6. Guard yourself from forbidden foods! “You will be defiled by them” (Lev. 11:43). Read this as, “You will be blocked by them.” ^{6 6} Based on b. Yoma 39a. Forbidden foods defile the body and soul; forbidden foods create vile and impure blood in the human body. If some of today’s Jewish youth have more of a tendency now than in the past to go toward evil, this is mainly an outcome of not protecting themselves against forbidden foods. Be careful, my brother, of forbidden foods, and thus you will save yourself from impurity, evil, and harmfulness.

7. Sanctify your Shabbat! The Sabbath is not just an ordinary commandment, but the basic foundation. One who weakens the Sabbath, Heaven forbid, desecrates the God of Israel. A person who doesn’t sanctify the Sabbath is like one who worships idols. “Keep” and “remember,” the single utterance the one God spoke. ^{7 7} From Lekha Dodi, based on b. Rosh ha-Shanah 27a. Unite with the holiness of the Sabbath, and in this way, commune with the blessed Holy One. The Sabbath, however, must be kept not only on the outside, but also within: pray, learn, truly evaluate your soul, concentrate on holy and pure matters. Shabbat upholds the entire Jewish nation. The Community of Israel and Shabbat are truly a pair, and in them resides the Holy Ancient of Days.

8. Keep your home holy! Not only the synagogue, the house of learning, the prayer room, but also an ordinary Jewish house is a small-scale sanctuary. When can this be said? When the house abounds with words of Torah, prayers, blessings, Kiddush, and Havdalah, and when these are expressed seriously, truthfully, with profound and intent sincerity! When a mother and a father, a brother and a sister, live in calm and true peace (for in a peaceful place, there is the blessing of the Father of Peace); when the children are educated in the spirit of the serious and pure Torah; when all the children of the house speak the Jewish tongue and are full of love, honor, and recognition for every Jewish thing.

But what is today the structure of a house of an average Jewish merchant? Mostly, it is a place of selling and buying, sometimes a feverish stock market, sometimes a club for a game of cards, and sometimes a hall for parties. The father goes out in search of “pleasures,” and the mother seeks her own. In the house—a constant ill will, continual arguments behind the backs of others, or to their face. The daughters no longer speak Yiddish; the sons are being prepared for empty careers. Although Shabbat and the holidays are observed in an exterior way, it is without joyous celebration, without soul, without life. They pray, and when they have the opportunity, they fulfill commandments and customs, but everything is mechanical. In a place where there is no light and no fire, no love or devotion—there is no resting place for the almighty God.

Yavnehite! Don’t allow your house to become secular and commercial. Let your house look as a Jewish house should—a small sanctuary of the Lord! See that the Jewish language is heard in your house, the voice of Torah, words of peace, heartfelt prayers, suffering on account of the great pain of Israel, and silent hopes for redemption.

9. Live always amid the whole Jewish people and for the whole Jewish people. Don’t be concerned about yourself, but about all of Israel. The pain of all should be your pain; Israel’s joy, your joy. Every single Jewish soul is a part of the Shekhinah, called kenesset yisra’el because She is the totality of Jewish souls. The Community of Israel is the lower Shekhinah, the kingdom of heaven on earth. The suffering of a Jewish soul is distress to the shekhinah, as it were. So how can you, Yavnehite, cause pain to any Jew? Whoever works honestly and wholeheartedly for the redemption of Israel—as he understands it—is working to redeem shekhinah. Blessings to anyone who does something good for the Jewish people—even if his views are far from our own! Blessings to any hand that is stretched out to bring help to Israel!

Yavnehite! In all your thoughts, all your longings, all your words and deeds, do not have yourself and only those close to you in mind, but rather the entire great holy Jewish people. Bring yourself and your loved ones into that whole. The salvation of the whole will be yours as well.

10. Remove yourself from party politics. Though you are bound to live as a part of the general society, and work especially for the community, do not join any particular party, even if it is close to your heart. Because as long as the party is occupied with politics, it is bound for the furtherance of those politics to transgress the limits of justice and communion of all of Israel. If you are a member of a party, and you find it difficult to leave it, especially if the main purpose of the party is the building up of the nation—set your heart to scrutinize every act and deed of the party. Your humanity, your Judaism, your pure conscience, is a thousandfold more important than even the best and loftiest party.

Whether you are a member of a party or not, you can and ought to participate in the work of any party, to the extent that it directs deeds to the building of the whole nation, and to the unification of the nation, and you are bound to remove yourself from it, when it divides Jews, or when, to achieve its purpose, it uses means that are contrary to the Jewish spirit, which is that of love, justice, and holiness.

11. Remember and never forget the three loves! The Yavnehite is bound to seek perfection in the religious sense: the avoidance of sin and the fulfillment of commandments in actual deeds. Above all, one should be especially imbued with an awareness of the three loves—the love of God, the love of Israel, and the love of Torah.

12. Subdue pride! Pride is the most profound and strongest idol. Pride is the “strange god” ^{8 8} I.e. an moral failing tantamount to idolatry in the way that arrogance perverts one’s ethical and religious sense. within one’s own body. Pride has deeply rooted itself in us, and in order to uproot it, concerted effort over decades is necessary. Even more: we must combat it all the days of our lives. As long as it rests in us, it hides God, it hides others, and it hides the world outside ourselves. We cannot reach the light of truth as long as pride rests in us. “Pay attention to this cursed one—and bury it!” ^{9 9} 2 Kings 9:34.

13. Sanctify speech! Speech is the expression of the soul. Guard the covenant of the tongue; the holiness of the tongue. Not one word of evil speech! Not one round of gossip! No idle words at all; and it goes without saying, not to defile your tongue with vulgarities. Do not think that there is no damage from speech. What difference does it make? A vulgar joke? Whom does it hurt? No, dear brother! A word has the power to build and destroy worlds. It is your duty, Yavnehite, to be a builder, a creator, repairing lives that have been destroyed. Therefore, let your words be holy.

14. Sanctify your inner life! Let not a day in life pass without taking stock of your soul. Learn or hear mussar [moral teachings] every day. Books like The Duties of the Hearts, The Path of the Upright, The Ways of the Righteous, Tanya, Select Counsels, should always be your companions. ^{10 10}The Duties of the Hearts is Hovot ha-Levavot, by the early medieval R. Bahya ibn Pakuda; The Path of the Upright is Messilat Yesharim, by R. Moshe Hayyim Luzzatto; The Ways of the Righteous is Orhot Tsaddikim, an anonymous fifteenth-century treatise originating in Ashkenaz; Tanya is Likkutei Amarim-Tanya, by R. Shneur Zalman of Liady; Select Counsels is Likkutei Etsot, based on the teachings of R. Nahman of Bratislava.

Even if you are busy, steal yourself away for five to ten minutes every day, in your chosen corner, for a short and precise tally of your soul. And at this same time, let there be a short silent prayer in your heart: “Sovereign of the world, set me on the right path, on the path of light.”

NOTE: Any reader who has firmly decided to start living in accord with the fourteen principles outlined above, even if not all at once but gradually, may turn in this regard either orally or in writing to Hillel Zeitlin, Szliska 60, Warsaw.