“If You Will Follow My Decrees” – Parshat Bechukotai with Rabbi Eliezer Berland Shlit”a

CHIDUSHIM ON PARSHAT BECHUKOTAI FROM MOREINU HARAV ELIEZER BERLAND SHLIT”A: “IF YOU WILL FOLLOW MY DECREES” “If you will follow My decrees – that you will toil in Torah” (Rashi): Getting rid of the Yetzer HaRa (the evil urge) is impossible except through Torah study in-depth.  “A man, when he dies in a tent” – you need to exhaust yourself in Torah, to put yourself to death over it.  Don’t learn Torah weakly, relaxedly.  The true tranquility is only Torah – “He saw the tranquility that it was good…yet he bent his shoulder to bear” – the yoke of Torah (Rashi). The true tranquility is tranquility of the soul – through Torah, we polish the soul, we clean it, scrape away the filth, toss all the filth out, and merit to tranquility of the soul. A person needs to know that he is responsible for the works of creation.  Every day, you need to create the world anew.  The world is run by those who learn Torah; through Torah, we create the world.  “Because all the new innovations in the works of creation, which Hashem Yitbarach renews continuously, every day, is all through the Torah… that on this day, there is abundant rain, and on this day, there is dryness; that at this time, it is cold and moist…and likewise with the rest of the variations” (Likutey Halachot, Yevum 3).  Rabbi Natan explains that you create the world.  If you slept and a disaster happened.  You daydreamed, talked to someone during learning time, and a disaster happened.  A person needs to know that there’s nothing to read in newspapers, and there’s nothing to know about what is happening in the world.  If you take interest in the world for just a second, a tragedy happens.  A person needs to believe that the moment that he was idle from Torah, a disaster happens!  You need to know that all the changes in the world happen according to your Torah study.  If a Jew learns, then the whole world begins to love us, because all the nations sometimes love us and sometimes hates us.  Anyone who learned history knows that one year they love, one year they hate and want to cut off all the Jews.  Because everything is dependent on our Torah study, and not on politicians or anything [else]. When a person learns Torah in depth, he brings his intellect into Torah; then, he creates new worlds!  Then he creates a new reality!  Suddenly, there are new rules for him!  He has money to travel to Uman!  Suddenly, he has spiritual abundance, physical abundance!  Because he created a new world.  So [previously], he was in a world where he didn’t have money, and now he is in a world where he already has money!  Because there already came into being a totally new world.  Because every moment, a person creates new worlds.  If a person learns Torah in depth, then he creates new worlds every second.  The Rebbe brings in [Likutey Moharan] Lesson 101: “When a person commits a transgression, God forbid, then the transgression and iniquity become etched on his bones, as it is written (Yechezkel 32), ‘Their iniquities were on their bones.’”  The Rebbe says: Do you want to atone for your transgressions?  Do you want to erase your transgressions?  This is hard!  Behold, your transgressions are etched into your bones.  The transgressions made the bones broken.  All the bones of a person are broken.  It hurts him here; it hurts him there.  This is all because of transgressions.  Every single transgression makes an etching on the bone – “Their iniquities were on their bones.”  The bones are hollow.  They’re already hollow; they broke from all the etchings.  If a person wants to join together his bones anew, to build them anew, to get out of “their iniquities were on their bones,” this is only through Torah study, to take tests, to be tested, to learn Torah in depth.  Because teshuva (repentance) isn’t helpful for the blemish, because the bones are already broken, already etched; so therefore, how is teshuva relevant?  You now need to draw new mentalities into the bone, to renew the bone, and this is through learning Torah in depth.  Through the Torah, you activate all the cells which are already blemished and weakened, and which already have begun to wither away.  The learning renews them, stimulates them, gives them mentalities.  The Torah builds you up and makes you into a new person. A person seeks advice about how to get rid of his bad character traits, so he has Hitbodedut and Chatzot, and all this is wonderful and good, but if he doesn’t have Torah in depth, nothing will help him.  Because if a person doesn’t learn Torah in depth, then the main thing is missing from the book.  So there’s no brain at all, because the brain is only received through Torah in depth.  So this is like a person who does Hitbodedut, but he doesn’t have any brains, so there’s nowhere to pour them out; Hashem wants to give to him!  Tomorrow, he will prayer with intention, and after prayer, he will already run off in order to eat.  He already flees here.  He already runs away to talk to his friend.  They say Aleinu, and he already takes off his Tefillin; he is already talking to his friend.  Then Hashem says to him: I want to give to you.  After prayer, say some verse, some two or three Halachot, learn a few lines from the Gemara.  Then you will have a wondrous intellect and understand everything.  Because after a person requests in prayer “put in our hearts understanding in order to understand, to comprehend, to hear, learn and teach, to observe, and to fulfill,” Hashem wants to give him now all the intellects.  So now he already starts to talk to his friend, and now he takes off before Aleinu.  He already takes off the Tefillin and is already outside.  He’s already talking, already arguing, already eating, and Hashem says, “I wanted to give to you wondrous intellects; to where did you run off on Me?” So the Rebbe says that without Torah in depth, there is no intellect, and [so] everything that a person does is missing the fundamental, because the main thing, the Rebbe says, is Torah in depth.  Therefore, the Rebbe says that the habit of learning is more important than the fulfillment of all the mitzvot.  The Rebbe brings in “Limud-33” in “Sefer HaMidot” that “the habit of learning is more important than the fulfillment of all the mitzvot.”  A person needs to habituate himself to learning.  We request immediately in the morning, “Accustom us to Your Torah,” that we should become habituated to Torah study.  And the Rebbe says that to become habituated is not enough!  Then a person will recite Gemara like Tehilim; this isn’t enough.  You need for “You to accustom us”!  Learning in depth is called “You to accustom us”!  To take Rashba, Ramban, Ritva, the Shitta Mekubetzet, the Rosh, Rif, Ran, Nimukey Yosef, everything that there is.  Maharam Shif, Maharsha.  Take some easier commentator, but in this way, your head must be in in-depth learning all the time, all the time remaining in in-depth learning. So the Rebbe says that if a person remains in in-depth learning, “that he understands the wisdoms of the Torah, then he merits that the yokes of government and earning a living are removed from him.”  And this is only through learning in depth, that he investigates and understands the wisdoms of the Torah.  Then he merits to a shining face.  Then, when all the thoughts of a person are only in Torah in-depth, in Gemara, to understand the Gemara thoroughly, to understand the Sugya thoroughly, to understand all the Rishonim and all the Achronim, and to sum this up, to write this down, and in the meantime to innovate several more novel insights, then at that moment, he merits to such a shining face, that the entire world returns in teshuva.  He receives such a shining face that the entire world returns in teshuva from his face – “A man’s wisdom illuminates his face, and through this the yokes of government and earning a living are removed from him.”  Then there is no yoke of government in the world.  There’s no Russians, no Arabs, no gentiles; there’s nothing.  There’s no yoke of government.  [For] one person who puts his head into the Torah in-depth, Hashem is prepared to remove the yoke of government from the world, all the governments, to cancel out the governments, so that only Am Yisrael will rule, only the Torah will rule. The shiur underwent editing, and if an error occurred, it should be attributed to the writer, and not, chas v’shalom, to Moreinu HaRav shlit”a. Artwork courtesy of R’ Yehoshua Wiseman: WWW.YEHOSHUAWISEMAN.COM