“A little bit and there are no wicked people in
the world”
Parshas
Vayetze
Transcribed
and translated from previous recordings of
HaRav
Eliezer Berland Shlit”a
“Vayetze Yaakov Vayelech Charana” (‘Yaakov left and went to Charan’) (Bereishis 28:10)
The Torah tells us: “Vayetze Yaakov” (‘and Yaakov
left’). When Yaakov left Beersheba, he’d already completed the seven levels of
holiness, the seven Sefirot, namely: Malchut, Yesod, Hod, Netzach, Tiferet,
Gevurah and Chessed. These are the seven ‘Gevurot’.
“Vayelech Charana” (‘and he went to Charan’). Yaakov
went to Charan, to the place where the roots of din, or judgment, was
found because he wanted to draw down chessed, or kindness, into the
world, and to bring shefa (bounty) into the world, because the work of
the Tzaddikim is to bring chessed and shefa into the world.
From the moment that Rebbe Nachman of Breslev came
into the world, he sweetened all of the judgements in the world until the end
of all generations. He drew down Shefa into the world, he drew down Chessed
into the world, and he announced that there are no more wicked people, and that
the age of wickedness in the world had come to an end! From the moment that
Rebbe Nachman was born, the age of wickedness finished; there were no more
wicked people in Am Yisrael, as he himself revealed in Lesson 282 of Likutei
Moharan (popularly known as ‘
Azamra’).
In that lesson, Rebbe Nachman explains: “Od me’at
v’ain rasha”, (‘a little more, and there is no longer a wicked person).
Just a little more - today, tomorrow, the day after tomorrow – and we’ll
already see that there won’t be any more wicked people in Am Yisrael, because
everyone will be on the path of teshuva, or repentance.
This verse, “Od me’at v’ain rasha”, comes from
Tehillim (the book of Psalms), and Rabbenu explained its simple meaning: Just a little more! A little more, and there
will be no more wicked people, and everyone will be Tzaddikim, and everyone
will reach the level of “Your entire nation are Tzaddikim” (Yeshaya 60:21).
One Jew will become a Tzaddik today, another one will
become a Tzaddik tomorrow, and yet another one the day after. And the one who
will become a Tzaddik after a few days will fulfil the verse: “the smallest one
will be like a thousand, and the youngest will be like a vast nation” (Yeshaya
60:22).
This ‘small’ one will rise up and up, as the greater
the soul that a person possesses, and the more refined their soul, the more
difficulties and obstacles they have to overcome when they want to make Teshuva.
Rabbenu teaches us in Lesson 282 that there is no
such thing as a wicked person in Am Yisrael! There is no such reality. Even
if you see a completely wicked person, from his head to his feet, you can’t see
any Yiddishkeit in him at all, he is completely anti-Torah, anti-observance,
God forbid, even if it seems to you that there was never a more wicked person than
this since the creation of the world, you should know that the main problem is
that this person simply lacks da’at, or spiritual awareness.
But a huge fire of holiness still burns inside of
them! A raging fire of holiness and yearning for Hashem Yisbarach burns inside
of every Jew, just that it’s covered over by mountains of dust. Their neshama
is on fire for God, but it’s covered in a layer of dirt. These Jewish souls are
like spiritual volcanoes; from the outside, a huge mountain covers the heat and
the lava flowing just beneath the surface, but the moment the fire and the lava
burst forth it consumes the entire mountain. The mountain explodes!
A spiritual mountain of dirt and rocks is currently
resting on every Jewish soul, but the day will come when the fire will bursts
forth, and consumes all of these mountains of sand and dirt.
In lesson 282, Rebbe Nachman writes: “And you need to
search and find in him a small amount of good. And in that small place, he is
not a wicked person.” Rabbenu is teaching us that here is no such thing as a
wicked Jewish person, from his head to his toes, just that it currently seems
that way to you. But it’s only your imagination! You imagine that he’s a
completely wicked person, but if you train yourself to look for some little bit
of good that he has done, or some kindness that he did to help someone else, you’ll
always find even in the most worst wicked person lots and lots of good. And
the very act of you finding some good in this person, and judging him
favourably, through this very act you raise him up to the side of good, and you
can cause him to make Teshuva.
We need to look at every Jew with a ‘good eye’, and
stop thinking to ourselves: ‘Well, I made Teshuva and I keep Shabbat, and I
learn Torah, so why doesn’t he make Teshuva like me?! Why doesn’t he keep
Shabbat like me?! He should be doing the same! I went through what he went
through and more, so why doesn’t he also make teshuva!?’
It’s exactly about this that Rabbenu said: “Od me’at
v’ain rasha”. A little more! He is going to do it eventually, tomorrow or
the day after. You can’t interfere with
Hashem’s order for the world, and the order of the teshuva process. The order
of Teshuva, when each person will make Teshuva, how he will make Teshuva, this
process is hidden from all of His creations, but it’s a process that needs to
happen to every single Jew. Every single Jew will one day make teshuva!
Now, it’s possible to speed this process up, but only
if we start looking with a ‘good eye’. Only if a person merits to look at every
Jew with a ‘good eye’ then, “he will consider his place and he [the wicked
person] won’t be there any more”, [ie, in the place of being wicked]. If
people would realize this, and internalize that if they started to judge others
favourably, and to stop looking at them with an ayin ra, or ‘bad eye’,
then there wouldn’t be any more wicked people in Am Yisrael. Because it is
possible to bring all of them back to make Teshuva, in the blink of an eye.
Even when a Jew appears to be the most wicked person,
know that he really has the most righteous Neshama, or soul. It’s the
opposite of how it appears to be externally: the more ‘bad’ the Neshama seems, the more
righteous it actually is. Only, because it’s so full of righteousness it’s
scared. It has a hidden, internal fear about keeping Mitzvot, because it knows
if it starts the process of teshuva, it will go ‘to the end’!
There are many Jews who are far away from Yiddishkeit
who say, ‘if I start to fulfil Mitzvot, then I will go to the end… not like
you! I will go to the end, I will learn Torah day and night; I will become
holy, I will purify myself, to the end!’ But to go ‘to the end’ seems very
difficult for them. So, we try to say to them, ‘go at least halfway, and keep half
the laws’. But they tell us no, they are not prepared to do that, because by
them, they want everything - or nothing. And in truth, if you were to show them
and to explain to them how to reach the entire way, and how to become holy, and
how it’s really not as difficult as they think, they would all make Teshuva!
Every Jew is a part of Hashem, and every person has Godliness
in him. “Man is beloved that he was created in the image of G-d” (Avos 3:14).
The heart of every Jew, even the most wicked, burns for Hashem Yisbarach. There
is no Jew whose heart does not burn for Hashem Yisbarach. Because a Jew is
not a cow or a sheep, every Jew is a holy Neshama, that was carved out from the
Kiseh Hakavod [the Throne of Glory]. Every Jew in the place where he is,
even if the burning coals of his soul and heart are currently covered over by
mountains of sand, billions of grains of sand, nonetheless, the coals continue
to burn. We need to blow away the dirt covering his heart, the mountains of
sand covering his heart, and this is what Rabbenu said – come lets blow away
the mountains of sand from his heart, because there is no such thing as a
wicked person in Am Yisrael. There is no such thing as ‘chilonim’ [secular
Jews], there is no such thing!
There are people who succeed in fulfilling the Torah’s
commandments 80% of the time, 70%, 20% and 10%. Every Jew fasts on Yom Kippur, and
eats Matza on Pesach. There is no such thing as a ‘secular Jew’! Every one of
them fulfils some aspect of the Torah. Every Jew is a holy Jew, a pure Jew.
This is the foundation of what Rebbe Nachman taught
us, that there are no wicked people in Am Yisrael. It’s forbidden to call
any Jew ‘wicked’. It is forbidden to say: ‘this one is wicked’. We need to
fix this way of speaking, because there’s no such thing.
How can you believe that so-and-so is wicked? Were you
in his place? Do you know where he was born? Do you know who his parents were?
What he went through? How can you decide to call a Jew wicked? How can you
decide to call a Jew ‘chiloni’ (secular)? How can you say things like
this? Do you think you can decide who is righteous and who is wicked? Do you
think that you can really know? You need to know that everyone is righteous, because
“Your nation are entirely righteous”, and there are no wicked people in Am
Yisrael.
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