Transcript
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[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