Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: Creating a G-dly Society as The Kingdom of Heaven on Earth

[Music] okay hi everybody thank you for coming and uh tonight's share is uh dedicated for a reforeshalema for braya bhattacharva and the aliyat nishama of yoel ben avraham we hope again that the learning should be both aliyetna shamah and rafish leima as well as all of the holy israel and those who are hashem healthy should should badai remain so i hope everyone also had a very rewarding and wonderful shavuot say time of matantora there is a famous thought that's expressed that shavuos is called the day that we were given the torah it is not the day that we received the torah and without getting into the chronological issues we spoke about last week the point is this the giving of the torah may have been a specific event at a specific time but the accepting of the torah is something you do every single day it's not possible to talk about the day that i accepted the torah because every single day i must re-accept the torah just as you know you don't say i don't have to eat breakfast today because i ate it yesterday every single day there has to be a sense of renewal and a sense of rededication you're not simply a jew today because you were a jew yesterday you're a jew today because you have decided i'm going to be a jew today in fact this is why people say the morning brachos are expressed in the negative you know thank you a god who did not make me a gentile why don't you say made me a jew why don't you emphasize the positive the answer is because god in a deep sense does not make you a jew by not making you a gentile he enables you to be a jew but you become a jew by the decisions that you make in living your life okay god uh god gives you the potential to become a jew but you have the responsibility to do so in fact there's a very very moving uh well everything and everything in the saber is moving the last hasidic rebbe of the warsaw ghetto was of clonamius coleman shapiro uh who's known as the h kodish the holy fire the piazzettes nurebe he was piazzetsuno was a little town next to warsa and he was in the warsaw ghetto and he lived through it and then at the very end he was deported to a concentration camp and he died and in the middle of the warsagada we continued to teach and inspire and the few people who survived children who remember his sudasha for children which lasted two or three hours into the night they say that somehow he managed to transport them into another world that their world was one of starvation fear death murder disease and for those three hours they were in another world he somehow created an alternative existence a deeper existence a richer existence and really one of the most inspiring people you know in jewish history almost they're just an amazing amazing amazing person and uh the notes of his holocaust shiurim were published in a safer called kodesh the holy fire it's available in english translation as well so go to amazon and look at it and i think you know you'll be quite quite amazed and moved by the power of his ability to create a connection to god even in the darkest moments of life so he writes there in one of his diary entries he actually writes as he's approaching rosh hashanah what does he want to be he says listen you know torah he learns a lot of torah he said i do mitzvos what is it that i seek from god that i don't already do he said i want to be a jew not a rebbe and not a rabbi you're not a talmud and not a great person i just want to be a jew and he says that's what i'm missing he felt he felt that he didn't hit that simple basic connection of being a jew and that's why again we don't call shavuos the day that we receive the torah because we have to receive it every single day so be israe hashem i hope that all of us will merit that kabbalah torah will continue to be nimshek to continue to go on into really every single day of our lives because after all the ultimate point of sacred time whether it's a shabbos or a yamchav is that the sacred time infuses the mundane with a sense of the sublime and a sense of the holy meaning part of why shabbat is special is because it also transforms the weekday it doesn't transform the weekday there was something defective in the way we kept the shabbos and that is true for every yamcha and every hog as well there has to be a carryover into the week but what i want to do today again shabu has kind of interrupted our sequence i actually want to speak about something that is connected to last week's parsha parshas nusso and the reason is that parshas nasso most years is normally read after schwa this year was a little bit of an anomaly so i'm giving myself so to speak poetic license to speak about it the way it's positioned in the normal course of the calendar but it could start us right there and then that's quite oh yes and also we uh that's good this is even the better excuse uh in chris lawrence they're reading precious muscle this week so this will be a parsha especially for the it's people but the eric israel people are invited to to listen in and that is uh the beginning of par of safer bermuda generally partisan amid were purchased one even participate is setting up the encampment of the jewish people in the desert and the suffragette is seeing this a symbolic way of creating an ideal society of holiness so let's take even technical details illustrate this the tribe of levy is divided into three sub-tribes based on the three sons of levy gershon kahas murari kahas had his son amram and amram had two sons mosha aron and one daughter miriam but girshawn kahas and mirari and each of these subgroupings were assigned a special responsibility in the transportation of the mishkan kahas were assigned the carrying of the ark the arena kodesh the mizbayach the two altars shohan the golden table and they did not use wagons they had to carry it on their shoulders and they are described as kodesh kidashim gershon transported largely which you might call the tapestries the cloths of the michigan uh the various roofing materials and they carried them in wagons murari had physically the most demanding job they were carrying these big heavy beams now granted they put it on wagons as well but they had to load it on the wagons right so girshan kahas and mirari each of them is given as a subtribe specific assignments in how the mishkan would be transported ref southwark writes that perceivos tells us al-shalosha devarim omate the world rests on three fundamental pillars on the study of torah on divine service through prayer and sacrifice and gamilas khasadim loving kindness and benevolence we know that the three patriarchs represent these three pillars abram represents the pillar of loving-kindness yitzhak who was willing to be a sacrifice to god is the pillar of avodah and yaakov who spent 14 years of uninterrupted learning of torah in the yeshiva of shame and aver he represents torah surah sadiq wants to say that the three subdivisions of shaved leaving who are the servants of god represent torah avodah gamil now in the case of kahas the association with torah is fairly simple kahas carried the aron hakodesh the orana kodesh is the container is the repository of torah so kahas represents the spiritual impulse of ami israel that finds its expression in torah and that's called kodesh kadashim because although the world stands on three pillars and you need three pillars the gemara says if a person thinks the only thing that's important is learning torah he doesn't even have torah the question is called omar enlitora any person that says all i need is torah affilo torah ain't bo he doesn't have torah either so it's a dover pasha you need torah avodah gamila and if within a yeshiva setting you don't have an emphasis on avodah and gamila the torah itself is missing you need three at the same time though although you need three torah is considered to be the most important of the three and the reason that so is that from torah you will come or can come to the other ones the other ones will not necessarily bring you to torah that's when i learned torah i see from the torah how important davening is and how important loving kindness is so the torah will bring me to those other things on the other hand if all i do is give me this kindness that doesn't make me understand the tosu as it were i'm not going to come to torah from but i can come to khasid from torah so that is why kahas that represents torah represents i'm sorry that carries the r and represents torah that's why kahas is called kodesh kardashian okay now the other two are a little less obvious why does girshone represent a voda so this is a bit tricky and a bit uh metaphorical rav sudoku says what was gershone handling garrison was handling the curtains the ureos the tapestries now the tapestries form the roof over the michigan right the michigan are boards and the roof is covered with these tapestries the roofing is what converts a structure into a byte into a home it is the roof that makes it a buy it until there's a roof there is no buy it and we always find the the idea of prayer is connected to making some place a house of hashem hashem describes the basa mikdash ki bay see base te fila yi kare la hola my home my temple will be a house of prayer for all of the nations so the concept of by it a home for god is connected to prayer and sacrifice and since gershon are carrying that which makes it a bite that represents a connection to tefila or avoda generally now murari represents the connection to gamelos khasadim why the gemarian sukkah points out that what is the difference between sadaka and gamilas hesset both of them are loving kindness so one of the differences is sadaka is with your money stucco you write the check camila is with the physical exertion of your body so if i give you money to buy food i've given stucco if i serve you a meal that's kamilas khasid which is even greater than stucco so since mirari's job involved the greatest level of physical exertion schlepping those boards so that's connected which involves the exertion that you put into helping people so the kitzer of sadok's point is that gershon kahas and mirari or kahaskersh and mirari represent torah avodah but right after dear shankas and mirari are counted we then have a commandment of certain elements that are supposed to be expelled from the jewish camp elements that involve certain levels of impurity this is called the mitzvah of tamayum there are three categories of tame people that have to be expelled from the jewish camp the mizora the zav and the tame nephesh the mizora is the person that has leprosy these of is a person with uh gonorrhea some type of sexual sexually transmitted disease and the tominefish is simply a person who came in contact with a dead body now this is not permanent separations all three of these have purification rituals but until there are purification rituals these three levels of tuma have to be expelled from different components of jewish society this is called to mayhem now to make things more complicated however these three levels of tuma are expelled from different levels of macha notes camps the jewish camp is divided into three camps the mishkan and the courtyard around the mishkan is called the camp of the shekinah the camp of the divine presence surrounding the camp of the divine presence is where the levium live including moshe and aram kohanim and levin and that is called la via and surrounding them on four sides right you had three tribes per side is called israel i'll describe a little later uh how in contemporary terms these things are translated but let's just look at the midboard to keep it simple the mishkan and the courtyard of the mishkan is mahnesh is surrounded by machine level and machina levia is surrounded by so listen to the hierarchy this is a bit complicated a metsora is expelled from all three camps the mizora is even outside of the machina israel he is he is kind of quarantined or in isolation the zov right the section of the gonorrhea again if there's only a temporary state but is separated from the camp of the divine presence and the camp of the livium if he's a lady but he is permitted to reside in machina israel and finally the tami mace the person who's in contact with a dead body is not only permitted in makhana israel but is even permitted in machina levy and the only thing is he's not allowed to go into so the two questions we want to look at which are related is number one what is the deeper spiritual meaning of the expulsion of these three categories of tumor and number two if they are to be expelled why do they have different gradations of explosion because you know materials from all three azov is from two of the three and they tell me mace is only expelled from magnesium why would that be some so here once again we look to rav zadok for the insight and rafato tells us the following idea and it's based on percolas just as pierre que obos tells us there are three foundations upon which the world is built three foundations of kadusa torah avodah gamilas khasadim rabbi allah teaches us there are three negative factors that destroy holiness in the world and what are those three negative factors whatever lizard copper says akina jealousy envy taiva excessive lust for sensual pleasure and covet a desire for honor or glory they take a person out of the world they destroy a person's potential to connect to god akina hataiva vahakavait the altar of slovakia used to say very beautifully that we shouldn't think that these things only take you away from olam haba although they surely do but they actually make your life miserable in this world as well i mean you lose out in both ways if i'm jealous if i'm envious of other people i never get pleasure in what god has given me and if i'm always seeking more and more typists to indulge in i'm not going to be satisfied and covered forget about covert you want cover you'll never get enough coverage right somebody compliments you about something you did today so you're thinking or you'll say what about last week whatever it is whatever compliment whatever ego gratification you get is never going to be enough so rav sadhuk says if torah avodah gamilas khasadim create the framework for holiness kena taiva vekavaid create that which destroys goodness destroys holiness sucks out the oxygen from the room you suffocate you die you're you atrophy because this just blocks the life-giving forces of closeness to god that can give a person meaning and purpose in life so here is reference says the three tumuts of mitsura zav and tome nephesh are physical or maybe metaphysical manifestations of the character flaws of kina type of a coveted the mizora represents kinna we'll see why the zov represents taiva and the tame mace represents kavod again this may not be so obvious yet we'll get to it in a minute but once we understand that when you read mizora you think kinna and when you read zov you think taiba and when you read tame mace you think kavit then you understand when the torah talks about expelling the tumout it is actually referring to trying to eradicate those negative forces that undermine kedusha in our own lives and in the jewish people as a whole so let's trace the association mitsura connected to kinah that's actually fairly simple i think we talked about it when we looked at the mitsura earlier in homicide misora is not a physical i mean it's a physical manifestation but it is not a communicable disease maimonides points out and maimonides was of course a doctor that the quarantine of a metsia is not because it's contagious in a physical way but rather there's a certain spiritual rat in a person that manifests itself in this leprosy this skin disease and the primary spiritual blemish is lashon hara that when you speak evil against people even if it's true in the time of the basa mikhtash there was a message from god that you've got to do chuva and this the russian all right now i'm assuming it was never the case that every every person who spoke less in hara got serious if that would be the case then really almost everybody would have been a method in fact one might even argue either that saras was limited to extreme habitual offenders or the other extreme only to the very righteous that god does not tolerate uh even a small deviation i'm not sure it'd be interesting if there's some place you can go for the vital records of sores to kind of know who got it you know i mean we know miriam got it that's one case she of course was obviously a righteous person and a prophet but we really don't know about that many other people i mean there's one case of a non-jew nama nugat saras but that's a different case that wasn't the saraso bologira so we know very little about how many people got it and which people got it but the primary sin which causes the tsarat is lash and hara now let's analyze lesha narelle a little differently what is the desire on the part of all of us sometimes to say bad things about people to cut them down to size to denigrate them to diminish their achievements very often it will actually be a sense of envy a sense of jealousy when somebody seems to be more successful than me they have more money more charisma more friends more torah learning and i feel bad that they're better than me i don't like to be down here when somebody else is up there so there are two ways of redressing the imbalance right if somebody's up there and you're down here one way is to try to lift yourself the other way is to try to pull the other person down and gravity is an easier force to work with so if it's and if we understand that is connected ultimately to a sense of jealousy and envy so we could say the mizora represents the negative force of jealousy now why is the mizora expelled from all three camps because jealousy is such a destructive negative evil attribute that it doesn't belong in any segment of jewish society not just the holy segments of the mishkan and levy but even ordinary life which is symbolized by mahoney israel now again not that it's easy to eradicate we we all may have various aspects of envy in fact that's the tenth of the ten commandments do not covet very hard one by the way and that primarily is in terms of meadows that primarily says don't be jealous of what other people have god has given you what you need and god has given other people what they need and to be jealous of what other people have is counterproductive and if you're jealous because they've achieved something worthy then your job is to achieve it but not to begrudge the fact that they've achieved it so mitsira equals jealousy jealousy is really bad therefore it's expelled from all mahal now you may ask me a question is it true that jealousy is all bad that jealousy is totally evil what about the famous passage in masaka's bhava basra that says kinas sofrim what does that mean the jealousy of torah scholars increases their wisdom competition can be a motivator now granted it's not the highest motivator that's called not lashman not for the sake of god but okay beside her as i'll say learn torah even not for the sake of heaven because eventually it'll bring you to a good place so it is a motivator this guy finished a track date i'm going to finish it too i'm not going to let him be better than me it's a motivation right so ghazal recognize that a certain degree of healthy competition can motivate people to do better so in what way is jealousy totally evil the answer is there are two types of jealousy a jealousy that motivates me to be better has a place although again i will add it's an inferior motivation even then it's an inferior motivation but i would not call it an evil motivation it is within the framework of motivations that potentially can lead to something good but there's another type of jealousy which is not motivating you to be better but a jealousy in which you desire somebody else to fail again all of us may have it to some degree even on the subconscious level but it's evil it isn't evil and my job is to try to eradicate it to the what or whatever degree we can in fact there's all sorts of studies about this and in social psychology about uh sometimes you have a group of people just give you an example they decide to go on a diet right a bunch of people who have to go on a diet and uh most of them like stop keeping the diet after a few weeks but there's one person usually it usually happens to be women's groups there's one woman who keeps on going and there's all sorts of ways in which the other people who are her friends try to get her off the bandwagon you know they say come on have a piece of cake you know what's so wrong with it or you know you look emaciated uh ever since you've been on this diet and you know your whole mood has changed you used to be nice used to be friendly and now you're a grouch all the time now these are little games that people play in which i feel real bad that i haven't been able to stick with something and you've been sticking with it and i'm embarrassed a little bit i'm humiliated so i want to get you up so we can be friends again now it might be in this particular case maybe it's a relatively minor thing although it's not necessarily minor sometimes people really really have to do this but it does show that even among friends we sometimes want people not to be too successful we want them to fail and the fact is brought down in safari that it's much you know there's a very big indian in judaism when someone is suffering you have empathy for their suffering this is called no say bio es vero i share your yoke you have a burden and i share your yoke with you it's a beautiful important thing we'll call that empathy but it's brought down that as great as this madrega is this level is it is easier to commiserate in someone's suffering than to rejoice in their good fortune an amazing thing your suffering my heart goes out to you when you're successful it's a little harder for me to deal with if i'm not in that place okay that comes from that idea of jealousy that we all have to some degree listen if it wouldn't be a problem the terror wouldn't have legislated it that's why the torah says don't covet precisely because it is our nature to be jealous so therefore there are two types of jealousy there might there might be what you call good jealousy although that's still inferior but it's a something you can go with and that's the jealousy that motivates me to be better but then there's destructive jealousy in which i want people to fail so i don't look bad or i don't feel bad and the material represents i want to cut that guy down with the size therefore the mitsura is expelled from all three machinas but then we come to the zaf now the zov's connection to taiva is fairly obvious after all ziva is a gonorrheal disease sexually transmitted disease so usually that'll come from an overabundance of sexual partners and the like so we could say the zev represents taiva lust but here is the thing lust is actually more complicated than jealousy with jealousy as hard as it is to get rid of and it is hard i could say unequivocally the jealousy of wanting somebody to fail is totally invalid totally bad it has no malcolm our relationship to taiva is a bit more equivocal and ambiguous because a certain amount of connection to the pleasures of the world is actually necessary for survival i have to eat i have to sleep there is a mitzvah of husband and wife to be intimate and have sexual pleasure and by the way that's not only for procreation although that's true there's an independent obligation of giving pleasure to each other that's an important point in judaism by the way sex is not only our sexual intercourse is not only as a means to have children but it's part of the nature of the marriage itself and the rambam even writes that physical pleasure has a psychological dimension when a person lives in comfortable surroundings they are calmer their spirit gets replenished they're able to serve god better because they're they're having they're living with less tension right the rambam talks about the role of aesthetics in life whether it be art or whether it be music or whether it be taking a vacation or looking at you know nature looking at the grand canyon or trees or orchards or plants and the like so god wants us to get pleasure from the physical world in point effect uh we we read in the same parasha parshas nasa about the nazir the one who takes a vow to abstain from wine that the nazir has to bring a sacrifice and rashi says because he committed a sin by being another because he's abstaining from a legitimate pleasure that god wanted him to have to tell me you shall me actually says quite astoundingly don't tell your kids they'll use it against you that after 120 years we are going to be held to account for every permissible pleasure of this world that we could have enjoyed permissible pleasure that we didn't enjoy because god said i put it here for you why did you reject the beauty and the joy and the pleasure that i wanted you to have an amazing thing reception of all hirsch used to say of course he lived near the alps and he was lived in germany he said that god is going to ask everybody did you enjoy my alps did you enjoy the majesty of my alps i put them there so you would enjoy it how could you not even look at it how could you ignore it so on one hand pleasure is necessary and pleasure is even desirable it's a way of enhancing our love and appreciation to god for the beautiful world that he created so what's the problem the problem is when it becomes an end in and of itself you know the old saying it's okay for you to own possessions but it's not okay for your possessions to own you and that is if i take my possessions my physical pleasures and i use them to enhance my appreciation of god and my gratitude to the world then they become a beautiful way of augmenting your mitzvos if on the other hand your mind and your soul and your yearnings are fixated in those physical pleasures whether it be food or money or intercourse or drugs or alcohol whatever it would be whatever it would be then you've taken something that should be a means of enhancing your connection to hashem and you're doing the opposite so taiva is bad but taiva does have a place in life and within a certain degree of moderation it's good so this is symbolized in the following way israel the camp of the israelites represents ordinary society regular people for regular people some connection to taiva is a good thing they eat and they drink and they enjoy but as you graduate in spiritual levels right the lady is the full-time servant of god and calvo homer when you achieve communion with god that state of ecstasy you no longer are involved in the physical but let me explain this this is an important point not because of some self-conscious strategy of renunciation or asceticism but simply because you've graduated beyond what you might regard as childish just as an adult at some point gives up playing with most adults at least gives up playing with children's toys not because they've decided hey i'm an adult and i'm not supposed to play with legos although legos might not be a good example you can do things as an adult with legos but whatever it would be you see it's not like i am renouncing my connection to children's toys it's like an automatic process i'm so connected to things that are more important than that that they just don't interest me anymore that's how it works with taiva it's not that i'm not going to eat this cake because i don't want to be a baltivore although some people act that way but that's not really what appropriate asceticism is it's a different thing i'm so connected to torah i'm so connected to mitzvos that these things don't interest me anymore i'm just not interested it's kind of a developmental process and that's why the zov that represents taiva does have admission in ordinary life but as you graduate in levels you simply are less interested in it so let's hear from kaneski good example elinoski was the prototype of the person who devoted all of his energies to the mastering of the torah and of course helping caulifla as well those are his two projects in life so it's not like he made some decision not to have luxuries it just it didn't matter to him it didn't make a difference it was not important to him that's the levy and the shrina in which the zev gets distance they tell the story about the chagas arya who is one of the great great acharonim that legend has it may be a legend i don't know if it's true that he actually died because a bookcase full of heavy books toppled over and he was crushed by the books legend has it that the books were taking a revenge because he was a very independent commentator and he often argued against earlier authorities and those earlier authorities took their vengeance by falling upon him and killing him so he broke his back and in his last moments on earth he asked someone to hold a talmud over his eyes so he could learn go through the whole tone one more time before he died just turn the pages you know like speed reading the talmud uh now the truth is i'm sure the soccer side he knew it by heart but he still wanted to read the talmud one last time so this was lithuania they were pretty tough people so one of the people said to him you figure someone's dying and you express a little compassion or whatever someone said you know you're about to die now is not the time to go over the talmud you should confess your sins and do shiva before you die so you will leave the world in a state of purity they were tough in those days so the shakasa responded and he said it's not that i was so righteous that i never sinned he said i'm not so righteous he says i just never had time to get to it i mean i was busy i was just busy i was busy learning i was busy doing mitzvahs i didn't have time that's kind of i didn't have time for the ice cream not that you know i renounced the ice cream i just didn't have time i was doing something else you know okay so that's when they murdered him he used the marshal of children they asked him what you're gonna know when he comes to shamanic he said yeah i think he's emotional a child though it's maybe like someone stole a child's screen right right right right right yeah in fact i i just just today i actually heard you know um we actually lost a very very great person a very interesting person this week uri rabbi uri zohar it's a colonel lavraka and dorizaar is a fascinating amazing story he was the johnny carson of of israel he was like the most successful comedian israel probably in israeli history movies tv you know live performances everything everything everything and he was totally unreligious and he lived quite a licentious lifestyle as well and then at some point he became like ultra orthodox charade he did shiva the world was shocked the world was absolutely shocked um and i i saw in india so he died at 86. he just died a few days ago so they're replaying different interviews that people had with them over the years and uh there was someone interviewing in it saying like um how does the rabbi urbizoa now look at the old urizawa then do you look at him like a bad person a negative person like you want to make believe he never existed and he said no he says that was he was a nice guy he was a good guy and i'm not cutting myself off from him in fact you can see actually he still is a very he still was a very witty and funny person although he had to kind of conceal it a little bit but he said it was like a child i look at my past the way an adult looks at his childhood yeah i enjoyed my childhood i had a good time i had friends but i was a child and i grew up and i matured and i realized that life has responsibilities that's it says i don't look at myself as an evil person i look at myself as a child who grew up and this very interesting point that's what it is i just became an adult although fascinatingly he had a partner who was also a great comedian eric einstein and eric einstein was not did not become religious but interestingly eric einstein's kids became religious and uri zoa's sons two sons married two daughters of iraq and sang and therefore they share grandchildren together and he said that he loves zaragon even though aragon's name is not religious but he loves him he's but he speaks to him maybe he spoke to him i'm not alive anymore but he spoke to him every week and uh it's fascinating and our gospel is kind of thrilled that he has these religious children and grandchildren although you know he's not a religious person himself but it's an amazing type of unity within the uh different segments of of israeli israeli society but be it as it may that's the analogy of the childhood okay so that's why so now you understand that's why the mizora which is jealousy is expelled from all three camps that's why the zav which is taiva does gain admission in ordinary life but not in mahina livia we now come to the tame mess now tummy may simply means the one that's in contact with a dead body tummy for seven days need to be sprinkled with the ashes this is the only tumor that needs to be sprinkled with the ashes of the red heifer the other two must do not need that sprinkling how is that connected to covet so this again is a little less obvious but keep in mind that adam and eve adam and java were supposed to live forever death came into the world because of the sin of the eight sadas eating the fruit from the tree of of knowledge how did the eat from that fruit what was the selling point surab sadduk says the selling point was the day that you eat from this fruit you will be like god with a knowledge and a mastery of good and evil a very very mysterious and deep idea but essentially it was mark just looking at it in terms of gross marketing it was marketed as a god pill which is the ultimate ego trip imagine i give you a pill and say take this pill and you'll be god but god doesn't want you to take it yeah but so what if i take it i'm god so who cares at that point i'm god too now in many many ways we are godlike can't deny it we are married but sell them eloquent we are made in the image of god we have creativity we have autonomy we have power we have an ability to manipulate nature in all sorts of ways we can fight and cure disease we can drain swamps create technologies we have god-like abilities in many ways but the ultimate reminder that we're not god is immortality it is mortality mortality is the ultimate chasm between creator and created and therefore it was the arrogance the hubris of man that brought death into the world not so much as a punishment but as a reminder and in fact we'll talk about this in another chair but this is why the purification rituals of death involve humility ashes which are a sign of humbleness uh immersion in a mikvah which is returning to the womb in an infantile state all of them are kind of the metaphor in greek mythology of the phoenix bird that rises from the ashes that it's precisely my humility and submission that gives me life by the way although i just said it was a greek myth in fact it is also a madrish and the greek might have got it from the medrish that is the nets bird is the same idea that it's burnt into ashes and then it rises from the ashes so every time i encounter death i am reminded of the reason for death covet arrogance gaiva and therefore when death is expelled from the it means kavod is expelled but here is the thing our relationship to kavod is even more complicated than our relationship to taipa kinna get rid of it if you can taiva has a place in ordinary life but as you spiritually mature you're less connected to it cove out i'll say two things about covert on one hand being too preoccupied with covert is the worst possible thing you can do the gemaran sota tells us that god hates the belgaeva god hates the arrogance god hates the prideful mishlai says tawavas hashem call god by life he or she who is arrogant in heart is an abomination in the eyes of god the gomorrah even says that the world is not big enough for hashem and the balgaiva to live in this world and therefore hashem leaves hashem leaves so on one hand cove seeking covert is the worst possible media you can have on the other hand it may be the most important thing that you need in your spiritual life kavod means in a good way i recognize my worth i see my value i identify that god gave me abilities and i have to use my abilities in a positive constructive way if a person does not have a sense of their worth if a person does not have a sense of basic self-esteem they'll never do mitzvos because they'll figure what's the point why would god be interested in my learning my governing my lesson you see humility we mentioned this last week does not mean a denial of my essential worth it just means i know that my worth comes because god gave me abilities that i have to use in a good way when moshe is the humble most humble of all people that doesn't mean he thought he was stupid he knew who he was but he knew that it was a gift from god to be used in in the right way so covet not only is necessary for ordinary life but even in the life of the lady which is spiritual aspiration you need to have a sense of covet i matter i'm important the only thing is when you reach the ultimate level of communion to hashem the vacus then you can leave your ego behind because at that point this is really a level that even the great siddiquim may not achieve but when you achieve a total oneness with god there is no longer a sense of your separate identity so you no longer think about i'm significant i'm important you don't think about the eye at all this is what casitas call beetle hayes the nullification of the self or even a higher level betelhamezius the negation of existence but there's a long way till you get to that in ordinary spiritual life of even the lady you need the covert i matter i make a difference and therefore if i can make a difference i must make a difference the greater of your rookham of mir one of the great great bali musser used to say that the person who is not aware of his faults is a foolish person i think i'm perfect you know i'm pretty delusional but a person who is not aware of their inner greatness is a tragic person because they will never know they won't have the tools to become who they're supposed to become they'll never become who they really are they'll never be aware of who they were destined to be and this is something that we have to know for ourselves and we have to communicate to our children how many people go through life never aware of the potential of what they could have been by the way i'm not talking about necessarily to be famous or whatever i'm not even referring to that i'm just referring within the parameters of their private life the person they could have become the life that hashem wanted them to have and the life that hashem created the framework so they would have but they never latched onto it because they thought it was beyond them it wasn't for them and that's a tragedy it's not just a foolishness it's a tragedy and therefore kavod tamemese equals kavod not only comes into mahna israel but even into machine olivia it's just a different level that's when you have a total union with the divine at that point there is no ego issue that comes into mind at all you're just one with god and that's a level that maybe only the greatest the greatest the greatest sadhikan may have again the tanya talks about this these are madrigas that are not really within our normal frame of frame of reference okay so this is rav sadok's very very beautiful explanation when the khazinish died in 1953 i think it was 53 so rabbi destler was the mashikiyak of the panavic yeshiva is famous for him mr mia leo published after his death strive for truth it's like his sixth volume says one of one of the beautiful beautiful books on the jewish ethical philosophy so rev destler uh was from well he was from lithuania then he was in england uh during the world war ii and then he eventually came over to eric israel and he was the masjid of panovich the great part of the yeshiva and at the kazanisha's levaya there was a boy that was crying sobbing and if destler went over to the boy and said to the boy why are you crying over the rav the gone and the sadiq that's buried in the ground the khasanesh he then pointed to the boy why don't you cry over the rav the gone and the sadiq that's buried within you because the rav the gong and the sadiq that's buried in the ground became the person he was supposed to become but what about you what about the greatness in you what about the potential in you maybe that's something to cry about a little bit more than the people who kind of self-realize uh their life right so that's uh that's i think israel's is beautiful message now let me just add just to make this a little more contemporary we have these three halaq areas we have the camp of the shakina we have the camp of the levien livia and we have the camp of the israel now today because we don't have the red heifer all of us who have ever been in a cemetery we're all tum a mess the other two of us we well generally there aren't any real lepers today sarah's today and zov maybe yes maybe not but most people are not as of either so it turns out that the average jewish person today the only disability they have in terms of tuma is tamemet now atame met is only prohibited to enter the camp of the shechina what is the camp of the shakhrina in modern times so the short answer would be the camp of the shakina would be the basa mikdash and the courtyard around the basa miknash anything beyond that on the temple mount is machen olivia so technically the temple mount the outer portion of the temple mount is only the camp of levy the inner portion of the temple mount would become the camp of the shrine so when we ask the halaq question i'm being very over simplistic everybody just want to bring out what the problem is am i allowed to go on the temple mount halakhali the short answer is if my only problem is tumatmet i would be allowed to go to the outer perimeter of the temple mount which is machina la via but i cannot go into the inner part of the temple mount because that would be machine shafina and the definition of inner and outer would simply be where would the courtyard of the temple be and that would define it as the inner so there are those people particularly in the that's helium the religious zionist camp who do go to the temple mount and they follow this practice of the outer part not the inner part because they are confident that they can identify where the beta mikdash would have been and based on their identification they could say this is not the prohibited area but it's no secret that and again i'm not giving up stuck i'm just reporting that most of the kharadi world takes the position that you are not allowed to go in any part of the temple mount and this is a rare instance where the government and the kharadam agreement albeit for different reasons the government is concerned with provocation and causing riots so the government doesn't like people going to the temple mount but the creature basically say that we look at it as a minefield that we're not sufficiently well versed as to where the beta mcdodge was located that we could say this is outer this is inner so that what i'm making is there's not really a much locus regarding principle here everybody admits in principle there is an area of the temple mount that a tame can go and everybody admits in principle that there's an area of the temple mount that they ta may make cannot go and the question simply is how confident are you willing to be in your identification of those areas now i do want to point out however that certain types of tumult are analogous to dissolve tumor and they cannot go into machen olivia that would be amanda that is semi-only mission even if it wasn't gonorrhea and a woman that's anita so even if you permit entry to the high rabbit for tamemet and the other part of the harabad you would not permit entry for a woman that is a nida or a man that had a seminal emission yeah but then you can go to the mix the problem is time i met you can't remove without pyramid the other two moats can be removed by mikvah and the light but since uh single women who have already started menstruating do not go to the mikvah today so there's no way halachically that a single girl has already had her period would be allowed to go in any part of the arabic that's an important thing to keep in mind that the outer inner distinction is only a mahnesh shahina definition which is relevant for tummy mets but once you're dealing with uh nida or balkeri seminal emission at that point the whole arabia is going to be prohibited because the harabayas is making the livia now you may ask me we don't have brand we don't have midsoles today but what is called the israelite camp so interestingly it doesn't mean every place jews live it's only walled cities uh so the the old city would have sora would have to be could not live in the old city but outside him and sora could live in tel aviv and benebrak and even uh perhaps parts of yerushalayim huh in baka even in baka right so it's interesting that this changes the picture a little bit we we we tended to envision the masaira as being quarantined in fact it wasn't so strict to quarantine as you would assume it just barred him from the walled cities and he could live uh in baka he'd live in baka he had dabadire here in baka and people could visit him so that kind of changes the picture a little bit so i just wanted to make it contemporary he has to announce it so he's i mean he yes we're not going to hang out with him that's true because they don't want to become tummy but he doesn't have to be in total in total isolation okay so uh that's what i wanted to share with you and i wish you all a good week and thank you for coming [Music] is