Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: Jerusalem Day - Pray For The Peace of Jerusalem

[Music] hi everybody thank you for coming and uh first I just want to uh announce the dedic ations once again for Ben Z and for the liberation of AR Israel from its enemies safe return home of our soldiers and our hostages the lasting Unity of the people of Israel and for all those whose Health has been affected by the war and in particular we also want to pray for the release of Arvin Nano Ben Sonia in Iran who is unfortunately a young man who is under a death sentence andm we hope that he will be freed uh aliat shama for kzar as always we're very grateful to the people who support Torah uh this is a hard week to figure out what to talk about because there are so many different things we have of course the holiday of shos coming up uh next week which is why we're not having a share next week we have the para of the week the first paral bidor which actually has some very interesting points that I wanted to talk about and we have uh 28th of er tonight tomorrow uh we have the 57th uh anniversary of the liberation of yusim in The Six Day War um people who are old like me do remember 1967 I was a little boy but I I do I do remember it and the Very stirring words of Mator uh one of the generals har the Temple Mount is in our hands and the euphoria so great that many many people genuinely believed that mhia was coming because after all you redeem the Temple Mount you're able to have access to all of Y as says the rebuilt Jerusalem a city that has been connected in all ways and many people did think mashia would be coming and that is why in erel at the time there was a tremendous arousal towards Chua in fact all of the Bal Chua or h a little later uh they all started essentially in the aftermath of the Six Day War which created a great great wave of chuva now unfortunately what often happens is opposite forces are generated at the same time meaning some people saw in The Six Day War the powerful hand of God and they said there's no way we could have done it without Hashem and therefore even a secular person turned to Torah and mitzvot to be connected to Hashem but then unfortunately there is sometimes a counter reaction which the Torah itself warns us about my power we have the greatest army we're able to defeat those you know 25 Arab Nations and as a result in some circles it turned into our uis our in invincibility the fact that we really know now we're not prophets and it's not really for us to prognosticate as to why things happened but a few years after the Six Day War you know six years later was the tragic yum Kipper War which in many many ways uh although brashem we survived but in many many ways it was a very very tragic deal in which there were many many casualties and Israel was in grave danger and at least some of the Sages identified that as the necessary corrective to some of the arrogance that was generated in the aftermath of the sixth day war to remind us that we are not in charge of our faith that without AES our great powerful Army as important as it is and as grateful as we have to be for it being here and I God forbid I not disparaging that at all but we have to realize without AES none of these systems are going to work and I've said repeated ly that in some ways that is also one of the lessons of October 7 uh to this day it is still not clear as a logical matter how Hamas could have breached the security systems that were in place it made no sense you had the border wall and you had the security systems and the alarm systems and the motion detectors and everything else and Hamas did not have sophisticated weapons they had trucks and tractors uh basically and somehow they're able to crash through all of these systems they're not detected for several hours it made no sense it makes no sense because you know Israel does have the best military security systems in the world and in many many ways I don't know if I would use the word miracle because it's not it's not a good thing but in many many ways it was almost a miracle that that Massacre could happen it doesn't make sense but sometimes unfortunately we we have to learn our lesson of not being smug and not being arrogant and realizing that we need Hashem to take us through this but no matter what whether you look at uh 73 or look at October 7 the one incontestable fact is that in 1967 something very beautiful happened the ability to have all of yam as a belonging to the Jewish people and as a place where we could serve Hashem we we don't have the B mikdash yet remember the cotel is not the bet mikdash it's not even a wall of the bet mikdash it is simply a wall of the outer Courtyard and on the harab it we don't have a temple and instead we have mosques and various other things and we're not even allowed putting aside H issues we're not even allowed to have a sh on the Temple Mount again I'm putting aside the isue you allowed to go with the Temple Mount but assuming you're allowed to go you're not allowed to have a show not allowed to have a minion so the galut is very much still here even in Jerusalem and even on the Temple Mount and maybe especially there but at the same time we have to be grateful that we have yusim and what a wonderful wonderful thing it is so this is something to be grateful for so whether you do it by saying Hal with a braa or Hal without a Braha or you don't say Hal because it's not one of the lurgical days these are I think secondary questions in many many ways because the ultimate emotion is one of a and uh that's something we need because uh when we're grateful to Hashem for the that opens up more Avenues of to keep on coming when we don't appreciate the good things that Hashem puts in our lives so AEM might say okay you don't appreciate it I won't I won't give them to you so these are some of the things we think about yam let me just mention a few observations about Jerusalem interestingly enough the rambam makes two fascinating points about jeruselam first of all in the Torah whenever the Torah talks about building a sanctuary in Jerusalem when you come to the land you'll build a sanctuary it never mentions Jerusalem as a city it always says you will bring these sacrifices in the place that God will choose which is a reference to yush but Jam is not referred to by a designated name in fact that is why the B is called in theu and in other in fact in the ramb the house that is chosen that's one of the terms for B mikash and that's connected to the term so Point number one is why does the Tyra keep it a secret the Tyra does not reveal that jerus will be the site of the B Mikes it's as if to say the place that I'll tell you about later so the rambam gives a fascinating reason the rambam says Hashem did not want to reveal the sight of the temple until after all of er Israel was conquered and divided among the tribes because the way it works now is yam is essentially divided tribally between the tribe of Benyamin and the tribe of Yehuda now there is actually thear how that works certainly geographically is situated between Benyamin and Yehuda but some say it does not belong to tribes it's like laav the District of Colombia which is National so some say you don't look at Jerusalem as belonging to Yehuda or bamin belongs to CLA Israel but either way it is carved out of Yehuda and bamin and in fact the Bas of mikdash itself is that way uh when you go east to west from the main entrance to the holy of holies the eastern part of the temple is in the of Yehuda the Kash and the like are in the of bamin like it straddles it's like those pictures of u a public library in Vermont that's on the Canadian border so the border is apparently I've seen pictures is the middle of the library so if you're you know if you're uh reading at a certain table which is on the US side and you got to check out the book on the Canadian side you got to go through a a border check you know in the library itself soav the bikes is the same thing in the middle of the bikes is the vision B so here's what the rambam says if God would have said where yam was the other tribes would never have agreed to the division of the land because each tribe would have wanted that City so as a result ad God did not reveal the Holiness of Jerusalem until after the land was already divided and as a result the division had been accepted otherwise it would not have been accepted that's one reason and the rambam gives a related reason that had the umot known of the sanctity of Jerusalem they would have fought much more ferociously not to give it up just as we see today uh and therefore God wanted the Nations to be oblivious of the Holiness of yush and that's why it's called because that would take away some of the ferocity in the wars against uh the Jewish people who were trying to conquer Jerusalem so that's the point the Ramba makes why is not referred to directly it is only called he makes another interesting point and that is it's clear that jeruselam as a city was conquered right it was conquered now the actual story of the conquest of Jem if I were to ask you show me in tanak where when and where y was conquered it'll be a little confusing because part of a conquest is in the book of yua part of it is in the book of shoftim part of it is in the days of David H and there's even something that's afterwards meaning different parts of the city were conquered at different times so the notion when the uh municipality celebrated the the 3,000th anniversary of the city they were counting it from David am's Conquest but in truth there were earlier at least partial conquests so yam was a conquered City I mean we conquered it but what's interesting is that when David H finally had a prophetic Revelation that the bikes which he was not allowed to build David could not build the basam mikdash because he was a man of war but he was given a prophetic Revelation where the site of the B mikdash was on Mount Moriah where Abraham was prepared to sacrifice y so you'll notice that that part the place of the mikd was the threshing floor of a yusi whose name was Arava Arava the jebusite Arna hausi and what did David do David collected money from all of the tribes to buy the mikash now this is also anomalous because after all if yusim is under Jewish sovereignty why does David have to purchase the sight of the temple so here too the Ramba makes a fascinating point he says that because the basam mikash is a city is is is something that represents Divine peace in the world which is why David could not build the basam mikdash because he was a man of war the mikash can only be Sanctified by consensual purchase and not by military conquest so yeah the city of Jerusalem could be conquered the mikash must be through peaceful negotiation now this has some very very interesting political ramifications I don't want to fully explore them right now but there is a notion part of the argument of why don't we build a temple today there are many different aspects of this but one aspect is that the Bas of Mikes has to be built in a context of Shalom and not in a context of the imposition of military conquest just as David H had to buy the harab and he could not rely on the conquest of yam as as a whole okay now uh again just make just a few other General points about Jim to think about uh in tanak is mentioned well in the Torah it's not mentioned at all except as shalam which I'll get to but Y is not mentioned in the Torah but in t in and it is mentioned some 600 times and it's been well pointed out that in the Quran it is not mentioned at all so somehow Jerusalem became a really holy city in Islam but that's a much much later development but it's interesting that in the N yusim is often most of the time not spelled with the second yud so you would read it yusem which actually corresponds to the English pronunciation Jerusalem in other words it doesn't have that second J it's not jusa liim but it's jerusalm what is the significance of that so here's the interesting thing we know that that yud the Yim thing is a common Hebrew suffix for plural so Y is a hand y hands regel is a foot is an I aim oen is an ear oim so yusim could be understood as two Jerusalem meaning the city's name is yerusalem yusim is two of them now what are the two well you might be tempted to say East Jerusalem and West Jerusalem but that doesn't count because we don't consider that two to begin with that's just one but we say there's an Earthly yusim and a heavenly yush and when the Earthly yush is in alignment with the Heavenly Jerusalem that is when we have Redemption and divine blessing when the Earthly yush is not in alignment with the Heavenly yam that's when you have all of the negative things that happen our job so to speak is to move the Earthly City to be in alignment with the Heavenly City and thus you Jim are the two Jerusalem um now it's interesting talking about East and West you know um I don't know if you heard this beneran in 1967 uh was so almost fanatically committed to unifying the city that he was seriously considering tearing down the wall of the old city he says why should there be a wall from a secular perspective you know there may be some uh some point to that but he was tucked out of it just for historical reasons uh you know you don't destroy some historical artifact that dates at least from the 15th century or the like but he said turn down the wall like it's the Berlin Wall why have why have walls in Jerusalem uh at at all but the is Shala SH now I had mentioned that Yus is not mentioned in the Torah but there is a city shalm that's mentioned Salem Shalom now remember when AB ainu waged war against the four major Kings who took L captive and he was Victorious against those kings and it mentions maled the king of Shalom brought forth to to Abraham Bread and Wine for who and maled was a Cohen not not from Iron but he was a the a high priest to Hashem and he gave Abraham a blessing now kazal give us a fascinating backstory here they actually say maled was not his name this is none other than shame the son of Noah who's very old which happens to be Abraham's great great great great great grandfather shame the son of Noah and shame was regarded as kind of the spiritual leader of the noahide world and the reason he was called maled King of righteousness or Justice because all of the kings of Jerusalem were given the title maled just like par all of the kings of Egypt were called paros whatever parro means but the kings of shalom now shalam was the original name of Jerusalem I have to say that this seems to contradict the rambam's point because the ramb made the point you'll remember that the Tyra does not mention yush so the Nations should not know that it was a holy city otherwise they would fight with great ferocity but according to the interpretation I'm telling you now shalam was already known as a holy city that the kings of shalm were given the honorific title of maled kings of righteousness which indicates that the Holiness of Jerusalem was known so the original name of the city was Shalom so where do we get the Yu so listen to this explanation just like you have Minneapolis and St Paul Twin Cities or Kansas City Kansas Kansas City Missouri kind of twin TN cities Jerusalem was also a Twin City the main city was called shalm shalm but then you have Hara Maria Mount Mariah the Temple mount that at least from Abram's time not not at the time of maled in Mal's time before the ARA it was just shalm but later when Abraham was willing to sacrifice y so Haram Moria got a new name what does the Torah say abam called the place Hashem I'm going to do a little translation here and it is said today bahem in the Mountain of God he shall be seen so let's just parse that verse for a moment Abraham calls Haram Maria which apparently was its original name he called it Hashem y or Y for short y God will see what does it mean God will see so abam is declaring my willingness to give up everything for Hashem and y's willingness to give up his life for Hashem shall be an eternal source of Merit and blessing to the Jewish people kav God will gaze down at this mountain and be reminded of the AA Hashem Hashem will see now there's again it's it's it's it's an anthropomorphic expression he will look at this mountain and remember what we did today now that so that's y but then it says it shall be said or it will be said on that day in the mountain God will be seen so Y and Y are two very different words although they have the same root Y is God will see yay is God will be seen so what is that a reference to so the med says it shall be said in that day that day refers to mashia in the day of God's ways will be seen we will understand the ways of God meaning in this world God sees us but we don't see God meaning we don't understand the dark but on the day of God's ways will be understood by us as well we will again we mentioned this a number of times the idea that in this world we have and we have gura we have punishment and we have compassion but then it will be revealed that even the punishment was for our compassion for our good for our rectification for our tikon which means to say Mount Moriah today would be called y God sees when mashia comes it'll be y God will be seen I don't mean seen in a physical way but his ways will be understood okay but be as it may therefore from the AA onward Haram Moria was called year he will see so now it turns out that there are two parts to the city of Jerusalem the main city is shalm and the Temple Mount is y Minneapolis St Paul so combin year shalm close it's not quite there yet is J but you'll ask me is [Applause] Al is y v well you may not like the answer but some say the gatria of alfan ha are in fact six so V is a contraction of the Alan hay so Yu shalm is year Temple mount plus shalm so that gets you Yus and the yusim I already said comes from the two Jerusalem Shala and Sh kind of the evolution of the name again this is a I believe a very very good shot except for the fact as I say it's hard to reconcile this with the rambam's idea that the Holiness of the city was not known to Outsiders till dav's time given the fact that we already see there was a Holiness that was known to uh to shame and the kings of Jerusalem that were called Mal Mal Mal so the final aspect of this I want to bring out is that so we have the two names yusim therefore is a composite City shalm Temple Mount is the rest of the city is shalm shalm is ym and with Shala it becomes jush now obviously in the context of the PK means God will see he will see right that's what it means he'll look down at the Temple Mount see the AA so to speak and that will be a source of Eternal Merit for am isra but what's interesting is the letters for the verb year are the same as the noun Y is fear of God like Yem right Al as a verb he will see as a noun y fear reverence or awe so what you find in the midrashim therefore in spite of the fact that the Tyra clearly is using Y in in the sense of a verb but the fact that it can also refer to the notion of yatem is a secondary explanation that Jerusalem is the city of reverence for God the city of awe the city of yat Hashem so building on that once again this takes us back to a theme that we've already spoken about several times during the period of the OM and yet it keeps on coming back and that is y and shalm embodies two contradictory ideas both of which are part of our part of our beloved City and it's something we have to Grapple with how do we straddle the contradictions you know there's an old tradition based on the makalum that there are four all of er Israel is Holy but there are four cities that are the holiest cities of er Israel there's y there's Kon there's svat and there's Taria they are traditionally called the four holy cities of AR Israel the mualim connect them to the four elements we have four elements we have fire we have water we have wind we have dirt right these are the four yod so they connect them this way yusim is the city of fire which is a cemetery is the city of dirt Taria on yam is the city of water andat which is ethereal mystical so to speak uh is the city of air wind right in yish we have an expression for a person who is kind of not quite in this world he's living in a world of his own a Luft mench that means a man in the air person who's not not grounded now the maam explain that these for can be directed in positive ways or negative ways let's take fire fire in a positive sense like a Tor fire fire passion excitement commitment fervor enthusiasm right I'm on fire that's good as bad a anger losing your temper that's bad a right the a could be direct the could go in a good way the go in a bad way dirt JT in a proper perspective is the source of humility submiss modesty uh lack of pretentiousness that's good we say in the Amita may I be like dirt to all who insult me meaning to say not to take it seriously on the other hand when your dirt turns into self-load when it turns into a sense of worthlessness a lack of healthy self-esteem then it becomes very destructive because you'll never do what you need to do because you think you're ineffectual so just like fire there's good fire and bad fire there's good dirt and there's bad dirt there's healthy proper humility and then there is self-loathing and despair which is no good water water is connected to the sense of pleasure and joy in life so water refreshing giving life on the other hand it could also reflect Hedonism and just spending your life devoted to uh tias and whatever whatever is going on right so once again there needs to be a balance and then air air can be connected to healthy self-esteem in many ways air is the opposite of dirt dirt is low air goes up healthy self-esteem but the negative could be arrogance so the point is the four cities of er Israel which are connected to the four elements have potentialities for good and potentialities for bad because the element within which the city is rooted can be used for good or for bad so I'm going to focus because it's y I am going to focus on Jerusalem in particular this is the city of fire so what does that mean in this city you will find passion you will find enthusiasm you will find commitments you will also find Locus you will often find animosities you will often find polarization right there's the good fire there's the bad fire so y represents the fire of yusim which hopefully will be directed towards fear of God I don't mean scared being scared this is awe reverence uh doing mitzvos learning Torah but it has to be counterbalanced with the other City now shalm is peace meaning it's an important point it can't just be a city of fire because if it's a city of fire you get polarization and mlus the year which is the city of reverence and fire has to be balanced with the city of Peace reconciliation togetherness Ava and similarly to have a city of peace is not enough because with peace can just mean I'm okay you're okay I don't stand for anything so essentially yam kind of requires that we integrate y with shalam and as I think I said just two weeks ago often in our polarized world you see that these seem to move in different directions because you often find as a person gets more and more religious more and more committed more and more y they become less tolerant and less accepting of people who are not living up to their standards and the other way around when people are open accepting and loving it often means or it may mean they are not firmly committed to Torah and Mitzvah says you got to combine your y with Sheldon otherwise your turns to be destructive and your shalam turns into a wishy-washiness that doesn't stand for anything so the same way as I think I spoke about LBA Omar embodies these two contradictory Notions of rabi Shimon who is totally connected to Torah and rectifying the deaths of the students of rabi aiva by seeing the good in others right we talked about two themes in LBA omir the truth is you see the very same two themes in the city of Jerusalem itself and that's our big conflict our big conflict is how do you have shalom in the city of Y how do you have y in the city of Shalom because they move in very very very opposite ways I had mentioned forgive me for repeating the Zar a Jew must love truth and peace and the kutar used to say it's easy to love truth if you don't care about peace right I stand up for the truth I don't care who I hurt and it's easy to love peace if you don't care about the truth if I don't care about the truth then I'll always be peaceful because I have nothing to fight about so some people love truth and some people love peace but but they wind up hating the other one the Zar says you got to move in the opposite way you don't this is not an either or choice you must love truth you must love peace and you have to find a way to live your truth in a context of Shalom and to live your shalom in a context of Truth [Applause] again this is a hard challenge particularly uh you know our society here in erel is not even geared to that type of interaction um because you know the Middle Eastern temperament generally nothing to do with religious and secular is that I'm right and you're an idiot that's being kind I mean the alternative your amol you're whatever but you know but if I'm being kind you know you're just an idiot and of course you'll say the same thing about me now where does that get you that doesn't resolve anything because that just creates an NeverEnding never ending cycle of you know just going down down down the pit uh so the challenge is to be able to beer the legitimacy and the good within contradictory viewpoints and that takes a certain amount of talent to be be able to identify n do that might facilitate Common Ground I'm not sure if I mention this story I'll give you a little out about about graphical story here many years ago um I had to I had a an unusual assignment I had to debate Alan dartz about something now was the I'll tell you the story because it's a it's kind of cute a little bit um we were at a convention kind of a rabbi convention I think it was a kabad event actually uh yeah it wasn't rabic but it was a kabad event and they wanted to get provocative speakers so they they asked Alan J was to talk not about Israel at that time things were relatively peaceful but about religion because Alan dth actually came from an orthodox family and he left it for a while so they thought it would be provocative to hear from him and he was supposed to debate Nat Luen I don't know if any of you know Nat Luan is a bashem still alive and healthy uh he lives here now he's a very very famous constitutional lawyer he himself has his grandfather was the R so Nat Len is a real famous guy so he's going to be dtz versus Luen know two famous people so Nat got got ill right before the shabbaton so they needed a last minute replacement so they asked me to step in I was not famous so the thing was I actually knew Alan ders in fact I'll tell you my story because I was a student in Harvard Law School and he was Professor but you know he didn't know me he never heard of me Etc so I I still remember this I mean I was kind of embarrassed he was like so angry that he was debating a pipsqueak you know this thing was like he was really really upset there was not LEF kodo uh to to engag in some debate with me but I was the last minute substitute but I had a MSA about Alan d because when I started Law School in uh September 1977 so the first day of orientation first day I was wearing a keepa Alan gtz who was not wearing a keepa went over to me and he said I see you're an orthodox student I want you to know if you have any problems with kosher food or any problems with rescheduling exams on chabas just come to me I will be very very happy to help you any way that I can because I look after the Jewish students in Harvard that that's my M with them so I said over I said you know I'm not sure if I'm allowed to debate uh Alan d because he's kind of like my rebi he taught me something you're not supposed to you know argue with your Reby I can tell you that that story melted him you can M see physically you know his arms were closed up he relaxed himself and he started joking and then what happened was you know we were debating you know he was taking the position um that uh he says he's not like Orthodox Jews he says he learns the Tet but then he uses his own judgments as as opposed to you religious people you're just automatons you never do any thinking whatever and I you know was saying well listen the whole process of learning Torah is we're always thinking we're thinking and overthinking and overanalyzing whatever anyway at some point because he felt validated and respected by someone that he thought might you know disparage him because he wasn't religious he started like bringing proofs to me like I would be saying a point against him and he would actually say but you know I'll give you some proof to what you're saying in other words he became an ally instead of an adversary now I'm not saying this to to Bast in anyway but the point I'm making is that sometimes the way you get over these unbridgeable differences is by trying to see the validity in the other person's position at least a little bit and when the person feels that you're hearing him then he'll be much more open to hearing you this is the pkin Mishay that I probably have quoted a thousand times but I will say it a thousand one times because it's so important as water reflects the face that you show it so the heart come upon Him upon himam I look at the water if I smile at it I see a smiling face I frown at it I see a frowning face the heart of man reflects back that which I show that person I show you respect I show you legitimation I show you validation you will see that in me I show you denigration I communicate to you that you're a nobody you're going to feel that way about me and that's exactly the situation in the typical debating Styles we have in this country what and that is why issues of never get resolved now I know people say well we're in time of War why are you talking about these secondary issues the truth is they're not secondary issues yeah it's true we're in a war for survival and the like but the truth of the matter is when there's that opens up the Gates of Heaven that opens up the gates of these are not like things well let's worry about when we resolve you know the war against Kamas no it could very well be that unless we take steps to resolve these these issues we're not going to solve the war against Kamas the external enemy will continue until we resolve the enmity within us so these are not secondary things that you put on the back burner until you resolve the main issue for the other way around that actually is the main issue itself and that is what yam embodies the two ideas that your growth in hasem should not be at the expense of your Shalom and your aat is you know when October 7 know the tragedy of October 7 onim T so you know that one of the if we could talk about a silver lining in a very very dark moment for us was the tremendous unity and togetherness that we did have uh for quite a while in which we understood we have a common d danger and a common enemy and we have to come together we have to care about each other we have to have an A and religious non-religious whatever and they work in both ways uh they were very very devout if they didn't enlist in the Army but at least they were involved in helping soldiers in various ways and then we have who turned to the Torah turned to the mitv with the and the the different campaign also was involved in in running these campaigns so everybody was meeting each other the the religious were reaching out to the non-religious and the non-religious were moving towards religious and there was a real sense of unfortunately as things drag on and drag on and drag on interminably and it's a very very difficult situation because we don't really have a clear sense of what is getting resolved I mean we know there's a lot of bombing going on we don't really know and part of it is it's Military Intelligence we just you know they're not telling us but the truth is a lot of us are in the dark uh are any objectives being accomplished at all uh because the hostages that are not released are not released and uh there was an announcement today that um onethird or more are are are not alive and Kamas manages like like cockroaches to somehow re rejuvenate themselves in all sorts of of places so what does it even mean to have a victory against Kamas again I don't want to get into politics but these are really really difficult questions but what happens is as the war drags on and we don't have a clear sense of of any type of Victory the unfortunate spiritual males is that our sense of unity and AK is disintegrating in the politics of the situation and therefore the very precious treasure that we did acquire in the aftermath of October 7 we're kind of losing and I think it's really really important that we find ways that we can recapture it so maybe maybe yum yam the 57th anniversary is a time that we can contemplate that the physical unification of Jerusalem might be a symbol of the spiritual unification of um Israel and that in turn actually prepares us in a very beautiful way to the Matan Torah of Shas where when we stood at the foot of har the Torah said we had to be we had to encamp and the word v in Hebrew is singular so everyone knows the famous drasa we had to stand at the foot of Sinai like one person like one heart could not have occurred without the unity without the of is and therefore yum in that sense could be could also be seen as a preparatory step for Matan Tor Itself by the way I should also add there's something else happened on the 28th of the year that people don't always pay attention to much much earlier it is the art site of Sho [Applause] Hani and Shi himself was a prophet who the P compares to Moshe and Aon so sh was so unbelievably great he was Shak kosha let me just tell you a short vort in honor of Shmi we all know the story of K KH was a woman who was childless for many many many years and she prayed to God for a child in fact all the laws of shon moving your lips without being out being loud are derived from kan's prayer KH is the Prototype of prayer Alia Coen thought she was drunk but in fact this she was a saintly woman so in one of her pleas according to the goar's interpretation she asked for a very strange thing she asked Hashem really give me mediocre son said don't give me a son who's too smart or too dumb or too big or too small give me somebody right in the middle to that degree I think we have to say her prayer was not really answered she was given Shmo but the question is what is I mean does one pray for a mediocrity I mean I pray my son shouldn't be too smart my son should be too wise why would I have such a so here is what I would suggest and this is a Key to sh's Greatness she didn't pray that he shouldn't be wise but she prayed that he shouldn't have a wisdom that takes away his ability to relate to people sometimes you can have a genius who kind of is not normal is not able to connect to people doesn't understand what they're going through because he's living in a different world a different frame of existence she wanted a son who would be able to connect to every type of person don't give him talents that will destroy his ability to connect to the common person so she wasn't praying intrinsically that he shouldn't have the talents but she was praying that his talents should not take away his ability to connect and once again the message is one ofas you know you need to have someone a leader who can talk to people who can understand their struggles now I think about this ref Steinman aarian life Steinman lived in abject poverty his his his Diva was essentially a shack if you saw pictures of it I mean nobody would live there but it didn't bother him or his Ritson because they were perfectly righteous he didn't care like he lived on a potato and water is what he ate every day and he even told somebody you know this tastes pretty good you ought to try it you he said somebody now people would come to him and you know they would talk about uh should I get a new car you know my car is 10 years old you know it's almost embarrassing you know you're sitting with somebody who's living in a shack and you're talking about well I have a car that's 10 years old but you know maybe I should turn in and people initially would be almost they had shist but they were they would be embarrassed to talk about fact sometimes a businessman would say you know I have to change cars every two years how do I do it but the truth of the matter is people described later that they had no difficulty at all in talking to him about those problems that even though on one level he was totally removed from that that had no connection into his life whatsoever he understood that some people are connected to that that is an issue for some people and he was able to connect to people on the level that they were on that's a beautiful gift uh psychologists will call that emotional IQ right some kids might be I'm just kid some people might be academically geniuses but you know they don't have an emotional understanding of people other kids who are BFA not gifted academically can have a very very high emotional intelligence so my little Kish is that when KH was praying for a mediocrity she wasn't praying for an actual mediocrity she was praying for someone who would be able to connect to every type of level of person because that is what a man Israel has to be a man Israel cannot judge people by his madrea he has to judge people by their madrea and then see are they functioning the best that they can within the particular madrea that they are so this this is in honor of sh so anyway may we do we the with enthusiasm with love and okay [Music]