Parshat Va’era 5784 (2024) by Rabbi Baruch Taub

good evening so let's go the the first order of business is to mention there's a mistake on the sheet it's par even though it says parot know how I did that but David fer immediately saw it so I have to I have to mention it okay this is par thank you David F thank you David haiser for all your technical work for the OU over the years and welcome back everybody okay um I just don't know what order to go in um where's my third sheet one second okay here we are I I think I'm going to start with the third sheet okay um this is uh we'll go a little backwards this is from the Sham Mish an old friend a great rebi the and I I've pointed out many many times the history of the sh he was the son of the AER who was one of the great polish Gitana gim uh in fact he he communicated with r Sal brisker very often R brisker said me him to hear his Shi but they came back they couldn't understand his Yiddish it's a big difference between Li Yiddish and Gitana Yiddish in any case I've also pointed out I think in past years that the shamm had a son who lived in Nat and he actually published manuscripts from the his grandfather from the AA that were unpublished manuscripts and they were called is put in a number of STM called nose desha the first one was actually written here in natana and I I saw this a number of years ago when I opened it up and I just saw and I then I did a little research and I found out where he lived I I went down in towntown there is a apparently a m at in town which I think might still be in existence the Name Escapes me for the moment but he actually lived here I say here for those of us from Nat he lived in N okay so the Sham mm we have the aeras hakus we have the Asos the 10 plagues um and we have at least the first number the majority of the 10 plagues are in this week's para um but when it when it comes to the plague of me catch myself here de H borod rather bod hail hailstones we find an anomaly and that's what he's going to speak about and I think it impacts on our situation today the need for serious f um when Moshe and Aon speak to parro they come in and out with parro and they threaten him with bat with the the hail and he tells parro he's going to remove the hail right so tells him you want you don't want this hail I'm going to get rid of it I'm going to go out of the city out of map I'm going to lift up my hands in prayer my prayers my doing will be heard by Theon and that will be the end of the bar rash on this I went out of the city from the city could not D in the city whether it was Cairo whatever City it was because it was full of idols and it was not proper for Moshe Renu to D in a city where there were Idols for a but I have a problem says the we have to understand when he removed the Frog plague they left parro's presence and he DED in the city and also the Maka of AR the Maka of the mixed wild animals which you find in I'm going to leave your presence and I'm going to beseech God the the AR the Locust he left clear that he DED in the city why was it that for the other three plagues he could pray to theom to theom to remove the plagues from from the Jewish people from from Egypt or affected us also but from Egypt but why by by by the um this one plague um he did not he was not able to dve into the outside of the city with the plague of hail V let me he gives us a a a wonderful answer you have to let's look at let's look at this plague of hail a little bit God tells him lift up your hand to Heaven explains when in this P an unusual statement Rashi is saying what the p means is God took mosenu up to heaven to deal with to bring down this plague of B we have to understand in the plague of Darkness It also says lift up your hand upon above the doesn't doesn't mean that by just lift up towards heaven but here Rashi explains Rashi doesn't say anything in in the darkness plag but in the plague of bar of hail he says that what it means I'll took him up actually took him up to Shay to to bring the plague what's what's going on third paragraph it would appear there was fire in the hail the Hail is water right water it's ice it's water so in the in the Barat in the hail was fire mixed together with the water rashi rashi on this p in our par it was a miracle within a miracle the hail I.E water and the were mixed together was water so he had water and fire mixed together in order to fulfill the wishes of our creator so peace was made between the fire and the water they existed they coexisted in boron miraculously there was a coexistence of fire and water in this plague of Hell purish meaning that God is above this idea of fire and water being opposites and he can he can do anything he wants but this is he's going to remind us he he diminished the tension between Fire and Water right fire water puts out fire fire right so he reduced the tension between fire and water and joined them together be where does this come from we have a source for this I'm sure many of you are going to be are aware of this sh Heaven what is sh the rabbis tell us in the med that Shay means it's Fire and Water that's what the heaven was created as fire and water coexisting Ze that God created the Heaven by bringing together fire and water that that was sh they were nullified one to the other they they synthesized with each other and they could live together heaven is made up of this know in cabalistic terms we we could we could there's a lot of discussion about fire and water the heaven is made but we're just talking about the actual physicality here that shamayim according to what what Torah tells us and Rashi explains to us is Fire and Water living together vain purish so now what does it mean that he tells Moshe y put your hands above the heaven he brought him up in order to bring this Maka this heavenly Maka this was this Maka was was dramatically different than the other nine plagues it was brought down directly from heaven heaven which is Fire and Water love synthesized together so this hail didn't just come in a physical sense you can speak to a meteorologist and they'll tell you exactly how hail is created physically the physicality of hail but essentially what the Ron was speaking in a much deeper sense of the hail which was Shay which was May in fire he brought him up higher than the heaven that M should actually bring this plague down to earth the plague of Darkness where it says all lift your hand up that's not what we're talking about he told him to lift your lift yourself up to the right he doesn't say it by he love mil this is what the rabbis here is what they're they're saying this is what happened with with hail this mixture of a it was a shay it was a Heavenly plague V Next paragraph so now what does that have to do with his having to go out of the city to pray for this hail the reason why he didn't pray in the city again what the name of the city is I don't know I have a feeling the name of the city of MIT was MIT not sure could have been Ram say there are cities mentioned in the Torah not sure but the reason why he didn't do in the city no that's a problem why should that stop MOS from well we have you know it says you know in dorum it talks about making your Camp holy we should not have human waste for the soldiers when they go out had a system whereby their human waste was not in the camp we kept a holy so they would be covered you can cover the test tble things we we can cover garbage when we when we pray and we can pray you can't pray amongst around garbage you can't set up a Suka near a garbage area right but you can cover the the garbage you can cover the SOA the human waste in this regard right you don't have to go out from house to house you can D it in one house let's say one house is a storage area of garbage uh right you can in another house you're okay it's covered up the truth be told we live amongst non-jews we live amongst Idol worshipers he writes nobody said you can't govern in a city where there are Idols right can D in a city where there's a church incidentally um the Fiddler on the Roof the movie The Play Somebody wrote many years ago that there's too much fiction here because Ana you remember there was a church if you remember your Fiddler on the Roof right testing your Fiddler on the Roof memory there was a church right and at tefa the actual city of anatea did not have a church which was why many people went to live in anatea in fact I think if I'm not mistaken Tel Aviv Tel Aviv there was a tremendous religious settlement originally in Tel Aviv because Tel Aviv did not have a church that's why there were many fatic groups that originally came to Tel Aviv there are other issues today with Tel Aviv that are not related to a church but that's for another discussion so and it's written in for example told the people when you return to the to the land of your enemy far away whether it's far whether it's near you can dve to God in the land of the non-jews which are full of Idols right the time of you can doen in a place where there are Idols you cover them up you just they can't be present when you're doing so what's going on here so here's his point that he makes there's doing and there's Dy this was of a different on a different denominator when he doed when he brought down the it was a different kind of Mak because barad came from this holy place above the heavens of Fire and Water of as a a world that had the tension between opposites opposites was did not was non-existent which is really the goal ultimately of that that we bring together we make sholom between opposites this prayer had to be a unique prayer it had to be a special prayer in order to bring down something from the world where opposites where opposite a world that does not exist by us where opposites live together in tension in tandem we that that's the source of this prayer right uh it's not a regular doing it's not a regular prayer right he had to stretch the limits of his human ability he had to completely demanded complete concentration it demanded a perfected environment therefore the presence of Idols of negative forces to for thisa could not exist he had to create a a special pure environment he was together with the idols in the city not good enough so that's that's what was going on here sometimes for a special prayer you need you need to isolate yourself you need to create an atmosphere that it's going to be special and he gives another example when God commanded mosenu with the calendar he gave the month of niss which is r kadim right when he commanded to him right it was we were still in Egypt but he took him out of the city which was full of Idols the the presentation of the of the Holy Jewish calendar had to create a a new spiritual energy in the hearts of the Jewish people why was K the first Mitzvah given to the Jewish people the establishment of the of the Jewish calendar why was that why is that the first commandment given to Amel the answer is I believe because what is the Lu it is as we of doing a real estate a commercial real estate um uh deal is is can by giving over the keys right it's a uh by handing over the keys right that's an official you give over the keys that it's an official Kinyon it's an official acquisition in real estate according to to it's a k the keys represent the the property this was Gave Over the keys to his kingdom toel through the B that the betra had the power has the power to establish when the holidays the Y toim appear on the calendar and if bezan decides that pesak should come out in August it'll come out in August right that that is the that is the ability of bezon to function and to and to sanctify the new moon it is the the keys to the kingdom to bring kadha into this world into God's world was handed over to am Israel right so this was a powerful Mitzvah this Mitzvah too had to create a special atmosphere a special environment I talked about this in a different place writes so Idols in the city would have impacted and and not allowed for the transmission of this great and holy the rest of the and the by the other plagues the other they could be D anywhere so beautiful idea I think the point of this is you know for those of us living in a Israel there's also a message here I I pointed out at one point one of the shum during the physic Shum that raim the great Mir he has a safer called SAS fantastic safer of his mus Schoen in the newer Edition that was put out there are uzen um dras that he gave during The Six Day War during and I think on the fourth day of the the fourth day of the sixth day war he gave it Russia at that time there was all kinds of a discussion just we've had it we had it in our time too where uh futa students tell meting boys and girls who were learning in Israel there was tremendous pressure to come home to leave ER Israel and they would say that well we're going to do in ER Israel we'll learn anel so spoke at that time and in that in that he writes of course you can do anywhere in the world to the reot but is the the the powerful and clearly at this moment in time whena is so Central a focal point and the focus of what we should we have to be doing during this Ace so those of us who have the of living in Isel have to take advantage of the special milu of Isel for as far as is concerned and for those who are not yet in a Israel to create an atmosphere that the atmosphere in our shs andat should be without talking should be a serious atmosphere theas that we're doing for now for a have to be on a different level than the normal Tas that we do three times a day okay now I want to go I want to go to number one and um number two actually which starts at the end of number one I'm not going to do inside because we have done this numerous times numerous times the idea I'm G to give out the idea of number two um I don't think I've ever presented the entire piece but it doesn't matter I'm going to orally explain it's very important and it'll impact on number one which is from the EMS lakov he talks about the MIT of um you know we have the Bor in our par the first born and he talks about um he talks about P the very important Mitzvah of pen redeeming a child Jewish child on the 30th day which is part and parcel of our our paral this week the redeeming of the firstborn right so let me let me do number two outside and it really relates to a question that we have this discussed over the years um very strange idea that Moshe rabenu Moshe rabenu had a speech impediment now let's put this in historical perspective there was no Zoom right there was no audio visual the only thing you had was the Word of Mouth from rebi to talmid from teacher to student so how is it that in such a historical period the person who was chosen the holy person who was chosen to give over Torah to Amel had a speech impediment how do we understand that so this piece here for hutner explains it and he starts off by telling us something that we have said before that in the morning brus we have two bras AAR we say as we say it a number of times we say it sometimes more sometimes less but asot is said in the morning which is a prayer in prayer PR of the ronom giving us the the Majesty the miraculous physical body the Goof of a human being and how it functions right and we have another prayer El which is a prayer thanking God for giving us our spiritual Essence our Nish now in in the sitter Inari in you have you have immediately followed by El in in most there's a pause between for our physicality our great physicality and for our great spirituality we have in the middle now there's a reason for that however according to the r right the Rama says that these two prayers should be said together why how do you conclude how does one conclude you are the doctor of All Flesh and you create us with Mira miraculously right everybody thinks that that means sayra hutner that means the the wondrous physical creation of the human being which is is miraculous right but that's not what it's referring to it is a bridge between the physical creation of the world is a Continuum to El the The Wonder of creation is that you create a physical Ro you create this physical human human being right but you attach him together there's a synthesis with the soul with the N so the physical creation Miracle The Wonder of creation of man is that you join these two together that there's a synthesis between the the physicality of man and his spirituality they're all one and the same now where does that come out where does that Unity come out because all the parts of the body parts of the human of the human being some of them are more physical some of them are more spiritual but each has a specific job and it's either physical or spiritual there's one exception how did God create man right he breathed into our nostrils and he gave us and the tar says that the power of speech speech speech the unique facet that a human being has the power of speech is that power is that M it is the unification of our physicality and our spirituality coming together the ability to speak is we are expressing ourselves in a physical sense but we're speaking from the heart speaking from the mind we're speaking we're speaking spiritual things right that's the power of speech now mosu stunners right why did he stun so the chu haran was a re the chisan writes that it was done purposefully so that future Generations should not say ah you accepted the Torah this mosha Renu must have been a charismatic tremendous powerful speaker captivated his audiences right powerful uh maneuvering what's the term they use for these speakers um what's it called um put on your sound tell meis Charisma charisma right but there's a there's a term used for these speakers um it's a it's a it's a profession persuaders motivational speakers motivational speakers right so he had Charisma but he was a he was a great motivational speaker that's why you accepted this Torah but it's really you know come on you know it's uh it's uh it's not true so that but that's the run but rev hutman says something much more powerful says something different let's say he says that the the fact that Moser rabenu had a speech impediment was not as a result of a physical inferiority it was because of a spiritual superiority Mosher renu's mind and heart and Nisha was on such a high wavelength that he he couldn't he couldn't bring out physically all of the spirituality that he was given from the ronish and I've always given the example of a child who has a stuttering problem the child is taken to a specialist and puts the child through a battery of of of tests and the children the parents feel their child is to use an oldfashioned Politically Incorrect term my child is very slow he stutters he's slow right he's not intellectually um Adept and they they come back for the final reading from the psychologist he says listen the problem with your child is not he's slow your child's a genius your child is thinking much faster than his physical ability to express his thoughts and his understanding that is the problem on his speech that's what a speech therapist an expert speech therapist does and there is a there are wonderful speech therapists out there who deal with this particular problem of stuttering and have had enormous success right in in the Jewish World in the Jewish educational world in the Torah educational world in particular there's a whole organization that deals with this but that was the problem mosha mosha stuttering was not the result of a physical inferiority it was the result of a spiritual superiority so a great moment happened in Jewish history in world history the Revelation on har a one time moment that AES came down in all of his spirituality he came into our world and mosha rabena went up on the mountain and at that moment there was a synthesis that moshe's physicality and his spirituality were merged together in a synthesis and from that moment on you have Savor dor mosha did not stop speaking for 40 years 39 years constantly speaking that change what came about with that change that his his physicality and his spirituality came together right that's how rner explains now what does that have to do with PID Aben with page three so hopefully we can get through it let's see what what um rakov says here actually it's page one right I'm talking about page one it's the first piece that I had okay so let's go back to this first piece the P says in our every firstborn I will redeem great commentary wrote why do we redeem the firstborn because remember the first born was was set aside to be do the aod in the mikdash right but it was then taken from them and given to shave Ley but you had to officially have a ceremony where you take away this level of sanctity right and make him into a quote unquote an ordinary Jew like you and I right so theor says so they could get involved get that down into our world into the normal world right that was the whole purpose of this this great Mitzvah p is to bring the je the firstborn child back into into normal you know not necessarily holy existence daily daytoday exist right what you see from this is if we would not redeem this child he would be living a life of holiness truth be told we have to understand this custom of the Jewish people we make a whole celebration right we have a ceremony with BR we have a meal he's coming down what kind of what kind of suit he have for taking this this from his lofty position and making him a regular Joe right first he was called now he doesn't have to work in the anymore the we get it back right what kind of sim is this what's going on good question right what does the say when he receives the money from the parents the the Redemption money this child will enter into the good life it be the will of the same way that he came into is coming into Redemption so should he enter into the learning of Torah to to getting married and and doing good deeds have a question what do what do we start off by saying why is it the by what do we say by the same way you came into the Covenant so what do we need what kind of a repetition here what do we need this for right why do we have this additional prayer what's going on here right what what what's going on here make a big deal out about the this kid becoming from a holy Place coming down to normal regular existence and we repeat that regular existence that we said at the BR so listen to what he says here and you'll see that it really dovetails with this whole idea that we spoke about from rev hutner um and El sh and and u let me explain I discussed this in there's a fundamental dramatic difference between and the nations of the world the nations of the world that the the soul and the body they're two separate entities they have nothing to do with each other right on Church you go to Sunday on Sunday you go to church and that's you know that's good but for the rest of the weeks you know rest days of the week you you're you're you get involved in work and everything else you know there's a separation between and state right that's the soul whatever that soul is that's what Holiness is SEC physical physicality material thing so therefore a non-jew can bring a Corbin can give a Corbin to the to offer in the mikdash but only a Corbin only a right it has to be the corbon is purely to God it's something to relate completely to God the idea of other carbon which deal with our our sins let's say a sin offering we we offer a COR we do something spiritual in order to affect a change in our physicality they don't have that concept right but the Jewish people body and soul are synthesized and they're mixed together they're mingled together they create a third entity shama Body Soul you have a human being right is both and they are tied together everything that we do is a partnership between this because of these two things therefore for example on the the says everybody says everybody admits you have to have a sud on the day the Torah was given right a strange gamorra everyone should say everyone admits you should read The Ten Commandments the but the gorah says no the rabbi say everyone realizes for sure you have to have a celebration physical meal a physical sud when we receive the Torah in order to demonstrate at the giving of the Torah the whole the body was made holy our body our physicality was there was a it's a different physicality we can we can pull off all kinds of spiritual things through our body the misses that we do I explained this in another place based on this we understand very well and good now we can understand this greatness of piden it's not it's a good question but the answer is better than the question before the yes this little baby was the yellow was was holy lofty physical level of but it's not for this reason that God brought the into into the human being into the body the purpose of man in this world is to live a physical material life to live a good life the good life with physicality with with good things with material Pleasures but in a holy way and to put bring them together to bring them together the spiritual and the physical and this is what we do with we bring him from this lofty position of Holiness that he still has until we redeem him right into this world the normal World down here to make himself better so that the Holiness will empower the secularity of his the material part it should overwhelm it the spirituality should should be the the the main focus but he will become a better person by coming into this world it's one right that's why is the holiest y because it's and mo together it's it's the weekday and the Y together right I mean the mission P where where am I getting this from the mission P says that if someone is something like the mission says something like that someone who who downg denigrates yam holy days that he has no the r writes on this comment this mishna talking about why because the essence of of is is the Ence of Mo of kadha is the synthesis bringing Holiness into you know not living in a cave living a an aesthetic lifestyle in a cave but living a life in the in the world in society living in society is a holy person right this is a great this is a cause for celebration through this P the child is now coming to become in his moment his potential of fulfillment bringing his Holiness into non holiness and bringing the two together this not simple matter to bring the light the soul and the body together and that's why the is right he asked a question which we skipped over by the we say that we don't say that by the bris we say but by we say you need fear of God for this you need a sense of godliness when we take this child and redeem him we give he should have fear of God he have should have a sense of godliness and it which will give him the the sense the SE and the Heart the emotion to bring together the into the so he will be successful in his role of life okay there you have it a new dimension of pidan haben okay thank you all for being here