Emor & Behar - How We Affect Others

you're listening to the weekly partial podcast with ari goldwag recorded with hashem's neverending of assistance in roman bishop michigan 5782 2022 this week's parsha in hudson arts is amore and in arts israel's bahar i'd like to show you a piece from the end of the magishin amar and the piece from the beginning of the parsha in bihar which is not directly at the beginning of bihar but i'd like to talk about the common denominator between these two midrashim both not very long with russian but interesting ones and uh let's let's dive right in at the end of our parsha we have the story of the makalo the person who was the son of bastivi his father was a misery he was an egyptian and he didn't have a place he wasn't part of the jewish people he didn't have a place didn't have a tribe felt rejected so he cursed hashem and as opposed to tells us because of this curse so he was sentenced to death but the measures speaks about the fact that a person who is in such a situation while it's understandable his anger of course not justifiable to speak against god but we understand he's upset we understand what did he do wrong yes meaning what did he do wrong that he was the son of an egyptian he's a product of a licentious relationship his mother had been together with someone else when she was married to a jewish man something very interesting and important in the tasks of the terror and understanding uh very important points you know there are people who it's not their fault a person is a monster in in uh he's the product of a relationship which was against the torah child can't marry into the jewish people in a regular way just marry perhaps another mom's there but an elim an illegitimate child by no fault of his own still the ramifications of the act of his parents and those ramifications go on for generations of verses ecclesiastes that king solomon said he he sat and he looked and he saw all of those who are when i get miss they're pathetic something has been done to them not their fault daniel daniel the taylor explained that this verse is talking about people who are the result of an illegitimate relationship behold the tears of these people a voice the fathers of these people the parents they did some kind of sin brought about an illegitimate child brought this child into the world why does this person have to be affected right the father had done something wrong he should turn into an illegitimate person why is the child going to be punished so we don't really have it what we see is that when a person does something wrong there are ramifications of this of this story as a result of doing something wrong there are irreversible ramifications and indeed other people will suffer as a result of the actions of the parents success verse tells us that an illegitimate child is not permitted to marry other people within the jewish people and indeed the sanhedrin the high court of the jewish people the court of the jewish people will prevent such a person from marrying another jewish person there's nobody to to comfort them but hashem says and this is the way of the madrish if if you learn the measures you'll find that the end of a power should often will switch and turn to a positive note and it will tell us something about the future time that's going to happen when mashiach comes when the messiah arrives here and here the message does that hashem says it's my job to console these people it's true they've done nothing wrong and we need to think about and try to understand exactly why is it or what's the i mean we said you know part of it is people do something wrong it has it has consequences right and it can affect other people we'll we'll speak more about that as well in the magician in the beginning of bihar but interestingly the magister says that ein one is going to console them in the future in this world they're considered secondary they're not able to become part of the jewish people a situation has been created and it's a very sad situation but that's how it is in this world of allah but in the future zechariah the prophet says in speaking about the future time when the messiah arrives so he speaks about the jewish people in terms of absolute purity gold without any drops another it's i'm sorry it's the puzzle against chapter four verse two that he speaks about the fact that there's a golden menorah a golden candelabra and the gula al-rasha we're gonna darshan what that means but before we get to what the gula al-rasha means which literally means some kind of round the word gula in hebrew modern hebrew is used as a marble that children play with there's some kind of round object upon it we'll see what that means in a moment but the idea here is that when mashiach comes when the messiah rises to gemara as well that elijah the prophet according to one opinion is going to come and he's going to purify the jewish people of the dross and it doesn't mean he's going to remove them the mum will be allowed those are the results of these kinds of situations ultimately will be returned to call israel they will be able to to marry into the jewish people they will no longer be rejected that's what the verse is talking about hashem is going to console them in the future and again we need to think about what is the idea behind something there were negative consequences there are negative consequences our our choices create real solid ramifications so what is the idea behind this that there's going to be a reversal of that in the future we need to understand what that means but that's how it's going to be so we mentioned this gula already there's like a round object on top of the menorah what is this gula so we can explain there's two amoram who explain what does it mean they darshan it they try to understand it the word gula the word gula can be understood to mean golo which means going out into excuse me and going out into exile and then another explanation of it is which means redemption mandarin one explanation of this verse is that it's speaking about the time when the jewish people went out into their into their galas into their exile and hashem went alongside the jewish people okay so hashem comes along with them it comes out to bavel he comes out the shrine the divine presence comes and accompanies us into our exile and of course that means that when there's a gula when there's a redemption so the ultimate redemption is not just about the jewish people of course although it is about us but really it's about the shrina the divine presence which has accompanied us throughout the exile and that means that god's presence is not fully felt as long as the jewish people are in godless as long as we're in exile god's presence is not felt in the world people can't relate to god as he truly is we can't see him there could there's a possibility for atheism there's a possibility for denial of god's exist existence heaven forbid which also connects a bit to this idea of the clellis the the one who comes to curse god and connects to somebody who we don't see we don't see how is it just where's the justice right when we don't see justice it's a question where is god because god is absolutely just god is completely good but that lack of of a sense of god that the fact that god is out there in gullus in our exile with us right where's the justice right where's that god is hidden as it were but ultimately um according to the other opinions so when it says the gula speaking about the redemption of the jewish people that there's going to be this purity that occurs as god leads us back into the land of israel god is when we see godliness we see god's hand in the return of nearly 7 million jews back to the land of israel and god willing soon will see it much more openly in the process of david as god returns the jewish people back to the entire jewish people back to the land of israel so there's a revelation right by alvaro malcolm god the king god is our king right no human king of course there's a human king as well but hashem himself is openly revealed as the king [Music] god also reveals himself and leads us back into the land of israel back to obeshu temple may be built soon in our days but he openly reveals himself and we get to see and this is i believe the message here of what the magister is trying to teach us we see that the question marks in life the problems how could it be where's the justice why is this person punished for the sins of his parents why does he have to suffer his whole life because of a mistake that his parents made where's the justice so in the redemption of that where hashem says in the future time when the messiah arrives they're going to be purified they're going to be allowed back into the call it's a statement that we will once again see the justice hashem will show that throughout time all of the mistakes that human beings made the possibility for mistakes were also provided for by hashem and ultimately they will be redeemed and reversed all evil will just be like like the smoke like we say in the rosh hashanah all of evil will disappear like smoke you know you look at for as an example you know the injustice the way that the media spins things about israel always takes the side of the the arab world the what they call the palestinians who are always spinning and lying and and that's part of their culture it's part of their religion is that they're obligated to lie to their enemy and still the media which professes truth and maybe no longer professes objectivity but part of their thing is to to raise up this lie and make it bigger and bigger until it's believed right so that's the smoke screen and all the lies will end with the gul hashem we'll reveal once and for all the truths and all the injustices right that will be the ultimate revelation okay so that's that's the idea here at the end of purchase emor now i'd like to share with you a lighter much lighter measure so the beginning of fascist bahar which is not connected as i said to the very beginning of the parasha which is talking about shemitah but it skips a little bit and talks about the idea of tells us chapter 25 verse 14 that we have somebody who's involved in a business dealing with his friend possibly tells us about one's obligations in in business dealings and one of the one of the things that the torah says is saying you say don't don't rip somebody else off don't cause him emotional pain don't don't uh overcharge him when it comes to selling something [Music] there's an obligation that we need to think about the other person that we're dealing with it's very easy in business there's always this excuse in business what do you mean it's business it's a doggy dog world i gotta get mine i gotta take care of my my family whatever but the torah exhorts us and and instructs us that we should not just think about our own actions our own benefit number one numero uno right that's not how it goes in the torah does her wants us because it knows that what we do and how we behave with others affects us at the core it affects us at the core completely i just wanna silence my phone to make sure it doesn't ring sorry about that okay now let's see this together inside of the magic remember this is a match a beautiful sweet idea which we all may know that death and life are in the hands of the tongue target there's a particular sage his name is aquilas and he said that it can go either way the same thing the tongue which serves to bring food into me to give me life that same tongue can be used to cause the death of others i can strike out at somebody it's like a sword it can either be a spoon that brings food into me or it can be like a sword that stabs somebody else but cyril armor high silifon of gajeles you can use your mouth in two different ways one accomplishes something very good one accomplishes something very negative what are those two ways let's say you have a uh a uh a coal in front of you so you can either make the flame bigger right use your tongue in a negative way to bring about i would prefer to say use our tongue in a negative way heaven forbid which we shouldn't do to bring about fire and flame of much or i can use my same tongue to salivate to to to spit on this coal and put out the flame so i have a choice another example of this is if let's say a person has you know we have to think about this in arts easter all obviously more not more exclusively person walks into this backyard and bark hashem in my backyard we have grapes come visit you can have shmita you can have it you can just walk in and take the grapes they're not that yeah they're not have they're not happening yet in a few months we have grapes and you know you if you bring it inside of your house so there's an obligation to take off tremendous mice just if you eat it so without having taken up tremendous meister's so a person brings upon himself a great sin so with your mouth all you need to do is say the prescribed text and you remove you separate out the trumans and meisters the tithes and then you're allowed to eat it so it depends on a person's tongue is the so now the magic tells us two stories so we see that the power there's a power in the tongue and i want to say that the foundational concept here is how do i use my tongue do i am i makeshif number one i can i can there's two things here one is that i can affect myself negatively i can bring about a sin i can bring about my own personal detachment from god heaven forbid as a result of not using my tongue properly i can also cause damage to others as we saw before we can have much legs we can have arguments between people if i'm not careful with my tongue it's my choice where do i focus do i focus on my selfishness i want to eat that thing right away or do i give off the tithe do i give off the the separate the seduct or the charity that i'm going to do i think about others as i take for myself when i speak is it so that i can wield power over others to destroy others or is it is my tongue being used in a proper way without that selfishness says to his slaves go bring me a good piece of meat from from the market the is van ley leash and he went out and he bought him a piece of tongue piece of meat this is how i understand the story where i am neil i saw he brought him he saw an opportunity a teaching opportunity tevie was a brilliant uh brilliant person we're gonna see in his response so he said to him oh that was a bad that was a good piece of me right bring me a bad piece of meat so teddy knew what he meant listening brought back a tongue really dangerous what's this s i said bring me a good piece of me you brought me tongue i said bring me a bad piece of meat you also brought me tongue what are you trying to what's the idea my name said he understood the message of regular what he why he had sent him out on this task to get him a bad piece of meat so to speak and he said look the tongue can be good or the tongue can be bad god have it when the tongue is used properly there's no better thing than that a tongue can with a person's tongue with our speech we can encourage others we can bring people up we can be you know we can really light up other people's lives we can use our tongues to speak words of torah we can light up our own lives we can pray etc okay but when it's used improperly the tongue there's no worse thing than that so it can be the best piece of meat or the worst piece of meat similar idea of heavy lift rebbe once made a meal for his students and he and they brought out the meat they brought out these tongues and some of them were soft and they were more edible and some of them were hard the meat was very hard to buy in iraq and economics what they did was they separated out they took the soft meat they left behind the hard meat he saw this as a teaching opportunity he said notice what you're doing just like you're separating out the soft ones you're taking the ones that are soft and you're leaving behind the hard pieces of me hello when you speak to each other make sure your tongue is soft one to another make sure when you speak you use your tongue in a constructive way watch out the tongue is a powerful powerful tool it has the ability to be it's it's this it's explosive it's nuclear the energy of the tongue is powerful watch out how you use it make sure you use it in a positive way make sure you are soft with your friends he gives us this exhortation when you're involved in a business dealing with others you're involved in interactions with others make sure that you do it with other person's welfare in mind it's not it can't be a selfish act that how can i get the most squeeze the most out of this but i need to also think about the other party the other person how can they also benefit how can i make sure that there's mutual benefit how can i find a win-win situation such that indeed we all we all get something out of this i'm not trying to squeeze the other person out so it's a powerful idea here and i think that we can connect these two madrussian one speaking about the illegitimate child and one speaking about the use of our tongues we can connect it and see there's two things here there's two options here i have to be careful about how i affect others in my relationships i need to think about what am i saying how am i using my tongue and how is it affecting others and and how is it affecting myself because though as we said the way that the way that i use my tongue the way that i affect others is going to have an impact on me it will change me to the degree that i don't care about others i become a hardened tongue i become i become a rock [Music] i become a rock i have to watch out what are the effects and there are real solid effects of my actions in regards to others and those are seen in the illegitimate child that's that's a result he's done nothing wrong but look at him he's a he's a miscan he's a really poor soul his life is damaged because of the mistakes and the choices of the parents we need to know the seriousness of what we do and how it affects others it's also true in our speech it's also true in our business dealings we need to know that it affects others and it makes it changes us it affects us and we need to know ultimately another thing that's very important and there's a good like we spoke about there's a redemption ultimately because when we're not thinking about my obligation towards others then i need to think this way but it's also easy to make a mistake in the other direction and say look why did that person speak negatively about me why did that person sin and therefore i am going to be uh affected in a negative way because of it and that's where we come to the second point which is equally important i have a responsibility towards others to to be positive to raise them up but i also have a responsibility within myself in my thinking to realize that the things that other people do to me i have to think about it as if this is hashem's will for me i sometimes have received negative consequences seemingly because of that person look what they did to me they spoke flesh and heart about me they spoke negatively about me they caused me an irreversible damage the oola at the end of time of the mamzer of the illegitimate child says that everything was from hashem this person for whatever reason we don't understand hashem us we don't know god's calculations and why it is this way we believe in gilgal we believe that the lives that we have now are affected by the lies we had previously in in our previous reincarnations that's what the torah teaches us we don't know the whole picture only hashem knows the whole picture for whatever reason this person had to go through this situation in this life perhaps because of a previous life we don't know the calculations but we do know that ultimately there's a redemption all the places where it seemed that god wasn't all the times that the media spoke negatively and the u.n passed resolutions against the the land of israel and against the jewish people really and the bds movements and all these things right they seem like how could this be it's not fair where's the justice but ultimately there's a redemption and we see that god comes out in front and we see that all of those things for some reason we don't have the clarity until the end to know for some reason those were decreed by god perhaps the cleanses of sins perhaps to trick the side of evil that we should be able to get through here even though we're here whatever it is whatever the understandings are it's not it's not so relevant it's not important we'll find out when the shaykh comes hopefully soon but the idea is that we in thinking about this negative situations we find ourselves and we need to know that those situations are also brought about by hashem and ultimately will be redeemed and we will see how the place where it seemed hashem was not the negative situation that we found ourselves in because of that other person it's not the other person that's how we need to think about it ultimately we need to realize and know that those situations are also from hashem and they will also be redeemed and we will understand at the end of time we will understand when mashiach and messiah arrives how all these situations were placed there by hashem for our good somehow for our good and they will be redeemed them so to speak just as the illegitimate child is brought back into the jewish people which represents the fact that ultimately everything we see was from hashem all of our situations we will see how they are redeemed we will recognize how they are also good so that's the message here the responsibility that i have on to others to not cause damage to not be part of anything negative and responsibility towards myself to recognize that whatever damage is being caused to me ultimately is the root of it is somehow for some reason hashem is bringing this upon me to cleanse me perhaps to to to correct something in me but i need to recognize that ultimately it's all from hashem and i need to continuously remind myself of this idea so i want to bless you i ask you to bless me jim should help us to have that sensitivity to have that soft tongue not to cause damage to others we can pray hashem should always pray not to cause any damage to others hashem should help us to have the depth of perception or the depth excuse me of a muna of faith to believe and to know and to hold on to the fact that everything that happens to us might seem to be caused by others should help us to recognize that it's all really from him and ultimately for our good thank you so much for listening a wonderful shamas this podcast was made possible through the gracious donations of listeners like you for more podcasts like this please visit www.ariegoldwag.com or search on itunes ari goldwag [Music]