Dancing instead of crying

 

 

My daughter told me a story about how someone had an accident and through a bizarre set of circumstances found it funny so instead of crying he was laughing and as he was laughing Hashem changed the pain into pleasure.

 

It reminded me of a story how the Mitteleh Rebbe, the second Rebbe of Chabad who had a orchestra complete with horses who with their riders would dance in tandem with the band, and he asked them to play on a given day.

 

His son – one of the riders – fell off and hurt himself and as the Mitteleh Rebbe was observing, they all looked at him and he motioned that they should proceed.

 

Later he explained “I saw in heaven there was a decree against my son, so I tried to alleviate it through the joy of the orchestra. Hence the necessity of continuing to play.”

 

This was a little reminiscent of a story of King David who had a young son who was very deathly ill – so King David was sitting on the floor pleading with God.

 

Unfortunately the boy passed on.

 

His servants seeing how distraught he was over the situation were afraid to tell him.

 

But as soon as they did, he got up and moved on.

 

He explained “I had hoped to alleviate the decree, however seeing that it happened, there is no need to cry.”

 

Though it is painful to recall the yet another profound profound story comes to mind.

 

A group of young Gerrer Chassidim were sentenced to the gas chambers and one of them said “it is Simchas Torah tonight, let us rejoice.”

 

So in the gas chamber –which the sadistic Nazis had also a torturous process to feed their sadistic souls – they sang and danced.

 

Now antisemites are basically jealous over the happiness of the Jews and the last thing the sadistic Nazis wanted to see, was Jews being happy.

 

So the sadistic commander had them open the gas chamber and snarled “tomorrow I shall torture you all to death.”

 

He placed them in a cell.

 

Unbeknown to him, a high ranking Nazi needed slave laborers and he came, in middle of the night, and he took all these young men with him and they all survived the war.

 

Closer to home, there is a young Shlaich in Manhattan – hugely successful – and I was in New York last year, during the intercollegiac Shabbaton in Crown Heights and he spoke, saying, that when he is literally penniless – as unfortunately happens often to Shluchim –he decides to dance.

 

Miraculously he very often gets results.

 

In fact the Rebbe’s last major sichah (talk) printed, is a directive, that joy will bring Moshiach.

 

So in the final analysis, if you want to change your life, try dancing instead of crying.