Ki Tisa - The Power of Finding Merit in Every Jew

00:00 They tell a story about the holy Berditchever, who once entered a beis midrash. He saw [unclear] a simple Jew [unclear] reciting the last verse of Psalm 119: “I have strayed like a lost sheep; seek Your servant, for I have not forgotten Your commandments.” He stopped at the words “I have strayed like a lost sheep; seek.” He said: Like a little sheep, a lost sheep, that had become lost among all the straw and hay. The holy Berditchever, after all, was the defender of the Jewish people; he would find merit in Jews. When he heard someone in the beis midrash say “I have strayed like a lost sheep, among the straw,” he said, “Let’s explain the verse.” Once there was a wolf. The wolf was in the forest and was very hungry, looking for prey, something to eat. Suddenly he spotted a little sheep in the distance. He went straight over to her and thought: Now I can devour this sheep. But wolves have a custom: they cannot simply catch a sheep and eat her. First they have to find some fault, some sin, some wrongdoing, something bad the sheep has done, so that she deserves to be devoured. The wolf asked the sheep, “I’m going to eat you. You just have to tell me what you did wrong, what sin you committed.” The sheep stood before the wolf, trembling, and said:

02:27 “Have mercy! I haven’t done anything. I’m a little sheep. I don’t hurt anyone, I haven’t bothered anyone, and I haven’t done anyone any harm.” The wolf said, “No, that can’t be. There must be something bad you’ve done. Think, think, think. Tell me what you did that was so bad you deserve to be eaten.” The sheep began to think, until she said, “I’ll tell you the worst sin I ever committed. Once a wagon passed by here. It was carrying straw—a wagon full of straw—and a few pieces fell off. I was hungry, so I went over and ate some of the straw.” The wolf said, “Well, then you’re a terrible sinner and criminal! You deserve a severe punishment.” And with that, he went and ate the sheep. The holy Berditchever said: “This is the plea in the verse, the plea Dovid Hamelech makes to Hakadosh Boruch Hu. He says to Hakadosh Boruch Hu, ‘I have strayed like a lost sheep, among the straw.’ The Jewish people are one sheep among seventy wolves. The seventy wolves, the nations of the world, want to eat and devour the Jewish people, and they look for something: What fault can they find with the Jewish people? Dovid Hamelech pleads: What do You have against the Jewish people? ‘I have strayed like a lost sheep, among the straw’—the little sheep is lost among seventy wolves, and they want to eat her. This is Dovid Hamelech’s plea to Hakadosh Boruch Hu.”

04:25 And, as is well known, “Seek Your servant” means: Search again for the Jewish people. The holy Berditchever would find merit in the Jewish people as a whole. In today’s parsha, Parshas Ki Sisa, we find the first person to plead the Jewish people’s case—Moshe Rabbeinu. And in the parsha we see Moshe Rabbeinu: who stands up to defend Jews, and which Jews? Jews who committed the gravest sin, the sin of the Golden Calf. That was the gravest sin. Moshe Rabbeinu, the shepherd of the Jewish people, comes back and then arrives with the tablets; he takes the tablets, throws them down, and breaks them. Later, he goes in—and throughout his whole exchange with Hakadosh Boruch Hu, he secures forgiveness and atonement from Hakadosh Boruch Hu. For whom? For those who sinned with the Golden Calf. There, in today’s parsha, we see how one must plead another’s case, and we must learn how to find merit in Jews. The Rebbe held a farbrengen on Parshas Ki Sisa in 5734. This was during the whole period around Yom Kippur 5734. Those who were there remember it too. It was a difficult time; there was a war in Eretz Yisroel. Terrible things were happening. There was great fear: What would happen? What...

06:20 There was Iraq, which said terrible things, rachmana litzlan, about the Jewish people. At that time, as is well known, the Rebbe spoke very forcefully in praise of the Jewish people. The Rebbe said then that things would be good for the Jewish people. This was something people saw several times. And that is indeed what happened; the miracles are well known. What happened? That winter, throughout the winter of 5751, the Rebbe spoke about it in every sicha. There were entire sichos in praise of the Jewish people. The Rebbe spoke several times then about how we must look at Jews, and how we must speak in their praise—even a Jew who, rachmana litzlan, has stumbled, even a Jew who has committed sins. We must see only his virtues, bring his merits to the fore, and plead his case. The Rebbe raised these points in the first few weeks. He also cited what is written in the name of the holy Berditchever about how to find merit in Jews. One of the things he mentioned then was what is written in the name of the holy Berditchever about Parshas Bereishis: “In the beginning, G-d created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was unformed and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And G-d said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light. And G-d saw that the light was good, and G-d separated”

08:03 “the light from the darkness.” The Midrash says: “Light”—these are the deeds of the righteous; “darkness”—these are the deeds of the wicked. “And I do not know which of them He desires. When it says, ‘And G-d said, “Let there be light,”’ it tells us that He desires the deeds of the righteous.” At first glance, what is the Midrash trying to say here? It is a puzzling Midrash. These are the deeds of the righteous and those are the deeds of the wicked, yet there is still a question, as it were, whether Hakadosh Boruch Hu desires the deeds of the righteous or those of the wicked? How can we say that? What does the Midrash mean? What is the question in the first place, and what does the answer—that He desires the deeds of the righteous—mean? The Berditchever says: The point is that there are two kinds of people who offer rebuke, two kinds of Jewish leaders who want to admonish Jews and bring them to teshuvah and the service of Hashem. Some focus on the deeds of the wicked: they speak about them and say, look what is happening with the deeds of the wicked. They deliver words of rebuke, speak sharply, and take people to task over the whole matter. They speak about how bad the situation is, rachmana litzlan, hoping thereby to stir everyone to teshuvah. That is one way. Others speak about the deeds of the righteous: they speak about the virtues of the Jewish people, highlight the virtues of Jews, the greatness of the soul, how precious Jews are, their greatness and their mitzvos. By speaking in praise of the Jewish people, they awaken within Jews their inner, hidden strengths and virtues. That is how they bring them to teshuvah. About this the Midrash says: “I do not know”

10:01 “which of them He desires”—these are two paths in the service of Hashem, two approaches to offering rebuke. And to this it answers: “And G-d said, ‘Let there be light.’” This is the tzaddik, the one who offers rebuke by speaking in praise of the Jewish people and thereby inspires them to do good. This is what Hakadosh Boruch Hu desires. It is precisely this that brings His bounty, blessing and success, and it is precisely this that leads Jews to return in teshuvah to Hakadosh Boruch Hu. “He desires the deeds of the righteous.” In this connection, the Baal Shem Tov also gives a parable. He says that once there was a king who had an only son. The son sinned and rebelled against his father, the king. The prince had educators with him. The king had sent two educators with his son, who had undertaken to educate him. The educators came back to tell the father what was happening with the prince: he had strayed from the path and stumbled. Both came back to tell the father. The difference was that one came and reported it quite matter-of-factly. He said, “Your child did this and that and this and that.” He described what had happened so the father would understand the situation. The second also came to the father and began to tell him, but in a way that aroused compassion. He spoke about how unfortunate the child was, how far he was from home, and how he had fallen in with bad company. It wasn’t who he really was; it wasn’t his fault. In this way he succeeded in arousing the father’s compassion for his son. And it was precisely this that led the father afterward to [unclear].

11:51 [unclear]. And these are also the two kinds of people who offer rebuke. The Baal Shem Tov calls them “the fiery serpents”—the kind who rebuke the Jewish people through [unclear], by speaking about and emphasizing undesirable things, hoping to inspire them that way. That is one way to rebuke the Jewish people. But there is another way: speaking in praise of the Jewish people and thereby inspiring them to teshuvah. And when we look at the weekly parsha—the Rebbe spoke on Shabbos Parshas Ki Sisa that year, following the events that had unfolded. Shabbos Parshas Ki Sisa that year came immediately after Purim. Purim fell on the Thursday and Friday of the week of Parshas Ki Sisa. Shabbos Parshas Ki Sisa was right after Purim. By then, the war’s miraculous conclusion was already visible, as is well known. Purim 5751 marked the miraculous end of the war. In what the Rebbe said that Shabbos, you can really feel the emphasis on praising the Jewish people. [unclear] about this, about this point, which has so much depth, and what it means for us today: how we should look at Jews, how we should find merit in them, especially in these days, when we need to speak in praise of the Jewish people to bring blessing and success, goodness and kindness upon Jews. So it is very important to bring out this point, the vision expressed in the words of tzaddikim, whose words live and endure forever. The Rebbe spoke then about the parsha and said that when we look at the weekly parsha, we see both

13:26 Both the weekly parsha and the haftorah we read this week speak about this. In the weekly parsha, we see how Moshe Rabbeinu, when the Jewish people stumbled in the gravest sin, the sin of the Golden Calf, stepped forward and gave himself over completely for their sake, to speak in their defense. What do I mean? We see two things in the parsha. First, Moshe Rabbeinu was willing to sacrifice himself. As he said to Hashem: “And now, if You will forgive their sin—but if not, erase me, please, from Your book.” In other words, Moshe Rabbeinu tells Hashem that he is prepared to give up his entire existence: “Erase me, please.” Moshe Rabbeinu’s entire existence is Torah. It was his whole life. Already when he was born, “the entire house was filled with light,” and as explained in the sefarim, this refers to Torah. From the moment he was born, his entire existence was Torah. “Remember the Torah of Moshe My servant”—his entire existence is Torah. It is his life. Moshe is Torah; his Torah was his entire source of life. Yet Moshe Rabbeinu comes and tells Hashem: If I must be separated from Jews, G-d forbid, if I must give up on them, then “erase me, please”—I am prepared to give up the entire Torah. That is Moshe Rabbeinu’s own self-sacrifice. Then we see that as soon as Moshe Rabbeinu came down from the mountain and saw that there might, G-d forbid, be an accusation against the Jews, he took the tablets and broke them. What—

15:03 Why did he break the tablets? In Rashi on the weekly parsha, we find one explanation. Rashi gives a parable of a king who had a betrothed woman, a bride, and then the king traveled overseas. There were maidservants in the house, and the maidservants sinned. “As a result, a bad name went out” about the betrothed woman, the bride. When the king returned and heard the bad name that had gone out about his bride, he wanted to call the whole thing off, to cancel the match. So the messenger, the intermediary between the groom and the bride who held the marriage contract, went and tore it up, as Rashi says. He said: She has not yet been married according to law. In the meantime, the situation could be investigated, and it turned out that it was not the bride who had sinned, but the maidservants. This is one of the things the parsha tells us, as Rashi explains. I had the privilege of being at a farbrengen where the Rebbe spoke at length about this Rashi. It was on Simchas Torah 5740. On the night of Simchas Torah 5740, before hakafos, I remember the Rebbe speaking about this Rashi, and there was truly terrible weeping. The Rebbe wept on Simchas Torah—and Simchas Torah is a time of joy. With the Rebbe,

16:41 especially on Simchas Torah, at hakafos, there was joy and dancing, tremendous joy. And there was tremendous joy on that Simchas Torah too. But when the Rebbe began speaking about this subject on Simchas Torah, he spoke about the final verse of the Chumash, where the Torah ends with the words “before the eyes of all Israel,” which Rashi says refer to the breaking of the tablets. That is how the Chumash ends. The Rebbe asked: How can the Chumash end with such a painful episode? On the last words of the Chumash, “before the eyes of all Israel,” Rashi comes—and how does he end? “That his heart emboldened him to break the tablets before their eyes.” I remember the Rebbe weeping terribly. It is precisely here that Moshe Rabbeinu’s greatest virtue is revealed: His Ahavas Yisroel was the deepest thing in his soul. True, the Torah was his whole life, and throughout his life he gave himself over for it—“Remember the Torah of Moshe My servant.” The Torah was Moshe Rabbeinu’s entire existence. But all of that had a purpose: the Jewish people. When the Torah stands opposite Jews, Moshe Rabbeinu does not hesitate. On the contrary, for him, Ahavas Yisroel stands even higher than the Torah itself. For the Jewish people preceded the Torah. The Rebbe once spoke about the teaching in Tanna Devei Eliyahu, which says: “I do not know which came first”—when there are two, the Jewish people and the Torah—“I say the Jewish people came first.” How do we know that the Jewish people preceded the Torah? Moshe Rabbeinu says to Hakadosh Boruch Hu,

18:21 as he comes down with the tablets: Here are the tablets, for which Moshe Rabbeinu gave himself over, which he waited for, and with which he lived his whole life. The Torah was Moshe Rabbeinu’s life. Moshe Rabbeinu walks along holding the tablets, and just as he is about to give them to the Jewish people, he takes the tablets and breaks them. He says: If not, there is no need for the tablets. Why? Because Jews are at stake. And here, in what reveals the greatness of the Jewish people, Moshe Rabbeinu shows us true Ahavas Yisroel, a living example. That is the point of the parsha. It is one of the things the weekly parsha teaches us: A Jew must give himself over to speak in defense of other Jews. Similarly, in the haftorah we read this week, we find Eliyahu Hanavi on Mount Carmel, at a bitter time for the Jewish people. Four hundred prophets of Baal, and “I alone remain a prophet of Hashem.” One lone prophet stands by himself. And he does not back down. He is neither afraid nor intimidated. Eliyahu Hanavi, all alone, wages an entire campaign. He gathers all four hundred prophets of Baal and all the Jewish people, stands before them on Mount Carmel, and confronts them with all his strength. One man stands alone against four hundred prophets of Baal, with the entire crowd on their side, not his. Yet he stands firm and does everything described in the haftorah, how

20:02 he arouses them to teshuvah. Where did he find the strength for that? Because Eliyahu Hanavi, like Moshe Rabbeinu, believed that Jews, at their core, have no connection to such an act. Eliyahu Hanavi knew that Jews do not belong to the worship of Baal; a Jew has a Jewish soul and believes in Hakadosh Boruch Hu. And even at the time of sin there is [unclear]. All of this is only something external: a failing, the circumstances, the surroundings, the yetzer hara, things around a person. It is not who he is. And when Eliyahu aroused them through everything he did there, with the bull for Baal and the bull for Hashem, he was certain—and that is indeed what happened, as the Frierdiker Rebbe tells us—that the whole crowd would call out together: “Hashem is G-d, Hashem is G-d.” Not “Hashem is G-d” once, but “Hashem is G-d” twice. As the Midrash says, at the giving of the Torah, when the Jewish people were in the desert, they said “Hashem is G-d” once. But after everything they had been through, in that situation, he aroused them to teshuvah until they all called out together, “Hashem is G-d, Hashem is G-d”—through the power of teshuvah within them, “a double measure of strength.” And this is what we learn from the weekly parsha: how to look at a Jew and speak in his defense. And at every farbrengen that followed, [unclear] about the verse the Rebbe cited, he emphasized this point: We must look at Jews [unclear].

21:48 We see this especially after the Holocaust, after the World War, after everything Jews went through, all the trials and all the darkness, the bitter darkness, doubled and redoubled. Today, every Jew is the most precious thing. Every Jew, the very existence of a Jew, is the most precious thing. We must love a Jew for who he is, speak in his defense, and speak of his virtues. The Rebbe spoke then about this point: The very act of speaking in defense of the Jewish people stirs and reveals their virtues, brings them to expression, and gives a Jew the strength to do teshuvah and serve Hakadosh Boruch Hu. The Rebbe then spoke about “I have strayed like a lost sheep.” This connects to the Gemara, to the Maharsha, and to the Tzemach Tzedek. The Gemara at the end of tractate Makkos cites the verse, “And you will be lost among the nations.” The Gemara says: I was afraid of this verse. It says, “And you will be lost among the nations”—G-d forbid, to be lost completely, so that no trace remains, G-d forbid, of the enemies of Israel. That is what the Gemara says. The Gemara continues with the words of Rav Pappa. Rav Pappa said: “No, perhaps it is like a lost object that is sought.” What does he mean? “And you will be lost”—lost, G-d forbid? “Like a lost object that is sought”—something lost that people search for and find. As it says: “I have strayed like a lost sheep; seek Your servant.” True, “I have strayed like a lost sheep,” a little sheep that has gone missing. But “seek Your servant”—they search for it and find it again. They search and find it; it is “sought.” Rabbeinu Gershom says: “Sought and found”—they search

23:38 it until it is found. Then the Maharsha says something remarkable. The Tzemach Tzedek also cites the Maharsha in his commentary on Tehillim. The Maharsha asks: What does it mean to say “like a lost object being sought”? He says this helps us understand the Gemara in Bava Metzia. The Gemara there discusses the laws of lost property. In the passage about returning lost property in Parshas Ki Seitzei, the Torah mentions “the ox, the donkey, the sheep, the garment,” and the Gemara asks what we learn from each one. Why does the Torah mention all four? Several things are learned from each. When the Gemara reaches “sheep,” it asks: What does “sheep” teach us? It then suggests that we might learn the matter of identifying marks from “sheep”—that if a lost object has identifying marks, it is returned. But the Gemara says we learn that from “garment.” In the end, the Gemara says: “The sheep in the law of lost property remains difficult.” In other words, the matter is unresolved. It would seem from the Gemara that we do not know why “sheep” was mentioned; there is no particular law to learn from it. The Maharsha asks: How could the Torah contain a superfluous word—the “sheep” in the passage about lost property? His answer is found in the Gemara in Makkos. The Torah includes that “sheep,” which seems superfluous, and the Gemara says of it, “The sheep in the law of lost property remains difficult.” We do not know why “sheep” was written. Do you know why the Torah wrote “sheep”? Because it says, “Like a lost sheep, seek Your servant.” Returning lost property, too, must involve “seek Your servant”—one must look for the lost object and return it. The Torah placed the word “sheep” among the items listed in the laws of returning lost property to call attention to “Israel is a scattered sheep,” to the Jewish people, of whom it is said in connection with this lost sheep, [unclear] exile, one sheep among seventy wolves. And concerning this lost sheep we say, “Seek Your servant”—it is a lost object being sought. Hakadosh Boruch Hu searches for it and will find it and bring it out of exile. Here the Tzemach Tzedek adds a remarkable insight. The Maharsha says this, and the Tzemach Tzedek asks: What about the continuation of the Gemara? This, he says, also helps us understand what follows. The Gemara speaks about identifying marks. In our service of Hashem, identifying marks are the idea of “Set up markers for yourself”—signs. This is the role of Torah and mitzvos: “Make signposts for yourself.” These are the Jewish people’s identifying marks, the signs of the Torah and mitzvos a Jew observes. So the Gemara is saying: Why is this a lost object being sought? Because of its identifying marks. Jews study Torah—“Set up markers for yourself”; Jews observe mitzvos—“Set up markers for yourself.” Torah and mitzvos are with them in exile. And because of Torah and mitzvos, which are the identifying marks, the lost object will be returned. But the Gemara says something further.

25:27 [unclear]

27:17 There is something about a Jew even without identifying marks. We learn about identifying marks from “garment,” which refers to Torah. But there is something even without identifying marks: the very fact that he is a Jew. Even if, Heaven forbid, he has stumbled and no identifying marks are visible on him—he is a Jew. And his very Jewishness can be recognized, as in the expression “recognition by sight.” The Midrash asks here: What is this recognition by sight? There are no identifying marks. But even when there are no identifying marks, there is the verse: “All who see them will recognize them, for they are the offspring Hashem has blessed.” When you look at a Jew, you can see in his face that he is a Jew—the very fact that he is a Jew. A Jew is Hakadosh Boruch Hu’s only child. A Jewish soul, even if it has stumbled in every respect, is still a Jewish soul, and he is still a Jew. And the non-Jews, the nations of the world, also know that he is a Jew. In his very being, one can see that he is a Jew. “All who see them will recognize them”—the nations of the world say, “That’s a Jew. Ah, that’s a Jew.” We see this in the darkest, bitterest times. The nations of the world do not distinguish between a Jew who wears a beard and peyos and a Jew who does not. When he is a Jew, we know from Hakadosh Boruch Hu [unclear] that what the non-Jew seeks out in a Jew is his very identity as a Jew. “All who see them will recognize them, for they are the offspring Hashem has blessed.”

28:57 This is a Midrash that the Tzemach Tzedek cites. When you look at the Midrash on Parshas Ki Sisa, you see that it says one of the arguments Moshe Rabbeinu made before Hakadosh Boruch Hu, when he spoke in the Jews’ defense, was by way of a parable. There was a king who had children. The children strayed from the path, to the point that they committed the most serious wrongs and did all sorts of bad things. The king no longer wanted anything to do with them and said, “They are not my children.” People tried to arouse the king’s compassion and said to him, “But they are your children!” The king replied, “They are not my children. I have nothing to do with them; I want nothing to do with them. They are not my children—they are another father’s children, not mine.” They said to him, “But you can see in their faces that they are your children. You cannot disown them.” This is what Moshe Rabbeinu says to Hakadosh Boruch Hu—you can see it in the Midrash—even when there are complaints against the Jews, that they have stumbled, that they do not want to serve Hakadosh Boruch Hu, [unclear], and all those things the prophets said that appear in the verses.

30:29 To this Moshe Rabbeinu says: [unclear]. And what verse does he bring? An explicit verse: “All who see them will recognize them, for they are the offspring Hashem has blessed.” That is the Jewish people. And because they are the Jewish people, “Either way, they are My children, and it is impossible to replace them with other nations.” That is the lesson of that passage. This is what the Rebbe spoke about, returning to the point raised at the farbrengens of 15 Shvat and Purim, when the Rebbe urged that we must learn this, particularly in our own day, in our time. This is a time when everyone needs to take the lesson from Moshe Rabbeinu, Eliyahu Hanavi, and the holy Rebbe of Berditchev. The Rebbe mentioned the holy Rebbe of Berditchev then, and [unclear] from the Rebbe of Berditchev, showing that he had this power. The Rebbe said then, and in his earlier sichos [unclear] he brings evidence for it, that he had heard in the name of his father, in the name of the Alter Rebbe, that through speaking in the Jews’ defense, the Rebbe of Berditchev opened a special chamber above in Heaven, the “Chamber of Merit,” so that everyone would speak in defense of Jews. And what was the point of this? Speaking in defense of Jews is not only about defending them, even when, Heaven forbid, they are in the most serious condition. Its power is that through it, the powers of the soul are revealed and awakened.

31:59 And through this, one causes [unclear] to be revealed and to overcome them, bringing all the Jews to the same conclusion they reached with Eliyahu on Mount Carmel. Eliyahu said, “Answer me, Hashem, answer me, so that this people will know that You, Hashem, are G-d.” And that is what happened: the whole assembly fell and said, “Hashem is G-d, Hashem is G-d.” So it will be now as well, in those days and in this time: already now we will see the truth revealed, the truth of every Jew and of all the Jews—that they are Hakadosh Boruch Hu’s people, [unclear] Hakadosh Boruch Hu’s people. That is the Jewish people: children of Hashem and servants of Hashem. And very soon we will merit the true and complete Geulah through Moshiach Tzidkeinu. And [unclear] the head of the Jewish people: the Rebbe will raise up the heads of the Jewish people, even the lowest souls, and thereby bring them to the greatest ascent, the ascent of the true and complete Geulah.