If there was one piece of advice, spoken straight from the mouth of the Aish Kodesh — Rav Kalonymus Kalman Shapira of Piaseczno, may Hashem avenge his blood (הי״ד) — that we could hold on to for dear life, it might be this.

On the Rebbe’s 78th yahrzeit, Rav Shlomo Katz opens the Aish Kodesh and Hakhsharat HaAvrechim to uncover the Piaseczner’s breathtaking understanding of the soul’s longing, pain, and ascent. We learn that when a tzaddik leaves this world, his tefillah changes perspective, his prayers align with Heaven itself, and that on his yahrzeit, those prayers still lift us upward.

Through this lens, Rav Shlomo explores the Rebbe’s teaching that everything is already within us. Our work is simply to create the platform — the awareness — for the soul’s song to emerge. The Piaseczner warns against the temptation of emotional numbness, urging us instead to feel, to risk, to live with the full range of divine experience.

From the depths of the Warsaw Ghetto to our own hearts today, this one piece of heavenly advice still whispers: Don’t silence your soul. Hear it sing.