What it Means to be a Yid! | Rabbi Yisroel Besser

There was a Rebbe, R’ Avraham Moshe of Peshischa. He was a big Tehillim Zugger, he said a lot of Tehillim. So the Rebbe of Vurka, R’ Yitzchak of Vurka, once met him and he was saying Tehillim, and he said: I have a question on a pasuk in Tehillim. The pasuk says in Kapital 88, we ask Hashem, Remove Your anger Take away Your anger from us, remove Your anger from us, stop being angry at us, Ribono shel Olam. And he says: Shouldn’t it say Remove Your anger from upon us? What's עמנו, us? Take off your anger with us? So the Peshischer answered him that there was a king, a very powerful king and a very moody king. And they knew that when the king got angry, there was no way to calm him down. But there was one trick that the wise advisors knew. The king had a בן יחיד, a little son, born after many years. He delighted him. Whenever the son came by, into the royal chambers, the king just smiled. And whatever the son did, just made the king happy. It put him in a totally different place. He found it hilarious. He found it endearing. The kid had all the charm in the world to him. He says: We ask the Ribono shel Olam, הפר כעסך You know what should remove Your anger? עמנו, with us, not from us. When you see a Yid, Ribono shel Olam, seeing a Yid be a Yid, that should be enough to make it. You should love us so much, Your love for us is so much that when You see a Yid, that alone should be enough to push away any anger. The Ba’al Shem Tov, there was a פריץ, a nobleman in the city and he was ill. And he was talking to the Ba’al Shem Tov about it. The Ba’al Shem Tov understood that the reason he was suffering this sickness was because he couldn't control his Yetzer Hara, his desires, his תאוות. The Ba’al Shem Tov told him different advices. After, the Rebbe, R’ Boruch’l of Medzhybizh, the grandson of the Ba’al Shem Tov, asked his grandfather: Zeydeh, Why didn't you tell him the truth that he should control his Yetzer Hara? Why did you tell him about this medicine or that medicine? Why didn’t you tell him how to do away with the illness, in the first place? So the Ba’al Shem Tov said: We could do that, but gey zog far a Goy vos meynt a Yid. Go tell a Goy, go explain to a non-Jew, vos meynt a Yid, what it means to be a Jew. He has no understanding of this whole idea that you could control your Yetzer Hara, you could rise above temptation. The sweet joy, the triumph, the ecstasy, of breaking your Yetzer Hara, he has no idea. The Rebbe, R’ Boruch’l, would say over the story and he would say, And ich zog, and I add, Gey zog far a Yid vos meynt a Yid. It's not only hard to explain to a Goy what a Jew is, it's hard to explain to a Jew what a Jew is. We ourselves don't even realize the power of a Jew. When we ask the Ribono shel Olam, הפר כעסך עמנו take off Your anger with us, with seeing a Yid, what Yid do we mean? We mean the Yid after Shavuos night learning? We mean the Yid by Ne’ila? No, no, no, no. We mean the Yid, every Yid, always, a Yid who walks through the marketplaces of life and tries and says: Ribono shel Olam, You want some things from me, so even though my eyes and my heart are pulling me this way and that, and it looks, for a moment, it looks so appealing, I know that You want something more from me and you want something higher for me, and I know that I'll feel better after it, too. That's the Yid, הפר כעסך עמנו, Yidden doing what Yidden do. That itself pushes away the anger. Every single one of us has such unlimited power to create רחמים, to create mercy, to create compassion in Shomayim, just by being Yidden.