Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: Between Pesach and Shavuos - Being and Becoming

[Music] but I just want to make mention that tonight because the building block community is the people and royalness together so when dedicate tonight's learning especially to those who most recently have fallen and for the Jewish people mistake for the Land of Israel and for the God of Israel ever since how you sure even learned it to a present day paint I mean yeah again I also want to second it's and also dedicate the learning to the OMA seek our own Israel is a small country and virtually every family of people that have been here a long time have lost either children or relatives in the various wars and I'll tell you a little story involving the great governor of zalman or Bach that and he was what we would call the karate God already was not religious Zionist he was not Modern Orthodox she was totally rooted in the traditional Lithuanian yeshiva type approach and one of his students was once telling him that he wants to go up two spots to pray at the graves of the great tsadikim the ariza of Yosef Cairo and if zalman said whenever I feel the urge to pray at the grave of a Sadiq I go to the military cemetery and Mount Herzl by it forgotten and I pray by the sight of a soldier who gave his life for the Jewish people and I believe he said whether religious are not religious the fact that he gave his life for qwali Israel makes him someone that is holy and beloved by Hashem and that's a tremendously beautiful story I mean as you know right now the yeshiva world is embroiled with a lot of conflict regarding the draft and regarding military service and there are legitimate no positions here this is a real significant argument because obviously I will be the very first one to say that without people who are involved in full time intensive Torah learning we would not have any see after the schmeyer we would have no divine assistance in whatever we accomplished and so the debates are very very legitimate debates but at the same time it has to be accompanied with a great sense of gratitude for those who have given have made the ultimate sacrifice and part of the problem in the way the debate sometimes goes is that it turns into a disparagement of hyaline and that's that's really a very very sad thing and that's really counterproductive to the cause of sanctifying God's name and our love for amuse rel our love for Eretz Israel so following up zalman or about its lead I also want to say that the people who died on behalf of the Jewish people are really considered to be Kadosh iam they are considered to be holy people and we should remember their memories with great great sadness but also great betokened that in all of my BA they are getting a great reward for their for their sacrifices for from Israel so that's the dedication my shear itself I know not you know the Israeli the Israeli calendar is a little complicated because y'all MOT smart is technically the fifth of ER which would be Friday right but what happens is whenever it's Friday in order that the celebration shouldn't go into Shabbos they make yo Matt Smith's Thursday instead of Friday and then yom has the quran which is the day before your mots but also becomes a day early so you have to remember all of these rules about nice and not miserable okay another thing I want to mention is and this is more of a more of a jocular note you know you had asked me about reciting ha well not reciting hello so you know the pun of victory shiva is not a zionist achieve at all and yet the founder of the shiva the great part of the truth was a supporter of the states in many many ways and because of him to this day the pontiff vitória shiva flies the israeli flag on your mat smut and they don't say Tommen now ref shocked on his own never would have agreed to those things but in deference to the public which arose did not change those policies so it's interesting that in the early years of the state a person once approached the point of virtue of and said if you're such a Zionist how can you not say hallo what type of Zionist are you you don't say how long y'all much smut what is that to the point of akhirah of gave a very classic answer he says what do you mean I'm not a Zionist I follow the manag of ben-gurion ano Matt smart ben-gurion uyama smart didn't say talking in and didn't say how he said I do exactly that I have the highest the highest Zionist standards because it's kind of a classic young outsmarts a small joke but on one end you can see that even within the Torah or ad world there are different views you have the punter vitória shiva which doesn't say taka none but then in Bnei Brak the same city we have the cousin ish who was so adamant that yo mots would not be celebrated that one year there was a bris of the fifth of ER and we don't say tockman when there's a bris and thus as Enosh instructed that they say taka none so people shouldn't misconstrue that they weren't saying talking on because of your mouths mud right that's kind of kind of an opposite approach but the point I want to get I don't want to give all children because I have another thing I want to talk about although it'll be connected is that's the issue of how well not how well you know these are technical questions and one can analyze them but I think that as a matter of general principle a person does have to have gratitude does to have to have a Carissa Toph and their Carissa Tove number one is to occur the sparkle that in the aftermath of a Holocaust in which six million Jews died and there was a devastating destruction of Colliers rail on so many levels and the Jewish people felt demoralized and they felt the based and they felt rejected they certainly felt unloved but God gives them an embrace so this does not explain the Holocaust I'm not giving an explanation but Mindy Nagi Israel in many ways was God's embrace God's hug to a people that were demoralized and had gone through so much and if you look at what this Medina has been able to accomplish whether it's in science whether it's economics whether it's agriculture whether it's even a situation of kiddush Hashem in the sense of the aid and assistance that it renders to every community in the world that suffers even even communities that would destroy us in a moment like Syrian refugees and the like I think there's a point of great pride that we have to have gratitude to a Shem but also gratitude to the infrastructure of the state whether it's the soldiers the policemen the firemen the people that make it possible for Jewish people to come here you know the very first law of the state of Israel in 1948 the secular law of the Knesset was the law of return and think about what the law of return is you know there was a famous American poet Robert Frost who said that home is the one place where they can't tell you you can't come in they can't kick you out and a lot of return basically says your home this is your home we can't turn you away once in a while there are some exceptions Mayr Lansky mafia there are some extradition rules even in Israel but they are very very rare and very rarely applied and the very fact that this state made a law that says every Jew in the world can come here and be entitled to automatic citizenship it's a tremendous tremendous gift now we know Israel Brooklyn is a democratic state and we have the right to disagree with the government the government is not holy the government is not infallible and we absolutely have the rights and even the obligation to express dissent but side by side with expressing dissent and disagreeing with the government even in a very very strong way there does have to be a basic sense of gratitude again both to a chef and to the leads the machinery of the state and the people more most of all who enable Jewish life to flourish in a very very difficult part of the world so we have to you know Jews like to argue we have a long tradition of arguing our whole oral law is full of arguments and debate and discussion so we do have a tradition right the old joke about two jews and three opinions and it's actually closer to two jews and five opinions but whatever it is that can't obscure the fact that we are one nation so it's a real hovel that that the polarization has become so strong this is the reason for the destruction of the by cheney was synonym the hatred that exists among different parts of am Israel and the Talmud you show me says that we will not get the base of makers back until we rectify the reason that caused this destruction so I would suggest therefore that whether you say how are you not so much whether you don't whether you say hello with a brocco as the rubber newt postions or whether you don't you said without a brother whether you say talking in or don't say talking on and there are many different combinations the guy I met a person on a bus just now and I had actually never heard of this combination I'm not sure it makes sense to me he says he says hollow without abraca and says talking it that's kind of an unusual combination but he says he doesn't he will add two governing he will not diminish that that was his position but whatever your combination and even if you don't change anything into Fela which is the standard yeshiva procedure that doesn't mean your heart should not be filled with joy ends and gratitude you know people say well how could this be considered a Jewish state look at the fact that many of the founding leaders now many of the founding leaders were not only not religious but anti religious and to this very day that may continue to a large degree but you know we have kook who is a great great optimist he used to say that this was part of God's mysterious plan that Shem wanted all of the Jewish people to be included in the redemption and therefore even those who were very very far from the Torah found their connection to God whether they whether they identified it as such as or not through their connection to the Land of Israel so on a conscious level they might think they're here for nationalistic reasons iana sztyc reasons socialism communism whatever it was that's what got them here but what really got them here was their soul wanted to connect to Hashem but because their bodies or their yetzer Hara was not in sync with that soul so God gave them other rationales but those are the fake reasons those aren't the real reasons so I've cooked concluded some people come to every chest rail because of their relationship with God and others will come to God through their relationship with Eretz Israel it works one way or the other and whether it's themselves directly or their children or their grandchildren or their great-grandchildren Ruth Cooke said it will eventually happen now some people say ruff cook was naive on the latest I really yeah you know it's not respectful to talk about such a great girdle that way he was Pollyanna she was optimistic he was hopeful maybe so but on the other hand we've seen a lot of what he said over the decades has been borne out and bears Rhetta Shem more and more should should come out come out as as well so we really have quite a remarkable country you know in all sorts of ways and it's something to be grateful for and you know the very definition of Jew you know the few years ago the American Heritage Dictionary had a section on slang American slang and they put in to Jew somebody is a verb in some southern states Mississippi and to do somebody actually meant to cheat somebody in business or to drive a hard bargain so you might say to somebody don't drew around with me and people protested the ADL the anti-defamation league in the u.s. protested because they said anti-semitic but the truth is American heritage was just reporting a slang usage in southern culture that jus means a verb to kind of cheat somebody in business but in truth Jew can be a verb as well but the show of jus you who D in Hebrew is gratitude right Leia called her fourth son you who duh because she said she said Tom Odessa Shem now I am grateful to God because he has given me more than I deserve Rashi explains a whole cache bone that she knew there would be 12 tribes and there are four mothers so she figured everybody gets three 12 divided by 4 is 3 so for the first three she wasn't grateful because she figured it was coming to her when she had number 4 she wound up having 6 but when she had number 4 I have gotten more than I deserve that's gratitude says this was a mess every Jew is called a Yehudi because we must go through life with the feeling that a Shem has given me more kindness than I deserve so if I were rewriting the American Heritage Dictionary although people don't use it this way and I had the entry to Jews somebody to do somebody would mean to be grateful for the kindnesses that Hashem has put into our lives it's very very fascinating of all the different things that Jewish people could be called it is the trait of gratitude that becomes our most predominant many people have to realize them to be grateful that's why we recite Bracco's we recite breakfast before we drink a glass of water we recite abraca after we go to the bathroom people don't laugh about it but you say you know I am grateful we recite Braavos before we do mitzvahs that God has given us the privilege and the joy of serving him some expression of gratitude that's what life is about and certainly Eric Israel which is one of the greatest of the gifts she didn't gender in our heart much much gratitude and joy so as they say the technical issue of halal not Howell is actually less important in some ways than the overall idea of feelings that one should have now as a shock of luck I'll tell you an interesting compromise position of reversal Scheckter of y-you who's a very very flush with Thomas Holcomb rep Schechter actually differentiates between yo mad smarts and Yomiuri shalom yerushalayim is also this month it's towards the end of the month it's the 28th of ER and that is the Hebrew day in the 1967 in the six-day war when we regained the old city and most importantly we regained the haribhai of the Temple Mount Israelis still remember many of us even outside of Israel then remember the famous words of mutsig or as the tanks are rolling in Hara bhara it's be a day know the Temple Mount is in our in our hands that's correct that's correct the Old West Bank the occupied territories as the press likes to likes to call them and the like Saoirse professional sector said he felt that yo Matsumoto was not imitation for Harlow and he gave a very interesting reason because you normally recites Hallel when there's a redemption y'all not smooth was the beginning of a war the very day we declared independence was the day that five Arab states attacked us so it was the beginning of no kimitachi crueler and therefore he said you don't say holla when a war starts you say hello when there's an intercom like Hanukkah Masha ankeny says young you shall I am was a discrete benefit Jara bias the Cosell and it was also the end of the six-day war so therefore he felt that your museum does deserve a hollow yo Matsumoto haps perhaps not but ok I want to talk about and again we're dedicating this in honor of and in sacred memory of the ILM and also in terms of the Kurata talk to our college portal for original and Medina even Medina Israel in spite of our vociferous disagreements occasionally with some of the policies which are totally compatible with gratitude at the same time I can be grateful and I can also disagree with a lot of decisions that is ok but I want to move to the mitzvah of counting of the Omer which in fact is in this week's Torah reading parshas mr and the torah describes the counting of the Omer in a very funny way it says who swiped him Laham you shall begin counting me maharat Sasha BOTS from the day after Shabbos 7 weeks all of us know that the meaning of Shabbos in that person does not mean Saturday but Shabbos in that perfect means the holiday of pacer which is called Shabbos and me ma caretta Shabbos means the day after the firt the under purpose of meaning the second day of paisa now we also know that this was a huge-mongous during the Second Temple between the Sadducees and the Pharisees that still Kim and the crew Shem now the push him the Pharisees get very bad press in the Christian Bible but they are are resolved they are our sages they are the Taurus about that thus to Kim the Sadducees were a sect eventually got extinct they kind of resurrect it hundreds of years later as the Karaites although there was not a direct connection they have two different movements but these two Kim many of which were wealthy and aristocratic did deny the oral law and they interpreted the Torah more literally and they claimed that surat saw omere begins on the Sunday after Pesach because it has to be me maha rat has Shabbat and if you learn ms-office Monaco's you will see that this was a debate that was NIM shocked for really hundreds and hundreds of years in which these two Kim argued that Shabbos and the public meant Saturday and the parousia argued Shabbos and the Pacific meant the observer Pesach so the question is very simple the question is why does the Taira use the term Shabbos if it means Pesach Bukhari the Torah is introducing a deliberately confusing and ambiguous term which invites the disagreement and the alternative interpretation of the still Kim why wasn't the Tyra more explicit about when you start counting the omer now the ebon desura gives a partial answer it's not a complete answer we have Lazarus as well let's look at the instead of selling me maha-rathah Shabbos it could have said me Mikasa Pesa the day after Pesa but that wouldn't be satisfactory says the ebon ezra because pests suck in the torah this is a very important point does not mean the 15th of Nisan Pesa in the Torah is the 14th of Nisan when they brought the Corbin Pesa so if it would have said me Maharaja Pesa I would have started counting the Omer on the 15th of Nisan the day after the 14th and the Torah had to say we must arrest the Shabbos the day after a holiday observance which makes it the 16th but the truth of the matter is that's that's not a complete answer it's true that my mother s epatha is not satisfactory that would have given you the wrong date but my mother Esther Shabbos also could give you the wrong date and give you Sunday and if you're asking me what the Torah could have said the Torah could have resolved it by giving you a calendar date it could have said rooster fight em love em be ohm Shi sha asar and the sixteenth day Lakota Shara shown to the first month which is how the Torah refers to me son so all ambiguities could have been resolved what is the significance of the Taira utilizing the term Shabbos when it means Pesa so here the measure hokhmah offers a very interesting explanation the metric Huffman says let's contemplate for a moment the whole logic differences between Shabbos and Yom Tov both of them are holy days both of them have restrictions but there are two fundamental differences between the holiness of Shabbos and the holiness of yom tov the first and the most familiar is that on yom tov even though we're not allowed to do melaka but we are allowed to do melaka for cooking and for other young shift needs right i can cook on your if if it's for the purpose of yom tov i cannot make a fire i have to use an existing fire or transfer from an existing failure but i can't cook I can carry etc even if there's no a roof I'm Shabbos I cannot do any of them right so that's called Oak Hill nephesh yom tov has a hectare of oak on their fish Shabbos does not have a hectare of Oakland elvish that's distinction number one distinction number two is the holiness of Shabbos is totally independent of any input that we have even if there wouldn't be a single Jew in the world god forbid every seventh day the holiness of Shabbos would come into the world Yom Tov is very different Yom Tov depends actually not on astronomy not on lunar astronomy yom tov depends on the sanctification of the new moon by the sun Hedren and even for example Pesach is the fifteenth day of Nisan so it's 15 days from the new moon of me Sun but let's say the Sanhedrin declared the wrong day let's say the actual appearance of the moon was a day earlier or a day later but they declared the wrong day the holiday of Pesa would be defined by 15 days from their declaration of Rosh Chodesh even if astronomically it is not the correct date the whole holiness of Rosh Chodesh depends on the Sanhedrin which in turn is acting as the representatives of amuse rail odka they talk that the Rambam actually writes today we don't have a Sun Hedren so why are there holidays at all Shabbos we have because Shabbos doesn't depend on the Sanhedrin but why should there be a young chef and the Rambam rights the only reason there are young impervium today is because the last Sun hadrons calculated the calendar and they sanctified all of the relevant Rosh Chodesh yes until the year 6000 the Jewish calendar only goes up to the Year 6000 right right now we're in five thousand seven hundred and seventy nine now what does it mean to say that the Jewish calendar only goes up to the Year 6000 in terms of calculations that's obviously not so the calendar sets up a pattern and based on that pattern we could calculate the day of a young TIFF a hundred thousand years in the future five hundred thousand years in the future but when we say the calendar only goes up to the year six thousand that means they sanctified the rosro dishes only until the year six thousand why is that so because we have a tradition that much Shia for sure will come [Music] why would you why would there be an error well once again the problem basically is that for purposes of Yom Tov all we need is the sanhedrin's determination and even if there even if that's mathematically a little off the holiness depends on those calculations well that's why we have that's why we have the leap years I mean we have I mean that's why we have the leap years and theoretically well okay I mean there may be some problems without a Sun Hedren in terms of adding new leap years in other words once you have a Sun Hedren we would add new leap years to the calendar but what the basic idea let's let's say the short term because what you're talking about would accumulate over a very long period of time by the year 6,000 for example there wouldn't there would not be a major problem using the calendar for 6,500 right etc but the idea is that because mushiya will come no later than the year 6,000 we will have a Sun Hedren and we will go back to kiddush a Kodesh will probably use email and Fenno and you know we'll probably use computers to communicate the new moon but we will still have witnesses coming so this is a very important distinction the holiness of yom tov depends on us the holiness of Shabbos comes from God and even though honest Jabez we recite kiddush but we're not making Shabbos holy we're recognizing that our Kadesh portal has made Shabbos holy that is why the braava for Shabbos is Baruch Hashem blessed are You Hashem makatea Shabbos who has sanctified the Shabbos what is the broken yontiff Baruch Hashem Makeda Israel for Hasmonean you have sanctified Israel who is then able to sanctify the times and when it's Shabbos on Yom Tov the new sock is very exact bharata Shem makatea Shabbos the Israel for has money so it turns out that yom tov has two distinctions over Shabbos one is young chief has the Hetzer of Oakhill nephesh Shabbos does not number to the holiness of yom tov depends on us the holiness of Shabbos does not the metric aquaeden says that these two distinctions are predicated on a third distinction which is really the underlying reason for both and that is Shabbos essentially commemorates an events then there's nothing to do with the Jewish people God as a separate entity God created the world in six days he rested on a Shabbos so we commemorate that creation when God created the world there were no Jews there were no Jewish people Shabbos has nothing to do with that gems interaction with me and as a result Shabbos is not sanctified by my action it's automatic and Shabbos does not bend to my needs like cooking because Shabbos represents an idea that is transcendent and that is why Shabbos is described as a gift that God gave to us because by right Shabbos ought to be universal why shouldn't they go keep Shabbos and as you know the halacha goes the other way around a non Jew is not supposed to keep Shabbos yeah that's correct but in terms of pure logic there is no intrinsic logical reason why Shabbos ought to be a Jewish thing Shabbos is a universal idea which Hashem gave to us as a Montana toe vomit on October something you didn't earn now younger from the other hand arises through a Shems interaction with Ami's Ralph without the 8c Atmos ryeom there would be no pace on without a ma tante or there would be no Shavuos without the clouds of glory that's surrounded and protected us in the desert there would be no circus so the reason why Yom Tov bends to what we need is because without us there wouldn't be a youngters the reason why we sanctify yom tov is once again because without a jewish people there wouldn't be holiday right if we're the reason there's a holiday so we make the holiday right so the message of Cartman says that third distinction is Maz bear that explains the other two distinctions okay so based on this somewhat complex introduction let's go back to wipe a sec has called Shabbos because that was the question that we began with and that is the following if we understand that Shabbos represents the holiness that we didn't earn and we didn't deserve but existed independent of us of all of the mmm toven Pesach is the closest to the paradigm of Shabbos because Pesach it's true that without the Jewish people that wouldn't have been a pay sucks in that sense it's a young chef and that's why there's all never Chet cetera but we were not deserving of redemption remember we should have been in mitzrayim four hundred years that's what God told her from LMI Hashem took us out after two hundred and ten years a hundred ninety years early because in those two hundred and ten years we had reached the 49th level of impurity had we stayed another minutes the or the amount of time it takes just for dough to rise and become comings we don't even know what this means we would have hit the fiftieth level so a college barcode took us out we were not deserving we were not worthy we didn't earn it but because of his love for us and his promise to our Omni second Yaakov he took us out but he pays own in a state of hurriedness he rushed us out don't look back by the way rushing has consequences now there's a saying in in medicine military surgeons are told when they have to repair arteries under very very extreme conditions they're told to repair an artery takes two minutes if you don't rush meaning when you rush you mess up that's a very very important rule in life generally the Jewish people had to rush out of Egypt and we had to rush because if we would have waited we would have been kaput but that rushing had its consequences thus far Mikoto Shem tell us had we been able to remain in mitzrayim for the hundred ninety extra years all of our deficiencies would have been rectified and there would have been the goal of Lima and there would not have been any Dulles in effect God had to truncate terminate the chemotherapy early because it was killing the patients but as a result there was some cancer left inside the patients that came back later that that's how the judiciary describes it so in that sense Pesach like Shabbos is an unearned gift you see God gave us an artificial entitlement which in terms of our own inner spiritual resources we weren't entitled to and that is why Pesach is called Shabbos so now let's take this one step further the basic idea of counting the Omer is a very familiar and logical idea the safer Athena says it is to create a thematic linkage between Pesach which is the holiday of freedom and Shavuos that is the holiday of Torah it kind of joins them together in a long-haul Emily the Rambam actually says we look at the 49 days of the O'Mara's kind of a whole on my weight joining the two holidays why is that important because the Tyra's communicating to us the idea that freedom is not a value in and of itself unless it is linked to responsibility and submission to God I think I mentioned Erich Fromm and disciple the Freud Jewish but not not observant but he made a good point and this ties into the all men perfectly that we make a mistake when we define freedom as freedom from something rather freedom has to be defined as freedom towards something freedom cannot be a purpose of your life you can't say I live to be free free to do what freedom is a condition that can enable the flourishing of a human being but freedom itself is an empty vessel that does not define the content of that life in fact Aristotle talked about it within different terminology talked about negative freedom versus positive freedom than the negative freedom simply defines what you're not bound to but it does not give you content so the counting of the owner is to create a linkage between freedom and submission to God and because I'll make the point that the the grain offering on Pesa is barley which is animal fodder and the grain offering unto us is wheat which is human consumption because freedom without Torah is animal liberation so all of that is wonderful and all of that is very self understood we think about freedom I think even in the political world people talk about the need particularly in the Republican side of it the need to link freedom and responsibility okay and that's exactly what this linkage is but here's the question the question becomes why do we do this on the second day me mother s why don't we do it on day one right why don't we do it on day one if you want to link freedom and responsibility do with at the Seder already right we beat Africa do it the day after so here let me share with you a very beautiful observation over if not one of breslov actually it's not his observation is in the name of his great-grandfather the Baal Shem Tov Rebekah the breslav was a great-grandson of the Baal Shem Tov and here is the issue that the Baal Shem Tov raises how come it is that when a person first comes to mitzvah the person is about rubra every mitzvah seems so beautiful so exciting so moving every Shabbos every Dominic every Fela and then in the course of time you know it gets gets road to get through it root nice it just becomes you know something that may be a burden sometimes something that doesn't doesn't engage your doesn't excite you in fact there's all genres jokes how do you know when about shuva has become integrated into the Jewish community and most of the jokes are focused on well when he talks during governing when he comes late to show when he can bench in one minute all of the answers are you've really become a regular from Jew when you no longer are excited about your mitzvahs it's a joke but it's also a bit of a sad observation as well you lose it fact you know well one of the great Jewish outreach programs in the United States is in Lincoln Square synagogue and it was it's run by River frien buck Walters been doing this type of care of for many many years maybe 40 years and one of the years they hadn't they honored a person one of the people who helps him out in the program and this person gave a classic speech it's on the internet because it's really a very very famous speech now and that is the speech was entitled why I hate ballet Chava it was very affectionate speech I hate barley chipper because Friday night I want to go home have a 15-minute sudha and go to bed that's what I want so I come in I start saying kiddush and then all of a sudden my mouth Shu but guest says oh can I ask you some cashews on the parsha or you know we haven't sung all this mirros yeah and he says I hate these people I want to go to sleep and they want to learn and they want to dive in and they want to do mitzvahs again he was expressing his affection actually you know humorous humorous went but that's it now the simple answer is well of course you do anything over and over again it gets routinized that's the way life is buts about shem tov says that can't be true for mitzvos because if we really believe when I do mitzvahs I build a connection with Hashem so I do more meat sauce my connection should be stronger how do you explain diminishing returns it makes no sense in terms of the spiritual dynamic of what a mitzvah is but what you're doing mitzvahs so listen to what the baal shem tov says the baal shem tov gave the following mushroom imagine a baby that's learning how to walk so initially the parents are holding up the baby and the baby takes one foot in front of the other foot and the baby is tottering but he's making progress and the baby is very happy with himself for herself I was walking I'm mastering this walking one day the parents decide the baby is strong enough to try it on his own so they let go what's gonna happen is plop plop plop the kid is gonna fall down a number of times now what is amazing is schmooze for another time is no matter how many times that kid falls down he is gonna get up again that itself is actually a very inspiring idea children are hard-wired not to give up somehow we lose that capacity in fact even children often lose that capacity but Hashem put in their nature I'm gonna do this I mean I remember you know if you have children you've seen this yourself when children learn to crawl even before they walk crawling is excruciating ly difficult I mean I remember you know the all the grunts that might my son was making oh no stick me why are you doing this you don't have to do this what is pushing you to propel yourself this way when it's so physically hard for you and yet a sham put into that child I'm gonna do this no matter what it takes but the kid is gonna fall right you're going back to the holding him up he's gonna fall now if he could articulate his thoughts he might be thinking how come it was so easy five minutes ago and now it's so hard him I'm only two years old am i regressing what's happening here the answer is it was easy because mom and dad are aneema were holding you up but now you got to make it your own when you make it your own it's gonna be harder so listen to what the baal shem tov says when a person first comes to torah they are very far from that so god carries them God holds onto them and therefore they experience the connection to a Shem in a very strong and powerful way every Shabbos is beautiful every Dominic is beautiful every Mitzvah is so moving but at some point Hashem says to the person I've shown you what you can become I've shown you the beauty and the holiness that can exist in your life now I'm gonna put you down on the ground and you make it your own and just as even when father and mother let go they're still there to help that child of course Hashem is still there but he lets us struggle so therefore the Baal Shem Tov said somewhat counter-intuitively this is amazing idea then when a person has struggles in their divine service and they feel that they're losing their much rekha it actually might be Hashem is confidence in them that's they're ready to internalize something and make it their own instead of being artificially held up when things are so wonderful sometimes it's something we really haven't earned so therefore it turns out that that is the relationship of Pesach and Shavuos Pesach is the artificial high that we didn't earn it was a madness Lingam Hashem showed us revelations what do cause I'll say that even the maidservant the lowly maid servants at the Red Sea some more revelation of Hashem presence then the great prophet Jessica who saw the ki se acabó he saw the Merkava the divine chariot but that was artificial Hashem showed us what we can become Hashem showed us what we could be he then puts us down at the bottom of the mountain and says I've shown you what's up there now you got a climate and that's the difference between Pesach which is suddenly revelation and Shavuos which is gradual step by step by step by step and every day of the Omer has its own spiritual exercise you can actually get sphere s Omer calendars which don't just tell you the day of the Omer but tell you Co ballistically each day has a unique particular a vote of it right there the seven weeks are connected the seven lower sphero's and each day is also seven in which within the major sphere of the week will be all the other sphero's in minor-key etc Pesa is the sudden revelation beyond my my draga shavoo oh s--- is the idea of earning it and internalizing it I struggle and by work because ultimately the only thing that is truly valuable is what we work to do all right what is the t-shirt say there's a t-shirt saying I like t-shirts any of you mentioned before that what you are is God's gift to you and what you do with what God has given to you is your gift back to God and therefore Pesa is the Madonna that I am gave to us Severus O'Mara culminating in shiraz is what we give back to our color sparkle the ballot Tanya writes it's not in the Tanya but in the coudé Torah that this is the explanation of a passage in the ZOA regarding the Song of Songs Shira Shira Shira Sherman is actually a bit of a controversial book of tonight there were rabbis who actually did not want she Reshiram to be part of the Tanakh they said it's romantic love poetry it does not belong in some semi pornographic it's that true of today's degenerate standards it's it's pretty mild so but nevertheless nevertheless it's it's overtly sexual so who was the one who is the Savior who was the great Redeemer of Shira Shira it was none other than Rabbi Akiva Rabbi Akiva thought if all of the songs in the Tanakh are holy she Reshiram is the holiest of holy that's why it's Shira she rim the song above all songs because it is a metaphor it is a muscle yes it talks about a woman and her lover a shepherd and a princess but really it's the passionate love that Hashem has for the Jewish people and the passionate love that the Jewish people have for a sham and everything is allegorical everything is metaphorical and commentaries like Rashi go through exactly how you understand the metaphor so it uses the love relationship of God in the Jewish people is explained by the passionate love between a man and a woman that itself is actually very very significant so in the beginning of Jewish even the woman cries out to her lover ma che nyaka Rafa pull me after you let me along Naruto so we can run so the Zohar says ma che Nia Careca pull me refers to pestle no roots uh let us run together is Shavuos and says the bhava Tanya Pesach God had to drag us out like a sack of potatoes we weren't ready we really didn't earn it but he slept us but through severe ax and sheilas we have a certain reciprocity in which we run with God we've tried to work on ourselves we've earned it so to speak and that's much cleany acha acha no roots ax right and that is the idea of why Pesa is called Shabbos because it's something we didn't earn now based on this we can now understand why is the counting of the omer the day after Shabbos because that's the connotation Shabbos pisaq Shabbos is what God gave you without effort the counting of the Omer is the day after the next stage a new avodah you're no longer receiving your now earning and that's why it's the day after because it's a new different step in my row does Hashem right so in many many ways it's less dramatic we don't have a seder so to speak I said as Shibboleth seder or Sri rest on their Seder but that's the nature of of things when you have to internalize the great gifts that Hashem gives you there's a lot of laborious attention to detail that you have to pay you have to you have to go through life is not going to be a series of highs Hashem shows us the highs to give us a goal to work towards and they dream to have but then in the day to day there's often a lot of struggle right you you construct your life in increments in little bricks here and there but you have to have the vision of what you could become Pesach is that vision and severus armor and Shavuos is the implementation of that vision you know it's interesting that one of the men hug him of Claudius rails not add-in but it's a minute that's almost everybody does is when a bait when it when a when a boy is born when a Jewish boy is born so the Friday night before the bris we have a ceremony that's called Shalom's ahora we welcome the boy now among most Ashkenazic jewelry there is no official ceremony for a girl but among many spite him there was actually a ceremony for a girl as well it may not be Friday night it's called Zebedee BOTS to welcome a daughter so Sparta more a little more egalitarian in this way than Ashkenazim know a finnish Ganassi wants to make his Everett a bad there's no Israel about Oh Sofia you're allowed to do that as well but putting aside the distinction of boys and girls what is the you sewed what is the mcore what is the reason for the Shalom chakra so the post can give a very strange reason the Shailaja car is to comfort the child the child is in distress being born into this world and we want to comfort the baby that's why it's brought down by the way if mom and baby are in the hospital it's better to make the Shalom sucker in the hospital than to make it that's a dad is home and he's interesting I mean normally what people will make the show them sucker in the home but if the baby is not there you make the shows where the baby is now why does the baby need to be comforted what's so bad about this world because in the womb the baby was learning all the Torah from the mala and the baby knew all of the Torah but when the baby is born the mala hits the baby on the on the lip and the baby forgets everything but the baby knows that he forgot everything and the baby cries because the baby yearns for that connection with the Torah that no longer as so we comfort the baby that's why the traditional food of a Shalom Zohar our chickpeas because chickpeas are rounds or oval and they connote the idea just like an egg they can oddity of the cycle of time there are good times bad times but the bad times will become good times but what's the ultimate message the ultimate message to the baby is all of that Torah that you got for free is not really that significant what is really significant is what you get by your work and your effort and your commitment and therefore we're comforting you because what you're going to achieve by your work it's more beloved to SM than what was given to you as a freebie and therefore your relationship will be deeper now one might ask an opposite question so what is the purpose of the baby learning the Torah in the womb if the baby is going to forget it anyway what's the purpose the answer is it gets imprinted on his soul and you know there's a sense people say for example once you've learned to ride a bicycle you never forget it I have not tested the preposition I recently but I assume that that is the case there is something that becomes a part of you that even if in a conscious way you don't remember things it's still there Hashem imprinted his Torah on the soul of a Jewish person and therefore even though he forgets it when he encounters it once again there will be a shock of recognition and that is why we go through that process and by the way this is even true for Gaiman people ask the question oh well if a person was a non Jew who converted to Judaism when did they learn the Torah in the womb right they were in the womb of a non-jewish woman but once again it's brought down indifference difference for him okay this gets into the mystery of God knowing the future and free well it's really a bit of a conundrum but since God knows who's going to become again though as it were God sends angels to those the Showboat as well and they do absorb Torah again that's there that actually is philosophically quite a difficult idea because if because that would almost indicate a predetermination of who will be hey Jerr okay maybe we'll address that problem some other time but nevertheless this is the method based on the measured hokhmah once again why pay circle is called Shabbos and the difference between paisa and the process of spirits home ranch floors so anyway thank you and again now as you know I'll be away for the next two weeks I hope everyone will be well and we should see you God willing and then three weeks [Music]