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How are Jews still around?-Bechukosai - The Parshah On Fire
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This Torah class is brought to you by
tora
anytime.com. Without a question, the
single most frightening part of the
entire Tyra are the curses contained in
parasa. Those horrible events that
Hashem tells us will befall the Jewish
people if we abandon our faith in him
and our passionate observance of his
mitzvah. These were those scary heavenly
declarations of the misery that will one
day rain down upon us if we fail to hold
up Hashem's flag in this world. How our
bodies will languish. How our enemies
will dominate us. How wild animals will
kill us and our children and destroy our
roads and cities. How we'll be met with
sword and plague and sickness. How we'll
encounter forms of death unfathomably
gruesome and ghastly. How we'll eat the
very flesh of our own children out of
hunger. and will be scattered amongst
the nations of the world. And our lands
will become desolate and our cities in
ruin and we'll be rendered into a bunch
of carcasses and heaped together into a
pile of rot. Yeah, kind of scary. But
here's what's strange. Just as the para
is ending and it finishes saying all
those horrible things that are going to
happen to us if we don't follow in
Hashem's ways, it throws in something
that seems to have nothing to do with
anything, just completely unrelated.
Immediately after following
the the Tyra decides to discuss the laws
of the the right that each Jew has to
donate his monetary value to the Bdash.
Why does the Tyra place the laws of
right after the doesn't it take away
just a little bit from the importance
and the magnitude of the topic? Why
would the Tyra follow its thunderous and
ominous description of the very serious
almost apocalyptic catastrophes that
will rain down on us with something as
technical and seemingly unrelated as
a so perhaps the following idea can give
us a clue. Out of all the many character
traits that the Jewish people exhibit,
the one that is perhaps most impressive,
the one that rises to the top in my
opinion is our endurance. Our ability to
be history's punching bag and live to
tell the tale, to have suffered at the
hands of virtually every single one of
history's villains and monsters and
still survive it all. But more
impressive than merely surviving in the
face of adversary is sets what sets the
Jewish people apart is our unique
ability to actually use the pain and the
anguish that we endured as a springboard
to catapult us forward to make us
stronger and smarter and better. We
don't get shoved down and then stand up
and link limp back to safety just
licking our wounds. We spring up with
vigor and we jump up with tenacity and
we regain our spirits and we rebuild
ourselves even better than before. Each
tragedy we go through is somehow
transformed into new creativity. We're
pummeled and we're terrorized and yet we
pick ourselves up and we dust ourselves
off and we find a reservoir of strength
deep inside of us to not only move on
but to move on on fire to thrive and
grow and soar using the animosity around
us sort of as jet fuel to power the
spiritual rocket ship within us. There
are many examples in our history of how
following a tragedy we picked up and we
rebuilt ourselves even stronger than
before. Schlom dies. The tragedy of the
division of the kingdom that comes
afterwards the towering
and after the tragic destruction of the
B first Bikash comes the great renewal
of Tyra beginning with and culminating
with Ezra. From the destruction of the
second Bamed comes the explosion of Tyra
in the form of the mission of the major.
From the crusades come the Ashkanaz.
From the horrific Spanish Inquisition
and the expulsion come the immense
mystical circle of Tvas led by the Ariza
leaving ripple effects that literally
reverberated throughout the entire Tyra
world. From the unspeakable Eastern
European persecution comes the movement.
From the Holocaust, the most horrid loss
of Jewish life in our nation's history
comes the miraculous resurrection of
Tyra Judaism in America and in where
there is such a proliferation of
institutions supporting our Tyra
lifestyle that virtually every 15 feet
is another scholarish a seminary.
You could push the Jewish people down,
but somehow someway they're going to
come storming back. The question is,
where did that inner reservoir of
fortitude and strength come from? With
what energy did our parents and our
grandparents, after persecution of the
worst degree, rise from the ashes and
rebuild our communities bigger and
better than before, brick by painstaking
brick. Many people look at Jewish
history and say, "Listen, it's just one
long chain of miracles and that's it.
That's the only explanation
from Hashem just swooped in time and
time again and saved us from the
brink." But is that correct? Is that the
only explanation? Is that being
historically honest? I think not. Of
course, there were miracles. Yes, Hashem
split the sea. Yes, Mun fell from the
sky. Yes, a small group of Hashmon
defeated an entire empire. Yes, the
Jewish people survived millennia of
exile and persecution and hatred. But if
you stop there, if you just say Hashem
did it all, we're missing the other half
of the story because a melam there's no
king without a nation. Yeah, Hashem
performed miracles, but he didn't force
our hand. We had Yeah, the sea split,
but it was we who walked into it. Yeah,
man came down from the sky, but it was
us only because we had already followed
Hashem into a barren wilderness with no
food in sight. We took the first steps.
He responded, "Yeah, there were miracles
that took place during the prim story.
There was also Esther risking her life
and Morai not bowing. Yes, the oil burnt
for eight nights, but there was also a
long and brutal battle fought by real
people with real fear who nevertheless
said, "We will stand up and stand
strong." Of course, there were miracles
throughout Jewish history. No one's
saying not. But our survival wasn't a
miracle vending machine just spitting
out Nissan. It was built on generations
of Jews choosing to remain Jewish, to
keep walking, to keep learning, to keep
believing. The question is how? How in
fact did we keep on going? How have we
not gotten eaten up at this point? If
you look at the statistics of mental
illnesses developed by people who
experienced trauma, people who had to
flee their communities or their
countries, people had to spend time in
jail, people who fought in Iraq or
Afghanistan or Vietnam. The rate of
mental illnesses developed by such
people is absolutely staggering.
According to the VA, 30% of veterans
returning from war zones suffered from
PTSD and were severely mentally hampered
for the rest of their life. According to
the National Veterans Foundation, 44% of
veterans relied on heavy substance abuse
to try unsuccessfully to cope with their
traumas. 43% of inmates at state
prisons, 44 at federal prisons, 63 at
local prisons are diagnosed with mental
disorders, either directly or indirectly
due to the trauma of being in jail.
Human beings aren't built to endure the
worst of what this world can throw at
them. War zones, prisons, bloodshed,
displacement, most people don't walk
away from that kind of trauma whole, let
alone functional. And yet the Jewish
people who have endured it all. There
isn't a form of suffering or trauma that
the Jewish people haven't faced.
Expulsions, pgrams, inquisitions,
ghettos, gas chambers. And somehow, not
only did we survive, we thrived. Every
time we were knocked down, we rose
higher. country after country,
generation after generation, we emerged
not just as survivors, but as leaders
and scholars and builders leading the
world that five minutes earlier was
trying to kill us. Kicked out of
Aritzel, no problem. We go to BL, which
is modern-day Iraq. And we set up shop
and we don't just develop a flourishing
community. We develop the most
transformative Jewish community outside
in Jewish history. We're exiled. We have
to run to Persia, modernday Iran. No
problem. We set up shop. We become
involved in trade and crafts. We have
all sorts of administration positions in
the government. We get exiled to Rome,
no problem. We become craftsmen and
merchants and bankers and doctors. We
build massive Jewish communities, the
biggest being in Alexandria with a
tremendously vibrant Jewish life. We get
kicked out and we run off to Spain. No
problem. We become financial adviserss
and physicians and writers and mapmakers
and astrologers and philosophers. We
developed some of the finest Jewish
communities to have ever lived. Teaching
and developing some of the most
influential Jewish scholars to have ever
graced this earth. Reishment that we
learn every single day like the Rambam
the Ramban. They betzra. We get kicked
out of Spain. No problem. We run off to
the Netherlands and what happens?
Suddenly the Netherlands become the
largest and most powerful economy in the
world. We trade in diamonds. We run
finance empires. We build strong
tyrabased communities. The world kicks
us out of a country and that country
kicks us out and that country just
collapses and we move on and we become
leaders and builders and movers
somewhere else. The Jewish people's
resilience is unparalleled in all of
world history. Where does it come from?
How are we not affected from the
thousands of years of trauma that
statistically speaking should have eaten
us alive generations ago?
The answer
is the end of this para
says it holds the answer immediately
following the list of horrors that will
barrage the Jewish people if we stray
from the Jewish path. The Tyra speaks of
the ability of each and every person to
donate his monetary worth to the B
mikdash. That placement isn't random.
There's nothing in the Tyra that's
random. The juxtaposition is telling us
that the immense inner value of each and
every Jew is unbreakable. And no matter
how grim and gory the backdrop is, one's
nama is intrinsically holy. No amount of
persecution will ever convince us
otherwise. The Tyra's specific placement
of the mitzvah of which highlights the
ability for each Jew to donate his worth
to the Bikush is telling us that even as
we get kicked and burned and stabbed and
expelled, we must remember our
everpresent, untouchable, unbreakable,
glistening inner worth. We remember that
it's not those barbaric hooligans who
determine our value. It's God who
determines our value. And in his eyes,
we are all intrinsically holy. No matter
how many layers of human corpses we may
lunder lay under, we must climb out and
allow our holiness to shine. We are the
torch of humanity and no amount of
ferocious persecution will ever dim it.
That's our secret that we have been
reminding ourselves for thousands of
years that our worth is intrinsic. We're
internalizing that concept so deeply
that no amount of external trauma can
convince us otherwise. If we lose sight
of the immense spiritual value embedded
deep inside of us, then our enemies win
the war. But if we keep our eyes on the
potential within and we develop a
perspective that inside of us is
unimaginable holiness, then we are
indestructible. Now listen to this idea.
Every month, Jews go outside to say
keshana. It's a monthly sanctification
of the new moon. And we look up to the
moon and we declare that the same way
the moon renews itself, so must we. We
take inspiration from the change of the
moon to get up and change ourselves.
Now, let's ask an obvious question. Just
about the only thing in the entire solar
system that does not change is the moon.
The earth has seasons. Stars come and
go. The sun is forever burning itself
with more and more energy. The moon just
sits there. There's no wind. There's no
water. There's no gravity. There's no
life. Neil Armstrong's footprints are
still there exactly where he left them
in 1969.
We could not have picked a worse symbol
for change in the entire solar system.
That's the symbol of change. A big stone
in the sky that just sits there. So,
you're going to tell me, "Well, what do
you mean? It gets bigger and smaller
each month." No, it doesn't. There's a
varying degree of light from the sun
being shown at it each month depending
on how much light is being blocked. It
doesn't actually change. Who are we
like, who are we fooling? Why would we
choose the moon as our symbol of change
when it's the one thing in the entire
universe that doesn't change?
The answer is that's precisely the point
we're trying to make. Change is not
about waiting for the season to pass or
the climate to improve. Change is not
about dreaming about different settings
and scenarios more conducive to our
success. Change is about changing our
perspective. Change is taking the
circumstances at hand and seeing them in
a different light with a different
angle. Change is ridding the habit of
blaming circumstances and directing our
sights on inner transformation. And
therefore, the moon is the perfect
symbol. It just sits there. It never
moves a muscle. And yet, it waxes and
waines every month. How so? Because our
perspective of it changes. It screams
out to us that in order to grow and
climb and ride the wave of life, we need
to be forever enhancing ourselves, to be
forever improving the quality in our
self. to stop blaming external purses
and places and things and start focusing
on ourselves to be forever grabbing hold
of that self-relenishing reservoir of
value inside of us and unleashing it.
That is why every single organ in the
human body grows bigger as you age.
Every part of your body was born
significantly smaller than what it is
right now. Your nose, your legs, your
lips, your stomach. The only organ which
remains the exact same from the time you
were a baby until the day you die are
your eyes. Why is that? Why don't they
grow and change like the rest of the
body? Perhaps it's because Hashem
doesn't want people to tell themselves
that they're going to just wait until
their eyes get a little larger to see
the bigger picture or to look at life
with with more depth. No. Hashem doesn't
want people to excuse their
shortsightedness or their shallowess by
saying that their eyes aren't fully
developed yet. No, no, no. the size of
your eyes remain the exact same
throughout your entire life. Our
perspective on the other hand is what
needs to be changing in order to grow
and become better people because having
the right perspective in life is the
single most important trait to have as a
Jew because it enables us to see through
the noise and ignite the spiritual
rocket ship that's inside of us. Here's
another example of this. Shulavi is
about to choose the next king who will
rule over all of Cla. And he walks up to
Yishi's house. And all Shul knows is
that one of Yishi's eight sons is
becoming king. He just doesn't know
which one. So Yeshi brings out all the
sons and they go through them one by
one, but none of them are a good fit.
Then asks to bring him his youngest son.
David wasn't even there. He was in the
field. Look what the Tyra says about
him. It says, "I lift
who walks up to and the says he had
beautiful eyes and says ah that's the
one he's the next king of Kal is now why
in the world does the Tyra say that
David had beautiful eyes why was that
relevant who cares and it almost makes
it sound like that's the reason he was
chosen to be king because he had
beautiful eyes does that make any sense
because he had beautiful
eyes perhaps the answer is that the
terror is not referring referring to his
physical
beauty. It's referring to his
perspective. Perhaps the reason he
became king was because of the quality
of his eyesight, his view of the world.
Doesn't was David wasn't chosen because
he was stronger or smarter or bigger or
faster. He wasn't. He was chosen because
he had the right set of eyes. Because
perspective in life is everything. It's
the difference between mediocrity and
greatness. When Yuri Gagarin, the first
man ever in space, returned back to
Russia 1961, Soviet leaders turned to
the Russian people and said, "My dear
Russians, we went all the way to space,
and you know what? God wasn't there.
It's official. It's confirmed. God does
not exist." On the other hand, Buzz
Aldrin from America, one of the first
people to land on the moon, right upon
landing, he kneel down and thanked God
in heaven and returned, saying, "I went
to space and I found God." Because in
life, we see what we want to see. The
Russians were trying to rid themselves
of God. They went up to space and didn't
see him. Buzz Aldrin was a religious man
looking for God, and he went up to space
and he found him. Our eyesight, our
perspective is absolutely everything in
life. Having the right perspective is
the difference between a life of growth
and development or a life of stagnation
and decay. That's why the Hebrew word
for I is ion she points out that the
word ion also means spring for having
the right outlook in life can make us
release a spiritual spring of potential
and gush forth energies that are strong
enough to survive any adversary. We go
out once a month whether in the cold or
the rain, the snow, the sleep, and we
dance by the light of the moon. For our
nation has a spring of spiritual energy
contained within our souls. And we with
the right perspective can always tap
into it. Listen to this story he tells
over the following story. After the
Nazis invaded the small village of
Klesenberg, they began to celebrate in
their usual sadistic fashion. They
orchestrated all the Jews into a circle
in the center of town. And then the
Nazis paraded the Rebil Yu the
Halberstean the Klesber Reban into the
middle of the circle and they're
taunting him and they're teasing him and
they're pulling out his beard. They're
pushing him around. The vile soldiers
train their guns on the Klesenberger
Rebba. And as the commander began to
speak, they're laughing. Tell us, Rabbi,
do you really believe that you're the
chosen people? And the soldiers, they're
guarding the crowd. They're laughing.
The Reb answers loudly and clearly,
"Most certainly." And the officer became
enraged and he lifted his rifle above
his head and he viciously beat the Reb,
swinging the rifle like a baseball bat.
and he's swinging and hitting the Reb's
head. And the Reba fell to the ground
and he's blooded and he's brewed
bruised. There's a rage in the officer's
voice. "Do you still think you are the
chosen people?" he yelled. And once
again, the Reba nodded and he said,
"Yes, we are." And the officer became
even more infuriated. And he kicked the
Reb. And he repeated, "You stupid Jew,
you lie here on the ground beaten and
humiliated. What makes you think you're
part of the chosen people?"
And the rebel looked at his family and
the fellow town's people watching on in
horror. And he turned back to face the
officer. And from the depths of his
humiliation, covered in dust, the Reb
replied, "As long as we are the ones
getting kicked and not the ones doing
the kicking, we can call ourselves the
chosen people." From the back alleyways
of the destroyed city of Urusim to the
ports of Spain in 1492 to the villages
in Germany ransacked and torched by
pagrum. From deep within forests in the
middle of nowhere to the northernmost
parts of freezing Siberia from the riots
to the crusades to the cells to the
dungeons to the fires and the torture
chambers and the barracks and the
ghettos and the hidden caves and the
concentration camps and bomb shelters
and prisons and betar and Toledo and
Warsaw and keep what's near. Oh, no
matter where we find ourselves at the
beginning of every month, Jews in groups
large and small huddle together in the
cold of the night and we say kilishana.
We look up at the moon and we proclaim,
"Hashem, this month we will be better.
This month we will start a new. This
month we will re-energize ourselves and
bring a fresh perspective and with tears
in our eyes, we said, "Hashem, no amount
of pain and bloodshed will ever place a
damper on the value we place on our
holiness. We will keep dancing down
history's road and allow our souls to
flood forth no matter what and no matter
when. And we look down from the moon
with tears streaming down our cheeks and
we limp into a small circle and we dance
and we sing and we cry and we remind
each other that although the exile has
been long and it's been dark and it's
been dreary if we keep remembering the
unimaginable holiness inside our souls,
we will without a doubt keep on marching
on.
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