Parshas Beshalach - Tu B'Shvat: Exile and Redemption Like a Garden of Trees

00:00 I heard a story about a well-known chossid named Reb Zalman Leib Estolin. He was a great Torah scholar and a man of mesirus nefesh. He endured suffering in Russia because of his self-sacrifice, and later came to Eretz Yisroel and lived in Bnei Brak. Reb Zalman Leib Estolin told a story he had heard from chassidim who lived in the time of the Tzemach Tzedek. There was a Jew, a great Torah scholar, who was not a chossid, but had family members living in Lubavitch. He himself was a Lithuanian Torah scholar who devoted himself to Torah study and serving Hashem, and he had an uncle or a cousin who lived in Lubavitch. Once he came to visit his family. He spent Shabbos in Lubavitch as a guest of his cousin who lived there. Over Shabbos they talked about the news, about Chassidus, about Lubavitch, and about the Tzemach Tzedek. His cousin said to him, “Since you’ve come all the way to Lubavitch, come see the Rebbe, the Tzemach Tzedek, on Shabbos. He delivers a maamar of Chassidus on Shabbos afternoon. Come and listen.” But he said he wasn’t interested. That wasn’t why he had come; he had come to see how the family was doing, and he would stay at home. And so

01:47 Shabbos afternoon arrived, and his cousin went to the beis midrash in Lubavitch to hear the Tzemach Tzedek’s maamar of Chassidus. The guest stayed at home and sat down to study Gemara. He tried to begin learning, but found that his mind wasn’t on it. He couldn’t concentrate, and he was a little bored. He began thinking to himself, “Maybe, since I’ve come all the way to Lubavitch, I really should go. What could happen? I’ll go hear the maamar, hear what he says and what Torah he teaches.” He went back and forth over it until he finally decided to go hear the maamar. He closed the Gemara and went to the beis midrash. The shul was full, with a large crowd. He stood off to the side, near the door, and tried to listen to what the Rebbe, the Tzemach Tzedek, was saying. In that maamar, the Tzemach Tzedek spoke about sowing and planting. The Rebbe spoke about the whole process of growth as understood in Chassidus. He delivered a maamar explaining in detail how Chassidus understands sowing and planting, and what they mean in a person’s inner service of Hashem. Suddenly, in the midst of it, he heard what the Tzemach Tzedek was saying. The Tzemach Tzedek was speaking about sowing, and said:

03:24 When you take a seed, a small seed, and put it in the ground, that one small seed naturally produces four hundred times as many seeds. What does this mean? After all, it all takes place within nature, yet the two things have entirely different qualities, and so on. As the Tzemach Tzedek said these words, that Jew, the Torah scholar, was standing at the back, near the door. A large crowd was packed in there, and naturally the Rebbe could not have seen where he was. But he thought to himself, “Even that is an exaggeration—that one seed produces four hundred seeds. Just an exaggeration.” He went on thinking, “These chassidim, I see they’re prone to exaggeration, and now I’m actually hearing an exaggeration like that.” That was his thought. Suddenly he heard the Tzemach Tzedek call out, “Why suspect an exaggeration here? Go and check in Kad HaKemach. That is what Rabbeinu Bachya writes in Kad HaKemach: each seed produces four hundred times its own amount.” Of course, the man trembled, and immediately recognized the Tzemach Tzedek’s ruach hakodesh. Naturally, it made a tremendous impression on him and shook him deeply. Afterward he did indeed draw close to the Tzemach Tzedek, began studying Chassidus, and took these ideas [unclear]

05:01 in this way. We find this in Parshas Beshalach, and it is also connected with the fifteenth of Shvat, Tu BiShvat. Both deal with growth and sowing, as we find in Chassidus, in a maamar of the Alter Rebbe in Torah Or, where he explains growth and sowing in a remarkable way in the service of Hashem. And of course, this connects with the time we are in, the days of the fifteenth of Shvat, which is the New Year for trees. At the beginning of the parsha it says, “And it was when Pharaoh sent the people away.” There is a Midrash Rabbah on this passage that gives several interpretations: What does “And it was when Pharaoh sent the people away” mean? What is the significance of the word “and it was”? The Midrash interprets it as an expression of “woe,” yes? “Woe.” As though [unclear] it says “and it was” because it is an expression of distress. In other words, Pharaoh cried, “Woe!” He regretted sending the Jews away. And “sent”—what is the significance of “And it was when Pharaoh sent the people away”? The Midrash offers several interpretations. In one of them, it says that this is what the verse in Shir HaShirim refers to: “Your shoots are an orchard of pomegranates.” “When he sent” is like the phrase “Your shoots are an orchard of pomegranates”: they become a field of pomegranates, a pomegranate orchard. And the Midrash explains this with a parable—

06:43 There was a father who owned a plot of land, a beis kor of earth. The father died and left that beis kor, that plot of land, to his son. The plot was dry, empty, and desolate; nothing grew there. The son was lazy and thought nothing would come of it. He sold it for a pittance, at a very low price. The buyer came, purchased the plot, invested in it, plowed and sowed it, and brought in water, until it became an entire orchard of pomegranates, grapevines, and all kinds of fine trees and fruit. Afterward the young man would walk around the vineyard, around the orchard, again and again, crying out and weeping: “Oh, oh, why was I so foolish? Why didn’t I make use of it?” The Midrash says that this is the meaning of “And it was when Pharaoh sent”: Pharaoh had the Jewish people with him for more than two hundred years, but did not make proper use of that or lead them as he should have. Then he sent them away. And after he sent them away, Hakadosh Boruch Hu took the Jewish people, and He—

08:08 nurtured them and gave them Torah and mitzvos, Mount Sinai and the Mishkan and everything else, and they truly became a great garden. An orchard of pomegranates: the Jews flourished like a field full of the finest fruit. This is “And it was when Pharaoh sent”: Pharaoh brought all this about by sending them away. Through that sending away, the Jewish people flourished and became an orchard of pomegranates and all kinds of beautiful trees, Hakadosh Boruch Hu’s most beautiful garden. This is “when Pharaoh sent the Jewish people away.” The Alter Rebbe dwells on this and seeks to explain the deeper meaning. It is a beautiful Midrash, a beautiful parable, but it contains a remarkable depth that the Midrash wants to explain to us: What is the inner meaning of exile and Geulah? For the parable the Midrash brings here reveals the full depth of what happened in Parshas Beshalach. This is the parsha of Geulah, the parsha in which we learn how the Jewish people leave Egypt. And here Parshas Beshalach, in which the Jewish people leave Egypt, begins with the words, “And it was when Pharaoh sent the people away.” Those words, in the first verse of the parsha, express the full richness and depth of the matter: what the exile was that the Jews endured all those years, when they were slaves and subjugated to Pharaoh.

09:46 To Egypt. Not only did this not bring the Jews down; on the contrary, through it they attained true growth. And this is a lesson for all Jews in every era, throughout every exile: when we find ourselves in a time of darkness, a time of exile—a bitter, difficult exile, with all that entails, growing harder and harder and more and more bitter—we learn from this parsha and this teaching that exile is, in essence, a process of sowing and growth from which the greatest revelation emerges. The Alter Rebbe explains this, and we can understand it from the way things happen physically. In the physical world, when we want [unclear] pomegranates, and likewise all the varieties of the seven species for which Eretz Yisroel is praised, when we want a place full of fruit and more fruit, we learn what produces the greatest growth: first there must be plowing, breaking up the ground. Then comes sowing and planting: we put the seeds, the kernels, into the earth. And there they remain for a long time, buried underground, with nothing to be seen. Someone who knows nothing about working a field or cultivating the soil will come and look. The only thing he

11:13 He sees a broken, plowed field, and nothing more. There is nothing there, just a desolate field. But beneath the ground lie the seeds, and the seeds, the kernels, have to go through a period of decay. They decay, and as they do, what do we see? Not only do we see no growth; we actually see decay. All those seeds disintegrate, and nothing is left. But over time, from all of this—from the soil being broken up, and from the seeds being placed in the ground and decaying—an entire crop grows. And here we see the difference between the produce of a field and the produce of a vineyard. With field crops, sowing eventually brings growth. But the growth is proportionate to what was sown. A person sows one small kernel, and hundreds of kernels grow from it. The quantity is incomparably greater. But ultimately, the quality is the same: you sow kernels and get kernels. That is what we see, for example, with field crops, with wheat and barley. But with trees—yes, trees and fruit—we see that they require much more time. With grain,

12:48 the Gemara says that within fifty-two days, you can already harvest barley, and in any case, wheat. It does not take long, less than two months. By contrast, trees take several years. All the years of orlah have to pass, and [unclear]. Besides that, some trees take many years to bear fruit. As the Tanya relates, there are trees that take seventy years. [unclear], as cited from the Zohar, some can take seventy years before their fruit grows. But that is precisely the point. When fruit grows on a tree, it does take more time and require more labor and effort, but then the fruit that grows is incomparably greater—in quantity, quality, and appearance. The green, dry, hard seed has no taste and no fragrance. But when a tree grows, it bears sweet, delicious fruit, with all kinds of flavors and fragrances. And that is the purpose of fruit from a tree: to sustain every living being. It brings vitality, refinement, and pleasure. We see this especially when a person eats fruit: fruit from a tree is eaten for enjoyment and pleasure, as the Shulchan Aruch also says in the laws of blessings over food. And this is what

14:13 the Alter Rebbe says: this is the idea in serving Hashem, the idea of exile and Geulah, and what the parable in the Midrash alludes to. The Jewish people were in Egypt. When the Jews were in Egypt, they were like seeds. They were in a dark place, “the nakedness of the land.” Pharaoh kept them buried, enslaving them to hard labor in Egypt, the nakedness of the land—backbreaking labor. There was a complete breaking, like what Kabbalah calls “the shattering of the vessels.” Their bodies were broken by labor that wore them down; it broke the Jewish body and the Jewish soul as well. The Jews were there in Egypt, enveloped in the darkness of the nakedness of the land, until they descended to the forty-nine gates of impurity, to a lowly state. But all this was only on the outside. It was precisely from within the darkness, from the concealment of exile, that the true depth of the Jewish soul was revealed. “Their cry rose up to G-d,” and “they cried out”—the Jews cried out to Hakadosh Boruch Hu. There was faith, too, as the Midrash says that the Jewish people were redeemed in the merit of their faith. Despite all the enslavement and all the bitter decrees Pharaoh imposed, the Jews remained strong in their faith. And more than that, there were all the ways in which “they did not change their names, their language, or their clothing.” Then there was the role of the Jewish women, as related

15:46 in the Midrashim: they brightened their husbands’ lives and brought about the fulfillment of “the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and spread.” So what happened? The exile was the sowing from which the growth later came. This is what the Midrash says about “And it was when Pharaoh sent out the people”: Pharaoh sent forth boughs and branches. When Pharaoh sent the Jewish people out of Egypt, nothing that had happened there went to waste. Bough upon bough grew there: a tree bearing the greatest, most beautiful and finest branches of the Jewish people, growing out of everything they had endured. And how is this explained in Chassidus? The Alter Rebbe explains the deeper meaning of the verse. The verse says, “And it was when Pharaoh sent out the people.” The Alter Rebbe says that it means Pharaoh sent forth boughs and branches among them. In other words, “when Pharaoh sent out the people”—through all the concealment he created, Pharaoh caused boughs and branches to grow among the Jews. That is why the Midrash says that when you take grapes and press them, it is precisely through treading and pressing that the wine emerges, “which gladdens G-d and men.” The same is true of an olive: when you press it and tread on it, with all the hard work involved, it is precisely through

17:18 the pressing that its oil is extracted. The true oil emerges when the olive is crushed and pressed. The same is true of the Jewish people: all of Pharaoh’s concealment and everything that came with it—“sending forth boughs and branches among them”—brought about the tree’s growth. And the tree, the vitality, the tree of life of the Jewish people, grew to its full height. Not only did they themselves attain the greatest spiritual heights and revelations, but they also brought out the sparks of holiness, as we know from Chassidus. When the Jews were in Egypt and carried out their work there, they brought out the sparks of holiness that were in Egypt—sparks that originated in a very high place in holiness and had fallen to a very low place in the sitra achra. And when the Jews left Egypt, they took with them the great wealth of all those sparks, thereby bringing a great revelation of G-dliness into this world. The Alter Rebbe says that this is the meaning of every exile and every darkness we see in the world. When we look around and see a darkness that is doubled and redoubled, when we are in exile, subjugated and preoccupied among the nations abroad, in all the different countries, amid all the darkness and bitter exile

18:42 and idolatry, into which a Jew must, G-d forbid, never fall—he must understand instead that the whole point of exile is that Jews live under the rule of another nation and inhabit the physical world during exile, and through this [unclear] is transformed. In other words, we use everything in this world to serve Hakadosh Boruch Hu: we make blessings before and after eating, and when we engage in business, we do so for the sake of Heaven. When a Jew says a verse of Torah in the darkness of exile, and when a Jew walks down the street repeating words of Torah, reciting Mishnayos by heart, sharing a Torah thought, and so on—every action a Jew takes during exile is like sowing. The Gemara says in Bava Basra: “Does a person sow one kor except in order to produce many kor?” That is, a person sows a certain amount in the ground not to get that same amount back, but to receive, as we said, four hundred times as much—and that is in quantity. With fruit, the increase is not only in quantity but in quality as well. Through the work and effort of [unclear], when a Jew serves Hakadosh Boruch Hu during exile, breaks his yetzer hara and his animal soul, stands firm in his service of Hashem, and uses the things of this world to serve Hakadosh Boruch Hu through them, and to, and to

20:09 and to, and to draw closer to Hakadosh Boruch Hu through them—then what the verse says will be fulfilled: “And it was when Pharaoh sent out the people.” Pharaoh, specifically Pharaoh, because this is the greatest [unclear] of kindness on the part of the nations, is the one who helps the Jews: “sent out,” so that they can reach “Your shoots are an orchard of pomegranates,” and all the greatest and most exalted revelations of G-dliness can grow. For Hakadosh Boruch Hu wants to bring about the greatest revelation of the Geulah, which we are all waiting for—the greatest revelation of the Geulah, which we can already see approaching—and it is precisely this way that we reach it. That is why we go through the entire exile, and “Pharaoh sent out the people”; it is precisely from this that the fruit grows—the most lovely, beautiful, and finest fruit. This is also the point of Tu B’Shvat, the holiday of the New Year for Trees. After all, we ask: Why do we make a whole holiday of it, a whole matter in the Torah and a full celebration when the New Year for Trees arrives? Why don’t we do that for other things? Specifically the New Year for Trees, because of what a tree represents. The point, the idea of trees that we see—yes, precisely this idea, also [unclear], connects it to Adam HaRishon. They need time, and in the meantime, seemingly nothing is revealed. But we see the success twofold,

21:36 It is precisely through sowing and planting and toil: “Those who sow in tears will reap with joy.” From this grows the greatest revelation of the Geulah. We once heard a story that happened in Russia, and we heard it from one of the daughters of the family. This was a well-known, large Lubavitch family, the Shagalov family. Her father, Reb Chonen Shagalov, was one of the great chassidim, one of those who showed mesirus nefesh. They took him, back in [unclear]. Yes, when they took the great chassidim and, Heaven have mercy, sent them to Siberia and [unclear]. In any case, she was left a widow with many children, all on her own. She was blessed, Baruch Hashem, with a long life. I myself knew her. She lived in New York, in Crown Heights. Yes, she lived past one hundred. Baruch Hashem, [unclear] in Teves, and she left behind hundreds and thousands of grandchildren and great-grandchildren. In any case, we heard this story, a very interesting story. She relates that during that period, in those difficult times in Russia, she was a widow on her own, a widow with many children, [unclear]. She was living for a while in the women’s section of a shul, for five or six months, and she wondered whether, before long, [unclear] she would have anything

23:18 to eat. If there was a little something they could still obtain, they gave the children food. Outside that shul was a courtyard. In that courtyard she planted a few potatoes, so that later she would have something to feed the children. Those were years of famine, hard years in Russia, the war years. That way she could give the children food, or have something to sell, something that could support the family. Two families lived in that shul. They divided the garden, the plot of land: on one half the Shagalov family had what they had planted, and the other family had the other half of the courtyard, where they planted their vegetables. Then came a day when they knew the authorities were about to come to the shul. They were coming to take everything from it. In short, that night they had to get into the shul and save the books and the Torah scrolls. The only way in was through a window. It had to be done in complete secrecy. They had to crawl in and out through the window and step on the garden. And so the chassidim, as they worked on this, they—

24:47 could do everything needed to save the belongings. The other family did not want to give permission. Why? They had planted a garden full of vegetables, poor people, and it would all be ruined in one night. People would go in and out, in and out, stepping on everything, and it would all be destroyed. But Rebbetzin Shagalov said she would let them pass through her plot. Why? They had to save the books—what kind of question was that? All night long they went in and out, carrying Torah scrolls, books and other things through the window, crossing the garden. And of course they stepped on all her vegetables and everything she had there. By morning there was nothing to be seen. Nothing remained of what had been in the garden. Well, that was the situation. What could they do? In the meantime, winter arrived. A few months passed. I don’t know the exact timing, but some weeks or months passed before they could uncover the ground and see what had happened. Then it turned out that in the neighbor’s courtyard, small, meager potatoes had grown. On the Shagalovs’ plot, nothing could be seen above ground, but they began digging to see whether there was anything underground, whether anything had survived. They dug beneath the soil and found—

26:15 large potatoes, large vegetables. They had been lying underground and growing—and not merely growing, but growing in great abundance. This was precisely in the merit of their having given over the garden so the books and Torah scrolls could be saved. The Rebbe helped them, so that beneath the ground everything grew abundantly. This is the point we make about the Yom Tov of 15 Shvat. And this is the real connection to Shabbos Parshas Beshalach. At first glance, the fact that 15 Shvat falls around Parshas Beshalach is just a detail. But the truth is that the parsha tells us what we need to know: even when we are in the darkness of golus, every mitzvah we do, every good deed, is like a seed placed in the ground. At the time, we may see only a seed. More than that: it undergoes plowing, it lies in bitter darkness, hidden and concealed, and we see nothing. But from all this grow the entire tree and its fruit, “bearing fruit according to its kind.” These are the greatest revelations of Moshiach, which we will soon see openly. And may the Rebbe help us, as we stand at the time of 15 Shvat and of—

27:33 Shabbos Parshas Beshalach, and then approach Yud Shvat, when the maamar “Basi Legani Achosi Kallah”—“I have come into My garden, My sister, My bride”—is well known: may we merit to see here below, in this world, how it all becomes revealed—the garden, the orchard, the things written in the verses of Tanach. May we see “the fruit of a beautiful tree,” and “a shoot will emerge from the stump of Yishai, and a branch from his roots will bear fruit”—that the Geulah will grow. And “when Pharaoh sent the people away,” together with the people, [unclear]. And may it be as it says in today’s parsha: “You will bring them and plant them on the mountain of Your inheritance, the place You made for Your dwelling, Hashem; the Sanctuary, Hashem, that Your hands established. Hashem will reign forever and ever.” And the sovereignty of Hakadosh Boruch Hu will be revealed in the world to the greatest extent precisely through the Geulah, speedily in our days, immediately, right now.