Parsha Perspectives for Today (Chayei Sarah) - Teachings of Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks

good morning boca welcome back to partial perspectives for today continues to be amazing and wonderful and feeling so blessed to be able to be together and to be able to learn torah in person grateful for the opportunity to also share more broadly and more widely for those who cannot be here in person but of course if you can we love to and long to see you this is a very special edition of the parasha perspectives for today because today is the first year site of rabbi lord jonathan sachsek and the rabbi sachs legacy foundation has asked us and included us in programs and events around the world that are commemorating this first europe site by sharing rabbi sax's torah what greater legacy is there for a person than promoting and sharing their torah his lips continue to quiver from the grave he continues to teach he continues to uplift he continues to inspire so today's entire sheer is dedicated a partial perspective through the lens of rabbi sax and what we'll do is both talk about rabbi sacks and let rabbi sacks talk to us through sharing his torah onto our parasha but i want to begin by thanking our generous sponsors the series for the year becky and avi cats and family and loving memory becky's father david grossman david menachem this morning's shirt is also sponsored by rabbi willie esther yaakov year bulk in memory of their mother and grandmother sheila admin bulk shane del fegabas akiva the shamashiraban aliyah and rabbi willie should find a lot of comfort also dedicated by friends of the torah sweets newsletter very new newsletter that just came out i saw it looks wonderful sign up for it be inspired by it thought-provoking articles by great torah thinkers of today you could subscribe at torahsweets.com t-o-r-a-h-s-w-e-e-t-s torah suites.com torahsuites.com go online and sign up a beautiful new newsletter and lastly by bailey gila grimberg in loving memory the yurt side of her father yona benitzlak jerome greenberg on his fifth year at site the 23rd of kashvan is thank you to our generous sponsors so we're now a year since we lost her by sex and it continues to be truly a devastating loss a loss of who he was as an individual as a person a loss of what he represented in this world the light with which he illuminated the world not just the jewish world but the entire world around us and the lost not only what was but when i think about the devastating loss of rabbi sax i don't only think about who he was as an individual that he's no longer here i don't only think about the valuable contribution he made the legacy he leaves with his magnificent torah his books his articles his teachings but to me i feel utterly bereft entirely denied decades more of what he was going to be of what he had yet to teach what he had yet to share the difference he had yet to make in this world he was a spokesperson for torah jewry be a singular exclusive fashion there was no one like him his judicial and his scholarship his capacity to communicate and to transmit authentic true torah values to a general broad jewish and non-jewish audience to be uncompromising in what we believe and where we're from and yet at the same time find a vocabulary and a vernacular that makes it something so richly uplifting to everyone in contemporary times we we needed him desperately who else would debate the atheists and agnostics of our time the way rabbi sacks did you go online on youtube and go watch videos whereby sax takes on what are considered the greatest minds of atheists and agnostics of skeptics and cynics and only a rabbi sachs who could quote the width and breath of torah and simultaneously of general knowledge and scholarship we are bereft we are orphaned of that leadership that he provided and on this first euro site we feel it we feel it as we have such beautiful and deep torah to dip into but for the next years and decades he was such a young man what we are being denied and what we are being deprived what we had yet to learn and what he had yet to stand up for and how he had yet to represent us and how absolutely painful painful that is you know the parsha vaiva avarma spoda saravalivko saw the torah tells us that when sarah dies we begin on page 106 in the earth's crosstalk i always encourage you to have hamish in front of you to follow inside these are the life of sarah 100 years and 20 years and seven years we spoke about it last year speak about it every year the partial's the same every year torah does not efficiently deliver the years of our life as 127 it breaks it down her whole life was equal and we spoke a lot about that last year she dies very suddenly she dies very abruptly and avram finds out he returns from the akedah he learns of her demise comes and what does he do he delivers a eulogy valifico sign only then does he cry and of course all the commentators note it's out of order a person is devastated i got a horrific call from one of our members yesterday whose brother who was healthy and well suddenly dropped dead out of nowhere a horrific terrible tragedy but when i answered the phone he couldn't speak i heard wailing i heard crying i heard moaning he couldn't speak until he was able to compose himself to tell me he had just received a call about his beloved brother normally a person is devastated by news liv ko so we cry and then we compose ourselves in order to compose the eulogy we put ourselves together in order to offer a tribute so why is avraham here let's put this it almost seems callous it almost seems as if avraham has not moved why isn't he crying why isn't he broken this is his other half arguably this is his better half aram goes on to live for almost four more decades and if salvation points out we don't hear any more contributions from avram when he loses sarah he's done not only does a piece of him missing he is missing he is incomplete to the point that he's no longer making contributions as a leader avram's contributions end with sarah's loss in this world and yet almost callously he's able to sit down without shedding a tear he writes a eulogy and only afterwards does he find the time to cry what's going on so salvation points out that there were two components to sarah's loss there was the individual sarah that avraham had lost a wife a mother of his child a life partner but there was also sarah imenu sarah the matriarch there was the role that she filled not only in her time but in perpetuity avram understood that his primary mission was to first communicate and capture that loss of who she was as a matriarch the sarah who is emenu and so he composed himself in order to offer a eulogy that would capture her significance irrelevance her legacy to the world she with him went out and transformed and revolutionized the world and it doesn't say the souls that avram changed it's the souls that they changed together collaboratively in partnership she was with him she was a greater prophetess than he was a prophet he was lost without her he understood her role in this world and first and foremost before he cried before he grieved before he moaned for what that loss meant for him as an individual he paused to recognize and acknowledge her role more broadly he composed the eulogy and only then did he cry says rabbi salvation i would argue the same is true for us even a year later with rabbi sax now by lord saks of course as the individual was a person who was sensitive and warm and kind he was a very special person i don't pretend to have known him very well but i feel extraordinarily honored and privileged to have known him at all he was in our community for shabbos he spoke here several times and we had a very warm relationship which was a tremendous a great privilege for me including shortly before he died during corona we did a panel together under the ou online but much more significantly for me personally we went through a difficult time as a public personality being publicly attacked by someone at one point my phone rang out of nowhere and it was by sax's soothing voice of solace giving me physic lifting me up and it meant the world to me that he had made the time to make that phone call as an individual as a private person but in the aside from his role as a husband as a father each remarkably his role would he meant collectively for all of us and for the non-jewish world for the bbc and for for the uk and for royalty who wrote about him prime ministers of the united kingdom of great britain who wrote the most generous and the most beautiful tributes to him lispod le saravalevco we recognize and we feel absolutely bereft of that role that he had much more broadly i saw a second interpretation of what does it mean let's build the sarvolivko it wasn't avram being callous by first writing a eulogy and only crying it's that human nature common sense is the opposite order first we cry we grieve we mourn and then we're able to compose ourselves to write a eulogy what happened there's an exception that's in the normal course of events when we lose someone that we anticipated losing but when we lose someone so abruptly so suddenly feeling out of nowhere then we almost can't generate the tears yet because we refuse to believe it so all we can do is intellectually or academically try to make sense of it and try to write a tribute and then when we realize the impact when we feel the punch in our gut that's when the tears will flow later for most of us even though we knew we were warned that we were cautioned and we were asked if we could dive daven for by sacks we were told he was sick this was the second bout of cancer in his life we were dominating for him but nobody knew other than his closest closest circle including his family nobody knew just how dire the circumstances were and for us for claudius fell for the world that felt like the news of his death came out of absolute nowhere for us all we could do was laspode and then live coasts all we could do was first try to give a tribute and then later cry but it occurred to me and i've been wondering and curious for the entire last year and i've asked some people who were very close with him why do we think he did it that way why didn't rabbi sax offer a commentary to the world as his health was failing why weren't we warned just how dire the circumstances were so that we could storm the gates of shamayim why did he keep it so private and so quiet we learned so much from him in his lifetime i'm so eager to learn and how he choose to how he chose to die as well and of course we don't have that opportunity to ask him directly so essentially all we can do is guess and conjecture but i think even this is a tribute to who rabbi sax was rabbi saks was a person of modesty and humility who didn't crave attention and only entered a public stage because he thought he had what to share as an agent and ambassador of hashem so he didn't want the attention that it would bring number one but i think even more poignantly number two with all of his public acclaim rabbi sax essentially defined himself as a husband and as a father and a grandfather he was unbelievably devoted to his family and he knew that the attention it would draw would make it even more complicated and difficult and painful for his family and i can only guess that he put his family ahead of himself that whatever solace or comfort it would have brought him to know that the world was dominant for him that the way he did it privately perhaps was more protective because he lived his life protecting protecting his family when avram comes in order to negotiate for this piece of land the torah tells us that avraham engages benefits the people of greece efron according to rabindiana this was the tenth and final test to have to deal with this used car salesman to deal with his low-life iswarf efron who presented himself one way as magnanimous and generous but really was we know ruthless and duplicitous and avram doesn't lose his cool he's a broken man devastated by the loss of his wife he should have absolutely no patience for such an individual but avraham never loses his cool he's even killed avraham is somebody whose midos always come first and that's true here even in this tenth test that he passes just like the rest of them says in the way he engages the way he encounters hakhiti but when he presents himself and argues for why he deserves and wants this plot of land and we'll get into a moment of brilliant insight of rabbi sax of the significance of avraham buying this land not just have a burial place for his wife but in a much more meta broader sense but when adam introduces himself he says the famous words that i believe are iconic words who am i why should you sell to me you own this land i'm an outsider who am i to come and to ask to demand to negotiate for that land and he uses two terms to describe himself two in some ways conflicting or opposite terms he says i am simultaneously gare vito shove i am at the same time a stranger and i live among you and i've shared this insider of salvation with you a thousand times and i'll share it a thousand more because i think it defines who we are meant to be in this world and i don't care which part of the spectrum of torah jewry you find yourself i don't care how much you retreat and insulate versus how much you engage every one of us needs to define ourselves that's the legacy of avraham avinu we are the children the offspring the spiritual progeny and these two words define the way we engage and we encounter the world and listen to what by salvation says on them because he might as well be writing a eulogy obviously by salvation long pre-deceased or by sex but he might as well be describing the great rabbi lord sacks says thereof what is our position vis-a-vis modern civilization with respect to science to western culture to the countries in which we live the answer is enshrined in these words certainly i am a resident i'm one of you i engage in business as you do i speak your language i take full part in your social economic institutions but at the same time i am a stranger and in some aspects of foreigner i belong to a particular world one that is completely foreign to you is a world in which i am at one with the creator there's a world populated by characters unknown to you with a tradition you do not understand with spiritual values that seem impractical in your eyes pragmatic children of grace it is a world full of alters and sacrifices a world of total of loving-kindness of sanctity and purity you live differently pray differently your conception of charity is different from ours your days of rest are different and so on in these matters i'm a stranger in your world and you are a stranger in mine jewish burial is one of the elements with respect to which we are strangers and foreigners to one another a jew dies and is buried differently a jew requires a cemetery of his own a jewish grave they salvation long long ago and long before my saks really hit the jewish scene was describing her by sacks on the one hand i'm a toshav i am well steeped well knowledge well versed in your sciences in your literature in your language in your culture i'm one of you i live among you i participate i contribute i take away i draw from i'm a full member of your society i'm a tashav rabbi sax was a tosha of not only of great britain of the uk of the whole western world a spokesperson of the western world he spoke that language was steeped in its culture understood the best of it was educated and was an educator and we know how many degrees and honorary degrees and how many books and how he was knighted in the house of commons we know all of his accomplishments but at the same time salvation rabbi sax had absolutely no problem living by salvatrix insight he was a toshiba full resident but he was aguer he also understood that he was a member of a society of culture of high culture not pop culture he understood it was jewish values not the secular values he sought to elevate the conversation not to lower himself to be part of it he was uncompromising and being a gayer in saying when our values are in conflict when they're not in consonance when they don't work together he was the living embodiment of this insider reversal of of avraham's iconic and immortal words that he said to beneface and that we say to the society around us and my own editorial comment i will say here is that there are generations in which the jewish people failed to emphasize enough one of these elements they said you know what i'm not a toshev perhaps we live too much in retreat we lift too much in insulation we have to contribute participate draw from be part of society but then there are generations in which we are too assimilated too integrated we forget that we are gayrim we forget we're foreigners and we're strangers we forget that as much as we have in common we are categorically different and to not confuse who we are where we come from and what our destiny is necessarily with those around us it is that balance that critically important balance that equilibrium which too often through our history and at different periods and different times in different places was out of whack and out of balance it is having spokespeople like rabbi sax who even if we were not knowledgeable you know sometimes again i'm just reflecting personally here sometimes you just felt comforted to know that rabbi sax exists someone much smarter than me who knows much more who speaks that language who could answer those skeptics who could triumph in a debate i don't have to watch it or listen to it i don't have to be the one doing it i just sleep well at night knowing that he exists i feel blessed to be in a generation that had him i'm comforted and i'm strengthened and i have a confidence to know that he's there and that's what his loss means that he isn't anymore and we can't turn to him we could turn to what he left us the full body that he left us but we can no longer turn to him and therefore that loss is tremendously tremendously painful before we really dive into the parasha i just want to leave you with one more thought in tribute to him and then we'll continue to study mostly from him his insights on this first year site that's how we elevate his neshama the greatest when we continue to quote somebody's torah that's how we really lift their spirits i spoke with a young man from our community a few years ago before by sacks was even sick or we knew it who identifies as a jew was a staunch zionist even served in the israeli army but had left an observant life and i engaged this individual whom i have a long-standing relationship he grew up in our community since he was a small child and i tried to pull every trick out of my toolbox every tool to try to engage to encounter to provoke to stimulate to challenge to get him to reconsider a torah observant life and i was in absolute and utter failure but in it before i was willing to concede defeat i asked him i said is there anything that would change your mind what do you think would do it we were having an intellectual debate about parts of judaism that he was deeply troubled by he wasn't simply abandoning out of te avon it wasn't simply out of desire or lust he had intellectual challenges with yiddish guy and he said to me quote the only person in the universe who i think could inspire me to keep shabbos again is rabbi sax if i met him and could talk to him i can't imagine that i wouldn't feel obligated to return to an observant life i actually tried to put the two of them together unsuccessfully but that tells you so much right there it tells you an enormous amount it tells you an enormous amount um in 2019 or my saks gave what was the last slikhos drusha in london in the hampstead synagogue september 21 2019 and as everything it was brilliant and was insightful and wasn't elevating for me it was also deeply uh meaningful because in it i didn't know this somebody sent me and alerted me to it in it he referenced the conversation that he and i had not by name he writes or he said this was transcribed and it was published in the last hamazrahi this past rosh hashana yom kippur mizrahi puts out a beautiful little magazine called and in it they had an unforgiving age from rabbi sachs which was his priest lifos address in 2019 and then he says this is what's legals are all about about being honest about saying master of the universe i know i let you down i know i let others down i know i let myself down schmuck holy hear my cry help me become the person you created me to be and then he continues he says a few years ago i was about to lecture one thousand people in a big show in america now getting one thousand jews to sit down is as hard as splitting the red sea so the rabbi the shaw said to me rabbi we've got 10 minutes before we begin every week i do the local jewish radio program would you do a quick interview with me i said fine we went into a study just the two of us and this is what he asked me i was that rabbi maybe some of you were here we had a thousand people we had an amazing amazing event with my sacks it wasn't for a weekly radio program it was before behind the pima was even a dream it was before corona but i had always thought we have these great people who come to the community if i recorded a conversation that would one day be of interest and i recorded this conversation in uh in 2018 january 18 2018 and then it just sat in a file i never did anything with it until after rabbi sax passed away and then i published it online the conversation this interview with him sort of by sax recalls that conversation and he says rabbi sacks he's quoting me now asking him i look at your cv i look at your career tell me rabbi sacks did you ever fail at anything i almost fell out of my chair laughing i said i have failed at almost everything my favorite sentence in the english language is winston churchill's definition of success going from failure to failure with that loss of enthusiasm i tried to explain to the rabbi that the real difference is not between failure and success the real difference is between failing and giving up and failing and keeping on going that's the real difference in life is what keeps me going i explained is the simple knowledge that god lifts us up when we fall and forgives us when we fail and then he ended that's russia i have one request forget the public persona of perfection that people post in social media know that the inner reaches of our soul we can be honest with ourselves we can acknowledge the way in which we failed because we know that god forgives and then forgiveness god gives us strength to heal that we what we have harm to men that we have broken to become the people he wants us to be now that interview also was transcribed january 18 2018 and the last comment i'll say in our introduction is to quote from that transcript because i began and i asked robert saks the following you can listen to online this whole interview but i'll just read to you a little bit you're a beacon of faith you promote faith you teach faith you inspire faith not only among the jewish community jewish people around the world do you ever struggle with faith i asked him do you ever feel that you confront doubt and in those moments of uncertainty what do you do to overcome it what do you do to overcome it no i didn't i didn't build into the question but i know that rubbish and i knew then i didn't know he had a second bout of cancer as we sat in my study in my home january 18 2018 it was a little reception before we came here a thousand people for a big event i remember vividly that uh it was a federation hosted at our home and there was a beautiful reception someone was walking around offering martinis and rabbi sax mentioned he had never tried one he thought he might as well have one and he drank it we did the interview and then he had trouble holding on to the lectern when he was delivering i still feel guilty that he said his mind was racing due to that lachaim that we shared before this interview so i didn't know it was a second bout of cancer but i knew he had faced cancer and i knew that he had challenges in his life and so i asked him did he ever have doubt and faith and listen to what he said note this is january and it's not a coincidence what parsha did he reference the passion in which his neshama left this world and today his first eurotype that we offer this tribute to him he said let me be very blunt with you i've had many crises in faith but i've never had a crisis of faith in a kurdish border i've had many crises of faith in man one crisis began as soon as i began to understand the holocaust to understand it took place in the heart of civilized europe not some third world country in some medieval 10th century the biggest question of faith i had was knowing all this was going to happen how come akiraj barclay had faith in us i never lacked faith in him because i never expected the impossible from him i know perfectly well that he placed each of us here for a purpose and we are supposed to discern that and to walk ahead for me the critical moment that defined my faith was achieved when i learned parshas sarah january he's talking about sarah begins with the death of sarah there is avram having lost his life companion the age of 137 at that point he has received from hashem three promises number one i will give you land number two i will give you children i will make you a great nation as many as the stars in the skies at sandler sea and finally i'll make you not one nation many nations but he only has one son where was the father of many nations where was the infinite number of descendants what did adam do at that moment when he should have had a crisis of faith he understood that god said walk on ahead of me so he bought the first plot of land he then made sure his son got married so he would have jewish grandchildren and later in a strange episode he takes an additional wife named katura six more children who become the father of many nations in other words concluded rabbi sacks this first question instead of expecting god to do for him adam realized god was expecting him to do the hard work for him once i understood that i never had a crisis of faith what a legacy what a beautiful insight and that's the first point i want to elaborate on is that insight of rabbi sax and i draw from his magnificent covenant in conversation published today as books but many articles that you could find online you can learn with her by sacks each and every week many of you do i look out i'm trying to domino give a drusha and you're looking down i don't blame you much more worthwhile you're reading for many years the printouts from her by sacks rather than listening to rabbis around the world we don't blame you but you continue to read and print out online and rabbi sacks on our parsha says the following he says the central theme of our parsha are two episodes both narrated at length and both offered in intricate detail and we know the real estate of the torah is precious more valuable even than montoya's circle as hard as that is to believe right now and yet and yet particularly the second episode of eliezer going to look for a wife for yitzhak is offered it is repeated at length it is verbose it is redundant it is lengthy why the torah's real estate is precious so summarize succinctly give me the summary of the story and instead the torah these two episodes a plot of land a negotiation is this trying to capture the original jewish business attitude ethics skill set why avon bill buys this field the cave burial place and he instructs his servant to find the wife why these two events so the easy answer is because they happened torah recounts and recalls history they happened torah's a document that is transmitting our history so it tells us they happen because it's part of our history but rabbi sachs rejects that he says that is not possible we misunderstand the torah if we think it's a book that simply tells us what happened a lot more happened it never tells us we are first introduced to avram we begin his life at what age 75. so if it was a history book it should tell us first his mother got pregnant what kind of pregnancy did she have was he active in the womb was he calm tell us about the labor it skips it omits significant parts of the story where the magis of course fills in between the lines but the torah is not a history book and the torah is not simply recalling or recounting what happened torah by identifying itself as torah defines its own genre says rasaks it is not a history book torah or means light it is a book of teaching everything in the torah is there because it is meant to teach it is meant to transmit not something that happened or history but something much more lofty so if it's sharing something that happened it's because there's something deeper in it so what is it that is deeper in these two episodes an entire parasha and if you have to summarize khayesara two episodes avraham negotiated a piece of real estate avram sent out a shirakh for his son yitzhak eliezer was in charge i would have said that's got to be the shortest passion of torah negotiating a piece of real estate okay how long could that be and why would you tell me okay that could take up a lot more time and a lot more room but fine eliza went they made a shirt they closed the shirt they paid the shark they called it they called it a day how could it be that it's so long so says rabbi sacks the following listen carefully because this is brilliant it's beautiful and it's important avram the first bearer of the covenant was given two promises by hashem and both were stated five times what were those two promises that hashem kept repeating to abram five times by the way if you're god you're probably good at your word one time should be good enough so if god repeats the promise five times why is he repeating it not for abram if god makes you a promise you should be good to go it's god almighty he delivers on his word last night we hit the 300th sitter snippet little shameless plug for city snippets go back to number one was modani and catch up we're at 300 we're in the middle of shema but somewhere early on and there is baraksha umar barach hashem says and he does he goes there and he's making he fulfills what he said he was going to do you can listen on podcasts and on the website you can get a whatsapp with the sitter snippet every day so hashem only needs to say it once why do you say it five times [Music] why five times because clearly he means to emphasize not the promise he's good at his word but he needs to emphasize the significance of that which he is promising what are the two things that he promised of him five times again let's prove to the people watching or listening that you were alive here hashem were filling out more and more no children you're going to have children you're going to have eight o'clock you're going to have you're going to have continuity in this world and what was the other promise eric israel the land good you guys have read the homicide occasionally i'm happy to hear that first is the land time and again he's told by god that the land that you've traveled canaan is yours we could look at some of these parachutes is the first time beginning of these words torah made famous they got them from the great singer daddy look at this land and it's called arts this whole land that you see at nana i'm going to give it to you paraguay and zion it goes on and on hashem promises avram the less than five times this land is your land second promise is kinder luck enoch children grandchildren continuity go to parakeet bays plastic base parakeet base pus suck your offspring will number as great as these sands on the sea i show you just like you can count and again the examples go on and on plus okay parakeets i impossible counts them did the hard work for us five times hashem says real estate this land is yours five times he says you're not going to leave this world without someone to say college for you you're going to have a child after you remarkable promises the land and its left and breath will be his and you will have many children good now sarah dies beginning he's not a real estate holder he does not own any land children he's got one he's got ishmael but he's already been told explicitly that ishmael is not going to be the one who will carry the legacy forward so how many children does he have within this context of his legacy his continuity how many children does he have he has one he has one i was in an elevator yesterday with your heaven when there was another couple and they were talking to each other and they were talking about somebody they know who has three children by the age of 36 isn't that insane so many children such a young age so crazy and we looked at each other like should we yeah now should we tell them they said nah and we just walked out of the elevator but barak hashem kenai nahara belia and hara a billion times over people have been blessed to have large families nothing that anyone should ever take for granted count those blessings each and every single day large families and if you do the multiplier effect if you have a lot of children and please god they'll have a lot of children that have a lot of children you can within your lifetime be a great grandparent or a great great grandparent to hundreds to thousands the numbers are are astonishing so avram who's given this promise you're going to be many you're going to be great you're going to be an enormous number and hashem as if toys with avraham come come come outside come give a cook give a look see the stars you're going to have so many stars your children you're not even going to be able to count come come to the beach i've come with me for a moment see the sand pick up a little bit in your hand the grains just in your hand forget the whole length of the beach just in your hand you see the sand can you count them no that's going to be your children now sarah dies and alvin said what happened to the stars what happened in the sand what happened to eric's throat what happened to my real estate what happened to the land he's no rothschild it's not jnf he's not what happened he doesn't own land and he has one child who by the way he came this close to slaughtering who by the way also is 37 years old and nebach says to himself he owns no land and he only has one son son says there by sacks now you understand allah the significance of the two episodes in parashat sarah are a hundred percent now clear why because it's all about what avraham does next it's all about what avraham does next listen to me very carefully because this is the story of the jewish people it's the story of rabbi sachs both his torah and it's also the charge that he leaves us with telling us what we need to do next first what does adam do so if i'm avram i throw in a towel i'm depressed i'm resentful i'm bitter i'm negative i'm angry hashem what happened all these promises i'm an old man i just lost my wife my better half i own no land and i have only one son and he's not married what does avraham do instead may al-pine may sell but saks doesn't point this out but others do the word va'yakam what does it mean to get up i think that this has entered our vernacular what do you call it when you're done with shiva of someone loses a loved one and they said shiva what did they say what do we say about them oh do you pay a shiver call do you know when they why would you ask when they get up that's true they sit in a low stools so you're getting up they get up a lot during shiva they get up to eat they get up to the bathroom they get to go to sleep they get up to daven they're getting up out of that low chair but we only call it getting up at the end of shiva why do we call it getting up from shiva we learn from avraham fayaka may al-pine may so because when the jew is down the jew doesn't stay out the juve we get up we get up we persevere we tenaciously continue in fact how do we come out of shiva i tell this to every person i walk out of shiva we go for a walk where does it say that nowhere where does say in the gemara nowhere it is entirely and utterly a min hug they're different than hugging some turn the chair upside down when you're done with shiva i think chabad breaks something on the floor i think to break something on the floor there's all kinds of interesting min hugging but one of the universal ones is to go for a walk why do you go for a walk because we see the grass is growing and the garbage is being picked up and life has to continue and the significance of the symbolism of walking we put one foot in front of the other physically we have to put one foot in front of the other and spiritually and metaphysically we have to put one foot in front of the other we get up that's how we do it and that is avraham's legacy he doesn't stay down and out when he loses sarah and he loses sorrow in tragic circumstances we discussed last year i'm not going to repeat this year sarah died what was her cause of death on her birth on her death certificate it wasn't cancer it wasn't high blood pressure and it wasn't diabetes she was shocked to death and how was she shocked to death when she heard what avraham almost did to her yitzhak she had a massive heart attack she dropped dead from the news you can imagine the regret the remorse the guilt that avraham lived with but he didn't stay down he did not stay down vayakam avraham avram got up and this is what rabbi sacks says he says first avraham undergoes a lengthy bargaining process to buy a field in a cave in which to bury sarah in a tense even humiliating encounter they say one thing and they mean another f from the owner the field wishes to buy he says listen i'll give you the feel bear you're dead as the narrative makes clear this elaborate generosity is a facade extremely hard bargaining avraham knows that he's an alien among them he has no right to the land you may not acquire it on your own but avram says rabbi sachs is not deterred he insists he wants to buy his own ephron says it's yours i'll give it to you is in fact the prelude to a demand for an inflated price at last however avraham owns the land the final transfer of ownership is recorded in precise legal prose to signal at last that avraham owns part of the land it's a very small part of the land it's a little field it's a cave but finally avram owns the land and was it easy did it come miraculously did it fall into his lap this is rabbi saks this is what he says is the iconic here this is the key point it came at a great expense it came after a difficult negotiation it came after turmoil and that is all the divine promise of the land that avraham will see in his lifetime that's all that he gets to own is a cave in a field he was told walk the width and breath of the land it's going to be yours but all he gets to actualize in his own lifetime is this little shtickle property this little piece of real estate this little cave in this little field and even that he had to arduously negotiate and purchase the next parrot one of the longest in hamish tells of avraham's concern that i that yitzhak find a wife 37 years old still unmarried avram has a child no grandchild no posterity no promise of a future beyond the attack if he's not married and here again does it come easy takes negotiation it takes money it takes trust he has to send eliezer out and away he has to come overcome elijah's instinct that eliezer wants him to marry his own daughter he has to secure rifka's release because lo lovan rather pulls this whole charade it doesn't come easy they have to pay a lot of money big dowry and then finally they're able to leave eventually patience pays off rivka leaves yitzchak marries her the covenant will continue listen to what urban sack says these are the no minor episodes they tell a difficult story yes avraham will have a land he will have countless children but these things will not happen sooner suddenly or easily nor will they incur without human effort to the contrary only the most focused willpower will bring them about the divine promise is not what it first seemed a statement that god will act it is in fact a request an invitation from hashem to avraham and his children that they should act hashem will help the outcome will be what hashem said it would but not without total commitment from album's family against what will sometimes seem to be insuperable obstacles do you understand what rabbi sachs is saying the whole theme the whole essence the whole idea of the whole legacy of avraham is that yes god made these two promises he made them no less than five times but when hashem makes us a promise he doesn't tell us to then become passive spectators to the fulfillment of that promise he doesn't tell us it'll come easily he doesn't tell us it'll come miraculously he doesn't tell us the timetable with which it will come or how much of it will merit to see in our lifetime yes that promise will come true but the promise is an invitation as much as it is a promise it is god's request to us to step up to make the effort to negotiate to be willing to give capital human capital energy emotion it is we have to be his partner a land israel and children jewish continuity rights are by sacks the astonishing fact is that today 4 000 years later they remain the dominant concern of jews throughout the world jews throughout the world 4 000 years later these are the two things that we still think about the safety and security of israel as the jewish home and the future of the jewish people will we have jewish grandchildren and great-grandchildren are these not the universal two jewish concerns four thousand years later avram's hopes and fears are ours is there any other people i wonder says are by sacks whose concerns today are what they were for millennia ago the identity through time is awe-inspiring now as then the divine promise does not mean that we can leave the future to hashem that idea has no place in the imaginative world of the first book of the torah to the contrary the covenant is hashem's challenge to us not ours to god the meaning of the events of not that realized that hashem was depending on him faith does not mean passivity it means the courage to act and never be deterred the future will happen but it is we inspired empowered given strength by the promise who must bring it about so when i saw this inside of rabbi sax now now i understood what he was saying to me in that interview when he referenced that god promised avraham these things five times he never lost faith in god the moment he studied he was cryptically answering in the interview to me but he elaborated more in this insight in his covenant and conversation where his point is you write if you're waiting for god you'll lose faith in him but if you realize that god is waiting for you he wants us to act he wants us to partner he is inviting us to bring about that future that destiny that reality then we realize that it's not a question of our faith in god it's a question of god's faith in us how did he conclude the meaning of the events that abram realized that god was depending on him faith does not mean passivity the courage to act and means to be never deterred the future will happen but it is we inspired in power given strength by the promise who must bring it about about. avraham got up from his loss he wasn't deterred he wasn't fatigued he didn't give up even though he had yet to see these two promises he realized it was his responsibility rabbi saks comes back to that theme over and over almost every essay he has on sarah he comes back to that theme over and over and he couples it he complements it with different insights from secular scholarship and stories but he comes back to that theme over and over again and is that not the jewish story did we not recently live it following the holocaust the seventh million the people who survived who had lost their loved ones they didn't sit passively they didn't feel a promise was broken they got up and they rebuilt they rebuilt tenaciously their sense of resiliency we are only here because after each of these episodes of life and in some ways i think that's our job even after the loss on this first yard site reflecting back of rabbi sax is not to wallow in that lost and not to wonder what could have been but to pick up where he left off to feel responsible to continue his conversation to continue his life mission of gervatoshev to learn what he learned from the world to contribute to that world to be those agents and ambassadors of the world rabbi sachs was one of the biggest kids hashem of our time if not the greatest who else would have prince charles prime minister blair to godola israel to everyone in the world equally speaking about his greatness he was a walking kid of hashem and instead of wallow in that loss and instead of wonder of what could have been our job is to pick up that mantle to pick up the baton and to keep going and in that context i'll share another insight i've been sharing recently and his torah touches me very deeply he happens to be a very fascinating individual and i'll share with you you remember that everybody sacks passed away the same week as rav david feinstein of color two devastating losses very very different models of jewish greatness both great in their own right different models of greatness whereas a strymol jew and you shall i am and uh on shabbos morning after davening there's a sit down kiddush each week after davoning the wine and he talks about events of that week always in the context of the filter of torah very powerful very beautiful i've enjoyed it and i love hearing afterwards the divrei torah from it so i heard from several people who were there including my son-in-law that that week after those two devastating losses whereby weinfeld sat down after davening with the shrine male and his tallest and after this and he made us he said chevra klaus suffered a loss this week of someone irreplaceable well christopher went and everyone said in their thought for sure he's going to speak about dublin feinstein he went on and on about the irreplaceability of this individual who they were in their greatness what they meant him how much he learned from them how broken he was and who was that individual rabbi lord jonathan sacks it threw everybody off that was rabbi weinfeld felt that loss and part of his greatness is the diversity of whom he appreciates it was really um very special to hear so this wasn't a reflection on rabbi sacks but weinfelt has the following very interesting insight he says you'll note there's a lot of overlap in our parsha we learn from the beginning of the parasha we learn the laws of marriage from the purchase of the of the cave of the mahq we know that one of the mechanisms to which a man can betray the woman is kasif if he gives her something that is of minimal value or shava pruta then through that through her accepting it people see this as degrading to the woman that the man is giving it it's not degrading the man gives it but she has to accept it if she rejects it they're also not married he could put 400 rings on her fingers he could put rings of billion dollar values on her fingers but if she says i don't have das i don't accept it i don't receive it then they're not married she could put a million rings on his finger and he can accept it and they're not married that's why a double ring ceremony is not consistent with halacha when i officiated a wedding and i understand that he's going to wear a ring which there's no problem with whatsoever i always say you give her the ring under the khutba she can give you the ring in the youtube room she shouldn't give you the ring under the khupa we don't want to distort the halacha to suggest as if there is a halachic value to the double ring there's only one ring which has value and it's not bias or discriminatory he gives the ring she has to receive the ring only if each do their part are they are they married where do we learn that from because it says a man takes a woman and here it says he took the field he purchased he acquired the field so through giving money you are betrothed there is a transaction which took place and we applied that we spoke last year i'm not going to repeat how utterly unromantic that is there's nothing less romantic in the moment of betrothal than talking about death nothing less romantic and yet we learn the entire mechanism from the story of death and there are beautiful beautiful insights of why that is again listen to last year's partial share where i shared a few of them several of them but there are other similarities we have how many days does one sit shiva how many days do you have shovel brothers after a wedding seven days in order to be able to eligible to say the sheva brachas what do you need you need someone upon hadashas someone has to attend the shava brachas who wasn't at the wedding how do you define panama dashos why do you need panama kadashas shabbos is part of khadashas you could give an hour shirt on panam kadasha it's a fascinating topic but you need someone there who's at the chevy brothers who wasn't at the wedding for that individual it is a renewed sense of joy and that's what generates our powers reciting the shava brachas there's a special benching to be said in the house of mourning we don't do it today but the halacha was when it was done you needed panam kadashas someone who had not yet been there to comfort someone who was not at the at the funeral so you have all this overlap seven and seven param qadashas we learn marriage from the purchase of the grave what is this connection what is all this overlap so by weinfeld shlita said the following he says judaism views death very differently from the world around us others view death as being closure as being final as being the end of a chapter the end of an era others view death as being only depressing and miserable but judaism sees death not as the end not as the closure not as the culmination judaism sees death as a point in a cycle that's why we eat lentils right yaakov felt fed ace of the lentils that he had cooked for yitzhak who was mourning the loss of avram we eat an egg the first meal this is the mourner comes home and eats an egg which is round the image of the round of the cycle of life death is not the end of a line death is a point on a cycle it's the point on a circle and a ramoin reminds us that at the very moment that we mark and honor death we also must celebrate life and that's what avraham understood he buries sarah vayakam and he gets up and he immediately focuses on yitzhak getting married so the next generation could flourish and this is the deeper lesson between burial and marriage that we're meant to respond to death by building life the greatest response to death is not to become debilitated is not to become a person who can't move but we take the memory of who we lost and now we make a commitment to build life and to make it flourish and blossom bigger and greater we take that sad experience and it should fuel us to recognize the significance of those who are alive around us and to build the continuity to build a beautiful and a bright jewish future that's what we're learning from avram that's what abram did and that's the two episodes here in [Music] we could do a whole day tribute and we're running out of time what more should we talk about here what more should we talk about okay let's talk about another part of avraham avraham's legacy that are by saks notes which i think is a reflection on rabbi saks as well and that is his commitment to he tells the story rabbi saks i used this in a shabbat show with russia many years ago and they took it from one of rabbi sax's great books sax was an author of countless books he put out he told me in fact when i when i was once talking to him privately it was uh it was around my 40th birthday so it was several years ago and i told him how unaccomplished i felt because i had yet to write a book hashem i have the privilege to teach and share a lot of torah but i'd love to leave a book i'd love to write a book if there's a book worth writing i'd love to share it so he told me that the first book he wrote and published was was only when he turned 40. he had tried countless times in that interview he could listen later i asked him did you ever fail when he laughed out loud one of the points of failure that he recalled was how many times he tried to publish books before his 40th birthday that were all rejected by publishers we're all looking and wondering who were the publishers who rejected anything rabbi sachs had to write who were they they should lose their publishing license who were those publishers but he told me that he published his first book at 40. that part was interesting the next part was overwhelming he said he said it just in passing he said i published my first book at 40 and i published a book every year since every year since so he published one book a year now his books are not like a collection of my dresses of the year i'm not knocking anyone who does that but you give a drush every shabbos then you take your best of you deliver it it's a beautiful contribution everybody stacks this book are scholarship they're research they're well thought out the thesis science religion they're unbelievable a book a year for decades after his 40th birthday he told me then he said by your 40th book birthday i want you to write a book send it to me i'll review it and help you with it i'll help you get it published i'm turning 47 this year and i have several books that i've written the problem is so far they're all only in my head i've yet to actually write them but i do remember his his words echo in my ears all the time he's written i think close to 30 close to 30 books or by sax but with that brilliance what i want to focus on is that our base ax was brilliant partly a gift by god his genius was a gift by god part of a genetic part of it given to him by god at birth much most of it earned through hard work through toil but that's not what i want to focus on what i want to focus on was his character there are brilliant scholars brilliant academics brilliant brilliant great men and women who when you come to know them and see them behind the scenes one of the blessings of being the rabbi is that you get to host all the scholars in residence one of the curses of being the rabbi is that you get to host all the scholars and residents because some of them when you see them when the lights on the camera are off they surpass what you thought of them in public and you're blown away you're inspired what you see of them when no one's watching just makes you think they're even greater others let's say rabbi sax belongs in that first category and i think that his his brilliance was surpassed only by his tremendous character by the tremendous character of who he was and how he lived and he makes this point in parishes when he talks about what eliezer went to go look for in a wife for yitzhak but he tells the story to begin with i don't we don't have the time i can't tell you the whole story you can find it online he quotes it from stephen carter stephen carter is a professor at yale university law school and he has a book called civility and stephen carter an african-american talks about when his family moved to baltimore it was the only black family in a jewish neighborhood and they felt shunned and isolated alone but this observant jewish woman came across the street she had made goodies a tray drinks and cream cheese and jelly sandwich she brought over to the children made them feel at home welcomed them and he recalls this yale law professor in his book that he he specifically identifies her sarah kestenbaum she died all too young he adds it's no coincidence she was a religious jew quote in the jewish tradition civility is called khasid doing acts of kindness which in turn derives from the understanding that human beings are made in the image of god civility he says itself may be seen as part of khased it indeeds require kindness towards our fellow citizens the ones who are strangers even when it is hard to this day i could close my eyes and feel on my tongue the smooth slick sweetness of the cream cheese and jelly sandwich i got with that summer afternoon when i discovered how a single active genuine another swimming civility can change a life forever by sax quotes the story from carter that yale professor and then he goes on and he talks about this is why avraham when he sends aliyazar and he arrives in achor aram narayam northwest mesopotamia to find a wife avraham had not told him to look for any specific traits of character he had simply told him to find someone who's part of his own family eliezer however comes up with this whole test the one is going to feed the camels in addition to him the one is going to show elias doesn't say i need a size 2. i need to see a picture elias doesn't say what's the yichus elias doesn't say i need to speak to the pharmacist what's in the medicine cabinet eliezer doesn't say any of the absolute insanity that people are looking for today by the way in all the of questions i field i don't remember anyone asking me are her parents on the ghasset committee do his parents volunteer for the kharkadisha i don't think that's on anyone's list of questions it was on eliezer's it wasn't on his list of questions it was his singular question his one question was does she do loving kindness sense does she care sex points out it's also the theme of the book of rus her kindness in boaz to russ the tanakh seeks to emphasize in sketching the background to david the great grandson who would become israel's greatest king indeed say the three characteristics the most important jewish character are modesty compassion and kindness sage is based on the acts of hashem himself torah begins with khashoggi it begins with god clothing the naked and it ends with him caring for the dead providing shelter for the homeless food for the hungry assistance to the poor visiting the sick comfort in the mourner a dignified burial for all became constitutive of jewish life during the many centuries of exile dispersed jewish communities were built around these needs these were chevros the societies for each of them we don't have a chevra of poker of what do we have hey what are you doing tuesday night i thought of a fun activity for the chevra let's go bury the dead let's go do a tahara i thought of a great activity for our chevra let's go do beaker hollam the beaker golem in jewish society points by sacks out were not chevrons of going to the movies they weren't chevrons of playing poker they weren't hedras of these other activities they were kadisha was it the definition of in yiddishkai are a group of people who they find their commonality is their desire their willingness their eagerness to do he traces at the 17th century rome kidarko bakodus brings in all this analysis english language in 1535 miles coverdale published the first ever translation of the hebrew bible into english it was when he came to the word khasiri realized there was no english word to capture its meaning it was then that translated he coined the word loving-kindness traces to the 16th century loving kindness by sacks is a whole piece about the role of so much i wanted to share about this but i think this is also part of her by sax's legacy particularly to me i can't believe we didn't get to all the other things i wanted to share probably was able to finish everything he wanted to say i have yet to have learned that from him but i think it's part of what makes her my sack so special he's the same as this essence is this notion of torah with all the scholarship with all the brilliance with all the published work with all the degrees in the honorary degrees with all the house of commons and all of being knighted with everything he achieved and he accomplished he was a mensch if you knew rabbi sax he was a quintessential mensch and he was beloved by all for being that mensch and more important than all the other accomplishments and achievements somebody was gifted by god and others he worked hard and toiled for was simply surpassed by being a mensch he shared with me when he was the chief rabbi the work he did to free hagunas and orchestrating throughout the united kingdom to be a mensch and to care about manchester and why was he so listened to and why was he so hurt the words of the righteous of scholars are embraced they are received when they are delivered softly and gently and that's why the torah be careful with your words be careful that you deliver them others are biting and others are sarcastic and others are negative and others seek to beat the jewish people over the head others seek to point out everything we're doing wrong but that wasn't rabbi sachs the why sacks lifted us up with optimism and hope with a vision with positivity with love with sensitivity with seeing all the virtue and merit of the jewish people not what was missing and i think that's why he did and does speak to us because banachas he spoke banachas and therefore the shema because he spoke banachas that's why we are able to hear him i'll end the rebel of zusha this is also in our pasha by the way because we spend more torah more real estate twice as much real estate on the story of eliezer getting this wife than we do on some laws of the torah so khazal note because great is the casual conversation of the loyal servants of our matriarchs and patriarchs even greater than the torah of their children what does that mean it means we learn from the way that they interrelated interpersonally from the derek of the way that they approached the entire world rabbi revolba and they say foreign he says it's like you go shopping and you have all these things that you collected you got some fruits and vegetables you bought some chicken you bought some cheese and milk how do you carry it all how do you check out with it how do you get it to your trunk how do you get it home you need a bag once upon a time they used to give you a bag now they're environmentally friendly and you have to bring your own bag or pay for a bag but you need a bag to put it in a box to put it in otherwise you can't bring it home it says revolver derek is karma torah because if you don't come shopping with a bag you have no way to collect all that torah the derek is the vessel that holds all that torah and if you don't come shopping for torah with the derek's bag you have no way to carry it home darkheart is kadma you got to come shopping with the bag before you go shopping otherwise you have nothing to put it in and that was rabbi saks the we say this every morning the mishnah from we list all these wonderful things that you reap the benefit in this world and the next world keeper of the aim and visiting the sick and burying the dead and then that mishna ends with talmutorah tamatora can i get kulam so the simple reading the simple understanding of means that while all those activities are virtuous beautiful and great talmud is the greatest of them all tamatota learning learning learning is central core it surpasses them all says no torah can i get kula means talmud connected the word connected means what opposite not against the opposite it means talmutoras kinneget kulam the tamatora only has value when it stands opposite all those other activities but if you learn torah and you don't practice keep it aim you learn torah you don't visit the sikh and you don't help you don't comfort the mourner and you don't help the under privilege and you don't stand up and fight for justice then what's the value of your talmud torah the talmud torah has to be kinneged first learn and do all those things and now the tamatores can i get kula to me part of her by sacs is a great legacy it's not only the scholarship but it's the is the banachas is the sensitivity is the menstrual kite it's who he was it's who we are meant to be when we pass he passes the baton and we pick it up and we take it and we go from here there's a lot more to share from him please god will have the opportunity for years to come have a fantastic day tomorrow morning 8 15 finally we're back 10 minutes of meeting mr sharon living with amuna tomorrow morning is back to its regular time 8 45. please note 8 45. tomorrow night we're going by nabima with the great rabbi yy jacobson for a conversation