"Impurity Has No Dominion"

"The Other Side (Sitra Achra) has no dominion, that is it, we are finished, enough, one must shout enough, enough," cried the Gaon and Tzaddik Rabbi Eliezer Berland shlit"a during a lesson he gave in Be'er Sheva, and the crowd cried out with him. "Now we are in Parshat Bo, 'And Hashem said to Moses, come to Pharaoh, for I have hardened his heart and the heart of his servants, in order to place these signs of Mine in his midst' (Exodus 10:1). Pharaoh did teshuvah (repentance); the Ba'al HaTurim says that Pharaoh did teshuvah, Pharaoh was a tzaddik, he was the King of Nineveh (Rabbi Nechunya ben HaKaneh says: Know that the teshuvah from Pharaoh, who rebelled against Hashem greatly, 'Who is Hashem that I should listen to His voice,' and in the same language that he sinned, he did teshuvah: 'Who is like You among the gods, O Hashem,' and Hashem saved him from death, to recount His power and might, as it is said: 'But for this I have stood you up' - and the King of Nineveh, and the people of Nineveh were writing documents of oppression and stealing and engaging in forbidden homosexual acts, and Hashem sent Jonah to prophesy against it to destroy it, and Pharaoh heard and stood from his throne and tore his garments and wore sackcloth and proclaimed to all his people that the entire nation should fast for three days, and he separated the men and the women, and likewise the animals on one side and their young on the other, and the young would see their mother's breast and cry, and the mothers would see the children and cry, and there were more than one hundred and twenty thousand people). Pharaoh rectified all the sparks that he had damaged."

"They shouted at Benjamin, 'Thief, son of a thief,' therefore he merited and received the Holy Temple within his territory, all the work that they would call a person a thief, son of a thief ('And they would stand and strike Benjamin on his shoulders and say to him: Thief, son of a thief, you have shamed us, you are your mother's son, that is how your mother shamed our father. And because of those blows that they struck him on his shoulders, he merited that the Shechinah (Divine Presence) would dwell between his shoulders, as it is said (Deuteronomy 33:12): 'He hovers over him all the day, and he dwells between his shoulders' [Tanchuma Vayechi, 10])."

"Benjamin jumped into the Red Sea with his hundred children, and then David arrived and he too jumped into the sea, 'Then the raging waters would have passed over our soul' (Psalms 124), all the raging waters passed over Benjamin and David. King David paved a path inside the sea, King David was the first, he was the pillar of fire. King David walked inside the water with a flame of fire, he made the first pillar of fire, therefore King David is alive and enduring, because he made the pillar of fire."

"King David walked literally inside the fire, therefore King David is alive and enduring. Like Rabbi Zeira who studied Gemara inside the fire. A person comes into the world to study Gemara inside the fire, even if everyone laughs at him and mocks him, let him study Gemara inside the fire. Rabbi Zeira performed one hundred fasts and another one hundred fasts and would enter literally into the fire. For this, a person comes into the world, in order to jump literally into the fire; this was the work of the tribe of Benjamin, to jump into the fire."