A fast run through the whole tale — the king, the daughter, the viceroy who asks for three things and sets out. The path off to the side. The castle of lo tov, where the festivities are real and the place is not. The year of longing, and the apple on the last day. The lowered prescription, and the spring that looked red and smelled like wine. Seventy years.

And then we stop where we have been holding, and read it from the inside, word by word.

V'amdah sham etzlo. V'yardah. V'yashvah etzlo. V'hikirah oso. V'haysah mena'eres oso me'od — v'lo ni'ar.

And the question of the night: why was the mesharet hiding?

• Who the soldiers are — not only the guards of lo tov, but the ones waging its war. And the ones who got him into that place to begin with

• What the slumber actually is: he is there, but he is off his mission. He forgot his mission entirely

• Why the companion hides. Not by choice. He hides because the viceroy, the mashpia, the one who gives to him, has stopped giving — and so he waits. And sometimes you are fortunate enough that he waits with you for seventy years

• Everybody has a companion. A spouse, a mother, a brother, a Rebbe, a chavrusa. A person cannot go through life without one

• Ezer k'negdo — zacha, na'aseh lo ezer. When you merit it, you see that the one standing opposite you is helping you. The people who tick us off, who trigger the worst in us, are helping us. Hashem is sending it through them, and we blame the messenger and never hear the message, because there is always a face to blame

• Seventy years means a lifetime — yemei shenoseinu bahem shivim shanah. And a lifetime can fit inside a single year. A man can be in so much pain in one year that it is seventy years of pain

• Who the three characters are, said again because we always need reminding: the king is Hashem, the lost princess is your neshama, and the viceroy is you

• Heichan ani ba'olam — where am I in the world? However old you are: what have I accomplished, what have I done, where am I?

• No matter where you fell, there is a door out — and a new code, a new clue, waiting in that exact place

• Why the drop after Yom Kippur is a compass, not a failure. You had the ohr, and you are not there yet — and if you do not notice, something will smack you in the face

• A retreat in Eretz Yisrael, ten weeks. I went for my wife. My life was great, I was happy — and I had no idea how unhappy I was, because I had gotten so good at distraction that I never felt anything.

• Hachlata, and then hascholah — a decision, and then a beginning

Hold on these three days, and walk into the sukkah with ahava.

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