God's Favorite Mitzvah

[Music] hi i'm lori palatnik and i'm coming to you from our home in jerusalem welcome to our home i'm the founding director of momentum i want to share with you and really an amazing gemara amazing amazing passage of the talmud that is really talks about a king who has a favorite fruit there is a king who is very beloved by the people in the kingdom who has a favorite fruit but the king's men told him don't tell anybody what your favorite fruit is don't tell them why because if he imagined his favorite fruit was kiwis he loved kiwis so what would happen if he's very beloved by the people of the kingdom everybody would be growing kiwis because that's the that's the the king's favorite fruit but it wouldn't be good for the economy so too the gomorrah continues that the king of kings the almighty hashem god has a favorite mitzvah but he can't tell people what it is because then everyone would be doing it all of the time our rabbi rabbi noah weinberg that's all of blessed memory deduced from this what god's favorite mitzvah is can you imagine so let's break it down god can't tell us what his favorite mitzvah is because then everybody would be doing it all of the time everybody that means it has to be something that applies to jews and non-jews it can't be specific to the jewish people because everybody would be doing it so it can't be nation-specific it also cannot be if everybody it can't be specific to men or women because everybody would be doing it all the time it can't it has to apply to children and adults you know because there's certain commandments that are very specific to a man very specific to women some are are very specific to somebody who is past bar and bar mitzvah age everybody would be doing it all of the time that means it has to be a positive commandment it has to be a positive mitzvah it can't be something that we refrain from so we can throw at hundreds of misfits right all of the negative misfits are bye-bye now we're very now we're narrowing it down okay everybody would be doing it all of the time so also it has to be something that's not historically specific like certain a lot of the mitzvot are really very specific not only to the jewish people but historically that means if we don't have the beta midash we don't have the base of mkdosh then the temple there's many of the the mids vote really apply to a lot of them are carbonate they're there has to do with sacrifices funny many many years ago my husband and i were living in toronto and we started something called the village jewel and i had before we had a building i had a lot of classes around my table and i was teaching different series with women and you know after we went through like the foundation classes and after we went through uh the hamesh uh we went through all the five books we i was like oh so let's do um let's do the commandments like gosh we have 613 commandments let's do them so i remember we i started going through them it's about in the order of the rambam maimonides and at the beginning it was very cool you know love god no god um and then when we got to sacrifices i remember like the women said i go this week we're doing sacrifices so we talked about the concept and went through some of the sacrifices the next week i go and now we're doing more sacrifices and then we're doing more so the class got smaller and smaller and smaller it's shocking really how many have to do with that okay so can't be specific to if we have to wait to make dash it can't be historic historically specific it also can't be geographically specific if everybody would be doing it all the time then a lot of the commandments really have to do with with israel with eretz israel that they only apply in the land of israel somebody uh told shared with me some uh it was during a shemitah year here and we're bringing women to moshov and agriculture musha that was um that observed shemitah that every seven years you let the land lie fellow and that's what the year we're in right now actually so i remember thinking like this is not going to be a fun teal with the women who are coming from from america who are not so observant to go to amosha that observes shemitah like we're going to look at a bunch of dead plants it actually was fascinating and amazing and inspiring so there was a woman who got on the the bus on the way we stopped to pick her up and she was going to be our guide for this mocha specifically why because she told her story she says my family grew up in muncie my father was a very prominent businessman very successful and one friday night the family like the my father and my sons and my father and my brothers came home from shul and i could tell like something was up my father and my mother were like whispering to each other throughout you know throughout the throughout shabbat and after we made hudala my father said family meeting and we sat down and he said friday night when when the boys and i were were walking home from shul a car came sort of slow down beside us and they yelled out jews you don't belong here get out of here and they roared off and they were kind of shaken and he said i've been talking to your mother and i realize they're right we don't belong here we're moving to israel and she says we were like floored like what and he said if we're moving to israel we want to keep as many myths both as possible as many mitzvahs as possible and many of them shockingly are agrarian they apply to the land shemitah being one of them but a lot of them like tithing and you know like the micer and things like this like a lot of them have to do with the land so he says we're going to move jesus my my father traded in his suit and his briefcase and bought overalls and we moved to a like a mosha that was based on on you know was an agricultural moshav and my father got a tractor and that's how we grew up she goes and i'm bringing you to that mo shop today to talk about chimita and they went and they told us about all the amazing miracles that happened like during the years and how they were able to to to make it it was really very and she said i ended up marrying somebody who didn't want to live on the mo shop and that's why i don't live there but my father still lives there and it was really really amazing amazing so a lot of the mitzvot would have to do with with that so here we are so now we're eliminating okay and some people say oh it's love your neighbor that applies to jews and non-jews applies to everybody but everybody would be doing it all the time what if what if you're on a desert island and there's no neighbors and you can't do husset and you can't do beaker hauling like visit the sick and you can't do anything that has to do with man to man gone so now we're down to man to god so once you start eliminating eliminating eliminating our rabbi rabbi noah weinberg he said it's prayer prayer is god's favorite mitzvah but many years ago when i was writing my first book friday night and beyond when i was walking people through the shabbos the shabbat experience step by step so not only did i do the house and wise of every step starting on friday and leading to mozai shabbat from beginning to end not only the house and wise i i wanted to include stories like i wanted stories that personal stories like did you ever keep shabbat in a funny place and it had to do with that step of it and and how you feel and how you connect to it and i interviewed men women observant not observant and there was like a collection of stories in each chapter when i got to okay and now we go to the bay knesset to the shul to the synagogue to the temple when i got there i asked people about their experiences and about how they feel about prayer and it was almost across the board shocking how this is something that people really struggle with and a lot of people don't connect with and this is god's favorite mitzvah so i went to my husband was a rabbi and we talked about it so then i really started delving into myself and teaching and finding out what people's blocks were and how to how to unblock and that's what this series is going to be about this is a five part series on prayer so let's talk about those blocks what are the things that block you what are the things that you struggle with when it comes to prayer so i'm going to i'll share with you some of the things i've heard over the years and i speak all over the world so a big part of it is what can i say a big part of it is is the language language unless you're israeli unless you're a natural hebrew speaker sometimes the language like really really blocks us the for some of us hebrew is greek to me i'm not a person actually who is is very good at languages it's not a natural talent that i have god gave me certain talents in certain areas and nothing in other areas thank god i was born into the english language because i i never i never could have could have uh could have could have learned it's not an easy language and it's an international language so now i'm in israel and i'm tiptoeing into hebrew and it's not easy does god only understand hebrew no my repetition says god does not speak chinese to eskimos god understands every language and actually it says the prayer we're taught is an expression of the heart if you didn't speak from your heart you didn't pray and for some of us a lot of us maybe it's not hebrew maybe it's spanish maybe it's russian maybe it's god understands all languages now there is an incredible deep mystical aspect of the hebrew and we should be trying to bring and learn and bring more hebrew into it but you can talk to god in in any language and sometimes we make the mistake and we think like oh prayer is for when you go to your house of worship but if you walked into a synagogue and said hello to god and then walked out and said goodbye that's a mistake because god really is everywhere god really is everywhere i remember walking with one of my kids when they were little uh in toronto my husband i built up a community there it's called a synagogue that's called the village shul and created a new community in toronto's forest hill many years ago we started with five families i remember walking to the village shul one shot this morning with my my daughter and we were talking about you know i think we were singing the uncle moishi song like hashem is hiroshima zero is really everywhere up up down down right left and all around so i said um and and so so she was asking me hashem is everywhere and i said yes and she says but especially up and we talk about up and what a chef really is everywhere in your car your home at the bus stop and we need to create that connection and invoke god's favorite mitzvah in any language anywhere also anytime sometimes we make the mistake and it's outside the operating room when a loved one is being wheeled in or when the plane is very turbulent and they're saying prepare for maybe not such a comfortable landing or when your kid is going off to write a very important exam or to take their driver's test or when you're yearning for something a soulmate that god should bring your soul this is when often we pray there's no atheist in a foxhole we shouldn't wait for that we really should establish our relationship with god and build our relationship with god not just when the plane is going down what we're going to talk about as we go through the steps uh in further in the in the series so any any language any place any time so what else blocks us from prayer well first of all we have to understand what prayer is prayer is talking to god how can you have a relationship okay don't tell tell me somebody's your best friend but you never talk to them if you don't talk to somebody like how how strong is the relationship prayer is talking to god but of course sometimes one of the things that blocks us is we think it's a one-way conversation which we're going to talk about in as we as we go through uh this series because it's not a one-way one-way conversation god's not going to talk back if you told me that you heard god in a from a mountaintop today we probably have therapists that we could connect you to but god does talk to us loud and clear but you're not going to hear god's voice like the jewish people did at mount sinai at heart c9 but god does talk to us loud and clear but again well as the series goes on well well how how do we hear god's voice so what else do you ever pray for something and didn't happen so some of the things that block us is unanswered prayers well god actually answers every prayer sometimes he says yes sometimes he says no and we'll talk about what do we do when it's a no how are we supposed to react and sometimes we think i'm praying to god i'm one of billions of people in the world like like what that's very busy there's problems in the middle east there's economies there's tsunamis there's earthquakes there's there's a lot of people in need there's poverty there's there's a lot of things going on he's going to hear my little prayer who am i these are the things that block us and that these are the things that we're going to be talking about as we go through the series so this was step one i hope you stay with me and uh we have four more four more in this series and there's an acronym that goes with it so that we can pray anytime anywhere and i'm going to give that to you as we as we continue so again from my my home in jerusalem i hope and pray that you'll stay with me and as we move towards the most important time of the year where we're probably going to do more prayer than we've ever done all year round combined let's uh let's understand what prayer really is all about okay we'll see you next time [Music] you