Shifting the Heavenly Seats | Rabbi Avraham Schorr

There’s a story told that the heilige Belzer Rav, the Sar Shalom, was very sick. And they sent a messenger to one of the צדיקי הדור, Rabbi Yitzchak of Neshchiz, to pray for him. And he said that in the heavenly court, they took away one of the judges, and he has to pass on, to fill that person's place. The messenger had a question. In this world, there could be such a thing that there's a place missing on a בית דין. A person passes away, a person becomes sick. But in the heavenly court, how can it be that a person could be gone from the heavenly court? And the Neshchizer answered him, that this person in the heavenly court had a great-great-great grandchild, that did something wrong, and that flaw of that person in this world that did something wrong reached above to heaven and caused that that person should be removed from the heavenly court. On the word וימאן there’s a Shalsheles. What is the meaning of a Shalsheles? There’s a Shalsheles that one can look at the generations that will come out of him. But the Shalsheles is on top. Realize from who you come. Realize that you have grandparents and great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents that are sitting above in heaven. And what you do in this world affects them above. Nobody wants to take a grandparent or a great-grandparent and cause him to be lowered in heaven. So when a person has a Nisayon in this world, and he has to be able to say וימאן, remember that what you do here in this world is not only in this world, it reaches the worlds above. It reaches your parents, your grandparents. How will you face them after 120, if because of you, they had to be removed from where they are and be lowered? That is a strength that gives a person the ability to say no, to realize that his actions, his Nisyonos, are not only between him and HaKadosh Baruch Hu, are not only his own actions, but his actions touch generations and generations above him. And then he has the strength to look at that Shalsheles and to say וימאן.