#23 Shavuos-Greater Than Angels

Someone once came to the Bluzhover Rebbe zt’’l broken, & very down. This person had many troubles weighing on his shoulders & needed chizuk. The Bluzhover Rebbe told the individual the following parable.

Once, a king was strolling around his kingdom, enjoying himself. While strolling, he spotted a violinist wearing torn, shabby clothing playing the most beautiful music on a street corner. The king went over & stood there, enthralled by the gorgeous melody when suddenly, one of the strings on the violin snapped. The violinist took the string & tied it together, & started playing again, another beautiful piece. Again, the king’s breath was just taken away; he was there for hours, completely mesmerized by the beautiful music, when, once again, a string snapped. And the violinist took the string, reattached it, & started playing again.

A couple of months later, the king was preparing for his annual banquet, & told his servants, “You have to get me that violinist to play at my banquet! I want him to open up the ceremony.” So they went to the town where they had seen the violinist last, & sure enough, there he was playing beautiful music at that exact street corner. The servants brought the violinist to the king’s palace. He was dressed, however, in rags and torn shoes, & had long, unkempt hair.

“He can’t come to the banquet this way,” they said. So they gave him a haircut, & bought him new clothes & a pair of shoes. Then they noticed that his violin was broken, so they bought him a new, beautiful violin as well.

Finally, the time arrived & the king got up in front of the crowd & announced, “Now, I would like to introduce the most talented, wonderful musician!” & the violinist came up to the front & started playing a beautiful tune. As the king listened, he seemed distraught & finally said, “Stop! Stop! Where is my violinist, the one with the torn clothes, wild hair & torn shoes? The one with the damaged violin!” So his servants told him, “Your majesty! This is the same violinist! But we couldn’t bring him to your banquet looking the way he did, so we fixed him up a bit. Now he’s fit to play at your banquet!” To which the king replied, “You’ve got it all wrong! There are many great violinists that I could’ve invited. But I chose that violinist, the one with the ripped shoes & torn clothing, the one with the long wild hair, the one with the damaged violin, the one with the broken heart! He plays the most beautiful music!”

Said the Bluzhover Rebbe to this downtrodden man, “Hashem has a lot of malachim, who are perfect & play beautiful music. But Hashem says, ‘I didn’t give my Torah to malachim! I gave my Torah to people. I want the people who fall, & get back up again! I want the people who have challenges that are so painful, yet they don’t lose hope! Their strings may ‘snap,’ but they tie them back together, & play again!’ The music of us. It may be broken, but it’s beautiful for Him!

As we all know, on Shavuos, we read Megillas Rus. In Megillas Rus, we hear how Rus was beset by many challenges. First, she lost her husband, then she became poverty-stricken & lost everything. But in the end, she was zoche to have a great-grandson named David Hamelech. And who was David Hamelech? He was the one who composed Sefer Tehillim! The one who played the harp! He had so many challenges. His own family thought he was a mamzer, his father-in-law tried killing him, & his son rebelled against him. Yet through it all, he raised his voice in song, & thereby got closer to Hashem.

How does this connect to us? Although this Shavuos, we don’t have a husband staying up all night learning, & didn’t cook a whole milchig meal for our family, for right now, that’s not our job. Right now, the job Hashem wants from us is that we take our violin, which may not look so perfect; it may have a few broken strings, but with this violin, play the most beautiful melody!

Because the music that comes from a broken violin can be more melodious than music that comes from one that’s complete. The Torah wasn’t given to malachim; people can sometimes be greater than angels!