The Silent Student - Parshas Haazinu

a little jewish boy comes home from school and he tells his mother that he got a uh a part in the school play she says oh yeah bubba what part he says i'm playing the part of the jewish father she says oh no go back to your teacher and tell her you want a speaking part this week's parasha parshas hazinu we read the song of hyzino the song that maisha taught the jewish people and it says mesha came and he said this entire song in the ears of the people who is the old name of yahushua of joshua before masha changed it to yeheshua to joshua okay so uh a couple of questions here which rashi deals with um why did maisha and together teach this song of hyzinu and rashi explains well there was a reason for that it was maisha's way of preparing the people to accept the transfer of leadership from him from maisha to yahushua so if they would see yeshua taking on a leadership role together with him helping him to teach the song of hyzinu then they would see that yeshua had actually been uh raised to the level level of leader in maesha's lifetime uh indeed that is what rashi says that the people if if moishe had not done this the people might have said later on after misha's passing and yeshua becoming leader the people might have said in the lifetime of your teacher you did not dare raise your head that's that's the wording of rashi um and now and now you want to be our leader so misha uh wanted to anticipate that and take care of that and he made sure that yeshua had that public and prominent place teaching with him the song of hyzino before mush's passing okay so that's that's one thing uh about the verse that uh that rashi explains the other thing that needs to be explained which rashi also explains why yeheshua is referred to here here as heisei is his old name yeheshua is the name that mahesh gave him by adding the letter yud which yoda's symbolizes hashem's name misha added that letter to heisha and made it yahishua before he sent them out on the mission of the spies back in parsha schlock which was 38 years prior to this uh story um so or 39 years prior to this to this story so um rashi and rashi explains that uh what's the reason that it's to show that even though yeshua was rising to prominence at this moment he retained his humility just like in the old days when he was still called hey shea okay fine it's fairly straightforward not that hard to understand but here's our question and our and our question is going to help us to understand something about the role of yeshua as maisha's successor question is rashi as he often does gets his the basis of his commentary from uh madrashim from the from the earlier works of the the tenorium in this case the commentary here is based on the words of the sifri and rashi changes the language a little bit rashi says that the people would have complained if if indeed yeshua had not co-taught the song of hyzino with maisha and then all of a sudden one day became the leader out of the blue with no previous um experience as as leader in the lifetime elisha people would have said hey what are you doing in the lifetime of your teacher you never even dared raise your head rush is the expression you never even raised your head and now all of a sudden you want to be leader but that's what rashi says that's not the wording in the in the madras that rashi is basing on uh in the medus the the people would have said in the lifetime of your teacher you never spoke the activator and now you speak so the original source the people would have just said to yahshua hey you never spoke before publicly i mean and now all of a sudden you're speaking in public but what rashi says is is much more severe than that the people would have said you never even lifted your head you never even moved the muscle to use the idiom of today you ain't even move and now all of a sudden you want to move you want to you know you want to make a move you want to draw attention to yourself so we want to understand why rashi uses a different language in fact a much more intense uh language than than the medish that he is basing himself on okay so i want to tell you a story in the 1930s when the lobby and his rabbitson were living in berlin and in paris the rebel was sent on many missions by his father-in-law the the frederick and one of these missions was a schliches to go to vilna vilna which was the bastion of torah scholarship in lithuania and uh also traditionally had been in the seat of opposition to but there was a particular matter of communal affairs which required a sort of a coalition of hasidim and misnagdam so the previous rabbis sent his son-in-law to vilna to get the signature of rebhai maizer who was a roshiva narav of bazdin in in vilna so uh the rabbit arrived in vilna and it happened at that time that was meeting with another great torah luminary of the time reborn on this particular occasion the devil was sitting on a bench waiting in the hallway to be admitted to uh rabhaim aiza's office and as the rebel was sitting there some bachram they they saw a visitor and they immediately discerned he was kassidic and they saw they decided to start harassing him you know there's a long-standing uh stereotype that the siddham don't learn you know they're not torah scholars so these young men from vilna they started asking the rabbit questions about torah scholarship talmudic questions and that ebba did not answer that but didn't say a word to them uh they were harassing him mercilessly and the rabbit didn't say a word nothing now rabbi opened the door and he was watching this he was seeing what was happening so he he told the debbie come in so they never got up came inside and as soon as they closed the door that ever said by the way this and this and this question that they they asked me here are the answers and the debbie gave astoundingly clear answers to all to these questions that these bakum had been asking him asking him out in the hallway sort of says to the rebbe he says clearly you were able to answer why didn't you answer outside when though when those guys were harassing you so the rabbit told them i was sent on by my father-in-law and that schleich is to come here and get the dove's signature answering those guys in the hallway was not part of my schliches that wasn't part of my mission that's not the mission i was on so i didn't answer them now when i saw that you saw that they were asking me questions and i couldn't answer the questions or you thought i couldn't answer the questions because i wasn't answering i knew that could actually affect the mission because maybe if you thought that i'm an ignoramus you wouldn't want to sign my father-in-law's letter so therefore i had to show you that i could answer because that's part of me doing my schliches about you know doing my my mission for my father-in-law but to answer those guys i had nothing to do with my mission that's why i didn't answer at any rate at that same time um azerbaijan took the letter and was reading the letter before signing continued to speak to the rabbi about learning and was so enthralled so astounded that barack obama finally said to the younger man come with me and i will make you the biggest goddle in in the litvisher world and that i've apologized and said i'm sorry but i have my mission i have my shlokas in life and it is to work for my father-in-law and at this moment began to cry by the way how do we know this how do we know such a story we know the story because there was a mashgiach and rjj in the yeshiva in the lower east side who was the meshadis who was the personal attendant of the bear he was there he saw this and he eventually when he was on the lower east side in manhattan he shared this story with a couple of bachram the whole story about why he shared it with them because these bakram had they snuck out to go to a fabregan in 770 and then he shared this shared this story so that's that's the story i want to tell you and the point of it is the rebels complete bitter self-effacement to his father-in-law to his rebel that when he was on a mission of his father-in-law that's it that's it that's all there was nothing else now if that's how that ever was when he was on a mission of his father-in-law imagine how the rabbit was when he was in the presence of his father-in-law well actually we don't have to imagine because it's well documented and everyone who saw the rabbit in the presence of his father saw that that ebba was completely he made himself like a non-entity there was one time after fabregan of the previous rabbit the previous servant got out got up and walked out and that ebba did not get up and follow that ever continued to sit at the table which was unusual that i would usually get up immediately after his father-in-law and follow him out of the room after the fabregan and this time the friday got out walked out and the rabbit continued to sit at the table only after the frida gerber had left the room did that ever stand up and as that ever stood up the table fell over and they realized the reason that eva didn't get up that i didn't want to move because the table broke because of all the pushing of the crowd during the fabregan the table actually broke and that ever had been holding up the table the entire time and didn't want to even let on that that's what was going on and when defeated rabbit finally got up and left the room then that ever got up and the table fell that i had been holding up the table the entire time similarly there's a picture of a dinner here in america in new york 1942 there was a laboratory issue a fundraising dinner and you see the previous server got up to speak which was very difficult for him at that point health-wise and the deba got up and stood next to the frida krabi and you can see the rabbit holding the feet of his hand to take to give him support there's a there's a shliya who has a supporter who's a doctor and this doctor keeps this photo on his desk why does he keep this photo on his desk he says because as a doctor as a student of human anatomy he says you don't realize what's going on there how uncomfortable that position is that the rabbit is holding his hand in such a way to provide maximum support to his father-in-law but at the same time is a is a position which is very very difficult for someone to hold their hand in for any sustained amount of time but we see that that was the level of that ebba's self-effacement in the presence of his father-in-law now i'm going to tell you this as much as that ever made himself absolutely like a non-entity in his father-in-law's presence or went on a schlitz on a mission of his father-in-law there came a time when the previous rabbit wanted the rabbit to begin to reveal himself to the siddha and it happened before the before the debba became officially the leader became the rabbit it was already in the lifetime of the previous habit and one of those major turning points uh was actually in 1931 the the previous rabbit was living in riga in latvia it already had to flee uh soviet russia and he came to advance to poland for tishrei for the high holidays and the story is told by the bachram who are there evie galitski allah from montreal actually recounts this on a gem video that they didn't really know anything i mean they knew that the ramash as they called him was the the frederick of his son-in-law so he must be something special but and they saw that he never left his father-in-law's side he was always with him but he didn't really speak they didn't really he didn't do anything so they didn't really weren't sure what was going on um but that success everything changed the friday could have been told the rabbit that he should go and fabreng simchas basa shuaiva the knights of sukkos he said fabregan with the sirim in the sukkah so abegalitsky who tells the story he was a baja there in poland at the time he says look we assumed that the rabbit must be a talmud but we never even we didn't dream of something until this until we saw it with our eyes that rang with us in the sukkah from 8 pm until 7 00 a.m an 11 hour fabregan on one mishna 11 hours on one mission i'm a missionary from this says be bold like a leopard and swift like uh like an eagle 11 hours that bring one mishna and he brought from zaya and from from gemara and from from madrush he says we were blown away we never saw anything like that and this was from the person who we never saw him move we never saw him open his mouth we didn't we didn't know we didn't know now all of a sudden we see so let's get back to our question about about rashi's commentary from this week's parachute why does rashi say that yeshua never lifted his head lahar mary she never lifted his head meaning he never even moved he never you know so much as the you know stirred in his place the words of the medici that rashi is basing himself out on is that he he didn't speak he never spoke so why does rashi change that so let's think about this what do we know about yeshua what we know about yeshua is what the tata tells us about yeshua theta tells us that yeshua was missharris matia the attendant the valet the the the butler of my ship what do we know about the yay show we know that he was they called they called him who didn't leave maisha's tent okay he was 56 years old when the tata calls him nar a boy but that was his level of self-effacement to moshe he was the boy he was the attendant the lad the the servant who never left maisha's side and and that's why rashi changes the words from the madhush from inmatia's lifetime the people never saw yeshua speak that's what the the mother says they never saw him speak she changed it so they never saw him lift his head he didn't so much as lift his head why why does rashi make this change because rash's point isn't that yeshua didn't have previous public speaking experience that wasn't the point point wasn't that he never got up to the deus and spoke the point was that what people saw of yeshua in in russia's lifetime they didn't see him move they didn't see him move so they had no idea what he was capable of so all of a sudden when he became leader we never saw this guy even so much as move and now all of a sudden he's leader so misha wanted to show in his lifetime that yeshua was indeed a a fitting success and that's why they taught the song of hyzinu together by the way think about when it talks about the the method of of of player transmission the messiah talks about it in the gemara in uh in adevan that what was the order of teaching it says maisha would learn from hashem and then aaron would come in and maisha would teach the lesson to aaron then aaron would move away and he would sit at maisha's left side and then aaron's sons would come in allah via summer and and and moshe would teach them and then they would move to the side uh lazar would sit at maisha's right and the summer would sit at aaron's left and then the zucchini the elders would come in and make sure we teach would teach them so then the elders would move aside and then the entire nation would come in and make sure we teach them so it comes out the gemara says that the entire nation learned the lesson once from asia the the the kingdom the elders learned twice from aisha aaron's sons learned three times from maisha and aaron himself learned four times from aisha every lesson so i want to ask you a question where was yeshua when all this was happening how many times did yeshua learn each lesson well we know that yeshua literally never left maisha's side he never budged from the tent so the answer is even though he's not mentioned there he was standing there the whole time silently in complete awe and complete devotion to his rabbit to moshe and this is what the people saw for 40 years for 40 years they saw someone who did not so much as lift his head and that's why moshe had yeshua teach the song of hyzing together with him in his lifetime because the people not only did they never see yeshua speak they never saw him move yeshua was so selfless he made himself so unobtrusive in mauritius presence that that people could could fail to realize that that yeshua was was leadership material and that's why mesha had to do this specifically make this demonstration and that's also the significance of rash's explanation why yeshua is referred to here by his old name of heisei because rashi says that it's to tell us that although he was granted greatness at this point he humbled himself like before rash's point here isn't just to tell us why yeshua is still called heisha even after he became yeshua raj is telling us why he's called heisha in this place in this place of all places where he's being installed into leadership it seems very odd in the context where he's being installed into greatness into leadership that he's being referred to by his old name the name he got the the the before he got the name from may sherbano and that's what raj is explaining that that's the whole point why did maisha feel the need to have yeshua teach the song of izino publicly together with him in moshe's own lifetime precisely because yeshua had always behaved so humbly he even when he became a yahishua he he stayed humbled like a heishaya his whole career the whole time he was acting humbly with such selflessness and that's why if moshe hadn't put yahushua up there with him to teach the song together the people would never even believe that this humble humble humble servant was capable of such a thing that's why it's called heisha right here to teach us that he was still that humble servant and that's why moshe had to push him up to the front i liked the fear that could have had the rebel fabregan for 11 hours if i can draw a comparison that by the way i should just for the sake of transparency this lesson is based on a sikha from la cotes circus um from uh helicoptes volume 29 of liquid surface these stories are my additions i'm humbly offering them as a possible parallel and uh should be taken you know with that level of authority meaning it's just my i'm drawing a parallel however i will share with you what it does say in the secret in the original and that is the hero the lesson the moral of the story what point should we take away from from this this whole story about yeheshua here's the hera that the rabbit gives the days following roshana that we're in right now the jewish people have just crowned hashem as king we just made hashem king over the entire universe again for another year that's very powerful we're very powerful that we're able to get hashem to be king of the world for for another year so we might become haughty because we realize how much power we have so just like yeshua humbled himself we also have to have humility we have to realize even though we have this power as jews to make hashem be king that shouldn't make us haughty that should give us an even greater measure of of humility or like the al trebba says the closer you are to hashem the more distant you realize you are the closer you are the more humble you become the the humility becomes a vessel for receiving all the blessings all the blessings from hashem which then assures us a good sweet healthy happy new year marximate one and all