Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: Developing a Sense of Gratitude and Appreciation

[Music] okay again i apologize for being a little late sometimes the uh i leave late and sometimes the traffic holds me up and sometimes there's a combination of both things all at once so i apologize uh today's uh tonight's share is dedicated for a foolish leima for bria baskaba i may she have a refuge lamer batok chocolate israel and for the aliyah shama of svee bin abhram halevi and ariela malka batayakov and miriam fine allah shalom the mother of ramifine which is the art said is going to be next week again from me is a good friend who gives wonderful humisiorim of his own and then we have another anonymous contribution once again the same donor and thank you mr or mrs anonymous we very much appreciate your generosity and finally ibanez still in the middle of its fundraising campaign to distribute charity uh to needy families for the upcoming and those who wish to participate can contribute to the link below in the youtube description box around the banner website and uh all of who contributed stuck and particularly as we approach and we enter the montavelo where god is going to be judging us on rosh hashanah tell us of course shubhaz filutsthaka chuva and prayer and sadaka mavira nisro huxera they can mitigate or eliminate any type of negative or evil decree so all of us really want to be extra meticulous in giving stakka and then doing khased and even as indeed a very very worthy cause i wanted to talk about two things tonight i'm not sure i'll get to both of them one is on this week's parsha and the other was connected to the seven of terrorists of comfort uh let me start with this week's parsha i'll just talk a little uh speed me up to uh double double the speed and then i'll get everything i'll get everything in the first thing is that we know that uh the mitzvah of benching after you eat is derived from a passage in this parsha moshe bainu tells us in the name of god the akholtav when you eat and you're satisfied you shall bless hashem because of the good land that he's given to you this is actually not just a general idea of blessing god this is a specific reference to a mitzvah to bless hashem after we eat food and that is why birkat hamazon is considered to be a mitzvah the ariza now there are a few important qualifications to keep in mind i just mentioned a few of them first of all even though the torah does mandate that we bless hashem at least after eating bread the torah does not give you a text for that benching meaning as far as the torah is concerned you could say whatever you want to say to hashem and that would be sufficient the nusa of birkat tamazon in fact is a later innovation although it might be quite early the gemara tells us for example that the different blessings of were composed at different times the first blessing of hazara saqal that god gives us sustenance was composed by moshe rabbenu to commemorate the falling of the man the second bracha which thanks hashem for eric israel was composed by yahushua binnun at the time that we entered the land of israel the third blessing which asks hashem to have compassion for yushalayim and the basa mikdash was part partly written by david before there was a base of miknash and it was augmented by after there was a base of mikdash now it's clear though that obviously david and did not write the barakah the way we have it today because today it talks about rebuilding the basal mitosis which you know if they had it they had it so originally it was not a prayer for the rebuilding of the mikdash but for the protection and maintenance of the mikdash it then got uh revised when historical circumstances changed right so bracha number one is moshe for the month of number two is eric israel yoshua benue number three yusholayim and basa miktus david and bracha number four was added late and we talked about this last week this was the bracha that was added in the aftermath of the awful terrifying beta massacre in the year 135 when the barcokema revolt was ruthlessly crushed by hadrian and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people were were killed were massacred and hadrian did not even allow the bodies to be buried he wanted them to decompose and putrefy but a miracle happened that the bodies did not decompose and three years and a week meaning the 50 from ninth above to the fifteenth above three years later hadrian finally realized he wasn't gonna he wasn't be making any points here because nothing was happening to the bodies there was a miracle he he permitted the bodies to be buried and that is one of the simras we mentioned last week why the 15th of became a very festive occasion and ghazal added the fourth blessing hatov fahrmativ that god is good because the bodies did not decompose the native he does good that we but we were permitted to bury those bodies now it's interesting if you look at these four broncos and that is the end of benching now the harachamans that we say after all is technically not part of benching at all and this is the they were added there's not in the gemara it was added in the time of the gaonim and it continually expands even today people occasionally add new harahumans we should get together with binay ishmael whatever it is there are a lot of different editions that people put in but technically it is not part of benching and this is the basis of the well-known halacha that kids like so much that you're allowed to talk in the harahamas it happens to be true i mean you're not supposed to stomp talk but it is true that you're no longer in birkat tamazon that is why when you bench with a coast of yayan and you're supposed to hold the cup of wine as you bench when you say the olam al-hasreno which is the end of you put the cup down that the vilna go now the only gun is often misquoted people often like i've done this myself people often quote the ville nagona as saying that you don't say the harahama's inventing that that is actually not true the villenegon did say the harahamas but he took the position that you do not say the harachamans on shabbos because since they are not an official part of benching and you're simply asking hashem for different things you're normally not allowed to ask hashem for parnassa or the like on shabbos and therefore the bill nagan took the position you do not say the harahamas and shabbos however it is true that as a result of this idea of the villenegon there are some yeshivos which actually had the practice of not saying harakaman even during the week this may have been the practice in slovakia and europe i don't know for sure but i believe it was the practice in haiyan berlin and they give a reason which i always found a little unconvincing of beetle torah they don't want to take the boys away from learning torah so as a result the few minutes of time that it says that it takes to te the harahamas could be spent learning so let's simply cut it out you know it frankly does not make a lot of sense to me for the following reason if the ville nagon were to say that i'm not going to say the harahamas because of bitter terror that would make sense because the vilma gown actually did measure his bittle torah in terms of minutes so if you're a person that says gee i'm i don't want to be mavato you know five minutes of torah okay that's that's a question but people will go out for pizza or people who go out for all sorts of things but when it comes to burka tomozo oh no i'm not going to waste my time you know learning is more important you know i don't know okay it doesn't sound right to me but nevertheless there was uh such a meaning of the harahamas now if you factor out the harahamas which were added later and we simply look at the four blessings of birkat tamazan you actually see a very very interesting pattern is about hakara satov gratitude to hashem and if you look you're you have ascending levels of gratitude from the most obvious to the least obvious the most obvious source of gratitude is when hashem does for me an open obvious supernatural miracle in which i can't deny the benevolence of god that's the first brahma talking about the man the man clearly comes from hashem there's no other explanation for it so baraka number one is hakara satov for the miracles of life in which god's presence cannot be denied the second bracha is a little less obvious because in eric israel we don't get them on we have to plant our fields we have to harvest we have to invest we have to build cities we have to create economies a person might be misled into thinking hey it's not god that gave me all of this it's my effort my work my aveda so the second barakah teaches us don't only thank god for the supernatural and miraculous but remember that even in your normal day-to-day activities without hashem there would be no hath like you're building progressive layers of gratitude the third the way which the way it's presently constituted deals with corbon bay san miguel angolas reminds us that even in times of persecution and exile we have to be grateful for what hashem gives us even when we're not in our lands we don't have a basement we don't have mashiach the fourth is the highest level of a carissa type because it's really really striking the baton massacre was a tragedy a tragedy somewhat equivalent to the holocaust itself a tragedy and yet ghazal are telling me that even in the most tragic devastating moments of jewish history or in our personal life try to see the ray of light try to see the silver lining harugae beta they found something to be grateful for that's a very powerful lesson as we go through in our own personal lives we go through challenges we go through struggles but try to see the goodness even in those difficulties that from those difficulties there are things that we gain there are gifts that we acquire they are awful gifts in the sense of being gifts that are so hard to take in but they're there if you look at it so birkat amazon can be seen as a primer to be mechanicas to train us in increasing levels of gratitude as we go through life ranging from the miraculous supernatural obvious to even seeing god's redemptive light in the tragedies and adversities of human existence the zoar has an evocative expression that there is something that is called bhutsina de cardinusa the word butsina in aramaic means a light cardinusa is darkness there is what is called a black light now what is a black light if something is black there's no light but the answer is the zoar is teaching us that even in blackness there is a light but just as many frequencies of infrared or the light you can only see if you wear special goggles so you need special so to speak eye gear to perceive the light of hashem in the darkness and that is a muna bitarchan and birkat hamason is one of the exercises that trains us in having that karate toef now it is interesting and for hallachic reason i'm not going to get into in so much detail that we know that you have to bench the orisa when you eat bread but doraisa since the torah says the visavata bisavata means you're satiated you're full the arisa you're not makriv to bench do raisa until you're full from your meal meaning if you just ate a piece of bread the original that would not obligate benching now there is a locus a postgame must the fullness be based on the bread meaning i have to eat enough bread that i would be full or does it mean the whole meal meaning the meat the potatoes everything else right the what is kade samia but it is important to know that if i just need a kazias of bread i am high up to bench i am high after bench but my kiev of benching is a rabbinic obligation it is not a torah obligation now the reason why that's important is because if somebody is being mozilla if i'm if i'm if if you can't bench or and and somebody is reading the benching for you they have to be the same clip of you so if you're convey severe and the other person only adequate he might not be able against mclaughs well different questions about that but that's where it becomes important when one is a key of juraban and the other is a khiev is a key of the arise okay be it as it may an interesting point is this so the torah does say at least under some conditions that after i eat i must express my gratitude to hashem what about the bracha that you make before you eat interestingly enough the conclusion of the gemara in massachusetts brachas is that the bracha you make before you eat is only of rabbinic origin the torah does not require a bracha before food that was a rabbinic enactment the torah only requires a bracha after fruit under defined conditions so keep that in mind bracha rishona is midrab the torah permits you to eat food without making a bracha first now there is one other mitzvah of making abraham that some say is the orisa and that is the bracha that we make before we learn torah this is the daily bracha that is called birkas torah is the making of such a bracha da o raisa so it's very very interesting that according to ramban ramban is nachman it is not not my mind he's nothing the making of a blessing before the torah is a mitzvah in the torah itself now you may ask me where does the torah say you must bless hashem before before you learn torah the ramban actually says this is the 613th mitzvah in the torah it's the very last one the very last mitzvah is berka satoru and this is when moshiro bainer was in his farewell song but we assume it all comes from hashem and this is a well-known passage because we recite it at different types of the parts of the yamida at the beginning of the amidah ki shame hashem ekra moshe's speaking now when i call out the name of god haveu godel lay lo kenu you shall give greatness to hashem now the ramban's interpretation of this verse may not be the first thing that strikes you but he says what moshe rabbanu is saying to qualify is when i teach you the words of god which is torah you must give greatness to hashem by making a blessing over the torah so the ramban actually says birka satora is the orisa now once again the same point i made about benjamin that even if benching is doris the torah does not require a particular text that's equally true for beer satire the text of birka satoru is rabbinically formulated in other words under torah you could use your own words but the concept of abraca is there the issue of birkha satora is an obligation well first let me just qualify that the ramban's point though is not universally agreed upon many do argue in fact maimonides seems to argue because the rambam maimonides says that the 613th mitzvah is earlier it's not this one it's the mitzvah of writing a safer torah which is one part earlier the implication being that birka satora is not a do-raiser and we treat birka satora the same way we treat any bracha over a mitzvah i mean any bracha over in mitzvah is normally rabbinic i mean it's filled in is a torah commandment but the baraka overt philan is rabbinic so most reshainam understands that birkha satyara is the same way but ramban does say bearcatheter is there isa by the way because there is an important point the shogunate positions that not only should men make the blessings over the torah but women should make the blessings over the torah as well because even if women do not have the technical obligation of learning torah they are obligated to learn the torah that teaches them how to live and therefore they should make the blessings over the torah as well would that be the same as fargo women it seems so even spidey women yeah because berkeley is not uh it's it's more than a regular beer gaza mitzvah by the way the kishema shemekra which is familiar to us because we recite it before the ahmeda of musaf and the amida of minska but we don't recite kishay mashamakra for chakras and arvis we just begin with hashem so just a quick little digression why that's so hashems is in the gemara itself the gemara itself indicates that the amidah should begin should be prefaced with the passage and to hillary hashem open my lips so that my mouth can declare your great your praises so that's in the gemara and if the gemara considers that part of the shmonish ray then halachically it is part of the shmonasaray kishay mashem ekra was added later in the time of the gaonim now here's the problem there is a special mitzvah to connect redemption and prayer for example in the morning you see this very clearly right before shimoni we end the blessing of krishna with baruch hashem israel and then we immediately go into shmo nasre and you're not allowed to have any interruption you don't answer amen to god ali israel that's why some some people have the minute and says it silently or you say it with the cousin because you can't make an interruption between redemption and prayer this is called sumitas in the morning this this connection is very very clear and the gemara even asked akasha why isn't hashem an interruption between gulowa and sri lanka's answer is it's part of it's an extension of shimon ashrae so you are connecting it now the truth of the matter is we pascuan that the kiev to be sommer gulo let's fila is not only in the morning but even at night we do say al-israel at night the only question is this to shimon ashrae is not so clear because after gali israel we say abraham we ask hashem to protect us and then we have if you're happening with sibor we have a khatsi kadish but the gemara explains at least with tashkevenu that since sasky veino is about god protecting you it's a continuation of gaola so the same way hashem is part of tefila hashgrivainu is part of gaulah of course that does not answer the khatsuka's problem and in khutsallahara it's even worse because we have this long prayer that i recited for for most of my life barak hashem leola main dna and i wonder if i still know it by heart uh so there are a lot of questions how do we fully fulfill goulash feeling but here's the point since in morning and at night you want to connect go ou israel to shimon ezra shame hashem ekra would be an interruption between gaula and tefila and therefore we don't say it in the morning and we don't say it at night but minha and musaf is not preceded by a israel and therefore we could say it notwithstanding that explanation devil nagon who doesn't didn't like any additions after the gemara you know he doesn't like these post talmudic editions did not say hashem nor did he say barakula brukshma because barclay over shimon was also not in the gemara uh the gemara talks about answering amen to bragos barack obama is again from the time of the go on him and the bill nagon actually did not answer boroku brook shimel right so there are basically you'll find that villenegon generally was not in favor of posthumour conditions in fact based on that i'm not even sure why he did say the harahama's invention i said he did say it except on shabbos the logic of his normal position would actually be not to say it at all not because of bitter torah but because he did not endorse post talmudic additions uh to the to the liturgy he was not in favor of a lot of putin and and the like okay uh be it isn't may uh this is berko satyra now most re-shine him say it's rabbana and ramban says it's the ariza but here is so it turns out that according to rambam at least there are two blessings that are minatara one blessing is bearcat hamazon after food and the other is birkha satora before you learn meaning the torah does not mandate abraca before you eat and the torah does not mandate a bracha after you learn that we don't make a broker after we learn so the interesting question is why when it comes to food is the main bracha after you eat and when it comes to learning torah the main bracha the only bracha is before you learn why buy tirade do we emphasize the before and by food we emphasize the after so this is a tasha of the mecha the ursa mayak and he gives a very very beautiful answer which i think gives us an interesting insight in what is our relationship with food and what is our relationship with torah spiritual food with respect to uh food the concept is this when a person is hungry when a person is needy the gratitude that they feel is instinctual in other words i had mentioned before that burkha tamazon is a primer in achieving gratitude now let me explain what i mean by that phrase on one hand it's an expression of gratitude you're expressing the gratitude that you feel but it also works in the other way around by doing it you can learn to feel a gratitude that you might otherwise not feel in other words it's not that birkat tamazon is necessarily an outgrowth of the emotional state that i'm in but rather it may generate the emotional state i'm supposed to be and this is consistent with the general philosophy of judaism in the language of the safer adam nifal kefi pulasav a person is influenced according to his actions we think actions are a result of emotional states which of course is true but we also have to recognize that actions can generate emotions positive or negative so in fact marriage counselors will often tell somebody who says i don't feel love towards my spouse act as if you did and by repetitive action we train ourselves to feel a certain way right that's the assault of adam niffal a person is influenced kefi puu losev according to the externalities of his actions you do actions of kindness over and over and over again you eventually become a genuinely kind person even if initially you didn't have those feelings of kindness so seen in that light birk is not only about expressing gratitude beer gas amazing is about generating gratitude when you otherwise might not be aware of it so here is the thing since the purpose of birkat tamazu is to generate within our personalities gratitude for the dependence on god where that gratitude is self-evident and obvious there is no need to concretize or legislate a bracha because you feel it anyway so when it comes to food the person comes in a hot day it's 100 degrees outside he comes into the house and finally there's water soda whatever it is juice the person might even verbalize thank god the gratitude is obvious i'm hungry i'm thirsty of course i have feelings of gratitude and because there's enough course i have feelings of gratitude there's not a need to mandate to concretize a formal expression because it's natural it's intrinsic it's automatic it's spontaneous there's no need to concretize legislate a formalistic project now i have to say apparently the generations descended in madriga because at some point the rabbis determined we have to make a bracha before we eat meeting we're not even grateful for that that's an example of the doroths in other words the enactment of bracha richonna actually reflects a descent of the generations in fact the word done the word the phrase for gratitude in hebrew is a very very evocative phrase hatoff does not literally mean gratitude a karate toef means recognize the good meaning our problem is not that we're ingrates our problem is not that we don't feel grateful our problem is we don't even notice what it is that hashem has done in our lives so the first idea of gratitude is notice look take in see us in the in in peric base shina is all about looking at the world looking at grass and flowers and trees and music and color and developing a sense of appreciation and gratitude for the life that hashem has given you with all of its difficulties but when you're hungry you don't need a formal bracha at least originally because of course you're grateful but what happens after you eat it's interesting you might think after you eat then you're full and you're fine you might think i should be more grateful but the tyra itself warns us later that that's not always the case but yishman yeshua and viva that mentions that as we get prosperous fat we kick it god we reject god i don't need god anymore it's like the this joke comes in several variations but but one of the jokes is a a guy desperately needs to park because he has a job interview that um you know it's going to be very crucial to his future and he's parking he's in a parking lot and there's like no spaces he's driving around and around and around and around and he says to god he says god if you give me a parking space and i'm going to thank you i'm going to serve you i'm going to do mitzross and then at that moment somebody pulls out he said never mind god i don't need your help anymore you know it's like i mean how did you what did you think happened over there right uh and this is how it is so once we're full we don't think we need hashem anymore so that's why when you're finished and you're no longer feeling that dependency you're no longer feeling that vulnerability you're no longer feeling that weakness hashem says remember think don't leave before you say thank you you know i'm the first to admit that i have this weakness as well but you know one of the common uh you know phenomena in all really all segments of orthodox jewelry is i don't want to wash right this idea that we avoid eating bread quite often because i don't want to what now it's not the washing that's the part what you really mean is i don't want to bench that's really benching is long right so i'd rather have you know i could have a big fancy meal and just get by with boring facials right i can eat meat and potatoes and and side courses and if i don't have cake i don't even have to make another milk yeah i can eat a whole bunch of stuff and get by with a three three lime broccoli if i have a kazias of bread already or ebay a whole benching i remember and again i i plead guilty to this myself uh but you know it really is not good thinking you know i don't want to make anyone feel guilty i'm giving mustard to myself a chance to thank hashem wonderful thing i remember i was at the leviah of an elderly woman and her grandson spoke and he spoke about his body he spoke about what a righteous woman she was and he said she never understood what does it mean people don't want to bench how could you not want a bench a chance in fact for carrot you should like do they tell the story a a a um husset once asked his rebbe he says rebbe you know what's the difference in you and me uh i eat a banana i make a bracha you eat a banana you make a bracha like you know what exactly is the difference so the rebbe says ah it all depends on why you're eating the banana you get hungry you want to eat a banana but there's a halacha you can't eat a banana without a bracha so you make the bracha in order to eat the banana okay that's fine he says i'm very different i don't care about bananas i don't have to eat a banana i have a hunger to make a bracha i want to make a bracha i want to thank hashem but never there is there is a halacha called blessing in vain i'm not allowed to make a brother unless i eat something so i look around for something so i have an excuse to make a bracha so the question becomes do you eat to make abraham do you make a bracha in order to eat right so this bubbie this this woman says of course you'll want a bench how could you not want to bench right there to thank hashem in that way but the metric says that we badaf can need it after we because after we eat the gratitude is not so spontaneous anymore and therefore we have to concretize it as a bracha in the hope that the activity of articulating gratitude will make us feel it inside bracha rishono was not necessarily originally because there the gratitude of need is very powerful when you're in need you really really feel grateful when that need is satisfied now with tyra learning the metro governor says very beautifully it's actually the opposite before we learn torah we may not appreciate it that much you know i'd rather maybe i'd rather stay in bed rather linger over another cup of coffee read the newspaper i'm not i'm not such an enthusiastic hurry wow i have to get back to my learning so as a result hashem says before you learn make a bracha in which you appreciate the gift of torah how sweet it is how good it is that god chose the jewish people to give them this precious gift meaning i need it because unlike the food where if i didn't eat i'm literally starving it's often the case that we're not necessarily starving for torah the next morning we've got to get into it a while in fact the kazanish used to say that it takes at least three hours of learning straight until you get into the real feeling of the joy of learning and he says when you break up you learn i mean most of us rarely if ever learn three continuous hours that's a big that's a big deal i mean learning 15 minutes is actually a big deal it's not it's not not the easiest thing but the khajanesh says well maybe i shouldn't even tell you this because it's not a it's not it's not a happy birthday he says that if it takes a certain amount of time for a pot to boil let's say it takes a half an hour for a pot of water to boil let's say every 29 minutes you shut it off for 15 minutes and then turn it on again you could have it go 29 minutes 29 minutes 29 minutes 29 minutes it might go for 10 hours but if you don't have the 30 minutes straight you'll never achieve the critical mass so he says if you don't have that continuous time you don't get i mean of course you accomplish a lot i mean that's a bit i mean every bit of learning is great but we don't get the maximum we could get when you don't have continuity continuity is what brings the water to a boil so before we learn we're not so hungry for torah so we need to make a barakah to make us realize but says mayor simcha and this is a very beautiful thought after a person learns of course he feels gratitude of course he feels joy of course he feels the sweetness of torah he doesn't have to say thank you to god god sees the gratitude in his heart and in his face it's like people say sometimes i've heard mothers say ah not not my mother election i always say thank you but sometimes you know kids come and they eat and they don't say thank you and somebody says to the mother a guest you know gee your kids just left the table without saying thank you so mom might say i could see how much they enjoyed it they didn't have to you know i'm not giving them an answer but i i can see from their eating that they enjoyed it and that that that that is the thank you you know the enjoyment so the metro says you don't need a bracha after you learn because the joy is going to be within you you've tasted the sweetness now i sometimes think if you want to be skeptical that's not true all the time and that's not true for everybody what if a person dutifully learns dutifully and that's good you know he learns he goes to a share he learns he doesn't really enjoy it but he goes out of a sense of obligation and i want to point out that is actually very admirable it's admirable that a person even if he doesn't particularly like it says i have to do this but to make the statement that once you learn the joy is so overpowering there's no need to make a bracha may not be true for every person every time right so how do we explain that so why shouldn't they have to make a bracha after they learned torah but the answer is the halaq structure sometimes does not reflect the reality of your personal experience but it reflects an idealized reality to which we inspire to which we aspire rather this halacha is telling me how i should feel after i learn so even if i don't feel that way i realize that that is the goal towards which i should be moving so the metro does not mean necessarily that subjectively each person is overwhelmed with the sweetness of torah although there's no question he was i mean he was certainly speaking out of his personal experience but even if i'm not on that madrega where i feel that the fact that the halachic structure is making that assumption is in fact teaching me what i should aim for i should aim for a joy in my learning and in fact that's why we're very emphatic that when you choose what you should be learning you choose masha libo hatha it's mashalibu khafiz means the areas of torah that bring you pleasure people often ask i only have a limited amount of time what should i learn should i learn tomorrow should i learn mishnas and you know there are different answers there are different answers for what you should do but really the answer above all answers in many cases is you learn those parts of torah that bring you joy that's called masha liberkaves because when you have enthusiasm and pleasure in what you're learning you'll stay with it and you'll continue to grow if you're learning things that you really do not enjoy at some point you will abandon them because it's hard for a person to simply go on and on and on i mean again it's admirable i mean the sense of duty is a very admirable thing and a lot of times in life and in yiddish we just have to persevere somebody once went to the time and complained that uh now rebbe i have a problem i don't have enthusiasm when i learn so the chavez-heim said well i guess you have to learn without enthusiasm for a while meaning sometimes that's the answer i mean that's maturity anyway i mean being a mature adult means you're not always going to get highs and things and people who say every experience has to be a high well you know there are no highs if there aren't lows i mean by definition so part of being a mature person is to understand that not every moment in life is going to be the height of ecstasy but at the same time we have to try to increase the joy we have in total learning and in all mitzvos as much as we can because with joy comes passion and with passion will come growth right the growth will come as you enjoy things more and more and more like they tell an interesting other story with ramirez he died in fact his your side is coming up in the beginning of ello i think it is the same day or maybe a day apart with rough cook it's an interesting study of two great great gadolin who lives more or less the same time ramirez senpai thing was a little older and died a few years before rivka but they were really from the same of the same takufa uh the dramer sempra was once learning with a hambusa and they came to a difficult part of the gemara that they didn't understand sir mayor simcha said let us pray to hashem that he gives us the joy in torah learning so we can figure this out so his friend said to him if you don't understand something then you should pray to hashem that you should understand it why are you praying to hashem to give you a greater sweetness and learning mayor simply said do you ever notice that when a baby is brought to a group sometimes another newborn baby is brought uh i still remember my with my own son um uh we brought him to uh an ncsy shabbaton like a few weeks after his birth and you know how it is especially with teenagers the baby is passed or you know you're worried a little bit but the baby is passed from person to prisoner everybody wants to hold the baby etc but a newborn baby everybody wants to hold or a young young child but then the baby starts crying and sometimes you'll have a situation where nobody can calm the baby except the mother the mother knows how to calm the baby what is it about the mother that gives the mother the ability to come a baby even if the baby's just a newborn baby doesn't really know the mother no some people would say the baby's sense of smell tells them that this is near the nursing this is near the milk supply that that that is a possibility but the metric gave a different explanation i don't know if he's right but this is what he said he said that if a baby is crying there is something about the baby that's making him uncomfortable maybe a diaper is pinching him too tight maybe a finger is twisted in a certain way now most people who like the baby but don't have deep love don't notice little things but when you love something very deeply you notice every little thing about it so mom can calm the baby down because out of her love for the child she notices things that most people just ignore the more you love something the more you notice everything about it so he says the torah is infinitely subtle and complex right we talk about the sea of the talmud there's so many highways and byways and subtleties when a person learns torah but doesn't really love it so they get the general picture but they don't really notice a lot of things because it doesn't matter to them so much so he says if we don't understand torah it's not because we're not smart enough hashem says the torah is not in heaven we're smart enough to understand torah but if we don't understand something in terms because we don't love it enough the more we love it the more insight we would have in understanding it so therefore ramirez said if we don't understand torah we don't pray to god give us a higher iq we pray to god give us more love they used to say i don't know again i don't know if this is true but it's an interesting story that if you wanted to be except the vilna gone did not have a yeshiva if it was the village had tamed him that he admitted to his inner circle that he would learn he never had a tremendous number maybe 20 30 whatever it is but these were the cream of the cream the cream of the crap the most delete with kanye legend etc so i once heard again i don't know if this is true so these are stories that in order to be admitted you had to learn something for a few hours without stopping and what was it that you had to learn this is really really bizarre you had to learn the first nine chapters of divreihayam now if you're familiar with this the first nine chapters of divrei are lists of names nothing happens at all they are names he says and the village test was if you really love torah can you read these names for a few hours with kashmak and with joy if you could read divreim with passion and with joy you're worthy of learning with the vilmigan if it bores you if it's not interesting enough then you're not worthy of learning with the vilnika somebody told me a mice with rebel yashif you know revel yashev uh for many years uh used to learn in a little show in maya sharim the show is still around oh hell sora uh i don't know in later years he learned at home but he used to go to that show it was a little show an abandoned show and he had the key to it and nobody was there during the day so he would just let himself in locked the doors nobody could see him in fact when people knew he was there they would sometimes bang on the windows and bang on the windows but he had a thing that he had his hours and he would not he would not respond people would even yell yeah some people have problems with this they would say because nephes because it's matter of life and death he would not answer he used to say later for because nephesh you go to the doctor you don't go to a rough what do you mean because netflix you go you'll go to a uh go to a doctor go to a hospital so he had this thing that people often took advantage and he had hours and he made himself very accessible but he also had hours in which he could not be disturbed but what people would sometimes do and this is interesting is they like to spy on him they could stand outside the window his back was through the window so you could see what he was learning so a person said he once watched him in a window through the window and he saw he was learning this was before pesach and he was on the first page for three hours now if you look at the shulhanara kirkus you will see that the first page only has one halacha and that simply says you start learning the laws of pesach 30 days before pesach that's all it says i mean most people read it and turn the page i mean there are commentaries but even then you know and then the person who was atomized said i don't even know what it what he could do for three hours with that but yoshif was looking at it for three hours showa linda darshan bihulkos because he saw joy significance depth meaning in every single part of the torah that enabled him to become who he was in which he was a master of every part of the torah because every part of the torah was beloved to him and that is what birka satori is about to generate within us a love of torah in fact what does the second bracha say or we ask hashem actually it's really a continuation of the first problem but whether you count it as a second one or not make the words of torah sweet to us we pray to hashem not just that we should learn but we should always feel the sweetness of devry torah that's why over the centuries klaus joe developed so many customs you know when we have the upshot in the khalaka that when the baby at three gets his first haircut some do it like omer before the third birthday or after the third birthday some do it on the third birthday itself they don't connect it to lag by omer now the kalaka was not an ashkenazi custom actually it was a it's more of a spartac acidic custom but now everybody does it now uh regular mainstream yeshiva mere people everybody does up sharons and and the like but we connect up sharing with the introduction of the child to learning torah although those are two different rituals it's interesting how minhagem got amalgamated there was the haircut and there was the bringing of the child to haider to learn torah the way it is now is people combine them into two things that used to be separate minhagem but you know i'm sure you've seen it or you've done it or you participated they take the olive bays and they put honey on the other face and the child you know takes the honey and says alef and bathe all of that is is very important symbolically the idea is that torah is sweet it's not a burden and sometimes unfortunately with all of the do's and the don'ts and some of the rigors of the school system and the different rules of the basiacos for some reason i think the girls schools are actually worse than the boys schools in some ways we create so much anxiety so much negativity so much resentment that even if a child doesn't go after i mean off the derrick is one problem but even if somebody remains religious best case scenario it's sometimes done without enthusiasm without joy without passion a person could be a from jew but kind of be dead inside because they don't feel because the joy of torah was not emphasized enough and this is really what birkha satyara has designed to give us that sense of joy and to be as hashem as i say when there's joy there will be knowledge you know um i'm sure you've encountered kids maybe you were that kid sometimes uh there are kids who aren't that good in learning whatever it is uh they don't grasp more they don't grasp michelle maybe i'm using a united states example so forgive me but they have phenomenal knowledge in certain areas they may know every batting average in the major league baseball since 1925. they'll give you you know like a photographic memory they'll give you a babe ruth and ty cobb and even lesser players and they've mastered huge amounts of information so how come they can't remember arashi or whatever it is when they can remember so much and the short answer is and this is true for all of us we remember what we care about we remember what interests us we remember what we're passionate about that's exactly right when you're passionate the information enters your brain almost seamlessly like almost automatic you just take it in you suck it in when you're not everything is laborious so the mesh point is very profound if you love something you'll master it if you don't love it you're not going to master it so if we're not mastering something we've got to ask hashem to help us love it because that's going to be the most important thing all right so i did not get to my second thing but i will mr maybe carry it over next week because the seven of terrorists of comfort i have seven weeks to talk about them so i can give myself for shifts maybe to talk about it next week they have terrorists of comfort but the beatles in may we did have unfortunately in yerushalayim some some tragic events over the past few days and our fellows are certainly with the victims and their families i understand that hashem no nobody died but some of the people are in critical condition so we should dive in for them we should think about them and we should pray that there should be certainly shalom uh in eretz israel and shalom israel and only shalom in the world as as a whole and beyond these weeks of should become actualized as the weeks of comfort and the weeks of redemption [Music] is