebbe Aharon’s passing.
