Tisha B'av: Caring for Your Fellow Man - Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer

[Music] Al if is one yud is 10 K is 20 and he is five is says Mish and the V says this as well that represents the 36 transgressions the 36 violations of the Cardinal type of sins of divine excision of CES ledv 36 indeed as well stands for our Defiance of the one the almighty The One and Only God the yud is The Ten Commandments the is the 20th generation from Adam to Abraham Abraham ainu was 20 Generations removed from Adam when the Covenant of circumcision BR was given that's the the five books of the Torah that the Jews trespassed that the Jews transgressed and violated but says a Zohar that's deeper than that because is the same letters as the primordial sin of Adam of adish when he sinned when he fell from grace and Hashem God Almighty says to him he says a a where are you of course God knows everything God is omniscient God is omnipotent God is omnipresent God knows everything God is everywhere God knew precisely where Adam was so what does it mean what is he asking AO where are you he knew where he was and the answer is says AAR he wasn't saying where are you he was saying how could you what's the matter with you what's wrong with you do you understand who you are and the same question is asked to us same question is what is the matter with us why are we still celebrating and observing why are we still Comming Tish after so many years in Exile 72 years after the Holocaust why are we still sitting here and why has this day not turned into a yonto into a holiday but I think that there's another question the question OFA the question is not Hashem necessarily per se asking us where are you but it's us asking each other it's me asking you you asking me and you asking everybody that you know and everybody that knows you asking you AA where are you because the Jewish people were wonderful there's no one like us we have hola for emergencies we have masum for death La we have call for weddings it's terrific but what about the every day what about the inet what about that day that I need to pick up or lift me up what about the day that I need to be bolstered what about the day that I need encouragement where are my friends AA where are you when I need you I need you I can't do this life alone you know how hard it is to be a toor Jew today in the 21st Century you know how many distractions and diversions you know how much impurity you know how much decadence you know how much depravity how much contamination how much stot how many much nonsense there is and it pulls us down it pulls us down it pulls down all the indecency of the the Morality In The Summertime in New York City it's hard the only way not to succumb is aeko where are you I understand you need me I'm here for you I love you you're my brother you're my sister AA I'm responding to the call of where are you I am here H I'm here I'm here for you did you know that a is an acrostic device a the book of a is written in the olive base chapters for 1 through 4 is all comprised of the olive bet Olive base why say for yir which reportedly our Legend and our tradition has it it's a very first book written in humanity mankind written by Abraham Abino himself SAA tells us that the world was created the protoplasm of the universe the DNA of the entire world is is the Olive Bas the 22 letters of the olive Bas as a matter of fact it's the different formulations and different permutations of the olive Bays that give us Bria that give us creation that give us objects that gives us the world and when we sin when we deviate when we falter when we go astray what we're doing is we're causing a corrosiveness we're causing a corrosion in the fabric of the universe in the olive bays and that is why when we do V when we confess the confessional when we beat our hearts in unish it's calling clapping the hearts when we beat our heart we say heav it's Olive base because the only way to reconstitute the only way to rehabilitate and repair the world the alive B that was damaged and corroded because of our sins is by saying the olive Bays once again out of confession Olive bays and similarly a which represents the destruction of the universe the temple the bdash is Olive Bas the corrosion the devastation the ruination of the world it's Olive Bas but there's a great anomaly and what is the great anomaly if you look at a you will see that for chapter one The Iron precedes the pay but for chapters 2 through 4 the pay precedes the iron it's out of order it's it's out of sequence we know in the olive Bay in the 22 layers Olive Bas iron comes before pay so why did you Jeremiah the prophet write from chapters 2 through 4 a pay before iron the talor says that because the nth day of of that we're observing now is rooted in the Sin of the spies those inoble leaders the princes of the Jewish people who were very pernicious and who came with gossip malicious gossip against the land that was flowing with milk and honey why because they put their pay before their iron because they spoke before they saw and that is why the pay precedes to ion in chapters 2- 4 asks the mahha on the gamorra if that's the case then why does chapter one have the iron before the pay it says because you may think then you may make an error and must be mistaken and think that youran Nai had a different M he had a different tradition and his tradition was that in the sequence of the olive bays in the order of the olive Bays indeed the Fay precedes iron and therefore the first time it's mentioned it's mandated it's necessary it's required to have the iron before the pay lest someone have that error the speaks about this the a famous T speaks about this the answer that the reason why Theon must proceed the pay in the first chapter of Lamentations of is because you can't State a falsehood without predicated it without basing it a bit on truth because then everybody will know that's just fallacious and therefore the princes the Des spies initiated their lie with the truth and that's why in the first chapter ion precedes the Fai I was thinking about this why does the fa come before the ion and I realized it's AA it's the same theme where one Jew asks another not God asking Adam UT Marion but one Jew asking another where are you when I need you I need you through the ups and downs through the vicissitudes I need you through the turbulence I need you to help me when I fall to get up not just for the cemeteries and weddings I need you for every day and every moment in between and that's where we fall short as a society and that's why perhaps the pay precedes the iron because too many of us we speak before before we know the evidence we talk we render judgments before we saw the facts we're way too conceited and I speak about myself as well I'm not condemning any person here in this room or anybody watching on any time i'm talking collectively we got a big problem and the big problem is we're not unified we have too much divisiveness we have too much friction there's too much altercation there's too much enmity and strife there's too much garbage the Jewish people are fractured and we're [Music] fragmented because we're so judgmental we're too pretentious and we judge before we really know we don't see you ever say to somebody I see what does that mean I see doesn't mean you see with your eyes God forbid a blind man could also say I see it doesn't mean he sees it means he understands because vision is also indicating the gift of aptitude a cognition of your faculties where you understand you're Discerning something we walk around too many of us yeah my my community is the best we know what we're doing my Rabbi he's second to God the others they're nothing if you don't belong to my Shore if you don't live on my block you're worthless basically y'all never say that but you know what we don't know each other too many riffs were splintered it's almost like before the Holocaust where there were so many communities holy holy communities but there was no there was no unity and everybody was trying to outdo the other and everybody was trying to tattletail and the other and everybody was trying to better the other I want to share with you a story about Ru Cooks cook imagine Ru cook today it's a little controversial do you know sad very sad he was mad Kad of none other than the gu the the different times I guess today if was alive you made him be a little controversial ruk Z was walking in the street and his detractors these Kim these zealots went ahead and they climbed up to the third or fourth floor of a building and they took putrid water they were doing L sham of course for the sake of Heaven but they emptied the water on top of his head R Coke was with his Entourage with his tum his students his disciples and the disciples were beside themselves they were irate they wanted to they said you know let us get those guys we're going to suffocate them you know R cook said no no bring them to me okay so R cook they expecting R cook to you know do some incantation and you know cast some kind of spell and curse them and they'll die R cook said no bring that to me I want to hug and kiss them said what they were baffled they were incredulous why would you want to do that is because I'd rather be guilty of than might rather be guilty of baseless love than baseless hatred comes from the word free baseless but the true emology the true word of is means charm or Grace means somebody has something distinct somebody has something unique somebody has something that's different and exceptional and that means that we have to look into other community and say what do they have that's different what do they have that's special that we don't have they're more colorful okay we'll take it not that we have to accept it but we have to acknowledge it recognize it and say you know what maybe it's not okay maybe it's not worth making a Mikus making a rift maybe it's more important to show some commonality and some Unity thear tells us that time of very very Wicked people ofar they served idolatry but they won every war sayar because the people in that time were at peace with the with shalom shalom is Paramount famous Rabbi doctor famous psychiatrist and Tom scholar of the Jewish people of Dr AJ twerski once told me a story that I'll never forget many years ago he was doing his rounds and giving a tour to medical residents of the Psychiatry Ward it's not an easy place to be at I've been there many not as a patient okay don't get scared been there many times for other reasons not an easy place and they encountered the medical residents encountered a medical anomaly something very unconventional something that was shocking one of the patients on the Psychiatry board was there for over 30 years neb you imagine the guy was on a Psychiatry Ward and the hospitalized institutionalized for over 30 years and they said that he's the medical anomaly nobody could explicate nobody could really unfold the medical mystery it's an enigma it's a real conundrum we have no idea what's going on here and they all the medical representants looked at this patient they saw he was like this his hands were positioned like this and he did not move almost like a catatonic state but he was standing and holding his hands like this they had a force feed him he would never ever deviate from this position they didn't know what to do over 30 years one of the medical residents was a religious jewer from boy and he said to Dr torski he said said I'd like to speak to him please okay nobody was expecting anything the biggest experts were called in for this nobody was able to solve this mystery nobody's able to solve this dilemma and this from boy this medical resident goes ahead and he says something in the ear he whispers something in the ear of the medical anomaly himself the fellow who for over 30 years is like this and suddenly n scam A great miracle happens the guy goes ahead after 30 years he sits down for the first time in years people were astonished they were shocked they couldn't believe it incredulous how did you do it and he said no it was really nothing I said come on this is going to go in the annals of medical Psychiatry as the greatest miracle in the century how did you do it and he said well I went over to him and I said to him as follows I said to him I understand that you're working so hard on behalf of us all to hold up the world without you the world will collapse I understand that and I want to extend my appreciation on behalf of myself and on behalf of the entire world for all that you've been doing for all these years of holding us up but now I am going to take you over for a few moments so you could rest you deserve a break after all these years let me hold up the world for you for just a few minutes and the man sat down let me ask you a question where did this answer come from unbelievable unbelievable you know where it came from because everybody that was looking at this psychiatric patient was looking at him like he was not an enigma conundrum as much as he is a nut and he is sick the first time someone went over to him and approached him as a human being AO where are you what can I do for you to commiserate to empathize to sympathize to say what could I do for you how could I understand where you are what you are suffering from I'm not going to treat you like a medical statistic I'm not going to treat you like some kind of nutcase I'm going going to treat you like I understand maybe potentially where you're coming from I'm going to go into your shoes I Echo and that's how after 30 years the man was finally able to sit down share with you a story about my great rebi Ru patal there was once a fellow whose father was hospitalized because of physical illness and he was on a death B he was dying he was very very sick and the elderly man says to his son who was also a student of ram he says I'd like you please I'd appreciate very much if you could please bring your rebi rabi Pam here to give a br to give me a blessing and the son was thinking how could I trouble the great Ram the sador the great man of the generation how could I trouble him I can't do that I can't bring it up to him the next day the father repeats his request and says i' very much appreciate if you could please bring me your teacher rabie pom to give me a blessing and the son realized he had no choice he went to RAM and he said reie I'm so sorry to intrude I'm so sorry to interrupt I'm so sorry to trouble but my father insists on the rashash coming and giving a blessing of Braha and said I would love love to but there's one problem I am a cohain and there's a halic challenge of a cohain going to a hospital in case there may be a corpse present and the man understood of course he was disappointed how is he going to Parlay this how is he going to convey this now to his father who so desperately wants the blessing from the next day Rabbi pal calls him RAB pal says tell me what floor is your father on in the hospital he tells him he's on the 10th floor is there a window in the room yes could you please arrange that at 2:30 p.m. your father should be wheeled in a wheelchair to the window in his room at 2:30 p.m. the son takes a wheelchair puts his father in the wheelchair and wheels his father to the window and they look down 10 floors and who is outside on the street waving to the window none other than the godor RAB effusive showering them with blessings and brus the man who bent over backwards who didn't take no for an answer because yes Hally it was impossible for him to go to the hospital but that's not a means you're going to look for way to make it happen even if it seems to be indomitable and impossible you will make it happen because you love your fellow Jew because Ram looked at every Jew as huge and as great and as Grand you know the P compares the Jewish people in the past week's para that je Jewish people be like the multitude the myriads of stars asks Rashi this is dis uous cu the Jewish people at present were only 600,000 they weren't the multitudes and myriads of stars stars are billions and trillions and trillions and trillions inestimable so it says Rashi what does the mean Rashi says it meant that they would be extin it means that they' be like they have the immortality of The Luminaries of the celestial bodies that they would always be present but not that they would have the number says differently he says you know what it means he says it means that they will be like The Luminaries their righteousness will scintillate and shine their sadik will shine like the great luminaries and the gron says that's a little it doesn't mean that they will exactly be like the stars but there will be so many Jews pamal used to say that the Jewish people will be like stars look at a star first of all the word kov says a r in t that every Star has a is shama we don't know what that means it's very esoteric that every Star is Nish is the Shem the Tet grittin and is the 22 letters of the olive Bas every Star has it said you look at a star and it looks minute it looks tiny but in essence in reality it's huge a star is huge he say you look at a person and that person you think looks puny and small small because you're not looking at their Nisha you're not looking at their inside because you're being judgmental but really that person is huge that person is so lofty just look at that person's potential look at that person's future and that's what we have to do we have to stop being judgmental we have to stop being noal we have to start Bridging the Gap told his children we desperately need desperate desperate desperate there's so many so many sorus so many tragedies so much pain out there forget about the terrorism that's awful and it's only starting I'm talking about an individual level so so much pain if I told you what I heard yesterday from several people that came over to me with their terrible terrible stories of Agony and travails that they're going through you would I'm telling you you would sit shiver you tear out your hair I couldn't sleep last night says you want you want we just get together care about one another why have we lost the core values of the Jewish people arino loving kindness be there for each other if we try our utmost and our hardest to really really really care about every Jun no matter what strip or Banner they carry and look into the nas understand that they are a star we're going to be we're going to Merit return us to you and we will come back restore the day of antiquity give us back those days of Love bring back the bring that the radiance bring down the love bring down the shine May