Tzav - Poor Man's Offering

you're listening to the weekly partial podcast recorded with the shem's never ending assistance in Israel 5775 2015 this is the Torah continues teaching us about the concept of the carbon the sacrifices that were brought by the Jewish people depending on the situation whether it was a sin offering to atone for some sin that had been committed or whether it was for other purposes other reasons sometimes it was a Corb could be a thanksgiv giving offering in any event the Torah speaks about the concept of the Min which was a special sacrifice it wasn't actually literally a sacrifice it wasn't an animal rather it was a flower offering the this is what it says in chapter 6: 7 this is the concept of the let the children of Aaron bring it in front of God in front of the Altar and the Torah continues and goes on to explain the entire procedure through which this offering is brought who eats it Etc now in speaking about the concept of the Min the flower offerings our sages tell us that it's specifically the the the flower offering was specifically for an on a person who couldn't afford to bring a more expensive offering of an animal so he would bring the he would bring this kind of sacrifice out of flour which was something that was affordable to anybody now I'd like to share with you a piece from RB nasan and as we read it so we're going to have the literal translation the the the concept that he's speaking about but I'd also like to bring it to a deeper translation or deeper concept which I think applies to us all you know we've spoken previously in the past of the concept of of the sadik of the righteous individual who serves many different purposes among them to find the good points within the human being to find the good points the the special uh purpose of each and every individual each and every uh member of the Jewish people Etc we've also spoken about the fact that the sadic is not just an individual it's not just a person who who I can go to and get a blessing from not just somebody who can find these good points within me but that sadak also corresponds to a certain aspect Within Myself the higher aspect of myself the soul of the human being the the aspect of the person of the Jew that allows him to indeed find the good points within himself that allows him to indeed bring out the goodness within himself even from his more physical nature even from his more base nature now with that idea let's read together this beautiful piece there it's brought down here in my beautiful and as we read together let's think about this idea as it may apply to us not just in regards to a sadic and a person who's not such a big sadic we'll see exactly let's see the idea ofas and then we'll try to apply it to ourselves he says like this this is the idea of the flower offering when it comes to the prayer of a person being raised up to the heavens which is an aspect of carbonis we know that the prayers were instituted in a corresponding way corresponding to the sacrifices we had a sacrifice in the morning in the afternoon in the evening so we have prayers in the morning in the afternoon and in the evening so because the prayers correspond to the aspect of the corbus of the sacrifices so what we find is that the way that those prayers are raised up is through the prayer of the poor person what does that mean we find that King David refers speaks about the idea of the prayer of the poor person says that the prayer of a poor person a person who is be of money or soon we'll see he's not only bere of money but it could be even that he's bere of spirituality but a person like that who prays a person who is really poor he doesn't have anything but he calls out to God that has a very high place it has the ability to go up to a very high place now this says is the aspect the cor the flower offering which is the Corbin which is a sacrifice which is brought by a poor person since it's brought by a person who is marud he's someone who's downtrodden he's lacking the funds to be able to do something greater he's more humble therefore his prayer and his offering are beloved to God now is going to tell us that even though it's true that this type of prayer a prayer of a poor person is very powerful it's very significant it's very precious to God he's going to say that the only way for that prayer to get up to heaven is going to be through the aspect of the sadic the righteous individual now hold on to your seats here for a moment because first he's going to speak about the power of the prayer of a poor person and the prayer of someone who is spiritually poor let's see nothing says like this what is the main poverty that a person has where is the main lack is someone who is lacking in his Torah learning and his fulfillment of The Commandments now in this person who is lacking Good Deeds he is poor in his deeds so to speak and he sees his lacks he sees that he doesn't have too much he's very lowly you have specifically says when a person sees that he's missing so much he owes so much to God especially because of his sins and he starts to speak to God and he starts to speak in a in a humbled way in front of God with a broken heart and he speaks about his pain and he Converses as it were with God certainly his prayer is very precious and important to God and it opens up all of the locked Gates this is the main aspect of the prayer of a poor person it means a person who is poor in his and his actions and his Good Deeds nevertheless this type of prayer even though it's true that God loves this type of prayer but in order for to get there to get in front of God as it were in order for to get in front of the The Throne of God's glory so it requires a great sweetening before it can perform its function completely because there are powerful judgments that are held on to it that are holding on to this prayer because where is this person who is removed from God where is this person who doesn't have a lot of good deeds so he's in a place called Theus Theus means that he's in a constricted place a constricted state of mind because he's in a constricted State because he is very weak he's very poor from having intellect so being that he's in that place the prayer that he prays it's not so simple for it to get to the place he needs to get to now and also in speaking about the actual physical poverty that a person May encounter it's also connected to the diminishment of the Moon which is also an aspect which corresponds to the aspect of of judgments and this constricted Consciousness and therefore the main salvation for this for this poor person this person who doesn't have the Mas who doesn't have the Good Deeds that he wishes he had how does he get there how does he get his prayer up how does his prayer get rectified it's through the great true righteous individuals who has merited to have expanded Consciousness in the ultimate perfected way and again as we read this understand that the spiritual aspect of ourselves each one of us has the aspect of the sadic within himself so each one of us has the aspect of the expanded Consciousness or the potential for expanding Consciousness within themselves and it interacts so to speak with with the lower aspect of ourselves with the on with the baser aspects of ourselves let's see howas says it and and then we'll get to the to the way that it applies to us now so the sad the righteous individual has the power through his through his expanded Consciousness to help out the person who's the H who has this powerful prayer but that prayer can't get to where it needs to get to but it has to be completed has to be helped by thead now what's amazing is what does thead do that sadic the righteous individual takes himself and he makes himself like an on He makes himself like a poor person this is the aspect of the Messiah the verse refers to the Messiah and says that he is a poor person who is riding on a donkey King David himself who was the messiah messiah he was the aspect of Messiah he himself called himself an an he called himself a poor person so the dynamic here is that the sadic takes himself brings himself down so to speak to the level of the on to the level of the poor person now what does that mean does it mean that he doesn't have does it mean he doesn't have good deeds that's not what it means even though he makes himself like a poor person and he lowers himself he connects himself with those who are poor those who don't have they're very lowly they don't have the they don't have the Good Deeds that they would wish to have even though they've done great blemishes in the spiritual Realms they've done what they've done so thead doesn't separate himself from them rather he has great compassion on them the the person who this righteous individual he comes down to them he speaks to them he considers himself where he looks at himself as if he's one of them or even less than them because he's extremely humble he's he's more humble than anyone that's on the face of the Earth nevertheless the sadic who does this who lowers himself to their so to speak in order to speak to them in order to communicate with them in order to help them he doesn't actually come down to the aspect of constricted Consciousness he doesn't come down to their level in the way that he thinks about reality all the way around God what he is able the the exalted level that is able to reach is that in his expanded Consciousness he recognizes that expanded Consciousness also includes the limited constricted Consciousness for that sadic for that righteous individual the constricted Consciousness can dwell inside expanded Consciousness they can be side by side his expansion allows for that because for him expansion and constriction are all the same this is the aspect of the humility of Moses David and the Messiah him and all of the true righteous individuals so this is an amazing idea that a person who's in truly expanded Consciousness he understands he can see that the constriction is not a contradiction to the expansion so what happens as a result of that what is the power of this now and this righteous individual who's the aspect of King David the Messiah so now he can go and he can help he can save all of those who are poor in the aspect of that which it says in regards to the Messiah that he's someone who's going to have compassion on those who are poor and those who are bed they don't have this the souls these poor souls he will save them CU he's able to go back to the root of that poverty and he's able to be mtic he's able to sweeten it at its root he sweetens all of the constricted Consciousness he can go all the way down to the smallest constriction the point which seems to be the farthest away from God this sadic this righteous individual has such a powerful expansion that he can find God even in the places where it seems that God is completely not there so he can bring that person person that person who's the on he doesn't have any powerful he doesn't have any good deeds he's completely disconnected from God but he prays out he calls out he prays to God and he says God save me he says God help me I'm so far from you so who can get that prayer who can grab that guy it's only the sadic it's only the one who recognizes that there are still good points there are still even those who are far away from God still have godliness within them and that prayer can be brought to God so to speak through this sadic through this person who recognizes this through his expans expanded Consciousness that indeed those who are even constricted have expansion within them so that is able to sweeten at the root at the highest root which is very high in that place where there are no contradictions where all of the constricted and expanded Consciousness are revealed to be the same everything is sweetened there now back to our since the prayer of the the prayer of the poor person which we said corresponds to the prayer or the the corbon the sacrifice the flower offering is the aspect of this sweetening of Theos of the constricted consciousness which is the aspect of the prayer of the poor person that's why it's specifically referred to as the prayer of Min right in the afternoon what's the prayer that we pray it's referred to in a funny way it's referred to as the the afternoon prayer is referred to as the prayer of the flower offering it's funny in the morning we we we we pray the prayer of shakas shakas means the morning prayer so in the afternoon we should pray the afternoon prayer should be the but that's not what we call the afternoon prayer we call it the what's the understanding of that why is it referred to in that way soas is telling us that it's referred to in that way because the afternoon prayer corresponds to the aspect of the which is the offering of the an of the person you know he's in the middle he's in the midst of his day he seems to be distant from God he's all involved he's involved in his work he's involved in this he's involved in that he's running around doing errands he's doing all the different things that a person is involved with during the day he's distant from God and what does he do he stops in the middle of that and he prays a poor man's prayer he's he's far away from God he doesn't have the that he wishes he has he doesn't have those good deeds nevertheless he prays that prayer he stops and he prays and it's called it's the poor man's prayer the afternoon prayer the prayer of the one the individual who's distant from God and how precious and how significant person stops his day and he prays that afternoon prayer and he and he reaches out to God from where he is in the middle of all his preoccupations that's the powerful prayer of the afternoon and that's referred to as the which is the poor man's prayer now just bringing this back and bringing it down and connecting it to us and thinking about it in terms that we can relate to because I don't know about you but I don't usually interact with someone who is the deepest greatest sadic righteous individual and you know that's not something that perhaps maybe some people do but it's not something that the average person interacts with on a regular basis so what what can we how can we apply this idea to our lives and I think that what's what we see here is that every person as we said every person has within them the aspect of the sadik the aspect of the righteous individual and the aspect of the Oni of this poor individual who's very distant from God and this a very deep lesson here that within ourselves we have these two aspects we have our baser nature and we have a higher nature and now we would think that only the higher nature is connected to spirituality but what we see here is and every person can look inside themselves and see that this is true we see that within the base aspect of the human being which seems to be distant from God which seems disconnected from my time from Good Deeds from humility nevertheless there is an aspect of humility within there that the the lower part of a person also desires have a relationship with hem also desires to have that to have that prayer there's a prayer that comes from the depth of the person but now that prayer that aspect of the the lower part of the person when it calls out and says I want to be connected to God it's so easy for a person to say you the base aspect of myself you want to be connected to God look at all the things that you've done wrong look at all the sins that you've done andas says no don't think that wayas says the person who's the an and he calls out when the base part of ourselves calls out and says I want to be connected to hem I feel sad I feel sad about all the things that I've done wrong all the places that I've given into myar I've given into my lower self I feel bad and I want to reconnect that's so precious to God it's so it's so important that prayer is so powerful but how is it possible for that prayer to get up it's not possible if we judge ourselves the sadic the righteous person doesn't judge he is so expanded that he's able to find the goodness the good points within even the lowest person and so inside of ourselves there's an aspect which loves unconditionally which is able to find the goodness even within the lower aspect and it's only when we move into that expanded Consciousness that we recognize that Hashem loves us no matter what that it's possible to be able to touch and reveal the prayer within our lower self which says I also want a connection with God that the physical aspect of ourselves the base part of ourselves also wants a connection with God but if we're busy judging ourselves we're not expanded so we can't get to that we can't even hear the voice of our lower self saying that so the lesson to me of what rasan here is saying is that I need in order to bring all of myself together in service of Hashem in order to bring all of myself together back up bring this cor bringing this flower offering from the depths of my soul from the depths of my base nature in order to access that place I need to be in an expanded Consciousness I need to be touching the place of the sadic the part of myself which recognizes the truth that there's always good within me that no matter what that it's possible to find good even within the darkest depths of the not so good that I've done I want to bless you please bless me back hasem should help us to listen to be able to expand ourselves to be in love with ourselves so that we can hear the parts of ourselves that seem to be saying I don't want a relationship with God but are actually saying that there's a little voice inside there that's saying I do want to be part of it hasm should help us to hear that voice Hashem should help us to expand ourselves so that we can love ourselves and love all of those around us sh should help us see his incredible love for us thank you so much for listening have a wonderful shabus this podcast was made possible through the gracious donations of listeners like you for more podcasts like this please visit www.wag.com or search on iTunes Ari goldwag [Music]