Parshat Balak - Part 2 - The Vineyard of Torah - Rabbi Menachem Nissel

so let's decode it can we do this we can do this first of all who wants to help what's the vineyard what is the symbolism of vineyards in Judaism this is like those you have any access to Casa de quirks they took about this little time difference between wine and bread for example so what is unique about about about wine about grapes it gets better as the ages this number one and it's exactly okay so a grape is yummy but how much can you sell a bunch of grapes for but you have a gourmet wine so then it's a whole different story and some used it is you can spend hundreds of dollars for a quality wine will began as grapes so a grape so to speak carries inside it the secret of the alcohol that's why the rabbi's always say Nick nessie on Yates a soda wine comes in the secret comes out it's a double metaphor first of all if you want to get to know a person don't do this don't do this but seriously you're gonna meet your future on your husband right you'll save you seen him on perm yet okay so that's a good sign you're still smiling good at say you know thank God you see the guys when they get drunk they're the sweetest cutest thing talking about the ones who are thinking about the real cheetah guys when they get drunk so they just like to eat different or and they're like it's very beautiful to see but the idea is you get to know the secrets of a person when they drink wine but also wine symbolizes the secret dimension of terror so when we say bread versus wine so bread is the staple the bread so to speak symbolizes terrific solve the written law but the oral law the beit midrash and for those of you who like to join me on a little tour of the mirrior shiva so i'll give you an invisibility cloak and you can come in go past the sleeping security guards and you come in and you see at first glance you feel like you're not some kind of a her 80 Led Zeppelin concert you know it's gonna like this raw coming from the mirror and you see thousands of people all looking like spare parts from happy from happy feet you know penguins everywhere and then you realize that they are all learning the same page of town words which looks weird at first glance but then when you understand what's happening each one of them is letting the same page of time with everyone else but each one will work on it and working and working and come out with their own deep understanding no two people learn a page of Talmud properly identically it's always a little bit of your own inner self comes out Peter's Peter is like wine you squeeze it and you squeeze it you never gets old you can never really really know a page of town it is infinite as God himself by the way that's almost a definition of Talmud because of Tom motives God's mind and written form so by definition is infinite but the experience the Talmudic experience to squeeze and to squeeze into squeeze until you get there as this good lady mentioned is that wine gets better as it gets old so most things that gets all milk gets sour when it gets all wine gets better when it gets old it's why it says that joseph sent his father Jacob Yaakov wine because das Canaan Nathan he may know because all people they like you why do they like it they like is it symbolizes the beauty of old age physically you go down but the deeper hidden part of you just gets better and better and better it's why we terror Jews are obsessed with the world to come because if the inner wall gets better as we get older so surely will continue to do so after we've discarded our bodies the bottom line is wine symbolizes the hidden walls the hidden world of tara the secrets of terror this is the the true miracle of the jewish people if you want to know why we're still here if you want to know the secret of the jurors it's all found in this wine in the chromium in the vineyards this is the secret success of the Jewish people I don't know where you'll come from but I could show you more or less the success of your community is directly proportional to the amount of wine you have in your community meaning Torah being studied the way it's supposed to be studied at the deepest possible level I'm a little biased my wife is from Memphis Tennessee to Memphis is surrounded by you go Louisville Kentucky to the north little rock to the west he got Nashville to the east he got millions to the south they're all about the same size the communities but rabbi moshe feinstein a generation ago sent two of his top students to Memphis and Memphis disproportionally has produced Torah scholars and great ladies like my wife and it sure is nice to see y'all what can I tell you it's an amazing community and it I believe a lot of it is because of the quality of the wine meaning the deep terror that is starting there what are foxes what are foxes in Jewish symbolism who knows the stir of rebbi akiva and the Fox it's a marshal it's a parable but once upon a time there was a fox on the banks of the river you know the story Danielle there was a fox on the banks of the river what happened next is that the the Fox tries to tell the little fish you know can't you see the fisherman's trying to catch you it's dangerous inside the water get out of the water and the fish turns around and says you're supposed to be so smart you think you can fool me I know that as long as I'm inside the water then I can survive the moment I leave the water I know what you're going to do to me you're going to eat me up alive that's what's going to happen so as long as I'm in my environment of course see the water symbolizes the world iturra the world of the the vineyard Jews survived directly proportional to the terror in their community it's the way it's always been you have a look at Jewish history wherever Jews came to a new place and they set up a yeshiva and they set up the basic institutions of Torah flourishing in their community then they themselves flourish and it is not assimilate and they succeeded so our success and by the way when you say bierko's tutor in the morning part of what you're doing is you're celebrating your lifestyle is surrounded by a centerpiece and that centerpiece of the yeshivas and the tower that has been studied in the places that you live and the places that you identify with let's go back over here we have over here number one we have the vinya the vineyard is turrible pair is the hidden are a law that is studied pass over from father to son from parent to child then you have the foxes the foxes are the seduction the foxes are those people that create an imagery that if you step out of the issue the walls then you'll somehow do even better it is those people to give this image that you can do better in a in an assimilated nun tura environment and everything's going to work out fine for you the foxes are always the ones that some use the power of their mouths to create an imaginary world that is very enticing but when you step into it there's nothing there the Foxes of the second-hand car salesman in the imagery hope none of your dad's do this for a living but the ones that will say oh there's no problem last week my son-in-law isn't in the North the whole of last week my son at some of his friend went to rent a car what is cheap car rental places and the way it works is is that when you return the car they look for dents and they find a dent then they charge you so my son will told me his friends saw there was like a sticker on the back of the car and the sticker wasn't an inappropriate sticker it was inappropriate some kind of a female inappropriate dress and this was the achieva guy so he took up the sticker even though it was a car rental didn't want to have it on the back of his car and he saw there was like a hole right underneath it so the people that the current is were trying to trick him they were going to remove the sticker and then charge him for that hole but since he was a good yeshiva boy he took away the sticker so he discovered whatever I heard the story last week and so those are the the foxes finally we have Luke hosts that are written on both sides what are the Lucas that are written on both sides so here I want to tell you something very important because of course fits in with everything I'm trying to get to the punch line is going to happen in about five minutes the main point in my class I'm getting there but the idea of the Lucas here you see and hear you see we need that for whatever ridiculous miracle to have them on both sides it's five over here in this five way what does it help me that it works on both sides so obviously there's deep capitalistic reasons for there's a lot a lot of stuff going on behind it if you want to go into Kabbalah you want to go into the mystical wall there's a lot you could say by the Lucas the Lukos is a is a is a is a subject in Kabbalah all on itself there's tons to talk about the Lukos but there's something very simple and very down to earth and that is the following the beauty of the terror in contrast to almost everything else in life the beauty of the turret is that the deeper you go into it the more you realize that there's no flip side what do you buy if what is the flip side mean the flip side is what you call an English small print it's always the small print there's a lot of things that look beautiful out there but they don't tell you the small print and when you get there then you realize that it's not exactly what you thought it was and you write a contract if you don't read the small print and you can get yourself into trouble but a lot of things in life and I'm looking at the clock over here so i really cannot talk to you about this a lot let's give you simple simple examples money is something that from your little child is told to be a value something you should pursue and somehow rather if you're rich everything falls into place now this is a wise room I don't know its rise because you are it's a beautiful day outside and you are spending your lunch times listening to a middle-aged rabbi teaching you terror so you're looking for wisdom you could be out there partying so you are smart enough I don't have to sell you the following point when I'm like the incredibly rich people out there bill gates in the curly rich man's he owns Microsoft I don't know when the stock market crashes by five percent so he is losing millions and millions and millions of dollars menachem Nestle who works in the bay and doesn't have any stocks it doesn't have any shares so he seems quite fine well not really because in about a year's time they're gonna tell us that the cutting or salad because there's no donors but that's a different story the point I'm trying to make is it on paper that you singing monies that you see sit there and you think money's going to solve our problem there's not there's a flip side you go deeper deeper use here is always a problem over here anything that's glamorous once you get down into real life you always have to worry when people the beautiful people out there will they make good marriage partners good marriage partners is not about what you look like when the two of you are walking to into like you know some kind of a show that's not what real life is all about it's so like when there's when the when it's three o'clock in the morning and someone has to get the kids it's your turn to got the kids nods your paragraph ago someone has to get the kids that's the moment of truth remember that that's the moment of truth whether you found someone good or not honey I know how hard it is for you I'm gonna push my weary body to get the child cuz i know you need your sleep no no tomorrow you're gonna go and learn i need you to be alert I'm gonna run again that's a beautiful marriage because it never happens that way but let's let's fantasize the point I'm trying to make is is that tour is not that way the deeper you go the more you unfold deeper layers of truth and deed of deeper layers of beauty and how everything fits in with everything everything else it's by the way the simple meaning we say God is one the idea is is that complexity means there's small prints but simplicity means the deeper you go the more you realize that everything fits in perfectly with everything else everything is in harmony everything is the way it's supposed to be so now I get to the point this is the agenda of today's of today's class because I really want to make a point to you unfortunately I have to make this point it's not a point I'm looking forward to making over here but let's just summarize what's happened so far the story so far is that bill um is on the way to destroy the Jewish people and the angel comes along and sets him in code is you're not going to win this what is the code over here the code is this imagery that you are trying to break down a vineyard by letting loose the foxes the foxes know how to create an illusion that the vineyard is fake and they create their own virtual vineyard which you and I Stickley know there's nothing there I'm not going to go in a tie right now to make fun of the society that you and I grew up in but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that what they the advertising people say is going to give you happiness does not give you happiness no one ever became happy with things no one ever became happy with things these things the matter how sophisticated AR or as mice with my my kosher phone okay it's the cachet out to dark negate this thing will not bring happiness no matter what they say over there this koecher just you should know what kind of Rabbis teaching you okay okay it's not going to bring things do not bring your vacations not bringing happiness partying does not bring your happiness this made it who it is what it is what they're selling to you the happiness always boils down to us Judaism has been selling since the beginning of time which is a good marriage and good parenting and good house building and good neighbor building and good community building together with God together with God's great purpose which brings us to a wall beyond this world all these things are timeless ideas of what it means to bring true happiness to people so bilham comes along and he wants to destroy the Jewish people he does it through the power of foxes he does is for the power of this illusion of truth and the angel says you can't do it because the Jewish people have a legacy of Luke hosts that are written on both sides which means they immerse themselves in the world that the deeper they get the more they see the beauty the deeper together more to see how true thiz they see how everything fits in with everything else you