The Voice beside Him: Keeping Every Practice
How can a person keep a long list of practices without letting any of them slip? R’ Elimelech asks him to imagine someone standing right beside him, and promises that the habit leads somewhere unexpected. Where does the voice beside him finally come from?
- Shir HaShirim 8:6. The last word, shalhevesyah, ends in the Divine Name Yah, which the print sets apart (י״ה): the flame of this awakening is Hashem's own. ↩
Item 12 is a practice for keeping all the others. A person should always picture, and above all while reading the Tzetel Katan, a man standing right beside him and rousing him with a great, thundering voice to keep every practice, letting not even the smallest detail fall. The urging begins outside him, in his imagination. But he promises that with habit a great awakening will come from the person’s own soul, “flashes of fire, a flame of Yah.” In his scheme, this is how the little note becomes alive: an imagined call from without trains the soul until the fire rises from within.
Picture a voice beside you loudly urging you to keep every practice, down to the smallest detail, for R' Elimelech promises that with habit the awakening will come from your own soul, like flashes of fire.
Learn this in the merit of Rebbe Elimelech of Lizhensk. His yahrzeit and life ›
English translation, notes and summaries © Zechusam.