Parah (Aduma) Paradox by Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz Parshat VaYakel 5778

[Music] everybody and I hope y'all had a wonderful forum and so we are of course heading to the microphone Nissan tell us that Nissan is the month of redemption Vanessa Miguel oh we were redeemed in the month of Nisan venice' aniseed in legal and the future redemption will also be in the month of Nisan which means although mushiya can come anytime except on Shabbos on yom tov but any son is the most obvious candidate without the redemption so indeed we very much hope and pray that this should be the month of the redemption of the of the jewish people from all of the oppressors this is also of course the week that we're going to end the second commish the book of schmoes and we do this by combining two partyís and of ayaat kofuku date together is actually the longest torah reading so exactly the longest crius a tour of the whole year because of the double partyís however notwithstanding that fact that is not going to be the haftorah right we try to connect our tour in the parsha because in addition to this being by Yael Baku day it is also our Apsara and they have Torah for the four special party oats is always based on the master it is not based on the Curia Satoru so let me talk a little bit about the concept of the four car she owes the mcore the source of these four special Torah readings is a Mishnah so it's very early to the contents come in that for the four weeks before Pesach we have special Torah readings the pressure of the week is rare that's normal but then there's a mobster and two of them are before poram that's partial skull in our car and two of them are after poor impartial Apsara which is this week and then the following week will be partial a kodesh that brings us into Rosh Chodesh Nisan so it's very very interesting that ghazal basically looked at these four parts as a spiritual preparation for such itself we have stolen the core para and qodesh now how is that so so we have sub milk of lublin says a very very beautiful thought says you know that's up is the time of renewal the time of freedom the time of destroying our Yeats our Horus or to speak so we can connect to a sham because the true slavery of a person is really there yet Sahara and the internal slavery is much greater than the external slavery but in order to be liberated in order to achieve a freedom of the neshamah one must kind of eradicate the evil traits that are within now we know that Pirkei avos tells us there are three fundamental pillars of holiness and the three fundamental fundamental pillars of holiness are Torah avodah kamila Sodom rev shimon hatzadik says the world stands on three pillars Lima datura divine service through prayer and corbino's and acts of loving-kindness the augo's correspond to these three pillars are from represents the centrality of loving-kindness and yets luck that was a Corbin represents the importance of prayer and Yaakov who at least according to the oral tradition spent 14 years of uninterrupted Torah study before he went to loved ones house represents the primacy of Torah learning so just as we have three fundamental pillars of holiness we have three negative factors that destroy a person and perky of us enumerates them as well and those those three negative factors are Kenna Kenna is jealousy envy Tyva tava excessive lust for the sensual and material and kavod an inordinate desire for ego gratification self-advertisement glory Kenneth Tiber Cobo mode C&S Adam minä olen they take a person out of the world and the Optive Sobotka used to say it doesn't only mean that they lose their portion in the world to come but it means even their life in this world is going to be very miserable a person is consumed with jealousy and envy they will never appreciate what God has given them they want one time after another Tiger they'll never be satisfied and Cobo covered is the worst of all covered is the worst addiction a person that's addicted to adulation and applause of the crowds and ego gratification of course sometimes you might become president of the United States you know whatever it would be so there may be some rewards there but still there's a constant factor I just read that the president the president Trump is people are worried about his emotional condition because all of the negatives are dragging him down because when you live recovers you can't really take a negative any time for all of it I don't any mean to say that we're immune from this all of us have this problem but that's the idea when a person is looking for covenant they can destroy his life that can destroy his world so here's your EPSA dog set up a set of Senate let me just say it in two lines and then we'll elaborate on it parsha Gollum helps us deal with jealousy Parshat zukar helps us deal with Taba Parshat spora which is our shop is coming up helps us deal with covet so we've gone through clearing out the garbage getting rid of the kin are getting rid of the taiga getting rid of the cupboard and when we've done that we're ready for kodesh which is his Hut shirt we're now ready to have renewal okay so the progression of the for par ce o--'s is not simply an arbitrary listing but its eradication of kin our eradication of taiga eradication of troubles and then you're ready for renewal and these budgets so I just wanted to elaborate on episodic a little bit to show you how he demonstrates this part of Scotland which is already long past it does deal with the issue of Kennin here we did talk about it so I'll be more Kotzur here and that is as you know the mitzvah of matzah Toshiko the Torah requires that there be an annual contribution that the qualities Rael gives for the financing of the carbon owes the carbon owes had to be purchased the Talmud and the Musa they had to be purchased with public money now what an individual brought a core of and of course he brought his own carbon but if you're talking about the carbon seaboard that Tom in the Moose ups the the oil of the menorah the burning of the Qataris you couldn't have some guy that says oh the service in the temple today is sponsored by a brown Goldberg that couldn't be it had to be public money and this was the master shekel and the Torah insists that that money be a uniform contribution rich people do not give more and poor people do not give less and the central lesson of the uniformity and we talked about this so I'll be MacArthur is that when he comes to the surface of the Almighty and when it comes when it comes to being connected to God through the besan McDuck all Jews stands before Hashem with equality remember that rich and poor does not just mean rich in money and poor in money but rich and poor includes the entire diversity of talents there are people that are rich in wisdom charisma organizational ability leadership qualities and then there are people that are relatively impoverished in a lot of those qualities so one might assume the person was more of those qualities is somehow more beloved by God but that's not the case because God judges us not by some objective standard of excellence God judges us by how much of what we were given do we pledge to his service so as a result people are vastly different abilities have the same potential of connecting to God and in fact it may even work the other way the person with great ability who proportionally gives less of themselves then the person with less might actually be inferior even though he's doing much more than my gives an example of two people one person could learn 100 plot of Kumar a day and he only does 50 which is still a tremendous pace and another person struggles to learn one death a week so this guy is doing 50 plot a day and this guy is doing one blood a week we might think the 50 plot a person is much superior in God's book that's not ms because the guy that's doing 50 plot a day is only giving us some 50% of his abilities and the one that's doing one blood a week is giving us him everything a blood of Siddhartha a lot is just Yiddish for for a very thoughtful page and you know as parents and their teachers we always say to our students to our children the only thing that counts is your efforts but in truth that's a bit of a platitude because in the real world that we live in the people that get the A's are the people that have the right answers and the people that get the jobs or the people that produce so really the concept that the only thing that matters in this world is effort turns out not to be true in many cases but in God's book it is 100% true in a Shems book it is the effort that is the most important thing so Matsuzaka teaches us the fundamental equality and dignity of every person in their ability to connect to God because God judges us by efforts and not by results and everybody has the same opportunity to make that effort now if you think about that that itself is going to be a great antidotes towards jealousy and envy because jealousy and enemy is when I look at someone else and I say if only I would be him again enemy can take positive or negative forms a more positive form of it's still self defeating is wish I could grow in the direction that he's growing there is of course a negative very ol antenna envy that says I wish he would fail like refresh points out that's when the playing field seems not to be equal one person is higher than the other person so there are two ways you can try to level the field one by raising your side of it and the other is by pulling him down and it's a lot easier gravity it's easier to try to pull people down hence Lashon Hara and soul of the city are you think he's so great you know we like to disparage we like to demean people that are accomplishing good things because it makes us momentarily feel a little better if we're not doing good things that we're able to do but as much as a shekel reminds you that God judges you by effort and if you do the best that you can you stand with equal dignity there was nothing to be jealous about now easier said than done to be short jealousy is a very very difficult traits to eradicate but at least in theory the adviser the service of Marxist Sasha kaun helps us overcome the trait of envy by making us realize how intrinsically important and dignified and beloved each person is in the eyes of a college board and of course there's another aspect which is related to this the first point I'm making is connected to the uniformity rich and poor are equal there's another point of famous casino thoughts that the monstrous a shekel is only if is a fractional denomination it is a half why don't you give a whole check up and the limit is that a half is incomplete unless it is joined to another half so there are two connotations to that one is it's an antidote to a person who's about Gaia if I'm conceited I think I'm so wonderful I think I'm so great the max is a shekel reminds me that unless I link to others unless I connect to others I will be in a state of defect but it also has an opposite lesson the same way it tells the arrogant person you are incomplete unless you connect to others you need others it reminds the person who may have low self-esteem that others are incomplete without me you see I am incomplete without others but the others are also incomplete without me you know I think I may have mentioned this to forgive me for repeating I remember reading years ago when there was a space program that one of the astronauts as they were going up to and the space capsule was asked what were his last thoughts before blast-off and he said I remember that this thing has 50,000 moving parts and each part was purchased from the lowest bidder on a contract so I'm a little nervous and of course it's not necessarily a joke because indeed there were in the space program itself accident casualties people delight and sometimes these accidents came from what you would regard as little insignificant parts that might call it might call like a plastic shield that might cost five dollars in a hardware store although with government contracts it probably was five thousand dollars but whatever it would be now the point basically is that major major projects depends not only on the big important pieces but even the small little ones no they have a story I read again about Arturo Toscanini who was a brilliant brilliant brilliant so conductor and really a musical genius see me was an absolute genius Oh somebody wanted to interview Toscanini in Tuscany said I don't have time because I'm sick I'm not well but I have to listen to a concert through the radio tonight and I have to evaluate it I'm not gonna be there to conduct it but I need to hear how the orchestra is doing now this is a radio now in the radio reception it's not very good especially if you're okay no a musical person who has to hear everything exactly so Toscanini said you cannot talk to me during this concert I'm gonna have to listen very carefully for two hours then you can ask me questions so Toscanini is listening to some complicated classical piece for two hours on the radio receptions not very good and Toscanini said how come there's only 15 violins they're supposed to be 16 vinyls what's going on what's what's you know it's not right so the reporter said afterwards you can tell the difference on the radio between 15 and 16 I do not believe that's possible and tell kini said no it sounds obvious was obvious that the violin that was missing me so the reporter was so disbelieving of this you know he went to the NBC Orchestra and and he said what's going on how many violins did you have a sense well we normally have 16 but a half an hour before the show one violinist called in and said he was sick so we figured 15 15 versus 16 who's gonna know the difference so the reporter goes to Toscanini and says this is unbelievable this is like a miracle this is like superhuman how are you able to see the difference that one violinist makes in a 100 piece Orchestra of which there's already 15 other violins and many other pieces at the same time this wasn't even a violin solo I mean that just vibrated the whole orchestra was playing and he saw a violin was missing so Toscanini said you don't understand it could very well be that the people who simply listened to concerts don't pay attention to small things and there are things they're not gonna notice but I'm a conductor I have to bring it all together every single thing is important every single thing contributes to the beauty and success of the whole and when you're a conductor there is no such thing as something being too unimportant to pay attention to so someone used this story may have been peso Kron I'm not sure as a marshal for the almighty the almighty Akhilesh Barco is the conductor of this universe and in the conductor of this universe there is no concept of important things and unimportant things to the conductor everything counts everyone counts everyone makes a difference God's plan cannot be realized on this earth unless every person does the best that they can with the talents that a college for who gave them and that is the master Cishek oh yeah I'm incomplete unless I connect but they're also incomplete unless they connect to me I have something to offer it's a message of both combating arrogance but building self-confidence in which a person realizes I have a role I have a purpose in this world you know we have these every morning and religious you open the sir their eyes and after they check the obituaries they say modani thank you God for giving me back my life and it ends with the phrase raba immunise aha your faith is great it's a plus say I see a fragment from Asia and the question is why your faith if the statement is I believe in Hashem my Yamuna raba and mu not see and one of the Hasina cancer says it's God's faith in us is very great and every morning when a sham gives us life he is affirming his faith in us that we have good work to do and we have potential to realize because if indeed there was nothing more for us to do in the world why would we come back the next day and therefore no matter how difficult life might be and the fact that people sometimes don't get support emotional support at work or in school or even from family but how college Barca was whispering in your ear I have faith in you you are worthwhile there's much you can contribute to the world go do it so based on this massive search echo is a marvelous way of dealing with jealousy because it reminds us of the Equality of dignity of every person it reminds us of the interdependence of everyone and the fact that everybody has their role and everybody has their purpose and like the Toscanini Marshall shows there is no such thing as someone that is too unimportant not to make a difference in the ultimate beauty of the great symphony that Hashem has made in this universe that that we live in okay so that is master Sascha Keil helping us with jealousy now we then come to our show so far and again I'll try to do this go through quickly because I do want to get to para and precious Zohar is of course to memorizing our length and I think we mentioned the partners as well that I'm not like and casitas is said to represent not aggressive radical evil as they say we sometimes have a mental picture of a Moloch we think of some machete-wielding Isis guy who just wants to shut off people cut off people's heads and in the light but in her cities there's a very different picture repsonders himself describes a Moloch as the cool cynic who does not believe in anything absolutely there's no such thing as absolute values everything is situational everything is a matter of opinion as the Israeli saying says I'll Tom Barea angling for care people to use that saying it's an old it was an old saying that right dad everything's about everything all the Holocaust is bad in the world you know if you looked at it from the German perspective you know you could understand that there was a lot of logic in what they were doing etc by the way this was actually a discussion that was in a Jewish high school in which some of the students were saying well you know I don't know who says that was so bad you know I mean the Torah says we kill them all make sure the Germans say we kill Jews you know what's you know what's that okay so the point basically is so our Moloch is not necessarily the person that is committed to a cause exactly the opposite a Moloch is committed to nothing a Moloch says nothing matters everything is Micra Micra is happenstance coincidence and the phrase our shared car car by Deron grab subtle translates a Moloch made you cold the coldness of a heart that does not feel a connection to God and does not seek to be connected to others and even if a person learns and does omits votes again spoken like a true cousin web Southwark says when you do it with coldness and indifference that is the root of a Moloch and in casitas is a very big theme that in order to eradicate and overpower the young mullux outside of you you have to first vanquish the amalek within us because the enemies on the outside just like those horror films in which your nightmares create the monsters outside of you that kill you but they're a product of their own nightmares that's actually a very deep thought that means the external enemies that we face are really a manifestation of something internal within us and thus the mitzvah of erasing our mullick is not only manifest in terms of getting rid of that thing out there but it refers to eradicating and I'm Oleg with them and the emilich was then his coldness in indifference and signorina now here rep so that makes a point which again might be unique to up set up a little bit and he says what makes a person cold what what takes away a person's love of spirituality love of Torah so he says it's an overindulgence in the time and the tie boats of all the Mirza now I say overindulgence because after all Judaism is not an ascetic religion Judaism does not preach that one should adopt an ethic of deprivation and suffering in fact we know that the nuttier the one who takes a vow not to drink wine is a sinner precisely because he is depriving himself of legitimate pleasures that the Torah wants you to have an in moderation so we are not talking about taking vows of poverty or wearing hair shirts or sleeping on beds of nails this was not the ethic of Judaism at all even fast days are discouraged beyond the fast days that we have to do you know a few times a year but extra fast days for repentance we actually consider to be not proper by enlarge so we're not talking about asceticism but it is still the case rub so that says that if a person gets to chakra too invested in the material pleasures of this world their heart loses its warmth for brilliance and there's a reason for this because when a person gets physical pleasures are generally relatively instant gratification like you get an instant gratification spiritual pleasures take time and and when a person gets addicted to the instant gratification it's very very difficult to get up the energy and the desire to do things that take work you know this is actually a phenomenon that goes beyond this particular discussion many secular educators forget about the billing to do with Judaism are very concerned with the effect that the Internet and web surfing habits have and the ability of students to concentrate and analyze in a prolonged way because web surfing is the equivalent intellectually of instant gratification it's the candy bar that gives you the sugar rush because you can immediately go from this to this to this to this to this and it might be a very excellent way to pick up information but in terms of sustained analysis and thinking it's a serious problem and there are many educators that are very seriously concerned about this about diminished attention spans and abilities it concentrates it's like someone told me I'm not sure I didn't devera fie this that when they have these classes online college classes or whatever will be so a standard college class was always 50 minutes and initially YouTube was running things in 50 minute segments but they discovered that the concentration range is no longer no longer than 20 minutes so they cut down a lot of their classes into 20 minute bites instead of 50 minutes I think the TED talks are like I think every 20 minutes I don't know if it's a fixed amount but now is that because of the internet or it would have happened anyway you know who knows but your subjects point generally is when we get habituated to the material we lose our sensitivity to the spiritual just as one who gets addicted to games will not read Shakespeare or William Faulkner Marvel so to hear as well so therefore up southwark says the following so this is a bit of a more convoluted Association if parshat so far is the Mitzvah to eradicate the external mammalogy and if eradicating the external um relic requires that we eradicate the internal moment and if the internal of Moloch is coldness of the heart in our Bogota channel and that comes from an over connection to the material and the sensual therefore the way we initiate the project of eradicating a moment is to kind of control and regulate and simplify our relationship to the material and sensual world again it's a difficult balance in some ways because we're not talking about cold turkey we're not talking about renunciation we're not talking about repudiation as the Rambam rights enjoying the pleasures of the world can be a way of enhancing one's love of God and one's gratitude of Usha the Kumari tells us a beautiful home for example is something that gives person and inner calmness and a serenity and an expansiveness of mind but it has to be your possessions are in the service of your priorities but not that they become your priorities they are your servants they are not your masters and when they become your masters then you're moving in the wrong in the wrong direction I remember a Pepsi Cola I know they still do it in the States they were running a campaign that if you accumulate Pepsi points for drinking a certain amount of Pepsi so you could catch them in for things that was interesting I remember in my Venise to teach contracts many years ago there was actually a case in the federal district court in the Eastern District of New York or a Southern District amendment at fascinating case Pepsi had a joker commercial where they said if you get 15 million points you can get a military Jetta and they actually had a film of a high school kid you know all the high school kids were riding their bikes and this kid like you're gonna parked his military jack now they picked a number that was so absurdly high that there was no way in the world anybody would ever get those points 15 million points or whatever it would be so they figured was a joke everyone but lo and behold some kid managed to get 15 million points maybe he ran drank a lot of Pepsi or whatever whatever it was and he demanded that Pepsi Cola give him a military jet that's worth that you know two billion dollars now number one it's illegal you can't just buy a private citizen cannot buy a a military jet but he sued them for breach of contract he actually went to court it was diversity of citizenship it was a contract case that went to federal courts in Manhattan and he lost his case he lost his case because because the person come on kid you knew they were joking to everything but there actually was that commercial but be this at night the name of the campaign was generally drink Pepsi get stuff and it just occurs to me that that's so emblematic of a material culture because it doesn't even make a difference what the stuff is it's just I want to get stuff I just want stuff it's materialism just for the sake of accumulation without identifying a need or a purpose or an interest I just want to get stuff and that's a situation where there's a coldness with regard to work means how can how can Gemara compete with stuff stuff is like an instant feedback the more it takes time and effort obviously it's a much deeper feeling but it takes time so we've looked at the two partials before porn we've looked at Stalin as helping us with jealousy and we've looked at so far as helping us with materialism and sensuality Thailand we now come to this coming week is partial Sparra and purchase part of and of course the October this week is from the book of your stress scale once again if Cusco was a nabhi before the Corbin of the first base of mikdash remember your Cusco was in the first wave of exiles that went to Babylonia eleven years before the Corbin together with Mordecai the Etruscan Mordecai were mush living at the same time your mio was also at the same time but he was in Eretz Israel so yet Eskil and your mio are the two Nazim that are contemporaneous with the Corbin bias region yo-yo is much earlier but Jimmy o in your Cusco our mamas living at the same time your mio is the prophet who is living in Eretz Israel so he is the eyewitness to the actual destruction of the temple your testicle is comforting and giving wizard to the Jewish people that are in Babylonia already and you Tesco uses many many metaphors as all the new VM do your Tesco commonly uses the metaphor of the adulterous wife he describes the Jewish people as an unfaithful wife who commits adultery against her beloved and loving husband that's a very common metaphor in the book of your testicles elsewhere but in this up Torah he just not used a metaphor of adultery but he uses the metaphors of tumor impurity he describes the Jewish people as if they are women that are need outs who Anita is someone that because of menstruation must separate from the husband and they have the tumor of Neda that because of what's going on in their bodies they are separated from their husbands and then he also uses the idea of Toma by mace they are Tommy because they have come in contact with dead bodies now let me point out that both of these are described in the Torah as states of Tona impurity however they have different repercussions the tumor of Anita as we know and by the way I want to point out Neda is a bit more complicated than than you might think today the only implication of Nita is that a woman and a man and a woman do not have marital intimacy without that period of days but you have to know when there was a base of me if you think the laws of neither are complicated now when there was a base on mikdash there was a whole other dimension of the laws of Neda that we don't pay attention through today but you had to pay attention and that is the Nita was Tom a just like a person in a cemetery is to me so for example if they Anita is married to a calling she could not touch his Truman because if Truman becomes tummy it has to be burnt right and not only that but the clothing she wore would be Thomas of the time if the clothing touched pots and pans so how different thing you have to be concerned about the pots and the pans and the food and the like today we're not concerned with that because we're all coming from cemeteries of the like so Nia makes it no worse today the only aspect of media that we pay attention to is the prohibition of husbands and wife being together is Muhammad - you have all the laws of tuna and Tarot that you had to be concerned with but neither change from the third temple again and then it'll come back when if their temple all of these laws of need are going to come back again well it's a complex a complicated system of laws yeah well yeah those are those are those are Kabbalistic customs that's true in other words it's not a whole lot of per se cupca ballistically women that are needed least if they're still actually menstruating don't go to cemeteries don't do terrace etc but though those are Kabbalistic that is not strictly halakha per se now we do know of course though that the trauma of Nita is moved by immersion in mikvah mikvah is the only ritual that anita needs after counting her seven queen days by contrast if I am too many because I've been in a cemetery I've been in contact with a dead body and I'm coming for seven days it is not enough to go to a mikvah to be pure I also have to be sprinkled on the third day of my two men on the seventh day with the ashes of the red heifer that is mixed with water and that is why technically any person that has ever been in a cemetery in his life even if it was 50 years ago you are taught may because until we are sprinkled with the ashes of the Parana dilma mixed with spring water going to the make for this not purify us and technically therefore without going to want to get into the whole debate but the technical reason why most religious Jews do not go in the Temple Mount is because there are certainly sections of the Temple Mount that a person that is ritually Tomei is not allowed to enter and all of us are ritually Tomei because we don't have the ashes of the para Duma now even the religious Jews that enter the Temple Mount actually admit to this I mean they're they're an absolute agreement they just say that's the prohibition will only be on an inner part of the Temple Mount not the outer part of it and they're willing to be confident enough to say their post qamar willing to say what is our what is inner most of the religious world is more cautious because after all as you know you don't want to walk you know in a walk in a minefield and say well as long as you stay here you're going to be okay you want to avoid the situation because if cause for showing we take one step in the prohibited area you're shy of carries if you're coming right so really this is my focus about going up in the Temple Mount is not a mock locust in how lucky principle it is simply a Marlowe kiss and a logic application and of course this is an interesting example where the government is very high rating this for different reasons meaning to say the Caray them are very much mayor not to go on the Temple Mount and the government like likes the ready position a lot more because at least most of the government because going the Temple Mount also creates a lot of political negative repercussions riots initially it was to cause twenty years ago of the first day how many years ago whatever was the First Intifada you know game when sharona's walk to walk down the Temple Mount but okay theaters had made oh this is para doing now so your festival uses two images since you festival uses two images of tumor the image of Neda and the image of Tommy mace he also uses two images of Sahara because he gives us the message of hope yes you are tummy you are impure but you have a way of purifying yourself you can purify yourself by immersion in the holy waters of the mikvah against symbolically by observing the Torah the waters of the Torah and you can purify yourself because I will sprinkle upon you the purifying waters of the Perodua now these are used as metaphors right Touma is a metaphor for sin and purification is a metaphor for children but it's interesting that two types of purification methods are articulated immersion in the mikvah and being sprinkled with the waters of para uma now the reason that is important is because that symbolizes two different types of chuhwa that a person can do one type of chuva is compared to immersion in a mikveh and another type of Trueba is compared to be sprinkled with the ashes of the Perodua how is that so the one characteristic of mikvah is mikvah represents total immersion in a mikveh every single part of you has to be totally under the water even if there's a little part of a hair that's above the water no good that represents a chuva that you might call tomorrow a Christian German a total epiphany a total change a transformative change in my life I have the old Paul on the road to Damascus now I know I didn't use that as an example but the concept is my life has changed and that of course is the highest river that is the children which you are literally a different person that past identity is foreign to you it's no longer you you are different but sometimes our Chava is much more modest maybe most times it's much more modest I haven't reached the state of emotional intensity where I'm totally transformed but I try to make little incremental baby steps if I used to speak about an hour an hour a day I'll try to cut it down to 50 minutes and then they sound trivial but that's also progress I'm gonna try to be a little better a little more self conscious about an honesty in business about greeting people with friendship about you know Maccabi law them to sabor Putnam Yokosuka read somewhere pleasant countenance and we're not necessarily talking about the radical transformative global changes because sometimes by the way that may be time to productive because people who try to will radically change their lives might find that that was true dramatic too big of a bite to try to take on and eventually they throw it away so the chuhwa of immersion is the Epiphany of total personality transformation rare but it sometimes happens sometimes a person may have a near-death experience of serious illness sometimes the person is just different but more commonly the Chuba is not the Chu of total immersion but the Trueba is now when you're sprinkled with the spring water and ashes of the piranha how much of that spring water and ash has to hit you to enjoy just a dress so even though 99% of yourself has not been affected by this at all that's a little 1% or one half of a percent or 1/10 of a percent is enough to transform you in positive ways so you're testing you know Volterra has the same that the best is the enemy of the better that's a very very interesting setting because what that saying is sometimes we think if I can't do something at a hundred percent level of perfection why bother the best becomes the enemy of the changes that were able to make by the way yeah well why boxes that's the eternal rebel was the founding regime before semantics he used to say he had a saying he said anything worth doing is worth doing poorly now that's the opposite of the saying like the saying is anything worth doing is worth doing well but he wanted to make an opposite point sometimes if we can't get it perfect we don't want to bother to do anything that you know if it's worth doing then it's worthwhile to try it even if you're not gonna do such a great job because it'll be better than it was without it and that is the chuva of being sprinkles with the little drop of the para DOMA as opposed to the total immersion of the of the mikvah and that is why your festival uses these two metaphors because he's saying if you're able to totally change cousins ain't brush em you will be way up there but don't give up because you're not capable of radical change even incremental small change is beloved by God because it shows that you want to move in the right direction alright so a person you might want to say I want every word of my Java needs to be filled with qivana usually that's not gonna work but you can say you know when I drink water and I make Shaco my project is I'm going to think about my gratitude to God or going to the bathroom whatever whatever it might be we take a small project right that's why your testicle uses the idea of the para Duma water okay now another point about parabola all of us know that para Duma was considered to be because I didn't finish what sonic start about covered yet that's why I had to be trying to finish that frankish column is kina ahora estaba I didn't yet show how para uma is connected to cover that'll be the final piece here that is rhapsodic says to follow you know that para uma is considered to be the inexplicable hulk the law of the torah which defies logic which we just can't make sense of and even have L asked the wisest of all people who understood the whole Torah when it came to para DOMA he said I'm stuck can't figure it out now part of why the para Doom is so enigmatic is not just Red Cow like all of those details which of course are enigmatic but it's because it embodies a paradox and a contradiction because on one hand the para a Duma is the vehicle of purification from two-month and the other hands everybody that handles the para Duma becomes topic so how can something that makes the term a pure makes the pure cometh by the way is a little joke my motions of rudiments Canaris RAL once made the statement by the NCS why you know it's why it's a wonderful wonderful organization mainly in the United States that takes publishable kids and the like and it really you know teaches them about Judaism and many become religious and many go to yeshiva and csy answer a wonderful wonderful way of reaching reaching kids and it does tremendous tremendous work but at CS why is a co-educational group where boys and girls are together now many as Sheba's don't like their students to participate and then see us why because it's wet but the problem is of course if you don't have religious role models participating in NCS why then how are the kids going to learn about Torah without religious people so so my brother Jimmy did not want at least single boys to participate in NC it's why so when somebody said to him well you know that's es why has such a marvelous track record of bringing people to Utica so he said kind of jokingly says and see a slice like the peridot mind says it takes the impure and makes them totally pure and holy but it could take the pure anomie and make them impure so therefore we have to be careful about the departed Ummah so his compromise was that he did he said married married married young young married polo people go with their wives you know etc that kind of maybe minimizes the these temptations like yeah does this mean that the person who sprinkles okay excellent excellent question excellent question because you're raising the the problem of infinite regressions yes meaning today somebody is going to be holding the bag and how are they going to get pure because if you're telling me I sprinkle you so I got to be sprinkled so somebody sprinkles me they got to be sprinkled so at some point how do you get a hundred percent purity but the answer is if it's next one question the answer is that the tumor of para Duma is not the tumor of mace and does not need to be sprinkle your only tummy for one day you go to the mikveh in other words it's only the tumor of corpse that requires sprinkling not the tomb of handling the para uma goes to the mechanism for yum and then at night he'll be sorry so that avoids the infinite regression problem that is that you would otherwise have so that is what para duma is so mystical but here is the family although I believe someone else didn't have an answer we don't have an answer but drug sucker Candice Fossum is offer an insight into the idea of how can the same thing purifying an impure and and and make coming so he says the following why did death come into the world death came into the world because of the pace of the incidents and the Norris enticed Ava who then enticed saga to eat from the fruit of the AIDS on us well Sadiq learns that the real enticement of the Noah was the nauseous statement the day that you eat from this fruit you will be like Hashem knowing and understanding good and evil in other words contrary to what you might think that it was the smell or the taste or the appearance of the fruit it was really the ego trip of being god imagine somebody offers you a pill take this pill and you'll be God that's what the doctor said whatever he meant exactly the day that you eat this you will be endowed with the knowledge and the understanding of the creator so death came into the world because of an inordinate desire for glory and Kaaba that is what death is the ultimate leveler because in many ways man is a kin to God we are in the image of God we have creativity intelligence we can destroy we can create we have free will there are many many qualities within the human personality that are divine but death is the ultimate reminder that there is an unbridgeable gap between man and God between creator and created so it turns out that death came into the world because of arrogance hubris divert so how do you become liberated from the impurity of death by connecting to ashes now we're not I'm not explaining red and cow but the idea is being sprinkled with ashes you know everyone knows the the Greek myths of the Phoenix word was actually as a mcaren Casal that out of the ashes comes the new bird there's something very profound in these myths and the myth basically expresses the idea that it's by destroying our egotism that we're able to be reborn into spiritual greatness but as long as there is the ego we are not really connected to the Eternity of God and to the power of God and therefore if death came into the world through arrogance and ego we are liberated from death by submission and self-abnegation symbolized by the ashes of para Duma and that's why rhapsodic says para Duma reminds us not to get too involved and carve out an ego by connecting to ashes but how does this explain the paradox because here is the thing we could talk about covered in two ways which are diametrically opposite but they're both true one is seeking kavod arrogance ego is the most destructive thing a human being can do statement number two having a sense of self-importance is the most important thing a human being needs meaning to say the following if a person truly believes they are nothing they are insignificant then they will never accomplish their mission in life because they'll say what's the point Who am I I'm a nobody I mean nothing so paradoxically a vote assertion requires a sense of self-esteem a sense of confidence that Hashem gave you talents and abilities a sense that you make a difference going back to Marcus a check out that you ever roll to play but then when it goes too far it turns into arrogance and ego then it becomes destructive so the remnants in the paradox of Perodua is this the same sense of self or the other way around the ashes represent the submission the ashes represent the Nullification of the self the nullification of the self is an essential element of purity but when it's taken too far and turns into a sense of worthlessness it becomes impurity there is the ashes that connect me to God and there is the ashes that distance me from God again there is the ashes that say I'm nothing but I'm connected to God and he is the ultimate source of power that will empower me to do things and then there are the ashes of resignation surrender despair and ineffectual 'ti which that same me that becomes destructive and therefore para Duma represents paradox because it highlights the importance of and Eagle APNIC self-abnegation but it also reminds us that a human being does staff does have to have a sense of their abilities and their talents and this is encapsulated of course in a very famous statements people often quoted as a medicine is actually not a mentorship it's a rubber name of precious but who was the Rebbe of the first gara Rebbe 19th century poets that a person has to have two ideas in his pockets at all times what is a Nokia for the affair I am dust in ashes I am nothing I am worthless I am zero and in the other pocket the lean infra Ola the whole universe was created for me as I made many cows and many dogs and many horses but he only made one man and one woman and the Gemara asks the question or the mission to ask the question why didn't God make a lot of people then one of the answers is so each person should look at this universe and say this whole thing is worthwhile just for one of us and that includes me in that includes you that's not gonna be conducive to arrogance because the same way the world was created for me the world's greater for you so it doesn't make me better in any way and this is a paradox because if all you have is I'm dust and ashes you're not gonna get out of bed in the morning if all you have is because of me the world is created Thank You becoming egomaniac so consequently in spiritual life there's a constant tension in pole between an awareness of how great we are coupled with the idea that without Hashem we're nothing and that is the paradox of para uma the ashes purify me by getting rid of my ego in dyma but they contaminate me when they make me think I'm not worth right that's what rich said excess so now we have a beautiful progression kena tie-back cover and then we moved to kodesh Couture of Southwark says renewal once you've eradicated the bad you can't just rest on your laurels getting rid of negatives is not enough you then have to use that as inspiration for concrete actions of holiness and goodness and that is why there's never a hepps ik between para and how that's because you can't allow the inspiration to falter or leave you right after you've completed the introspection of getting rid of the bad you have to concretize that in positive spiritual ways right so this is the avada of the four parsers and as they say the haftorah in your testicle does use Touma as a metaphor for sin and both mikvah and the sprinkling of the pearl edema as the metaphors of chuhwa in fact this is a classic if you have a good with surgical memory the plastic of the subterra is said every day during selita's with iraq t la femme my m to her grandma jim says i will sprinkle upon you the pure waters due to her Tim and you will become pure and this is taken from this haftorah of so be a source of shame I hope that all of us will be able to rise to these great great challenges to work on the negatives of Kenneth BAE recovers but at the same time then become neat Kadesh to become renewed and revived and in that way if enough of us do this we will create a place for the Shana to come into this world and then we will be so her to the BSO machine and the opinion based on victors [Music]