Matzah as a High Risk Investment

so there's uh a guy walks into a bar and it's not a joke this is what really happened a guy walked into a bar the other guy docked [Laughter] a guy walks into a bar and a big big burly guy this is a bar at a hotel lounge up on the 20th floor and he sits down at the bar and uh he starts talking to the stranger next to him and he says then by the way you know here on the 20th floor that the wind current between the buildings here is so strong that if you jump out of the window before you hit the floor the wind current will actually lift you back up and put you back inside the window so the other guy says no that's impossible the big burly guy says no it's definitely true and i'll prove it to you so they go over to the window 20th floor and jumps out starts plummeting but then the second before he hits the sidewalk he just sort of makes a u-turn and he sails floats back up and hops back in the window and he says there you see 100 uh fine so uh the other guy says wow that's amazing i gotta try that he jumps out of the window and he plummets and he hits the sidewalk and the bartender says superman you're a real mean guy when you're drunk superman you're a real mean guy when you're drunk yeah okay what we're going to talk about are uh high risk situations last minute saves right at the last second what am i talking about specifically i'm speaking about the great paradox of pesach observance the great paradox of pesach observance is that we spend weeks maybe even in some cases months getting our homes ready for pesach which means specifically to be hummus free we rid our homes of comets and then after it's all done we deliberately bring into our homes the biggest risk of comets that there could be i'm talking about the matzah itself we take a product that is made from two ingredients which two ingredients the two ingredients that make comets you take flour you take water and you mix them together and the timer starts ticking and it's like the bomb squad trying to defuse a time bomb you have 18 minutes to get this thing baked or it's going to become the exact thing that you just spent a month getting rid of so here's the question instead of creating this high pressure situation why don't we just avoid the whole thing now i'm not saying you have to eat matzah it's part of pesach but we can make alternative matzah here's the suggestion alternative matzah what would be alternative matzah you know have you seen the pesactike products that they make today with the tapioca flour and the potato starch they make stuff that looks like bagels and bialy's and all types of stuff so i'm sure that with this same non-grain flour they could make some pretty convincing schmoramatsa why not you're saying no you don't go for it why why not or it's a test test no why can't you do it well because you're kidding me you can't eat why can't we make matzah out of there are five grains there are five grains that are true grains wheat and barley are the two main ones and then you have spelt oats rye so you have wheat barley spelt oats rye so instead of using one of those five use chickpea flour use potato starch we were commanded to use from those don't we have to use from those those grains so this is a this is a discussion that our sages have this is precisely the discussion that i say just ah this question is asked in the gemoda you want to ask this question yeah and it says based on aposic the passage says and you should guard the matzes so our sages learn from that that which requires guarding that which if it wouldn't be for our vigilance would have inevitably not inevitably within 18 minutes become comets so ushmart the verse alludes to the idea that in order to me matzah is in the proper sense of fulfillment of the mitzvah and pesach it has to be something that invariably rather rapidly in fact would have become comets which means only from the five grains the other types of flour do not leaven they they do not come to chemoths when water is combined with them but rather they uh begin to rot and unless you bake them quickly but they don't have a leavening process they have uh another chemical reaction only those five types of grains have that leavening process so this question was asked and answered by the sages long ago the answer is ushmart the verse comes to tell us [Applause] are by definition not just non-humans not just non-comets but matzes are by definition what would have become comets except for intervention okay so we have to understand this concept a little bit a little bit better the great defender of the jewish people great lover and defender of the jewish people was always looking for uh an extenuating circumstance on the basis of which to exonerate jewish people and and and the jewish people in general so there's one story where uh levi says to hashem says look how you made the world you took all of the temptations and you put them in front of our face you walk down the street and you beset with temptation and you took all the truth the wisdom and you hid it in books imagine if someone would have been born to a world where it was reversed imagine if you master the worlds had brought a person into a world where you walk down the street and you are beset with truth and with wisdom and that if you wanted temptation you'd have to go read about it in a book then nobody would sin but since you did the opposite what else do you expect from us and what claim can you possibly have against us so that's a wonderful story of leviathan and it's typical of those kinds of stories but it's still the question remains why in fact did hashem create such a world why did hashem create the world in such a way that the entire prospect of entering this world is fraught with spiritual peril the riskiest thing that can ever happen to a neshama is coming into this world and why did hashem set it up that way okay so you can have all the all the answers about free will and tests us and it's uh to strengthen us but give it time for a minute to ponder the philosophical question that there's an alternative i mean at least for a moment consider the fact that at least in theory at least in theory the world could have been different there could have been a world there could have been souls that go into bodies and it wouldn't have to be so high risk it wouldn't have to be something that's almost invariably gonna going to cause damage or at least has a high high high likelihood who who emerges from their embodiment unscathed spiritually unscathed you're saying initially it wasn't supposed to be like that hashem created the world right so there was there was there was a heaven on earth it was ghanaian okay fine true so that's correct but well yeah we we did it to ourselves is is is easy but let me just push back a little bit and perhaps this again is alleviated line but you know like it says in tehillah which in kabbalah is understood as referring to the uh sin of the tree of knowledge nato al-ilah baniyadam an alilah is a libel so basically it means that verse means that hashem launched a terrible libel against binet aldo against humanity in other words he framed us he wanted us to look like we caused it to ourselves we didn't cause it to ourselves okay we were some complicit but it was entrapment he set the whole thing up and he knew from the very beginning there was going to be a sin of the tree of knowledge and he obviously had that planned out that was part of the drama it's part of what he expected to happen by the way similarly same thing giving us all that gold when we left egypt and then being shocked that there was a sin of the golden calf so yeah there is some uh some partial blame on our part but hashem said it up that the whole heaven on earth thing was so fragile that it was basically set up to fail and he knew he was creating a world where for 99.9 percent of history i mean except for those first few hours the the human condition is going to be one where embodiment is incredibly challenging for the soul and that the soul is going to be at risk the whole time that it's here so it's back on hashem it's the ball's back in his court for creating the world this way so i'll tell you a story the story is about uh really about a father or maybe some would say it's a story about a son i don't know i'll let you decide if it's a story about a father or a story about a son it gets i guess it depends on who you identify with a hosted a simple classic a farmer from one of the towns outside of lyajna ryajna was where the where the altar the balatanya held court for most of the years of his leadership so a simple closet a farmer from an a small town outside of a small village he came to the altar and he was bemoaning the state of his young son his teenage son who was a very talented boy very clever and charismatic had a very strong personality and this boy was headed down the wrong path and in today's day and age we would call it youth at risk so the altar told this man you arranged to get your son to me and i'll take care of the rest so the father comes back home he sees the sun and he knows that his son has a weakness for one thing he loves horseback riding now horseback riding so what do we know about horses we know we don't know anything about horses but in the late 1700s in eastern europe horseback riding was not considered to be and i mean today probably it's considered very posh right horseback riding right okay but in late 1700s eastern europe riding on a horse was like for a cossack it was a real crass course type of thing that's no that's not what a a jewish boy didn't go horseback riding yeah you have a horse so it's a beast of burden at the family farm it pulls the plow or you hook it up to a buggy and you go sit in the buggy like a mensch but they'll go riding on a horse like like a car sack it's very not nice and this boy was into that okay this was part of or symptomatic of his whole uh leaving the the fold so the father knew that if he offers the boy an opportunity to ride the horse he's not going to be able to resist so the father says to the boy i have an errand that needs to be done in lyajna in town i want to know if you can maybe do it for me so the boy says perhaps a bit um brazenly yeah i'll do it if i get to ride the horse so the father that's what he had in mind the whole time he says fine okay ride the horse but he knew that's what's going to get the boy to go into town so the boy gets on the horse and he rides into town and uh he comes to the altar rabbit his errand was to bring some type of a message and once he was in the the shul of the altareb it was not very hard to get him into a personal audience so he's he's there in in the altar of his presence in the altar of his room and the altar just starts chatting with him conversing with him and asked him about his life and what his interests are what he likes and the boy starts talking about horses and um the altered says explain to me because i don't get it what is the attraction what's the allure of of a horse so the boy says well if it's a you know if it's a good horse a strong horse a fast horse it gets you to your destination so much more quickly now not in an agreement he said yeah but if it's a fast horse then if it goes off course then it gets you lost it gets you away from the path so much faster the boy thinks for a minute says yeah well that's true but also if it's a fast horse as soon as you realize you're off the right path you get back on the right path so much faster as well now that it says ah yes as soon as you realize he said then as soon as he realizes and then the boy it dawned upon him that the altar had been speaking to him in metaphor about his own life that he was in possession of a fast powerful mighty horse this was a certain power within him and that this power within him had become counterproductive right michigan the one who is greater than his colleague his evil inclination is commensurately greater so here was this talented young man and he had this fast horse let's call it this power powerful personality talents and rather than being an asset they had become liabilities and it was drawing him away from the proper path in life then caused him to see how the very same force that had become destructive as long as he would identify it as such if he could self-diagnose and realize that he was not on a good path and he was quickly getting farther and farther off the path then the very same power which had become destructive would actually become a positive force would bring him back to the right path as soon as he realizes in other words dalton didn't tell him that there's a you know an evil monster and you have to go kill it or trap it or tie it up and throw it in the bottom of the sea without that ever told him there's a horse now the horse right now is taking you on the wrong path but if you become cognizant of the situation and you'll recalibrate that very same horse the very same horse will become the engine to bring you back on the right path and not only bring you back on the right path but ultimately that horse that engine will be what propels you for the rest of your life to accomplish great things now this is a story about i said i don't know if it's a story about a father or a story about a son it's obvious to say it's a story about a song because he gets the most screen time in the story but uh i think it's also a story about a father because uh you don't see the father's reaction maybe even the father doesn't even know the whole story i don't know but it's a lesson for the father as well which is that um sometimes maybe maybe all the time what we think is a bug of our children is actually a feature and if we don't know how to nurture it and channel it obviously it becomes destructive but the difference between destructive and constructive is not getting rid of it but properly directing it and and that's uh that's not just a parenting tip it is a parenting tip it's a big parenting tip but uh that's a guide in life we have this ego the sense of separate selfhood those who have learned you know what uh what an absurd delusion it is to buy into one's own separate sense of selfhood right there's nothing but hashem and nevertheless we were given this really robust sense of separate identity i am oh yeah hashem may be bigger than me and older than me and more powerful than me but i am right i am and i claim i claim my autonomy at least in my little bubble i i get to do some of the things i want to do that's called ego or ego edging got out that sense of i am autonomous both in my existence and in how i uh how i live and that is the root of all evil ego is the root of all evil self-consciousness becomes self-obsession which becomes the justification for everything nobody thinks he's the bad guy nobody thinks he's the bad guy everybody thinks they're a tragic figure nobody thinks they're the villain in anyone else's story it all comes from ego in fact siddham tell a parable about the the malacha mothers the angel of death he came to god and he complained that his name is bad for business because the malacha movis his job is punitive he's supposed to punish people with death death sentence but in order to do that he has to trip people up and make them liable for death by making poor decisions and when his name has the word death in it people go running so he says to god i can't do my job with the name like malachi mobis like angel of death so god says fine no problem i'll give you a name it's a little more tame you do a dba doing business as and you'll uh you'll call yourself sutton so he says okay i'll try it out and he comes back he says well it's not good god says why is it not good he says because people ask me what does that mean i say it's a hebrew name don't worry about it they say but what's the translation adversary adversary i thought you were my friend take a hike so hashem says fine call yourself yatzohara so he tries he ate zahara he comes back says god it's no good right in the name ra means evil evil inclination come on i'm showing my cards god says okay fine i got another name for you this name the siddha came up with and it's almost cute you call yourself nepheshabamas animal soul it's almost you know it's kind of cuddly animal soul so he goes and he tries and he comes back and says god this is still not working i'm about to close the deal i'm about to convince somebody to do something totally insane and convince them that it's in their best interest right and they're about to do it and then they say to me what's your name again i say animal soul they say you know what i'm not comfortable taking life decisions uh making life decisions based on guidance from an animal i'm gonna talk it over with a couple people and that's it boom and i lose it and they never they never get back to me so so god says to the angel of death slash adversary slash evil inclination slash animal soul he says listen i didn't want it to come to this but i have a name for you you can do business under this name and it's perfect for what you do and in fact if you call yourself this name nobody will ever question you in fact they will always think that you have their best interests at heart and in fact they will not listen to their loved ones they'll listen to you he says what's the name that i should i should call myself what is it he said call yourself yes yes i exist or conscious existence ego sense of selfhood uh as the parable goes the uh slash sutton slash it's a hottest never miss went under the name yesh and business has been so booming ever since then that he hired another delegate to focus on each and every one of us in other words it's that voice in your head that sounds smart because it sounds like you so that's the ego that's the ego the ego is the source of all of our problems so i have an idea how about hashem could reorganize reality and he could create everything it would be just exactly the way it is except we would be egoless we would eliminate that potential for disaster we'll make it safe the soul will come to a body right then it can do physical mitzvas and everything but no ego no separate sense of selfhood so this this this possibility was also considered at one time and pleaded the case was pleaded before before when when when did it take place right before the giving of the torah the angels came to hashem and they said how can you give your glory the torah hashem's glory that existed before the creation of the world primordial wisdom the blueprint of creation how can you take your glory and give it to human beings of flesh and blood it's a it's degrading it's degrading and they're going to mess it up they're going to all mess it up they're not going to do it they're not going to keep it so may sure was up in heaven at that time was during the 40 days and 40 nights and um so hashem told me sure no he says no you answer them so yeah uh so so measurable starts going through the ten commandments and showing how they're inapplicable were you brought out of egypt do you have parents do you do you work so that you should rest do you do you have envy and competition amongst you but then the coup de grace like the winning argument he says listen but forget all the specific details of these commandments whether or not they apply to you let me ask you a very general question do you guys even have a yatsuhara no i didn't think so case closed and that was it and hashem gave the torah to the to the jewish people souls in bodies so it's kind of counterintuitive at least at first glance do you guys even have an evil inclination and that was the winning argument that should have been the winning argument for the angels the angels should have said look we don't even have an evil inclination we're not going to mess this thing up and meisha abano did the opposite he said to the angels do you guys even have an evil inclination no i didn't think so and as such what's the point of giving you the torah so when hashem gave the torah and he gave it to people who have that separate sense of self who have that ability to rationalize and self-justify to the point of even making very poor decisions when hashem decided to give the toyota to such people it wasn't by accident it wasn't by accident at all it was by design he gave us that evil inclination he gave us that that ego that sense of self and that also wasn't by accident that was also by design that also wasn't a bug it was a feature it was the primary feature this is the idea of a high-risk high-yield investment no risk no return little risk little return high risk high return what was the high risk the high risk was creating us the way that we we were created hashem you bet the farm he went for broke you put all of his chips on one number and he spun the the roulette wheel so to speak and the odds are the odds are we're gonna mess it up the odds are this is not going to work out well but the end of this story we all know that we know the end of the story the end of the story is venerkatsu when he realizes when each one of us realizes that there's a horse inside of us and if it's unchecked it's but when it's harnessed and it's focused then it's an asset the greatest asset then that is the greatest reward for the greatest gain the greatest profit from hashem's perspective how does hashem gain how does they say what do you get for the man who has everything penicillin what do you get for the man who has everything penicillin he has everything you gotta give him penicillin he has everything what do you think about it okay do you give hashem where where can hashem gain where can hashem make a prophet he's got everything prophet for hashem is when he gives us free choice and he stacks the he stacks the odds against us and we still come through and not only we come in we come through in spite of this uh this ego but we incorporate that into our service of hashem and we make that the basis of our service of hashem in other words we choose to humble ourselves see angels don't humble themselves what ego do they have they don't have an ego a human being has to humble himself or herself in other words it's just like matzah matzah is humility right matzah is flat that symbolizes the humility comets is puffy and it symbolizes therefore it symbolizes ego and our sages say that the yetzahara is like into comets so mata is bittel bittle is self-abnegation self-nullification self-sacrifice sometimes we say bittel isn't thinking less of yourself it's thinking of yourself less bitter is freedom from self-obsession but true bittel isn't when the default setting is a lack of self-concept that's like an angel hashem didn't give the torah to the angels he gave it to souls and bodies true bittel is when there's an act of surrender there's a choice to surrender that if it wouldn't be for the surrender then this ego would become unfathomably destructive but when i intervene when i make a when i make a choice and i decide to surrender to hashem surrender that ego then the surrender itself becomes the ultimate vehicle for god to express himself in my life for his will to be expressed through my will to make my will his will but that only happens when there's the potential to assert self-will so it's exactly the same premise as why only that which could have been comets can be matzah only that which could have asserted its sense of selfhood meaning the jewish soul that's in a body with an animal soul in a healthy robust sense of separate selfhood that's that's the water hitting the flower and invariably if you leave that alone if there's no training there's no hinok there's no there's no intervention what's i mean it's a it's a given you make that fatal combination you put a soul in a body and give it an ego and a separate sense of selfhood it's like the water hitting the flower it's only a matter of time rather rapidly in fact that things are going to get out of hand and yet if we can intervene in that situation that's when we can become matzah when we choose selflessness we choose selflessness the act of surrender the choice of surrender to tell hashem your will not my will oh i have a will but no i'm choosing your will not my will that's matzah and if not if that's not even on the table if the potential for the horse to destroy us is not even on the table then there's no potential for the horse to become to become the the engine for great spiritual accomplishments nothing and and for that hashem didn't need to give the torah to souls and bodies and in fact hashem didn't need to make a physical world he didn't have to make any of this so the entire purpose of creation is really based on the premise like leviathan of a question why is it like this well like we said it's not a bug it's a feature this is the nature of existence yeah grammatically you would expect it's to say libro with all of your heart with one base it says it with two of them and our sages point out that this is referring to two hearts two dimensions of the heart the it's a tell even the it's a harder that ultimately love a love of hashem is not it's not enough to love hashem with that part of us that is naturally inclined to love of hashem in other words what we call the godly soul but we should take that part of us that on its own that left to its own devices rebels against hashem and to curb that and to train it to domesticate that beast and to turn it into a an asset like like like schleimer who was the wisest of all men he had the best parables he said says initially in proverbs that there is much produce from the strength of an ox he wasn't giving farming tips what he was saying is then an ox left on its own is a bull in a china shop it ruins everything but when you put a yolk on its back then everything grows yeah can you give the hasidic reason why they most of the jews did not leave admits ryan i've heard people say they liked what they had rather than what they were going to is there a different perspective that the rabbit took why those people didn't leave mitzrayim most of them did not leave the question why four-fifths of the people did not leave mitzrayim maybe i could throw it back on you and say why did one-fifth leave oh okay there there's there's a there's a bigger question which is if four fifths and you hear this i've heard people say this if four fifths didn't even leave mitzrayim why do we think that we're going to do any better when meshiach comes i hear this all the time people say that maybe the majority of kalisa shalom are going to remain in gulas you ever hear people speak this way i have it's horrifying so let me share one perspective with you about that and it actually is based on the haggadah and the hasidic understanding of the goddess specifically the deba's way of explaining it you know with the four sons when we say to the wicked son if you would have been there you would have not have been redeemed what kind of thing is that to tell the kid what kind of thing is it to tell them that's devastating you're cutting him off you're telling him that you shouldn't have even made it here that's what it sounds like so the neb explains it like this what are you telling him if you would have been there if you would have been in mitra you wouldn't have made it out that's true because that was mitsura that was not the ultimate perfect complete redemption the proof of which is that after we left egypt we were in exile again multiple times but i want you to know something that was then this is now in the coming redemption with meshiach every single jew will be redeemed so yeah you wouldn't have been able to leave mitzrayim that's true but i'm pointing that out so that you understand that that will not prevent you from leaving this exile with meshiach so in in order to answer your question let me say like this psychologically it makes a lot of sense that plenty of people didn't leave and that even a majority of people didn't leave or even a vast majority of people didn't leave what's the kiddush the novel idea is that when meshiach comes everyone's going to leave which is really at the end of at the end of it all what really counts there are people are going to be struggling until the last moment people who you would think you want to talk about high risk high yield there are people who until the very last second you would think there's no way they're ever getting on board with this there's no way they're not going to be part of this redemption it can't be i don't see it and those people at the last second are going to turn around and that and that's exactly what hashem wants that's exactly why things were set up the way that they were in order to have that high risk high yield so we can take think about it like this you're taking the negativity and you're transforming it you're taking a potential force for destruction not just a potential force for destruction but in in actuality a force which unfortunately most of the time becomes destructive and that force itself is being repurposed so the kid with the fast horse that was destroying his life now becomes the kid with the fast horse who is who is making incredible strides in in getting closer and closer to hashem and of course that kid is all of us the kid's father's all of us and we're it's multi-dimensional right i think that's also an important lesson for us you know the kid was quote unquote at risk you know and not going in the ways of um family father wanted to and father we thought it had a lot of news of course in such a way but my point is that they didn't reject them and say he didn't reject him but that's not enough and that wouldn't have been a story because he wasn't rejecting him wasn't the story the story was that the altar told him or he didn't even tell him necessarily we don't even know if he knew what transparent transpired doesn't matter what the father knows what matters is what the son knows by the way it doesn't matter what you think of your kids it matters what they think of themselves okay let me just make this clear because to you what's obvious is not obvious to others it's not that the father didn't reject him it's that the kid was told that there's nothing wrong with you to the contrary there's everything right about you see there's a big difference between telling somebody look you're messed up but you are messed up kid and so therefore you'll always have a place here that's called tolerance is that wrong yeah well it's first of all it's condescending and nobody wants to be condescended to but second of all it's untrue because hashem didn't give people character defects in order to plague them and burden them every single character defect is just an unchanneled character asset so the truth to be told to our children to ourselves to each other is that whatever it is that's ruining your life is just and as of yet unchanneled power to give you a very very meaningful life it's one and the same force the point of yeah story i'm adding that it's a you know an angle where it's looking at because we're the son we're the father but we're also the kid and hashem is our father saying you know you're messing up but i'm gonna help you channel you know if you're open to it hashem's the ultimate father hashem doesn't uh doesn't reject us for being messed up because first of all he's the one who made us messed up but second of all he knows that we're not really messed up not only we can but the only reason we were given these issues is because they're really powerful in a in a positive like you way they're not bugs they're our assets those same concepts were just worded in this way our our struggles our challenges or our character you know you might say they're not in our way they are our way that's right that's right the fact that flour and water become comets is not a problem it's what makes it possible to have matzah we have to understand what matza is mata isn't just something that's not comets if that were the case then eat a piece of styrofoam matzah is precisely that which would have and by all right should have become comets that's that's that's a metaphor for life and for existence and for each one of us and for and for the whole world it's not just that which isn't comet isn't ego but that which would have and by all rights should have become unchecked out of control ego except for intervention which is also why and this is a topic for another time it's an ongoing avoida it's an ongoing aveda it's not just like you make a decision one time to surrender it's an ongoing thing it's a daily thing every single day every single moment one is an intervention in stopping something and the other is an intervention in adding something in other words when you just said when you have a negative character trait it's recognizing that we can use it for good right the the matzo thing is if we left it alone and didn't intervene and stop it then it would become this this thing we don't want it to be the other one is we have to add this we almost have to but it's not just that we don't we stop the matzah it's not that we stop the dough from becoming comets it's that the intervention makes the dough into matzah right it's not just we didn't let it become comets we made it into matzah right but the intervene it just it sounds like the intervention is holding back with the matzo case we give it less time we hold it back you know what i'm saying it's just the processes are holding back and in other cases sometimes the process is adding too well the process is intervention it is holding back it's holding back the the asserting self-will no i'm saying when you when you notice that a negative character trait it really can be used for positive you're right it's it depends you you can use it for positive by holding back your ego and realizing you could use it in another way but when we develop character traits it's usually a positive concept it's not seeing it as a negative in the end it's used as a positive thing but the initial act of intervention is an act of surrender you're saying by the parent to notice that the kid does have a good quality you know what i mean just the analogy was was a little off for me but i get what you're saying well ultimately the parents can't do it for the kid the kid has to do it for himself each one of us has to do it for ourselves right so you're saying when kids have a character trained parents when you have a character don't worry about parents don't worry about parents that's that's a step removed let's not worry about cliche cliche when we have character defects the common denominator in the solution to every one of them is some act of self-nullification right i get that it's just you said any character defect is just really an unchanneled character asset after self-nullification but this is not musser this is not muslim where you take where you try to build yourself into a mensch we don't do that we're not into self-help this is siddhis see this is so first step is matzo surrender selflessness after you make room for hashem and you let the light shine in then the character assets start to to manifest but it's not that we purposely pursue character assets that's a byproduct of bitter the whole thing's about bethel okay let me do it real quick yeah um