Haazinu-Succos - Rain of Torah

you're listening to the weekly departure podcast with ari goldwag recorded with hisham's never running assistance in 2021 this week's prize was parches hazino i'd like to give you a few thoughts about the parsha the very beginning of the parsha as well as moving into we're coming out of yom kippur yum kippur besides for being of course the day of atonement hashem forgives us for all of our various it's also the day that kurdish poor who gave us the lucha schneiders moshe abandoned moses came down from the mountain with the second set of tablets on this day so it's a day of torah it's a day of receiving the torah it's a day of rededication in our relationship with god with hashem sukis sukis is also coming right up and if we look at sukis and we look at what happens at the end of circus perhaps we can notice something and that is the end of sukkah we celebrate the completion of the entire torah simcasterra happens on shimini atteres the last day of sukis and that represents the fact we have receiving the torah at the beginning by young kippur 21 days later 22 days later we have the receiving of the torah the completion of the torah that we received and in between we have this period excitement we're so excited we have the arbaminum we have the the lula of the estuary we have the midst of the sukkah i'd like to suggest that perhaps even the sukis itself revolves very much around torah very much around the concept of the term why where do you see that perhaps you could say that the sukkah itself reminds us of israel the purpose of the suck is to remind us that hashem protected us in the midwest inside of the wilderness for 40 years and we all know how did he protect us besides for the fact that of course we had booths we had tents etc to protect us but we had the awesome clouds of hashem's glory protecting us in the midwar and we commemorate that we remind ourselves of that by stepping out of our homes and recognizing and remembering hashem is always protecting us we're in the sila de menussa we're in the shadow we're in the under the the wings of the divine presence so to speak the torah itself we could say as we'll soon perhaps see in the madras the terror itself is a protection from the winds from the rain right we're going to talk about rain because we have we we have this mushroom of the rain the plastic refers to the array of kamata you know we don't so much want to hear about rain on circus right but just like the sukkah protects us says it's something to protect us from the rain the terra as well just like hashem protected us in the wilderness god gave us something to protect us through all time and that is the torah the torah the intellectual property that we have that god bequeathed to us the information here the misfits the commandments these all serve as a protection for us throughout our sojourn and our many goliaths are many the many wildernesses that we've traveled and traversed so with that introduction perhaps we can have a little bit of an understanding of the midram here that speak very much about torah and i think that circus is a great time sitting in arsuka i remember last year i was actually in quarantine last year so it circus was a time for me to learn of course to be with my family and indeed let's see some interesting things about the torah as it is compared to rain and to wind and we'll see more hazing the tour begins with the awesome song which is the edus the testimony of moshe ben of moses for the jewish people to remember for all time about our relationship with hashem and how it's a never-ending relationship and of course as we said the way that we express our relationship best is through the torah our commitment to torah to god's will for us listen up o heavens and i will speak and the land shall hear the words of my lips and here you know at the beginning of the song at the beginning so whenever you want to understand something you can look in two places at the beginning or at the end because the beginning is the first thought and the end is the sum up of all that went on before so here at the very beginning of the song the torah wants us to know what is the song about what is the edith what is this testimony what is this covenant between god and the jewish people how is it expressed it's expressed in the torah yeah gives us which is the torah it comes down like rain in russia and it flows like dew my word god says okay so we have so far two different michelin two different analogies one is rain the tire is like rain in some sense we'll see soon how and in another sense it's like dew rain is something that comes perhaps suddenly rain is something that's very powerful it it goes everywhere it goes i'm sorry not so much everywhere it goes in some places matar that's ring tau however tal which means do that's something that falls equally in small amounts early in the morning and late in the evening the torah is somehow compared to each of these and we'll see soon in what ways like the powerful winds that go through the grass and like drops of water says rashi that come upon the grass as well okay we'll see hopefully i don't know a lot of time to get through all the different pieces over here that speak about these verses but let's see if we can the power of torah the power of our of our relationship with hashem receiving the torah the love of hashem the forgiveness of hashem yom kippur leading on through sukis this time of awesome joy expressing our thanks to god for forgiving us expressing our excitement to be in that relationship with hashem culminating with sinclastera it's all about tyra it's all about this covenant these mitzvos very important thing the first thing that the measure says that i'm reading to you from the magician the sephiri like this yeah legally says in your affilo whenever you have the lesson of arifa what is my gift is to you like reign ya'll by the calf that is killed in a place where they found a murdered human being so it uses a lotion of our food says on what is this calf going to its own for in a similar way interestingly says the madrish the tyre has the power to atone for our sins coming out of yom kippur heading into a time of joy atonement the torah serves as atonement for us it's like sierra him on the grass what is him so the magistrate understands that si irim instead of meaning wind as we explained before it it means a carbon a seer is a type of korbon what do the carbonates come to atone for alka-toys so when a person studies the torah when a person rededicates himself to one's relationship to god so it serves as a kapar and atonement for him atonement it's a returning to our relationship with hashem it says the message further and i believe that this is an explanation of the first statement of the majors israel moshe says to jewish people i want you to know that my going to receive the torah was not a simple thing it was not just you know you walk up to shaman you you walk in there into the heavens they give you the torah you come back down no no no it wasn't so simple and it started and i believe that this is the explanation for why it's a kampara why is it that the words of torah serve as an atonement for me as we said partly because we're entering back into our relationship with god but on another level there's a desire there's a pain there's a challenge of difficulty involved in studying the torah we don't immediately understand the words of torah we try to understand it there is a depth here that we need to plum there's a there's a word sometimes the russian that are hard to understand the gemara we don't understand we work at it monitoring says i was there forty days and forty nights small chamber didn't eat he didn't sleep forty days and forty nights straight studying the torah well i remember i was there 40 days and 40 nights he says listen to this i went amongst the angels then one of the angels are called fiery angels each one of those fiery angels could burn the entire world from is a type of angel a fiery angel that is there by the kisiah covered by the throne of god's glory i gave my i gave my life for the torah dominus i gave my blood i i did something which was extremely challenging and almost impossible just like i studied the torah and i did it in a difficult way i was challenged overcame the challenges so too you should do the same thing and i'm adding based on the previous statement of the of the major and you will have a kappa you'll you will atone you will re-enter into your relationship with hashem depending on how much like hazal says the reward is greater according to how much a person is challenged how much pain and difficulty a person goes through there so the measure says quantifies what we're saying myself said you should know that there's going to be difficulty and challenge when it comes to learning but when it comes to giving it over to a student don't think that it's an obligation for the teacher to make it hard for the student number teas alcatel and russia there's an aspect of mutter of rain heavy rain something that comes down very hard but then there's also an idea of te zal ka talam rasi which means russian of zal which means cheap which means not difficult to acquire the uranium a person should offer it to his students in a way that they can receive it easily they'll be interested in receiving it you know you trap them so to speak you draw them in and then they have to face with face off with the challenge but that's the idea of the magician okay another piece in the mattress this is a beautiful thing when it comes to trees and the rain the rain comes down and it provides sustenance for many different types of trees many different flavors of trees but geffen le fema the rain gives the taste to the grapes have a great taste the size of mushi the olives have an olive taste the tana lefimashi dates have a date taste also words of tyra the terror itself is one thing it's one goose it's one uh one body hard to translate it precisely it's one concept all encompassing is from mikro mishna tamil allah there's all different types of things that a person can find can connect to within torah some people connect to madrish some people connect to gemara some people connect to mishnah some people connect to the tower itself to the some people love tanakh some people like there's so many different aspects within the torah there's something in there for every everyone just like and and interestingly and beautiful beautifully the terra is something which is like rain it makes that which is within a person grow just like a gef and it has its own dna the grapes they grow there they have their taste but how do they grow they grow as a result of the rain the rain brings out that taste the geffen finds its own taste in the rain so to speak so too the torah each person has his nitia he has the things that he's inclined to the things that he loves in the torah a person finds those things and amazing fruits come out says i'm just another cool thing just like when it comes to rain so you don't know until it just it can just suddenly spring out on you it just starts raining suddenly this is obviously before they had weathermen but the weathermen aren't always right you know just like the rain can suddenly spring on a person right the verse describes in first kings chapter 18 verse 45 how the appeared the rain just started pouring in so too you want to know what it means to be atomic sometimes you you hear somebody speak and they're they're so well-rounded they've received so many different concepts they've invested so much time years and years and decades and decades into their torah learning you don't even know how much they know until they start talking it's just like sudden boom like the rain springs upon you so too it is with a torah so too it is with the terror okay a few more concepts here just beautiful beautiful intrusion that i wanted to share with you hey rabbi see my um so we see in the verses previous that we read we saw that moshe abandoned the moses said that the heavens and the earth will be witnesses to the covenant between the jewish people and god how do we know where do we see that the winds as well were to be these witnesses each of the different aspects of the verse refers to a different direction of the wind refers to the westerly wind tisaka dharma sees the rock's phonus first of the northerly wind cleans off the rakia as clean as gold the next part of the verse refers to the easterly wind which darkens the heavens this is a reference to the southerly wind each of these different winds are represented here in this verse and they all bear witness to the fact that akashboku that god has a relationship with the jewish people that lasts forever through the torah and again my thought about the fact that the torah protects us these are winds that might be destructive just like the sukkah protects us it's not the strongest structure but akadeshwar who is the one who's really protecting us that's what is to remind us so to the torah itself intellectually through our performance of the mitzvos through our learning of the torah it protects us from the winds of change that go on throughout the world through the new isms and the new uh concepts that the world takes on progressive progressivism cancer culture all the different cultures that come along that blow a person this way in that way and they come and go wasn't long ago that communism was the way to go marxism etc all these different cultures and and the winds blew this way and the winds blow that way still here we are protected by the torah consistently as represented by the sukkah by the time before yom kippur that we receive by the torah after that we receive what we complete and we dance with the torah this is the center of who we are this is our protection from the nations of the world measures continues we have time to probably finish all of these pieces they're just beautiful each one of them is a gem in and of itself every day stability if a person will gather words of torah in a similar way to someone who takes water you have bottles of water jugs of water used to be how they store the water they would store them in pits in the ground they would lay cement on the pits they would store the water in the pits it was a cold place protected from the elements so if you put a certain amount of water into the ground so let's say also you're going to get back how much water that you put in general i should say miami bar drink as the verse says initially in proverbs drink water from your pit okay but if instead of taking bottles of water you take the rain and you collect the rain you have uh irrigation bringing the rain to your massive pits shikha in a way that's enough for yourself so it's enough for yourself that's what you get whatever goes in is what you get for yourself but if you receive the torah yari kamatar is received like like the rain how can i collect as much rain as i can how can i receive as much and put into as many storehouses as possible so then the result is like tal tal is something which is spread everywhere as we said rain is something that might fall in one location but tal the dew it's something that spread evenly over many different places if a person receives the torah like rain so then he sprouts forth the words that he says are also going to be able to inspire others because it's going to overflow to others as well they will flow out of your the air out of your well but in that in the next verse that your ma knows your rivers your springs i'm sorry will shoot out as rivers we talked about the rain we talked about the do now we're going to talk a little bit about the wind what is the effect of the wind in the world and why is the torah compared to wind wind blows through the through the grass when milo is so it the the grass flows and and shakes in the wind and and the wind helps it to grow cactus terra also has that effect also has that impact to raise you up to cause you to grow to make you greater the haiti mecca the torah spins you around makes it very windy and raises you up and like rev drops of of rain in the in the in the grass when little drops of rain fall upon the grass you know i can picture you know field of grass and the rain falling and you see the rain the the drops of rain hitting the grass the grass going up and down so it's it's cleaning it off it's taking care of it also has that ability can it can have that effect the tyre is something which is a beautiful gives you hain it gives you grace okay last part of the metric massive hello will wrap up we can think about this over sukkahs we can think about this as we hear about rain hopefully not anywhere near our sukkahs says imagine the final point massive hello yard another point about the wind just like these the the winds blow a la savin on the on the grass my son is what we saw before there's red grass there's green grass there's different colored grass there's white clara's there are different results when it comes to a person who studies the torah who is in a real relationship with hashem some people are common very wise they develop a tremendous understanding and intellectual collection so to speak some people are cheering they're good people they do what's right they follow the laws of the torah some people are righteous there's they have that aspect some people are hasidim which is a different type of righteousness but each and every one of them just like you have different colors of grass and just like we saw before you have different types of fruits producing different type fruit trees producing different types of fruits the tara is one thing that brings about all of these things so with all these thoughts combine them together think about them ponder them pick out one thing that you like maybe you can share it at your table on sukkahs with your family maybe we can think about it going from yom kippur to the time of receiving the luchas until when we rejoice with the completion of the torah the beginning of the end of the torah between that is the time of sikkis when we're protected by the shrine the torah protects us the door daya the the ultimate generation when the jews had just received the terror kept the torah in the wilderness nothing like it that was the door day of we are going back there we are returning to that place so i bless you and ask you to bless me that we should indeed have the ability to incorporate these insights into ourselves have a beautiful show miss have a wonderful sukkas thank you so much for listening this podcast was made possible through the gracious donations of listeners like you for more podcasts like this please visit www.ariegoldwag.com or search on itunes ari goldwag [Music]