נמצא מיקומו של גן עדן!! | הרב אליהו ובר

No. >> Yesterday, I spoke about this a lot, and today I will start with it. Yesterday we talked about the signing of the covenant on the 24th of the month, but I want to talk about the first sentence that opens the covenant. Arise, bless the Lord your God from everlasting to everlasting. I don't know why people who read this yesterday —I am sure everyone, yesterday, the 24th of the month, everyone should have opened the Bible. The book of Ezra, in its second part, Nehemiah, and read what happened on the 24th of the month. I think every Jew in their home did that, and then they read, starting with : "Arise, bless the Lord your God from everlasting to everlasting." And since the only place I know—perhaps there are those who bless God in such a way, that "Blessed be the Lord God of Israel from everlasting to everlasting"—is the Temple Mount, then everyone should have gotten up this morning to bless God from everlasting to everlasting. So , everyone is still sleeping, and they will wake up soon and come here. That is one excuse I want to offer. Everyone is still sleeping and they will continue. >> Or they have been asleep since yesterday and haven't had the chance to read these verses yet. A third explanation, I don't know. >> There is a drawing closer to the people of Israel. >> Obviously. >> So we committed, and we will not forsake the house of our God. And I want to return to the weekly Torah portion. The weekly portion speaks of a place called the Garden of Eden. >> The Garden of Eden. >> The Garden of Eden. Do you know where the Garden of Eden is located? I do not know. Well, many of the early sages tried to find the place suitable to place the Garden of Eden there. In fact , the accepted interpretation is that it is in the Babylon region, the lands of the Euphrates. But we have a problem . What is the problem? That we have two —we have four rivers that flow out of the Garden of Eden. The Euphrates and the Tigris are in the Babylon region. And the Gihon and the Pishon, according to the literal meaning, especially the Pishon, which is written to encompass Cush. >> The land of Cush. >> The land of Cush, so we know where that is located. So it turns out the Pishon —it is explained there that it refers to the Nile, as Rabbi Saadia Gaon brings. So, Ibn Ezra tries perhaps to disagree a little, but even according to him, it is located in the southern region of the Land of Israel. So it turns out we have four rivers here: two are on the southern side—southern, western, but more, more south of the Land of Israel—and two are more north-eastern. That means the Euphrates —north-east, and the Tigris even more north, it reaches Assyria, yes, it went to the front of Assyria, east of Assyria, which is even further north. So it turns out we have two rivers that are north-east of the Land of Israel, and two rivers that are south, south of the Land of Israel. So whoever wants to know where the Garden of Eden is—four rivers come out of the Garden of Eden. Where is the Garden of Eden located? Maybe it is in the >> The Land of Israel is where the Garden of Eden is located, and that is what Ezekiel says: "The land that was desolate has become like the Garden of Eden." Now the Land of Israel, after it had become a wasteland, it transformed back into a Garden of Eden, and this is what is written in the verse in Isaiah: "For the Lord has comforted Zion, He has comforted all her ruins; He makes her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the Lord." So this means the original Garden of Eden is likely supposed to return to its place in the Land of Israel. Now let’s search for where it is located in the Land of Israel. There are four rivers that we mentioned, whose names are Gihon, Pishon, Perat, and Hiddekel. There are two streams here in the area. One is the Perat stream, which Jeremiah already speaks about. It should be in the Anathoth area. Today there is some hypothesis about a specific place. I don’t know how much of a hypothesis. It is well-founded enough, but it is certainly close to the area of Jeremiah , which is Anathoth. There is a point regarding King Solomon, it is written: "Bring him down to the Gihon." So it says there are two streams located nearby, close to Jerusalem; one is named after the Gihon, and one is named after the Perat. We haven’t found the Hiddekel and the Pishon here yet; maybe they exist, and it’s just because the prophets didn’t need to write about them, they didn’t have a story, so we don’t know where they are. But it turns out that it must be in the Jerusalem area. So let’s search for it in Jerusalem: where do we have a place that the Holy One, blessed be He, tells us not to be, and He placed cherubim there? So there are cherubim there. "He drove out man, and at the east of the Garden of Eden He placed the cherubim and the flame of the revolving sword to guard the way to the Tree of Life, for there the Lord commanded the blessing, life forever." Do you want to know where the way to the Tree of Life is? We have a place here from which life emerges, for there the Lord commanded the blessing, life forever. From here life emerges, and also here is the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, one must be careful. And this is the place where one truly must be careful, not to eat from the fruits in the wrong way. Whoever eats from the fruits of the Tree of Knowledge when the commandment is not to eat, well, that is a problem. By the way, an important point for reflection: the first commandment in the Torah, many say the commandment is not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge. No! The first commandment: "Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat," after that is the negative commandment not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge. First thing , the commandment is "you may eat." And if we also go to the Temple, we have, for example in the Temple, sacrifices from which one may eat, offerings like the peace-offering that everyone can eat, or the sin-offering that every male among the priests shall eat. And we have things not to eat from, that is the burnt offering; a burnt offering is entirely for the Lord, it is forbidden to eat it. Yes. So that is the Tree of Knowledge not to eat. So we have trees that the Holy One, blessed be He, says to eat. Trees that the Holy One, blessed be He, says not to eat. We want to know, whoever wants to go to the Garden of Eden, we hear people saying " this is the Garden of Eden." Where is the Garden of Eden? But yes, it really is the Garden of Eden. Why? Why does the whole world, the whole world really want to come here? Everyone wants to aspire, everyone aspires to the source, everyone wants to come to the Garden of Eden. So the privilege of those who rise and reach the Garden of Eden, it is a great privilege. May the Holy One, blessed be He, help us to truly see the Garden of Eden in the east. A river flows out of Eden to water the garden, and from there it separates and becomes four headwaters; so a river flowed out of Eden, from Eden the garden emerges, our Garden of Eden. And we must know, truly, this is the matter of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil: to be careful there about what is permitted to us, what is forbidden to us, to know which places one is permitted to enter with a certain level of ritual impurity or another, for Priests, for Israelites —for the needs of the Temple, for the needs of the sacrifices. There are all the laws for this, all the details, but it is called the Tree of Knowledge of Good and also Knowledge of Evil. For this reason, one must be careful. He who eats the fruit in an incorrect way, he who eats from the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge—not in the right place. Meaning, one who could have entered in a state of purity but entered in impurity, he is eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Evil, he is eating from the evil part. That is already the serpent’s advice, so one must know how to discern. On the other hand, there is a place, there is a thing that one may eat from the garden, you may surely eat. We have the part of what is permitted and what is commanded for us to do, and that is to come to the Garden of Eden, to eat of its fruit and to be satisfied with its goodness. May the Holy One, blessed be He, grant us the merit to eat here from the Temple sacrifices in the correct way, speedily in our days, Amen.