Rabbi Peretz Chen | With all the burden and challenges, how did he succeed in educating my children? - Parshas Pekudei

00:00 Hello, dear friends. How many times have you left home for work in the morning without a sandwich? Without even a piece of fruit. Why? Because you were rushing around making sandwiches for your children. And when you come home in the evening, exhausted from a long, draining workday, and want a few minutes of peace and quiet, one child is hungry, another is bored, another needs help with homework, and she wants to go to the playground. Then, when it’s time to bathe them, a whole new story begins. Getting them to sleep is an ordeal of its own. So at the end of the day, we find that we’ve had almost no time for ourselves. It’s exhausting and frustrating. What, don’t I have a life of my own? Is everything for them, everything about them? What about me? What about my personal life—rest, peace, calm? What about me? And that’s without even mentioning the times there are problems at school, a child isn’t feeling well, or there are spiritual concerns. We want him to daven, and he doesn’t daven. Especially today, with everything going on in the world, with the media washing over us and everyone around us, how can we truly be at ease? Who says we’ll succeed? Who says this whole story will end well? It can be very stressful, very frustrating. What can help us be happy and full of faith, trust, and hope that, with Hashem’s help, things will turn out well and everything will be all right? That even though my efforts, strength, and options are limited, in the end, with Hashem’s help, we’ll see blessing and success? Sometimes the difficulty is financial, too. Things aren’t always easy financially: there are financial pressures, the cost of living, a mortgage hanging over our heads—there’s no shortage of worries. Dental treatment for the children suddenly lands on us, along with so many other things. So what assures us that, after all this, with Hashem’s help we’ll see blessing and success? And what can we do to draw

02:11 that to ourselves? Today’s lesson, and its encouraging, reassuring, uplifting, optimistic message, comes from the weekly parsha, Parshas Pekudei. This coming Shabbos, with Hashem’s help, is not only Parshas Pekudei; it also marks the end of the Book of Shemos. The Sages teach us a principle: there is always a connection between the beginning and the end of a book—“their beginning is bound up with their end, and their end with their beginning.” In other words, there must be a connection between the beginning of Shemos and its end. And if we look even a little, we immediately see a very striking connection. At the beginning of Shemos, we read about the Children of Israel going down to Egypt, and the Torah counts them: the seventy descendants of Yaakov who went down to Egypt. So the book begins with a count of the Children of Israel going down to Egypt. And at the end of Shemos, in Parshas Pekudei, there is also a count. What is counted? The donations the Children of Israel gave for the Mishkan. So both the beginning and the end of the book are about counting. We’ve found a connection. But here’s the question: each of the Five Books of the Torah has its own special designation. Shemos is called the Book of Redemption, because it tells of the redemption from Egypt. And what characterizes redemption? It is something beyond nature, beyond logic, beyond the ordinary—beyond anything normal. Take the Exodus from Egypt: logically, there was no way they could leave. No one had ever managed to leave Egypt. Then, suddenly, extraordinary things happened—things beyond nature, logic, and the ordinary—and ultimately they left Egypt. Their very departure was itself beyond nature. So,

04:32 if the book is called the Book of Redemption, and redemption is characterized by what is beyond nature, the ordinary, and logic, how can its beginning and end be about counting? Counting is limited. It’s exactly ten, and no more. Exactly seventy, and no more. Exactly the amount donated to the Mishkan, and no more. So again, how can a book about redemption, called the Book of Redemption, a book characterized by what is beyond nature, begin and end with limited things, things within the limits of nature? The explanation—and the message we can take from it—is this: True, the beginning of Shemos speaks of seventy people going down to Egypt. But what happened to that limited number of seventy in the end? When they left Egypt, hundreds of thousands of Jews came out—an enormous number, utterly out of proportion to the number who had gone down there at first. Suddenly, everyone saw that the small, limited number of seventy had become something incomparably greater. That limit had become, in a sense, limitless. And the same is true of Parshas Pekudei, which speaks of the donations for the Mishkan. The Children of Israel donated all kinds of items for it. In the end, after they built the physical Mishkan out of objects, wood, goatskin coverings, and other physical things, what happened? Suddenly, the glory of Hashem, the Shechinah, the infinite light—something beyond all limits—rested in that limited place. The Children of Israel began by doing something limited, and within that limitation, something infinite and unlimited entered. This tells us that when we do things according to the ways of nature, according to what is ordinary, using the strength and means we have—when we do our part and make the effort we can—suddenly something amazing happens: something supernatural, beyond nature and beyond

06:56 all logic, comes and rests upon us, enters our lives, and connects with us. That is exactly what happened to the Children of Israel at the Exodus from Egypt, and exactly what the weekly parsha tells us about the Mishkan: suddenly the glory of Hashem, the Shechinah, rested in that place. That is why the name Book of Redemption fits. Redemption is something beyond nature. And the beginning and end of Shemos show us that although things start in a natural way, out of nature and limitation—and out of darkness—comes something higher, something truly supernatural. What does that mean for us? Earlier, we spoke about the difficulty and challenge of raising children. It takes a tremendous amount of energy. Who says we’ll succeed? Financially, too, things aren’t always easy. But the Torah’s message is that when we act and make an effort with the strength Hakadosh Boruch Hu has given us, doing what we can according to our abilities, then—of course, if a person tells himself, “I don’t have to do anything; I expect the blessing to come down from Above on its own,” that generally doesn’t work. That isn’t how the world operates. Rather, I have to seriously and consistently invest effort in what I can do with my limited strength. But I do make that effort. I do what I can. And suddenly, all at once, we’ll see amazing things happen. We’ll see a blessing come from here, another from there. Suddenly, we’ll see the supernatural enter and rest within the natural. It’s like people who went to yeshivah and studied. For example, some people have completed the entire Shas—all the Gemaras, the whole Babylonian Talmud. Finishing the entire Shas is no simple task, but people have done it. Once, someone who had done it was asked, “Tell me, how did you manage to finish the entire Shas? How did you do it?” He answered:

09:03 “I finished the entire Shas in five minutes.” They asked him, “Wait, wait—how can you do that in five minutes? Five minutes is barely enough time to open the book!” So he said, “I’ll explain. Those five minutes that people waste waiting for a bus, waiting at the clinic, waiting here or there, in all the in-between moments—I used them. Five minutes and another five minutes and another five minutes, one small piece at a time. Suddenly it all added up to something big.” He accomplished a tremendous amount. In other words, when we do the little we can with our limited abilities, a little more and a little more, one drop and another drop—as our Sages say, one coin and another coin add up to a large sum—suddenly we see something great come about. All those little things become something very big. Especially when it comes to raising children, it’s even more so. As is well known, the Rebbe said and repeated many times that children don’t simply come into our lives and leave us to figure out how to manage. With each child, Hakadosh Boruch Hu sends all the means we need to succeed with them financially. He also sends us the emotional strength to meet their needs and carry out those tasks. Each child comes with two channels: one for livelihood and one for inner strength. So everything is given to us from Above. What do we need to do? Make an effort. Don’t sit back with our legs crossed; work as hard as we can, with the strength we have. Then, suddenly, we’ll see how a blessing comes from our small, limited efforts. Suddenly we’ll see how the seventy who went down to Egypt

11:04 become hundreds of thousands. Suddenly we’ll see a physical structure that Jews build with the tools and resources they have, and the Shechinah dwells in it. Suddenly we’ll see blessing and success. So may we all, with Hashem’s help, have blessing and success and see much nachas from our children. May we see all our efforts bear fruit, and see that great, boundless blessing rest upon the work of our hands. May we have true Jewish, Chassidic nachas and joy with our children, and may we merit children who are happy, healthy, and at peace. May it be Hashem’s will that these words of Torah be a merit for the Jewish people in this difficult time. With Hashem’s help, may all the soldiers return home safe and sound, healthy in body and mind; may the wounded recover; and may those poor, suffering hostages finally return to their families, healthy in body and mind. May we merit the coming of Moshiach and the Resurrection of the Dead, and hear only good news. May we merit the boundless blessing of the complete Geulah. If you feel that the content of this class speaks to you and gives you something reassuring as you deal with things at home and with the children, then share it. Share it with a friend so they, too, can hear it and find comfort in it. May we hear good news. Much success. All the best. Thank you very much.