How to Talk to Pharaoh (and Other Unreasonable People) | Parshas Va'eira

Bill Gates is looking for a new chairman of Microsoft for the European division for the whole European continent and they have these massive interviews and they've narrowed it down to a thousand applicants and among the crowd is a little Parisian Tunisian Jew named Maurice Cohen and he hears Bill Gates say anybody from these applicants here who cannot code in three computer languages can get up and leave and 200 of the applicants get up now there's 800 left Bill Gates then he says anybody who doesn't have an Ivy League degree can get up and leave another 200 get up and leave now there's 600 he says anyone who hasn't had experience five years or more managing a team of at least 500 employees can get up and leave another couple hundred get up finally Bill Gates says anybody who's not fluent in serbo-croatian can get up and leave at this point there's only two guys and Maurice Cohen is one of them and the thing is well no but he's Jewish and he has hutzpah so Maurice is still sitting there and and now there's only one other applicant and so Bill Gates comes over and he says okay since you're the only two left who were able to to adhere to all of these these qualifications and you're the only two who are fluent in serbo-croatian why do you have a conversation with each other so maurice pauses and he says man easton ah Laila's i'ma call Hal a lot and the other guy looks at him and says Chabot hole Holly look I know a clean car mate so matzo okay today's topic is speaking a language that you don't understand actually no speaking a language that the other person doesn't understand why did why why is this connected to this parsha so I'm gonna parshas Valera we're looking paddock Zion parsec base chapter 7 verse 2 Hashem is giving instructions to make sure they know how he's supposed to relate to par a Melek monogamy tells him I taught you Misha see da bear should speak a scholarship I'll echo everything that I command you the odd reign of he and Aaron your brother you dhaba del padre he'll speak to power what's going on here maybe she should speak to power and then are they should say depart sera she has to come in explain to us Odyssey dad that Rashi says you should speak palm akka scoliosis Lewis Marie should speak once for each of every time after each of the plagues that measure comes to party may she should speak caffee shisha my time EP just like you heard it from my mouth just like you heard of a mountain verbatim Hashem is telling Mesa I'm gonna tell you and you're gonna repeat word-for-word what I said to you you're gonna repeat that to para the IRA no hija and then your brother ah harrowing young Lisa no we'll translate it furthermore react team Anu he will explain it but as ney father in the years of parrot in other words what's being described here a shaman speaking tamasha presumably in Hebrew right and Misha is supposed to go to para and just repeat the words that he heard from a Shem word for word verbatim now does Pyrrha understand these words first of all we know that he doesn't we know how do we know party doesn't understand wouldn't understand these words we know from the story of Yosef right when yeas of met Padre and they had that showdown about the languages the steps it's a meadow sure about the the 70 languages the 70 steps and then each language you knew you could go up another I don't know which step serbo-croatian was but eventually yes have got to the top step and then he knew one more language then pirate he knew Russian Turkish she knew the holy tongue party did not know that language so first of all we already know that party didn't know that language and even if you say by the way we welcome Melek auditioned it was a new king according to the interpretation that a new king means and actually new king it's a little bit difficult to say the previous Egyptian pharaoh didn't know Hebrew but the new one did presumably pottery did not know he were but then also from context right here from our very verse with the Rashi's commentary it's clear that party didn't know Hebrew because Hashem is telling nation repeat verbatim word for word exactly what you heard from e tu Padre and then what has to happen next Aaron's gonna come translate it and explain it so obviously party doesn't understand the words that may say okay so then here's the simple question what is the point in speaking a language to somebody that they don't understand in other words in theory especially because Irene is acting as translator so then just skip the whole Moshe part it's not like it was spontaneous wasn't like Malaysia had to be there they already knew what Hashem told me she she had the message already then he went to go repeat it so save time Malaysia could have told are and he what I was told and then Aaron would go and he would translate it and explain it okay so I'm I'm not gonna tell you the joke that everybody knows everyone knows this joke in fact what I'm gonna tell you the punchline everybody knows it kid it's not how it's not the joke it's how you tell it right everyone who knows that joke okay I'll tell it quickly I'm not gonna tell it well because new guy goes to prison he's sitting in there in the mess hall and he hears the prisoners one calls out 73 and I'll crack up and then this is 82 they'll crack up on their guys 115 the up crack up so later that night he's in his cell and he asks his cellie he says what's what's they say numbers and then they'll crack up what's the dealer says we've all been in prison for so long we all know each other's jokes so to save time we numbered the jokes okay so then he says oh I want to learn the joke so he learns all the jokes and he learns their numbers and so finally he knows which ones are really good ones the next time he's sitting in the mess hall so he says 23 and it's silent nobody laughs right and then 54 and 54 is a hilarious one nobody laughs 12 nothing so he says to his cellmate he says why is nobody laughing they say the guy says to the younger guy he says it's the punchline kid it's not the joke it's how you tell it okay fine that joke itself needs a number okay that's a joke itself is older than the hills at any rate but I'm not telling you to be funny I'm telling because there's a point it's not the joke it's how you tell it there's a certain truth to that there's a certain truth to that the delivery you know there's a story a true story that probably never happens one of those but it didn't have to happen there's a truth to it a Jewish mother sends her son off to yeshiva and so he writes her a letter and she can't read so what they used to have I mean a lot of people couldn't read they would have a reader it was a job like it was a position in the every village you have a literate person who could read so she takes the letter her son wrote there from yeshiva and she goes down to the reader and she gives him the letter and asks him to read it so this particular reader was I guess more like you know he was doing his job more perfunctorily was just sort of discharging the duty so it looks at the letter he says mother it's cold I don't have enough clothes they're not feeding us enough food please send money so she hears this and she says you know I sent my boy Devo first letter he writes back and he's just asking for money I don't like that so she was she disappointed a few days later though she calmed down she just said you know what I want to read the letter again but she couldn't read it so she went back to the reader but this time was a different reader and this reader was more of a thespian he enjoyed his job you used to like to get into it so he reads the letter says mother it's cold I don't have enough clothes and they're not feeding us please send money now she says well now he asks like a mensch okay so you ever heard of 738 55 okay you're gonna remember this now this is the key to not just public speaking although I have it in mind often when I'm standing in front of a crowd but it's it's with all communication 738 55 it was actually the result of a study done by a professor in UCLA in the 1970s professor in communication and he came to the conclusion that a speaker influences his listeners 7% by the words he says that's it the words are 7% 38% with body language right in gesticulation right and 55% don't a voice 7% words so very little 38% body language and 55% tone of voice and this is this is just this is how people react it's how they react to to communication to messages yeah that's that's just how how human beings are the nonverbal element is is is more important than than than the words themselves so for instance I mean we all know this in day to day experience you sit down and you tell your spouse yeah you have my complete attention well you just said the words you have my complete attention but that's yeah yeah yeah I'll give my complete attention you're mumbling you're looking in your phone so that's clearly nuts up or I'll talk about you know talk about child rearing so you tell your child oh ho that's terrible you don't do that never do that right you're obviously parents disciplining the child and they're laughing so never do that sounds pretty grave but the parent is laughing so the child understand here never do the child hears it's funny okay and so on and so forth the point is there's a great deal of power to non-verbal communication the emotional energy that we put out there through our movement through a tone of voice there's a story that in the 1890s in Poland the government issued a ban against Sheeta against Jewish ritual slaughter of animals for kosher consumption and the huh fats Higham there'll be so Mary Kagan he was trying to get this ban rescinded or to get it repealed before it was passed and they brought the huff it's hime before a group of high-ranking polish officials to to make his his to plea to plead his case which you know from behalf of Poland's Jews would have caused tremendous hardship so the hobbits Higham could not speak polish at least you couldn't speak well I don't know if maybe he spoke a few words but he he couldn't be polish so therefore he was allowed to plead his case in Yiddish and there would be you know like an official court interpreter so the harvest time got up and he and made a fiery speech and he pleaded with these officials and when he finished the translator got up and the government officials told the translator it's okay sit down we got the point and the decree was rescinded so you see the power of what we say not with our words but with the emotional energy it can speak more than the words themselves now obviously words matter I mean that's why when I come in and give a class and planning what I'm gonna say obvious I can't just you know just stick you late and raise my voice and lower my voice so words do matter obviously but we have to understand in what way the words matter and what way do they now or in what context in what case where to work words matter and where do they matter less so here here's here's the differentiation para was the ultimate narcissist his ego was so strong that he literally he believed in himself as a god and he believed he was absolutely unbreakable and that's why there had to be the mawkish to break him down and to force him to hit rock bottom and as long as he was at the height of his power as long as he was the king of the greatest superpower in the world so you couldn't talk to him well you know they say go talk to the wall reading some vaunt where I go speak to the wall be speaking to power I was speaking to the wall and there was nothing that could break that there's nothing you could say to rationalize with him to make him see the error of his ways because he was just totally self consumed he wasn't he couldn't listen there was no there wasn't a reasonable person there to talk to him the only power that could break down pirate at that point would be God himself so that's why Hashem told Moshe you speak over my words verbatim the words of God the exact words that make sure heard from Hashem because the point wasn't to reason with Peres because he couldn't be reasoned with the point was to break him to expose him to a power greater than himself and therefore Mayer came in and he spoke the words of God and in fact if you back up the the verse that we read earlier at the siddhappa you should speak Hashem tells me you should speak so if you back up one more verse and actually shows us what's going on here the game inertia Malaysia Shum spoke tamesha and he said it at AC the Satya L Aquila fara I made you an l a-- came over Padre what does that mean so sometimes it can be translated I made I mean Rashi says here Raider I made you a judge and a chastiser but also a McCrea to man they should die the literal meaning is I made you a god what does it mean I mean you got it means Mirza was there not to explain things not to bring it down into human language not to make it relatable he was there to represent God God was coming to yell at par a and break him down and tell him you're not a hotshot like you think you are and it didn't matter to explain it to him because he wasn't gonna be open to to an explanation all that he could do is just be screamed at with the wrath of God and that's what my sure did he came and he represented God and he delivered the wrath of God so what's the the personal application for all of us right we try to make everything practical generally speaking when things are normal when things are regular we try to reason with the it's a harder and nefesh a Bahamas however you want to call it the ego and we tried to explain to that lower self why it's plans of how we should live our life is really not such a good plan and we try to reason with it and we try to explain to it and that's why we learn and that's why we you know we internalize ideas so that we can actually speak to ourself have a conversation with herself there there was a closet who used to davon in Yiddish and not because he couldn't read Hebrew but they asked him why he would have it in English and he said because the purpose of Fela is to refine the animal soul my animal soul speaks Yiddish right if I speak Hebrew you know that's the holy language that's my my godly soul speaks Hebrew so you know my godly soul doesn't need to davon it's already connected this is to refine my animal soul so I speak I speak to it in the way which understands and and generally speaking that's what we do we speak to ourself meaning our lower self in a language that it understands so you take the ideas that you learn in Toyota and you bring them down and you try to make them applicable you try to explain to yourself why this is the right way to live why that we should do a Shems well why we shouldn't just pursue our own our own whim and explain it with with with with stories with with metaphor I mean it's interesting about just i stoled yesterday I was in Montreal so we had an event for connected with the York site of a very great mechanic Makia we had wolf the mush beer rabbit green glass evolved green glass all wasalam from Montreal who they're ever referred to as I'm a COBOL he was a great great scholar and and his son-in-law who was the one who brought me there to speak at the event he was telling me stories about wolf and one of the things he told me is that his father-in-law used to say that when you learn a concept in Toyota whatever it is if you want to really make sure you you've got it you should picture yourself as a six year old and explain that idea to yourself as a six year old and we know that wolf was was was dealing in the deepest ideas of Kabbalah and and this method that he was describing wasn't just what he was telling others to do this is what he did himself so you could understand he was taking the deepest ideas and then he would translate it he would translate bring it down into a language that a six-year-old could understand and generally speaking that is the the way that we do it we speak to ourselves speak to the ego speak to the animalistic side that is resistant to holiness and reason with it and relate to it and draw it in that's the regular way however however here's the asterisk here's the exception to the rule sometimes the ego becomes so inflated so enormous that it cannot be reasoned with sometimes you have padre mela mitzrayim syndrome and the ego cannot be reasonable so you can't talk then it's talking to the wall you can't talk to it anything you say it's gonna flip back on you my father is oguzhan sign I've mentioned before my father's a psychologist so I grew up a lot with jokes about psychology and psychologists my father told me a joke you said this lady goes to a psychologist and that's how this is why are you here she says well because my friends think I'm crazy why do your friends think you're crazy right she says because I'm dead and they don't believe me okay so he's thinking to himself and he says to her ah he gets an idea he says let me ask you a question do dead people bleed and she says of course not the dead so all of a sudden grabs her hand he takes out a needle and he picks her finger and he squeezes the finger and a little drop of blood comes out and he says I hop what do you say to that she says wow what do you know dead people bleed okay so the point is sometimes when you're so self-absorbed and you're in that echo chamber of one and you just can't hear any other voice you can't hear you can't get your reality check you're not available you're not open to you're not receptive it's what you supposed to do what you're supposed to do when that's the case now one solution is if you're really that in your own bubble sooner or later I don't wish it on anyone but this is what happens to us if we're really in our own bubble sooner or later life's gonna get dysfunctional enough it's gonna get painful enough you're gonna get your wake-up call you're gonna hit rock bottom and then you're gonna get humbled and then you're gonna listen to reason I think Abba Eban the great diplomat he had a he had a saying he said that nations like people you know just nations are like people they tend to behave rationally after all other opportunities have been exhausted right okay so you were saying it a little bit cynically but the point is that you want to be unreasonable you want to be headstrong you want to be stubborn okay go go go go go eventually going to hit the wall you're gonna crash and burn and then you're gonna listen to reason alright however we don't want to hit rock bottom we want to raise the bottom we want to give up and surrender to a sham before our life is falling apart not like Padre who let his whole country go to hell before he was able to be humbled okay so you know the story about the the guy who bought a mule bottom you'll from a farmer and the farmer tells him listen this is a very good mule anything you need him to do need him to schlep whatever you just tell him to do it he obeys commands don't get rough with this mule this is okay find no problem next day the guy calls up the guy who purchased the mule calls up the farmer he says you sold me a lemon right this mule he's a dud you told me he obeys commands he won't move he won't move so the the farmer says bring him back here so the guy puts the mule in the truck he goes back to the farmer he says look at this this mooing doesn't do anything so the he says what he wanted to do just tell him to tell him just to move tell him to walk so the farmer says okay fine he walks over to the mule and he bounces him on the head thump and then he whispers in his ear and then the mule starts walking he says what did you do you told me no rough stuff why you punch him on the head he says no no all you have to do is whisper it to him any moves he's a big you didn't whisper to him punched him on the head he says that's just to get his attention okay so but sometimes that's the way that the ego is that it's in a power a mode where you can't just go talk to it yeah if the punch him on the head and get his attention that's why when moisture would go to Padre he didn't reason with him he didn't explain things to him he went and he gave him the Word of God even though Polly didn't understand the words because wasn't the point the point was to hit him with this power and that he could understand because it's beyond understanding same thing with ourselves normal mode of operation is you reason with your animal soul you explain things to it but when we find ourselves in that dangerous situation where we're impervious to logic then we have to apply what Crizal what our sages tell us ago modern Broca's eylem yargh is Adam Yates ur tave al yetzer Hara that a person should rage his Yates Atari was a good inclination against his evil inclination and by the way it says alum which sometimes you translate as always it doesn't mean always because we just said that's not the mode that we always do it's not even the mode that we usually do it's unusual it's unusual Lila min-gu Matta can mean actually if you learned Ramona sometimes that'll use the word Olam to mean actually meaning not what you would have thought actually okay because why what might have you thought what what might you have thought we know that rage that anger is toxic and that we're supposed to distance ourselves from it call haka ischial evade a bit of a disorder that anyone gets angry it's like you're worships idols so we would think there's never a place for it so come this agents and say well I'm actually there's one place where rage is appropriate oh yeah who do I get to rage act point them out Joe tell me what I get to yell at yeah you wanna you wanna rage okay you can rage it yourself and not even all the time not even all of them when you see that logic isn't working explanations aren't working reason isn't work you're dealing with a par a so then it's time to just hit him with the full force the the power of God and you know but that's again that's just to get his attention and after you have his attention then we we can have a conversation