Month: March 2017 – כ״ד באדר תשע״ז

The Soul-savers

By: Rabbi Shalom Arush Update date: 3/18/2017, 21:13

Translated by Rabbi Lazer Brody

With Hashem’s help, we’re going to learn about the mitzvah that carries the greatest rewards, beyond anyone’s ability to imagine.

The Zohar in Parshat Truma says that a person who deserves to be called praiseworthy is one who does everything in his power to bring other people close to Hashem.

We must understand how important the above point is, for as soon as you bring someone closer to Hashem, you defeat the Sitra Achra, the Dark Side of evil. Not only that, but it is considered as if you have actually created that person. There is no greater praise of Hashem than bringing people close to Hashem, for you rescue that person’s soul from the clasp of the Sitra Achra and return it to the realm of holiness.

The Zohar then says something amazing: when you teach a person emuna, you rescue all of that person’s Torah and mitzvoth from the clasps of the Sitra Achra and return them to holiness. This is eye-opening; you’d think that only evil people would be caught up in the holds of the Sitra Achra. Not true! The Dark Side lays in ambush to trip up Torah learners and mitzvah-observant people, because it feeds of the holiness of their Torah and mitzvoth. He who teaches someone emuna and brings that person truly close to Hashem, returns the captured sparks of holiness from the clutches of evil to the bosom of holiness in the upper worlds.

Anyone who helps an errant individual, says the Zohar, ascends three times a greater ascent than he or she could have by performing any other mitzvah. Why? By elevating one person, he or she elevates the whole world, both the spiritual realm and the physical realm. What’s more, they bring untold joy to the Creator. These laudable people invoke sustenance for the entire world and gain entrance through twelve portals of Gan Eden. These are only a small portion of the praises that the Zohar enumerates for bringing people closer to Hashem.

More than anything, the person who tries his hardest to bring others close to Hashem creates a major sanctification of Hashem’s Name in the world and brings Hashem the greatest imaginable gratification.

You can’t imagine the reward of spreading emuna. Let me give a striking example:

A family in Los Angeles was about to be divorced after having been separated for over a year. A host of therapists and well-wishing friends couldn’t bridge the tremendous gap that had developed over the years between the husband and the wife. At the last minute before their imminent divorce, a friend of the husband gave him a copy of the Garden of Peace. It saved the day. The husband read the book intensely from cover-to-cover and realized how awfully he made every possible mistake. At the advice of his friend who gave him the book, the husband reached out to Rabbi Lazer Brody and sought additional coaching. Meanwhile, his conduct improved so much that his wife took him back. They made a new beginning and their marriage was not only saved, it became wonderful.

In gratitude for what the emuna books and CDs did for him, the husband has since sponsored four major emuna events on the West Coast and has brought hundreds – maybe thousands – of people closer to Hashem. Not only did he save his own children from the terrible fate of a broken home, he has since saved other couples from the tragedy of divorce.

Let me ask you one question – with the above Zohar in mind, what is the reward of the young man – a modest and unassuming high-school teacher –  who gave the husband that copy of the Garden of Peace, his first emuna book? In the Heavens, all the dividends of all the people whom the husband has since brought closer to Hashem will also be credited to the high-school teacher. The reward that awaits him is mind-boggling!

Continue reading…

From Breslev.co.il, here.

Dedicated Followers of Fashion

“And he (Aaron) will place the incense on the fire in front of G-d”.(16:13)

A famous writer once quipped, “Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.”

The width of trouser bottoms and their distance from the wearer’s navel fluctuates on a yearly basis, and the shape of the human foot seems to metamorphose inexorably. Fashion, however, doesn’t just begin and end with clothes.

“And he (Aaron) will place the incense on the fire in front of G-d”.

In the first part of the service of Yom Kippur in the Beit Hamikdash, the kohen gadol would burn incense in the Holy-of-Holies. The Tzadukim (Sadducees), who denied the authority of the Oral Torah, claimed that the incense first should be placed on the fire in a fire-pan outside the Holy-of-Holies and only then the kohen gadol should carry it inside. The Talmud (Yoma 53) cites the above Torah verse as a proof to the contrary — that the incense should only be placed on the fire “in front of G-d”.

In every generation, the Jewish People has its ‘Tzadukim’ — those dedicated followers of fashion who want to copy what they have seen ‘outside’, to introduce ‘improvements’ ‘adjustments’ and ‘modernizations’ into our holy faith.

The Torah sages of each generation fight a constant and bitter battle against these ‘improvements’. Which is not to say that the Torah is stuck in a bygone age. On the contrary, the Torah speaks to each generation on every aspect of life, sometimes involving itself in the finest minutiae of science to express the Halachic view of all that pertains to the modern world.

That view, however, is always extrapolated from the inward essence of the Torah outward, not grafted on from the outside. The Torah addresses the modern world not in terms of compromise or appeasement, not through pandering to the ideology of the hour, rather it views the world through intrinsic principles enshrined in immutable criteria.

• Sources: Based on Hadrash V’Ha’Iyun

From Ohr Net, here.