Due to Pride, a Person Loses Spiritual and Material Abundance - Words of the Esteemed Rabbi Eliezer Berland shlit"a - Scenes from the Mezuzah Placement in Pisgat Ze'ev

"And you will be like God" (Genesis 3:5)...

"The sin of the Tree of Knowledge is "And you will be like God", a person thinks he is already like God, the world is in his hands, he controls the world. Why is a person sick? Why does he have no children? Livelihood? He can't find his match? It's all because of pride. Every thought of pride causes him to lose his spiritual and material abundance, every thought of pride pushes away the Divine Presence, as it is written, "I and he cannot dwell together", through a thought of pride the Divine Presence disconnects from the person more than any other sin."

In pride, a person does not do teshuvah

"Sometimes a person fails in a sin and he is broken..., he does teshuvah. But a person who is in pride has no broken heart because pride is the opposite of a broken heart, and therefore he does not do teshuvah. When a person is in pride, he cannot tolerate anyone in the world, he thinks, who can reach me? Who is equal to me? A person walks with the thought that he is the wisest, the most understanding, and the most clever."

"If a person feels he has done something, like praying with intention, shouting in prayer, rising early, and thinks to himself I am better than the one who is now sleeping in bed", then everything is lost. The one lying in bed now, maybe he is weak? And maybe now he is praying with the tallit and shedding rivers of tears? What do you know? He may have risen at 8, and said the Shema, but after that, he cries for a whole hour, what does a person know? The moment you have a thought of pride from rising early or behaving with abstinence, you have a certain conduct, and therefore you are already better than the other, at that moment everything goes to the other side. Unless a person recognizes his pride and does teshuvah for every thought of pride, then he corrects everything and elevates everything to kedushah."

"Pride and desires do not belong to a Jew"

"A person must know one foundation that pride and desires do not belong to a Jew, it is not the essence of a Jew, it is only an external garment. Because the moment Adam HaRishon sinned, the holy Zohar says he received a garment called "leprosy of the snake's skin" (mishcha dechavya). Hashem gave him the punishment of receiving the body of the snake, which is what is called "tunics of skin" with an 'ayin' and not "tunics of light" with an 'aleph' as it was initially. And so every person, the moment he is born, receives the external garment, "leprosy of the snake's skin" which is pride and desires, and he must fight with it and know, "this is not me", "this is not what I want", "this is not my true desire"."

"A person thinks that desires are his true desire, his essence, it is not true, it only seems to him, some physical desire has clung to him, some foreign craving, and it is not the nature of man, it comes from the sin of the Tree of Knowledge. When Adam HaRishon ate from the Tree of Knowledge, there was a certain poison there, and he ate this poison and poisoned all of humanity. But we must get out of this poison, we must not become addicted to this poison, we must not let this poison draw us, a person must shed his snake's body, his mishcha dechavya, because his body is actually the body of the Sitra Achra, Hashem created for him tunics of skin, garments of the Sitra Achra (pride and desires). And indeed the true tzaddikim have merited to nullify this snake's body, through their holy work.

Drawing Close to a Tzaddik Shows a Person His Traits

Therefore, our Rebbe (Torah 10) says that the advised counsel to nullify pride is drawing close to tzaddikim. Because the moment a person draws close to the true tzaddik, he immediately sees where he stands in the rectification of his traits, and begins to hate his evil, to hate the desires, he will not want it anymore, at least he will not make desires a "way of life". He will be ashamed of himself, cry about it, and do teshuvah. And not like people who make desires a "way of life", instead of being ashamed of it, on the contrary, they boast about it, they value it. If people believed in tzaddikim and drew close to them and listened to their voice, then they would merit to come out of all their evil, and from all the desires and become completely purified.

Courtesy of Tzama Nafshi Photo Gallery from the Mezuzah Placement of the Esteemed Rabbi Eliezer Berland shlit"a at Rabbi Nir Yezi in Pisgat Ze'ev, Jerusalem. [gallery link="file" size="full" ids="13816,13817,13818,13819,13820"] Photos courtesy of Shachar Eliyahu