A Month of Physical and Spiritual Healing - The Month of Iyar in Light of Chassidus

00:00 The transition from Nissan to Iyar is a very sharp one. Nissan is a month of Geulah. The name of the month itself, Nissan, reminds us of miracles. It is the month of the great miracles of the Exodus from Egypt and the splitting of the sea. And not only the miracles of the first redemption, but also the miracles of the final Geulah, as our Sages tell us: “In Nissan our ancestors were redeemed; in Nissan they are destined to be redeemed.” During Nissan, a Jew is in a completely different atmosphere. He lives in an atmosphere of Geulah, with the hope and confidence, each and every day, that just as the first redemption took place in Nissan, so too we will truly merit the complete Geulah this Nissan. “The time of our freedom.” A person is in an atmosphere of freedom. Even according to halachah, we do not say Tachanun throughout the month of Nissan. As it says in the sefarim about Nissan, the entire month has the character of Rosh Chodesh. The holy Shelah writes that the verse “This month shall be for you the first of months” means that all of Nissan has the character of the first of the months. Every day of the month, through the last day, 30 Nissan, has the character of Rosh Chodesh. These days have all the holiness, exaltedness, and festivity of Rosh Chodesh. A month of Geulah, a month of freedom—that is Nissan. By contrast, Iyar arrives. Compared with Nissan, Iyar is certainly, if one can put it this way, a dry month, a month without festivals or holidays. Of course, there is Pesach Sheini and there is Lag BaOmer, and there are all the—of course, in terms of holidays, it is no comparison to Pesach, the time of our freedom, and the month of Nissan. So the question arises: What exactly are we coming to when Iyar arrives—each and every one of us? What is the meaning of this month? What is its deeper significance?

02:11 For a Jew, of course, we are taught what the Gemara says: “We ascend in matters of holiness.” When Jews reach the second month, as the Torah calls it, “the second month,” it cannot be a descent from the first month. On the contrary, from the first month, Nissan, to Iyar, which is called the second month, there must be some ascent, some elevation. What exactly does Iyar mean in our lives? Of course, the first thing that is special about Iyar is Sefiras HaOmer. Every single day of Iyar we count the Omer, a mitzvah from the Torah. There is a disagreement as to whether nowadays it is still a Torah obligation or a rabbinic one, but we perform a mitzvah and say each day, “Who has sanctified us with His commandments and commanded us concerning the counting of the Omer.” It is the only month of the year in which we perform a special mitzvah every single day. But, with Hashem’s help, we will devote a separate class to the meaning of Sefiras HaOmer. Today we will speak mainly about Iyar in terms of the essence of the month, which is also hinted at in its name. These are very beautiful and profound ideas, with very important lessons for our daily lives during Iyar. So we will focus on a few points. One is the special acronyms for Iyar cited in the sefarim. There are two acronyms for this month, and we will discuss both of them—what they mean and what we can learn from them about serving Hashem. And also, what the Torah tells us about this month, which is something very interesting. If we look in the Torah and see what it tells us about this month, the second month—and I will begin with that last subject.

04:15 What does the Torah say about the second month? There is an explicit verse in the Torah, in Parshas Bamidbar. The book of Bamidbar opens: “Hashem spoke to Moshe in the Sinai Desert, on the first day of the second month, in the second year after their departure from Egypt.” The book of Bamidbar, which in many years we also begin— I think in most years we begin reading it in Iyar, at the end of Iyar—tells us there about an event that took place in the second month. The first month is full of events. The entire story of the Exodus from Egypt, “This month shall be for you the first of months,” the whole process of leaving Egypt, the splitting of the sea—all of that took place in the first month. But what does the Torah tell us about the second month of the second year? That is, after the Giving of the Torah and after the construction of the Mishkan and everything else, what happened in the second month of the second year? That was when the Jewish people were counted. What exactly does the counting of the Jewish people represent? Looking at it very superficially, it does not seem to say much. All right, Hakadosh Boruch Hu asked that the Jewish people be counted, to find out how many there were, apparently. Fine—a census, something very external. This is explained in the sefarim. It starts, first of all, with Rashi. Before going to other explanations, let’s first look at what Rashi tells us. Rashi says something beautiful: “Because they are dear to Him, He counts them at every opportunity.” The Torah tells us about the counting of the Jewish people because this counting expresses how especially dear they are. It is like a person who has something very precious. Someone who has diamonds, who has very precious things, likes to check them and count them, to make sure they are all intact and all there.

06:25 So Hakadosh Boruch Hu counts the Jewish people because they are dear to Him. In other words, the counting of the Jewish people expresses His love for them, how dear they are to Him. That is how much Hakadosh Boruch Hu loves the Jewish people, and that is why He counts them. What is it about counting that expresses how dear something is? Beyond the point that a person counts something because it is precious, the sefarim explain—and it is written in the holy Shelah and explained at length in the teachings of Chassidus—that counting expresses the uniqueness of each individual. When you count, you are saying that each one has a very special importance. The fact that something is counted expresses that it is significant. There is such a concept in halachah: something that is counted is not nullified. There are laws of nullification concerning forbidden and permitted foods. When a forbidden food falls into and becomes mixed with permitted foods, there are rules about nullification by a majority, nullification in a mixture of sixty parts, and so on. These are questions of nullification: how is a forbidden item nullified when it falls into and becomes mixed with various permitted things? Halachah says that if it is a fruit or an object of a kind that is counted—meaning things that people do not sell in bulk, in packages, or by the kilo, but sell as individual units, counting them one by one—that expresses the item’s importance, and then it cannot be nullified. It makes no difference if it falls into and becomes mixed with sixty, a hundred, a thousand, or ten thousand permitted items. The prohibition can never be nullified in the permitted items, because the fact that it is counted shows how precious it is. So this brings out a beautiful point, a beautiful lesson: Hakadosh Boruch Hu asks Moshe and Aharon to count the people

08:31 Out of His love for the Jewish people, He counts them. The census tells us that the Jewish people are so precious to Hakadosh Boruch Hu that every single Jew counts. And that gives us the strength to stand firm, to know that the Jewish people are alive and enduring, and that nothing in the world can, G-d forbid, do away with us or break us. This has been the strength of the Jewish people through thousands of years and hundreds of generations, as Jews have lived in all kinds of places and through all kinds of periods in exile. The census expresses this essential point: the importance of the Jewish people, that we are alive and enduring, and nothing can nullify us. So the Torah says, “In the second month.” There had already been a first month, the month of the Exodus from Egypt. Hakadosh Boruch Hu saved the Jewish people and took them out of Egypt. That was the first stage, the first month. The Exodus meant leaving the darkness, going from impurity to holiness, from darkness to light. It was an escape—“the people fled.” That was the first moment, stage one. But after escaping, you need strength. All right, a person has escaped. You were in captivity, in the enemy’s hands, and you got away. But escaping is only the first stage. You could fall again. You could fall back into the enemy’s hands. Here you need special strength. So then comes the second month, and Hakadosh Boruch Hu counts us. He gives us a census and says that every Jew is someone special. The inner strengths within a Jew are awakened, giving him the power to face all of life’s challenges. In other words, in the first month, Hakadosh Boruch Hu gave us the strength to leave evil for good, impurity for holiness. For the Jewish people, that

10:40 meant that we fled the impurity of Egypt and accepted the yoke of Heaven. We were out of danger, but the evil was still inside. A person still needs to do inner work to stand up to life’s challenges. The first stage passes. This happens to every one of us. Sometimes we have an awakening to teshuvah and flee enemy territory. We leave the place of impurity and the sitra achra. Then comes stage two, and a person says to himself, “Wait, now the work on myself begins.” Suddenly he starts encountering challenges and difficulties along the way, all kinds of obstacles and things that get in his way. He is told: You have strength. Every Jew is precious in the eyes of Hakadosh Boruch Hu. Every Jew is regarded as a distinct, complete being. With that strength, you can begin to work on yourself, to repair and improve your whole life, and truly connect to Hakadosh Boruch Hu from deep within. And that is the second month, the month of Iyar. There is something very interesting about the initials associated with Iyar. The holy books discuss two sets of initials for the word Iyar, because it can be spelled in two ways: Alef, Yud, Reish, with one Yud, or Alef, Yud, Yud, Reish. There is a lengthy discussion of this in the Shulchan Aruch, Even HaEzer, section 126. It discusses at length the laws of documents, kesubos and gittin—how the name of the month Iyar should be written according to halachah. Is it written with one Yud or with two? And there is an interesting point here. Those who hold that Iyar is written with one Yud give an acronym. Many sefarim by great Torah scholars bring it—the Chasam Sofer does too, among others—that Iyar stands for “I am Hashem your Healer.” Of course, Hashem’s name is written with

12:53 a Yud: the name of Hakadosh Boruch Hu begins with Yud, and so on. “I am Hashem your Healer”—those are the initials of Iyar when it is written with one Yud. The second acronym applies when it is written with two Yuds, as the Rema rules in practice. The halachic authorities bring these initials: Avraham, Yitzchak, Yaakov, Rachel. Of course, all of this is discussed in Kabbalistic works, but it is also brought in works of halachah, in the Shulchan Aruch in Even HaEzer. The four letters of Iyar—Alef, Yud, Yud, Reish—represent the four supports, the four aspects, of the Divine chariot. When we speak of the supernal chariot, the Midrash says, “The Patriarchs are the chariot”—the holy, supernal chariot. There is also Yechezkel’s chariot, the chariot of the angels he saw in heaven, with its four faces: the face of an ox, an eagle, a man and a lion. But there is also the chariot of the holy Patriarchs: “The Patriarchs are the chariot.” What does it mean that they were a chariot? The Patriarchs were a chariot for Hakadosh Boruch Hu. What does that mean? The Midrash explains the image of a chariot, just as the angels are called a chariot. A chariot’s purpose is for a person to ride in it, and the chariot is entirely at his disposal; it has no will of its own. The rider takes the horse or wagon wherever he wants, and the chariot goes where the rider takes it. In that way, the holy Patriarchs were, so to speak, a chariot for the Shechinah. Hakadosh Boruch Hu is revealed in the world. He wants, so to speak, to ride—to be revealed in our world—through the holy Patriarchs and their self-nullification. Avraham, Yitzchak, Yaakov and Rachel are the four. So first we’ll discuss the initials meaning “I am Hashem your Healer,” and then we’ll discuss the chariot: what it represents in a Jew’s avodah

15:08 in Iyar, the second month. First, regarding “I am Hashem your Healer”: the Gemara in Shabbos, page 147, says that all remedies and medicines from Pesach until Shavuos have a very beneficial effect. In other words, the Gemara tells us that this period has a special power for healing. On the simple, physical level, these are auspicious days. The month of Iyar is an auspicious time for healing the body. At the same time, for a Jew, healing the body goes together with healing the soul. They are one world—“one nation on earth.” For us, physical and spiritual healing go together. So Iyar is also an auspicious time for healing the soul, as we discussed in connection with Pirkei Avos. As the Midrash Shmuel, among the commentaries on Pirkei Avos, writes: Why do we study Pirkei Avos during these weeks after Pesach? Because Iyar and the summer season begin. In summer, the forces of nature grow stronger. The trees grow, the sun shines upon the earth, the hot days arrive, and people attend to their physical health. But along with the natural heat outside, a person’s impulses also grow stronger. So a person needs to refine his character traits and his nature, to work on the ailments of the soul and the negative traits he has, and to correct and heal them. Studying and reciting Pirkei Avos is one of the things that helps with this. In other words, Iyar is a month of healing: physical healing, an auspicious time when a Jew can bring about healing for various illnesses and ailments. It is worth making use of this period, and also addressing ailments of the soul by correcting and improving the faculties of the soul that need healing, correction and improvement. So here we come to the initials

17:25 “I am Hashem, your healer.” There is a very powerful message here, and it follows specifically from the month of Nissan. This brings us back to the point with which we opened the class: Nissan and Iyar—how does one follow the other? As explained in works of Chassidus, there are two kinds of healing. One is when a person was ill, went to a doctor, and the doctor gave him medication and treatment. Slowly, thank G-d, the person recovered. That is healing by a human being. The Torah gave a doctor permission to heal; of course it did. In Parshas Mishpatim, the Torah says, “And he shall surely heal.” According to halachah, a person must go to a doctor and follow the doctor’s instructions. But when healing comes through human means, it is natural healing. And with natural healing, even after a person recovers, some scar always remains, some trace. He was once ill and now he has recovered, but he is no longer quite as he was before. Something remains. After recovering, he does not have quite the same strength, vigor, youthfulness, or freshness. Something has weakened. That is ordinary, natural healing. But there is also the healing of “I am Hashem, your healer”: “Any illness that I placed upon Egypt, I will not place upon you, for I am Hashem, your healer.” As explained in the sefarim—the Maharsha discusses this, as do other great Torah sages—even if a person was ill, when Hakadosh Boruch Hu brings the healing, “I am Hashem, your healer,” it is healing in the manner of “I will not place upon you.” It is as though the person had never been ill. He returns to such health, such strength and vigor, that he

19:27 is as though he had never been ill at all. On the contrary, he is fresher and younger than before. That power of healing belongs to the month of Iyar: “I am Hashem, your healer.” This applies both to physical healing and to healing of the soul. In physical healing, Iyar is an especially auspicious month for a person to recover without any trace or scar of the illness remaining. On the contrary, he returns to freshness and strength—as though he had never been ill at all. “I am Hashem, your healer.” And the same is true of healing the soul. A person can correct what he needs to correct—his character traits and his behavior—and heal the afflictions of his soul. Here too, there is a special power to do so in the manner of “I am Hashem, your healer.” How does that happen? Because we are coming from the month of Nissan. In Nissan, we lived in an atmosphere of Geulah. During Nissan, a Jew lives with the awareness that Hakadosh Boruch Hu revealed Himself: the King of kings, Hakadosh Boruch Hu, came to him in His glory, Himself. That is the month of Nissan. Hakadosh Boruch Hu Himself took us out—not through an angel, not through a seraph, but Hakadosh Boruch Hu Himself took the Jew from impurity to holiness and purity, from darkness to light. So the month of Geulah blesses the following month and gives it strength. As we said, they are the first month and the second month. There is a custom among the Jewish people to bless the new month. On the final Shabbos of Nissan, we blessed the coming month, Iyar. Nissan blesses Iyar: it uplifts Iyar and gives it strength. Even though after Nissan we move from the miraculous into the natural order—we experienced the miracles of Nissan, and now we have entered a life governed by

21:28 nature. Iyar is a time when nature asserts itself, when the natural order grows stronger, along with all the weaknesses and difficulties a person seemingly suffers because of nature. So we are told that in the merit of Nissan, even Iyar—the month of healing within nature—can bring healing in the manner of “I am Hashem, your healer.” Both physically and spiritually, we can succeed this month in working on ourselves until we reach a state of health and strength that comes from Hakadosh Boruch Hu Himself: “I am Hashem, your healer.” Then no trace remains. On the contrary, a person rises higher through the advantage of light that emerges from darkness, with the power of a baal teshuvah, who can reach an even higher level than a tzaddik. And here we come to the Divine chariot: Avraham, Yitzchak, Yaakov, and Rachel. It is a wonderful thing. As we said earlier, what does the chariot mean? Every Jew is a child of Avraham, Yitzchak, Yaakov, and Rachel. The holy forefathers and foremothers influence us and give us the wonderful strength to truly correct our character traits and our behavior. We can learn from the ways of our forefathers. Every Jew is a child of Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov, and of Sarah, Rivkah, Rachel, and Leah. The holy forefathers, who are the holy chariot, are thus present, in essence, within every Jew. As the Alter Rebbe explains at length in Tanya, “The forefathers are indeed the chariot.” They merited to pass on to us their character traits, their conduct, their very essence and soul. Every Jew has, by nature, the strengths of the holy forefathers. That is why we can all reach this level: to be a holy chariot for Hakadosh Boruch Hu, devote ourselves to the Divine will, work on what we need to work on—as we discussed—correct our nature, heal ourselves, grow stronger, overcome our difficulties, and prepare for the Giving of the Torah. That is really the main point of Iyar: to arrive prepared for the Giving of the Torah. But here everyone

23:41 asks: What is Rachel doing here? Why was Rachel chosen specifically? True, the initials of Avraham, Yitzchak, Yaakov, and a name beginning with R can give us Rachel—but R could also stand for Rivkah. She too was one of the foremothers. Yet Rachel specifically was chosen as the fourth leg of the chariot. There is a subject here in Kabbalah that we will not go into now: Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov correspond to the three higher attributes of chesed, gevurah, and tiferes, the three central attributes, while Rachel represents malchus. But that is a subject in its own right. Here we will focus on the particular message Rachel gives us in this work of correcting the soul—what we see as unique to Rachel our mother, for which she merited to be the fourth leg of the supernal chariot. This is brought in the sefarim, and Rashi also brings it in his commentary on the Torah. What do we see that is unique about Rachel? She alone was not buried in the Cave of Machpelah. She alone gave way. Rachel’s life, from beginning to end, was a life of giving way. It began when Yaakov Avinu chose her. He wanted to marry Rachel, but as the Torah tells us, Rachel gave way to Leah so that Leah would marry Yaakov Avinu first. She gave Leah the signs and revealed the secret to her. And so Yaakov married Leah first, and only afterward Rachel. An extraordinary act of giving way. Later in life, we find Rachel giving way to Leah again, as the Torah relates in Parshas Vayeitzei. And then there was the greatest act of giving way: Rachel our mother was buried along the road, not in the Cave of Machpelah. The holy forefathers and foremothers are buried in the Cave of Machpelah in Chevron. Rachel alone was buried along the road, near Beis Lechem. Before his passing, Yaakov Avinu calls Yosef, Rachel’s son, and asks him

26:00 to help him, after Yaakov Avinu passes away, bring him to the Me’aras Hamachpeilah. Then he says to him: “When I came from Padan Aram, your mother died, and I did not bury her in the Me’aras Hamachpeilah. I buried her on the road, in Beis Lechem.” What is going on here? Yaakov Avinu wants to ask his son Yosef, Rachel’s son, to help him and use all his connections to take Yaakov out of Egypt and bring him to the Me’aras Hamachpeilah. He knows there will be tremendous difficulties, that Pharaoh will not let him go and that Yosef will have to call in extraordinary favors. So he says to him: You should know, I did not do this for your mother. Why didn’t you? Why didn’t you do everything you could to bring Rachel to her rightful place, the Me’aras Hamachpeilah? Why was she buried along the way? The answer, Rashi tells us in Parshas Vayechi, is that Rachel Imeinu gave that up. Rachel Imeinu knew that the time would come when the Jewish people would go into exile. They would be taken out of Jerusalem and led along that road, and they would come and weep at Rachel Imeinu’s grave. Then Rachel Imeinu—“A voice is heard on high; Rachel weeps for her children”—stands before the holy Shechinah and weeps for the Jewish people. As the Midrash relates, the forefathers come to weep, and the foremothers come to weep, but Hakadosh Boruch Hu does not listen. Rachel Imeinu comes and says: I gave something up. I gave my signs to my sister. I gave up my place and am buried here, along the road, so the Jews would have a place to come and cry. That is a true mother, who gives up everything for her children. She gave up the wonderful holiness of being buried alongside the holy forefathers in the Me’aras Hamachpeilah, just to help her children. So now Rachel weeps for her children, because they are gone. Hakadosh Boruch Hu promises her, “Restrain your voice from weeping,” He tells Rachel, “and your eyes from tears. Do not

28:07 weep. No tears. Your children will return to their border.” Hakadosh Boruch Hu promises her that in Rachel’s merit, the Jewish people will return to Eretz Yisroel: “Your children will return to their border.” Rachel’s strength is this extraordinary power of refining one’s character: putting yourself aside to help another Jew. What kind of Jew? A Jew who has sinned and is therefore going into exile. At the time of the destruction of the Beis Hamikdash, when Hakadosh Boruch Hu is driving the Jews out of their land because He is angry with them, she stands there and prays, pleading on their behalf. And it is precisely this extraordinary thing that will bring the Geulah. This is the symbol of the month of Iyar: the holy chariot that a Jew becomes for Hakadosh Boruch Hu. This is the work; this is the task. This, in fact, is the inner, deeper meaning of the month of Iyar for each and every one of us. Let’s use this to sum things up. We have learned three extraordinary points about the month of Iyar. Number one: Iyar is the month of counting, the month in which Hakadosh Boruch Hu counts each individual Jew and tells him: You are strong. You are an individual. You are not lost in the majority, not even among a million. A Jew has tremendous strength to withstand all the difficulties and challenges around him. Second: “I am Hashem, your healer.” The month of Iyar comes after the month of Nissan and gives you the power for healing of the body and also healing of the soul, in the manner of “I am Hashem, your healer”—so that no trace remains of any of the negative things that need healing. And the fourth point: to be a chariot for Hakadosh Boruch Hu—Avraham, Yitzchak, Yaakov, Rachel. All this is the deeper meaning of Rachel’s month, the month of Iyar. May Hakadosh Boruch Hu help us make use of every moment. May the light of the Geulah—the light of freedom, the light of Geulah that we received in the month of Nissan—accompany us in the inner work of the month of Iyar, so that each and every day of

30:13 the month of Iyar will be a day of “I am Hashem, your healer,” a month of Avraham, Yitzchak, Yaakov, and Rachel, of the supernal chariot. In this way, we prepare ourselves to receive the Torah. May we soon receive the Torah anew, especially the new Torah of the Torah’s secrets that Melech HaMoshiach will reveal to each and every Jew, and “the earth will be filled with the knowledge of Hashem as the waters cover the sea.”