Parshat Beshalach and Tu B'Shevat 5784 (2024) by Rabbi Baruch Taub

good evening everybody can you hear me okay number one on the sheet is really number one and two we're going to do something very very profound from R hutner I'll start off with um the that apply if you listen to everything Hashem does this is from the paraa I just want to get to the end of the p you listen to his now listen you if we listen to the Torah properly completely all the illness that is in was in Egypt you will not have this a famous is the ultimate Doctor we spoke in our last week about um alternative medicine and seeing doctors and there's a Mitzvah to see a doctor to go to the doctors right um but the the important thing here that we want to emphasize is that for some reason the Torah promises us that all the ma the illness that was in MIT I will not put on you so we'll come back to that that PK soon and let's look at what hutner has to say and he points out something very strange and unique in Theon which we say every day in the ofu that we recognize that a is RO that he is the Healer the text because you are our source of Praise right he has a simple question this idea that is the source of Our Praise we're always praising him this could apply to every single one of the bras in why da in the of RA right why do we throw this into the BR of that heals us he's our praise he he builds he's going to build He blesses us with all the seasons of the years because he's our prais why da here in the BR of RA do we say we praise him okay okay let's go into what he wants to say he the opinion of theal is when we sit at the S night and we tell over the story of The Exodus this is not praising God why not we're telling over the greatness of God the goodness of God the good things that he that he he does shall MO and his acts of his acts of Grace his acts of kindness with us but we're not describing his greatness that's not what we're doing here why he's gonna this is based on a sh cannot say that you cannot say that the reciting of the is reciting the Praises of you can't say that it's against the law tell you why there's a famous gor that somebody went up to DAV in the gorah and he started to say you know we say and he kept going on and on and on and on so they stopped him they threw him off the beima and they said you know they asked him cynically have you complet did all of the praise of a you it's endless we are only allowed to say those statements of Praise that were given to us by the Ane nesset hola who put the sitter together nothing more nothing less to start praising God all kinds of words of Praise beyond what K what the the rabbis gave us license to say we're not allowed to do that right which leads to the problem of because you are our source of Praise we actually say that in the so we'll get to that so only only somebody who really understands like let say like he's allowed to do something like this so now that's the moral the moral points out clearly that when we sit at the Seder we're not giving over the we're not saying over all the we're not we're not describing him all of the praise that's do him right can't do that you're not allowed to do that comes along and he says like this I want to approach this with fearfulness with fearfulness because the moral is the moral the great moral the great uh the the the rabbi who opened up to us and the interesting thing is about theal I think I might have mentioned it in the past until about 200 years ago the moral was not well known it was not well known but it has become he has become a source of tremendous knowledge in Jewish Theology and philosophy and hash the moral is the sort of that so the the the rutner says I I'm fearful the sh the shiny I want to suggest that that I want to have another approach which is counter what the maral says Shin the excess from Egypt is different than all other things that we praise God about we are allowed to praise him we are allowed to go overboard and become personal even to praise why the this this challenge of the gor this warning of the gor did you finish all of the praise of cynically theor says the gor gives a mus of a king he has golden vessels the king you know he's got beautiful beautiful things he's got golden vessels and we praise him about the silver that he has Which is less beautiful than the gold less valuable than the gold that's a we go on and we praise him with silver when he's really all about gold right this can only apply to those cim those vessels that the King has aass for his own personal use right we have no right to praise God on his his beautiful stamp stamp collection or his coin collection when really he has a a collection of uh Priceless diamonds right that's a on our part It's it's a lack of understanding the greatness of the king but that's only the things that he keeps for his own personal use volane therefore therefore you know you've got a problem when you start phrasing his silver something different let's say he buys silver in order to demonstrate to you to us to his people how who he is and what he's all about say you know he he wants to he creates something that is for us not for himself not his own personal collections of valuables and jewels and so on but he creates something in order for us to understand who he is and to praise him right our uher Our Praise it's a personal thing right let's say it's a painting let's say the king prepares a painting gets a really famous artist and he draws something you know how art is everyone looks at a p picture and he sees his own has his own interpretation right well if this picture was given to us and put out for us to recognize and understand him then we have a right we have a license to give our personal opinion of praise right phrase is a relative thing I pray somebody this is what I recognize in that person this is what I recognize this is what I recognize in that painting to me the look at the colors you know what this represents yet everyone's got their own interpretation well is something The Exodus from Egypt the that's theon's painting to allow us the night of PES of self-discovery and of discovery of our own right every single person has the MIT of even children everybody has a right to say what's on their mind about there's no you can't complain you can't say this is wrong you can't say well you're going to say something doesn't come near what really God is all about can't say that because here we have a license on the PES night every Jew has a license to speak out right to to say what's on his mind we encourage children to ask questions I've always pointed out why do we we why do we take the plate off the S the Seder plate off the the table right after we sit after Kish we take the Seder plate off and then we bring it back and the child says why did you do that why did you that's why we did it so you can ask the question that's what the gamor says we do it so you could ask the question that make sense what does that mean what it means is that we want to encourage questioning the way to raise children is not to tell them this is the way it is and this is the way it's supposed to be and that's it you have to listen to me but you have a right to question to to to look into things and you have every right to have your own opinion that's what is all about we want to encourage everyone to have an understanding of and to present that personal understanding that is the mitvah of telling Over The Exodus so it comes out should be Exodus from Egypt where it says in the Torah in headline letters it's only given over in order to be revealed to be praised right you should tell over that the the how the games I played with parro played games with parro we saw at the beginning of last week's par right only that one unique individual in a million has a right to add Praises no when it comes to each and every one of us has a right to express our opinion about what's going on about I think there are more book comment on the than any other safer that we have right even even I would dare say right now so what does that have to do with the price of tea of China what does that have to do with the question we started out with he started out with a question only in the BR why is it only in the BR ofu where we we pray to God to heal us that we say you are our praise why not in any other BR and answer the whole idea of God being the RO was promised to us in in relationship to the Exodus from Egypt then he promised us when we left every disease that I placed in MIT loim I will not give you the idea of Theon being the RO the praise of him is the RO it has to do with therefore necessarily the for for healing when we ask him for healing and good health we put in you are our source of Praise because in the inan the the topic of where we are all not only we have a we're allowed to we're encouraged to praise God so that statement that we praise him that extra statement of Praise is D in the BR of RA because it's a br that he gave us the his power was revealed to us through the Exodus this is the way it goes anything that has to do with with the Exodus from Egypt everything from The Exodus from Egypt is open territory for us to praise him as much as we want on an individual basis and that's why it's only in that BR of which has to do with in this idea this idea has and I want to add something a PS I want to add I want to add something about this idea that we're free to speak PES we can say things we can't say any other night right the word is not for two words the mouth that speaks the Miracles the signs the Wonders including the promise of his healing power they're the first that were given to us purposefully that we can praise him we can speak on PES that's it's all about speaking speaking out you can't have a criticism if it's Praise of God so be it we're allowed to do it tonight and only that night on the mouth speaks and Praises according to our understanding every every single person has an understanding of how works when you read the and we have a right to express it and you don't have to worry that his praise that he's only praising him with silver vessels instead of gold vessels that were missing the mark v p is p there's no missing the mark on PES he wants to hear from all of us whatever we have to say even if it's not the golden vessels but the silver vessels are even less copper he doesn't matter it doesn't matter to him this is what he wants to hear from us okay over the page this is number three from from RAB uh the beginning of the paraa God doesn't take us directly to Har takes us through the desert and we were armed when we came out from ER MIT now he's going to focus on one aspect here quot rashi rashi what does mean from the wordu only one fifth of the Jewish people came out of Egypt this is a an incredible statement that Rashi brings that one fifth went out and four fifths died in Egypt they weren't worthy of coming out his source is a one in five say one in 50 one in 500 that's the med this is a a very strange medish according to the words of the the 30 million or 300 million Jews died before the Gula from also hard to to swallow millions of Jews this is worse than all of the 10 plagues put together multiplied by in past years now by the way this was done during the three days of darkness so that the mitam should not see that the Sinners of je the Jewish people were killed right that's the medish now I offered a few years ago another totally different approach um from uh from one of the great uhal of of yush and I'll I'll just say it over very quickly we but I I don't want to I want to come to what he's saying he's going to say something a lot more practical but he said like this if four fifths of the Jewish people were not Roy to go out they were Sinners what about their children you can't kill the children they're not Bar Mitzvah they're not B Mitzvah the children didn't do anything wrong right so you had to save the children of four fifths of the Jewish people so that's what it means here that they came out kimim means that four fifths were killed but the parents not the children that every Jew came out and it said that all the children came out they all the families came out with with with five children right everybody had five children right so it's like Planned Parenthood how is that possible so he explains what it means is that it doesn't mean five children it means five sets of children they had their own children and they had four children from those children their their children went out they were they had from the parents who had to die they took their children that's one approach but he's goingon to say something else and it's a lot more practical it's a lot more easier to swallow than to say that there were millions of Jews actually who died in MIT who sinned I'm gonna explain this based on aash in the beginning of God is speaking toen and he's telling him that the the blood of your brother is is speaking to me you killed your brother is speaking to me from the ground what did you do it's yelling to mein explains this what's the blood of your brother why does it say in the plural the Bloods of your brother because not only did you kill your brother but the generations the generations the millions that will come out would have come out of he will not materialize they won't be in this world by killing one person you've killed generations of of he right that's what we have to say here only a few people died only a few people died in the darkness there were there were some terribly evil amongst the Jewish people they were not fit to go out there were Jews didn't want to go out these Jews were not fit to go out and they died in the three days of darkness I am but if they would have stayed alive they would have given birth to millions of generations afterwards and that's what the rabbis in the med are arguing about four times 600,000 or 49 times 600,000 right multiples greater multiples of the 600,000 Jews in okay they know how to make the you start from the beginning of until the building of the so there's Millions upon Millions upon Millions if the rabbis in the med are talking about until the building of the B mikdash it's a couple of million if you're talking about until messia comes going through our Generations you're talking about million times million times Millions right this is what he wants to say it's a very nice practical understanding of this very difficult medish that Rashi brings finally concludes I'm going to prove it to youash say Rashi says they died during the three days of darkness why not any other time God didn't want the Jewish the Egyptians to know that Jews died there were Jews who didn't go out of Egypt they died and were buried B during the darkness and the MIT were not aware of their absence right however tell me something truth be told if you're gonna explain this med according to the simple words of the millions di it's impossible the Egyptians wouldn't have heard about it and also they could never have buried them all in time my purish makes absolute sense only a few individuals died CL Isel and it wasn't felt the enormous loss from CLA Israel dma let me give you an example the cursed na they killed six million Jews 50 years now it's not 78 years what today we could say today they killed 10 million tens of millions of Jews for us now 70 or 80 years since then since the Holocaust are you call they would have have children and grandchildren in the Years yet to come who died in the Holocaust will continue to increase would have continued to increase their blood and the blood of their children and God will Revenge and we can say that about what we're going through right now to that should bring out the at the end of this miserable and the rim should get their due okay one last piece I have here and then I might say just something quickly about tubish which is coming up on Thursday um also from rut a very short piece sent us out now this is also at the end of this is all the end of now par is gonna send us out it's all the whole story's out the only thing left is the Red Sea a the next tell us that now mosha took out the remains of with him now why is that mentioned now they took them out we they were taken out on the on the 15th the night of the 15th the Sater night the bones were taken out and also the bones of all the but why is it mentioned here and not when we went out after you know B when par threw us out then we say we took out the bones of Moshe but it was already we started already before misho that we stand it's only mentioned the until the whole story of the exod is over only when par was chasing us out we were Moshe was going we were going with the bones of the remains of Y also we're not talking about a timeline here when he sent us out it was the night of the 15 we're asking the order of theim it should have been mentioned earlier why du is the The Taking of ysep with us now when par was sending us out and why isn't it mentioned it earlier he says like this who is ysep what was ysf let me suggest this idea this para sending us out it also smacks of this in this para that we could return to MIT right God dka took us out this way so we wouldn't return to we wouldn't be afraid and come back to the proof is they chased them they chased after them parro and they chased after to bring us back says this in yish with him he's still coming after us he wants to take us back right bish right he said he took us out but he wants us back we need additional protection now that he won't take us back into the relationship that we have with parro we've had with him for so many years and we still have with him to be under his gun that we shouldn't come back we need protection that he won't take us back again why did yep go to because of who ysep was ysep was was a sadik even as as the Viceroy in Egypt he remained steadfast with Torah so he's mentioned now because it's only in his because it was only on his we we needed this extra shme of Y to keep us out of Y was the one who saved us from be from spiritual Annihilation while we were in mitah so he's got to be the one to save us not from not going back you know I've mentioned many years ago I think that um ysf D ysf sinim was the head of Napoleon's son hedrin you heard of Napoleon son hedrin Napoleon had an idea to make a sin not of Jews he made a Sanhedrin of the Jewish people and he appointed a rabbi in head of the head of the son hedrin he was the rabbi ysf do Zim and you would think you know such a rabbis like you know he's not he's a kind of not not a he's appointed by Napoleon right you'd have the idea that maybe he was not such a special person Napoleon Napoleon's Rabbi so when he died the sopur some sopur eulogized him and it was on I think parash and in the par there it says that make sure make sure you tell my father when you go back to him that I'm the president in Egypt right make sure he knows that what I'm doing right so he ask question he asked a question some it's in his Dres this is what Yos was concerned to tell his father you know my father you know every Jewish father wants a son to be a doctor president of the United States you know the old joke right so uh that's what he meant so no says what he wanted to tell him was this an right I am Yosef and I'm the m in MIT but I'm still Yosef even though even though I am the vice Roy I'm running in Egypt this the terrible place called mitan on I am I maintain my I maintain myus and my commitment to you and to to Torah so uh that's that's what ysph was all about that's why he was sent to Egypt to take us out to se keep us separate from Egypt and in the end it was he was it was necessary to have his presence to keep us from going back okay just um a minute or two on tub bishvat which is coming up on Thursday uh just about the only thing that we do ritually on on for the men we do on on we don't say T this it comes out on a Thursday so it's a bit of a bonus we don't say t but we know that it's the new year of peros right R the new year of trees the new year of fruit so it it's interesting that when you if you look at secular Zionism there was tremendous celebration of the three um the shalim from a from a a harvest perspective from a natural from an ER Israel perspective which is all true it's a time where we celebrate the first fruits but it's such a so much deeper than that why are we celebrating fruits why don't we celebrate the rashash for vegetables right it's a different time of the year for why rash for for P what's unique about fruit what's the difference between fruit and vegetables so let me go back to the maral and he says like this what's uh fruit is human food vegetables vegetables classic In classical literature vegetables is animal food right when Adam sinned when arish sinned and what did tell him you're gonna have to eat vegetables that was his that was his punishment so what did he say so the gor says that said to mosha you mean me and my donkey are going to eat from the same trough right vegetables that's animal food why is that so be is b b me is B what you see is what you get that's what an animal is B ma a b is it it's born it eats it sleeps it procreates and it dies what you see is what you get a man is from the ad it's not what you what you see it's what you become a pre it's it's the tree it's not about the tree it's about its its fruit when you get a vegetable you have to reach down to the ground take a vegetable not only that vegetables are M Cara you have to replant them every year a fruit you have to reach upward to get a fruit from the tree and not only that but it rejuvenates every year it regrows right that's what a pre represents it represents the spirituality of Claus or reaching up to the rebon film that's what the fruit represents it represents our relationship to on a higher plane beyond our things right that's tubish that's the r of to recognize that we are a higher being with a higher Purpose By the way there's a special prayer for an ESR on tubish if you pray hard enough you'll get a very good ESR Onish okay there's a Mitzvah to eat the P of there's a Mitzvah to eat a new p and to sayu but I just want to warn you about the BR ofu I remember as a kid when we were in school they would give us a bag of fruit and there was boxer the boxer was hard like a piece of cardboard and he told you have to make a on this you know make that's not that's not the the carob tree you get it when it's green and then you make a can only be said if you really enjoy what you're eating right if you don't enjoy it you don't make theu so you have to make sure you're getting a new fruit that you have not had yet and it's something you enjoy right and therefore then you make a okay everyone should find their she this Thursday okay have a wonderful week everybody and there's no this Wednesday because of tuat there are programs going on in the shs here in both the McDonald's and the Young Israel in Natan so we'll see you next Monday for paraa