The Gaon Yanuka in a talk to inmates in Israeli prisons ahead of the Shavuot holiday

3:07 And also, always remember all your guards, the prison officers who are there with you. You too, judge them favorably. I know it is hard for you, and there is very great hardship. One must know that they are not the ones who put us in this place, and one must also give them great love, and there should be unity. Know this: the greatest power is to be only in unity. All the holy ones and all the tzaddikim were in prison.

3:33 Who? Yosef HaTzaddik, all the holy ones. The Rebbe Rayatz, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak of Lubavitch, the Rebbe Rayatz, who was in prison so many times, and the non-Jews aimed guns at him, and came to shoot him in the head. Several times they tortured him and tormented him. And then he told them: 'This toy frightens someone who has one world. But someone who has two worlds, this toy does not frighten him.' And there were many holy ones who were there. And Rav Nota Gorlik, one of the holy ones, was a holy and righteous young man. They put him in prison in Siberia, in harsh conditions, for years upon years, for nothing, only to abuse him. He kept his kedushah and his Judaism, and they say that he disappeared by way of a miracle. They say no one knows what became of him; they say that he disappeared. Many

4:13 stories about many holy ones who went through this: that the priest's daughter tried to be with him there, and they brought a priest's daughter in to him to test him, and with all that he was not tempted. And he was in prison, in jail in Siberia, in harsh conditions and all, and he rose and was elevated and reached lofty levels. You must remember the strength and the hope in these moments that you are there, and you need to know how to use this for the highest place. Because the Holy One, blessed be He, is with the sick, with the unfortunate, and with whoever is in prison, precisely in the darkness.

4:41 Those who sit in darkness, who are in a place where everything is closed in on them, and they see no opening and no hope: there the Holy One, blessed be He, is found. For 'To this one I will look: to the poor and broken in spirit.' And one must always awaken and do teshuvah and pray to Hashem, blessed be He, and be full of hope. Strengthen one another. You must be united, especially, especially, especially since you are in such a place. If you are united, and there are no quarrels among you, and no one takes out the bitterness and the hardship of his life on the other, when you are in such a place, and in a state where all of life feels like a person is shut in, that everything is closed in on him...

5:17 I want to explain something to you, so that you will know. Know that there are many people who are inside a prison. Also a soul that is inside the body: for the soul that is inside our body, it is like one who was free and entered into a prison. That is how the soul feels, too, being inside the body. It feels like 'a king bound in the tresses.' The holy soul is royalty. It feels that it is imprisoned, that it is shackled, that suddenly it is inside a body, that this body brings it down to places that are not good, that it leads it to places that are not good.

5:47 The soul feels that it is in prison all the time, that it is in jail. For the soul, to be inside the body for one day is like a person who sits in prison for 70 years. When he feels 70 years... what pain he feels when he is there for 70 years. That is how the soul feels being inside the body. Because the soul wants to cling to its Maker, it wants to return to its root, it wants to reach the highest place, it wants to cling to the rock from which it was hewn, to the place from which it came and was sent.

6:18 And you need to remember this. And there are also people who are in the hospital. I was in a hospital. I saw people there who are lying on a bed, full of suffering, and they are shackled to the bed. That too is a prison. This whole world is one big prison. So do not let your spirit break. Hold yourselves strong, with all your might, so as not to break. And know that this is the secret of the Giving of the Torah. All the power of receiving the Torah... I spoke about this, when they asked me a question: why is it written, 'Moshe received the Torah from Sinai and handed it down to Yehoshua, Yehoshua to the Elders, the Elders to the Prophets'?

6:51 There could have been a question: it should have continued in the same order, by names. 'Moshe received the Torah from the mouth of the Holy One, blessed be He,' as the Rambam writes in his introduction to the Mishneh Torah, where he explains the order of the receiving of the Torah: Rav Ashi from Rava, Rava from Rabbah, Rabbah from Rav Huna, and so on, received the whole order of the Torah. And then he begins to list the whole order of the Torah, and says that when we received the Torah... If you look, Moshe Rabbeinu received the Torah from the mouth of the Holy One, blessed be He, from the mouth of the Almighty. He did not receive the Torah 'from Sinai'! Soon people will think that Sinai is some person's name. Today there are people who are called Sinai, there are people who use that name. One could say that maybe Sinai was greater than Moshe Rabbeinu,

7:31 and Sinai gave to Moshe Rabbeinu, taught him some words of Torah. Why is it not written, 'Moshe received the Torah from the mouth of the Holy One, blessed be He'? One could make a mistake, Heaven forbid. So I explained the answer to this: 'Moshe received the Torah from Sinai' gives the name of the place. And after that, seemingly it should have... and after that it is written, 'and handed it down to Yehoshua, Yehoshua to the Elders,' by the names of the people, 'the Prophets' and so on, 'handed it down to the Men of the Great Assembly.' They did not continue with places: 'Moshe received the Torah from Sinai and handed it down in Shiloh, and from Shiloh to Gilgal, and from Gilgal to Jerusalem; Jerusalem, the Beis HaMikdash, the Holy Temple, and Pumbedisa,' and all the yeshivos, the places where they learned Torah,

8:08 to give it by names and places. Why does it say, 'Moshe received the Torah from Sinai'? So I will explain it to you. 'Moshe received the Torah from Sinai.' Why? What happened at Mount Sinai? Moshe Rabbeinu, at the beginning, when he was a shepherd, he went out there into the desert, and he was in the desert, secluding himself. And Moshe Rabbeinu had a very good heart. He prays to the Holy One, blessed be He, and he saw the pain of the Jewish people, and he saw the pain of his brothers. The pain of the Jewish people hurt him very much, that they were held in captivity and in sorrow. And he had a very, very great ache.

8:35 He wept over them and prayed. And one day he sees a mountain full, full, full of birds, full, full, doves, the whole mountain covered with birds. And he does not understand what this mountain is. He sees a strange mountain, and he goes up to the foot of the mountain, and at once all the birds flew away from there. And then he sees a tree burning with fire. This is the burning bush: 'the bush burns, and it is not consumed.'

9:00 And in it there are seven kinds of fire: blue fire, green fire, red fire, purple fire. Now, the Me'am Lo'ez, Rabbi Yaakov Culi, brings this in his sefer, where he explains all the seven kinds of colors in the fire. And then Moshe Rabbeinu, on that occasion, sees that it is such a great sight that even the birds marveled at it, but they fled from before Moshe Rabbeinu. And he stands facing the burning bush.

9:26 And at once the Holy One, blessed be He, speaks to him and says to him, 'Moshe, Moshe,' and begins to explain to him the pain of the Jewish people, all the suffering, as He sees the affliction of the Jewish people, the pain of the Jewish people. And He commands him on the mission: to go and redeem the Jewish people. Moshe Rabbeinu is afraid: 'What will be? How will I be? What will be there? What can I say to them?' And then we find that the Holy One, blessed be He, gives him the wonders, gives him the staff, and the whole chain of events, until Moshe Rabbeinu actually goes to the land of Egypt.

9:54 And He said to him: 'Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh, I Will Be What I Will Be... has sent me to you.' 'They will ask me, What is His Name? What shall I say to them?' 'Ehyeh has sent me,' and so on. Moshe Rabbeinu goes to the Jewish people and begins to redeem them. And here I want to stop and point out to you a very important thing. This place, this mountain, in fact was... The Midrash Rabbah explains that this mountain was in fact Mount Sinai. It was Mount Sinai. This mountain that Moshe Rabbeinu went up, and saw the birds, and saw the voice and the burning bush: it was Mount Sinai. The Midrash brings that in fact the revelation to Moshe Rabbeinu was in this place.

10:28 And afterwards the Torah was given on this mountain. That means the beginning of the geulah of the Jewish people began on this mountain. And the whole purpose of the Exodus from Egypt: they returned to that same mountain. Moshe Rabbeinu returns to that same mountain, and from that same mountain he gives the Torah. So 'Moshe received the Torah from Sinai.' Why? Because the Holy One, blessed be He, reminds Moshe Rabbeinu, and the Sages teach us, to remind us: always begin by remembering. In order to receive the Torah, in order to remember, remember the place you came from.

10:56 Remember the place you started from. Remember the place from which everything began; that in the merit of this place, and from this place, geulah came forth for the Jewish people. Think to yourselves: the Midrash brings all kinds of things that Moshe Rabbeinu said: 'Send, please, by the hand of whomever You will send.' He said to Him: 'Send, please, the last of the prisoners in Midian. They are all better than me. There are people in the prison there in Midian; all of them can go redeem the Jewish people. I am not good, I am not worthy, I do not deserve it at all. What do You think, that I can go for this?' If there had been an argument there with Moshe Rabbeinu, and Moshe Rabbeinu had not acted properly, or there had been a mistake there, what would have happened at once?

11:29 Everything would have been held up, everything would have been delayed, everything would have vanished. Someone else would have had to be chosen. Maybe Moshe Rabbeinu would not have agreed to that, or would have fought it. But everything began from the moment that Moshe Rabbeinu accepts the leadership, accepts the mission, and sets out to go and help the Jewish people. The geulah begins from that moment when Moshe Rabbeinu stands at Mount Sinai and receives the Torah, and begins to give the Jewish people the strength and the hope, and they begin to go out from darkness to a great light.

11:55 And this is the secret of receiving the Torah. You need to always remember that the true and complete receiving of the Torah is the strength and the hope: that Moshe Rabbeinu did not despair of the Jewish people, that the Holy One, blessed be He, revealed Himself to him at Mount Sinai. The whole revelation to Moshe Rabbeinu, the whole event of the bush, symbolizes for the Jewish people the one symbol, to remind the Jewish people, as the Torah too was given on that same mountain, that the Holy One, blessed be He, loves them and chose them, and He never despairs of them, and He loves them and rejoices in them: 'My son, My firstborn, Israel.'

12:24 You need to remember that no matter what you are going through, no matter what comes upon you, the Holy One, blessed be He, is with you and does not leave you. And everyone has hope and a remedy. And let no one ever, ever, ever break. Ever. Do not be broken by anything, and let nothing break you. And your greatest power is to go out and bring the geulah. And you have all the strength and the time and the ability to act, and to think thoughts of how we can conquer and bring the geulah. I also want to give you an example, for 'From all my teachers I have grown wise': the Sages teach us in Tractate Sukkah, page 53: 'A man's feet are his guarantors.' A person's feet, they are the guarantors to take him to the place from which he will go to his eternal home, to his place,

13:11 to the place where he will have to give a judgment and an accounting before the King of kings, the Holy One, blessed be He. And here too, this is a prayer. We will see how it will be possible to get this prayer to you. A very important prayer, for you to read. The Holy One, blessed be He, brings things about. In this world that we pass through here, we go through many things that we can never understand: all the reasons, all the moves, all the ways. But you must remember that in each and every one there is the possibility and the power to bring the geulah.

13:38 In Tractate Megillah, page 7, the Gemara tells about Rabbah and Rabbi Zeira, that Rabbah arose and slaughtered Rabbi Zeira, and afterwards he brought him back to life. I asked a question. After all, we know that a person who commits a sin cannot, in fact... how can he get up at all and bring someone back to life? A person committed a sin; they should have seized him and said to him: 'What have you done? You slaughtered the greatest of the generation! And you can still bring him back to life?' From where does he have the power, after he slaughtered him, slaughtered him, and he has the power to get up and bring him back to life?

14:02 This is something that is beyond logic. From where? Today, a person eats a small piece of neveilah or of something forbidden, he makes a blemish, a sin, and the Shechinah departs and leaves him; his prayer is not heard. A person eats creeping and crawling things, and his prayer is not accepted. So from where does such a person have the power to come, to get up and slaughter the greatest of the generation, and afterwards he can also ask for mercy for him, to bring him back to life? From where... how did he do this thing? It is a wonder.

14:27 This is a question I was asked, and I will answer it for you. I really want you to understand that Rabbi Nachman, the holy Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, whom you have surely heard of, once said a very beautiful thing. That is: 'Even if I were to transgress the Torah 400 times, I would never despair of teshuvah, and it would not bring me down from my level.' And truly there is something here; one really needs to explain the depth of the things he said.

14:54 Many times we are in a place where a person judges himself. And in Torah 282 as well, Rabbi Nachman explains this: that because of his spiritual state, he judges himself, and loses himself, and despairs of himself completely. And one must distinguish between the not-good deeds that a person does and his reality, what the holy soul that is within him is, and its root and its continuity. One must always remember that the greatness of Hashem, and the Torah, and the mitzvos, and everything we merit, this is the highest place. That is where one must aspire.

15:24 And everything that a person is habituated to, and falls, and grows distant, and falls to his evil inclination, and falls and grows distant from Hashem, blessed be He: this is from the side of the deed, from the side of the animal soul, as the Baal HaTanya explains. This is from the not-good side. But if a person truly cleaves to the Holy One, blessed be He, and he lives Hashem, blessed be He, and he has emunah and knowledge of Hashem, blessed be He, he will always be with Hashem, no matter what. This is not something that can cause him to grow distant from the Holy One, blessed be He, because in the end he will do teshuvah for it.

15:51 Therefore, the secret of how he could bring him back to life, from where could he get up and bring him back to life? From the secret of the mercy of Hashem, blessed be He. For if you think... Always remember that Hashem, blessed be He, is endless mercy. Endless mercy. Hashem, blessed be He, is an infinity of compassion. It is mercy so immense that... let each one of you try to imagine all the kinds of good that he would want: Hashem, blessed be He, wants to do good for him infinitely more. Infinitely more, Hashem, blessed be He, wants to do good for you and to bestow upon you. And you must always be strengthened in emunah and in hope, never to break. Because in the whole place where you are, there are of course, there can also be, people innocent of any crime,

16:27 and people who were framed with false accusations, just as Yosef HaTzaddik was put in prison, and many, many ways and many things, all kinds of 'hidden things that belong to Hashem our G-d': all the moves, and what a person goes through in this world, and all his gilgulim, and everything that comes rolling upon him. And certainly everything is by individual Hashgachah. And we must always look at things in a way of judging favorably, and look favorably both on ourselves and on others. And also, certainly, everything that Hashem, blessed be He, does, He does for our true, complete and eternal good.

16:55 And it is worth being careful to accustom yourselves to say every day Psalm 25 and Psalm 51, to do the secret of teshuvah in completeness. Because when one does teshuvah in completeness, one merits, and it is possible, to go out from darkness to a great light, and to prevail, and not to be inside this exile, and inside... inside the body, and to be locked up inside this place. I want to bless you that you always remember and contemplate the great compassion of Hashem, blessed be He, His immense and infinite compassion, and that you remember that 'Moshe received the Torah from Sinai' is to recall the place from which we received the Torah: the place where Moshe did not despair of the Jewish people, and where the Holy One, blessed be He, did not despair of the Jewish people. He pleaded for them; He went, He wanted to take them out.

17:37 That is why 'Moshe received the Torah from Sinai,' and not 'received the Torah from the mouth of the Holy One, blessed be He.' When we come to remember and contemplate why 'Moshe received the Torah from Sinai': because at Sinai was the first revelation of the Holy One, blessed be He, to Moshe Rabbeinu, and everything that He spoke with him at the burning bush, and everything that He taught him: that He does not despair of the Jewish people, and that He sees the pain of the Jewish people, He sees the suffering of the Jewish people, and He asks of Moshe Rabbeinu: 'Go and redeem My people Israel. I want to be with you; go and redeem them.'

18:02 That was the purpose of the revelation. That is why it is written, 'Moshe received the Torah from Sinai.' How did we receive the Torah? From the strengthening and from the hope, that the Holy One, blessed be He, believed in the Jewish people. Therefore, look at all Five Books of the Torah: all the verses begin with the praise of the Jewish people. 'And He called to Moshe'; and 'In the beginning He created,' where 'the beginning' is the Jewish people; and 'the words that Moshe spoke to all of Israel.' Every Chumash begins, all the parshiyos begin, only with encouragement and with the intensity of the love: Hashem, blessed be He, loves the Jewish people. This is receiving the Torah.

18:34 The whole essence of receiving the Torah. The Torah begins with 'Bereishis,' 'In the beginning,' and ends with 'before the eyes of all Israel.' All the Jewish people, all of them, are beloved and cherished and precious before Hashem, blessed be He, and Hashem, blessed be He, loves them all with an infinite love. And this is the secret and the power to receive the Torah: to remember that the strengthening and the power to receive the Torah is that there is no despair in the world at all, and one must be full of hope and be patient with everything that we go through in this world. And remember, it is not necessarily those who are outside the prison... there are also those who are outside the prison and they are in prison.

19:04 There are those in hospitals, there are those who suffer, there are different people, there are those who already... Everyone goes through things in this world. And this world is a complicated world, not a simple one, and there are many sufferings and ordeals in this world. And you must hold yourselves strong, strong, strong, to be full of hope and to do complete teshuvah, to know that it is possible to reach the highest place through the power of teshuvah. Teshuvah reaches up to the Throne of Glory. When one merits teshuvah... teshuvah is the Keser, the Crown; it is 'Ehyeh.' It is the greatest mercy of Hashem, blessed be He.

19:30 Strengthen everyone, encourage everyone, give hope to everyone, believe in each one, because it is impossible to know who it is, and which one, who will merit to bring the geulah. And I always say that just as from the greatest darkness, precisely from there, one goes out to the greatest light, and precisely from those who brought the exile upon us, and the wicked ones who caused this whole exile, all the disasters they did to us in the world...

19:56 That Hitler, may his name be erased, who carried out all the atrocities in Germany: he was in prison, and there he wrote his book, and he came out of there with such power to do all the disasters and all the atrocities and the harm that he did in the world. And how we must learn the very opposite! See what this is: if one takes that same thing... He did those things, the terrible deeds and all the disasters, all the millions who died, non-Jews, Jews, murder without end, without measure, so many people, so much evil that he did in the world.

20:26 If they would take that and do the opposite: the trait of peace in the world, and reveal compassion in the world, and they would think how to light up the world, and how to do good for the world, and how to heal the sick, and how to help people. How much... when will people arise, who will arise to think how to change this world, so that it will be a better world, purer, wiser? This is the greatest thing. And you have the power there, precisely, to go out from darkness to the greatest place. Because the more one pulls the bow back, the higher and farther the arrow goes in the end.

20:57 So it is with you too: your ability, in the end, is to reach the farthest, the highest, and to go with strength and hope. From everything you have been through, make use of it. Because every day that you are in such a place has power and meaning for the soul. You can rise and soar further ahead. And accept everything upon yourselves with love and with joy. And we will look forward to Hashem, blessed be He, redeeming us, and may we soon merit to go out from darkness to a great light, and all of us will be full of hope and strength and emunah and joy and hope. And always remember that there is no despair in the world at all, and not to lose your mind, nor any moment, nor hope in life.

21:33 May Hashem strengthen you. There is no despair. Sing: 'There is no despair.' You know, I will tell you something. They say that our holy Rebbe, Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, said: 'There is no despair in the world at all.'

21:59 But you know, people think he said it as a saying or something. Do you know that at the time he said it, he bound himself to all the souls of Israel, and he went through, he felt, all the Jewish people as one. He imagined what a Jew would go through, and what he would feel in that darkest place. And he reached the lowest, the lowest, the lowest place there is, that a Jew might feel, and might ever be broken, even if he stands on the wall, stands in a place where he wants to take his own life, or in any situation. And only then, when he had felt them all, he said: 'There is no despair in the world at all.'

22:33 So always remember this: if one of you feels some brokenness or something, remember that Rabbi Nachman of Breslov was already in the place in the soul that you are passing through, and from there too he said: 'There is no despair in the world at all.' So always remember that there is no despair, ever, ever, ever. And be full of hope, because all the holy ones and the tzaddikim were there too, and felt what you are going through. And strengthen yourselves onward with all your might, to shine the light and to bring good and abundance and light to the world. Be strong, be strong! Fortunate are you! Be strong, be strong, Jewish people!