On the night of 16 Tevet, Parashat Shemot, a shiur was held for students of the “Yeshiva Gedola” of “Breslov – Chochma V’Daat” at the home of Moreinu HaRav Eliezer Berland shlit”a.  Before you is a summary of the shiur which the Rav gave to the young men, lasting for close to an hour:

Shimon and Levi killed an entire city for one girl who was taken hostage, and the Sefer HaYashar writes that it was told throughout the world that a crime family arrived, and two children among them killed an entire city. The dudaim (mandrakes) were in the form of a man.  We were in Yavne’el and they said that there were dudaim, but they weren’t in the form a man.  Whoever took the dudaim conceived immediately.  “It is enough that you took my husband.”  No one knew that Rachel gave into Leah until Moshe wrote this in the Torah after 240 years. The controversy between Yosef and his brothers was that the brothers claimed that the sons of Zilpah and Bilhah were sons of maidservants, because Lavan made a condition with Yaakov that they wouldn’t be free and would be considered like slaves.  There is a practical implication to this regarding property, that they wouldn’t be inheritors, and that they couldn’t marry a Jewish woman.  Likewise, the brothers ate [a limb] from a live bird, but the Rambam rules that fowl is not considered meat. Amasa ben Yeter stabbed Avner ben Ner in the fifth rib. Avigail bat Nachash had no desire, like a serpent (nachash), which doesn’t taste food at all. It is written that David said about Shaul’s clothes, “I did not try,” but really, Shaul’s clothes fit perfectly to his size, but he told him that he wouldn’t have any miracles in them. In the Zohar Bereishit 10a, it is written that the world is spherical like a ball.  The Ralbag (Rabbi Levi Ben Gershon) said that there is a place in the world that is nighttime for a half-year and daytime for a half-year, like in Alaska.  Columbus travelled to the west because he was a Jew and knew that the world is spherical like a ball. From the age of 13, I sit with Gemara.  They would go on Yom HaAtzmaut (Israel Independence Day) to see the new battleships on the Hof HaCarmel, and I would be with the Gemara.  How is it possible to abandon the Gemara…?!  A person’s only pleasure is learning Gemara.  The more a person learns, the more learned he will be.  Stories about a serpent with seven heads, and the Lion of the house of Ilai.  A man isn’t supposed to be home between 5:00 AM and 10:00 PM at night.  Otherwise, he yells at his wife, “Why did you do such-and-such?” The wife goes crazy if her husband is home.  He should arrive at night, help her a little to put the room in order.  The Rabbanit would travel to work all over Israel and return exhausted.  I would do the mopping at home. Even if they cut two of a person’s “simanim” (the throat and esophagus), he can give a divorce document, because he is still lucid and can still live for some time if he not’s in a marble house without windows, so that air doesn’t enter.  Because otherwise, they say that from the shock, he dies, but he can stick together the two “simanim” and continue to live.  This entire sugya is brought in the Ketzot HaChoshen 250.  People don’t know what they’re missing.  Ketzot HaChoshen is the sweetest thing in the world!

With these words, Moreinu HaRav shlit”a concluded the fascinating shiur to the young men of the yeshiva, which lasted around 55 minutes.