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My beloved son — may he live. [Yitzchok]

Receive the enclosed letter here — and send it at once by post [פָּאשְׂט — the postal service, from the Slavic/German Post] — and seal it properly. For I did not seal it myself — so that you can read the letter I wrote to Rabbi Ephraim. For every word that Hashem sends under my pen [כָּל דִּבּוּר שֶׁהַשֵּׁם יִתְבָּרַךְ שׁוֹלֵחַ תַּחַת קֻלְמוֹסִי — kulmosi: my pen, from the Aramaic/Greek kalamos — the reed pen. The word appears throughout the Talmud and kabbalistic literature as the instrument through which divine speech passes into writing. The phrase tachas kulmosi — under my pen — is a recurring formula in these letters (cf. also Letter 66) expressing that the pen is merely the channel: Hashem speaks, the pen receives. Reb Nussun does not claim the words as his own composition but as transmitted through him] in matters concerning us is very much needed by each and every person.

For certainly everyone needs to fulfil what our Rebbe, of blessed memory, warned — to always strengthen oneself. And he said explicitly [Sichot HaRan 302]: the essential thing is "from the belly of She'ol I cried out" [מִבֶּטֶן שְׁאוֹל שִׁוַּעְתִּי — Yonah 2:3: the cry of Yonah from the depths of the great fish. Rebbe Nachman in Sichot HaRan 302 teaches that this verse is the model for prayer from any depth: however low one has fallen — even from the belly of She'ol — one can still cry out to Hashem. The verse is the assurance that the prayer from the abyss reaches Him].

And every person falls so much in their mind that it seems to them as if this was not said about them — as if they have descended more than the belly of She'ol, G-d forbid — and as if they no longer have the strength to cry out — and as if they have already cried out very much and it does not help them — and many other rejections [d'chiyyos] like these. And in truth it is not so — for I know the truth that he, of blessed memory, directed all his words explicitly also at you — and at each and every person. And not only can they cry out always — however it is, however it is — also according to his holy and sweet and precious and wondrous and wholehearted words — in the ultimate truth of their depth of wholehearted simplicity — one can also gladden oneself at every time — and seize the sorrow and the sigh and turn it to joy [לַחֲטֹף הַיָּגוֹן וַאֲנָחָה לְהָפְכוֹ לְשִׂמְחָה — to seize the sorrow and sigh and flip it to joy. The verb chatof — to snatch urgently — runs throughout these letters for grabbing Torah and prayer before the moment passes. Here it is applied to sorrow itself: snatch it before it takes hold, and turn it to its opposite]. And may Hashem Yisborach strengthen your heart to walk in his holy ways always — and may the words of his holy Torah never depart from our mouths or from our children's mouths or from our children's children's mouths forever [וְלֹא יָמוּשׁוּ דִּבְרֵי תּוֹרָתוֹ הַקְּדוֹשָׁה מִפִּינוּ — echoing Yehoshua 1:8: "this book of the Torah shall not depart from your mouth"; and the Shabbos evening prayer: "may the words of Torah not depart from our mouths or from our children's mouths or from our children's children's mouths — from now and forever." Reb Nussun applies both the biblical promise to Yehoshua and the Shabbos liturgy to the specific words of Rebbe Nachman's Torah]. The words of your father. Nussun of Breslov.

[Hebrew: נָתָן מִבְּרֶסְלֶב...]