Kosher Astrology (Part 7 Libra - Tishrei) Rabbi Robert Rhodes

[Music] good afternoon everybody it's so glad to see you all here um nice warm summer's day in the holy city of Jerusalem um let's start by just reviewing our three cardinal principles since we're dealing with astrology which can indeed be misconstrued the three basic principles are the constellations are just stars they align in the heavens from our point of view and at our particular point in time and also with our cultural background to a different picture looking at or focusing on something like a particular constellation is just to help us understand different things what we're doing here is not prescriptive you will not get advice for which career to follow who to marry or do not marry we're gonna see very dramatically in the text that we're going to be looking at today that this type of discussion in the writings of the early Cassini provides helped us understand ourselves helps us understand a time of year it tells us a little better and we are talking 100% about the rules months that's the biggest shift in the way you have to look at things regarding this this whole subject alright the title for today is the month of Tishri or the month of Tishrei first month of the Jewish year in capitalistic andesitic astrology alright that's sounds like a really really serious topic but you're gonna see that it is really just straightforward practical advice by way of introduction we're going to be focusing on the writings of rabbi mordechai Yosef Lehner the first red it's Watson he is known as a ish pizza revi because of the town that he lived in let's see 1801 to 1854 and this is a certain amount you can read up on Wikipedia about him very very very influential teacher his book is consistently mean in print and the things that you have to realize our number one the translation here is my own if you're watching this on YouTube you'd like a copy sent us a note via the website and we'll happily send you at a PDF of all of this now the translation is entirely my own and we're looking at texts that are not organized the way we expect to have books organized today right I'm thinking of for example rabbi yosef Ramones books especially when I shoot out on the seventh year I cannot say I read this book from beginning to end but there was an introduction there was a summary there are bulleted charts colors pictures and you know exactly where everything is here in the time of books that we're looking at it's not organized quite so well there are there are indexes that have been produced after the fact that are somewhat helpful and here in the mass you loss over Mordecai Yosef we are at either an advantage or a disadvantage in that the book contains the collected recollections of the Torah lectures given by the Rabi put together several years after his death so you've got the the colds notes on this or I think in America legal in CliffsNotes the the lecture the class must have gone on for an hour two or three or more but you're gonna end up with a pager to it most I think the longest of the pieces in the whole book two pages long so we're looking at a very very highly concentrated text on the other hand it's short so we can actually get our teeth into it we can get through it relatively quickly so what we're gonna do here is take a look at number one the ultimate source about the month of Tishrei and that's going to take us back to the very very beginning of this whole series the Seyfried Syrah the book of formation and what the five things connected to the month are we're then going to zip into our favorite book and we've been consistently learning the mass you love here and we're gonna look at a couple of the things that are quite interesting from our sort of contemporary perspective that are not in the Seyfried Syrah that are not discussed Jen all that much in the and the writings of the capitalists but are as follows number one is the precious stone or the semi-precious stone that connects with each of the months and number two is the name of the leader of the tribe as given to us in the book of numbers safer by me to our chapter one right so these are stuff that these are things that are a little bit awfully off the radar in terms of generally talking about the month because you as we'll see in a moment you've got five things that we've got listed in the the book of formation tons of things to say about that and then we've got the issue of the tribes that connect right so again one of the basic introductory points that you and you need to be very very aware of when you're reading them the Hasidic rabbis is everything is is parallel you've got to see that there is as little difference between things as possible and that every time there is something with twelve in it it's going to be something to do with the twelve months of the year right and also that it's a level playing field those of us who have been studying Torah for a while we tend to have a hierarchy in terms of what's an important source for for information the Bible is at the top the Talmud is pretty close Midrash maybe not as close texts in the prayer book well these are from the Middle Ages are much later than all of these you know similar holy writings but largely the Hasidic rabbis are going to take this as a level playing field now pretty much everything is is going to be connected and can be mixed up together so you gotta be mash up here okay so let's let's jump into this and what we're looking for is not prescription but a description of the things that are there in this particular month of the year we're not talking about the current month we're talking about Tishrei the month that is gonna start in under four weeks right so Rosh Hashanah is the biggie and we're gonna have Rosh Hashanah Yom Kippur zip code so we're probably not gonna have some so many of our classes going but it's an important month of the year and it's extremely important to get our minds into what the power of this month is and what is there for us to use right fundamental point that we've said over and over again that once we determine what is a useful and valuable factor of a particular month it is there to be used or let it use us all right because as we know there are things out there in this world that can be used one way or the other for good and for not-so-good and if you just let it slide and you just let it go you can spend your time being drawn along by the current or you can use the connecting yourself forward any sort of metaphor like that works works perfectly well so I've done my best to translate this and to write it out as read as clearly as I possibly can I know there are some significant spelling mistakes you will bear with me on that because even with spell checkers on the life it's a little bit less than perfect I'm going to draw your attention to page number three which is simply a cut and paste from the temple Institute org and we're going to be looking at these stones that are on the plate of the high priest each one of them representing one of the tribes right so we're going to we're going to get into this but this is background information the temple Institute website says there are thirty contenders for twelve stones and it's really really difficult for us to know exactly what they what each one is but there is a list here he is not exactly lined or they are not exactly lined up to the translations that I've used as I've taken from other sources we're going to be looking at the tribes of Joseph and the tribes of Benjamin onyx and opal I have got here in my translation onyx and Jasper so there are an enormous amount of factors you just don't know what a particular valuable or semi valuable stone is called in in different cultures right different places in the world cool these things by different names and also the regarding the colors of the actual stuns they very we look at for example of diamonds and we know that diamonds are supposed to be white to clear and shiny but there are red diamonds and there are blue diamonds and it varies according to the mineral composition of the of the various item this is not something and particularly familiar with but I know I've got a wedding ring that's made of three different colors of gold and these are naturally occurring variations you do not know dies that I put into it so the actual colors black and a stone possessing all colors are gonna be the ones that we're looking at and that again according to the temple Institute the actual colors are certain but the 12 most representative names we have chosen for the purpose of listing them it's not carved in stone it's not set completely that these are the actual stones nonetheless you've got to get into the idea of well do stones have a particular power or force to them maybe they do maybe there is something within a particular type of crystal and there's this whole world of this sort of thing out there but here we're looking at what it represents and what it teaches us we're not terribly interested in what a particular stone can do for me various types of opal and this information I just got from the internet opal which is going to come up here is or in various cultures is used for all sorts of things it's used as a cure for hangovers and it's used also to women how it's given to women who are giving birth and it's supposed to calm the pain and the difficulties of giving birth so different cultures have used these things very differently and believe different things about them we're going to be looking at entirely Torah sources texts and resources that are going to try and tell us what these individual stones represent and then connect them here with the names of the leaders of the tribe and a particular purpose right the Torah tells us in Exodus and actually Numbers chapter 1 which of the tribes leaders are listed and I see if I ask a question hunt and earth do we need to know their names for the people that don't have an enormous amount of significance in later biblical stories but we're told their name so there's something to be learned from the names okay let's just jump right into this very first paragraph is the safe receiver chapter 5 verse number 9 paragraph 9 that God made the letter lammott king over intimacy - mish is always in sexual relations first month of the year the issue is letter loud and we're not going to be touching on this at this time and we're not gonna be dealing with with intimacy either but the text tells us that he bound a crown to it combined one with the other so we're talking about a time before creation so God is existing and none of us are are even thought of or we've been thought of we ain't here world isn't there but God somehow takes the letter lament or something that represents what the letter lambda or what the leather land represents and this is a huge discussion in in the commentaries of the Seyfried sirrah what does it mean a letter lament when there's nothing to write a letter land on what does it mean intimacy when there's nothing to there are no two people to be intimate but we're dealing with things that are from a period for which there is really no no way of expressing it other than using the terms of the words that we have so God put these two things together and with them he formed the constellation Libra and we have to always look at the the Hebrew terminology Mosin hi Emma about the balance the scales in the universe and the month of Tishrei in the year this is easy it's really really straightforward to figure out what we're looking at here certainly with the constellation Libra the balance the scales because this is a time of the year when Jewish people believe that we were judged by God God is sitting up there and holding our deeds in a scale of balance our good deeds on one side are not so good deeds on the other so that Libra is the constellation here that that makes an enormous amount of sense Tishri generally taken to be a rearrangement of the words race sheet beginning the names of the months do come up in these types of discussions and they're going to be used as acronyms and if you take the Hebrew letters tough Shin race you'd you can rearrange them to be Rach Shin you're tough which can be read as Rashid not exactly if there's an owl missing somewhere but it's close enough and then the gold bladder in the soul of male and female this is the most enigmatic bit of the first four things we get we get the letter we get the thing that you do with your body we get the constellation we know the month we can sort of understand this but what the safely at sea right is talking about when it says my rock the gold bladder in the nephesh in the soul which I can only translate a soul Zak Haruna cave are male and female [Music] that's that's that's the question that's the question that is one thing that we have to leave that so you wouldn't it's an enormously complicated thing with what it means across all the commentary that talked about it the translations here this is Roman Catholic calls them named asam and humor and their fetchers are Harley this is going back a couple of paragraphs just before where it starts listing all the months there are 12 manly he'd give the club directors there are 12 forces within the human body so we know it in a couple of different ways from from the Bible itself there for example Abraham how did Abraham learn Torah it's very well known that he learned it from his kidneys right the killer yoked are a source of learning and of wisdom or at least of advice and then there's a left kidney and the right kidney because we each have two of them all right is there such a thing as a negative piece of advice or Rockmore flow so that's you know again again a technical detail but each of these body parts and organs which are mostly human but once we get into them you will see that one or two of them two of them in fact are in animals again bite matching the terminology of the safer you Syrah to the terminology that we know from the Talmud and from law texts right so each of these independence of whether we are a man or take a look let's take a look this is chapter five paragraph six in the safe routes you know which I haven't reproduced for you that there are twelve direct towards in the sole male and female the two hands the two feet and these are going to be very very easy to understand what they're talking about why is this the month of the right hand and this the next month is the month of the left foot right there's got to be different things they're gonna be different dress short that we can pull out of it the two kidneys right different types of wisdom the gold bladder the gallbladder is generally taken to be a source of bitterness it's called in Hebrew Aymara which means literally bitter and it is the source of depression if you say to your psychiatrists I am feeling a great deal of Morocco bruh and feeling black bitterness the black bile is taking over my life a Jewish psychiatrist here in the state of Israel will say yes I am or prescribing an antidepressant right this is this is recently common terminology the intestines right and it's specifically the small intestine as opposed to the large intestine the liver your liver is generally taken to be the source of bad things deliveries were purifies the blood delivers the most blood in it then we get to the something called the cork Yvonne and the cave are the Kirk Yvonne is generally translated as the gizzard of foul it's something to do with the grinding of food and it's to do with digestion what you do with your food you take things in its ground up inside you and then it's a it's expelled so the month that has that is going to be talking about this sort of stuff then you have the caiva which is the fourth stomach of the cow otherwise it's the stomach of the human being because we have just one stomach other opinions say it's the esophagus small intestine some say it is the appendix right so as we get through the months we're going to come to all of these and you're gonna see that these are just standard classic assignments of emotions of ways of doing things that are connected with parts of your body when it says right hand or stomach or left foot it's not necessarily talking about your literal right hand or your literal stomach we're talking about a process that you can understand by looking at what my right hand does as opposed to my left hand assuming your right handed right and no disrespect to the left handed us right so the whole point that I have to keep pushing is we're here to try and get some understanding out of all of us and to make sense of our lives and to make sense of this particular month that we're going to go into so if you can open up a homage if you have a Bible in front of you hopefully they'll at least want to hear if you have one for me I'd be very happy all right I need the large print edition thank you okay so we're gonna look at to check two things right obviously anything that comes in 12 is gonna be connecting to the stuff that we want to talk about so we're in the book of Exodus a portion of chapter one okay here we go yeah those of us so we're all on aren't schoolbooks we should yeah we should all be on the same sort of page right um Exodus shmoop chapter 1 verse 1 there are actually 16 times where the tribes of Israel are listed and they're they're not all the same so the assignment of the tribe to the month is going to be different according to whether we're following X's chapter 1 or Numbers chapter 1 and the general division and break down with this is one is going to be the Gras version to go on a Vilna version of the Seyfried serie and the other is going to be the version of assad you got on all right again check the counties that you don't have to worry too much about but what this does give us is number one two months or rather two tribes for each month right and in our case we're going to end up with three tribes for what for our particular month because one of one of them is going to be Joseph who did who moves aside mess up what was it was it works [Music] okay exes chapter 1 verse 1 these are the names of the children of Israel came to Egypt we're coming into Egypt Jacob with Jacob everyone was hassle first removing Shimon LaVey Judah Issachar Zebulun benyamin Don Naphtali GAD Russia okay so that's the pretty particular order there grant Joseph is already in Egypt and we have now a list of 12 tribes exactly as they are the men themselves and they are twelve brothers right moving ahead to numbers chapter 1 safe abundant bar not even mark here okay look up numbers right I have a stone addition of a flush here so you know yeah seven twenty six and if you have a stone addition just of the thrush are shot by mid Barney we're looking at a census in the wilderness and the leaders of the tribes right so God speaks to Moses in the wilderness Simon we've left Egypt the Red Sea has been split the Torah has been given all sorts of good things and here are the names of the leaders of the tribes alright so you're gonna notice something here and you're gonna see a great deal of similarities but the in addition to the names of the tribes we have the leaders of each of the tribes because each one of those is going to help Moses count the the Israelites if you look a little bit verse number 10 for the children of Joseph for a frying belly shall not the son of Omri hood for Menasha Galilee eldest son of the ducks were so the tribe of Joseph is divided up into two right and that means you have twelve tribes because lavey is left out all right you get all the lists here but it's only later on that we get the Levites the Legion in the army of god and if you look at verse number 27 the Levites according to the father's tribes were not counted among them right so they have a separate census and if you look at chapter two you can do this by themselves these are the way the tribes are set up and the compliments the end compliments of the various tribes and again the leaders names are there and each of the tribes is divided that are the divided the tribes are divided up into the threes and they go on each side of the of the of the intent of mean the Illinois the Michigan okay and here again we have if you look at chapter 2 verse 18 the banner of the camp of a frien right the tribe of manasseh these are two separate tribes all together and Lavy is left out of this right look at Exodus go back to chapter 28 in the book of Exodus because we're gonna be we're gonna be dealing with this and we're looking at the various things in the temple or rather in the Mishkan and the portable sanctuary that the Israelites were using so it's a little bit in one of the things that they made for the high priest was called a hoe Shack a breastplate which was placed on the a foot and this is something we spend quite a bit of time with going back a few weeks and if you look at X's 28:15 you shall make a breastplate of judgment of a woven design in reality it was not a plate right we see this thing represented on the front of a Torah scroll quite often and today it's a representation of what was and it's made of metal or silver today but this was actually woven who was made of gold turquoise purple and scarlet wool and linen twisted together square shall be folded etc etc you shall fill it with Stone Mountain four rows of stone and I'm looking here in the art scroll Edition and they have simply not translated the stones names into English at all they've simply translated them there were four rows of stones and the stones in each row represent one of the twelve tribes and in fact the names of the sons of Israel the twelve tribes according to the names engraved like a signet ring each according to his name shall they be for the twelve tribes that's verse 21 so there were these four rows of three stones each and you can see that the drawing other you can go to the the website of the temple Institute and you can look at the the reconstruction and they have selected certain stones based on their incredibly extensive research but we're just going to use various stones that we are familiar with to to start getting some meaning out of all of this okay so the starting point is text number one mhm s stands for mayhaw sheet Lowa i did not write that out yeah I did here on the Hebrew it's the very first one on the right the top of the right on the column and it's where we started this whole thing this is where we began at the very beginning that there are 12 words in that lesson tomorrow maybe a page of the Talmud on off Hashanah that the rabbi's had a fair amount of difficulty understanding right that should be familiar hopefully you recall some of this and through their knowledge and experience with other languages they were able to understand what these twelve words are absolute bottom line rule everything is a is on an equal playing field here what looks like just being dictionary discussions of scholarly rabbis trying to figure out what some words mean no this is a number 12 it's got to be connected to the 12 tribes and the masculine does it for us right so the Mishnah teaches us now by oh she proves from a verse the horn of a ram is called a Karen what's the point here you can only use something called a Karen a horn that to blow the shofar on Rosh Hashanah so how do we know that for example a yo Vail when we're referring to a verse in Joshua refers to the one of around RB Akiva said I went to Arabia I heard a ram called yasuo which would be vol and from this we can infer that the meaning of the term Yeovil in the related language of hebrew is exactly the same so they're talking about coincidences of language and understanding what one word means from another across languages which is standard classic scholarly methodology for understanding a word that we don't now we look at a similar language look at Arabic in this particular case or Aramaic or whatever it happens to be and we say there's a similar sounding word over there similar looking word and we know what it means right we're not concerned with that at all how what they're what they're dealing with but what we're getting to is the yo veil the trumpet that is sounded number one in the Jubilee year to freeze to cope to free the slaves and the chauffeur of redemption at the arrival of the Messiah go home and read Joshua chapter six right because what this is the siege of Jericho and there's a whole layer of meaning and reference here I'm guessing what the issue pizza revenue was getting at is all I have is this handful of lines here but why would we bring in this tomorrow why would we bring in this picture of the siege of Jericho right going back to the book of Joshua right you're all familiar with with this story right Joshua leads the Jewish people into the Promised Land and they have stay at cities that they conquer the cities that they don't have to conquer they surrender and Jericho in rabbinic literature in Midrash him is a city of black magic Jericho is a city that yeah that is not defeated my normal means but this is really really interesting stuff we did a course going back a year or two of radical and ridiculous readings from various sources and this was one of them Jericho's walls were maintained by black magic it's something straight out of Harry Potter right that you need to have the right spell the right combination of things and that none of the weapons of the time could have defeated it so they they want they walk around the city seven times they the show for so many times they shout and cry out it is a spiritual encounter right between the forces of evil that are represented by what is already there and the forces of good so what's the show for about the chauffeur is about putting down the dark wizards right let's stick with me stick with Harry Potter right my kids grew up with this where we're steeped in the Potter law lore right the chauffeur represents an enormous amount of things and where it's the ration text sorting in the Hebrew and it's a third paragraph here in the English here is a list of 12 things that correspond to the 12 months of the year the ram's horn the yo veil which literally means Jubilee but also has the same meaning of ram's horn refers to the month of Tishrei first one on the list first month of the year because in this month a person must understand that God can take Israel out of bondage bizarre Hodesh this is the only point we need to take here and this is where we started again if you remember that sheet where we had all of the focus points of the months but xerath oldish in this month so i real hard on Lahav in it is necessary for a person to believe to understand that God can bring Israel I think meaning the individual Jewish person and the nation as a whole the hay root a llama that God gets you out of jail God hands the get-out-of-jail-free card Lahore okhla ham kilo can you meshuggah dim male lamb that no matter what bondage the matter what slavery you were in no matter how terrible the last year has been because you cannot escape the difficulties that you've been having whatever it is my failure to get up in the morning to go Davin with a minyan ticket you know pick up pick up myself right my inability to focus when I'm attending a Torah class let's not get into all the other difficult and horrible things that people can be enslaved by the month of Tishri has at its core the notion the power of you were never really enslaved at all the low Michelle la Ali had met alone no one ruled over you at all Rach who Lovato the only one who was actually in charge is God all the time the Doherty of prison cell has always been opened the key is not even needed you can walk out right so that's where we we began quite a few weeks back with what's the focus of this month we go into the month of Tishrei the month of Russia Shana will we make God a king we enthrone God we start this whole process of repentance and of review of our life and this is what we do in the present month of the month of Elul and then we come to Yom Kippur we come to the Day of Atonement where we ask God to forgive us for our sins and then Sukkot which you know can deal with a lot of things that God's protection on our journey through life we're looking at a month where God is setting us up for success in everything that we do including those things that appear to us as failures that's a very very hard lesson to take it's very difficult to understand if you're feeling down if you're sick if you're unemployed if you have a strong desire to learn about Torah but you fall asleep every time you start listening to a class or you open a book what are what what's going on right the ultimate point is you're being set up for good you are never ever being set up to fail when the things that you think are holding you back are things that are holding you back to you gonna be even better after you overcome them and walk away from okay let's take a look at the stones the issue with the stones here is that there are two tribes that line up with the months of the year right each year has two times one of them is Joseph with regard to Tishrei and the other is Benjamin right so I can look at my nice of the page and also if you want to look back at page no.3 all right and I'm looking in my copy of these safer you'd see row we have bunches of charts of all of these things the tribes that line up are Joseph and Benjamin and our task is going to be to see what they what this all has in common we're not going to look at the name of the tribes themselves and the progenitors of the tribes because one of the things you can do is go and look at the birth story of the tribes and that's actually a piece of reading you can do yourself without any of this when their mothers give birth to them Joseph avenge right there both the daughter both the children of Rachel right and what does she call them and why and this is not not rocket science in terms of reading right a little bit of a little bit of Bible reading handful of lines and you'll see there is there are factors there we're looking here at the stones on the ocean on the breastplate of the high priests I did this one first I have no idea why yeah because it comes in order this comes first in the book right so it's the bottom paragraph on the first page and it's the bottom couple of paragraphs on the right-hand column only on the Hebrew text right so I've put in here X's 2815 a devotion of of judgment the work of a master weaver etc etc and we are now here in row number 4 there are other ways of lining them up and again the speaks of the complexity of the whole thing but it also speaks to the complexity of human beings right it's not one-size-fits-all you look at what we might call general astrology here you are born in the month of we're looking at Libra most naive that means you're a certain type of person and the story here will there are a lot of different choices and there are a lot of things to look at and there's a lot of meanings but the meanings do correspond and overlap through the Grove a significant degree and our task is to say whoa this is talking about me this is what I really need to be feeling going into this month right when we go into the month of Tishrei in four weeks time when it's Rosh Hashanah what power is there in time itself that God has put there for me to use or if I'm born in that month or if I have a child born and or if I have a relationship with someone born in that month maybe there's something I can understand more because I've learned this and you will either get the Eureka moment or you won't because these are these are books that genuinely reach out and grab you did you ever read a book called Jonathan strange amazing amazing again if you if you like Harry Potter this is you do good if you like ponder this is like Harry Potter for adults and my English who knows they might forget and it's a it reads as a history book with footnotes of the wars with Napoleon but being fought with magic against the background of the revival of magic in England and right at the very beginning there's a distinction this mate I think is very very valuable that there are a lot of books that are written about magic this is the book Johanna Clark there are a lot of books that are written about magic but then there's a limited number of books that are in themselves magical and that's an important distinction when you open up most of the writings of the great Hasidic rabbis you're looking at books that are themselves magical you're looking at the window an opening into the spiritual world into God's universe and there's a handle that goes out and grabs you and tells you something and sometimes it's a foot that comes out it gives you a kick because you need to be given a kick and you need to be told this is wrong you're not doing the right thing you're looking at things totally wrongly or incorrectly wrongly but these are the sort of books we're looking at here and I think that's a very important realization so here we go shoham right is violent in front of our cellist right deal show him as a cellist onyx onyx is the stone of Joseph on the breastplate of the high priest the Onyx stone had the name of Yosef on it onyx is love he says show him who Ahava it's basically an assertion that you have to take but he's gonna give you proof of that commotion it by Aaron we've already explained this in the book of Genesis chapter 2 verse 12 and if you have some time you can look this up it's the verse about the Garden of Eden and the rivers that go forth from the Garden of Eden how do we know that show how onyx refers to love because it goes to a certain land where there is no lack where there is crystal and there is onyx stone let's let's look up the verse I think it's worth it's worth taking a minute and looking at this Genesis 2:12 because it's gonna say something very very specific and this is where he is getting the notion that onyx shoham equals love and not just love but intense love and unequivocal love that is reciprocated and between God and people okay I assume I have this right [Music] if the river issues forth a comeback a couple of wines we're in Genesis chapter 2 gray sheet there that time we're in verse 10 the river issues forth from the Garden of Eden to water the garden and from there it is divided and becomes four headwaters the name of the first is P Sean the one that encircles the whole land of havilah where the gold is the gold of that land is good but Dola is there the art-school translation is being consistent and the shoham stone as well we're saying the dolma is some type of clear crystal and shoham is onyx not necessarily a hundred percent correct but we got to say something because we're talking in English here right so the issue Pizzarelli is looking at this particular verse and on going back quite a few pages in the book he says that this refers to the land of Israel is quoting Midrash is quoting Zohar this refers to the land of Israel but Dola crystal is the temple which is the source and the focus of your fear or of God and show how it refers to the true love or the only the only true love which refers to the love between God and people and this is based again Zohar sort of terminology but always giving right truly truly love someone we're not talking about a great love of chocolate here right we're talking about love of another person what do you want to do is get right and that's that's the relationship of God in Israel that God always wants to give us stuff and that is love and that's how we get to Joseph right it's not a simple connection but once you see it and you look at it for a minute it does make sense right Joseph had a stone on the breastplate called shoham so the month were looking at the month of Tishri is the month of Joseph and the month of the shoham stone of the Onyx which refers to love hi ready Leo say hi yeah Ahava aza lash ami bera but the third line down on the top of page number two Joseph had a very strong love for God to the point where it was very easy for him to give up all the desires of this world because of his love of God what are we talking about here Joseph and the wife of Potiphar but again you gotta go back and read this whole story right Joseph is sold as a slave into Egypt and he gets out of jail at some point and he becomes a more senior slave in the house of a man called potty fart and in the text clearly in the Torah mrs. Potiphar throws herself at Joseph and he resists right and he resists so he is the the paradigm of overcoming this type of desire but how do we do it right he could have done that thing he could have gotten that word hot with muscle 44 I've probably gotten away with it right how did he do this he got away with us he got out of this particular situation because of his incredible love of God ma-mutt you're aa low high alcohol I'm owed Matt's Mameha Massa because if he had only got a real fear of God he would not have been able to withstand the test right the ultimate test comes someone offers you a million dollars to do something in cash right now that you're not supposed to do right whatever it happens to be if you are only afraid of God watching you if you're only afraid of the repercussions then you're gonna say well I'll take the million bucks but if you have this incredible love where you want this reciprocal relationship with God then you're gonna say that it's not worth it to me it's totally not worth it to me to destroy this relationship we learn in the Talmud and Aaron when the evil inclination takes charge no one remembers the good inclination because of this great love that Joseph had for God God did him a favor God showed Joseph demote do you know shall Aviv God showed Joseph the image of his father Jacob at that particular moment when mrs. Potiphar was tempting him the most he saw his dad's face right and we're going to assume that leads to had a very good relationship right not everybody gets along quite so well with their father or considers a parent to be an inspiration but here definitely and this yes ammonia cackle Avenue hey I thought and God also said to him at that point your name is gonna be on the stones of the high priest and you're gonna have this in your past either you're gonna lose the privilege of getting your name there or it's gonna be an incredibly bad association of people who will look at you and say look he doesn't deserve this honor right Joseph love of God which God returns we now have to move to the next stone we've got two stones here right and this is this is an int this is an interesting one and we're gonna have to see how how these two things connect the second stone is the stone of the tribe of Benjamin right when we're going to talk about the tribes themselves they're gonna be three tribes for the month but here we're only looking at two stones the stone assigned to the tribe of Benjamin on the ocean is the Yosh PHA I think I've written it out with with the Jasper right again the names are not a hundred percent certain but if we look at I did put this somewhere there we go if we look at the list after Onyx opal the stone possessing all colors so is onyx by the way and so is Jasper well Jasper tends to be predominant in green right again what was that particular stone they had a couple of thousand years ago and the one that they picked out then assumingly with divine inspiration all right this is all the work of its ala and I only out of the the architects and designers and we assume there's a fair amount of God's direction over there go by the stone or go dig up this this particular stone the the precious stones can be very radically different in their appearance from one place to the next from one mine that they get the from to the next and in that era they had this particular color but in our time the same stone looks very different right so I'm just going to go ahead with the with the translation that I've gotten from somewhere or other and that this particular stone is a stone of Benjamin what we're interested in is not the stone itself right and this is our disclaimer nonetheless and notwithstanding that we do make a disclaimer around this maybe there is something about that stone that can help remind you of this do we want to go as far and say this stone has some energy to it and that it does some sort of magic for us and there there is this thought and I can even find your sources and talk about these things that maybe you should keep these type of stones with you if you need to feel this type of thing but here we're looking at a out of focus and the shoham is on the the unconditional love that is Torah sources this is verses this is Midrash this is oh I hear it's real simple the stone is called a Yasha fee because it has a mouth the word divides up good Shin hey hey the Benjamin character when we're looking at this aspect of the month of Tishrei it has a mouth live love to swallow hoola kibale and to receive Cole had to vote and him say him that olam all the good things that are found in the world all right so yet there is a math which we can of course read and number of different ways if you want but here we're looking at Genesis chapter 49 again reading you can do yourself relatively straightforward it's actually one of the more complicated book chapters and the bonneville in terms of understanding it Genesis 49 Bereshit the very last chapter is Jacob's blessing to each of his sons right there are 12 sons they each get a blessing and the other the other the other power chapter the parallel is that is right at the end of Deuteronomy at the end at the very end where we have Moses giving the blessings so these lines where Jacob one of the patriarchs of Moshe right the leader of all Israel they say a line or two about each of the tribes with Jacob it's the individual person he's addressing with motions the tribe as a whole and these lines are significant so report Ohio State is taking the line from the blessing of Jacob Genesis 4927 Benjamin is a wolf he will hunt binyamin's AV trap tariff is literally to tear apart right if you want your National Geographic specials you see the Wolves and the Lions ripping their prey to pieces right not the sort of TV shows that I like to watch but the guy I sci-fi shows helps me understand Kabbalah and Zohar Benjamin is a wolf he will hunt he will tear apart that prey in the morning he will devour and the evening he will disappear will divide the spoil the thing that Benjamin does and we're gonna see that there's there's more there's more to this is go out take things from outside the cab and devour them we're gonna see that there is an additional aspect of this but this is gonna take us a little bit of time to get to this is your Mordechai OSA explaining it and right somehow or other cut this off in the Hebrew returning English the good things that are found among the nations the Benjamin character has the power to collect gather and internalize receive he looks to the good of all the nations and brings that into Israel Benjamin's job in the broadest sense and we're not to necessarily just tell him other tribe is to take stuff that is found out there look at it and say do I want this do I not want this to sift and select we're gonna we're gonna analyze this a little bit more and bring it into more and to more clear the next time but the question that I want to finish with here is we're heading into the month of Tishrei right as if the day it's a little bit a little bit down the road but here I am getting ready for Rosh Hashanah getting ready for Yom Kippur getting ready for Sukkot what's my focus gonna be what are the energies that I have to work with in this particular month that is really so important is this the first month of a new year it's a month of all these incredibly high an important holy days and what we've gotten so far from Joseph and his stone the Shoah and benyamin and his stone the Yash Fay or the HP I can put this into two words from Joseph and the shoham we get love we get absolute love of God which is returned it's a two-way street and from the Yash Fay and benyamin from Benjamin and the other songs are called jasper is to select is an active process of sifting and selecting so two things that are not the same but must be connected in some way in the month of Tishrei there is out there an absolute commitment to love of God love of Torah connection with God and that we do get on these major holidays because we put so much focus and so much intention into preparing for them and getting the full measure out of them but you know something this is a world out there and there's a world out there beyond the base of Madras beyond the study hall beyond the synagogue there are things even beyond what we would call Jewish observance and Jewish knowledge there are things in other countries there are things that other people have and some of them have something good that we can take and we can take in so maybe that's both that's two sides of the same coin or two stones that fit together right whether it will make a nice ring or a necklace I have no clue all right that you got to go to a jeweler and see what they can do for you I'm assuming you know which stone is actually which but the power and the focus has to be there's a whole world out there and there has to be good stuff in it right I mean I produce this text on my computer using Google Docs and using the Internet then the Internet can be used to do an awful lot of bad things I can scam people out of money on the internet right not that not that I've had any such desire or respond to letters from lonely ladies in Nigeria and let them take away my money there this possible is negative to everything and the month of Tishrei has these forces and these foci write great plural of focus focuses love of God that is returned reciprocal God has you back God is always there and giving you another chance right which is the which is the the whole story of Rosh Hashanah of Yom Kippur and nonetheless don't ignore the rest of the world because it does have something okay we're gonna refine this to get the next time because the we're going to get into the names of the tribes leaders the names of the tribes leaders and there are three of them this is going to involve a little bit of Hebrew you have difficulty with Hebrew we're going to spell up all of these words but if Hebrew is not your best subject to talk to us we can we can happen we can happily help you with all of that okay thank you for your time and concentration and we will continue this month of Tishri thing next session [Music]