Chapter 26: The Wrestler Who Must Be Joyful

The first twenty-five chapters showed that the G‑dly soul can always win. Now comes the fine print: all of it depends on joy. A stronger wrestler can still be thrown if he is lazy and heavy, because his strength never comes out. The G‑dly soul is the stronger one, since a little light of holiness drives away much darkness, but a sad, heavy heart keeps that strength locked inside.

Laziness and heaviness, the text says, come from sadness and from a heart “dulled like a stone” that cannot feel. They are symptoms, so the cure is to restore joy and an open heart, and zerizus follows. The coming chapters deal with sadness, then with the dulled heart, and then with reaching real joy.

A note for today: this is about the ordinary heaviness everyone knows. Clinical depression is an illness, and needs proper professional treatment.

The verse seems to praise sadness, but the wording says “profit will come” from it. No one speaks that way about something good in itself. So sadness has no value of its own; its worth is only in what it leads to.

It leads to joy. A person’s sins build an “iron wall” between him and his Father in Heaven. A true, bitter sadness over them, with a broken heart, breaks that wall; as the Zohar reads it, a broken heart breaks the spirit of impurity. Then he is close again, and the psalm’s opening comes true: “Let me hear joy and gladness.” Two conditions are already here: the sadness must be true, and it must come at set times.

Tikkun Chatzos is a midnight prayer of mourning, followed by learning until morning. Psalm 51 bridges them: it starts with a broken heart and ends with joy, so the learning is joyful, not heavy.

And this joy is deeper than before. The Zohar asks why the wisest of men had to tell us that light is better than darkness, and answers: he meant light that comes out of darkness. Just as darkness adds to our sense of light, the sadness that came first adds strength to the joy that follows.

The verse in Deuteronomy shows how much joy matters. Its plain sense: you did not serve G‑d when you had “an abundance of everything”. The Arizal reads it as “more than an abundance”: your joy in serving G‑d was not greater than your joy in having everything. Serving G‑d is meant to be a person’s greatest joy. One way to understand the severity: lack of joy is the root. Without it there is no strength for the struggle.

Now the how. The first weight on the heart is what happens to us: children, health, a living. The Mishnah says to bless G‑d for bad news as for good. The words differ, but the Gemara says the acceptance is the same: with joy, because this too is good.

Then why does it look bad? Good from the “revealed world” comes from G‑d as He reaches out to the world, and we see it as good. Good from the “hidden world”, the yud and hei of the Name, comes from a higher, more inward level (in Chassidus these letters stand for G‑d’s wisdom and understanding). It is too high for us to take in, so it reaches us looking dark.

To picture it: a parent can give a five-year-old a lollipop, or a savings certificate worth a fortune when he grows up. The child wants the lollipop. A kindness given on the parent’s level is beyond the child, and sometimes it even hurts.

This does not make pain stop hurting, or forbid grief. It takes away the sadness on top of the pain: the despair and the sense of injustice. And we still pray for good that we can see.

Why are they called “those who love Him”? Their joy shows what they love. A person who wants closeness to G‑d more than comfort, even more than life, can be glad of whatever brings him closer, and the hidden world is where that closeness is greatest. This hidden good comes from a higher place.

The reward fits. The sun is now in a sheath; we can bear its light only because it is covered. In the time to come the cover will be removed and the hidden world will shine openly, without pain. Those who were willing to sit in its shadow here are the ones on whom it will shine. It is the “shadow of wisdom” because the hidden world is G‑d’s wisdom, and here it casts only a shadow.

These are words to say to oneself. For someone else in pain, humility and simply being there help more than explanations.

Now the hardest kind: sadness over what I have done. “This too is for the good” does not apply, because a sin is truly bad. Still, this sadness must be dealt with, and “find ways in his soul” admits that it is not easy.

During prayer and study, the reason is simple: they need joy. But someone driving, shopping or working who suddenly feels low about his spiritual state thinks it is honesty. The Alter Rebbe calls it a trick. Real sadness over sin comes from love and fear of G‑d, which come from prayer and reflection, not out of nowhere in the middle of a deal.

Why would the yetzer want this? A sad person looks for relief, and the quickest relief is a craving; and one who feels worthless thinks, “What does it matter what I do?” The force that pulls toward sin puts on holy clothing and says, “Look how low you are.”

A sudden thought like “I want to come closer to G‑d” is different. That is the soul, and it lifts a person up.

The thought may be true. The answer is: not now. “You may have a point, and I will deal with you, but not while I am praying, learning or working.” A person must be in charge of his sadness, and knowing it has its own time makes it easier to set aside.

At that time he should think not about how bad he is, but about the greatness of G‑d against Whom he sinned. Remorse about oneself leaves a person lower than he started. Remorse about his bond with G‑d breaks the heart in a living way. That is “bitterness”: an active pain that wants to change, not a resigned depression.

“Elsewhere” is Iggeres HaTeshuvah (chapters 7 and 11), which speaks of times like the bedtime Shema or the midnight prayer. Then the session ends. The sadness goes, with full faith that G‑d has forgiven, even a sin repeated many times. That certainty is the true joy the chapter began with. Remorse is not made smaller; it is put in its place, and it leads to joy.