In honor of the holy day of the Hillula (anniversary of passing) that falls tonight, we present the awe-inspiring words delivered by our Teacher, the holy Gaon and Tzaddik, Rabbi Eliezer Berland shlit"a, for the Hillula of Maran Rabbi Ovadia Yosef zt"l, whose day of passing is on the 3rd of Cheshvan.

"Rabbi Ovadia Yosef was literally Mashiach ben Yosef. From the age of 7, he did not lift his head from the book, and he would review every page 100 times. Rabbi Ovadia would walk to the Kotel (Western Wall) through Damascus Gate, where they used to shoot, with a book in his hand. They shot at the Zwiller [Rebbe] (Reb Shlomke Zwiller, who was the fourth Admor of the Zvhil Chassidus and founder of Zvhil Chassidus in the Land of Israel) when he passed through Damascus Gate, and it hit his hat. But this did not concern Rabbi Ovadia, and he continued walking to the Kotel every day through there with the book in his hand." "It wasn't for nothing that Rabbi Ovadia became a Gaon. He would review everything a hundred times. He went according to the order and learned everything slowly, bit by bit, with 100 repetitions. This is how he learned everything by heart and knew the answers to everything that has been composed since the beginning of time. In the end, when he fell ill with a minor stroke, he forgot 3,000 answers." "One day, when they took Rabbi Ovadia in his youth to help in the store and he began carrying crates, Rabbi Eliezer Attiya zt"l arrived and told his father to release the young Rabbi Ovadia to study Torah, and that he would stay and help him instead. Since then, he never lifted his head from the book. There is no such thing as lifting one's head from the book, and that is how he became the Gadol HaDor (Leader of the Generation). If a person lifts his head from the book, he immediately stumbles in matters of immorality, in Torah prohibitions." "Today is the yahrtzeit (anniversary of passing) of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, and it is the greatest yahrtzeit of the year, greater than Yom Kippur and everything else. Because Rabbi Ovadia Yosef was literally Mashiach ben Yosef, and I danced with him together at Yad Eliyahu. 'Dormita' (a Kabbalistic state of spiritual slumber) has the gematria (numerical value) of Mordechai, because during the 70 years of Babylon, the Nation of Israel was in a state of sleep. The holy Ari says that the 70 years of Babylon were greater than the Exodus from Egypt, because there they merited great perceptions of Godliness, to see the Blessed One face to face, and to ascend to the world of Tehiru (pure spiritual space) which is drawn from the lower tip of the letter Yud of the Tetragrammaton." "The main thing is to take the innocence and simplicity of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, who never lifted his head from the book. He was Mashiach ben Yosef—if we had merited, he would have been revealed."