Listen: New. Avraham Understood That It Is Impossible to Receive the Infinite

What does a normal person do when they are in trouble? They try to calm down, cry out to Hashem, and pray for their soul. What does the Tzaddik, the foundation of the world, do when he is suffering from afflictions? He sings to Hashem Yitbarach, believing with his entire being that everything is great mercy with the purpose of drawing down even more Infinite Lights.

"Everything is Infinite Lights, everything is vessels for Infinite Lights," begins our teacher, the Gaon and Tzaddik, Rav Eliezer Berland shlit"a, in his holy lesson. "It is written, 'Know for certain that your offspring will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, and they will enslave them and oppress them for four hundred years.' I read in the Haggadah of Rav Baruch Ashlag that he asks: Why did Abraham not argue? What is this four hundred years? He should have told Hashem to reduce it for him, just as he said in Sodom: 50, 45. Why did he not argue? Why did he accept the decree of exile with such love and good spirit? And he answers - Abraham understood that it is impossible to receive the Infinite Lights except through servitude; therefore he asked, 'How shall I know that I will inherit it?' Abraham knows that it is impossible to receive any gift from Hashem except through servitudes and afflictions."

"Abraham Avinu lived before the giving of the Torah, and there was not yet Torah with which to build vessels, so he had no choice; in order to receive Infinite Lights, it was necessary for 'your offspring to be strangers in a land that is not theirs, and they will enslave them and oppress them for four hundred years.' Every time a person has some servitude or trouble, it is only to prepare vessels for them for the Infinite Lights; every trouble is to prepare for them infinite vessels. So when a person is in trouble, they should not cast away the sorrow, like Joseph the Tzaddik." "When a person is in trouble, make a 'tzohar' (window/light), 'A tzohar you shall make for the ark'; every trouble is a window to the Infinite Lights, and therefore one should not ask for the trouble to be removed at all. It is forbidden to ask at all for there to be less; the more trouble there is, through this, one makes vessels for even more infinity, because Hashem is truly infinite. The kindness of Hashem is above the heavens, above all imagination, above all thought."