The daily chizuk of The Rav, Rabbi Eliezer Berland shlit"a: “A person must throw away all the devices of impurity, guard the eyes, and sanctify the mind.”

Monday, 27 Teves 5785 — these are his holy words:

“Before Moshiach, everyone has to go through this…”

“Rebbe Nachman says it’s impossible… until a person goes through all the different forms of the Sitra Achra in the world, he cannot see Moshiach.”

“And today, in this generation, there are forms of the Sitra Achra that did not exist in the Generation of the Flood, and not in any generation. Because in the Generation of the Flood, Noach built a city, and Mesushelach built a city. Chanoch ascended to Heaven with his body, but before that he built a city: ‘And she bore Chanoch, and he was building a city, and he called the name of the city after the name of his son, Chanoch’ (Bereishis 4:17). They built a city with great walls, and some Cushites would bring in the food—so a person would go out of the city [and there they were protected from the vanities of this world].”

“But today, everyone has in his pocket not only one iPhone, but five iPhones—so he can see, all at once, five scenes of impurity, impurities that were never seen in any generation. The greatest resha’im never saw such scenes of impurity as the way they cause children—boys and girls—and young youth to stumble today. Children at age ten already see such words and images of impurity that they feel there’s no reason to be religious—there’s no reason.”

“Because until a person receives seichel, the yetzer hara rules over him: ‘The inclination of man’s heart is evil from his youth’—from the moment he is shaken out from his mother’s womb. The yetzer hara comes before the yetzer tov by thirteen years, and after that it already becomes the ‘owner of the house.’ And a person reaches age twenty, and the yetzer hara rules him—he doesn’t manage to free himself from it.”

“A person must know that the first thing is: he throws away all the iPhones, and all the smartphones, and the new technology that renews itself every single day. They call it a geometric progression—where it multiplies itself and jumps without end—the Sitra Achra jumps without end.”

“Rebbe Nachman says: when a person sits to learn, and he gives his thought and his heart to the Torah and becomes absorbed in it—he must understand what he is learning, Rebbe Nachman says. And he must bring forth chiddushim, because the Torah is called ‘poor in its place and rich in another place.’ And every moment he must renew more chiddushim and more chiddushim, and write chiddushim.”

“Moshe Rabbeinu grew up in Pharaoh’s house and he did not ‘open his eyes.’ We are inside Pharaoh’s house today. Today it is worse than Pharaoh’s house—because in Pharaoh’s house they did not see such forbidden sights as what every boy and every girl sees here. And everyone has the devices of impurity—the smartphone and the iPhones and the rest of these terrible devices—and he doesn’t know how to get rid of it. It is written: he is tied to it like a dog.”

“And that is why he is called Yosef HaTzaddik—because he guarded his eyes, and in his life he never lifted his eyes. For one hundred and ten years he did not lift his eyes. And that is why there was a golden chain on his neck—because he did not raise his neck—and why he merited the viceroy’s chariot—because he never lifted his eyes.”

“The goal of a person is to reach a mind that is fast and sharp—to have the fastest mind in the world, the sharpest mind in the world.”

“And this is the goal of this yeshivah: that every bochur should reach the sharpest seichel…”