Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: Insights into the Book of Numbers and The 7 Books of The Torah

[Music] okay hi everybody and uh it's good to uh see uh more and more faces coming back in person and piazza hashem perhaps we're even going to move into the big room into the main show if more and more people do come and people are listening remotely also shalom alechem and i hope everyone had a wonderful shibuas it's already our second class after shivohas and as always uh we appreciate the sponsors of this year and uh tonight again uh we are miss paolel and learning for a refuge leima as well as the young man that we've been dominating for for quite a long time binyamin israel we and all of them the holy israel should have a refusal reforce and efforts for saguf and of course our filos are with the families who lost loved ones uh in meron and of course in the recent terrorists attacks uh throughout different cities of eric israel and right now we have a ceasefire god willing you to last unfortunately the other side does not have a great track record but you know who knows khazal tell us that as we approach mashiach the binet ishmael will do chiva so perhaps as we are iniquity perhaps indeed we will be zohair to see that type of of cuba and so tonight i'm going to again be a little off sync because i really want to talk about something that was at the end of last week's parsha because last week we spoke about something else post post chabous and that is really it's thematically about the book of amidbar as a whole so it's almost not tied necessarily to a parsha it's really tied to a theme about chomach by midbar and that theme is about creating it is the archetype for the ideal jewish society the society of kadush remember we spoke about the fact that in the middle of the machina is the mishkan the source of kedusha and around the machine are the leviam that are the full-time people that are osek in torah and avodah and then around them are the different types of tribes with the different flags and that as we spoke about last time represents the notion of a unity with a diversity in which each group had its own approach in avodah hashem it was not a homogeneous unity it was a unity that appreciated the uniqueness of each individual and we look at that midborn in which everybody is organized around the mishkan and everybody is serving hashem but they are serving hashem within a common framework of torah and mitzvos but with the uniqueness of their personality this in fact is the prototype of the ideal jewish society as i mentioned last time people sometimes make the argument that now that we have a jewish homeland now that we're in erich israel why should we keep ashkenazim svardham all the different subgroups of hasidim and ashkenazim and spiderm there ought to be a unified minhag erich israel but the truth is obviously that's a mistake because even when we had the tribes during the first temple there were separate tribes and and the like and as i indicated the diversity that exists within ami israel is not intrinsically a weakness it is a strength and a beauty it turns into a weakness and a deficit only when it leads to a sinatrina a hatred a disparagement that is something bad to be sure that is the reason for the destruction of the second base amiktas but the notion that there are different him in avodah sachem is a very powerful one binary thinking of the either or type is actually pretty foreign to judaism in many ways is dysteric right or is that derek right again it may sound like the old joke where you know the rabbi hears one side of a dispute and says you're right and here's the other side of the dispute and says you're right and the reverend says how can they both be right and he says you're right too so it makes it may sound like i'm sounding that way but often in all of these different opinions whether it's about yeshiva boys in the army or whether it's about secular studies or whether it's about parnasso versus full-time learning all of these like issues that people grapple with there is no single right answer and single wrong answer there'll be different approaches different direction different answers that are appropriate for different people and that's why we need a rebbe and that's why we need a mentor that's why we need a guide but we also have to be our own mentor and our own guide that's also very important on one hand a person should always have a higher authority that they turn to but on the other hand you also have to own your life and take responsibility for your life and think things through it's not like a blind dependence on what somebody else somebody else says so that's kind of what bamidbor is about the the the constituting of this ideal jewish society and in fact sadok has a very interesting observation uh in which he basically says that the book of bamidbar can be divided into three units a very very unequal length unit number one is from parshas bamidbor parshas nasso and the middle of this week's parsha balosha and that's unit 1. now what happens after unit one the jewish people are finally commanded to leave mount sinai or the the sinai desert uh 11 virtually more than 11 months almost a year after they came there they came rosh chodesh of year 1 the 25th of er just 11 months and 3 weeks later the anan finally starts moving and we have book 2 of bamidbor and book two of amidbhur only has two verses when the oron was traveling because the armin was traveling ahead of them moshe said and we say this when we take out the torah today kuma hashem arise god we a new soy vacca and your enemies will flee and omar and when the aron came to the came to rest we say this when we put back the sacred torah hashem river vice alpha israel god rest your presence among the myriads of israel and that's book two book two are the two sukim and they are set apart from the the book one and book three by upside down nuns if you look in the sacred torah you have a noon and after then it's not upside down but the nun is turned in the other direction it's a backwards nun and you have a backwards nun before the word by by yahi binsa and after shiva hashem river israel and that is called book two so book one is by midbrain until that point book two are the two verses of even and book three is the rest of the book of amidbourne now obviously these are very very unequal books right and what's the concept of a book too that only has two two verses that's why the passage in michelle talks about wisdom is on a house of seven pillars and i'll say the seven pillars are the seven books of the torah seven books of the torah there's only five books of the torah no if the book of amidbur is divided into three that will give you seven boraisias is one shamosa is two vayikra is three but midbor is three divarim is one that's that's how you get how you get the seven books of the torah so if you want to uh kind of show off your knowledge you consider the shabbos table and say so we're now going to talk about the seven books of the torah and someone's got several books of the torah there's only five books of it in fact in a way it's a little contradictory to say seven humashim you actually can't talk that way because by definition means one-fifth of the torah right but so seventh is an oxymoron but nevertheless there are seven books of the of the torah but what is the significance of that division number one and number two what is the significance of the odd feature of the backward nuns surab sadhuk says very very beautifully that this is the key to the structure of the book of bamidbar book one of bamidbor is the ideal society it lays out the mishkan in the middle and the levium around the mishkan and the machanos which as we explained is the unity within the diversity and the ideal jewish community that's book one book three is the disintegration of that ideal reality through sin because book three the story of the miraglum the story of korach the story of the moabite women that enticed us in balboar in other words in a sense book one set up this ideal world and book three shows us the disintegration of that world so how do you go from book one to book three the key is book two and those two took him a book too are the key of how you leave the glorious vision of book one to the sordid reality of book three because the tupesuken bahiban sawaharan is describing the journey away from mount sinai and because i'll make the point that when the cloud of glory finally moved authorizing the jews to leave harsinai they were very very anxious to leave ghazal used the very apt description kitinok habbo raya that when they finally were given the green light to leave mount sinai they stay left like with the enthusiasm of a child that is released from school some of you might remember as kids and maybe even as adults uh last day of the semester get out of there right uh i mean i sometimes feel that way even as a teacher you know but certainly as a student for sure when it was time to uh get out you know you get out uh and of course in the united states they're it's not as big here they have those old-fashioned three-month summer vacations which the truth is we got bored you know even even a kid who really wanted a nice long summer vacation uh after a while you know you almost want to go back to school but whatever it is they left tarcini with geshmach they left tarcinai with enthusiasm they left tarcinai with passion because they were afraid they figured we've been here a year and we got 613 mitzvahs you know how many more mitzvahs are we going to get if we have to stick around of course their big mistake was that they actually did get mitchus even after they left arsenal so it didn't really help them but nevertheless they figured let's get out of here while we can syrup sudoku says how you go from one to three is based on the attitude you have towards torah and mitzvos when your attitude is one of joy and enthusiasm and simcha in that will sustain you that will strengthen you that will elevate you if on the other hand even if you're religious even if i keep the commandments my attitude is one of uh it's a territory it's a trouble for me it's an inconvenience it's a burden i take it for granted i don't appreciate it then you can lose all of the madregos that perhaps you achieved and if you manage not to lose them your children can certainly lose them because if children are raised in a house even a from us where yiddishkait and halachos are regarded as burdensome and difficult and at some point they're going to have the attitude why do i need to put myself through all of this trouble you know there's an old yiddish expression it's a schweitzein yid it is hard to be a jew you know people say it's hard to be a jew and the expression really was clean or if it was coined but it was widely used in america in the 1920s or after world war one where it was indeed very hard to be a jew there were no protections for shomer shabbas people and if you didn't go to work on saturday you had to find a new job every monday morning really in fact i should even say that the minute in america that many shills have too many on him they have an early shabbos minion let's say seven o'clock minion and they have a later minion and that was a rev in america for for 25 years and uh rabbanim actually don't like the early minion that much because the early minion are people who want to escape the rubbish russia so you know we always had kind of a little bit of a resentment over that rabbis now they speak about now they speak about that i never did that yeah yeah right they figured it out finally yeah but uh but what's interesting is that the people who go to the early minions tend to be the more yeshiva element so i like to remind those that more yeshiva elements that the origin the historical origin of the early shabbos morning minion in the united states not in israel there's a different history but in the united states was that this was the makalo shabbos minion this was not the front minion these were people who really wanted to be from they wanted to be orthodox they wanted to keep halacha they would dive in every day they would put on filling they would make kiddus and shabbos and they would try to keep shabbos but they just couldn't hold back going to work so they would go to work they'd have to open the store at nine o'clock so they needed an early shabbos morning minion now god forbid i am not going to sit in judgment on them i mean they had a tremendous nissan and you know who am i to say who knows if i or any of us would have managed to surmount that nissanian there were heroic jews who did not that many it's kind of almost a lost generation there were some who did but those who didn't you know it was a difficult situation not like not like today at all uh and yet and yet if the message that the kids were getting is yiddish kite is so hard so difficult their children by and large left it it's almost the lost generation the generation of jews who were raised who grew up between the 1920s and world war ii largely not a hundred percent largely left yiddish guy montgomery after world war ii was a different stage in american history because then you had the rebuilding of day schools the establishment of yeshivos people like ramosha feinstein riverand cutler came to the united states and of course the unforgettable rev schrag of five little mandlovich uh you maybe some of you might not have heard of him but he was a true true true pioneer who established toram sora and literally was responsible for hundreds and hundreds of day schools throughout the united states which changed things but the generation between 1920 and 1940 very very lost almost lost even you know and ramasha feinstein used to say that the phrase it is hard to be a jew destroyed a whole generation now maybe that's a bit of a hyperbole but his point was that when the attitude that is conveyed is that it's hard to be a gym then people are going to drop it when the attitude that's conveyed is it is joyous to be a yet that has staying power so rav sadhuk reads this into the structure of amidbhur itself book one is the holy ideal book three is the disintegration of that ideal and book two is the transition based on leaving harsinai with the attitude of tinoc safer in fact if i could if i could digress for a moment uh to elaborate on this point from another another source there is a gemara in the darwin which interprets the number of sukim in the navi ishayahu that indicates that the naviem didn't understand why there was a khurban basa alma of the harvest and didn't know and the naviem didn't and hashem himself had to give the prophets the direct answer and the answer the gemara gives well is that the basa mikdash was destroyed because they did not make blessings over the torah and as the ron explains they were learning torah and they were doing mitzvahs because if they weren't then the vm would have known that but they didn't say birha satora and that caused the khurban basa mingdash saraveli lapyan one of the great great bali musser asks a very strong kasha are we talking about the first bassamic dash or the second base of magnesium it's very clear we are talking about the first base of mikdash because when the second base amicus was destroyed there were known a vm around the last naveem are you at the beginning of the second temple by the corbin of the second temple by the romans there were no reveal so we're talking about the first base of magnesium so what's going on here did the vm don't know why it was destroyed and hashem has to answer because they didn't say birco satoru we know why the first base amicus was destroyed the worst of arrows in the torah idolatry gilearayo sexual immorality adultery for example and srirustam and murder so you have to come on to again it's naveria but it's it's relatively minor compared to that of their they didn't say berga satora and if you're going to tell me that naveem didn't know about if i desire a giveaway well what do you mean they didn't know what do they talk about i mean the books of the niveam are giving musser to bernay israel because of those are various so number one what did what did the navium not know and number two why is the answer to the quarban lo birkuba tara tahila if you have this the the cardinal of arrows of avodah zarah gilearayus see so revellia gives a beautiful beautiful answer when ghazal are saying that the vm didn't understand how there could be a corbin basa mikdash they weren't asking what are the sins that caused the khurban besamektas they understood that the sins that caused the khurban are availed they understood it they saw that they gave musser and tokika about that for sure those were the availas but the naveem are asking what you might call a meta question and that is okay claw israel is guilty of the worst of heiress but they were studying torah shouldn't the torah refine them shouldn't the torah protect them shouldn't the torah elevate them how can you be a person who learns torah and then go out and do await azara giliarayas srihar a marshal that i often use is imagine you're in yeshiva and you have a nice morning seder you're learning from nine to one and then you have an hour break so you go to town you commit some rapes murder and bank robberies and then you make it back in time for minha and afternoon seder i mean there is something wrong with that picture i mean doesn't the torah affect me in some way so that's the question they're asking when they're saying how could there be a corbin base of mikdash they're not asking what was the sin that caused the kharma they know what the sin is avodah zarah gilearis with but they're asking why didn't the torah elevate and purify them so they would be incapable of that sin and the answer is because they didn't recite birha satora they learnt but they didn't recite beer what's the connection how is that an answer to the question so avelio lapion brings from the beginning of the book of malachim aleph if you remember in the book of malachi malach is towards the end of his life and he is shivering he is cold and all of the blankets that are covering him are giving him no warmth and hazal say why were the blankets not capable of giving him warmth because i'll say anyone that is if you treat clothing with disrespect the clothing will eventually not protect you and david melech was guilty of treating clothing with disrespect because you will recall an incident that at a time when sha'al hamelech was pursuing david and wanted to kill him shala wanted to kill david at some point shall went into a cave to relieve himself and he left his cloak at the entrance of the cave social was obviously vulnerable and not protected they didn't have apparently for whatever reason they didn't have secret service at the entrance of the cave and david was able to sneak up to that entrance cut off a piece of his cloak and then later he was standing on a hill calling down to shoal and saying you see how close i was to you i could have killed you and i did not and at that point show you know felt bad that he was pursuing him that was very short-lived but there was a little bit of rapprochement a little bit of peace at that point so ghazal don't fault of it for being mubasa the melech that's not the problem but he's a garment so apparently garments are are related to each other because was mavasa should cloak but because of that the other garments did not give him warmth so beware don't throw your uh right your wife will certainly be happy don't throw your uh clothes around if you're then of the begun will not take care of you now what you see from that thank you what you see from that teaching is that if something is intended to provide a certain benefit for you but you don't treat it with requisite respect it will not give you that benefit even for clothing cerebellia says in the same way that a disrespect for clothing will result in the clothing not helping you [Music] a disdain for torah will result in the torah not helping you either so means they didn't appreciate the torah as a gift for which they would express gratitude and appreciation they learned the torah they kept the mitzvos other than the big three they were violating but they they kept the mitzvahs but because of low barricade you see what javeli is saying it's not that the temple was destroyed because of the sin of birkha satora that's not the point the temple was destroyed because of availazara gilearayas shvikha stamin but why didn't the torah that they learn protect them from available why didn't the torah elevate them why didn't the torah purify them the answer is because they were not makshib the torah they were satora and the same way that we say right you treat clothing with disrespect the clothing will not give you warmth you treat the torah with disdain the torah will not give you elevation and spiritual growth and then it will indeed be possible that you have a morning sailor in yeshiva and then you go out and rape and pillage in the uh for your hour break and then come back and this is exactly the same point that rebellion is making from the litvisha musser standpoint we have sadhu is making from the khasidish standpoint it's interesting that they both have the same idea that the structure of safer by midburg is based on the idea that how you get from the ideal sacred holy society to a total disintegration of korach and the miragum and everything else that comes from the transition of leaving now the only thing that's left to explain in this part is what do we do with the two nuns right that book two is bracketed by two inverted two backwards nuts so here if sodic offers also a beautiful beautiful explanation we know that nun symbolically has a connotation of nephilia of falling this is the famous statement to massachusetts of rabbi yochanan we know that the uh hilum 145 that we know as ashrae of course is interesting the the first passage of ashrae ashrae yoshivei sakha is actually not part of that capital it's from a passage that's an earlier chapter of tehillah so we call it ashrae because we always begin with that ashrae but ashrae begins the hill in 145 is and of course as you know ashrae is written as an aleph base acrastic in which each verse begins with a different letter of the olives but the there is one letter that is omitted in ashrae and that is nun we go from mem your kingdom is an eternal kingdom um and your rule is because every generation mem and the next one is some hashem hashem supports all who fall there is no verse that begins with the letter none surah yohan asked akasha why is there no uh nun in i mean there is another naturopath there's no puzzle that begins with the letter none sir of yochanan answers that none has a connotation of nephilim falling being defeated being subjugated and david hamelech did not want to begin a possum with the idea of nephila and ravyokonnen quotes a possibilimos that is describing gullis and khorban with the words nafla meaning the jewish people are spoken of like as a woman nafla she has fallen lo tosip come she will not get up again basu last israel the virgin of israel and david melech did not want to begin a pus hook with the idea of nefilah lamai said the gemare itself has many many questions on it the gemara itself is very fair because there are acrostics in tahilim that do have a nun meaning happens not to be one of them but if ravioli is giving us some answer that david amelok didn't want to begin a pasuk with the letter nun number one there are acrastic poems in tehillim that do begin with none and number two even if it's not an acrostic there are plenty of succumbing to them that begin with none so it's a little difficult exactly how is this a complete answer but this is what raviolin says that nun is a remiss of nefilah as we find in amos and that's why david mentions nafila only in connection with hashem supporting you that's why in the samar so hashem hashem supports call hanoflim all who fall so nephila will be mentioned at least in ashrae only when it's connected to some hashem supporting by the way the gemara then has a little digression about the difference between an optimist and a pessimist and that is uh ravioli interpreted nufflo liceisif in a negative way nuffler she has fallen low society she won't get up again but but my rubber in the west eric israel they read the pussic in a different way instead so it all depends where you put your comma instead of saying nuffla she has fallen lo come she will not get up again they would read it this way enough la lois if she will not continue to fall comma come rise up pursue lost israel so a puesta could be read negatively or positively perhaps in eric israel they needed to be optimistic uh although it's interesting because rabbi yochanan himself wasn't on my renaritosaur it's interesting that raviola interpreted the puzzle in a negative way and then the gemara says in the west or very inherited which is west above el they made it positive i mean is also bimar rubber but he did not uh read the puzzle that that that way but be it as it may what emerges from the gemara is that nun is a remis of nephilim now based on that we can understand why book two is bracketed with nuns because book two represents the nephilia of the attitude of tinoc but why are the nuns reversed to teach you that a nun is always a reversible condition that yeah in life there are going to be times that we fall we lose our madregos but one should never despair you can always turn it around and therefore if sudok says that side by side with the torah describing the negative destructive attitude of tinoc the torah is also telling you it's not permanent it doesn't have to be permanent every day is a new opportunity what you are today does not have to be limited by what you were yesterday and what you can become tomorrow is not limited by what you are today in fact robina yana says it sounds like a cliche you know the t-shirt saying um today is the first day of the rest of your life you know it's it's it's a t-shirt saying but the truth of the matter is rebecca yonah says exactly this romano yonah says that the first step to shuva even though ultimately chuba is about regretting your past and thinking about your best but the first step to chuba is that you should look at this day as the first day of your life because if i start dwelling on the past too much i get discouraged and i lose my enthusiasm i get depressed i get despondent so rabbi yanya says the first element of juva is to forget about your past and say this is a new day i'm on a new road where i was yesterday has nothing to do with what i have today and then when you get stronger you can then think about your past and how you could fix it and the like so this idea that today is the first day of the rest of your life that's actually a very very important important aspect so this is rav sudok's understanding of the basic structure of the book of amidbar actually it turns out i am talking about this week's parsha so again i'll have to figure out what i was going to say i'll have to keep for another side because i actually want to continue with something from parchas itself now in the parshas palace we're going to an earlier point in partial oh yes i'm sorry one final point about this and i think we talked about it uh around a month ago a month ago was pesachini and this is the parsha of pesachini so i don't want to repeat the share that i gave you on pesach cheney but those of you that remember i'm not sure how many but those of you that remember will recall that one of the very important lessons of pesachini is the gift of a second chance that even if i'm tame i feel i'm impure even if i'm derek i feel i'm very far from god if you want to have that second chance hashem will give it to you and that once again ties in very nicely with the notion of all nephilim is reversible so the the the reversible nuns fit in very well with the theme of passage god will give you a second chance if you want it remember you have to ask for it and hashem wouldn't have given pesacheny had they not said to moshe give us another chance now in this connection i want to go a little backwards to an earlier part in parches vallosa in which the the levium are formally chosen to take the place of the firstborn and there's an age limit right levine are supposed to serve in the mishkan only from the age of 30 to the age of 50. and at 50 there seems to be a mandatory requirement now there are two i mean the gemara itself notes that one public says they start at 25. another pussac says they start at 30. so the gemara says that 25 you start apprenticing under the supervision of an older lady at 30 you can kind of be given responsibilities by yourself and the fact that there's a five-year apprenticeship the gemara has an interesting observation we see from here that if you've been working at something for five years and you're not successful it might be time to change so as a little aside uh this is a very well known excuse in the yeshiva world where person talmud will often go up to his rebbe or shashiva and say i've been in yeshiva for five years i'm not very successful i guess it's time to leave sometimes it is indeed but there are two different answers if the rebbe wants them to stay there are two different answers the rebbe gives one might be called the warm and fuzzy answer and one might be called a tough love answer uh i'll give you the tough love answer first so you come to the rosh yeshiva and say i've been learning i've been you know trying this for five years and it's not working so i guess i should leave so the rebbe says you think you've been trying you think you've been doing anything he says this is only a test if you've really tried you haven't tried so mella the test has not been fulfilled that's kind of the tough answer the warm and fuzzy answer is looking at the other part of the sentence i've been working for five years and i'm not successful well the rebbe says why do you say you're not successful maybe you didn't accomplish everything you could have accomplished you wished you would accomplish you you know you should have accomplished but are you able for example to read a rashi that you couldn't have done five years ago in other words instead of emphasizing the aspect you didn't try this emphasizes success can exist on many many levels even if something is not a complete success but be it as it may whether it's 25 or there is a mandatory retirement at 50. some of you folk might feel well fit these old man already but you know that's not how i feel and other people i think agree with me uh that's a pretty young mandatory retirement age 50 years old got to retire and again there's a whole much locus how luckily it's quite complicated does that only apply to the michigan did that apply to the base of mikdash later different groups uh is it a disqualification from all service or only some service again many many different cheetos but there is a retirement age so the michelin coolant makes a very interesting observation without explaining it and it says kohanim have a disqualification that is not shared by livium and luveem have a disqualification that is not shared by kohanim kohanim are disqualified for aveida in the base of mikdash if they have a mum a blemish a broken leg a broken finger a kohen cannot serve in the basal mikdash until that mom heals and if the mum is permanent then he cannot serve at all in the basement a lady that has a mum is still permitted to sing and do whatever he's able to do so mum is a person only for a coin and not a lavy okay now age is a persol only for a levy and not a coin a cohen can do the aveda at 70 or 80 if he's able to do so a lavy is disqualified at the age of 50. so for levieum the person is age for kahanim the soul is physical blemish now how you know that that's pretty clear it's pretty straightforward actually that's simply looking at the sukim the terror writes women by kehane and not levine and the terror rights mandatory age requirements for libium and not gohan but what is the logic of it why should it be that kohanim are disqualified bemoan and livium are disqualified by age what is the logic of that type of khaliq so there is a thought that is offered by the samar the sadiq was the third rabbi of khabad his name was the same as the seventh rebbe of mendel mendel the first who by the way was a universally recognized god all even by non-christian cemetery was a great great post sake as well as a mokobo the fact that several gave the oraca was one of the greatest literature misnogate rabbanim of the night of the 19th century and his first stellar before he went to the vardik was in a chabad city communities would often have to hire non-chabad rebellion but if you were not rebbe or rav you had to be approved by the rebbe so they are khashogging had to spend a month in the summer sedex house and the samadhique tested him on on all the animal of the shokanarak and the arkhashokhan would speak with amazement about the gainess of the much older samakhsare and he said as a praise of the tsa mercedes that i was in his house for a month and there was not a single time he told me a hasidish of thought and which again the semester was extremely prolific in khasi the symmetric i believe they say uh not all of it's been published but had over thirty thousand pages of hasidis and kabbalah but he knew that that that wasn't the eric shulkin's cup of tea so he didn't he didn't tell him anything whatever it would be and the arkhashogen was amazed with that that semester didn't try to proselytize him or make him or anything anything like anything like that but be this made that cemetery was the altar rebbe's grandson uh and the semicide says the following the cayenne and the levy represent two different ways of serving hashem the cohen represents consistency precision and exactitude if you know for example anyone that that's either learned mishnais of katrina or gomorrah of kachim knows that the whole aveda of the basa mikdash is a very highly regulated detailed aveda it's not a place for creativity it is not a place for improvisation it's not a place of do your own thing uh you have to follow the rules very precisely very exactly and it has to be done the same way every single time i'll give you a trivial example let's say a cohen would decide the cohen wears big day kahuna when he does the aveda if a cohen were to decide he wanted to add a nice scarf to his big dacuna or a nectar that seems to be a harmless innocuous enhancement of the beauty of the mitzvah do you know that if he were to wear a necktie all of the corbanos that he would bring are totally puzzled and this is called a soul of marouba begotten if a cohen wears extra garments besides the big decahuna the avoid is possible so a colleen represents the idea of following the details of hashem's law without deviation without change the cohen represents constancy his job is not affected by his mood by his feelings he has to do the job and indeed the whole prototype of the aveda is the carbon tubmet carbohytometer is day after day after day after day twice twice a day that's correct morning and afternoon so the cayenne represents stability consistency precision exact fulfillment of detail levy now levine had many different tasks but their primary greatest task both in the michigan and in the base of mythos was shira vizimra they would sing and play instruments both vocal and instrumental as the avedo was being done particularly as the wine was being poured on the mizbayach after the carbanos now although it's true that eventually khazal dictated what the song would be they took chapters of tahilam etc but originally it didn't have to it was improvisation i mean whatever the labor he wanted to say there is no there's a mitzvah of shira but there is no text of what the she-ra is so levine were like jazz improvisation they expressed their creativity in song and in dance and in movements so so that some athletic says there are strengths and weaknesses in each aspect of this awaited session the strength of the calling is he is constant he's undeviating he is not affected by his moods because his task is going to be the same no matter what the downside of that approach is that after a while you may not always have enthusiasm or passion or feeling because you're so focused on the detail that you don't see the overall forest of connecting to hashem the lady lives in the world of passion and emotion and that's a beautiful powerful thing because in passion and emotion i feel love of god reverence fear of god but that also means to some degree i'm a creature of my moods and the mood that can be elevating and high at one moment can you know not necessarily be there for you at the other moment meaning a yiddish kite that is predicated on emotion and feeling can wax and wane and be inconsistent a yiddish kite that is based on precision and attention to detail will be constant and consistent but it may lack emotion and feeling so here's what the semester says the cohen who lives in the world of precision and detail age is not an impediment because if anything if your job is to do the same thing again and again and again and again you only get better with age the only thing that can stop you are the physical limitations of your body which are exemplified in mum so you can work until you are physically unable to work because you will just get better with age with respect to livia who live in the world of emotion it actually works the other way around emotion is so powerful that you can surmount the physical limitations of the body now you know i mean a lot of this is fake obviously but sometimes you see the christian faith healers they call on people to get up out of their wheelchairs or whatever it is okay i i understand that that's fake but but there is a certain element that when a person is intensely emotionally aroused they can surmount the limitations of their body to some degree the classic examples are the woman who lifts the car when it falls you know a baby is trapped under the car the woman will you know lift the car i mean she may be in the hospital for the next four months but the adrenaline will allow her to do something superhuman the emotional intensity can surmount the limitations of the body to some degree and that's why the lady is not disqualified by physical disability because when they're in the in the zone so to speak they can transcend the limitations of their body but what is the occupational hazard of the world of emotion burnout you do it over and over and over again you might lose the enthusiasm so therefore the lady who lives in the world of emotion his disqualification is age the cohen who lives in the world of detail and precision his disqualification is physical disability now i am being a little loose here because i'm identifying mum with physical disability that's not quite true because obviously there are certain women that a person can have that don't necessarily disable him from physically doing the aveda for example uh if a cohen has um one eye bigger than the other eye or whatever it is or a unibrow that may be a mum even though it's not a disability per se but at least generically we can understand that the general category of mum does connect to some type of physical impairment and the like i heard that a left-handed calling should not do the abode that is correct that that is correct thereby that has to be done with the with the right hand that's correct um so this is the id now now the semester then goes on to say in reality the mishkan requires both kohanim and levine because essentially what this means is avodah's hashem requires these two extremes to be combined we need on the other hand the world of precision if your yiddish guide is simply based on feel good spirituality i love god and yet you simply make up your own religion you're not serving hashem that's simply a narcissistic self-indulgence i think we've spoken many times in different contexts that avodah's hashem means following god's rules so i need to be the cohen who follows god's rules but at the same time i need to incorporate within my personality love and passion and excitement otherwise my yiddish kite becomes sterile empty and superficial now you could almost say in in a sense that what the temperature is talking about is combining the lichvac and the husset again these are stereotypes i i don't i don't mean to say them as absolutely true statements and that is you have the litzbach that you know cares about halakhah exact exact exact exact and then you have the chasse that is about emotion and feeling so the litchvac is the kauai and the husset is the levy but you need kohanim and lavium and the truth of the matter is it's not just in the basal mikdash but each of us builds a basal mikdash for hashem in our own heart bill vavi as the as the poem goes bilvavy mishko nevner i build a dwelling place for god in my heart and therefore in my own mishkan i need to be a cohen and a lady i need to combine those two modalities and the like and that is the abeyda of the koen and that is the avodah of the lady and that is why they have different dis disqualifications now the truth of the matter is they're in the writings of their resale there's a little bit of complication in one passage of their easel he writes that leosid lavo the levium will be elevated to be gohan i'm not sure he indicates what happens to the gohan it seems to be the gohan and will be absorbed reabsorbed into shavit levy and all the vm will be elevated to go at him that is one uh teaching of their easel there's another teaching of the arizona as they seem to contradict that actually says the aveda is going to go back to the first born who lost it after the credo ego so it's hard to reconstruct exactly what is going to happen but at least if you go with the first view that the levine will become kohanim this makes a lot of sense because when we perceive the true essence of god we will be in a permanent state of emotional inspiration and therefore we will be able to be levien as we do the aveda of the kahanam becomes within within complaining yeah yeah that that that the the kohanim in other words levy the shape of laby will become gone and i'll be able to do both um who's going to be that i don't know i don't know if he said i don't know if he says that that everybody gets promoted so who's going to be israel again right in the rest of the world for the rest of the world well indeed keep in mind that we are described i'm israel is described as calling him a kingdom of gohan you know it's interesting just end with this [Music] a few weeks ago we mentioned the the breiser the famous teaching of rabbi akiva that the reach is the important fundamental principle of the torah and benazzai gave a second passage this is the book of the creation of man who was made in the image of god and those are two views that we talked about but there's actually a third view in a medrash that is quoted in the hakadama to the enyakov and we don't really have this matter so it seems to be a lost madrid that there's a third opinion one opinion says the most important verse in the torah is another opinion says the most important verse in the torah is man is made in the image of god okay we understand that but the third view is no the most important verse in the torah is essa kevin you bring one lamb in the morning corbin the essa kevis hashini taseban or bayem and you bring the second lamb in the afternoon that's the most important one so it's a little anticlimactic i mean you know one puzzle talks about you know loving your neighbor like you love yourself that man is in the image of god how much you have to have coconut rios i mean you're picking the carbon tummy i mean you know what about shabbos what about tetris why what is so important about the carbon tubman and the answer is consistency because there are going to be times in life where we don't feel inspired but you know tomorrow morning maybe i'll really want to dive in and i'll dive in great maybe the day after not learning whatever the elevator is but the carpet tummy is the reminder even when you're not inspired go through the ritual go through the practice keep it up remember that life does have ups and downs and you stick with it even though times are not always going to be full of inspiration i mean that's really the essence of maturity anyway life is not an unending series of thrills first of all if it would be we wouldn't be thrilled anymore it would just be the way life is by definition the highs are highs only because there are lows you know it's interesting i i mean i think all of us know people like that i mean i remember when i was a robin in silver spring so there was an elderly man who's not alive anymore um and he was not yeshiva educated because he grew up in america he was an american he grew up before there were yeshivas really there were not any yeshivas but he had this thing that he never he would never miss a minion no matter what no matter what i mean i know in washington we get snow sometimes it's not like chicago but you know we have our snowstorms and the like and you know there are many times i remember him i mean i would run from a ride if i was driving obviously but i remember him like going with his walker or whatever it is he would not miss a minion this idea of consistency no matter what and in many many ways that was an attribute that was stronger than many of the people learned in yeshiva have you know we learn in yeshiva so we're kind of sophisticated we know the halachus says i don't have to do this if this whatever we make such bonus right whatever whatever sometimes they're right sometimes they're wrong but we we we make distinctions that get us out of things and he was a simple jew actually he was actually very intelligent but he didn't he was not a atomic anyway and you know no calculations this is what you do a jew goes to show in the morning and the jew goes to show in the afternoon the weather doesn't make a difference whatever it would be and whenever i think of this divorce about essa kevis you know one one one lamb in the morning one lamb in the afternoon i think of that type of jew sometimes we are victims of our own sophistication the older generation in many ways was not as torah knowledgeable as the newer generation and it's a little bit of and maybe i'm speaking more about america that's my perspective my memories my formative years that sometimes the yeshiva educated the boys looked down at the older simple balabatim who you know we're not that learned that much and yet and yet it's very very similar to the idea that the on the shoulders of the giant can see further than the giant true but only because they're on the shoulders of the giant and not only that but there were many many qualities of that older generation that i think got lost with our greater sophistication and even our greater toronto kind of a certain simplicity kind of uh this is the way it is and you don't ask questions and you don't look for ways out uh that's the idea of consistency and that's the ability of the cohen but that somehow says you also have to ultimately combine it with the feelings and passions of the of the lady so wish you all a very very good week and shabbat shalom and my good health [Music]