The Only Advice Against the Yetzer Hara

THE YETZER HARA (EVIL INCLINATION) DOESN’T GO ON VACATION – EVEN IF YOU WERE IN UMAN

THE TRUE WAR HAPPENS IN ONE’S HEAD, IN THOUGHTS, IN THE PLACE WHERE WE PLAN LIFE.  THIS ISN’T A SECRET: WHOEVER WANTS TO CONQUER THE YETZER HARA NEEDS THE HOLY TORAH.  RABBEINU WARNED US OVER AND OVER: THERE’S NO OTHER ADVICE, NO SHORTCUTS, AND NO ALTERNATIVES.  ONLY LEARNING TORAH FILLS THE SOUL AND BRING A PERSON TO TRUE FREEDOM.

SO WHY WAIT?  LET’S GO OUT ON A FASCINATING JOURNEY ACCORDING TO THE WORDS OF MOREINU HARAV BERLAND SHLIT”A ABOUT THE PHENOMENAL POWER OF LEARNING TORAH, BECAUSE WHOEVER HOLDS ONTO THE TORAH, HOLDS ONTO THE KEY TO CONQUERING THE YETZER HARA.

SUNDAY, 12 TEVET 5785 – THE WAR AGAINST THE YETZER HARA BEGINS IN THE MIND, AND THE WEAPON IS THE GEMARA

These are his holy words:

TORAH-LEARNING IS THE BASIS OF ALL SPIRITUAL SUCCESS  

Boys needs to learn Torah.  They need to know Shas from memory, to finish Shas every month, like Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky, because only through the Torah are all prayers accepted.

Even if a person travelled to Uman a hundred times, his yetzer hara only gets stronger.  He doesn’t understand why, because he was already in Uman, he already slept in Uman for several months.  But his yetzer hara only gets stronger every day – only Torah learning can fight the yetzer hara.

Rabbeinu says in Lesson 8 [in Likutey Moharan]: “Three hollows of the skull-mind” -- we need to fill the mind, the hollows, only with Gemara learning.  There is no advice against the yetzer hara, because a person is held captive in the grips of the four bad traits, which are fire, water, air, dust, and the klipat nogah.  One is held captive in the grips of the four bad traits, the house of slaves, and is a slave to his yetzer hara.  He is incapable of learning Gemara, incapable of concentrating on Gemara learning, on understanding the Gemara.

https://vimeo.com/1045566845

However, the Rebbe says that we need to learn all of Shas.  We need to do what the Rebbe says, not what I say.  The Rebbe says that a person needs to fill his mind, the three hollows of the skull-mind.  A person has three hollows in his mind and he needs to fill them with learning Shas, to learn Shas day and night.  A bachur (a young single man) needs to learn 16 hours.  A married man, up to ten children, also needs to learn 16 hours.  When you have ten children, learn eight hours.  Up to ten children, the wife takes care of the children; you can be in yeshiva.  The yeshiva is five minutes from home, and if your wife needs help, she can call you.  Today, Kollels are five minutes from home.  It’s not like it used to be, that people had to walk three months.

Then, they would walk three months, a half-year, on foot.  There was the “one-day yeshiva student” (Chagigah 5b), who for a half-year walked on foot from Babylonia to the Land of Israel, and for a half-year he walked back and learned one day.  On this day, he managed [to learn] the entire Torah.  It used to be that people had to walk to yeshivas for a half-year, three months.  The son of the Tosefot Yom Tov walked for a month on foot from Me’as to Prague.  By the time he already reached Prague, he heard that his father was sentenced to life imprisonment, to death by hanging.  So he walked another time from Prague to Vienna, another two weeks on foot.  On the way, he saw a woman with a red handkerchief walking with her baby, with a nanny.  Suddenly, he sees a giant bull, two meters high, that is about to gore her and the baby.

TURN IT OVER AND TURN IT OVER, FOR EVERYTHING IS IN IT – THE ANSWERS TO ALL QUESTIONS ARE FOUND IN THE GEMARA

Who angered the bull?  Why would the bull gore a poor woman?  What did she do to it?  There is a reason for this.  In the Gemara, everything is written.  Whoever learns Gemara knows the reason!

Immediately, he grabbed the red handkerchief and threw it aside, and the bull ran after the red handkerchief.  This is how she was saved.  That second, a carriage with four horses – all gold – stopped.  A man is all-gold clothes -- gold-embroidered -- got down from the carriage.  He said to him, “Listen, you saved my wife!”

“What did I save?  I did a simple thing.  I saw a bull coming to kill a person!”

“You saved my wife.  What do you want, a villa?  Tell me what you want.  I’ll give you everything.”

He said to him, “I did a mitzvah, I saved a person from death.  What, should I sell the mitzvah for money?  God forbid, I’m not willing to.”

“But I will give you a three-story villa with ten elevators.”

“Let me learn Gemara.  You’re just bothering me.  Leave me alone!”  He was in the middle of learning Gemara.   He wasn’t willing for him to speak to him at all.

“Fine, you know what?  Take my business card.  I’m the French consul in Vienna.  Vienna is in Austria.  If you have some matter there, I don’t know, if you ever come to Vienna, come to me.  I will help you with everything.  I’ll work out everything for you.  Present my business card, and they will immediately let you in.”

He’s already in torn and worn-out clothing.  Already for a month, he’s travelling, walking on foot for four weeks.  His shoes are torn, he’s carrying them in his hands.  He reaches Vienna and asks, “What happened to my father, the Tosefot Yom Tov, the most important commentator on the Mishnah?”

“Your father is a spy who writes against Christianity.  There is testimony by two kosher Jews, ‘tzaddikim,’ who say that your father wrote against Christianity.  The chief priest imprisoned him, and in another hour, the emperor signs.  The moment that it’s signed, they’ll hang him in the city square in front of everyone, so that they will hear and fear.”

“My father is going to be hanged in another hour and I have a business card from the French consul in Vienna.”  He ran quickly and saw there some kind of guard’s hut.  He showed to him the business card.  The guard didn’t understand: A man in torn clothes and totally full of mud, gripping his shoes in his hands – what do you have to do with the consul?  Have you gone crazy?  You forged it, certainly.  You Jews know how to forge anything.

He said: “Listen, go to the consul and tell him that someone is waiting for him outside.  I have a business card.  What is it your business?  Why do you interfere with me?”

So he runs to the consul and says to him, “Some crazy man has come.  Perhaps we should institutionalize him.”  He shows him the business card.  Suddenly, the consul remembers: “Oy, he saved my wife.  He saved my baby.  He saved my nanny.  Bring him in immediately.”  He shouted at this guard, and he immediately brought him in.  He opened all the gates for him.  He said to the consul, “In another hour, my father is begin taken out to be executed.  They say that he wrote against Christianity, that he’s against Christianity.”

The consul ran quickly to the king, but the king refused to sign [to release him].

He [the son] says to the consul, “The king already has to sign, there’s no choice.  There’s no such thing.  You are the French consul.  A French consul has power.”

So the consul runs another time to the king.  The king says, “Fine, give 30,000 grush, and we’ll release him.”

“From where would he have 30,000 grush?  His clothes are torn, his shoes are torn, he’s totally full of mud.”

Immediately, they announced in all Vienna that they were going to take out the Tosefot Yom Tov to execution.  Everyone sold their jewelry, seats, tables.  They gathered only 15,000 grush.  They didn’t manage to reach 30,000.  Fine, for 15,000 grush, they release him, expel him to Krakow, to Lodz, to Kovno.  He’s expelled from city to city.  In every place that he tries to be a rabbi, they say, “The Tosefot Yom Tov is coming!”  They don’t know that he is sentenced to death and immediately make him chief rabbi.  Immediately, they also receive a letter from Vienna, to immediately fire him by command of the emperor of Vienna.   The emperor writes, “I freed him, but not so that he would become chief rabbi.”

Chief Rabbi of Krakow, Chief Rabbi of Warsaw – there’s no such thing.  So he would wander from city to city.  In every place, they would receive letters from the emperor in Vienna.  A person here needs to go through seven levels of Gehinnom (hell) until he reaches his purpose.  Even the Tosefot Yom Tov, who was the greatest in his generation, the greatest Tzaddik in his generation, but two wealthy men whom he ruled against in court told him, “If you rule against us in court, he won’t have rest until the end of your life.”  So it actually was.

So the Rebbe says that a person’s entire work is only to fill their mind with Gemara – this is all one’s work.  There’s nothing else in the world.  Everything else is the Sitra Achra (the side of evil).  It’s the house of slavery.