Tomer Devorah with Rabbi Avigdor Miller's Commentary 8 Chapter 4 Lish'erit Nahalato For the Re

Shalom. We are [clears throat] starting the fourth chapter of Tom Devor and we are in the character trait of Hashem called for the remnants of his estate. And to review, we said that Hashem is merciful even when we are rebelling against him. He's giving us another chance. And he is merciful in that he supports our mistakes until we get around to doing tusha and fixing our mistakes ourselves. And he is merciful so much that he actually goes ahead and fixes the outcome of our mistake. He cleans up the mess while remaining giving and kind. And the fourth one is the remnants of his estate. Rabbi Mosha Cord says, "Hashem conducts himself toward ami Israel in this manner as if they were his king, his relative." Relatives. What does it mean? As if God were saying, "What can I do? Even though they did wrong and sinned against me, they are my relatives. They are my flesh and blood, so to speak. Because am Israel is considered a mate, a spouse of Hashem. That Hashem took us as his nation. Meaning he took us as his partner in the this world. Like it says I am for my beloved and my beloved is for me. We are committed to Hashem and Hashem is committed to us. And this comes with with benefits just like we if uh a stranger would do something against us we would get upset but our relative we are also upset but we say what can I do he's my brother he's my cousin he's my uncle he is my child he or is my spouse. I cannot afford to lose them. I have to forgive them and be patient with them. I cannot kick them out of my life. They will always remain my relative. And that's what Hashem does with us. We may rebel against him. We may delay our tusha. And Hashem says, "If it was anyone else, another nation, I would wipe them off the face of the earth, as God did with many nations in the history of the world." But Hashem says, "I cannot get rid of the Jewish people." like Moshe defended us so um so well when we sinned many times and Moshe said, "Hashem, you have no choice. You cannot kill the Jewish people because you committed yourself to them by taking them out of Egypt, by giving them the Torah." And Moshe said to Hashem, if you do kill them, then people will think that you can you can change your mind. People already think that Hashem can change his mind, which of course is false. as um bil himself in this week's para says Hashem is not a human being and therefore he cannot lie. Hashem cannot change his mind. If Hashem chose the Jewish people, they are going to remain a chosen nation forever. The Christians may come and say, "Hashem changed his mind." But he forgot to inform everyone. Muslims come and say, "Yes, Hashem changed his mind twice. First he chose the Jews, then he abandoned them, and then he chose the Christians, and then he abandoned them, and now he chose us, the Muslims." And we say, "No such thing. Hashem is not a human being. He cannot change his mind. He cannot make a mistake and say, you know what, it didn't work with the Jews. Let me choose someone else. No, one nation under God indivisible. We are the nation and will always remain that one nation under God indivisible. Now, Rabbi Avikd Miller explains, "Hashem displays these character traits for the remnants of his people." That's the name of this uh character trait of Hashem, the remainder of his people. What does it mean? The remainder of his people. We are called his people. and he treats us as his people. And because of that, Hashem is more merciful to us than to anyone else. And you'll say, why should it be like that? And the answer is we are logically supposed to treat those that are closer to us better than everyone else. to the point that the Talmud says a wife of a man is like his own body. We are equivalent with our spouses. Why? Because they are the closest thing to us. The closest relationship is that of two spouses, even closer than parents and children, even closer than brother and sister. They actually connect and unite physically and it's supposed to extend to emotionally and spiritually. And just like you would treat your spouse differently than anyone else, at least that's how it's supposed to be. And you would treat your children differently than anyone else. And you would treat your brothers and sisters differently, not like anyone else. And there's no uh discrimination. That's how it's supposed to be. The closer someone is to you, you treat them better. Why? Because they need you more. They depend on you more. There is a greater covenant between you whether you were born into the family or you chose those covenants. And so too with Hashem, Hashem chose us as his nation and therefore we become his and we are committed to each other and our relationship is closer than God's relationship with anyone else. Hashem is merciful and therefore he treats everyone with mercy. All the nations of the world he loves and takes care of. But being that the Jewish people are the ones that he made covenant with, therefore he is obligated by that covenant to treat us as his own family. Another example of this is that we have a commandment not to charge interest but only towards the Jewish people. other nations. There's nothing wrong with charging them interest. But with the Jewish people, the commentators say we have to treat them like family and therefore the Jewish people have to be treated with more kindness. With other people, it's perfectly fine to charge them interest on loans. But with your own family members, let's say your own wife. If my wife asks me for a loan, let's say she needs to buy something and she says, you know, when I uh earn money, I'm going to put it back into the family account. I don't tell her, yes, I'm going to give you a,000, but you return 1,200. That would be funny. We would laugh at such a thing. Of course not. I and my wife are one. We have the same bank account. Everything is together. Doesn't make sense to lend to your money to money to your wife with interest. And I'll say just say the same thing with your siblings. I wouldn't lend to my sibling with interest. That's not what you do in a family. Every family is different. But in an ideal family, in an ideal family, the proper way to do it is to lend money to each other without interest. And that's how we're supposed to treat the Jewish people. We treat all the Jewish people as if they are our brothers and sisters because they are. And therefore, we don't charge them interest. We treat them better than members of other nations. So, Hashem similarly treats us as if we are his relatives. Now, Rabbi Miller continues says, "Hashem displays these character traits of mercy for the remnants of his people." The author Rab Mosh Cordo uses the word sheer here in an atypical sense. Normally the word sheer means remnant or survivor. But the word in Torah also means relative, kinship. In this analogy of u hatan and kala a groom and a bride hashem is the hatan the the the groom and am israel the Jewish people are his kala we are god's bride sometimes means a wife and therefore in this sense hashem regards am is as his mate. He is wedded to them. Hashem, God is like our husband. We relate to God as our spouse, specifically our husband. Just like a wife receives, accepts what the husband brings from the outside, whether from the field, whether from his hunt, whether from the job or the store. The husband supplies the raw materials and the wife cooks, manufactures clothing and so on. So too the Jewish people, we receive from Hashem the blessing, whether it is rain, sunshine, life, health, we receive it and then we're supposed to produce something with it, make it better, improve the world. So we, the Jewish people, have a special covenant with Hashem. Hashem specifically brings the blessing to us. to Jerusalem, to the land of Israel, to the Jewish people and then the blessing spreads out to the entire world. We receive it like a mother would receive it from her husband and then the mother distributes it to her children. So too, the Jewish nation is like the mother nation. We receive the bounty, the blessing from God who is the father of the whole world. He is our husband and we distribute it to all the other nations. Now, Rabbi Cord continues, "Our sages of blessed memory explain that we find in Tanakh that Hashem not only calls us his wife, he also calls Israel BT, my daughter. We are a child of Hashem." Another relationship we have with Hashem and that is my sister. So we have multiple relationships with Hashem. We are very closely connected to God. How? We are his wife. We are his daughter. We are his sister. And one more relationship it says sometimes he calls us in me my mother. On some level Jewish people not a simple level Jewish people are considered the mother of Hashem. Not the way Christians um interpreted that it means that a human being can give birth to a god. That's nonsense. What it means is that just like a mother takes care of a child and has abundant kindness toward her child, so to our relationship with Hashem. Our relationship with Hashem is that we do his commandments not because he is the master and we're slaves, not because he's the king and we are his subjects. That is true also. But we also do commandments of Hashem like a wife does for her husband with love. And we also do commandments and we have a relationship with Hashem like a sister to her brother. Love, connection, respect, care. And we even do mitzvot for Hashem like a mother would take care of her baby with self-sacrifice with more than the baby requires. As the sages say more does the mother want to feed the baby than the baby wants to nurse from his mother. The mother has such abundant love for her baby that she wants to give him more than the baby needs. And that's how we treat mitzvot and our relationship with Hashem. We say, "Hashem, we want to give to you. We want to thank you. We want to take care of you. What else can we do?" Hashem says, "It's okay. Take it easy. just do these 613 mitzvot and we say hashem let us do more. We introduce rabinic clause. We introduce customs. We do more and more and more. When does it ever stop? Just like the love of a mother for her baby never stops. She buys him more toys and more clothing and more snacks. So to our love for Hashem never stops. As it is written, Israel, the Jewish people are his close nation. Close in a sense of kinship. We are kerovimovo. We are relatives related. We are close to Hashem. He has an actual close relationship with us and we are mainly his children. As it states in another verse, you are children of Hashem your God. Jewish people as a nation are a child of Hashem. He took us out of Egypt as taking a baby out of a womb. We are his children and every individual Jew is a child of Hashem, the one that he loves. So Rab continues, we find that the remnants of his heritage is an expression of close relationship, kinship and despite whatever they did, whatever Jewish people did, they are his family. We are family of Hashem. That is why you find that many Jewish names contain name of Hashem like Israel, Gabriel, Rafael, Mal, Uriel or other prefixes or suffixes that have Hashem's name in it like Eliu, Adoni, they all these names have or even the name Yehuda and many others have God's name in it. Why? It's like a last name. What family do I belong to? I belong to God's family. That's why he is part of my name. It's a an expression of our close relationship with Hashem. And despite whatever the Jewish people do, they are his family. And therefore, Hashem laments and says, "What can I say? If I will punish them, I will suffer the pain." When a father has to punish his child, the father hurts. The father suffers. The mother who has to punish her child, she thinks, "What excuse can I find to limit their punishment, to bring them out of the punishment sooner?" Just like Hashem did with the Jewish people, he took us out of Egypt. He sent us in say stay in Egypt for 400 years and Hashem says I can't. It's already 100 years 150 years 160 years 170 I can't. When it hit 210 years Hashem said I can't suffer anymore. Hashem was suffering with us in Egypt and he said please please come out as soon as you can. So, Hashem says, "What can I do? If I punish my son, a Jew, I will have to suffer the pain." If a person has to punish his own son, it hurts him. As it says, in all their distress, Hashem, so to speak, is also distressed. In all their suffering, God experiences the same suffering. The word law in the verse is written with an alf to indicate that their suffering reaches the now this is a cabalistic idea that they don't translate in the book and don't explain. But in the Torah, the word law is written with an alf. But we read it with a vav. With an alf, it means not. But our tradition is that it should be spelled with a vav. And therefore, we pronounce it with a vav, which means god also suffers. But cababalistically, olive has to be there. We cannot replace it. ALF has to be there because it has to do something with the upper worlds. Okay. Now, and he continues, Rab Mosha Card was a great cabalist and he continues for another little bit um into the language of Cabala. And he says and surely when you consider the dupartsim which is a cabalistic expression which is the world's primary system the alf needs to be there but the word law in the verse from Yeshai is read with a v to indicate that we are god's kin family and therefore it actually hurts him if he has to punish us. Now Rabbi Miller explains these cabalistic things a little bit and he says Rab Mosha Card said that the alf reaches pelleon pelle means a mystery of hashem's existence we cannot understand the actual relationship that exists between us and hashem whatever we said here is not to be taken literally we are not relatives with hashem we don't have the same physical body as Hashem. Hashem doesn't have a body. So what does it mean? We are relatives to Hashem, doesn't have DNA in which way we are related. We cannot understand the actual relationship that exists between us and Hashem. Nevertheless, the scriptures are full of these expressions of kinship. Therefore, we see that Hashem wants us to think exactly in these terms. We are his children and he is our father. Now the term dupartsim in cababala which he doesn't want to explain expresses the relationship of a husband and wife. Just to give you a hint, do means to that's what it is in Persian in Bkarian do means to or the English word dual do means to partimu means face which means there's a there are two faces there are two beings over here and that expresses the relationship of a husband and wife. It means that Hashem made the world only for Ami Israel, for the Jewish people. Just like a man, a man and a wife live for each other. They build a house for each other. Their nest a man's wife is like himself. The Talmud states, "Likewise, Hashem has made the world for Ami Israel, the world has a dual face to it. The divine and the physical. The divine is God. The physical is the Jewish people. Everything else is background." Where do we get the license to say such a thing? In the book of Devarim, it says to Hashem belongs the heavens and the heavens above the heavens, the world and all within it. Everything belongs to Hashem. But only in your forefathers did Hashem delight to love them. That's the verse. And it continues, "And he chose their seed after them, you from among all the nations as this day." Out of the entire universe, Hashem, the Torah says, chose the Jewish people, us. In every generation, Hashem says the same. We are the children of the ones he loves most. The Torah states clearly that of our entire universe, Hashem is interested only in us. It is not boasting. We're not saying this. Hashem revealed it to us. That's his attitude. Therefore, if he has such a great love for the Jewish nation, he wants us to know that's how we should feel about each other. Hashem loves us as if we are his spouse, as if we're his child, as if we're his sibling, even as if we are his mother. Like a man would love his mother. Even though this other Jew is not your relative, close relative at least, you should feel that every Jew is your flesh and blood. throughout the Torah the word the word is used which means your brother and that's how you should see when the Torah says don't do this to your brother or do this to your brother it means don't do this to any Jew that means the Torah refers to any Jew as your brother or which means your friend but he is not my friend the Torah says you have to treat every Jew as your friend. You have to treat every Jew as your brother. So now we're moving from how Hashem treats us. We learn from that how we should treat every Jew. This attitude requires work. But if Hashem has shown us such an example, it's for the purpose that we should emulate him. We should labor to acquire the attitude that every Jew is our flesh and blood brother. [snorts] Well, Hashem, we covered a lot of ground. We will pause over here until next week and thank you for joining. In the meantime, everyone should have Shabbat shalom.