Avoiding Negativity Isn’t Enough—Here’s What the Torah Says to Do

So we're continuing parasoy and in this para it's almost like a continuation from the previous portion of bidbar of counting the Jewish people. We're reading about the commandment to count the tribe of Ley in the desert and the tribe of Ley is divided into three parts three subtribes. There is the family of Kohus. There is the family of Gshin. There is the family of Murari. In each three of these subtribes are counted individually. And when the Torah tells us about the details about when Geon is counted, when the census is taken, the Torah says something unique by the tribe of Geon that it does not say with regard to counting Mari or Kahas, the other two subtribes and that is counting the tribe of Geron al P Aaron according to Aaron based on the mouth of a literally speaking. In other words, the counting wasn't done solely by Moses by Mosher Renu. It was also done by Aaron. That's not the case when it comes to Kahas. That's not the case when it comes to Murari. I guess for some reason the tribe of Geishun needed Aaron's extra watch, extra care in getting their census taken. Why did Ironon have to get involved with the counting of Gish but not with Marari, not with Kohas? In Lukyra, the alterba provides this whole spiritual and really personal paradigm and how we understand the para. If you read just the literal text, it sounds like the Torah is telling us the history of what took place. But that's not just what the Torah is. In fact, that's primarily what the Torah isn't. The Torah is primarily not history, but instruction. There's personal instruction, personal significance. The reason why we spend so much time throughout the Torah, probably the majority of portions center around, I shouldn't say majority, but a a big chunk of the Torah of the five books of Moses center around discussing what we did in the desert camped with a tabernacle, a home for God. Because the whole purpose of being in the desert was to take that tabernacle with us, that home for God, and be present with it in the desert to make God more present in the desert. Because the desert is this idea of desolate, this of of emptiness, a place where people don't reside and spiritually a place where God is unlikely to thrive. And over there, God says, "You're going to spend the next 40 years camping around, going from place to place in the desert, making my presence known." And that's the spiritual cabalistic dynamic of why we spent 40 years in the desert. It wasn't just a punishment, but we actually had a job to do. We had a mission. And we can't settle. We can't go into the land of Israel until we're done with our mission. until we're done illuminating the spiritual darkness of the desert. And every detail in the Mishkan that had to do with the tabernacle is relevant to our personal lives, you and me, you watching this video in illuminating what may feel like a desert around you. Sometimes we feel that we're in a desert. We feel that we're in this place where there is just no opportunity for spirituality to thrive. People aren't interested. People are distracted. People, whatever it is, we just feel like it just can't thrive. And we have this obligation to build a tabernacle. We have to build, metaphorically speaking, we have to build within our own hearts a place where God can reside. And we do that through prayer. And we do that through studying Torah. We do that through mitzvah. And sometimes we have to take that tabernacle down and rebuild it in another location. Sometimes we have to move spaces. Sometimes where we are right now has enough light and we have to go somewhere else and share that light elsewhere. And the job of Gon metaphorically, you know what the word Gishon means? That tribe. The word Gishon means to drive out. When when one gets divorced it's called gerushin. Divorce means gerushin to separate. The job of geran is to drive out negativity to separate negativity from positivity. To when we reframe from negativity when we turn away from evil when we try to avoid sin that is the spiritual service of gishan that is being counted. In fact what would geishun do the subtribe of the ley tribe of gishan what would they do? They were responsible for carrying the tapestries and curtains, the most external part of the Msbayak. The other tribes, Kahas and Marari respectively were responsible for carrying the various vessels, whether it be the altar or manora or candalabra and other utensils. Um, Marari was responsible for carrying the beams and the tribe of Gishan were responsible for carrying the curtains and tapestries. You know what tapestries are? The hides, the skins that they would weave beautifully together and various wools and linens and it represents protection. Gun is protecting us from evil. When we're trying to avoid and look away and stay away from things that we should be even when it's difficult, that's Gashan. In general, on a on a broader sense, the tribe of Ley represents discipline, Gora. And Gshin is almost like the epitome of Gora, the epitome of discipline, the epitome of what Levi, of a Levy really represents, which is I'm so disciplined. I'm driving out negativity from my life. And that's represented by them being responsible to carry the curtains. They're the ones who are responsible to carry this protection in the desert together with the Jewish people. Help the Jewish people stay protected. And when we employ that mindset, we're acting like garrison. However, it's important to do this safely and correctly. One could be so obsessive about trying to avoid sin that they end up serving sin and that's not a good thing either. Obviously, it's it's always good to not sin, but that can't be everything. It has to be Alpi Aaron. Gerishon is counted. The census is taken according to Aaron. Well, who's Aharon? The Cohen tribe. And Aharon is the epitome of love. Pirava says we should all be students of Aharon. We should all learn to love people like Aharon did. Aharon was the type of person that loved building relationships together, building people together, bringing people together. And he had bequeathed this trait to all of his descendants. When a cohen gives us the priestly blessings, the bless the brah they recite beforehand is they have a commandment from God. They have to bless the Jewish nation with love. To the extent that if a cohen has animosity towards somebody, he should not be offering those blessings. He's doing it disingenuously because in order to be a real channel from God, to channel those blessings from God to people, he has to actually love people. Gun's job is to protect the Jewish people from sin. That's the mindset within our own selves is us protecting ourselves and each other from sin and avoiding sin. But how do we do that? How do we stay away from the Sahara? How do we stay away from negative influences, from negative feelings? How do we stay away from depressive feelings? How do we stay away from this compulsion that we often have to stir things up, especially when it's a lot of fun or to say things that might be hurtful when it's fun? How do we do that? And the answer is alon. We do this based on the instruction of aaron. We do it with love. We have to do surra. We have to refrain from evil from negativity but through love through positivity. The says a person should get their always get their good inclination angry and infuriated at the negative impulse at the negative inclination at the zahara. And what that's usually meant to understand the way that's usually understood is we need to kind of rile ourselves up at the har because if we're angry at it, we won't listen to it. But the has a different explanation. It doesn't say you should get angry at the it says get the angry at the get the good inclination angry at the bad inclination. Well, how do you do that? by making it more connected to God. Because the more it's passionate about God, the more it's in love with God, the more it's in love with its mission, its purpose, its meaning in life, the more it's connected to what it should be, the more it will feel disconnected to what it shouldn't be. So rather than focusing on what it should disconnect from, focus on what it should connect to. So the job of of gam is driving out the negativity having those curtains of protection and saving us from negativity. But how do we do that? We do that alon according to aaron. We do that with love. The way we reframe from negativity, from sadness, from depression, from anxiety. The way we refrain from the urge to do things we shouldn't is by connecting to what we actually should because like the says a little bit of light chases away a lot of dark. So why fight the dark when you could just increase light. Yes, you need gum. Yes, you need to drive away negativity. But we do that by connecting to the positivity. That leaves less space for negativity. If you look throughout Igris Kaidesh, you see this genre of of respons from the Lava several times where you'll have a young student, let's say an adolescent, writing to the about certain youthful sins he had done that he feels terrible for, that he feels guilty about, and it's constantly haunting him and breaking him apart. and he's having trouble protecting himself and he's asking for some sort of tick, some sort of remedy. And the Reb's reply is which means divert your attention to something better. Find something better. Find something else better to do. Uh that that doesn't mean the problem isn't real. But it means there is a part of you that's even more real. Cherish that so there's less space for the problem. We should connect with Aaron and our Aharon, alparon should fuse our gear, should fuse, infuse and empower our ability to protect the Jewish people and it should be with love, with passion, with goodness, with kindness and we should uh finally get out of this desert and finally make our way into the promised land. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.