The Secret of the Left-Handed Pitcher | Parshas Ki Sisa

so God was looking for a nation to receive his commandment he sent an angel to the he said would you like my commandment they said well what does it mean is it something you got to do yeah we have enough rules we have enough we got to do know we're too busy we don't have time ok so then the angel went to the Ishmaelites he says would you like God's commandment and they said what's a commandment it's you know something that you have to do now we have enough we have to do and we're not interested I'll have time then he went to the Israelites he spoke to Moses the angel went to Moses and he said would you like God's commandment and Moses said how much does it cost he says it's a commandment it's free Moses says in that case we'll take ten of them ok so we know that Hashem gave the Ten Commandments set aside Iblis at the time of mountain later the revelation at Sinai then later on four days later to be precise the hard copy was received the hard copy no pun intended literally hard copy on stone yes ok so in this week's partial partial key C so we read v10 eleisha and he Hashem gave to Moshe when cattle a solid a burrito when he had finished speaking to him but her sin I and II and Mount Sinai they look I saw a deuce two tablets of testimony Lukas seven tablets of stone sylveon bad spell Hakeem they were written by the finger of God okay so Shanae look ice or a this look ice oven to tablets of testimony tablets of stone simple question I'm going to ask you such a simple question we would never even think to ask it because we take certain things for granted because it's just the way things have always been 10 commandments right 10 commandments how many tablets 2 tablets ok why 10 commandments 2 tabs we take it for granted because Sol Invictus the imagery of Ten Commandments on the 10 what is a Chagall yeah so ISA well but I'm saying in theory if you just if you talk about the math here there's no reason why you couldn't put 10 commandments on one tablet or or converse let's go the other extreme you could put one commandment on 10 tablets why do you have to put 10 come in what's a 2 tablets is physically five Commandments on each one explanation is given them in other momoka mean other mojave day that they separate duties to our shaman duties between men and his fellow that's actually not the answer that we're gonna learn today but interesting comment but I'm asking on a much more basic level why split it up at all or if you're starting to split it up then let each one be on its own you know we have like like like dice you know I have 10 tablets each one with one with one commandment on it furthermore I just want to point out that the way that you'll be hired from I should carry it by the way it would took supernatural strength to carry it anyways even the two tablets it was too heavy for a normal person to carry but at any rate another thing I just want to point out that in the verse that I just read it says the word look likes twice tablets it's written llama DSS there's no love yeah well in Toyota things are sometimes written male and sometimes written across it so it's not written look hice we know that the vowel is look place with a hilum which means plural or la haute plural two tablets but it's written as if it were Luke laughs which would be yeah in in Hebrew you have sometimes you take a noun and you put it the Smith us you put you juxtapose it with another noun and you have the singular construct form so you know you have like Alva is love and Ava's acid is the love of kindness right or Torah todas I am tire of life so you put that tough that there's not a grammar lesson but if you if you put it tough at the end of a of a singular noun and you put it miss me to us to another noun so that becomes like a construct it becomes like a compound phrase at any rate so it's written like that it's written like it where Luke Haas but it's really look hice plural and an Rashi explains look I see Luke asked see if it's written as if it were the singular construct form to tell you why why does it say that is it it's written as if it were singular so how you say in shove is because they were equal rats Arashi says show host a hen Chaves to tell you that they were equal so now we have 10 commandments to tablets and remember to equal tablets five and five all right so as I said these this this concept are so big with this to us we're so used to it we take it for granted it's like the air that we breathe but we want to question it what is the idea behind this configuration okay so here's what I want to ask you we know that everything in Tyra is precise and everything in the world is precise and that there are certain patterns in reality that repeat themselves they're sort of the imprint of the Creator within the creation so here's my question to you where do you see in nature to symmetrical and complementary entities that each have five subsets to them so two and two and each of the two have five but so the human being has a right hand on the left hand and on each hand or five fingers so it's not that we have one hand with ten fingers or ten hands each with one finger we have two hands eath which each with five fingers what's the idea uh ballistically we know that the right hand is acid and the left hand is garuda those are the two major emotional energies in the universe giving and withholding passive is giving Buddha is withholding the gas and the brakes go and stop in terms of Torah those are do's and don'ts another way of looking at the two tablets is that they're organized by do's and don'ts you mentioned before the bane of them look of a debate I may know them lahmacun me know the motivator that's one way this is another way the first tablet you know the first tablet is the right tablet because in Hebrew we read from right to left right exactly you know the famous story it's a true story that Henry Kissinger when he was Secretary of State for Nixon he he he told Golda Meir he says listen just because I'm Jewish don't think you're gonna get any favoritism for me because first I'm an American and then a politician and then I'm Jewish he wrote her in a letter so she wrote him back and said I'm happy to let you know that in Israel we read from right to left he said he read his list in the opposite order first he's Jewish okay the right side is the first sight the right side are the do's I am the Lord you got now I know you're gonna say the second one is you should have no other guys you should not take God's name in vain so as the safe Rehema explains in mitzvos evolved through lammott those the saver clinic explains that you should have no other gods and don't take God's name in vain I really sub Commandments of a nice hash of Allah I am the Lord your God and so that means those two are really part of that positive command I'm the Lord you got and then you have Shabbos which is obviously a positive command especially in the first time you know the the Safa as opposed to summer and then you have Commodus a vehicle via Mecca honor your your parents which is also a positive so the first Luwak the first tablet are deuce and then you have the second tablet the left tablet which are the don'ts like hello it like or like I saw on a billboard in the Bible Belt once what part of thou shalt not did you not understand okay so what's the what's the idea here you think about the two types of obligations the do's and the don'ts as a right hand in the left hand and you start to realize the nature of Tara as an ethical system as a legal system as a way of life needs to have this dynamism this combination of these two opposite and complementary forces and if not any system that would only have dues or only have don'ts is sort of proverbially speaking the sound of one hand clapping and in contrast when you have both do's and dont's you have two hands clapping and what do you do when you're full of joy you clap and so therefore a joyous Judaism is one that has to be composed of do's and dont's there is the love and there's the respect in emotional terms love is what I do for you respect is what I don't do because of you I say there's a guy the example that I Eve they came up with years ago but I use it all the time because people seem to relate to it a guy is driving home from work why is it the guy out of coz that's what I relate to so the guy's driving home I mean as opposed to being a woman why because that's what I relate to so a guy's driving home from work and he really just wants to go home he's tired he wants to go straight home and the phone rings and it's his wife and he has to answer it and yes and she says could you stop off at the store for me and pick up the you know whatever some weird thing that husbands are sent to the store from time to time to pick up you know the cream of tarter like he has no idea what they use it for he's here but he sent to the store at least once a year to buy more of it he doesn't know what goes into but for him it's a level of like a super irrational decree I look like but his wife tells him to go get it so he wanted to go straight home but his wife said stop at the store pick up the cream of tarter so immediately what does he do turns on the blinker and he gets off the the highway and he goes to the store and that's it because his wife's told them to and that is love that's love you say oh that's too trivial to be love husbands should try one time not doing it and find yeah that'll find out okay but then let's say is the opposite scenario he's coming home from work and he's going to the store why cuz he's been fantasizing since 11 a.m. when his boss yelled at him that he's gonna stop off on the way home from work and he's gonna go buy his favorite tub of ice cream he's gonna come home is gonna hide it in the back of the freezer behind the frozen peas were no child will look at 11:00 p.m. when the oldest child is pretending to be asleep he's gonna sit in his favorite chair and eat his ice cream with a spoon don't judge my hypothetical characters fantasy that's what he's fantasizing about at enric so he's ready to go to the store pick up his icecream and all of a sudden the phone rings it's his wife and she says I need you to come straight home and that's it no ice cream no store he goes straight home that's respect that's respect see a scenario number one he wanted to go straight home but she said come and go to the store for me so he went out of his way for her he did something extra he did something more and that's love scenario number two he was ready to do something he wanted to do she said I need you not to do that and he aborted mission okay that's it self containment and he went and did her thing so love is what I do for you respect is what I don't do because of you and in relationships between human beings this is true as well as with Hashem so there are the do's of Torah and they're the don'ts to do what I do for a sham they don't do what I don't do because of a sham now the question becomes which one is more fundamental which one is more important to Jewish life the do's of the doubts there was a rabbi in Bensonhurst Brooklyn in the 1930s who had learned in the town of Lubavitch the real about which the Lubavitch that Lubavitch is named after rubbish lemma aren kosnovski and he came to America before the previous endeavor the previous owner came to America in 1940 before that there are only literally single digits of you know real abhava jurors in them in America and he was one of them so when he came to when when they when Lubavitch came to America he had already experienced with the American Jews so they asked her because in offski what's the deal with the american jews like tell us what are they all about so he was trying to explain to them American Jews are funny like even when they're supposedly religious talk about the 1930s America the assimilation was rampant even the officially Orthodox were not so Orthodox so there was they were asking what's the deal with the American Jews he says American Jews are funny they all know how to make kiddush but none of them know how to make Havdalah he meant it on two levels he meant it literally that Friday night the family gets together and very nice and you know you have a meal and you know the father stands in the head of the table it makes good dish and who doesn't know that who doesn't love that very nice family hour but by the end of Shabbos I mean already Saturday afternoon this one's going to the library to do homework and this one's going to the movies and this one's going to football practice and everyone's busy and by the time Shabbos is over there's no half-dollar because people are already doing their own things so nobody makes you know everyone makes kiddush nobody makes up though but he also meant it on a deeper level homiletically he meant it he doshas from the word Kaddish means holy we proclaimed the holiness of something we say this is holy this is good we can use this in our service of God have Dulla means separation to me mouth deal means to discriminate discrimination is not a dirty word by the way have Hana is discrimination to be able to discern the difference between one thing in another I mean there is a certain type of prejudicial discrimination we talk about as a societal ill that's a different discussion but discrimination as a skill as an ability to discern between one thing and another it's not a negative thing whatsoever it's a necessary thing to go through life you have to be able to make decisions and decision making is based on discernment they don't make that discernment you were saying so they know how to make Kadosh they know how to say everything's holy we can do this we can do that well we're in America or in a free country we can use everything everything can be part of our lives so to make kiddush no problem to be mobsteel to make Havdalah to say no this can't be part of our lives or this can't be part of this day this you know we don't do this on this day this is not a Shabbos activity or this is not the context within which we do something like maybe this is a fine thing but in the way that it's being done we can't take part of it because because because we're Jews they don't have that ability they're just open to everything and they don't have that ability to make boundaries so that's what he was because an auskey was was was warning his colleagues when they came over to America I was one time at a shul somewhere in the world I won't say where I don't wanna get too specific but it was in the world and somewhere on the planet Earth and yeah and I give it too much away so it was one of these things are supposed to speak in shul like after the Torah reading so I got up there to the to the pulpit and I looked around and the entire show was empty it was empty so I looked at the rabbi said what's going on the shoulders empty so he says kiddush club so I said doesn't look like a club looks like the whole shul he says I couldn't fight it you know I just made it known you know an unofficial official thing so everybody just runs out and I wait until they'd finished and then they come back and we continue so he basically gave in to the whole kiddush club thing so after everybody comes back in I don't remember what I was supposed to speak to them about that day but I remember what I did speak to them about that day they came back in and I told them that story about a cosmonaut Sookie about American Jews know how to make kiddush they don't know how to make Havdalah and I said to them you know it's interesting you think this is the first kiddush club I ever saw I saw plenty of kiddush clubs but what I want to know is and all my travels all the places I visited never once did I see a half dollar club everyone's running for the kiddush club nobody makes half dollar club why everybody wants to say yes we can do this this is good we can include this we can make this part of our lives this is acceptable this is alright everyone likes to make edition but though no one wants to sit make half dollar nobody wants to say stop no one wants to say you know what maybe this doesn't have a part in our lives no one wants to exercise that discernment and those boundaries and that self containment I remember I saw my book that I mentioned something my father's a psychologist so when I was a kid sometimes I would read some books from his library there was a book there about transactional analysis or whatever they're not important but it was talking about the hippie boy says to the hippie girl do you love me and she says I love everybody what does that mean do you love I love everybody so then she loves nobody if you can't say no then your yes is not a yes if you can't make up duller than what is kiddush it's interesting the signs of a kosher fish there are two signs of a kosher fish right fins and scales okay now it's interesting Lee who modern Kulin asks we know of no fish that has scales that doesn't have fins so seemingly Toyota could have just told us the scales and then we would know so there are fish that have fins that have no scales you know like like sharks you know like jaws right but there are fish that end but there are no fish that have to have scales and don't have fins so the good Mona : asks why and the answer over there is you know yog dealt a Tobi idea but there's an interesting explanation for this that the lava Chiba gives in his regime asyou know there were no books that they'd ever wrote throughout his lifetime particularly before he accepted leadership and those those notebooks were discovered after gimel Thomas after his passing and they're incredible incredible works the regime as' and it was one of the regime's there talks about this about this Gemara and explains that LP kabbalah that we are fish what i mean we are fish when Rabi Akiva was studying Torah even when the Romans banned it and he was asked to explain why he was risking his life remember the famous metaphor that he gave the parable of the fish he said remember the Fox said to the fish the fishermen are gonna catch you come out of the water and be safe up here in dry land and the fish says no if I'm in danger in my in my habitat how much more so am I in danger if I come on dry so and rebbi akiva said look if learning Torah I'm in danger but if I don't learn to her I mean even more danger meaning to say the Jew to the Torah is like a fish in water right so we in our relationship with Hashem and his Torah we are like fish so the question is what's a kosher fish what's a kosher fish well you got to have two things you got to have fins and scales what are fins and water scales fins are what propel you so when you make progress in your spiritual development okay that means your ability to learn Torah your acumen your your prowess your dedication you know the the shrits all that stuff that propels you forward like like fins then there's the scales what are scales scales are protection you know their armor in fact cos Casaus means chainmail well what do you do with with scales you don't do anything with them they're just there to protect the fish so the fish is intact so the fish can swim around so he uses his fins that's what he does scales don't do anything but if they're not there then the fish isn't protected which means in the case of a Jew he becomes susceptible to all types of foreign influences that undermine him so here's the thing any fish that has scales will also have fins in other words if I'm protected if I have my boundaries if I know how to say no if I men know how to make Abdallah if I have my standards and boundaries in other words my respect for Hashem what I don't do because of a Shem then I know I also have fins then I have my progress the things that I'm doing to become greater in my spiritual service the dues will also benefit but if I only have the dues without the don'ts then I don't even have the dues so what do we learn from this that when Hashem gave us the Torah he gave us ten commandments which represent the entirety of Tyrel luxottica explains the 220 ladders of the of the isettas adidas represent the 613 biblical commandment for us the seven mitzvahs darabond middle Bunyan 6:20 which is also come out to a cat sir which is the casio Tyra so the entirety of trader is is contained within the ten commandments but the ten commandments are represented by a right hand in the left hand five and five and they are sha vase their equal you cannot put the do's ahead of the don'ts and even to the contrary because it is our nature to put more emphasis on the do's than the don'ts we have to be extra careful to be mindful of the don'ts I'll just close with this example I like to use this I think it brings this out nicely the greatest pitcher in the history of baseball and I don't say this because of any sense of Jewish pride I say this if you look at the statistics if you look at the numbers or if you look at polls of sports writers who will list you know the 10 greatest pitchers of all time one name that is almost always number one or or near number one and we aware of this Sandy Koufax Sandy Koufax and I'm not saying because we're proud of him because he o by though he was also from Bensonhurst Slim aaron kalinosky was from Bensonhurst oh he's from Lubavitch and he moved to Bensonhurst and Sandy Koufax haven't been Bensonhurst and he moved to he eventually was in LA but oh so here's my question Sandy Koufax was one of the greatest pictures if not the greatest pitcher in the history of baseball but if you ask anybody but the game in his career that he was most famous for what will they tell you the World Series game that fell on Yom Kippur that he did in Paige the game that he did not play in other words you look at the greatest picture statistically if you want to look at the no-hitters and the perfect games you have what to look at what he up what he accomplished on the mound there's a picture you have a view of what to look at and yet if you ask people I'll tell you into this very day in fact remember a few years back there was some type of a dinner in in the White House and the previous administration Obama so Obama said a joke obviously a joke writers who wrote it for me but that's not that's not the point the point is that this is what he was the Sandy Koufax is remembered for decades later Obama gets up and he says Sandy Koufax in the audience tonight sandy and I have a couple of things in common sandy is a left-hander I'm a left-hander sandy can't pitch on Yom Kippur and I can't pitch ok whatever it's not a hilarious joke but the point is the president United States 40 years later but 50 years later is what what references is he making the game that he didn't play so the point is sometimes we undervalue the power of the left hand the self containment the discernment discrimination saying no chiefly no to our cells and we have to remember the Torah was given two tablets like two hands like the sound of two hands clapping okay oh by the way one more thing I just want to I just want to point out something very cool and I mentioned it if you were listening Sandy Koufax what hand did he pitch with the left hand that's the power of the left hand the self containment okay