Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: When Your Enemy Suffers Do Not Rejoice

[Music] okay hi everybody thank you for coming uh first let me announce uh today's sheers uh dedication first they refer shalema to tsuri ben of avraham and braya batrava may they have a refuse layman israel it was the first yard site of binyamin israel in halevi gancia and again we uh hope that this year should be an aliyah nishmatau and we wish our deepest condolences to his parents uh the gandra family and we also have the art site of uh shmuel empty this is your father right uh yeah yeah your father zundo ben yakov yosef and uh made the debut be lili nishmato and uh this is also we have a dedication from uh by ruvain and shira gayson lili nishmas reuben's beloved father dr alan gayson elio ben menachem mendel jacqueline zachono lovraka to commemorate his third yard site on the 18th of thomas here i do to say a few words dr gayson was a physician in silver spring i myself knew him very very well for over 20 years uh he was certainly a great great uh sadiq and uh an o wave shaolin varudev shalom the media varana koen and i know that all of the silver spring community misses him i miss him personally and i just want to extend my own brachos both to mrs gayson and to all of the all of the children and then we have other dedications as well sponsored anonymously in the merit of arya leib ben rus for the warmth of your shabbat table and the energy it lends us all week may your brahos be magnified by the learning of this sheer main and another anonymous uh sponsor who wishes to remain anonymous uh sponsoring this week and next week in appreciation for these classes from the rav and the great work ebony provides for the community again i know that i and rabbi poston are certainly very very grateful for all of the haksaka's torah of the different sponsors and bias hashem may it be a source of great blessing to all those who try to support torah learning and the other good work hessed work et cetera that ibuna is involved in we are now in parshas pinchas and in order to understand the parshas pinchas we have to look at the end of parshas balak i mentioned last week the very interesting tradition that is recorded in massachusetts brachos that the reason why billam had such success in cursing right his curses seemed to come true except in this one case so when you try to curse the jews because there's a certain fraction of a second every day in which there's tremendous divine wrath in the world and if you can get your curse in in that particular fraction of a second the curse is effective because god's wrath has been invoked most of us don't know when that particular fraction of a second is bilum knew what is called the eidon riska the time of anger and that is why he was able to tap into that divine wrath and be able to make a curse that would be effective this is the gemaran brahmos yadav billam bilaam knew exactly when the time of anger was so it's interesting if if indeed that is a spiritual law although we don't really understand it that if you curse in the time of anger it works why was bilum not able to effect his curse that day so the irizal actually says strangely enough god in anticipation of bill i'm trying to curse that in that moment god canceled his anger that day there was no anger that day and therefore when billam is trying to curse like there's nothing no button to push the red button the panic button isn't there and therefore bilham can't do anything the arizona says even this is so interesting it's very homolytical the pussock says when billam went with bullock the wrath of god was kindled because bilham went with bullock so the simple meaning is god was angry at billam because he's going with bubba but the arizona has a hyper literal translation because quite literally literally means the anger of god was angry the anger of god was angry because it was sent away the result says the anger was angry because it was dismissed from its normal job now obviously none of this is fully understandable in any simple rational sense but the swarm tell us what is the taclet what is the purpose of this moment of wrath that god puts into the world like why is there a split second of tremendous chiron off in the world so the swarms say this is what gives people a kind of fear and trepidation to violate the word of god meaning to say a person that's the lowest maimonides says the rambam writes that the lowest motivation for virtue and avoidance of evil is fear of punishment but it is a motivator and it can get you started and the truth of the matter is we might disparage it as a motivator but if we truly internalize the notion of of divine accountability we would never sin so the truth is one would be a big sadiq based on that so god wants our neshamot to taste a little bit of that divine wrath so that kind of gives us the fear of god throughout the day so it's attenuated it only lasts for a split second but it's enough for the neshama to have a little bit of a jolt gee i better behave because there are going to be consequences so now you're going to see the genius of bill and listen to what a genius bilum is an evil genius bilum's plan a was to tap into the moment of fury and cursed beneath israel he was unsuccessful because god canceled the mo there was no moment of fury god canceled it ah but bilaam now has a plan b because if the moment of fury is what gives people a conscience and a fear and uh an abhorrence of doing evil then billam knows on a day when that particular emotion did not enter the spiritual universe people are more easily enticeable to sin which they normally wouldn't do if they would have been margin if they would have felt that either israel and therefore bilaam came up with a plan b and the plan b was remember he was sent home in disgrace three times he tried to curse the jewish people and every time god turned the curse into a blessing bullock is anoint he paid bilaam or at least he owes balaam quite a lot of money it's a question if he paid him or he owes them because some say billham came back to collect the debt the truth of the matter is i don't know why bullock has to pay i mean bilham didn't do the job so maybe billam has a no refunds policy it's not really clear what the business details of the deal were but billup gives bullock a final piece of advice dress up the moabites women and entice the jewish people in fornication and idolatry and god hates sexual immorality and avodahzara and for sure you will accomplish in that way what i was unable to accomplish by my magical cursing this is bilaam's part b but the genius of bilum's plan b is it emanates from his understanding of why he failed in plan a he failed in plan a because there's no eid on risk there's no moment of anger aha the mad scientist says there's no moment of anger now they're enticeable in a way that they normally would not have been insistable under ordinary circumstances and therefore indeed bilaam had a partial victory many many jews were led astray many jews were involved in idolatry in fact this was the disgusting idolatry of baal poor that involved defecation many jews were involved in fornication with moabites and midnight women and jews were dying right and left there was a divine plague that entered the camp and it already killed 24 000 people and it would have kept going had pinchas not done his act of zealousness which we'll talk about in a moment so the truth is bilham could look back at his encounter with ami israel with a certain degree of satisfaction meaning he wasn't a total failure he managed to accomplish some of his agenda and therefore he still has that track record of of being effective at the evil job that he was engaged in so what is going on is that we now have jewish people who are involved in idolatry and fornication and sexual perversity and not only that but in the heat of the moments there is the nasi the head of the tribe of shimon his name is zimri ben solo and he takes a midianite princess cosby bassoor and he is literally having relations with her in a public way where everybody could see and when moshe rabeno says to them hey you know not right don't do this they say back to him oh yeah it's wrong to be with a midnight woman who allowed you to marry israel's daughter who's a midgenite woman now the the the chutzpah of that answer i mean uh you you actually moshe rabino himself was floored marsha roberto himself was muted he didn't even know how to pair how to respond to that and the torah records that pinchas the son of al-azhar the son of iron meaning the grandson of arun took a spear and he killed zimri and cosby i'll discuss the ramifications and because of this act that is called zealousness standing up for god he stops a plague meaning many more would have died as it were twenty four thousand people died but because of what he did hey shiv es hamasi he removed my anger from vinay israel so i want to talk about what pinho says so first of all let me give you the narrow halachic framework so you understand what's going on i mean are we dealing with vigilantism are we simply dealing with hey you know this guy didn't keep shabbos so i just shoot him so this is a very very narrow category of halacha it still applies actually but it would be a very very rare scenario and that is if a jewish man is publicly now publicly means quite publicly it doesn't just mean people know about it it means he's doing it outside if a jewish man is publicly having sexual relations with a gentile woman and it actually has to be that configuration not a gentile man with a jewish woman but a jewish man having public sexual relations with a gentile woman a person who is zealous will have to talk about that has the right and perhaps the obligation to kill them but only as long as they are actively engaged in the sexual act once they have been disengaged at that point they would have to be taken to a court or to a base then for whatever the appropriate punishment was now the halacha is that if you ask your rabbi let's assume that i see this happening and i go to my rabbi and i say am i allowed to kill them the rabbi is supposed to say no or at least not answer the question right so in fact when pinchas asked moshe what do i do moshe simply responded he who brings the letter should read it meaning i'm not going to tell you what to do you have to decide on your own but in fact this is an unusual example of kanna in pogenbo of the kanai of the zealots who is allowed and perhaps even obligated to do something that would be totally improper for anyone else so it is a very very narrow category it would not apply to shabbat desecration it would not apply to somebody eating traif it would not even apply to intramarriage where people are having relations behind closed doors it's a very very limited category but it is a category of canaan pogenbao and as a result of this act of murder this act of violence maybe i shouldn't call it murder but certainly an act of violence pinchas is given what is called a blessing of peace first of all what what what is a blessing of peace and second of all it's a little odd that even if what pinchas did is a good thing why would he get peace as the blessing sin pinnacle's action was not an act of peace but before i get into this i want to make a little observation about hypocrisy you know most of us look at hypocrisy as a vice if i behave one way and i'm truly not that way inside we say oh you're a hypocrite your mouth says one thing your heart says something else it's not good to be a hypocrite but famously alexander pope i believe remarked that hypocrisy also has a certain virtue hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue the fact that i have a certain vice but i need to behave a certain way means i acknowledge the standard now i want to bring an interesting proof i think from the case of of moab that hypocrisy counts the torah says much later parches ki say say that we're going to read before rosh hashanah that people who convert even from the nation of moab are not allowed to enter the jewish people right that moabites cannot enter into claudius realm and it gives two reasons why we don't allow moabites to enter one is that when we're passing through in the desert and we wanted to go through their land and buy and buy food and water they refused to give us food and water even though they're descended from lows that avraham's nephew who was so kind to lot and the second reason is they hired bilam to curse us even though bilaam's curse was changed from a curse to abraca but the moabites wanted to curse us and because of that the torah declares that the amount and the moabites cannot enter the congregation of god now we also know that this halacha only applies to males it does not apply to females the proof of course is rus the moabite russ was a moabite woman she converted to judaism she married boaz she is the great grandmother of david hamelech she is the ancestor of mashiach how could that be moabites are not allowed to enter the jewish people the gemara explains that only applies to the male moabites it does not apply to the female why is that so so the governor says well listen we can condemn the males for not giving food and water to the israelites but i can't condemn the females because it's not sunil for a female to go out to a foreign army and offer them food and water so i can't fault the moabite women for being selfish because they were behaving in a modest and refined manner now come on obviously uh whatever the moabite women did in connection with not giving food and water was not motivated by sneeze because when it comes to fornication when it comes to zanuss when it comes to sexual exploitation there's no there was no scenic issues over there so obviously it's like you know all of a sudden your tsunua when it comes to offering hospitality to people who need it or sorry tsunius can't do it so why should the moabite women get a pass for their modest behavior if modesty was obviously not their motivation at all and the answer is because they still were doing the right thing it was right for the women not to go out to strange men granted their motives were improper their motives had nothing to do with anything good but you see from here that if you're doing the right thing even for the wrong reasons you deserve a certain amount of credit and therefore i think there's a certain tribute so to speak paid to hypocrisy where i'm behaving correctly even though i'm not really doing it for sincere reasons but if it's true that even hypocrisy has its moral virtue there is one mitzvah where hypocrisy can play no role at all and that is being a zealot for god that if your motives are not right not only is there no mitzvah there's a tremendous tremendous albera and here let me illustrate this with an interesting observation of the kisab sofa the cassava sofia of ram binyamin sofia was one of the great the godolam in europe in the 19th century he was the son of even a more famous godo this is ramosha sopher known as the hassam so fair the names are actually uh kind of upon sofia means the uh the signing of us of the soffair kasab is the writing of the sofa but whatever it would be uh the cassava sulfur has a very very actually very very beautiful safe around some surface as well but this is a word from the cassav software in which he focuses on a question that rashi himself raises the torah describes pinchas lineage as pinchas the son of al-azhar the son of ara removed my wrath from binay israel because he was zealous on my behalf and therefore i did not this is hashem speaking therefore i did not destroy the jewish people therefore say to him i am giving him a covenant of peace and we'll talk about what that means so the question is normally the torah does not give the lineage down to the grandparent it says it should have just said pinchas the son of al-azhar why describe him as pinchas the son of elazar the son of aharon so rashi explains because when pinchas killed the nasi of the tribe of shimon many of the other jews were very angry at pitras they said who does this whippersnapper think he is he's a young guy and he kills a man of prestige a man of stature and ami israel and after all let's look at pinacres grandfather because because because the hamish tells us just as moshe married israel's daughters al-azhar and lazarus's father actually married one of israel's daughters and pinchas's mother was a daughter of israel that means pinchas grandfather from his mother's side his maternal grandfather what had been a mid-united idolater so they basically said who does this guy think he is his own grandfather lazarus i'm sorry his mother's father was an idolater at some point so he has the right to take the law into his own hands so therefore the terror wants to say okay don't look at his grandfather on his mother's side look at his grandfather on his father's side and that's why it says look at a lazar's father don't look at pinchus's mother's father now the emesis this is a very difficult rashi because that's that that's a non-sequitur i mean it's like saying hey what gives him the right to do this look at his maternal grandfather so you say back oh no don't look at the maternal grandfather look at the paternal grandfather well i'll say no i want to look at the maternal grandfather i mean one does not cancel out the other so if on some level there's some claim that because his maternal grandfather was an idolater he didn't have the right to do what he did and we'll see what that means then how are you negating that by saying oh look at the other one so the cassave cipher offers a different shot than roshi and the sub sulfur says fascinating when it says pinchas the son of al-azhar the son of araun it doesn't mean pinchas the son of al-azhar and el wazor was the son of arun which is the simple meaning of the verse but it means pinchas had two fathers he's pinchas the son of al-azhar biologically and he's pinchas the son of araun spiritually he is pinchas the son of elazar that was his father and he is pinchas the son of arun what do we mean we know from pirkei of us that around had an outstanding meetup of oh wave shalom barodev he was the lover of peace he was the pursuer of peace he loved all of god's creatures that implies jew and non-jew and through his love and through his shalom he brought them to torah by the torah telling me says the cassava software that pinchas was a son of arun the torah is telling me pinchas did not act in this way because it was his nature to be angry upset combative and violent pinterest's nature was to be accepting to be compassionate pinchas acted not because generally you'll find in life that the people who tend to be zealous for the glory of god tend to be hotheads they tend to lose their tempers they tend to get angry they tend to get upset over everything those people shouldn't be in this myth those people should find a different line of work you want to be a kanai you have to hate what you're doing i once heard a bit of a controversial person from rabbi abby weiss those of you may have heard of abi he's a retired rabbi and a very interesting person he's done many many controversial things in his life but he was he is a great oath israel and all the way back in the 1970s he used to be involved he used to lead many many rallies and demonstrations against the soviet the former soviet union to let jews out of the soviet union and many times he was arrested you know typically for one day or whatever it is but he was thrown into jail uh and there were a lot of because they would demonstrate in front of the soviet embassy in new york in washington and he once said a statement that i'll never forget because i remember it after many years he says if you want to be an activist for jewish causes or for any human rights causes you have to hate what you're doing because if you love what you're doing it then becomes a matter of stroking your ego and getting the publicity right in other words you have to hate you have to not want to demonstrate not want to get your name in the newspaper not want to be interviewed on tv but you do it because it has to be done you do it because there's a need because if you kind of personally get a kick out of being famous out of being a celebrity then your motives are tainted and when your motives are tainted then your activism is no longer for the cause your activism becomes an ego stroker and an ego feeder and this is exactly the way it is with kannauts far too often the zealousness for the glory of god is a way that we can stroke our egos and show that we're better than some other people or whatever it is and then it becomes an act of guyva an act of arrogance right so the torah has to say pinchas is not acting because that is his nature pinchas is acting because it's not his nature but he has to do it anyway it has to be done moreover the torah is telling me pinchas is not acting out of hate pinterest is acting out of love pinchas is not getting joy in destroying even evildoers pinchas wants to restore on the israel to a state of health again the idea that you're motivated not out of hatred even for the evildoer you're motivated out of love for amy israel if i'm solid uh the great refrain brisker used to say there are two types of kanyam for god one is legitimate and one is illegitimate and they can be compared to a housewife who has a mouse problem and buys a cat to kill the mice now both the cat and the housewife have a common agenda that if there are mice we need to catch them but the difference between the housewife and the cat is the housewife would be much happier if there wouldn't be mice the cat would be sorely disappointed there are canoeing who genuinely enjoy exposing the shortcomings of others who genuinely look and look and look until they find the weak or ugly underside of something so they can expose it somebody comes out with a book of 550 pages and the kanai will say on page 548 in footnote 869 there is a contradiction to what rav shaq said in 1949 this person is an epicurus he's a culture we must burn his book we must destroy it because there's a line in the book that is trace and there's kind of a pleasure of this it sometimes strikes me again i mean i don't want to be guilty of criticizing others because in a way it's contradicting the whole thesis that i want to talk about of not focusing on the flaws of others but sometimes when they when they have these demonstrations that are blocking traffic because they're protesting some religious cause again i may even i may even support the religious cause that they're trying to advance you'll notice there's a little bit of a carnival atmosphere people the demonstrators kind of laughing joking having a good time as they inconvenience people as they insult people as their mavasa people what is so funny about that what is so enjoyable about that if you have to do what you're doing and one can raise a very serious question if it has to be done at all then you're doing it not because you like doing it you're doing it because as sad as it is as tragic as it is you need to do what you have to do but there's no glee that should be accompanied there and your motive has to be a motive of love and not a motive of hate take two thoughts from ref cook about this rev cook who in his own lifetime was of course one of the great great great paragons of loving every jew unconditionally and rough cook suffered for it there were people who reviled rough cook to this very day during shmita we have cook's other controversy about hetero mexico but in putting that issue aside uh the primary condemnation of rough cook in his lifetime was that he befriended even jews who were not just non-religious but anti-religious the some of the founders of this of pre-state zionism and he saw good in in everything he saw a potential for godliness and there's a lovely quote of rev cook i don't have the words in front of me in which he said the way of a wise person is not to be so involved in criticizing evil but in generating good and by creating light darkness goes away by itself you don't have to take a baseball bat and start beating the darkness and the way of a wise person is to generate wisdom and not attack ignorance don't attack do what's good and when you need to protest and sometimes there might be reasons for protest be sure that your motives are loving motives caring motives not motives to put people down even people who are richard and that's why the cassava sofa says going back to the kazab so fair that pinchas is not only a biological son of al-azhar but pinchas is a spiritual son of aaron by the way it's a little aside and this is a total speculation on my part i've always had a little feeling that the cassava sofa's observation is a little autobiographical i think it may be an indirect reference to his own very great father because some sofia was an unrelenting fighter against the reform movement in its early decades the sums over lived in the early 19th century when the reform movement began in hungary and in germany and the sofa was in what later became hungary and the kasam sofa was very very strong he excommunicated them he didn't allow them any legitimacy in the jewish community he was very very tough he was intransigent uh he did not give an inch in fact a hundred years later if he saw cilantro said he would have been more conciliatory he thought that way he could get more jews but built a wall of separation in fact i'll tell you a little story i used to many many years ago when i lived in baltimore in the early 1980s so i was giving a share in a casino show and after the share a man from the show went over to me and he said you know you really should give your shirt in another room you shouldn't give your share in the basement so i said why is that so he showed me on the wall there are takanos from the hassam sofia going back to the beginning of the 19th century in which no shir or drusha can be given in any language other than yiddish because one of the early things the reform movement did was which is from our perspective is very innocuous they started giving dressos in german or hungarian and that was considered to be an opening to the reform slippery slope today you're giving a dress in hungarian tomorrow you'll have an organ and then you'll eat treyf so the kasams ever made it that a show was not allowed to have any torah lesson in a language other than the language of the jews so he told me you know we try to keep that takana so unless you want to give the shiren yiddish which i i really couldn't do he says you got to go to another one now like nobody that was not enforced so nobody else ever asked me to do that but that was the khasam sofa very very tough but i think maybe the cassava software wants to tell us between the lines that that wasn't his father's nature his father's nature wasn't to condemn his father's nature wasn't to vilify his father's nature wasn't getting pleasure in exposing people his father was motivated out of a love and concern for the jewish people so i think it's intriguing a little bit that maybe in the cassave sofa's description of pinchas we have a son's description of his great father the hassam sofia of moshe sulfur again one of truly one of the great great leaders of judaism in the 19th century now i want to say another thought from ref cook we know that the amida that we dive in every day three times a day we commonly call shimona s-ray 18 blessings now that's a very inaccurate term first of all in shabbos it's not eighteen blessings but even during the week shimon ester is not eighteen blessings it's nineteen blessings so the gemara in barakos explains that originally it was 18 but after the destruction of the basa mikdash robin gamlil the nazi of the sanhedrin in yavna yavna was the city one of the cities where the sanhedrin went after the quran felt we need to have a blessing against the meennim now meenim is a term that appears in the talmud and it means sectarians now it's not clear historians still debate against whom is he referring to but many say it's referring to the early christians that were who were actually born jews and they were infiltrating the synagogues with missionary work informers and the like and this was a big problem and he wanted there to be a public blessing that is recited against the meaning and that's the bracha for those who are informers this will be no hope etc and the original gear so our gears has been censored but it actually talked about those who reject the torah and the like and rama gamil said who could possibly write such a bracha where will we find an author who can write such a bracha and they look around and they finally identify a rabbi called shmoel hakotan shmuel the humble and he is given pride of authorship for malchinim and that is the 19th blessing although it's not in it's not in the 19th position but that is the last blessing that was added to the amidah for malcinema and that is called birkasamina and all of this is in the gemara syrah cook raises the question what's the big problem here remembering o'meal seems to be saying gee who could possibly author this bracha whoever did the other ones can do this one let ramakamil write it like what is the unique qualification for writing this practice and if there is a unique qualification what is so special about shmuel that he would be the one that would have that qualification traff cook says a lovely vort riv cook points out that most of the brachos in shimone esra at least once we get to asking hashem things are asking god for brachus give us health give us redemption uh give us judges uh give us pranossa give us the ability to do shiva give us forgiveness we're asking god for blessings the only bracha that asks god to curse and punish is that and here's what jeff cook says god does not accept prayers to destroy and punish god does not want us to come to him with anger and hate and resentment now it's true we can ask for the elimination of evil because our goal is the love of the jewish people but you can't be motivated by hate you have to be motivated by love so reverend gamlio's dilemma is who could possibly compose such a bracha and be motivated by love the romans have done so much harm to us uh the missionaries the christians they are destroying us we hate them but any barakah that's based on hatred ref cook says is tainted it's ineffective it's not accepted so who can do it that's the problem so small hakkatan qualifies why does shemullah qatan qualify so the truth is we know very little about this person who is called shimura hakatan we know he was very righteous in fact the gemaran sanhedrin says a story that he was sitting with other rabbis in a room and a voice from heaven came out and said there is a person in this room who is as worthy as moshe rabbenu of receiving the torah had the torah not already been given and it's recorded that everybody in the room looked at she's because they knew he was the person that the heavenly voice was referring to so we know he was very righteous but we don't have a lot of teachings from him but we do have one statement that he made in pirkeivos and it's not even his statement it's actually a puzzle in mishla a pussican proverbs and it says he used to say this meaning it's not even his original thought he is simply his his mission statement was a verse in michele and what was that verse in mishlai bina when your enemy suffers do not rejoice that is what the god said to the angels when they were rejoicing as the egyptians were drowning and ram gamil says ah who can curse the evildoers who can pray that they be destroyed only one who does not get personal joy in the sufferings of others when you have that joy that glee in other people's downfall you're disqualified your motive has to be love and not hate and yes sometimes your love may require that you pray that god destroy evil because the evil is like a cancerous growth that can destroy the organism there is a notion of amputation that sometimes might be necessary as a last resort as a last resort let me remind you it's the last video if you remember with breyer robbie mayer's very learned wife when rebbe mayer wanted to pray that evil doer should be destroyed breuria told him do not pray for the sinners to be destroyed pray for the sin to be destroyed that the sinners should do chuva and become righteous people that's what it is and as i say sometimes we do have a sense of glee in exposing the shortcomings of others when indeed we should have a sense of grief and our motive should not be disparagement embarrassment or shaming of others our motives have to be for the greater love of the jewish people and for the love of hashem right so zealousness is a hard mitzvah to do and most of us might not be qualified or worthy of doing that mitzvah and we need to think about this and i want to point out that even the zealousness of pinchas and pinkas is the paradigm of the righteous zealous zealot with the proper kosher motives he's the banara but there are costs to being a zealot i'll mention a few of them cost number one is when you train yourself to always be focusing on the negatives your ability to see goodness and holiness in what people do become atrophied you no longer see the good in what people do even secular jews do a lot of good they can be kind people they can be good people but when i put on the mask of zealousness all i see is what they don't do and by the way this even uh turns into how you look at people in the torah world uh there's often a cynicism people look at this scuttle and that god all they say ah you know this and that and this is not just the way you look at secular jews this cynicism and this negativity even permeates the way you look at rabbanim and russia shiva's and godolim and sadiq i think of a passage in one of mark twain's books you know mark twain you know his name was samuel clemens and mark twain was apparently something he had been a riverboat pilot on the mississippi so mark twain means mark two places in the river whatever it is it was the common thing they would have to say when they came to certain fords in the river so mark twain says that his years as a riverboat pilot destroyed the beauty of the river to him why because when he didn't know anything about the river all he saw was this beautiful stretch of water the shimmering colors of the sun and the leaves the tree leaves etc and he saw a beautiful graceful body of water but when he's a pilot he has to pay attention to the rocks and to the woods and to the trees and all of those different colors that were so beautiful as an observer they may indicate some hidden obstacles that could destroy a ship right to switch my metaphor a little bit icebergs look quite beautiful except when you're on the titanic i see a picture of a beautiful iceberg in the atlantic ocean wow that's pretty but when you're the captain of a ship you can't look at the beauty you've got to see the danger and try to respond and mark twain said his professional uh activity as a riverboat pilot took away the geshmach that he had in the river and then i gave another example of a doctor a physician looking at a graceful ballet dancer excuse the the muscle here but he said you know you can look at a dancer male or female you can see grace you can see movement you see fluidity you can see something beautiful but let's imagine you happen to be an orthopedic surgeon and you're sitting in the audience so when the dancer stretches out his arms or her arms oh boy i see the tendons twisting and turning and the muscle fibers ripping and right so the point sometimes is once you get habituated to seeing the problems you may have a problem in seeing the beauty and seeing the good and the truth of the matter is pinchas himself became a victim of that and there's never been a zealot as kosher has been us and that is because i'll tell us that pinchas lived a very long time that pinnacles never died pinterest morphed and eventually became a leo hanover right so yolanda spin us now elio navi was also very zealous in fact eliana never uses the language he says to god kano kinesi i was zealous for your name now if you look at the life of elio navi you see that there was much frustration in his life because he lived largely under the reign of the evil king and our vote zoro was rampant and aha was always trying to kill a leo and nobody know he had to hide in all sorts of places but finally there's the great confrontation between good and evil between light and darkness mount carmel uh four hundred prophets of the bow build an altar for the baal the avodah zarah and eliyah navi builds an altar for god and even though there's a base of mikdash but he's given temporary permission to bring a corbin up in mount carmel and haifa what later was haifa and uh he digs a trench around in his back and fills it up with water and he pours water on the water on the animals to make it very hard to even have a fire and the prophets of the ball are dancing around and screaming and praying and nothing happens and they'll yell enough he mocks them and he says cry louder pray louder maybe bow is asleep you've got to wake him up nothing happens elio anovi calls out to god and fire comes down from heaven and it consumes the korba and everyone knows that god is real and they say the same words from which the yom kippur we and jim kippur hashem who elokim it is our god that is the true god beautiful mass shiva but what's interesting is how long did that last it lasted one day the next day ahab sends a message to elio and says don't think you're off the hook i'm still going to kill you elio navi at this point his spirit is broken he took out you know he used his best shot he did a supernatural miracle to show that there's only one god and the response is so what so essentially he basically says to god i have been zealous for your name i have stood up for you but the jewish people reject your covenants and they worship other gods they're not worth it forget about them and hashem says to leo go on a little trip elio walks for forty days and forty nights and he arrives at harcinae eleonor cena and there's a very dramatic scene in which there is like an earthquake but god is not in the earthquake and there is a fire and god is not in the fire and there's a hurricane and god is not in the hurricane there's a small still quiet vice that says to elio go anoint your successor now the whole elisha alicia became a leo's successor it's time for you to die basically will not die elio didn't die but ascend to heaven now although alioa navi died or it shouldn't say he he left the earth in a very miraculous way but essentially god is firing him and the way the commentaries understand this is leo leo you have lost faith in your people you no longer see their goodness you no longer see their potential you no longer appreciate the spark of holiness that is within them how can you be their leader how can you be their guide if all you see is the negative time to go at this point and the fact the medrash even says that because he used the lushen they have annulled your covenants bris hashem says oh yeah you're condemned to go to every breast that ever happens in the jewish people they keep the breath largely i think going to a brisk you know we may enjoy it but if you have to go to every single breast everywhere in the world you know not so not so easy elio nevi was punished by having to go to every single bris because he said as brits so what i'm suggesting psychologically is that the media of kannauts which in the case of pinchas was so noble and so justified eventually morphed into a hyper critical eye which ultimately required that even the greater leo navi be replaced and the truth is i i see this in life i see this that when you're so focused on trying to show why this is traif and that is strafe and that is raven that is grave you don't see the sparks of goodness that can exist in those things you don't see it right you're so convinced and again maybe right that your shiva boys don't go into shouldn't go to the army okay and again i mean i i understand that position and to a large degree i agree with that but as a result you don't appreciate the mysterious nephesh of khayolim that are in the army but one shouldn't cancel out the other why can't i see the good even if there are aspects that are not so not so good and yet the nature of things is we become habituated to negativity and that can destroy us so that i think is one hidden cost of being too much of a zealot you lose the capacity like mark twain said you're so focused on flaws that you lose the capacity to identify good a second point is when you direct your gaze outward at what other people are doing wrong it often is an excuse not to look at ourselves it's very convenient to say so and so and so and so are doing all these bad things instead of asking ourselves how do i improve how do i become better years and years ago and again in a way this story is going to contradict because i'm going to point out a flaw that i saw and again i i feel i actually feel hypocritical doing this i mean i feel a little guilty but but i want to make i want to make a point just to illustrate what i mean but i i recognize if somebody were to call me on on that i'm violating what i just said i will plead guilty to it but but it is a story that just to illustrate uh the points i remember uh many many years ago i went to two different shabbos shiva dreshes one was in a yeshiva kharadi show and the other was a modern orthodoxy both rabbis were very good speakers i wanted to maybe i was a little curious i wanted to hear how the dresses would differ the yeshiva shakha radi show people were very very observant very meticulous in halacha but it was not the warmest place if you were a stranger a new face nobody would necessarily talk to you the modern orthodox show people were a little less meticulous in halacha but it was very warm and inviting and friendly and how are you etc right that's kind of the background so i went to the kharadi show and the drasha was about the importance of keeping shabbos properly and keeping all of the halachas and shabbos as a source of blessing an important topic to be sure then i went to the modern orthodox show and the sermon was all about greeting people being friendly to people being warm both dresses were wonderful the problem is they should have been switched because i'm sitting in a show where everybody's warm and friendly and i'm hearing the rabbi say got to be warm and friendly what's going through my head yeah not like that show across the street and then i'm in the kharadi show gotta keep shabba laka and everybody in that show keep shabbiskala and they're thinking yeah not like that show across the street each one is looking at the other one and seeing their pagoda what really should have happened is the haredi show should have understood yeah hashem we keep the mitzvos very carefully but we need to be warmer more friendly more opening more more open more inviting and the other show says hashem we have a warm friendly group but we need to be more conscientious you see what happens you hear muscle and people think in their minds yeah if only the other would do this but there's no point in thinking about the other we got to think about ourselves and sometimes zealousness is a very convenient way of avoiding the responsibility for looking into our own lives if a resource elantra used to say that when he was young he wanted to change the world and as he got older he thought he would change his city and then he thought okay i'll change my wife and children then you realize you know i can change myself i can try that's hard enough when i work in myself there'll be ripple effects that things will be changed right in a marriage right you never try to change your spouse that's already a foregone conclusion that that's going to be a failure but if you change yourself to become a more sensitive kind loving person that will change your spouse as well that's going to change everything but it has to start with working on yourself not about all the flaws that somebody else has so canos in many ways instead of being a mitzvah it's a big distraction because it takes you away from the introspection that we all need so cost number one is it inculcates within you a negativity and a cynicism in which you're no longer responding to the good within people cost number two it takes you away from the responsibility of looking into yourself cost number three is an interesting observation of it uh points out that when aesop discovers that yitzhak had given the brachos to yaakov impersonating asaf so the torah says asap had a loud and bitter scream that he lost the you brothers have to feel free to there now point out that this expression exact expression appears one other place in tanaka and that's when mordechai hears of the evil decree of haman to wipe out the jews the same words are used and the gemaran magilla says because yaakov caused asaph that pain a descendant of asa that's harmon because ahman is from amalek a molecule is a descendant of asaf causes a descendant of yaakov that identical pain it's a medical negative meter you yaakov caused ace of pain the descendant of asa will cause a descendant of yaakov the same pain now if crimson weather said how do you understand this if we assume and maybe that's going to be a question that what yaakov did was morally justifiable we can debate it but if we assume it's justifiable then why should there be a punishment for doing the morally justifiable thing so if it says it's very interesting thesis and it actually has parallels in modern work on moral philosophy that the issue here is not punishment the issue is consequence there are laws of spirituality which are parallel to laws of the physical world for example let's imagine there's a burning building and i go into the building at great personal risk to rescue a baby did i do a meritorious action yes was it virtuous yes does that immunize me from getting burnt no just because you did the right thing doesn't mean you're not going to get burned because when you play with fire unless god does a miracle you're going to get burnt in other words even actions which are morally virtuous can have negative consequences i mean god can do a miracle but but you can't expect that victim should levitt said in the spiritual realm causing pain to other people has a cost even if your action is justified even if it's the right thing to do even if you should do it but as the saying goes what uh goes around comes around or what comes around goes wrong i always forget which way you say it but the concept is you cause humiliation you cause suffering even to an asaph it's going to come back to haunt you now that doesn't mean don't do it sometimes you got to do it but beware be aware that there's a consequence don't just see me don't so blithely assume oh it's the shame of course i'm doing the right thing think about this very carefully because there are consequences to hurting other people there are consequences maybe i shouldn't be too specific um to what happened at the bar mitzvah boss smith i don't even know the details that the women at the wall whatever they were doing uh okay whatever the problem is in you shalom unfortunately there are so many different events every day something happens that illustrates this and things are justified as zealousness cano standing up for god maybe maybe not i don't want to pass judgment but all i can say is this teaching evasive reminds us that when people are hurt and people are shamed there is a consequence that comes back and bites you so this sunday we begin the period of three weeks and the period of three weeks we think about the corbin basa mikdash the truth of the matter is we should think about the corbin basa mikdash all the time the whole year but we focus on it specifically in a much more intense way during this time and we know that the primary reason for the khorben of the second basa mikdash which is the temple that we have lost in since the year 70 is the hatred and polarization that exists among jews and it is our job particularly during this period of time to think about building bridges to trying to see the good in others to trying to appreciate the virtues in other people to focus on ourselves rather than condemning other people and to recognize that any type of zealousness can only be legitimate if it is based on love rather than hate or anger there is still a chance that this very year we will not have to fast on sunday base amicus can be rebuilt even even now even even now and indeed the navi zakaria says that when the basal mikdash will be rebuilt these fast days will become days of rejoicing and days of simbra may indeed that be the case but if shalom we still do not merit then at least may we do what we can to rebuild the basa mikdash by overcoming these barriers of hatred and polarization that tragically are so prevalent in claudius so thank you and have a good job [Music] yes