Mishkan, the Universe, & Everything (Ep. 162)

hi this is david dolowski and welcome to the robert alowski show whether you're watching with our friends over at tour anytime or wherever you watch or listen to your podcasts as always we're happy to have you along so let's start with a little bit of business um we have received a lot of interest in the fila series and i keep getting uh letters so we made a special page where you could sign up for the fila series if you're interested we're going to start after pesach that's the plan so go to rabiolovsky.com and you can say i'm interested no commitment at that point but say i'm interested in joining this year what time is good for me and uh like i say we're trying to find a time that will accommodate the most amount of people and uh my producer michael said so far the only time that looks like it's not good for people is friday night every other time seems to be some people are good for it some people are not so we'll do the best we can and uh the point is to try to make the maximum amount of people unhappy as possible and that's what we always try to do if i can spread a little unhappiness for solemn yeah so uh okay that's uh that's our bits of business and uh onwards uh we're talking about the mishkan and uh it's very interesting if you go to the living torah by aya kaplan it's a translation of the torah into english to the best of my knowledge it is the only english translation of the torah arts grow translates it into a dialect that's very similar to english but isn't actual english and the problem with translations is it's always tricky because uh there's different ways of speaking you know so if you say god spoke to moshe saying no one says that in english so i kaplan for example writes uh why don't you do such and such says god what god said the way you would write it in english it's it's a brilliant brilliant work he writes in his introduction it took him nine months to write the translation uh of the living torah it would take me nine months just to look up all the books in the bibliography uh it's so extensive if you ever have a chance just take out some time and read the bibliography it's absolutely fascinating he did this all nine months i i heard a story once and again i i i didn't check it out i'm not pissed of crone but um uh we're in he uh uh these these two guys were writing a paper on his translation and they went to see his widow and said could we see the notes that he used to put it together he says he didn't use any notes he just sat down and wrote straight which is unbelievable thing they put out a rough draft of gurus hashem that the maharal had written and you can see what he added and took out and things like that it was it was edited but he just sat down and wrote and it's unbelievable but um he writes in his introduction that one of the reasons for writing this was so that people would understand the mishkan that's what he says he says that unfortunately it's something that is seen as esoteric and not having relevance to our lives and he wanted to make it as clear as he possibly could so that's what we said at the beginning the the fact is that a lot of people don't appreciate that the mishkan is an essential part of our life as jews something that's meaningful so let me give you one example uh when i talk about relevance the melakas you're not allowed to do on shabbos strange way of saying it yeah 40 less 1 which means 39 why don't you just write 39. the taste is yantif on the mishnah writes because we have a certain way of expressions in gaza so when you want to say a few in english or you say there were two or three people there whatever it is in in hebrew he says in in mishnahic language we say four or five arabic and he says because the kinds of the four or five you find in pajamas when you steal a cow and sell it or shake it you have to pay back five cows when you steal a sheep and sell it or shake that you have to pay back four sheep so four or five becomes the expression of when you want to say a few four or five abraham that's what he says whereas the only time you find the number 39 in the torah is by malcus and it says you give 40 and then they learn from the pasek that you leave off one so it's really 39. so you see 40 less one is the way we say 39. that's uh that's the way the toys with jantip explains it but we'll see in any event there are 39 melakas how do we know the melakas we look at the building of the michigan so we say okay they had to grow flax in order to make the linen what went into the growing of flax they had to boil up the spices what goes into boiling they had to treat the takash hides and cut them into pieces what goes into preparing hides they had to spin the wool in order to make the coverings what goes into taking wool and making it able to spin and weave it so all these things they analyze and they come up with the things you're not allowed to do in choppers it seems a little backwards though we have a base of mikdash 410 years the first time 420 years the second time but a lot of the things in the mishkan didn't go into the base of mikdash we didn't have to crush him well we didn't have the yoyos yeah so uh if you look at the time of the mishkan 40 years in the desert 39 actually because we didn't put it up till the second year 39 years in the desert we were in eric's trail for 850 years take off um to take off 410 for the base of mikdash at least 440. and over 360 years we had shiloh which was not the michigan so you're talking about less than 200 years of jewish history that we had the mishka and we spend all of this time as we mentioned truma and tatsava and half of kisa and vyayako and pakude to tell me all about the building of the mishkan which stood for less than two hundred years and from there we learn out here shabbos which we have to keep every single week for over 3 300 years do you see how it's a little backwards it's not supposed to work that way tell me shabbos this is what you can do on shabbos this is what you can't do on shabbos and then take all the building of the michigan and put in a bracer there is a price in malachi mishkan so uh you managed to put this stuff in the middle it's okay you know all the laws of shrita there's a lot of laws of srita it's very complicated area you know where it appears in the torah hashem says to moshe you will check the animals the way i showed you on har sinai that's it no laws no the it's all written in the tourism so surely we could have put all of the building of the mishkan and all the materials that went into it into uh the turkish palpate it seems a little backwards to start with the mishkan and work backwards from there to figure out shabbos tell me shabbas i mean this is a pretty obvious question and when and when you find that the icker is not there it it it has to make you suspicious i.e most of the laws of tequila schaefer are learned out from you evil yoevil is once every 50 years and uh it was only during the time of the first place to make dash and there were 70 years that they didn't keep it if you make the hajj when there were less than 10 yards in all of jewish history whereas there have been over 3 300 rosh hashanah and we learn how the lords are belonging from evil again it seems a little backwards so you got to be suspicious when you see something like that happen okay so let's take a look at shabbos on shabbos you have to rest why because hashem rested now he didn't really work that hard right i mean besides the fact that he's infinite you know so it's not like he gets worn out friday night he went out and had a couple of drinks with some friends and said you can't believe the week i just had right but sarah mamara's never allowed him the entire world was created with 10 expressions that's all he had to do he spoke ten times or if you have an old translation he spake ten times let's sayeth the lord anyway so uh that was a whole big deal so what does it mean he rested obviously doesn't mean he rested because he was tired it means he stopped creating vayishvoice he stopped from making the world it's interesting six days the world was created hashem made the world it should have said bishops yum him in six days he created the world it doesn't it says six days he created the world strange the answer is that it's not that it took him six days to create the world he was creating for six days and then the six days ended and he stopped so it's not that it took him six days to create the world between me and you he could have done in a moment a nanosecond probably less because he's that sort of time so he doesn't even have any time right so he created the world in six days so that it took him six days but not because he needed six days in six days he created and then he stopped creating and when the six days were over he stopped creating you see he he threw in a few extra things during banish mushrooms you know twilight got in a few things yeah during that twilight of creation ten things but uh he created for six days and then he stopped that's why there's a mistake where people think that you're you're done your life is done you finish what you have to accomplish and then you die obviously not yeah avraham had 10 tests after he passed those 10 tests yeah he finished that last one when he was uh 137 and he died at 175. so it doesn't work that way yitzhak was blind and considered as if he was dead but he was still alive he didn't die so i'm safer it's not that you're finished and then you die you die that's why you're finished or as someone used to add a tagline to their emails i don't know if people still do this but they used to add tag lines at the bottom of their emails you get some fun quotes douglas adams who wrote the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy when he finished the third book he called it the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy trilogy when he put out the fourth book he wrote the fourth in the inappropriately named hitchhiker trilogy when he put out the fifth book he wrote the fifth in the continuingly inappropriately anyway so someone had a tagline a quote from him where he said i don't know if i went everywhere i was supposed to go but i think i ended up where i was supposed to be i think that's a it's a fine observation anyway but someone had a different tagline when you die your inbox will not be empty it's not that you finished answering your last email and now you can die no there's always stuff going on you'd never finished this woman set as a goal she's going to do all the laundry and she did everything she washed every piece of clothing and she felt so good and then she realized oh no my children are wearing things it's never over so the ishbos just means that hashem stopped what did he stop he stopped creating the world so to commemorate this what do we do we stop from creating the world and that's very easy because i can go months without making as much as an asteroid what do you mean stop from creating the worlds it's very easy we don't create worlds therefore kirschberg had to give us a world to create that was the mishkan it was a microcosm of the entire universe and we didn't build the mishkan on shabbos on shabbos you don't build the mishkan one can go into why that is but the mishkan is a place of holiness in space and shabbos is a holiness and time but okay so what it means that we rest on shabbos it means we rest from creating the mishkan so you have to tell me the mishkan because that's the basis of the creation of the world i'll give you something a little kabbalistic for those of you who are kabbalistically oriented um there are the ten spheres right we've spoken about them in the past uh seven we're pretty familiar with those are the ones when you count spherus even in your art scroll sitter you have the first week as khasen and then gevorah te faires naitza hod yasod in each one of those weeks we work on those circus is condensed each day we work on one of those and those seven of course correspond to parts of the body your right arm your left arm yeah so different parts of the body are represented by those the seven cochleas which are called the uh celestial objects that can be seen with your naked eye the sun the moon mercury venus mars jupiter and saturn represent those seven lower spheres um the ushpezen on circus represent the seven cohos right so those seven we access a lot they're the seven days of the week um as i mentioned the kofilev fest so is the sun which gives the light and the heat so the first day of the week is sunday gefura is represented by the moon that's what the second day of the week is moon day shabbos is represented by saturn that's why the last day of the week is called saturn day yeah so uh they represent days a week so those are the seven and then there's uh the top three that we don't usually access they're called the moken the brain and uh it's usually beena and kessa although there's another way of doing bean and das but okay so uh picture the skull and the two parts of the brain you know one is stronger in men and one is stronger and women that's kaufman and bina you know women have been asera and so certain people are left brain and right brain yeah it tends to go stronger in men and in women and that's why huffman bina in kabbalah is also called the of and the aim the father and the mother fine so those are the ten spheres and they pop up a lot in judaism mostly the lowest seven it's hard to access those top three we do on special occasions like the assassination and things like that but for the most part we work with the bottom seven but there are ten spheres now in kabbalah they talk about the four levels of existence it's known by the abbreviation abia which stands for attilas bria [Music] four different and you can see in the story of creation yeah um it starts with the pressure elo kim that's bria atsilas is the aleph before the base of voracious and then you can find you'd see renascia throughout the story but fine four levels says the svasamis each one of those four levels has 10 spheres all together that comes out to 40. obviously a big number in judaism 40 different spheres in all of creation and that's what a kurdish barricade used to make this world that we're in if you ever go to a mall and you have the big map and your little arrow you are here you are here in mauchus of the world of asea you're all the way the bottom of these 40. the top is the beginning of the process what is known as yeshmein creating something from nothing that original point of creation so that's 40. and uh this is an idea a number of the the cobalam talk about you can find this written out uh in the deceiver shalom he speaks it out well and he says you know you do certain physical actions down in this world and you access certain spiritual powers simplest example is when you wave you're down him in the four directions all right so when you do that it affects the winds it affects the towel so uh you're able to do certain things down here that access certain powers up there and so he says there are 40 actions that we used physical actions i should say 39 physical actions that we did to create the mishkan which is our world that we created there's one of these 40 that you can't access and that's yeshua and we can't create something from nothing we can only work with what hackers who gave us that's why says this false emas it's not 39 it's 40 less one and i can't tell you which corresponds to which but when you plow that's accessing one of these spheres when you weave that's accessing one of these now i'm sure ryoma cuban could probably line these up for you i can tell you that nasi washington doesn't but what it means is that we do a physical action down here and it accesses that spiritual power that went into the creation of the world we can't create the world on a mega level but we can do it on a mini level that's what we do when we make the mishkan so the mishkan isn't just everything that's in the world is in the mesh gun so uh rashi says for example the yurios were held together with 50 blue loops and gold hooks that held it together and the gold hooks in the blue loops are supposed to look like the stars in the heavens that's one example there are examples of everything that goes into the construction of the world that's in the construction of the mishkan now let's take it as ruby tests like to say a little deeper yes the marbling and pasha's truma says that everything that goes into the mishkan in fact corresponds to the human body you can hear this yes uh i have to be very careful because sometimes when i imitate people i get stuck in them for days i once spent the entire week just rub my wine it was a little touchy anyway i won't do it anyway but [Laughter] that's why somebody once said it's so hard to impersonate you in the purim play because you're so many different people it's like doing somebody with multiple personality disorder anyway so uh someone asked me do you have multiple personality disorder i said i don't but he does anyway the album and pasha's truma explains how everything in the mishkan is a macrocosm of a human being the corruption represents the ribcage the three coverings over it represent the three layers of your skin the dermis epidermis and endodermis i get a 90 on the biology regions thank you very much anyway um and uh the the auron is your skull and the two luchos one represents the left side and one with the right side of your brain and the broken luchaz represents your subconscious mind you see how this works so when we talk about the mishkan we're talking about something that's there for us to access the level that we have is the potential inside of us you need the mishkan to be fulfilled as a person like i say admiration didn't need it but he didn't need a brisk meal either he was born already mao he also didn't need to prepare bread it grew on the trees but now that the world is messed up we need some way to be able to communicate that's why mach like is rashi and ramban if we would have built the michigan with or without the ego but rashid says it's only there for the caitanya why because if we didn't do the haita egel didn't build the golden calf then we would have reached the level of adam in ganeden when we got the first set of luchos at harsinai as it says no more deaths that would be it we'd go back to where we were supposed to be we didn't so now we had to build the world in order for us to be able to artificially access that power so we're going to talk about this uh more next time because i want to speak a little bit about the big day kahuna and how that also helps us access our humanity but uh now i want to move to our question and answer segment anonymous asks would rabiolosky prefer if people wrote their real names when submitting questions i don't care and let me clarify it bothers me to no end when people write letters to the editor in jewish publications anonymously it bothers me to no end when people make comments online anonymously coward if you're not interested in signing your name to it then keep your mouth shut it gets me so upset because people have no problem attacking people online or in print and then writing their name anonymous you want to attack someone who was brave enough to stand up and say something you want to disagree with them have their guts to sign your name to it and if you're too cowardly to sign your name to it don't write keep your mouth shut it's unbelievable i i i don't know if you can sense this but i have been attacked online and also in publications there was uh i wrote for many years for the hamadiya and uh occasionally somebody would write in a letter as a complaint and they would always give me the letter first so i could publish a response in the question and answer section which to me is the only decent thing to do but there was another jewish publication that wanted me to write for them and i was not interested and they said okay well can we ask you questions and we'll write it up i i i wasn't happy about it but i said okay i was very nice lady who was asking me the questions and writing it up and i think she did a fine job somebody wrote a letter into the editor attacking what i said clearly not understanding what i said they never gave me the letter beforehand they never gave me a chance to respond and after that i said i'm never writing for your publication again you let somebody write in and attack me without giving me the chance anonymously without giving me the chance to respond i i i i see the most horrific things written in these in these in these letters to the editor columns and these cowards sign anonymity write your name so that somebody can come to you and say you said this stand behind your words and if you don't want to stand behind your words keep your mouth shut coward anyway it's just my feeling but a person is submitting a question who cares i'd have to know who you are and i have the option of choosing your question i'm not choosing your question i don't choose all the questions first of all i don't have time second of all i don't like some of the questions i'm not gonna answer them it's my podcast i do what i want okay um anonymous asks how do i know when i'm ready to start shidduchim no boy oh boy uh the grower says when you're 18. the standard line that people give in response is i'm dominating a longshore asteroid but okay yeah but the gamora says parents are obligated to support their children until they're old enough to make it on their own but until then you're supposed to support your children how old is that five if the kid's a little slow six and then you call in the child and you say well son it's time for you to make it on your own it's been a pleasure having you here good luck anyway i did this tomorrow once and someone said to me um that's changed today right i said yeah now it's about 45. and that's only because you're hoping one of your parents died and you get the arusha hearing aids trout the couple gets married and every shabbos they go to the parents and the in-laws then the parents and the endless appearance of the illness and they continue doing this until their own children get married and start coming to them so then they have to stay home and make shabbos for the first time so obviously things have changed yeah but um let's let's put it this way the general principle is that marriage is a good thing you should get married every mayor says yeah i got married at 14. if i would have gotten married at 13 i could have spit the sutton in the eye because it's a great way to spend your teenage years being married you know with all the misunis that are out there all the terrible things it's nice to come home the gemara says that a girl got married when she was a nara if she was a bulgaris she was already considered over the hill anaira is between 12 and 12 and a half she's already over 12 and a half the parents are going crazy oh my gosh what are we going to do with this girl sometimes you still find his way somebody asked from yoyo the satma rebbe if you have a question and a bar mitzvah boy who gets the mafia he said whoever is older so today you know people say well you know people aren't mature enough people aren't this people aren't that okay uh i think it really depends on the person some people are mature and are ready to take on obligations and some people you can wait a very long time and they're not so how do you know it is always good to have a spiritual advisor be it a rebbe or a rebbe or amashia smart friend you know uh or whoever's in charge of the institution whatever it is someone who's able to know you and advise you correctly so there are obviously certain considerations right if a person finds that being unmarried is causing him thoughts of immorality and possibly immoral actions and the person's going to get married and it's going to straighten them out that's a good thing my rule of thumb is when you're not happy being alone and you want to have somebody in your life yeah so uh you know obviously you have to know what you're doing and you have to know the other person and uh there are those who suggest uh you know uh premarital counseling um there's uh i used to give i used one time i gave a share to guys who were in dating about what to look for when you're dating and then basic overview and someone wrote me and said i heard about this and i asked one of the rebel in my yeshiva to do it what should we cover well we set up a gave them a few ideas for a curriculum but the more preparation you have going into it then the better it will be because the world has changed because my father and my mother said we'd learn to love each other so goldie now i'm asking do you love me yeah every touristy does that sound he said i feel so bad for you litvisha somehow you think you have to develop a meaningful relationship before you can get married it takes years to develop a meaningful relationship you're not going to be able to do it and in three months six months takes years so by the casino we don't even pretend you know yeah everything looks good [Laughter] you find each other attractive and uh and then enjoy being with each other you know the you share the same values so you get married you have the rest of your life to work out you know all those details i was uh speaking once in the va rush line and uh and one of the girls said something like you know but but you can't put a number on it you know that you have to know the other person before you get married you know like what's their favorite color so it's the time i'd been married over 30 years uh i went home and i said honey what's your favorite colors because i don't know i never thought about it and yeah we managed to have 11 children without knowing her favorite color [Laughter] so uh you know when when you feel like you want something now here's the most important thing the most important thing you want to go into this relationship not for me but because i want to build something in cloud yourself you know when my parents got married you wanted to marry a jewish jewish person and build a jewish home and have jewish children and bring them up that was the that was the overriding consideration now if you want more on this subject i did a whole series on the topic of shidduchim dating and marriage which you can find wherever you watch or listen to your podcasts or you can uh find it on my website and listen to it over there so you'll have a lot more information on this topic anonymous asks if you have a full-time job and your wife works and you don't overspend is taking a loan to survive justified i know what you mean by justified is it uh sensical no absolutely not [Laughter] yeah you have to live on the money that you have when i got married my father over solemn who was the master of the double message when i got married he said to me you have to learn one phrase i can't afford it whatever it is i can't afford it i can't afford it one time he came by the house and he says why don't you fix this why don't you get that and i said dad i can't afford it he said to me don't be a cheapskate so the answer is sometimes there are unexpected expenses i.e uh someone gets hurt and they need medical treatment or they can't work um your car suddenly breaks down or uh you you have a hassana so then okay so i'm kind of stuck i need money to carry me through this difficult time but if i'm borrowing to live on it can't work that way now there are a few organizations and if anybody's interested you can contact me i could try to put you in contact with one of the people i know who works with one of these organizations where they work to get you out of debt because people do what you're saying they borrow money they run from gamak they borrow from this one and that one and they get themselves so into debt they can't get out and they reorganize them they take away all their credit cards they can only spend cash they show how to cut all of their expenses and um and you can only spend what you can spend and that was and you have to save for unexpected uh currencies it used to be that kind of put it away for a rainy day everyone had savings today people are not so good at having savings they just wait so you can hope there'll be another pandemic and uh joe biden will keep sending you checks but that's not a way to live a life yeah you have to be fiscally responsible and if you don't have it you don't have it you gotta be you gotta be reasonable that's my opinion on the topic okay that's it for this week if you want to find out more about the show you can go to my website rubyalovsky.com you can leave a comment you can send an email you can sign up for your interest in the upcoming fila series you can join daf yomi you can join it's a new new page every single day yeah you can uh join one of the two massive charm classes that are ongoing i have people who join and they usually give a little background so that they know what we're holding but everything that he says is a gem you can listen to uh some of our music choices yeah and uh that's it you can sponsor an episode that's it for real now i'm devin olaski and this is the rapper ilovski show it's the rabbi orlovsky show tauren simra ready to go the rabbi [Music] [Applause] roloffsky show till next time till we meet again surround my rolowski show it's the rabbi rolowski show it's the rabbi yolowski [Music]