Yerushalayim: What it means to be a Jew - Rabbi Mordechai Burg

there's an amazing major that tells us how yerushalayim got its name it was actually a mahlokas between shame and avraham avinu shame said that the name should be shalem [Music] said the name should be ye to see who said well put them together yerushalayim avraham and shame both get what they want it's a very strange magish first of all why is the origin of the name important to us second of all why could nakadash brahu decide decide like avraham decide like shame what's going on over here i heard a very beautiful shot these two names actually represented two different world views shane's world view was one of schlemut one of personal completion he had a yeshiva was a well-known yeshiva avraham avinu even learned them at yeshiva it was a yeshiva that focused on personal growth and if you wanted to learn in yeshiva shane behavior no problem but you went there why wasn't shame the first jew what made avraham avinu the first jew is he actually went out and shared the message of the urbanislam with the world in fact the meri says that avraham avinu was makhara half the known world in his time he was an he was the ultimate cure of rebbi so the name shalem represents the personal shleimus the name ye ra avram vino it's to see to go out to have a vision which one of these is correct the answer is they're both true we live very often in that tension people ask that question all the time i want to go out and do something but it might be dangerous for me personally how do i negotiate that tension so there's ye there's the vision of going out and sharing who's the message with the world and then there's shleimur the personal shlamus that we're all searching for who says both of them are right both of them are true obviously there's value to going out and sharing akash baruch's message with the world and obviously there's value in staying in and working on your own personal avodah both are true and yet says it has to be yerushalayim avraham avinu's vision has to come first there's an interesting thing that people say i hate it they talk about you know when you come for your time where you're learning in israel that's you that's your time to be selfish a jew is never selfish the notion of selfishness as growth is so distorted it's impossible for that to be true yerushalayim means that our personal shlamus can only be achieved when we share what we have with the world of course there are times where we need to be for ourselves and not for others but our personal shlaimus must be to share what we have with other people as the laboratory said if you know aleph teach aleph yerushalayim is the center of the world it's the place where creation was born from all of creation started and arabia's right there in new shalom and we are privileged to have your shalom today but the message of you shalom sometimes gets lost the fact that we're supposed to say yerushalayim is a concept that we go out and we share what we have with the entire world sometimes we are either on one side or the other a little bit too much out or a little bit too much in it's a spectrum there's no easy answers but our avodah is to work on our personal shleimas by sharing what we have with the world how could we forget your shalom forgetting your shalom is forgetting the basic mission for which claudia's role was created and in the times of the three weeks where we are mourning the destruction of the besan in the times of the three weeks where we didn't have that vision of going out and sharing with our fellow jews now more than ever perhaps is our opportunity to really challenge ourselves to say what is our vision what are we doing to share the ubanisham's message with the rest of the world