Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: Jewish Peoplehood and Mercy on a Unified Nation

[Music] okay uh good evening everyone it's good uh good to see you i hope everyone had a wonderful inspiring and joyous pesach and bizrat hashem may the pesach be a precursor to the galaxy israel and really the whole world both of course from the physical issues of corona but more importantly as part of the messianic redemptive process our shirt tonight is sponsored by actually a very good friend of mine from new york joseph kalimi and we very much appreciate the torah and as well once again we are uh praying for a refuge leima to benjamin israel benjamin a young man that's been undergoing a very very uh strong struggle against a bad disease thank god he is doing better but he still needs our prayers and we hope that our learning in our fellas should be a refuse leima to be israel benjamin israel since pesach was just over i with your indulgence i want to talk about what you might call part two of the pesach story and that is pesach of course is a holiday that is bracketed with a yamcha from day one and a young tough on day seven the middle is and day one and day seven celebrate different facets of redemption day one celebrates the redemption of mithraim leaving egypt day seven is the culmination of that redemptive process and that is the splitting of the red sea which is treated as part and parcel of the gaula and i want to talk a little bit about kriyasyamsof the splitting of the of the red sea uh it's interesting if you remember the torah reading from just a few days ago last shabbos the the seventh day of pesach there are two verses that are in close proximity to each other that are virtually uh repetitious they virtually have the same words with some slight differences verse number one says israel came into the ocean or the sea that became dry land hamayum laham khama and the water was a wall mee minam on their right um and on their left now that's the first passage they came into the iam that became ya basha just a few verses further down it says israel israel went into the yabbasha within the um so instead of the so-called but then it ends the same way at least in terms of how we read it the water was a wall mimi namu mismalam so that's the same wording but the word khama in the second verse is spelled differently than the word khama in the first verse in the first verse homa is spelt khas and there's only one possible translation wall in the second verse we read the word khomar as khomah to be sure but the khama is spelt without ev so there's a double reading there you could instead of reading it you can read it means anger and fury and i'll have a comment on that that when god ordered the sea to split the angel of the sea was filled with anger because the angel of the sea said manish why are the israelites any more deserving than the egyptians the egyptians worshipped the vodazara and the jews worshipped their bodhisattva and in truth god didn't even have an answer god's answer was i'm giving to them on credit because they're going to accept the torah at sinai et cetera and the like so we have these two verses so the villenegon asks three questions on these two verses number one what is the point of repeating the same idea that vinay israel went into the sea and there was a wall number two if you are repeating it why do you repeat it in a different sequence in the first puzzle it's the tohayam into the sea which became dry land in the second verse is dry land within the sea and the third question is the double entendre of choma without above being read only appears in the second verse the double entendre does not appear in the first verse because in the first verse coma is spelled with above and cannot have the meaning of anger three questions on these two verses so the velma gong ingeniously gives one idea that answers all three questions and that is the two verses are not repetitious they are referring to two different groups two different unequal groups in ami israel pasek one is group a and the second passage is group b now what's group a so you'll recall that the torah describes that when the jewish people are standing in front of the amsaf and they see the egyptian army coming after them they are terror stricken they are paralyzed with fear and indecision and confusion proverbially between a rock and a hard place quite in a literal way they have the sea in front of them and they have the army coming after them and if you look at a map you will actually see that the area is also ringed with mountains so the army is coming and they cannot flee by land because they're kind of locked in by by steep mountain ranges and the like so they panicked and we're going to see some wanted to commit suicide some wanted to surrender i'll get into the different responses but there was one man who acted on the courage of his unconditional faith in the almighty and that was the head of the tribe of yehuda nakshon ben amin who jumped into the sea before it split before it split and the water either went up to his mouth or went up to his nose and then hashem made the miracle in the merit of that emunah and he was followed by a few others interestingly enough according to the gemaran saita the people who followed him were not members of his own tribe it was not shay but yehuda that followed him it was interestingly sin that followed him so it's interesting nakshon was the leader and he was followed by the tribe of binyamin that's right now the rest of the jewish people once they saw the miracle hey great nice miracle to see is split let's go through it so says the bill nagon pussic number one is talking about nakshan banami nadav and the tribe of binyamin that's why it says they went into the sea that became dry land because when they went into the sea it was not dry land and that's why the word homa is not spelled without a vow so we could have the secondary meaning of anger because lagabe these people with respect to these people what do you mean why are they different than the egyptians of course they're different than the egyptians they demonstrate that muna bitacho faith in god but the second pasuk is referring to the rest of ami israel which were johnny come lately they had to wait that's why it says not that they went into the sea that became yabasha but rather they went into the abasha it was already dry land on them the midazzadin the attribute of judgment was makatv it made an accusation against them they're no better than the egyptians and gods they have to say i'm giving you them on credit because of the merit of matantora so with this ingenious interpretation the two sukkim are referring to two different groups one group went into the sea that became yabasha the other group waited until it was yabasha the group that went into the sea that became yabasha the water was a hamad was not a source of anger or disparagement or criticism the other way around the second group is biab right they waited and for them the the the angel of the sea said to god manish they are no better than than the egyptians right this is from the bill nagon in terms of understanding these two circum and again it's a very very ingenious and it highlights the basic idea that one has to pay very very close attention to every detail of the torah including the sequencing of words that you know maybe in english it may be translated the same way they came into the sea that was dry lands but the fact that in lush and nakotish in lush and torah the order is different means there is a message to it and that's why i've said a number of times that whenever you're uh confronted with a problem of repetition in the torah pay esc pay careful attention to the differences in the repetition because the torah rarely if ever repeats something in an identical way there will always be a little bit of a difference and focusing on the differences will be the key to understanding the overall reason for the repetition so that's something to remember as you go through the the humish but point number two is i want yeah it's interesting that the tribe of leva were not mentioned uh it is interesting uh and i'm not really sure uh why they didn't step up to the plate at that particular moment obviously when it came to the golden calf they were the ones who stood up for hashem for the torah and the case of the miragum as well they were not involved in the sin of the miraculous at this particular juncture i you know it's a good question it's always a good question like why at certain times uh they didn't uh come forward i'm sorry yeah there for what you're saying what they need to come to the state of rockland because they weren't scared of the canaanites they oh okay okay okay well all right but again yeah that's an interesting point that uh they had less to be afraid of but on the other hand gazal do talk about the idea that if the canaanites were to take over they would massacre the non-combatants as well so in a sense there still was a there still was a fear you know the canaanites wouldn't necessarily recognize colonel exemptions or theological exceptions or or whatever whatever it would be uh i mean okay i don't want to get into politics i mean sometimes indulges in the fantasy that if we would just get rid of the state of israel and turn it totally over to the arabs there would be a great great flourishing of torah and avodah and mitzvos because the arrows would certainly encourage the judaism if it's separated from zionism you know again that that's uh you know it's almost like these fantasy alternative history that if khas shalom anything would ever happen it ain't going to be that way that's not the way it's going to uh that's not the way it would play out but okay so now i want to share with you a thought from the meshach ramirez and he asked sakacha that the jewish people had just come out of a whole year in mitzrayim in which you had 10 plagues now that actually how you get a year is a little difficult but but the mishnah in masaka's edges actually says that the process of yet mitzrayim took place over a 12-month period and the the plagues are going are over a 12-month period again it doesn't seem to be that long but again there are different interpretations how you get that freshman every single plague differentiated between the jews and the egyptians that's exactly what happened blood the egyptian water turned to blood the jewish water didn't turn to blood frogs the egyptians were afflicted with frogs the jewish people weren't kingdom lice what it makes because whatever you want to say every single marker distinguished between the jewish people and the egyptians and you never find for the entire duration of that process that the angels were complaining to god manish why are you treating the israelites better than the jews of course we're treating the jews better because they're they're the slaves and the egyptians on the enslaved are the enslavers rather so there was no concept of kitra kitra against prosecution accusation why is the concept of ketrik emergent madafka at the splitting of the red sea when such a kitchen did not occur throughout the ten macos over the last year manistano et le mielo comes up only by the it doesn't come up by the whole process of ycs mithralia yeah the jews were the underdogs in israel but when they left they were they were victorious okay that'll kind of tie into what i'm saying but that that is a good point uh that when we are more modest and humble et cetera we merit more divine protection today right right right right so here's what the mesh says and again he actually uses something i used from him before pesach and that is we know that the jewish people in mitzrayim over the 210 years they were there unfortunately descended to a very lowly spiritual level they were idol worshipers except for the tribe of levy they did not practice bris mila except for the tribe of labor they had reached the 49th level of impurity whatever that means and hashem had to take them out 190 years earlier because you should have been there 400 years because we would have hit level 50 and if he hit level 50 or irredeemable according to their resale the meaning of the of the torah's statement they didn't have time to let their dough rise and they had to bake it as matzah rather than hummus doesn't just mean para was kicking us out but it means that the the we don't even know what this would refer to practically that the minimal amount of time it takes for dough to rise and become hummus they would have hit level 50. there would have been goners so god says gotta leave now and yet we are told that in spite of the fact that the jewish people reached the nader of the 49th level of impurity they did have certain merits right and we talked about these merits right last night right i'm going to repeat them again it says they didn't intermarry and they were faithful to their jewish spouses they didn't change their names uh they they didn't uh they spoke russian occultists they spoke the sacred language of hebrew they did not speak lashon hara against each other and as i explained that was not like a from thing but that was in order not to get advantages from the authorities now the messiah explains huh yeah well little loose hope was an expression of keeping lush nakota if you remember i i used those ideas to express the notion of keeping hope up and the light because preservation of latin akodesh is an affirmation of hope that there will be a gaula now the mesh understands that the greatness of these four indicators was not so much religiosity and even belief in god after all they were idle worshippers but it's a sense of jewish unity and actus and togetherness and community that's why even a non-religious jew that wears a high necklace and goes by the name rafi now you might say yeah what what type of jew is he the answer is if he wants to identify himself as a jew that's something very significant i may have mentioned forgive me for repeating this but it's something that's meaningful to me so i may repeat it more than once when i lived in chicago and devon avenue which in those days was an all-jewish street now it's half jewish half indian but i lived in devon avenue there was a restaurant uh that was a kosher style restaurant that was called the bagel now kosher style means it was trife it was not culture but kosher style and i remember walking by and my coaches stopped by culture style isn't even a good description because it discriminates against svardim kosher style generally means good ashkenazi tray food you know so no you'll get to filter fish that showman's right it doesn't even have all the smart uh but i remember walking by and there was a sign in the window this is the early 1980s and there was a sign in the window that says we give a free glass of wine for every order of cholet so i was thinking to myself this is uh this illustrates everything that is wrong with american judaism gastronomic judaism some guy you know once uh you know walks by the window he wants to buy treyf chol of don chavez goes into a trade restaurant handles money eats non-coaching food but it's choline because he remembers that his grandmother used to make choline oh yeah and he remembers that the grandfather used to have wine so let's have a glass of manushevitz wine or whatever it is and somehow he thinks he's doing something jewish and he's identifying with jewish rituals when in fact he's totally violating halacha in every single way and this is called gastronomic judaism or cardiac judaism some people say you know judaism of the heart or bagels and lox judaism whatever you want to call it and in my younger years i was a young man then more cynical i was saying ah who needs these types of jews why is it a value at all but as i get older hopefully wiser you never know i begin to see that there's a lot of meaning in that because that's exactly where the jews were in mitzrayim they weren't serving hashem until they brought the corbin pesach they weren't you know they weren't doing mitzvos but they had a sense of peoplehood i'm a jew you're my people we share a language we marry into each other we don't turn against each other to get some advantage from the ruling authorities we have hope that we have a common destiny we rejoice in each other's joys and we suffer in each other's sadnesses now this is not the end point of redemption the purpose of redemption was to receive the torah so this type of jewish peoplehood is not the ultimate end goal but it's the beginning without it there would be nothing without it we would have hit level 50. and when you hit level 50 you're gone this is an important consult the idea of regarding myself as part of the jewish people you are my people you are my tribe you probably have had this experience uh in an airport or a train station that at least if you're up on israel of course there's so many from people so it's not a you're not conspicuous but if you're in a kennedy airport or if you're in a train station whatever it is in the states and i think maybe other countries even more so so if you're conspicuously orthodox you have yamaka or whatever whatever it is so people will often come up to you and kind of say i'm jewish too or i'm a member of the tribe now i have to admit that that usually irritates me you know you're saying i'm busy like what are you what are you bothering me you know but that's my problem the truth is it shouldn't irritate me at all uh in point of fact it's a wonderful thing that somebody who may be very very far from torah sees a religious jew and says i want you to know i'm on your team maybe i don't know the stuff that you know maybe i don't do the stuff that you know and i don't even know what it is that you're doing but i'm with you and that is how the jews got out of mitzrayim had they not had that they would have hit level 50. so the guy that wears a high necklace and his shirt is open until his navel whatever it is in a whatever in a nightclub or whatever is still making a statement and the guy that says i want to have traffic challenge on chavez because that's going to connect me to my grandparents it's making a statement and that means quite a lot that does mean a lot there's something in him that wants to connect so here's what the mesh says when the jews are unified when they're together when they have avat israel they create a hole that is greater than the sum of the individual pieces so even if i as an individual have this sin and that sin and that sin and that sin hashem will have rakhamin because i'm part of a nation and that's why in mitzrayim the angels were not makatrix because there was that fundamental unity that protected us united we stand divided we fall i think i mentioned again more than once benjamin franklin's statement we have to hang together in the time of the american revolution we have to hang together for otherwise we shall surely hang separately now what happened at the red sea so there's another famous rabbinic teaching that at the red sea in the panic of the moment the jews split into four groups this is other than one group said let us jump into the sea not like nakshan let us jump into the sea to commit suicide let's kill ourselves the other group said let us surrender and return to egypt the third group said let us wage war and the fourth group said i always think they are the most foolish let us call out to the nations of the world to protect us let's go to the security council right because next ticket let's go to the security council for a resolution that will condemn this egyptian aggression and the like now the standard understanding simply is they had different ideas but the mesh gives a little bit of a twist to this idea he says it's not simply they had different ideas it's that the essential unity that kept them together was disintegrating each one was simply looking for their survival strategy that they thought would be best for them ah so there's a consequence the unity that existed in mitzrayim when they were slaves has now disintegrated at the um so here's the problem when we are no longer united as a people then god's scrutiny is of us as individuals as individuals there are many faults and flaws and alveros where we could be found wanting so the question was again to remind you of the question the question was the kit rook the accusation of manish tano evo mayella why does that come up only by kriyasyamsof and not in mitraim because in mitzrayim it is true we were idle worshippers but there was an actress israel when that disintegrated by kriyasyamsev then the judgment is going to be stricter which means to say that when jews are divided it's not simply the sin of not loving your fellow jew but the whole standard of divine judgment has changed because god will look at me under a type of microscope that would not be prevalent had there been actus and unity and togetherness and the like now what's interesting is that this is an important message particularly during the period of the counting of the elmer you know the torah gives us a mitzvah which we're doing that between pesach and cebulos we count starting from the second day of pesach we don't do it on the first day we count days now what is omar just just in terms of being sure everyone understands this the omer is simply a measure of barley that was sacrificed in the bay samik dash on the second day of pesach in the time of the temple it was very important because jews were not allowed to eat of the grain of the new year until the omer was given to god in the base of mikdash so the word omer almer is like a measure it's a it's a volume you know a bushel it's it's actually the volume of 43 and a fifth eggs that's how big the elmer is it's a measure of barley sacrifice part of it is sacrificed on the altar and part of it is eaten by the kohanim and uh and alike uh and from the bringing of the omer we start counting days until the holiday of shabbos that's why by the way there's a whole mach lokas among the richonim where we don't have the corbin of the omer is the counting of the omer period a torah commandment or a rabbinic commandment toss in masakas minakos actually says that the counting of the omer when there's no omer sacrifice is a rabbinic enactment to remember the basa mikdash which means it's a mitzvah jarabana you still have to do it but it's a rabbinic commandment it is not a torah commandment the rambam's opinion however is that even when there's no carbon of the omer the counting of the omer is still a torah requirement and that has some practical ramifications i don't want to get into all the technicalities and that is uh can you count the omer after sunset but before the stars are out because from sunset to the stars coming out is called twilight and halachically there is a doubt whether it's night or whether it's day that's why shabbos has to be started no later than sunset but you can't end until the stars come out because with respect to starting shabbos you've got to treat twilight as night with respect to ending shabbos you gotta treat twilight like day and that's why shabbos is more than 24 hours it is from sunset to the stars coming out the next night which will at least be uh 24 and a half or 25 hours whatever it would be but it would be something added on to the 24-hour point so can you count many synagogues for example will count the omer before the stars come out and they're relying on tosos and minajos that omer is rabbinic because for rabbinic laws you're allowed to be lenient for torah laws you have to be strict okay now we've mentioned this before and we'll mention it again but the basic idea of counting the omer is to link two holidays and make them one pesach is the holiday of freedom shavuos is the holiday of torah counting of the omer links and joins and connects these holidays to remind us that freedom is worthless and even destructive unless you connect it to torah i think i've mentioned more than once tagari the great indian poet who compares a human soul to a violin string that's capable of beautiful music but only when the string is tied down can it express that music a loose string can do nothing and the human soul is the same way we think if only i had freedom i could be creative i could flourish i could express my soul but it's really the opposite it is submission to hashem that liberates you that frees you that gives you self-expression tagari was not writing about judaism but the line is such a beautiful line the violin string has to be tied down to generate music and that is why the gemara tells us that the corbin ha omer is barley which was in those days fed to animals and on chevros we bring a wheat offering of wheat bread barley is animal food wheat is human food and the lesson is freedom without torah is animal liberation right so the basic idea of counting the over is a fairly clear idea it links freedom with responsibility and by the way even in the secular political realm this is a major major major thoughts in which many have said that western democratic civilization has veered far too far in the direction of entitlement and privilege and freedom and away from the notion of discipline responsibility and community freedom without responsibility becomes a destructive force and one can never say the purpose of my life is to be free that that's a non-sequitur freedom is a condition to be able to accomplish but it is not the essence of what life is about freedom is an enabler at best now i think when you mention why the uh omar is not counted on the first day yes and why the timing of i just said that's correct we talked about that before pesach the first day of pesach is not yet connected to shavuots because you don't count the omer so it's freedom without responsibility and it turns out it's the same day of the week as the ninth above it goes straight to church now that was my little yeah thank you now here's the thing if i were to ask you based on what everything that i said should this be a happy time or a sad time logically it should be a joyous time it is the sembra of looking forward to the glorious day of matantora there is nothing intrinsic in the omer that should be connected to sadness and indeed as far as the torah is concerned this would be a happy time the torah does not mandate any sadness and yet we know that during the period of the omer there are various restrictions that we engage in which are indicative of the laws of mourning to a greater or lesser degree so for example we don't make weddings during part of the over again there are different minhagem a leaf for another shear maybe a more specific consideration but at least for part of the omer we don't make weddings we don't get haircuts we don't listen to at least live music if it's recorded music ask your local orthodox rabbi and these are various practices that are connected to mourning now why do i mourn so the gaonim tell us that during the period of time between pesach [Music] rabbi akiva who accumulated 24 000 students all of those students died between pesach and schwarz which is the overt period and therefore we mourn the deaths of the students of rabbi akiba so when you say they died between passage was that all 24 000 died in like one year of that two months or was it accumulation so so that's interesting that's not that's not entirely clear meaning you can actually learn the teaching two ways there was one catastrophic year in which 24 000 people died or you could learn it may have been over a prolonged period of time but it was always the time of the year that the students died that is a good question and by the way i'm going to i'm going to leave this for a later share a little bit but the gemara says they died through a plague a plague there are those who say and this is controversial whenever i mention this i get a bunch of youtube criticisms or whatever it is but there are those who say that this was actually a euphemism because as you know barbie akiva himself was very involved in the bar kokoba revolt against rome and rabia kiba died as a result of his participation in barcogba and some say that the 24 000 students were actually collaborators with balco against the romans and the romans massacred them uh as part of their participation in the markov revolt and in later years ghazal didn't want to talk about barcocco that much they often covered up things they talked about a plague again for our purposes it's not really important whether they died because of a plague or they died because of their participation in the barcocca revolt what is important is that either in one year or several years 24 000 students died and the gemara gives us the reason for their death that's why this is critical they didn't show proper kavod respect to each other now we can assume that the students of ruby akiva were not rude that we're not pushing each other out of line or calling each other an idiot but whatever it was there was a certain aspect of a lack of respect that they had for each other which is really a lack of love a lack of care a lack of looking at the other person and seeing their importance and maybe from our perspective if we would have looked at them we wouldn't have noticed anything at scans but according to their level and according to their madrega they could not be the transmitters of torah to the next generation if they didn't have that sense of unity and love and respect now again i want to make it very clear it's important to differentiate between what the gemara tells us and what the gaonim do with the gemara now here's the thing the gemara itself records that the students of rabbi akiva died between pesach and chivos because of the sin of not having covered for each other that is in the gemara but the gemara does not draw any halachic implication the gemara does not say therefore during the olmer period we don't make weddings so as far as the gemara is concerned this is simply a biographical fair historical fact which has no halachic ramifications the gaonim after the gemara took this historical fact and used it as as the basis of various halachos that pertain to the minhagem of availas see it's important to know because sometimes we confuse things people say oh the gemara says you can't get married during sphera because rabbi akiva's students died that's incorrect the gemara does say rabbi akiva's students died it does not draw the implication to halaq observances that does not exist until the time of the gonim and in fact there is even a view this is very very fascinating that the reason we don't get married during sphera and we don't get haircuts during sphera is not because of mourning at all it's the idea that the omer period is like a whole homo eight connecting the holiday of pesach and the holiday of shavuos and on ho homo et you don't get haircuts and you don't make weddings which means a totally opposite idea in other words one could actually assert although this is not mainstream one could actually assert that the laws of availat are not laws of where they look they are laws of moaes because of joy like i told my wife huge we were you know we had a lot of laundry to do and i said you know uh there may be a logical position that you don't do laundry during sphera that's not true but but the logic is after all if you look at sphere like homomoe the same way you don't do haircuts and you don't make wedding you know you don't do laundry or collarbone right so maybe we have a header to delay laundry but again uh nobody says that and to to say that the laws emanate from kalamow there's a data certainly the predominant view is available uh because of the students of rabbi akiva now to be frank the death of the 24 students of rabbi akiba is not the greatest tragedy that we faced we've had holocausts we've had many many more people so why am i mourning the deaths of the students of rabbi yakiva so the meforshim all say it's not really mourning it's really about resolving in your own life to try to rectify the character flaw that resulted in their deaths if their deaths were they did not show proper kavod to each other then my avodah during this period of time is to grow in the kavod that i show a person now what is kavod so kavod means honor dignity but refshimshin rafal hirsch has a very interesting etymology here he says that kavod comes from the same shoresh heaviness when i show you kavod it's not a matter of being polite it's not a matter of etiquette it's a matter of looking at you as weighty as having gravitas you see it's possible for me to treat another person i'm very polite i'm very nice but i look at the person as nothing as a nobody he doesn't really have anything to offer kavod referred says is not so much in external behavior as it is in a as a perception of the person as having heft as having weight as you know we even say in english the person is a heavyweight that doesn't refer necessarily to how obese they are or or whether they want a boxing uh trophy but heavyweight is like a slang term for someone that you know is a man of such a person of substance so kavod is i look at another person and i see their value i see that there's something that they're giving that they contribute in fact i have to say you know in jewish outreach in kirif sometimes uh one of the things that is that is incorrect and wrong in kirib is that sometimes a makai ref looks at someone who's not yet religious and conveys the message you know you're a nobody you're in nothing but i'm gonna give you all of this wisdom that'll make your life worthwhile because the way you are now you know there's nothing no value or purpose in your life now number one that doesn't really work very well because when people are condescended to and people to look down upon they get defensive and insulting insulted and they don't want to hear what you have to say but number two it's not even true besides the fact that it doesn't work it's not true you have to look at each person and try to identify what about them is good what about them is solid okay the guy's not show me shabbos maybe they're honest they have integrity they have intelligence and you work and you interact by seeing the kavod in that person seeing the heaviness seeing the value seeing the goodness and that is how you ultimately are able to be a positive influence because you're not just there to give your wisdom to them you're also there to learn from them and be open to what they say you know many many years ago i was giving a share in columbia maryland now colombia has had a bad house for many many years but when i was there there was no orthodox presence at all but i gave a weekly share that an organization was sponsoring and after this year a woman went over to me and she prefaced her remarks by saying i'm not as religious as you but i don't even remember what the butt was but at the time what i said to her was why do you say you're not as religious as me maybe you're more religious than me there may be different commandments that i do that you don't do maybe shabbos but maybe you honor your parents better maybe uh you have a you know you don't lose your temper maybe you're more charitable that's also serving hashem that's also being religious why is being religious only whether you wear it filler than say bracos what about a person that treats others with dignity with respect and it's an important idea to to not just convey to others but to internalize in ourselves and that's why we mourn the students of rebbi akiva not simply because it was a tragedy although it was but because we have to realize when we don't have that cove out for each other we're setting ourselves up for self-destruction again going back to the mesh when the unity dissolved at the splitting of the red sea we were vulnerable right so that's why the message of kriyasyamsaf and the message of sphere are the same and this is why svera is not a contradiction because on one hand when you're preparing for the torah that should be a joyous time on the other hand you're thinking about the sadness of the death of rabbi akiva but no mata itself requires that there be unity and togetherness as the pasik says that we encamped is they watching singular so when we think about the students of rabbi yakiva that's not taking us away from our preparations of mountain torah that's part of the preparation israel right so this is why we need to do this now this ties into another aspect of the seventh day of pesach you'll recall that on the seventh day of pesach we read shirashirim the song of songs now the song of songs in many many ways is one of the most difficult books of the jewish tanakh the jewish bible because it is written in a very open and explicit sexual way it is about the passionate love that exists between a woman and her lover the the near-misses when they're looking for each other it talks about the joy of their encounters hugging kissing even beyond hugging and kissing if you read the verses uh in a literal in a literal sense that there were rabbis who wanted to censor shiraz sheila and they felt it does not belong in the jewish bible because it is a celebration of romantic love and that's not something we we have to write public books about it was only rabbi akiva who is the great defender of shirashiram and rabbi akiva argued if all of the shirim if all of the poetry in the tanakh is holy shirashirim is kodesh kidashim the holy of holies because it's an allegory it's a metaphor it is describing in graphic terms the passionate love that god has for the jewish people and the jewish people have for god and the princess or the woman is us and the shepherd is god and if you reach here ashaman with the understanding of that metaphor you can see some of the passion there and you can also see the sadness because remember there are different scenes where the woman has gone to sleep for the night and her beloved is knocking at the door and the woman plays hard to get and she says i've taken off my dress how can i get up now hoping that he'll keep on asking for her but he walks away and then she gets up where has my beloved gone and she wanders the streets looking for him in the middle of the night and she's beaten by all of the guards or policemen in the streets where is my beloved your beloved has gone away now what that's really talking about is there are times that god wants to redeem us he's knocking at the door but we're not ready we play hard to get and then when we finally are so fed up with all of our suffering we say god bring mashiach but it's not the time right so the whole idea of the missing and god is looking for us and we're not ready and then we're looking for god and god is not ready the time is not yet right and all of that so shira shirim is a metaphor of the love that god has for the jewish people and the love that the jewish people have for god and the yearning for redemption and that's why it says at the end that love is like a fire and even the greatest torrential waters cannot put out that fire the waters are the nations of the world that try to destroy us but they cannot put out that fire within us so as a result of this metaphoric understanding if you ever look at the art scroll of shirashiro you will notice that they don't translate it literally they they only give a metaphorical translation so for example when the second verse says you know the first verse just says shira shirim the song of songs that belongs to okay then it says ye name in the she goes p you kiss me with the kisses of your mouth caress me with your kisses the woman calls out so the art squirrel will say something like oh when god took the jews out of egypt he did a lot of plagues you know and they now now in fairness to art school and i have to say this because art school has been pilloried for this for many many years in the commentary before they comment on the verse they also give a literal translation so they don't give the literal translation in the translation but they do give it in the commentary okay and people point out that arts grow totally so to speak removes any romance or sexuality from the narrative and simply makes it a historical book ah there was mithralium there was mishkan there was matantora etc there was a base amiktas there was a corbin based on mcduche aren't they basing it on the threshing it's not just no no well well the fortunes are not translating i mean it's a very different thing of course this is a metaphor that no no one is questioning that but the question is why don't you give the translation upon which the metaphor is based so art scroll says the following art scroll says they made this decision based on their editorial board that felt that a literal translation would be misunderstood as romantic maybe even semi-pornographic love poetry so in order to eliminate misunderstandings they go straight to the metaphorical non-literal translation okay that's what they said so my question is if shirashiram in its original form is so prone to being misunderstood why didn't shameless write it the way art scroll translated it why does shlamahamela who is the wisest of all people talk about kissing hugging caressing spending the night together why does he write about it that way so in the art school shirashi room they give an answer to that question in a letter written by mordechai gifters of the great russian shiva tells but the letter is only in hebrew and the letter is not translated but it's interesting that rav gifter addresses this very issue why does muhammad write the letter i'm sorry why does he write shira shirim in such an openly sexual way as opposed to simply using the metaphor so here's what jeff gifter says this is a real really beautiful idea he says shira shirim is a martial it is a parable it is an allegory it is a metaphor for divine love the love of man to god and the love of god for man but you can't understand the metaphor unless you are connected to it in its literal sense meaning to say a person that is incapable of human love if i cannot form a relationship with a human being that's full of passion and love and care i cannot have a relationship with god so you need to be connected to the literal in order to understand the figurative you know there are people that say they love humanity they love causes they love the human race but they can't get along with their next door neighbor they can't get along with their wife because they love humanity now they tell the story about leo tolstoy you know leo tolstoy the great author of war and peace was a member of the russian aristocracy in cyrus russia he was count count tollstein and in addition to his great novels warren peace and anna caronina he was a social reformer he wrote tracks against slavery which was called serfdom you know freedom of man and even anti-smoking he wrote an early work against uh smoking he said it was bad for health and the like which was a little progressive in that way and he himself was a slave owner he had serfs and he didn't always treat them that well so somebody asked him count tolstoy you write about freedom for the serfs and you write about the rights of man then you write about emancipation and you write about political rights and liberties why do you treat your serfs in a bad way so tolstoy said just because i love humanity doesn't mean i have to care about people two different two different things now i rest assured that tolstoy was subtle enough and smart enough that he knew exactly the irony of what he said he was not saying it as an ignorant person but he was talking about the human nature is we're often connected to abstractions but the abstractions don't concretize themselves into the realities of daily life hamelech is teaching us that with judaism you got to start with the concrete and work up to the general you want to love god start with loving your wife loving your fellow jill whatever it would be in other words you need the human love to eventually come to divine love number one because if you truly love god you love god's children but number two right so in a sense love of god leads to love of men but it also works the other way love of man leads the love of god it works in two directions love of god leads to love of man because if i love god i love god's children if i love you i'm going to love your kids but it works the other way too because the vilna gowns has a very interesting idea the villain says what is the nature of human love human love now there is a lust component but that's not really love that's just lust or sexual desire but if you talk about love i love a person so the villain says all human love is love of the qualities of god that are reflected in that person's neshama right so if i love a person because they're kind i love a person because they're wise i love a person because they're you know intelligent or perceptive when i'm really loving is i'm loving god because my soul is identifying the aspects that are godly within that person and since my soul comes from god whenever it encounters godliness it's going to be attracted to it now we have different frequencies different nishamas will be attracted to different fast god is infinite some the shama will be attracted to the kindness of god some will be attracted to the wisdom of god right we're on different frequencies and that's why we fall in love based on or form friendships based on different things but the villenegon says all human love that is not lust is love of god i see within that person qualities of hashem and i want to connect because when i see a quality of hashem my neshama wants to connect to that source so it works both ways love of man is love of god and love of god will lead to love of man so melek's teaching is that you got to start with the concrete right uh you don't start with abstract globalization but you start with the one-to-one relationship uh that you have and therefore uh the thought of the measure with respect to why there's a kit right kris yamsev also carries over into our vote of spirit omer of kavod zelazer and it's connected to shira shirim in which love of man is what leads me and connects me uh to the to the love of god by the way this idea of rehearsal's observation about covet right covert is connected to seeing the other person as weighty refreshment said this applies also to the mitzvah of kibbut of the aim right there's a mitzvah to honor your parents surah qayyim says although the gemara defines this externally you bring them food and drink but emotionally there's a component that you have to up you have to identify within your parents qualities that are worthy of emulation an interesting idea in other words keep it up the aim isn't simply oh my parents are worthless people but i've got to be nice to them you actually are muhlev to identify within them qualities of goodness that are worthy of emulation now hashem i think for the vast majority of us no that's not so hard we could see a lot of things remember mark twain's famous aphorism when he was 17 he thought his parents were so foolish and when he was i think 21 or whatever age he says he was surprised how wiser they had grown in just a few years i think all of us perhaps have gone through that experience but even if sometimes our relationship with our parents might be difficult we try to identify you know the way that the qualities they have that are still fundamentally good even if they got perverted or distorted because of the vicissitudes of life and that fits in with reference exactly because keyboard is not just external behavior keyboard is seeing the other person as weighty and significant and this is the great great ivoda that we have in the counting of the omer so bias rath hashem i hope that all of us will be able to grow in this way and as we approach shivuat we can become of like one person one heart and in that way merit to receive god's torah which in turn will bring us ever closer and the coming of mashiach whatever [Music] oh