Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: Accepting G-ds Torah out of Love

[Music] okay hi everybody good to see you uh nice and cold it reminds me of uh new england winters so we feel a little bit uh back to my childhood and uh tonight's uh here is again spontaneous lomo and again we welcome the parents and uh we're very very happy that you are with us and hashem should give you much comfort and a refuge leima to benjamin ben manukha bayla and gershon benbayla it should be israel and also this year tonight is sponsored by a dedicated and generous anonymous donor so well we thank whoever you are you know who you are and uh we are grateful and finally uh ibanez all of us want to thank those who have contributed to the matanotli of yongnim fund for purim this will help so many people uh rabbi poston informs me that they have reached 30 of the goal so that's significant but less than half there is a link below in the youtube description box for those who still wish to contribute and uh once again please indicate whether you're a you shall i am poor in person or a non-usual important person do you keep boredom on thursday or friday because that will determine where the money will be uh distributed and yes hashem in the merit of matano's leaving that's a great that's not only general stukka but the specific mitzvah purim we qualified to a yeshua needless to say we are living in very very dangerous times obviously the people in the ukraine are at the greatest risk but the problem is in these types of conflagrations things can very very easily spread and in ways that are very unpredictable the whole world might get involved god forbid in various ways so we need the yeshua fakadesh barco at this particular juncture in time truth is we always need it but sometimes we become more aware of it than other times and maybe it's fortuitous that purim is coming exactly at this dangerous moment because there was another time where we faced a very dangerous moment and purim was the day of salvation and redemption and we hope israel hashem that it should be so this year as as as well uh what i want to do is i want to do two things tonight i hope i'll be able to get both things in uh one is i actually want to share an interesting observation on the parsha nothing to do with purim but it's it's interesting it's interesting enough i hope that i want to share it with you and then i want to continue some thoughts on torium which will be building on what we talked about last week so these are two totally dis connected pieces uh and let's do it one at a time with respect to the parsha you know parshas vayikra and parsha sav first and second part of aygra deal with highly technical material they deal with all sorts of corbanos and the truth is i i happen to enjoy the extremely technical details of carbanos and uh indeed we have intricate masektos of the gemara that deal with all of this but i'm not going to put you through that right now uh maybe there'll be other theorem that will have the occasion but they want to share a more general vort they tell the story about the balatanya the first rebbe the altar rebe that he once uh had a student who was associating with people that were not such good influences so the alto rebbe said you shouldn't hang around with these people they're going to take you away from mitzvos take you away from the voters hashem avoid negative destructive influences in your life make sense so the young man had a very brilliant uh response he said rebbe i'm not a person that's influenced by anybody after all i was with you for so many years and i didn't change so i'll be with these people i'm not going to change meaning i'm not going to get better i'm not going to get worse i'm impervious to being influenced so the same way you know i didn't get influenced by you i'm not going to get influenced by them so the audience said you're making a big mistake there's a tremendous difference between kedusha holiness and tuma and we see it in the following way when the torah describes a sin offering a carpentratis right this is the offering that you bring for certain sins so it mentions that once the animal is shifted and you have the meat anything that touches that meat is holy that's what it says but ghazal say it doesn't mean anything that touches the meat meaning if one piece of meat coolant regular meat touches meetup it doesn't become holy but rather it means if you cook a piece of meat with kratos meat so through the cooking process it absorbs the taste of the hot dust then you have to treat the non-consecrated meat as if it's cuddo she could only be eaten by kohanim it could only be eaten in the courtyard of the mishkan or the basa mikdos it can only be eaten for a day and a night and if it's left over after a day or a night it has to be burnt in other words even though the torah's language is anything that touches the khattas gets the sanctity of the khattas khazal teach us it doesn't mean it actually touches the oh it touches but it means it's cooked with the khattas so it absorbs the taste then and only then does it have the halachot of a khattas that only kohanim can eat it it has to be eaten in the in the michigan and it becomes no sir no sir means if it's left over it has to be burnt now let's take the same example instead of carbon and non-corbin let's say you had a piece of meat that was tummy because it touched a dead body or it touched a dead animal or whatever it is and a tame piece of meat touches a tahar piece of meat the halaqa is conveyed by mere touching so you see a very interesting hashem you see a very interesting paradox the holiness of akhatas is only transferred by a cooking process the impurity of something tame can be transferred by casual touching so what do we see we see from here it is easier to be influenced in a negative way than to be influenced in a positive way to be influenced by kedusha casual contact is not enough you have to be cooked you have to be marinated you have to be immersed and then you absorb holiness but tuma even casual contact can drag you down so the bellatonia says the fact that you weren't influenced by me just means you weren't marinated but with respect to bad influences even a casual contact will drag you down and therefore your ingenious argument is not true which again reminds us of you know really an obvious point but in a very clever way that we have to be very very careful about negative influences in our lives we're certainly worried about that for our children but i've said many times before that we sometimes misdefine what our negative influence like we might say oh um i can't let my child play with the neighbor because they rely on hetero makira during shemitah now granted even if you don't want your child to eat hatred when you tell your child that doesn't render them bad people that doesn't render them bad influences on the other hand when there's a kisaron in midos they're angry they're selfish they're egotistical they're insulting they put down other jews that's something got to be careful about so sometimes i think in our polarized culture we are not defining properly what is a true bad influence and what is you know something that you negotiate around but it's not necessarily a bad influence so that's one thing to think about the second point i want to share with you is a carbon jar this again it's about a corbin gratis a sin offering is this uh is the carbon that you bring for certain serious alveros right for example if i desecrated shabbos inadvertently if i did it on purpose i don't bring corbanos the punishment might be the death penalty or something but if i didn't know it was shabbos or i mistakenly thought i'm allowed to do something on shabbos and i did it and then i find out that it was sinful so there's something called a karban khatus a sin offering that i bring that gives me atonement only if i also repent together with chu but without chuba it doesn't work now what if i'm not sure if i did in aveda meaning let's assume that shabbos is over let's imagine i'll make up time 6 30. and i thought it was already 7 30 and i did malacha but now i discover not that i vod i desecrated shabbos but i discover that i may have done melaka 6 29 or maybe i did at 6 31. now i can't bring a sin offering because you bring a sin offering only when you know you did an aveira so what do you do when you don't know but you might have done enough era so here too there's actually a carbon that the torah says that you bring and this is called a sham taloi asham taloy means a guilt offering for taloy for doubt now an asham taloy only helps you until you find out if after i brought the asham taloy i then find out for sure i did a sin i have to bring a corbin khattas if i found out i didn't sin well the ashram taloi was technically superfluous but but i brought it i can't i can't take it back so all of this is very clear right the difference between us both of them are sacrifices but khattas is brought when you know for sure that you sinned and now is brought when you're not sure if you sinned and it covers you until you discover that you sinned or didn't sin if you didn't sin you're fine and if you sinned you still must bring a korban khattas an ashram does not take away the fear of a corbin contest okay all of that is clear but here is the thing with respect to ajatas there is no minimum value that the khattas is worth you could bring a small goat to small shape even if it only cost you a dollar it's perfectly valid whatever you bring assuming it's the right animal and it's without blemish it has to be without blemish it's going to be valid the torah does not obligate it to have a certain value but with respect to an asham taloi the torah says it has to be two soloyan to sheckle again don't don't think about sheckle today two shekels of the torah is considerable amount of money so here's the problem what possible logic would necessitate that an asham talloy should be more expensive than ahatas an ashram talloy in a worst-case scenario i committed a sin but if i knew i committed a sin i would only bring a minimal value so where maybe i sinned maybe i didn't how could the korban for a suffix be more khamor more strict than the korban for avada right doesn't make sense because the worst thing that could be in the case of the suffolk is i committed the sin if i committed the sin i can get by with a minimal carbon so ribenu yaina in shari chuba offers a very very beautiful explanation rebelliona says that part of what brings a person to chuva is their inner recognition as to the enormity of what they did wrong now granted we're not supposed to be depressed we're not supposed to kind of be broken because then we can't move on but a person has to take average seriously in the sense of remorse uh regrets for what i did and resolution to move on but that requires that we take it seriously if i simply say ah it's not a big deal so mimaila rebellion says like this when a person knows that he sinned then he realizes he did a very bad thing so his remorse is naturally going to be great hashem accepts a smaller penance the carbon can be minimal because the chuva of your heart is strong and complete and deep but when you don't know that your sin you can keep on telling yourself you know i probably did melaka 631 instead of 629 it probably wasn't shabbos a person kind of rationalizes to himself that they didn't do anything wrong when you rationalize to yourself you didn't do anything wrong your chuba is not really sincere you're hedging your bets and therefore hashem requires a greater punishment a greater ownish a greater penance than would be required had you had the requisite regret so regret remorse sincerity of truva takes the place of punishment and mitigates the punishment machine cane when you don't have that sense of regret or remorse then god forbid the punishment is sometimes going to be greater and that explains the paradox of why the asham taloi actually has to cost more than a khatas one other interesting about asham taloy that's interesting although an asham taloi does not take away the obligation of the khattas when you discover that you sinned yom kippur actually does by that i mean the following if a person committed did something and he doesn't know if he committed ascent and he's high of an ashram tulloy but he didn't get around to bring it to yom kippur cancels out the need for ashram taloy although yom kippur will never cancel out the kiev of a korban khattas again that these are jurashos there's a whole message of gomorrah very very fascinating massachusetts that unless you do daffy ome many people never get to although it's a very very interesting maseratis this is masakis krisis that deals with all of the laws of khatas and all of the laws of asham taloi so you'll see the mishnais increases and you'll see that the kawak of yom kippur replaces the need for asham taloi even though it does not replace the need for a carbon gates okay so those were the two observations i wanted to share with you from parsha sav dealing with the laws of corbin khadis but now to return to our discussion of purim and this will somewhat overlap with last week this is kind of really part two of last week and let me start with a very fascinating explanation of the villenegon when harmon decreed that the jewish people would be destroyed so mordecai and esther gathered the jews to fast and to pray tomorrow we're observing a time this esther in commemoration of those fasts so mordecai wanted some type of sign from heaven that god would redeem the jewish people and what he did was he stopped children coming out of haider and he asked them tell me the verse that you learned today the idea is that out of the mouths of babes that somehow the verse that they learnt would be a message from hashem that we tell them good news or bad news so mordechai stops child number one what did you learn today so child number one said that possible the actually but all three verses are the ones that are after eleno although many most of us do not say them but the first verse is from um do not be afraid of a sudden terror and of the calamity of the evil-doers shall surely come upon them meaning don't be afraid of the terror because there will be a calamity on these roshan sounds good hashem then he asks child number two because he wants to have a kazakh he wants to create a pattern child number two says again this is all f in eleno utsu eights of issue for this is in fact a popular purim song utsu eights of the super they engage in conspiracies and it shall be annulled da bru dav or velo yokom they speak against us and it shall not endure ki imanu kale because hashem is with us wow also sounds good but mordechai wanted three times to be sure that this is not a fluke and the third child quotes again these are all from ishayahu adzik adseva nihou i am with you from ancient times ani i will carry you and i will rescue you so when mordechai heard these three mordechai felt hashem had given them a message that the jewish people will be saved so the vilmagone has a very interesting comment on the significance of these three sukim our encounter with amalek attacking us appears three times in tanakh the very first time was when amalek attacked us as soon as we left mitsuram they were the very first nation that attacked us remember we rashi brings the muscle from the medrish that the jewish people were like a scalding hot bath when we left mithrim everybody was afraid of them the ten makos they knew you don't mess with the jews amalek jumped into the bath they got burnt but they cooled off the bath for the next guy they removed the aura of invincibility they demonstrated to the world that you know you can fight the jewish nation yeah we lost but we put up a fight you can put up a fight maybe you'll win so the first encounter with amalek was sudden not only unprovoked but also unexpected the vilnigan says the first pasak is a remiss to the first attack of amalek and that's called pakhat pisum means sudden unprovoked unexpected in other words the first passage is reassuring mordechai by looking to the past remember the pachad pithsome of the first attack and it's called pison because nobody dared attack you it was totally unexpected and by by looking at the past that gives you be talking for the future now the second time a molecule attacked us is also in the torah but it's really not that explicit in the 40th year of the desert the last year our own died roshav by the way this is the only yard site that is recorded in the hamish one needs to have a reason for that meaning to say uh you know we know moshe abano died on the 7th of audrey but that's not recorded we don't know or we know from mid-russian but from the hamish we don't know when avraham is died we know how old they were but we don't know any particular date miriam as well the only person whose date is explicitly recorded in the homich as a date of the month is arun akoen who died rosh chodesh of of the 40th year in the desert now when aaron died the clouds of glory that are protecting us dispersed they spread we lost them because the man came in the merit of moshe the water came in the merit of miriam the anonym came in the merits of iran when aaron died we lost the anonymous and then it says we were attacked by the canaanites and moshe pray to hashem if you give me if you deliver this nation unto us you know we will give thanks to hashem so rashi brings an interesting medrash that these were not canaanites that attacked us these were amalekites that attacked us and since they remembered that they were defeated the first time by moshe's prayer they decided to disguise themselves as canaanites so when moshe prays to hashem deliver us from the canaanites the prayer is going to be ineffective because they're actually amalekites moshe suspected there was a ruse or a disguise didn't know for sure and that's why he prayed to hashem if you deliver this nation to our hands whoever they are so it turns out that the first attack was an attack that was sudden and unexpected the second attack was through a ruse and a subterfuge that's the second passage utsu eights of his soulfire they will engage in conspiracies tricks subterfuges that will be enough so the vilna gown says the first pasuk is a remis to the first encounter with amalek in the mid bar the second passage is a reference to the second encounter of amalek in the mid bar utsu eights of the suffer so again pasek one and passage two are reassurances based on the past now what about the third blessing the third plastic is the third encounter with amalek and that is in the days of haman haman is a descendant now we're not counting by the way you may think well why am i skipping all the way to haman what about the war of sha'al against amalek where he failed to kill god we're not counting that because that was our aggression in other words there are three places in tanakh where amalek attacked us war against amalek was we attacked amolex we're not counting that one but the third war of aggression of amalek against us is haman and here the gemara magilla says the medra says rather that when haman was plotting against the jewish people so some of his advisers told him you know don't mess with the jews they're very powerful god loved their god is very powerful he protected them in egypt et cetera so haman's argument is their god is very old that was a long time ago he cannot protect them anymore after all he let the first bashar mikdush be destroyed he let the jewish people be exiled in haman's warps way of thinking that is because the god of the jews is in retirement he can no longer do the old things he used to do so what does pasek gimmel say i am old i was with you in ancient times and i'm still around so mamela the villain says quite beautifully each pasuk is it is corresponding to the particular encounter with amalek the pachad pison the sudden fear the unexpected fear is the first attack of amalek where nobody expected this would happen the second which is through subterfuge masquerade on disguise is the utsuhitsa the conspiracy and the third which is the most important for mordecai because that's the present situation is that god says i may be old but i have i am not impaired right i've been around a long time but i can still get the job still get the job done okay so what i want to do is i want to add a little bit i want to build on the bill nagon's insight if you remember the main idea that we were talking about last week is that although amalek is an external enemy that wants to destroy the jewish people the power that amalek gets comes from defects within us that make us vulnerable to amalek it's the inner amalek that empowers and enables the outer amalek and consequently the swarm tell us that when the torah gives us a mitzvah to eradicate amalek now as i said last week today we do not fulfill that mitzvah literally because we don't know who our mulek is we may have our suspicions but we don't know for sure so we don't go around killing people unless they're actively threatening us in other words i can't go up to a person who's not threatening me and say oh you're a mother i'm going to kill you if he's threatening me that's the law of roe dave even if he's not on my leg i could kill him okay so the swarm akitaishim say that although we do not actively try to eradicate external amounts unless they're actively fighting against us there is a mitzvah to eradicate the internal amalek and that itself will disable and disenfranchise the outer amolex so i mentioned last week that there are two pigamim two defects in our character that make us vulnerable to amalek the first is coldness and lack of passion this is a review a little bit in avodah hashem that even if a person does mitzvos even if a person learns torah and it's a dover pashut better to learn torah and do missus without passion than not to do it at all that's for sure but still that's the kawakawa mullah tamalek is coldness indifference complacency boredom doing things out of habits how do we know that that is a source of amalek's power from the words which we read last week in parashat sachar a shark a molecule made you cold now rashi interprets that in reference to the hot bath that's rashi rabb sadok says it refers to the coldness of the heart lack of passion the second padam is hatred and polarization among jews because amalek does represent unbridled hatred when we have disunity when we have hatred including indifference between jews we become vulnerable to the hatred of amalek when we have a vatican then we have a great protection from amalek now where do we see this we see this from a teaching of the government bhava basra that amalek can only be eradicated by the children of raqqa and not the children of leia and that is why the first king of israel who was given the commandment to eradicate amalek was well well first of all in the desert itself the one who led the war against amalek was yeshua binon from the tribe of ephraim who is yosef's son who is from raqqa we find that the king who was given the commandment to eradicate amalek although he didn't do it completely was sha'al from the tribe of binyamin from raqqa mordechai and esther are descendants of sha'al and they were the ones who orchestrated the downfall of muhammad and in many ways they rectified the sin of sha'al who didn't kill ag they killed arg's descendants and finally the enigmatic figure which really deserves a share of his own mashiach ben yosef who precedes mashiach ben david one of the roles of mashiach ben yosef is to eradicate amalek and pave the way for mashiach ben david and all of this is based on the teaching that amalek can be eradicated only by the children of rochelle now why is it sometimes yosef and sometimes binyamin that i don't know but all of the downfall of amalek is connected to rakhel more than leia and the reason is because all of leia's children as well as well as the maidservants are tainted with the hatred they showed yosef in selling yosef and as a result because they are tainted with hatred they become vulnerable to hatred of amalek on the other hand her children are not tainted with that blemish number one yosef was the victim binyamin was not involved in the mekira and raquel herself exemplifies a selfless love in giving up her identification signs the night of her wedding so that leia could take her place without being humiliated so raquel represents the paradigm of love without hatred and that gives her gives her children an immunity from amalek so it turns out we have these two defects which require our eradication coldness and indifference in avodah hashem and sinatrina so here is the point that i think is very interesting if you look at the encounter the three encounters of amalek you see that each one is based on one of these defects the first encounter of amalek in the desert that's where the words actually appear are shark they made you cold so the the initial encounter of amalek was because of the pagam because of the defect of coldness and indifference so the first attack is based on the pagam the defect of kreerut haleif coldness of the heart the second i'm sorry the second mukhama which was 40 years later is connected to sinatrinam how do i know that this is not bearish but here is the association our own dies disperse amalek attacks us iran's meda is always described as o'haib shalom the lover of peace the pursuer of peace aron was the one who fostered in ami israel a mutual love a camaraderie a togetherness when aaron died there was a urethra there was a diminution of that israel that's why we lost the ananeha covert because we were no longer worthy of the clouds that represent peace and shalom and unity so it turns out and that's why i'm all that could attack us so it turns out the first time amalak attacked us was because of kriya saleef the second time a mullet attacked us was because of a lack of avast israel and disunity so of the two defects which make us vulnerable to amalek the first attack is based on defect number one and the second attack is based on defect number two we now come to the third encounter which is the encounter of purim on purim you see in the purim story in the megillah that claudia israel was guilty of both problems and that made them vulnerable to amalek as a double whammy a combination of the coldness of the heart and a certain separation we often connect to the destruction of the second temple but you see a disunity even here which is the tail end of the 70 years of the babylonian exile let's first look at the sinister because this we pointed out last week and i'm going to repeat something it's well known that the name of hashem is never mentioned in mcgill esther and that's connected to the notion of concealment and hiding god's presence is hidden there are no supernatural miracles there are no supernatural miracles in mcgill us esther hashem is running things through concealment through a mask right and that's why the name of him isn't mentioned and yet it's known that the zayar haqqadaj tells us that whenever it says the word melech it means true but it also is a reference to hashem double meaning higher meaning lower meaning so when it says for example that night the king could not sleep lower meaning had insomnia higher meaning the guardian of israel does not slumber or sleep hashem is awake looking after us right every passage you have to look at it that way so you'll remember when harman is making his case to achive why the jewish people ought to be eradicated so the first thing that he says is yes there is a nation that is scattered so let's analyze it lower meaning higher meaning lower meaning is human haman is saying to you because the jewish people are so widely dispersed among all of the 127 countries they are not concentrated they can't put up a fight and it will be easy see before he says the bad things about them he's simply saying they'll be easy to get rid of because there is no critical mass that's capable of organizing that's lower meaning higher meaning the spiritual power of haman which is amalek is saying to the melech hashem the jewish people are not deserving of redemption because their mefos are uma foreign they are scattered at its higher meaning the point is not that they are scattered geographically that makes no difference spiritually but they're scattered from each other sinner polarization indifference they have their cliques so it turns out according to that the kittruk the prosecution in shamayim against vinay israel was mephosa and mufarid being army which is the second achilles seal of amalek that we identified the idea that we become vulnerable to the sinner hatred of amalek when we ourselves are guilty of that sinner however you can also see that the jewish people were guilty of the coldness of the hearts which is the first bagam of amalek now this is again less obvious but let's go over this the gemaran megilda says that the talmudim of rabbi shimon bar yochai asked rafshim and the author of the zawah but this is in the gemara why were the jewish people worthy of destruction what sin did they commit that should make them so rabbi shimon bar gave an answer because when akashverosh made his huge banquet the third year of his reign many many jews participated in that banquet the nano they got pleasure from that meal and for that they were kayamies now the igmar then goes on and says that should only be a key of miso for the jews of shusha and they went to the banquet not jews from otherwise gave other answers but in terms of at least those who participated in the banquet they were high of misa because they got pleasure from the banquet right that's what the kumar is that's what you have shimon bayochrai says so the swaster ms asks i mean what did they do wrong they eat they ate trees they ate kazar they ate non-kosher food that's a very big of era but you know you're not high of misa you don't get the death penalty for violating the laws of kasras so how could you shimmer their misa because they got benefit from the party how is that a fee of misa so says this fascemas you'll note that the gemara does not say they were high of misa because they ate at the party the gemara says they were high of misa because they were nano they got pleasure from the party what's going on why did ahashverosh make a party the third year of his reign why so the gemaran megillah gives us a bit of a complicated structure i'm not going to go through all the details of the kashman but essentially the kashmir was this said the jewish people are going to be exiled for 70 years and then they will be redeemed and brought back to the land akhashverosh miscalculated when the 70 years start counting he started counting from an earlier point than he should have and based on his erroneous calculation the 70 years were up after two years into his reign so the jewish people should have been redeemed and if they weren't redeemed that means either god canceled the promise or god can't deliver so the party was a celebration of the belief that the jews are not going to be redeemed now the gemara goes through that he was wrong because if he would have counted the 70 years from a later point that didn't come yet that would come later and indeed the second temple was built in the reign of akash farish's son from esther daryovic so this was says when it says the jews got pleasure from the party it doesn't mean they got pleasure from the eating and drinking they got pleasure they were celebrating for the same reason achash was celebrating in other words okay who needs eric israel who needs a base of mikdash we are happy where we are that's the kinetic nano they got pleasure from the sauda because they were celebrating or at least they were happy for the same reason that is called complacency who needs eric israel who needs a base of mikhtash we're happy in shushan we have glad kosher uh i guess not chinese restaurants loud kosher persian restaurants uh pizza i guess they wouldn't have pizza i guess was probably not invented although i think the pizza was invented by chinese people not italians but whatever whatever it would be we don't need that you know why should we leave our comfortable homes and go to the barren eric israel then so mamela what makes us vulnerable is the coldness of the heart of not yearning for redemption so amazingly enough the villenegon's pattern fits so well the first attack of amalek is coldness of the heart the second attack of amalek is lack of actus the third attack of amalek is a combination of the coldness of the heart as seen in them enjoying the meaning of that banquet and lack of actors as seen in the kitchen of the prosecution mephozar um purim in other words is a more intense danger perhaps than the first two because purim combines not not purim itself but but the at the time of the megillah it combines the two dangers that make us extra vulnerable to amalek people don't realize we were in real danger we were in danger the lesson of the gemara is kalia we were guilty and deserving of being wiped out it wasn't like this was a fake threat this was a real threat and in shamayim there were bonus perhaps the jewish people should be wiped out it's only art shiva that saved us this is why when hashem finally redeems us from the kawak of amalek we have to address both defects both defects we address the sinatra because again when hashem saves you from amalek that tells you i must eradicate those defects that make me vulnerable to ammonia sinatrina is addressed by mitzvos like my notes food gifts matanosli of yonim sadaka to the poor what is that about compassion reaching out bridges of friendship that's a tikkun for the actress for the lack of access what is the tecon what is the rectification for the coldness of the heart so here again it's a little less obvious but it's very very true purim is a day of accepting hashem's torah how is that so the gemara in shabbos tells us that at mount sinai hashem held the mountain over our heads and he said if you accept the torah that's great if you don't i'll crush you so we were forced into it and purim we accepted out of love what we had previously accepted out of fear and coercion so we sometimes don't realize that a very important aspect of purim is accepting god's torah out of love what is the difference between one who does something out of fear and one who does something out of love answer i mean many differences actually but one answer might be the relative level of enthusiasm you bring to your task when you do something out of fear you don't do it with passion you don't do it with enthusiasm you do it because you better do it or something bad is going to happen to you and you'll do as little as you need to get away with it when you accept the torah out of love you're filled with joy and enthusiasm that's exactly the opposite of the coldness of the hearts and now you see that we address if if indeed there are two spiritual flaws that make us vulnerable to amalek when hashem gives us a yeshua from amalek we have to rectify both of those laws we rectify the sinatrinam by mishlochmanot matanoslav and we rectify the complacency and coldness of the heart by accepting the torah out of love rather than out of fear and purim is isman of kabbalah satora biava okay so you can trace these pagamim in all three encounters of amalek and in purim we were vulnerable to both of them and we respond to both of them by the various mitzvos and rituals that we engage with on purim itself and it reminds us therefore very much that purim is a time for re-accepting hashem's torah in a joyous way it's also the case that purim is a very special day for tefila for prayer not just i don't just mean the regular dominating that we do but to set aside some time because it says the following on every uh when a person asks you for sadaka you are entitled to ask for some proof that they have a need do you have a letter from a rabbi or something i mean those are easy to get but still a person has to have some minimal proof unless they're asking for food if they're asking if you're carrying a bread and they say please give me a roll luckily you have to give them a roll because if somebody is asking for actual food god forbid they might drop dead you know if you don't give them something immediately but other than but if they're asking you for money you can always say do you have any verification but on purim is anyone who puts out his hands you give you don't have to give a lot but you have to give to everybody on pork uh little kids and you learned that very quickly that all these kids over to you they put out their hands and and and and the light so the demian the compa the analogy to prayer is the following the whole year when i pray to hashem hashem might look at my ledger and see does he really need this does he deserve it is he worthy of it just like i ask is the poor person worthy of the tsaka but on purim kalapashijad i put out my hands i get it so purim too is a time of prayer where god is very very very accessible to feel so it would be a concern but people are actually very busy on purim uh this year maybe even more so because in your shalom at least purim is friday uh the complexities of when you make your poor male are very very interesting uh the best thing to do uh i want to get into all the details is to make an early kind of a breakfast meal and finish by the middle of the day and that way you're not going to ruin your appetite for shabbos and you'll have a nice pouring meal but if one is interested in more complicated options there are ways of combining the purim and shabbos meal where you start your meal friday afternoon and you actually continue into shabbos and in the middle of your meal without benching you make a kiddish i don't want to go into all of the details there are exotic ways of doing it but the simplest way of doing it is to make a morning meal and then of course you have a big shiila because normally a pouring meal is supposed to be meat flake shakes but some people may have difficulty you know eating a heavy flaccid meal early so there are hetero for a morning meals to have a milk it's the same problem with the brisk by the way has the exact same problem a sudas mitzvah should normally be the most honorable thing which is a fancy felicia meal but if you're making a bris uh 7 30 in the morning some might have difficulty with flight checks so some will be allowed milking others are purists and they will have flagships uh no matter no matter what and the like although this reminds me of a story nothing to do with anything i'm talking about but it's it's a funny story and maybe you know it's poor him so maybe i could say a funny story there was a person who was supporting his two sons-in-law in colo and the condition was that every day he would give them a fancy meal a fancy lunch a big lunch so one he gave milkricks and one he gave flagships and the sons-in-law were always arguing who is more esteemed in the eyes of the schwer you know milk like your milk can be expensive you know fancy cheese and blitzes can also be a lot of money so one was saying i'm more question of the other you're more kosher whatever you know they were arguing over who has more covered here so what happened was that the father-in-law lost his money after a while and he couldn't afford meat he couldn't afford cheese blintzes so instead he gave them both potatoes but in order to fulfill his condition one guy got potatoes in a flay chick pot and one got potatoes in a milky butt they both were eating the same food but one was flay shake potatoes one was milk and potatoes so they were still fighting i'm more question because my potatoes are in a flay chick pot the other one said no i'm more kashaf because my potatoes are in a liquid pump so the father said listen when i gave you real meat and i gave you real milk so you could fight you know who's getting a better deal but when you're both getting potatoes potatoes in a flea chick pot are not any different than potatoes in a milky bun so some want to compare this in the machloks in between khasidam and misnogne you know in the time of the ville nagon when the hasidic movement began there was some real real significant philosophical religious differences the villenegon put the hasidic movements into serum excommunication and they were arguing over all sorts of ideas so today people say how come today we don't have those types of fights we do have fights between but spiritually they're very trivial the fights that they have which are very significant are over property they tend to be who owns this building who gets this show and they fight over it and the fights can be violent but they're not spiritual arguments their arguments over turf they're turf wars and even among christine themselves there's a lot of turf wars but spiritual debates about simpson and the like yeah nobody does that today so he said like this that's the idea when there were real hasidim and real miss nagdam it was like meat and then dairy people could fight today you know hasidim our potato there are potatoes they have a little acidic taste and there are potatoes that have misng taste it's all potatoes it's all potatoes there's nothing to fight over other than turf wars which are you know are not of really any type of spiritual value at all right so that just reminded me of the uh of the potato thing okay um but be this at may purim is a great great smile of tefila and this really brings an interesting perspective about tinus ester and this is a fascinating idea tinus ester is very different than any other fast we observe every fast putting aside young kipper but you know the these are fasts that are commemorating tragedies these are facts that are commemorating bad difficult experiences that we had and therefore there is an undercurrent in these fast days of sadness and mourning and grieving tightness esther is exactly the opposite time is esther is a fast of success it reminds us that when the jews turned to hashem and they fasted and they did shuffle hashem listens to their prayers in other words this is a fast day that even in the fast day there is joy and happiness okay very very fascinating this is a fast that shows us that fasting works it's not a fast over tragedy it's a fast that averted tragedy and therefore this is a fast way that we can have a great deal of simrah in fact the shame ishmael says a beautiful idea this explains an interesting halacha if the ninth of ab falls out on shabbos so we fast on sunday we fast afterwards we don't fast early and the reason we don't fast early is we don't want to bring on tragedy prematurely if tinus esther falls out on shabbos we fast on thursday not on friday because you don't want to entertain us back we fast on thursday so how come tish above we push forward time this esther we go backwards the answer is very simple you don't move tish above forward because we don't want to bring on tragedy prematurely but tinus esther is not tragedy tangent esther is success so to bring it forward early is no problem at all because it is not a tinus that represents perennials catastrophe so beaso hashem may you have not only a meaningful fast may you have a joyous vest and may it lead to the great great sembra of of purim whether you're keeping purim thursday or keeping poor on friday and on some level all of us are keeping purim for both days uh at least in some sense uh may it be isman of yeshua and simcha for call israel and the world [Music]