Bring the whole sack
The beggar arrives carrying sacks. The rav sees another lesson in that detail. A beggar approaches without claiming independent possessions or merit. But he does not arrive as a person with no history. He carries what he has gathered.
The highest prayer, as the Zohar teaches in III:195a, is the poor person’s prayer. The passage discussed in the preceding shiur places it before the prayers of Moshe and Dovid because of its brokenhearted closeness. Now the rav asks what it means to come with the sack as well as the empty hands.
Sometimes a person thinks that Hashem wants only the respectable parts of him. He can speak about a noble aspiration, but feels he should hide a confused feeling, an embarrassing struggle, or a small concern. The rav urges him to bring those too. The sack means the whole person, including the burdens picked up along the road.
The narrator tells us the sacks contain bread. The rav imagines stale scraps and other collected objects to make the picture tangible. Those imagined contents belong to his illustration; the printed story does not list them.
He compares the care with which a homeless person guards a small bag with the casualness of someone who has far more. He admits that he himself can be careless with an expensive possession while the person with a bag holds on to it dearly. The point is the attachment to one’s actual life. What looks unimpressive to someone else may hold everything that person presently has.
The beggar comes as he is. Prayer asks for that honesty too: here is my life, here are my wounds, here is what I cannot yet put into order. A person need not first produce an impressive version of himself before speaking to Hashem.
Prayer as a relationship
The rav cites Reb Tzadok’s teaching that prayer is not merely a device for obtaining a desired outcome. Need brings a person to pray, but the prayer itself creates connection with Hashem. Tzidkas HaTzadik 211 describes prayer as recognizing one’s lack and looking toward Hashem; it says that He desires the prayers of tzaddikim. That passage supports the relationship and dependence at the center of the rav’s explanation. His precise formulation that the trouble is for the sake of the prayer is an explanatory expansion, rather than a verbatim quotation of the section.
Honesty matters because this is a relationship. If spouses deceive one another even over apparently small things, something in their trust is damaged. The rav uses that familiar example to ask whether a person feels able to bring his real concerns into prayer.
He recalls a wartime discussion about protecting a family from panic and limiting distressing news. A questioner asks whether he may lie to his wife to spare her worry. In the rav’s retelling, the teacher gives a reluctant practical allowance in the particular situation but says that he dislikes it: lying works against the trust on which marriage is built. The rav takes the concern for trust as his point, not a general permission to deceive a spouse.
That reported discussion also contains strong assertions about the danger of frightened nighttime trips to shelters, including a comparison of supposedly certain trauma with a supposedly tiny chance of a rocket strike. The retelling even includes advice against going to a shelter in a particular place. Those assertions and that advice have not been verified as the original speaker’s guidance and are not adopted here. For actual alerts, follow the current Home Front Command instructions for the location; helping children remain calm belongs alongside reaching the protected space. Official civil defense guidance describes the need to reach a protected space when a siren sounds. The learning point in this anecdote is the concern for honesty, not a ruling about emergency protection.
The rav contrasts prayer with his example of putting on tefillin. There are levels of attention and kavannah in a mitzvah. But if the essence of prayer is a real encounter, refusing to bring the actual self affects the relationship itself, not merely an added level of polish. This is his avodah distinction. It is not a complete halachic ruling about intention, validity, or when prayer must be repeated.
Being honest also requires yishuv hadaas: stop long enough to recognize what one is actually feeling now. The task is neither to act more spiritual than one is nor to reduce the person to the worst thing in the sack. It is to stand before Hashem with the whole of that life and ask for help.
Bringing the week into Shabbos
The rav recalls a teaching he heard many years earlier about entering Shabbos. A person might imagine that Shabbos begins by leaving the whole week outside. There is an aspect of setting weekday business aside, but that is not the whole spiritual task.
Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chayim 306:8, distinguishes permitted thought about business from the mitzvah, for the sake of oneg Shabbos, to regard one’s work as finished. Mishnah Berurah 306:38 especially warns against thoughts that produce worry. Bringing one’s week into Shabbos therefore does not mean turning Shabbos into business planning or deliberately dwelling on anxiety.
The remembered teaching concerns bringing the person who lived that week: the difficulties, the effort, the avodah, and the unresolved needs. The six weekdays prepare for Shabbos, and afterward Shabbos should enter the coming week. There is a movement in both directions.
In a playful explanation of turning around at bo’i veshalom, the teacher imagines looking back to see whether any bags were left at the door. Did I bring my whole week, or leave some part of myself outside? This is an illustrative explanation, not the established historical origin of the custom.
The rav’s remembered lesson is that Hashem wants the person who is actually arriving, including the broken and ashamed parts. Like the beggar, come with the sack.
The blessing that sounds strange
The beggar asks the children how they arrived in the forest. They do not know. They are too small to understand their situation. When he begins to leave, they ask to go with him.
The rav sees a change. Having met the tzaddik and received bread, they can begin wanting something larger: let us leave the forest. But the beggar refuses to take them. The reason for his refusal is not explained in this shiur.
They then notice that he is blind and wonder how he can walk through a thick forest. He blesses them to become like him, leaves them more bread, and goes.
The rav describes the blessing here as being blind like the beggar. The actual opening paragraph says that they should become like him and be old like him. That wording should be kept distinct from the rav’s anticipation of the later explanation of the beggar’s blindness. He is bringing out the puzzle: what seems to be a disability will prove to conceal a great attainment. The wedding-day teaching will explain it; this shiur does not yet do so.
He previews other beggars who appear deaf, without hands or feet, or with another bodily limitation, and who bless the children to become like them. The apparent strangeness makes the listener wait for the hidden meaning. It is not a judgment that a person with a disability is less valuable, nor an instruction to acquire an impairment.
Notice the bread while still wanting home
The children have not been rescued from the forest. They could have focused only on the beggar’s refusal and felt abandoned. Instead, the story says that they understand that Hashem has watched over them and sent the beggar with food.
The rav returns to the qualification without which his opening thought could be misunderstood. Ask for the great yeshuah, but recognize every small yeshuah along the way. Wanting redemption does not make a piece of bread worthless.
There can be the ultimate redemption, a personal rescue, or merely a small gift that carries someone through another day. The rav calls those small experiences “mini Mashiach moments.” A person can pause and recognize care in them while still waiting for an answer to the larger need.
This is not an explanation of why a particular person remains in pain, or proof that an absent gift means absent care. It is a way of noticing the help one has actually received. The children do not know the road out. For the moment, they know that they have been given bread.
The two requests belong together. Do not let comfort in the forest replace the longing for home. Do not let longing for home make it impossible to thank Hashem for what sustains the journey.