They Don't Know From Matzo Balls — Parshas Behar

so wish me a the sabbatical year in the land of Israel when there's no farming and Jewish farmer is outside standing in the middle of his field his neighbor comes by sees him he says sleep hard only excuse me Samata so what are you doing here you know you're not supposed to be farming right now and he says don't worry I'm not farming he says what are you doing though you're standing in the row of your field he says this oh I'm just trying to win a Nobel Prize he says yeah how so are you winning a Nobel Prize we're standing here in the middle of your field he says well don't you know every year they award the Nobel Prize to someone who's outstanding in his field so parshas behad begins describing the mitzvah of shmita the sabbatical year the seventh year when there's no farming the Shabbos like rest for the land now in the made on the Vulcan of the Rambam it explains some rational explanations for different mitzvahs and it mentions that the idea or one of the rational explanations behind shemitah is to give the land a chance to rest so it can replenish itself now crop rotation that's the technical term for it it's not a uniquely Jewish concept that's not unique to Torah you know everybody knows about the concept that you have to let a lot it's called letting the the land lie fallow you have to let a layer you have to let a piece of land lie fallow every once in a while and because the nutrients become depleted over the years season after season putting out crops and then you let it rest so that's that's a that's something everybody knows about that's not unique to Torah but what is unique about the midst of shmita is that rotation is Kashmiri I can who it's like its name implies crop rotation you don't let all of the land lie fallow at the same time you rotate and you leave an open field so it can rest for a season and you plant in the other fields samantha is when you let all of the fields the entire land all lie fallow at the exact same time and nobody does that I mean only the Jews do that and you could understand practically why that would present a challenge because if you have the entire land lying fallow and there's no agriculture so what are you gonna eat and in fact this is precisely the challenge that the toyota acknowledges in our partial it says be he say new and if you're gonna say maniacal Bashan aureus what are we gonna eat in the seventh year hey Mulaney is it overly NASA if as to what saying that we're not allowed to plant we can't you can't reap our produce so a sham says don't worry matts evcs bo karsey elohim Bashan officious I'm gonna send forth my blessing in the six year for all success at foolishly shy Shawn him the sixth year will provide enough for three years meaning for the year itself then for the seventh year where there's no agriculture and then also for the eighth year were you getting everything up and running again so the six year is gonna provide triple the bounty of a regular year okay fine but here's the question if the land needs to replenish itself in the seventh year then the land in the sixth year must be the most depleted the most used up and in that year you're gonna tell me that that's the year that's gonna provide the normal amount that a normal harvest provides and and don't say well you know how gem can do whatever he wants of course Hashem can do it every once but if fish I was doing whatever he wants then he can make it so the land doesn't rest at all so if the land is resting in order to replenish doesn't make sense that the six year which should be the most used up year it should be the the worst crop that's not only going to not be the worst crop and not only to be a normal crop but it's gonna be crippled of a normal crop okay so this is what we have to understand and we're gonna get back to this but I want to tell you something something even more perplexing than how the 6th year would give a triple bounty and that is I read a few years ago there's a bulletin called Lubavitch International and in it there was a story about a Habad house on campus at the University of Washington in the Washington State in the Pacific Northwest and it said there that when this look em first came to campus they would serve traditional matzo ball soap to attract to the students to the Friday night Shabbos dinners and then they stopped why because the Jewish kids didn't know what it was yes that that's right we're talking about people who are so far removed from Yiddish Kyte not just from Jewish observance and religion but even from Jewish culture that they don't even know what traditional Jewish cuisine is so the matzo ball soup which normally is like you smell the smell and it triggers this nostalgia this this emotional reaction didn't have that it but there was no emotional association there was not it didn't mean anything to them they didn't recognize what it was so then there was no point serving it to that so that's kind of weird I mean we all know that when you if you have to fight dirty you know you need to use a dirty trick if you need to get a Jew to melt if you need to suddenly you know make them receptive there's these little buttons you can push a little emotional triggers you know a yudish word or some Jewish humor or you know Jewish cuisine you know corned beef on rye you know like that kind of stuff and you're talking about though these kids who are so many generations removed from from Judaism even from cultural Judaism that they don't have those buttons to push you can't even so how are you gonna get that and and and what what's the most puzzling thing is what doesn't make sense if it's Friday night and there's a Jewish kid on campus and he has no idea what a matzo ball is what's he doing at a Shabbos table for its Friday night you should be at the bars with every other college kid and if on the other hand you're telling me he doesn't want to be at the bar he wants to be at the Shabbos table I can tell me he doesn't know what a matzo ball is either way the whole thing is weird it makes no sense and yet there's a kid who doesn't even know what a matzo ball is and for some reason he knows that he's supposed to be at a Shabbos table so if he doesn't know what matzo balls are what's drawing him there how does he know to be there why is he there so I want to tell you a story about 150 years ago there was a a prominent Jew in Baghdad we don't think about Baghdad as being a Jewish neighborhood but once upon a time before 1948 it was a very Jewish neighborhood and not only quantitatively but qualitatively it was a great congregation with great achievers and leaders and rabbis and in fact this story I'm about to tell you it was recorded by one of the great rabbis of Baghdad the Bennish high so the Benish high records a story it's actually in his safer and on Shabbos about a prominent Baghdad Jew a businessman who manoalani wanted to convert to Islam just to explain he didn't want to convert out of any theological conviction or anything like that he just for business purposes there was a certain there was a ceiling as far as you know non-muslims how much they could progress in society and he figured that if he'll become a Muslim they'll have more privileges so he was ready to convert now there was a thing that they did there I don't know if this is common to all of Islam I doubt it is I mean it's it's a big religion there's a lot of different different denominations and different sects but this particular community in Baghdad they had a rule that the Muslims wouldn't accept a non-muslim to convert until a clergyman from the real from the person's religion would come to try to talk him out of it so in this case the the the the clergyman was was the venetie venetie I was supposed to come in and try to talk the guy out of it before he would become a Muslim before the Muslims would accept this Jew as a Muslim so the Minish guy comes in and he starts giving the guy every powerful argument that he possibly could about why he should not do this and the guy listens and he's like okay I hear you but you know what it's just gonna be better for me to be Muslim so you know thank you very much but I'm you know doing it so the Bennett I says you know hold on guys so just just wait I'm I'm calling in for backup and he found some guy simple Jew who was a childhood friend of this other Jew and he brings him in and the Benicia I realized it all the intellectual arguments weren't working so he needed he needed someone more who could speak this guy's language so he he gets the the childhood friend of this guy and it comes in it says to his friend he says you want to you want to convert you want to become a Muslim he says you know and Shabbat they served the humming hot food no gosh Kozma called taunt says you know what there's an egg in the humming if you become a Muslim you will never again have that experience of eating the egg from the humming on Shabbat and the guy couldn't do it that was it he couldn't take it he says all right fine cancel it call it off okay so why am I telling you this story I'm telling this story because here you see the example of that emotional trigger something so simple but there's that emotional association and and and it held a Jew and it held him to his Judaism and and and and that's the way it was I mean we we have much experience with this we know we know the old trick you know of serving the traditional foods and the smell of the Jewish cuisine and it reminds people of their Bubbe and there's a there's a way of awakening a pintle a Yid in a Jew by playing upon those emotional associations okay all of a sudden we're dealing with a generation where they don't even have those associations anymore no I remember I heard once from rabbi manis Friedman that he said he realized one day it was at base condo trellis which was a school for four girls who were more becoming observant so he said there was a line that he'd always be able to use and could always just cut through the noise and get people to you know to think straight and he says one day the line didn't work anymore what was the line you would say to them you know what enough already think about what your bubbie would say and that would always work until one day it didn't because he realized that times had changed we'd be we we've progressed so far into gullies that people didn't remember a religious grandparent anymore that there were so many generations of assimilation that they didn't have that connection anymore so think about it we are in a time when those connections those emotional connections those trigger words don't even work you know there used to be a time when a Jew if you would talk to them about I mean if he just again maybe it's not fighting fair but if you just needed to get them to you know just you needed to get through to them somehow you mentioned the Holocaust you mentioned the Six Million and it would you know sober them up you know how many Jews didn't get tattoos because I'm saying non-observant Jew they didn't do it because of because it's a it's a mitzvah not to didn't get a tattoo because because of the Holocaust or how many cremations were prevented I'm talking about non observant Jews who otherwise wouldn't necessarily value Jewish burial but how many cremations are stops because he's after the Holocaust you're gonna get a cremation or or another example you know Israel there was a time that it didn't matter where a Jew was as far as observance where they were politically you talk about Israel and I would all of a sudden they would get very serious that Jewish pride and come out and now let's that's not it's not the case I mean talk about on campus the Jewish students there not only do they not get excited about Israel maybe they're even against their their part of BDS because you know they're no that's that's the culture on campus so what do we what are we talking about really when we're describing a reality where Jews don't have those associations anymore they don't we don't have those triggers that we used to rely on anymore so I'll tell you like this it's fifty seven eighty right now tough shinpei which by the way by way of comparison in the Chinese calendar which is the second oldest calendar it is forty seven eighteen which of course begs the question if it's fifty seven eighty in the Jewish calendar and forty seven eighteen and the Chinese calendar then for one thousand sixty two years what are the Jewish people order for take-out that's just a joke anyways by the way that's an example of a pure cultural Judaism of a Jewish of Jewish humor that you know a generation ago would get a laugh bunch of college kids you know especially in the Pacific Northwest I don't think they were laugh of that today anyways what what's the point the point is if it's fifty seven eighty that means it's Friday afternoon what does that mean so the good mother and son Heather and tells us they're just like you have the seven-day cycle of the week there's a seven millennium cycle of history timeline of history you have six millennia and then the seventh millennium of Shabbos in other words mushiya so from the year one from creation until the year a thousand that's like Sunday then by Monday the second millennium that was the flood right then Tuesday the third millennium you have the obvious name always the patriarchs the matriarch and you had going into Egypt and the slavery in Egypt and coming out of Egypt and you had the revelation at Sinai and then the the fourth millennium that would be like Wednesday then both the first and second base of mikta but with both temples were built and destroyed and then on Thursday the the the Talmud was redacted in Babylonia and Rashi wrote the the commentaries and Anna Commission and Gomorrah while he had Crusaders outside in the street and the Rambam he fled from Muslim extremists and he wrote the the mission of Toyota that all happened on Thursday then on Friday Friday had the Black Plague day at the Spanish Inquisition you had pogroms you had the Baal Shem Tov you had the Industrial Revolution the rise of the Soviet Union the Holocaust the fall of the Soviet Union the invention of the iPhone that's all Friday that brings us pretty much the present day which is roughly about 12:40 p.m. anyone who's been in a Shabbos observe at home on head of Shabbos knows how hectic things can get and then that's what it is right now but no matter how hectic it gets eventually you know Shabbos comes and things calm down so what happens is we're getting closer and closer to redemption every generation is getting lower spiritually lower where we're technologically much more advanced than our ancestors but but spiritually were in a much lower level were we're depleted there's a story that admission finding was once on a plane to excess oil and he happened to have been seated next to one of the the heads of the Israeli socialist labor movement and after the plane took off one of his tell me them came over to animation and he says I brought you your slippers let me take your shoes and then later it comes over I brought their of his his food and he was you know taking care of him and so this leader of this socialist Labour Party says you know I I'm amazed about the the honor that your son gives you he says now this isn't my son this is my student if you would see my son you would see even you know real treatment he says but don't don't be jealous he says is the guy says my son's never treat me like this ever get this kind of dead ahead it's so delicious is listen don't don't don't feel bad my students my sons are loyal to my teachings and your your sons are loyal to your teachings you see according to your sons what you taught them they're one generation more evolved than you are according to my sons and our teachings I'm one generation closer to Mountain Toyota than they are so we understand very well that every single generation is lower than the previous one and in fact you get to a point in history that's called Equus of the Messiah the heels of Messiah what's a heel a heel has no sensitivity its most callous part of the body its coarse can't think can't feel so there were generations that were like the head to know him I'm Elohim these were geniuses geniuses they were like the head then there were generations there were they weren't like that but they were like the heart they had an emotional connection a real emotional connection to Yiddish guy and then time passed and eventually we got to a point where not only we didn't have the head connection to you this guy we didn't even have the heart connection anymore in the last generation before Michelle comes you're going to have kids that don't even have an emotional association for a matzo ball you're not going to be able to push those buttons that give them those emotional reactions for those sentimental nostalgic reactions they just don't have that and you could ask yourself then this very question how can the sixth year the weakest most depleted year provide for the seventh in other words how can the sixth day of creation meaning Friday which corresponds to the sixth millennium of history be the one where the Jews who are on the lowest level of any generation throughout history those are gonna be the Jews who are gonna bring the seventh millennium we're going to bring mushiya impossible if anyone was gonna bring mushiya I should have been those who were like the head the geniuses who understood godliness or at least those Jews who were like the heart who felt what it meant to be Jewish but now we're a bunch of heels we don't have head association they don't have heart associations we can't think we can't feel we're going to bring mushiya so maybe somebody's great-great-great-great great-great-great grandfather would have brought my ship but if he didn't how how how is the kid who doesn't know how matzo-ball gonna bring mushiya but here's here's here's the explanation this is precisely the point because it doesn't make any sense it makes no sense that a college student who doesn't know a matzo ball should be at a Shabbos table on Friday night instead of a bar he doesn't understand what he's doing there he doesn't even feel why he's there he's just there but that's something that his great-great-great great-great grandfather could never have done because his great-great grandfather understood why he was supposed to be at a Shabbos table or at least he felt why he should be at a Shabbos table but the beauty of the great-great-great-great great-great-grandson he doesn't understand it he doesn't feel it he's just there that's devotion that's devotion irrational devotion and when we show this kind of irrational devotion to a sham Hashem replies and says if you can be irrational so can I and the yield of the sixth year can be increased to be greater than the yield of any other year the year that should have been the most depleted where the soil should have been the most used up and the least productive is going to be the one that's so productive that it provides for the seventh year the generation that is the lowest is going to be the one to bring mushiya so if you're ever uninspired or unmoved in your in your Yiddish kite just remember this just remember throughout history who did mitzvahs with deep understanding and with deep feeling our specialty in this generation is we do mitzvahs because we're Jewish we don't understand it we don't feel it we just do it because that's what we're supposed to do our ancestors couldn't do that they couldn't do that they knew why they were doing it they felt why they should do it the beauty of our generation is we do it irrationally out of devotion this is just what we're supposed to do and a sham says have you can be irrationally devoted to me I'm gonna be irrational I'm gonna make something that totally doesn't make sense this is this is the generation the most used of the most depleted the lowest generation the heels of history Equus in America these are the hidden us yeah we're the ones we're going to provide for the seventh year we're going to provide and bring the world into mushiya