Mind Flex Rabbi Shippel

good evening friends it gives me a great privilege to spend some time with you here at project inspire i want to thank project inspire in their mind flex series for all that they have done not only in mind flex but also their recent international convention i want to congratulate them and just thank them for everything they've done for you and i and for jews throughout the world during the course of this entire pandemic over the past year may it soon be behind us the topic for this evening's talk is mosques and a preparation for the holiday of freedom throughout this year we've been wearing the mosques of the coronavirus in fact one of my congregants said to me he said rabbi every day i feel like i'm celebrating all of the jewish holidays he says i'm constantly going outside to speak to people like it's sukkot like i'm going outside into a little hut he said i'm wearing slippers like it's tish above the day of jewish morning when we don't wear shoes he says i'm cleaning cleaning cleaning being so careful about my cleanliness as if it's the eve of passover ready for a year and i'm wearing my mask as if it's pouring but you see friends what we're here to discuss today is that there's a fundamental difference between the mosque of corona and the mosque of purim the purpose of the mosque of corona is to keep the viral load to keep the germs to keep the bacteria away from you whereas the purpose of the purim mosque is the total opposite the purpose of the pouring mosque is we put on the mosque not to protect ourselves from that which is coming from the outside in but on the contrary we put on the hamas to symbolize the purim is a time when we celebrate that which comes from the inside out where we look beneath the surface we allow ourselves to let loose and we look beneath the surface and see what's really going on in the story you see if we look at the history of purim but we all know that there are two rabbinic holidays the two rabbinic holidays of purim and hanukkah hanukkah took place during the time of the second temple and is not mentioned at all in tanakh in the old testament in our scriptures purim however takes place during the period between the destruction of the first and the second temples it takes place just three years prior to the beginning of the second temple period and purin is in fact mentioned and the whole story of purim is part of the scroll of esther the megillat esther which finds itself canonized made holy and part of our scriptures the rabbis tell us that everything goes after the finish we're all familiar with the psychological principle when a child comes to you and he says mommy or daddy i have three things to discuss the first two things are just fillers but it's really the third thing the last that they really want to share with you the book of esther the scroll of esther here i have a copy of it together with me the scroll of esther which we'll read this coming thursday night and friday morning was the last book in the tanakh in the old testament and the scriptures to be canonized just prior to the period of the second temple but there's something unique about this book that doesn't exist in any other book in the torah and that is it's the only book that makes no direct mention of god's name the rabbis tell us that any time in the book it says the word hamelech the king the king one of the protagonists of the story but anytime it says the word hamelech the king that's a hint to god in the story in fact if you look at this magilla that i'm holding i think you should be able to see it one of the beautiful ways of buying a megillah is making sure that the scribe who writes it puts the word hamelech at the top of each column so that's one strange thing about the megillah but really there are many others the other strange thing about the megillah is that the megillah begins with the hebrew letter v and if i would turn all the way to the end of the megillah which i'm not going to do right now but you can check up in your prince and magillas or in your own mcgillis scroll you'll see that the last word of the megillah is zaro which means his children his generations his progeny and it also ends with a letter of of so let me ask you a question if this is the last book to be canonized and it's the last book of the tanakh surely we have to understand that this last book has a very profound message for every single one of us as it becomes so to speak the guide for life in a post tanakh in a post-old testament period a time that will take us from the beginning of the temple period which does not have all the miracles of the first temple it has grandeur but a dimmed grandeur all the open miracles that take place in the first temple don't take place in the second and it is the guide to that period and also the guide to the thousands of years of jewish diaspora until we march towards the messianic era and i believe that one of the reasons that the megillah begins with a vowel and it ends with a buff it's because valve is the letter numerical value six but vav literally means a hook a vav is a hook and a hook is that which just like the letter of in the hebrew language serves as a connector when you have two hebrew nouns if you put the verb before the second noun it connects the first noun to the second noun vov is the connector because it connects us to our heritage the story of the megillah gives us the theory and the equation of how to remain connected to our heritage throughout all the years of the jewish diaspora and of the diminished glory that no longer exists post first temple and that story my friends is literally that we have to understand that the word might ester which literally means the scroll of esther on a deeper meaning means i stare to reveal that which is hidden and just like the purim story which unlike all the other biblical stories is not replete with open miracles but rather the puritan story is the story of a wicked man who wants to overtake the jewish people and he wants to destroy the jewish people and you all know the story we're not going to go through the summarized story of purim but you all know that it just so happens that his first wife the first wife of the king achashveirosh just so happened she wasn't happy to come and parade herself in one of his parties so he just so happened to have a assistant named haman who encourages him to get rid of her and to send letters against improper behavior of wives throughout the kingdom it just so happens that he then starts a debutant he starts a competition to find the new queen and it just so happens that the one that he chooses is esther the jewess and it just so happens that she becomes the queen and i really can continue it just so happens it just so happens it just so happens that haman then starts his whole plan to destroy the jewish people and the king buys into it but then it just so happens that one night akashvirosh and all of a sudden he says bring the royal the royal record books read me a story a bedtime story and it just so happens it just so happens that they read in the story of many years previously when there was a tempted coup by two guards but mordecai the jew was sitting at the palace's gates and he reports about the attempted coup because he understands all 70 languages and they're speaking tarshishi tarshian and he gives the message and the coup is aborted and it just so happens that kashmirosh in the middle of this night says did we ever reward mordechai and they tell him no and it just so happens that haman is walking in and they call in and they say to him what would you do to the man that the king wants to honor in thinking that it's him haman says put him on a horse and ride him through the town and say i said this is what we should do for the man that the king wants to honor and it turns out that that reward is given to mordechai and then we reach a moment in the story where mordechai goes to esther and he says to her he says you've got to go in i know what's going on here i know about haman's terrible plan you've got to go in to the king and try and get him to thwart this plan and esther says no i can't do that everyone knows if you're going to the king unannounced off with your head finita la comedia and mordechai sister but esther this is your moment if you don't take advantage of this but this is the unique moment that god has given you and esther goes in and we're all familiar with the rest of the story my friends there's no obvious miracles in this story the story of purim is recognizing the role of god in each of our lives digging deep beneath the surface and finding that godliness finding god's role in our story you know the rabbis tell us that there's a famous story about a babylonian noble woman who once went to the great river yehuda hanasi the author of the mishnah the compiler of the mishnah and by judah the prince and she says to him tell me since creation what does god do all day long did he just put the world on autopilot and he says no he says you know what god does all day long he makes him he makes matches matches between one man and one woman between different people matches for marriage and matches for business and this woman says no big deal she says i also have many many servants i'm going to match them up i too can be godlike and the meadows tells the story that she goes home the next day and she puts her servants in loins and she says okay you're gonna marry this one and this one's going to marry that one and this one's going to marry that one almost like a one of these mega weddings and what happens the next morning the madrid says the rabbinic teaching tells us one person comes with a fractured skull and one with a broken arm and one with a broken leg and one with a gorged-out eye and she comes back and sister of judah the prince she says i guess it's not so easy to make matches i guess your god is in fact very very busy and if you look at that midrash that rabbinic teaching it tells us the story of not only the matching of couples and to find god's hand in the match yes in every relationship sometimes there's a matchmaker but if you look into the relationship you'll find that you just so happen to be in this place at that time when you met this person who introduced you to the person who become your life partner and so it is in business that yes we all study but the reality is if you think about how you got that big big break i recently was sitting with one of the largest women's clothes handbag manufacturers in the world and i said to him what was your break how did you become that brand name that everyone knows about and he said to me rabbi i'll tell you actually he says i was in china many years ago and on the way back from china my plane had some trouble and we landed in kyoto near kyoto in japan and those were the days some two or three decades ago before there were so many spare parts and so we landed on him to be there for 24 hours before they got a new plane to fly us back to america and he says while i was there well i'm a businessman what do i do i hit the malls and he says i went to see the malls and i went to see the shops to see if there was anything unique and new and there was nothing he says and then i went to get a taxi to go back to the airport and he says while i'm standing for the taxi there's a little shoemaker there next to the taxi stand and i see that the shoemaker has these cute little wallets on a string that he's selling and i looked at it intriguingly and he says that's the first time i saw a wristlet and i thought wow this is a great idea to make wristlets and i'm going to take wristlets back to america and he said from those wristlets that i happen to just so happen to see while i just so happen to be on a trip to kyoto which i never dreamt of going to in my life but because of the engine trouble from that i was propelled to greatness and so it is in every single one of our lives this story of megillat astaire that what the torah is telling us is that we have to reveal the hidden legal we have to find god's role in our lives and that's one of the reasons friends that we eat ham and tasha those triangular shaped cookies and purim because you have to look inside to get the sweetness you have to dig deep inside but there are many reasons why we eat hamantaschen some people say that the reason we eat hamantaschen is because esther the way she kept kosher while she was in the palace of the achashverosh the king for all those years is that she ate seeds she ate poppy seeds and ham and tashin were originally called mong tashin little packets of poppy seeds inside of them and from those poppy seeds we remember that well how she sustained herself all those years in the all those years in our favoritis palace but those poppy seeds are covered because you have to look beneath the surface to get to the sweetness and you know there's another idea of why we eat hamantaschen and that is some people say that that's what haman's ears look like in hebrew they call them oznay others say that they're the position his ears took on while he was so embarrassed leading mordecai on the horse through the town and others say no they were the shape of his hands why do we celebrate his ears and his hands and why is that part of the purim story so many people tell us because the three corners remind us of abraham isaac and jacob the three patriarchs of our people and it's in their merit they were the first people the patriarchs and the matriarchs that created in the dna of the jew the ability to continue being committed to our values in spite of everything and so we remember their great merit but you know i don't know about you but when it comes to eating a hamantaschen and i have to be honest just last night we had a hamantas hamantaschen factory here in our kitchen they made raspberry ones and strawberry ones i hope i'm not making you hungry and poppy seed ones and chocolate ones and even ones with the lotus filling and i don't know about you but when i eat a hamantasan the first thing i do is i bite off one of the corners and the fact is friends that in jewish life there are many mitzvoth there are many commandments that have to do with corners we're instructed to put fringes on the corners in our garment we're instructed not to shave the corners of our beards that's why we leave sideburns we're instructed not to cut the corners of our field but to leave it for the poor and if you think about it fill in have to have perfect corners the phylacteries that we put on in the morning what is it about well corners corner represents the limitation in fact in the english language when they say a person's cornered means they're stuck in the old days they used to put the child who misbehaved in the corner because you are stuck well if a person's cornered it means you have no way to go it means you're ready to give up wherever there's a corner god gave us mitzvot and commandments to create something that extends beyond the corner when a jew looks at themselves in the mirror and sees their sideburns when a jew looks at their field they leave the corner for the poor and i believe when we eat a hamantaschen we start with the corners because porn once again represents the time where it looked like we were cornered but just like that the fringes on our talit remind us that the jews never cornered because if they have god on their side they can always go beyond the corner so too i think we bite that corner of the hamantasan first because purim is a time when we show that even though we thought we were cornered if you've got god on your side somehow you'll make it you know friends i'm sure for many of you just as for me and my family this has been a year of tremendous challenge we have lost people that were close to us unfortunately i myself was out for three months with a corona and i feel very blessed to be alive but in the process we live in manhattan so many people in manhattan have left from our own community that we had the privilege of starting over a decade ago 87 families left manhattan and moved to other communities around the world because and no one's to blame them this corona just changed and zoom that we're experiencing right now have just changed all of reality for so many people in so many industries and so all of a sudden we reach moments in our lives every single one of us where it's a little bit hard to reveal that which is hidden and to find god in the process but i can tell you what has kept me and my family going is number one the appreciation of all the blessings around us number two the recognition of something that my father told me in my bar mitzvah he said to me my bar mitzvah my father blessed memory said to me listen for every human being the two most important days in your life are the day you were born and the day when you figured out why you were born and if you're here it means that you have a unique role to play that no one else can play and you got to take advantage of every single day you know someone once asked me friends that as jews one of the do we have an image like the world has an image of a glass being either half full or half empty and we all know that the ultimate optimist looks at the glass is always being half full and the pessimist looks at the glass as being half empty someone asked me that is an image that is constantly used in the world at large someone asked me to we choose do we have also such an image of a glass being either half full or half empty and in discussion with a dear friend about this question we came up with the following conclusion and that is that there is no such thing in jewish life as a image of a glass being half full or half empty but there is an image of a glass for our tradition teaches us overflows and the question that you have to ask yourself is that we all look at all the vicissitudes of jewish history the ups and the downs and the challenges and the triumphs how's it possible the jews have always viewed their lives as cosi revayah my cup overflows and this my friends i believe is the secret one of the great secrets of jewish survival and that is it might sound a bit childish but if you listen carefully you'll see how simple but profound it is i honestly believe that just like we eat the corners because when we're in a corner we recognize with god's help on our side we can always extend beyond the corner like that fringe that extends beyond the corner of your talit my friends i think what we have done throughout all of jewish history when our cup gets a little bit empty you know what our secret is and how we always experience kosiro my cup overflows is we take whatever we have in our cup and we pour it into a smaller cup so that we are always living in a reality of cocera of my cup overflows and then we have to recognize that if we're here we have a purpose that no one else can fulfill we are surrounded with blessings for our cup overflows we have to all appreciate all of the blessings of each day of our lives everyone's here for a specific purpose those who have passed even if we don't understand it clearly fulfilled their purpose because god decided it was time for them to be entirely with him in the next world but those of us are here we have a specific reason to be here and during those three months where i struggled with a corona as much it was painful and as much it was a struggle i said if i'm going to get through this and i have to do even more and i have to appreciate the blessing of every single day but sometimes it's just being difficult and how do you get through and so i want to share with you i would say the go-to reson de etre of my family the little torah insight for the great sage of the hassam was the great leader of astra hungarian jewry and he comments he says in the torah itself we find a time when moshe when moses himself is frustrated and he cannot see and understand exactly god's plan and he turns to the lord and he says to him haranian almighty show me your glory where are you and the almighty responds and he says to him i will show you my back but you will not see my front i put it into my own words and the hassam soy for the greater moisture sulfur says that that question was not a question for one time in history and that answer wasn't an answer for one time in history but the answer and the question were for all times of history because we all have moments in our lives we're regular human beings when we have to turn to god and we say there are some holy people perhaps my wife is one of them who's able to see god at every moment but i struggle at times and so i have to turn to god just like moshe said and say show me your glory basically asking god where are you and the answer that he gave moshe was not just an answer for once in history but an answer for all history and that answer says the hassam safer my friends is don't interpret the verses i'll show you my bank but i won't show you my front which many people interpret correctly to mean that if you want to understand where god is don't worry retroactively you'll be able to see in the story where god is but that's the story from a historical perspective because we all know that god looks at life in terms of the infinite perspective that he is and we have our finite defined human perspective says understand this verse differently understand this verse as not being a verse that tells you about retroactive perspective but understand the verse in terms of god giving you an answer to your question right now and he says you want to know where my glory is when he says i'll show you my back what god in fact is telling every single one of us is look backwards look backwards at your life my friends look backwards can you see me was i there for you would venture to say that every single one of us if we look backwards in our life can see god and how he's been there to hold our hand and to help us with challenges and many different junctures so god's telling us look backwards if you can see me in the past then even though right now you have no clue where i am don't worry i'm going to be with you going forwards because i am inside of everything i'm there i'm holding your hand you're created in the image of god and i walk with you every step of your life and if you've seen me in the past i'll be with you going forward so even though we might find ourselves in incredibly challenging times the reality is that we all if we can look back and we can see god in the past then we have to know that we can see god in the future and he'll be with us in the future friends the rabbis tell us though in the messianic era all holidays will become obsolete the madrid tells us except for purim purim is the one that will you with us forever and frank the rabbis tell us that yom kippur the day of atonement israeli understood on a deeper level as yom kippurim a day like purim because what you can accomplish on purim you can accomplish on yom kippur and vice versa we accomplish by withholding by abstaining from our involvement in the physical world and it's very easy to be spiritual when you don't eat and when you don't drink when you don't engage in relations when you don't shower and you don't anoint yourself and you're the whole day in the synagogue but pouring is on an even higher level because purim is a day of love remember the megillah begins with a vow and it ends with above the hook the connector purim is a day of connecting connecting with your inner soul it's a day of connecting with your loved ones one of the minces of the day is giving out gifts to your friends it's the one day of the year when the poor or people that are in need can ask of us for assistance and we cannot use our power of discernment that we normally use whether we want to reject them or not in fact i mentioned a few days ago to some of my students that last year in purim someone came to me four different times in a different costume but each time i had to give him because i'm purim you can't say no you can't reject anyone it's a day of connection of our peoplehood it's a day of gathering together with family and loved ones and friends if you're able to in this corona environment to drink and to have a party celebrating our victory and it's a day of twice reading the scroll of esther to remind ourselves that i'm putting we're all here like to reveal that which is hidden and to find god in the story purim is a time of incredible opportunity in fact i want to just share one opportunity of pouring with you and that is when i was a yeshiva student in near israel in baltimore i learned about the opportunity of prayer on purim and that is that the rabbis say just like the rabbis tell us if you want to be judged well on rosh hashanah for a new year on the day of judgment well the way god judges you is the way you judge other people and if you are constantly giving other people a benefit of the doubt then you too god will give the benefit of the doubt well on purim the same way we show our largesse and we do not reject anyone who asks us for funds or for money or for assistance the same way on purim we do that similarly god turns to us and he says my children i'm here for you in prayer and my friends it's brought down in holy books that the most auspicious moment of prayer is with the sunrise on poor in mourning and so i encourage you to go on one of the websites that tells you exactly when the sunrise is in your locale and to find that moment and to put in a special prayer at sunrise on poor morning because the gates of heaven are open it's purim is the day it's not easy to be spiritual and yom kippur i know it's challenging but it's much more of an accomplishment to be spiritual and poor in when you have to indulge in the physical because at the end of the day god wants us to live in this physical world and to elevate it and purim provides us an opportunity annually to indulge in the physical but to elevate it to the spiritual so i want to wish you all a purim may this porn be one of great revealing of the god inside of you the spark of godliness inside of you and may be one in which you're able to see god in your lives as we reach out to others may we bring godliness to each part of our lives and may the masks that we wear going forward not be the masks of the corona may it leave us very quickly and soon to prevent the viral load from entering into us but rather may this mosque of purim that we put on remind us to let down our mosques and to reveal the god that's hidden inside of every single one of us and to connect to that spark of holiness that provides each one of us with a constant connection with eternity purim