When Heaven Shuts the Door on You (Parshas Acharei)

all right so let me officially welcome everybody back to our uh weekly share here at the olivia's cook library on central avenue here in cedarhurst in the five towns we've been away for over a year and back hashem we're back i've had both my vaccines and we have even have social distancing over here so if anyone's looking for a safe place to come learn toyota uh once a week mondays 11am on uh central avenue olivia cook library okay and and we call it the women's parties here someone was asking is it really for women the truth is it's for everybody but you know just in the actual physical space we made it just a women's group um but really it's the content is for everybody okay fine um so there was a teacher history teacher and he was teaching european history so he asked his students who knows the motto of the french army and one of the kids says i give up he says that's right okay we're going to talk about giving up in this week's parsha actually we have a double parasha ahremas and kadeshim but in the beginning of it's speaking about the kangado about arunachalene and his duties in the besamiktas and what do we read here uh bizet's javed with this aharen the high priest shall enter the holy of holies and then it describes that he's not supposed to go there all the time it's only jim kipper but what's what's this word besides why is it bothering rashi but this is a is an it is an interesting term some of the commentaries rashford said i should have said what was what's besides so rashi addresses this and he says besides it's a hint gematria the numerical value of it is the esser it is four hundred ten the zeiss is four hundred base is two someone want to count we have an accountant base is two zion is seven it gets us up to nine aleph is one so we get up to ten tough is four hundred so up to four hundred ten okay rem is the bias re-shine it is a hint to the first base to make dush the first base amiga stood for 410 years so what it really means is for 410 years aha and his successors his descendants his um the whoever is the queen god will be able to enter the holy of holies and to perform the service onion kipper okay so here's a question and actually i got this it's not my question i got this from uh sir from the rebel and that ever calls this question actually a klotzkasha klutzkasha is a question that's so obvious that once you hear it you're like why doesn't everybody ask it ask this but then once you ask you you're like and yeah but what's the answer this is really hard to answer so it's klutzkasha anyway so that ever calls it a clutch kasha clutch cash is like this it actually says shot of bizaese is big matrix 410 it means for 410 years iron will enter the basement and you know what happened after 410 years it was destroyed by the babylonians and they went into gaulis for 70 years in bubble so this is the klutzkasa when they were learning this pasuk in the times of maisha debata or for that matter in any generation up until the corbin bias region up until the destruction how did they learn shot in other words they come to this passage ice means 410 by the way guys you know that the basement dash is going to be destroyed after 410 years well that's very uplifting right so and first of all it's discouraging also it hadn't happened yet so we're gonna basically you're saying you're doomed no there's no way out of it this is what your fate is sealed this is what's going to happen 410 years is going to be destroyed especially yeah what do you say they were supposed to be there for 400 years yeah and it got shortened to 210. yeah yeah when you talk about the the message of 410 years uh the base of ignis being destroyed for 410 years it's not just depressing in that something terrible is going to happen it's also um it's it's a it's a personal rejection because we know like we say in mustaf we say in the most of prayer that we don't have the carbonics that we normally would perform the music offerings we normally perform why not we say because of our sins we were exiled from our land and we do not have access to the base of so basically what what's the message here is the basement this is destroyed because of your sins it's going to be destroyed you're going to sin so that's that's our question is really how how do we understand the meaning of this verse how are they learning this verse for all those centuries up until the destruction every time they would come to this word and say basically god says in the torah we're going to sin and we're going to sin so bad we're going to get our basement taken away from us okay so uh you missing the question yeah how would you feel if you came to a pasek that says there's nothing you can do you're gonna ruin your life it's written in the torah and it's happening how would you feel if you came to an event that's a future event it's a terrible future event and it's going to be all your fault and there's nothing you can do about it like i said free choice is that the question i don't know if we're getting philosophical and questioning free choice i think it's a much more simple question just on an emotional level like what's the point of such a message like what's the point let's say even that it's unavoidable this is the way you talk to people what am i supposed to do about it you just told me that there's no way that i can avoid this fate so then why even tell me okay so i'm going to tell you a story we'll come back to this i'm going to tell you a story this is a story from the from the gemada um about one of the great sages and he had a tragic fall uh the say jalisha benavoya who became known as achar the other one because his actions as an apostate were so foreign from his original character that they just they called him akka like he can't be the same guy this has to be some some somebody else now there's a lot of uh speculation in our tradition what set him off i mean it's a fact that he became an apostate what set him off there's different discussions one explanation is that he had um a crisis of faith that he saw particularly a very disturbing incident where a father told a child to go chase a mother bird out of the nest and then the child went to the tree and fell out of the tree and died so he was disturbed by this because there are two mitzvahs honoring your parents and shoeing the mother bird where it boasts both of these mitzvahs it says explicitly i'll give you a long life and here this boy was performing both myths at the same time and and he died so one theory is that when alicia saw this i mean we know that he saw it when he saw this this is what sort of disturbed me couldn't reconcile it and uh sort of set in motion a certain path there's another explanation that actually he he just had a spiritually um he had a spiritually intense experience that he could not integrate there's actually a story in the morning about dalid nicholas four sages who entered the hardest part is like a heightened state of consciousness it's another level of reality a spiritual reality that so there were there were four sages there'd be a kiva alicia benevola benzyma ben azai negative things happened to all of them only rabbi akiva entered in peace and he left in peace but one died one went insane and one alicia became a heretic so um and and and if eloheilu diver ali kimheim it doesn't have to be one explanation or the other it could be a confluence of all these different factors the point is that alicia had this tragic fall and he you know he became he became a heretic and um he rejected the law and he lived a life completely outside of jewish observance so the gemada i was mentioning so that that same gemara tells us that at one point in his having fallen very low and he was performing very unseemly acts so at one point it says yatsusa bascoyl a heavenly voice issued forth va'amra and it said and then it quoted the passage or a snippet from a pussock in year me yo shuvu bonnim shave of return wayward children that's the wording from jeremiah and then put on a little uh appendage there at the end of the statement except for akhe so the heavenly voice comes out and says in the wording of the verse return wayward children meaning do teshuva return to hashem wayward children except for don't bother so when he heard this he said okay forget it forget it if i ever had any thought that i might do teshuva now a hundred percent i'm never doing chuva because even in heaven they're telling me give up so i'm going to give up so basically it's interesting and this is based on the reishi's which is brought in the shallow the worst sin that ah did because he did a lot of sins but the sin that he did that sealed his fate that he could never come back from see he could have come back he wasn't being given a specific invitation to do teshuva but he could have done to shiva but he decided not to because he wasn't giving us given a specific invitation actually this is uh rav maisha shapiro explains that what did the boss kill mean the boss killed didn't mean that aker shouldn't do chuva it just says you're not being given a specific invitation and in fact alicia even understood that and said hey you're not giving me an invitation that means you know you must not really want me right so the but getting back to what that is the worst sin that did what was his worst sin the the sin that he couldn't do chiva from that he gave up that he gave up that he gave up because he had done every other sin in the book and he still could have done chuva he wasn't irredeemable until he threw in the towel till he said he was irredeemable so the worst sin of aker and akha did a lot of sins was he gave up on himself he decided oh that's it bosco heavenly voice says don't bother okay that's it i'm done i give up and had he rejected that had he said you know what no i'm not going to be pushed away he still could have done children tell you something more there's a gemato in soccer interesting gemara um in fact it's so interesting the the meiri says that you have to change the wording and it shouldn't even say what it says but most mufashim say it does say this and they have to sort of bend over backwards to explain what it actually means there's a there's a gemara that says i say everything that the homeowner the host tells you the guest to do do except for leaf so the meiri says take out that last part because it's weird why can't he kick you out of the house but then there's other explanations the villenegon the the morgan avram they say he can't send you out meaning he can't send you out to go do errands um meaning his authority is only in the house if he tries to send you out of the house like you go to the store and pick me up some butter he can't he can't do that but if he says hey uh you know stand over here and uh i don't know hold the door for me because that's in his house he could tell you that or um marshall says it's sort of like an in internal contradiction once he tells you to leave then you've left his resources he left his authority so now he has no you know he's not your host anymore so now he has no more authority at any rate the point is we're not getting into explaining this gemara there is such a ghazal there's such a dictum of our sages call this attitude hashem is the balabayas of the world it's his world this is his world and therefore as the balabias of this world he made the world he has the right to tell anybody to do anything he gives 613 commandments that's so imposing that he couldn't he could tell us to do anything it's his world we're guests so hashem has the right to tell anybody to do anything and and they have to comply except get away from me i have to listen to hashem no matter what he tells me if he tells me stand on your head and spit wooden nickels i have to do it right the only thing i don't have to listen to hashem is if hashem says get away from me i don't want a relationship with you sorry no i'm not listening so aha in that spirit could have should have said bosco comes out and says everybody do truth except for me i don't care what are you telling me to get away from god i'm not going to get away from god and he could have fought for it he should have fought for it and his worst sin worse than all the other sins that he did was he didn't fight for it he gave up on himself there's uh we're in the month of year and uh black bomber is coming up so i'm going to share with you a story of rashby of uh so there's a story in the town of tsidoin sidon is in modern day lebanon um but at a time was a it was a jewish town or at least there was a jewish population there and this couple was married for 10 years and they didn't have children so uh according to some opinions after 10 years without children they're supposed to get divorced so they came to abhishem they came to rashbi and they said that we want you to arrange a divorce so and they were sad you know they liked each other but you know what can they do so or at least that's how they felt what can you do so rash b says okay i'll set up the divorce he says but we got to do one thing when you got married you made a party they said yeah he said okay so we're gonna make a divorce party if you got married with a party you're gonna get divorced with the party we're making a party it's in question the the tana says we're gonna make a party made a part so they made a big party and he told them you know serve lots of food serve lots of drink that was all part of his plan so basically what happened is the i don't know what you call him the ex-class and the soon-to-be ex-class and he drank at the party and he passed out and um when he was like still like semi-conscious he says to the his about to be ex-wife he says listen i don't want to send you away you know empty-handed i mean i'm assuming that xilba but like as an extra gesture he said whatever you like from you know our joint estate here whatever the most precious thing is to you whatever it is take the most precious thing from our house and bring it with you to your father's house she was moving back in with her father that's what they did in those days so take the most precious thing from our house and take it to your father's house and then he passed out and then he wakes up in the morning where is he he's in his fair's house he's like why am i this is my about to be ex-fair extra i don't know how far they got enough they actually did the get why am i in the shera's house so she says well honey you told me that i should take the most precious thing from our house and bring it to my father's house there's nothing more precious in our house to me than you so i brought you you schlepped your drunk body over to the house and that's i brought you you're the most precious thing to me and it was a beautiful story heartwarming story um oh and then in case you like hollywood endings then there should be davin for them and they had a child but that's not that's not the point uh the point is that at the end of this story the madrush comments and sort of turns the whole story into a marshall and says go learn from this that this woman says to her husband there's nothing more precious to me in this world than you and then her prayers that she waited for for so long were granted so how much more so when the jewish people say to hashem there's nothing more precious to us in this world than you in other words that the relationship is not transactional it's not about what can i get from you it's not what's in it for me it's essential there is an essential relationship it's not about what you can do for me it's not about the payoff it's about an essential bond i want you that's it that's it so why am i telling you the story because chuva is the expression of the yakida shebang of the core of the jewish soul that tells god listen there may be many good reasons why you don't want me around you and i'll be honest maybe there's some good reasons i don't want to be around you you know maybe it's mutual and those the but those reasons pertain to lower soul levels now even you go to the essence the essence of the jew the yakida means also one with god i can't escape you you can't escape me so there may be many compelling reasons even religious reasons meaning it may be in heaven they figured it out you don't belong here get out and on on a certain level it's a compelling argument that we need to break up but if i go deep within myself and i search my core i realize there is no me without you i can't be without you i can't be without you that's what chuva is chuva isn't i figured out a way to make it work i figured out a way to get you to forgive me i figured out a way to get me to forgive you that's not what chuva is chuva is the recognition that i can't get away from you and you can't get away from me we are one and that that's it that's that's our essence we are each other's essence that's what chuva is and that's what hopefully would have realized and in doing so he would have brought out the actual essence of chuva real chiva not just truva like he felt bad he did some stuff and he embarrassed himself or he made a bad reputation for the all that i mean look if somebody does chuva for an ulterior motive great we'll take it because it's better than not doing shiva but the essence of chova is it's not about a transaction it's not about a payoff it's just this is my essence and there's a story um about the balchemtev the long story i'm not going to tell the story i tell the punchline that once somebody asked him for a bracha for children and the basham to saw in heaven that the guy didn't really have it coming to him the way abraham's works is not the toddler can't create something you don't have in your account what he can do is he can go to the teller and get them to look up your account and go give you whatever is in your account maybe you have you know millions of dollars in a swiss bank account you don't even know the number you forgot the number you don't know that you're the beneficiary so that sadder can go and get you what's yours but if it's not yours he can't get a few that's called stealing from the bank so a guy asked about the foreign knowing that it wasn't in his account and a basketball came out and said that uh the balsham david lost his elim haba and when he heard that he rejoiced and he said ah now i can finally serve hashem properly because now it's not about reward similarly we know the story of the altadeba he was in vegas he was in a trance-like state and he was talking to hashem in the second person he was saying i don't want your paradise i don't want your world to come it will just want you okay the point is that that's not just great tadikim that's all of us deep down deep down we say like this it's not about forgiveness it's not about turning over a new leaf it's not about self-improvement it's not a no i mean it is but that's not the core of it that's not the essence of it the essence is look even if you'll tell me that none of nothing else will be accomplished even if you'll tell me i'll never be forgiven even if you'll tell me in theory that we're never going to reconcile okay but it's not about working a peace treaty it's not a business negotiation it's the recognition that i am you and you are me and i can't escape you and i'm not gonna let you escape me and that's the depth of chuva and that's what aha could have brought out specifically when he'd been told that even heaven says get the heck out of here we don't want you we wrote you off the list that's the perfect opportunity to do real chuva when heaven says i'm sorry there's no place for you here in other words i just want you to understand we're not saying here that god's playing a game and he's like playing hard to get he's rejecting you to see how much you'll fight for it no there's a real hedgeman a real accounting has been made whatever account i don't know how they make their accountings in heaven but they looked at the books they looked at you know what's what's doable and on a certain level on a certain you know in a certain line of thinking that makes sense in heaven they said um i'm sorry this guy ahri just he can't come back we don't we don't have a place for him and it's not that it was a game that's what i'm trying to bring out it's not a game it's not hashem is playing with us it's true and the point is yeah fine no no problem even if it's true even it's true in heaven that i've been written off it still cannot change my essence in essence the definition of essence is that which does not change anything that that can change or is subject to uh to to fluctuation is is inherently a secondary property an essence an atom is built in it does not change the essence of the jew is connectedness or even oneness with god so there are secondary properties of mine which can fluctuate in and out of a relationship with god my behaviors you know god knows my behavior sometimes can be aligned with god's will sometimes god forbid you do innovator and my behaviors are not aligned with god's will right or or my feelings even even more so sometimes i want to do hashem's will sometimes i don't want i want to do my will or or my sake or my intellect sometimes i'm thinking in line with aloha sometimes they're not but those are all secondary properties those are external layers go to the core go to the essence the essence is who am i that cannot fluctuate in and out of closeness with god because its very essence is closeness with god oneness with god okay now who is the paradigm the absolute master the pro at being chutzpadek in this fashion of telling god you're not going to chase me away they should have been maisha bainu when the jewish people are about to enter the holy land masha starts pleading with hashem and he says you've begun to show your servant and you mentioned something your your strength your your strong hand you're okay the point is rashid grabs those words you have begun to show your servant what does it mean you you've begun i mean first of all this is the end of the 40 years they're about to enter the soil so what's what's a sham beginning so rashi actually explains very it's very cute uh that moshe is telling hashem you have begun he's saying you started it don't look at me you started it what does that mean it means that 40 years earlier after the ghetta egl god told moshe i'm going to wipe out the jewish people because of the the sin of the golden calf so at one point god says and misha had not be this is an important point here misha had not begun arguing yet god just says he's going to do it and god says let me alone leave me alone let's meet up leave me alone so that that's back in say for schmeichel we're talking about uh what parsha's kisa so hashem is telling me it's not bothering me so moshe realized from the whole i haven't started bothering you i didn't start arguing so he took it as a hint don't bother you ah that means bother you so that's why forty years later when moshe is pleading with hashem to enter er he says to him you started it you started you started this thing you taught me right after the sin of the golden calf the even when you say my word is final no non-negotiable that really it is negotiable again i want to stress this it's not about playing games not the hashem is just trying to you know reverse psychology on a certain line of thinking on a certain level a certain heisman a certain accounting a certain segal dikdusha i'm saying according to even holy intellect a calculation has been made no sorry the jews cannot be forgiven for the sin of the golden calf it's just unforgivable and nevertheless if you push push to what point to the essence where at the level of essence all of the logic in the world even holy logic even heavenly logic goes out the window and god has to preserve his people and preserve his bond with them so if you push to that level then that level will be revealed so meisha was telling hashem you taught me the secret that even when you say my word is final meaning god's word heavenly godly calculations it may be true it's not it's not not a joke not saying god's making it up it may be true but you want to know what's truer the intrinsic essential bond between every jew and god and and and no logical argument can uproot that okay so in this light let's go back to our possible vise with this aharen will enter the holy basis 410. how were they supposed to learn this for all the years and the times of maeshrabeno before they even entered the land and built the base on magnus how are they supposed to build this when schleimer built the bills a beautiful new grand opening beautiful new basement english and they're learning this possibly come to paris oh guys don't get too excited only 410 years how are they supposed to learn this in in in the in the years leading up to the corbin were they were they're supposed to say well guys time is ticking i mean it's it's 408 years it's 409 years it's inevitable there's nothing we can do you know what zaihar says the holy zayer says that in an alternate timeline of history see the the first base of english had the last 410 years it had the last 410 years but it didn't have to end in corbin and gullis it could have finished its 410 years and transitioned directly into the final complete perfect eternal basa mikdash which would have been a beautiful thing would have been a great thing okay guys we're ending the 410 years of this first base amigdas and now we're going to bigger and better things the eternal base of mikdash in other words it would have just been a smooth upgrade only positive in every single sense so 410 that timeline didn't have to be a negative thing it could have been a purely positive thing so when they were learning this and they knew that that that the first place of english is only going to last 410 years and even if they understood that that meant that there was the possibility or even more than a possibility maybe they understood that there was a likelihood of hormone of destruction of gullus exile it doesn't matter you think we're fazed by that you think we're scared by that you think if a boss coil comes from heaven itself and says guys you're cut off you're done you're removed no more relationship with hashem get out of here you think that phases us no we say no problem god you're the bala boss it's your world and therefore you tell me to put on phil and i put on philly tell me to give it to dhaka give it as i said anything that says you got to do except leave i will not leave no i don't have to leave when hashem tells me even with his divine perfect wisdom we figured it out you got to get out of here i'm not leaving i'm not leaving and when i refuse to leave this brings out the true essence of my relationship with hashem so this bizet's 410 in our parsha is actually a beautiful uplifting empowering message it's not doom and gloom it's not fatalism it's the exact opposite it's a reminder that nothing can shake or threaten or destabilize the essential bond between the jewish people and hashem