The Daily Chizzuk of our Rebbe Rav Eliezer Berland shlit”a — “All illnesses come from blemishing the covenant”
“The Gemara is the suggested advice against the evil inclination.”
These are his holy words:
All illnesses that a person has are from blemishing the covenant, that one blemishes at the age of 13. At the age of 13, one does not understand the severity of the matter — he didn’t have intellect.
Until the age of 16, there’s no intellect at all — neither for a boy or a girl. Either a girl becomes corrupted at the age of 16 or a boy becomes corrupted, because they don’t have awareness, so they behave only according to their senses, only according to the evil inclination.
A person is born from the evil inclination — “Behold, in iniquity I was fashioned, and in sin did my mother conceive me” (Tehilim 51:7). A person is born with the greatest desire.
Rabbi Natan says that the whole task is to nullify this desire. A person cannot confess. He cannot confess, because he cannot bring the speech out.
It is very hard for you to confess, because you do not have the joy of a mitzvah — a wedding. So go to a wedding! Go to every wedding! Go to a wedding of a mitzvah and get into dancing, and amidst the dancing search for and feel where the joy does not enter — if this is in the legs, or in the heart, or in the brain.
A person needs to enter into the entire structure of joy, so that the heart will rejoice, and the brain will rejoice — because the secret is joy; the root of every mitzvah is joy.
The mitzvah isn’t completed without joy. One needs to learn with a melody. There is a melody to the Gemara. If it’s without a melody, then there is no flavor in one’s learning.
You need to know that a person needs to learn eight hours of Gemara — this is before everything. They ask, “What is Breslov?” What is the suggested advice against the evil inclination? You need to know that the first thing is learning Gemara! That even if this is dry and you don’t understand: a bull gores a cow — what does this have to do with the evil inclination? Still, the Gemara is the advice against the evil inclination!
