קב.

To the honor of the President of Israel — my heart and my flesh — Mr.

S.Z. Shazar To the honor of the President of Israel — my heart and my flesh — Mr. S.Z. Shazar, whose glory and whose praise grows ever greater — and of whom they say there is none as understanding and as wise as he — who has set his heart to come to the treasure of truth. And all his desire and his longing is to bring this truth into the entire world. Blessing and life and peace. There was a King's Son who was wise and loved wisdom greatly, and he had great sages with him. And anyone who came to him with some matter of wisdom was held in very great esteem by him, and he would give them honor and wealth for the sake of wisdom — to each one according to his wish: whoever wanted money, he gave him money; whoever wanted honor, he gave him honor — all for the sake of wisdom. And because wisdom was so prized by him, they all took themselves to wisdom, and the entire country engaged in wisdoms — this one wanted money so that he would receive money through it, and that one wanted esteem and honor.

And because they all engaged only in wisdoms, they therefore forgot in that country the arts of war — for they were all engaged in wisdoms, until all the inhabitants of that country were great sages, to the point where the least of that country would be a greater sage than all others in another country. And the sages of that country were exceedingly great and exceptionally profound sages — and there was great depth and subtlety in the wisdom of those sages. And because of the wisdoms, the sages of that country became heretics — and they drew the aforementioned King's Son also to their opinion, and he became a heretic as well. And the King's Son — because there was good within him, for he was born with good and had good and upright qualities — would sometimes remember where he stood in the world and what he was doing, etc.

And he would groan and sigh over this — over having fallen into such confusions and having strayed so far — and he would sigh deeply. But the moment he would begin to use his intellect, the aforementioned heretical wisdoms would return and grow strong within him. And so it was many times — he would remember where he stood in the world, etc., and he would groan and sigh. And the moment he began to use his intellect, the aforementioned heresy would return and grow strong within him! [The following two paragraphs are a continuation of the letter, being the same passage Saba sent earlier in Letter 55 — here sent again deliberately to Shazar:] There are people who engage extensively only in wisdoms — and most of the time their intention in this is only for the vanities of this world, namely for esteem and honor or money and the like. And because they engage only in wisdoms, through this they entirely forget the arts of war — meaning how to fight the great battle that a person must fight in this world, which is the battle against the evil inclination.

And sometimes they come to complete heresy through the wisdoms. The transcriber Yisroel Dov Odesser נ נח נחמ נחמן מאומן

Israel Dov Odesser