Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: Appreciating The Land of Israel and Understanding the Sin of the Spies

[Music] hi everybody and again it's good to see your faces coming back and if the backdrop looks a little different this is actually our old place this is the baka show a mcgriffiam and we finally are able to go back to our old malcolm so it's a little bit of a return home uh as always we're very grateful to the sponsors of the shir and in particular once again we are praying for a refusal to shift galileo about and again a young man that we have been dominating for a very long time who very very sadly very much needs uh our prayers and our fellas and all of the holy israel have a reformer shlayman hashem hear our prayers and may the torah that we learned be asukus for them and for all of claude israel that needs raphua and yeshua and bracha and and and in addition we have some sponsorships by my friend in new york yosef kalimi and some old friends from maryland uh dr brian and kaya rosen in honor of the new granddaughter yael adira born to their children yitzhak and mushkar rose and i remember yitzi when he was a little boy in brazil it's great to see that he is he and his wife are now parents of of a new of a new daughter and uh all of the family the parents and the grandparents should have much much us um i think that's it for today okay i mentioned last week that the book of amidbur really has three parts part one deals with the ideal jewish society part three deals with the sordid realization of the imperfections of that society and part two is the transition of how do you go from a to z and that's by the attitude you have when you leave harsinai well essentially uh part three which is kind of the bad stuff actually began in last week's parsha as soon as the jewish people left harsinai remember they immediately wanted the quail etc the kibro-sativa the graves of lust and the the the downward spiral continues uh in this parsha with really one of the most pivotal events uh in the whole torah and that is the hate hammer raglan hate of the spies had a devastating immediate consequence this is not kind of some long-term ethereal punishment in the world to come it actually meant that the entire generation that had left mitzrayim any man that was 20 years old or up at the time of the exodus died over the next 40 years and was not permitted to enter the land of israel except for yahushua binon and kalev ben yafuna the whole door hamidbor essentially died as a result of the marathon they died gradually they died over a period of 40 years now you'll notice that i did mention men from the age of 20 and up so it's important to keep in mind who did not die as a result of the raglan number one women who were greater in their faith did not die as a result of the raglan perhaps this is not so certain many women died in the midbar of normal old age or whatever it would be although that's not so but no women died as a result of the freedom of raglan and therefore there were many elderly women who entered the land of israel that's one point a second point is and this is a little less clear there are some reason him that actually say that shaved lady the tribe of lady did not die as a result of the raglan and therefore they too were able to enter eretz eric israel there is a final opinion of rabbenutam and the numbers are very difficult to reconcile here whereabenertime says that on the average 15 000 people would die every year 600 000 divided by 40. this is an approximation is fifteen thousand rabena tom actually understands a sugiya in massachusetts that the last group of people who were supposed to die in the 40th year god canceled out the punishment and as a result fifteen thousand people of the doraha midbar actually entered here at israel this is a tremendous heritage this is ravenous tom's interpretation of why the 15th ave became a great day of simcha because every year fifteen thousand people would die on the ninth above and what happened was the last year nobody died the ninth above and they thought they miscalculated but on the 15th of our when they saw a full moon they knew the night of had passed and zakharov was hashem simply waved the punishment to the last group now that is a tremendously difficult uh interpretation uh simply because the gemara and not the hamish itself says that all of the men died except for yoshua and colleagues so now you're saying yoshua and kalei then 15 000 of their closest friends so we don't need to go into all the specifics but nevertheless this was the devastating result of the faith on the ratlin again morale points out in many ways the fact that they died over 40 years and one end of this 40 years of wandering that's very true on the other end it also means that the punishment was spread over a long time instead of hashem simply wiping out the generation right away it was a little bit at a time so the morale says the 40 years is actually a midat a final chronological point when we say 40 years please keep in mind that this is counting 40 years from the exodus of egypt from the time they left egypt to the time they entered the land of israel was 40 years the miraculous happened around a year and a half into that time so actually from the time of the raglan till the time of their entering the land of israel is around 38 and a half years okay it's 40 years retroactively from the time that they left that they left um it's right actually the truth is it's 40 years minus a week actually because you can calculate it exactly because they left mitzrayim on the 15th of nisan the first day of pesach they crossed the yard dane in the 40th year on the 10th of nisan which means five days later would have been 40 years so it was 39 years 11 months and the three weeks and and two days after the time so we rounded out and we say they were in the desert for a total of 40 40 years okay so although there are other topics in departure people sometimes forget but the maraglim is such a dominant and important historical event in the formation of um israel that that is what people generally talk about and that's we're going we're going to talk about uh tonight the parsha begins that god seems to speak to moshe god says to moshe send spies in order to determine uh whether the inhabitants of the land are strong or weak and uh what is the best way to conquer them what is the best way to defeat them so the posture says if you simply interpret the word shalakh is god himself commands that marauding be sent now rashi points out that this contradicts the account in the book of deuteronomy in other words we seem to have a contradiction about this was it a divine command or did it come from the people in this parsha it seems to say hashem told moshe send the spies when i read the book of jevara which is moshe rabano's review of the history right before his death moshe said you jewish people came to me and you said we want to send spies to determine how to conquer the land in the best way so you immediately have a contradiction between parashat shewa and parshastavarim a divine command or was a proposal that emanated from the insecurities and fear of israel so rashi gives us an important answer rashi's answer is that you have to read the two accounts together and initially the the the shiloh marathon the idea came from the people it was not god's idea and moshe simply asked god and when god said hashem is not commanding it's not a mitzvah hashem is saying it would have been better if they wouldn't have sent but if they want to send you can do it if you want in other words in order to reconcile the contradiction rashi has to interpret not as a commandment but as simply giving permission to a request that came from the people which means the normal understanding of rashi is that it is rashi's position that it's not just the report of the marauding and the response of the people that is a sin that for sure is the case but it's the actual request for spice that is a fate okay we have to separate the different components was it a sin to request a delegation of spies that would check out the land rashi learns it is a faith and the reason it's right is because if you have faith in god's promise god promised he will give you the land god promised that you will be able to subdue the enemy then why do you have to check it out the very fact that you're checking it out means you don't fully believe in god's promises so according to rashi meaning the sending of the miragum is a hate and shiva is not a mitzvah it's god grudgingly saying if that's what you want to do go ahead and do it ramban takes very strong issue with rashi ramban says there is absolutely nothing wrong with sending marauding sending miraglem in no way is inconsistent with the muna or bitakum faith and trust in god because after all even if god promises you victory you are muhlyev to have a military strategy you are mcleaves to know how to wage war where to wage war this is part the ramban says of the world of ishtar this is right this is the world of human effort god is the source of pinasa but you got to go to work or at least find somebody to support you god is the source of healing and the refuge but we are still muslim to go to a doctor so the ramban says the fact that god promises your victory does not absolve you of the obligation to figure out what the best strategy is it's not a stereotype and the ramban brings two excellent proofs number one as you just said yeshua himself and yeshua above all knows how tragic srila morado was and yet when he becomes the leader after they cross the jardin he sends two marathon to check out urethra to see how they should attack it and not only that people don't always notice this moshe rabbenu himself sends out muradlin that when they wage war against in the east bank of the jordan against sikhon and og so one of the cities that they conquered that were given to the tribes ruvain gods and half of menasha there was a city yazer that was a canaanite city and it says it's only one plastic there's no there's no story here it says moshe sends to check out jazeera i mean after the caitanya marathon moshe sends miraglim again the ramban says the answer is nothing wrong with sending miranda in fact that might be expected ishtarlas in developing military strategy and therefore the ramban says it's very very clear that the hate of the miragulim is not the sending of the miracle but it's number one the fact that the marathon themselves exceeded the scope of their mission they were supposed to give a factual mission they were supposed to identify what are the weak points what are the strong points they're not supposed to editorialize if the canaanites are stronger than us will they defeat us or there's no way we will succeed right just the facts they're not supposed to editorialize that's one thing and number two the reaction of the people and it was remember the moroccan came back on the eighth above and that night the night of tituba everybody cried and mourned and god said you cried the night of tishbov for no reason this will be the night of eternal crying and mourning like tish above is rooted the tragedies of tish above are rooted in so this is a big mach lokas rashi and the ramban was there any sin in the requesting of the miraculous according to rashi there was according to ramban the requesting of the marauding was not enough era but it was the met the the response of the moroccan as well as the response of the jewish people to the report of them around them then in his commentary hamikdobar actually gives a middle view a very interesting view he says it was indeed he starts off with rashi and then turns into the ramban it was a sin to need the miragulum but once you need it you have to do it and it's if develops a very interesting thesis the nazif says there's a certain ideal state of immuno in which your trust in god is so deep and so comprehensive that you don't even need his titleist you know that god will take care of you but once you show the weakness of insecurity and fear your relationship to god takes a different turn and all of the things that you wouldn't have needed to do had you not been afraid you must do now that you are afraid and therefore it became a mitzvah it was a sin to ask for them a raglan but once they asked it became a mitzvah to send them he develops this thesis but from an interesting proof from this on one of the stories in the book of shemo if you remember when hashem decided that shalom would no longer be king so we instructed shemoel to go to yishai in beslachem and anoint one of yishai's sons to be malach and shemoel said to hashem how can i go to beisler and anoint eshai sho'o will hear that i'm going to anoint a successor and sho will kill me so god's response to shmuel is bring a carbon go and take an animal and then it'll look as if you're just going to bake lethem to bring a corbin in those days carbanos were permitted everywhere bumbles were committed in other words he gave shmuel a ruse a subterfuge to cover things up now the native asked akasha why didn't hashem tell shmoel initially go to basler with a korvan so you will be able to anoint sho david without people knowing about it it's a very funny thing hashem just tells shmuel go and anoint the son of egypt he doesn't tell shemoah how to protect himself shmuel then expresses insecurity so god says this is what you should do what if he wouldn't have asked so the native says and this is hard to say about schmuel who was such a great great sadiq had shmuel not been afraid then nothing would have happened to him he could have gone there he could have anointed devin openly and publicly and through his ammuna in hashem he would have been protected but once shmuel even momentarily is afraid that on some level he dropped in his pitakan in hashem he leaves the world of pure amunah and now lives in the world of human effort on his douglas so god says ah if you're scared i now have to deal with you on that level and i give you a subterfuge then the sib says this is the shara this is the compromise between rashi and the ramban that it was sinful for the doraha midbour to knead the ishtables of morocco but once they needed it it became mandatory that's the saying that god always gives you what you need even if perhaps you shouldn't have needed it had you been on a higher level so those are three opinions regarding the shiloh but now let's go to the other side of the coin the miraculous are gone for 40 days the gizera is for every day of your mission there will be a wandering for a year and they come back they come back the 8th of and they give their reports and the people cry and sob and say we want to go back to mitzrayim where life was so good it's so amazing how uh people have a revisionary memory which we see in our own lives all the time and the big question is and we're going to ask this question every year every time you read it how could this be this was the generation that experienced the ten plagues that experienced the red sea that experienced the glories of matanzawa just a short time before granted there was a satellite you can ask the same culture there but the great but now we're focusing on the miracle that every single day sees the miracles of hashem through the man that falls from heaven and through the traveling well of water and through clouds of glory they see across a way that no generation since has perceived god and all of a sudden they're afraid they figure we can't cross the jordan we can't defeat the enemies how could there be the saitama radhla how could there be a lack of a muna a lack of bitara that required the deaths of an entire generation not only that but to make the question a little a little worse rashi points out that moshed shows for maraudin people who weren't sadiq people who were righteous remember he didn't chose the scene they don't confuse this if you look at the list of who is the head of the tribe and then you look at the list of who's them rather you see they're not the same people the people who went as marathon were especially chosen group and they were chosen because of their righteousness so we really have two related questions how could the miraculous sin in their reports and how could the people sin in their response to the report i mean this is the door humid boy and no it's a question that perplexes us every single time we read the story so there is a mahalak there is an interesting approach that's offered by the native by the melbourne by referesh in different ways but it's fundamentally a very similar approach that the nissian the authenticity of the miraglen and the um they saw a difference between the way life was in the midbourne and the way life was in the land of israel going to be in the land of israel the midbar can be best described as a spiritual cocoon they are surrounded by an open and supernatural 24 7. revelation of the shechina the man as i said coming down every day except on shabbos and on friday a double portion to cover shabbos the bear the water the the lowly maidservants saw on kriyasyamsaf revelations of the divine that even the greatest prophets did not see they saw the midbour as the epitome of kadusha of tahara of purity of sanctity of godliness and of course who was their leader in the midbar none other than the greatest of all prophets who ever lived and whoever will live no sheriban and this was the life of the midbour when they come to eric israel life is going to be very different they're going to be confronting the physical difficulties of life there will no longer be man they will have to plant and harvest and thresh and grind and bank they will have to build cities they will have to have lawyers lawyers lawyers doctors accountants air conditioning they'll have to have regular armies and police and fire they're going to have to live in the world of teva the world of nature the world of cause and effect the world of ishtaros and human efforts and they will be confronting all of the challenges that building a society and the physical reality of of this world entails and they were afraid they were afraid because they said i mean imagine a scenario you can even imagine this i remember that years ago in the states there was a very popular cartoon strip uh dunesbury some of you might uh might remember it about different types of people going through different experiences so in one of the one of the characters uh tried to get every single university degree they could get because they didn't want to leave school so they got md's and they got jd's law degrees and then they got phds in like every possible field and they just stayed and stayed and stayed and stayed because they wanted to be in school instead of getting a job in the real world and finally the person had a dilemma he had gotten every degree the university offered he didn't know what to do at this point he had gotten every phd and md and jd and everything else like where do you go and he was expressing the anxiety that he had that i don't know he also ran out he ran out of post-it now today we have a lot of postdoc so you can actually stick around a lot but apparently he ran out he ran out of even post-docs and he finally had to confront the spectre of having to make a living and it was horrifying and terrifying okay that's kind of a humorous thing but imagine the person and this is something that's very close to home the person learning in collab for many years he's in a pure torah environment his whole day is spent hopefully he's using his day wisely his day is spent with torah and avodah and yeresha but then the day comes that he has to make a living for his growing family and the cold stipend even when it's paid which may not be that often is insufficient he's afraid he's afraid not because he doesn't want to work that's not the reason he's afraid because he says once i leave my spiritual cocoon will i have the resources to confront all of the trials and tribulations of the material physical world and the person's attitude might be i need to be in coll a little longer i need to be here longer to build myself up more to grow in a moon and to grow and be talking to grow in torah to grow in hiroshima so then it's him says the spawn of the miragulim was they actually wanted the people to stay in the midbrain a little longer because every day we're in the midbar we experience miracles we experience such we learned torah what did they do all day in the midwest most of the time they were not traveling i mean they were learning torah in fact there's even an expression in the gemara that the torah is ideally given to those who eat mud because they don't have to work et cetera so they have their food and they can learn torah and this is the insecurity of the people meaning to say yes we believe that god wants us to have marriage israel but we're not ready we're not ready we haven't remember uh eventually they were there for 40 years but remember there's only a year and a half after we left withdrawal we need to absorb kedusha we need to absorb torah we need to grow and then we'll be ready but right now when we confront the physical reality of enemies that are so much more powerful than us we don't think we can withstand the nisionos we are not adequately prepared for meeting the challenge of building a society in irish israel and this is especially the case when they realize that moshe albania was not going to be their leader although it's true that the sin for which moshe was excluded from marriage israel was not yet committed the hitting of the iraq that'll be in a few weeks but it's clear that it was already known that moshe would not be entering the land of israel how do i know this we read it in last week's question remember the elders eldaru maidat we're prophesying and yahushua goes to moshe avenue and says they are unauthorized prophets put them in jail and moshe says i don't begrudge their prophecy it would be my fondest wish that god would put his spirit on all the jews that they too should be prophets now the khumash does not indicate what were el dorado made up saying that made yahushua so upset rashi tells us from ghazal that eldaru maydad were saying [Music] yahushua moshe is going to die and yehoshua will bring them to herod israel this is an important little bit of information to assimilate that means by the time the miraculous were sent it was already known among the people that moshe avenue was going to die meaning every day we stay in the desert is an extra day we have moshe rabena to instruct us and to inspire us if we go to eric israel right now we lose mojo remain so in the excuse me andre hirsch all make the argument that the miragulim had a seshbong the shame shamayim they wanted the generation to stay in the midbar for a longer period of time so they could absorb the spiritualities like being in kohler once again absorb the spirituality and the kedusha and that will prepare them for the ultimate challenge of dealing with gashmith dealing with materialism dealing with society so this explains another interesting anomaly and that is we find that moshe had an intimation that this this mission would not go very well it's a strange thing he sent the miragum but he had a hush that things were going to get messed up how do we know this because you'll notice that he changed yeshua's name yeshua who was the spy of the tribe of ephraim his original name was hoshea just like the prophet hoshea but moshe changed his name explains is god's name hoshua meaning may god save you from the evil counsel of the spice now if you think about this if moshe is praying that people shouldn't be influenced by this by the bad spies then why does he only pray for yoshua let him pray for all the spies that they shouldn't come up with a bad report moreover another question if you look at the hamish carefully you'll see that after the miraculous give their report and the people cry and moan and complain yahushua is very very silent he and khaled fall on their faces to pray but the only one that presents an argument to the people that we have to have faith in god it's only callif yahushua doesn't seem to say anything it's almost as if yeshua is immobilized he's muted so why is this number one why does moshe have a special concern for yoshua he doesn't pray for khaled and number two why is it only called that speaks up and not yeshua and there's one answer to both of these questions because if we understand that the raglan emanated and also the response of the people emanated from the insecurity of entering a physical less spiritual world without a michelin and that is the fear that motivates both the marathon and i'm israel then think about this who would be the person most likely to have that fear more than yeshua been known himself yeshua bennune is going to be the successor to motion he knows more than anyone the impossibly big shoes that he would have to film see it's not like the political system here you know the political system in politics people say uh the vice president let's say of the us spends his whole day in this case here all day waiting for the president to have a heart attack okay not not real yet that's a nasty thing to say but in some figurative sense it's true i'm waiting when will i be the boss in torah it's very much the opposite maestro abeno himself didn't want to be the leader remember he argued with god over and over and over again and you think yeshua is waiting for moshe to die so he'll take over it's the opposite moshe knows if there's anybody that will want to stay in the midburg longer under moshe's tutelage it'll be none other than yoshua himself and therefore it's yehoshua that is most vulnerable to the maraglim's case moshe didn't have to pray for khalif you know khaled was strong khalid was a mayman kawaii wouldn't go along with it kalev doesn't need a name change or a prayer but yoshua does because if the miragulum will say how can we live without moshe how can we live without man and without the hair that ananya covered and without the torah of the midbour how can we confront the challenges of building a physical society that's going to eat that yeshua in a very strong way therefore yeshua needed the special siata deshmaya of rajra banu's prayer and the name change and indeed moshe rabena was right because that's why yoshua couldn't speak up the miragum are making all of these arguments it's like you know i'm sure we've all faced sometimes we've come to a certain decision that involves certain risks and we've decided i'm going to make that decision but then somebody brings back your insecurities and you become insecure again right after you've got a certain level of strength and competence somebody can take it away what about this what about that what about that what about that and then what happens is all the confidence you should have been building can just go away yoshua lawson again this may be a daring thing to say but it's possible i think at least momentarily yehoshua lost his confidence when the people are speaking and raising all the things that would be insecurities for yoshua and that's why call life has to take the initiative so it's a very fascinating point that in a sense the morale points out the 40 years in the deserts on one level is a punishment of course but on another level it's exactly what the miraculous wanted and the people wanted if what you're saying is we are not ready to confront the challenges of eric israel we need the spiritual cocoon of the midbour we need moshe bainu's leadership hashem gives them exactly what they say they need you need more time i'll give you 40 years or 38 and a half years of more time it's very fascinating that was the very very thing they asked for now it's true they didn't ask to die in the desert i think doran midbour hoped they would enter eric israel but they wanted more time and that's exactly what they got they had mocha rabeno for 38 and a half more years than they would have had he would have died right then had there not been the kaitamaranga so this is the native the melbourne refers to his understanding generally of the haita marathon again to to use the muscle of cola it is essentially the koval person who says i'm not ready for the world yet i need to be in this environment longer when i confront that physical world i will lose my kadusha and when i lose my kadusha i will no longer be able to be victorious over the enemies because i will not be deserving of god's divine properties if i'm not living on the madrega of kedusha and the link so when we summarize the lessons of the miracle i think we can actually come up with a list of five or six points that we need to know because this is always going to be a problem once you define the height as such a noble height a hateless with noble aspirations you immediately get the problem so what was the sin right they were so righteous in their kashmir they wanted torah they wanted kadusa they wanted moshe of anu they wanted the experience of the revelation of the shekinah in an open intimate way sounds good so why is it such a sin so i think there are a number of points that we can make in summary number one whatever your calculation you cannot substitute your judgment for god if god says to you it's time to enter the land it's time to leave the desert it's time to emerge from the cocoon you cannot say i want to be in the cocoon longer you can have the most logical not in the world from the perspective of human logic but if hashem says time to go you've got to make the you have to operate with the assumption that hashem's judgments is better than mine very very simple there are no hashmonos in terms of second guessing the re-bonus you'll know them and in a deeper sense one has to understand this may be a message for kolo as well maybe it's a little controversial the ultimate goal of torah is to take the spiritual truth of the torah and translate them into the real world the midbar is actually not the ideal state the midbar is an artificial state the midbar is a state that is removed from the pressures and mission notes of the real world and it was a learning ground it was a training ground it demonstrated on a daily basis and muna and bitakon in hashem and by the way that has a cost when you have that intimate relationship with god and that open and supernatural relationship then every misstep is going to have immediate consequences you commit a sin thousands of people die we live in a world of concealment we live in a world of divine hester panim so we don't immediately see reward and punishment in the midbar everything was immediate you saw that god was in charge god is in charge in this world too but through the veil of concealment you don't you don't often you don't always see it in the midwest that was obvious but the ultimate goal of torah and the ultimate goal of life and we've spoken about this many many times is not to escape reality but to confront the darkness and confusion in ambiguity of the world and bring godliness out of that darkness and out of that chaos in the very famous expression of the balatania which is not his expression actually it is from a madrid but it's often quoted as if the tanya said at the alta rebbe was nisava god's deepest desire was to make a derivative a dwelling place badafka in the lowliness of this world the idea is in other words take the torah take the kedusa and use it to build a society where your farming and your business and your military and your police and your politics and your warfare are all conducted based on hashem's principles hashem's laws this was referred to as great philosophy called torah where you take the torah and you bring it into the world and therefore that is your mission your mission is not to stay in the desert your mission is to take the lessons of the desert and bring them into ordinary everyday life and confront reality it's easier in fact there's a famous story the dubner magette was one of the most famous preachers in lithuania in the 1700s he always talked with parables and the like and interestingly enough he was a very dear friend of the villenega and the donagham used to ask his dumber magette to come by for a private audience and give the vilna gone mustard and there is tell the villenagang who is the greatest of the talmudic the greatest of the qidoga the ramadan said i want you to tell me what i'm doing wrong tell me how i can improve tell me how i could be a better person so the german imagine didn't want to do that he says what type of principle would it be i'm going to tell the villain you know what he's doing wrong but the villenegon says i need it i need like everybody else i need mushroom i need ways to improve myself tell me what it is so finally the dumna margaret told him you're a big sadiq you're a big thomas you know color tyra cooler that's a wonderful thing but you know you're in your room all day you don't do anything else you're not in the outside world you're not confronting the challenges of the work environment so it's easy for you because you don't have any challenges but let's see how righteous you would be if you have to go out into that world that world of moral ambiguity that world of questionable ethics that world of infinity and see how righteous you would be he was essentially telling the villain do not look at yourself as so righteous because you're not confronted with the challenges that so many other people have and it is recorded that the ville madone cried the village wept and the village said i don't know if i could maintain my madrega given those questions and yet the ultimate goal is we have to confront those conditions because we have to bring torah into the world and not withdraw ourselves from the world in order to connect to torah so that's the second lesson the idea of sanctifying the physical is actually a goal of torah the third lesson i think we have here is that a person has to believe in themselves in many ways it makes it turns out that the fate of the moroccan was not a lack of faith in god it was a lack of faith in themselves being worthy of a relationship to god in the absence of moshe repeat it emanated from a personal insecurity and the hate is not believing in yourself feeling that you're inadequate to meet the challenges that god is telling you you're able to meet you know every morning when we wake up in the morning and we check the obituaries and uh we're still here so the first thing that we recite even before we wash our hands is maidani we thank hachem that he's given us back our lives he's given has given us back our souls and we say rabbi munasaka your faith speaking to hashem your faith is very great and this these two words are actually taken from a pasuk in they actually are from tanach what does it mean your faith is very great faith is something i have in hashem so it should say rabbah and munasi my faith in you hashem is very great why does it say rabbah and your faith is very great now the grammatical answer actually is that the word ammuna in biblical hebrew does not mean faith that's a more modern usage in biblical hebrew is faithfulness reliability dependability so when we say godzilla muna is great we're not talking about god's faith is great we're talking about god's faithfulness dependability reliability that every day he keeps the world going that's actually that's probably the simple answer but in the shifters that want to translate and muna as faith they say very beautiful god's faith in us is very great that every morning he gives us life because he believes in us putting aside the puzzle of god knowing the future but whatever it is god says i believe in you i'm giving you life because there are there are still things you can accomplish you can do great things you can do good things you can make the world a better place or at least your little corner of the world a better place hashem has faith in us even when we lose faith in ourselves even when we feel insecure even when others you know we live in a life we live in a world sometimes where people do not get the validation that they need whenever we're in hostile work environments sometimes family issues are not family members are not as supportive and we sometimes can lose hope or faith in our abilities but think about this every morning that you open your eyes and get out of bed hashem is whispering in your ear i believe in you i trust you you can do it and therefore the third point about the miracle is the need to believe in ourselves to understand that if hashem gave us life he gave us the tools to meet the challenges because it would be perverse for god to give us challenges and not give us the ability to surmount those challenges so if by definition hashem gave us challenges he gave us the ability to meet those challenges faith in hashem means faith in yourself as well and that brings me to the opposite point and that is negativity can become a self-fulfilling prophecy you might call it a reverse placebo effect if i believe i am prone to fail then i become a failure and this we see from a famous sport of the katsuka rebbe if you remember one of the things the miraculous said was when they described the gigantic stature of the canaanites they said we were in our eyes as grasshoppers compared to them and so we were in their eyes so the katsuki rebbe says gevaldik everything starts from us if you think you're a grasshopper then that's how you're going to be perceived by others if you don't think of yourself as a grasshopper then you will not be seen as a grasshopper now obviously this idea of self-confidence is not the same as arrogance as gaiver arrogant skyva are repulsive qualities that a jew must banish that you must cultivate humility modesty of course those are the qualities but humility and modesty are not contradictory to the self-esteem that hashem has given me the ability to serve him in a good way you have to have both this is the famous statement that a jew has to have two ideas in his pockets at all times one is i am dustin ashes and the other is because of me the world was created we've i've quoted this now this is from buddha prashiska but the statement because of me the world was created is in the mishnah and the missionary points out that god made many lions and tigers and dogs and cats and cows but only one human being or maybe one man and one woman so that each person says because of me this whole universe is justified now that's not arrogant because the same way i say because of me there is this universe that's also true because of you so it's not arrogant it doesn't mean i'm better but i recognize how beloved i am and we all are in the eyes of hashem so i mentioned so far i've mentioned so far uh four four ideas that it's a sin to think you can second guess god's judgment number two our ultimate purpose is to confront the material world and elevate it rather than escaping number three the sin of not believing in yourself number four the self-fulfilling prophecy of negative thought kind of the reverse placebo effect you might call it and number five ultimately the sin of the miracle was also a sin in not appreciating the gifts that hashem gives us in particular of course eric israel you can look at even today if you look at ourselves in different ways we can look at eric israel as the gift of hashem the place of kedusha the homeland of the jewish people the place where we can in the very air as ravita levy says there is prophecy although we don't necessarily have that yet or you can look at eric israel as you know a dangerous place a bad place a negative place uh a place without customer service or whatever whatever whatever whatever it would be and the credit reminds us that if you want to appreciate a college parkour's gifts if you want to have hakka sparkle's gifts just to have them you have to appreciate them that which you don't appreciate you don't get you don't appreciate eric israel it'll be taken away from you this of course is very very relevant about eric israel in particular but it's a general lesson about the imperatives of gratitude again i've mentioned many times before the famous thought of the semester why all jews are called yehudim you dim after all is only the tribe of yehuda why are all jews called you dim we come from different tribes and the swastamis answers leia calls your forth son yehuda because he says now i am grateful to god odessa why is she grateful with son number four because leia knew that there would be 12 tribes and she knew there are four women out of whom 12 tribes come so 12 divided by four gives her three so each woman is entitled to three schwa so when you get what you think you're entitled to you're not grateful it's coming to me maggie when she had number four she wound up with six but when she had number four that's gratitude god has given me something better than i deserve says the swastemas every single jew must have the attitude that god has given me more than i deserve the very translation of jew a grateful person that's what you means i know that in the south they say jew means driving a hard business deal but we mean we mean it to me gratitude and finally i just want to end with i thought of the ramban makes the point the ramban points out that when moshe rabbanu prayed for the jewish people in the aftermath of the golden calf moshe used two arguments his first argument is god should remember the covenant and the promise that he made with avraham yaakov and the second is if you destroy us in the desert the nations are going to say you didn't have the power to bring us to erect israel and your name is going to be desecrated right so the two arguments are for the ego the merits of the patriarchs and hashem the desecration of god's name after the marauding you may notice he does not bring up avraham he makes the same argument if we die in the desert they'll say you don't have the power to bring us etcetera but he doesn't bring up such and the ramban raises the question why is the ghost only invoked in the aftermath of diego and it's not invoked after the morale and he says the following he says the federal ego was a sin but it was not a repudiation of god they thought the ego was an intermediary etc and therefore therefore moshe could still say remember the covenant of avraham but the heidemar was a repudiation of the gift of eric israel and because eric israel was so beloved to the others when you repudiate what the of us loved you cannot ask hashem to save you in the merit of the others a person who repudiates all of their parents values cannot then right again it reminds me a little bit of an infamous case uh in california where uh some teenagers killed their parents menendez brothers and then they asked the court for mercy because they're orphans but that's that's one of the examples of chutzpah you kill your parents and say i'm an orphan well the answer is you kill your parents you can't ask for mercy that you don't have your parents you reject your parents then they can't stand in for you was a rejection of what was so near and dear to the heart of the avatars therefore you can't invoke this at that point so this pakista are some of the lessons of the shayna maraglin and i hope in particular that we will absorb the lessons of gratitude and akhara satof for the great gift of eric israel and bias hashem uh as the passage says in to him yerushalayim may you see the good of jerusalem and is the famous again that when you look at yerushalayim or eric israel generally we're about two of your eyes should always be attuned to see the good and not see the negative so schwarzenegger [Music] is