The holy Mezritcher Maggid was very ill. As his talmidim prayed for his well-being, they sent a pidyon nefesh to Rav Pinchas Koretzer, along with a request for his help to daven for the Maggid’s health.
Despite his best efforts, Rav Pinchas saw that it was to no avail; something was blocking his requests. In order to get to discover the source of this interference, he decided to come and visit the Maggid himself.
When he arrived, he met Rav Shneur Zalman of Liadi, the mechaber of the Sefer HaTanya and founder of Chabad Chassidus, outside in the antechamber. “The Maggid is resting now, he is asleep,” explained the Ba’al HaTanya to Rav Pinchas. After they spoke, Rav Pinchas proceeded on to the Bais Medrash. There to his horror he discovered various writings, teachings of Chassidus and the Maggid’s discourses lying haphazardly on the ground like discarded debris. He lifted up the holy writings with reverence and kissed them. In anger and haste, he made his way back to confront the Ba’al HaTanya, holding the incriminating sheaf of papers aloft as evidence.
“Aha! Now the matter is clear to me! I have been doing my best, davening and pleading, attempting to intercede on behalf of the Maggid. Something was holding me back and blocking my tefillos. Now I understand the root of the matter and the cause of the Maggid’s illness! There are harsh judgments because you have let the spread of the deepest teachings of the inner Torah spread outward and this was holding back my prayers!”
The Ba’al HaTanya understood Rav Pinchas’ angry accusations and so he responded to him with the following famed moshol:
In a faraway land there lived an aged king. One day in his later years he finally had a son. The child was beloved to him and he worried and fretted over his every need and want. He worried over his health and began to suspect that perhaps one day he might need some medicine that would need to be prepared with ingredients from a distant land that were unavailable in his kingdom. He therefore ordered all the apothecaries and those learned in herbal lore to gather together various potions, medicinal herbs and salves from the world over and to safeguard them so that just in case one day there would be need of them, they would be ready at hand. Among the various remedies there was one precious potion that was extremely rare, used to cure fainting sickness.
