Grand Finale Chapter 2 Shaarei Teshuva 2:27-34 with Rabbi Aaron Poston

[Music] everybody welcome back to well you know it's not the ibn abate midrash but it is the khabara for the charity and it's not just for women it's only for women live here and then they get to ask questions afterwards but this is for everybody we are in the last few chapters i mean they're very very short but there's quite a few of them and i'm praying i'm hoping that we will actually finish or culminate and be able to summarize what we've learned for last you know almost 100 pages so we're in paraguay we're in chapter 2 paragraph 27. the last thing we had talked about something in my throat one second the last thing we had talked about was the was the mission perky of old you know if i'm not for myself who am i if not now when beautiful beautiful beautiful we should really feel that now is the time to do chuva a lot of the theme of chapter 2 anyway was i'm not going to call it the sin of but let's say the mistake of the mistake of delaying chuva the laying truva has some grave consequences and i think this will sum it up these last few very short paragraphs so as you on my left shoulder we have the safer for those who want to follow in this particular book we're on page the other books are different pages but they should still be the same chapter 2 charbette charbette what do you call this paragraph 27. so he's going to list altogether nine ideas the truth is we're only talking about eight now because the last one we already talked about and that was from the mishnah if not now when so in the remainder of this uh paragraph two uh the the rebelliona will present eight more ideas or reasons why one should not delay now what is truth anyway i mean come on we're talking about character development the whole idea of as the villenegon puts it the purpose of life is tikkun hamidot fixing our character which is ultimately the the best way of doing truly because we are created in the image of god but we don't live up to that image right that's why we call sin what we call mistakes which really boils down to um the bad character i mean you know just to put it simply so here we have it after we heard he spoke about if not when now hashnia the second idea i did let's say someone says you know what i'm going to wait until i have enough money in other words let's say for example people who want to learn torah right i want every jew should want to learn torah right every person in the world will want to learn as much as they can about life and wisdom but let's say jew has a special obligation especially the men right the men and for example um hillel hillel in the in the talmud i don't know if you know this but there's uh there the gamora brings down several different characters who had the seemingly legitimate excuses why they couldn't learn and hillel was very poor and he had to work and you know what he did for work he sold matches he sold what they called at the time kindling wood little pieces of wood that you could use to start a fire so as soon as he sold enough which is i don't know how much that is a small amount he would then use that money that he earned to pay his way into the bait midrash one day he couldn't sell any i don't know why maybe there was a an overabundance of matches or kindling would anyway uh he couldn't get into debate in the trash they wouldn't let him in he didn't have the the fee he didn't have the entrance fee so the word is that he went to the rooftop i guess they had some kind of skylight and um not that he fell asleep but he was listening intently and it was snowing and before you knew it some of the students looked up and saw that the the window i guess the sunlight the skylight was blocked couldn't see they knew that they could see the outline of an image of a body and they went up there they brought them down warmed them up gave them some hot chocolate right a few extra blankets but this was the um the desire to learn and not to say when i have enough money i'll sit and learn right there's obviously different um excuses so here he just brings down this idea right if a person makes this excuse you know and after he would gather at a mass even a considerable amount of money he will still not be satisfied because there's this concept of always wanting more right there's actually a verse it's actually not a verse it's it's brought down in the madrid we will we will see the verse in ecclesiastes 5 9. we actually will see the verse but it's a concept brought down in the gomorrah that says a person does not leave this world with even half of his desires fulfilled or satisfied it's based on this verse in ecclesiastes whoever loves silver will not be sated with silver the truth is even even the verses have multi meanings you know when you talk about desires like silver even the word yikself is is based on the word desire okay so kessif silver is based on the word desire it's a little bit of a play on words but even more than that this can also be talking about and what i spoke about in um i forget which one of the previous 48 ways it was i think it was number 37 right never be satisfied with your learning always feel that you can learn more and more and get better clarity right be hungry for the truth so even though this yes is relating to the idea of desires and never being able to fulfill even half of them if someone has a hundred they want two hundred right you meet millionaires billionaires and they're always looking to the next million or the next billion okay so this is the um this is what he brings down that a person does not leave this world without even half of what he desires in his possession if he has a hundred he wants to his metabolism and if he had 200 of course he wants 400. so you see here he mentions here that a person deludes themselves into thinking that he has attained only half of his true desires if he possesses a hundred let's just say a hundred dollars these are zuzia the type of currency they used back then the person is convinced that if he would only have 200 he would be happy he'd be satisfied but we know we know as soon as he gets two now he will only be i think he'll be satisfied if he had only had four so they're always constantly searching for more that's what we do that's human nature okay and that's the verse in koheles in ecclesiastes 5 9. so if you wait until you have enough this is very this is foolishness because you'll never have enough just get it through your head it's a fact of life no matter how much you get you're only going to be wanting more and more and more so you know change your your bar for when you're ready to sit and be serious about whatever whatever it is you want and here we're talking about chuva or the ability to do shruva or to learn torah obviously torah and true are synonymous but in this case we're talking about making excuses for doing true or working on your character oh only once i make money i can sit and then i can work on my character right okay the 28th this that's how short these paragraphs are this is a one-liner paragraph 28 ashley sheet another reason not to delay doing chuva or working on your character you know that time diminishes time is fleeting time is it's going to say it's your it's your worst enemy i mean it's just i think the older you get the faster it goes i think there's a psychological reason but i think it's actually whatever i'm going to say it's true it's true from a perspective right obviously time i mean it is relative right einstein came up with some uh maybe it's a law but let's just say it's a theory at least on on some level that that uh right it's called what is called the theory of relativity okay or the law of relativity and the time you know based on perspective for you could be different than for me maybe maybe it's because of the the speed that we're traveling or how far we are from gravity i don't know okay but there is this concept so it is somewhat uh subjective in in that case but anyway so we have this idea that um the melaka right when you're thinking about the fact that the task is so great especially regarding torah torah is vast right as it says that it's longer than the earth and deeper than sorry so it's deeper than the seas and further the ends of the earth it is infinite so how can i ever you know you could come up with an excuse oh it's too much i'll never even make any headway it's not true everybody on their own level whatever inches you or meters whatever yards you you accomplish this is a tremendous accomplishment and don't look it say you'll never do it yes the task is great and character development i think we discussed this before many rosh hashivas have talked to their students who sit and learn gemara all day and are learning you know one tractate after another and they tell you that character development working on one meda if you can break that bad character trait or habit or whatever it is if you can work and improve your character that's even greater than all the torah that you've ever learned in your whole life and that's an unbelievable statement here yes it's very great in the sagatam of era vadvekas and therefore just keep in mind that the the things that we want to attain is fear and love and clinging or cleaving to hashem that's like the ultimate right that's the the spiritual virtues that were were um we're trying to attain like it says in perky a vote in chapter 2 ruby tarpon says this is very similar to what we just spoke about hayom kitsar malachim aruba the day is short what does it mean the day is sure it means our lifespan is very short what is it 70 years and if we're strong 80 of course today you know whatever we do bless people with the 120 years but again we we mean that they should be healthy till the very end god forbid that they should you know live to 120 on some kind of machinery or you know what i mean but they should have clarity like moshe robeno had till the very end strength and health like moshe urbano had to the very end he lived to 120 in fact he died on his birthday we say about sadiq that they would they they're likely to die on the very day of their birth you know many years later of course um okay so rabbit harford would say the day is short the work is much the workers are lazy tell me about it the reward is great and the master is pressing all right we're not going to spend too much time on the mishna i i suggest anything we're learning go deep into the original source you know just to get a better idea and let's go on basically to sum up this idea is that postponing the task only diminishes one's chance to complete it before the day ends know that the day is short but if you think it's so great and you can't accomplish it you may give up don't give up okay the 29th paragraph um yep i really eat the fourth the fourth of the series when you god forbid when you delay tikkun of show any implementation of your improvement of your character you crew avon you're causing a sin the akasheo they rose and you're likely to stumble you're likely to trip up into more more sins mead on it like constantly on a regular basis now why is that so basically anytime you're delaying this your um it opens yourself up to countless spiritual pitfalls i did mention before there's no such thing as stagnation when it comes to spirituality you're either going up or you're going down flat across hazal say this the clear car brings it down hazal say it in other places in fact from the parsha itself you have the angels going up the ladder going down the ladder there's no angels staying on a rung is that right a step they're not just hanging out they're either going up or they're going down and these angels in the dream represent this idea of there's no such thing as spiritual stagnation in fact in the 12-step programs they speak about this a lot and it's true we'll see by habits also we're going to talk about habits shortly but habits are the hardest thing to break of course and it can turn what we call um into your second nature right if you become a bit habituated is that the word okay so there's a word like that i'm sure it's something like that uh you acquire a habit so the these things can be very hard to break but it's easier to break them than something that's in your dna okay it's something that's learned and you can unlearn it so keep that in mind um that if you delay these uh the the the true or the character traits what you're doing is you're creating i guess right the strong habit and the habit is going to be harder to break later on so you're better off not delaying this as the now the fifth reason in inver in um oh that's what we're in right we're in the fifth already did i say that no um but it's basically a very similar idea thirty says hamishi the fifth reason again by delaying the um the improvement of your character hayes what happens is your inclination we call the evil inclination only strengthens okay it grows more powerful the akashiach halleth and it actually causes one's heart to become even harder which means the yiksha allah it's going to become even more difficult for the person to improve his character afterwards it's really um you know habits are hard to break we you know we know that and now listen to this in mishlai which is in proverbs and this is chapter 24 verses 30 and 31. so you have to hear both verses together to understand what's going on by the fields of a lazy man i passed and by the vineyard of a man without sense so you're looking at assuming that we're talking about someone who's lazy out of habit and behold thistles had grown all over it obviously it's not one day this is a um a series of weeks or months or maybe even years but it's it's not one day okay the lazy it's he's obviously a lazy man because he's allowed the the weeds to overtake nettles had covered its surface i'm not sure what nettles are i think they are the um the you know in the in the western movies you had you know these um is that what it is no what is nettles i can't hear your own i just see your lips moving i'm sorry you can come off um come off mute and say it over here they're weeds oh just simple weeds okay had covered its surface like spikes i was thinking like tumbleweeds but okay and it's stone fence had been torn down it's uh it's a shame to allow a good property to uh to be seemingly abandoned and then you know when you come back and try to um to fix it up it's so much harder right if there's a constant fixing or attempt to fix it certainly when you come back and try to make it um plantable or sewable whatever the word is you know productive and it's going to be a lot easier if you were attending it on a regular basis okay so we see that [Music] this is how he sums it up the field of a lazy person it's not only unproductive but with each passing day becomes more difficult to work so too think about this a person who neglects his own character improvement will find it much more difficult to change at a later date i mean it really becomes ingrained as i mentioned it becomes second nature can become your first nature right second nature is superficial and can be changed but once it becomes ingrained and it's very difficult and you don't do anything to change it it can become as we i will refer to as first nature now he mentions in most extreme cases it is possible for one's character to deteriorate to such degree the person can no longer free himself from of this yetzer hura while he yet lives there's an interesting idea we just brought up in the broncos with mike and that is when you're in prison it's very difficult to get out on your own now if you're healthy and you know you're you're under good behavior whatever you know think about you can get out early for good behavior but let's say you're relying on your friend to send you a cake with a little file or someone to to sneak in a a cell phone or a sim card or whatever it is that or maybe a gps tracker with a drone who knows whatever it is you usually need help it's a very interesting gemara about someone who's ill and robiokunan comes in and shows him his arm and anyway they have a whole i don't want to go into the dialogue and discussion but the end result is that even when you're down and depressed let's just say thinking negatively whatever it is that the person is feeling because he's ill the other person can actually revive the person through i'll say good cheer through good words through even touch somehow another there is like healing is a very powerful thing and it comes from positive positivity so anyway without getting in too much of that here's this idea is sometimes we need intervention sometimes we need a little bit of booster help from outside but once you have given into your yetzer hara it's almost i'm gonna say it's almost impossible right i wanted to bring a gamora here i'm not sure this is the time yet all right so we'll we'll save it for later so oh yeah actually comes in right now so in gamora avodah's are 17a so there's this idea that when one becomes one's evil inclination is so attached to the person and okay let's just read the words here and then i'll explain it when your evil incarnation becomes so much attached to the sin itself it's like heresy and the person is incapable of purifying himself obviously while the yetzera are still alive the amru hamusarim la hair gel alcohol davar sultan because there's this concept that um all things are controlled by habit as i already mentioned habit is a very powerful thing and hard to break so in gamora in avodah's r17a i don't want to go into the story those who are familiar will know the story those who are not look it up yourself i'll just gloss over the ideas of this person whose name was elazar ben dardaya at the end of his life he cried himself he was in such pain from the sins that he did and it had to do with sexual immorality by the way that he put his head between his knees and he cried himself to death he actually his soul left his body a voice came out of heaven and called him rabbi i mean whatever he was doing was not something a rabbi would do and yet because his truth was so powerful the remember his his habit was very powerful he was something that he did that was not probably just constant but exorbitant he went to great lengths if anybody who's familiar with the story knows what i'm talking about if you guys know just shake your head you guys know the story okay all right so i you know i suggest you can look it up yourself in 17a again his name is al-azhar ben daya and you'll get the whole story over there but the last line over there says that he was so attached so guilty of this sin yet once he died we know that he repented fine but what's the point here the more answer answers there too since he was attached so strongly to the sin itself it's to the extent that transcended the physical temptation he thought it's similar to heresy it's like there is no god all that exists is me and that sin right i just it it's like addiction overcomes me i mean that's really what addiction is also right my god is the drug my god is the rush and the gambling my drug is whatever it is just plug in anger plug in whatever it is i know pornography is a big thing today apparently but whatever it is plug it in plug it in and that's like a form of idle worship because that's what you're chasing that's what could they call a monkey on your back think about i mean that's a very strange kind of thing to say but whoever made that up knows what it's like they they must have known what it's like to have a monkey on their back to describe it in such a way but basically the the answer is is as as they say in the 12-step program that this is a spiritual illness and the way to be and i'm using the word saved the way to be cured the way to recover the way to recovery is through a spiritual program and that spiritual program believe it or not is from the bible okay it's the 12 steps of what they call equinox anonymous narcotics anonymous and it's all about character development and reliance on a higher power which is basically judaism in a nutshell oh by the way maybe i'll put this in in the description box below rabbi twersky um his memory should be blessed spoke for our organization when he um came out with his book called if i'm not if i'm not mistaken uh do i have it on my shelf i can remember the title uh uh truth and recovery or recovery and truva repentance and recovery something to that extent so i'll put the description i'll put the link below so you guys can see it and get an idea of how the 12 steps developed from the bible itself from the torah itself from jewish principles how to break habits how to break habits who wouldn't want to break a habit okay bad habits i mean good habits keep them up okay uh paragraph 31 hashish sheet the sixth remember we got to get to number nine right first of all you don't know how long you're going to live right who knows you have to be concerned you're not going to live that long right you're going to live like i said 70 80 hopefully even longer but um so your mother uh yash lim hok chuva you should be concerned that maybe just maybe that you're not gonna live long enough to do truva properly um you're not gonna live forever so why not no just know that you're not gonna live forever so why not take truva seriously right just keep in mind that if you delay your your truva you may not complete it before you die um then he says i'll cain his your olaf this is why king solomon himself thank god for king solomon right it comes to with his wisdom to warn us in uh ecclesiastes 9 8 um do i have it here yeah okay so that's kohalis now it says at all times but call eight you began levani your your clothes your outer garments should be white well it doesn't say outer garments your garment should be white and the shaman and never be lacking oil on your head but it's the first part that we're focusing on and rashi mentions right there prepare yourselves just keep in mind i have to prepare myself today at all times meaning today all times me now with good deeds so that if you die today you will enter in peace you don't know when you're going to die you don't know when you're going to how long solomon likened this to a man whom the king invited for a day of feasting without setting a time for him if he's wise or clever he will immediately launder his garments and bathe and anoint himself i mean come on the king invited you to a banquet and he didn't give you a time but you know that the parties it's always happening at the palace so you might as well get ready and this is what god wants king solomon knew what god wants from us and he's telling us keep your garments white what does that mean your garments white remember your soul is pure and your body your physical body the the way you're living your life that's your that's your um the lavoosh that's the garments of the neshama that's your actions so keep them clean keep them white i.e nothing to erase okay this is just a uh a simple way of discussing this um in here in the language of man okay um is there anything here let's move forward he basically says at the end of this right strive to always be in a state of spiritual purity for one has no way of knowing when the person will die fine now we're at paragraph 32. by the way there's only 34 paragraphs in in chapter two so we're really at the very end uh the seventh reason ah is 34 right so now we're in 32 the seventh reason is if one delays doing truva you have a vote yes what does that mean so by the time you do embark on the process of your pen of repentance you're you're basically you're your sins are like old already they're they're like petrified meaning they're really hard to break right they're old right and you're not not only the old and and petrified to the point that they i don't mean petrified in terms of fear i mean petrified in terms of hard but you've already lost the sensitivity to them you're no longer grieving you know when you first sin you're like in shock i can't believe i actually did that or i actually thought of that right hopefully right so imagine that now you you don't even remember having those regrets or negative feelings anymore perhaps even you've justified and said it wasn't that bad look i don't even have an emotion over it i don't even think about it so you'll basically forget the gr any grief you have over them below and you're not going to worry about them then you when like you did when you first committed those sins and that is a problem because we know that we spoke so much about the the different levels of grief and worry and um you know the sighing and the groaning all the different adjectives we used earlier on you won't have them the more you delay the less sensitive you are towards the the sin itself okay which is makes it more difficult to to do truva okay 33 hashminit the eighth reason not to delay doing shiva below the yami right when someone gets old well on in years they are and they become weak in power sorry weakens the power of the eights of hurrah so the the actual right okay this is like there's different types of the sahara has is always going to be there right but when the let's say physically i could talk about a man i'm sure women have their own issues they could talk about so it could be in the early years there's physical sins but later on there's other sins like power and haughtiness perhaps those are not so relevant in the younger years but other types of physical sins are so i think he's referring more to the physical sins when you're pat when you're young and you're full of energy right you can hang out until three o'clock in the morning in town right i'm just giving things i hope nobody does that but i'm just saying right so then you have a lot of koach right and the yetzera is stronger when you're young let's just uh we're going to see a story about king david for example unless we saw that already no we're going to see that um so it actually was in the haftarah it was last week or the week before it's all blur to me but anyway here you have it with avishag right so here you have it when when one is well on in years and his the strength of this yet sahara weakens meaning his physical desires wane lo yikabel scar allah you know you when you do chuva later on and you don't have that strong yates aura you're not going to get as much reward and i'm not saying that's a reason why not to delay he's bringing it down just know that if you do it now while you still have the the the the eights are strong then you're really breaking your yazar then you're really getting the reward for you're getting your you know measure for measure if you break the it's hurrah when you're already old and it's weakened to its minimum strength what i mean i'm not sure i'm not saying that it's not worth anything of course it is hashem you did it but imagine if you did it when you were younger keep this in mind i mean this is what he's trying to say here that you will not receive as much reward for doing truva as he would have had he perfected his heart in the days of his youth while he still had a strong urge to sin it should be very clear and then there's a proof text from where it's actually from in psalms king david okay but the gomorrah in avodahzar in 19a brings it and that's where i have to bring the sour sheen here for that okay so the verse in psalms 112 1 says ashrae ha-ish i have to find the hebrew well oh yeah ashrae ish happy is the manner praiseworth is the man who fears god well the very fact is haish the man so the gomorrah mentions in other words when you fear god while you're still an ish now i know it means man but let's just say when you are young remember we're talking to women here so it doesn't mean when you're a man okay we're not talking any trans transgender stuff here we're just talking straight up human being while you're young okay so the man while you're still a man and meaning while he still retains his vigor and physical desire that's when you have the earth hashem and it says in gemara sanhedrin 22a i know i have it here as well here it is so this is um it is not right it's malachi mouth i think it was not last not this past shabbos but the shabbos before was the torah a king david was well owned in years meaning he was he had turned seven he was in his 70th year his last year of life and he was cold at night and they sought aversion well he couldn't marry her because he already had 18 wives but anyway he didn't have relations with her either but for some reason she was able to keep him warm and her her response listen to this so she said to them when they people thought you know different things about her she said about king david when the thief is lacking what to steal he makes himself like a man of peace and that's the the last statement in the in the the rabbina yona but it's it appears in the gemara in other words what she was saying about since king david was physically unable to anyway engage in um let's say procreation he devised an excuse not to marry her in other words he couldn't marry i mean what could he couldn't even consummate the marriage with her basically that's what he was saying it was okay i'm not sure if that's there's a single age that that happens it may not even happen to every man but let's just say in general there is this idea of the physical desire or physical abilities waning as one gets older and so she was not um she was not involved in this uh but she basically said like think about a thief who has no ability to thieve a thief who has no ability to steal there's no you know okay i'll make a confession okay because it came up on the shabbat this past year but i'm making the confetti i do smoke okay now i don't smoke on shabbos so you know hey i don't have any desire to smoke with shabbos i don't smoke on shops i don't even want to smoke lunch it's shabbos like like when you're kidding me it's like drive your car on travis i don't have any desire to drive my car travis um turn on the tel i wouldn't wouldn't turn on tell me shabbos it's like shabbos is filling the air right why am i bringing this up if if it's a yates hurrah it's you listen i don't have a desire so i'm not breaking any of my um i'm not breaking no jobs don't even have a desire and i just want to tell you for those people in 12 step program that you could get to the point where hashem will remove your desire to do that negative act whatever it is that you're trying to break hashem could remove it from you he could remove that that's called sanity right in the second step you believe you can be restored to sanity the sanity is the actual removal of those insane ideas that you can keep doing the same thing over and over again expect different results anyway let's move on let's move on we are now in 34 we're in the home stretch the home stretch here we go to eat the ninth of these nine reasons so all of us are young i don't know everyone watching how old you are it doesn't matter but in in our days of old age we have to believe this so when the intensity of a person's emotion is diminished so apparently we're just intellectually trying to understand that one no longer has the ability to strength or strength the ability or strength to forge new paths in his heart i do know that statement united it's very difficult to teach an old dog new tricks right i get that right and i think in our generation i'm talking about the people i know that i'm that are on camera with me here in in my living room on on zoom we are in zoom right um that we're of a later generation meaning like anything to do with a smartphone or computers the newest you know it's a little bit um you know we have to work a little bit harder than the 16 year olds for some reason you know they can develop web pages and be programmers with her eyes closed right and i know you're shaking yeah because you're very intelligent you're very smart but okay let's just assume you know we get a new phone and we need assistance from a younger person to figure out all the potential potentialities um and it's like second nature for them for so here i i think it's like an example but what he's talking about here obviously they weren't smartphones there weren't computers just the idea of being able to deal with new things is very difficult the older you are and to organize these new ideas in which to battle your evil incarnation it makes it very difficult okay in order to attain virtues nor does the person this i think is true for sure i'm not going to say for sure the older you are the less you have the abilities to develop new ideas but let's assume it's basically true it's more difficult for an older person here also you don't have the energy tutorial and to labor in the in the study of torah for example or to perform such good deeds usually i shouldn't say usually at some point in time you're in you need more help than you can give i mean that's you know whether you need to be driven around except my my father's hashem kanindahar he's still driving in his 80s late 80s well he's in florida so everybody's driving at the same pace on the highways you need to really be careful they stick to the they should stay to the right you should stay to the left but anyway um whatever it is this idea that um you you don't have the the full the full physical abilities interesting um before we read the verse in cohes 12 1 before we read it okay we'll read it and then i'll come back to it so it says in ecclesiastes 12 1 remember your creator in the days of your youth before the days of evil come the years arrive about which you will say i have no desire in them in other words the older you get um it you don't have the same you don't have the same power to uh to uh to with this you know negative desires and you don't have this the same drive to do good stuff because you don't have the physical uh sustenance the physical abilities let's just look at um number one down below character improvement requires breaking new ground so as we spoke about like new ideas hard to teach an old dog new tricks if you were while you were young already working on your character so then you are habituated in a good sense to constantly be working on your character so even when you're older it'll be easier okay so keep that in mind i think that's really what he's saying here even though it's older for you know it's harder for an older person to do new things but if you're already doing them you're you're ahead of the game anyway let's go back a character improvement requires breaking new ground changing aspects of one personality that have become ingrained this creation of new paths in one one's heart is a difficult task that requires emotional strength now i'm going to say again when you have found that emotional strength while you were young and you you it's your passion to work on your character it's going to be cinch it's going to be easier when you're older i just want to mention that but as one ages his physical and emotional strength diminishes and new undertakings become much more difficult to be sure this description applies only to those who have not toiled in torah study and character improvement throughout their lives ah there you go if you were already i'm going to use the word habituated i you know i'm sure there's better words if you have already can become accustomed to have a set time to learn with a cavuso whether it's once a week every day right when you have um an emotional breakdown with a confrontation and you realize it's your fault right you realize you sinned in the relationship or whether it's you and you and god are you another human being you and yourself you're already working on that character so then you're way ahead of the game it's not going to be new or difficult for you righteous people who have spent a lifetime in these efforts do not falter when they reach old age on the contrary as they grow older they increase in spiritual strength and that's also another interesting idea i spoke about in my last thursday's night class i'll put the link down below that says spiritual ascendancy requires physical sacrifice and there's this balanced you know this famous story of ray schlakesh and rabbi yochanan right for those who are not familiar i'll tell it really quickly raj lakish before he became rabbi shimon bin lakish he was the head of the bandits like i'm trying to imagine i i think of robin hood but also he was like a tarzan he lived in the trees he he traveled to the forest you know he hid he was stealth stealthily and he hid and but he was very powerful person and he was i'm not going to say he was evil i don't know but he was a criminal okay he was a criminal um and he saw rabbi yochanan and he was he didn't know his ruby okana but he saw what he thought was a female in the lake in a in a pond in a some body of water and he dove in from a great length thinking i don't know what he was thinking but he was thinking of uh approaching this woman but it wasn't a woman it was ruby okay who happens to happen to have been very healthy physically when we say healthy in israel we mean healthy healthy looking not too scrawny not bones right like uh a lot of skin a lot of flesh okay and he was also very pale by the way he was very and maybe he had long hair i really don't know but anyway that's how it's described he was very pale and he was very handsome which could mean he had a beautiful sister i don't know but in the end what happens is he recognizes this desire of raeshlackish shimon because he came far distance with all this power and this physical you know strength to come in i don't know let's say be with what he thought was a female and he offered him he says i see that you have all this power what potential you have like the sleeping giant right the jewish people i see you have such desires but these desires are for beauty and the torah's beauty why you know i can offer you my sister who's very beautiful she's even more beautiful than i am but only if you commit to learning torah it says the moment that he committed he just said yeah i'll do it meaning i'll learn the torah i also marry your sister he lost all his strength it's not that he okay so i don't know exactly what that means all his strength obviously he was swimming and waiting but he lost the old strength that he had the physical strength and therefore it was like kind of like moved aside and now focused his strength his soul strength is focused on the spiritual i say soul i mean majority of his strength is focused on the spiritual and i'm going to put that link down below too as if i think it was pretty good share was not my ideas based on both the clia car and if i'm not mistaken it was also at the end i bring in the ben yohoyada the bani shai beautiful piece well what did i want to bring up here in this idea i kind of forgot but okay let's go back into the text the last thing we did mention was the cohellis twelve one and now the uh the rebelliona concludes arcane therefore if it fits a person to harry don't delay that was like the whole message of basically shar shnayan right don't delay in the obtaining here's the word deliverance i like the word salvation myth lot means to be saved literally of your soul don't delay you could be saved right now all you have to do is work on your character and to engage in the service of god immediately without any delay there's no point in delay delay is just negative negative consequences i uh i spoke last night about the importance of making decisions in the 38th of the the 48 ways and deciding to procrastinate right deciding not to decide has consequences right that's a decision so okay don't delete don't take joy in your decision making it's a whole take a look i'll put in the description box description box below do not delay and we end off with what king david said uh peace be upon him in 119 verse 60 119 verse 16 which is like this i hastened and i did not delay to keep your commandments i hastened i did not delay now's the time now is the time now's the time okay um yeah the reason i brought in the uh raeshlakish was just to show you that there is this um you know importance of or let's say it's a metaphysical thing you you choose the spirit oh i mean it was based on two verses in chapter 26 in genesis where hashem is telling isaac i don't want you to go to egypt but rather i want you to dwell in this land and use the word to shakon and then in the following verse even though he says i want you to dwell in the land i'm going to tell you and then immediately he tells them dwell in this land but he doesn't say tishkun he says gore so i go into a islami like just quoting the clear car the difference or what the symbolism is between tishkon of dwelling which is a permanence in a spiritual way and gore which is a transient passing through the physical world because of all the physical blessings that come in this week's in that week's parsha last expression anyway so bizrat hashem we will begin a chapter what do you call sharp gimmel right we're actually more than halfway through the book right because the first two sharim are a majority of the book uh bazrat hashem uh halfway through anyway so uh there's only four four chapters and so bizarrontosham if anybody wants to join us and if after watching this remember you can always watch it anytime you want but if you want to join us and have some fun online afterwards you know talking about different subjects that you feel comfortable talking about then you'll join us you'll just send me a whatsapp and we'll figure out how to get you on board anyway with all that have a great life and um that's all i can tell have a great winter and stay healthy and we look forward to seeing you next week [Music] is