Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: The Joy of Prayer

[Music] is okay good evening everyone welcome again to the uh tuesday night uh torah in baka with robert greiterwicz and we're continuing to pray for the reforeshalema of the also there's two other sponsors for this evening and that is from tully steinberg his yard site would be the tenth of kislev as well as for the elite shama for gedalia ben shraga fibal and that is sponsored by philip weiss the art sliders in the twelfth of kislev okay thank you again i hope that the words of torah that we say tonight should be a refuse leima from binyamicho ben khanita and an alias neshama uh for those that have a your site uh this week pinchas gershon ben again the words of torah should be nishmatam and we very much appreciate the family members that are supporting torah by sponsoring ishir and once again that's really the greatest zukulus that you can give both for the neshamas that have left and for the reforeshalema of those who need to be healed and as always batok sharkhole israel among all of the sikh of israel should have a refuge layman bezrus hashem we should specifically see an emergence from the mageifa of kobet and corona that is greatly affecting really the entire world amazing this week's parsha is really jam-packed because essentially uh all of the tribes except for binyamin are born in this parsha it really covers a span of more than 20 years that yaakov is spending in loven's house and the end of parshas told us describes yaakov running away uh and really he's leaving eric israel for two reasons one is a positive one is a negative the negative reason is that asap wants to kill him he better get out of there because asap might destroy him the positive reason is he needs to find a wife and as just as we found with yitzhak that there was a tradition that avraham avinu laid down not to take a wife from the canaanite women and we discussed that last week so yitzhak himself was not allowed to leave eric israel because he was a carbon so eliezer had to go in yitzhak's dead but yaakov is allowed to leave so yaakov is leaving in order to find a wife so there's really two different reasons in fact the sephora had rush say that's why the parsha begins by yaakov yaakov leaves beersheba and he goes to kharan in every trip there is a yitzia there is a leaving and there is a halica there is an arrival a place that you're going to but sometimes you're making the trip to get out of where you are and sometimes you're making the trip to go to where you want to be with yaakov there's a double reason why say he has to leave beersheba because of asaf by but he has to go to kharan in order to find a wife that's why the torah emphasizes that yaakov's journey was a double journey there was a taklit there was a purpose both in the itsya in the leaving and in the halika and in the place that he was going to but it mentions that as yaakov is traveling by if god malcolm he encounters a place by al-ansam and he decides to stay there for the night kiva hashemish because the sun sets and he slept and he had a magnificent dream of a ladder of the angels of god going up and down the ladder cause i'll give us quite a complicated story here yaakov is very far from yerushalayim but somehow god brought the temple mount to where he was kind of contracted the earth and yaakov was actually having a vision on the temple mount of the angels going up and down and god wanted him to stop there atkid that god made the sun set prematurely and yaakov is caught in the darkness and this forces yaakov to start to stop now the torah says by if government he encountered the place it's as if he bumped into that place the harabayas came to him but ghazal darshan said that the word encounter is also referring to an encounter with god and yaakov enacted the practice of praying to hashem at night according to ghazal or at least one opinion in ghazal each of the of us enacted prayer to god at a particular time of day abraham enacted prayer in the morning yitzhak enacted prayer in the afternoon and yaakov enacted prayer at night so because of this now now obviously this does not mean that the text of the prayer was made by avraham tsakanyakov the amida the shmoney esray was created by the men of the great assembly at the beginning of the second temple period and it was revised after the khurban they saw mikdash so the prayer of avraham yitzhak and yaakov was a spontaneous prayer it was a prayer of their own words their own pouring of their heart to god and the rambam writes ideally that is what prayer should be but we're not always so capable of articulating our thoughts so that ham gave us a standardized nusa which has all of the deep intentions in it so even if i myself am not capable of those intentions i linked myself to the words but the rambam's ideal is not to be discarded uh totally that even in the era of standardized prayer which we're in now of course and you have to say those standardized prayers it is significantly important that one cultivates an individualistic relationship with god to speak to god in your own words to converse with him to pour out your hearts to develop an individual personal relationship with the almighty in breast breslav and in other casitas this is done largely through a process called tispotidus in which you kind of go into isolation go into a forest go into a place where nobody's around and you call out to god but even if you know we don't have the forest to go to we don't have a private place to go to but one could be in their office one can be in their bedroom one can be in their study and one can talk to hashem actually ideally actually by moving your lips not just by thinking about it and talk to yourself you don't have to scream you don't have to do it in a way that other people hear you but the notion of cultivating an individual relationship with hashem is something that we sometimes forget about and i include even those who are very observant and even those who are very meticulous in keeping the halakhas often and again i i'm not giving muslim i include myself in this criticism often we forget about god even as we embrace the torah it's a very very bizarre thing that sometimes we're so involved in keeping the mitzvos that we forget about the one that gave us the mitzvos and the one that gave us life and the one that created the world and when we think about prayer we should remember that the original prayer of abraham yutzukanyakov was literally talking to hashem conversing with hashem pouring out your heart to hashem and it didn't just become like a ritual that you have to get you have to get through pravida levi writes in the kusari that the three prayers of the day are like the three meals of the soul just as a body generally needs to take nutrition three times a day so too the soul is starving for a connection with god and our filos are the food that feeds the soul and without that connection to god through tephila the soul is starving and pining and malnourished so i want to use an analogy based on the kusari you know just if you analogize the three prayers to the three meals so if a person were to just live on junk food let's assume the only thing you ate were candy bars and potato chips that's all you ate so you wouldn't die you would not die it's enough to keep you alive but you would be malnourished you would be deficient you would kind of probably get sick in different ways even though you know your life could drag on so too all phyllos are a meal but some spilos are a well-balanced nutritious delicious meal and some felis are the equivalent of junk food now eating junk food is better than not eating at all right if you simply wouldn't eat it all you would die fairly quickly you know people can survive for a while fasting but eventually they're going to die so if the choice is davin without kavanagh or don't devin my answer would be dabin but no that that's kind of a junk food meal and how much am i depriving myself when i could have had something that's nutritious that really helps me and instead i'm living on uh chocolate bars and potato chips right so one could use the kuzari's analogy to explain how we would view prayer without kabbana and based on this tributary says that phila should be the highlight of the day should be the happiest time of the day again once again and i include myself in the muslim you know if you're a religious jew you you of course starving three times a day and when possible you even try to have a minion three times a day sometimes minima is combined whatever it is but you know you try to have all three fellows with a minion and that's a wonderful thing and some people are even more meticulous that they want to dive in chakras with the rising of the sun that's called vasikin and all of that is wonderful but you know we sometimes have this idea well i got to do it but i want to get it over with i want to get it over with as soon as as fast as i can there's not a sense of pleasure in it of joy in it it's a sense of burden now once again a sense of duty is important in life so even if you don't like to do it if you're doing it it counts it counts for something it does count for something but review says it could count for such for so much more if we would realize the joy in that encounter with hashem like how does a person feel when you're hungry and you sit down to a good meal there's like a schmack right there's an exciting kind of an excitement well tefillah should be even much more than that but at least something like that the simcha the height of the day it's some it's a madriga again i it's something that i'm working on all of us all of us need to need to work on and god forbid i never intend to be critical but it's sometimes the fact that we don't appreciate the opportunities that hashem gives us the gifts that hashem gives us we don't cherish it we don't relish it we don't see what a wonderful thing it is and think of once again think about it as the laby says sitting down to a meal of the soul talking to akadeshwar so that's kind of a general thing to think about in in tafila and the fact that we have such a gift and factor of celebrity of yeshiva university yoshido sullivan says that tefila is a kiddish that we're even allowed to approach god because one might have thought who are you and who dares approach the almighty like you know uh you're so you know you we we are all in so insignificant that we dare approach the master of infinite power of the universe what a chutzpah what an arrogance jerusalem said if god wouldn't tell you he wants us to dive in we actually wouldn't be allowed to die to him it would be us or because it's khusba but what did hashem say not only does he allow it but he craves it he wants it and once again people sometimes say it's a difficult question uh what is this thing that god says we have to pray them is god an egomaniac we have to stand there all the time and say how great he is and help us help us help us doesn't god know what we want anyway or what we need which is even more important than what we want but it's very very clear that all the bushingham say this that the purpose of prayer is not for god's sake the purpose of prayer is that it's something that we need our neshamas come from god and of course according to the balatanya and cyprusidas not only does it come from god but it's actually a part of god whatever that means because god did not create the soul god breathed his breath into us and that became the soul and the zohar haqqadah says and this is actually very controversial teaching and it needs a lot of explication that i'm not going to do tonight that when i blow my breath into you a mouth-to-mouth resuscitation i'm giving you my actual life force he who breathes into another mee garment is breathing in from his own essence in that sense the soul of a human being certainly the soul of a jew is not a creation of god it is of the essence of divinity itself this is the phrase a famous phrase that everybody uses today but it's a quite controversial unloaded phrase helek ello kami mao a portion of god above again philosophically how do you divide god it's a real problem uh i don't think it's an actual verse in job uh but but there are there's words that's similar to it that endorses how do you divide god and does that mean i am god obviously i'm not god humans are not god again this is a very complicated uh story in the history of hasidus and this is part of why the villenegon was against some of these formulations but be it as it may because the neshama comes from god it yearns to be reconnected to that source the balatanya uses the phrase over and over again that the neshama in the gulf is in goddess is in exile exile is not only the state of the jewish nation being outside of the land of israel or without a basa mikdash which of course is true that's kind of a national gulles but there's a profound existential individualistic colors in which minus shama is cut off from its source and that's tremendous pain that's tremendous tremendous pain we can't even imagine it and tefila is one of the most powerful ways that the neshama relinks to its macor and that is why it is actually supposed to be a profoundly joyous experience that is said to be the height of the day so these are things to think about the joy we have of tavima let me mention another interesting point this is i i didn't i'm not yet up to the main thing i want to talk about but let me let me mention another introductory point you know all of us know that at least the men for its filat chakras for the morning prayer we put on if you're married or swaggy or yaki you put on a talus again among non-yeki's non-swardim single men do not wear a big talus until they're married but the married people wear a talus and every man whose bar mitzvah puts on phillip now let's think about this for a moment the mitzvah of villain is in the torah of course but the mitzvah's villain is not particularly linked to chakras in fact ideally in an ideal state one would wear to fill in the entire day even going to work in filling etc you would take it off when you go to the bathroom uh and there are still people today a few people not that many people who still were to fill in the whole day certainly the ville magoon warts fill in the whole day um scheinberg there's a crown with rocker a great rush of shiva who was nifty a few years ago had like small filling you would you wouldn't even know that he was wearing it in other words he uh besides the fact that he had 100 pairs of sisters that's another thing but he would have small filling under a hat and you know cover it up by his sleeve etc now the reason why we don't work fill in the whole day is because filling requires a certain carvana a certain seriousness a certain not fooling around not joking uh inspilling carlos roche it's called uh also it requires that you guard your body from flatulence or something like that so mamela it was thought that when most of us are not on the level to respect the holiness of phil in the whole day so we keep it down to the minimum but the question becomes why is that minimum defined as chakras why don't i say for example i put on filming at minh like what what is the point of chakras and filling there is nothing in the mitzvah's villain that links it automatically to filat chakras so i'm going to give you three quicky answers to this answer number one is you're right tifilin has nothing to do with chakras but there's a general rule that you try to do on mitzvah as soon as you're able to do a mitzvah and since we do not where it's filling at night and that's our lucky you know where it's filling at night so my first opportunity is when i get up in the morning so my mela i do it then now it's very true by the way if you didn't wear it to fill in in the morning you put it on until nightfall 100 but generally speaking we connect it to chakrit simply because chakras is the first prayer that i recite when i get up in the morning so it's simply an expression of those who are conscientious do mitzvos as early as possible by the way this raises a question sometimes with a bris ideally a breath should be done as soon as possible the morning of the eighth day technically you know if the sun is up at uh 6 15 in the morning the bris should be well after you know after davening you dive into monastery but it should be mamash 6 30 in the morning but often people delay a breath because they want their parents to come they want family to come it takes a while et cetera so that's a whole shiloh are you allowed to override the principle of alacrity of in order to have a bigger crowd in order to honor family members the minute obviously is that people do in fact i've been at many britain's which are right before sunset and they'll do a bris like in the late afternoon you have to do it you can't do it at night okay again ask your as always ask your local orthodox rabbi when hashem you will have the occasion to make a bris so answer number one is fill in has nothing to do with chakrit but it's simply an example of zerizem and le mitzvot answer number two is that there is a statement in the gemara that anybody that wears i'm sorry anyone that says the shema and is not wearing twillen is giving false testimony to hashem because in the shema we actually read you shall tie that fill in or tie the phylacteries on your arm and put them between your eyes meaning in your on top of your your forehead and if you're not wearing filling you're basically testifying that god said worked filled and you're not doing it now at night that's not a problem even though i say at night because i'm not supposed to where it's filling at night so that's why it's not a problem at my roof but in chakras if i were to dive in chakras without filling and put on filling later even i would be making false testimony so therefore i got it connected to chakras because of kriyashma minha would be less important for its villain because minsha does not have the recitation of shema but now let me give you a third answer which is connected to what we're talking about in the parsha which is from the mesh and it's a very very interesting answer do you remember a few weeks ago when avraham avino waged war against four hostile kings on behalf of five kings including the king of stone avraham actually helped out the king of stone and avram rescued lot and avraham recaptured a lot of prisoners of war that had been taken and the king of saddam told avraham give me back my people that you liberated and you can take all the spoils of war and avraham avinu declined to take the spoils of war from the king of stone because he said i don't want anyone to ever think that it was you who enriched abraham i want my wealth to come from god and not from evil kings now avraham's expression was now i will not take a string or a shoelace from you the gomarian saita says the following in the merit of avraham saying i'm not going to take even a string hashem gave his descendants the mitzvah of situs the mitzvah of strings and in the merit of not taking a leather shoe strap hashem gave us the mitzvah of to fill in the straps that we wrap around ourselves so it turns out according to the gemaran saita that the whole mitzvoth villain is in the merit of avraham aveena so the mesh says very beautifully since chakrit is the prayer that was enacted by avraham avina again not the text but the idea of praying in the morning and the mitzvah of twilight came in the merit of avraham avina that is why we wear to fill in and even tell us because talos also is from the string but afghans feel us chakras because we're connecting it to what the gifts that we got through our through our brahma you know it's really a beautiful beautiful connection there is a stere in ghazal the gabe talis according to the gemara in saita we got sithis in the merit of avram saying i will not take a string but there is a madrid that says it was in the merit of shame the son of noah avraham's great great great grandfather who covered up his father's nakedness with a blanket and it says in the merits of using that cloth to cover up his father's nakedness hashem gave us talis so there's a little bit of a stira does the citrus come that's one might be the garment why not be the fringes uh or one might be that shame had many descendants so yeah shame got it but that could have gone to other semitic descendants and avraham was the one who who latched on to it because of okay right so this is some introductory points i i wanted to share with you but let me now get into the main question i want to discuss which is a very perplexing question so avraham was masaken chakrit yitzhak was meta in and yaakov was mitake in arvid right he enacted prayer to god at night now the problem is this the gemara says in masaka's broncos and this is actually it's an argument but this is awiposkin that davening chakras is an obligation you must do that darwining myriff not shema of the evening is is is dorisa but the amida or darwining at night is technically a racist is technically optional now please don't walk away saying that i said you don't have to dive in my river it's brought down that since for hundreds and hundreds of years actually almost 2 000 years it has been accepted by the jewish people that we dub in my roof so now it becomes an obligation by virtue of the long-standing custom that was accepted by the people so now if you were to ask anybody any rabbi am i obligated to dub in my riff the answer is 100 yes that's fine but at its inception the fila of arvid was a rashut with certain obligation it's i'm sorry uh not an obligation optional it was not a hover it was not an obligation so here's the question if avram's prayer is an obligation and if the itzhak's prayer is an obligation why would it be the case that the prayer of yaakov would be optional why should the prayer of yaakov be inferior to the prayer of abraham and yitzhak in some ways is considered to be the greatest of the of us although he's standing on the shoulders of avraham and yitzhak right avram had the son yeshua el who was not worthy and was banished and yitzhak had the son asaf who was also not worthy and banished it's only yaakov all of whose children in spite of the fact that they had problems too with the sale of yosef things were not perfect but all of them merited to be part of the jewish people yaakov is called mitoso shalema all of his progeny had the holiness of the destiny of the jewish people it is said that on god's divine throne there is engraved the face of the ideal man that god remembers so to speak again this is metaphorical because god never forgets but god contemplates with love the face of the ideal person and that ideal person is none other than yaakov avinu so how could it be that the prayer of avraham and yitrak is mandatory and the prayer of yaakov is optional why would yaakov's prayer be less significant than the prayer of avraham and yitzhak this is a good culture so the pinay yoshua one of the great commentaries on the gemara in mesakis brachos asks the question and he gives a very good answer he says like this whether the origin of the fellows is because of the avoc is actually an argument in the gemara because there is another opinion that says that the three filos are not because of the others but the three filas correspond to the sacrificial cycle in the basal mikdash there was a morning offering and the chakrit makes up for that morning offering there was an afternoon offering and minha makes up for that afternoon offering and finally there were no offerings at night officially but if there was any leftover organs or fats that were not consumed on the altar we would burn them through the night but if there wasn't anything left over you wouldn't so the pneu wants to say the following the opinion that says our vit is optional is not following the view that the feel out there because of abraham yaakov yes if you follow the view that the philosopher because of avramitsukenyakov arvid would be an obligation but the one that says arvik is not an obligation is because they link the curve they link this filos not to the of us they link the filos to the sacrificial cycle and on that that's optional because at night there was no obligation to burn the fats if there was nothing left over so therefore what the issue was saying is that if you do follow the view that it's fearless or because of the others you would you would follow the view that arvid is achieved and the mandiamar that says arvid is not a here is not an obligation is following the view that filots are because of the sacrifices and not because of the others this is the pane yeshua's very logical finish but the problem with his innovation is that it does not fit the rambam's decisions because the rambam says both that the tephilos come from the ovos avraham did chakras yitzhak did yakov did myraf and the rambam rules that under the strict halacha our vit is optional and not obligatory so now you're back to square one the rambam does say yaakov did arvis by the way when i say jacob did arvis keep in mind i don't mean the only dub in myrov obviously yitzhak incorporated what avraham did and added minha and yaakov incorporated what abraham and yitzchak did and added myriad so avraham david once a day yitzhak daven twice a day yaakov daven three times a day but be it as it may you're back to square one how could the rambam maintain that yaakov did my rev and yet my rev is optional that seems to be a contradiction logically and the pane yeshua's answer doesn't work because the rambam does not link the prayers to the sacrifices the rambam links the prayers to the ovos and still says arvid is optional so let me share with you an answer from rav zadok of lublin the greater of zadok where rav sadok tells us that even though we dive in the same amidah morning afternoon and night so it's the same words exact same words you know shabbos is different but during the week it's the same same shimon as ray in point of fact each tafila has a different emotional resonance in how i connect to god now in some ways the advent of electricity has taken that feeling away i dive in the day i dive in the afternoon i dive in night it's all the same but if you think about life before there was no electricity there was a big big difference between day night daybreak late afternoon there was a sense of changes going on and the changes going on in the external world the physical world mirror and corresponds to different emotional states that i go through when i pray to god so the emotion that you bring to chakrit is not the same as the emotion you bring to mind and the emotion you bring to mira is not the same as the emotion you bring to chakras uh to my roof rather yeah chakra still but right and again that's something that's important because sometimes you know since we say the same words we're kind of we think we're going through the same thing but in fact it's a different type of and here's where is what rav sadak says morning is a time of renewal especially if you dive in when the sun goes up kind of a new day a new day always gives a person a sense of hope a sense of gratitude even if you're kind of depressed even if you're going through difficult times at least the first second that you open your eyes like you'll only last a second there's always a sense that things can be good today things can be better so the dominant emotion of chakrit is one of hope one of gratitude one of a belief that today can be better than yesterday there's a great potential even the birds singing in the morning it's kind of the birds are saying you know there's a life out there it's a new day that's why basically happening with the rising of the sun can be a very dramatic way of experiencing this because you're kind of joining with creation in singing the praises of god as we begin a new day that's why i'm a little critical today the second minion tend to be very mechanical uh people are looking at an atomic clock i remember i once had to dive in for my father's yard site on uh and of a seeking minion and i you know i dive in for the omen i was kazan and afterwards they were very angry at me because i was two seconds i began the yamita two seconds after sunrise and they said you messed up you missed sunrise now keep in mind that in the time of our sages there were no clocks there were no clocks that measured time that way and sunrise was really an emotional experience of connecting with the sun and singing to god again not god forbid not sun worship worshiping god with the rest of the universe so in a sense now instead of people looking at the sun and singing to god with the sun people like staring at the clock to be sure that you know everything is exact in fact the second minute was actually in a in a room a basement without windows kind of i don't know kind of missing the point i mean that to kind of lock yourself in a basement without windows and staring at a clock i don't think again hologray you fulfilled vasikan but i don't know if the overall spirit is truly is truly there but okay that's my little little dance but okay but be it as it may the mood of chakras is hope joy gratitude that belongs to abram because avraham avinu's life ultimately culminated in all of the blessings of god he became a great man he became of course wealthy he became famous he became prosperous but also he had a tremendous spiritual influence on thousands of people right he made right the torah talks about the nephesh the souls that he made in kharan all the way even before he came to eretz and he worked with the men right and and uh sarah worked with the women these were the first kira of pioneers before asha torah before or samayak before ibanez right they're the ones that and they were very very very successful and avraham at the age of 100 and sorry at the age of 90 were given a child in a miraculous way who grew up to be a righteous person and remember even ishmael the bad son you think about it all of the uh deficiencies you might say in abram's life got closed up ishmael after sarah died did shiva and came back to abraham some want to say by the way without getting into politics i'll leave it to rabbi kessel who is the specialist in this that the united arab emirates overtures with israel is also an expression of the vinay ishmael doing chiva yamim at the end of days it's very very significant that the arab nations are coming closer to the jewish people there is no accident because just as the ishmael returned to africa the binay ismail will return to acknowledge the jewish people and and and the like and hagar who was sent away got reincarnated as the righteous woman keturah because i'll say the wife katura is none other than hunger so avram is zoka to close the circle [Music] so yes avraham had many many tests but he passed them and avraham lost his precious wife sarah which was tragic but you know she was 127 i mean people people have to die sometime they lived a long life together so avraham's life represents in total gratitude appreciation and of course hope and faith in god's goodness and indeed let me point out that in many many ways the way you serve hashem is the way you perceive hashem but i perceive hashem a certain way and i translate that into my behavior now we know that avraham's behavior was the media of khasid the attribute of lovingkindness why did avraham serve hashem in that way deception of hashem the god of kindness the god of goodness that's why by the way the al-qaeda was such a difficult trial for abram because he saw god as the repository of kindness and here god is saying to slaughter his son so avram was so faithful that he was willing to override his very conception of god but at the end of the day god was the god of kindness because what did god say people rabbi sax makes this point quite a lot that one of the great lessons of the al-qaeda is you have to be willing to kill your child if god says so but god doesn't want it doesn't want you to do that meaning part of the al-qaeda is not only avraham's willingness to do what hashem wanted but a definition of what hashem wants and what hashem doesn't want in other words you walk away from the al-qaeda and the bottom line is god is the god of mercy kindness benevolence who doesn't want these things to be done okay that's a very important second lesson of the al-qaeda so that's why chakras is the prayer of avraham because chakras is about gratitude joy appreciation seeing and feeling the benevolence of hashem in all of the creation now mint can be dive in a half an hour afternoon let's say if it's a 6 a.m to 6 p.m day you can dive in miracle from 12 30. but ideally minha should be daven before the sun sets but as the sun is setting in other words you have the lengthening shadows of the day now if chakras is the prayer of gratitude and appreciation we can call minha the prayer of panic now that's true in some literal ways as well mindra does have the shortest window of every prayer all right so in your shalom if you're stuck you're not near a show of course you're always near a shell but uh whatever it is you can dive in in the street right if you had to stop in the middle of the street in dublin you know you could do it people would not think you're crazy but when you're in a working environment let's say in the states minha poses a problem sometimes because chakras you can usually do before you go to work and my review can do when you get home in the middle of the day you got to do it before sunset i remember in the days before cell phones when we used to have all these phone booths around if you walked into penn station in new york city in the late afternoon you would see all the phone booths occupied by orthodox jews who needed zabin minska but they were embarrassed just to dub in openly so they went to they went into a phone booth and they put the phone receiver to their ear and they recited the shimona s-ray that's way of kind of covering up that you were davening minha they were making a phone call to god of course they have to know that when you're calling from penn station it's a long distance call only when you call from your shelian is it a local call so whatever they were charged but this was their long-distance call so mintra is a matter of panic both in terms of time but also symbolically you have the lengthening shadows of the evening it's still daylight it's still daylight but night is coming now again let me remind you that the advent of electricity in fact there's a whole book written on this from a secular standpoint has changed the nature of night night no longer has the dramatic impact that it had even 150 years ago but when you didn't have lights even if you had candles with candles don't give you a lot of light night was kind of the end of the activity you know that's why for hanukkah even there was a halacha you have to light within a half an hour of darkness because after a half an hour there's nobody in the street now that's not so true today but the remains again there's an issue that applies but you see very very clearly that in the olden days and by old days i mean you know 150 years ago night was the end of everything right if you ever read a jane austen novel or something like that about uh british customs you see that you know night you close up the house so night represents the idea if day represents blessings goodness hope tonight represents concealment of hashem withdrawal losing things so minra is the prayer to god that has a certain air of desperation god i still have your blessings but i feel they're slipping away i feel i'm in danger of losing them please please please let me hold on to them a little bit longer why is that the prayer that is connected to yitzhak avena because keep in mind that yitzhak gavino is still in eric israel he's wealthy he's successful he's in the land but yitzhak is already getting the intimations that there's going to be an exile and a servitude if you remember hashem told avraham that his seed will be strangers and slaves in a land that is not theirs for four hundred years rashi brings hosanna that asks a very simple question 400 years the jews were not in egypt 400 years the jews were in egypt only 210 years where do you get the 400 years so rashi explains based on ghazal that the 400 years start from the birth of yitzhak that from the birth of the yitzhak until the exodus is 400 years but the question is obvious what do you mean you're starting from the birth of yitzhak god said there will be strangers and slaves in the land that is not theirs for 400 years yitzhak was not in a land that's not his hits was inherit israel and he wasn't a slave the answer is that even in yitzhak's lifetime and even in his own lands his own land he was made to feel like an alien and a stranger remember the philistines harassed him they filled up his wells he was getting the message you don't really belong here you're an outsider and of course this has unfortunately a very contemporary parallel in which there are so many people even today that are looking at the jewish people in the land of israel and saying you don't belong here whether it's the ultimate agenda of the palestinians or whether it's our fellow jews in the left wing again i don't want to be political but you know the notion which you would think is self-evident that we the jewish people have a right and indeed an obligation to live in the holy land is not universally accepted there are quite a few jews that don't accept that premise and certainly quite a few nanjus who go along with that and that's what it means when it says yitzhak is it's still daytime but you feel that things are slipping away so you see the idea here chakras is the prayer of hope and gratitude minsha is the prayer of fear desperation and panic we now come to my roof now you have to know a little bit about what yaakov avinu's condition is when he's running away from merit israel first of all and rashi gives you a very detailed chronology i don't have the time to go into all the details but rashi figures out that yaakov was 63 years old when he took the broncos from asap he's not a young man he is 63 years old he is without wife and child he has no wife or child at this point he is also poverty stricken because it says that eliphas asap's son took away all of his wealth as he was running he is afraid for his very life asav has threatened to kill him and he knows that aether may very well carry out that threat he is leaving the holiness of eric israel he thinks he will never see his father again although the myself winds up surviving much longer than everybody thought but he thinks he's not going to see his father again and in fact he never sees his mother again rifka dies tragically she never truly fulfilled her promise to him i will send for you to come home she died before she was able to do that and not only that but you have to know that yaakov is fearful that he's going from the frying pan to the fire because if aesop is a threat to his physical life he knows he's going to lovant's house his mother's brother his uncle lovan is a house of cheating deception and yaakov was so afraid that this could rub off on him and his children and destroy them spiritually and the whole destiny of a holy nation of amishra will go up in smoke so yaakov is filled with fears apprehensions yaakov really has no hope 63 no wife no children penniless leaving the holiness of israel leaving the holiness of the home of abraham and yitzhak going to a place that's tame that's impure that will challenge his spirituality yes he does have the magnificent vision of the latter and god's reassurance but that's after he prayed when he prayed he prayed in total darkness not only that because i'll actually say the sun set early that day so if chakras is the prayer of gratitude and joy and mincha is the prayer that you still have god's blessings but they're slipping away as the prayer of panic myra rav sadok says is the prayer of emunah faith faith is what you have when life looks hopeless when there's no way out when you're in auschwitz when you're in the concentration camp when logically there is no way you can get out of your situation but you have faith that god will help you god will sustain you god will give you strength even when the situation looks hopeless my riff is connected to emunah that is why after the shema of the morning when we say hashem mms god your god is the god of truth we say the ativ yasiv means it's firmly standing mourning is a metaphor for the joyous occasions of life when i see the kindness of god the ms is standing up it's because it's it's staring me in the face at night which is symbolic of those times in life that seem hopeless and overwhelming and mess with god's truth is something i have faith in even though i can't see it and this is a very very famous interpretation of tehillim sadiq base which is the song of shabbos [Applause] khashoggi in the morning i declare your loving kindness and your faith i declare at night and in the suffragettas it's very for some it's very well known that morning means the mornings of life in the bright moments of life i see the kindness of hashem but in the dark moments of life i have faith in hashem no matter what and therefore my wrath is the prayer of munnar gratitude and appreciation minha panic as things are slipping away arvid is a muna in moments of total darkness so now listen to what grove cedric says we started off with a difficult question and that is if if yaakov avinu was metaken arvid why would arvik be an optional prayer so here's the thing the question is assuming that if something is optional that means it's less important right that's the assumption of the question but you can look at it another way when something is an obligation that means every 13 year old boy is capable of doing it and is expected to do it so chakras which is gratitude for the kindnesses of god that can be expected of everybody the navi yeshayo says even a dumb animal appreciates the hand that feeds it you're not grateful to god for your life for your health of course you have to be grateful that's pashut and that's why you'd say you have blessings but things are slipping away well that's the old saying there are no atheists and foxholes you know you turn to god but our viet represents a level of holiness that not everybody can attain yet you in other words we work towards it but it's not something that's automatic that even when life is hopeless even when you're living in darkness even when you're in the concentration camp even when there's no way out you connect to hashem you feel hashem's love that is optional the optionality of myrif if there's such a word as optionality is not because it's less important but because it represents a level of aspiration which is too high to be made mandatory for everybody and therefore if sadaq says my rev is actually the highest level of prayer it is the level of emunah in hashem even in total darkness and once again we're coming to chanukah and i guess next week we'll talk more about it but you know one of the messages of hanukkah is the capacity of the light to overcome the darkness even when it looks hopeless because after all they found a jar of oil that should only last one day there's no way one day of oil could last eight days so logically when they lit that one day of oil they figured they must have figured it'll go out you know tomorrow it'll go out and that's it and yet chanukah teaches us that when you do as much as you can do god will bless your efforts beyond what you thought possible and that's an important lesson for us because we live in a world that has many many layers of darkness there is the darkness of the ignorance of torah among most of the jewish people there is the darkness of brutality the darkness of poverty the darkness of racism the darkness of of rioting and violence and again particularly in the united states you get to see this and of course with the rise of islamic fundamentalism over the past decade and a half you see what's going on in the world and there's a lot of darkness and sometimes that darkness is overwhelming and i look at myself we look at ourselves and there's we think there's so little that we can do but the lesson of chanukah and the lesson of myra is that even when there's darkness you try to see the light and you try to light the light and even if you think that your light is so insignificant and so small that it can't accomplish anything what's the lesson of hanukkah you do what you can and then hashem blesses your efforts beyond what you thought was possible you know there's a whole debate particularly in the reform community it's hanukkah an important holiday not an important holiday they go back and forth they kind of wanted to be they wanted they want to compete with christmas and they want to make it a big deal but then they say well it's not a major holiday you know so they debate every year should it be a major thing should be a minor thing uh it's true of course that hanukkah is not a yamcha in the sense of not being allowed to do work i mean that that that's of course the case but the comic is enormously important because it reminds us to have faith in the light of hashem and to have faith in our capacity to be as little to rebel used to say lamplighters who can bring some light to the world and even if we think our contribution is so insignificant chanukah says you do what you can and then hashem multiplies your efforts beyond what you thought was possible so it's over a good week [Music] oh