Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: All Lives Matter Equally The Half Sheqel

[Music] hi everybody khodeshtov we're in the month of adar the month of simcha and i hope that all of you and all of claul israel and really everybody should be blessed with a great deal of joy even though you know the world is going still going through difficult times it's been a little more than a year really last for him was when a lot of the lockdowns started and we're still kind of uh in the middle of it and because rat hashem we should have a yeshua today shir is uh dedicated in honor of the memory of the york site of benjevo on the sixth of adar and may our learning be in aliyat and also once again we are dedicating to learning for refuse leima for benjamin israel ben khanita a young man that we have been praying for for quite a few weeks and he should have a foolish lima as well as jonathan ben eric and for both of them they should have refused layman israel and the words of torah should be of benefit to them and all of the jewish people that are that are suffering illness today i'm going to depart a little bit uh from the parsha of the week and really talk about um i'm going to go a little backwards and a little forwards and that is in the month of adar the sages enacted that there are four special shabbos readings now they don't replace the regular torah reading we read the parsha of the week every week but as a master as an additional final reading we have a special reading for four weeks and the haftarus always match up with that special final torah reading so for example you're going to find that for these four parshiots the torah is not going to be a torah that is connected to the parsha of the week but it'll be connected to the special reading and this is called simply arba parshiot the four special parshas the four special toy readings we had the first one last shabbos and we have the next one this shabbos and then we'll have two more after that until the rosh chodesh nissan i want to talk about start off with talking about last week's and then i'm going to talk about this week's because well let me first enumerate the four partio generally so you'll have a sense of what the map is and then we'll be more specific and more detailed the four parshiots are number one parashat shkalim this is a torah reading about the mitzvah of giving the half shekel and that is always on either the shabbos before rosh chodesh or as in this year when rashford is shabbos we read parashat shkalim the shabbos before purim which happens to be this coming shabbos because purim is on shabbos is parashat zakhar it deals with the mitzvah to remember and eradicate amalek and of course haman is from amalek the third parsha which is already in preparation for the passover korban is parashat's para the the parsha of the red heifer which is whose ashes are used to purify us from tomato mace and the fourth parsha which will be rashford nissan is parasha sakhodesh that deals with all of the laws of the korban pesach so in a sense though it breaks down into a very symmetrical division shkalim and zakhar are precursors to purim and para and khodesh are precursors to pesach you'll see why shkalim and po and zakhar are connect are going to be connected to purim para khadesh are connected to pesach so we're not going to be talking about para and khodesh right now because after all we are coming to the holiday of of of purim and therefore we will focus on shikola mensah what is the mitzvah a little bit of information first what is the mitzvah of marxist of giving a half shackle by the way the half shekel of the torah is a lot more than an israeli half shekel don't don't confuse it the carbanos of the basa mikdash and of the mishkan in the desert had to be publicly financed a person couldn't say like yeshiva say oh i'm dedicating all of the service in the base of mikdash today couldn't do it carbanos have to come from cloudy israel if you want to bring your own sin offering your own burnt offering you know you bring your carbon that's your money but the carbonates that were brought on behalf of amy israel the carbon tumid the daily sacrifice the mussaf offerings on shabbos rosh chodesh and yamtif the burning of the incense the lighting of the menorah oil every single day that could not come from private donations that had to come from a tax that was levied on all of the jewish people to the tune of a half a shekel a year half a shekel a year was essentially your tax in order to purchase the necessary corban oats including incense and the monorail oil that was used in the base of mikdash now the second point to know is that the basal mikdash had a fiscal year just like any company has to have a fiscal year and the fiscal year of the basal mikdash did not begin on rosh hashanah the fiscal year of the basa mikdash began rosh chodesh nissan which in the torah is always described as the first month by that i mean starting from rosh chodesh any corbanos that you're bringing after from rashford nissan onwards has to come from newly collected money money that was collected for that specific year meaning even if there was a surplus even if last year's scholar were left over because let's say the price of animals went down and we do have money in the temple treasury from last year's collections that could buy the new carbon oats you're not allowed to use that old money in fact the mission of massachusetts there's a whole tract date in the mishnah about the mahdi sachiko in fact there's no babylonian entitlement on it but there's a you shall me on it that's why for those of you who may be learning daffy yomi i don't know if many listeners are da yomi people uh this is the only part of the daphyomi cycle that actually learns talmud you shall me rather than bubbly because there is no talmud bubbly but the mishna is like almost a manual of accounting it talks about what do you do with surpluses what do you do with surplus golem that cannot be carried over into the new year so as a result when rosh chodesh nissan came there had to be new money in the temple treasury that was collected for this new fiscal year so as a result even though people paid their half shekels in the course of a whole year there had to be something there to start the process off so as a result the ham enacted that we start collecting the shkalam of the new year one month before nisan which happens to be roshador on the first day of adar we make an announcement time to get time to contribute the half shekel now again i want to emphasize not everybody paid their taxes on time plenty of people paid late they paid six months later eight months later 10 months later and there were even people that we had to enforce right we had the equivalent of the uh halachic irs that would uh or um or the the treasury the outside uh that would go and collect the taxes but at least by starting an adar that ensured that there would be a critical mass of skalim so as a result therefore zechar the mikdash to commemorate what was done in the basal mikdash we read about the half shekau the shabbos of rosh chodesh adar it says for those of you that are students of the christian bible the very very famous scene of jesus overturning the money changers in the temple you know the money changers were not such bad guys as jesus perhaps portrayed them they were there to exchange foreign currencies into the half shekel meaning to say if i was a jew from whatever from spain or france or whatever country i came from i say babylonia and i didn't necessarily have the local half shekel currencies to be able to donate to the temple so i would come with my foreign currencies and the money changers would give me the necessary half shekel uh minus the commission that they would take okay you know it's a way of making a living you know money changers have to make a living too uh but jesus was upset with the commercialization of what was going on but uh i think he well understood as a jew with a uh a torah background he well understood that there actually was a legitimate function uh for the money changers uh in the in the temple as as as well didn't you accuse them of uh exchanging dishonesty yeah that was part of the idea you know excessive commissions and and and whatever it is or not giving you value for your money uh you know i don't have obviously other than that single account in the christian bible we don't really have any particular record of how widespread that dishonesty was but yeah yeah monavie obviously that was always a a potential so that's mata sachetta now directly that is not connected to purim i as i said a few moments ago that shkolim is a precursor to purim but based on the description i just gave you you don't see that i'm going to come back to why that's so amalek is very very clearly connected to purim because under the tradition that we have haman is actually a descendant of amalek if you remember the story when king saul when sha'alu hamelech is given a commandment to eradicate amalek shall carries out the job 99 of the way but he does not kill the king of amalek who is called ag agag is eventually killed by the prophet shmuel shmuel himself kills our god and that's what the book of shmool tells us but in rabbinic tradition agag managed to escape for a little bit a while and he impregnated a woman and when agog was killed the woman who was pregnant was still alive and she gave birth to a baby and eventually the descendant of that baby was none other than haman and that's why the megillah calls him haman [Music] and agag is none other than the king of amalek that's even the makor the rama says of the well-beloved children's well everyone should do it but children love the custom of making noise when haman's name is said you bang and you you stamp your foot and that's based on kind of eradicating the memory of of of a mullet so that's obviously connected to purim because purim is a celebration in part of the triumph over the forces of evil that amalek represents but what does shekalim have to do with purim is it just a coincidence so to speak that uh rosh chodeshad or is the manta purim and that's when they started collecting shkala so let me call to your attention a statement of the great amore rabbi shimon bin lakish rabbi shimon bin lakish says gol it was known before god god is referred to as the one who said and brought the world into existence that harman would try to destroy the jews by giving ahashvero shekels that's recorded in the megillah that when haman wanted to uh get the right so to speak to kill the jewish people and he had all of his arguments why they're not worthy and they deserve to die he actually wanted to give akashverosh an immense amount of silver asaret al-afim kikar kessev 10 000 talents of silver now a kikar is a weight of silver that's over a hundred pounds i don't have the exact number but it's over a hundred pounds ten thousand talents that's a million million pounds of silver ah in his generosity turned down the offer he said now you can do it for free great but nevertheless uh haman tried to get us via scotland so god wanted to anticipate and negate the power of haman's shekels so he gave us a mitzvah where we give our shekels before haman gave his shekels haman gave his shekels to kill us on the 13th of ada right that was the oman's designated day hashem gives us a mitzvah of shekau on the first of other which is earlier than haman shekels and therefore our shekels counter man's negate minimize the power of haman's shekels and that is why rishlaquis concludes on the first of our we announce the myths for math to countermand the chiclet now this passage this statement is a very enigmatic statement it's very hard to logically understand what's going on first of all what what does it mean that we are countermanding ham on shekels i mean haman is long gone haman was hung uh uh haman is not here in what way do we continually need to counter man's haman's shekels and second of all how are you countermanding it i mean the shkalam of haman were given or at least he offered to give them to achashveirosh and arshko and we give to hashem we're not directly countermanding it what is the shyfus what is the connection between the shekhalim that we give and the shkalim that haman wanted to give and what is the need that you're countermanding by the mitzvah of master sashita there seems to be an implication that the shekaulam of haman represent a continual threat that we have to fight against when from the megillah it is simply an isolated historical event that happened and does not reoccur so to understand this statement a little bit more deeply we have to focus on a very well-known observation and that is although the book of esther is part of the bible it is part of the tanakh it is a sanctified book it does not contain the name of god the name of god is not mentioned in the book of esther which is very very unique after all the one thing that tanaka is full of is of course mentions and references to the almighty in the book of esther there is no mention of which and by the way interestingly enough in the septuagint the septuagint was the greek translation not only of the torah i mean that the initially was only the torah and that's described in the gemara about the seventh the elders that septuagint the the translation of the seventy the gemara talks about their translation of the five books of moses but at later times there was a translation of the entire tanakh and for the most part the septuagint called the targumha shivim is more or less a literal translation but there are some books in which they make some significant changes which are treated as non-canonical meaning they're not treated as authoritative as part of the masoretic text but there are changes that they made and one of them is that in their version of mcgill at esther they have a prayer of esther hamalka in which he's praying to hashem for deliverance and they put in the name of god so scholars debate which is the authentic version of esther is it our version of esther which doesn't have the name of god or is it the version of esther that has the name of god and they quite rightly conclude that it's more probable that the addition of the name of god was the later later text and not the original because the reason is quite logical if you had a mcgill at esther that originally had the name of god why would a later generation take it out it makes no sense why would you make that change if on the other hand you started off with a text that didn't have the name of god for whatever reason i'll try to give you a reason then one could imagine that a later generation wanted to make it more religious make it more from so to speak so the septuagint does add the name of god but in our tradition that is not the original text in other words the original text of the book of esther which we read of course on bored does not mention the name of hashem very peculiar by the way there's one other book that may not mention the name of hashem may not because it's not so clear and this is even stranger this is shir hashirim the song of songs does not mention the name of hashem although i'll mention one possibility that it does now the song of songs of course is an example of very passionate romance between a man and a woman and yet this rabbinic tradition we have is based on rabbi yakiva and that shira shame was almost banned from tanach like banned in boston they didn't want to include it they thought it was semi-pornographic but rabbi akiva got it in baby kiba argued if all of the songs of the tanakh are kodesh shira shirim is kodesh kidashim because it is a metaphor for the passionate love of god for the jewish people god is the shepherd and the jewish people are the princess and all of that passionate midnight encounters are the desire of hashem to come to us and redeem us and our yearning for hashem but sometimes we play hard to get like the woman is says i'm asleep you know don't wake me up now etc now shir hashem also does not mention the name of hashem except there's one word which is a little unclear at the end of shira shirim it talks about even the greatest torrential waters cannot extinguish passionate love which is shall have vessel shall have means it's like a burning torch but the problem is how do you deal with the last syllable it shall have vessel one word or two words if it's two words shall have it a burning torch of god so then you have the name of god on the other hand others understand shall have messiah is just one word and it's just a poetic form of the word shall have it and it does not connote the name of god so there is a mach lokas if the name of hashem is in shirashira but that's only a mach lokas with respect to shirashirem with respect to magillas esther for sure the name of hashem is not there now why is that so why is that so so the general idea is because everything about the book of esther everything about the purim story is about the concealment of god because unlike yet where god reveals himself in an open supernatural way a way that his presence cannot be denied the ten plagues and the splitting of the red sea and then in the desert of course the continuation of that with the man falling from heaven and the traveling well and the clouds of glory in which hashem's presence is open and clear and undeniable in the book of esther god is acting behind the scenes so to speak there is no there is no open miracles in the book of esther in fact if you analyze every single event in the book of esther uh if you would be a skeptic or a heretic or an atheist i mean richard dawkins could explain every event i mean he doesn't accept the historical accuracy anyway but even if he would accept the historical story he could explain it well within the bounds of atheism kills vashti well sure in the ancient world kings killed their queens all the time he happens to pick esther somebody had to be picked esther happens to be positioned in the royal house so that when haman wants to destroy her nation she's there great wonderful coincidence so purim is all about hiddenness all about concealment the idea that hashem is behind the scenes even when you don't necessarily notice him and it's only when you look at all the pieces in retrospect that you see how hashem is running the world the very word ester her name is connected to hester hester is concealment right hester panim that's why of course the book of esther is a diaspora festival right the miracle of the book of esther occurred primarily in ghuzlar it's not in eric israel because in galut hashem's relationship to us is here but it's more of a hidden relationship it's not as open as it is in eric israel uh even today eric israel you see the hashikaka a bit more but certainly when there was a base of mikdash there was much more of a giloid much more of a revelation so purim is very important because it reminds us that even in hiddenness we have to look for the divine and that's an important lesson don't think that divinity is only when you have open miraculous supernatural manifestations even the mina of wearing a mask of course this year i understand that mask wearing on purim is uh you know not so clear exactly or what's the you know what are you gonna do what are you gonna do important different than you're doing today uh we've been wearing masks the whole year but okay santorum will get a special poor mask and in many ways this whole year was kind of an experience of purim to see the light of hashem even when things are dark and things are difficult and things are challenging that's a different level of concealment that's not the concealment of coincidence but that's the concealment of you know suffering adversity that's a different type of concealment and that's what a mask is a mask covers up the inner reality so this is a well-known idea that i'm sure many of you have heard before that the name of hashem is not in magilla tester but the zoar says that even when the name is not explicitly mentioned it is encoded in references to melech that when the passage talks about the mela there is a double entendre there is a double meaning there is the flesh and blood guy who's called akashvirosh and then there's mela the king of all kings that is parkour there's a double conversation so to give you one example of how this is so dramatic the turning point of the megillah when things begin to get better is chapter seven perhaps zion when akashvarish cannot sleep that night and he calls his secretaries to read his chronicles and then he discovers he didn't reward mordechai for informing him of the assassination plan that's literally the turning point when you know until that point haman is at the ascendancy everything he wants he's getting done and this is the beginning of the decline and that's why even the balcore reads it in a very dramatic way on that night the sleep of the king was restless it is literally the turning point so the zohar says it has two meanings ah couldn't sleep and there's a reference to the verse in tehillim israel behold the guardian of israel does not slumber does not sleep hashem in shamayim is finally saying i'm going to take charge of this situation and change it for the good double meaning which means every pasuk in which malach is mentioned you have kind of a lower meaning and a higher meaning lower meaning is human king akheros higher meaning is something is happening in shamayim that god is saying so now let's apply this to the conversation that haman has with akhishvarush vayomir is trying to make the case you know after all even wouldn't normally want to destroy a whole nation that's paying taxes and everything else so herman has to make the case without even identifying that he's talking about the jews that the jewish people ought to just get rid of him so it says haman says to the miller yes there is this nation mephozoid they are scattered and separated among all of the nations of your empire thus saying shall note this is in the megillah dusayam sho notes me column their laws are different than everybody else's laws strange customs they don't fit the estas and the laws of the king they don't fulfill for la it's not worth the king's energy to sustain them it's not worth it get rid of them now let's analyze this on the lower level and the upper level the lower level is classic anti-semitic tropes that have been used throughout history and that is haman is making a case number one jews are scattered all over the place now that has two implications number one they're like a cancer in all societies that every society is infiltrated with these jews all over the place number two there's a strategic point that because they're not concentrated in one place they don't have a critical mass to be able to fight your army so it would be easy to get rid of them because they're not in one place and then he goes on and he says that their laws are different than all other laws and the gemara gives examples that hummon is saying they have less respect for you than for a fly because if a fly falls into their wine they take out the fly and drink the wine if you touch you the kid you're a guy if you touch the line they got to throw it away so you're worse than an insect and then haman makes the argument every time he asked you to do something he always has this holiday excuse oh can't do it it's shabbos can't do it it's pesach can't do it no matter what happens you know every day seems to be a holiday one right there one way or the other so human is basically saying they're unproductive they don't keep the laws they don't respect you they're like a cancer infiltrating society and they don't have a critical mass that could really fight you anyway so it would be it would be easy just to get rid of them one by one by one right and i said my right makes the case but mystically you have to understand that just as there's an earthly human who is trying to convince an earthly king this same conversation is happening in shamayim with the spiritual evil force that homun represents i.e amalek arguing to god that the jews are not deserving of redemption and we don't always realize this we don't always realize that purim was a near calamity it was not a done deal that we would survive in fact the kumar megilda actually says that spiritually we were nitrice we were deserving of destruction and harman's monologue is translatable to what we might call a kit rook is an accusation in shamayim so now let's look at it this way the first thing hormone on earth said was mephozar umaforad's being scattered and dispersed haman meant simply that the jews are not concentrated in one place so there's no critical mass that's what haman meant but the celestial dialogue is they are divided and dispersed among themselves there is no unity there is sinatrinam there is period the foes are uma foreign thus say they don't keep the king's laws i.e they don't keep the torah the laws of the king so it turns out that in shamayim one of the the very first kitra kit of the accusation the very first charge against the jewish people was polarization dissension disunity that was our achilles heel as it always is our achilles heel to borrow a greek metaphor that was our weakness that was our pagam that was our vulnerability that was the basis in shamayim why we were deserving of destruction that is why when mordechai hears of haman's decree that on 13th of adar the jews are to be wiped out and he runs to queen esther to tell her to intervene so the first thing so esther said to him was go and gather all the jews and they should fast for three days and that of course is the origin of the fast of esther now note though that he didn't just say tell the jews to fast she prefaced it with the phrase go and gather all the jews that's a phrase that connotes unity and togetherness meaning if our weakness is mephosarum of foreign we can only overcome that weakness with the opposite force of leich kanos as kalaiyudim that is also the reason that when we were finally redeemed and the khazal established a holiday in commemoration of that great salvation the holiday of purim so the mitzvahs of purim involve many gestures of unity and togetherness sending food from one person to another giving charity to those in need all of that is about reaching out beyond our egotism beyond our selfishness to embrace others to connect to others now that's important the whole year but why the reason why it has such a prominence for purim is because that is the tikkun that is the rectification of mafuzaram of foreign in fact that's why that's even the origin of the idea you know that again this year things are obviously going to be a little different uh but in normal times when you send mishloch so i give you a food basket let's say but the custom is i don't give it to you directly i try to get a shalia i get and you know usually a kid i get somebody to bring it to you on my behalf so it doesn't just go from a to b but there's a c there's a middle man who's supposed to bring it now why is that such a custom because since the idea of shalochmanot is to increase friendship and camaraderie and caring you try to get more people involved so it's not just me to you but they get another person involved who brings it because that's called marba reyot marberet is the increasing of of friendship in fact when this is an interesting discussion but many say one should endeavor to give shalomhmanos to somebody with whom you're not necessarily so close as a way of creating closeness i just want to warn people that that can backfire because uh if somebody knows you're giving shahmanis to them because you don't really consider them so close they may be very offended so you got to be careful everything these types of things have to be undertaken with a great deal of common sense and thinking about the repercussions you know okay but be it as it may uh therefore allegorically metaphorically the kitrig of haman might be described as the heavenly skull that human is using to convince god to destroy the jewish people again on earth haman wanted to give akashverosh silver but the way you translate that in the heavenly conversation is the purchase price to eradicate the jewish people is pointing out their flaws their casronos their mephosaurumophobot that is called in other words that's a very poetic allegorical description but that can actually be called the shekels of haman seen in that light the shekels of haman are not a historical event that happened once but in every generation every day there are rugen every day god has to make a decision to stick with us because of sinasrina mephozor methoren so now we understand that rish lagish is quite accurate in talking about the sheikh lay haman that continued to operate but now let's look at the first part of the statement so the marxist hasheco is somehow a countermanding of the sheikh lihaman why is that so so let's focus on the mahdi sasha for a moment when the torah gives the mitzvah of marxism again and let me repeat that that's a lot more money than the modern half sheker the torah has an interesting requirement that it must be a uniform contribution it mentions a rich person is not allowed to give more and a poor person is not allowed to give less everybody must give equal now i understand why a poor person cannot give less there's such a thing as a minimum requirement listen there's a million you want to participate in the service of the temple there is a minimum requirement if you have to borrow you have to borrow but there is a minimum requirement but why would there be a rule that if i could afford more i'm not allowed to do it why not rest assured you know yeshivas charge tuition and a lot of people do get scholarships but if i'm a parent and i'm able to give more than full tuition rest assured that every yeshiva in the world is going to take it no yeshiva is going to say sorry you can't give more who says that and yet when it comes to the service of the temple god says not only is there a minimum but there's also a maximum we're not going to take more from you why is that so the swaste says a very beautiful idea he says that when the terror talks about rich people and poor people it doesn't only mean rich in money and pouring money but rich can refer to the whole spectrum of talents and abilities that people have there are people who are rich in many many ways they're smart they're fast they're charismatic i mean not everybody has all of these things but different people may have different sources of richness people like them they're good organizers whatever it would be these are people who have great wealth in many many areas and then there are people who seem to be at least until you get to know them better they seem to be bereft of a lot of talents they seem to be poor there's rich and poor in a lot of ways rich in wisdom poor in wisdom rich in money pouring money rich in abilities poor inabilities what the torah is teaching me is this when it comes to the service of god because the temple is of course emblematic of the service of god rich and poor stand with equal dignity and access to and the reason is because god does not judge you based on the magnitude of your objective achievement god judges you by how much of your abilities and talents have you given to him so the same way even in charity a poor person who gives one dollar might be doing something greater than a super billionaire that gives a thousand dollars so too the fact that one person is very very talented and another person is less talented doesn't mean that the less talented has less of an access to god rather everybody's graded on the curve of their individual abilities the mabit who is a contemporary of raviosa cairo or of moshe ben yoseptrani gives a muscle and this is not exactly the much i don't remember the numbers he uses but this is the basic idea let's imagine that you have a student a yeshiva buckler who's a great great genius and he's able to learn a hundred blot of gemara a day which is phenomenal a hundred blood of more a day and uh he decides that he's so far ahead of everybody else he's only gonna do 50 blood a and then you have another person who struggles to do one blood a day or one blood a week or one blood a month and we look at these two people and we see one guy doing 50 blood a day basically that means he finishes shots every month you know wonderful wonderful wonderful and the other person is struggling and we say well he works hard but you know he's not really accomplishing the my bit says in islam it'll be the other way around the guy who learns one blot will get more than the one who does 50 baht why because one who does 50 baht is only giving hashem 50 of his capacity even though he's achieving many many times more and the one who's doing one block i mean nobody gives a hundred percent but he's giving closer to a hundred percent god grades you on how much of yourself you've given to him in fact says that this may be an explanation of an interesting passage in the rambam and hilda in the rambam discusses the very fundamental concept of free will one of the most fundamental concepts of judaism that god does not predetermine if you will be righteous or evil but every person has the capacity of choice then the rambam discusses hashem hardening paro's heart very interesting questions but there's a general rule we function with the concept of free will and the rambam argues that free will is a logical necessity for accountability and responsibility because if i were pre-programmed to behave a certain way and i couldn't override that then by what justice could god hold me accountable for my offenses and by what entitlement would i deserve reward or positive affirmation so the whole reward and punishment system is predicated on free will that's why by the way in modern society where free will is under a lot of attack especially based on genetic code genetic markers markers on the light there are actually some philosophical questions regarding criminal responsibility okay that people are really discussing this how could people ever be responsible for anything unless you accept free will so all of that is beautiful all of that is true but but the rambam gives an example that seems a little bizarre the rambam says every person can be as righteous as moshe rabbenu now the problem is that's a little hyperbolic i understand i could be righteous i have free will i'm not a victim of my circumstances i can rise above my condition all of that is wonderful and good and very very important but to be a mojo of ano come on no that's not going to happen so in what sense can the rambam possibly make the claim and not only logically won't it happen but even textually the torah says there will never be a prophet as great as moshe albania he was given talents and abilities that are beyond whatever any human being is going to get by the way that's actually an article of faith because that is actually the predicate of why the torah of moshe cannot be superseded by subsequent revelations to jesus or muhammad the immutability of the torah that the rambam considers to be a principle of faith is predicated on the unique greatness of moshe rabbenu which cannot be replicated again i'm not going to get into the proof of that assertion and one could argue with who says but but certainly the formulation of the 13 principles of faith is precisely based on the absolute uniqueness of moshe rabena because otherwise you'd have the argument that god could supersede the torah by later revelation so what does the rambam mean when the rambam says each person could be as great as moshe remain in vasserman offers a beautiful interpretation revoked says that moshe rabbenu was described in the beginning of the book of yahushua as evad hashem the servant of god what is the connotation of servant god so the radat where david kimchi one of the great commentators said that this is calling to mind [Music] that means whatever a slave requires belongs to his master if a slave finds a hundred dollars in the street he might hide it you know who knows but legally halachically that's the master's property moshe was called ebit hashem the radak says because every single ability that he had was never for himself it was always for the service and the glorification of god mashakana whatever he acquired was for god that's the radak so says that's what the rambam means when he says every person could be like motion my talents my abilities are infinitesimally small compared to moshe but just as moshe gave hashem a hundred percent of what he was theoretically we could aspire to give hashem a hundred percent of what we are even though that hundred percent is so much smaller and that is the lesson of math in the emphasis on equality says rich and poor stand before god with the same access the same dignity the same chance to connect to hashem by giving the abilities that they have now if you think about this this is a refua to the shekalim of haman if the shekalim of haman are about disunity machlokas jealousy rivalry looking down at people excluding people because they're not important the lesson of mahdi sachet says everybody matters everybody counts so the poor person has no reason to feel disparaged and the rich person whoever you define rich has no reason to disparage because everyone stands before hashem so that's what the gemara means that the maxis hasheco counteracts talks about the equality of rich and poor now there's another aspect of the marxist chateau that is somewhat connected and not only is there an emphasis on uniformity of contribution but also the idea that it's a fraction you give a half a shekel not a whole shuttle i know that uh robert poston referred to at the beginning of this year i think i don't think it was recorded uh the kliyoko's famous observation that the dimensions of the aranha kodesh were fractional dimensions because in torah we should always feel we're lacking and we should seek more and that's with respect to torah but with respect to the temple contribution the torah also says you give a half not a whole the implication of a half shekel is a half does not become a whole unless you combine it with another half and the lesson therefore is i need you you need me without the togetherness without the his cash roots we are defective we are so there are two aspects here the uniformity is the equality of dignity and the half is the incompleteness without connecting to the other you know think about this you know uh when you have let's say a uh a spaceship a rocket right so a rocket has you know millions of parts and some of those parts are so essential you know the motors or whatever it will be and some might be you know 50 cent screws that you get in a hardware store and looking at it objectively you know it's a piece of plastic it's a metal screw nothing but if that little screw is not functioning properly the whole thing can explode in fact that's happened there there have been a number of accidents over the decades of space travel in which things have been destroyed because of little pieces that were intrinsically insignificant but they were absolutely necessary for the accomplishment of the mission so yeah in call israel you'll have golem you'll have russia shiva's you'll have the people who accomplish so much in the world and then maybe you have people who are not so prominent not so public but they fill a role that is every bit as essential and there's no way to accomplish the mission of israel without the participation of all of us in our fullness that's why there's a famous teaching the zoar says that there are six hundred thousand letters in a safer torah and there are six hundred thousand basic souls of the jewish people that left egypt and each soul is connected to a letter in the torah and if a torah is missing one letter the whole torah is puzzled the whole torah is possible again we'll leave for another time the the famous question that there are far less than six hundred thousand letters there's only around three hundred and five thousand letters that's a big margin of error we'll leave that for another time but the idea that if i'm not connected to my letter it's not just me that's that's missing the whole torah is not in place so let me end with a story of the famous musical conductor prodigy arturo tuscanini some of you may have heard of him uh he was in the 50s 60s and earlier he was a very very uh famous musician composer conductor uh pianist and he really was a musical prodigy and a reporter wanted to interview him and toscanini said you can't talk to me because i don't feel well my orchestra has a concert tonight i'm not able to go but i have to listen to it on the radio and i need to concentrate and i cannot be interrupted because i need to be sure that everything is right and if anything goes wrong i can't correct it down but i'll be able to tell them what they need to work on later so the reporter promised i won't say a word i just want to watch you i just want to observe how you listen to a musical piece so he comes to toscanini's apartment in manhattan and this is the 50s so the tuscany had these old radios remember these old giant radios maybe you've seen pictures of them and the sound quality was not very good but tuscamini has to listen to this symphony orchestra playing and he close he closes his eyes in deep concentration for two hours and at the end of the two hours he opens his eyes he shakes his head he has a grimace on his face and he says how come there are only 14 violins that were supposed to be 15. why was the violin missing and the reporter says this is unbelievable even if you would be at the concert unless you counted the violins how many people would notice the difference between 15 and 14 violins and you know you're not even at the concert you're hearing it on a radio where the quality is even so good how do you know the difference so the reporter went to investigate this he said it's not possible you just made up this story to impress me so he goes to the uh to the orchestra to the hall and he talks to the first violinist you know the head violinist of the string group and he says to the violinist tell me how many violins do you have in this section so the violinist said well normally we have 15. but right before the concert one of the violinists called up and said he wasn't feeling well so i figured the boss wasn't going to be here tonight and nobody's going to know the difference so i said we'll go with 14. it's too hard to find a replacement that shuts short notice and he said and then he said listen nobody no nobody knows the difference so the reporter says well one person didn't know the difference and he goes back to tuscanini and he says i can't believe this this is a miracle like how are you able to see the difference between 14 and 15. so toscanini said you know listen i know that the average person in the audience even in the audience didn't know the difference and called homer listeners on tv or radio you know didn't know the difference but when you're the conductor you know that every single person makes a difference every single person contributes to the beauty of the performance and if that person isn't there the performance is not as beautiful as it should be so yeah i notice because everybody does matter and this is a this story the susquehanna was not jewish obviously but this story is a beautiful muscle to the almighty who is the conductor of the symphony of the universe and in that symphony of the universe there are so many things that seem to be little and significant people who you know we don't necessarily see you know the great need the great contribution even animals even plants even insects in ways we don't understand and we have to know that to god everything matters everyone makes a difference everyone is important everyone has their contribution and when that contribution is not there it's not forthcoming then the beauty of the symphony is impaired and that is the lesson of max hasheco that without our connection to each other there is something that is missing and that is how the master hasheco count your mans and count your acts the shikley haman the shakalam of haman mufasaram of foreign disunity and polarization the sashaka togetherness equality of dignity and recognition that without my connection to the other i am going to be defective but it goes both ways you have to understand without my connection to you i am defective i need you so that's a that's an antidote to arrogance but it also gives me strength because you need me in other words it both raises the spirits of the brokenhearted and it lowers the arrogance of the balgaiva because we need we need each other so i wish everybody i guess we'll have one more class before purim but as we approach parchas when we talk about the eradication of amalek hasidic swarm tell us that there's also an amalek within us meaning when we think about destroying amalek does have a halachic application to a certain enemy but we don't know what that enemy is so practically we don't apply that today so the relevance of the mitzvah for us is much more of an internal process to destroy the amalek within the amalek within is selfishness it's egotism it's hatred and if if we want to defeat the amaleks in the outside world we have to start with defeating the amalek within us and only when we achieve the victory of the amalek within will hashem give us the protection from the amalek with that so shabbat shalom and culture [Music] my