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The school year of 5786 opened in Bnei Brak with 114,000 students, representing one of the biggest educational systems in the country of significant Torah flourishing and expansion in the educational system of the 'city of Torah.' During the summer months, the municipality toiled to prepare an improved commencement for this new year, through the opening of sixty additional classes and 26 new kindergartens, of which 15 are for special education and 11 for general education, allowing for the absorption of 600 new kindergarten students.
"The Alter of Kelm used to say that whoever is indifferent during the month of Elul and the Yomim Noraim, is cruel to his parents, his family and to all of Klal Yisroel." These are the beginning words of HaRav Nisan Zalman Goldberg.
He continues:
Every person with a modicum of seriousness, a bit of concern and an ounce of tefillah, can affect entire revolutions in the whole world through his deeds. We are obligated to feel responsibility for all of Jewry.
The 'world' tends to say that in Elul, even the fish in the water tremble. This is compared to a man on a motorcycle, where part of the fun is the noise he makes so as to warn people to make way or to be impressed. This selfsame rider who bought the latest, strongest model, overhears his neighbor drilling a hole in his ceiling in order to affix a chandelier, and says to himself: 'I see that my neighbor also bought himself a motorcycle.' Apparently, all that he has in his head revolves around the noise that motorcycles create.
One who lives Elul, connects everything that happens to the essence of Elul.
Finally, finally, the citizens of Europe have begun to wake up. Perhaps a bit not enough, perhaps a bit too late.
In any case, more and more citizens have begun to understand that the Moslem immigration to their countries is destroying the Western world. And the result: the rise of Rightist parties in many European countries. This is sometimes good for the Jews, sometimes detrimental. But the Jews are not the goal, rather, stemming the immigration.
In the three largest countries in Europe: England, Germany and France, the Rightist parties are leading in the polls. In Germany, the Alternative to Germany, an extreme Rightist party, leads the surveys. The present German government has curbed the immigrant entry to the country; the damage which the previous governments which allowed an uncontrolled immigrants of millions of immigrants cannot be easily repaired.
The same applies to Great Britain. ...
Part II
Bitachon
Reb Meir Simcha's actions during the war show the high madreigoh of bitachon that he achieved. In the Meshech Chochmah, his peirush on Chumash, he is writes that there is a specific mitzva for each individual to have bitachon in Hashem.
Everyone understands that bitachon is a trait that is imperative for all Jews but Reb Meir Simcha argues that there is a specific mitzva in the Torah, "Uvo sidbok," (Devorim 10, 20) which commands us to have complete bitachon in Hashem.
Reb Meir Simcha understands that "deveikus" means total reliance on Hashem. He explains that just like with other mitzvos there are different madreigos in how a person fulfills them, here too the more one relies and feels totally confident in Hashem the more he is fulfilling this mitzva.
He attributes the fact that many in his generation did not feel committed to Torah to their lack of bitachon. In fact he answers the question that if Shabbos is celebrated because Hashem rested on that day then why is it not given to the whole of mankind and not merely Jews alone.
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Opinion & Comment
There are several mitzvos in the Torah involving counting time. First the Torah (parshas Metzora) informs us of the mitzvah to count the seven clean days of the zovoh (this law does not apply at all today): "If she be cleansed of her zov then she shall count to herself seven days and after that she shall be clean" (Vayikro 15:28).
Later in parshas Emor the Torah writes the mitzvah of Sefiras HaOmer: "You shall count for yourselves from the morrow after the Shabbos, from the day that you brought the omer of the waving; seven complete Shabbosos shall there be, until the morrow after the seventh Shabbos shall you number fifty days" (Vayikro 23:15-16).
Finally, in parshas Behar we have the mitzvah of counting the shmittah and yovel years (the Jubilee Year when working in the field is prohibited like on shmittah, land reverts to its original owners, and slaves are freed): "You shall number for yourself seven cycles of sabbatical years, seven times seven years; and the space of the seven sabbatical years shall be to you forty- nine years" (Vayikro 25:8).
The Chinuch (mitzvah 330) writes that the Sanhedrin counts the years until the yovel: "They would count each year and each group of seven years until the yovel as we do during the days of the omer"; and later he mentions that they would count these years aloud.
Opinion & Comment
Few things so highlight the depth of our golus as the way the rhythms of life of the non-Jewish world affect us. For many of those who live in chutz la'aretz it is hard these days to escape the dominant spirit of the beginning of August, the dog-days of summer, the time the whole world (or at least the Northern Hemisphere) thinks about relaxing a little.
Yet in the yearly cycle that really counts, it is already the beginning of Elul. Elul! The time in which all good men begin to prepare for the upcoming yemei hadin. A time of introspection and evaluation, and of increasing tension as the days of yomim noraim come nearer. It is definitely not a time to relax.
September seems altogether a better time for Elul. The climate is cooler and, for those who are exposed to it, the non-Jewish world also returns to work and study after the long summer of vacationing. But we have no time to waste, for the yemei hadin are fast approaching.
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