Ki Sisa: The Lemonade and the Cabbage: The Destruction as the Seed of the Redemption | Rabbi Yechezkel Sofer

00:01 Speaker 1 Recording in progress.

00:06 Speaker 2 Good evening to all our viewers and listeners. We are already in the middle of Bein Hameitzarim, in Parshas Matos. This year is unusual: both 17 Tammuz, which begins the Three Weeks, and Tisha B’Av fall on Shabbos and are postponed. And since they are postponed, may they be postponed altogether, with Hashem’s help, and turn into joy and gladness. As the saying goes: If life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Our Rebbeim emphasized many times that the Shabbosim of Bein Hameitzarim are about transforming darkness into light. There is a very special sicha of the Rebbe on this in volume 29. There he cites a midrash from Pesikta deRav Kahana, which says: “Rabbi Avun said: A lion rose under the sign of Leo and destroyed Ariel.” The midrash explains: “A lion rose” refers to Nevuchadnetzar, of whom the verse says, “A lion has risen from its thicket”—the lion emerged from the thicket and pounced on its prey. “Under the sign of Leo” refers to the zodiac sign of the month of Av, the fifth month. “And destroyed Ariel” refers to the Beis Hamikdash, of which it says, “Woe, Ariel, Ariel.” They explain that it was wide at the front and narrow at the back, like a crouching lion. “And why,” the midrash continues, “did all this happen? So that a lion would come under the sign of Leo and rebuild Ariel.” “A lion would come” this time refers to Hakadosh Boruch Hu, of whom it says, “A lion has roared; who will not fear?” “Under the sign of Leo”—“I will turn their mourning into joy.” “And rebuild Ariel”—“Hashem builds Jerusalem; He gathers in the dispersed of Israel.” That is the wording of the midrash. The Rebbe asks: The midrashim of our Sages are not merely figures of speech or wordplay. Why use the image of a lion for both Nevuchadnetzar, who destroyed, and Hakadosh Boruch Hu, who builds? If Hakadosh Boruch Hu is a lion, Nevuchadnetzar is not even a mouse. How can the same name, a name conveying might—the lion—be given to both Hakadosh Boruch Hu and Nevuchadnetzar? What is this telling us? The Rebbe offers a wonderful idea. By giving them both the same symbol of a lion,

03:57 Speaker 2 the midrash resolves a general question about the destruction. There is a law that someone who breaks utensils, tears clothes, demolishes a building, or the like in a destructive manner violates the prohibition of bal tashchis, “do not destroy.” That is how the Rambam rules in Hilchos Melachim, chapter 6. There is another law, connected with the laws of the Beis Hamikdash. In chapter 1, the Rambam says: “Likewise, one who breaks a single stone from the altar or from anywhere in the Sanctuary.” Someone who demolishes part of the Beis Hamikdash—a wall, for example, or anything between the entrance hall and the altar—in a destructive, vandalistic manner receives lashes, as it says, “You shall tear down their altars; you shall not do so to Hashem your G-d.” The Rebbe asks: We have the well-known teaching on the verse, “He tells His words to Yaakov, His statutes and judgments to Israel.” In other words, Hakadosh Boruch Hu observes the mitzvos too. He does not merely tell us what is permitted and what is forbidden; He Himself observes it. What He does, He tells Israel to do. So if He commanded Israel two prohibitions—one against destruction in general, and one specifically against destroying the Beis Hamikdash—how could He have violated both prohibitions by destroying His Beis Hamikdash? Both bal tashchis and “You shall not do so to Hashem your G-d.” How could He have allowed the Beis Hamikdash to be demolished? The superficial answer, of course, would be: What do you want from Him? Did He do it? Nevuchadnetzar did it against His will. But we cannot say that. What is more, the Rebbe says, the destruction took place on Hakadosh Boruch Hu’s explicit mission. He quotes a verse from Yirmiyahu, chapter 25, where Hakadosh Boruch Hu says: “Behold, I will send for and take all the families of the north, says Hashem, and Nevuchadnetzar king of Babylon, My servant, and I will bring them against this land and its inhabitants, and I will make them a desolation, an object of scorn, and everlasting ruins.” In other words, Nevuchadnetzar was the rod of His anger. He was the staff in the hand of

07:06 Speaker 2 Hakadosh Boruch Hu. So we cannot excuse Hakadosh Boruch Hu by saying He was not the one who destroyed it. How could He do such a thing? Now, someone might say: Do you think He did it for no reason? The Jewish people sinned—“because of our sins”—and they were not worthy of the Beis Hamikdash. So He took the Beis Hamikdash away from them. The Rebbe asks: Fine, we can understand that they were not worthy of it and that He had to take it away. But why break it? Why destroy it? He could have hidden it away. We know that once they entered the Land, the components of the Mishkan—the curtains and the boards—were no longer needed, so they were hidden away. We are also told that in the Second Beis Hamikdash, the Aron was no longer there; it had been hidden deep below. Hakadosh Boruch Hu could have made the earth open its mouth and swallow the Beis Hamikdash whole, showing the Jewish people that they were not worthy of it. But why destroy it? Why break it? There are two prohibitions: bal tashchis and “You shall not do so to Hashem your G-d.” So the Rebbe begins to explain the defense of Hakadosh Boruch Hu. With regard to bal tashchis, it is easier to explain why He did not violate the prohibition. This is based on Midrash Rabbah on Eichah, section 4, paragraph 14, concerning the verse in Eichah, “Hashem exhausted His fury, poured out His burning anger, and kindled a fire in Tziyon.” The midrash says: There is a psalm in Tehillim, “A psalm of Asaf.” Asaf was one of the Levi’im who sang in the Beis Hamikdash. “O G-d, nations have entered Your inheritance; they have defiled Your holy Sanctuary,” and so on. The midrash asks: “A psalm of Asaf”? It should be “a weeping of Asaf”! “A lament of Asaf”! Why call it “a psalm of Asaf”? If nations have entered Your inheritance and reduced Jerusalem to ruins, what is there to celebrate? The midrash answers with a parable: A king made a wedding canopy for his son, preparing and decorating it. In the end, his son went astray. The king immediately went up to the canopy, tore down the curtains, broke the poles, and destroyed everything. The midrash relates

10:17 Speaker 2 what the prince’s tutor did: He took a reed flute, a kind of musical instrument, and began to play. They said to him: “The king has overturned his son’s wedding canopy, and you sit here playing music?” He replied: “I am playing music because he overturned his son’s canopy instead of pouring out his anger on his son himself.” So they said to Asaf: “Hakadosh Boruch Hu has destroyed the Sanctuary and the Beis Hamikdash, and you sit here singing?” That is why he says, “A psalm of Asaf.” “I am glad that Hakadosh Boruch Hu poured out His anger on wood and stone, rather than on Israel.” So there was destruction here, damage—but not vandalism, destruction for its own sake. It was for the sake of putting things right, and therefore it does not fall under the prohibition of bal tashchis. This is true even according to the revealed dimension of Torah. The Rebbe cites a law from Hilchos Shabbos. The Rambam says: “Anyone who performs a destructive act is exempt.” If an act is inherently destructive, one is exempt. So someone who wounds another person or an animal, or tears or burns clothes in a destructive manner, is exempt, because he has not created anything. He has caused damage. Destruction is the opposite of creation; it is not considered melachah. The Rambam goes on to say in another chapter that sometimes a person is liable for it: “One who tears in his anger.” “In his anger” means while he is angry—not because of his mother-in-law, G-d forbid. Yes. Someone who tears something in anger, or in mourning for a deceased person for whom he is obligated to tear his garment, is liable despite damaging the garment, because doing so puts his mind at ease and calms his impulses. Since his anger subsides through this act, it is considered as though he has repaired something, and he is liable. In other words, it is considered melachah, not destruction. So we learn that when Hakadosh Boruch Hu exhausted His anger through the destruction instead of pouring it out on Israel, He was putting things right. There was therefore no violation of bal tashchis. We have acquitted Him of violating bal tashchis. But, the Rebbe asks, we still have not solved the problem. The question remains: What do we do about

13:22 Speaker 2 What about the prohibition “You shall not do so to Hashem your G-d”—that one may not destroy a stone from the Beis Hamikdash or the altar? What will you say, that here too he demolished it to vent his anger, taking it out on the stones rather than on the Jewish people? The Rebbe says there is a difference when it comes to the Beis Hamikdash. It would not be enough for someone who is angry to come along and, instead of tearing his clothes, knock a stone out of the altar. They would ask him: Why did you do that? “I just wanted to calm my anger.” Because here the issue is not whether you are repairing or damaging. The issue is that you are destroying the Beis Hamikdash: “You shall not do so to Hashem your G-d.” So even if you do it to calm your nerves, that does not permit you to destroy a stone from the altar or the Beis Hamikdash. There is only one situation in which a person who does this would not be liable: demolishing in order to rebuild. For example, if the altar cracked or was damaged and needed repair, and to repair it, the stones had to be broken and new ones put in. Only in that situation, where the demolition is for the sake of rebuilding the Beis Hamikdash—not for calming my nerves—would it not be forbidden. With this, the Rebbe intended to resolve the Midrash we mentioned earlier about the lion, and again, that a lion should come. What the Midrash wanted to tell us is: Who was behind Nebuchadnezzar, the destroyer? That same lion, Hakadosh Boruch Hu. This was demolition in order to rebuild. The same Ariel who demolished did so in order that Ariel should come. It does not mean merely that afterward Ariel would come and repair it. The demolition was intended from the outset for the sake of repair. That is why it called both the destroyer and the builder of the Beis Hamikdash by the same name, “lion,” as a hint. Interestingly, according to Kabbalah, the face of a lion—it says in the vision of the Divine Chariot that there is “the face of a lion on the right.” Right

16:15 Speaker 2 is chessed, kindness, but a lion represents gevurah, severity. The Hebrew letters of aryeh, “lion,” can also be rearranged to spell yirah, “awe.” So how can the face of a lion, which represents awe, be on the right, the side of kindness? The idea is that the inner meaning of the destruction was present at the time of the destruction. It was not that afterward He regretted it and said, “Oh, why did I destroy it? Let’s rebuild it.” Rather, at the time of the destruction, the goal was not destruction. It was actually the beginning of the process of building the renewed Beis Hamikdash. This is a very special idea. Again, everyone thinks that when the Beis Hamikdash was destroyed, Hakadosh Boruch Hu was angry with the Jewish people, so He destroyed it. Then, either they did teshuvah or He forgave them, and, well, let’s rebuild it for them. The Rebbe says: No. At the time of the destruction, the goal was not destruction. It was demolition in order to rebuild. An example from everyday life: There is no growth without the seed decaying. When someone sees the seed decaying, he sees it as a loss. But someone who understands says, “Aha, without decaying it cannot grow.” So there is a profound idea here: It is not possible to arrive at the building of the third Beis Hamikdash without destroying the previous Beis Hamikdash. Where did the Rebbe get this idea? He cites Midrash Rabbah on Eichah, chapter 1, section 1. Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi says… The discussion there is about Moshiach’s name: What is his name? Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi says: “His name is Tzemach, as it says, ‘Behold, a man whose name is Tzemach, and from beneath him he will sprout.’” That is a verse in Zechariah. Rav Yehudah, in the name of Rav Eivo, says: “His name is Menachem, as it says in Eichah, ‘For Menachem is far from me.’” Rav Chanina said: “They do not disagree.” Both are right. How can that be? “The numerical value of one is the numerical value of the other.” Do the calculation: Menachem has the same gematria as Tzemach. And Chabad chassidim know that Mendel also has the same gematria as Tzedek. Menachem Mendel is Tzemach Tzedek. So

19:32 Speaker 2 it is already written in the Midrash: Moshiach’s name is Tzemach, and Moshiach’s name is also Menachem, and they have the same numerical value. What does this have to do with Tzemach? The Midrash continues with an amazing story. I’ll translate it into Hebrew, because it is written in Aramaic. There was once a man… This was at the time of the destruction, right? He was not in Jerusalem. There was no news, WhatsApp, or telegrams back then. You could be up north and have no idea that the Beis Hamikdash had been destroyed. So a Jewish man was plowing with his cow. His cow gave a strange moo. An Arab passed by and said to him: “What are you?” “I’m Jewish.” “Oh, you’re Jewish? Then you can let your cow go, and she can cast off the plow. There’s no point in your continuing.” “What happened?” “The Jews’ Beis Hamikdash has been destroyed.” Interestingly, that is what he represents: If the Beis Hamikdash has been destroyed, there is no point in sowing. There is no point in going on living. So the man asks: “How do you know?” He tells him: “I heard it in your cow’s moo. That’s what she said.” He understood the language of animals. While they were speaking, his cow mooed a second time. The Arab said to him: “You can harness the cow and the plow again.” “What happened?” “The savior of the Jewish people has been born. Just now, this very moment.” In other words, the Beis Hamikdash was destroyed on Tisha B’Av, and the savior of the Jewish people was born on Tisha B’Av. The rest of the story is interesting. The man asked where he had been born. The Arab told him, and he went there and found a woman who had given birth. She said a baby had been born to her that day. “And where is he?” She told him: “Winds came and carried him away, and I don’t know where he is.” A most interesting story. The striking point here is: How can such a thing be? Logically, it would seem that Moshiach cannot come a second after the destruction of the Beis Hamikdash. Hakadosh Boruch Hu is angry. The people need to do teshuvah.

22:26 Speaker 2 Especially… Looking back, we see that two thousand years have passed and Moshiach still has not come. So why would Moshiach be needed at that very moment? The idea here is that the moment of destruction is the moment when the Geulah is born. It is an entirely different way of looking at the whole matter of the destruction and exile. Based on this special idea, the Rebbe wants to explain another remarkable point. This time it is from a different sicha, in volume 2 of Likkutei Sichos. Here too there is something striking. We know that the eternal bond between the Jewish people and Hakadosh Boruch Hu was first established at the Covenant Between the Parts with Avraham Avinu. In the midst of that covenant, He tells Avraham Avinu: “Your descendants will be strangers in a land not their own, and they will be enslaved and afflicted.” More than that, a terrifying darkness falls upon him there; our Sages say that He showed him four future exiles in addition to Egypt. What is strange about this? Avraham Avinu is not being punished at this point. He is entering into a covenant with Hakadosh Boruch Hu. Chassidus explains that a covenant is an eternal bond that cannot be broken. With an ordinary promise that is not a covenant, it may be that we were not worthy of it. The promise was conditional on our being worthy, and we lost it. But something given through a covenant is like two people who love each other locking themselves in a room and throwing the key outside. We ourselves can never get out. So a covenant of love like this is not just ordinary love. It is called love that does not depend on anything, because you do not make a covenant about something that might be lost if the other person is no longer worthy, in which case you would not keep the covenant. There is no such thing as not keeping the covenant. So the one making the covenant is declaring: We love each other unconditionally. Whatever happens, we will remain connected forever. How, then, can a message arrive at such a moment of love—a message about what?

25:20 Speaker 2 About exile. We could try to explain this specifically through another Midrash. The Midrash says that at the Covenant Between the Parts, Hakadosh Boruch Hu gave Avraham two options: “How do you want your children to descend—into Gehinnom or into subjugation under the kingdoms?” Rabbi Chanina bar Pappa said: Avraham chose subjugation under the kingdoms. He preferred that to their remaining in Gehinnom. But what, really, is the difference? First, we need to emphasize: if you’re told “either Gehinnom or subjugation under the kingdoms,” that means they have something in common. If you’re told “either Acamol or Dexamol,” both are painkillers. But you can’t say “either Acamol or lettuce.” That doesn’t work. There’s no connection. From this, the Rebbe derives in one of his sichos that subjugation under the kingdoms accomplishes the same thing Gehinnom does. What does Gehinnom do? It refines the soul so it is fit to enter Gan Eden. So subjugation under the kingdoms also refines the souls, purifies them and makes them worthy of the Geulah. That is what he chose instead of Gehinnom. Interestingly, the Rebbe doesn’t explain there why he didn’t actually choose Gehinnom. If it amounts to the same thing, let them have good lives in this world. Gehinnom? Well, everyone goes to Gehinnom anyway. Why did he specifically choose subjugation under the kingdoms? Perhaps we can say this: Who enters Gehinnom? The soul. So what is refined and purified in Gehinnom? The soul. But Gehinnom doesn’t refine the body. Avraham Avinu wanted them to be worthy of the World to Come, of the resurrection of the dead, with the body refined as well. That is why he preferred subjugation under the kingdoms. It takes place down here. The body suffers under the Nazis, under the Communists, under the Haidamaks; the body suffered under the Romans and the Greeks. The body of the Jewish people was refined. So then what? Then you might say: Why are you asking how He could give him such options in the middle of His ceremony of love

28:17 Speaker 2 for him? You could say it was for his benefit. After all, it saved them from Gehinnom. So it makes sense that at a moment of love He would give him the option of how to be saved from Gehinnom. But that isn’t enough. Why? Because at a wedding, you don’t discuss burial arrangements, even though eventually one spouse will have to bury the other. Enough to face that sorrow when it comes. You don’t talk about such things at a wedding. So why, in the middle of the love Hakadosh Boruch Hu expresses to Avraham at the Covenant Between the Parts, does He bring him the “good news,” in quotation marks, that “your descendants will be strangers,” “behold, a dread, a great darkness,” and “a smoking furnace”? He shows him all the exiles. Why? There is another puzzling point along the same lines. The Gemara in Bava Basra, page 99a, discusses the keruvim. How were the keruvim positioned in the Holy of Holies? Which way did they face? Rabbi Yochanan and Rabbi Elazar disagree. One said, “They faced one another.” They stood opposite each other, face to face. The other said, “Their faces were toward the House.” That is a verse written about Shlomo’s Beis Hamikdash. With the Mishkan, it says they faced one another; with Shlomo’s Beis Hamikdash, it says their faces were toward the House—as though each keruv faced the opposite wall, with their backs to one another. How can that be? The verses contradict each other. The Gemara says: It isn’t difficult. Both are correct. One describes a time when the Jewish people do Hashem’s will, and the other a time when they do not. In other words, when the Jewish people do Hashem’s will, the two keruvim—which, as we know, symbolize Hakadosh Boruch Hu and the Jewish people—look at each other with love and affection. When they do not do Hashem’s will, the keruvim, the Jewish people and Hakadosh Boruch Hu, are at odds: “They turned their backs to Me and not their faces.” That is what the Gemara says. There is another Gemara in Yoma. Reish Lakish said: When the non-Jews entered the Sanctuary,

31:26 Speaker 2 they plundered everything there. They entered the Holy of Holies and saw the Ark and the keruvim. The Gemara relates that they saw the keruvim intertwined. They saw the two keruvim embracing each other like a man and woman. They brought them out to the marketplace and announced to everyone: “Look, look! These Jews, whose blessing is a blessing and whose curse is a curse—this is what they occupy themselves with?” This is their worship. And about this, the verse in Eicha says, “All who honored her scorned her, because they saw her nakedness.” So Reish Lakish says that at the time of the destruction, the keruvim were intertwined. The Rebbe asks: How can that be? Didn’t you say that they are intertwined when the Jewish people do Hashem’s will, when there is affection between them? At the time of the destruction—the height of anger, the height of Hakadosh Boruch Hu’s concealment of His face—you see the keruvim embracing each other? How can that be? Again we see the point, though we haven’t explained it yet: at the time of the destruction, love is at its height. When Avraham Avinu is told about the exiles, it is the height of love, the Covenant Between the Parts. What is going on here? Why is there destruction at the height of love? Why is love expressed at the height of destruction? How can that be? It seems completely backward. To address this, the Rebbe brings a parable in his sicha. The Rebbe phrases it this way. It is a parable from a great chossid named Reb Hillel of Paritch. He composed an entire maamar on this subject, and in it he gives a parable that the Rebbe adopted. It explains how, at the very height of concealment and hiddenness, precisely then, revelation is at its height. Here is the parable. Reb Hillel of Paritch says: When a teacher imparts an idea to his students—I mean a real teacher. A real teacher doesn’t just pull material out of his sleeve without even paying attention to his students. That isn’t a teacher;

34:57 Speaker 2 that’s a teaching employee. A real teacher is a mashpia, and while teaching, he gives his full attention to the student sitting before him. It is as though he wants to put everything in his own mind into the student’s mind right now. And the student feels it. The student’s face lights up at the teacher’s attention: how completely focused he is on me. I am his whole focus. The student truly delights in it. But sometimes something happens—and only someone who works in education can really understand this parable. Sometimes the teacher has prepared a lesson, prepared it thoroughly. He knows the subject and has anticipated every kind of question the students might raise; he already has an answer ready for each one. Yet the very process of teaching can awaken a new insight in the teacher himself, one that strikes him in the middle of the lesson. As he explains the subject and its reasoning to the student with great energy, an astonishing insight suddenly flashes into his mind, shedding an entirely new light on the whole subject. So what’s the problem? Finish the lesson and deal with the insight afterward. As I see it, psychologically, every new insight is by nature like a flash of lightning. It flashes for a second and disappears. To preserve that flash, you have to attend to it immediately and grasp it through binah. The flash is chochmah—a flash of insight. But if you don’t begin grasping it right away, trying to understand it... What does binah do? Binah begins asking, “What is the basis for this? Where is the proof? What is the definition? What analogy could illustrate it?” And then it builds a structure that holds on to that point. But he can’t do that in the middle of the lesson with the student. Right now he is focused on conveying the material. He cannot also work on absorbing it. When he is occupied with giving it out, he cannot take it in. So now, he says

38:15 Speaker 2 The teacher faces a dilemma: If he wants to remain faithful to the student, he’ll say, “I feel I’m missing something here—but what can I do? I can’t abandon the student in the middle of a lesson. I’ll continue with the original lesson I prepared before this flash of insight.” But what will happen to the insight? What should he do? He doesn’t want to lose it. Why? Because he cares about the student. This new insight is something he hasn’t fully grasped himself yet, but he senses an amazing new light in it. If he can grasp it, he’ll have something to offer the student: a profoundly new understanding of the subject. So out of devotion to the student, for the student’s sake, the teacher decides to disengage for a moment from teaching. Instead of directing all his intellectual powers downward, toward the student, he now directs them upward, to receive the insight. He tries to hold on to the flash of insight that has just come to him, to grasp it and imprint it in his mind so this great new idea won’t vanish. Let’s see what happens with the student. The student senses the teacher’s withdrawal. From the student’s perspective, everything goes dark. Interestingly, this happens in stages. I’m only summarizing it here. Anyone who reads the original will see that the analogy describes and explains these stages of the teacher’s withdrawal beautifully and at length. What does the student notice first? The vitality the teacher had while giving the lesson suddenly fades. He’s still speaking and continuing the lesson, but the sparkle has gone from his eyes. The vitality is gone; everything seems dull. Then, as the teacher withdraws further into himself, he gets closer to the idea and begins to understand it better. He grows even more excited by it. And what happens then? Not only does his speech

41:18 Speaker 2 to the student lack vitality, it also becomes halting and confused. He suddenly breaks off in the middle because of the thoughts occupying his mind. He suddenly uses words that don’t belong to the lesson, perhaps words connected to the new insight, and the student has no idea what he’s talking about. Eventually the teacher has withdrawn so completely, risen so high and become so absorbed in the new insight, that he finally grasps it. And once he has grasped it, he is so overwhelmed by the depth of the idea that he falls silent. He stops speaking, and the student sits in class, unable to understand what has happened to his teacher. “He’s been withdrawing from me bit by bit. Everything has grown darker; he’s gone deeper into himself, until he’s left me here and is off daydreaming. What happened? What did I do wrong? Why did he abandon me?” But that is how the student experiences it. That’s how it looks on the outside. What is happening beneath the surface? Rabbi Hillel of Paritch says that if the student pays close attention, he’ll notice something interesting. True, the teacher’s speech has lost its vitality and become halting and confused, until he stops speaking altogether. But if the student looks carefully at the teacher, he’ll see that his face is glowing. The teacher is positively radiant, as though he has discovered something amazing. So if the student understands what he’s seeing, he’ll realize that this wasn’t just the teacher losing focus and thinking about unrelated things instead of what’s happening in the classroom. He’ll understand that the teacher has withdrawn because a wonderful new insight is taking shape in his mind, which he’ll then be able to share with the student. Now, a student who doesn’t understand this sees how completely the teacher has withdrawn from him and feels disappointed. There’s nothing for him to do now. The teacher is silent. “I

44:01 Speaker 2 don’t know what’s happened to him; he’s off daydreaming.” So he gets up, leaves the classroom, goes outside for a drink and plays around. But if the student understands that something is taking shape here, then, Rabbi Hillel of Paritch says, he remains standing there, utterly focused, waiting to hear the new revelation. He prepares himself with eager anticipation to receive the new light now taking shape in the teacher’s mind. Anyone who reads Rabbi Hillel of Paritch’s maamar in the original will find remarkable things there. He explains the entire Egyptian exile this way. This is what happened at the Covenant Between the Parts. He says that at that point there was a flash of divine insight concerning the Torah that Hakadosh Boruch Hu would give to the Jewish people. The new insight at the time of the Covenant Between the Parts was the giving of the Torah. In the time of the Patriarchs, Hakadosh Boruch Hu still appeared to the Patriarchs and to the tribes. Afterward, little by little, there was more concealment; exile began. Then the exile grew darker, until things became so severe that Moshe Rabbeinu himself cried out to Hakadosh Boruch Hu: “Why have You harmed this people? Why did You send me? Since I came to Pharaoh to speak in Your name, he has harmed this people.” Not only had You not fulfilled the promise of the Covenant Between the Parts; things had become worse. Why did they become worse? Now we understand. As the new divine revelation of Geulah descends through the worlds, unfolding from one world to the next, Hakadosh Boruch Hu seeks to draw that new revelation into this world. So He withdraws from the lower realm, and those below experience darkness and exile, without knowing why. And this is the secret that answers another question about the worsening of exile. On a simple level, without Chassidus, if you ask people why we are in exile, they’ll say, “Because of our sins, we were exiled from our land.” So exile atones for sins. All right. It’s like someone who is dangerously ill being given

47:01 Speaker 2 antibiotics that weaken the body considerably, but there’s no choice: he needs to be healed. But let’s continue with the medical analogy. Someone has a severe infection and is given a high dose of antibiotics. After a week or two, when the infection has subsided, the doctor reduces the dose. Instead of three times a day, he says once a day is enough. So, seemingly, if exile were only meant to atone for sins, it should have been most severe at the beginning, when we had a great many sins that had not yet been atoned for. As time went on, exile should have become progressively easier and less severe. What do we see? Exactly the opposite. The longer exile continues, the harsher and darker it becomes, until we cry, “How much longer?” Why? We’ve already achieved atonement; ninety-nine percent of the sins have already been atoned for. Surely the dose of suffering and darkness can be reduced. Why does it grow more severe? With this explanation, we can understand it. If exile were solely about atonement for sins, that really is how things should be. But once we understand that exile results from the divine light withdrawing upward in order to draw down the new light of Geulah, it makes sense. When was the new light of Geulah born? At the moment of the destruction. At the moment the Beis Hamikdash was completely taken from us, there was a flash of insight: Moshiach was born then. When exile was first spoken of, at the Covenant Between the Parts, the idea of the giving of the Torah arose. And as exile continues, it is as though Hakadosh Boruch Hu rises ever higher in order to draw the light of Geulah down below. This is the inner way of looking at Bein Hameitzarim. “All her pursuers overtook her between the straits.” The Rebbes of Chassidus say that the Hebrew word for “her pursuers” can be read as “one who pursues Yud-Hei.” Yud-Hei is the deep, inner part of Hashem’s name. Whoever pursues an understanding of Yud-Hei attains it during Bein Hameitzarim. So one can

49:58 Speaker 2 To grasp it, because we grasp the inner intent, the hidden presence of Hashem within the exile. “Fortunate is the man whom You discipline, Hashem.” It looks like suffering, but in truth it is the depth of hidden good. And so, the more severe the exile becomes, the more it is a sign that, little by little, the Geulah is already approaching. It is like childbirth. She has been pregnant for nine months. So at first she needs strong contractions, but afterward they should gradually weaken? What? The contractions are what bring the baby into the world. And it is precisely when they grow stronger that we say, “Soon, soon, soon it will be mazal tov!” This is also the idea behind what is written about the future: “A new Torah will go forth from Me.” There is a wonderful, lengthy sicha of the Rebbe explaining what this means. But Chassidus says that the Torah Moshiach will teach the Jewish people will reveal the inner dimension of Torah so deeply that even Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai would find it worthwhile to return in a physical body. He might ask, “What would I do there? I know the entire Gemara; I know the entire Zohar. What could Moshiach possibly teach me that is new?” “A new Torah will go forth from Me.” It will be a wondrous revelation unlike anything we have had until now. And all this comes after concealment and hiddenness: Hakadosh Boruch Hu drew down the new Torah. To conclude, this is really how we should relate to every difficulty in life. Chassidus teaches us that when troubles and suffering come, Hakadosh Boruch Hu is not cruel. His purpose is very deep. There is an absolute, profound good here that a person cannot grasp. A person sees it as bad, but if he knew its depth, he would understand how much good lies within it. And let us finish with a lighthearted saying. We say, “You opened my sackcloth and girded me with joy.” What does “You opened my sackcloth” mean? In its plain, biblical sense, when someone is girded and loosens his belt, that is called “Let not the one who girds himself boast like the one who loosens his belt.” So a mourner is girded with

52:53 Speaker 2 sackcloth: “You opened my sackcloth and girded me with joy.” This troubled me. True, the time comes to take off the sackcloth after shivah, but I have never seen people come out dancing after shivah. “Girded me with joy.” We can suggest, in a lighthearted way, that “opened” means not only loosening what is tied around someone, but also developing film. We no longer have film today, but we used to. Say a bride had studio photographs taken, and she is very excited. After sheva brachos, she comes to the studio. “Well, what about the pictures?” She wants to see them already. And the photographer says, “We have the film, but I haven’t developed the pictures yet. If you like, I can show you the film. You can hold it up to the light and see roughly how they came out.” She looks at the film and everything goes black before her eyes. On the film, her wedding dress looks black, her eyes are white, and she looks like a skull. She asks the studio owner, “What have you done to me?” “Madam, you aren’t seeing the picture yet. It hasn’t been developed. You’re seeing the negative.” When we develop it—“You opened my sackcloth”—when we develop the picture, you will see how beautiful it was. All the pain and suffering were, in truth, drawing down the new light. “A new light shall shine upon Zion” in the complete Geulah, which will come this very year, 5782. We will dance with joy. On Tisha B’Av we will be able to dance with joy—and after Tisha B’Av as well. We will not need to fast; instead, we will come to the third Beis Hamikdash with Moshiach Tzidkeinu, very soon indeed.