Feed your animal first— Parshas Eikev

a panda walks into a restaurant sits down orders a sandwich and uh before they can even bring him a bill he gets up pulls out a gun he shoots in the air and he runs out and as the panda is running away the manager screams after him says panda what are you doing you didn't pay for your sandwich the panda says yeah that's right i'm a panda look it up so the manager takes out a dictionary looks it up panda panda oh there's there's panda what is what does it say panda small black and white marsupial from asia that eats shoots and leaves okay let that soak in anyways you're going to see why i told this joke joke about animals eating okay within us we have the human we have the animal there's the uniquely human drive for bonding with the oneness with the all the everything and then there's the part of us that is part of the animal kingdom the the drive for self-preservation which is you know every living thing and we refer to this as two souls so that that desire to be surrendered to the one we call that the godly soul the neph shall accuse and that animalistic desire to to preserve the self is is called the nephew bahamas the animal soul now when it comes to the godly soul our duty in taking care of the godly soul is to allow it to reach ever higher peaks of spiritual growth and and awe and love of hashem and then we also have a duty toward the animal soul which is to tame it to domesticate it we don't want to get rid of it god forbid it can become an asset but we have to re-channel its its wild impulses and and that means working within you know our twists of character and our various different shortcomings and trying to refine ourselves so that the animal can become a beast of burden and actually an asset and um we have a duty toward both of these souls and taking care of these two souls are sort of the staples of our spiritual diet the question becomes which takes precedence which do we need to address first do i do i deal with my animal soul first and and then sort out my brute defects of character and then develop love and awe of god with my godly soul or maybe the opposite the argument could be made maybe i need to learn how to in meditate on infinity and then i can conquer my selfishness so the law is that you have to take care of the animal first where do we learn this from this week's parsha parshas akiv it says venusati of i will give you rain for your field for your animals to eat from and you will eat and be satiated so first the animals eat then you the person eats and that that's a halacha that if you own an animal you have to feed your animal before you feed yourself but as all things in toyota it operates on multiple levels it's also an instruction to us when when how to address our different souls and and and this makes sense also in in macrocosm in in if you think about creation that the animals were created first and then adam then the human being was created and also in microcosm if you think about the timeline of a person's life a person is born he already has an animal soul the vitality of the body the self-preservation instinct you know that's what that's what babies are babies are all self-preservation that's why they cry at three in the morning and without any compunction right and then at bar or basmati for thirteen for a boy twelve for a girl you get the nerve shallow kiss you got you get the godly soul and then you're morally accountable and you can make good choices because you're able to be selfless and altruistic at that point so first the animal then the godly in fact in tanya the godly soul is called nephasha chains chapter two base of tanya's hashem israel the second soul right so it makes sense to say that when we're talking about the progression in life about our spiritual progression our spiritual growth is that we deal first with the animal with taming ourselves domesticating ourselves getting all of our selfishness under control and then we try to nourish the the the the godly soul and it's its penchant for for oneness with with hashem makes perfect sense okay now the issue is we find what appears to be a contradiction where this pattern gets broken in torah in fact in this week's parsha impartial's ache of itself in partial day it talks about the seven species with which the land of israel is blessed there are two grains staple foods and then five uh fruits and without getting into the fruits let's just talk about the two grains it tells us that that the land of israel is a land of it's an edits gita that means wheat and soya barley wheat and barley now traditionally speaking wheat is human food and barley is animal fodder barley was used to feed animals in fact that's why for instance the minhasa aimer the special offering at the beginning of the of the spherus aymer period that was barley specifically barley why was that barley because um sweetheart is a time of refining the animal soul with the time between pesach is a time specifically for working with the with the uh character traits of the animal soul so therefore an animalistic offering of barley it also says about the saita that her offering is is barley those are the two offerings that are barley the the imer and the site the why because her behavior was animalistic behavior so therefore her her uh rehabilitation is through an offering of animal thought at any rate the point is barley is animal food so if we just establish that the pattern is first the animal then the human first we deal with the god uh the animal soul then we deal with the godly soul how come then when it lists the species with which the land is blessed it says wheat and then barley it should have said barley and then wheat animal then human i mean everything in torah is exact and these patterns seemingly should be consistent and when it's not consistent we ask a question so i'm going to try to explain all of this by way of a very interesting passage in gemara in uh attracted the very bottom of the of the ahmed and this is an explanation that the churaba gives of this gemoda by way of uh siddhis it's interesting this same gemara was explained by the rabbi's father the makuuba rebellivitrock who was a great leader during the the the soviet era in russia and was uh obama citizen fish somebody who was uh who sacrificed himself for for yiddishkeit during the most brutal times in in russia for the for the jewish people and he was as mentioned in makubal very very into kabbalah and the rebbe's father who's whose uh your site is hof of coming up very soon next week he wrote a kabbalistic explanation of this same passage of uh gemara and it that that that explanation can be found in his egress in the letters some of the letters that were preserved in liquid levi but here's the rebe's explanation uh according to this so the gemara goes like this first of all a little background context the the gemara is talking in this uh at this play at this point about lush nikiya about using euphemism using refined language don't say something not nice say it you know if possible in the in the nicest way so the story goes like this there was a sage named rabiyeknon kakuka is a place named i guess he was from that place and it says that went out of the yeshiva to go inspect the harvests among the villagers people who lived in the rural areas then he returned to the yeshiva and the sages asked him how is the wheat crop this year they asked him kitten naiso-yafes are the wheat crops developing nicely omar lahem he said to them your face the barley crops are developing nicely why did he do that simple meaning is in the context of the discussion of speaking nicely and not saying negative things apparently the wheat crops weren't doing so well they asked what are the wheat crops doing nicely he didn't want to say no they're not doing nicely so instead he changed the subject he said the barley crops are doing nicely so what happened umrule they said to him go and announce that news to the horses and the donkeys what are you telling us the barley crops doing well barley is animal fodder we didn't ask you about the animal fat or we asked you about the wheat not the barley why are you changing soda what does it have to do with the price of tea in china you want you want you want to tell somebody about how the barley crop is doing tell the horses and the donkeys how the barley crop is doing and then the gamora asks my have a layla may matter what should he have said if he didn't want to say that the wheat crop isn't good but apparently saying that the barley crop is good is not germane wasn't the right answer so what could he have said the gemara says he could have said ish in your face last year the wheat crop was good and then he would have avoided telling them the wheat crop now is not good but he would have been telling them the truth and he would have been doing it you know in a nice way okay that's the simple reading of that passage in gemara but now i want to tell you the hasidic reading the hasidic reading starts like this and this is very much the rabbi's father's style and you see how the rabbi emulated his father's style first of all every detail even a detail in a garathon in the homiletic portions of talmud is extremely important so for instance somebody's name the name of a sage is important sorry somebody who the law is engraved within him he's a scholar and that makes sense because where does the narrative start in the yeshiva right it started he's in the yeshiva and he goes out from the yeshiva is a scholar and he's in the environment of holiness of torah now he goes out of the holy environment he goes out he leaves the ivory tower so to speak and he wants to see how the regular people are doing in the in the in the villages that means the guy who's spending all of his time in a holy environment is going to go check on the regular people and see how is their service of hashem developing how are the regular people who are in in in the regular day-to-day life not the people who are in yeshiva all day people who are dealing with regular life how is their relationship with hashem so he went to go check on them and when he came back to the yeshiva they said how are the regular people doing how's their spiritual development so what did he tell them he said i've got good news for you your face the barley crop is very good they're doing a great job taking care of their animal souls i see them they're being very honest about owning up to their character flaws and and their defects and they're working with it and they're trying to tame it they're doing what you're supposed to do you're supposed to focus on the animal soul and refining it and cleaning it and polishing it and the barley crop is great the people are very attentive to working with their animal souls so the sages liked that they liked that they were excited about it so when they heard that they were like wow the people are doing really good working with their animal souls well you know what when you're on a roll you keep going they said go tell the horses and the donkeys why why the horses and the donkeys because an animal soul generally is compared to a kosher animal you know like a cow or a sheep or a goat but you're telling us that people are doing so well dealing with their animal souls maybe we can go even lower maybe we can deal with the non-kosher animals sometimes if a person has a really really dysfunctional animal soul that could be that could be compared to a non-kosher animal like a like a horse or a donkey so they said things are going so well let's tell the horses and the donkeys maybe this this program of spiritual development that the masses are engaged in this could work even for people who are dealing with very dysfunctional animal souls and and so they were happy about it was actually they were like uh you know excited about it okay but then why does it say what should he have said or could he have said if if he said a good thing and the sages liked what he said so why does he want to say oh but he could have said different why here's why because it's true that the main thing that people are involved in is working on their animal souls and the main thing they should be involved in is working on their animal souls however you have to know something the ability to work on the animal soul and to refine it to lift it up it can't lift itself up an animal soul can't lift itself up it has to be lifted up and what lifts it up the godly soul so yeah the main focus is we work on our animal soul but the only reason or the only way that working on the animal soul is even possible is because you already have a godly soul so he should have said your face last year's wheat crop was good in other words only because we already have the wheat crop we have a godly soul now it's possible to deal with the animal soul and so there you have it there's there's the pattern that it's supposed to be yes the main focus is is on animal soul and working on your you know more rough defects of character and your selfishness and trying to refine that but the only reason that that's even possible the only reason there's anything we can even do about it is because you have already a godly soul which is think about how we start our day we start our day maidani we give thanks to hashem and then you return to me my neshama and neshama means godly soul and then we go on to the blessings and we say uh again the godly soul that you gave me is pure and so the first thing we start the day with the acknowledgement i have a godly soul now the rest of the day the focus is all on being a mensch in day-to-day life which means refining the animal soul but the beginning and the foundation what makes everything else possible is that there's the godly soul so now we really we understand yes it's correct first feed your animal then feed yourself meaning the priority the emphasis in life is first get a healthy animal soul work on your defects of character and refining your selfish uh drive and then we work on developing the the godly soul to reach higher frontiers of spiritual growth yes that's true but no at the same time the only reason we're able to work on the animal soul is because last year's wheat crop was good because you already have a godly soul so now now now we can answer our initial question which is why does the torah when it lists the the different species that that the land is blessed with and it says barley before or it says wheat before barley when we'd expect he should say barley before wheat because it's teaching us an important lesson that the first is wheat first is wheat the the lifelong work and the emphasis the bulk of our energy and our time and our and our focus is going to be on working with the animal soul but you should know it's because you have a neshama you have a godly soul so when you wake up in the morning and you say may the ani and thank hashem for your godly soul your transcendent self realize that that's what gives you the ability then afterward to go into day-to-day life and try to make your animal more of a domesticated animal and to train your selfish side to become a little bit more compassionate and a little bit more uh a little bit more loving a little more tolerant but it's all because last year's wheat harvest was good it's because we were already given the godly soul