Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: (Corrected Version) Seeing the Light in the Darkness

my baby [Music] thank you for coming and again Rabbi posting is still on his trip to the United States but uh we have the two errands who are ably helping arrange all of the Shoreham and thank you for keeping us going our dedications for tonight uh is for devorah Basra Moshe Rea Finkelstein again a a woman that was very influential in my life growing up in Hartford Connecticut Debbie Finkelstein dedicated by her son Ephraim and his wife Naomi Finkelstein again May her uh Baruch [Music] a refurbished Lima for Braya batrava khayam Arya Ben Rifka Hadas batsara and Khana badita Edo again should be refused Israel and once again we also have an anonymous donor so a Mr or Mrs Anonymous or Miss Anonymous we're very grateful thank you very much and all who support Torah should be blessed by Hashem for their support of Torah learning the Parsha we're reading today is actually a very very event-filled Parsha that covers quite a few years jakovino is running away from his brother Asaf and yaakov has two reasons why he's leaving Eric Israel one is a positive reason and one is a negative reason the positive reason is yaakov has to get married and since it was makubal in the family that you don't take a Canaanite wife so the same way that on the other on behalf of yitzrak had to go to kharan which is avram's family so too Yakov on his own yitzuk was not allowed to leave errors to sell yakub is Allah so yaakov has to go to find a wife and of course Jacob will marry rahalia villavazova and the second reason is yaakov has to get out of here because ASAP is planning on killing him if he can so then before she can say this is a little marumas in the first four words of the parisha Jacob yaakov leaves bear Sheva which is where youth was living and he went to kharan which means sometimes when you leave a place it's not so much important that you're leaving it's where you're going meaning sometimes the Iker the most important part of a trip is the destination and sometimes the most important part of the trip is where you're getting away from so by the terrorists saying yaakov left and Jacob is going that indicates that yaakov has two motives he has to leave Beersheba no matter where he'd go even if he'd go to China he has to leave Beersheba because of asaph Aran in order to find a wife and the terrorist emphasizing that with yaakovino this journey both has a purpose of yitzia where he's leaving from and the purpose of halika where he's going where he's going to now Rashi of course gives another dresser why does the Torah have to say yaakov left Beersheba we know from we know that Jacob is leaving if he's going to Quran and we know that he's leaving from Beersheba because that's where yes so Rashi gives a very very famous Russia from the medrish that it's not simply physical leaving but when I Sadiq when a righteous person leaves a Markham there is an impression there is a void there is a vacuum there's an emptiness that is that is uh can be created the glory the radiance of a makkaim is diminished when a righteous person leaves and that's what it means by yatese his presence or his absence so to speak was noticed and noted but be it as it may it is brought down that before Jacob went to Quran he took a 14-year detour that is not explicitly discussed in the Torah 14 years until he got to haran and what did he do in those 14 years he went to Yeshiva what Yeshiva did he go to this is called the Yeshiva of Shame and Behavior now shame is of course Noah's son shame is no longer alive Ava is the great grandson in fact Ava is an ancestor of avram so in a sense uh yaakov is learning by a great great great grandfather and there was a Yeshiva of Shame Behavior now what did you learn what was the curriculum in the Yeshiva of Shame Behavior I mean there was no Hamish there certainly was no Gomorrah right that they didn't learn remember keep Hagar or or whatever or ramban or anything like that what was the curriculum and and and moreover shame and Aver are technically not Jewish they're righteous they're not Claudia through so it's interesting we don't really know what the curriculum of Shane Vie ever was at a minimum it was halachic analysis of the seven Commandments of Noah but probably the dominant aspect was what would what you would call Pure spirituality and perhaps it was connected to mysticism Kabbalah meditative States prophecy ruach an interesting alternative to the standard Yeshiva curriculum today uh people often complain that at least the Yeshiva curriculum a lot less so for the girls schools but they complained at the Yeshiva curriculum is too weighted towards technical analyzes that are found in the talmud and not enough time is devoted to what you might call spirituality in fact it's a funny thing a person comes to you I mean I get we see this North America all the time a person without any Yeshiva background comes to Yeshiva so they expect that they will be learning the purpose of life and the nature of reality and uh you know why did God make man you know the important questions so they come in and they sit down and the talmud has the answers to all of these questions which it actually does but not in an explicit way so much and all of a sudden they start opening up something at a whole discussion about what happens when a chicken lays an egg on younger you know is it muksa or two people that are grabbing onto a Talus and each one is saying it's mine and how do we divide the talus or the different ways that you betroth a woman or divorce a woman and like this doesn't answer any of life's questions this doesn't answer like why am I here and what's reality and at first glance a person for a while is really disoriented because all of this so if you're like a legal mind if you enjoy legal logical analyzes so you'll love it even though it's not overtly spiritual but you love the give and take of you know the different opinions right it's intellectually very engrossing at least for a certain type of intelligence not not for everybody either but on on the intellectual level it can be very very engrossing and very fascinating but at least explicitly it does not have a spiritual content that much in reality because Torah is the essence of God's will no matter how you connect to it you are connected to God and that that's essentially the theological Foundation that no matter what you learn in Torah you can become a more Godly person somehow it's not it cannot be rationally explained but it's based on the notion of the Torah being an indivisible home but the point I'm making is that shame Behavior which did not have all of this legalism that we have in the structure they probably directly concentrated on spirituality and so it would have resembled a Kabbalah Yeshiva as it were rather than a mainstream Yeshiva now the question that people ask is the following by the time yaakov was running away because he took the brachos that were intended to ASAP when we discussed that last week yaakov and ASA they're not youngsters anymore they are 63 years old that means for 63 years yaakov was in the Holy environment of Rifka and for the first 15 years avrah mavina was still alive was absorbing Torah learning whatever that meant for decades and decades and decades finally when he's 63 he has to leave so he needs a 14-year detour in Yeshiva of Shame be ever went for 63 years he was in an environment of holiness and Torah study what exactly did he gain in the Yeshiva of Shame Behavior that he didn't gain in the Yeshiva of yes Sarah and Sarah and drift Sarah footner has a very very interesting point he says there is the Torah of Eric Israel and there is the Torah of golus for the first 63 years of his life yaakovino was zohra to be in Eric Israel and he absorbed from avram and from yitzrak and from Sora and from rivka in your name of kadusha purity but the thing is golos has challenges of its own because he's going to a place where there's no caducea he's going to a place where there aren't other groups of people who are of the Hashem where everybody are pagans and Idol worshipers and their standard of morality is not great now of ram avino himself had lived in an environment like that but you have to understand by the time yaakov came on the scene Abram and yet maintained some of this had large communities of monotheistic people that I've run with makave so yes but yaakov as it were grew up we might say in a from society yaakov grew up in a God again there were a lot of people that weren't God-fearing but yaakov grew up in a God-fearing Society yaakov grew up with Role Models yaakov grew up with people he could emulate people he could connect to but now he's going to be alone now he is going to be the only one where will he get the courage where will he get the wherewithal to be able to survive a hostile immoral environment where there are not going to be other Jews or they're people other people I should say who believe in Hashem and keep the Torah that's where the Yeshiva of Shame Behavior comes in shame who's actually not alive anymore but shame grew up in precisely that environment shame grew up in the generation of the flood where the whole world was corrupt except for and his family shame knew what it was like to be the only family in the world that was God-fearing and God obedience and although shame is no longer alive shame transmitted to his children and to his Yeshiva how to remain righteous when you live in a world of evil and that was something that Jacob could not get from his own father yet and therefore before yaakov can start the Galas of the 20 years that he winds up spending in loveland's house he needed to prepare himself for that challenge and those were the 14 years that yaakov spent in the Yeshiva of Shame and Aver how to survive when no one around you shares your morals and your belief system again we have to think about how extraordinary Noah must have been sometimes we talk about oh no it was not as great as Ibraham Etc and that's what the sower says but imagine what it takes to be the only one the only one in microcosity we actually sometimes see that I mean I know in the United States uh you know for a while I was teaching in um University of Illinois Law School Champaign Urbana and in those days this was the early 1980s a while ago Champaign Urbana didn't even have a Chabad house there was no Orthodox Presence at all in Champaign-Urbana in fact I was I used to commute from Chicago the perfect still I still shudder because I commuted on these tiny commuter airplanes Brit Airways and Chicago has pretty uh windy Winters Windy City so the airplane would be shaking it was only like a 45 minute flight but you know I was scared to death every every single single time on pretty Airways so at one point we had just got married so my wife and I were thinking about moving to Champaign Urbana but there wasn't there wasn't Jamaica there wasn't to make for it really couldn't there really couldn't I couldn't do it but in Champaign Urbana where there was no Orthodox Presence at all there happened to be two shomar Chavez families one I had old boys and the other had all girls one had you know I used to Easter alternate when I would be in Champaign for two nights a week I would alternate among the two people two families one was always Milkshake the other was always life it was interesting like it was like one was a computer science Professor so he was making a lot of money with contracts so the house was very very fancy the other was a Classics Professor which was so underfunded uh that he didn't even have his own phone in the University they had the department had to share a phone you know and they're like that was like two opposite things but it was amazing that you know there was no minion but these were two families who remained shelmer Shabbos and he was very beautiful I remember when I stayed particularly at the The House of the people that had the boys that every night or at least the nights I was there the father would sit and learn Torah with his sons at night who went to public school and I was thinking to myself you know of course you know we want to send our kids to yeshivas and everything else but this is a literal fulfillment of vishinance you know my father should teach us and this is exactly what it was father sits down and teaches his children tell him and the three boys remained from one of them actually became a rabbi Etc so uh it reminds me a little bit of that environment that even when nobody around you is keeping mitzvahs you still keep the mitzvos no matter what of course that painter Banner was not an evil environment it was very very nice people there even if they weren't religious or Jewish but still there was not a lot of Hawaii Judaism in that place now I mean it's not it's not a it's not a rainy City but but now they have a Chabad house Etc they have more of an orthodox presence and stable mignonim I don't know if they haven't I think they may even have a make for at least to make this nearby but when I was there they didn't have any of those any of those things okay so beat us at me uh the password tells us but that yaakov encountered the play a place and he decided to rest there for the night because the sun went down Rashi brings that the sun went down suddenly in other words God wanted him to stop at that place it wasn't his natural place he would have kept on traveling but there was a certain place that God wanted him to stop so how does God make him stop God makes it Nightfall the sun sets a few hours early so yaakov has to stop and yaakov has a dream and this is the wonderful dream of the latter of the angels of God going up the ladder and down the ladder and God promises yaakov imagine how frightened Jacob is of the whole experience he's going to go through and that he's running away from ASAP God tells yaakov I am I will be with you I will protect you and I will bring you back to this land you will be coming up you will be coming back and yaakov wakes up in astonishment and yaakov said I didn't know that there was God in this place I didn't know and Jacob made a vow Etc that if God will fulfill all of these promises he will give Hashem Maser this is the origin we'll give it to him ten percent of all that he has again it's a beautiful powerful scene it's the reminder that in that Darkness There's Hope but I want to go back a little bit when the plastic says he encountered the place because the sun went down says the word encounter is a word that means prayer yaakov stopped to Daven and gazal teach us avram avinu enacted the practice of praying to God in the morning that we call chakras enacted the practice of praying to Hashem in the afternoon that we call him and it was yaakov who enacted the practice of praying to Hashem at night that we call arvit or marif added and yaakov added my roof now a little bit of clarification when we say that the ovos enacted the three prayers we certainly do not mean that the text of the amida that we recite was composed by the of us the text of the amida dates from the beginning of the second temple and it's from the men of the great assembly the answer canesasola and even after that it underwent revision so for example if Shimon ezrae prays for the restoration of the temple that obviously was not even written by the object of Dola because they were alive during the second temple so the amida was initially written by then and then it was revised to take account of the destruction of the base so we don't mean that the ofice wrote the nusak of the amida rather the OVO simply enacted that every Jew should pray to God morning afternoon and night and that prayer could be as long or as short as you want to make it in your own words and only later there developed an idea of standardized prayer as the rambam says because not everybody is capable of composing their own prayers now here is the problem so on one hand we say avram enacted chakrath yes that's komari number one number two is that the myriv prayer is considered to be optional meaning to say chakras is mandatory is mandatory Arvid is said to be optional now today it's mandatory because it's a Min hug at least among men women actually usually don't govern my roof but for men it's considered uh mandatory because it was a minhog that people accepted so it becomes mandatory but in its Inception my riff was an optional prayer so the question is how do you reconcile these two teachings if avram's prayer is mandatory chakras and yitzhak's prayer is mandatory why should the prayer of yaakovino be inferior less important than the prayer of avrahman in many ways we actually know although we don't like to rank people that yaakov is considered to be the greatest of the Patriarchs why is that so because avram had a yitzuk and a Ishmael that was excluded and yes and ASA was excluded it's only yaakov avinu all of whose children are part of I'm Israel that's called me all of his progeny are within the nation of Israel moreover on the Divine Throne of God the Divine Chariot that is portrayed in the first peric of Ezekiel so it mentions there are four faces there is the face of a lion and the face of an eagle and the face of an ox and the face of a human these are very deep meanings but hazal tell us that the face of the human being that is an Hashem Celestial throne is the face of yaakovino the ideal person and to use another metaphor that is brought down in svarn but I think it actually has a secular origin that yaakov there's not a who stands on the shoulders of giants can see further than the Giant now Jacob is not a Jacob is a giant on top of a giant but in a sense part of why he'll be greater than avram and yitra is because that in addition to his stature he is standing on their shoulders even a on top of a giant sees more than a giant a giant on top of a giant surely sees much more than the Giant so the question is why should yaakov's prayer be optional if yaakov is considered to be the greatest of the others so let me first give you a technical answer from the great safer the pine yahushua Yoshua was the rav of Frankfurt around 300 years ago and he wrote a safer of much of the talmud that's still considered to be a very classic work interesting story about Japanese sure rights in the hakadama in his introduction that he was caught in a fire he was in a courtyard in Frankfurt and the courtyard was wooden this was a common problem in Europe that these were these wooden Courtyards these wooden buildings if you ever go to the diaspora Museum in in near Tel Aviv was a ramatka and beta fusot and they have dioramas of Shoals and Courtyards you'll see these wooden courtyards and he was caught in a fire and he had no Avenue of Escape he had no way out all the entrances were burning they were blocked and he made a Netter he made a vow to God that if God would give him life and give him a second chance he would devote the rest of his life through writing a book that would try to answer all of the questions that tosfos asks on Rashi ptosis always asked questions on arashi he would try to explain Rashi and defend Russian writes all of a sudden a blocked entrance there were logs burning in front of a door there seemed they cleared away they moved away and he was able to and he escaped miraculously and he was determined to fulfill his vow but he didn't want to write a single kiddish a single uh Innovative thought on the talmud until he learned the whole atonement over and over again we didn't want to write on bracos because maybe there was something in neither that contradicted it so it is said he learned shots 36 times until he set pen to paper but I had learned talks before that anyway but he did 36 times and then he felt he was ready to write now you can see why the paneer show is so authoritative because the author refused to even write anything until he you know we have today in yeshivas people want to ride a safer they learn one block of gemara and they want to write their original observations well okay which is actually which is good I don't want to discourage that either but the point is the financial didn't want to write a single thing until he had learned all of Chess 36 36 times so the potato Chua gives a very very interesting answer I told you only one half of the gemara I told you that avram did chakras and yes and the origin of the three filos are because of the avos avra mitsakanyakov but you know there's another view another view in the gemara that the origin of the three filos is not because of the of us but the origin of the three filos is a replacement for the sacrificial cycle in the basal miknash because now that we don't have corbinos our prayers take the place of corbinos so in the morning there was a daily offering of a lamb a burnt offering on the altar chakras is of the morning in the afternoon there was another Corban tamid a daily offering and that's minha so chakras ishakar which is afternoon Now what is my riff Connecticut now in truth there were no carbonos that were brought at night the corbanas are never brought at night but the thing is if there's any leftover fats or limbs that were not let's say from the morning offering or from the afternoon offerings and other offerings that were brought during the day not everything was consumed so you burned them overnight now the peninsua says and that's my riff so my Riv is corresponds to what's called Hector the burning of fats and limbs that were not consumed in the course of the day now the paneer show says very beautifully understands that the prayers correspond to the sacrificial cycle you can understand why Arvid would be optional chakra is mandatory because the carbon tamid is mandatory mind is mandatory because the carbon timid of the afternoon is mandatory but the burning of the leftover fats is not mandatory because if there were no leftovers you didn't have to burn anything so the visual says the following since it is a Mach Locus in the gemara if the prayers are because of the others or the prayers are because of the corvanos the statement that our Vic is optional is only following The View that the prayers are because of the carbonos but like the opinion that says the prayer is because of the others our vet would be just as mandatory that's chakra that's where the play issue says now that's a very good answer in the gemara because I could actually say that this statement in the gemara that our vit is optional is following the opinion that the philos are because of the corbanos in the gamara it works but where it doesn't work and this brings us back to square one is in the rambam's opinion because the ramban tells us in hilkas malachim that the three filos come from the others avram the chakras did Arvid and at the same time the rambam also poskins that Arvid is optional except for the fact that it became a minhook that was accepted so now you're back to square one and that is if indeed yaakov is the origin of Arvid then why should Jacob's prayer be inferior prayer of avraham and yet in other words the play yeshua's answer does not work in explaining the the rambam so this brings me to a second answer and the second answer is one of the greatest Hasidic thinkers rep sadak I often mention him repsada Cohen of Lublin I think Russ died in the year 1900 so he essentially he was a 19th century a person who died at the very beginning of the 20th century and uh rev sadok was not born into a hasilisha family where Sarah became almost a converted cousin so to speak but even as a young man he was an extraordinarily brilliant person he had mastered talmud and Kabbalah at a very young age then at some point he became accustomed in fact there's a whole story about how he became he was so brilliant and as sometimes brilliant people may have a certain aspect of wanting to show off a little bit so he would be traveling to different cities to talk to the rabbis who are much older than him the kind of show them that they weren't as learned as they thought they were because he could usually beat anybody in an argument and at one point he wandered into a casino of the ishpitzer the ishpit sir publicized the answer was that I see that she would be a very deep thinker and the ishwister was speaking sudashilishid and you know the casino were listening but you know some of them were probably falling asleep because you know this is the review they heard every week but Jeff was transfixed and in the middle of the ishwasher speech I think I've said it was like 18 or 20 it was he was a young man all of a sudden he started screaming in the middle he was grabbing his head he said all I am is a brain all I am is her head I want to be a person I want to have a heart but then he said my heart is on fire now doesn't anyone see the fire he started like screaming people thought he was crazy this was a real transformation of rev Southern and he became a very devoted of the ishma now the issues but in pure learning Republic may have been more learned but he was mavatel himself to the yesterday like for 30 years would not even speak in public he would just listen he was very honored he was like an elder but he was like you know he didn't he didn't speak the interesting dog eventually and there was some question as to who would take over and there were different succession issues but at some point south became the successor to The Experts here for a few years uh now even interrupts other silent years he was silent in terms of not speaking but he was always writing he wrote wrote wrote wrote he had many many things many thoughts he wrote them they were not published necessarily they were published after his death but we have many many beautiful beautiful deep profound books of reps other and what is so unique about rough Southern is exactly what this story shows his swarim are pitched at a very very high intellectual level a level that combines Gamora and madrish and Kabbalah and so are he mastered everything very very high level but at the same time there's a deep deep emotional passion that suffuses his works you know you don't always have that combination you know there are some of them that are intellectually you know very very good but they're intellectual you know they're they're kind of dry I mean they're intellectual but there's not a passion or an emotion and then you have you know rah-rah you know inspirational books that are stir up the crowds they don't necessarily have a lot of depth to them rev saddock is a combination of the two now that does make it very hard I mean if subject is not popular reading so to speak and that is why English translations have not really been that successful because it's very difficult to adapt even a book of that complexity but here's the thought of repsetric and his thought is the following again what's the question the question is why would our vids be optional if it is the prayer of jakovino so he says you know when you think about the three prayers on one level they're all the same because the Ami does exactly the same we say the same on me the three types but he makes the point that even though the words you're saying are the same the meaning of the amida in chakras is not the same emotional idea as the amida of and the Amita of Mitra is not the same as the media varvid externally you're doing the same thing but the emotional valence that you bring to the prayer is supposed to be very very different now to some degree I just want to say that we've lost that sense a little bit partially because of electricity right somebody once said that the interstate highway system ruins the inner cities of the United States whatever that's a sort of destroyed neighborhoods Etc and one can also say that the electric lights ruined the mystery of the night the night had a certain symbolic meaning that you know now we have we don't have a difference in night and day right the lights are on all the time there are actually books about this even secular books about like the history of night that the meaning of night has changed a lot in modern society so let's look at the three prayers the ideal time to Davin chakras although it's kosher later is with the crack of Sunrise meaning you start that's called rasikan you start you're dominating Before Sunrise but you hit the Shmoney aslay with the rise of the sun uh it's as if to say you're joining the nature like you look at Sunrise as the sun is coming to praise God and bring a new day and I join myself with the Sun in worshiping Hashem I've always had a little bit of a complaint because the way of us seeking work today we're so disassociated from natural world that the sense of wonder of the Sunrise it's kind of lost on us who instead if you go to a vasecon minion they're not looking at the sun they're looking at the atomic clock the clock Sunrise is 5 53 and uh whatever it is and uh 31 seconds and you know so if it's only 5 33 and and and 15 seconds so the cousin has to go so yes so here's exactly I know this myself one time I don't have investiga normally but one time my father's uh at every father's yard site and I had to go to a vasekan minion and like I was 20 seconds late I was 20 seconds after the official Sunrise as measured by the clock and they told me I couldn't have it there anymore that's causing him at least now if you think about this obviously in the time of the Gomorrah and certainly the time of the Tana they didn't have clock they were looking at Sunrise so they weren't focusing on things through the exact second the whole fixation with the exact second is artificial but more than that I think it actually takes away the spiritual meaning of us again when a day begins I'm filled with wonder I'm filled with awe and a new beginning and I pray to God connecting myself to that new beginning so he says chocolates what is the emotional background of chocolate it is one of gratitude hope optimism premise a new day is beginning it is the prayer of joy and gratitude you know it's almost instinctive in human nature I mean maybe we get depressed like five seconds later but the start of a new day even if the you know the night was bad the day before it was bad there is this feeling of Hope the birds singing now again once we become consciously aware of our difficulties we sometimes lose that Joy kind of right away but at least initially there's this idea something new is happening through a southern class chakras is the prayer of gratitude appreciation and joy in God's creation and that is the prayer of avraham because we know that avram exemplified that the attribute of loving kindness but here is the twist why did avraham exemplify in his life the accurate of loving kindness because that is the way he perceived God he perceived God as a god of kindness benevolence compassion goodness this is what he saw he didn't deny the fact that there is suffering but the point is overall he saw a world of goodness and kindness and therefore he emulated God the way he understood God by the way that's why the Arcada said to me the trial of avra more than yet because it challenged avram's whole conception of who God was it wasn't only the Superhuman difficulty of being told to kill your son I mean that's hard enough but there was something even more than that it threw him in disarray as to what is the nature of God and of course at the end God said he didn't want that sacrifice so things got answered in that way so chakras prayer of gratitude and Hope so now we come to mind oh yes and avram's life was that way as well because although avram had all these tests but at the end of the day when avram was a hundred and he had a son gets even Ishmael the so-called bad son did shuva and came back to him and avram was respected and admired and he brought many many people together with Sarah and yes he lost his beloved wife Zara but she was after all 127 they had many many years together and she lived seven years beyond the 120 years so avram saw a life of fulfillment a life of completeness a life of closure that's why it says God blessed avram with everything buckle we now come to mind so repsetic says again I'm paraphrasing a little bit if chakras is the prayer of gratitude and joy is the prayer of panic when you feel things are beginning to slip away imagine just as the ideal time for Mitra for chakras is when the Sun rises the ideal time for minha is before the sun sets but as the Sun is setting we you can definitely earlier than that but ideally when you see the Shadows of the evening the night is coming so Mr represents panic in a number of different psychological ways first of all the coming of the night used to be a time of panic not so much today if you're a farmer your work has to stop at night there was no way of continuing your work I think if you use a modern example although it's arbitrary there's no reason for them to stop automatically you know the New York Stock Exchange always closes at five although they don't have to but they do so if you ever see pictures of the trading floor as they're approaching five o'clock there's a gigantic clock and it's one minute to five they are running around like chickens without a head they are screaming and yelling because they have to get it in because once it's five o'clock no more deals that way so the night is coming it's a time of Panic it's still daytime but things are slipping away now the time of mental is a time of panic you know if you're in the working room okay so when Eric just threw out one of the nice things about Eric Israel is that it's not embarrassing to dive in the street if you have to yeah if I'm caught in the middle of a street I have the government I'm not near a shoulder whatever reason usually you're near a show anyway but I'll definitely music on the street uh even the Kilani knows what I'm doing I mean it's not going to be uh you know I'm not going to look strange but if you're in the United States or any other country so chakrish you can usually Dive In usually not a before you go to work and our vet you can dive in when you come home it's always the middle of the day you've got to figure out where you're going to dive in see if you have a private office okay that's one thing a lot of people don't have private offices cubicles or whatever whatever it is so you're at meetings and you're looking you know the Sun is setting like what do you do with minha in fact there's no joke that what is the definition of a relaxed Jew a relaxed Jew is that you're not flacic and you're driving you have like you know there's no worry in the world so I'm not for like I said can't I dive in America like you know life is good no that's the idea but until you die with or if you're flacic and you can't have ice cream for six hours you know there's anxieties there right so in fact in the days before cell phones when they used to have phone booths I don't know if they even have phone booths anymore so if you'd be in Penn Station in New York around medical time and they had like 10 phone booths you would see every Booth is occupied by but what I know at least would be an orthodox Jew wearing a hat or something and they were embarrassed to dive in so they'd pick up the phone and make believe they were having a conversation with god which is a good way of describing prayer and that's how the government and sometimes it was taking too long and people would be banging on the phone bills get out of here you know stop the call already you know other people are in line and and they're like of course I'd like to say that when you uh pray to God from New York it's a lot it is a long distance call uh here it's a local Co you know maybe it's better the phone is a good metaphor actually in that way so Mitra is panic but spiritually it represents the idea of a person who still experiences the blessings of God but things are beginning to slip away and you ask God please let me hold on to your light a little bit longer rep sudok says that is exactly the prayer of lived in a rich Israel yet was wealthy yeah was successful but the Shadows Of Darkness were beginning to come remember the 400 years of Exile that were decreed in avram's Covenant of the parts they begin from the birth of was given Petty harassment was people were telling you it's like you don't belong here the wells that he had they filled up the idea is you don't really belong I think sometimes of how the Jews in Germany were uh 1933 34 the very very early years of Hitler when Hitler didn't yet make concentration camps and Jews still had businesses but there was a real sense you don't belong here we don't want you here took felt that way even in Eric Israel so chakras is the prayer of gratitude and joy minha is the prayer of panic and Desperation but now we come to my River unlike chakras and Mishra chakras is prayed at the beginning of the day and minhrez prayed as the day is ending and the Sun is going down myrath is prayed when it's totally dark my river is the prayer of Darkness chakras is joy and gratitude and mentally Hispanic my riff is the prayer of emuna the prayer of faith emuna is what sustains me even when I'm in total darkness it is the prayer of the person that says that even if my life is dark even if I've hit bottom I trust in God's goodness and God's compassion to get me through this that is uniquely the prayer of yaakovino and that is why yaakov is diving in the dark yakovina was 63 years old he's not yet married not married he is leaving Eric Israel he is leaving his holy father and mother he thinks he will never see them again in reality Yitzhak lives much longer than everyone thought so he will see us again but he'll never see Rifka again he's leaving Eric Israel he's leaving the spiritual home of Youth look at Rifka he thinks she'll never see his parents again according to the Madrid Khalifa is the son of Aesop took away all of his wealth so yaakov has no possessions no children no wife he is running away for his life and what's worse is from his perspective he's leaving the frying pan of asaph and he's running into the fire of loving because if ASAP is threatening him physically yaakov is deathly afraid that love ones dishonest the interception will destroy him and his family spiritually so yaakov has nothing and there's no open again I want to point out you may ask me well what what about the Glorious Vision no no no no no no the Glorious vision of the latter was after he prayed this was God's answer to his prayer when it says yaakov saw nothing so yaakov's prayer is the prayer of amuna and Muna is what you have when you have nothing else but amuna is all you need to have when you have nothing else now the risk rev used to say of course he wasn't taking account of inflation he says if you have fifty thousand dollars in the bank you don't need a Muna of course fifty thousand isn't as much as it used to be but so let's make it a million if you have a million dollars in the bank you know that's not in Moonah moon is when you have nothing in the bank but you're my man so my ref is the prayer of faith that even in the Darkness God is with me he will sustain me he will protect me this is the prayer of yaakov that's why in the morning after the Shema of the morning we talk about Ahmet fiatsif God's truth stands up firm because the morning of Life represents the joyous moments where I see hashem's presence I see hashem's but Knight represents the night time of life where Hashem is concealed and I don't feel the presence of Hashem and I feel abandoned and I feel lost and I feel scared but what I have is the moon and so in the creation of night Ms via Muna I affirm God's truth with the ammuna that I have right and Muna at night yatsuf standing up firmly and clearly in the day so now RAF says with this basic understanding he turns things on their head what was our question if chakras is mandatory and mint is mandatory which is avra manitra why would yaakov's prayer be optional so here's what just says the question is assuming that if something is optional it is somehow inferior it's only optional in reality it's the opposite of the case anything that's mandatory means it's a madrega that even a 13 year old boy or a 12 year old girl could do it's called davara Chavez anybody can do it so when it comes to chakras which is gratitude every Jewish person every human being is expected to be grateful for the good things Hashem has given you even animals are grateful says the ox knows the one who acquires it was by love and the donkey appreciates the trough of the one who puts in food there is among dog psychologists uh do dogs feel gratitude or they just show gratitude because they know they'll get favors that the cynical attitude right dogs show gratitude for sure they're happy to see you they love you they're excited they appreciate what you give them but my glocus some say they genuinely have that emotion others say dogs are so smart that they know that if they sh act as if they're happy to see you they'll get good things I prefer not to be cynical about dogs so I'm going to assume that a dog genuinely feels love and gratitude for all the affection and treats that you showed so grad she is mandatory because basic gratitude she should have minha two there's an old saying there are no atheists and foxholes meaning when things should be slipping away and you're panicky you turn to God so the requirement of chakras and Mantra is because the emotional state they represent is accessible to even an average person but myth is more Sublime my rev represents a madrega of faith in Hashem even when everything has been taken away from you faith in Hashem in the concentration camps in the darkness of Auschwitz not everybody can live on that level meaning it's a optionality if there's such a word means it's a level that we aspire to but it can't be a level that's absolutely required so if sudok's twist here is a very interesting twist that the optionality of Arvid is not based on its inferiority but on the basis that it represents a spiritual level that is deeper and more profound than that of chakras and Mitra the prayer of emuna prayer of faith as Eve who suffered tremendously in the Book of Job Eve says even if God were to kill me I will have hope in him I will have faith in him I believe those words in the English translation whatever I don't remember the King James exact words I think Bach said in one of us musical compositions those particular words were set to such a religious music though he slay me I shall yet hope in him I think that's the King James translation of those words and the Supreme Casino I don't think sotherick says it but it's a well-known Casino board that this is referring to in Miss Mart Sadiq base which is the the song of Shabbos in the mornings I declare your loving kindness foreign and your faith in night so the secret has to say the mornings refer to the mornings of your life not just the physical morning there are part times of Our Lives which are mornings Joy accomplishments my person gets married a person has children and you have Milestones professional success learning success whatever it is those are the mornings of your life and in the mornings of my life the Boke air I declare your loving kindness but then there are times of life that are called Layla dark moments confusing moments frightening moments lonely moments I don't know where to go I don't feel Hashem with I feel rejected those are the nights says in those nights I can't automatically say I see your head but meaning my faith in you my faith in you I will say I will feel even in the night that is the great lesson that jakovino teaches us and this is the great symbolic meaning of the mind of Prayer perhaps it's no accident that precious normally is shortly before Hanukkah you know we're in the month of Kiss Labor Ready of course shortly before is a relative term but you know we are approaching Hanukkah because too represents the Triumph of light over the darkness uh there's Darkness the whole struggle against the oven is called Darkness and Hanukkah reminds us that even in that Darkness there can be a light of Hashem that endures and strengthens us in our adversity but sometimes that light is not going to be visible the Zohar has an expression but Cena de cardenasa which literally means the black light now how can light be black so the Zoar makes the point that we like to say there's light at the end of the tunnel the Zoar says there's something deeper than that there is light in the darkness of the tunnel but we're not able to see that light and Muna is like putting on infrared goggles or special goggles that allow you to see certain frequencies of life that you otherwise would not be able to see and Muna are those glasses to see not just the light at the end but the light even Within the tunnel itself so again thank you for coming [Music]