House of Love and Prayer San Francisco, 5733.
Transcribed by Rabbi Elana Rappaport Schachter for the Holy Beggars' Gazette  
What is the highest level a person can reach? I'll tell you on a simple level.
Sometimes you hear a person laughing and it sounds like laughter, but if you  have really good ears it really sounds like crying. You listen to a hurricane and it  sounds like the wind is angry, but if you have really good ears you know that the  wind is searching for something is so desperate. A wedding is a strange thing,  and if you don't have good ears the whole thing sounds shallow. Most people don't  hear what is going on at a wedding. The holy bride walked in... she didn't say  anything. The holy groom walked in... he didn't say anything. That's only if you  don't have good ears. If you had mamash good ears you could hear not only what  the holy bride is crying now, but you could hear her cries from the very first cry  on, and the same with thechasan. When they walk to the wedding they don't  begin from a little room down the hall, but from their very first second to this  minute was one long walk to the wedding. So I want to bless each holy couple that  they are with people who hear them in a very deep way, and that G-d should bless  them with children who also hear, and they should grow in a world that hears.
  Reb Nachman says that people come to a wedding and then they walk out. One  says, "It was a beautiful wedding. I liked the food." Another says, " I  liked the  music." Another says, "I met a lot of good friends there."  They werent really at  the wedding. Then someone walks out and says, "Baruch HaShem, thank G-d,  those two got together!"" He was there at the wedding.
  The Veil  The more real a thing is the less you can see it. After you reach the level where  you see all those things which are not to be seen, then you open your eyes and  everything is clear to you and it feels like you saw it all the time. To love someone  is the deepest thing in the world, but you can't prove it. G-d is the most, utmost  real thing in the world and you can't see Him, but after you don't see Him, you see  Him. Then you can see Him everywhere, in every flower, in every cloud, in every  little stone, in every candle. When we say the Shema, G-d is One, we close our eyes,  because first we don't see G-d, we're blind, we just believe, but then we open our  eyes and it is so clear. He's always there.
  If people only know each other by what they see, then there is no connection  between them. If they see about each other all the things that nobody else sees  that means they really love each other; that the A-mighty put them together.  This is the source of the tradition that the chasan (groom) is putting a veil over  the face of the kallah (bride). He tells her, and tells the world, "I have seen in my  kallah things which nobody else has seen."   G-d doesn't only put people together in this world; they have been put together  before they were born. So the chasan is telling his kallah, "Believe me, I  remember. I remember a long time ago when we were not seen in this world yet,  when the A-mighty put us together."  The holiness of a wedding is that they do it  of their own free will, their own free choice, but after their free choice they  realize they had no free choice, because G-d had put them together all the time.
  Friends, you must understand that when we do something we are doing it and  then it is over and done, but that when G-d is doing something it is there all the  time. The truth is that at the moment of the wedding G-d is putting chasan  and  kallah  together like He never did in Heaven, because this world is much deeper  than Heaven. Heaven is only what G-d is doing, but this world is us and G-d, and  two are always stronger. When the chasan covers the kallah, from that moment  on G-d is putting them together in such a high place that nobody has ever seen it,  nobody knows, not even the prophets, not even our patriarchs, just the two of  them alone with G-d.
  We wish they will always have a beautiful face. In Hebrew panim  - face, and  p'nim, - inside, are the same thing. We always want them to be one, insides and  outsides, from all four sides.
  People get married in order to bring children into the world. When the chasan  covers the kallah's face that means he knows that children are coming from  such a high place where nobody can see, nobody can look, only G-d in Heaven can  know. So, according to our holy tradition that very split second of covering the  kallah's face is the moment when they should both pray that their children  should come from the holiest place in the world.
  The Tallis  A good friend is someone where I can hide. Sometimes we make a lot of mistakes  and we have nowhere to hide. A Tallis, a holy prayer shawl, is a place where I can  hide. According to our holy tradition, a tallis is given as a gift from the bride to  the groom. You know someone loves you when you are good and sweet, but  everyone has a part that is not perfect. So the bride says to the groom, "You can  trust me so much, you can hide under my soul all the time. I shall help you hide  under this tallis for all eternity." The truth is that in our lives we meet many  people whom we love, but only one person who gives us a tallis of peace where we  can hide.
  The Ring  There are two lights in the world. There is finite light, which has measures,  which has vessels. Then there is the infinite light which has no vessels, has no  beginning and never ending. This is round. Every person in the world has a little  bit of measured and a little bit of unmeasured light, and yet even the  unmeasured is individual. In that part of the light which has measure,  everybody's measure is different. Even in the light of the infinite, in the  unmeasured, the holiness of human beings is that even though we are all  infinite, I am not infinite in the same way you are infinite. But then there is  something infinite behind all this which brings all the infinite together. The  kallah  walks in circles around the chasan, giving him that part of herself which  is infinite. The holy chasan  gives her a little ring, giving her that part of himself  which is infinite. Both of them are standing under the chupah  (canopy), the  great infinite light which covers both of them together, which is G-d's light  beyond everything. that real, holy, infinite light which has no beginning and  never ending is what gets people together.
  The Holy Beis Yaakov says if someone gives you a gift and you don't know the  worth of it then you didn't receive that gift properly. Imagine if someone gives  me a little ring and I think it is worth only a dollar. So my thank you is a dollars  worth thank you. I didn't receive more. If I know the ring is worth one hundred  dollars I say thank you differently, because I receive it differently. Can you  imagine if someone gives me something and I know it is eternity?!
  I'm sure you gave a lot of gifts in your life, but none of them compare to the  wedding ring. For the first time in your life you are privileged to give someone a  gift and know you are really doing G-d's will. For the first time in your life you  give someone a gift and you know your whole life depends on that little gift. For  the first time in your life you give someone a gift and you know this person will  remember it in eternity. For the first time you give someone a gift and you know  your great great grandchildren will know. So you can imagine how round this  ring is. It is really eternal. It has no beginning and never ending. It will be  remembered forever.
  When you receive this ring it is mamash  eternity. Your life depends on it, your  children, the whole world, the coming of Messiach depends on it. The Gemara  says Messiach can come only when all the people who are supposed to be in the  world to bring Messiach are here. Everybody has a little brick for the Great  Highway, and until everybody has put his or her stone in the right place the  Highway isn't yet finished.
  The Ketubah        The Midrash says the Torah was written with black fire on white fire. White  fire is when everything is clear. Black fire is when everything is dark. Imagine I  take a piece of white paper and I start writing letters. Someone who doesn't know  about letters says, "Why are you putting so much darkness on the white paper?" I  say, "You don't understand. I'm writing holy words." Sometimes we are a little bit  angry with G-d and we think, "Why do you put so much darkness upon us?" But  after the whole thing is over we realize G-d was writing holy letters. We bless the  chasan and kallah that they should be able to read the black fire and the white  fire. We bless them that there should always be white fire around them because a  letter can't live without white fire. A Jew can't live without white fire. Holy  Shabbos kept us going even with all the dark fires. Shabbos is just white fire.  Davening is white fire. Having a little house where you love each other is real  white fire. On that while fire HaShem is writing beautiful words, holy words.
       The chasan is promising in the ketubah, "I shall work and I shall treasure and I  shall feed and I shall sustain." It means "I shall feed your body and sustain your  soul with Truth."        The holy Strelisker was fire, but before he was married he was a holy beggar He  was a little butler in a rich man's house and his wife-to-be was a domestic helper,  sweeping the floors. No one knew how holy they were, the holy of holiest. Finally  the rich man married them off. it was a little wedding. I'm sure there were ten  holy beggars there, and maybe the thirty-six hidden tzaddikim, but officially it  was just the rich man and a few rabbis. Under the chupah they read the ketubah  and the seven blessings, and right after the wedding was over, the holy Strelisker  grabbed his wife, jumped on a wagon, and wanted to leave. The people asked him,  "Why are you running? We've prepared a little feast for you." He said, "I have no  time, because when you read in the ketubah 'who sustain and feed their wives  with truth' I suddenly realized that my wife and I don't know the truth yet.  Therefore we are rushing to my holy Rebbe, Reb Shlomo Karliner to learn fast  what it is to be true, what the truth is." So holy Strelisker and his holy wife  arrived in Karlin and there were real Sheva Brochos for them - with Truth!
       The smaller a thing is, the more precious it is. The holy Shinover said, "When I  was young I thought the blacksmith must be the richest man in the world,  because when he works he makes noise all over the world. He is sweating. He is  really working hard. A little jeweler who walks around with a little suitcase with  no sweat, no noise, how can he make a living? Then I grew up and I realized that  the blacksmith has tsores  (problems). All the noise he was making had nothing  behind it. The jeweler doesn't make any noise, but he has a sweet little suitcase,  and there are the millions."        A holy beggar is someone who doesn't make much noise, and maybe he doesn't  even know very much, but he has a little ketubah. He has one sweet little paper,  and everything is written on it. I want to bless you, chasan and kallah, that when  you have children, the night before you give your child a name, when you don't  know which name to give, take out the ketubah and cry over It. Then your  eyesight will be so clear and you will know just what name to give.
  The Glass  The holy Baal Shem Tov says that children find it hard to give their parents  advice. Sometimes they would like to, but it's a little bit hard. But a good friend is  very easy to give advice to. Very few minutes in our lives are we true servants of  G-d. Very few moments are we really G-d's children. Even fewer moments are we  on the level of being G-d's friends. Under the chupah you are definitely G-d's  friends. In fact you are G-d's partners, building the world. Therefore it is a  custom that the chasan gives G-d a little bit of advice. You know what you do? You  take a perfectly good glass, with nothing wrong, and you break it. You are  showing G-d, "Don't you see how bad it looks when someone breaks a glass, so why  is the world broken? Why did You let it happen? Why did You let it happen that so  many hearts should be broken and crippled?" The difference is that to fix a  broken glass takes so much time; all a broken heart needs is to be uplifted. We are  telling G-d, "If I want to fix this glass it would take me so long, but You, G-d, You  can fix it in a minute. Why don't You?
            Everything perfect is like the Holy Temple, and everything destroyed is the  destruction of the Holy Temple. If there would be no more destruction in the  world the Holy Temple would be rebuilt.  When the Belzer Rebbetsn passed away,   the Rebbe was walking behind the coffin and crying terribly. The Chassidim  asked him, "Rebbe, why are you crying so terribly?" He answered, "I'll tell you. If I  could bring my wife back to life again wouldn't I do it? I would do anything in the  world! So here I am, walking behind her coffin know the truth. If I could bring  her back to life I would do it. You, G-d, You can bring the whole world back to life!  Why don't You? Why don't You?"     Anyway friends, let this glass be the last broken thing in the world. From new on  let there be no more breaking hearts, no more breaking spirits, no more unsaid  prayers.
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