Parshas Nitzavim

The Al­ter Rebbe once said about teshu­vah, “True teshu­vah is akin to what the goy in Vitebsk felt.”

What was the story?

A river runs through Vitebsk, di­vid­ing it into two. There was no bridge in those days and peo­ple went across the wa­ter in a small boat, a lodke. A pow­er­ful wind was blow­ing one day and the peo­ple stand­ing be­side the river told the fel­low: Don’t go. It’s too dan­ger­ous. But he paid them no heed, set off in his boat and drowned.

“In the very mo­ment when he saw he was go­ing to drown, ” the Al­ter Rebbe com­mented, “how dis­traught was he for not hav­ing lis­tened to his friends, and for set­ting off in­stead. That is true teshu­vah.”

A young man told me, over some mashkeh, that af­ter that Sim­chas Torah he was so deeply af­fected — es­pe­cially by the story about R. Hil­lel — that he went into yechidus on the sev­enth of Chesh­van (and said what­ever he said). The Rebbe told him, “The main point of teshu­vah is re­solve for the fu­ture. ” Then the Rebbe said, “I don’t know your health sit­u­a­tion. ”

“Nu,” he an­swered.

The Rebbe said, “You should fast Shovavim⁶³ on Mon­days and Thurs­days; and there are plenty of Mon­days and Thurs­days be­fore Shovavim be­gins — you should fast then un­til 1 p.m. Start your day early on Mon­day and Thurs­day: get up at 6 a.m. and study as you are ac­cus­tomed. But aside from that, you should learn Mish­nayos: Seder Ko­dashim, three mish­nayos each day — but re­ally learn them, in great depth!”

63. Shovavim (“mischievous ones”): an acronym for the six weeks that include the Torah readings of Shemos, VeErah, Bo, Beshalach, Yisro, Mishpatim — a period of teshuvah and fasting for G-d's “mischievous” children to correct their ways. ↩

In 5719 (1959), R. Moshe Schneer­son, a rel­a­tive of the Rebbe who lived near 770, passed away. The Rebbe per­son­ally took part in the lavaya and ar­ranged the burial. Af­ter re­turn­ing from the ceme­tery, the Rebbe asked R. Zal­man if he would re­cite kad­dish for him through­out the year, and told him that this too is con­nected to “ Ufo­ratzta” ( ex­pand­ing the realm of ho­li­ness).