A Stunning Story from the Jewish Oral Tradition -- Every week, we experience so many unexpected, hidden gems on our Awakin calls. This past week, we had an absolutely stunning call on Becoming and Witnessing in These Tumultuous Times, with Rabbi Ariel Burger of The Witness Project and Cleary Vaughan-Lee of the Global Oneness Project. Full of deep insight and stories, the call was truly transporting and transformative for all. Rabbi Burger closed the call with a story from the Jewish oral tradition, and so he couldn't point to a source or written version of the story. But luckily we transcribed it :). You won't want to miss it. And you can hear his recitation of the story starting at 1:26:25 (near the end) of the video recording of the call.

Rabbi Ariel Burger: So this is a story about the Baal Shem Tov, the Master of the Good Name, the founder of the Hasidic movement in Eastern Europe, 250 years ago -- a mystic, a storyteller, a deep, deep master. And this is a story about loss and opportunity, and really it's a story about the power of yearning. So the Baal Shem Tov was famous for several things. One was that he would, on occasion, saddle up his wagon and his horses, and he had a wagon driver named Alexi who was very close with the Baal Shem Tov, but there was something strange about the way that he guided the horses when they were traveling -- he wouldn't sit facing forward, looking at the road, he would sit facing backwards looking at the Baal Shem Tov. And he would let the horses go wherever they wanted to go, because they always somehow ended up where they needed to go.

So on one Friday, which is getting close to Shabbat -- Friday night is the Sabbath -- so on one Friday, the Baal Shem Tov says to a bunch of his students, "Come with me. We need to go somewhere right away." They saddle up the wagon. Alexi gets on the wagon, sits facing backwards, looks at the Baal Shem Tov, gives the horses their hay, and the horses start running. And it was known that the horses could travel hundreds of miles in a very short period of time -- in a kind of mystical teleportation kind of way. And so they travel like this for several hours, and they arrive about an hour and a half before the Sabbath, at a little hut in the woods. They're in the middle of a forest. They've traveled for hours through the forest. There's nothing else around; there's a little hut. And they get off the wagon. The Baal Shem Tov says to his students, "Listen, I need you to promise me -- no matter what happens, you're not going to ask any questions, and no matter what happens, you're not going to tell anyone that I'm the Baal Shem Tov." And they promise.

He knocks on the door. A very poor man opens the door. He's wearing rags. Behind him are a bunch of children crawling around, and it's a mess. And the man says, "can I help you?" And the Baal Shem Tov says, "We need a place to stay for the Sabbath. And it's getting late. There's nowhere else we can go. We need to stay with you." And the man, who is very kindhearted although poor -- he says, "okay, of course you can stay with us. We don't have very much. But you're welcome to everything we have." He sets them up in the stable with some comfortable straw, which is the best thing they had to offer.

And then the man runs into the kitchen where his wife is frantically preparing for the Sabbath meal already, and it's late. And he says to her, "Honey, listen, I don't know how to tell you this, but we have like 12 guests for the Sabbath." And his wife says, "well, there's no way we can feed them. You know, all we have for the Sabbath -- we have a little bit of the bread that I made (maybe it was sourdough). And all we have is milk from the cow and eggs from the chicken. That's all we have." So they think a little bit, and she says, "you know, it's really important to welcome guests and we have to have faith in God. So I want you to go prepare the chicken. I'll make a chicken soup.`" He says, "it's our only chicken, we're not gonna have eggs for the children ever again." She says, "I know, but it's really important to welcome guests."

So he goes and prepares the chicken. They start to make ... she makes the chicken soup and she realizes that's enough for Friday night dinner, but there's not enough food for the Sabbath day. And there are three meals of the Sabbath: it's Friday night, Sabbath morning, Saturday afternoon. So she said, "You know, we're going to have to prepare the cow." He says, "Betsy?! She's been our source of milk and our friend a long time." She said, "I know. It's heartbreaking, but it's really important to welcome guests." So with a broken heart and a lot of fear in his heart, he prepares the cow, and there's enough food for Shabbat.

The Baal Shem Tov, with all of his students -- they come into the house, they light the candle. The owner of the house, the poor man, blesses the wine, blesses the Sabbath day. They wash their hands, they eat the bread, and the table is set with food. And the Baal Shem Tov leans over, and he grabs the pot of chicken soup, and he guzzles the whole thing down -- in one shot! And his students are sitting there aghast. They can't believe it. "This is our master? This is the man we've been following? How can he do this to this poor family?" But they remember they promised not to say anything. They promised not to ask any questions and they promised not to reveal that he's the Baal Shem Tov. So they're quiet.

And the poor man and his wife look at each other and they don't say a word. They all go to sleep hungry. The next day they come to the second Sabbath meal, and now there's a bunch of other food. The Baal Shem Tov grabs it all and guzzles it all down. And his students are aghast; they cannot believe what is happening. "What is happening? Our master turns out to be a shmendrik and a glutton! How can we be following such a man?" And the poor man and his wife don't say anything because honoring the guests and welcoming the guests is the most important thing to them. And they're able to feed their kids with the bread and a little salt so they're not starving, but it's very, very tough.

It gets to the third meal and it's the last of the food that his poor family owns. And they sit down at the table and the Baal Shem Tov scoops it all up and eats it all before you can say "Baal Shem Tov" and there's nothing left. And then the Baal Shem Tov makes Havdalah, which is the blessing that ends the Sabbath. He says to his students, "All right, let's go." They get on the wagon and they leave, and the students will not even look at him. They're just destroyed, but they promised -- they didn't say anything. They have a little bit of faith in him still, but they can barely live with their questions about what's just happened. They start to say, "Rebbe Master. What was that all about?" He says, "Sh, don't say anything." They go back home.

Saturday night, the poor man looks around. There's nothing left. The pantry is empty. There's no cow, there's no chicken. There's nothing left. He goes out into the woods and he starts crying. How am I going to feed my family? And he starts praying, "Creator of the Universe, you provide for everyone and everything. If you want to, you can provide for us too. We have nothing left. We have nothing left." And he spends the whole night crying, crying from the bottom of his heart.

At dawn, he hears footsteps in the woods. And a man comes stumbling, clearly drunk, into the clearing where he has been praying. And the man says to him, "You know, nobody believes me, nobody believes me." And the poor man says, "What do you mean? Nobody believes you about what?" He says, "Nobody believes me that I'm secretly a rich man, and that I buried a treasure in these woods. Nobody believes me." And the poor man, being kind of heart, says, "I believe you. Tell me your story." And he tells him his story, which is for another time. And he shows him where the treasure is buried under a tree. And he says, "You know, when I leave the world, you can have it because you're the only person who ever listened to my story! You're the only person who was ever nice to me! You can have the treasure." And he leaves.

The next day, the poor man goes into town. It's a long journey, and he comes into town to maybe gather some charity, collect some money for his family. And he sees there's a big commotion in the synagogue. He goes to the synagogue and he asks, "what's the big commotion?" They tell him, "You know, Yankula, who was our town drunk, passed away this morning." And he goes to the funeral and he realizes that's the man who spoke to him in the woods. And he thinks, "could it be?" He goes back to the woods. He remembers where the tree is. He digs, and sure enough, there's a treasure. And Yankula left it to him. So he has a treasure.

Six months later, a well-appointed wagon pulls into the town of the Baal Shem Tov, and there's a rich couple and their children. And they came on a tour. They're visiting masters, holy masters, across that area of Eastern Europe. And they want to visit the Holy Baal Shem Tov. They walk into the Baal Shem Tov's court and they almost faint. They realize that the Baal Shem Tov was their Sabbath guest, and the Baal Shem Tov of course recognizes them.

So now we come to the heart of the story. The students are watching. They see all of this; they recognize the couple -- the poor couple. The Baal Shem Tov ate them out of house and home, and now they're rich and they're doing good things with their wealth. It's not getting to their head. They're very generous, and very kind still, and they really still care about welcoming guests, and they're sharing their money and their wealth, wherever they go. And the students say to the Baal Shem Tov, "Rebbe, can you tell us now what was happening? What was happening? Why did you go to their house and eat all of their food?"

And the Baal Shem Tov says to them, "You know, in heaven, they wanted to give this couple all the wealth in the world. They knew in heaven that this couple, this family, was meant to be wealthy, that they would use their wealth for kindness, for generosity, for compassion, to help many, many people. There was just one problem. The couple were so kindhearted and so content with what they had, but they never prayed for wealth. They never needed their need. They never longed for their longing. They never yearned for what they yearned for. They never allowed themselves to feel the pain of absence, of lack. And I knew that the gateways of heaven were open, but the channel down to earth was closed, because in order to receive blessings, you have to yearn for it. You have to have your heart broken open. And so it was my job. It wasn't an easy job, but it was my job to go and break their heart -- to go and take away the last of what they had. Because I knew that then, there was a chance that their yearning and their heartbreak would open the Gates of Heaven and the channels so they could receive what they were meant to receive for the benefit of all."

And I love this story because we're living in a time of a lot of heartbreak, and we're living in a time with a lot of pain, and we're living in a time with a lot of lack -- a lack of justice and kindness and human connection, and many of the things that we've been talking about in this beautiful conversation. We're living in a time of a lot of lack, and that can shut us down and it can cause us to numb out. And it can cause us to put our armor up. If we're lucky, if we're wise, if we're educated, and if we listen to the story, we will go out to the forest and we will cry our hearts out for the world. And that yearning and that longing is the great hope, because I believe that in heaven, they want to give us all the blessings in the world. I believe that they want us to have peace and joy and connection, and it's just up to us to build a vessel for it and to open the channels.

So I bless all of you that when you feel your heart breaking open, you take advantage of that moment. Put it into words, put it into art, put it into music or poetry, find a way of expressing it. Don't run away from it. Don't turn away from it. Belonging is what can save us.