"How the Jordanian Attack on Jerusalem was Stopped in the Merit of a Young Man Who Fired a Simple Rifle" • The Daily Lesson from the Gaon and Tzaddik Rabbi Eliezer Berland shlit"a (may he live long and good days)

Before you is the full daily lesson as delivered by our teacher, the Rav, Rabbi Eliezer Berland shlit"a (may he live long and good days) - yesterday after the Ma'ariv (evening) prayer, Sunday night, the 18th of Sivan, Parshas (Torah portion) Shelach-Lecha:
"Every day ten killed, every day on Shabbat ten killed—a most righteous young man from Susya, from the Hebron Hills. It is a religious moshav (settlement), and the commander, a Major, was inside the tank—in the Namer tank. Once there were Shermans and Pattons. The Patton would defeat the Sherman. Then in the Six-Day War, they arrived with Pattons, so they would also defeat the Pattons. It is impossible to defeat a Patton, but there was one Yemenite man who was there in Shafat—the Shlomo Ridge (Ramat Shlomo). He saw two Pattons hiding there in order to conquer Jerusalem; they could have conquered Jerusalem in a single second. You were not born yet, 1967 (5727). So two Pattons approached and had already reached Ammunition Hill (Givat HaTachmoshet). In another minute, they would have been at the gates of Jerusalem in Meah Shearim; not a trace would have remained of all of Meah Shearim. And then a Yemenite boy, a bit 'foolish,' 'simple,' I don’t know what he had... he took a simple rifle and fired at the tank with a simple rifle. Two Patton tanks—this is Russian-made, it was the most modern armor at the time. Forty-eight years ago. And then suddenly he fires with his simple rifle, just tickling these tanks a bit, these Pattons. They had arrived from Jericho, and they had gasoline canisters. A tank cannot travel all the way from Jericho; it can go ten kilometers—twenty—it cannot travel sixty kilometers. So they attached tin gasoline canisters to them on the roof at the back. And the moment he fired at the back, he hit the gasoline canisters, and the gasoline ignited in a millisecond and all the tanks went up in flames. This was the greatest miracle of the Six-Day War, that Jerusalem and Meah Shearim were saved from the two Pattons the Jordanians brought. We didn't... back then we were under the Jordanians. They fired all day; they would fire at boys and girls. They would fire and they would snip (snipers). They were here—these housing projects (shikunim) were not yet built. The housing projects of the Third Wall, that was the border and here was the wall, and they stood on the wall and sniped into Meah Shearim, into Beit Yisrael; it was impossible to do anything. Just like there are a thousand missiles every day, it is impossible to do anything. And today there are already RPGs. Today they fire at the Merkava and at the Namer tank. Twelve people enter a Namer—these are the most sophisticated tanks—but an RPG cracks it as if it were made of paper. And all the terrorists—seventy thousand terrorists—all of them have RPGs. This is a war that will never end. There is no chance that this war will ever end, except for when the girls decide to lengthen their skirts and sew up the slit. Every girl who walks with a slit is violating a d'Oraisa (Torah) prohibition. They must immediately change the dress, and all the girls must know this. Every girl needs to be a principal and a teacher; now until the age of fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, they must study. A girl should not just wander around; she needs to be a teacher or a principal to open a seminary for a thousand girls—there will be a thousand girls. A thousand principals, there will be a thousand seminaries, there will be a million girls who will study Torah, who will keep Shabbat, who will say Tehillim (Psalms), and then the complete Geulah (Redemption) will come speedily in our days, Amen!"
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