Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: (Part 2) In-depth Analysis of The Shemah

[Music] okay everybody thank you for coming and as i always say it's um because most of my classes most of everybody's classes is via zoom it's so nice to have some actual human faces this morning uh we had a power outage at or semaia so i have to give a zoom share on telephone so the only thing worse than a zoom share is a zoom share on a phone where i literally don't see anybody and i'm just talking into a a phone for an hour so hashem this is a much more pleasant way of of teaching what we're going to do tonight is uh this is part two of this year it's a little off the parsha cycle per se but we began discussing the shema the other week and i'm going to continue that a little bit although it'll be a little off the beaten track of what you normally focus on when we think of shema we of course think of such fundamental principles as the unity of god and the commandment not only to fear and revere god but to love god with all of your heart with all of your soul with all of your might it is also the source of the commandments of torah learning this you shall teach your children is actually a commandment that you yourself have to be conversant with torah khazal drasha the shinantam which we translate as you shall teach is also a leshon to be sharp that the divrei torah should be they should be sharply delineated in your mind that if someone asks you a question you should be able to answer it with clarity this is an important point there's a mitzvah to learn torah there's also a mitzvah to know torah again i don't want to comment about the way torah is learned in many yeshivates which emphasize the learning of torah but not necessarily the mastery and the knowledge of torah that's a separate mitzvah the shinnan levanaka and of course the torah says you should speak about god and speak god's words of torah when you get up when you go to sleep when you're sitting in your house when you're traveling on the road the notion of all encompassing a jew should always be connected to the study of torah and to be thinking about god in fact they tell an interesting story that um a wagon driver once asked rebbe israel of solanger he says you know i don't i'm not able to learn the swarm i mean how do i learn torah so we saw cilantro told him go over in your mind all the things a religious jew does every day i wake up in the morning i wash my hands three times i make a brachialis a dime says go over there that's learning torah that's halacha you're going over the seder hayom of the jew and even that itself is a fulfillment of the mitzvah of salvatore it's very fascinating if i simply go over what did i say in davaning today well i said carbona i said brachos and i said carbanos if you said garbanos i said psalms you know you're actually learning refrigerator said what's the difference if you read it in a book that this is what you're supposed to do or you go over it in your mind that's also a fulfillment of of talmud torah and that's not my talk tonight about the importance of studying torah but i have to say that in uh maybe more so in chris uh that there are many many orthodox jews who are observant their shabbos observant they keep kosher uh they observe even the laws of family purity and they're very very fine people but there is in many circles no concept that you're supposed to study torah every day in other words it's just not part of the process of what it means to be a jew and we have to know that learning torah every day is part of the essential definition of what it means to be a jew that is connected to akadeshwar okay but the main thing i want to talk about is an interesting discrepancy because we have the first parsha of shema which talks about loving god with all of your hearts and all of your soul and all of your might and then we have the second parasha of shema that if you listen to hashem's commandments he will give you reign he will give you prosperity and there are two discrepancies between the first parasha of shema and the second parasha of shema first the first parasha of shema is written balashon yachid it is written in the singular you shall love in english of course you is the same whether it's plural or singular but in hebrew via es hashem alakacha if you observe god's laws and you serve him with all and all of your soul god will give you reward but note that instead of it says in other words it's a washing rabbim rather than a russian that's discrepancy number one now the mice is little inconsistent because later in valhalm shimawa itaka reverses reverts rather to a lash and yakit but at least in the beginning it's alashan raven and the second difference is that in the first paragraph of shema we are called upon to serve god in three ways with all of your soul with all of your might in the second parasha of shema it only mentions with all of your hearts with all of your soul it does not mention all of your might it doesn't say baha'u'llah so once again there are two differences between the first parasha of shema and the second parsha one is versus rabim and the other is mentioned in the first parsha in the second parsha it only says with all of your heart and all of your soul it does not say with all of your might what is the significance of those discrepancies so here let me share with you a very very interesting regarding what it says in the second paragraph if you listen to god's mitzvos god will give you rain and prosperity via safta de ganercha and you will gather your grain this is in the second parsha the asafta so rabbi ishmael who was also the cohen guttal he was one of the ten martyrs rabbi ishmael has a very important principle that he derives if hashem says if you keep his commandments he'll give you rain and you will be able to gather your grain the implication is that gathering your grain is laudable is a good thing to do we see from here rabbi ishmael says that the torah permits and even encourages gainful occupation and making a living that you're allowed to make a living now you may scratch your head and say i need a dresher to say you're allowed to make a living like what would i have thought well i would have thought that because the torah commands you to spend every waking moment involved in learning torah perhaps i'm not allowed to work perhaps i have to say god will take care of me perhaps i have to learn torah and do nothing else so robbie ishmael quite sensibly i think most of us feel that that's a sensible position says that the torah gives a person a dispensation to be osek to be involved in parnassa and parnassa has a nobility right hazal actually say talmud the combination of torah learning now derek eretz is actually an ambiguous word we saw our phrase we sometimes use derek aretz to refer to good medos but in the context of that mishna derek harris there is not referring to character it's referring to being involved in the world in a physical and material way that's how ref hersh used in his famous school of thought torah derek he was not referring to torah with good meedows that's the muslim movement that's a different movement toriyam derek meant that one should learn torah but also be involved in being a productive member of society and rabbi ishmael sees that as permissive based on the verse vios after the sounds good sounds normal but then the gemara brings a second view and the second view is that of rabbi shimon bar yochai who actually rejects rabbi ishmael's point he says parnassa work farming if a person is gonna plow when it's time to plow and plant when it's time to plant and harvest when it's time to harvest when is he gonna learn torah so because of this rabbi shimon bar yochai states an absolutely astounding proposition that if claude israel truly does the will of god they will not have to work at all hashem will give them their parnassa biderich nace or they'll be you know non-jewish people who will be working so to speak creating the uh societal structures or they'll be just miracles and when the tyrus says you will gather the grain it's talking about jews who are not fully doing the will of god now tosos asks the obvious question how can rabbi shimon bar yochai interpret the passage via safter in shema to refer to people who are not doing the will of god i mean the whole context of the passage is if you listen to hashem and do his mitzvos and love him he will give you grain and you will gather it it's clearly talking about people who are doing the will of god so how can he possibly characterize this as an ocean russo no shomako and ptosis's answer is that according to rabbi shimon bar yochai this is what is called osinbajo notion meaning that you're doing mitzvos you're doing god's will but you're not living at the highest level so on some level you're not ice and recitation marketing now this is a very extreme position is basically saying the ideal is that a person basically say i put all of my faith in god i am going to learn torah i'm going to serve hashem i am not going to be involved in parnassa now that may sound extreme but in truth it worked for him it actually was the way he lived his life the gemara gives us the famous story that at one point he ran away because of the romans wanted to kill him because he was very anti-roman and he lived in a cave with his son ravi elizabeth shimon for 12 years and during those 12 years there were fruit trees that sprung up in which he ate fruits there was water there were springs that gave him water the birds brought him meat although yep there's some how do you know how do you know what the hamster was that's a problem but nevertheless i assume it had the proper supervision and the like and if you recall after 12 years hashem finally told him he got the message that your enemies are no longer here go back and rejoin society and when he left the cave he saw people farming and he looked at them with astonishment how could they squander their life in physical and material pursuits and the spiritual fire of his gaze somehow consumed them again kumar doesn't mean that he wanted to kill them that's clearly not the context but somehow you know he was just so astounded that people were burnt up and god said to him go back to the cave and after a year he spent another year in the cave it came out and it was heir of shabbos and he saw a farmer carrying two bundles of myrtle hadasm and he was going to give him that stare again burn him up but the farmer then mentioned to him i have two bundles of hadassim to honor the shabbos one because of remembering the shabbos to keep it holy in the ten commandments in israel and the other observe the shabbos don't do the forbidden malacha which is in parachute realized that even in physicality and materialism you can serve hashem but essentially what rabbi shimon bar yochai is doing is he's extrapolating from his relationship to god and he's trying to universalize it to everybody else it worked for me hashem took care of all my needs it would work for you if you feel you have to devote yourself to physical and material pursuits you are a person who lacks faith and you're not totally doing the will of god so we have a fascinating much locus rabbi ishmael seems to endorse the concept of work productive labor generating income rabbisham says no forget about all of that learning torah is the only thing that matters now the gemara then goes on and says this is very important many people followed the path of rabbi ishmael in which they engaged in occupations to generate money and they also devoted time to learning torah and hashem blessed them with success and many people tried to follow the pathway of rabbi shimon bar yochai and they failed they were starving they had no way of supporting their families so the gemara seems to indicate that the pathway that is generally the best way to go is the route of rabbi ishmael nice we have this maclokes then we have the gemara statements harvey oscar ishmael the al-sabih adam they were associated for low el subhan but the vilnigan has a and you you might expect this start from the villain count the velma gown has a very interesting deok in the gemura the gemara could have just said ishmael the gemara could have said that laws like rabbi ishmael or the mark would have said it in the negative but the gemara does not make the statement that way the gemara instead makes an empirical observation many followed the path of rabbi ishmael and they were successful and many followed the path of rabbi shimon bayochi and they were not successful so the velma gone understands the gemara is not negating the path of rabbi sherman it's simply pointing out it is not appropriate for most people most people should follow the way of rabbi ishmael but says the vilnigan in every generation there are yeshide special individuals whose faith in god is so great that they are expected and in fact they want to do this they are expected to renounce their connection to the economic activity of the world and devote themselves totally together i want to point out obviously you know within the haredi world of marriage israel we're not following that pathway because instead of saying it's like everybody does it and people often ask the question well how do i know if i'm supposed to be a rabbi shimon bar yochai person or a rabbi ishmael person that's right you can try it but the way i understand it is it's not really a function of how well you can learn it's really a function of how deep is your ammuna in hashem and how much you're willing to sacrifice to serve god meaning rav shimon barikali is not saying sit and learn and you'll get a cadillac in an air-conditioned house you know in a fancy neighborhood in your shelagh no that's not the deal but if you're a person whose love of hashem is so great that bread and water does not bother you and your faith in hashem is so great that you know hashem will give you what you need then you can separate yourself from the world but even then i want to point out it has to be a joint decision with your wife and the children et cetera meaning the resources laundry used to make the famous statement you can't be ethic on somebody else's account right so if i'm a bread and water person and my wife is miserable i'm not allowed to be a bread and water person but nevertheless the point i'm making is that the idea that i want to learn in caldell and have a comfortable life that's not what rabbi shima richard is talking about he's talking about balayam number one and he's talking about people whose love of torah is so great that they just don't need the material pleasures of the world in fact they saw an interesting story that um there was a baker in the panavic yeshiva who was engaged to a young lady and the son brought his kaava to to meet rafshak who was the resident of panavic and they spoke for a while and the woman told rafshak in order that my husband should learn i am willing to take on every hardship i will live in bread and water i will sleep in the floor i will have one dress you know not only for the week but for shabbos too i will suffer no matter what it takes for my husband to learn torah sounds good so when the woman left the room rafshak told the husband break off this engagement immediately what's the shot because if the woman's attitude and it's an understandable attitude is i'm suffering but i'm doing it for torah a person cannot live a life of being a perpetual martyr eventually you resent it eventually you get angry eventually you hate it you despise it you want to get out of it reshack says the optimal mindset is not i am suffering so you should learn torah rather the love of torah is so great then i'm not really suffering whatever it is i'm giving up is so small as compared to what we're getting and that's a high madrega in fact i can tell you i know myself that within the colon world again i mean there are obviously many many many exceptions but um there's sometimes a great deal of of a marital discord because the colon life is is has a lot of deprivation etc and it's extremely rough on many many wives they they're taught in basiaco that they have to sacrifice sacrifice sacrifice but again if you enter a marriage with the idea that i am suffering and i am sacrificing that is not really a recipe for happiness the happiness has to be i see this as so much better than the alternative that it's really not even a sacrifice so the villain this is the villain of god's point again the vilnigan's point is that the gemara does not reject the media of rabbi shimon bar yochai but it's saying that it is a media that is limited to special unique individuals and it is not the normal path that should be followed by most people most people need to combine their torah learning with some form of parnassa and by the way the the importance of pranossa is not only because it brings in money although that's a major importance but it gives a person a sense of dignity it gives a person a sense that they're able to support their family that's a very very important psychological aspect that a person uh no needs that i can take care of my wife and my children and and the like okay so with this film the gun the brisker ruff answers and again i'm going to segue back to shema and you'll see how this is connected the vilnigan answers a very very perplexing contradiction in a mishnah at the end of massachusetts conducion the of massachusetts education discusses the various obligations that parents have towards their children and rabbi meyer mentions at the end of massachusetts the olam yolamed adam espino um a parent must teach his son and that may be his daughter today as well umnas a profession a trade nakia that's clean now it's interesting what clean means clean can either mean literally try to get him a job that he doesn't get his hands dirty or clean can refer more probably to honesty and integrity a clean job vacava and one that's relatively easy meaning it's not overly time consuming so the person has time for family and for torah learning and for mitzvos so rabby mayer seems to be following the same view of rebbe ishmael that it's part of a parental responsibility to teach my son a trade now today you know in the olden days it might be that if the father was a tailor he would teach his son to be a tailor today we teach our children a trade primarily by paying tuition for college or training programs or whatever it would be but whatever it is a parent has an obligation to empower and enable their child to make a living that also has a lot of relevance today about secular education etc and i don't want to get into all of those issues so if we were to match up this view with massachusetts brachos we would say rebbe mayer equals rabbi ishmael and the only difference is he elevates it to a parental responsibility rabbi ishmael simply says a person should have a parnassa rebbe mayer adds it is a parental obligation to give the child those tools then a few months later there's another rabbi rabbi nahurai who says forget about parnassa meniac i would forget all professions in the world all traits ain't i will not teach my son anything ella torah except for torah he'll be married so that'll be the question so it seems at first glance that rabbi mayer is following the view of rabbi ishmael and rabbi nuhurai is following the view of rabbi we would literally match up the two rabbis in kadusan with the two rabbis in brachos but israeli poston said here is the problem the gemara in aravind tells us that rabbi mayer and rabbi nahurai are the same person in fact mayir in hebrew means to illuminate and nahorai is the same thing except aramaic just like people have right you can have joseph and joseph same name sir we may have two names meyer was his hebrew name but he also went by an aramaic name no right now if it's the same guy you have a real problem how could he first say a parent must treat must teach his child to trade and then the same person says a few lines later i would teach my son only torah but says the brisker of based on the vil nagon we have a wonderful way of reconciling those two statements because notice the difference in wording the statement of refmer is stated as a general rule a parent must teach his child a profession the statement of revenue right is not stated as a general rule he doesn't say a parent should teach his son only torah he says i myself know that my children are so unique are so special that for them they are capable of living on the madreka of rabbi shuman so it's not a stira at all uh because it's exactly what the gemara in bracha says for the heart the way the will negan interprets it for the harbai for the masses you follow rabbi ishmael and that's the parental duty to teach my son a profession but for yeshide who are very very unique and now as i said it's not just in their iq their learning ability but in the ramuna in their faith in their willingness to sacrifice and not even look at it as a sacrifice rebbe mayer says my children can and should live on the level of rebbe shimon and brian that's why it's so meduyak that the wording is so different rabbi mayer she speaks about a general clown rabbi nahura he was author of mayor speaks about amy malamade espinis not it's not going to read it is it do you read it i would only teach beni my son or bonai my sons now what's interesting to me is that there is a famous story in massachusetts brachas in fact we may have mentioned even two weeks ago but i think we've mentioned it before rebbe mayer had a very exceptional wife his wife was brewia and bruya was very brilliant and very learned she was the daughter of one of the ten martyrs who were killed by the romans rajyan and breyer was the daughter of anybody he was the one who was wrapped up in a safer torah and set on fire and he said the parchment is burning but the letters are flying up to to shamayim et cetera so bruyere was his daughter and the gamora brachos gives us uh two stories about breoye both of them which are very famous the first story is that rabbi mayor had enemies who were making his life miserable and he wanted to curse them that god should punish them and take them out of commission and breuria told him david says sins should be destroyed from the world and then you're not going to have reshaying anymore don't pray for the destruction of sinners pray for the destruction of sin so that evildoers will do chuva and become close to god very very fundamental principle tim by the way that does raise a very fascinating theological question which i will allude to but it's not my topic and that is can you pray that god should cause a sinner to do chuva now you've got a problem there the problem is how colby de shamayam everything is in the hands of god rich poor sick healthy our success and failure in life is up to god but there's one thing that god does not determine god does not determine if i will be righteous or not righteous that's up to me that's free will you're not born good and you're not born bad god doesn't make you good god doesn't make you bad because if you believed in pre predestination as some religions did and do then there can't be accountability how can i be responsible for my bad if god made me do it how can i be rewarded for my good if god made me do it the whole idea of reward and punishment suggests responsibility accountability but you can't have responsibility or accountability without free will this is very fundamental free will is the predicate of chuva it makes shuva possible now if that's the case then what is brewery's point pray that they do tuva god is not going to make them do chuva if they want to do cuba they'll do it on their own and if they don't they won't so what type of prayer can i offer now the martial asks a question and the martial says well what about me can i pray that i do truly that you can do because you can say to god i really want to do shiva god help me out so then we have another rule if you want to do something hashem will help you but if i pray for a person who does not want to do truva that god should make and want to do shiva is that not a violation of the principle of free will it's a very good tasha so one answer the simplest answer would be this god is not going to make somebody do truva that has to be their decision but you know there are a lot of experiences in life that can push us in one direction or another who are we going to bump into at dakota are we going to bump into some rude religious jew who pushes me away and then i say to myself if that's what religious jews are i want nothing to do with them or will i meet a religious jew who's pious and kind and wants to help me now that's going to make a very big difference one type of jew that i meet will inspire me to repentance the other type of jew i would meet god forbid not always but might turn me off and all of that who do you meet right so when i pray that somebody should do juva i'm not really praying god make them religious god is not going to make them religious that's going to be their choice but i pray god please put the experiences in their lives that can inspire them in a good way and keep them away from the experiences that might be negative that you can pray that you can pray for right i can pray that they should be in environments that are conducive to finding the truth okay so that's story number one about breweria story number two about breweria though is a tragic story that is rebbe mayer and bruya had two sons i don't know if there were other children and the two sons came home from the beta madrid and they complained of headaches and they went to take a nap and they died in their sleep they died it was shabbos rabbi mayor came home and he said i noticed that the boys left the base meadows what was going on and she said well i don't know what's going on she didn't want to tell him but she said i have a shyla to ask you months ago years ago somebody gave me two jewels to watch like two jewels to watch until they came back from a trip and now they want the jewels back do i have to give it to them surabhi mayor said what type of question is it it's their property of course you have to give it back to them so she took ruby mayor upstairs to the bedroom and she removed the blankets that was covering the the bodies and she showed him that their two sons have died and she said these are the precious jewels that the owner gave us to watch and protect and the owner now wants to take them back so i'm just wondering if maybe those were the very sons that revenue was talking about when he said and the sons were alive at that point that these sons were on the madriga of rabbi shimon prayer and they were taken like the greatest sadiq were sometimes taken from the world like nadavanavir when they died our institutes and sons moshe said god was sanctified by the holiest ones that he took from this world i don't know i'm just uh making a biographical connection between robbie mayers robbie neroy's sons that he refers to in the mission condition and the story in massachusetts okay so with all of this background let's go back to the question that i started with and that is there are two discrepancies between the first paragraph of shema and the second paragraph of shema the first paragraph of shema is written singular you shall love god with all of your heart that's washing the second paragraph is written bolas on rabim plural that's difference number one difference number two is the first paragraph of shema mentions three things love hashem with all of your heart with all of your soul and with all of your might the second paragraph of shema only mentions all of your hearts and all of your soul it does not mention all of your might so now let's see if this can give us a little bit of explanation two principles here principle number one one might posit that when the torus speaks singular it is because there is an aspect of the message that only applies to unique individuals you're going to have to test this proposition because i i understand there may be a lot of contradictions to it but one might say if something's balash on yokrid it is addressed to the special yard and if something is balashon rabim it is addressed to the general collectivity of everybody that's point number one and therefore there is something in the first paragraph that's only for the yacht and the second shema is for everybody that's the plural singular now second point we discussed this last week what does it mean to serve god with all of your heart we talked about the idea that even the negativity in you even the yetzer yatzahara can be used and harnessed to serve god such as um you know if you can't sit still and learn for many hours you can become an organizer of events and surface in that way and all of your soul is of course the mitzvah to give up your life for the big three before you do idol worship or sexual immorality or murder right i give up my life for god but what is the third one with all of your might so rashi gives you shot number one is the willingness to give up all of your money for god now perhaps we might say what that means specifically is to forego economic activity to devote my life to serve god without any expectation of a connection to money in other words rabbi shimon bar yochai and the reason why it's in the first parsha is because the first parsha is bolos and this ability to sacrifice any connection to money is only appropriate for a yakid and that's why it's bolas and yachin because most people are supposed to follow the anaga of rabbi ishmael but the second's parsha of which is balushan rabhim and therefore it is not addressed to the unique individual it is referring to the collectivity of israel so every jew must love god with all of their heart and every jew must be willing to die before they violate the big three of aeros but it doesn't say they must renounce their connection to money because for carrots they're supposed to generate income in fact that's why the next verse is because that is the media of rabbi ishmael and what do hazal say for most people they are supposed to supposed to follow the media of rabbi ishmael right so the same way rebbe mayer says as a general rule teach your child the trade but then carves out an exception for people who are in the madrega rubbish that for the yakit there's a renunciation of maudeka but for the rabbim you're not supposed to renounce that connection because you're supposed to follow the meda of rabbi ishmael and in fact this might be a oh okay well i'll leave that so that would explain the discrepancies in the shema now what's interesting is and i think what's very important is that if the second paragraph of shema is communicating a message that applies to everybody and that's why they're not expected to give up their connection to the odes to the money to economic activity but it's still true that they have to love god with all of their hearts and all of their soul that's very interesting because many people might say oh loving god with all of my hearts that's beyond me that's a madrega only for the greatest sadhikam that is not a madriga that an average person is able to obtain but you see badass specifically in the second parasha of shema which is addressed to the average person and that's why they're not expected to give up their money so to speak they'll be engaged in prainasa but they still must love god with all of their heart and all of their soul so that's an important idea that hashem is not an esoteric idea that is far removed from our reality but it's something that is supposed to be accessible and available and reachable to all of us now i think i may have mentioned two weeks ago i don't remember that there are different ways one comes to abbas hashem there is according to the rambam the generator of abbat hashem is it's an outgrowth of awe and reverence it's kind of you know i'm going to use more trivial examples sometimes you see an awe-inspiring sight and it may literally take your breath away you see the grand canyon or something like that and from the awe the rambam says maybe not towards the grand canyon comes a sense of love because you see god's greatness you see god's perfection you see the universe that he made with all of the stars and the planets and the different animals and that generates awe and reverence which is hashem not fear of punishment but yera in the sense of awe and reverence and from that awe comes a sense of love because we are attuned really in fact rav salvatrik describes it as the the aesthetic sense of man right we are we are instinctually uh connected to beauty when you see something beautiful it triggers a positive reaction and there's an aspect of beauty that inheres in perfection for example mathematicians often speak of mathematics with almost a sense of love it may sound a little peculiar if you're not a mathematician because they see in mathematics such elegance such logic such coherence such consistency tamudic learning can be that way as well there's a sense of arts again not everybody is is hardwired to see it in those particular contexts but there are people many people who could feel towards the elegance of a talmudic argument the same beauty that others might see in looking at a painting because they see symmetry and they see balance and they see harmony so according to the rambam love of god stems from the aesthetic nature of god's perfection and therefore love and awe are not opposites people often think fear of god and love of god are opposites the rabbi learns no it is fear of god fear not in the sense of fear but in the sense of reverence and all that gives rise to love of god because i see such perfection you know even a person like albert einstein right now albert einstein did not believe in a personal god that that's a big problem obviously he did not believe in a god that commanded the jewish people to do mitzvot but he certainly believed in a god that was the creator of heaven and earth and what brought him to that belief was he saw such a symmetry such a beauty such a coherence such a logic and of course he had a much deeper understanding than most of us will ever have but as he contemplated the order within the universe his heart was filled with a certain love for the creative intelligence that manifested them that is why for those of you that have more of a physics background when quantum mechanics when niels bohr another jew very very brilliant extremely brilliant jew developed an alternative school of physics based on quantum mechanics which is everything is indeterminate probabilistic things don't follow a coherent pattern you know things fall apart all the time einstein refused to accept it einstein basically said his famous statement he said in german he doesn't believe that god plays with dice he saw coherence so that's the rambam's answer so the rambam talks about love of god as being an aesthetic response to god's perfection that you get both from studying torah and right science can give a person that love others ground love of god in a much more personal experiential way and that is the notion of gratitude you look at your life and life is often hard and and there are people that suffer tremendously and you know that's always going to be a difficult problem but even people who suffer tremendously sometimes have a tremendous love for god because they they also see the blessings that god has given them and certainly for most of us who barack hashem do not have to go through the tremendous nissan of that suffering a person comes to love god by focusing on gratitude in which you know god gave me a family god gave me a home god gave me a partner god gave me the ability to live in israel or live in your shalom whatever it would be that's why we're so fixated on broccolis we make broccolis and everything we make broccolis and a glass of water we make breakfast on eating an apple we make breakfast when we go to the bathroom because what is all of that about notice pay attention be grateful don't take things for granted the word for gratitude in hebrew is or the phrase for gratitude is now literally does not mean gratitude means recognizing the good that's the first step don't be oblivious you know mindfulness is the relatively not totally new but it's the relatively new buzzword now in the jewish community because mindfulness is very very big in popular psychology and although mindfulness was largely derived from eastern religions etc but but but the central concept of mindfulness is obviously what judaism is very much about noticing living in the moment appreciating the set that hashem is giving you this very moment i am not a frightening time now i'm not going to say that's wrong because obviously if we're going to be on trial for our life in a few weeks there is something to be a little scared about but it's not the complete picture because ello is also a time of love of reconciliation of togetherness remember that the most famous rem is there are different illusions in the bible to the month of ello and the most famous illusion is from the possibility the song of songs and the song of songs is romantic love poetry in fact there were rabbis who did not want to include it in the tanakh because they said this is love poetry what are you putting in romantic novels but rabbi akiva got it in because rabbi akiba said if all of the songs are holy shirashirim is the holiest of the holy that's why it's called the song of songs because it is a metaphor it is an allegory the princess the woman who is passionately in love with the shepherd is the jewish people and the shepherd is none other than god and all of the misses there are all sorts of scenes where the lover is knocking at the door and the woman says i'm asleep already and then when she looks for the lover the lover is no longer there that's the history of the jewish people that god wants to redeem us and we're not ready and when we're ready the time is not here yet all of this and that's why shirashiram is such an amazingly deep and moving song or poem when you look at it because it is the love of god and the jewish people and the pathos of that love and even the sadness of that love because there are times that one party is ready to consummate the relationship and the other party is not so in shira shirim is a very famous refrain anee li dodi this is the princess saying i am for my beloved i pledge my faithfulness to my beloved video d lee and my beloved pledges himself to me take the first letter of those four words ah ni aleph lid odi lamit vidodi love now this is enormously important because on one hand we look at elo oh trepidation gotta do shiva i've got to look at all the bad things that i've done you know god's out to get me i'm going to be judged maybe i'm going to be guilty i'm scared i'm depressed but that's not the right way to look at it ello is about love it's about acceptance god wants us to be better people and god is is not waiting for us to fail god wants us to succeed and therefore you have to remember that ello is the time when we can feel god's love and when we feel god's love we in turn grow stronger in our ability to love god because all of us love that which loves us right when i feel someone's love i love them right because of the time when we can grow in love of god because we can feel the love of the love of god and that's why it's very important there's a famous muscle uh those of you that have connection with chabad and probably have heard this module a million times it's taken from the alta reby which really from the zoa in which the month of ello is called hamelach the whole year the king is in the palace you can meet with him but you got to make appointments etc but once a year the king goes out into the field and anybody who wants to approach him can approach him that's called hamilach the king is in the field and the month of elo is hamelech okay so when we talk about love of god this is the month where we can actually try to connect to god not only out of fear although one cannot deny that that's an aspect here too but even the fear you know the fear uh i mean this is a maybe a a talk that needs to be continued you know there is punishment there is gehenna jews believe in hell yeah we do believe in it although we don't believe in eternal damnation but the nature of hell is very analogous to physical therapy i mean imagine this god forbid a person broke their legs and a person has to learn to walk again and they undergo physical therapy and that physical therapy can be excruciatingly painful you can hear people screaming sometimes let me alone people might even say i don't care if i'm not don't walk again just leave me alone and the good therapist says we got to go on so hell we don't know exactly what it is but hell is very painful but it's painful in the nature of spiritual therapy to cleanse our souls so we will be able to connect to god so even health is not an angry god trying to hurt us but it's a god that's trying to give us the therapy we need so we can connect to him in a loving way yeah it hurts and you scream we'll scream and it would be better if we would take care of ourselves spiritually just like take care of ourselves physically so we won't wouldn't need the therapy but if we messed up the therapy itself is part of what is good for us okay so it all comes to love even the ghana is part of what god is giving us as a loving god okay so i wish you all a good week and we'll see you next week [Music] yes [Music]