Parshat Balak from the Words of the Righteous Rav Rabbi Eliezer Berland shlit"a

Parashat HaShavua 'Balak' - from the mouth of the tzaddik, foundation of the world, our teacher and master, the Gaon HaTzaddik, Rav Eliezer Berland shlit"a.

"The mouth of the donkey": Hashem speaks to us twenty-four hours a day without pause. Hashem speaks to us every single second through thousands of hints. There is no person who, at any given moment, does not have their soul teaching them what to do. The soul is alive and existing, and it teaches the person. Every second, there are infinite hints for each and every person regarding what they must do and how they must behave. "Ten things were created on the eve of Shabbat at twilight, and they are: the mouth of the earth, the mouth of the well, and the mouth of the donkey..." (Avot 5:6). Hashem created the donkey so that it would rebuke Bilaam. For when a person goes to commit a sin, creation rises up against him! "The heavens shall reveal his iniquity, and the earth shall rise up against him" (Job 20:27). The heavens and the earth all rise up against him! From the heavens, they signal hints to a person so that he will not stumble into sin! The Shechinah (Divine Presence) signals to a person not to stumble! They signal to him once through a donkey, once through a gentile; the Shechinah dresses itself in all sorts of forms to signal to a person not to commit a sin. Even the donkey rises up! It presses him against the wall, and presses him again and again, saying to him, "Start understanding the hints! They want to save you!" What is the "mouth of the donkey"? When a person goes to commit a sin, the donkey cries out, "Where are you going?" And it cries out all the time! Not only to Bilaam! It cries out to everyone: "Where are you going? What are you doing?" The donkey cries out! The animals cry out! All of creation cries out! "Why are you going to a bad friend?"

A person can feel as if the ceiling is literally falling when he goes to do something not good; everything is screaming! He hears sirens from outside, the sound of alarms; the donkey stands in his path, suddenly he sees some vehicle blocking him, suddenly the door is closed, nothing is working out—everything is against him! When he goes to commit a sin, then immediately there are alarms! Sirens! Alarm after alarm! Suddenly there are police, Magen David, fire trucks—the whole world is noisy! The moment a person goes to do something not good, Hashem has already planned from the six days of Creation how to signal to the person not to commit the sin. All of creation is arranged for the sake of the person so that he will not commit any sin in his life. Everything that happens to a person—here his wife rebukes him, here a friend rebukes him, here the bus driver yells at him—these are all hints! The bus driver tells him, "Move forward, move forward, move already! Get on faster!" These are all hints! Everywhere they rebuke him, they yell at him, and all the shouting he hears are all hints from Heaven! When the bus driver yells at you, "Get inside! Further inside! Move! Move forward already! Get even further inside!"—know that these are all hints to enter into the interiority of things, to enter into the interiority of the Torah and the mitzvot, so that you do not remain outside, in the externality of things. For what a person hears, every word he hears, are hints from Hashem. Hashem speaks to us through every person in the world; Hashem urges us to begin to enter into the interiority of things, into the depth of things. Once, some avreichim were passing through the Central Bus Station and saw someone standing at a sunglasses stand. He was shouting there, "It's a pity about the eyes! It's a pity about the eyes!" He shouted like that for eight hours in the middle of the Central Bus Station. What more is needed than this? These are all hints! "It's a pity about the eyes"—sanctify the eyes! Guard the eyes! Everything one sees and hears are all hints to draw closer to Hashem.

A person needs to know how to understand what the hints are. The hints that awaken him to draw closer to Hashem, hints that rouse him from his sleep—that is the matter of the hints. It is not, "So-and-so called me from the middle of the Seder, so I am going with him now"; that is not a hint, that is madness! If one needs to go because it is a truly important matter, then one goes. The Rebbe says in Torah 54, "However, the greatness of the intellect in this must be in measure, only according to his human intellect should he increase the thought in this... 'Hashem, You are very great'... 'You are very great' means that the greatness of the intellect should be in measure and in limitation." The Rebbe says not just hints of madness! Hints mean to learn, to pray with intention, fixed study sessions, to learn Gemara—that is called hints. They give a person hints every second, and one must understand what the hints are, because there are hints that a person does not understand. Hints are a Bat Kol (Heavenly Voice) from Heaven, and one must not go out of one's logic, because even in a hint there must be some logic. "A wise man is better than a prophet"; logic is better than prophecy, and therefore the hints must not be against the Torah and against the Halacha. A person thinks, "Here, I have done teshuvah (repentance), that's it, now I will have rest from the yetzer hara (evil inclination), I am holy, I have no bad thoughts, everything is fine," but then everything starts to come back to him. He is already walking less charedi, and he starts to compromise a little; he is already in a decline, and then he has a crisis. And why all this? Because he does not know that the war is for one hundred and twenty years! For the whole life! If a person knows that he has a war for one hundred and twenty years, and his teshuvah is not yet complete, and he remains the same beast he was—the same man of desires, the same bad character traits, the same corrupted traits—he knows that everything remains the same for him and nothing has changed, then he will not have a crisis. But since he does not know that nothing has changed, suddenly he has a crisis! When he goes to sleep, he sees that he has bad thoughts; during the day he walks around full of forbidden sights; he sees that he is full of desires, and it burns in him like billions of bonfires, and he breaks. A person must know that the moment he did teshuvah, everything that was until today remains with him! What he stole, robbed, murdered, desecrated Shabbat, drove to the beach on Shabbat, smoked on Shabbat—it all returns to him! It does not suddenly disappear in one day! Suddenly, after some time, he gets a desire to smoke on Shabbat, suddenly he wants to drive to the beach, Heaven forbid, suddenly he becomes bored. His body is not used to Torah, his body is not used to the pleasures of holiness, to the pleasures of the holy Shabbat; he does not yet have the vessels to receive the holiness. And if someone took drugs, then the drugs pursue him in the hardest way. Whoever took drugs, may Hashem have mercy, how many years does it take him to get out of it? A person asks, "What... after all, I did teshuvah, I was in Uman." Truly, it is not like that; it is not so simple. Things that the body has been accustomed to for forty years, twenty years, thirty years—one does not get out of it easily! So, from the abundance of desires, from the bonfires burning in him, he breaks completely! He says, "How much can I cope? How much can I? Maybe this is not for me?"—It is not for you!? Certainly it is for you! For whom was the Torah written? For the Christians!? For the Muslims!? What... the Torah was written for the Pope!?

"For this, one must draw close to the tzaddik who is great in stature."

Because when a person draws close to the tzaddik, he begins to receive hints, he begins to understand the hints, he receives hints not to despair! He receives hints to fight, to cope; he begins to understand that the war is for one hundred and twenty years, he understands that this is the path, he understands that this is the order, he understands that he still has years of work to purify himself, he understands that he must fight all day with his spirit of folly. They signal to him all the time, another hint, and another hint: "Struggle!! Overcome!! Continue to fight! Continue to struggle! Until you emerge from your spirit of folly." All things are drawn from Hashem, all things are drawn from the Ein Sof (Infinite), and the person must be connected with the Light of the Ein Sof, to be connected with Hashem. Hashem signals to a person every second infinite hints. When Jews are killed everywhere, in every corner, and all of Am Yisrael is in terrible anxiety, and no one knows what will be with him, what will be with his household—these are hints from Hashem. Now we have reached the worst situation that has ever been in Am Yisrael: missiles are flying, people are running to shelters, murders, killings, Heaven forbid; no one knows what will be in another second. Am Yisrael sees that nothing can protect them; truly, everything is drawn from Hashem! Everything is hints from Hashem so that we will do teshuvah. We have reached such a situation that everyone already wants to do teshuvah. Every day Hashem signals to us through speech, thought, and action; every day Hashem contracts His Divinity and signals to us that we should awaken to teshuvah. And all of this Hashem does for us out of the great love that He loves us. He can no longer tolerate the immorality! Hashem can no longer tolerate the lashon hara (evil speech)! The desecrations of Shabbat! He wants Am Yisrael to return in teshuvah.