Better a Fool

“I’d rather people call me a fool my entire life than for Hashem to regard me as evil for even one hour”(Akavia ben Mehalelel, Mishna, Eduyot 5:6).
 
In Uman this past Rosh Hashanah, a 70 year old man got up in front of the crowd in Rav Shick’s tent, and told them the following story. He candidly explained to the people gathered there that he was not a religious man, but he liked tradition, and he believed in G-d.
 
A few months’ before Rosh Hashanah, he decided to book a ticket to Uman, for the havaya, the experience, to see what it was all about. Long story short, a few weeks before Rosh Hashanah, the man experienced a massive heart-attack and died.
 
He said that he got up to Heaven, and was being judged in the Heavenly Court.
 
They said to him that if he promised to start keeping mitzvot, and in particular Shabbat, that they would give him another chance. The man (who clearly is very honest…) told them that there’s no way he could do that. He was old already, set in his ways, how on earth could he promise that, when he really didn’t think that he could keep to it?
 
At that point, it really wasn’t looking very good for him. (Back down on earth, the hospital had already filled all the paper work in for his death, and filed it with the appropriate government department).
 
Suddenly, there was a flash of blinding light, and a young man with a beard appeared in the courtroom, and said something like: ‘He bought a ticket. I’ll deal with him’.
 
The next thing, the man woke up back in his body, another medical miracle. It was a couple of weeks before the Rosh Hashanah holiday began, so the man had enough time to recover from his near death experience, and decided to make the trip to Uman after all.
 
When he got to Ben Gurion airport a few days before Rosh Hashanah, they stopped him at passport control and took him out to a special interrogation room, because he was listed as ‘dead’ on their computer database, and they thought he was using stolen documents. It took quite a few phone calls to the hospital that had treated him, and a few other places besides, before he could convince them he was actually still alive…
 
Every year when my husband goes to Uman, he hears some new, miraculous Rebbe Nachman story told first-hand, by the person who actually experienced it. Sometimes, it’s near death experiences, where the person in question is really on the verge of getting into some serious trouble in the Heavenly court for not taking Torah and mitzvot seriously enough while they were still alive.
 
But because that person had made even the smallest effort to get to Uman, to visit Rebbe Nachman’s grave, the Rebbe always came through for them as some sort of Heavenly advocate, at that most crucial time of their life (or rather, death), and he arranged for them to be given another chance.
 
Another time, my husband heard the most amazing story of a rabbi who was not a Breslever per se, but who’d been convinced to come to Uman for Rosh Hashanah by a holy Breslev friend of his. While he was praying by the grave, he heard a voice tell him: “atta efess” (‘you are nothing’). He looked around, couldn’t see anyone talking to him, and resumed praying. Again, the voice told him: ‘atta efess’. Once again, he looked around, couldn’t see anyone addressing him – even though he’d heard the voice very clearly, and just knew it was talking to him – and pushed it out of his mind.
 
A little later that same year, when he was on vacation with his children, the rabbi heard that same voice suddenly start talking to him while he was dozing off, and this time it asked him: “Where is your son, Moshe?”  He jumped up, went looking for his two year-old son Moshe – and found him floating face down in the pool of the hotel they were staying. A few more seconds, his son would’ve drowned.
 
In our modern times, it’s so fashionable to be cynical about everything, and not to believe anything we hear. We’ve all been played for fools too many times to take anything seriously. But Rebbe Nachman tells us that this is a mistake. He says that it’s better to be a fool than a cynical disbeliever, because at least a fool will also believe the truth when he hears it.

Every year when my husband (and others) come back from Uman with these amazing first-hand stories, I feel so grateful for being connected, in whatever small way, with the miraculous miracle factory that is Uman; with the wondrous Rebbe that is Rebbe Nachman; and with all the amazing people who often appear ‘crazy’ and ‘foolish’ to their more sophisticated peers, but who still believe the truth when they hear it. And today, that is no small achievement.