Breslov Blog

As I've mentioned several times already, in Torah 10 of "Likutei Moharan" Rabbeinu discusses three stages of attaining something new in spirituality: a mountain, a field, and a home. At first a new insight or ability seems too lofty and far from our ordinary life; then it becomes closer but still requires much toil to internalize and make our own, until, finally, we feel truly at home with it. Today I'd like to connect these three stages to the famous idea from Torah 6, "<...>  a person has to be baki (expert) in Halacha . This demands that he has two types of expertise: baki b'ratzo ("expert at running") and baki b'shov ("expert at returning")." Here Rabbeinu explains that there is no such thing in spirituality as always ascending, or always walking on level ground; there will be countless ups and downs, and so he teaches us how to deal with them. First, we have to be able to run up a mountain without ever slackening our...

This past Shabbos I started learning "Megillas Esther" with a Breslov commentary and already found some inspiration. It didn't really come from the commentary itself, but rather from an insight of my own, but I feel that this is even better.  When describing the feast of Achashverosh, the Megillah says that " d rinks were served in golden vessels, vessels of assorted design..." Our Sages explain that Achashverosh took the holy vessels of the Bais HaMikdash and used them in his drunken feast. This was a tragedy for the Jews because, as the commentary I was reading explains, these vessels represent the tools we have for coming close to Hashem and deepening our awareness of His constant Presence.  With the Bais HaMIkdash destroyed once again and its vessels nowhere to be found, we now find ourselves in more or less the same place. Yet all is not lost. The word "כלי" ("a vessel") has the same gematria as the word "הלכה" (" Jewish  ...

I'm still striving to understand what would be the best way to fulfil the dictum of Chazal, "As soon as Adat comes, we increase our simcha!" As I wrote already, I think it's no coincidence that the word "אדר" ("Adar") has the same gematria as "הר" ("a mountain"). Becoming more joyous doesn't come naturally; it's more like a steep mountain that we have to climb. To be honest, at first I was thinking more along the lines of buying myself a new book, or a new piece of jewelry (and kind of debating with myself which one would work better, or whether perhaps I should go ahead and buy both, so as not to take any chances). This attitude changed today when I listened to R' Nasan Maimon ZOOM class on "Likutei Halochos". As he was finishing the class, R' Nasan said, "Now, in the month of Adar, we have to increase our simcha. Now is the best time to concentrate on the simcha shel mitzvah !" Well, it may ...

  Rabbeinu's name "נחמן" (Nachman) has the same gematria ( 148) as three other words: "קמח" ("flour", which can be understood as physical sustenance in general), "נצח "("eternity"), and "חלקי" ("my portion"). This is the way I understand it: if a person really chooses Rabbeinu as their portion, then Rabbeinu will give them all they need, both physically and spiritually, in this world and in the Next One. What's more, this will enable them not just to live, but to really flourish. The word "יצמח" - "he will flourish" - also has this same gematria of 148.

It's almost Adar already, and everyone knows that, "as soon as Adar comes, we increase our joy". Yet this doesn't always come easy. Indeed, Rabbeinu said in "Sichos HaRan" (#20) that "true simcha is one of the most difficult things to achieve in serving Hashem". As usual, we can see this in the name of this month itself; the word "אדר" in Hebrew has the same gematria as the word "הר" ("a mountain"). So the joyous nature of this month is by no means a free gift; it's a mountain we have to climb. Hopefully, by the time Purim rolls around, we will be well on our way, and then this wonderful holiday itself will propel us straight to the top!

For many of us, this world is a very noisy place. Yet it is also a place of opportunity. The letters of the word "רעש" ("noise" in Hebrew) can be rearranged into another word - "שער" ("a gate"). This world can be a gate into everything holy, yet it can also lead us far away from holiness.  Getting past the noise and choosing the right gate can be agonizingly difficult. But for those of us who are lucky to have Rabbeinu as our guide, this is much, much easier. He was the one who said that we shouldn't allow this world to deceive us, and he also gave us all the tools we need to succeed.

In Torah 18 Rabbeinu says that everything people do has (or should have) a tachlis -  a purpose, and the most important tachlis is coming close to Hashem. I decided to take a look at the word " tachlis " and found something interesting. In Hebrew it is spelled "תכלית", so that right in the middle of it there is another word - "כלי" (a tool or a vessel). The two letters "ת" at the beginning and at the end of "תכלית" can stand for " ת למוד ת ורה" ("Torah learning"). Now, I don't know how much this insight is really worth, but I think all this can be understood to mean that Torah learning is not the primary goal; it is just a tool (of course, a very important one) for achieving the ulimate tachlis - coming close to Hashem.

In Torah 29 of "Likutei Moharan" Rabbeinu says that the complete rectification of all one's business dealings is "to keep in mind that the sole purpose of every step he takes and every word he speaks while earning a living is to be able to give charity from his earnings". This was something I could never understand. Isn't the most basic reason why people work is to be able to provide for themselves and their families so that they themselves shouldn't be in need of charity? After all, as Rabbi Akiva says in the Talmud," chayecha kodmin " - "a person's own life comes first". Today, while listening to R' Nasan Maimon's class on Torah 18, I unexpectedly got an answer to this question. In that Torah, Rabbeinu develops the concept that everything a person does has a tachlis (a purpose or goal). Most often, this tachlis has another tachlis: a person does A to achieve B, which would enable them to get to C. R' Nasan gave t...

Yesterday I was reading letters of Rabbi Yaakov Meir Shechter, one of the contemporary Breslov leaders here in Israel, and I really liked his words about what we have to ask from Hashem, "שלום בגופנו וממוננו. ותורתנו" ("peace in our bodies, in our money, and in our Torah learning"). I thought: Rav Shechter is probably a very spiritual person, yes he realizes how important it is not to lose sight of the physical. After all, it says in "PIrkey Avos" that if there is no flour, there is no Torah. We might want to live our whole lives on the upper, spiritual floors of the building because indeed they are more important, yet if we neglect the ground floor and it collapses, there will be no building to speak about.

What does a tzaddik do for those who are connected to him? One of the very important things is that he helps us come back to Hashem, even when we are incapable of doing so ourselves.. In Torah 35 Rabbeinu says that "teshuvah entails returning the thing to where it was taken from". This source is Chochmah (Wisdom) with which Hashem created the world. Practically, this means that a person who has merited returning to that lofty level lives with constant awareness of Hashem, and this awareness dictates everything they do or don't do. Rabbeinu goes on to say that this is the aspect of zarka (one of the musical notes used when reading the Torah; literally it means "to throw"). What this means that a person needs to be "thrown" back to the level of Chochmah because, more often than not, they are incapable of getting there by themselves, even if they want to. This is where the tzaddik comes in. He takes his followers, if only they are willing, and brings the...

Torah 8 begins with Rabbeinu stating that a sigh of a Jewish person is very precious because through this sigh, they receive shleimus hachesronos (a filling of their lacks). This is how this idea is explained in the "Mesivta" commentary, "through a sigh, he receives the things that he is missing." I realized today that this explanation is not necessarily the right one. In the next sentence, Rabbeinu explains that the lack is filled through a person receiving ruach chaiim from the tzaddik. But ruach chaim is something intangible; the way I see it, more often than not it manifests itself not in the person receiving what they lack (or what they perceive they lack), but in their getting the strength to cope with the situation exactly as it is. Of course, not all lacks are subjective. If someone is starving, then they really do need food. If someone is getting evicted from their apartment because they can't pay the rent, then, of course, they do need to come up wi...

This Shabbos, I saw another idea in the book about Rabbi Rosenfeld, a Breslov pioneer in America, that really caught my attention. Granted, it was related to what I'd already been thinking about, but nevertheless, it brought me some fresh inspiration, so I'd like to share it. "Rabbeinu zal wrote that true greatness is the ability to be both above and below at the same time; that is, to be spiritual and yet keep one's feet on the ground." Then I realized: a person has two feet, and they have to keep both of them firmly on the ground, This is probably why, in regard to gashmius , Rav Rosenfeld mainly guided his students in two areas: that first, they have to find a job and then get married. Only after becoming thoroughly grounded could they truly aspire to spiritual heights. 

The famous Jerusalem tzaddik Rabbi Arye Levin once said (I'm quoting from memory, so this just the idea that caught my attention and not his exact words), "When good and righteous people dream, their visions can reach Heavens but they are still firmly planted on the ground, like the ladder seen by Yaakov Avinu. Yet when evil people dream, their dreams are neither above nor below, neither reaching high nor rooted in reality; when Pharaoh had his dream, he saw himself standing at the edge of a river - neither here nor there." When I started writing for the Nanach blog, one of the conditions was that I wasn't allowed to mention any "contemporary Rabbis", which obviously included my teachers in Breslov. At first it was fun, "Hey, I have so many ideas of my own that I can write tons of posts without ever mentioning anybody else!" I saw it as an interesting challenge, and I wanted to prove that I could do this. Yet, after a while, I started to get a nagg...

There is a very well-known saying from the Talmud that Rabbeinu brings in Torah 57: that we shouldn't deviate either to the right or to the left from what the Chazal (as well as the tzaddikim and their contemporary students) teach us. But why, in fact, shouldn't we do that? My favorite answer comes from R' Nasan Maimon (but ultimately, of course, from Rabbeinu in Torah 48 Tinyana): because this world is a very narrow bridge! If we wiggle too much, it's very easy to fall. But if we stay firmly on course, then indeed there is nothing to fear.

Reb Noson writes in "Likutei Halochos" (" Hilchos Nedarim 4 ") that a person shouldn't want to be entirely spiritual, without eating, sleeping, and building a family with all that entails. One of the explanations of why it's wrong is that such ungrounded spirituality is, in fact, illusory. Rabbienu himself stresses in Torah 7 Tinyana, on which this Halacha is based, that a Jew should live both "above" and "below" because without "below", there is no "above".  This idea struck me today during our daily ZOOM class with R' Nasan Maimon, probably because R' Nasan was very successful in really bringing it home. Then I remembered that he had a great mesorah for it: his teacher, Rav Rosenfeld, who had single-handedly brought Breslov to America, did indeed guide his young students to be both "above" and "below": not only to be serious in their commitment to Torah and mitzvos, but also to find a job...