כששוכחים מי אנחנו | אורות התשובה- שיעור 4 | הרב יהושע שפירא

So yesterday we saw Chapter 6, Section 5 that the creation was created in such a way that first of all, the meaning of an act depends on the will of the one doing it. And this thing is visible to the eye and simple, even though there is also the uh, pressure of the action test, the result test, but it is visible to the eye that the will has a heavy and decisive weight in the interpretation and value of the act. And the great innovation here is that repentance does not work only according to this matter. It is an additional dimension of depth regarding the weight of the will on the result. The modern world is very, very, uh, sharpening the result test. The world of will, uh, has disappeared from it to a large extent and remains in romantic workshops of all sorts of, and this phenomenon, uh, seems to me to be weakening compared to what it once was. It still has, there is, a place, but it has already, uh, settled; it is not, uh, flying upward, but rather has some campaign, it is present. And the result test of modern success is of immense weight in our culture. Thank you very much. And the very establishment of will is certainly , uh, an issue that we also need to study a lot, and this is what we usually learn in the letter of repentance, and God willing, we will also deal with it this year; but this year we dealt with a greater innovation , which is that repentance acts backward in time as well. Meaning that the will does not act only on an action in the present and not an action in the future, but it also acts on an action in the past. And how is it possible to act on an action in the past? Because there are laws for actions. If a person murdered a soul, then he caused immense pain, a lack, a void on the part of the victim himself, and immense pain on the part of those around him, and a loss to all of society. So there is an action: it is like throwing a stone into water where you see waves upon waves of the action, and the act of murder has waves upon waves of influence on all those surrounding the victim, who dove into deep waters and lost his life. And the reverse action, which is really not simple, is hidden from the eye. And indeed, the example of murder is very, very extreme, and the hardest both to explain and to perceive. Because if the murderer repented completely, then the family suffers less. This is marginal, of the marginal, of the marginal, if it exists at all. So where do you say that this law operates? That repentance acts backward. But indeed it is one of the actions that faith governs, and not wisdom, reason, and observation of reality. For if you ask, we all said today "V'haya Im Shamoa," and the scripture conditions the economic abundance on the observance of the Torah and commandments. So according to this, the world of the yeshivas should be very rich today, and the world, a world that fights against it and fights against other major tenets of the Torah and commandments, should be very poor and maybe even exiled from the land. So , uh, do we see this? No. The question of why it is bad for the righteous and good for the wicked, which Moses our teacher asked, is a painful one, and essentially it is the question of all questions about the world, about which it is said "and you shall see My back, but My face shall not be seen"—that Moses our teacher asks: why is it bad for the righteous, and good for the wicked? Says according to the law The problem with hearing the law of the Torah is that the righteous should have it good and the wicked should have it bad, yet reality shows...Sometimes, many times, most times, seemingly the opposite. So where does it work? The truth is that this matter is a matter of faith, not observation. You cannot analyze the reality of the world and see it, certainly not easily. Meaning, there are sides that saw the salvation of God, that the people of Israel received a prophecy, a promise, and a divine covenant before...thousands of years, that after being exiled, they would return to the land. And behold, it is happening before our eyes, so there are things that do come to pass, and even before we returned to the land , our very survival in exile is a phenomenon that has no parallel in the world at all. So there are places where you see the hand of God in history, in the general sense, but in the details, the hand of God is hidden. In order that man will have a choice. If the hand of God were visible and the righteous had it good and the wicked had it bad, then there would be no choice for man. The choice comes from this contradiction, the shock that the Holy One, blessed be He, conceals the true law of reality, that the righteous have it good and the wicked have it bad . It is this shock that enables the choice. If a person did a mitzvah and his bank account went up, then just for the bank account he would do the mitzvah. We would lose both the "for the sake of Heaven" and the desire to hear, and the choice itself. Meaning, if a person ate chocolate and all his teeth were healed and his whole body grew stronger, then we would have no difficulty in matters of eating. We would only eat chocolate, and—maybe not everyone loves chocolate; I spoke to those who do, there are probably two or three here. So if eating chocolate also healed teeth, and also strengthened the body and made it healthy, then there would be no problem . The contradiction is created so that man will have a choice in this world, both in matters of maintaining his body and in matters of maintaining his soul in the account of Torah and mitzvot toward the heavens; and if there were no choice...And that is why the Holy One, blessed be He, also hides from us the fact that repentance works backward —if a person were to repent, he would raise the murdered person from his grave. If that were the law, it would have many drawbacks. Well, one drawback might be that people would murder much more easily. Today we are very afraid. Well, maybe it wouldn't be so terrible, because if you can raise him from his grave through repentance, then maybe it's not terrible for a couple of days. How will you... What? How will you repent? Right? How will you... Yes, but the thought of repentance is close and one must be extremely careful with it, but it is not murder. You are saying if a person committed a sin and he doesn't have the means to repent, then he remains without repenting for another sin; well, he needs a lot of prayers, but if he murdered and does not have the means and he does not repent, then he remains...Well, we are talking about fantasies. What, like, the understanding of why the Holy One, blessed be He, wants things to be hidden so that we will have free choice in mitzvot and in Torah, and... and in repentance. And in repentance it is explained, but let's say regarding the body, why—why does the Holy One, blessed be He, want us to discover what is healthy and have a test in health, and have mitzvot in the Torah? Preserving one's soul is, first and foremost, a commandment in all matters of this world, not only in the holy, but also in the mundane. They, uh, take care to challenge man, that is the world in...Not only in the holy. True, not only in the holy, but it is explained because you want it, because it is more, more... Does...A Gentile who even knows that there is an Israeli nation, is already a remote Chinese person; he has a billion Chinese around him, he has to, uh, get past them all to understand that there are nations outside of China at all, to cross some kind of Chinese wall like that, and he wouldn't even know that Israel exists. But there is, uh, uh...An existence to this Chinese village, and there are better people in it and less good people, more wicked ones and less wicked ones. Does the Holy One, Blessed be He, also demand from him that he be righteous according to his ability? Yes, free will descends down to the very depths, in some hidden place; even trees have free will. The Holy One, Blessed be He, said to make a fruit tree yielding fruit, and the earth sinned and made a tree yielding fruit, rather than a fruit tree yielding fruit. So there is, in some place, choice even in the inanimate, in the plant, in the moon. So all the more so, all of the human figure, in all its levels, has, uh...Free will. Do we believe that because the Iranians did not receive the Torah, they have no free will and are exempt from all their deeds? No. Cursed evildoers. We have a moral, emotional, and also divine verdict regarding their actions. And we pray that all wickedness be consumed like smoke, for You will remove the government of malice from the earth. Government of malice refers to the 70 wolves, not to one sheep. Within me, too, I want the government of malice to be removed; of course, there are allegories and reflections for this, but the main point of "remove the government of malice from the earth" is the...The wolves that surround the sheep. And we have a moral verdict regarding them. So that is true for the whole world, and part of these moral matters is also dealing with the fact that if you eat chocolate you go to the dentist, and if you eat less chocolate you need the dentist less. That is part of the...Struggles that the Holy One, Blessed be He, has placed before man. Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the world, who... Rabbi, if the nations of the world are "three shells," what is the matter of repentance for them? The statement of " three unclean shells" emphasizes the gap between the holy and the impure. Free will says that even in a place where impurity is dominant, where it is visible, in some deep place, there is a Divine image in every human. There is a verse that "you are called man," and the nations of the world are not called man, but the Divine image has not departed from all of humanity; so there is free will, and the Admor HaZaken tends more to sharpen the matter of the three unclean shells that are in the nations of the world, and Maran the Rabbi, of blessed memory, tends more to sharpen the matter of the Divine image that never left all the nations, in parallel to the struggle for the supreme and lofty status of Israel. Yesterday a list was submitted...With great noise, a new one. I don't know, it wasn't submitted, it's like it came to light—It raises a very deep question: their number two is a Christian Gentile, a lover of Israel who does very significant things for its sake...With great courage. Ofer Winter took Yousef Haddad as his number two. Yousef Haddad, who is, he is a Christian Gentile, but, uh...an Israeli patriot, uh...of the state, uh...More than many others in this part. So what ...what are we saying about this? It is a very deep question: Is it permitted to form partnerships with non-Jews here ? There are many discussions in Jewish law, but the question is what exactly the Rabbi says that that yes, that in certain ministries it is possible, in other ministries it is impossible; Minister of Defense no, Minister of Foreign Affairs no. If he does not say that it is possible, from the evil inclination, security is more of a problem. No, is this, uh, uh, the existence of the nation or not? They want there to be a Minister of Public Diplomacy. Uh, he actually explains things well, he is an activist full of, uh, fighting power and apparently physical power too. He recently had some, uh, uh, debate with many people, he beat them all, and then at the end one attacked him physically, so, uh, it seems that his strength is great there too. So is it possible to form a partnership? Yes. Are there such citizens that we accept and also want them, them to receive their rights as citizens? Yes. Is there here a scent of ideological assimilation? It seems to me that yes. How do we do this exactly? I don't know, it needs a lot of thought . I don't want to decide. I have an inclination, I don't want to decide, but in my eyes the this party raises quite a few questions, mainly is it, like most of the Right thinks and probably most of the Left too, it is a blow to the Right if he receives applause from the Left, it means it is useful. Who receives applause himself? He who brings them the So that is the question. The Right says: it is very harmful to the Right. The Left applauds him: run Ofer, run, in their, uh, language. That is one type of question. And honestly, uh, well, these are questions. And are generals also politicians? A question. We have some experience in this matter, not a day or two, and there are organized statistics for this matter. Sometimes it succeeded and even greatly, sometimes it failed and even greatly, and probably more often it failed greatly. And does he seem to me to be one of those who will succeed or who will fail? I'll keep that to myself. But the...First of all, a hero of Israel—there is no, no, no question. But it is a big question; in my eyes, many rabbis at the time forbade voting for a secular party, a party that has secular members. Rabbi Avrum at the time, when the Techiya party was founded, said that it was forbidden to vote for Techiya; it was an Israeli patriotic one with, uh, faith-based roots—he said: it is forbidden to vote. There were those who disagreed, but here it is another stage , that essentially, like, I didn't hear anyone talking about this question at all. I...it stabs me like a knife in the middle of my stomach. Why? Because you know in my opinion that the fear of a "state of all its citizens" that the Left wants is, in my eyes, an inaccurate expression. The problem is a "state of all its assimilators" much more than a "state of all its citizens, " much deeper than the question of a " state of all its citizens." What is the difference? A "state of all its citizens" is a state where there are Jews and there are non-Jews and there is equality in influence on the character of the state. Instead of a Jewish state, a state that erases Judaism, lowers it to a minimum and in part it obliterates it completely. It depends on how far left you go. But Even if you lower the weight of the Jewish character, which is what the High Court’s dictatorship does incessantly, You still maintain, you can still maintain the distinction between a Jew and a Gentile. But there is a problem, that we have a deep, gaping chasm in the distinction between Israel and the nations. And, The problem is that a large part of that side has no brakes against a state of all its assimilated citizens. They have no, they have no brakes. One of Barak's cockpits The whole war, the whole struggle, Brothers in Arms, Kaplan, all of this sits, in the end, Mostly with Barak and a small group there, one of whom I sat with quite a bit, and one of them was a soldier in the Shayetet, carried out daring operations, buried friends who were builders of the country. And he was commander of the Shayetet, and was commander of forces, and was head of the Shin Bet, and was a minister on behalf of the Labor Party, Ami Ayalon is his name. And we sat A lot in meetings, right and left. And he , About 12 years ago, he wanted to write a book. 11, something like that. He wanted to write a book. He was born with the State of Israel. Not on the exact same day, but almost. He wanted to write a book about the 70 years of the State of Israel, 70 years of Ami Ayalon, and 70 people I’ve known throughout my life. And he asked me to be one of the 70. So he came here to my room, With the big recording device and , He recorded everything during it, And , We talked for two hours. In the end, he dropped the 70 people, leaving only two; mostly One named Sari Nusseibeh, an Arab he is infatuated with, praises him and Melts before him, and the second one, who is the demon, the monster, Is my brother. Now, since my brother is much smarter than me, when he came to interview him as one of the 70, Meeting as the head of the Shin Bet , He asked him if he could record it. So my brother said: If you’re recording, I’ll record too. He says: Please do. They both recorded. When Ayalon forgot this detail, And out of the 70, he mostly praised and lauded the Gentile, He invented deranged fabrications with no connection to reality about what the conversation with my brother was. He wrote it, the book is called "Friendly Fire," and there is a chapter on the meetings with my brother, and my brother has all the recordings. There is no connection between what is in the recordings and how he slandered him. Since my brother has a lot of faith in the judges, he decided not to sue him. He consulted with several major lawyers who explained to him that, on one hand, and even if it’s on one hand, it’s so clear what the judges will rule that there’s no need for you to file, it’s already obvious, so he didn’t file, but Libskind, what is his first name? Kalman, ah, it probably took time to convince him, but in the end, he agreed to listen to the recordings and see what was written in the book. A book, and he wrote an article about it in Maariv that simply analyzes it factually: it says this, it happened like this; it says this, it happened like this. There is no minimal reasonable connection between the slanders of this despicable liar and what actually happened. Now, I was on friendly terms with him and I valued him highly, because he is a true lover of Israel. So when he sat here, one of the questions he asked me was: What is the most important thing you discovered in our meetings? And then I said to him : "Ah, Ami, let’s stay friends, let it be." We weren't very close friends, but this...Let it be. It’s...And He says to me: "No, there's...speak." I said to him: "I'm willing to tell you, if you want, I’ll tell you." He said: "I want to." I told him that I had heard a lot about the Left supposedly wanting to give up Judea and Samaria so that there would be a Jewish and democratic state here, and at first, I thought these were just words, that you don’t...you don’t believe what you’re saying. What is the...what is the logic? What's the connection? Until I met you and saw that you were saying it from the bottom of your hearts; you truly believe it completely. And then I went home and thought: What is going on here? We finished a meeting, it was at Lavi, three days. It was meetings throughout the year, every time an evening of a few hours, and at the end of the year three days, and there were 12 such years, maybe one shorter, I don't remember exactly. And we finished , I came home and I said: What is going on here? Do they really think that giving up Judea and Samaria is for the sake of a Jewish state? What, do they want a Jewish state more than I do? Does it hurt them? What is going on here? And then, I was struggling at home with this question, and then suddenly an idea hit me, a realization. Now, I saw some spark in this realization, but not a very high probability that it was true. At the next meeting, I suggested it to the guys from the Left in the discussion. They looked at me as if to say: " Obviously, what...what's the news here at all?" And what was the suggestion? That since they are in a process of assimilation that they have no ability to stop, they have no...they have no cultural, educational, value-based, or other mechanisms that can stop the process of assimilation, so they want there to be a Jewish state here for it ...for it to happen. They need the borders...why are they giving up on the Galilee so easily? Why aren't they fighting for the Galilee and the Negev? Unconsciously or consciously? They want there to be a Jewish state, and they want their borders to be such that there will be a majority there for at least their grandchildren or great-grandchildren, and after that, they cannot take responsibility for further ahead. So they want the borders to have as little demographics of the other side as possible and as much demographics of this side as possible, but they can't say it, because to say it is racism. So they are in a bind: they want it, they act for it, and they can't say it. And when I suggested this idea to them, they just looked at me, as if to say, "What,""what other novelties do you have?" That these simple things were obvious to them, and I was shocked that this was self-evident. They have no idea of a state of Jews together because, in general, what is universal or there are two voices within them. Now, let’s talk about these two voices: surely they also have logic, and there is also a desire here to annoy the Right and the religious that they didn’t take over—meaning, there are other accounts here. So I told him all this, and then he says the following sentence to me. He tells me: My mother —who I later went to check, passed away two years earlier—was always saying, with two sons, she would tell us that the most terrible thing that could happen to us in life is for us to marry a non-Jewish woman. They grew up in places where there were volunteers who came to help from Sweden, from all kinds of places, and it caused quite a bit of contemplation. And if they have —she was always telling them: The most terrible thing that could happen to you is that you marry a non-Jewish woman. He says: In my gut, my mother is still kicking all the time and saying: The most terrible thing that could happen to you is to marry a non-Jew. But in my mind, in my head, I don’t know how to explain what she is saying. It’s only in my gut. And my problem is that for my children, in their gut, there is my head and not my gut. Meaning, what is he actually saying? You are right. Now, since the deepest problem I see is not a state of all its citizens, but a state of all its assimilators. And I say, ho ho, a hero of Religious Zionism is making a move here that it could be that if there is no state of all its assimilators, then there is room to discuss the question. My intuition before I delved into the thought is that it doesn’t belong— we respect him, appreciate him, help him build his own party, but not this connection. We don’t go with Mansour Abbas not just because he belongs to the Muslim Brotherhood, but also because with all due respect, and there is respect, there is a difference between a Jew and a non-Jew. We don't start the week without the "He who distinguishes between Israel and the nations." And you are forbidden to drink wine with him because you will come to marry off your daughter, and if you are always with him inside this, it’s not simple—it’s not a Torah prohibition perhaps, but it is a very difficult question. And at the price of the harm to the Jewish state here, it seems to me that it is a very great danger. And the fact that people aren’t shouting about it is an even greater question. So the question is, is such a party built to fight for the Jewishness of the state? It doesn’t say that, it doesn't it doesn’t want a decision against the enemy. I am in favor. Is the decision it wants different than Bezalel and Itamar—I don’t know, he comes from the field and yes, he has his merits, you can’t deny that, you can’t deny his merits, he is a hero of Israel, does he understand international relations, which is what decides this question? Doesn’t seem like it to me. He sat at my house and tried to convince me that he does, and I was convinced that he probably doesn’t. And what decides this question, whether you crush them to the end or not, is your ability to maneuver in international arenas. It is not the IDF versus Hamas. That is not the question. If it were the IDF against Hamas, then it would be clear who has more power. But now, no; there are those who don't want to achieve a decisive victory because of Hamas, but there are those who don't want to achieve it not because of Hamas but because of Europe, the United States, the international stage, where since the beginning of the war—and by the beginning, I mean since Simchat Torah —antisemitism suddenly spiked. Not since we attacked in Gaza, since the massacre, antisemitism suddenly spiked. You know what happens to animals when they see blood? Antisemitism spiked on Simchat Torah, before we even hit Gaza. All the campaigns, the starvation in Gaza that never happened, it's all part of an attempt to use sophisticated, lying, vile, disgusting weapons as part of antisemitism, but it’s not, it’s not, uh, a fact-check. So what is the problem there? The problem there is not how much we are boiling with rage against Hamas. Because that, actually, that’s fine. And why? There are more cautious decisions, more, uh, due to legal questions. Are there tactical questions in managing the war that it’s possible, if Ofer Winter were Chief of Staff, would have been decided differently and turned out much more successfully? That could be. Am I sure about that? No. I am telling you the truth, my truth. Why did heroes already taste that, taste that, and it didn't always lead to bigger victories in war? It's not simple. The idea of an APC that explodes brings that threat; the idea of destruction with buildings and whatnot, that was brought by the religious, the intensity of the entry, was the entry and exit—what did they call it? What? Raids, did that lead to better results or not? For now, it seems to me that the IDF has much, much more impressive results than Arik Sharon, than Raful, than all kinds of people who were much more similar to Winter than to...uh, what was his name, Herzi, the results are much more impressive. To be smart in war and not just full of power. I don't know if that brought more deaths. What didn't bring, what brought casualties was the ban on mortar fire, by the legal team, the military legal team, no, the mortar fire, that is what brought that they go with the international law strictly, strictly, and. I’m not saying we shouldn't be smart in the debate against international law, but it cost us a lot . Is it this method or that method? I don’t...I don't know. Now, I am not a military man, I am not...I hear that many people on this side tend much more toward Ofer Winter’s opinion and I respect that. And if in the end I had to be asked, is it possible to have... to have Herzi Halevi as Chief of Staff or Ofer Winter, what would I decide? I wouldn't hesitate for a tenth of a second, not even a blink, clearly it would be Ofer, I rely on him much more in the long run...but am I sure that all his suggestions are only good and all of Herzi’s suggestions are only bad? No, I’m not...I’m not...I’m not there. But okay, but all these questions to me...but there is a question of cognitive assimilation here , and it’s dangerous, it’s the crux of the question of Judaism as the center of the entire debate, where the State of Israel is heading. We are sitting here in Ramat Gan because of this question, and it is a big question . We need a lot of national soul-searching on this question. Well, time is up, an important issue. No.