More recent comments from Rav Berland.

(These are pretty charif, be warned. I’ll discuss a bit more under the comments themselves.)

Translated comments from Shivivei Or 366

Excerpts from a shiur given by Rav Berland on motzash, June 29th, 2024, Parshat Shelach.

[The Rav has been talking about how Yonah the Prophet is swallowed by a huge fish, and that fish in turn is meant to be the ‘lunch’ for the Leviathan, but the Prophet Yonah stands in the mouth of his fish and tells the Leviathan not to eat him. Instead, the Prophet Yonah promises the Leviathan will be eaten at the time of the geula, by the True Tzaddikim, at the ‘Feast of the Leviathan’.]

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So, who is going to make the bracha [at the seuda for the Leviathan]?

Who is going to bless for us? Avraham Avinu can’t make the blessing, because Yishmael came out of him. Yitzhak can’t make the blessing, because Esav came out of him. So who is left?

Yaakov remains. But Yaakov says I married two sisters.

But, David also married two sisters[1] – but everything happens according to protectzia. You have protectzia, that you have such a holy father. So Yaakov, who married two sisters, he can’t make the blessing.

But David has protectzia, they arranged some protectzia for him, he got special permission.

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The Gemara asks about this, on page 19b in Tractate Sanhedrin[2]: How did he marry two sisters?! Who gave permission?

Did you give the permission, Rav Goren?….

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Rav Goren gave permission for the…

There were two officers [in the IDF] who were the children of an adulterous relationship.

[There was a woman who married a convert, but then left him without obtaining a get. She was then in a relationship with another man, and two children were born from him, a son and a daughter. According to the halachah, because the woman didn’t get divorced with a get from her first husband, these children are mamzerim.]

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So, what did the Rav Goren do?

He nullified the conversion of her [first] husband, because she didn’t recieve a get from the first husband. They [i.e. Her two bastard children]  were born, Baruch Hashem, in a ‘kosher’ fashion,[3] but without a get.

Without a get.

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Everything that is now happening in….

[The Gaza envelope, from the date of the Simchat Torah massacre]

They took children and put them in ovens – this was those who were born without mikvah[4].

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For two days, the army didn’t show up.

So, this is the Defense] Minister Yoav Gallant and Herzi HaLevi – they didn’t let the army to come.

Came 400,000 [reservists, to fight] within an hour. They said 200,000 came, 400,000 came.

[The army told them]: There are no guns! Make a list!

Good, it takes a whole day to make a list [of who wants a gun, then] there is no key for the armoury. No [keys], like that. They find the key – and the armouries were empty.

After two days passed, the army came.

They’d already burnt all the children, all the babies. They took everyone hostage.

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They kidnapped all the women who were going along b’pritzut (dressed / behaving immodestly).

A woman who was going along b’tznius (dressed modestly / behaving modestly ) – they said: “You are staying here, we aren’t going to touch you.”

They went past a lot of girls who were there in force, with their families. They said if you are b’tzniut – we aren’t touching you! We won’t take you. We won’t fire on you.”

And so like this, they shot at point-blank range all the women who weren’t going b’tzniut, who weren’t dressed appropriately.

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And every day, they are killing another woman there [of the hostages in Gaza].

Now there are 120 [hostages], and 47 have died, al kiddush Hashem (to sanctify God’s Name), in Gan Eden.

There are 73 left. Each day, a different woman, a different soldier, they abuse her until she dies.

But they didn’t take the banot tzniot, a girl who was dressed appropriately.

They said, you are going to stay here.

==

A few came [to the Nova party] from Shuvu Banim, but they didn’t drink champagne.

There was here Natan, the son of Nachman Dan. He came, [but] he didn’t drink champagne, so he remained clear-minded.

All those [who were drunk / high] thought that it was their friends, they didn’t understand that it was terrorists.

So he was saved, he ran away until Tze’elim. He travelled some 60 km, and they chased after him the whole way, with the driver. The driver was Amer [his name?], he didn’t drink anything, the driver drank just one bottle.

==

FOOTNOTES:

[1] King Shaul promised that whoever killed Goliath would marry his daughter Merav. David fulfilled the condition, technically,perhaps, becoming ‘betrothed’ to Merav, but Shaul then changed his mind. Later on, David married Shaul’s daughter Michal. See the next footnote.

[2] That passage states:

“The following Baraisa discusses David’s marriages to Meirav and Michal. R Yose’s disciples asked him: How could David have married two sisters while they were both alive? [R Yose] answered them: David married Michal after the death of Meirav.

The Baraisa cites a different answer to this question:

R Yehoshua ben Korchah says: [David’s] marriage to Meirav was based on a mistaken assumption, and was therefore invalid. As it is stated: Give me my wife, Michal, whom I married with one hundred foreskins of Phillistines. Since David was never legally married to Meirav, he was permitted to marry her sister, Michal.”

[3] The Rav appears to be speaking sarcastically.

[4] I.e. Their parents weren’t keeping the laws of taharat hamishpacha. It’s a fact that the religious yishuvim in the Gaza envelope were almost totally spared from the atrocities that occured on Simchat Torah.

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One of my daughters read these comments in Shivivei Or on Shabbat, and got really, really upset by them.

She was saying that ‘no-one knows why it happened’, and stuff like that – stuff that I hear from a lot of believing people, who have been brainwashed by our [mis]education system to believe that there is no such thing as ‘reward and punishment’.

It’s part of the narc paradigm, that basically says ‘I’m a good person, so nothing bad should ever happen to me.’

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But as we’re starting to unpack here on the blog more, there is no such thing as ‘good people’ and ‘bad people’, spiritually (at least, not until we’re dead and the total reckoning of our deeds can be made by shemayim.)

What there is, are ‘good deeds’ and ‘bad deeds’ – and a person will be amply rewarded for every single good deed.

And conversely, if they don’t make the requisite teshuva for their bad deeds, those bad deeds create harsh dinim (judgements) on a person, that can lead to difficulties and suffering, in order to ‘atone’ for the bad deed.

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It’s a sign of just how messed-up our world is, spiritually, that this idea is even controversial.

We aren’t hefker.

We can’t just do whatever the heck we want, and God doesn’t notice, God doesn’t care, chas v’halilah.

This is the main ‘idea’ of the satanic masons – that if there is a Creator, He doesn’t care what you do down here, because He’s not actively involved in the world any more.

God forbid, a billion, trillion times over.

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This idea is the exact opposite of living life with emuna, where we know every tiny little thing that happens to us is specifically tailored for us, by Hashem, and part of the conversation He is trying to have with us all the time.

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Where my daughter is right, is that you need to be on the level of the Rav, to be a true Tzaddik with real ruach hakodesh, to be able to state so clearly what ‘sins’ are leading to what dinim, specifically.

Hitbodedut gives us a little bit of ruach hakodesh specifically for ourselves, and possibly, for the people who are very close to us.

I have lost count of the number of times I was suffering with some ‘din’ and I took it into hitbodedut and suddenly got a huge wodge of insight into what it was connected to, and what I needed to work on, acknowledge and try to change, in myself,  in my own life.

Nothing happens ‘for nothing’.

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But only a real Tzaddik with real ruach hakodesh can state so clearly for other people, what is causing the dinim to manifest for them.

Rav Berland is in the position to do that.

But if you don’t believe he’s a ‘real Tzaddik’….. things can get kinda tricky.

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The satanist-masons have been pushing the idea for centuries that God doesn’t care what we do, and everything is hefker.

Even in the so-called frum world, this idea has taken root so strongly – just we try to get a heter, or a ‘rabbinic opinion’ to make it possible to turn black into white.

But God does care.

About every little thing.

And every bad deed we do that isn’t rectified with teshuva in some way pulls down harsh judgements upon our heads.

It’s a harsh reality to grasp, for many of us.

But it’s reality.

And the basis of the ‘reward and punishment’ that underpins free choice, and the whole reason Hashem made the world in the first place.

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After my daughter’s reaction, I was really thinking hard, about whether to translate and publish these comments from the Rav.

But I realised there is no point ‘candy-coating’ reality, and that the Rav is only saying these things to try to bust through our national apathy, and our spiritual stupor, to encourage us to start taking the whole idea of ‘reward and punishment’ seriously again.

To take God seriously again.

The war isn’t over yet, by any means, and spiritually, we are coming down to the wire here.

So, his comments are up.

And may Hashem help us to take them to heart in a positive way, and to understand that just as we get ‘punished’ for the bad deeds, we also get rewarded 500 times as much for our good deeds.

There is still everything to play for.