The Daily Chizzuk by our Rebbe, Rav Eliezer Berland shlit”a – “We don’t have any institutes. We learn Torah. Come and see that people don’t go out to the field, and everything grows”
“May G-d make you like Ephraim and like Menashe” (Bereishit 48:20)
“He will tie his donkey to the vine” (ibid. 49:11)
Thursday, 3 Shevat, 5783
These are his holy words:
We say, “[May G-d make you] like Ephraim and like Menashe.” Why don’t we say “like Zevulun and Yissachar”?
Zevulun gave everything to Yissachar, whatever he had – money, billions. He traveled with ships, fruit. Every fruit was the size of a building. One peach was the size of a house. A cluster of grapes would take up an entire ship. They would bring the fruit [and] everyone would go crazy.
The whole world would say to Israel, tell us which institute you have? Which institute do you have? The Weizmann Institute? Which institute do you have?
We don’t have any institutes. We learn Torah. Come and see – people don’t go out to the field and everything grows! Reish Lakish went to pick [grape] clusters. He was a bit of a farmer. He had vineyards there, and he went to harvest them. He had one cluster the size of a seah [a measure of around either 8 or 14 liters]. Every cluster was 14 kilograms. The next day he went to harvest grape clusters. Already the clusters had shrunk a bit – it became two clusters for a seah – every cluster 7 kilograms. After this, he went to the garden a third time. Then it already reached three clusters for a seah.
His Rabbi – Rabbi Chiyyah — asked him: “Why are you absent from the yeshiva and haven’t come for three days?”
Reish Lakish answered him: “I harvested grape clusters.”
Rav Chiyyah: “How many do you harvest? How many? What weight?”
Reish Lakish: “The first time everything was 14.5 kg. On the second day, it was 7 kg. On the third day, it was already a weight of 5 kg.”
Rabbi Chiyyah: “If you hadn’t gone to the field, it would have grown more. Let the cluster grow. A person fears – it grew, it will already become rotten. No! This only grows! This will grow for you … times over!
The Gemara says that in the future, they’ll bring one grape in a ship. A person will put in a tap and will have wine for a hundred years. The wine will be cooked inside the grape. “He will tie his donkey to the vine” – there will be on a donkey one grape cluster.
