Rabbi Nachman told a parable illustrating the importance of speaking to people about the service of G-d.

There was once a very rich man who possessed countless wealth. He made an announcement that anyone who needed to borrow money should come to him and he would give him a loan. Needless to say, large numbers of people were only too eager to take up his offer, and they came along and borrowed money. The rich man had a notebook in which he kept a record of all the loans he gave. One day, he picked up the notebook and started glancing through it. He saw that he had given out enormous sums of money in loans and not a single person had bothered to come to pay back their debts. Naturally, he was very angry and upset.

Among the people who had borrowed money was a certain man who had lost the money in an unsuccessful business venture. He had nothing to pay his debt with. It troubled him greatly that he was unable to pay, and he decided that the least he could do was to go in person to the rich man and explain the whole problem and that it was not his fault and so on. Accordingly, the debtor came to the rich man and started explaining the whole story of how he had received a loan from him, but when the time came to repay the debt, he was unable to do so because he had lost the money. He had no idea what to do.

The rich man replied, "What do I care about the money you owe? Of what importance is this small sum you owe me, whether you pay it or not, compared with the total sum of al the loans, which runs into tens of thousands? What I want you to do is to go to all the people who borrowed money from me and ask them for the money. Remind them how much they owe me and ask them why they don't settle with me. Even if they don't pay everything, if each one would just pay back a small part of his debt, that alone would come to thousands of times more than the entire sum you yourself owe."

The meaning of the story is self-evident.


from Tzaddik

 


(C) Breslov Research Institute


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