ROSH HASHANA: EVERYTHING DEPENDS ON YOU
Rav Eliezer Berland gave over the following during a shiur he gave in Elul 2014:
“Rebbe Nachman said that everything depends on you — you who are traveling to be by the true Tzaddik. You have the power to return, you have the power to bring every Jew back. The secular people aren’t guilty of anything. We’re the guilty ones, us, that there are still secular people in our country. If we were just a little more spiritually aroused, if we had more love for our fellow Jew, then everyone would have already seen God’s light. Everyone!!!
“Anyone who does teshuvah for real can lift up the whole generation, all of this generation and all of the other generations, too, including the generation of Moshiach, and the generation of the Revival of the Dead. Even then, until the time when Rabbenu gets up and leaves his tomb alive and well, we will still be obligated to travel to his holy grave, and even Moshiach will travel to Rebbe Nachman’s holy grave, because only he can raise up all of the generations.”
WITHOUT THE RAV, NOTHING WOULD BE LEFT OF BRESLOV
Rav Shalom Arush once commented that it was amazing to him that there were still many people out there who had no idea that the whole Uman phenomenon had only come about in the merit of Rav Berland. “Without Rav Berland, there wouldn’t have been anything left of Breslov,” said Rav Arush. “I know that he really did everything. I know very well what he did.”
Rav Levi Yitzchak Bender once said that Rebbe Nachman would repay all the kindness that Rav Berland had done for him, because he was constantly thinking up ways to get even more Jews to go to Uman with him.
But when Rav Berland was asked if he was happy about all the thousands of people who had started flocking to Rebbe Nachman’s grave since the fall of the Iron Curtain (with an estimated 60,000 people expected in Uman for 5778), he replied, “I’m happy. But I was hoping that many more people would go.”
The Rav, shlita, was familiar with the teaching from Likutei Moharan that each person who made the trip to Rebbe Nachman’s grave was effectively completing the global soul of the Tzaddik. Each person there was a spiritual “spark” of the Tzaddik’s soul. For that reason, the Breslov elders passed down to their students that at the annual gathering in Uman on Rosh Hashanah, if you would only look for it, you could mamash see the holy part of a person’s soul — the “Tzaddik” part of their soul — glistening brightly.
NO ONE SHOULD BE MISSING!
Rebbe Nachman himself famously taught that no one should be missing from the annual gathering, from the biggest Jew right down to the smallest. Everyone has a part to play in the spiritual rectification of the world; everyone has a spark of the Tzaddik’s soul to contribute to the effort, in some way. So it was that Rav Berland has always sacrificed so much to get as many people as possible to Uman for Rosh Hashanah.
Even in his recent years of exile, he continued to be a staunch advocate for his students, and for as many of Am Yisrael as possible, to be at the grave of Rebbe Nachman in Uman on Rosh Hashanah. Once, while he was in Uman, he explained to his students that being in Uman for Rosh Hashanah was like being given a visa to enjoy a year of good health, life and open miracles, and for being written in the book of tzaddikim, all in the merit of Rebbe Nachman.
Shuvu Banim International wishes all of our readers, and all of Klal Yisrael a Gmar Chatima Tova, and that we should all be sealed in the book of life this Rosh Hashana, 5778.
