Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: Revolution, Reincarnation, Cain and Abel

[Music] okay hi everybody uh good evening again it's good to see uh some more and more faces coming back in person so i'm not just talking to a uh to a screen and uh i hope that more and more people will be able to physically come as uh hopefully bazrat hashem kovet will will recede yeah today's share again is dedicated uh for a refuge leima to ashifra bhatt khalil and galileo devorah and in addition we are continuing our filos uh for binyamin israel benjamita and we hope that he and all and uh and all of the holy israel should have a a reforeshalema a bacaro bakar of mamish in addition this year is sponsored by again a friend of mine mikhail puratinsky in appreciation for ibanez and all the learning and may the learning and stuka be a sukhois for all of those who need yeshua's refuge and shidduchim you know i think we've spoken already about the idea that the book of bamidbar is three books that's why the passage in mishlai talks about the torah having seven books beratious is one shamosa's two vayikra is three by midbar is three and then devarim is one book and the three divisions of bamidbar again i don't want to be married because we had spoken about this is a book one takes us until the journey from sinai book two is only two verses the journey from sinai and then book three is the rest of the book of amidbar and you'll recall that raf sadok the way of sadiq understands it is book one is a reference to the ideal jewish society that is based on torah avodah gamilas khasadim every shaivit has its role every shave it has its uniqueness it's kind of the ideal huh yeah okay it is the idea is the ideal jewish society that we need that we need to have book three is a process of disintegration where everything falls apart and the transition is the journey from sinai with the attitude of a child running away from school that when you despise the torah when you reject the torah when you look at the torah as a burden even if you're keeping it technically you have a tremendous tremendous downfall and parashat korek of course as parshas miraglum last week is in book three we're dealing with everything seems to be unraveling here it was already decreed that the jews would wander in the desert for 40 years as if that wasn't bad enough and all of a sudden we have korach who is a lady leading a revolt against moshe rabana ref salavaitrik used to say that at least rhetorically the revolt of korach might be called the revolt of the common man essentially korach is what you would call an anarchist or a radical egalitarian because korok's argument is an argument that is still made today in many cases all of the jewish people are holy all of the jewish people are good don't you believe that don't you believe in the holiness of ami israel all of us heard god at sinai the two first two commandments i am the lord your god who took you out of egypt you shall not have any other gods so what gives moshe a bainu or rabbis or any group of people any authority to be leaders so korach plays what you might call the populist card the anarchy card the idea that we don't need government we don't need rules we don't need leaders every person should be entitled to create and invent their own relationship with god that's correct's argument you know it's interesting um there was a professor in harvard a very famous protestant theologian harvey cox who in the 1960s wrote some very very well-known books on religion in america and in his book he interviews a woman called sheila sheila is a nurse and sheila says she believes in god but she doesn't believe in organized religion and she has her own religion that she calls sheilaism which is her private relationship with god okay so that's sheilaism so i remember hearing a a talk from rabbi jacob shakhtar very very eminent scholar an orthodox rabbi as well that said we're very lucky her name wasn't judy because then her religion would be her religion would be judaism now in point of fact many people do have judaism whether their name is judy or not in which people say i have my own relationship with god i don't need mitzvoth i don't need the talmud to tell me what i have to do i don't even need the hummus to tell me what they have to do this is kodak's argument of salvatrix says the common sense rebellion call her a dog coulomb kedoshan everybody is equal we don't need rabbis or moshe in particular to tell us what to do now based on this though moshe rabbanu's answer is a non-sequitur korach comes to moshe and korach basically says everybody is equal we don't need leadership structures now if you recall moshe baner's initial speech is to build up korea by saying you are a lady and you have special jobs and god shows you why are you so unhappy with the great great jobs that god has given you but that's not responsive to correct argument if korach would be arguing i don't have the vote i should have so moshe says you have a lot of covenant but if korek is arguing there shouldn't be leaders you can't refute that by saying you're a leader too and the answer is very very obvious there is what korach says and there is what korach means and of course this says analogies in the in the political world co-rex vocabulary is we're all equal we don't need leaders we don't need bosses but the hidden agenda is you're going to have bosses and i want to be the boss instead of him and that's why mosher boehner responds by saying you have covered also you shouldn't really feel excluded and this is really the problem with all revolutionary movements you know robes pierre the french revolution spoke about liberty equality fraternity and what did it turn into rose pierre created a dictatorship that was actually worse than any of the kings the communist revolution brought us lenin and then stalin okay the czars were bad i'm not a supporter of the tsars but it's hard to see that stalin was any great improvements over whatever oppression the czars in russia did the american revolution might be an exception okay that's an interesting thing to talk about people debate even that pol pot i don't want to get too political talk about what happened in cambodia pol pot again a rebel mount saitan a revolution to liberate the masses turns into a power grab that is even worse than what you overthrew george orwell saw this very clearly in his famous parody of the russian revolution uh animal uh farm where the animals revolt against the human oppressors and one of the animals or some of the animals become as oppressive as the oppressors and this is the story of kohak korak uses the vocabulary of equality when in fact it's all about his own power moshe rabbanu saw through this and there's one other unknown heroine who saw through this we don't even know her name and that is mrs own ben pelos in the beginning of the listing of who are the revolutionaries with correct it talks about the the elders the 250 elders and it mentions a guy that's not mentioned at all in the torah anywhere else and owen ben pelos joined and one ben pelos is not mentioned the late later on and who is on ben palace we know he's from the tribe of ruvain that's all we know and the gomorian sanhedrin gives us a little bit of a back story about owen ben palace that own ben palace was saved by his wife because he comes home and he's really excited and he's waving the flag and he says korek says we're all going to be kings we're all going to be bosses we're all going to be authorities no no no more taking orders and his wife in the way that a good wife you know addresses her husband says you are an idiot he says what do you think is going to happen if moshe wins you're in big trouble and if korach wins you're going to be a nobody so why are you getting involved what do you think you're going to gain here and indeed when korach's men came to summon onben palace to what would have been his death she uncovered her hair brazenly so they dared not enter the tent of a married woman whose hair was uncovered and the gemara says that own ben pelos was saved by his wife who gave him a reality check beware of hidden agendas uh as opposed to korach's wife who goaded him on kodak's wife said yeah yeah yeah keep on going keep on going so that's really one point here of course that's the notion of the of the hidden agenda that often people who speak the vocabulary of equality fraternity we want you to participate in decision making are really just rhetorically trying to undermine leadership so they can be they can be the leaders okay that's that's one thing to be aware of the hidden agendas that often exist there's another interesting point there's a famous mishna in pirkei evos and the mishnah says in pirkei yavas that every mach lokas every disagreement that is the shame shamayim that is for the sake of heaven so follow his qiyam it will endure we will continue to discuss it and analyze it and it gives an example of the arguments between hillel and shamai and basil in shamai yes the happens to be like base hillbell but we study bait shamai we learn bait shamai because both sides of the makloches were acting for the sake of god and for the sake of truth so the positions will continue to be respected and admired but then it says a macholocast not for the sake of heaven will not endure it will disintegrate it will be laid to oblivion and the bishop says what is a maklocus what's the mach lokes not the shame shamayim korah and his congregation so the mufasa maskakasha that's not symmetrical because korach and his congregation are only one side in other words in the reisha it says in the first part it says what is in the shame shamayim so you should say what is that okay versus moshe karacharya is only one side so one answer could be very passionate you don't want to say korak versus moshe because that would imply that the stigma of not lashing shamayim is on both sides where it's not that's actually a simple answer but because i'm seifer gives another answer he says when you have a makhlokas not lashing shamayim even the people on the same side are fighting with each other meaning if you look at korak karaka had a whole bunch of people right korek had 250 elders and he had people from ruvain and on ben palace and they're all united against moshe and they all use the vocabulary of egalitarianism but they all have their own personal agenda the the the the elders wanted to replace the levine the levine wanted to replace the quran him rouveines are jealous because the firstborn was taken from them and given uh to efraim in menasha in other words within the group of uh common people that are joining together there's no actus everybody's in it for themselves again i don't want i do not want to be uh too political but a friend of mine robbie oppenheimer used this theme to kind of describe the likely coalition that is emerging in the israeli government in which nobody really wants to be with the people that they are and each person is simply thinking about what is best for their personal power and they they're united against a common enemy whose name happens to be netanyahu and how long this it will last this is not a made in heaven this is a made in hell and how long this shidduch will last is really anybody's guess if it will last at all and it's very very similar i don't want i don't want to belabor the politics too much but it's very very similar to how the meforshim described korach and his congregation in which everybody had their own agenda and there was no real unity and that's why machloke is not lashing shamayim korach viadosa yeah can i just say something that maybe you find to be true or not i i don't know but it just sprung to my mind that there's something in the jewish psyche that makes us all anarchists in some way and we i mean marx karl marx and einstein they all had a spark of anarchy because they went against the conventional thinking and i think that we jews are gifted in that we have an intelligent intellectual mind that brings us toward that phenomena yeah it is a very good point uh there is something to be said for independent thinking there is something to be said for thinking outside the box there is something to be said for not being shackled to conventional wisdom and indeed the whole existence of the jew is kind of bucking the trend we are such a small group and if you ask a typical person typical non-jew uh what percentage of the population of the world are jews you will get amazingly high numbers people i'm not even talking about anti-semites it's just an average non-jew they'll say huh must be 25 30 50 because you hear about the jews they they run everything whether it's true true or not and then when they discover the tiny tiny minuscule percentage of the world we are and yet there is such an impact and to be able to survive and not just survive but to flourish and to be creative and to accomplish when when the whole world is trying to destroy you you do have to be right the torah says we are a stick a stiff-necked people now that works sometimes to our disadvantage you know we don't listen to hashem etc but on the other hand that's also the survival mechanism so you are you are correct and uh so therefore indeed there may be something good in that quality but that quality can be taken in destructive uh and anarchy ways and to end the like you know karl marx i believe came from like 35 generations of rabbis his father was not his father broke the pattern but it's an oh it was an old rabbinical family going all the way all the way uh back and yeah freud too they say i don't know if this is true they people like to tell stories but they say that they've some of freudian's ideas about the subconscious and the id etc can be found in kabbalah can be found in the zoar with obviously different terminology so i once heard it may be a total bubba misa that they found a a regular zoa in aramaic zohar in freud's library with his own notes in it okay i'm not sure i buy it but this is what they they want to say that he actually learned to the zoar itself in the original and was able to write hebrew notes but who knows okay so those are really the two kind of preliminary points about korach number one the hidden agenda and number two the notion that even within his group there was no unity because everybody was in it for themselves and that's something to remember a lot when people beckon you to join their causes and and and and the like so now i want to share with you a very enigmatic comment of the arizona that is explained by the shame mishma the shame his father was one of the great gedovy hadour the abney nasir the sakura rebbe and the shaymishmore was his successor and was also a great great talmud and and leader for those who are interested in in in suffrage hasidas the shame ishmael is actually a very good point of entry for hasidic literature because it's relatively easier than many other hasidic works so it's often recommended as uh one of the first swarm that one would learn if you are moving towards casitas and some of it it's been translated into english you can actually get english translations of or at least adaptations i don't know if we have a word for word translation but we have adaptations of the shame although i personally i i don't like any adaptations i don't know but it is uh i can i can work with translations all right translation i can read it i can read a thought in english but adaptations i don't like because that's kind of the author telling you what the the shame with what the what's the casitas whoever says but whatever it's something to look into so let me tell you what the arizona says um very enigmatic it's based on this very simple gematria but the aria doesn't tell you what the what the significance of the gematria is mosha the gematria of moshe mem 345. okay of course 308. the difference between 345 and 308 is 37. 37 is the gematria of hevel abel who was killed so we have three gematrias 345 is moshe 308 is korach 37 is heaven based on the arithmetic therefore we can establish the following two equations moshe minus havel equals correct okay following the math here or korach plus evel equals motion okay right that's how you get it with either addition or subtraction mosha minus sevo is korach korak plus havel is moshe adkan the words of the arizo okay the numbers work at least sometimes you have a problem comatrice don't add up then you really have a problem how to figure it out but rick hashem the kamachary is add up okay fine but what does it mean what is the comparison what are you bringing in heavily all of a sudden all the way back from the very beginning of the torah so i'm going to offer to you the beautiful explanation of the shame mishmael but before i mention the shame ishmael i want to augment it with one of the most famous thoughts of ref celebration actually liv obviously much much later and that is of yosef dave solovec of yeshiva university one of his most beautiful essays which i think you can actually get online for free now is called the lonely man of faith a very very classic classic essay and then the lonely man of faith ref sullivan deals with many many things but one of the things he deals with is the fact that in the creation of man in partial sporacious there are two different accounts of the creation of man of adam there is the account of the creation of adam in perak aleph chapter 1 and then there seems to be an alternative account of the creation of man in chapter two and the two accounts are a bit inconsistent that's why there are bible critics who you know it's not us but who do not believe in the divine origin of the torah that actually posit these were two different versions written by two different people that some editor simply mixed up together pretty bad editor because you're keeping two inconsistent accounts and without getting into all of the inconsistencies let me just mention a few in genesis chapter 1 man and woman are described as being created together god created man and woman together in genesis 2 we have the famous story that man was lonely man was alone he had no help mate and god said the famous verse it is not good for man to be alone i will make a helpmate and woman came sequentially which means in perak olive men and women are described in a simultaneous way in peric base it's described sequentially that's one difference the second difference is that in chapter 1 the torah emphasizes that man is made in the image of god greatness of man now of course keep in mind image obviously does not mean physical image god does not have a nose or a mouth but image as maimonides says refers to spiritual qualities of intelligence of bakira free will autonomy creativity these are aspects of our connection to god and of course it's been well said that this is the foundation and i'll use the term of the judeo-christian ethic i know something i want to know apollo christian i think okay the seder but the the fundamental idea of human relationships is that man human beings are made in the image of god and that is why they are worthy of respect and dignity but that appears in chapter one chapter two emphasizes man is made from the mud man is made from the dust of the earth so ghazal simply say that you know both are true but ref salvation fletches us out in a very beautiful way this is what he says this is really a brilliant exercise in biblical interpretation when the torah gives you two contradictory accounts of an event the torah is not necessarily conveying history the torah is indicating that in man there are two types of personality constructs one which would emerge from genesis 1 and one which would emerge from genesis 2. he actually calls this adam 1 and atom 2. but he doesn't mean there was an atom one and there was an atom to it there's only one atom only one of them but he means that the torah wants us to focus on two different and even contradictory aspects of human personality adam one is termed majestic man and these are his terms adam two is termed redemptive man and really i can't really do justice uh to the beautiful way he articulates this but he says the following majestic man is aware of his power his ability to create he is in the image of god he comes into the world as a team man woman able to create families able to build societies genesis 1 is an emphasis on the majesty of man the dominance of man because god put us into this world to drain the swamps to discover cures for cancer to fight covet to make the world a more just place to take initiative creating a land creating a society here not just say god will take care of everything of course everything comes from god but we have to be actors that's why genesis 1 talks about the strength and the power of the human being you're in the image of god and by the way that's why the mission i should also add in the garden of eden is be fruitful and multiply because dominate the world don't be a victim of the raw forces of nature but dominate in control so genesis 1 represents what you might call the godless of man the greatness of man but if all you have is the vision of adam one what that leads to is arrogance guyva the sense that there are no limits i can do whatever i want so as a result adam one needs to be balanced with adam too if adam won is a recognition of my greatness and my power and my ability adam too is a recognition of my fallibility my weakness my inadequacies if adam one says i am in the image of god adam two reminds me i am from the dust of the earth if adam one talks about me as having a strong family unit by which we can go out and do things adam one reminds me of my loneliness and my weakness and my dependence on hashem if the mission of adam one is to conquer the world kibush the mission of adam too is the ula shamra to cultivate and preserve hashem's garden and not destroy it you know the environmental movement everything has a tinge of anti-semitism the environmental movement occasionally makes statements jews get blamed for everything that the destruction of the environment in part comes from the attitude of genesis chapter 1 where man is told to conquer nature rather than live in harmony with nature but all i'm saying is that in genesis 2 the mission is to live in harmony to preserve and protect conquer preserve and protect now if all you have is redemptive and that's called man finding his redemption in his subservience to hashem but you understand if all you have is redemptive man i am dirt i am nothing you have passivity the swamps don't get drained the cities don't get built the diseases are not eradicated so you need to have a balance with the greatness of man along with the weakness and subservience of god again this ties in exactly to what we talked about last week with the raglan the two ideas because of me the world was created but this is truly truly truly a brilliant and beautiful parshanu to exercise of explaining biblical verses the two accounts of man exemplify the two aspects of human personality that must exist adam one and adam two are not two people they are two aspects that must coexist within the human personality so now i'm going to go to the shame ishmael and i think although i'm you know using of salvation here but i think that this will help us understand the shame of shimon when cayenne and heaven were born these were the two children of adam and khaba essentially the integrated personality of adam harishan got fragmented into the two children in which cayenne took over the atom 1 personnel persona and have el took over the atom 2 persona what do we mean cayenne cayenne's name khaba called cayenne cayenne and the terra gives us a reason there's a meaning to the name konisi ish hashem that actually means i have created a person means with hashem i am god's partner in creating life meaning it's not just god gave me a child rather i am an active creator now that's khabib talking but shame ishmael wants to say that that was cain's personality cayenne was the person the man of action the person who cultivated the earth he took the raw materials of the earth and tried to convert them by agriculture tried to convert them into something better than the raw product cayenne represents the human force of egotism of accomplishment of wanting to get things done of not being passive and saying i leave it to god to take care of things but to take charge of the world as it was now the word heavel have al means breath or also vanity everyone remembers the very famous refrain in the book of kohelet ecclesiastes where king solomon says havel havalim a [Music] now here there's a little bit of a confusion the famous and standard english translation is vanity of vanities says the preacher vanity of vanities everything's vanity but you have to know that in the english at the time of the king james version vanity meant something different than it means today today when we talk about somebody having vanity that refers to being conceited or arrogant but that was not the meaning then vanity then was like everything is in vain nothing worthless so in modern english a more accurate translation of a heavel is not vanity that doesn't correspond to the modern use of the word vanity but futility or things that are ephemeral temporary like breath you breathe out some air and it just you know you don't see it and what america's bemoaning is the futility of everyday life you work to to gather wealth you're not going to take it with you et cetera all of these things people spend so much time and energy on don't mean anything in the long run very depressing book that's at the end of the book um says he gives you a little bit of comfort actually a very important number soft devour at the end of everything fear god and do his mitzvos and then your life has meaning but most of gohelis is a book about the meaninglessness of life right i'll say he wrote shir hashirim in the ardor of youth and that's why it is so romantic and passionate he wrote michele which is full of practical wisdom save your money don't guarantee other people's loans like practical advice middle age middle-aged man who is prudent and cohellus as he's approaching death he is struck with the realization of how much of our life we waste on things that really don't matter i mean you can't deny this there is obviously a very depressing tinge in coalesce although it is redeemed at the end but be it as it may have el means ephemeral vanishing futile cut heavel's name was heaven because hevel basically was so aware of the inadequacies of the human being the adam too we're just dirt god does everything without god there's nothing we can accomplish so essentially the way using enough solid matrix terminology cayenne got the atom one and hevel got the adam too cayenne got the majesty of man and heavenly got the redemption of knowing without god were nothing but have all needed taken heavil needed taken because humility is great humility is wonderful humility is holy but when your humility convinces you to live a life of passivity in other words you leave everything to god you know if god doesn't want us to have covert he'll he'll get rid of kobe don't need vaccines or medicines or polio whatever it would be i know the copyright sees a little controversial let's take the polio vaccine if god you know doesn't want us to have polio he'll get rid of it in other words the problem with the heavenly latitude in the world is that in theory you simply don't do anything you say god will take care of it nothing for me to do so when cayenne died and when hevel died each of their neshamats needed rectification cayenne needed to absorb humility and hevel needed to absorb initiative and leadership and here we get into an idea that's a bit controversial in jewish history and that is the idea of gilgal gilgal is reincarnation and people ask all the time is reincarnation a fundamental axiom of judaism the answer is it is not reincarnation is not mentioned in the talmud so it's not authoritative there were very great rabbis such as of sajagon who claimed i mean there'll be final resurrection of the dead that reincarnation will be but until the final resurrection of the dead there is no concept that a soul once it separated from the body will come back again and again so if a person were to say i deny reincarnation they could not be called an epicurus okay i'll give you that nevertheless as as all of you know the idea of reincarnation was solidly accepted by the great cabalists such as the arizal and the vilmagone later and the ramhal ramoshikai in luzado wrote an entire book on the subject of reincarnation that is called shah hagil gulem the book of reincarnations and in fact at chabad.org you can actually find an annotated translation of the whole book you can actually read char gogulim on khabad.org in english interestingly enough on our subject i had to speak on transgender issues a few a few days ago not not my best choice of topic but i did mention refrain vital does talk about the phenomenon that sometimes a male soul may be imprisoned through gilgal in a female body and perhaps in some of the cases of transgender that might be going on okay uh so the shame ishmael who is of course rooted in the hasidic kabbalistic tradition very much goes with gilgal and he says the following if cayenne's neshama needed rectification heavels and shaman needed rectification they needed to come back so he wants to say korach and moshe was a gilgal of heaven and that is why moshe at least is the most modest of all people because moshe's dominant personality was the hevel the humility of heaven but moshe rectified hebel's neshama because in spite of moshe rabbenu being the most humble of all people moshe was not passive moshe was a leader he took the jewish people out of mitzrayim he brought them to mount sinai he prayed for them he judged moshe avenue did not allow his humility to take away his sense of responsibility for taking care of a nation of at least three million people and then if you add the arab rav which is kind of moshira bainer's people as well at least in some sense you may have had you know 10 million people you know the arab rave could have been huge and moshe did it and moshe did not allow his humility to make him passive and ineffectual in fact people have written books about moshe rabbenu as leader the qualities of leadership that you see from moshe albania korach on the other hand failed in his mission korach was a man of great talent korak was the cayenne of the world the go-to guy but his mission was to inculcate within himself humility and submission and that he didn't do so essentially the end of the story is a reversal of the first story in genesis it is cayenne who killed seville in the story of korach it is the reincarnation of heaven that is moshe rabbenu who calls upon god to kill the reincarnation of cayenne who is kaur okay that's the basic pattern and as i say i think it fits very very well with rav sullivatrix atom1 and atom2 essentially uh korach was adam won moshe was at him too but moshe rabeno incorporated the atom one into his atom two korak failed to incorporate the atom 2 into the atom one and therefore kawaraks and summer was not mesukan was there a later gilgal who knows but you know these gogulum will go on until there is tikkun until there is rectification and completion so with this hakatama with this these introductory ideas the irish gomatria now becomes extraordinarily meaningful it's not just a word play moshe which is 3 45 equals korach plus heaven or moshe minus that means to say that korach was a man of phenomenally great abilities intelligence understanding of the torah according to ghazal he understood the mystery of para duma the only one who got it a person who indeed the navi shemoil is descended from the children of korach who survived shmuel in a sense on some level is even greater or equal to moshe and i run together korach had tremendous abilities but the problem is he didn't have the heaven he didn't have the humility if you would add the humility to kairak you get a moshe and if you take a moshe and take away the heaven you get a torah moshe and korek are exactly the same except for the humility that moshe had in that sense the story of korach is really a greek tragedy right the concept of tragedy uh in greek literature is not that you know you're standing outside and a building falls on you or a car hits you that's very sad but that's not tragic tragic is when you are destroyed from a flaw that is within you that is tragic because you look at greatness you look at talent you look at ability to do wonderful things in the world and then there is something within the person that destroys all of that when there was so much potential that is tragic and the arizona was telling us that's the tragedy of color karach was a mojo revenue but because he was driven by arrogance and covert he was destroyed now unfortunately i mean without again without getting too specific we have seen over the past few years some very very great rabbis maybe i shouldn't call them great but very talented and accomplished rabbis teachers people who were able to reach thousands of people in remarkable ways but they were destroyed because of a character flaw because of an over-reliance on their charisma because of egotism in which they thought there are no boundaries the rules don't apply to them whether it's sexual impropriety or or other things that's why you have to be very suspicious of charisma because charisma becomes can become a personality called i know that we all of us gravitate towards charismatic figures but charisma is very very dangerous in fact they say the altar of slovakia used to talk in a very boring monotony he had like almost a deliberate policy to make his presentations uninteresting kind of crazy you think counter-intuitive but his idea was he wanted people to be influenced exclusively by the content and not the style he didn't want there to be any stylistic again i i try not to follow that you know i think most teachers try not to follow that because in our generation if you don't try to talk interestingly you won't get anybody but the algorithm was talking to very very eminent and khashov and righteous people and he made a concerted effort that there'd be no stylistic embellishments coming into his words so people would focus totally on the content and as i say i myself am very very suspicious when i see that very charismatic religious leaders maybe because i unfortunately had experience uh with people who wound up to be dangerous in that way that when somebody is like too charismatic and much of the focus is on the teacher rather than the torah not a good thing and that is the kind of the fatal flaw of korah kind of right the idea that he was great he had greatness but that greatness was marred by a flaw that brought him down we're going to see in a few weeks that in many ways this is the same story of bilham okay there's a very strong parallel bildem was a nothing who was equal to moshe rabena and yet bilham was consumed with taiva and jealousy and then and greed and everything else and this destroyed him certainly in politics you see this all the time i mean go and go all the way back to uh richard nixon richard nixon in many many ways was an extraordinarily talented uh person who did you know he did he did a lot for the for the jewish people did a lot for the state of israel uh but you know he got he got destroyed he got destroyed because of the various flaws that were there i mean it was almost like it was very very hard to even watch a person who had you know was doing good things in many many ways and gets destroyed from that which is within and that is the story of of korach and that i think is the shame ishmael's hezbear of the gematria of moshe minus hevel you get a korach and korak plus ahel you get a motion adam one atom two um moshe was messaging but korak was not metacaine the neshama of cayenne so cayenne still needed a tikkan who knows what happens in later generations let me just mention a a final remark and the final remark is uh from the native if you recall what happens here was that korach had a group of 250 elders and the elders were tested by bringing incense to the mishkan and arun brought incense and korach brought i'm sorry the 250 elders brought incense and what happened was that our own corbin was accepted and the 250 elders were burnt they fire came out from their fire and consumed them so korach died in a different way korak died by the ground opening up the 250 elders died like not even a view in many ways by a fire coming from their incense and consuming them and then the torah says that you should take the metal pans in which they brought incense and you should beat them flat and they should be made a cover for the top of the altar so the kaira it's a little strange if these 250 people were rebelling against moshe and rebelling against god why should they be given the honor of having their fire pants made a permanent covering of the mizbeach why are you honoring them why are you giving them that distinction now the simple answer might be there's actually a simple answer and that is we're not honoring them we want their sins so to speak to be on public display so that everybody should realize that when you rebel against moshe and our own there are going to be severe consequences meaning every time a person wants to say i want to be a colleague instead of the culling you look at the mizbaya and you see that covering and you remember what happened to the 250 elders who wanted to replace iran so it's not a question of i'm giving them covet i simply want there to be a public display of their hate that's a simple answer but the native does suggest a different answer which in some ways almost contradicts everything that i've been saying then it sips says the 250 elders had a different motive than korach korak's motive was arrogance gaiver power the 250 elders than it suggests and this is not the way i've been learning until now actually wanted an intimacy with god their kavanah although it was also denying authority so to speak but their kavanaugh was they wanted an unintermediated relationship with god they wanted a direct relationship with god and they knew they would die in trying to do this they knew it but they said we are willing to die to experience the intimacy of our souls with hashem and then it says they didn't die so much as a punishment but they had reached a level of divine ecstasy in which their neshama could no longer stay in their growth you know arya kaplan secretary was a great author and a great uh mccobble as well um and uh he writes in fact uh his works uh are probably the best works in english on basic kabbalah inner spaces is the main one and he actually writes there he talks about meditations and different ways of meditating on god's name and connecting to hashem but he points out it's like swimming he says you should always have a buddy with you do not do this alone because what happens is when you reach a certain state of ecstasy you have an out-of-body experience and your soul leaves the body and when it's all his body it doesn't want to come back so you die simply because the soul when it experiences communion with god not constricted by the gulf the soul doesn't want to come back so you need somebody there that when that person sees that you might be leaving kind of gives you a slap and says come back to earth so he actually says you need a buddy when you do these kabbalistic meditations and my my on my unsubstantiated speculation is you know he died very young and in fact uh kabbalists have a track record of dying very young the ramak died at 48. the re died at 38 or 39. i think ari captain also died at 48 i think it went he was younger than that okay uh and my again i have absolutely no proof so maybe i shouldn't say it but i feel that perhaps he was engaged in they met that maybe he wasn't maybe maybe he wasn't following his own advice he was engaged in a meditative practice without the buddy and this could happen so then it's if says that the 250 elders were similar to that particular process their kabbana was the shame shamayim and that is why they are given the honor of having their fire pants hc but it's also a cautionary tale and the cautionary tale is that you still got to follow god's rules that's part of the lesson as well meaning it's wonderful to have an intimate relationship with god but when you don't follow god's laws there are going to be drastic consequences we talked about this with nada venavio then it civ essentially says the 250 elders is a reprise of the nut of an avio story on a larger scale we've talked about before that the mystical spiritual temperament has i'm going to use a fancy word has an antinomian tendency antinomian simply means i don't like to follow the rules i'm spiritual i connect with god don't bother me with technicalities don't tell me i can't do this i can't do this i can't do this i want to focus on god indeed this was identified as a critical issue in the early years of casitas which so much emphasized that they could cleaving to god love and fear that sometimes there was a danger they would abandon and both the tanya which was written in the hasidic movement and the nepa shachaim of refrain bolajin the vilnigan student which was written outside of the hasidic movement warn that you can't allow devacus to take the place of because when you try to have a relationship with god that is not within the boundaries that hashem said it can actually be destructive which means obviously the ideal situation is i keep the halacha and i strive for spiritual connection with god but if you had to make a choice without devakis is better than devecos without again halaqua without vegas is not great because one should strive for a deep relationship with god but ultimately is your minimum and without your minimum you can't have a maximum you can't build the second story of a house unless there's a there's a first story halacha is the first story and then you build everything on top of that so basrat hashem we should learn from all of these things and try to ground our relationship to god on his will and then try to go beyond that in inculcating avat hashem and yerat hashem so shiva tovan thank you for coming [Music] yes