Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: The Law of the Torah and Unconditional Love for Another

[Music] okay hi everybody and glad you came I see the crowd is getting bigger and bigger although I wouldn't yet call it overwhelming but thank you for coming out and today we deal with what is considered to be the most mysterious of all of the mitzvahs of the Torah we have the mitzvah of Peres Duma of the red heifer and this is a particular ritual in which the Taira says you have to find a para oh that has to be all red all red does not mean fire engine red I used to think there when I was a child if you have to fight a fire engine cow which you're not going to find essentially orange Brown is good enough that's what we're talking about but which is a common color among many types of cattle but it has to be a hundred percents you're only allowed one black hair if there's two black hairs it is disqualified and that pyrrha is slaughtered it is then burnt into ashes the ashes are mixed with spring water and then whenever somebody comes in contact with the dead and their tummy for seven days the way they are purified is on day three and on day seven they are sprinkled with even a drop of the water and the ashes and then on day seven they go to the mikveh and then at night they're going to be taller so para Duma is the necessary prerequisite to become purified from the tumor from the contamination that arises when we connect to a corpse now let me point out therefore since bisman has a we don't have the pyrethrum every once in a while some Brut claims to have a part of them but even if really even if we add the animal we would have to prepare it in fact there's a circularity here only pure Kohanim can burn the ashes and prepare the para Duma so by definition to make a new para uma you have to have some ashes of an old para Duma that can purify the participants so today we're in a double bond even if we had the para Duma we would have literally no way to prepare it what's going to happen when Messiah comes is a Leo Hanavi is going to bring a jar of some leftover ashes of the last pair Asuma he will purify some Kohanim and then they'll be able to make a new end that will help the rest of us could be possible now for him to be born in let's say outside of the city or outside of the place of yeah there actually is a discussion in the Gemara itself in the mission itself about Kohanim you could be born in isolated places on tops of mountains and they were never exposed to a corpse and a result they are toheart and therefore if you wait thirteen years they will then be able to make a porridge Ummah and the mission actually discusses such a group I understand that around ten years ago there was a group of very religious people who wanted to raise children that way and the police broke it up because of child abuse they treated it as child abuse kinda whatever because you have to do a lot of kind of isolation the kids could not be connected to anybody else and the like so essentially the catch-22 is you can't make a para uma without a para Duma is going to be resolved when mushiya comes now the fact that all of us are coming minutes is not necessarily a problem with everything even a person whose time they met we dive in we learn we do mitts vote we keep Shabbat being from Airmech does not mean you're a pariah there is essentially only one or two things that a ton may met is not allowed to do you are not allowed to enter the area that is the temple area and the courtyard of the temple and number two you're not allowed to eat corbino's which we don't bring any way or trauma that you give to a cowing now I don't want to get too much into the halacha detail but this is essentially the controversy whether we're allowed to enter the temple mount's as you know most Orthodox Jews do not enter the Temple Mount some Orthodox Jews nothing like about Jews do enter the Temple Mount and let me explain what the mock locust is the maloca siz this everybody admits that the part of the Temple Mount that was actually the temple and the courtyards a Tom I met is absolutely not allowed to enter but those who do enter the outer rim of the Temple Mount say that that is outside of the temple courtyard and therefore they are permitted to go there those who don't say it's too much of an uncertainty it's like walking into a minefield if I were to tell you oh you can walk here the mine is six inches away don't worry about it most of us would not be very comfortable doing that so really the mock locusts between those who go and those who don't is not a mock locusts and her logic principle everybody admits the inner part of the Temple Mount is austere and in theory the outer part of the Temple Mount is mature everybody's motive - those are welcome the question is how confident are you in your identification of when does the outer become the become the inner but that is essentially why we cannot go not only point out women have a separate issue if a woman is a meat ax or a man for that matter had a seminary mission and the woman did not go to the mikveh yet she cannot enter any part of the Temple Mount no matter what so in a way it's a little awkward even if I as a man can enter the outer part of the Temple Mount if my only problem is not having para DOMA a woman has an additional halakhah Kish ooh her neither status unless she went to the mikveh and she she's in a state of purity so it's complicated it's very very clear in the Torah we'll talk about the spiritual meaning of this shortly that purity and impurity Toma and Tyra which are really words that you can't even translate but we commonly translate them as purity and impurity are very very important concepts in biblical theology and in Holika as well there's a whole order of the Mishnah a very difficult or that many people don't really learn that well called Tijeras about purity and impurity but today by and large most of those rules do not apply simply because we don't have the mechanisms to purify us so para Duma is the indispensable necessity to become purified from the tumor that you contract when you're in proximity to a dead body that means you either touch a dead body or you move a dead body or you carry a dead body or you're under the same roof with a dead body and that would even include an overhanging tree there are a lot of different ways you can touch it and once you catch it you can't get rid of it without the sprinkling of the para ajumma ashes mixed with water nice this is not immersion you have to do order to make for an addition to that mix what we have today but this is called huzzah sprinkling now this is described as Hoch Zoet who cast a toga now what is a coke and coke is a law for which we have no intelligible understanding there are many laws of the Torah that make a lot of sense don't kill don't steal they are called Mishpatim heuk in our laws that no God must know the reason but we don't really understand what they are and this is called the Hoch par excellence because it is so inexplicable but what is so inexplicable about it well there's quite a lot of stuff why a cow why red why ashes wine mixed with spring water why am i sprinkle twice but on the other hand as strange as that is I have to say it's not much stranger than a lot of other things that are strange shot this why wool and linen you know why can you only eat animals that have split hooves and chew their cud meaning once you start saying that things don't make pure logical sense then this is not necessarily the of candidates for the hook so what makes this the Hulk of all hooks the inexplicable of the most inexplicable the answer is that it is not simply the strangeness of the ritual although it is a strange ritual it is the paradox of the ritual because paradoxically the ashes of the para ajumma purify those who are to me and yet everybody that handles those ashes becomes timaya in the process so the same thing that is a vehicle for purifying the impure is a vehicle for contaminating the pure so part of what makes this a hulk is the concept of paradox contradiction now I just want to stop here because people sometimes raise a question if it's true that anybody that handles the ashes becomes ritually impure don't you have a problem that you'll never be able to get the Jewish people in a 100% level of impurity let's imagine Messiah comes we have a para Duma so I split well I'm not a culling but you know I realized let me yeah who I'm we're coming for a moment so I sprinkle you I'm coming so then somebody else has to sprinkle me and their tummy and then somebody has to sprinkle him and he's stomach so the problem is you have like an infinite regression where there's going to be a last guy holding the bag who's gonna be Tommy and if you find another guy to purify him then he's going to be coming how is it possible for all of quality Israel to become taller it's a question that might occur to people but let me point out it is not a question at all and the reason it's not a question at all is that's the only Touma that needs sprinkling with the ashes of para Duma is the tumor that you get by contact with the corpse so if you were in contact with the corpse by touching by carrying by move by being in the same building you need to be sprinkled with para uma now it's true that I who sprinkle you I become tummy but I didn't become tonight by contact with the corpse I became Sun made by contact with para uma all I have to do is go to the mikveh and I'm going to be pure at night so what will the last guy have to do the last guy the last sprinkler will simply be able to jump into the mikveh and at nightfall he will be pure and all of Clouseau will appear in other words again it is not that every case of tumor needs para uma ami de every month does not need para uma the only one that needs for ajumma is contact with a dead corpse okay and again in the contact can be touching carrying moving or being under the same roof including a tree and alike now this overlaps with the love Kohanim but be sure you understand the difference a KO hang is not allowed to become tummy too immense and Israel is allowed to be tummy to emit but both a calling and the Israel if they did become term a are subject to the same purification rituals so these purification rituals are not limited to come on in they apply even if I may use rather I want to bring a Corbin I want to go into the base I make - I have to have the sprinkling of the para ajumma and it's pretty amazing that if you think about how many Jews throughout Jewish history needed to be sprinkled when there was a base on mikdash hundreds of thousands if not millions and more than once during the year and multiply that by the number of years and it's amazing that we are told that throughout our history from moshe Rubino until the destruction of the temple there were only ten para ajummas that were needed and the tenth one is actually going to be say is saved so really only nine were used up and the tenth win is going to be mimosa mushiya so really was kind of a miracle that it lasted so so long yeah so here's the things are technically if you study the technicalities it's very interesting you have to mix the ashes in the spring water but you don't have to sprinkle people with the ashes so for example I could just put a tiny bit of ash one piece of ash in a gigantic vat of water and I can keep on adding water I can keep on adding and adding and adding and adding and when people are sprinkled you don't have to deplete the ashes you can leave the ashes in there and just like sprinkle them with the water so that that's apparently how they how they did it so the kids are there for para uma exemplifies the idea of parrot of paradox and that is why Allah says in the book of Ecclesiastes am rtl , I said I wanted to seek wisdom for hirako calm me many and I saw that wisdom was beyond me and the Gemara explains or the medics planes rather that he went through every single Mitzvah and he understood it but once he got to para Duma he didn't make sense to him and then he realized the before him say that all of the Torah is beyond me from the keuken we understand that even the part of the Torah that's intelligible to me that makes sense contains depths of meaning that are beyond human comprehension and this gives rise to an important question when the Taira introduces the para Duma it begins with the words dos Lucas a Torah this is the Hulk the statute the inexplicable law of the Torah now the reform ask a question given the fact that this is not the whole Torah it's only one particular commandment the Taira should not have said those hookahs haataja it should have said Zoet who cuts hapara this is the law of the para why does it say zoats uncut hatorah as if there's something about the whole Torah in poor argument so I'm gonna give you three answers answer number one is from the or I am the Rin points out an interesting idea that in the law of purity the greater the sanctity of life the greater the impurity is in the absence of that life so for example a dead human being has a much higher degree of impurity than a dead animal if I touch a dead animal I am Tom a for only one day and I don't need para do you mind just go to the mikveh and I'm to her if I touch a dead human I'm coming for seven days a dead human has a much greater tumor than a dead animal a dead Jewish person has a greater level of tumor than a dead nun Jacuzzi non Jew conveys to MA only by touching and carrying it's only the Jew that conveys to my being under the same roof a dead plant does not have to my dog unless a dead animal touched it but but the dead plants meat site itself has no tumor which means to MA is something that results from the vacuum and absence of a life force that was holy and special and therefore the greater the holiness the greater the two-month that is why human greater than animal Jew greater than Andrew etc animal greater than plant which has no tumor at all so therefore it turns out that those Kolkata all the laws of purity and impurity derived from the holiness that the Torah imparted into the soul of human beings and the Jewish people in particular and therefore when it says this is the coke of the totem it doesn't only refer to parody which refers to the whole concept of purity and impurity is not an intrinsic natural phenomenon it's not like you know German contamination or something like that it is a construct that emanates from a holiness which when vacated creates a vacuum and that vacuum generates to man and that's so true path a Torah that is the orihime's answer and that is answer number one answer number two is a fascinating thought of the Vilna Gaon that's a little controversial everyone knows the famous teaching that the Torah is compared to water and there are a lot of reasons for that just like water purifies and water is necessary for life and water goes from high ground to low ground so the Torah leaves the arrogant and goes to the humble right so there are many many reasons why tourists compared to water but the Vilna Gaon gives a strikingly original reason and the reason he gives us the following if I pour water on soil and in that soil there are seeds the water will cause or enable those seeds to sprout and grow but the water is in difference if those seeds are wheat or those seeds are poisonous weeds water will be moths Mia what has ever in the grounds whether it's good or whether it's bad water is a medium of growth so to says the Vilna Gaon this is quite amazing coming from the Vilna Gaon Torah will accentuate whatever me doats whatever character traits you have in your personality if you are kind if you are compassionate if you are loving the total will make you a kinder compassionate a more loving person well nobody disagrees with that but listen to the second part of the sentence if God forbid you're a person who is selfish who is arrogant the learning of the Torah will make the arrogance even more pronounced well he doesn't say well but he says it well there's a lot of contradictions on this because there are many many passages that the Vilna Gaon himself brings that the Torah could change you for the good but the Vilna Gaon says you have to be committed to wanting to change for the kind if you're not committed to wanting to change for the good this is an amazing thought the Vilna Gaon was not a person who did not give up importance to torah learning and yet the Vilna Gaon said without consciously trying to become a better person it's not going to be an automatic process the Torah which can purify one type of person can actually contaminate another piasa type of person it can be another avenue for competition another way of arrogance another method of showing one upmanship i think we see this in the world sometimes so the Vilna Gaon says no no I meant the other way around in order for the Torah to improve you you have to be committed to wanting to change other words if you have bad seeds in you the Torah is going to make those bad seeds grow what's ever in you unless you are committed to wanting to change and getting rid of those bad seeds that's exactly right but again the donnagon says what that means is that even if I learn for ulterior motives I'm doing it with the hope that I eventually will serve God lachemann witopia moleish wants to be part of your mental process and that's why by the way the Vilna Gaon is said to be the spiritual forefather of the moisture movements that was started by we're all cilantro in the towards the latter third of the nineteenth century there were those who were against Rebbe sauce on tour there were those who took the position if you're learning Torah that's all you need you don't have to work on your personality the Taira is going to straighten you out remember you also want your said Tyra is the healthy diet for the healthy soul but just as if somebody is sick they need some medication besides their normal diet so working on one's me dots etc Musa is something that the sick soul needs for a tickin and that's largely based on the vil McGowan's teachings now again this is a huge my hope is one could eat we can easily give a whole course on this subject that the muslim movement had many many detractors some of whom were very eminent people but the Vilna Gaon himself seems to basically say that Tyra is going to accentuate the negative within you unless you have a conscious effort to try to uproot it so now this is what compares to the para uma Parvati Duma is a medium where the very same thing that can purify you can to make you worse so school kata Torah that paradox is in the Torah itself the Torah itself is Miha hair it can purify a person whose tummy but it can also ruin a person if he has the negative me does that have to be uprooted so that's the second answer of why it says oku cos hotter ah well that's correct but but again a person could be tall yeah it's a good point I see what you're saying but a person could be taller in terms of his observance and everything else but deep inside there are Nietzsche odds that are they're very very that are very very negative now a third answer is appointed with higher mu Levites I used to make and he used to make the points that in many ways the way we deal with who Kim really defines the way we're connected to the whole Torah because like this if I keep the parts of the Torah that makes sense to me we're never really sure and I'm never really sure am i serving god or life simply a fellow traveler walking with God as long as it makes sense to me so keeping the Mishpatim does not yet demonstrate the unconditional submission to the rabona Shalom but when I obey those parts of the Torah that vadhaka do not make sense to me then what I am demonstrating is my connection to all of the Torah not just the hook my connection to all of the Torah is one of submission and obedience rather than simply following whatever I think is is right and therefore the Hulk is so important because the Koch is the definition of your abode attention and refraction Leavitt used to point out quite often that the one thing a human being does not like to be is a human being does not like to be beholden a human being doesn't like to do anything because we're forced to do it we always want to be in the position where we're doing it because we want to do it not because someone is making us do it right so the husband that is about to take out the garbage because he wants to do his wife a favor and as he's about to take out the garbage his wife calls from the other room please take out the garbage on your way out the husband I'm not being autobiographical and the husband will have a moment of resentment in which he says I don't like to be told what to do he was going to do it anyway but he was going to do it cuz he wanted to do it when someone says do it it kind of takes away all the fun takes away all the credit this is why this is interesting tomorrow the Damara says that a person who does aim it so that he's commanded to to get smoke more reward from god's then a person who does a mitzvah they're not commanded to do so for example if a woman sits in the sukkah which she is exempt from because it's a time bond commandment she gets reward ashram reward support Ashkenazim even make a bra a woman can make a brothel they say bazooka but her reward on that one on that one is less than the man because the man is commanded to do it and that which you do when you're commanded is a greater mitzvah than that which you do when you're not commanding even though you get reward in fact the marshal says that is why we make a party when someone is bar mitzvah because their until they were by Mitzvah they were not commanded now they're commanded so ptosis asks an obvious question doesn't logic indicate the opposite if I do something that I have to do I don't deserve a pat on the back that's my job if I go beyond that it's like time and a half for overtime I should get more reward when I do something I don't have to do because I'm doing more than I have to do so toast of us says a very interesting psychological idea that once you have to do something you have a much stronger Yeats or Horan not to do it because of the stubbornness of the human personality so it's actually easier to do a mitzvah you don't have to than to do a mitzvah you have to do because once you have to do it there's a rebellious nough switch in me I don't want to be given orders that's why you'll find sometimes although there may be other reasons that a kid before his Bar Mitzvah will get up for a minion and me so enthusiastic and once he's 13 once he has to do it kind of he loses he may lose some of the enthusiasm that's why in they like it in the reform movements one of the positive things that has happened in recent years is there's been a growth in the percentage of Reform Jews that put on tefillin every morning more and more Reform Jews you're putting on tefillin but the growth is almost 100 percent women in that men and one of the one of the explanations is women are not obligated to put on tefillin so for them it's an exciting great wonderful thing man has to do it I don't want to do what I have to do that's morning I don't want to get orders so the Hulk is the opposite idea in which I do something not because I want to do it not because it makes sense to me not because it's logical I do it simply because I got to do it and that's an important attitude obviously Hashem wants us to want the mitzvahs but we have to have this backup idea that even if I'm not inspired even if it doesn't excite me there's this back-up default absolute position I do what I got to do because I got to do it and then I work on seeing the meaning I work on the joy and work on the inspiration but I have to know that even if none of that comes there is this absolute obedience and Submission when clamp Phillips gave another example of this idea if you remember when Devon hemella was I'm sorry when shawl hung up oh yeah I'm sorry w endeavour that malice towards the end of his life was being pursued by his own son of Sheldon and there was a man shimmy bangerra who was a relative of Sheol and he was cursing Duggan and he was saying now God is punishing you for what you did to my relative and when Doug was on his deathbed he gave an instruction to his son be sure that you punishing me bangerra find some pretence to punish him so she'll Omaha Mela said something to shimmy Ben Gary this very peculiar you told you even gayer ah I'm putting you under house arrest you cannot leave your estate he had a big estate and the day that you leave your estate you were going to be killed so he put him under house arrest and it wasn't was not a small house it is then recorded that there were donkeys if shimmy Ben gave her that then wandered away and shimmy Ben gamer went to look for those donkeys he was being watched he got apprehended and he was executed now this is a very strange thing shimmy bangerra didn't leave his house because he wasn't wanting to go to his mother's funeral or his son's graduation he went to look for some donkeys he had servants he knew that his life was in danger he knew he was being watched what type of idiot is going to leave his house when he knows that his life is in danger I do not intend to draw analogies to the covert 19 breakfast area I would not describe leaving your house as falling within that category but shimmy bangerra for sure that was and if I'm sure Levitt says if he wouldn't have been told not to leave he wouldn't have left a donkey he has plenty of servants looking for his donkeys but once he is given an order he can never leave his house staying in his house becomes unbearable he can't stay in other words he says I'm gonna go maybe they're not gonna see me maybe I'll escape that's the way it is when you have to do something that's bad Africa when it's so hard to do until you have to do it it wouldn't be a problem Sheba Mangueira might have stayed at home his whole life had he not been told he's never allowed to leave once he is told allowed to leave the truth is I'm a member reading various holocaust stories where Jews sometimes had to be holed up in bunkers in hulls and attics and basements for days and days at a time and you can imagine that you would go stir-crazy and yet if you leave your life is in danger but there were people who had to get they again I mean they had to get out and they would go out and often they would be collected sometimes they weren't but there is a point at which you just can't take it anywhere and I think that I think many of us have experienced in recent months so we do understand that idea when you can't leave that's when you have to leave okay so that's refined from evidence points that it is the hope so sohcahtoa it is the Hulk that demonstrates what your connection to God is that I don't just serve God when it's convenient to me but I serve God with kind of an unconditional submission to as well but now let's try to understand yet another teaching Raschi brings a teaching of a rabbi from a prior generation he is Rev Moshe the DAR Shinra Moshe the preacher and the Moshe ha dharshan tries to explain that although the per atom is not a carbon and again I hope you understand this there is nothing in the para Duma that involved the base of mikdash meaning to say the sprinkling was not in the temple the slaughtering of the power was not in the temple in other words the sprinkling enabled you to go into the temple but the polymer ritual was not a Corbin there was no sacrificial ritual about it but Ramona Garson wants to create a structure where the para Duma is seen to be a cap ara and atonement for the sin of the golden camp the same way if a baby messes up the mother must clean up the mess of the baby so the para the mother the cow is my separate and the mess of the AYGO the calf and he goes through how every single detail of the para DOMA is kind of an atonement for the sin of the golden calf and the question is how can it be an atonement it's not a core bun it's not a sacrifice and exactly in what way is it an atonement just because cow calf mother child and I mean I mean what is exactly the connection so here is what this wasn't missus let's go a little deeper into this let's look at the paradox of the para Duma on one hand if I am Tom a because I was in contact with a corpse and I get sprinkled with the water in the ashes I now become pure day three day seven I go to the mikveh on the other end the people that prepared and carried and transported the para do mashes their tongue a for at least one day right it's a paradox how do you explain it now obviously if hemella didn't understand that we're not going to understand it nevertheless partial explanations are actually offered in swaram let's go back to the idea of tumor but Southwark writes all tuna is connected to the idea of death obviously contact with a corpse is contact with death but really even the two most that are not connected to corpses are also connected to death for example a leader is ritually Tom a every month the shedding of a uterine lining is the loss of a potential life that could have been conceived that month dead animals are death leprosy which is kind of a disintegration of the flesh is a form of death what about childbirth if a woman gives birth to a child she is Tom a four one four seven days in the case of a male 14 days in the case of a female how is childbirth connected to death so our first set is very very interesting this is a an amazing way of looking at childbirth even though childbirth is obviously a new life coming into the world it actually is a death of a life that was within the woman's body the woman was sustaining the mother was sustaining a life that life is no longer within her that life has been externalized beezly the woman there is a vacuum there is a void so we can assume therefore that the shirah SH of all the laws of impurity is connection with death in one way or the other point number two how and why did death come into the world originally a German cava were supposed to live forever because of the faith of the eighth son does God decreed there would be death albeit they had a very long life they lived 930 years but nevertheless there has to be a death there what was the sin of the age of us I think I mentioned a few weeks ago Red Sox idea that death came into the world because of arrogance because of divert because of conceit because what the knockos told cover is the day you eat from this fruit you will be like God to understand the nature of good and evil now whatever that means the the eight sadhus is being marketed as a God pill a pill of fruit a food that will give you the deepest most profound profound understanding of divine wisdom so death came into the world because of arrogance hubris the idea that man can be God and it's very easy for us to fall into that trap because in many ways we are godlike we are made in the image of God Selam aleykum now being made in the image of God doesn't mean that God has a face God does not have a physical image but it refers to the attributes of God intellect autonomy freewill the ability to create the ability to accomplish we are very godlike in our abilities but the ultimate reminder that we are not God is that we lack immortality that is the ultimate chasm the ultimate dividing line between a beret a creator and a Niva and a creation so death came into the world not so much as a putter as a punishment but death came into the world to remind mankind of their loneliness and their subservience to God death came into the world because of arrogance and it is death that teaches us humility I can death teaches us two things really death teaches us humility and death also teaches us the preciousness of life because the fact that life is finite and life is limited means you treasure and you cherish every moment because you can't say I'll take care of the problem ten thousand years from now we don't have ten thousand years and as a result carpe diem seize the moments that's why the Metra says very strangely when a God created everything it says it was ki Tov which was good it was good it was good and at the end it says he saw everything he created and it was very good well how can good + good + good + good be a very good if you have a straight C average you're not gonna have a it's not gonna average up to a B so the meddra says God made everything he then added death to the equation which was death that turns good into very good hmm that doesn't sound right how does death make it a very good the answer is it makes life very special and very precious so the concept in Judaism which is a concept of remembering the day of death is not meant to be depressing or pessimistic or frightening it's meant to be energizing it's meant to be I want to make my life count because my time is not going to be unlimited and therefore I want to do what I can in this life but going back to Adam and hava death came into the world through arrogance and divert so now listen to this can we become liberated from the impurity of death by rituals of humility and submission thus mikvah what is make for one of the association's of miksa is it is a returning to the helpless state of a baby in the womb the mikveh has been described as a womb where the Braer floating in the water and of course you're in an utterly helpless environment because when you put yourself in water you can't breathe although it's only for a few seconds it does highlight the vulnerability and the second ritual of purification is para uma which is ashes ashes is a symbol of humility and submission now obviously I'm not explaining why read cetera but at least the concept of action does I in other words it liberates you from death because if death comes into the world because of arrogance I become liberated from the impurity of death by ashes and by immersion which is returning to the helpless dependent state of a newborn baby and therefore it is out of my ashes that I achieve a new wholeness of identity just like in Greek mythology when you had the phoenix bird that was burnt to ashes and out of the ashes came a new entity and by the way there's a mattress that says exactly the same thing so I should say the name of the Midrash so to buy obliterated my ego and my arrogance and my Guyver by obliterating that divider between me and God I achieve new life I achieve redemption I achieve purity I achieve liberation and I am readmitted to the Garden of Eden because think about it this way when I'm Tom a when I come in contact with death that is in a little bit of a way a reenactment of the sin of eating from the ate sawdust that brought death into the world death is a reminder and a reconnection to the sin of the tree of knowledge and just as the sin of the tree of knowledge necessitated an expulsion from the Garden of Eden when i reenact and re-experience the sin of the ate sawdust I get expelled from the Garden of Eden that exists in this earth which is what the base on Mick - the Temple Mount right the temple is considered to be the gun agent of Earth in other words I'm reenacting the fate of the eight sawdust and I have the consequences of the eight sawdust expulsion from the Garden of Eden but I become liberated from that taint by the rituals of humility and submission which are implicit in the ashes of the para duma and in the immersion in the waters of the mikvah that simulate the womb and the dependency of a child on its mother where the child knows it can it can do nothing by itself without the parents that will take care of it so this is the basic explanation a bit Kabbalistic about how the para Duma along with Nicola is the vehicle of purification death comes into the world by arrogance we are and therefore we're expelled from the GaN a then again we become liberated from that death from that impurity by humility and submission but here's the thing and this overlaps with what we talked about last week so the connection is very very similar there is what you might call good humility and there is what you might call bad humility because humility is a wonderful thing but if taken in the wrong direction it can be destructive because if a person truly feels they are worthless they are nothing they are nobody then they will never have an understanding that what they do in the world matters they will not attempt to be a force for good because they will be overwhelmed with their ineffectual 'ti and the meaningless of their isolated existence so thus we are taught that a person must have two ideas in his pockets at all times there must be wish be lean therefore hold on because of me the world was created God made many cows and horses and dogs and cats but only one man and one woman because each person must say the universe would have been justified for me alone and at the same time in your other pocket an Okie for VA fair I am dust and ashes if all I have is a Nokia for VA fair I become paralyzed ineffectual passive I never achieved the good that I'm able to achieve I never accomplished a mission for which God put me in this earth I need Abbess really never I owe them to make me realize how important I am in God's plans of things on the other hand if I only have Bastille II never hollom because of me the world was created I am filled with arrogance and pride and therefore I have to counterbalance be shreelane Ibrahim with a No Fee off our VA fair and I have to balance a Nokia for VA fair with me really never alum to know my worth know my value know my significance and recognize my talents use them in good and constructive ways but know that they are a gift from uh Shem and without Hashem none of my efforts would ever bear friend so let's go back to peridot on one hands para uma can purify from the greatest impurity because when death comes into the world through Gaia and arrogance I become liberated I become purified I become empowered I become redeemed by connecting to those ashes of humility and submission and yet and yet and yet at the same time if those ashes convince you of your worthlessness and your ineffectual 'ti it will make you impure the same meda of another of humility which can purify the gross impure person can also destroy the pure person if he takes it the wrong way and therefore indeed the paradigm of another cuts in two directions it can elevate a person and make him holy but it can also destroy a person in fact that's why it's we often find that you know there's a certain genre of monster books that talk about the worthless of the human condition you're nothing you're nothing you're nothing and often in yeshiva students will be told not to study those books simply because we're a weaker generation and if we get too depressed and we get too upset it's going to have a negative effect on us meaning we're not necessarily strong enough to say ok I'm a nothing but I still have a job to do and I'm going to do it that's kind of the attitude but you got to be a pretty strong person to do that most of us need to be told we're great we're wonderful and then we go ahead and function so as a result in recent decades the emphasis in clean Earth has been much more on parenting as well and rightly so has been much more on positive affirmation rather than direct criticism in reality however a person is supposed to live with both of those polarities at once be aware of my utter nothingness and be aware of my total greatness and indeed it's been well said I think I may have mentioned this that's the great review ruin of the great much gear of the mir yeshiva used to say that the person who is not aware of his faults he thinks he's perfect is a very foolish person is an idiot how can I possibly think and I'm perfect but the person who is not aware of their greatness is a tragic person because the tragedy is they'll never even realize the person they could have become the life they could have had the difference they could have made how sad that is that a person comes into the world and leaves the world without an awareness of all they could have done and therefore that's the paradox of para uma the ashes can purify you and uplift you and the ashes can contaminate you at the same time let me just end with one final thought that is unrelated but it's a beautiful thought as well and this is a Midrash and there are certain image Russian that are very enigmatic and it's hard to explain the Meldrick comments on para Duma that the secret of para Duma is a Bacchus realm if you want to understand para Duma you have to understand what it means to love a fellow Jew hard to understand right what's the connection between para uma and loving a fellow Jew so there's a beautiful explanation from one of the greatest Ksyusha Rebbe am of the 19th century this was the opt error of the Rebbe of apatow of the up to rough and the aperture of wrote a safer that's called a habeas round which is all about above Israel and the app says the following we've been discussing that in the case of the para Duma I sprinkle you with the ashes you become pure and I who was handling and become impure right that's the paradox the abbe de rêve says it's not really a paradox rather it is the reason why it works because if I sprinkle you with ashes what am i doing I'm doing a message for you even though it's going to cost me even though it's going to be to my detriment even though it's gonna hurt me I'm willing to put myself out in a way that will hurt me in order to benefit you says the app giraffe that is the unconditional love we have for our fellow Jew and therefore instead of saying oh how can the same thing purify and impurifier it works the opposite the reason why it purifies you is because I'm willing to become impure myself when I put myself out to help you that brings holiness and purity into the world and therefore the paradox of para Duma is based on the purity that comes into the world through a vast Israel they have a against notice it is a story about a Rebbe a mother was teaching his child how to read and he was looking at Akhilesh and at the end of the Commish the way you have a period and the homogeneous like a colon it's like one dot on top of another down although it looks like a good like one year on top of the unit so the kid thought it was a yard and the father said no no no no when you see one on top of the other that is just a period so then when the child was reading he came across two yards that were side by side which of course we read it as a Shems name and the kid just rather there's a period he stopped reading so the father said no no when you see the yields that way you pronounce it as a Shems name the child asked his father how come the first configuration was a period and the second configuration is God's name so the father answered looks like a year right your than yet are the same words right good when one Jew is standing on top of another Jew arrogance skiver conceit look down the tourist stops you can go no further that's a period that's the end of the process but when one year one year stands next to another yet togetherness equality respect friendship there is where the presence of God is located a yard on top of it the Torah goes no further it is stopped a yard next to it that is God's name and that is the para Duma the willingness to make myself impure to help another drill is the factor that brings purity are into the into the world so you'll have a good week in a good shabbos and thank you for for coming [Music]