Letter 146

The world is full of cries and groans and great and bitter sighs without measure — and all of them cry out: Money! And each and every one cries out with strange voices — as though he lacks more than anyone in the world — until they nearly expire their souls from the immensity of their bitterness. And they have nothing with which to give themselves life. And the essential vitality and the sweetening is the Tzadik — the foundation of the world — who sweetens at every moment, in every generation, the bitterness of the world. And certainly every single person — according to his closeness to the Tzadik and according to his faith in him — so his bitterness is sweetened even more.