Parshas Vayeira in Light of Chassidus | How to See Moshiach in Our Confusing Times?

00:00 There’s a well-known question people ask: We’re living in such a confusing time, with so much darkness in the world. How can the light of Moshiach be found in all this? On the one hand, we’re told that we’re approaching the moment of the Geulah in giant strides. We see it; we feel it. The tzaddikim of our generation speak about it and explain that ours is the generation of the Geulah. “Behold, he stands behind our wall.” Moshiach is already behind the door. But on the other hand, we look at what’s actually happening and see so much darkness, so much turmoil, so much pain. The wars, the confusion, everything that’s happening in the world. Where does all this fit in? How does it connect to the Geulah? If we open our eyes through the Torah, through the weekly parshiyos we read at precisely this time, they’ll give us a perspective, an understanding, a way of looking at things that helps us understand the situation, understand what’s happening, and see all of reality in a completely different light. There’s a well-known teaching of our Sages: “The deeds of the fathers are a sign for their children.” In other words, everything that happened to our forefathers is a sign of what would happen to their descendants, to the Jewish people throughout the generations. The Midrash Tanchuma, and other sources, explain that all the accounts in the weekly parshiyos we read during these weeks—Avraham Avinu and his journeys, Yitzchak and Yaakov—all these Torah accounts are not merely stories of things that happened in the past. Of course, they all happened, but they also carry a message. The Torah is eternal. The Torah gives us guidance for life; it is a Torah of life, teaching us how a Jew should live today. “The deeds of the fathers are a sign for their children.” A sign is not just an indication. It also gives strength. The stories the Torah tells give a Jew today, in our time and our generation, the strength to know how to live, how to view the situation, and how to draw lessons

02:35 for life from what we see in the Torah’s stories. So when we look at the Midrash on the parsha, we find something remarkable. The Midrash says, “I found David My servant.” Where had he been lost? When you say something was found, that means it was lost and then someone found it. King David. King David is “David, king of Israel, lives and endures.” He established the kingship of the House of David, from which Moshiach will come. So King David was lost. Where was he lost? the Midrash asks. It answers: In Sodom. “I found him in Sodom.” Wow. What does that mean? What connection does King David have with Sodom? What does “I found him in Sodom” mean? It’s a remarkable thing. When we look at the weekly parshiyos, starting with Parshas Lech Lecha, we find Lot, Avraham Avinu’s nephew. From the very beginning of Avraham Avinu’s story, Lot keeps appearing in the parsha. Who is this Lot? What’s his story, and why is he present in every part of Avraham Avinu’s story? Hakadosh Boruch Hu tells Avraham Avinu, “Go forth from your land, from your birthplace, and from your father’s house.” We all know that this was the first message from Hakadosh Boruch Hu Himself to the first Jew. This is how the history of the Jewish people begins. “Go forth from your land.” Avraham Avinu leaves his land, Charan, his father’s house, and so on, “to the land that I will show you”; “I will bless you and make your name great, and you shall be a blessing.” He receives all these wonderful blessings, and who enters the picture? Lot. He takes Lot with him. Then, further along, Lot’s story comes up again: Lot’s shepherds and Avraham’s shepherds quarrel, and they separate. Lot moves to Sodom. At the next stage there’s a war—a world war, no less. In Parshas Lech Lecha we learned about a world war, and once again Lot appears. The whole story: there’s a war between four kings and five kings, and the four kings defeat the five. An enormous and very difficult war.

04:55 In that war, poor Lot is taken captive. Lot is abducted. What is the story the Torah tells us? Suddenly Avraham enters the picture. He doesn’t ask questions, doesn’t investigate, doesn’t stop to wonder whether he can do it or not. Avraham, one man on his own, takes Eliezer his servant and goes out to war. The whole purpose of that war is to rescue Lot—Lot again. Then comes Parshas Vayeira, and there too, the whole parsha revolves around Lot. It begins with the angels who came to Avraham’s home: three angels who came to give him the great and wonderful news that the Jewish people would have a future—or really, that the Jewish people would have a beginning. Avraham is the first Jew, but he has no children. The angels come to tell him that, with Hashem’s help, he’ll have a son, Yitzchak. But it isn’t one angel who arrives; it’s three, because one of the three has a mission to save Lot from the destruction of Sodom. So once again, Sodom, Lot, and Avraham come together in Parshas Vayeira. And when we look at Parshas Vayeira as a whole, we see something remarkable. The Torah opens with the wonderful account of Avraham’s meeting with the angels and the good news they give him that a son is about to be born to him. From there, it moves to Sodom and all the evil, turmoil, and darkness there: the appalling, degrading way the people of Sodom treated others, and all the grave sins they committed. “The people of Sodom were exceedingly wicked and sinful against Hashem,” and Hakadosh Boruch Hu wants to punish Sodom, to overturn it, to destroy it—the whole story. There, too, we have the extraordinary account of Avraham Avinu arguing with Hakadosh Boruch Hu. After that, the angels arrive in Sodom and save Lot and his two daughters. Then the Torah tells us what happens next. Lot manages to escape with his two daughters. They reach a cave, and then, as the Torah relates, Lot gets drunk, and from that cave

07:20 from Lot and his two daughters, Ammon and Moav are born. After the Torah tells us this whole story, it goes on to tell us what happened next. First Avraham Avinu is in Avimelech’s house—more turmoil—and in the end he’s saved there too. And what happens after that? Yitzchak is born. What do we see here in the story of Parshas Vayeira? Light and shadow mingled together, light and darkness. “Toward evening there shall be light”—a verse in the Book of Zechariah about the days before Moshiach’s coming. A mixture of light and darkness. On one side, Sodom is overturned: turmoil, darkness, smoke, columns of smoke. Hakadosh Boruch Hu brings fire from heaven, turning the whole area into a place of salt to this day. And at that very time, at that very moment, Lot is there, and from him, in rather troubling circumstances, Ammon and Moav are born. And from there we come to the birth of Yitzchak. What does all this tell us? The Midrash tells us and reveals the secret: this entire story is the process by which Hakadosh Boruch Hu, right at the beginning of Jewish history, is preparing the way through our forefathers—paving the way for Moshiach’s coming. And here we reach the deeper meaning of the story. Who is Lot? Ammon and Moav are meant to descend from him. Who is Moav? Moav is the ancestor of Rus the Moabite. So later in history, we’ll encounter them again. Not just once, but several times. Yet the main, concluding account is Megillas Rus. Rus comes from the fields of Moav. She is a descendant of the Moav born from the story of Lot and his daughters; that Moav is Rus’s ancestor. And she—again—goes with her mother-in-law to the fields—to the Land of Israel, converts, and marries none other than a descendant of Yitzchak Avinu and Yaakov Avinu: Boaz. Boaz is a descendant of Peretz, the son of Yehudah.

10:01 Son of Yaakov, son of Yitzchak, son of Avraham—and that is how the whole story of the Davidic dynasty begins. Here we start to see something remarkable that the Torah tells us, giving us a deeper understanding and letting us look at things at their root. From the very first moment, from the first command, the first test, when Hakadosh Boruch Hu comes to Avraham Avinu and tells him, “Go forth from your land,” that is where the secret of birurim—the refinement of the sparks—begins. That is where the story begins of the Jewish people going from place to place: to the Land of Israel, then to Egypt, and then to fight the kings. And the whole story is about bringing forth the soul of Moshiach and bringing Geulah to the world. That is why Avraham Avinu takes Lot along with him from the start. Avraham Avinu looks at Lot—what does he see in him? He sees the spark of King David and King Moshiach within Lot. The holy books say—the holy Shelah says—that on the one hand, the word Lot has a root associated with a curse. On the other hand, lot is also a kind of spice. We find it in the weekly parshiyos that follow. The word Lot, the holy Shelah writes, has a gematria of forty-five, the same gematria as the word adam. Adam—aleph, dalet, mem—has a gematria of forty-five. Lot is also forty-five. Forty-five is a very holy number. Forty-five is what we get if we write out the holy Name Yud-Kei-Vav-Kei—not just its letters, but each letter’s name in full. Yud is written yud, vav, dalet. Hei is written hei, aleph. Vav is written vav, aleph, vav. And hei is written hei, aleph. If we add up all those letters, the total is forty-five. That is the holy Name of Hakadosh Boruch Hu, and that is

12:19 the gematria of adam, and also the gematria of Lot. We see that forty-five is found in the name Avraham as well. The letters of Avraham can be read as eiver Mah—a limb of forty-five. This, too, is explained in the books of Chassidus and Kabbalah: Avraham Avinu was, so to speak, a limb of Mah. He was, so to speak, a vessel, a limb, just as a limb is a vessel for the soul. Avraham Avinu was a limb of Mah, of that Name whose value is forty-five, of self-nullification to Hakadosh Boruch Hu, the Name Havayah. The letters of adam—aleph, dalet, mem—stand for Adam, David, Moshiach. In other words, what does Avraham Avinu see in Lot? He sees Adam, David, Moshiach—the purpose of Creation, which began with Adam Harishon, continued with King David, and will reach its completion with King Moshiach. With this, we can understand the rest of the story. The great war we learned about in Parshas Lech Lecha, the four kings against the five kings, with the whole world thrown into upheaval—what is going on there? It is all about capturing Lot. In Kabbalah, the central point is the battle with darkness, with kelipah, impurity, and the sitra achra. The nations of the world want to capture the soul of Moshiach, and that is why Lot is taken captive. The soul of Moshiach is in captivity, and Avraham Avinu knows this secret. So Avraham Avinu goes to war to reclaim the soul of Moshiach, because he knows that through Lot, Moav will be born, and from him will come Ruth the Moabite. And from Avraham will come Yitzchak. So there are two lines: one through Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov—the side of the Jewish people—and the other through Lot, Moav, and Ruth. It is precisely through this seemingly impossible joining, when Ruth breaks through the darkness, joins the Jewish people, and meets Boaz, that King David will emerge, and from there, King Moshiach.

14:51 And that, in fact, is what is remarkable about the entire history of the Jewish people. Listen to another wonderful allusion to how all of this is there, hinted at in the Torah. Parshas Lech Lecha says that when Avraham Avinu went out to war to save Lot, he went out with 318 men. Rashi says there were not 318 men there; there was only Eliezer. Eliezer has a gematria of 318. The holy books, the books of Kabbalah, say that the number 318 is actually the value of three of the letters in the word Moshiach. Moshiach is spelled mem, shin, yud, ches. Shin, yud, ches add up to 318—the 318 young men mentioned in this story. The mem is the mem of Avraham. The mem of Avraham together with 318 makes Moshiach. What remains of Avraham? The letters aleph, beis, reish, hei—the first four letters of Avraham. Add up aleph, beis, reish, and hei, and they come to 208, the gematria of Yitzchak. So in the words “Avraham with 318,” we find Yitzchak and Moshiach. As we said, throughout this war and this whole story, Avraham Avinu is searching for the soul of Moshiach. He knows it is in Lot, and that is why he does everything he does: he puts his life on the line to save Lot and bring him out unharmed. That is why the story of the Covenant Between the Parts comes immediately afterward. There he receives the good news that King David will come, and “the bird of prey descended upon the carcasses,” and he will fight the nations of the world. But he will not finish the work: “Avram drove them away”; the bird returned. Then Hakadosh Boruch Hu tells Avraham Avinu: “A dreadful darkness fell upon him.”

17:01 There will be much suffering and much pain through the hardships of exile and the four exiles. But “afterward they will go out with great wealth.” As Rashi says, this does not refer only to Egypt. It also refers to all the redemptions, up to the Geulah of Moshiach Tzidkeinu. That is why, there, Avraham Avinu receives the promise not only of the Land of Israel first conquered under Yehoshua bin Nun, the land of the seven nations, but also of the entire Land of Israel, including the lands of the Keini, Kenizi, and Kadmoni, as far as the great river, the Euphrates. We will merit that soon, in the war of Gog and Magog, in the war of Moshiach that we are now finishing, and soon, in our days, we will merit the complete Geulah. With this, we come to Parshas Vayeira, and the entire parsha takes on a completely different appearance. The whole story of Parshas Vayeira is about how the soul of Moshiach descends into the world. This is what the Midrash means when it says, “I have found David, My servant”—where did I find him? In Sodom. In the place most opposite to what we would have thought, there lies the greatest, deepest spark. What is the secret behind this? What is the reason for it? It points to a single, profoundly deep idea, one of the secrets of Creation explained in the Zohar, Kabbalah, and Chassidus, in the inner dimension of the Torah: the superiority of light that comes out of darkness. This is the secret of birurim that the Arizal speaks about, which began with Avraham Avinu’s first journey in Lech Lecha. From the moment Avraham Avinu received the command, “Go forth from your land, from your birthplace, and from your father’s house, to the land that I will show you,” the process began of seeking out the holy sparks of G-dliness found in places of darkness. It is precisely from the bitter that sweetness emerges. It is precisely from darkness that we reach the great light. Precisely in the place that seems most opposed to it, the point is revealed—the wondrous, profound light of Geulah. To reach the light of Geulah, we have to go through this process of entering the lions’ den, entering the place of darkness, and redeeming the greatest spark from there.

19:16 In Chassidus, this is called a descent for the sake of an ascent. The higher something is, the lower it descends. The loftiest sparks are found in the darkest places. And it was precisely when the Jewish people passed through the darkest places and the darkest periods of exile that their spark of mesirus nefesh—self-sacrifice—was awakened. We have seen this throughout the generations, and we learned it from the story of Avraham. As we said, the deeds of the fathers are a sign for their children. Avraham Avinu was a model of mesirus nefesh. He was tested with ten trials and withstood them all. He faced trials and hardships, but rather than breaking him, they strengthened him. They gave him the strength to serve Hakadosh Boruch Hu with mesirus nefesh in every situation. In this way, he brought about the opposite of what one might expect: he turned darkness into light. He brought the holiest sparks out of the darkest places. That is the process of bringing the Geulah through Moshiach: it is precisely from the darkest place that the greatest light is brought forth. And that is the message for each and every one of us. When we see darkness in the world, when a Jew faces hardships, trials, and moments when everything around him looks dark and he cannot see where to go, he must know that within that darkness are the most wondrous holy sparks. We are in the final moments before the Geulah. Moshiach is coming. It was the same in the story of Parshas Lech Lecha and Vayeira. People who looked only at the surface saw nothing else. They saw darkness. They saw Sodom and Gomorrah overturned. They saw Hashem destroying, destroying the world. They saw the people of Sodom, wicked and sinful. That was all they saw. But someone who looks more deeply sees the light of Moshiach beginning to shine here. He understands that there is work here

21:28 —deep work—that needs to be done. That was the work of Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov, the fathers of the world, who devoted themselves with mesirus nefesh to spreading Hashem’s name. What did Avraham Avinu do day and night? He welcomed guests, performed acts of kindness, and made the name of Hakadosh Boruch Hu known in every corner of the world. Bringing those two things together is what is asked of us today. The deeds of the fathers are a sign for their children. We need to learn from Avraham Avinu. For us, the first Jew is a model for each and every one of us, especially in these days, when we see the world moving by leaps and bounds toward the Geulah. Just as Avraham Avinu “planted an eshel in Be’er Sheva,” as it says in the parsha, “and there he called in the name of Hashem, G-d of the world,” so too each of us must open our home, open our heart, draw a Jew close, and do a kindness for him—both a material kindness and a spiritual one. Teach him a word of Torah, tell him about Hakadosh Boruch Hu, tell him that Moshiach Tzidkeinu is coming now, that the Geulah is at the door. Every deed, every word, every good thought—that is what will turn darkness into light. That is what will bring the Geulah. And precisely in these darkest moments, this is the time for all of us to unite, to come together, and to take the lesson of the weekly parsha to heart. Learn from the Akeidah of Yitzchak, learn from Avraham Avinu, learn from the mesirus nefesh of our ancestors, stand strong, and connect in the deepest way through Torah and kindness. The deeds of the fathers are a sign for their children: welcoming guests and making the name of Hakadosh Boruch Hu known in the world. This will bring us to merit seeing the fulfillment of “I have found David My servant; with My holy oil I have anointed him.” “My holy oil” is the sacred anointing oil. As explained in Chassidus, this oil represents the power within the soul—the power of mesirus nefesh. Just as oil never mixes with any other liquid, so it is with the soul of a Jew. A Jew can never

23:42 mix with the kelipos, with impurity, with the evil in the world. With this oil—the power of mesirus nefesh, the power of self-nullification that a Jew possesses—a Jew stands strong. And it is precisely out of hardship that mesirus nefesh grows, as we have witnessed so remarkably in recent times. This is what will bring us to truly merit the complete Geulah through Moshiach Tzidkeinu. May we see it with our own eyes, this very day.