Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: Yaacov's Struggle with His Antagonist - Internal and External

[Music] okay hi everybody uh good to see you all and uh hashem while we again have a very generous sponsors uh for our shiorim we have uh in memory aliyat nishamav bin yaman yasrel bin halevi and uh minyamin's mother mrs gancher is here we want to welcome her and you know it was a difficult it is a difficult time but we're very happy that uh you're in irish israel and uh you could spend time with us uh in addition uh sevilla bastavids and we have two york sites on the 12th of kislev guidalia benchrogafl the father of philip weiss and bayla bhattacharyam the mother of zarach seidman both of whose york sites are the twelve of kislev and rav shmuel bin of viktor hakowen whose yard site is the 17th of kislev and that is the grandfather of rami fine who is a good friend and one who actually gives many very excellent komishiorim of on his own through email lists and and the like and in addition to the ali at neshama that we hope that our torah should elevate all of these in the shamot and ganeden uh we wish a rafa uh no no specific names today but all those who are ill whether they're inoculated uninoculated uh whether it's covert based or not covet-based we hope and we pray that they should be so good to uh good health and all those who are not sick should remain healthy and and vibrant so uh today's parsha uh parchesva is finally comes back after an absence of really 36 years the way it works is that the first 14 years he was in the yeshiva of shane viewer and then he was uh in love one's house for 20 years seven years he worked for leia in seven years he worked for raqqa and six years he worked for himself to build up his fortune and then two years of travel he actually it it's a little difficult to figure out why it took so long but uh right now uh he finished his 20 years and is 14 so it's 30 34 years and he gets wins as he approaches eric israel that asap is still out to get him you figure after so many years asap wouldn't care anymore but asap is coming with an army of 400 people and yaakov is very very frightened and it's very very interesting the puzzle says yaakov was very afraid by yate sarlo and he was very upset double lashon rashi says a fascinating thing from qazal which is really a jew real jewish value yaakov is afraid he may get killed and yaakov is afraid he may have to kill very very fascinating for a jew it's not just a matter of i want to save my life i don't want to kill other people either there's a famous or infamous statement attributed to golda meir and i emphasize it's gold in my ear so because some people really hate the statements and she said we can forgive this is what she said not what i say okay i'm quoting her we can we can forgive the arabs for killing our children but we cannot forgive the arabs for making us kill their children now i i do disassociate myself from the first part of the statement but there is some genuine truth in the second part of the statement that a jew feels pain not only when our own suffer we feel pain when others suffer as well this is why we see this from kriyasyamsaf that hashem feels pain when even russian may suffer right the egyptians are drowning and the angels want to sing a she-ra to hashem hashem says my sayatava beyond my creatures are drowning in the sea atem ramshira you want to praise me this is a time to be happy yeah god does what he has to do i mean after all god is the one that's killing them god does what we have to do and we do what we have to do someone's coming to kill us we have the obligation to kill them 100 we don't turn the other cheek but we do it with some sadness we don't do it with glee we don't do it with joy because when human life gets destroyed it's always sad and it's always tragic and that's why yaakov is expressing the idea that he's not only afraid he may get killed he's afraid he may have to do some killing as well so that i think is very interesting i'm not sure if golda meir based in ambassador probably not uh but she was makhabenic kind of guest so to speak or linked into what uh what rashi is is communicating now in addition yaakov sends gifts to asaph devising alternative strategies he's getting ready for war if necessary he's trying to make peace if necessary and the third strategy which is most important is tefillah he prays to hashem right i pray to hashem war peace whatever it would be i pray that hashem should give me hatha because without hashem there will be no now the first line of his message is very instructive in love angarti behold azav i have lived with love on [Music] and now i'm coming back so rashi again brings a fascinating russia that guardi are the same letters as taryag 613. so yaakov on one hand is kind of being very submissive to asaf but he's also hinting i have a lot of merit in me as well i was in love one's house and i kept the 613 mitzvos meaning don't mess around with me i have spiritual merits and even though the torah was not given yet but we know that avraham yitzhakenyakov knew the torah even before it was given the khasam sofir asks a very interesting question how can yaakov possibly make the claim that in lobhan's house he kept 613 mitzvos obviously he didn't did he keep shemitah for example i mean number one a lot of mitzvos only apply in the land of israel so obviously yaakov did not keep those mitzvahs but number two even the mitzvos that theoretically applied outside of israel jakob didn't keep completely for example yaakov married two sisters jacob married rachel and leia under the laws of the torah which wasn't given yet you're not allowed to polygamy is permitted but you're not allowed to marry two sisters and indeed the ramban says that the well-known statements that the othos kept the whole torah before it was given only applied when they were in the land of israel and didn't apply when they're outside of the land of israel so how could yaakov possibly make the claim imlavangati taryag mitzvot shomarti i kept 613 mitzvahs so the kasam sofa says maybe we have to re-examine what is the translation of shamarti i translated it as we would normally translate it i observed i kept some server says maybe not we find in a few weeks from now uh uh actually well in one week from now the next next week's parsha that when yosef has all of these dreams about the stars bowing down to him etc so the brothers were very jealous but it says aviv his father yaakov he kept it in his heart and rashi explains that the phrase shamar is yoshev he is sitting and yearning when will this dream be fulfilled so you see from rashi that the verb shomar does not have to refer to observing anything it's a certain attitude that in your heart you're thinking about it you're yearning for it so melilla some cipher says when yaakov says taryag i kept the 613 mitzvoth it doesn't mean i kept them he didn't keep them but it means for every second i was in lovan's house i was the yoshevu mitzappa i was sitting and yearning when will i have the zakhus to come back to eric israel and keep the mitzvahs that's a beautiful idea i guess most of the people here live live in eric israel some people don't and there are obviously halacha permits it there are jews in qataris and there are godzilla so i'm not going to discuss the halachos or the of living in eric israel obviously there are hetero but even if a jew is living in ghazlaris every moment their heart should be connected to erect israel and by the way this also applies to people who live in eric israel you know somebody once asked ray putner when your future made aliyah what did he miss about khutslawarits theraputner was a very he was a guttural batara and a very witty person rafitner said the big thing i miss about christ is the yearning to come to eretz israel when i was in church lawrence i yearned i pined i thought about it i come to eric just well you know i take it for granted i don't appreciate it i even be i may even be negative about so when i say every second you have to be yo shaiva with sappa hoping and yearning to be in eric israel that's not only a message for hutzler's people that's a message for people who live in heritage israel as well to yearn and appreciate you know the old saying which i think is from shakespeare absence makes the heart grow fonder uh that that is true in a large way i mean a lot of times uh i mean some i mean it's interesting when i uh actually i haven't been back to america since since covet started but when i used to go to america with some frequency and people would talk to me about how they yearn for eric israel how much they want eric israel how much they think of eric israel and sometimes i was a little impatient so what do you think so you're sitting here and you're giving me speeches about your great love for eric israel but the truth is that is human nature that the absence creates a certain yearning once we have it we don't pay attention and that's a real chaval but still that's what yaakov means some cypher says in love on garth mitzvah marti yoshevu when will i come back to be able to keep the mitzvah um rev cook you know if cook uh we know of cook of course as uh first the rav of yaffo and then the rav of you shall i am and then the rav of eric israel the rafa regime but you know that ref cook was stuck with the outbreak of world war one roof cook happened to be out of the country hashem with his wife and uh he could not go back to arizona for around five years he was literally disabled from returning to arizona for five years so the first uh 18 months or so he was in switzerland and then he went to london and in fact he was he was the rev of the show he was the rev of maksikhat he was a rev of a show in london and he stipulated in the contract that if the traveler restrictions are lifted i have the right to leave immediately that was built into its contract itself but it is said that rough cook didn't you know you know england has some very pretty country sites and roof cook refused to ever visit the countrysides of england because he said the only beauty i want to have in my heart is the beauty of eric israel he did visit the british museum because he very much liked rembrandt you know rembrandt painted pictures of rabbis and in the rembrandt's paintings the faces have a certain glow so he thought that reflected the khadusha of torah that rembrandt somehow intuited even though he was a guy but he somehow was able to sense that and see that so he did go to the british museum to see rembrandt the rembrandts but he did not travel in the countryside he said he did not want any other beauty to be in his consciousness other than the beauty of of eritrea but five years i mean thank god he was with his rabbits and that he wasn't wasn't totally alone uh but he was separated from eric israel which for him was obviously an extremely painful idea now yaakov's statement as rashi brings it has two parts one is taryag mitzvot marti i kept the 613 mitzvos and then there's the second half of the sentence this is not in the humish this is rashi from the madrid telling us what yaakov said i kept the commandments and i did not learn from lovan's evil ways now again the simple shot is that jakob is saying to asaf don't mess around with me because i'm a sadiq i mean he's he's invoking that for self-defense meaning to say i kept the mistress i didn't learn from love under russia but i remember hearing from my own rush yeshiva of rav rudimen zakrono of raqqa at the near israel in baltimore that jakob is not boasting it's the other way around jakob is self-critiquing himself he said yeah i kept the mitzvahs but i never had the enthusiasm for good that love on had for evil meaning you can learn things from messiah love on had a great passion for evil for cheating whatever it would be and yaakov is saying it's that my desire to do good was not as great as lovan's passion to do evil he says i should have learned from his evil deeds in fact uh refseq used to say and it actually makes sense you know when you look at the power of one individual to wreak havoc on the world you can take hitler marshmallow stalin mount seitan the you know osama bin laden the 911 or changed the whole world and you look at that and of course it's so abhorrent but the idea is if one person can change the world for the worst if one person can do an evil that affects millions and millions of people how much more so can one person be a force for good in a sense we do learn things from rashawn we learn from rashawn the power of a human being to change the world it happens to be in their case they're changing the world in evil and destructive ways that's true but the individual makes a difference we sometimes think god what can i do i'm ineffectual i'm just dropping the bucket you see from the rashayam right well what what did the hijackers have in 911 i mean they box cutters whatever it would be and they were able to kind of change life in the united states and really all over the world and we're still going through that okay covet kind of superimposed that created a new type of problem but you know we're still living with the aftermath of 9 11 in so many ways so my rosh hashiva understood is not a boast i didn't learn from his evil ways i'm righteous it's kind of a self-recrimination that i should have learned from lovan's passion for evil i should have brought that same passion to my torah to my mitzvos and the like now of course yaakov was being modest here i i assumed that jacob did have all that but jakob is speaking in a modest way that he didn't have that okay be this may yaakov is very very frightened and a final point before i get into the main thing i want to talk about is i give long introductions i admit uh yakov says to hashem save me from my brother from the hand of my brother from the hand of asaf so the basal levy asks the obvious question the torah does not have redundancies asap is his only brother so why does he say save me from my brother save me from asaph so the basal levy says very very beautifully that yaakov was afraid of two things yaakov was afraid of the ace of that will kill him and yaakov was afraid of the aesa that may be his brother in other words what if jason says oh you're my buddy let's go together it'll be like lovin that could destroy yaakov's neshama so yaakov is afraid of the ace of that will murder him because that's a sakana of the guf and yaakov is afraid of the asa that will come as friend because that is the sakana of assimilation which yaakov successfully resisted in lovan's house but perhaps asap might break him in that way again um the basil levy uh was writing this in the 19th century when the haskalah the so-called jewish enlightenment was very very powerful and many many jews were leaving the traditions of the torah to embrace secular culture assimilation and besides the growth of the reform movement as well which is kind of a little bit of a different movement than haskalaskala was essentially a movement towards secular culture and philosophy reform tried to change the observance of the religion itself whatever it was but all of these different movements were arising in the 19th century and the basil levy was saying that we have two types of enemies sometimes we have enemies that attack our guf and sometimes we have enemies that attack our shama and the shama enemies might even be worse in many many ways because we don't even realize their enemies assimilation intermarriage all of these different things okay so this is kind of just some general introduction in the beginning so yaakov is very frightened but what's fascinating is the night before he meets asap in the flesh he encounters asa in the spirit it's as if yaakov has to wrestle with the spiritual essence of asaph before he's ready to confront the aesa in this world and we are told that yaakov had already transported his whole family they had crossed a river or a stream and yaakov realizes he had forgotten something because i'll say actually he had forgotten some small jars earthenware jars he went back to retrieve his possessions and all of a sudden he encounters what atari describes as a man although it's an angel and the circumcision dedicates an angel and they're wrestling all night and sometimes yaakov is on top winning and sometimes this mysterious angel man is on top and then in the morning with the break of dawn the man says let me go i have to go and yaakov says i'm not going to let you go unless you bless me and this angel man said your name shall no longer be yahkov which is the heel your name shall be israel you have ascended with god for triumph and victory and yaakov emerges not unscathed yaakov is limping because the person this logo the angel dislocated his thigh and yakov is hobbling and that is why the torah says jews do not eat the sciatic nerve to commemorate the events of the sciatic nerve being dislocated that is why at least in america you cannot get a kosher sirloin steak because the way it works is to remove the sciatic nerve which is a very very large nerve with a lot of branches is a very very difficult piece of kosher butchery so in the united states and most other countries they simply sell the hindquarters of kosher cows closer slaughter cows to to non-kosher slaughterhouses because it's too difficult to do the nikkor the removal of the girana shaft in irish israel and other countries where there's not a lot of meat they actually do go to go to the trouble of doing nikoi so although by and large the cuts of meat here are not not as good quality as you have in america you can in fact get certain cuts of meat here that you would not be able to get in the united states except by very special order you can do it backward if you have money you can get anything you know if you want to pay for it you can get a private decor but commercially in kosher supermarkets those cuts of the hindquarters are not available because nikkor is so laborious so who is this mysterious man what does he represent so the terrorist doesn't say the terror does describe him as an angel that much i think we do have but i'll say this is none other than the guardian angel of ace of himself the spiritual power that gives ace of power and rulership in the world and yaakov is fighting what is the overall symbolism of this whole event so the safer says very simply and this is the simple plan that we know myself assimilating what happens to the our forefathers is a harbinger and a precursor of what's going to happen to us and we also know that night is always a description of gullus and persecution and redemption is called day and what hashem is showing yaakov is you and your children will go through a long dark night and in that long dark night the enemies represented by asaph will try to kill you will try to defeat you will try to wrestle you will try to destroy you and there'll be times that you'll be successful and there'll be times that they'll be successful but hashem promises after the long night there will be a day there will be the break of dawn and when that break of dawn comes not only will the enemy leave you the enemy will bless you the enemy will acknowledge your triumph the enemy will see the goodness that is within you so the whole scene of yaakov is a precursor of the night of golos followed by the day of gaula in which the umo olam it's not just they'll be vanquished but the umo saolam will acknowledge the greatness and nobility of the jewish people who stuck to their guns so to speak in spite of all of the nations trying to destroy us now it also means that when we emerge from the long difficult and bitter golots we're not going to be unscathed we're going to be injured we're going to be hobbling we're going to be crippled you know we've gone through 2000 years of pogroms and crusades and holocausts and expulsion of the jews from spain and terrorism plus assimilation plus intermarriage coming from the other side so when the galoola finally comes it's not going to be oh bro hashem everything's fine that's why it's described of course to take a different metaphor that's why the coming of mashiach was described as a birth and just as a birth has labor pains there's going to be a lot of pain in this redemptive presence but it's going to come and therefore the safe rachina says every time we don't eat the gidhanasha to commemorate yaakov's encounter with the angel we are actually affirming our belief in the coming of mashiach and goula one doesn't assume that right you know you know you know we don't consciously think oh uh if if i don't eat a sirloin steak uh that means i believe in mashiach you know we don't make the connection but in point the fact that is the ultimate meaning of this particular scene and that's very very beautiful there is the long night that will be followed by the glorious day and in that glorious day the very force that tried to destroy us will acknowledge our goodness and our courage so that's one bait and that's i mean really that's i would call that the patrick shot that is the basic idea of what the torah is communicating in this story you know people sometimes ask to digress for a moment uh is the is the torah historical or is the torah metaphorical meaning is the torah history or is the torah metaphor now obviously as religious jews we do believe that the torah is history uh yeah please thank you but you know some people who are less traditional might say oh the exodus of egypt is a metaphor it didn't really happen the obvos are legendary figures they didn't really live let me make it very clear that you know i don't believe that that's a religious jew i believe there was an avraham mitsuko there was a theosome stripe but i would suggest the following idea which is based on myself on him to ask whether the torah is history or metaphor implies a binary choice where it's one or the other the true answer is the torah is history and metaphor meaning the torah is describing events that happened but those events that happened are not just isolated events that happens they are metaphors for processes that continue to occur in world history and in jewish history and this is a perfect example of that uh yeah yaakov wrestled with an angel at night and he's hobbling on his thigh that is history that we believe that happened but the metaphorical meaning is this is galot and gaula and mashiach right so instead of asking is it history or a metaphor it is history and metaphor same thing with the ethiopian which we'll talk about when we get into schmos historically the jews were slaves in egypt and they were taken out of slavery metaphorically it is the struggle of the neshama to be freed from the servitudes that inhibit the meshamah from expressing its own spiritual mission misrayam means limitations and boundaries and you'd see us misrayam is the kawak to be freed from all that enslaved right so metaphor and history uh that's exactly what it is okay so now though let me share with you some other perspectives on yaakov's encounter with the angel and here are two very interesting observations of the shrine points out that yaakov is the only one of the patriarchs in which there is a spiritual force from heaven that is trying to destroy him why don't we find some analogous spiritual force coming against avraham coming against yitzhak yes to be sure abraham had trials abram had nishio notes but you don't find a malach coming down to destroy abraham so here the khabib scramble says a very very interesting thought we know that pirkei avos tells right a very famous teaching that the world actually one of the great gohan of gedolin ah versus my own yeshiva's street and that is the world stands on three pillars torah the study of torah avodah divine service and gamilas khasadim acts of loving kindness that's been perceivos it is well known that each of the others exemplify a particular pillar in avodah hashem that's why we have three of those because we need three pillars avraham fundamentally represents it loving-kindness yitzhak who was willing to be a sacrifice to god is the epitome of avodah and yaakov although we don't see it from the so much but given the tradition that he spent 14 years learning torah in the yeshiva of chamber yaakov represents torah so it's torah avodah gamila a jew needs all three a jew cannot be a good jew and there cannot be a vibrant cloudy israel unless you have torah avodah however in spite of the fact that you need all three torah learning is said to be the first among the equals and that is because when you have torah learning you will come to the other things through torah learning i will know how to serve hashem and i will learn about the importance of it torah learning when it's done in the right way will bring you to the other two the other two will not bring you with torah now you could daven and you could do hesen you're not going to know tosos and by virtue of that behavior and the other end if i learned those things i made darwin better and so here's what the islam says the eighth sahara which is symbolized by this ace of power the demonic power that wants me to sin the eight sahara takes a very long view of things by that i mean the eight sahara is perfectly happy to let me do mitzvot as long as those mitzvoth do not have staying power as long as he knows there's not going to be continuity and intergenerational perpetuation so avraham who represents kassad the eight sahara says let him do it because after a few generations they're not going to be jewish a yiddish guy that's only based on loving kindness as important as that is eventually is going to peter out so the asahara leaves avraham alone yitzhak let them have their magnificent synagogues and everything else but after a few generations without torah it's not going to last but yaakov represents torah with torah there is nitrius there is eternity there is perpetuation that the sahara wants to destroy now the times words are very very prophetic this is actually the large part of the history again i'm most familiar with the united states i apologize i can't necessarily speak to other countries but i suspect there were similar processes you know the united states had several major waves of jewish immigration the first major wave was in the middle of the 19th century and that was primarily german in fact they did quite well uh you know goldman sachs all of those investment houses were founded by those german immigrants in the middle of the 19th century they were not too religious they were reform at best and some of them just became seventh-day adventists or christians at worst so religion was not big on their agenda but social welfare was they did create various institutions of social welfare lending societies and the like and what happened basically was that their descendants eventually assimilated and left the jewish community now the next wave was after the again i'm being oversimplifying here was after the russian pogroms in the 1880s you had many many jews came to the united states but as opposed to the kind of wealthy educated germans of the earlier generation these tended to be the far less educated secularly polish and russian jews in fact if you know american jewish history you know that there was a great deal of dislike you know the high-class germans looked down at what were called the ocean the east jews because they were uncouth they you know and therefore um uh they didn't allow them to join their country clubs or their uh even the jewish hospitals and the like now the jews from russia and poland many of them were were religious they were observant they were traditional and the light but they were not learned in torah and they really did not create yeshivas because they didn't have the ability to do so with very rare exceptions but they had many many shells many many synagogues many and they represented a voda serving god through prayer and the like and there too what happened was you have the lost generation meaning uh the children of those who came in the 1880s and afterwards largely became non-observant uh and uh they're lost generation they're not identifiably jewish anymore and it is only now the third great wave was after world war ii when you had the survivors of the holocaust and this was the generation that largely created yeshivat and kola lim and day schools under the leadership of people like rav sharaga faisal mendelovich who was a great divisionary review and to whatever degree there is at least a small orthodox regeneration in the united states it is the product of yeshiva education meaning until there were day schools in every community through torah even if you had the synagogue even if you had the societies judaism did not perpetuate and this is exactly the words of the the eight zerhara is willing to let avraham do his thing and the atahara is willing to let yitzhak do his thing because that's not gonna last but yaakov's thing is gonna last and therefore the asaf is determined to stop it but then the second observation which is also true and kind of bittersweet it's it's somewhat humorous but it expresses the truth and that is the eight sahara the kawak of asaf wanted to destroy torah and that was what i would wanted to destroy yaakov but the yatzahara was unsuccessful because there will always be jews that will learn torah and keep the torah no matter how poor they are no matter how persecuted they are the angel of asa was not victorious in destroying torah in ami israel but the angel of asev had a partial victory it dislocated yaakov's thigh the zohar haqqaday says that just as the thigh supports the body the angel evasive was able to weaken the support of torah in the world toro will always be limping along and actually remarked that any yeshiva or torah institution that does not have financial problems you must question its authenticity because the angel of asa was victorious to make the support of torah limp along and the truth is it is quite amazing in many many ways because you know there's there's actually plenty of money in the world actually if you think about the amount of money that's invested in movies entertainments of all types but the money is there and even within the jewish world the money is there but it gets directed to this and to that and to that and to that and somehow jewish education is always limping along why would that be so the answer is that was aceb's victory that the thigh will be hobbling along the support the foundation now you may then ask me ah so why should i give money to yeshiva why should i support torah why should i give anything for jewish education it's supposed to be that way they're supposed to be limping they're supposed to be starving but well let me give you an example uh when anesthesia for childbirth first began to be administered like again in the 1800s there were christian theologians all men of course who said women in childbirth are not allowed to get anesthesia because god cursed eve you shall give birth in pain what gives you the right to take away the pain you got to suffer again these were men who didn't have to go through the experience now what does judaism say about that so this is an important distinction a curse is not the same as a mitzvah when god said a woman will give birth in pain god is saying that's the nature of things because of the sin we're going to make the nature that childbirth will be painful but that doesn't mean it's forbidden for you to try to alleviate the pain in other words it's not a commandment god did not say thou shall suffer god is simply telling us what the nature of the world will be as a result of the sin of the eighth of death but i'm still allowed the same way i can go to a doctor if i'm sick so a woman could take what would alleviate the pain of childbirth in other words a curse as to the nature of things is not a contradiction to the hetero we have to try to make it better so torah is the same thing on one hand it is going to be the nature of torah support that is going to be limping along but that doesn't mean we don't support it we have our our obligation right so those are the two observations of the prophet uh you know i occasionally say this story in arsene and i and i always end with the idea that you know that any yeshiva that doesn't have financial problems one must question it's this authenticity so i reassure the talmudim and arsenal that they have a wonderful wonderful yeshiva but the final point i want to share with you is really a a i'm sorry it's really a third point that is the gemara in khulan discusses what did the angel look like he's the angel of asa but it doesn't say he looked like asaph so there are two there are two opinions in the gemara one says the angel looked like like an ax murderer looked like a violent evil person and the other says the angel looked like a talmud with a long white beard very very saintly now that's a little hard to understand exactly i mean i understand the axe murder this was a hostile force that was trying to destroy yaakov but what would be the idea that looks like a saintly talmud well first of all i'll peep shot one might say that maybe the gemara is being marames that sometimes the dangerous people are those who may come in the guise of a big tamil with a white beard when they're not authentic meaning there's kind of a warning to charlatans and people who are not truly leaders of torah who represent themselves as such okay that might be what kazaal was saying but some suggest a very deep psychological interpretation of what's going on here and instead of looking at this as an either or ax murderer or talmud some understand that the gemara is saying that this figure had a dual identity and it was shifting back and forth one minute one minute x murder and the figure is none other than yaakov wrestling with himself that the angel that yaakov is fighting with is him you know we talk about wrestling with your inner demons that's an expression in english yaakov is wrestling with his inner demons and the process that's going on here is the following yaakov is going to confront his brother asaf for the first time in many many years and yaakov knows that he took things away from asaph that on some level on some level might have been regarded as properly asap's thing the birthright the blessings and yaakov now is going through did i do the right thing because this is what sadiq does eight sadiq introspects it's sadiq looks at his deeds exotic says was i right in what i did was i the righteous who did what had to be done or was i the murderer that took away from my brother what could have been his destiny and yaakov is wrestling with yaakov understands until i clarify my motivations until i clarify why i did what i did until i understand whether what i did was righteous or evil i am not worthy to confront my brother and survive that confrontation and therefore yaakov's struggle is the struggle of a righteous person to try to understand whether his behavior was good or whether it was bad and whether he needs to do truva whether he needs to maybe give it back however that would work i have no idea somehow give ace of the brows that is the lonely struggle of being honest enough and courageous enough to acknowledge our failures our mistakes to admit to ourselves and to hashem where we might have gone wrong and those struggles are lonely that's why it's the middle of the night because those are the things that you might think about in the middle of the night you're not surrounded with family and friends that say don't worry about it you're a great guy the sadiq understands that there are moments of loneliness and moments of isolation and moments of introspection so this is quite an interesting idea that the angel that yaakov is wrestling with is himself and he's limping in the morning because he realizes that although he does conclude that this had to be done it had to be done but he also concludes that he is tainted and affected by itself he's limping because immoral means might sometimes be justified for higher ends the opposite people say the ends never justify the means that actually is not true it is often going to be the case that the ends exactly justify the means but as i think i mentioned that doesn't mean you don't get hurt right it's like jumping into a fire if i jump into a fire to save a baby that's a great thing to do but i'm still going to be burnt and when you get involved in lying and cheating your character gets affected i think i mentioned two weeks ago just to repeat it very very quickly this is why yaakov is a victim of deception both in loven's house and through the sale of yosef because he who engages in deception is going to be victimized by deception even if it was justified and that is why haman yaakov i'm sorry asaf emitted a bitter cry when yaakov took the brahmos well mordecai emits a bitter cry when haman who is asap's descendant wants to kill the jews mizaki negative so this is what yaakov is going through yaakov is going through this lonely struggle you know abraham lincoln once said you know the city lincoln actually get a non-jew but lincoln is a very very interesting figure because in many ways he was a genuinely righteous person he was a very thoughtful person a very introspective person a kind of a deep deep person in fact he's he's rated by most people well trump said maybe he's better than lincoln but other than donald trump lincoln is rated as the greatest president uh in america in american history in fact i once i once a little snippet on youtube of something from the show west wing in which uh if you know the show president bartlett is depressed because whatever it is so his psychologist or his therapist tells him because he's sitting under a picture of lincoln he says must be tough sitting under that picture uh you know lincoln saved the union and saved the united states and all you did was uh you lowered tax rates in michigan or something you know whatever it is so lincoln was a big guy but somebody once said to lincoln at a cabinet meeting during the civil war that we will surely win because god is on our side and lincoln responded it's much more important for me to be on the side of god than god should be on my side god doesn't work for me god is not my employee in which you know i need something god you know give it to me my job is to work for god no broke hashem god pays generous wages you know god no gives us compensations but god is not working for me i work for him and that is what the saddek says did i truly act for the sake of hashem did i act for myself and this explains a very important question that people ask we know that avraham's name and avraham's name was originally avram and hashem changed it to avraham and sarai's name or sarah's name was originally sarai and she became sarah now the is we don't refer to them by those original names other than when we're reading the text we don't call avraham avraham you're not allowed to you don't call saura sarai the shinoi hashem replaced the old name with yaakov that's not true although the torah also says your name shall no longer be yakov your name shall be israel the torah itself continues to use the name yago and we use the name yakov and in both places it says loyi o shimha your name shall no longer be called so why is it the case that with avraham and sarai i'm sorry avraham and sarah the new name totally supersedes the old name with yaakov we still work with both names yaakov israel in fact a common name for children yaakov israel that's a common a common combination with yakov israel so ghazalian short says the answer is this the answer is that with avraham at least with abram it's pretty it's actually pretty easy because avrum is the patriarch of aram of syria and the hay is now hamon you're now the patriarch the teacher of the whole world right so there's no reason to keep the old name because the new name includes the old name and adds things but with yakov the way it works is this yaakov means heel heel is the part of you that's in the dirt that's in the mud israel is the name of triumph you have triumphed with god so yaakov is shiftless the lowliness of contemplating my dirt and my filth and my sin the israel is the triumph of redemption the reason why israel does not replace yaakov is because it is only through the yakov that you get to the israel it is through the struggles through the honesty through the introspection through the courage to confront our inner demons that we achieve this triumph and therefore it's not possible for israel to replace yaakov because you need the yaakov process to become the israel the person who is not willing to grow is not willing to improve who is not willing to look into their neshama can never achieve the triumph and the victory that was given to israel and therefore the name yaakov is not superseded by israel [Music] because you need the yakov to become the israel and that's the that's why we actually use both both names now interestingly enough and this would require a lot maybe we'll save it for another share but i'll just throw out an idea that you can think about uh people say there's a lot of difficulty in understanding the relationship of yaakov to rakhil and leia on one hand yaakov loves rachel more than leia in fact terry uses a lush and that's almost inconceivable i mean the lesson of the torah is yaakov hated leia now then before some say god forbid that you should understand that yaakov hated leia but hate and love are relative terms meaning the love for rachel was so great that what the levy had for leia would be called hate in terms of in a relative sense so rachel is yaakov's favorite wife by far and yet rachel only had two children in am israel and leia had with the schwarze had six children and then you had the maidservants and rockell is not buried next to yaakov so on one hand rachel has this huge importance on the other hand her importance seems to be diminished in some ways so one of them some of them a forshim and one has to flesh this out i don't have a complete approach is rachel was the wife of yaakov and leia is the wife of israel and we have to define it it needs much more definition but structurally it's such an intriguing thought and that is why you'll find that rachel dies when they enter eric israel which is right after yaakov's name was changed to israel that israel is the realm of leia and rocco is the realm of yaakov and rachel dies when yaakov's name is changed and since yaakov died as israel it is leia that has buried him so i'll leave you a homework assignment in which you can try to think or work out what is exactly the characteristic of yaakov and israel and how does that match to ruckela but it's such an interesting thought uh that i just wanted to get it out there so it's something you can uh you can think about um so uh i wish you all a wonderful wonderful uh shabbos uh once again uh well let me mention one final thing about hanukkah a little little little bit of a tidbit that's brought down in sephora without any macor in ghazal this is very strange in a way i'm very loath to simply tell you a claim that the supreme khasidos make that's not rooted in some earlier source because how did they know but this is what they say they say the following khazal tells us that the reason yaakov crossed the river and that's how he encountered the mysterious angel is he left behind some small jars that he wanted to retrieve now that's kind of crazy why would he go back to retrieve small jars i mean it's the middle of the night it's dangerous to go back by himself i mean he could be attacked by animals by people he was attacked by an angel that wanted to kill him so some say the gemara says that sadiq care more about their money than even their property even themselves which is itself needs some questions reminds me of the jack benny joke your money or your life and he said let me think about it okay we'll have to analyze that but in the suffragettes it's brought down that the jar that yaakov wanted to retrieve was a very very special jar that was handed down father son for many many generations after the flood when noah was deciding whether it's time to return as you'll recall he sent out the raven then he sent out a dove three times and the third time the dove came back i'm sorry the second time the third time the dove didn't come back but the second dove that was since came back with an olive leaf in its beak and that showed that things were beginning to grow so the in this chassidis forum it says that not only did it come back with an aleph leaf but on the leaf there was a few olives and noah pressed those olives into a jar that was a sign of god rejuvenating the world and that jar of no ox olive oil was passed down from father to son father to son and when yaakov left it behind it was very precious to him he wanted to retrieve it and it is said that that was the jar that eventually was sealed with the cohen goddale seal that was the basis of the hanukkah miracle quite amazing goes all the way back to the flood the only problem is you know i uh you know if this would be a madrish if this would be uh a hazal you know it would have a particular authority as far as i'm able to trace and i may be wrong there may be sources i'm not aware of uh this teaching kind of comes in very very late this comes in from cypre casitas from the 1700s so the logical question you can ask is how do they know i don't know i don't have the answer maybe it's in kabbalah but it's a beautiful thought that this was the park that yaakov wanted to retrieve and this was the park because the same language is used a small jar an earthenware jar that that was the basis of the of the hanukkah story so be well everybody and have a good job thank you 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