My rebbe told over a story that happened with his father. I'm a little fuzzy on the details of the setting, but it goes something like this. My Rebbe's father was traveling (in Russia) and he stopped in some beis medrash to get warm. Now, it happens to be, my rebbe told us, that there was a certain niggun used while learning Gemara (my Rebbe referred to it as the "Amar Abayei Niggun"). Some bochurim were learning there, and in the corner sat a man, not learning, who remarked to himself, ""it hurts!" My Rebbe's father asked the fellow what was wrong. He responded by introducing himself; as it turned out, this man was a well-known ilui who had gone off the derech. He said that hearing that niggun of the bochurim learning tore him up inside. Whenever he would do an aveirah, right before doing it, he would hear that niggun in his head, and it would take away all the flavor of the aveirah. - ע"כ
The connection between our neshamos and the Torah runs deep. Deeper than we can understand. Some may try to sever it, chas v'shalom, but it is always there. The Zohar says that Hashem, Bnei Yisrael, and the Torah are all one. This is too deep for me to understand properly, but we can certainly appreciate the deep connection that exists. Why is it that people who grew completely irreligious, even violently anti-semitic, simply discover that they are Jewish, and then become inspired to reconnect to Torah in a strong way for no apparent reason? What ignites this flame? The embers of Torah are always there within us, our neshamos are intertwined with it, and as such, bound up the Ribbono Shel Olam as well. Sometimes, the wires get a a little dusty and we can't see them, but all we have to do is brush off the shmutz.
Here's a quote from a NYTimes article from a couple of years ago. I happened to be in Poland the week right before this article was published and saw this man in the Warsaw shul.
This all reminds me of the following Reb Shlomo story:“I went to my parents and said, ‘What the hell’? Imagine, I was a neo-Nazi and heard this news? I couldn’t look in the mirror for weeks,” he said. “My parents were the typical offspring of Jewish survivors of the war, who decided to conceal their Jewish identity to try and protect their family.”Shaken by his own discovery, Pawel said he spent weeks of cloistered and tortured reflection but was finally overcome by a strong desire to become Jewish, even Orthodox. He acknowledged that he was drawn to extremes. He said his transformation was arduous, akin to being reborn. He even forced himself to reread “Mein Kampf” but could not get to the end because he felt physically repulsed.“When I asked a rabbi, ‘Why do I feel this way?’ he replied, ‘The sleeping souls of your ancestors are calling out to you.’ ”
