One day Besht asked one of the older students, Wolf Kitsis, to blow a shofar (ram's horn) on Rosh Hashanah. And to make it easier for him to concentrate while performing this ritual, Besht advised him to study the Kabbalistic kavvanot associated with the shofar. Wolf Kitsis plunged headlong into the study, making numerous extracts in order to review them before the action itself and, therefore, become even more confirmed in his pious intention.
The day of the holiday came, and Wolf began to look for his notes, but they disappeared to God knows where. And that’s not the worst part: out of excitement, he completely forgot everything he had read about. I couldn’t remember a single kavvana. But there was nothing to do - and he, appearing before the meeting, with an empty head and a contrite heart, began to blow the shofar.
At the end of the davvenen (worship), Besht turned to the student and exclaimed:
- Yesher koah! Never before have I heard such inspired sounds of a shofar!
“But, teacher,” Wolf Kitsis was amazed, “I forgot everything I taught the day before, and blew the shofar without a single kavvan in my head.” Only with the humility of a man who knows that he knows nothing!
“My dear Wolf,” Besht said with a smile, “in the palaces of the kings of the earth there are many chambers, and each of them opens with its own key. But if a person has a simple ax, it will fit into any. If this happens with earthly kings, then even more so with the King of kings. Kavvanot are the keys to the chambers, but not a single door can resist a person with a humble heart.
Commentary by Rami Shapiro What is this ax that no castle can resist? Broken heart. When you realize that the necessary keys cannot be found, that all your spiritual efforts only served as an aid to the cunning “I” and therefore you cannot enter the chambers of Awakening, your heart breaks into pieces. And then all the castles crumble to dust and the doors open.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru