Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: Lessons Learned from the Splitting of the Sea

[Music] okay hi everybody uh good to see you all and hope uh your pacer was inspirational and wonderful uh you know it's brought down that the minute of chabad uh that for the very last part of the last thing you do in the seder before gadjah and it like is nirza we recite a paragraph that may hashem accept our vote and it begins with the phrase khasal cedar passage that the seder of pesach has been completed according to all of the halachas by the way as a little aside that paragraph was not written for the haggadah that paragraph is taken from the yotser of shabbos haggadah that most people don't recite but you know the special yotts rose for shabba salgado and khasal was taken from the oats there and then it got moved over to the haggadah but be it as it were as it is the minute of chabad is they do not say because they say the sader is never finished the spiritual cocos that the seder brings into our lives continues to elevate us and inspire us the entire year and it's not shaykh to say it's not shaykh it's not possible to say it is finished so in light of the chabad minute i am going to speak a little bit about some aspects of at least the end of pesach but first i again i have to announce that our share is dedicated again with nishmat binyam and israel ben uh zachary and again his parents are here and we welcome you and uh we share in in your sorrow and in your struggle uh a refuge leima to bryan and then we have a generous contribution was made anonymously so we want to thank mr or mrs or both anonymous for your generosity and in addition uh the silver's family and gratitude for the shiorim has also sponsored this year and again we're very very grateful to these sponsors and all of the people who generously support the torah and not just of this class but of all of the very good work that ibanez does rabbi poston and robertson poston and everyone else who uh helps him out and uh once again uh torah said all of these things are good they bring mashiach they bring gaoula and i just encourage everyone to generously contribute to ibanez's good work but what i want to talk about tonight is really the tail end of pesach and that's the splitting of the red sea and the truth is this is something that's relevant to think about every day because in point of fact part of our governing every day is the shirataiyam of yashir right so as well as the cs mitzrayim generally is something that is in the focus of our thoughts every single day i think i've mentioned more than once uh the observation of rav khasko levenstein sekwein lavraka was one of the great great great balay musser he was the mashikiyak of mir when miro was in shanghai during the war years he kept the yeshiva together and then he briefly spent time in the united states after the war but he couldn't stand it he said it was not a place of kadusha but he came to irish israel and he became the masjid panovich after destler was nifty one of the great great barley musser andrew huska levenstein once made a fascinating remark he said a baal musser has to have a good visual imagination because there are a lot of pivotal experiences in judaism that we are supposed to kind of relive we're supposed to re-experience the exodus what was it like to be a slave and to be freed matantora what is it like to be at the foot of sinai and see god reveal himself kriyasyamsaf because the more you have a power of visualization the more you're moved the more that you're inspired you're not simply remembering some long distant historical events but you actually can give rise to those same feelings that a person would have the shasmasa so they tell the story that they once uh walked by office that the door was open during chakras and they saw him setting up two rows of chairs it's not clear what he was doing apparently he wanted to kind of simulate kriyasyamsev like what's it like to walk between two walls he literally wanted to physically like experience a type of creos uh christiansen of course i would say there was no water there obviously so it's kind of a a litvisher way of experiencing kriyasyamsa without you know the water without the splashing without the mess and everything else so i'm going to talk a little bit about kris yamsev and the first observation i want to share with you is a very very ingenious vortex from the vilmigon himself and that is if you remember the kriya satora of the last day of pesach which is kris yamsev so you'll remember that there are two verses in close proximity to each other that just differ by a little bit and that is one passage says entered the dry land within the seabed et cetera from home and the water was a wall mee minamu mismalam to their right and to their left a few verses before then there's a project that's almost identical via vinay israel they went into the sea which was yabasha hamayim khoma the water was a wall mee mee naama mismo so the velmagown asks three questions on these two sukkah question number one is why does the torah repeat virtually the same idea the jewish people walked into the dry land and the water was a wall to the right and to the left what's the purpose of the reiteration question one question two is why is there this slight difference why does one plastic say into the sea that became dry land and the second pussac says into the dry land within the sea question three the word choma which means wall is written in the torah without a buf that is called khasir rather than malay if it's khasher rather than malay you could read it as if it said hema anger and ghazal actually have a dresher that says when god ordered the sea to split the angel of the sea was angry and defiant and the angel of the sea said ma nishtani right this is also a manishtana right this the angel of the sea had a manistana manistano why are the egyptians any worse than the israelites why should i split for the israelites and not split for the egyptians hallelu of their voters all right the egyptians are idol worshipers are and there were jews who were still by the worshipers even at the korea's yams of itself and god didn't really have an answer god's only answer was they are not deserving of a kris yamsev right now but they're going to be macabel the torah eventually and and i'm going to give it to them on credit i'm going to give it to them in anticipation of what they will become even though they're not that madrego right now now here's the thing that bill negon points out the double entendre homa and without above kemah only appears in the second passage that says in the first passage that says bayam the abasha the word coma is written with of us and it can only have one possible meaning the meaning of wall and not the meaning of anger why does this double entendre this double meaning only appear in the second verse and not in the first verse so we have three tashas and two short sukim number one why the repetition number two why is there a difference between yam lea bashar versus yabba shah with and number three why is the khama without of love for which we have the drasha of anger only appear in the second verse and not in the first verse so the vilnigan offers an explanation that answers all three tashas and he says the two sukim are referring to two different groups within israel you'll recall that when the jewish people are at the shores of the yamsev wherever that is exactly and the egyptians are running after them they quite literally feel they are between a rock and a hard place as the english expression goes uh they're panicky they're frightened of course the numbers themselves are quite amazing as the ebenezer points out i mean how many egyptians are coming after them it's 600 chariots okay even if you assume there are also foot soldiers the numbers of jews greatly greatly greatly outnumber uh the egyptians and not only that but it mentions that the jews left biad rama with might and power and and rashi actually brings the jews had weapons the jews had weapons so you have 600 000 men if you add the women and the people younger than 20 the number that's commonly given is 3 million okay some of them might be kids and babies okay but still let's assume you have two million whatever it would be against 600 what's the big panic we'll just defeat them the ebenezer says and this is a very modern idea uh that you see what a slave mentality is this was your master you were serving them for hundreds of years you finally have the chance to escape but then the master comes after you you lose your courage you lose your independence you lose even the basic simple idea that we should be able to fight them off the ebenezer says that generates panic and indeed the ebenezer makes the point that that is why alpi the redeemer of israel had to be someone who did not grow up as a slave moshe bainer grew up initially as a prince in pyro's house and then for many years he was not in mitzrayim and in fact according to gazal there's a whole backstory that torrid has not discuss he was a king and moshe moshe had a whole career before he was moshe abandoned it's fascinating but uh yeah he was 80 years old he had a whole he had a whole life you know that's why i tell people you know when you get old don't think that it's time to retire you never know what new challenges hashem can have for you at any at any age moshe had a whole life the tory doesn't record it but the ebenezer says because someone who grew up as a slave will never have the inner strength and independence to rebel against his master you needed a free person to come in and lead the rebellion but beat us at night the one thing we could say from the torah itself is that kriyat yamsaf was a matter of panic and yet we know that there was a small group of people the leader was who was the nazi he was the head of the tribe of yehuda and he was followed interestingly enough according to ghazal he was not followed by other binay yehuda rather it was bene binyamin so it's fascinating the nazi of yehuda was followed by the shaivet of binyamin and he jumped in and according to one version up to his neck and according to another version up to his mouth and according to a third version up to his nose in perfect dammuna that hashem will take care of us and then the waters split and then the johnny come lately injured so the vilmagone says beautifully this is maduyak in the language of the psukim the first passage says they entered the sea that became ya basha that's now for them the angel of the sea cannot be angry manish tanu elumielu of course they have sequios they have the merit of emunah of bitarch so in the first passage which is the tokhayam biabasha is spelled only with a vault a wall there's no [Music] they have secrets but the second passage says the villenegon is referring to everybody else who did not enter the sea until it already split they did not have a muna they did not have bhitar and that's why it says via vo they entered the channel when it was already dry for them the sorrow shall yam the angel of the arm said that's why the double entendre of choma kemah only appears in the second verse so this answers all three questions right the repetition it's not a repetition it's referring to two different groups group one entered the sea that became dry land group two waited until it was dry land group one the water was a homa there was no for group two there was what was called a kitsch rug a kittruk means a prosecution an accusation a declaration in shamayim that they in fact were not worthy of this redemption and hashem had to placate the forces of din by basically saying okay they're not worthy now but i'm giving them credit for what they will become at the time of matantora so this is what you call kind of call a grand slam debartora because when you have uh three questions that you can answer with one yourself that's how you measure back and the way we measure how good age of our torah is is how many questions it can answer right just like a scientific theory right that's how you determine the beauty and elegance of a scientific theory by how many questions and answers that's also true with uh debris torah as well okay but now i want to supplement the ville magoon with an interesting observation of the masjid simcha hakawain again and you know you know that i work for orthomark we have to point out ramirez the great rav of davinsk who died in the 1920s wrote two swarms both of which are classics his first favor was the or somayah mayor or samayak on the rambam and the second was his sephirah mesh that is called the mesh i am told that the meshman was written before the ursa mayak but his father advised him that he should not publish his first save around humish because then he'll get a reputation as just a preacher he should first establish his credentials as a master of pilbal and halachic analysis and then he can publish the comments although the truth is anyone that learns masjid knows that the metro is not just a shaffer and it is filled with uh well kabbalah philosophy halachic analysis indeed it's kind of a mix of all types of aspects of of torah but okay but the metro culture raises a very interesting question be it as it may we do find that at the time of kriyasyamsa there is a kit rook there's an accusation there is a prosecution there is a charge an indictment against ami israel now what's going on we just had a whole year of makos a little complicated the michigan edges says that the whole 10 marcos took all took place over a year it's a little difficult because you have to figure that out because it seems to be much less than a year but be it as it may from the time that moshe first went to pyro until marcus is in each of those makos only the material were affected and not the jewish people the bloods only the water of the egyptians turned to blood the frogs the lice whatever it was so we just had a year in which hashem afflicted the egyptians and didn't afflict the jewish people how come there was no kittering why didn't the angel of the uh of the water say ma nistana evo mayela why is there a kit drug only by kriyasyamsaf when there was no taina at all for the marcos so the meshach says the following it is true that the jewish people in mitzrayim were on the 49th level of impurity and that's why they didn't even have time to let their dough rise because the little amount of time that it would take for dough to become comments the few minutes we don't even understand this they would have hit the 50th level they would have been irredeemable as it were four-fifths of them died because they did hit the 50th level so they were in a pretty bad shape they were over their vote zara except for shavit levy they did not do brits milo except for shaped lady they are described in the navigator and this passage is quoted in the haggadah that they were like a baby that was filled with filth and everything else and god finally said in your blood you will live and that refers to the blood of pesach the blood of mila god gave us those misvotes to put us over the top but i mentioned this before the makilta tells us that in spite of the lowly spiritual state that the jewish people were in they had certain merits that made them worthy of redemption and the list appears in different forms and different sources but the meshach goes with the magilta he mentions there was no intermarriage there was faithfulness of husband and wife they didn't change their jewish names they didn't change their jewish language they spoke latin akodesh and they did not speak loshanhara against each other okay so no intermarriage no la shanhara keeping their names and keeping their language now it's important to understand what is the nature of these merits these were not from kite it's not that they were from if you're an idol worshiper you're obviously not practicing the jewish religion in any way you don't do brismilla it's important to understand this when you say for example and again i've talked about this a lot of times but it comes up a lot of times when it says they didn't speak latin horror about each other that doesn't mean they were reading two paragraphs of the khafiz khayim saver and they called the shmir salazar hotline what it means is actually more of a political sense they did not turn against each other to try to get advantages from the authorities one could imagine and indeed tragically this sometimes happened even during the holocaust where superimposed of course on the tragedy of six million jews being killed there's like a smaller tragedy on top of it that is sometimes jews were so desperate to try to get a little bread for their family to try to save their children that they would turn against they would reveal the whereabouts or what another jew was doing in mitsrayam not speaking hara we had a united front that's what it means so the point is that these four merits not intermarrying not speaking rashan hara keeping jewish names speaking russian kodesh were not undertaken for religious reasons they were indicia of actus of unity of community of avat israel of the notion that we are going through this together so this is very important the thing that got us redeemed from mitzrayim was not well what we were given ultimately we were obedient to god because he gave us passage but what entitled us and what enabled us to get those mithras from god was not our obedience to god it was our avas israel and our actus in the face of adversity again i think i mentioned before when i lived in chicago on devon avenue many many years ago so there was in the middle of rogers park on devon avenue which is now largely an indian street but that it was a jewish street there was a kosher-style restaurant called the bagel and maybe still there i don't know uh and kosher-style means drift i mean it was a trey restaurant so i remember walking by a chicago wintery morning and i saw a sign in the on the on the restaurant window saying we will give a free glass of wine for every order of chocolate that you order so i was thinking to myself at the time i was a young you know young fellow this is what this is everything that is wrong with american superficial gastronomic judaism here you have some guy who goes into a tref restaurant on shabbos uh but he remembers oh yeah you're supposed to have wine and you know bubby used to make this thing called sholins and i'm going to have my trey flying and my traif challenge and handle money and that way you know i'm keeping some reminiscence of shabbos or whatever it would be and obviously there were people who would buy cholesterol shabbos in a trayf restaurant so i was thinking to myself superficial worthless you know nothing you know man but as they get older maybe wiser maybe not i begin to think that you know this is exactly what got us out of mitzrayim we were not from we were not religious we were not keeping anything but we wanted to identify as jewish we wanted to make a statement you know you're my per you're my brother you're my people you're my nation and somebody walks by and says i don't know what shabbos is i don't know what catrice is you know i don't keep it but i remember that uh my bobby used to make this thing on shabbos and my zeta used to drink this wine and this is a way that i want to identify with my people and i don't know any other way but i'll do this and then i'll go to the ball game or the mall or or whatever it is now that's not the end's purpose of redemption the end purpose of redemption is to accept the torah but it is the beginning of redemption and without that beginning there wouldn't have been a redemption which actually means redemption starts with your identification with the jewish people and then that can morph into a connection with god but it's your connection to ami israel that will bring you to a place where you'll be able to receive god it's a very important point so i can no longer look at a person who just wants to you know he wears a mug in david whatever it is yeah those are the people you mean you know a guy i mean let's talk about this didn't change your name so let's say you're in a discotheque in tel aviv i don't know if they still have disc attacks i don't know if maybe i'm dating myself and the guy uh has his open shirt down to his belly button and he's wearing a mug ain't a bit and hi my name is rafi so he doesn't change his name and he speaks hebrew and he wears a jewish star you know am i supposed to respect that am i supposed to admire that am i supposed to look at that as something good the answer is yes i am because he at least wants to identify himself as a gym you know in our summer you know we have all sorts of programs besides the regular learning programs we have college students who come for a few weeks and you know many of them do get inspired many of them might gravitate towards becoming more religious but there was one case they sent the person over to me because they thought i could handle hopeless cases but the truth is it actually was a hopeless case because here was a guy who came over and said you know people say how do i know there's a god how do i know there's a torah okay those are actually typical questions they're not easy to answer but you know that's standard thing but this guy came over and he said i don't even know why he went to the program what was he drinking he says i don't understand why you have separate programs for jews like what what is it you know why is it important to be a jew and why is it significant that i was born a jew and it really doesn't mean anything to me now you understand at that point you actually do hit a wall because the typical non-religious guy might say something like i'm proud to be a jew i just don't get all this religion stuff that you can work with somebody who says i just don't get it i don't know why you jews get together to do things together i don't see the point that that actually is unfortunately a very very virtually hopeless situation in other words jewish pride bagels and lox all that superficial stuff can have a much deeper meaning it's the soul of the jew that wants to connect i've mentioned before sometimes you know you go to an airport it's not here here hero everyone's here go say a regular airport in america let's say or some other country and you know you're noticeably orthodox either you wear a keeper or a woman that's dressed cenius or with the shade at the with a temple shape or whatever it would be so sometimes people like to come out of the woodwork and they'll whisper if you might be an airport worker a baggage handler a person you know who doesn't look jewish at all will almost conspiratorially whisper to you hey you know i'm a member of the tribe also now i as i say i've said it before i mean this on a personal level it sometimes annoys me because it's kind of a bother but but the truth is that's my problem it should not bother me it should be something that's very very good there we go i'm a jew i'm proud of it i will die for it if necessary they tell a famous story reverend cutler during the holocaust uh he was already in the united united states and he would sometimes go to washington dc on shabbos on shabbos to negotiate with government officials to try to save whatever jews they might save through various war refugee programs this was 43 44. and he would go if aaron didn't know english he would go with irving boonham the corner of rocco was a great great jewish jewish lay leader and at one time they had a meeting with roosevelt's secretary of the treasury henry morgenthau henry morgenthau was a highly assimilated no german jew who had no connection uh with judaism at all not even reform he was intramarried to a non-jew and and reviving was trying to uh have the treasury make various deals you know to release certain monies uh again the problem was legally because you're giving aid to the enemy that was really the whole controversy in holocaust rescue that the only way you could save jewish lives was by giving nazis or not various nazi leaders certain gifts certain money bribes whatever it would be and morgenthau was very reluctant so reverend cutler said to boon him tell morgenthau that it's a pretty bad thing that he is so concerned about his job and his covet and his honor and his glory that he doesn't care about his people the regard was very agitated so um bruno did not want to tell morgan though that that would be too much of an insult so he said something like um you can see the rabbi is upset here and you know we need to work this out so reviron somehow intuited that boonum did not translate what he said so he pulls bhunam's jacket and he says tell him exactly what i said so boone is very very embarrassed and he finally says well the rabbi feels that you care more about your position and your status than the lives of jews who are going to die because you're unwilling to make these concessions and it is recorded that morgenthau no one had ever spoken to him this way he was secretary of the treasury he took off his glasses he put his head in his hands for a few minutes and then he got up and he said tell the rabbi that not only would i give up my job for my people i would give up my life and although it was relatively late in the war morgenthau did establish a war refugee board that did in fact save i mean it's a small number compared to 6 million but he saved several thousand jews he was one of the few within the roosevelt administration who as a result of this genuinely tried to do something uh for hunting for at least a segment of hungarian jewelry towards the end of the war so you see that even a person who's very assimilated very very far away from yiddish if they have this connection to the jewish people it will bring them to good things and the alta rebbe even writes this is why even a jew that's very secular at moments of extremity we'll be willing to die al-kita's hashem willing to die okay so here's what the mesh says again yeah a lot of the digressions here but the question was why was there no kit rook against the jewish people in mizrahim and it only came to light by creating something says the following it is true that the jewish people were idolaters but because they had achtus israel and a sense of community as can be seen from not changing their language and not intermarrying and not speaking washing ara and keeping their jewish names the mesh says when there's actus and unity and israel we become a whole that is greater than the sum of our parts so in spite of our individual shortcomings we bring mercy and compassion from heaven and that's why there was no kid drinking what happened by kriya yamsaf by kriyatyamsaf in the panic of the moment there was a disintegration of the unified front that we had maintained in mitram because i'll say that at kris yamsev the jewish people divided into four groups these are four bad groups not counting not shown et cetera group number one said let us return to egypt let us surrender group number two said let us jump into the sea but not not like nakshane let us jump into the sea and commit suicide group number three said let us wage war and group number four said let us cry out to the nations of the world the united nations to come and rescue us i always thought that was the most foolish of the groups now the mesh understands this medrash in a little different way than most understand most understandable simply means there were four different strategies he looks at it in a more serious way he actually says in the panic of the moment each person individually was thinking about what is best for them they no longer thought about the other people we lost the achtus says when you lose you lose avast israel you lose selflessness you lose connectivity to a community it's not just a sin in and of itself but you are redefining the whole standard of judgment if i focus on myself as an individual hashem will look at me as a discreet individual i have plenty of alberous hello over there so in this mayan when there was an actress there was no kid rick by kriyasyamsuf where there is a disintegration of aratus that is when khitrich comes so think about this you know we sometimes say oh how about israel was such a great mitzvah and when we don't have avas israel we're missing a great mitzvah that of course is true but it's much more serious than that it redefines the whole way that akadesparco looks at us if i'm looked at as a discreet separate individual i may have good points hopefully we all have good points but there's plenty of negatives there when i am connected to a clown i become part of a whole that is greater than the sum of the parts that brings rakhamim into the world the truth of the matter is you see this even before there was a jewish people rashi himself brings you know we had in the beginning of gracious two very corrupt generations the generation of the flood and after the flood the dorhaflaga the generation of the tower of babel and both rebelled against god and both denied god although the tower of babel is a bit of a complicated narrative exactly what it was but rashi points out the rebellion of the generation of the flood resulted in their utter destruction the rebellion of the tower of babel resulted in dispersion but not destruction what's the difference and rashi says because although the generation of the tower of babel rebelled against god and they didn't accept god and they wanted to build a tower to kind of replace god in heaven whatever that means exactly but they did so with shalom and actus and unity and therefore that gave them protection as opposed to the generation of the flood there was social integration social disintegration hatred polarization violence that and therefore when you don't have that actus society gets destroyed when there's actually even if they're copper beaker even if they're denying god god will look at them with a certain measure of so this is an important message it's important generally and particularly during the period of the omer where we commemorate the deaths of the students of rabbi akiva because they did not show proper respect and regard for each other and all of us for him tell us that our job during the period of the omer is to work and cover honoring cherishing the dignity of everybody particularly other jews to be masake to rectify the sin of the great students of rabbi yaki who must have been very great people after all so this is a message we need to understand that avast israel is a great great protection for us but now let's go a little further let's look in more detail at the actual four groups that the jewish people split and split up into now these are dysfunctional groups these are incorrect groups group one said let us jump into the sea group two said let us return to mithraim group three said let us wage war group four said let us call out to the nations of the world so here i want to share with you a markshava from the baal shem tov that is recorded in the seifer toldos yaakovic we get a little bit a little bit of word of bibliography you know today you can go into a swarm store and you can get in hebrew or english or both balshempto valatora etc you know beautiful beautiful smart now you have to understand that the balchemtrov did not write anything the balshempta of their al-shamdu did not write a safer uh on the torah or anything else and uh the only way we know what the balshemptov said is by teachings that are recorded by his talmidim so when somebody produces a book called balsham to allah torah what that basically means is they went through many many differences for him and they picked things out that are quoted in the name of the bolshevik like that's one of the ways avraham today can make a panaso by writing new sparham essentially you're molocate so that's why i mean that's that's one of the ways you get a gazillion haggadahs every year i mean didn't write down that but he wrote on the kurmis you take everything out from that and you publish a new haggadah that's right that's right that's right or rap sadoka right you can have nothing for god you can do anything you can take any any safer on anything and and uh make alika even hindushi harim you know this fus emis was the fiduciary's grandson now the hidushi harim yavisik mayor the first scararebe did not write either but essentially this fus ms quotes him many many times so somebody goes through this fazemas and produces a work he do shayharim okay so that's a little hint for people who want to uh look for some type of safer that they could compile okay so similarly uh the balchemtov's torah was primarily communicated to us by one of his great disciples raviaco yaisef of polanya and his safer and hamish told osyakov yasif was the first khasidisha seifere ever published and he quotes the balshemptov more than times so it is really the primary source of the torah of the balsham tuf it is very very interesting we know that the balchemtov's successor the one who took over the hasidic movement the one who really created hasidis as a mass movement was the magid the maggit of meza rich the misery richard margaret revdo bear and it's interesting that ravyakov yosef was in line to be a leader obviously he was he was obviously a great great leader of hasidis because he was the main transmitter of the balshemptos torah but it was decided either maybe the basham tip himself may have decided this that jakob vyasev was too uh aggressive uh against miss nagdev that in his total shock of yahusef he is very very disparaging of non-christine the meza richard margaret was a much more conciliatory type of personality and rebecca vyasif was a very militant personality and it was thought that uh his uh his a particular approach would not be conducive to growing and expanding the movement right because remember all of the early hasidim were misnomed i mean they came from this i mean there were there was no hasidic movement so uh every husset at the time had to break away from his family traditions and as a result it was concluded that you needed uh darkheid shalom which is always the right way of doing it rather than being very combative so told ya'akov yasif is a very interesting safer but there's quite a few passages that are quite acerbic quite critical quite insulting about the mishna gate mindset that only wants to learn torah and doesn't think about abbas hashem and yeras hashem and all of these different things so b isn't me just by way of digression just you understands where the safer comes from in the dhamma of the told us yaakov yasif he brings in the name of the best best is the abbreviation of baal shem tov rabbi through belgento a beautiful interpretation of the four groups that are standing by the sea and it's a metaphorical interpretation that the turbulent sea is a metaphor for confronting the challenges of a world that we live in a world where god's presence is concealed a world in which we're overwhelmed with different choices that push us in this direction in that direction storm tossed and a person is looking for strategies to navigate in a world of confusion and turbulence now they tell the shock of the isis brings that we know that uh again this was a this is both from greek philosophy and and torah trazal took it over although it's essentially borrowed from greek philosophy the notion of the four elements the idea that all matter is comprised of different combinations of these four elements you have fire water earth and air or wind in fact the four holy cities of eric israel are connected to this yerushalayim is the city of fire teveria is the city of water chevron is the city of dirt the graves and sfat which is ethereal is the city of air each of these holy cities are rooted in these four yesotos now these four-year sodos are not physical i mean they manifest themselves physically but they ultimately they ultimately represent spiritual forces and all spiritual forces just like for the old photographs you have regular photographs and you have the negatives if you're older you remember you know what i'm talking about and and and the like so too spiritual forces exist in their pure holy state and they correspondingly exist in negative and destructive states so the four-year sodos can exist in kedusha and the four yasodos exist in tuma in kedusha fire represents enthusiasm passion right generating light so we have a torah we have or samaya right that's the fire the light the passion the excitement that's the ace of kadusa the age of tuma is anger maklocus animosity the same type of emotion can exist in these two different forms water water is something which purifies it refreshes it rejuvenates it cleans so water is connected to simply in life there is a simphe a joy in serving god the water of tuma is hedonism in which you live your life just for pleasures and decadence right kedusa tumor we have uh dirt so dirt lowliness in its holy form humility submission a lack of arrogance understanding your place as a servant of god in tuma it can turn into depression despair helplessness hopelessness right as you see how these meters can exist in two forms now then we have wind or air in its holy form it can refer to kind of a spiritual elevation where you get disengaged with the material and you focus on ruknius but the negative is we talk about a balgaeva as ruach davoa he's taken over by his wings so to speak the arrogance the spirit of looking down at people so the point is that the four-year-sodos can exist in kedusha states and in two mistakes so what the baal shem tov says is the four negative responses of quality israel contemplating uh the turbulent sea of life are connected the four-year-sodos of tuma so he says group number one that said let us jump into the sea that's let us embrace hedonism let us look at the world and simply take from the world whatever pleasures we can get eat drink and be merry for tomorrow we shall die by the way that english expression is taken from a passage this is people with that attitude what is the use of holding back on anything i might as well live my life for um unbridled taiva so that's the assad hamayom jump into the sea the second group that said let us return to mitzrayim is the negative of dirt let us become lowly depressed despairing hopeless meaning we live in such a world of overwhelming evil that there's nothing i can do i am just going to shut myself down the third response let us wage war uh that corresponds uh to fire mach locus right so the negative there would be anger conquest domination power the only way to get ahead in this world is by looking after number one and the calling for the umo love is the power of speech the power of debra the power of ruach that would be arrogance in gaiba so the balshem dev understands that the four responses are the four yesodos as manifested in tuma and how they manifest themselves in negative ways that's a very interesting stuff but i'd like to just add a little bit and maybe modernize this a bit and that is if you apply it not as an individual struggle like how do i deal with taiva how do i deal with anger how do i deal with humility how do i deal with pleasure in the world and all of these issues that i have but you can look at it in a more broader way and that is how does a person retain a jewish identity in such an overwhelming secular world and you know particularly in the united states but in israel as well you know the obvious answer torah mitzvos missouri a lot of people don't want to go with that like somebody might ask you how do i keep my kids jewish right so you say to them well send him to yeshiva keep shabbos and kosheros at home well besides that what other way what other way do you have people know people always don't always want to hear that way you know that's too hard so people are grasping at straws for different ways of fostering jewish community or sometimes just giving up so one might say that the four responses at the sea are four ways that jewish society has tried to deal with jewish identity a minority in a secular world the first way is jumping into the sea i.e committing spiritual suicide we can call that assimilation meaning how do i keep my children jewish one might say who says i have to now you know people sometimes ask the question no reform judaism goes so far to the left are there any boundaries to reform judaism i will give you a boundary but it's quite amazing around a few years ago the graduating class of hebrew union college in cincinnati which is the reformed seminary they have a branch in jerusalem the class the students decided they decided to invite they decided the graduation speaker so they invited a novelist who writes you know jewish books books about jews and the novelists speaking to reformed rabbis made the point that judaism had an interesting run for around four thousand years but now it's time to close up shop and you know we gave what we gave to the world the world does not need jews anymore and we should just stop doing jewish things he said there were many many cultures that no longer exist and there's no particular reason for our our culture to exist this was in an address given to future rabbis of the jewish people well to the credits of the administration of hebrew union college they did issue a statement in protest of that so everybody has their limits although i have to say apparently the graduating class didn't have that limit but at least the administration had that limit and this scott knew how terrorists the generations get weaker as we go by so one solution to anti-semitism is let's get rid of jews judaism and there won't be anti-semitism this in fact by the way was theodora herzl's plan now again i i am not here to insult you rehearsal he also had no jewish education whatsoever and he was very very well motivated he cared about the jewish people i am not at all here to disparage him but he saw the rampant european anti-semitism particularly the dreyfus trial which was a trumped-up fraudulent sentencing of a man who was innocent and herzl believed that the solution to anti-semitism was normalization getting rid of whatever makes jews different than regular people so the herzl view view of zionism as opposed to even other unreligious zionists like did believe in kind of a unique role for a jewish state herzl wanted a jewish state to be the same as bulgaria romania hungary he did not want there to be a distinct jewish identity he envisioned and that's why he was even willing in fact at one point he offered in exchange for territory in the ottoman empire he offered uh if the pope would support him mass conversion he says i will bring you a million jews who will convert to catholicism now again i am not here to denigrate him at all i am not denigrating him i mean i i believe he had very very noble motives but he believed the solution to anti-semitism is get rid of the uniqueness and the exceptionalism of judaism and that is the response of jumping into the sea we'll solve anti-semitism by killing off judaism as a separate entity the second response let us return to mitzrayim we might call and this is actually a common response we might call this spiritual spiritual schizophrenia in which you keep a double life like when i'm a slave so during the day i'm a slave and at night i have my little zone of privacy in my house this would be exemplified by the old adage attributed to moses mendelsohn be a jew at home and a man of the world outside the home the notion that okay i'll keep my little religion i'll keep my synagogue and the light but fundamentally i identify with the secular culture the way i conduct my business and everything else so if the first response is assimilation the second response is a sense of fragmentation and schizophrenia that's the slave double life meaning when i'm at work when i'm in the marketplace i am functioning as a guy my jewish life is a private little part of me the third response wage war might actually be the opposite we'll call that ghettoization in which i look at the secular world and i wage unrelenting war against everything no internet no geisha access that's the attitude in which a person looks at the world and says the only way i will survive in this world is by rejecting by repudiating you see it's the other way around if going back to egypt is the notion that my primary life is in this secular world and i keep religion as a little little corner the waging war is the other way around in which you refuse to accept anything from the world and that's also incorrect because khazal tells us [Applause] you must believe that there is valid wisdom and insight the fourth response let us call out to the nations is the attempt to foster jewish identity by calling on our history of persecution and victimhood you'll often find that federations and the like what they want to build on is they build on holocaust memories and anti-semitism has been well said that uh if anti-semitism were to miraculously disappear from the world overnight there would be a lot of jewish professionals who would be out of a job the idea is that people try to create jewish identity by saying we have to fight the anti-semites but the problem is people don't want to be victims the idea of the holocaust although the holocaust is a tragedy but unfortunately it does not resonate as powerfully among young people as it once did people say it's a different generation you know whether you're holding this against germany or poland whether you know all the people who perpetrated the holocaust are long gone right even the ukraine who were who were vicious anti-semites right zelensky is a jewish president although he i mean a very very good man in many ways but he's a little ignorant about the holocaust unfortunately and the like and besides you can't define your judaism by what you're against you have to define your judaism by what you're for you know people who are involved in jewish outreach and college campuses we'll point out it's an interesting thing when you want to organize a rally against louis farrakhan you'll get a lot of people when you want to give a class on hummus you'll get fewer people people love to fight the enemy but what do you stand for so you see this point here the point is the four responses which are dysfunctional one is throw in the towel and assimilate jump into the sea the second is let us return to egypt let's characterize in a schizophrenic way we have a double life i'm jewish at home but not in the world the third is i wage unrelenting war against everything that's outside of the basamed rich and the fourth is my identity is based on victimhood and an appeal to the nations of the world to stand up for the rights of the oppressed in other words i'm jewish because i fight anti-semitism and therefore in that sense what is being characterized in the metaphorical way are the different dysfunctional responses that jews have had to either maintain their identity or in the case of jumping into the sea obliterate their identity right these are some lessons that we can take so according to the told us yak of yosef the name of the baal shem tov it's dealing with the personal struggle of the four eusodes in tuma and according to this other thought it's referring more to the global response of how i integrate my judaism with the secular world that i live in uh so be this may thank you for coming and you should have a good uh good week [Music] is