KLM: Easy Mitzvos Series: The Amazing Spirituality of the Mezuzah with Rabbi Asher Baruch Wegbreit

[Music] welcome back to the cavanaugh mitzvos foundation and again we're zoho to be in the yebene base midrash i have two very important questions for you very important is there such a thing as an easy mitzvah question number one is there such a thing is there such a concept as an easy mitzvah two if you'll say yes there is such a thing as an easy mitzvah then my next question is is it as good as it sounds i mean a mitzvah and it's easy and it's pleasurable so let's let's tackle that because the answer to these questions is so important is there any easy mitzvah is there such a concept absolutely it is mentioned in parque avos in the mission of davos ben azai says rats the mitzvah run to a mitzvah kala kuflamid now you could translate the word kala as light as opposed to heavy however that's not how the ferrous cereal explains it and that might be more of a question there's such thing as a light mitzvah so that's paris israel says yes there are mitzvahs that are easy let me give you he gives he actually gives a few categories let me give you something that you know there's always an exception to the rule but i think everyone would agree this is easy the mitzvah of one shabbat to eat and drink delicious food and fine wine or whatever you love right that's absolutely an easy mitzvah okay owning shabbat now let's go to the second question is it really as good as it sounds and why do i ask that you know we should have a healthy suspicion of things that are easy you know the famous get rich quick scheme i noticed the last word scheme schemers i even saw a documentary on this recently about people who are telling you how to make money on the internet and how you can make a lot of money and this person did some good research he says one of the telltale signs the red flags that it's bogus it's a fake is if they tell you it's easy oh just in three simple steps it's for easy easy easy it's most likely a scam so we have to understand what is hashem offering us a get rich quick mitzvah what's going on here and the truth of matter is it depends on how you approach it okay it really depends but i'm going to make the argument it's as good as it seems and let me give you an example let's go back to shabbos for a second one shabbat when you eat when you have a delicious food right or here's a here's a favorite of many people let's say kiddish in the morning kiddish rabba and you're not having your meal yet so well you have to have mizono some grain products so there's a delicious cheesecake or a layer okay just pick the cake that makes your mouth water okay now is that a mitzvah absolutely is it a get rich quick absolutely let me let me make this clear to you owned chavez is for sure a mitzvah okay to delight in a physical way on shabbat now what are you rewarded for that i thought like this take the richest man in the world right now uh elon musk okay probably it's him okay but so you have him his money his money okay you have perfect health you have a wife and a family they're wonderful they just give you pleasure right you live in a perfect climate you have every necessity you need you have a stimulating engaging occupation right that et cetera et cetera would that count as a reward for ownikshabas absolutely not we cannot be rewarded for mitzvahs in this world because any pleasure any health any tranquility you can imagine doesn't come close to the reward for memphis so look at this you eat delicious food i'm just using onugas tonight we're going to look at the mitzvah of mezuzah another easy mitzvah but let's just think about do you realize it really is you eat the food you enjoy the food and it's unspeakable reward that awaits you in the world to come and and all these other beautiful things like connection and relationship etc okay sounds great no catch all right so let's go to the the flip side of this okay here is a principle that we've been teaching at klm a lot you know mitzvahs don't always succeed as much as they could and it's because we are sometimes forgetting that minces don't occur in a vacuum we just think okay here's a mitzvah and i'll do the mitzvah there'll be no opposition there'll be nothing and no challenges to it that's so incorrect it's such a the the yeta hara knows how much this easy mitzvah can provide you and what it can do for your connection so beware okay in fact uh and this is the first time i'm introducing this but we came up with a mathematical formula at klm cavanaugh mitzvos math klm math all right i'm going to introduce this formula now in general from missus and then we're gonna look at this formula when it comes to mezuzah okay here's the equation it's very simple it's not calculus it's it's simple arithmetic here we go mitzvos minus kavana right mitzvos subtract kavana equal rituals that in other words an easy mitzvah is easy to be devalued okay because if it's a mitzvah without kavanagh it becomes a ritual and hashem wants so much more from he wants our mind and our heart he wants us involved so if it's misses without kavanagh ritual on the other hand let's do the positive formula okay mitzvah's plus kavanagh equals now i could say several things it equals spiritual delight it equals relationship with the creator right mitzvahs plus kavanagh equals some extraordinary things now however we're going to look at the mitzvah of mezuzah and we're going to see that mitzvah mezuzah minus kavanaugh will be obvious but mezuzah plus cavanaugh has an equates to something amazing all right so we're going to take the mitzvah of mezuzah and understand why it's an easy mitzvah what the dangers are right right what the hell are is going to do to us and then we're going to i i i called it on the title the amazing spirituality of mezuzah you will see please god in the and this will be probably a couple of classes so now let's take a look at the formula as applied to mezuzah um cavanaugh missus is now teaching you math spiritual math cavanaugh limits this math let's take a look so the mitzvah we see here is mezuzah and the formula number one works like this mezuzah minus kavana equals ritual right you see the fellow he's running out the door maybe he puts his hand on that going forward and this is how he feels about mozusan ritual okay now before we look at the brighter side let's understand this more why does uh why um would mitzvah suffer from a lack of kavanagh like i said i said to it there's always going to be a challenge especially with easy mitzvas because the itsahara is not thrilled about this okay however let's explain the challenges we face with it certainly seems like a pretty easy misfit in fact i want to say mezuzah is even easier than an easy mitzvah now what do i mean okay what's easier than an easy easy mitzvah a mitzvah that's completed already you did it there's nothing more to do and that's what we think with the mezuzah you get you get some money together you go to a sofa someone writes uh the parchment that of the mezuzah you buy the mezuzah holder and you stick it on your wall and you make the blessing that of to fix a mezuzah to your home and you're done right that's what we think so what could be easier than that once you put it up right once you put it up now most people kind of know that there's a min hug to touch the mezuzah as you pass by some people kiss it that's definitely brought down okay so i walk by kiss it and i move on with my day so if we do like that it's certainly going to be a ritual we we might even not notice that that there's in a certain sense or remember did i did i kiss it did i touch it etc maybe you have a practice okay so the the the the challenge with a mezuzah is it appears like the that you basically bought something a mitzvah that you put on your house it's a you have a mitzvah to put a mezuza on your house and it offers you protection all right now there's a whole discussion about the protection that comes from mitzvos and maybe people have heard stories where there were miraculous stories of protection and then maybe other people have heard known that it didn't seem to protect so that's going to come in a later class i'm going to discuss that the zohar talks about if the mezuzah worked didn't work why not okay but for right now this is our mindset i think about it was a i have to put them azusa on my house in the different areas the door posts and it's now i have something that's going to protect my house and it's a beautiful identification this is a torah home great but it's it's going to be prone to be a ritual okay now let's take a look at what mezuzah could and i will say should be all right so we say if you have a mezuzah plus cavanaugh it's not just connection spiritual connection in relationship ready you will have a spiritual encounter when i put this out the the graphic artist said to me well you know you can't always necessarily have a spiritual encounter you can always get a connection from a mitzvah seem he was making a good point but the truth of matter is and i have an incredible source for this the rambam says you will have an encounter a spiritual encounter all right so let's discuss the cavanagh that we need to have okay what we need to understand i have for me this was amazing information when you understand this information it really is going to upgrade your connection i think right away so first of all as i said to you it seems like that the mitzvah of mezuzah is done when you're moving into an apartment or you have to change the mezuzahs where you have to get them checked that seems to be the mitzvah okay and now it's up and doing its job and your job's over not true says okay first of all yeah let's take the rambam the rambam says let me read you what the rambam says in mishnah torah okay and hillclass uh uh says this to fill in mezuzah and safer torah okay so the rambam says like this high of adam the he's a hair be mezuzah people have to take great care with mezuzah shihihovatakol it's an obligation to everyone that means men and women tamid constantly be very careful with mitzvah the of mezuzah because it's an obligation constantly now that idea is taken another step by the say for her rating a very famous book that tells you about all the mitzvahs uh you could perform and also another there was a tom degraw he wrote a parish on this sitter his name was the aura yeshan and this talmud of the gra was one of the few people that got a scum on approbation from the villenegon okay they both say like this right you have a mitzvah not just the only the first time you put it up that the mitzvah uh you have a mitzvah to affix the mezuzah on a daily basis now it's up there physically now by the way it says in the in the parsha of the krishna where it was written the the the uncle is hints to this because it says kas vinon write it to covey it to to to put it like there's an expression of covaya e team littara you set um permanent times that keep repeating for torah so they're saying yours if uh with the right thoughts you're really fixing the mezuzah every time now really in truth you're fixing it on your heart okay and in your mind but you're putting it but they're saying like this i just want to make see i'm about to tell you that there's some very beautiful other mitzvahs connected to the missus but they're saying before you get there you put you ha you can fulfill the mitzvah on a daily basis right i have in mind the uh fixing of the mezuzah in my home all right so that's number one and we heard the the rambam says it's a constant obligation okay so that's number one so now why let's understand that you know um the torah seems to say put it on your house put on your door post the cities etc right why is it more than just a fixing something there okay so the mezuzah is in a special category of misses rav shimshin rafael hirsch explains this beautifully they're called adus testimonies okay let me give you some other examples shabbos is in aegis it's a testimony that hashem created the world uh it sits as to fill in there's certain mitzvahs the moadim the the the per the myth is not is for sure not just the action you're testifying to something very fundamental you know i heard this said it's really this president was trying to kind of get you uh not to treat things like a ritual and you know he didn't he didn't want you minus kavanagh eagles rituals so he says about to fill in he says if you don't think about what's written you know here and here he says it's like you're wearing two rocks you know you're strapping two rocks on yourself god forbid there's something in there there's special messaging in the to fill in and there's special messaging in the mezuzah you hear this it's testimony to some fundamental deep important things that are misses in themselves okay so now we can understand that hashem didn't want us just to put a protective device a spiritual protective alarm system in your house it is like that we'll talk about that but that wasn't all that was going on there he wants this this isn't the parsha with the krishma and okay so now having said that we understand why that it's it's really a mitzvah every day i went up to my neighbor on travis i was so excited you know and not gonna do it he knows i'm always gonna say something about kubota said you know he hugged me when he heard this i said you know when did you put up your message so when we first came in i said no you could you put it up today in your mind and heart if you did it properly you know and then he did give you a kiss so now but now let's understand this part of the equation here there's something about mezuzah that's even more than many other mitzvahs again and this is i'm going to read you the rambam mitzvah plus sorry mezuzah plus kavanagh equals spiritual encounter let me read you the okay rambam just giving you an excerpt and again this is uh we're starting again the easy mitzvah series and mezuzah has so much spiritual depth and beauty with this not it's just the first class okay so there's more to come but let me read you the rambam and we'll understand how to have a spiritual encounter okay says the rambam he continues in that same halacha mukholsman every time you go in your house and out of your house yaakov right yaakov encountered the place the word pogeya means to have encounter the rambam son the abram benram he talks about there's the most spiritual experience you can have is to have what he calls encounter so the rambam uses this language you're having an encounter with yehuda hashem and hashem's love so that's what that that's the potential here if we have the kevin now i want to start the the spiritual encounter of mezuzah with love and that'll be it for this time okay so let's understand how you can have a counter of avas hashem which again is a big big mitzvah okay so there's a great amazing story i want to i don't like using the word story when it comes to the talmud because these are true events okay there is an event described in the talmud with um perhaps other than yisro one of the most incredible garen i mean there have been amazing converts through our history but this is one of the most renowned garem in jewish history his name is uncles right so listen to what happened he was uh i think he was a nephew of the king of the emperor of rome he was very high royal royal position and i he made a trip i think to jerusalem israel and he came in contact with the torah and he converted now uh this was a shocking event you know someone from the royal roman family you know the emperor converts and it was disturbing the emperor so he sent soldiers to bring him back most likely to punish him you know certainly if he doesn't change right so it's a famous thing he they come and he engages them and explains to them you know they're a little surprised what do you why'd you why are you becoming a jew you know you were in the royal roman family the downtrodden jews so he explains some of the uh ideas in judaism and uh what happened they converted the soldiers didn't go back they didn't go home right so this is happening more than once so the the emperor is realizing his plan is is uh not going so well so he says don't speak to him whatever you do just take unclass bring him put him in chains whatever and bring him here don't speak to him so the legion they come they come his house and he's packing his bags he's walking out of the door and he puts his hand on the mezuzah it says he put his hand in this is i think some think he he kissed the mezuzah now you know the romans they were pagans and they see this and they're like so they couldn't help but ask them what is this so listen to what he said okay now this what i'm about to say let me just tell you what he said and then i want to try to share the depth that i experienced from this okay he said like this he says think of a human king right i i like to use let's use buckingham palace because we it's we actually have an image of this okay he's um if you see the way it works with a king so let's take buckingham palace they have a huge huge like outer area but they have this gate and they have guards there and then you get into that gate their guards right in front of the palace and you go it's heavily guarded i was on my way now you know when the prime minister comes they have like several cars all flashing and this you have no idea which car they're prime mentors in and there's this like whole cavalcade of protection so anyhow when a king he has guards he places them out and where's the king he's safely inside right so as uh the uncle says not so he says you know we're in the house and the king is outside our homes protecting us in other words let's just face it we all live in serpent quarters of the king of kings of akashborjo right we're all servants in servant quarters and why is the torah says why is the muslim right out there our king is on the outside protecting us okay on the inside now i just two points about this okay and then we'll close our first session okay you know we pray to hashem we learn as torah the thing we pray constantly but it's hard sometimes we don't always sense we're in hashem's presence why because it's a typical thing we do with hashem as we pray but if you do something that's a little unusual you can break out of this one time i had people and this helped me too i had them write in in the time of ello i said write a letter to hashem right write a letter to him telling him how much you appreciate it and love him and apologizing so we you only you don't normally write letters to him but when you write a letter you're for sure writing it to someone right so in that unusual experience of writing a letter like shem becomes real you hear that so the same thing thing if you what uncles did for us was incredible right he always encountered he's saying if you will hashem is on the outside of our homes protecting us right the king the k our king is on the outside and we're on the inside so first of all that already know if you can connect this metaphor he gave is in the talmud meaning it's a you can use this and realize that it's just incredible i'm a servant and the king's outside my house guarding me unbelievable okay so that's spiritual but now one more thing the rambam says you'll have an encounter and you'll have love okay so i say to you to know that such a great the grandest most um there's no way to describe the royalty and exalted status of hashem and this king and the fact that he's in each and every one of our homes he's if you will we'll explain that later outside the door guarding us it's just absolutely it has to touch you you have to wow shane really loves me and wow how can i not feel love towards hashem so what i'm trying to say is this this is what i'd like you to do all right i want you once a day put your hand on the mezuzah i'm not asking you to spend a lot of time i think i'm by thinking about what's going on here the special messaging that's in the mezuzah i'm fulfilling the mitzvah of mezuzah and by thinking about how the king is outside guarding our homes i'm fulfilling mithra of ava hashem to love hashem for all he does for us [Music] is