During the Days of the Festival We Enter the Tree of Life

Reb Noson explains: During these days we must open the path to the "Tree of Life." During these holy days, we must overcome, break through, and reveal the way to the "Tree of Life"—wonderful holy words for Parashat Ha'azinu and the holiness of the holiday season from our teacher, the Gaon and Tzaddik, Rav Eliezer Berland shlit"a.

THE PATH TO THE TREE OF LIFE

All of a person's work during these days—Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, Hoshana Rabbah, Shemini Atzeret, and Simchat Torah—is to merit the "Tree of Life," which is the service of Hashem. For after Adam HaRishon sinned, the path to the "Tree of Life" was blocked; Hashem placed the "flaming sword which turned every way" and the Cherubim to guard the path leading to the "Tree of Life." Since then, for everyone who wants to enter the "Tree of Life" (the service of Hashem), obstacles and delays stand in their way, caused by the Cherubim and the "flaming sword which turned every way."

Rashi explains: "The Cherubim" (=angels of destruction), "the flaming sword which turned every way" (=which threatens him from entering the Garden again), threatens and frightens him from entering the "Tree of Life." A person is afraid to study Torah, afraid to rise at midnight, to perform hitbodedut, to go to the fields, afraid to travel to the graves of tzaddikim, afraid of Arabs. What are Arabs?! Arabs do not exist at all, as it is written: "Behold, the nations are as a drop from a bucket, and are accounted as the small dust of the balance" (Isaiah 40:15). They do not exist at all; they are not present at all.

Reb Noson explains: During these days we must open the path to the "Tree of Life." During these holy days, we must overcome, break through, and reveal the path to the "Tree of Life," the path to the service of Hashem. As long as a person is in the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, they have obstacles, fears, doubts, and confusions; they do not know what advice to follow in their soul. Through emunat chachamim (faith in the Sages), one merits entering the Tree of Life, as Reb Noson says: "And complete advice in the service of Hashem is impossible to attain except through the true tzaddikim of the generation" (Likutey Halachot, Sukkah 3).

A person must find a tzaddik who can bring them directly to the "Tree of Life," who will bestow upon them the consciousness (mochin) of the Tree of Life, who will bring them into the "Tree of Life." Then they will have no conflicting advice, no confusion, no fears, and they will merit to overcome all the obstacles and delays that come from the Cherubim and the "flaming sword which turned every way" and enter the service of Hashem.

"A FOOLISH PEOPLE AND NOT WISE" (Deuteronomy 32:6)

"The main principle and foundation upon which everything depends is to connect oneself to the tzaddik of the generation and to accept his words regarding everything he says, whether it is a small matter or a great matter, and not to deviate, Heaven forbid" (Likutey Moharan 123).

Everything that a person goes through in their entire life depends on whether they merit to believe in the tzaddik of the generation; everything stands on faith in the tzaddik. A person must nullify all their thoughts, all their desires, and nullify their own personality to the tzaddik. They must accept his words on everything he says, even if he tells them the opposite of their own intellect, whether it is a great matter or a small matter.

One must cast away all their own wisdom, for a person is born with wisdom—everyone has their own wisdom—and this wisdom hinders them from drawing close to the tzaddik and returning to Hashem. One must remove their own intellect as if they have no intellect at all, for the tzaddik bestows all intellect. As long as one has some personal intellect, they are not considered fully connected to the tzaddik. The moment a person has even a drop of intellect or a drop of understanding of their own, they are not connected to the tzaddik.

"And Israel, at the time of receiving the Torah, had great wisdom" (ibid.). Israel knew all the wisdom of all the magicians; they studied under the magicians and knew how to calculate the constellations, they knew how to calculate everything.

Therefore, the "Bnei Yissaschar" explains that Moshe had to say "k'chatzot halailah" (about midnight, Exodus 11:4), specifically "k'chatzot halailah," and not at midnight, because Pharaoh calculated that that midnight fell between Mars and Jupiter—Mars is din (judgment/severity), Jupiter is rachamim (mercy). Mars' influence was ending and Jupiter's star was beginning; this was the point of midnight according to Pharaoh's system. If Moshe had said "at midnight," Pharaoh would have said that Moshe was performing sorcery, drawing powers from the constellation of Mars to carry out the plague of the firstborn. Therefore, Moshe wanted to shift the time of midnight by a few seconds, by half a minute, so that Jupiter's influence would already have entered. Then everyone would know that it was the hand of Hashem and not wisdom or sorcery, and that is why he said "k'chatzot."

And so it was with Korach, when the people of Israel said to Moshe and Aharon, "You have killed the people of Hashem" (Numbers 17:6). You are telling stories that Hashem opened the earth... you caused the earth to open through wisdom! Because through wisdom, it is possible to open the earth! Only when they saw that everyone was dying did they understand that it was the hand of Hashem.

And in truth, the people of Israel, at the time of receiving the Torah, cast away all their wisdom and believed in Hashem and in Moshe His servant. This is what Onkelos translated for "A foolish people and not wise" (Deuteronomy 32:6) as "A people who received the Torah and were not wise," for the essence of receiving the Torah was through "not wise." A person is born with a lot of wisdom, and every person has a lot of intellect, but that intellect is only for understanding Gemara, for understanding the Rishonim and Acharonim; only in Torah should one place their intellect.

And this is what is written, "Naval" (foolish)—the fifty (nun) gates of wisdom (lev), which alludes to the holy Torah, which is the true wisdom, before which all other wisdoms are nullified. To build an atomic bomb and kill millions of people at once is murder; it is not wisdom. The wisdom is to save millions of people! For in truth, through one letter of the Torah, it is possible to save millions of people; through one letter, it is possible to heal billions. All the wisdoms of the world are nullified against one letter of the holy Torah.