Rabbi Dr. David Gottlieb - 33rd Day of the Omer: Rabbi Shimon's Folk Festival

What I'd like to do is come at a single subject from two different angles, two very different angles. Uh some of you, I suppose, were privileged to be here for Lag B'Omer. I was returning back from Los Angeles late Lag B'Omer afternoon, so and we had a grandchild who had a haircut there. So, I missed it. But, I've done it before. Um it is the great Jewish Israeli folk festival. Um and for a country this size, it's by far the biggest gathering ever during the year. Nothing matches it. Hundreds of thousands of people, now depending on who you trust to say that 200, 300, 400,000 people within the space of 24 hours, or let's say 36 hours. What's going on? Obviously, it's centered on Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai. Who was he? What did he contribute? Why is he so special? Why is he the one that attracts this kind of occasion? Indeed, the Talmudic coin says that had it not been for the fact that Rabbi Akiva died as a martyr, it would have been celebrated on Rabbi Akiva's yahrzeit, not on Rabbi Shimon's yahrzeit. So, it's it's a long and complex story. Now, people associate Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai with the Zohar. That's correct. But, I don't think many people associate him correctly. Rabbi Shimon had a had a yeshiva. And in that Yeshiva, they specialized in what we would call today Kabbalistic topics. They had many discussions. Outsiders came from time to time and participated. Some identified, some strangers. Rabbi Shimon assigned one of the Talmudic one of the disciples named Rabbi Abba to edit the discussions. These were free-standing discussions. He edited them and he associated them with verses in the Torah. But it's not to be assumed that when you have a piece of Zohar that's associated with a verse, that somebody set out to write a Kabbalistic commentary on the verse. No, just like Ravina Ashi took discussions of Tannaitic material and attached them to Mishnayot. It isn't as if the discussion was centered on the Mishnah. This is a symposium how should we deal with this Mishnah? These people made these remarks. They had a discussion about a topic. In the middle of the topic somewhere, this Mishnah played a role. So they associated with that Mishnah. Rabbi Abba did a similar editing job for the Zohar. The chief um the chief contributor and the Rosh Yeshiva was Rabbi Shimon. So he's representative of the whole process, but he wasn't the only speaker. And it's certainly not true that when he was in the cave for 12 years, that he wrote the Zohar. That's something which I've heard many people say, which is simply has no no basis in fact. Now, it's not wrong to call Zohar and Kabbalah Jewish mysticism. But there's considerable misleading about about it as well. First of the word Kabbalah means received. Kabbalah means to receive. And Ramchal and others say that the significance of it is it's not invented. It couldn't be invented. It's not the fruit of speculation and inspiration and other religions drug-induced highs and the rest. It's part of the oral tradition just like the rest of the tradition came ultimately from prophecy, so this two came from prophecy. The mystical material was not invented by Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, far from it. All of the material was revealed to Moses and he taught it to the people of his time. And then it went through evolution. It wasn't taught publicly to the vast majority of people. It was kept in a closed circle of people. And it got various different modes of expression. Anybody who thinks that Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai invented Jewish mysticism, and I have read historians who think that and even worse, um should go back to the book of Ezekiel and read the first five or six chapters and see what you understand. I guarantee you will understand nothing. Because it is one of the treasure troves of Jewish mysticism and it is impossible to understand. And there are mystical visions in the five books of Moses. And it's it's something which goes all the way back to the beginning of of Judaism. Indeed, it must do so because if it didn't, it would be heresy and no one would have accepted it. Now, it does track a certain level, typically, typically, tracks a certain level of explanation, a certain level of analysis, which is I would say very deep. I'll give you an example. Let's take the first few words of the Torah. Bereishit bara Elohim et hashamaim ve'et ha'aretz. The literal reading of those words is to indicate a time. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, the way Maimonides reads it. Or in the beginning of his creating heavens and the earth, he made light. The way Rashi reads it, it's talking about when things happened. The Midrash comments the base of Bereshit can mean for the sake of, even in literal Hebrew, even in the book of Genesis, the word base can mean for the sake of, the letter base. Rashi's is a code word for the Torah and the Jewish people. And therefore, the beginning words read for the sake of the Torah and the Jewish people, God created the heavens and the earth. I'm not going into the different levels, Shabbat, Rosh Hashanah, all of those and all the rest, but the Midrash's comment is to tell you the purpose of the creation. Purpose. In a certain sense, that's deeper, more broadly significant than just the time. So, the Midrash is pushing a level deeper. The Zohar says the following. Says something almost shocking. The base can be indication of using a tool. When you when you dig with a shovel, then he was is said "Lachpor b'deker." Deker is a shovel. Base means with, you use the shovel as a tool. So, says the Zohar, there is an unnamed subject, X, and the first words of the Torah say X used Rashi's to create Elohim. Shock establishment. An unknown subject used Rashi's to create Elohim. Elohim is God's names. So, creating God is just, you know, seems to be off the map. That's something which doesn't need to be, you know. And then, to have it reference some unknown subject, so here's the idea. The idea is, as it said in the Kabbalistic tradition and in the philosophic tradition, we don't understand God at all. God is transcendent. May out impossible to understand. No thought grasp him at all. No words describe him. Okay, so God is beyond all description. Then what are we talking about all the time? What are we talking about? There are thousands of descriptions of God. The answer is you're talking about what he does, not what he is. Can't talk about what he is. You can only talk about what he does. In particular, you can talk about themes and patterns in what he does. The things that he does aren't just random. And they don't come out of an infinitely complex background that we can't grasp. God purposely reduced the complexity of his actions so that we would be able to understand that. He created us with certain natural principles for our understanding, and then he so to speak reduced himself to act according to the principles that we have we possess so that we'll be able to understand what he's doing. Now, there are different principles. One is called loving kindness. Another one is called strict justice. Another one is called mercy. Another one is called charity. These are familiar to you because they're familiar Hebrew words. They're familiar because the Talmud, which is continuous with the Zohar and the mystical tradition, uses those as God's attributes. The Zohar thinks it's a step further and says, all we have are these active attributes. We don't have anything else. There's nothing behind them. Okay, that means every time you see a name of God, the Zohar will ask This almost sounds like like like heresy. The Zohar will ask which one? Not which one God out of a multitude of gods, but which one of God's active principles is this name of God referring to? Ah. Now let's go back to the comment of the Zohar in the first few words of the Torah. There is a principle of God's action, which is unnamed in the verse. That unnamed principle used another principle called Reshith to create a third principle called Elohim. What are they? Well, Reshith we know from the famous verse Reshith Chochmah Yirat Hashem. The beginning of wisdom. Reshith is associated with wisdom. Wisdom, Chochmah, is one of God's active principles. The unnamed subject used wisdom to create Elohim, which is Binah. So you have Chochmah and Binah. And the unnamed principle is what we call Keter, the crown, which is the highest of the 10 Sefirot. So what this the Zohar is saying is Keter, unnamed, used Reshith, which is Chochmah, to create Binah, and our world is the product of Binah's activity. I would say that's a step deeper even than the Midrash. Because here you're finding out who did it. Who created the world? What was the character of the creative principle that brought the world into into being? And the answer is that it's Binah. Notice how the three fit together. The flame shot is when? The Midrash says for purpose. And the Zohar is who? They all contribute to a fuller and fuller picture of what's going on. I'll give you one more example, and then I want to comment on how it relates everything else. If you are lucky enough to use a good Sefardi siddur or some Chassidic siddur and do this, sometimes they have the two names of God interweaved with one another. The Yud Heh Vav Heh and Vav Heh interweaved with Aleph Dalet Nun Yud. The idea is this. This name, Aleph Dalet Nun Yud, the one we pronounce on that that we're familiar with, um if you look at the way it's spelled, it has an Aleph, and then it has the letters Dalet Nun Yud. Now if you if you rearrange them, it's din. Din means strict judgment. So, this name contains din. It holds din within it. It has an aleph outside which add to din to make this name. So, it's a container of din. Okay. Now, what So, what? The Zohar in parshas Shoftim says there are four different ways that we execute capital judgment, capital punishment on people. When the When the When the Gamara says that the end of days God will destroy the evil inclination, he will apply all four forms of capital punishment to the evil inclination. Use all four of them to destroy the evil inclination. Okay. One of them is saif. Saif means using a sword to cut off the head. And each of the four ways that he will use capital punishment on the evil inclination is done through the name yud and a hey and a vav and a hey, which is a little tricky because that name is associated with mercy. But mercy applied to strict justice yields destruction. Because mercy for everybody else. If you rid the world of strict justice, that's mercy for everything else. Okay. So, now, how does it work? Well, says the Zohar, the yud and a hey and a vav and a hey becomes a sword. How does it become a sword? The yud is the handle of the sword. The vav is the blade of the sword. And the two heys are the two edges, the two sharp cutting edges of the sword. So, you picture now the four-letter name, the proper four-letter name of God, yud and a hey and a vav and a hey, as a sword, where the yud is the handle, the vav is the blade, and the two heys are the are the edges of the blade. Now, this combination of names is used in the in the sitter and they say in the Sefardi sitter or in a sitter of um some Hasidim. When you start the Shmoneh Esrei, when you start the Shmoneh Esrei, you start with a verse, "Hashem Sefatai Tiftach Ufi Yagid Tehilatecha." "Hashem, open my lips and my mouth to declare your glory." Your praise. And the message is this. I think it's this way. If If it's If this is the way the letters are interleaved, you have the Yud outside. Then you have the Aleph-Dalet name which contains then, holds then, encapsulates then, covers then, and inside it you have the Hey-Vav-Hey of the four-letter name, which is the blade. So, you're putting the sword in its scabbard. That's the picture. Now, when you say "Hashem Sefatai Tiftach Ufi Yagid Tehilatecha," that name of Hashem there is Aleph-Dalet. In the verse, it's Aleph-Dalet. In the sitter, it's spelled this way because the function of the Aleph-Dalet there is to put the sword in the scabbard. The sword that you held when you said the Shma, where the sword can be used to cut off negative elements, that sword is put away. You don't want to be functioning with a sword when you go into the Shmoneh Esrei. You want to be functioning with a with the appeal to mercy and only mercy. So, that's what the Zohar says. I remember when I read that, I thought to myself do I know anything about what's going on? I've done you know, thousands of Shmoneh Esreis, and I said "Hashem Sefatai" every time. Have I any clue what's going on? Have I any clue what's going on whatsoever? Okay. Now, having said all of that let me give you another piece of background. I'm putting all these things together These are things I put together over decades, but as a philosopher, when you see these things coming from different angles, and they all come together to a consistent picture, it's to me it's a very exciting picture. Um The Shulchan Aruch is a book of Jewish law and custom. The Moreh Nevukhim, Guide of the Perplexed, is the most complex, abstract, deep, complicated, fundamental work of all Jewish philosophy. The Ramah, Ashkenazi source for the Shulchan Aruch, whose comments are printed in every edition of the Shulchan Aruch, starts his commentary with a quotation from Maimonides' Guide. Why would he start his commentary on the Shulchan Aruch, a book of law and custom, with a reference to the most difficult, abstruse, distant, specialist book of Jewish philosophy? The Ramah is making a statement. The statement is, don't think that law and custom's one thing, and philosophy's something else, different realms, different dimensions. Judaism is one organic unity, and every part lives off the other part. Every part contributes to every every other part. You can't understand any one thing in isolation. Its roots and its growth has to be traced to all of its connections, and there'll always be roots in Jewish philosophy. The Ramah, by the way, was known for studying Jewish philosophy, and he caught flak for it. There were others like the Maharshal who criticized him bitterly for it, and he defended himself that that he felt it was appropriate. Now, what he quotes from the Maimonides' Guide is a person has a responsibility to be conscious of God continuously. The verse says, "Shivisi Hashem negdi somid." Maimonides says, "If you're in the palace of the king, in the throne room, and the king is sitting on the throne, you behave in a certain way. And the way you behave is not the way you behave in the street. You give yourself certain liberties in the street that you wouldn't give yourself in the throne room of the king." So, says Maimonides, a person has to realize that our king is with us all the time. That in that sense, we're always in the throne room. We're always in front of the king on the throne. And that being the case, that should affect our behavior. So, there are more quotes than now. The The The Mishnah Berurah says, "The Kabbalists told us how to fulfill this idea that God is before me continuously, picture a certain way of spelling God's name with certain vowels. That particular spelling and vowels is the what you keep in mind when you want to have God in front of you." So, I read that and thought to myself, "Here you have a law and a custom backed up by a quotation from the Guide of the of the of the Perplexed and and implemented through a quote from the Zohar." That's a good illustration of what the Ramah is talking about. Everything is related to everything. So, Rabbi Shimon Zohar is very deep, very complex, very um um technical in ways. It's built on gigantic deductions, complex arguments, careful definitions of multitudes of terms, a vast amount of information. Very, very few people can work with it. But, it penetrates down to everyday practice. It's not as if it's just for specialists who go off, you know, I I'll have to I'll have to I'll have to tell the time. The Druze religion, I'm told, is only understood by a few hundred elders, and all the rest are ignorant of their religion. If you ask them what the principal religions are, they'll tell you they don't know. The elders know. That's enough. They don't have to know. Judaism wasn't that way. We believed in a challenge of universal learning, but in the effort of universal learning some and accomplished more and some accomplished less. This was typically accomplished by many less, but it's connected. It's all connected. So, as I showed you, when you say in the beginning of every Shmone Esrei, "Hashem, open my mouth, my lips and my mouth can declare your praise." If you knew what you were saying, if you appreciated where it came from, you'd say it with the interleaved two names of God, which all the Sefardic siddurim have it. You know, the 13-year-old Sefardim who daven, they daven with that in front of their eyes. How many understand? How many don't understand? But they do. It comes down to everything that we do. It affects everything that we do. It's part of the world we live in. Now, um here's an illustration also for everyday practice. The Talmud says when you take three steps back after you finish the Shmone Esrei, you bow to the right and then to the left and then straight forward. You may know some people who don't seem to do that. When they step back three paces, the first way they bow is this way. Talmud says bow to the right. They bow this way. They have a different custom? No. They're also bowing to the right. Because when you say to the right, you really have to ask, "To whose right?" Doesn't say to your right. Says to the right. And the Kabbalistic picture is that since you are standing talking, so to speak, to the Shechinah, the Shechinah's facing you. So, in this interaction, there's your right and the Shechinah's right. And the Shechinah's right is on your left. So, people who bow this way first are bowing to the Shechinah's right. People who bow this way first are bowing to their own right. Everyone's bowing to the right. Question is, whose right? Well, first of all, that takes the position of Tefillah very seriously. You know, not just going through a 6-minute meditation which you do with half a mind. You're standing before the screen and before God's presence. To the extent that we have a custom is to bow this way first. I think, wow, it's all about two Hashem's right cuz that's he's facing me. So, all of a sudden, a little custom like bowing at the end of the menorah when you step back takes on very deep cabalistic significance. There is a custom, I don't know if you come across it. Um, and I'm just mentioning it not forcing it on anybody. That you you put on and take off your shoes. Put on your right shoe first and you take off your right shoe Uh, that said, yeah, take off your right shoe last. Put on your right shoe first and take off your right shoe last. Why would you do that? What would possibly be the significance The answer is that right is loving kindness. Left is strict justice. They are both attributes, so to speak, of God, but they're not equal. They're not equal. Whole purpose of creation is loving kindness. Strict justice takes uh, second place to loving kindness. Now, putting shoes on your feet Putting shoes on your feet is a way of protecting your feet. So, we're protecting the right foot strictly more than the left foot. We're giving precedence to the right over the left. We have a lot of mitzvahs that do that. So, if you're taught how to light the Hanukkah lights, you know, you add you the first night you put a candle in the rightmost position. Then the next night you put that one plus one for the left and you move left as you add them in. When you light them, you light the new one and you go down to the old and to the old space list, it means you're moving from left to right. Right is the goal. Right is guiding the motion. We have a lot of mitzvahs that distinguish between left and right. And they always give precedence to right, right over left. So that also ultimately becomes a capitalistic idea. Now, the Jewish people understood this. They understood that even though I don't know the Kabbalah personally, I know some snippets here and there. I know that everything else is based on it. Everything else is an expression of it. It's an expression of ultimately capitalistic ideas. Listen to what Luzzatto says about the the length of our prayers. Why is Shacharit the longest prayer? And Maariv is the next longest, though considerably shorter. And Mincha is the shortest. Why is that? Why is that? So, Luzzatto says, based on the Arizal, based on the whole capitalistic tradition, every day has a different theme. The days contribute something to the development of creation. Every day is another 24 hours, one 24 hours later. And therefore it has a different theme. Now, one function of prayer is to register that theme and to project that theme onto the world. And here the day starts in the morning and ends at the end of night. Which it does in certain sacrifices as well. The Jewish day can work both ways. So, Shacharit, the morning prayer, is the longest because you are confronting a new theme. Now, there's a sub-variation between daytime and nighttime, daylight and and darkness. So, Maariv carries that theme into its variation for darkness. That's why it's the second longest. Mincha is simply the end of the daytime period. Okay, there's a minor, even more minor, variation between the beginning of day and the end of the day, but it's a very minor variation, and that's why my menstrual is so short. So, we think, you know, I don't know, it's the middle of the work day. It's an inconvenience to have a menstrual so long. According to the real reason, the real reason reflects something that's going on in a different realm altogether. I'll give you one more example, then I'll come to the other side of the issue. When I lost both my parents in 1 year, 1992, um I studied the laws and the customs of mourning. Uh one of which is, if you are a mourner, you should lead lead the prayers. Be the select tsibur. And the question comes up, suppose you're in a big congregation, there are lots of people who need to lead the prayers because they're mourning for their parents. How do you give precedence? Or, if you have a choice, which should you choose? We don't do this on Shabbos. Mourners don't lead the prayers on Shabbos. They have 18 prayers on an average week. So, you get one of 18, and you can choose any one of the 18. Which one would be best to choose? I don't know. I I read it question in the book, and I thought, "Well, I wonder what I would say." But, I got it dead wrong, and I don't I've asked many people since then. Turn of intuition, no one got it right. The right answer is Maariv Motzei Shabbos. Evening prayers Saturday night. What? I mean, what about Shacharis is much longer, twice a week you read the Torah during Shacharis? This Kedusha? What? Maariv Motzei Shabbos? And the explanation is this. The point of leading the prayers is to do something good for that deceased person, for that soul. Now, when you move from uh from Shabbos to the week, on Shabbos the souls are not judged. They're not judged, and they're not punished. Moving to the week, it's returning to the realm in which judgment and punishment can take place. That transition you can have the maximum benefit for the soul. If you put in something good for the soul at that transition, that gives maximum benefit to the soul. And if you can't get to my vote of Shabbos, my the rest will be cuz also the best because you're going from day time to night time where the judgement and punishment intensifies. I read that and thought to myself, "Wait a sec. What I'm doing here is because what's going on there. Not because of psychology and economics and sociology and family you know family solidarity and so on and so on it's because of what's going on there. I'm still connected to that soul. I can still do something for that soul. What I do here is because of what it's connected to there. That's the cabalistic idea that there's a there that there surrounds us. It underlies everything that's going on in our world and ultimately our laws and our customs are expression of that reality. So as you realize this that even if his personal acquaintances only with a few snippets here and there, but he realizes the reasons for what he's doing are in that teaching. Okay. That's one side. That's sort of the the position that Rebbi Shimon has vis-a-vis Jewish scholarship and life generally. Now let's talk about folk festivals. There are three the three major holidays Pesach, Shavuos, and Sukkos. There's a mitzvah to come to Yerushalayim. They are called in English the pilgrimage festivals. Are they all the regular? Let's think about this in practical terms and in economic terms. There are places distant from Yerushalayim a week's travel or two weeks travel. Let's take an intermediate case. You live a week's travel from Yerushalayim. That means six weeks a year on the road. Yom Kippur. And okay, we we can come to you on Uh okay, since you mentioned it, I'll you maybe you heard the story from me. I gave a a shear once in a business uh, in in downtown Chicago. Somewhere on the 80th floor. I come down to the street level. I'm waiting for the car to pick me up. Over this Jew appears out of nowhere. He comes over to me and says, "In the times of the temple, where do you think they spent Yom Kippur?" Total stranger. Total stranger. I don't know. "In shul, I hope." "No," he said, "on the road." Cuz they had to get there for Sukkot. Yom Kippur is only 4 days before Sukkot. And if you take us a week or two Shabbats in between, sometimes two Shabbats in between, you know, it's impossible. So, they slept out on the road. People are walking and the the happen to come together, you know, where you people walk at different speeds. It's a completely happenstance, so to speak. It's Hashgacha from Providence that these people came together. Not with your favorite chazzan and not with your favorite person for the illah and so on and so forth. Yeah, and then you were there a hay hay stack someplace or whatever. And that's where he spent Yom Kippur. And he walked off and disappeared. It's just one of those things. I have a couple of experiences like that. I have one over here. This is also a little bit relevant. Where you know where B'nei Chorin is? Just up up the hill over here in the Machon Ya'el where all the Sefardim daven. They have a whole thing there. I used to live right near the shul here. And sometimes convenient, so I go over there for Mincha Maariv. So, I daven Mincha, come out, I'm waiting for Maariv. It's sort of dusk dusk-like. And a kid comes over to me. I don't know, maybe he was 12. Yeah, 14 or 11, I couldn't tell exactly. Sefardi kid. He says to me, "Why do we daven Maariv?" Total stranger. I've never seen him before. He's never seen me before. "Why do we daven Maariv?" So, well, the Maariv says that uh, it's a it's a reshus, but it's a reshus that people took on as a custom and therefore it's binding as a custom. "No," he says, "that's not the reason. The reason is that Zeir Anpin is together with Malchus and Malchus together with and he gives me this whole long cabalistic formula of which I understood nothing at the time. I didn't understand a word he was saying. And then he walked off. So, you know, now this kid was taught that. So when he goes into the he knows why he's in terms of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, in terms of the Ari. He knows what the what the bases are. Okay. So now, let's talk about 6 weeks on the road. 6 weeks on the road. That's a strategic investment. You're talking about farmers for whom work time is very precious. It's not something you can just throw away. What great Jewish value is accomplished by that investment of 6 weeks on the road? Officially, it's a leader of the you come up to the base of you present yourself in the Azara. You give a carbon shria. There are all sorts of things written about what happens in the Azara and so forth and so on. And all that is correct. But there's another element and that is you experience hundreds of thousands of Jews serving God together. And that is even a category. When you have an opportunity to do a mitzvah together with many Jews, that's preferable. It's called am hadras melech. In the multitude of the people is the glory of the king. And it's preferable for you to do it there. And I think it works two ways. Since there's greater glory for the king, there's a greater contribution. You are contributing to that greater glory for the king, but you experience the glory of the king. You experience it. And for you, that's an important element in your in your spirituality. To experience God's glory. And it's found but over in the multitude of the people. You have to imagine the hills around here black with people. Thousands and thousands of people coming to serve the dominant of the minion and the hollow you know, I'm not exaggerating. You know very well, in the plaza before the Kotel, you can get 100,000 people. It has happened. So, if you talk about all the hills around here, you're talking about a great multitude of people. You ever go there if you go to shul this morning, for example, and you have minyanim from all over the world, every different kind of accent, every different kind of custom. If you're not just too dazed out by by being up all night, it can be a very thrilling experience. Birkas Kohanim, also during the during the holidays, where not that many people sometimes 10, 20, 30,000 Jews can come and and and pack the place. Judaism is a religion not only of laws and principles and philosophies and values and priorities and behaviors and strategies, it's also a religion of experiences. And the experiences are necessary. They're crucial. You cannot have a healthy religious life without mass experiences. Question then becomes, where do we have opportunities for that? Where do we have opportunities for that kind of mass religious experience? There are some examples. Rosh Hashanah they happen in great advice, great um funerals. When one of the leaders of the generation dies, we had two just just before Pesach. Um we lost him. Um so then hundreds of thousands of people can turn out. I remember with Moshe Feinstein's levaya. And this was to me it was absolutely shocking. I guess it shows how little I understand. When he came here to be buried here on on Har Hamenuchot, it was Purim in Jerusalem, Shushan Purim, 15th of Adar. I had lived here I'm here since since January 1981. I don't think in all time here I heard his name mentioned. Americans who came from America and who knew him talked about him, but among Israelis, among in Yeshivas and so on and so forth, you never heard his name mentioned. So, I thought, he's coming on Purim. Who's going to turn out? 200,000 people turned out. That's what happened. It was astonishing. It took more than an hour for the people to walk past the entrance to the city. The entrance to the city was blocked, completely blocked. I walked it. So, I couldn't believe what happened. It was his his his impact, his presence of of Klal Yisrael was so enormous. Um so, you have it. Here, in Meron, you also have it. And in Meron, in a way, it's even more broad because, number one, all of the different streams of Jews participate, whether it's Hasidim or Yeshivish light or Yekkes or Hungarians or Sefardim, everybody that participates, and a lot of people who otherwise you wouldn't have regarded or noticed that they were religious also come. It's a great festival, and there's a combination of feeling exalted, exalted, thrilled, awed, is there also a solemnity that that buzzes, together with a with a sense of sharing. Sharing and togetherness. You went the most unbelievable outpouring of caring. Every 5 ft, somebody's offering you something. Water or milk or or or or soda or coffee or or cakes or you know, if you need something, and please take, and people just care about you. They care about you. And this money is contributed by people all over the world, so that these things can be available. When you go up by bus, where you stop at the bus stations, the places that are set up, first of all, they're set up to be separate for men and women. And there are the food and coffee and whatever you need drinks whatever you need. It's the sense of spontaneous sharing of class rail. There's a sense of unity that's that's very precious. Now, I think that that's contributes something that's very precious in um a person's spiritual life. The phraseology of Baruch Hashem Hashem Elokim in the multitude of the people is the glory of the king. It doesn't talk about their scholarship. It doesn't talk about the level of their righteousness. We're not now talking about scoffers and people who disconnect themselves all together. We're talking about the very righteous, the most pure, and so on and so on. It means that if you have in a certain sense, if you have 10 great tzaddikim and 100 ordinary people, the glory of the king is with the 100 ordinary people. There are other things about the tzaddikim I'm not discounting, but I'm just saying this dimension one can't ignore this dimension altogether. And has to be expressed. I saw it here because I moved here, but also you have it to see in Maseches. There's the daf yomi program. A folio of the Talmud every day. If you do that, you end up finishing Shas in 7 1/2 years. Um Baruch Hashem, my wife pushed me into it about 35 years ago, so I should say I'm a veteran, but it's the way I do it becomes a challenge anyway. Um and it's not easy. And um at the end, the people doing it worldwide on the same schedule. So, at that date, when they're finishing it, uh people get together. Now, I think three times ago already they started to take Madison Square Garden. Since Madison Madison Square Garden seats 20,000 people. That time, three cycles ago, the reporter of the New York Times who covered it was an Arab Muslim. That's who the New York Times sent to cover the Siyum HaShas. You know, just want to know who they are. You picture from that. And he wrote, "When the people stood up to pray in this um buck this place, this edifice, where people kill each other. Sports events, hitting each other, punching each other, screaming and screaming at each other, AND THROWING BOTTLES at each other, and so on and so on. 20,000 people got up to pray silently." He said it impressed him. It impressed him. It impacted him. He saw something there. Okay, so I went This last time was the third time that I went in a row. My wife went because she knows I'm doing it. She went with me. Last time we took one of our sons who was there also. Um and two times ago, it was in Madison Square Garden and someplace on Long Island, another another thing where they had 20,000 there and another 17, 18,000 there. Last time ago, it was in Madison Square Garden and the place in New Jersey, MetLife I don't know which one it is, big stadium. And this time it was in MetLife Stadium and there were 90,000 people there. 90,000 people. When 90,000 people get up to pray, when they say "Yisgadal v'yiskadash" to to Kaddish, when they say "Borchu" to Borchu, when they say "Amen". That's something you don't forget. You don't forget it. I have the ticket from the one 17 years ago. I have it in my pocket. I never put it away. It's too thrilling an experience to forget. And it becomes part of your Yiddishkeit. You see 90,000 and the emotions that people had. Friend of mine was in a slightly different place from where I was. He told me there was a fellow there when they make the final Siyum, there's a whole long formula to say maybe you've been at a Siyum Maseches, you've seen how they do do it. They make a whole So, somebody there who represents the community and he says it. One fellow Mr. Akiva Feld who had learned the whole Talmud was saying it aloud. Tears pouring down his eyes. So, there you see uh an expression of the glory of Hakadosh Baruch Hu that you don't see at other times. This is something that has to be sought out. And it's a part of a more general message. The general message is, as I said before, that the Torah is a is a Torah of experiences. These are the mass experiences in which you experience Hadran Melech. There are other experiences that a person has to look for when there are Hashem, when there are levayas. Well, if people who are of some importance announced it, you know, sometimes the whole yeshiva goes. Because if you if you spend all your time in this yeshiva, you could think that you've joined a group of about two or 300 people and that's it. You go out and see the streets of Yerushalayim clogged with people and it takes an hour for the procession to go past. You say, "Well, wait a second. There's a whole nation out there. It's not not not such a simple thing." Um just 2 months before the um last Siyum Hashas at MetLife Stadium there was a um there was a gathering at the at Citi Field stadium with 12,000 people concerning dangers of the internet. I was very close to that because our son organized it. He organized it. It was under the leadership of the Skolener Rebbe and Reb Yisrael Solomon, but he was the designee to to organize it. Up to 3 days before the event, there was very widespread prediction that it would be a flop. No one was going to come. And all the cynics had their spins on it, so and so on. 2 days before it became clear that it was overflow. In the end, they filled the 42,000 and they had to rent the um Oh gosh, there's another uh stadium a block away named for a very famous tennis player. Arthur Ashe Arthur Ashe tennis stadium, and they put another 15,000 in there. So, 57,000 people had turned out just to hear what they have to be careful about. And how can we improve sanctifying God's blessed name in the world? You see that? You know, they didn't come to get awards, they didn't come to celebrate anything. You know, even even the Siyum Hashas is a celebration. This wasn't a celebration. It was just the leaders of the generation said we have to come together, and we have to make resolutions, and we have to deal with this problem, and they came. Anyway, this is something which you should be mindful of. And if you didn't go to to Meron this year, then you plan to go to Meron next year, and also look for these types of opportunities. We were here in 1977. I was about to go and prepare the the family for Aliyah. And we were living in Geula, and at that time Belz was in the Agripas area. Um we decided after our Seder that we would go to the Belzer Rebbe's Tisch as his chassidim do. So, he has the Seder in his in his in his synagogue room there with hundreds of people, and then hundreds and hundreds more come back. He finishes his seder and then he goes on Yitziat Mitzrayim. The exodus from Egypt. What happens? He starts to walk. It's 2:00 in the morning. He starts to walk in the streets of Jerusalem. People follow him behind him. Hundreds and hundreds of people. And then he stops and he says some divrei Torah and then he starts to walk again. And that's you see you're going hour hour and a half. You know, you finish the seder and you're going. You're going. That's an unforgettable experience. So these are things which build a person's Yiddishkeit together with the ideas and arguments and analyses and proofs and and priorities and values and all the rest. The experiences build a person's Yiddishkeit especially the experiences of a group. Chassidus taught this and stressed this. The idea of the community, the idea of the group is something which people should have in mind as a fundamental idea. And it's very I think it's very indicative that the biggest such um expression in our times is Lag BaOmer because as I said it expresses the idea that Judaism is one unified entity integrated entity from top to bottom. All parts touch all other parts. And Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai has been grasped by many many many common people as a hero. And that shows that as refined and as high and as abstract as he was his influence has reached down all the way to the foundations of the Jewish people.