Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: Unity of the Community through Individuality or Conformity

Okay, everybody and I hope everyone here had a wonderful Shavuos and I'm actually speaking from Yerushalayim towards the end of the second day of Shavuos or the second day of Shavuos just ended. So the people in America however still observing the second day. So I wish them a good Yom Tov when they hear it later. And as always the the Shiurim dedicated for the Refuah Shleimah of Chaya Shifra bat Gelila Yoheved Gelila Yoheved bat Devorah and Binyamin Yisrael Chaim ben Chanita who we've been praying for a very long time. And be'ezrat Hashem he and all of the cholim should have a Refuah Shleimah betoch shaar cholei Yisrael. Uh Klal Yisrael is obviously going through very very difficult times just as it seems that we are emerging from Corona. Thank God we have new sorrows that that come up but we had the tragedy in Meron and then the Friday night I think Shavuos night there was a tragedy in Pisgat Ze'ev in the Karliner Beis Hamedrash. And of course all of us are very very very concerned about the terrorism in Eretz Yisrael and the missiles and particularly in Lod and some other mixed Arab Jewish cities. There is a lot of riding a lot of violence and many people are not secure in their own homes. And we pray as the Mishna says the last Mishna in Shas that lo matza Hakadosh Baruch Hu kli machzik bracha al ha shalom that Hashem did not find a vessel that can contain all brachos more than shalom. Shalom is not just a bracha, shalom is a vessel that enables all the other brachos to have meaning. So, I think it behooves all of us to first of all, we're living here, so actually we are in a dangerous situation ourselves. But Baruch Hashem, so far and it should continue, we've been relatively safe, but there are people who are in sakana and it behooves all of us to pray for them, to think about them to ask Hashem's rachamim and bracha for Am Yisrael, for the toshavei Eretz Yisrael and really for the entire for the entire world. So, if I could just add a dedication, I would like to dedicate our learning tonight for all of those who are in sakana that they should have a a hatzalah. There are really two things I want to talk about tonight which are not really related, but they're two different thoughts. One is I want to append a thought to what I spoke about last week before Shavuos because it's very relevant to the second day of Shavuos. You will recall which is today, or at least was today. You will recall that last week we spoke about the Magen Avraham's very famous question in which the Magen Avraham says that we celebrate Matan Torah on the 50th day of the Omer. We count 49 days and we celebrate the 50th day of Shavuos. But the Magen Avraham proved from the Gemara in Maseches Shabbos that the Torah was not given on the 50th day of the Omer, the Torah was given on the 51st day. What would have been the 51st day? And the proof is because the Gemara in Shabbos has a braysa from Seder HaOlam that says that we left Mitzrayim on a Thursday and that means that was the 15th of Nissan and therefore the first day of the Omer was Friday. And when you count 7 weeks, the 49th day of the Omer is Thursday. That would make Friday the 50th day and yet the Torah was given on Shabbat, the day after. So if that's the case, we celebrate Shavuot a day earlier than the Torah was actually given. And the Magen Avraham's answer was that in reality it was Hashem's original plan to give the Torah on Friday, which would have been day 50, and it was only Moshe Rabbeinu on his own initiative who pushed it off an extra day to Shabbat. So we celebrate Shavuot not on the day that the Torah was actually given, but on the day that the Torah would have been given based on Hashem's original plan. Again, that's a very dramatic answer because it actually says nothing happened on Shavuot. Nothing happened. The Torah was given the day after, but we celebrate God's original plan. Last week, you might recall we we spoke about the meaning of that and I'm not going to repeat that thought. Uh but I just want to share with you a a machshava from one of the great great Kabbalists, Rabbi Menachem Azariah mi Pano. Pano was a city in Italy. Ram mi Pano who was a talmid of a talmid of the Ari Zal. He himself was not a direct talmid of the Ari Zal. And the Ram mi Pano uh talks about the idea, why did Moshe add an extra day? Why did Moshe push off Matan Torah to an extra day? Now, simple pshat is he felt the Jewish people needed more spiritual preparation. That that's the normal understanding. But my Ram mi Pano gives a very striking insight. Moshe Rabbeinu uh Does the Torah say that he made a cham cham? For about carrying Yes. three days. Yes. Yes. So, he made a he made a drasha. He made a drasha. But, the Ram Pano Al Pi Kabala wants to give a a deeper reason of perhaps why he viewed the drasha in that way. And the Ram Pano says that Mosha wanted to legitimate the institution of a second day of Shavuot in the Gola. Now, let me explain why. This is already a question that the Rambam brings. Why do we have two days of Yom Tov in Chutz La'aretz? So, the original reason was that when there was a Sanhedrin in Yerushalayim and they would proclaim a given day to be Rosh Chodesh, the new moon, and the holidays would be calculated X number of days from the new moon, so outside of Eretz Yisrael, they never really knew when the Sanhedrin made Rosh Chodesh Rosh Chodesh because Rosh Chodesh could either be um well, well, there was any given month might be with Rosh Chodesh being day 30 or a month could be 30 days with Rosh Chodesh being day 31 and it really depended on when the witnesses saw the new moon. Now, throughout Eretz Yisrael, within at least the span of 2 weeks before Pesach whatever it would be, they would be able to know what day was made Rosh Chodesh and they would be able to have the appropriate count. But, outside of Eretz Yisrael, they lived in a permanent state of doubt at least for that month. Was it day 29 or day 30? So, as a result, they had to count the Yom Tov from either the 30th day if the old month was 29 or the 31st day if the old month was 30 and hence they had to keep two of those Yamim Tovim. Okay, that's the concept of called Sfeika D'Yoma and even though the Gemara says Bizman Hazeh, we work with a predetermined calendar, so we know which months are 29 and which months are 30. So, logically, there in fact is no reason for the Gola to have 2 days of Yom Tov, but Chazal decided that we should keep the original custom of Safek in case we ever go back to the old system or whatever it is. Now, the question is this. That makes sense why we have 2 days of Pesach both in the beginning and at the end and why we have 2 days of Sukkot and why we have 2 days of Shmini Atzeret in the Gola because all of these are Safek. But, LeChumra, there is no reason why Shavuot should be 2 days. And the reason is the following. The reason is because since Shavuot is not based on a calendar date, Shavuot is simply the 50th day from the Omer, so it makes no difference. So, so by the time you got into Sivan, even in Chutz La'Aretz, they knew when Nissan was and they knew when the Omer began and they knew what day would be Shavuot even though they didn't know if when Rosh Chodesh Sivan was. So, they didn't know if it was if it was the fifth or the sixth or the seventh. They didn't know that. But, you don't need that knowledge for the holiday of Shavuot. You just need to know when the second day of Pesach was. And that did require knowing when Rosh Chodesh Nissan was, but even in the Gola, by the end of 7 weeks, they certainly knew when Rosh Chodesh Nissan was. So, logically, therefore, Shavuot should only be 1 day even in the Gola because the whole concept of Sfeika D'Yoma is irrelevant. And the answer the Rambam gives simply is Shelo Tachlok B'Mo'adim. That when the Chachamim enacted the requirement of two days, even though the logic of that rule doesn't apply to Shavuos, they didn't want to differentiate because if Shavuos would be one day, then some guy might think, "Oh, if Shavuos is one day, why does why does Sukkos have to be two days or whatever it would be?" This is called a low plug, a very common rule in Halacha that we don't make distinctions even though logically a distinction could be made, but it it might lead to this to confusion. So, the Ramami Pano says, "Moshe knew that there would be a logical objection to having a Yom Tov Sheini of Shavuos. So, he wanted to confer on the second day of Shavuos an extraordinary importance that would single it out as a day worthy of celebration. And what is that importance? It became the day that we received the Torah. In other words, it actually is the day of Matan Torah, and as a result, it has an unusual importance. Now, that means even in Eretz Yisrael, where today was Isru Chag, it was the day after the Yom Tov, it still has the Chashivus of the day of Matan Torah. Since Moshe Rabbeinu was not permitted to enter Eretz Yisrael, and even though this is before his sin, he knew he would not be entering. There are many many Rayas that Moshe understood he would not be entering Eretz Yisrael. So, Moshe Rabbeinu felt a special connection to all of the Jews who are stranded in Chutz La'Aretz and not able to come, and he wanted to give them a special significance in the second day of Shavuos that they keep, that that actually became the day of Matan Torah. This is from the Ramah of Menachem Azariah Mipano. By the way, for those who are interested in the history of Kabbalah or history generally, uh let me just point out two interesting things about Ram Ami Pano. Uh, the first is an observation that Rav Footner made uh made. And that is we know that all of the Kabbalah of the Ari has been filtered down to us essentially through only one Talmud. That is Rav Chaim Vital. When people talk about Kisvei ha'Ari, the writings of the Ari, there are virtually there are a few, but there's virtually no writings of the Arizal. Rav Chaim Vital who is the Arizal's great disciple is the one who wrote down what uh the Ari said and he interpreted it and the like. Now, the Arizal had many other talmidim. Although he only taught for for two years. He died very very young. But he had many many talmidim, but Rav Chaim Vital ordered everybody to turn in their notebooks to him when the Arizal died and he would decide what goes in, what goes out. But there were a few renegades who didn't turn in their notes. And as a result, there actually is an alternative Kabbalistic Lurianic tradition that is different than Rav Chaim Vital. And most of those Sefarim have never been printed. They're actually manuscripts. People who are Mekubalim, I am not one of them. They actually have manuscripts of the non-Rav Chaim Vital uh Kabbalah uh that they utilize. But Rav Footner pointed out that the Ram Ami Pano's Rebbe and uh Rebbe this country the Arizal is bedafka not not through Rav Chaim Vital. It's a different channel. And therefore the very great importance of Ram Ami Pano is that you can actually find Kabbalistic ideas that do not appear in any of the Arizal's Kisvei ha'Ari because all the Kisvei ha'Ari are Rav Chaim Vital and this is the non-Rav Chaim Vital variant. Again, I mean most of us would not really understand the great great differences. Uh but it's very clear that even a safer like Tanya, uh, a lot of it is is not the mainstream Lurianic Kabbalah and some of it comes from the non-Rav Chaim Vital understanding of the Kitzur RE. That is point number one that at least for a from historical standpoint is actually very very interesting. Uh, point number two is that we have some drawings of Rabbi Nachman Azariah mi Pano and he did not have a beard. He was clean-shaven and the later pictures try to airbrush it or correct it and put in a beard, but uh, those were actually changes in the picture. And this in fact was the shita of many Italian mekubalim that a beard is connected to Eretz Yisrael. A beard represents a certain level of kedusha and therefore only when you are in Eretz Yisrael, uh, do you have the beard. In chutz la'aretz, you're supposed to be, uh, clean-shaven. And indeed, many say the Ramchal was also originally from Italy. The Ramchal, too, uh, did not have a beard until he came to Eretz Yisrael where he also died very young. He came to Eretz Yisrael only at the very end of his life and he, too, died around the age of 40 and, uh, his official grave is in Tiberias next to Rabbi Akiva and the Rambam, but some say he would actually died in Akko. Some say that the thing that's marked as his kever is actually not uh, not his kever. I I have no idea, but this is what uh, different people say. By the way, just as an aside, I'm sorry I'm I'm digressing tonight, but the digressions, uh, hopefully are of some interest. You know, the Ramchal today is very very mekubal. It's a little bit of a pun, a kabbalist mekubal, but also widely accepted. Ramchal is mainstream. Every yeshiva learns uh, the Ramchal and and the like. Uh, but the Ramchal in his own lifetime was a very very persecuted, uh, person. I don't mean persecuted by God, I mean persecuted by rabbonim, by what they did. The Ramchal lived shortly after Shabbatai Zevi and the Ramchal also lived shortly after Baruch Spinoza, Benedict Spinoza was excommunicated and there was a lot of fear about false messianism and the havoc that that erect. And the Ramchal was teaching Kabbalah and very original Kabbalah as well. He was even writing a new Zohar amazingly enough. And uh the many, many of the rabbonim of the time were very, very concerned that this would lead to a Shabbatai Zevi cult of personality. And the Ramchal was excommunicated Well, he was not excommunicated, but he was ordered not to teach Kabbalah. Uh and he first he relocated to Amsterdam and then he had the same problem in Amsterdam and then eventually he came to Eretz Yisrael. But it's interesting, they say that Hashem has a sense of humor. You know, when when when when you think about the seforim of the Ramchal that are so widely learned, the Mesillat Yesharim, which is considered to be the greatest of the mussar books, the Derech Hashem, which is considered to be once again one of the greatest, if not the greatest, systematic exposition. So we talked about the three major seforim, the Mesillat Yesharim, which is for mussar, the Derech Hashem, which is the basic philosophical um outline of Judaism, the Da'at Tevunot, which is a very, very deep book about the reward and punishment and hashgacha pratit, divine providence, and the like. Uh the only reason the Ramchal wrote those was he was not allowed to write his Kabbalistic works. So he had to turn to writing books about in non-Kabbalistic terminology. Now, of course, all three of those seforim are totally based on Kabbalah. Even Mesillat Yesharim is actually a Kabbalistic text, but he does not explicitly draw on Kabbalistic sources. Uh Derech Hashem a tiny bit more Kabbalistic does, who knows, a little bit more. Uh but the Ramchal was an unusual genius and even as a stylist and he was able to essentially present Kabbalistic ideas in totally non-Kabbalistic language because the Ramchal wrote many Kabbalah works that we still have. The Kolah Pisgai Chochmah, which is really an exposition of of the Ari's Kabbalah, but in his three major non-Kabbalah works, uh he tries to avoid that type of terminology. Uh but it is said that the Ramchal himself destroyed thousands and thousands of pages of Kabbalistic writings. He thought uh I'm not sure he thought they would fall into the wrong hands or he thought the Chaim Mordechai meant to get rid of them. It's not clear why he felt he had to destroy them. Uh but the Vilna Gaon said that if the Ramchal would have been alive in the Vilna Gaon's lifetime, he would have walked to Italy or Amsterdam to learn Torah from the Ramchal. And in many, many ways, the Ramchal's reputation became so stellar because of the endorsement of the Vilna Gaon, meaning in the Ramchal's own lifetime, he was persecuted. Uh he was thought to be almost semi-heretical uh because of the fear of connecting him to Shabbatai Zevi. And really, it was the Vilna Gaon's imprimatur that kind of koshered uh the Ramchal and made him part of the mainstream of of all the learning that that that we do. So again, very very interesting, but I'm just bringing this in as another aside that based on the sheet of the Italian Kabbalah, it is said the Ramchal also did not have a beard until he came to to Eretz Israel. Okay. So forgive my my digression, but But was point number one I want you to uh talk about. Uh point number two is uh we last Shabbos we began uh the fourth Chumash, the Chumash Bamidbar. And although we're a week behind, but Shavuos intervened, I want to kind of give a general introduction into one of the main themes of Bamidbar. We know that the English name for the Chumash Bamidbar means the desert because it talks about all the events in the desert and and the uh what you know, among the beginning words of the Chumash is Bamidbar Sinai. But we know that the English uh word for the Chumash is Numbers. And indeed, that is actually the rabbinic name for the Chumash Bamidbar. It's called Chumash HaPekudim, the Chumash of census. I think the Latin of census is sensai. And uh there's a very good reason why it is called the Book of Numbers or Chumash HaPekudim because it begins with a counting of the Jewish people. And towards the end of the Book of Bamidbar in Parshas Pinchas, it counts them again. And uh it's a it's a different population base. In the beginning of the Book of Bamidbar, the generation that left Egypt is counted, meaning anyone that was 20 years old when they left Mitzrayim is counted. Uh the second census occurs 40 years later or 38 and a half years later after the uh old generation has died out. And now we are including the counting of the people that are coming to Eretz Yisrael. Right? One is Yotzei Mitzrayim and the second one is Bo'ei Ha'aretz. And this includes people who were under 20 when they left Mitzrayim and anybody that was born in the desert. Right? So, it's a different population base. Interestingly enough, well, if you compare the two countings, although the numbers of people in each tribe is different. There's a different tribal count, but you come up with the same with the same same total, which is actually very, very fascinating point. So, the idea of the Book of Numbers makes a lot of sense because the first minyan, the first census, counts the Yotzei Mitzrayim. And the second census counts the Bo'ei Ha'aretz. And this is very important in terms of distributing land and and the like. Both of them count only males from the age of 20 up and upwards. Now, Rashi Now, let's talk about the first census. The first census, we're given the exact date of when at least at least when it started. That is, it started the first day of the second month of the second year of the Exodus. By that we mean the following. In the Torah, the years always begin from Nisan, not Rosh Hashanah. Rosh Hashanah is the seventh month, Tishrei. So, we left Mitzrayim Nisan of year one. Year two begins next Nisan. And Nisan of year two, the Mishkan was dedicated, Rosh Chodesh Nisan. That is when Nadav and Avihu died. And one month after the dedication of the Mishkan, Rosh Chodesh Iyar in year two, Hashem commands Moshe and Aaron to count all of the males from the age of 20 and up. Okay? So, this is one month, just keep in mind the chronology. This is one month after the dedication of the Mishkan, 13 months or 12 and 1/2 months after they left Mitzrayim. Now, Rashi points out a very interesting thing. Although this is the first explicit census that is mentioned in the Torah, but there in fact was an earlier census around 6 months earlier. Because when the Mishkan was being constructed, now this is after Yom Kippur, right? Moshe comes down with the second Luhos. Hashem forgives the sin of the golden calf. And the day after Yom Kippur, Moshe gathers Am Yisrael. And he says, "Let's construct the Mishkan." And among the things that Am Yisrael had to contribute was a half shekel, which was melted and used for the sockets of the Mishkan. And in Parshas Pekudei, we are not told about a census, per se, but we are given the total number of shekalim, or the weight, the total weight the shekel is a weight. The total weight of everything. And if you multiply uh that uh by by two, in other words, you it tells you how many shekalim, multiplied by two, that tells you how many half shekalim, you get a population base that once again is the same as you had in Iyar. So, Rashi So, it turns out that the half shekalim themselves gave you a population number. So, Rashi asks two questions. Question number one, if the Jewish people are counted right after Yom Kippur via the half shekel, why do they have to be counted again 6 months later in Iyar? Why is there a need for a counting 6 months apart. Bishlamai Parshas Pinchas, the second counting, that's 40 years later, and that's a different population base. But here, the people were counted uh through the half shekel after Yom Kippur, and now you're counting them again in Iyar. What's the point? With that, Rashi asks a second kasha. That's very interesting. How could the populations be the same? Because again, if you count the half shekels, you get the same population, 603, 000 with a little change. Here's the problem. You get counted when you reach the age of 20. Now, that means anybody who was 19 at the time of the first counting, who had a birthday between Yom Kippur, let's say, and Iyar, would be counted in the second one, even if he wouldn't be counted in the first one. So, didn't anybody have a birthday that would raise them from 19 to 20? Now, you might answer, okay, but maybe the people who became 20 in those six months were equaled by people who died in those six months, and therefore the deaths and the births and I and and the birthdays canceled each other out. That's a possible answer, uh but many meforshim say that there was no such thing as natural death in the midbar. Many people died in the midbar, for sure, but the only people who died in the midbar were the people who died because of specific sins, whether it be uh the egal, whether it be the miraglim, whether it be Korach, whether it be the whole generation of people who died over 40 years, obviously 600,000 people, but other than that, nobody just died because they got old. And as a result, since between Yom Kippur and Iyar, there is no particular sin recorded other than the deaths of Nadab and Abihu, and they they weren't counted anyway because the Levites were not counted in that calculation. So, you can't really answer that the deaths were equal to the people who had their 20th birthday. So, these are two questions that Rashi asks. Question one, why is there a need for a census 6 months apart? Question two, how could the numbers be the same if some people were 19 and they had their 20th birthday in the middle? So, Rashi gives an answer to each question. The The answer to the first question is that Rashi says that when God counts and recounts Am Yisrael, it is not for informational purposes. It is an expression of love. It is a derech chibah. Just as a miser counts his money over and over and over and over and over again because it's so precious to him, so too Hashem counts the Jewish people because they are precious to him. And he counts them whenever there's a significant event. In the aftermath of the Agel, he counts the Jews to see that they're still here. When the Mishkan is built and he's coming to rest his Shechinah on he counts them. So, according to Rashi, repetitive minyan is derech chibah. Derech chibah means it's a way of expressing affection. Now, what about the second question? Didn't anybody get older? So, here Rashi says a tremendous chiddush. Rashi says that everybody had an identical birthday, lockstep. Uh and that's every Rosh Hashanah they became 1 year older. Meaning, let me give you an example. Let's imagine you have two boys. One boy is born in the month of Tishrei and the other boy is born 11 months later in the month of Elul. 11 months later, they're 11 months apart. When the next Rosh Hashanah comes both boys are going to be called 1 year old. Everybody becomes 1 year older on Rosh Hashanah. This is lockstep birthdays. It's not based on your actual date of birth. Rather, you're born in the in a year when that year changes, you're now 1 year older. It's a calendar year. Right, that's correct. It's a calendar year. I understand that uh someone told me that the Chinese do that do that. I don't know if that's I don't know if that's true. Uh and I'm also told that uh racehorses Schools do that. To get kids Oh, yeah, yeah, you're right, for classes, right. So, when Mayla Rashi says if you were 19 at the time of the first census, Yom Kippur you would not become 20 till next Rosh Hashanah. And since between Yom Kippur and Elul, there's no Rosh Hashanah you if you were 19 the first time, you were 19 the second time, right? So, therefore, based on the lockstep uh calendar birthday there would be no change in the population. A very very interesting shidush that Rashi says. Okay. Now, here is the point, though. Even though it turns out that the Jewish people were counted twice uh they were counted when they gave their half shekels for the construction of the Mishkan and they were counted 1 month after the Mishkan was built it's important to note that the way they were counted is very different in the two scenarios. The first time they were counted it was a very anonymous counting. By that, I mean, people put half shekels in the pushka. And Mosha and Aaron tabulated the half shekels. And they knew the population via the tabulation of the half shekels. Now, in parshas Bamidbar, the Torah does not explicitly state that they were counted by half shekels. Now, many Rishonim and Rashi himself says they did give a half shekel. So, we would assume that the half shekel remained constant in both minyanim. But there's still a difference. And the Ramban points out that unlike the first minyan, where you simply put your coin in the pushka, the second minyan, you actually hand your coin to Mosha Rabbeinu. And you introduce yourself. Right? The Ramban has a very beautiful explanation that the lashon Mispar Shemot, which we stand we translate Mispar Shemot versus the counting of names. But the Ramban says Mispar Shemot is the narration of a name. This is actually a very beautiful idea because if you think about this, Mosha Rabbeinu, the greatest prophet whoever lived, the one who did all the miracles in Mitzrayim, the one who gave us the Torah, how many Jews ever spoke to Mosha Rabbeinu even in the Dor Hamidbar? How many Jews ever had a connection to Mosha Rabbeinu? I mean, even looking at Mosha Rabbeinu was scary. I mean, he is his head was covered. I mean, he would walk because of the light of the Shechinah. I mean, he was like a like a ghost-like figure. Uh you know, if you had a problem with your uh milchik spoon and your fleishig bowl, you didn't go to Mosha Rabbeinu. First of all, with Maimon, those problems were not so uh common anyway. And there were other people to to to pasken those shailos. So, the average Jew, if we could talk about the Dor Hamidbar being average, nobody was really average. The average Jew had no shyness to motion up here. He was unimaginably great. But the Rambam says it was extremely important that at least once in your life you go over to motion up here and then you say, "Hi, I'm Avram, I'm Yitzchak." Whatever it would be. It was important for you to connect to motion. And it was also important for motion. Because sometimes when someone is a leader, you know, they're a leader of a nation, they're a leader of a people, they don't always realize that their decisions impact on individuals. You're not just the leader of cloud Israel as a good elected say, you have to be the leader and supporter of Reb Israel, the individual Jew itself. So this was a way that motion up here could connect. I mean, I mean, you see this, this is why presidents, you know, sometimes go to a diner to have, you know, I mean, it's politics, but they do it to sit with the common person and kind of let's talk about, "Hey, you know, what you know, how's your life going?" Whatever it Okay, that that a lot of that is fake, but there is something important in a leader being connected to the people. So that's one difference. The first minion, you didn't have that. The first minion was anonymity. The second minion Mispar Shemot. Meaning it still was through half shekels. Because that's another halakha. You don't tabulate a population by a head count. You got to do it by counting other things. So the Rishonim do say it was a half shekel. By the way, what were they used for? The first half shekels were used to be melted down for the sockets of the Mishkan. Okay, that's fine. What were the second half shekels? So, that's done. They were used to buy the animals for the carbonos, just like the half shekels. In fact, every year they gave a half shekel for that purpose. Now, there's another point. In the first minyan, we have a total of how many men from 20 and up there is, but we don't have a tribal breakdown. We don't know how many Reuvens, how many Shimon's, how many Yehuda's. The first time that we have a tribal breakdown is only in the second counting, in Bamidbar, and not in the first counting. And again, that also highlights the idea of the first counting as being very anonymous, very collective, very aggregate, not focused on individuality or the or the like, both in terms of the fact that people just dropped their money in and didn't physically give it to Moshe, and in the fact that there's no break there's no tribal breakdown. It's just a collectivity. So, this would seem to suggest that there are two different ways of counting the population. One is a very general minyan, and one is a more specific breakdown. And what would the lesson of that be? What would the significance of those two modes of counting be? And why do you go from mode A, modality A, to modality B? Well, all of us know, and we spoke about this more than once, that the idea part of the idea of the half shekel count, which was both for the first counting and the second counting, is that the half shekel is a lesson in unity and togetherness because a half is incomplete unless it is joined to another half that makes a whole. Right? So, the half shekel, the notion is I am incomplete unless I am part of a community and the like. But, there are two different ways societies form communities. And here I'm I'm even referring to secular societies. Right? A society combines people with different backgrounds, different histories. And you somehow have to create a unity in a community. There are two ways of doing it, and I'm going to make up a name for these. One might be called the melting pot. Again, that's a familiar term. And one might be called the salad bowl. A melting pot is the concept of forging a community by obliterating differences. This was certainly the model uh in the United States for the first half of the 20th century. And this was also the model here in Israel in the uh founding years of the state in which people came, whether it came on in came and Ashkenazim came and Sephardim came. And part of the Zionist agenda, again, I'm I'm not here to condemn, although it is still a very painful uh part of the history of the state. Uh in which see, people again, I don't want to get too political here. I mean, we have different stories of of Yemenite children, you know, being placed in non-religious homes and uh their payas being cut off and even children who came from the Shoah, from the Holocaust, and uh and and people like to portray this as the anti-religious animus of the Zionist state. Um I don't I don't want to go there in particular. I don't think we need to get involved in accusations. Uh what was really going on, I think, was that there was a belief, which again, it absolutely an incorrect belief, but it was a belief that the only way you could forge a state and a society and a culture with people coming from so many different countries and backgrounds was to create a homogenization. Get rid of differences. Don't have the Ashkenazim, Sephardim, Yemenite, and all that stuff. Everybody should be the same. Common language. Even the army. Part of why to this very day military service is uh discussed as such an important value is not only the security needs of the state of Israel, which are, of course, enormously important, but because Ben-Gurion, going back to Ben-Gurion, he saw the army as one great unifying, homogenizing experience in which every Israeli, in of course in Ben-Gurion's view that would have meant men and women, would go through the same experience. And they would emerge with a cohesiveness. I I guess the point I'm making is that the motives were not sinister. The motives were benign, although I do believe that the results were were very, very misguided in some ways. But again, I don't want to get get into that too much. But what is the model again of of a melting pot? The model of a melting pot is you want to create a society, get rid of the differences. Make everybody the same. You know, today the opposite of that is, of course, multiculturalism, in which every group is encouraged to do its own thing. I mean, if you go back, let's say, those of you I guess the older people in the room, growing up in America in the the '50s and certainly before that, the '40s, the '30s, the concept that a public school would offer regular classes in Spanish language, that would have been absolutely ludicrous. You come to America, you learn English. Which is exactly what, you know, my parents did and then really all of the Jewish certain the Jewish immigrants from from from Europe. Because the concept was English is the language. Just as Hebrew is our language here. So, melting pot means the formation of community by obliteration of differences. That's one type of unity. A unity that is based on conformity and sameness. There's another type of unity that we could describe with a variety of metaphors. A salad bowl might be one type of metaphor. You have lettuce and tomatoes and peppers and olives and mushrooms, different colors, different textures, different tastes. An orchestra. And each one can be seen as something distinct, but they harmoniously blend to create a whole that is greater than the sum of the parts. And you can use exactly as you said, you can use other metaphors besides the gastronomic. You could talk about a symphony in which the beauty of a symphony is the multiplicity of notes. If you simply play the same notes over and over and over again, it would not be that musical. Or garden. Like Demetrius says that the beauty of a garden is the diversity of flowers. They do have gardens that may have 10,000 red roses and that may have a certain beauty, but for most of us, the beauty comes with the variety of thing. Or you can talk about a tapestry. The different individual colors blend or a mosaic. There are many many metaphors, but the common denominator of all of these descriptions is you're not creating a holistic unity by obliterating differences, but by taking the uniqueness of each component and combining them in a common endeavor, whether it be a salad, a symphony, a painting, or a mosaic, or a tapestry. And then you get a beautiful whole that is greater than the sum of the individual parts. This is a community that is not based on sameness, but it's based on the integration of difference in a harm harmony. Now, the problem with multiculturalism is that they accentuate the difference without creating a harmonious commitment. I mean, that that is essentially the problem of the Well, I won't call it the problem of the Muslim world. It's the problem of the non-Muslim world as there's an influx of Muslims because Muslims come into Europe, they come into Germany, they come into England, they come into France, and they just want to do their thing and not be connected to the society as a whole. So, when you have that unbridled, I'm going to do my own thing, then you're not going to have the community, either. Uh but, theoretically at least, the possibilities are we have a community that recognizes, appreciates, endorses differences and diversity. Right? So, we have you model of unity based on obliteration of difference. Right? I think if I give you a a less appetizing gastronomic metaphor, uh let's look at cholent, right? So, cholent's one of the great contributions of of Judaism. Uh Again, there are cholent Cholent is a halachic food. There are halachic reasons why we developed uh cholent uh for cooking on Shabbos and and the like. So, when you look at cholent, you know, on Shabbos, so you see barley and meat and potatoes and beans and kishke, or whatever you put into it. But, once you get to the middle of the week and there's leftover challahs once you get to Wednesday or Thursday and you haven't made new challahs, it's kind of it's like one glob. Everything just melts into everything else. There is no longer any distinction. Everything is the same. You don't know what you're looking at even at that point. So, quite literally, that is melting pots uh achdus and the like. So, which does the Torah endorse? So, the answer would be there are times when you need one and there are times when you need the other. Let's consider Klal Yisrael recovering from a calamitous event, a cataclysmic event. Let's consider after the Holocaust. The Holocaust decimated 6 million Jews, 1/3 of the Jews in the world, a million and a half children. The Holocaust destroyed most of the yeshivas and talmidei chachamim in the world. The Jewish people were decimated. And many, many, many actually thought, even some religious Jews thought we would never really recover. To some degree, we still have not recovered to this very day. In the aftermath of the Holocaust, that is not a time where you march to the beat of your own drum. That is not a That was not a time to focus on individuality. Many people put aside their own personal agendas because they had to work to rebuild the nation. That is why even many marriages after the Holocaust, people who may have may have may have lost their first families, not just their their spouses, but, you know, many children, they kind of marry, I don't want to describe it totally this way, but in some cases, they just married like the first person they they the first person they bumped into. Uh there was a sense we have to get married, we have to rebuild, we have to start families again. And they were not concerned that much with Hollywood romance or infatuation. And the funny thing is, by the way, that a lot of those marriages became very, very loving. Of course, in the you know, the European way it it wasn't I wouldn't it wouldn't it was never expressed in the Hollywood way, but there was very, very deep affection in many of these marriages because the marriages were based on a common commitment. We're going to make it work because we have a job, we have a responsibility. And yeah, there're going to be difficulties. Life is not going to be easy. But we're committed to make a home. And this was a situation where people were not focusing on individuality that much because there's a paramount need to rebuild. So, there are times in which you put aside your agenda and work for the common good. But that's essentially short-term. That's not the permanent goal. The permanent goal of the Torah as a society matures, as it gets stronger, as it gets more settled, as the basic institutions are there, you got to move to a new level. Not the level of blind conformity, but the level that appreciates difference and diversity. Now, now again, I I need to be very careful here. When I speak about difference and diversity, I refer to difference and diversity within the framework of Hashem's Torah and mitzvahs. I'm meaning obviously there's all sorts of difference and diversity that may reject the Torah. And that I'm not talking about. I'm not I'm certainly not legitimating rejection of the Torah. But within Torah, there are many, many derekhim in Avodas Hashem. Now, people sometimes say, "You know, why do we have Ashkenazim, Sephardim, and Ashkenazim there's there's you know, Litvaks and Russians and Hungarians, and then Sephardim you have Tunisians and Moroccans and Algerians, and then Temanim almost a separate separate category. You know, shouldn't we're we're in Eretz Yisrael, shouldn't we have like one minhag, one unified practice? What is the reason there have to be so many different practices?" But, the truth of the matter is that these different practices are not a sign of weakness. In Chassidus, different Chassidus, they are a sign of strength. They are a sign of beauty. They are a recognition that Hashem is served in many many different ways. It becomes a negative thing when it turns into sinas chinam and rivalry and machlokes. Yeah, it can become a very bad thing. But, intrinsically, the different hanhagos of Am Yisrael is like the garden of many flowers that brings beauty to the service of God. And God gets nachas that way. So, why would we posit therefore that melting pot is the response to states of emergency. But, the long-term flourishing of the Jewish people depends on salable. And I would suggest that this is represented in the difference between the first minyan and the second minyan. The first minyan is the aftermath of the chet ha'egel. Yom Kippur. The chet ha'egel was a cataclysmic event in Jewish history. We don't always realize how close we were to being utterly extinguished. God wanted to destroy the Jewish people. And if we wouldn't be physically destroyed, God wanted to abrogate his covenant with the Jewish people. God told Mosha, "I want to get rid of these people. I'll make a covenant with you." And Mosha, of course, says told Hakadosh Baruchu, "If you're not going to take them, if you're going to erase them from your book, you can erase me, too." But it was a time in which we were decimated. Our whole relationship with God was in jeopardy. At that time, you got to be focused on doing all that you can to rebuild the covenantal relationship with God. And that is why in the first minyan, you don't introduce yourself as, "Hi, I'm Avraham." Uh because your individuality is not important at this point. We just got to work together for a common goal. And that's why there's no tribes there. We don't care if you're a Ruvein, Yissachar, it's not important. You're a Jew. And you have a common mission. In other words, melting pot. We're not focusing on uniqueness, differences. But when the Mishkan is built, and as Rashi calls that, this symbolizes Hashem's permanent presence resting in Am Yisrael. There's a new and different type of unity that we have to work on. And this is not the unity that is based on anonymous conformity. This is the unity that is based on diversity. That is why I as an individual stand before Mosha. That is why we have tribes. Cuz think about this, tribes are a very big deal in the Torah. Right? Every tribe has its own place in the formation of the desert. They have their own degel, their own flag, they have their own nasi. And when they uh come to Eretz Yisrael, at least during the first Temple period, second Temple that fell apart a little bit, but in the first Temple period every tribe had its own land. In fact, the Ramban points out a very fascinating political discussion that there were times in Jewish history where the tribes regarded themselves as separate countries sharing a common religion. There actually was a notion like like separate states. That there's a state of Issachar. If you remember Pilagash BeGiv'ah was a was an awful sin that was committed in the territory of Binyamin. And the other tribes demanded extradition of the wrongdoers. Shevet Binyamin refused. And there was a massive civil war in which thousands and thousands of people were killed on both sides. And the civil war is very much similar l'havdil to the American Civil War. Where basically, you know, the American Civil War was not fought over slavery. It was fought over secession. In other words, states the southern states took the position they have the right to leave the union. And the civil war was fought over the idea that this is one country. And the Ramban writes, interestingly enough, you know, a thousand years before the American Civil War, the Ramban writes actually we say 700 years before the American Civil War, the Ramban writes that Shevet Binyamin was claiming they were a sovereign state. So, the rest of Klal Yisrael doesn't have the right to demand extradition. And this was fought over the notion that we are one Am Yisrael. It's not just we have a common religion. We are one nation. So, tribes are a very big deal. But you might ask why are tribes a big deal? Isn't it enough that we're just Jews? I mean, we fight enough the way it is just based on that. We have to now fight, "Oh, I'm a new soccer mom, I'm a Zevulun, I'm a God." Why should there be a tribal division in Klal Yisrael maybe other than Kohanim and Levi'im? And the answer is there was something very deep and profound about tribalism. Because the Medrash goes through a whole Arichus. Each tribe had its own approach to Avodas Hashem. Each tribe had its talent. Each tribe had its uniqueness. And by dividing Klal Yisrael into different tribes, Hakadosh Baruch Hu is saying that the community of Am Yisrael is not based on sameness and conformity. But it's based on the differences that unite around a common center, which of course is the Mishkan. And each contributes the diversity of their talents. So, this indeed this whole Mahalach, this whole approach can furnish perhaps uh a different answer to Rashi's initial question, why is there a need to count the Jews twice in the span of 7 months? Because this connects to the two different modalities of unity. The unity of the melting pot in the aftermath of cataclysmic events, and the permanent unity that is based on diversity, uniqueness, and difference. Now, this second unity is actually a harder unity to achieve because in truth, to be a religious Jew requires a great deal of conformity. I you know, obviously Judaism is not a religion where you simply march to your own drummer. Uh there's a Shabbos, there's kashrus, there's tfila. Uh, there right uh tfilin, tzitzis, whatever it is, we all got to do that stuff. Well, some of them are for men, some of them are for women, but whatever the mitzvahs are. So, obviously there's a great deal of conformity. But within that framework, we have to try to discover the individuality that we bring as well. You know, it's easy it's easy to be the individual if you're not part of a community. And it's easy to be a homogeneous part of a community if you simply ignore your individuality, although it'll be painful later to do that. But the big challenge is to integrate these two opposite facets of being a religious Jew. I think I've given the example before. Uh, sometimes particularly a person uh who is about chuva, someone who was not raised religious, but even kids who were raised religious, they have the same issue. They have certain talents and interests that may not be in the mainstream, it may be poetry, it may be writing, it may be art. Sometimes internally generated, sometimes from the outside, that those types of talents and those types of expressions need to be thrown away because they are not yeshivish, they're not Jewish, they're not from, they're not Torah, whatever the language is going to be. Now, granted, certain sacrifices have to be made. If somebody was uh a dancer in a nightclub or whatever it would be, you know, it might be that uh some things have to be given up uh or modified in some way. But by and large, if one has certain talents, abilities, and interests, they should find ways in which that can be integrated in their service of Hashem. And that might be the unique contribution in some way or another that they can contribute to call me Israel through the talents and interests that they bring. Meaning there are those that say and I've heard it said, "Oh, if Hashem gave you a certain talent, that's kind of the yetzer hara and your avodah is to bedavka not give in to it." I don't know. It To me it That sounds a little perverse that, you know, God made you interested in something so you bedavka should make yourself, you know, not get involved. Seems to me that the more logical approach is that perhaps this is the way that you will serve Hashem. Or at least one of the avenues of your avodas Hashem. And I'll tell you, you know, we know it's There's no secret that one of the the very pressing issues that the religious world faces is the phenomenon of kids at risk. These are kids from religious homes who go off the derech, whether they are kids at risk, go off the derech, whatever it is. Now, this is a very complicated problem and obviously, you know, I cannot sit here and tell you, "This is the reason." There's not a single reason. And sometimes there's no reason that we can figure out. People have free will and things happen. So, I'm not here at all to give you a definitive reason. But I can say, I think, that one of the contributing factors is that when kids live in a society that demands conformity to such an excess excessive um level in which they can't express themselves in a music or art or sports and their spirit gets crushed and they feel they have no avenue by which to express themselves, they will rebel and throw it away and try to find some way that they can breathe. And if our from societies would be more accommodating to the individuality of kids and the like, and they would have more breathing room and the ability to kind of live with a certain amount of flexibility within within a lot again, I'm not talking about how lucky compromise. That's a that's another question and a very complicated question, but even without without a lot of compromise, I think that that that would at least partially address a little bit of the again I as I say it's a much more complicated problem, but at least partially uh this would address some of the malaise that the kids do experience that they literally just have no avenue to express themselves. So uh I guess the bottom line basically is that even in a very technical exercise like how the Jewish people are counted, which you might have thought uh has no particular spiritual meaning, there are always very very important lessons uh that we can learn. So wish you all a good uh Isru Chag as we leave Isru Chag of Shavuos and um let me just end with one uh final uh uh half minute thought. That is Shavuos is called the day of the giving of the Torah, but it is not called the day of the receiving of the Torah. It is not called Yom Kabbalas haTorah. And one of the reasons that's given is Matan Torah was a discrete event. God gave us the Torah on a certain day, maybe the day after Shavuos, but God gave us the Torah. Kabbalas haTorah is something we have to do every day. Uh we don't just do it out of shvus. Just as every single day you eat breakfast. You don't say I eat breakfast yesterday. So too the whole Yom Kippur You Torah has to be new and vibrant to us every single day. So now that we are leaving the holiday of Matan Torah let's resolve that everyday we will try to have a Kabbalah shel Torah. Thank you and be well.