Can Bill Gates Fly a F-15? — Parshas Emor

the chief of staff of the United States Air Force opens up a nearby base to new recruits to try to get some new recruits for this for the Air Force so he's walking along the base and he sees a couple of twin brothers who have wandered onto the base apparently they want to want to enlist so he goes over to the two twins and he says to the first one he says what do you do young man what skills do you bring to the United States Air Force he says I pilot pilot ok very good sign him up he says to the next brother what are you young man what do you do he says I chop wood he says he chop wood what this 2020 the US Air Force doesn't even need people chop wood says but you hired my brother he says yeah because he's a pilot you chop wood he says will hack if I don't chop it he can't pile it ok is he gonna see I met Sasha you're gonna see why I told that joke anyways this week's partial partial Semin is speaking to the Cohanim to the priestly class about many things that apply to them but one of them is about the consecrated foods specifically what we're going to study about right now is through ma the donation or the portion of the agricultural yield that is given as a gift to the Cohanim so we read the whole Tsar illogical Kaddish no nan Keohane may eat of this consecrated food the heinki the nefesh Kenyon Kasper however if a claim acquires a soul as a monetary acquisition we're talking about slavery yes not PC to speak about it but the institution of slavery does exist in the Bible so if a coin acquires a servant who yeah he'll buy he may eat of this consecrated fruit as well as it like the verse finishes we leave base a hanging a clue black may also those who are born into the king's house his family as well so in other words a Kahane may eat Roma and not only the Kahane but also what's relevant for our discussion the the servant of a kind as well by the way this doesn't just apply to through ma this verse is speaking about Roma but also it applies to with the other sacrificial meat the portions of the core bonus that the claim does eat you might recognize from the words that we say every morning prior to chakras to the morning prayer we say the the Mishnah is a o mckimmon what what are the places of the sacrifices and over there it enumerates how various sacrifices nikola Cohanim Lanisha i'm full of mayhem loved a hem which literally means may be eaten by the Cohanim by the priests their wives their children and their servants so this will add a hem and their servants that's what we're talking about here so here's our question since Karuma is no longer given to Cohanim today and we don't have servitude either so what's the significance for us of learning this law that the servant of a Kahane is allowed to eat from and what does this have to do with a pilot joke so let me seemingly change the subject for a moment and ask a question basic Jewish ritual blessings on food okay why why do we do it the the gamora says laguardia and Broca's which is an entire tract at about blessings modem brokers Daffy lawmen hey ami Ralph Cole Han na min ha alam has a blade Bravo anyone who partakes of and derives benefit from this world without reciting a blessing mall he commits the prohibited act called Milla or misappropriation it's a specific term which really means to miss appropriate consecrated resources for instance like if somebody dedicated an animal to be a sacrifice and then later on he changed his mind and he just used it for personal use that's called misappropriation that's his mole back dish he misappropriates misappropriates consecrated resources or you know if somebody would go into the the end of the base um in addition to the holy temple and they would take out the the calum their clay showed us the the ministering vessels and bring it home and you know use it as dishes as for salt so that would also be keys Moyle bihac Toshi's misappropriating consecrated property so so the gomorrah says that anyone who partakes of this world and derives benefit of this world and he doesn't recite a blessing beforehand it's like he's doing this sin he's misappropriating for personal use consecrated property the point is that hashem hudson leia that did that to hashem belongs the world and everything in it like we say in there and Jhelum so taking anything without a blessing it's it's like misappropriating holy property for personal use like Lahav though but like a politician who gets in trouble because they find out that he was using public funds to pay for his you know his personal family vacations sort of like that but we need to understand something here it doesn't say that eating without a blessing is like stealing doesn't say it's like stealing here it says it's like misappropriating holy property and there's a big difference there's a big difference between the two if eating without a blessing is like stealing then making a blessing is like asking permission first so that it won't be stealing no it's like you see your your neighbor using your lawnmower you say hey did you ask first no that's called stealing but if he comes over today can I use your lawnmower okay fine all right so then if it would be like stealing if you ate a Shems food you know it's all it's all hush I'm food everything belongs to us yeah it would be like stealing if you ate hashem food without making a blessing then I understand making the blessing is like asking for permission from a Shem to eat but that's not what it says it says that eating without a blessing is like misappropriating consecrated property it's like being mile back dish so in that case what is asking permission help it won't help to ask permission because it's not an issue of getting permission it's an issue of this thing not being available for personal use period at all that's it so asking doesn't help in other words you want to borrow your friend's car you have to ask him first or it's stealing but if you want to fly in f15 okay so now you say the joke okay say but if you want to fly an f15 even asking the airforce to borrow isn't gonna help they're not available to civilians and and not only would would asking permission not help offering any amount of money in the world wouldn't help the government is just not gonna allow any civilian to fly in f15 any private citizen cannot do it Bill Gates could come and offer as much money as he wants I'm sorry he can't he can't fly the f-15 this is not for private uses belongs to the military however there's one way that Bill Gates in theory at least could fly enough f-15 it's one way that Bill Gates could fly an f-15 he would have to enlist in the Air Force and be trained as a pilot and then he could find f15 but then even then he wouldn't be able to fly it for personal use he'd only be able to fly it as part of his military service and then later if he would retire become a civilian again he could just come back to his old base and take the f15 out for a spin even though he used to fly that very same plane when he was in the Air Force and that's precisely how a blessing works a blessing doesn't change the food a blessing changes us in other words a blessing doesn't make the food no longer be consecrated property no a blessing turns us into people who are allowed to make use of consecrated property and who is allowed to make use of consecrated property when we make a blessing and we say bara etosha and blessed are You Lord our God alakay no Lord our God melech ha-olam who is king of the world we proclaim Hashem mastery we submit to his authority that not only the whole world belongs to him but that includes us we belong to him so we admit that not only does the food belong to him we ourselves belong to him so in other words the the food doesn't belong to us before we make the blessing and the food doesn't belong to us after we make the blessing it never belongs to us it belongs to him the whole time just that by making the blessing we proclaim that we to belong to Hashem and in this way as servants of a sham like the servants of a Kahane we may partake in foods that are off-limits to regular people so we make that Braco we make that blessing we become Hashem servants and now we can make use of that which is normally off-limits we can enlist in the Air Force and fly the f-15 there's a well-known story about the holy rebbe reb le mela from luhansk he had a friend the colleague who once came to visit him and this visiting scholar was also a Talmud holcomb but he hadn't achieved the holiness of dabeli melech so the friend says he says tell me please we're both scholars yet you reached such a high level compared to me explain to me what is the difference between you and me what do you have that I don't so the belly Melek says to me says let me live let me ask you when you want to eat an apple do you make Oh Braco first he says of course of course I do what's the question about lame Alex is I so that's the difference between me and you you see when you want to eat an apple you make abraha when I want to make a bro huh I eat an apple think about it this way we don't make blessings so that we can eat apples so that we can have permission to enjoy some of this world that's not the purpose that shouldn't be the way that we look at it no not at all we make blessings because of the incredible connection to a Shem that it affords us because with every blessing that we make we change our status we get to proclaim that Hashem is alakay know our God Malaka LM king of the world and that we belong to him and in that space were of self transformation where would we put proclaim that we are his servants then we get to make use of his resources as well but the purpose of the bracha is not to be able to make use of ashrams resources not to be able to get permission I'll let me have the Apple because I want to have an apple that should not be the intention the intention should be that I want to belong to a Shem I want to put myself into that state and then automatically what happens of course the avid of the Cayenne the co Haynes servant can also eat the consecrated property so here's the way to look at it are we such holy people are we clay Hannam so to speak maybe not but we can be I've de Kahana we can be the servants of the priests that means we can submit to a higher authority by the way I want to mention this is a little bit Kabbalistic here but there are different types of servants Cibola and see this explains that the difference between an avid Avery and an avid Kanani Hebrew servant and a Canaanite servant how logically there are difference because I'm saying spiritually spiritually they're describing two different levels of the service of a sham and ever every is a more of a refined level more spiritual level that's where we submit to a sham but we submit push them with more of an emotional motive meaning we feel Ava's a sham yearís Hashem we feel the love in the aw Hashem evidene 9e is a lower level every 298 Canaanite servant is a level where we submit to a Shem purely out of caballes oil mouthwash a mime acceptance of the the yoke of the kingdom of heaven where we're not feeling the love but we we have we have the discipline and we submit we surrender to Authority so avid Kanani Canaanite servant is feared to the lower level but here's the thing hello quickly which kind of servant of a coy hane is allowed to eat the foods that can only be eaten by acclaim not an avid evening not a Hebrew servant of acclaim only the lower level David can ID the Canaanite servant so what does this show us that when we become servants of our I'm so to speak by proclaiming that he is Ella K no Malik I love he is our God and he is the king of the world and we belong to him what level are we doing that from from the lower level we're not such holy people we're not such lofty people but we want to submit that means when we want to just give our will over to Hashem at least on the behavioral level I can't give you my heart I can't promise to feel loved and all the way I ought to but I can give you my behaviors I could submit I can say I work for you I don't work for myself when we do that all of a sudden interesting thing happens now are they high Hannam can eat from the HEC dish from the consecrated foods so with that just that desire to want to commit ourselves even if the only desire we have the sheer willpower I'm not feeling the love maybe I'm feeling other loves and that in fact I feel I have desires for things of this world and and I have a misplaced respect and on reverence for things of this world and yet I have the discipline to say I want to subjugate myself to Usher and that makes me like the evident can I knee a Canaanite slave and now I can eat the heck dish I can partake of his world so let's be practical here let's talk about applying this this this concept to our daily lives very simple when when we make blessings on our food we should have the right intention we should have in mind not that this is asking permission can we use some of Hashem food and make it ours no never becomes ours the intention should be that we're admitting to the fact that we have a responsibility to use what we eat only for its intended purposes even after you make a bravura it's not like now you can run off with it and do whatever you want with the energy in that food it still belongs to him it never stopped belonging to him to the contrary it belongs to him and we belong to him so now you have the calories from that food you have the energy to burn it's not yours to use at your discretion however you want whatever strikes you as interesting or fun you have to go use that energy to dava and to learn and to do acts of goodness and kindness and that should be our intention in fueling up and partaking of the bounty of this world not only we're making a blessing to get permission in fact not a no that's not what the point is we're making a blessing to reaffirm the fact that we we owe it to our Shem to use the energy in this food as true servants as true servants who are always on duty and always on coal we are his we belong to him and we should act like it in everything we do the way we eat the way we think about our eating where we use the energy from our food and when we have that in mind then every meal every snack every cup of coffee becomes a spiritual experience