Eikev

The sicha for parshas Eikev is in Vol. II of Likkutei Sichos

Parshas Eikev is one of the seven Haftorahs of consolation. The Rebbe says that the Haftorah is a reflection of parsha, so if the Haftorah is one of consolation, then the parsha also must be one of consolation. And what is the consolation? For the golus and an encouragement for the coming geulah.

The truth is that all of Torah is really about geulah, because who is considered a free person, the Mishnah says, only one who studies Torah. Because through the study of Torah, we free our neshama from the golus of the animal soul and the body and that brings eventually to the geulah, the freedom of the body in the literal sense from its exile in the physical world.

Everywhere in Torah speaks about the various subjects of mitzvahs, and through those mitzvahs and the study of Torah we come to geulah. But in the seven parshas of consolation that come after Tisha B’Av, here the geulah is spoken of directly. In order to explain geulah, in order to appreciate and understand geulah, we first have to understand what is golus, what is its cause and how do we rectify it. When you rectify the cause, then automatically the effect produced by this cause is removed and nullified. And that brings us to the geulah.

For example, a person who is ill. If he knows that he is ill, and he knows what the illness consists of, then he will know that he has to go to doctor. When he goes to doctor he will know what to tell him, he will be able to describe his illness, and the doctor is better able to help heal him. The knowledge itself that he is ill, the knowledge of what the illness consists of, this is already half the cure, which enables the other half of the cure to take place as well.

Therefore in the knowledge and understanding of what is the golus, and what produced it, that is already the beginning of geulah, the beginning of redemption, because knowing what the golus is we are halfway to the Promised Land.

When the Jews came to Israel the first time, they got there through the desert, through a great desert.  And when they came out at the other end of the desert, then they entered into Eretz Israel. Since all of the events in Torah are a lesson and a blueprint for what will follow through history for all generations, the fact that the Jews came into Israel after going through the desert, that tells us also something about our geulah. Our geulah comes after we go through our desert, and in this knowledge, the understanding of what the desert was then will help us understand how our desert, the one we are in today helps us prepare for the geulah.

And so we see in today's parsha, one of the seven parshas of consolation, that we are told about the desert.  And the Torah describes the desert as follows: it says it was a midbar hagadol, a great, large desert, hanora, an awesome desert, a place of nachosh, snakes, soraf, burning snakes, v’akrav, and scorpions, u’tzimaon and a thirst because of a lack of water.

These are the different details, which the Torah tells us about that desert, which is also a reflection of the desert that we are in.  The Torah says, that this midbar, this uninhabited place is gadol, very large, a grosse midbar, which means that the place that is uninhabited is greater and larger than the place that is inhabited. Particularly if we take it on a deeper level, a place that is inhabited means a place that is inhabited by Yiddishkeit. So midbar gadol, a place where there is no holiness, where there is no Yiddishkeit, is much greater than the place where Yiddishkeit is, particularly since Jews are a tiny minority among all the other nations. When a person starts to consider the world in which Yiddishkeit does not exist as a great midbar, he is impressed by the greatness, by the vastness of the rest of the world, this is the beginning of the discouragement of the golus. Particularly when a Jew considers that not only are Jews a minority, but in a time of golus, at least now the Jews who are practicing Torah and mitzvas, are not yet the majority of Jews.

So the first thing the Torah tells us about the golus, the cause of the golus is that
we see the midbar as great, as being very large. So the first cause, the first step downwards into golus, is the feeling a Jew has when he looks around the world and sees that the world is bigger than him and that the place of Torah and mitzvas is a very tiny place compared to the rest of the world.

The truth is, of course, that the world has no control and no authority over a Jew.
On the contrary, as we say in the Haftorah of this parsha, that the time will come when kings will serve the Jews and ministers will be the assistant of the Jew; as the Gemarrah says concerning the mitzvah of tefillin, when the nations of the world see that the name of G-d is upon you, then they fear you, and that's referring to tefillin that we wear on our heads. That when a Jew has on his head the words that are contained in the tefillin, Shema Israel Hashem Elokeinu Hashem Echad, and his mind, his intellect is surrounded by this awareness, it’s wrapped around his head, that G-d is the only Master of the entire world, then all of the nations of the world are respectful of the Jew and wants to help him. 

But when the Jew starts to think that it’s midbar hagadol, a very large desert, he gives the world, the non-Torah world, the non-holy world, an importance and a significance, and he says the world is so large and I am so small, how we can sustain ourselves.

The question itself, that doubt which gives the world such significance in his own mind, is the beginning of a state of golus for this person, golus being a heller v’hester, a concealment, where he no longer recognizes that what he has is the truth and is the greater power, the greater truth. He feels subservient and diminished by the size of the world. But when he remembers that G-d chose us and elevated us, lifted us up and gave us the Torah, then he is not intimidated by anything, knowing that he is higher, closer to the truth and has more substance than the rest of the world, then he is not in golus at all.

He understands and recognizes that G-d gives him his livelihood, that he can conduct his business in a kosher and honest way, according to the teachings of the Torah, and then he will even have time left over to have a daily session for the study of Torah.

So seeing the world as intimidating, overwhelmingly large is the beginning of his golus and if he persists in that, he goes down a step further where the midbar, the golus, the world it's not only gadol, a vast midbar, but it is also hanora, it becomes also the awesome desert. When the world is large and he feels diminished, insignificant by comparison, then as long as he remains within his own world, in the yeshiva, in the synagogue, in his own home, there he feels comfortable being a Jew.  He is only intimidated when he goes out into this large world, and it dwarfs him. But when he starts to consider the world, not only large, but also awesome, then he is not only feeling insignificant, but he is feeling threatened by the world. And then even in his own home, even in his synagogue, even in his yeshiva, he feels that he has to compromise, he has to submit to the dictates of the world and he can't be Jew even in his own environment.

And that leads to a further descent, where it's not only a great desert, not only an awesome desert, but it also becomes a nachosh, it also becomes a snake. We are told that the venom of a snake is hot, it burns, and here what it means that the desert is a place of a nachosh, is that he starts to develop an enthusiasm and a passion for worldly things that distract him from holiness.

The step after that is that he comes to a desert of a saraf, a burning, consuming snake. Not only does he becomes enthusiastic and passionate about worldly things that distract him from his passion for holy things and goodness, but it completely destroys, it completely consumes all his enthusiasm for holiness, saraf means completely burnt up, all his enthusiasm for holiness is drained away into the unholy.

And that can get even worse, where with the  midbar, the desert, the golus becomes an akrav, a scorpion. The scorpion's venom, we’re told, is a cold venom, it freezes the tissue. This desert has the effect on the Jew in golus that he starts to feel a coldness, an indifference to all matters of holiness and Yiddishkeit. And that's even worse than the snake and the saraf.  Because as long as there is warmth and enthusiasm, as long as there is passion, even for the wrong things, it is very easy to transform a passion that is misguided into a passion for the right things. Because as long as you are alive, as long as you are enthusiastic, that can be channeled into a good direction.  But coldness, indifference, this can’t be used for anything. You can't channel it, you can't redeem it.  It is lifelessness and with lifelessness, there is nothing you can do. So that is worse even then enthusiasm for the wrong things.

This leads to an even greater descent, an even worse state of golus: tzimaon, a thirst, when there is no water. This means that the person is so trapped in the golus, so overwhelmed by what the world seems to be demanding of him, that even when from Above his soul is stirred, and he develops a yearning and a thirst for G-dliness, where his neshama wants to get closer to G-dliness, either because of the heavenly voice, that daily calls the neshama to return, to come back to G-dliness, as Chassidus explains, and so he develops a thirsting and a yearning for G-dliness, even then he can't find his way back to Torah. Because ain mayim, there is no water, he has no access to the water of life, the Torah. He doesn't know what it is he is thirsting for. He doesn't know what it is he is yearning for, because he is completely forgotten that holiness even exists, and so he can't imagine that his thirst is for holiness.

Where does all of this begin?  What is the first step in this terrible condition of alienation and entrapment in golus?  All of it begins with that first thought, where he considers the midbar, the midbar hagadol, he feels intimidated by the vastness and by the daunting size of the rest of the world. And by giving it that kind of significance, that is the first step, that leads him into the descent, which eventually ends up with a thirsting but without means of finding his way home.

And so we understand from this, that the first step in repairing the golus and getting out of the golus, and producing the state of geulah, is to have confidence and feel strong and secure in the awareness that qualitatively, in terms of truth and in terms of holiness, we have access to that holiness, we were elevated by the mitzvas we were given and the closeness we have to G-d, and that that should actually make the rest of the world that doesn't have this access, look insignificant compared to us. And in that way, we shed the mantle of golus, and we are ready to go into the land, into the good land, with Moshiach Tzikanu, speedily in our days.

With this will also understand the statement in the Gemarrah considering the laws of davening. The law is that while you're saying the shemona esray, you're not allowed to interrupt for any reason at all, not even if the king walks into the room. Another law is that if a person finds a nochash, a snake crawling around his ankles, he should not interrupt the davening. But if he finds a scorpion crawling around his ankle, he should interrupt the davening and save himself from the scorpion.

The meaning of it is, that when a person is in the middle of davening, which means that he is going about his Yiddishkeit, serving G-d and in the middle of this, he feels a warmth that isn't holy. He suddenly feels an enthusiasm and an attraction for something other than G-dliness. That's the snake, as we said before, the snake’s venom is warm, and it is crawling around his ankle.  So although this is not good, yet he doesn't have to interrupt his davening, on the contrary, he should davening better.  Because eventually, if he davens better, he will draw the enthusiasm or the warmth that he is feeling for unholy things into the davening and it will become part of the holiness.

But if a person is davening, and he suddenly feels a scorpion's effect around his ankles, he is feeling a coldness and indifference, even if it is only around his ankles, the coldness hasn't affected his mind or his heart, but it is beginning to affect him around the ankles, that's enough reason to interrupt, to stop what he's doing and to reconsider and find a better way to serve G-d.  Because the coldness, as we said before, is worse than an enthusiasm for the wrong things.  A lack of enthusiasm, this indifference and this coldness, shows that he is not on the right track, it is not serving G-d in the right manner at all. And therefore he has to stop this kind of service, davening meaning service, he has to stop this way of serving G-d, and he has to find a more effective way of serving G-d, the way that ignites his neshama, that warms him to the service and makes the service alive, living, and enthusiastic. And generally that means that he has to come to the service of G-d through the study of pnimiyus haTorah, through the study of Chassidus, because the study of Chassidus is the Tree of Life that brings enthusiasm to all other parts of Torah.

And so by learning this week's parsha, that describes for us the process, the causes that lead us into the golus, into the depth of the golus, into this vast, awesome desert, that swallows up the people, by understanding the causes of the golus we are halfway to geulah, because we know what we need to correct.  And primarily, as the Rebbe said, what we need to correct is this feeling of intimidation. The feeling that because the world is larger than us, we therefore can't have an effect on it, but it must instead have an effect on us.

When in fact, that which we have, the G-dliness that we carry, and the message that we bring to the world, is the most powerful, the truest and most promising of a good world and a transformed one; that we have the ability to change the world and we need not be intimidated, we may not be intimidated into thinking that because we are small in number, small in size, that our message is therefore not as effective, not as important, and not as powerful, when on the contrary, we were given the mission , and we were given the ability certainly to change the world and make it a dwelling place for G-d by spreading the teachings and the practice of Torah and mitzvos throughout the whole world wherever we come in the various travels in this desert just as it was then, that the Jews traveled and camped and traveled and camped, bringing G-dliness to all the places where they stopped, and although places that they covered, and traveled through, until the entire midbar was not only not a place of defeat and alienation, but it was actually the preparation, a warm-up, with the coming into Eretz Israel, with the geulah that will come at the end of this long golus, which serves as a preparation that actually brings the geulah, with the coming of Moshiach speedily in our days. 

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