כא

And in the matter of the desire of eating he also had a great battle and very great exertion before he broke it, because at first he did not tend at all to breaking the desire of eating as mentioned above. Afterwards he wanted to break this desire, and it was very, very difficult and heavy upon him. And it was so difficult for him to break the desire of eating, to the extent that it seemed to him that all desires he could break except for this desire of eating, and it seemed to him that this desire of eating must inevitably remain, because it is impossible to break it - so strong was the insurgents of this desire, and even still he strengthened himself and quashed his inclination and broke also this desire of eating, completely.

And the greatness of his holiness in the abstinence of the desire of eating was well-known to the eyes of all, because he did not eat at all, and also the little that he did eat was with very great necessity, and he needed to force himself with all his strength in order to eat a little, so that he would have some strength to live. And he said, that in the beginning he started to break the desire of eating, that is, that he forced himself and accustomed himself to eat less than what he ate originally, and when he got used to this, to eating less than before, he saw that he still has desire in this eating, even though that it is less than before - and he began again to break his desire and to eat even less than this, and so too afterwards he saw that also in this (smaller amount) he still has desire - and he ate yet less; and he conducted himself this way until his eating was very, very scant and diminutive in the utmost frugality and sparing which is impossible to explain. And afterwards he came to the resolution that even though his eating is very sparse, even still he still has desire in this little that he eats - and he strengthened himself and broke the desire even in this small amount, until he broke the desire of eating completely, and he withdrew from this desire completely in the utmost holiness, until he did not have any (bodily) desire, absolutely none at all.

And with all of this happening, that he was separating himself so much from eating, because of this he was not able to eat anymore at all, and apparently from his words, that afterwards he had the ability to eat in holiness without any desire whatsoever, even if he would eat a lot, however, he was unable to eat because of his habit, that he accustomed himself to eating very paltry and little.

And he said, that afterwards on the sea, when he traveled to the land of Israel, he saw then that he has no vitality from anything, so he forced himself to eat a little, and from then on he accustomed himself to eating a little; but before this he did not eat even such a diminutive consumption, because in reality even afterwards, after he was on the sea, his eating was also very, very paltry, and previously he did not eat even this scant amount.

And in the matter of his voyage to the land of Israel there is a lot to relate: the greatness of the enormous and very, very difficult suffering that he had going and returning, and the greatness of the exertions, and the miseeras nefesh (self sacrifice), and abundant impediments, that he had before he merited to come to the land of Israel, and all of this will be explained in its own small treatise further on, with the help of Hashem Yisburach, just a bit of its fringe but not all of it, because it is impossible to explain everything.