Igrot Kodesh · Letter 9100

By the grace of Hashem,

7 Adar* 5726,
Brooklyn,

I greet and bless you,

I have duly received your letter[1], in which you also speak of your state of health and its improvement. May Hashem grant you a complete recovery, and may it come soon. This applies equally to the sadness you share with me. Indeed, a Jew in good health is necessarily joyful. Furthermore, we are in the month of Adar*, and from its Rosh Chodesh* we are commanded to increase joy[2]. Now, it is clear that the One Who gives the Torah*, when He issues a directive therein, grants beforehand the means to fulfill it. He also enables one to recognize that this directive has a very solid foundation. Doubtless, there is no need to say more to a person such as yourself.

You also allude to positive means and a positive objective. As you know[3], that which is the opposite of positive — or even simply forbidden — can in no way be done for the purpose of performing a Mitzvah*. In the words of our Sages*[4], this is called "a Mitzvah* that results from a transgression," and they employ very harsh language about this. There is, moreover, another concept that is often confused with the preceding one. It concerns the use of means that one would not have employed for oneself, but which, when it comes to influencing one's neighbor — meaning, means that are permissible but whose use depends on whether the context is for oneself or for another. The principle here is that everything that is permissible for one's own affairs may also be used to influence others; that is, anything one would be entitled to do for oneself, one is also entitled to do in order to influence others.

One can elaborate at length on what was said above, to provide an example that will make it clearer. Let us take a young man who grew up in an observant home from a young age, and who therefore knows, as part of the aleph-bet* of Jewish values, everything that this young man has acquired and received directly, at home, as something self-evident, in a certain sense without effort. Thus, he will be willing to forgo his moral pleasure of Shabbat* in order to prevent another Jew from committing a transgression punishable by stoning — Heaven forbid — or in order to teach him Torah*, for example.

The Gemara* rules on this, in tractate Baba Metzia* 85a, not only that such an activity is more important than studying at the Yeshiva* here, but also than study in the Heavenly Yeshiva*. With my blessing for good health, good spirits, and joy — as well as for a joyful Purim*,