Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: Sanctifying the Physical World

[Music] all right okay hi everybody uh good uh thank you for coming and uh today's share is dedicated for a foolish lima to brya bhatthava may she ever refuse leima together with all of the holy israel and may those who are healthy uh remain healthy and the malia nishama fort sv hirsch bin abram we again we're always very grateful for all of the support of torah and it should be azahus for all of those who support tauran for the reasons that they are supporting this year it's interesting that i'm going to mention something from last week's parsha but i know that people sometimes complain so it's going to be about this week's spiritual for sure this year but i want to start with a five-minute introduction that will lead into this week's parsha so please bear with me for five minutes uh and that is uh ghazal tell us that the book of bhamitbar is actually three three khumasum meaning the torah has seven books boracious shamos vayikra bamidbar is three books that make six and devarim is number seven so instead of the five khumasum of the torah we have the seven khumasum of the torah although grammatically you can't talk about seven khumashim because literally means one-fifth but it's like seven books of the torah and the book of amidbour is divided into three books of very unequal length the first book of bamidbor is parshas bamidbor parshas naso and half of baloska the third book of amidbur begins two verses later and it is the rest of the book of amidbur the second book of mabidmar is only two verses that talk about the arana kodesh leaving and moshe rabbanu says may your enemies disperse etc and that's a separate hummus the two verses are called the separate homage so rav sadok explains in a very beautiful way that the reason why bamidbar is divided into three units is unit number one is the ideal world that god wants us to have a world in which you have the mishkan in the middle and the tribes are surrounding the mishkan each tribe having its unique function its unique identity a special individuality in its approach to god but they're all unified and together with a central core so we would call part one of bamidbar is the ideal part three is the sordid reality of life in which everything falls apart uh we read last week about the mun the complaint about the mon that resulted in quail and people dying and this week we're going to read about the spies which is what i'm going to talk about and the week after that will be kodak's rebellion and then the fornication that baal paor with the midgenite women and the moabite women so in a sense part one is the ideal of a jewish society and part two or part three is the disintegration of that ideal so how do you go from part one to part three how do you go from this beautiful holy sacred ideal to the social disintegration of sin and rebellion the key is part two the two verses which are swiftness the two verses describe the journey away from mount sinai after almost a year god finally gives them the signal to leave mount sinai and rashi says that the signal to leave mount sinai was greeted with a lot of enthusiasm the jewish people left sinai like a kid the last day of school you know with enthusiasm getting out of there because they figured that god is giving us so many commandments foreign sinai the longer we stay maybe he'll give us more commandments maybe 613 is only the beginning so of course they were wrong because hashem continued to give them commandments even after they left but they figured once we leave sinai no more commandments surabsoduk says the way you can go from the highest level to the lowest level is by the attitude you have towards mitzvot if you look at mitzvos as a burden if you look at them as an inconvenience if you look at them as obstacles from which you try to escape even if you're formally religious then you can lose all of the benefits of the spiritual power of the torah and that's how you go from one from a from the apex of a to the nader of z through the transition of tinoc the child who runs away from school now it's interesting that in the safer torah those two verses are bracketed by two nuns that we don't pronounce but they're written in the torah scroll two nuns and rav sadok says none is connected to nephilia falling losing your madrega but the nuns are unusually positioned they are actually inverted they are reversed and the lesson is that no matter how far you've fallen nephilia is always reversible by chuva and masem tofu so at the same time that the torah is telling me the dangers of how easy it is to fall and lose everything there is a message of encouragement in the idea that you're never so far gone that there isn't the possibility of returning and indeed that's the message again in last week's party the parsha and khutslaarith of pasak shani pesakshini says no matter how impure you think you are or no matter how far you are from god derek rakoka god will give you that second chance if you want it it's a very very profound lesson in not getting overwhelmed not being hopeless not being despondent never feeling that there's no way you can get back on track because no matter what road you've taken and no matter how far you think you've branched away from that connection to god you can get back like what they call it what do they call those wormholes in the universe kind of you know you can kind of cut through trillions of miles or whatever whatever it would be they're all of these cosmic shortcuts so you could you could be like you know a million miles away from where you're supposed to be but god creates these shortcuts through the work of chuba and the like that bring us back so this is by way of introduction to the story we're going to look at tonight which is the story of the parsha of the week in irish israel and that is the story of the spice and this is really a tragic story that had major major repercussions for not only the generation of the desert but even for our generation to this very day and that is moshe sends a delegation of 12 spies to check out the land of canaan and they come back on the eighth of uh they're gone for 40 days and they come back on the eighth day of uh with a negative report that is the the enemies are so strong there's no way we could conquer them etc and that night which is the night of the ninth of us everybody is crying and sobbing and they believe there's no hope and there's no way they could ever conquer the land of israel and as a result that entire generation now these are the men from age 20 upwards died over 40 years in the desert and only those who were under 20 at the time of exodus or were born in the desert plus many women women actually were not nikhla in the gezera of the marauding they had faith but all of the men except for yehoshua and khalev died now that was of course a tragedy for the generation of the desert but we should know as well that our sages tell us that that is why tisha b'av became a day of mourning and devastation and destruction because hashem decreed on that night of the tishbo when everybody was crying and complaining you are crying shalhinam you are crying for no reason at all i will make this day the day of eternal morning so if we are suffering tish aboves to this very day it actually goes back to the height of the miragulum so this is a parsha that's really quite quite major the fate of the miracle in which a whole generation of people people who had witnessed the exodus from egypt people who had seen the ten plagues they had experienced the splitting of the red sea they had experienced mata and torah of course there was the kaido ego which was the left turn but okay but now we have the miragulum and at this point god does not forgive the heidemara mean in a complete sense and that is uh they have to die over a period of 40 years so i want to talk about the morale a little bit uh and let's ask a number of questions first we talk about the faith the sin of the spies was it a sin to send spies like the jewish people are in the desert they're positioned to go to the land of israel is there a sin in the ethsem the actual raglan so there is actually is on that point an interesting mahlokas rashi and ramban the parsha begins with hashem saying to moshe sen spies if you read the passage literally god is commanding them to send spies but rashi interprets it this way by the word meaning do it if you want because the people are asking you to do it but i think it's better if you don't do it meaning hashem is telling moshe if you really had faith you wouldn't need to send spies and the fact that you're sending spies that already shows a lack of faith so according to rashi the hate is not only the report of the miraculous and it's not only their reaction to the report but the actual decision to send spies was in itself an aveira because if they had if they had real faith in hashem they would know that hashem will take care of it for them ramban argues ramban says there is nothing wrong and if even if god has given you a commandment to go and conquer an area and god has even promised you success you still have to engage in conventional military strategies because that's part of what's called tishtadlis the same way god gives you parnassa but usually you have to work if god forbid somebody is sick even though god is the source of healing you're supposed to go to a doctor and follow medical advice so too if god commands you to wage war you're supposed to figure out where are the weaker points what are the stronger points and the ramban says there is nothing wrong with srila ahmadlin and in fact he brings excellent proofs because number one we find in the book of yoshua that yoshua himself since miraglim to check out your eco now who more than yahushua knows the evil effects of miragum he was one of the 12 miragulum he and color were the two good ones but he knew what havoc that wrecked and yes he does the same thing the ramban says there's nothing wrong strategically to figure out what's going on and not only that ramban says it's not only yahushua that sends smiles moshe rabbenu himself it's only it's not the terror doesn't make a big story about it but when moshe rabeno conquered the east bank of the jordan from the king of the omori that was eventually given to the two and a half tribes of reuven god and khasi sheikh menasha it mentions that one of the towns in trans-jordan that was conquered by banay israel was yazer that's a city and it says moshe sends spies to check out yazer and figure out the best way to attack it this is after the faith of a raglan so the ramban says there is nothing wrong with sending miraglum this is a legitimate hishtad lutz in which you got to figure out your military options the problem was that the miragum editorialized they went beyond their mission they should have reported what areas are strong what areas are weak what's the best route to to get into eric israel they had no right to opine we have no way of vanquishing these opponents that's already editorializing their job were to be reporters of the news just give me the facts no editorial comment because hashem already gave us the editorial comments that this was the land that he promised so the faith was the washing horror of the miraglen and the hate was the reaction of the people but the sm the ramban says is legitimate as is evidenced by moshe ascending miraglum later and by yehoshua bin nun sending maragon later venusiv i'm sorry was it wrong for the people to react to the stars no because the reaction was improper because hashem told you that you will come to erect israel you will conquer it you will settle it so at that point we have a responsibility to figure out how to do it but we're not allowed to think that we can't do it we're not allowed to think it's beyond us we're not allowed to think we're going to fail because hashem told us we will succeed and he will be with us so to panic and be fearful and to cry and to feel that there's no way you'll succeed that is a lack of faith in our kurdish workers he also said in bringing you up to a good and wide land you're very friendly he gave us all of those things yeah so the only thing we had a right to do is we had a right to devise the plan of how we should do it but we didn't we don't have the right to give up and to think that it's unattainable because that would already be not having a belief in hashem now the native has an intermediate position that actually is very very interesting the native said it may have been a sin to ask for spice but once you ask it becomes a mitzvah to send him kind of an intermediate position and his argument is the following hashem deals with you based on the level of faith that you have in him and the level of your bhitakhan when your bitarchon is at its highest level you actually don't need human strategies and human interventions but once you express your fear once you express the idea that i need to have a military strategy you're showing you're not on the madrega of highest level of faith so then you are obligated to engage in strategy he brings a proof in this way let me give you the proof that the native brings the nasir brings a proof from shmuel when hashem was displeased with king saul with shalham elect because shaw did not carry out the commandments of eradicating amalek so he told shmuel go to baslet and anoint as a successor to shoal one of the children of yeshua he didn't tell them which one but one of the children of yishai and shemo then said to hashem how can i do that sha'al will hear about what i've done and he will kill me i'm afraid if shaw hears i'm anointing his successor sho will kill me so god said well i'll give you a pretense because in those days you were allowed to bring sacrifices because there was no basa mikta there was a mishkan and et cetera but you were allowed to bring sacrifices bummo's were permitted so he told us he told shmuel you go to bayslacham with the pretense that you're bringing a public corban and that way show will not suspect that you're anointing one of yeshi's sons now notes that hashem did not give him this subterfuge until he expressed what how can i do it i'm afraid sho will kill me what if he wouldn't have asked that question shouldn't have god given them an insurance policy so then it says if shmuel wouldn't have been afraid if shmoor would have been 100 secure in his trust in akadesporjo he wouldn't have needed any tricks he wouldn't have needed any cover-ups he wouldn't have needed to pretend to do something else he could have gone openly and announced i am anointing a successor to show and god would have protected him but once he opens himself he opens himself up to fear once he opens himself up to doubt so god says ah you're worried about things based on the natural order of events then you have to seek protection within the natural order of things by subterfuge and masquerade which means it now becomes mandatory had shmuel not express the fear he wouldn't have had to do anything to masquerade what he was doing once he expressed the fear it becomes mandatory the native says the same thing is true for the idea of the miraglen had the jewish people not requested maraudin god would have taken care of them without any plan without any military plan once they express the need it now becomes mandatory and that is why moshe and yeshua continued to send spies because the jewish people demonstrated that for whatever reason they were not yet under madriga of not being afraid and that's again this is a difficult point but apparently the idea is that when a person reaches bitachon at the absolutely highest level now this is extremely high level there literally is no fear that if you're scared if you're frightened you know i don't mean i mean to make anyone guilty here because i mean i obviously i also get frightened at scary situations but if you're frightened you haven't reached the highest level of bitarin and once you have that fright then you are hilaritically obligated you are hilarically obligated to work within a naturalistic system to kind of minimize your risks whether it involves going to doctors whether it involves military strategy whether it involves appointing a king all of these things are responses to the fear that i have when my betahn in hashem is not at the highest level and this is what the khaba salah says many many times he says the more be taken that it's okay catch 22 the more betahine a person has the more god will take care of him with less intervention on his part the less bitah the more you're going to have to do in order to receive hashem's divine providence right that's the the basic idea of the nisiv which is kind of an interesting compromised position between rashi who simply says they shouldn't have sensed spies at all and ramban who says of course they should send spies the nasiv says they shouldn't have wanted it but once they want it they have to have it because they've changed the way hashem interacts with the nation based on a fear or a lack of betah okay so that's part one part one is asking the question is there anything wrong with sending the spies but now let's look at part two uh the aveira of the people in respondent the bakiya the crying and the panicking over nothing and people do ask the kasha how do you understand that's it it's a little inexplicable because after all once again she repeats what i said before this was the generation that experienced yetis mithraim in fact remember just chronologically speaking this is only a year and a half after the exodus okay this is not like you know a hundred years later this is a year and a half after the exodus every single person experienced in cs mithralia the ten macos matan torah kris yams if we are told that the lowliest maidservant at kriyasyamsaf uh perceived hashem more than yechezkel the navi who saw the divine throne and the merkava the divine chariot and all of us they know what god did the egyptian empire was a world empire and they saw that god toppled that egyptian empire are the canaanites stronger than the egyptians are they panicking over the canaanites what is it how is it detoxing i know these are questions we always ask how is it possible that the door that witnessed yet yes mithraim all of a sudden feels uh there's no way we're going to beat those giants and defeat those people and remember the miraculous even using the positive features of eric israel as part of the negative message they were bringing back giant fruit now that shows the fertility of the land but what are they making the point they're saying oh you see see how big the fruit is imagine how big the people are they're going to beat you up they're going to destroy you or hazal actually say another thing that when the miracle were going through the different cities many of the canaanites were dying now god did that as an act of him to eliminate a lot of the enemies before we even come the miraculous used that to say you see there's disease in this place that you know people are dying you know we're going to die too now there's besides the strength of the enemies they're talking about it's disease-prone there's a lot of malaria in israel or whatever actually they used to be actually then they um you know there used to be a a whole lake that was north of yom kinara it was called hula there's the hula valley and that actually was a lake that but it was a very very muddy and marshy and filled with mosquitoes which carried malaria so in the i think it was 1950s israel did a massive engineering project to drain the lake hula so now it's uh now it's just a valley there's no water there anymore and that was actually to eradicate malaria so apparently the miragum we're saying there's malaria whatever people are dropping dead and the light so how do you understand it though i mean a moon not be talking okay listen i understand that for us maybe you know maybe we could understand that if we would not have that amount because we didn't experience those things but they experienced it so here there is a thought huh yeah christian yeah i'm saying well what we've experienced that's what i'm saying you see us in israel makos kriyasyams of matantora everything they experienced it so here there's a mahalik there's an approach that is said by many many meforsham in in different ways we have the malbim we have rev hirsch we have the nasiv they all go with a very similar mahala that here is the problem the jewish people already know they already know that when they enter eric israel moshe is going to die they know already that moshe is not going to be their leader when they enter earth cell although it is true that chronologically speaking he didn't yet commit the sin which will stop him from coming in but there was already a prophetic revelation that he would not be entering eric israel that's exactly right in last week's parsha baalosh you'll remember that when moshe was told to anoint or appoint 70 elders so there were two elders who in their humility they didn't want to enter the group and these were eldad and maydad and there were misnabhim they were prophesying in the camp and yehoshua went to the torah doesn't say what they were saying and the torah tells us yahushua was very concerned and he went to motion and he said put them in jail arrest them you know they're not they don't have the right they don't have a prophet's license and moshe said the beautiful words do you think i have to be the only prophet i would be very happy if every jew would be a prophet of god now rashi tells us like you said that what made you sure so upset because of what elder method were saying they were saying moshe will die and yehoshua will bring them into ourselves brazil you see by the way the modesty of yoshua i mean you might have thought you know sure might have been very happy to hear that news hey i'm going to be the boss but no moshe is i'm sorry yoshua is deeply deeply deeply hurt by any intimation that moshe is going to die what about after moshe complained that things are only getting worse god says now i'm going to show you what i'm going to pharaoh rashid says there is a decree now you're going to see what i'm going to devour but you're not going to see right you're correct you also see it even even earlier but but the the question the point i'm making is when did binet israel know that you say moshe may have known it even earlier but binet israel are hearing el dalumeda so here is the thing by the time the incident of the miragum occurs the jewish people are aware that moshe is not going to be there when they enter the land of israel now it's important to realize that the way hashem interacts with the jewish people in the midbar is not the same way he's going to interact with them when they enter eric israel the mitbar is a spiritual cocoon the man comes down from heaven they are surrounded with clouds of glory that protect them there is water in the merit of remember the man came in the merit of moshe the clouds of glory and the merits of our own the water of the well of miriam is the merit of miriam so they have their water they have their food they have their protection and above all they have moshe repeno who will teach them and guide them and pray for them and protect them and they're living this idyllic existence in some ways in the desert in fact the kimora has a lotion that the terror was given only to the generation that are like the people who eat man meaning to say the ideal generation for learning torah are people who don't have any responsibilities outside of learning taran serving again now even so we complained plenty but the midway was actually an ideal idyllic existence when it comes to eric israel when we come to eric israel life in eric israel is going to be very different not going to be mud we're going to have to plant plow plant harvest thresh there's not going to be a traveling well we'll have to dig for wells and of course in inaudible anyway because of the nature of the rainy season there's often scarcity of water that's a very common occurrence to this very day there are times in which we have a scarcity of water no clouds of glory we're going to have to have our army so it turns out that although certainly vis-a-vis lawrence god's providence is much more manifest in the land of israel than it is in hutzler it's that's for sure but as compared to what the midbour was there's a great great hesterpanim a concealment of the divine now the concealment now concealment of the divine and we talked about this a number of times that doesn't mean god forbid god isn't there and god is not running the show concealment of the divine he's there but he's harder to see now that has two negative effects that move in opposite directions on one hand if a person does not feel the tangible presence of god they are more likely to be frightened to be disillusioned to be terror stricken to feel inadequate to the challenge because i don't see the hand of god in an open clear way and there's an opposite effect as well that when you are successful you attribute your success to your abilities the torah in fact warns about this it says when you come to eric israel and you will be so you will become successful you will say varam luv you will say your heart will become high and mighty and when your heart becomes high in might even you will forget god and then you will say vyotsum yadi it is my strength and the power of my hands so you see it's an interesting point that hester panim can move in two directions hester panim can engender within a person a sense of yehush a sense of hopelessness and despair because i feel that god has abandoned me or it can also engender arrogance and overconfidence in which i don't need god right it can work in two but these are two negative consequences that arise from hester panim so what's the upper attitude towards a job well done i understand we don't accomplish anything but we do actually i'll foreign it a little bit as i go on but the truth of the matter is that um in a non-arrogant way one is actually supposed to have a certain pride in their accomplishments there's a verse about one of the righteous kings of yehudah yahushua tamela who was a righteous king by igbo but hashem his heart was confident and joyous in what he did so as a matter of fact a person does have to have a sense barak hashem i'm doing good things because that gives you encouragement but when it turns into attributing it to you rather than hashem then it becomes arrogance so what the native says is the following the miragulim are actually because the miragum were righteous people rashi says the twelve miragum all twelve of them were sadiki you know years and years ago you might remember a cartoon if you ever read the comics not comics but you know newspaper cartoons uh there was a cartoon dunesbury and uh whatever it is it was very popular in the uh 70s and early 80s and there was a character in dunesbury who he didn't want to finish school so he went to every single graduate program that the university had he went to medical school he went to law school he went to phds in biology and physics and and political science and history and music he went through every everything i know so the years were going by and he constantly had another academic program actually some sometimes i feel some post doctor that way you know you open programs the program the program to program the program and the problem was he had finished everything he had gotten every degree the university had and like he had no choice other than to get a job and he just didn't want to do that he didn't know what to do because he had finished every university degree but the short answer is you know it's wonderful to have an education but then you have to kind of take your education and use it in practical activity in the world colell to some degree maybe i'm being a little controversial is kind of the same way you can look at the midbar as an extended coll experience we grow in a muna we see hashem every single moment and that prepares us that even when we live a life of hester panim we will know that god was there god is there because we saw that from the desert in other words the desert was like a phd program in that moon it would be to prepare you for a muno be talking when you come to eric as well so la havdale like the character in doonesbury who needed more time in school because he wasn't yet ready to face the real world the marauding basically said it's too fast we're not ready to face that world of hester punim that can either result in depression and hopelessness or arrogance we need to have more time we need to be in the midwest longer we need to get the mon longer and longer and longer so we will internalize hester punning and we need moshe rabeno longer and longer and longer because how can we survive without emotion so the same way that a colo person might say i need another year in color i need another period where i'm just learning torah because that will strengthen me and that will prepare me for the challenges of the new world that i'm entering the miraglim deliberately intended to prolong our stay in the midbar knowing number one that would be keeping moshe rabbenu alive that much longer because indeed if we would have gone into here to throw right away just three days you know et cetera without the miragum moshe would have died 40 years earlier 38 years earlier than he died so in some ways the irony is the very punishment of god is exactly what the miraculous wanted they wanted us to stay in the mid bar longer under the guidance of moshe rabbano that's exactly what god gave them surely they they knew that prophecies for bad don't necessarily have to come true yeah so what privacy for bad are you referring to well okay but uh it's these things are not inevitable but nevertheless they made the assumption unless they heard the opposite they made the assumption that what happened i mean again it makes sense meaning you know you don't want to play russian roulette meaning if if if there's a good chance based on a prophecy that moshe will die so let's stay longer in the desert so their kavanaugh was eric israel is going to be a unique challenge the challenges of hester punim the challenges of nature taking over with god being concealed the people will be will be hopeless and depressed or they will be arrogant and overconfident they need to be in the mid bar longer to internalize those lessons so that's what the miragulim's husband was and i i'll add a third point in other words the two points i'm making or three points i've made so far in this is number one they want to be in the desert so they don't lose moshe number two they want to be in the desert so they will internalize to a greater degree and muna and bitarchon in the and this will prevent the potential of hopelessness and despair when they don't see god in an obvious way and it'll prevent the overconfidence of arrogance so we need we need this experience we have to have it i would also add a third point and that is the miragum are taking the position that the very confrontation with the material world again going back to the colon analogy can erode your spiritual truth again i use color as an exam go to work i won't be learning as much i won't be dabbing as much i won't be meditating as much i could lose my rookness my spirituality very easily so i need to kind of suck it up i need to absorb it in my bones over and over and over again in the mid-bar because that's going to be the fuel tank that will sustain us when we get to eric israel in other words the fear of confrontation with the physical so a lot of different points are related here that intersect the loss of moshe the hester panim that can lead to either despair or arrogance the need for material engagement in society that can take a person away from god simply because you're so involved in the gospels the materiality of allah so for all of these reasons the miraglum said we need to be here for a while the longer we are in the desert the better it is because that will be the spiritual cocoon that will nourish us and sustain us now this can also give us an insight in why the people panicked because they also felt without a motion who is going to hold us up there's no way but in other words yeah in mitzrayim there were the ten plagues and there was a kristiansen but there was a moshe revenue without a motivator we have no way of doing this by ourselves you know and one could imagine now this is why i'll tell you a very interesting little point here if you remember 10 out of the 12 spies gave this negative frightening report two spies yeshua and khalif did not but if you look at the hummus you will actually see that the only one who actively argued against the spies was kalis yoshua didn't say anything called is the one that says you have to have faith you have to believe in god and god promised you that you'll bring you to a good land an expansive land have faith yeshua is kalev's silent partner why doesn't joshua speak up why is yoshua so reticent yeah he falls on his face and he prays but he doesn't he does not speak up so i'll give you two reasons which are opposite reasons one reason the covetous suggests that people would have discounted joshua's words because yoshua stands to gain meaning since yoshua will be the designated leader if yoshua would say oh come on let's go of course we'll win people might look at yoshua and say yeah you're saying that because you're bolstering your leadership position and therefore yoshua felt it would be better for him not to talk so people would not accuse him in the panic of the moment of simply advancing his own political agenda actually says that thought okay but i think there may be another point here if we understand that part of what's going on is the terror of a life without moshe and a feeling that there's no way we can connect to hashem without a moshe rivena who would feel that pressure more than yahushua you know unlike well i don't want to say let's not about american vice presidents but you know the people say no this is probably not true people say that every vice president is waiting for the president to get a heart attack because they want the job they want the power again i don't mean to say that's true but that's a common thing that people say the jewish leader is the other way around moshe abbeyno didn't want leadership and yeshua didn't want it they took it because they had to they took it because god told them to do it moshe tried many many times to turn it down hashem said no you got the responsibility so it's yoshua's very humility that actually made him a little vulnerable to what the miragum are saying this is a bit of a daring plot that maybe he didn't speak up because the words of the moroccan were affecting him we're not adequate we're not worthy we're not ready we can't do the job without moshe yoshua is hearing those words and yoshua knows he's the next guy in command that's going to affect him a little bit hashem he didn't join the evil counsel of the spies but that doesn't mean he wasn't affected a little bit and in fact i would even suggest that this might be something that moshe had in mind if you remember yoshua's original name was hoshea moshe changed yeshua's name from hoshea to yahushua yodan hey is god's name because moshe prayed that jehoshua should be saved from the evil council of the miragum now which means moshe knew that there would be a bad report but whatever why he said why he sent them that's an interesting question but at least moshe suspected let's say even if he didn't know but why does he pray for yoshua why doesn't he pray for colleagues i think the intimation is that joshua was especially vulnerable to the argument that the spies were making you know we can't do it without moshe we're inadequate we're failures and therefore moshe had to make a special prayer that joshua should at least have the inner fortitude not to give in but i'm suggesting his silence in response to the miraculous might have been some intimation that those words were making erosion right even in normal life sometimes when someone says something to us that may be very painful we become muted we we can't even respond meaning we don't want to accept it but we don't really have an argument against it so we're unable to talk yoshua might have been unable to talk in that situation so it's a much more complicated philosophical dynamic we need coal we need the desert we need this existence we need mosha we're not adequate we're not ready yeah meaning we do believe in the long run they didn't say when we'll be ready to go but we're not ready yet so what's the aveira so there is a number of points and that is with all of your hashmonos with all of your calculations with all of your self-assessments you can't be smarter than the rebounder shalom if the ribanus alone says you're ready then you are ready you can't say i'm not ready and this actually means that if hashem gives you a mission then by definition he's given you the ability to accomplish that mission and that includes having faith in yourself there's a beautiful beautiful statement from upsetting that actually you ought to memorize it's in sitka satsadek and rav sadhuk says kishem adam lahamin the same way a person must believe in hashem which of course [Music] you must believe in yourself we often confront situations in life in which we feel inadequate now granted i'm not saying you badafica seek out difficult situations i mean if you don't feel like jumping off niagara falls because you know you're scared i'm not telling you to do it but if hashem puts it in your life and you didn't have control over what you got what what's got thrown on you you have to believe he's giving you a way to deal with it he's giving you the strength and therefore in some ways the sin of the spies was not only a lack of emunah and hashem but the lack of vamuna in themselves that even without a moshe robino we will be able to do what hashem told us that we must do and you can't make your own hispanos i'm not ready yet now it's interesting there's a famous word from the cutscene review so they said we were in our eyes like grasshoppers compared to them be a mayhem and so we were in their eyes we were in our eyes like grasshoppers and so we were in their eyes the passage says the katsukarebe it all starts off with you if you look at yourself as a grasshopper then that's how you will be perceived but you're not a grasshopper and don't look at yourself as a grasshopper and then you will be able to accomplish the mission that god gave you okay so the faith of miracle was a haitian but the sin was in not recognizing your potential to navigate the challenges that god gave you now there's another point because i mentioned at the end that their argument also was that we're going to be so involved in gashmi it's so involved in physicality farming and building cities and waging war that the involvement in gashmius will take us away from god right the notion of too much involvement in this world so here the lesson is that that is actually the ultimate purpose of the torah the ultimate purpose of the torah is to take the physical world and elevate it and consecrate it and this is actually very much connected to the holiday of straws that we recently celebrated the gemara says in massachusetts that just like the number four is so dominant in pesach four sons four cups of wine four questions for the show note of gaula for terms of redemption right so four is pesach but it's a little lesser known that three is shavuos the gemara in shabbos says a man from the galil said to ravyaci blessed is god who gave a threefold torah torah in the vm kasufim to a three-fold nation prohang labia israel in the third month nissani or sivan after three days of preparation now the kumar doesn't explain it but apparently there's a lot of threes here right right right so so the question becomes that moshe is the third son of armament they're child of honor so the question becomes uh why is three such an important number when it comes to matantora so the morale says a beautiful point the morale says that 3 is the number of integration and synthesis when you have opposite forces imagine a triangle so the baseline of the triangle has two points in opposite ends opposites but then you draw two lines from the two points and they meet at an apex so what you've done is you've integrated you've balanced you've combined opposite forces it's thesis antithesis and synthesis and the morale says this symbolic idea of three is balance and harmony among opposites that's why yaakov writes avram represents the extreme of loving-kindness and yitzhak represents the extreme of gevor of inner strength yaakov is the synthesis and the harmony of khethed and gevorah which in kabbalah is called tiferes beauty and that is why too much produces ishmael and too much kubura produces an ace of its only balance harmony and integration which produces the perfection of the jewish people in which every tribe is holy we have a various but every tribe has that kedusha so this is an important idea that in fact morale has symbolic meanings for many numbers you can actually put out a little book about uh maral and numerology but but but one of his most well-known ideas of number symbolism is three is the idea of balance again it's based on kabbalah so based on this the morale says the torah creates a balanced and thin synthesis between the two dimensions of our human personality on one hand we are comprised of a body and an animal soul and that body craves material comforts whether it's food or sex or pleasure or sleep right hedonistic needs which which indeed we have to indulge into some degree but they are the demands of the body and then we have the godly soul that only seeks connection to hashem and body and soul are always in conflict whether you call it yet sahara yates are mean there are a lot of ways a lot of words you can use or nephesh bahamas says the tanya has it the animal soul versus the nephesh eloquis or whether you just call it guff versus neshama right the human being because the human being is more kind of because we are composites we live in a state of conflicting drives without a torah there would be no way to synthesize and balance these drives and that is why in other religious traditions the only way you achieve holiness is by distancing yourself from the material either celibacy poverty affliction sleeping on nails whatever it would be because physicality is definitionally inconsistent with a spiritual relationship with god you're either an animal or you're an angel those are your only two choices now by definition that is not a permanently sustainable level because eventually you have to eat so you're on off on off on off conflict what the torah taught us is the torah taught us a unique path and that is the path of synthesis and integration in which we don't look at the material world as a contradiction to spirituality but we look at the idea of the material world as kind of neutral in which the drives of the body can be elevated and consecrated and sanctified so i eat which is the same thing an animal does but by making abraca and by thinking meditating that i'm eating to have strength and energy to serve god the ingesting of food becomes a holy spiritual act sleeping sexual relations and look at all mitzvahs look at how mitzvahs are rooted in physicalities you take leather and you make filling you take wool and you make tissues you take plants and you make a lulula venezuela you take wheat and you make matzah what are mitzvahs about what is the torah saying take the physical make it holy elevate it consecrate that's what eric israel is about so the whole idea that we can only be close to god by a life of spirituality that is divorced from confrontation with the material it's kind of missing the whole message of the torah which is sanctify the physical as well so that part of the marauding's argument is also incorrect because hashem says the door on mitbor is not the ideal it's not the optimal life it is a training ground to then be able to deal with the world and elevate it and this actually rap sadok says this beautifully comes out so i'm going to go back to schwarz a little bit in the description of matantora that before the ten commandments were given we visualized in the sky thunder and lightning brought him our lightning after the torah was given it says colloque thunder lapidim torches barack him pre ten commandments lapidim after ten commandments what's the difference between a barak and allah pit it sounds like your israeli political system we've had plenty of problems from the barakas of the world and the lapids of the world by putting putting that aside barak is a flash of lightning brilliant light and then you're plunged into darkness until the next lightning flash that was holiness before the torah was given before the torah was given every person could have moments of ecstasy when they disengage from the physical world but then they're plunged into darkness because they have to eat they have to sleep the torah gave us a new way of holiness the holiness of the torch now a torch on some level is not as intense as lightning and it's true when you live in the world you're not always living at that nirvana ecstatic state but the torch although it flickers is a constant source of heat and light and you can navigate the road by a torch if you had to you really could not navigate by a twisting road by a lightning flash and therefore the idea of the torah is you sanctify the physical world you don't avoid it you don't renounce it you don't treat it as evil but you treat it as a tool that can be elevated and as dabala tanya writes the whole goal of existence is to make give hashem a dira bitarch a dwelling place in this lowest of the worlds and that too is an aspect of the caitanya and not understanding that particular idea so hopefully this will give you a little bit of a perspective on the various dimensions on one hand it does remind us that the faith of the miracle and even the heights of the people was not just a simple sin there were there were valid considerations that they had but nevertheless these were these were mistaken judgments for which they were held to account so thank you [Music] is