We've Passed Pesach, Now What? The Final Step on the Path to the Complete Geulah

00:00 We’ve been through Pesach, and a person asks himself: What now? What is our work? What is our task at this point? Pesach is a festival of Geulah, a festival of freedom—“the season of our freedom,” as we say in the prayers. Freedom of the body and freedom of the soul. It begins with the first days of Pesach, and reaches its peak on the last days. In particular, as explained in Chassidus, the Baal Shem Tov revealed that on the seventh day of Pesach, the last day of Pesach, the light of Moshiach shines. So we’ve reached the peak, the highest and most elevated place, and then a person comes along and says: Now what? What is our task? What is our work? To free ourselves from exile? To go from exile to Geulah? That’s what we were engaged in all through Pesach. Now we’re after Pesach, and we still have a whole week of Nissan ahead of us. Often, when we want to know a Jew’s task in life—what we’re meant to do and what we’re meant to live with—we look at the history of the Jewish people. Then we can discover and understand what our task is, what Hakadosh Boruch Hu wants from us now. Some things are well known, and others are less well known. Everyone knows what Pesach is, but there are also things that aren’t so well known. When we reflect on them, though, they’re part of the history of the Jewish people, part of our history, and they have implications for our everyday lives. We know that nothing in the Torah is by chance. Everything has its lesson and its message. So when we look at what happened in the days after Pesach, the Midrash Seder Olam tells us—there’s a Midrash called Seder Olam. It was written by one of the Tannaim, Rabbi Yosi, who recorded the history of the Jewish people. It gives us many things we wouldn’t otherwise know: dates and times. So in this Midrash, in this book, we

02:16 discover many, many things that are important to the history of our people. And there he writes that the conquest of Yericho took place in the week after Pesach. He explains the whole sequence. The Jewish people crossed the Jordan with Yehoshua bin Nun on 10 Nissan. That was the day—it says explicitly in Tanach that on the tenth of the month, on 10 Nissan, the Jewish people crossed the Jordan. The next day, 11 Nissan, they had the bris milah. Tanach tells us all this in detail: how the Jewish people had not performed bris milah throughout the forty years because of the danger in the wilderness, and so on. So on that day, 11 Nissan, Yehoshua bin Nun circumcised the entire people. Then they waited a few days to recover, and Pesach began. That year, Pesach fell as it does this year: on Sunday, beginning on Saturday night. They celebrated Pesach for a full week. Tanach relates that they observed all the laws of Pesach that week. The seventh day of Pesach was on Shabbos. The next day, Sunday, 22 Nissan—which outside the Land of Israel is the last day of Pesach, while in the Land of Israel it is already Isru Chag—the seven days described in Tanach began. How did the conquest of Yericho begin? For seven days the kohanim circled the wall of Yericho, carrying the Aron HaBris and blowing the shofar. And through this, on the seventh day—which was Shabbos, 28 Nissan, just as this year Shabbos Mevarchim will fall on 28 Nissan—the wall fell, and all the great miracles of the battle of Yericho took place that day, 28 Nissan. So we have a message here: an event in the history of the Jewish people that happened in the week after Pesach. As we said earlier, the stories of the Torah have a message. What lesson is there here for

04:41 us to learn? The Rebbe spoke about this in earlier years when the calendar fell exactly as it does this year. That was in 5737, in 5741—several times when there was this unusual, distinctive calendar arrangement, with Pesach beginning on Sunday, the seventh day of Pesach on Shabbos, and the last day of Pesach outside the Land of Israel on Sunday. The Rebbe addressed the point that this is exactly how the calendar fell when the Jewish people first entered the Land of Israel. What does the battle of Yericho teach us? There’s another very interesting point connected with this: the yahrzeit of Yehoshua bin Nun also falls this week. He brought the Jewish people into the Land of Israel, and he was, as the Gemara calls him, “the first of the conquerors”—the one who conquered the Land of Israel. According to what is written in the sefarim, he passed away on 26 Nissan. So the week after Pesach includes both the story of the conquest of Yericho and the yahrzeit of Yehoshua bin Nun. In other words, we’re talking here about entering the Land of Israel, conquering the Land of Israel, and the conquest of the Land of Israel itself. We’re talking about the conquest of Yericho, which Rashi, citing the Midrash, calls the lock of the Land of Israel. Why is the conquest of Yericho so important? It’s so central because, as we know, Yericho was the lock of the Land of Israel, and it was the most strategic place from which to conquer the whole land. In a physical sense, too, it was the point of entry into the Land of Israel. And especially in a spiritual sense, as the Midrashim explain, Yericho was such an important, exceptional city that every king from every kingdom had some piece of land, some place, in or around Yericho because of the importance

06:47 and prestige of that place. So we understand from this that the conquest of Yericho is very important. The question is what it means for us in our daily lives. What can a Jew take from the story of the conquest of Yericho for our own personal work? Today, then, we’ll talk about the conquest of the Land of Israel in general, the conquest of Yericho in particular, and Yehoshua bin Nun—how these relate to our work and to our service of Hashem now, after the spiritual uplift of the lofty days of Pesach. Chassidus explains that the conquest of the Land of Israel also refers to the conquest of a spiritual Land of Israel. In other words, everything we say about the physical territory of the Land of Israel also exists in the spiritual Land of Israel within every Jew. Why is it called eretz, “land”? Because it desired to do the will of its Creator. Every Jew has an aspect of the Land of Israel, a land of Canaan, which must be transformed into the Land of Israel. Eretz is related to ratzon, “will,” and to running. Each of us has the power of will and the power to run. That will and that drive are found in the land of Canaan—in physical, material desires. A person lives in a physical, material world. We have an animal soul and all the physical, materialistic desires of the world. We want to make money, have a good time, enjoy ourselves, and do whatever we feel like. But a Jew knows that isn’t the goal. The soul came down into this world for a particular purpose, and that purpose is to transform the land of Canaan into the Land of Israel: to conquer the land. In conquering the land, there are seven nations. Chassidus explains in the name of the Baal Shem Tov that the seven nations correspond to the seven negative character traits in the soul. Each of us has seven traits, seven qualities that we need to refine. The negative traits are called the nations of the world. Seven nations: the Canaanite, the Hittite,

09:06 The Emori. Chassidus explains what each of the nations represents in our souls: the power of love, the power of awe—chesed, gevurah, tiferes, netzach, hod, yesod, malchus. These are the seven middos. Each nation represents one of the negative traits in our animal soul, and we need to work on them, conquer them, and transform them: instead of loving things a person should not be attached to or love, to love Hakadosh Boruch Hu, to love a Jew, to love the Torah; to have awe that is yiras Shamayim, and so on. To transform every trait, every characteristic, every aspect of our nature, every emotion into Eretz Yisroel. That is the conquest of Eretz Yisroel. But to conquer Eretz Yisroel, there is the matter of Yericho. What does Yericho represent? Yericho, after all, is related to the word rei’ach, “scent.” Scent is connected to the deepest place in the soul. Scent is connected to the power of pleasure. In other words, not just desire, but pleasure as well. There are the things a person does, acts upon, thinks, understands and feels—but then there is pleasure. What do I take pleasure in? Where is my soul? Scent has the power to reach the deepest place in the soul, awakening the soul’s capacity for pleasure. Pleasure is the innermost place in a person’s soul. That is why Shabbos is described as “You shall call Shabbos a delight”—oneg Shabbos. Pleasure is something very deep. When we talk about pleasure, people in the world talk about pleasures—physical, material pleasures—and “pleasure” sounds like something very coarse, very material. But the truth is that pleasure reaches the deepest place in the soul. When a person feels inner pleasure, G-dly pleasure, spiritual pleasure in serving Hashem, then—as the Chassidus texts put it—there is nothing higher than pleasure. In other words, when a person takes pleasure in serving Hashem, it means that their whole being is there; their very existence

11:22 is there. In fact, pleasure is what drives desire. The Alter Rebbe discusses this in Tanya as well. A person wants something; desire is what sets them in motion. I want to eat, I want to sleep, I want to dance, I want to learn, I want to do something, I want to act. But what drives desire? Pleasure—the soul’s capacity for pleasure. Of course, there is the pleasure of the animal soul, and there is the pleasure of the G-dly soul. Our task as Jews is to reveal true pleasure. Yericho, rei’ach: scent awakens pleasure. We see that when a person faints, one way to rouse them is with a strong smell. We also see people on Yom Kippur smelling various strong-smelling things to keep themselves alert. On Yom Kippur, because a person is fasting, they are tired and weak, and their soul is in a state approaching faintness. But the sharp scent rouses the soul. Scent has the power to rouse a person from a faint. So in serving Hashem, Yericho means reaching the deepest place: taking pleasure in serving Hashem. Once a person feels pleasure in serving Hashem, even their everyday life and their desires change. They can transform all their desires—eretz, the land of Canaan, their alien, negative desires—into Eretz Yisroel, into holy desires. And that, in fact, is what it meant that Yericho was the lock of Eretz Yisroel. Hakadosh Boruch Hu says to Yehoshua bin Nun, the first of the conquerors: We are entering Eretz Yisroel. The first thing we need to conquer is Yericho. First, we need to reach pleasure—to have a Jew find pleasure in holiness, in G-dliness, in serving Hashem. And here the big question arises: How do I come to feel that pleasure? Here I see a Jew whose life is immersed in physical, material pleasures, who takes pleasure in everything connected with the flesh and the material world.

13:41 How can I suddenly turn my pleasure into G-dly pleasure? So here the Tanach tells us what happened after Pesach. First came the period of Pesach. Pesach. A Jew ate matzah for seven days; they ate faith. On Pesach we received the power of faith for the entire year, as the Zohar explains: matzah represents faith. Matzah is the food of faith. Matzah is also a food of healing, healing one’s faith. On Pesach, the season of our freedom, a Jew separates themselves from chametz, eats matzah, strengthens their faith, and reaches a peak of faith. On the seventh day of Pesach, they split the sea, break through everything that conceals what lies beyond nature and prevents them from seeing the G-dly truth. G-dly light is revealed in the world, and the light of Moshiach is revealed. As the Baal Shem Tov explains to us, on the seventh day of Pesach, on the last day of Pesach, a revelation of Moshiach’s light shines in the world. Then a Jew receives the strength to go out and conquer Eretz Yisroel. Now is the time to take yourself in hand and know that you can conquer the lock, conquer what you take pleasure in, and make your pleasure be in matters of holiness, Torah and mitzvos. And once your pleasure is in the right place, that pleasure has an effect. As we said, it is what drives desire. So your desires will be directed to the right places, and desire will govern your faculties—your intellect and emotions, and above all your actual conduct, your thought, speech and action. Interestingly, the Zohar tells of some Tannaim who were once walking along the street. There was a child there, the son of one of the great Tannaim mentioned in the Zohar. He saw these Tannaim as they passed by and invited them in. He said to them, “I can smell from the scent of your clothes that you haven’t said Shema Yisroel—that today you haven’t recited

15:56 Shema.” And the account tells us that this really was true. They had not recited Shema because they were occupied with another mitzvah, accompanying a deceased person to burial. So they were exempt from Shema, but he detected it from the scent of their clothes. The Alter Rebbe says that scent, as we said, reaches the deepest place. Yet in this story in the Zohar, the child said he smelled it in their clothes: scent is connected with clothing. Through their clothes he sensed what was going on with them—that they had not fulfilled the mitzvah of reciting Shema. The Alter Rebbe explains that, as we said, on one hand scent reaches the deepest place, while on the other hand it finds expression in the most external things, in clothing. When we speak about clothing, in Chassidus, in Tanya, the Alter Rebbe says that clothes represent the soul’s garments. Thought, speech and action are called the garments of the soul. The Alter Rebbe explains to us in Tanya that the G-dly soul—and likewise the animal soul—has the soul’s faculties and the soul’s garments. The soul’s faculties are intellect and the middos, the emotions. But the soul’s garments are what it actually does: thought, speech and action. They are like clothes. Clothing is something external. A person puts it on; it is external, but something of the person’s essence is expressed through their clothing. We can see this very concretely: although clothes are external things, you can get to know a person through their clothes. The Gemara even says that clothes are called “honor,” because they give a person dignity—and sometimes they also lower a person’s standing. When someone dresses in normal, appropriate clothes, we can sometimes tell something about the person through their clothing: how they are dressed, the way they dress, and so on. So it follows that, on one hand, clothing is something external; on the other hand, it reveals where

17:57 That is where pleasure is found—pleasure, the deepest part of his soul. So when we speak about conquering Jericho, we mean reaching the place where the depths of my soul are found. But that is expressed through garments, through the soul’s garments. In other words, it has to be expressed in thought, speech, and action—in the garments of the mitzvos, in actually performing the mitzvos. This is also what it means that Jericho is the lock of the Land of Israel. To conquer the Land of Israel is to conquer our own souls. A person wants his mind to be a healthy Jewish mind, and his feelings to be healthy Jewish feelings: love of Hashem, awe of Hashem, joy in Hashem, Torah study, understanding Torah. We want our intellect, character traits, and feelings to be healthy and right. That has to be expressed through the garments. Garments have the power to change a person. Through the external, a person reaches the internal; through the garments, he reaches the soul. Thought, speech, and action—the actual fulfillment of mitzvos—that is where the fundamental change takes place, revealing the true pleasure we have in Hakadosh Boruch Hu, in Torah and mitzvos. Then a person can transform his entire reality from the land of Canaan into the Land of Israel. And that is what Tanach tells us. For seven days, the Jewish people walked, with the kohanim and the Tablets of the Covenant, around the wall of Jericho. Every Jew is called a kohen: “You shall be to Me a kingdom of kohanim and a holy nation.” Every Jew has the quality of a kohen. Every Jew has a connection to the Torah, to the Tablets of the Covenant, and that is really the story here. When the Jewish people, after Pesach, after the week in which they ate faith in the Land of Israel, circled the wall of Jericho and ate [unclear], they walked together with the Ark and the kohanim. As we said, this symbolizes a person awakening within himself the power of the kohanim that he possesses: a Jew is part of a kingdom of kohanim and a holy nation, and he is connected to the Torah, to the

20:17 Tablets of the Covenant. He does this day after day. Then, when Shabbos arrives, a day wholly of pleasure, “the wall fell.” The whole wall of the corrupted Jericho—the material Jericho, which symbolizes pleasure in material and physical things—fell. Then Jericho could be conquered, and through that, the whole Land of Israel could be conquered and transformed into the Holy Land. This is also connected with Yehoshua bin Nun. As we said, during these days, 26 Nissan is the day of Yehoshua bin Nun’s passing. He was the leader of those who conquered the land, and from him we receive the strength to know that a Jew has the power to conquer. There is no need to be shaken, and no need to be afraid. “Why do the nations rage, and the peoples plot in vain?” We must not fear the nations of the world, but know that we have the ability to conquer Jericho. And this will also bring us to an actual conquest. Just as we are speaking about conquest within the soul, so certainly in these days, when we are now in the month of Nissan, and our Sages tell us, “In Nissan they were redeemed, and in Nissan they are destined to be redeemed,” this week is an auspicious time to bring about what happened then, in those days, roughly three thousand three hundred years ago. When Jericho was conquered for the first time, they saw miracles and wonders: “the wall fell,” and they conquered Jericho in a wondrous, miraculous way. So too may we merit that this year “the wall will fall”: that all the undesirable things, all the bad things, will fall; that all the evil in the world will fall and holiness will prevail. May we merit to conquer the Land of Israel, the Holy Land, the place Hakadosh Boruch Hu chose, “a land that the eyes of Hashem your G-d are always upon, from the beginning of the year to the end of the year.” May we merit the complete Geulah immediately, right now. Amen, may it be His will.