The Custom of Proclaiming 'Chazak' Ending a Chumash by Rabbi Dr. Ahron Adler

the context of tar that um the uh uh there is a section in the Zohar it's a very very it's a known section actually that says that godh created seven worlds we're the seventh world he created a world he destroyed a world he created a world he destroyed a world and the r asked the simple question what did the inhabitants of those six worlds do to deserve total Extinction and Annihilation and so on that Force the to create another world and the r said thear does not tell us what they did that we have no clue why those worlds were destroyed so why bother telling us this piece of information so said to teach us one one one step and that was what was the immediate reaction of God after he destroyed a world he went and created a new world and he says that's the message if we unfortunately go through a tragedy whether it's on a personal level or a national level what we ought to do is pick ourselves up and create a new world and this is what the people in the communities the settlements the Kim of Asa what they their great resolve to rebuild and by planting three weeks ago the wheat that they basically made a statement we're coming back we're going to rebuild and my kids decided to give the kid my new grandson the name uh um Neta which is uh I explained to them that some of the great ranim of the past carried the name Natan Neta it's a very very rinic name and this little one will grow up to be a big as well hopefully um you know that two weeks ago some of you know that I was in Flight I was in transit and I didn't give a share on a Sunday when I normally do um I actually found out about the birth of this grandson in the cockpit so you know that uh I have a pilot son who's not flying now because he's up in the north guarding our country next to the Lebanese border but he has friends in the business and I was invited to sit in the cockpit and there I found out from a WhatsApp that my daughter gave birth so I walked out of the cockpit I told the first flight attendant I saw I had a grandson born she looks at me and she says first I said no the 27th she almost fainted kadh has been excessively kind to our family and he should continue to do so and share that with all of is so this series is called a series of and because of that I thought I would mention something about what will take place in two days time when we complete the book of grait um just last night I give a Shear in the har and I addressed the issue of the saying of kazak kazak kazak and we say this at the end of the reading of it's even a particular honor when the Gabi select somebody um to have that last final Aliyah which usually it's of or whatever the end would be of the and people stand up for the reading of the last and they call out so just happens that even this minhag and we'll see in a moment what the minhag is all about this custom carries with it some variations because if there wouldn't be variations it wouldn't be Jewish so there has to be you know differences of opinion so do you sayak or do you sayak or do you say or do you say well there is a and there it says so what does that have to do with and finishing a actually nothing so the the the add-on of vak or V is most probably something that carried after the original Minh kicked in but the original minut was to say kazak so what does that mean to say kazak and then the Bal also says kazak and the the person who gets the alyah finishes with his braa so rachinski in his calendar his ER Isel calendar that many people have stuffed in their Talis bag that tells you anything significant on a particular day and what the a particular day might be and whatever it is it's a very nice calendar for especially for gabim so there he says that the person who gets the Aliyah of kazak which the Shabbat would be does not say kazak kazak just let the people in the sh say it because he has to say the final bra and there would be an interruption a he between the reading and the saying of the and hence he strongly recommends that the person who received that final alyah should not sayak but just stand there silently and listen to the crowd sayak and and and so on okay so that's a Min you know whether whether everybody attends to this I I'm sure that most people are not familiar with this line of RA kachinski I'm not 100% sure that I would call it a HEI an interruption because something that is of a Min nature very difficult to call it an interruption I'll give you a good proof to it that also relates to this week's paraa and that is the saying of in the middle of kishma that's not really the middle it's after the first PUK so we all know that says there's no there in the first chapter of he tells us something highly unusual that the r would flush out a a medish to support A Min it's very rare in the M that the raah is going to bring a midic source to support a and he says the med says that was troubled by the fact that his grandfather Abraham not only had but he also Hado and to use the modern word who was off the Der also had a son off the Der and that was as so yov now has 12 sons and he's concerned whether any of them are off the D so all 12 of them address their father Isel yob is Isel Hashem we believe in one God we're with you in everything that Abraham taught you we are there to continue the tradition of and everything that goes with it so yobu the grandfather he says what every grandson every grandfather would do at the Mitzvah of a grandson who bashem is putting Onin and is reading the Torah and so on soob was this is what the med says so Rah says we continue echoing the sh response of yobu as if to say when we sayma in the morning and in the evening we're also addressing and we're saying yeah we not only ruim the 12 tribes who are standing there sitting there around yob before he passed away we are the descendants of that and we're continuing to say and as if to say is echoing so we say it low now nobody in a million years would suggest that this is a he is an interruption between the is an allowance for this socalled he and it's not really considered an interruption and therefore I don't believe that if the person getting the alyah this week this coming Shabbat for for and will sayak together with the the congregation with the community I don't believe that's a he but okay you know rachinski is um is representing you know that very L very litvak grouping where HEK is is known commodor and and and he makes that comment but let's try to understand really what is all about so I'm going to share screen I hope I can do this and we're gonna read a source it's not let do a share screen no okay I can't do the share screen so um is KH speedback listening she is yes I am yes I am and I can I do a share screen [Music] please okay she's can you hear me yesd like to know if you can do do a share screen okay I just have to figure out because I'm on my phone I have to figure out how to make you a co-host and then you'll be able to share screen I'll let you know okay okay great okay so I'm gonna start this pal but I hope I'll be able to bring up this Source uh in the 15th century there was a great great POS Kal his name was RAB MOS Ben Min he's known as the maharam Min and he was born in Northern Italy but um he's very ashkanazi and he served as a RV in many of the ashkanazi centers he was a student of one of the great ashkanazi Pim of the late 14th century known as the r isine who's the author of The Truman and this Adler yeah you are now good to share as a matter of fact I made you the host and um I'm going to sign out so I no problem okay all right thank you so much okay great okay so I'm if you have the screen in front of you I am reading from Source number 11 he writes as follows we have we have a custom after we complete a book one of The Books of responds loud voice now he doesn't say anything about apparently 500 years ago the Min still was just to say one word and the reason for this cust as it's when we finish studying a chapter or a chapter of of actually and in the it says and certainly after the completion of an entire the phrase phrase means we will return to you the idea is that when we study uh anything if we don't return to it then ultimately we're going to forget it we're going to forget it and therefore the reason for [Music] this we finish the chapter or the entire tra we ask says we should not forget is there somebody not muted is there somebody not muted that's the case we're getting some um H shy poock could you please mute yourself shy Pala could you please mute yourself because you're causing a lot of static sh moment can give me a moment that's it good thank you so good so the the tells us please guard yourself that you don't forget and I remember I had a rebi in t borar many many years ago his name was Rabbi gorth and he used to say if you don't you forget if you don't review you're going to forget and therefore what we ask ourselves when we complete a section of Torah study that we should review it we should go back to it please review it so you won't forget it when finishes or whatever it is people give him what they call should have great strength what does that mean that is to say you finished you've completed the Mitzvah of being you should have a merit of doing more so in other words it's you know you might even be exhausted from being the so we tell them and so on it's interesting the don't have the phrase they have the phrase which is very biblical by the way and with Yeshua parak and and theak is the equivalent of and that is to say here too we just finished the you should have strength to continue to review and to and and to learn it again the communitys out everybody in calls out kak at this point this is the message of the but had a different take and it Source number 12 this is not a quote but it's a paraphrase of an entire she the r claimed that he saw he was witnessed to old and in the end of each the word was printed as it's printed in all of except in these old it was printed with an abbreviation it was Zion with a a quote Mark K which meant that it's two words it's Zion and K and what the and said it wasan and theal so this wasak it was actually abbreviation ofal which meant that when the Bal came to the end of thees the last P not only did the Bal read but the community also read the last pum now does this sound familiar well with regard to the five books of Tor we don't do this but if you recall the end of migil the end of migil the entire Community reads says out loud we do it at the end of it's also at the end of the which happens to be the very end of the book of it's reread so some of these at the end of the books are reread and the question is why are they reread and how does that um impact on the Min of kazak with the r said it wasn't that the community called out kazak as we do in accordance with the explanation of the Marin but the r said that what was called out was the entire last P together after the who's in essence of here after the reads the last P the community reread the last and where does that come from and the r said as follows I'm now pointing to Source number eight on the page now Source number eight the mishna tells us in that whenever we say Hal we have a custom to repeat the last the ending all of us remember how we say and when we get to we say it again so the mishna tells us that there were communities who had the custom to double po so there you have to double those communities who did not have it don't have it but today all of Isel has this custom where we repeat the last sentences the last Pim of the question is what's behind this why why do we do this so the r explained as follows that whenever we say praise to God we're in deep trouble because there's no end to it do you remember what we say on Shabbat if our lips if our mouths if our ability speak would be unlimited we'd never be able to complete the amount of Praise that we would have to say about so whenever we say Hal it's it's almost a minuscule of a down payment it doesn't even come modly close to what we should be saying about so therefore it's downright insulting to do that it's almost like and I say if you would invite Albert Einstein to be a guest speaker and you introduce him by saying that when he was in fourth grade he did nicely on an arithmetic test that would be totally insulting so to say of a minuscule of praise to God is insulting so the question is what would the exit strategy be um to to begin to say Hal and we have Hal as a Mitzvah we have wrot in we have every morning as part of the before we get into the the shakar so how do you get out of it without insulting a so the r gave an explanation but before I'll say that I'll just use a an interesting uh illustration uh many of us remember that um that there they were uh in exit that scares me now many of us remember the uh the newspaper hatu was a newspaper from the it's now defunct and it morphed into Mak but I remember many people used to look at the the the Hat newspaper not because of the news but because of the announcements the the news used to be pretty stale like a day or two old but the but the announcements you want to know who got engaged who got married loyal L who passed away people would put these ads in the Hat and and that's why people would look at it so there was somebody who wanted to honor some Rabbi for some occasion and he was concerned how would he write out the name of this rub how would he prefix it would he say har I mean every Tom Dick and Harry is harav so that's not good har so half of the Tom Dick and Harry's today are harav no that's not good enough so we'll say har nice maybe that's not good enough for him maybe it's I mean you can go on with all these prefix so he decided to do something very clever and he wrote etc etc etc which means that listen I know that you're more than harav exactly what you are I don't have a clue but you know who you know who you are so that's all inclusive in the etc etc etc but I'm acknowledging that you're Way Beyond har as funny as this sounds the r said that's the exit strategy and therefore what we do by is not just say we're gonna say it again now really we should say it a 100 times a thousand times 10,000 times a million times and a billion times we don't have time so by saying it a second time we acknowledge the fact of see Way Beyond one time Way Beyond so we symbolize it by saying it second time that's what we do by and what do we do in so in the morning we begin with and we're very very optimistic because we have a the the quotes from and we say we say boy we're gonna do a job now we have the and you get going you start saying and so on you get to the end you look at your watch you know you have to go to work so you have to end some so how do we end we end with the so there we declare you God are the master of all the expressions of Praise pick for yourself whatever you think about yourself I have to go to work I have to stop and and that's how we we somehow end it and in the same symbol of vain kades see you know Kadesh has nothing to do with death Kadesh is a a a type of proclamation that God's name is going to be great and Sanctified throughout the whole world that that which Abu started is going to come to a climactic ending at Masia time so we we we in a minion so this is an expression of Kes we Sayes we say God's name will be great and Sanctified which is based on a his great name where in the world that he himself created when now now we don't want to wait another thousand years and I'll say parenthetically that in the 12th century in Yemen they added to Kadesh in the name that the r should live to see it that was the the the unbelievable U attitude that they had towards the rambam which was just imaginable they said the ra should live to see the in Hebrew we say right now and then we all say in Aramaic which is the Hebrew equivalent to God's name is going to create the whole world in aric it's and then we have an additional eight expressions of Praise after we already said we have another eight in aric fine that's it we said 10 expressions of praise to God you done not at all he's he's way above all of the expressions of Praise that was ever ever said in this world so that is the etc etc etc and therefore and I'll just use one more example from the world of and I'm gonna show it again on the screen um in in the source number nine which is going to go over to the next page it reads there is a question in the mikdash when theim would sing the song of the day right today and we have a chapter of that's all every every day we say a different chapter of T the easy one to understand is Shabbat but on Sunday I believe it's that tells us that there's a connection between the chapter that was selected with that particular day of creation say that that would be a full-blown Shi itself to explain well whatever it is the Lev had a text and the Lev had there was instrumentation so he had a choir with a band an orchestra behind the choir so the question is what does the orchestra do it plays out the melody and the people sing the text so when we consider the of theim which was the most important part of the was it the text was it the message of the chapter of tum or was it the the melody that comes out of the instruments that were there in the beta mikdash so it seems that the text seems to be very important and and that's what thear says that which came out of the mouths of the L which means the text that was most significant but there's another opinion des and the other opinion says just the opposite that you know what was important about the the who was the the melody not so much the text the text was important to support the melody but what really was important was the was the nigin and tried to give some understanding to this because it doesn't even make sense I mean they're sending they're singing a chapter of of that should be important why would the the melody be so not just so important but even more important than the text of and the said because the the text is the limited amount of Praise that human beings were able to offer the N is the etc etc etc it takes the idea of the to a higher level of beyond words it's beyond words and that's the the superior aspect of the the Melody that came forth from the instrumentation at bet mikash now we know that Torah is both learning and it's also song The the whole Mitzvah of writing a SE T is given in the Mitzvah of right here you have it on the source number one the calls itself sh why because on the one hand Torah is a text for study no doubt but Torah is also an instrument of praise to that he actually gave us the Torah and therefore said the a person getting an makes two the first one is for study it's the same that we use every morning for before we study T but the final at the end of the AL is the praise to that he actually gave us the T because we acknowledge the fact that the Tora is also furthermore there is an understanding by some of the greats that when one reads tanak even if the person does not understand one word of what he or she is saying is a fulfillment of reading Torah on what level on the level of song on the level of song we know people who WEA them they don't understand a word they're saying yet there is value to just reading the so this is the concept of as opposed to the the orable text of let's say anything in the world of if you don't have a basic understanding of what you're reading the reading is a total waste of time so you have to really you don't have to understand it in depth to get the Mitzvah you can read a mishna and know that you're reading a mishna about some Mitzvah that's okay but if you're just reading in the and you don't have a clue that this section is the second section of M Shabbat all about candle lighting Friday night it's just a total waste of time to read it as as a parrot would read it I mean I can tell you that I'm capable of of singing in Arya from some Italian opera I don't understand one word of it of Italian yet I'm able to imitate like a parrot some of the uh Great opera singers who who sang the a particular piece so I can tell you with great embarrassment that I remember in America there was some who for they also didn't understand one word they were saying and yet they were K it's not a good thing by the way if you have that but unfortunately there were some k who didn't understand what they were saying when it comes to reading tanak you can read it without any comprehension whatsoever and still have an understanding a a a value on the level of Shir and because that's the case every creat T not only carries the concept of learning but also carries the concept of sh and that's why as I mentioned the person getting the Aliyah concludes the Aliyah With Praise of the giving of the Torah so on the and the level of Torah reading on in in in the framework of sh we says the end each just like we end with repeating the last as an etc etc etc so theak theal idea was that the B as aazan reads the last as he just completed the book ofid and the kahal the community that rereads the last as a type of symbolic etc etc etc and that's a very interesting take to what the concept of what the Min of kazak was all about yes we need there's no question we need because a war drains us on so many different levels it uh somehow depresses us and if somebody's walking around depressed the person is not sick the person is very normal it maybe the people who aren't depressed might be a little bit abnormal um the the um unfortunately unfortunately um this war is dragging out a little bit longer than anybody even thought originally and um it it's it's it's taking its toll on the people but we're just going to to have to re rededicate our resolve and I think that's what's happening we we we need the we have to we need the for ourselves we need the for others we we have to hang in there and give strength to our and I know many of you are involved in all kinds of projects to help our no doubt to augment the as much as possible wherever we can whether it's a Bess whether it's at home you have a few minutes you pick up AUM you say aim it's it's the cumulative effect of all this of K how could he ignore this he has to take this into consideration and take it into account we ask that Kosh should should give us the relief that we're all really looking forward to should give us a victory that will allow all the people in the South and the north to go back to their home and begin the process of rebuilding their lives and M it's going to be a great era hopefully of peace and tranquility and it will be Shalom Isel I mean when yakob ainu passes away with all his troubles that he had during the lifetime he was able to bring his to knowing that he did the final job that was required of him to give over that tradition to the Next Generation we're going to do that so that the next generation will be able to live here in Earth Israel in peace we able to live in prosperity well to live in in in this I heard from talked about the is the the spirituality and the g is the G the material you have to have both we have to synchronize the two we have to have the proper balance and God willing we will be blessed with the we will have both the and and will be and we should all hear from each other this to vot