The Baal Shem Tov's Secret for Turning Trouble into a Window of Light | Parshas Noach in Light of Chassidus

00:00 The transition from Tishrei to Cheshvan is a very sharp one. Tishrei is full of festivals. It is called “the seventh month,” and as the Baal Shem Tov says, “seventh” also suggests “sated.” In fact, this is written in the Midrash on Parshas Emor: the seventh month is a month sated with blessings, sated with mitzvos. It is full, and it fills us. Then suddenly we arrive at Cheshvan, a month that seemingly has no holidays, an empty month, so to speak—ordinary days, with no festivals. So this leap, this transition from Tishrei to MarCheshvan, is a very big one. So much so that some books write that the reason Cheshvan is called MarCheshvan, in books and in halachah, is the bitterness that sets in when Cheshvan arrives. After all the joy and dancing and all the wonderful things we experienced together in the seventh month, during the great festivals of Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkos, and Simchas Torah, we suddenly enter what seems to be a dry month. A kind of bitterness stirs within us: MarCheshvan. But on the other hand, when we look more deeply, the opposite is true—and that is what we’ll talk about today. How can we turn the bitterness into sweetness, understand the deeper meaning of MarCheshvan, and connect with the month from a very, very sweet place? Here we come to the deeper explanation given in the books for the name MarCheshvan: “mar” here does not mean bitterness, but refers to “mar midli,” drops from a bucket—drops of rain. Cheshvan is the month when we begin to pray for rain. In Eretz Yisroel, 7 Cheshvan is the day we begin to pray and ask for rain. As the Mishnah says in Tractate Taanis, they would wait until 7 Cheshvan for everyone to return home, and then begin the prayer and request for rain. So the rainy season begins now. MarCheshvan, then, is like “mar midli.” The verse says “mar,” and the translation explains that “mar” means

02:40 drops. The drops of rain begin to fall. And rain is rain of blessing. The rain of blessing we receive in Cheshvan is what MarCheshvan is really about. On the contrary, rain of blessing is the sweetest thing there is. And if you ask: If so, why do we call it “mar”? Good question. There are two meanings of the word “mar”: one is bitterness, and the other is drops of rain. Why, indeed, are raindrops called “mar”? One explanation is that there is a bitterness in this dependence: a person waits for rain and does not know whether it will come. We have to pray for it; we have to ask for it. We know that one difference between dew and rain is that dew is always present. There is no situation in which there is no dew. Rain, by contrast, is something we must pray for and request. The Midrash explains this through the verse, “May my teaching drop like rain; may my words flow like dew.” Of dew it says “flow”—it flows; of rain it says “drop,” ya’arof. The Midrashim tell us that ya’arof is related to oref, the back of the neck: the stiff neck must be broken. A person is stiff-necked, so that stiffness has to be broken. “People break the stiffness of their necks,” says the Midrash. Through teshuvah and prayer, a person breaks that stiffness, and this brings about rainfall. We know that every year we need to pray, ask, and hope that this year will have abundant rain of blessing. That is what we prayed for throughout Tishrei, especially during the Hoshanos of Sukkos. As is well known, it is all connected with water and rain—that we should have rain of blessing this year. So that is the deeper meaning of MarCheshvan: there is bitterness, but that bitterness turns to sweetness. Through a Jew’s prayer, we have the power to turn

04:52 the bitter into sweet and bring rain of blessing. In the broader sense, rain of blessing includes not only rain in the literal sense, but every blessing. All the blessings and bounty from Above are called rain of blessing. As the Baal Shem Tov interpreted the verse, “If you walk in My statutes,” “I will give your rains in their season”: the Baal Shem Tov says that “your rains” also means your material needs. Everything a Jew needs materially is included in “your rains.” Hakadosh Boruch Hu will give us what we need at the right time, in the right measure, as much as we need, abundantly, and in a way we can receive it. So it follows that the essence of Cheshvan is turning the bitter into sweet—turning the bitterness of a month without festivals into something sweet. Through our own work, through a Jew’s prayer, Torah study, and good deeds, we have the ability and the power to turn the bitter into drops of rain, into rain of blessing, and to bring great blessing. That is the expression “rain of blessing.” In Chassidus, rain of blessing is also discussed in a spiritual sense, in connection with the blessings Hakadosh Boruch Hu gives each person in Tishrei and the blessings the tzaddik gives. Tishrei is the month when Hakadosh Boruch Hu bestows an abundance of blessing for the entire year. It is also known that Tishrei is a month of blessings bestowed by the tzaddik: through his prayers, the tzaddik of the generation draws blessings to every Jew, that they should all be fulfilled, and that everyone should be inscribed and sealed for good, for a good and sweet year. As explained in the books of Chassidus—and the Rebbe also brings this in Hayom Yom—the blessings of tzaddikim and the blessings Hakadosh Boruch Hu bestows upon us are called rain of blessing, and they come

07:04 as rain of blessing. They also say that Hakadosh Boruch Hu gives you rain from Above. But for that rain of blessing to do its work, so that a field full of sweet fruit—everything we want—can grow, we need plowing and sowing. A person has to work hard: “One who works his land will be sated with bread.” We have to toil and work. This also involves bitterness. “Those who sow in tears will reap with joy.” There is sowing in tears. We have to break up the soil and plow—hard work—and then we have to sow, wait for things to grow, and pray that they grow well. All of this is connected with the bitterness involved in serving Hashem. Chassidus explains that this applies to spiritual work as well. There is plowing and sowing in serving Hashem. For a Jew, it is not only in material matters; in prayer and study, too, “If you toil, you will find.” You have to plow and toil, to work the soil. Soil also refers to our physical nature, the soil of the body—“dust from the earth,” as we learned in the previous parsha, Parshas Bereishis. The earth is the soil of our material nature. We have to break up that soil, break down our material coarseness and refine it, and toil and sow the seeds of Torah and mitzvos. Every mitzvah is called a seed. As is known, mitzvos are compared to seeds placed in the ground. When a Jew does a mitzvah, he plants another seed in the ground. A mitzvah is like a seed from which all the divine light we bring into the world through our Torah and mitzvos grows. And that is the meaning of MarCheshvan: a Jew comes out of Tishrei and enters day-to-day life, the ordinary gray days of the year. It is a month without festivals or special celebrations; we live our everyday lives. But then, through plowing and sowing, through every Jew’s service of Hashem in day-to-

09:34 Day after day, a person labors to plow the soil of his body and animal soul, and to sow mitzvos and good deeds—one good deed and then another, one good action and then another. Through this, we turn bitterness into sweetness and bring down all the abundant blessing with which Hakadosh Boruch Hu blesses us in the month of Tishrei, so that we can actually see the blessing with our own eyes, so that we can see the rains of blessing and how they manifest here. And we see this message of the month of Marcheshvan in the weekly parsha, Parshas Noach. We always begin the year with Shabbos Bereishis, which in most years is still in the month of Tishrei; at any rate, we always read it in Tishrei. But Parshas Noach, in most years, is already connected with the month of Cheshvan. So we study Parshas Noach at the beginning of Cheshvan, and in Parshas Noach, too, we find this message, this power. After all, a parsha is something we need to live with. The story of the Flood, the story of the Flood, the story of Noach, is really the story of turning bitterness into sweetness, especially as explained in Chassidus. And today we’re going to talk about a wonderful explanation from the Baal Shem Tov of the story of Noach’s ark. This explanation by the Baal Shem Tov, which is really one of the foundations of his teachings, shows us the wonderful power a Jew has through prayer to turn bitterness into sweetness, to turn darkness into light. And we need this message, this wonderful message of the Baal Shem Tov, in our days, in this period, when we find ourselves in days of darkness: “Darkness shall cover the earth, and thick clouds the nations.” Days like these, in a time when the world is shaking. So the Baal Shem Tov’s message is an extraordinary one. What does

11:41 the Baal Shem Tov say the story of the ark means? On the face of it, it’s a wonderful story, an interesting story, but what does the Torah want to tell us through it? When we look at the end of Parshas Noach and begin learning about Avraham Avinu, we can already connect to it. Avraham Avinu is the father, the head of the Jewish people; he is the beginning of the nation. Avraham Avinu is born, and then things come alive. That is where the history of our people really begins. But what does the whole parsha before Avraham Avinu mean to us? Why do we need to know the story of the Flood? There were wicked people, and Hakadosh Boruch Hu brought a flood, and then He had mercy, and then things began again. And Noach left the ark. A nice story, but why does it belong in the Torah? What is its message for us, the Jewish people? The Baal Shem Tov says—and this is, of course, based on the Zohar and so on—that the story of Noach’s ark contains the inner depth of the power of a Jew’s prayer: through prayer, a Jew has the ability to take the greatest darkness and bitterness in the world and turn it into light. The Baal Shem Tov says that the state of the world described by the Torah can exist in any period. Every period has its own darkness. When we are in galus, in a difficult period of galus, there is a situation in which “the earth is filled with violence.” There is the situation of everything the Torah tells us about—the way people behave, what happens in the world—and there are the turbulent waters. Chassidus explains that there are waters, “mighty waters,” referring to all the distractions and worries and difficulties and everything that comes to interfere with a Jew’s service of Hashem. Hakadosh Boruch Hu says to Noach—and, in fact, says to every Jew: What is the message of the weekly parsha? “Come into the ark.” There is an ark. What does the ark represent, says the Baal

14:00 Shem Tov? It represents the words of Torah and prayer. The word teivah, “ark,” also means a word of Torah—teivos are words. Why are words called teivos? Because an ark is something that, from the outside, looks like an ark, like a box, but inside it there is something. There are things inside it. An ark holds wonderful things within it. The same is true of every word of prayer. The teivos, the words of prayer, are really like boxes holding within them a wonderful depth of G-dly light. In every teivah, every single word of Torah and prayer, says the Baal Shem Tov, there are three levels. The Torah tells us that Noach’s ark had three stories: a lower story, a middle story, and an upper story. Three, three, three stories in Noach’s ark. What are these three stories in our service of Hashem? The Baal Shem Tov says: There is the world. That is the reality of the lower story—the world we live in. There is the middle story. This refers to the souls of the Jewish people, who stand in the middle. They are the intermediaries who raise up the world and bring it close to G-dly light. And the third story, the higher one, the upper story, is G-dliness. It is the upper world, the G-dly world. In fact, says the Baal Shem Tov, the three stories are worlds, souls, and G-dliness. Every word of prayer connects us. When a Jew says a word in prayer, these three things are joined through that prayer: the lower, middle, and upper levels. The world, through the soul of the Jew who is praying, connects with G-dly light. We take the world and bring it to Hakadosh Boruch Hu, and through this we draw an abundance of G-dly light down here into the world. That is the essence of prayer. And then the Baal Shem Tov says: “Make a tzohar for the ark.” Hakadosh Boruch Hu says to a Jew—this is the message of the weekly parsha—“Come into the ark.” First of all, enter it; be inside. When you pray, enter into

16:27 the prayer; connect with the prayer. We all know that many times we come to daven, but we’re not there. We say the words, we’re with the congregation, we say every word, but we’re not there—we’re traveling all over the world. But with the prayer itself, we don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t connect; we aren’t there inside it. So we are told: “Come into the ark.” Enter deeply into the words of Torah and prayer. Be inside; connect. Deveikus, cleaving—one of the foundations of the Baal Shem Tov’s teachings—cleaving to the words of Torah, cleaving to the words of prayer. And that is why he says, “Make a tzohar for the ark. Make a tzohar for the ark.” Tzohar means light. Rashi says a tzohar is a precious stone. In a second explanation, Rashi says it is a window. What is the tzohar? In a moment we’ll explain these two interpretations, a window or a precious stone. But the essence of tzohar is radiance, brightness: bringing brightness to the ark. In other words, when you have the opportunity to pray, to say a word of Torah, the words of prayer and the words of Torah should have a tzohar—radiance, brightness, light, joy, vitality. Pray with vitality and learn with vitality. That is what the Baal Shem Tov asks for: tzohar. And then he says something wonderful: “Make a tzohar for the ark.” There is another allusion here in the word tzohar. If we look at the word tzohar, we see that its Hebrew letters are the same as those of tzarah, “trouble.” The same letters: tzarah, ratzah, “wanted,” and tzohar. Tzarah, ratzah, and tzohar all have the same letters. This is not just a coincidence; it is not a game. According to Kabbalah, there is something very deep about letters and their combinations. Through the power to join letters and rearrange them, it is possible to turn one situation into another. And this is the meaning of “Make a tzohar for the ark.” Which teivah, which word? The word tzarah, “trouble.” There is a situation of

18:50 Distress. “It is a time of distress for Yaakov.” The verse says that there are times when we look at what is happening in the world and see that it is a time of distress for Yaakov. There is distress. Our task is to turn the tzarah, the distress, into a tzohar, a source of light. Then “from it he will be saved.” The distress itself becomes a source of light. How do we do that? Through ratzah, through desire—through praying with a desire to say the words of the prayer. “May it be Your will.” That is the very essence of prayer. A Jew asks that it be Hashem’s will for His will to change, so that a negative situation becomes a positive one. That is what prayer is: “May it be Your will.” The power of prayer to change, so to speak, His will—to turn a negative decree into a positive one, darkness into light and evil into good—is in our hands. When a Jew says the words and “enters the ark”—enters the words of prayer and the words of Torah, and remains there—it does more than protect him from the raging waters. It does more than keep him, G-d forbid, from being swept into the flood of the world’s darkness. It also turns distress into light. It transforms a world of darkness into a world of light. We need to recognize, believe in and understand the wonderful power of prayer that we possess. That is the Baal Shem Tov’s message in this week’s parsha, Parshas Noach: we need to know how much power our prayers have. Through prayer, a Jew can turn tzarah into tzohar. He can change a situation. You may see a situation and think there is no hope, nothing to be done. The Baal Shem Tov says: Don’t worry. Pray. Go inside. When you pray, don’t wander anywhere else. Enter the prayer, say the words, attach yourself to the words of

21:02 the prayer. There are two ways to do this. Here we come to the Frierdiker Rebbe’s wonderful explanation of the difference between Rashi’s two interpretations. Rashi says that a tzohar is a window. In his second interpretation, Rashi says it is a precious stone. What is the difference? The Frierdiker Rebbe says these are two approaches to prayer. A window is an opening through which light comes from elsewhere. It brings sunlight into the house. That is a window. Of course, we need to understand how this worked in the ark, since there was no sunlight at that time. That is a question in its own right. But let’s speak about the spiritual meaning. “Make a tzohar for the ark”—a window. A window brings in light from outside. A precious stone does not. There is no light coming from outside; it is a stone. But some stones can produce light. They themselves are bright and sparkling, and light shines from them. Here is the message: these are two approaches to prayer. In one approach, a person can contemplate Divine light and, through prayer, perceive the light of the Ein Sof. Prayer is a time for contemplation. Chassidus explains that prayer is a time when a Jew can concentrate, delve deeply and see beyond the words. He can contemplate Hashem’s greatness and, through that, bring Divine light into the world. That light shines for him during prayer, and then he sees it in the world as well. When he goes out into the street, he sees that “there is nothing besides Him.” He sees how Hakadosh Boruch Hu’s Divine providence guides him in miraculous and wonderful ways. But there is another approach: the precious stone. The Baal Shem Tov says that sometimes a simple Jew cannot contemplate or delve into profound ideas. But you can say the words. Just say them with enthusiasm. Say the words themselves, but say

23:11 them with intention, with vitality, with enthusiasm, with joy and warmth. Connect with the words. When a person says the words of prayer, word by word, with intention and a special vitality, then an ordinary stone becomes a precious stone. It, too, becomes a source of light, with the power to transform the darkness of the world—of nature and of the reality around us—and reveal the G-dliness within it. That is the message for our time, right now. If we look with our physical eyes, we see a world of distress, may G-d have mercy. Look at everything happening in the world: all kinds of pain, troubles, difficulties and darkness. But we need to know the power we have. “Enter the ark”—the Baal Shem Tov’s secret. Enter the letters and words of Torah and prayer, connect with them, stay inside them and surround ourselves with the words of Torah and prayer. That will save us from the waters of the flood. And more than that: “Make a tzohar for the ark.” By saying the words of prayer and Torah with vitality, enthusiasm and joy, we turn tzarah into tzohar, darkness into light. “It is a time of distress for Yaakov, and from it he will be saved.” Out of the distress will come light. May we truly merit to see it in these very days: the brightness, the great light we are all awaiting—the light of the complete Geulah. May we see it with Moshiach Tzidkeinu, especially in the month of Cheshvan. The Midrash says that Cheshvan is waiting for the day when the Third Beis Hamikdash will be dedicated, and that celebration will take place specifically in Cheshvan. May we merit to see it this year, in the month of Cheshvan.