Rav Berland Shlit”a Delivers Shiur while the Snow Falls – 18 Shevat

OVER THE COURSE OF THE COLD SPELL WHICH HAS VISITED ISRAEL, WITH SNOW FALLING IN JERUSALEM, OUR REBBE RAV ELIEZER BERLAND SHLIT”A PRAYED THE MAARIV PRAYER AND DELIVERED A SHIUR TO A LARGE CROWD AMONGST FIERY ENTHUSIASM.

“Now all iniquities are forgiven, snow is already falling – ‘If your sins will be like scarlet, they will be whitened like snow.’  Now everything is whitened, all the iniquities!  We’re now 120 days after Rosh Hashanah, 30 days after Chanukah.  Everything is whitened.

“The women in Egypt were divided into three types.  The women, instead of running to Ein Kerem, Bikur Cholim, Shaarey Tzedek, Har HaTzofim [names of Israel hospitals], gave birth under the bushes.  The athletic ones would run to the field to give birth under the bushes.  They [the Egyptians] would come with dogs to search for them.

“A woman would go [weighing] 100 kg. and return 30 kg.  What’s going on here?  Where is the child?  [The mother would answer:] There wasn’t any child.  This is a sickness… There is a sickness like this where one becomes bloated and then becomes thin!

“This couldn’t be!

“The dogs began to dig, like the dogs in the Alps which dig and search for people in the snow.  In the Alps, people are buried under the snow – avalanches!  Sliding to the abyss.  Then they send special dogs which dig in the snow, with stretchers and warm drink – hot coffee and tea, and lots of medications to warm up those buried under the snow.

“Then there [in Egypt] the children would be buried under the earth!  Like Korach said, ‘What’s this joke of being on the earth? [The man Moshe was very humble, more than any person on the face of the earth].  You’re humble – then be under the earth!  Learn from me – I’m under the earth!’ [Then in fact he was swallowed in the earth.]

“So the children were being swallowed in the earth.  They brought plows.  Like the Rebbe says in Torah 9 [of Likutey Moharan], they saw that the children were being swallowed up, [so they] brought more plows and more plows.

“The Egyptians received ten plagues.  The plague of the firstborn – every woman had 80 children, all of them firstborn [firstborn to different fathers, because they were adulterers – Ramchal].  All of them died!  She came to Moshe, saying, ‘You said plague of the firstborn!  I had 80 children and all of them died.’  He said to her, ‘What can I do when all of them are firstborn… You know the reason!’

“So the women would flee under the bushes, under the trees.  ‘Under the apple tree, I aroused You,’ ‘I made you multitudes like the plants of the field.’  Children would blossom like mushrooms!  They would be swallowed up in the earth, and sprout – ‘they shall blossom from the city like grass of the earth’ – like the Tzaddik.  And so all the children blossomed – 600,000 children – all of these received the Torah!  They received the Torah.

“There were those who were not athletic, to run to the field – gave birth at home!  [The Egyptians] broke down the doors.  They heard the screams of the children ‘little foxes destroying vineyards.’  They took children aged 4, 5.  When the mother screamed – Ay!  Immediately they called the commando, the KGB, the Egyptian commando, to break down the doors.  The angels would enter from the windows.  Every woman would pray several months.  Therefore, the angels arrived, took the children and brought them across the river, to the desert.

“’He suckled them with honey from a rock, oil from a flinty stone.’  It all became filled with oil, with milk.  The entire desert became filled with lakes of milk.  The children swam in lakes of milk, lakes of oil, lakes of honey.  This was the second type, who didn’t manage to run to the field to give birth to the children.  So the angels took the children and brought them to the other side.

“The third type – not this and not that.  They didn’t manage to run to the field, and the angels didn’t arrive – what can be done?  They put [the children] in the place of rocks, the place of stones, the place of marble stones -- they placed the children.  The mothers didn’t relent.  They went and cried, said all the Tehilim.  They began to cry under the pyramids, under the rocks.  Then ‘the snare broke and we escaped!’  The snare broke – the rocks broke and the children emerged alive.”