When one understands the power of prayer on a day like Yom Kippur, he forgets all time and space and maximizes his potential for divine connection.
The Lubavitcher Rebbe taught the niggun (hassidic melody without words) on Simchat Torah of 1961 (5722). He told his hassidim there the story of a shtetl, the day after Yom Kippur, when the townspeople came to shul and found a hassid, still dressed in a white kittel and wrapped in his Tallit. His eyes were closed tight with joy and pain on his face, as he walked around and around the bima, tears streaming from his closed eyes, singing the words to the Shir KaKavod (Anim Zemirot). He had spent the entire Yom Kippur in such a lofty spiritual state, completely immersed in “cleaving and yearning” to Hashem, that he had become similar to an angel, singing, from the depths of his heart, “My soul wishes to rest in the shade of your hands, to know all the secrets of all your enigmas”. He was so overcome with yearning for the state that he had been in during this holiest day, that he tried to extend it for a little bit longer, and before he knew it, it was the next day and, his eyes still shut tight, he had not returned home and had not yet broken his fast!
Submitted by Debbie Stone