Why Perspective Determines Your Future - Parshat Chukat - Rabbi Moshe Borger

I like to tell you about the amazing month of Tammuz. We live with the times and every single month of the year is actually something very unique that we're supposed to be working on. So, the question is what is Tammuz all about? And let's try and connect it a little bit in with the parsha of parshas Chukas that is actually actually going to really be the parsha of this week in uh the diaspora. So, Tammuz they say if you take the letters of the word Tammuz and you mix them around a little bit, it comes out to tell us that these times are times that are coming towards teshuvah as a money teshuvah mamash mashiach ba'im, the times of repentance are coming into reality. So, as we know, the months of Tammuz and Av have been very, very challenging months for the Jewish people. In fact, they say that it was actually Esau that actually took hold of those months. Says that Yaakov was given the first three months of the year, Nissan, Iyar, and Sivan. And then the Megillas Mukos says the great Refael Refael Zalman Margolies that we took Nissan Nissan, Iyar, and Sivan and Esau took Tammuz, Av, and Elul, the next three months. So, we're about to go we've just started the month of Tammuz. So, if we look in the very, very holy book of the Bnei Yissachar, Rabbi Yissachar Berman from Dinov, he explains the deeper meaning of each and every month. He tells us first of all that [clears throat] each month actually has an order of the letter of the name of Hashem, Yud, Kay, Vav, Kay, Yud and Hay and Vav and Hay. In some months it's in the right order. In this month, in terms of it's completely in the wrong order. It's literally hey, vav, hey, and yud. So, what is the significance of hey, vav, hey, and yud, which is the opposite of the tetragrammaton, of the way that it's supposed to be? So, says the Benei Yissachar comes to teach us that whereas when things are in order, as they were in the month of Nissan, which is when it is in the correct order, in that case, everything goes smoothly. It's all an interaction with Hashem in the way of rachamim, of mercy, and that's why the Jewish people came out of the land of Egypt in the month of Nissan. So, what's going on when it's the other way around? When it's the other way around, it comes to teach us it's a time of strict judgment. It's a time of din. And as we know historically, the Jewish people have gone through very difficult times in these months, particularly in the three weeks which are going all the way from the 17th of Tammuz to the 9th of Av. Very, very difficult time for the Jewish people. So, it's a time of judgment. And they say every single month, there's a different way of we of interacting with Hashem. So, what was going on exactly in this month? Well, if you look back, if you look back historically to this month in terms of the Jewish people, what was going on? This entire month of Tammuz is when the spies entered the land of Israel. They entered on the 29th day of Sivan, just 1 day before Tammuz, and they spent the entire month looking negatively at the land of Israel. Interestingly enough, every single month, there's 12 months in the calendar, and every month is connected to the reason to a different one of the 12 tribes. So who's connected to the month of Tammuz? None other than Reuben. Who's connected to the month of Av? >> [snorts] >> None other than Shimon. Reuben and Shimon. So what's the significance of Reuben and Shimon? Well, if you look back at when Reuben was born, his mother, Leah, who named him, said, "Hashem ba'oni." Hashem has seen my affliction. His birth, his name represented affliction, the affliction of his mother, the fact that Leah felt that she was not as loved as her co-wife, Rachel, and that Jacob loved Rachel more than her. Av is connected to Shimon, as we said. What, Shimon? Well, when Leah named Shimon, she said that Hashem has heard my prayers. He's heard my prayers because again, she mentioned the fact that she was afflicted in vis-a-vis her relationship with her husband compared to her relationship of her husband with her sister, with Rachel. So these two months are months that even historically there was a negative perception on the way that we looked at life. The way that the Jewish people perceived the land of Israel was negative. 30 days of a negative perception of the land. So you may not be too surprised therefore to discover that >> [clears throat] >> not only are the 12 months and 12 tribes, there's also 12 parts of the head, says the Arizal. And each month is connected to a different part of the head. So, what you may ask yourself is the month of Tammuz connected to? So, Tammuz is connected, says the Bnei Yissachar, to the right eye. And Av is connected to the left eye. And in fact, when we say in the book of Lamentations [clears throat] of Eichah, when we say in that book, which you read on Tisha B'Av, lamenting over all of the difficulties, all of the holocausts, and all of the horror that the Jewish people have been through throughout the ages, it says, "Eini eini yordim mayim." My eye, my eye is dripping with tears. Dripping with water, dripping with tears. Which is really an expression of the fact that in these two months it was going to be months when there was going to be a lot of tears of the Jewish people. So, what does this mean to us? How are we supposed to fix this up? What are we supposed to do in order to change our lives around to make them better? The answer is that we have to do a paradigm shift in total terms of how we look at life. And how we look at our lives in particular. That's what our avodah, our work is in this time. Changing our perception of our lives, seeing things in a positive way. And if we do that, we're going to fix up everything. And in fact, that should have been a decent goes into talk about how there's actually certain hints to Eliphas and Eliyahu. >> [clears throat] >> Coming to say Eliphas and Eliyahu, is uh is going to be the one who's going to beckon in the coming and usher in the coming of Mashiach and Pinchas is Eliyahu. And if you take the numerical value of Pinchas and Eliyahu together, it's actually 260, which is actually the numerical value of the word iron, of the word I twice, representing these two months and the fact that we're supposed to be looking at life in the better way, in a more positive way. And if we do, that's what's going to bring Mashiach, as we all know. We all have our struggles, so many challenges today in this generation, with all of the AI. But it's artificial intelligence. It's not real intelligence. Real intelligence tells you, I've got to use my brain to work things out. I've got to use my mind to activate my eyesight to see things in a positive way. And I can turn everything around. And instead of it being negative, it can all turn around to be absolutely positive. So, what do we do? How do we change around our perception? So, I'll tell you a couple of stories. There was a great rabbi called Rabbi Shalom Cohen. He was actually the head of the Porat Yosef Yeshiva. He's a great great Torah scholar and a very very close friend of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, who eventually went on to be one of the the Rishon LeZion, the Godol HaDor, the great rabbi, Sephardic Chief Rabbi of the generation. And this political party, Shas, which is quite well known here in Israel, the Sephardi political party, religious political party. So, if you ask most people who started Shas, they'll tell you it was Rabbi Ovadia Yosef. Well, at the funeral of Rabbi Shalom Cohen, I heard otherwise. His son got up to speak, and he said, "I'll tell you something amazing about my father. My father, Rabbeinu Shalom, started the Shas political party. And he got it off the ground, and it was running beautifully. And all of a sudden, some people some politicos decided that Rabbi Ovadia Yosef should take over, and he should be the head of the party. Can you imagine to yourself how that feels? You just started something, and it gets taken away from you. How painful that would be? And he said, "You know what my father said when he heard that Rabbi Ovadia Yosef was taking over? He said, 'Baruch Hashem. I started this, and now it's being taken over by a great, great rabbi who's going to take it to even greater heights.' Unbelievable. What a way to look at life. An incredible, incredible thing. One of my uh rabbeim [clears throat] told me, he said that uh many, many years ago, um he's actually he's actually the mashgiach in Aish Hatorah, one of the mashgiachs, one of the rabbis there, said, "Many, many, many years ago, he was actually a rabbi in a yeshiva, and um he was fired. Why was he fired from his position? Because there was a certain student he was involved with, and he felt that a different Yeshiva would be better for him. So, he went about people knew about it, some people didn't know about it. He went about organizing to find this young man the right place for him and that's what he did. When the Yeshiva found out about it, he wasn't hiding anything, but when the Yeshiva found out about it, they fired him. And said my Rabbi, Baruch Hashem that happened because then I got to go and work in also man, one amazing thing and anybody who knows this Rabbi knows what a tremendous privilege it is to have this Rabbi that. But what an amazing way to look at life, to be able to say, I lost my job. There couldn't be anything better cuz it's only going to bring me on to something better. I was thinking in this week's parsha, parsha Chukat, we hear about many different wars. There was the war that we fought with Edom. We came to the land of Edom and we said, we would please like to have passage through your land. We won't raise arms. We'll buy your water. We'll buy your food. Yeah, and we'll go through Derech HaMelech Na'aleh. We'll go through the way of the king, in other words, right out in the open. Please let us come through. You're our brother. And what did Edom do? They came out. >> [clears throat] >> They came out armed to the teeth. We didn't fight them. We went around. Then we came to confront the giant, Sihon, the king of the king of Heshbon. And when he when it was proposed to him that we should take passage to go through should take passage through his land. He came out to fight. And that's exactly what he did. He came out to fight. And we fought against him. And we were able to overcome our Hashem to overcome Melech Bashan and all of his army. And then afterwards his brother Og Melech Bashan the king of Bashan came out to fight against us. And we also overcame Og Melech Bashan and his army as well. Incredible thing, a famous thing about where the some say that Og was a was a giant and he lifted up a mountain to throw onto the Jewish camp and then came and he and he on his ankle. And anyway, [clears throat] he he cut down his enemy and Hashem we were able to survive. I was thinking it's very interesting thing. We actually we begin the parsha with the red heifer. What is the red heifer? It's a very very big cow. And we take that red cow and we burn it down to ashes. And we mix it up. We put a little bit we we we put a little bit of hyssop and we put a put a branch of a cedar tree in there and we all burn it up together and we take those ashes and those ashes are used and they sprinkled on an impure person who became impure from coming into the dead and he becomes pure. What is the significance to us today of the red heifer? They actually say that they did find that they think they found a red heifer today in Katzrin. And it looks likely that it possible that it could actually be a real genuine red heifer. Who knows? What is the red heifer? says the Baal Shem Tov, it comes to teach us that we have this gigantic gigantic ego inside of us, and we have to burn down that ego. We have to burn it down into ashes. And once we've burned down our ego into ashes, then I believe that's when you're able to purify other people and purify yourself. Only when you've burned down your ego can you truly be humble and truly be able to go and help other people. And I believe that these wars that we had with our enemies are also a message for each and every one of us. There's different challenges that we each have, and it's all about how we see the challenge. How we perceive the challenge. So, we came across our enemy, Edom, who showed no appreciation to the Jewish people, to his brothers, for the fact that we had saved him from having to be slaves in another country, in Egypt, and we took that on ourselves, and we did it ourselves. No appreciation. He comes out to war with his great ego. Edom means red. It represents the ego. It represents anger, which is also red. It represents passion, which is also red, also represented by red. So, what's the Torah teaching us? It's teaching us if we have to come across any one of those challenges, it will come out to challenge us. What should be our response? Love or to go around. Don't even go there. When it comes to anger, we know whenever we get angry, it's a SLIPPERY SLOPE. DON'T GO THERE. Don't even go there. We all know as soon as you allow yourself to get into anger, you lose yourself. As soon as we allow ourselves to get into our passions, we lose ourselves. As the Satan says, "Don't carry after your heart and after your eyes." They say, "You get the first look for free, but after that, that's it. Turn away. Don't go there. Don't go there. You know you're only going to lose. It's a slippery slope." And so too it is when it comes to the ego. When you allow yourself to indulge in your egotistical feelings, you're only going to fall. That's what happens. So, don't even go there. That's what the Torah is teaching us. However, when it came to Sihon, the king of Heshbon, the Rebbe Shalom and others, the great Slanimer Rebbe, teaches us that Sihon comes from the word sicha, which means speech. And Heshbon comes from the word machshava, thought, account. Our thoughts, when it comes to our word when it comes to our words, to our conversation, WE HAVE TO FIGHT FOR EVERY SINGLE word to get the right words out, to not say the wrong words. As we [clears throat] all know, the world exists I believe the whole world exists because of somebody that held back his words at a time of a quarrel. We all know when we hold our cell words back, when we're arguing with somebody and When don't say anything, that's often the end end of the argument. So, we have to hold ourselves back. But, when it comes to say, "Oh, but we have to fight for it. You have to fight for your words. You have to fight to get the right expression out there." And positive words. And words of Tefillah, words of Torah. That's what we should be using our words for. But, even with our words, we can still be challenged by our thoughts. And that's why it's telling us in the Torah, you have to fight. Just like Sichon, the king of Cheshbon came to fight us, we have to go out to fight. To fight for positive thoughts, for good thoughts. Not obsessive, negative thoughts that occupy us so much of the time. Instead, we have to go and push away those negative thoughts and think good thoughts. Take control of our minds. That's what we need to do. We have to fight for that. And Og, the king of Bashan, why was Og, this famous giant, that lived, some people say, but that's to be taken literally, from the times of the flood of of the flood. And some people say, certainly from the times of of of Avraham Avinu, where he was he was the one that encouraged Avraham to go and save his nephew Lot. Og, why was he called Og? Strange name. So, the reason is actually the Medrash tells us because when Og saw Avraham doing the mitzvah of making matzah, and he saw the tremendous passion and excitement he was putting into that mitzvah. And others say it was connected because during at the time when Yitzchak was born it was actually over Pesach and the bris the brit milah would have been I believe on Pesach or the sixth day of the Pesach. So they say that the excitement and the joy of that event was so great that it inspired Og to actually have a brit milah himself. And therefore when Moses was told al tira oto, don't be afraid of him, you could read it as don't be afraid of oto of his ot of his sign that he has a circumcision. Don't be afraid of that merit that he has when you come to confront him. They say that Og was not named by that name. He chose that name for himself in order to remind himself of what he saw how he saw how from serving Hashem, how he saw the excitement and the passion and the way that he did it, how he saw the joy of the brit milah. But the interesting thing is I was thinking, why did he call himself Og? Understand he made the matzah. Matzah is called is called is said sorry Sarah was told lu she v'asu got need and make got make got me cakes of matzah. And Avraham Avinu went and he took it upon himself to go and make that matzah. He made the matzah himself. And that's interesting. He could have focused. He didn't have to focus on the matzah. He could have focused he could have called himself simcha, joy. He could have self called himself hitlaf. I'm somebody who's excited about something he could have called himself kedusha. He could have called himself brit or could have called himself called himself Brett, maybe. Yeah? Maybe that's where the name Brett comes from. He could have done he could have changed he could have called his name by one of those names. Why did he call himself Og? Because he saw what a matzah. He saw the cakes. That's what he was thinking about. He saw that probably the cakes [clears throat] and the food that there was at the Brit Milah and he said, "Wow, look at that. That's what I want. I want that excitement. I want that I want that guy schmear. I want that physicality. That's what I want." And we all know we have to fight when it comes to physicality. We have to fight when it comes to food to control our animalistic urges to eat. As always say, when it comes to Shabbat and you have your cholent, yeah, you have that delicious just a stew that we have every Shabbat with the meat and the potatoes and the lentils and the old and the kishka. So, we say, you know what? The first bowl, we can say, you know, "That's really the shame shamayim. I'm doing this for the sake of heaven. I I I I'm doing this for the right reasons." But when you have the second or the third bowl, it's game over. It's game over. Yeah, you're probably not >> [laughter] >> you're probably going to collapse and you're probably going to wake up hours and hours later. So, we have to have control. We have to take control when it comes to that. So, that's what the Torah is teaching us in the month of Tammuz. Get your perception right. Work on your eyes. Work on the way that you see things. Work on the way that you perceive things. Look at them in a good way. And if we do that, and please God we can merit to have Eliyahu and Pinchas and Moshiach Tzidkeinu. Please God have Messiah coming speedily in our days. Amen.