The Daily Strengthening from our teacher, the holy and righteous gaon Rabbi Eliezer Berland shlit"a – “Through rising early, the Third Temple will be built”

“My father disciplined you with whips, but I will discipline you with scorpions” (I Kings 12:14)

“From the eater came forth food” (Judges 14:14)

“He turns wise men backward and makes their knowledge foolish” (Isaiah 44:25)

Sunday, 8 Sivan 5783 – Rebbe Nachman prays all of everyone’s prayers

These are his holy words:

Rechavam did not serve idols, but he said, “I will give you scorpions.” What kind of fool says such a thing? “My father disciplined you with whips, but I will discipline you with scorpions” (I Kings 12:14) — Rechavam was intending the sign of Scorpio, for then the Third Temple will be built.

Rechavam was saying: You want a Third Temple? Then scorpions—because the whole point is the Third Temple, which will be a Temple of fire. You only merit that through “scorpions”—meaning, that you get up early at 4.

What is “From the eater came forth food” (Judges 14:14)? Who is “the eater”? “The eater” is the lion—the lion in the Divine Chariot! And this lion turns into honey— with the Tzaddik, everything turns to honey!

Just as Vespasian asked Rabbi Yochanan (the Gemara in Gittin 56a–b mentions the meeting that took place between Rabbi Yochanan and Vespasian (Titus’s father) after Rabbi Yochanan was smuggled out of Jerusalem. As described there, Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai foretold to Vespasian that he would be crowned emperor of Rome, and immediately said to him, “Peace to you, O king”… see there), what do you do if there is a barrel full of honey and there is a snake on the barrel?

Rabbi Yochanan was silent. Why was he silent? Say something—speak.

He said: I think you take tongs and kill the snake with them. Then Rabbi Akiva applied to him the verse, “He turns wise men backward and makes their knowledge foolish” (Isaiah 44:25). Rabbi Akiva asked: You don’t know how to answer? Tell Vespasian: you take the dragon and move it away.

Who is the dragon? Who is the snake? These are the biryonim—the violent zealots! The biryonim who burned the storehouses, burned the treasuries—the wheat, the barley, the oil—everything they burned. Because the food in the storehouses was enough for 21 years; in the Midrash it is written that it was enough for 22 years. If there had not been disputes, they could have held out within the walls of Jerusalem for 22 years.

After 3 years Vespasian left. He said: Enough—I no longer have strength. How long do you think you can fight over the same city? After all, after three years they had already conquered Carthage.

And the emperor says: Master of the Universe, have mercy—have mercy. Even the emperor—even though he is a non-Jew, even though he is Roman—prays: Master of the Universe, You place an entire army into the hand of one man. We no longer have strength; we are already wretched, we are miserable—this cannot be.

Master of the Universe, have mercy on him; Master of the Universe, hear his prayer—the Rebbe says: all the prayers, it is I who prays them.

The Rebbe writes in Chayei Moharan: You should know—within all the prayers, from the creation of the world until the end, I become “impregnated” within each one: within a non-Jew, within a Jew; a sick child, a sick father, a sick mother, a sick woman. A non-Jew also prays—he screams and he cries even more than Jews (“And [Esav] cried out a great and bitter cry exceedingly”).

Everything is Rebbe Nachman: he becomes “impregnated” within each person. He said: All the prayers in the whole world—I become “impregnated” within them; I enter within them, and I pray and I cry out from inside them.