Each letter of Torah and prayer can bring a Jew back
Continuing the awesome shiur from the Rav.
You can read the first part HERE.
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Excerpt of a shiur given over on Friday night, at the Bar Mitzvah of Rav Berland’s great-grandson, Mordechai Meir ben R’ Shmuel Eizik Tzuker. January 10, 2025.
Each day, a person can recite 600,000 letters.
Each minute, 200 words, each word is on average 4 letters, so in an hour, 48,000 [letters], in 12 hours 576,000. There is missing 24,000 [letters, if a person studies Torah for 12 hours, to reach 600,000]. So, how do we make this up? We add another half an hour of learning, so this is exactly 600,000 letters.
With each letter, it’s possible to bring a Jew back in teshuva.
Us, by way of the learning lishma, (for its own sake), we bring people back in teshuva.
And it’s possible to take everything into account, also the learning, and the prayers – everything together, also the hitbodedut, that we talk [to God in our own words], this is also considered [to be included in the 600,000 letters]. And also, what a person thinks in their thoughts, this can also be added to this.
A person does hitbodedut for two hours, and the first hour doesn’t say a word, only after an hour there are words. These words [i.e. the thoughts that are in a person’s head when he’s doing hitbodedut, but that he can’t yet speak out] are also included.
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Someone asked if it’s possible to do hitbodedut during the prayers [with the Rav at ma’ariv at the time when there is a long period of] niggunim, when the Rav is singing during the prayers.
The Rav said yes.
We sing hoshiya et amcha for a quarter of an hour. Each person can do hitbodedut [during this time] and consider this afterwards as part of the hour [daily hour of hitbodedut as prescribed by Rebbe Nachman].
But, it’s preferable to sing, because this is the highest thing, and then afterwards there is time to do hitbodedut.
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See, now it’s the yarhtzeit of Rav Natan.
We came out from the house [to go to the celebration for the hiloula] at 11pm, and by 1am we were already finished. There was still time to go and do hitbodedut, it’s possible to go to Sanhedria to do hitbodedut for two hours. It’s possible to go to Shmuel HaNavi, 40 minutes to go, and 40 minutes walk to get back.
It’s the most beautiful place there, there’s a view there. You can see from there until Latrun, until the sea. It’s the highest place in Jerusalem, the most beautiful place. It’s called ‘Ramat Shmuel’. They used to live in Rama. “The One Who answered Shmuel in Mitzpeh”[1] – there is the mitzpeh (also means ‘lookout’).
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Someone asked if they buried him [i.e. Shmuel HaNavi] in his home.
No. The crusaders, they wrote in their book that they moved him afterwards to there [to where he’s buried today], and they built the structure that is over his grave.
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[The Rav moves on to a discussion of how Hitler killed himself in his bunker in Berlin and then immediately World War 2 ended. Someone then asked him: Did the war really stop immediately? The Rav continues:]
Yes. The second that he [Hitler] died, the war stopped.
On the 16th of Iyar 5705, Hitler killed himself, and at that same moment the war was stopped. The moment there wasn’t a leader, the war was ended. And if he hadn’t have killed himself, then he would have merited to get the Nobel Prize for Peace – because that’s how it goes.
Whoever murders millions of people, so he merits to get the Nobel Peace Prize, because at the end of the day, he wanted to make peace. The Jews bothered him, a little, so he killed a few Jews.
That’s how it goes in the world.
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So, the Nazis surrendered on L’ag B’omer, and the Japanese kept fighting.
Because they had Togo [the head of the Japanese army], who wanted to continue the war. They were part of the coalition with the Germans, because it was an obligation to continue the first ‘mitzvah’ of fighting against the Jews, to fulfill it.
They publicised a picture – a giant, giant poster, of how a Jew ate a Japanese baby. The Japanese didn’t understand what a ‘Jew’ really was, until they explained to them about the yeshiva students who were stuck there, who escaped from Europe to Shanghai.[2]
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Not a lot of time passed until they already dropped the bomb on them.
They dropped an atomic bomb on them. The first bomb they dropped on the 27th of Av, and the second three days later, on the 30th of Av, 5705.
The first was on the 6th of August, and the second on the 9th of August.
In the month of Av there are 30 days, so the first was on the 27th, and three days later, on the 30th of Av, they dropped the second. And they were prepared to drop a third bomb on them, if they didn’t surrender.
But then, they surrendered. Why dafka in the month of Av? Perhaps, because this is the mazal (astrological sign) of Aryeh (Leo).
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So, they dropped a nuke on them, and then Togo said that he was going to go and take counsel with the sun.
Because they used to say that the whole of the Imperial Family [in Japan] were born from the sun. So he went to take counsel with the sun, and then he said that this was not a nuclear bomb!! There is no such thing as a nuke! It can’t be, that the Americans have a nuke and the Japanese don’t have such a thing!
The Japanese are cleverer than the Americans, just the Americans had the Jews, who invented and built the nuke. So Togo said it’s stam, just some rotten tomato that they dropped. It’s nothing!
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Translated from Shivivei Or 392
TBC
FOOTNOTES:
[1] This can be found in the Selichot service.
[2] This is the famous story of the Mir Yeshiva.
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