Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: Elul is A City of Refuge in Time

my baby [Music] okay hi everybody thank you again thank you for coming I really appreciate it and tonight's share is dedicated for a refuge Lima for emotions Israel and in addition for the elite of David bermotion Fishel Jonathan Israel Ben David Moshe shmuel benshepsil mayor and by Jeremy Bernstein in memory of his late father whose yard side is on the ninth of Elo Baruch Ben shmuel pinchas again may all of the debris of all of the people in whose memory this year is dedicated in addition as I mentioned last week but I'll mentioned it again is launching its annual fundraising campaign for the upcoming young and Telvin to distribute food and other necessities for the financially challenged uh 100 of the funds go to the recipients and to date we have reached 25 percent of the goals we still have a way to go and please we should all help particularly during this time where we're taught a repentance prayer and charity my virenitzera they take away any negative or evil decree that might otherwise be upon us so tadaka is a major mix it's important the whole year but it's especially important as we approach the days of judgment the yamim narayim and they link to the campaign can be found on the Ivana website and in the description box uh there so business Hashem hopefully people will participate in a in a very very generous way um I just want to start with really a total digression but it's kind of based on the dates of the calendar that is this past week we actually have two yard sites of two different Godot very different godolin but are very both of them are very worthy of our consideration uh one is the yard side of rough cook and the other is the artillery of Mayor Sim known as the Orson and the like and if we could talk about a common denominator between them the common denominator was besides an absolute Mastery of Carla torakula including Kabbalah and both roof cook and mayor simcha were masters of halacha of gemara of Kabbalah and the like but also in terms of the kindness of their personality the ravas Israel their love for every Jew the Deep respect they had for every human being seeing them as being made in the image of God and that's a message that we need to think about sometimes because sometimes today when we think about what makes a person a godoll we think primarily at least in the Yeshiva World of how much they know and of course that is important of course it's important and these are two people who knew everything as well but it's more than that God love is not simply a computer that knows a lot of things he got over someone whose heart is great whose feelings are very strong to see the goodness of people to try to elevate people to build them up and not to knock them down and to see the godliness in every creation of God and as a result to follow the adage in perkiavos to be a disciple of our own the Cohen to be a lover of Peace A pursuer of peace to love God's creations and through that way bring them to Torah right I think obviously over generalizing and not going into that many specifics but this was where outstanding characteristics of both rough cook and rev mayor simran died a little before of cookie died in the 1920s Swift cook died in the 1930s around I believe around 10 years 10 years later and I'm not sure if they knew each other although it is interesting they may have known each other because the truth is your mayor simply himself was offered to be the rav of yushalayim before initially came from Lithuania and he initially was the wrath of yaffo there was no Tel Aviv wasn't invented yet he was the rav of yafo and then he was stranded he left Eric Israel to go to the founding Convention of baguless Israel I think it was in Vienna and because of World War One he was he and his wife hashemi was with his wife but he was stranded in for five years five years he was not able to return to Eric Israel for the entire duration of world war one he spent a little bit of time in Switzerland but the bulk of the time he spent in London and he had a he needed a Parnassus so he was a REV of a European yiddish-speaking show in London but he built it into the contract there was a clause in the contract that said if at any point he could return to average Israel he would be released from his contractual obligation but he wound up staying close to five years in London it is said that he actually enjoyed going to the British Museum and looking at the paintings of Rembrandt Rembrandt has a number of very beautiful paintings of rabbis actually and Rembrandt's paintings are known for their glow right there's a certain glow in the faces with cook said that expressed the holiness of the Torah but when people wanted to take him to the British Countryside which is very very pretty he didn't want to go when it comes to natural beauty I just want to focus on Eric Israel I don't want to get connected to the natural beauties of any other of any other country so he never went to the countryside or at least never took a trip to the countryside and and the like rev cook as all of you know was very controversial in his lifetime because of cook adafka reached out to every type of Jew there were zionists who were secular there were zionists who were not just non-religious but anti-religious and would have cooked befriended them because he saw even in their secular activity he saw a godliness that a person might think that he's coming to Eric Israel because of socialism because of nationalism because of Zionism whatever the reason but the real reason of cook said is that there's something in his nishama that wants to connect to holiness and he said that some people come to Eric Israel because of their relationship to God and some people will come to God through their relationship to Eric Israel and he saw seculars even secular anti-religious Zionism he saw that as a way of bringing the non-religious to the land and once they participate in building the land they will develop a connection with God as well was rev cook overly optimistic was rep cook naive we can debate it and the truth is rough cook himself in his later years as he saw how things developed had some questions that have cooked himself engaged in some self-doubt and some questioning of whether he was just too open to everything and he would sometimes say you know his great opponent although they were good friends but his ideological opponent was of Joseph hayem zonnenfeld the head of the Ada Harris and they were personally very good friends but they had very very opposite views on many many things and if Cook said more than once you know maybe Rabbi zonnenfeld is right you know who knows who knows who knows but nevertheless I think we've seen many many things and ever so we've seen children grandchildren of committed atheistic zionists who gravitated to the Torah to the mitzvahs and Rick Cook's argument is that that wasn't a repudiation of their grandparents that was an outgrowth of what their grandparents were doing that was kind of his his Paradox as it were so he was very very controversial but it's an unfortunate thing that sometimes people you know denigrate him and in fact he was absolutely an absolute guttle in every traditional sense and then he went beyond the traditional sense to embrace things that were unconventional but he wasn't like some like you know modern Orthodox Rabbi who wants to legitimate gay marriage I mean that wasn't you know that wasn't him he was shakua in the world of Torah there is a story they tell about roof cook now I hesitate I I often tell you stories that I I almost know were not true because it's such a beautiful story that I want to tell it to you people some people say the story is not true I'm going to tell you that ahead of time but you know like Rabbi wine says you know even if it didn't happen it could have happened or it didn't happen yet or you know it's exemplary of a character and that is everyone knows Elvis are born of the Ezra Perlman Elias rightfully described as the father of modern Hebrew he kind of brought you've Rich back to be a spoken language he invented many words and the like and in fact although it's not really in print anymore but the original Ben Yehuda dictionary which is like many volumes is really a book that you can read for entertainment because it's not just a dictionary he goes through the sources of the words and how we developed you know why is Muslim a camera you know so these are words he made up all of these different words and the like because the word seldom so Elizabeth Yehuda himself did a lot of other things besides the Hebrew language although that was his passion some of his activities were anti-religious I mean he was very much against the notion of religion being a powerful force in this is pre-state but in the in the uh the British mandate era and the like and as a result none of the rabbanim wanted anything to do with him and he didn't care about them they didn't care about him the one exception was rough cook he used to go to rev cook quite a lot and the reason is free linguistic reasons because he would look at when he would be trying to invent words in my in Hebrew to apply to Modern things he would look at Mid rashem and he would look at gamaras and he wasn't interested in the content of the Gamora but he was interested in the linguistic meaning of something so he could use it as a word so he used to go to rough cook every Friday to ask him about midrashin what different words meant so he could then incorporate it in his dictionary and and make up new words based on the medrish and and the like so the story now all of this is true until now everything is true this is actually accurate now I'm going to tell you what some people say might not be true but it definitely could be true so I I in my heart I can believe it that is one Friday he came to a cook with his usual midrashim problems and at the end ref cook who also allegedly nude is a fanatic although he was born in a yiddish-speaking family he absolutely refused to speak Yiddish in fact his son wrote a biography autobiography and biography his father in his own life and he said he was a late bloomer because you know his his mother didn't know Hebrew that well at the time he brought it from Russia and he did not allow her at least we did not allow her to speak uh Yiddish or Russian to the boy so the boy didn't hear anything and the dad was away all day so the kid didn't hear people talking ever so he says he was a late bloomer but what were his first words that his father once made it came home in the afternoon it was like a surprise visit and the mother was singing a Russian lullaby to the kid and it was yesterday got so upset like he banged a chair on the ground you know so the kid shouted no or whatever whatever the Russian word was or the Yiddish word you know name and that type that kind of got the first words out of him and the like say well the edge of either was fanatic he would not speak a word of either she would not speak a word of Russian even though he knew both languages he only spoke if Rich and rev cook accommodated all the Earth Cooks normal language was in fact Yiddish but Rift cook only spoke to him and they've read Because if Cooks knew he wrote very well as well so at the end of their conversation about the midrish where of cook turned to eliezra benude and said perhaps the time has come now why don't you think about doing chuva and then perhaps the rabbi is correct that's all he said Story Goes that night Friday night died in his sleep tight Friday night and you shall I am they bury very quickly so the levia was called for Saturday night mode no Rabbi in Jerusalem wanted to go to levia because all yesterday as we do was considered to be heretic and they didn't want to have anything to do with him although it was a well-attended funeral but not by the Orthodox rabbis of Jerusalem rev cook now this again many people say it's not true so I'm not vouching for this but drift cook even though he was a culling but you know he went to the lavalia I didn't no didn't approach the the body itself and roof Cook's argument was that since eliezerb in Yehuda said that the rav is correct that he ought to do chuva he said we have to have a kazaka an assumption that he died as about Shiva and the rambam says even if a person sinned his whole life and does chuva the last second of his life all of his are they wrote are forgiven he also pointed out that the very institution of Reviving the Hebrew language was a great great great spiritual accomplishment as well so he did Siobhan his you know of Eros and they had this greats serif cook was willing as it were to speak at the leviath and uh and and the like so this was rough cook a very unusual in factor of cook even he was so optimistic in some ways and it came from his mystical temperament as well as Israel that he even saw in Rebellion against Torah a positive force because he said what's driving the rebels is they can't stand in sincerity they can't stand superficiality they can't stand people going through the motions without feeling something so they're rebelling now it's sad that they're rebelling going against the Torah that is sad but the feeling of rebellion comes from a source of holiness it is the desire for something deeper something better therefore if Cook said the responsibility of a Torah Community is to address that rebelliousness by showing them how within the Torah you can find the Deep spirituality and holiness that people are seeking so he saw even in defiance against the Torah he saw something positive coming from there because it made us have to rethink exactly what we stand for and what is it that we're trying to teach okay this is what I've cooked enormously complicated person now it's interesting that you always have in the nature of complex spiritual personalities you have what is called contested legacies meaning it's like the old children's story about seven Blind Men and the elephant and if you ever came across that story meaning seven blind people we're told to touch an elephant and describe what isn't what do you think an elephant looks like so one blinds person touched the trunk and he said oh an elephant is like an eel or a snake a bow constrictor another person touched the ear of the elephant oh the elephant is a giant butterfly another person touched the leg or embraced the leg of an oven oh the elephant is like an oak tree oh it's bigotry and the third person somehow got his hands around part of the stomach and said oh the elephants are just like a fast hippopotamus or or something now none of them were correct meaning each of them only embraced part of it and they had a partial truth that they erroneously because they were blind they erroneously interpreted as the total picture when it was only a partial picture rev cook is very much that waiver of cook has many many disciples many many followers it's been 70 years since roof cook was nifter so his disciples are second third fourth fifth generation already but people each person is like a blind man who sees part of roof cook there are those who we see in rev cook the notion of avat Israel you love every Jew no matter what there are those who see in rough cook the idea that a Jewish state the pressure of cook died before there was a state but the idea of the Jewish connection to Eric Israel is so Paramount and that leads to Messianic ideas of you cannot have land for peace and you got to get rid of the Arabs right A Certain militancy and then you have an opposite view of cook that views rough cook as the humanist who wanted to make room in this country for every type of person Jew nanju the prime minister of cook was contradictory because he was multifaceted he saw all sides of a situation he spoke about a Jewish state and he also spoke about the rights of Arabs in a Jewish state and yet you have some people who focus on the Jewish State thing and some people to the left focus on the Arab rights thing they weren't called Palestinians in those days but we call it Palestinian thing when in fact if Cook was trying to embrace all of these Notions operating at the same time he was both a Universalist and a particularist Universalist in the sense of seeing the Dignity of all human beings and at the same time seeing the unique spiritual Mission and identity of the Jewish people it wasn't a binary All or Nothing it wasn't this or that it was a synthesis of all of these different ideas and unfortunately what happens is that people tend to grab onto this thing or this thing and each one claims to be the this true disciple of by the way an identical thing happens although on different issues with throughout the salivagic was a was similar again not similar in the sense of total ideology but similar in the sense of complex multifaceted deep in which there are different bits and pieces that people hold on to there are those that say RAF salvation was a talmudist who was rooted in the Yeshiva culture of Eastern Europe who happened to have a University degree in philosophy but that was a little side aspect of him that really was not important there are others that say RAF salvation is one of the great religious existential philosophers of the 20th century and he happened to have a talmudic education in Yeshiva as well so you have the philosophy Disciples of celebratic and you have the talmuda disciples and they don't talk to each other basically I mean take someone like everyone is stupid well I don't want to say stupid I mean some of them all of them are very smart on both sides of the equation but if you take someone like referral Schechter who is a very very distinguished uh Thomas and many people consider him one of the godolm in the United States and he was very very close to rev solovacic for many many years but like he has nothing to do with the philosophy of reps elevation everything is Rebels teaching and then you have someone like Walter wurtzberger who happened to be a congregational Rabbi but his his real interest was philosophy and you know everything is philosophy Etc so it always happens when people are complicated you know you grab onto different bits and pieces and the light okay well yeah eliminated them okay okay well some did and some didn't I mean basically what happened was this it was not very good maybe he was absolutely he was absolutely very controversial but but but uh not as much as he is today but but even in his lifetime because the Ada Harris did not accept it meaning to say rewriting the history I'm not providing yesterday have you heard of the Aiden Harris I am absolutely not writing District Ada Harris was not in um okay they were not invested was not invented in 1985 started in the 19th in the 1920s that's all already that's fine but ref cook was was more recent than 200 years ago uh there was controversy okay okay you know it sounds like you want to argue with me I'm not arguing with you uh so you know you're not going to get a fight out of me which I know disappoints people sometimes uh I'm not gonna fight with you because I understand all of this stuff the Kasam sofa invented I know I know I know I know I know that's fine and many Arabian resilience too we have three pasta Frank was a Zionist uh refluence was a Zionist uh revisers at an earlier part of his life was a Zionist I know I know I know I know uh you're not going to get a rise out of me if that's that's what you want I know people you know because I can tell you that I don't want to boast but I know everything you know about this subject and I'm still telling you that rev cook was controversial in his lifetime it brought him a tremendous amount of pain and rev cook never responded in any negative way to any of the attacks and uh but still you but you are correct uh if Cook start was RAV of yaffo he was then and then he was the first RAV of of mandatory Palestine there was no Medina yet and many many accepted him they signed exavra banuts but the heredes was a secessionist group that did not accept her of cook as rev although they did regard him as ravo piafo that's how they refer to him they still considered the rabba viafo as being legitimate but be this it may uh with cook was a an extremely great great person and we have to honor his memory and live up to his live up to his legacy because his legacy is complicated but it's also simple the idea of avat Israel the idea of about Eric Israel uh our Central pillars and they have to be Central pillars in our lives as well now remember who I probably did know replica mom was true that they did because they're from the same geographical area uh and ramir simpra himself was older than earthquake and he had he was offered to be rather but he didn't he was not able to take it was also a person who was very very great in Torah he's called the saratora the prince of Torah the king of Torah and even the non-jews in Latvia considered him to be a saint an exotic and they would turn to him for advice they would turn to him for Asus it's interesting that in the city of davinsk there was no Yeshiva but there were two rabbis both of whom were godole hador and the two rabbis had very different personalities one was and the other was the ruggage ever go raviose Frozen and Romero simra was the rav of the non-hasida community and the rugged shover was the rav of the hasida community in fact he was a Chabad person in fact has a messiah that the last Le Bobby got ordained from the rugged rubber I'm not sure if we know that for sure but that's the that's the claim they're pers they were very close friends they worked together but they had very very different personalities you have mayor simra was gentle was kind was soft-spoken the rugged shover was tempestuous the rugged Trevor was a storm the rugged shover was fiery uh if you would ask the rabbit Trevor any type of question you know he would barrage you with a hundred references he wouldn't explain the references he would just say you shall meet yourself you know just go on to this day only consists of a string of references and there are full-time collels that are trying to decipher how the references answer a particular question like you know what's the connection between here and uh here and there uh and uh said about the ruggage ever that he said that people think the record Shuffle has a photographic memory he says he really doesn't just he finishes shots like every week so everything in the talmud he saw within a week so that's why he remembers it it's nothing to do with a good a good memory and because of this uh you know you didn't want to ask the repertoire for a question because he could sometimes make you feel like an idiot so they they tell the story just to give you one example in a very very sharp cutting wit and the sharp cutting width of the rugged Trevor was a rabbi once came in well I'll tell you two stories one is the reviron Cutler reviron Cutler who became retrieve of Lakewood was already a Russia Shiva at the age of 22. and he was a brilliant Russia Shiva and he wanted to share some of his Torah with the record shower who was much older but he was afraid to come as a roshishiva the record Shopper would cut him up so he said he was a businessman who has a store but he learns on the side a little bit so could he share some thoughts so he told his very complicated thoughts to the ruggage ever and the rugged Trevor's Supreme compliment that droviron Cutler treasured was that for a working man you're not bad I mean that was the highest highest compliment now another story they tell is there was a REV who came to the rugged shover and told him over give Ray Torah and and the like and direct travel was very nice the record server was very very nice to him so the rabbi said I hear that you're so tough on people you're so tough on Thomas you're so tough on Scholars you're so tough on him how come you know you're treating me so nicely so the record you ever just said you're right I am very tough and tell me he says yeah I'm not even gonna you know I'm not even gonna bother so this was the record cover that were very simple it was the obvious was very very kind very soft he and his wife only had one daughter one child one daughter and the daughter died before she got married and apparently the Robinson was broken she was emotionally broken for the rest of her life Andrea simcha in spite of his schedule used to take long walks with her every night and he would hold her hand in public now this may sound like a minor thing but rest assured them in Lithuania this was a big big deal and he held your hand to just to give her strength to be with her to take care of her very very devoted husband in that in that way as well and he was very great in making Shalom bias among couples who had marriage marriage problems he would spend hours and hours and hours and hours so again these are yard sites and when we think about these Sadiq we should remember the chronometric one final aspect about Ramirez I want to mention is his commentary on Hamish is the safer and in the measurement was printed after he died which was 1924 I think certainly in the 1920s and maybe it was written some of it may have been written 50 years before that so way before Hitler way before the Holocaust and he writes in Persia's side that he talks about the idea that Jews are always looking for creativity to expand and if they can't find it in the Torah they will look in other places for creativity and he says that those who think that Berlin is the New Jerusalem and Berlin will be the source of wisdom and insight will unfortunately come to see that Berlin itself will be a source of great destruction she's more or less kind of a prediction that there would be a bun coming out of Berlin and again this is 1924. I mean this uh you know way before there was I don't know if there was already a Nazi party or not but certainly is that the pretty much at the beginning of a Nazi party and no one thought at the time that there would ever be anyone like Hitler who would be the ruler of of Germany so many say many considered that to be an example of of ruachakode so again I apologize for the digression May their memory be a blessing maybe learn from them maybe maybe follow for in their ways and particularly at a time when quality Israel is so divided and so polarized um that you know we should be able to go beyond all of the machlocus and embrace the Shalom so now we come a little bit to the partial we'll talk about the parish a little bit and this is a hard parser to talk about because this Parsha has more than 70 mitzvos the most of any of any parts in the Torah so there's so much to choose from what do you choose to talk about uh there's ebum and there's get and there's kadushan and many many other Mitzvahs but I'm going to talk about two Mythos that badafka have no practical relevance today but there are lessons that we can learn from them the first I'm going out of order but I want to talk about the later Mitzvah first is the Parsha about the rebellious Sun this is a very very unusual a law this is a law of a kid who's not even bar mitzvah 12 years old and he steals meat and wine from his parents without permission and his parents bring him to the San Pedro to a Sanhedrin to be adjudicated which parents would even do that and the Sanhedrin sentences him to death and he is stoned and this is called the rebellious son Ben so rare um now this is so unusual because at the end of the day all the kid did was steal a little bit so you know you don't you know we don't execute for theft moreover according to Tradition at least the kid is not bar mitzvah yes he's 12. he's not yet not yet 13. when do you punish a cut so the mishnah says a number of things about Ben solo mode the first thing it says is that the Ben solo umore is not punished for what he did he's not punished for what he did he's he's punished or he's sanctioned for what he will eventually become this is an example of what is called nidon al-shame sofa that he will be judged for what he eventually will do because the Torah is basically saying he starts off stealing from his parents he's addicted to alcohol food today we could add drugs and the like eventually that will expand to stealing from other people and God forbid could even turn into murder and therefore the Taurus philosophy at least in this case is let him die in a state of relative innocence rather than wait until he turns into all of the bad things that he's eventually going to do now this itself is very very unusual we are certainly not allowed to make that calculation what was that there was a whole movie about this um Minority Report uh where they had a technology they could tell you we're gonna commit a crime right so they arrested you you are being arrested because in two years you're going to commit a murder right we can't go that way we have no way of knowing that we don't have a right to do that who knows God knows and God says needon I'll shame sofo he is judged not based on what he did but on what he would become eventually very very very unusual but it's an example of neither nor same Soho there is a question the commentaries asked because I'm not going to go into but I'll mention the question that we find by Ishmael is dying in the desert and God wants to give Hagar access to a well so you smell could drink and the angels say to God why are you saving him he's going through his descendants are going to oppress the Jews let him die and God says I judge him the way he is now now he's not so bad I mean obviously he's somewhat bad because he was banished but he's not such a bad guy so the martial does ask Akasha that this is called that sham that's the lesson of the Hashem judges him the way he is so there is a fundamental contradiction between the concept of a Sher who shun you're judged based on what who you are now versus need done I'll shame so foe your judged vis-a-vis what you will become that's a a good question that the martial asks I'll leave that for the site but the other point the mishnah makes about the Ben solo Mora is that there are so many crazy conditions that have to be met that it'll never it never happened and it never will happen so many conditions in other words Hashem created a theoretical construct where this kid could be put to death but it's never going to happen because there are so many technicalities now it's interesting there's so much Locus and the mission itself one person says never happens the other person said it happened and I sat on his grave how do you explain that mclokus anyone says it'll never happen one says it did happen Okay that's I mean normally when you have a maclocus in halacha we like to say both people have a correct perspective they're looking at it different ways but this is a factual problem was was they've been sober more executed or was there not apparently but at least the tanakama the first time in the mission says the Ben sawarimura was not executed it never happened never happened now I want to give an example of two technicalities in that law one is an unusual technicality the other is not so unusual but what these technicalities can teach us technicality number one and this is based on dresha of the sukim is that both parents must have the same voice their voices must sound alike if their voices are different the kid has not have been so remarkable now that's almost impossible I mean a man and a woman sounds exactly the same they say husband and wife you know kind of look look the same after a while somehow even that what that means is not so clear but their voices are exactly the same actually that's already Aloha evolution the second condition is actually a commonplace condition but it's a requirement the parents cannot be deaf if either of the parents are deaf kid cannot be a Ben Stormer of course in most cases the parents won't be deaf so these are technicalities these are gazera sarcasos we don't really have reasons for any of this but is there some lesson that we can get from these technical conditions so this forum points out that these are actually interesting lessons in Parenthood and that is the idea that here we have a kid and the kid is going off to Derek so to speak in a big way and there are going to be some very severe consequences to this child because he's going off the terror so lesson number one is before you can punish or sanction a child for going off the Derek Hashem both parents have to be on the same page both parents have to speak in the same voice meaning this doesn't only mean although it does mean that as well the technical unlikelihood that they sound the same and that is true that is what it means a lot quickly but in a more spiritual symbolic sense there has to be consistency of message father and mother have to be in the same page and then the kid could be expected to follow the right path and if he doesn't there are going to be problems but if father and mother are moving in in opposite directions you can't blame the kid for anything he's hearing different messages all the time now that's not to mean that Mom and Dad behave exactly the same men and women number one are different fathers and mothers are different in some families you know Mom is the disciplinarian and dad is the easy guy the standard was the other way around you know wait till your father gets home or whatever whatever it would be and children uh very early on learn the skill of trying to pick one parent against another parent that's one of the skills of childhood that kids pick up one way one way or the other but the fact that men and women have different personalities different approaches softer harder more disciplinary more relaxed okay those are differences in means but in terms of fundamental values what is it that we want our child to be to be inevited Hashem to keep the mitzvotes to have me dealt about very important about Israel all of these values there has to be an agreement in fact that's one of the things you know when you decide to get married that's one of the most important things you're looking for yeah there has to be you know attraction there has to be chemistry yeah all of that is true too but there has to be a commonality of fundamental values what type of home do we want to build what type of family do we want to create what's important again that doesn't mean there aren't going to be differences but the differences have to be in the framework of a consistent set of values and priorities and then only then can the kid be blamed so to speak for going off the Derek and that's what it means symbolically both parents have to speak in the same voice now the idea that if a parent is deaf the kid can't be a benzo Remora also has a symbolic meaning you want your kid to be good you can't be deaf to your own message you got to hear your own message you know it's a well-known saying that people only have a yachohara when it comes to themselves and they don't have a yetihara when it comes to their children when it comes to my child I want him to learn I want him to dive in I want him to keep all the Mitzvahs that's my child when it comes to me you know I have different excuses you know at that point I have more of a Yeti but in truth the greatest influence you can have on your child is not the influence of a lecture a sermon a criticism a judgment it's the type of life that you yourself live you want a child who loves Torah again there are no guarantee there are no guarantees I'm not suggesting there's a guarantee but in terms of probability you want your child to love Torah you become a lover of Torah you want your child to have me those tovos then you have to strive to be a person of me most of us now sometimes you're lucky you hit the jackpot sometimes you get a kids who's no far superior to the parent and sometimes never you have the opposite you can have the most wonderful wonderful wonderful parents and the kid does not follow the Derek there are things we don't understand here I understand but in terms of probability the Apple oh it doesn't fall far from the tree and and salesmen have a saying you're not able to sell anything that you won't buy you can't sell Torah unless you're buying somewhere when you buy it when it's meaningful to you then you communicate before they used to talk about this see where he was humorously describe the scenario of a parent who is like talking throughout davening and when his kid is talking he stops his conversation to tell the kids stop talking so what does the kid learn the kid doesn't learn not to talk and show the kid learns that when he has a kid he'll tell his kids not to talk and show I mean that's that's what he's mimicking my dad my Abba tells me not to talk I will tell my kid not to talk but if she wants a child to learn not just how to tell his kids not to talk but not to talk the father has to not talk right that's that's basically it and this has become a very important example I mean this is true in all types of caref the greatest way you bring people to Torah is not by telling them anything unless they want to know it unless they ask questions but it's by living a life a certain way being a certain person living your life with Integrity living your life with me those thought of us with Abbas Israel with all of the good things that you want your children to have and then they absorb it they absorb it this is what they see it becomes natural to them it becomes what life is about it's not something superimposed on them as something unnatural so these are the two points of Ben solo remember that even in the technicalities you see a wonderful thing you see that number one the child is not at fault if the parents are inconsistent in their messaging that's what it means the voice has to be the same and the child is not at fault if the parents are deaf to their message right um I mean I remember years ago I was on a board of directors Board of Education rather of a Jewish school and in the foot flowers and the parents were discussing how they could create more learning opportunities for their kids truth I I wasn't an enthusiastic about the idea because the kids were going to school anyway until five o'clock and they were exhausted it was a double curriculum you know and they're tired kids need to play kids need to be run around it needs to run around you don't necessarily add on hours but the parents want to have add-on hours now and they were discussing how do we make our kids excited about learning so one of the downsides about being a rabbi of a congregation is that I I kind of know a lot about people's private lives so I knew what a lot of the parents were doing at night I can't say 100 obviously and they weren't learning that much you know they were doing other things so I was thinking to myself oh you're asking the question how do we Inspire our children to love learning Torah so I didn't say it but I thought it says well you learn more cover yourself you'll Inspire your children to Interior you know because that's uh it goes back to the modeling you know not not the drusha learn more learn more learn more but you know you got to model it so so that's the important lesson of the Ben sorrow now the the other thing I want to talk about I'm going in reverse order is earlier in the Parsha we had one of the most morally challenging mitzvahs in the whole Torah very very difficult the Asian fat Tower the women the women that is captured in war where we are actually the soldier was actually given permission to have intercourse with her and then if he does one like one bite at the Apple so to speak one freebie but then if he wants to go further with this relationship he brings her into her into his house and uh she shaves her head and she gets her fingernails grow to look repulsive and this is done for 30 days and then he either decides to marry her or if he doesn't want to marry her he cannot keep her as a slave she goes free so that itself I mean at least there's some humanistic standpoint there meaning his only choices are marriage or Freedom he cannot keep her as a slave because of what he made her go through that's what the Torah says that's called ashet you flat Tower and Rashi says the rationale of Asia is that in time of War passions are uncontrollable and therefore the Torah at least wanted to reduce the danger that she can't be kept as a permanent mistress that yeah you can do it once I'll talk about that in a moment but any other permanent relationship requires a marriage commitment or total freedom she cannot be kept as a slave okay now the first one I want to make I want to make clear is obviously this is a sinful thing he's with uh or it would have been a sinful thing he's with a non-jewish woman but are we talking about this is a really essential question are we talking about wartime rape what does the Torah allow him to do once once does the Torah actually allow the rape of a woman from the side of the enemy well I have to admit the simple reading of the public is yes that's how you would read it but I do want to call to your attention that at least one of the major commentaries the toso thread who was a great reshone does make a point that the head there of one intercourse in time of war is not a legitimation of rape it permits a consensual intercourse now that's important to know because otherwise people will say uh because you know rape during wartime is a war crime and to this very day it is a war crime and people might say oh is the Torah legitimating a war crime so at least the ptosis read says no so be a rishona is consensual okay now you mostly shine immigration say that most of them do not say that does the rambam say well the rambam doesn't say one way or the other one that's true but that's a different but you know that's a different thing I mean I mean you're murdering in war because that's a question of you know they're going to murder you so your your murdering war is part of self-preservation that wouldn't extend logically to to rape that's beyond what you need I mean that's why in even in modern the modern laws of war killing the enemy is mature but raping the enemies you know not allowed I mean there is there is a big difference if she is a combatant I mean I mean we say kill a woman do you mean a woman that's a soldier she's supporting the war well are you asking or secular which question um so this would depend actually uh if it's of the Seven Nations of Canaan you you can kill you kill even the women if on the other hand Syrian women that supports the syrians against Israel no you cannot uh you cannot actually you cannot kill them you cannot in fact you don't you can only kill combatants but the bomb is uh doesn't uh differentiate well where it gets complicated is this if in order to successfully defend my country against an aggressive enemy there will be collateral damage to civilians and I don't have another way of doing it then you're right even women and children can be collateral victims of that but to specifically targets women and children in order to uh to just disable the enemy but you're doing it as a separate thing that that would not be would not be allowed I mean collateral damage is a well-known Concept in both halacha and the law of war and that is if in order to get down the power well yeah I I think that's yeah that that is absolutely legitimate that's like I mean listen I don't want to get too political but when you have Palestinians or terrorists who are using women and children as Shields and I can't get at them without uh the women and the children then I I can again it's very sad it's very unfortunate it's very tragic but it's their fault they're using their own people as hostages against against the Jewish Army so I think you have to differentiate between what is called collateral effects of trying to defeat the enemy versus specifically as a nation I'm not sure about that does Israel do that sometimes when they are shooting from there so so so so here is the difference no no here's the difference that I would make meaning if if the terrorists or the aggressors are somewhere else and I'm shutting down the hospital in order that they would surrender that's an improper use of non-combatants to advance a military objective but where the terrorists are in the hospital itself and that's where they're sending bombs from and that's where they're doing different things then yeah then I could shut off yeah yeah I mean I would differentiate uh is it collateral to going against the aggressor or is it a separate activity that you're doing against non-combatants so this is Asia shabbatore very unusual so it raises a lot of moral problems of Morality In Time Of War but I want to share with you an allegory that The Oregonian brings in the name of the Zohar which connects Asus symbolically it's a symbolic interpretation uh to the month of Elo and to Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur and it says like this I'm going to paraphrase the verses and show how the Zoe are interpreted when you go out to war against your enemy and God will deliver the enemy into your hands and you will capture so he says the greatest enemy I have is my own yet sirhara that tries to take me away from God and the person is saying allegorically when you decide you're going to wage war against your evil inclination God will give you victory and then it goes on and says and you will see when you go out to war a beautiful woman and that refers to your nashama your nishama is described as a beautiful woman in her Radiance and her beauty that she was taken captive by the Sahara because you've given in through wrong things so what you want to do is symbolically you want to recapture your soul I want to be reconnected to my soul my goodness my potential my Radiance I want to get it back from the enemy so it says you shave off her hair and you let her fingernails grow so listen to what the zor says hair which grows out of the head represents false ideologies and ideas and fake value systems so shaving off the hair is you want to regain your nishama disabuse yourself of all of the false ideologies that corrupt you and let your fingernails grow well when you have very long fingernails it's hard to grab onto things so that refers to the Hedonism of wanting to grab onto things so the two things you got to distance yourself from are false ideologies and acquisition and hedonism and then it says she shall cry for her father and mother a month of days a month of days so this is what the Zoar says her father is God and her mother is the Jewish people meaning then the shama that's doing chuva should cry over the pain it inflicted on God and the pain it inflicted on the Jewish people and a month of days is the month of elil which is the month of repentance and shuva and soul-searchinga and therefore the zawa again this is obviously not the simple meaning of the verses nobody says that it is but as though our views views the Asia as a way of reclaiming your soul reclaiming your soul coming in contact with the goodness that is within you with the radiance that is within you trying to disabuse yourself of false ideologies trying to be less involved in the rat race of materialism crying over the fact that I've separated myself from God that's my father and crying over the fact that I've hurt not just myself but I've hurt the whole Jewish people which is my mother land and the ideal time of year to do that is the month the month of Elo um you know hello is described evil has many ramazim there are many hints to the month of evil the most famous one I've mentioned and I know that you know anyway is Anila Diva Dodi Lee I am for my beloved my beloved is for me the four words alif lamid hello this is very important because people often look at that little as the month of guilt not right not the month of guilt the month of love Lee Israel cook says I look into myself to make myself better because I want to have a loving relationship with God I'm not looking about how bad I am I'm looking about how good I can become so that's one REM is available but there's another REM is available that's a little less known and then other remedies of Ello is referring to the ear mclect the City of Refuge what's the City of Refuge very interesting Institution when you kill somebody unintentionally inadvertently so you don't get the death penalty but you are vulnerable to the blood Avenger a relative coming to get you unless you go to a designated City of Refuge so it's not a prison I mean you're in a city I think it's a levite city the medium live in the city but you better stay in that City if you leave the city the goal hadan could kill you as long as you're in the city you are protected and this is called air michelat there were actually 48 already McLeod in the land of Israel all of them were levite cities there was in fact Bobby has all interesting husband yet because the only people who go to the year neglect are people who were careless meaning if it's a true accident that you couldn't avoid you don't have to go to the air mid so the air McLeod is for what we would call manslaughter you were negligent you went through a stop sign you didn't look both ways at an intersection you threw some heavy object off your Merced not knowing there were children there in other words it's unintentional but you were careless you should have taken some precautions so you go to the Irma glass which is the closest thing we have to a prison system but who do you hang around with levium who are the teachers and rabbis and righteous people made a point you see that the penal philosophy of the Torah is you don't stick bad people with other bad people you stick bad people with good people who they could learn from and they could uh improve because as you know typically in prison uh somebody goes to prison for a small offense it is extremely likelihood likely that they will come back that's called the recidivism rate is like 80 or whatever it is like you go from madrega to madrega you're in there for marijuana and eventually you know you'll be there for armed robbery and maybe even even worse because who are the influencers in a prison all these all these bads uh all these bad people now by when the terrorist describes Aaron McLeod it says the following he who did not premeditate well okay God prepared for him McComb a place prepared for him um I'm sorry uh you know hello Kim yeah in other words Ello is encoded in the Parsha of ear miklat what does ello have to do with ear McLeod and the answer is spiritually there's an ear miklat in space and there's an ear McLeod in time ELO is the City of Refuge that exists in time but you'll say to me wait a second ear McLeod is for murderers albeit unintentional what does that have to do with me I'm not a murderer the answer is we are murderers we're murderers of ourselves because if we don't use life in the best way that we can do it then in a sense when people kill time that's kind of suicide right you're taking your life and you're not using it so Hashem knows we're showgake we're not doing it with malice we're not doing it on purpose we're doing it with intention with good intentions but we're careless a little bit so we need an air mclet and ello the Montebello is the year mclat in time that corresponds to the ear McLeod in in space it's a place time of reflection a time of because after all what does a person do in an ear make left right again he has a city but you know he's kind of limited he can't travel to Europe he can't uh uh can't even go to Tel Aviv or whatever it would be uh so there's a lot of time to reflect a lot of time to think a lot of time to go over what I need to do to be a better better person that's what level is and we don't take advantage of it enough because people think oh and Yom Kippur I'll do my Cuba well no there's no time to do chuvan Yom Kippur if you think about it I mean you're diving all day I mean when a person has to think exactly what do I need to work on in the coming year what should my goals be that's not a Yom Kippur activity per se unless you have a very long break on Yom Kippur because we have like too much to do on Yom Kippur really the time when when you do it it's not on the yamimtoven the album Tobin are the culmination of a process but you gotta all of us I mean talk to myself we need to use this time to kind of think about what it is we want to accomplish this coming year you know even the gallium have uh New Year's resolutions which I know might be might be sometimes minor but sometimes they're also character building resolutions so we should certainly I mean that's really what I mean they got I don't know if they got it from us but that's you know we certainly talked about that all the way back and that is as we approach a new year we try to make some type of resolution to improve ourselves in one way or the other maybe I'll say for another time it is important not to bite off more than you can chew resolutions should generally be small and manageable but they need to be consistent that's the most important thing you know there's a very very popular maybe the world's most popular duffyomi here everyone I'm sure everybody hears about it Ellie stefansky share I think he has on the internet like 25 000 I don't know huge amounts of people and you know part of it is he creates a community there's a lot of jokes very good pictures okay all sorts of things when they talk about corbanos they'll bring in a goats whatever he has all sorts of but he has a saying in his share I think it's almost become like the motto of the share which I like a lot uh you know he gives off yomi so he says it's not the duff that's important it's the yomi that's a good statement adapt is a quantity and that's a big quantity not everybody can manage that quantity yomi refers to the consistency of the commitment I'm gonna do it every day so he said if you have to choose the consistency is more important than the quantity so a person makes some huge Kabbalah you know I'm never going to speak Russian the rest of my life they're setting themselves up for failure but you take like a smaller goal whenever I drink a glass of water I'm going to think about thanking Hashem through the water you know that takes like two seconds of time those are things you can stick with and then what happens is you get spiritually stronger and as you get spiritually stronger one Mitzvah leads to another Mitzvah so I think all of us again again I'm talking to myself I don't mean to give mustard to anybody but all of us should think about what types of things can I do to make myself a better person in the coming year and again it's not only it doesn't necessarily even have to take the form of man to God it could be an interpersonal is equally important if not more important but whatever it's going to be whether it's learning whether it's happening whether it's greeting people and a friendly way whether it's anger management right now a lot of a lot of psychological work is actually chuva work people think I I um again I these are a lot of questions that come my way where people are going to therapists and and the therapist is encouraging them to be a little more lenient in certain Allah is and uh it's always very very difficult and there are people that have a tremendous which are much I don't mean you know violate Allah but you know not being strict in certain areas and people are wrecked some people are very very religious and very devout are racked with tremendous guilt over this and what I try to tell people I might get in trouble for this is you know to try to repair your psychological health is a spiritual activity it is part of what shuva is chuva is not just doing more and being Stricker chuva is to put yourself in a healthier place in your relationship to God and if this is going to bring you in a healthier relationship with Hashem then this is spiritual work it's not just psychological self-help or whatever it is that you're doing we have to kind of have a broader view in fact physical exercise can be part of children if so if somebody resolves to lose weight that is supposed to you know they want to be healthier be in a better shape to serve Hashem right but you have to connect it to God that's the only thing you have to say you know this is part of how I want to serve Hashem in a better way so sometimes we have maybe two limited definition of what true is we think it means oh I got a diamond more again it includes that also but there's all sorts of aspects of making yourself a better person that are is part of the chuba process and that little is a time when we try to think about this so it's the more we can do before Rosh Hashanah the more meaningful the yamim no rhyme are going to be for us so again I wish everybody extoba and thank you for coming [Music] is here