Hashem Forgives - Just Do Teshuva and Know Who the Tzaddik Is -- Rabbi Eliezer Berland Shlit”a

UMAN ROSH HASHANAH – PEARLS FROM THE HOLY WORDS OF THE GAON AND TZADDIK MOREINU HARAV ELIEZER BERLAND SHLIT”A, AS GIVEN OVER ON THE 11TH OF ELUL, AUGUST 31, 2020, IN THE MIDST OF THE CORONAVIRUS PERIOD. IYOV WAS A REINCARNATION OF TERACH. Moshe said, “Va’Etchanan – I pleaded.” How much have I pleaded already? Five hundred and fifteen prayers! Hashem says, “Do you know how to plead? You don’t know at all how to plead! Learn from the Leviathan – it pleads until Hashem gives it what it asks for.” Can you can make it your servant? “Moshe My servant is dead” (Yehoshua 1:2). It wants you to bring it Eskimos – “Can you riddle its skin with barbs, or put its head in a fish bucket?” (Iyov 40:31). In another thirty days it’s Sukkot! All the offerings of Yom Kippur are drawn from the Leviathan, from the Fiftieth Gate. If you knew the secret of the Leviathan, you wouldn’t sin! Everything would be atoned for you – from the six days of Creation until today, and until the end of the world! Hashem forgives everything, only that one should do teshuvah, be dust and ashes, know who the Tzaddik is. In Egypt, all the babies were supposed to die. The midwives were supposed to strangle them at birth. [The midwives Shifrah and Puah – Miriam and Yocheved – answer Pharaoh:] “The midwives said to Pharaoh, ‘Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women; for they are experts; before the midwife comes to them, they have given birth’” (Shemot 1:19). There was a huge hospital with nurses – by the time they went from room to room, they had already given birth. AMRAM DIVORCED YOCHEVED Amram was the Leviathan (the Holy Zohar). The 7th of Elul was the day that Miriam banged on the table and said: Enough with this insanity of divorces! What will a child do without a father and mother? He’ll immediately become secular! If a child sees his father, mother, grandfather, grandmother – all of them tzaddikim – then he’ll also be one! What, now he’ll go and become secular? Go eat falafel in the streets? …Puts on five pairs of tefillin – Rashi, Rabbeinu Tam, Shimusha Rabba, Raavad… Servant forever – the Leviathan. When Yonah was swallowed by the fish, there were six hundred thousand little fish inside the fish – he felt like he was in a health resort… We were in Tzalmon – a health resort! We came here (Ayalon Prison, Ramla) to meet you… The Leviathan is at the North Pole – there is no land there, it’s all ice. Under the ice is the Leviathan, where the entrance to Gan Eden is. At the South Pole it’s minus seventy-seven; at the North Pole, minus twenty. You walk on the ice – boom – it cracks. Someone at the Pole flew with an airplane – the airplane collapsed. “I pleaded to Hashem” – I plead five hundred and fifteen prayers. Hashem says, “Do you know how to plead like the Leviathan?!” – “Will he beset you with entreaties, or speak ingratiatingly to you?” (Iyov 40:27). Everything depends on how the union is – the child comes out only according to the union. Rabbi Meir asks Elisha ben Avuyah: Are you crazy?! You wrote so many books – Nachelei Elisha, Ma’alot Elisha… Such commentaries you wrote on Etz Chaim – and suddenly you lost your mind? He said: Everything depends on the union! [Because the parents’ intent was not for the sake of Heaven, only that he should learn and fire should emerge from him.] But with Rabbi Akiva, it was a union of amei ha’aretz (unlearned people)! You say, “The end of a thing is from its beginning,” but Rabbi Akiva’s mother didn’t even go to the mikveh! Just simple shepherds who fell in love with each other! It was forbidden for an am ha’aretz to enter the house of a talmid chacham, because everything he touches becomes tamei and requires immersion. All the furniture must be removed from the room – afterwards everything he touches will become tamei. Don’t touch that! Don’t drink from that cup! Rabbi Akiva was an am ha’aretz – he didn’t understand. He thought they were just scorning him, degraded him… Rachel was the most righteous woman of the generation. Didn’t she find any man except one who wanted to bite a talmid chacham like a donkey?! But in his life, he never saw a woman [he guarded his eyes]. She was the greatest psychologist in the world! Such a psychologist never existed in the world. …Iyov subdued the klipah (the evil husk) of the donkey – only Iyov merited to subdue the klipah of the donkey. From a young age he had already converted. He had been Terach and was suffering from his previous reincarnation. Iyov was a tzaddik – there was no justice here. Rather, he came to rectify his previous incarnation. As Rabbi Eliezer HaGadol said to Rabbi Akiva: “If you had come to all the shiurim, they would not have scraped you with iron combs!” The wife of Turnus Rufus was [a reincarnation of] Kozbi bat Tzur – this needed to be rectified! We came to the world to rectify all generations. This generation – it’s the generation of the Holocaust that was seventy years ago. People are still alive. ---- was short – at age sixteen, they took her to Auschwitz. She had never spoken with a boy in her life. She was quick – had never seen a boy. She got off the train – one of the kapos told her, “Say you are seventeen.” She was startled because a boy had approached her! “Say seventeen.” She said, “Seventeen, seventeen” – it didn’t help – straight into the fire, into the oven. She was sharp – one hundred girls arrived – they surrounded them and made a belt so that they wouldn’t see them, holding loosely to one another. She dashed at them and ran to the right side. The left side was to the ovens – the right side were saved. She mixed in with them and they didn’t find her – and so she was saved. Miriam shone like the sun at midday! The camp didn’t move until Miriam was in the camp. The clouds didn’t move – Miriam would go throughout the camp. The clouds didn’t lift until she reached the head of the camp. “Remember what Hashem did to Miriam on the way!” Remember what happened to Miriam: what should you remember – that she had tzara’at? A blemish in the Tzaddik?! Rather, Miriam was the head of the camp – Miriam saved children – Miriam said: “Abba, bring back Ema! There’s no such thing! I will go at you with all my might and all my mind!” The 7th of Elul – like now – everyone divorcing, Amram divorcing – everyone divorcing. She shouts: “Enough! Enough! Enough! Enough! Enough! Enough! Enough!!!” They all brought back their wives. There was weeping in all the houses – children crying, shouting – everyone becoming secular without their father and mother. “A man is born like a wild donkey.” Age forty is understanding; a person is born only with lusts! If he doesn’t see his father and mother – his father sitting at the head of the table and singing the zemirot – and father stays until the end, not falling asleep in the middle! He sings, encourages the singing, says some words of Torah. “May the year and its curses end.” Ezra enacted that we read the parashah of “Ki Tavo” before Rosh Hashanah. Once they didn’t read the Torah in a single year, but in three years – then only Zachor, Parah, Shekalim [were read every year?], and also Ki Tavo before Rosh Hashanah. A person comes to go through all the curses – if you had come to the shiur, there wouldn’t have been iron combs! …Behind the door they hid the idols – they found them, looked, and left. They didn’t check. He was king for thirty-one years – why did they stick thirty iron lances into him? Yehudah ben Bava is buried in Shefaram – today they are going to him – now they’re going to him. Thirty iron lances, because he served thousands of idolatries as King Achaz from age thirteen – he only woshipped idolatry. He didn’t know anything -- what’s permitted, what’s forbidden… There wasn’t the halachot of the Rambam. Nothing, no book – never learned to read or write. If a person is serious – this is the Sitra Achra itself! A person comes to the world to tell jokes! “Milta de’shtuta” – every person should tell jokes – “Milta de’shtuta!” It’s forbidden to be sad even for a thousandth of a second! Tell jokes! Come home with a smile! Don’t come home with depression… [come] with a smile, with joy! THEY CLOSED UMAN?! EVERYONE IS TRAVELING TO UMAN TODAY.  THERE’S NO SUCH THING – GO! THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH US! Go to the Well of Miriam, Tzalmon… The Well of Miriam has an airstrip with planes of four hundred seats to Uman. Forty thousand people land straight on the tomb – no customs, no passports, no Corona, no morona! Who invented that word anyway?! Who invented it? It’s an invention of someone! Someone invented this word?! It’s a word of the Sitra Achra. “Raise the horn of Your Mashiach!” How did people fall into such mistakes – to believe in such things?! Hashem is One! She believed after she stood the test, didn’t break, shone like the midday sun! Just like when Rabbi Shmuel Shapira became Breslov – they brought him a shidduch with a birthmark on her face. They got married – the next day the birthmark disappeared! Why does a person come to the world? To remove the stain [KeTeM]! “A miKhTaM by David…for I have sought refuge in You…You guide my lot” (Tehillim 16). The lot cries out! “According to the lot.” “Even the inheritance is pleasant to me…because He is at my right hand, I shall not falter… the delights that are in Your right hand for eternity!”  All of this is the heel (ekev) – “It shall be that as a result (ekev) of your listening” – to throw up the heels -- the Name Havayah before your eyes! [an allusion to Tehillim 16]. THERE IS NO LOCKDOWN ON UMAN! IT’S ALL LIES. SOMEONE HERE IS LYING! “It shall be that as a result (ekev)” -- we arrived in Athens. [We] danced – suddenly, boom, all the barriers opened and everyone fled from their posts! We immediately arrived in Uman, in a second. Today they travel to Uman! We came for “Save Your people (Hoshea et Amecha).” Therefore, a person comes to the world to catch the Leviathan by its palate. “Va’Etchanan – I pleaded.” What “Va’Etchanan”? Learn from the Leviathan! Supplications… Iyov lived 210 years, because a person comes to the world to live 210 years. Therefore, David received five years from Avraham, twenty-eight from Yaakov, and thirty-seven from Yosef – all in all seventy. He lived seventy years, plus seventy from Adam HaRishon out of a thousand. Everyone, from today, should sign before Ma’ariv to live a thousand years. King David – Ben Ish Chai – this is King David. Finish Tehillim by morning. Now is the minute that King David appears and enters into each and every person. This is the minute – and everyone should live a thousand years – he is entering each and every person now.