Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: The Unconditional Covenant with Abraham

[Music] okay everybody it's good good to see you and uh first uh the share has a number of dedications today one is from the wine tribe and the lawyer families wishing me a refusal hashem i very much appreciate the good wishes thank god i hope that i am more or less recovered and and really all of those who are afflicted uh should also have a a reforeshalema uh in addition uh the aliyat nishama the elevation of the soul for binyamin yisrael bin uh the young man who we prayed for for a very long time and he had a courageous fight uh kadesh barack who took him to shamayim but he should have aliyah uh david and a via adena but adam all of these nashamas should be elevated in ganeden by the torah that we're learning and finally to honor the second your sight of a wife a mother and a grandmother sophia ziegler sophia sarah bracha but avraham by your family alan ziegler and jared ziegler the york side is on the seventh of march be as right hashem once again uh the debris torah should be in alias neshama for the for the nifters uh the first two parties of the torah regis uh deal with might with the themes that are beyond the jewish people voracious is the creation of the world and noah is the re-establishment of humanity after the havoc after the destruction of the flood but jewish history quad jewish history begins of course with avraham avinu and it is often said that avraham avina was the first jew that's a very common expression the truth is that's a little difficult to define what makes you a jew per se i mean after all avraham had a son ishmael who is not regarded as jewish and even yitzhak had who more or less is not regarded as the jewish although there's some interesting contradictions in ghazal really if i had to pick the first jew in the sense of all of whose descendants are part of the jewish nation we would have to go all the way to yaakov because all of yaakov's children so to speak are jewish and moreover if we define a jew as someone that was given the torah in fact abram was not given the torah but i think the meaning of the term the first jew is that he is the first person with whom god made a covenant that was not ex that was not applicable to the whole world god made a covenant with noah but that was a covenant with the human race avraham is the first time that god takes a segment of humanity and gives them a special mission and a special relationship and that eventually became the jewish people but avraham is uh unique in that sense because until his time all of god's covenants all of god's promises were with all of the humanity with abraham we have a notion of selectivity and abram and of course right now he's called avram he's not yet called avraham and sarah is called saurai and that's going to be important because we're going to talk about the change of names are given a commandment when avraham is 75 years old god says leave your family leave your place of birth leave all your prior attachments to go to the land that i will show you he doesn't even tell avraham where it is he says when you get there you'll know how did everyone even know what direction to go to that's an interesting question but it kind of was like a compass or a magnet right our magnets or our compasses point true north avraham's compass pointed to eric israel there's his heart new that that's where he would find god so one of the very perplexing questions that one might ask is why did god choose abraham if i ask you look in the hamish what is so special about avraham that god chose him to go to his land and god said i will make you a great nation and you will be a source of blessing into the world what's interesting is if you ask the question why did god choose avraham based on just reading the end of parshas noah when avram is introduced as a person and then when god speaks to him when he's 75 years old there is no reason that's given at all it's kind of a jolt of lightning out of the blue now we know that's not entirely true because khazal give us a whole backstory famous midrashim that are not in the hamish but they're famous midrashim right avram's place of origin is called or kastin and if you take the word or aleph same word as or or the same spelling as or but or does not mean light it means a furnace of fire so avraham's ancestral origin was called ur costim the furnace of the cauldians the babylonians that was the term for the babylonians so the postures that's just a place you know i come from new york i come from chicago i come from war constant because i'll have a famous madrish that terrach abram's father was an idol merchant he used to sell idols and he once put avraham in charge of the store and avraham wrecked all the idols and he put weapons in the in the hands of the idols and when tara came back and said what happened to the merchandise avraham said oh the idols were fighting with each other and tara says are you crazy everybody knows these idols can't do anything so he said to his father so why do you sell them why do you worship them you know that they're nothing well that was the interaction of avraham and his father but nimrod who was the king of the area nimrod was not too pleased with avraham discrediting idolatry and he actually threw avraham into a fiery furnace he said he was going to be burnt to death unless avraham renounced and avram refused to renounce and he was willing to die and he was thrown into the ore costume the furnace and he survived now avraham had two brothers he had a brother in nacho and he had a brother haran haran haran was the father of sarai and lot sarai and lauter brother and sister and sarai is avraham's niece so abram actually married his niece which is permitted even after the torah was given so the torah tells us that the madrid is adding so many details the torah tells us haran died in the lifetime of terror it doesn't say why harun died but the madrid gives us the reason why harun died because haran was straddling the fence harlan was asked do you believe in allah do you believe in one god and haran said i'm going to wait to see what happens to my brother if my brother is saved from the furnace i will become a believer if my brother is burnt i'll go with the idolatry avraham is saved so haran gets religion haran says i believe in god but because he was not willing to risk his life he did not merit the miracle see abraham didn't know he was going to be saved abram was willing to die haran only affirmed his belief in god when it was expedient now not that that's sinful as a matter of fact it's perfectly appropriate to become a balchuba when you see abram being saved that's not a problem see harun did not do any aveda in that but this is not the madrega that you merit a supernatural miracle so there's a whole backstory so if you ask why did god choose avraham well avraham was willing to give his life for abraham we also taught taught people about hashem and abraham also taught ethics and morality so there's plenty of reasons why god chose avraham but the problem is the torah doesn't give you those reasons the whole story of word custom is not inventory other than the place name so on one hand there are reasons and on the other hand the reasons are not stated why would that be so situations tells the story that sometimes there are some some midrashim that are so familiar to us that we must believe it's in the hamish itself she was giving a lecture and she gave an example of the story of avraham in the fiery furnace of war costim anyone that learns homich even as a child knows this story and he's so sure it's in the hamish and khamalibu it said it's not in muhammad it's a madrish and it's important that people know what is in the hamesh and what is a madrid so she she would tell the story later that she was giving her class to a bunch of army officials in fact a lot of her work in the 1950s was with khayalim religious not religious etc and there was this gruff army general who was not religious but he had learned as a child and of course he knew hebrew and he said of course the story of the word so she gives him a hummish and she says to him find it show me the story so he's going back and forth he knows hebrew he could read it he's going back and forth and the story is not there and he gets very frustrated and he says i don't want the abridged version give me the forgive me the original version you know and of course that is the original version so it is a little perplexing uh it's so avraham's pre-story is so important and so beautiful devotion commitments spreading the name of god among others ethical monotheism messi with nefesh devotion and the torah gives us none of that background we know of the righteousness of abraham once god speaks to him but we have the story of the archangel that's after god made a covenant to him but the torah gives us no inkling into avraham's story before so the morale says a very beautiful thought tells us any ahava any love taluya badavar that depends on something we'll call that conditional love i love someone because they're smart i love someone because they're good i love someone because of various characteristics physical beauty in particular so hazal say that type of love is not a guaranteed love because butler davar when the reason for that love is no longer present but the love goes away as well that's called love that depends on a certain factor ava [Music] but then there's a type of love that's much deeper ahava sha'ina to luyabidavor we would call that in english unconditional love like a parent for a child or the example the mission itself gives is the love of david and jonason and such a love can never be destroyed even if it's butler davar butler ava love sorry butler low butler this needs a little bit of an explanation what is what does unconditional love mean exactly now maybe for a parent to a child maybe you talk about an unconditional love but how can two human beings i mean for example when a husband and a wife marry and they're in love with each other you love someone because of some reason you love them because of their wisdom their kindness their gentleness their modesty their intelligence whatever it would be there's something i mean there's a reason i mean if a person loves another human being there is a reason for that love and if there's a reason for that love then does it become conditional love like what does unconditional love even mean so i would suggest the following i would suggest an unconditional even unconditional love always emanates from a cause unconditional love i mean david and jonason there was a reason why david and jonah son the son of became such close friends but here's the point love may start off because of a reason but at that point when your soul truly unites it no longer depends on the reason so in its genesis there is no such thing really as unconditional love in its inception but through the conditionality there is a meeting of the soul and when the souls are connected then they can't be separated this is the shilok the mishna makes between the conditionality of avatalia bedovar and the unconditionality of abrasion so let's now talk about the fact that god chooses avraham and god makes a covenant with avraham this is not the final covenant of circumcision but this is an initial stage in the covenant of and god says to abram this is not just a covenant with you but with your children with a nation that will be created they will have a mission and a purpose and a relationship did god have reasons for that yes we could talk about avraham's righteousness his willingness to die for god his messiah's nephesh his desire to teach people about godliness there are plenty of reasons but here's what the morale said if the torah would have said god chose avraham because of x y and z that would have implied a conditionality in the relationship and that could get us in trouble because what if future generations of jews are not righteous what if they don't seek to serve hashem what if they rebel against hashem if god made the covenant because of the righteousness of abraham then when we don't have that righteousness we are in danger of losing the relationship because it's ava bedovar butler but god wanted the covenant with avraham to be in the nature of unconditional love so it wasn't actually unconditional meaning god had reasons but the torah wanted to describe it as having no reason at all so it becomes unconditional love and what that means is therefore and this is a very important idea which is very relevant in the polemic against christianity for example right i mean essentially the fun foundational idea well there are a number of ideas but one of the foundational ideas of christianity is that the jewish people maybe they don't say it today because it's not politically correct but classic certainly classic catholic catholic theology is called supersessionist which basically means that the jewish people forfeited their relationship to god because of their sins and god no longer had a covenant with the jewish people and the sins are not just you know killing yeshua that's a separate thing but you know all of the sins that caused the destruction of the basal mix etc and therefore one of the names for the catholic church classically it was called the new israel they were the new jewish people with different obligations you know etc that's called supersessionist theology again i don't want to get into christianity so much the official position of the catholic church actually now rejects that idea but this is deeply deeply deeply embedded in many many many christians going back for two thousand years a fundamental belief so morale and i have a feeling maraud was actually writing this to kind of counter this argument morale is saying that's not emis no matter how sinful the jewish people are no matter how rebellious the jewish people are their covenantal relationship to god can never be abrogated does that mean there are no consequences to misbehavior of course there are consequences hashem has tough love hashem has love but it has consequences there is a destruction of the basement there's there is a gulles there are many many persecutions we go through because god wants to bring us to chuba so no one is suggesting that you know we live a life without responsibility for our actions but all of god's chastisements emanate from love and not rejection and the morale says that is why the covenant with avraham is described as having no reason for it at all because if the terror were to say that the covenant is based on reasons that would make it ava hatsuluya bedavar and then supersessionist claims would be correct that you should know that i mean maybe you i'm sure many of you know this that the establishment of the state of israel was an enormous theological challenge to many segments of christianity because they looked at the exile of the jewish people as proof that god has rejected them that was the proof that is why you are in exile so when jews came back to the land of israel and not only came back to the land of israel but established an autonomous jewish state well if i'm a believer in supersessionist theology how do i deal with that god is supposed to reject it and that is why for many many years the vatican did not recognize the state of israel and until pope paul in the uh i think in the 70s uh took a trip to israel no pope ever you know ever visited the holy land once it was under jewish control i mean during the crusades they would occasionally visit whatever but once it was under jewish control uh they did not visit because they didn't know how to answer it it was a stira it was a contradiction to their fundamental idea if i if i could digress on this idea of the unconditional nature of the covenant this is a really really really fundamental no matter how far a jew wanders away from god and no matter how far the jewish people wander away from that hashem is still with us hashem loves us hashem cares for us the special relationship is here even though there can be indeed very very negative consequences etc let's go to the story of a much later navi after the torah the navi hoshea right hoshea is the first of the twelve smaller books becca is actually the largest of the books and o'shea was a navi who lived in the northern kingdom of the ten tribes and this is before the destruction of the basa mikdash and he's you know dealing with a very corrupt society and he's giving musser et cetera like the navium do and the beginning of hoshea is a very strange story he is commanded to marry a very well-known prostitute whose name was gomer so imagine you're a navy you're one of the great great cadolum of the generation and you're told to marry a to use an older expression a woman of ill repute and he marries her because hashem said to marry her and even if even after he married her she's married to another she continues to engage in her prostitution so she's not even about shuba she's not someone who renounced what she was doing she continued of course it's much worse now because now it's not just prostitution it is also adultery and the mephorshim have a lot of problems with this story i mean did god tell him to do that so the abarth now says this was a dream sequence meaning he didn't actually do it but this was a dream a vision that hashem put into his mind that he had married this prostitute and she continued to engage in prostitution okay that's fine so that's my locus whether it actually happened or whether it was a dream or a trance sequence but the question is still the same what's the point of it what is what is the event designed to teach so the gemaran sakhin gives us a back story which is not in the in the biblical text and that is when god is telling hoshaya bring the jewish people to chuva hoshea at one point actually said you know god why are we going through this been there done that it never works why don't you just drop them and make a covenant with another nation now let's compare right away hoshea with moshe rabena in moshe albania's case after the sin of the golden calf that's what hashem proposed hashem proposed to moshe let me just destroy this troublesome sinful nation and you'll be the new jewish people i will make a covenant with you you know technically i'm still keeping the avraham covenant because you rather descended to rob rome too right i'll just get rid of the other 99.9999999 and you'll be fine what did moshe say moshe said to god i'm not making a private deal with you i either come with them or you erase me with them that was moshe but hoshea was a great navi but he was not moshe and osha actually said to god you know god why are we going through this rigoroum of of chewba blah blah blah so just forget about it let's start new and hashem told hoshea to marry a prostitute again whether it's a dream or real is is not important for this purpose and then when she continues to practice her prostitution god says to oshaya hey you got a divorcer she's not a faithful wife and oshea said i can't i love her too much so god says to hoshea now you know my problem the jewish people are the unfaithful wife we are treated as being betrapped to god but sometimes we're an unfaithful wife we commit adultery we turn to other gods in the olden days it was mamash idols today we could talk about right avodahzar is not necessarily bowing down to an idol but we worship money power materialism egotism political systems right that's also our voters are all those things are idolatry where they can be idolated of course obviously they can be used in good ways but when they replace service of hashem they become idolatry so really god ought to divorce us but he wanted the navi hoshea to understand that sometimes love can be so deep that you just can't help yourself now this is a very daring metaphor because you know god can do anything right what are you limiting but in some way and again this is metaphorical we obviously cannot grasp it completely in some way god is stuck with us in other words he wanted the navi hoshea to understand what it means to be married to a wife who continues to be unfaithful but your love is so strong that you just cannot separate yourself from her that is hashem's relationship to the jewish people that is what is called ahava no to abidabar and that is why the torah gives no reason for the choice of avraham are there reasons surely but the terror doesn't give them because the torah wants to underscore the unconditional nature of the covenantal relationship that god has with the jewish people and that's an important idea you know i i saw a story just outrageous story that um there is a group a jewish group that wants to ban not ban they're not seeking legal things but they want to encourage jewish parents not to give their kids a bris okay well we've had that before but they want shills well you know obviously not orthodox synagogues yet but they're turning to conservative and reformed synagogues to assist them in this effort by saying gee there ought to be other ways to have a covenant with god other than physical mutilation and the truth of the matter is hashem i think this is even the reformed synagogues have not been that responsive to their call by saying you know hey jews have jewish boys have to have a bris you know holding on to something so the truth of the matter is we live in times in which people are moving very very very far away and yet even then i mean think about this and in a perverse way i can look at this group and say they're so far from hashem that they're against circumcision but they want to be part of a jewish community just the same glass half empty half full right i mean on one hand they're calling for the greatest sin but they want to be part they say we want to be connected i don't know i mean that means something that means something in the sense that there's something in the jewish soul that doesn't want to cut off the connection with god no matter how far it is and no matter how crazy it is it wants to connect in some way and that is you know what has them called the pinta liyid the little spark of jewishness that's in the soul and the like now people ask the question if avraham is so great and god is making a special covenant with avraham why doesn't god give up from the torah i mean the torah was given later but the torah is god's will why doesn't god give avraham the torah in other words why didn't the albos avraham and then yaakov of course why didn't they get the torah so the question presupposes that not having the torah is a spiritual deficiency that's what the other if the others are so great shouldn't it shouldn't they have had the torah but in reality it may work exactly the opposite way the ovos did not need a revelation from god as to how they would live their lives they knew it through the exquisite spiritual intuition of their neshamas in fact the mishnan kedushian says that avraham avino now it only says it by avraham but the meforshim assume it's yitzhak yaga of the tribes everybody they kept the torah even before it was given at sinai abraham according to this warts villain and by the way this is i'm not going to go into this now this creates a whole genre of literature because every time the of us do something that is a violation of the torah later the commentaries have to address it for example how could yaakov marry two sisters rahul and leia if the torah prohibits even though it allows polygamy it prohibits marrying two sisters how could avraham serve the angels that he thought were people meat and milk if there's an issa of meat and milk that's why it says he first served them the milk and then the meat the butter and then they the meat etc in other words this is a whole genre in other words once you take the position the ovo's kept the torah then every time they do something that does not fit what the torah says later got a prop meaning if i learned they didn't have the torah then before mata ontario they could do a lot of things they were only bound by the seven commandments of noah so i'm not going to get into all of the questions these like numerous questions and there are whole books devoted to this idea uh of the of us keeping the time but what does it mean i just want to focus on a more basic question what does it mean that the ovo's kept the whole torah even though god didn't give it i mean how did they know if god did not tell avraham about to fill in about sixes about katris about shotness how did the others know and the answer is a very very deep answer that literally does not make sense on our madriga and that is they knew through the intuition of their souls now let's look at armadrega most people understand certain principles of morality almost maybe intuitively most people understand for example it's wrong to kill it's wrong to steal now i understand there are cynics that say that even those basic ideas are only matters of education that's what we know we heard that's wrong to kill and steal from the time we were very young so it's simply an environmental response in a person but i think judaism views it very differently beauty judaism views the soul as divine and in the divine soul there are intuitions of right and wrong conscience plays a role in spiritual life not just in fact that's a very interesting idea sometimes talaka might permit something but you have a feeling in your heart that it's not right so what do you do with that so some people say oh if i said you can do it go ahead and do it rav cook says not necessarily there's a reason why hashem gave you a conscience there's something your neshama feels that this isn't good and it's a very big hisa owner of cook rights again this is one of the controversial statements of course when you allow your meticulous halachic observance which is very significant of course to cause an atrophy of the natural conscience and morality that comes from god now again this is a little subtle the reason why it's subtle is that sometimes the feelings we have may not be the original feelings of the nishama but it may be things we heard about or we learned from the new york times or the jerusalem post or society as a whole i mean okay i don't want to get into controversial examples but let's say something like gay marriage or abortion okay i'm not going to be in this so we could feel oh how can you stop a woman from an abortion she's a single mother there's poverty there's rejection what will she do of course she has to have a right to choose so there it's it's a difficult issue because there on one hand your conscience says it ought to be allowed but your conscience is contradicting the halal again i'm not talking about the cases where abortion is allowed there are cases but let's assume it's the case where abortion right so in a case where tells you something's wrong but your conscience wants to legitimate it so at that point you have to assume that your conscience is not expressing a genuine divine message but it was kind of environmentally influenced that of cook writes of course he doesn't write this example of abortion when the permits something it doesn't require it just permits it but your conscience gives you a feeling that it's wrong that's something you've got to pay attention to it's called natural morality because steen wrote a very famous article about it it's available online so we do understand natural morality we understand it's wrong to steal we understand it's wrong to kill we understand it's wrong to humiliate people and hurt people for no reason if you have a reason it's okay but you know you don't just you don't just go around hurting people for no reason so here's the thing about the others that is so unique the same way that we understand that the structure of the universe requires that we don't kill and we don't steal the other saw to fill in and shabbos and kasras and shatness they saw that in the structure of the universe to be able to bring divine blessing into the world now we don't even understand that how does a person just figure out on their own that not wearing wool and linen is a good thing we have no idea but the question therefore why didn't the obvos get the torah for carrick the other way around they didn't need to get the torah they intuited the torah from the spiritual structure of the universe itself and it is only when we lost that intuition that god had to give us revelation now there's a deeper answer which i'm going to be walking on very very thin ice i'm going to just share with you a thought of rev sudok but but again many many people would not accept this thought and that is the torah is god's blueprint of course based on the law of averages meaning to say the torah is the system that is right and perfect for most jews most times meaning there may be in theory individual cases where the torah is not the best thing for that individual but god had to give a system that applies to the majority of everybody the majority of the times because we're not capable of making the discrimination am i in or am i out so we have a torah the ovos were on the madrega in which they understood the goodness of the torah but they also understood when they should deviate from that that's the deviate from the torah because they understood when it would be spiritually beneficial and that we lost and that's why we had revelation in other words this is very again this is a normally controversial idea because it could lead to great abuse because if god forbid somebody decides i don't want to be religious the torah is not for me well in the vast majority of cases they are seriously mistaken and this could have tragic repercussions but this is real controversial there may be a one in a million one in a billion one in a trillion one in a quadrillion and you never know where in fact it's better for him to be outside of the torah but god took away the ability to make those decisions because we're not capable of making those decisions we have to go with the average rule the greatness of the of us was not only that they kept the torah but they intuited when they shouldn't keep the torah and refrain the lodging says in the nether shachayan that that is something that since the sinai revelation we can no longer do okay again i'm i don't know if i should have even mentioned this today i'm sure i'm going to get some very very strong negative comments i do want to emphasize that the bottom line is that we cannot make those judgments today those were the judgments of the others and rakhine velazner says very very emphatically that we cannot make those judgments okay so those are reasons why the of us didn't get the torah okay but now i want to go to another another thought and that is there's a very very famous question that the mafursham asked that is if avraham avinu kept the whole torah before it was given then he surely knew that there would be a commandment of circumcision that would be given so why did he not give himself a breath until god commanded he knew shabbos kashus shatness twilight sisters he knew brittany if he knew with me then why did he not circumcise till he was 99 years old this is a famous kasha it is asked by a lot of sources but the one source is rabbiliyahu mizrahi who was a turkish rabbi in the 1500s and he wrote the greatest and most complete commentary on rashi called the mizrahi and all of the later commentaries on rashi are based on again this i know raviosa misraki is a famous speaker today but this is rabbi leon is rocking and rolling asks to kacha why didn't avraham do a bris before so the mizrahi gives one's very beautiful answer he says simply cause i'll say you get more reward when you do a mitzvah you're commanded to do than when you do a mitzvah you're not commanded to do so if avraham would have circumcised himself before he was commanded he would never have the ch see other mitzvos i can do them now and then when god commands me i can do them again with me lie you only have one chance to do so if avraham would have done it without a commands it would have been a name at ceviosa so we had to defer it as a mitsuba viosa because otherwise he never would have had the chance that's one answer answer number two is brits milan is the one mitzvah you cannot do without a command and have it and the reason is because brit mila is a covenant brits me la is a relationship a relationship can exist only if both sides want the relationship you can't make a brit with another person even unless the other person agrees so until god commands the brit if abraham were to cut himself there that wouldn't be a covenant because the other side is not ready for that relationship so brits mila by definition has to await god saying i'm ready for this covenantal relationship because then it becomes the covenant that is second answer the third answer is given by the maharisha the marsha moreno of shmuel eliezer was one of the greatest talmudic commentators in poland again in the 1600s in fact every single gemara you look at that in the back of the gemara is the commentary of the marsha on gumara rashitosas that's one of the greatest of our swarm and the marshal says that the kasha is actually circular you're asking if avram kept the whole torah before it was given he should have circumcised himself without the commandments says to marsha when we say avraham kept the whole torah before it was given it was only after circumcision circumcision gave him the ability to intuit torah in the world so in other words before he circumcised he didn't know the mitzvot that would be a very very good answer that through brit milah he acquired the knowledge of the torah and that's why he couldn't do brit mila beforehand because he wouldn't he wasn't aware of it so what i want to explain in the few minutes that we have left is how does brit mila elevate avraham and give him the capacity to see the torah in the mitzvot in the physical structure another point to keep in mind is that we know at the end of lecha avraham and sarai's name is changed with the addition of aha to each of them so instead of avram he is now avraham and sarai is no longer sarai she is sarah the way some people describe it the yurt of sarai was split into two hays so it actually all came from the woman avraham got half of the and sarai kept the other half so she's left with the hay and abram is left for the hang what so two things why does britmillah give avraham the understanding of the torah and why is brit mila the catalyst for the change of name sarai right to sarah abram to ever so to explain this let me share with you gamora massachusetts menaches the gemara in massachusetts says that god created through the spiritual power of the letter yud and god created allam hazzah through the spiritual power of the letter hey and that is the meaning of the passage that we recite every day ki baka hashem cause yudhi with yud and hey sur olamim hashem created worlds i.e through why is yud the letter of islam habbah and why is hey the letter of isa so the morale says is the least physical of any letter because you're the smallest letter so you'd represent spirituality that is divorced from the physical that is the pure spiritual realm where there is no physicality yurd represents the absence of the physical hey morale says could be viewed as a composite letter dalit visualize a dalit and the left hand regal of the hay could be seen as a yoda to me i would have said above but he says it's dalid and yod dalid and yod is hey now dalit is pure materialism because dalit represents the four dimensions of matters as einstein did not invent space-time continuum it was already known the idea that matter consists of you know length height width and time because time is an incident and a characteristic of matter right matter exists within a time space continuum so for is gush me for is materialism physicality what is yud yuri is bringing the spirituality into the physical yet into dalit gives you a hay so what is hey hey is the integration spirituality in the mundane activities of life so even when you're earning money even when you're getting you know taking care of children changing diapers marital intimacy these are physical actions many of them we share in common with animals but we can elevate them we can consecrate them we can sanctify them judaism does not believe in renouncing the physical we don't believe in celibacy or poverty we don't believe that holiness is achieved by rejecting the physical holiness is achieved by taking the physical and elevating it now note that hay is only half the gematria of yud because it is true that when your holiness is divorced from the real world it may be more intense the good holiness right the monk that meditates you know for for 18 hours a day may achieve a very very high level of spirituality but that's not god's goal in other words when you're involved in the world things will be less intense but ultimately they are more meaningful and deeper because you're bringing holiness even into the material world in the famous language of the balatanya which is actually the language of a madrid god wanted his dwelling place to be batactonium in the lowest of the worlds you don't escape the low world you take the low world and you elevate it so it turns out that yurt is the level of pure spirituality that is not connected to gash meat hey is the integration of the spiritual into the physical now to answer my second question why why why is brits mila connected to sheena yashem because brits mila has many many meanings but one of the meanings of brits mila is that even the most physical sensual animalistic drives of a human being the sexual function can be consecrated to the service of god brits mila itself is a symbol of how physicality materialism typho animal impulse can be challenged and ele channeled and elevated because brits mila gave them the capacity to sanctify the physical and that explains why they were able to intuit the torah only after brits mila because what is torah about you know one might have thought i should serve god by meditation i should serve god by withdrawal why am i taking leather and making to fill in why am i taking wool and making citrus why am i taking a lure of an s-rogue and a ramshorn what is torah about other than seeing in the physical world opportunities to serve god but avraham could not relate to god that way till after brittany before but he related to god only from the perspective of the spiritual after brits mila he understood that even the gross physicality of this world can be the means to serve god and that is why he and sarah got the hay now let me just add that this may explain a very very interesting thing this is a thought for a shovel brachas that is there's a famous gemaran yuvamos that says man and woman the man is called ish and the woman is called isha they share two letters aleph and shin and the man has a yud and a woman has a hay so the gemaran yevamah says yudhei is god's name so the idea is when god is in the marriage the man is a man and the woman is a woman they're doing exactly what they should be doing you take god out of the marriage take out the old head what do you have a selfish egotistic fire in which they destroy each other so that's a beautiful word about shalom bias that bring hashem into the marriage things are good take hashem out of the marriage you have ish but the question is why does the man get the hood and the woman get the hay so it could very well be this idea generally that if you it represents pure spirituality and hay represents integrating spirituality into kadusha it could very well be and i'm generalizing obviously that women have a superior capacity for integration when men confront the world testosterone takes over competitiveness egotism and therefore the same way somebody with emphysema has to have like pure oxygen so too a man needs to get or get away from the world sometimes go to yeshiva go to kobel go to show ola get away from that world for a while at least because that world is going to drag you down a woman's godless is that she can bring the spiritual into the physical uh taking care of children's shabbos table whatever it would be and in many ways when she is said to be azer connector the help made of men part of her help is she shows him the holiness of the physical she shows him the hay just as sarai gave avraham the hay actually right sorry the yurt of sarai was split into two hays so avraham got his hay from sarah so that's a mokshava to think about that the special role of a woman is to show a man how to integrate spiritual ideas into the tangible mundane realities of life and that is why the marshal says avraham was able to intuit the torah only after breitmillah and that is why avraham and sarai acquired the hay or at least her yid was split only after brits mila because brit mila teaches us the ability to infuse the physical and even animalistic and involuntary with ideas of kadusa so wish everybody a good job it's a good week and uh everyone's your business shouldn't be in good health [Music] is