Rav Yitzchak Breitowitz: Post-Shavuot Insights into Na'aseh V'Nishmah

[Music] You see your tomorrow [Music] Okay. Hi everybody. Thank you. Thank you for coming and I hope uh all of you had a very uh enjoyable inspirational uh shabuos time of accepting Hashem's Torah. Uh since it's right after the we'll talk a little bit about Shabuos even now with your with your permission. Uh first the shar tonight is dedicated as always praying for the victory of our soldiers and all the fronts of the war and the lasting unity of Israel for all of those whose health has been affected by the war uh the safe return of all of the hostages and all of the and all of the families that have been displaced uh from their homes. Uh in addition we have a bit of a special dedication tonight uh for Yitzkat Isaac Ben Yoel dedicated by his son Abiwis who just finished sitting Shiva uh for his father and he asked me to read a little bit of a biography so at least we'll have a sense of who his father was. Uh Yet Isaac Benoel was named after his mother's father who in all likelihood it was named after the first Kaliva Rebi. Uh he was an honest, hard-working person who loved his family and he often used humor to cheer people up uh whenever they needed it. He was very humble and quiet. He went to the Nar Israel yesa in Toronto which is originally was a branch of Mayoshiva Nisel in Baltimore. Over time it became independent. Uh he was devoted to his family and to his friends. He moved to Erit Israel two and a half years ago. He loved the land based on prior trips. He knew many of his children would eventually be moving here as well. Uh of all of the torsion we watched, he enjoyed my shir the most. Okay. So, we are delighted. We are delighted to be able to sponsor a shir in his memory. Uh may this Torah servant as alias nama and continued merit for him. So we hope it should be an alias and uh may AI be comforted with all of the aim of may his father have a a great inab um so there are really two things I want to talk about but they're a little bit connected one is some thoughts about matan tora and it's an interesting board you know we say that shvuos is the time that we got the Torah god gave us the Torah and last week we explained that at great length. But you'll notice that we often use a different phrase. For example, Pure Yavos says Moshe Torah. Moshe received the Torah. And we often talk about Torah. So the holiday does not describe our receiving of the Torah. The holiday describes God giving us the Torah. And without getting into what exact date that happened, I just want to give you a very quick thought of why the holiday is called matan tora. But the overall experience from our perspective is described as kabolas tora. And the answer is actually quite simple. Matan tora, God giving us the Torah was a singular event. It happened at a particular time in history that God gave us the Torah. But our acceptance of the Torah is not a one-time event. Every single day, we have to receive God's Torah the same way that you know, you don't skip breakfast today unless it's a fast day because you ate breakfast yesterday. Every day has to have its own breakfast. Then every single day we have to receive the Torah a new with the same enthusiasm, the same passion, the same excitement. So it's not possible to describe kabala satyra as zum kabala sat. It's kabala is every day. It's constant. Matan hashem gave it to us on a certain date. Our responsibility to be male is every single day. So in that connection therefore uh even if it wouldn't be the day after or now it's 2 days after uh nevertheless to talk about kabala satyra is always appropriate because kabala satyra is in fact something that we have to do every single day. This is encapsulated in's famous statement. Every single day the Tyra has to be new. In that connection, let me share with you an old um I may have said it recently. I don't remember. Forgive me if if I did say it recently. That is says I have asked one thing from Hashem to dwell in the house of God all the days of my life to see the sweetness of God. Same word and to visit his sanctuary. So the question is does he want to be a permanent resident or a tourist? He he says, "I want to dwell in the house of God all the days of my life." And then he says, "I want to be able to visit." Are you a visitor or do you dwell in the house of God all the days of your life? And the mush that the supraas give is to a bar mitzvah boy who's been looking forward to wearing his fillain uh for months, maybe years, and he finally puts on his fillin, and it's so exciting. There's so much passion, so much Gishmak, so much excitement, but then as the years go by, you lose the enthusiasm. David Hamelik wants to be connected to all the days of his life, but he he also wants it to be like a first time visitor at the same time and that with the same enthusiasm. That's the meaning every single time it should be new. Unfortunately, we sometimes apply that in a not a positive way. Sometimes we forget our learning so much. Every time we learn something, it's first time I've ever seen it. That that's a that's a bad example of uh but the kadashim in terms of the excitement, in terms of the gishmak, uh that's something we should really strive for. And uh as we're coming off, I hope that inspires us to that. What a gift the Tyra is. What a sim the Tyra is. You know, it's been pointed out that is like the only holiday that does not have what you might call a distinct ritual other than the laws of Yum itself. In other words, Pes has matzah of Sukus has lul and esroshana has teas chauffar. Yum kipper has the unique ritual of fasting. But there is nothing you're staying up all night as a min but there's nothing that shu has other than the fact that it is a yamt but that it shares in common with every other yamt there's what is unique about what's the holiday about blindes cheesecake those those are customs those are not in the structure itself but the answer is that when you have tyra you have everything meaning you don't need to augment it you don't need special rituals. You don't need a special way of celebration. This is life. This is everything. In this is the complete way we connect to our kadesh. Shuas represents a celebration of life itself. And therefore, you know, life doesn't need to be augmented with anything else. It's life itself that is beautiful and significant. The Torah is the life of the Jew. The Tory is the existence of the Jew. Shivus does not need any other ritual to accentuate the mitsio, the fact of the Tyra itself. So I want to share with you something which uh I will connect to the para. Uh so we will have a thought on the para as well. But everybody knows that the famous thing the Jews said when God offered them the Torah after offering it to other nations who turned it down, the Jewish people said, "Whatever God has commanded us, we will do and we will learn. We will then learn." Uh and the Gmorrah Shabas has the following passage. When the Jewish people prefaced the NASA before the nishma, we will do and we will learn. Because they said the NASA first, the angels in heaven came down and put on the head of every Jew two spiritual crowns of glory. One because of the NASA and one because of the nishma. And we had those crowns of glory until theel when they were taken away. Now the basi asks an interesting question. The gammorra doesn't just say when they said nasma two statements they got two crowns. The implication is they got two crowns only because of the sequencing of first the nasa and then the nishma. Meaning if they would have said nishma vasa we will learn and we will do they would have only gotten one crown. Now the problem is if the notion of the two crowns is because they made two commitments a commitment of action and a commitment of learning then why would the two crowns depend on the sequencing? Why does the garra emphasize they got two crowns? because it's bishikuishma. So the bas in timehonored Jewish fashion uh wants to answer this question by raising another question right common way that Jews talk and that is there is an interesting gamorrah in masakus nadarim when it discusses the reasons for the destruction of the temple and all of us are familiar with the well-known gamorrah that says the first temple was destroyed because of idolatry and because of sexual immorality and because of murder. And the second basikdash was destroyed because of hatred and polarization for no reason. Right? Though those garas are very very well known. But the Gammor seemingly out of left field comes up with another reason for the destruction of actually the first temple. And it says ah they did not recite the blessings before the the Torah. They learned Torah, but they didn't recite the blessings over the Torah. So, okay, that's that is a violation of Yeah, they didn't keep a but uh is it that bad that causes apparently you're you're you're putting it up there with and they didn't make the blessings of the Torah. I mean, what's what's the comparison there? So, the BI says the following. There are two ways we could view the idea of learning Torah. One way of viewing learning Torah is that learning Torah is necessary to be able to know how to live as a Jew. Meaning, if I don't learn the laws of Shabas, how will I know how to keep Shabas? If I don't learn the laws of Kashwas, how will I know how to keep kosher? If I don't learn the laws of prayer, how will I know how to davin? meaning seen in that way, learning Torah is simply a vehicle to give you the practical knowledge of how to live as a Jew. And and undoubtedly that is the case. But if you only looked at Torah that way, technically you wouldn't be looking at it as an intrinsic mitzvah. You would be looking at it in the terminology of as a mitzvah, a preparation for a mitzvah. Meaning there are many activities that we have to do preparatory to a mitzvah. For example, uh there's no mitzvah to bake matzah or buy matzah for pes. There's mitzvah to eat matzah. The buying of the matzah or the baking of the matzah is a preparation. There's no mitzvah to build a suka. But building a suka is a what's called a mitzvah. Now a mitzvah never has its own braha. You don't make a brah in a so you make a braha when you eat matzah not when you bake it or buy it. You make a braha when you sit in the suka not when you build a suka. Ara mitzvah does not have a braha. Only the actual mitzvah has a braha. So says the basi when kazal say they committed the sin of not making the blessing before the Torah. It isn't simply that they weren't keeping a certain hala. That wouldn't have been that serious, but it means they had a certain attitude towards Torah that Torah was only a means to an end. And that's why they didn't make a bra because they looked at it as a as opposed to seeing it as the primary vehicle by which we connect to God. And keep in mind, if you think about this, if you take uh a work that is kind of the bread and butter of the yeshiva world, uh it's learning Gomorrah. Now, if you think about it, if the whole purpose of Torah study is to simply have practical knowledge how to live as a Jew, uh Gomorrah might be almost the worst vehicle to learn for that. you open up. I mean, I I remember it's kind of an inside joke, but it still strikes me as funny. I remember I was once in a Jewish bookstore in the Washington DC area and uh a man came in who looked like he didn't have a lot of background and he bought the two volume art scroll on Masvin, the laws of Arth. So, not that I like to ease up, you know, you know, whatever. the the owner went over to the guy and said, you know, I'm happy to sell it to you, but no, this is real hard. Aravan is a very very hard track date and you know, maybe you'd like something that's a little easier. Like, why are you buying like the hardest track date in the tomb? And the person said, "Well, I live in a city without an AV, so I want to build a an AV in my backyard. So, I figured this book would tell me exactly what I'm supposed to do." So, I see that anyone who's ever learned a page of Gomorrah uh knows how funny that really is. You open up the first page of Aravven and you have five opinions in the Talmud and each opinion has six interpretations by Rashi and by Tossus and the other commentaries and the like and you're not going to get a bottom line at all. Right? That's not what Gomorrah is. So, so obviously when we talk about learning Torah, we're talking about something that's existentially distinct than just getting practical knowledge. And after all in this day and age of used to be Rav Google was the greatest of of the of the postkim uh uh but now I think Rav Google has been replaced by Rav chat AI chat or whatever it is. Now we have superior versions of saka. So a person might say I don't have to learn Torah at all. I mean whatever answer I get I can get from AI or I can get from Google or whatever it would be. But that's not going to work. Torah is our connection to God. Torah is our soul food. Torah is our oxygen. So the Bi says very beautifully if they would have said first we will learn and then we will do they wouldn't have gotten two crowns because that would have implied the purpose of our learning is to be able to know what to do. So for that you get one crown. I'm going to do the mitzvah. But when they say we will do that already includes we will learn whatever we need to know in order to do. And if they then say afterwards we will learn that's a commitment to learn even when it's not connected directly to practical action because the act of Torah itself connection to God. See this is why there's a lot in the Torah that on one level is not immediately practical at all. I even in the we learn about leprosy. We learn about sacrifices. We learn about things that are not we don't practice today at all. But you have to understand that the Torah is God's will and God's will is God's mind and God's mind is God's essence because God is an undifferentiated unity. There's no separation. You connect to this aspect of God, you're connected to totality of God. When I connect to God, I become transformed. I become elevated. I become differentiated. Makes no difference where I learn. I can learn this. I can learn that. I can learn that. I can learn that. The Torah itself connects you to that's why even the parts of Torah that are not noa are still so important to us. And that's what the basi says is the significance of only because they said nasa before nishma they get two crowns. Had they said nishma and then nasa they would have gotten one crown only for the but still there's still a little bit of a question here. So it does turn out that what we've done is we've shown that not blessing the Torah is not just the sin of not blessing the Torah but it refers to a certain attitude towards the Torah in which they didn't see its transcendental spiritual significance but still is that equal to idolatry because because it's very clear from the passage I don't want to go into the proofs that when it says that the temple was destroyed Right? Because they didn't make blessings before the Torah. It is referring to the first basis, not the second basis. It's clear from the Gomorrah itself that that's the situation. But I thought we have something much worse. We have why do we bring in the attitude towards the Torah? So here Revelan, one of the great great uh Bali Muser personalities of the 20th century offers a tremendously really beautiful insight. If you remember the beginning of the book of Malikim, the beginning of the book of Kings where David is 70 years old was on on is 70 years old. He's shivering. He's cold and he's covered with blankets and he gets no warmth from the blankets and khazal give a reason because when Sha was pursuing David many many years earlier at one point Sha was asleep and David cut a corner off the gar his garment and then from a distance he told Sha I was so close to you that I could have killed you and I didn't do that. So the garra says David treated clothing with disrespect and he who treats clothing with disrespect the clothing will take revenge against him and not give him warmth. Your maza it's not going to protect you. And apparently uh clothes have kind of communication like relatives because obviously the clothing that was not giving him warmth was not the same clothing that he disrespected. But clothing comes together just like crows. By the way, it's interesting. You know, my neighborhood, maybe in all of your I don't know, there are a lot of these crows and crows are very, very intelligent and they have good memories. And somebody told me a story. It's hard to believe that some guy had like chased a lot of the crows away or something from eating and like six months later a bunch of them ganged up on him and they kind of like attacked. They remembered that he was the enemy. They come together. So So they kind of communicate with each other uh when someone is hostile or or whatever. So be sure to treat your crows uh crows nicely uh in that uh in that uh in that way. So David Malik didn't get warm. So what do you see from that idea that when you don't treat something with the right respect it's not going to give you protection? So rebellion says the same way if you treat garments with a lack of respect they will not give you protection if you treat the Torah with a lack of respect it will not give you spiritual protection. So here's what Revelia Lepian says. The actual sins that caused the destruction of the first temple are the big three of butal are wondering if the Jewish people were learning Torah, how could it be that the Torah they were learning did not protect them from those sins? There's something wrong with this picture. Imagine a student in yeshiva who learns Torah conscientiously from 9:30 in the morning to 1:30 dava and then has an hour and a half break. So he goes to town for an hour. He commits uh some murders, rapes and uh walks into a church to give a mass. Then he makes it back to yeshiva at 3 for afternoon sed. It's a little strange. Meaning, doesn't Torah change a person? Doesn't Torah elevate a person? So, Kazal say the following. Why were the Jews capable? Because they didn't have the proper respect for the Torah as exemplified by not making the blessing. And because of that, the Torah didn't protect them. And therefore, they could commit the worst of in the world. See rebellious is it's not that the sin of not making the blessings caused the what caused the was. But how could it be that the Torah that they were learning didn't spiritually protect them? That was a matter of attitude. the attitude of that the Torah is only a practical subject and it doesn't really have a spiritual significance. At that point, if you treat garments with disrespect, it does not give you warmth. If you treat Torah with disrespect, it does not give you spiritual protect. Just to be a little simpler level, the simplest explanation of NAS and we will do and we will learn is that it's giving God a blank check. Meaning if they would say we will learn and we will do the implication might be let's hear what you're offering is unconditional submission even before we know what the deal is. giving God a blank check. All of the nations of the world who were offered the Torah, they asked Hashem what is written in it. Nasishma is exactly the opposite. Okay. So Nasishma is a biggie very very significant idea. Ravaji Ysef says that at least the men six days a week when men put on fillin. So what do we do? We put on the hand fill in before we put on the head fill in. The hand represents action, commitment, strength. The head represents the mind, the makaba. So the same way by matan tora, we committed ourselves to action even before we knew what it was. So we do the hands before the head in the sense that our commitment to action is absolute even before we fully understand what the mitzvah are. So every is a kind of kabala the beginning the beginning of the of the day. So based on this overriding importance of nasma, it may be very surprising that the first time uh in parasra when we're offered the Torah uh the Torah does not record that we said it says whatever God said we will do later in one partial later it's Meaning there are two different statements the Jewish people made and both of which are recorded. One was NASA and one is NASA. And we're so used to NASA vanisha being the dominant statement that you almost have an impulse when the balor reads the call you feel like calling out vanish and yet doesn't say venishma in that first verse only in the second only in a later verse. So what's the significance of that? So the mesh says very beautifully and he approaches this from a different angle. The mesh says it's well known that the Gmorrah tells us even though the does not give you this number directly that there are 613 mitzvos in the Torah. And we divide the 613 into 248 positive commandments. thou shalt do and 365 negative commandments thou shalt not do. The Gomorrah then further indicates that the positive mitzvah correspond to your bones. 248 bones. So every time you do a certain positive mitzvah, it gives spiritual life. Spiritual life. We're not talking about arthritis, whatever, but it gives some spiritual vibrancy to a bone. And there are said to be 365 senus or ligaments in which every time you violate the negative there is some spiritual damage to a particular ligament. Now kazal make this statement. They do not give you an actual matchup list. They don't tell you you know which mitzvah can I get this finger or this bone in the finger or whatever it is. But there actually are I don't have the savor but there actually are swarim later they don't have the authority of kuzal that attempt to give uh detailed matchups in that particular way. Okay. So the gammorra in in effect correlates the 613 to the anatomy of the body meaning the perfection the spiritual perfection of the human body depends on these mitzvah at least for a Jew. So if that's the case you have an obvious question. There has never been a Jew in the history of the world who is capable of keeping 613 commandments. Some are only for men and not for women. Some are for kohanim and not for non-cohanim. Many of course only apply when there's a bas mikdash and not when there's no ba mikdash. Many apply only init. Many are situational meaning they apply when a situation happens and there's no guarantee there'll be that situation. Now if there wouldn't be a correlation to human anatomy, this wouldn't bother me. I would just say you do whatever mitzvah you need to do and that's fine. and what you don't need to do. No problem. But the problem is if there's a bone or a ligament that corresponds here, then by definition, I'm going to be handicapped. I'm going to be crippled. I'm going to be defective. God created a system that is literally impossible for even a Mosher Rain. I mean, Mosherenu couldn't fulfill Truma and Meiser and Schmita and all of those mitzvah. So, how do you understand it? Meaning, how can God create a system where the totality of the Torah corresponds to human anatomy and then make it impossible for any human being to do all of this? Hashem is creating us to be irrevocably tainted and defective. Talk about original sin in that in that real sense. So there are two answers that Mapam give to this question. One answer is limit to Torah. And this is yet another reason why it's important to learn those parts of Torah that are not even if they're not practically relevant because if indeed let's say corbanos or leprosy, there must be a leprosy bone here. There must be a bone in my body that's connected with the mitzvah of leprosy. But my hope is that we shouldn't get leprosy. So, how do I get that spiritual light? By learning about it. Same thing with get. Do you know that giving a get is one of the 248 positive mitzvah of the Torah? Not in the sense that go out and give a get, but conditional. If a person, if a marriage is going to be terminated, there is a mitzvah to do it this way. So, what's a righteous man supposed to do? comes home and says you know honey I I know we have a good marriage but you know I have this getbone that is defective that is that is missing I can't get a schlamos of my getbone unless I give you a get so what can I do now that would be absurd if somebody would go to a rabb and ask a shila you know I need to give my wife a get because otherwise how do I have a tikun forget you know I think the rabbi would say Well, check into the hospital and get yourself a psychiatric evaluation. But what's the answer? The answer is learn. So the the process of will give you the light of get. Whatever get bone you have in your body will be satisfied with makas getting. That's answer number one. Answer number two is through a Israel. Now what does a have to do with it? Because it all depends on how you define yourself. I as an individual definitionally cannot do 613 mitzvah by definition. But if I regard myself as like an atom of a larger organism that's called the Jewish people that has a past, present and future. So the same way when I put fill in on my arm, I don't say my left arm has done a mitzvah today. No, I have done a mitzvah. My left arm is part of me. So too when I attach myself to ami Israel with a Israel and aus then the mitzvah of every segment of ami Israel become my mitzvah as well the mitzvah of the women become the mitzvah of the men the coen becomes the israel the past becomes the present even the past because the same way if I did a mitzvah 10 years ago it's part of my mitzvah account okay if I defined as part of clo Israel did mitzvah 2,000 years ago. Then I did those mitzvah. You see when I separate myself through rivalry through then all I have are my mitzvah but through Israel right I get everybody. So these are the two pathways Torah learning Israel. So says these two pathways are alluded to in the cabala because in paras which only says the p begins everybody answered together. Underline Yakov. Whatever Hashem said, we will do says the MEA. When there's Yakov, when there's a when there's a Israel, we can actually keep the Torah in action. I can't do it alone and you can't do it alone, but as a nation, we fulfill the mitzvos in action. That's the Israel ter. But inim it says people answered but it omits the word. So the Torah is alluding there will be a time maybe most of our history where Israel is not going to be united. There's not going to be a there's not going to be togetherness at that point. The mitzvah of the past are not the mitzvah of the present. The mitzvah of this group are not my mitzvah. I can't say anymore I can keep the Torah by action. So how do I keep the Tyra nasa? We can do it the nishma. He interprets it through learning. That's plan B. So we have these two plans that are alluded to in the itself that how do we keep mitzvos number one by a number two by Tomra. So these look like two different pathways. The Akus pathway, the tomato pathway. But in reality these are two roads that converge and ultimately become one because say we say it every day in we say it every day after um shalom the people who study the Torah they bring peace into the world that Torah can be a vehicle for bringing peace So when you have a fractured world, Torah learning is one of the most powerful vehicles. I understand I mean I'm not I'm not blind. Uh people sometimes look at the Torah world and they see within the Torah world and vis the outside world that sometimes this seems to be a source of divisiveness and polarization. Well, I can say it's a good it's a good kasha and the Torah world even if it's being victimized also has to go into a nephesh. Why isn't it working that we bring shalom into the world? Because tell us that's the way it's supposed to be shalom. So you can't just blame it on the other side. However you define the other side, something must be missing in what we're doing. How could it how could it be that way? Okay, but without getting into the polit politics of the situation, this is the me this is the idea that these two pathways ultimately converge become one and tomatur can be and should be a great great great unifier. You know, I often say to people, you know, sometimes people feel that they can't learn Torah with somebody until they convince the person that the Torah is divine and the Torah comes from God. And they have to go through all sorts of proofs, some of which will be accepted, some of which will be rejected. And I can't sit and learn a Mishna with you until you are absolutely convinced that the Torah is from God. I personally feel that that is a wrong approach because if you're not going to immerse yourself in Torah learning until all of those issues are going to be uh decided then it could very well be you'll never get past that gate. Rather the concept is okay initially we agree to disagree. I believe the Torah is divine. You don't. But even you have to admit that historically it was the repository of the wisdom of the Jewish people. That's a historical fact. That that's not a deniable fact. You can be an atheist and you can't deny that these were the texts that Jew maybe you think they're crazy, but these were the texts that Jewish people were learning. So I will learn Torah as the word of God. You will learn Torah for the cultural historical wisdom of the Jewish people. And then a funny thing happens. A person will often be convinced of the Torah comes from God. Not by any a priority argument that we make, but by just immersion in the Torah itself. Immersion in the Torah itself. And that's why it's a great great bridge uh for unity among Jewish people. Even someone who doesn't accept the theological premises of our connection to Torah could still gain so much from that process of learning of Torah. And that's something we have to think about. You know, there was a famous um famous Baltua in Israel because he he was famous before he was from Urizor Zakra. Uri Zoro was known as the Israeli Johnny Carson. Well, some of you might not know might not know who Johnny Carson was, but uh that's Katoy and Mascara. Yeah, Johnny Carson was a big big big big uh comedian in America and Uriz Zohoir was the Israeli equivalent. Totally secular funny late I mean everything was late. His whole thing was making fun of things and when he became religious this had shock waves throughout the the secular culture of Israel. Like what has happened to this guy? like you know he must have been crazy absolutely crazy and of course you know his sense of humor didn't leave him I mean he had what he had but he became a very very f person he became a teacher of Torah and the like uh so people would go to him they figured he was so well connected to the secular world he knew exactly what secular Jews needed to hear so people would go to him people who were working in out outreach and said how do you approach what do you teach this guy in Tel Aviv about Judaism So the guy figured would say kabala or you know sex or whatever it would be. Urizoro says said uh take makus bakama and learn the seventh per of bakama that deals with technical laws of theft and the like. So the guy said you're telling me I should take a secular Jew in Tel Aviv and just start learning Gammorra with him. that's gonna inspire him. That's going to bring him to Judaism. And Uriah got very upset. He said to this person who had been a person who had learned in yeshivas for many years, he says, "You don't value your own Torah, you think the Torah that Hashem gave us isn't good enough to inspire people. You got to come up with something else. You got to come up with a gimmick." He says, "Well, if you don't believe in the power of Torah, how do you expect you're going to get someone else to believe in it?" The salesman's motto is you you can't sell what you don't buy, right? If you wouldn't buy it, you're not going to be able to sell it. So, he's already told the person, your first step is to buy Torah and then you can go out and maybe sell it, sell it to people. to say you I worked for and you know um was based on this kind of approach in which uh you immerse people in in Gmorrah and all sorts of things and even though on some level it doesn't make sense because it's not always going to be inspirational immediately but ultimately it is that immersion in the sea of Torah the sea of tomat that can often bring a person to hashem so the idea that we have to resolve every philosophical objection until we start learning I think is a false premise. Uh it's the learning itself that not in every case again different people need different approaches and I I acknowledge that as well. So I'm not stating absolutely universalist truths but we don't need to address every question before we just get into the Torah itself. The Torah itself has a tremendous tremendous tremendous power. And that's what mean when they say the learning of Torah increases peace in the world. It is a way that people do come together. It brings people together. So in America for example uh you can learn of the reformed Jew Mishna Gomorrah Poss and even if their theology is very different than yours you can still achieve quite a lot in bringing them closer toades. So uh in this connection I just wanted to share with you that we are now in the fourth Kish. I did say I would say something on on the para and I I want to connect it a little bit and the fourth Kish although the Hebrew designation is Bidbar that just means in the desert because the Kish begins in the desert but in point of fact the English name is actually the more accurate name and in fact it corresponds to the rabbitic name of the Kish. Uh the English name of the fourth book is numbers and that is the name Khazal gave to it that means the of the censuses or I think sensai is the Latin plural uh because it begins with a counting of the Jewish people and that's the generation that left Egypt and then towards the end of the book of Bidbar there is a second counting after the 40 years of wandering which are not the people who left Egypt but the generation that was born in the desert or that was less than 20 when it left Egypt. So you're counting two different population bases. Uh and that's why it is called numbers or in Hebrew the countings because there are two population countings in the book of Amidar. I'm not going to focus on the second counting of the new generation. I want to focus on the first counting. So the book of Aidar begins with the Jewish people being counted from 20 and up. And we are actually given an exact date when they were counted. That is they were counted or at least the counting began may have extended over a few days. The counting began uh roesh of Eeyore the second year from the exodus. Now remember in the years change in the month of Nissan not Roshashana. So we left Mithr in Nissan. So Nissan until next Nissan is year one. Then Nissan is year two and Eeyore is one month into the second year. It is also one month after the Mishkan was dedicated. The Mishkan was dedicated roesh Nissan Roshesh Eeyore. We are command or Moshe is commanded to count B is and we are given the tabulation of that countenim shah from the age of 20 and up meaning if you're younger than 20 you were not counted in that census. Now here is the interesting question. Rashi points out that even though this is the first time an actual count is recorded, we can prove there was an earlier account right after the sin of the golden calf. How do we know this? Because as the Mishka was being built, the Jewish people were commanded to give a half shekel from 20 and up. And if you tabulate the total of the half shekels, you see the number of the 600,000 people. Now this was the aftermath of the eel which was less than 6 months before this. Meaning to say the koel happened on the 17th of Thomas and God wanted to destroy us and finally on Yum Kipper God forgave us and the day after Yum Kipper Moshe commanded us about giving the Mishka and then we gave the half shekels. So essentially we gave the half shekels around yum tipper time and through the half shekels we know exactly how many people were aged 20. Then Eeyore right from Yamiper to Eeyore is 6 and a half months. Hashem commands to count them again. What's the point of a second census which is only six or seven months after the first census. there was a census based on the half shekels that were given for the construction of the Mishka. So Rashi himself gives us an answer that repetitive counting is a sign of God's divine love for the Jewish people. The same way a miser might count his money. You see these caricaturures Abeneer Scrooge right in Charles Dickens things he's counting you know his treasure house over and over and over and over again. So Hashem Lahabel has so much love for AmI he counts us and he recounts us and he recounts us. So Rashi learns repetitive counting is dera whenever there's a significant event after the ago he counts us to see how many survived and when the mishkan is built and he's putting his in the nation he counts us again but I think we could amplify on this a little bit by pointing out that although there was at least an implied census 7 months earlier than this one. The census 7 months earlier was very different than the census. Now the earlier census did not give us a tribal breakdown. We don't know how many ruins, how many shimons, how many Yehudas because all that happened was people gave their half shekels in the pushka and we tabulated the half shekels and we knew there's a 600,000 population, but we have no idea of how many of each tribe. Masha came seven months later. It's no longer an anonymous shekele count, although Lama Rashi does say they gave a half shekele for this count as well, but a record was made of each tribe. So, it's not exactly duplicative. Minion number one, census number one in the aftermath of the ego was anonymous and purely collective. Minion number two was a breakdown into tribes. Why is that important? Because the Tyra is morame, the Torah is alluding here to the idea that there are two different models of creating community that can exist in Kali Israel and even in the world. One to use more modern terminology might be called a community based on melting pots and the other we might call a community based on salad bowl or tapestry or symphony which whichever metaphor we want to use. the concept of a melting pot which was very predominant certainly in the early 20th century in the United States and in the certainly in the early decades of the state of Israel. Melting pot was when you when you try to form a society of different groups. You want to obliterate distinctions as much as you can. You want to put everybody in the same pot. You want to meld them together. to give you an unappetizing mushel. Think of a cholant that was made for shabas and you still have leftovers by Wednesday afternoon. Forgive me. Uh what what happens there is you often have an undifferentiated uh in which you can't even tell what the separate ingredients are. That is called a melting pot. A melting pot says we create aus by obliteration of difference, minimizing difference. You'll never eliminate it 100%. But the more difference we can erase, the more similar we can make everybody, the more unity we'll have. Because when people are moving in their own directions, by definition, there's going to be a certain disunityity and disharmony. So that's one model of community building in which we forge our community by homogenity, by making everybody the same. There's another vision of community that you can describe with different metaphors. Let's say salad bowl as an example, right? The beauty of a salad is you have the lettuce, you have the tomatoes, you have the peppers, you have the mushrooms, you have the chickpeas, uh hardboiled egg, whatever you put in. Different colors, different textures, different tastes. And it's precisely the differences and the uniquenesses that combine to create a beauty, a harmony, a gustatory experience that would be greater than any individual component. Now you can use salad as an example of that or you can use a tapestry. Like the beauty of a tapestry is not that it's simply monochromatic one color. It's the different colors, mosaic, the different textures, the beauty of a garden. There are gardens that may just have 10,000 red roses and that may have a certain beauty, a powerful beauty, but for most people, the medus itself says the beauty of a garden are different colors. Now the Tyra is exemplifying these two models of community building by the two different ways of counting the Jewish people. The first counting is simply giving us the Jewish people are 600,000 people. No individuality, no recognition of difference. It is the pure community based on melting pot. The second is a community based on diversity and heterogeneity because that's the idea of tribes. We sometimes forget, you know, we don't have a tribal consciousness today unless you're a coin or a ley. But tribes are a very big deal in the Torah. Uh separate flags, separate places in the camp, separate parts of Erit Israel. And you might wonder heck civil wars were fought over infringing tribal boundaries ple you know really very very serious civil wars in the book of chaim in which hundreds of thousands of people died now you may wonder don't we have enough disunityity among the Jewish people that we have to introduce hey I'm Rub and I'm better than you you're only Yehuda or vice versa why are tribes important anyway why is amrael created with 12 tribes. Isn't that kind of a a distraction? The answer is no. Because that's exactly the point. Every tribe has its own personality, its own uniqueness, its own der Hashem. Hashem is telling us, I don't want a community based on conformity, based on sameness. I want a community that's based on a celebration of the uniqueness of each group and by extension the uniqueness of each individual. Now the question still remains but wait a second but we do have these two countings. So which is the Torah saying to do? I mean the first counting was melting pot. The second counting is recognition of heterogeneity. But the Torah did give us the first counting as well. So what does that mean? The answer is the Torah is morame that there's a difference between shortterm and long-term. Meaning there are moments in Jewish history which are moments of acute crisis where the very survival of the nation is threatened. the aftermath of the ego with was such a situation where whatever that means wanted to abrogate his covenant with Ami Israel and destroy us and Moshe had to daven and daven and davin and davin the aftermath of the hol or during not the during the holocaust was an example of that as well where even the great Gdolei Torah liter devoted 247 including driving on being driven on Shabas to fight to save Jewish lives. So when you have states of emergency and acute crisis, that's not the time to focus on differences and diversity. So melting pot is the shortterm response to acute dangers. But once you have a Mishkan and you're developing a permanent relationship with God, the minion of Bidor is saying this is the I want. I don't want the Atos based on sameness. I want the Atos that is based on recognition of the uniqueness that each group and each person brings to Clav Israel. So yeah, there are times in which put aside your private agendas for the greater good. But the permanent of Israel has to rest on an appreciation of recognizing that community does not mean conformity. Community does not mean sameness. Community does not mean obliteration of individuality. Again, in the real world, uh particularly maybe in Israel, you will not always sense this, but of course, part of it is that some people do have this view that we're in a perpetual acute crisis. So, based on that itself, they say we got to, you know, be together. But okay, I I don't want you I don't want to get into into politics uh so much, but certainly in raising our own children, in teaching our own students, the notion is not uh to cookie cut them into identical shapes, but to recognize that the greatest thing they can do for the Jewish people is to develop the uniqueness of whom they are, their their uniqueness because after all you know um God doesn't make mistakes in that sense. So uh if my job is exactly the same as your job then why why were we both created you know uh obviously every person has a certain uniqueness that cannot be filled by any other person. So if all I'm striving to do is try to be like somebody else, in effect, Hashem is losing out in terms of his world plan, the person that I'm supposed to be. He's not gaining from that. Right? So there's a very deep lesson, as I say, and I've said it many times. In even the most technical parts of the Torah, there are some very, very deep lessons. I mean, I could just look at this and say, "Oh, the Jewish people were counted twice." you know, uh, all right, it's just a matter of numbers. Count it, count it. What's the big deal? But the MS is in the different ways that they were counted, we see a tremendous significance in how you form a, how you form communities. And uh every good rebi knows that the goal of a rebi is not to make atonement to be exactly like him but to bring out the kot that are in the toment and certainly in our children uh that is our responsibility. So again as we uh enter the uh postwist world may all of us be za to accept the Torah is and to recognize that the does not mean we expect others to be exactly like us but that we appreciate the uniqueness the diversity the different colors that's why I know sometimes narrative sale there's sometimes movement you know we have we don't have tribes today but we have divisions we have Ashkanazi, Spardi, Timmani, you know, different types of Sparta, Moroccan, Tunisian, Iraqi, Syrian, Ashkanazi, Yakis, Litfisha, Pilusha. And there is a there's sometimes a thought that initial especially some people have made the argument that you know why do we have to have these vestigages of the diaspora? Why don't we create what's called a nusak aid? Let's create one unifying ritual. I think the army tries tries to do that as well. But the short answer is that it is true that if if different movements result in maklocus and bitterness that's a bad thing. But if you factor out the makus there is a beauty in every minog having its survival because every minog is like another color another you another flower in Hashem's garden and that makes the garden much more beautiful. So one shouldn't look at diversity as a weakness. Diversity at least within obviously I'm talking about uh is actually a a beauty and a strength. So thank you and have a good uh good weekend. [Music] Is [Music] he so much here? Oh my