Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: Power of Speech and Prayer

[Music] okay hi everybody thank you for coming I apologize for being a bit late for some reason the buses were very slow today today uh first the sh tonight is dedicated ra to and margit may they have and may our Torah be for a for them and for all in addition fori and um Henry lvin the brother of Lori Poston lvin and Ray Lavin uh he was nifter he passed away this week after a long illness and uh may he have a a wonderful share in Ganan and may our learning beo Nish in addition s bzra Hali whose yard site is the 26th of a and this is the mother of Jeremy and Jillian Bernstein again we hope that the learning should be at uh we are uh in the period of 3 weeks uh we just we had the fast of of the 17th of Tas this year on the 18th of thas because the 17th of Tas was on chabas and there actually is quite a few connections between the paraa and the three weeks and I just want to talk first a little bit about the three weeks in general and then we'll Zoom down into the details of the of the paraa ruk of Lin uh in different places in hisum offers three different perspectives on the three weeks there three related observations although they can in fact be connected uh the first observation is let's talk about the 17th of Thomas you now the 17th of Thomas originally would have been a very very joyous day that was the 40th Day from Matan Torah that was the day that mosha Renu was in fact did come down with the luos the tablets that would be given to B Israel that in fact was what he brought down but we lost faith we lost confidence we were afraid he wasn't going to show up we worshiped the golden calf so as a result instead of the 17th of tamas being a day of Matan Torah it became a day of Nishu and that in turn led to a whole bunch of other tragedies in the course of time uh y being broken into and the cessation of the carbon tet etc etc but at least in potential the 17th of tamas was supposed to be kind of a day of redemption a day of GAA p is the day we left MIT shivu is the day we heard the Ten Commandments shivas would have been the day that we physically got the luos from Hashem that represented the Torah so it was a potential day of Joy a day of redemption a day of freedom because tell us there was no one who is free except one who was connected to the Torah has a fascinating correlation he actually says that the three weeks which start from shivas SAS and then they culminate in Tish represent so so he counted three weeks plus Tish correspond to the four leonos of redemption when God took us out of MIM he utilized four stages of Redemption the three weeks and Tish above are four stages of estrangement and distancing they're kind of like the if you remember the old cameras before they were digital cameras they're like the photographic negatives of the four Lonas of GAA that if the four Lonas of GAA are progressive levels of closeness nearness to God the three week on the ninth of is distancing from God but here is the thing the same way you could ascertain a photograph by looking at the negative I look at the negative and I I know what the photograph looks like so too it is the process of estrangement that simultaneously is bringing us closer to God everyone knows the famous saying I think it may be from Shakespeare but it's a famous English proverb absence makes the heart grow fer it is sometimes an awareness of how far we are from God that stirs up within our heart a yearning and that yearning can be the deepest closeness that can exist Sook says on one hand the three weeks and the ninth of are the opposite of the four Lon of GAA because the four Lon of gula are levels of closeness and these are levels of estrangement and distance but at the same time it's a mirror image because estrangement and distance can generate a passionate yearning for closeness and that itself creates the closeness that creates the closeness the yearning to be close to God makes you close to God that's how it works because God yearned simultaneously I remember reading once uh not that uh she's any type of source this uh was a novel by Anne Rand uh this probably the first time I've ever mentioned an ran uh but not the famous ones not Atlas Shrug and not the fountain something that she wrote the alusa uh it was about life in the Soviet uh Soviet Union it was like a novel against the oppression and it talked about two lovers who were arrested and they were sentenced to life imprisonment and uh the court system was so cruel that they wouldn't even allow them to kind of be imprisoned in the same place they had to be imprisoned 500 miles apart and they're on their last train ride the last ride in which they will ever see each other again and they made an agreement that every night at a certain time we will look at the Moon together at the same time you're one place I'm in another place and in that way we'll be connected on some level now you know anran later gravitated to all sorts of different philosophies objectivism selfishness I'm not going there but this is a very powerful imagery it's the imagery that sometimes the deepest closeness you can have is when you're apart and that's what the three weeks in the ninth of a is it is the closeness that comes from distance in a more humorous vein when rev hoodner came to erisel towards the end of his life so somebody had the ask hutner was there anything that he missed about so he said yeah the great thing that he missed about was the yearning to come to because once you're here you take it for granted you take anything for granted but when you're there you're yearning you're thinking about it and in some ways your is making the point you were closer emotionally to the idea of erel than neb when you're here as strange as that is there's a lot of Truth to that observation a person could be in and be thinking every minute oh I'm yearning and I'm hoping and I so want to be here when you're here you know either you're not thinking about it or sometimes you're thinking negative things about all the different inconveniences and the like so that's observation number one that it's precisely as we experience how far we are from Hashem we actually simultaneously and paradoxically become much much closer to a god in that process that is the meaning of the famous statement in the gamorra that mashiach is born on Tish now that doesn't have to mean that the flesh and blood mashiah has a birthday on tiab obviously um kabad cannot take that position because the Reb's birthday was in the month of Nissa right but but again once again the moral himself says that the gamari does not mean the birthday of the human that's mashia or will be mashiah is Tish but it means the kak of mashiach enters the world through the yearning and the sense of distance that we experience anti of as I realize how far I am from God that creates a yearning and a connection and it's that yearning and connection that brings the power of redemption into the world okay that's R sadok's first observation R second observation is that the concept that we need three weeks to prepare ourselves to mourn for the B mikdash corresponds to the idea that the BAM mikdash was destroyed because our heart and our soul was no longer a dwelling place for god let's go back to the very first time a Mitzvah of building a temple is discussed this is about the mishan in the midbar so Hashem said to Moshe they shall make for me a temple a Sanctified area so I God will dwell in them in them and point out it does not say I will dwell in it rather the Hashem dwells in our heart and our soul so when you have a bikash that is simply a tangible sign that God's presence is in your heart and in your soul so why does the temple get destroyed because when God is no longer in our hearts the symbol is no longer meaningful God takes it away like the symbol would be an empty symbol I mean what is the temp a nice building the Temple is a symbol of the sh that lives within us when the does not live within us no Temple so says we know that there are three although give specific a says there are three essential character flaws which Drive the divine presence from our heart and our soul and this is encapsulated pabos at K jealousy Envy begrudging The Good Fortune of other people Kina TAA insatiable Lust For pleasures and Cav out the need for ego gratification self agisent these negative character flaws they take take a person out of the world and the alter of used to say it doesn't only mean you lose your world to come that's for sure but it means your life in this world becomes an unending frustration Le the same floss that we attribute to bams students or uh yes yes as a matter of fact they are the same ones although they're they're expressed in different vocabulary but in point of fact they match up uh those three match up the K even says that matches up to the three most in inverse order he says that jealousy could lead to murder TAA can lead to improper sexual offenses and he says kot can lead to self idolatry which is a form of the greatest form of AAR where I worship myself I look at myself as the center of of all existence and and alike so he connects the three weeks with the three factors of kavod and that leads into the students of bam and that can lead to the three most which of course are indeed the cause for theb of the first base amik as the gar says in Yuma so we need three weeks so to speak to work on these three mid of that's his second take on the 3 weeks the third observation he makes is also very interesting and it's based on the ha torus we know that our enacted that on chabas and on yam when after you read the Torah we have a section of the prophets that are read and that's called the ha Torah when I was little I think I said this before I came up with thees when I first heard the phrase oh well the reason why you call it half Torah is because it's the half Torah because the prophets are not not as important as the Torah so we call the prophetic reading the half Torah that's how I understood it that's a pretty good that's a pretty good terce but uh but when I got to havala that I I couldn't I didn't have an interpretation for that one so I had to beiser uh but ha just in terms of a verb actually means to announce is to announce we have a prophetic uh section now kazal for the most part do not tell you what Theus are it has to be connected to the par or the and that's why they're different Asim Italians yakis hungarians many many different choices for H Torah and all of them are Kosher it's not possible that one is right and one is wrong because the gamar itself does not mandate what the haor has to be other than connected to either the par or if it's a yum connected to the yff and the like right that's why there are different minhagim and it's not not a question of one is right and one is wrong from time immemorial there always were different local traditions for the h but kazal did enact that three weeks before the nth of a we must read three half Tyrus dealing with tragedy and then for seven weeks after the ninth of a which takes you all the way to rashishana we have to read seven hav Toros dealing with the theme of com three of Calamity and seven Haus of comfort which actually takes you all the way to rashash we will talk about the Haus of comfort when when the time of comfort comes and hopefully it'll get her before Tish even not then we'll talk about it after Tish but the three halfus of uh the first of them is going to be this chabas uh the first two are from the book of yahu who is the prophet of Destruction and the third one the one right before Tish is from Isaiah yes the vision of yes yes is by the way all the Haus of comfort are from yes yes is the big big Nai of the most Comforts in all of tanak but the last ha of tragedy is BFA from yes R Points out if you just look at the first word of the three h tyus you see a very very interesting pattern the first ha this sh which is chapter one of saer yo begins div y the words of Y the second T which is peric BAS of yo the navi is talking and he says sh here listen to the word of God and the third ha which is right before Tish that this year it'll be on on Tish on the nth of which is shabas is the vision of so just look at look at look at the first three words of of Theus you go from speech to hearing to as if to say speak no evil hear no evil see no evil and R sedok says that during this period of 3 weeks we are we try to be misaking our various sensory functions we start with learning to recognize both the positive power of speech and the negative power of speech to be the of debor and then we try to move to not just using my speech in a proper way but to try to avoid even hearing negative things about people purify what we hear and then finally we change our vision we change our perception again this is actually a very important point I think I made this point many many times I'll say it quickly again and that is Lan you know everybody today and Brash it's a good thing CL I mean we still commit the but CL Isel is very very conscious that there's something bad about saying derogatory things about people lanara is on the radar whether we fully keep it or not is another question but people are aware of it they take it a religious person at least takes it seriously and I'll tell you the truth even nonreligious Jews there's a whole school of what you might call non-orthodox muser out there in which they learn muser books and they they they try to incorporate it's actually a good thing they try to incorporate mid toos even though not all of them are keeping the mitzvos in a literal way so this type of Consciousness about not being negative about people is something that permeates uh people's minds but you have to know that ultimately lanara is it's not about speech it's about perception because if I look at people in a negative way and I but I control myself at some point I'm going to explode like a pressure cooker you can't constantly look at people in a negative way and never say anything bad about them so the real goal of in lashan Hara is not simply to control your mouth but to change the way you see things to change your vision to look at people in a kindly way in a favorable way in a loving way and when you look at people that way it's not that you'll become naive you'll still see the problems but you will literally lose the desire to say bad thing I just don't have a desire to put people down it's like you know let's say your son is not doing something uh the way that he should be doing you know you you you don't have a big desire to kind of talk to people about it I mean unless you're seeking help but just uh humiliate your son humiliate you're you're you're humiliating yourself every Jew fact this is a fascinating little thing I uh there was aant who was the again interesting name he was the rash V he died recently and he left behind a very uh controversial Memoir it was never published now whatever it is that he has all sorts of interesting strange stories uh very very fascinating but he recounts a very one little V that's really very good that one time in brisk uh they were denigrating Ru cook know he Zionist he was too close to non-religious people so somebody had theah to ask one of the brisk Ras you know you have your cousin at yiv University yoseph Jo Sal who's also a Zionist and you never say anything bad about it how come you never criticize Rabbi yose do salv so the brisar Riva said that's different that's a family now Family you don't criticize so the person said back to the brisar Risha well rev cook looked at every Jew as family so even if they weren't religious he didn't critic do you're criticizing Ru cook for not criticizing Jews who are not religious why don't you criticize your cousin the answer is my family I don't criticize so of every Jew is his family he doesn't criticize same thing what's the T right so R elephant records that the brisker rashash Shiva was absolutely silent after that that particular uh response so this is the progression you start off controlling your speech and your hearing but the ultimate goal is K change your vision change your perception when you change your perception then everything falls into place you're not struggling anymore not to speak lanara or to embarrass people you just lose the desire it just goes away because you look at people in a very very different way is the ultimate goal not just control your speech and control your hearing change your vision change how you look at things so it turns out though that the first week of the three weeks this para this haa coming up is about the power of speech and we need to think about the power of speech there is a verse in Proverbs famous verse hes death and life are in the hands of the tongue said this the med explains the P quite literally it says that once the different organs and limbs of the body were debating I'm not sure how they conversed who is the most powerful so the leg said we're the most powerful because without me the body can't go anywhere and the hands and the arms say we're the most important because without me you can't grasp or do anything and the Brain said I'm the most powerful because without me there's no thoughts and no actions so finally the tongue said I'm the most powerful so they started laughing at the tongue the medra says because they said hey tongue you don't even have a backbone you can't even like stand up you know you're so insignificant and the tongue said okay you'll see how important I am uh what basically was that uh all of this took place in the body of a servant of a king a non-jewish king and and uh when they when the servant reaches the King's Room so uh the tongue causes the Declaration hey King you're like a dead dog or something now there was the tongue says something derogatory so the king said kill this person off with the head so all the limbs are frightened and they beg the tongue do something about this you got us into trouble so the tongue said oh yeah I come from another country and in my language the words that mean wretched dog in your language actually means glorious ruler in my language and I apologize I was using my language and I should have use whatever it is this the bottom line of the story is the tongue says you see I could get you killed and I can get you saved death and life is in the hands of the tongue but you have to understand something very important that life and death does not just mean physical survival we have to know that death can occur in many different ways you can kill a person's Spirit you can take away their hope you can rob them of their Courage by words that are cruel hurtful humiliating and that's death also but the other thing is important as well and here this is where I have a little a teeny little bit of critic criticism on the f Fus on lashara because lashan Hara is always focusing on how destructive speech can be and that is true but remember there's another side to this schom doesn't only say death in is in the hands of the tongue SCH also says life is in the hands of the tongue in other words speech can give a person hope can give a person optimism can give a person a sense that they're wanted that they're needed that they're cared about words can destroy and words can build up you see they tell the story that you know the wrote books on lanara he was the one who really brought the laws of lanara to the consciousness of CLA Israel and it's interesting that that the early part of the K's career a lot of even rabbis didn't really believe that he could truly live up to his own standards so they would send spies to visit him now people would come as rabbis or guests and they wanted to trip him up in different ways so one of these spies reported an interesting exper experience he says he came to the and he expected that the would be very austere never talk never say anything except learning and dobing but he noticed that was a very talkative person he would talk he would tell stories he would ask questions but sonin-law was indeed so super righteous he would never say a word unless it was daving or learning so the person said I spent that chabas there and I was much more impressed with the son-in-law than with the because seemed to be a loose fer but then I realized how absolutely great this was the son-in-law avoided the sin of Lara by basically not talking said well wait a second God gave us speech in fact speech is considered to be the unique quality of man famous taramas God breathed into man a living soul the tarum unus in a very rare non-literal addition because unus is normally very literal says r a spirit that can speak so there's no point in just covering up my power of speech I have to use it for good purposes to build up build people up you know the old adage that maybe we were told by our parents sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me is unfortunately not very true Sticks and Stones can break your bones but you also heal you know young kids tend to heal pretty quickly when we're a little older it takes a little longer but you know even older people can can heal very often but the names the insults the humiliations even as we get as children can stay with us the rest of our lives sometimes the rest of our lives I mean I remember hearing an interview with Richard Nixon after he had left the presidency of the United States and he had been through a lot obviously he had been as vice president he had been through the Cold War and then uh the engagement with China as president and then of course Watergate and leaving the presidency in utter disgrace right the only well actually until well okay actually with Trump he's not unique anymore but what whatever it was and yet what was Richard Nixon talking about he was talking about the playground taunts in the fifth and sixth grade it's kind of scary that people who are making decisions that can blow up the world are thinking about what happened when they were in sixth grade so he tell your sixth grader to be pretty careful how he treats his classmate he never knows where that classmate's going to wind up in somewhere so this is what speech is speech can change a person for the good or for the bad and when we think about this first week of the three weeks R sok says we're thinking about a t of the now what is amazing is there's a direct Connection in the para itself to how powerful speeches the paraa begins with the concept of making a Ned a vow or a shua an oath helically these are different verbal formulations so a vow is object focused an oath is person focused let me give you an example let's assume I don't want to eat apples or CH maybe chocolate more realistic I want to go on a diet I want to be absolutely sure that I don't eat chocolate so if I say all chocolate is forbidden to me object language that's called n if I say I swear I will not eat chocolate that's called the but either way whether you make your commitment in the form of n or or the form of sh the Torah says you are not allowed to desecrate your words if you eat a piece of chocolate after you made a nether or shua it is as bad as eating a piece of bacon it is trafe it is forbidden to you you're over and isera for which you could get lashes now what's interesting is you see from here the extraordinary power that God gave to human speech to create spiritual realities that otherwise would not exist God In His Infinite kindness did not declare chocolate to be trfe one of the hasem right so chocolate I I mean we believe especially with a cabalistic perspective that when you weat tra you know you're affecting not just yourself you're affecting the world you're bringing impurity into the world so that's a certain Dynamic there's a certain cause and effect that these sins affect the Dynamics of the universe chocolate does not have that power and yet once you by the power of your words made that chocolate prohibited you have vested in the chocolate all of the destructive negative powers that God put into the Peace of kazer or whatever it is so if you think about it NE is quite an amazing example of the power of speech to change spiritual realities again we're not going to give a there are ways of annulling vows going to a Bas and Etc there are ways of getting out of vows but you have to go through a procedure meaning if you don't go through a procedure The Vow remains binding no matter what now generally speaking our sages discourage making vows even if you want to go on a diet don't do it through a vow K very much discourage it but sometimes people do make these vows and they need to know that it has to be taken taken very very very seriously and I would suggest that it actually fits R sok's analysis that the first week of the three weeks is about recognizing the power of speech the kak of debor that speech creates reality now I know I know I'm going to get the comments on this so I I will preface that I'm say I'm going to tell you something now that some say was a madeup story and not proven I know that so you don't have to write and tell me this but I I'll tell you the story as it was reported and to repeat I am aware of the fact that many many people have questioned the accuracy of the report so I please don't write me to tell me this uh and that is uh they showed under an electron microscope an electron microscope is a very powerful microscope that can actually see things at the molecular level and even below that uh and they looked at water molecules just GL a glass of water so water is H2O right a molecule of water is two atoms of hydrogen that are bound to one of oxygen and when they're bound together in a certain way that creates the liquids of water so they basically said that the molecules themselves assume different configurations based on whether the speech in the room was angry or whether it was kind meaning when there was angry speech the molecules rearranged themselves in ugly patterns and when there was kind and gentle speech the molecules arranged themselves in beautiful patterns can I say some have said that this is not a true story but even if it's not true on the electron microscope level I believe it very much is true on the ultimate spiritual level of the way the universe functions right so whether I have the empirical proof from the microscope is actually a secondary Point uh the point of this story does not rise and fall on whether you could see this in the structure of the molecule but it is certainly an element of the spiritual world that we inhabit and people talk about this speakers talk about this I feel The Vibes in the room it's a common thing right I mean I I exper it uh what does it mean I You Feel The Vibes where you getting that we do have I mean some people are more psychic than others that's a gift that is distributed in different ways but almost everybody kind of has a sense of emotional energy that's being generated in a room in a crowd and that affects us in various ways and speech is one of the primary conduits for that emotional energy Okay so I think the para ofed and shu is a very good example of the kak ofb but now I want to derive another aspect of this now that not this is not in this para this is actually in next week's para now now most years we actually would have read two paros together we would have read Matos which is this week and masi this year we're splitting because this is the uh the opportunity for the people in to catch up because the people in are one par behind so this week they're going to be reading Pinas we're going to be reading Matos next week when we read masi they will read Matos and after three months we finally caught up so in order to giveus the chance to catch up with us we actually split two paros that most years are actually read as one big par so I'm going to take the homiletical license so to speak to borrow something from Paras Masai Paras masi and this is not the only place in the Torah we had it earlier the Torah as well talks about the special rules that apply uh for accidental homicides we'll call them manslaughters right non-intentional killing of people so we don't give the death penalty for that but what we do is there's a City of Refuge uh where a person stays and this is a very indeterminate sentence a very strange sentence he stays in the City of Refuge until the cohain God dies and when the Cohen godal dies he then goes free so if the Coen godal dies one day after his sentence he goes free after one day if the Coen gel dies 50 years later he goes free after 50 years if he dies before for the Coen gutle he is buried in the City of Refuge not to be taken out until the Coen gutle eventually dies this is really a very strange sentence it is an indeterminate sentence and the like but nevertheless the RO remains in the year miklat until the Coen God dies the missionary records in Mas makos that the mothers of Coen godles used to bring the roim in the year mikl care packages cookies and and Foods in order that the roim should not pray that their sons would die because if I'm stuck in a near mikl and I would like to get out I might pray to Hashem that he caused the coing GLE to die so in order that I shouldn't pray that the Coen gutal should die the parents of the Coen GLE or the mothers that says would bring gifts or food to the RO right this is a mishna both the B and the USI ask the same question the implication is that if the roim were to pray to God that the Cohen GLE would die there is a chance those prayers would be effective because if there's no chance the prayers would be effective what are the mothers afraid of so apparently their prayer might work so the gorra says how could that work if the coing godle is a righteous person why would he be vulnerable to the prayer of aak that the Coen GLE should die why would such a prayer work can you just pray that somebody should die so listen to the so both the B and the you me ask the question but they give different answers the B's answer is it is true that if I pray that a blameless innocent person should die my prayer is not going to work I can't just pray that an innocent person should die but the Coen guttle Is Not Innocent the Coen GLE is vulnerable to somebody praying that he should die because the coing gutle is at fault for not praying as a spiritual leader of his generation he should have prayed that such homicides would not take place under his watch therefore if such homicides did take place under his watch he didn't pray enough he didn't pray enough he becomes complicit he becomes blameworthy Ergo he would be vulnerable to the prayer of the RO and that's why the RO needed to be bribed now let's think about this a little bit the rule that a roak goes to an near mlet does not refer to every accidental homicide I mean if somebody is standing on a roof of a building and the roof collapses and he falls on somebody in the first floor and kills that person he does not go to the a mlet that's an unavoidable action he had no reason to suspect it's very important to understand ear mikl is not for every accidental homicide ear mlut requires negligence carelessness you went through a stop sign you didn't stop at an intersection you backed up without looking to see if there was a kid in back it's unintentional you didn't intend to kill anybody but you were careless you were indifferent you didn't care enough about the possibility right you threw uh garbage you threw heavy items out of your window trash and a kid gets killed with a pot or something now here's the thing can I pray that God please don't let negligent people be careless please help people be more careful you see the problem there k say everything is in the hands of heaven but the decision to serve God I cannot pray that somebody should be righteous because that's their decision it's not God's decision God does not decide if people are righteous or Sinners right I've mentioned before my my rosh yite rman of maryell was just this past week the 14th of of of uh Tas I post and help we make a video for n Isel about this and one thing which I did not mention in the video was that at the beginning of every we would go to the Riva we would ask him um for a br and he would say are you going to learn well this man and uh he would say we would say we would say if God's God Wills we will learn well and his answer is God certainly Wills but it's not up to God the decision is up to you you should say if I will I will learn well so the question on the B is this how can the B assume that the Coen God's prayer would have stopped the irresponsible behavior of the road so says the Kish there are other ways of learning this but I'll just go tonight with the K that you see from here that the power of prayer is so great that it overrides the principle of free will that yes I can pray that somebody should do chuva I can pray may my careless brother-in-law be not as careless when he drives I can pray I that's free will and God doesn't interfere with free will in the context of prayer he does and the Kish actually says you can pray that Hashem should make an evil person into a sadic that is the kak of prayer and of course uh the Kish has a r from AAR in Bros if you remember rebbi mayor had enemies that he wanted to curse we talked about this and uh breur his wife said why should you curse them that they should die pray that they should do chuva so what do you see from the garish like the Kish you can pray that somebody does Chua now I had mentioned that some learn this very very differently some learn you cannot really pray that somebody does cha you can only pray that Hashem put into their lives inspirational people that will bring them to Chua that's the alternative and that's what the mar isma but the actually says cut and dry you can pray that a Russia should do chuva and uh this is what the is telling us the co God could have prayed that the caress driver will stop at the red light even though that's a function of B now that is what the B says thei asks the same question why is the Coen GLE vulnerable to the prayers of the murderers that the murderers have to be bribed so the so the B's answer was because the Coen gutle has culpability that he didn't do Yi says and this is even scarier that the power of prayer is so great that it can work even against a person who's undeserving meaning other words a person who is undeserving of of being punished meaning you can pray that a righteous person would die and Hashem might listen to the prayer so the point I'm making is that both according to the B and according to the Yami right our talk tonight is about the power of speech so one aspect of the power of speech is the power of prayer and you see from both the B and the Yi the tremendous power of Prayer from the bav perspective we see the power of the prayer of the Coen God from the US's perspective we see the power of the prayer of the RO that they could get a CO even though he's not guilty of anything right the Yi is taking the position the co is not guilty right so the power of prayer so we have to recognize the power of our daving but once again one has to be realistic davening does not mean you get whatever you want if I could quote uh so I had Ann Rand and I'm going to quote MC Jagger strange uh assortment of of sources tonight uh that's when people ask me for a sour sheet you know why I don't give it I'm not going to give them you know MC Jagger and an rant but um MC Jagger's song You Can't Always Get What You Want but you get what you need and that is a very profound that is a Rel religiously deep truth although MC Jager probably did not intend it in that way and that is amuna is not panish I would love a new car I'll just pray to God for a new car and I'll have that new car in my lot no maybe you won't maybe you will that can happen too but that's not there's no guarantee about those things but I will give you what you need and sometimes that refers to the resilience and courage of being able to go on being able to rebuild being able to recover from tragedies there's no guarantee of what will or won't happen but every has a power the power of your speech coupled with your heart brings down all sorts of blessings the greatest greatest of is your relationship withes let me just end with one further garar kadan the kadan gives a very strange story it's hard to understand how literal we should take it that a certain city was being baguer by like a seven-headed demon like this monster demon and that was hiding out in some abandoned building and and it terrorized the population particularly at night and no one knew what to do this was a very powerful demon so a certain great Rabbi was coming to town and one of the rabbis of the Town recommended hey nobody should offer the rabbi Hospitality so he'll have to sleep in that ruined building and for sure he will take care of the demon so the rabbi needs accommodations nobody offers him anything so he goes into this abandoned building and of course this horf Dragon demon seven heads comes and wants to eat him up or kill him or burn him whatever the demon does and every time the rabbi davens and one of the heads fall off he davens head one falls off Etc he davens he davens he davens seven FAS all the heads right they have been decapitated the Demon's dead and everybody's happy so the next day the rabbi goes over to uh the guy to the other Rabbi who set him up this way and said you know you could have killed me there you you how could you put me in a place where my life was in danger so the rabbi's answer is I knew your life wasn't in danger I knew you could do it so the mara asks a very good question even if we assume 100% that this Rabbi was so great that there was a virtual guarantee that would be a miracle so even if I could even I I'm allowed to make that I'm allowed to say you're so great I know a miracle is going let's assume I could make that assumption but there's another problem here that is he who benefits from Miracles loses a share of his habah meaning is a spiritual reward so the physical things you get in this world don't take away from your Haba because there's no comparability between the physical and the spiritual but when you're getting Miracles you're getting special Divine connections good that'll save you and save other people but you're going to lose your because or at least your is going to be diminished because you're n from m n right anyone who benefits from Miracles gets a diminution in his okay so for again I mean of course of course that's a problem but but the gamar means to say that you know we don't have anyone of that Madre today but for someone who really really really really really all right you're it's going to happen that's so here's what the Mara says the Mara says it's true that if you benefit from a miracle youra is reduced but anything you gain from prayer is not called a miracle because it's the nature of prayer that these good things happen and therefore since this Rabbi was saved by the power of prayer that's not called n m it reminds me actually of a story which again um don't write me I know that so many people say it's apocryphal but it's a story that that's been reported in different in different places that when the G the IM was saved from the from warsa saved from the warsa ghetto so some say again I I know the history is questionable that he was brought to London for a while brought to England for a while before he came to AR Israel and uh Winston Churchill was told there's this very holy Rabbi who's here and would Churchill like to meet with the rabbi for Spiritual advice during World War II so the G rebbi comes to Churchill and obviously Churchill doesn't know yish and the g rebbi doesn't know English so there's an interpreter whatever it is and the conversation goes something like uh Church ask the re you know we're being bombed by the Nazis Etc you know was what do we do like how can we get God's grace how do we get God's mercy God's compassion so the Reby said do you want to know the natural way or the miraculous Supernatural way so church will say said well first tell me the supernatural way and then we'll talk about the natural way so the rby says the supernatural way is you get your Army Navy and Air Force organized enough to repel the Nazi threat that would truly be a miracle if that will work the normal way is take it to hel take a book of Psalms and pray to God and that'll be the the natural way you're going to as if to say what happens through prayer is actually more natural than what happens to all of the different tias so so be it as it may uh we're in this period of time where we think about uh the B mikdash and most importantly we think about how to make our hearts and souls a dwelling place for Hashem and uh by thinking about the power of speech the power of prayer and the power of speech to build up relationships to create warmth to give and encouragement as I say we have to be aware of the destructive powers of speech that's for sure but it's very much only half of the picture to think about the bad things that speech can do we also have to think about the good things that speech can do how it can literally change people lives for the better by the friendly way that we can approach them to build people up give them give them encouragement and in that way we're taking giant steps towards making our hearts and souls a dwelling place for ourish have a good week everybody and thanks for coming [Music]