There is no sound more haunting than singing Yedid Nefesh by yourself. The melodies which string themselves so well are only threads in a tapestry that need multiple needles to be properly woven, and without other weavers, your strings and notes fall flat, the music feeling awkward, and off. Singing by yourself, wherever you are, makes you feel uncomfortable and alone. Where’s the minyan? You’re a cog, where’s the rest of the machine? You can close your eyes, and remember when you were small, when the sounds of your shul reverberated up through your shoes, almost shaking your hands as you struggled to understand the words.

 

But then your eyes open, the façade fades. It may be due to quarantine, it may be travel, but you are alone. On some level, when you sing, the doubt in your head laughs at your off-key notes, and tells you it is for nothing. Is there a worse feeling than being alone, and doubting your purpose? That nagging voice, a mental itch that can’t be scratched, a hunger to know that you cannot satiate on your own.

 

The voice is weak, it cannot strike when you are strong. It stays in the shadows, silent when you’re with friends, silent when you’re in shul, but it murmurs as you go home, and rolls over you like a wave once you’re alone and in bed, with no more distractions to wall yourself off from the sea of doubt. The darkness always lingers at the edges.The only way to keep the darkness at bay is to keep the engine pumping, to keep the fire burning. Only through hard work, consistent work, true effort, a true servitude to the flame, can one stoke the fires of passion, the fire of Torah, the fire of an honest life. Only this fuel can keep the soul’s spirit burning bright, a beacon of hope. And once that fire burns bright? The fire dances, it jumps, it spins, it whirls. The fire is joy.