Chukas/Balack: Control Your Kli

Dear friends, welcome to this week's virtual dasha. This week we have the incredible privilege to read the double paras of hukas and balik. In the beginning of paras, the Torah gives us the mitzvah of paradma, the red hepher, the red cow. And again, this is amongst what we call the paradigmatic in the wide beautiful and holy world of mitzvah. There are many types of mitzvah. There are some which are just automatically intuitive. Even not commanded me to honor my parents, I would have done so because it makes sense. Don't kill intuitive. Then there are other mitzvah which are not necessarily intuitive. For example, Hashem tells me to go ahead and keep shabas. So I don't know that I would have known on my own to have a day of rest. But once Hashem tells me to do it and once I understand that the hashkafa behind it is to understand that is the primary mover and shaker in the universe. He is the ultimate ongoing creator. It makes sense. I understand it. I wouldn't have intuitively known to put sites on the corners of my garment. But once I understand that the number of strings then the knots correspond to the number of mits. Once I understand that the the blue string is to remind me of the sea which reminds me of the heavens which reminds me of the throne of again intuitively it makes sense. But then there's a third category of mits what we call justim andim are these mits which really seem to defy all human comprehension. They don't seem to have a reason. Now, of course, every mitzvah has a reason because does not ask us to do things for the sake of doing things. Everything has a reason. Everything has a purpose. But in this world of these are these mitzvah which don't appear at first glance to have a a reason which I understand or a reason which I could comprehend. And paradum tells us that if a person contracts ritual impurity by coming in contact with the corpse, there's an entire process. You have to find a red heer and again the halos. So the details of what determines a red heer, the criteria are quite intense. Then you take the cow, you slaughter it outside of the bikash, you reduce it to ash, you mix the to ash with a whole bunch of other ingredients. This process or this mixture is then sprinkled upon the individual who was tame, who was ritually impure and renders him to renders him tar, excuse me, renders him ritually pure. And then again, fascinatingly enough, it has the opposite effect upon the person invol people involved in the process. The coin sprinkles, the one who transports the water. These individuals who may have started as ritually pure then become a fascinating a fascinating and again the point of this ultimately is to highlight and to cultivate a sense of allegiance and fidelity to because dear friends we do not follow our king because it appeals to our intellect. We don't follow our king because we understand everything and anything that he asks of us but we follow because it's a privilege to follow. We follow and we serve because it is the greatest privilege in the world to be close to and through the performance of the ones we understand and the ones we don't. We are privileged to relationship. But I want to draw your attention to a fascinating detail in all of this. The Torah says this is in paricutes chapter 19 verse 15. The Torah says when speaking about all of the of ritual purity, it says, so literally the translation, any open utensil that does not have a stopper, no stopper, no cork, no plug to the utensil, it is ritually impure. What is this referring to? says Torah is speaking about a very specific utensil, an earthnware utensil. There's a fascinating fascinating detail technical detail about earthnware utensils. Earthnware utensils cannot contract tuma on the outside. So for example, if you were to take a tame item, again without getting too graphic, you were to take a dead rodent, which is a source of tum, and you were to slap that on the outside outside of an earthnware utensil, it would not become tame, the earthnware utensil. The only way an earthnware utensil becomes tame is what Rashi calls me to on the inside. So if you were to take that same rodent and dangle it in the interior airspace of that earthnware utensil even though there's no contact between the tuma the item of ritual impurity and the actual interior walls the earthnware utensil becomes tame when the tummy item when the item of ritual impurity is when inside the airspace even again obviously if it touches the interior walls then it becomes tummy but even if it doesn't touch the interior walls but But it's just dangled in the air space of the earthnware utensil. The earthnware utensil becomes tummy. Now I know not the most riveting a lot of technicality but this is important. Therefore explains over here the is talking about an earthnware utensil but the utensil only contracts on its interior but not from its exterior. Therefore, so therefore there's an important so therefore if you have let's say now remember one one more technical detail there's something called oil I know a lot of technicalities this week there there's something called oil to oil means let's say god forbid a person dies and they're inside a home anything underneath the same roof as that corpse ultimately becomes tummy as well that's what's called oh so therefor says here's what the Pik is teaching me. If let's say someone passes away inside of a home and underneath that same roof with the person who passed away is an earththenware utensil. So now the shil the question is does the earthnware utensil become tame and the answer is it depends. What does it depend on? Was the earthnware utensil open or was there like a cork? Was there a stopper in the on the earth on on the mouth of the earth utensil? If there was a stopper there, a cork, some type of plug. So the earth utensil, the interior is plugged up, is closed. There was a lid on it. So then the tuma can't permeate the utensil because remember as we said before, an earthn utensil only becomes tummy through its interior, not its exterior. So therefore the utensil is not tame. If there's a cork, there's a plug, there's a stopper, there's a lid, the earthnware utensil remains ritually pure t. However, if there is no cork, no stopper, no lid, the earthn utensil is open, then by definition, it contracts by being underneath the same roof as the corpse. That says therefore, if we go back and reread the earthn utensil which is in the same house underneath the same roof as a corpse and it doesn't have a lid, it doesn't have a stopper, it doesn't have a plug. Right? Therefore, tameu ultimately again, it will contract tuma. Why? Because once again, an earthnware utensil only contracts tuma from its interior, not its exterior. So, you're thinking to yourself, okay, we're 7 minutes in and I just got a bunch of a bunch of laws about the laws of tum ritual purity and impurity as they apply to an earthn. Now, what? So, dear friends, here's where I think the Torah is giving us a tremendous and overwhelming and beautiful and profound life lesson. We know a person is often compared to a utensil on many different levels. But the utensil that a person most resembles the rabbis tell us is an earththenware utensil because just like a is made from the earth. So ultimately Adam comes from Adam comes from the earth as well. And therefore we find especially as we come to the liturgy and it's amazing to contemplate that the high holidays are not too far off we find many many references that a person right we say at the end of I stand before you like like a utensil like utensil filled with all different kinds of things. But I think that this imagery and this metaphor is so incredibly important because just like an earthnware utensil only becomes tame if you allow the impurity inside of it. So So too dear friends, we only become ritually impure if we allow things inside of us. You see, in life, you often don't have a choice about what impacts the outside of your utensil, right? I often can't control. I go into the world, I can't control what's hitting the outside of my utensil. I can't control sometimes the exposures that I have, what I see, what occur, what is what is said to me. I often don't control the stimuli around me. I don't control the circumstances around me. But what do I control? I control what I allow into my utensil. I control the influences. I control the baggage. I control the positivity or the negativity that you allow to permeate to come inside of your utens. So you know the mim the commentaries point out that the 10th of the ten commandments is lo. Don't covet. Don't be jealous. And many of the commentaries are bothered by this. How can you tell someone not to be jealous? Right? I come home. I see my neighbor got a brand new beautiful car. Ah, I maybe I can't afford that car. Or maybe I I I want it, but I can't have it. Or my neighbor's putting on an addition. Or my neighbor's kids are so well behaved. Or their marriage looks so perfect. How can you tell a person not to be jealous? Jealousy is the most natural reaction ultimately to seeing someone who has something that you don't have, that you want, but for whatever the reason, either you don't have it, you can't have it. How can you tell a person not to be jealous? And many of the mak commentaries explained so beautifully the prohibition the love right the prohibition is not that you can't be jealous it's that you can't remain jealous sometimes I can't control initially how I feel but I control sustained feeling do I allow myself to continue feeling a certain way initially the reflexive the reflexive feeling the reflexive emotion maybe I can't control but do I allow that emotion do I allow that feeling to sit sit inside of my personalistic utensil. That's my decision. Because dear friends, I control what I allow into my personalistic earthn utensil. I control what I allow to reside inside my clea. And if I want to put a lid on it, if I want to put the stopper in, if I want to put the cork in there, I can control what goes in on the outside of the utensil. I control very little. I control very little. But what I choose to keep in my utensil, what I choose to retain in my utensil, that's up to me. And what a profound lesson for us. What do you keep inside your utensil? And sometimes if you can't necessarily control what immediately goes in, you absolutely control what remains inside your utensil. What do you carry around inside your personalistic clea? Do I harbor animosity? grudges, resentment, and maybe it's wellounded. Maybe because people did stuff to me, hurt me, did all kinds of different things. But I choose if I want to shle that around or not. That's up to me if I keep it in my utensil. Maybe I'm so down just about my past failures, my feeling of under accomplishment, my feeling of not measuring up. Okay, maybe it's legitimate, maybe it's not. But do you want to shle it around in your clea? That's your choice. That's your choice to decide what you want to put inside your cle feelings of optimism, feelings of hope, feelings of depression, feelings of what you choose. You choose. You can't choose what impacts the outside of your personalistic utensil. But you absolutely choose what to carry around inside your utensil. I choose what to let in. And even if I can't choose initially what to let in, I choose what to allow to remain in. How incredible would it be during these days of tamos, during these days which kind of lead up to some of the darkest times on our kendrical experience to take a step back to take inventory. Let me kind of take my personalistically. Let me empty it out on the table of life and see like what what do I got of there? What's what's in there? What's inside the personalistic clea? And I'm sure there's a ton of stuff that's fantastic and wonderful. But I have no doubt for myself that there are a number of things that should not be in there. There's negative feelings. There's resentments. There's toxicity. There's grudges. There's all kinds of things that are in there. There are feelings of inadequacy. All kinds of things that are lining that cle. And do I want to carry it around with me? Do I want to shle it along with me in life? Or do I want to empty out the personalistic clea, put the stopper, put the lid, if I put the covering on and say, you know, enough enough. I can't control the outside of my cle, but I absolutely control the interior. And the problem is if I don't control the interior, if I don't control what goes into my cle the if your personalistic utensil is just wide open and you don't filter what you allow to go in there, but anything and everything that happens, you just let inside of your personalistic there's no lid. There's no lid. There's no stopper. You're going to defile your clea because if you have no filter, you just let everything in there, it's going to destroy you. It's going to corrode you. It's going to undermine your ability to accomplish great things in life. I decide what goes in my clea. I don't decide what happens on the exterior. But here's the good news. What happens on the exterior doesn't make my clemen. It's only what happens on the inside. Control your clea. Take control of your life. Take control of who who and what you want to be. and decided that although you can't control the external stimuli, I absolutely decide what I allow in and maybe better stated what I allow to remain inside my clea. Use your stopper, use the lid, control your clea and decide what in life you want to be part of your experience. What are the things you want to remain inside of you? And what are the things you're finally ready to let go of? Control your clea. And if we could do that, then we paved the way for beautiful, dramatic, and holy successful living.