The Surprising Secret of the Month of Elul That the Rebbe of Lubavitch Wanted Everyone to Know!

00:00 We’re entering the month of Elul. Each of us asks: What do we need to do? What exactly is the work? What is the month of Elul, and how can we make the most of it? Today I want to share with you a special message from the Lubavitcher Rebbe. He delivered it in 5711, the first year of his leadership. On Shabbos Mevarchim Elul, the Rebbe gave a special sicha and asked that this message about the month of Elul be publicized everywhere. It is a very special, important, fundamental message about the particular work and responsibility we have in Elul: what the month means for us, and what unique strengths and opportunities we can receive from it. It’s a wonderful sicha, a wonderful message, and a very important one. It will give us strength, hope, and confidence, and truly help us prepare ourselves and make the most of this wonderful month—the last month of the year, the month of mercy and forgiveness, of taking stock, and of teshuvah. It will help us use the month properly and prepare for the coming year, to receive the wonderful blessings that Hakadosh Boruch Hu bestows on each and every one of us—the greatest blessings for a good, sweet year, and every blessing, materially and spiritually. As we said, it was Shabbos Parshas Eikev, Shabbos Mevarchim Elul. As was his practice, the Rebbe held a farbrengen every Shabbos Mevarchim. On that Shabbos, he asked that a special message be conveyed and publicized in every possible way. The point the Rebbe made was this: We know that there are a number of phrases whose initial letters spell “Elul.” They are cited in various sefarim, including works of halachah and Kabbalah. It’s very interesting that the great Torah sages did not regard the word “Elul” as just an ordinary word, but as a word that has

02:36 meaning. Elul is a profound month, a month of great significance, the last month of the year and the month of preparation for the coming year. So its name, too, has meaning. Many phrases whose initial letters spell “Elul” have been identified, and each one expresses a different point, a particular idea, a particular message, a special task in which we need to invest ourselves during this month. Here the Rebbe focused on the initials of “Inah leyado vesamti lach”—“It came into his hand, and I will set aside for you.” This is one of the allusions cited by the halachic authorities, including the Kitzur Shulchan Aruch, and by several other great Torah sages. It also appears in works of Kabbalah, including the writings of the Arizal. The question is: What does it mean for us? “Inah leyado vesamti lach.” This verse is in Parshas Mishpatim, where the Torah speaks about someone who, G-d forbid, killed another person unintentionally. The Torah says that because it happened unintentionally, “It came into his hand, and I will set aside a place for you.” Hakadosh Boruch Hu says: I will provide you with a place, a city of refuge, to which a person who killed unintentionally can flee. There is a law that the blood avenger, a relative of the person who was killed, may pursue the killer and kill him. So the Torah also gives the killer a way to save himself: he can flee to a city of refuge, where he is protected. There are three such cities in the Land of Israel and three across the Jordan, as the Torah describes in detail in Parshas Masei. Some of this also appears in the weekly parsha that is always read during the first week of Elul, Parshas Shoftim, which also speaks about the cities of refuge. There the Torah speaks of another three cities of refuge: “When Hashem your G-d expands your border”—in the future, when Moshiach comes, there will be

05:03 cities of refuge then as well. There will be another three cities in the new territories the Jewish people will take possession of—the lands of the Keini, Kenizi, and Kadmoni, three nations whose lands we have not yet taken possession of. But in the future, the Land of Israel will expand to include those three additional regions, and there will be three more cities of refuge. We read that in the weekly parsha. So we have the verse “Inah leyado vesamti lach,” referring to the cities of refuge. What is the message? Just as the cities of refuge take in the killer, the month of Elul is also a kind of city of refuge. What does that mean? All the commentators who explain this allusion say that it refers to Torah study. The Gemara in tractate Makkos says that words of Torah provide refuge. The Gemara derives this from a verse in Parshas Va’eschanan. It says there that Moshe Rabbeinu designated three cities of refuge, and shortly afterward the verse says, “And this is the Torah that Moshe placed before the Children of Israel.” That verse follows the passage about the cities of refuge. What do we learn from this? That the Torah, too, has the power to shelter a person. Words of Torah provide refuge. So this is the allusion concerning Elul: if a Jew devotes time to Torah study during Elul, that, too, is a kind of city of refuge, a way of making amends and atoning for sins, and so on. Here the Rebbe goes deeper into the matter. What really is the message? What does it mean to say that Elul is a city of refuge? He gives a wonderful, illuminating explanation that helps us understand in depth exactly what Elul means, what it means for it to be a city of refuge, and what that means in our lives. So let’s first look at exactly what purpose a city of refuge served when the Jews lived in the Land of Israel. If

07:19 we look at it on the surface, it seems from the Torah that the whole matter of a city of refuge was a kind of punishment. If a person killed someone unintentionally and fled to a city of refuge, it was because someone wanted to take revenge on him. To escape, the poor man had to leave his family and live in an unfamiliar place. But at least he was protected there. He was safe from someone taking revenge on him and could go on living. But what is the deeper meaning of a city of refuge? The sefarim explain—the Sefer Hachinuch, which discusses the reasons for the mitzvos, and a number of other works, and this is also implied by the Gemara—that the city of refuge is a form of atonement. It provides atonement for the sin. Even though the person killed unintentionally and did not do it deliberately, he nevertheless needs atonement. It is something that needs to be put right, a sin that requires atonement. Anything a person does, even unintentionally, requires some measure of atonement. Why? Because we know that if a person truly does not want to commit a sin, he will not do it even unintentionally; it simply will not happen. A person has the ability to control himself. He will not do something that is utterly unthinkable to him. For example, we do not see people falling out of bed in the middle of the night, even though they are asleep. There is a natural measure of self-control that keeps a person from falling into danger; that is generally how it works. We see that even an animal will not jump into something harmful, into a fire. It is an instinct, a natural sense that tells it: No, that is forbidden; you do not do that. The same is true if a person is a

09:24 When a person is spiritually and emotionally healthy, and the G-dly light of the soul shines within him, then even an accidental sin will not happen to him. An accidental sin happens because the animal soul has gained the upper hand, as the Alter Rebbe says in Tanya. In other words, his physicality, his materialism, his animal soul, is very strong, and that is why something like this can happen: “Oops, I wasn’t paying attention. I forgot, or I wasn’t paying attention, and I slipped up unintentionally.” So someone who kills a person unintentionally needs atonement. Atonement means refinement. Atonement means setting things right; it is not a punishment. It means correcting, refining, cleansing the impurity, the damage, the deficiency caused by the sin. And once a person has corrected that, he can go home. That is essentially what a city of refuge is about. A city of refuge was not a place of suffering. On the contrary, as the Gemara says, they would bring him food; he had something to eat and a place to rest. He lived there in peace, and no one disturbed him. He had rest not only physically but spiritually as well. The Gemara says that if he was a student, even his teacher had to travel there to teach him Torah and be with him. In other words, both physically and spiritually, the person was there in the greatest comfort and peace, and he could carry on with his life in the best possible way. What was the difficulty? He was in a place he was not used to. He had gone into exile, and Sefer HaChinuch says that the pain of exile is like the pain of death. When a person is in an unfamiliar place, that is something that breaks him. A person likes to be among people, in surroundings and in an area he knows. Going somewhere no one knows me is painful. It is not easy.

11:27 But that flight, that departure, is what refines the soul. It corrects the materialism that has taken hold of the person, and the sins and transgressions. In this way he can correct this sin too, and once he does, he can, with Hashem’s help, go home afterward. That is essentially the idea of a city of refuge. Let’s take this whole idea and translate it into spiritual service of Hashem. Here the Rebbe brought what is written in Kabbalah, and explained at length in Tanya and Chassidus: the idea of taking a life extends far beyond murder in the literal sense. It also refers to every sin and transgression. Kabbalah discusses the verse, “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed.” The verse in Parshas Noach speaks about bloodshed. The sefarim explain that “sheds the blood of man into man” also has a spiritual meaning. Blood means warmth; blood means vitality. Blood is the life of the soul. The G-dly soul, too, has blood: the blood of holiness—warmth, enthusiasm, life, vitality in holy things. When a Jew commits a transgression, commits a sin, he takes strength, energy, blood, vitality from the G-dly soul and spills blood. He, so to speak, kills: he takes vitality from the G-dly soul, from the neshamah, and brings it into the realm of impurity, into the animal soul and the yetzer hara. This is called “sheds the blood of man into man”: from the holy person, from the holy soul, into the wicked person, into the realm of impurity, the sitra achra, the kelipah, the animal soul and the yetzer hara. There is a kind of killing here, may Hashem spare us. This needs to be corrected. Now, every sin is unintentional. Why is every sin unintentional? Because a Jew does not want to, and cannot, be separate from Hakadosh Boruch Hu. The Gemara in Sotah says, “A person does not sin unless a spirit of folly enters him.” A healthy person, as we said before, a healthy person

13:58 will not jump out of bed, will not jump into a fire, will not enter a place where he could be harmed, a place of danger. If that happens, it is because of a spirit of folly. So, in essence, we can view every sin a Jew commits as unintentional. But as we said, even an unintentional sin requires atonement. What is the aton—now there is the avenger of blood. Sorry. The avenger of blood is the yetzer hara. The Gemara in Bava Basra says: “He is the yetzer hara, he is the Satan, and he is the Angel of Death.” These are not three different angels. First, he is the yetzer hara, who comes and leads us to sin. Then he is the Satan in Heaven, who prosecutes us. And then he is the Angel of Death, who comes to carry out the punishment. He is the yetzer hara, he is the Satan, and he is the Angel of Death. What does that mean? What is the meaning of this Gemara? It means that the very same yetzer hara who persuades us to become an unintentional killer—to take the vitality, the blood, the fervor, the strength of holiness and hand it over to impurity, the kelipah and the sitra achra—then becomes the prosecuting Satan and says, “Wow, this person did such things; now he must pay for them.” He becomes the avenger of blood. The Satan is the Angel of Death. Now he wants to take revenge on the person for doing something so grave, for taking the blood of holiness and putting it into the kelipah. What is the solution? Cities of refuge. This is where the month of Elul comes in. Just as there is a place in the world, an area called a city of refuge, a specific place of which Hakadosh Boruch Hu says, “It came to his hand, and I will appoint for you a place to which he may flee.” Hakadosh Boruch Hu designated a special area within the Land of Israel: if you flee there, you are protected, you are safe, no one

16:04 will harm you. There you can atone for the past and establish a new way of life. As we said, you can learn how to live, and through that you will receive all the atonement you need. Exactly the same thing exists in the year: just as it exists in place, it exists in time. Which period of the year is like a city of refuge for a person who wants to do teshuvah and flee from the avenger of blood? The month of Elul. This is what the Arizal says: “It came to his hand, and I will appoint for you a place to which he may flee.” The initial letters of “it came to his hand, and I will appoint for you” spell Elul. The month of Elul is the month of refuge. It is the month when every Jew has the opportunity to flee from the avenger of blood, to flee from the yetzer hara who is the Satan and the Angel of Death. Once you make that escape and enter the city of refuge—what does it mean to enter a city of refuge? It means, the Rebbe says, entering a new way of life. During the month of Elul, a person needs to set a daily schedule for himself that is different from the rest of the year. That is what fleeing means. In practical terms, in everyday life during Elul, fleeing means leaving behind my everyday behavior throughout the year and changing my daily schedule. If throughout the year my schedule was filled with all sorts of things—work, business, activities, getting things done, all sorts of important things and more—but I had no time to sit and learn, no time to put effort into davening with concentration, no time for acts of Ahavas Yisroel or for bringing people closer to Torah and mitzvos; I was very busy with myself and my life. Then the month of Elul arrives, and a person is told: leave your routine; step out of... As it says about Avraham Avinu, when Hakadosh Boruch Hu told him the famous verse, “Go forth from your land, from your birthplace, and from your father’s house.” What does that mean spiritually? “Go forth”—Hakadosh Boruch

18:30 He says to every Jew: The month of Elul is coming. Disconnect, leave, flee—“Go forth.” Leave the routine, leave the day-to-day, leave the dry, gray life behind. Enter a new way of life: the month of Elul. “From your land”—leave your own desires; “from your birthplace”—the behaviors and habits you’ve had since birth; “from your father’s house”—the things you brought from home, from your family, from your parents, the things you absorbed. Make a change in your daily life. Begin a new way of life. Flee into the way of life of the month of Elul. More Torah, more prayer, more soul-searching, more teshuvah, a different kind of conduct. That is what is being asked of us. This flight to a city of refuge keeps you safe. The yetzer hara cannot reach you there, nor can Satan or the Angel of Death. There is no avenger of blood. In that place you don’t need to torment yourself or practice self-denial. On the contrary, as we said, in the city of refuge a person was provided with everything, both materially and spiritually. He could sit and learn and pray, and observe mitzvos in peace and with abundance—but within this flight, in the city of refuge, in the month of Elul. A person who enters that place is protected. In the meantime, he has the opportunity to do teshuvah. And here the Rebbe added an extremely important point—very, very, very important for us, for our lives today. There was the flight to a city of refuge in the time of the Beis Hamikdash. There, you say a person needs to flee to the city of refuge, but that does not necessarily mean he is safe, because a trial and judgment still follow. Who says it was unintentional? Perhaps it was deliberate. They have to bring him to trial and determine what happened, how it happened, what the circumstances were. And then it could turn out that... well, the city of refuge might not help him, because if it was deliberate, that cannot work. Here we say it is not like that. Here we are talking about something entirely different. Here we are talking

20:44 about the power of teshuvah that Hakadosh Boruch Hu has given us. Every Jew, whatever his situation has been until now, has the opportunity to flee to a city of refuge. There is the power of teshuvah, which Hakadosh Boruch Hu accepts. Here below, a beis din sometimes cannot accept teshuvah, because there are laws. If a person has incurred a punishment, they must administer it. There is nothing they can do. A judge can rule only on what his eyes see and what the halachah says. In other words, if you did this, this is the consequence; you cannot simply say, “Oh, I regret it. I’m doing teshuvah.” But when it comes to the month of Elul, teshuvah certainly helps. This is the time, the month of Elul: “I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine.” Use these days to draw closer to Hakadosh Boruch Hu out of love, to turn back from wrong ways, to improve our conduct—“Improve your deeds.” So during this period of Elul, when a Jew does teshuvah, all the sins, all the spiritual bloodshed, G-d forbid, are as though nothing had happened. Hakadosh Boruch Hu grants atonement, repairs, makes things better, and gives you a new opportunity and new vitality. And that is really the purpose of the month of Elul. Here the Rebbe said something—I’m reading from the book, because these are very powerful words, and I want to say it in the Rebbe’s own style and words. It is a very, very important message, and every one of us who hears it needs to pass it on, so that more and more Jews will know what is actually incumbent on us during these days of the month of Elul. “And this is what needs to be publicized,” the Rebbe says. Hakadosh Boruch Hu says to the Jewish people: “I am giving you twenty-nine, thirty days. During these days, if you detach yourselves from the habits and the bad conduct you have followed until now, and ‘flee there’”—that is what it says about the cities of refuge: “and flee,” flee into the cities of refuge. Flee,

22:56 flee into the order and way of life of Elul, and settle there. Then you will be able to correct everything that has not been as it should be, in the past and in the present—everything that has not been done properly until now. And consequently, there will not be—consequently, excuse me, there will be refuge from the avenger of blood, from all accusations. This conduct, this flight into the month of Elul, is the best refuge from all the accusations, G-d forbid, that may come from Satan the accuser. And through teshuvah—first teshuvah out of awe, through which deliberate sins become like unintentional ones, and afterward teshuvah out of love, through which they become merits. There are two kinds of teshuvah. The Gemara at the end of Tractate Yoma says there is teshuvah out of awe and teshuvah out of love. Of course, teshuvah must begin with teshuvah out of awe. What does that mean? Awe does not necessarily mean fear of punishment. It also means awe of the King. Hakadosh Boruch Hu is the King of kings. Hakadosh Boruch Hu is my King, and I cast off the yoke of the Kingdom of Heaven. I disconnected from the King and distanced myself from Him through my conduct. I do teshuvah; I return to accepting upon myself the yoke of the Kingdom of Heaven, awe of Heaven. That is teshuvah out of awe, and it causes deliberate sins to become like unintentional ones. Afterward, we need to continue to the next stage: a deeper teshuvah, teshuvah out of love. Teshuvah out of love is the ideal teshuvah: a person returns to Hakadosh Boruch Hu out of love and devotion, wanting to draw close and connect to Him. Then deliberate sins become merits. The Alter Rebbe says in Tanya that when a person does teshuvah out of love, deliberate sins become like merits, because it was precisely his teshuvah that brought him to this state of love. Precisely because he had been so far away, it stirred within him a much deeper thirst, devotion, and desire to flee all that darkness, all that death, all that distance, and to want to be close to Hashem. That is why teshuvah out of love not only pushes away the sins; it also transforms them,

25:24 turning them into merits. So the Rebbe says that through this work during the month of Elul—fleeing into the cities of refuge, placing ourselves within a different way of life—we have the blessing that we should be written and sealed immediately in the book of the completely righteous, for a good and sweet year. And that is the point we need to take in the most practical way, as the Rebbe explained later at farbrengens in subsequent years. It is meant in the simplest sense: during the month of Elul, every Jew should try to spend more and more time in shul, in a beis midrash, in a yeshivah. If you can give yourself a few extra hours a day, or a few days during the month, to go to a place of Torah, a place of prayer, a place where you can devote yourself more fully to serving Hashem—that is the flight we are talking about. Enter a deeper, different way of serving Hashem, something new. Making this change, taking this flight, is the wonderful power that protects us from the avenger of blood. It is what protects us from all accusations, G-d forbid. It gives us the strength to truly make use of these holy, exalted days, to do the teshuvah we need to do, to draw closer to Hakadosh Boruch Hu out of awe and out of love. And with Hashem’s help, may Hakadosh Boruch Hu grant each and every one of us a good inscription and sealing, a good and sweet year materially and spiritually. May we truly know how to make use of these great days in the fullest, deepest, most wonderful and best way, with joy and gladness of heart. May Hashem grant us all a month of blessing, a month of goodness, a month of Geulah—the complete Geulah through our righteous Moshiach.