Everything is Thanks to the Tzaddik

A lesson from the Gaon HaTzaddik Rav Eliezer Berland shlit"a, from this week, Parashat Vayetzei 5779, at the home of the Mann family in the Mekor Baruch neighborhood of Jerusalem.

""And they came to the threshing floor of Atad, which is beyond the Jordan" (Genesis 50:10), "the threshing floor of Atad." After all the grain in Egypt had rotted, they made a new threshing floor that was sufficient to store grain for all of Egypt. Everything is in the merit of the tzaddik, everything a person has and everything that comes to him, everything is in the merit of the tzaddik."

"The threshing floor was guarded from people and it was impossible to enter it, and in this threshing floor there was food for all of Egypt. The wicked would not allow anyone to take from the threshing floor, 'And they were vexed (vayakutu) because of the children of Israel' (Exodus 1:12). They thought that the children of Israel were thorns (kotzim), but in truth, they were the thorns. 'Vayakutu,' a term for thorns, 'and the evil returned to its former state,' they were informed that the evil would return to its former state. What, is every threshing floor surrounded by thorns (atad)? Is every threshing floor surrounded by thorns? Why was it called, 'the threshing floor of Atad'?"