Rebbe Letters: The Rebbe's Blessings for a Bar Mitzvah Boy

good evening welcome back to week two of our 30 day gimmel tamos hachono gimotamos drabis your site we started this on gimmelciven 30 days before the yard site this is week number two um before we begin i want to mention that tonight's shir is a tonight's latter is written to hagon we planned this weeks ago we compiled letters that are connected to a theme the theme of his castras befitting the theme of kimotamos and we chose this letter based on its content and then just a couple of days ago i found out that the one to whom this letter was written is in the hospital and is in need of our prayers so we want to have in mind again the name is and the learning tonight should be in his merit you should have a speedy full complete healing now who is maisha bendvara i will tell you is a great leader and talmud khacham he is the leader of the ada kharedis community in yerushalayim iraqi dash dish and he's originally from london england the letter we're going to read tonight which that ever wrote to harav was written by harav when he was in london and in fact involves an incident which took place in london a little bit of background just so you know that as a young child rav sternberg was already recognized as a an illui as a prodigy by many daily israel including destler who as we know lived in england and interestingly during world war ii when the nazis were bombing london the sternburg family moved to a relatively safer location in the countryside and there they shared an apartment or a room with rav dassler who recognized the great potential of their of their son maisha at one point during the war there was such danger that rabbi sternberg's mother dvira we mentioned her name wanted to send him out of the country there was a boat leaving england to go i think to canada and uh she asked another one of the uh daily sro who were in england at that time during the the war era uh the great khalimer baal hamosa and mr steinberg asked rabelia should they send young maishala on the ship to escape with the other children and he said he wanted to perform something known as a goril it's a form of asking for answers through a book opening a book randomly randomly but of course nothing is random everything is basically pratis and finding an answer and at any rate there are many preparations required to do the guerrilla grow properly including fasting and rebelliou was not able to perform the preparations to his satisfaction so he apologized to mr sternberg he said i can't give you an answer i'm sorry i don't know what to tell you in a case like this when in doubt just do nothing so they did not send young maesha on the ship and unfortunately for those who were on the ship the ship sunk and many hundreds of children were lost at sea tragically so uh that is how fate intervened to preserve the life of a young rav maisha sternbach later on as he grew he learned in yeshivas and artistro and he was very close with the brisker with velvet brisker as well as with the hazen ish and later on he held rabbinic positions in various places interestingly he spent a few years in the eighties in johannesburg south africa and later he came back to air to throw he spent many years building a community for yemenite jewelry and sort of avoided the limelight when he could have lived in nebraska and he was sought out to be uh to be a leader in in a makham toyota and he chose he opted to [Music] to lend his leadership skills to empowering a disenfranchised community and he built the community in rosh haiyan for yemenite jews of course he he ended up in yurushalayim and that's where he is now as a leader of the ada credits community they decreed this of course is a very old organization that goes back well before the the state of israel it was originally founded by the the chief rabbi of jerusalem jesus christ and uh today rav steinberg is the leader of that organization and again as we mentioned hashem should send him a speedy complete refore and tonight's learning should be in in his merit the letter begins let's look inside the text and you can go to the 30 letters 30 days website or to the soul words website to get access to the pdf if you're watching on youtube or elsewhere you don't have the pdf or if you are listening on podcast platforms you also don't have that option but if you go to the 30 30 days 30 letters 30 days website or the soul words website you can download the pdf bar hashem yod of nissin tough shin you'd gimmel brooklyn shalom shalamov okay before we've even gotten into the body of the letter there's something quite significant here and that is yodaf nissan the date that's the debba's birthday of course you know that because many of you learned with us the 30-day preparation 30 letters in 30 days up till you're off nissan which is the deva's birthday um why is it important that this letter is dated aleph news and i'll tell you why of short little thoughts on every single day of the calendar year and there that ever mentions that a birthday is supposed to be spent in reflective solitude in his bedus the introspection and stock taking to the extent i'll tell you a remarkable story that the white house wanted to call the debate to wish him well on his birthday and that ebba actually told the secretary to decline the call from the president i think the president was carter at the time uh explaining that with his apologies he cannot take the call because a birthday is supposed to be spent in in reflection and and contemplation so that every that ever declined a call from the white house on his birthday because a birthday is such a precious and special time in many ways a birthday is compared to a personal rosh hashanah rosh hashanah is the birthday of the world a person's personal birthday is like a mini rosh hashanah shun of course is a day where every single moment and second is precious and a birthday is similar so at any rate what does that tell you that the rabbit took time that his time was always precious but especially on yoda of nissan on his birthday never took time to write this letter to sternberg obviously that is a is a testimony to the importance of this communication and uh is a great uh honor to the to the recipient to be to be uh the recipient of a letter that ever wrote on such a such a special day okay in answer to your letter from the 16th of other so this is nissan i don't know how long it took the letter to get from london to new york but however long it was we're talking about now three weeks later that the deb is writing back in your letter you inquire about the text the wording of the bar mitzvah invitation that you received from the great illustrious with all the titles gives him the title shaddaar at the end which is schluchha de rabbanan which means a of the rabbit and the bench was a shaddaar in england at that time in this event that the letters about meaning the bar mitzvah celebration took place in london now the date of the bar mitzvah i have the invitation actually i'm going to pull it up and show it to you um let me see if i can do this right let me see yeah okay so there's the bar mitzvah invitation and you can see that the date you see under the name where it says israel israel is the name of the bar mitzvah boy people might know uh yusra al-shamdiv in crown heights so under the name israel it says that the bar mitzvah celebration is going to be god willing in an auspicious time on monday the 15th of other let me see if i can okay so that one's smoother than i had even anticipated you don't know how much you don't know how much uh hollywood magic went into just pushing those buttons and making that image go up um so at what what what what am i saying here it had been shashant have made a bar mitzvah for her son yusro one of his four sons um and the bar mitzvah was antasv wrote a letter to the rabbi on tezian so it means that rav sternberg wrote the letter the day after the bar mitzvah now presumably he received the invitation well in advance of the bar mitzvah but apparently he wrote the letter after the bar mitzvah i don't know the background i don't know exactly what happened i'm assuming i could be completely wrong this is a complete conjecture then sternberg maybe mentioned today his concern about the text what's the concern we didn't get into it yet and perhaps that adventure told him no if you have questions ask the rabbit that's just my my fan theory but at any rate what we do know is rav sternbrook's letter to the debit is dated the day after the bar mitzvah took place okay so the rabbit says i got your letter where you're asking about the text of the invitation that the champtov sent out about their son israel's bar mitzvah asha that the aforementioned person meaning was blessing or expressing prayerful wishes that his son the bar mitzvah boy should be the lambdan god fearing pious and studious scholarly kefir [Music] those are the operative words here in accordance with my intention and my desire meaning mine meaning speaking about himself uncharacteristically by the way that ebb would use the first person very sparingly so this is an instance where the debbie uses the first person okay let's take a look at the the invitation again i'm just going to pull that up again okay you see here so under on the bottom part like under the english you see the english line where it gives the address 69 lordship road london so it says nivakish we are requesting escrivenu you deno lovely that our friends and relatives our relatives and friends should come to participate in our joyous occasion god fearing and pious and scholarly kefi kavanagh verratzin hakadesh shel kaved kidduchis lito according to the kavanagh the intention and the wrote saying the desire the actually it says the holy intention and desire of the rabbi those are the words that raf is uncomfortable with kefir kavanaugh's shall kill okay so that ever writes exactly those words except the rabbit changes it to be in first person uh so he's asking meaning the latter writer is asking it's troubling him what is the meaning of yehudi because why are you connecting the wishes of a jew meaning rebench's wishes for his son as well as the the guests of the bar mitzvah their wishes that they are bestowing upon uh the bar mitzvah boy why are you connecting that with the kavana and the rats in the the intention and the desire of a human of flesh and blood of a mortal human being a bus of adam flesh and blood meaning to say i'll fill it in i mean what it doesn't say you could invite people to come to the bar mitzvah this this is the this is the what do you call it uh the proposed suggested alternative you can invite people to come to your your sons bar mitzvah and to bless your son um but say and to be well you're saying hashem according to the will of hashem or something you know words to that effect whatever why are you saying in accordance with the kavanagh and the wrath saying of a human being just seems like a little bit much that you're giving all of this weight to a person's understanding of the blessings like why are you uh maybe i'll put it this way even if rabensha had said that this was his um intention that according to what he understood from the rabbit how he had learned it from the rabbit this is what he wanted for his child but the bench is saying i'm not even sure what he's not literally saying but this is how stern book is taking it the bench is saying you know what i don't know what these words mean it's not even important for me to know what these words mean whatever the rabbit thinks they mean that's what i want my son to be and it's bothering okay so let's let's look at the answer here let's look at this reply and remember who this letter is to this is to a great scholar so obviously the response is going to be in accordance with that hina you do uh it is known that prayer is the service of the heart the commandments all like i say just say tina's base on aleph the very beginning of gamora tightness what do they say over there they say of the hole levathem which are words from homage from seyfried devarim you should serve hashem with all of your heart or hearts plural what does that mean serving hashem with your heart the gemara explains what type of serving hashem takes place in the heart and the amen you should say meaning the correct answer is davening prayer so prayer is called aveda shabalif okay interestingly although it's called aveda sheba leif service from the heart or in the heart it also needs to be articulated orally you actually have to physically pronounce the words that of course is something that's spoken about at length in tanya pediglam when it comes up yeah yeah you see those those chapters over there that are talking about uh kavanagh the intention being like the uh soul of a mitzvah and the physicality the performance of it is like the body so in the case of filo where there's not a physical action but the oral articulation actually vibrating air on your five compartments of speech that's the action part of it so it has to be articulated orally and by the way it's not just in tanya perigla speaks there that feel it has to be pronounced you actually have to say it with your mouth even though it is a service of the heart okay um and consequently you have to align your heart and your mouth you have to get your heart and your mouth to be on the same page as it were la mancha toilet filler so that the prayer should be effective okay so far so good foreign you can deduce just from the the text of the prayers how detailed they are that it's important for prayer to be detailed valesci estabik betfela clawless it's not enough just to say a general prayer to say yeah whatever whatever's good no you're supposed to be as particular and specific and explicit as possible yes that's why we have the 12 blessings in between in this minister the eighteen blessings of the amir of the standing prayer you have three blessings in the beginning three at the end the openers and the closers but then you have the twelve in the middle which are each one addressing very specific needs material and spiritual needs ville bakasha krillis and we don't use a general or vague catch-all request and if you look even more closely even in the blessings themselves forget about the fact that each blessing is different and articulates a different request than every other blessing but look within the blessings themselves you can break it down even further that within a theme each blessing has its own theme but then it gets into particulars of that theme so we see here the idea that fila is supposed to be specific by the way we just started the rambam mishna toyota over again on la boimer and uh so we just finished say for hamada what was it yesterday two days ago i can't remember but uh i can tell you that yes yeah it must have been yesterday because yeah no was it yesterday i don't know we finished the halal we know we finished okay we got into safers manum that's right and we finished krishna krishna was the first uh dinim in zmannim and then we started fila so yesterday yeah point yesterday we started just the the beginning we just got started but in parikh aleph of castilla which was yesterday's rambam in halakha's base in gimel and dalit over there it says a little bit of the history and it says that really the mitzvah of prayer is that everyone is supposed to just be as articulate as they can be and that for various reasons that no longer was possible and people were not capable of being as articulate and specific as they were supposed to be so the ancient necessa put together ezra who brought the jews back from bubble to he composed a a specific prayer write a text but just yesterday's rambam talks about this idea that really prayer is supposed to be a person if we only could do this uh a person expressing himself as specifically and as articulately as possible so the rabbit says here you see from the nusavila that being specific is important it's important and it has to be pivolibe it's not just enough to have those feelings you have to actually say it it's not enough that you have some vague sense of it in your heart even though prayer is primarily avedish belay you have to be able to find the right words to express those those feelings it's interesting usually we speak about it the other way around that the problem is that you know good words you got a lot of pretty words but who says your heart is aligned with those words but it works the other way around as well i mean you have to you're you're obligated to make it work both directions sometimes you have the feelings but you're not really sure what words to say and prayer is supposed to be an articulation of very specific feelings with the right with the right words for those feelings okay so let's continue here um therefore somebody who doesn't feel that he's capable of articulating himself adequately foreign he's not able to properly bring out what he needs to bring out for whatever reason that it might be it doesn't matter why it is just that's the fact [Music] but he thinks in his estimation at least that he's got a friend i know a guy i got a guy. this guy he wants what's best for me he has my best interests at heart via avanab shay and he knows what i want yay sir even more than i do yes more detailed than i know how to do it and more profoundly more deeply than i can do it so you know what i'm going to rely on that guy what he says is i am hereby formulating that my prayer should be whatever my good friend my dear friend has for me however he's dominating for me that's my prayer so it's it's it's interesting there's no nusach from from the ancient necessity law how to bless a bar mitzvah rather it's very interesting but we have written it's been preserved the bar mitzvah blessing the dharav destler gave to sternbech in london when sternberg himself was a bar mitzvah boy so obviously there's a there's a concept of somebody a talmud who understands things properly giving a bracha to a bar mitzvah boy knowing how to how to set up a bracha the right way so the rabbi is saying to rav stenbach listen she wanted the best for his son he knew he couldn't articulate it adequately so he passed it over to me he felt i could articulate it better than he could you know as we there's an expression for that what he said right what's my answer what he said for the yankees fans now there's uh yankees fans out there um you ever heard about the anti-trust hearing in congress in the summer of 1958 there were there was an investigation regarding professional sports specifically baseball whether the major league was violating antitrust laws because basically it's a monopoly i mean what kind of competition do they have um so there was a there was a congressional hearing and the two representatives of professional baseball who came to to congress to testify were from the yankees the manager casey stangle and the player the uh the hall of famer mickey mantle so uh casey was casey stengel the manager he was he was the first one to speak and they asked him to explain why major league baseball is not a monopoly so what transpired was an absolutely legendary rambling rant that was so convoluted and bizarre that uh not only was everyone in congress absolutely cracking up their recordings of it you hear just peels of laughter but it became like this this and it became enshrined basically as the most bizarre and hilarious rant that had ever been given over on uh on the floor of congress so it went on for 45 minutes so for 45 minutes and casey stengel went he just he said things had nothing to do with the hearings and he told the story of his life and all types of weird personal anecdotes and like nobody could follow now afterwards they say that maybe just maybe he was a genius they say either he was an idiot or he was a genius because what happened is the answer was so convoluted that it derailed the hearings and then nothing ever came of it and so then there was no anti-trust action taken against major league baseball so they say maybe he was dumb like a fox maybe casey knew exactly what he was doing and he was purposely trying to make the answer as uh as confusing as possible but at any rate whether it was intentional or unintentional casey stengel gave this absolutely rambling bizarre rant for 45 minutes 45 minutes anyway at any rate at the end of the whole rant one of the members of congress then turns to the second witness who hadn't spoken yet and he says mr mantle what do you have to say about baseball and antitrust laws and the famous answer mickey mantle the mick says my views are about the same as casey's and the the congress just erupted in laughter because this guy just ranted for 45 minutes and then they asked mickey mantle he says my views about the same as casey's whatever they were right at any rate what he said so that was a humorous historical example of the what he said uh being invoked but there's a real concept which is hashem has asked us to pray and prayer doesn't just mean the prayer book that we read from three times a day it means at any time of need and ideally i'm supposed to articulate my needs as as eloquently as possible the problem is i don't have a text to read from when it comes to how to bless my son for his bar mitzvah so what do you want me to do what do you want me to do if i know a god who knows what i want and is able to express it why can't i say you you want to know my prayer here's my prayer whatever he says whatever the love allah says that's my prayer okay if i could come up with it on my own i would i can't so i'm saying whatever that ever says that's my prayer so that's uh that's one answer now uh let's continue here um there are many halaq examples of this principle rabbit uses thila as the primary example but the rabbit says we find many many examples in halacha of this principle umayham and among them a an investment loan a hatter isca is a very complicated procedure which many people erroneously describe as a mechanism to allow one to loan with interest god forbid that's not correct you're not allowed to loan to a fellow jew with interest it's a mechanism that turns part of a loan into an investment and based on the way that rabbinic law regards the difference between a deposit and a loan it becomes possible for the recipient of the funds to pay back to the provider of the funds more money than was initially provided but it's not interest it's uh it's a dividend on a on an investment it's called the heteriska and as i said it's very complex and it's important that it be done properly otherwise god forbid it is loaning with interest which is patently forbidden now part of the point that i was about to make is precisely about how complex the hatter iska is and it has to be documented it has to be written you can't just say oh yeah we did a hat to esca it has to be documented and the documentation is what gives it its its authority makes it permissible that this transaction is being done in accordance with the enactment of our sages the case of zafilo ahmadz and even an ignoramus who has no idea what that means writes and it helps hollarbically this is a valid mechanism since this person says i'm hereby giving over my intention to whatever hazal had in mind i have no idea how a heteriska works i don't i can't follow it i don't understand why the difference between a pagoda and and and i can't can't keep up but you know what there are people who understand how a heterisco works so when i'm doing this transaction with my friend i'm doing it in accordance with the way it's understood by the people who understand how it works and it halachically works we don't sit the amma audits down and say to them no nobody you can't do this until until you understand you have to explain it say it back to us we don't care if he understands as long as he says however the proper understanding of it is the way that it's understood by the people who do understand that's what i'm understanding or that's what i'm agreeing to then it's halachically acceptable so that ever says that's a perfect example in halacha where it is completely valid it holds weight even in the most technical sense for one person to say that my intention is whatever the intention of another person is and that's what adventure did he said i don't want to mess it up i don't want to say my understanding of the bracha bar mitzvah boy i want it to be the rebbe's intention that's that's what i'm comfortable with okay let's continue here if you're looking on the pdf we're on page three bass point number two and uh it doesn't say aleph but i believe we're to understand that everything we read until now was aleph was point number one base point number two aids bullets for who can estimate just how tricky the itsahara is and what a craftsman the yetzahara is and how the itsahara knows how to come to each person in the the most crafty way as it's explained in the gamut in shabbos uh base okay this is the second point uber mela therefore being that the it's a heart is very tricky he's going to seek out many ways to confuse somebody trip him up especially at a special time at a propitious time it's a special time where this person's prayer is more likely to be received she evaluated so there's more of a concern on our part that the it's a heart is going to come and disrupt the origin and try to mix in an ulterior motive be the kasha sayo tilasei into the person's request and prayer okay in other words it's always doing his job he's always working hard to mess us up you know when rav naftali met upshits was a little boy he was misbehaving and his father said to him why are you misbehaving he says i can't help it my it's a harder doesn't leave me alone so his father said ah you should talk you should learn from me it's a harder he's always doing his job he never stops he's always working so to you you gotta always work never stop working and the little boy says tatiana martial demolition it's not an apt comparison he says why not he says because the it's a harder doesn't have a yates a hutter to try to get him not to do his job so the eights of hud is always working doing his job and especially at an ace rating like a bar mitzvah special life cycle event father wants the best for his child and he's going to he it's a heart is worried this father is going to let forth a really powerful heartfelt prayer for his boy yeah so what's the atahara gonna do he's gonna especially try to disrupt that prayer the more those requests are distanced from material concerns meaning the more lofty the more spiritual the requests are uh like the the requests that the father was making for his son that he should be god fearing the not enough that he should be god-fearing but he should be accosted which means beyond the letter of the law affilomai meaning even more than a yidesha mayan the enemy's topic was that that even that is not enough al-ambassaf he adds london that he should be scholarly that he should be a scholar who has access to the power of title and he uses the power of title in his aforementioned being god fearing and being pious beyond the letter of the law wow he titus emis titus powerful tata is a traitor of truth and i think there's a typo here uh in many versions it says but it doesn't make sense it should be ms armor ali especially because it just said titus emes and it's a it's a it's a madrish it actually said hashem should create the world but amis truth said hashem should not create the world create man um at any rate um so it should be amis so at any rate it ever says like this there's a powerful prayer there's a powerful potential for prayer that the yatzahada just really is not going to let slide he's going to come and mess with it and especially when the father is being really lofty and asking for spiritual things all spiritual things not asking for material things and he's really pushing it he's he wants the child should be god-fearing and not enough he's god-fearing he should go beyond the letter of law and be accosted not enough he should be god-fearing and accosted but he should have the power of torah as a terrorist scholar to do the the things that a god-fearing pious person does like wow the it's a hut is very threatened by that moving shahiyat sahara so it's understood that what's the it's hard are going to do you happen he's going to seek any means that he has the valvo latvilla to disrupt to disturb this prayer deeper and if he can't mess up the speech if he can't get the guy to say the wrong thing hare al koponen it's much more subtle he'll get in there and he'll confuse him emotionally what's he gonna do he's gonna come start whispering to the father well you know maybe these blessings are a little bit too lofty maybe they're a little bit too unrealistic maybe they're a little bit too wild you know maybe you should bless your child that he should be comfortable he should make a good living that he should be a successful materially what about a little bit of that you know he doesn't have to be so extreme in the spiritual stuff this is similar to what writes in the end a person's psychology even the warped psychology of his own evil inclination he talks about uh tomorrow means to switch that he want he makes he dedicates an animal as a sacrifice and then he's oh no no not that one i want to switch it so they the toyota penalizes him that he can't switch it and what happens instead is that both animals now become uh sanctified so now he loses ownership of both animals they both have to go to be sacrifices yeah the afopia even though a person had all the right intentions and he says oh i want to dedicate a sacrifice i want to dedicate this animal to be a sacrifice so he's his heart's in the right place he may regret it he may take it back no no no no i spoke too soon that was well that was way too too religious too religious i i baby steps i got to slow down okay what's the only solution how to deal with this hulim he's got to turn over his tila to somebody else because otherwise he may talk himself out of it at the last minute and no you know you know i i know what i wrote on the invitation but it's just it's too intense this way it's done you already signed over the check to somebody else it's done now it's not yours anymore so yeah it's very interesting the the the example here of tomorrow actually makes that statement that that mitzvah it's interesting because with the hachamim with rabbinical enactments they're all psychological or many of them are psychological like i mean just to give an example like like harcoce like the distance that a couple has to have during certain times of the month like that's all based on psychology that because i'll understand what types of behaviors would bring too much familiarity which would cause a problem or or even things like you know two people sitting at the same table one's eating meat and one's eating milk and like are they allowed to uh eat at the same table with the same tablecloth or does one have to have a placemat like what's this based on this is based on hazel understanding human psychology and making enactments based on that understanding but tomorrow is actually biblical and that i'm saying that in itself that mitzvah is a reflection of toyota's understanding of human psychology and precisely the phenomenon that a person may begin with the loftiest of intentions and then talk himself out of it so this is what the rabbit says that you may want to bench your son with the loftiest most spiritual brachas but you're not sure you can have the guts to go through with it so you give it over to somebody else let's continue you give it over to an ishaq somebody else someone who's not the person himself not the father of the bar mitzvah videos but he's best of both worlds he's not you but he wants what's best for you then that person is going to have the right speech and the right intention the gam lazer commander niggler and by the way the rabbit says this phenomenon has many examples also in nigla in the revealed legalistic portions of title that i gave examples before the first point the point about needing to be articulate and specific the number said fila is the primary example but also there's the heter iska and over here the second point base point base point uh the second point the idea of avoiding the hataras targeting by giving it over to somebody else and the example of uh of people sort of balking at their own initial lofty intentions so that that's the primary examples from tomorrow but uh that ever says there's many examples in neglig one of them one example there are many examples but one example is from nidorim they say or rather he said to them this is speaking about maisha rabeno when he made the entire jewish nation swear in the plains of mayev in the 40th year in the wilderness that they would upkeep the entire terror so he may sure who said to them have yedim you have to know shalom when i'm administering this oath to you it's not based on your understanding of what the oath means but rather on my understanding you're agreeing that it means what i say it means not whatever you think it means what hashem thinks it means in other words we have an example here from the gemara where a person can agree to something that he himself doesn't understand but he knows that someone else understands and he defers to that other person's understanding okay gimmo you guys ready a new point not about the mentioning of the rabbit but apparently about mentioning the word khasit he says you you commented like why do we why does bench give a uh a a blessing or ask his friends and family to give a blessing to his son that he should be a hasid why a specific path innovative hashem why not just say that he should serve hashem there are many legitimate paths in the service of hashem so why be specific that he's going to be acidic why does that have to be uh i'm sorry with all due respect it's not so that that your suggestion is not correct i told you already at the beginning you see with ghazal that they made blessings as specific as possible and in fact they would have gotten even more specific but the ancient necessities were compiling prayer for all yeden so they left it at a certain point they didn't get more specific because it had to be something universal for all jews avogadro and even there you see that it's very very detailed so excuse me but if somebody wants to get specific not only about his son doing hashem's will but he wants to articulate which path in the service of hashem his son should do to do hashem's will that's actually very much in keeping with the whole spirit of davening and as i mentioned that was yesterday's rambam and uh also in a couple of days we'll be on peregrine and over there it explains that idea that filo should be as specific as possible okay light now i want to be frank with you i wasn't even sure if i should answer your questions very important i think to learn from this not only that the debit wasn't sure whether or not to answer the questions but that ever told the person that he wasn't sure whether or not to answer the questions why was that ever not sure unfortunately it's always been this way but especially nowadays there are many people who come up with questions especially if it's about something that's new to them they're not used to s when they ask themselves why are they slipping out of it they see something hmm that's new maybe it's a good thing well hold on a second i don't do it and if it's a good thing and i don't want to do it um okay no it's not a good thing the easiest answer for them who is les mites associates like cushious holoder to question it in other words it ever says like this i'm not accusing you of having this intention but i'm just telling you that it's very common that people will come to you with questions about a certain practice when the questions are not sincere really they constructed the questions for themselves to make themselves comfortable with why they're not doing this thing that they saw somebody else doing i sure as anti-alice and if that's how the question came about then there's really not a lot of point in answering it because the gates of questions were not closed you know it says that it's a it's an interesting uh expression here but uh de mois the gates of tears it says that even though the gates of prayer were closed but the gates of of tears a person genuinely cries so the gates of tears are always open so whatever says the gates of questions are always open in other words it's always an accessible go-to excuse when you're exposed to something and it may be something good but you can't live with the fact that it's good but you're not doing it or you haven't been doing it so you just come up with a bunch of questions and then you have the perfect excuse oh that's why i don't do it and that's why i'm not going to do it so whatever says the gates of questions are never closed i love that expression by the way uh you know stephen wright said that he went to the 24-hour grocery and he walks up he sees the worker there locking the doors he says what are you doing he says i'm locking up he says but your sign says open 24 hours the worker says yeah not in a row okay there you go uh avocado and shayni makirai but since i don't know you personally i'm gonna assume that you have you have honest intentions you you only mean well you're asking for real you're not trying to just wriggle out of your own obligation you're just asking about something you've never encountered in anyone's letters before you got this bar mitzvah invitation you looked at it like that's new i never saw that before i never encountered that before i wonder what's going on so i'm going to chalk it up to sincerity you're just not used to it and so that's why you question it become a mcmaster canal even though that ever adds there are so many examples of such a thing i just love that thing like i get it it was new to you it was unfamiliar even though there are many examples of it like we just explained at length in this letter like whatever went on at length explaining they're not familiar with this in all the different examples that the that ever gave remember this letter is from the middle of other so it's a month before pacer it's a little less than a month from pay success blessings for uh happy and uh kosher pesach nikhta vitsuda here's the ps it's understood if you have any comments on what i've written to you it's anyone like someone i'd be very interested to read them and i'm going to try to answer you i don't know if sternbeck wrote back to the rebel i don't know otto a comment a little note i want you to know says that that i was very precise in the examples that i chose when making my point because the rabbit said there are it's become a mccamus there are many places that ever could have drawn from to make his point but whatever says i want you to know i precisely chose these examples why example i gave about a schwa about about an oath that a person is administered an oath and they tell him the oath doesn't mean what you think it means you're agreeing that you're promising to do whatever we think it means what our intention is right so i use the example of an oath of vedas hamas because really what's an oath it's the whole idea of undertaking the obligation of being being sworn to uphold the toyota which is the whole idea of a bar mitzvah and after all this whole correspondence started because of a bar mitzvah invitation when someone becomes a bar mitzvah or a child of the commandments or a son of the commandments he becomes mushbava ahmed he's now continuously duty-bound me harsinai or rather it it falls upon him the duty now to uphold that which he was continuously duty bound to do from the collective oath at harcinae but until he's 13 he's not accountable for that but the the the obligation originates with the uh with the oath at har sinai at the revelation at sinai uh and then there was something else yeah and then that the cavanaugh oh the the purpose of this so the bar mitzvah is now personally obligated to live up to that which the jewish people swore to uphold at har sinai and the purpose of the jewish people upholding the torah is what kavanaugh said he the purpose of the jewish people upholding the torah is what rebus bahatur isca to compound interest in a permissible manner of the mechanism of an investment really what does that mean [Music] is he says there's a mimer from my father-in-law with the dibra mascara which are words from the asia's kaio it's a mimer from tafshin from tough from tough shin tess from from 5709 1949 and over there the frida krabi that his father-in-law explains that the entire purpose of the soul coming to the world is to accrue interest that hashem is the investor and he gives kaijus he gives powers to the soul it's not a loan it's a deposit it's an investment and that both the jew and hashem end up profiting in this investment because all of the mitzvahs that the jew does while he's embodied down here create additional new lights in the higher realms which benefit both him and hashem so that ebba says i chose those examples an oath and the uh the the the mechanism for loaning not loaning but investing uh because that really is what a bar mitzvah is all about it's about a jew becoming an adult and being duty bound to uphold the oath of the jewish people and the purpose of that oath is to come down into the world to do mitzvahs in a body which end up creating new lights creating a profit based on the investment of energies that hashem put into that individual jew musketeer i also included here a copy of my myth of claudia that ever used to write a number of times a year a general letter a pastoral letter which was addressed to all jewish people so it's coming up close to pesach already there was already a myth of quality that ebba says i'm including that along with my personal letter to you yes and i'm sure that you will be interested in the and that is the end of tonight's letter again we want to wish and this should be in his house and hashem we will continue with our study of igres next week for letter three in our series thank you so much thanks to everyone good night