FROM "PSYCHO" TO RABBEINU

Before I did teshuvah, I used to be very fond of  "Psycho", which I considered one of the best and deepest movies of all time. There was one sentence in particular, said by the main character, that really struck the chord. After many years, I still remember it word for word:

"We, all of us, live in our own private traps, forever unable to get out. We fight, and tear, and claw - but only at the air, only at each other, and we never really budge an inch."

Unfortunately, this is the experience of many people in the secular world, not necessarily psychos. But what happens when a person merits to leave this world of loneliness, unhappiness, and alienation behind and to do teshuvah? I think this is perfectly expressed in Chapter 124 of Tehillim: "Our soul escaped like a bird from the hunters' trap; the trap broke, and we were saved."

This is already good enough, isn't it? Yet if a person is lucky enough to find Breslov and Rabbeinu, they merit to much, much more. The Hebrew word for "trap" is "פח". It has the same gematria as the word "נחל", as in "נחל נובע מקור חכמה" ("a flowing river, the source of wisdom"), which is Rabbeinu. And so it happens that one is replaced by the other. Instead of being in a trap, a person now finds themselves carried by a river. They can relax and trust the flow, feeling secure that Rabbeinu knows perfectly well where he is taking them. As long as they do their best to stay within the current (attached to Rabbeinu), everything is going to be alright.