Every Year, A Jewish Villager Used To Pray In The Synagogue Of The Baal Shem Tov For Yom Kippur. His

Every year, a Jewish villager used to pray in the synagogue of the Baal Shem Tov for Yom Kippur. His son had a disability and couldn’t learn the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, much less the prayers and the blessings. When his son was old enough to fast, his father took him to synagogue, so he too could observe the Day of Atonement. The young man had a flute that he loved to play. He used to play it all the time when he sat in the fields, looking after his father’s sheep. He didn’t actually play any tunes, but he loved to blow his flute to make sounds. One day, without his father’s knowledge, he slipped his flute into his pocket to take to synagogue. The young man sat through the Yom Kippur service, all through the evening and then the next morning. He wasn’t able to recite the prayers, but he heard the prayers of the Baal Shem Tov and the rest of the community, and they stirred his heart. He felt a powerful urge to do something for God. He said to his father, “I brought my flute, and I want to blow it!” His father hushed him, afraid that his son would suddenly cause a disturbance in the middle of the prayers on this holy day. “Don’t you dare,” he said. So the young man restrained himself. During the prayers that afternoon, he begged his father again, “Please let me blow my flute!” His father became angry and warned him sternly against it. Once again, he restrained himself. But in the final moments of the final prayer, when the gates are just about to close on the holiest day of the Jewish year, the young man could no longer hold back. He pulled out his flute and blew a long, powerful note. The people in the congregation were startled. They cringed when they heard the discordant sound. They stared at the young man, casting disapproving looks at him and frowning at his father. But the Baal Shem Tov continued praying, undisturbed. When he concluded his prayers, his disciples asked him about the boy and the flute. The Baal Shem Tov said, “That boy’s flute raised all our prayers to heaven. The holy spark in his soul was burning within him like a fire. With all the power of his longing, he blew his flute from the depths of his heart, without any other motive but for God alone.” For Jewish tradition teaches, “Above all else, God desires the heart.”

Adapted from Yitzhak Buxbaum, The Light and Fire of the Baal Shem Tov