Fighter Pilots And The Springs Of Life - The Parshah On Fire- Chukas

This Torah class is brought to you by tora anytime.com. No mitzvah in the entire Tyra is associated with more esotericism and mysticism than the mitzvah of paradum. It is completely clouded in mystery. The paradum and its unique set of alus became the ultimate paradigm of laws that are unapproachable by human logic. And who can blame us for labeling it this if the singular greatest mind in all of world history himself declares in gel that he couldn't understand it. So then who are we to even attempt to comprehend it? So by and large people gloss over the words of the paradum's peculiar procedure and move on content that they have satisfied all intellectual obligations to sort of get meaning from this topic a topic that our human minds simply can't understand. And yet with even a casual glance at the mafaram on this mitzvah you quickly realize that this approach is wrong. True. The Tyra labels the mitzvah of the as a a decree from Hashem that is inexplicable to the human mind. But that points out many is merely referring to the paradox the paradum contains in the fact that the cen charged with preparing and sprinkling the concoction becomes tame while the individual who gets sprinkled on becomes pure. But the actual mitzvah, however, is rich with meaning for us. And the inspiration that it contains is as relevant today as it ever was. So let's dive right in. A dead corpse conveys impurity. And anyone who touches it needs to be purified by the paraduma. We all know that the process of its preparation consists of burning an entire red cow in a fire into which is added a cedar branch, some hissup and some crimson dyed wool. The remaining ashes are then mixed with spring water and sprinkled on top of the impure person. Now, did the Tyra just pick some random plants and herbs to burn and sprinkle on impure people? Obviously not. These materials says Ramshin Rafulh are not random ingredients in some esoteric potion that magically fights impurity emitted by a dead corpse. These are specific symbolic items used to spiritually inspire a man needing that inspiration. A dead body explains Pers is the antithesis of a Jew on earth. It represents brute physicality and earthliness. A corpse is everything the soul is not. It's stagnant. It's mundane. It's materialistic. And therefore, as a means of protecting our souls from becoming intoxicated by worldly, earthly, unholy pursuits, Hashem placed several safeguards in our lives to ensure that we focus on our soul and not on our body. And one of those safeguards is avoiding contact with the dead body. The paradigm of mundanity. A corpse doesn't have inherent radioactive toxins that are emitted the moment it dies. Rather, Hashem places safeguards around a dead body to prevent us from coming too close to something that screams out brute physicality. Our souls are what we are central centrally focused on. And Hashem wants us to keep it that way. And therefore, one who did touch a dead body, someone who perhaps got a little too close to death, the very symbol of yesterday, of decay, of stagnancy, needs a special concoction of symbolic items that will inspire them to remain fresh and vibrant and holy. The cedar, one of the tallest of all trees, serves to remind the man of the need to grow ever higher, using confidence and strength to spiritually forged forward in a largely unspiritual world. The hissup, a very lowly plant, inspires the need to be humble and focus on becoming a more caring, loving, and compassionate divinely oriented person. And then we have wool from the strong ram colored with crimson dye which is a dye excreted by a weak worm to represent the mastery man should have over the entire gamut of the physical world. So we take all of these elements big tall and weak and we reduce them to ashes inspiring the person who got them who got tame to reach higher in a world where it is so easy to just remain low. And finally, we mix these ashes with fresh spring water, water as in the elixir of life, as in the symbol of life itself. We take the dichotomy of ashes and water, stagnation and growth, life and death, yesterday and tomorrow, and we sprinkle it on the man. We drive home the idea that both elements are needed to live in this world as a spiritual Jew. We need the power of a historical yesterday infused with the vibrancy and the energy of the incoming tomorrow. We as Jews abhore pure physicality and death. And a dead person we stay far away from. But we don't negate all the wisdom and the meaning that that deceased person stood for. We take the meaning out of their deaths and we infuse it into our future. Imper writes that every single batch of the paraduma concoction had mixed inside of it ashes from Mosher Rabenu's original paraduma because that's precisely the point we're trying to make. We use fresh spring water to remind the contaminated man to refocus on spiritual vibrancy and growth. And we also mix it with ancient ashes to ensure we never forget our past and the rich meaning it gives us. Jews have been performing balancing acts for the duration of our existence. We live in the present with an eye on tomorrow and yet we still focus on our rich and meaningful past using it as a springboard for our physical and our spiritual growth. For example, on the one hand, no country in the entire world has more museums per capita than Arit Israel because we cherish our past. And yet, no country in the world, aside from one, has more new books written than Arit Israel because we are constantly innovating and thinking fresh ideas. On the one hand, Israel leads the entire world in medical patents, leading the way to massive amounts of medical breakthroughs every year because we focus on the future. On the other hand, Israel has one of the highest numbers of registered tour guides of any country in the world because we are enamored with our past. On the one hand, Erit Israel has the city of Yafo, the oldest port in the entire world, as well as the city of Eureko, the oldest continuously inhabited place on earth. On the other hand, Erit Israel also boasts some of the world's fastest growing cities such as Kiryat Cafer and Bamesh. On the one hand, there are more Jews studying ancient religious wisdom in its original text than any other religion in the entire world, demonstrating our ironclad attachment to our past. On the other hand, Jewishowned companies comprise the third highest representation on Wall Street behind only the USA and China, demonstrating our ability to keep looking forward and ensuring that we have the material success to keep moving forward. On the one hand, the country of Israel takes in more immigrants per capita than any other country in the entire world, many of whom are older people with nowhere else to go. On the other hand, the fertility rate amongst the Orthodox Jews in Israel is one of the highest in the entire world. On the one hand, Israel leads the entire world in elder care, pioneering cuttingedge technologies and providing worldclass support to ensure the dignity and the well-being of its seniors. On the other hand, Israel leads globally in maternal health and neonatal health and child care, nurturing the beginning of life with the same excellence it gives to its final chapters. On the one hand, Jews are forever visiting the anda because we are forever looking to our past. On the other hand, Israel is the only country in the entire world to have entered the 21st century in a net gain in the number of trees because we are always looking to our future. On the one hand, our leaders, the people we flock to for advice, the people we look up to and emulate and revere are often the oldest people in our communities. On the other hand, every Jew deeply believes the entire world rests on the heel pm of the pure holy children learning Tyra, the purest, holiest children on the face of the earth. Because the Jewish people's success is predicated on being intensely attached to its past while being vigorously focused on its future. That's who we are. That's who we were. That's who we will always be. This dichotomy is interestingly expressed in the laws of kosher meat. The two symbols of a kosher animal are famously its split hooves and the chewing of its cut lacking one of these elements and the animal remains non-coosher. Ever wonder why these features of all the animal features these two were chosen to be the line of demarcation between kosher and trafe. Why those two? What exactly is symbolic about those two features? So explains that these features represent two aspects of life that Hashem very much wants us to focus on. Chewing cud represents yesterday history review. An animal is reeing a meal it already ate. A split hoof on the other hand represents forwardness, climbing, going. The animal with one of the most pronounced split hoof in the animal kingdom is the mountain goat. It is also the animal capable of flying higher than virtually all other animals. The Tyra explains is telling us that not only must we have split hooves and be forward thinking, but we must forever chew our cud remembering our past, our history, and our ancestors. Only an animal that represents both is fit for Jewish consumption. Conversely, the animal that most symbolizes Christianity is the pig. When I visited the city of Toledo, Spain, there was a crusade festival going on in the town square. It was a festival celebrating the middleage Christian lifestyle. Smack in the middle of the square was a massive full pig on a skewer slowly roasting over a fire. It became the symbol of Christianity early on because it was the ultimate edible slap in the face of Judaism. A pig is the only animal in the entire animal kingdom that has split hooves but does not chew its cud. Likewise, Christians are very progressive and full of reform and reconstruction and are far more interested in tearing down history than propping it up. Christianity from its infancy is a religion that's an entire essence is the new and supposedly improved version of Judaism. It is completely forwardthinking, almost petrified of the past. Therefore, the pig is the symbol of choice. The Muslims, on the other hand, are best symbolized by the camel, the animal they use most in the hot desert climates they call home. They considered Mohamad's camel, Kazwa, a holy creature. They more than almost any religion use the camel in their day-to-day life. The cannibal chews its cud but does not have split hooves. And likewise, Muslims are intensely focused on their history with tight-knit tribes run with an iron fist by the elders of the home. While they're they considered their youth nothing more than disposable religious fighters. And because of their attachment to their past, they express extreme caution with embracing virtually any form of modernity. And if not for Hashem sending them 600 trillion gallons of oil underneath their feet, they would still be living in the 1900s. The Jews have an infusion of both. We have a rich history that impacts virtually every part of our lives, but we also have a strong passion and desire to constantly grow and to adapt and to spring higher. This dichotomy is the greatest balancing act our nation performs. We spend our days pouring over ancient books written thousands of years ago and at the same time spend our days coming up with new and fresh interpretations. We tell our children immensely detailed stories of events that took place millennia ago, yet have conventions to discover new and innovative ways to teach students. It is the only way our glorious heritage lives on with a grasp on the past and a eye on the future. Listen to this story. In the year 1948, Leon Frankl, Howard Livingston, George Lter, and Coleman Goldstein were enjoying regular life after serving in the American Air Force as pi fighter pilots, flying planes during World War II. They were thrilled that the war was over and they were more than ready to start families and live peaceful lives. But one day out of the blue, an old friend of theirs, a man named Steven Schwarz, he called them up and left them all a message. Get to the Henry Hudson Hotel in Manhattan and get there fast. The survival of the Jewish people is at stake. So knowing that the Holocaust was over, these four ex fighter pilots were confused. But nevertheless, they rushed to the hotel to hear Steven Schwarz out. They all met in the hotel and they see Steve sipping on a glass of vodka in the lobby and he looked at the four young pilots and he said, "Listen here, hundreds of thousands of Jews are about to pour into Palestine right now and almost all of them are completely unaware that the five neighboring Arab countries are planning on invading and slaughtering every one of them." Egypt declared that we will do what Hitler did, only worse. And Steve put down his glass and he looked at these four young 20-year-olds. The Jews have absolutely no way of defending themselves. We found four German planes that were abandoned in some field in Czechoslovakia, and the Jewish people need you to fly them. Can you become the Jewish people's air force? And the four boys just looked at each other. They had finally begun living a peaceful life and now they're being asked to climb back into the seat of a fighter plane. And not any old fighter plane, but German fighter planes. Steven Schwarz looked at them with a fire in his eye and he said, "Millions of Jewish people in the Holocaust lost their entire past. You four have the opportunity to at least give them a future." And the four looked at Steve and said, "Okay, we're in." So the four traveled east and they secretly de declared themselves the Jewish people's temporary air force. An air force consisting of four people. Not 4,04, not 404, not 44. Four people. Possibly the smallest air force of all time. Certainly the most frightened. On May 29th, 1948, the immense Egyptian army was 20 miles out of Tel Aviv. And Leon Frankle approaches Herod Harold Livingston and told him, "Listen, if one of us doesn't go up and bomb them out right now, there will be no tomorrow and there will be a blood bath. Okay?" Harold said, "Okay, I'm going to go." So, lifting up the used German plane to the sky, Harold looked down and he could see scores of fresh Jewish immigrants on the ground below, hoping and praying that they could finally start their lives a new. And he nervously looked up ahead and saw the massive Egyptian army. And he quietly flew his plane until he was moments away from being directly on top of them, on top of their gunmen, on top of their artillery, on top of the thousands of soldiers who might shoot him down at any second. And he tilted his plane entirely on its side to get the most direct angle to drop the bombs. He closed his eyes and screamed, "Shma Israel!" and let the bombs fall. And fall they did. And in a sheer miracle, sent straight from heaven, the Egyptian army was left in shambles, and Harold flew back completely unscathed. The oncoming Egyptian onslaught was ground to a halt. The war was won, and the potential barbaric slaughter of thousands of Jews was avoided. And years later, when he sat down with an interviewer, Harold was asked what he was thinking as he was flying towards the Egyptian army. He said, "I looked up to heaven and I said, ' God in heaven, those Arabs down there might want to win this war. We Jews need to win this war. Those Arabs might want to come out victorious. We need to. Those Arabs might want to claim this land. We need to claim this land. Hashem, save us so the memory of the six million can live on. Hashem, save your precious nation so we can continue to make you proud because our past is too glorious and our future is too bright. We as Jews look to our glorious past for our spiritual energy to propel us into the future. We rid ourselves of the stagnancy of death by ensuring that we are forever drinking from the fresh springs of life with youthfulness and zest. We take our ancient traditions and we use them to light up the world. We look to the past. We look to the future. We cling to our heritage and let it guide us down the road of life today, tomorrow, forever. You've just experienced another Torah class brought to you by tora anytime.com.