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On the night of Simhat Torah 5575 [1814], the Seer closeted himself in his room on the second story of his home. The one window overlooking the wide Jewish street was open; it was very near to the…
In a dream, in a night vision, while [I was] asleep upon [my] bed during my imprisonment, a voice called in my ears. The voice was the voice of Jacob, like the voice of my father, may his memory be…
One moment of silence, please. If you please. I
would like to say something. He walked
right past me. I could have touched the hem
of his mantle. I did not touch it. Who could have
known what I did…
In the year 5332 [1572], we went out in the fields and we passed the grave of a gentile that was more than a thousand years old. His Animus was seen on his tombstone and he tried to harm me and kill…
It happened one day that Sabbatai Zevi returned from Egypt with his wife. As he entered Gaza, the prophet Nathan cried out with a loud voice: “This is the saviour of Israel, the messiah of the God of…
And the sages have stated, in regard to the reward of those who serve the Almighty and carry out His will in this world, in Song of Songs Rabbah 6:8: Anyone who occupies himself with the Torah in this…
Three Idlers [finish chanting]:Why, oh why,Did the soul descendFrom the highest heightTo the deepest end?The greatest fallContains the upward flight.[A long pause. All three sit motionless, lost in…
That year my wife, Hannah, became extremely ill and one Sabbath she was in a coma and close to death. At night, at the conclusion of the Sabbath, we approached her to witness the departure of the…
When I heard that Isaac Kornfeld, a man of piety and brains, had hanged himself in the public park, I put a token in the subway stile and journeyed out to see the tree. [ . . . ][ . . . ] On the day…
Rabbi Eleazar opened the palm of his hand
and let the fertile, virgin earth escape
He took pure water from the mountain spring
recited the two hundred and twenty-one alphabetical combinations
and…