The Merit of Knowing You Are a Jew! • The Daily Lesson from Rabbi Eliezer

Before you is a summary of the topics from the daily lesson as delivered by our teacher, Rabbi Eliezer Berland shlit"a – yesterday after the Maariv prayer, Monday night, 9th of Shevat 5786, Parshat Beshalach:

1. Rabbi Elazar ben Arach was equal to them all.

2. It is forbidden to speak during prayer.

3. The Gemara states in Chagigah, page 14b, that Rabbi Elazar ben Arach brought down fire from Heaven.

4. Abraham called Eliezer a donkey, because if you are with Abraham for one hundred and twenty years and you do not see fire, then you remain at the level of a donkey. And in the end, he merited, in the merit of the humiliation, to ascend with his body to Heaven.

5. "We are all dead" – Rashi brings that they saw a woman whose children all died during the plague of the firstborn, and the real reason was because she went with other men.

6. "And it covered the eye of the sun" – the locusts, even though there were billions of them, did not step on one another and did not push one another, but rather each one walked in an orderly fashion.

7. Tomorrow is the yahrtzeit of the Rayatz; there was someone who was an opponent of Chassidut, and all of his sons left the path. In his distress, he turned to the Rayatz and asked for forgiveness, and then he told him that his grandchildren would already do teshuvah (repentance).

8. Hashem said to Pharaoh, you called them "many" (lest they multiply), I will bring upon you locusts (arbeh).