The Daily Chizzuk of our Rebbe Rav Eliezer Berland shlit”a – “The Gemara is the deepest intellect in the world”
Wednesday 12 Iyar 5783 – “In every generation there is a serpent with seven heads which wages war against the Tzaddik”
These are his holy words:
Also a gentile learns Gemara. Now it will be obligatory to learn Gemara in all the universities, because Gemara is deepest intellect that there is in the world. In Korea, they learn Gemara. In Jordan, they learn Gemara. In every place, they are learning.
In Russia, we wrapped the entire KGB around our little finger. They said to me: Yes, we don’t have Talmud. You’re smarter than all of us. If only we also would learn Talmud. The KGB themselves said this when they were interrogating me at the time of the trips to Uman during the Soviet regime. They told me, because you learn Talmud, you put us in our place, you wrap us around [your finger].
You need to know, the entire task of a person is that through learning Gemara, he will be the smartest person in the world – but he needs the Tzaddik. A person without the Tzaddik is a complete gentile.
Because how is it possible to understand what is brought in the Gemara {Kiddushin 29b], that specifically in the yeshiva of Abaye the serpent with seven heads entered; that specifically there, the serpent with seven heads would come? In the middle of the day, the serpent with seven heads came in and everyone fled. So what do we do now?
So you need to learn tractate Kiddushin until Shavuot – this is forty days. Every day, two daf – altogether 80 daf. Learn about the serpent with seven heads.
They told Abaye that Rav Acha bar Yaakov arrived. Abaye said, make sure not to give Rav Acha a place to sleep, so that he will sleep on the benches in the yeshiva. Then when the serpent with seven heads will come – only Rav Acha bar Yaakov came eliminate it, because he was the true Tzaddik who could eliminate the serpent with seven heads.
In every generation, there is a serpent with seven heads which wages war on the Tzaddik. The Nazis were a serpent with millions of heads – eighty million heads, all of them there were heads of serpents.
So like this, the unfortunate Rav Acha came – exhausted, walked three days on foot, didn’t eat, didn’t drink. He needs to sleep in some place. From sheer heartbreak, he fell asleep at the table, on the bench. Suddenly, at Chatzot [halachic midnight] he sees a serpent with seven heads. What should we do? Where should we flee?
Rav Acha bowed seven times, and with every bow, one head of the serpent fell off. A person comes to the world in order to subdue the serpent with seven heads.
Because the serpent with seven heads is the woman whose husband cut her into twelve pieces in the incident of the concubine of Givah (Shoftim 19-21), and now she came back in reincarnation Then 400,000 men came from all of Yehuda, all the Jewish people, in order to annihilate Givah. Because of one story, they annihilated an entire tribe.
Therefore, when Binyamin was born, Rachel said to call him “Ben Oni (Son of My Affliction).” Rachel saw with Divine inspiration that all the tribe of Binyamin would be annihilated, but 600 men would remain of the children of Binyamin.
Then, there wasn’t Shuvu Banim. There weren’t any youth organizations and no one to take care of the youth. So all the young men of the tribe of Binyamin went out to degeneracy in a second. The evil inclination is stronger than everything. The evil inclination ruled over them, so they were liable to death.
The people of Giva committed the most awful sin in the world, so all the tribe was annihilated. The whole tribe was reincarnated in the students of Abaye. Abaye himself was a reincarnation of the unfortunate husband who cut his wife up into twelve pieces.
The Gemara says in Sota [20] that without the Tzaddik, all one’s learning isn’t worst anything, even if a person knows the entire Torah backwards and forwards. Like before the Shoah, they knew the Torah forwards and backwards, but they didn’t know who was the Tzaddik.
Rav Acha bar Yaakov said that a person who learns without the Tzaddik is called a sorcerer. He said, if you don’t know who the Tzaddik is, you cannot subdue the serpent with seven heads, because in every generation there is a serpent with seven heads. Our entire work is to subdue it.
