The Daily Chizzuk of our Rebbe Rav Eliezer Berland shlit”a — Why the parents did not want the shidduch of Rav Shmuel Shapira?
Friday, 1 Elul 5783 — What happened to Rav Berland when he began to learn the books of Rebbe Nachman?
These are his holy words:
It is forbidden for a person to look at beauty — “Grace is false, beauty is vain” (Mishlei 31:30); the beauty comes after the wedding.
After the wedding, the bride becomes like the sun in the afternoon, like the story of Rav Shmuel Shapira. When Rabbi Shmuel Shapira was Litvish, his parents did not consent to the match with Freida, because she had a red birthmark on her face. An entire side of her face was full of red like a beet. The parents [of Rav Shapira] said: Now that you have become a Breslover, we don’t care.
Rabbi Shmuel Shapira did not look. He said: Now I don’t care about anything; even if my parents are against me, it makes not difference. I want this match.
When they made the engagement, the following morning the birthmark disappeared. The whole birthmark disappeared. They saw a real miracle.
Frieda read Shivchei HaRan at the age of 13, and then she said, “I want a groom like what’s written in Shivchei HaRan.” And so she received: One like Rabbeinu mamash. From this match descended the whole Shapira family and all the Franks.
The Rabbanit [Berland] already at the age of 16 finished all of Likutey Moharan. The Rabbanit finished there all the books. There were all types of books there: Meshivat Nefesh, Shivchei HaRan. All of this she already finished.
She asked me at the beginning of the marriage, before Shevi’i shel Pesach, when we returned from Haifa on the train, “Do you read Likutey Moharan a little?” She began to test me if I know, and I didn’t know what she was talking about [the Rav was previously Litvish]. I had no choice; I began to learn.
Then on Shevi’i shel Pesach, I opened up Sipurei Ma’asiot — I felt like a shock of electricity. Suddenly a person in one hour knows all the wisdoms, and he creates the day. We learn that through charity, we create the day, how we create the day anew, and we need to create the day with all the wisdoms.
The Tzaddik creates the day with all the wisdoms in the world. He can in one hour learn what people learn in 2,000 years. And therefore, “Moshe was very humble, more than any man” (Bamidbar 12:3). Moshe said: Everything that I learned in eighty years, I can learn in one hour. What a person learned in seventy years is learned in one hour.
Today, they learn in five minutes everything that was learned in the course of all 6,000 years almost. All the versions of Newton and of Aristotle — in five minutes, you learned everything.
In my youth, during the summer break, I finished all the learning material. Therefore, at the time of learning, there already wasn’t anything for me to do. I said, now we will learn Gemara under the table, until the teacher caught me and said: Go to the yeshiva, learn Gemara, but now you are in school.
I said: What, you’re limiting for me the Gemara? I walked to the synagogue and learned there for a week. I didn’t go to the school at all. The teacher told me that I must come, and then we stayed already until the end of the year, until 17 Tammuz. On 17 Tammuz, we already moved to Kfar Hasidim.
