Shir Hamaalot and the Significance of 15: Chizuk for Iron Sword by Rebbetzin Pearl Borow

and I do want to say at the beginning needless to say everything that we say and everything that we think is of course a good news for of course to all the to theim who are being returned may they be healed their families may they be healed may we he and I would like to add a special if you do not mind for esta but henna and may we hear only boto vote from our families from CLA Israel from the soldiers from everybody I want to talk today a little bit about toim because that's really what we have all been doing we've been saying toim and what is it about toim that makes us use this safeer almost exclusively for first of all you know that is divided into five sections just like the Torah so what the Torah is to toim is it is comparable to Torah in that it gives us a wholeness of just like the Torah gives us the wholeness of in the introduction to the classical medrash limb rabi mayor teaches us he says all of saim was written by Dav and he proves it by uh quoting um in limit says k k David all of the songs of David Kalo have been finished says rabi mayor don't read Alti K but read Kum or cool all of saer toim was written by D and yet in the Garra we read on the end of the Amud we read David H safer to in thear it says that composed saer with the help of a through the help of 10 zakim and it gives us a list of the Zak it starts with Adar and it goes to maled and it goes to Abraham and it mentions Moshe and we have the three liim Anda and hmon and then of course the three sons of korak and how can we reconcile the statement of rabie Mayor where rabie mayor says the entire safare is written by David and the statement in the gamarra that tells us that there was help that David had um it even says we know we have in for example Mis we have we have so we seem to have some toim that were written by someone else and in truth say there were some toim that were written before the time of David but David as a person from his youth was always reciting she wrote when he was out with the Sheep of his father when he walked along this highways and byways of the country when he was sent to Shaul to play his musical instrument when he went out to war when he was doing he would always say she wrote the and because some of them were his own and some of them were those that were written before him when he was saying them he made them his own because he said them all the time maybe sometimes he added something but because because his very recital was so constant it's as though all of them became his personally you know why I'm mentioning this I'm mentioning this because with so many of Israel saying toim today there are so many toim groups that I alone one person that I know about going on to today all of us are saying this toim we are making this toim into our own personal property they become ours we repeat the toim we think about them we try to understand what our great teachers were teaching Us in these wonderful wonderful Pim and when we say them and especially because we are saying them now on mass we make it as though we are composing those beautiful words today we have taken ownership of these words they have been handed down to us and we have held on tight and so when we say the please accept them as though we ourselves have written them but we know that we stand on the shoulders of our great teachers who did indeed give us those words but we have made them our own through our reciting among those toim the ones that I really am very attracted to and that I keep going back to are the shirot that appear from until so it's towards the end of the there are 150 um chapters of TM and is 120 so towards the end we have these Shot 14 of them begin she hamalot some of those say sheer hamalot David some of them don't one says she L the second one says she and the question that I would like to POs to you is why are these set aside what is going on why 15 and what maot are we talking about maalot in English if you look at any English translation it will say a song of a sense a sense you know like going up or steps it doesn't say a song of steps but you could probably call it that Ma going up rising and most of our MIM will say that what we're talking about Rashi and radak both will say we are talking about the fact that in the B mikdash there were 15 Steps that went up from the area that was called Ezra nashim the area where the women were permitted to go and not only the women but anybody could come into that area and then you had to go up 15 Steps to get to the Ezra Isel where you went if you were bringing a Corban where the men were permitted to go and that was 15 Steps up and what Rashi tells us by the way Rashi interestingly says 15 Steps down isn't that interesting it's a song of a sense but she says 15 Steps down by from the Ezra Israel the area where you went if you had a Corban to the Ezra nashim where everybody could go it would seem that the liim during the time that the daily Carbono the Carbono tamid were given or the Carbono on a shabat theim would stand on those steps and they would sing these particular 15 and tell us that composed these or specifically for the levim to sing them during the times that the carbon note were given that it was these 15 that were composed in order to be said these Shalo are a little bit different the poetic pattern is a little bit different in the Shir Malo because they have repetition they're just a slight bit different interestingly ibben Ezra doesn't talk about steps at all but he says that these shirot that the Levan would sing were different notes the tune was different it was maalot it was higher sweeter notes because these TM the words are very beautiful and the music followed the words in that they were very beautiful you could recognize the difference the tune was on a higher um key I would imagine uh than the way the Levan would sing any other Shir so there's something set aside and something different the question that I want to raise and that I am not going to um be able to totally do justice to because we can really talk about it a long time is the idea of 15 15 you know there's nothing arbitrary in the betam mikash in the betam mikdash everything that existed including these 15 Steps came straight to deid VU it was given to him in Prophecy tell us that shui gave David the secret of the blueprints of the B mikdash when David was running away from Sha and he came to shmuel and said shmuel what is going on I don't know what to do I think sha wants to kill me and shmuel tried to calm him down and said I am going to give you a secret and it is the secret of the blueprints of the BET mcash which of course David Leon gave to his son schlomo because he was promised before he died that his son schlomo would be the one to build that betam mikdash so if it comes B and it comes from Hashem then there's got to be something very important about the 15 if you think of the idea of there being 15 Steps 15 Steps it means you're going someplace right it means you are going upward sometimes you might have to go down like Rashi put it going down but it means you want to send and you know the word maalot also is used to mean characteristics especially when we use the term in Yiddish in Yiddish you would say a person has good characteristics so there's something about the term that is moving from one place to another there is something about the term that is talking about a person's characteristics and so I want to tell you the N the number 15 we don't really we don't know a lot about the number 15 it's not in the right goes from one until 13 what is 15 do we know anything that is 15 we do do you know first of all the name of Hashem yud K when we use the name car yud K what is the numerical value Y and he is 15 we have a PUK and that says trust in Hashem forever because with the name y k he became the rock of the universe in other words the word car speaks of hashem's strength and speaks of hashem's lasting power eternity I couldn't think of the word for a minute it speaks of his strength and his eternity because with the word there is something strong he is the rock forever with the name Co so there's something about 15 15 do you know that in the which we is the last thing that we say in zimra we praise Hashem 15 times there are 15 Expressions if you look at the kades but you have to look at it carefully because it's not as clear as in the is if you look in the kadish then we use the the Praises of Hashem and kadish 15 there are 15 different Praises so there's something about we want to really praise God completely and it would seem that we need 15 steps to praise God completely I am going to watch my time a little bit the most amazing thing that I learned and I'm going to give you AAR Torah a little bit early no P excuse me I'm gonna give you a very early Torah to say the S you'll have to remember it you know what is 15 at the there and I want you to think of the word maot yes Brenda I knew I was thinking as I said that I said Brenda's [Laughter] here what does that introduce my friends how many maoto vote how many steps did it take a to take us what Dao do you know that when we go through Dao if you are not too busy singing Dao then you will count 15 going from the first it would seem that in order for us to go from taking us from out of until he didn't build the mdash for us to go I want you to know it was 480 years for us to go out of and come to the time that mikdash there are 15 different stages that we needed to go through so 15 is a Perfection 15 is an improvement 15 is a reaching a goal and remember I mentioned that Rashi says the steps you would go down sometimes when you're working on reaching a goal you need to step back for a minute and make sure that you are solid in the place that you have reached so before you take the next step up you might have to remain on a step you might have to go down a step reinforce relearn redo and then go to the next one we see that in the shiram malot themselves because all of them have some rep repetitive words and repetitive ideas very often a PUK will end with something and the next one will start with something for instance let's look at the most well maybe not the most well-known one but the one that we say the most often which is K let's do that together here la oh I forgot to mention that La laot there will also be 15 stages say that am Isel will have to go through as though they're going on steps when we will leave the galot on mass all of us and come to ER Israel at the time of mashiach there will be 15 stages and say there are 15 Steps for the sikim to come at the time of mashia before the so this particular she the second one is she laot LA to those maot that will be established in the future at the time of the Kates at the time of mashiach when we will all have an alah of 15 stages to get to the place that we need to be so so we have repeated the end of one the beginning of the next [Music] is so you immediately see the repetition of we have the repetition because sometimes when we want to change our status we need I think we said this in our first we need to go up a step and then stay there for a minute and make sure that we know where we are and what we're doing and what our goal is before we go to the next one so we have some of these repetitions in the beautiful beautiful Shir that um remind us of the future of mashiach and also of our daily that is watching over all of us that he is in touch and that we are using when we D in we are using those beautiful words that were written by David and those words that he borrowed from people that would living before him those words he made his own because he used them all the time they were always on his mind May these words also be our own may we use them may we may our words reach the heights of Shay and may we hear about a Rua about a Yeshua about some greatness everybody's talking about the fact that it's almost kanuka I was looking ahead to pesak but it's almost kanuka everybody's talking about the fact that n Sim benla happen at this time that it is the darkest time of year and that we have done on the darkest time of the year we light candles for Puma Dena the the great n that a KES did for us so many years ago may it come true that when we light those candles for Puma Nissa this year that we will be far same A great miracle that will happen in our time it's all be there and he could change it B regga so let's hope that that will indeed happen thank you very much for your attention