Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz : A Leader's Personal Connection to the People

[Music] okay you need everybody this week of course we're doing parks by Viagra and dr. Avaya and I just want to point out initially the very obvious connection there there is between the parsha and the haftorah what is the partial about or at least the beginning of the part is about it is about a childless couple we've been living for many many years without children a Brahman Sora although Yeshua was born from hussar he talked about the great hospitality that Avram and Sora show strangers who are three angels but they don't know that they're angels and it talks about the fact that in the marriage of their righteousness they were blessed with a child one year after the event and the end of the parsha is how they almost tragically lost their child because the Mitzvah because of the commandment of the akkada and at the last minute an angel of heaven comes in and says do not slaughter the child like that is kind of been very brief what the storyline is well in the Torah which is taken from the book of Malacca the book of Kings we have somewhat of a very similar storyline in which a woman of Shuna and her husband did not have children for many years he was a very hospitable woman the Prophet Leicester with a child after the child grew up for a few years he suddenly died and Elisha the Prophet swings him back to life in a miraculous way so in many many ways the story of Elisha parallels the story of Abram and Sarah and the fact that after they were given that blessing they almost lost the blessing that they were given and if the last minute a miracle happened that saved the life of the child now one point that's very important to see generally is that obviously any of Torah is chosen because there's some type of thematic connection to the parsha but at the same time often the thematic connection may be in the nature of opposites meaning to say there may be a different alternative almost contra contrary perspective that to have Torah offers what I'm going to show you tonight is that on one hand similar story some very very significant differences that teach us a lot first of all just a note of technical help tourists we have been reading until this Shabbat for the past ten weeks we have been reading half tourists from the book of Yeshayahu yo-yo is the great prophet of comfort he has the seven have tourists of comfort and the first three hospitals of gracious Noah Leffler huh so putting aside where Shoshanna Yom Kippur and Sukkot didn't have their own up to recycle yo-yo has dominated the parsha of the week for the past ten weeks finally some of the other prophets want to have their room their space and the Sun they push him aside and the Becky show yo is not going to be very from for quite a few weeks so he's trying to he had his run and now we moved to other prophetic books and this is the first October which is a narrative as opposed to the general ethical teachings of the prophets this is a concrete story and the concrete story involved as I said the Prophet Elisha now Elisha was a disciple of Eliyahu Hanavi that a Philly owner he was taken up to heaven Elisha became his successor and the elio Elisha stories in the book of Malakand are very unique throughout tanaka because most of the vm that we encounter are new vm that our teachers in other words we have their ethical teachings we have their toca their rebuke we have their messages we have their prophecies of the future occasionally the prophets engage in miracles to make a point Elisha is we literally do not have a single teaching from Elisha recorded at all Elisha was a miracle worker prophet and just one story after another story the way it's been described Elisha seems to have had a bag of miracles in his sack and he was simply traveling around Derick Israel doing miracles and the miracles were sometimes for relatively mundane thing they were not necessarily the great national miracles like in Mount Carmel when oh yah ha nobody wanted to sanctify God's name and he calls on God to bring fire from heaven to consume his offering and everyone does chuhwa and they prostrate themselves and they say a chef will go Kim these are miracles of kiddush Hashem Elisha there's a group of people small groups they don't have enough water he makes the water sweet the soup doesn't taste good he makes the soup good he's crossing the arguing he's the only one he's not splitting the arguing for anybody else he just splits the yard game cuz he has to Crossman he gives a woman a child it's almost as if contrary to the normal philosophy that you know you don't do a miracle if you don't need to America Oh Massa me seems to be if you can do it by a miracle why bother doing it the regular way and this is quite unusual it is normally not the role of profits necessarily just be miracle workers many later writers have compared the stories of Elisha to the stories of Ksyusha rebus in which the Rebbe is simply a miracle worker who dispenses all sorts of favours and again Eliyahu Hanavi started the trend a little bit Elisha greatly magnified where the Leo Hanabi did map you remember as though Leo and um he was ascending in the chariot of fire to heaven he promised Elisha you will have double of my spirits and indeed cause I'll go to a detailed Counting elio an avi has eight miracles that are credited to him Elisha has 16 miracles that are credited to him now it's interesting that this type of pattern did not continue meaning once we get past Elisha prophets become primarily teachers ballet mousse are ethical messages and the like and they only do miracles on rare occasions in order to establish some theological point but they don't just dispense miracles as a matter of course so it's a bit of a historical mystery why exactly at that particular point in time the prophetic mission took on the type of miraculous they mentioned again just to give you a conceited analogy you know Chabad Lubavitch calls itself kebab casitas no shabad is an abbreviation chochmah binah that this was a term that the movement was given by the alter rebbe himself by there's Amin the founder of Chabad he called his movement he called Ishita Chabad now what is Chabad distinguished from like I mean there is generic bussiness there was about Shem Tov the Mahadev knezovich and then the bhava tanya the alter rebbe was a disciple of the majority market together with many other disciples the no Anneli Mela and Roble be it's like a birdie chip and that's one could see this began to create different courts and different groups and different sects well the alternative to Chabad is called I got I got is an abbreviation tested Guevara different kebab is mabini got the theory or what the alter rebbe was trying to get at was that casitas was becoming much more of emotional connection which involved miracle workers and a connection to a Rebbe who would do all sorts of miracles for you paradoxically in spite of what kebab may have come in late become in later years the alter rebbe was very much against going to a Rebbe for miracles and mobile sim the alter rebbe says that each person must connect to God by virtue of the intellect the alter rebbe was very suspicious of emotional feelings in the service of God because he saw emotions as very ephemeral and very dimension you know at one moment you're excited the moment you're not excited you're a creature of your moods your moods pull you in all sorts of directions and he determined that in order to truly connect to God you have to connect to God through the intellect which will then awaken and arouse true emotions that are grounded in the mind rather than the animal soul and therefore it's interesting that's why Chabad was the only casitas that really took root in Lithuania because those Romanians the listbox to miss lab Jim - Velma down like they prized very much the Faculty of rationality and to see this to a large degree was becoming non rational or a rational Chabad specifically was here to create a rationalistic approach to positive so in many ways we might say I'm just using a rough para la mía that Alicia was the paradigm of the ha got nothing the nothing as it were who attracted crowds by virtue of miracle workers rather than the particulars of his teachings the legend the vm reverted back to the role of being teachers and instructors and and the like now it's interesting that if we contemplate jenner of the role of miracles just as a general perspective here we actually see the Gemara in Tainan has a very very fascinating passage so Asafa be it's very very intriguing the quarantine this gives the story reminiscent of seaman John Steinbeck of a man who lost his wife tragically and he had a young child who needed to be nursed and the man was so poor he could not afford to hire a nurse so a chef made a miracle that he was able to nurse the child from his own ground and he fed his child and the rabbi's of the Talmud who became aware of this story they were debating whether this is a good thing or a bad thing one of the rabbi said what a righteous man person must have been that the Almighty changed the nature of the world that he should be able to feed his child like great day miracle supernatural praise Hashem for supernatural miracles that he does for the righteous but there's another opinion that says this is actually a very ugly thing that God has to change the laws of nature the my Rabb explains that every time God's purposes are accomplished by new miracles that actually implies a certain imperfection in the existing structures that God created by God created a world that world has natural laws and harshest gracious describes the natural functioning of the universe as Kito that this is good now occasionally the system doesn't work so to speak so God has to break it or God has to replace it with something but the very fact that God has to replace it he implies there was some inadequacy or imperfection within the pre-existing system that needed to be supplemented so the rabbi's of the Talmud said conflict what we might think that the true greatness of God is manifest not in his capacity to break the system and replace it but to bring Redemption through the system itself so in for example it would have been a greater accomplishment if the guy would get a job or if there would be a nursemaid that would offer her services for free now we because we take things for granted we wouldn't see the hand of us down there but in some objective reality that is a greater glory to God that God's system accommodates the needs that need to be achieved as opposed how do you pronounce it thing to do ex machina that's kind of degree the technique when you wanted to resolve something by some mocking okay is ready like never heard it said yes you know when something just comes out of the sky so to speak and that just means you know that's the sign of a weak writer right if you're writing a player's up and you got to rely on those types of gimmicks you have not created an organic resolution to your dilemma from within the confines of the situation so that's a fascinating discussion in which they were rabbi's of the Talmud that said you know maybe miracles are impressive but miracles are not the highest level of divine providence that can rectify the in justices of the world or the unfairness of the world maybe that might be why Elisha is kind of an exception to the norm and normally the Newseum do not communicate their messages to miracles that the Rambam really points out that the only function of miracles really is to give us consciousness-raising because what happens is we take nature for granted we don't see the hand of God so the miracle is an attention-grabber that's why I'm not vanity says that the word NACE actually means a banner or a flag that's to get your attention so you understand that even in the normal course of events a shemin's running the world and there is hashgacha and and elect right so that's just a general comment about about Elisha now to get into the actual story itself so it mentions there's are two stories here and it's not clear why the first story is part of October story number one is that there was a widow mightily she's just wandering around there at Israel with this Tommy demand people approach him do a miracle for me and a widow approaches Elisha and she says my husband has sign and you know that my husband was a god-fearing man but where this happened is that we owe a lot of money and the creditors have come to seize my two sons as slaves now this is actually not the halacha the halacha never was you could sell a person into slavery to pay a debt the only exception was if a person stole a crime the person stalled and did not have money to pay he could be sold into some type of indentured servitude but that is not the same thing as slavery for borrowing money and certainly there's no there was no concept in Halawa that if I borrow money my children could be taken in slaves nevertheless obviously society in those days just as today was not always following ibaka and you find throughout Tanakh that it was a relatively common practice that children would be seized as collateral for debts so to speak and they would be kept despite they would essentially be slaves they would work off the debt by some type of servitude sociopath she says - the prophecy says to the Prophet alas my father my husband was a god-fearing man that you knew personally and now because of his debts our children are going to be taken as slaves now interestingly as I'll give us a little bit of a backstory and they actually give us the identity of who her husband was it is not mentioned in the in the narrative her husband himself was a prophet who has his own book the shortest book in tonight this was the Prophet Ovadia and indeed what I'll say that she talks about him as a never - am Ovadia actually means servant of God and Obagi has his own saber which is only one parent it is the shortest safer in Tanakh in fact it is the haftorah of purchase by yesh lach because we're Slav talks about Yaakov talked about Yaakov leaving ASA and over Jay is in the Lua about the downfall of Adams downfall of Rome etc but being acid mayo vodka has another thing to his credit besides his prophecy and that is he was a serpent in our our house palette doctor was the king at this time of Russia and I have wanted to kill all of the prophets his wife Isabelle got him to kill all the prophets with a logic is 100 prophets that he supported out of his own resources and therefore Elisha and alia were one of those prophets and therefore he says you know what my husband did be in fact someone who suggests that's why he incurred so much death how does a courier of the king get to support 100 prophets the answer is he had to go to the bank quite a lot and she's basically saying he's in debt because of you do something about so Elisha says well what are you having your house do you have anything in your house what's the concept there is a general concept that miracles have to take effect on something right if your total if there's nothing there at all the miracle doesn't happen if there's something there it gets magnified that's what they say about the bank account right you say America's realm it's not good to check your bank account too often because if you check it up and you see how little there is in it Hashem is not gonna make a miracle to make it work but if you don't know exactly and even a little bit there it might get increased this is called some William in our ayan abraca takes effect when you don't know exactly but she said he said sir what do you have so she says I have a jar of oil that's all I have I'm sorry you had your hand up and I apologize so what's quite amazing is you know he must have had something but we as far as we know he doesn't have vision he doesn't have teachings he just does miracles it's a very unusual role no he does not have a book he's in the book of my mother wondering also well that's very that's a very excellent point because generally speaking the definition of who is a Navi is a person that is charged with a mission to communicate or a vision to communicate to omnious realm in fact even if you have visions if you're not told to communicate them you are not another that is why daniel who had many many visions about the future it's not another his book is in the ketubah and not in vanadium so what makes Elisha a Navi is a very very intriguing question now one possibility is that he was given visions that for some reason are not recorded in the book meaning there may be many many dimensions to him which are not necessarily recorded but as far as we know from the book of Moluccan he is a miracle worker that's that's I mean everything he's not caught well yes yes I was you know in a ninja you know in a funny indirect way you know I don't think he's called nothing but he's always accompanied by a group of individuals who are called Binet I'm a VM now bananas iam literally means the prophets sons but it's universally understood that Binet here means the disciples of the prophets that every prophet used to have disciples that would hang around and follow him so clearly it's almost like prophecy by association if Alicia is followed by the disciples of the Nadeem then it would stand to reason he must be another otherwise they wouldn't be following him but that's kind of very it's a strange thing that's a very indirect way of calling somebody and nothing by virtually no medium so that is that is a very excellent question now when it comes to the oil what would he then says is go and borrow a lot of he Potts from all of your neighbors and then what happened was again Christianity kind of borrowed some of this some of the story later and what happened was he poured the oil into the different vessels and every time it was empty it got to be filled again and again and again and again so now she has pots and pots and pots of oil he tells her sell the oil for money and pay off your debt meaning she had enough olive oil from this miraculous flat again it's somewhat reminiscent of the story of Hanukkah as well that the oil that was a limited quantity somehow lasted much longer and that is the way that she was able to pay off her debt by the oil now this is the first story in the haftorah this is not directly connected to the theme of childlessness so technically Apatow it could have begun with the next story we're going to say some give a simple answer of tourists have to have a minimum number of verses we have to bring in this other story as it were to bring it in some spare time actually don't read this part of Apsara because it doesn't belong but it's kind of miracle one and now we have miracle 2 which is the main part of the story and this is very different if miracle one is a poor widowed woman who has children they're going to be taken away from her Story number two is a very wealthy married woman who doesn't have children so she has plenty of resources she doesn't have children's kind of an opposite story and it's also very interesting that you see here that you know you sometimes happen or maybe I shouldn't offer amateur psychoanalysis or sometimes you find a situation where one spouse might be very very excited about roughness and spiritual matters and the other spouse is a little bit less invested or less or more indifferent together and often often without without stereotyping and often it may be the woman that is more see a thing about religion then the man the man might tolerate his woman's life's religious desire it seems to me just reading the narrative that that's what's kind of going on here that this is a married woman she has a husband but she is the one that interacts with the Prophet she is the one that goes to his Shearer you'll see she is the one that insists that he lived in their home when he's passing through and her husband seems to be a nice guy your kind of man whatever she wants you know we'll let him do it meaning she is out absolutely the activist person but she's a married woman this is not like the first story which involved a widow and she is described were introduced to her by her being called a chaga Dola a big woman and this is not referring to physical size but this means a woman of status a woman of stature a respected person a person of wealth and whenever Alicia would go to the town of Shu Nam because he made his round she would always literally says she would grab hold of him again you probably assume it's not meant to be literal and she said I want you to come to our house for food and for lodging and then she says to her husband you know the Prophet always comes to us when he's in Shuna let's build him a little attic apartment a little Aliyah a little attic apartment and it even gives us the furniture let us put there a bed and a table and a chair and a menorah candelabra and whenever he comes to us he will have his private space the seven fortune points out a very very fascinating point that this in effect is extraordinarily sensitive over in the sense that she also sees the human needs of a man of God you know we sometimes especially someone like Alicia Alicia was the person who dispensed miracles he was available to everybody all the time individuals came to him and was not just a matter of national issues but every individual of troubled spirit would comes in and her perception was that she recognized that even the man of God and the public figure of the Prophet needs a place that she'll out needs a certain degree of privacy needs the ability to withdraw from the crowd as it were and there were this highlights the sensitivity of the woman again perhaps she was forceful in some way yet she's almost like demanding Elisha come there but the Jen tells her husband let's create a privacy forum and Alexis again it's an important lesson I just heard today that you know somebody was talking about about their sight that the Rebbe the last Rebbe has many many more Marlon and Cephas and all of the predecessors combined and part of the answer was that he devoted more hours they say that his mother-in-law when this Rebbe became Rebbe in the 1950s and he was having you see this for many years private sessions from 8 p.m. to 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning three times a week doing that so his mother-in-law said you know I am the daughter-in-law of a Rebbe and I am the wife of heretic and none of them I nor my husband nor my father-in-law ever did did you know they would have no they would have two or two or three hours a week they would meet with people and that was it he says how can you meet with people day after day night after night without sleep without even it's supernatural indeed it is it truly was a supernatural thing so her perception was she understood the need for a certain amount of privacy okay so he goes there Alicia goes there he sleeps there he has his private apartment now what's interesting is he has a servant there a homage that travels with him I'm not sure if the shaman stayed in the apartment or not because it says she only put one bed there I don't know where the show-me-state you stay that some some in or some hotel or a bed-and-breakfast but the shaman is a person who at this points is in good standing although later he's going to be disqualified in this is gay Ozzie and he's consulting with gay housing and he says the gays are saying this woman is really really nice what should we do for her meaning what miracle should I perform her okay we're going to see that maybe this is not the right way to raise the question so she caught he calls the woman to her and he says you know you've done so much for me what can I do for you you need some favor from the king that I can get from you and she simply says don't need anything the toq army or no Cleo Shepherd among the people I'm happy with my life I'm happy where I am you don't have to do anything for me meaning once again her righteousness is such that she's not looking for a favor she wants to take care of this Sadek she wants to give him hospitality now you'll notice it's all her she her husband did the construction or hired the carpenter whatever it would think the husband is not involved at all she just says so coming and opening each other so gate Ozzie then speaks up on his own you know she doesn't have a shot let's take care of that now she didn't ask for a child he did enough for anything he said I don't want anything but gay cause he says what about a child so Alicia says to the woman and this is almost an exact quote of the Commish Alicia says to the woman in the language that parallels what the angel said to Abram the MOE aid has that case hyah one year from now at this exact time you will be hugging your baby the parallelism to the rushing of the Torah is exactly ka hyah Sora will have a bed and she says to the Prophet do not sent me up for disappointment please I didn't ask you don't raise my hopes up okay so the story done goes again I'm going to explain some details in a moment but the stories that go that miraculously a year later he has a child quite amazing and then it mentions it doesn't tell me how many years but later fast forward several years the child is working with his father or these accompanying his father in the field during the harvest and the child all of a sudden says I have a headache my head is hurting the child is brought home to mom she puts the child to bed and the child dies the child dies she goes upstairs she takes the body of her dead child she puts him on Alicia's bed in Alicia's apartment so Alicia should discover that dead body but in the meantime Alicia is not there Alicia is somewhere else so she asks he tells her husband get someone to saddle the donkey for me I need to go to see the Prophet husband doesn't know their son is dead husband said the boy home for the mother to take care of so the husband says why are you going to the Prophet it is not Shabbos and it is not Rosh Hodesh today so again the implication is on Shabbos and Rosh Chodesh the prophets used to hold learning sessions or inspirational sessions and she would go maybe the husband didn't go but she would go to the ship so he says why are you going what do you go to the Prophet it's not Joppa it's not retro dish and she just says Shalom everything's fine don't worry about it so she doesn't want to tell their husband that then itself raises a question I don't have a complete answer why didn't you want to tell her husband maybe because her husband didn't believe in the Prophet so much anyway and if she would tell doesn't it's all you see the Prophet gave you a gave you a bum kid whether whatever it would be and she doesn't want her husband to get involved in this that that itself is a side point and she goes to the Prophet who is up in Mount Carmel and when she sees the Prophet and a hottie I'm sorry Alicia sees her coming from a distance and gay and he asked me Cosby why is this woman coming they don't know and he tells gate Ozzy go talk to the woman for some reason at least I didn't want to talk to her directly because he says what's the problem I hope your son I hope your son is doing well and she says I don't want to talk to you I want to talk to the big guy and Alicia is very perturbed because he says to get something something is very wrong here but Hashem has concealed from me what it is I don't know what it is and in some ways you read from the text that almost bothers him more than her distress because Alicia has this direct connection with Hashem all the time and all of a sudden it's like the channel was shut off and he's confused he's impressed what is going on she comes to him and she says I didn't ask you for a child you asked me what I wanted I didn't ask you further and I said don't give me something that's gonna cause me grief but you gave me something I didn't even ask for us and I grew to love that child and I was connected to that shot and now it's been taken away from me you created the pain that I feel now you have a responsibility to solve it so he rushes to where the child is lying he tells gate I seem to put Alicia's staff on the child thinking that this is miraculous relic of exotic that doesn't work finally Alicia himself has to go in Alicia does mouth-to-mouth resuscitation again you can describe it as a medical procedure but but he's the school buddies described as dead and what eventually happened the message that the child starts sneezing he opens his eyes and eventually he is alive and this is yet another miracle of the estimation now let me just point out some very very interesting interpretations of this story is this story designed to show how great Alisha is is this designed to point out various flaws and how he approached his mission what exactly is the lesson and why did the child die what exactly is the purpose I mentioned it's connected to the Arcadia that just as you spoke almost died but the al-qaeda was the test I from space what exactly was the point of the child dying here the child was born through a miracle so let me share with you a few a few different thoughts that's been the foursome give one thought that the one fortune give is that the child's death was a punishment to the Shunammite woman herself she was being punished what did she do wrong so here's the suggestion the suggestion is that when a child is born to a miraculous supernatural divine intervention that is a sign from heaven that the child has a special mission in life and must be raised and educated in the service of Hashem the paradigm of that is the birth of Shmuel remember that kana was also a woman that did not have children for many many years and what she basically said was if I have a child I will dedicate him to the service of God and when he was two years old she brought from well to the Mishkan in shyla and shuo became the servant of God now this child we find is simply going into the field becoming a laborer becoming a farmer working with his father we don't find that the tsunami is understood that if God gives you a special miracle there is a special responsibility that goes along with it so according to some this was a punishment to the tsunamis for not recognizing the great gift that God gave her now other before some say that's a very problematical because first of all you don't find that there is such an obligation that if somehow a person conceived through a miracle or an unusual series of events you have to dedicate the person totally to God I mean obviously every human being is supposed to dedicate themselves to God but you don't find any particular sin what because because her son happened to be in the field with his father that's somehow a sign of some failing in the way that she raised her child so to say this is an homage to the Shuna myth is difficult but if some of them of course you actually want to be more amazed that there's an onus year that a person has to realize the great opportunity or alternatively another negative aspect would be that perhaps you didn't want to have children when she told in other words when the Prophet asked her what do you need and her initial response was I'm fine why didn't she ask for children was it because she just wanted to help the movie with shame Shania see this is always a difficult issue with people who grapple with infertility at some point is a person's I voted to pray or the person's I voted to accept know cuz I'll say about the mouse know Sora was barren rifki was barren for many years rough dough was barren and the Guardia vamos says why were the EEMA hosts balanced I mean why they were so righteous how should we just today we just finished the yard site though of Raqqa we made so the Guardia bomber says they were barren because God yearns for their prayers God yearns for their prayer and therefore God created needs and lacks in their life so they would turn to Hashem now let's imagine sort of a moment what if Sarah was of course a righteous woman what if Sarah after many years of infertility would have said the following she would have said I very much wanted to have children but I see that it's not in the cards I see this is not what a sham was giving me I accept Tasha's decree with joy and submission and I understand Godzilla's over now that sounds like a very virtuous righteous response but according to kazaaam if that would have been servants response she would have missed the boat she would have missed the very reason why the infertility was created the infertility was created not so you will resign yourself to your things the infertility was created so that your friend now the question though is that we do know there's the other modality as well there is the modality of Ghazni with Toma so one of the most difficult issues in life and this is not only in the context of infertility the illness many many challenges when is my mission to storm the gates of heaven and when is my mission to basically say I accept doctor well and I'll tell your story which is got no coming X key this involved a child who was seriously ill he had an illness like something like taste I don't think it was a sex but some genetic condition that had a basically a hundred percent mortality rates by a certain age and the child was being taken all over the world for different medical treatment but also to get ruffles from this side they convinced revving everything and they finally came to have Iago come in etiquette and the father told your jacket unmasking the entire story and everybody is listening there are a lot of people in the room and they're crying and they're sobbing and if they see what the family is going through what the child is going through and you're got to come an esky who was the most sensitive of people he really wasn't kind gentle so he said to the parents I wish you knock us from your other children meaning this kid's gonna die and may you have not gonna smell your other children so people were absolutely shocked they were they were desperate in disbelief that here he's simply telling a grieving couple that your child was gonna die and took away their hope but and the child did die shortly thereafter but the parent says this is exactly what we needed to hear we needed a reality check we needed to get ready for Plan B there is the plan a in which you hope and you pray and there is a point in which you understand that whatever the reason is and we don't know the reason God's will is not what you want it to be and then you have to make yourself a tune to God's will and he said and that made us realize we didn't have to schlep our later old all over the world we could bring him home wherever we would be with his siblings he would be with his friends he would be with this place we could take the last few months and make it nice and and comfortable point without the tension of raising hopes and defeating hopes never said rabbi yaakov gave us the permission not to aggressively try to fight the apparent now this is very beautiful very deep and something that that we all have to grapple with but in truth it's a very difficult transition point at what point do you move from A to B because obviously plan a is you do what you can both medically and of course spiritually humans feel it stuck up take away the evil decree you don't simply say resignation is not your first response you don't simply say Oh our child is cancer comes here with Toba I mean you know that's not your initial response but at some point it got to be it may have to become your response and the question is when do you have the my vine so some look at the truth I meant that maybe the shoe not meant was too dismissive of the possibility that you would be able to have a child now of course let me remind you surah 2 was skeptical Sarah over here is the angel she doesn't know that their angel saying she's gonna have a child and what does the Commish say sorrow laughed and she said after I have withered will I have a child when my husband is oh because I'll say when the angel say to Oberon why did she say she's do Oh she didn't say she's too old but because I'll say you're allowed to lie to make peace with the husband and wife he was if they would have said she said you were too old that's my upper thigh from feeling so so there are two possibilities in looking at the shoe na misses possible mistake one was that she did not raise the child to be special and the other is the fact that she didn't ask for child to God's gonna say he really didn't want it to I'll take it away but what's a little perverse about that is that why would God give it to her and take it away you know God felt she didn't ask I'm not gonna give her then she shouldn't know you know God okay now others want to learn that the issue is not the tsunami at all the issue is Alicia the tsunami is righteous is good everything she did is for Shan Shan I am and the story is not about any negative aspersions on her behavior but there's a little bit of a remnant that Alicia needs has come up and why what's going on here because I'll say that there are three keys that Hashem normally keeps for himself he does not give to a human instrumentality or an angel one is the key of rain the other is the key of resurrection of the Dead and the other is the key of childbirth now in truth in the Alicia ilio saga we actually see a prophet appropriate obvious permission but for some reason they appropriate the three keys that are supposed to belong only to God Eliyahu Hanavi decreed on his own God didn't tell him there would be a famine for three years and he decreed when there would be rain and God is following marching orders of a prophet in this story Elisha seems to have two of the keys he both has the key of childbirth and the key of resurrection of the Dead now initially though he appropriates the key of childbirth without even asking God I mean look at this story yet he doesn't ask except for anything here what happens is he asks the woman what can I do for you the woman says I don't need anything okay cause he says she doesn't have a kid Elisha says next year you'll have a kid now who did he consult when he made that declaration you know in the case of Sarah these are angels who are communicating from a ship Elisha as it were is making his own decisions and a beautiful powerful remnants to this idea because when it says the next year she had a child according to the time that Alicia said now the Flemish has the same wording but it says the next year Sarah had a child according to the time that Hashem even here it says Alicia meaning Alicia now why God gave him this power we don't know but Alicia is so powerful that he controls the mechanism he says what do you need anything I need a child I'll give you a child next year no prayer notes FEMA no reference to a sham and the time is based on Alicia's time so summer fortune want to suggest that Alicia needed somehow to in China learn that without the connection to a Shem and that a child died yes Alicia you brought the child into the world but I'll take the life now Alicia initially and that's why God conceals her in other words he when the woman comes in distress he doesn't know what's going on Shem is shutting off the channel I want you to know what it's like when you don't have this direct channel now he still has this remnant of magical thinking because that is why he tells gate Ozzy put my staff right like you know put my my thing like my staff as and where no since it belongs to me this will have some power doesn't work what Alicia has to do is he closes the room and it says I forgot to mention it this is critically important he walks back and forth he prays to Hashem you know it comes from me I will do to see us amazing so some learn this all started is a fascinating explanation of the story that Alicia was a person of such divine power or at least he was empowered by the divine that there's always the risk of thinking your gun yes and this story was designed to remind Alicia that without God you're nothing you don't know what's going on you will not be able to revive the day until you pray and submit yourself and make yourself some service and therefore it's a whole lesson of humility and again it's very very relevant to even spiritual leaders today you know there are people today yes there are reputed to be able to do miracles and to of various other things without getting into whether it's true or not but they have certain reputations and the notion of arrogance is something that is always there in fact even the notion of choosing what the woman should have was kind of an exercise in arrogance she didn't have for a child now I mentioned some look at that as a sin on your part but others day who gives Alicia the right to impose that on a person that's what she didn't ask she didn't that why are you giving you what you didn't ask are you playing that you're deciding what he needs and what he wants when that's not what she asked that's a very year also so the whole idea here is a lesson of the man of God needs to be even more humble than the non man of God because to whom to the person that has great power and great shelita there was a responsibility to be my care to recognize that this comes from my college vertical and the life no there was a third perspective that's very very interesting that actually looked at this as a little bit of another type of moisture to Alicia about the dangers of delegation you know what happens basically is you see Alicia was a very very popular prophet people needed him for a lot of different things so as a result he began to develop a system of go-betweens this is a constant because he is the go-between meaning you want to talk right she wants to talk to the province k cos he is there to be the gatekeeper and you see that that doesn't work she pushes her way through and then when it comes to bring the child back to life he said instead huggsy initially and part of the ideas he's still missing he has like a bunch of miracles still so he created what you might call the office of the Prophet right the office of the Prophet and the authors of the Prophet we have secretaries and intermediaries and people that do the job and part of the lesson is that you know need the actual issue of akin they need the man of God and you can't really create gatekeepers on the life now this is obviously a problem even to you very much so today you know we have with whether it's your crying kid Nevsky or Steinman rebel yeah sure people tell me they remember the 1970s always a great great Thomas Walker was extremely accessible because he was much younger he was only in his 70s but you know he would sit at a small show and even women would come up when women have over him with with chicken questions or he'll push office questions and he would you know he has plenty of time I mean he had plenty of time meaning they weren't hundreds of people around him they were not gate keeper there were not shamash em they were not done by him and he would ask you know people would asked whatever they needed to ask it and whatever amount of time they needed to formulate their questions he would listen in later years what happened was that he became world famous so to speak and could you also get much older and you had hundreds of people trying to talk to him and you had tens of people guarding him and that you anything what do you need to ask him I remember I pushed ass collection once in my life I had to ask him a very difficult Shila about a before marriage and a kid was born from a second marriage is the Imam sure if the first marriage didn't ever get very difficult shiloh sometimes and I was pushed through I was like an assembly I was pushed through and you know I got out the question and he gave me a quick answer and then I had a follow-up they pushed me to nope no follow-up to their Matt and part of the lesson here is that the hlo king has to keep a personal connection with the people that you can't do your avodah to intermediaries the secretaries to delegation so there are interesting lessons about how to be a prophet in this in this narrative that emerge so that's quite interesting in that way and I remember hearing from about revenue that the levy says somebody wants to ask him how he does so much how we know so much just amazed that both his scholarship and his activism and really was truly truly superhuman in many ways and he said a Rebbe gets his strength from his class even see them who need him Hashem gives you strength based on the needs that you have to address so when when you disconnect yourself from the people that you need to help Hashem will take away some of the abilities that you otherwise would have because you're given these abilities because people need you and a Shem wants them to be out so as a result the more the Rebbe does for something since I've seen him the more powers and abilities a sham will give the Rebbe the less you do for and that's really kind of a metaphor for life in general the more we give of ourselves to others the more abilities that the power touch Evers going right so these are different perspectives about about the role of the nothing one final thought to go back into the parsha itself you know the more forum asked a very interesting question we find that Sarah and Manu gets criticized by the angels because she lamps when she hears the angel thing your wife Sarah will have a child one year from now sorrow laughs and scoffs and she says how can that be I'm not gonna have I'm old and all my husband's old and I've already passed my period of rejuvenation now the question is in the last week's partial partial echo when a chef tells an opera I'm ahead of time before so it knows that you're gonna have a sudden she'd be called good clock what is the torah' say he fell on his face and he laughed and there's no criticism surrogates criticize the angel say about Sarah why is she laughing does she not believe that God can do anything why is Sarah knocked for her laughing and I've run laps and no there's no there's no problem there's no criticism of opera for laughing so the MS is even though the identical verb is used except for masculine feminine for Avram it says by Y it's cut he laughed and with Sarah it says but it's cracked which means she laughed seems to be the same but if you look at the targa monkey which is normally a very literal aramaic translation it actually gives a different aramaic translation with reject to operatic sensible car D which is AI Romaic he rejoiced with sorrow it says the Gothic she stopped so there's two types of laughter obviously there is the laughter of joy and there's the laughter of cynical disbelief and by the targum uncle is changing the translation of the word the targa bhisma remains that albums laughter was joint service laughter was skepticism but even so there's a question because wait is it a from here's the message from Hashem so of course he believes it saara is hearing the message indirectly from three entities who happened to be angel but she doesn't know that she sees them as an itinerant Bedouin you know people are simply traveling around so she has the right to be skeptical in the way the nav realm does it because she's not getting it from a what she understands is a divine source so even with that distinction why is she criticized so there's a shot from the RF hi my pleasure client Benatar which is a remarkable chat he says you know I forum laughed out of joy and sorrow laughs out of joy joy was not skepticism so what is he criticized for remember cuz I'll say at that very point service started getting her period again sorry started menstruating and she left because she sees that her body is coming back to you but the time is like this we have to assume although it's not articulated in the comments that when a sham told Abraham that Sarah would have a child he probably told sir I mean I probably told his life now abiram laughs when he hears a divine promise Sarah doesn't laugh until she sees the physical beginning of that prophet so the claim why are you laughing Sarah is not why are you laughing it's why are you laughing now and you didn't laugh before it's because the promise of God is not as real to you as what you experienced in your own body and that on some level is a tickle a little bit of a lack of Emunah llamas at soxhlet estaba llamas at Suffolk on a rock show why are you laughing now are Bromwell before because Rob the promise alone was the same as reality for you Sarah there's a difference between physical reality and divine promise this is the entire Hyams of shock it's reminiscent the Camargue is a story that Giorgio Khanna was once interpreting one of the Messianic prophecies that we all said love oh the gates of you shall I am or the walls of you shall I am shall be made of huge slabs of diamonds and rubies they will be gates of jewels going up you know 20 I'm Oh silence so a certain starlet was listening any Center but Bubba mites that can't really be true but the Gemara record that once he was lost at sea and he saw floating on the surface of the ocean slabs of jewel like material so he was rescued and goes back to Oakland and he's so excited and he says sir I'm yawning maybe you're right I saw exactly what you were talking about your cousin said until you saw it we didn't believe it meaning you didn't believe what the plastic says what the Drucker says you have to see it so it mentions rappelling him gave him a stare and he burnt up in a heavenly yeah and then the fire of a girlfriend gay but you see that that's the idea that a mundo becomes the custom ever used to think somebody has to cut you ready they said people tell me that certain casinos you remedy sees the used piece in every circuit the kutsuki Rebbe says I don't have to see them I believe that they're there and my omona is as strong as physically syndrome so that's a perspective on the idea of it okay don't have a good weekend [Music]