Powerful: Kol Nidrei on the Seashore in Los Angeles

The Daily Chizuk from our teacher, the Gaon and Tzaddik Rav Eliezer Berland shlit"a – Every baal teshuvah has merited a revelation of Hashem face-to-face

"All vows, prohibitions, oaths, consecrations, and konamot... that we may vow, or swear, or consecrate, or prohibit upon ourselves, from this Yom Kippur until the next Yom Kippur that will come to us for good. Regarding all of them, we regret them..." (From the Kol Nidre prayer)

Tuesday, 10 Elul 5782 – The melody he heard as a child brought him back to Judaism at the end of the world.

These are his holy words:

A person must be a servant of Hashem; once a person has done teshuvah (repentance), he must continue to be a servant of Hashem.

Hashem revealed Himself to the baal teshuvah; every baal teshuvah is a revelation face-to-face, a revelation of Divinity. Every baal teshuvah needs to know exactly how he returned in teshuvah, what caused it, what?

There are baalei teshuvah who were the wealthiest and had everything good without any crises. It is true, there are those baalei teshuvah who were pushed into all sorts of places and then returned in teshuvah, but there are those baalei teshuvah who had only good, only abundance.

For example, Stoker had everything; he had already gone to make a film about the Carmel, about Haifa; he was supposed to receive billions for it. He knew nothing of Judaism; he only remembered that they would once go to the 'Kol Nidre' of Yom Kippur.

They were completely secular, living in Haifa, they had a record store, but on 'Kol Nidre' they would go to the synagogue. On Kol Nidre, they would stand outside the synagogue, hear the melody of Kol Nidre, and go home - that is what he knew; he didn't know there was Shabbat, he didn't know there was kashrut, he didn't know anything.

Today, children are being raised who don't even know that the Torah exists; they see us as primitive cave-dwellers. "These Haredi religious people are destroying our country" - they want there to be a country only of abominations; it is impossible to stand up to the trials, because even the angels did not stand up to them.

And this Stoker went to swim in the sea; it was already sunset and he remained in the sea in Los Angeles. He is swimming in the sea only in a swimsuit, without a shirt, without anything, swimming in the sea, what fun it is to swim in the sea. Suddenly, near the shore, he hears the melody of Kol Nidre - this is the only thing he knew from the entire Torah.

He ran toward the melody; he hears the melody he has known since he was a baby, because this is what his parents would do. On Yom Kippur, they would go to Kol Nidre, stand outside, and hear the melody of the cantor - and this is the melody that was etched into him. He sees some caravan, some wooden shack on the seashore, and inside it are old Jews, Holocaust survivors, all crying, such a Kol Nidre...

He stood there in his swimsuit outside the window, mesmerized - mesmerized by the melody, mesmerized by those who were crying.

He had never seen such a sight in his whole life, such a revelation of Divinity - suddenly he sees that there is a Hashem in the world face-to-face, there is a Hashem, there is a pleasure greater than swimming, there is a pleasure greater than being there in the sea. There is something sublime, something that rises above all intellect, above everything he learned in his life, above everything he enjoyed in his life.

He had another two years, but he immediately announced that he was canceling that contract. He acted like a madman; he had a million-dollar contract to make a film about the entire Carmel, the whole mountain from bottom to top. He gave up everything, said "I am packing and returning tomorrow to Eretz Yisrael."

There are many baalei teshuvah who returned from within the good, from within the wealth, who swam in a sea of cream, in a sea of milk, in a sea of honey, like the infants (in Egypt) who would swim in a sea of honey - a person must be a servant to Hashem.