Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: Reaction when between a Rock and a Hard Place

[Music] yeah I was not going to give my Shirin to which laugh but I will say just a few a few words to be tried almost always false either during the week of purchase Pechaluk or immediately after party especially and there actually is an interesting connection we know that the Shabbat of artificial rock is called Shabbat Shira the Shabbat of song because that is the singing of Asya sheer when we crossed the Red Sea but it is recorded that there was an old Minich mainly among Ashkenazi that we would feed the birds on Shabbos we would give free food for the birds on Shabbos Eva and the origin of that is based on the fact that when a knish Marco had the month fall which falls in this of in this bar job so he stipulated that one cannot leave any money over till the next day and no one would fall on Shabbos and on Friday you would get a double portion to cover Shabbos so Dustin and a veeram wanted to discredit Moshe Rabbeinu as was their wants so Shabbos they took the month that was given to them on Shabbos and they scattered it outside so they could point to the idea oh you see them undid for lunch Eva's so the birds came and ate the Mun so when Dustin Viren wanted to pull everybody out and show them that the mud fell on Shabbos there was no money round so because we're grateful to the birds because of their eating of the month therefore it was customary to feed the birds now how luckily actually this men are grazes a number of interesting questions because challah quickly you're actually not supposed to feed wild animals on Shabbat that are able to fend for themselves because that is treated as unnecessary labor if it's your dog your cat that depends on you so of course you must feed them but if it's an animal that spends for itself you're not supposed to put out okay but nevertheless there are various defenses of the minik now what do you see from this minute you actually see three ideas in gratitudes number one that gratitude is not only to people but even to animals that there's a certain gratitude to animals number two it is intergenerational because obviously the birds that you're feeding today knocked the birds that actually ate the month and number three you see that gratitude applies even if the intention was a selfish intention we can assume that the birds weren't eating it in order to validate mosha of a no they were eating it because it looked good but that doesn't make a difference when I say it was assessing and this teaches us that gratitude applies on all levels so even the people who who get paid for their services we have to be feel grateful now the reason why this is relevant to b'shvat is to b'shvat it's not necessarily a major major holiday in the Jewish calendar but too much fraud is a time in which we assess our relationship to our external environment it is kind of the Jewish Earth Day although it is much deeper than that and at least one of the elements of how we are Mitsy access to our environment is that we have to have a car asset oath to the earth itself the earth the water the air these are gifts that our Shem has given us and we owe it to our Kadesh Borko we owe it to ourselves we owe it to our children and future generations and strangely enough we even know it to the earth the water and the air that there's a certain element of a kurata Tov not to abuse them not to diminish them not to destroy the goodness that they give now you may ask me a question well I showed you how carrots are Toth to Birds okay but where do you find to caretta Tov to in adamant things like air or earth well you find that as well if you remember the first maca of blood had to be affected by our own striking the Nile and turning the water into blood is could not be affected by Moshe Ravana why not because the Nile had given him protection and shelter when he was put on the Nile and foul by Abbas pyro so Moshe Rabbeinu owed a debt of gratitude to the Nile and therefore he could not be the direct instrument of turning it into blood so gratitude applies even to the water like the air the earth and the like and that's what - fight is so in some ways again I I don't want to suggest it on you'll have a to by Seder there will go into the very very deep Kabbalistic ideas that the human soul is compared to a tree that's not my topic tonight but even on a basic simple level a religious you ought to be environmentally conscious and I have to say that unfortunately sometimes we are a little lacks in that department now part of it is the crowded conditions of living in a city etc but but you know when you see trash in the street and they're assessing Irish Israel one that should really hurt hurt us because Erica Strauss should not only be holy but because it's holy it should also be beautiful and one should not be Smerch it in any in any way so tubers fire there's a little bit of an opportunity to focus on our connection to the environment so I'm not saying you know you can't use styrofoam plastic that's you know your own decision I'm not pushing any particular environmental agenda but the concept of not littering the concept of hikari Sato for the air the water the grounds all of this is very very important and as we see from the parsha of parish about Shira the union of occurrence at of is intergenerational and it even applies to non-human actors so that was my little spiel about to be taught at least on the most basic level of thinking about the environment somebody told me a story it's an awful story really it may be very very upset about a religious couple very very religious couple and they wanted to have a picnic on Chavez they wanted to have their Sudha in a park ok if they rely on the a roof thinking that you can have a suit in the park but at the end they did not dispose of their garbage on the picnic table because they said no garbage to smoke sir not a lot to move it so here's the thing first of all there are plenty of it a room to move it but but if you're gonna be ma clear and you're not going to move garbage then you don't have a picnic that's as simple as that what gives you the right to have a picnic when you know ahead of time you're not going to remove your garbage that is mom-ish Gazzo of other people you're stealing from other people their enjoyment of park lands of public lands and the like so one has to be very very careful the Gemara gives an amazing story the Gallardo vakama gives the story of a man who was clearing rocks from his field there were boulders and he was throwing them into the street so the kharkom said to him why are you taking rocks from land that is not yours and throwing it in some land that is yours so the guy didn't understand what he was being told it's the opposite I'm throwing it I'm removing the rocks from land that is mine but the goo Marco silence said that he was delinquent delinquent in his taxes to the Roman government the Roman government confiscated his property he lost it and he was wandering the streets and he was tripping and stumbling and bruising himself on the very rocks that he had thrown into the streets and now he says now I understand I was removing rocks from property that is not mine and I threw it into the property that I myself am using so as the saying in English goes what goes around comes around or is it what comes around goes around I always forget which which order it is but that's the that's one of the ideas that we should remember remember as well so indeed in the United States at least I'm sure they must have a similar organization in Israel there actually are environmental organizations that are Torah oriented that there are religious Orthodox how logic organizations that are committed to environmental protection so if that is a a cause that appeals to you I think it is a legitimate cause it's an important cause it's a worthy cause and especially in Eric Israel even more even more than quits larette's because the ultra slow but we used to say that part of yeash of Eric Israel is not only living here but to make Eric Israel a more livable country when you pick up a piece of trash in this land you are doing the Mitzvah of each of Eric Israel so it goes beyond simply physically living here as important as that Mitzvah Mitzvah is okay so that's my little two b'shvat commercial but as they say there are obviously very very deep Kabbalistic meanings as well and you will discover that's the makuu bottom of spots in the time of the Ariza created a wholesaler of to b'shvat including four cups of wine different types of fruits and I won't believe that for the wonderful Seder that you will undoubtedly experience okay now going back to the splitting of the Red Sea which is the main event in the parsha the splitting of the Red Sea is of course the conclusion of the Otzi at Smith's right in fact we celebrate that on the seventh day of Pesach everyone knows well first let me start off this way because I'll have an interesting rush on that in the panic of Korea cm surf the Jewish people were terrified they literally were between a rock and a hard place they're looking at this ocean the sea the Red Sea of course as you know red sea is obviously a mistranslation it's yam soup is reed sea okay it's not the Red Sea but okay be this at night we call it now if the name is now the Red Sea at least in English and they're facing this war and they have the Egyptian army with their chariots coming after them and they are terrified they are horrified they are devastated with fear they are paralyzed with fear so first the ebon Ezra asks the obvious question how many Jews are here you have 600,000 men from the age of 20 ana and people under 20 and and women etc conservative estimates are you have 3 million people now the Egyptian armies described us have 600 chariots but they certainly didn't have three million foot soldiers so the Jewish people can easily it would appear defeat the Egyptians just numerically they just were so many much more so many more of them why are they so horrified why are they paralyzed and the epinephrine makes an interesting psychological points that this is slave mentality the Egyptians were their masters for so many years and they're finally being freed on the experience 10 plagues but when the master comes after them they get frightened they lose their courage and they panic and they don't know what to do effect the epinephrine makes a fascinating point this is actually why the Redeemer of Israel himself Moshe Rabbeinu could not have grown up as a slave you wonder why was it so necessary Moshe banners life was a very unusual life before he took the Jews out of Egypt he grows up in Pyro's house as an adopted son of the king and when he runs off to Midian house I'll give him a whole other story he was a king in Ethiopia for many many years he was a royal figure he never partook of the slavery experience of his brethren in fact I I've said before that I speculate that that is why Dustin and I veeram didn't like Moshe Robina so much because they said who gives this guy the right to be the leader if he didn't suffer as a slave in midstream unlike Dustin in our theorem who were taskmasters who got beaten for not reporting on the juice right I mean put yourself psychologically in Dustin or WM shoes they're saying we suffered we were beaten and here's this guy who grew up as a you know in Pyro's house and all of a sudden he becomes the great liberator now obviously this is foolish Marsha Rubino as the greatest of all mafia but from a purely human perspective you can actually understand a little bit the tremendous jealousy that Dustin and of Ihram had to Moshe Raveena and remember doesn't review and were actually righteous because they were the one fifth that were saved right so they're not like this totally bad Rutger show him that we portray the meth so the evidence recession while Redeemer of Israel had to grow up in freedom is had he grown up as a slave his spirit would have been crushed and he would not have been able to inspire the Jewish people to strive for freedom the Ebenezer makes a big point about slave mentality in fact a similar phenomenon I think it's called the Stockholm Syndrome you may remember this is when people who are kidnapped for long periods of time even when they're given their freedom they don't leave sometimes kidnappers you know hold people for years will flow open the door and say you want to go go and the person doesn't go the person literally it's almost like there's an electronic leash on them that holds them back and that's why the Jews complained in the desert oh the let's go back to the good old days of Egypt right the great the great old days of Egypt you know the the onion and the garlic and the fish and everything else because you know being a slave has its compensations frankly and some level because you know you know your schedule you're told what to do you don't have to make the decisions of a free person in fact if you know American history you'll know that after the Civil War that that was also a dilemma in terms of many free slaves didn't know what to do with themselves so to speak they didn't have any sense of direction so to go further with this cause I'll tell us in the panic of the moment the Jews split into four groups they didn't know what to do one group said let us jump into the scene that not in the belief it'll split but let's commit suicide let's jump into the sea let's commit suicide another group said let us fight the Egyptians and the third group said let us call out to the nations of the world the United Nations to save us I always thought that was the most foolish of the trips and the third group I'm sorry the fourth group said let us just return to Egypt and be slaves again now all four of these groups are criticized again even the group that said jump into the sea was not not shown been I mean not that we jumped into the sea it was he said so let's just commit suicide so someone who understands that besides the literal Meldrick of these four groups it really has a symbolic meaning because everything in the Torah is a precursor for future events we say my suppose what happened to our patriarchs is a sign of what's going to happen to us and our vows is lobbed Africa Avram it's rockin Yaakov it also applies to the shut him to the door amid bore everything is to use a fancy word paradigmatic everything is kind of establishing a pattern for what's going to happen based on this some want to say that the raging waters of the amps off' refers to the secular torrential challenges that a jew faces in modern society right we faced so many challenges living in a secular society a godless world and how do we navigate those challenges and historically there have been four responses of the jewish people that are incorrect that are dysfunctional and let's let's show how they fit in the first is jump into the water and commit suicide well metaphorically that just means total assimilation if the water represents the attractions of the secular world jumping into the water simply means we will embrace all that that secular world offers and we will abandon the distinctiveness of our Jewish identity which really is a form of suicide I mentioned last week that Herzl is vision of secular Zionism and again I again I want to re-emphasize that I am not at all critical of Herzl as a person I I believe his motives were absolutely fine and pure motives he cared about the Jewish people tremendously but his vision was was incorrect in the sense that he thought the solution to the anti-semitism of Europe that emerge from the Dreyfus trial that kind of stirred him up would be eliminated if the Jews would just be like all the other nations of the world have their own lands have their own army they even attribute I think to beggary and maybe that we've really made it when we have our own bank robbers and criminals we will be Kahala that is the response of jumping into the water but that is suicide and ultimately it doesn't really help you because it is no accident that the country in Europe where the process of assimilation proceeded the furthest was in fact Germany out of which came the Holocaust again this is a very complicated issue and it's a painful issue and it's a controversial issue but there is no accident that one of the sad lessons of the Holocaust yeah I'm not saying it's a reason I'm just saying it's a lesson after the fact one of the sad lessons of the Holocaust is that you can't escape being a Jew by trying to obliterate your identity because Hitler frankly didn't care Hitler didn't care if you were a practicing Jew or not Hitler didn't care if you were converted to Christianity there were in fact there was a saint of the Catholic Church and she was canonized Edith Stein she was canonized as a martyr to her faith because she died in Auschwitz as a Jew she didn't die because she was Catholic right so again I'm not giving reasons it's not for me to give a reason but it is a lesson that to try to escape the problems of anti-semitism by obliterating your Jewish identity is not going to work in fact there's a little thing in Yiddish that when Jews don't make kiddush the will make abdullah separate and separate under life okay now the second response was let us return to Egypt let us be slaves so this might be the idea of so the first is assimilation that's jumping into the water the second might be what you call fragmentation now fragmentation is actually very common modality that's the double life in which I will be a Jew at home when I go to show you know my Shabbos table but when I'm in the world I will be a citizen of the world in other words I will not bring my Jewish values into my secular life and hence you can have the phenomenon of a religious person might be dishonest in business or cut your cutthroat competitiveness that's the notion of a slave because a slave also has a bifurcated existence he is working for the service of the master and then at home he has his little tiny zone of privacy so that's schizophrenic fragmentation so jumping into the sea is assimilation going back to Egypt is fragmentation right Moses Mendelssohn famously said be a Jew at home and a man of the world in the world now the third idea is let us appeal to the nations of the world that is Jewish identity based on victimization and that's an issue today you know obviously we have to remember the show up but if you think about it to build Jewish identity on all the bad things that have happened to the Jewish people it's basically saying you got to be Jewish because there's so much anti-semitism in the world there are so many Hitler's in the world etc but that just tells you what you're against that doesn't tell you what you're for so a Jewish identity that is built on being a professional victim has no staying power and that is why we find unfortunately that you know the two pillars that used to attract non-religious college students to be interested in Judaism the two pillars were Israel and Holocaust memory and unfortunately although birthright improved the Israel a little bit but unfortunately those two pillars do not have that staying power anymore we know unfortunately on college campuses how many Jewish students are actively anti-israel it's shocking and horrendous and we also know with sureno that many many of the younger generation are no longer interested in the Holocaust to say it didn't happen to us it happened 70 more than 70 years ago you got to go on you got to move on because you can't communicate Jewish identity by saying what we're against you have to establish it based on what we believe what were for okay so again jumping into the sea is assimilation going back to Egypt is fragmentation appealing to the nations of the world as a victim is victimization and then we have the last one let us wage war against Egypt now this is an interesting one this we will call ghettoization and that this is actually a very religious response this basically says the world is evil the world is corrupt the world is degenerate I will relentlessly fight against everything out there and retreat into a voluntary ghetto of the mind now that sounds very very religious that is the most religious of all of these responses it basically says everything outside of the beit hamidrash is traif and hazard i don't want it but based on this explanation although that is by far the best of the four incorrect responses because it does acknowledge the primacy of Torah it is also an erroneous response because it is cutting yourself off cutting yourself and your family off from potential good that exists in the world at large what do cause I'll say if someone tells you , by there is wisdom and insights and knowledge amongst even the Gentiles Tom in believe it and indeed there's a passage from the Vilna Gaon that says for every measure of secular wisdom that a person is missing he will be missing ten times as much Torah as a result of his ignorance so it is of course a challenge to be able to embrace secular wisdom and culture and not have it undermine your connection to turin mitzvahs like this was researches of you Torah in directorates in a more modern incarnation Torah Amada and the people at Yeshiva University debate endlessly over the difference between Toro ma da and tourism derech Eretz okay that's an interesting discussion but the common denominator of them both is the notion that one integrates from the secular world ideas that one can then incorporate in their Torah and in the revolta shem and therefore their relationship to a Kaddish Barco and to ami Israel will be richer and deeper than it would be had they simply neglected all of those wisdoms so therefore this is a very hopefully it's an interesting allegorical interpretation that the four groups at the answer which represents dysfunctional incorrect responses represent the assimilation the fragmentation the victimization the ghettoization and all four are incorrect rather the correct response is that of not shown jump into the water meaning confront that secular world do so with Emunah that Hashem will give you a path to navigate through those waters not as the person who is totally assimilating but the person who is willing to take the goods and then apply it in Theravada sessions again I'm going to admit that it may be that ghettoization is sometimes the lesser of two evils meaning to say there are there are indeed so many dangers in the secular world that debase you that degrade you that can take you away from Torah that I can respect a person who's made a decision that I need to isolate but that is a lesser of two evils meaning it is an evil it is not an optimal choice but it might be the better of two bad alternatives in fact has been well said I remember when ruff salivate Rick was nifty that was back I guess 1980 I don't remember either yeah I think was 97 97 yeah 97 so this was a dilemma for the Jewish observers River was there good of magazine because on one hand we have cell divisions Olive a chook was a Russia Shiva at weiu for more than 50 years he was one of the good old legged or he had thousands of Tom Needham you couldn't ignore him on the other hand he had a PhD in philosophy he was not the model of the a good atrocious Shiva so there's no good always wrote big biographies or a most refined steno tobacco kamenetsky the stapler right they had huge biographies but what could they do for F salivate check they couldn't ignore it but they also didn't want to give him the same treatment they would give to the standard girdle so they did something that to this day the Jewish observer is now defunct anyway but to this day it infuriates the Tommy them of refs elevate check some other people as well and they wrote like a half page thing instead of a typical fiber six page story and the way they said it was actually it's kind of a brilliant way of saying it they said Rev celibate Rick was absolutely unique in the way he was able to integrate secular and religious ideas and therefore although he was unique in his greatness but uniqueness is not necessarily a model that can be emulated by others that was clever I mean it might be infuriating but that actually is a clever way of doing it you might call the damn thing by fake faint praise or you might call it recognizing his uniqueness they had the same problem of Bnei Brak from a different angle there was a gut Olympian a black medallion at all who was a great great great person he was a Cataumet of macarthur nish he was a talent of rusev refined canet ski but he was a very independent person he refused to take money for Torah learning so he had a partner sir he was a farmer part of the time he was a he was a contractor he did but he was a cuddle he was like good god oh so and he also had controversial ideas about the age of the earth and dinosaurs yeah different very very out-of-the-box ideas and unlike nothing slip began that you could push around because he was just a kid you know but what drove model said could not be ignored because he was a true true gunnel by every traditional definition so once again when he died you of crime can ask you used the same line I guess he didn't get from the Jewish observer he said he was unique in the generation what he did only he could do no one else should follow that particular path so I understand the dilemma but nevertheless the point is ghettoization is not the optimal approach it may be the necessary approach in some circumstances but one should not doubt it as the optimal highest level of a Volvo decision so that's the idea of the four groups in the ups off' but now i want to mention another point and that is all of us know the famous metric that when hashem closed the sea on the Egyptians the Milwaukee husha race wanted to sing Hashem praises and our College barked who said no Massa Yad I traveled by your my creatures the Egyptians are drowning in the sea there are also my creatures Viet M om Shiva you want to sing in joy to me while the Egyptians are drowning this is not a time of joy this is a time of sadness now please note Hashem is not saying oh I'm not gonna kill the Egyptians because they're my creatures Hashem chosen they have to die we are not pacifists a ball the hard hunt someone who comes to kill you you kill them first but when you kill them you do so with sadness you do so with regret that it's come to this Golda Meir famously said again that may be infinite in famously said that we can forgive the iris for killing our children again that's the part that many many people deeply resents I'm not endorsing that but she said we can forgive the iris for killing our children we cannot forgive the Arabs for making us kill their children so I I do not associate myself with the first part of her remark but the second part does reflect a Jewish truth that there is a notion that even the death of an evildoer is a tragedy because every human being is made in the image of God and every human being has the potential to be holy and good and Noble and when a human being destroys that potential by acts of violence and sin and evil it is not just a tragedy to the victims of his evil it is a tragedy to the evildoer himself because of what the life could have become an - M grieves over the victims and the Shem grieves over the perpetrators quite amazing this is a remarkable remarkable statement then a college bar who is quoted as having commiseration and compassion for the Egyptians even though they had to die God is not calling off the death sentence my see Edyta will be up there now this idea actually has a holic implication as you know and the first day of Pesach and at the Seder we say a complete hallow how well shall then but all the other days of pay sucks including the last day of Pesach we only say hot see hollow meaning we leave out something and there are different reasons that are given but one reason that is given whether she bowling Luckett is that since the seventh day of Peyser commemorates the swimming of the red sea and the angels were told not to sing a song of praise to God so we too have to diminish our how well because we have to reflect a certain rakhumai notes for the Egyptians now you may ask your kasha the tags asked the question okay so we should only do a half Hallel under seventh day of Pesach all the other days ought to be a full hour so the Todd says well you got to work backwards you never want ho-hum away to be more significant than a hug so since the seventh day oppressor is a hug and you're going to downgrade to a half hallo then you got to go backwards and make it a half Hallel for every other day okay that's what the Todd says but now I want to ask a simple question if we only say a half hallo because we don't want to celebrate excessively the loss of life then what about the first day of pace on the first day of pace are plenty of people NT of Egyptians died that was mock us because the firstborn of Egypt died so why do I say a full hallo make the same argument my sayad I tell will be up and if you're gonna give me the answer well I really don't care about the Egyptians it was our night of redemption well seventh day the same thing in other words there are two attitudes one can have here one attitude might be called particularism as long as it's good for the Jews I don't care what happened to the guy or there's an attitude called universalism I care about all human suffering so you can be one or the other but how come on the first day of Pesach we are particularly if it's good for the Jews ok what happened to the Guardian was what happened to the think I even celebrate that day ya know right if I sure would have killed the firstborn and not given us the money Diana so how do you explain the fact that we start off Pesach as particularist concerned only for our parochial interests but by the time we reach Kriya thumps off we become Universalists my say are they terrible right what happened what happened in the middle here so let's start with an explanation of the base Haleiwa basal AV was the first salivate check that was the rubber brisk he was refrain salivate Rick's father movie Asha bear's name sec ok that is that fun here okay and he raises an interesting observation if you think about the 10 Makos and you think about Korea cm so you actually see an interesting opposite phenomenon in the case of the Makos the miracle was always the punishment of the maka and the sparing of the Jewish people was simply leaving them to the natural order blood the miracle was the water turned into blood the Jewish people were left to the order of nature that water was water there was no miracle done for the Jewish people the miracle was the punishment blood dub safar daya Keenan or of all of them Bacchus pakoras the NACE was the owners the hot sala was the terror Chris Yosef think about this Christian surf was the very first time that the miracle itself was the vehicle that saved us the Egyptians did not die miraculously their army drushyam that say the Egyptian style unique deaths etc but if you simply look at the circuit the Egyptians did not die by a miraculous divine intervention rather God simply removed the miracle of keeping the water apart and once the water is no longer subject to a miracle it naturally comes together and that killed the Egyptians which means all of the Makos the NACE was the owners and the hot seller was vltava kriya science of the NACE was the hot seller and the owners was the TEVAR okay that's that's a very interesting observation but why is that so important the reason that's so important is that mitzrayim did the moccasin mitzrayim demonstrated that God will change the laws of nature to punish evildoers in the world vanish em turned the water into blood so far they'd kill him the whole purpose of the Makos was to demonstrate God's might God's power God's control over nature but in the direction of being Mohnish we shot him and that taught the Jewish people an important lesson that God ultimately fights injustice in one way or the other there will be punishment there will be accountability therefore the basically rewrites the dominant emotion that we acquired when we left miss Ryan was a year Accession fear of God and reverence for God because God showed me I better behave in life because if I misbehave there are serious devastating consequences but Chris Yosef gave us another picture Chris Yamcha Hashem changed the natural order not to punish because the Egyptians were not punished by the miracle God changed the natural order to redeem as a result crius Yosef we experienced the love of God at a much deeper level than we experienced even in Metronomy shrine we also experienced the love of God he redeemed us but korea-asean safe Hashem changed the natural order of the universe to redeem us so CLE SEM self we are Marga SH we experience Hashem love for us now there's a putt seek admission lay come I am upon him upon him Cain lay for Adam Lee odham beautiful beautiful posture this is something you can put on on your refrigerator as a motto as water reflects the face that you show it so to the heart of one person reflects that which it receives what's the shot I look into a pool of water whatever face I show the water is the face I get back I smile at the water I see a smiling face I frown at the water I see a frowning face what I show is what is reflected back to me slow mana Melek says the same way a reflecting pool of water reflects what you show it the heart of a human being reflects what you show that person I show somebody love respect care concern they will feel that way towards me I show them disregard that's how they'll feel towards me in fact in many many ways this puck could actually be the secrets to resolving religious and secular tensions because for some reason the argumentative style of the Middle East generally is that you always demonize the other side now maybe I still have my American bad habits with me you know the idea of trying to find common ground but you know normally I would think that if you say something I disagree with I would try to do something like well I hear what you're saying but maybe you could modify it etc I'd try to find a movie a mystery tough kind of a common denominator but the way it works here is you're an idiot you know you're not partially right you have no point at all now what happens is I say this person is an idiot the other person thinks I'm an idiot so as a result you know in religious secular issues you know one side calls the secular on my leg and the other side calls the religious parasite whatever particular way it goes and it just spirals and spirals and goes on and on and on and on and on and nothing ever ends I once saw there was an organization called common denominator I don't know if they're still going up rabbits probably still around I once saw ground rules this was a way of trying to facilitate religious secular communication so I actually had it in the ground rules no throwing of chairs to put put in be sure you know you're not allowed we will not allow throwing it whatever it would be but if you start from the other premise I acknowledge you I hear what you're saying you are making a point but would you also consider this then you have mlx promise that what you show towards the other person he will be reflected back to you and I am up on them up on him so others is supplied by Korea cm self if korea-asean surf was the time that we felt God's love more than even in matreya why did we feel God's love because he did a miracle not to punish he did a miracle to redeem when we feel God's love when God gives love to us our heart gives love back to God the same principle come I am upon him upon him that applies in human relationships the by Latanya rights also applies in divine relationships the more you are aware of Hashem love the more your love for hashem gross so what emerges from this is when we left Mitzrayim we were suffused with year a session crius Yosef because we experienced a higher level of Hashem love for us we were suffused with a visage now why is that important because when you live in the world of yera your concerns are parochial I want to be sure I don't get punished I want to be sure I get rewarded I want to be sure my family is protected that is the motivation of the year I wrote that mogera is I want to be good because I don't want to suffer negative consequences so when you live in the world of the era the only thing you focus on is what's good for you you really don't care about collateral damage yeah a lot of Egyptians died but okay that's not my concern so on the first day of Pesach which is celebrating I've owed them a year oh you say a hole how well it was good for the Jews but when you live in a relationship where you love God so here's the thing part of loving let's talk about loving another person part of loving another person is you try to see the world through their eyes right for a husband and wife that's a difficult challenge men and women as the Kumar says men and women are two different nations that's it's a lesson in the Gemara so it's very very difficult but that is that is a person's avodah in marriage both from that husband and the wife's perspective I want to understand how you feel I want to see the world through your eyes too so by extension when you love God you want to look at the world through God's eyes not straight not just your eyes and from God's eyes every human being is precious from God's eyes the death of the Egyptians of the tragedy so the reason why there's a progression from particularism to universalism is that is the movement of our Veda based on era to avodah based on alpha a voter based on Ava and you're no longer focusing on what's good to me yeah sure it was good for me that the Egyptians died but from God's perspective there was a sadness although it had to be done and it properly had to be done but there's a sadness and when I'm innovate may Ava I will try to feel that sadness as well because that's what I shouldn't feel and that is how its expressed telepathy now you might ask a very very strong question and everything that I said so according to what we're saying you see at Smith's ryeom was the experience of serving Hashem out of ii-era and crius Yamcha is serving a sham out of love because we feel God's love but that's not what the person says when the plastic talks about korea-asean surf it says but yar you sir LS ienaga Toula assure us ah Hashem be mitzrayim the Jewish people saw the great powerful hands that God put against the Egyptians by year and they feared or revered Hashem that's Chris Yosef the amino Bastion and they believed in a sham but Moshe of toe and in Moshe served by the way that plastic is quoted in Bogota and that is the only time Moshe a famous name is them that I got it so if your kids are restless or grandchildren are restless and you want to give them an assignment you can say you'll give a little prize to anyone who will tell me when motivators name is mentioned but the problem is by Kriya see opps if it says year by year but the answer is this the answer is there are different types of yera as well you know we're familiar with Yura Yura itself has two basic types there is fear fear of punishment I better behave because there's punishment that's a discipline thing and then there's Euro which is all and reverence and then there's love of God which is higher but then there's a third year that's even higher than love so there's euro 1 euro to Avila and then there's year of 3 that's higher than Abba and year of 3 is an intensification of love that is so strong that you are afraid to do a sin not because you're afraid of punishment but you don't want to bring pain to the one that you love so let's say a husband is deeply you know loves his wife and he has to get up early and his wife is sleep so he may be afraid to make any noise that will wake her up now what is he afraid of is he afraid that you'll hit him with a frying pan well maybe that could be but usually no that would be fear of punishment is it because he's in awe of her it's like waking up Queen Elizabeth or something no he's not in off air the fear is a different fear it to love I love somebody I care about them I am afraid I'm tiptoeing I'm afraid to do something that will bring them pain so when it says they had yireh by curious young self it does not mean era of either fear of punishment or all that we got in myths Ryan but it refers to the madruga of era which is an intensification of love and this little medulla that way because in most of the Torah when it describes Zira it always says you're right ello Kim hello Kim is the needs of ding and Punishment here it says 4-year rule ha Hashem your cave of K is the name of rock mmm so it's an unusual juxtaposition to have Europe with the shame of aya but if we understand it this way it's a beautiful point because what it's basically saying is because we experience Hashem mercy other that awakens in our hearts a love for us him and that love generates a fear not to do anything that will impair that love and that's why we have a year uh ASSOCHAM vadhaka and not not elokim in Rosh Hodesh benching in the in the prayer that we recite Shabbos move or can the Shabbos before Rosh Hodesh so we ask em for a number of things right and one of them is I am Shh I am here at Sean I am for year a trait a life that has fear of heaven fear of God and fear of sin what exactly is the difference so this is the difference Neurath shamayim includes the two lower levels of Europe eurozone Esch and awe and reverence for God shall maíam us faith is not fear of that it's fear of the sin because it'll bring God pain and God is the object of your love so your ask rate is actually a mod raiga that is makuu char - I've rather than Europe Eurasia maíam is era us faith is the intensification of Allah and therefore which was acquired at Korea's yams off' was here as hate aayiram Hashem that comes from an awareness of a college bar whose love as combined upon upon him when we feel Hashem love our hearts feel a greater love towards a college bar okay I wish you all a good week and a happy to be taught next week and mrs. Jim Lowe see [Music]