Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: Brief History of Jerusalem and The Census - Diversity or Uniformity

[Music] thank you for coming and uh this year tonight is dedicated lia liat nishamat of rabbi bruce raikkonen who is harav kodesh benjayim contributed by michael and hannah pietrokowski and again we hope the chair should be eloy nishmatau and in addition a refuse leima to bryan batrava in honor of the 84th birthday of raqqa leia batsville freyan fishel lorraine black and roccaleo should live a long and healthy life in addition we have an anonymous contributor and he sent a little ins he or she sent a little inscription it is taught that the students of rabbi akiva perished during the omer because they did not allow show enough respect for one another i would like to anonymously show a small token of respect to ray braitos and rabbi poston for all the great work they do at the banan bina thank you very much and again uh may any may you and all who contribute to the support of torah be given the blessings that the kurdish broker for those who do support the torah of hashem so we are approaching once it's passed lag by omer we're already in the second stretch of sphira and in addition this coming sunday is the 28th of er and in case you don't know that's a very very significant day in the modern jewish calendar that is yom yusuf that is the day in the six day war that we finally regained after 19 years of being separated we regained the old city and even most important in that the hierarchy and those of you who are a little older may remember the famous words of matagor who was the officer who first got there habayitz biodeno the temple mount is in our hands and there was such a tremendous tremendous outpouring of joy that yerushalayim was not once again eer shachubra lawyer a city that was united every part of yerushalayim was under the control of the jewish people whether we've moved backwards on that issue is an interesting political point which i'm not going to discuss in particular but anyone that knows remembers that the six day war the aftermath of the six day war because it really was so miraculous so amazing so beyond the derek was actually a major impetus in the chuva movement in bringing many many jews back to yiddish gay both asha torah and your samara were essentially founded in the aftermath of the six day war but there were unfortunately two different reactions one reaction was this could only come from god and that brought people closer and closer to torah and yiddish which was a wonderful thing but there also had been an opposite attitude wow we are really wonderful we can defeat all of these arab nations you know in a few days and that exemplified the guyva the arrogance of the attitude of kohi viotsem yadi when a person says my success comes from my strength and my might so you had two opposite reactions to the sixth day war you had this idea that this could only come from god and then you had an attitude we are like superman we are the greatest military in the world which you know again i'm willing to say is largely true but we still need hashem to get us through this so many say that the um kippur war of 1973 only uh five or six years after the sixth day war was unfortunately the very very sad corrective to the attitude of kokhi of yosemite which was really a devastating more or less i mean israel pulled through but it was a very demoralizing defeat which showed us how vulnerable we are and as sad as that was as tragic as that was uh it was seen by some as kind of a a spiritual corrective to sober us up to sober us up and make make us recognize that uh without god uh we're powerless with god we can do any everything and that's where we're holding now and uh over the years we still remember the glorious day when we were able after 19 years to go to the temple mount to go to the uh or at least the wall surrounding the temple mount some went down the temple mount so i'm going to temple mount to pray to our kurdish kodesh and that's yom yerushalayim which is the 28th of er that is the hebrew day one little comment about the name of our beloved city the name of the city that is imprinted on the consciousness of every jew yerushalayim yushalayim is actually a merger of two different city areas just like minneapolis st paul and the like and that is the original name of the city which is already in biblical times was shalem salem we see after avraham's victory against the four powerful kings the righteous king melech shalem the king of shalem brought the abram and yayan bread and wine for who kohan lakelo yong this is way before military was given was a cohen to the almighty gods and basically even in ancient times before the torah was given before there was a jewish people shalem was known as a holy place a sacred place and the kings of shalem were given the hereditary title the king of righteousness just like pirate was the hereditary title of the kings of egypt in fact qazal tell us that malchistic is none other than shame the son of noah but when he's king of shalem he is called zedek so the original name of the city was said i'm sorry shalem shalem so where do we get the uru because that's the other part of the city mount moriah when avraham avinu was willing was willing to sacrifice his son yitzhak he renamed haramaria the temple mount he called it hashem yerev god will look down and see his people god will remember the merit of the al-qaeda he will look at his people with compassion and love year hashem so consequently the temple mount was called year the rest of the city was called shalem so put the two words together you get year ah shalem well that's close but no cigars they say ye is not uru but the meforshim say aleph and hey is close enough but aleph and hay is gemachuri above so you can merge the two letters to make yeru but we're still not there yet because that should mean that the name should be pronounced yerushalem just like which is mamish jerusalem where do you get the yud the second yerushalayim now in fact in tanakh yerushalayim is normally written although we pronounce it jerusalem it is commonly written without that second yet so phonetically it actually spells yerushalem but where do you get the double so here two of them before some say a beautiful idea the yud mem the yim sound is a plural like yadda yim raghlayim oznayim yerushalayim means two yerushalems what what do we mean by two yerushalams we don't mean east jerusalem and west jerusalem but we mean there's a heavenly jerusalem and there's an earthly jerusalem and when there is goula when there's a bait makdash the heavenly is in perfect alignment with the earthly jerusalem so yerushalam quite literally means you shall rather quite literally means two yerushalems and yushalem in turn is a combination of the two cities so to speak two areas one is shalem and the other is ye hashem yirae which is what abraham avinu called the temple mount together they become you shall mind these two names yera and shalem are actually quite interesting because they actually highlight some contradictory aspects of these cities similar to what we talked about spherus omer last week so this is going to overlap a little bit and that is era itself is a bit of a double meaning yera as avram avinu used it meant god will see ye god will see but it has the same letters as the word year o which is fear and reverence and the medrush indeed does interpret ye as not only referring to the verb of ye god will see but also a noun meaning fear and reverence for god shalem is shalom peace and you shall i am therefore is described as the city of divine reverence the city of peace and without repeating everything we talked about last week i i noted last week that these two goals are often in opposition to each other because as we grow in our yirat hashem we often fail to accept the ideas of others we fail to respect to be tolerant to see the legitimacy of different types of approaches sometimes yeah overpowers shalom and sometimes shalom overpowers iran which you compromise on basic fundamental ideas the combination of iran shalom once again highlights the idea that as we grow in yirat hashem we must also grow in shalom as we grow in shalom we cannot let it be at the expense of era we can't allow our religious enthusiasm to denigrate others to look down at others to take away the sense of respect that we can have for people but at the same time we can't allow our desire for shalom to dilute our commitments and kind of distort the truth by which we live our lives and that kind of paradox a little bit is the essence of what it means to live in yerushalayim you know it's brought down that there are four although all of eric israel is kadosh that's of course the case but there are four special holy cities and the holy cities are yerushalayim tavaria you can either consider me the four holy cities they correspond to the four primeval elements that uh yerushalayim is the city of fire and svath is the city of air ethereal mystical kabbalistic lebron the place of the graves of the arvos is the city of dirt tivaria is the city of water each of the cities is negative one of the elements each of the cities is one of the four letters of god's shame havaya this had grammatical the uk the ravque et cetera but we see that in this typology yerushalayim is described as the city of fire now fire has a positive and a negative fire gives light fire gives warmth fire enables you to do all sorts of constructive things without fire we would not be able to build civilization that is why we celebrate the fact that hashem gave adam harishan the gift of fire mozai shabbat said it right after shabbos and to this day we make a barakah over the fire giving thanks that hashem gave us something that enables the creation of civilization but we also know fire can be destructive fire can consume yerushalayim is the city of fire in yerushalayim there is light and there is fire heat there is comfort there is building there is creativity but at the same time it can very easily turn into mach locus hateful demonstrations sometimes hashem not that often but sometimes even violence on the part of religious jews there was a recent kind of violence with the with garrett hasidim which you're going through a difficult difficult time right now so has to be balanced with shalom it is shalom that will be the corrective to the excesses of age right so when we as we approach you shalom we should give thought about the two names of jerusalem what those two names represent and how we can incorporate in our lives both the idea of aish and the idea of shalom i remember one time i had to take a cab uh from svats back to yerushalayim it was a north american event we were in spots and i we needed to be back my wife and i needed to back the new shallam we left that swat like six in the morning and we got to usher in whatever it is 8 15 or 8 30 and kind of the beginning of rush hour or not the beginning but middle of rush hour and the horns are blaring all over the place and the swat cab driver just said to me he has been a cab driver in spot for 50 years and he had never once had to use his horn in the car he said he had never heard literally in his life so many horns going off at the same at the same time and that's the difference right throughout you know we're laid back you know uh stop your car if a cow is crossing the street you know you gotta you know be uh don't dress uh you shalom right we're uh we're on edge a little bit that's fire now fire is a wonderful wonderful necessary thing but it can also be abused and we have to be very very careful to use our fire for light for warmth for creativity for accomplishment and not to create much locus and sinatrina so that's just a little thought for yom yerushalayim by the way yamiche lime is considered by some to be such a significant day that for example rabbi hershel shakhtar i had mentioned he actually has a sock that not to say halal on yo matsumoto for you know various reasons but he does say hallelujah in recent years i guess people forget uh yemi schleim's build has been a little bit underplayed people don't celebrate it with the same enthusiasm uh that they used to but again it's something that's certainly very very worthy of celebration i noticed that the react just seeing it from the train they put this gigantic gigantic gigantic uh they cover the whole wall of the building with uh without having to call it a flag or a banner or something just i've never seen such a big banner so maybe this year perhaps they're planning on doing a little bit a little bit more okay so now we move into yet another aspect of actus we are beginning this week the fourth of the mushroom we finished last week safer vayikra we are beginning this week the book of numbers safer by midbor now it is very interesting the hebrew name for the book is by mid boy which means in the desert the english name is numbers and indeed what's interesting is the english name does correspond with the rabbinical name the rabbinical name for midbar is of census of counting i don't know if the plural of census in latin is sensai but pikujim is plural numbers countings is what it really means why is it called countings because the book of bamidbor is bracketed with a census at the beginning of the book and it's bracketed with another census at the end of the book and they count two different populations in the beginning of the book moshe albania was commanded to count the generation that left mithraim from 20 up so that is a census of yotsei mitzrayim towards the end of the book in parshas pinchas which is already after the 40 years where the generation of the desert dies and the only people who are entering erect israel except for yoshua and colleagues are those who are under 20 at the time of the exodus or were born in the 40-year period this is a new generation this is the generation of those who will be entering the land interestingly enough the total of both populations are the same the number of the of the otse mitzrayim and the number of boyaris is the same but the individual tribal totals are different in fact it's interesting to take a chart and look at this meaning some tribes actually had a big population growth in the 40 years other tribes had a big population decline so the totals are the same but the subtotals are very very different and it's worthwhile to compare the two lists and determine who kind of increased their numbers in the 40 years and who lost their numbers and then see if there's any particular reason why that would be the case we're going to focus tonight on the first of those two sensai the census in parashat bamidbor and moshe rabeno and aron together are commanded to count the population of the jewish people miben esrim shana vamala from the age of 20. and they are given this commandment rosh chodesh eeyore of the second year now the years begin in nissan in the hamish the mishkan was dedicated in nissan so this is one year and one month or one year and two weeks really after they left mitzrayim and uh one month after the mishkan was dedicated moshe is commanded to count the people now rashi makes a very interesting observation that although this is the first explicit counting of the yo-sai mitzrayim there in fact was an earlier counting in the aftermath of the golden calf uh when the jewish people were contributing money or gold for the building of the michigan because rashi points out that when the mishkan was being constructed everybody was commanded to give a half shekel and this would be an atonement for the sin of the golden calf and in parashat piku day we are given the total number of shkalim and hashem says everybody has to give the same the rich man does not give more the poor person does not give less and the people who give the half shekel are from the age of 20 and up so that was after yom kippur which means there was a census after yom kippur through the half shekel and then there was a census after ear which is the beginning of safer bamidbar why would there be a need to count the otse mitzrayim it's the same population base why would there be a need to count the old same italian twice within a span of seven months it's the same population base the people that were 20 years old when they left with ryan so rashi gives the following answer rashi says the notion of repetitive counting is an expression of god's love for the jewish people just as a minor i'm sorry just as a miser rather will count and recount his money over and over and over and over and over again because he loves it so much so too god counts the jewish people like a miser would count his money or his jewelry and the like so rashi says there's no particular reason whenever there's a pivotal occasion in the history of god's relationship with the jewish people god counts them after the eggel god counts them to cherish the jews that survive that was the half shekel at the time of the ego and then when he's coming to put his shakina on us with the building of the mishkan he counts us again so rashi says it's derek but then rashi raises another question that's very interesting rashi raises the question if you add up the half shekels as reported at the end of shamos you will get a number that is the same as the population in bamidbar 000 with a remainder now here's the problem it really shouldn't be the same because you are included in the count when you hit your 20th birthday right until you're 20 you're not included when you hit your 20th birthday you're included now if the first count was yom kippur and the second count is eeyore then anybody that had a birthday between the afternoon and not on yom kippur but the contribution of the shekel was the day after yom kippur anybody that had a birthday between yom kippur and eer if they hit their 20th birthday between those two dates the population base should be higher so how is it shaykh that in seven months nobody reached the age of 20 which would increase the second number now one answer you might give is well okay maybe birthdays were balanced by deaths maybe a certain number of people died in those seven months and they happened on those interesting coincidences they happened to be equal to the people who had their 20th birthday in those seven months and that's why the populations are the same that is certainly a possibility but uh the reshanam point out that in their judgments and they have sources for this there are there were no such thing as natural deaths in the desert the only deaths in the desert are the deaths that the torah records uh nobody else died i mean plenty of people died because the torah records their deaths but since there is no description in the torah of anybody dying between eeyore between yom kippur and dior our assumption is there were no deaths so rashi raises the question how could it be possible that the population wouldn't be larger because anyone that was born between yom kippur and eeyore who hit their 20th birthday would make the second census larger than the first census so rashi gives a fascinating answer rashi's answer actually is that the determining whether you were 20 or not 20 was not a function of your birthday everybody had a uniform birthday and that is rosh hashanah every tishrei you became one year older which means the following if you were born in ello one month before tishrei when tishrei came you were now one year old and if another person was born like the preceding tishrei he would also be one year old and from that point every birthday was a lockstep progression on tishrei consequently since between yom kippur and eeyore there is no rosh hashanah nobody became one year older anybody that was 20 already the first time had become 20 last rosh hashanah right just 10 days before that census which was after yom kippur and nobody got older maybe you had your biological birthday between then but that did not determine if you were ben esrim because there was no tishrei rosh hashanah between yom kippur which is census number one for the day after the yom kippur and eeyore which was census number two so rashi says lockstep i understand lahavsail that they use that for determining the ages of racehorses that they get a uniform january first birthday even if it's the the horse is born in december and i think i'm not sure in which context that uh chinese compute age of population that way as well that uh maybe that was part of the communist cultural revolution that everybody has the same birthday or something like that uh but at least at one time china china did it that way another approach would be which i think is also very logical that the age of 20 was defined by how how old you were at the time of the exodus meaning we didn't care if you became 20 in between meaning in order to be included in both the first count and the second count you have to be 20 years old at the time of the exodus so therefore at that point that would be a fixed number of people that would not increase between yom kippur and er okay b visit may this is how rashi and other commentaries explain the significance of the same number between the first census and the second sentence and why are there two countings rashi says derek that is the way god expresses his love and affection but i want to take this matter a little deeper and that is it is true that there was a census after yom kippur in the aftermath of the golden calf and it is true there was another counting of the same population base in eeyore after the hakamata mishkan after the putting up to the mishkan but there were some significant differences in how the counting took place and it's worthwhile to ponder the differences and not just the similarities the first counting was in many ways what you might call an anonymous counting people who were 20 simply dropped a half shekel into a pushka and moshe counted the half skullen there was no personal interaction so to speak the counting was indirect through the computation of the number of half shekels and we figured out a population of 603 thousand by contrast the counting in the beginning of bamidbar the torah uses the phrase mispar shamut now mispar is a very interesting word in hebrew ms pyre can mean the counting of names it can also mean the narration li saper lispar to count lists appear to narrate ramban says the following idea first of all it does not mention in bamidbor that the counting was through shekels at all so one possibility is moshe of benue literally had to count people but even if we say the counting of bamidbor was through shekels as well it was not a shekel that you dropped in a pushka it was a shekel that you directly gave to moshe rabbenu in arun and the ramban says that that is the meaning of miss barshemos div moshe rabeno your name hi i'm reuven here's my half shekel and the ramban says very beautifully it was extremely important that at least once in your life you meet moshe rabbenu in person think about this how many jews had any connection to moshe rabeno he was the one who gave them the mitzvos etc he was a presence but the truth of the matter is the average person never had occasion to talk to moshe robino you know if your milk spoon got mixed in with your felicia pot you didn't go to moshe and ask him the question there were judges there were rabbis they were posting around was much more a man of the people our own o wave shalom row they shalom if you had a problem with a husband and wife aaron would handle it moshe rabena was really not of this world in in many ways his whole face was covered up when he would go out among the people unless he was speaking the words of hashem you didn't even see his face he wore a veil he wore a mask i mean you could imagine if once in a while you would see him walking what type of reverence what type of fear would you have so moshe rabeno in many many ways by necessity of his position was distant from the people but the ramban says it was so important that at least once in your life moshe saw your face moshe heard your name it was important for you and it was important for moshe that it's not enough for a leader to represent the nation of israel the leader must know that he's representing the individual people as moshe sharer of a goodness israel used to say you don't just help klaus israel you also help rebel israel grab the individual person reby israel so one difference between the first census and the second census is the second sentence was anonymous i dropped my coin and they just counted the coins the second census involved a personal relationship either by not having skull him at all you were directly counted or as the ramban says in miss barcelona that even if you gave your skull you introduced yourself to moshe moshe would put a face instead of a faceless a particular face that's one difference between the first census and the second census the second difference is that in the first census there is no tribal breakdown we know in the aggregate there were six hundred and three thousand jews by counting the shackles but we don't know how many reubens how many shimons how many yehudas how many suckers because all we have is the money that we the silver that we count so we know how many people but there's no tribal breakdown by contrast in parashats by midbar not only do we know a total of the whole people but we know the individual subtotals of each tribe so the two differences between the first counting and the second counting which really stem from the same factor is the first counting was anonymous so individuals did not give the coin to moshe they just put it in a box of some sort some type of receptacle and there was no tribal breakdown the second minion is miss parshamut you declare your name individuality and breakdown by tribe now these events happened within six or seven months of each other what does it connote so we understand uh everyone understands the importance of unity togetherness about israel the very fact that the counting of the jewish people is to a half shekel we talked about this highlights the notion that each of us are incomplete unless we link up to others because a half is incomplete unless you take another half and join it right so the whole process of counting is an exercise in unity and togetherness but here's the thing there are two different models of unity that one can imagine when you're trying to create a community you're trying to create a unity you're trying to get creative togetherness whether it's within a family a large family or whether it's within a community or shoal or yeshiva or within omni israel right like mark twain once said it said about the weather everybody complains about the weather but nobody does anything about it well in some ways avast israel is kind of a sinatrina is a very similar phenomenon we all talk about it we all complain about it we all moan and i include myself we all moan and groan about how bad things are but what do we do concretely to try to make things better right so you want to make things better you want to create actors in a community but there are two different models that you can have for actives one we will call a melting pot and the other we will call a salad bowl melting pot which was the predominance philosophy of cultural assimilation in the united states in the decades of the 20th century and the medina israel in the late 40s the early years and the 50s and even into the 60s was the notion that when you have people with different backgrounds different cultures different philosophies you gotta kind of homogenize them you gotta blend them together so these individual differences don't stick out because the more differences you have the less cohesiveness you have so the notion of a melting pot was emphasizing obliteration of difference in order to avoid conflict so that would mean for example in the united states there was no such concept in the early in the early decades of the 20th century if a spanish-speaking immigrant or a german immigrant would say hey could i have instruction in school in a foreign language you're crazy english is the language and that's it and generic israel you had similar types of issues of kind of taking away the distinctiveness of the tai manim and then and whatever it would be to make them part of the state in fact in many many ways that was ben gurion's agenda and again i don't speak ill of ben gurion he was a great man in many ways ben gurion david ben-gurion but his vision was very much the notion of homogenization the only way you create a society from so many cultures and so many countries and so many backgrounds is you gotta make them the same same language same experiences in fact the notion of universal conscription in the military was not so much a security measure as it was a cultural homogenization measure he saw that as as a very important goal part of the opposition to those who don't want to serve in the army is based on looking at that as a destructive goal but both sides are admitting that that was a goal at least one of the goals one of the goals of even the army right you know so when you serve in the army together for three years that kind of joins you it combines you it gives you a shared experience it gives you a history right which in many ways is fundamentally important we have a common bond so we'll call that melting pot because melting pot says you achieve optimal unity by obliterating differences and creating cultural sameness in recent years in all many many countries united states israel europe there's an alternative model to melting pot and we can call that multiculturalism which you know it's kind of a negative word in many ways and that is the idea that instead of creating societies based on homogenization you create societies that celebrate difference and diversity recognizing that communities are enhanced when there are many many different ways of approaching things now obviously the downside of multiculturalism is great great divisiveness i mean this was the problem of the muslim presence in europe and to some degree even in the united states in which the muslim refused to assimilate within the general norms of society and as a result there would be violence and and the like so the two terms i would use as melting pot when i think of melting pot what i think of sometimes is chomans i'm going to use gastronomic analogies let's compare a choline to a salad so a children's right so you mix together the meat and the barley and the potatoes and the beans so at some point these do look distinct but imagine uh cholanth monday by monday by tuesday by wednesday okay you're kind of stretching it at that point at that point it just gets consolidated into kind of an indistinguishable glock in which you can't tell anything everything just melts together a salad you combine lettuce and tomatoes and cucumbers and peppers and chickpeas and mushrooms whatever you want alfalfa sprouts so you have different colors different textures different tastes each individual component retains its identity but together they have a synergistic effect a catalytic effect in which each one contributes to the other in a very positive way in other words there is a model of unity that is not based on obliteration of difference but a model of unity that is based on a celebration of difference community does not have to be conformity community does not have to be sameness there be a community in which each separate ingredient contributes to the whole now you can use a lot of metaphors to express this idea you can talk about a salad bowl as i just said you can talk about a tapestry the beauty of a tapestry are the different colors in the tapestry you can talk about a mosaic you can talk about a symphony if you were to simply play the same note over and over again same notes you don't really have music music are different notes right different textures different tastes so there is unity based on conformity and there is unity that is based on a celebration of differences that exist so which is the better model the torah is maramese that sometimes you need one and sometimes you need the other and i would suggest the following the first counting represents the model of unity based on melting pot because the first counting is anonymous there is no revenue there is no shimon there is no laby there is only jews six hundred and three thousand and we don't focus on individuals we just count the money and we look at the anonymous mass of people that's the actus that is based on melting pot the second dominion seven months later is an actos that is based on salad bowl where the individual has an identity the individual has a hachivas and tribes are also important because you know we sometimes forget how important tribal affiliation is in the torah scheme of things tribes had their own nussie their own prince they had their own flag they had their own position in the desert when they come to eric israel tribes have their own sections of land in fact in many ways you see in the book of shoftim that sometimes tribes regarded themselves as separate countries if you remember the very very sad story at the end of the book of shofting about pilage bhagiva there was a concubine who was raped and essentially murdered mass raped gang raped and murdered in yemen's territory and this was such an outrage that the other tribes demanded extradition of the wrongdoer to be tried for his crime and the tribe of binyamin refused to extradite claiming that they have exclusive jurisdiction over crimes committed in their territory this is actually actually the argument and uh this was a civil war the rest of quali israel declared war against the tribe of in yemen tribe in yemen fought very valiantly and were actually quite quite successful but but obviously they were outnumbered and eventually benjamin was on the verge of being decimated being eradicated yes yes yes a civil war mamish in which the other tribes waged war against the tribe of binyamin uh it is very similar to the american civil war you know people make a mistake people think the american civil war was fought over slavery it was not lincoln was of course against slavery but he would not fight a war over slavery the american civil war was fought over secession meaning to say the southern states took the position they have the right to proclaim themselves a separate nation the confederacy uh lincoln said for that we have to fight we cannot allow there and pelegus bhagiva according to the ramban's explanation is exactly that issue shavit benjamin consider themselves a separate country it's like it's a very interesting idea because essentially david beyman's position is every tribe is its own nation we happen to have the same religion okay so just like you have an italian catholic and a german catholic and a french catholic and an american catholic so you have a benyamin jew and a ruvain jew and the shimon jew but we're not one nation and you don't have the right to kind of give me orders so that was a wrong attitude but still tribes are very important their tribal consciousness was very strong now you may ask why does god introduce tribes as a relevant criterion i mean don't we have enough things that we fight over that now i'm going to fight over ahmed bin yeoman and you're a rubin isn't it isn't the only thing that's important that we're jews why have tribal divisions okay colleen levy i understand but beyond going levy what difference does it make what tribe i come from why does the torah make a big deal and the answer is because the medrash tells us each tribe had its own approach in the service of god each tribe had a unique spiritual personality god did not want an ami israel that's monolithic god did not want an army israel where everybody is the same there needs to be a ruvain and a shimon and he is sacred as a bull and tribes some tribes were devoted to learning and subdrives were devoted to commerce and some were agriculture and some served god through prayer and others through charity the very notion of a tribe highlights the idea that god wants the salad bowl the tapestry the mosaic the symphony rather than the melting pot of homogenization and that is ultimately what is desirable so in fact the medrash makes the point that the beauty of a garden is in the diversity of flowers now there are gardens which only have one flower you can see a garden that only has 10 000 red roses that's not beautiful but for most people they get they see more beauty in different colors than in one color so now you'll ask me the question so that's why the second census is individualistic and tribal because it represents a model of actus that is based on diversity and difference so why was the first census anonymous the answer is that the first census was in the aftermath of a calamity that threatens the very survival of the jewish people and god's covenant with the jewish people this was the faith so what god is saying is this there are going to be times of emergency there are going to be times of calamity there are going to be times where the very existence of amicil is being threatened in those crucial times you got to put aside your individuality you got to sacrifice your individual interests right you know we say it's good to march to the beat of a different drummer but sometimes you got to put away the drum think about the aftermath of the holocaust we had to work the other people literally there were people literally married like the first woman they met basically you know that we have to rebuild by the way hashem those marriages turn out to be very very successful without courtship and romance there was a sense of a shared responsibility and the holocaust survivors met that responsibility in a tremendous way so the teres miramis that there are times that the ah is so great that you gotta put your private agendas to the site that's census number one but that's temporary that's not the long-term goal the long-term goal as rashi says when god wants to to truly put his divine presence on us you need the second census melting pot is a short-term necessity in states of emergency but the ultimate goal of jewish unity is a jewish unity that is salable rather than melting power and that is the teaching of the second sentence now i need to clarify this because i've been saying the words that god wants communities based on diversity god wants communities based on difference we celebrate differences we don't try to squash them now you understand that unfortunately in the modern society we live in when you see words like diversity like difference so you think of that it's often connected to lifestyles that are very very antagonistic to the torah i'm not referring to that now we have to be kind and compassionate to all jews religious and not religious like god for it i'm not suggesting any type of negative condemnations of people but when we talk about creating communities that respect differences i'm not referring to creating anti-halakha communities i'm referring to within the miscarriage within the framework of allah we have to appreciate differences uh and hashem we have them whether it's hasidim different types of hussein different types of muslim ashkenazim svardhan different types of ashkenazim different types of spartan people sometimes say why are there so many variations of even judaism that is not a weakness that's strength that's the beauty of different approaches in avodah hashem it turns ugly when it's a source of rancor and hatred and maclocus but in and of itself it is the beauty of many flowers in the garden now we do have to understand that this also means we have to enhance respect legitimate the different personalities of people particularly children you know our educational system for no other reason than sheer numbers is basically based on a one size fit all model everybody gets the same instruction everybody is pushed into the same way let's imagine you have a child who likes to write poetry or or likes to play music sometimes they will not have outlets for those particular they'll be told that's goish that's secular that's not from enough we want to make everybody into the same model but you know when you try to put a square peg into a round hole something's going to break something's going to give shlo mohammed tells us educate a child a youth according to his way his or her way and what that means is the villenegon says every person has their way their individual way my goal whether it be as a parent whether it be as a teacher and in some ways even as a spouse vis-a-vis my spouse is to see the individuality and uniqueness of the other person and not try to impose some type of artificial model on that person that does not correspond to the essence of their personality that can break a person that is one of the factors in the phenomenon known as kids at risk where kids go off the derrick but it's worse than that it's not only people who go off the derrick even people who broke hashem remain religious but their spirit is broken there's a depression maybe it's a subclinical maybe it's not you know classified psychologically as depression but a lack of enthusiasm a lack of joy in the abode of hashem because they were never given the opportunity the legitimacy to express the individuality within their personalities we focus so much on kind of a lockstep in many many cases that this aspect of personality development is very much frustrated so we recognize there are going to be times in which you put aside your individual quest and you got to be a melting pot person but the long-term survival and flourishing of israel is only when we recognize the individuality of each [Music] unit each of us is needed not only as an anonymous collectivity we are needed as individuals and if we don't live the life that we can as individuals then hashem is not getting what he needs from us and the jewish people are not developing as they should develop so again this is once again something to think about as we approach matantora that has to be ish that does not mean conformity but it means rejoicing and reveling in the differences and the diversity that can exist within the beauty of a jewish community and celebrating those differences so miyako will help us to achieve that thank you [Music] is