Whose Avodah Is Better

When he was still a young man living in his father's home, Rav Yitzchok used to fast and afflict himself, depriving himself of sleep in the hope of serving Hashem better. He would secretly give his daily food to the servants and fast until nightfall. He kept this up for one entire year.

That year, on Yom Kippur night, as he stood before his father, Rav Yechiel Michel of Zlotchov, he was so overcome with fatigue that he fell asleep on his feet and had a vision. In it he wandered the heavenly palaces from chamber to chamber. There he saw that his own avodah, his lack of sleep, his deprivation and his fasting, had an unwholesome stench. But when he looked into his father's beautiful chamber and saw his father's avodah, all the sleep his father slept, the food he ate and the drink he drank, Rav Yechiel Michel smelled like fragrant flowers and glowed with splendor.

When he awoke from the vision, his father, the tzaddik Rav Yechiel Michel of Zlotchov, turned to him and said, "So whose way of serving Hashem is better, mine or yours? My eating and sleeping, or your fasting and afflictions?"