The Big Fish

One Shabbos, while Rav Boruch was in a certain town, a very large fish was brought to him on Erev Shabbos. He asked that it be prepared in honor of Shabbos, and at his tisch he divided it among the chassidim. As he gave out the portions, he told them a story.

There was once an upstanding yungerman who spent his days learning Torah while his wife ran a small store to earn a modest living. The Soton envied his success and decided to test the couple by sending the shop an abundance of customers. His wife became overworked and overwhelmed, and she asked her husband to help her. He cut an hour from his learning, then another, until he had left his studies completely and spent the whole day on the business. This is the way of the evil one. Today he asks for one sin, tomorrow another, until our pure and innocent yungerman had shaken off the yoke of Torah and mitzvos and become a complete rebel.

Once, while traveling, he reached a crossroads and was weighing a certain transgression when he heard weeping in the distance. The townspeople told him that it came from a prisoner of the poritz, a wealthy Polish landowner. The poritz said to him, “This wretched Jew is late with his rent, so I have jailed him until someone ransoms him or until he dies and rots.” The spark that is never extinguished in any Jew was kindled again. “I will redeem him,” said the yungerman, and on the spot he took out his purse and paid the ransom.

As Chazal say, one mitzvah leads to another. The Jewish spark within him was now awake and aflame. He felt remorse over his empty life, and he remembered the days when he sat and learned in purity and innocence. He resolved to do teshuvah, but then fear gripped him. What if he was not strong enough to withstand temptation again? What if his resolve faded and he went back to his old ways? As he passed a river his decision became final. He threw himself into the raging water, sure that only so could he remain pure of heart.

As his body sank into the depths, his soul rose to Heaven, and the heavenly court convened to judge his case. The arguments between prosecution and defense flew back and forth. On one side, he had once lived a holy life of Torah and mitzvos, and then turned to a life without observance. On the other, he had just fulfilled the great mitzvos of pidyon shevuyim and saving a Jewish life, using up all his money. Yet he had also just committed a grave sin by taking his own life, though he did it to escape temptation and keep his newfound faith. In the end the Bais Din Shel Maalah ruled that he must return to this world, as a gilgul in a fish. If a Jew would eat it, that would be a tikkun for his neshamah.

Rav Boruch concluded that his soul had returned in the very fish they were eating. He hired a minyan to say Kaddish and learn Torah as a tikkun for his neshamah, until it could return to its source. And so it was.