The Mystical Letter Hei - Part 7: Why Women Don't Wear a Kippah - Rabbi Yaakov Marcus

[Music] I wear here at New Vegas shall I am and working on the mystical Hebrew alphabet we're up to the letter hey and we're just gonna go over for the first few minutes what we covered last time we were working on the fact that hey is the integration of the physical dial in the spiritual you would it brings both together so it's a letter of completion masculine words typically in Hebrew lack a hey that integrates the physical and spiritual together like the word yella is a good example which is a boy but feminine words like the word yelled da have that integration of the physical and spiritual together yelled da what the hey is a girl so we defined masculine as at least for the tourist perspective as giving over and affecting outside of yourself while I'm teaching the term being masculine relative to you so masculine would be the site of Cassatt as is giving what can I do for you how can I help you the feminine side is called the side of taking something working on it and raising it to a higher level so that would be if I'm teaching you Tori even if I'm a woman I'm masculine relative to you because I'm giving a return affecting it with it when I learned Torah from my rabbi I'm feminine relative to him because I'm gonna take what I've learned work on myself and make myself a better person or I'm gonna take what I learned get out there and make the world a better place so taking something working on or raising it to a higher level is a feminine trait the mechanism the feminine side uses to take things work on them raised into a higher level is the mechanism called in dinners rules of limitations rules limitations enable you to take something and raise it to a higher level the example I used in a previous classes if you're 20 years old you say by the time you're 25 is going to be a doctors lawyers and accountants and engineers a psychologist wow that's fabulous but you won't get any you have to limit yourself down to one career work on that hard and then you can become fabulous let's say psychologists okay give up the other careers for the next five years but you can be a great psychologist have use rules limitations you can take yourself to a higher level that is a feminine mechanism so the feminine sides the side of dim that's also what we covered last time then we talked about strengths and weaknesses and relationships and women tend to be stronger in relationships because add-in mechanism takes a relationship to a higher level in a man's world when we give over and we affect outside of ourselves there's really no natural limitation on the facet side and therefore everyone everything seems equally outside of us we marry our wives we marry our career we marry the car we marry the golf game we marry our health club we married the Internet we marry the TV everything is equally outside of us is hard for us to define essential relationships because we spend our best hours at work or commuting we come home we're tired it's hard to see that the relationship with our wife is a more essential relation you need rules limitations for that women tend to be stronger in relationships because rules limitations means I married him and I didn't marry my career and I didn't marry the Internet I didn't marry the TV anime or my golf game I expect more from my relationship with him than expect from anything else so that creates a natural strength and relationships we covered that before as well so we said if a guy is the side of giving over and affecting outside himself what is he going to give over enough fact in other words let's say a guy and a girl set up on a date so whatever he feels himself up with that's what he's gonna want to give over so if he's into baseball he'll talk baseball if he's into sports he'll talk sport is that the money he'll talk stocks if he's into music he'll talk rap songs but whatever he feels himself upward that's what he's going to give over so the problem with all those categories is they're finite what if she's not interested in baseball what if she's not interested in stocks so it can create a problem when he's giving over but whatever he feels himself up with that's what it's gonna want to talk about so we went to the hebrew spelling of the word for man and woman the word for man is ish and it's got that olive shin root as a matter of fact both man and woman have that all Egyptian root that's the word fire fires your ability to change the state of something's a very powerful term in Torah but his unique letter is a good and each has a good and therefore metaphorically speaking a man's job is to reach in and up for that unit of spirituality that's the unit of Torah that's the unit of how God's world a man's job is to reach up for that you to spirituality because it floats and give that over so we men are transmitters of you into this world the masculine side is a sign of transmitting so that's why Orthodox Jewish men no matter whether you're a doctor or a lawyer an accountant it makes no difference at least a few minutes a day we're gonna reach up for some univ torah we're gonna try to be pipelines of that torah to the world that's why your husband will have a stronger Mitzvahed alert or every day then you will because he's got to be a pipeline of transmission of turin to the world even if it's five minutes a day even if it's 15 minutes a day even if it's in the morning before he goes to wall street even it was on his way home he stops to synagogue he does my room and then he learns her a few minutes but we're all supposed to be pipelines of unit into this world okay that's reaching up and giving over that you to spirituality what's a woman's unique letter was the east shots any planets a hey the roots the same but she has the hey so what's the job of the feminine side the job of the feminist side is a woman goes out into the dollar to the physical world and shows that that doll out of physicality hides a higher level spiritual purpose the example I used last time I think is a car car is all about dollar you know it's glass metal plastic steel it's all doll a doll with physical physical physical so if you only look at a car as a doubt of course you want a BMW you want the best doll and you can buy what's the problem with that that's not the word Eva the word Isha is the woman's job is to go out into the Dobb of the physical world and see it hides a higher level of spiritual purpose that's the you had hidden inside the dollar your job is to express out the potential spirituality hidden the physical the feminine side is the side of expression you express out the higher level spiritual purpose is that our hidden inside the physical world so when a an Orthodox Jewish woman looks at the doll out of a car she sees a higher spiritual purpose she says this doll out of a car is for visiting the sick taking food to the poor taking my kids to school that's what a car is all about and therefore it's not just about doubt so if that's true a Toyota works just fine I don't need to spend an extra hundred thousand dollars getting a BMW what a waste I can do the same things for a hundred thousand dollars less with the Toyota that's your job to show how the physical world hides a higher level spiritual purpose and express that out right now of course again this relaxed this leads back to human biology because Hashem doesn't make mistakes he created the physical world and a way to teach you to our concepts so a guy is a transmitter of the idea of a child nine months later she expresses out what that idea was that's the little baby with the little soul inside that's only happening on the feminine side there's no hay on the masculine side as a matter of fact men don't have a dollar we don't have a dollar so we tend to have a tougher time relating to the physical world than our wives do our wives concede that the spirituality in the physical world better than the husband's do in others we don't have a natural place to put the physical world yeah we've got to deal with it yeah we've got to work in it but but ironically a woman could potentially do better on Wall Street than her husband this men don't have a dollar to put all that Wall Street money making ten hours a day there's no place for it so we tend to run the risk of defining ourselves by what we do because we don't have a spiritual place to put that physical you know though we define ourselves by our careers and therefore when we tend to lose our career we tend to lose our identity whereas a woman she goes down into the doll on Wall Street she has a unit of spiritual purpose in there she could say listen I'm not a mergers and acquisition specialist for Salomon Brothers I'm a wife and a mother but I know I'm trained in finance and therefore I can supplement my family's income down here but the dollar Wall Street is not who I am my job down here is to be a spiritual representative of God I'm I'm not going to gossip I'm not going to bend the truth to make a deal I'm gonna be spiritual inside this workplace and that's a a real strength of the feminine side that the masculine side doesn't have the example I used last time for this is you know when you when you look at an old ultra-orthodox Jewish wedding album it looks like the photographer was shooting the pictures of the men's size in black-and-white film right black pants and white shirts right everyone's just going around in a circle and you look at the women's side and if there's any color it's on the women's side why because there's a dollar on the women's side that women naturally understand hides a higher level spiritual beauty it's a higher level purpose so you can express out the beauty and the feminine side and an insight is going to end up boring right so being a powerful male is trying to give over and be a pipeline of spirituality in the world so the obvious question you can ask is one second if your husband's learning for a few minutes on his way to Wall Street how does that protect him how does he has no dollar to put Wall Street in he's a pipeline for you up for 10 15 20 minutes so let's say he does docume you know where he learned to page a Gomorrah whatever over a half hour an hour before he ends up to work how does that help him all day at work how's that keep him spiritual all day so if you pretend that you to spirituality is like oil you know like the oil you pump out of the ground so if we're bringing it for a pipeline for you of spirituality to the world even if it's only a few minutes a day before we go into work that pipeline of spirituality that that we become a conduit for so it keeps our pipes oily even for the rest of the day do you follow it's not like when we stop we're done we have a vision of God running the world from those few minutes that's gonna hopefully stay with us all day and that's why men are asked to gather a Wall Street and a boardroom to double Mincha you know at 1:30 in the afternoon your husband's will gather to pray in the afternoon in on Wall Street because Hashem says ok it's been a long day you're starting to lose sight of who you are down there it's too much dollar for you it's too much physicality you got to talk to me whereas the women are not asked to gather in a minyan on Wall Street in the middle of the afternoon because you naturally are stronger at seeing the higher level expression of spirituality in the physical world you're gonna see it better on Wall Street then your husbands are that makes sense so we have the stronger mitzvah to check in with God three times a day with a minyan and you don't have the same Mitzvah because the physical world is not going to typically damage you as much as it will us men okay so yeah this leads us to the following paradox which I also mentioned last time and that is that the stronger your good the further onto the Dollard you can go to express out the spirituality of the physical remember you're the side of expression so that means the more powerful your good your neshama your soul the further outs of the dollar you can go without being damaged the further out of the dollar you go without being damaged the more you'd you can bring out of the dollar the weaker your good meaning the weaker your spiritual strength your spiritual fuel the weaker your you've been fueling your soul the lessons of the dollar you can go before you get damaged the less of the dollar you go before you get damaged less good you can bring out the doubt does that make sense it's like a paradox in other words in other words you're learning Torah here in New Vegas shall I am eight hours a day and you head to a shopping center to buy a skirt for Shabbat so you can get in and out of the dollar to the shopping center get your skirt and come back because you need to skirt for Shabbat because your your nurse trauma is so full of torrid you get I'm here because I you just care for Shabbat I'm not at the shopping center because I'm bored I'm not in a shopping center because it's a hobby to shop I'm here to shopping center because the I need to express out something beautiful for Shabbat because my old skirt is torn or something like that right so that means since you're you it is powerful you get into the dollar to shopping center you bring out a higher level expression of the physical world you take a skirt you say this is for Shabbat you take the doll out of a skirt you say this is fresh mutton that's a higher level spiritual expression of a skirt but if you've been working on Wall Street ten hours a day for six months and you head home and you say oh I need a new skirt for Shabbat and you pull it to this shopping center off the New Jersey Turnpike or wherever it as you live you know four hours later you've been shopping shopping shopping shopping shopping but you forgot you were there first Kurt now you've got a new handbag new shoes new outfit new earrings or whatever because it's entertaining it's fun it's a hobby it's whatever but now the dalit of the shopping centers taking control and you lost sight of the higher level spiritual purpose because you went in there less focused spiritually on why you were there so the more spiritually powerful your good the further into the dotted of the world of Wall Street in the world shopping centers of the world of cars you can go without being damaged and therefore you can bring out more spirituality from the dollar the weak are the more vulnerable you are spiritually because you're not feeling your good the lesson to the physical world you can go before it takes over and overwhelm zero okay that's very important concept so when you leave here you have to understand you must fuel your unit for the rest of your life get it by downloading classes off the internet and listen to them in your car as opposed to listening to top 40 radio or news talk radio or whatever does you listen to right that's one way to feel you're good go to classes go to synagogue on Shabbat whatever it is but you got to make sure you're fueling your good constantly because otherwise the physical world will over you and you'll just lose sight of why you're an Express or review it out to the world okay and this led to the famous drawing of the masculine side is a transmitter of spirituality to the world so we create what's called the flow down we are a pipeline of spirituality that's the good of Torah that's a good of power stems running the world we create a pipeline at that in the world and we give that over without limitation in other words we try to bring as much of that into the world as we could possibly can okay that's called pipeline giving over that you would that's the male side what's the female side the female side is to take all that that's been given over limited down limit it down and take it to a higher level okay so therefore I come home and say guess what I learned this week we should keep coach or we should put mrs. is on the door we should whatever it is we shouldn't gossip gossip is blush and horror it might hurt people's feelings God doesn't want to serve people's feelings and I give over all this stuff that I'm being exposed to when I'm learning Torah my wife's job is to say one second the list is too long let's just focus on one of these things right now one of the things on your list you mentioned was gossip we're not supposed to gossip okay good let's let's work on not gossiping in our home let's play don't gossip games with the kids let's review the laws of not gossiping at the Shabbos table let's put up a reminder notices next to the telephone and we can make our home gossip free you see how the feminine side took one of those transmitted ideas and took it to a higher level because she understood that if we tried to do all at once all these beautiful mitzvahs that were pipelining into our house all at once we'd probably get none of them but by picking one you could take it to a higher level because otherwise let's say I come home and I give over all these interesting insights that I've learned it if we don't use Rosa limitations we'll get which means we'll just feel guilty about all of them whereas if you take one to a higher level than the homes gossip regreat now let's work on the next one that's a feminine strength so that's called flow down as transmission expression is connection back to Rochelle that's the masculine pipe line and the feminine doing something with it okay and that's how the world runs and this is the chart called don't stay single because you can't fulfill your potential by being one half of the formula you can't fulfill your potential by just being a pipeline into nothingness and you can't fill fulfill your potential by being an expresso if there's nothing there to express so really each side is not better than the other each side is a half of a whole I think this chart is also any questions on this ladies I think this chart is also a hint to a deeper idea as to why men wear a kippah now when I was young I was told men wear a kippah to remind ourselves that there's something above us meaning God you put a head covering blood to remind yourself there's something above you which i think is a beautiful inside it's nice and then I remember when I was young carry that in Chris you know up until the time of President Kennedy around 1960 the custom was for centuries that men always wore hats President John F Kennedy when he went to his inauguration was like the first president in American history that did not wear a hat to his presidential inauguration the next day because that was considered cool men stopped wearing hats but first you know go back a thousand years men were wearing hats like it was one of these so anyway in Christianity they removed their hat when they went into church why cuz they said well we don't want a barrier or a blockage between us and God okay I hear that so there's got to be a deeper idea to where we--where keep them and simply you know there's a God above me even though that's true so I think the deeper ideas like this this is what I learned from my Rebbe what the deeper idea is that if you look at a human being if you look you'll see this is where I stop right this is the finite end of me I stop here Judaism says no really my spiritual roots go all the way up into the spiritual realm the Talmud says that human beings are like an upside down tree just like you know you look at a tree and you see its drawing its nourishment from when to the ground in places you can't even find so - human beings are like an upside down version of that my spiritual roots my soul goes all the way up into the spiritual realm and I'm drawing my spiritual nourishment from a place you can't find so therefore don't think I stop here uh-uh I'm to where I stopped is totally hidden you can't find it because it's going all the way up into the spirit realm and therefore the end of me is hidden I think that's the deeper idea of wearing a keep I'm not just to remind me there's a God above me you follow them the metaphor if that's true what obvious question would you ask me if we're like an upside down tree and our spiritual roots go all the way up then why don't women wear it keep them because aren't you an upside down tree don't you have a soul going all the way up into the spiritual realm and drawing sussan say yeah all human beings have souls that go up into the spiritual realm and draw spiritual flow down so so why do men wear a kippah and not women that would be the obvious question you would ask and I think the answers this diagram right because the pipeline of spirituality into the world is actually on the masculine side your job is to make the world run correctly as a result those there has to be a spiritual flow but something has to happen a chef says I don't sense spirituality down into the world nothing I said to make the world a better place that's the feminist side making the world a better place and expressing it out his feminine so in a certain way symbolically that means her keeper is on his head so if you're single your keepers wherever the pipeline of spirituality is flowing to you from in other words you open a hole miss you learn Arashi so since that pipeline is flowing out there actually or keep us on Rocky's head or wherever you're getting that that spiritual flow from that's where the hidden source is coming from since that's not your essential job even though you can do that your job is to do something with that flow and be an express er then you're not you don't have to wear the constant reminder of the transmission side you're actually the ones who cause everything to function correctly as a result so the reminders on the other side do you follow I think that's also from this chart okay so now now that we have the masculine side versus offense side transmission versus expression let's go back to relationships and let's see where we can apply this in terms of strengths of weaknesses in relationships so one of the things you have to understand if as transmitters in a man's world everything seems equally outside of them so therefore we perceive everything in the physical world as over there and therefore if it's over there it's hard to perceive it as affecting me right it's safely over there so we give over and affect it but we're not constantly aware of how it bounces back to affect us you follow whereas the feminine side is rules of limitations to take something to a higher level so that means you can push aside the impact of this the external world and say okay this is essential I'm going to focus on this that's a limitation and take this to a higher level where do we see that spilling over and being hinted to in Jewish law so I think the easiest example is are you familiar with the idea that in a tower based system of Judaism men and women don't go mix bathing you ever hear about this like in Israel they actually have separate beaches for religious men and women until they even and Tanya and I think it allowed also and according to Jewish law since people aren't modestly dressed when they go bathing we have women's beaches for women we have men's speeches for men and if you want to go mix bathing you could with your immediate family you could with your parents or your siblings or your children but you'd have to find your own private special stretch of beach somewhere because once the public's involved and you're not immediately related to these people so it becomes problematic okay so we're talking about public beaches here not private stretches of beach okay now did you know that the the idea that men and women don't go mix bathing is really focused on the man as opposed to the woman in other words if a woman is modestly dressed and say you know she's in a shirt with sleeves and skirt and everything like that she could go sit on the men's side and read a book right but if a man's modestly dressed he can't go sit on the women's side because there are bathing suits over there so that that's not fair if it's separate beaches it should be separate how come the women can come over to the men's side and not the reverse and the answer is because I mean let's just say when we go back to masculine and feminine I think it's hinted to with the following idea we've been working on because let's take a couple who are not religious a secular Jewish couple and they go to a beach in Miami or something like that which has thousands of people in it so let's put yourself in in the husband's head who's outside of him so his wife she's laying on a towel over there tanning and the woman over there and the woman over there and the woman over there and the woman over there and the woman over there and everyone on a certain weird level is equally outside of it because his world is giving over and affecting outside of himself so in a strange way he married her his wife but he could have married her and he could have married her and he coulda married her and he could have married her because everyone secretly outside of them so the Torah is not saying well if you take him to that beach he's gonna look at his wife look at these other people say I want a divorce Tory never discusses that but since marriage is so kodesh like the word for engagement is the betrothal condition so the which has the root code of marriage is so Co - that it's almost like a sham saying if you take him to that beach and his world was totally externally focused outside himself he could end up degrading his relationship with his wife and not even know he's doing it and almost he could be subconsciously comparing because that's a male weakness because everyone's equally inside of him and he's not even aware that's going on but that's a masculine vulnerability so what are you taking to that beach for it that's crazy you could be degrading the marriage and not even where it's being degraded I mean he could be aware it's being degraded but even if he's not whereas she can go to a men's beach sooner she's modestly dressed because she married him and she did marry him and she didn't marry him and she didn't marry him and she didn't marry him she expects more from a relation with him than those other people so jim says well that's fine then that's not going to pull her down the same way it could pull him down so you see why it's skewed a little bit there that makes sense now nowadays over the last half century or so women have been pushed toward adopting male we mrs. and therefore may be different from a few centuries ago maybe it's more likely that women will go to a beach and check out him and check out and check on him and check out him in which case it's probably not a good idea to go over to the men's side but that's not because Hashem did that that's because society I think pushed you know I said in previous classes that it's much easier for a guy to go from girlfriend a girlfriend a girlfriend a girlfriend because even though they're all wonderful people and even though he had a great time with each one they all stayed equally outside whereas for a woman once you internalize a relationship you trying to take it to a higher level when he walks awake and it can destroy and create tremendous hardship or heartache so therefore it's it's more painful and a woman's less likely to go for a boyfriend a boyfriend a boyfriend s a guy can so that's actually a feminine strength you don't want to lose that based on society's pressure to make you more male it's actually a positive thing so therefore taking one essential relation to a higher level is something you want to try to commit to for the rest of your life and you don't want the male weakness of everyone equally outside of you okay so I think that describes separate beaches sort of in a deeper way than just okay Shem says is a bad idea okay you follow now just to put it in historical perspective until a certain point in recent history I don't know if you know this but public beaches were separate I mean for our generations like who ever heard of you know you have to go to Israel right to find a separate beach but you know the United States has thousands of miles of coastline is possible to find several beaches in the United States maybe you know if you find a firm hotel somewhere or something like that there's a separate beach in front of it but it's not the normal but did you know if you go back 100 years or so separate beaches were the norm did you guys know that in other words if you went to a public beach in Europe stop until recent history there were men's beaches and women's beaches because that was called normal we don't have a sensitivity to that anymore but from what I understand the first mixed beach in Europe was in England around 1918 now 1918 is not that long ago that's my grandparents around the time my grandparents were young 1918 is not that long ago and yet that was the first mixed beach in Europe who's in England and did you know if you went to that mixed beach you had to wear a bathing suit right men were shirts and pants women wore dresses with sleeves and that's called a bathing suit like a suit right nowadays bathing pieces of material but in the old days it was a suit so did you know that not only did you have to wear a bathing suit which means that a public beach you had to be covered but if you came off the beach in your bathing suit the police would give you a ticket you had to pay a fine and you were covered this is only what 90 years ago or something no honey I mean like this is not that long ago so so what did they understand that we don't have a clue about anymore how come if you came up the beach in a shirt and pants or in a dress the police gave you a ticket you had a pea fine and don't say because the suits were ugly they wouldn't give you a ticket for ugly do you know why you you got a ticket me out of a fight because the suits were wet and what they understood is a wetsuits not a suit it's called skin so once it's skin it's not modest you had to put on a robe when you came off the beach you had to put on a robe if you didn't you got a ticket is that unbelievable like imagine the sensitivity that's only a hundred years ago and beaches were separate so if that's true then then it according to that logic how come nowadays you know people walk down the streets of Manhattan in like leotards or body suits or whatever so in my grandparents generation you got a ticket for that because that's not called clothing that's called a layer of skin and people say well that's not modest put on a rope and now people walking down the street looking like they're gonna go take a shower or something so there's no sensitivity so how can we lost the sensitivity and I have a theory I want to give you my theory as to why society lost that sensitivity from something that in the early 20th century everyone understood and I'm not a sociologist but I'm pretty sure I'm right I think that in the 1940s and into the 1950s what caused society to lose the sensitivity was that birth control became extremely effective extremely inexpensive and extremely accessible in your local pharmacy and once that happened those three things happened all the sudden a part of a relationship an intimate part of a relationship which was about marriage became recreational and it was you no longer needed a marriage commitment because you know for the last thousand years beforehand so if people had an affair outside of marriage so somebody would get pregnant somebody got called or if boyfriends girls live together somebody got pregnant it was embarrassing but all of a sudden in the middle of the 20th century that changes and nobody gets caught or nobody gets embarrassed and all of a sudden you get in the by the time you get the 1960s it's the hippie movement remember so what's the hippie movement if it feels good do it so all of a sudden an intimate part of a committed relationship through marriage for the rest of your life was no longer necessary and therefore what became a part of marriage became recreational once it's recreational then I think a sensitivity to modesty went out the window [Music] yeah could be I mean but do you understand that that for thousands of years people understood what was modest and what wasn't and then the span of a few decades nobody has a clue about it anymore I really think it was just a paradigm shift because of relations the nature of relationships change fundamentally and therefore Affairs didn't get you're caught in and why get married you don't need to get married you can recreate our marriage relationship without getting man all of a sudden everything changes then all of a sudden people aren't dressing moms there I think it started before the feminist I think Hollywood may also find for the same exact thing that I don't know I don't know I know women were fined I don't know if I don't remember for coming up beautiful words but I think Hollywood also changed people's scent level of sensitivity in the 30s and 40s when you saw the big screen a new level of fashion that maybe was not as public but again we'd have to check with sociologists okay so that's male weaknesses and and masculine and feminine in terms of expression and we'll continue I don't know if I teach you guys tomorrow tomorrow's Wednesday right maybe Thursday with more on the letter hey we're almost done you