Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: Leadership Structure after Moshe Passes on

[Music] hi everybody uh we're not at our usual location in baca because i'm not going to be able to give a live share tuesday night but rabbi poston was kind enough to come to orsamaya and tape me here and first today's share is dedicated for a reforeshalema for braya batrava and the aliyat nishama of sveeb and avram halevi in our yellow malka batyarkov and as always we are very grateful for your generous hakusakus torah may be a source of bracha and merit for the khalim to get better and for the nishamas that have left this world to have to have an aliyah we are of course already in the month of ello we had shabbos was the first day of ello we already are blowing the shofar during the week in preparation for rosh hashanah and i do want to talk about parsha shoftim this week and some of the interesting connections that it has to the season of shiva and repentance forgiveness as we prepare for the new year of rosh hashanah and then yom kippur but before i do those connections i do want to go back a little bit and this parsha is actually a very important source for a very interesting and significant halachic idea any student of halakha learns very quickly that the rules of halacha are divided into two ways there are rules and mitzvoth that are called the orisa they are commanded by the torah itself and then there are many many rules that are called mijrabanan they are called the laws of the rabbis and this could take different forms some of these are called gizeros gazeros are negative rules don't do this and usually it's in the form of don't do x because if you do x you may come to do y which is a violation of the torah and in order to make a fence around the torah the rabbis say don't do x even though on a biblical level x would be permitted one very good example is the torah prohibits eating meat that is cooked with milk technically if i have a glass of milk and a hot dog that is permitted dough ricer but the rabbis forbade eating meat with milk and even gave waiting periods whether it's six hours three hours that depends on the custom because the fear was if you have your glass of milk with a hot dog you might come to cook the hot dog in milk or even something like chicken and milk del ricer the yesser of meat and milk is only with mammals that produce milk under torah law you could cook chicken and milk but the rabbis made a gazera this is a fence around the torah another type of rabbinic enactment is a takana which is a positive mitzvah like lighting hanukkah candles reading the megillah that even reading the torah on shabbat is not a torah requirement the torah itself does not require that it be read in a public way so all of these are rabbinic legislation some of them are negatives don't do x because you'll come to do y and that's called gezera and some of them are positives like hanukkah candles even even their shabbat lighting candles for shabbat is a rabbinic requirement and we collectively we call them mid-rabbana now people raise the obvious question how can there be rabbinic enhancements to the torah does not the torah say thou shalt not add do not add do not subtract moreover we make a bracha before i light hanukkah candles for example i make a bracha a share kit i shania be mitzvoth blessed are you god who commanded us with your commandments to light hanukkah candles well where did god command me to light hanukkah candles there was no hanukkah at the time the torah was given so maimonides has a very very important interpretation of a verse in this week's parsha when the torah describes the role of the sanhedrin the supreme court of 70 elders that sat in jerusalem until the destruction of the temple and then for a few hundred years in various other locations the torah says you shall not depart from what they instruct you lo sassoor me call us do not depart from what they tell you yamin o small to the right or to the left maimonides writes that the torah is commanding you to listen to the gezeros and takanos of the now that doesn't mean your local rabbi but means in other words maimonides says every single rabbinic obligation becomes an obligation commanded by god by virtue of the low sassoor and that is why on a rabbinic law i can make the bracha i share kids mitzvosov simply because where did god command me to light hanukkah candles god did not command me to lie tonight again but since god commanded me to obey the takanos and gezeros of the and among those takanos is near hanukkah every durabanan becomes a dorison now that's a very important point because sometimes you hear people saying oh i don't have to keep that law because it's only rabbinic according to my monitors that's simply not the case because once the rabbana required you to do it it now gets folded in to the dorisa of lysosource so that's not directly connected to ello per se but it is a very important usual that we get from this parsha and that is which is the negative thou shalt not depart and there's also a positive commandment via sisa kahola share your you shall do in accordance with how they commanded so that was really just a preliminary point i wanted to make but a second point let's go back to the beginning of the parsha itself moshe rabbenu remember the whole in the whole book of deuteronomy moshe rabena was in the last month of his life he's going to die in the seventh of adar and the 40th year of the wilderness and seifer divorum is said or at least he starts saying it rosh so that is literally five weeks before his death and we don't know exactly what date he said this but it is within five weeks before his death now moshe rabeno interestingly enough is kind of a one-man show because moshe avenue incorporates within his persona all facets of leadership he is the spiritual leader he is the law giver uh he is the political leader but when moshe avenue is about to leave the world it's understood that there's no single human being that can take over every one of moshe rabbanu's leadership capacities and as a result a major theme of the parsha is kind of what you might call the creation of permanent leadership structures in which moshe rabino's different functions are spun off and assumed by different people so for example vis-a-vis political leadership we find the idea of appointing a king and indeed according to the rambam the appointment of a king is a mitzvah the arisa now again um we don't really have time just throughout the question uh if indeed appointing a melech is mandatory there's a mitzvah to have a melech the obvious question that i hope is on everybody's mind is how come when the jewish people ask the prophet shemoel to anoint a king shmuel tells them god is very dissatisfied with their request because why do they need a king god is their king and the torah is their law why do they need a king this is a very very well-known question that maimonides himself asks the mammonies after he says there's a mitzvah of a king asks on himself then why was hakodesh barco through shemoil dissatisfied when the jewish people asked for a king and the essential answer is that it all depends on your motivation if you want to be like the or you want a system of law that you think god forbid is superior to the torah so then that becomes a rebellion against god but if you want a king that will guide you in the ways of the torah that's actually a mitzvah so in effect the melech handles the political leadership of israel and then we talk about a prophet right we talk about prophecy prophets give us the spiritual mission from god and the sanhedrin gives us the halachic leadership and decision making so you'll notice that there are three lines of authority that are demarcated in this parsha and it's interesting that within religious leadership there are two functions melech is political leader navi is spiritual leader of course there can be more than one navi and sanhedrin is halachic leadership now you'll notice there's actually a split between the spiritual leader and the halachic leadership and this is reflected in a very important talaqah that a navi cannot impact on the halachic process if a navi comes and says i have gotten a message from god that you are no longer supposed to keep shabbos on saturday but keep it on sunday even if he is a person that's muksak it's been established that he's been a navy we treat that as a false prophecy because of the torah's directive of lo basham i am he the torah is not in heaven charismatic spiritual leadership as important as it is cannot impact on the halachic process that's why the gemara says we do not pay attention to heavenly voices lo basha miami and in fact not only is it the case that a navi cannot change ahalakha but navula cannot even be a tiebreaker when there's a maklocus let's imagine you have different rabbis some rabbis say this some rabbis say this the navi comes and says god told me uh what the position is now there he's not contradicting he's simply telling you how to resolve a maklocus it's very clear from the gemara that low basement does not only refer to the inability to contradict the torah but it even means we don't allow input into the halachic process in fact without getting involved in polemics one of the reasons people sometimes raise the issue why can't judaism accept uh yashka as a messiah or whatever it is and there are many many many reasons this is obviously a very very long talk but one of the short and sweet answers which needs to be developed is that any prophecy that attempts to change any particular halacha is definitionally assigned to the role of navi sheker in spite of miracles in spite of divine credentials that seemingly have already been established the halakhah is that he's an avid sheker god is not going to give a message in that way that goes to the eternity of the torah the non-changeability of the torah the idea that ev whatever god gave at sinai is never going to be going to be changed now i should mention there is a fourth leadership in other words we have melech political leader sanhedrin which is halachic leadership navi which is charismatic spiritual guidance and then we also have the role of the cohen and the lady who are in charge of the temple service and it is a very interesting point that the talmud ushami says that a cohen should not be a malek in fact this is a famous comment of the ramban develops the ramban uh raises the question in parches vairi that we know after the great hanukkah revolt when the kashmir nyayam the maccabees overthrew greek rule over eric israel and they were righteous and they were willing to give their lives for the torah and they established the hasmonean dynasty within less than a hundred years they were basically annihilated and rome took over and the ramban raises the question why should such a fate have befallen the hasmoneans who initially were very very righteous people and one of the answers the ramban gives was that after they achieved victory they should not have established a monarchy and he gives two reasons one because monarchy belongs to the tribe of yehuda so anyone not from the tribe even it should not be a monarch that's reason one but reason two is especially interesting even if we would allow monarchs not from yehuda we would not allow kohan nim to be mount moloch and the problem with the hasmoneans was that they were kohanim and the ramban brings a you shall me tom and ushami to that effect that it is prohibited for a cohen to be a melech now that's worthy of pondering a little bit like you know why is i mean if you're not focusing on yehuda right this other answer is not talking about it can only be you that if the soccer could be a melaka and the zebulon could be a melaka and a ruben could be a malach why can't the coin be a miller so apparently the you shall me understands that there is some concept akin to separation of church and state that we don't want religious leaders to be involved in political decision making now we know in the united states where we have a concept of separation of church and state the basic explanation that's given is we need to protect the state from the negative influences of religion and the sectarianism of religion but that is not the explanation of a torah state because in a torah state a torah state ideally should be run by so i think what the ushami is suggesting is a radically different interpretation the need for a separation of church and state is not to protect the state from the church from religion but to protect religious leadership from the corruption of the political process everyone knows lord acton's famous aphorism power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely and the notion is that the torah envisions that religious leadership not be involved in the day-to-day exercise of power because when a religious leader is involved in power their very judgment becomes clouded with the advantages of holding on to something and they're no they no longer represent a disinterested pure voice and that is why the cohen who is the spiritual leader of omni so one of the spiritual leaders should remain apart from daily decision making now which was interesting is the one person who understood this idea very well was i believe the abdo pope john paul ii who's now a saint in the catholic church and john paul issued an edict that no ordained catholic priest could serve in a political position that required a number of people of congress resigning robert draynon who had been he was a jesuit he had been in congress for many many years i believe more than 20 years actually had to resign his seat because the pope's idea was that if you are a servant of god you cannot be actively involved in politics and without commenting too much on the situation in marriage israel i mean on one hand religious parties have served their constituencies and i guess we've benefited from them on the other hand there has been a lot of corruption a lot of power grabs and one would wonder if some of the antagonism that the secular israeli might have towards the religious establishment might be greatly minimized if indeed religion would be outside of the political realm again i throw this out as a suggestion or a point to think about i'm not taking a definitive position on it but i think the implication of the roshami that a cohen should not be a melech is actually very suggestive of the notion that power corrupts religion and religion ideally should be a moral voice that is not bound up with the sectarianism of political power and and and the like okay so that's kind of a general theme of the parsha but we also know that based on the jewish calendar parashat shoftim is always read in the month of evil within the first week of the month of avalo and that is because there are going to be rimazim there are going to be allusions to the chuva process in various parts of the parsha so let me illustrate this with two points let's go back to the very beginning of the puzzuk shoftim vishotrim you shall appoint shoftim judges shotrim policemen or enforcers you shall appoint bachol in all of your gates now you will notice that the word lacha you shall appoint is lashon yahid individual now granted according to the simple psat in the hamish the jewish nation as a whole are often referred to as singular because we are supposed to be ishakhad like one person one heart but technically it is a lash and as a result the bali musser and the suffragetta hasidis actually want to say that there's an indirect message to every individual during this time of year there's a collective mitzvah to have policemen and have court systems but it's also a message to me that i as i prepare my repentance as i prepare my introspection my preparation for the days of offering narayam i need to make for myself both a chauffet and a chauter how is that so what is a chauffeur the word chauffeur of course means a judge in modern hebrew a judge who applies the rules of the torah is called a dayan and a judge who applies the secular laws of society is called a chauffet the torah itself however uses chauffeur in fact the word dayan is not in the torah persay the word chauffeur is used whether it's a religious judge or or otherwise so what does a chauffeur do a chauffet determines what is right and what is wrong who is innocent and who is guilty what types of actions are worthy of censure and what type of actions are worthy of admiration and emulation the first step in my own kashmir is i have to be willing to be a judge over my life what have i done in the course of a year that's good and constructive and worthy of emulation and incorporation what have i done that could have been done better should have been done better could have been done differently that requires what we call shifita that requires judgment evaluation now sometimes that's a very easy decision uh if i ate traif assuming i keep kosher and i ate tray so i did something wrong uh if i put on still and i did something right so sometimes deciding whether something is right or something is wrong is not particularly difficult those are easy cases so to speak other times it's a little more difficult i had a certain interaction did i handle it right did i get too upset or was the situation worthy of a certain amount of indignation and had i not been indignant perhaps it wouldn't have been good so that requires judgment evaluation the ability to discriminate between what is correct and what is not occurring let me point out that this exists on two levels of abstraction one is to identify your fundamental values what do i consider based on my understanding of god's will what do i consider the good things in life what do i consider the negative things so one is the process of identifying your value system to have what is called moral clarity the second which is equally important and even more difficult is even if you are you've identified the values how do you then apply it to the specifics of your situation you know in general it's the same issue a person might know the whole shogunate a person might know every single rule in the shogunate but they may not know how to apply it to a specific case because their specific case is not exactly the same as what's there and that could take a lot of depth meaning there sometimes there are rabbis who indeed know everything there but they may have difficulty how to apply it so the concept of being a chauffet means the willingness the time and the effort to number one identify your constellation of moral and spiritual values and number two apply that constellation of values to the specifics of your interactions and your behaviors and then you determine what was good what was bad often it'll be a mixed bag there were aspects that were good aspects that were not so good how can i work on them that is the idea of making for yourself a chauffet developing the ability to introspect think about your life evaluate your life determine what was right and what was wrong but the truth of the matter is that is only part of the picture because even if you have moral clarity and even if you understand exactly what is right what is wrong the yetzer hara can very easily drag us down because that is really a disciplined issue and an impulse control issue we might find ourselves in situations that bring out the worst in us we might interact with people that will push our buttons and we may know ahead of time what's the right way to respond and what's the wrong way to respond but in the pressure of the moment things will fall apart that's where the chauter comes in the chauffet is the judge the chauter is the policeman now as modern-day police will tell you putting aside the controversy in the u.s about the absurdity of defunding the police not a good idea ideally policing is not only about punishing crime once it's committed but rather in an optimal way the presence of the police is supposed to send a signal not to engage in this misconduct right that's called preventative policing so a chauter means the following idea chauffet is the capacity to identify the right and the wrong in my behavior but i then have to develop strategies that will prevent me from falling down that rabbit hole again for example i may have to decide to avoid certain environments just as an alcoholic theoretically you can go into a bar and not drink and everything will be fine but you know what's going to be you put yourself in temptation what's likely to happen you may have to avoid certain relationships if they have a certain toxicity that will bring out the worst in you or another type of strategy might be to try to plan things out ahead of time meaning if a prayer let's let's assume every time you meet your parents or your in-laws there's always acrimony and bitterness now if you simply tell yourself it's a new year i'm gonna behave better this time you know that's a very noble sentiment and it's very good to want to be better but you know without a plan without a strategic plan the same thing is going to happen as it always happens and the same response is going to happen as it always happens so you've got to think it out and one of the mental exercises is you try to anticipate worst case scenarios a little bit meaning okay i'm going to come in and they're going to say i'm overweight i'm not dressed right why can't i hold the job so what am i going to say plan it out how will i respond in a way that will not cause me to blow up and and to make them blow up even more now granted life will always throw you a surprise i'm not suggesting you can plot everything out ahead of time but the more you think about it the more you make a script the more you try to plan okay if they say this i'll do this they say this i'll do this i'll try to divert the conversation to this then you'll be prepared and i'm suggesting that is the role of show terre chauffette is the more general idea not good to fight not good to argue i should try to be rhodef shalom beautiful that's exercising judgment what is right and what is wrong but the chauter is the mechanism that will enable you to carry out the judgment the police enforce the judgments or the police prevent the crimes from happening that is your show tear and in truth that is exactly where when i include myself in this i don't mean to stand put myself on the pedestal this is exactly where archuva process often falls short we kind of recognize oh i did this wrong i did that wrong i'm going to try to be better but without strategies without plans without trying to focus specifically what am i going to do when i'm under stress the best intentions plants are simply going to fall apart and that's why the thera-badakis marames in this montevello you as an individual not just chloe israel should have both the capacity of judgment and the capacity of self-policing but then it's very interesting it goes on and says they shall judge the nation a righteous judgment so here the super casitas say a beautiful idea when it comes to you when it comes to me i should be involved in self-evaluation and introspection when it comes to other people i shouldn't be involved in judging them so much mishpat sadek sadek means judge them righteously this is the famous teaching in pirkei avos you should judge a person the kafsa we don't need to go into the immense amount of introspection we do for ourselves that's their responsibility we don't need to apply it to others with respect to others i should be tolerant forgiving understanding with respect to myself now again i don't want to be misunderstood the truth of the matter is even with respect to myself this is very important i do need to be tolerant understanding and forgiving because if a person is too hard on themselves they get depressed they get devastated and they feel hopeless so judging the kafsa does indeed apply to you too but that has to be a means towards then being energized to look into my life and try to make the appropriate tikkunin meaning judging the tafsirchus is not an excuse for complacency it creates the healthy foundation which enables spiritual growth okay so that's uh an important point of shofting the show trim titan there's another remis in the parsha although the actual pus suck that ceramic is in another partial and that is in parashat shoftim we have yet a third reference in the torah to the notion of cities of refuge now cities of refuge is a very interesting idea and this is for the accidental negligent homicide that if ruvain kills shimon without malice without intention but in a way that represents a callous disregard for life we would call that manslaughter in modern legal terms so reuven is not put to death because if this was unintentional but rouvain is sent to the cities of refuge there were actually 48 cities in the land of israel six primary cities and uh 42 non-primary but they all were array miklet and he stays there we talked about this a few weeks ago he stays there until the cohen god all dies which is a very strange punishment if the culling guttal dies uh 50 years later he's stuck for 50 years and indeed if he dies first he's buried in the aramic left not to be assumed until the cohen guttel dies the coin girl dies a day later he goes home after a day but be it as it may this is the city of refuge and uh the consequence is if he leaves the city of refuge he is vulnerable to the blood avenger a relative that can actually have permission to kill them if he simply leaves the the city actually has a trouble the city has a boundary of 2 000 cubits around the city so uh the the the murderer is protected until he leaves the around the year michael interestingly enough ghazal one of the remaseem one of the hints to the month of ello i had already mentioned last week that the most famous hint to the montevallo comes from a verse in the song of song shirashirim which is a story of a passionate love affair of a woman and a shepherd and that is a metaphor for the passionate love between israel and hashem and the woman declares more than once annie la dodi i pledge myself to my beloved one with loyalty and love vidodi lee and my beloved pledges their love to me those are four words and the first letter of those four words spells out ello ello time of love time of closeness that's the most famous remus but interestingly enough there actually is a remiss now the passage is not in this parsha the puzzle happens to be in parchas mishpatim but here mikwah is mentioned in this parsha in parshas mishpatim the torah says when it describes the year miklot asher he who did not pre-meditate elo kim ina leodo god prepared something for him for i have given him a place i share your new summer that he could run so again without powerpoint it may be hard to see the words but if you look at the four words he prepared for him and i made you a place to run so ina is olive first letter le yado llame uh the word elo is encoded in which means in other words spiritually ello is defined as an aramic left meaning there is a concept of a city of refuge in space and there is a concept of a city of refuge in time ello is an ear miklot in zaman now you might wonder what is the comparison to ear mclet jeremic lot is a reference to people who kill i mean most of us are not murderers like what what do i need an aramic lot and one answer is and this may be a little disheartening is that when god gave us a life and we don't use our lives in the right way all of us are engaged in a form of murder you know when a person says for example i'm going to waste some time well yeah i'm going to kill time well killing time is a form of suicide because what is life other than a succession of moments lived in time time is the stuff of life so in a sense every sin is a form of murder a form of suicide besides the fact that some of varus are actually called murder humiliating somebody publicly that's one thing but even aronaveras hashem gave us life which is so beautiful so precious there's so much we can do with our lives and all of us sometimes squander the opportunities but god knows that even if we're murderers we're not intentional murderers we don't do it on purpose we don't act out of malice we don't act with evil intention we're a little careless we're a little non-thinking a little impulsive so we get the ear mclaugh now what's the idea of an aramic left in space the road say goes to a place and the lavatory made this point it's like a prison but it's not really a prison because he has a whole city to live in but who is he exposed to every iraq lot is a city of livium the livium were the righteous teachers of israel you don't send an 18 year old to a place where he's surrounded with murderers and rapists and child molesters which is a very good description of our prison system today you send a person to a place where the influences are good and noble and that gives them time to reflect and to think and come to a realization about the reverence you have to have for life ello serves that same function god knows the vast majority of us are not evil we want to be good we do a lot of good and that's important also a person shouldn't just look at their life and say oh all i do is have various that's not true we do a lot of good we help people we serve hashem but we have our moments and our times and our weaknesses so we need an ear mclaughs in which we can reflect in which we could think in which god gives us a chance to reevaluate push the reset button reboot to use a computer term and that is why ello is so much connected to the ear miklet in time the city of refuge for the inadvertent homicide that is done without malice and without evil intention and again as i've said over and over and over again shuba is not about so much feeling guilty and feeling bad it's about recognizing that god gave us a gift and it's a pleasure as well as a challenge to take that gift of life and make it the most beautiful thing that we can do and if we're of cook writes over and over again that shuva ideally should be connected to joy the joy of in fact um i remember reading from solid basic an interesting point that the al-qaeda yom kippur we recite all of these al haits and he recalls that when he was in germany in berlin this was actually sung to a jaunty tune now i have to say i myself remember this when i was a young child one year only my parents went to an old german synagogue in connecticut and i still remember the tune for the al-qaeda that was very funny because al qaeda is not something that you have a joint detour you know you're singing oh i did this and i did this and i did this but the answer is when you clean out the stables of all of the dirt and all of the excrements and all of the filth you know it may be a hard job to do but you know you're really happy because now it's so clean it's so nice and i can get rid of all of this stuff that's a simha it's a real real sibling so at the end i just want to share with you a general thought which is not to this parsha but remember that we are also in the seven weeks following tish above we have the seven haftarus of comfort these they're called the shiva den as aramaic seven have terrorists of comforts and uh they are all from the navi yeshayahu the great navi ishayo who is the the great prophet of comfort the whole second half of the book of isaiah is devoted to prophecies of comfort and the gemara itself says that there is a certain pattern of haftarus the three weeks before tish above are have tyrus of tragedy the seven weeks after tishbov are have tyrus of comfort and redemption and then we hit rosh hashanah and the haftaris are about the theme of chuva repentance now let's think about this look at the pattern tragedy comfort repentance there's something a little wrong with that picture because in point the fact we don't get redeemed until we do chuva number one you see that in the torah the torah says that because of our average there's going to be godless and destruction of the basa mikdash and suffering and then we will turn to hashem and then he will redeem us that's in the torah and the rambam says the jewish people will only be redeemed if there's juvenile though he does say god promises the jewish people will do tuba but they have to do shiva and in the amidah in the shemona esre you actually see the same point because look at the order of the amidah we ask hashem to help us do chuva we then ask hashem for forgiveness right we do chuva hashem forgives us and then reina go israel redeem us so if it's true that from suffering we come to chiva and from shiva we come to redemption then why do i go from suffering to comfort redemption and then to children it should be suffering leads to chuva and shuva leads to redemption right so how do you understand the pattern and the answer would be the following it is true that in the chronology of the unfolding of history i will not be redeemed until i do juventus and therefore if you're going to plot out how will things happen in real time from the suffering of the golos the jewish people will come to chuva and with that shuvo will come to ghoul but psychologically when a person suffers from god whether it's individually or the jewish nation as a whole gullus corbin crusades pogroms holocaust terrorism were beaten down and beaten down and beaten down century after century a person naturally feels they are rejected by god god doesn't care anymore where will i get the energy to do shiva if i feel that god no longer matters god no longer cares so i need through my suffering and within my suffering to internalize the idea yes life is sometimes hard life is sometimes tragic but i know that god loves me i know he will redeem me i know he will embrace me and from that recognition of goula you get the psychic energy to do chuva so yes first there is suffering then there's truva then there's goula but an awareness of gaulah is the condition the saint aquinan to be able to do chuva otherwise you feel abandoned and that's why it's been well said that no person can really do chiva unless they already feel that they are beloved by god no person becomes better unless they feel they're good because when you feel you're broken when you feel you're worthless then you feel you're beyond repair a person beyond repair does not change and that is why we need to internalize the message of redemption as a preliminary stage to be able to do chuva that's the assault the truth of the matter is you actually see this if i could go a few weeks earlier in the torah when maisha rabbenu when maisha avenue speaks to binay israel and he says hey you know i want you to go to eritrea israel and god said i can't go and mushroom god was angry at me because of you and god said i can't go so the question becomes what does he mean god was angry at me because of you the simple meaning is quite disturbing he's basically saying you guys made me lose my temper you guys were complaining you made me hit the rack god was angry at me because of you it's your fault well this is analogous to the guy that hits his wife and says she made me do it now maybe the wife wasn't behaving so well but you know it's not a justification and certainly maisha albania was not going to say if i sinned it was you guys fault that sadiq wouldn't do that so the the drasha saran revenu nissan says very beautifully when maisha says god was angry at me because of you you yeah maybe god was angry at me because of you he does not mean it was your fault that i sent but he means that he means that god was angry at me for your sake meaning you committed so many sins against god and god forgives you but when i'm disrespectful to you god does not give me a second chance now what is michael urbano doing he's building them up because they're so afraid they're going to lose motion they feel not worthy and how will they cope with the challenges moshe is saying look at how beloved you are and iran says much of the book of javarim moshe albania was giving musa and and criticism but iran says you can't criticize without building up you can't criticize without showing how beloved you are in akkadis barclay's eyes and therefore that's the same idea here before we do shiva we have to know how beloved we are in god's eyes and that's why the nahama is repeated not once and not twice and not three times but seven times over and over and over again because on an emotional level we need to hear and feel the reality of god's love i think i may have mentioned before that many children remember the first time that they were lost they were separated from their mothers i mean i remember i actually remember it uh i'm in a department store with my mom allah shalom and all of a sudden she turned a corner and i don't know where she went and you know it goes to a child's mind sometimes oh i'm lost forever i'm an orphan this is it the whole thing may have been 30 seconds but this is what goes through a child's mind and then when they're finally reunited with their mother the mother says over and over again i'm here i'm here i'm here i love you i love you i love you why does mom have to say it so many times because the head may hear it once but the heart needs to hear it a lot of times but that actually explains why the sheba di is so repetitious i mean it's kind of saying the same message over and over and over again and people ask akasha and the force will try to differentiate this word from that word but i think on an emotional level the language of the heart requires a certain redundancy that the language of the mind may not require and that's why we have seven up terrors of comfort and that is why the month of ello is so connected to the love of god the love god has for us because without an awareness of that love we don't have the psychic energy to be able to do to do chuva so again as we entered the monteville uh let me just mention one final little horror you know we started saying inelo the beautiful mismar uh tohilumba 27 the david hashem irie god is my light the ishii he is my salvation me me era from whom shall i fear and we say this quite a long time actually the village actually didn't say it because he this is a posthumoud condition to the liturgy and the villenegon was against and the editions that are not from the gemara but the minute of both ashkenazim and sfardim is we do say that with hashem some say it's chakrits and mairev others say it chakris and minha or whatever it would be but we say with david and we say all the way through shimini at saras in hutzler it's where you have some khastara they don't say it on simphistore but through media service and there are different reasons there but there's one uh little plastic i want to uh one one part of a puzzle i want to leave you with a little thought that is says there is one thing i ask from god that i request shifty babes hashem call you let me dwell in the house of god all the days of my life laxais hashem to see and experience the sweetness of god ul of vaquer and to visit bahekalo his holy temple so in the suffragettes but they ask akasha that the pussac seems to contradict itself dove it starts off saying i want to dwell in the house of god all the days of my life and then he ends lavaca i want to visit his temple right so what is it does he want to be a citizen or does he want to be a tourist shifty vive kyle to be a visitor which one is it so they give a muscle when you have a bar mitzvah boy he's been looking forward to wearing to fill in assuming he's from a firm family like all of his life since he was nine years old he's been waiting and dreaming to put on that villain and then it finally comes the month before his bar mitzvah and he starts putting on to phil and how exciting he is how excited he is you know it's such a such an experience and then what happens is as it goes on for weeks for months for years for decades it loses the geshmaq you get habituated it doesn't become such a big deal anymore david hamel is praying that he should dwell with hashem all of his life but it should always be with the enthusiasm of the first time visitor i want to be a permanent resident who has the excitement of a tourist think about this in terms of verity throughout i remember very clearly the very first time i was zoha to visit eritrea i finished law school in 1979 and my parents alaya mashallah who really didn't have money for these things bought me a trip to israel so 1979 my first time in israel how every single thing was so exciting every stone every step you know waiting for the bus being on the bus you know everything was great fantastic wonderful getting lost was great and then what happens is you know decades uh you know waiting on buses isn't so easy part of it is old age granted and the like and you know we lose some of the enthusiasm prays i want to be with hashem constantly but i always want to have the schmuck the passion the excitement of doing it for the first time i think you know if we could possibly replicate that that would be a great great goal for the new year to serve hashem with enthusiasm with joy with knowing that we matter with knowing that hashem cares about us loves us in an infinite way and every good thing that we do means so much to akadeshwar hashem may all of us be zoha to do chuva out of joy and enthusiasm to dwell in the house of god all the days of our lives but to levakia but to be do it as the visitor as the tourist good shabbos and khodashnova [Music] is