The Passover Haggadah Part 1 - Rabbi Dovid Gottleib

look at the ha now um I would say as a guest second to the five books of Moses go probably has more commentaries than any other work of Jewish text every year there's a holiday where it's the focus of the whole holiday it's not very long and at least in the on the surface it's not very difficult to read um so it's attracted ex a lot of attention and this attention uh lives in very many different types of direct uh dimensions and as I usually say when I start a series of my own uh I have my own training and my own preferences of of things to explore when I say abat in ha I don't intend that that's what it means rather it's one way of explaining it to make sense out of it from one point of view and if you hear your other explanations even other explanations that seem to be contradictory that does not um does not disturb the importance of of hearing theat that I'm presenting even contradictory can be understood to contribute to a larger whole um my background is in philosophy somewhat in mathematics I'm interested in textual analysis in terms of the words and the logic um I'm interested in capitalistic ideas andic ideas those are the things that um that describe my particular sensitivity to the text now um the first element in the text Al here you have preliminaries before the actual say um this is in this beautiful H it's on page six it's the say s the order of the Seder service now we have two types of Haas here see if you have the other ha you know where the this this simonar say out the page so people will be able to know where it is the 15 stages of the of the Seder I have okay the 15 the order of the 15 elements of the Seder page six well that's the one we we have there's another one with a different Edition you have it you don't have it I don't see the other yeah on this Edition is Page four page 19 in the arturus yeah come grab yeah okay see you have it on 19 over there and we have it on six over here so we're all said now there are 15 there are 15 stages in the Ina um there are also 15 Steps in the temple going from the entrance way to the highest point there are also 15 of the Psalms which are called shiral shal malos are steps or stages or elevations as you go up so 15 clearly is an important number for this kind of procedure 15 is also the numerical value of one of God's names spelled with a Y and a he so that would have some relevance here I want to point out one little piece of grammar which I found uh at least one commentator points out um and the English doesn't doesn't preserve it so and you have to understand it in the Hebrew I I'll translate it to you and see if you pick up where there's a break in the continuity say the sanctification and wash their hands eat parsley break the middle matah relate The Narrative wash hands say grace eat bitter herbs eat the horse Rish and Horas with the matah partake of the meal eat the middle matah say gra after meal say the prayer for acceptance okay now listen again carefully say the sanctification and wash hands eat parsley break the middle matah relate The Narrative wash hands say grace eat bitter herbs eatos break the meal eat the M mat say grace say h prayer for acceptance what's the break H okay listen again say the sanctification and wash hands eat parsley break the mid mat relate wash say eat eat partake eat say say prayer how about and hello between one and two there's an and and none of the other ones have and oh yeah that's a little odd isn't it it's a little strange they skip that in this English trans I I that's why I put it in I I read it I put it in when I translated I said that the answer English translation you know what's an and here and there you know because they don't pay attention to the things that are really important so the and means that the first two are joined together in a way that the other ones are just a list of step after step after step so let's think about that one number one is sanctification making kidush and the second one is washing hands h kidush means means doing something that produces expresses describes Holiness sanctity washing hands typically is a way of getting rid of something on the hands that's not good dirt or whatever the symbolic of disposing of something that needs to be eliminated so it's a positive and a negative now when you think of working on your spirituality both types of actions are necessary both positive and negative of course to rise in spirituality means in part to absorb more inspiration absorb more information exercise more discipline and more um courage reaching for higher developments that's all positive also there are things that hold you back and things that hold you down those things need to be addressed to whatever extent weakened or neutralized or even expunged so both aspects are necessary now the question is in what order you do you do this or is it an order maybe just work on both simultaneously as a famous verse written by King David Turn Away From Evil and do good sounds like King David is telling us this is how you do it first turn away from Evil and then do good and part of the explanation is you as an agent when you perform an action the whole of you is the agent performing the action that means if you have good elements in you they're part of the action if you have bad elements in they're part of the action it's a mixed bag for most people most of the time it is a mixed bag so it sounds like listen you want to do a real good not a compromised good not a blemished good not a semi- good you want to do a real good you have to first rid yourself of the negative elements so they won't participate in your performance of the good turn away from Evil and then I say say to do good and there are schools of Jewish spiritual growth which use that as their theme some schools talk talk about first focusing on failures detracting elements and doing one's best to try to expunge them and then turning to rising in the in the positive direction of more spirituality but not all sources express it that way um in the fifth blessing of the where we talk about recognizing our failures and and trying to overcome them uh the the petition goes like this Hashem please bring us back to your Torah and bring us close to your service and help us do perfect Chua repentance so Chua is how you address the negative and try to detach it rself of it but it's preceded by bring us to your Torah and bring us to your service those are positive so it sounds like we're asking for help in growing in the positive first and then after that we're asking for help in expunging the negative that's the opposite order so so one could ask how do you make sense out of the two orders and here's a suggestion that's made in the literature maybe King David when he says turn away from Evil and do good isn't talking about steps one and two maybe he's talking about steps two and three and here's how it goes the first thing you do is do something good attach yourself more thoroughly to Torah and invest yourself more in hashem's service do something the good is it a blemished good yes is it only a semi good yes there are still negative elements and they're participating in the doing of the good but it's a semi good it's a blemished good it's a good with blemishes that's not nothing that's not nothing and the semi good the blemished good gives one the strength to then turn and rid oneself of the negative and then in step three go back to do a good which is not blemished because a negative has been expunged so it's a three-step process do a compromised good use that reinforcement of the compromised good to then um turn against the negative and and expunge it and then turn back and do the perfect good or more realistically it's 2 n+ one it's an odd number you start with doing the blemish good and then that gives you the ability to somewhat overcome some negative elements and then you go back and do another good which is a superior good now because there less negative elements in it and that gives you the strength to turn back and go and then work again to expunge more negative elements and that's how you make progress but you could start the way it is in the and you could start with doing the good my Reb when I asked him should I engage in uh reflection and self-evaluation it's called in Hebrew which some people do every day some once a week some once a month we all do it the 10 days should I do that and he said yes he said I have to but he said it's appropriate to do with one condition always start your self evaluation with something good think over your day find something that you did during the day which is good and dwell on it meditate on it yes yes I struggled with that I made the right choice and it came out well I did the right thing and pat yourself on the back and then after you created a basically positive self-image then go on to investigate the negative things which may need need help the emphasis in theic movement was always to start with the Positive now back to the so here it says sanctify do something holy and then wash your hands because there may be things that have to be washed off I did find one city commentary who didn't generalize it beyond the night he said usually you follow King David but one night of the year you're given a special help from Heaven to be able to start with the positive and then turn to to to spel the negative I believe that from the you have a an indication that there are two schools of thought here there were schools of mus that stressed the greatness of man that was the basic orientation from the point of view of the greatness of man that's how they started to make their progress um there is a k I'm not going to go through all the details that he goes through but uh the choal way to put his point is there are two types of mus you say to a person you know something you're a wreck you're a disaster area you're so low you'd have to reach up to touch bottom you're really and if you don't pull yourself together you're going to be a nothing that's one type of um type of muser there another type of muser listen you're really doing very well I would give you a 92 average but you're capable of a 98 why not get the last 6% that you're capable of why not make it a complete performance don't leave it at 92 when you could do a 98 pull yourself up and do that last bit to make it as good as possible it's also mus both our exhortations to improve but they start in two different ways for those who know the literature the water that came from Iraq left Egypt before they got to Sinai is where they got the first type of mus and at the end of the 40 years when Miriam died there was no water they got water from Iraq that was the positive type of mus that's way broke wanted it to happen that's where the says it at any rate I think that's what's hidden some one of the many things hidden in the fact that there's an extra V here which connects one and two which you don't have in all the rest of the elements in the in the Sor are we together yeah we spit now 15 minutes talking about a VV it's worth it it's worth it V is a very important letter and so is every other letter if you one you learn as you go through this type of learning over and over again be very careful attention to every letter yeah put it's a collection of things from different times um we know that because in the beginning there are a few sentences in Aramaic and restot it in Hebrew some of the haar is in the m and some of it isn't so I don't each piece would have to be um of Kasher wrote a h where he classified all of the all the pieces and where they came from but they're all but they're different yeah I just to clarify the say the sanctification step is the good part and then washing hands as removing the that's right that's exactly right okay ready okay fine now let's take a look at Kish well I'm going to skip the part for chabas because this time it's mostly shabas there is Abdullah this is the kidish for for holidays and it has a number of of important elements in it that I can explain obviously every word is important it speaks of Hashem who oh boy hath who's chosen us from among all people exalt us above all languages and sanctify us with his Commandments now notice the order here if someone said you know why we're special what makes us special what makes us different is that God assigned to us a special task of living up to the 63 Commandments thereby perfecting the creation so forth and so on Sinai is the time when we became a nation when we receive the Torah and the Torah is what makes us special that's not exactly what this says because he says he chose us and exalted us and only third sanctify us with his Commandments that seems to mean that there's something there to base a relationship before and independently of The Commandments that we got and after all God shows the Patriarchs and matriarchs and there are hundreds of years before the Torah was given at Sinai so it has to be something essential in the Jewish Nation beforehand that at least qualifies for the beginning of this relationship and he gave us language which is the official Jewish language which is Hebrew and that's somehow more it's exalted it's raised above all the languages now uh of course you study uh language and the history of language you will definitely be programmed into you that all languages are artificial they're all conventional there's no particular the connection between TBL and this or cat and what the ones that roam around outside they're just sounds and symbolic representations and in different languages they are different and there's nothing to make one right or wrong well that's generally correct but the vast majority of Jewish sources say that Hebrew isn't like that Hebrew is a language which is connected to the real world the letters of Hebrew were the elements out of which the creation was made the words of Hebrew indeed it says in in in Genesis says word for word God brought the animals to Adam and he called them their names doesn't mean it made up a syllable okay that one's a sloth and that one's a a turtle and it no he he he knew what the letters meant he knew what the combinations meant he looked at that animal and said this is its name I'm not dubbing it with a arbitrary name no that is its name and then someone who speaks the that language his thought processes are molded by the language which has that special relationship to reality um there was a French uh from the 19th century I guess he was a kind of sociologist and he made the following remark you can judge for yourself what it's worth pity the poor English and glor the great French because you see the French language has a noun and then adjectives after it because that's how the mind thinks the Mind thinks of an object and then thinks of its qualities the British are crippled because in English the adjectives come first and the noun comes afterward which is against the way you think that's what's wrong with the British among one of the many things that the French think go wrong with the British their minds are all confused because their language is backwards from the way you think that an actual thing that French savan said of course a lot of the answer is simply that the way you think is molded by the language you learn to speak not given beforehand and if French has one order and English has different order then the English probably will be thinking the way English is because that's what that's what they learned to speak and that had an effect on how they think what you speak and how you speak does have an effect on how you think and if you start off with Hebrew if Hebrews is is your first language or at least a language that you speak that will have an effect on how you look at the world and this shows itself brutally in M transations uh many translation dictionaries will tell you shalom means peace H what does peace mean well peace means absence of disturbance a peaceful night means no arid Sirens no explosions it's peaceful in English you can say that the graveyard is very peaceful that's true you could never say the great Y is shalom in Hebrew never Shalom comes with root which means complete completeness in a certain sense of perfection it means it has a lot of different elements they integrate into a hole where they contribute to a function in a smooth organized and efficient way we're not looking for just no bullets we're looking for shalom it's a different idea so if you speak Hebrew and think of Shalom and you report it in the New York Times peace it's not going to be the same thing the same idea at any rate so we have that language because we have that language we have a special relationship to the way the world is the way created it and therefore to a who is the creator and the Patriarchs and matriarchs lived lives that expressed godliness because human beings can have Godly characteristics which isn't obvious shouldn't be taken for granted if the Creator is an infinite very being and not a spiritual being spirituality is something he created along with tables and chairs spirituality is just a feature of the created World he's Beyond even the spirit spiritual if we had been told and of course therefore human beings and God can't have anything in common we' have nodded our heads and said of course of course not that's obvious uhhuh so when we're told it's not so we have to take pay attention there is one of the 63 Commandments which is you should acquire Godly characteristics just as he is gracious so you too should be gracious just as he is merciful so you too should be merciful others sources say just as he is Holy you should be holy so that means that in spite of the fact that there's this infinite Gulf between us and the Creator we can possess something like his qualities his characteristics and some of you know very well the verse in Genesis which backs this up what verse is that God created man in His image or in his form or something God gave man some Godly characteristic in him says that explicitly part of the the relationship that that carries is the possibility of expressing those qualities which are Godlike qualities Like Loving kindness for example so that being the case when people like the Patriarchs and matriarchs express those qualities then they qualify for a special relationship with a coach brel want to ask a question yeah um Rabbi matalone kind of suggested at something like this in the last year in regards to like AR Nish shas's umbe Cooper Smith I'm getting too confused the point is um is that potentially the Godlike characteristic that he's put in us or is there something more than that potential no that that is it you you remembered exactly correctly now I'll tell you what the tradition describes in the Sha as though have to be careful because very often well in in our Corpus of information words are not meant to be literally or not L the literally a six-year-old would understand them the soul is described as the which in dictionary meaning is a piece of God on high wow yeah wow is right and the zor says the verse in Genesis says God blew into his nostrils a soul of life and the zor says when you exhale you exale hail from the middle of your body that's where your lungs are which means it comes from the innermost part of your body why does the Torah use the anthropomorphism of exhaling to tell you that what he projected into Adam is something that's very close to what he is when now of course I hope I'm not shocking you but God is not a salami that you can slice up into slices so when it says it when he said a a piece of God on high do mean you're slicing God into slices but what it means one way to look at one part of what it means is that when you look around in the world and you look for things which on the say on the surface of them on the face of them Express godliness the human soul is the highest thing higher than Angels higher than the Spheres that carry the Stars whatever whatever it is the thing that he created a soul is a is a created thing like a tree is a created thing but that thing character carries in the world the character of godliness more than any other thing in the world and ra the way the way of God by chapter 2 goes into this in great detail very sophisticated and and and complicated detail but it's there so um as I said when someone lives in a way that expresses that that qualifies him for a special relationship with God and that is expressed in a in a in a in a phraseology which you all know and which the midash stands on we talk about God as the god of Abraham God of Isaac and the god of Jacob never anyone else never not God of Moses not God of David just Abraham Isaac and Jacob and the M says that David uh said to you know why is it such an exclusive Club why must it be only three I volunteer I want you to be known as king of David so God said to him well look I tested them and they passed the test so David says test me also so God says you're on I'm bisking this but okay right and he gave him a test and he failed I said see they passed you didn't pass so I'm not going to be known as king of David the idea here is the idea that the lot lives of the Patriarchs and the matriarchs though they are hidden more but M those people their lives more consistently and more completely expressed the godliness that man is capable of than the lives of any other people before or after and that's why the idea of calling God the god of Abraham has the following application you're talking to a person for to Judaism is not clear he's learning for the first time and say listen you want to learn about God study Abraham's biography you'll learn a lot about God from Abraham because Abraham was a Godly person so you'll learn what it means to be Godly and therefore you learn something about what what how God runs the universe right there are three people from whom that could be said and that's why he chose them and had the special relationship with them and that's part of what means here in the Kish when it says he chose us from All Peoples and exalted before Lang languages before he Sanctified us with his Commandments these are prec preconditions for the sanctification of The Commandments okay what you get so far now the idea of sanctifying us with the Commandments has at least two applications first of all when a person performs a Commandment that creates a certain Holiness in him um some for like the Tanya picture it this way God's God issued a command this person takes that command into his mind and with his Will He makes himself into a vessel to express that command in the world so it's God's command in him that's being expressed by what he does that's a very exalted connection to God that itself and that and they take the word take the middle two letters in Hebrew can mean connected to so that's one way in which a Mitzvah sanctifies a person by giving us those Mitzvah he gave us a a a procedure by which we can sanctify ourselves there's another explanation as well um in I think it's parous it says that says through Moses the Jewish people God's Torah is not far from you Mitzvah is not far from you it's not in the heavens that you should say who will go to the Heavens to get it for us and bring it down to us not over the sea to say who will go over the sea to get it for us no it's with you in your heart and in your mouth to do that's a very famous verse Rashi there says something very interesting he says it's not in heaven because if it were in heaven you'd have to go there to get it so you read the Rashi you think oh really I mean I'd have to go there to get it like how would I do that I mean isn't that just by definition impossible and the says if commands you to do something that gives you the capacity to do it the command enables you to do it the imagees the Kings chooses someone for a job and he says I'm giving you Royal Authority he gives a document signed by the king this fellow has Royal authority to do XYZ okay with that document he can do it everybody else is going to you know bow down and help him to do it because the king gave the document by giving us the Commandments projected into us the ability to fulfill the Commandments and to have the impact on the world that the Fulfillment of The Commandments uh Im compus so that very giving of the Torah Sinai elevated us and Sanctified us before we started to to perform them just the fact that we were elevated to the position where we could do them those are two elements in being Sanctified by The Commandments then after after that introduction it says uh with love you gave us when it's not chers we skip that now they translate solemn days for Joy H um I wouldn't translate sound that's young so let's let's translate that in Hebrew means a meeting aad in modern Hebrew is that terrible world world word for a committee which I as a professor used to I was so happy we had a chairman of the department who said we won't have any committee meetings I'll interview you privately you you really to get your ideas and then I'll make the decision I said good good we don't need meetings Grand standing and everybody showing off and everything else forget it was much better that way um M's a meeting time the holidays are meeting times makes himself available to us so it can be a connection and therefore there for SIM for Joy Joy comes from being in connection to so there are meeting times for Joy now a is a time to be celebrated in a certain way and is a Time on the calendar now the time in the calendar isn't arbitrary and here we come to something which is it's portrayed differently different sources I'm not sure that they disagree or maybe that each one just talked about half a picture the natural thought is why do we celebrate pesak on the first day of pesak on the 15th of Nissan well that's when it happened that was the night in which there was the death of the firstborn and that was the day in which we left Egypt that's our Liberation day that's when it happened so every year on the anniversary of that day we celebrate what happened on that day that's true that's true and that's fine but it leaves over a question is there any reason why it happened on the 15th of and if it happened on the 16th of tus we' have celebrated on 16 of tamus because that would have been this anniversary and there are for that say no the 15th of Nissa was was set aside from the creation of the world to be the Jewish Liberation day it's a Liberation day inherently in inherently even before the events take place and that's why the event takes place then and you have a hint of this in the in the Torah itself you probably have heard the incident when the Three Angels Came to Abraham and he showed them hospitality and then they left Abraham and two of them went to Sodom where L was living and L gave them Hospitality they came towards the afternoon they came into his house in the evening and he made that a meal a drinking party and the Torah specifies a meal a drinking party with crackers crackers don't make a mistake crackers Matos it says so be careful we just say really that's how we treated them crackers like why did he do that especially since when they went to to to Abraham ABR told Sarah to make Breads and the oal tradition says because it was the 15th of Nissa it was the F the first night of what will become PES hundreds of years later and even before the Torah was given Abraham knew that L knew that they did kept what they could of the Mitzvah that were available and even then so uh when we talk about uh the the um the time of the time in the calendar is not is not is not arbitrary and therefore that's one of the words for the for the holiday now here we have and which says the go explains those two words as follows both of them are signify happiness is where you prepare for something you build something and you manage it and so when it comes to fruition you have S so like getting a degree in University and four years working on it then you get the degree you satisfied the conditions and made it happen so something that's unexpected there a verse Rejoice on your word as someone who finds a great treasure most people don't go hunting for great Treasures sometimes they stumble across them but they don't go hunting for them here sometimes you have a a surprise something you didn't anticipate which turns out to be very very valuable and life has both as aspects in it uh I usually say this when people are getting married you planned for this you made decisions and evaluations that you've planned your life together hopefully and what you want to accomplish and where you want to do and so forth and so on and there will be surprises prepare yourself for the unprepared you know for the you know anticipate the unanticipated and some of them are really extraordinarily inspiring that the you the other person you and the other person have certain features which interact with one another in ways that you couldn't have dreamt of and they make the marriage a much more joyful uh Union than it would otherwise have been to prepare for both holidays we prepare for we know what's coming we know what the laws are we know all the preparations you have to make but if your eyes are open and you're sensitive you also experience things which you didn't prepare for which are also part of the rejoicing of the holiday you have a question no sorry that's right okay I was hearing yeah room maybe it fell down no no it's there's a depression there it's not in the room I don't think so and then you have the name of the holiday now here is a little bit of a secret just ly talks about this the name of the holidays in the mouths of the colloquial speaker and the name of the holiday in the Torah are often not the same example the upand cominging holiday in three plus weeks is huh P right P nowhere in the Torah there's the word PES used for the holiday word PES is in the Torah what is it used for the doors passing over the good try this is a a not not a yeah it's for the Pascal sacrifice the day before PES on the 14th of niss and sometimes it's used for the 14th of n because that's the day in which the Pascal sa sacrifice takes place nowhere in the tanak is the holiday called PES it's called Kos the holiday of matah H well we should think about that why would the colloquial language of the people not follow what the Torah says about the holiday and there's another example of that our year begins with which holiday R rashash absolutely nowhere is there rashash in the Torah nowhere it's called Yik or the day of the chauffer blast why is that um so the Le says we look systematically at the difference between the ter name and our name the Torah gives the name according to what we do and our name gives it according to what does that's very interesting we call Rash either rash or so let's take P the word p with a is a word that describes what did on the night of the the destruction of the the first born in Egypt mat so what we do we eat mat gives us the name according to what we do and we give the name according to what he did the year begins with Ros we say that's the beginning of the year the yearly cycle from the creation that's what did he calls it y tra the day of the Shau blast which is what we do each one is seeing it Through The Eyes of the other and the root for this is where just before they come into land of Israel Jewish people have a war with midan and tells Moses tell the people I want you to exact the Revenge of the Jewish people because of what they did to you I want you to make war there exact revenge and Moses tells the people we have to go to attack midan so as to take God's revenge against midan the verses are back to back because BR was calling get our revenge and we're calling get his revenge the same thing and says this is symptomatic of a love relationship because in a love relationship a lot of the time you see the world through your beloved's eyes you see what it is for your beloved so when you see the differences in the names that's something we which which is expressed by the difference between what the Torah says and what we say so that here's just just the question of the language you use nothing is nothing is stomp nothing is oh yeah that's just how it happened and leave that for the anthropologists and historians who make a living out of not not discovering things um okay now here it's called is called the time of our freedom well as a matter of fact there are a number of different words in Hebrew which speak about the idea of freedom and you should pay attention to this because Hebrew is a language with very small vocabulary maybe there are things that ancient Hebrew speakers had that didn't get didn't uh enter into the writings that we have but the language that we have based on the writings that we have is a very small language um and when you translate and think in English English is by far the biggest language in the world just because it borrowed from a lot of other languages that's why you can make a lot of nuanced distinctions in English that you don't have in Hebrew so when you find one subject which for which Hebrew has a number of different terms that's very important that means this very small language dedicated a number of terms to this one subject then you have to pay very careful attention to the differences between the terms uh for example cognition there are at least five different terms in Hebrew which which talk about cognition that's very very important so here you have Kus which is the word that's used here um then there's um KES which also means a kind of freedom and then there's uh um drawer which is another word for a type of Freedom so those things have have to be have to be distinguished here can mean freedom and the same letters can mean to engrave on Stone it's quite far relationship free which means like unattached unfettered unlimited and yet it's also graved on Stone and the tradition comments on it that engraved on the tablets and re said when you say I'm you should be thinking ahead to sh when we received the the the tablets with the with a 10 pronouncements engraved on it and there's a very deep idea a million great deep ideas but here's a philosophical idea let me ask you someone gives you a rule that you must follow does that increase or decrease your freedom decrease decrease for sure there'll be times when you wish you could do something else but there's the rule and the rule might be positive or or negative there are times when you like to do something the rules says don't do that all rules decrease freedom but some rules in addition to decreasing Freedom increase freedom and indeed some rules increase Freedom by decreasing Freedom here's a very simple example drive only on the right side of the road what do you mean 50% of the road is off limits right 50% of the road is off limits now you can go someplace if everybody's driving on all sides of the road nobody can go anywhere so by losing 50% you gain access to the whole Road on your side the very fact that you lose the 50% gives you access to to the to to traveling here's another example chess I'm sitting at a chessboard we're in the middle of a game and I take my knight I move it straight forward three spaces and take off his Queen he says you can't do that I said sure I can watch I'll do it again one two three off the agre no problem no we're playing chess you can't do that why can't I do that who's telling me what I can do what I can't do I'm a red-blooded American don't push me around don't tell me what to do I do what I please yeah you can do what you please but if you do what you please you can't play chess because chess is a game where you do what the rules say that's what makes it possible to play the game you can't play the game unless you give up your freedom to move every piece anywhere you want okay it say games why are you talking about silly things like games what about language do anybody tell you what you must say I say and and and plus blue that's how I talk good for you but no one's going to listen you can't communicate if you just say words randomly to communicate almost every combination of words is off limits what a gigantic loss of Freedom yeah but then you can communicate that's worthwhile isn't it so sometimes there are laws which limit every law every rule creates limitations gives and and removes a certain amount of freedom but it creates a possibility of doing something extremely valuable that's the way you have to look at the rules of the Torah they very greatly guide and manage your behavior but they do so in the spirit of an army trying to win a war and being told that at 12:06 you attack here and the 12:15 you attack there and then at 130 we Retreat and at 3:00 we attack again it's like a dance you know and then and then the enem is confused and then you overrun the enemy and you win so these rules very greatly restrict our freedom but on the other hand they make possible the accomplishment of something which otherwise would couldn't be accomplished so that's the idea of the freedom that you get on pesak is really for the sake of attaining the capabilities that what's engraved on the tablets will give you on that's how much could be built into a word an Infinity can be built into a word I'm just scratching the surface okay we together with this point okay might be worthwhile when PESA comes to say to say kidish slowly okay give us a chance to think a little bit um p is memorial to the ex from Egypt yeah it sure is that's when we left Egypt so we can't can't uh can't can't deny that I want just add one point here we'll pick us up again tomorrow we say that many things are in Memorial to The Exodus from from from Egypt and one of the shabas in the kidish shabas say the same thing some commentators ra included asked in what way is chabas a memorial to The Exodus did we leave Egypt at chabas no was either Thursday or Friday according to the two different opinions in the gar Thursday or Friday wasn't chabas so in what way is chabas a memorial to The Exodus from Egypt the ram has a very direct straightforward answer one of the things you do when chabis is you refrain from all physically creative work that's the vast majority of all human employment and human needs it's to manipulate the physical world in certain ways if you're a slave you can't do that you don't have your own self Authority your autonomy to decide not to do that work every time you stop doing that work you should think how did I get here I only got here because of the Exodus from Egypt that sentiment is is echoed in go as well so very simply if you know where you are and know where you would have been without the ex from Egypt you said okay so very fact that I can keep shabas means I'm a free person and that's because Co BR took me out um the other and other idea is this I just told you that when you think of our freedom you think of where you're going PES inaugurates a certain process which comes to fruition on shabas um every holiday of the year has a calendar date except Shabu Shabu is the 50th day after the beginning of pesak no matter what date of the month of s it comes out and in ancient times it could come out on the fifth sixth or seventh of San some years on one some years on the other so it's the only one that in other words its whole Essence is to be the Capstone of P that's what sh is that means sh from the that's that's P from the very beginning is aimed at getting to sh and receiving the Torah it's freedom for the sake of receiving the Torah that's what it's for so that being the case it's it's a projection on a on a on a on a scale and that's the idea also of shabas shabas is the purpose of the week uh that's why it comes to the end of the week I never understood how they explained to themselves the Christians when they changed the calendar when the Roman Emperor said I'm going to Institute Christian rules for the Empire but you're not getting two days off a week pick one so they had the biblical Sabbath on Saturdays and they had what they called The Day of the Resurrection on Sundays and they celebrated both of them they pick one so they just moved the biblical Sabbath of Sunday it's mov it and that's cified to this day most English calendars the first day of the week is Sunday there's a working Week calendar which is artificial but the real they start with Sunday so it's the first day of the week not the last day of the week hello in the Bible that they have also the Sabbath is the last day of the week that makes a gigantic difference the whole week is aiming to Sabbath Sabbath is the purpose of what you do during the week that's the goal that you're going for so that's similar to what's going on here p is seen as the beginning of a process or the goal and orientation that's also a way in which it's related okay we're just working on KES we'll pick it up tomorrow in than