The main thing is to help people make teshuva
Last week, Wednesday night, July 24th, 2018, found Rav Eliezer Berland, shlita, meeting the kehilla (community) in the city of Holon. All the trips that Rav Berland is undertaking around the country are being done to try to bring the geula closer. Rav Berland has been working for years to try to encourage more and more Jews to return back to God, and to make sincere teshuva.
There are so many stories of how the Rav would go house to house in his younger days for three days straight, without sleeping a wink, in his burning desire to bring more people back. Perhaps what’s even more astounding, however, is that the Rav is still doing this at the age of 80, when his own health continues to be frail.
But the Rav is continuing to demonstrate enormous mesirut nefesh (self-sacrifice) in order to bring the holy Jewish nation back to our spiritual roots, and in order for Hashem to have mercy on us.
Here’s a small excerpt of some of the Rav’s previous shiurim on the importance of making real, sincere teshuva:
“A person can live to 120 years old, and still not know what he’s doing. His ears are all blocked up, but he’s learning [Torah] and praying, but he’s still not doing the ikker (the main thing)! The ikker is to go to other people, and to help them to make teshuva! To give shiurim (Torah classes) for them! To travel around, and open up kollels in Bat Yam, and kollels in Holon, and kollels in Herzliya, and kollels in Ramat HaSharon, and in Hod HaSharon – in every place!
“In Hadera, in Afula – in every place, that there should be a branch of Shuvu Banim. Rabbi Levi Yitzhak Bender used to say, ‘Where is your time going?’ The [main thing] we need to do is to bring people back in teshuva.”
