Lag BaOmer and the Sefiros (HaRav Yitzchak Breitowitz)

okay we were uh talking about L Bomer yesterday and um I had mentioned there are two aspects to LBA om and yesterday we spoke about one of them the first aspect and that is the connection between LBA om and rabi Shimon bar but there is another aspect of LBA om and that is we spoke last week about the fact about the very moving and Powerful story of rabi Akiva and the fact that 24,000 of his students after years of learning and struggling and his wife living in poverty he finally becomes the greatest of the rabbis of Israel and he has 24,000 TM and uh such a wonderful thing and yet the 24,000 students died in a period of time between pesak and Shu we talked about this last week I don't want to repeat the whole story it was my speculation we know re ia's wife died shortly thereafter it's my speculation I have no source for it that it was the Heartbreak of you know she finally saw a reason for all that she went through and all of it collapsed and that's enough to kill you RAB aiv on the other hands started from scratch think about that as well he lost 24,000 TM he started again he started with five and you know he could have had the attitude you know what's the use of five five students and yet those five students among whom are RAB shim are the foundation of the mishna and the Torah shal so one of the lessons of RAB AA is you don't give up that even if everything you worked for collapsed gets destroyed you don't simply throw in the towel you keep on going on um of salic remember salvic of University um I remember in the um I don't remember the exact year but I think it was either the late 60s or the very early 70s uh suffered three bereavements uh in one year in a very very short span of time uh he lost a brother he lost his mother and then he lost his wife uh so he sat Shiva like one after the other and people who knew him I I did not know him well say he never really recovered although he taught Torah for another 10 years but he never really recovered from the death devastating nature of that tragedy but at the end of the third Shiva that was the Shiva for his wife he said a thought that I always remember kazal tell us that Hashem created many many worlds before this world this is not the first world he created many worlds before this world in fact the terish Israel the great commentary on the mishna actually says that that might be the understanding of dinosaurs and fossils because when you say God created many worlds it doesn't have to be other planets it could be on earth there was an earth that underwent ice ages and meteorite showers and all of that is pre the world that's described in braus you see we're not manipulating the six days of creation that's a different thing you know some people want to say well each day of creation might be a billion years no no no the six days or six days but the age of the Earth could be connected to the prior world that are precious this is the so's is he created many worlds that he destroyed and R salic just raised the question now why did God create so many worlds that were destroyed what's the point so his answer was that Hashem wants to give us a lesson that even if all the world worlds you create get destroyed you have to go on and create again Hashem is teaching us the idea that just because your world is destroyed doesn't mean you don't go on and that that in many many ways is the whole story of Jewish history what did we do after the Mikes what did we do after the Holocaust we keep on going you keep on going because that was the MAA ofes RAB AA kept on going he lost 24,000 TM he said I'll start with five five like what's the what's the use of that what are you doing five and yet and yet they are the tan Rabbi mayor rabi Shimon RAB Yehuda these are the foundations of Tes shal came from those five it's amazing thing because they had many tum Etc in fact most of the tan are from that group come from that group of five that are the T of rabaka in the second in the second round now there is a tradition though and again I I don't have to get into the M did they die through a plague did they die through bar okay we discuss that as well and U I'll get in trouble for that but I don't want to have to repeat it necessarily but be it as it may there is a tradition that on the 33rd day of the Omare they stopped dying on the 33rd day of the Omare the plague stopped there's Aus do we mean it stopped and it didn't start again and that's the Min that says the AA stops after LBA or was it a Hiatus it started again but LBA was a day off and therefore the Sim LMA om is it was the day that the the plague or the deaths ceased they stopped so that's the second aspect of L in other words has for two reasons one is connected to raim that we talked about yesterday the other is connected to the cessation and the deaths of the T rebi AKA did it stop or did all of just yeah yeah so so obviously that's a very good question uh if had had 24,000 students and they all died then the reason it stopped on LBA om is because nobody's left right that's that's a very good question so what exactly would be the Sim so apparently I don't have the exact numbers apparently 24,000 must be around number meaning to say there were those who did survive meaning theoretically they could have died LBA om uh they got spared there was uh it's actually similar it's not the same suya but uh to what uh of tsus and M Tinus that the last Tish of the desert when the generation of the desert is supposed to die the last 15,000 didn't die meaning the last group who were supposed to die uh the 40th year of the desert actually didn't die so even though the tyus says the whole door died but that could leave over a certain a certain remainder now the question becomes why would LBA be a special day why would LBA be a Hiatus why would the 33rd day of the OM which otherwise has no particular kivas why would that be the day that the students of rabi AA sto dying so this teaches us a very very deep idea of L B Because let's remember what thear says theama says that the students of RAB AA died because they did not show proper covod respect honor to each other now let's ask ourselves what does it mean they did not show proper covo to each other let's imagine we would have had a video from that time are we assuming they pushed each other out of line they called each other names you're an idiot you're stupid get out of here you're worthless we can assume that if your Z to be a talet of RAB AA especially RAB who taught as we learned a few weeks ago right loving your friend as you love yourself is a CL God in the Torah we would assume his students followed H very very well if you would have seen them you would have said up true so what does it mean they did not show proper C to each other so there's a very interesting observation fromal who says that the chish the root of the concept of cavod comes from the word Cade Cade means heaviness cavod is not a matter of etiquette it's not a matter of politeness it's not a matter of D ER you know I could be polite to you I could be you know even nice to you but I look at your person as my inferior it's not really worth very much but I'll be nice to him because I'm a sadic no bless obl if that's that's how you pronounce it cavod is very different cavod is I look at you and I see you as weighty heavy not not in terms of physical weight heavy significant having to use the Latin word gravitas heft right even in colloquial English when somebody's a real real big expert in a field we might say he is a heavyweight in his field so covod is not a matter of being polite covo is a matter of looking at a person and seeing them as worthy seeing them as people of substance who have something to give it's a certain attitude towards seeing the godliness in the other person and on that again for reasons that are still a bit mysterious the students of RAB AO were were felt uh by God to be lacking a little bit maybe maybe again we could just guess about this they had such a great teacher that they didn't really consider what they could learn from their colleagues and go who needs you I got I'm connected to the big guy right so whatever it is there was a sense that I don't need you you don't really contribute anything to me we're all connected to the AKA and the like now you may ask so this is very subtle meaning to say if you would have seen their behavior behaviorally perhaps they acted perfectly but in their heart there was not a sense of seeing the in the other person now you may ask well do you get the death penalty for that do you get killed for that you die for that so one way of looking at it is it's not that you know God is punishing them but it works this way these 24,000 people were supposed to be the Torah leaders they were supposed to be the gulum of the Next Generation they would be the ones that would teach CLA Israel Torah and KES basically said you can't be a leader and a transmitter of Torah unless unless you could look at the your other Jews and see their see their goodness so it's not you see it's not like a punishment it's not like oh I did a sin so God punishes me it's simply they couldn't be the ones who would be the transmitters of Torah and that actually explains why we do mourn remember I I mentioned that the the the the of during are not from the law of the gar the gamarra gives us gives us the story but the gar does not say there's any they are minim that developed in the time of the ga and I should add a little thing that among ashkenazim the minhagim got much much more strict in the time of the Crusades because many Jewish communities were wiped out during eeor and Sian so in truth it's not just it is very much connected also to the Crusades but be it as it may people ask the question okay the students of Reb AA that's pretty bad but to be brutally Frank we've had worse no six million Jews died in the Holocaust in the Crusades there were many more as well why are we still fixated on T rabaka like why why am I still every single year for a long period of time I got to think about the T reab AA like why the answer is it's not so much I'm mourning their deaths because if the only issue would be mourning their deaths as as I say unfortunately we have more deaths that we could be mourning but it's to remember why they died spiritually I don't mean politically why they died and therefore resolve in our own lives to rectify that idea and that is why it is not a contradiction to the fact right the the thear is to prepare ourselves to receive the Torah and the second aspect of SP is to mourn the t r so you might think these are two different opposite things no it's all the same because one of the ways we prepare ourselves to receive the Torah is by connecting to each other and by seeing K seeing the other person with cover that's not just you know I'm nice to you because I'm a sadic but rather I see your kivas I see your good greatness your goodness I see your heft I see your gravitus I see the significance in who you are so that's not like a separate thing that is how one of the ways you prepare for kabala sa so this is the general perspective on the K of the t r so what about L this gives me an excuse to segue back to Tom dor which I have not yet abandoned but this is uh maybe a good transition to the conclusion of it and that is you'll recall as we did T dor and I always like to tell people that I I make no claim to have the best Tor sh on the internet but I I do believe I can claim I have the longest running share and tar on the internet think we've done more than 70 sessions that much I think I can claim legitimately uh but you'll recall that the to so much of the tomora is about the spos that the different ways that God relates to the world and as you know the seos are divided into the first group of three which is God's mental operations kesser Crown but the lower seven are the emotional behavioral attributes okay I'm not going to go into that now but just to remind you of the lower seven it's loving kindness gura Inner Strength Tes Beauty n eternity or Victory hod is Glory yod is foundation malus is kingship right these are the lower seven spherus these lower seven are extremely important in many many aspects but as you know each of the lower seven spheros is linked to a particular personality who exemplifies that Maid of Hashem so the maid of is exemplified by Abraham the med of inner strength is which is the synthesis of and is eternity or endurance is M hold glory is Aon is y malos is you'll notice in this cabalistic designation Moshe and Aon precede Ys right Moshe is Aon is hod yosf is y even though Yosef lived earlier but mystically so to speak what yose represents comes after Moshe and Aran now this notion of seven repeats itself in many many contexts it is the basis of thep of suus which actually explains why the primary although there is another opinion but the primary sh is that the fourth day of suus is mosha the fifth day is Aon the sixth day is Yos people are always asking why is it out of order but but the answer is very simple obviously ypon is a mystical concept and it's based on the Z and it's based on the spheros so the seven lower sphos are also connected to the seven weeks of the Omare each week of the Omare is connecting to the spiritual energy of that designated sphere so the week the first week of the OM which of course is the week of PES is the week of which is Abraham the second week is the week of Y which is gur right and again one could spend many many hours and you know we spend some time on it but whatever time we spent on it you could double triple quadruple and more as to what exactly is the nature of the spiritual energy of each of these sphas but you understand that just like each of thep is connected one of these spher each week of sphere is connected but what gets a little more complicated is that since there are seven days in a week so every single day represents a sphera as well within the larger sphere so for example in the week of there is a and you can even see this in the sitter even in the AR sitter at least in small letters the designation cabalistic of the first day of the OM which of course is the second day of p is it is the day of loving kindness within the week of loving kindness because it's the first day of the first week the second day of spirit which is the third day of p is called the Inner Strength within and you not confuse the second day of the first week with the first day of the second week the first day of the second week would be called of gor the second day of the first week is called what on Earth is the difference here right everything will be could be inverted by in the next week so once again all I can tell you is there actually are Sim and books in English as well which try to identify how the energies combine and try to give each of us a spiritual meditation or exercise for every day of the OM that what is the focus of the gura within as opposed to the within the G and how you combine all of these different things so it's actually quite a I mean you know it's it's a deep idea but it's quite a a popular theme there's there's actually more than one book out there that tries to address this as a character building exercise and that of course is abs abolutely in the spirit although the Rach himself does not go through the days of s but it's certainly in the spirit of the teror in which we utilize the spos as a basis for building our MOS and our character and our relationship to toes yeah the dark and the and the white and vice versa they have the light and the dark it's like it's the the in the other yes yes and in fact the truth of the matter is uh in the world of of the ARA even the even the Rak cabala uh these these go on in you know with infinity meaning to say it's like what do they call those little dolls inside the Russian thing the do within the do within the do I mean at some point they're going to stop they can't go on you know infinitely but it's like every single sphera has all the other spher in it and all of those subser have all of the sphere is in it and it goes on and it goes on and it goes on and it goes on and go on so there's the of theor you know whatever would be it can go to an infinite number of of levels that's the fundamental even subatomic structure of the spiritual Universe okay so now here's a fascinating thing let's ask ourselves what combination of the spos is the 33rd day of the OM LBA om Mo shabas and Sunday so lagba om is actually the fifth day of the fifth week now don't be confused here we're going to count it it is four weeks and five days in the OM but but keep in mind when you say four weeks and five days that means the five days are in the fifth week because it'll only be after the five weeks I say right so four weeks and five days which equals 33 is the fifth day of the fifth week make sure you understand that even though you say four weeks because You' only you've completed four weeks now what is that the Fifth Sphere is iron so it's a double dose of Aron it is the day of Aron and it is the week of Aron Glory of Glory iron squared Why is that significant because we know that aon's outstanding mid was sh the pursuer of Peace the lover of Peace even greater than Mosher abeno Moser Reno his job in life was sometimes he was the most humble of all people of course but his job sometimes was to be tough that was his job he had to be that's the task that God gave him Aon was the one that people went to when they felt heartbroken they felt despondence when there was not shom between husband and wife or parents and children and Aon would bring reconciliation Aon would bring peace and that's why it actually mentions that when Aon died the Aus in CLA Israel was even greater than when mosha died because after I mean what can we say mosha I mean mosha was mosha the greatest of the greatest of the greatest but the average person didn't necessarily with mosha fact you can you can ask how many how many Jews ever even met mosenu they heard him speak gave the Torah but you know did you ever did you say good shabas to mosu did you say sh to mosu remember he was kind of a scary figure he had this Veil over his head like very mysterious person he was more Angel than human in many many ways Aon and again forgive me for humanizing it too much but Aon was a man of the people so people related to Aon in ways that they couldn't relate to mosha because of his Supernatural greatness so above all Aon represents H because Glory here refers to the capacity to see the glory in others this was aon's greatness Aon stepped back to let others shine so it turns out LBA om the world is so fused the spiritual energy in the world is the maida of Aron so now you can understand why the students of rabaka did not die on the day of lagba om if the reason they died is because they did not see the Kash the C the weightiness in the other person un LMA om at least temporarily the scales were lifted from their eyes they saw people in a different light they saw the true Essence they saw theas of the other and in the moment they attained that level even if it was only temporary because it may have started afterwards the Maga stopped immediately because if the Maga came because they did not show K the Maga stopped when they reached the level of Aron that's the significance of LBA which means LBA there's a special capacity that we can have to connect to other people to see the good in other people to see theas in other people we can maybe get to a certain level in that Aida that maybe the rest of the year might be a little more difficult for us so to speak our eyes can be opened to things that we sometimes don't see or we don't pay attention to right so this is the second aspect of L om the idea of hodod um wasn't whole thing about SP like only after like or is that all year round thing why is it that I don't I'm not sure I understand that we count and then each day of the counting there's like a sphere for the week and a sphere for the day we only look at that after well well well well I mean you know the interpretation was given after the fact but but keep in mind when you give that interpretation you're basically saying that that was the kavana in in in the Mitzvah itself in other words uh spos are not an invention they are uh you know they are an interpretation of what spiritual reality is right we don't we can't create spos uh we can only ident we can only discover and identify them so they are they are pre-existing entities they are the mechanism by which Hashem created the world that's all year round thing or only bring no no all the year round all year round all year round sure sure but but SP is a Mitzvah that symbolizes that but but but are all year round of course still on this day of the month or this day of the year it was yeah yeah yeah that mean anyal week also well yeah but but I think that may be true but I think you're going to have a little bit of a difficulty uh how how do you identify the week meaning to say take a random week of the year so I might say uh Sunday is and Monday is is K but what's what does the week represent it depends where you start there's is is it a week is it a gor week I mean where do you start do you start from R do you start from PES you know it's not I mean that's going to be a problem meaning we don't necessarily have a clear M as to how to define any overall week outside of the the OM weeks yeah so what gave us the the ability to Define it during this period well because I mean it's working backwards a little bit I mean since the Torah gives us a commandment to count seven weeks so in that commandment there is a week one a week two a week three so the the cabalists see that as logically correlating to the order of the Spheres but that's because you have a designated week one the rest of the year we don't necessarily have a number we can assign to a week even though you're correct with the days that that is the case Okay so this is a deeper meaning of l bber so now I I just want to conclude with the following idea so it turns out if you look at the two Simas of LBA om one is a celebration of the greatness of RAB Shimon that we talked about yesterday and the other is the rectification of the sin of the T RAB AKA that we talked about today based on hod Shabah what is interesting is that these two ideas are in a little bit of contradiction to each other because Rish represents what you might call passion zealousness total commitment fire remember that when he left the Cave the first time and he saw this farmer working and being o in parasa he looked at him and the guy burnt up and said how can a person waste his life with ephemeral temporary trivial things and not be devoted to tyus when I think about right we're thinking about learning no matter what mitv no matter what now here's the problem in the world that we live in we often see that the more passionate and fiery and committed I get in my mission the less accepting and loving I am for people who I feel are not living up to the standard you go to college go to work but I mean I'm telling even if they're religious and you know if they're not religious so it tends to be passion and zealousness tends to breed a certain denigration of others but then you have the opposite there are people who are loving and open and tolerant and accepting but they don't stand for that much sure you want gay marriage what's wrong with gay marriage two people love each other who am I to interfere with that abortion on demand it's a woman's body who you know how dare we interfere with reproductive choice now there's the point I'm making is we tend to have this dichotomy in life between the passionate true believers who may tend to be fanatically intolerant and sometimes even hateful although that's a very strong word versus the big tense open tolerant people who don't seem to have a moral compass and a firm sense of what the values of Life are about either or and yet what with L is telling us is this is not a binary Choice you're not one or the other you got to be both you got to connect to rabi Shimon barai be passionate be fiery don't waste your time on things that are temporary ephemeral trivial focus on what's important but at the same time remember to look at others and see their covero see their weight see their worth see their legitimacy don't allow your passion to make you intolerant and don't allow your tolerance to take away your passion you have to be both now the truth of the matter is this whole Shear is really a commentary on a PK it's a PK in zakar zakar was one of the last at the time of the second B Mikes beginning of the second B Mikes and Zar said You shall love truth and you shall love peace the kutar rebbi was said to have remarked it's easy to love truth if you don't care about peace and it's easy to love peace if you don't care about truth if I don't care about truth I could get along with everybody I just don't care the other way around if I really care about truth I can't get along with anybody because I think everybody's off in some way CU only I have truth of course right so what does the navi say sorry you don't love truth and not peace or love peace and not truth you got to love truth and you got to love peace and that I would suggest are the two themes of LBA om now let me just then total switch uh today is another very very very important day not connected to S this is the day of P right today is the for didn't say this morning P the story of the second P so I just want to tell you a very very short vort but what you think about PES sheni these people were T they couldn't bring the Corbin PES they were ritually impure they went to mosha Reno and they said why should we lose our chance to bring the Corbin PES and Moshe didn't know the Moshe went to God and says what happens and God said ah if they t or if they once once we get there to S if they're far away from y they're given a chance to bring the Corbin pesak one month later on the 14th of year this is the makeup for those now of course if if you're tmy even today you're in trouble but there's no third makeup but if if you were t a month ago you had a second chance so there are two lessons in says that we ought to contemplate sometimes a person feels they are so T they are so impure they cannot connect to God or D they're so far away they can't connect to God the Tor teaches no matter how T you think you are no matter how far you think you are D Hashem will give you a second chance you want to come near to him he'll give you that chance that's Point number one it is the gift of a second chance there's never a point of no return there's never a point where you're so t or you're so that you're beyond that's point one yeah you talking about generally re can they still return well you can do truan cus you can do you can do truan the cus goes away you do Tru on cus even the goes away now says there's another point though keep in mind that P sheni came only because people asked for it now there was no reason for them to ask I mean if the as it was known at that point was if you're tell me you don't bring a COR I mean it's like it's like asking you know uh can I get an exception to drive on chabas I I mean the the had been a t person doesn't bring a carbon P so you go to Moshe and you say talk to God about changing this I mean what's going on what is even in their mind to say hey we couldn't bring a carbon PES what do you know what's the hab the answer is that they loved Hashem so much they had such a desire to serve Hashem they could not bear the idea of being excluded so in truth even asking the question made no sense at all it made no sense to ask the question because if the was you don't bring it you don't bring it but they wanted to have a chance now what would have been if they just would have said like a good Jew would say the is the I'm putcher I'm perer maybe it's even an advantage imagine if we got a pure you don't have to clean up for pesak this year are we going to complain oh why am I deprived of the chance you know to clean my kitchen for PES assuming we got an officially signed and authenticated permission from Hashem I'm not sure we would complain that much but the answer is they needed to serve Hashem so here's what the rim says if they wouldn't have asked they wouldn't have got it this is quite amazing there would not have been P had there not been that desire so the two lessons of P sh are there's always a second chance but you have to want it if you don't care it's not going to happen okay and that's a general rule in Aus hasem Hashem is there when you want to be connected to him and he won't be there when you don't want to be connected to him right people you you can't really say to Hashem show me a sign and then I'll follow you it's kind of the other way around you make the commitment and then things happen before the commitment you know maybe May yeah maybe I mean sometimes Hashem does us to TOA but you can't really depend on Hashem kind of revealing himself to you until you show that that's truly what you want so those are kind of very briefly I think uh one of one of the things we think about on this great day of P again there's not a lot that we do on P other than not say uh but it is a it is a special day and it's worthy of thinking about the lessons that PES sh teaches us okay have a good good P thank you for listening to this awesome production to find out more and to partner in our mission please visit o.edu