Ari Goldwag - Ki Sisa - Receiving the 7th in the 6th

you're listening to the weekly partial podcast recorded with hashem's never ending assistance in ra Israel 5776 2016 this week's para is para Kisa and in our para I'd like to focus in on the story of Mel the t's description of the Jewish people's great fall with the creation of this golden calf but actually before that I'd like to share with you a thought about the introduction theuk the verses that lead up to the m lead up to the creation of the golden calf and I believe that this is a very deep lesson a very deep concept which the Torah is hinting to in its introduction immediately before the paraa immediately before the whole concept of the golden calf the Torah gives us a number of verses which seem to be unrelated but as is the way of the Torah there is nothing that's by coincidence there's nothing that's just done everything that's done is for a reason all of the sections of the Torah that are placed next to each other always are coming to teach us something so this is in chapter 31 verse 12 the verse tells us like this God said to Moses as follows you shall speak to the children of Israel and say keep my shabas keep the Sabbath this is a sign between myself and you for all generations to know that I am the one I am God who makes you holy and the verses continue to speak about what is the concept and I'm skipping a verse to verse 15 six days you are to do work on the seventh day it's a day of rest it's a day which is holy unto God and whoever is going to do work on chabas and when we say work it doesn't mean physical manual labor necessarily but it does mean any kind of conscious creative act even lighting a match is considered work so anyone who does that is liable for death the Torah tells us the famous verses which we say every the Jewish people will keep the will keep the sabath keeping the Sabbath for all generations as an eternal Covenant it's a sign between myself and the children of Israel forever that for six days God created heaven and earth and on the seventh day God rested now these are the verses that immediately proceed M becoming aware of the fact that the Jewish people have made an a golden calf so the verses continue very interesting there's a transition verse between shab between the discussion of shabas and the discussion of the Mel the golden calf where Hashem gives Moshe at the end of speaking to him he's been talking to him for 40 days and 40 nights he hasn't slept he hasn't eaten nothing he's been there with Hashem with God receiving the law of receiving the Torah at the very end hasem gives him the two tablets they are stone tablets which were written with the hand of God as it were the next verse chapter 32:1 which is a direct continuation there's no pause in the text it's a continuation the nation saw that Moses was late he hadn't yet come down from the mountain the Jewish people see that Moshe is late and they say where is he he's not coming we need someone to lead us we need someone to connect us to God as is the depth of the understanding what's going on here and Aron tells them to bring all their gold Etc and they create this golden calf so there are three different points here in the narrative which I would like to focus on and try to understand the first is shabas the idea of the Sabbath a covenant between God and the Jewish people six days of work seventh day is a day of rest that's the first idea the second concept is the L the completion the final giving over of the Torah the concretization in a very real sense of the Covenant between God and the Jewish people the L the stone tablets and then the third point is that the Jewish people see Moshe is late and they begin to create this golden calf I would like to understand the sequence here why is it that the introduction to the story of the golden calf is that c the command of Hashem to mosha to the Jewish people to keep chabas to keep the Sabbath immediately followed by the giving of the L And Then followed by the story of the golden calf what is the understanding of this now there's an important thing to understand we we find that mosu Moses was on Mount Si for 40 days 40 nights it's classic we know that V the Jewish people received that amazing Revelation at Mount the sixth day of the month ofan is the day that we celebrate the M it's the day of the the giving of the Torah the open revelation of the Jewish people 40 days Moshe is there he comes down the happens on sh 40 Days Later the 17th of the following month which is the month of tamus he breaks the L part of the reason that we fast on that day is because of the fact that the original lcos the original stone tablets were broken it's also a fast in commemoration of the fact that we had this great sin that we sin with a golden calf on that day but the idea that's important to understand which I'd like to understand the depth of is that there's 40 days from the time that MOS raenu receives the Torah the Jewish people receive the Torah until the time that he comes down with those L with the the stone tablets which represent the relationship of hasem with the Jewish people in a concrete form what is the understanding why what's this 40 days what is the idea of 40 days even more than this is a medish the medish tells us something very interesting when the verse talks about the fact that hasem is giving the stone tablets the to it says this is in chapter 31:8 God gave to Moses at the end of speaking with him the two stone tablets what does it mean why does the verse use the word which means that God gave as a Matana as a gift what is the idea of gift in this context for 40 days the entire 40 days Moses was there above he was learning the Torah and he kept forgetting says to God Master the world I've been here for 40 days I don't remember anything I don't know anything that I studied you taught me all this Torah I don't remember a thing what does God do when 40 days was complete God gave gave Moses the Torah as a gift the verse says God gave to Moses what's the language of giving it's a of it's a language of a gift the idea is that mosha couldn't remember it at the end of 40 days has gave him a gift and he was from that point on he wouldn't forget all of the Torah that he had studied and put in all that effort to try to understand even though he forgot it from now on he would remember it it was a gift so the question is why did mosh need to study work so hard 40 days and 40 nights no sleep no food no drinks nothing he had to work so hard and every time he just forgot it if anyway at the end it's just going to be a Matana it's just going to be a gift why is it necessary for him to go through this whole entire process forget everything and then indeed at the end receive it as a gift what is the what are what are our sages teaching us here with this teaching with this concept and how is it perhaps connected to the concept of the number 40 what is the depth of the number 40 and how does it connect to what our Kaz our sages are teaching us now before we get to the main thrust of what I'd like to say I want to share with you one more Mish which has a very important and deep point which I'd like to tie in to what we're speaking about the me says It quotes the verse in Daniel in Daniel 9:7 to you our God is the charity upon him and all we have is embarrassment we see the M speaks about at length and goes through a number of different examples of different understandings and explanations of the fact but we see that Hashem does amazing charity with us and in return all we really have to show for it with from from the charity that God does for us is we're just embarrassed there's so much good that hm does for us we don't appreciate it to its deepest depths we don't really respond in kind we don't have that the recognition of the good that God does for us and in fact all we have is embarrassment and the M says that this verse really sums up what happened when it came to the when it came to the sin of the golden calf says an amazing thing after all that the Jewish people had done with the golden calf after this amazing sin the M which was this amazing bread from Heaven the Mana it shouldn't have come down God shouldn't have continued to provide them with sustenance when they were rebelling against him what does the verse tell us it's a verse in chapter 9 verse 20 your M you didn't prevent you didn't stop giving them the man this is one understanding of what it means in the verse that you God you are amazing you give charity and all we have is embarrassment despite the fact that we were rebelling against you you still contined to do charity you still continue to give us the Mana amazing thing says not only that listen to this they took the Mana they actually used the Mana as part of their sacrifice to their to the golden calf sh the verse says says in Ezekiel 16: 19 the bread that I gave you I gave you this amazing bread which had the taste of oil and and honey you placed it before them meaning before the idolatry gave it to them as an offering that's the verse in Ezekiel despite that it still came again Hashem still continued to give us the M the next day that's the amazing charity of hem say another explanation of this verse another place that we see that hem is doing charity despite the fact that we are doing embarrassing things what does it mean the people of Israel are standing below they're down on Earth and they're creating this idolatry in order to cause their creator to become angry as a verse says in Exodus 32:4 it's in our takes from their hands and he creates he crafts this golden calf what isem doing at that very moment God is sitting above and God is is crafting the stone tablets in order to give the Jewish people life in order to create a relationship with them that God at at the very end of his whole discussion with MOS as we said God gave him the he gave him the stone tablets this represents again the idea that Hashem is doing amazing charity even as we are doing acts which in our relationship with Hashem are embarrassing so when we read this m we hear this med it's it's so challenging so difficult to understand I mean if you think about the contrast God is doing amazing charity God is doing amazing kindness to us and this is how respond Hashem at that moment is is carving out the L carving out the stone tablets for the Jewish people giving them Life Giving Them eternal life and what are they doing they're rebelling against Hashem with this golden calf how can we how do we understand that even I think it's even harder to understand you know they took the M this miraculous bread and they gave it as an offering to to the to the to the idol how could it be how do we understand this what is the depth of of this magish what is really going on I'd like to share with you an amazing thought a really beautiful idea which I think is hidden in the depth of the following question my question is like this we know that the number 50 is really 7 time 7 seven weeks for example from PES until seven weeks we count and the 50th day which is the Transcendent day it's the 50th aspect that's that's that's the 50th so the number 50 is Count 7 * 7 transcend hit 50 that's 50 now what's 40 we asked this question previously what is the concept of 40 m was on for 40 days and 40 nights CL is in the in the midbar in the wilderness for 40 years the number 40 is significant we we find it many times I don't want to go into all of the different examples you can go do some research on your own but what is the number four 40 what is the concept of 40 I was thinking about it that intuitively I felt that the number 40 must be just like 50 is 7 * 7 + 1 it's 7 weeks the number 40 is 6 weeks now the problem is the problem is that 6 * 7 6 weeks * 7 days is 42 so we explained how we can get from 49 to 50 50 is the all-inclusive aspect it's the Transcendent aspect it's the combination of all the Parts but if if I'm correct in my hypothesis that the number 40 is really six weeks it's really 6times 7 how do we get from 42 back to 40 if it's really supposed to be six full weeks so then we shouldn't be at the number 40 we should be at the number 42 now I'd like to share with you to answer this question AES a novelty a novel thought which I believe is true and as I was reading the verses which speak before the verses I talk about the concept of chabas six days we have six days that we're to work in the seventh day of chabas it hit me that chabas extends backwards into the sixth day what do I mean there's a concept of T chabus there's actually an obligation to accept chabus early meaning on Friday afternoon before it's actually chabas you can extend chabas into Friday you can actually accept shabas in all of its strength if a person accepts chabas early on Friday afternoon it is chabus if he desecrates the chabus after he's accepted shabas on Friday afternoon he will be liable for death shabas extends can and does extend into Friday earlier into the sixth day so the seventh can extend into the sixth so it struck me if that's true if that's the case so if we're talking about s weeks or 6 weeks that means that the seventh week which represents the seventh day which is shabas if we were to extend chabas backwards the seventh week backwards into the sixth week it would mean that we could extend it back two days or three days whatever you want I mean this is in theory this is a concept this is a this is a novelty but we could extend it back such that the sixth week we could say ends before the end of the sixth week so even though the sixth week should really go to day 42 we could say that the sixth week ends at day 40 and if I'm going to say this so we need to understand what does that mean what is the concept what is the idea what does it mean that the the sixth week ends on day 40 what does it mean that we extend shabis into the sixth day we extend the seventh day into the sixth day we accept shabas early so this comes back to the depth of the idea of the number six and the depth of the idea of the number seven the number six is the number six represents the action that we do the actions that we take in order to bring in our parnasa let's say to bring in our livelihood those things that we do that we're active in order to receive all the goodness the the the abundance that Hashem wants to give to us but on chabas we stop we stop from taking action we just receive everything is ready from before chabas the chant is sitting there in that pot it's cooking from before chabas all the food is ready the are baked we don't do anything on shabas we don't cook on shabas we don't create any kind we don't do any kind of conscious creative acts on chabas everything is ready before chabas comes we just receive we just receive and we acknowledge the fact that even all of the work that we've done until now all the six days of work that we've done is really just Hashem doing for us it's really Hashem giving to us yes we are the channel to receive that which Hashem wants to give to us but really it's Hashem who's doing it like the verse says when I keep chabas I am making a recognition of the fact that hasm created the world and if hasem creates the world he rests if hashm is creat is the creator he's constantly providing sustenance to the world even the efforts that I take in order to sustain myself by stopping and saying I'm not going to take any efforts today I'm acknowledging the fact that everything even efforts themselves belong to Hashem all that I've received really belongs to God when I take shabas and I extend chabas into day six the sixth day is the completion it's the completion of creation it's the completion of my acts it's when I am completing my preparation for shabas if I take shabas in early which is what I'm to do I'm obligated to begin chabas on the sixth day before the sixth day is finished so if I'm extending shabas into the sixth day I'm already acknowledging within the Sixth Day within my very actions that it's not me that it's all Hashem that it's all God the point of connection between six and seven the point of connection that Friday night and really the shabas afternoon as well as we're seeing that point of connection is the place where we meet Hashem where God who is in terms of us he's the male aspect he's The Giver God meets us we are the female aspect ready to receive and acknowledge that all that we have is just a reflection of what God wants to give us it's not really ours so it comes the end of the sixth week comes day 40 which is early and Hashem says now now now is when we are completed now our relationship is ready to be consummated it's time for us to come into a relationship between God and the Jewish people here on day 40 early before the 42nd day Hashem is already saying mosu now it's time for you to bring the Lis down throughout this 40 days what has Moshe been doing he's been putting an effort he's been trying his hardest he's been working hard he's been sweating he hasn't taken a a bite to eat he hasn't eaten any food he hasn't had nap he hasn't slept a wink he's been putting in all of his efforts and and six weeks full 6 days parallel in the six days he's worked and he's worked and he's forgotten every single thing it's not a coincidence it's not a coincidence at the end he gets it as a Matana right there as he's about to enter into the seventh week as he's about to get to the Jewish people receiving the Torah properly in a concretized version right there is when he receives it as a gift which because he's about to enter shabas which of course shabas is referred to as the gift K sages refer to it as an amazing gift that hm wants to give to the Jewish people shabas is the gift it's us recognizing that it's all a gift it's all just about us receiving and it's about us stepping back and recognizing that it's all Hashem all the efforts that we've done even in Torah it's not us we can't remember we can't possibly receive it it's only because hasm wants to give us this this gift and that happens at the very end of the sixth day but before the end of the sixth day we're extending we're bringing the seventh aspect the seventh week the seventh week is already extending Backwards Day 40 already is when we're supposed to make ourselves ready to receive and recognize that it's all Hashem all that's been going on until now has all been Hashem as well but here's where we come to an amazing deep idea which is extremely powerful and extremely important to understand in ourem in our development of our relationship with Hashem and that is that when you get to day six you get to Friday afternoon you get to that point where the relationship is imminent shabas is coming it's almost time for us to completely give it up completely give it over to Hashem at that moment because of the fact that Hashem is about to give us the Torah because of the fact that Hashem is about to enter into a relationship with us because of the fact that a man is about to enter into a relationship with his wife which is also what happens on Friday night because that's about to happen all Mayhem Breaks Loose think about Friday afternoon right before shabas everyone is rushing to complete finishing that floor cleaning the floor taking out the garbage doing all the last minute things that need to be done everything happens at that moment because we're about to give up we're about to completely surrender and let shabas in the measure says that just at the very moment that hasem was writing those L clis was making an agle the very the very thing that Hashem was giving to them to show his relationship with them was the man the Mana and they were offering that to the what does that mean at its depth I think that the depth of what this is saying is that as we get closer to that point of surrender of giving to Hashem of of having a real relationship with hm of receiving actually more more appropriately more accurately as we enter into that moment of receiving from hasem which is represented by chabas there's an incredible mayem in order for us to extend JIS earlier when we bring it back into the day 40 into the 40th Day instead of day 42 in order for to in order for us to start accepting it early for shabas to come in early for us to already recognize that it's Hasam earlier there's a challenge that's created because that's not the the normal character of day six the first six days the character is that we are trying but on day six at at on the 40th Day is when M I can't do this it's When has has to give him that gift and cl also there was a point where it seemed like it can't be and amazingly how's the Torah describe the point where they say it can't be how we can't do it it's too hard it's impossible they fail when they say that of course doesn't failu when he says I can't do it gives him the mat because he doesn't he sticks it out does have a failure here but what is the way that the Torah describes it amazing the people see that mosha hasn't come down yet it's already day 40 he said he's going to come back on on day 40 they haven't he hasn't come down the language of the verse was late and tell us the wordes also can mean the sixth came tell us that means the sixth hour came it was the sixth hour was the afternoon already he hadn't arrived yet but I want I was thinking it's an amazing thing bashes means that the aspect of the sixth has come we have hit the point in time where it's Mayhem it's craziness it's Friday afternoon and it's time for us to just give up it's the moment of craziness when if we give up over there if we let go over there in that moment of craziness that's where the relationship really begins and it's a paradox because why is it crazy then it's crazy then because the relationship is about to begin it's crazy then because it's about to be shabas but can I extend shabas earlier into the week can I start chabas already earlier on Friday afternoon can I bring the seventh aspect already into can I bring the the from day 43 to 49 which is which is the seventh week can I extend that back to Days 41 and 42 or even back into day 40 That's the true test that's the deepest test can I acknowledge Within action that my action is not really what it is about it's really about Hashem it's really Hashem doing everything even as I'm acting it's really my acting itself has a character of chabas about it that's the deepest depths and that's the deepest test and that's the challenge that Jewish people faced and they failed but it's not a coincidence like we said it's not a coincidence that that was happening at the very moment that is ready to give us charity are we ready to receive it all we have here in this story is an embarrassment but M raenu he got it he did it correctly he hasem hasem said I'm ready to give you charity and he said I'm ready to receive it so he got the Torah as a gift and that's how would have been and it could have been for the Jewish people and in fact that's how it was in the end because if you think about it we need the end of that week we need days 41 and 42 and we have another week of rejoicing and what happened to those days what happened to that week I'll tell you what happened to that week MOS does indeed receive the does receive the at a later time it's on Kipper much later M comes down the day after and you have a actually over there it's a few days you have to explain how it works out over there but you have that week of Celebration which would have been if you think about it mosh would have come down they hadn't sinned with the golden calf he would have come down they would have had the complete the completion of that week and they would had a week of Celebration I think how do I know because that's what happened indeed when MH came down much later on yum Kipper there's a few days between yum Kipper and sukus and then they celebrate for a week because they have the they have the divine presence which is a result of the relation ship which the Jewish people finally receive and have when they receive the Torah itself when they receive the the second set of tablets I'd like to bless you and please bless me back Hashem should be able to help us see that so many times there's points of Challenge and difficulty in our relationship with Hashem but Hashem should help us to recognize that those are indicative of the fact that there's a deepening that's about to happen in our relationship with Hashem at you know we all experience those moments should help us to see that it's the sixth day for us it's that time of challenge because we're about to enter into that deeper relationship Hashem should help us to face off with those challenges and deepen our recognition that it's all from Hashem at those moments so that we can receive the Torah indeed like mosh raenu did and we can receive that relationship like Moses did as a gift after so much hard work after failing so many times finally to receive it and that it should become ours as this gift from Hashem thank you so much for listening have a wonderful shabas this podcast was made possible through the gracious donations of listeners like you for more podcasts like this please visit www.wag.com or search on iTunes Ari goldwag [Music]