Rav Yitzchak Breitowitz: Current Events and the Final Exile of Yishmael

[Music] okay everybody good good to see you again and uh I just read the shear is dedicated for praying for victory of our soldiers and all the fronts of the war for the lasting Unity of the people of Israel and for all of those whose Health has been affected by the war and the safe return of all the hostages be we've already seen the beginning of it Al benzar shom Ben and David Fishel Ben mayor on behalf of all of his grandchildren and we have a special dedication and celebration of the 101st birthday for rif Lea basav R Loi by her loving daughter phy uh Miller and in good health and finally congratulations to the new American president and administration uh much much braa and uh you know again I I think all of us uh had a sense of I I really shouldn't speak for everybody but many many many Jews particularly in Israel have a tremendous Euphoria with the new Administration and you knowem you actually see that political power can be used for good which is a little bit of a Kish actually but there is such a thing as someone who just uses his power uh to accomplish good things uh but we also have to remember ultimately everything is in God we trust which is on the coinage of the US although not in Israel it ought to be but uh in the United States in God we trust and the noi said bem blessed is the person who puts his trust in God and the other way around or and the mafor explained that doesn't mean if you trust in man you will be cursed but it means the very fact of putting your trust in man puts you in an a cursed state You're vulnerable things can change every minute you know even with Trump I mean there were statements earlier in the week you know that we're a little Not So Pro uh the needs of of the Jewish Community AR Israel but then he goes back on it so the point basically is that he should be a both for Isel and really for the world but ultimately you know God calls the shots and God determines what happens in the world and um he's not you know he's not Jewish so he's not mashiah you know uh and and and the like but still we wish him uh and the whole Administration much masle and braa I'm sure you saw that he met with the hostage families at least the ones that are in America and uh he was connecting to them and uh the other topic which I've already talked about in other places I'm only going to allude to is uh the issue of um the very conflicting emotions that that all of us have uh every time a hostage is released uh we feel a tremendous joy that brem their suffering has finished they've been reunited with their families if they're in good health it's even better uh at the same time look at the price the price is that to get the Kim back terrorists and murderers are being released like a poison into the body politic andam we hope not butam these were people who killed once and murdered more than once and they're just being released and we wonder what was the purpose of the War what was the purpose of the dying if if we simply have a situation where Hamas can be rebuilt and Gaza can be repopulated who knows some people say there was some secret agreements when Trump put pressure on it maybe Israel can bomb bomb Iran you know who knows so maybe in point of fact this will turn out to be much I just want to allude to the fact I'm not going to give you a in this I I've given this year elsewhere uh that there is a major major major uh if in order to free Kim uh we are permitted to kind of give in Terrorist demands uh Raj YF and his son RIT Yosef the present Chief Rabbi has taken uh the position that the imperative of P ransoming captives and and taking people out of dangerous situations justifies giving into any demand because we have to save these people's lives that is a approach number one and other gum have endorsed that as well approach number two has been that when you're fighting an enemy that tries to destroy you uh you can't so to speak give in any type of demand because you're saving some lives you have to look at the long-term repercussions that you know you might be saving whatever it is 20 30 100 lives by endangering the future security of the entire population by terrorists who will come back so in this I mean in point of fact October 7 itself was an example of that where sinir uhem is no longer uh in this in this world uh but sinir was released uh he was already in isra custody under a life sentence we also did him the favor of emergency brain surgery but okay that's a seate issue uh he was released as part of the gilad Shalit exchange and He was largely uh the architect of the October 7 Massacre so essentially we did save galad chalit and I'm very very happy for that but you know who knows if that caused over a thousand deaths and 200 hostages so there are uh poim who basically say you cannot give it to these types of deals in the same way that every who fights is essentially risking his life for the greater cause then tragically and I again it it hurts my heart to to even say this but but some have taken the position even Hally that theim would would have to be regarded as kind of like that in order to secure the success of the overall objective there are people that have to give their lives now how do you tell a mother that how do you look so so actually one of the mothers said very powerful statement she said that I scream and cry and demand that my son be released no matter what and I hope that the government won't listen to me that they'll take into account the larger objective so I'm not here to give you any at all but all I can tell you is that the ambivalence that I think all of us feel is actually mirrored in a h debate it's actually very significant debate and this is not the first time that we face this I mean we face it now now we faced it with galad chalit uh we faced it actually even in inbi although inbi wound up to be a rescue mission but in the early stages of inbi the conversation also was about releasing uh terrorists and the like now from Israel standpoint it may have been a ploy but nevertheless the rabim at the time we're discussing the the so this goes back quite a long time and it's actually discussed in Mish that says we don't pay excessive Ransom uh to kidnappings lest we embolden the enemy to continue to uh go down this path and the whole m is how you apply that mishna to the Contemporary situation so as I say I I don't want to get into the technicalities but I guess the situation is such that I needed to say just a a few words about it but that should not obscure the joy that we feel that people are home and uh in some ways even if Israel's deal is is is foolish from one perspective but at the same time it shows how much am Israel cares about every single Jew and in a sense even when it's mistaken for whatever you know if it is mistaken but it comes from a Jewish greatness that every single person and in fact as you know from the past past Israel has done these deals not just to save lives they've done so even to reclaim dead bodies Hally that's even more questionable I mean what you know uh how can you endanger the public in order to get back a dead body for burial okay again I'm I'm not here to address pis here but I do think that you still have to see the the greatness of CLA Israel that we care so much and that's something to be very very proud of uh that we value life and we value our and we value our and you know we want to do whatever we can and have is saying that actually means great love can sometimes throw your judgment out of whack okay so again I don't mean to give you any definitive sck but if you consider this type of deal to be a Kill Co which it might be but it comes from AA it does come from a good place a good meta in am Israel that we need to build on and we need to increase uh and in fact I've said many many times already it's a I can almost say it almost every week since October 2023 that this was the Silver Lining of all that we've gone through and that is it has brought us together in a more powerful way uh unfortunately some of that Aus is uh dismantling that happens to be true but at its best that akas uh was very much strengthened specifically in this time of adversity um okay uh so now let's U go to the paraa obviously we're dealing with the par and there's always something very point iions about Moser renu's first appearance to parro Hashem appears to Moser Renu the Shepherd in the burning bush and mosha is not a young man you know at the age of 80 you think about retiring uh right and the like so mosha didn't Envision that the last part of his life would be you know so pivotal and he's shepherding along and God Appears to him in the burning bush and God gives him a mission to go and take my people out of Egypt I have heard their prayers I have seen their suffering I remember the covenants that I made to AB and Yakov and Moshe just argues with the almighty over and over and over again he says I'm not good enough they're not good enough he uses both types of arguments I'm not worthy they're not not worthy get somebody better get somebody more articulate I don't speak well every excuse in the book K actually say he was arguing with God for a whole week although the Kish does not give you the a timeline finally God kind of gives him a direct order you know you're going whether you like it or not and Aon will be your interpreter you can't you don't talk very well iron will be the one that will convey the message so Moshe finally goes to parro together with Aon and Moshe does all of the signs turns the staff into a snake and the the water into the blood this is not the plague of blood but this is the preliminary just establish his credentials and the problem is of course that Pyro's magicians Egypt is full of kichu can do all the same things yeah it's true that moshe's snake swallows up the other ones but still more or less they did the same thing and parro turns on Moshe and he says hey you know uh this agitation for civil rights equality Freedom that's because they don't they have too much time on their hands so they start thinking about things I'm going to make it worse from now on the quota of bricks they have to make is going to be the same but they're going to have to gather the straw for the bricks and Moshe leaves parro and he's met with the angry glances of all of the Jews that have heard he's made their life worse not better I mean imagine this Moshe begs God not to go and then he goes and everything becomes worse than it was and this actually breaks mosha raaba this is one of the places in the Torah where moshe's spirit is actually broken Moshe says to hasem why have you done bad to this people and then he adds why did you send me from the time that I came to par not only did you not save the nation you made it worse that's kind of how the end of par you have to read it sometimes you know we we get a little thrown off because different dep par but you have to realize that is the middle of a conversation it's the middle of this conversation and God says to him you're a man who lacks faith I appear to AB Y and yov and I made promises to them and they never saw the full fruition of those promises but they believed in me and you're not believing in me when I make a promise that you're going to see with your own eyes and at that Pointes says tell B is I am God and Rashi actually explains a little different we normally say is the Rashi here based on gives a bit of a different Nuance the is I am trustworthy I am Dependable I carry out what I say I'm going to doem and then we have the famous for of redemption I will take you out of Egypt I will save you from the servitude I will redeem you I will take you unto me for a nation there is a fifth term I will bring you to the land I'll get to that in a minute but it's yua that all of us know of course that there's a Mitzvah Sater night to drink four cups of wine it's MIT it's not a mitv the first cup is kidish the second cup is at the end of the maget at the end of The Narrative the third cup is after benching and the fourth cup is after Hal which means it actually what I just said is an important thing to keep in mind toally it's not just drinking four cups of wine it's doing mitzvos over a cup of wine we do kidish over wine wine we do mid over wine we do benching over wine we do Hal over wine that actually has important repercussions uh let's when the hag says fill up your cup fill up your cup when it tells you to meaning a person might think I'll fill up my cup when it's time to drink the cup I'll fill up my cup no good you got to recite the maget over the wine you got to recite the Hal over the wine not just drink the wine so fact the bris actually said aish the brisar said that the cup you drink has to be the same cup over which you perform the Mitzvah so the brisar says the following if I said mget over a cup of wine and then that cup spilled and I have to refill it I got to recite the whole magot over again on the cup that I'm going to drink I can't say mot over this cup and drink some other cup is very pivotal now the itself of course talks about the ofos and it even makes the point that women are also inos because they too partook of the miracle of redemption but the gamor strangely enough does not even though every child iner learns the reason for Del Kos the gamarra itself does not give any well the only reason the gamarra gives is actually a technical reason if I learned the whole talid B and I ask according to the talud B why are there four cups of wine the only reason you have is because there are four mitzvos that you got to do over wine kidish mid Bening and Hal that's the only reason the gamar givs but both Rashi and his grandson the rashbam it's interesting AR is so so interesting uh the rashbam uh was one of rashi's grandchildren he was the older brother of Raben nutam rabam is rakov Ben mayor and rashbam is rabish shmu Ben mayor both of them are you know G we shown him and we know in MRA we only have rashi's commentary till the middle of the second peric uh we don't know why exactly and the rest of the M we only have the commentary of rasham so one thing that everybody notices is that the rash Bam's commentary is around five times the size of rashi's commentary that rashi's kak of abbreviation Clarity and brevity is literally unsurpassed it actually is miraculous in many ways the rasham is much more Mar uh now but you don't have a controlled experiment because you can't compare Rashi and the rashbam because in Basra where you have the rashbam you don't have Rashi and when you have Rashi you don't have the rashbam but in arim which is the peric the last peric ofakim that talks about the Seder I don't know why the rashbam wrote a commentary on arim even though Rashi also has a commentary on arim so there you can actually do a scientifically controlled experiment because you can compare the two commentaries on the same line of gorah and there too you'll see if Rashi says it in one word rash will say it in five words if Rashi says it in two sentences rash will say it in 10 sentences and and the like so you actually have a proof by the way that's why they say all the is has the most number of pages in Chas it does not have the most number of words the pages of AAS are actually relatively short because the rash Bam's commentary is huge so the truth is m is not uh the largest M even though it has the most Pages for Dai uh purposes and uh and and the like uh but the reason I'm bringing it up is the following the famous dressure that every kid knows that the reason we have four cups of wine is because of the four not of is not in the Babylonian tement at all it is from the yeli which which is then quoted by Rashi and the rashba okay it's pretty amazing uh that it's an interesting example of things that have become the common knowledge of CLA Israel but are not from the Babylonian tal they're more they're more from a a less accessible Source T Yi I mean I mean most people don't even learn the T Yi uh rightly or wrongly and yet this is from the hore of uh the of G being the basis of the four cups of wine is from thei as a little aside let me mention another that we only know from the tal ji and that is the iser of eating matah on a of PES now we know that um technically uh you are allowed to eat mat I mean some people have been hug him they don't eat M from por or they don't eat M fromes right those are men hug but technically you are allowed to eat matah until AR PES in the morning which actually means the isra of eating matah kicks in earlier than the isra of eating ketz I can eat until 3 hours into the uh into the day but I'm not allowed to eat matah from the beginning of the day and the Yi basically says that anyone who eats matah on Arab of P it is similar to consummate having intimate relations with your betra uh woman before you've recited theas Etc meaning it'll be M later but right now you're not allowed to do it so this is a the that you're not allowed to eat mat on P and yet it is totally based on thei it's not in the Babylonian tal at all this is yet another example of something that is only learned from the from the Yi okay but be as May there are other reasons for d kosas as well but we're going to go with the most common reason that the iser of the of rather of delos is Theos of so the obvious question becomes why do we need foros of was a single event God took us out of MIT what are the four Lonas of G so so I'm going to mention first aat from the in the hamik then we'll give something that's a a little bit more my Civ actually points out that the freedom and again he has a very very beautiful intricate way of showing this in the text he says the Jewish people achieved freedom in gradual stages that during the Macos there were times that parro didn't respond at all and there were times that he gave them a a little bit of movement right so the NV points out the following initially parro did respond the way the way he's meding theim is the first three plagues pyro didn't move an inch the blood the frogs the LI nothing happened everything was exactly as bad as it was so nothing happened but the second group of plagues the NV says parro took away what is called the avodas per the backbreaking labor was taken away and they just remained regular Slaves by the third group even the slavery was taken away but they weren't allowed to leave Mitra and then of course the last they left and eventually they got the Torah so then says the four the four stages in Freedom was number one taking away the avodas but they're still aim number two taking away the a but they still had to remain in Egypt number three leaving Egypt which happened in pesak number four for T because the fourth is generally understood as mat T So before of GA means freedom came to us in our four stages removal of per number one removal of a number two uh being able to leave MIT number three Matan Torah number four and again Matan Torah of course is nothing to do with the maros but with the maros he does have this pattern of three things happening during the maros meaning a being able to leave M this is how the N understands it and again it's uh it fits theim uh very very well uh and this of course is what kazal actually say kazal actually say that the Jewish people stopped being slaves rash which is 6 months before pesak that corresponds to the idea that there was period during the makos where we weren't we weren't able to leave Egypt but we were no longer technically a right so that that type of stage did occur but I want to share with you a thought from theim Al to the first re of G the G Reb this's father and he correlates two different midrash on one hand we say of course that the four cups of wine are Kad the four Lonas of gulan MIT but there are two m one Med says the significance of four Leonas of GAA is because there were four evil decrees that parro had promulgated against us and we needed a Redemption from each of those four decrees at different times decree number one was the servitude decree number two was when he said remember he had an astrological Vision that uh the savior of Israel is going to be born Etc so he decreed that the soldiers come in I'm I'm sorry first he decreed that the uh yeah the soldiers come in and they kill every male child that was the second decree and that was not so much so then the third decree required the mdos The Midwives to come and you know kill the boys that was shiff and Pua Y and Miriam and that they didn't do so decree number one was the slavery itself decree number two was the genocide of the soldiers decree number three was the attempted genocide by the mdos by the midwives and decree number four is the last decree and that is the Gathering of straw you have to gather your straw it's not going to be given to you so this medish tells us that the four Theon not of GAA are connected the four gazerro of par that is medish number one medish number two says that the four leonos of gaula correspond to the four Exiles that the Jewish people will go through in their future history MIM is like the Prototype of Gus but after we come to erit Israel and there's the destruction of the basa mikdash Etc we go through four Exiles right this notion of the four Exiles appears over and over and over again it appears in M the song it appears in the Book of Daniel many many times in the book of Zakaria and what are the four Exiles the first Exile is Babylonia which destroyed the basa mikdash and exiled us Babylonia was succeeded by Persia Paras in which the porm story happens Babylon uh Paras was eventually conquered by Greece Alexander that created the gas of yavan and yavan was eventually conquered by Rome and Rome is said to be the descendant of asov and Ed and Ed of course was M the second B Mikes and the Gus that we are in is described in this very day as the Gus of Edam the Roman gullas and even though you may ask well why is it called the Roman gullas the Romans are long gone there are no Romans ruling in the world even in Italy there are no Romans and certainly uh Italy anyway is not any Empire but but the short answer is it makes no difference if the Romans are here or not uh what the Romans did the Gus of Rome the Gus of Asa has not been rectified the temple is destroyed mashia has not come moreover in in various statements of kazal the Roman uh gas morphed into Christianity which became the dominant oppressor of the Jewish people in our history and generally Western Civilization as a whole it came from Rome Rome took it from Greece and and spread it throughout the world so even if there's no ethnic Romans around this is called the Gus of ASV now in truth kazal always describe over and over and over again with very rare exceptions that the four exile once again are B Paras yavan and Edom those are the four Exiles however there is one passage in P elzar which is a medes that actually talks about the final stage of Gus that we will face will be the Gus of yishmael yesma and that will be the most dangerous of the gas of all actually I I hesitate to say this because whenever I say this it gets posted on an Arab website uh so you may have come across it whatever that uh I talk about the of of of of B isma and uh they use it for propaganda techniques so I can't really help it unfortunately but so I'm not going to be Maring that precisely because I don't want it to happen again uh but it does say because B is have certain spiritual merits whether it be Brisa whether it be SOS whether whether it be praying to Hashem five times a day Etc and that makes them a more difficult enemy to Vanquish because there is a certain spiritual power there uh now that seems to contradict kaz's typology because kazal always talk about the Gus of edin as The Last Exile before mashiach and yet we see we actually see it in our own eyes how gas is in terms of Arab terrorism or Islamic terrorism I should say kind of terrorizes the world but the truth is it's not a sta because the gas as a whole is G because there's no question that the vast majority of Jews in the world are living under Christian domination so it's like uh Gus isma is a 4.1 meaning this is the fourth Gus that's the Gus of Asa it's going to be augmented by yes but essentially we don't regard gas as a separate Exile but it's a certain intensification of Tor that we're going to have in which the last struggles that we will face Asam Israel will be the confrontations between asov and yesma in different ways Western Civilization versus Islamic fundamentalism and that indeed is maybe the major challenge that the world uh faces today and that's connected to the meaning of Goan MOG and the struggles of go and MOG many actually see this as asov versus isma and we happen to be in the middle so we get affected we get hit uh by traffic uh moving in both uh both sides uh but be as it may the medish I'm quoting about the D Kos does not mention yes it simply says the four Kos or actually not the four Kos the four not I'm going back to the itself the forless show note of GAA is really God's promise that just as I will redeem you from MIM I will redeem you from B from Paras from yavan and from Ed so we have two different midrashim again mid number one correlates the four Lon note of GAA to the four decrees of parro medish number two correlates the four leonos of gaula to the four Exiles right so the first medish is focusing on four bad things in MIT the second medish is making it a much broader idea that Hashem will redeem us from the four Exiles so the K wants to say he wants to correlate these two mid Russian in a very interesting way if you remember by the brisban abarim by the Covenant of the parts when Abraham went into a deep Slumber and Hashem gave him an ominous frightening prophecy that your children will be strangers in a land that is not theirs and they will be enslaved and they will be persecuted for 400 years and the nation that enslaves them I will judge and your children will then leave the land with great wealth right that's the brisar we allude to it in the ha right that that very verse is in the hag of PES so we do have the famous idea that Hashem told Abraham they're going to be enslaved or they they're going to be in a land that is not theirs for 400 years now in point of fact the Jewish people were only in MIT 210 years from the time that Yakov ainu came down to Egypt till the time that Moser reeno took them out of Egypt is only 210 years and as I mentioned last week even within that 210 years since they didn't become slaves until Yosef and all the tribes died that takes off uh more than 100 years that they were slaves for less than 100 years but the question is God said 400 years how do you reconcile the 400 years with the 210 so Rashi suggests an answer again again Rashi didn't make up the answer but it's based on kazal that it didn't say they would be slaves in Egypt for 210 years no nation is mentioned at all there will be strangers in a land that is not theirs and that could even include living in ER Israel if you don't have a sense that this is your land and therefore we count it from the birth of Y from the birth of till is indeed 400 years that's the well-known answer that Rashi gives but the based on other says the following idea had we stayed in mitam 400 years that could have purified us from all of the impurities all of the defects all of the deficiencies just like an iron furnace indeed m is described in the Tyra remember that P I took you out of the core habarzel I took you out of the iron furnace that's exactly how MIM is described what does an iron furnace do again iron furnace here does not mean the furnace is made of iron it means a furnace in which you purify iron it melts away it burns away impurities so the says a very disheartening thought had we been able to stay in MIT 400 years that would have burnt away all the spiritual impurities and we would have been ready for mashiach we would have entered arel with mosha rabenu and there would be a an immediate Bas of mikas that would never be destroyed this would be it this would be it because after all by we had reached the level of Ghan Etc and uh perhaps there even wouldn't have been a there wouldn't have been aego had we burnt away all the impurities so the wouldn't have happened but what was the problem the problem is we couldn't stay for 400 years because it adversely was pulling us down we were in the 49th level of impurity had we stayed another few minutes we would have hit Level 50 we would have been irredeemable I mean chemotherapy is a perfect example if r a person has cancer and they go through intensive chemotherapy and the chemotherapy is the only thing that's going to kill the cancer but the chemotherapy is so strong and so potent that it's actually lethal to the person the chemo can kill the person so what do you have to do sometimes sometimes you have to stop the chemotherapy so the patient won't die but that leaves the cancer inside which can grow and grow and grow and eventually kill them so says theim I'm using modern vocabulary the MIT was a spiritual chemotherapy a COR barzel and had we completed the course of treatment the spiritual cancers of M yose and Adrian would have been gone and then we we would have per received the Torah in a great state of Purity but what happened was it was having the negative effect of pulling us down we weren't able to take that treatment so God had to cut it short but here's the problem this is why it's disheartening by cutting the Gus mitam short by 190 years he left the cancers within us thus we have theel we have thein and the need for the thousands of years of Gus that we've gone through it's like interest had we been able to last another 190 years we would not have needed the thousand of years of gas that we had but again cancer is such a Perfect Analogy if the cancer was left within a person it grows and grows and grows and then you need more radical treatment to get rid of it so therefore the says if that's going to be the case every Gus we go through is kind of an intensification of what we should have gone through in MIT he actually wants to suggest this is a beautiful connection that the four decrees of parro actually which were bashem not totally fulfilled they were played out in the four Exiles so gazer one in MIM turned into Gus B I'll explain how gazer 2 of parro turned into the Gus of Paras gazer 3 of parro had to turn into the gas of yavan and gazer 4 had to turn into the gas of edim because we didn't complete the MIT process it had to be carried out in the four Exiles so let's make a correlation again a very very brilliant thought he says when we look at the um the first gazer of pyro is servitude right he made us slaves we lost our freedom that actually corresponds to the Babylonian exile because in truth if we ask ourselves under which Exile did we lose our lose our freedom it's only true for GIS B Because GIS B took a free Nation Under The Kings of Israel or the Mal Yehuda and conquered it subjugated it once you talk about Persia Greece and Rome there was no free Jewish Nation Persia took over from Babylonia and Greece took over from Persia and Rome took over now the one exception is that at some point in the Greek uh period we did have the Kaneka revolt and the honi Mal so there was an independent Jewish state for around a hundred years but in truth kazal did not have high regard for the malus of the it actually regards them as just Greeks in the sense of the values that they were espousing so in a sense therefore the gazer of Abdus corresponds to Babylonia because it's Babylonia that made us slaves all the other guses were just continuing that loss of political Freedom so Abdus gazer number one corresponds to Gus B now the next Gus is Persia now the Persian Exile was very very short it was according to kazal it was only around 50 years meaning from the time that um Cyrus conquered the Babylonian Empire till Alexander of Macedonia conquered the Persian Empire was only 52 years the gas of Paras is very short but the one outstanding event that happened in the gas of Paras was the story of puim and the gazer of hamon and that represents genocide so the gas of bavel represents subjugation the gas of Persia represents genocide and that corresponds to the second gazer of parro where the soldiers were commanded to murder the Jewish babies thow throw them into the Nile that didn't happen but that left us vulnerable to the second gas of of yava of of Paras which was genocide now the third Association is a bit more subtle the third gazer of pyro you'll recall seems to also be genocidal and that is the midwives were instructed to drown uh to um I'm sorry actually I have to apologize I think I think I missed up I mixed up my sequence the mdos The Midwives were first I'm sorry the the second gazer of par was The Midwives again I I want to correct that were the midwives uh the that's the second gazer the third gazer is the soldiers throwing them into the water so the midwives we would describe as parro's attempt to commit genocide against the Jewish people that corresponds to Persia the gazer of H now the third gazer is when the midwives didn't do their job the soldiers were told to throw the kids into the river this corresponds with Greece but in a in an association that's a little bit more symbolic when we look at the N going back to Kaneka a little bit when we look at the nission that we faced with Greece it was a that was primarily one of spiritual assimilation meaning unlike Persia where hamon wanted to kill our bodies and hamon did not care if we were religious or not religious hon and Hitler are very much the same kill every Jew Yovan was a bit more subtle antios was not an anti-semite in the model of Hitler Fact one might even say antias was an enlightened desperate antios was perfectly happy to give Jews full political and economic rights as long as they give up that which makes them distinctively Jewish assimilate become Greek adopt the mores adopt the philosophies and everything will be good for you so although Kaneka turned into a war and we talked about this extensively but Kaneka was a spiritual struggle much more than a political or military struggle now Greece we talked about this had much much wisdom there was valuable philosophy valuable Insight when kazal say if someone tells you there's wisdom among the go and believe them that's referring to the wisdom wisdom just like Torah is compared to water water is lifegiving water is purifying water refreshes the soul but water can also drown you if you use it the wrong way water can kill you so the notion of drowning the babies in the water is an illusion to the gulus of yav were contact with the water philosophies of yavan which could have refreshed your soul and could have elevated you but when they're taken to rebel against God they suffocate and destroy you so you see where he's going meaning gazer number one of parro which is servitude corresponds to Babylonia that took away our freedom gazer number two about killing the mialo killing the babies corresponds to Paras which is physical genocide Gaz number three that the mios I'm sorry that theim the soldiers will drown the babies in a symbolic way as a remes to Yan where the wisdom of yan that could be called water could also turn into a vehicle that will suffocate you and destroy your spiritual essence you see his thesis again his thesis is that because these gazerro did not run through the entire process they needed to be carried out in the Exiles over many more years so now we come to the fourth gazer and the fourth Gaza is seems to be innocuous in some ways I mean it's a gazer but you know what's so bad the gazer of gathering your own straw your quota is not diminished you have to gather your own straw that is said to correspond to the galus of edim again the Gus of asov the Roman Exile the Exile that we are still in albe it augmented by isma what's the catcher what's the connection between the Gathering of straw and the Gus of Asa so suggests that the Gus of not the gas the gazer of straw is described as pizor people had to scatter to get their straw because it wasn't brought to them meaning when I was just making my bricks I stayed in one place and they brought me the straw and I made my bricks this is M of me to scatter so the characteristic of Gus asov this is called the Gus of being scattered in what way is that true so it's true in some superficial ways and it's also true in in ways that are far deeper and more profound superficially we are told that the gullas of edim will be the greatest scattering of the Jewish people of any gullas under the Babylonian gas we were in Babylon the Persian Empire was bigger we were in Persia Persian Empire and other countries Etc the G of Ed were every place in the world there's even a Mas cannot come until Jews are every place in the world even Antarctica I saw my friend of mine from Yeshiva who now a very very FR some of you might have heard sh from him so uh when they advertise his tape series they say Rabbi Fran has listeners in every continent and they put in parentheses including Antarctica apparently there's a Jewish guy in Antarctica who listens to shorya so P are in the most literal sense is we're all over the place it also means the breakup of families no it it was for a lot of the Middle Ages and certainly way before that people lived in the same house the same Community for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years your children your grandchildren your great grandchildren built up a community they say in frag just a cute little thing that in of course only not not like here every day but there was a Coen in Prague who had 12 sons who were kohanim and his 12 daughters married so uh when they were there would be 25 kohanim from that family going up so he says this is how your M because is introduced in the Torah by the verse is so shall you bless is 25 real got 25 getting up there that notion of families being together but we live in pizor but pizar is not just geographical pis is also psychological people are distance from each other there is the pisar of a lack of connection of husband and wife the alienation of parents and children the sin that exists between us scattering scattering and think by the way going back to MIT itself how the gazer of T actually facilitates hatred because here's the thing it it creates competition so to speak meaning if I have my straw and you have your straw so I do my thing you do your thing and your success does not stop me from my success yeah you might do more than me but that's because you do more than me but you're not stopping me from doing whatever I'm able to do once we got a farage for the straw every time you pick something up it may not be available for me it introduced a certain notion of competitiveness rivalry sin the gas ofed is the gas of what do kazal say this second temple was destroyed because of hatred and polarization so pisor has a lot of connotations geographical distancing breakup of families in the sense of being separated the polarizations between husband and wife parent and children the sinot within isra and then there's even a deeper level of pisar and that is the estrangement and confusion that is within yourself within our own personalities the inability to focus this is indeed if you think about this and this remember wrote about this way before the information age but think about the impact of the internet the impact of social media you're hit with all sorts of inputs in a million different directions can't focus can't concentrate can't prioritize can't focus on what's important because there's always a distraction out there that creates an inner turmoil I remember years ago when I was living in in Maryland so I saw an ad in one of the Jewish newspapers uh the Washington Jewish week there was an ad a certain delicates in it wasn't even a kacher delicatess but they were saying they sell mustard and they say we have 300 brands of mustard so we look at that as a great great blessing 300 brands of mustard wow uh so think you know I was thinking my my wife tells me you know Friday afternoon you know go to the store pick up a jar of mustard so I walk into the store and I'm hit with 300 jars of mustard assuming they have heur you know what am I supposed to do you get paralyzed with the abundance of what's available oh go get AAR Torah off the internet you know I don't even I don't even try that right because I have no idea what what what to look at choice is in many ways of course a blessing but Choice can paralyze you Choice can paralyze you a lot and that's called P that we're going to be pulled in so many different directions that we're just not able to focus on anything when we're doing one thing we're thinking about the something else and I do the something else I'm thinking about something else after that and you're busy taking pictures of an event and you know you don't experience this you don't experience the event right you're some sometimes you have husband and wife sitting each of them is on their on their phone to checking something else like what's going on we're we're not living in our own lives so this is the profound idea that it's the fourth gazer of parro that creates the disjointedness the confusion the turmoil that exists both in terms of our interpersonal relationship and just in terms of our own internal mental balance and again the is that because these gazer were never carried out in their fullness in MIT they needed to be carried out in more in a more extreme measure during the the four the four Exiles the good news is that although none of us can give dates and anyone that tries to give a date for the coming of mashia kazal were extremely critical kazal say people who try to calculate the end of days uh ought to burst they ought to explode meaning they shouldn't shouldn't live they of Misa for doing such a thing and I think people need to be aware of that because people particularly there Israel love to give prognostications about all sorts of things uh we can't do that we're not allowed to do that at the same time uh we are allowed to say that at least we're in the of we don't know if it'll be a year two years 10 years 50 years but we are at least in the periods things are happening the idea of yesel doing CH the person did Chua and we are told side by side with theas is uh the terrorists the murderers there is Dubai there are these pocket of different Islamic Nations Arab Nations Saudi Arabia again possibly that want to make peace again I'm not saying they're doing so for Spiritual reasons but we talk shalma fromma comes LMA so we're seeing is doing chuba uh we're seeing things happening in the world and yes some of them are tragic and some of them are disruptive but once again that too is described as characteristic of birth Pains of mashiach labor pains labor pains I am told I can't say I know firsthand but very very painful very painful and yet from that pain comes great light great bra great and that's hopefully what we're experiencing in right now so yes in that end stage there will be pisor scattering not knowing where to focus because that is the characteristic of Goos Ed but at the same time out of that P will eventually come the or the great light of the mashia so may we be to see this G and in the immediate short term May theim who are still alive may all of them uh be safe and be reunited with their families very very soon thank you [Music] oh