Preparing for the Release of the Special Book on the Three Weeks

In anticipation of the Three Weeks, which will begin on the 17th of Tammuz and continue until Tisha B'Av, a special book by our teacher, the Gaon and Tzaddik, Rav Eliezer Berland shlit"a, is about to be released in honor of this special time. The book is still in the holy handwriting of Rav Berland shlit"a, and efforts are being made to publish it in a well-edited, eye-opening edition.

Ahead of the moving occasion of the book's publication, we are beginning to release selected excerpts from it. This is especially relevant following the words of our teacher, Rav Berland shlit"a, from this past week, when in a conversation with one of his students, he encouraged the distribution of the book Megillat Ruth. The Rav said: "This book will cleanse all the impurity and all the harsh judgments from the world. There are such judgments and impurities in the world, but my books and writings, the Torah teachings and prayers, cleanse and purify all the judgments and impurities from the world."

"THERE IS NO GRASPING THE TZADDIK"

"The spies said, 'Our wives and our little ones will be a prey' (Numbers 14:3). They said to the people, 'If Moses does not enter? Certainly our wives and children will be a prey without Moses. How is it possible to conquer the land without Moses? How is it possible to fight against the giants?' And in truth, their mistake was that they did not know that Moses has no body at all; the body of Moses is an illusion. When you see the tzaddik with a body, it is an illusion (Meshech Chochmah). For the tzaddik, there is no difference if he is alive or dead, no difference if he is with the body or without the body. And therefore, no one saw how he was buried; the angels took him. He traveled fifteen miles in one stride on Mount Nebo, 'And no man knows his burial place' (Deuteronomy 34:6). His yahrtzeit is not written, because for Moses, it is above all human perception. It is not the body; it is not the beautiful nose of Moses, or the beautiful eyes of Moses. 'His face shone'—Moses is something entirely different, which has no grasping at all. There is no grasping the tzaddik."

"And this is the whole of Tisha B'Av, this is the whole destruction of the Holy Temple: that the tzaddikim are people who have no grasping, whether they are alive or whether they are not alive. The tzaddik lives, the tzaddik dies; the tzaddik is with us, is not with us; we see him with our eyes, or we do not see him with our eyes. At the moment that we think that we see the tzaddik, then he is present, and when we do not see him, he is not present? This is already a flaw in the faith in the Sages; it is a sign that you have no faith in the tzaddik. Since the tzaddik is Divinity itself, the tzaddik is the Divinity that descended to the earth; it is a manifestation of Divinity itself."