Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: The 3 Weeks and The 21 Days

[Music] okay hi everybody thank you thank you for coming uh this week of course we have uh a double par as we often do mat Masai uh when they are together that is the longest Torah reading uh of the whole of the whole year and as you would expect there are many many many different things to talk about it's very hard to choose uh we have on one hand the whole para of vows which is a fascinating sug for which there's a whole M actually there are two tractates MIM and M which is not about the holiday sh but it's about taking taking an oath and I will just say very very briefly that one of the very important lessons that we learn from the para of narim is that words make a difference your words create existential spiritual realities if I take an oath not to eat an apple or if I take a net the apple is forbidden to me that's formulated in different ways it becomes the same as kazer meaning I literally have the power to create prohibitions that's a Godlike power normally only God determines what is much what is user the of says I can do so as well meaning God says I'm not allowed to violate My Vow that itself is extremely important because that refers to the kak of debor we think Sticks and Stones oh I'm sorry yeah sticks and stones may break my bones names will never hurt me well we see from the par of narim that words are realities I'm sorry I um hasten to begin too quickly I need to announce the dedication the she is dedicated to not Ben B beneda and for the liberation of er Israel from its enemies safe return home of the hostages and Soldiers the unity of am Israel and a Rua for all those whose Health has been affected by the war as well as OS for the release of Arvin nanel Bena the Young in Iran and forz yob Ben Moshe um who has a loving and dedicated husband father grandfather Community member by Yael Roberts Danish and for Jeremy Bernstein's late mother's yard site the 26th of Thomas SAS alzar Hali may all of the namos have an alah in the Merit ofak Torah we also have some other dedications but the Y sites will be uh next week uh so we will announce them then so if your yard site wasn't announced we will we will definitely get to it so we have the par of nidor which is one very important blesson and then according to the ramban we have the Mitzvah of living in erel which one can give a whole Shmo about as as is well known whether there's a Mitzvah to live inel is generally a m said to be a m between rambam who does not count it as a Mitzvah versus ramban and I'm kind of giving you a list of what I'm not going to talk about tonight that's another thing one could spend a lot of time talking about so uh as as always uh but particularly when you have a double para there is truly an abundance of riches there is no limit to what you can talk about uh in the Torah but what I want to talk about tonight in particular is I want to talk about the three weeks and connect it to the partial as well it will be connected to the para and really I want to cover five observations about the three weeks three of them are from ROK of blin and two of them is from the O Isel the Rua so it kind of breaks down neatly into a three and a two although they're not of equal length as we go through it first let me share with you uh two I'm sorry three observations of of r s the first observation is that the reason why we we areel Over The Bash for a period of three weeks is that number one these are weeks of tikon these are weeks of rectification these are weeks in which we strive to make our heart and our soul a dwelling place for the sh and that's how you rebuild the B mikdash our job in rebuilding the B mikdash at this point in time is not to clear the Temple Mount and physically build a structure some want to say that but the rambam is very clear that the physical building of the B mikdash has to await the coming of mashia but what we do is we build a spiritual dwelling place for God in our heart and in our soul and when the sh can rest in our heart and in our soul then we will be Z when we have a critical mass of Jews that are living that way will then be Z to the bias shishi which according to Rashi at least will come down from the Shay according to the r mashia will build it but the physical Bas mikash is not significant as a building there are beautiful buildings in the world the physical Bas mikdash is significant as a symbol of and therefore the three weeks are our Endeavor to kind of rebuild the basa mikdash so the ninth of will become a Messianic day be Sak points out that if it's true that the three basic positive factors that keep the world going are Torah and aod Torah Divine service prayer and Corban and G and acts of loving kindness we know that the three destructive factors in the world are Kina uh jealousy uh TAA is excessive Lust For sensual and material pleasure and C speaking glory and R sok basically says that the three weeks which remind us of the reasons for theban are tkim for the three destructive MOS of Kina and R goes further and he says that kavod are the ultimate roots of the three biggest AAS that cause the destruction of the first temple aara idolatry garas sexual immorality and murder in this way he says jealousy correlates to murder indeed it happens to be the case if you look at non- Terror or War rated murders it often arises out of jealousy rivalry and the like so Kina when taken to its extreme culminates Ina taken to its extreme culminates in giloy Aros now the third one is a little subtle he wants to say that kavod leads to aod Zara how is that so because aod Zara which literally means what strange worship foreign worship it applies whenever your mindset is to elevate anything as more important than God in your life so as a result aara can be self idolatry if I look at my comfort my desires my ego as more important than the R I am actually guilty of AAR money can be AAR politics can be AAR uh the attitude of it is my strength and the power of my hands that have given me all of my accomplishments is a form of as the Torah says when you are arrogant and proud you will forget God so's point is the three weeks are a period in which we try to rectify the negative attributes of Kina jealousy TAA lust and kovot ego gratification which in turn are the roots of the worst of aus in the Torah the AAS that you have to give your life for which is K which is a again these are some of these are going to be short that's observation number one three weeks are conned kinaa the second thought that ruk says these are in different places so I'm gathering them from different discussions of this is that R sadok connects the three weeks with the four expressions of redemption you'll remember when God took us out of MIT God expressed to Mosher Renu the Redemption in four terminologies for say I will take you out I will save you I will redeem you I will take you unto me for a nation these are called the four terms of gah and it was on the basis of these form four terms of G four terms of redemption that kazal our sages enacted that at the Seder night we drink four cups of wine to correspond to the four of uh if you want a discussion as to the sign ific of the I refer you to earlier I'm not going to go over that now but here is what R saduk wants to say R sduk wants to say that if there are four stages of redemption and they culminate in a fifth stage because there is a fifth that after you're redeemed I will bring you to Isel so there's four Lonas of GAA and a fifth Lon of coming to ER Israel he wants to say that shivas the three weeks and Tish are a mirror image or a negative image a negative image of the process of GAA moving backwards kind of undoing it so he says the following he says sh last Tuesday sh is conned the first less of gula you're kind of going backwards on that because shivas actually should have been a very very holy and elevated day because that was the day where Mosher Renu came down with the first tablets after 40 days and had there not been an agel that would have been the day where we actually got the luos and that would have been the culmination of where the whole purpose of was to facilitate Matan Tor and yet because of theel it turned into a day where the Torah was taken away from us instead of being given to us so he says that shivas or bam is a reversal of stage one the three weeks each of them correspond to the Lan two 34 and the ninth of in which we were exiled from the land is a reversal of a I will bring you to the land so sodok sees so so the way he's Counting it is sh three weeks that equals the four of GA TI is conned the fifth Lon of GAA and it represents the idea of negation or moving backwards away from the Redemptive potentials that could have existed and yet there is a very subtle point and that is we perceive our journey in life as moving in a circle rather than linear now when you move in a circle the further away you get from a given point in the circle the closer you are on the other side of it right I have a point in a circle I'm moving here here I'm further and further and further and further and further away I'm closer and closer and closer coming to the other side so ruk says on one hand the three weeks Tish above give us our batas on one hand it's moving away from Redemption on the other hand it's moving us closer to Redemption because the the key idea here is the awareness of distance generates a tremendous intensity of attachment and love uh if it was shakespare uh that said absence makes the heart grow fonder by the way there's a whole Theory not not too many people agree with it but there's a theory that Shakespeare himself might have been an English Morano an English hidden Jew in when Shakespeare was alive whoever Shakespeare was uh Jews were not allowed in England they had been banished from England but some want to point out that there they analyze Shakespeare's plays and they find references to pyos and various other things even his portrayal of which people thought was anti-em Semitic actually is a heroic figure whatever whatever ever it would be but the phrase absence makes the heart grow fonder is kind of a motif of this period when we realize how far we are from Hashem that creates a tremendous Bond of intimacy and yearning so it's not simply that shivas oramos the three weeks and the ninth of are reversals of the lon G but they are actually part of the process of GAA that brings us closer to Hashem it's a little reminiscent of of a thought when R hutner towards the end of his life uh came to ER Isel he moved to erel he remember he was a actually a hostage on an airplane back in the 70s but but he did spend his last year's here so he was asked at one point someone had to to ask him is there anything you miss about what do you miss about right so a lot of things we might say but what he said is this the one thing he missed about was the yearning to live in this is an interesting comment so to speak a person sits in he yearns he dreams when will I be able to come and he thinks about it all the time I want to be here I want to be in you sh am so then you come then when you come you face the normal frustrations of living here waiting for buses going to Banks you know all of the stuff that a lot of trouble too hot uh rainy sometimes although all all all of those things are bras of course you know and somehow once you're here the enthusiasm is not always going to be so powerful it's quite an amazing thing that you dream and you yearn and that can give you a stronger attachment to something than when it actually happens they tell that once a a woman came to him crying he was very angry at his to me him and uh he asked her what's wrong he said you know everybody has parents they can visit their graves in the cemetery and they can talk to their parents in the cemetery they could D in they can ask their parents to be m yoser in Shay all my friends have a grave that they can go to visit their parents and uh ask them to be Moser he says my parents are alive where can I go this what the person said so the Tam like started laughing andanan was very angry he says listen the the woman might be crazy but you know if she has genuine genuine pain you have to you have to deal with it but the point once again is you know you yearn for something but when you have it you don't appreciate it that's what life is I remember reading years and years ago this was a fictional historical novel about rabiaa and his wife R it was written by Marcus Layman who was a a r he was a a person in the 19th century uh he wrote about ra and I just remember this little little line uh because it was like uh I wanted to show that R was more religious than her than her teenage friends that they were thinking like they had a a free afternoon so what should they do to uh spend the after afternoon so R said let's go over to the base of mish imagine let's go over to the Bas of mish we can watch the carbonos so the other girls said nah they always do the same thing there you know let's go to the mall instead now again I I have no no particular proof that this conversation ever happens but it's kind of indicative of of an interesting attitude yeah the Bas of mikas you know Carbon Tom it's the same thing every day you know like what is there what is there to to see maybe y toim it's a little little little different and alect so therefore the the second point of radok with some elaboration is that on one hand this is a reversal of the G moving backwards on the other hand it's bringing you closer to where you need to be uh because absence creates tremendous yearning tremendous connection with Hashem that perhaps you don't have when everything is fine the third point of radok about the three weeks is that he focuses on The Haus just the first words of the Haus last week was the first H Tor of the three weeks the Tor of Pinas and it begin it's the beginning of the book of yo who is the great na'vi of theban personally experienced the destruction of the B mikdash he of course is the author of a Lamentations and it begins div y the words of Y the for this week uh is peric B of Y listen to the words of God giving them mus before the and the third which is the shabas before Tish is the first chapter of yes and it's called yes vision of of course yes lived many years before theban but he has prophecies about things that are going to happen so saduk says look at the first words why we have three weeks first we start with speech then we move to hearing and then we move to Vision so we talk about speak no evil hear no evil see no evil the three weeks are designed to focus us on rectification of these faculties Rectify your speech not to say bad things about people or have negative thoughts or at least negative speech negative speech and then we say that even if you control your speech also control what you're hearing But ultimately ultimately you got to change your perception see people make a big mistake when they think I mean bashem in recent years uh the the severity of lashar has kind of caught on you know we have these big gatherings all the time against L against lashan Hara and the power of speech U you know mainly by women more than men but men men attend them as as well and people are very conscious that lar is a bad thing now sometimes they go to an extreme they're not willing to reveal information that they must reveal about like so as the pointed out who wrote the book on lashara quite literally he pointed out that sometimes there is a Mitzvah an obligation to reveal derogatory information you can't just be aaic and be quiet if if somebody could be a danger to a sh or a danger to a woman or a man Etc uh psychological Financial whatever Business Partnership meaning you can't just play it safe and say oh I'm going to be mmir and never say anything about anybody sometimes you're M to say things sometimes you're not allowed to say things and if you look at the more of the book is devoted to when you must reveal information then when you must not but people make a mistake when they think that the central Avida of lanara is to control my speech because here's the problem if I'm filled with negativities resentment and anger but all I do is bite my lip and not say anything now of course that's a high madrea in spite of the thoughts that are roiling through my Consciousness well number one I'm going to have a very bloody lip my lip is going to be bleeding and number two like a pressure cooker eventually I'm going to explode you can't go around in your mind with negativities and then just control your speech so the real ultimate goal of zir lanara is not to change your speech patterns but to change your perception patterns you learn to look at people in a different way you learn to understand the trials they're going through the difficulties they face you look at them with compassion and with love and with empathy and at that point you're no longer struggling with controlling your speech you just don't want to say anything negative about them you lose the desire like what's the purpose what am I trying to do here what does it accomplish why why do I want to put people down you see so that's really the progression control your speech control your inputs but ultimately control your vision control your perception of reality redirect so these are three kind of unrelated observations of r one is the connection to K and kav uh the other is the connection to the four of G in which on one level you're reversing that process on the other level you're coming closer to it on the other side through absence and year uh create yearning it makes the heart grower and the third is it is a Tik a rectification for the kak of uh Speech and I had mentioned in the beginning that nadarim in particular is an outstanding example of the power of speech words are reality you know the old thing that mothers would tell their kids when I was growing up I don't know if they still use the say in America sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me uh is unfortunately sadly just not true if anything the names can hurt a person much more than the sticks and the stones the sticks and the stones can break bones to be sure but kids usually can recover from that they get better the psychic hurt of being humiliated can last with a person their entire life so you got to be makak your speech and then what you listen to and ultimately your perception just as an aside about the power of speech I remember hearing an interview once with Richard Nixon and Richard Nixon certainly went through the ringer in terms of Watergate and terms of resigning the presidency he went through quite a lot again whether he deserved or not deserved another question the truth is from a Jewish perspective Nixon was actually a very very good uh president and he actually was a good president it's a funny thing if it wouldn't have been for the lying and the cheating in the Watergate he actually was quite an excellent president I mean much much U when you listen to him compared to almost anyone that came afterwards you see the difference lail between a God and you know St St politician but anyway uh when he was being interviewed he kept on talking about the playground taunts that he got as a fourth grader or a fifth grader here's a guy president of the United States who kind of the most powerful human office in the world and what happened to him in fourth grade somehow is affecting the decisions that he's making now that's a little scary but that's the power of speech it lasts forever and ever and ever okay so those are the three Horus I wanted to share from from r sodok I want to share two beautiful more lengthy Horas from the O Israel the and it's interesting that I've been quoting him a few times uh past few weeks it's it's interesting that it comes up a lot so I don't know maybe with respect to the three weeks it's an unusually Rich load of associations uh that he brings in but uh an amazing thinga number one is in parat Pinas so I'm going to go back backwards a little bit and connect the three weeks to Pinas horor number two will be connecting the three weeks to this this par hor number one he points out that Pinas is always read either right before shivas or Bas or right afterwards it's always like the very early in the three weeks says what's the connection because the Jewish calendar is not accidental and anything that's read in a given time of year is connected to the time of year so this is the that he makes Paras has a very lengthy list of all of the special MF additional offerings that are brought on special days that includes chabas Roes theer and I'm sorry in fact the musim all the musim are in so he wants to say the following if you count the number of sacred days that we have in the calendar you come up with 21 now his count is a little unusual let me give you his count shabas even though there are 52 chabas a year but there's one kadha called chabas so chabas counts as one similarly rodes even though there are 12 R keshes but there's one kadus called roses roses counts as two Okay so shabas is one I'm sorry shabas is one rashes is one that gives you two we then come to p and since there are seven distinct days of pesak we count pesak as seven so that gives you nine we then come to shos which is one day in Isel that gives you 10 we then come to Rashana which is two days even in ER Israel so that gives you 12 we then come to Yum Kipper which is one one day that gives you 13 we then come to sukos anderas together that gives you eight so 13 and 8 is 21 So based on his count there are 21 sacred days of the year uh that require you know mus and the like he points out the three weeks are 21 days 21 days he correlates the 21 days of Bim the three weeks with the 21 sacred days of and this is what he says he says the days of Bim the three weeks means the narrow between the narrow places have a kadua that is so awesomely great that all of the holidays including chabas get their kadua it's like a spillover the kadia is so massive that it spills over into sacred time of the 21 days meaning the 21 Kim that we have are simply a reflection or a spillover or the leftovers of the kadua of the 3 weeks but the kadua of the 3 weeks is so awesomely great that the light has to be covered up by extreme Darkness because the light is too powerful for us to absorb and only liot mashia where K indeed teach us that those 21 days including the night of will be days of and that their light will be revealed and they will even overshadow the 21 holy days of the musim that's quite quite an amazing thing and he makes the point that the letter Tess which of course is very significant because Tess is the ninth of now Tess on one hand well number one the 17th of th 17 the word to generally the Gat of to is 17 is that right 96 yeah to right so it's very interesting that b begins with the word to 17 and it ends with the ninth of which is Tess which is also to so Bim itself is bracketed with the notion of to and he says to itself canotes a goodness that is hidden and inaccessible because he brings from the sa that if you look at a test uh a test in in sa for Torah writing in print so you'll notice that the head of the test is bent downwards inwards so which means the goodness is concealed within a framework and therefore the apov says that by connecting parat Pinas to the three weeks that highlights to me that the Holiness of all the Y to comes from a greater Holiness a higher source that is shrouded in darkness and distance and that is the kadha of bams and therefore he said says these days are potentially and again this connects to rok's idea days of tremendous closeness to God in fact in I don't know if he brings it but other SW bring it it says call wrote this is the beginning of it's talking about all who pursued Jerusalem all who tried to destroy Jerusalem hea uh captured it or reached it B between the narrow confines so like the narrow Straits no place to escape I called out to God from the narrow Straits so the simple meaning is Yi is simply describing that we tried to run away and there was no place to escape and the enemy got us right that's the simple meaning of the PK but they say the following the word wrote could actually be broken up into two words Road all who are pursuing God his will reach him in the period which is the name for the three weeks right right tremendous closeness that it is the Shish the root of all of the Holiness all of the Holy days that are expressed in par it's a remarkable idea correlating the 21 holy days of mus with the 21 days of Bim between the 17th of Tas and the ninth of but now we come to a fifth thought which is the second thought of the oeus this too is an extraordinarily beautiful thought again it's not connected necessarily to the first thought and this takes us to Paras masi that's the second of the two paros and the Tyra gives us a list of all of the stops all of the journeys that the Jewish people took till they came to ER Israel by the way Rashi points out an important point you know you read Paras masi and you get the impression they were moving every day the truth is they were not uh there were actually stops in which they remained more than 19 years I mean There Are Places in which they literally lived for a very very long time uh the total number of travels uh in the 40-year period is uh 42 there are 42 stops from MIM till arot Moab which is right before they enter erel 42 mas and the makal make a very big deal about the 42 stops in the journey to Israel and they say it's very very deeply symbolic of the Journey of the Nish through the desert of is like a desert uh meaning maybe materially there's a lot of comfort here but it's a desert in which we don't see God we don't feel Rus there are so many temptations there are snakes and scorpions of the spiritual kind that take us away from Hashem we got to navigate this desert and the 42 is a reference to the ability and I'll explain why in a moment to kind of get through that desert till you get to the promised land the promised land isaba so the C cabala see the 42 Journeys as a metaphor or a mhall for the struggle of the Nish to survive this world survive the desert of this world till we get TOA now in that connection the opav makes a beautiful observation after going through the 42 places the Torah gives different Mitzvah and one of the Mitzvah that it gives us is IR miklat City of Refuge the City of Refuge uh someone kills inadvertently but negligently if if if you kill somebody through an unavoidable accident the building just collapsed and you landed on somebody you don't go to the ear mlet because you were not guilty of anything really the ear mlet which is is only for a shog G unintentional and not amaz it that's true but it has to be it's very akin to the legal category that we call manslaughter okay so essentially M Slaughter you know you didn't look both ways when you went to a stop sign you threw a a rock out of your apartment without looking meaning you didn't intend to kill anybody but you were careless you were negligent so the tyus says you go to a designated City of Refuge and it's a very strange sentence you remain in the City of Refuge until the Coen God dies very very strange sentence if the Coen godal dies one day after you went to the E mlet you're free if the coing guttle lives another 50 years you're stuck and if you die before the Coen gal dies you are buried in the ear mlet and you're not accumed to a family plot till the coing gutle dies this is a very indeterminate sentence very very strange the gumar has a very fascinating M like this uh what if somebody's a Coen go but we then discover that his mother was actually a divorce which means he's not a Coen at all do I treat that as a Coen guttle who died and the r goes free or do I say that since retroactively there never was a Coen gutle the is if there was no Coen gutle when he sentenced he's there forever so do I look at it like there was a Coen gutle until today and now there isn't in which case he goes free or do I say which is actually logical well we see there was no Coen gutle to begin with so he stuck for ever that's Aus in the garuna or M very very fascinating fascinating makus about whether disqualifications of kahuna are retroactive or they're only considered to be prospective in fact there also be a Shila all the carbonos that he brought were they kosher uh until his disqualification was was known but be it as it may uh the gamar ask the question uh why should the roak uh why should his sentence be connected to the Coen gle's death and the Babylonian talmud says because the coing gutle is responsible because it was his job to pray for his generation that these accidents shouldn't occur and therefore if it occurred on his watch it's because he did not pray enough for the Jewish people and therefore he is responsible and that's why his death is considered to be an atonement for all of the people that are in the air miklan now interestingly enough the mishna recounts that the mothers of kohanim gdolim used to bring gifts and food packages to the roim so that the roim should not pray that the co and gutle should die kind of bribe them now I'm not sure uh perhaps the mishna is being a little bit euphemistic I mean I would have thought maybe because I'm living in 21st century uh society that the the real problem that the women are afraid of is not so much the Goan the r are going to pray but they're going to hire you know Mafia uh to kill the Coen but maybe I'm being cynical and I'm using modern uh values the mission does not say that they're afraid of fit men or assassins the mission says they're afraid of the power of prayer that's what the mission says and therefore they would bribe them with cookies or whatever the B must have asked the question well wait a second here if I want to get out of the air mlet and I'm going to pray to God am I going to be bribed by chocolate chip cookies I mean is that going to change my orientation so the B muser answer of course it's not going to change your orientation you're still going to DAV but you're not going to DAV with the same 100% devotion because you'll be thinking about dear old mom you know brought me these cookies and therefore your cavana is not going to be 100% And that's going to make the difference already meaning you're going to pray the guy should die but it's not going to be with the same gmak or the same his and once the kavana is thrown off a little bit the of the may be very very different uh different as well now how many ear mlats are there so the truth of the matter is there are actually 48 there are six primary ear mlet and there are 42 subsidiary All 48 are the cities of Levan by the way Le bbbi made a very very excellent point he said anir mikad is the closest thing we have to a prison system in the Torah know the Torah gives punishments lashes money even death penalty but the Torah does not have imprisonment the Tor does not have a jail system the closest thing we have to a jail system is the air mlet where you're confined to a city the rest of your life or at least until the co God all dies now an ear mlot is a regular City it's not a prison in fact who live the ear mlot has a regular population the regular population are Lan so the re me pointed out per very sensible that you know when you send teenage kids let's say an 18year old you send them to prison what environment are you putting him in you're putting him in an environment of criminals loow lives rapists murderers what type of is he going to get in prison he starts off as moderately off the D he'll become a lot worse that's why what is called the recidivism rate is extremely high once you're in prison once you'll be going back again and again and again the rebi says that's self-destructive the torah's model of imprisonment is somebody went off the Derk they were careless they were callous they they were a little indifferent to life so who do you put them with you put them with sikim you put them with you put them with kohanim you put them with leim and that raises a person and that makes a person more sensitive to and theim the Divine image in human beings so the Reby said if anything the model of prison now we're not talking about dangerous vicious people I mean that's a separate thing but the ear michl is not designed for Dangerous vicious people that's a separate category but we're talking about people who were careless people who weren't thinking people who were not as conscientious as they should have been they didn't care enough we're not talking about no dangerous people and for those type of people the rebi said whatever prison system you have should be based on putting the person in a good environment putting the person in a religious environment a moral environment where he can learn to change and learn to become better so the ear Mika teaches us a lot about an appropriate philosophy of incarceration and and and and the like okay now when I say six of the cities are primary AR mlot and 42 of the cities are secondary or a mlot what do I mean what is a primary mlot and what is a secondary ear ml so the gar explains in MOS that the six primary cities for example is one of them that's the most famous one that you would know they protect the murderer from the go hadam from the blood Avenger who could kill him even if the roak doesn't even know that he's in a near miklin let's assume the RO is running away and he enters the boundary of K and he doesn't even know that it's Kevan he is still protected they give him protection even without thought and thinking the 42 cities only protect you if there's conscious awareness now I'm not sure how you prove any of this but somehow if the goam managed to kill the guy before the guy knew he was one in one of those 42 cities uh the the gadam would be exempt from punishment because these 42 cities protect you only me death by the way I'll tell a famous word it's not not not a famous word but I thought from my own rashash ridiman in which uh he comforted raren Cutler I believe raran Cutler uh when raren Cutler was trying to collect money for Lakewood or whatever it would be uh again I'm not I think it was a Varon cut but I might be wrong he got very little money very little money for his Yeshiva great Yeshiva lakid and that same week in Baltimore uh there was a conservative or reformed group that was raising money and they got like a million dollars in like a night or something and raron was suben raron was brokenhearted because he was wondering why do such important causes of Torah don't achieve any success and then you have all sorts of causes that are against Torah that seemed to be very successful they attract all of it so r came up with this thought my said the following you know it's brought down that um the ra mlot had road signs meaning to say each ear mlot had signs on the road telling you ear mikl this way so the RO would know where to go and yet we find that when you're going to the B mikdash when you're there were no road signs that directed you to the B of mikdash you know you're walking on the road and you'd have to ask people which means when it comes to going to the B mikdash you have to ask when it comes to the a mikla you don't ask why is that so why wouldn't there be signage for the B Mikes I mean today there would be but but in the olden days there was not so he said the following when a person's going to the B mikdash that's a Kem that's a sanctification of God's name that's a Mitzvah we want you to ask directions because we want this to spread we want more and more people to know oh you're going to the base of mish I'm going to the base of mish he's going to the base of mish we don't want to sign we want you to say show direct me toesik when it comes to KES you want to spread the news across as wide a group as possible when a person murdered even inadvertently but because of carelessness there's a desecration of God's name it's a tragedy we don't want people to kind of publicize oh I killed somebody where's the ear miklin so we give him the sign so he'll figure it out on his own so the Riva said to raron Cutler he says when you have a good cause God makes his hard for you to raise money so you have to go to a lot of people and you spread the beauty of what you're doing when it's a bad cause God will give him all the money up front that way you know you're not going to spread the news and talk about it for months and months and months you'll get it done in one night and then uh forget you know you get rid of it right so that's the idea of the air M so once again therefore six are a mlot give protection even without knowledge 42 only with knowledge so here is what the opv says the 42 journeys of the Jewish people through the desert until we get to the promised land which is a metaphor for the Journey of the Nish through the desert of this world with all of its trials and all its tribulations correspond to the 42 Cities of Refuge meaning God gives us as we journey through the desert of life God gives us Cities of Refuge where we can refresh our Nish build up our kesher with hasem Torah mitos the 42 Journeys are the 42 or mlet but here's the thing the same way the 42 or mlet only protect you when you have conscious awareness so too you're Tyra and your mitzvos protect you and they provide the ear miklat for your soul only when you consciously think about what you're doing if you do your Mitzvah automatic pilot you do your Mitzvah by roote you do your Mitzvah superficially they're not going to elevate you they're not going to lift you up they're not going to protect you from the ravages of society and therefore the uh the opub says the 42 Mas correspond to the 42 or miklat which are the cities or the aspects of Refuge that protect us that give us strength that give us courage that give us deac us attachment to the almighty as we go through the desert because and the MS is all of us are Ro all of us are kind of murderers because think about it you know Hashem gave us a life and if we squander that life and we don't use it properly what are we doing but killing ourselves a person wastes time a person Wast life it's and therefore we kind of need the ear mlet the 42 mlet the 42 Mas the 42 Journeys now the opv also points out that in kashma the first par of shma after sh so starting from the I'll talk about the first in a moment has 42 words and the first par ofma is about accepting the Yol of heaven and that will give you the 42 AR miklat which will protect you as you journey through the desert of life okay so you see all of the associations they're a bit complicated there it's kind of like a tapestry the 42 stops are the 42 Cities of Refuge because we are murderers we are self- murderers of ourselves and that in turn connects to the 42 words in shma not counting the first P which I'll get to in a moment and that uh that is connected to also the mikl ofas just another little thought from RAR Cutler I'll come back to the first in a moment um rarin Cutler was once asked by a hel in a different context that why would such a great God and a great rashash Shiva like rarin have to spend all of his time collecting nickels and dimes but not only collecting nickels and dimes but being humiliated being insulted being degraded here is what rarin said we know if you kill bog you go into Exile IR Mich is called Exile he says every teacher of Torah might be a murderer I didn't Murder by sticking knife in somebody but again the power of speech my words my negativities I could have said something that hurt a person that humiliated a person that took away their enthusiasm that embarrass them that's murder it's unintentional murder or homicide because I didn't intend to do it but I have to go to the ear mik and that's why he says teachers of Torah and the r represents not only himself but in a sense he's a sh for all of his faculty Ras have to go into Gus they have to go into Exile because they too are Ro Bish quite amazing so that connects ear mikl with the power of speech okay so what are our associations the 42 stops are a metaphor for the Journey of the soul in the desert ofah until it reaches habah ultimate Redemption they correspond to the 42 AR mikl that give you protection your Torah your Mitzvah your aod your Isel which protects you from the murderous forces that want to destroy you spiritually and that corresponds to the 42 words of shma from Thea until the end he then makes a final point in the equation this is a little of a that the 21 days of can be subdivided into 42 nights and days right in other words if you take every day and you divide it you get 42 and therefore itself corresponds to the 42 stages of Journey 21 days 21 nights that bring us to Redemption now again this ties in with because the obvious question you're going to ask is well wait a second here the Journey of the 42 stops is from the midore to where Israel from to this is a journey from the 17th of Thomas to the nth of which is destruction I'm moving in the opposite direction but once again I think the ab would have to tie this in with the idea that the distance creates closeness and therefore this is the great great journey the three weeks is the great great journey of giving us the ear miklat that will bring us to gaula okay so 42 stops 42 AR mikl uh 42 words in shma from the I'll get to the first p in a moment and the 42 halves of bamar are all going to be connected now the after then goes on and says okay but what do we do about the other six primary AR mikl that are not reflected in the Mas now keep in mind that he says the following the 42 words of shma from via are the AR mikl the second level AR mikl but shma is six words that corresponds to the first level of the a mikl so what's the connection there so he says the following the 42 are a mikl only work if you have conscious awareness you got to know you're in that City so that refers to the notion of working on myself with conscious striving to be make myself a better person but the first six verses of shma which refer to the six or mlot that protect you even without awareness says the opav they refer to What's called the pin that within every Jew no matter how ignorant no matter how rejecting a Jew is of Torah there is in his heart of hearts a receptivity to Rus in which that is salvageable even when he's not consciously aware of it that's the first pk ofma and those are the six AR mlet which are not picked up in uh the 42 Journeys which is the Journey of conscious awareness the Journey of mindfulness and this is what the balatan says the balatan writes that no Jew has to learn how to love God or how to Revere God it is built into us it is a quality of our nishas it's already here it gets covered up it gets obscured lack of awareness lack of connection but at moments the balatan says there will be moments of stress in which that aasem and that hem is going to break out and that is why even people who are very very far from Torah there will be occasions in which they will give their lives Liv many many many stories of this just one illustration uh there was a man in a stle during the Holocaust who was M shabas he had a he had a store open on chabas he didn't care about anything and at one point when the Nazis were uh massacring the town uh they ordered him to trample on a safer Torah no they took a Torah they threw it on the ground they said Jump On It now here was a man who didn't care about anything one would have thought and he said no I'm not going to jump on the Torah they pulled out the gun and said we will kill you right now if you I mean probably they would kill him anyway but we'll kill you right now if you don't jump on the Torah he said I don't care he died he gave his life the AAS hasem and the IR hasem came out out of nowhere because it's already it's already there you remember Daniel Pearl a few years ago was a reporter for the Wall Street Journal uh he was not an observant Jew in fact I believe he was married to a non-jewish woman he was kidnapped was it Al Qaeda it was um was not Kamas it was before Kamas but Al Qaeda or Isis I think maybe Al Qaeda I don't remember and uh they they videoed this this was on YouTube although they took it down they put a a knife or something uh to his to his throat and they said uh say that Muhammad is the prophet or whatever it would be he said I am a Jew they beheaded him right there a person could get his whole eternity in in one second look at this where did this come from I am a Jew he died right then you know they tell the story I mean I mean it's a very sad it's a sad context but it's a a humorous story a little bit raren Cutler went uh during World War II he went on chabas to have a meeting with Henry morgantha who was the Secretary of the Treasury in Franklin Roosevelt's Administration morgantha was a German Jew from a very very wealthy assimilated family he was totally not involved in any type of Jewish thing but rar with his interpreter Irving Bonham who is his great interpreter very successful businessman very very very learned Jew and a confidant of gdolim was going to be his translator and RAR was trying to negotiate for the government to allow money to be paid to be sent to occupied Europe both to help Jews and even to bribe Nazis to get Jews out and Morgan thou basically said you know can't do that it's against the law we are at war with Germany and the Axis powers and under federal law you're not allowed to send money to enemy countries or whatever to another way wait so rarin said it seems to me that you're more concerned about keeping your job than about the lives of the Jewish people now he said it in yish uh bonam did not want to translate that bunam didn't want to offend margan so boonham just said you know you see the rabbis very upset and he really wants you to think about this so even though he didn't know English somehow intuited that bonam did not say what rarin said so he shakes Bonham's jacket and says say exactly what I said word for word don't soften it so budham was very very embarrassed but he said well the rabbi feels you care more about your job than the deaths of the Jewish people the rabbi said you don't care so Morgan th took off his glasses and he put his head in his hands for two minutes and then he lifted up his head and he said tell the rabbi Not only would I give up my job for my people I would give up my life for my people it was already unfortunately relatively late in the war but Morgan thou in fact did help uh with the war Refugee board and uh you know a few thousand Jews were were saved because of Morgan th intervention now where did that come from his initial reaction was I got to follow the law and you know that's uh that's what the laws are the law I can't make exceptions time of and yet as the balat says there is something within the yid that comes out and that's that's the that protect you even when you have no conscious awareness right that's the separate thing but the Mas in Pari are the 42 so again it's a bit of a complicated tapestry but it's a it's a very very powerful one in which we connect the 42 Journeys with the 42 mikl with the 42 words of v in first with the 42 halves of the day and night of the Bim the upshot is that these are days of great Holiness again the op is making the point in another way of of great great Holiness and a potential of great closeness to Hashem so may we spend these times in trying to rebuild the bikash of our heart and if enough of us build the b mikash in our heart and our soul we will be to mashia and the May It Be [Music] it