going home ... to yerushalayim: Reb Neuberger – Mishpatim: Assemble All The Jews

17 February 2023

Reb Neuberger – Mishpatim: Assemble All The Jews

ASSEMBLE ALL THE JEWS

“Mishenichnas Adar marbim b’simcha … With the advent of Adar we increase simcha.”

The amazing thing is that, no matter how devastating our tzouris, we increase simcha in Adar. Are we blind to reality? What happens if there is so much tzouris that simcha seems not just inappropriate but impossible?

Yes, even then we increase simcha in Adar!

This is the essence of simcha: it arises from the tzouris itself!

Purim is classic, because the events described in Megillas Esther are a potential catastrophe. All Klal Yisroel was threatened. The joy of Purim comes from the “impossible” yeshua that Hashem brought about for us.

There was no apparent way out. Haman and Achashverosh were logically invincible. Out of total darkness Hashem unveiled a completely unexpected yeshua. “I cried out to You [Hashem] and You healed me…. You have raised my soul from the lower world…. In the evening one lies down weeping, but with dawn, a cry of joy!” (Tehillim 30)

As I write, I was informed of the latest attack in Israel. This involved someone I know personally along with his two sons. I know this man.

I want to say that I have no answers, except to say that Hashem will save us and bring back His holy ones in glory at techias Hamaisim, may it be soon. We have to know this. “You reduce man to pulp and You say, ‘Repent, Oh sons of man’ …. Gladden us in accordance with the days you afflicted us, the years when we saw evil….” (Tehillim 90)

My friends, we have to be one family and love each other. There is no alternative. Hashem will save us, but we must become one. As Esther ha Malka says to Mordechai, “Go, assemble all the Jews ….” I believe that we will not be able to stop the tragedies until we become “k’ish echad b’lev echad … like one man with one heart.”

This is the prelude to salvation.

Hashem is “echad” and we have to be “echad.”

We will be saved when we assemble as one.

Our salvation is “impossible,” but it will happen.

How on earth did Avraham and Sarah have a child?

How did Yosef become the ruler of Mitzraim?

How did Bnai Yisroel get out of Mitzraim?

How on earth did Dovid become king of Israel?

How did we survive the Churban?

How have we survived two thousand years of holocausts?

My own story: How did I survive our personal melt-down of January 10, 1966? It was impossible, but it happened. Hashem lifts us off the bottom.

Following major surgery, I dreamt that I was in the Bais Hamikdosh. I am not going into detail; I have written about this at length, but suffice it to say that – at that moment, when I had “been” inside the Bais Hamikdosh – I realized that all my suffering, physical and mental, had been a gift from Hashem, and that there was no way I could see the Bais Hamikdosh unless I went through whatever was needed to rectify my shortcomings.

It is clear to me that my entire early life, a world of suffering as I rebelled against Hashem and His Torah, was all kindness from Hashem. If I had not suffered for the first thirty years, I would still be trapped in that darkness. The suffering was a chessed from the Ribono shel Olam. He rescued me by making it impossible for me to live in that world of darkness.

I will never forget the leviah of a talmid chacham, where one of his son’s recounted a conversation with his father shortly before he died. The son asked, “How are you today, Tati?” and the father replied, “Baruch Hashem, worse!” The father knew he was dying, and yet he said “Baruch Hashem!”

I knew a famous rosh yeshiva. At the beginning of his final illness, he said "I am afflicted because of my sins.” No one else would have dared to say that about him, but he said it about himself. Needless to say, he meant it.

In the days before Moshiach, if we don’t do teshuva, Hashem will “appoint a king over [us] whose decrees will be as harsh as [those of] Haman and the Jewish People will repent. And in this way, He will bring us back to the right path.” (Sanhedrin 97b)

We have to know that everything in this world – no matter how catastrophic – is a sign of His mercy. Soon B’ezras Hashem, we will see the ultimate triumph over evil with the coming of Moshiach ben Dovid and the rebuilding of the Bais Hamikdosh!