Understanding the Value of a Mitzva - Rabbi Benzion Klatzko - Library of Torah Thought

[Music] hi everyone i'm going to speak about something that we're very familiar with and you know i fancy myself as a quasi intellectual so i'd like to take an intellectual approach to a topic that seems very common which is the concept behind mid-slot i do mitzvot because that's what you got to do you know you eat the mud you put on the thrill and there's a mitzvoth mitzvoth are basically things that we do these are stuff that we do and it sounds like every religion has its stuff and this is our stuff the problem is that and i'm gonna be very politically incorrect okay other religions are fake and because they are fake they are made up by people so people to get people to join a club you got to go through ritual which is the same way that it works in a fraternity i lived on fraternity row so everyone's got to go through the rituals of the fraternity it's a bonding experience but in the end of the day if you've got a religion that's real i mean there's really god and he really made the world and he really really wanted to create us why does he need us to do stuff believe it or not that's a very legitimate question like if if the religion is fake then you know it's it's a club thing but if there's a creator and he created us little guys and he wants to wants us to thrive so why would he give us stuff to do it sounds mundane but it's it's it's a profound question it's a profound question why does god need us to do stuff is he lacking something that he needs us is god going to be mortally wounded if i don't put on filling or if i eat a cheeseburger so why does why and does he really care and if there are eight billion people in the world does he care if little me between six o'clock and 6 20 go into a kentucky fried chicken and eat non-kosher chicken he cares about me and he's going to remember and he's going to log it but how does that work i understand why this is like if you're a thinking person we we're allowed to ask these questions why do we need to do stuff if it's not just to you know create that unity and that shared experience but if it's is it supposed to do something more than that so of course the answer is yes but there are a number of points that need to be spoken out and i'm hoping that by the end of this relatively short talk we're going to be able to cover some profound ideas that will make your mental observance uh more meaningful it'll enhance your connection to judaism first i'm gonna mention sort of a basic but profound idea when it comes to god and the world we can all agree that if our definition of god is the universal definition he is uh all-knowing all-powerful uh he is in control of everything uh omnipotent omniscient so god would need nothing i need things you know what i need i need sleep otherwise i'll get grumpy i need food or i'll be even grumpier i need to feel nice when i'm in front of the mirror you know i need to be dressed well i need to not be too overweight my blood pressure's got to be there i need stuff and then certain things i don't need but i want i want a nicer car i don't want to drive a jalopy i would like a phone that could have good functionality i'd like good phone service like i need stuff as a matter of fact in a in a real way i am far more needy than a newborn baby the only difference is that newborn baby can't control their destiny and in certain ways i could control my destiny so if i need a slurpee or i want a slurpee i go down to 7-eleven and get myself a slurpee but those needs like a little chili i need a good phone i need a good car i need a good breakfast i need we are full of needs like little children god does not have any needs you know why because he is all-powerful he is everywhere and anything that he needs he can make how can he make it because just very um very scientifically pragmatic god does not exist within the universe the universe exists within god now i can go to the science of how to explain this but it's very legit what i'm saying and that's what judaism believes as well god does not exist in the universe in other words the universe does not exist outside of god wherever the universe is that has to be within god i guess the 20-second scientific explanation is because space and time are the same dimension and god had to be outside of time to create space time so when god creates space time the space time grows and it's within god so god was the external force that acted upon space and time that allowed to grow so all that is growing within god okay got that yeah yeah no no but the bottom line is god doesn't need anything the newest camera he can make news camera he can actually go a thousand years in the future and you know bring you back to the pain i mean that's what it needs to be god you transcend time that's the beauty of that's the beauty of being god and so why would god create us what does he need out of us so here's the concept take every good character trait that you know of and we know their characters are considered good and there are ones that are considered bad dishonesty it would be considered a bad trait selfishness is a bad trait honesty is a good trait selflessness is a good trait um good traits positive traits have their root in reality and honesty all negative traits have their root in dishonesty and it's a very interesting idea i'm not going to get very into it philosophical idea uh but i'll i'll prove it in a very quick way that negative traits have their roots in dishonesty let's say somebody is a a braggart they're a show-off they're full of themselves so you say well you say wow that person is haughty that person that's a terrible terrible character chain but haunting this is root is within truth and and and lies why is that so because i'll give you an example let's say there were um two brothers in a house and one brother decides you know mom is not home she's out shopping the kitchen is a big mess so brother a says you know i'll make mom happy and he takes a broom and he sweeps up the room and cleans up the counters and he just makes the the the kitchen really beautiful and then mom still is not home so he goes back to his room just then brother b comes out to you know grab a cup of milk from the fridge and then the mother walks in and the mother right away says wow kitchen is beautiful and the mother looks at brother b who happened to just walk in and the mother says wow you'd clean the kitchen thank you so much it made me so happy and brother b doesn't say oh it wasn't me was the other guy he's like yeah my pleasure my pleasure i love to do whatever i can for you is he you know was he showing off she's showing like look at what all all that i did no he's lying he's lying that's a lie what happens is when a person takes credit for their brains for their good looks for their talents that's a lie because who gave you your good looks those high cheekbones those big baby blues who gave that to you who made you stronger or taller than the next person that's gone so when the person shows off it's not just hoardiness but again it's root is dishonesty and to understand this idea there's much more to be said about it okay so the almighty is the source of all good character traits which means all traits of honesty all honesty and goodness comes from god to the point that it says the seal of god the seal of god is truth wherever you see truth you know god's there whenever you see somebody who's lying or telling a lie you know that god is uh god is pulling away or that person has rejected god okay now part of the character traits of truth are the act of giving when i give and i am generous and i have a good heart that's a wonderful wonderful thing when i take and i'm selfish that would be the negative that would be the flip side the almighty as part of his truth is goodness which includes giving the only thing is that when one gives what do you need you need a recipient you need a recipient to give too you know you don't need because you don't need to give in the first place but the way that good goodness manifests itself is by giving so therefore god creates us all of us specifically because he wants to give us stuff he wants to be good to us he created mankind because he wants to be good to mankind it's and not just to mankind but the animals in the world this is god manifesting his character trait of giving it's not that he needs anything god doesn't need but god wants to give and therefore god created a recipient and you jamie you naomi this trait of giving needs a lot say to be there because when i say disappears then there's no giving okay so now we have a question so god wants to give us so guess what give us make us rich give me give us mansions give us nice cars give us abundance of food god you say you want to give you said your character traits to give so then just give why do we need mitzvot in other words if we think of mitzvot commandments as a way to earn stuff from god the gods do this and you'll get that why does he make us do stuff and the whole reason that we're created is because god wants to give us so then just give us end of the story why do we need to keep shabbat why do we need to keep kosher you want to give give you hear the question and the answer is a very beautiful and profound idea i'm going to give you the aramaic term then i'll translate it the aramaic term talmud is written in aramaic the aramaic term is called nama kisufa means of embarrassment the bread of embarrassment the bread of shame what's the bread of shame the bread of shame is when you're somebody who keeps having to take with their hand out like this oh please give me please give me eventually it's just an embarrassing thing i'm embarrassed that i have to keep taking it's not it's not fun it doesn't feel good to be such a taker so for example let's say somebody knocks on your door and when by the time you open the door the person's gone but there's a box and in the boxes a new phone and maybe a new computer and very expensive and and it says gift to you it's like oh wow that's so much fun wow thank you i don't know who my my um my anonymous donor is but thank you so much what a benefactor the next day knock on the door here car keys that's for you next day another keys here's a mansion for you how do you feel by day number three you may feel like really great like wow i'm becoming wealthy overnight but on the other hand you feel like but what do they want who why are they giving this to me that's called the bread of embarrassment when i keep getting things for free it's embarrassing it's shameful so ultimately we would rather earn what we get it feels better it is greater pleasure to receive after we've earned it than to take a handout now it's interesting i just want to say that nowadays where we have like these game shows you know these game shows and you come and you spin the wheel out of your ten thousand fifty thousand it's it's a weird phenomena because it actually glorifies the act of taking in a way that we we're supposed to be a little bit uh shameful of like we're supposed to not want to be uh takers who love freebies as a matter of fact the talmud even says if you hate receiving free gifts uh you you have a life you have a better life it's a better life if you're always out there looking for the freebie that's not a good life coming up so if that's the case hashem says i want you i want to give you i want you that pleasure i want to just give give give but i also want you to uh to enjoy the giving and you're gonna stop enjoying it if you keep getting it for free so you know what i'm gonna do listen up i'm gonna have you earn the stuff i'm gonna give you i want you to earn it you're gonna do things and based on what you do you're going to earn this tremendous reward now i want to say something the kind of reward i'm using this word or the kind of pleasure that god can give us is infinitely infinitely greater than we could then we can imagine there's no way that we understand that kind of pleasure and that is within the capability of god to be able to give us pleasure as it says in the pasuk it says in the verse no one but god can even imagine this kind of pleasure it's so huge and what it's interesting by the way if you look at the quran and you look at the pleasure that the quran and muhammad promised all those pleasures are very worldly pleasures they're very human pleasures it's almost as if the writer of the quran couldn't think outside of the box so you know if if in this world pleasure is one virgin for whatever reason that's a pleasure so there will be 72 versions virgins in in in the next world so 72 of earthly pleasures is still just earthly pleasure streams of wine is another thing that's promised uh in the quran okay i mean it's good to have an abundance of wine if you happen to like wine uh but that's still an earthly point you haven't sort of transcended the box of base animalistic pleasures the pleasure of wine besides intoxication and then vomiting is the pleasure of the taste on the palate that's a very i mean a monkey also enjoys tastes on the palate that's why he runs after bananas right and enjoys it right but in judaism we say no the pleasure that we're talking about is so much greater than a simple earthly pleasure and god's i want to give to you things that way transcend um these very base pleasures but i i know you're going to want to earn it so i'm going to give you a mitzvoth now the mitzvoth that hashem gives us in general while some of them may seem burdensome some that may seem difficult the truth of the matter is between you and i it is a joke compared to the reward that we're supposed to be getting so let's say there's a mix with the light shabbat candles it's actually rabbinical mitzvah but rabbinical mitzvah is a mitzvah because the torah says to listen to the rabbis okay i'll shabbat candles and i get this tremendous reward how hard is it to lie two candles really that's right imagine if i say you know if you like two candles you get a million bucks really like what's the catch no just gotta get matches okay done or a lighter okay i got that also i got candles no problem i got candles now light them oh and say a blessing really that's the whole put on filling okay they're after one day okay how do i do it then and then at the end after you do it a few days like wow it takes me like if leaving the prayer aside putting on filling takes about a minute two minutes maybe if you're slow these are quick and for that i get a reward that that transcends anything that i could ever picture that's crazy it's it's so minute compared to the reward that that is given it's very much like a parent does to a child i do this to my kids all the time i incentivize things for them because i want them to improve i want them to do great things with their life and the incentive is always greater than than the task that i ask them to do and very often the task to ask them to do is really just for them so i'm incentivizing them to do something for them like when i say clean your room like who wants to live in a dirty room and you could ask my kids even if they're everything's true and about they feel good when everything is in order and everything's in this place and sometimes i'll incentivize okay if you make sure your room is clean for a week x y and z will happen so i'm incentivizing them to do things for themselves and what i'm giving them is far more than they would have gotten if they have been in the real world at cleaning their own cubicle that's that's the way that god looks in the world i'm going to give you stuff to do and most things not all but most things are relatively easy and some are easy and fun there are some that are more difficult the the one that the two that come to mind would be circumcision and perhaps um perhaps uh kosher when you're traveling and you want to eat in a restaurant but even so compared to what that reward is it's it's considered minute okay um should we speak about i'm going to you know be a little interesting should i speak about what how we understand that next level reward because we're saying it's not streams of wine now i've said not pearly gates because i never saw pearly gates they don't you know i'd rather could wrought iron gate um halos never exactly got what the halo is i think it's a cartoon uh mechanism and harps i mean i like harps but you know wings you know you're dead anyways so so what is what exactly is that reward so i'll give you a little taste of it this is not this is not complete or conclusive but just a little taste there's a concept called a mikubal kubal is somebody who knows jewish mysticism and throughout history there have been certain people who have tremendous ability based on their kabbalah now let me just mention there's a lot of charlatans out there and i i would never tell a person rant on the cuban but it is a fact that throughout history there have been people who have studied the deepest level of hidden uh hidden judaism or hidden torah it's called kabbalah and kabbalah there's another way of saying it's called sud so means the foundation and if you go to a building very often the foundation is hidden underneath the ground and yet the foundation holds up the building so kabbalah is known as sod because it is this hidden uh mysticism that holds up the building that's just an interesting point so let's say you go to a kabbalah person like a mukubo who is a real mystic now one of the things that they may be experts at is something called that they can you know you hear the concept of palm reader so there's fake palm readers that you could see in the state fair or you know you see them in certain villages but there is a concept that both on the hand and on the face things are known about a person they're a couple kabbalah ideas again i'm not saying anyone today has it there's even a concept that exists that the mezuzah of adore uh absorbs what happened in that room there is a person even alive today i think his name is shemtov who people come and they take themselves off the door and he can say wow this room you know there was adultery or this room someone was not right and they could see them know themselves as the same word these are very deep ideas now not discussing or debating uh these powers and where they come from and it doesn't exist today and so on i want to ask a totally different question why do people even go to them in the first place or why do people go to palm readers or crystal ball uh suit says why why would they do that and the answer is because we all want to know two things we want to know can anyone see my hidden secrets that i guard most carefully am i exposed and when i come into somebody and he looks me and says wow three years ago you broke your leg while playing baseball and they there's no way they can know that well what else do you know about me it's a little bit scary to be so exposed right and the second thing is sometimes i want to know the deeper truth of something now a palm reader wouldn't know this but a makubal can know this somebody in my family is very ill why why would that be so and then a couple may say well i could tell you after speaking with you i could see that the shores which means the root cause is because your family is not careful about the sunnah means gossiping about each other now i mean right away you go home and everyone let's start learning the laws of la but what's what's interesting is that to understand a truth that is hidden from us is life-changing it's life-changing whether the truth is who are my real friends or why did i get fired or why the holocaust happen or what's the hidden meaning behind ukraine and russia going to war and how will that end and who's supposed to be affected we we uh thirst for the real reality behind the facade of what goes on in the world we thirst for it when i was young this is not a good good game to play but when i was young someone called me in the room and said you know i know you're great friends with so and so i'm thinking of becoming his friends as well what do you think about them what do you think and it was a very strange question i think i was in eighth grade at the time and i said he's a great guy i think it's a great idea he's such a friendly person i think you'll really like him and after i finished saying that from out of the out of the closet pop this guy mainly this guy had made up with the person who called me in the room ask klatsco what he thinks of me i want to hear i want to know the truth and he hides in the closet while you i was asking thank god i said good things because if i said oh no well he's a little bit of a jerk or he's a little bit selfish what would have happened to our friendship boom and and i think about why did you play such a stupid game like why would you why would you jeopardize a friendship it's not a good game to play but he played it because there is this desire to know truth which transcends everything it transcends everything i want to know is this person my real friend when you get married does my husband does my wife really love me do they really care about me what's really my relationship with my children right i really all right doesn't this this is what this is what we obsess about and for good reason one of the great rewards in the next world one of the rewards from its vote is clarity and absolute truth clarity and absolute truth and it is it is something that is so meaningful to know what real reality is that no less of a person than moshe albanu told god i need to know i want to know and god said you're not gonna not right now you'll know after the fact okay so therefore and that's just like the tip of the iceberg so there exists pleasure that is way outside the based pleasure of physical pleasure there's pleasure that involves accomplishment there's pleasure that comes from relationships and then there's the absolute pleasure which is connect connecting with god who is the very epitome of truth means that i now have peaked behind the curtain at life that's very powerful you know right now there is the the web telescope they're finalizing the calibration of the mirrors and it's going to be able to see parts of the universe we've never had access to and it will see in infrared and this telescope cost 10 billion dollars was the most expensive one item ever built in from the history of mankind 10 billion dollars and for what and for what mirrors on the telescope to see the universe why do we want to see the universe because we as human beings need to know truth are we alone why are we created how did it begin how will it end right that that means so much to us so that's part of people behind the curtain that's part of that that amazing reward so hashem says i want you to do mitzvoth and through mitzvot you're going to achieve this reward but and here's next step next step i could have given you meaningless things to do meaning i could have said look i want to give you pleasure and i i would do it for free but i don't want you to have bread of shame so i'm going to make you do things so you know what i'm going to make you do i want you to stand on your head and clap your feet together for five minutes every day and through that you're gonna earn infinite reward but what is that accomplishing that accomplishes nothing so the almighty did something even more profound he said like this i'm going to give you stuff to do but the things that i want you to do these myths vote they're going to accomplish something remarkable in this world they're going to change the world you see it says the almighty the world has its ups and its downs and there's wickedness and there's a there's a virtue and and there are people who are sinners and people who are saints and there are nations that uh turn to the dark side and and send people to gas chambers i want you to make the world a better place and that is a meaningful mission and if you accomplish that mission then i will give you the reward so you're not just standing on your head clapping your feet together or turning around in circles until you're dizzy and you fall i'm going to give you things to do that make the world a better place and then you and i have become partners in the universe now that feels good because no one wants busy work if you're a kindergarten teacher and you want to go out for a you know for a little snack what do you do to the kids you give them busy work but the moment a kid get gets his busy work the kid resents it like i don't want busy work i want i want something that is meaningful and so the almighty said the work you're gonna do is gonna change the world so how do these mitzvoth that we do change the world how does that work the answer is some mitzvot are obvious how they make the world a better place those mitzvoth are don't kill don't steal i don't have to explain to jamie or alexei or anyone else here how not killing makes the world a better place it just does and those are mitzvot that are so obvious they're so universal that practically every religion has some variation of these mitzvoth practically every religion does they're hardwired into us we want to make the world better so we don't kill each other we don't steal hopefully we don't commit adultery like we we're hardwired to do these mitzvoth my question for you is what about the ritual what about the mitzvot like uh put on filling or don't eat milk milk and meat or don't wear wool and linen together how does that mitzvah make the world a better place so that i'm doing something that's beneficial and not standing on my edge clapping and clapping my feet together understand how is keeping kosher not just busy work and if your answer is going to be well if you keep kosher you'll be healthier i promise you that's not true that's like that's one of the big mistakes that there are non-koshers that are healthy plenty of insects are full of protein and they're not kosher and plenty of schmaltz herring is not healthy and it is kosher kosher and health do not go necessarily uh hand in hand they don't yes there are examples of how pig or swine pork you can get trichinosis from it so and some shellfish uh can be poisoned and i mean there are examples but there are examples of milk and mayonnaise uh giving food poisoning so that's not why so what i want to do in the last 10 minutes is allow us to peek behind the curtain and figure out how mitzvot which sounds like a ritual is really there to make the world a better place but in order to understand this we have to understand the following let's say there's a a person who has a very nice voice and they go to juilliard uh music school and they apply and they audition for the school and they actually have a gorgeous voice like the person doing the interview says wow i've never heard somebody with as nice a voice as you have welcome aboard and then the first day of class the teacher begins to do warm-up exercises and as everyone's doing these warm-up classes this person who had just interviewed who they said had a stunning voice so this person let's call it a he he's sitting there and he's like okay let's like yell yellow let's let's let's get this over with and the teacher says why aren't you doing these exercises and the person says oh come on those exercises are for the regular people they need the practice but me you already told me i have the nicest voice you ever heard you already said that i'm an awesome singer just give me my part then i'll sing and you know i'm ready to just jump right in and the teacher says you arrogant so and so you think that if you want to sing in the met one day it's good enough just to have a good voice you think that's all it takes to be a professional you want to be professional right do you know how many skills that are involved you know you have to learn how to project your voice could have a nice voice but it doesn't project you have to know how to enunciate letters and words not to divide them up so you tell a story you've got to have the right body language you have to know how to interact with the other people who are on stage with you so it doesn't seem like you're singing solo even though the stage is full there are so many skills that you don't know yes the raw skill you got to know how to sing no question about it but the nuanced skill to make you a professional you're far from that so start doing those exercises says the almighty the raw mitzvoth the raw commandments which which the whole world has that's don't kill don't steal that's that's great yeah you want to be a good person that's great but that's universal everyone's got that but if you want to be my partner in making this world better and doing this tikkun alum to fix the world to make the world amazing it's not good enough to do the basics you've got to accomplish the nuance and dan happens by doing mitzvoth how does this work so the idea is like this each mitzvah targets a meda the word mida means a character trait each mitzvah targets a character trait that's supposed to make me a wonderful example to the world so it's not just a mitzvah to make the world better but it's a mitzvah that allows me to teach the world the very definition of goodness so let's take milk and meat for for a moment very simple example so why can't eat milk and meat that might and what is so nuanced about not eating a cheeseburger so in order to understand this you have to know that mitzvot are profound they're not just do's and don'ts there's always meaning behind it so let's speak about the meaning behind milk and meat milk always represents mercy in the torah israel is called the land of milk and honey uh and shia shem speaks about the milk that the the young suckles from milk is always about mercy that's why that's why in hebrew the word khalaf has within it the word lev or leif which means heart milk is always about mercy as a matter of fact a mother who nurses when when the baby is is nurses regularly the mother's nurse the milk comes in on schedule when the baby needs to nurse that's an amazing thing to think about my wife will tell me uh you know it's four o'clock uh baby's about to wake up i say i don't know she said well i'm i'm ready to nurse my body just told me i'm ready to nurse and i know the baby uses schedule so the mother's body works out according to the schedule the baby's needs and if the baby decides to have a random midnight snack that's unscheduled when the mother hears the baby crying extra milk comes in a milk reserve comes in in order to feed this baby milk is all about mercy it goes it goes much much deeper than that by the way you know when a mother nurses the very right when the baby is born it's not milk that comes out that's something different called colostrum which protects a baby with antibiotics for the first few days and then when the baby has enough by antibiotics to protect the rest of its life from certain diseases that the mother manufactures in our internal pharmacy then it switches over to milk there's much to be said meat or killing an animal always involves a level of strictness or cruelty meaning the torah does not demand that we are vegetarians but the torah does acknowledge the fact that life has meaning even the life of an animal in the life of a creature that's why there are many many many mitzvoth in the torah that involve animals there's a you're not allowed to hurt an animal you're not you can't rip off the limb of live animal if you have a donkey and an ox they can't be strapped to the same yolk because one's gonna pull harder than the other when it's time to eat your animal has to eat before you like there's many many laws we acknowledge that animal life is life however it is permitted to kill an animal to eat it there are reasons why not to get into that but we acknowledge that involves cruelty and that's why even when we slaughter an animal the knife has five major laws so that the animals shouldn't feel that it was even cut they're known as shia drastic [Music] five laws and if you do it wrong then the animal is not kosher it's worthless because we want the animal not to suffer but we still acknowledge we could still acknowledge that it involves cruelty says the torah don't mix milk and meat don't mix your mercy and your cruelty or don't mix your mercy and your strictness now what does that mean what does that mean the torah says something very profound it says that if a person has mercy on someone who does not need that mercy then you will end up being cruel to someone who does need your mercy when you skew your scale when your compass is not calibrated eventually it becomes the opposite i'll give you an example i want to paint an image for you imagine you're looking into the viewfinder or a viewfinder of a camera and you see a little dog a cute little dog and this dog is wearing a little sweater that it hates because the owner put on in a sweater and it's eating delicious meat from a bowl a nice silver bowl with its name on it that it can't read and you look at the viewfinder and say wow whoever owns this dog must be so merciful look at how it takes care of the dog and look how it feeds the dog and take and enclose the dog wow what an amazing owner but then the camera pulls back it gets further and further and suddenly you see in the wide angle that behind this barracks that the dog is eating this supper in you know 16 feet behind it is electrified barbed wire and behind that are skeletons of human beings who would do anything for a a potato peel but none will be forthcoming because you are looking at a at a concentration camp and many of the nazis had dogs they treated like little princes and princesses and yet they had so much mercy on this dog that ask for it and that doesn't need it what happens is they they their their internal measuring stick got skewed they're so merciful on the dog they end up being incredibly cruel to human beings that need their mercy don't mix your mercy and your cruelty i want to tell you something this is a very profound idea because every nation is judged in history by the milk meat idea who received the compassion of the that nation and who was the nation strict on you just look at israel who's getting the compassion is it israel or is it hamas and the nations who choose sides are really choosing the milk media idea when you have so much mercy on those who maybe don't deserve it you end up being cruel to those who are trying their best let me give you another example of this there's um when i was in l.a i used to live in in la there was a big billboard that was put up one day on wilshire boulevard and that billboard had a split screen and half of the billboard had a big pile of dead chickens and the other half of the billboard had a big pile of dead bodies from auschwitz so split screen pile of dead chickens pile of dead jews and on the top the caption was what's really the difference and then the bottom the word pita now if you don't know what pita is peta is an organization that stands for the people people for the ethical treatment of animals and they were trying to say have mercy on the chickens and then the next day all of these holocaust survivors many of who live in condominiums and in apartment buildings in wiltshire rolled up their window shades to see a billboard that could have come straight out of nazi germany what's really the difference between a bunch of dead jews and a bunch of dead chickens you have so much mercy on these chickens that you end up being cruel to human beings that have been through hell don't mix up your mercy and your cruelty i actually met the person who made that billboard i couldn't believe it was a jew and she was doing a birthright and i told the story and she came to me proudly i she said yeah by the way that was my idea i said really how could you do you know how many people you heard thankfully they took it down right away because there was some there was tremendous negative feedback but who gets your mercy who gets your cruelty that's a big that's a big deal hitler used to say i want to protect germans so anyone who is mentally disabled we have to gas because they're going to water down the gene pool of the aryan nation gas chambers were originally tried on the on the infirm on the disabled in germany though those were the practice so who got their mercy who got their cruelty you end up being merciful to the people by being cruel to all those who can't fend for themselves even as a parent the milk meat question is a big deal one of my kids keeps running in the street so i finally said it's a little kid i said stand in the corner you keep running in the street and i tell you not to and god forbid there's a car going to come and the kid's howling and just then a neighbor comes to borrow some sugar so i said sure and the neighbor's waiting by the door as i get the sugar and when i come back the neighbor says thank you so much and i hope i'm not out of place but which means that you are but let them go just let them go cry whatever they did let them go look how much they're crying and i say oh so you're gonna you're going to watch them when they run into the street next time are you going to go in the ambulance with them when they get hit don't mix up your mercy with your cruelty that's why when the torah says don't eat milk and meat the torah says it in a very unique way and i'm going to finish with this the taurus has a very unique way it doesn't say don't eat milk and meat it says don't cook a kid in its mother's milk what a weird way of saying don't eat a cheeseburger how many times am i going to take a kid a baby goat and cook it in its mother's milk but the answer is that torah wants to give me the most warped case of taking mercy and warping it by making it cruel you take the milk that the little kid was supposed to suckle from was supposed to gain its nourishment from and you take that kid and you cook it and the milk that was supposed to give it life instead you give a death don't mix your mercy with your cruelty the idea behind mitzvoth are there to teach me moral lessons whether it's about honesty whether it's about anger every mitzvah there's no thought no such thing as ritual that's a mistake people think oh i do all the mitzvoth the moral mitzvot i keep so i say oh that means you keep all of them because every mitzvah is targeting a moral idea not only every mitzvah but even minha game which means customs actually when you learn sophisticated judaism you'll learn that these material are targeting targeting moral ideas but there's reason behind it that's supposed to be transformational that's supposed to transform us to transform the world in order we can come close to earn that reward and not just stand on our head clapping our feet together but be partners in creating the most beautiful world so that's a little bit of the deep idea behind mitzvot i hope you enjoy this and you got a lot from it [Music]