Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: Elul - The Month of Repentance and Responsibility

my baby [Music] thank you for coming and um again tonight's share is dedicated mosha and tonight's class is also dedicated by danit Hermann in honor of Rabino hakradoshif is tonight is your side I didn't but with the following message again you know the President says in michel'i whenever you mention a righteous person you should add a blessing as I do have to say a little bit about certainly as we know he's one of the great great early leaders uh he was a talmud of the measure Richard Magid who was the successor of the belchemtov he was a very dear friend of the balatanya of schneizaman of liade who was much younger than Revolution and in fact if you look at your Tanya I'm sure everyone has a Tanya you will see that is one of the people who gave a letter of approbation to the to the Tanya Andrea is known for his total love of every single Jew no matter what and we have all sorts of stories about that The Story Goes that he was the rav of British and he once saw a Jew who was smoking on Shabbos and he said to the Jew rabbit do you know today is Shabbos he says yeah I do he says do you know you're not allowed to smoke on Shabbos he says I do I know that so he says ribona Shalom look at your People Israel they are so honest they are so truthful they run away from shekar that even to the rabbi of the town he's not going to cover up what he did what a tremendous media of Claus Israel or there were times in which uh he would see in those whenever he saw any type of aveira he would always like show in fact The Story Goes that gamoran bracos tells us that Hashem wears fill in although we don't really understand that and the gamaran braco says what is in hashem's villain in archfelden we have Shema Israel we talk about the unity of God what is in so the Gemar answers just like artsville and have verses about the greatness of Hashem Hashem about the greatness of the Jewish people if a Jew drops his thrilling if the juice fill and hit the ground How concerned is a person they fast they give sadaka but we are your children Hashem and we're in the ground of the gullahs you have to pick us up you have to kiss us you have to redeem us because you can't let your children be on the ground what's interesting is that you know Revelation is of course known for his Avant Israel and we have fewer stories about how great he was in terms of Torah learnings I want to tell you a quick little story about his Godless and Torah learning and his great spirituality generally The Story Goes that one time there was a kahila a shell and some unknown City and right before Yom Kippur right before kol nidrate a man just comes into the show no one knows who he is and the man says I'd like to dive him for the omelet apparently they didn't have a regular cousin and he darvins call nidre davins Myra for a very long time and then after myriv he's up all night learning Torah they can't believe it the man dabbing along my roof and he's learning Torah all night standing up and the next morning after being up all night he does chakras and after chakras he reads the Torah and after reading the Torah he davins musaf and after davening musafir and after menstrual the whole day and people can't understand there's no break and they can't understand what type of human being this must be an angel this is beyond human capacities finally on Kippur and then they dive in the weekday Myra Yom Kippur is over and the prediction verse happened to be the ridicula he starts crying he says I can't bury it I'm starving I'm starving I'm starving so everybody feels finally we see that he's a human being they bring him food and water he says I don't want that I'm starving I didn't learn tomorrow I didn't learn gemara today so he takes out a Gamora and he learns all night and the next morning he's off in chakras and only after chakras the next morning did he have something to eat that was the particular tremendous tremendous Sadiq and gone and yet he was so filled with abach Israel so again I appreciate the dedication as we say his Merit protect us protect all of quality Israel and unfortunately in very very difficult difficult times finally when we look for isakuyo to the Montebello is coming up Rosh Hashanah is coming up and we need Merit to stand before God in a holy good way and one of the greatest things we can do is the stucco that we give both to the poor and for the support of Torah so Ibana is launching its annual fundraising campaign for the upcoming tobim to distribute food and other necessities for the financially challenged 100 percent of the funds go directly to the recipients and there will be a link on the website and in the description box below the uh the Youtube video again that the giving of Charity can give a person life and all sorts of bragos and bies Hashem those who will be generous in giving their stucco will get much much reward from from so again we thank all the people who dedicated this year tonight we're going to look at the pressure to shavua that is coming up the first Torah reading in the month of Elo that is coming up and that is parshaim uh and it's interesting because remember that the whole book of devarim is occurring in the last seven weeks of Moshe rabenu's life it starts and Moshe is going to die the seventh of Adar so all of the book of devorem are his Farewell discourses for that period of time now I can't give you a more exact date of when Moshe rabenu said parashat shofden but obviously it was somewhere between and the seventh of of Adar and one of the main themes in parashat showtim there are many interesting mythism but one of the main themes is the concept of creating Authority structures because if you think about it just from a systematic standpoint one of the major problems that the Jewish people are going to face is the notion of transition Moshe rabena was their leader took them out of mitraim he was the greatest Navi he gave them the Torah but he's going to die now leadership has many components there is there is what you might call religious leadership in terms of mitzvotes and how they wrote there is what you might call spiritual leadership which is inspiration meaning even if you're not going to give you Allah like this leadership their spiritual leadership which sometimes can be different uh there is political leadership now in many ways Moshe rabena was a one-man show that combined all of these different roles he was the political leader of am Israel that's why hazal described mosharabenu as a Melech leader who gave them the mitzvos and the aveiros and Moshe pascant Shyla so to speak and Moshe rabena was also the spiritual leader who gave them Musser and and and spirituality in connecting to God but when Moshe dies there's going to be what you might call a separation of powers in which there will be different institutional bodies and persons who will take over the different roles of Moshe rabeno so the political leadership will be through a Melech a king although only after the period of Judges that will be several hundred years but eventually we will have a monarchy uh the halachic leadership is the Sanhedrin and the court system and the spiritual leadership will be the gift of Prophecy we'll love the prophets now remember the prophets did not give holoca leadership a navi is not allowed to declare oh God told me what the halacha is because after the Mosaic Revelation the Torah is no longer in heaven has to be decided by human beings who are utilizing what you might call Legal reasoning but the navi has what you might call charismatic leadership the navi is giving spiritual messages of closeness to God so if you think about it the different Authority structures that are decided that are described rather in parashat show of them corresponds to the different roles of Moshe rabena political leader which is malach spiritual leader which is nothing leader which is the Sanhedrin and the court system generally right and each of them are a specific facet of as a whole cannot be replaced and his functions have to be dispersed among several different different bodies so I want to talk a little bit about some aspects of these Authority structures and what lessons there might be first of all in terms of malach in terms of King it's a very very interesting question the Torah seems to say and the rambam so passkins that when the Jewish people are settled in the land of Israel there is a Mitzvah upon them to appoint a king appointing a king is one of the 613 Commandments of the Torah so there are a number of problems with this if you understand you shall appoint for yourself a king is actually a Mitzvah in the Torah then why when the Jewish people approached the prophet Samuel the navi shmuel and they said we want a king so if you remember shmuel who was a very very great prophet gave them a long Musser schmooze how how dare you ask for a king that means you know God should be your king and that means you're rejecting the kingdom of God and God is very unpleased with you God is unhappy with you and that's why there's going to be a hailstorm to show the Divine dissatisfaction and a king will take you away from the Torah so it's a very very difficult question if the Jewish people are supposed to appoint a king then why was it an aveira to ask for a king when the terrorist says that's what you're supposed to do so the rambam himself raises this question and the ramdunk is a very interesting answer the rambam says actually asking for a king is totally proper it's the right thing to do and it's a Mitzvah but the motivation for asking for a king was a traith motivation they said we want a king to be like all the nations we want a king so we can have our own political system instead of the Torah which means it's not the monarchy that's a problem but it's the motivation behind the monarchy that's the problem and that is why the rambam says that God gave them a monarch that by definition was set up for failure because yaakov avinu said on his deathbed that the monarchy of the Jewish people should always go to the tribe of Yehuda of which is of that tribe mashiach will come from now the very first king of Israel was not from Sheba jahudah but was from shaved Benjamin why was the first king from shavit binyamin if malhus is supposed to go to save a Judah so the rambam explains since their motivation for wanting a king was a tainted inferior improper motivation God gave them a monarchy that by definition would not be the permanence monarchy it would be a monarchy that would fail and that's in other words now this is the rambam's understanding I will say that there is a difficult touch on the rambam because the rambam implies was intended to be temporary from the very beginning and yet the book of shemuel implies had shall all not sinned in his failure to kill the amalekai king what is more say your mouth your kingdom would have lasted forever according to the rambam that's impossible Charles Marcus could never have lasted forever because shawl is from Benjamin and the maoris is so I remember I raised this question many many years ago like almost how many years ago like uh 1980 and a woman in this year gave me an answer that I still remember it's a great great answer she says of course the malachus would have gone to shave at Yehuda but remember that one of David's wives was Charles daughter mikha and Mikhail died without children but perhaps if Shaw hadn't sinned would have been carried out through so in effect shall would have been in the Royal Line even though it's via David that's a great that's a great answer but okay be it be it as it may though this is the well-known sheet of the rambam that there is a Mitzvah to have a king monarchy is proper now I know that this sounds uh not so good to people who are used to democracy Republican governments or at least figurehead monarchs like the like Great Britain or England et cetera where the king doesn't really have power and of course if we look at the record of monarchies we see that a lot of our kings were not always so good either but in many many ways if you have a monarch who is committed to the Torah who follows the Torah who is subordinated to the Torah who carries the Torah wherever he goes just like the president of the United States has somebody who carries this nuclear football right you know this have you ever looked at a picture of the president you will say there was always some guy 24 7. who is next to the president or right even outside of his bedroom that has a briefcase that has all the nuclear codes it's called the nuclear football uh what is it there's also a little card the president has a laminated card that has those cards it was interesting that Bill Clinton left it in a suit that went to the cleaners I was surprised the White House I'm surprised the White House doesn't have its own cleaners but apparently the president's suits go to a cleaner and there were these nuclear codes but okay as we know nothing happened but okay and and the light so the equivalent of the nuclear football for the Jewish King is the safer Tower the king must have can they say it was a small secretary they had with them a small sleeper Tower because power corrupts absolute power corrupts absolutely a Jewish King has tremendous power the gives that King a lot of power but when he knows that this power has to be exercised for the glory of God and for the good of the Jewish people then monarchy is a very efficient way of doing things you get things done right you don't have gridlock you don't have these endless political debates or demonstrations so in a sense when a king is good it's real good when the king is bad it's real bad Winston Churchill said about democracy including British democracy that democracy is the worst system of government ever invented except for everything else which means given the human propensity for corruption maybe monarchies are not so good but in the torah's ideal a monarchial government would be a very very good form of government if the king obeys and is subordinated to the laws of the Torah I just want to point out that although a majority of postgim actually say that the appointing of a king is a Mitzvah so you shall appoint the king it is a Mitzvah to appoint a king there is one dissenting voice and this is very interesting and this is the opinion of the abarbanel ravitz is a very very interesting figure I think we've spoken about him before but just to remind people as he's called or of Ravenel depending how you pronounce it was the finance minister of Spain during the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella he was a at a very very high role in the government in fact he was the one who primarily financed Columbus's expeditions to what eventually became the discovery of the new world they thought they were going to India by a different River they hit the another continent in the middle and the barbinal was learned and very devout and he lived during the time of the Inquisition and the expulsion of the Jews from Spain and he's finding his financial Acumen was so necessary that Ferdinand was willing to give him a waiver that he could remain a Jew remember the the Jews were given a choice you either convert to Catholicism or you will be expelled or you will be burnt at the stake those are the three choices converts die or leave and the barbadell was given a fourth option you can stay and be religious because we need your money now it is brought down that the apartment now was on the verge of con of convincing Ferdinand to rescind the decree of expulsion he argued that the Jews were very very productive people and they ought to stay and they don't bother anybody and you know they are they're only good and Ferdinand was going to relent but at the last moment the dreaded tarkamanda was the Grand Inquisitor came and he gave Ferdinand a tremendous about how can you abandon your principles for money and the like and Ferdinand really out of almost fear of Tor Commander's wrath of God refused to rescind his decree but he did offer the barbinel an exception and the apartment now of course did not want to leave stay in Spain without his Brethren so he actually left and he said on the 9th of Ave with the one of the ninth of was one of the dates the explosion occurred over a long period of time one of the dates was the ninth above and it is recorded as the Elder of the Jewish people was the head of the procession and towards the end of the procession there was a mother with her four-year-old child who grew up to be Rabbi Joseph Cairo the author of the shulkin era who eventually went to Constantinople and then to uh it is recorded that on the 9th of when they were expelled from Spain that they should play musical instruments and songs on not just during the nine days on Tish above itself part of it was that people were so despondent they were so subrachen they were so broken that it was really considered a matter of life and death the other explanation that's given which I like even more is that he didn't want people to think that this was such a big deal so what you're leaving Spain Spain is a God look like any other gullet you don't cry over leaving Spain cry over leaving yerushalayim cry over leaving Spain no not a big deal and therefore you know you can sing even when you're leaving Spain but be it as it may the Obama spent the rest of his life in different countries part of it was in Portugal he had children he had adult children in Naples and Venice and he wrote after he left his political career he wrote voluminous commentaries on a lot of things very distinguished and very sizable literary output he has commentaries on the hummish and on most of the Nadim and on the Book of Daniel he was very into Messianic calculations most of the consumer like we don't have we don't have commentaries on to illum or Michelin but we have Torah nivim and multiple commentaries on safer Daniel he wrote a commentary on Pierce he wrote a commentary on the Haggadah of pesach he wrote a commentary on the rambam's guide to the perplexed maurya novuken and he wrote works on messianism on the idea of mashiach as well as works on Jewish philosophy and the like kind of outgrowths of his commentaries on Daniel was the messianism book and the outgrowth of his commentary and the guide to the perplexed were his books on Jewish philosophy and he had a very he has a very unique Style number one it's absolutely beautiful and he's very very clear and what a good thing about the Barbarella in addition is he will summarize all of the predecessors Rashi ramban before he offers his interpretation so you actually can get an overview of all of these different views but his style is that he'll always introduce every topic by giving you a bunch of questions so when he discusses the Parsha he'll give you the 100 questions on the price or you know 20 Questions 25 questions and then he'll offer an explanation that will answer all of these questions for example he has no fewer than 100 questions before you even start the Agata he gives you a hundred questions that he's going to answer so they tell a little bit of a joke about the person who became an epicorus a heretic he used to enjoy uh reading the Ababa now after The Challenge on Shabbos afternoon and he would sit in an easy chair after lunch and he would read the a barbinell now as you know when you eat challenge Shabbos afternoon and you're sitting in a soft chair you get kind of tired and you fall asleep so he reads a hundred questions and he falls asleep before he reads the answer so he says I can't believe in the Torah so many questions so many contradictions so many inconsistencies so you have to be careful if you're reading a lot of questions be sure that you get to the answer in a way suffered a little bit because the commentaries are so beautiful but they are so long they are so long that people often do not have the patience so there are now in English there are abridgements of the apartment now a friend and colleague of mine of Pentacles cast net is writing abridgements of a lot of their webinars work so you can kind of make it a little bit more more accessible okay now the reason I'm bringing this up is though the barbinel both in his commentary to Parsha showtim and in his commentary to the book of shmuel when the Jewish people ask for a king actually takes the position that monarchy is not the ideal government of the Torah and in point of fact it is better not to have a king and when the Torah says you shall appoint the king that is simply giving you permission if people want it they're allowed to have it but ideally it would be better not to have it at all and it's very very fascinating that their barbinel draws upon his own experiences with monarchs in coming to that conclusion he says monarchy involves uncontrolled power is subject to abuse it is much better he said to have a system of Elections where the officials are subject through the control of the people they can be recalled he also talked about term limits where people are limited in terms so they know they can't really abuse their power now because in a short amount of time they will be subject to other people and he greatly praised the Italian city-states of Naples Venice Florence and the others which actually had elected Republican representative government subject to term limits this I think may be the only place in Jewish religious literature where there's actually a long a long essay in favor of a democratic when I say Democratic I mean Republican you understand the difference democracy if you want to be pedantic democracy refers to Direct Control by the public that's where like they had this for example in small towns in New England they used to have this idea where the whole town got together and decided things they didn't elect representatives he had 100 people in the village they would get together and they would decide technically that's democracy uh what when we have what is called representative democracy that is what is called a republic a republican form of government not referring to the parties Democrats and Republicans is where decisions are made by electing people who then act on your behalf so the Barbarella was a big cusset of what you might call Representative Republican government and he has a dociation a very unusual Sita that the monarchy was not desired by Hashem now the truth is there is a big inconsistency with the environment on the one hand the robinelle is a proponent of representative democracy on the other hand the Ravenel is perhaps the greatest writer on messianism that we have I mean he wrote three commentaries under meal and two books about mashiach and clearly mashiach absolutely is a monarchy so on one end he is not in favor of monarchy except when it is the Messianic monarchy which of course is totally governed by God but he does not look at monarchy as an ideal state of government for the Jewish people or anyone else and he drew upon his bitter experience with Ferdinand and and Isabella so this is an interesting example of how a person's torahashkafa I think was influenced by the actual experiences in life uh that that he had so that's something to think about in terms of monarchy now one other point about Miller before I go to my next topic because I'm going to talk about different Authority structures and that is there is another great book on Jewish philosophy that was written after the barbadell and that is raviosef Alba who wrote a book of philosophy called safer Karim uh I'm sorry I'm sorry he was before the apartment now called The Book of fundamental principles and ravalbo made the argument that encounter distinction to the rambam who says there are 13 fundamental principles of faith reveal asserts there's only three fundamental principles of faith that a Jew must believe in a Jew must believe in God number one a Jew must believe in rewarding punishment that God will reward virtue and punish evil and number three that good and evil are not arbitrary constructs but they come from revelation that the Torah comes from heaven now just to illustrate a difference in the rambam's approach and reveal let me give you two examples that of course we know does not have a body God is incorporated one believes that God has a body that's an erroneous belief but the rambam characterizes God's incorporality as a fundamental principle of Faith so according to the rambam if you believe in God but you think God has a body you are a heretic you're an epicurus perhaps you don't have a share in the world to come revolvo argues that just because something is a mistaken belief does not mean it's a heretical belief so if one were to believe that God could has a body that is an erroneous belief but that's not heretical as long as you believe in God if I'm an atheist then yeah by definition I'm a heretic but if I am a corporalist meaning I believe that God is a body I am a mistaken person but I'm not a heritage by the way this is an important point because you're going to hear people say that you're very safe will believe that God had a body not true people are misconstruing what travalgo is doing where Volvo actually agrees with everything the round bump says ravalbo's belief system was exactly the same as the rambam's belief system they simply differ as to how you classify certain deviations from that belief system the rambam counted the non-corporeal aspect of God as a fundamental principle of the religion revalbo said no it's a secondary principle subsumed under mitsiotation another example what if a person says I believe that after we die God rewards us for all the good that we've done and there's Allah and if we've done things that aren't so good that we haven't done shuva there's a Penance that we go through a rectification that we go through Indiana but I just don't believe in Resurrection of the Dead because why is it important for the body to come back how do you characterize that well the rom-bomb's 13th principle is that there will be not just which is the world of the Soul but at some point we don't know when there will be physical resurrection of the body the union of body and soul so according to the rambam if I don't believe in Resurrection I am a heretic because I am denying the 13th principle of faith says hey all of these are just details the principle is that God has a system of reward and Punishment what form that will take which is the world of the Soul or resurrection of the Dead which is the world of the body those are details which are not of fundamental importance so yes Judaism does believe in Resurrection of the Dead so if you deny resurrection of the Dead you are making a mistake but you're not heretical because you do believe in the general idea of reward and Punishment so again I want to repeat people will sometimes tell you ravalbo did not believe in physical resurrection of the Dead not true revalbo believed in everything that the rambam believed in but it's simply a question of how do you classify people who have erroneous beliefs are they Heretics or are they simply mistaken people not every mistake a person makes is going to make them a not because risk okay that's the safery career and in fact say foreign I think is a very helpful resource to be aware of because sometimes we confront in life people who have difficulty accepting every detail of the rambam's 13 principles might might enable an alternative modified structure that a person can still be faithful to the Torah faithful to the Mitzvahs observance of The Commandments and can live with certain mistakes which don't exclude them from Israel so it's important I think at least for rabbis to be aware of ravalbo's modification of the ramp up okay why am I bringing him in though because one of the interesting things of safericarium is that he has many many interesting digressions off topic in which he illustrates a number of questions which are not necessarily relevant to his main theme but they are very fascinating and that is often the case the digressions might be even more interesting in the main discussion in his digression one of his digressions he raises a very interesting question we find by Charlotte that shall all made one mistake and God rips away the Kingdom from him show was given a commandment to eradicate the nation of amalek and shall all fulfilled the Commandment 99 percent spared the king of amalek that shmuel had to kill and he spared some of the animals and of course that turned out sparing our Gods turned out to be very very serious because that God was able to impregnate a woman until he was apprehended and that was the ancestor of Hamman okay it's very interesting thing but the basic idea of show that that is correct that that is why the whole story of Purim is a rectification of the sin of shaol shall was supposed to kill amalek he did not as a result of shaol zavera was born who virtually eradicated almost eradicated the Jewish people Mordechai and Esther are The Descendants of Haman I'm sorry descendants of all and they Rectify shaul's failure by orchestrating the death of Haman the downfall of amalek it's a very very important idea that Mordechai and Esther are Miss sake the hate of show all by causing hormone to be destroyed but in terms of Tolerance God has kind of a zero tolerance for Shoal one mistake and he's gone now Dominic committed in Avera that one might in some way say is even worse let's consider uh the story of David and bathsheva now there is a lot to say about that story uh David's um actually it was actually it was done with hubris David says to God I purified myself test me give me the biggest challenge I can pass whatever you throw to me famous last words never say those words God says okay let's see how righteous you are and that very moment he sees a beautiful woman bathing and he has an uncontrollable Lust For and he sends her husband to the front Etc now it is very very true that the talmud makes the sin to be much less than we might otherwise think if you read the book of shemuel without any commentary what you see is David committed adultery with the married woman number one David impregnated this woman number two David wanted to cover up and deny his paternity of this kid so he calls the man back from the Army and says be with your wife the man refuses to leave so David has him killed you know he has him positioned in battle where he gets killed and then he takes her for a wife so David is guilty of adultery number one that would also mean the child who actually died would be a momzer and number three three David is guilty of indirect Murder By positioning him in a dangerous place now the talmud says anyone that says that of his sin is making a mistake because every soldier in King David's Army gave his wife a get before they went to fight a Jewish bill of divorce why would a soldier give his wife again because you have a big problem which even today exists of missing inaction you know a soldier God forbid is missing in action we don't know if he's dead or alive his wife cannot remarry because maybe he's alive she's a Laguna a stranded woman so in order that women should not be stranded and have the ability to rebuild their lives every Soldier gave his wife again now there's all my cloakis among the commentaries this is called the special guetan that we're given in war is this an absolute yet meaning as soon as he leaves she could marry somebody else or is it a conditional get kind of saying this sketch will be effective if I am gone for a year and you don't hear anything about me meaning if I come back you know whatever but whether it's a conditional get or an absolute gut but Sheva was not married when she was with David so David was not guilty of adultery David was sleeping with a single woman okay what about the murder thing so there the Kamari says that Uriah Oreo was her husband's actually deserved death because he violated an order of the king the king ordered him to come home he refused and Allah is when your moired you rebel against the king the king can execute so technically David didn't sin and that's why the gemara says anybody who says that does it sin is making a mistake but I would also say the opposite is also true anybody who says David didn't sin at all is also making a mistake absolutely that this was an awful sin not send the prophet nothing none of him by the way I see that Nathan the prophet is very popular in the British coronation handles famous coronation song zadok the the the priest and Nathan the prophet that piece of it but nothing who's the main Navi after shmuel died gave him tremendous muscle so how do you reconcile that the talmud says David didn't sin the project says David had a tremendous sin the answer is There Are Spiritual sins of the heart govid technically had everything lined up but in his heart because it was understood that when a soldier came back the wife would remarry him that was it so it was a spiritual adultery and yes David had a headed to kill him but he was really doing it to get him out of the way and God judges not only the actions of a person your actions might be technically correct but they are morally repugnant they are evil actions and David was castigated by the prophet and by Hashem for that wrong intention even though he did not commit a technical sin so bacteria of Josef Alva so yes if Volvo asks a very good question is not given a second chance shall messes up and he's gone love it commits the awful sin of being with bathsheva and orchestrating the death of and David suffered tremendously number one uh he lost the baby and number two all of those things afterwards of Shalom trying to kill him his own son all of that was a consequence of this But ultimately government is restored to the monarchy and not only that but the next child he has from bathsheva is none other than shlama who succeeds him and remember that the Messianic line is not only from David David had many sons the Messianic line is through another is the ancestor of mashiach so why is there greater tolerance for David than there is for sure yes if albo actually gives two interesting answers that differentiate from David one is that shall all sin was connected to his responsibilities as a monarch I am King as a king I have a certain job to do I didn't do my job therefore I get removed David's sin was a sin of passion but David did not so to speak commit a misfeasance in the execution of his Royal governmental responsibilities so Rivaldo says quite amazingly you know that personal sins do not automatically disqualify you from mauchus it is only sins in the commission of your responsibilities as Monarch now I don't want to get too much into secular legal analysis but this mirrors a fascinating debate under American constitutional law right the Constitution says a president can be impeached and removed from office for what are called high crimes and misdemeanors now one of the things that Trump said when he was running the first time is that he's so popular that he could shoot somebody he could kill somebody in Fifth Avenue in the broad daylight and he would still get elected as president now interestingly enough constitutionalized Scholars debate what if a president simply shot somebody in a bar a president took a baseball bat and broke broke with Windows of your car is that an impeachable offense you might say it's outrageous but some say that has nothing to do with the conduct of the presidential office now if he got the Secret Service to do it that might be a problem but if he's simply a meshugging a guy who shoots people and breaks Windows he could go to jail but that's not impeachable because removal from Office depends on abusing the powers of the office there is such a sheeta like that in American constitutional law and that mirrors of Joseph Alba's answer that personal sin does not disqualify you from mauchos it is only sins in the conduct of your Royal of your Royal Duty however Revival gives another answer because the first answer I think bothers us a little bit because I mean you're dealing with Hashem here I mean okay maybe you're going to tell me in in terms of human politics a person might say hey my private immorality has nothing to do with my suitability right a person commits adultery a person does all sorts of things well okay so what I'm a good president I'm a good governor you can you could perhaps buy that argument some people don't buy that argument there either say if you're an immoral person how can you be a good Governor but when I say the truth is most politicians maybe I shouldn't say it you know in their personal lives are not living high standards of morality but some of them can be so be good and that's what revalbo was saying but the problem is when you're dealing with Hashem an office how can you possibly separate how can you say oh even if you're a Russia you're fine because you're you know you make the trains run on time in other words may make sense maybe in a secular political system and even then it's questionable it doesn't make that much sense one would think in a religious system where morality and following Hashem should be Paramount so he gives a second answer and the second answer is even more interesting and very very relevant to this time of year the second answer that he gives is that the difference between shall end of it was not in the nature of their sin maybe David's sin was even worse than Charles sin show sin was a sin of omission he failed to kill every amalekite David's sin was a sin of quasi-adultery and murder but the difference between David and was not in the magnitude of their sin but in their reaction when they are confronted and called upon it when shmuel returns to Shoals Camp after Shoals supposedly completed the mission why did you not fulfill the word of God well actually initially he starts off that shovel comes and he says to shmoch she'll even initiate it I have done the Mitzvahs of God and shmuel says what is the bleeding of the sheep that I hear so so show all starts giving excuses I was afraid of the people they wanted to keep spoils I listened to them so Shoal is doing two things sequentially the first thing he does is denial he says I didn't do anything wrong I did the word of God and when he is called upon that and said no you didn't he blames others for the mistake that he made in other words he did not take responsibility for his action and therefore his chuva could not be complete because he did not acknowledge even to himself failed here either I tell myself you know 95 percent is plenty good enough or I say well what do you want from me people made me act this way I can't be responsible comes to government he requests an audience he says I have a story I want to I want to tell you about a rich man and a poor man and the rich man had flocks of sheep and Cattle and the poor man all he had in the world was one little lamb that was almost like his pet and he fed the lamb and he loved the lamb and he cherished the land and the rich guy wanted to make a banquet so we took the land of the poor person he slaughtered it and he served it to his guests think about such a person who had so many resources of his own but he had to take the one precious thing that this poor person loved and David is outraged and David says such a wretched selfish person deserves to die again how luckily it's not so clear exactly uh unless the whole thing was a euphemism again again it's an interesting interpretive point because even if the rich guy is guilty of theft you know you don't get killed for that but perhaps it was understood that the lamb here was a wife so to speak okay but whatever it is after nothing said the story to David he points to David and he says you are that man you are that man you're a king you have everything you have all the wealth you need you have all the wives you have whatever that 18 wives himself not as much as to some but David had many wives too and you took away from a man the one thing in his life he's one connection the one human being he was connected to now the truth of the matter is what was Governor's response dubbage response was one word or two words actually level Kim I have sinned I am wrong now David in fact had all of the excuses that the gemara itself gives him he could have said she had a gift she wasn't married he could have said rebelled against my order so I had the right to send him to his death he could have said why is she bathing on top of her roof anyway he could have said everything but he knew that those excuses were out of he acknowledged it he took responsibility and that's when shuva is possible so you see what ravalbo was saying human beings are fallible human beings are weak human beings make mistakes human beings sin God is not going to take you away from malchutz because you sinned but the nature of being a Miller is as Harry Truman said the buck stops here they take responsibility the modern expression is you own it and then Hashem forgives because then truth is possible when I acknowledge I don't live in the world of excuses then real movement can be made and therefore the difference between is not that shall sin was worse than David but shall did not accept responsibility and David did Even though David had all of the excuses that the talmud gives now the truth of the matter is David learned this from his own ancestor David's ancestor is Yehuda remember the story of Yehuda and Tamar remember the story in the Hamish was that you would have a daughter-in-law Tamar and tomor married his oldest son and the oldest son died and then she married his next son onano also died so you'd have the third son he doesn't want Tomar to marry his third son because he's afraid that she's bad luck or whatever she causes husbands to die so she remains in a state of aguna where she can't marry and what she does is she dresses up like a prostitute she entices Yehuda he gets his own daughter-in-law pregnant but he doesn't know he's with his daughter he was with his daughter-in-law so when he sees Tomar pregnant he considers her to be committing adultery outside of the family and the electric structure is quite complicated but the Hamish is describing that somehow Tamar is connected to that family and therefore if he got pregnant outside of the family it's adultery she is going to be burnt at the stake and she refuses to identify Yehuda because she doesn't want to embarrass him and atonement says better to be burnt in a fiery furnace than humiliate somebody but she took his a money belt and staff as a deposit for the prostitution and she said to Yehuda hey the one who gave me these things now if Yehuda would have said I don't know who that is she would have died she was not going to reveal anything but Yehuda stepped forward and said call me many she is more righteous than me Yehuda had the quality of Moda to admit the truth and from there were twins and the from the boy that was called parents Boaz is descended Boaz married Ruth and David comes and mashiachops so this Meda of taking responsibility admitting when you're wrong it was embedded in shape with you from the time of Yehuda and it found its expression in and that is even though he suffered because of his sin David is given multiple chances because he took responsibility you know it's interesting that many of you have heard of the great facility the second dare rebbe who's known as the svasemus and the founder of Guerra casidas is the rim of Yitzhak mayor alter and ravitzak mayoralter had ten Sons and all ten of the sons died in his lifetime but the grandson the son I think I think the son of his youngest son was reviewed Arya Des Moines and the rim raced three minutes rabbits and raised this in their household and every day the rim revitic mayor would learn with the svasemus as a child and one day this was very late because there was a family emergency a medical emergency and he came an hour late to be with his grandfather his grandfather did not know why so he gave his grandson very very about not wasting time not coming late about using every minute for Torah study very harsh very strong his Robinson came into the house and said why are you harassing the child there was a real emergency room apologized and said to label labash the swathamus says why didn't you tell me she was only like eight or nine said I so much wanted to hear the Musser of the zadie I wanted to hear you're a chastisement I wanted to hear your which was good for magnesium so here you know we tend to come up with excuses even if we don't have them but here you see the direction is even when they have excuses they don't want to use them they want to improve themselves they want to be challenged they want to become much much much better so as they say this is a very important aspect of chuva in life the chuva of taking responsibility you know we live in a culture which you almost might call Professional victimization everybody is a victim of something now again I I can get in big trouble for this and I really do not want to get into big trouble for this certainly there are people who have suffered tremendously because of the abuses that have been perpetrated on demand and by all means these people deserve compassion they deserve empathy they deserve to be protected absolutely people who are victims of sexual abuse emotional abuse physical abuse of any type so God forbid I I know that even with my disclaimer I know I'm gonna be criticized for this uh you know God forbid I am not at all trying to be callous to people who have suffered tremendously but the bottom line of life is we can't live our lives as victims at some points we have to take responsibility for our lives and move forward and at some point we can't say well I behaved this way because of what was done to me no this is the gift of what is called bakira free will and this is the challenge the burden of what is called free will free will is a great great amazing gift that God gave us we have the capacity to choose in spite of everything that happened in the past I can choose that's a gift it's also a burden because what it says basically is no excuses you gotta make the choice you gotta choose life we read last week there is the pathway of life and the pathway of death you gotta choose the pathway of life now yes in context that's referring to mitzvos versus non-mitzvos versus Sin but in a more General way it applies to what is my orientation in life am I going to choose the negativity the anger the resentments and lock myself into that way of living or am I going to say I'm more than a victim I'm gonna go beyond it right so bakira is both a gift and a burden because when there is the possibility of positive change there becomes the responsibility of making those changes Hashem as we enter the month of eloh again a time of great love a time of great reconciliation May Hashem give us the kawak to take responsibility for our lives and then we will be able to do a chuva in which many many positive things can be accomplished [Music] there is