True Forgiveness

Once, Reb Zusha of Anipoli heard a wedding procession passing outside his window. He rushed outside at once and began to dance with wild joy before the new couple, to fulfill the mitzvah of rejoicing with a chasan and kallah. When his family members later remarked that such a public display did not befit a Chassidic Rebbe, he answered with the following story.

“In my youth I was a talmid of Rav Yechiel Michel, the Zlotchover Maggid. Once, during our learning, he lost patience with me and rebuked me in anger. Later he sought to appease me, and I forgave him. ‘Zusha, please forgive my angry rebuke, and forgive me for embarrassing you,’ he said. ‘Rebbe, I forgive you,’ I answered. Before I retired for the night, he came to me again and asked once more, ‘Zusha, please forgive me.’ Again I answered, ‘Rebbe, I forgive you.’

“As I lay down to sleep, I was still awake when the soul of my Rebbe’s holy father, Rav Yitzchok of Drohobitch, came down to me from the world above. He said, ‘I left only one son in this world, one precious son, and because he embarrassed you, you want to destroy him.’ I protested, ‘Rebbe, I have already forgiven him with all my heart and soul, twice over. What more should I do?’

“‘You call that forgiveness?’ he said. ‘I will teach you how to forgive someone completely. Follow me.’ I got up, dressed and followed him to the mikveh. ‘Now immerse yourself three times,’ he said, ‘and with each immersion say wholeheartedly that you have forgiven my son.’ I did as he asked. When I came out, I saw that his face was shining with a light so bright I could not look at it. I asked him why, and he said he had earned it because he was always careful with three sayings of Rav Nechunya ben Hakanah, who credited his long life to three things: ‘I never took honor from my fellow’s disgrace, I never went to bed having cursed my fellow that day, and I was generous with my money’ (Megillah 28b). And he added, ‘What I achieved with these three, you can achieve through joy and simchah.’

“So when I saw a chance to rejoice with a chasan and kallah in their simchah, right on my own street,” concluded Reb Zusha, “I hurried to join them in the joy of a mitzvah.”