The Power Of Renewal (Ep. 319)

Hi, this is Rabbi Alon Ansky, and welcome to the Rabbi Alon Ansky Show. Whether you're watching with our friends over at Torah Anytime, or wherever you watch or listen to your podcast, [music] as always, we're excited to have you along, and if it applies, do not forget to subscribe, share, comment, and like. There you [music] go. Got all that down. And I've got a special, um, dedication this week. Sponsored by some 11th graders from Yeshiva Ohr Yisrael. Finkelman's, Aryeh Schmidt, Aaron uh Ohna Ohna No, I hope I'm I'm not pronouncing this right. Ohna No, no. I apologize, Aaron. I'm sorry. Aaron, uh Ohna No, Yitzy Horowitz. That was nice and easy. >> [laughter] >> Shua Backerac, and Eliyahu Zell. Uh, I send money through you sometimes. We're all fans, some crazies, baruch Hashem, of the show, and listen every week. We hope this sponsorship will inspire more like it. That's right, there are a lot of classes out there that really should be sponsoring with us. Shout out to our friends and classmates, Moshe Nachum, Yisrael Epstein, and Shalom Naiman. Now, I full disclosure, I don't know if this is Naiman or Naiman. It's written like Neiman Marcus, but it might be Naiman. This episode is also sponsored in loving memory of Aaron Nosson ben Moshe Shimon, and Chaim Dovid ben Yitzchak. P.S., what do you think of the TYH Movement? I assume that's Thank You Hashem. >> [laughter] >> It might be uh Torah Youth uh Hebrew program. I don't really know. I I'm guessing it's Thank You Hashem. Uh, I I'm not familiar with it when you say in terms of a movement. Um I guess what you could be saying is um a movement where people get together to give Hoidaa to Baruch how could I be against something like that? It's like coming out in favor of tooth decay. You know what I mean? It's it's it's a no-brainer and anyone who wants to get involved in something where they thank Baruch gosh what could be what could be better than that? I think that's wonderful. Who do I get off on off of? Um the dollar parshios there's there's always in the dollar parshios I think an inherent question that I'm going to illustrate but I'll illustrate it in a circular manner. And again I don't mean to criticize. I'm not a I'm not a critical person by nature but um I I I think it is interesting just to explain. When uh I taught in the discovery so they have a class called the five levels of pleasure. The idea is that the fifth level of pleasure which is the lowest level is physical pleasure. The fourth level is love. The third level is meaning. The second level is power. And the top level is being close to him. And I read the whole outline and I sat through the class many times. I heard him give it. I heard other people give it. And uh nobody seemed to be able to explain at least in my opinion well second level pleasure. Power. Until then it always works. You see that people will trade money for love because to have children for example is more expensive than not having children. So I'm willing to spend my money for for love. And yet, people will encourage their children to go to war if they think it's a worthwhile cause, even though they might get killed, cuz they're willing to trade love for meaning. So, those make sense. But, people are willing to trade meaning for power. And though I remember the way Reb Nach said it was, you can see this in the negative, how people will give up all meaning in order to be able to get power and what they'll do, etc. But, that's that doesn't really prove it. Who says that a person will give up love and meaning for power? Somebody might, but it's not an automatic, it's not something you see necessary in nature. I've heard it explained many times, I was never happy with the explanation. And the first level is of Hashem, that the infinite pleasure of being close to Hashem is is Right. When Motty Berger used to say this over in his God class, he left out that level. He would go from He would go from physical pleasures to love, and from love to meaning, and from meaning to Hashem. You know. And the second level is very hard to understand. So, me uh I always like to know what I'm saying, where it's coming from. In fact, I'll tell you an interesting story. >> [snorts] >> And there was a class in Discovery called Outside Verification. Nickname for it was called Pig, Fish, and Moon. So, they would point out that it it says that the pig is the only animal that has split hooves and doesn't chew its cud. But, maybe there are others. They've never found another one. So, that's a raya that the Torah you know, you can see. My fish brings the mission, it says that if it has scales uh then it definitely had fins. So, even if you find a fish and it's just the top of it, and you don't see the fins, but you see the scales, there's no fish that don't have scales that that uh have that doesn't have fins. He says and they've searched and they found hundreds and hundreds of different types of fish. They've never found a fish that has scales and no and no fins. They found fish that have fins and no scale but not that would have scales and not fins. And the third one was the Sod Haibur and they quote the Rambam with the Sod Haibur showing the exact time of when the moon would appear and how could they possibly have known this number to this exact time the Hazal when the the amount of time that the moon goes around the sun. So uh my brother-in-law who's much more educated than I am Rabbi Dovid Lichtman he uh he went to college and everything. He was teaching in Discovery and they gave him the outline to this class and he showed them articles that the ancient Greeks knew that the amount of time it took for the for the moon to go around the earth and and they figure they had the same number that we had already. So they took it out. I remember one of the people who taught this class said I always felt there was a problem with this class and he they removed it because you don't want to teach something that you know is incorrect because what happens when you get caught? Yeah. It's like the little kid playing chess and and and the person says if you move that I can take off your queen and the kid says I know. I was just hoping you wouldn't see it. I thought that's no way to to teach a class and teach something that you know is wrong. So they took that out at that point. So it's always good to check the sources and see where everything comes from. So I hear this and who says where is this all coming from? So it turns out it's from Sefer Chinuch. In Va'etchanan the haftorah of Shema Yisrael on the mitzvah of Ahavas Hashem the I looked up the Sefer Chinuch. It comes from the safer chinuch. And it says the way you get to ahavas Hashem is by knowing that it's greater than mamon, banim, v'chavod. All right, so mamon is fifth level pleasure, which is uh physical pleasure. Banim, children, that's love. And kavod, that's meaning. And that's it. There is no power. I looked up three safer chinuch, three different editions. Nobody had anything else written. And I finally opened up the English safer chinuch in the footnote on the bottom it says there is a girsa that says memshala. But that was obviously a mistake. So there's only four levels of pleasure. It really has to be rebranded. I brought this to their attention and they were like, "Yeah, okay." >> [laughter] >> But when I teach it, I obviously uh I I teach that there's only four levels because there is no fifth level, there's no memshala. That's why it was so hard to explain. L'havdil elef alafim dolos. We have the four parshios. Shkalim, Zachor, Parah, and Chodesh. I can explain both of them. Yeah? Shkalim is based on the Gemara that says that Haman gave a large sum of money to Achashverosh to buy Klal Yisrael in order to destroy him. As the Gemara says, there was never a bigger uh kinyan umachna at that time. That was the biggest transaction. He bought the Jewish people to have a right to be able to destroy them. So Shkalim I understand. So when he comes and he has to dress Mordecai up, he says, "Your shalom came before my shalom. And therefore, before we come to Purim, we give our shalom to be able to counteract the shalom of Haman." There's a lot more to say on it. But at least I understand what it's doing there. And we read it on if shalom comes out on Rosh Chodesh or on the shalom before Rosh Chodesh. Why? We have to start collecting the shalom on Rosh Chodesh by starting Rosh Chodesh. So, we announce it in shalom that we read this parsha that everyone should know it's time to get your half shalom ready and make sure that you give it. Right? Okay. Zahor is pretty obvious. And that is before we destroy Amalek, we read zecher Amalek, what Amalek did to you, how they attacked Jews so that we can go out. Before shalom goes out to fight Amalek, Shmuel Navi reviews what Amalek did and recall their crimes so that when we go to fight them, we understand why we're doing it. Fine. And then we come to Purim. Those two are before Purim. And then after Purim, we read parshas parah. Why? Because we're coming now to Pesach and you have to tahor yourself to bring the korban Pesach. You have to be tahor. And it's a process. It's a week-long process. You have to go to the mikvah and then get spritzed with the may chatas, which is of course the red heifer, which is burnt and reduced to ashes. A little bit of those ashes are put into water from a natural spring. And then you put in a piece of hyssop and you spritz it on the person. So, that has to be done on the third day and then again on the seventh day, and goes to the mikvah, and then he's tahor. It's a 7-day process. So, we're telling everybody, get yourself into a situation of tahara, you have an obligation. I I understand that. The last one is parshas hachodesh. And I've never really heard a good explanation for parshas hachodesh. So, they said, well, because we're about to do Rosh Chodesh Nisan, and so we want you to know that achodesh hazeh lachem Rosh Chodesh shem, and you should start counting this month. Okay. So, what am I reading parshas hachodesh for exactly? What is it that I'm trying to bring across with this parsha? Now, it's true. Achodesh hazeh lachem Rosh Chodesh shem, we start counting from uh Nisan. Uh the nations of the world basically start counting time from Tishrei. We do it from Nisan, and there's two different methodologies. Obviously, my colleagues were really leasin with Yeshua, whether the world was created in Nisan or whether the world was created in Tishrei. Um we celebrate Rosh Hashanah in Tishrei, and we say this is the day of creation. And of course, the Ran says, if it was created in Nisan, then what's Rosh Hashanah? He gives a whole explanation, we've talked about it in the past. But why is it necessary in the dalet parshiyos to read that there is a parsha called parshas hachodesh to tell me that Nisan is the first of our time, uh first of our months, etc. So, I want to talk about this a little bit. In our Purim podcast, we talked about time and the idea of moed, etc., but I want to try to take it from a slightly different perspective if I can. As we read parshas hachodesh, and with that we finish the dalet parshiyos. And this is different from the fact that time obviously has a beginning and has an end. It It puts it in a different context, and let me explain what that is. Bereishit bara Elohim et hashamayim ve'et ha'aretz. That's how the Torah starts. And Rashi right away says, "Why did we start from Bereishit? Why didn't we start from "Hachodesh hazeh lachem rosh chodashim" which is the first mitzvah?" I What about the mitzvah of shabbat? What about the get an asha? What about period of re'iyah? What about shabbat mitzvah of benai Noach? Okay. But for the Jewish people, what the first mitzvah that we get that we're starting with that isn't repeated later on like the other mitzvahs are is "Hachodesh hazeh lachem rosh chodashim" that you you will tell me rosh chodesh. And in fact, Hakadosh Baruch Hu comes to Moshe with a nevu'ah. It has to be during the day, so it's in the twilight when the the new moon is there. And he says "Hachodesh hazeh lachem" pointed with his finger so you can see what the new moon looks like to be able to be mekadesh it. This was very important. So Rashi says, "Why Why was this here?" So uh he gives an explanation. Ramban gives a different explanation. But you see that there's some sort of a connection between Bereishit bara Elohim and "Hachodesh hazeh lachem". Because Bereishit bara Elohim means in the beginning. The first word of the Torah is an allusion to time. And Hakadosh Baruch Hu created time and space within which the world would exist. Bereishit, in the beginning, Hakadosh Baruch Hu created shamayim ve'et ha'aretz. He created space and time. That's how the Torah starts. The Torah starts with a creation called time. What Acharei Mot comes to teach comes to teach us is that we are in charge of time. That we run time. I was speaking once there used to be Reuben Suker had a program on Fridays in English on a defunct radio station here. And I used to speak about the parsha. And it was a lot of fun. And there was a lot of people listening at the time. Uh Kol Simcha the radio station was. And one week he was running very very late and I remember it was parshas Bo. And it was my there was only 5 minutes left to the show. And he came to me cuz I don't know what happened he had a long interview whatever. So he says Rabbi Wolosky, what do we learn from the mitzvah of Acharei Mot comes to teach us is I said it teaches us that Jews are out of time. And he says, what does that mean? I said it means we're out of time. Have a good Shabbos everybody. >> [laughter] >> I thought that was incredibly clever. One of the people who listened of course was uh Reuben Weinbach who was my boss in Ohr Someayach. And he was not [laughter] happy. I thought that was a great joke but he didn't like it. You know, he was very he was very concerned. Um partly for Ohr Someayach and partly for me. There used to be a big evening of shmiras halashon for women and uh and I was the speaker. And uh one year when it was taken over when the original people ran it uh apparently they felt I was too controversial to put up. They They They would have me speak in the local day programs, but they didn't want me in the big hall because, you know, they were worried what I might say. So, when it when it came under new ownership, so so he made me a speaker, and I got a very fine reaction. Um I'll never forget they said everyone should speak between 35 and 40 minutes. So, the first speaker spoke for an hour, the second one spoke for an hour and 20 minutes. I spoke for 37 minutes. And it was very well received. And people afterwards said to me, "Why did you speak so short?" I said, "You're asking the wrong question. Why did everybody else speak so long?" So, after that, more or less, the fellow who was running it would consult me on which speakers to bring in and etc. And he said, "Look, I want to bring you in again, but I just had you as a speaker this year, so would you MC?" I said, "Sure." He says, "This way I get to advertise that you're going to be there and you know, I'm not, you know, use you as a speaker every other year, but I'd I'd like to use you as an MC." I said, "My pleasure." So, Mendel called me up when he saw the ad, and he said, "It's not photo to to be the MC." And I said, "Rebby, I said, if I can be this event in any way, it's my privilege." And that's it. And I told them I said if they need me to sit at the window and collect the tickets, I'll do it. If they want me to to clean up the the hall afterwards, I'll do it. Anything I could do to this event, I think is extremely good. And uh you know, I worry about my COVID. Reb Moshe Feinstein used to give a shiur Erev Shabbos and afterwards everybody ran out cuz they were late. You know, it was Erev Shabbos, a lot to do. And Reb Moshe Feinstein was very short. And all the lights in the Beis Medrash were pull strings. If you're old enough to remember when there were lights with pull strings. And he took a chair and walked around the Beis Medrash to pull cuz he couldn't reach it, to pull each string to be able to turn off the lights. Everybody ran off. And he didn't worry about his covered. Wasn't you know wasn't a problem of that. They used to say at the MTJ dinner afterwards he would go in the kitchen and thank the staff for what a wonderful job they did. You know. So uh So he felt that this was uh for me it was unbecoming to make a joke like that. I have to think it was one of my best. >> [laughter] >> But Reb Mendel, what can I tell you? I I I appreciate the fact that you tried very hard to try to up my game. >> [laughter] >> But in any event what does that mean that the Jews own the time? What is this connection of of the Jews to time? So the Gemara says an amazing thing. He says uh "Hachodesh hazeh lachem rosh chodashim." And the Gemara gives an example. Hakadosh Baruch Hu says to the malachim "Set up the heavenly court. Tomorrow is Rosh Hashanah." And so the Satan comes in, he's the prosecutor up in Shamayim. And the defense attorney, the Jewish people, Machal Yisrael is there. And they bring the books of all of the sefer zachronos, of all the deeds. They have everything set up. And they're waiting for Hakadosh Baruch Hu and he's not there. So one of the malachim flies up to the pargod to the curtain, knocks on the curtain. Says uh "Hakadosh Baruch Hu, we're waiting for you to start." And he says, "Yeah, we'll we'll do it tomorrow." Says, "Pardon?" Says, "Yeah, the base in Samata, the heavenly the earthly court has decided to make Elul 30 days. So, tomorrow's Rosh Hashanah." So, he said, "But you're God." He says, "When it came to time, I gave that power to the Jewish people. The Jewish people decide time." And tomorrow Rosh Hashanah tells an amazing story. Where Rabban Gamaliel, who was the Nasi, said, "This is Rosh Hashanah. This is going to be the date. And so, of course, 10 days later will be Yom Kippur." And Rabbi Yehoshua made his own calculations. And he thought that Rabban Gamaliel was off by a day. And so, he decided he was going to I'll keep both days Yom Kippur as as a as a suffix. And Rabban Gamaliel got wind of this. Now, you have to remember, this is after the Korban. This is uh Rabban Gamaliel of Yavneh. And um the survival of the Jewish people dependent on everyone coming together. Otherwise, you'll break into a bunch of sects. And in fact, as we know, in the time of the uh Beit Hamikdash, you had the Sadducees, you had whoever it was who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls, you had the Essenes. There were all kinds of different little groups that existed and and uh were fracturing off. And that's why when the Machlokes was finally decided between Beit Hillel and Beit Shammai, they forbade anyone from following Beis Shammai anymore and that's where Rebbe Tarfon said, "I lay down to say Krias Shema like Beis Shammai says." Now, don't get me wrong, Beis Hillel also says you can lie down. They say you can say Krias Shema in any position. So, I was being yotzei both shitos by lying down and saying Krias Shema and I almost got killed by thieves. And the Mishnah says, "You deserve to die for following Beis Shammai." But even Beis Hillel says I could do it. He goes, "I know, but you're of such a stature that if people see you doing this, it's going to destroy Klal Yisrael. Can't have this machlokes." So, Rabban Gamliel was keenly aware that he had to work very hard. He wasn't considered the greatest of the Chachamim at that time. Rebbe Eliezer and Rebbe Yehoshua, who were the Rebbeim of Rebbe Akiva, apparently commanded more respect and he was keenly aware of this. So, one time when Rebbe Yehoshua and Rebbe Eliezer had a fight, an argument, not a fight chas v'shalom, at a particular process whether the oven would be tamei or not, so, Rebbe Eliezer could not win over the other Chachamim. And so, he was running out of options here. So, he says, "If I'm right, let this tree fly through the sky 50 amos." And it flew. Rebbe Yehoshua says, "We don't pasken from trees." He says, "Let this river run backwards." And it ran backwards. He says, "We don't pasken from rivers." He says, "Let the walls of the Beis Medrash collapse in if I'm if I'm right." And they started to collapse. Rebbe Yehoshua says, "You stay out of this." So, the walls didn't know what to do, so they were curved. They said, "You could always go and see the shoulder." The walls were curved in. And finally, he says, "Let a bas kol, a heavenly voice, come out and say that I'm right." And a heavenly voice comes out and says, "Allah is like Rabbi Eliezer." And he sure gets up and says, "Lo bashamayim hi." And that's it. God, you stay out of this. The Gamorah said they asked Eliyahu, "What did Hashem say at that moment?" And he says, he says, "My children have defeated me. I gave them the Torah. I Even I can't change it." So, they took everything that Rabbi Eliezer said was tahor and burnt it, and they put him in the charem. Now, he was married to Rabban Gamaliel's sister, so mistama Rabban Gamaliel was the one who had to dis- to to to pronounce the charem on him that he was you know, he was out of it. And Rabbi Rabbi Eliezer's reaction was tremendous. Cuz we know there's a Mishnah in Pirkei Avot that says that if you were to take all of the chachamim and put them on one side, and Rabbi Eliezer on the other side, he'd outweigh them all. So, Rabbi Eliezer should have said, "You know what? I'm going to open my own yeshiva." Like Anan ben David did when he started the Karaites, went to business for himself. And say, "Rabbi Eliezer, I outweigh them all." >> [laughter] >> And he goes on his yeshiva. He didn't. He walked off the stage of history. But he was married to Rabban Gamaliel's sister. And Rabban Gamaliel's sister was worried that if he was to daven and pour out all of his sorrow to Hakadosh Baruchu, Hakadosh Baruchu would take it out on her brother. As it is, Rabban Gamaliel was on a boat, and a storm came to sink it. And he said, "Hakadosh Baruchu, I didn't do this for me or for the honor of my family's house. I did this for you so that the Torah shouldn't become two Torahs and the storm stopped. Nonetheless, the power of saying Tachanun after Shemoneh Esrei is so powerful that his wife would always interrupt him at the end of Shemoneh Esrei so there should be a break. And one day she thought it was Rosh Chodesh and he wasn't going to say Tachanun, but she was wrong. And she turns around and sees him is saying Tachanun, the special tefillah a Jew can ask anything you want. And she says to him, "Okay. I hope you finished davening cuz you just killed my brother." And sure enough, they heard that Rabban Gamliel died. But why did Rabban Gamliel do this? To stop the machlokes. So he hears that Rabbi Yehoshua was questioning his din of Kiddush Hachodesh. So he commands Rabbi Yehoshua to come to me with your walking stick and your money bag in your hand on the day that you think is Yom Kippur. Of course that's assur from the Torah to do if it's Yom Kippur. And he was beside himself. And Rabbi Akiva's talmid says to him, "Listen, if you want to rethink this calculation, you're going to have to go all the way back to Moshe Rabbenu and rethink every calculation that's ever been made. But the Kodesh Baruch Hu gives us the power to decide when Rosh Chodesh will be, he gives us that power over time." And so Rabbi Yehoshua accepts it upon himself and goes to to him and in order to preserve the power of us having time. Now, today we have a calendar. But it wasn't like that in the good old days. In the good old days, two witnesses had to come and testify that they saw the moon, and they would question them. Where did you see the moon? Where was it on the horizon? Where was the uh the points pointing? How high up in the horizon was it? What direction was it? If they couldn't find two witnesses, then instead of the month being 29 days, it became 30 days automatically. See, you understand like in the winter, where you have cloudy days a few months in a row. And it could end up throwing off Rosh Chodesh. But, that's okay, cuz that's what Kodesh Baruch who said. And that's not the amazing part. Listen to the amazing part. A woman has what's called a vesses, which means that she becomes a nida on the same day of the Jewish month at the same time every single month. That's how it used to be in the good old days. And uh you could set your watch by it. So, if she was going to become a nida on Yud Gimel of the month, 13th of the month of the Jewish month, and you have 3 months of 30 days, she's still going to become a nida on the Yud Gimel. Because they they you have the power to control time. It's an astounding concept. They bring another example. I don't want to go into it, but where our ability to determine time will determine l'ma'aseh. Kodesh Baruch will not make the day of judgment unless we decide it. And whether or not today is is Pesach or tomorrow is Pesach, and it's a question of eating chametz and and and being chayev kares, we decide it. And when Yom Kippur is, we decide it. We have that We were given that power over time. When we say "Rosh Chodesh zeh lachem rosh chodashim", it's not just telling us that Nissan is the first month, it means that we have that power. So, let's look at a concept of a "chodesh zeh lachem" in a slightly different way just for a moment. There used to be a television show called The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. It was uh controversial. It was constantly getting censored because they were even though they were kiilu folk singers, but they were part of the protest movement of the '60s. They uh they did a lot of uh of controversial things. And they made fun of politics and religion and all kinds of different things that they used to do. And they were constantly getting censored. I remember one time uh you know, they had to do their monologue. And he says, "Well, the censors at CBS went over our monologue to remove any references, you know, to the president, to the Congress, anything like that." They go on for like 5 minutes saying everything they were, you know, they had to, you know, remove from the monologue. He says, "And now the monologue. Good night." >> [laughter] >> So, one of the characters they had was George Carlin. He used to play a character called the Hippie Dippie Weatherman. I don't know why I remember this. You remember strange things that's just lodged in your subconscious and you can never remove anything. Yeah. Somebody wrote in on the question and answer, "I've been working on my shmiras einayim, but how do you remove the bad things that you've seen?" Everything stays in your brain. Uh I don't know how you get it out. Maybe electric shock therapy, I don't know how, but everything stays there. You you you all the memories are there and you can you know, sometimes through hypnosis or other methods bring it out and and people remember. Yeah. You remember everything. So does Pepperidge Farm. Pepperidge Farm remembers. Anyway, I don't even know if that's his slogan anymore, but when I was a kid they had a commercial like that. But so he used to do the hippy dippy weather man. Anyway, at one point he says, "I have the year-long forecast. It's going to warm up in the spring, getting very hot in the summer, cooling off in autumn and getting cold in the winter." >> [laughter] >> Oh, that's pretty good. That's the way it works. Everything begins and everything ends. There's a beginning, there's a middle, and the end. And that's how the Jewish people are as well. The Gemara Menachot says, there are 15 generations from Abraham till and 15 generations from to Tzidkiyahu. So, what does that mean? If you think of the moon, the moon begins, becomes a new moon, it waxes, gets stronger and stronger until you come to a full moon. Oh, yeah. And then it begins to wane and get smaller and smaller and smaller until it vanishes. And that mirrors the Jewish people. So, we began with Abraham as a tiny sliver and we build up until David and which is the 14th and 15th of the month, when the moon is full. That's why we have 14th and 15th Purim and Shushan Purim. Pesach comes out on the 15th. Sukkot comes out on the 15th. Yeah. It reaches its crescendo and then it starts to go down. And so right after after our golden age, there's a civil war. The 10 northern kingdoms break off. And Kaiso fights a number of wars. People attack us. Eventually the northern kingdom is destroyed and by Sanhedrin and Ashur Assyria. And then finally in the reign of Sidqiyahu, the base ministry destroyed. The Jews go into Galas into Babel. And that's the end. That's it. We're at the beginning, a middle, and an end. And that's what Haman said to Ahasuerus. The Jewish people had a beginning. They reached their golden age and now it's over. The base ministry destroyed and it's over. The Jewish people are finished. And that's why when he made the poor, the lot, and it came out to Adar, he was happy. Says the Gamara, why was he happy? He said because the Jewish people began in the San Hakodesh as a Lakem. And that's the first month. So it makes sense that they will end in Adar. And that is when the Jewish people will end. And in the normal course of events, he's right. Because you hardly ever meet an ancient Greek or Roman or Babylonian or Assyrian or Hittite or Edomite. You can still find Samsonites, but they're usually in the luggage department. But, uh, all of these ancient people, they started, they built themselves up, and they collapsed, and became nothing. And that's the life of kingdoms. That's the way That's the way kingdoms last. And look, uh, we lasted 850 years in Israel till we were destroyed. That's a pretty long run. But, then that was the end. And now Haman says, "They are finished, and we can destroy them because the Jewish people are dead." And he's right, if it was anybody else. But, "Hodesh Hazeh Lakhem" means the following. I don't know if you've ever seen a Shel Zman Kriyat Shema chart for the year. It goes by the solar calendar, and it'll basically be the same time every single January 6th, March 3rd, April 20th, July 9th. It'll be the same time every single year, basically. Because the word for year is shanah, which means to repeat. Again. Mishneh Torah, when Devarim is called Mishneh Torah, it means repetition of the Torah. Yeah? It's It's again. So, every year goes around. You can make a solar calendar very easily. Yes, you're going to end up with a quarter day every year, and so every 4 years you have to add in a leap day. Okay. Well, that's not like a big deal. As we say in Hebrew, big deal. Say little big deal. But, um chodesh is from the language of lichadesh, to make it new. The new moon, the new month. You've heard the expression, the Jewish holidays are always early or late, but they're never on time. Cuz the Jewish calendar our months are based on the moon. And since, as I mentioned today we have a set calendar, but uh in the good old days you had to wait for two witnesses to come, and based on when they came that was going to be the new month or not. You couldn't make a calendar. Not for a month. I don't know if today's Rosh Chodesh or tomorrow's Rosh Chodesh. That's what Rabbi Eliezer's wife made the mistake. She thought it was Rosh Chodesh, and it turned out that it wasn't, because these things are variable. A month is variable, which means that this month has never existed before. So, when the Kodesh Baruch Hu says, "A chodesh zeh lachem," he's not just giving us control over time, he's saying, "You can create a new beginning when no beginning exists." And that was the power of the shkalim. Because I create I collect the chati shekel in Adar to use to buy the new korbanos in Nissan. And we extended over. Listen to a Gemara. Gemara says, when it came out to Adar uh it says Haman was happy because Moshe Rabbeinu died in Adar. Shkoyach. He was also born in Adar. Is what the Gemara says. He didn't realize he was born in Adar. So what? Everyone who's born dies. We celebrate a yahrtzeit. We don't celebrate a birthday. I don't care when I was born. It matters when I died. That's when when the story comes to an end when you die. Tchiyas hameisim, the story'll pick up, but but in this world, you're born, you uh you live your life, you slowly get old. And now the end is near. I'm in the autumn of my life. Thanks to not yourself. It was a very good year. Yeah. Talks about when you're young, you reach your strength, you start falling apart. The riddle of the Sphinx. So it goes. What walks in four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three legs at night or in the evening? The answer is man. He starts out as a baby crawling on all fours, and then becomes a man and walks on two legs, and then becomes an old man walking with a cane. That was called the riddle of the Sphinx. And that's it. You're born, you live your life, and you die. Except the Jewish people. Because all of a sudden we appear again. And we come back and we build the second Beit Hamikdash. And we reach a new crescendo. And then it begins to wane, and the second Beit Hamikdash is destroyed, and we go into galus. And that's the end. And then we reappear in Bavel. And we have the great yeshivas in Bavel. And we We a golden age, and then we wane, and then we disappear. Then suddenly we pop up in Spain. Suddenly we pop up in France and Germany. Suddenly we pop up in North Africa, and it ends. And we reappear. Cuz Jews control time. We're outside of time. We decide time. Ha Chodesh Hazeh Lachem is not just telling us that Nissan is our first month. It's telling us we decide the month. We decide the time, and we can bring it full circle. And that's why in Adar the mazal is dagim. What they call Pisces. The fish. And you see sometimes they draw a Pisces like this. But sometimes they draw a Pisces as a yin and yang. The top of one fish facing the tail of the other, and a yin and yang. And so the Gemara says, when uh Haman saw that it was Adar, he was happy because just like uh big fish swallows a small fish, I will swallow up bene Israel. And the Gemara says, what he didn't understand is that an even bigger fish will swallow that fish. It It keeps going around. There is no end to the Jewish people. Our Our When we end, we start again. Nissan is somehow the ending and the beginning come together. And so we never end. We have We have uh We've been beat and we've been down, but we keep on defending. We intend to stay around cuz we are never-ending. I'm not sure whose song that is. I'm sure somebody will let me know. Yeah, I remember it as a kid. And then people would just be singing, "We've been beaten, and we've been down, but we keep on defending." Very powerful. Powerful words. We are We are eternal. And so time affects everything except the Jewish people. Um I'm sure I must have said this in the past at some point. It is an idea I heard from Reb Moshe Shapiro. It says that Rachel stole Laban's teraphim because he made them into an avodah zarah. Teraphim are not an avodah zarah, but Laban made them into an avodah zarah. What does that mean? Teraphim were a divination method to be able to predict the future. But he made a religion out of that. That's why when um he removed all of the recessive sheep from the flock and left him with pure white sheep and pure reddish-brown goats, he knew the odds were that their dominant color was going to be there, and there were not going to be variations. But somehow they kept getting born with white blotches or brown blotches or dots or around their ankles. Whatever whatever he changed the deal to, they were born that way. But it's not supposed to work that way. It's not the way That's not the way the world works. I know how the world works. I'm a shepherd. But the normal rules did not apply. So he made a god out of his trough and because he was sure this is how things are going to go. I I I know how time works. There's a beginning, there's a middle, there's an end. This doesn't make any sense. There's something called nature. He made a god out of that. And so um you find instances in uh Nach where the Nevi'im say, "We're going to change around the nature. It's going to rain when it's not supposed to rain." It'll uh uh you know, things are going to take place in a different way. Yehoshua can make the sun sun stand still. So then motion Machama with Amalek. You you you nature serves the Jewish people. And since we exist in time and space, time serves us. We decide what the time is going to be and how it's going to work. And the Chodesh Hazeh Lachem tells us as we come out of Adar at the end of the year there's a yin and yang. And we're going to go from that old year into the new year without without a break. It's going to continue. Because we don't end. The Jewish people don't end. And even when it looks like we're down and out, we rebuild. A but wine tells the story that he when he was in America, he went to a Judaica store. He wanted to buy a tsais. The guy laughed at him. Said, "There'll never be a tsais in America." Says, "When they when they published the first one, I sent them a copy." Yeah. After the Holocaust, we were done. We were done. Then came to America and that was it. I remember reading a book by a conservative rabbi about how Orthodoxy is dead. It was the 1970s. And how conservative is the only thing that's going to exist. And today the conservative movement is on its last legs. Everyone knows it. Gasping for existence. Um and we've been rebuilt. Remember the words of Mark Twain when a newspaper uh publishes obituary. And he commented, "Reports of my death have been highly exaggerated." I remember 1967. I was alive then. Everyone was sure this was the end of the state of Israel. It was only 19 years old. The Golan Heights were considered unconquerable. Egypt had the biggest air force in the Middle East. The Jordanian Legion was considered the most powerful army. The whole country was only 9 miles wide. Wouldn't take much to destroy it. And everybody was writing our obituary. And then we won. It shocked the world. And I remember somebody wrote an article at the time that says, "Now everybody doesn't like us. When we were going to be wiped out, then we had a lot of friends cuz everybody likes dead Jews. But when we survived So, some people actually were sympathetic to Jews on Shemini Atzeres when they killed 1,200 of us. But as soon as we fought back, then everybody hated us. Some people hated us even before we fought back. They were already protesting against us. Pretty scary, eh? Anyway, that's the point. So, in midst of Hashem, we should appreciate the fact Here's to new beginnings. And just remember expect the unexpected. Or as they say in Israel, we don't rely on miracles, we depend on them. That's it for this week. If you want to find out more about the show, you can go to my website rabbiolovsky.com. You can sponsor a podcast, sponsor a question and answers, sponsor a portion five. You can sign up for one of our online shiyurim. And that's it. Until next time, I am Rabbi Orlovsky and this has been the Rabbi Orlovsky show. It's the Rabbi Orlovsky show. Torah and simcha, ready to go. It's the Rabbi Orlovsky show. Knowledge and wisdom will help you grow. 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