On Being Brutally Honest and the Power of Prayer

Heat. Heat. [Music] Shalom everybody. We are here to talk about prayer. Um, Rabbi Flax, we're praying for him and all the soldiers and all of Amish is in the situation we're in. with the evil coming out of the north that being um none other than Persia, Russia, Palas, the head of the stake, [Music] and uh we're going to discuss some complicated or let's just say technical stuff first. Um sophisticated. There you go. So the word to what does it mean? What does it mean? So art school has a great introduction to the word ple. The root of t toilah is ple pale which means self judgment. It is a it is a reflexive to to judge oneself which sounds very counterintuitive. Aren't we talking to God? What does it have to do with talking to myself? What does it have to do with judging myself? So, modern Hebrew, you don't want to know what the serious investigation unit is called. You don't want them knocking at your door and saying, "We're here to do a serious investigation." Right? There's misdemeanors, which I don't know exactly where they begin and end. They seem to change, but we'll call them minor, relatively minor infractions. And yet, in Hebrew, you know, modern Hebrew, and you'll see why. We'll go through some of the ancient uh biblical Hebrew, it means a felony. It means to judge. It means to differentiate. It means to clarify and make decisions. As the as the arts scroll says, you're sort you're sorting out evidence from rumor. You you're taking you're trying to differentiate between valid opinions and wild speculation. So how do we see in biblical Hebrew that the word ple or plea is exercise in judgment? So if you go to Exodus 21 22 this in Mishati where a p two guys got in a fight and they hit a woman who was pregnant and the what do you call it in Hebrew it's an Uber and Uber is that which takes a ride right and it's a fetus the child the not yet born child dies because of the hit to the woman's body your stomach and a judgment. There's an assessment against him and he shall pay it by the order of the judges. And in the Hebrew the 22 says like this bless you judgment. Judgment. This sounds doesn't sound like a fun thing to do. Not at all. Let me let me just inter interject with the story. You're owning you're the owner of a big business and you have to order stock or you have someone order stock as it sells. You have to know what sells, what doesn't sell. Why would you keep ordering items that don't sell? They're not moving. So, you take stock. You want to be a successful businessman. You know what sells where it sells. is in the front counter, the back counter, the side, the left, is it near the bread, near the milk, whatever it is. Is it in the display cabinet or not? What sells and how's it doing in the sales department? Cuz you're going to order, you're going to take your good earned money and you're going to put it into more stock. So basically, to be a successful business, to be a success, not just a successful businessman, to be a success, you have to take a neph. all about taking stock taking an accounting of your soul on a regular basis. There was a question in the Gomorrah. Are we only judged on rashashana? Are we judged every single day or are we judged every moment of every single day? I have to tell you the Gmorrah does not really conclude which one. The truth is we are judged all the time on different levels. So if you look at uh we saw Exodus 21:22 that was true. Now, and if we take a look, Daniel, Daniel prayed three times a day. Did you know that? When did this thing develop? How was it? So, let me give you before Daniel, before we talk about Daniel in chapter 6 before the anessa, now it's the men of the great assembly establish what we use as the many of the braot. And who were them? is these 120 men. Some say the majority prophets and then sages and then maybe it's slowly, you know, over one or two generations. That's all. It didn't last that long. Switched over to a majority of sages and minority of of prophets. Some say no, it was always a majority of prophets. But the last imagine Kagi, Zakaria, Mali, Ezra, Nhema, Daniel included, Kanyan, Misha, Lazaria, Mori from the story of Esther, Zerubbabel. These were all prophets. Not only did they develop our prayers that we still say today, the whole I'm going to use the word knock, right? It's not the Tanakh part, but it's the Knock part that they canonized. Obviously Moshe brought into existence the first five books of Moses. But what comes out as our Bible and believe me I mean you have Christians also claim that that's their Bible just as well. It's from the anchor. So we have to have a certain amount of trust. If you trust the Bible, right, then you trust them. It's what we call part of the oral Torah. You cannot deny that the Jews had an oral Torah. We go through the rest of the Nak part and it's obvious that is oral Torah the even though it's written down who decided it's in and not in the ankola and that was canonized that was 2500 years ago Daniel was on this this um committee right it was basically you had a Sanhedrin normally from the time we left Egypt of 70 and even after the anchess was only one or two gener generations. Then it went back to 70. There was a great need after the Jews had returned from a 70-year exile. Believe me, a lot of Jews forgot about their their roots, right? You always had some Jews living in the land of Israel. But who came back? Only 40,000 plus from Babylonia. And they were for the most part, I'm going to say secularized to a certain extent. They didn't keep Shabas properly. The whole concept of muksa of what you can and cannot touch on Shabbat which is basically rabbitic but it's based on a Torah concept. You have to prepare before Shabbat. That's a Torah concept. But the idea of Muka and so many of the laws of Mukah was developed by this group of people on the way back, right? They realize, wow, they're watching people crush grapes on Shabbat, bringing things in and out of the gates of Yale, out of the gates of their cities, right? Doing business on Shabbat. And so they, what's the word? Knuckled down. They really, you know, got a little bit strict with the condition that as the Jews started to accept Shabas like they had 70 years prior, they would slowly lift a lot of these strict rules. Muka. The first year that they established Muka, you almost couldn't touch anything, right? It was basically everything except eating utensils. And then they slowly were more lenient. Cuz you normally you cannot have a baston override a previous bastin unless they were greater in wisdom and in number. Unless the bastin that makes the rule to begin with says this is we're going to allow later bastins to um uproot our edicts when the people uh are able to and get what the lesson was that was supposed to be taught. Look at Daniel 6 11. When Daniel learned that the writing had been inscribed, he went home. He had windows open in his upper story. You know where they were facing? East. No, they were facing west. You know why? Because he was in Babylonia, right? He was and so he faced Jerusalem at that place. Three times a day. He fell to his knees and prayed and gave thanks before his God exactly as he used to do before this. So the idea of praying three times a day was already instituted. Okay. But what was developed and what was it based on? There's a big makus. I'm not really sure it's such a big makus, but there's a well-known argument or our prayers three times a day based on the I'm going to say the invention or the creation by the aos Abraham Yitzkov or are they parallel to the carbonos? We have the tumid, they have the uh the continuous offering, one in the morning, one in the afternoon and then of course you have the burning of the leftovers in the evening and of course then you have musaf on shabas and holidays. So these these prayers how it worked originally before the ane kessa gdola people just prayed they knew what to pray. What does that mean? back to the judgment. They knew what was important. They knew what was crucial. And as we get further away from Sai, we lose it a little bit. Then we had a gullis and exile. So when you look at the 18, now it's 19 blessings. We're going to talk about that too. What are they? Right? Okay, we have a formula. First it's praise, then it's requests, and then it's thanksgiving. But what is it about the the requests? Well, we're going to see. I have to go back to the idea how it's judgment, self- judgment or taking an accounting of the soul. Finding out what's important that these are the 13 focuses. These are things that one should focus on. This is what is important. And it's amazing that it's 13. 13 is a magic number in Judaism. I just want to go back after I mentioned that it's about really focusing on what's important. So, let's say in 12step recovery programs, they claim, and I think rightfully so, there's no way one can recover from any kind of addiction unless you're brutally honest with yourself. Rabbi Torski wrote a book, right? Chuva, recovery through Chuva, Chuva through recovery. It's really one and the same. We are trying to do chuva, right? We're trying to be baluva, right? Masters of repentance. That that halavai, that's what we should be, right? Whether you're born religious or not, we want to. So the only way to do that is to be brutally honest. When I am wrong, when I could do better, when I made a slight mistake, when I made a medium-sized mistake or a big mistake, and how can I rectify it? What do I need to do to rectify it? So it's basically truth is staring you in the eye right when you go through these are the basic principles of Judaism. So what does it have to do with being being brutally honest and self- judgment I want to take you because we're talking about the word ple just to hit it home look at rashi in Genesis 48:11. Do I have it here? Yeah. Um, so if I ask you where is your heart because the idea and I'm going all over the place. We said about corbanos. Corbanote are in the morning and in the afternoon and the evening. So we can see where Daniel got this idea from. Right? So and what about Abraham, Isaac and Jacob? Each person can tune in to a different frequency. And Aram's frequency was getting up early in the morning. Yitsak's frequency was somehow working in the field. And Yakov, as we know, had this dream by the ladder. His frequency seemed to be at night. So it was something they tapped into. Doesn't mean the others were not on target. It was just something that resonated more with them. So to say that they invented or created or started this pattern is true. The fact is that God instituted the carbonos. One in the morning, one in the late afternoon and the rest burning in the in the evening. So just to get back to this point, what are you doing these three times? What are you doing? And I think it was Raboken. Somebody in the Gmorra says have we should be praying all day long. I don't think he means the shonstay. I think he means selfjudgment. Now, you have to have some compassion, right? Self- judgment requires a lot of compassion. And we're going to see it here as well in Isaiah. I'll tell you now in Isaiah 16:3, but we'll get to it. So, going back to Genesis 48:1. So Israel said to Yoseph, right? I did not imagine seeing your face. Right? He thought Yseph was dead. I didn't imagine seeing your face. And here God has shown me even more your offspring. I got to see man, right? So what does Rashi say? Low palalti. That's the words he used. I didn't imagine. So it's not just judgment. It's imagining, right? Who is that? I could be wrong. John Lennon. Imagine all the, right? Who doesn't want a world, a utopian world, right? That's what the Jewish people have brought into the world, a concept of a world to come. Not just resurrection of the dead and not just reward, but a kingdom of God on earth where we have rule and order. So Rashi says, "My heart did not fill me." Mean I dare not even to think that I would see your face again. In the Hebrew leni, I asked you, where is the heart? Right? My heart did not fill me to think the thought. Where's the heart? Right here. Right. Right here. The the thing that thinks. That's why the Torah admonishes us. Don't follow after your heart. Right? So, so you see that this idea has to do with thinking and that brings us to Isaiah 16:3. He Rashi quotes the word pali means thinking. He means thinking like it says in Isaiah 16:3. So, let's take a look at that a second. Isaiah is admonishing the Moabites. You know, they weren't very kind to the Jews when we left Egypt and he was trying to give them a way to repent. He was saying you can you could take the Jews in as refugees now, right? The northern tribes were on their way out, right? And what do you have left? Many many refugees. And you could be kind to them. And that could do what? that could be a rectification for what you did when the Jews left Egypt. But they didn't. They failed. But um the comment here says, so in verse three, render counsel, execute justice. That's our word. Executing justice. But remember, executing justice is not just for a negative. We we somehow think executing justice is a negative thing. He says, "During the noon time, make your shade as dark as the night. Hide the refugees. Do not reveal the wanderer." You have an opportunity to do chuva to rectify. And how can you rectify the again? You're you have a business. Hey, you've been ordering the wrong things or you've been paying the wrong price or you've been dealing with people who don't deliver on time. You could change. You could change. Isn't that amazing? But you cannot change if you're not I'm going to use the word executing justice meaning being brutally honest with yourself. It's very tough. I get it. Trust me. I understand. I'm a human being too. Who wants to look at their face in the mirror every morning and think, man, I have fallen short. I Right. But the only way to overcome, the only way is to realize your shortcomings. And of course, you get married and your wife is your uh your conscious and she'll help you out. She'll tell you exactly where you need to work on yourself. Okay. So just to go back to again some of the history who did you have is the some of the greatest sages I mentioned who some of the prophets were but you have Shimon Hat Sadik and his student Antigonos so this is going back interesting enough there are 18 blessings right as we mentioned there's a formula and this is how one should pray on their own this is probably how they prayed before they had this structure I mean the the exact wordage, verbiage, they knew to start with praise, then you make a request and then you say thank you. So out of the 18 blessings, we all know that later on in history, so at the end of the second temple, meaning and when the Christians took u liberty to uh cause trouble for us, the 19th blessing was what? Invented, developed. The idea of 18 blessings is because we have 18 vertebrae. And when you bend over and we do bow four times, we bend our back. We're supposed to bend like like a tree is falling. Just fall over, right? And then slowly get up stretching out your back feeling each click of your 18 vertebrae standing up. And when when you mention God's name, you the word bar, it's also related to your knees, bending your knees. Bar means you're the source. You, God of the source, because that's what a bra is. The pool, the spring comes from whatever source underground. And you're saying bar the source ata you hashem you're the source. And so we bend over these eight these four times. And um there is an opinion that there actually there were 18, right? That's we know. But that the 19th one wasn't added per se. There was a split. Some of the ideas were already in justice. So basically Katan made a new braha but he really just separated justice from what we should do or what we should pray for when it comes to the mal shinim. I mentioned the Christians. Anybody who was a detractor or an adversary of the Jewish people at that time it was the Christians believe it or not. Uh not much different than it was up until maybe 50 70 years ago. Who knows? But there's a lot of chuva that the Christian nations have to do. And you can read the book of Avaja and find out what will happen to them. You can't make this stuff up, fellas. Okay, we know that there are three pillars of Judaism, right? Torah, a go, right? Every Jew has these three traits. If you meet somebody that doesn't have the trait of a goid, you could think twice. Who knows? Maybe they're not really Jewish. I don't know. But Torah, and a voda is going to be the key here. As I mentioned a little bit, right? So we had the carbonas the tummy offering back in the day in the first temple period and even before that basically the different cities you had kanim there were watches the kanim of a certain city went up to and offered for a week or two weeks depends on what time in the history right now at that point by the second temple there were 24 watches but it started out with six then eight as the kahanic family grew and grew. So if they were part of a certain city, family went up to us and you lived in that city or that environment, the I'm going to call the metropolitan area, whatever the the area of that city was, you went out to the city center or the city square and you prayed. So there was a connection between the tummy offering morning and evening with your with your group with your city and that's how it went and we're talking about until the time of the of the kinescodola and and and whatnot. So a voda is strongly connected. In other words, even we call it a voda. It was originally connected with the with the corbonos. And as the corbonos went up, so did our prayers. Similar to what we talk about a chauffeur, right? We blow blowing the chauffeur the last 48 hours. Yeah. Right. War. Blow the trumpets in war. You come here every morning, you'll see it. Okay. And so so that was originally people prayed their own prayers at the time that the offerings were done in their city meaning what this the the city members were in Jerusalem doing it but everyone went out to the city square. So now you have what we call that was no set nusak. There was no uh particular order of words. But this is what u the anesah did. Remember these were the people who put the Tanakh together. You want to quote chapter and verse but you don't want to follow them with the prayers. We have a problem. Houston, we have a problem. Right? You heard that expression? So going back now to this original idea is it the head making all these notes thinking seriously I'm repeating these same words over and over and over again every day now are obviously we talked about putting in your own prayer if you don't something you don't put your own prayer in there's something a little bit wrong you have to feel maybe even saying the same words but focusing on different words Okay? Because this is it's canonized the same people that canonized the knock part canonized our prayers. So we have to have kavana. We should have kavana number one that we are praying to hashem. How we dress. Are you aware that there's a certain um expectation? You're standing before a king. You're standing before a very important person. How would you dress? Standard. How would you dress? So, there are different standards and let's just say it could be that there are different uh customs. I mentioned already, I kind of skipped over it, but there were 12 tribes. They all had different customs. They had different accents. They had different color flags. They had different uh stones. They resonated each one to a little bit of a different tune. And that's the beauty of Judaism. They were like a salad. Someone was making a salad earlier. You have colors. It's like an orchestra. You have the violin and you got the cello and you got the bass and who knows what. I don't really know that much about music, but you can have so many different What do they have some of these orchestras with 21 instruments, even more, right? I mean, 21 different kinds of instruments. It's amazing. So, this is what we're talking about here in terms of prayer that we all get together. You're born in Lithuania, the other one's born in, you know, eastern Poland. And they have a little bit of a different, you know, South Pole, they have all kinds of different um nuances and we love each other. We love each other, right? We appreciate the differences. So, going back to this idea, yes, it's it's in the head. It's as if oh, Rabbi Kellerman spoke about this. Why is it that we need to move our lips? Besides that, right? The fact that David Melik is speaking about I I praise you with all my bones, with all my flesh, right? It's not good enough just to be in the mind. It has to come out. He spoke about the way it bothered him. I don't want to, you know, you have to hear it from his mouth, but it bothered him as it probably should anybody else, right? Why can't you just lie in your bed and think, "I'm praying to God. Just me and him. We're communing. We're we're we're united." So, one thing that men and you know, men and women are different. Women, they have the gift of gab. And that's not that's not an insult. There is I mean, statistically speaking, they speak a lot more than men do. It's just it's an obvious fact. It's about the relationship. He speaks about this idea. He can see three men, three women walking down the street. All three are talking at the same time, right? Why? It's all about the relationship. Somehow or another, moving your lips, which I already express is just the fact that I'm praising God with all my bones, but it's coming from a higher level of salilute down to an action. Okay? Okay. And it's coming, it's bringing something into the world, but it's more than that. And I I have to say it loud enough for myself to hear it cuz I'm talking to myself. I am created in the image of God. Okay? Aren't you created in the image of God? Who am I talking to? God. I'm talking to my higher self. There is no part of God. I'm not a yeah of course I'm a portion of God but I'm not a separate portion of God. Okay, let's leave that for the coalist. But where does the heart come in? I mentioned this is the heart. But there has to be feeling and emotion, right? The heart we call the seed of emotion. We spoke about there has to be when I witnessed you'll see this comello theim when they do vido they do confession. Wow. It changed my whole view of confession. Okay. Confession seemed to me as an immature young adult that it's all about pounding your chest and feeling bad. What happened? Well, but sudden I see in Jerusalem at 1:00 in the morning or whatever a bunch of holy yin and I see it obviously you could see it all across the board but for some reason it was just so obvious by the besides the fact they say the same words every night makes it easier and I like that because in the Ashkenazi world you're like wow it's a tongue twister and you're trying to keep up and you have no idea because this is a really highlevel Shakespearean Hebrew. Here it's simple. It's push it and it's rhining and they sing it and they're dancing and they're full of energy and they're full of joy and they're loving each other and hugging each other and I don't see the same thing when I come out of Ashkanazi minion. Okay. But but so what does it mean? Number one, to have intent for the words. You absolutely have to. I just tell you as a baluva. When I first came around, they told me, "No, stay." Some people told me, "Don't worry about what it means. Just learn Hebrew and say your prayers all in Hebrew." The truth is, there is a concept like that that if you don't know the words and you say in Hebrew, it's as if you said it and you get a lot of credit. But as a thinking bal you come around sentient being and you want to know it's moving the whole idea is it should move you right it should affect you when you come out of your when you come out of a shul after prayer you're actually supposed to be a changed person a different person if you say these words you don't know what it means you probably are changed but it's too subtle it's too hidden. It's not at all recognizable, not to yourself and maybe nobody else. It could take a really long time. So my suggestion always was as a teacher now understanding my own experience, start with the English. Once you master a paragraph, a few sentences in English, you get the idea. Now break your teeth. Do one paragraph a month. I mean that might be slow but whatever your pace is a Hebrew paragraph once you master the English you have like a a an idea you've internalized the message then you can go and move to the Hebrew but it could take a long time there's no rush there's no race everybody according to their abilities okay so really this was only the first installment bizm uh whenever Rabbi flax is not available We have had uh Rabbi Goldshider. We have had Rabbi Wedgbrite. And now you get a little taste of me and Rabbi Flax told me we'll see if anything changed. He will be here next week. I don't know if that'll change, but we're counting on it. Rante will get back to basics with the simp part that we must feel. And again, if you're making stock, you're a businessman, and you realize you have been making a mistake, you've been losing money, when you correct that mistake, you should feel some sense of satisfaction and joy. And we we said you have to take all the time. Hopefully you'll understand that by domining and using the the nusak that the version that we use it's assisting you in making your nephesh it's assisting you in in in realizing what's important like Messiah like resurrection of the dead start with das the very fact that God even gave me like a jump starter he granted me enough wisdom where I can move forward And that's the first of the requests. And of course, Rafua and Davidic Dynasty and oh this just beautiful these as you learn and go through it you'll see these are the 13 primal parts of our soul and we'll learn about them as we go further. I wish everyone to be safe and we will be victorious through aus through unity mamish through working on our character through aus true akus if we can only overcome the internal yates we will certainly we will certainly overcome as we said in one of my shim recently one of the names of the yates is sophoni sophon means the northern one also means and and uh this is uh I I ran so will overcome everything we need to overcome be victorious. We'll see you when we see you. You see your sh