On the night following Rosh Chodesh Av 5779, our teacher, the holy Gaon and Tzaddik Rabbi Eliezer Berland shlit"a (may he live long and good days), delivered wonderful and inspiring words regarding teshuvah (repentance) between the Mincha (afternoon) and Maariv (evening) prayers. These are the main points of his words:

"The 1st of Elul is the greatest day of the year; Hashem says, 'I take everything upon Myself.'"

"Whoever performs true teshuvah (repentance) today, on the 1st of Elul, then Hashem takes all of his transgressions from all of his gilgulim (reincarnations) since Adam HaRishon (the first man). Perhaps he was once Lamech, perhaps he killed Cain, perhaps he killed Tubal-Cain."

"Everyone has already cut people into pieces, was in Sodom, built buildings in the Tower of Babel, seventy miles high. And afterwards there was the Holocaust and they built houses for the Germans, to show that everything was to atone for the Dor HaFlaga (the Generation of the Dispersion)."

"They would throw children into the fires, just as they burned [sacrifices to idols] for 850 years—in Gilgal and Shiloh it was 400, and another 450 years."

"All of this we read in the Parsha (weekly Torah portion)."