Chayei Sara - Three tefilos

Hi, this is David Olowski. Welcome to the para in five where in five minutes or thereabout. We give you a little insight into the para that hopefully will be uh worthwhile and helpful to you to make your shabas more meaningful. Uh so we've spoken in the past of course of the journey Elaza goes through to go and find a wife and when he comes back the pik says Rifka sees him uh conversing in the field and the kazal tell us that he invented as we know each one of the abos invented a created Shakras and Yitk created Mina and Yakov created. Yeah. As it says by Abraham came Abraham and as it says by Jacob and all of them instituted these three that we say every day. Why do we say three a day? You know the Arabs say five. Yeah. Why do we say three? What what is the significance of this? And what is the significance of Jacob establishing these? Yeah. All right. Let's start with because those are the easiest. I will tell of your in the morning and I will speak of your amuna of your faith at night. So what does that mean? There's something that is built into a human being where we become hopeful in the morning cuz it's daybreak. If you want to believe it can be daybreak, the sun rises over the horizon. Suddenly the world gets light and the world has a sense of freshness and newness to it. As I heard Visha Shapiro say once in Shir, even forina New York smells good in the morning. [laughter] That was uh that was before the present administration. But uh you the idea is that it comes up in the morning. Everything is fresh. Everything's starting covered with dew. Sunshine. It's the beginning of the day. It's hopeful. Things are going to go well. It's going to be a good day. That's the nature of the beginning of the day. And that's when we say we say we talk about all the praises of we make all the of all the good things that a bar gives us. Every day starts off with this tremendous hopefulness and this concept that we're going to accomplish and do great things. Yeah, that's how the day starts and that is chakras. Yeah. And uh Abraham's life represents that. He gets thrown into a Gibson. Bof, he comes out. He's fine. You right. Um he gets 10 tests, he pass all the 10 tests. He goes to war against the four world powers. He's successful. You know what I mean? Him and his wife have no children. Boom. The age of 100, he has a child. You know, 99 has a child. He was born when he's 100. At the end of his life, he sees Yeshalucha. Uh he sees Yitka get married. He sees him have his twins. He sees that everything is going that he died five years early. So he shouldn't see as of go off to because his life is a life of of he was night is scary. That's when the monsters come out. That's when we don't see. That's when our world shrinks. That's when we're afraid of all the forces of evil that come out into the world. The nighttime is a scary time. Yakob's life was tough. He's forced into a position of having to act falsely and steal the brahas from his father. Then he has to run away from his brother who tries to kill him. His grandson beats him halfway before he gets there and steals all of his money. He has to deal with his uncle who becomes his father-in-law who is the most corrupt individual in the Torah and that's saying something changed his arrangements 100 times and he has to work there and manage to be successful and work around this slime ball which is not easy to do and then he escapes. His daughter is kidnapped and raped. two of his other kids wipe out a city which starts a war that the Jewish people then have to fight against all of the locals in Cananan to be able to get away. And then his brother comes to attack him with an army of 400 men. He doesn't know what's going to end up happening. And then he loses his roesh when he thinks that his beloved son Yoseph is dead for 22 years and at the end he dies in gulus. That's a very sad story, but that's night. And it's at nighttime when you're living the life of Jacob that we need to say of amuna. So what's didn't have a bad life, but he didn't have a great life. He had difficulties. He had challenges. Things were hard for him. And therefore, it was the setting of the sun. It's not dark yet, but you see it coming. Is translated as twilight, even though it starts at 12:01 in the afternoon, right? But it means the sun is setting. And Yitkak himself didn't really suffer any difficulties. But he died knowing that Yseph was still alive and he couldn't tell Yakov. He died seeing Yakov in pain. He died seeing Asov become a Russia and try to kill Yakov. He he died seeing all the different difficulties that were waiting for Yakov and for Yoseph and the and the problems that were coming up for Cly Israel. He himself didn't experience it, but he saw it coming. It's the setting of the sun. It's anticipating the difficulties that are waiting around the corner. And so when we dive in shakras, we say zimra and we put on our fill in and we have a sort of positive sense. We go to shul it's dark outside. We say we have to stress that we have faith that is going to take care of us and [laughter] there's always the expression I have to you know you gota you got to fit in a min because interrupts your day because you see that the day is just going and heading towards a particular conclusion and you interrupt it with the says I have not forgotten you. I'm thinking about you. I see the sun setting. I see the night coming. I know the difficulties that are waiting around the corner. And I want you to know that we stand strong with you. So when we dive in our we should have in mind not just the aos but the ideas that theos represented in the world. Yetsk was den. Din is always pulling back, pulling back. And that's exactly what the setting of the sun is, pulling back. And so we should try to focus on the three aspects of the day when we say chabas.