Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz - Elul: The King is in the Field

[Music] so tonight she or it'll be dedicated to the continued roof we shall aim a complete recovery for Harvey Kassadin who underwent triple bypass surgery and his Boracay sham healing up very nicely his name is hi I'm Rea Ben rifka hi everybody and [Music] toes and it's interesting that the month of ello has a knower of illusions that's was I'll give us some of them are from the metriod Red Room themselves and some of them are from later people like the result and I just want to mention three Vermont symbols to the month of ello and the symbolic meaning of each of those three allusions the most famous illusion is when I mentioned last week and I'm sure you've heard of it and that's based on the verse in she Reshiram she Reshiram is written as a romantic love story but in fact we are told where the Akiba thought us if all of the songs of Tanakh are holy she Reshiram is the holy of holies kadosh kadosh m because it is not simply the love song of one human being for another human being but it is the deep love the infinite love that Hashem has for the Jewish people and that the Jewish soul ultimately has forgotten and ensure a serum one of the sukham that is repeated several times is the refrain an eva don't even Dodi lean I am for my beloved I pledge my loyalty and my passion to my beloved so says Israel to God and God says without delay and my beloved is connected to me and therefore if you look at the first letter of the four words on me live Dodie Dodie wait it spells out the month of L oh this is again a very very famous reminisce that elbow is on me with Dodie Dodie Lee it's interesting if I beg you if I can digress for a moment about a half story because technical the sheer amount of tourists as well you know one of the most interesting of tonus she's not the operatory that we read this time of year but it's connected to the Anil Adobe with dotingly is the first chapter of Hosea Oh Shia is the first of the 12 smaller prophets the English caused a minor premise they're not minor but they're smaller they're their books are smaller and in the beginning of Hosea Hosea has given a very bizarre command seemingly out of nowhere he is commanded to marry a well-known prostitutes go mare bust of law him and he is told to take her for a wife well because he's a prophet he obeys whatever God says to do so he takes this promise she must have been pretty confused the swelling what would this great brevard all of a sudden want an area prostitute but she agreed and she got married in but she continued to practice her prostitution even after she was married now besides the fact that adultery is a betrayal that also raises the halacha difficulties yeah generally speaking if a woman commits willing adultery well she's married to her husband she's not allowed to stay married to her husband but for whatever reason and I'll try to explain what's going on here Hosea does not divorce her and God tells him why don't you get rid of her and he says to God I really can't because although she's wayward but I love her I've grown to love her I've grown to be very fond of her I can't get rid of her so God says to the prophets now you know my problem now there's a big my focus where Sophia Barb and Elle and some other commentaries take a very interesting position and they say this is not an event that happens this is a dream that Hosea had so according to their barber now it is a dream it is not an actual event other commentaries actually say this is an actual event what's going on what was the purpose of God's commands what the lesson what is the whole idea of what is going on so the Camorra tells us there's a certain backstory that's not totally reported in the biblical narrative and that is when God gave Hosea a prophetic mission this is even before the Exile with the ten tribes he told Hosea go and tell B'nai Israel they got it through children again they got it repent they got to come back to you come back to God and so Shana said to God he says you know why are you bothering with these people they're unfaithful they don't they're not connected to you they worship idols which is a form of adultery that's the image that is often used he says why don't you just get rid of them and find somebody else the opposite of course of Moshe obey know that when a Shem said in the aftermath of the a callus of I want to destroy this nation and I won't make you a special nation Moshe says no deal it's a package deal I'm either part of them or I want to be wiped out with them O'Shay on the other hand of course he wasn't arguing that God should make a covenant with him in particular but he was saying okay listen the Jewish people have committed adultery get rid of them so what I should want to know share to understand is that sometimes your love can be so profound it can be so deep that even when your spouse betrays you you can't get rid of them you're stuck with them because the love is there he wanted Hosea as a prophet to understand on some level God's unconditional love for the Jewish people and when Hosea cannot get to read whether it's a dream or not is not really that relevant here when Oh Shia cannot get rid of this unfaithful wife because she cares about her too much God says now you understand the predicament that I face now unconditional love of God just as unconditional love of a parents doesn't mean there are no consequences for bad behavior there's plenty of consequences the Jewish people suffer Gullah sends the destruction of the base of mcduck and everything else but all of those consequences do not come out of rejection they do not come out of faiths they do not come out of God wanting to cut off the ties that he has with us but he comes out of a sense of trying to make us better so we'll become the person we're supposed to become exact this is a mistake sometimes that parents make when parents interpret unconditional love to be equivalent to love without discipline or structure that's actually a mistake that's ultimately destructive to a child unconditional love means I love my child no matter what but I will take the steps that are necessary and helpful to make this person into the best person they're able to become question what happened well it seems that well I don't know exactly there's no indication and she kind of drops out of the scene but there's no indication that he divorced her and in fact the culmination of this story is when God talks about his love for the Jewish people being unconditional he uses that he has a very famous puck that men who put on tefillin say every day as they wrapped its filling around their hands of a rustic lelee alum I will betroth you to me Hashem says to the Jewish people forever they rustically I will be trusted to be pathetic of a mish box with righteousness and with justice and professing his loving-kindness mubarak's on him and with mercy they rustically be emunah i will betroth you unto me with faithfulness the adat Hashem and you will have intimates loving knowledge of God knowledge is a euphemism for actually being connected in the most intimate way there are seven expressions of endearment notice the olam forever says it mish pod has said recommend justice and righteousness and loving kindness and mercy and we're not faithfulness and das intimate connection 7/7 terms of endearment and according to some core else that is actually one of the reasons why the callo walks around the katana I came from a cosmic so I guess this is in my mind the katana caller walks around the cousin seven times to represent the seven levels of love and connection that a question an ekala have which parallel the seven levels of love and connection that God has for the Jewish Jewish lutely it's not begin to divorce yeah yes how could I show you stay married again I mean this is really one of the proofs of the environment now that this was the whole thing was a dream that is that is correct that is correct it's an interesting question why wasn't mm that was complicated to do how could of is married bat Sheva he committed adultery with her and that's based on the whole commercial interpretation they're technically but Sheva had gotten they get from her husband right that's as though that's though story of the Gomorrah that although Dublin committed spiritual adultery he did not commit adultery a lot that is there are two people she's prohibited to she is prohibited to the her husband and she is prohibited to the man with whom she committed adultery yes sir so Devon would be included as a prohibited person fact that's a that's a serious issue when a woman did not get again a woman got a civil divorce and she married a guy and then she finally realized that she needs to get a death so she gets again but the question is since her initial marriage to the second guy was before she received the death it is technically adultery and if it's technically adultery even after she gets again and she could marry other people she might not be a be permitted to stand with the guy that she was married to her living with if she has children and if she has children it's a lot worse they may be moms Amy because they may be deemed to be born out of adultery and that's a very very serious problem there is actually in fact that I don't really have an answer to their the kids are gonna move up Sarah there are hightailin to allow her to stay with the guy on the grounds that she did not intentionally commit adultery because she if she was not religious she believed that the civil divorce dissolved the Union so in there for one might treat this as unintentional adultery but but even if you accept that that's not gonna work for the kids because even even rape even if a woman is raped god forbid if she's married woman the kids that are born from that rape would be moms Abram in other words mom sure does not depend on intention or culpability it simply depends on the children being born from man that's not her I love the cuspid so that would be a worse problem than this simple question whether she could stay married but being as it may though with the story of Foshay of shows us is that even though we are wavered though we're guilty of the equivalent of adultery were unfaithful to God God's love is very much unconditional and that is why the month of L o that is set aside for repentance and flesh bone huh nephesh introspection and I had mentioned last week that ll certainly in the Shiva world if every spent this time in any Shiva L o has a certain we could almost say there's a certain cloud over L o in the sense that it's a scary time people talk about true the Oh Maude in coming the day of judgments but we have to remember that all of this is the background of an unconditional love in which God does not want us to fail God is rooting for our success and God is hoping that we will reach out to him and if we reach out to him what is Casals famous saying open for me Hashem says like the eye of a needle make a little tiny open and then I will open myself up like the doors of the beit hamikdash that are wide you do a little bit hashem meets us much more than halfway and that's really even sizing with what I see rabbi dovid is going to be talking about see there's a certain ambiguity in his title Shoebat of love does he mean I do Chuba out of my love of God which is the normal translation of chuva muhabba but the other interpretation which i think is also valid is I am motivated to do chuva out of a sense of God's love for me I'm not doing Juma because I'm scared you know I remember the unnamed met once mentioned this one of the most famous Puritan features in colonial times in the United States when it was a economies of Great Britain was Jonathan Edwards very very famous Puritan preacher and I remember reading one of these sermons I think was I was assigned to me in the college course in early American literature and it was something about feeling the wrath of an angry gunner and this was a guest this was his mistress ruse to awaken to arouse his congregation to repentance so he said you think you know your anything in God's eyes he says and he gave a very graphic description I can't I can't even do it justice nor would I wanted he said you are like an ugly little spider in God's fingers then he could crush in a second and he is so disgusted with and repose by that he simply wants to throw it in the fire he says and that is what you are like in the eyes of God citrus thing he didn't include himself at that condemnation you know at least he could have said that's what we're that's what your life okay and the point is she was basically portraying God as vindictive as angry as hateful as spiteful full of disdain and this is very much the opposite of how Judaism understands the Almighty we understand that God punishes we do understand that things happen we do understand there's horrible and there's colors and there are Holocaust and Crusades and pogroms of things happen in the world we don't preach the idea that everything is going to be peachy keen and everything's gonna be sweet and nice but we also understand that for reasons we quite we quite cannot fathom this is in a background whom I often describe God is angry right so again the way the Rambam explains it the Rambam explains that anger is not describing an emotional state it is a label we put on actions of God that were they to be done by a human being would connote the idea of anger and in fact the Torah itself says as a father chastises his son as a parent punishes a child so God punishes you so the Torah itself makes that linkage and I think the story of Hosea brings it out in a very graphic and powerful way so the first remnants of elbow is reminds us that although we are preparing to stand before God with our very lives at stake no the books of death in the books of life are going to be open but it's against a backdrop of a meal adult even though degree the backdrop of God's infinite love he's rooting for us to succeed he wants us to succeed basically we just have to move towards him and he's there to embrace us I mentioned last week I think the famous must show that the alter rebbe uses that ello is the month or the time of hemella Vasudeva Posada means the king is in the field meaning normally during the year the king is in the palace you need to make an appointment there's a certain bureaucracy to be able to encounter him but once a year the King goes out in the public he's in the field anybody can approach him there are no guards there are no intermediaries LOL is that to Kufa of Imelda bus again so that's the first remnants of ello that this is a time of love of reconciliation of togetherness there are people who look at this as the sweetest time of year because it is when we get to you know make ourselves clean again to kind of purify yourselves not because we're scared of some negative consequence but because we want to be connected together and we want to give God's not let's just like a child we'd want to please a parents and he loves very very deeply so that's remedies number one and that's the best-known rebus elbow as a time of love and reconciliation by the way just as a little aside you know this is an EVA the diva Dodi Ling is a prusik and she uh she wrote and you know that she Reshiram almost didn't make the cannon the were rabbis who wanted to ban Shira she like damned in Boston because they looked at it as semi pornographic it talks about men and women and very graphic images kissing hugging it really is if you look at it quite literally it's it's fairly explicit in a lot of the imagery that is employed uh today that if you look at the arts crow translation of the song of songs now in fairness they do give a literal translation in the commentary but in the translation itself they use only metaphor so for example when the pustak says he has ravished me with kisses so the article translation will read something like when God took us out of Egypt there were many plagues that showed his glorious care for us it leaves out the ravishing me with kisses so the question becomes you know you read the article translation of Shira human you say what is so controversial there it seems to just be a description of the things that God did in the public more or less and why do you mean a repetition of that so here she refuses very potent explicit sexual passionate imagery and that should not be denied and because of that it was a controversial book and there were sages that said this is a romantic piece of literature that does not belong in the cabin of holy books and the one who saves it the one who gets all the credit is Rabbi Akiva who said yes it is a sexually explicit but it is a metaphor for divine love so the question becomes this the question becomes if indeed it is a metaphor for divine love why does another to use such sexually explicit imagery why did you slap my mother to write the song of songs the way hard scroll translated the song of songs after all if I scroll said the literal translation is too powerful for us to be able to absorb then my Malick apparently didn't think think of it that way so in the article she rush here there's actually an answer to this in a letter untranslated in Hebrew by Brett Mordecai gift there is a fanatical front but they didn't translate it you would you have gift your says the following idea it's a very very interesting idea his idea was that she Reshiram is a parable or an allegory for the power of divine love but to understand the allegory you have to be capable of human love we need to say only a person who is capable of passionately loving another human being is able to transcend his egotism and self-centeredness and to be able to link to the divine so therefore it is fundamental you cannot love God as an abstraction but you love God primarily through your ability to connect to the godliness of other human beings so he who does not understand the literal meaning of Shirish even cannot understand the higher me shirshu now they say about the leo tolstoy it's also had a great the novelist Tolstoy was a member of the Russian aristocracy and the desire is Russia he was count Tolstoy and as they count he was an owner of slaves and supposedly he did not treat his service as well as he could have in spite of the fact that he was also a social reformer who wrote a number of treatises calling for the abolition of serfdom so people called upon it people said to him well you're kind of a hypocrite you're calling for the abolition of serfdom and the rights of man and freedom and equality and yet you have not freed your surface and you mistreat your serfs how do you reconcile what you actually do in your life with your philosophical and political views and told stubborn mark with some irony and he certainly understood the irony says just because I mean lover of humanity that doesn't mean I have to care about people there are two different issues I love humanity I am concerned about the general social condition in the world but that doesn't always translate into the here and now Judaism as you see for sure Shem is working in an opposite way before you come to this abstraction I love God I love society the question is how do you relate on a one-to-one basis to the people that are nearest and dearest to you whether it's a spouse whether it's children or even extend it a little bit secretaries in the office or people that you just encounter do you treat them with dignity do you treat them with respect because that's really the measure you start with the prot you start with these small details and then you progress outward sector of cook says that that is one of the remote some of the kiosk chauffeur there's a lot the kiosk so far that you have to blow from the narrow ends towards the wide end now I'm not sure if you'd be able to blow it the other way but but even if you could the halacha is it's not valid you to move from the narrow to the wide this is an explicit a lava in the Gemara that is past condemn the show Canora and of cook says that metaphorically represents the journey of human consciousness from being concerned with me as an individual to eventually embracing larger and larger configurations of humanity expanding from a single person to a husband to a parent to a community it's a claudius room and eventually to the world as a whole with cook says spiritual growth will always move in the direction of a greater concern and compassion that it's interesting that I believe that today was rough cooked your services every third of elements you know this happens to me a lot essentially think think that so often inadvertently it must be the neshamah of the person universally I'll say something from that Godot on the yard side even though I was not consciously thinking of the art side but this is what Christmas oh yeah after a protracted but nevertheless at least its history is through your assignments and the idea of Toki Amina cuts are is that religious spirituality should not proceeds in the direction of greater self centeredness and insularity but it should proceed from her private community outwards to greater and greater groups of human beings and eventually even embracing the world and again cook actually took the position even beyond humanity to be concerned for animal welfare as well look at you know although he was not an actual vegetarian but he did consider vegetarianism to be a spiritual ideal towards which one aspires but concretizing the abstractive love hashem exactly what well they they concretize it in the sense of putting something as a substitute for gotten that compensation you can't do but but in terms of starting with human love and then moving towards divine that's a transitional step that's not a substitution that's a transitional step but the thing is some of you who are children of the 60s you've never may remember a famous song by John Lennon imagine and the song imagine is basically saying well let's get rid of separate nations separate religions let's just all be one big happy family how wonderful the world would be if we wouldn't have different different groups now here this is something Judaism disobedience in the family obviously Judaism disagrees with getting rid of religions that's that's obvious but the question of one might raises is if I'm so still love every Jew let's say then should I care more for my children and I care for other people why do my kids have any special claim to my resources Peter Singer a very famous Jewish ethicist not religious in Princeton actually made this argument he says there is no moral value in fact it's immoral to prefer your children over anyone else meaning to say if you have enough money that you could support a hundred people out of starvation level you don't have the right to send your kids to a private school or says spend your money on sending your kids to university you should divide your money a hundred ways so that a hundred people will have bread d now if you're gonna ask me well did Peter Singer himself live that way he admitted he did not quite live that late but he approached if he actually he did giveaway I think 60 or 70 percent of his income that way a certain amount of natural selfishness he says he couldn't he couldn't conquer his gate Sahara that another interesting story that his mother was a prominent lawyer in Australia and when she got Alzheimer's unfortunately dementia he paid for her to be in the best home in Australia the best facility and somebody said well according to your Bentley your your egalitarian ethics of utilitarianism you want to use your resources to Bent do the most good for the most people why are you spending two hundred thousand dollars a year on your mother's care and he said when it comes to your mother your philosophy often it doesn't quite work doesn't quite work out and he admitted there was an inconsistency and that itself by the way it's at least into an intuitive argument against singer in the sense that if it's a non workable philosophy that human beings cannot really live live with there might be something wrong with it but okay but they say that's an intuitive it's not a logical argument for saying but here is the thing Peter Singer and John Lennon are kind of aligned on the same idea that we shouldn't make these small groupings that we treat better than everybody else everybody would be evil but Judaism actually since I've canoed E ISM says that although eventually my love should expand to embrace all Jews and after all Jews all people and then all animals in all forms of life but it has to start with a particular istic Benson because without the particular istic bends it is too amorphous it is too unclear it is not connected to anything a person has to be rooted and when you're rooted you can then fly like a kite when the kite is being held we can then go in all directions otherwise it just flies away meaning unless you're attached to something you're not attached to anything and that's why Judaism again going back to Tolstoy statement can't just love humanity you gotta start with specific human beings and then you broaden yourself laughs laughs and that is okay I'm in our cuts are you start with the parochialism of your private identity and then you can move outwards so that once you realize that family life is the great laboratory for spiritual growth the ability whether it's husband wife parent child is is the experimental laboratory where a person can grow in all of the different qualities that one needs to be able to serve Hashem and that's why it's a big come out that sometimes you know we look at the family as kind of a distraction from the important avodah that I want to do in life when in fact it is the very mechanism the very structure that allows all of those things to be accomplished now when one is single obviously they'll be a different set of challenges than one has to face but even then a single person has to try to create to use the modern lingo a virtual family so to speak so it may not be blood relatives at any given point it may be friends may be community that you're in the show that you're in but the point is it is the specific interactions that we have with others that form our God consciousness and that is the lesson of Shira Shira that human love is the mechanism that brings you to divine love and if one doesn't understand and one doesn't have the capacity of human was then one cannot really love God in the in the abstract again this seems to be again this is at least the the seeming implication of sheer sheer mo granted I think you might find some opposite sources in some other books like the club Isola bubbles who talks about love of God as of an isolationist thing in other words suppose xi writes if when you truly love God you don't want to spend time with people you just want to be with God right so so there is another type of school of thoughts which basically says love of God should be such a passion that you've lost almost interest in being connected to people but as I say the the simple understanding of the metaphor of Shira Shira actually moves in the other in the other direction so it's complicated it's a multi-faceted idea in which the one that is serving God is struggling with this do I want to be connected to people but I want to get away from them so I can focus on God I mean all probability you need both components but at different points of time one will become more dominant than the other so that is RAM is number one of the month of their Lord season of love let me give you a second premise to the montebello which is much less known and that is we're going to read it in a few weeks before Rosh Hashanah when hashem says 'now hashem elokenu s Lavaca the yes revolves around God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your children to come back then so the words s live of AHA the s love as I request so the first letter of those four words once again spells ello ello is connected to circumcision of the heart now what is circumcision of the heart in a literal way that would be quite a dangerous operation that would almost certainly be fatal we're not talking about taking a scalpel and cutting away some outer tissue of the heart that's usually not going to be very advisable but this is a metaphorical expression the expression is this the lace throughout Tanaka and of course in the ancient world as a hall is described as the seat of emotion feeling desire yearning again we don't need to discuss how that fits with the scientific understanding but certainly that is the metaphorical understanding of the heart now or by let's say let's take let's take the aura of the male organ is a blockage it is something that is covering up the true nature of something so circumcision means to remove barriers or impediments to reveal what is truly within so when we talk about an uncircumcised hearts that means a heart that is not able to truly feel or Express the emotional connection that you have with God circumcise the heart is an expression that means removing the blockages so what we have here now is another idea and that is we have so many blockages that prevent us from achieving our true potential every human being certainly every Jew but really every human being was put into the world with a mission now the mission doesn't have to be something famous something big or dramatic but you know we have a purpose there's something we can contribute to the world there's something that we can do to make the world or a little part of the world our family whatever it is a better place but somehow sometimes from childhood sometimes from other experiences in life we often have blockages that prevent us from becoming the real person we were intended to become I mentioned before that the word Shuba which means return doesn't only mean returning to God it also means returning to yourself becoming the person that you really are now sometimes we're so immobilized with fear of failure that there's all sorts of things we could have done to make our lives deeper and richer that we don't do I mean even outside of religion this is the case you know many people they had they had surveys about things that people regret not doing when they were younger so one example is many people regret not playing a musical instrument they would love to have been able to play a musical instrument or the less but why do people not do it sometimes because they were afraid that the look bad they'll be foolish they're afraid to do something that people might laugh at them because they're not going to do it well so the founding worship of our man who's not alive anymore was mental Weinbach once put it very nicely he said everyone has heard the saying from their parents probably anything worth doing is worth doing well but everyone knows that famous thing he put it the opposite way anything worth doing is worth doing poorly by that he means and I think it's a true statement that if something is a worthwhile endeavor you should endeavor to do it even if you're not going to be the greatest at it that you've done something and first of all psychologically that can build confidence and second of all the half loaf is better than Noma I think Voltaire said that the enemy of the better is the best by that he means you have a certain idea that I got to be perfect or I'm not going to do it as a result we never achieved the 50% to the 25% that we could have done because we have this idea I'm either going to do it perfect or I'm not going to do it and since I probably won't do it perfectly I'm not going to do it those are blockages those are inhibitions against psychologists often talk about certain videos that we replay in our minds maybe going back to childhood or whatever it might be of things were not able to do it's not me you know there's a famous mantra you know if not when a breslav those of you that have any connection to the rest of if not when as as is well known taught not only by Cassini teachings which are quite profound but he often talked by stories well we have story in fact breast diversity i'ma tell stories and not one there are thirteen famous tales of Rebbe Nachman and he doesn't give any explanation to the tale so you sit around if there are commentaries trying to say what the meaning is so what if his famous stories involves a prince who was afflicted with the malady that he thought he was a chicken so what he did was he stripped he took of all of his clothes and he crawled under the table and he would only eat things that fellow up the table table scraps and nobody could convince him that he wasn't the chicken he's not for sure he was a chicken so a wise man shows up and says I will cure this Prince of his illusion so the first thing the wise men did was he took off his clothes and he crawled under the table and then when the Prince looked at him and said apparently the Prince could still talk he said what are you doing here so the wise man said I'm a chicken - were you the only chicken who looks like a human being I'm a chicken - alright so they were pecking together after two weeks the wise custom mclaughlin put on his clothes so the prince said what are you doing so the cop said who says chickens can't wear clothes and then he sat at the table and every time there was the same question what are you doing says who says she can't can't sit at the table so the long and the short of it was that after six months the Prince still thought he was a chicken but it made no difference because he was doing everything that a human being does so a psychotherapist would say he's not cured he's still laboring under the delusion that he's a chicken but a behavioral therapist would say who cares what he thinks he's behaving like a human being now if not one never gives any explanations of the story so everything is a guess but I think it ties in to what we're saying and that is we have nothing the same don't let your artificial mental image of who you are block you from becoming somebody great but we have legitimate the limit I'm a chicken I'm a turkey I'm ineffectual I can't do those types of things and that controls us and that blocks us and that prevents us from moving so one way of dealing with it is to work on your self perception but that could take a very long time there are people's and psychoanalysis for 50 years the other is okay keep yourself perception for a while but just ignore it who says the chicken can't do all of these things and then what happens is it is the behavior itself that can change the self perception as opposed to some some type of therapeutic turnaround as to what your self perception is so the truth of the matter is Ronald Reagan once said that there is no end to the good that could be accomplished if people don't care who gets the credit that's that's what that's what Ronald Reagan said yeah that's a that's a true statement as well come on buck all your comment there are wise things that are said but there's another there's another thing you can say along the same lines but maybe almost in an opposite direction there is no end to the good that can be accomplished if you don't have the fear of embarrassment or failure fear of embarrassment or failure is such a blockage that it stops us from moving forward and therefore removing circumcising the heart reminds us that we have to take responsibility for the life that we have and we have to be willing to do things even if we think we're not going to do them perfectly even if we think we're going to possibly fail but the effort itself builds you strengthens you and then of course you get shiatsu - Maya you get divine assistance to be able to do what you need to do so that is the second remnants of elam circumcising the heart removing the blockages that paralyze you stop you from moving forward we then have a third remnants to the month of Elul which is actually connected to this week's parsha and that is we know the institution of Erin McLeod here McLeod is a City of Refuge and what is that if somebody kills accidentally but we don't mean unavoidable accident but we mean what we called manslaughter a certain carelessness inadvertent not paying attention going through a red lights etc so the Tokra said you don't get the death penalty because it was unintentional on the side but there was a certain punishment or penance that must be imposed and that is going to cities of refuge death designated cities in a rich Israel and remaining in those cities is very interesting indeterminate sentence until the death of the Culhane gods are a very strange sentence if the Kohen Gadol dies a day later the road seoc goes free if the Kohen Gadol dies 50 years later the road Sammis language for 50 years and afterwards it dies before the Kohen Gadol he is buried in the earth McNutt to be assumed only when the cohen photo dies okay that's that's another Allah - interesting quite about the indeterminacy of the sentence and why this linked to the coming that's all the Gemara says because the Kohen Gadol himself is responsible for the homicides that occur on his watch therefore when he dies that creates an atonement so that's airman glutes now in the parsha of airman glutes the torah basically says it's an approach that's mr. puttan it's the same type of thing that in the air make lad you have four words that spell out the first letters spell out hello so ello is my romance in the parsha of air mcnutt's and the question becomes why is ello compared to an air leak once so we have an interesting idea here a air McNutt is a City of Refuge in space it's a spatial temporal area ear mcnutt's and in fact it's not like a prison because already McLeod had a regular population as well besides the Bronston what who are they the the normal residents of the Iroquois these were cities of lithium but about maturity is the whole idea that when somebody is callous they show a lack of interest in other people's lives and they have to be punished you don't put them with other criminals who have perverted an evil values you put them with righteous and saintly people from whom they can learn and benefit therefore though the Rebbe was arguing that that penitentiaries and prisons ought to be connected with positive environments that foster transformation so the air McNutt is where a person goes to get recharged and renewed and to become reoriented to understand the so the same way there is a near me glut in space the month of ello is an ear make lot in time and here the concept of your McClatchy is very very telling because the intima clock is not for every sin it's only for murder or these homicide killing the taking of a human life well every event is a form of murder sometimes we murder other people right what do we say you embarrass somebody publicly it's as if you murdered them but no matter what we are murdering a part of ourselves we're murdering a part of ourselves because we have so much potential so much holiness and every and what is life other than a succession of moments so every time a moment is used in a destructive negative manner there is a form of partial suicide that is actually taking place right wasting time is actually suicide killing time is not just killing time it's killing you we're taking part of our life and we're destroying it but God knows we don't do so intentionally we don't know so with malice we're inadvertent we're not thinking we're not paying attention we need the air make less because we're exactly we are the road saya the show get who are we murdering we're murdering ourselves but it's inadvertent we need the air MacLeod we need that time where we can remove ourselves a little bit from the day-to-day routine to spend time on fresh bone a nephesh on shuva and asking ourselves what type of person do I want to be how can I improve now it's a very dramatic way of looking at it that essentially when we violate the will of God we are actually committing a form of murder or violence against ourselves no things are just as an aside this reminds me of a very powerful statement of ayran cutler once said you know of Aaron Cutler was a great great Russian Shiva even in Europe before World War two he was just 22 years old was already a Russia Shiva great day great god / Torah and when he came to the United States and he started his yeshiva most of the week he was not in Lakewood he personally lived in Barbara he was only in Lakewood for Shabbos but most of the week he was going around the country collecting money and what type of money did he get in those days not that much people didn't understand the concept of a Shiva that was not geared to produce rabbis but just people sitting and learning so he would get a dollar here and two dollars here and there were times that people would embarrass him and humiliate him and say what you're doing is stupid and America doesn't need it so what if his students once asked him says Rebbe you know you're such a God oh you're such a Sadiq you're such a Thomas Hauk huh why does God put you through this Agra man this humiliation of having to beg people for money and they don't want to give not only that but they make fun of you and they they say what you're doing is stupid and meaningless so listen to what Reverend said he said well you know Hashem decrease that many rocha Sheba's have to go into exile they have to wander from place to place exile is a very term that we use for Yermak left says the the sin for which exile is decreed is when you kill somebody well he says a teacher of Torah may have inadvertently killed some of the students it's inadvertent but sometimes the way your Rebbe talks to a students the way the Rebbe D legitimates a question that the student tests that you know don't have such stupid questions you can kill and crush a student's spirits that can affect somebody for their whole lives there are people who actually remember things that happened in 4th grade maybe I mean yeah and that may have turned them off from Turin sir of Aaron Cutler said every rep II of Torah is potentially a murderer and that is why I am decrees they have to wander from place to place because that is like the ear McClatchy I'm not sure if I mentioned mister let me tell you a story that moves in the opposite direction of instead of being a person who crushes the spirit you're a person who brings out the best this is a story dwelling Roth IRA in late Steinman and this was a story of Bnei Brak were a boy from a religious home went off the derrick and in fact he decided to marry a non-jewish woman I know if there was an Arab or European who just happened to be in Israel and he left his parents house and he went to live with his non-religious uncle in Tel Aviv and the uncle took a man that was fine but when the uncle heard that he was gonna marry a non-jewish woman this was too much even for the uncle so he said you have to go to your parents for Shabbos and you have to tell them I'm not gonna tell them you have to face them and tell them so the kid called up his parents and he said I wanted to spend Shabbos with you but it has to be on my terms meaning I smoked I use my iPhone I use my computer and I'm gonna do it publicly and the protest whatever it is is Bnei Brak otherwise I'm not coming so basically the parents and I wanted him to come so they agreed to all of his trips so he's there he tells them he's engaged to marry this woman non-jewish woman and he's repetitive play Brock using his iPhone and smoking and the parents didn't say anything they just wanted him to be home so Shabbos afternoon the father asked his son a very odd question he says I'm going to a share that Chris diamond is giving would you like to go to the shear now why he thought his son would be interested is in itself unusual yeah we'd like to go is go to the share with me the son said yeah I do want to go to the show and they went to this year and after this year the father brought his son over to rough Steinman and mentioned trust I mean now my son is a sweet good boy but you know he doesn't keep Shabbos anymore maybe the the Rebbe could give him a brother so Steinman asked him how long have you not kept Shabbos they didn't talk about the the engagement of it to the gun so the boy said I haven't kept shoppers for two years he then asked the boy during those two years did you ever have thoughts of doing true he said yeah four times in the two years I had thoughts of doing children how long were those thoughts ten minutes over two years four times so Steinman said to him Wow so four so over the past two years you were on the moringa of about Chava for forty minutes and because I'll say the place where the bell she was stands is greater than even the perfect setting so for 40 minutes you were greater than any topic in the world because you had reached the level of the ball to roofs diamond said I'm jealous of you I'm jealous of what you achieve okay now that's part one and you know the boy was was fine with that a short while after was the boy broke off the engagement with the non-jewish woman but he said to his father by the way which was diamond said to me after the share was very very good and very very nice but that's not why I broke off the engagement I have an earlier encounter with fish time when I was in fourth grade and that's why I went to the shear because I remembered something that happened in fourth grade and this just reinforced it and together I made my decision what happened in fourth grade he was the fader of Bnei Brak her ad family later the whole class coaster of Steinman for a bikini he would give a bikini to the trader kids and Roche diamond was not a hard tester now some people ask hard questions or Timon you know duska gave easy questions and gave people candies and all the kids answered the easy questions but this kid think the boy says I couldn't dancer I couldn't answer even an easy question so if she diamond so much wants you to give me a candy he then asked me an easier question couldn't answer then he asked me an easier question and couldn't answer so everybody got candies I didn't get any candy after everybody left verse diamond asked me if I could stay behind privately and he said to the body he said to me he says you know in learning Torah the thing that counts is not your success so to speak but how much effort you put in in trying to do the right thing he says everybody only had to put an effort to answer one question and you had to put an effort to answer three questions so you work three times harder than everybody else so I want to give you three candies instead of one candy and the boy said I had forgotten that story over a number of years but when you asked me if I wanted to go to Rupp Steinman share that triggered a long repressed memory of that fourth grade incident and then I recognized if such a great person could see the good in me could see the potential then I should live up to that potential and that should we connect to a college burger story and that's why I decided to make the decision then I made again Shuba by recognizing your goodness by recognizing your potential now ideally that should come from within I shouldn't need somebody else but most of the time practically uni serves let me give you one one final little story about this this is the great governor of high moser Krasinski my mother Gretzky was a phenomenal gun he was a brilliant genius he was a the posts I adore he was about Stucker of the door he was the one that he died in 1940 the beginning relative beginning of the Holocaust but he was the one that did all of the arranging for the yeshiva stove to Japan and China I mean he was the one who arranged all of the visas did a tremendous amount of work I think like my own mother chamber of Ruderman metruff Kai Moshe when her vitamin was like 14 or 15 and he described her climb motors house in Vilna this is the 1930s and he says there was a big dining room table a long table and people were seated on both sides of the table this was like a grandmaster playing chess some people were asking analogic childless some people needed stucco some people needed information about other other things and he was answering all of these things at once and he was writing his own letters at the same time and people were talking if somebody would stop talking because they figured he wasn't listening he would say go on and he repeat exactly what they said and it was my receiver himself was that brilliant Eloy that's who amazed at what you got multitasking so if Clara was a phenomenally great great goggle in many many ways but there's a little story that I'd like to share with you which I like very much it's great Sabrina so you might see call them in a significant story but I've always been moved by it during the early years of the war in 3940 sir hi Mauser was in consultation with the Joint Distribution Committee that that was the American organization that collected a lot of stock up and they would send them to the Jews in Europe the Jews in the ghetto etc so if I Moser was meeting with the American representative of the joint - Lithuania which was a fellow Samuel Schmidt who was a physician but he was a volunteer for this work and dr. Schmidt was not a shomer Shabbos he was not a religious Jew at all but he was talking to reply Moser about money and distribution of funds and where the money should go and what are the needs prioritization of leads of the life so in the middle of the conversation with high Moser takes dr. Schmidt's hands and he says you know dr. Schmitz do you mind if instead of my calling you dr. Schmidt I call you Rebbe Shula grab the Rebbe is a title of some respect so for some reason this got dr. Schmidt he started like stopping a little bit and he said you know Rebbe I don't keep Shabbos I don't keep kosher okay a doctor I am that's my degree but to call me you read which is a title an honorific title for a nice religious Jew you know I don't deserve a nice I don't deserve for you to call me red so my mother said to him how can you say that about yourself you're a person who left a comfortable pernessa you put yourself in a war zone to serve the Jewish people do you think God does not value what you're doing do you think what you're not a good Jew do you think that what you're doing is not significant he says you're certainly a chew that deserves to be a Rebbe because of all that you're doing for the Jewish and dr. Schmidt writes and if they rewrote in a colony was we were sending a weekly column to Cincinnati Jewish paper that he went home that day he put out two filling he kept kosher from that day forward and he kept Shabbos from that day now my Mauser was not an outreach worker he was not involved in cure of programs he was not even a good speaker that day in spite of his phenomenal godness he was not a particularly charismatic person he didn't like to speak publicly and yet how did he change a person with literally one conversation by uncovering and making that person realize their Worth and their value in the eyes of God and that brought a person to children that goes back to ours a time of love and I will as a time of uncovering the blockages within us and ll as a city of refuge because the concept is when a person realizes their greatness the chumma is almost automatic because I want to live up to the beauty that is already within me and that is why you know when children get the message there are no goods they're defective they're failures that is not a motivator for somebody to become better if I get the message that on the flop then I'll just be a flop that's whether that's what I'm gonna be it is only when a person can be convinced of how good they truly are that they will be motivated to become to become better and that's why it's very important during this season of cuspidor nefesh that we be aware of ello as a time of love that is what our of Steinman changed this young boy's life Denisov hi Moser made dr. Schmidt a stronger service with a single conversation so be s recession may we always be able to interact with our children and with our students that way and may we realize it about ourselves as well we need to kind of give selves they say pat on the back as well to recognize the good within us as motivators for true transformative growth be well of a good week [Music]