Parshat Bo | Rabbi Taub

par Bo so first piece we have here is from the Sham Mish we're gonna one theme the theme this morning could say that the theme this morning to a certain extent is beor the first board the idea of first board at least the first two pieces or three things we're going to discuss will we deal with the okay now the sh mm the number one um he starts with this is peric giml of the par the this is at the end of the par kades um you have to sanctify the first born okay but then there to be the peric deviates right talks about sanctifying the first born then all of a sudden uh first born not only of humans but also of Bea and and animals then uh the gamor kind the the per kind of little halfhazard Le um remember the day you came out of MIT so we talking about MIT Kish is that's because of the um the the final mocka of destroying the firstborn right because what what what the rabbis tell us is that for every Maka for every plague that happened to B Israel there was a counter kadha that we got so without going through all 10 of them but with Bor the obvious is that there's a now after the plague of the first of the first born the kadus of Ben Israel is announced that that we are we are the Bor is is Holy is San and by the way is is also benel we're also but he so he didn't go why what then he talks about the animal right doesn't seem to fit in then he reminds us about our slavery then talks about bringing he going to bring us into fits is talked about here is all the par of and that we eat matah we don't eatat and then he goes back to every animal you have to theor of every cattle is Holy the first born of a c cattle right and then pet of a donkey has there's a whole process and then he returns and he says talks about the Mitzvah of giving over to our children right and then he ends with filling right he ends the peric ends with right that that this is all should be a sign on your arm and on your head so what does all this have to do with this is the par so right it's a little half as you take a look at the end of the par you'll see you'll see this so this is what he's going to talk about now okay the sh is for those of us for those who have not been here before the sh was um the uh sh he was a son of theer a great kic master who actually his far the the abzar died in 1913 so the Sham died about let's say 20 years later okay soic master in really our time almost our time right then he goes on I gotta we have to get our hands on this why didn't he immediately saides and now talk about the concept of being mades of sanctifying the first born but he doesn't do that but he SE and he he he stops and he goes to he talks about right so I gave you a little bit this introduction hear what his question is and at the end he goes back at the end of the he talks about the sanctity of the first born again now he says you can't answer the way the answers in many places in sometimes uh oh I want to say we're learning today fora we're learning today fora for barl Ben fager Barry and doren's husband Dorene who was our secretary right and he's having a major major operation again today and he should have Rua and everyone should do for barl Ben fega and our learning is in the SC of our learning that he should have a rafu okay so that I mean the H the halfhazard para so you can't say like the ran says many times um the Torah is give short shrift to the words that ski over things that he says to Moshe sometimes mosha speaks to ronam you don't you don't see everything he said but but that's not what's going on here that's if things are out of order right so what so so V go down about two lines V here's my answer I'll tell you what my answer is because we have to understand what the the sanctity of Bor means right Bor is a concept the first is a concept and this is not just about the first born that when we were given that mits of sanctifying the first born we were given a total Panorama of being beor everything that we have is is is Ben is right so he explains and he says this in the name of his grandfather the every one of the plagues that Egypt got there was an opening of sanctity to Israel as I mentioned earlier right there's a quid proquo for every plague we got the the better side of the deal now the plague was the dark side of the negative of everything we got the real picture right so the destruction of the killing of the but we now become the that's [Music] sanctity right so it's ver the says right they get plagued and we get healed right so is this is the this is the the rehabilitation of is as Isel right we're coming out of Egypt this is The Birth of a Nation go M of go when we come out of M this is the birth it's like the Le of the birth ofel coming out of MIT and we are the right we're the first born of all people so therefore the plague of killing the firstborn which destroyed their now remember until now Egypt was at the top of the world they were the most powerful nation in the world they were the RIT they were the Bor right they represented the power of the world Egypt was the country of the world right but what happened now is that the it it turned over completely upside down and Isel became the everything has everything is in every in every aspect you have p is that's why the par talks about PES it's not out of order here the Torah is describing to us what the BR of K is it's not just about the firstborn son it's about everything else it's about P it's about the the which is the first of the right the calendar begins you know Rush the head of the year is p right so you have you know we always say kados kados kados there are three kinds of Kad there's kadha in Inman in time there's kadha in place right in Mak and there's kadam right so Kad so this is what we were given here the B is the kadush in time is PES the first born in time is PES in terms of the calar in terms of our calik is in space in place the San of is that is sanctity that is the first of the K of of of space of place right Ben and what's in the in nees where's the the of of the Soul that's the the brain the seat of the intellect and the Heart the seat of the emotion and that's filling right that's fing fing is put here and the and the and F is put here because your this is all this these are all issues of the the first born the firstborn animal and what we eat right um Israel right and the calendar right that's what what's not he's not changing topics here but he sh these are the these are of place time and Nees and Humanity everything is in this par so it's it's not out it's not half as this is it's an essay this peric is an essay about what Bor is all about it's not just that you know we redeemed the firstborn son that's that's good that's that's neish that's F right and maybe that's why we make such a big thing about Fillin by Bar Mitzvah boy starts hisin at bar mitzvah it traditionally that's a major thing a major um entree into being a bar mitz putting on filling but that relates to the Bor aspect of um of clel right the filling again the neish the the intellect and the and the emotion right and he says again this is the be this is the this is the of space and time the of the hand is next to the heart and the to of the head is next to the brain right Hees to sanctify the heart this is what man is all about this is this is our r that clel has that we understand that we are madesh right what we what what our mind our intellect and our and our emotion right the is intellect interesting what does it say about fill in the Torah you put the B between your eyes now if you translate that literally you would have to put the filling right down here right on the bridge of your nose right but that's not what it means but so why does the Torah say says perhaps he says even though the place of the is where the soft part of a baby's brain is right that's where you put it the beginning of the hairline or the beginning of the hairline that's where that's where it has to be right so so why does the Torah say between your eyes because intellect all everything has to do with right intellect is not in our is not we're not in control you know what we see right we we are into we we think about what we see so there's a power of sight and we shouldn't abuse it because sight can destroy that's why we look at our we have to look at the representing the MIT we have to be we look at the wrong thing our goes in the wrong direction so there's a tie in between sight and and and the mind he quotes a in Proverbs my son give me your heart and your eyes right it's good to be you want to be an academic right you know there's a Paul Johnson if you're familiar with the author Paul Johnson a historian he he was a Catholic um I think he's still alive I'm not sure but he wrote the history of the Jews phenomenal history of the Jews right by Paul Johnson I recommend it but he also wrote a book called The intellectuals now the intellectuals he talks about all the people that are intellectuals that you know in the world of philosophy all of who whatever name you can come up with each one of them was absolutely brilliant but they were degenerates one after the other all these great Minds these great minds that are worship right uh the founding fathers of philosophies right they were they were degenerates right and um and what is that all about because uh greatness is not to be an academic right so you're an academic you're great right that's not what greatness is by us you know um rosha Feinstein right uh how do Ros become rosha Feinstein right it has to be a synthesis of midot of the of the eyes right the LA and the in the mind otherwise you just know you're it's an academic you you go approach Torah it's it's intellectual popcorn it's very nice I want to study it like I'll study mathematics but that's not what it's all about let me tell you about raoa Feinstein right pardon yes right yeah we're not right yeah all right listen you're on tape now be careful what you say he's got children and grandchildren okay all right you're right right we have a whole a bit of L problem with his approach to Kabal anyway but let me tell you about Rosa rosha was the godor the posor right he pusk for all of us right when mosha when rosha came to the Lower East Side people suggest become a sh there's no you know what are you going to do here right he sat he learned he wrote um rebi was the rash he when he was a little boy his father would send him with a chicken to in the lower e side they they moved here from Taria to and they were living on the lower e side and he would take a chicken to a r in lowy side he said there were three kinds of ronam on the low side he walk in every R was sitting with a gamorra but one R had a plate there and he did not look up from his gamorra until he heard the tinkle of the coin because you're coming asking sh you got to pay right until he heard the money hit the dish then he would look up and he'd P then there's another kind of Rob he said and he and he is a kidy remember this he he just pushed the plate towards you right but there was one r on the Lower East Side that if you went to asking shot he didn't even have a plate and that was Raa right So eventually rosha became right and he writes at the beginning I think I might have mentioned this a few weeks ago in the be in his introduction to his first he said you know who might answer these questions right but what can I do people are asking questions and nobody's answering them so I've got to answer them so I'm gonna answer them the V I can right so mosha became God right how do you become a god it's not just academic right there's nothing that MOS didn't know in Torah right whatever it is right but it was who he was a p his Persona right that's greatness for us right so that's the perhaps why the Torah says that should because without that the intellect is nothing so this is unbelievable this is all the B and the Animals the first so so this is and I'll give you a silly example right if you're a sports fan and even if you're not you you'll understand this that you have let's say in sports course you have a team let me take uh I don't know baseball right let's say you're a baseball fan and you were a fan of certain in your city like the Yankees let's say they became they won the World Series uh 20 times right and all of a sudden for 10 years they didn't won the World Series right and all of a sudden they come back and and they win the World Series right take any city right the when the when the when the sports runs Society in so many ways that it effects people want to live there the value of houses tourism right once the the first the first that they won the world they were number one they were the B laav deal so tourism picks up housing picks up the whole Comm environment changes and affect they do things with the environment and the highways right that's B Bor affects the entire social Dynamic the entire Panorama of our lives that's B that's what the that's what he say he says over here okay let's go to number two this is from R hutner and he's also talking about Bor the firstborn and he's going to give us something very special this is from a much bigger piece and I've taken it out um what he first of all points out here is that ik the whole got the to tell over your son is two of those sons are in this chapter also I skipped through it but you'll see that you have I think the Russia and the are in this par the twoim in from this whole thing you have the Jewish children who become the Bor who ask the questions right so he says the whole idea of we got the Mitzvah of relating to our children is talking in this in this whole paragraph paric of the sanctity of Bor right the father to the son with with the Exodus from Egypt this is in the par the whole Essence the whole Persona of the mitvah of teaching your children it's tied in with the sanctity of right so this is when we didn't we left out in our discussion here but he's throwing that into the pile here that whole the whole idea of of of giving over to our child that's a concept of how is that passing from father to son from parent to child how is that it says let me explain there's a mitah in the Torah there's a a MIT in the Torah whether it's there a MIT there's also MIT to honor one's older brother let's say could be an older sister also the post can discuss this could be every older brother or sister but essentially the MIT right to honor your oldest brother where does that come from from the of right other words is you have to honor the firstborn son also your brother right Theo explains in what what is the what is this the utility of this the honor why do we honor parents they are our beginning over the page right the children come from the mother and the father from the parents the also has a place in the in who come after him right in other words the Bor makes husband and wife mother and father right so it's the second level of of CH of children right he creates the next stage in the the the growth of the family the pattern of the nation right the pain or the joy of child raising which comes to parents for having that firstborn child right is mixed in that that it's aim in their birth in their ability to give birth the what does he mean it gets better and then the essence of the he becomes a kind of a parent a second deegree parent and I've mentioned this before I think maybe here in this in this this setting that psychologist there's a lot of literature in Psychology about the Bor being the parenting child the parenting child and it it relates it leads to a lot of interesting sometimes problems sometimes good things but it's like a triangle you have mother father and the firstborn he's got something to say about every child about everything that they're doing wrong to that child and not to him whatever so sometimes it's an inverted triangle you know you have the Bor up here mother and father so I'm saying psycholog this is something that psychologists deal with right there is such a notion as the parenting child right and but but it relates to this because he really essentially is a second deegree parent he creates right he moves along let me show to you in in KES I'm going to show it to you in in our language right at I'm going to show you how is a second level parenting Parenthood second level father right the word of father is of right it's one two in gatria it's one two right Al is of ba is take bait and right after the bait so now what is now you have in mathematics right this is not complicated math even I can understand it you have units right from 1 to 10 is units from 10 20 30 40 50 is is tens and then you have from 100 205 is hundreds right you have 10 units tens and hundreds okay in gatria every letter of the olive bed has a number right we know that alive is one B is two UD is 10 is 20 right ra K is 100 ra is 200 10 is 10 UD is 10 is 20 one is one two is B Al is one bit is two so look at the the word what do you have you have Al B father son the take what do you have bait what's bait bait is the second of units right one two ba is the second of units you have the is all the second letters b ba is the second letter the Continuum of units it's the second letter b is the second letter of tens right and re is the second letter of hundreds that's the word Bor Bor is a continuing everything by the way everything in the Torah is based on mathematics everything in the Torah is based on mathema we don't understand it right but there was a a t a student of the vnon who wrote A saer which actually just came out in the 1990s they discovered this safer and it was published and his whole the he explains there from from his rebi the V Theo that the basis of to mathematics is such a a fundamental part of Torah and you see it here here's a perfect example Bas the continuation of units um tens and hundreds is theor is the parenting child is that second degree parent right that creates the whole concept of let me go further he says more the first letter of it is a Continuum from from father because because the before is the second level of parenting this is the by the way there's a big difference between the modern Hebrew that we speak and KES right that we speak I mean I don't want to you know burst our bubble but it's not Lan kodes right there's no such thing as Z in Lan KES to give you an example right it's it's close it's a close cousin right it's important to speak it right right I'm not it's you know there's there's sanctity to it it's based on right but it's not right it's a second root second parent beautiful concept right from with hner now so what do you see from this again just to review quickly that the Bor makes husband and wife mother and father he is the parenting child he does contribute in that way and natur psychologically also is does physically that's what he is right um and he he changes the whole reality the whole dynamic of the family if you look at the end of barid and particularly Noah you'll see when the the genealogy is listed in the Torah it will say for example missel lived X number of years then he had children and he lived another y number of years lived X Y years and died and why is the T divided up like that at the beginning there were others that are just it simply says so and so lived uh X number of years he had children and he died why is there a division in many cases in migration you'll see it that so and so lived X number of years he had children and then he lived a y number of years a total of x y and he died so theot is what's T telling us that life with children is a totally different experience than life without children just push it it's a simple simple fact of life right and that is what the Bor creates he creates that that distinction in in life okay let's go to the final piece here and maybe we'll have time to uh to do some things um outside this piece um I want to get back okay so this is a little bit of a going into also we're at the end now I want you to go to him tell him if you don't if you don't send the banel out you're finished I'm going to destroy all your firstborn right H but you here's what I want you to tell him go to and tell him I hardened his heart the kbo and and I why did I do this because I wanted him I wanted him to make a point here 10 times over with these plagues rash important rash warn him that's rash he's being warned what's the warning he knows that he's not going to listen to him but he is instructed to warn him but he knows he's not going to listen he already hardened his heart there's no turning back for parro we're going to spend a few minutes talking about that concept of what is it mean exactly that his heart was hardened right we we'll get that when we finish with Schwab but it's it's futility right not utility it's futility to warn him right a bigger problem you want the whole warning is strange this is what said how long will you refuse to humiliate yourself in front of you this is what he wants warning him mosha says to him I want to have a message from God how long was it are you going to continue to to humil to to refuse to humble yourself to the rebish right well to be like a nobody a nothing a poor person a lonely person when are you going to when are you GNA finally do that recognize who you are compared to the question is even stronger how is it possible how can God even ask to do this right parro the king of the world right he's parro right whose heart is hardened bash far he can't change any he can't he can't help himself right which we'll explain afterward he already hardened his heart we'll we'll explain afterwards why that is so right one other thing he now this is this is something is a strange you know how long is it going to take you the implication is there's going to be a time that farro is going to cave in and finally totally humiliate himself and totally s surrender to a who recognize that he is nothing and a is everything when is that going to happen already right this is a fantastic medbar sh nve the king of nve now we're going to Yum Kipper right so yonah right the king of nve this was the Paro or in Brackets he writes oh gilgal shallo parro the cabalist say MIM say he was a gilgal of parro he was parro right now what do we know about the king of n he was aad sh is the same you remember the story right he he he they put on sackcloth they they fasted they cried to God to save them he M changed the whole the whole society of nve right he turned by it was a turnaround right he got up from his throne he threw away his his Royal garments right by he put on he put on he put on sackcloth and sat on the ground and they dou into Theon so when is when is they gonna happen to you the second column point is he say that par could really do this now he could conceivably do this right that he Harden his heart as long as as long as that was what he wanted to do if this is what he wants if he's not going to change his mind he's not going to change his personality right if he but he could do it right but he's not he's not capable why we'll see why if he really would have done it made himself humble to Theon right he would have gotten up from his throne could have saved himself as he did when he was king of nve right by the way that's a fascinating medish right to remember right okay Al he this was the warning that M gave him how long it's going to take you to lose your arrogance and to be finally become humble to God clearly the day is Gonna Come you're gonna you're gonna lower yourself you're going to humble yourself you're gonna come down your throne this is the warning him how long is it gonna take you right he just adds a little bit of muser for for all of us based on this he says if we're smart we're gonna take out a personal ethical moral muser idea from this real real turnout real change in our lives for all of us to get rid of arrogance to get to have a sense of humility gives a whole Litany of of that the theor made at the end of and a lot of it is is in our El at the end of Theon right and one said I am dust in my life how much more so when I die I am just a a very who am I what am I please don't allow me to sin anymore but that's he's throwing in a little bit of mus which is not not it's a kada to have that as well but I just want to talk about this idea of God hardening hardening parrow heart right and you can really say Z fair right to quote not loan Kish Z what do you want from parro he he can't help himself you hardened his heart you harden his heart so how do we understand what does it mean that he that he that he hardened his heart so the the m in his introduction to discusses the idea of right the essence of The Human Condition is free choice that's the essence of who we are we have have the we have free choice and we make decisions and we make the right decisions we go in the right way we make the wrong decisions we don't go in the right way but there's something that M says that is called Beyond it is possible to go beyond how so let me demonstrate right we all go go beyond B right when Friday afternoon comes and you got a house full of guest coming you might like to say to yourself I don't need the shers no shabas this week I'm canceling shabas I'm going to the movies right that's it but you know you're beyond right you wouldn't think of doing such a thing right you know take Bal Chua he's becoming from and he's getting closer and closer you know I I remember I had somebody he's sadic with a beautiful family today but when he started to become from he was a heavy smoker and he came to me once he came to me at at Min sh says Rabbi I made it till 1:00 today for no cigarette right so you know the Balu is driving in the street and he stops at a red light and he stop he start stop eating tra and he sees the McDonald's and he starts to break into a cold sweat right he's gonna go should I go should I not go right and he goes through the even goes through a red light to get out of there right five years down the line when he stops that red light he doesn't even recognize me right would he think would he think of right because he's beyond that now that's being Beyond we are Beyond B in so many things that we do we are Beyond B it's like a football game you advance the the ball the line of scrimmage or as R desler says it he says it's like in the army that the soldier you keep going against the you have Victory you you whatever ground you have covered and and conquered you keep going you don't have to look back right that's being Beyond it's possible to be Beyond now the problem is like this you can be Beyond in a good way because how do you get Beyond because there are three elements here there's the mind we talked about at the beginning there's the mind there's the heart and then there's the liver the seed of of of raw passion right so you have if you are in charge you are a melik that's Mo L is LA and is the liver right right so you're Mel again same idea you're in charge but if if you do the right thing right but if you you you can be Beyond you keep doing the right thing you you'll keep doing the right thing you won't stop at McDonald's right but if you keep doing the wrong thing right that's destruction that's the liver cuff the Lum of the heart that tells you I want my heart's going to be instructed by my passion KH that's L and then me then the end the last is the me the mo it's it's inverted so that what runs is my passion my that's KH that's destruction KH is destruction in in KES right so parro that's what happened here parl kept making the wrong he couldn't help himself anymore because that's what happened he was beyond in the negative sense in the negative way cab L Faro and that's why it says cab l Paro right C is the liver Le is the heart and the AR parro is the AR take the word from par AR is the back of the neck the NEP of nape of the neck it's the backwards way of getting to the mind right uh cab Le Paro is the same thing right is that's what it was okay thank you all okay pleasure e e for