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CHUMASH
Parshas Bereishis - Shlishi with Rashi
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The Torah is continuing to tell us about the creation of Chava:
Even though Adam looked at all the animals, he couldn’t find any for him to marry! (Remember, Adam was made as a man and woman together!)
Hashem made Adam fall asleep, so it wouldn’t see, and took off the part that would be used to make Chava. Hashem brought her to Adam, who called her an “Isha” (woman) since she came from part of a man (“ish”).
Hashem gave them a mitzvah to get married, and they did!
Now the Torah tells us about something that happens later, about Cheit Eitz HaDaas, because it only happened after the snake saw Adam and Chava get married:
The snake was jealous of Adam. IT wanted to get married to Chava! It decided to trick Chava into giving fruit from the Eitz Hadaas to Adam.
The snake asked Chava if she was allowed to eat from all the trees. She said, “Yes — except for the Eitz Hadaas, which Hashem said we shouldn’t eat or touch, because it will make us die.” Of course, Adam didn’t tell her that touching the tree was dangerous, but she thought that was part of what Hashem said.
The snake pushed Chava against the tree so that she did touch it! “See,” the snake said, “You didn’t die from touching the tree! You wont die if you eat from it either!”
The snake told her, “Hashem doesn’t want you to eat from that tree because then you will be like Hashem!” The snake kept on talking to Chava until it convinced her that it would be good to eat from the tree. It hoped that she would give Adam the fruit first, and then he would die, so that it could marry Chava instead!
But instead of giving Adam first, she ate the fruit herself! Then she shared it with Adam, who ate it too!
The fruit of the Eitz Hadaas changed them. Before, they didn’t feel embarrassed that they were not wearing clothes, because they didn’t have a Yetzer Hara. Now they did, so they were embarrassed and wanted to cover themselves up.
Then they heard Hashem calling them!
Hashem said to Adam, “Ayeka? Where are you?” Hashem wanted Adam to tell the truth and do teshuvah, but at first Adam blamed Chava for making him eat from the fruit. Chava also didn’t do teshuvah right away — she blamed the snake.
Hashem didn’t make Adam and Chava die right away, since they DID feel bad. But instead of living forever, they would have to die later.
Then Hashem spoke to each one of them and told them what would happen because of the Cheit Eitz Hadaas:
The snake — Hashem made it not able to talk anymore, and took away its feet so it could only crawl on the ground. People would be able to kill it.
Chava — Hashem made it hard for her to have babies. It would be hard to take care of them, and hard to have babies. She would want to be with her husband, but he will be in charge.
Adam — It would be hard to grow plants for food, and he would have to work very hard.
Now the world wasn’t as holy as it was before — Yidden would need to fix that and make the world a Ruchnius place again!
Now we go back to what we were talking about before — how Hashem made Chava.
Adam named her Chava, since she would be the mother of all living (chai) people.
And back to what happened after Cheit Eitz Hadaas:
Hashem decided to help Adam and Chava become Tznius, and made them special, warm, and comfortable clothes that fit them perfectly. They could have made their own, but Hashem did it as a chesed for them.
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TEHILLIM
Yom Chof-Hey (119 - first half)
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In today’s Tehillim, we start kapitel Kuf-Yud-Tes. It is the longest kapitel, and we only say half of it today — it takes us two days to finish it in Chitas! This kapitel goes according to the Alef-Beis, and every letter has eight pesukim that start with it.
In the letter Beis, there is a posuk that says “Bameh Yezakeh Naar Es Orcho Lishmor Kidvorecha.” The posuk means, “How does a person make the way he acts pure? By listening to what Hashem says.” By doing mitzvos and acting the way Hashem tells us in the Torah, we will be pure and holy.
But there is another meaning to this posuk too!
The Alter Rebbe once went to his Rebbe, the Maggid, and asked for a bracha to have a baby boy. The Maggid said: “Bameh Yezakeh Naar? How does a person have the zechus to have a baby boy? ‘Es Orcho’ — by having Hachnosas Orchim.”
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TANYA
Igeres Hakodesh Siman Chof-Hey
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Today we are starting a new letter from the Alter Rebbe. One of the things we learn from this letter is what we can do so we don’t get angry.
When someone says something to us that we don’t like, or does something we don’t like, we can get angry at them. The Chachomim tell us that getting angry is like serving Avodah Zarah! If we had stronger Emunah in Hashem, we wouldn’t get angry.
What does Emunah have to do with getting angry?
The Alter Rebbe explains: Why does a person get angry when someone does something not nice to him? Because he is sure that it’s the other person’s fault that he is hurt! That’s a good reason to get angry at them, right?
But it isn’t really true! Everything that happens in the world is from Hashem. Even if someone is saying something not nice to you, it is only because the chayus of Hashem is in that person and is letting him say that not nice thing. If Hashem didn’t want him to say it, he wouldn’t be able to!
(Of course there is no excuse to say or do not nice things to other people! Someone who does is doing an aveira, which they may need to get punished for, but that is a separate thing!
Hashem gave the person the koach to say or do what they did. Hashem decided that this thing should happen to us. If it wouldn’t have happened through that person, Hashem has many other messengers.)
Instead of getting angry at the other person, we should think about the chayus of Hashem that is doing it, think why Hashem is making this happen to us, and what we need to do to make it stop.
Sometimes we are so upset about what’s happening that it’s hard to think about our Emunah in Hashem. That’s why there is an eitzah from seforim to stay quiet so our anger doesn’t get stronger, and to wait for some time. During this time, we can remind ourselves that everything is really from Hashem, and we don’t have to get angry.
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The Alter Rebbe made ten niggunim. Some are only very short tunes and not even a whole niggun, but they were made by the Alter Rebbe himself!
The niggunim that we have from the Mitteler Rebbe aren’t really made up by the Mitteler Rebbe — they were made by chassidim and sung in front of the Mitteler Rebbe.
The Mitteler Rebbe had a choir, a “kapelye.” Some chassidim would sing, and some played instruments. The songs that they sang in front of the Mitteler Rebbe are what we call the Mitteler Rebbe’s niggunim.
There are certain times, like at the end of Yomim Tovim, when it is a minhag to sing the niggunim of all the Rebbbeim. We sing a niggun made by the Alter Rebbe, and a niggun called “Kapelye” from the Mitteler Rebbe which was made by these chassidim.
For many years, on Simchas Torah, the Rebbe would teach a niggun himself! Those are the niggunim that we call “the Rebbe’s niggunim.” There were also niggunim that Chassidim wrote or sang for the Rebbe’s Yom Huledes, with a posuk from the Rebbe’s kapitel. Many times Chassidim would whistle during niggunim when the Rebbe would want them to!
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Today we learn the same mitzvah as yesterday (Mitzvas Asei #241): If someone sets a fire, they are responsible for paying for what the fire burns. If it burns part of his neighbor’s field, he may have to pay back the neighbor.
We learn this mitzvah from a posuk in Parshas Mishpatim: כִּי תֵצֵא אֵשׁ וּמָצְאָה קֹצִים
This mitzvah is explained in Mesechta Bava Kama, perek Beis and Vov.
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Before, we learned about damage that comes from an animal eating from someone else’s field, and the kind of damage from an animal hurting people or animals or breaking things. In today’s Rambam, we learn about damage that comes from somebody’s hole in the ground, or a fire they started.
Perek Yud-Beis teaches us that if someone dug a hole, and an animal fell in, they need to pay back the animal’s owner.
Perek Yud-Gimmel explains the halachos if a THING fell into the hole and broke, like furniture or dishes.
Perek Yud-Daled teaches us about if someone starts a fire and it burns someone else’s field. If he started it in the other person’s field, or if he wasn’t careful when he started a fire in his own field, he needs to pay. If he was careful, and the fire spread anyway, he doesn’t need to pay — we say that it came from Hashem.
Now we are finished the halachos about damages! Tomorrow we will IY”H start a new set of halachos, about stealing.
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Today we learn more halachos about yibum and chalitzah. One of them is that if the oldest brother does not want to do yibum, we ask all of the other brothers if they want to marry her. If none of them want to, we force the oldest one to do either yibum or chalitzah.
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We learn in today’s Chumash about the Cheit Eitz Hadaas. Adam and Chava were told not to eat from the Eitz Hadaas, but they ended up doing it anyway.
When we learn the story in Chumash, we might wonder: What’s so hard about not eating a fruit? There were plenty of other fruits in Gan Eden! Why did Adam and Chava not manage to keep such an easy mitzvah?
Chassidus teaches us that when there is a very important mitzvah, then the opposite side of kedusha fights EXTRA strong against it! It makes it feel VERY hard to keep even a small or easy mitzvah!
That is an important lesson for us:
When there is something that feels that it shouldn’t be a big deal, but it is very hard for us anyway, then that might be a mitzvah that is so important for us to do! Since it is so important for our neshama, our Yetzer Hara is fighting very hard against it! When we realize that, we can find the koach to do the mitzvah no matter how hard it seems!
See Likutei Sichos chelek Gimmel, Parshas Bereishis
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The first posuk of the Twelve Pesukim starts with the words “Torah Tziva.”
“Torah Tziva Lanu Moshe,” the Torah that Moshe Rabbeinu commanded us on Har Sinai, is “Morasha Kehilas Yaakov,” a yerusha to each one of us! That means that the very same Torah that Moshe Rabbeinu was given at the time of Matan Torah is what belongs to each of us today.
The Chachomim tell us that this should be the very first thing we teach a child who is just learning to talk!
The Rebbe shows how this posuk has a message that is a foundation for learning Torah, which is why this is the first posuk a child needs to know. This posuk shows us that even parts of Torah that we don’t understand we should be ready to take with Kabolas Ol.
How do we see that this posuk is talking about parts of Torah that we can’t understand?
What Moshe Rabbeinu got on Har Sinai was not just the Chumash, or even just Tanach. It was ALL the Torah that we would ever have, including Kabbalah and Medrashim and even the Torah of Moshiach!
We are able to understand and learn a lot of parts of Torah. We can learn Chumash, Tanach, Medrash, Shas, and even Kabbalah! But there are some parts of it that we AREN’T able to understand. Some parts might be too hard for us, and of course we can’t learn or understand the Torah of Moshiach until Moshiach comes!
So we see that this posuk includes parts of Torah that we don’t understand!
This is what a child needs to know right away. Even if there are parts of Torah that we don’t understand, we know that they are all part of the same Torah that “Tziva Lanu Moshe!” We need to know that we will do what Hashem tells us in the Torah, with Kabolas Ol, even if we don’t understand it.
We can understand better by using the mashal of a tower:
Learning Torah is like building a tower. To build a tower, there needs to be a strong foundation at the bottom to keep the building steady, and then we can build more and more layers on top until the tower is very high!
Our Torah tower also can always keep growing, because there is always more Torah to learn! But we need to make sure that our foundation is very strong. Otherwise our whole tower will be shaky! The foundation is Kabolas Ol, accepting what the Torah says even if we can’t understand it.
This is the foundation that Torah Tziva gives us, even before we are old enough to start learning!
See Likutei Sichos chelek daled, sicha for Simchas Torah
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RING! Is that the bell for recess?
Before we run to get our snack, we first take care of our seforim! We close the sefer we were in the middle of using, since it is not kavodik for a sefer to be left open with nobody learning from it.
The Rebbe said that cheder kids used to ALL know this. Nowadays, people don’t always think about their seforim! They leave the room, and just leave their poor seforim open, all alone.
Once the Frierdiker Rebbe noticed an important person walking away from a table where he had been learning. His sefer was still open. In a kind way, the Frierdiker Rebbe asked him to close the sefer, and not just leave it that way.
The Rebbe had been standing nearby. The Rebbe knew how the Frierdiker Rebbe was always so careful not to bother other people, especially important people. He told the Frierdiker Rebbe that he could have asked him, the Rebbe, to close the sefer instead of telling this person!
The Frierdiker Rebbe said that it is important to make sure that the sefer is closed when it is left alone, but that is not all. It is also important that if it is possible, the person who opened it should close it himself.
See Toras Menachem vol. 39, p. 190-192
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לעילוי נשמת הרה״ח ר׳ דניאל יצחק בן ר׳ אפרים ע״ה מאסקאוויץ
שליח כ"ק אדמו"ר נשיא דורנו למדינת אילינוי
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A chossid once wrote a letter to the Rebbe, sharing good news.
In the letter back, the Rebbe asked that this chossid shouldn’t just share this kind of good news, he should also include another very important kind of good news! “Ain Tov Ela Torah” — “There is no good except for Torah!” The Rebbe asked the chossid that he should also write about his learning Torah, especially Chassidus!
Learning Chassidus is especially important, since it brings the Geulah! As R’ Chaim Vital, a talmid of the Arizal, explains, not learning enough Pnimius HaTorah keeps the Geulah from coming faster.
The Gr”a, the Vilna Gaon, also writes about this, in his pirush on Mishlei.
And it is important to not only learn Chassidus, but to also spread the teachings of Chassidus to others, so that the Geulah comes much faster!
See Igros Kodesh chelek Yud-Gimmel, p. 32
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לע"נ התינוק זאב ארי' ע"ה בן יבלט"א הרה"ח ר' שניאור זלמן שי' גליק
נפטר ב' מנחם אב ה'תשע"ג
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