Everything. In the summertime fruits are plentiful because of the sun. The tasty apples are here! Ah! Red apples and luscious cherries and purple plums! They’re plentiful in the summer and the prices go down in all the fruit stores. Now you’re living!
And so rabbosai, it’s what I always say: The happiest season of the year is the good old summertime! There’s nothing like the days of summer! Nothing compares to the happy pleasures of this time of year! And Chamisha Asar B’Av is smack in the middle of it all!
Synchronized Joy
Now, the question is what’s the purpose of this summertime joy? Just to be in a good mood? Just so that the half-frummeh boys should cruise around in their cars looking for good times in the mountain resorts, in the pizza shops. Oh no! That’s the opposite of the purpose—we’ll talk about that yet, but it’s just the opposite. Because according to our thesis of Hashem looked into the Torah and He created the world, of a creation that is synchronized with Torah living, we understand that just like the Shalosh Regalim are calendar days that function in harmony with nature for the purpose of avodas Hashem, the midsummer days are the same thing. The happy days of summer were created according to the Torah blueprint, for the purpose of Torah idealism.
Now, when we talk about this principle it’s important to first of all clear the decks for action by reminding ourselves what is the foundational Torah blueprint of creation. What is the purpose of nature, of Hashem’s creations?
Designed to Declare
So we look in Tehillim and we see that The vast expanses of the universe declare the glory of Hashem, and the sky tells the work of His hands (19:2). Here immediately we learn one of the most fundamental principles of our lives: The universe is intended to testify to its Creator. Not that it’s something incidental, that it just happens to be so that you can see the Creator in creation. No; the blueprint says that it was made for that purpose—the purpose of the universe is to declare His glory.
Hashem, all of Your works praise You..., they’re speaking of the glory of Your kingdom, and they speak of Your might (Tehillim 145:11). Kol means all – every single part of creation is speaking about its Creator.
And for what purpose? Why is the creation speaking? In order to make known to man His mighty deeds. That’s the purpose; to make known! But not only that there’s a Creator—that every little boy and girl knows already—but the glory of the splendor of His majesty. To know so much about Him that you can actually be margish His Presence; an actual sensory perception.
More Emunah, More Emunah
Of course the world doesn’t think about that too much but the Chovos Halevovos, he knows what he’s talking about and he makes a big fuss about that. He has a big Shaar Habechina in his sefer and he says it’s a chiyuv to look at everything and study it in order to feel the presence of the Borei more and more.
Like Moshe Rabbeinu — Moshe Rabeinu didn’t need any proofs that Hashem existed! He had spoken to Hashem many times and he knew very well that Hashem existed. And yet, he said, Hashem, show me Your Glory. Because it’s never enough; you can never see the Glory of Hashem enough!
And so make no mistake about it, that’s the purpose of everything in creation. It’s intended to make us walk around in awe of the Creator; to live with an Awareness of Hakadosh Baruch Hu that is both constant and powerful. When Hakadosh Baruch Hu made this universe and He filled it with phenomena, the chief purpose was that mankind should marvel at them; that we should see such plan and purpose in them, such intricate wisdom, that we should understand clearly from whatever we see, that we are standing in the Presence of a Creator so clearly, so tangibly, that we are awed into submission. Hakadosh Baruch Hu made it for one purpose: ‘To make known to people the greatness of Hashem!’
Maple Mustaches
So when you walk in the street and you see maple leaves on the ground, that’s what it’s for. A man was walking with me and I showed him a maple leaf; I asked him, “You know what it’s for?”
He said, “I make a mustache out of it.” He showed me how he can open it at the edge and attach it under his nose. “That’s what I know it’s for.”
Oy vey! He’s missing the point. The maple leaf is to make known! A seed with a special wing; a wing leaf. If you would take the trouble to raise it and throw it into the wind—some people never did that—you’ll be amazed to see that it doesn’t just fall down. It rotates! The leaf is attached to the seed in such a manner that you can see engineering is involved; it’s planned according to wind physics. And the wind causes it to rotate and it flies away from under the shade of the parent tree and it plants the seed somewhere else where it can grow a new tree.
When you see that, it’s the leaf is speaking of the glory of Your kingdom, to make known! To make known! That’s the purpose.
Rav Miller and the Malach
And it means we should keep our eyes open to the messages. Once I was sitting at Chaim Berlin on the fifth floor and a messenger came through the window—it was a dandelion seed floating on a parachute. And I took it and I spent time meditating on this. There are about thirty silken hairs in the parachute. And in the middle, suspended from the middle, is a seed passenger. And it arrived at the fifth floor. Now, dandelions don’t grow on the fifth floor anyplace; they’re not that tall. But this parachute enabled it to rise up and it was sent to me min haShamayim.
There’s no question Hakadosh Baruch Hu sent it. I was sitting in my chair near the aron kodesh and it flew in gently. And I looked up as if a malach had come through the window. It would be more important to me than a malach.
And later—after the seder—I took it and put it under the faucet to see if the silken strands would wilt in the water. No! Even when wet they remained outstretched because that’s their function; even when rain comes they shouldn’t lose their ability to float. Miracles! The Glory of Your Kingdom!
And it’s very important for people to learn this; otherwise they could spend all their years unaware of what is expected of them—they never realized what the blueprint is, what the plans of the endless phenomena are for. We’re expected to understand that everything that we encounter in ‘nature’ is intended to be another opportunity to fulfill this purpose of creation.
Peach Pit Miracles
On all sides you could see nissim and niflaos in nature. On all sides Hakadosh Baruch Hu has left simanim to recognize His handiwork, His plan and purpose in the world. I was walking today with a young man, and we saw a peach pit lying on the sidewalk. I said, “Look at that, a miracle!”
He said, “What? It’s a peach pit.”
No, it’s to make known. It’s proclaiming its Creator. First of all there's nothing in the peach tree as hard as a peach pit. It's the hardest material in the whole thing because it’s purpose to protect the seed. It’s a remarkable material; lignin and cellulose, the same tough substances that make up wood and bark.
Also, it’s composed of two halves that fit together exactly. But try to pull them apart; in most cases you'll fail. You can't do it. Because they’re pasted together with a cement; a special formula that’s extremely strong.
But if you take the peach pit and put it inside the ground and it opens up by itself! Because that cement-material yields to the bacteria and the fungi in the soil. So here's the peach pit with the two halves exactly fitted together with a cement that resists your efforts to pull it apart, and still when it’s in the soil it cracks open by itself. Eventually, moisture seeps in, and the embryo inside swells, builds pressure, and cracks the pit open from the inside. And now the seed is ready to begin producing another peach tree.
So here you see now it’s not just a peach pit. It’s a message from Hakadosh Baruch Hu. You can’t just walk by and ignore it. Stop and look at it. Hakadosh Baruch Hu is talking to you: “I'm giving you another opportunity to gain emunah,” He says.
Seeing is Believing
And don't think it's unnecessary, that you know all about it already. It's like a Jew who was told, “Let's go tomorrow to Har Sinai to be mekabel the Torah.”
So he says, “I'll stay home. You go and I'll believe you. Come back and tell me. I'll accept everything.”
No. Seeing is different from hearing. You'll sit home and you won't be present at Matan Torah? You’ll just sign on the dotted line, ‘I also accept the Torah’? No. You have to come and see it. That’s the only way you’ll feel it.
And so if a person will ignore all these messages from Hashem, he’s missing out. A good Jew looks and sees a peach pit and he becomes more and more close to the feeling that Hashem is right there.
And now you begin to understand a little bit about the purpose of summer happiness. Because just like the yomim tovim, the Shalosh Regalim, are celebrated with a certain backdrop of gashmiyus happiness and gratitude, in order that we should appreciate the ruchniyus lessons, same thing the Chamisha Asar B’Av season. When you’re surrounded by the happiness of the summer, that happiness is intended to be a spur for thinking, for awareness, for kirvas Elokim.
Winter Too
Of course, the winter is good too. You have to bless Hashem at all times, always His praise is in my mouth (Tehillim 34:2). Dovid Hamelech stood in the snow and he sang to Hashem: You are the Giver of the wool-like snow (Tehillim 147:16). He enjoyed the snow and he thought about the Wisdom of the Creator in the snowflakes, how each snowflake has a unique design, made by the Great Designer, to trap the warm air in small crimps—just like wool does—and it insulates the earth beneath, keeping it warm all winter long. That’s what keeps the earth alive, ready for the summertime fun. And Hashem throws down His ice like pieces of bread (ibid. 17). When Dovid saw hail coming down he wasn’t short sighted to see in it only hail but he saw that the hail would melt into water which makes wheat grow and then the wheat turns into bread.
So even when it’s cold and the snow comes down, that’s also an opportunity to see the glory of His kingdom. But the wise man understands that the summertime is especially suited for success in this spiritual achievement because that’s when Hakadosh Baruch Hu displays His Greatness and His Kindness, in a more open way. Everything is blooming. The trees are covered with green leaves, on all sides the fragrance of the grass and bushes is wafting in the air. Right now is the most precious opportunity to study the glory of Hashem because that’s when everything is operating at its maximum. It’s the happiness of the summer at the time that all of nature is busy preaching the lesson of the glory of His kingdom.
“Come and look at Me,” it’s saying, “see what I’m showing you.” And so you’re in the mood now to fulfill the purpose of life.
The Summer Harvest: Emunah
Now this may seem to you like just a form of talk, verbiage; but you’re making a very big error. Not only it’s important but we’re going to see now that this is actually the purpose of the Am Yisroel, our national function, in the summer. This is the time of the year we’re expected to gather in as much Awareness of Hashem—happy awareness—as possible. That’s what it states in Mishlei (10:5): The wise son he gathers in, in the summertime, the son that embarrasses his parents, the failure son, he’s asleep in the harvest time. It means that during the summertime the fruits are ripening and the wise son is busy; he’s collecting dates and figs and grapes. But what does the foolish son do? He’s lying down somewhere in the meadow playing a harp or something. He’s napping or sitting staring unthinkingly into space. He’s not doing anything for the future. In the summertime, that’s the time to be awake and to gather in the benefits that Hakadosh Baruch Hu is bestowing by means of nature.
But what are the benefits? Not just good times and nice scenery; not the dates and the figs and watermelon and ice cream. That’s good too but if that’s all it is, that’s the shallow person’s view of the summer. What we want to gather in most during the happy days of summer is yiras Hashem, Awareness of Hashem. That’s our function now, to be not the ben mavish, the failure son, but the ‘wise son who is gathering in emunah’.
Part III. Clash of the Calendars
The Clash of Yetzers
Now, we have to realize something important now. If the summertime is a time when the voice of the yetzer tov is speaking most loudly, when everything is alive for the wise person to take advantage of to bring to life his awareness and emunah, at the same time, the other yetzer is also alive. Besides the instinct of seeing Hashem in the world, all the other instincts also are springing alive.
That’s the way of Hakadosh Baruch Hu; this world is a place of tests and nothing good comes easy. And so the great opportunity of summertime is also a great test; in the summertime other voices arise. Just because nature is so vociferous, because nature talks so loudly and the mood is a happy one, so people are deceived.
That’s why the summertime is also full of falsehood. So you receive a letter from your City Councilman or from the State Assemblyman who wants to show you the good things he’s doing for you—he’s doing nothing against crime; he’s not helping you lower your taxes; but he wants to make you feel that he’s giving you a good time so he lets you know how many concerts there are during the summertime. He supplies you with music, Bach and Beethoven and even worse garbage, all kinds of garbage; summer night concerts! And so if you want to risk your life and go to Prospect Park at night you’ll get a free concert. If you put on a suit of armor and take along ten bodyguards, maybe you’ll survive.
Everyone is Woke
Instead of midsummer kedusha, it’s a midsummer night’s madness. Summer romance! That’s not the way of the Jewish nation! Because when we talk about love, we talk about it in a sense of kedusha. To us marriage is kiddushin, it’s something holy. And to them it’s a physical thing; a brutish rude animalistic attitude. We are awakened by the summer happiness and they also are awakened, only that we are awakened to holiness and they to the opposite.
You know, the Gemara says that on Yom Kippur and Chamisha Asar B’Av the men went out to choose their wives. Can you even think of such a thing today? The answer is that Yom Kippur was kulo kodesh. They purified their hearts. And you have to say the same thing about the 15th of Av—it was kulo kadosh.
So they went out to look at the girls—little girls were holding hands and they were dancing around in a circle. In those days girls married at the age of twelve; they didn’t wait till the old age of sixteen, seventeen. They were twelve year old girls and they were dancing around. And the pure men of a pure nation looked at the girls the way you look over the esrogim before Sukkos. A muvchar you want, with good yichus. “Which pardeis is this esrog from?” you ask. So here too you ask, “Who’s this girl’s father?” “Who’s the grandfather?” You ask about the yichus. And you picked an esrog – a mitzvah, that’s all it was; it was kulo kodesh.
You understand now what Chamisha Asar B’Av was! Because it was a nation trained in kedusha! We don’t realize the piety that once existed. It was kulo kodesh! And therefore they could have celebrations like that. In the times of the Beis Hamikdash, Chamisha Asar B’Av was celebrated with the kedusha that existed at that time.
Reinventing Holiness
Today it’s different. Today the irreligious, the modern Jews, have corrupted the kedusha of the 15th of Av. And because we’re sunk into the tumah of the goyei haaretz over our ears, even the frummeh have to realize that they’re soiled and sullied by all the wickedness of the umos haolam—only that they have a black hat and a beard that covers it up. And therefore we’re not able to celebrate like they did in the days of old because we’ve been corrupted inside; we have all these things from the outside world.
And so we see that as much as the yetzer tov, if it is utilized properly, can flourish in the month of Av, the other one flourishes too. In the summer nights, people are busy looking for things to do. The unthinking masses imagine that the good times of the summer mean vacations, wasting time. Every Sunday he gets behind the steering wheel of his car and he wants to ride all over the country, smelling the fumes of a thousand cars ahead of him. And he’ll come home at night, dead tired and full of smoke of gasoline in his lungs and he wasted his summer.
But we’re not talking here to the fools and the knaves, the people who are wasting their lives. We’re talking to the ones who want to walk in the holy ways of our forefathers. We’re talking to chachamim, to the Am chacham v’navon, the Am Yisroel that utilizes the month of Av. And so we have to strengthen ourselves; we have to stand up to the yetzer hara, to the world that doesn’t understand the purpose of summer.
Hot and Cold
And that brings us to the name of one of the sons of Noach. Noach had a son named Cham. Cham means warm; he was a summer fellow all the time—a passionate and impulsive temperament.
And because he was a cham, when he saw his father lying uncovered by accident, he didn’t take any action to cover up his father’s nakedness. Instead of pausing, controlling himself, and showing respect, he reacted quickly and improperly. Whereas his two brothers who had trained themselves to control their temperaments, to understand a situation and its test, they calmly walked backwards with a blanket and they covered up their father.
Now, Noach when he woke up and became aware of what happened, he understood that it was because Cham is a hot fellow. And he cursed Cham’s son, Canaan.
Now why was Canaan singled out mostly? He wasn’t even there! It was Cham who was guilty! But you have to understand that in Canaan was realized to a very great extent all the faults of his father Cham, all the faults of the hot personality who doesn’t succeed in his tests, his opportunities.
Nation Versus Nation
Canaan was the opposite of the Jewish people and I’ll explain that. You remember when Rivka was being given away as a bride for Yitzchak, so at first her family hedged a little bit—they wanted to postpone—but finally they agreed to let her go. And they gave her a blessing: “Our sister, you should become thousands times ten thousands.” (Breishis 24:60). A very great blessing: “Your posterity should number in the millions.”
Actually it wasn’t their words. Hashem put these words in their mouths. And that’s why when you come to the chasunah where your daughter is sitting just before the chuppa and the veil is put over her face so you bless her, “You should become thousands times ten thousands.” We repeat the words of the blessing that Hashem put in their mouths, the words said to one of our Imahos.
But then they added something else: “Your seed should inherit the cities of his enemy” (ibid.). It means that your descendants will one day come into Eretz Canaan and you’ll be the conquerors. That was the promise placed into their mouths by Hashem.
Friendly Enemies
Now, it pays to remind ourselves who are these enemies that our nation conquered? After all, which enemies’ cities were conquered by our people? Canaan. Our people conquered and inherited the cities of Canaan, that’s all.
And so the question is what kind of ‘enemy’ was Canaan? Was Canaan bothering our people? No. Was Canaan harassing us? The truth is just the opposite. Avraham lived in Canaan; he wasn’t bothered by Canaan. The
