Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: The Transcendental Unity of Israel and the Sinaitic Revelation

[Music] okay good evening everybody hope you're all well uh i know that hashem the lockdown has been lifted we hope it'll be permanent and we hope of course more importantly even that uh clauisville and the whole world should have a refuse leima from from the pandemic and those who are ill should get better and those who are healthy should remain healthy it's again a time of te fila any time where we beseech hashem for rakhamim tonight's shear is dedicated in honor of ilana and simcha davinsky's birthdays on the 25th and the 30th of shevats let me just mention that there is an old jewish tradition that's brought down in sephirah that on a birthday you can give broncos to people and those broncos have a special efficacy so uh i wish the birthday people that they should have you know a very very wonderful year and a wonderful life but also please give broncos to those that you you care about and uh once again we are dedicating the sheer to benjamin israel a young man that is going through a difficult medical struggle and uh god willing he should have a raf if i could add a little bit of a personal note my wife's sister was niftares around 10 days ago and i would also like to be a co-dedicator so to speak of the sheer in memory of kaya razorbasmella that these different torahs should also be so as i mentioned last week we are now in what you might call part two of the book of schmos part one of the book of schmos is the story of the exodus part two of the book of schmos is the story of the purpose of the exodus because remember as we mentioned last week freedom alone freedom from slavery does not give a person a goal or a purpose in their life freedom enables a person to try to accomplish what they need to accomplish but there still needs to be a purpose one cannot logically say the purpose of my life is to be free the question is free to be what free to do what so as a result it's very clear from the torah itself that the talkless the purpose of yutsuya's mitzrayim was the goal of kabbalah satoru it reminds me a little bit in a humorous vein that in the uh 1960s and 70s when there was a great great struggle to free the jews of the former soviet union get them out of there so every synagogue orthodox conservative reform had a big poster on the ground quoting the verse in exodus let my people go and what's interesting is first of all that's not an exact um even translation of the language of the passage when moshe demanded that pyro let the jews go he didn't say let my people go he said shalakhan me send forth my people but more importantly they always skip the second half of the verse shalakhami sends my people forth and that's where they ended it but there's one more word in the passage vayavduni so they will serve me in other words it wasn't just get them out of egypt it's that they will accept the torah and in reality although you don't really uh see this unless you look at the sukkam carefully because we look at parashat mishpat in this week's parsha and it's a bunch of laws but i hope you can see that thematically this is a continuation of the revelation at sinai just read it in other words god gave the ten commandments with thunder and lightning and everything else and there's actually a big mach locus how many of the commandments did the jewish people hear because remember if you read the verses just read the verses without any commentary god gives all of the ten commandments to six hundred thousand people actually three million people and then they say they're too frightened and they ask moshe to be the intermediary and then god gives moshe all of these different laws that are in this parasha and he conveys them to bene israel in other words the simple meaning of the verses is if we ask the question how many of the ten commandments did the jewish people hear directly from god the simple answer is they heard all ten because the hamish itself says they did not express their frights until hashem finished the service of dibros and indeed there are commentators that do learn that quality heard all ten of the asera sadebros all of the dibros before they asked moshe to be the intermediary it's well known however that ghazal in massachusetts marcos have a different understanding and their understanding was that we only heard the first two commandments from god i am the lord your god who took you out of egypt of course why is that a commandment that's another question which i'm not going to talk about tonight but generally speaking maimonides says this is the commandment to believe in god ramban raises a fascinating question how can god command you again these are questions i'm not going to really address tonight but i'll throw it out something to think about how can god command you to believe in him what's going to make you listen in other words the following if i already believe in god i don't need to be commanded to believe in him if i don't believe in him then under what authority can i be commanded to believe in him it's like going to an atheist and saying you can't be an atheist and the atheist asks why not he says because god says you're not allowed to be an atheist but i don't believe in god so the ramban actually questions maimonides how can there be a mitzvah of emunah ramban argues a muna is a foundation once you have a muna then god gives you mitzvahs but emunah per se cannot be a mitzvah and yet and yet one cannot deny that maimonides counts the first of the ten commandments i am the lord your god as a commandment of emunah even though ramban has a very powerful logical objection to that and the explanation is the standard explanation of maimonides again this is not the main thing i want to talk about but i'll mention it is that god is directing the commandment to a person who believes in god but he believes in god because of tradition and upbringing and god says you who believe in me because your parents or your teachers taught you you are obligated to establish an intellectual foundation to understand the existence of god so it's directed to the believer but it's requiring him to take his belief system to a higher and a deeper level that in turn is the source of a great great controversy in jewish philosophy that exists until this very day should one investigate the various rational proofs for the existence of god maimonides seems to consider it mandatory or should one say listen i'm not going to open a pandora's box maybe if i start getting engaged in philosophical speculation perhaps i'll come out at the wrong side of things and maybe it's better not to you know to this very day if you walk into a yeshiva basement you will certainly see all the writings of the rambam the mishna torah but if you ask oh i would like where do you keep the guide to the perplexed which discusses these issues at least the standard yeshiva based madrish does not even have a copy of the mourinho on the shelves they may have it in the back room or whatever it would be so that's a whole interesting historical issue about what is the jewish approach towards philosophical speculation and analysis of the existence of god but be it as it may i'd want to digress too much according to maimonides and according to the gemara the jewish people only heard the first two commandments i am the lord your god who took you out of egypt and the second commandment which is the negative thou shalt not have any other gods before me and that's when they got frightened now again i want to point out that this is actually an example of rabbinic interpretation that is deviating from the chronological sense of the text i mean look at the text and you will see that the expression of fear was only after all 10 of the commandments and yet hazal say that this is an example of ain't much that the torah does not always follow chronological order and in point of fact the expression that we don't want to hear from god anymore we need to have moshe as our intermediary that occurred after the two commandments and not after the not after all of them now the question is where did the rabbis get that conclusion well they got that conclusion through gematria gematria of course is one of the methods of interpretation in which every letter of the torah is assigned a numerical value just like a can be one so aleph is one base is two and uh the gematria is the following it's a very uh famous schematic an interesting gematria the torah itself says torah siva lanu moshe moshe gave us torah now the gematria of torah is 611 right tough is 400 above is 6. so that's ratios 200 606 and hey is 5 so that gives you 611. now we know the torah has 613 commandments so why does it say moshe gave us 6 11. answer moshe gave us 611 by being god's intermediary but two of the commandments i am the lord your god and you shall not have other and the other gods we didn't get from moshe we heard directly from god okay but be it as it may that was the experience of matan torah and then parashat mishpatim is not like some a bunch of commandments that god gave later the jewish people are still at sinai and this is after they express their fear so god then calls moshe over and he gives them all of these commandments now in a sense the commandments of mishpatim i mean we're not supposed to say commandments are more important than other commandments but on one level they are almost super commandments and let me explain why this is before moshe goes up to mount sinai for 40 days in other words moshe is on the ground right now and god gave the ten commandments or two commandments and then we expressed fear and then god gave the rest of the commandments and then god is continuing with this whole parsha and only at the end of the parsha does hashem say to moshe go up to the mountain and be there for 40 days and i'll give you the rest of the torah in other words the mitzvoth of parashat mishpatim have almost a special priority because they are not given when moshe is there in the 40 days when he gets everything else they are given while he's still on the ground and i think there's something very important there because parashat mishpatim is primarily not exclusively what you might call the civil code of the torah it deals with interpersonal relationships it deals with damages it deals with property rights uh it deals with not stealing not murdering not committing acts of violence it regulates and humanizes the law of slavery again that's an interesting topic one cannot deny that the torah does have an institution of slavery and that raises some interesting difficult questions but one can also not deny that as compared to the rest of the ancient world the torah certainly civilizes it and the torah recognizes a responsibility towards the slave that did not exist in any society ancient or even modern that did have slavery and the like so the kitsour parashat mishpatim is primarily not exclusively concerned with the area of the torah that we regard as bain adam lammachavero between man and man rather than man and god and and keep in mind that as i said indicated these votes are put in a priority position because they are not given to moshe during the 40 days they are given to moshe before the 40 days before he even goes up into the mountain and i think this highlights the idea that the mitzvoth bain adam le chavero are extremely important now in a sense what i'm saying is a truism and an obvious point but you know unfortunately it's not as obvious as you might think because we often identify the meaning of being a religious jew with adherence to the shabbos to kasras to prayer to ritual and that is important of course it's important those are the commandments of god but we don't consider ethics in business and honesty integrity kindness we consider them kind of general values but we don't look at that as the hallmark of an observant person and thus people say oh there are observant jews who are not honest in business there are observant jews who are rude or cruel well one answer you can give if you want to be a smart aleck is there's no such thing as an observant jew who's not honest in business because if he's not honest in business he's not an observant jew even no matter how he's dressed no matter how orthodox his practices are the same way you can't ask me how come some orthodox jews eat eat bacon my answer would be if they eat bacon they're not orthodox jews we have to have that same attitude towards business ethics honesty and the like which we don't unfortunately and in fact this point which i'm proving from the mishpatim being given even before moshe goes up to sinai i think you can even see more vividly in the ten commandments themselves it's a well-known idea right that moshe rabeno came down with the two tablets on each tablet were written five of the commandments by the way the commandments you know if you look at the common picture of moshe coming down and of course the first commandments he broke and then he came down with the second commandments that's a separate issue but the common picture is number one they're rounded at the top and number two they're joined they're like joined like one slab and uh the truth is according to khazal both aspects of that picture are incorrect number one they were not joined they were two different blocks of stone that moshe was bringing down and number two they were not rounded they were actually like cubes they were cubes and the fact the commandments were written on every side of the cube front back side side top bottom etc and that's why if you ever look at um some of the lubavitch kid magazines they actually have a picture of the command of the luchot in that cube form but a well-known idea about the luhot is that the first five are bain adam lamakum the first five are between man and a man and god believe in god thou shall not have any other gods do not take the name of god in vain remember shabbos honoring parents i'll get to that's an interesting question and the second five are interpersonal uh don't murder don't don't steal don't give false testimony don't covet don't commit adultery but an interesting point is if you look at the words the number of words in the first five are much larger than the number of words in the second five okay the the second five are very staccato low tiered stock lotion of latigno now we have a tradition however that the amount of space that was covered by the engravings was the same on both sides so if the first luach has many more words and the second luak has fewer words but they cover the same amount of space that means by definition the size of the engraving of the second side was much larger than the engraving of the first side because the first side had more words more letters in the same space so they had to make the font size i don't know if you talk about fonts in terms of engraving of rock but whatever it would be the font size to use that term must have been much larger in the second group than the first group so now let's imagine this moshe comes down with the tablets and again obviously i'm not talking about the first ones because he smashed him but let's take the second ones that come down on yom kippur and you're putting on your glasses and you see moshe in the distance coming down from the mountain and you're staring and you're appearing and you're trying to see what's he bringing with him which commandments are you going to see first you're going to see the interpersonal commandments before you see the between man and god because they are in bigger font size so once again from the asera sadibri themselves you see the primacy of bain adam and again it's something that we need to remember over and over and over again that the definition of a religious jew is not only bain adam it's now of course i hate them to add that may not be also not the whole picture so to speak we have to try to do both but one is not less important than the other and if anything ben adam akabera might in fact have an extra khachivas one other point about this dichotomy though is and that is people do ask the question what about the fifth commandment because you're telling me the first five are between man and god and the second five is between man and man okay so let's look at the first five i am the lord your god that's the mitzvah of emunah okay great thou shall not have any other gods okay man and god third do not take the name of god in vain okay fourth remember the day of shabbos to keep it holy okay all of that is in man and god but the fifth is to honor your father and mother now since my father and mother are human beings it would appear that by honoring them is the fulfillment of an obligation between man and man not between man and god so why is kevin of the a in the first column it ought to be in the second column of course that would make it four and six but okay whatever it would be uh for for symmetry you're not going to put a mitzvah in the wrong place so why is keyboard of the aim bain adam lamakam logically it belongs in bain adam le chavero so i'm going to give you two again quickie answers uh to that question answer number one is that the foundational idea of keeper davian is gratitude to those who gave you life so even if uh i mean i mean for the overwhelming majority of people our parents gave us much more than life they gave us love and they gave us nurturance but even in the very unfortunate circumstance where a parent did not adequately take care of a child and again hashem that's comparatively rare but sometimes it exists but you cannot take away the fact that you are in this world because of them and even if your life is hard but everything you could ever accomplish in this world is only because you're here if you wouldn't be here you couldn't do it and therefore the foundation of honoring my parent is i honor the person who gave me life ah so if you truly internalize that value you will come to honor god who is the source of all life and all goodness a person who doesn't honor his parents does not have gratitude for the gift of life so you don't have gratitude to god so keyboard of the aim is a real stepping stone towards the glorification of god because god of course is our ultimate parent that's answer number one answer number two is a bit more psychological and maybe it's addressed more to the parent than to the child and that is in many many ways the image we form of god is the image that we form of our relationship to our parents because to a little child maybe you remember this to a little child a parent is a godlike to a little child i mean they grow out of it quickly but to a little child mom and dad are like gods they're all powerful they're giants they make the decisions can i do this can i do this can i do this and of course i remember this very well there's a certain stage in childhood where a child looks as his parent as superman like my son used to say oh i could beat up anybody i could throw them across the street i get a whatever it again they grow out of it i miss those eight i miss those days uh but there is a certain time in which a parent is invincible now so i look at my parent as god but how do i see my parents if i see them as arbitrary i see them as cruel i see them as unjust i see them as unfair i see them as abusive then that's going to be the image i have of the almighty god because god after all is super parent if on the other hand i see my parents as loving and good and kind and fair then that will be the image i'm gonna form of god now obviously people can grow up and obviously the images we form as young children do not have to be the images that we carry throughout our lives we can mature and the like but i hate to give you the bad news it's possible to transcend those childhood experiences but it's not that easy it may be very frustrating to say i'm a 30 40 50 60 70 or 80 year olds person and i'm still laboring under stuff that i absorbed when i was four and as a rational person you say that can't be possible but in truth it actually is possible and it's common and all of us are still living connected to that world in some way so in that sense keeper of the aim is connected to serving god because the way we parent forms within the child's psyche which will continue into his adulthood how he views his relationship to god himself which means in other words that although kibad of the em is a mitzvah that is directed to a child of any age it's also a message to the parents if the torah says to a child honor your father and mother the torah says to the parents be a person who is deserving of that honor be an honorable person be a person that your child can look up to and say you're a person that's deserving of honor okay it's very important keep it up as a message to a parent as well as to a child be honorable in that way okay so you see the primacy of bain adam la vero in two aspects both in the proximity of parashat mishpatim which is even pre harsinai and number two in the positioning of the asera tadibros the ten commandments where the mitzvos bainadam lacha bereau were written much larger and they would actually are engraved much larger and they would actually be the first commandments the teaches something else about matantora that's very interesting it's it's actually relevant a little bit to some people here that is matantora is actually the source for the steps that one must take in order to convert to judaism matan torah was actually seen as a conversion experience of the jewish people now in a sense they didn't convert because they were born jewish but they converted in the sense that they were adopting a a new religious system of worship and what are the what are the requirements for conversion so for a man it must be uh circumcision number number two immersion in a mikvah and number three the acceptance of commandments that you will commit yourself to the keeping of the torah now how do we know these requirements we know these requirements the khmer new vamos says because those were the steps the jewish people underwent when they accepted the torah they had circumcision now this was a little earlier because but but when they brought the corbin pessah in mitzrayim they had to circumcise before they could bring the corbin pesach they went to the mikvah it says by ahar sinai that they had to immerse themselves and the acceptance of the mitzvos are the very famous statements which is in this parsha called hashem whatever god says we will do finish and we will accept that's kabbalat mitzvahs and those requirements are the requirements to this very day of a halachic conversion to judaism for a woman it's the same except the woman doesn't have circumcision so she has immersion in the mikvah and kabbalat mitzvoth acceptance of the mitzvoth so it's learned out of matan torah now in the time of the temple there was a fourth requirement for conversion and that is a non-jew who wanted to convert had to bring a special sacrifice in the basan mikdash and the blood would be sprinkled over him and that too is derived from matan torah because we read in this week's parsha that the jewish people brought o olots are burnt offerings and shlamim peace offerings and moshe sprinkled moshe was the coin then aaron did not yet become cohen until the mishkan was dedicated so at this point moshe is officiating interestingly enough as kohen and moshe sprinkled half of the bloods on the altar and half of the blood on the people now interestingly enough the gemara even raises the question if aguero has to bring a sacrifice and we don't have sacrifices today maybe we can't even do conversion today because we're missing one of the elements so the talmud darshans the talmud has a dresha that the requirement of korban is only when there's a temple and when there's no temple that requirement is waived but interestingly enough you have to have a dress shot for that meaning had you not had a special drasha we would not have been able to do conversion bisman because of the of the quran the point here is that matan torah is the paradigm for conversion the makur the source of all the laws of not all the laws but of the basic structure of conversion is from what the jews underwent at harcina okay interesting question the morale even says an amazing well the morale raises a question and that is under torah law when a person converts to judaism they are treated as a newly created entity right this is a famous rabbinic statement gersh and it's gayer a person who converts dummy is like a newly born infant now that has some very important talaq ramifications which are somewhat surprising and that is let's say a a brother and a sister convert to judaism under torah now rabbinically it is us under torah the brother and the sister are not related to each other and under torah law i keep on repeating that they are allowed to marry the rabbi translate it's like a newborn again one who converts is like a newly born a baby so under torala if a brother and sister convert they are permitted to get married if a mother and son converts it sounds very strange they are permitted to get married if a father and a daughter convert they are permitted to get married now the rabbis prohibited this because it looks too much uh like forbidden incest but under torah law you are a newly created entity that all relationships are cut off now again i don't mean emotionally of course obviously you love your brother your sister but how logically you're not related so the morale raises the question the following if we assume that matan torah is a mass conversion it would stand to reason that all the jews that were standing at sinai were no longer related to each other and father could marry daughter and mother could marry son and brother could marry sister and we don't find such a thing we don't find that the laws of arrios the laws of forbidden sexual relationships didn't apply so the maharao says the morale actually says a very very unique original thought and he says although it's true that matan torah was conversion and although it's true that in normal conversion that erases relationship the conversion of matan torah was unique in that it did not erase pre-existing relationships why was it unique because matantora was the only conversion that ever existed that could be a compulsory conversion meaning one of the bedrock rules of conversion is that you have to want to do it right you cannot be forced to become jewish you have to want this on your own and even when we convert minors so in a sense they didn't have a say in it when they become bar mitzvah they can renounce it if they don't want it that's a well-known principle they don't have to reconvert that's a common mistake but they can renounce their conversion because conversion ultimately has to be something that you do on your own but the conversion of matan torah was very unique because ghazal say god held the mountain over our heads and god said yeah you guys have a choice if you accept the torah that's wonderful if not i'm going to drop the mountain over you now this is you have to understand this a little deeper this is not god putting a gun to you god is basically saying the world has no purpose without your accepting the torah so in a sense we accepted the torah under a certain sense of duress and compulsion and therefore it is a gay rush that is totally unique one of a kind and the kiddish of the morale is in a garage that is unique and one of the kind like this it does not sever relationships and therefore the laws of aguilarius the laws of forbidden incest did remain in effect again it's a fascinating fascinating morale and of course the gemara itself is very fascinating how could we be forced into accepting the torah uh again maybe we'll we'll come to this either tonight or uh in a future session because we'll be talking about matan torah uh even past past this week uh but now i want to focus on the famous immortal words that the jewish people uttered and again they are in this parsha it's interesting it's not in departure of the ten commandments kyle i whatever god said we will do the nishma and we will hear we'll have to look at the word here in a moment and the gemara in massachusetts tells us that when the jewish people said naseb in ishmael in particular when they were maktim meaning when they first said and then nishma the angels of heaven came down and put on the head of every jew two crowns of glory two crowns of spiritual glory one corresponding with nasa and one corresponding with nishma we will do we will listen and those crowns of glory again we have to assume these are spiritual auras these are not physical crowns remained with the jewish people until the sin of the golden calf which was only 40 days later so you see from ghazal the way they understand the verses that it's not just that the jewish people said two things but it's the order that's very critical they first said nasa and then they said nishma what is so great and what is so significant about the order of nassev nishma so the simple explanation which is a very very valid explanation is this if i were to say the other way if i were to say nishma banasa that means let's hear what you're offering and then we'll do it that would imply a certain level of conditionality let's hear god let's tell us god what you want us to do and then we'll evaluate it but when you say nasser we will do whatever you command now let's hear it that's a very high level that's giving god a blank check that's basically saying i'm unconditionally accepting your will even before i know what it is that's a great great accomplishment remember that according to the madrish hashem offered the torah to every other nation and every other nation always asked what's in it then god said don't steal don't kill each nation said can't accept that the greatness of the jewish people is not simply that they didn't reject after hearing what god offered but it's much greater than that they made a commitment in advance nasa we will do we don't even know what it is you want we're going to sign up and that is ammuna that is faith that is trust every single day when the men put on their filling so what arts filling uh that phil and are the proverbial black boxes that actually contain within them the words of the shema and the words of god taking us out of egypt and the like and we have the filling of the arm and we have the filling of the head and what you're basically doing is you're binding your physical strength which is your arm your emotions which is your heart and your intellect which is your mind to the service of god i am pledging my strength my feelings my mind to god that's actually one of the reasons why this fill in is on the left hand because that's up at the left arm because that's opposite the heart which at least metaphorically we speak of as the seed of emotion although there is a good question on this because if a person is a lefty and their dominant arm is left they put fill in on their right hand so it's a good question because the standard explanation that filming is put adjacent to your heart uh is cannot be the complete explanation because if that would be the case lefties have their heart on the same side as righties they caution you to think about but nevertheless uh for most people the khalap this villain is connected is opposite the the heart now we know that halachically we put on the hand villain before we put on the head filling and the gemara has derivations of that idea but logically one might suggest and i've seen this idea that fill in is a daily re-acceptance of god's torah and the same way that when the jewish people accepted the torah they first committed themselves to action even before they understood it and they're also saying even in other words even even if i don't understand it meaning i will accept no matter what and then i'll try to understand but my doing is not conditional on my understanding so that's mimicked in this villain where my commitment to action precedes my cognition my cognitive ability to comprehend what's going on so every day that a man puts on filling in the right order he is declaring and this highlights a very interesting paradox in judaism because on one hand i have to say this there is absolutely no religion in the world that puts such a premium on understanding i mean what religion has a mitzvah that every single person is supposed to learn torah understand torah in fact it was my understanding and someone told me this even true today to some degree but during the middle ages the catholic church did not even want lay people to read the bible because they didn't want lay people to have their own ideas about the bible they wanted it to come only from the clergy and as a result there was almost universal illiteracy in the christian world except among the clergy themselves somebody told me that even to this very day i can't i don't want to say that it's true but even to this very day the catholic church doesn't really like people to read the bible on their own they'll get wrong ideas when it comes to judaism or the druzes here in israel for the jews in israel for example have all sorts of sacred books that the average druze is not allowed to read you have to have a green hat the whole thing of promotion you only get to see the books when you're a certain level the average person we don't even let you see the sacred books this is part of the drew's religion no they're not jews the jerusalem and the jerusalems are very fine actually very very fine people i want to say that they help the jewish community here in israel in many many ways i believe they're allowed to be in the army even because their loyalty to the jewish states is is unquestioned uh so i like the druzes but i'm just pointing out that i'm just making a statement of fact i believe that in their religion the sacred literature is off limits to the average jews in judaism the greatest of mitzvos is to learn to study we want every single jew to be able to look at the mesh and look at the mishna and look at the gemara and look at the shogunate and raise questions and debate and argue and discuss and understand there is no religion in the world that puts such a premium on intellectual understanding and yet side by side with the preeminent importance of understanding is unconditional acceptance of even that which you don't understand so on one hand we call upon you to accept the commandments in blind faith and then we give you a second mission now that you've accepted it in blind faith do your best to understand it the best way that you can it's almost a contradiction because you can have a faith that's based on intellectual understanding and you can have a faith that's based on unconditional commitment judaism is based on both foundations simultaneously but the first step is this unconditional submission to god and that's nasa vanishma and that is that's phil and shelyad that precedes beats phil and shell shel rosh every day we're re-accepting the tone but now i want to focus on one other point about the seven ishma and that is this puzzle appears with slight modification in two places it appeared in last week's parsha parashat israel which talked about the ten commandments and it appears in parshas mishpatim but it appears in two different versions and maybe if you remember the torah reading last week you would have noticed this and perhaps it even bothered you everyone knows the famous verse call us hashem whatever god spoke not seven ishmael we will do and we will try to understand but earlier that's not what was said it says everybody answered together call us here deeper hashem whatever god says we will do so let's compare these two sukim in parashat's israel the jewish people are quoted as saying na assad we will do. they didn't add the word vanishma only in parshas mishpatim did they say vanishma why is there that difference i mean it's the same occasion it's accepting the torah why the very first time they said nasa and the second time they said nasa venisma that's one question this that in the first verse it says [Music] everybody answered does not appear in the second verse it just says it does not say yakdav so in the first passage the word yakdav without the word nishma in the second passage the word nishma without the word yaktov what is the significance of those two verses so the meshach offers a beautiful beautiful interpretation and it's based on a very good question we know that the torah has 613 commandments we know further that these 613 commandments are divided into two groups there are 248 positive commandments they're called mitzvoth assay and they are the mitzvos thou shalt do where to fill in where it sits is read shema may kiddish on shabbos these are positive mitzvos do circumcision bring the carbon pesach eat matzah these are the commandments when god says do something 248 and then we have 365 negative commandments when god says not to do something don't eat pig don't violate shabbos etc 248 plus 365 equals 6 13. now the gemara correlates the 248 positive mitzvahs to your bones there are 248 bones in the human body and again there's some question how to coordinate that with present understanding of anatomy i mean the numbers are very close they're not exact kazoo may have had a different count of the bones but the concept is every positive mitzvah gives life to a particular bone so there's a fill in bone and there's a citrus bone now we don't know what that means exactly that doesn't mean physical life obviously you can still get arthritis even if you're a very religious jew but it gives a certain spiritual vibrancy to your bones and when you don't keep that commandment you don't get that vibrancy that's for the mitzvoth i say for the mitzvah it's the other way there are 365 sinews or ligaments in the body and every time i do a negative commandment i am harming spiritually one of those ligaments so there's the ligaments and there's the shabbos ligaments and the like so consequently my even my physical body the bones and the ligaments need the commandments to get vibrancy and to be healthy and to be able to fulfill their mission in other words the 613 commandments are correlated to the human body so if that's the case we have a very very serious question because there never has been and there never will be an individual person that is capable of keeping all 613 commandments some of the commandments are only for kohanim and some are for israelim some are only for men and not women some are only for women and not men many only apply when there's a temple and we don't have them and there's no temple many only apply in the land of israel like shmita and those who don't live in the land of israel although they should don't have those mitzvahs and as i say even if you're living in eretz israel and even when there's a temple there's a lot of stuff you can't do so and of course if you think about this even in a more deeper way i mean giving a guess for example this may be an absurd uh point but but it's interesting uh giving a get if you want to divorce your wife is actually a mitzvah in the torah that if you want to divorce your wife you have a mitzvah to give a get now if giving again is one of the 248 mitzvots that means there must be a get bone in my body that doesn't get its vibrancy unless i give a get so what do you what are you supposed to do are you saying oh i need to perfect my get bone so sorry honey you got to get divorced otherwise i don't have a taken of my get bone that sounds a little absurd but how do you explain it you're correlating every one of the positive mitzvoth with a bone in the body so god created a system where it's impossible for me no matter how righteous i am not to be a spiritual that doesn't seem right that doesn't make sense god gave me 248 bones and 365 ligaments and he said every commandment of the torah gives light and life to a ligament or a bone but you're not going to be able to do a whole bunch of them i'm condemned to be defective and not because of my free will not because of my sins but because i simply can't do that stuff so how do we understand that so there are two answers that this forum give us answer number one is this is one of the reasons why torah learning is so important because with torah learning i can learn about the mitzvos that i cannot do and i can still have the light of those mitzvos for example the gemara says he who learns the laws of sacrifices is as if they brought sacrifices and that applies to everything meaning my neshama needs the light of every one of the mitzvahs every one of them the 248 positive and the 365 negative minus shamanism but how can i do them all answer even if you can't do them all you can learn about them and therefore when i learn about the sacrifices i get the light that my sacrifice bones need when i learn about the laws of divorce i learned masaka's kitten i get my get bone i don't have to divorce my wife hashem i shouldn't divorce my wife but i get the nourishment that comes from the mitzvah of get by learning about get that's why it's an interesting point you know the time everyone knows of course the great great author of number one the books about the laws of against lashon hara derogatory speech that's his most famous and he wrote the mishna brewer which is a guide to the practical laws in the shulkin arach that apply every day and shabbos and holidays so when we think about the khafizen we think of him as someone who was deeply involved in teaching vinay israel practical guidance for everyday life but what's a little less known outside of yeshiva circles is the chavitzheim was actually a great pioneer in re-introducing the study of the gemaras about sacrifices massachusetts that had been neglected for hundreds of years he was a cohen and he actually he reprinted old books on on the order of corbanos out of his own he certainly was not a rich man but somehow he got the money to reprint the swarm he himself wrote his own works on it and people asked him why are you spending so much time about the laws of sacrifices they don't apply today as if the khabib islam was indifferent to contemporary practical allah and the khabib time gave two answers to why he was so involved in corbanos answer one is which is not relevant to our discussion but it's an important answer is if you really believe that mashiach can come every day and that the temple could be rebuilt tomorrow then carbonates are not abstract laws that have no relevance you have to believe they might start tomorrow and if you say i'm not going to bother with carbonarts because uh it's not relevance to life then what you're saying is you don't believe in the imminent possibility of messianic redemption so answer number one of the habits claim is your whole premise that carbonates are not relevant to practical life is a denial of the imminence of mashiach that's answer number one and that's not relevant to our discussion but that's an interesting very interesting important answer answer number two is the point that we're making and that is it's precisely because we're disabled from doing the carbonate that it's so important to learn about them because that's the only way our neshama absorbs the light of that mitzman so although it's true it is true that you do have to give priority to study those parts of the torah that are relevant to your life shabbos katrius i need to know that stuff but one should recognize the great great importance of even learning those parts of the torah that are not relevant to your life number one number one there are spiritual truths in them that will be relevant but number two metaphysically speaking my shaman needs the nutrition of carbonate of the laws of leprosy of the laws of guests of the laws of purity and impurity and if i'm not able to carry them out in practice i have to carry them out through learning so that's answer number one to the question my question one was how can i get the light of the 613 commandments if i'm not able to keep them all answer i can still learn about them that's answer one answer to how do i get the nourishment the nurturance of all of the 613 commandments answer ahavat israel unity and love for my fellow jew how does that give me that so here's the answer you know let's say i put filling on my arm so how do we describe that we don't say oh my left arm did a mitzvah today it's not my left arm that did a mitzvah i did a mitzvah because my arm is simply part of me right when i say i walk the shell you know we don't say oh my legs did something i did it so here's the thing when you regard yourself as a separate entity and an isolated discreet individual there are many many mitzvos you're not able to do i can't do a cohen's myth i can't do a woman's mitzvah i can't do uh the mitzvos of the basa mikdash when there's no base on mikdash but if you connect yourself to the jewish people with love and togetherness you become like a cell in a transcendental organism that has a past present and future and what that means is therefore if you are part of this total organism and that total organism over time has done all of those mitzvoths then it turns out the mitzvahs of the cohen are your mitzvos the mitzvos that you do are the cohen's mythos the mitzvoth of the woman are the mitzvahs of the man the mitzvahs of the men are the middles of the woman the mitzvos of the past become the mistress of the present because just as you know every cell of my body may change in the course of a decade or two decades right interesting point accepting maybe brain cells but basically you are not the same person you were 20 years ago every single cell in your body is a new cell the cells change but the person remains the individual components of israel may constantly change but there's an entity called omniscient and therefore the way i can tap in taitayak mitzvot is by connecting myself to that entity that is called israel so there are two different ways that you can achieve the shameless the perfection of taryag mitzvot one is through talmud torah and the other is through achtus israel yes so now the mesh says this is a beautiful explanation of the passage in parashat israel vayanu calla remember the word yakdav everybody answered in unison the torah is referring to a situation where the jewish people are united they are together they when that hypothetical situation exists we can declare call us whatever god said we can actually do i can't do it all you can't do at all he can't do it all she can't do it all cannot do it all but we as a nation past present and future we can fulfill the torah even with action because every single mitzvah that any jew ever did becomes my mitzvah because i'm unified into that clown and that's why with yakdav we fulfill the torah with action but parashat mishpatim which eliminates the word yakdav the torah is alluding to what's going to happen when there will be times in jewish history maybe most of the times of jewish history and certainly today where let's say reinu regretfully and with sadness there is no unity there is polarization there is mach locus there is hatred there is divisiveness at that point we are no longer connected as a single nation each person for himself at that point i can no longer say i can do the torah by action because as an individual i cannot keep the whole torah by action i can do some of it but not all of it so what is the way that i can fulfill the whole torah and i said i can do it by learning learning in other words the teres marames when there's a yakdav we can fulfill the torah with deed and when there's not a yacht of we fulfill the torah with learning and and the torah's deviation is not so much to tell us what the jewish people actually said but the torah is giving you a rem as an allusion to the two different ways we can perfect our neshama with all of the 613 commandments of the torah we have a plan a and a plan b and in the order plan a is avast israel plan b is talmud torah the learning of torah now i just want to end that at first glance these seem to be two distinct roads i was israel i fulfill the torah by action because i'm part of everybody's actions without avast israel nebucha i got to go to the plan b which is learning but in reality although this is a plan b plan a and a plan b and these are two different roads the two different roads eventually converge and they become one and the reason is the famous statements of some people say this every day in davaning particularly in eric israel shalom the alum those scholars who study torah they increase peace in the world meaning torah itself is a factor that should create peace and harmony and togetherness among jews i realize that people might ask the question that we don't always see that today well that's a very very good question that bothers me as well all i can say is if our sages tell us that the learning of torah brings peace into the world and our learning of torah is not bringing peace into the world it's got to be that there's something defective and deficient in our learning of torah i will leave it at that but we have to think about that because if we would be learning torah in the real way it's supposed to be learned our sages promise us it would create shalom so ultimately the fallback position of talmud torah when there's not avat israel becomes about israel because the learning of torah itself brings peace into the world and i just want to point out that this is a very important insight in jewish outreach uh sometimes you know we have a responsibility to help other jews and teach them also learn from them as well that's an important idea but we sometimes feel that i can't start learning torah with somebody unless they accept and are convinced of all the theology that the torah comes from god etc and until we kind of nail down the idea that the torah is divine etc i can't learn with somebody there are different opinions about this but i i personally feel that that is a big mistake because it is often the learning of torah itself that brings a person to connection with god meaning i could tell a person listen i believe the torah is from god you may not believe that yet but so what let's study its wisdom let's study its guidance let's study its relevance let's say you believe the torah is written by human beings let's say that although we don't believe that but you can still see the wisdom in it the goodness in it and in truth what we often find is that exposure to the wisdom and the goodness of the torah will create bridges among jews and will bring jews back to god even if they have not yet accepted at the inception all of the theological predicates so that goes back to the idea that the learning of torah itself creates a great light in the soul that brings a person to god and brings a person back to the jewish people so as i mentioned last week the ramban tells us there is a mitzvah to remember every single day of the year and these lessons that we're talking about tonight therefore we should in integrate into our lives every single day so we too can stand every morning the men when they were to fill in and the women even without that villain call us whatever hashem says to us we will do vanishma we will endeavor to understand so shut up and thank you for listening [Music] is