77.
May it find favour before You, Lord, God, God of our Fathers that You come to my help and, in Your bountiful loving-kindness merit me to break the craving for food completely. Let me eat and drink with great holiness and purity at the proper time in the proper amount, as You really desire. Merit me to draw upon myself the holy fear which comes at the time of eating. Then I will be able to sit at the table at meal time with great awe and fear of You. By this, merit us, through Your immense loving-kindness, to sweeten and nullify all kinds of anguish and suffering and all the harsh decrees that befall us and to all the Jewish people.
You know all the distress and suffering that occur to us, generally and individually, every day. Because of our very lowly minds it is hard for us to accept and deal with this suffering day by day. Have mercy on us, for Your Name’s sake. Help us from now on to arouse ourselves and draw upon ourselves Your sublime holiness. Let us draw upon ourselves real fear of Heaven so that it shows on our faces such that we won’t sin. And by this fear, especially at the time of eating, may we nullify or sweeten all the distress and suffering from over all Jews.
As a result, merit us to rise from one spiritual level to another in holiness until we reach the level of a truly holy man until we become totally merged in the aspect of spiritual man. Let us have holy speech at all times for, by this, one is defined as man. Merit us to the aspect of the Shechinah speaking from our throats. May the words of my mouth and the musings of my heart find favour before You, god; my Rock and Redeemer.
78.
(a) The great tzaddik also must be a simple person at times and to abstain from studying Torah and cease his holy perceptions for he has to deal with his bodily needs as well. If so, how does he draw vitality at those times for is it not so that the essence of life is the Torah. However, know that he draws vitality then from an aspect of the existence of the world from before Matan Torah. Certainly then also the Torah existed in reality for the Torah is eternal; but then the Torah that is included in the Ten Commandments unapparent and hidden within the inhabited world which itself was created through Ten Sayings. And the tzaddik, at the time that he abstains from the Torah, and is an aspect of a simple person, he receives his vitality from this aspect of before Matan Torah, that's to say, from the hidden Torah. By this, he gives vitality to all the simple people in the world, for all the simple people, even the wicked, and even, by distinction, other nations of the world, all receive their life-force only from the Torah which is the essence of life. But, the truth is that they are far away from the Torah, therefore they need the greatest simple person over them so that all of them will receive their life-force through him. Consequently, the great tzaddik is forced to descend and fall into simplicity to behave like a simple person for a period of time in which he draws vitality from the hidden Torah. By this he gives life-force to all the simple people in the world. Each person, according to how near he is to holiness and to the tzaddik, so he draws through him a higher level of life-force from the hidden Torah. So even someone who is a simple person, for example he cannot study Torah or he is in a place where he cannot study Torah, even so he has to strengthen himself even then with fear of G-d in any way that he can for everyone receives vitality from the hidden Torah through the great tzaddik who behaves with simplicity at times. (See inside).
(b) Even someone who has fallen a great deal, Heaven forbid, and who is placed in the lowest pit of Hell, Heaven preserve us, even so he still has great hope through the great, true tzaddik, for through him a person can receive life-force from the realm of holiness in any place wherever he is. Therefore, despair really doesn't exist in the world. However a person is, even if he has fallen to the place where he has fallen to, Heaven forbid, since he strengthens himself in whatever he can, he still has hope to return and come close to G-d. The main thing is "From the depths of Hell I cried out." Even a cry from the depths of Hell is never lost. A person should shout out to G-d at all times regardless of whatever happens until G-d looks down and sees from Heaven.
(c) Sophisticated wisdoms damage a person a great deal. Wise people become trapped in their own cleverness. We have to distance ourselves a lot from all kinds of wisdom that some people have. It seems to them that they know clever things in the service of G-d. Cleverness we don't need at all. The main thing is only purity and simplicity together with perfect faith in G-d and in the true tzaddikim. But in simplicity one also has to be careful to avoid being foolish. Nevertheless, cleverness we don't need at all. A person can come to great joy through his simplicity and faith. Happy is he who goes in the path of simplicity.
(d) We have to ask a lot from G-d to merit to come close to the true tzaddik. For happy is he who merits to come close to the true tzaddik while he is still alive. Happy is he and happy is his portion in life. The Evil One pays a lot of attention to this and tries to confuse the world. For the Jewish People are now very close to the Final Redemption. They now have great desire and yearnings towards the Holy One unlike any other previous generation. So the Evil One deceives us and establishes in the world many famous, false leaders. Also between the true tzaddikim he has introduced controversy such that no one knows where the truth is. Therefore we need to beseech G-d very much to merit to come close to the true tzaddik.
79.
By means of repentance a person merits to nullify time. For all the troubles, harsh decrees and foothold of the Other Side are only in an aspect of time. By this repentance we merit to hear the voice of holiness and to subdue the voice of the Other Side. This is an aspect of "When you are in distress….in the end of days" (Deut.4:30) – specifically in the end of days for this is an aspect of time. Then "You will turn to G-d, your Lord and listen to His voice" (ibid), that's to say, we will merit to return to G-d. By this we will merit to cancel time and all the troubles and to hear the voice of holiness. This is also an aspect of those mitzvot dependent on time; they are in order to raise the concept of time through their performance to the level of being above and beyond time.
80.
In earlier generations there were tzaddikim who wanted self-aggrandizement for the sake of Heaven. Whoever wanted to merit to self-aggrandizement was the leader of the generation. But, nowadays that the self-aggrandizement is for the sake of the person's own honour , the Sages established that no person should run after self-aggrandizement but rather he should flee from it.
81.
When a person studies Torah or performs a mitzvah with such joy that he dances with his feet because of the joy, through this all those who support the Torah financially are elevated. Similarly, this rectifies all the words of evil called 'foot' ('regel'), an aspect of what it says, "No slander ("regel") on his tongue." (Psalms,15:3). A person is also raised financially, for money is called 'regel', as it says, "All the property under their feet" (Deut.11:6). They also merit by this to have children who are also an aspect of 'foot', for 'a son is the thigh of the father' He also merits through this to faith which is also called 'foot' as the Sages said, "Habakook came and stood everything on one principle- a tzaddik lives by his faith"(Makkot,24). And similarly, all the things called 'foot' are elevated through dancing for joy.