The daily strengthening from our teacher, the holy Tzaddik Rabbi Eliezer Berland shlit"a – “The Gemara is the deepest intellect in the world” Wednesday, 12 Iyar 5783 – “In every generation there is a snake with seven heads that fights the Tzaddik.” These are his holy words:

Even a non-Jew learns Gemara. Now they will require Gemara to be studied in all the universities—because the Gemara is the deepest intellect that exists in the entire world. In Korea they learn Gemara, in Jordan they learn Gemara—everywhere they learn.

In Russia, we ran circles around the entire KGB with our little finger. They told me: “Yes—by us there is no Talmud. You are smarter than all of us. If only we, too, would learn Talmud.” The KGB themselves said this when they interrogated me during the trips to Uman under the Soviet regime. They told me: “Because you learn Talmud, you outmaneuver us—you turn us around.”

You have to know: the whole power of a person is that through learning Gemara he becomes the wisest in the world—but he needs the Tzaddik. A person without the Tzaddik is a complete non-Jew.

Because how can we understand what is brought in the Gemara (Kiddushin 29b)—that specifically into Abaye’s yeshivah a snake with seven heads entered? Why would a snake with seven heads come specifically there? In the middle of the day, the snake with seven heads would come in and everyone would run away—so what do you do now?

So you need to learn Tractate Kiddushin until Shavuos—that is 40 days. Two pages a day is a total of 80 pages—to learn about the snake with seven heads.

They told Abaye that Rav Acha bar Yaakov was arriving. Abaye said: “Make sure not to give Rav Acha a place to sleep, so that he will sleep on the benches in the yeshivah.” Then, when the snake with seven heads comes—only Rav Acha bar Yaakov can destroy it, because he was the true Tzaddik who can destroy the snake with seven heads.

In every generation there is a snake with seven heads that fights the Tzaddik. The Nazis were a snake with millions of heads—eighty million heads—everyone there was a snake-head.

And so Rav Acha came—poor thing—exhausted. He walked three days on foot; he didn’t eat, he didn’t drink. He needed to sleep somewhere. From sheer brokenheartedness he fell asleep on the table, on the bench. Suddenly, at Chatzos, he sees a snake with seven heads—what do you do? Where do you run?

Rav Acha bowed seven times, and with each bow one head of the snake fell—because a person comes into the world to subdue the snake with seven heads.

Because the snake with seven heads is the woman whose husband cut her into 12 pieces, in the story of Pilegesh BaGiv’ah—and now she returned in a reincarnation (Judges 19–21). Then 400,000 men came from every man of Judah—all of Am Yisrael—to wipe out Giv’ah. Because of one story, they wipe out an entire tribe.

That is why, when Binyamin was born, Rachel said to call him “Ben Oni.” Rachel saw with Ruach HaKodesh that they would wipe out the entire tribe of Binyamin, but from Binyamin there remained 600 men.

Back then there was no Shuvu Banim, there were no youth organizations, and there was no one to take care of the young men—so all the young men of the tribe of Binyamin went off to a corrupt culture in one second. The yetzer hara is stronger than everything; the yetzer hara took control of them, and so they became liable for death.

The men of Giv’ah committed the most terrible crime in the world, and then the entire tribe was cut off. The entire tribe reincarnated into the students of Abaye. Abaye himself was the reincarnation of that poor husband who cut his wife into 12 pieces.

The Gemara says in Sotah (page 20) that without the Tzaddik, all the learning is not worth anything—even if a person knows the entire Torah inside out. Just like before the Holocaust they knew the Torah inside out, but they did not know from the Tzaddik.

Rav Acha bar Yaakov said that one who learns without the Tzaddik is called a sorcerer. He said: If you don’t know who the Tzaddik is, you cannot subdue the snake with seven heads. Because in every generation there is a snake with seven heads, and all of our avodah is to subdue it.