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The Yanuka’s own words in this shiur, translated into English by Lehallel · 5,402 words · 28:44. Press a time to hear it said.
0:05 that Moshe Rabbeinu attained at the time of his passing which is the greatest level that a person at the time of passing reaches a level... it is impossible at all to understand what can be attained And the awesome tzaddikim, before they passed from the world it was for them a moment and an awesome longing, that they merited the purpose that they say: now I accomplish all the actions now I continue the path in the world They were always in action They had no connection to this world, they did not touch it As we explained, the 'mishcha dechivya', the serpent's skin, is filth over the whole body and 'the serpent - dust is its bread', it touches the dust but the tzaddikim did not touch the dust, they were not in the world at all The Tenth of Teves is the start of the siege on the holy
0:52 on Jerusalem, the holy city. Jerusalem is the knowledge of the whole world All the knowledge in the world and all the beauty in the world all of it is drawn from Jerusalem And at first, when the Holy One, blessed be He, created the world we know that it was - everything was whole, everything was rectified the Holy One, blessed be He, was joyful The greatest joy of Hashem, blessed be He was on the day the Beis HaMikdash, the Holy Temple, was built and the greatest joy was over the Temple that was built Why the Temple? 'For Hashem is a G-d of knowledge' - a G-d of knowledge for the Temple is knowledge, 'I will carry my knowledge from afar' The Temple is knowledge, to know Hashem In the Temple everyone can know Hashem, blessed be He
1:48 And now, because of our many sins, our Temple and our glory were destroyed and the main point of the fast is to remind us of the destruction of Jerusalem This is the severity of the fast of Tisha B'Av even though the birth of Mashiach is on it still, the burning of the Temple stands on it and over this we fast and afflict ourselves But what is the reason for the fast? What is the reason for fasting?
2:17 The fast of Yom Kippur is 'and you shall afflict your souls' 'for on this day He will atone for you to purify you from all your sins' That is to say that this day, the fast is to afflict the soul and to do teshuvah And on Tisha B'Av the fast is over the destruction of the Temple We fast so that we remember the destruction, what was destroyed for us 'Our Temple and our glory where our fathers praised You, has been burned by fire and all our treasures have become ruins' So there is a difference between Yom Kippur and Tisha B'Av On Yom Kippur we fast over the heart we do teshuvah and strike the heart And in the fasts of the destruction, when we fast over the destruction of the Temple so this is a fast that is different from the Fast of Esther
3:16 The Tenth of Teves is not the fast of Gedaliah ben Achikam nor is it the fast of the Fast of Esther rather it is the fast in memory of the destruction of our Temple and our glory where our fathers praised You; it is a pain like no other Because only the more knowledge a person has the more he can understand how great the loss is Just as a baby will not understand what the destroyed Temple is and the more a person grows and is told, the more he learns he will understand what the destruction of our Temple and our glory is And when the siege on Jerusalem began Nevuchadnetzar, that he could lay a hand on the Temple it is because he was one of the grandchildren of King Shlomo he came from the seed of the Queen of Sheba, from the marriage with King Shlomo
4:09 and from this came the hand - this is what the Maharal explains that from here came his power to rule, to lay a hand on the House of Hashem which is 'Your destroyers and those who lay you waste shall come out of you' that the one who could in fact bring about the redemption and the rectification for the end of all the generations which is what he accomplished - King David, and King Shlomo, and what they accomplished But the character traits and the baseless hatred, and all that caused it caused the destruction of the Temple, and the burning of the Temple until our Temple was destroyed and we were left without a House and so we go on in exile from bad to worse So if so, as we explained before that the fast of Yom Kippur is over the heart
Read the whole shiur in English (34 more parts)
5:08 that we do teshuvah, strike the heart and do teshuvah and confess before Hashem, blessed be He whereas on Tisha B'Av the teshuvah is over the knowledge, over the intellect over the wisdom that we lost The Temple is the source of all wisdom, all the intellect there is All the wisdom in the world flows from Jerusalem, from the Temple 'The children of Jerusalem are wiser' 'The Jerusalem Talmud makes one wiser' The Jerusalem Talmud has almost no questions and difficulties as there are in the Babylonian Talmud and the holiness of the Jerusalem Talmud is higher than the holiness of the Babylonian The Jerusalem Talmud is the Talmud of the Land of Israel The Land of Israel - all its influence is gathered within Jerusalem and the whole world is included in the Land of Israel and the whole Land of Israel is included in Jerusalem
6:04 and the place where Adam, the first man, was created was in Jerusalem and the whole beginning was in Jerusalem, and everything ended in Jerusalem and everything will be in Jerusalem in the future, and all go up to Jerusalem The Temple is destined to be built in Jerusalem Everything begins and ends in Jerusalem; it is the head, the middle and the end it is the beginning and the end of the whole world, everything And when we actually fast, we need to understand with our knowledge what we are fasting over, what we lost how we came to a state where our Temple was destroyed and not only was it destroyed, but it is also not built and with what we do, it is still not built We know that each one, every person the redemption depends on each one
6:54 on each one of the Jewish people the redemption depends The greater a tzaddik is in stature the more he can reveal the mercy of Hashem, blessed be He upon the world, and upon creation and upon all the creatures That is why this was the first dispute, at the beginning, the one about Noach that some expound it to his discredit, and some expound it to his praise Because there is a dispute here: on one side there was a revelation of mercy and on the other side there was no revelation of mercy There was a revelation of mercy, because in any case there was a rescue and destroying them was the attribute of severity destroying the generation of the Flood, for going in their sins that all their sins and their transgressions had to be wiped out
7:41 'The end of all flesh has come before Me' It is impossible with such flawed and corrupted knowledge that they corrupted the way, corrupted the way of Hashem, blessed be He they took the way of the world and turned it upside down So the Holy One, blessed be He, said, 'The end of all flesh' It is impossible, they have no knowledge, they damaged the knowledge It is no longer possible to keep them alive on the face of the earth they must be wiped out, because they damaged the knowledge So the Holy One, blessed be He, wanted to wipe them out So Noach had to reveal the mercy of Hashem So he begins to reveal the mercy when he comes out of the ark and Hashem, blessed be He, did not like that he revealed the mercy
8:14 when he comes out of the ark He wanted him to reveal the mercy before he entered the ark So because he did not reveal the mercy before he entered the ark, some expound it to his discredit But in any case there was a revelation of mercy that he managed to reveal in that there was a rescue, and so afterward the world continued and so afterward for many generations So this is a revelation of the mercy of Hashem, blessed be He a revelation of mercy - of course not great mercy because we wanted mercy that would be without measure mercy that can cancel everything, every flood and every trouble And when Avraham Avinu began to reveal His mercy, blessed be He Avraham Avinu came, and he does not want there to be the attribute of judgment
8:58 so he begins to ask and to reveal more and more more, more, more... mercy of Hashem, blessed be He, and so it was Avraham Avinu reveals the mercy of Hashem, blessed be He but this mercy was still not without measure until Yitzchak Avinu came and asked for His mercy, blessed be He, and so on and so on He asked, and there was still the attribute of judgment, until Yaakov Avinu came and until Yosef HaTzaddik came, and so on and so on until Moshe Rabbeinu came - the Faithful Shepherd Moshe Rabbeinu revealed such mercy which is 'Erase me, please, from Your book that You have written' that he does not want to exist unless there will be a remembrance and a remnant for the Jewish people that, Heaven forbid, no trouble will happen to the Jewish people
9:41 He revealed mercy, that Hashem, blessed be He will leave the Jewish people in the world and forgive them all their sins and whatever He will exact, it will be with mercy what Hashem, blessed be He, will do over generations, from one generation to the next only that it should not be, Heaven forbid, in one moment that it should not be 'Let Me be, and I will destroy them', Heaven forbid because that would be in a brief moment Moshe Rabbeinu succeeded in bringing about the mercy of Hashem to put off the punishment as much as possible That is why every punishment that came into the world, that came over the generations this is also the answer for what our brothers went through over all the generations in all kinds of pogroms, in the decrees of the years Tach and Tat
10:25 and in the Holocaust, and in all the things that happened all of it is, as it were, because of the word of Hashem, blessed be He that He said, 'Let Me be, and I will destroy them' Hashem, blessed be He, said 'and I will destroy them' What Moshe Rabbeinu succeeded in was to put it off so that the punishment would come as late as possible so that the Jewish people could multiply and so he saved and redeemed the Jewish people and revealed His mercy, blessed be He Moshe Rabbeinu revealed the mercy of Hashem, blessed be He Moshe's mercy was hidden away in the Torah and when the Jewish people, Heaven forbid, go by the attribute of judgment then the attribute of judgment in the Torah comes out and strikes and when the Jewish people go by the attribute of mercy
11:03 then the Holy One, blessed be He, reveals His mercy in the world until this mercy passed to King David King David composed the book of Tehillim which is all supplications and requests and mercy how to reveal as much as possible the mercy of Hashem, blessed be He 'Your great mercy', and 'Your mercy', 'merciful and gracious', 'merciful' - only merciful all the time, expressions of mercy and supplication before Hashem, blessed be He to ask before Hashem for so much mercy endless mercy that King David asked for And the greater the tzaddik is in stature, as we explained the more he draws the mercy of Hashem into the world until this mercy rises and is revealed and the Holy One, blessed be He, has mercy on all the creatures And now you will ask: if so, then when will the redemption come?
11:55 So the answer is: when they will be able to reveal such very, very great mercy upon the world and upon the Jewish people that then the Holy One, blessed be He, will decide and desire to redeem us And there is in the book 'HaKarnayim' by Rabbi Aharon of Kardina on which the Maharash of Ostropoli gave a commentary and also in 'Dameshek Eliezer' there it is the secret of King David's soul; David had NaRaNCHaY 'nefesh, ruach, neshamah, chayah, yechidah' And the purpose of the... well, this is... never mind, these are not things that...
12:41 There are things so awesome that we do not know that we read in the books of tzaddikim, who pray we do not know how much they were not in this world they came in order to reveal the mercy of Hashem upon us And every generation in which we did not draw close to those tzaddikim of the generation and did not follow the Sages this is 'Your destroyers and those who lay you waste shall come out of you' that we are guilty in every generation This is the greatest teshuvah that needs to be done This is what I wanted to explain the fasting on Tisha B'Av versus Yom Kippur On Yom Kippur we confess over the heart, that we sinned and on Tisha B'Av we fast over the knowledge that we spoiled that we did not follow the Sages
13:29 that we did not follow the Sages, follow the path follow the correct knowledge in this world Had everyone listened to Moshe Rabbeinu then in fact there would not have been the sin of the Golden Calf If there had been a whole and absolute nullification to Moshe then creation would have come to its complete rectification And if in fact there had been a whole and absolute nullification to King David that they would have accepted the mercy he revealed all that they resented David so much and hated King David this prevented David from revealing the mercy of Hashem because it is impossible to reveal the mercy of Hashem except through those tzaddikim and Sages of the generation And because they did not receive from them, through this the mishcha dechivya went on growing - the opposite The opposite.
14:20 and this caused more and more of the serpent's filth And so when King David passed away, his throne and his kingship passed to his son King Shlomo, and King Shlomo was the wisest of all men Do you understand why he was wise? Why was wisdom so important? Because he inherited all the knowledge, all the wisdom from his father What does it mean, inherited from his father? He received wisdom from Hashem He did not receive wisdom - King David did not teach him wisdom he did not need David's wisdom rather, it means that he received the mercy from his father to reveal the mercy of Hashem And where is the mercy of Hashem revealed?
15:05 Where can the mercy of Hashem, blessed be He, be revealed? In the Temple; the Temple is the place of mercy And if the Temple is destroyed, what is revealed in the world? The attribute of judgment The attribute of judgment is revealed in the world And because King David succeeded in passing the mercy on to his son and his son built the Temple it follows that His mercy, blessed be He, was revealed in the whole world That is why this attribute of mercy was spread over all the creatures 'Lift up your heads, O gates, and be lifted up, everlasting doors and the King of glory will come. Who is this King of glory?'
15:41 Who is this King of all the glory? It is Hashem, blessed be He; He is the source of all glory All the greatness and the praise are for Him, they are before Him Everything belongs to Him And when King David revealed the mercy of Hashem, blessed be He, in the world it went on and spread through the whole world until the whole world could come to its rectification But of course, because of the troubles 'How many are my foes! Many rise up against me Many say of my soul, there is no salvation for him in G-d, Selah' And then he said, 'But You, Hashem, are a shield about me, my glory, and the One who lifts up my head' Because King David wanted to raise his knowledge to the highest This is the secret of knowledge, this is 'who lifts up my head'
16:22 It is to raise the head, to raise the kingship; it is David's crown for all his kingship was in order to raise the heads of all the creatures upward For the mishcha dechivya is 'on your belly you shall go' that he went down below, that he would be on the ground 'and the serpent - dust is its bread' But King David rectified the filth of the serpent So he said to Hashem 'But You, Hashem, are a shield about me, my glory, and the One who lifts up my head' Because all the glory and kingship I have is in order to raise the head, to bring all the creatures to be included in the right path and to raise their heads, so that they will not see the world because they did not grasp or touch this world at all
17:07 It emerges from the words of the Maharash of Ostropoli that the whole world would have come to its rectification had they listened to and accepted their view (of the Sages) completely everything would have come to its place in peace, everything rectified because the mercy of Hashem is revealed upon every single thing in the world which is the main revelation of His mercy, blessed be He And the moment the mercy of Hashem is revealed, there is hope for all there is hope for all the creatures And that is why we fast and keep the fast all the time on Tisha B'Av over the destruction of the Temple for the knowledge was destroyed from us, the knowledge has already departed from us and we have no knowledge, no understanding, no intellect and we do not know how to contemplate, how to see, how to think
17:53 and what to begin with, where to begin, what to do, how to do it and we do not know how to pray, and how to pray and how to give Hashem, blessed be He, satisfaction There is no more knowledge in us; we have gone so, so far down There is no knowledge in us, we do not have the understanding of how to reveal His mercy Our master the Arizal told Rabbi Chaim Vital that he came into the world in order to reveal to him the wisdom, the secret of the wisdom for the wisdom that our master the Arizal revealed this awesome light that Rabbeinu Chaim Vital revealed in his holy books, and this whole path, and all the kavanos and the holy Baal Shem Tov, and the holy students he had and the holy Gaon, the author of 'Imrei Kodesh'
18:47 who was the student of Hashem's anointed one the author of 'Shema Shlomo', Rabbi Shlomo of Karlin Rabbi Uri of Strelisk, the holy Seraph, Rabbi Mordechai of Lechovitch It is written that the love between them was a love without measure so that they did not even want to tell him at the time of his Rebbe's passing that Rabbi Shlomo, the holy Gaon of Karlin, had passed away They could not tell him about it because they said that if he heard about it, he would not survive in the world from grief and they wanted to know how to tell him; when they told him, he heard it and he was silent, and he said: He commanded me all my life to be only joyful how will I be sad now?
19:21 And he girded himself to be in joy for one moment and at once he burst into tears, in great grief, and tore his garments in grief Rabbeinu Chaim Vital delayed the burial of our master the Arizal for a long time He held on to him, he did not let them they had to push him, and this was something that he could not bear in his mind - how the Holy Ark had departed from him how our master the Arizal had departed to his eternal home How had he left the world? He could not understand it So he held on; they had to bring him in So he delayed, he could not he grabbed him and wept, and they argued between them and so it went on for quite some time, until it ended in mercy
20:09 The root of all the creatures is their desires When you see a person in a place, it is because he wanted to get there When a person wanted to be a sinner and to distance himself from Hashem he had a root of desire that brought him there A person who wants to do some bad thing his desire will draw him there A person who wants good, even if right now he is not doing good but he has a good desire for Hashem, blessed be He - it will bring him to everything And for this one must rejoice the most and thank Hashem that the Holy One, blessed be He, gives a person a good desire before Him, blessed be He that a person has a good desire to serve Him, to turn to Him to yearn for Him, to think about the purpose of this world
20:49 to yearn for Him, to think what the purpose of this whole world is - what is the purpose? Desire is the greatest thing a person has that he wants to become holier, and purer to be holy in the eyes, to guard his eyes from everything to want holiness for Hashem, to want holiness of the eyes to want the thought, to want to sanctify himself to want this - and this is the most exalted and highest thing When a person wants, he offers up all his fat and his blood This is also a very good practice, you should know it can bring a person salvations which I also recommend to whoever wants to sanctify his eyes to begin even, until he merits the level to begin learning ten minutes without lifting his head from the book
21:39 after that twenty minutes, after that half an hour after that an hour, slowly, slowly, as much as he can and he keeps to this time Let's say he learns every day in some book, a fixed book he learns in it ten, twenty minutes, not lifting his head from the book not lifting his head from the book, not getting up he puts his head down and does not lift it, ten minutes like this This is also a segulah for memory, it will also help So the more knowledge a person has, the more he can also want A person who truly wants the more a person wants and the more he longs this is where his stature is measured more And this is a great and tremendous novelty - what the power and stature of desire is
22:23 that a person who wants so much and yearns and is measured then the Holy One, blessed be He, judges him by his desire This is in fact the difference, that the Holy One, blessed be He there is a difference between the nations of the world and the Jewish people We - if we only intend to do a mitzvah the Holy One, blessed be He, credits us with this mitzvah whereas the nations of the world and the non-Jews, when they intend to do good the Holy One, blessed be He, does not credit them with it in the Yerushalmi, Pe'ah, the beginning of the first chapter How much a person must rejoice that he has any desire at all to want Him, blessed be He Do you know how many there are in this world who do not want Him, blessed be He, and do not think about Him, blessed be He
23:02 do not want Him - how much they do not want How much? they do not follow Him, do not think, to want Hashem, blessed be He to be in this world and to want Him, blessed be He that you have a heart, that you want to pray - you have a heart that you say, 'Draw me close to You, blessed be He, Master of the world' that you ask for Him, blessed be He - what a heart You want to learn, you long to learn one more page you long to get to learning the 'Shulchan Aruch' long to learn the Rambam, you feel the holiness you yearn for it - what a merit it is to want such a thing In all the six weekdays one can want; there is a craving of desire for bad things too, for good things too - and how is this explained?
23:44 A person might want to engage in idle talk - he can I am speaking from the side of 'kelipas nogah' idle talk, not words of lashon hara, which is already completely evil or a person wants to sleep too much, excess dozing and sleep this is called 'a scoundrel within the permission of the Torah' So anything a person does that is not a forbidden thing one cannot say it is forbidden - I take some thing and try to take its 'kelipas nogah' and to permit it to oneself without limit and from this he goes on and, Heaven forbid, causes a flaw this is 'kelipas nogah' - it is good and bad it is a grip on all the matters of this world the pleasures of this world, etc.
24:25 But one must also know that a person should have a settled mind that he should not cancel himself out; there are those who go into stringencies and fast, and afflict the body, and fast and this is not the way in the service of Hashem One need not break and ruin the body because, Heaven forbid, afterward he will not be able to learn and pray anymore One must take care of the body, eat well and sleep well and settle a person's mind only the main thing is that he be able to serve Hashem And his main refinement, and his fasting, and his affliction should be not to speak idle words to bless over food in holiness and purity the first blessing, beginning and end - to be careful At the end, to be meticulous about the blessings as one should
25:05 to be careful to reach a hundred blessings to pray the whole Amidah prayer with intention, every single blessing and if, Heaven forbid, a stray thought comes, he should be silent at once as the Tur writes: when a stray thought comes during prayer a person must be silent, and when the thought has passed, continue so that there will not, Heaven forbid, be a flaw during the Amidah prayer before Hashem, blessed be He when he stands before his Maker - so be careful in these things If a person now fasts and weakens his body and his strength then how will he learn? How will he pray?
25:32 What will he do? What will he do? He will not have a settled mind He also does not make blessings, which is also a great flaw How careful one must be even more on Yom Kippur when we want to increase blessings let it be at least over spices - well, and how much can a person do anyway A person fasts and fasts all day, and he will not think well and will not pray, he will not have a settled mind he will not be able to rest, he troubles himself a lot and it also becomes a great flaw But on Shabbos there is no flaw in desire, because a person has a settled mind he has three meals, and he settles his mind and prays he does not want anything in the world he only wants to rest the rest of Shabbos
26:09 because he is now in the World to Come Shabbos is not in this world; it is light, His light, blessed be He Tomorrow you will feel the light of Shabbos Now also, 'and they shall prepare what they bring' writes the 'Likutei Torah', Rabbi Mordechai of Chernobyl It is also in 'Darkei Chaim V'Shalom' of the 'Minchas Elazar' of Munkatch he says that if I could... that there is a practice from the Maggid that it is like a command to sleep on the eve of holy Shabbos, that it is from the Ten Commandments he says that he found that it is from the Torah 'and they shall prepare what they bring' - this is preparing the body for Shabbos with sleep that one must prepare the body with sleep; this is a great level The 'Likutei Torah' also writes that this preparation
26:46 specifically on Thursday night, when one learns at night this repairs for a person every flaw of sight it repairs a person - learning by the light of the moon when one learns Torah by the light of the moon it repairs the sight, it repairs a person's mind and if he learns Torah, it refines him All that the soul comes down to this world for is to repair the knowledge, because the moment all the creatures will want to circumcise the foreskin of their hearts and reach the purpose What happened, tzaddikim? Yes, sit, sit It truly pains my heart that you are so cold, I cannot continue I will tell you a story about Rabbi Yoel of Satmar They tell that once he officiated at the wedding of some couple and the groom said to him: give me advice for all of life
27:31 He said to him: have you seen how many pogroms and how many troubles there are in the world? Know that a good thought that you will have, and a good desire will redeem you from all the troubles When a person wants good, he draws complete good to himself when you want Hashem, blessed be He A person who only wants the desires of this world a person who wants, Heaven forbid, to sin and to distance himself from Him, blessed be He already with this desire - Hashem protect us What is 'One who comes to defile himself, they open the way for him'?
28:02 They open all the gates of Gehinnom, they open all the angels of destruction so that he will have hardship and grief in life And all that is hard for the world, and all that the world is going mad and all that the world goes through, it is only because of this One who will want good, will want Him, blessed be He - already endless holy angels accompany him He sanctifies his body, his limbs his prayer has a different taste, his Torah has a different taste his mind has a different taste He receives His light, blessed be He, he merits the purpose He refines his body, the coarseness, the physicality And through this and in the merit of this may it be His will that we merit the complete redemption speedily in our days and Hashem, blessed be He, our King at our head, amen and amen!
28:42 Rabbi Chananya ben Akashya says...
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