Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: All Who Pursue G-d Will Find Him

[Music] okay hi everybody uh thank you for coming and uh today's share is uh dedicated for a reforged lima for brya bhatthava and avital margalit bat batsheva they should have refused leima with all of holah israel and in addition an aliyat nashamah her yard side is the 26th of and that is the mother of jeremy and jillian bernstein we again very much appreciate the hakusaka's torah and may the learning be eloy nishmata this is parshasmasi this is the very last parsha of the book of amidbar most years matos and maasai are read together and indeed in khutslawrets they are going to be read together and this is the great ketchup in which all of the parchios arizona hutzlares will be at the same page after a break of three months ever since pesach but since the vast majority of years matos and masai are read together most of the divre torah if you want to look up some torah on the internet for the parsha you will find it on matos matos masai they go with the first parsha so the truth of the matter is it actually is not so easy to find at least a package to var torah on precious masai and still though i think you'll see there's some very very profound so dope secrets of very great significance in parshas masai as well as some very interesting halaqa aspects as well so as always the case sometimes when you have two parshiot that are read together the second parsha gets shortchanged and in truth that is not really uh justifiable of course the same thing is true in gemara if you go to any yeshiva based medarish and you pull out a shah's volume you will always see that the first half of the track date is very very well learnt and the second half is barely touched because no one ever gets there that's why i have a little mishudas when i learn a masekta i start in the middle because i want to be sure i do the second half then i go backwards and i do the first half later and i think that actually makes a lot of sense okay but be it as it may departure starts off with a listing of all of the places the jewish people stopped from the time they left mitzrayim till our votes moa of the plains of moab which is the last stop before irish israel which is well it was of course will be after moshe abbayno moshe of being who dies these are called massey binay israel the travels the journeys of binay israel and some of the places are very familiar it mentions harshinai for example some of the places we know nothing about other than the fact that they're mentioned we're not uh told anything happened there or or whatever whatever it would be but all of them of course have been really going with this starting with the zoar talk about the idea that there are 42 journeys there are 42 stops that the jewish people went through over a 40-year period now what's interesting is if you look at rashi you will actually see that many of the journeys were in the first year and many of the journeys were in the last year meaning we we tend to think that for the 40 years in the desert they were wandering around constantly that was not the case they actually spent more than 20 years in certain locations the vast majority of the wanderings were year one and year 40. in the middle they were kind of positioned in the desert and they remained relatively constant this is if you look at russia you will see the that rashi makes and in fact rashi points out that the reason for the enumeration of all of these stops is to show us god's compassion that when you add everything together they were not moving around that often and academically gave them a certain amount of repos and rest in the mid-bar so it's i think very different than the common picture that we would normally have but the number 42 is very significant because the fortune point out there are a number of correlations 42 is a significant number in a few ways 42 journeys through the desert there are 42 cities of refuge which are also in the parsha for the one who kills bashogg accidentally and he goes to the air michelin there are 42 now this is already maybe a stretch but then before you bring it we're in the period of the three weeks between the 17th of thomas and the ninth above three weeks are 21 days not counting tissue above tishbo was the 22nd day 21 days each day has a day and a night so consequently there are 42 day night periods means the between the boundaries between 17th of thomas and tish above so look at the three correlations 42 journeys in the desert 42 levite cities which are cities of refuge although i'll qualify that 42 periods of yom and lila during the three-week period what does all of this mean what would the significance be so first and foremost is the important insight of the zoar that the 42 journeys through the desert are symbolic of the journey of our neshama as we go through life what the jewish people did as they go from mitzrayim to the promised land is the process that we go through from the time we leave the womb that's called yet see us mitzrayim leaving egypt so to speak until we get to the promised land which is we go through these various stages the balatanya writes that the desert is symbolic of emptiness the desert is symbolic of trial and tribulation and deprivation and a sense of sometimes being distant from god and not finding your way and not really knowing what to do but what is our job in life is to persevere through the deserts of life when we don't always have clarity we don't always have understanding and then eventually we reach eric israel we hopefully complete our lives in a good way and we go to ullah and therefore in a very deep level now again we're not going to be able to spell out every one of the 42 levels but the 42 levels of going through the desert the zoar says is the neshama struggling through the midbour of ayla mazza to reach the kadusa of ayla maba which is symbolized in this world with eric israel itself and indeed the mufasam also point out that the four goliaths we know that from the book of daniel and from the book of zakaria and from many many midrashim in ghazal that the jewish people are under are going to undergo or have undergone and will continue to undergo the four great exiles the exile of babylon and which destroyed the first base of mikhtash and then persia which was the genocide of haman and that's when after haman the second temple was built and then yavan the greek rule and then eventually the roman rule which is called the goddess of asaf and the goddess of asav destroyed the second temple and we are still in that galas until mashiach comes these are called the four goliaths the four exiles and i think i spoke earlier that even though there is no roman empire we are still in the goddess of edom because number one rome is the progenitor of western civilization and number two the corban that rome created hasn't gone away yet so yeah maybe there's no rome but we're still suffering the goddess of edding now i did mention that i'm a fortune to talk about the fact that uh the final final final stage of gullus will be the gulles of yeshmael which will connect to eddie and that does connect very much with islamic fundamentalism and the parquet rabbi eliezer says the gulles of ishmael is going to be the most dangerous of all because ishmael has a spiritual power they're the only nation besides the israel that has god in their name israel al-iflamin is god's name ishmael and yeshua comes with a certain spiritual power the power of brits mila the power of sunios the power of prayer whatever it would be and as a result it's very difficult to defeat ishmael adam comes with brute physical force so it's a dover pashut that brute physical force can be defeated ultimately by spiritual means but he who comes with spiritual forces albeit dark spiritual forces is much more difficult to defeat but even so ghazal do not look at gollus ishmael as a separate autonomous scholars they look at golis yeshmael as part of gallus adam which makes perfect sense because if you think about it even politically the jewish people are not under yeshmael domination the jewish except for very very few i mean there are very few jews in islamic countries as jews who are in galut we are under the domination of western civilization so we are still laboring under the gullus of edom but the influence of ishmael both in terms of oil and in terms of terrorism and fundamentalism is all pervasive in its acting upon the goddess of edom so the typology that goloti ishmael is not a separate gullet but it is an aspect and an enhancement so to speak of the goal of dome actually describes the reality that we're living in because jews are not directly under the memshala of ishmael but ishmael is having an effect on the entire world not just israel of course but whether it be europe england germany france whether it be the united states that people say oh you know how can you condemn all muslims as terrorists you know uh most of them are law abiding peaceful people you know even if it's true but when you're dealing with a billion people so let's assume 95 percent are sadiq and wonderful people i'll give you 97 you know okay 3 of a billion is a pretty pretty pretty pretty large number that's already larger than the entire population of of jews in in in the world but be it as it may we have these four goliaths and the madrid rabbi says that the four exiles are marumas they're alluded to at the very very beginning of the torah where the torah talks about you the world was desolate vohu confused in a confused jumble and there was darkness al pine to home on the face of the depths and varuat came and the spirit of god murakaf was hovering over the water that's uh the passage right that's the second passage in the torah so the medras says this is an allusion to the four goliaths that were built into the fabric of creation the world was desolate that is the gullus of babylon value confused is persia darkness is greece and pine to home the depths is the gullus of edom because it is so long so long it never seems to end it's like an infinitely deep ocean that you never hit the bottom but the spirit of god hovering over the waters the measure says is the spirit of mashiach that will bring goula so the concept of the four exiles is a very very fundamental idea in trying to understand jewish history what the exiles represents obviously different nations come from different spiritual forces there are nations that get their power from ishmael there are nations that get their power from asaf but we have these four goliaths so the reports from say that since parshas masai the journey of the jewish people through the desert is symbolic of the journey of our neshamos through the desert of life and symbolic of the jewish people's journey through the desert of galuts the four exiles are marumas at the very beginning of the parsha the first four words of the parsha are elah binet israel these are the journeys of the children of israel look at the first letter of the four words aleph is edom the goddess of adam mem is madai which is another word for persia because paras and madai were ko kingdoms binet bays is bavel yod is yava now of course it's out of orders i'm not sure how you explain the uh change of order but the meforshan points out that the dhalid golios are kind of our desert struggle and of course mitzrayim is our own inner israeli misraya means our limitations our boundaries our constrictions but when we talk about leaving mitzrayim we're talking about leaving the mitsrayam that enslaves us our own inner enslavement so you can see that there's a very very deep symbolism the journey of the soul the journey of the jewish people through gullus now let's talk about the other associations i had mentioned 42 cities of refuge i need to qualify that a little bit in truth there are 48 cities of refuge let me explain how this works the torah says that when someone kills inadvertently shogek now inadvertently does not mean an unavoidable accident an unavoidable accident there is no punishment but if one is negligent one is careless one committed what might be called manslaughter they didn't look when they went through a red light they didn't stop at an intersection they threw something out of their window without looking who would be passing by so they don't get the death penalty because it was unintentional but there is a certain circumstance where they go to what are called cities of refuge now it's important to understand that a city of refuge called ir mclaughs has a double function there are two separate functions that are assigned to an ear mechlet function number one which i think is the one that more people are familiar with is it is a protective function because the is that if i kill somebody the goel hadam a relative of the deceased is allowed to kill me right just kind of a vigilante and that has helped me some explanation but the goal of adam can kill me but when i'm in the army lot i'm in a safe zone so if a goal of adam were to number one there's security in the aramic ladder number two if the goal of them would breach the security he would be a murderer so one aspect of the irmiklat is it gives you a kind of protective custody so that the goal adam cannot get you now if that would be the only function of an ear mclaughs then you would think that the rothsaya could wave it let's assume they wrote say is a rich guy he has a nice house he has his own private security guards he might say oh thanks but no thanks you know i'd rather stay in my mansion and i'll have my guards and i don't really need uh to go to the air mclaughs and the light but you have to understand that that's not going to work because the air mic lot is not only protection and security the aramic left you can call it punishment you can call it atonement and that is it is a mandatory atonement process that a person must go through you don't have the choice to stay in your mansion and hire your guards you must go to the year mik lut and you remain in the year mcleod until the death of the cohen gadol which might be a day later and it might be 50 years later you don't really know how long you're going to stay we talked about last week that the mothers of the cohen guttals used to bring food packages to the rhodesian so they shouldn't pray that the cohen guttal would die or whatever whatever it would be or i would actually say they shouldn't hire a hitman perhaps that might be the more probable outcome and and the like so the aramaic lot is not just security the aramaic lot is atonements and why does one need atonement after all it was an accident because the answer is there was a callousness there was an indifference there was not caring enough about human life uh and therefore you need to have an atonement now lubavitcher rebbe made a very very beautiful observation about ir michelette and he says it really reflects what the torah's view would be on a prison system it's very well known that if you study the torah and you look at the different punishments that are in the torah imprisonment is not really one of the standard punishments there is death penalties there is lashes there is compensation for damages there are fines like double for stealing and the like so if you steal you don't go to jail right you you return you make restitution and you pay a double fine but there is no imprisonment the now a prison is mentioned besides pyro prison is mentioned but only has a holding pattern so when moshe didn't know what the halacha is for the guy that cursed god or the guy that gathered wood on shabbos so the guy was put in some type of prison cell until moshe got the answer but that's a holding cell that's not uh that's not a sentence per se so the closest thing we have to a prison is an ear miglet now a near mclart is not really a prison it's a whole city but the roadside is confined to that city and if he leaves the city his life is vulnerable the goal of adam can actually wait outside the city technically by the way he has two he has a radius of 2 000 ammos outside the city meaning 2 000 ammos from the city is still a protected area if he takes one step out of that 2000 ammos wem the guy can shoot him with impunity and the like so one could imagine uh certain vengeful goel adams might constantly be waiting out there to see if the guy gets lost in his morning walk outside of the city or or whatever it would be so it is a kind of imprisonment in the sense that his mobility is limited but it's not really a prison system but the rebbe makes the following point ori miklot we're not just inhabited by by prisoners are miklock were levite cities remember livium did not get regular portions of land in the lands of israel unlike the other tribes ruben shimon well shimano yehuda they had sections of the land of israel livium did not have their own land but they were given 48 cities that were dispersed throughout the land of israel the six primary ari miglet are all levite cities so if i murdered basho geg and i go to an air mikla i am living with levium that's who i'm living with i am living in a town of livium who are the levine kohanim and levin they are the teachers they are the rabbis they are the spiritual guides of ami israel so here's the rebbe's point if somebody goes off the derek they go off the straight and narrow they show a callousness an indifference to life they don't care enough their moral code has been compromised what do you do do you put them with people that are worse or you put them with people who are righteous who are good we get influenced by our environment everyone knows that the recidivism rate for prisons is extraordinarily high meaning the 17 year olds i mean i know more about the united states prison system than israel although i have not been in either although i tell you and i was a communal i mean i i was a communal rabbi for 25 years and unfortunately i i know more than one uh from person who did wind up in the prison system but okay but be it as it may a 17 year old gets in there for a drug for marijuana or whatever it would be the likelihood that they'll come back for worse and more violent crimes is very very high and the reason is who are their friends who are their colleagues who what is their environment what influence are going to be upon them so what does the torah say in the one institution where the torah does have a prison system or something close to a prison system what do you do put the guy with the people who are the best of um israel and not the worst and then the person will learn the person will grow the person will change and therefore the rebbe's point was that we ought to try to create within a prison system now again we're not talking about extremely violent dangerous offenders that may have to be a special category but we're talking about tax evaders we're talking about careless people we're talking about cheaters no non-violent people but they need to learn they need to internalize values and ethics you put them in a good environment not a bad environment and that's what the year miklot teaches us now let me explain one thing because this i'm going to come back to the journeys you'll see the correlation there are two categories of the aramic wood there's a 6 and a 42. remember the total number of levite cities are 48. six of them are called primary are amiglet and the other 42 are called secondary oramic lines so all 48 are rra miclan but they are divided into a six and a 42. so the gemara in marcus explains what's the what's the point of this division if after all all 48 cities are here are a mclart what is the hawaii difference between the first six and the remaining 42 so the gemara in marcos explains that the first six operate as r.a miklot even if the rosia is not aware that he's in an ear miglet the other 42 only protect him if he has awareness so let's imagine for example that the roseach doesn't really have a sense of direction he finds himself actually actually one of the arie mclaughs one of the six are immigrants he finds himself in hebron but he doesn't know he's in hebrew he doesn't know and the goal of adam kills him in by convincing him that he's in tel aviv or whatever whatever it would be so according to the halacha the goal adam is innocent because since the road say oh i'm sorry i know i'm saying kevin is one of the six i'm sorry since heaven is one of the six even if he doesn't know the goal of adam is guilty because the six protect the roseach even when he's not aware masha'enteng the other 42 protect only when there is awareness okay so the six protect even when there's no awareness the 42 protect only when there is awareness this is the gemara now to take this a little further let me share with you an insight from the after of one of the great khashil shurebing urbis the rav of apto his safer and hamish is called o'haiv israel because it's a lot about avast israel and he himself is often called the o'has realm and he says an interesting observation even though we don't have an ear mikla today we can get the spiritual atonement and protection of an ear miglet by our recitation of shema krishma gives us the protection of an ear miglet and it does it in two ways the first passage is contains six words so the first passage of shema corresponds to the sixth primary arimigla the next part shall be after you shall love god with all of your heart all of your soul contains 42 words the first parasha of shema and that corresponds to the second level of the ari miklet so shema and viahapta gives us the spiritual protection of the 48 are a miglet broken down into the six and the 42. so first of all what does that mean the spiritual protection of r.a miklot why do we need the spiritual protection of r.e miklet unless we kill somebody who did we kill i mean ari miklet is for a particular sin the sin of unintentional negligent homicide we'll call it manslaughter would be the legal term i didn't do that so what what do i need the spiritual atonement of your michelin so the after up doesn't explain it but i think there's something very very deep here and that is yeah number one first of all maybe we do murder people in various ways right because i'll say if you humiliate somebody publicly you might be guilty of murder it's key either right so it could be we murder people in different ways i don't remember if i said this last week forgive me if i'm repeating something my mama said i don't think i said it but i don't know if anyone would remember uh there's a story about reviving cutler uh wherever you know when lakewood started when the yeshiva blake was started uh after world war ii did you remember they say the story no you don't know okay if you don't remember i'll say it okay that's the advantage of people not remembering sometimes i can get a chance to repeat uh it's a very powerful story uh when riverand cutler started the lakewood yeshiva and was very small after world war ii because during the war he was actually very involved in trying to save people so he really didn't start anything until after the war so the idea of toriel ishmael the idea of a place just to learn torah was very very foreign in the united states there were a few yeshivas very very few there was you you should be university there was toru vedas there even was my alma mater neri israel but basically few and far between and reviron who had already been a great guddell even in europe great great genius brilliant talmudic scholar spent most of his time collecting money he was only in lakewood on shabbos and and most of the week he was collecting money and he was not getting big donations five dollars a dollar okay in 1945 the dollar went further than it went today but not so much you know a dollar was a dollar it wasn't a huge amount of money and you know he realized that it was a job to build up torah a very difficult job but he did it but there was one experience that broke him he was in miami with collecting money and in a hotel elevator somebody entered a woman entered was not dressed properly and at some point this really kind of broke his spirits and he started like weeping weeping to himself he started crying to himself that hashem had to put him into such a situation so the talmud that was with him said rebbe you're such a gong you're such a sadiq you're such a talmud you could be giving shiorim to hundreds and or thousands of tamidim you could be writing svarim and god gives you a mission to collect a dollar here and a dollar here and to be humiliated and exposed to all sorts of things that you spent your whole life trying not to be exposed to why does hashem put you into this suravaran said the following thing you know the that when you kill accidentally you have to go to the city of refuge you know that's called exile you have to go into exile he said every teacher of torah might be guilty of killing somebody accidentally not by taking a knife or firing a gun but by harsh words by not building somebody up by saying even an off-handed comment that could crush their spirit we talked last week about the plastic and michele life and death is in the hands of the tongue suravaran said the reason why rosh hashibas have to go into exile is because maybe they killed somebody bashog it wasn't on purpose and since the rash of shiva represents the whole institution so he may bear it for all the rebellion as well so the individual rebbies might not have to go into gullus but the reshiva does so in a sense going back to the after road when the after of says we need kriyashma to give us the atonement of eremikwat it might be because all of us to some degree may have killed part of the human spirit in another person might be our child our students our spouse our friend our co-worker right it's not so clear that we're not murderers in one way or the other we need ir miklot and says the option of krishma can give you some of the capara of your miklot why is that what huh why accuracy i'll go i'll get to one but this is what he said this is why my six words and the abda is 42 words but there's another way that we need the kapoor avira miklet and that is we murder ourselves we might be guilty of partial suicides because what is life but a succession of moments time is the raw material of life so when we waste time we don't use our moments in good ways and we even use the phrase sometimes i kill time you're not we're not killing time we're killing us in some ways we don't use our lives in a good way now again that doesn't mean there's not room for recreation i mean the rambam that even recreation and vacation and looking at beautiful things can be part of a spiritual life because they give you energy and they give you serenity so i'm not suggesting that every time you take a walk in the park you know there's some sin here the other way around that could be a very very good thing but the notion of using your life in a meaningful way seizing the moment so in a sense all of us are murderers murderers of ourselves and therefore we have to connect to the ir mikhlat to give us that kind of kapara that the year miklot miklot give gives us you know um there was in the 19th century there was a maget an itinerant preacher and maggie them were of many many different qualities you had maggie them like the dublin who are very very great tamil ham i mean the bill nagaon was a friend of the dublin market you can imagine that the djibril margaret must have been a first class talmud khacham and the villagan would invite him to give him private muster talks but then there are other magic them that you know uh they just had to make a living so they would go around giving uh russia's etc uh sometimes the same russia and every place okay so maggie them had a wide diversity of quality from the great great great talmud to people who just this is the job that they made but one of the famous mageedam was a very very great market too was the market of kellum now don't confuse him with the altar of kelum the altar of kellum the old man of kellum kellum was a city on the german polish border on the polish side the altar of kellum was ravi sual solanter's great talmud and the altar of kellum developed teaching musser and teaching ethics and morals and character building and the like the maggid of kellum happened to also have been a talmud of resource laundry but he didn't have a yeshiva he was an itinerant market who would go from place to place giving musser and guidance and the like now he was a very dramatic person his style was extremely dramatic so i'm going to go over a particular sermon that he gave on a particular day he comes to a kahila and the show is right next to the cemetery the town cemetery is next to the show and he says a miracle happened one day that all of the bodies came out of the graves and they were given a half an hour to fix whatever they needed to fix in their lives and in a much more dramatic way than i could possibly say it he was describing how those people were running around like chickens without a head they were running in a panic like one person went to ask maxilla and make amends for all the people they hurt and another person took it to hillary and another person took a gemara and another person went to his wife and went to his children and every moment they're keeping one eye on the clock you know 10 minutes gone only 20 minutes left 15 minutes left and as they're approaching the end of the half an hour they're getting much more and more frantic because they know this is the end this is the last chance this is where they could fix it and then finally it's 28 minutes and 29 minutes and then countdown you know uh 60 59 and then it comes and the ultimate column was very it's recorded very dramatic people were crying people were going crazy people were saying oh yes and then it's all over and then they go back and they'll never be another chance to fix it because everything is based on what you do in this life no other chance putting aside reincarnation but the author of kalama was not going with reincarnation and as everybody is so excited and moved by this he then says henra bosai what is so bad if god has given us more than a half an hour to fix things and then he said and who said god has given us a half an hour it's a scary thought i don't want to depress anybody i don't want to trust myself myself either but the truth is we never know we really never know and if we never know ghazal themselves say try to live every day as if it's the last day not in this sense for sheldon of being depressed but in the sense of wanting to make it count don't put off what you can do today you know make that phone call to the people that you know we have grudges with or tightness with you know fix it up i mean all of us when the end comes should be ah in good health are going to have unfinished business that's that's kind of the nature of the human being but we can try to leave as little unfinished as we're able to take care of things so in a sense all of us are murderers we need the year micklin now and this is the krishna again i'm going to segue back to the 42 stops we'll connect it yeah but note that the krishma is broken up into those two segments the shema israel has corresponds to the sixth primary r e miklet and the ahafta corresponds to the 42 secondary remicklin why would it be divided up in that particular way so here too we know that the difference is these six protect you even when you're not aware right the six are emiquon there's a beautiful passage in the tanya latanya points out an interesting idea a very powerful idea that you will notice often that even a jew who is very unconnected to god who doesn't keep mitzvos doesn't go to show eats hazard doesn't keep shabbos maybe even says he's an atheist when push comes to shove they will be willing to give their lives for even the god he thought he didn't believe in and the jewish people a jew will be most serenefish to die for god and the jewish people even if they're a person who doesn't even practice judaism and never never seemingly cared about it and says the balatanya that's because this is the source of the idea of pintaliyid the point of the jew in his godly soul is already implanted a love of god and a reverence for god he gets covered up he loses connection to it he loses awareness of it he loses awareness of it so he thinks he doesn't have it but in moments of stress in moments of tension something comes out from the inner resources of his the depths of his neshama for which he had no conscious awareness until that moment it breaks through and that's why the ballatini said a jew does not really have to learn how to love god or revere god a jew has to uncover and connect to what is already in there that's the inner meaning of chuba chuva which we translate as repent really means to return now returning implies you're going back to where you were return to god return to the jewish people but one might say returning to you see we use with shuva the vocabulary of changing right we we talk about i can change for the better and that's true behaviorally i can change but existentially chuva is not about changing it's about becoming what it is you already are you're not changing you're returning to your true identity and that's why the balatonia says every jew is going to be willing at some ultimate moment to be most her nephesh even though he can't even know why do you remember the wall street journal reporter daniel pearl a few years ago very very uh tragic story i don't remember if it was okay there or before that but he was kidnapped by terrorists and he was literally beheaded on youtube i mean they took down the video after they didn't leave it up but they put like a sword or a knife to his neck and they wanted him to proclaim his belief or allegiance to islam and he said i am a jew they slit his throat they killed him now daniel prayer was not observant and i believe he was even even intermarried but that is a person who died al-qidah shashem indeed when ghazal said a person can get his own in one second this would be a classic example of that he gave his life rather than deny his connection to the jewish people in spite of the fact that he wasn't observant and uh mitzvos were not part of his life where does that come from it says the balatanya it comes from the godly soul that is within you that yearns to be connected to the creator so here is the idea is talks about the unity of god and the unity of god means the notion that i am connected to god because my soul is a helic of god's breath doesn't just mean there's one god it means i am one with god that's going to work even without awareness that's why my israel is mahuvan to the six r.a mikla that give you protection without awareness because that refers to the pinta liyid on a subconscious level that will come out you see the correlation the shema israel is the pinto layit and therefore it guides you it lifts you it inspires you even without conscious awareness on your part now [Music] however god gave us a mission yeah it's wonderful to have a pencil he id but god also gave us a mission through torah through mitzvoth to bring it out from the subconscious to the conscious and that's how we express our love of god i express my love of god by serving him but by definition service of god requires awareness you can't be serving god unless you're aware of him and aware of his commandments so consequently the ahafta i love god by serving him with my heart and with my soul and with my life with my might that corresponds to the 42 are a miklet that give you the kapara only when you have awareness right so it's kind of a beautiful thing in other words this is adding to the after up i mean the after off simply says shima israel is connected the six are a miklot viajafta is connected to 42 or a miglette but he doesn't go further than that so what we're adding is that these six are a mic left protect you even without awareness that's the pintolee is but the after loving god and serving god requires awareness but be it as it may the common denominator of all of this is the after rav's idea that the 6 and the 42 of krishna correspond to the rv miklot and they give us the kapara they give us the atonement now once again how does it do that in what way does it do that the answer would be that if we understand that the ear miklet like lo babajirabhi said is designed to heighten your awareness of spirituality and become more sensitive to the mean is the purpose of life right that's why we take the rosaya who was careless and we put him in an environment of gohanim and levine so when we don't have the year mikla krishna can do the same thing krieshama heightens my awareness my sensitivity the priority of my life to serve god with all of my soul and all of my heart so in a sense it can do the same thing that your mikhla does now obviously i don't mean this in a halachic sense meaning hey rosaya couldn't get couldn't get out of going to the air miklet by saying hey i'll just stop in my roof you know i'll stay home and david myers you know that's not going to work but in in a spiritual sense the kriya shma bisman takes the place of the of the ear here miglin so in a sense we look at it this way we are making 42 right the jewish people are going through 42 journeys in the desert on the way to the promised land those journeys are a metaphor for the neshama struggling through the journeys on this earth which are often a desert empty barren devoid of meaning devoid of purpose confusion but we keep on going in those journeys they are the journeys of the neshama they are the journeys of the jewish people in the four exiles right but like the cities of refuge there are ways in which we can in those 42 stages we can achieve a communion with hashem a reflection with hashem right the 42 cities of refuge meaning to say precisely in our confrontation with the desert we can connect to god be elevated by god heighten our awareness and that in turn also corresponds with the uh 42 the 6 and the 40. but here here it's only the 42. i don't know why the 6 gets out of here but it does correspond with the year miklot which is corresponding to the 42 stages of awareness love of god and finally i think the last correlation i mentioned was the 42 day night periods of the three weeks now here you might question that the analogy seems to be breaking down because here you seem to be journeying in the wrong direction you're going the wrong way meaning the 42 journeys through the desert is i go through the desert to get to eric israel my nashamah goes through the nisionos of this world to get to olamba the 42 r a miklots are the avenues of behavior and meditation that can refine my neshama and give me atonement all of these are destinations towards something positive but the three weeks which we say the 21 days corresponds to 42 day night periods you're moving from the 17th of thomas to the ninth above i mean you're not moving towards redemption you're not moving towards life you're not moving towards atonement you're moving towards destruction and mourning so why would we correlate the 42 journeys towards irish israel to the 42 stops towards the 9th above the answer is again a point that we made last week and that is that in a sense there is closeness to god achieved by closeness and there is closeness to god achieved by distance as we become aware of how far we are from hashem that creates within our hearts and within our soul a tremendous yearning to be close to and therefore the further away you get it's like a circle right if you have a circle and you're moving away from a point on a circle the further away you move from the point the closer you get on the other side see it's not like a line if you have a line so the further you move away from a point on the line the further you are if you have a circle so my point is here on the circle so i'm going here here here further further further further further further further closer and that is the very very important idea that the three weeks which again are represented as 42 periods are also taking us to the promised land they are taking us to a journey of reconciliation they are taking us to a journey of closeness it is the closeness of being aware of how far we are absence makes the heart grow fonder the notion of knowing and yearning for redemption is the most powerful motivating force that will bring the redemption i think i mentioned this is the meaning of the ghazal that mashiach is born on tishoba famous is born antiseph morale says that doesn't mean necessarily that the man that will be mashiach birthday has to be anticipated moshe can be born any day of the year but it means the messianic power of redemption enters the world based on the magnitude of our mourning for the khurban basa mikdash if you don't feel the loss then there's nothing that god feels he has to restore you feel the loss that creates this connection with that so thus all of these correlations actually fit 42 journeys through the desert transitions of the nishan although we didn't really enumerate them specifically struggling with the deserts of the world 42 are emicles which are connected to the awareness that allow me to navigate my awareness of thinking about god and then finally the 42 periods of the three weeks which is also a journey and it seems to be a journey away from god but in that journey away from god we can find god in a very very deep and meaningful way there's a verse in echa where it says call wrote faha he see guha all who pursued her meaning the enemies who pursued jerusalem hey sigua they captured her banamitsarim between the narrow walls meaning he's describing a scenario where jews tried to escape and they were just trapped but in the suffragettas they offer a little bit of a homiletical interpretation instead of reading it wrote farah those who pursue her you break it up into two words wrote fei kha all who pursue you'd hey although is also the term for the three weeks between shiva serbatamus and tituba they're called between the narrow walls so what is the passage telling me according to this dress if you're seeking hashem this is a time when hashem can be found you find him through distance as well as closeness and sometimes finding him through distance can even be more powerful i think i mentioned last week forgive me for repeating raphutner's famous statement that he said the one thing he missed about aliyah was the yearning to live in eric israel and there's something uh actually something that resonates very true there you know the person is in huxlarets and they're dreaming of when they can come to eretz israel and they think about it day and night and they have such a love for the land and then they come here okay they come here and then we have to deal with uh you know everyday life the frustrations of everyday life and we don't always have that same passion we take things for granted we take everything for granted right so uh this is being a president to learn not to take hashem for granted not to take eric israel for granted not to take the base and make this for granted and through that yearning we can achieve an incredible closeness so thank you [Music] yes