Rabbi Breitowitz in Preparation for Shavuot

hi everybody and uh and hopefully uh we are we are all proceeding a pace uh to prepare ourselves for manant to in a few days and um I want to talk about a variety of things that are connected to some of the spiritual ways that we preper for Matan Tor particular particularly as it impacts on interpersonal relations uh as as we know uh the the sponsoring organization Ren is really an organization that is committed not only to the growth of learning Torah but toad loving kindness and to Isel and one has to understand fundamentally that these are not like two different things you know there's Torah and then there's a Isel but rather they're part and parcel and they are linked and one cannot achieve one without the other so I want to start first with something that might sound like a relatively Technical and dry discussion but in point of fact there's a tremendous inner meaning that one can derive one of the wonderful things about Torah learning is that often uh the great spiritual ideas are not necessarily expressed explicitly as great spiritual philosophical idea IDE ideas but they are inferred from the uh from the interesses of the details of various hukic structures and one can then see wonderful wonderful ideas so I want to talk a little bit about counting the Jews you know we've just entered the fourth and the fourth in Hebrew we call asid but the truth of the matter is the English name or the Greek name as it were is actually more accurate this is how Kaz called it and that is you know we call it the Book of Numbers well the name for the book of is which means the ofi or sensus whatever the Latin plur is and that is because the book of bidor is bracketed with a counting of the Jewish people in Paras midor the Jewish people are counted and that is the generation that left MIT and then in Paras Pinas which is towards the end of the book it's not M the end of the book but it's towards the end of the book that is after the generation of the desert died in the aftermath of the sin of the spies so the new generation was counted now what's interesting is the totals are exactly the same in both but the subtotals are very different I'm not going to talk about that tonight but there are some fascinating kazal and rashis and rans that talk about and try to track the various changes in the tribes over the 40 years in which some tribes grew tremendously in some tribes shrunk tremendously but amazingly the totals actually balanced out over the 40 years again I'm not going to talk about that so much uh but the point I want to talk about is that Rashi tells us well let's let's start with the itself when were the the first census in sa midb when were the Jewish people counted so the Kish itself says it wases of the beginning of the second year the year's change in Nissan the mishan was dedicated in the month of Nissan one month after theuk sishan the Jewish people were counted and they were counted not everybody was counted but only men sha from age 20 and above were counted and you get your total of 603 plus thousand uh and the like so Rashi points out that there is actually an unrecorded census of the Jewish people that took place earlier after the after y Kipper in other words six or seven months before this County and that is when the mishan was being built and the Jewish people were commanded to give a half shek and that half shekel was melted down for the adim for the sockets of the Mishka if you calculate the half shekels you actually see that the Jewish people were counted and they also come out to be that number of 63,000 so Rashi asks a very interesting question there are six months between yum Kipper and Y actually more than you a little bit little bit more than six months didn't anybody have a birthday in those six months was nobody born as it were in the months between yum Kipper and Di and if there was a birthday then the the the population should have grown by whoever reached their 20th birthday in that period of time and if you're going to tell me well yeah maybe new people achieved benim but other people died we actually have a tradition uh that there was no natural death in the midbar other than the many deaths that are recorded in The KES itself so once again one could not just assume that people died since there's no record of deaths during that period of time so Rashi gives a very very interesting answer Rashi says similar to the Chinese practice that the definition of a birthday was not the day that you were born but every single Rashana you were assigned one year old so between yum Kipper and there is no R so anybody who was 20 at the preceding rashash which still would have been 20 the population didn't change and and that is why uh the censuses are the same now it's unusual to use rosashana because in the Torah the primary year change is in Nissan but Rashi couldn't have done that wouldn't have been a good answer between Kipper and there is a Nissan right so Rashi in order to figure this out Rashi bka had to say that we're using rosashana rather than Nissan and hence nobody had a birth I understand that Chinese do that also for identification purposes you know if you're born like a a month before the Chinese New Year you are one years old with that first new year and then you become one year old after that that's also the way race horses uh that's right race horses are aged the same the same way and Rashi says that is how the Jews were counted in the midb but there are there are other answers to this question as well I'm not going to go into all those answers right now because once again I I want to move to a a more fundamental point and that is what is the purpose of counting the Jews in such proximity you know yum Kipper and then then e it's only a few months multiple countings for what purpose Bish the counting in Pinas that's a new generation that's a new population but this is the same population what exactly is the point of counting them six months apart so Rashi explains that that is called D hea that is that that multiple Counting on the part of the almighty although he knows our number obviously is an expression of affection one could analogize it to a miser who count his gold coins over and over and over again because he loves them so much so Rashi says it's a that after the AO he wants to count and cherish every Jew and when he built the Mish when hasem comes to make his AR rest right so it's but let's take it a little deeper although the same population base was counted and as Rashi explained nobody had a birthday a birthday in the middle the way the counting occurred in the first instance and the way the counting occurred in the second instance was very very very different the first counting was a very Anonymous counting people dropped half Shekel in a pushka and Moshe and Aon counted the half shle and figured out a population base there were no individual contact between the donor and the counter moreover there's no sense of tribes in the first census you know how many benim Jews there are but you don't know how many ruen how many Shimon how many yudas how many by contrast the second minion was very different it was not simply an aggregate minion but it involved a tribal breakdown for the first time how many ruang how many shimun how many Lees as well but Ley was slightly different because Ley was not counted meim Ley was counted separately with two different numbers we have the number of Levan from 30 days and we have the number of Levan from 30 years we actually don't have the population of the Levan from 20 and up but obviously it was some number that was smaller than the 30 days and uh and larger than the 30 years but be it as it may the concept of tribal breakdown only emerges in the ER sensus it does not emerge in the postum hipper sensus moreover there's another way in which the e sensus was more individual there is a term that the Kish uses about the second sensus we read it last week's para misot mispar shot means the counting of the names but ramban suggests that maybe mispar does not mean counting but it means narration and he said that part and parcel of this half shekele that people gave for this County not the first County was that they had to go up to Moshe and give their name to mosha roduced themselves to mosha raenu so that one time in their life they should have a direct connection we don't always realize this you know how many you know how many Jews ever spoke to Moser R first of all people were afraid to look at him right Shina the divine presence I mean he was kind of a ghostly figure his his head was covered you know when he walked in and out because of the light of the but the ran says it was very very important both for CLA Israel and for Moshe that there should be a sense not only that Moshe is the leader of CLA Israel but Moshe is the leader of Reb Israel as we say every individual CH and Moshe himself needed to have that lesson we sometimes get fixated with numbers with masses in fact to take a totally different topic even with the Holocaust it's been pointed out that when we think of the awesomeness of 6 million Jews it becomes a bit of a an abstraction and sometimes we understand the horror and the terror and the tragedy not when we focus on six million people but when we take you know one child one family and what they went through and then we understand in fact again you continue this discussion for a moment on the n9th of Al you'll notice if you have a good lurgical memory it's hard to remember kenos because there are so many of them and the language is difficult but you know we talk about kenos theas and then towards the end of the kenos we have a little story about from the gamorra about the Son and Daughter of RAB Ishmael theen G that they were taken into slavery and it was dark they didn't even know they were brother and sister and the master wanted to force them to cohabit and produce slav because both of them were very beautiful and they refused and in the morning they saw they were brother and sister and they cried and out of their grief their Nas di they died now you might say okay I mean listen this is very very sad story but these are two people I mean we're talking about the B all the tragedies we have to then make a point about what happened to two people the answer is exactly that if you really want to understand the tragedy you have to focus on the individual not just the collectivity so too moso as a leader needed to understand the ran Center that leadership is not only about what you do collectively but that each person is someone that you must cherish you must care about and the ramban writes this is n in the words Mis so what have we established we've established that although the census after yum Kipper and the census in Eeyore is counting the same population base because nobody had an ex nobody had a birthday so to speak in the middle but they were counted in two different ways the first was Anonymous and Collective the second was individualistic in two respects both in terms of a tribal breakdown right rben Shimon Ley and in terms of Miss parot the individ there was still a m but the individual didn't drop his shekele in a pushka That Was Then collected but he had to hand the half shek to Moshe and what is the connotation what is the significance of these two different ways of counting groups the anonymous Collective way of counting a group and the individual istic way of counting it's still a group but a group of individuals rather than an anonymous collectivity so I would suggest that it actually represents two different ideas two different visions of what it means to have a community and they may be summarized by sociological term by melting pot versus salad bow or melting plot versus multi multiculturalism if you want to uh use use a more sophisticated term the concept of a Melting Pot which was certainly the model in the United States in the 19th end of the 19th and the first half of the 20th century and it was largely to our detriment in many ways the model iner uh in the uh beginning of the Medina in the 1950s was that if you want to create a society you have to obliterate differences you cannot tolerate distinctions there needs needs to be a Common Language a common culture a common experience and for people to march to to their own to the beat of their own drummers whether it's in terms of individuals or in terms of ethnic groups is ultim The Melting Pot model suggests it is ultimately destructive to cohesiveness and to Unity because Unity requires that you give up your individuality to be part of a group that is why for for example in the United States uh in the early Decades of the 20th century there was certainly no concept of second language instruction you know you learned English whether you know you liked it or or or not and you now now it's very difficult actually in places like Florida it's actually difficult for English only speakers to get jobs I mean basically okay but okay be it as it may the Melting Pot ideal says you achieve cohesiveness and Community by obliteration of difference and by homogenization that I would suggest is what is represented in the first minion the first minion is a Melting Pot minion we don't care about ruang and Shimon and individual people we care about an of and that is why those schull were given Anonymous however the second minion represents a different vision of community which I will call a salad bow and a salad bowl like the beauty well again you think about a Melting Pot for a moment uh to give to give you a gastronomic analogy think about how a cholent looks when you're approaching Tuesday Wednesday even Thursday of the week it started off as a vibrant mixture of meat and barley and potatoes and whatever you put into it and the like but somewhere in the middle of the week it becomes an indistinguishable block of different things in which you can't even identify what the components are that's ideally the melting PT salad bowl is very different the beauty of a salad besides the fact that it's healthier lies precisely in the different colors the different textures like the red of the tomatoes and the green of the lettuce and the crunchiness of the peppers and the beauty is not in the sess and the obliteration of Distinction but rather it is in the celebration of the difference in every one of the different components creates a beauty that otherwise would not exist now you can use many many metaphors to describe this you can talk about a salad you can talk about a mosaic you can talk about a tapestry you can talk about a symphony no different people might use different metaphors but the common denominator is that the beauty is in the combination of disparate elements in which each one celebrates its Unity its diversity in the context of unity now again one has to be very very careful uh diversity just like the word gay right many many years ago gay used to mean happy so essentially the word was hijacked well in some ways maybe to a Le degree but some way the word diversity has also been hijacked uh because diversity when you say the word diversity oh sure you know gay rights and you know abortion all of that when I say diversity I'm referring and again this is a question that needs definition but I mean diversity within the framework of what are the acceptable parameters of what it means to be religious Jew I realize that I'm skirting a very very fundamental question but again uh diversity I am not referring to the legitimation of everything that Hashem says is improper but it is a celebration of the idea of different approaches in abem different ways of relating to the Creator different creative approaches to life the fostering of an individual relationship to God and as they say you can call that salad bow you can call it tapestry you can call it Symphony you can call it Mosaic but the medish itself makes the point that the beauty of a garden will often be much greater if there are many different flowers than if you simply have the same flower the beauty is in the diversity and that is the difference in the first minion and the second minion the first minion is anonymous homogeneous and uniform the second minion is a celebration of the individual components of the tribes each tribe had its own unique and not only of the tribes but even of the individuals as the ran sees in the phrase so as a result uh unlike Rashi that is simply saying the two countings are the same and they are simply an expression of one might suggest that the two countings represent two different ways of creating communities so the question you'll then ask is well which is right the Torah D you both ways what is the Torah suggesting is optimal the answer would be this there's a time and a place for everything in the aftermath of a Calamity that threatens the nation it is a state of emergency it is not a time to March to the beat of a separate drummer after the Holocaust for example there need you know there was a a pressing need to rebuild the Jewish people rebuild the infrastructure of of Education of of even marriages know people you know if if you have family members who are Holocaust Survivors you remember people who married after the Holocaust they weren't waiting for Hollywood romance necessarily they knew they had to get married they knew they had to build families and brem hasem blessed many of those marriages with love as well even though perhaps you know they didn't get married out of out of that love so when there's a state of emergency you got to join the common effort so the first minion occurred in the aftermath of the golden camp that was a state of emergency we were hanging by a screen God wanted to aggregate his Covenant with Israel God wanted to replace it with Moser at that that time the message of the hour isus Unity come together in choua in masum toen don't focus on your own individual point but here is the point I want to share with you by having a Manan just seven months later God is telling you Melting Pot is sometimes necessary as a temporary response to extreme conditions but the ultimate is not an that is based on nothing but an that is based on Sal God wants Unity God wants is God wants togetherness but he wants a togetherness that is accomplished not by obliterating the uniqueness of the individual but by celebrating the uniqueness of the individual now this does create a certain tension in life because on one hand being a religious and a committed Jew whether you're living in arel or does require a high level of Conformity I mean we can't tell a person you know March to the beat of your own Dr know it's interesting that Harvey Cox who is a very very prominent uh Protestant Theologian uh wrote a book about what's called civil or Civic religion in America kind of a notion that uh religion has a certain official cache in in America even though there's a separation of church and state and he talks about interviewing a woman called Sheila and Sheila made the point that many people make that she believes in God but she does not uh believe in organized religion so she says she has her own religion that she calls Sheila ISM and that's how she relates to God well uh it's lucky that her name was not Judy because if Judy had her own religion it would be Judaism but in truth many people even if they're not called Juda do create Judaism in the sense of know J you know I'm Jewish and this is what I think so therefore this is a Jewish belief because I'm Jewish and this is what I think I'm obviously to be a Jew does involve a certain amount of Conformity we all are supposed to keep shabat and K the men where where it's filling Etc and one cannot be authentically an Eid Hashem if one simply does their own thing but one of the challenges that we face and maybe it's more acute in our Israel is how to create a society that has genuine respect for the Toleration of differences and to look at them as sources of strength rather than things that we attack and we undermine now this plays out on different levels and actually in some ways maybe I'm collapsing different questions which in fact are different I mean one set of questions is how does the religious person relate to the the secular person now obviously as an IDE logical matter I cannot conceive that that is a right someone isab or doesn't keep kosher or or believes gay marriage I as an ideological matter I cannot subscribe to that as a legitimate truth but there is still the possibility of respecting a person as an individual I might conclude that a person is wrong but I can still understand that they are seeking TR truth that they have some Foundation their Nish is still theim they are still entitled to dignity and respect as a child of God and a person that has a soul I'll give you a little story that may illustrate this a little bit know many years ago I was giving a share in Columbia Maryland which now it has now actually it has a religious sh but in those days there was uh really no one that was which we call Orthodox in Columbia Maryland fact Columbia Maryland for those of you that are from the United States was a model City it was it was like just invented by a real estate developer it was not a initially a a public city and they actually had laws that you weren't allowed to open sectarian religious institutions you weren't allowed to open a church or a synag eventually those laws were changed by the way similar to Rabia for for many years as well r had such an ordinance as well but I was teaching Columbia Maryland to people who were not uh in any sense and after the sheer a woman went over to me and uh she began her remark with the statement I'm not as religious as you but whatever whatever she shef and what occurred to me at the time was I said how do you know you're not as religious as me maybe you're more religious than me I'm might be more religious in terms of I know more about shabas and more about kasas but maybe you're nicer to your parents maybe you respect your parents more than you maybe you more meticulous in Mo and heart maybe you have more control over your anger and you're kinder to people isn't that also being religious isn't that also serving God we create an artificial dichotomy when we Define the meaning of a religious person as only a person who keep shabas and koser and the life and we ignore the so in the sense of celebrating differences it doesn't mean you legitimate ideologically every deviation from the Torah but it means you strive to assume the goodness in every person and you recognize their strengths and you recognize what you can learn from here says call and by the way in there's a beautiful interpretation actually a double m means you learn from every person but some want to say it's a little non-grammatical but they want to interpret is like and you learn by looking at the totality of a person meaning a person might have many aspects that are l but you look at the total picture that call how made me callam and then you see you see that oh I'm sorry okay I apologize right so that's one set of of now now there's another issue that is how do we deal with other people who are religious who have different ideologies than us in some ways that's the more difficult challenge now I will say here I think uh Eric and lears are a little different you know uh Americans of whom I used to be one we like to pride ourselves on tolerance acceptance we know how to get along with people and here I come to Israel and everybody goes crazy over everything what's going on here and we're not talking about religious secular tensions we're talking about differences between people K you know what what possible difference does that make you know they say that Eskimos are able to identify 300 shades of white because they need to know different types of snow and ice you know where could they walk so they're so AC their eyesight is so trained that they could differentiate different types of snow that would be indistinguishable to the average person well that's how religion is an eror to threat you know there's a there's a major May you know there's a major between and major major major issue um you know but I don't want to bet but you know I'll give you a month salary if you could tell me a difference inh between and I mean it's basically you know in distinguish world but somehow there's such a sensitivity to new so here in Eric Isel now again in the defense of Eric isra the more deeply you care about things the less easy it is to be tolerant so one so is the American mentality based on generosity of spirit or is it based on you know indifference I'm okay you're okay right one can look at it two ways but be it as it may I think that the fundamental lesson of the second minion is does not come by homogenization it does not come by obliteration of difference it does not come by surrender of individuality but it comes by fostering and reeving and rejoicing and validating all of the different approaches that people bring knowing that because God is infinite in the Infinity of God there will be an Infinity of pathways within the framework of Torah again I want to emphasize to reach and going back to the early point that even those who are one could still identify aspects of goodness even within in which you know God is being accessed so to speak in one way or the other so this is a very very important time because and and of course this also translates into the educational system rako ketki wants from marked that our educational system is like the hotel of sedone now sedone had hotels but the hotels of sedon were like the Greek procrasti beds one size fit all if your legs were too long they would be cut to size if your legs were too short they would be stretched out the r and rako kineski said sometimes our schools create a certain model of what it means to excel and that model tends to be analytical skill in textual manipulation I me more learning essentially and that's very very important that's how we produce our raban our poim our gdan of course it's very very important it's critical but frankly not every child has a talent for that and being forced into a certain modality generates frustration failure a lack of self-esteem and that ultimately undermines theem in extreme cases you get the phenomenon of kids at risk go off the DK but one has to know that the problem is actually deeper and more profound than people will go off to D even if a kid stays from stays religious the person might be dead inside doesn't speak then he doesn't have a relationship with us because his individuality was squelched his talents were not recogniz his or hering wom as well his talents were not recognized and as a result he is of The Walking Dead he may not be a kid at risk well he's a kid at risk for risk of another thing but nevertheless and all of this comes because we've ignored Kan dark training a child according to their way and not trying to impose a type of vision that is foreign to that person's personality that person's talents all of this is happens when you focus on the melting P rather than the salad B the salad B understands multiple intelligences it understands that people have different ways of approaching life is look looks at people not only with tolerance but with respect and that is a different way of going through life and in that way you achieve the community of right again they were counted with tribes this is why tribes are so important because one might ask a question you know tribes are a big deal particularly in the book of amidar you know they have separate mum separate governor princes they have separate portions of land in AR Israel they have separate places they encamp in the desert now you might wonder why do we make a big deal about tribes isn't that another factor that that that creates disunity in am Israel we should have a Jewish people who cares about Ru and Shimon and Lees and you saw maybe Ley you need go but who cares if I'm from Ley or not from Le from Shimon or Yehuda or Y why should that factor be relevant of today of course we don't even have a consciousness of that to be sure but why is that a relevant Factor the answer is very profound because God is specifically saying in the tribal division that not everybody is supposed to be the same the tribes had different approaches different paths different mechanisms in and therefore God wants that diversity to exist whether it's whether it's muser whether it's things that are a little less conventional whether it's different emphases in Torah VOD different methodologies of learning different talents of children that need to be fostered and developed and celebrated and appreciated and the fact that God values our eff effort more than our tangible accomplishment all of these are ideas that you know everybody knows there's noish I think in what I'm saying but it's so difficult to implement these ideas in practice especially when the pressures of the societies to which we belong are so much in the direction of a stultifying Conformity which basically says there's no room for creativity and diversity and celebration of different talents that people have that may not be in the conventional analytical gamorra model in the life so I guess the upshot of all of this is that from the technical details of what you might think is a relatively dry discussion of how Jews were counted in the two countings one sees a profound message as to how does one create how does one create Community you know there was something on on the internet I I I didn't memorize it I saw it over a year ago so I don't remember all the details but it it was very very funny and very very true uh it involved a fellow who was about to jump off the g m he was going to jump off the bridge and commit suicide and a yid walks by and says wait wait wait don't jump don't jump and there's a whole series of questions he asks him are you a y or a GU the person says I'm a he says I'm a we have so much in common then he says are you a so anyway it turned out this went on for like 10 levels of stratification and everything was good everything was M oh you're a you know you're a a of then there was like something that was 10 levels down you know are you a follower of this rashash or that R and he said that's R go ahead and jump who cares you know I wish I could reproduce it but really it kind of divided people down to the 10th level and that little difference was okay go ahead I really don't care what happens to you okay now let me point out that these themes are actually echoed in the Mitzvah of itself very very interestingly enough you know we are finishing up the counting of the Omare and the counting of the Omare which counts the 49 days between and so the tells us that the purpose of the counting of the OM is to link the holiday of Freedom with the holiday of responsibility and because that's very important meaning PES and Sh are not two holidays they are one h holiday that is linked by in fact in Theon is called a linking to holidays because we have to remember Freedom has no meaning unless it is linked to a higher purpose when people say the purpose of life is to be free that doesn't make sense free to do what free to be what freedom is a great blessing and one has to be grateful for it but freedom is not a purpose freedom is not a goal and that is why we have to link the says and by the Counting of thei an Indian poet who was not speaking about Jews said it very very beautifully he said a human soul is like a violin string there is beautiful music within our souls now take a violin string and cut it Loose from the instrument and put it on the kitchen table free unencumbered no restrictions try to get a sound out of it you'll get nothing paradoxically on some level counterintuitively it's only when you tie it down you restrict it you limit its range of motion is the music within able to come out and tagari was suggesting that submission to God is Not enslavement submission to God is the mechanism for self-actualization in which which The beauty within will emerge within the discipline of submission and by the way even in you know if you look at Art generally it's always that way you know if you ever hear a jazz musician who does an improvisational riff like amazing so some kid just learned how to play the trombone or whatever it is he just wants to start blowing why do I have to you know play all these pieces I'll just do what he does well no you can't do what he does until you practice your scales for many hours and you play all those boring pieces and then when you've acquired craft when you've acquired skill when you have acquired discipline then you're able to let go and become artistic and creative even in it's that way I have to tell you that um you know sometimes when I read uh so let's say post uh I find an actual uh aesthetic artistic component in the way that he has such an easy Mastery so to speak of all of the literature he's able to maybe play with it is is is maybe in a reverence word he doesn't play with it but it's kind of a sense he he does to use it and draw upon it and and you know mold it and you know work with it and it looks like e looks easy so to speak but that comes from all of those years of of devotion and the letter so that's theme number one of counting of the old Mar take your freedom but understand you must submit to the will of God you must be in EV Hashem you must grow in your Torah your aod your your your your your your your commitment to the rebon of Allah that is theme number one so to to to encapsulate that I might say that theme number one is to become more more passionate in Your Divine service but there's a second theme of counting of the own and this second theme uh did not exist at the time of Matan Torah but it emerged based on later historical circumstances and that is the 24,000 students of rabaka died between pesak and Sh and to commemorate and mourn their debts we have certain aous restrictions again some people end them after some go through the whole period but whatever it is that's why we don't take haircuts that's why we don't make weddings that's why we don't listen to music although that's an interesting question the does not mention not listening to music but there's a very good reason for that the maintain you're not allowed to listen to music the entire year okay so there was no reason to mention SP but nevertheless since we don't keep the Restriction the whole year we do observe it uh during the SP and the story about RAB aa's students is very very poignant because if you remember RAB AKA was an and at the age of 40 he was employed by the wealthiest landowner in Jerusalem a man who went by the nickname CBA saua which means a stuffed dog because he was so hospitable that even if you were a dog you wouldn't be hungry anymore which is unusual for a dog but he was ignorant he didn't know how to read and Rael the boss's daughter fell in love with him now the gamar is not a very romantic document this is is probably the most romantic passage in the gamarra but she loved him explained because she saw in him greatness that he didn't know that he had there was a spiritual love here she saw what he really was Insight she was able to pierce beneath the rough uneducated uncultured exterior to see a man of character a man of greatness and a man of Brilliance so she married him her father was at Port her father made a vow excommunicating her and and disinheriting her she was reduced to object poverty and nevertheless she sent her husband to yam to learn with the first graders how to read and and in his modesty he was able he was willing to do that and he stayed there for 12 years and The Story Goes after 12 years he came back to visit his wife interesting question why didn't he visit her in between but okay putting that aside and he overhears her talking to somebody where somebody is telling her a neighbor right we always have these helpful neighbors they're always uh offering their opinion on things their unsolicited opinion and the neighbor says what type of husband do you have that leaves you for 12 years in poverty like this and she said I wouldn't mind if we'd go for another 12 years and the Tet tells us he didn't even step in for a cup of coffee he just went back for another 12 years again how do you understand that the the exact mechanics of the story and does the story reflect absolute historical reality you know one doesn't know it could very well be some commentaries say that he did occasionally visit his wife but and was essentially he was away for those years but you maybe come back once in a while but being as it may after the 24 years he came back with 24,000 students imagine that the largest Yeshiva in the world is the Mir Yeshiva here in Yan and that has maybe 8,000 students this is three times the size of Mir 24,000 students and this poor woman dressed in Rags who was suffering all of those years she finally sees the joy of everything that she gave up how it was worthwhile what she produced and she goes to Rea and they push her away they think she's a crazy woman in rags and RAB AA says the very famous Immortal words shall all that I am and all that you are shall L because of her and thear goes on with a very interesting story story that kala did not realize this was his son-in-law but he finally after 24 years he had R son his daughter but he made a vow so he hears this great Rabbi could mat a vow so he goes to RAB AA says I made a vow not to give my daughter anything can you Release Me From The Vow and raka said if you would have known that your son-in-law would know how to learn Torah would you have made the vow and he said learning Torah if I would know he'd learn how to read Hebrew I wouldn't have made the F so raka said well you're release from your V so here's the thing that adds a level of poignancy to the story those were the 24,000 students all of whom died in a short time on one level of course these are 24,000 students but I but I for some reason my mind keeps on wandering back to Rael Rael suffered so many so many years she finally sees all that her suffering accomplished and then it's all taken away from her it all goes into the ground everything was a waste nothing was accomplished again going back like I said earlier sometimes if you focus on the individual it may become even more powerful than the collectivity but here is our point unfortunately Jewish history has had tragedies that are greater than 24,000 students ding we have had holocausts where 6 million Jews Di and before that we had Crusades and pams and kiniski massacres where once again more than that number done why am I singling out the 24,000 of rev AA and the answer is it's not so much to mourn over them because unfortunately we've had worse but because kazal identified the specific reason why they died and they died the Garo says because they did not show proper covero to each other and therefore we think about them not so much to mourn but to try to be in our own life the idea of showing now what does it mean to show to have C for somebody else makes a very beautiful point he says we can assume that the students of rabaka were great people they were not insulting each other they were not calling each other names they were not pushing them out of line they were not spitting at them probably if any of us would have seen a student of RAB AA and another student we would have seen DS we would have seen refinement we would have seen good behavior rers says cavod is not a matter of behavior it's a matter of attitude the eological origin of cavod is c c means heavy cavote is when I look at you and I see you as a weighty significant person ref first says it is possible to be polite to somebody but you look at them as a lightweight that's the that's the phrase that we use in English someone who doesn't add any value to the conversation so cavod is an attitude not just a behavior it is I look at you with weight with significance with heft with to use a slightly fancier word with gravitus and the gar made that has properly behaved as the students of Rea might have been they did not see theas in each other and therefore the aod of spas is to work on this attitude of seeing the significance and weight of the other by the way says a similar Point by of the the same L of now even though kazal defined the Mitzvah externally you know you give your parents food and transportation and clothing he actually says the Mitzvah is not really fulfilled until you identify in your heart the qualities of your parents that are worthy of emulation you have to look at your parents not as a beneficiary of the service you give them but to identify qualities of admiration and emulation now I hope and I think that for most of us that is not such a difficult challenge but for some people it might be some people have you know difficult parents Etc even then said you have to strive to find you know perhaps the struggles they went through Etc and the fact that they were still able to raise a family even though it was not as good as it could have been you really have not done keep of the aend till you see your parents as worthy and significant people and similarly in the cavod we have for other people it's not a matter of being polite although it should start with that but it's really a question of the attitude that you have and life of course what did Mark Twain say about parents he says when he was 17 uh he thought his parents were fools and when he was 21 he was so amazed how intelligent they got in just four years so that uh that often happens happens as well now so it turns out again going back to summarize there are two different things we do during spat as a preparation for the holiday of sh we become more passionate and committed in but to be the of we have to learn to see the weight and significance in the other now what's interesting is that in some ways in the world we live in the these two goals operate at Cross purposes they're almost inconsistent because what often happens is as I get more passionate more Stark more fiery as I become more of a True Believer in the proper way to serve God I can sometimes look at other people whether religious but not on my level whatever my level is or certainly secular and I look at them as less worthy I look at them as you know not really good lightweights at best and sometimes they I might use the vocabulary of of Russia God forbid which should really not be used about Str juice but conversely when you have Big Ticket big tents inclusive Jews I'm okay you're okay they're often very wishy-washy and mushing in what their fundamental commitments are meaning if every idea is equally good then nothing is true the challenge of spir and the challenge of our educational system and the challenge we have in our own lives as religious Jews is to be fiery committed passionate and constantly striving to grow in ourem and at the same time be tolerant accepting loving compassionate and even respectful I don't tolerance is a bit of a a wrong word sometimes because tolerance implies that person is my inferior but I'll tolerate them like you might tolerate you know an ant or whatever whatever it is this is more than just tolerance it's covered seeing the good in them seeing the strength in them and in many ways I'll say as they say word to the wise is sufficient this is actually a key to diffusing many many tensions that exist in society says as water reflects the heart I'm sorry the face that you show it right other words if you have a pool of water if I smileing at the water I get a smiling face if I frown at the water I get a frowning face as water reflects the face that you show it so too the heart of one human being reflects back that which you show it I show a person respect I show a person love I show a person concern they will feel that way about me as well it's no secret that we live in a society here in erel where tensions are very very high in fact in many many ways you know surveys of the population have shown that the internal divisiveness within am Israel is of Greater concern to even the average Israeli and all of the great great awesome threats that we Face from from the outside we live in a very dangerous part of the world obviously although I have to say the whole world is pretty dangerous it's not only AR Israel right now like that's that's one of the arguments for alah I mean you know hey you know uh if life is dangerous in Paris and London and New York you might as well be here it's not it's not going to be worse which actually is uh is empirically uh somewhat true but putting that aside the average Israeli Rec religious or secular recognizes that the internal divisiveness is even worse than the external threat and if we could overcome the internal divisiveness hem would give us much more and much to counter those external threats but in many many ways if we as religious Jews could acknowledge the contributions of even those who are not religious whether it's the Army whether it's the police whether it's the garbage collectors actually all of these cases many are in fact sh Mitzvah but even those who are not sh Mitzvah if we instead of demonizing instead of delegitimating instead of criticizing can open ourselves up to see the good that they do also in creating a Medina and running a Medina and all of the infrastructure that allow allows the religious communities to function then I think based on Mish P that they would also see I'm not saying they would become religious that's a separate thing but they would see the beauty of Torah the beauty of Judaism they would see what the religious community offers as well following schl now a person might say well why do I have to be the one who started let them start liking me and then I'll like them why why do I have to like them and then they'll like me the answer is you know somebody has to start that's all somebody has same thing in a marriage all the time well why do I have to do something for my wife let her do something for me somebody has to move if you don't move nothing ever happens somebody needs to be the adult in the room and if you're a Torah Jew and you have Tor values then you know that that is part of our responsibility so SPH om has a contradictory challenge how to be passionate but still open how to be firmly committed to the Torah but still tolerant and respectful of all types of people seeing their strengths and not just their weaknesses by the way we had this week and I'm sure many of you all of you celebrated yam uh the older people in the room and I include Myself by now uh remember that great day uh the 28th of V 1967 I was just a little little boy that but but I do I do I do remember it and it's a very very glorious day but you know the very name y Yim is a composite City like Minneapolis St Paul uh the original name of the city was Shalem which is Salem Shalem maled is the king of shal so where do you get the Yu the Yu is actually the part of the city that is the harab because Abu called The Temple Mount Hashem Year God will look down at his people so the two cities the haray was called year and the rest of the city whever that was was called shalm shal so the Al and the got combined to above is Yu sh Le and indeed in the second Jud is not there in it's normally not pronounced it isus which is the English well jerusalm and the Y say is aanin like and it refers to the two Jerusalem not East and West that doesn't count but of Heaven Shala and Sh but what I want to sh share with you it's this interesting thought that the same dichotomy that we have in spir om between passion and inclusiveness lies in the very name of our beloved City Y is a pun because y means God looks God looks but Y is also you know fear reverence of Heaven shal is peace Hashem say your fear of God your passion your commitment to his worship cannot be at the expense of Shalom with others and your Shalom with others cannot be at the expense of year you have to combine and Sh and those are the two themes of again it is a challenge for us and it's a challenge of the that we give to our children how do we raise our children do we want to raise our children that when they look at a they say oh he's a go is that how we want our children to respond or you want our children to have love and care and concern and respect for every Jew and to some degree for every person as well because the idea of man being in the image of God is Not only Jews that even applies to non-js again I understand the difficulties when you're dealing with a segment that wants to kill you exactly how you inculcate that virt I do understand that maybe that'll be a talk for another another time but there is a reality that Salo Kim does apply to non-jews as well as Jews one can prove this from payos let me just end the hour is is getting late let me just end with a a short thought we know that the great thing that the Jewish people did at M Tor was their statement hasem is a tremendous thing Hashem offered the Torah to all of the nations of the world but all of the nations of the world said what's in it I want to hear what's in it I'm not going to sign on the dotted line until I know what's in it what is the greatness of n isma we will do it God now let's hear what you're what you're telling us to do tremendous thing UNC conditional acceptance without any questions without even knowing signing a blank check but you know it's very very interesting that this famous verse appears in if you look at theer andos the Jewish people didn't say nasma they they did say something very similar but not exactly they said so the question is why does one p say call and the other P says there's a beautiful thought from the where he says you know say there are 613 mitzvos 248 positive Commandments 365 negative Commandments right we know and correlate them to the body there are 248 bones and each positive Mitzvah gives life to my bones so I'm not sure what that means exactly if you have arthritis you know what what Mitzvah are you're not doing you know it's hard to know exactly what that even means but do say the are ConEd the and then the Sha the 365 negative Commandments uh correspond to the Senus or the ligaments of the body that if you violate a negative commandment you're hurting that on some level now here's the question how could that possibly be so there has never been a person in history that has been able to keep 613 Commandments some of them are only for men and some are only for women some are toan many of them only apply when there aik many apply we are in but you know so many Jews Florence in other words it seems that God created a system necessary for our Perfection that's impossible to keep how could that be how could Hashem say you know your bones and your ligaments need all 613 and you're not going to be able to do it even if you're living in AR and even if there is a base of make under the best conditions there are going to be mitzah that don't apply to you or take a mitz like gu you know giving a get is a MIT in the Torah now the Torah says if you decide to divorce your wife you give a get now that must mean there is some bone in there's some ligament in my body that gets its spiritual sustenance by the Mitzvah of giving a get very good but what does that mean am I supposed to give a get to get that spiritual sustenance I mean no one's going to say that you know even the people who go out of their way to send away sh never somebody say I got to do the Mitzvah of get what whatever it is so there are two answers to this very good very good question meaning how am I if it's not possible for me to do two answers one answer is this is the Mila of tal that even the mitv I'm not able to do when I learn about them I absorb that Holy through the process of learning say it byos a person who learns the laws of carbos is as if they brought a Corin it applies to anything so if I learn I get the spiritual I get the spiritual light of so Torah that's why actually writes it's important to learn even Those portions of the Torah that are not Hally practical because that's how you get the light of the midst which you're not able to do that's answer one answer two is aat Isel how does aat Isel help me with this problem in the following way when I put Fillin on my left arm in the morning how would I describe what I did I don't say my arm did a Mitzvah I say I did a Mitzvah because my arm is part of me the same thing when you connect yourself to the Jewish people with bonds of love you become like a limb attached to a transcended entity with a past present and future so the mitzvos of any part of that entity are your mitzvos when you separate yourself and you stand alone by definition your mitzvot are going to be incomplete and defective but when you're M yourself to the cloud then the Mitzvah of the men become the Mitzvah of the women the Mitzvah of the Coen become the Mitzvah of the Israel the Mitzvah of the past become the Mitzvah of the present because it's one entity that eternally stays just like your cells constantly change but you're still the same person so the me these two in the in it says under [Music] when the Jewish people are with they can say to God we can do everything I can't do all the Mitzvah you can't do all the Mitzvah but when there's the Mitzvah of this group become the Mitzvah of all but the second P doesn't have the word Y in it and it's a Remis that there will be a time many times and many places where the Jews are not they're not there's there's polarization at that point we cannot say I can do it all because I can't do it all so I have to come on to the second answer n we can do it through learning meaning that's why in the that says we keep the whole Torah in the that doesn't say we need Plan B which is the light of T Torah Nas through the M I'll just end that on one level these seem to be two different Pathways the pathway of Torah learning and the pathway of aash Israel but in reality these are two roads that ultimately convert and become one and the reason that is so is tell us Shalom that when people learn Torah in the proper way it is not a tool for divisiveness polarization it is a tool to create Harmony peace and love in the world so the T Torah Road ultimately should turn into the abas Isel Road as well and therefore the two Pathways to our in come together and become one these are great great challenges and of course all of us know that the the of the GAA is because say that the was destroyed because of that existed in is and as rauk used to say in a very very famous remark that I know all of you have heard if it was that caused the it will only be that caused will cause the Redemption but who am I to qualify R cook at Aller any but I would just add one little supplementary comment that perhaps we shouldn't describe the love we have for a fellow Jew as kind of says you don't deserve it but I'll love you even though there's no reason to really we need to go to the next level and we need to be able to look at others and see all the reasons there are to love and care about them that it shouldn't be an in which the person is worthless but I love him anyway we should strive to see their work see their value and promised help us to achieve these goals may all us