Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: Pesach and The Metzorah - Confronting the need to change

[Music] so I uh I I had said that we're going to eventually connect this to pesak but initially I'm going to talk about the institution of SAS SAS is uh typically translated as leprosy the modern condition of leprosy is a disease called Hansen's Disease and that does not correspond to the description of SAS in the Torah uh in fact according to the oral law according to kazal SAS is not a medical condition at all Saras is a physical manifestation of a spiritual rat it is a message from God that something has to be corrected in one's life addiction to that say again addiction it could be something similar to that of a spiritual that that's correct uh so the quarantine of the mats as we will see is not because of contagious disease but it's to give him an opportunity to reflect and introspect and do chuva uh with respect to whatever it is that called caused the SAS now the ramban points out that SAS is actually a kind of gift from God because it's a feedback that you need to correct something you know I remember when I taught in law school so in a typical law school classroom there was only one exam at the end of a semester there are no quizzes not even papers for most courses so as a result a lot of students are very anxious they always want to know uh they want feedback how doing and the truth is spiritually we also are sometimes a drift like how does Hashem view me you know and uh it's interesting that SAS is a feedback albe it a negative feedback but it's AES telling you that there's something to correct and that is why the ramban makes an interesting correlation that SAS exists as a hak institution only when there is prophecy and that's why at the time of the beginning of the second mikdash when we lost NAA we also lost the H institution of SAS because it is a form of Prophecy although it's not the most Pleasant prophecy uh that that we would like to hear now uh we know the Torah divides SAS into three groups there is Saras of the Flesh on the person there is Saras in garments and there is SAS in houses and kazal say that although there are a number of AOS that cause the SAS to come but the primary AA foras of the person is and indeed MIT Mo he who says bad things about people the primary AA foras of the Garment is G that means arrogance and GAA because clothing is often a vehicle for which one expresses their their honor in the world and SAS of the house is a result of means selfishness in the sharing of your possessions like you don't offer your hospitality to people you don't give sta you're not willing to do and uh therefore you're not using your home as a place to welcome people and you're also concealing your assets so to speak I don't give charity I don't have enough money and what happens when your house gets sass is you have to take everything out of the house so all of that hidden wealth that you might have in the house gets exposed now today it would be questionable because we don't keep most of our wealth in the house but okay but be it as it may symbolically the expression is all of your possessions are going to be exposed Nowa there was a on this because the gar actually says thatat of the bay never happened according to one opinion meaning it's a theoretical that never existed on the other hand there's a contrary gorra that looks at it the other way that first Hashem punishes you in other words it's going up in punishment first Hashem punishes You by making your home not habitable then it's your clothing and only then it goes to the Sarat or basor which implies that Sarat or basur doesn't come until you first go through the other two stages and yet the other gar says that that stage one literally never happen so obviously there are M of this nature they're hard to explain I mean another example is the bious son who is killed because he stole from his parents the Ben s umor so according to one opinion in the gamar there never was such a case the hakas are so many and that it never happens and the next line is a certain Rabbi said it happened and I was there and I uh was next to his grave right so how could there be a mlus about something like that but okay but you see that in occasionally there are even M on matters that you would expect to be absolutely factual and you know how could there be a how do you say for example both opinions are right of that nature okay that's another question heard wife a way to understand that contradiction of Y that the Rabbi says I actually stood on his grave yeah because of if it's true this person really is he's so self-destructive he never gets to court not that he actually was declared but he was technically that's a nice shot in other words he committed suicide or got killed uh in a in a drug shooting or something that's very good that that's a very nice shot meaning i' I've encountered the type of Personality that would have been a Ben that's very that's very excellent okay but that doesn't answer my question of SAS okay we'll have to ask him if he has aat for that okay by the way just Derek aab I don't know how many people are familiar with he's a big rash in Miami and my own son attended his Yesa and uh he used did you say what was oh okay and my son would often tell me that uh this is the uh Greatest Secret in the yes world I guess not so much of a secret but you know a lot of people don't realize what a uh a great Risha he is and what a great Yesa he has so it's kind of a uh so if any of you have grandchildren or children in the states who are looking for y bu uh Miami is certainly something to uh something to consider a little commercial I will send him the bill uh after afterwards uh but in any event if you go through the idea of SAS the rambam who of course was a great doctor makes the point that people think that the quarantine of the MS is because of infectious disease and in fact they want to make a point oh the Torah identified infectious disease but the the rabam says no SAS is not a contagious disease except in the spiritual sense and as I said the isolation of the mits is that number one lanara is toxic lanar destroys communities lanara brings disension so yeah in a sense it's contagious we have to isolate him because there is toxicity in that type of behavior and he should realize that and this brings a person to Chua but yeah it is manifested in a physical way no no of course SAS is a physical condition but it's a physical condition that comes from spiritual sin yeah no it is it is it is very physical great lens to describe no no of course it's it's very very physical but it's it's not a disease in the sense that in fact one should understand that even the quarantine of the mats is not a real quarantine I mean his family can visit him in fact anybody can visit him in other words I'm allowed to visit a mats I'm allowed to talk to a mats he's not totally isolated but he is and the lesson to him is yeah yeah you are dangerous you are a Typhoid Mary not in the sense that somebody might might catch leprosy from you but in the sense that your behavior destroys communities destroys marriages destroys Shalom bias but there's another Point as well we want the person to feel what it's like to to be lonely to be isolated that a person should recognize kind of the pain that maybe he caused others andash Shara creates Division and by experiencing the pain that he caused others that is ma person to a great a great idea of Chua there also possibility of forced introspection by having being alone even though he's not completely isolated he's forced to he's got all this time well yes that that that's correct you know the term Penitentiary uh was a term that the Quakers introduced in the in the uh I think the 18th century uh in Pennsylvania because they looked at prison as the place of penitence the place of reflection the place of chuva now whether that corresponds to the modern prison is is pretty questionable because of reism and and the environment that you're in sometimes it happens sometimes people generally uh even Jews there Jews who have become Bal Chua uh in in prison certainly many uh Christians were born again and it seems in many cases it was genuine other times of course the prison environment is so degrading so corrosive corrosive so immoral that a person who goes to prison for a relatively minor offense could actually God forbid become unfortunately a a hardens criminal so whether penitentiaries maybe that's why we don't use the word Penitentiary that much today but the the older word for prison was Penitentiary so we have the isolation as forcing him to look into himself we have the isolation that he should recognize the toxicity of his behavior and we have the isolation that he should experience the pain of the pudim that he caused in society now the one thing that we don't have an answer for is clearly the Torah didn't create a system where every time somebody spoke he got s if that would be the case Eric would be one big lepers Colony I mean what are you going to say every time I speak leara so obviously we're talking about habitual but even then we have to assume we don't have numbers that for reasons that only a KES knows there must have been selective enforcement meaning Ru might have gotten SAS and Shimon didn't Hashem deals with Shimon in a different way even though Shimon may have the same AA or May even be worse maybe only the more righteous people got SAS as a direct message from hasem and the will get punished in I don't have the answer meaning all I can say is I can't imagine that there ever was a system where every person who spoke lanara became a Ms first of all you'd have a Manpower shortage the kohanim have to deal with this so we would have to assume that this was a selectively Meed out type of punishment that only hes knows exactly why which is true for the of punishments generally right all punishments some people get them some people don't uh in any particular case there's an ultimate but how it becomes manifested in particular is something we really don't know now one final introductory point but then I I'll go into the main thing which will connect to PES is the pivotal role of the cohain when a person has the Tas and we'll just talk about the Tas on the flesh which is a white splotch he goes to a Coen and a Coen determines if this is or not even the greatest in the world if he's not a Coen has no jurisdiction no power to Proclaim SAS if the Coen is ignorant he can use a as his advisor so to speak but it's the Coen that pronounces now what's amazing is that the is not like a doctor who is simply identifying a disease rather Hally the mits does not become a mits until the cohain proclaims it to be so it's like the umpires used to say it ain't a strike until I call it a strike uh well by SAS it's even more so when the Coen says this is SAS he's not saying you were a MS rather you're only in Ms from now and that is why we have the OD that there are times in which the co is not supposed to declare somebody a Ms because it would take away from the joy of of another experience for example if somebody wakes up with SAS the co does not declare SAS until after the uh if somebody is married then for the entire the entire seven days of no declaration is made the r himself uses that as a proof that we're not dealing with quarantine because of disease if we were dealing with quarantine because of disease it would be irresponsible to say I'm not going to Proclaim this disease because of sim you know I mean you got you got to take care of it okay example was sh overides truth yes yes but this is a little different because the idea is it literally does not have the of SAS until there is a declaration now there are two points to be made here first of all the role of a Coen aats uses his speech in a negative way kohanim are exemplified by Aon who is O Shalom for Shalom Aon used his speech to bring people together in a sense we tell them at s you you have abused your power of speech to create dissension to create M you must go to the cohain and absorb how what the Coen does with the K because the goal of Judaism generally is not to Simply make you silent somebody might say for example oh well is so serious I just won't talk that would actually be sinful when the Torah says breathed into Adam the spirit of Life the tarus says in Aramaic and this is very unusual foras because unas is a very literal translation here unas introduces a concept that the Divine Soul within a person expresses Itself by R through the power of speech and therefore one is supposed to talk one is not supposed to forgo the k ofor but you use dbor in positive ways to exchange Torah ideas to build people up to offer Comfort to offer even to give mus when it's warranted and in a proper way but not to degrade and not to destroy they tell the story when the wrote his saare on the Lords ofar so there was a who wanted to visit the to kind of check him out because a lot of a lot of people had this idea that what is writing is not not possible for a human being to keep I want to see if he's a hypocrite if he lives by the standards that he writes about so the person noticed that the you know had guests and chabas as poor as he was and uh he was quite talkative he was telling stories and telling M and telling and then he noticed that the had a son-in-law who was such a that he didn't say anything he would be quiet he didn't want to say anything that would be improper so at first glance the person said why are people making such a b big deal about the of the son-in-law seems to be so much greater because he doesn't say a word but then as the person was listening to the he said you know it was an amazing thing that as talkative relatively talkative as the was there was not a single L there and he realized that's a much greater accomplishment it's a much greater accomplishment to interact with people to connect with people to use your deeper and positive ways rather than simply say I'm going to be quiet you know I want to play it safe I'm going to be quiet right so that's one idea of the Coen learn the K can be used in positive in good ways the other aspect is that the whole idea of T teaches me that words create reality because that's exactly his situation it's the co because often a person might justify his Lush and Har by saying saying you know it's only words what do they say sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me right uh we've all heard that statement uh but the truth of the matter is that's patently false uh the broken bones of children can usually usually be healed but some of the psychic wounds that we get from humiliation can stay with us and it's actually very very frightening how even the decisions made by world leaders that can involve you know millions and PE of people are connected to some degree to Childhood taunts on the playground I actually once heard an interview with Richard Nixon where he was you know this is after Watergate after we left the presidency and he was kind of just musing about his life and he's talked about uh the insults in fifth grade amazing thing and certainly when you talk about the Hitlers of the world yakam and the stalins and the uh and even much later Saddam Hussein who was not not in the same league as as that uh that it it's frightening you know the old saying the child is the father of the man is unfortunately very true now of course Hashem runs the world and everything is but the amount of evil that gets Unleashed in the world because of the taunts and humiliations that people suffered as children is quite quite frightening so we have to learn words are realities and therefore the whole h of SAS teaches him the word of the Coen creates a reality now there's something that was reported I'm a little reluctant to say it because some scientists claim it's a madeup story so I'm giving you a warning ahead of time that this is a contested story but you know if it's true it's a really really nice interesting point but it may not be true and that is some have claimed uh they've looked at water molecules under an electron microscope and the molecules form different patterns that when words are spoken in kindness and in a gentle way the molecules arrange themselves in a beautiful formation and when there is Harsh insulting derogatory words they form ugly configurations I think the scientific uh research was that when you're in the process of freezing the water or freezing okay that if you're playing let's say you know Hard Rock versus classical rock or right be a difference in the patterns right right right right yeah yes know that that okay that that could be true now as they say though whether that's true is is contested but but but some have said it is true and the truth of the matter is whether that particular example is true or not I think all of us know that words creates energies I mean energies are things that we feel we really can't deny it there is positive energy there is negative energy release of hormones in action well yeah that's that that's true as well there are physiological changes in a person uh you know if someone is insulting you denigrating you you know there are things that happen in the body in the body itself so these are realities and therefore the whole that words make a difference is a very important M so now though in order to connect you to PES I want to take you through what a typical msor would have to has to do in a bit more detail again uh all of the details are such a labyrinth that we are not absolutely going to cover a lot of detail but I'm going to cover what you might call plain vanilla SAS no no pun intended uh and that is a person wakes up and they discover they have a white splotch on their hand hand let's say or on their arm so the H is they are obligated to report to the Coan to a Coan they must go to a CO they can't just deny you know not do anything the co looks at it either with a as an assistant or without a depending on whether the co is capable and the co has to determine does this Hally meet the definition ofas or not in terms of color in terms of size if it does not meet the definition of tarat he simply goes home and goes to a dermatologist okay now let's assume it meets the the definition ofat in terms of size and color so the co quarantines him immediately quarantines him immediately and he is quarantined for a week on day seven the Coen inspects him and looks for one of three signs of called signs of Tuma signs of impurity and any one of these three signs will upgrade him or downgrade him depending you want to describe it how you want to describe it into being a definitive msor one is that if there was a splotch let's say on his arm and uh the hairs were originally black even though there's a white Nega if two of those hairs turned white he is immediately upgraded to a definitive M that's called SAR Lavan but it has to be two hairs the second Simon of Tuma is the Nega the splotch has grown it's bigger than it was even by a little bit that is called Pion and the third Simon of Tuma which is counterintuitive because this seems like something good but it's actually something bad is that in the middle of the Nega there is some clear flesh meaning it was all white uh a week ago and now in the middle there's a spot of of regular flesh that's called mik live flesh so those are three simonm of Tuma they have a common denominator yeah change change no of course yes change that's right uh the the the three simam are the black hair turned white the second is Pion expansion and the third is mik some flesh in the middle which is now clear now if he has any of those S he is a definitive Ms and he will not he will remain in qu until it goes away and then he has to count seven days and he has to bring sacrifices so it may be a week it may be 6 months it may be a year theoretically it may be his whole life although that that's generally not the case but when it goes away he counts seven days bring sacrifices now let's say it's day seven and he doesn't have any of those changes he is quarantined for a second week and then at the end of the second week he is inspected for those three changes if they happen by the end of week number two he's upgraded into permanent SAS until it goes away if not if by the end of the second week there is not a Simon Tuma he goes home even if even though the original leprosy is still there he actually goes home and at that point he deals with a dermatologist he does not deal with the Coen anymore yeah is there a connection between the word Saras and SAR absolutely so absolutely so uh uh sasis is the Greek translation I mean they took the the Jewish word the Greek translation of satat is sasis however today don't worry about it if you have sasis first of all generally speaking it's not the shade of white that would typically be SAS but number two if we don't have the Coen who is authorized to make a prison sess so it's not declared so it's not uh it is not sess in fact the word therapy also is connected to the is a Greek word connected to Rua terapy right so there are many Greek words uh because the they come from the Greek the septent the Greek translation of the Kish introduced these words which later entered English through Greek and then you know Greek influenced Latin and Latin we got incorporated into English English is a mixture of right English is like Yiddish right English is a mixture of many different uh languages there's a Germanic base and then there's also Latin Greek and other things that uh that came in um okay so what I want to talk about is the following and again this will connect to PES I want to talk about what is the spiritual significance of these three Sim of Tuma why would their presence make the person a Ms and why would their absence release the person even though he still has the actual leprosy itself so here's the thing as we said a few moments ago the whole purpose of the msus quarantine is to give him time and opportunity to reflect on his sins do AES do a Chua to realize the toxicity of his behavior and to feel the pain that he caused others now whenever we're confronted and of course the SAS itself is Hashem telling him you got work to do but whenever we're confronted with things that need to be changed or worked on or improved we immediately go into a defense modality we have defense mechanisms that try to get us off the hook and there are three possible mechanisms that may be involved mechanism number one we'll call self-justification meaning instead of acknowledging I did something wrong I will give myself excuses and justifications for what I did in the case of lush and Hara which is only one example there are numerous justifications I put that in quotation marks that people give themselves although they're not helically valid a person might say everything I said is the 100% true now obviously everyone here knows that the fact that something is true has nothing to do with a heter of lanara in fact the very definition of lanara is derogatory speech that is true otherwise it's called Mo shamer something else but still psychologically a person often defends himself internally by saying it's 100% true or the person is much worse than I said I could have said something worse or the person hurt me so I'm giving him a little back of his own medicine now called Revenge but once again uh Revenge itself is something we often justify he did it to me I'm going to show him so the very first defense mechanism we have is simply a denial to ourselves that we did anything wrong we invent all sorts of justifications one of the English expressions for justifying something that you really know is not good is called whitewashing you whiteash that's why Lan Lan yakov's father-in-law lovan is called the white Watcher because all of the deception that lovan engages in he always has some excuse you know when he switches Leia for ra so Lan sounds like the sadic Lan says I'm sorry I don't know where you come from Mister but we are a refined Society where the younger daughter does not get married before her older sister don't you have any D he turns into aob no maybe you take brus away from your older brother we don't do that here right so everything about laan is turning the other side of it making himself look like the righteous person so the SAR Lavan right he goes to the Coen day seven day 14 and the Coen sees there's a white hair that's how shem's message to the person you really haven't started the chuva process yet because you're still in the business of whitewashing go back into the cave and think about it some more in other words it's a Simmon that the chuva has not really begun and therefore you need more time to think about this so it's not so much a message for us it's a message for the person himself now a type of response may actually be the opposite a person may be so overwhelmed by the enormity of their guilt that they feel they've reached a point of no return they feel what's the use of even trying to be better every time I try I fail I mess up again and again and again why should I even bother that comes from what we call Yos Yos giving up despondency I just happened to see a part of a video on cleaning for pesak and you really was a kind of a poignant scene and you know May so maybe something has happened to us where this woman was scrubbing away and she was meticulous she went through every single inch of everything and like AR of PES she just knocked over a box of Cheerios that you know the Cheerios better and you know she just sat down I mean it's not funny it's funny it was portrayed as kind of a funny video but uh she just sat down and cried she sat down on the floor and she just cried and the truth of the matter is this is actually a very understandable response you work so hard and whatever it is could be a diet it could be a health it it could be uh you know vem even in lashar in particular and we fail again and again and again we lose hope we lose uh we lose faith in us in ourselves we lose faith in our Kish even helping us and that is symbolized by expand the Nega gets bigger P meaning you've sinned and your attitude is it's so hopeless I just I'll just keep on doing it what's the point of trying to change but that too is a big Aur because a person has to realize that the power of Chua is great what I was yesterday does not have to be what I am today and what I am today does not have to limit what I can do tomorrow and I have to have faith in hashem's love and faith in my ability that Hashem will give me that even when I have setbacks I can come back as the PK says in mishle that sadic falls seven times and gets up again it's not that the sadic doesn't fall the sadic has failures also that sadic has disappointments whatever they would be they wouldn't necessarily be our in other words that sadic is not eating ham sandwiches whatever it is but but according to his madrea that sadic will encounter spiritual failings but what makes him a sadic is he doesn't give up he gets up again so Pion Pion means expansion of the Nega is essentially the message that you are living in a hopeless uh state of paralyzing guilt but know that that's not the case go back and reflect now the third defense mechanism uh is a little different and that is it may be connected to a a the the second type of personality and that is sometimes when a person is so overwhelmed with their guilt the only way they can deal with it is not to think about it not to think about it meaning I'm not going to allow myself to go there because if I go there I'm going to be dragged down meaning you don't let the AA penetrate the conscious reflection in your art and that's pie that that's Mika what is Mika you're surrounded by the rat of Saras but in the middle everything's fine now this third modality is a little different than the first two the first two modalities denial of responsibility by justification or overwhelming paralyzing guilt although we all go through both of those at different times we can pretty much say they are not proper they are not true and they are not proper the third one may sometimes be necessary I mean Judaism recognizes that sometimes a problem may be so overwhelming that you need to put it on hold you need to put it in the recesses of your Consciousness huh yeah right you have to put it you have to put it away you have to go on you do have to sweep it under the rug as a temporary measure like a denial you say it's not a denial it's just not thinking about it I don't think about it I yeah I know I know it's there it's not it's not denial would mean I I deny that it happened this is not thinking about so so as a temporary measure and temporary is a matter of degree how much time that is it you know is it 50 years you know temporary but eventually you got to confront it though eventually you have to go back when you're strong when you've accomplished when you feel the light Hashem you then go back so the third is also an incomplete Chua but but but it may be justified under the circumstances but therefore that's the symbol of the mik and therefore the mats goes back so essentially the three Sim of Tuma represent the three types of excuses that we have for not dealing with our problem one is we justify the other is we are overwhelmed with guilt and the third is we don't allow ourselves to think about it because it'll typically be paralyzing that's why there's a bit of an overlap and in all of those cases therefore the message is you have not really begun a Chua process you need to go back now if at the end of two weeks there is no Simon Tuma even though he still has the S so apparently the underlying sin is still there but at this point he can become an outpatient at this point we can tell the person listen in the absence of the Sim Tuma the Chua is being undertaken in a very good way you can finish the process at home in the context of your family so it's not saying he didn't have the Tas but it's saying this type of Tas can be dealt with on an outpatient basis because the process of Chua is well undertaken now how do I connect this to to P so all of us know that which is the thing we get rid of on PES is very much connected to the the is described in K as she Isa the leavening agent in the D you know the uh for many years the largest Sader in the world I'm not sure if it's still the case is in Katmandu Nepal the Himalayas and kabad has a Seder for around 2500 people a lot of them are Israelis you know Israelis after they finish military service love to travel all over the place and a lot of them go to Asia with Thailand or Nepal India uh and uh maybe there are a few Orthodox people there but but I would assume the vast majority are not uh Orthodox or not from although since they know Hebrew so obviously they could follow a Seder a little a little better than uh than Americans or anglos could uh but kabad has a say there 2 200 people I'm I'm not sure now if they do but they had and they introduced a little bit of an avantgard Minh and of PES which although it may strike you as a little hippie-ish it's actually quite beautiful and it fits the spirit of be burning thees and that is when they burn thees p in the morning everybody is asked to write on a piece of paper one negative character trait that they want to burn and Destroy and throw it into the fire and burn it with the it so if I have an anger problem I say that I should get you don't put's name in obviously because then you wouldn't be allowed to burn it but uh may I overcome my anger my selfishness my egotism and you throw it into the fire and that should be burnt with the as well now you might say oh aard that's not traditional but the EMS is uh if you look at the prayer not everybody says it but the cabalistic prayer that is recited when we Burnet it kimat says that beish it says just as I have physically destroyed the Kates the physical Kates that I have so too May Hashem help me destroy the humates of my heart that is the Atara so I could serve Hashem in a pure and a good way so this minut of burning bad mid with the fits very much the actual that many people recite uh in when they burned the they tell Another Story Another beautiful story about was doing bikas searching of the with all of his students and they spent hours and hours and hours going through everything and after several hours the tum were very happy because they really felt they did a tremendous job but the rebi started crying and the rebi said we got rid of all of the here but then the rebbi pointed to his chest his heart and he said but what about here who's going to doas in here so the tum gave a beautiful answer he said rebi don't worry about that the Mish says in a place that you don't bring inates you don't have to search rebi the re's heart is a place where no ever goes in so you don't have to do a bedika beautiful beautiful answer but they say that may be a Terrace for the rebi may not be a terce for us or even the of the re right how do you deal with that so we all understand that is about the and part of the liberation of PES is that hem allows us us to be liberated from our Yar to some degree now why is connected to the Yar so the mar gives three reasons why is connected to the reason number one which is the best known reason is represents puffiness right bread puffed up it represents arrogance GAA ego matah which is flat represents humility submission although with the fancy PES rolls they make you know you we see that I mean there there's things that look Mish like bread but okay but say again you have to eat you have to eat you have to eat right so in that sense is GA yes as put yes yes is ego right the alter rebbi in the talks a lot about yes and or and and and like uh so is ego matah is humility that's reason number one that's probably the best known reason but the morale gives two other two other reasons and that ises spoils and rats right if you have bread right bread gets mold and it gets moldy and then gets very disgusting matah doesn't spoil right matah you could eat matah it could be 100 years old uh maybe they have matah from Masada I'm not sure uh that that you could still still eat in various ways uh matah does not spoil without leaven there is no kilal in matah and the third Association is and therefore that's that's why it's connected to the because the aara creates a rat within a person it creates a distancing it creates a contamination a filth within the person matah does not spoil because the Nish that's connected to is always holy and elevated and Noble and good now the third association with the Yahara is actually very interesting as well the morale points out thatat represents passivity and inertia why is that so because if water falls on flour you don't have to do anything to make it humit sometimes people make a mistake they think K is only if there's yeast or a starter not true Hally if water hits regular flour there is absolutely no leavening agent that is added then the definition is after 18 minutes without working the the dough it is Hally treated as the beginning of a fermentation process that makes it even if there's not even a visible sign of anything so humates happens matah requires doing something about it when the water hits the flower I got to act I got to put it in the oven before 18 minutes up in fact it has to be baked before 18 minutes are up because otherwise it's going to become so the morale points out therefore there are three associations between um regarding thear number one is ego matah is humility number twoes is spoilage mat does not spoil number three is passivity and inertia and that allows me to be slept down by the matah is action kadus requires action right the the world just as physics teaches the nature of the world is it winds down towards chaos uh life is like a downward escalator if you simply stand still you are going down you have to consciously strive to go up and that is what matah represents matah is action now if you think about this this corresponds actually very nicely to the three s of a mits because whitewashing the black hair turning white that comes from arrogance when I try to defend my actions when I try when I refuse to admit that I've done anything wrong to myself when I simply give an excuse for everything that I'm doing that actually comes from arrogance and gu now now if you delve more deeply I don't want to psychoanalyze this totally in point of fact arrogance itself often comes from insecurity and a lack of self-esteem I mean that's an interesting point I need to be arrogant because that's the protective veneer that keeps me going but at least on the level of actual justification that is arrogance I am too great to admit that I did something wrong so therefore the Simon Tuma of SAR laavan whitewashing corresponds to the idea ofes as a sign of GAA and arrogance now the pon which is the helplessness and the hopelessness and the despondency of feeling can never change and that's the Yos and therefore I might as well keep on going that represents the progressive rot of bread of theit in which the person feels I've already started down the path of Destruction I might as well keep on going what's the point of trying to change and the third idea of emotional distancing I'm not going to think about it that's literally inertia I'm not going to allow this AA to intrude on my Consciousness because I don't want to deal with it that is quite literally the notion of passivity and inertia and therefore the three Sim of Tuma correspond to the three connections of to the and therefore when we are eradicating the we are eradicating those three Simon of Tuma we try not to live in a state of denial we try to recognize that no matter how many Aus we have done in our lives there is always always always the capacity for growth and we recognize the importance of taking action and not being passive in aod Hashem things do not fix themselves of their own accord you have to we not you I mean we all of us we have to try to work on what we need to work on now again there may be a time and a place as I indicated sometimes you do put things on the back burner because you have to focus on other things that build you up because only when you're in a position of strength are you able to work on konos and sometimes the advice might be don't tackle that problem yet particularly in we often find a metaphor that the way you deal with darkness is not by attacking the darkness but by generating more light so a person builds the mitzvos that they're good at and that kind of gives them strength to then deal with thear so that may be true but eventually you got to deal with it because you can't I think I may have told you this story forgive me for repeating it uh you can't really correct a problem until you acknowledge that it exists and therefore it has to come to the level of Consciousness I think I told you when I uh first moved to Silver Spring Maryland and I was commuting to Baltimore where I taught in the law school so I had to go on the highway 95 North which is a very famous Highway in the east coast and if you're not careful uh there's a turnoff to 95 South in the right lane so I remember when I first moved and I was not so conversent with the Road and I was distracted so all of a sudden I'm driving and I noticed the Washington Monument and the Jefferson Memorial which I never remembered seeing on my way to Baltimore uh so I thought to myself uh for a second oh no am I in Virginia and I didn't want to acknowledge that because I didn't know how to correct myself so instead I started I I remember I started telling myself you know maybe you do see it on the way to Baltimore maybe you never maybe you never noticed I literally you know I can't even explain this I knew I was wrong but I didn't want to admit it I started think you know maybe maybe you do see it yeah yeah so the point is uh you know of course in Investments people do this all the time this is the the proverbial statement throwing uh good money after money right I invested $1,000 in something it's a bust I keep on putting more and more money in thinking it's going to change and of course I'm ignoring Einstein's famous observation that the definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over again expecting a different result and we do this all the time and in we do it as well but p is about being honest again and we're not talking about confessions to everybody in the world and the new York Times or Jerusalem Post or whatever it is but to be honest to yourself because after all the reality doesn't change you know uh we can go through all sorts of denials and all sorts of games but the reality is the reality and Hashem knows the truth certainly so uh we're doing ourselves a service if we are honest with ourselves and if one is honest with oneself then one can indeed take the steps that are necessary so I want to wish everybody May may we be uh to burn not only the physical but thees of our hearts uh and to achieve a connection withes that's very intimate and very dear and very very precious and in that way the holiday of P will be a of G for each individual person and be it should be a stepping stone to the G of Cl Isel with Masia and good [Music] l