Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: Experience G-ds Love in an Intense and Powerful Way

[Music] okay uh hi everybody uh again it's uh we're because of the sega uh we're giving our share from uh ishiba samayak instead of our normal location but uh i always appreciate uh my small live audience and uh today uh today's here is dedicated for the aliyat nishama of gabriel cambis then mashla said zada the art site is coming up in a few weeks and in addition their torah learning should be a zakhus for the reforeshalema of binyamin israel benjamita a young man whom hashem has finished radiation and chemo scheduled for a scan he's been able to go to school we still need to daven for him and we certainly hope and pray that he should have a refuse lame of a talk israel and all of the learning that we do should be for the benefit of his health and again as always we very much appreciate any and all sponsorships uh for this uh sheer and really for all of the very good work that ibanez does um i really have two things i want to talk about today first i want to briefly talk about tu b'shvat we know that this wednesday night and thursday will be what you might call a relatively small holiday in the jewish calendar but one that is actually quite beautiful and has many many depths of great meaning and that is the fifteenth day of shabbat the fifteenth day of the month of schwartz two two simply means tesla of two bishops is mentioned in the gemara as rosh hashanah ilanats it is called the new year for trees at least according to base hillel vaishamai says the new year is the basilo says the 15th of shivat but in the context of the gemara this is really a very very technical rule and that's a rule about tithing and the rule of tithing when you have to give true motes and mouse wrote you have to give various for the produce of eric israel so the halaqa is every year must have its own tithing i cannot give tithes from the produce of one year on that of another year so consequently you have to know when does a new year start for purposes of combining produce so for most purposes the new year starts on rosh hashanah so i cannot give tithes for the produce after rosh hashanah with the produce before rosh hashanah or vice versa but for trees the talmud says the demarcation point is not rosh hashanah but the 15th of shevat because with respect to fruit we have a different tithing date for reasons i'll get to a little later so technically there is no mention of it being a holiday there is no mention of it having deep spiritual significance it is simply the technical demarcation point between the fruits of one year and the fruits of the other year for purposes of true moat in mosul nevertheless in the course of time particularly through the influence of the great cabalists of svats in the time of ramosa cardavero and then the irizal and the talmidam of the ariza tu bashvat became invested with a great great deep spiritual significance they pointed out that although we call it rosh hashanah it has a relevance to human beings because in the human being himself is called a tree kihadam ates in fact we are considered to be upside down trees an earthly tree has its roots in earth and it reaches up to the heavens we are the opposite we are rooted in the heaven and we extend into the earth therefore we are retreated therefore when tu b'shvat is a rosh hashanah not there is a dimension of tu bashvat that applies to us as well and the kidushi harim the first gara rebbie explains this in a very powerful way the talmud you shall me writes that any fruits that blossom on the tree after tuber is a product of the reigns of the new year meaning the rain of this new year produced the sap that caused the fruit to blossom if on the other hand a fruit blossomed or budded before tu b'shvat the primary rain that generated the sap was of last year the fiduciary river says metaphorically the word geshem which means rain refers to all of the spiritual brachot that god puts into the world the bracha of health serenity the ability to understand torah shalom by its love and compassion that exists between people these are also these are the reigns of blessing that god brings into the world so the halluciarium says although it is on rosh hashanah that god this god decides what blessings we're going to get we don't draw on those blessings till after tuber meaning from rosh hashanah to tuber we are living off last year's reign after tu b'shvat we are living off of the rain so to speak that god decreed for us on rosh hashanah therefore the hinduja rim says one should be able if you're since if you're spiritually sensitive enough to feel a difference in your life between pre-tu bishwat and after jewish now it may not be better sometimes on rosh hashanah perhaps god forbid something more negative was decreed for me but it will be different which means yes it was on rosh hashanah yom kippur that god decided the brachot we're going to get in the air but from tu b'shvat those gates are open we can access spiritual treasures that we otherwise could not get and therefore it is a time of renewal of new opportunities just as the winter is gradually fading as we approach the rejuvenation of the spring so too in our own human existence our own spiritual existence there are new geshme bracha reigns of blessing that are available and thus by parallel to pesach that has a seder the mukubalam created a tu b'shvat seder of eating various fruits and even drinking four cups of wine to suggest that this too is a time of liberation and opportunity in a more prosaic way though it is a time to feel gratitude for all of the blessings that god put into the world particularly the blessings of the fruits and the grains that god blessed the land of israel and therefore one should eat those perhaps and one should understand that when you eat the fruit and you make a bracha and you have gratitude to god you are releasing the spiritual energy in the fruit and by releasing that spiritual energy you are bringing a bracha down to the world there's a very famous explanation i think it's from the arizona but if not it's from a capitalist that the well-known statement in the gomorrah anyone who eats without a bracha is as if they are stealing so most understand that to me that everything belongs to god and god gives you permission only with the bracha so if i eat without a bracha i'm stealing from god because it's god's property until i make the bracha the atonement itself explains it that way because one verse says hashem shamayim lashem theorets not time of nadam god owns the heavens but he gave us the earth another passage says la shema or sumla god owns the earth and the answer is it's god's property after bracha i have permission to use it so the simple meaning of gizella is you are stealing from god but the mekubolim say you are also stealing from the rest of the world because through your bracha you could have unleashed spiritual blessing into the world that would benefit the whole world when you don't make a bracha you are stealing from people the blessing that it could have come in so although i would not call to the jewish version of arbor day or earth day but it does have some connection to that idea and that is we glorif we glory in the beauties of nature and that generates within us feelings of gratitude and joy for the very beauty that hashem put into the world the diversity of taste and smell and color and these are things to think about gratitude is always a wonderful quality to cultivate and tu bishwat gives us an occasion to express that gratitude in the context of understanding that unlike perhaps other religious traditions judaism does not disparage the physical judaism does not reject the pleasures of this world but judaism teaches that you can take the pleasures of those worlds and sanctify them elevate them dedicate them and then the very beauty that exists in the physical realm now becomes connected to an inner spiritual radiance that brings bracha to you and brings bracha to really the entire world in one way or the other so i know it's a little early we're a few days early but i want to wish everyone a happy tu bishvat and may all of us merits to tap into the new potentials the sap so to speak that comes from the new brachats that become available precisely atubishvat and may us always when we always appreciate the beauties of nature and use them as a stepping stone to appreciate the kindness and the benevolence of our of our creator that was the first point i want to talk about just a little bit of a preparation for tubercult and again uh yi banan normally has a very beautiful uh tu bishwat seder uh this year unfortunately uh they're not able to have it so uh hopefully you can either see some things on youtube uh but the icare is that we should whoever we're with and even if we're by ourselves because remember even in the loneliest times a jew a human being is never alone there is always hashem with us and one should feel the presence of hashem no matter where they are and therefore i hope that tu b'shvat whether you're with people or by yourself you'll be able to feel the loving presence of akadesh parker that will strengthen you and comfort you in very very difficult and challenging times so that was my point number one uh point number two is i do want to connect it to the parsha that is coming up and the partial that is coming up is actually the completion of the exodus of egypt right we left mizrahim obviously on the first day of passover the 15th of nisan and the red sea split on the seventh of pesach and that's when we crossed and then we began our desert journeys which unfortunately took a lot longer than we thought it was going to take but essentially pesach begins with the seats mitzrayim and it culminates with kriyas yamsev the splitting of the red sea now there's a very interesting medrash uh which discusses the halaq issue that every holiday of course we recite a hallow on the first day of pesach including the seder night we recite the whole hollow complete hollow but the rest of pesach we only recite a half hollow our halal is not complete now this is very unique for example on sukkot we recite a complete halal for all seven days plus the eighth day of shemini azerite and in chlorites the ninth day of simcastora for hanukkah we recite a whole halal we recite a whole allah it's only rosh kodesh that is a half problem because joshua is not a true youngtive but pesach on the other end is a true yamcha and yet we only recite a whole halal day one we're in khutzlaret's first two days we don't recite a whole halal for the rest of pesach and why is that so so there are different reasons that are given so i know that what i'm telling you is not the only reason that's given but perhaps the best known reason is a reason given by the commentary shibole lekkets which was one of the beshinan and he quotes it in the name of a madrid now it's interesting we don't actually have this madrid but he apparently had access to a megarish that we don't have and the shiboli record says the following the reason why we do not recite a whole hollow on the seventh of pesach is because the seventh of pesach commemorates an event that resulted in the destruction of the egyptians and our joy is to be muted the pussock says in proverbs when your enemy falls do not rejoice and therefore since this commemorates the destruction of mitzrayim our joy has to be reduced our joy has to be minimized we don't eliminate it totally but we go from whole halal to half-hour now you may ask akasha well that only answer is the last day of pesach what about day two through six i mean that's not kris yamsef why don't i say a hola well then so the ta's answers that we go in reverse logic and that is days two to six are called hamoid they're not a complete holiday we never want to make halamoed more significant than a yamtif so if i'm not gonna do a whole hollow on the seventh day of pesach which is a hag then i'm not going to do a whole halal on the days of halamoi now i just want to clarify that this idea that joy cannot be complete when human beings are suffering does appear in the gemara itself but in a different context it's important to see the difference between the shibale lekkes and the gomorrah the gemara discusses and the medrish as well that at the time of the splitting of the red sea the angels in heaven wanted to sing a song of praise to god and as the angels were singing songs of praise god told the angels the egyptians are my creations they're drowning in the sea atem omrim shira this is the time for singing and jubilation human life is being destroyed so remember so the talmud says that the angels were disabled from saying shira because we have because they hashem had commiseration for the suffering of the egyptians the shibale lekket is taking this thought further than the gemara itself took it the shibolaki said that that is the reason we do not recite a complete halal on the seventh of pesach because we too have to commiserate with suffering now this is a remarkable idea this idea of my say thy table my creatures are drowning in the sea the atem ramshira on one hand we are not pacifists i'll say somebody comes to kill you hashtag low kill him first we don't believe in turning the other cheek if someone tries to destroy us we are commanded to fight but side by side with the need to respond is always a sense of sadness that it had to come to this we recognize the tragedy of all life being destroyed we recognize that we have to have rakhim and compassion that even when we have to do what we have to do and we have to do it and i want to emphasize that it would be a misplaced compassion not to take the steps that are necessary after all god is crying about the egyptians but he's still drowning him god doesn't say oh these are my creatures i have to save them but there is sadness and i have to say that this is one of the things that personally makes me most proud of the idf our wonderful army because on one hand one of the best armies in the world they get the job done but there's never been a glorification of the suffering of the other side they do what they have to do but there's no joy there's no enthusiasm i remember years ago there was a picture in the new york times and it was picked up by many other pictures of a terrorist who dipped his blood in the bodies of uh i'm sorry dipped his hands rather in the blood of the bodies of his victims and he was dancing around in a frenzy with his fingers dripping blood celebrating the joy of destroying jewish men women and children all i can say is that i could not even imagine a jewish soldier doing that unless they were literally psychotic or mentally insane even the doctor that few that you know years ago a few i think 20 years ago killed with the dr goldstein was the name killed a number of of arabs and again that was not justified i'm not justifying it but he acted out of a broken heart in fact he had ministered to them he had been a position to them he had taken care of them but he had seen so much violence so much murder so much retaliation that he snapped and he did what he did but there was no like dancing around and singing in the light so this is a very important idea that the idf has never embraced a glorification of killing the enemy and this is something that i think as jews we have to be very very proud of my creatures god says are drowning in the sea atem shira you think that's something to laugh about and sing about and dance about so and the shabala like it says that it's not just the angels that are being silenced even we we still rejoice because god redeemed us we don't dismiss it totally but we show a little bit we're not completely basimaha might say yada tovah so what i want to raise is is i think an interesting question here and that is okay we don't say a whole halal on the last day of pesach because egyptians died but we do say a complete hallow on the first day of pesach and at the seder and many even in the show even in the synagogue pesach night now plenty of egyptians died the first day of pesach that was of course the plague of the firstborn and that was so devastating that the torah itself says ain't bias i share a shammace there was not a single home in which there was not a dead body single home of the egyptians so how come i have this unrestrained joy on the first day of pesach see there are two ways one could view the world one could view the world to a particularistic lens and that means as long as it's good for the jews i don't care about the collateral damage so somehow on the first day of pesach we are parochial we basically say hey this was great we got out of there egyptians died good riddance i really don't care about what happened today we'll call that particularistic or parochial but then the other way of looking at it is to be a universalist i commiserate with all human suffering all human misery so the problem here is you can be one you can be the other in fact one could make arguments either way good for the jews good for humanity but how come on the first day of pesach our moral stance seems to be if it's good for the jews i don't care who else suffers but on the seventh day of pesach all of a sudden we become universalists in which i identify and i empathize with the suffering of everybody even the unworthy even the oppressors where do you get the change where do you have that transition what happens in the intervening days that would make me look at the world in a different way so let me start with an interesting observation of the basal levy the basal labia points out that the miracle of the splitting of the red sea was fundamentally the opposites of the miracle of all the plagues all of the ten plagues in egypt if you think about it the miracle was the punishing aspect of the plague the water turned to blood the frogs over uh ran uh mithralian the lice the death of the firstborn every single plague the miracle was god changed the natural order of things to punish the egyptians for their evil if the jewish people were spared in the plague it's not through a miracle god simply left the jewish people within the confines of the natural order right there's water the miracle was the water turned to blood god left the jewish people outside of the ambit of the miracle the splitting of the red sea is exactly the opposite if the ten plagues the miracle was the punishment and the salah the saving was the teva the nature with kriyas yamsev it's an opposite problem or an opposite process the miracle was the splitting of the water the miracle was the saving of israel the egyptians did not die miraculously at least according to the simple meaning of the buzzing when the jews had crossed over god simply removed the miracle in the absence of the miracle the water comes together you happen to be in that water you get drowned the egyptians did not drown by a supernatural process the egyptian drowned by removing the miracle and they died by drowning so it turns out that both the marcos and the kriyasyayamsa involve a nace a miraculous shinoi a change of the teva but the makos represent a shinoi in the direction of punishment and retribution kriyasyamsa for the first time represents a shinoi in the direction of love and compassion and giving now why is that significant so here is the thing when the jewish people experience the exodus from egypt which comes after the culmination of ten plagues this is certainly a great great loving kindness but the predominant lesson of the marcos is the awesome power and severity of god's judgment against evildoers that the almighty god will change the very foundations of the laws of nature to punish those who perpetrate injustice cruelty on others well when i walk away from that type of experience the one thing i absorb is yirasashem yiras hashem means fearing god now fearing god itself has two components you can fear god in the most literal sense that i better behave because god will punish me if i don't either this world or the world to come and although maimonides writes that that is a relatively low level of spiritual accomplishment in which i'm doing good because i'm afraid i'm going to get punished but nevertheless it sometimes can be a motivator and a very powerful motivator now era of course has a higher level fear of god is not just fear but there's something higher called reverence or in fact the word yirah in hebrew has these two connotations the lower level of fear is called yiras ownish fear of punishment the higher level of fear is called yirat harom amund that means awe and reverence for the majesty majesty the omnipotence the glory of the infinite power of god not because he's going to hurt me if i disobey but there's just an awe and a reverence as i see his infinite power so that is what the marcos taught us the marcos taught us hashem that hashem hashem's mastery over nature will be employed to punish and destroy those who perpetrate evil in the world so we did not yet experience the highest level of love of god yes of course god taking us out of mitzrayim was an act of love but god didn't do a miracle of love the miracle was a miracle of punishment kris yamsev is the first time in the process that a miracle was done not to punish a miracle was done to show love and compassion for his beloved people which means kriyas yamsaf we felt the love of god the love that god has for us in a much stronger more powerful way than we felt before it's as if we look at ourselves and we say god changed the physical laws of the universe just for me just so i would be able to go through the channels of the red sea twelve pathways each tribe had its own derek i see how much god loves his people not just doing miracles to punish and destroy but doing miracles to show and demonstrate his love so we could conclude therefore that on the seventh day of pesach there was a greater revelation of divine love than there even was during the ten plagues and at the time of pesach the beginning of pesach itself now let's go further there's a beautiful verse in the book of proverbs and this is one of those circum that i actually encourage people to memorize or put on their refrigerator door kamayam hapanimal panhim kane leif [Music] what does that mean as water reflects the face that you show it so too the heart of man reflects back that which is shown what does that passage mean imagine you have a pool of water and you're looking into the water and the water reflects back your face the face you show the water is the face you're going to see from the water you smile at the water so to speak you have a happy kind face you will see a happy kind face you frown and you're angry you will see a frowning angry face whatever you show the water is what the water reflects back so malek is saying the same way that water reflects back whatever face it is shown the human heart will reflect back that which i show it i show you kindness concern love you will feel that love and kindness towards me i show you denigration demonization beetle you're a nobody you're going to feel that way about me whatever it is that i show you is what you're going to mirror back to me in some ways i don't want to get too political but this is why relatively very little progress is made in any area of religious secular dialogue in the state of israel like we never seem to get ahead we're always consumed with fighting arguments sinatra nam and part of it is because each side demonizes the other if i look at a secular jew or a secular movement and i say abi kores a malek heretic then they're gonna feel to me parasite lazy person non-productive if on the other hand i could look and a fellow jew and i could see their humanity i could see the goodness and worthiness of the accomplishments that they're doing i could look at policemen religious or not and be grateful for the sacrifices of themselves putting themselves in danger or khayalim or garbage collectors or street cleaners and i could see the positive contribution that they're making to the quality of my life then they would see the positive contribution of religious jews torah learning and the like now people ask well why do i have to be the one that starts i mean you're telling me if i look at them nicely they'll look at me nicely well okay why can't i say let them look at me nicely and then i'll look at them nicely why do i have to start the short answer is as the saying goes somebody has to be the adult in the room somebody has to start okay yeah they i could say they should start too okay that's fine but we have no control over them i have no control over anybody but me so all i can say is i have to do what's right i have to strive to see the good in people to understand where they're coming from to understand that even if people might be misguided in the sense that they don't agree with me and maybe i'm the one that's misguided but whatever it is even if they're wrong they are very very rarely malicious we're not talking about hitler's here we're not we're just not talking about that type of evil we're talking about people that might be misguided that might be mistaken who may not fully understand and again i want to emphasize perhaps we're the ones that don't fully understand and slow muhammad is giving us a great great treasure in how to diffuse conflict and bring people together you will get back from the other that which you project on to the other kamayam upon him upon him came lay for adam that would solve everything i mean i i in my own life i remember once i once uh i was a last-minute substitute for something but i once had to debate a very very prominent american academic who had once been an orthodox jew but i'd left it and he kind of didn't like a lot of things that orthodox jews were doing and uh when i was tapped to be a last-minute substitute personal i see that he was very disappointed because the guy that should have debated him was much more famous than i was so like he's a great guy who i'm a little nobody but be it as it may uh the first thing i started doing is i started talking about all the positive accomplishments that this person had done and that i admired him in many ways and it was amazing my wife tells me this i didn't notice that he started physically relaxing that initially he was like his arms were together and he was very uptight because he figured i was going to kind of berate him and say how bad he was and he was ready to fight and say how limited and stupid i was but as i was building him up a little bit you know his arms like relaxed he became less tense and then he started complimenting me and complimenting the disguise and then everything else to my and my partner upon him it actually works it really does work now why am i bringing it up here so the balatanya writes the same way that if i show you love you will feel love to me applies to god the more i feel the love of god the more i have love towards god because i feel god's love so that increases the love i have for god come i am upon him upon him my god also benefits from this principle so now let's go back to kriya samsef kriyasyam so if we've already said we felt god's love in a more powerful way than we felt even by yes mitzrayim because hashem did a supernatural miracle to change nature but based on the michele pasuk like water that reflects the face you show it the more we felt the love of god the more we had love of god our love of god grew stronger and therefore we can actually make two two statements now kriya's yamsev enabled us to feel the love of god in a much more powerful and intense way than we had before that's step one step two is as we feel the love of god in a more powerful way the love we have for god now becomes increased now this may explain a medrash which is a little bit enigmatic the torah writes after kriyas yamsev we say this every day in davening the jewish people saw the great hands the great power i show us that god did to the egyptians hashem they feared god for me no basham they believed in hashem over moshe of dough and moshe his servant so the medra says only from kriyasyamsaf onwards was their real year before kriyasyams if we didn't have real yira now that's a bit of a question if it would have said from kriyasyam safanwar's we felt real love that would fit what we're saying but why does creos amps of give us a level of era that we didn't have before isn't yeara something we achieved right or reverence fear of punishment didn't we achieve that all the way back in metria the answer is that until now i've been saying there are two types of ira there is yirata oneesh there is fear of punishment and there's here at tyromamuts there is awe and reverence but now i want to introduce a third type of era in the context of actually four levels of spiritual development the lowest level is fear of punishment i better behave otherwise there'll be nasty consequences then you progress to serving god because you have an awe and a reverence for his greatness [Music] and then there's a third level that from that awe and reverence i proceed to loving hashem note the progression here when i contemplate the greatness of god that is that awakens in my heart love for hashem so this is these are the three levels so far going from lower to higher yirasa oneesh yirasaromamus ava but then there's a third level of yira that is above ava it is not the fear of punishment and it's not even on reverence but it's it's an intensification of love that the love is so powerful that you are fearful of doing anything that will bring pain to the object of your love it's not fear of the person let's take it in the human relationship let's imagine a person loves his spouse very much and he or she has to get up early and really really really does not want to wake up their spouse so they tiptoe they walk on eggs eggshells so to speak they're very very careful they're afraid to do anything that may cause their spouse discomfort now this is not fear of punishment i'm not afraid to wake up my wife because she'll hit me with a frying pan hopefully that's not going to happen and it's not even all in reverence oh i'm afraid how dare i you know wake up the you know mighty holy you know wife or whatever it is it's a fear that comes from love when you love something very intensely you're literally afraid of doing something that will cause them pain so with respect to god there is a level of era that is really higher than other it's an intensification of love which translates into a fear not a fear that i'm going to get punished and not even on reverence but i fear how can i do something that will bring pain to the one that i love this might be the meaning you know for us benching the prayer that we recite and show the shabbos mavaraka the shabbos before rosh chodesh so we ask hashem give us a life in which there is shamayim there is fear of heaven and fear of sin now what is fear of heaven fear is heaven is god fear of heaven includes fear of punishment and it also includes on reverence give us a life in which we have ye rashtramayam yi is not fear of god it's the fear of doing something wrong that caviar will bring pain to god that is a year that comes out of love so when the medrash says kriyasyamsaf gave us yira it is the era that comes from the intensification of love that kriyasyamsaf represented yerasa onash and yarasa we acquired from the exodus itself yet see us mitzrayim and the ten plagues but kriyasyamsaf which is feeling god's love and therefore growing in your love of god culminated in the era and that's what the medrash means that says become the elect from kris yams of onwards there was yours and in fact it's very medujak here because it says by yeru haaam es hashem they feared hashem now the name that's used is yud ke vodka the tetragrammaton now the problem is yurt kevke is the name of mercy and compassion it should have said yerat elokim for example which is the meet us for example when avraham told abimelech the king of the palestinian that sarah was his sister and when avi malek says why didn't you tell me the truth and avraham said i didn't want to say she was my wife because you would kill me why ain't your wrestle kim there was no fear of kim in this place meaning you don't believe in reward and punishment but it seems to be a contradiction to talk about yira in connection with the name of rahman but if you understand that this is not a fear this is a year coming from love it was seeing god's rakhimim that gave us that love and that love gave us that era not to do anything that would bring pain to our beloved okay this is the idea of creating so now let's take this a little further part of loving somebody and this is very true in a marriage is you strive to see the world through their eyes right men and women with derek clau are very very different and one of the adjustments that every married couple hopefully needs to go through and hopefully will go through is try to understand [Music] what the other person is seeing what they're feeling what they're experiencing we call that empathy not sympathy sympathy is islam i feel sorry for somebody empathy is the capacity to kind of feel that experience it's very hard for a man to see the world through a woman's eyes and it's hard for a woman to see the world through a man's eyes we are different but the deeper the love the more i strive to try to see the world the way you see it it's never going to be a hundred percent obviously the glasses we wear are always based on our eyes but we strive in fact even in marital therapy one of the techniques that is often employed and it works pretty well is role playing if husband and wife have a dispute and they've come to an impasse a therapist might tell the husband make believe you're your wife what would you say and says to the wife make believe you're your husband what would you say it forces each person to put themselves in the shoes of the other and see the world differently now when you live in the world of era when your relationship to god is based on fear then you're really looking after you you're looking after number one i don't want to do something that will have negative consequences for however the me is defined for me for my family for my people for my nation right yira is by definition kind of a parochial idea that's bound up with self-interest so now i want to suggest this is the difference in hollow going back to the very original question i had raised the question if the shibali luckett says we only say a half halal at the end of pesach because since it commemorates the destruction of the egyptians our joy is not complete then how come on day one i say a whole halal plenty of egyptians died then too that more egyptians may have died in mahakasparos than died at kriyasyamsaf the answer is in the first day of pesach my relationship to god is based on era so my main focus is i want to avoid negative consequences to me so as long as good things are happening to me i'm perfectly happy and if there's collateral damage that other people are suffering that's not so much of my business but by the end of pesach we've graduated we've moved from a relationship of fear to a relationship of love and once you move into the relationship of love part of loving god means you try to see the world the way god sees the world now that's even harder than marriage right it's much harder to see the world the way god sees the world because god is infinite but this is the difference from my perspective the egyptians are evil bad rotten enslaved us if god destroys them good riddance yahshua but from god's perspective there's something different here god created every human being every human being is in the image of god every human being had the potential to become a good person to do good to accomplish to achieve so when a person makes evil choices for which they may have to be destroyed sometimes because remember god himself is not a pacifist that is not a matter of just saying good riddance there's a deep deep sadness caviar within a kardash because these two were his children i mean imagine if you have a parent that has a child and the child goes off the derek and maybe the child does awful things awful things and the child has to be killed he's a mass murderer and the parent even agrees that the child has to be killed but there's so much grief because of what could have been things could have been different so my point is the movement from a parochial preoccupation with what's good for me to commiserating with the suffering and destruction of all human beings is based on the movement from a relationship of yirah to a relationship of ava as we grow in our love of god we feel god's love every human being and even when a human being is destroyed that is a tragedy in other words it's a very interesting idea the tragedy of evildoers in the world is not only to the victims that they have affected there is a tragedy to the evil doer himself what he might have been what he could have been and this creates an infinite sadness on the part of god and the more that i love god the more i endeavor to feel empathy so to speak for the divine pain and therefore it's padafka and the seventh of pesach where that empathy makes my own joy muted and a little bit reduced while we go from the whole hollow to the half hollow and this is something to be to remember again i i keep on repeating this this does not mean that we tolerate evil this does not mean that we let it go this does not mean there's no accountability there is accountability there is justice you know the nazis needed to be tried at nuremberg and even defeated today but there is sadness things could have been different they might have been different the tragedy of a potential that was never realized and we give that some acknowledgement in our half hallow on the seventh day of pesach so those were the uh thoughts uh that i wanted to to share with you um but again as i say i wish everyone a very happy and joyous uh tu bishvat may be a time of renewal uh may uh the magefa may the plague of kovitz uh be past us and may some of the responses to kobe would also be moderated and i uh well maybe i should i don't want to go there but okay but let's beat me and as it may uh may there be refuge lima may there be bria tagov and ultimately may all of us be zoha to the gaula shalema behrafiyam [Music] me [Music]