היום התחייבנו ישראל שלא לעזוב את בית ה' לעולם | הרב אליהו ובר

The 24th of the month, the people of Israel gather after the holiday has passed. When they wept on Rosh Hashanah , they were told: No, now is not the time to weep, now is the time to build Sukkahs. So they went, stopped weeping, and went to build Sukkahs. This is the repentance of the removal of the repentance: returning to Hashem, building a Sukkah. The holiday ended, they read from the Book of the Law of God day by day, and on the eighth day they held an assembly as prescribed, the holiness of Shemini Atzeret. In the language of the Jerusalem Talmud: "Bar Demu'ada," the son of the festival, " Isru Chag," as it is called in our tongue according to the Gemara in Sukkah. And arrived The 24th of the month, now they gather to regret their sins. The title Of their prayer: "Arise and bless Hashem your God from everlasting to everlasting." The ordinance of "Blessed be Hashem, the God of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting" is mentioned here, and from here the Sages derive: "And let them bless Thy glorious name, which is exalted above all blessing and praise," for every blessing, give Him praise, as they answer to every blessing: "Blessed be the name of His glorious kingdom forever and ever." Where is this? Only here. This ordinance exists on the Temple Mount, as explained in the Gemara in Taanit, that it applies to the entire Temple Mount. It is called: All those who conclude blessings in the Temple, for every blessing there is a special conclusion that they say: "from everlasting to everlasting." Every blessing, instead of concluding it with the standard "Blessed are You, Hashem," they conclude it at length: "Blessed be Hashem, the God of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting." And this is the ordinance of the 24th of Tishrei : "Arise and bless Hashem your God from everlasting to everlasting," and to every blessing they answer: "Blessed be the name of His glorious kingdom forever and ever." Where is this ordinance? When is this ordinance? The 24th of Tishrei. And then they tell the story of the people of Israel; one must read and study the Book of Ezra, in the part called Nehemiah, chapter eight or nine, where they go over the entire history of the people of Israel, how the Holy One, blessed be He, loves us and does good things for us and we, unfortunately, do not behave properly, and now we regret it, we return in repentance and even so, we forge a covenant and sign it. Today, we forge a covenant and sign and commit ourselves to the Holy One, blessed be He. What is our commitment? To leave the nations of the world. Not to intermarry. Our sons will not marry their daughters. Their sons will not marry our daughters. One commitment, a second commitment: to keep the Sabbath. And the people of the land who bring the wares and all grain to sell on the Sabbath day, which is holy, and to forgo the seventh year and the debt of every hand. And then begins a whole description of everything that needs to be brought to the Temple. And we imposed upon ourselves the commandment to give a third of a shekel a year. Yes. In the First Temple. The government took care of it. Meaning, the king—Hezekiah, Josiah—the authorities took care of it. When there were no authorities, then it was indeed necessary for the priests to take care of it. And the people of Israel would bring the funds, and the government would ensure that they brought the funds and brought the sacrifices. My house was not there, so there was the commitment. And it describes there, one must read everything, the whole description: the firstborns we will bring to the Temple, and the tithes and the offerings—everything, everything, we will bring to the Temple—and the concluding sentence: "And we will not forsake the house of our God." That is to say, we have committed ourselves today. We have committed ourselves not to forsake the house of the Lord. A commitment of the 24th of Tishrei for the entire people of Israel. That is how one returns in repentance. That is how one returns in repentance, by not forsaking the house of the Lord, and we will not forsake the house of the Lord. The order. We need to restore the service here. We have passed the holidays, we have passed Rosh Hashanah, we have passed Yom Kippur and the days of repentance between them. We have passed the festival of Sukkot and even Shemini Atzeret. Now we commit, Master of the Universe, we will not forsake the house of our God. Not during the long winter that lies ahead of us, and not afterward either. We will never forsake the house of the Lord. Our eyes are constantly [focused]. It is written afterwards that there were people who volunteered to dwell in Jerusalem, and they were truly in the house of the Lord all the time. But even for those who are far away, their eyes must constantly be lifted toward the Temple. It is not only about what is written there, that one brings the tithes and offerings to the Temple—it is clear that this is the duty: to bring the tithes and offerings, not just to the priests, but to the priests who are in the house of our God. But that is one point; The more important point is that we should constantly aspire to that place, that we should want to arrive here, That our eyes are lifted toward here. Now, at this time when the Temple is still in ruins, our commitment must include, of course, that we will not forsake this place, this ruined place. That we will turn it into the house of our God, we will build here a house for the Lord, We will build here a place for sacrifices, we will build here a place for the connection of the people of Israel with the Holy One, blessed be He. We will build here the place of the connection of the Holy One, blessed be He, with the people of Israel. And we will constantly remember the house of the Lord in all our commandments, to contemplate every single commandment we perform. How we connect the people of Israel as one person with one heart to the service of the Lord. And so, this 24th of Tishrei of this year can be the proclamation of the people of Israel that we will not forsake the house of our God. May the Holy One, blessed be He, help us that truly all the people of Israel today, today, Monday the 24th of Tishrei, will all be awakened to the matter of the house of the Lord, to build it, to move forward with it, and instead of dealing with matters of politics, elections, and the like, they will deal only with this matter of the Holy Temple. Amen, may it be His will.