Royal Beginnings- Shoftim - The Parshah On Fire

[Music] the crossing of the Jordan River into eritel led by yahushua after Decades of wandering in the desert was by far one of the most surreal moments in our history all of the pain the anxiety the frustration of the last 40 years coming to an end in all of the excitement and the nervousness and the anticipation was pulsing through our veins the moment we were dreaming of was finally happening but what took place smack in the middle of the river was strange while marching through the river Yoshua screams for us to stop stop he Roars and after getting everyone's attention he declares my fellow Jews before we enter the land Hashem wants us to erect 12 Stones one for each shave it and write the Tyra each one he wants us to place them in the ground and in the middle of the river we are to leave them there forever so in one of the most unusual events in Jewish history the entire Jewish people stood in the middle of a miraculously split Jordan River found 12 big Stones inscribed the tah on each one of them and then planted them in the ground they then got up and walked for the very first time into ell with the river crashing back down on the path they had just walked swallowing the stones whole now let's ask the obvious question what exactly were those stones supposed to do what good were Stone monuments that got flooded mere minutes after being erected wouldn't waiting to erect these Stones until after we crossed the river and entered the land make a lot more sense and as strange as it seems our head scratching Mid River Behavior was actually precisely on theme with a major concept found throughout Judaism a theme that is likewise in this week's para the para discusses the coronation of a Jewish King and buried in the middle of the king's rules and regulations is an innocent looking PK that subliminally contains a powerful ingredient for the king's success the in it states as the king sat down on his throne for the very first time he was to write a small Torah scroll and clutch close to him at all times he went nowhere without it meetings trips abroad battlefields the tyus scroll was to remain bound to his arm so at first glance this seems to mean that after ascending the throne and establishing his kingship the King was to write a say for Tyra but if you look a little closer points out RZ instead or arban are Stoll in Baltimore the Tyra seems to go out of its way to specifically command the king to write the trra precisely as he is in the process process of sitting on his throne the Tyra seems to be saying that the success of the king is predicated and the injection of infusion of Tyra into his kingship literally the moment he sits down on his throne not 5 days later not when the party stops not when he gets comfortable from the very first minute as he's in the process of sitting down on his throne reinet explains theara plays a very deceptive psychological trick on us it's called The Power of leader instead of telling us to push away obligations entirely he merely tells us to do them later by mentally pushing things off till later we satisfy our inner conscious telling ourselves that we will do it just later and at the same time we don't actually have to exert the effort of doing it and this psychological trick is devastating because leader is often the first step to never the trra is telling us something powerful at the very beginning of each of the many stages of Our Lives just like a king who has to write the safer Tyra literally as he's sitting into his throne there must be an infusion of Holiness at the beginning of our lives and waiting beyond the beginning means waiting far too long so while marching through the Jordan River to the promised land Hashem commanded us to stop he wasn't going to allow us to walk into the land and get comfortable and figure out where the coffee shops are and paint our homes and build bakeries no no no he wanted us to infuse the absolute earliest moment of our entry into the land of arel with Tyra he wanted us to inject Holiness and sanctity from the get-go right in the middle of the Raging River not a moment later we weren't erecting those 12 Stones to be a tourist attraction for our grandchildren we knew that those stones wouldn't be seen by human eye the moment we walked out of the river we were writing those stones as a way of injecting Holiness into us the writing itself infused us with Holiness ensuring that we would come into the land as people spiritually on fire we eat matah on P because we didn't have enough time to make regular bread when we fled from MIT you you ever think about that for a second ever wonder why Hashem couldn't just give us 18 more minutes to leave a norm to leave mitan with a normal loaf of bread days prior Hashem showered us with 10 miraculous Earth shattering plagues on the MRE and now suddenly he won't give us enough time to bake a decent loaf of bread why is that the answer is a fundamental Concept in Judaism Hashem was declaring to all of us on that fa ful night our last night of MIT that if you want to change if you want to get out of this spiritual Wasteland do it now not tomorrow not in 20 minutes not in 18 minutes now because later is the first step to never humit is the symbol of waiting it's the symbol of fermentation it's the symbol of later the very infancy of the Jewish people had to be infused with zus not lethargically trudging our way to spiritual Freedom running to it from from the very first possible moment from the Inception of our people Hashem wanted us to know that when it comes to spiritual change the very beginning needs to be infused with Holiness and waiting 18 minutes for a fluffy loaf of bread is allowing The Germ of lader to take root allowing leader to take hold sometimes has devastating consequences for example the building of the base mikdash took seven full years to complete now one would expect that the completion of the greatest building in the history of our planet would warrant unparalleled festivities and attention and yet what happened on the very first night of the B MD's existence the Inception of the holiest building on earth instead of a night dedicated solely to the inauguration of the bam mikdash infusing it with Holiness and Purity schlom was distracted at his own wedding party celebrating his marriage to the daughter of the Egyptian parro a wedding ceremony that the Misha you hey says was more excited about than the inauguration of our holy what occurred on the very first morning of the basa mcus completion the very first morning the culmination of hundreds of years of spiritual Blood Sweat and Tears you know what happened shockingly slept in he came late late to the very first carbon T the the are sitting in they're waiting and runs in late andab says that that on that fiful day Hashem sent the Heavenly Angel Gabriel to plant a reed in the ocean that Reed grew to become a famous Peninsula which would house a city that would be inhabitated by the inhabited by the very people who eventually destroyed the bikash that re grew into Italy the home of the future Roman Empire the Destroyers of the B mikdash each and every one of us is in essence a king of our own kingdom if we Infuse our beginnings with an injection of Holiness and Purity that creates a Bedrock upon which magnificent spiritual infrastructure can be built but if we let the power of leader grab hold we often never Shake It Loose we tell ourselves I'll start doing with concentration when I get to high school and then we say I'll start when I'm in based maners or seminary and then we say I'll start when I get married or after that it's when I have a kid or then when I marry off all my kids and innocent lader when we were 14 pushed us all the way to our deathbeds it's like driving a car when you're on the highway going 75 mph in order to turn onto the exit you only need to move the steering wheel a few inches and the car moves hundreds of feet to the right or to the left but when you're on a side Stree going six miles per hour even moving five feet requires you to turn the wheel significantly so we are all the same way when we're young and Youthful we're going 100 miles an hour when one is beginning a spiritual stage and you're filled with fresh enthusiasm and zest infusing that moment of energy with Holiness and spirituality can accomplish far more than trying to do so late in the game the Commanding General of the United States Army once got up and he gave a speech to a new batch of soldiers all hoping and dreaming of climbing the ladder of the United States Army and he looked at them and he said all of you here have dreams of rising in the ranks and good for you but there is only one way of doing that it's with one Mantra that will take you to the heights you wish to climb there is only one secret to establishing yourself in the United States Army the most powerful Army in all of human history and all the soldiers are you know they're leaning in with curiosity to see what the secret was and he paused and he said the only way to change the world is to wake up every day and make your bed make your bed how insignificant how Petty and inconsequential what did he mean by that so he explained he said that if every day from the very GetGo you establish yourself as a man who is organized and clean a man who represents himself and Carries himself with dignity then a foundation of selfworth is laid within you upon which greatness can be properly built but if from the very beginning there is laziness and disorientation then the foundation is wobbly and anything built on top risks crumbling the very first in the entire the first one is the charge for us to be Miss gabari to wake up and roll or like a lion not lethargically not energetic not waking up like a man who looks like he just limped back from the Vietnam War no no no like a lion of course we feel groggy of course we need coffee what it means is that we should inject our day from the gecko with Holiness it means we should say a meaningful mod we should start our day with a small thought of the greatness of Hashem or concentrate when we say ashar listen to this listen to this kashar in the second peric he says that the very first thing want to do when he wakes up in the morning even before reciting my is to look at the mza to infuse our souls with Holiness right away no time to lose we wake up every single day and we build a foundation upon which our spiritual building can rest from the very beginning and that same M pis that tells us to be strong like a lion also tells us to be cow keser light as an eagle the eagle is one of the only birds in the entire Animal Kingdom that has what what is called spontaneous flight all other birds need to take off like an airplane and rise in slow increments higher and higher in order to attain maximum flight but not not so the eagle it flaps its wings and it shoots upwards no Runway necessary it goes up propels itself upwards the mission is telling us to be like an eagle that jumps up right away be like an eagle that helicopters upward and not like an airplane that ascends slowly slowly don't wait for months and years and decades to attain spiritual great greatness do it now jump up and fly the same way a king begins his Empire with an infusion of Holiness so do we begin our marriages at every wedding there is a strange custom that's practiced right at the end of the the raises his foot and he Stomps on a glass and he's demonstrating Our concern for the broken bik we break a glass after singing a very somber tune under the and this shows that the destruction of never left us now what happens after that is very puzzling the breaking of the glass which is supposed to remind us of the sadness of the destroyed vam mikash essentially became the Ultimate Party starter there isn't even five seconds between the breaking of the glass and the eruption of singing and dancing that ensues what was supposed to inject an element of sadness became the ultimate Trumpet Of Joy aren't we completely avoiding the message with the the glass breakage is trying to give us isn't are we killing the whole thing the answer is that the BD was destroyed mainly because of a lack of a lack of enthusiasm a new home being built by a newly wed couple is an erection of a miniature a spiritual cocoon in which Hashem feels welcome and proud if a lack of sim was the Catalyst for the's Destruction then the remedy for its rebirth must be Sim and therefore the absolute immediate first moment that glass is broken signifying the conclusion of the and the official start of the new couple's life we inject into that marriage into that mik spiritual s a new Palace of Hashem on this Earth must be infused with Simka from the very first minute thus concretizing it as hashem's Palace forever we don't wait 10 minutes we don't wait one minute we don't even wait 10 seconds because when it comes to spirituality Jews don't wait perhaps the most dramatic example of this concept in all of Jewish history is the story of Alisha Ben Aya Alisha B Aya wasn't just a great tana and Rabin Sage he was one of the greatest sages in a generation consisting of our History's Greatest sages he was one of only four people recorded in the to have entered ganen while still living in this world and yet tragedy struck he walked and he left it all falling off of the Mountain of spiritual greatness he climbed at top the mountain of sin he murdered a child he frequent harlots so bad was Alicia and so catastrophic was his dissent from spiritual prominence that the gor doesn't even refer to him by his name anymore it just simply refers to him as AER the other one now the moment he left the Jewish fold he was welcomed with open arms by the Roman Elites and was instantly propped up as a prized philosopher who finally saw the light a man who Rose to such unimaginable spiritual Heights could not have possibly Fallen any lower than he did yet he had one disciple who wouldn't let go he had one talwood who wouldn't move on from him the famous T mayor one of the leading figures of the mishna was the prized talmud of Alicia and continued to run after him hoping to squeeze out more of the amazing spiritual information still stored within Alicia and despite leading a life of murder and adultery red mayor wouldn't leave his rebi he would beg him to return he would cry for his repentance and nothing changed and one day out of the Curiosity Remer asked AER what caused his demise what was the Catalyst for his unbelievable fall and Alicia turns to Mayor and said I'll tell you exactly when I was born my father invited all the major rabbis to attend my bris the most prestigious members of the Jewish Community were there and right when we were about to begin the two biggest ttic Scholars at the time Reb elzar and Reb Yeshua walked in Talking Words of Torah and they sat down on a bench and a blazing fire surrounded them and my father dumbstruck asked them what that fire was and they explained that it was the fire of Tyra that surrounds those who learned it properly so after the collective jawdropping that took place amongst the attendees of the bris my father got down on one knee and whispered into my ear that I too should learn Tyra in order to receive such a fire and the honor that comes with it my father injected in me the desire of prestige of honor my entire spiritual edifus was built on a foundation of hardiness and greed thus one of the greatest sages of all time had a wobbly start leading to a catastropic end p kovas is a collection of one of the one or two most profound sayings of various tan so when Alicia was asked later in his life to contribute his most profound saying to P he responded the following the most seminal nugget of wisdom that I can offer humanity is the father following those who learn when they are young are like ink on a clean page those who don't are like ink on a smudged page beginning at the beginning is the secret to spiritual longevity the harrowing parting words of one of the greatest sages of all time who lacked only one thing a proper beginning we are here today as practicing Jews because our beginnings were infused with holiness we are children of fathers who stayed up the whole night of our bris learning with us and singing to us and injecting us with Holiness from the start we are children of holy mothers who would Crouch by our cribs watching asleep and beg and cry and plead tearful prayers for our spiritual health we are grandchildren of holy Bubbies and zes would light the shabus candles and cry rivers of Tears injecting Holiness into our childhood we are students of reum who walks into our kindergarten classroom and with faces beaming a Heavenly Shine lovingly taught us the alipas we are students of teachers who while we were still innocent and pure showed us the sweetness of a blim and the Holiness of a capital to Hill him we are of Rebus who lovingly cut our three-year-old hair and benched us with their holy hands injecting us with kadus and tar we are descendants of Y who injected into our beginning the ability to die for for hashem's Glory we are descendants of Yik who injected our beginning with the Herculean ability to overcome immoral Temptation we are descendants of D who injected the infancy of our kingdom with the ability to stare down Giants and fear no one we are Jews today living a life of Tyra because precisely as we were being born a new after the Holocaust we had Giants of men injecting Holiness Holiness into us at the time of our Inception the the monater rebas Roar for shabis rabar and Cutler's unwavering War to spread Tyra the laicha Reba's unflinching mission to find every last Jew rmha Feinstein bringing the torch of Ty greatness and firmly planting it on American soil unapologetically we are here because we had them at our beginning we are here because our Inception was injected with Holiness and we know that for Spiritual growth the time to infuse Holiness is at the beginning we are here because we know that beginning after the beginning is beginning far too late [Music]