Ecstatic Witness

But the truest life of the man of ecstasy is not among men. It is said of one master that he behaved like a stranger, according to the words of David the King: A sojourner am I in the land. "Like a man who comes from afar, from the city of his birth. He does not think of honors nor of anything for his own welfare; he only thinks about returning home to the city of his birth. He can possess nothing, for he knows: That is alien, and I must go home." Many walk in solitude, in "the wandering."

There are still more profoundly solitary ones [who]...become "unsettled and fugitive." They go into exile in order to "suffer exile with the Shekina." It is one of the basic conceptions of the Kabbala that the Shekina [Arabic: sakina], the exiled glory of God, wanders endlessly, separated from her "lord," and that she will be reunited with him only in the hour of redemption. So these men of ecstasy wander over the earth, dwelling in the silent distances of God's exile, companions of the universal and holy happening of existence. The man who is detached in this way is the friend of God, "as a stranger is the friend of another stranger on account of their strangeness on earth."

Martin Buber, The Life of the Hasidim, "Hitlahavut: Ecstasy."