THIS GENERATION CAN ONLY BE RECTIFIED BY REBBE NACHMAN’S LIGHT
Translated excerpt of a shiur that Rav Eliezer Berland, shlita,
gave at an outreach conference in Netanya, in the year 2000 (taken from ‘Hithadshut
Magazine, Issue 12, Shvat 5777’).
The Gli
Razia [1] said that until the year 5760 (2000) is
the rectification of the world, and the rectification of the 974 generations [2] (that preceded creation).
For, there are
souls that are born completely righteous (Tzaddikim). There are souls like Rebbe Nachman,
who are completely without sin, who never once sinned. Holy and pure Tzaddikim,
who served Hashem day and night, who guarded their eyes, and never once paid
attention to the material world.
After that, there are the ‘regular’ souls, the souls who are
average, or in-between [not completely righteous or completely wicked]. After
these in-between souls, the wicked souls begin, and each one needs a spiritual
rectification.
The Gli
Razia says that the rectification of these souls will continue until
5760 (which may also be understood to include 5761 too), which is the time the
wicked souls will need to be rectified.
After 5760, all those who didn’t wake up and do teshuva, who didn’t
see the Divine light, who didn’t see the light of Hashem, who didn’t feel the
pleasantness of Hashem, who didn’t taste the nectar of Hashem…
The Gli Razia
wrote his book more than 460 years’ ago [now, in 2017, more than 480 years’
ago]. He foresaw some very serious things, he
was one of the prophetic figures of that generation, and he saw what would be
happening in another 460 years.
AFTER 5760 A TERRIBLE SPIRIT OF TUMAH WILL DESCEND TO THE WORLD
He said that all
these evildoers, that we see today running wild, prattling away, all these
preening ‘black roosters’, their rectification will only last until 5760. And after 5760, such an enormous spirit
of tumah (spiritual impurity) will descend to the world, such a
terrible tumah will come down to the world.
Only until 5760 will there be a rectification for these
reincarnations, after this there will be ‘many years’ (רב
שנים) – which has the same gematria as ‘Amalek’, = 240. Amalekite
souls, mamash, will come to the world, because from 5760 until the end of
that decade, there is ‘many years’, which is the gematria of Amalek.
And so, these
Amalekite-type souls will come, people who are impossible to talk to. They will say: ‘We need to kill the datiim (religious
people)…’ – they are submerged in their lusts and desires from the tips of
their toes all the way up to their heads.
All these souls that come after 5760, their only hope of being
rectified is via the Divine light that Rebbe Nachman revealed more than 200
years ago. He taught that these generations would come, that no other advice
would be able to help. He said more than 200 years ago that a flood would come
to the world, that would ‘cover the tops of even the highest mountains’.
CHILDREN WILL RUN AFTER THE CULTURE OF THE STREETS
It will sweep
over all of the mountains – this is referring to all the Tzaddikim, even the
children of the Tzaddikim will be destroyed by it. It will be impossible to stop the
children. The children will run after the culture of the streets, after all the
madness. There won’t be any way to stop them from doing this.
Rebbe Nachman said:
generations are coming that no advice will be able to help, if we don’t start
to reveal this light already from today, to reveal this hidden light already,
today. We need to take this light from the realm
of potential to the realm of actual.
There really will come generations where you won’t be able to say a
single word to them, to help them. You will talk to your children, you will
talk to people, and they won’t have any idea what you’re even trying to say.
And it is here, where such a light will come, where we will need to reveal such
a new light.
And this is what Rebbe Nachman is explaining to us, in
Lesson 37 (of Likutey Moharan), that now we need to start to reveal a
completely new light to the world: ‘A new light will be shone on Zion, and all
of us will soon merit to His light.’
THERE IS ONLY ONE
LIGHT LEFT
For there is only one light, there will be only one escape hatch
left, one remaining ray of light, and if we manage to open this one porthole,
and if we merit to uncover this escape hatch, and to show [people] the way to
it…It’s only via this one porthole that people will be able to accept anyone
else’s words, and to be persuaded of anything, and to accept the Godly light.
This is what Rebbe
Nachman is explaining to us, that right now the lusts are only gaining in
strength and overpowering us from one moment to the next. These lusts are so dreadful – all the
gadgets, the computers, the internet, all the different programs – if you press
on a button, a person can find themselves in the lowest depths of hell, or even
lower, that his father or grandfather couldn’t even conceive of there being
such a thing. And no-one else ever dreamed that such things could ever exist
before today.
Just by pressing one small button when his father isn’t home, a
child can just press some button – and it’s all over! He falls into oblivion!
To the deepest depths! To such a low place, that who knows if he can ever come
out of it again? And who can even pull him out of that place?
His father has no
idea why his son’s spiritual yearnings suddenly got so destroyed. He doesn’t understand that he bought a
computer with access to the internet, and he didn’t keep it protected. There
are many programs you can use to protect your computer.
Suddenly, in one
fell swoop in 5760 (2000), we’re seeing all these different types of spiritual
impurity blowing across the world, that no-one is able to stop. That’s why Lesson 37 (of Likutey
Moharan) was written. Lesson 37 was written to subdue this dreadful force
of spiritual impurity, which is the secret of the kruvim (cherubim)…
reviving the whole situation that was found at the time of yetziat
Mitzrayim (leaving Egypt). We are starting it all again.
THE 49 GATES OF IMPURITY
In Egypt, Am
Yisrael was sunk in the 49 gates of impurity, and worshiped all the different
types of idols, and there was no spiritual impurity that Am Yisrael wasn’t
somehow in the middle of. They went right up to the 50th gate…
And now, only Rebbe Nachman can get them out of there. No
other advice can do it. And they were already on the verge of
falling into the 50th gate, and they were about to start sinning with the
non-Jews [3], G-d forbid, so Hashem immediately took
them out.
And now, we’re
talking about a completely new stage, a completely new light, a new light will
be shining on Zion.
A person has
a yetzer hara (evil inclination) raging inside him. He could be a ‘true’ Chassid, with payot
down to the floor, and his yetzer hara is still running wild. He has
no idea how to subdue it and he has no idea what to do.
It didn’t used to be like this. Today, even children are seeing the
most awful things. Hashem should have mercy. Hashem should have mercy. And who
can stop them, if we don’t give them the real light, the light of Hashem?
It’s like Avraham
Avinu, who was born into the most immoral generation. He was born into the most
spiritually-impure generation, with Nimrod the rasha (evildoer) – the
height of spiritual impurity. And Avraham Avinu was just one person, and
he smashed all the idols, he wasn’t scared of anything. Even though he was just
one person, and by himself, he still broke all of the idols…
His father said
to him: ‘Avrama’leh, are you trying to tell me that you are smarter than
everyone else? That
you’re the smartest person in the world?! That there aren’t any other wise
people in the world? That you’re wiser than Nimrod. We’ve been serving idols
and worshipping idols here for 1700 years, already, but you’re smarter than
everyone else, and you’re going over to a new system?!’
EVERYTHING’S COLLAPSING!
But Avrama’leh
said: ‘Abba’leh, where’s your brains?’ Terach responded: ‘Could it really be
that the whole world [has been wrong about] serving idols for 1700 years?! Ok, yes once there was a big flood, there
was a big cloudburst, I don’t know what. It’s true that not everything went so
smoothly all the time. It’s also true that once the Tower of Babel fell down –
there was some sort of engineering error, I don’t know what, and the Tower fell
down…’
Avraham said to him: ‘Can’t you see what’s going on?! Open your
eyes! Everything’s collapsing! The world’s collapsing!’ There’s not going to be
any world left.
We see that every second, the earth is crumbling under our feet.
Open your eyes! A person can see that the earth is crumbling. Here, someone’s
son dies, there someone’s wife passes away, here it’s the husband. And yet
people continue to contaminate their eyes! They don’t understand that it’s
their own sins that are killing their wives, and their husbands, and their
children.
This is what
Rabbenu revealed to us, in Lesson 37. And this is the key for how to help these generations, the
generations from 5760 onwards, these awful generations that are starting to
come to the world, generations that their fathers never imagined or envisioned,
and that their ancestors never saw before in their lives, except maybe only at
the time of the mabbul (flood).
[1] A Torah
commentator who lived around 500 years ago.
[2] In the 2000
years before the creation of our world, the Gemara explains that Hashem created
another 974 different worlds that were all destroyed before our present world
was created, because they refused to keep the Torah. The souls from these 974 generations are
referred to as the ‘brazen ones’ in each generation, and are often connected
with the Erev Rav. See Gemara Shabbat 88b, Midrash Tanchuma, VaYeshev 4, and
Lech Lecha 11, amongst others.
[3] Apparently
referring to intermarriage and assimilation.
Taken from Shuvu
Banim International, The Official site of Rabbi Eliezer Berland shlit"a.
