Elul Preparations (Part 2) by Rabbi Dr. Aaron Adler

we had the page in front of us and I digressed a little bit to expand some of the ideas the page we have today incorporates some of those um sources plus many others I'm going to ask you to turn to the second side of the page and just look at the the last Source because if we do the last Source first the sheare ends early right Source number nine it comes from kit this is rare people will ask me what in the world are you quoting from the kit was a work byans from Hungary about 300 250 300 years ago and it's a compilation of um all of what we call in laws of laws of laws of Shabbat and Kim and that's it that's basically what the book entails the um we used it in elementary school Once Upon a Time as a basic text to study denim the problem was that why while in my uh early days in yiva education starting from grade five and 8 and until 12 I lived in B Park where there was a dominant Hungarian Community there and the kar was immensely popular uh it didn't sit well with other communities because of the KRA Factor the factor of being strict on on many many many points of Al uh other communities had lenient rulings and lenient ways of doing things yet the did become somewhat of a main text until people graduated to doing the Mish which is a more book which was an addendum to the of R ofo and he already brought into play many of the diverse opinions that you have in the world of the akronim the lat the late great from the 16th century till today and many of those opinions were not necessarily the strictest opinion after died 1933 and in some circles the mishura is still the the common text the last word on the word of Al but in many communities that's not so any longer there are great great posim who um come after the like in the states here so we have other opinions out there and that makes life life somewhat complicated because what do you mean this is my grandfather told me such and such and the answer is you're both right you know what your grandfather heard was correct and what you heard was also correct and so the here brings the basic L month of customs and with underlined in the middle of source number nine what we talked about last week if you recall last week I talked about the of saying which is kavan 27th chapter of T some people started on the second day rash which is the popular custom some even began on the first day of R and explain because El only has 39 29 days and they wanted to make it into a full 30 days so that you add the you have 40 days this I'm not going to repeat the whole share from last week but the K brings the popular custom of beginning on the second day ofes which is the first of now this is a man living and hungry here in we don't say we say and the reason is because there's a y sheni Factor kicking in so is also the Y of sheni of the seventh day of sukot and and and therefore therefore the saying spills over in until but here we quit by and which is also we don't say here in Isel the um the idea of additions to the and I mentioned that we blow before the says this accustom even to blow the chaar by m at night I mentioned I never saw a blowing at night time before but I guess he saw it but he mentions it's not a widespread custom theim also have a show for blowing but has nothing to do withar they've never added the 27th chapter of tum into the dings but they have and this we talked a little bit about the the that M goes up on L for the third time of 40-day period till till yipa and uh and this this is where the basically kick in when they say we call the 13 attributes there's somebody in theer and I can tell you from experience in my seven years in B back in the 80s and having all of the month of el with my students who 80% were and therefore we had all the students join the we didn't force the Nazi students but we encourage them to do it to join the 80% and all of the staff the the teachers teachers of G and so on all joined and therefore we accured some experience in the Spy ritual [Music] of beautiful as we had the BTO will sound off theer every time there was it was a very moving moving combination of the Scher which gives you the chills and the shakes which is exactly what it's supposed to do it's a jolting experience and you're saying which is the core of every you don't have to be asazi for this Ori for this the core of all is the saying of the 13 attributes and you need a Minion for it so some of theim say that if you're saying at home for whatever reason either you delete that and then you just say the Poetry which most people don't understand anyway and but then it's like taking the the oxygen out of taking the air out of the balloon taking the the core issue of of of is is the is the and uh but some say that you are permitted to say as part of this in private provided that you you sing it with the canellation we call the trop as if you're reading it in the in the Tor so if you're proficient about laning so you can say with the with the TR you're allowed to do that and U okay uh but that's that's second fiddle the most important part of is with a minion to say AEM and I'll just say I'll just say that um the uh the division of the is not clear in the itself we talk about 13 attributes but if you open up ain's addition to Z he's got a a chart and he divides it according to nine different opinions I may have mentioned this last week to nine different opinions of slicing the pie of Hashem hasem k the um and so whatever we don't know the division and we say it and hopefully will pick up the right attribute that's applicable for whatever a in question and that's why one of the poems that we say during has the phrase we ask please choose the appropriate mid we have no clue which is the right one for any to synchronize the AA chart with the nor do we have a clue how to slice the pie if there are nine different opinions that means there different ways to slice the p and one opinion we do it according to the to and we stop now V is V if you know the you're actually in the middle of a phrase and there are some who count as another one they all end up at 13 and one splits the pie that you end up with which is like the way way end of the and people wonder when we say or Monday Thursday and some say it every morning when we say so we end with it's in the why do we do that the answer is it's dot dot dot etc etc etc etc until just in case we don't have it all correctly said so we symbolically bring it to the end of the pasuk as well and maybe it incorporates that entire the question is is the first hem count does the second hasem count does kale count is it one or is it two is separate is separate or is it together they're all different combinations all of the above are true depending on which view one points out to now if you look at on the top of this page the second side number four it's the rambam in the laws of chuva this is a key key sentence or paragraph in the Ram's laws of chuva where he talks about the fact that a person should view himself or herself as we enter the Y season as having 50% Merit and 50% demerit now again we don't know what's going on in our private charts how many how many a do we have we don't know and even if we had a numerical count we're not even familiar with the weight of particular a and yes a and mitv come with weights some are heavier I once gave a share called the heavy duty mitv and I simply focused on the seven or eight MIT that said they are they're equivalent to all the MIT and the ra tells us that if said such a phrase that a particular Mitzvah is equal or equivalent to all of the mitv you know it's a heavy duty Mitzvah one of them is living in is I've said that off in in Tac the living in is one of the heavy duty Shabbat is one of them is one of them is one of them not serving a is one of them not serving not worshipping worshiping right right the negative right not obser not worshiping is one of the and so on there there are just it's just it's a list it's a very important list of that are so we don't we're not familiar with the weight because there is a concept called in second chapter it says be careful with the easier mitzvot or the lightweighted mitzvot as you most probably are for the more serious mitv and then the Rah in his commentary to this mishna tries to give us an explanation or a categories which are the which are theot which are the more serious which are the lightweighted and he says well if it's the negative mitzvot this is going to be easy because there is a punishment chart so there are capital punishment and they come in four flavors and and there an order to the capital punishment that we're familiar with from the after we say then and on the S that we're obligated to get this and S they obligated that and the last one says the four versions of and we enumerate which is stoning which say even though can bring it about we should know from in an airplane crash that's also SK because what they did with a person was they threw him off the mountain and most he died from that fall before they even threw a pebble at him so that kind of death is called is burning people unfortunately get burnt is expiation sometimes people choke to death and and the if her is decapitation sometimes people are their bodies are blown up and it's also a type of her so in different modes these four types of modes of execution wanted to meet it out on somebody today he has his ways of doing it not in the form way that was practiced Once Upon a Time in Aon and we should be aware of the fact that even though your experience in Reading KES will tell you m m you shall die you shall die several times over in the the mishna tells us that if Aon executed once in 70 years it was a bloody baon which means they tried their utmost not to bring somebody to execution that does not mean that they let him off the hook they baon had opportunity of jail sentencing and this not the there's an or there's a general um Authority by baon to protect society and if there's a need to put somebody away for a prolonged time because that person is a dangerous to society they can do that so just because they didn't execute doesn't mean the person walks away and waves to the to the judges and say haa you know I'm a free bird he's not necessarily free bird so we don't have to worry about that and we also deeply believe that kosh's upper Court Heavenly Court can take care of the situation just as well but there is a that's that really tells us that the purpose that the Tor says this is m m is to teach us the severity of the AA the person has to know that he or she did something that's a capital punishment offense even today when there's no judicial Authority for exitation on this level of Al ba of 23 judges and so on so the ra tells us that the order of is not haphazard but it's the order of severity if somebody doesn't have that there it's the highest order of a sin and the next is the and the next is the next is and why do I say this because the mishna tells us that there's a dispute as to what the order is there's a view by the Tanish Shimon who says that if skillus ra her is 1 2 3 and 4 rabish Shimon believes it's 214 and three it's and so you may say What's the difference execution is execution the answer is that it teaches us the severity of an AA and it is important when a person does Chua to understand the weight factor of the AA and that's those are the first four number five is k k means beton does nothing to you but will will be some type of loss of habah loss of habah that's not something person is interested and a varus like eating on eating on P not doing a Brit I mean these are Big Time performances that carry with them the penalty of Kate that's U that's one of them and then the next one is called it's God's way mode of execution just dealing with a person a death blow however he chooses to do so and then the that was six and seventh is malot lashings again we don't do that today in a batin at all but if a person ate cooked beat and milk together and all this has to be of course with Witnesses it has to be for warning beforehand and and the person says I don't care and they bring him to court and they try him and they accuse him and they convict him so he would get the 39 lashes Mal coat and the eighth category is a in a that there's no physical act to it but it's just a a that's also an AA for example you remember in the Ten Commandments and so some people remember the great movie in 1956 Charlton hon right they say the book was much better the uh the um the the the tenth commandment so what is the tenth commandment so if you look at some shoes I don't know what you have here yeah you have it here it says L mod mod the English word in the King James Edition was not to covet I I never knew what coveting mean we we didn't use that in Bor Park covet right so I didn't know what that mean but it's it's a strong desire for a strong desire for it says it enumerates just in case you don't have uh your own imagination it could be for somebody's wife it could be somebody's property for somebody's animal somebody's this somebody's that those days it was in somebody's ax and somebody's uh donkeys and so on today it's you know the guy's car and the guy's Villa and his in a swimming pool you know that he has it and I don't have it that's an A but if you remember from where the splits the 10th commandment into two it's but before it's now the word to have or which is desirous lust so is also lust they seem to be synonymous seem to be synonymous phrases so the ra tells us the difference is is you walk by a guy's beautiful car and you say wow he has it and I don't have it that's already in AA what did you do nothing you continued walking and just went on with your life the very jealous Sensation that he has it and I don't have it is in AA now beton cannot punish because beton doesn't know what you thought about knows right it says God knows what's hidden knows what's going on in the inside but beton cannot convict because you can't try somebody he can't say somebody I think when the guy passed my beautiful car he must have had a Pang of jealousy let's convict him on it you you don't have a case because nobody's going to be able to prove that so that's says the r is that this guy's car you know I really want that car so I go over to the owner of the car and I say you're selling the car says no says no sell me the car I really want your car no but you know sometimes a person is such a nudnik and he tells the guy listen here's money down right on all right take the car and he takes the money so begrudgingly he sells him the car so you're not a thief you paid for the car but this this whole this whole show indicates how strongly you wanted that car that's L mode and if you take it without paying then you're a gazan then it's low to fine that's another AA but brah says if you violate LOL you get bonus you get three Aus you get l in the pocket you get l in the pocket and lowol in the pocket because before you stole it you must have wanted it and you may have done something to have to get it legitimately and therefore you get all these AAS in the pocket so is no because it's called a which means a a negative commandment there's no act to it it's just a sensation and that and therefore that's the lowest order of an AA so the ra gives us some type of a of a chart of of the of the severe to the more lenient type of mitzvot fine so we don't know what's going on and therefore as we approach yam we should think that probably we're on the to use the United States football game the 50 yard line the 5050 line you're on the 50/50 line Half Mitzvah half AA why because if you think that you know this year was a pretty good year I did a lot of I DAV properly I kept Shabbat never stumbled on Kash I mean you know think about it K doesn't have much on me this yum so I don't have to take this yum seriously I'm really in good shape or a person says see it was a horrible year I messed up with half the misus and more and I was a lousy guy um and you know what all the nothing's going to help it's a lost cause Raam says don't take either stand think even though this is a very very theoretical possibility that you are 50% let Al each of us a 50% let alone don't country is 50% but it's a healthy approach to Y that we should think ourselves as 50% that one more Mitzvah can tip the scale one more Mitzvah and therefore according to ramb theera program is a program of upgrading Mitzvah performance for the the objective is to tip the scale let's see it inside on Source number four on top top of the second page side therefore he should see himself as he's half Merit and half Merit the whole world is if you violate one you have now tipped a scale for yourself and you brought the whole world down because you're one of era now is getting counted universally for the whole world and you've caused the destruction of the world but if you do one you have decided in your favor and you have caused that you and all of the mankind will receive some type of uh help and and deliver and so on and therefore if you just jump to the underline because of this all of have the custom to add giving and other good deeds perform that normally you do not perform when from the 10 days of CH from from we called it so this is a program of being consciously upgrading one's Mitzvah performance and he says everybody I wonder if he had women involved involved too but I remember to there were women who came to S mostly women who didn't have little children at home but women did come to and in the that's 5 in the morning sometimes 4:30 in the morning and the is for an hour and a quarter before ding not like asham who say and the at the 9:30 in the morning minion and they're going to get away with ptim that talk about Lila you know exactly what do you mean but old Laya at 9:30 in the morning so he [Music] says this is what we call until the break of dawn so the optimum time for is before the break of dawn however it takes if it takes an hour it's an hour and whatever so only he did not know of the the 40 days it came in a different direction and was adopted by rosf Caro of the shul in representing spari tradition except the rambam in Egypt 12th Century doesn't know about it of the of 40 days and ashm actually adopted the Ram's point of view except there was a qualification because in the 13th century in the period of the ashas there were there were groups of very Pious people they used to also fast every day of theer of course eating at night time but still not eating during the daytime but if you look at the map you'll see that four of the 10 days you're not allowed to fast two days of rashash shaba and aripa and therefore they simply move that whole thing back four days and that's why ashkanazi is at least 4 days before rashash why I say at least because from a completely different angle came in another custom to begin Shabbat now this year works out perfectly because rash is on Thursday and therefore your four days are Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday which according to the cabalist the ideal time for S is midnight at midnight with summertime is about 20 to 1 in the morning now I remember going to hear the great moitz for back in 1962 63 64 before kitki died in 66 at 1 in the morning in bethl and we were there until 4 in the morning of 3 hours and that was in front of 1700 people in a SRO standing room only capacity crowd of s right what was that then you got shakas right no then we went home and of course they went to the 11:30 minion in the morning for shakas right but it was Sunday you know which a friend of mine called Sunday in is Shabbat sh Goot so most people didn't work on Sunday so we'll be able to do it but uh if rash rash doesn't come out on Thursday so we'll still begin and then have a few extra days of but this year it works out with the minimum four and the poem was composed for that occasion and on we now approach you opening up the season of saying that's lifted out of's at the opening of mikdash found inim you know the big on the King George Street so the choir is gonna go to town with that right my wife always says how come people always the standing part of dings are always when the arodes is open you know so that makes you stand longer you know but when they open the own KES so it gives a little bit extra you know take it more seriously say by the way yeah is it obligatory just I'm just going to quote you beat me to the punch perfect exactly what I was going to say now the the idea of standing when the arodes is opened is a custom but not obligatory because one must necessarily stand when a t is being carried is in motion but when a sa to is in position whether on the table for reading or in the or kodesh even if the curtain is opened there is no obligation to stand and I've mentioned this the M often enough before n with the custom is to have theodes open for the entire n anybody that's weak just sit down and it's okay it's okay okay to sit down when The KES is open you're just now allowed to sit down when the SAR is moving you know when that's a problem on during and a lot of people sit around because you know are dragging out I don't know what's GNA be this year it's GNA be a different for sure but where people are dancing and dancing holding and many people are not part of that sit on the side that's not right and it's interesting that he had a little different custom for he had all the CRA put on the table and the dancing was around the that were on the table and therefore whoever wanted to sit could sit because you're allowed to sit when SE is lying on the table like during laning during reading of the Torah so that's what he did but um nevertheless this idea of upgrading in mitv during AA generated another type of custom that was against the custom there is a custom we know there's a there's an idea once a month called k k which usually we practice it on Shabbat leaving after rashes when after rashes usually not before the third of the month and according to the capitalist not before the seventh of the month but certainly not after the 15th of the month it has to be when the moon is still a new moon and a new moon you know the third month it's still very small Moon seventh it's already a quarter of a moon but you can somehow finagle and call it a new moon and so on why the third why the seven the idea was if you weren't sureesh you better make sure that it's the new moon and you're not catching the tail end of the old Moon which is also a small moon now of course today that wouldn't happen because today we have calendars and today Shabbat before KES thean is announcing when rashes is he's even he's even telling you the m he's telling you what fraction of a second you might theoretically be able to see Catch the first sliver of a moon so that's not a problem R in his tell us tells us that you say immediately after he didn't go for this three day he didn't go for this seven day but that's not the custom the custom is at least to wait after three days okay B now there's also a custom that after Tish I'm sorry that in the month of of not to say k until after T after T is the ninth is the 10th of of already and sometimes even the 11th if Shabbat and you fasted on the 10th so then the night after is ready the 11th of the month that's pretty late to say the rationale is that you want to say and you can't do that in the nine days can't be because says you have to be in mour and so what about your y it's to wait for the after to save the Kish for I mean rash is also roses but not to say it earlier then after yam because Yip generates an explosion of there's a mish at the end of it's interesting the mishna the whole talks about bad times and fasting for drought and fasting for other terrible occasions but it ends on a good note almost similar to every ha where you know you can bring out the worst of Cl Israel in a ha but the last fim you know turn it all around and with some type of a hope and promise that it's going to be good at the end of days so the Mish also ends with an up note the two greatest in the calendar yum and the 15th of of really the 15th of of some people will say whoever heard of what happened on the 15th above so I got news for you the gar also asked that question what the world happened on the 15th above and the gar gives us no fewer than six different things that happen on the 15th of and I remember said too many answers means that nobody knows the answer if there too many answers so what's the answer answer we don't know which is the real answer which are the secondary answers we don't know but whatever it is a tradition that the 15th of is a joyous day what happened I don't have to scratch my head on y it's the date that receives the second that comes down from our it's obviously the day of of atonement what could be a greater day of sim than that so yum is indeed a great day of sim so at the end of yum where there is a dispute amongst the great how does function the special unique atonement for Y which is not the usual atonement during the year yes there's atonement during the year too we say three times a day we say it three times a day fine and this true with the whole year what's the difference with between the whole year and yum the whole year you can deal with your AAR peace meal like a shopping list all right I'll take care of two AAS today and come call me next week I'll deal with the next two and so on y you can't say I'll deal with 10 AAS this year and I'll be back next yam kipa that doesn't work yam is All or Nothing All or nothing and I mentioned last week that's why rabaka used the imagery of theik there is no partial there's no partial it's all nothing it's a clean slate you walk away with a clean slate and the question that had was does This Clean Slate kick in for in a 24-hour period does it begin with kidre and end with Nila or is it at n the last seconds of yum kipa it's very much at the end and every Rabbi who gives a priest nil talk will will harp on this and might even use Sports illustrations to talk about a game that in the overtime at the last Split Second the whole thing switched how much you can switch your whole life in a split second and that's the Neer experience and in that type of ecstasy and joy you go out of sh and you say l so there is such a minute like that the VIN challenged the Min Vin died in 1798 he challenged the minog and he says why should I wait till f for Kish Lana my gosh the r says here you should upgrade your Mitzvah list between rashishana and yum kipa because you might be on the 50/50 line 50% Mitzvah 50% AA maybe Kish Lana is going to tip the scale for you why waste the opportunity and say it after yum so the VIN challenges this very very general custom and here in because of the neighborhood that we live right next door here shed which is the Bastion of the pran who the prian the students of the VIN who came toim by the encouragement of the vill and you should know the vill made an attempt to come as well an unsuccessful attempt but he did make an attempt to come but he succeeded in sending some of his top students here to yam and what happened was there was a vacuum of ashkanazi custom because who was in ER is 400 years ago 300 years ago 250 years ago started there was those who came from they came from the expulsion right in spat RF Caro and so on and they came to the big three cities called AR andon so this was all territory there were a handful of yemenites who actually migrated but not a lot but it was fary that's what it was that's why ra claimed all along that every asazi automatically becomes a spy because Caro was the marra he was the ra of the place and that was the Min so if you have uh let's say a thousand Jews in a place and one person now migrates to this place with an opposite Min he and he's a permanent resident he now becomes part of that thousand that's the you move in you you you move into the Min so he said every arriving ashkanazi moved into aardi um atmosphere halakic atmosphere and became spy so therefore everybody should be a you want to know something I would sign on the dotted line to that view so that all of should be one t and not two or a thousand different to yeah all right so Bish I use sometimes in different context but uh right right right no no sometimes in funny context you saying here is it's a clear that somebody moving into an area where there's a dominant communal men so you automatically assume that minut now today you have to be careful with this because after the there was a complete breakdown ofil the professor wrote about this in Tradition 1992 rupture and reconstruction and um there was a breakdown so there's no such thing as an American Min or Canadian Min or for that matter ER is min how much to wait between milk and meat meat and milk there's no minut but once upon a time the woman hug him so there was in Europe there woman hug him there was the the the the Eastern European man there was the the German men there was the Holland men there was this man there were hug and what happened after the Shah everybody took in the suitcase their family Min and that's what they do so it's it's not something that you can make into Aila there are certain places that are kilo the brers community they have the Frankfurt commun Min that's that's still the minute and and if you move into that neighborhood and you become part of the community and you never waited three hours after meet you can start waiting three hours after meet even though your grandfather was a galana I'm not sure they're going to let you into the community if your grandfather was Gana it's a different story but uh but that's the way it works and Raad claimed that every ashkanazi basically became ay and then he says but if you want to keep Ash Al smoke have upon who to rely on wow so he allows ashkenazim to maintain ashaz I remember 1984 when the first major wave of Ethiopian Jews came to Israel was called operation Moshe and so then and Shapiro were the chief rabbis and there was a qu there was an issue of which Chief Rabbi is going to be uh assigned to deal with the ethopian Jewish Community because there are two ranim right there's the ashkanazi and thei so R said says I don't know who they are the Ethiopians but they're certainly not ashkanam that was Rob had these interesting remarks but he really believed that everybody is a sity here B that was his view I'll get back to Raad in a moment but he was a great person but not going to get into his politics that's that's a my humble opinion little bit of a black dot uh on his record but uh but T it was a sensational Pake without a doubt but and he believed in in his community very very strongly so the the vor's custom was to say um was to say before and that became the Min right here in the neighborhood and that then spread to many neighborhoods of y a lot of the Minag the Min of the V became the min in for many many many different things okay so that was it I'm just going to tell a little tidbit of a a personal note why I personally say Kish like the Ram's view the first opportunity after rashes I think I'm sometimes the first one in the world saying Kish Lana I have a very good feeling but it has to do with an episode a medical episode that I had several years ago with a slip disc and um I could could hardly walk and I was had to go from harim to to own by cab which I did and I got out I told the cab to drop me off at the pharmacy which is about a block away block and a half away from my house which normally takes me at my walking speed about 45 seconds to make that walk and I needed a Fil A fulfilled prescription for steroids to get me out of a cycle of pain that was was unbelievable and I and thank God they had the prescription and then it took me 45 minutes to walk home 45 minutes every step every step it was like really treacherous and I turned the corner of the and I saw the moon and I realized I didn't do Kish yet that month and I took out my phone and I did K right then and there and had this feeling of H renewal because what ises and what is the ofes if not for the sensation of renewal for CLA there shouldn't be any imperfection it's historic imperfection and I took upon myself I said you know what and I felt better after I said that Kish I was able to walk home not well with pain but I was able to walk and I realized it did something before I even took the steroids it it was it was an unbelievable remedy for me at that moment and I took upon myself as a personal thing I'm going to say Kish La at my earliest opportunity and I also have a thing I'm here in this country 45 years and uh I never said Kish laana in cuz you know it if you're in for a visit so maybe after rodes there is a moon there I'll wait till I get back to because is something that has to do with so I will do my utmost and it's been working out so far pretty well um even two and a half years ago when I was in the in Boston I came back a few times I made sure I synchronize these visits with Kish Lavana okay so I have a Kish laana Juke in my head which uh which I'm very very happy about so I'm just telling you that you can do these things fine uh the next order of business I want to just point out is Source number seven Source number seven yeah that is correct what the what did he the the comment was J Shapiro says he remembers hearing seeing walking dancing um somebody said something that the rambam counts learning Hebrew as an easy Mitzvah so the answer is he's right and it's in the same Ram that I quoted in this commentary to the chapter 2 on so I talked about the heavy duty mitzvot and he gives us the schedule of the of the of the punishments but then he gets to the positive mitzvot and he's got a little bit of a tricky issue there because the torat doesn't tell us the rewards for mitv so he gives us some guidelines but then he gives us a few examples of easy and one is he says enjoying having and learning Hebrew now go try that at the old P for for people who are breaking their teeth to learning Hebrew the ra didn't mean how much effort you have to put in to do the Mitzvah he was talking about the weight of the Mitzvah learning Hebrew where does it say the they have to learn Hebrew it's implied by the fact that the Torah is written in Hebrew so it's true you can study Torah in the vernacular but it's a preferred option to study Torah in Hebrew the were written in Hebrew and while the Torah can be explained in 70 that's have all these different commentaries once you translate a verse you are limiting yourself to one way of understanding the Torah so it's a correct way but 69 other ways are going to be missed by studying it just in Translation if just reading a secular a text in English or French or Chinese or whatever you're going to miss the points of the way kazal understood the nuances that are there embedded in the Hebrew so and there are some mitv can only be performed in Hebrew like we call can only be in Hebrew so if doesn't know Hebrew and he doesn't how to say the words he can't do he has to be in Hebrew there other there's a mish in in the seventh chapter of the following can be done in all languages and the following can only be done in Hebrew so those MIT can only be done in Hebrew obviously you have to learn Hebrew so it's called he Mitzvah it's in preparation of a Mitzvah the study of Hebrew is not a Bonafide Mitzvah but it's in preparation of a Mitzvah so that's called low level of Mitzvah performance fine correct you fair Source number seven is Right are they considered so so what the r there says is if theal said that it's it's equally weighted to all of the so then it's clearly from the and one of the examples is it says so I mean how difficult is it to wear TI It Takes no energy whatsoever it's an inexpensive Mitzvah if you want to get a free pair of tias just go to those places that are winding tias now for the high him and tell him you're a and you'll get one for free and uh so so it's it's an easy Mitzvah doesn't cost a lot of money and you just put it on and the rest is history you take it overnight and that's it and that's one of the heavy duty mitvah because the T so if you would say that the T says that the T grants you long life that sounds like heavy duty Mitzvah like correct correct so that's what the does he tries to figure out implied signs that that they are misel let's look at source number seven Source number seven is is and he he brings the custom he writes it's a custom but I know it's a custom even outside eres Nissan Andes El twice a year to go up to the cemetery for family great visitation before Nissan and before El okay I'm not going to talk about Nissa now but El is understandable um and then the question is what what what what what is really behind this so look at seven by the graves of the parents there are some who say next to the Grave even though there's no okay so the question is not is it permissible to say kades without a minion but if somebody saying kades without a minion should you answer to the Kadesh which is really the same question which means if the answer is yes to the secondary question yes answer amain that means there's something basis to saying kades without Dominion or you might say you're not allowed to say kades without a minion but if somebody said kades it's not the end of the world that you send said to his Kadesh his bottom line it's it's a three and a half page response but his bottom line is Al you're not allowed to say Kadesh without a minion because it's what's called a just like Bor and Kad and and T you have to have a minion and let me just add a minion is begins with 10 men over by Mitzvah but then the minion expands to anyone else in sh man woman and child what does that mean if you have 11 men and Sh 11 men right come to a weekday minion where perhaps women didn't come I say perhaps because in my 615 minion and Sh every morning we have six women who come regularly to DAV including my wife was saying Kadesh this year but uh many of these women started as kadish sers and just continued after the year was over and so we have half more than half a million of women every morning in but let's most normal there's no of a woman no no no Z no nothing so so so there if you have 10 men in the minion now 11th person falls in does that mean you have 10 plus a hitchhiker I mean what no now the minion is 11 and if you have 20 you have 20 if if you have 100 you have 100 if you have a thousand a thousand and the r pointed out that the BAL of the opinion that women are part of the minion after the minion has been formed so now if you have 20 men and 10 women the minion is 30 people 30 people why is this important because if you want to suggest that a woman can say KES in then she has to be part of the minion so ra henen those remember ra henen from the states ra ysep hen the grandfather of hin from here who passed away the husband of of rabet hin from nishar so her husband's grandfather Yin so he said yes a woman can say Kadesh but for reasons there should be at least one man saying Kadesh at the time simultaneously so that that's what's generally practiced but a woman can say Kish but if you don't accept the notion that a woman is part of the minion that seor then she can't say Kish from so we've accepted the idea that a woman after the minion's been formed that she can't say Kish and now the question is at a Bak for not always does the family put together a minion so sometimes you have seven eight people from the family and friends at an unveiling and then you look around see a few other people there I remember there were there were professional uh you know Kel mole zers in in in in cemeteries on Sundays and they'd be very happy you know for $20 to join you in the minion and they did it made a business they made a good catch uh on on doing this it was a and and there was a story said about the r that he was once at the cemetery for the for the visit of his wife at his wife's cem grave and and somebody asked them to come over and and and and say do you know how to say k he said I can say say and then the man takes out a $20 bill and the r looks at him he says I don't take this for money whatever the man went to the uh the office and he says very strange a rabbi did me a service and didn't take money who was that he says that was TR by S V you know he's the founder of the mman school here in Boston in Brookline the man went and made a $1,000 donation TOA that was very nice very very nice the r said if I would have known that I'd stay there the whole day cuz he found out about it said sure I'm going to give $1,000 to I'll say say as many KES as you want but R said that you have to have a Minion for saying of Kadesh and if somebody darare say Kadesh without the minion at the grave he says you should not answer a it's what's called it's an orphaned and that shouldn't be done just like person blurting out that's out of context saying he's not going to drink so you don't answer to that kind of a so this Min of going to before is a min for sure it's a Min but having said that the V same V he was against grave visitations totally totally even for parents after the levah you par and that's it you don't go back one of his reasons was the mosh renu's gravite was never ever revealed never knew where his gravite was and that was so that they shouldn't make maro's gravide into a place of ala regel into a yeah and which unfortunately became very very very prominent in theic world and in the focus of going to Great visitations to the rebba and exactly what the vul was against he was against that why because when you go there you start talking to thead and that's perhaps an a of SP speaking to the dead you are allowed to ask a to tap into the extra merits of thead that that's legitimate but D not talk directly to the sadic that he should intervene on your behalf that is an violation of idolatry you know to do that so the vun was against this and I spoke about this custom of the Vago or anti- custom when I stood next to the v's grave in VNA and I apologized to the Vago I said I know you were against this my dear re wrote in his book NE about the r that the r had the custom not to do great visitations in accordance with the Vin's custom so I told my re I said re you know that the r went to his wife Kev every single Friday since 1967 till he wasn't able to in the 80s and I myself took the RO to the grave of his father of mes Alek on the yard side 1975 and gimb so did go so said Apparently after the rabbitson died he changed his custom so I said you know we have to write about that SOA told me all right you write about it so I did in my book on the conversations with the r and r gave me his you know rber stamp on that yes I had to I had to correct the record because the r did go and he went often often enough and it was almost uh you know that he went so many times all right he what discouraged other people he discouraged other people but he did right it was not he himself said that was obsessive he himself said the book I wrote is called 70 conversations in translit it's in English 70 conversations in transit with the r yeah okay mem next week we will continue I'll try to have another sheet there okay [Music]