Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: 70 Nations 70 Bulls and Bringing the Torah into our Hearts

[Music] it's [Music] hi everybody i hope uh again we're uh recording from a remote location which is my normal location uh ishiba george mayo and uh i do have an audience of four people and i'm very grateful that they came it's a lot easier to talk to people as opposed to talk to the camera but i also want to wish everybody who may be listening that i hope you had a wonderful yamtif and the year that we're going to face in uh should be a year of blessing and good health and be israel hashem even the coming of mashiach and the redemption of the jewish people and the whole world we are of course still in the afterglow of sukkot and simchastora so i want to talk a little bit about it although the umph has passed but hopefully the spirit and the holiness of the umph will still continue to pour into our daily lives so i want to share with you a thought about sukkot and emphasize part of zukos that often is not discussed that much that is in the basa mikdash sukos had a very unique ritual that was not paralleled in the rest of the year and that is we know that every single day when there was a temple people brought an offering uh carbon tamid this was the daily offering was brought every single day of the year whether it was shabbos yom kippur whatever it was and that was one lamb that was sacrificed as a burnt offering in the morning and another lamb that was sacrificed as a burnt offering in the afternoon and that is called the carbon tumid that of course uh always exists and then on shabbos for schrodinger you have additional offerings that are called musaf offerings mustaf literally means additional offerings now when the carbon tumid was brought there was always a libation of wine after the meat was burnt on the mizbayach they would pour wine on the mizbayach and that was the point at which the levium would sing the psalm of the day so when we have a psalm of the day whether it's sunday monday tuesday that actually was the song or the poem that the levium would sing to music unfortunately we don't have the actual musical notation they would sing as the wine was being poured that is actually the meaning of a very well-known talmudic statement that people sometimes don't know the context of and that is in omrim shira el alayan we only say songs over wine now what does that mean i mean we sing all the time without whining but it's referring very specifically to the fact that in the base hamikdash the levine would sing the psalms not while the meat was burning but while the wine was being poured in omrim shira ella al hayat so that's the whole year on sukkos the wine libation of the morning offering was augmented by a water libation so if you would be standing in the base of mikdash for the seven days of sukkos you would see in addition to wine being poured you would see water being poured now only in the morning offering in the afternoon offering they only had wine and for the musa farfari they only had wine but for the carbon turmeric of the morning there was a nisa hamayam in addition to the nisa hayan and they would go at the crack of dawn they would go to the shilua right this natural spring of jerusalem and they would draw the water and they would bring it into the base of mikdash and the whole preceding night they would have parties in anticipation of the pouring of the water and these parties were called and are still called which literally means the rejoicing of the water drawing and although we don't do the water drawing today because we don't have a base of mikdash we still have the celebration and saying that one who did not see the joy of the water drawing did not see a simbha in his whole life that's how great the joy was a phenomenally great joy and in fact the talmud actually gives two different derivations for the word shou eva va means to draw from a source but what is it a reference to according to one opinion it is the drawing of the water from the mei shiloh according to the other opinion it means that the jewish people drew as a result of their simpha they drew prophecy and divine inspiration that the joy that a person brings to the service of hashem can make a person so close to god that they become capable of prophecy now the gemara in sukkah gives that interpretation but it does not give us an example of it actually happening the talmud ushammi gives us an example and it speaks of the prophet jonah we read about jim kipper the story of yonah and jonah didn't go to prophecy school yonah was not training to be a prophet yonah was rejoicing in the simcha space of eva and he got a little beyond the norm and he got zapped with prophecy so you got to be careful right you never know what's going to happen if a person is totally involved in simcha in fact that might be a little bit why he was reluctant to become a navy although there are many other reasons as well because that really wasn't what he viewed himself as he didn't want that job it kind of came to him uh even though that's not what he was anticipating so similar special was a tremendous source of joy and even today this year of course uh things were a bit more muted uh but they're probably worse some plus basis away but somewhere but i i did not really uh wear your own corner oh yeah okay i i myself was not able to participate directly but still the icker sempra as the force from say is always in your heart it's not necessarily external but be it as it may the question i want to explore is simply this all of us know that succos is called the time of our joy and there are a lot of reasons why sukis is a joyous festival it is the time of the in-gathering of the harvest which inherits israel is very important its proximity to yom kippur means that we're in a state of purity we are remembering and we are surrounded by the clouds of glory so there are many many reasons why sukis is manson but the question is why did ghazal define the simpha in connection with the water dry meaning hazel didn't simply say oh anyone who didn't experience the joy of sucrose never saw dry they specifically talked about the joy that is connected to the water and you know what what about the sukkot what about the lula of vanessa what about the other mitzvahs why bedoka did hazal see in the nisa the drawing of the because remember the parties they had the night before were all in anticipation in preparation of the drawing of the water so why were they rejoicing they weren't rejoicing because it circus they were rejoicing because they were looking forward to the drawing of the water what's so special about the drawing of the water that it should engender a tremendous amount of joy so i'm going to give you two answers one is a long somewhat complicated answer and the other is a simpler answer but hopefully both answers will give us some understanding of this but before i get to the answer to that question let me start with a more technical question and that is what is the source of uh pouring the water if you look in the torah about the corbanos it does talk about wine libation that is in the torah part of spin house but explicitly but there's nowhere in the torah where it talks at all about hamayan so how do we know it so there are two so there are two interpretations according to one opinion it is simply sinai meaning to say it's not in the written text of the torah at all it's part of the oral law hashem gave the commandment to moshe moshe handed it down and it's not so i was mentioning the source of nisa hamayam and there are two opinions one opinion says it is simply a halal emotion be seen on meaning to say there is no source in the written law the other opinion actually has a very interesting drasha because in all the days of sukkot when it describes libation it uses the singular word niska but on day two instead of in this card it says miss k hem which is a plural day six it says which is a plural and on day seven it says instead of kamish pat in accordance with the law it says kamish patan with an extra mem so if you've been following it's a little complicated without a chart uh there is a superfluous mem a superfluous ut and a superfluous mem and that spells the word mayam so mayam is encoded uh in the anomalous niskay hem instead of uh niska nissa yakriyod instead of nascar and mishpa mishpatam instead of mishpat so i don't want to get too involved in the technicalities of this but the gemara in sukkah actually says there's a fascinating practical difference whether nisa khamayim is halakhal emotion mesenai or whether it's derived from the mem yud mem that is we know that there are five letters of the hebrew alphabet that take a different form when they're at the end of a word so in the middle or the beginning of a word they have one form and then when they're at the end of a word they have another form we call it a final right so feet now the the question in the following let's say somebody is writing a say for torah or it's villain and mezuzah and they mistakenly use a final meme in the beginning of a word when they should have used a regular men biddievit after the fact is it a kosher safer torah or is the whole thing puzzle so the gemara says it depends on this is so fascinating that you can derive from nisa hamayam a law that is connected to filin torah and mezuzah because if you think about it according to the second opinion that derives the word mayam from the memud mem wait a second here that first meme is a final man it says vanessa ham how can a final mem yod mem spell the word mayam if you have to write it in the non-final form the fact that the tyrus spells the word mayam with the first letter being a final letter the gemara actually derives from there that according to that opinion if the evidence i've never seen it happen but if the evidence so fair use the final mem in the beginning of a word it would be kosher and by analogy if he used a non-final letter at the end of a word it would also be kosher ma kane according to the other opinion who says we don't have any proof one way or the other and logically we would say it's puzzle because a final mem and a regular mem are actually two different letters and the same way if you did a different letter i wrote a nun instead of a mem for sure it's no good so a final instead of a non-final would be no good as well so i very much like this example a lot because it it really shows us the interconnectivity of torah and how one part of torah can shed light on another part of torah because everything is connected in one single uh statement of truth okay so that's the source but to go back to the primary question that i began with and that is what is it about the water drawing ceremony that is a cause for such joy remember it's not just that it's sugars sukkas indeed is a season of joy but what is what is special what is unique about nisa so as i mentioned i'll first give you a longer answer then i'll give you a shorter answer the longer answer is this uh i'm going to move away for a moment from the corbin tamid and i want to focus on the musa offerings the additional offerings of sukkot the additional offerings of sukkot are very very unique they are very different than any other yamcha different than rosh hashanah yom kippur pesach rosh chodesh very very different and in particular one one of the most notable aspects of the sukkot korbanot are the bulls the pyrim that were brought every day of sukkos and the two points that is unusual is that number one they were brought in descending order meaning to say day one was 13 then 12 11 10 9 8 987 right so that's a very unusual feature that they are brought in a changing number that goes down and the second point is if you add up all of the digits you get the number 70. and the gemara explains that the 70 bulls of sukkot correspond to the 70 nations of the world listed in precious noah which try to destroy us in various ways either destroy us by trying to kill us or destroy us by assimilation my jews can be destroyed in many different ways sometimes they can be destroyed by even friendship and love if it leads to the path of intermarriage and assimilation so we look at the seventy nations as forces in the world that want to destroy us in fact i'll describe the jewish people as a lamb that is surrounded by seventy wolves and we bring the carbon nuts to negat opposite the 70 nations so their power should be weakened and diminished as we approach yamota mashiach that is why they go down in number because the lesson would be that the koak of ra should become weaker and more impotent as you approach the final redemption now you may ask katasha well wait a second here hopefully we are approaching the redemption and yet we see the powers of evil rising up in different ways but whether it's islamic fundamentalism terrorism and the like but still the zoar explains that that is in the nature of the death throes just as a human being right before they die may have one last burst of energy or a candle right right before a candle goes out it flares up so too evil will have a certain temporary ephemeral power right before it vanishes so seen in that way the 70 parim of sukkot are designed to diminish the powers of evil in the world but there's actually another way of looking at it that the gemara looks at it as well and says we're not bringing the corban out to counteract that negative influence we're bringing the carbonate on behalf of those nations that god should bless them in fact the gemara says if the nations of the world would know how much blessing the jewish people brought to them by virtue of the carbonates of sukkos they never would have destroyed the base hamikdash so we seem to have a contradiction of interpretation meaning even if we accept that the 7d parim are connected to 70 nations of the world we seem to have a much locus what it is that we're doing with that are we bringing it to be protected from them or are we bringing the corbanos to bring a blessing to them but in fact if you think about it a bit more deeply you will see that there's not necessarily a contradiction because they're both connected when we pray that the powers of evil should be diminished we're not praying that they should die we're not praying they should be destroyed we're not praying that they should be decimated rather what we're praying is that they should do chuva they should turn to god right think about the rest of that in fact this is a very very dominant theme in the rosh hashanah and yom kippur dabani right the yeadah call paul we pray may every creation know that you are the creator and then evil will perish from the earth like the smoke can be dispelled so in a sense when i pray that the power of these nations should be diminished i'm not praying that they should die or be destroyed i'm praying that they should abandon the evil ways and turn to god and then in turn i ask that god should bless them god should give them prosperity god should give them success so the two sides of the coin we're praying that their power should be diminished and we're praying that god should give them a blessing are really not contradictory because after the powers of evil get diminished by chuva and emunah and turning to god we hope that they get abraham where we are drink the jews we don't begrudge breakfast for the world god himself told avraham all the way at the beginning of the relationship with him with avraham i will bless those who bless you those who bless the jewish people who appreciate our mission who understands the values that we we are supposed to stand up for we don't always stand up for them but that we're supposed to stand up for they will be blessed by god in fact i don't want to uh you know again i i'm not a prophet so i don't like to speak you know words of definitive prophecy which in any event i'm not capable of doing but many have said that the very very unique prosperity of the united states which hopefully is not on the way now but the fact that uh america assumes such a leading role in the world may very well have been because they were a welcoming home again there are pockets of anti-semitism here and there of course there always is and there always will be until mashiach comes but by and large the united states was a country that gave jews religious freedom and they allowed the jews to flourish economically politically socially uh and uh what did god say to avraham once again those who bless you will be blessed by hashem okay yeah okay so the point i'm making is that this is not a contradiction praying that their negative influences should be diminished and they should be blessed are really two sides of the same coin because once they abandon the evil ways once they do true once they recognize god once they recognize the jewish people then god is going to bless them and we pray that god should bless them and that's an important idea that we're not out to get people uh the jewish people are not out to be negative we're not out to be destructive uh the question like you think that peace treaties recently between the uae and bahrain also reflect in oncoming sentiment in the arab world yes i think that yes i think this is very very significant uh in the following way uh tell us and again i'll talk about this a little bit more as i go on but tell us that the ishmael himself did shiva uh eventually before he died ishmael in other words dichuva died as a righteous person and we know that the arabs are descended from ishmael again they became muslims much later of course but the arab nations are descended from ishmael and it's brought down in swarm that just as just as originally ishmael was a russia did shiva so all the arab nations who turn against the jewish people will do shiva before mashiach comes because just as we say about the jewish people masa of ice what our forefathers did is kind of a sign as to what we're going to do that applies to you that you smile as well ishmael did sugar we will do true in fact i'm sorry they will do chuba in fact the mexican says that the first stage of their treatments is really an amazing thing occurred uh more than a thousand years ago when they converted to islam meaning they renounced paganism right and they became monotheists that is already a stage although again the muslims have not been very friendly to us but that is a first stage of suga in believing in one god and the second stage of cuba will be they will renounce their animosity and their hatred for the jewish people and they will acknowledge our right to the land of israel now seen in that light seen in that light i think there's an enormous importance to the united arab emirates and bahrain making a peace treaty with israel now granted you know if one wants to look at it in terms of politics there are economic reasons and etc etc but on the other hand one cannot deny that to me i think to many people there is something almost miraculous about an arab country that makes peace and it's not like the piece of egypt egypt made peace a long time ago but you know uh israeli is afraid to go to egypt you know that's what's called a cold piece or whatever uh but in the ua uae there's actually a nice chabad house a beautiful show in fact there's already two shells uh that's a sign of a that's a sign of a vibrant jewish community there's already a breakaway right how many how many from people are dominating but seymour uh in the uah but they already have two shows to break away from the blade house and uh you know the government is very very supportive that government is supportive of religious worship so to me it's a very big step towards the idea that the ishmael will do chuva bias the end of days can be a very long period i mean the end of days doesn't mean mashiach comes tomorrow we don't know how long that will be and we don't know if we've gone through the wars of gogan mugo yet all sorts of interesting things but we are at least in the generic to kufan called you end of days and one of the phenomena of the end of days is you'll see movements of chuva from the binet yishmael and i think this piece is part of it so i i see a lot of significance and i know people are some people are knocking it but i i see it as a very very significant historical historical event okay so now let me share with you a comment of the villenegon that is really connected to what i was just talking about the vilmagone says of the 70 nations 35 of them are are connected to yeshmael and 35 of them are connected to asuf and that's why you have 70 35 35. now the question is what does the villain mean you know the first thing that may come to mind is oh 35 nations are descended from ishmael 35 nations are descended from asap that's absolutely not true the 70 nations are listed in parashat noah we're going to read in a week and a half and the truth of the matter is the 70 nations don't count avraham and his progeny so for carrots the seven none of the 70 nations are descended from asaf or ishmael because asia means well our abraham's progeny right yitzhak uh had a uh brother or abraham had a son ishmael and yitzchak had a son asaf they're not so actually there are 72 nations against us eight seven ishmael they're not within the seventy so what the vilmagone must mean is a different idea a more abstract idea and that is that the nations of the world get a certain spiritual energy that gives them the ability to do whatever they do in the world whether for good or for bad and the villenegon is suggesting there are two types of negative spiritual energies in the world that allow destruction to occur and one is a kolach that comes from ishmael and the other is a korach that comes from asav and the suggestion therefore is that we ourselves are facing two different types of challenges and let me explain what that is let me take asa first because asap is actually a little bit easier to define the kayak of asaf is kind of a hedonistic materialistic view of the world which has no room in it for god uh so let's take the very first example when asa was introduced in the torah asap is a hunter and he comes back famished and yaakov is cooking uh beans cooking lentils trollins part of charlotte and uh he as a result he says to asa that he wants to buy the the right of the firstborn uh by giving that uh by giving that food and asav basically says behold i am going why do i need the birthright now let's analyze this a little bit the simple meaning is that he's famished he's been uh running around in the hunt so he's basically saying if i don't need i'm dead it's like an expression but in a deeper way he's making another point a much more troubling point what is the bachohan what is the right of the firstborn so remember before there were kohanim the bachur was the one who was the designated person to devote his life to the service of god every frequency just to give you a totally non-jewish analogy there used to be a tradition among irish families that the firstborn son had to be a priest and the second son would be a policeman and the third one be a fireman right those were the irish professions well the hog deal i don't mean to make a real comparison here but l'havdiel the firstborn of the family was to be the servant of god who brought the corbanos et cetera and by right that belongs to asaph because although yaakov anderson were twins asap came out first asap came out first so yaakov wants to buy this privilege and what asap says is what do i need this privilege for what does it mean i'm going to die meaning to say after my physical life there is nothing there is no allah there is no judgment there is no accountability there is no reward all there is is the life of the body and if your attitude is all there is is this body and that's it then the only logical response is eat drink and be merry for tomorrow we will die so asap is making a very very powerful net albeit negative theological statement for a person who believes there is no existence after the physical there is no need for any type of service of god so asap represents the idea that the only thing that matters in life is pleasure money power ego asap represents the hedonistic materialism that sees no room in life for god or even if one has a little bit of a formal relationship with god it'll be you know 20 minutes on sunday that's what asap represents ishmael is a very different picture ishmael is obsessed with god in different ways think about the arab fundamentalist who says as they drive their car into a crowd or as they blow themselves up with suicide bombs you know the arabs the muslims at least they're the muslim arabs they pray five times a day they have circumcision that was given all the way back to avraham's time they are very macbeth they are very particular about modesty and snails they're very connected to a sense of worship of god but what they do is they hijack god and they pervert him and use him for evil and violent place very very different asaph represents the denial of god and the emphasis on hedonistic materialism ishmael represents religious passion that is misdirected in destructive and immoral ways so now with that understanding the vilnigan's remarks are so brilliant the vilmagone is suggesting and again i can't identify which 35 nations are this and which are that but he's actually talking about the idea that there are two different forces that are hitting us in other words the challenges that we face are coming from two directions on one hand we have western civilization which is really a sub in fact according to ghazal rome is descended from asa which emphasizes money power ego self-advertisement hedonistic materialism and then the other hand the other danger that we face which which again there are midrashim that say this is the most dangerous goddess that we face before mashiach is a religious fanaticism that invokes the name of god but at the same time uses the name of god to perpetrate violence and destruction and development on the gun is suggesting that we're going to be buffeted by these two forces the koat of asaf and the kawak of ishmael now pirket rabbi eliaser says an interesting point this is a message that although in the book of daniel we always talk about the four exiles babylon persia greece and rome and rome represents western civilization in fact pakistan says there will be a fifth exile before mashiach comes and that'll be the exile of ishmael which you know we are facing now where so much of the world is held in hostage by islamic fundamentalism again hashem because of covet the arabs also get a little scared and they're not getting involved so much but but still there's still a very very uh you know negative atmosphere in in many many circles and the pregnant rabbi eleazar says that the gulles of ishmael will be the most difficult enemy to defeat why because there's only two nations that have the name of god in their very name israel el alaflamin hashem's name israel you have excelled with god and yeshua god will listen and that represents the idea that a7 and all the other enemies they come with physical force and as a result they can be defeated in physical or political means but the ishmael comes with certain spiritual powers we might call this dark spiritual energy even though it's for nefarious ends whether it's through prayer or circumcision or sneeze and therefore yeshmael cannot be defeated militarily or politically is can only be defeated in spiritual ways if you think about this this actually makes a lot of sense even from a political standpoint you know for the 50 years or so following world war ii the period that was called the cold war until the collapse of the soviet union so both the united states and the soviet union were engaged in an arms race in which they were accumulating nuclear weapons and the theory behind building up nuclear arsenal was a theory that went by the abbreviation of the acronym man mad is mutual a short destruction what's the slora you're not going to try to destroy me because you know that if you try to destroy me i'm going to destroy you and since you don't want to get destroyed you're not going to destroy me so the concept would be my ability the us's ability to destroy russia would guarantee that the the soviet union won't attack us and from the russian standpoint it was the same thing their ability to destroy the us was a guarantee the us wouldn't attack them now that only works when you have an enemy who doesn't want to die right given the fact that the russians they say it wasn't soviet union they didn't want to die so they're not going to attack but what if you have an enemy who glorifies death who is willing to be most or nephesh for whatever their cause is who considers death to be the most noble thing that could possibly be there's no way you can stop them how do you deter them what you just increase police increase soldiers well remember two years ago or so uh there were terrorists who were just driving cars and ramming their cars and in the train like kevita kalas stations how are you to stop that there's no way you can stop it so avada we have great tremendous amount of gratitude to the army and to the police but by definition they're dealing with a fundamentally impossible situation and this is exactly what the madras is alluding to when it says that ultimately the defeat of ishmael can only occur through spiritual means not physical means and that's why it's so difficult because it really calls upon us to counter their negative spiritual energy with spiritual energy of our own so that's what the villenegon means when he says claud israel has two existential threats one is the threat of hedonism and materialism atheism and the other is the threat of religious fanaticism now to take this one step further i would like to suggest that these two negative forces are not only referring to things outside of us but they actually coexist within our own personalities as individuals so for example when i don't want to get up to governing i'd rather sleep or i'd rather not learn or i'd rather not do mitzvahs because i want to do something that's more pleasurable for me that's the coach of asav in me that's talking the ace that says forget about god enjoy life have a good time that's all that matters that's all that matters eat drink and be merry that's the ace of within conversely when i sit on my throne and i look down at other jews and i say oh they're not serving god properly they're up because them they're heretics they're infidels although that's not a word that we use right you may be thinking you're speaking from from the perspective of its addict in fact you're speaking from the perspective of ishmael who uses the religious fanaticism to look down at others to destroy others to consider them not to be worthy you know again i hasten to add in no no way am i drawing a moral comparison between jews who look down at other jews and suicide bombers obviously they are not morally equivalent in any possible way but but at a certain deep root level they share a common feature of looking down at other people and considering them to be unworthy this is yetzhat and i'm sorry this is asav and this is yeshua so now with this long introduction let me segue back to the nisa hamayum and that is rebecca one of the great great commentaries in the church makes the point that it says unto hillary ah in god you have put us through fire and water so uber bachelor brings a mattress that says fire is called asaf and water is called yeshua right that's the symbolism both of them can destroy you both of them can drown you fire can destroy you water can suffocate you barnum i am israel so based on that rebecca says the following when we pour wine on the mizbayach wine is the color red red is fire so the wine is connected asap so the whole year we simply say that asa will come back to god and do but sukkos we are approaching so to speak the total eradication of evil by the seventy kaparin and sukkos the whole festival is a rammus to the future gaoula and the last step of the future gaoula will not only be the destruction of asav or asa coming back to god when i say destruction of asia i mean ace of doing chuva but it will also be ishmael doing cuba and therefore the nisa hamayam is a remiss to ishmael yayan is asaf because it's and mayam is ishmael so now you can see that if you understand that symbolism what type of joy is connected to the pouring of the water because it basically says there will be unity there will be completion that all of the evil will vanquish it will be the ultimate triumph of goodness that even the binet ishmael that hate us and don't acknowledge ours to eric israel will eventually do truman as broke hashem as i mentioned earlier uh the bahrain and the emirates peace treaty might actually be a very significant step in that particular direction so that was answer number one that's a bit long now i'll give you enter number two which is uh shorter and a bit more digestible and this is from the great rosh yeshiva rav khutner and rafner says the following what is the spiritual origin of nisa hamayam so it says that on the second day of creation god made a rakia a rakia means a firmament that separated between the lower waters on earth and the heavenly waters in shamayim right the waters were separated by the atmosphere so to speak so the medrash tells us whatever this means exactly that the lower waters complain to god and the lower waters said why have you separated us from you why have you made us distant why are we estranged so hashem on the second day of creation made a promise to the water in which he said there will come a time in which you will be reunited with your heavenly source by being you'll be gathered from the spring you will be poured on the altar and be brought back to akadesh park and that is the source of the mitzvah of hamayam to allow the mayama tactonium to allow the lower waters to become reunited with the upper one right that's a measure says raf whitner this is a beautiful mushroom we are that water because what you see with nizohamayam is no matter how far and distant you have gone from god you have the capacity to be reunited that's what these waters were these waters were separated and they came back remember our neshamas are a helicopter god breathed into our so into our bodies our neshama and the bellatanya explains and it's hard to understand this that the soul of a jew maybe every human being that's a bit of a debate is not a created entity god created the soul whatever the animal soul of a dog or a cat or a cow right god said let there be cows so cows have life a human soul was not created by god saying let there be a human soul the human soul was created by god breathing into us a soul now that is an enormously significant distinction because as the zora hakade says when i breathe into you i am like mouth-to-mouth resuscitation i am giving you part of my life force you see the point the soul is not created by god the soul is god now what that means is this is a matter of controversy because what does that mean oh my god obviously i'm not god right you know what does that mean exactly but the phrase is a very very commonly used phrase in all of the suffrage khasidas and kabbalah and the truth is even among the misnak says the very same thing with the talmud of the bill nadam as a result the balatanya writes when the neshama is cut off from its source of being connected to god the pain is unimaginable we don't even understand it on a conscious level what it's like for aneshuma to be in exile and yet when we do have arrows we build up walls of separation that block us from connecting what reminds us is no matter how far and distant you become from god you now have the chance to be reconnected and that is why it is such a profound source of joy because what happened to the water is what happens to us in the aftermath of yom kippur i think i mentioned before you know there's a common phrase that all of us use called kira for hokkien pure verhokum means that if somebody is not keeping mitzvos they don't keep the torah they are far from hashem so we draw them near by teaching them by encouraging them and this is a common phrase to be matarev the person that is rahab but interestingly enough the bhava chareby did not like that phrase laventure evie says why do you say the person is far from that every jew is near to god some people know it some people don't know it so maybe you can teach a person to appreciate his closeness to god but you're not taking him from a fireplace to a near place in a sense the rebbe is teaching and we said this earlier before that shiva is not about changing we use the vocabulary of changing but again look at the word of shuver means returning returning means you're coming back where you already were you're not becoming somebody else a jew doesn't have to become close to god a jew merely has to return to what he really is inside and that's why they even say there's sometimes a sense of deja vu sometimes a person is exposed to something in the torah that they never heard before they think and it seems like familiar deja vu because it's imprinted in their neshama that's who they are that's who they are so now let me just say a thought about hakapos akavos ceremony of walking around seven times so hakopos are also connected to this idea the swarm tell us that when yeshua and the jewish people conquered the first city in israel that they conquered and that was of course the city of eureka what did they do they walked around the city once every day for six days and on shabbos they walked around seven days i'm sorry seven times seven times and the walls collapsed so hakufa in circling connotes obliteration of walls and barriers fact some say very beautifully that this is why at a wedding a color walks around the hassan seven times because among human beings there are always going to be barriers we have different backgrounds we've lived their lives differently and the kala is praying so to speak that at this moment of union all of the barriers that separate human beings should collapse of course people ask a question so why is it that the kala walks around the hassan let the hustle walk around the column the answer is for good or for bad i'm not saying it should be this way but lamai says this way it is often the wife who works harder on creating shogun bias she invests more time more effort again i'm not saying this is the way it should be actually maybe it shouldn't be that way but on the other hand the minute is understanding the reality of life and therefore she is the one who obliterates the barriers of separation so you see why hakopos are the culmination of the whole yamnarayam we've done sugar we've experienced success and now we walk around seven times so the walls of separation that separate us from god should be obliterated but let me just end with a very very beautiful observation from robbie sullivan university you know we do our cafes on simkastora or smithseris but we also did hakavos the day before on hoshanah rabbah we also walked around the bhima seven times right early in the morning and your salvation pointed out that these sacraments are done differently on shana rabba we walk around with the lulav and esrog and we encircle the torah where someone's holding the term in the middle on simchas torah we walk around with the torah and we're encircling the bhima there is no torah in the middle at least in the traditional hakovas so rashik says there are two stages in collapsing the barriers lula vanessa represent mitzvos doing god's will so there's a stage one in the stage two stage one is by doing hashem's mitzvos this will enable us to connect to his torah because ghazal tell us without yerest shamayim without obedience to hashem the torah is not going to penetrate your heart and is not going to elevate your soul so how do i connect to the torah by doing mitzvos like lula vanessa that's stage one but then there's a stage too the mitzvos enable me to connect the torah but the torah enables me to connect to god so the akavas of simkas torah is a dance around god not a dance around the torah we're not dancing around the torah again i'm not referring to the dancing people do later i'm referring to the formal ceremony of akafus which people sometimes don't pay attention to that's very important the formal ceremony of hakapos i am not going around i am not dancing around the torah i am dancing with the torah around the vacant bhima that represents the so what is that about if through mitzvos i connect to torah through torah i connect to hashem and the vilmagone indeed says that the dance of the kapha is the dance around the shekinah that is also going to be an attribute of messianic ages that's why we don't realize this we don't really realize how sacred the hakapos are you know of course we're supposed to sing and dance and and rejoice but one should understand that it's a very serious type of rejoicing that's why you know those of you who are familiar with uh the nursery feel of the tune but we'll note that on some kashminitsaras there are snatches of yamim narayan tunes that the now a lot of people think that's shtick they think that's parody oh you take the tunes of the solemn days and you bring it into the joyous days it's like it's like parody but it's not that at all it's really saying there is something of the holiness of rosh hashanah yom kippur in the unrestrained joy of story like they say that somebody complained to the hadushi irim that they weren't honored with the hakapha they were not given the sacred torah to hold the fiduciary said are you sure you want to do that because you know when a person makes an oath in a bastion the most severe oath is an oath that you make when you hold the sacred torah says when you dance with the torah and subhas torah you are making a shivoha to hashem that you will live by this torah amazing so this says maybe you're lucky you didn't get it you know we take it for granted uh let me just send with one final story and then then we'll break you know uh there are two great honors that that we give for elios on simcoe torah one is the one that's given the honor to finish the torah and then the honor of hassan gracias the one that is given the honor to begin the torah anew uh they tell a story about uh boys in the yeshiva who were not dancing in simcoe store they were just sitting at the sidelines they weren't doing anything and their rebbe said why don't you rejoice and the boy said quite honestly listen rabbi we don't learn so much we don't uh we're not so connected to the torah so it's almost like a chutzpah what gives us the right to sing and dance with the torah when we really don't live by the torah the way that we should so the remy said that's a big mistake because let's go back to the two honors of khasan torah and hassan brazil's there are different customs but at least in the yeshiva world khasantore is given normally to the either the biggest thomas hakam or the roshi shiva or the like you know your customer was given to a very special person because in voracious you may give uh you know to anybody who who pays the price again some christine have an opposite orientation but in the literature world khasantara is a more question of covet now look at the difference here khasantara is a celebration of accomplishment what you've done so as a result who do we honor with ontario the person who accomplished because kassentory is about accomplishment question gracious there's been no accomplishments yet huss embraces is about promise it's about potential so even if you're not such a great thomas you know what this year can be different there can be potential there can be renewal so the reshiva told us to meet him even if you guys are not hussantorus because you didn't accomplish as much as you could have accomplished you can rejoice as a husband braces because it's a new year there are new potentialities new opportunities and you can rejoice in that so again uh i wish everybody a shout out to a good and a sweet year a year of good health a year of redemption a year of of braha a year in which all of us will feel the loving presence of hashem thank you [Music] is