Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: A Clear Explanation of the Sefirot, Pesach Sheini and Lag B'omer

[Music] okay hi everybody shalom thank you for coming uh first i want to announce our dedications for tonight uh the aliyah and the shema of binyamin yes well then halevi uh that's someone that we've been praying for for a very long time and unfortunately he succumbed and bizarre hashem he should have an elias neshama i also want to wish his parents the ganchors who are suffering from covet that they should have a reforeshalema in addition yoel ben avraham and then i have two dedications from rumi fine who happens to be a friend of mine in new york who himself gives many many shiurim in humish and the like and the first dedication of from abrami is lazar nishmas his grandmother mauka basa and the second dedication is refuse leima for yosef zundo bastavora ester and then we have reforesh leimer for bria batrava and all of these khalim should have refua bittokshar hole israel there are really two things i want to talk about tonight one is looking at the past and one is looking a little bit forward to the future short-term future tomorrow i want to talk about uh what we celebrated on sunday and there actually was a holiday on sunday that perhaps uh you didn't notice called pesachini and then tomorrow night thursday we're going to have the great holiday of lag ba omer the 33rd day of the omer log is simply uh and we will discuss what the significance of these holidays are neither of these dates are yom tovim in the terms of a dorisa sense but they are very very festive cases first let me talk a little bit about pesachini because even though it's already passed it has such an important message that it's something we need to internalize what is the story of pesachini the carbon passage is of course brought on the 14th of nisan and it is eaten the night of the 15th of nisan when we have the seder at the time of the very first carbon passage in the desert which actually was the second carbon passage the first was in egypt but the first one they brought in the desert there were people who were ritually impure they were tummy they were contaminated by contact with the dead and as a result they were not halal permitted to bring the corbin pesach they went to moshe rabeno and they complained and they said why should we be deprived of a chance to bring the sacrifice of god now question number one why were these people tummy what made them impure what dead bodies were they in contact with so there actually is a mach locus in the gemara an argument in the gemara why were these people coming according to one view it was the rotation to carry yosef's bones remember yosef's bones were transported for the 40 years in the desert and the people who transported it there was a rotation so it happened to be that these people their turn was to transport yosef's bones the time of the carbon passage so that made them tame right you carry a dead body you are tame for seven days there is another view that these were the levine who had to retrieve the dead body of nadav and avio when the michigan was dedicated iran's two oldest children not even a view brought incense in an improper way and a fire came from hashem and killed them and their bodies are in the mishka and those bodies had to be retrieved so we're told that none of eu's cousins retrieved those bodies the problem is that makes you tummy and therefore they were unable to bring the carbon pesach whatever the reason was whether they were tame because they were carrying the bones of yosef or whether they were tame because they had carried the bodies of nathavinaville they were not able to bring the carbon pesach so they went to moshe and they said lama nigara why should we be deprived of bringing the carbon pesach moshe didn't know the answer moshe asks hashem what happens when somebody is ritually impure and they can't bring the carbon pesach and god created a new mitzvah discussed what that actually means and god said ah if somebody is ritually tummy at the time of the corbin pessah and then god added another another stipulation or somebody is far away which will be activated of course in the in the desert nobody is far away from the michigan the michigan's right there but when the jews eventually settle there'll be people very far from jerusalem who won't be able to make it for pesach so either if you're tame or you're derek that term does need some definition so you can bring the corbin pesach exactly one month later if the original carbon pesach is the 14th of nissan the ability to make up is on the 14th of er which was sunday and that is called pesach cheney now pesach cheney is very different than pesach number one pesach richonne is a holiday for seven days and you're not allowed to have hametz leaven's bread pesacheni is only the 14th of nice of eor and they would eat the corbin that night the 15th to be or and they would eat it with matzah and maru but europe they were allowed to have comments in their house they didn't have to get rid of any comments this is pasukchenny so first of all analytically speaking uh the whole idea of pesachini seems to contradict the way we understand the way hashem gave the torah to moshe pierce yavo says in the very beginning moshe ki baal torah mesenai god gave moshe in the 40 days he was at harseen i both the first time in the second time all of these 613 mitzvos moshe knew received from god all of the 613 mitzvos now pessah cheney is one of the 613 mitzvahs so how could moshe not know that he had already been at mount sinai and god had given him the mitzvah in fact there are four places in the torah where moshe didn't know the halacha and he had to ask hashem one was the guy who gathered wood on shabbos and he transgressed the malacha moshe didn't know what the penalty for that is he had to ask god and god said one who desecrates shabbos with the requisite warnings gets stoned that's the makoshesh the second was the blasphemer the one that is the child of a jewish mother and an egyptian father so he's jewish he cursed god blasphemy moshe didn't know the punishment he has to ask god once again the punishment is stoning the third case for moshe didn't know is pasukeni where the people who were tame came to him and said what do we do moshe didn't know he asked hashem hashem said they could bring it one month later the fourth we're going to read later and this is the daughters of salafrats was a man of the tribe of menasha who died in the desert he had no sons and the question is who is going to inherit his portion in the land of israel his brothers maintained that when there are sons they inherit but when there are no sons it goes to the brothers so they should have the right of inheritance the daughters maintained that's when there are no sons daughters inherit like sons and it doesn't go to the brothers moshe didn't know moshe asked god and god said when there are no sons daughters have equal inheritance rights so these are four situations where moshe did not know the the punishment for the shabbos desecrator the punishment for the blasphemer the law of passage and the law of yerusha inheritance of daughters the daughters of salafi now my question is a very simple question on all four of those cases if chazal understands that moshe was given all of the mitzvos of the torah at mount sinai then how could it be he didn't know uh you know this the death penalty for hillel shabbos and for blasphemy is one of the commandments pazak shaini is one of the commandments but no salafi is one of the commandments so what didn't he know so there are various midrashim that avada moshe knew but he had forgotten because of anger hazal derived from various points that moshe lost his temper and there is a well-known rabbinic teaching that he who is angry will lose his wisdom okay but the khazrnish gives a very very nice shot which is really very meaningful in terms of the structure of the torah the quranish points out that although moshe was given all of the mitzvahs of the torah in the 40 days at mount sinai the jewish people didn't get them right away if you read the hamish you constantly say that the jewish people are getting mitzvos in dribs and drabs over a 40-year period we did not have all of the mitzvos till the very day that moshe rabbanu died there are many commandments in the book of deuteronomy which is the last month of moshe albeno's life that are not even mentioned in the torah before that the mitzvah gets their divorce our assumption is hashem told moshe that mitzvah sinai but he was not authorized to reveal it until various occasions now why that's so is a fascinating question and you actually have to go through every individual mitzvah but you have to differentiate between when did moshe get the mitzvah and when did banay israel get the mitzvah vinay israel did not get the torah at one time binay israel got mitzvos over a period of 40 years it's a very very important idea and that's not a contradiction to moshe kibel torahme sinai because the key belt me sinai is when did moshe get the mitzvah and that is even the meaning of perhaps the most ubiquitous puzzle in the torah by adabir hashem el mosha lamar so the english translates it god spoke to moshe saying well the saying is just a superfluous word you don't need it but lamar actually means to say it to other people meaning god is telling moshe the commandments that i gave you with sinai you're now authorized to communicate them to bane israel i'm giving you the green light so now the khajunish says it's very pressured why moshe doesn't know what to do moshe rabbenu knows from sinai that a mahalo shabbos gets stoned moser abanu knows from sinai that a blasphemer gets stoned moshe rabbenu knows from sinai that a person whose tummy can bring pesach cheney and moshe albano knows from sinai that daughter's inherit but he was not yet authorized to tell the jewish people those questions so moshe rabeno is uncertain it's kind of acting on the basis of inside information am i allowed to make hallachic rulings based on what i was told when i was not yet told to reveal it to the clown so he asks hashem and hashem says now is the time to reveal it in other words it's the green light so it's not that moshe was ignorant of a halacha but rather moshe was uncertain how he could proceed if he had not yet been given the lamer of that particular mitzvah and obviously what's going on here is it is god's will that certain mitzvos be revealed to the jewish people through certain historical occurrences okay so now the kedushi irin points out a very beautiful lesson of pesachini the corbin pesach is one of the strongest symbols of our relationship with god it's a repudiation of idolatry it's an affirmation of emunah it expresses gratitude for hashem passing over the houses of the egyptians it's a very strong sign of the unique relationship we have with god but sometimes a person feels they are unworthy of that type of relationship they feel impure they feel besmirched they feel contaminated or they feel they are direct they are so far away from god that they have no way of getting back in track elisha benavoya was that way alicia benavoya was a great great rabbi who became a heretic he became an epicurus why that's so is again a complicated story there's actually a historical novel about him as a driven lathe written by a very famous conservative rabbi milton steinberg which kind of explores psychologically the conflicts of this complicated man alicia banaboya i'm not suggesting it's an authentic sort or anything but it goes to different possibilities and he had a very devoted disciple who was a great great rabbi robbie mayer and rabbi mayer continued to learn from abisha binavoya even after alicia neville was a heretic and when people said to rebbe mayer how can you learn from such an epichorus rebbe mayer said i look at him like a pomegranate i throw away the inedible peel and i eat the good seeds i separate myself from the bad part and i take the good part people sometimes use that as a justification to take jewish studies courses at universities where there's a lot of happy chorus a lot of kefira but they say ah i'll be like ref may or i'll take the good and get rid of the bed the problem is most of us are not as great as i mean most of us none of us are as great as robbie mayer so it's hard to take the chance there okay at various points rebbe mayer turned to his rebbe and he said you know so much torah you're so learned why can't you do truva and elisha benaboya said i heard a voice from heaven that said let my wayward children return except for this man because he's beyond the point of return rav salvatrik used to say that this so-called voice from heaven was not a heavenly voice which was alicia banabo it was called aker the other one it was a voice within him that told him he's too far gone in fact the gates of chuva are never closed but sometimes we have a perception we're too far away so what is the lesson of pesachini no matter how tame you are no matter how far you think you are from hashem there is the gift of a second chance there is a gift of the ability to come back pesach says hope is never lost there's always the chance to come back that's a very very important lesson for us in our lives but the hiddusha harim says there's a second lesson because keep in mind that the mitzvah of pesachini was given only because people went to moshe and they complained about it now you may wonder why are they complaining after all they're legitimately exempt i mean they were doing a mitzvah they're coming i mean imagine if you know people go crazy they clean for pace imagine if you got a letter from god signed sealed authenticated that it is from god it's not a fake letter that says you don't have to clean for pesach this year are we going to say no no no why should i be deprived of a mitzvah if we're if we get if we get a valid exemption we run with it why were they complaining and the answer is when you truly love god you look for opportunities to serve him you relish those opportunities it pains you not to have that chance so says the kadusarim on one hand the message of pesacheni is the gift of a second chance no matter how far you are but there's a condition you have to want it enough to ask you have to care enough that you feel there's something missing in your life if they didn't care then god wouldn't care god wouldn't give them a second chance had they not asked for it but they cared enough to ask god cares enough to give right so those are the two great lessons of pesachini never give up hope and ask hashem did you say earlier that the minister had to come about was just a question yeah well again uh it would have come about but but these individual people would not have been the media for the mitzvah so they wouldn't right now this hashem would have given it whenever hashem would give it maybe he'd have to wait for a future generation it wouldn't have been given to them they would not have been given a second chance in other words had they not complained to moshe hashem wouldn't have said oh the people who are tamay should bring the corbin they just would have lost out okay so i think it is true that the myths of somehow would have come out but not to not for them at least right so these are the two lessons of pesachini the gift of the second chance and all you need to do is ask you don't ask you don't get actually that's what they sometimes say in mirror you know mir is a gigantic yeshiva like seven thousand don't meet him and sometimes uh students scheduled tommy them get lost it's hard to have a connection with the rebbe if your shirt has 200 people in it or whatever it is so rav nachm parsavas of zachariah was one of the great great registers of mir once said in mir we don't give you have to take meaning you have to ask if you ask you'll find if you don't ask you know uh you might not be noticed and the like so there is a kind of a similar dynamic kalape hakodeshwara okay so that's what i wanted to share with you about pesacheny it's already passed but it's something to to think about now the holiday that's coming up is the 33rd day of the omer and this is actually the third share in a row that and spheros omer so we kind of stretched it out in a lot of ways and the 33rd day of the omare is a festive day in various ways many people go to marone and we'll discuss why last year of course everyone remembers that in meiron there was a devastating tragedy of more than 40 people who were trampled to death and we still mourn them and we think about them and we pray and hashem should give them much much reward in allah but this year they still are planning the big crowds to marone and obviously they've improved a lot of the safety conditions so bias hashem there should only be a good health no one should be injured in going to meron but the question is what is the joy of lag balmer why is lag ba omer a festive day why is it a joyous day now granted the magnitude of the joy may differ from person to person i think rachelem kenovsky said the only thing we do on log balmer is not say tachen okay but even that is at least an external little sign that it's a happy day even if you're not doing anything i don't say document okay but obviously many people do much more than that so what's interesting is that the festiveness of love by omer has two different reasons which are almost opposites we already spoke last week and some weeks before that that during the period of sverasa omer which is a preparation for matantora the 24 000 students of rabbi akiva died tremendous loss and we mourn their deaths by not getting haircuts by not getting married later min hugging include not listening to music and we talked last week that the different configurations different customs how many days do you observe but according to our tradition on the day of logba omer the students of rabbi akiva stopped dying now depending on the minhagem either log baomer was a break and they continued to die afterwards or according to some understandings lag by omar they stopped dying meaning there were no deaths on lag by omar so whether logba omer is mamash the end or whether lag ba omer is a hiatus or a break depends on the minhagen but the celebration of logba omer is this was the day that the students of rabbi yakiwa did not die i'll come back to that the second reason for lach bahomer is because it is the day that a later student of rebbi akiva did die it's a little peculiar where we're rejoicing because deaths didn't occur and we're rejoicing because a death did occur and this is the death of a later disciple a later disciple of rabbi akiva who was called rabbi shimon bar yochai and it is said that log ba omer was the day of his death [Applause] now why would that be a happy occasion right the death of a psychic is a sad occasion it's a happy occasion because it is said on the day of his death he revealed a great light to the world the mystical light of teachings that are in the zoar he is said to be the author of the zoar again that's also a question exactly what that means it certainly does not mean he wrote every single word in the zoar there are many passages of the zoar that are later than rabbishem and but it does mean that the core of the mystical ideas in the zohar are from rabbi shimon bayochi and therefore the day of his death was the day of a great revelation of wisdom and holiness to the world that until then was inaccessible and unknown the connection to rabbi shimon bar yochai is why people go to meiron rabbi shimon bayochi is buried in meron with his son rabbi al-azhar brabhishema and the pilgrimage of hundreds of thousands of people to meron is based on the connection of lokbalmer to the death to the yacht site of rabbi shimon bar yochai now i just want to point out that the idea that lakba omer is the yard site of rabbi shimon bar how do we know that what's the source for that well it's it's very interesting the source is a passage in the kisway hari the arrizal's writings and you need to know that the arie himself wrote very little when we talk about kiss fei ari we are actually talking about rabbi khayyim bhitar of khaiyan bataal was the irish primary talmud and virtually every teaching we have from the arizona we know only through richard vital so he was to use a secular example he was the boswell through samuel johnson right he kind of wrote down boswell wrote down everything samuel johnson said lahavdio maya the allah wrote down everything there rizal said the result died very young arizona died thirty-nine mufrain vital i believe was a little older i think climate change i believe was 41 when the arizona died so the arie was actually younger than muhammad but was mobital himself he nullified himself to the arizal now here's an interesting historical issue in the kiswayari that we have it describes the joy of logba omer as yom shemace rabbi shimon bar yochai yom shemese that's the source that this was his your site however some historians have pointed out in the earliest manuscripts of kiswahirizo it does not say yom shemace rabbi shimon baryochai rather there's an extra letter yom simchas which means the day of the rejoicing of now that's an ambiguous phrase presumably that means the day that he taught the zoa but it doesn't say he died that day only in later manuscripts the hess dropped out so it reads yom shames so some have posited that this was a printing error or a scribal error and in fact there is no authoritative source that they are that of shimro yokai died unlocked by omer but nevertheless the minute israel has been macabre that that is his yard sign and even if it's not as your side it is still called yom simchat the day that he revealed the zohar so that's simply you're going to have anyway by the way as a little aside a much much much later guttal also died in like palmer and that's none other than the rama drama is the pre-eminent poseik for all ashkenazic jewelry right your joseph kara wrote the shogun and those are the succumb for sfardim and the rama added glasses for ashkenazim he died and also a young man he died like i think 42 on lag by mer and the ramaz shul is still a functioning baitkin asset in krakow the rather omar was the rav of krakow and he too died on log baimer okay so we have these two different ideas of lug bomber one is the students of rebbi akiva stop dying and the other is the death of rabbi shimon bar yochai and the revelation of the zower i want to suggest that these two different aspects of lagpaomir mirror two general aspects of spherosaumere and they bring out opposite ideas that need to be reconciled let's first talk about the aspect that log balmer was the day that the students of rabbi akiva stop dying now we know and we talked about this last week at length that we're not just mourning a tragedy because if that's all it would be we've had worse tragedies why don't you mourn the holocaust rather ghazal tell us that the students of rabbi akiva died because they didn't show proper honor and respect to each other and as the first points out this does not refer to etiquette but kavod means you see the significance of a person they didn't see the significance of their perhaps because they were connected to their rebbe they were connected vertically to such a great person they didn't really see the shivas of each other so they died not even as a punishment but they died because the mantle of torah leadership can only rest on bedolin who see the worth and the value of every jew if one does not see the worth and the value of every jew you can't be the leader you can't be the goddess the students of rabbi akiva were the next generation of godzilla god says you can't lead my people if you don't have faith in my people if you don't see their goodness you don't see their greatness they were taken from the world and that's why it's brought down that when we commemorate their deaths we're not just mourning but we have to resolve in our own lives to see the good in others see the cove covergirl first says means like heaviness see the weightiness the significance the gravitas kavod and kobet is the same same shearish so what happened on lag ba omer that the plague stopped why did it stop unlike balmer by the way people always ask natasha if rebecca lost all of his students then if it stopped unlocked by homer that's because nobody was left so what are you celebrating the plague stopped because everybody's done the answer has to be that not everybody was killed i mean that's exactly it there were 24 000 students they were dying until log bomber they were still tummy them around they didn't die unlocked by homer and according to uh one minute they didn't die after lung bomber meaning it doesn't say everybody died or well it does say coolant but you could say coolant means they they all of them were in in the process of dying okay so here why was lakba omer the divine day where the students of rabbi akiva stopped dying needs to be understood in a kabbalistic way we know that a kalisp interacts in the with the world to the medium of what kabbalah calls the ten spheros the ten divine emanations these are certain divine energies that manifest themselves in how the world is run and god is always balancing and harmonizing these different opposing forces the first three spheros though are called god's brains they're kind of god's internal deliberations and we don't know much about them and we don't even talk much about them the first three spheros tessaire the ultimate crown of god wisdom beena understanding that are called gimmel rishonos the gimmel rishonos we don't talk about but the lower seven are more behavioral and emotional and we feel them in the way god runs the world and i'll just enumerate them is loving kindness [Music] is strength tifares is beauty netzach is either victory or endurance or eternity hode is glory you sow this foundation i'll try to explain a little bit of them and the last one is malchus kingship and these are different attributes for example hessed is the impulse of giving and benevolence govura is the meet in the world tiffares is the harmonization of khasid and gevorah etc so these are the seven spheros which are seven channels of divine energy that comes into the world it is said by the makubalin that every week of sverasa omer corresponds to one of the lower seven spheros so week one of cevirasa omer which is pesach of course right is the week of he loving kindness week two of sverasa omer is inner strength and discipline week three is beauty to ferris the harmonization of question and week four is eternity i'll try to explain what that is week five is uh hode glory week six is you so it's foundation week seven is moses but not only that given the fact that every week has seven days the same way each week corresponds to one of the seven spheros each day within the week corresponds to one of the seven spheres as well and you can even see this in a sitter so for example the first day of the counting of the omir which is the second day of pesach is called the day of lovingkindness within the week of lovingkindness the second day of the ulmer third day of pasar is called gevura the inner strength that is within the susan which should not be confused with the first day of the second week which is called right there's a weak and a day axis of identification now it gets complicated to understand you know we can understand that maybe the spheros has isolated entities but when you're dealing with combining them with the other ones what does it mean but there are actually books and spheres homer spiritual calendars that use this formula of the spheros and it actually gives you an assignment for every day of the omer something to work on because the basic concept of spheros is hashem mimics what we do we determine the flow of energy by what we do this is a famous word from the balshem david melak says hashem hashem is your shadow so what does that mean your shadow goes wherever you go i move my hands my shadow moves with me god shadows you you behave with compassion you bring compassion into the world you behave within you bring din into the world so severe us omer every week we want to bring in a particular divine energy so let's talk about this so week one i emphasize compassion because i want to bring sesame into the world week two i emphasize discipline and introspection because the world needs me as well not in the sense of punishment but in the sense of structure and order unrestricted headset is as chaotic as an ice cream machine that you can't shut off right you need structure that's me that's in so week number one i try to be a kinder person week number two i try to be a more disciplined person week number three i try to balance my desire to give with my desire to focus and integrate so to ferret beauty is balancing the extremes too much hasset like avraham you get a ishmael too much gabora like yitzhak you get an asap yaakov represents the ferret so that's the first triad giving holding back with structure balancing often abbreviated but then there's a second triad that enters the picture right thesis antithesis synthesis the second triad is this even if i as a person have managed to balance crested and devour when am i outer directed when am i inner directed because i need to be interdirected as well and i've achieved a balance i can still be defeated by external obstacles the pressures of society the demands of work a non-supportive family netsucker is the quality of endurance and victory in which external forces do not take you away from your mission so the seviros correlate to personalities avraham is hesed so the first week is the week of abraham right now i'm not dealing with the days and the weeks i'm just looking at the weeks week number two is yitzhak who focused on introspection and inner spiritual development week number three is yaakov who balances we then get to the second triad of nets not allowing the vicissitudes of life to take you away from your mission that is the week of moshe rabeno moshe's nessa moshe in spite of the fact that he was the most humble of all people he had a mission he had a difficult rowdy group of three million people who tried to undermine him at every stage but he had a job he didn't allow himself to get discouraged if i want to be a netsock person i'm asking god for the kawak not to be broken by the difficulties i face in life but you know you need an antithesis because the same way too much has it your kids will lose their teeth too much you become a steamroller i have my agenda i have my avodah i will roll over you i want to wake up every night for tikken khazos i have a roommate or a spouse who will happen to be woken up and say who cares i got to do my thing so you need a balance to netzer and that's haute if netzach is full steam ahead no matter what haute is the receptivity to the other stepping back and that is our own o shalom varudev the lover of peace our own lived a life where other people would shine the fact that he was a navy before moshe and he was willing and happy to give moshe the leadership and i run making peace between husband and wife so too much nazar you're a steamroller too much hodes you're a dish rag right iron iron made diego people wanted an ego so just as chaser and gevora need a balance up to ferret netzer and haute need a balancing principle which is called the sod foundation and that is symbolized by yosef you'll notice that we're not following chronology here we have mosha iron yosef yosef was a person on one hand who had the quality of nets he was sold into slavery he was raised in a society or he was growing up in a society in his later adolescence and youth that was bereft of morality that was corrupt that was degenerate and he remained firm in his mitzvos and all that he learned from his father and he rejected the temptation of asia's potiphar and he didn't lose hope throughout his imprisonment and his slavery and when he became mishna lamelach the nissan is even greater then he's saying of power is even greater than the nation of poverty he's a netsock person he doesn't get broken but we also know that josef had an extraordinary talent to be able to forgive others including his brothers and the fact it's brought down that the reason why yosef was such a successful administrator was because he made other people look good this is actually one of the great management tools you know we have leaders who when things go good they take the credit and when things go bad somebody else gets the blame a true leader works in the other direction a true leader gives credit to others and acknowledges others but takes responsibility when things don't work out well yosef is described as ish matsuya now the standard english translation of ishmael means a successful person but grammatically that's not right matzliyach is one who makes other people successful so yasot is the balancing of moshe and arun moshe full steam ahead our own i step back oh if shalom vero they've shot them i let other people shine you sowed is how you integrate it and then the last of the spheros is malchus kingship and when the zoar describes what is maukas it says malchus is an empty vessel malchus is simply the channel through which when god mixes all of these forces together in different colors and combinations they enter the world through the conduit of malchus that's the revelation of god's kingdom and that is symbolized by david hamelich who knew that everything came from god dublin's own life was not his own remember other marishan gave him 70 years that's why adam should have lived a thousand years and autumn only lived because he gave 70 years to david hameles right these are the seven spheres and they they they they apply in so many contexts these are the seven ushps and of sukas these are the seven hakkophos of both hoshanah rabbah and shemini at ceres and they are the seven weeks of sv rasa omer different spiritual energies symbolized by personalities who exemplified the highest development of those particular spiritual energies so now let's plot lag by omer on our graph lag by omer is the fifth week of the omer that's a little confusing because we we count the fourth week but we're in the fifth week right now uh so for example log ba omer what do we say tomorrow night i could say it now because it's not like bummer yet we're going to say tomorrow night that this is the 33rd day that is four weeks and five days but it's a little confusing that actually means we are five days in the fifth week we've already finished four weeks so lag ba omer is the fifth day of the fifth week of the omer the fifth week of the omer is hod glory the fifth day of the omer is hod shebahot the day of glory in the week of glory it is a double dose of aaron the spiritual energy that comes into the world is our own squared now if our own meda represents seeing the good in people letting them shine appreciating their goodness not trying to be domineering then logba omer was gifted so to speak with that spiritual aura as a result for at least that one day the scales were lifted from the eyes of the tamide rabbi yaqiba that they truly were able to see the greatness of the other and since the whole reason for their deaths was their failure to perceive that greatness the day they could perceive it would be the day that they would no longer die maybe it was temporary maybe it was permanent that depends on them in hugging but that explains why lagbaa omir the students of rabbi kiva didn't die because it was the day of hoja behold and that was the tikkun that was the rectification for not having covered for each other but then we also celebrate the greatness of rabbi shimon bar yochai now in many ways rabbi shimon bryan i think i mentioned this last week represents an extreme connection to torah that places him beyond the purview of everybody else lived in a cave with his son for 12 years because he was fleeing the roman persecution in those 12 years hashem made springs of water and trees with fruits and the birds brought in meat and all he focused on was torah mitzvos kabbalah de vegas adkid actually took the halaq position that you're not allowed to go to work rabbi ishmael says huh a person should have a parghasa what are you talking about a person is going to plow when it's time to plow plant when it's time to plant when is he going to learn and rabbi shimon bayochi makes the astounding statement that if you simply say i give up everything i devote my life to god god is going to take care of you it worked for me so he says it'll work for you too now the gemara goes on to add many tried to follow the path of rabbi ishmael and combine torah with making a living and god bless them and many people tried to follow the path of rabbi shimon bar yochai and basically say i'm not going to work i'm not going to make any plan god will take care of me and they they didn't do that well so in terms of normative halacha we do follow the path of rabbi ishmael because we're not rabbi shimon bar but rabbi shimon bar is the epitome of being unconnected to the physicality of this world who needs it don't need to work my life is with hashem so in a sense when we honor the stopping of the deaths of rabbi akivas talmidim we're focusing on connecting to others we are celebrating passion and fiery devotion to truth so what is fascinating here and again this point deserves further development maybe i'll even make a fourth year on spirit what is fascinating is in the polarized world that we live in these two goals often contradict each other you tend to find again british um there are many exceptions but you often tend to find the more the more fiery the more consumed i am by torah and mitzvoth the less patience and tolerance i can have for people who are not on my level i can look down at them i don't want to talk to them i don't want my kids to be connected to them i make walls of separation and then you have the opposite you have people who are they love all jews they're big ten shoes not everyone's good everyone's wonderful but they often might be mushy and compromising on truth you believe abortion is fine okay you know everyone has their opinion transgender gay marriage whatever whatever the issue would be which means it's almost as if you got to make a choice either you love people and don't stand for anything or you're passionate and zealous but you reject people who are not living by your standards what sevilla saw omar generally and what lagba omar in particular is by combining these two ideas it's saying remember the our own our own of seeing the good in others and remember the passion of rabbi shimon bar yochai to uncompromising truth grow in your torah grow in your mitzvahs but don't let it be at the expense of your love and acceptance of others grow in your avas israel and your respect for others but let it not be at the expense of your devotion to truth none i'm using an expression from transgender but it fits here you got to be a non-binary person not in the sense of transgender but non-binary in which you shouldn't look at these pathways as mutually exclusive you got to do both and that i think is the lesson ultimately of luck balmer we celebrate two very different things and two very different personalities because we have to integrate both of these ideas into our psyches help us do that and again part of the key is to understand that if i'm passionately connected to torah part of my passion should include the mitzvoth israel in other words that should be my passion and we think i'm passionate about torah and therefore i can't care about people well that's part of the torah too right so let your passion be i'm passionate about israel about looking at people favorably that's part of my passion folded into the zealousness and then you're able to live without that contradiction that often exists okay thank you and uh that's for tonight [Music]