Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: The Righteous Shall Live by His Faith.

[Music] all right so hello everybody uh thank you for coming it's good good to see you and hello to the zoom audience as well and we have some dedications tonight the aliyah of avraham ben yosef and binyamin israel ben and may the devry torah that we will be learning tonight may it be him in in in addition i'm told that this class has a very generous anonymous contributor we would like to thank and whoever this person is we are very grateful uh for their support and uh may they too he he she and their families whoever uh it is should have the bracha of those who are moxic torah this week's parsha as all really all of the parsees of the torah has a lot of meat to it a lot of things to talk about it's always difficult in an hour to figure out what exactly to talk about so sometimes i opt for the easiest thing and talk about the very first puzzle in the parsha and that will kind of carry us away again though it's important sometimes you know because of the idea of reading a different part every week we sometimes lose a sense of the continuity of what's going on let's start from the end of parashat mishpatim the end of mishpatim tells us that moshe entered the cloud of mount sinai the shaheena so to speak and he climbed up the mountain and it ends by moshe bahar our boy boyim laila moshe was enveloped in the cloud that covered mount sinai for 40 days and 40 nights we know from devarim where moshe is recounting that story many years later that for those 40 days and 40 nights that doesn't appear actually in schmoes but in the book of javarim he says lechama i didn't eat bread i didn't i didn't have water uh and miraculously the gemaran shabbos actually describes that he was not just on top of the mountain there was an actual ascent into shamayim so that's where we are moshe is and harsina now parshas truma are the details by and large of how to construct the mishkan parchastitsava by and large is about the details of the big day kahuna plus some other aspects parshas ki sisa is simply continuing what hashem is telling moshe and we'll talk about that now again i have to remind you there's a huge mock locus i don't want to repeat everything i said a few weeks ago between rashi and the ramban according to rashi chiruma titsava kisisa until diego were not given to moshe in those first 40 days they were given to moshe the last time he went up after the sin of the golden calf because rashi understands that the mishkan was a response to diego and rashi quite literally says two and a half parshiot ain't the torah does not follow chronological order so in a sense if we were writing the torah according to the chronology of rashi we have the pasuk in mishpatim moshe is at mount sinai for 4 days and 40 nights and then we immediately segue to the story of the golden calf that he comes down and we're not told anything about what he was given during those 40 days in other words remember trump and saba kisa according to rashi were not given at that juncture that's why it's a little confusing according to ramban on the other hand ramban does understand and i mentioned before that the ramban had a uh essentially although he couldn't get rid of the principle that the torah is not in chronological order because sometimes you are forced to say it and in any event hazal articulate such a principle but i think it's safe to say that the ramban was kind of hostile to it meaning to say he tries to avoid it whenever it is possible to avoid it he has a presumption that the torah is in chronological order so according to ramban the background of the sin of the golden calf is moshe is hearing about a mishkan and big zakahuna and everything else and then he comes down and he finds an angle so i just want you to have a mental picture how to connect truma to sava the beginning of of kisa meaning according to rashi you kind of have to take it out of the whole action at this point because it is after the angle according to ramban it is exactly what moshe is hearing during those during those 40 40 days but be it as it may kisa the beginning of kisa is kind of the finishing details of the mishkan and it talks about the kior the kiara is the uh kind of the the basin where the kohanim would wash their hands and feet and then it ends right right before the ego in the torah it ends with a reference to the obligation of keeping shabbos and they paragraph that many many people although not so much in yerushalayim but many people recite friday night before the amidah of myrif and many people will also recite it in the kiddish of shabbos morning vishwamuru vinay israel kalbach has some beautiful nagum for it i will not sing it for you the shamroov in israel is a shabbos the jewish people shall observe shabbos lassos episode to keep the shabbos for all of their generations as an eternal covenant with hashem baini uvain binay israel oc liolam hashem is speaking between me and binay israel this is an eternal sign hashem invests that hashem made the world in 6 days he rested and he relaxed but vaina fash is also an expression of an extra soul comes into the world now this is very beautiful very important why is shabbos stated at this particular point i mean shabbos has already been said in the ten commandments why is it repeated at this point so rashi based on ghazal gives us a very very important basic lesson and god is in effect saying that although there is a great mitzvah to build a mishkan but you don't build your mishkan on shabbos because the very definition of which which activities are forbidden on shabbos are the activities that are involved in building a mission in other words this is an extremely important hawaii source it is specifically telling you you're not allowed to build the michigan on chavez but that would only be of historical interest to us but what it's teaching me lederhot is the definition of malacha is what is involved in the construction of the michigan so according to rashi the purpose of the shamroven israel is to teach me the definition of what are the 39 mullahs of shabbos again there's a famous thought from a source i normally don't quote but it happens to be a beautiful book of uh rabbi abraham joshua heschel a very famous conservative rabbi but someone who is personally orthodox and someone who came from a great great yikes of great hasidic rabbis wrote a book about shabbos called the sabbath which is actually a very beautiful book and it is a 100 kosher book that one could read and he talks about the fact that the mishkan and shabbos represents two different aspects of holiness there is the holiness of space which is mishkan that is consecrated space eric israel is holy space you shall yusholayim harabayat khodashak dashim in the desert the mishkan was consecrated space we call that kadusas marco and then we have the shabbos which is sanctity of time time certain time is holier than other time and by the torah teaching me that you don't build a mishkan on shabbos the torah is teaching me that in judaism the sanctity of time is more significant than the sanctity of space and that is why in a sense on shabbos the world becomes a mishkan the world becomes the sanctuary of god you don't need a specific sanctuary a specific mikdash and that is why you don't build whether it's the basa mikdash or the michigan you don't build on shabbos now recipient of al hirsch again i mean obviously i can use this as a springboard just to talk about shabbos that's that that wasn't my main theme tonight but let me just mention a few thoughts about this you know i remember uh you know i i grew up in hartford connecticut i think i probably mentioned it a few times and um in those days when i was in elementary school there were no solomon chapter there were no conservative day schools so as a result the only show in town was the orthodox day school so any parents who wanted their kids to have an intensive jewish education even if they weren't charmer shabbos would send their kids to the orthodox school that was the only school there was so as a result i went to school it was a coed school number one but number two at least 70 seventy-five percent of my classmates were not showing me shabbos so i mean i my classmates were not charming shabbos although our teachers were all orthodox uh teachers so i remember uh when i was in sixth or seventh grade so one of my classmates was having a bar mitzvah in a reform temple and it was like five miles away from my house and it was a good friend of mine so i was walking to go to the bar mitzvah whatever whatever it was without dealing with this issue of uh don't go with your reforms in those days we didn't focus on on those issues so much so i'm walking uh like five miles in the heat there's no aerith no water and one of my english teachers who was not religious like drives up and stops like stops her car and offers me a ride so i said to the teacher well you know it's shabbos i don't go into a car so she said why not so i was only 12 years old so i started saying well you know you're not allowed to do work on chavez and if i go into a car i'm causing more gasoline to be burned so i'm causing the consumption of fuel so i'm doing work on shabbos so she says to me i still remember this so let me understand you you're telling me that because you don't do work on shabbos that's why you're going to walk five miles in the hot sun without water as opposed to getting into a car that could get you to the synagogue in three minutes which is doing more work at that point i was kind of confused so i kind of just disengaged but you know it's a real good question i don't do work on shabbos therefore i don't drive i walk in the sun and people will ask you this and maybe you think about this yourself what on earth is the meaning of work you're telling me if there's no a riff and i walk out of my house with a toothpick in my pocket and i go from a private domain to a public domain i'm high of misa for doing work but in the house i'm slipping around tables and chairs and everything else totally motor what's what's work here so if hirsch gives a very very important definition it's a very basic definition and he says malacha don't do malach does not refer to physical exertion the word for physical exertion is avodah or like in mitzrayim they were doing back-breaking work again with references creative etymology he connects it to melek although obviously it's not not even the same spelling but is a creative act that demonstrates your mastery over the raw materials of nature so it's not a question of a lot of labor or not a lot of labor you're taking the raw material of nature and you're showing your power of transformation plowing i make the ground suitable for agriculture planting i'm enabling a growth harvesting threshing kneading baking bread skinning tanning writing fire right the use of fire is a major technology even carrying in fact ptosis actually says carrying is kind of an inferior malacca meaning in some ways you're not changing anything but still particularly if you focus on time space as an essential identifier of matter so switching locations is in effect a transformative change on some level in fact in modern physics it actually works out that way so our first says that is why we have the anomaly that purely destructive acts are not molochoto right in other words very interesting if i destroy some for example if i build buildings if i demolish a building it's not a malacha unless i did it with the intention of clearing the site so i can build something else now rabbinically it is forbidden but in terms of malacha it has to be constructive if i rip something up just because i want to get rid of it that's not malacca even though the physical exertion is the same so this is refresh's key malacha is about mastery over the raw materials of nature it is not about physical exertion and since on shabbat we want to acknowledge that god is the source of creation the way we acknowledge that god is the source of creation is by refraining from the dominance and control that we normally have over the world of nature now the one exception is uh you know marital intercourse where you're literally creating life that happens to be permitted activity on shabbos and that's an interesting question well you know that's the highest level of creation okay but god basically said that's so holy that that we're not going to take away even on on shabbat and maybe especially on shabbos and the like you see so this is an important insight of her first because this explains you know you know people say time immemorial oh the reason why the torah says you're not allowed to create a fire is because in the olden days you had to rub two sticks together or two stones together it took an hour it was a very very physically uh tiring now you're telling me you strike a match turn on a light you know what type of work is that if anything it should be more wrestler today because the question of creating fire is not the labor it's the control over the natural processes of combustion if it's easier for me to do that that's a reason to make it more forbidden because that's showing more of a mastery more of a control right so this concept of malacca is a very significant so so the two preliminary points are uh rabbi heschel's points of holiness of time versus holiness of space and the second point is the definition of malacca is man's mastery over the raw materials of nature which you have to withdraw from to acknowledge god as the source of all creation okay and that's what it is that uh you know herman welk as a cornell of rocket hermann walker is a very very famous jewish american novelist who died i think uh well over a hundred several years over 100 and i think he wrote his last novel at 99 and herman walk many of you might know happened to also have been an orthodox jew and years and years ago he actually wrote a book about orthodox judaism called this is my god i think a few years ago he issued actually a second edition in his 80s or 90s and the like and he tells a story and this is my god that's really quite a beautiful story you know he says he grew up orthodox for a while he left it then he came back to it again and he says that when he wrote the kane mutiny which is one of his novels uh it was term being turned into a broadway play and it was his first novel that was going to be a play on broadway that's a very big deal and he was working on it like 18-hour days and finally the play was going to open up saturday night so you can imagine as you're approaching opening so uh how frenzy the pace must be so he tells his co-producer friday afternoon around two um i gotta go now i'll see you later the producer figured he was going to the bathroom or going for a 15-minute coffee break and he looked at his watches okay you can go but you know come back in 20 minutes we got a lot of work to do so herman walker said you don't understand i'm not going for 20 minutes i'm going for 26 hours i will be back around half an hour before opening tomorrow night herman walk said the producer the other producer didn't even have words he just stared at him open mouths in total paralyzing shock he said you have a broadway play opening up in whatever it is 30 hours and you're going to leave for 26 27 28 of those hours or even more than that and herman walk then thought about it and said you know that is a pretty crazy thing to do see it is pretty nuts then he realized that one of the lessons of shabbos is just say no in other words yeah unless it is literally a matter of life and death which if it is comes in you just say no so that highlights a very interesting dichotomy in shabbos on one hand shabbos humbles me by telling me i'm not the master of the universe on the other hand it empowers me by saying the universe is not my master either you see it shabbos is both the epitome of subservience and subjugation and the epitome of empowerment and freedom and that is why the ten commandments give different reasons for shabbos in partial israel which is one version of the ten commandments it emphasizes shabbos as a commemoration of hashem as the creator of the world meaning i'm not the boss god is the boss and i will give up my control and my mastery because he's in charge in parashat that gives you a different version of the ten commandments it says you shall remember that you were slaves in egypt and god took you out of slavery that's a different message that's the idea that shabbos is about freedom the world makes many demands on me and when shabbos comes at least if you're not a rabbi rabbis actually work on shabbos but if you're not a rabbi shabbos says you're a free person you're not a slave and by the way i have to say that you know we're so used to when we think about the greeks and the romans we're so used to always thinking about how they hated the jews and tried to destroy the jews and a lot of that was true of course antiochus and the romans destroying the makers but you know i actually have a book written by the late professor louis feldman the colonel of raqqa who was both a religious person and a talmud and a world famous scholar on josephus in which he compiled all of the positive writings of the ancient world about jews like there were greeks and romans who looked at the jewish people with great admiration and one of the things they admired most was shabbos that a jew understands that they take time off that the world cannot enslave them and in fact many say some historians say that the reason why the romans were so harsh that anyone who converted to judaism would be killed et cetera was because there were so many romans that were converting to judaism the romans were afraid they were going to lose their whole civic religion it was estimated that more than 20 percent of the roman empire tried to convert to judaism now were these halal conversions you know maybe not you know i i it could be could be they weren't room they weren't keeping missiles but they wanted to identify as jews they loved the jewish family structure they loved the jewish sense of ethics and morality they loved the concept of shabbos they looked at the jews and they saw a good people a moral people a free people and you know even in that background of anti-semitism and everything else there was much much much that the umatom admired it's a fascinating book because we normally don't even hear about the pro-jewish sentiments that were expressed by many many people in the umota alum that tried to uh to persecute us right so those are some things to think about in the idea of shabbos but okay and and and of course as i say the reason why shabbos is mentioned here is because shabbos is the very definition of what is prohibited i'm sorry the other way around michigan rather is the very definition of what is prohibited on on shabbos okay but now let's go back to the very very first verse god says to moshe ki sisa when you count the children of israel each person shall give a ransom for their soul and then it goes on and says this is what they should give they should give a half shekel but half shekel is not the equivalent to the modern halfshackle it's much more but they should give a half shekel of silver now the vilmagone points out that there are two different commandments here this is not just one commandment there are two different commandments one is a permanent commandment and one is a one-time commandment the permanent commandment is whenever the jewish people are counted they should be counted indirectly they should not be counted by a head count you don't say one two three four five rather they give coins they give pebbles they give something and we count them in directly now you'll notice the first plastic doesn't have to say it's to a half shekel half shekel is not mentioned in the first verse it says they shall give a ransom for their soul so the villenegon says that is a mitzvoth wrote that the jewish nation is not supposed to be counted directly they are only supposed to be counted indirectly but that does not require a half shekel necessarily and indeed in time of sholamella when he counted out his army says they gave pebbles or they gave sheep if they had whatever it was now the gemare in brachos tells us that this was a mistake that david hamelich made because at the end of the book of shmuel base david after he had conquered many nations and expanded the territory and david created somewhat of an empire although it was not as big as hamelech's empire david was very proud of his accomplishments and he commissioned his general yoaf who was also his nephew count the jewish people i want to know how large a nation i am and yahweh said not a good idea and david wanted it and if you remember the book of shmuel because the people were counted there was a magaifa there was a plague because the torah itself says count them indirectly so there shouldn't be a negative negative means a plague and that is directly related that warren brachle says to the plague that dove it caused by a head count in fact warren brackles is very critical of david it says david hamelech made a mistake about something that even little children know it's a puzzle so derek agav as an aside let me point out that the ramban says for shalom that david would have done a direct head counsel david would never have violated and express directive in the torah but the ramban understands that david made another mistake that even and in i mean i'll explain the reason for this shortly even an indirect head count indirect by shkulem or by rox is only permitted for people from the age of 20 up and dover's mistake was counting people below 20. or the ramban says that even an indirect count is only permitted for legitimate reasons like allocation of benefits it is not permitted for kavod or guyva so it's a mclaughlin warren bronco says david's sin was direct head counting ramban says david did indirect head counting but the problem was it was either including ben esrim or uh shalom not for a legitimate reason now this controversy may sound a little esoteric but actually it's highly highly relevant and that is if you're an orthodox jew are you allowed to respond to a census whether it's an israeli census or a u.s census if you're a united states citizen now a census is an indirect counting because essentially the government is not coming in and counting you by for care if you don't answer the census there may be a head count they're going to come in but if i answer a census i'm simply saying i have four kids or whatever it is and the government adds numbers on a piece of paper so a census is an indirect count not a direct count so if i learn that the hate is only direct headcounts then responding to a census would be permitted because that's indirect but if i learn like the ramban that even indirect counting of jews is prohibited if it's below the age of 20 then it would be other to respond to a census and if i learn that it's permitted only if it's for a legitimate purpose so that would kind of depend on your philosophical stance towards the state of israel meaning if i regard israel as a legitimate state then there's a legitimate reason for the government to know right so so nature character would not be allowed to respond to a census although they wouldn't respond anyway so you don't have to bring in this this idea to it so it actually is no gala myself there are religious jews who feel it is prohibited to respond to a census and this would be totally on ramban versus the gemarian brachus okay be it as it may though let's just go with the gemara in brachos that the first pussac is prohibiting a direct counting of the jews do not count jews directly count them indirectly and this is a permanent mitzvah and it doesn't require giving a half shekel that's going to be the next method we'll talk about it just means count them indirectly what's wrong with a direct headcount what is the torah saying the torah is telling me if you count people directly you bring negev plague direct headcounts equals plague indirect equals safety what's the lesson there what's the what's going on there so the basic idea is this when you count somebody you're taking them out from the group at least momentarily you right i have a group of people there's you and there's you and there's a remiss that we need to be a community there is safety in numbers there is safety and actors and if a person person is even momentarily taken out of the community they are in sakhana and the torah is highlighting the idea that when we're separated from a koala we are in spiritual danger and even in physical danger and that's why all counting has to be done in such a way that the individual is not pulled out of the group even just in terms of a number okay so that's an important idea of the idea of unity in the sense that you know united we stand and separated we fall and add that even a direct head count is considered to cause a negative a magafa a sakhana we cannot allow ourselves to be separated so that is the first myth that is pasuk alef and again i want to repeat pasuk aleph is not tied to a half shekel in particular passage is simply a general rule thou shalt not count jews by headquarters by the way there is a custom we have for a minion that is based on this but i frankly it does not make sense to me uh you know we need we need ten men for a minion right we can't uh start uh kaddish kadusha kriya satora unless we have 10 people so i have a bunch of people i don't know and i want to count them so it is said you should not count one two three four five six because that's a head count right we don't do head counts of people so instead we recite a pasuk that has 10 words hoshiya at america right save your nation and bless your inheritance take care of them and lift them up forever that has 10 words so you can do that so that i can understand maybe that's not a head count because you're not using a number that's one minute there's another minute that frankly is enigmatic to me in which you say not one not two not three not four uh you know okay that doesn't make a lot of sense and i'm not sure if there's a macar for that but you'll sometimes see that as a way of avoiding the the head count which is prohibited now we then have plastic base plastic base is a specific mitzvah for that time zay it knew this is what they should give they should give a half shekel the jewish people are being commanded at this point when they build the mishkan to give a half shekel but the vilnigan points out the first passage is ledoros that's a permanent mitzvah the second is the particular way that myths was going to be done now now here there's an important point that a lot of people get confused about there are two different half shekel donations in the michigan and in the bay hamikdash you know in a few weeks i'll be right before other shaney we're going to have uh something uh parsha special shabbos that's called parsha scholar and we're actually going to read this again about the half shekel now parches golem is talking about an annual half shekel that was given to buy sacrifices in the base of mikdash that's an annual half shadow but you have to know that the half shekel in the beginning of kisa is not the annual half shekel even though strangely we're going to read it to commemorate the annual half shekel but the annual half shekel is not even mentioned in the torah explicitly that's why we we need to borrow we need to borrow the other half shekel to talk about the annual half shekel because there is no explicit reference to the annual half shekel the half shekel that's being described here was part of the construction of the mishkan people gave a half shekel of silver and all of those 600 thousand people and all of those half shekels were melted down and out of those half shekels they formed the sockets of the mishkan the sockets remember the boards of the mishkan had two prongs like a plug two teeth and each tooth was inserted in a block of silver imagine a concrete block except it was silver and when the mish gun was set up the crash in the boards were put in the adanim the sockets and then when they were disassembled like legos they would take the krushem out of the adanim and everything was put this is very heavy by the way though the weights are extra i mean thousands of pounds you know more than one ton each one of these and a lot of people carried them and put them on wagons and they would be transported so the marxis hashekel in parches a lot of people don't realize this is not a reference to the annual half shekel that was used for carbonates it is a specific reference to the half shekel that was melted down [Music] for the sockets that held the boards of the mish gun in place the term for this is means the contribution for the socket and that's only a one-time thing because that was only building the michigan once you had your sockets you had your sockets that was not a reoccurring donation the carbunos is a reoccurring donation this is a one-time donation but if that's the case there's a certain problem here the jewish people are the ones who are told to contribute their gold silver copper wool linen jewels to the michigan and the big decahuna now you'll notice though that when moshe is going to be collecting all of these things nobody has to give a certain amount every person decides what they want to give how much gold do i give to the michigan if i have gold up to me how much silver how much copper the only part of the mishkan in which there's an absolute minimum requirement is the part of the mishkan that goes for the adani and that's actually a very unique feature you have to give a half shekel that's a certain weight shekel here is more of a weight 20 gera is a certain weight so the gold that will go to the construction of the our own every person gives whatever they want to give the copper that will go to the construction of the mizbayach every person gives what they want to give the wall that will go to the tapestries that cover the mishkan every person gives whatever they want to give but the silver that goes to the adonim everybody must give a half shekel so it's a little anomalous why is this the only part of the construction project which requires a minimum donation i'm not asking about carbonus carbonis is an operating budget so everybody has to give the same amount for the carbonos but with the building fund there's an inconsistency here because normally the building fund was left to the discretion of every person except for the adani why would that be so why would the adanan be treated differently than the orana kodesh then the mizbayach then the menorah then the big day kahuna there we left it to every person to decide what i could afford but i want to give here you're not given that decision you have to give this minimum amount but of course the minimum is also the maximum the rich gives no more the poor gives no less so here is an idea rebena bakaya points out that the michigan there are you have to count them but he but he he he counts 613 commandments connected to the michigan if you add up every detail do this do this do this he comes up with 6 13. and 6 13 is not just the number of the mitzvos of the torah generally but it corresponds to the human body because the 248 positive commandments are my bones and the 360 negative commandments are my sinews and ligaments so the mishkan on some level is supposed to correspond to the human body in a sense in a symbolic and mystical way the mishkan is giving us an instruction how to make ourselves into the ultimate sanctuary of god the ultimate dwelling place of god is not a building whether that building be the mishkan whether that building be the basa mikdash and yerushalayim the ultimate mishkan of god is in our hearts and in our soul and the mishkan every part of the mission is supposed to correspond to an aspect of our body again i i can't give you the full description something to think about bill valvee as the famous song goes from the safer charade bill vavvy mishkon in my heart i build a dwelling place for god or when god gave the commandment to build a mishkan the usually mikdash make for me a holy place vishakhanti bishokham so i will dwell in them not in it in them in the jewish people we are supposed to be the basa mikta hashem we make our hearts and the mishkan is a symbolic representation of the human body now if we understand that the mishkan is a symbol for creating our own sanctuary we understand that every person builds their sanctuary in a different way every person has a different personality every person has a different talent every person has a different ability it's not shy it's not possible for the terry to say everybody gives the same some people their gift is gold whatever that would translate in other silver copper we need diversity of talent we need diversity of what every person brings to the table so the torah does not impose uniformity in the construction of a mishkan because every person builds their michigan in their own way but the adanim are the foundation of the mishkan right the crush him the boards are resting on the sockets so essentially the idea is i'll flesh this out in a minute everybody builds a mission based on the individuality and even the idiosyncrasies of their but it must rest on a commonality of foundation that's why the adanim that are badass a foundation that's uniform so what is the foundation of our mishkan so adanim represents foundation everybody's michigan is different but there got to be that common foundation so what is the common foundation so there's a gemara message marcos that says a very interesting thing it says originally god gave moshe 613 commandments we heard two of them and moshe gave us 6 11. but later generations found it too difficult to wrap their head around six thirteen so the great golem of later generations reduced it david amella got it down to six to fifteen now you have to understand that doesn't mean he eliminated mitzvos but it means he grouped them into a category so that way you could think about 15 things instead of 613 things and that way you could be connected and the gemara goes through various progressions that as the generations got weaker they made everything into fewer and fewer and fewer principles so i'm just going to go with the very last three it mentions the navi michael the great navy michael which is actually very famous and beautiful passage encapsulated the whole torah into three principles what does god ask of you associates to do justice to love kindness and to walk with humility and modesty in the presence of god love justice i'm do do justice do justice love kindness walk with humility and modesty in the presence of hajime that's the word sneeze cenias is not a kid everything can be a whole other talk cenius is not about skirt length and this and that tsunius is an attitude of humility and modesty cenius is not only a woman's thing cenias is a jewish thing and indeed a human thing now again it will have ramifications regarding dress and other things but those are ramifications they are not the core essence of sneeze the core essence of sineas is an attitude of humility and modesty in the presence of hashem so michael gave us three principles ishayahu reduced it to two shimru mishvat observe justice a suit now here let's focus on the transformation between mihra and ishayahu mikha said changed it he kept the mishpot there but he changed it to shim room mishpat so how do you explain that change so i would suggest i didn't see this shot that asos mishpod is to do justice shimru is more of a negative avoid injustice meaning as the generations got less pure we were not always capable of doing just just things so the answer is if you're not sure if you're doing justice just keep away from it don't do injustice now michael's second principle avatar to love kindness ishayo changed it to asos give charity so this i think is also very interesting michael's ideal is i should love being kind to other people but ishayo is facing a generation where people did not feel kindly towards each other so you should you always say it says okay even if you don't feel it you can at least write the check so he's changing it from the highest level of loving kindness to giving charity so there is a correspondence between the first one and the second one in michael's list and yeshua's list but notably what is the one that yeshuyo skips legamri he skips cenias he skips hatsune alex right so somebody who doesn't who feels uh choked by all the restrictions of seniors say oh you say oh got rid of samias not really of course uh so how do you explain that omission why would your shadow take out sneeze i think something very interesting here too the commentaries tell us that the idea of tsunios is even in your mitzvos even when you do mitzvos you do them privately you don't do them ostentatiously you don't do them so people will know everything that you're doing your mitzvahs are between you and god they're not for public consumption but yeshua was telling us that as the generations get weaker and weaker and weaker sometimes it might be important to do your mitzvos in a more public way so people will be inspired and will learn by them meaning sometimes as important as modesty is you need to be a little open about what you're doing i mean let me give you a really almost a tragic example in a way i i knew a man uh who died he's not alive anymore and brookshire he was a from man but he really was not involved in learning he was not involved in torah he just did this wasn't his thing and he once told me quite an amazing thing he said his father was an extraordinarily great talmud but his father was so humble and so modest he never wanted anyone to see him learning including his children so if he'd be learning gamora at the kitchen table two o'clock in the morning and one of the kids came in to get a drink he had a newspaper in which he covered up the gemara and yesterday i'm reading the paper i can't sleep and this son said he didn't know that his father even learned torah until he was an adult till the kid was an adult so think about this in a way you understand the point there father was humble modest his whole life was scenes but the result was his kid never saw him learn and therefore the kid was never inspired to learn torah so we as parents as teachers we sometimes have to be i'm not going to call it balgaeva that's not guyva but we have to be a little open about our misfits when we say brachas we should say it a little out loud so you know the talmud should say on main or whatever it is and see that we have kavanagh so that's why yeshiyo eliminates that's nailed us because as the doroths get further and further from god we need to be a little more conspicuous in our midzvis all right so that goes from three to two but that's not the end of the road even two was too much for people to hold on to so we finally of course we're not going to get below one we finally hit one all of the 613 mitzvos can be subsumed under one principle and the one principle is articulated by khabaku kanovi and that is the pasak in habakkuk the righteous person lives by faith and hashem's love and moon and divine providence when i have a muna then i will keep the torah because i know that i have to do what god wants me to do and therefore i will learn what god wants me to do and i'll remember what god wants to know if i'm strong in a moonah everything else is going to follow emunah will make me learn torah because i need to know what hashem's will is and muna will give me resilience when life is difficult and munna will give me courage and muna will be the character trait that will bring me to the whole torah so if every person constructs their own basa mikta which is why there's no uniform donation but there needs to be a common foundation which is why the adonai mara half shekel common i'll guess why it's half in a moment the foundation is a muna the commonality of the foundation that all temples the gods will share is a muna so now we are what we've established is the adanim represent ammuna which is the foundation so now let's focus on a few things why are there two adam on each board each board has two sockets right you have two prongs two seconds because emunah is two pronged there is of course a muna in god and there's a muna in us we have to have faith that we are worthy of a relationship with god the greater of sadak of lublin says it is safe for sitka satsang and these are words that really people should memorize it's an aphorism and put it on your refrigerator door kisha just as i am obligated to believe in hashem biatsma i have to believe in myself i have to believe that i'm worthy of having a relationship with god i have to believe that my life matters i have to believe there's a reason i shall put me in this world and what i do makes a difference because if i believe that i'm insignificant then why should i do anything what's the difference if i dive and what's the difference do i learn what's the difference if i do miss who am i the answer is i and you and everybody we're plenty hashem gave us greatness hashem gave us potential hashem gave us talent and we have to believe it would be perverse of god to give us a mission and not give us the ability to accomplish that mission so if we're here we have what there is to accomplish god has faith in us even when we don't always have faith in ourselves so the reason why there are two are done in prakesh is one is a muna in hashem one is a muna in you i have to have a moon in myself right the greatness they say that um at the khaji nisha's lavaya khazanesh died in i think it was 1955 i think it was either 53 or 55 i don't remember about i think was 55 so there was a boy at the cemetery that was crying and sobbing and rev destler the mr melio was he came from england and he became the masjid in ponovich said to the boy why are you crying over the great rabbi and gaon that is buried in the ground why don't you cry and he pointed to the boy over the great rabbi and gone that's buried in you because the rabbi that's buried in the ground became the great rabbi young that he could have become but what about us we we have that greatness in us too maybe not the hazardous but whatever it is we have greatness we have to realize it we have to have faith in ourselves because like the t-shirt says god does not make junk so if you have faith in god faith in yourself is a corollary of faith in god it comes from that number one because our soul is the breath of god so in the most literal sense there is god in us whatever that means exactly that's a cut very controversial idea and number two god created us so if if you if you look at another human being and you call them defective or worthless or whatever it is you're impugning how cottage sparklers creation that's why there are two i don't but now let's focus on another aspect why is the contribution a half shekel rather than a whole now there's a very well known vote which i'm going to talk about later that each of us is half unless we're connected but i'm going to give a different explanation based on the theme of emunah because tonight the theme of the adanim is not actus it's ammuna and that is part of the muna is understanding we only know half of the story our knowledge of reality is incomplete things happen in the world that don't make sense to us righteous people suffer there are tragedies children die right they've been young and israel the the the family the gantry family that's sponsoring this year was a young man who tragically died of cancer and we look at the world and we don't always see goodness righteousness it doesn't always make sense to us but a person with a muna understands i only see half of the picture tonight today and tonight purim cotton right this is the purim of other aleph right so this today was the fourteenth and tonight is the fifteenth so in usual i am this is the real purim katan right and purim is all about hiddenness of understanding that as we go through things we don't always appreciate them only after everything is said and done do i see the hand of god there is nothing in the purim story that is supernatural or miraculous one could look at it as a bunch of coincidences but in retrospect you see the hand of god so the reason why the adam that represents ammuna is the half shekel because emunah means i only know half of the story now the truth of the matter is that all of this comes out in the story of the eggel itself first of all the ramban and the kuzari point out that the kaito ego was not a sin of real idolatry i mean how could the jewish people who were taken out of egypt just a few months before how could they all of a sudden say oh this calf is our god it's very clear from the narrative that the jewish people were insecure because moshe was gone it was the 40th day and moshe didn't come back yet as it were like there's an old joke why are jewish weddings uh always late because the one time the jewish people insisted on punctuality they committed the golden calf they say moshe's late right so from then we learn out you know don't expect to be on time because if you're expecting to be on time bad things are going to happen that's an old old joke they say why jewish weddings are always always late but it's very very clear that the jewish people were frightened they were insecure they thought they were not worthy of a connection to god without moshe you could even say the ego was not a lack of a muni and god the kaido ego was a lack of a moon in themselves and that caused them to do the haida egga so that connects to that part of the adonium in which you have to have two undone faith in god and faith in you but it also connects the idea of knowing of only knowing half the story because you'll recall in the course of moshe praying that hashem should forgive the jewish people so there's a very mysterious scene where moshe asks hashem teach me your ways and hashem says i will place you in the cleft of a rock and i will place my hand over your eyes and i will pass by you and then i will remove my hand and you will see me from the back but you will not see me from the front this is just all i said now is i recited a passage obviously this passage is one of the great great mysterious verses in the torah moshe says let me understand your ways god says i'm going to cover your eyes till i'm all by you and then i'll take off my hands my hand you will see me from the back what's going on the gemara in bracha says that when moshe asked hashem show me your ways moshe is asking god why do righteous people suffer and evildoers prosper the world doesn't make sense and what god is basically telling moshe is you're not going to get the answer for that in fact even though we say moshe reached the highest level there are 50 levels of understanding moshe reached 49. he didn't hit the 50th this is the 50th level so the sum suffer explains the idea front and back is you're not going to understand things as they are happening but only after everything has happened you can see in hindsight and retrospect the meaning of things you will understand me from the back you will not understand me as things are happening that back does not occur until moshiach the end of history and then things will make sense in this world we will often be in a state of confusion and that is why the foundation of ammuna is predicated on the half shekel that connotes the idea that our understanding is incomplete and if we have the arrogance of thinking we can fully understand we are committing serious serious mistake so b doesn't matter i want to wish everybody a happy and joyous purim there's no media reading obviously but you know one of the things one of the gifts of purim is purim is a day where hashem listens to our prayers even more than a regular day and that includes purim cotton so this is a very auspicious time for the gates of shamayim to be open and biased hashem yeah listen to the our prayers and all of the prayers of ami israel to bring the gaula pimhaira via maine [Music] is