What's a Brain Without Feet? (Parshas Eikev)

so there was this guy who got hired as a ceo of a big company and on his first day he met his predecessor the guy the ceo who just got fired and the outgoing ceo uh says tim says good luck you know filling my uh shoes over here listen if you have a problem that you don't have an answer for here are three envelopes and if you can't solve a problem you open one of these envelopes he says okay fine no problem he takes the three envelopes he puts them away and he starts running the company the new ceo starts running the company and he's doing okay for uh a few weeks but after about a month he uh there's a sharp downturn in profits and uh shareholders are starting to get upset so he doesn't know what to do he opens the first envelope and inside the first envelope there's a note that says blame your predecessor so he calls a meeting and he says you know really we inherited a very weak structure from from my predecessor it is really his fault but we're rebounding it calms everyone down things settle a few quarters later and uh things are not picking up and the heat is on again so uh he doesn't know what to do he opens the second envelope opens the second envelope he looks inside it says reorganize okay reorganize so he fires a bunch of people he hires a bunch of new hires he reorganizes and everyone comes down and things are good for a few more quarters and uh then finally there's a downturn he doesn't know what to do he has no other ideas what what can he do he's got no choice goes back to the envelopes he's got one more envelope he opens the third envelope opens up the third envelope there's a note on it says prepare three envelopes okay we're going to talk about leadership we're going to talk about responsibility in this week's partial partisan we read about um speaking to the jewish people the whole safe at the bottom is maisha speaking to the jewish people at the end of the 40 years and uh a lot of it's called mishna toyota the repetition or the doubling of the theater because malaysia is repeating a lot of the events that occurred during the 40 years so one of the things maisha says is eli he's recounting hashem said to me this is talking about the time well you'll tell me when it was hashem said to me maisha's recounting get up go down hurry from here because your nation has become very good ego sin of the golden calf because your nation has become corrupted get out of here go down go down from the mountain so misha was on har sinai receiving the toyota and meanwhile there was the sin of the golden calf so hashem says get up get out of here go down hurry out of here now it's interesting the term raid go down doesn't just mean descend spatially in spatial terms from the mountain but it actually also means in status as we said this story is not the first time this narrative is being recounted it's actually this happened in safer schmoys so we get a little bit more insight from the way it's written over there in several schmoyes it says i'm spoke to masha and now speaking the third person in in vari maesha speaking in the first person saying what happened hashem spoke to me in schmoyes it's speaking the third person hashem spoke to maisha and told him go down descend that same word there because your nation has become corrupted all right now there and say for schmeichel actually fills in a little bit more because the first time it's coming up sometimes if it's if it's repetitious it actually won't actually relies on the fact that we we learned it already so over here in particular it doesn't explain what that descent is really talking about but back there um in several schmoyes it does and and russia says that go down means from your greatness from your high position and this is actually what rashi says in his commentary is based on a gemara in brachas daf lamed bay sommed aleph the gemara says that hashem hashem spoke the motion says go down my friend asks what is this expression go down descend um allah says at that time hashem was saying to mesha in effect this is what these words meant maesha reid migudu go down from your greatness israel i only gave you greatness because of them now the jews are sinning what do i need you for i'm going to ask a question simple question at the time when the jewish people were sinning at the golden calf clearly masha was not there hence hence hashem is telling him not just go down from your status but get down there because he wasn't there so here's the question very simple question if maesha was not present so not only he was not involved in anything that was any of the wrongdoing but he didn't even have the ability to protest you know there's a concept of mishyesh beyoday the enemy that a person has the ability to protest against wrongdoing and if he has the ability to and he doesn't do it then he's complicit but in this case maisha wasn't there he was up on har sinai he was receiving the torah why does moshe have to suffer why does moshe have to descend in his spiritual status because of something that not only he wasn't involved in but he didn't even witness okay i'm just going to float the question out there no i'm just floating it out there i'm going to tell you a story stories like this then we'll come back to the question the balchemtev used to dominate length and one friday night the balshampton was davanink and what they usually would do friday night is they tell me them when they finished davening whenever it was they would stand around the balshemptiv like in a circle and they would let the basham of david as long as he wanted and then after the mosham to finish davening which was considerable amount of time everyone would leave shul friday night and they would go home and make kiddish one friday night for whatever reason the tell me them it occurred to them you know it's friday night we're hungry our families are waiting maybe the kids are tired here's what we can do we can all sneak off and go home we make kiddish have a bite right and come back we can go and we'll be back long before the balchamptov is normally finished and they figured how you know they they made a whole plan in their heads how long they had to go and how how how quickly they'd have to be back so they agreed on this and they one by one they dispersed to their homes and they made quick kiddish and they had a bite to eat and then they hurried back to shul long before the time when the balshamptav would be finished avenue and they got back to school the bashamtif was done he was finished finished aveni so they were very confused and basham saw their confusion and said i want to tell you a parable once upon a time there was a group of men traveling through a forest and the leader of the group said that in that tree high in that tree there's a beautiful bird now no one else could see the bird or even hear the bird but the leader said it's there there's a bird up there and in fact if i can get up to the top of the tree i can take the bird and bring it down and we can all marvel at its beauty its beauty of song the beauty beauty of its plumage and uh but i just need to get up there and and get the bird so here's what we're gonna do we're gonna make a human ladder everyone stand on each other's shoulders and i'll go to the top and i'll get the bird and i'll bring it down so they agreed this is what they're gonna do so the old like like an acrobat act each one standing on the shoulders of the next and the leader stood on the top and he captured the bird and as he captured the bird the guys who were forming the human ladder got bored and they said you know what we're gonna go take a lunch break right now and they walked off and of course what happened the guy in the top of the ladder collapsed so the bosch has said like this when we are together when we are as a group i am able to ascend in heaven and i'm able to bring down blessings from on high because of your support you are the human ladder but when you guys went off you went to your homes you each dispersed to your own home and you sort of broke the the group dynamic then i can no longer climb to the heights that i'm accustomed to to climb to and at that point my darvening was over so if you would have stayed then i could have continued climbing but if when you leave then that's it my darvening is done it's important it's very important that we understand that the relationship between the jewish people and maisha rabeno and what the zaihar calls espacitusa dementia the extension of maisha or the maisha-like figure in each generation is a symbiosis and even more than a symbiosis where you have two parties which are mutually benefiting from each other it's actually deeper than that it is a uh on a deeper level it's one entity it's one being to the extent that and we're not talking about a regular rav and talmud relationship we're not talking about a regular teacher-student relationship we're talking specifically about a maisharabeno or ispastus demacia a maesha-like figure the relationship between maesha and the people is so much not just a symbiosis where they they mutually benefit each other but they're they're so intrinsically linked with each other as if they're one entity that the the nature of this relationship is actually best metaphorically conveyed as a single a single organism think picture a human being who possesses many limbs and although there are many limbs many diverse limbs in the body they're all of one body they're all of one essence think about a a human being where if you would take a cell from the toenail or from from the tongue it's the same dna right it's one entity it's one organism it's one living being and the difference between moisture and the people is not like the difference between one person and a second person but really within one person it's like the difference between different body parts and specifically if you're talking about moisture and the people it's the difference between the head and the feet the head and the feet are two extremities the head is the highest not just spatially that it's located at the top of the body but the head it runs the the the the the the central nervous system and it's it's guiding and directing all of the different limbs and the feet obviously are the lowest not just again that they're the the lowest spatially speaking but the feet have the least amount of sophistication as far as their function what is there are different organs of the body that perform different tasks you know like the lungs bring you bring in air and the heart pumps blood and the the kidneys refine the blood and all these things but what what if it hands even you know they're not organs but hands can you know can draw a picture you can if you're an artisan you can you can make make art with your hands um if you speak if you're jewish use your hands right the feet what a feet do feet really only um feet are you know they call gross motor meaning it's it's just the most um the only thing a foot can do is to bring you unless you're that guy uh there was a my left foot guy but but really all a foot can do is it's called it has the ability to bring the person from one to transport the person to bring him from one location to another so it has the most simple most basic function so you have the brain which is the most adel the most refined the most sophisticated you have the feet which are the most basic all it can do is move the body from one place to another and yet they're the brain and the feet of one organism and this metaphor of brain and feet actually is biblical it's actually biblical and it's spoken by none other than meisha obano when he's speaking about his relationship with the jewish people there's uh there's a pasek in uh safe about mid by passion hundred thousand feet of the people which i am in the midst of so the people are referred to as the feet the nation is called the feet and meshes relationship with them is like a head that guides the feet in fact the word rebe base yud is a rochester is an acronym israel the head of the children of israel and siddhis points out that anoichi the word anoi as opposed to the pronoun uh ani which also means i but i know he is like it's the first of the ten commandments when god spoke at sinai so anoiki actually is a byword for god and not just uh any level of godly revelation you know they're different shameless they refer to different levels of revelation but is the highest level the essence of hashem because it can't even be described by a name so it's that pronoun which defies categorization because it can't be called by any of any one of the shamers the different divine names are descriptive and in that sense they sort of describe one type of revelation but means the essence of god whoever god is without without having to take any particular form in in in in revelation so siddhis explains that because of the relationship between the ragliam the people then there's annoy him there's this essential level of god present within the people in other words it's not enough that may should obey no is meisha qui potato messina like it says in pikayamas and that maesha learned voting he learned directly from hashem and he taught it to the jewish people that's all well and good that's moshe as a teacher but then there is the relationship between moshe and the people that's like the head and the feet where in order to have in order to have the anoiki in order to have the essence of god present within the jewish people there has to be an intact relationship between maisha and the masses which means that without moisture without the brain the feet don't have any purpose they have nowhere they have no direction they have movement but they have nowhere to go no reason to go there but conversely conversely without the feet the brain has vision the brain has an agenda the brain has this goal but it can't actually get there can only imagine it it needs the feet to actually bring it there so there's this relationship between maisha and the maisha-like figure in every generation with the masses that is very much like the mind and the feet of one single organism that on one hand we need moisture to guide us to tell us the agenda give us the marching orders literally the feet need marching orders but at the same time motion needs the people mission needs the people because without the people he can't the the brain can't accomplish anything i'll tell you a story i don't know who will get this really this is i tell this story a lot because i like it but it's one of those stories that i like you know what i just a little personal um i'm just gonna share with you on a personal level i don't like the kinds of stories most people like you know you've heard me complain about this before with the hollywood endings you know the americans all like the hollywood endings they all like you know they all lived happily ever after okay and not only do i not like those stories but the stories that i like tend to be very underwhelming because nothing happened there was no putters no one got thrown in a dungeon it was just a bunch of people one guy said this and the other guy said that and then there was some type of subtle insight that you're supposed to glean from the dialogue anyway so this is a typical story like this just don't get too excited all right so here's the start i was speaking in sydney australia it's a number of years ago actually was gimmel thomas i think you know thomas was on a shabbos game of thomas yorkshire and um so i was speaking in sydney australia a guy comes over to me and he says to me tells me his name and based on his last name he thought i would react but i wasn't it wasn't clicking for me it wasn't ringing a bell so he he points out to me he saw that i wasn't registering he was like my great uncle was gersh and shalom everyone knows who gersh inshallah was gersh inshallah was the professor of kabbalah at hebrew university gershwin shalom was a yucca german jew at least publicly outwardly officially he was not a big believer he was not so religious to put it mildly he studied you know like biblical criticism how they studied the bible as an academic subject devoid of any kadusha so he was the one who innovated the study of kabbalah specifically of zaihar as a as an academic study with devoid of any reverence or kedusha whatsoever so um in fact i'll tell you a story within a story this actually i heard from from joseph toluskin who heard it from herbert weiner who wrote nine and a half mystics herbert winer when he was a college student at hebrew university he took gersh and shalom's kabbalistic studies class and in the middle of the class there was this khasid named avram yuhudahin he was the son of radatzhen or hershel chernakov who was uh i think it was a classic going back to the times of the time but safe yamaha at the end of his life he lived in eritrea and he was he had a son of ram yehuda so anyways here the these are the characters avraham yohudahin this laboratory sort of like troublemaker rolls into the hebrew university class of gershon shalom teaching like kabbalistic studies and herbert weiner from nine and a half mystics is a student anyways this is not even the story that i want to tell you but avraham huddershain starts harassing gershonchala and he says to him no what's the difference between a hosset and a kabbalistic studies professor i don't know what's the difference between a classic and a kabbalistic studies professor so he says it's the difference between the bala boss and the accountant a business owner and his and his bookkeeper what's the difference the accountant the bookkeeper his whole day he's immersed in numbers and every one of those numbers represents a dollar a penny and he knows exactly how much to the penny came in today how much to the penny went out today he this is what he lives with at the end of the day though he closes the books he goes home and he doesn't have that money it's not his money he he can track it all he can tell you exactly to the penny what came in what went out but it's not his money he doesn't have the money the business owner of the bala boss he doesn't know exactly to the penny what went in today what went out today maybe once a month he gets a general concept of it but it's his money belongs to him so he says he says the kabbalistic studies professor he's like the accountant he's bucky us boss he knows every single word every single letter of zayer but he doesn't make it his own he doesn't live according to it so it's not his money the khasid what does he know from zarya you know you know of khalifa you know maybe the first few he knows kegavna because it's in the siddha he knows a few things right but it's his because he owns it he's like the business owner anytime he needs to spend that money he could spend it because he makes the kabbalah his life he lives according to kabbalah okay anyways that's not the story i want to tell you so this guy in sydney david chalamy tells me this story says he after the yom kippur war he starts hanging around lubavitch in melbourne just taking some classes and his father a good yeah yeah a good german jew starts freaking out oh no you fell in with these sydim they're going to brainwash you they're going to make you a radical so he said they sent me to my great uncle the family intellectual garrison shalom to deprogram me yeah so he says i went to yuru shalam i went to iratica to the old city to my great uncle's apartment and we're sitting we're talking and he's like sort of he says he was very like cold very intellectual and he said the whole conversation was in german because german is the language of academics if you're speaking intelligently speaking german and he's grilling me and i realize as he's grilling me he's trying to decide whether or not i'm even worth saving because if if i'm not intelligent then whatever who cares you know let him do whatever he wants to do so he's trying to determine first of all if i'm smart enough to be worth saving so he's acting asking me questions and i'm answering and i could tell that he feels that my answers are good enough that you know it's it's worth it for him to continue talking to me so at one point in the conversation he says to me and i realized that this is like the the ultimate test he's if i don't answer this question right then he's giving up on me so he says to me do you even know the secret of lubavitch he says you're hanging around lobovich you're so enamored with them do you even know the secret by the way and i should tell you he told me he says i didn't become a lebovager then i'm not a laboratory now my father was just freaking out he's like i didn't become all about you but i was hanging around them that was scary enough right so he says his great uncle gershon shalom the professor of kabbalistic studies from hebrew university he says to me says do you do you even know the secret of lebavich he said i thought a second i knew it was an important question and i said yes uh they have a general they have a general so i i stopped him in the middle of him telling me the story i said that's that's remarkable that you felt that that was what was unique about lubovic like how did that why did that strike you he says well you know i studied history in college and i see things in terms of nations and history and to me that that was clear that this this model of leadership you know that ebb is power and and and the ability to you know to to mobilize and to send schlocher and so i said yeah they they have a general and i saw it in in like military terms not not just a king a general somebody could you know order the troops they have a general so he says he sort of smiled as if to like give me somewhat you know semi-approval but he couldn't let it be right he couldn't let it be the ultimate answer and he says no like almost but not quite he says no he has an army so i ask you what's the secret of it you say they have a general no not they have a general he meaning has an army now you say whatever you want about gersh and charlotte but i've thought about this story so many times there are a lot of people who claim to be leaders show me your army show me one person who will devote their life to your marching orders so to say they have a general yeah that's good but really what's much more impressive than the fact that the rabbit was a general is that the siddhim conduct themselves as an army who follow the orders of the general so anyways is it's not a one-way street it's not a one-way relationship it's not just that the people have a moisture that the feet have a head it's just as much every bit just as much that maisha has the people that the head has the feet that when there's this visionary like the balsham told his tell me them in the parable there was the person who could see the bird and hear the song they couldn't see and hear the bird he could see and hear the bird okay so he's the visionary he's the tadic he's the one who sees what they don't see and hears what they don't hear he he he's he's the the eyes and the ears the mark called are called the eyes of the community okay and yet without them forming the human ladder to stand on top of he can't go get the bird you know you you talk about the rabbit from day one from the rabbi's inaugural february and he said we're going to bring mashiach so the rabbit was the one had the vision was able to say not just we're going to somehow come back from the the the unfathomable loss from what you know what what the jewish people had suffered in that time not only we're going to come back we're going to somehow rebuild no no we're going to we're going to actually finish the job that all of history has been adding up to we're going to bring mashiach we're going to bring the china back to this world so it was clearly that of his vision but it's not enough to have the visionary that ever said i need each and every one of you to do the work what does it mean to do the work each one of us in their own way each one of us in their own sphere of influence starting in your home to influence your family but also in your community to everyone that you meet and and wherever you do business people that you interact with each one of us has a sphere of influence each one of us has to take responsibility and to follow the marching orders so it's not enough that there's a visionary who sees what's possible the visionary who sees what's possible cannot accomplish one bit of his vision without the rank and file regular simple jews like us so to answer our question from the parsha what does it mean the gemaran bracha says that at the time of the sin of the golden calf hashem [Music] the only reason i gave you greatness was for them what does it mean it means it's not just you're the smart guy you're the charismatic guy so therefore you get to be the leader you know like in in politics so you get a guy who's who's telegenic he looks good on camera and he knows how to read from a teleprompter and he's got he does these networks well so he's got good connections and he's the leader no no no a leader a true leader a maisha like leader in ye this kite means somebody whose entire greatness comes from the fact that he is the head which guides the feet and that conversely the people are the feet which carry out his vision it's not that he won some contest and he gets to be the one in charge what do you think that like the brain won some contest they had a contest between all of the a bottom and now it got to be the the brain the brain is the brain because the brain is the brain it's intrinsically different it's inherently different than the other limbs but a brain in a jar the proverbial brain in the jar is is for all intents and purposes not a brain because that's not what the purpose of a brain is so a maisha without a nation what's the purpose of a motion without a nation this is what hashem says your nation became corrupted now you want to tell me you're going to get down there and save them and redeem them and and fix this situation then then i'll reinstate you because now there's a purpose for you and that's exactly what transpired right after this malaysia realizes he better get down there and save the people and sort things out but if you don't have a people oh you're then you're a brain in a jar what function do you serve so a moisture banana without a people is a it's like the sound of one hand clapping doesn't it doesn't it doesn't accomplish anything so anyways bottom line we try to make everything practical we have to remember like this we are the foot soldiers literally foot soldiers but mushroom and the east pashtu sadamaysha and every maisha-like leader throughout the generations all of these visionaries from maisharabenu on down are relying on us to implement their vision in our daily lives and to finish the job into bringing