vort from the Rebbe on this week's parsha, Parshas Shoftim. There's a pasuk in Parshas Shoftim that starts off like this: כי תצא למלחמה על אויביך, when you will go to war on your enemies, וראית סוס ורכב, and you will see a horse and a chariot, עם רב ממך, a nation that's much more than you, לא תירא מהם, don't be afraid of them. כי ה' אלקיך עמך, ה' your God is with you, המעלך מארץ מצרים, picked you up out of Mitzrayim. And the Rebbe taytshes this in a very interesting way. First of all, why does the pasuk say כי תצא למלחמה על אויביך, when you go to war on your enemies? You don't go to war on your enemies, you go against your enemies, or with your enemies. So it should have said כי תצא למלחמה נגד אויביך, or it should have said עם אויביך. What does it mean you will go to war on top of your enemies? So the pshat is the Torah is telling us, how will you win the war? The first thing is you have to remember when you're going to war, you're going with the koach of Hashem'. Like it says in the pasuk, כי ה' אלקיך עמך. And if you go feeling that you have the koach of Hashem', you lechatchila go, to begin with, feeling that you're on top. That's why the pasuk says כי תצא למלחמה על אויביך, when you go to war you have to remember you are on top of your enemies. You're not going equally fighting two equal sides, you have the koach of the Eibershter, so you're on top.

וראית סוס ורכב, you will see a horse and a chariot, and Rashi says it says לשון יחיד, it says singular even though it means there'll be a lot of horses, a lot of chariots. So Rashi says because in my eyes, in the eyes of Hashem', they're like one, they're nothing. So the pasuk is telling the Yid, go and always feel that you're on top of אויביך, you're on top of your enemies. And you'll see in my eyes it's all like one, they have no koach. So you have to remember that's how you have to look at it, too. And the pasuk continues, עם רב ממך, a nation that's much more than you. So the simple pshat is a nation that have much more people than you, much more soldiers than you. So the Rebbe taytshes a little different: עם רב, why do they look like an עם רב, like a big nation, a lot of people? ממך, that's because of you. If you look at them that way, if you don't look at them with the koach of the Eibershter, mimeila they're nothing, so it looks to you because that's the way you look at it. You have to look at lechatchilah that they're סוס ורכב. The same way the Eibershter looks at that they're nothing, if you have the koach of the Eibershter and you feel that, you see them as nothing. Ah, it looks like עם רב? It's ממך! It's because of you. Since you look at it that way, that's why they have a koach. So you have to remember that it's all because of you, not in reality. If you look at it that way, you look at them that way, that's how you're going to look. And that's what the pasuk says: if you have that, you're going על אויביך, and there's a סוס ורכב in the eyes of the Eibershter, and you know that the fact that עם רב, it's only ממך, it's only because of you, but really that's not,

לא תירא מהם, don't be afraid of them. And then the pasuk says, כי ה' אלקיך עמך, ה' is with you, המעלך מארץ מצרים, who picked you up from Mitzrayim. It doesn't say המוציאך מארץ מצרים, who took you out of Mitzrayim. The פסוק is trying to hint to something else. The Eibershter picks us up. He picks us up beyond the nature of the world, beyond the teva. And therefore, the fact that physically they have a lot of people makes no difference, because we are higher than that. That's why the פסוק says המעלך מארץ מצרים, ה' picks you up from Mitzrayim. The word Mitzrayim means limitations. The limitations of nature is called Mitzrayim, and naturally they're a lot, but lifoel, it's not like that. Because if we have the koach of the Eibershter, that doesn't mean anything. So that's what the פסוק says, המעלך, He picks you up from ארץ מצרים, ממילא, for sure you will win the war. And this point that it all depends the way we look at it, and if we look at it in that way, then chas veshalom, if you look that they're a lot and they have a koach, that's bad. But we have to look lechatchilah that we know lechatchilah that they have no koach. The

Rebbe explains this in a different place, similar, not exactly the same, but similar. The Rebbe explains it on the פסוק by the מרגלים in פרשת שלח. One of the things the מרגלים said to the Yidden, that we went to Eretz Yisrael and we saw the giants there. So the pasuk says, ושם ראינו את הנפילים, there we saw the נפילים who were giants, בני ענק מן הנפילים, the great giants. Then the pasuk says, ונהי, ונהי בעינינו כחגבים, we were in their eyes like grasshoppers, וכן היינו בעיניהם, so we were in their eyes. That means they're so big that compared to them, we're like little grasshoppers. But the question is, why does the pasuk repeat it twice? ונהי בעינינו כחגבים וכן היינו בעיניהם, we were in their eyes like grasshoppers, and that's how we were in their eyes. So the Rebbe taitshs like this: we were in their eyes like grasshopper because that's the way we made ourselves look. ונהי בעינינו כחגבים, we were in our own eyes like grasshoppers, we did didn't have this koach knowing that we go on the koach of the Eibershter, mimela we have the koach, we're stronger than them, we're bigger than them, but because ונהי בעינינו כחגבים, because we were like grasshoppers in our own eyes, we looked at it that way, therefore וכן היינו בעיניהם, that's how we were in their eyes too. Now, the koach that they got is because the way we looked, which is similar to the taitsh that the Rebbe taitshs here: עם רב ממך. Why are they an עם רב? Because ממך, because it depends on you. And the pasuk says in order to overcome all the problems, if you lechatchila know that we're going with the koach of the Eibershter, we have the bitachon of the Eibershter, the emunah in the Eibershter, and we go with that koach, we have to know that all the hardships that on the outside look like they're hard, it's only ממך, it's only because we look at it that way, but really we are כי תצא למלחמה על אויבך, we're on top of the enemies, which any hardship is like an enemy, we're on top of it, and it's all because of us that if you don't look at it that way ממך, that's when it comes out that it's hardships, otherwise it's not hardships, and that's when we have the koach to win the war or overcome all the hardships because המעלך מארץ מצרים, השם picked us up from the limitations of of of teva, and therefore we will definitely win. And this is

nogea to the month of Elul, when that's when the time we have to make a חשבון הנפש, and one of the things in our חשבון הנפש we have to make is, what's our approach? Do we look at everything with the koach of the Eibershter or not? And if we look at everything with the koach of the Eibershter, that gives us koach to do teshuvah, and to make good hachlatot, etcetera, etcetera, and get from the Eibershter a כתיבה וחתימה טובה.