(Part 4) The 8 Habits of Spiritual People Rabbi Robert Rhodes

[Music] good afternoon thank you for coming out of this incredible eat we all get extra points up there for the level of suffering wind or to study terror [Music] we're gonna start with a very intense focus on the story of Noah and the flood okay so we spent the last three sessions talking about the garments of the high priest what the high priest wore when he went to officiate in the temple and the basic thought there is you are the high priest of your own life your master of your own destiny captain of your own ship and all of those are on on the website you can watch them if you'd like to hand out from that like happily give it to you all and if you want to go back and do that whole saved again we can we'll find time and we'll find space and we'll keep the air conditioner running and stuff a good stuff like that here we have a list of things to do to help you navigate the storms of life right you know the story of Noah on the flood right what we're gonna do is go back and look at the book of Genesis starting with chapter 6 probably through to chapter 9 and as we did last time we're gonna go backwards in and how this works we're gonna actually look at the prime text that were really here to study which is not the Bible itself but the Bible as read to us and read for us an interpreter for us by our my Mordecai Yosef Lehner of fish bits who was run by Mordecai Yosef later Bishop it's I'm really smart I printed this from Wikipedia so I know absolutely everything 1801 to 1854 very significant Casita thinker founder of the issue it's rods in dynasty of Hasidic Judaism one of the most spoken about but also one of the least understood and read of the great masters died in 1854 so not that long ago a hundred and sixty something years ago and radical thinker totally radical thinking and one of the things that he's famous for of course is saying that the major characters in the Bible who come out doing bad things on our reading we're actually doing very good things right so there is really in his worldview no wrong no wrongdoing god is good and the fact that you did a sin in quotation marks well you have to realize God must have wanted you to do that sin right that's not what we're here to talk about that's a very deep philosophical and theological discussion and we could spend quite a lot of time with that if we wanted to but here we're looking at the Rebbe Vishram and wonderfully Oh safe talking to us in what we would call terms of a self-help book if you go into any bookstore and there are a few bookstores left in the world how many self-help books on the thousands thousands I mean my wife has been listening to a lot of this stuff on me on YouTube while she's working in searching for apartments for people and stuff like that the the variety from Oprah to everything everyone you can imagine here we are looking at lists of things in the Hebrew Bible and the lists are largely lists of things that you should be able to commit to memory quite easily right they didn't have the smartphones that we have where everything is on it and everything is an app but here in the story of Noah he picks out eight things it picks out three things of that eight things and says if you know this story you should have these two these things in your mind and if you sit and think about this you will have a picture that will guide you through the stormy waters of life generally speaking in cusine is Amanda's Oh heart water and oceans our symbol for lust we can say means a lust word all right particularly improper and forbidden desires that's the the undertone here but in general all the difficulties of life and that's that's a very very straightforward picture that I think we can take we are on a ship we are protected by the ship by the ark as we traverse the ocean of life it sounds like a pretty straightforward metaphor and it really is it really is a very very very interesting course we did a while back but from naught by L you know Elijah to go on a Vilna he talks about Jonah and the Whale in terms of a metaphor for the soul's journey through life and then he gets into all sorts of imagery with thee with the ship of the whale and the ocean the dryline that's an amazing amazing interesting look to learn but we'll leave that one for the future we're just going through life here and life is not always easy right we feel look at other people and say they have they have plain sailing but of course for us it's usually a little bit more difficult and complex than that there's a three page handout and what I've done here is put in it a chart which obviously contains at least a couple of mistakes I see at least one right away none of these things are ever perfect and they're always the the basis for discussion they're forgetting for getting on with all of this you look at page one of the handout there are eight key words and we're gonna have to focus on these words and maybe make a mnemonic for them or just remember them in terms of the the order of the story used to be when I when I went to school we had to learn things off by heart I don't know what it was whatever you could folks went to school but yet I have in my mind whole volumes of Irish and French poetry which is incredibly useless to me and nonetheless nonetheless there is the there is the need to UM to what in certain is when I may be learned verse fourteen fifteen sixteen or final art and then you can then you have this in your head right so there's a couple of very big big things that were getting here and before we get into the text I want to just go and read you one little paragraph that I wrote on the bottom of the page here we have a discourse by a very significant thinker and he's telling you how to weather the storms of life and he's giving you equipment that Noah was given by God and you can use an adapter for yourself but there's a couple of bigger points that come out of that and what is that all the stories all the words of the Bible all all of Torah is teaching us very deep personal growth lessons anytime you open up the Bible anytime you open up a book of jewish law jewish learning it's not just an end in and of itself it should be reaching out and grabbing you and saying here's a lesson for you right here we're focusing on more generic stuff but we're really in a set of books that are absolutely magical that really have the ability and when i was learning this with with my Ramanathan moshe levy in toronto we sat down and pretty much every single day that we learned this stuff and we learned specifically breslav hassid us there there was a message directed at one of us both of us families what's going on in the news unless you've heard of her behind Kraemer the great translated this massive 2530 volume set and he told me that he was for quite a while the principal of a boys school and as principal of the boys school he was the senior disciplinarian and they had young boys teenage boys who got into trouble and did all sorts of rotten things that they were not supposed to do and the teachers couldn't handle some of them and the assistant principals couldn't handle some of them and eventually they made their way up to Rabbi Kramer's office and now Mike Kramer had no idea what to do with this kid whatever the issue was so these situations he would say you see that set of books over there and he was talking specifically about the Kotel I thought the great book are a great set of robbing an awesome and when they stand aggressive he would say to the boy take a volume there at random open any page and start reading and nine times out of ten there was an answer to the question under the problem of us kid had whether it was a theological problem a personal problem an issue with authority or studying that was being addressed on that page nine times out of ten that is the level of magic that is the level of God that is literally every single word of these books right so I never failed to be amazed never never there's a much bigger bigger bigger lesson here of course and what I will do is bring in a couple of lines from the son of Rambow mortify yo say it was rabbi Jacob lamer he talks to us in very contemporary terms is it not that much later is the end of the 19th century and he put some of this into incredibly contemporary terminology that I think you'll find interesting and hopefully valuable okay so the Torah reading that we're gonna be looking at and we're gonna spend probably a bit too much time on but if I think it's worthwhile because we need to get these words clear in our minds before we go into the act the text that the great Hasidic master is going to it's going to is going to learn with us and I translated into English so it's it's pretty straightforward the English translation is oh yeah the English translation is 100% of my own and there's about three or four lines that I cut out from the Hebrew because it gets into some technical analysis of further sources that are just going to make make our heads spin a little bit too much if you want I will already led protects completely beginning to end so the the chart is indeed flawed but the things that we're going to come up against and I want to spend a bit of time on this is eight different things or maybe eight nine ten or eleven of them or maybe less by the end of the next this session in the next few will have come to a decision as to whether they're eight or not what's significant about the number eight not your heads and say yes I really know please you know what them great isms since seven represents perfection in the physical world eight is one of those which represents either infinity spirituality transcendental beyond professional physical absolutely 100 percent bang on target God created the physical world in seven days so seven represents things you can touch and bind and use once you are past the number seven on to number eight you're flying as they say you're off this world even you're into things that transcend the physical that will and what we're looking at here is a set of rules a set of recommendations that will lift you up above the ordinary workday life that we that we all have okay the Brittany lot the Covenant name of the child on the eighth day the circumcision and our revelation out Sinai was the day after seven times seven exactly precisely and exactly okay so the chart is very simple this gentleman gets a gold star yes I did did you have that in kid in school newer kids and there were colored stars and there were different grades of colored stars and everyone saw how badly I was doing and you know but that's like there are eight words in Genesis chapter six are gonna be highlighted but I'll be more to class initiatives and we're gonna look at them very very carefully there are issues with the words themselves in Hebrew I'm not sure how how advanced you are in your studies of the Hebrew language but we're gonna I've transliterated them for you and we're gonna try and put them all into English the ark is made of number one something called gopher wood right and what is go for wood nobody knows what gopher wood is right it occurs only once in the entire Hebrew Bible it is the wood out of which the art was made go fare is sulfur so also pitch or tar right and there is a word in English to tar the road right to play star upon the road tar is a thing that makes things waterproof it was some sort of tree and maybe as we'll see wood coated with pitch maybe what it is the commentaries don't have an awful lot to say about it the English translation I'm looking at brown driver and Briggs and looking at the absolute classic old-time a Bible dictionary from more than a hundred years ago it says the work the work would of which the ark was made which we're looking at Genesis chapter 6 starting with verse number 9 okay and if you have the standard art scroll Hamas here it's page 31 Genesis 6 Genesis 6:9 I'm still looking at the chart because go Fair is going to be referring to do not make your anger visible if you're angry about something don't show it then we're going to try to understand what that means once we get into the text but we have to get very very clear in our minds what the what the words are so keep in mind there's something called go Fair and there's something called golf rate give them a race tov which means brimstar right you go to church on a Sunday morning or you go to the synagogue on a Saturday morning and the preacher brings down verbal fire and brimstone upon the congregation right the way the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed right something to do with a metaphor for divine retribution or else hot tar I don't think we have fire falling from heaven these days or didn't occur very often in in the Bible but go fair oh my god it's the end of days at the end of days but the go Fair and the Gulf rip at gimel a racially GFR sound on the verbal routes seem to go together and it has to do Society with keeping your anger within you there are lots of things in the world that are worth being angry about but very very little it's worth expressing the anger Keenum is another word we're going to come up again so we're going to see this again compartments can is a nest again it's one of these very odd words in the Hebrew by we're syllabus 4000 class that we're gonna read through all of these account as a nest the nest of a bird it seems to be rooms compartments and the kingdom in the art are the state rules of the of the cruise ship Noah had many rooms in his ark and that is telling us to be calm and have faith we'll see how this works out yeah fartin you shall cover the ark with pitch for tar meaning going back to the anger thing have no anger on the outside become her faith in God and if humanly possible then get to a place where you can uproot anger from your heart from your mind completely and that is expressed says our rabbi in the expression covering the ark with pitch numbers for a B and C are a little complicated especially if you're not too familiar with Hebrew that the dimensions of the ark spell out the word for tongue the Ark is 300 cubits long which is leshawna lama chin noon this is exactly the same type of the same model we had with the with the eight garments of the high priests many of them are very easy really obvious and the connection is is straightened straightforward here it's a little bit more of a stretch to say speak only the truth control your tongue is what Noah is being told to do so just to clarify instead of the race you should say none should say none with fifty yeah exactly for a is the is the length which is 300 which in Hebrew which shin for B should say fifty which is none and for C is Lama thirty cubits which is the letter L and together forms the Hebrew word for LeSean we are being told in the dimensions of the ark that when you conceal yourself when you put yourself into the ark so number one protect yourself against everything that's going on around you and number two to navigate those stormy seas you need to keep a strong hold on your tongue be careful what you say right regulate how you speak to other people we know this isn't as incredibly important some people have very thick skins and some people of very thin skins and most of us are somewhere in the middle there are certain words you can say to me that will make me very very unhappy there are most negative things you can say to me I really couldn't care less I was a congregation rabbi for 25 years this is very little that you anyone can do to insult me right or make me feel bad but there is there's still a couple of things that that hit the right spot and we all we all have these things so hard number fine the window right if you're watching the news here in Israel so hard as the organization of rabbis that is either opposed to or is actively cooperating with the Chief Rabbinate of Israel so hard as a window or a light again we're going to look at this text directly here clarity the window refers to clarity God is in charge be completely clear of who runs things in this world not me not you not even my wife not even rabbi posted right right the world is controlled by God all of this all of this is God's in charge and you've got to see this as clearly as you see the trees and the light outside of the window number six is an odd one because the verse says regarding the dimensions in verse 16 that the dimensions of the roof of the ark slope and reduce upwards till it is one cubit with all right it's verse 16 we're gonna read every word here he is gonna read it very very differently and you'll see clearly once we start reading the text that the the text of the Bible says complete the ark too less to within one cubit of its top so finish off everything but don't finish off the very top little bit leave part of the ark unfinished untouched undecorated unprepared don't eat everything you don't have to have a house that's completely perfect you don't have to eat everything that you see in front of you the door number seven is an interesting one I know absolutely nothing about ships and boats I disliked going on anything on any ocean anybody of water history of course right study the history would get frisked get o boats generally don't have doors on their sides so Noah is in this aren't protecting himself from the things of this world he's navigating the stormy waters of life and we're doing the same thing it's a normal way to get into a boat is through the top of the deck here is me until put a door in the side which may be saying don't have the door that's completely wide open all the time we're going to get into this and we have to talk about issues with the rabbis of fish pits and how they change from one generation to the next through saying open the doors to everyone right we are here involved in a cure of organization we're opening our doors anyone who wants to come and learn absolutely welcome there is the other opinion that says well maybe you should only teach this stuff to the the elite to the best students so the people who showed the most promise for being teachers themselves maybe it's a it's a dichotomy it's an attention that was very very obvious in the rabbi's of issue kids from one generation to the next for the first generation to the second where there was a split over this type of thing but generally speaking he's going to be talking here about you and me our homes our lives is it a good idea to always let everybody in the door do you have to run after every stranger and pull them in and sit them down and feed them and be nice to meet old Oh practical stuff number eight talk to year the art has multiple lower decks and he's gonna get into what we would probably consider a very controversial very politically incorrect and perhaps psychologically unsound each child according to his needs not necessarily in the very best way teach everything to to the kids you know is the good kid and close out the bad kid I have two children who were absolutely angels and perfect in every way but there are people who have children who are on different levels in the spectrum and how do you deal with each one of them and maybe by extension is also talking about how do you deal with students if students are really interested grab what you're saying then students that don't okay so that's the list numbers 1 to 8 don't be angry be common our faith uproot the anger completely speak truth have clarity that God is in charge do not be a glutton meet peace and then look after your children according to each of their needs okay we're gonna put our heads a little bit into the actual text of the Bible because there's a few things here that really really do need to keep in mind before we can get our heads into what the revenue Bishop it's is telling us and drawing out of all of this and the journey is is a worthwhile journey right Genesis chapter 6 verse number 9 we're gonna do mostly in the English but we'll do a little bit in in the Hebrew as well because some of it really and truly is based on the Hebrew okay these are the offsprings of Noah Noah was a righteous man perfect in his generations Noah walked with God and he had two begotten of three sons it's a contemporary English translation we always say I've got my son right he had three sons Shem ham and japhet the earth became corrupt before God and the earth became filled with robbery the translation says here the the Hebrew is but t male are at Hamas the land was filled with Hamas violence is a term that we would use today theft God saw the earth and behold it was corrupted God did not like the way things were going for all flesh had corrupted its way upon the earth God says it's time to press the big reset button God said to Noah the end of all flesh has come before me for the earth is filled with robbery with Hamas through them people are just being really horrible to each other and behold I'm about to destroy them from the earth right God is telling Noah what make for yourself here is the verse that we're gonna be focusing on a lot verse number 14 make for yourself an ark of gopher wood it is what they call in Greek a hatbox look common on right we can very very sophisticated and say we know what that means it means read once there is no other occurrence of this word in the entire Hebrew Bible it's nothing to do with Gophers right as in the North American little animal but it's potentially something to do with go Fritz with pitch or tar or sulfur I'm beginning to think from reading some of the other than traditional Jewish commentaries on the Bible that this is a type of wood that had been sealed with go fair or go for it which is tar now they took the tar that we put on the road the blacktop and sealed the wood with it okay make the art with compartments and we're still in verse number fourteen keenum to us at at Ava compartments you shall make for the ark that makes a lot of sense because you don't have to create a lot of animals into it and people and married couples and they some of these animals will need to be kept alive kept apart right the word can or cane is a nest and the nest of a bird right so maybe it is something to do with cells like nests in Noah's Ark again I'm reading straight out of the ground driver bricks but the very old-fashioned but easily accessible in English Bible dictionary what do you call the rules of the show cabins that doesn't what I was trying to think of that little day the word in the ship is a cabin right um state rules in the aw and on the cruise ships Dex Dex is not as not what we're talking about but rooms specifically it was divided up and this is going to be taken to mean you've gotta have a lot of rooms and you've got to have a good idea of what's going on in all of them right you can't leave your ship and not know what each of the rooms is for cover it inside and outside with a pitch right the half fire time Oh tom you shall cover it if you're a little bit familiar with the word with the Hebrew language cough hey Rach is to cover up but it also means atone repent right one of the great things about Hebrew one of the things we do try to push is get your heads into a place where you can start to learn the Hebrew language no matter what your level of ability is no matter how good or not so good you are at languages work on Hebrew because it's it's more than the key to the door it's it's the key to the whole world opening up here's a very very simple one how far is cover over with pitch and it's also going to mean cap para which is a noun to atone for to get forgiveness for things that you've done wrong precisely and exactly right so we're gonna be focusing on all these words on there they're right here on the list that you have okay here is the number for one this is how you should make it 300 cubits in length of the ark fifty cubits its width of thirty cubits its height right and this we started off talking already and I'm just gonna read you from the from the the English translation here in the art scroll even if we don't know exactly what a qubit walls but there are numerous estimates and he says here according to the smallest estimate of 18 inches per qubit the dimensions of the arc were 450 by 75 by 45 know everybody has a cubit from the top of their finger to their elbow but it has to be standardized and milk some people bigger than others some people are taller some people have longer legs longer arms those good standard measurement it's not subjective it's right but what we're looking at here is a very large boat and certainly for those times a gigantic boat but what we're interested here is what's being taught here and how you should build it right verse 15 the zetas share toss at all time this is that which you shall make it you shall make it 300 cubits being shin 50 cubits wide lammott no sorry I'm I'm in in enumerate I really do have problems with numbers none cubits wide and 30 llamada cubits height so shin so turn the letters around lament 30 shin 309 50 and that spells out the word Lashon Tong referring to speech okay a window you shall make for the ark numbers verse number 16 write again a very very difficult and peculiar word an incredibly brilliant because I did actually photocopy the stuff for myself so hard is again a very rare word there's another word that's connected to it according to the dictionary which is the plural what's the plural looked so hard it's a Hawaiian exactly again this is according to a very old dictionary so there may be contemporary you know scholars who will say say it's otherwise but sadly hey Rach is supposedly a singular of the word that we know very well it's our Ryan meaning noon high noon exactly when the Sun is at its highest in the sky so midday when there is the greatest amount of light and the least amount of shadow on the earth right so that so hard is according to the classic Jewish commentaries one of two things it is either an actual window in the ark or it is some sort of magical stone that brought the light into the ark itself okay we're gonna look upon it as a window as a source of clarity okay verse number 16 so art oscillated other amah to kalenna millimolar and to a cubit finish it from above I can read the English words I can read the Hebrew words but it doesn't make an enormous amount of sense unless I have you know some some context the L and - a ma one cubit tip kalenna you will finish it meet Lamar Allah from above now I can't put easily put that into a very to a very comprehensible sentence but the commentary here in the English as the arcs roof sloped upwards to a cubits of the rain would run offered the a llama up rising up to one cubit in with the roof of the ark sloped that makes a certain amount of sense but the Rebbe of each pitch is going to say no you got to read this literally up to the top up to before the top of cubit of the art you will do all the work of finishing off the woodwork don't finish it off completely right and then put the entrance of the argument side etiquette Ava put the Ark's opening in the side this is going to be really very significant than something that we're gonna get get our teeth into in our minds into a little bit make it with bottom second and third decks talk to him means bottom lowest she in second should be Shem third toss a you shall naked so the ark had to have how many decks have to have a top deck it had to have a bot that bottom deck and in between a second and a third deck right so there were three decks on the ark that were below the top deck of the Ark right I don't know much about boats I'm sorry that is one of my my lacking Zin life I disliked boats it totally is like going on car ferries and all that sort of thing yeah the dictionary says that so har is simply a light or a window there's not an awful lot more to be said about that I want to continue at least zipping through the read the rest of these chapters because one of the basic thoughts that we said does come out of the whole process here and of learning the book let's go to me Aloha I brought my more the failure simulation bit is that the Bible is teaching us lots and lots of things and the main thrust of a lot of Hassid ISM and a lot of Cassini writing on the Bible on books of Jewish law it's really very straightforward it's about you it's about you being a better person too but you reaching your full potential as a human being as a spiritual being and there's a lot to see here in the story you know on the ark but I want to zip on a little bit and go through a couple of points and then get get to the very end okay so verse number 17 the key verses for us are 14 15 and 16 because here we have the dimensions and the materials and instructions for making the dark right so if you look at verse number 17 still in chapter 6 God says I'm bringing flood waters upon the earth to destroy all flesh within there is a breath of life and you can read all of this very very easily for yourselves Noah did everything according to what God commanded him so he did in that ends chapter 6 right we know from Jewish tradition those 120 years between Noah getting the instruction and starting to build and then the rain starting to fall very obviously Noah was there building the art with the intention of people seeing it and saying what's going on oh god it's going to destroy the maybe we should repent maybe we should clean up around anyway firstly chapter 7 I think you can read very very easily for yourselves Noah was 600 years old when the flood water was on the earth he took his sons his wife his sons wives they all went into the ark he took different sorts of animals and birds and it starts to rain verse number 11 says of the six hundredth year of Noah's life in the second month of the seventeenth day of the month the Fountains of the great deep burst forth and the windows of the heavens were opened and arraigned for all 40 days and 40 nights right so they were they were all there in the ark and after 40 days the waters start on easing off right chapter 8 the waters recede Noah sends forth the Raven and the Raven comes back and he sends out the Dove to check what's going on right he didn't have drones to send out he sent out little birdies right the earth dries off okay look at verse 15 in Chapter 8 God spoke to Noah saying go forth from the ark and every living being Noah left the ark all creepy things every bird everything that moves and Noah built an altar to God and God smelt the sacrifice and said I will not continue to curse the ground because of people and we're supposed to live happily ever chapter nine rebuilding the ruined world God's covenant would not be fruitful and multiply fill the land and God gives the starts the whole whole issue here of the seventy seven was not many people today are not heights people who do not necessarily want to become Jews but observe the seven basic rules that we have here in the Bible that Judaism certainly says every human being should observe so here's here's the source of it and the thing to do for homework is see if you can extract the seven rules from these chapters alright I'm not gonna test you one of the next time but the seven laws that Noah hide people should observe are not entirely clearly spelled out here in the rules of the sons of naath okay so it's this alludes what your thinking caps on about right so God talks to now off and said everything is going to be wonderful the sign of the Covenant that I will give between me and you is the rainbow the cash yet what's the symbolism of the rainbow yeah what's the symbolism of the rainbow it's another to shape shape why is the bow this particular thing the choice of God's pledge never to destroy humanity again something nice after the rain right it's pretty in the sky and if it rains and got then got us got a smiling right the the symbol is about we're right bang on the hasidic masters talk about this it's a machine well it's in a couple of different places that it's God's bow as in bullet arrow pointing towards him when you carry a gun around you pointed directly down at the floor never towards someone else God takes his bow which yet previously pointed and used metaphorical arrows to destroy the world in this case rain but places the boat pointing upwards right god lives up there we live down here right not literally but that is that is the image of the bow okay here we go here's the anvil material right where we're above the age of 18 here no children are listening in on the internet right maybe they are okay verse number 20 we're gonna have to get into this piece because the revenue of ish bits is gonna bring this up with regard to children Noah has three children and something happens with them right Noah the man of the earth where the translation is of course assuming commentaries Noah became a less spiritual being than he had been inside the ark which is the standard rabbinic reading of it as the translate the art-school commentary it is not the translation of the revelation but he's gonna say once Noah goes through the ark experience he is complete he is perfect he's the most spiritual being possible which was what allowed him to get drunk and prance around in his birthday suit right this is this is gonna be this is gonna be a really interesting little piece but the core text that we have to keep in mind here is no ID based himself and planted a vineyard how do we get that out of there's no debased himself in the in the Hebrew at all there-there add their adding to it Noah was a man of the earth and he planted a vineyard he's obviously being criticized for planting a vineyard because he makes wine whereas he should have planted corn something good good and healthy to eat right he drank of the wine and he became drunk by get the GAO the toes are hollow this is verse 21 22 in Chapter 9 Noah became drunk and uncovered himself within his tent right he was lying there totally blotto drunk and totally naked by yaar ham of Ethan are very very interested in verses ham who was here described as the father of Canaan and why do we need to know clearly the the text is telling us that cannot on is involved in this whole story no it was the grandson of Noah Noah has a circle crown was a son called Canaan and just reading Rashi the commentary here says King not on the grandson was the first to notice this and ran to call his father and said look at grandpa the old drunk right so what does the text say the text in English says that ham the father of Canaan saw his father's nakedness and told his two brothers outside right will read the English and read the text and go back to the packet or any video but he captioned by effort the two other sons Shem and Japheth took a garment by a scene while schrems may have laid it upon their shoulders by a lihue ahora neat and they walked in backwards so they wouldn't have to see their their father in his debased estate by hih su at a vat of ahem and they covered up the nakedness of their father's roof in a hem a hornet and their faces were turned away and the nakedness of their father they did not see okay there is a difficulty with this and the biblical idiom of to see the nakedness in the Hebrew ha ha ha ha does not mean they looked at their fathers aged genitalia and generally speaking to see the nakedness of someone is to be sexually intimate with and generally speaking in a prohibited way right you have analytical the list of people of women are men whose nakedness you may not see and that is a list of forbidden sexual relationships so what we have here is a discussion of what actually happened did harm actually I'm not going to say did did that with his with his agent father or did he castrate him right the castration one is a little bit more makes a little bit more sense to our sort of because there is a logic to it calm says this is what we survive the flood form to hang about naked and drunk and our father is going to have more children with our mother and then there'll be arguments about inheriting the world and who's going to have all the property and all that sort of stuff let's prevent them from having more children either that or sexual intimacy as opposed to just looking at the nasty scene so this is gonna be the subject of discussion obviously for number eight there are three sons one obviously does something not so great and there are two who do what seems to be the right thing verse 24 Noah awoke from his wine and realized what his son when his small with his young son had done to him and he said cursed is keen on a slave of slaves shall he be to his brothers and he said blessed is a shell the God of Shem and that cannot be a slave to them may God extend japhet but he will dwell in the tents of Shem making on his slave to them so he places Shem as the number one son the best son he places japhet as the number two son who will be secondary to the number one son and then ham number three son and his descendants is starting with his his son the grandson was ready life will be a slave to all of them right not not unreasonable sort of thing to say considering what we have in terms of the picture of what went on no one lived after the flood three hundred and fifty years and all the days of Noah twenty-nine 50 years any time okay got a couple of minutes let's get it start in on the actual text in the mashing log itself it's gonna be in the Hebrew at the very bottom of page number one and in the English on the bottom of page number two this is 100% my translation I accept full and complete responsibility for all of these mistakes inaccuracies bad things that will mislead you right in some of the occasions I'm struggling a little bit to to get the words into English because with the master lock with this particular text like a lot of the great rabbis of the cassini movement they didn't write their own stuff and the descendants the son and the grandson came and started to try and remember what did grandpa say here we are reading the story of Noah and our congregations and our communities this week which were not right now what is there on that parsha what is done the novice story and they do this three times over so you've got actually three volumes where you have Noah and volume 1 and volume 2 and line 3 but soon you've got very very little text and you've also got the issue that I know we've talked about before that he probably didn't speak in Hebrew and he certainly isn't written in contemporary Hebrew so we're trying sometimes to figure out what's the Yiddish or the Polish idiom behind it and sometimes we get it clearly that's a better coat so the meaning of the art he says in yong-ha Teva what is this whole thing about the ark she not tarnish a meat bara that God gave advice ASA the Hagana and protection means of protecting yourself on how to live a CH of root in May has until the time of anger this is a time when God is being angry with the world and God said to Noah here's what you're gonna have to do to survive and here he is it one of the very few explai tsa's where he says the hey hold me the exact same thing applies to absolutely every one of us this is what the Hasidic masters are at their absolute best doing saying here's something in the Bible here's an analysis we've got of it and now this is applying to you as well this is about you this is about your life there are difficult times Komets alone is that case Lebow someone whose heart has not yet become purified if you are not yet perfected you haven't succeeded in getting all the bad stuff out you're trying to navigate the sea of temptation because the ocean is pretty much always a symbol of desire and lust not just for immorality but for food from money emotions passions right the seed boils and high storms and it comes and goes the sea can be carbon the sea can have huge storms and everyone in between that's us that's our emotions that's our lusts and our desires for things if you haven't cura find yourself completely if you haven't worked on yourself to the point where you're absolutely perfect here you can get advice how to hide if you sucked air at smo how you can conceal or camouflage yourself how do you escape from the boiling passions of the world that so happens how do we get away from the violence the immorality all the things that are around there VI gang Bardo and how can you protect yourself against all the bad things that come to the world he's giving you a reference here we call raha me - right - but Allah something is mint irrigation contemporary Hebrew it means it's emotional I get mint - right - at my kids wedding I feel emotional but meat right this is a reference to the travelers prayer when you go out on a journey somewhere more than just taking a local bus ride you say a prayer where you ask God to protect you from all the bad things I'm interaction over Oklahoma that come into the world that disturb our minds that frighten us that stir up emotions one way or the other how do you protect yourself and this is what the building of the ark thing is defend yourself and hide yourself I'm going to take a very good reference this is where we're going to stop it over over time rabbi mordechai Yosef eviscerates does not have a lot of text his son rabbi yaakov of issue it's volumes Vantage volume on each book of the Bible thick thick volume it says a lot he may know I hysterics mo I have to get this one yeah here's the line here's the line that's it's worth buying the book it's worth reading the book from beginning to end just for this which helps you understand the other thing he explains what his dad says about the MN here we go he lost it again Tara ha olam the nature of people in this world Haddam must tear at smoke the tear adult a person conceals himself in busywork worries things that I have to do next right to Beto raid to have tear dot is to have things that are worrying you but not on a massive scale you busy yourself you suppress you push down your desire to do anything real by saying I've got a full and complete calendar I have something to do every minute of the day I'm busy and what the father is saying I'm one of they all said to say is you've got to conceal yourself and hide yourself and bring yourself into a closed place with a list of things that will help you get out of that close into space not bury yourself in things to do okay we'll continue this next time we go we'll read this text from beginning to end hopefully we'll get through it in one session and if not it'll be 2 or 3 [Music]