A Vort On Parshas Nitzavim: Is Hashem Also In Golus?

00:16 Good Shabbos, kinderlach. This Shabbos, we have a very special parasha where the Aibishter talks to us about the future, what's gonna happen in the future, in the end of days. You know, Jews are gonna go through a very bitter, difficult, miserable galus. As you know, how much tzaras the Jewish people had in galus. They were amongst all the nations, and some nations were much harsher to us than others. It was very difficult galus. It's still a difficult galus. We want Mashiach to come, and Hashem promises in this parasha that there will be a time in the end of days when all of the Jewish people will do teshuva. We'll, we'll decide that's it, enough is enough. We can't do averas anymore. We gotta do teshuva for everything we've done wrong, and when we do teshuva, automatically the galus goes away, and Hashem takes us back to Eretz Yisrael with Mashiach Tzidkeinu and builds the Beis Hamikdash. This is all in this week's parasha. And the Torah talks about how we'll be spread amongst all the nations, all over the world, different countries that will control over-- have control over us, right? We will live amongst them. And some of them will be very, very difficult, very, very, uh, harsh and very mean to us. And as we know what happened in history, some J- some countries, Jews had a very, very difficult life, and many Jews were killed in those countries. But Hashem says in the end of days, we Jews are all gonna do

01:45 teshuva. All Jews, every single Jew will do teshuva. And when that happens, and something amazing will happen, Hashem promises he'll bring Mashiach, and all of the Jewish people from all over the world will come together and go to Eretz Yisrael, and Hashem will build the Beis Hamikdash there on, on Har Habais, and we will have a third Beis Hamikdash, and the whole world will be a different world. Everybody will live at peace with each other. There will be no war and no famine and no fam... We all know what it says about Mashiach, and it's in this week's parasha. Now, there's one, one passuk in this parasha that's very, very interesting and very unusual. Look what it says. Hashem says, "You'll do teshuva, and you'll want to come closer to me, and I will then come bring you back from galus." But then it says... It doesn't use the words, "I will bring you back from galus." "I will come back from galus with you." What is Hashem saying? I will come from galus together with the Jewish people? That means Hashem is in galus too? Why is he in galus? What, the Goyim are, are, are making his life miserable like he did-- they did for us? Ha- Hashem is the creator of the heaven and the earth. He created all the Goyim. How can he be in galus in them? They can't control him. They can control us because we're amongst them. We live in their countries. But how can he be in

03:09 galus to the Goyim? He says, "I will come out of galus together with you." That means I'm in galus. As long as you're in galus, I'm in galus with you. That's an amazing thing. Why would Hashem say he's in galus? Well, let me tell you, kinderlach, this is an important idea that you should always remember. The galus doesn't happen by accident. The galus happens because we behaved in a certain way that naturally brought the galus. If you look in the Torah, in the parasha, these parashas, in the last week's parasha, it's all about Hashem saying that when we behave in a certain way, then we will bring certain types of things in our lives, saying if we do good things, we behave, we do-- we daven to Hashem, we learn Torah, we do mitzvahs, we help each other, we have Ahavas Yisrael, then Hashem says there will be very good things for us. We'll live in Eretz Yisrael. We'll live at peace. We'll, we'll-- There will be no, no-- nobody will starve. Nobody will have a problem. There will be no poverty. We'll be a-- We're living a good life, and we'll be close to Hashem and serve Hashem with joy, with happiness. If, chas v'shalom, the Jewish people mess up, as happened in the time of the first Beis Hamikdash, in the time of the second Beis Hamikdash, the Jewish people started doing terrible things, and that's what happened. They have a galus, destroyed the Beis Hamikdash, and, and they went into galus. And

04:25 now Hashem is waiting for us to do teshuva, to fix all the problems that we did. Now, why is galus such a natural thing? So if we do averas, we go into galus. Why is that? What's the connection? The answer is everything starts inside of us, inside of you. You know there's a galus inside of you. There are Goyim inside of you, and there's the Jew, you, inside of you, and you can go into galus by the Goyim inside of you. How does that happen? Well, the Goyim inside of you are obviously not people like out there in the, in, in, in the world. It's the yetzer hara. And the yetzer hara can be very f- powerful, very strong. The yetzer hara is evil, and if we do averas, then we are becoming, um, close to the yetzer hara, and the yetzer hara now has power over us. It makes us do more averas and more averas. And so now we're in galus amongst the Goyim inside of us. And you know what else is happening at that time? Something terrible. Not only are we going into galus, our neshamas are going into galus. We're also dragging Hashem into galus inside of us, too. You know why? 'Cause every single one of us has a neshamah. The neshamah is a piece of Hashem. If you go into galus, into ye-yetzer hara, and you do evil, and you become in galus to the, to the evil, to the bad yetzer hara, you know what happens? You're

05:51 dragging Hashem, that piece of Hashem that's inside of you, also in galus. 'Cause you're dragging yourself into galus, so you're dragging Hashem into the galus. So Hashem says, "You're forcing me to come into galus with you because I have a piece of myself in you. I put a piece of me in you, and when you drag yourself into evil, into bad stuff, then you're dragging me into the bad stuff." It's like the Alter Rebbe says in Tanya, it's like taking the head of a king. Imagine a king of a country, and a person in the country would come and grab the king. Not only would he be disrespectful, he would run in, take the king's head, and drag him to the bathroom and stuff his head in the toilet. Can you imagine what a terrible things would be? When a Jew does an avera, he's literally taking Hashem's head because Y- Hashem, a part of Hashem is inside of you. You're dragging Hashem into something terrible, bad, evil. That's galus inside of us. And Hashem says when you create galus inside of you, that it will automatically will cause that the Jewish people will end up leaving Eretz Yisrael and going to galus amongst the nations. The moment we come out of galus inside of us, we will see automatically how we come out of galus from the nations, from the Goyim of the world, too, and we go back to Eretz Yisrael with the Beis Hamikdash. See, it's all connected. So that's what Hashem

07:14 is saying. When you do teshuva, I'm coming out of galus with you. And when I come out of galus with you inside of you, then you know what? I will take you out of galus from amongst the nations as well, 'cause they've connected to each other. Good Shabbos, and a Gut Yohr. Shana tova u'mesuka.