Brooklyn, Elul 5746.
Transcribed by Rivka Haut for Connections

Here is a story of the Lubliner:
Reb Yankele was a multi multi multi millionaire. In Lublin every Shabbos
there were thousands of hasidim. Reb Yankele paid all the bills of Lublin for
many years. The Hasidim wanted to show their gratefulness to him so they said
that they wanted him to have the privilege of sitting next to the Rebbe. So
for years, he sat next to the Rebbe. Suddenly he went bankrupt. Everything he
owned was taken from him. There was a rich man who said, "Everything that you
have belongs to me. The seat that you have, next to the rebbe, that too
belongs to me." But reb Yankele said, "But I  didnt buy that seat. It was
given to me out of friendship."


Well this rich man gave him trouble. Every shabbos & yom tov he was in shul
an hour before davening began and he sat in Reb Yankele's seat and reb
Yankele couldnt drive him out.One great simcha, everyone runs to kiss the
Torah & Reb Yankele also runs to kiss the Torah. When he returns to his place,
there the rich man is sitting in his seat. People start arguing. Some say the
rich man is right. Others say reb Yankele is right. A fist fight breaks out.
The holy Lubliner walks around with his Torah, comes over & says, "What's
oing on? Fighting in the holy beis medrash?" Everyone stands frozen wherever
they are. Reb Yankele says, "Holy Rebbe, you remember once I was rich, I gave
so much tzedaka. Now I have nothing left except for the seat next to you."
How can the rich man take it away?"

The Holy Lubliner thinks for a while and says, "Wait. Let me ask the Heavenly
Court which of you is right." He closes his eyes and then says, "Reb Yankele,
in the name of the Heavenly Court, it is your seat. But not because you gave
so much money for Shabbos. It is your seat because when you said you lost
everything, that you only have one thing left. there was not one person in
shul who did not do tshuva. You touched them all so deeply. Everyone in this
shul is already inscribed in the Book of LIfe, because you caused them to go
through the gates  of tshuva. Therefore, the Heavenly Court gives you this
seat."

G-d opens so many gates for us. Dovid haMelek says: Zeh ha sha'ar laShem...
("This is G-ds gate. Tzadikim will enter through") What is the difference
between a wicked man & a tzadik. A tzadik, when he sees an open gate he goes
in. A wicked man doesnt. Look at relationships between people. between
husband & wife, parents & children. One of them opens the gate for the other.
How many people get divorced because they didnt open the gate? How many
children are angry with parents because whenever they opened the gate the
parents were too busy with something else? On the universal level, there were
times when Israel could have made peace with the entire world. There were
moments when we could have brought Moshiach. We didnt take care of it, we
missed the chance.

Every time I do a mitzva every time I do something good, G-d opens the gates
for me to do another mitzva. Why dont I go in? I never do. The Tanach writes
that wicked people are always walking around, always circling, never going
in. On the first Shabbos of Elul we always read Shoftim. "Appoint judges and
officers in all your gates." What is Elul all about? Doing good. G-d is
opening all of the gates.

I want you to know that the tshuva of Elul is not tshuva for sins. That is
for the ten days between Rosh Hashona & Yom Kippur. In Elul the important
thing is, I am doing tshuva for all the gates that were open to me and that I
didnt enter.


Let me say something very deep. Can you image what kind of gate G-d opened
to us on Mt Sinai? The deepest gate in the world. The gate was so wide open, the
gemora says, that there was no longer any death in the world. We could have
gone straight into eretz yisroel. We could have fixed the entire world. But
instead what did we do? We made the Golden Calf. We said to G-d, we are not
interested in Your gates.

Gevald! How could we do that? How could we do that to G-d? So Moshe had to 
go again to Mt Sinai to re-open all the gates.

In former good days, every city was closed with gates. When they were opened,
they blew the shofar. In Elul we blow the shofar to let the world know, to
let ourselves know, G-d is opening all the gates, G-d is re-opening all the
gates. And we are saying "Appoint judges and officers in all your gates which
G-d gave you." Like Yankele, you didnt deserve them. You lost them. But, G-d
is telling us, I shall give them back to you.

It says "which G-d gave you for your tribe". What does it mean? Whay didnt I
enter the gates? Becuase I said the gates are beautiful, but they arent mine.
These arent what i need. So G-d says to me, "your tribe". Each tribe has its
own task to do. G-d tells us in Elul, not only shall I re-open all the gates
for you, but I shall let you feel "for your tribe", what your thing in this
world really is.

Why did we make a Golden Calf? Obviously, standing before G-d was the
greatest experience in the whole world. Bt it didnt reach into our deepest
depth. Each person didnt say- this is for me, really for me. Every Jew knows
that there ought to be frum Jews. They feel the Jews as a whole ought to
follow the Torah. Even so called secluar Jews believe there should be Jews in
Mea Sheurim hwho are really frum. They just think its not for them. Elul is
"ani ledodi v'dodi le". I am my beloveds & he is mine. A Jew must say, it
does apply to me, it is mine.

Who had the most personal connection to G-d? Moshe Rabbenu. A rebbe is
someone who fixes our personal relationship with G-d. When Moshe Rabbenu
wasnt around they made a Golden Calf. Everyone knows that nobody really
believed a calf was G-d. They only wanted a personal relationship with G-d.
The holy Izhbitzer teaches that they knew, with unclear prophecy, that they
had something to do with the gold & silver, but didnt know what. They were
actually to build the Miskan with it, but didnt know that yet. Why was Aharon
HaCohen the one who built the golden calf? Aharon haCohen is the master of
the personal relationship with G-d. Moshe originally wanted Aharon to give
the Torah. When G-d first spoke with Moshe, he asked G-d to send someone
else-- Aharon-- to lead the Jews out of Egypt. But, obviously, G-d wanted
Moshe to give the Torah, so we had to make the Golden Calf. Afterwards we
realized that our mistake was that we werent connected to G-d in a personal
way.

All year long I'm doing tshuva without hearing the shofar. If I do something
wrong, I say to myself, "G-d I'm sorry, I wont do it again" & thats enough.
After I made the golden calf I realized that I sinned because I wasnt
connected enough. So Rosh Hashona is a Day of Remembrance, the day I say
every word in the Torah touches me deeply. The service of Rosh Hashona is not
for fixing mistakes, for atoning for sins. That is on Yom Kippur. Rosh
Hashona is when I re-establish my connection with G-d.

Why is it that Rivka was tested before marrying Yitzhok, but Rochel was not
tested before marrying Yaakov? Because Yaakov & Rochel were so connected.
Rochel re-establishes our connection with G-d. The haftora of Rosh Hashona is
"Rochel cries for her children". Yosef, Rochel's son came out of prison on
Rosh Hashona. 

Leah is even deeper. I dont have any words to describe Leah's connection to
G-d because Moshiach hasnt come yet. Yaakov & Leah didnt have a personal
connection -- it went even deeper. Leah is the mother of Moshiach. Moshiach
will come even to those who are not connected.

In Psalms it is written "aromimka haShem ki dilisani"-- I will praise G-d
because he has "dilis" with me". The Pshischa says the word "dilis" has two
meanings: one to lift up, the second to make into a door -- "deles". I am a
door through whom people come to You. I want to add to what the Pshischa is
saying: "Ozeir dalim". G-d helps those who open the door.

How does a person know how much he is connected to someone? Everything
depends on how one hears. When someone tells me that someone else is sick, I
feel sorrow. If he is my best friend & I hear he is sick, gevald, it breaks
my heart. When we heard the Torah on Mt Sinai, our problem was that we didnt
hear it deeply enough. Blowing the shofar on Elul is to help us to hear
better. Basically the shofar was blown at Mt Sinai. So why do we blow it on
Rosh Hashona? We blow the shofar in Elul because it is connected with Torah.
On Rosh Hashona we are saying now I can hear the shofar, now I can hear the
voices on Mt Sinai.

The deepest depth of connection is not only what you hear. Its also what you
see. You can tell how much you love someone from the way look at them. The
question is how much you understand the Torah when you look at it. The
question is, when you take the Torah out of the aron what do you see?

Rosh Hashona is all about hearing. Rochel is hearing. From its haftora: "Kol
b'rama nishma" A voice is heard in Rama, Rachel is crying for her children.
Sucoth is like seeing through a veil. On Simhath Torah we really look at the
Torah. Not only at whats written in it. We look at the whole torah.

Shavouth we looked at G-d. Head knowlege. We still made the golden calf. On
Simhath Torah we dont learn a word. We know nothing in head knowlege. We 
look at the Torah & it conects us with our deepest depths.

A so called secular woman once told me that she sends her little boy to
Sunday School & one day he tells her, "Do you know that we Jews have a
Torahle & our teacher tells us we can buy it in a bookstore?" So she goes &
buys him a little Torahle. Now he wont go to sleep without holding this
Torahle in his arms. Can you imagine what holy soul this little boy has? Can
you imagine what this little boy, who sleeps every night with the Torah in
his arms sees in the Torah?

There are two types of gates that G-d opens for us. The gemora says, "if one
comes to be purified, he is helped. If he comes not to be pure, they open for
him". Does G-d help someone to be bad? The truth is that one split second
before you do wrong, G-d opens all the gates for you to let you know how
beautiful it is to do good. G-d says to you, "You know why you are doing bad?
Maybe its all My fault. Maybe I didnt teach you well enough how it is to do
good?" So one split second before you do wrong, G-d opens all the gates for
you. He gives you a taste how good you can be. Before, you ignored all the
gates. This month Elul, you should remember these gates.

The Holy Ropshitzer says that whatever you do, they call it out in heaven.
But we know that in heaven you dont say anything bad. So what do they say in
eaven when someone makes a mistake. They call out, "Someone is paving a 
new way to G-d". Tshuva is always new.

Whatever the simple meaning of "he who comes to purify" is, the deepest
meaning is that when one wants to do tshuva, he is helped. One second before
he can do wrong, all the gates are opened for him.

Aharon haCohen is the master of Inside. Aharon haCohen is teaching us that
when we built the Golden Calf its not that G-d opened gates for us & we didnt
go in. No. We were already inside and we walked out.

What does Aharon bring about? We sit inside the Sucaca. The Succa has no
gates. We sit inside with G-d. Until Neila we do tshuva for the gates. Rosh
Hashona is the gate of the year. We open the aron & then we close it. Then
Neila comes. We open the aron & leave it open. We have arrived inside. From
there to the succa.

We made two mistakes with our eyes. First we looked at the golden calf & said
"This is our god". Then when the spies returned, we sinned by believing what
they saw. Yom Kippur, the first sin we fix is the sin of the spies. We go
back to Yerushalayim, we recite the avodah. Simhath Torah, we fix the sin of
the Golden Calf, we see the Torah with holy eyes. Why did we make the Golden
Calf? We knew the Torah. Sometimes even knowing the Torah, you make the
Golden Calf. Words are sometimes the biggest golden calf in the world. The
Torah ends with. "in the eyes of all Israel". Moshe Rabbeinu fixes our eyes,
the eyes of us who made the golden calf, the eyes of the spies.

When Moshe broke the tablets, the letters floated around in the air. Moshe
said forget the words, what about the letters? What was he really saying?
What reaches my heart is not words but letters. Moshe says you cant be a Jew
unless your heart is broken. Heartbroken here doesnt mean sad. It means
something touches me very deeply. When I love someone very much I feel a
lttle broken. Depth comes from brokeness. Maybe high means whole, but deep
means broken. When something is very deep it breaks our heart into pieces.

Rosh Hashona & Yom Kippur we ask G-d to forgive us for not going through the
gates. Neila, G-d tells us, "Nvo'a sharekha" Come inside, Stop standing at
the gates asking for forgiveness. Come Inside". Moshe Rabbenu is the opener
of all gates. But Aharon brings us Inside. Succos we live Inside. Simchath
Torah we can go out into the world again. After being Inside we can go
nywhere in the world because we shall always remain Inside.

Everyone knows the highest blessing is Rosh Hashona night, when we bless our
children. I bless those of us who dont have children yet, to have them fast,
and that we bless our children with prophetic eyes, "in the eyes of all
Israel", "and G-d saw the light that it was good". In the coming year may we
all see a glimmer of the Light.
