Appointment with Moshiach | Parshas Vayishlach

a guy walks in to LaGuardia he's flying to Denver and he goes the ticket counter the ticket counter says you were slightly checking for some flying to Denver you have any bags to check he says yeah I do but before I check my bags I want to know something the big bag here can you make it show up tomorrow in Dallas and the two medium bags can you know can you make them show up three days from now in Cincinnati the guy that the desk is this no sir we cannot do that this is are you sure you can't do it there's no sir we do come on you're flying from LaGuardia to Denver to make one bag show up tomorrow in Dallas and in two bags show up three days from now in Cincinnati no we can't do that so you sure you can't do it says no we cannot do it is this good because that's exactly what you guys did to me last time okay speaking of itineraries multi-city itineraries this week the ocular vase of final confrontation and ace of makes peace with Yaakov and he says to him brother now that we made peace let's become traveling partners let's go travel together and Yaakov tells Asaph yah Verna add a knee lift knee off day my master please pass before your servant meaning go on ahead go on without me Vonnie it's not a lowly et I'll take my time according to my pace little eggle I'm a lock washer lafawn night well irregular you logged him according to the pace of the all the animals that I have with me as well as the pace of the children of children with me it slows me down sure Ave until I come join me to my master meaning to you tase of say era say era to the mountain of Sayer so I'll meet up with you just go on ahead and we'll meet up at har Sayer okay now if you go on and you read Yaakov travels and he goes to suck ice and then he goes to sham and then I mean if you keep following eventually goes to have wrong he never shows up and say yeah so rapture deals with this whereas she says what was the act of telling Asaph proud to show of a Ella Dana st. you know until I meet up with my master in say er here have Leia debtor he widened where he expand and he expanded the way for him what does that mean I mean he described his itinerary by projecting the trajectory farther than he actually was going shall i how you die I'll Allah has Ella so case he only had in mind to go to so case so suitcase was in that general direction but instead of saying meet me at suckers meet me at say yur which is much farther past so case why did he do that um he said he said to himself Jakob said to himself him die til Isis leader ah if he has in mind to do harm to me my brother ace of even though we just made peace but he established himself as a as a violent person young team he will wait over there it's a her where I told him to wait up for me i boy at Slade till I arrived to him till I get there so he won't be able to ambush me who like Allah and then he didn't go Yaakov didn't go now what do you do about the fact that this is clearly misleading now she doesn't like that he doesn't like for us to think that yankov is misleading so now she tells us the a muscle alien will he go he wasn't lying he said I'll meet you there eventually right so when your wife says I'll be ready in five minutes right by the way they say that a woman's I'll be ready in five minutes is roughly equivalent to a man's I'll be home in five minutes okay yeah so you can use that for free you don't even have to quote me alright so when will he reach there be may Amish Shia and the times of mushiya shouldn't hang out like it says and we're gonna quote now from a vodka Vanya was an interesting prophet he was a GERD Sadek a righteous convert from Adam Adam means the Roman people who descend from Asaph yeah he was a descendant of Asaph and because he became a jew he merited in his prophecy when he became a prophet to prophesize the downfall of his people of his biological origin yeah and hit the haftorah for this week is the book of Avadh yeah so a lot you said and in fact it should be familiar to you because we say it well you'll tell me when we say it Avadh you said regarding his prediction or his prophecy of the of the Messianic era messianic showdown between yankov and Asaph she never like it says the automation' be hard seeing saviours will go up upon mountains iron that means the Jewish people leash pipe to judge for all that they did over the millennia as har ace of the mountain of Ace of which is synonymous with har Sayre when do we say that by the way all the machine by Hertzian leash princess our ace of Hashem Hashem I'm Luca and HM will have the kingship it's uh we say it every single day in the Avenue yeah at the end of the summer okay so I want to tell you this is more than just a narrative this story as we know Tyra is militia here ah the word pedra itself is from the word Hydra which means instruction so everything in Toyota is instructive it's not just a history and indeed our sages derive a halakha from this story it is brought in the Gemara Nevada Zara DAF HOF hey I'm at base and it is codified by the Rambam in mission NATO help us read seoc laws of murderers pedak good base halakha castes if you're interested to look it up and it says there that if a Jew is asked by a non Jew hey where are you going he shouldn't tell him where he's going because then Andrew may lie in ambush and wait for him so he should do it like Yaakov told a sieve and say a further destination so if he's starting off in five towns and he's heading to Brooklyn and now juices where are you going says I'm going to New Jersey today I'm just gonna be waiting all the way down there in New Jersey and that you will never get to that point because he was only going to Brooklyn and then he won't get ambushed that's what the halacha is now I want to tell you something you say well why don't why don't we do that you know why we don't do that because that's not the way people are today people are not lawless people are not murderers and in our day and age not only just in our day and age but for centuries I'm saying I'm not saying this to be PC I'm the the halacha commentaries say specifically the meaty lived in 13th century Spain he already said you don't have to speak that way to non-jews they're not lawless people they're not suspected of murder I mean even if they don't like you they're not gonna just murder you so we don't actually do it that way anymore we don't do that you can actually tell them I'm going to Brooklyn so it's good to know that you don't have to because imagine at the ticket counter by the way that's why the Jews buy the hidden city tickets by the way that's just so you know point beyond destination that's a little like Dan Steel's joke there but it's inside baseball okay whoever gets the joke at any rate you go you go research it Danny at any rate you're flying to Miami say you bring your passport say you're going to Bermuda it's a lot cheaper okay at any rate I can't give all the secrets here this is a shear anyways so we don't do this today you can tell a non Jew your real destination you don't have to be worried that they're gonna kill you so then the question becomes and this question only arises from our deep conviction that everything in the trader is instructive the question becomes okay fine so then what is the teaching for us it's not just a factoid it's not just hey you wanna know some trivia once upon a time non-jews were so lawless that you had to be afraid they were going to kill you you couldn't tell them were you really going okay that's trivia that's historical information but Toyota is hey rotator is instruction so I want to know for us in 2019 what is the practical guidance that we can still glean from this from this halakhah okay so put that on the shelf and I want to tell you a story the story takes place in 1991 in Moscow this is Gorbachev's Soviet Union this is the times of perestroika when things are just beginning to thaw and there was a thought well I suppose I should back up there's such a thing as the keenest hush locum hey allow me the global or the worldwide convention of Habad emissaries which takes place in New York just to place a few weeks ago and then there are regional keno sim there are regional gatherings of Slocombe of kibosh looking in in America they take place according to two different regions but in other countries something you know other countries are smaller so you can have they have an entire european regional guinness so in 1991 there was a thought in America's offices marizleene unity no that's the organization one of the main organizations of Habad and the one that runs the dish liquors so there was a thought that now that Russia is opening up a little bit maybe we'll make the european regional kennis in russia wouldn't that be cool wouldn't that be cool I mean just decades earlier not even decades early even even years earlier there was oppression of Judaism but you didn't have to go back in too far you know even just a few decades where literally these same Sydenham or this same movement was being targeted for the most brutal torture and and and in summary executions and like people be dragged out in the street and murdered for teaching for teaching children Torah right and now just a few years later it was possible you know we could make we could make the European Regional Convention in in Moscow so the rabbit was asked whether or not this would okay so the rebus response was if all of the Slocombe can get visas then it's good that was that up his response if all of the sh locum can get visas and that's what happened all of the all the Europeans love him were able to get visas into Russia and it was arranged that the European Regional kidness should be in Moscow and the regional kidness was a writ was arranged directed by rabbi moshe cutler ski who's the one who arranges the main kinase as well as all of the regional Kinnison and Michalowski figures prominently as a character in this story as you're gonna see Shabbos there in there I hope I'm pronouncing this now butchering is too bad but it's called the mullah dish nyah Hotel in Moscow fancy hotel and they're supposed to go down to the marina Russia shul which was the one of the one Shoals that stayed open under communism prominent sure and that Shabbos morning all of a sudden this pounding furious banging Arabic on our skis hotel door it opens the door and one of the Slocum says to him you're in trouble they're gonna kill you says who who's gonna kill me he says the old men the old man are gonna kill you he says what old medics is the old men they say you walked them into a trap what's going on so he goes down say leaves his room he goes downstairs and he finds three seniors looking can't happen to know who was it was a hell cap as initial on the mattress often and Beto gravich they are hiding in a broom closet and they see their Misha and emotion to him they pull him into the broom closet and and and they they say to him how did you do this to us how could you do this to us and ambitious it do what what do they do you walked us into a trap we're all going to be exiled we're all gonna be killed we're all going to be arrested at the very least now you have to understand something all three of these senior Slocombe grew up in Soviet Russia all three of them had been arrested had served time had been in prison indeed Schlemmer matrosov was arrested from the steps of Marina Russia sure the very show that they were about to walk to that Chaves morning so they had definite reason to be insecure they grew up this is where they lived this is where they were persecuted the memories were not that old it was their lifetime and now what did they see which triggered all of this panic this dread this trauma they said look look outside you say we're not in a trap look outside look what you did to us so the measure goes to the window and he sees a whole row a whole row of Russian police animation walks back over to the three elder Siddim he says it's an honor guard they're going to escort us when we walk to shul the three elder Siddim says impossible is no such thing no such thing but it may sure says okay I'll tell you what I'll go out first if they take anyone they'll take me and while they're grabbing me everyone else can scatter they say fine you know that's what you're willing to do so the measure goes out he speaks to the police turns around comes back in he says I told you guys it's an honor guard you're here to ascore Duss police escort as we walk to show and that is indeed what happened there was a parade so to speak of Slocum Shabbos morning in Moscow in their capitals with their telephone over their shoulders marching proudly down the street Russian police escorting them as an honor guard so that's the story I wanted to tell you that is a little snippet a little slice or a glimpse into the way that things want to be not how they've always been indeed that's precisely why those three elder venerables in them were terrified because it was such an aberration from the historically established routine but that's the way it ought to be and in fact that's the way that it was conceived in its original inception conceived no pun intended or maybe pun intended I guess when rifka was pregnant she went and she asked about why she's experiencing a battle within her womb and she was told that there's not just two children there are two nations yankov an ace of represent the Jewish people and Western civilization respectively young givers the Jewish people an ace of his Edom or Rome Western civilization which continues even till this day so she was told there are two as nations not just two people two peoples and the word is spelled so it can also be Revati points it out their game which means exalted once and rafi points out well why the double meaning he says because it's also a reference to the historical personalities of Rebbe and Antoninus to exalted ones our Rebbe and Antoninus Rebbe was the leader of the Jewish people in his day he was the redactor of the Mishnah following the Second Temple period Antoninus was a file of Semitic Roman Emperor a lover of the Jews and he was a personal friend of Rebbe there were friends they respected each other so in its conception meaning how it began at least in theory yankov an ace of were meant to have a symbiotic relationship like Rabi and Antoninus in fact the Psalms Seifer says that Rabi and Antoninus were the norm that it was supposed to be and that ideally young given ace of the Jewish people in Western civilization should have had a relationship similar to a year sovereign's Volyn partnership yeah like in the twelve tribes two of the twelve tribes you saw friends woolen you saw her studies torrents woolen goes out and does does the commerce in order to support the Torah study of your sucker so initially it was supposed to be that the Jewish people are occupied as scholars in spiritual wisdom and Rome Western civilization which is really good at technology and invention and in Indian industry they would provide the support the infrastructure the material support for the spiritual endeavors of the Jewish people and that's how it was supposed to be it was supposed to be like a Rebbe Antoninus relationship now the reality is that there's been a few thousand years of aberration where it hasn't been the way it's supposed to be but in a moment like 1991 that Shabbos in Moscow at the regional European kinocilium you had a glimpse of the way it is supposed to be you have the Slocombe proudly marching to shul on a Shabbos and you have the Russian police acting as the honor guard that is a representation that's an archetype of how the relationship is appropriately supposed to be and in fact it's a little more to the story just the dis kind of delicious irony Michalowski mentioned to me that when they actually got back to the hotel where did they put them to have their meeting where they're gonna they're gonna plan how to spread godliness all over the all over Europe they were placed in the Lenin communist party room and they sat in that room and they planned all the activities this look am I going to do and Europe to spread godliness throughout the continent that year so but but but the point is everything that Western civilization has created all the infrastructure whether its military might or its technological advancement or industry it's all really there to act as material support for the spiritual endeavors of the Jewish people and that's the way the relationship is really supposed to be so really that is the way it's the way that it ought to be and in fact you know there's a song we sing after Havdalah on Saturday night after Shabbos alveta of the yankov do not fear my servant Jacob one of the lines of that song goes according to the olive base but the tough line is say T 10 Emily ank you give truth to Yankee which is a a verse from the prophet from T to never slang of Hester love ROM but there's a deeper meaning so the smell of amalga the meal after Shabbos is sooo the stove of Malcolm a Shia it's the it's the it's the meal of King David the Messiah or the for bearer of the Messiah is there's a connection between malama Malka and mushiya which is also why it sustains the etem lose the lose bone which is the the source of TS amazing resurrection at any rate so at that meal where we have our sights set on mushiya we say teeth and Emmas a yankov give truth to act what does that mean don't make Jacob a liar Jacob told Asaph we're gonna meet that house a er when Messiah comes make yankov good on his promise make sure that he makes good on his promise in other was what does that mean we're saying make sure we're saying to wash on the yankov an ace of the the Jewish world can Western civilization can finally enjoy the proper appropriate relationship that they were always meant to have a Rebbe Antoninus type relationship now we can answer our question what is the instruction to us when the non-jew says where are you heading and we don't tell them our immediate destination on our itinerary we tell them our ultimate destination and our center area what does that mean it means when they ask us what's your agenda what are you driving at well you know what you come here for what do you want while you're living in our country what what do you guys are all about don't tell them some PC answer about immediate goals what we're here for religious freedom we're here for some security we're here for tell them the truth tell them the ultimate destination you want to know what we're here for you know what we're driving at our ultimate place where we're gonna meet up with you a perfected world mushiya where there will be peace among all humankind and especially there will be this unique relationship between Western civilization and the Jewish people and we should state it proudly and transparently and openly that is the instruction for us in our day even in our day and especially in our day when we're so close to Michelle