Once I was at my father's house and garden in Jerusalem, when Passover eve fell on Shabbat, I went to pray the Shabbat mincha prayer in the Amshinov Hasidic synagogue, I came and saw that there was no minyan and then I saw some friends take out a Torah scroll and go read in the other room, so I ran :
"Say, have you not heard the reading of the Torah?"
I answered "no"
"Are you sure?" He asks
I said "I did not hear"
And he laughs, laughs and then he says "of dawn"
A quarter of an hour before sunset !!!
Then there was the Passover Seder, we finished late and I was already awake until the morning and I decided to go and pray the Vatikin prayer. I come to Vatikin in Amshinov and I see a long line of Hasidim, I see that there is a large quorum of Vatikin, but I see that they do not enter the Beit Midrash. Where are they going at five in the morning? - Make the order, what do you mean? Passover Seder!!!
(Apparently it's midnight ... I do not know, maybe next night's midnight)
One has to grasp what a mitzvah is, it is a supreme thing in the sublime. It's very hard because we do not feel anything. Even the most logical commandments, too, belong to the commandments that even though we seem to understand their taste and logic, are beyond what a person is capable of achieving in his mind and belong to the secret.
It works in us, it is the connection, the fuel for divine devotion. It is a life of vitality.
Like rowing in a stormy sea and gouache and we lost the oars and suddenly we are handed some rope whose grip advances us to the goal, keeping the mitzvos, studying the Torah - that is the rope. By attraction we get closer to the goal and it works in us in reality.
Adherence to the good, adherence to morality, adherence to the depths of the inner truth of reality - this is the commandment.
Along the way, there are also many family, social, community and psychological choppers.
Rabbi Eli Horowitz
