Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: Expressions of Redemption and Hope

[Music] he hi everybody thank you thank you for coming and uh first uh this year tonight is dedicated uh for AA for Nat Ben ZL and B Ben fra and as always for all those whose Health has been affected by the war and for the return of our and uh the brothers and sisters who are in captivity or who are going through the war effort in addition for benzar dedicated by R FR and Naomi finlin in memory of their parents Rabbi and Mrs Philip finlin as always uh the fingles were people who had a very pivotal pivotal influence on my own life uh finally we would like to invite uh everybody to the annual I bishvat seder uh that God willing I hope to uh lead or be involved in uh live music by Kim David Wednesday evening January 24 uh to register just send an email to tub bishvat yad.com and payment instructions will be sent as a reply you know even in regular L of sorts we actually have a tat in the day as well and I like to say that for biva it is the one day of the year that they have a healthy fruit and vegetable diet so for that alone it's very very kada if you're not uh so particular on on correct uh fruits and vegetables during the rest of the of the year but again more fundamentally it is a time to express uh for the Beauties and the boun of er Israel and that's always something hakar is always a a very very good thing uh we are uh in the parot of Yas we began talking about it last week and at the end of parashos we have a very very radical turn in things where Moser raenu was arguing with Hashem over and over and over and I don't want to go I'm not worthy they're not worthy he's using every possible argument he says I'm not good enough and they're not good enough and you can get better people than me and he keeps KES in debate for seven days he's arguing with hem for seven days and finally says I'm not asking I'm telling so hasem wanted Moshe to agree Moshe didn't really agree Hashem says you're doing it whether you like it or not so mosha and Aaron finally go to parro and Moshe does all the signs that he has to do to show that he is a sh Hashem he turns the water to blood uh and he turns the staff into a snake and his hand is Saras and everything else and Pyro mockingly says me Hashem who is this Hashem AO you get the impression pyro heard ofes but he's like saying mockingly who is this God that I should listen to him I'm looking at my list I don't see him on my list I should let the Jewish people go so pyro comes up with the idea that people agitate for Liberty when they have too much time on their hands very familiar dictatorial tactic they should work harder then they're not going to have time to think about freedom and liberty and civil rights and everything else and he makes things worse he actually says from now on you have a quota to make a certain amount of bricks uh we used to give you the raw material the straw from now on you got to gather your straw and you have to come up with the quota so this actually breaks Moser raain it's very very strange because mosha Reno understood that this would be a process Hashem did tell him Hashem already told him phoh is not going to let them go right away so Moshe expected that there would be resistance that's not the Kish but that life should be worse again Mosher Renu is a person that although he grew up in the Palace of the king mosha abu's heart is Soul felt so much compassion so much pain for the suffering of the Jewish people and the fact that their pain increased and their suffering became worse was unbearable to him and in spite of the unbelievable madrea of mos rabeno he complains to God in very harsh terms why did you make it get worse for the people why did you say why did you send me May Pyro from the time I came to pyro not only didn't it become better it became worse and M said it with the phrase May from the time May from the time I came to Pyro you made it worse for the people so the medish points out a beautiful interesting observationes said to Moshe you are complaining to me with the word as from then by your life they will be redeemed and praise me with the very word that you're using as a complaint against me and that is the O Yer Moshe that is the song at upon the Red Sea which culminated the Redemption of the Jewish people you complain be o the O will be the source of the gratitude for the G so the maam explained that it's not just the same word o and us but rather aadesh was telling mosha the idea that it's precisely the worsening of the situation that will open the door for Redemption meaning we spoke about this last week that it is the thing that you perceive as evil that in fact will be the source of good and the mforum explained this in a very very concrete way a very very specific way the Jewish people should have been in Egypt 400 years that is what God told Abraham the Jewish people were redeemed after 210 years because if they would have stayed even a little bit longer they would have hit the 50th level of Tuma but God has to work kav God has to work within his gazerro if God said 400 years it got to somehow be 400 years even if he has to collapse it into 210 years so Hashem has a problem Hashem has a mathematical problem how do you compress 400 years of slavery into the 210 years one way of doing it is unusual population growth so that the manh hours that were worked by this huge population over 210 would equal the man hours of a normal population over 400 so the reboy of the population was in itself one of the ways bash that God could take us out after 210 instead of 400 and the second is the extra difficulty of the suffering it's hard to quantify suffering but the concept was God was go there 400 years which would contain a certain measure of suffering if that amount of suffering could be experienced in a shorter amount of time in effect you've taken the 400 years and you've built it into the 210 so some foram say it was precisely the incremental difficulty of gathering the strug that created the requisite extra difficulty that enabled the Redemption to occur at this particular moment in time and that's what it means the very o that you're complaining about will be the O that will signify the Redemption and that's the way life is the difficulties in life are often the catalysts for our spiritual growth so the para ends with moshe's complaints and then God begins a muser to mosha a chastisement mosha which carries over to the beginning and he said you know I made many promises to the Patriarchs and I didn't fulfill them in their lifetimes and they didn't complain and you have no faith and then Hashem says am moreal Israel I'm sending you back to B Israel and you shall say to them I am Hashem Y and Rashi says I am the one who is faithful in keeping his promise and then he uses the famous four terms of redemption I will take them from the burdens of Egypt I will save them from their slavery I will redeem them with an outstretched strong hand and outstretched arm I will take them unto me for a nation fori theti the Alti these are called the four the four of G now I know you know this it's well it's a wellknown but it's interesting that it's not as clear as you might say all of us know that in the Seder we're obligated to drink four cups of wine and or grape juice whatever it is and we drink it at various points of the Seder the first cup is drunk after Kish the second cup is drunk after we finish the recitation of the hagada story the third cup is drunk after we say and the fourth cup is drunk after we recite the Hal we finish the Hal these are four Kos and this is a and the T does not require drinking four cups of wine but it is a rabbi obligation and it's a rabbi obligation for men and for women men anden women are equally obligated in the Mitzvah of Aros but why is there a of four cups of wine so it's very very interesting everybody knows the famous reason that the were the four cups of wine to correspond to the four terms of redemption I will take you out I will save you I will redeem you I will take you unto me for a Nation meaning Ked AR the shinus G but what people sometimes don't recognize is that that's not necessarily the reason in point of fact the Babylonian talud the gamorra does not give that as a reason in so far as the gamor is concerned the only reason you have four cups of wine is because there happens to be four different Commandments that you're doing at the Seder and each commandment should be honored with a cup of wine you honor kiddish with wine you you honor hag with wine you honor Bening with wine you honor Hal with wine meaning it's not that there's a Mitzvah of four cups of wine rather there are four recitation Commandments which should have a cup of wine attached so in so far as the Babylonian tment is concerned the four cups of wine are simply because of the four mitzvot which would mean I mean let me give you let me give you a practical example let's imagine you didn't have a hag let's imagine you didn't have a ha you didn't know what to say would there be a Mitzvah to drink four cups of wine if you're not going to say kidish you're not going to bench you're not going to say ha so according to the Tom there would be no Mitzvah because there's no Mitzvah of four cups of wine there's a Mitzvah to have four recitations over wine so the Bali does not connect the four cups of wine to the four Lonas of GAA the the First Source that does connect it is the talmi thei says con AR of okay now that's very interesting because we normally assume in that the B is much more authoritative than the USI and yet the very familiar source that the D Kos are conned the for Shon us of GAA is not from the B at all it is from the talmud as a little aside I'll mention another P whose source is not in the B at all and it's only from the that's the that you're not allowed to eat matah on era of PES now some people stop eating matah from porim or some people stop eating matah fromes Nissan those are men hug but according to the strict you're allowed to eat matah until the day before PES P you're not allowed to eat matah because it'll ruin your appetite or your excitement for the matah of the night and the tell me now in the B there's no such if you were to ask me where in the gamar does it say you're not allowed to eat it doesn't say the source of this well-known that the rules is in thei which actually uses a very striking metaphor it says anyone who eats matah on a of p is tantamount to a person that has relations with his bet trust before the wedding uh meaning at some point it'll be much at some point it'll be a Mitzvah but if you're jumping the gun you're doing a sinful action that's the same thing o over here so it's interesting that there are two of P one is the source for at least the reason for the four cups of wine and the other is the P which means you understand what this means this actually means the is of eating matah comes in earlier than the isra of eating I can eat until the four fourth of the day matah I cannot eat from dawn right so the iser of matah starts earlier than the iser of eating on P and without getting into it this creates sorts of problems when you make a c for for a B for a firstborn to take off the fast on a of PES what exactly do you eat in the morning uh you can't eat matah you could eat but a lot of shs understandably don't want to mess up the show with bread and potato starch cake and the like is shahak that does not count uh for that's either be bread or cake bread Mata cake and like all of those those options don't really work ER of PES all right so people come up with egg mat but again maybe we'll talk about that uh when we get closer to the closer to the occasion I don't know why I'm talking about the S maybe T bishvat SED is making me think of seder but okay but I don't know all right so now let's go with the T ji that theod of the Mitzvah ofos is because of the four not of GA V why are there four the not of GA after all was a unitary event God redeemed the Jews from the slavery of Egypt why is that expressed in four terminologies of GAA so I'm going to give a several answers some of them will be short some of them will be longer but just in terms ofat the simplest Pat answer is actually given by the N the great Berlin and he simply points out and he proves it by a very very ingenious close exam close examination of the language of the text itself that the Jewish people achieved their freedom in stages meaning yes from the time Moshe came to parro until the time the Jews left Egypt was one year this we know from tradition that the whole period of the plagues was a one-year period but the shows it's not that we went From Slavery to Freedom in one night with the plague of the first born but rather over the course parro was responding in various ways to the plagues in different points and he says the following he says there were three levels of slavery the worst level the highest level the most level was called avodas per avodas per is backbreaking labor and in the middle of the makos he shows it where it happened parro finally relented and he took away the per but we were still aadim the second level was he took away the abdos but we were not permitted to leave mitan the third level was makos were even we were even able to leave m so consequently he says the first L of G Hashem is promising us the backbreaking labor will stop even though you'll still be slaves the second L of GAA is even the slavery will stop even though you'll be stuck in Egypt the third stage of redemption is you will leave MIT and the fourth stage is you'll get the Torah so the NV very elegantly simply says that the four show note of GAA corresponds chronologically to the progressive stages that the liberation of the Jewish people took place over that year and even into the desert that first the avodas per was taken away but they were still aim then the Abdus was taken away but they were still stuck in Egypt then they were permitted to leave Egypt and then finally we got the got the Torah that's how the N understands the doid of G the medish medish Raba gives two other interpretations of the four Lon of gula one interpretation is it corresponds to four different decrees that pyro issued against the Jewish people and God is promising we will be liberated from all of those evil decrees decree number one was slavery itself decree number two was the initial decree that the uh that the M mot The Midwives should strangle or kill a male the male babies remember that was Pyro's original decree and they weren't listening to it the third decree was the solders should throw the males into the water and the fourth decree was the Gathering of the straw so par was goer for Gaz is and will anol them all now I will admit there are some kasas on this medish and it's simply this by the time Hashem is telling Moshe about these things the gazer of throwing the babies in the water was already a not meaning it wasn't an active Gaza anymore in fact it was an old 80 years ago already because the gazer was at around the time that Mosher raena was born when AEM is speaking to mosha mosha is 80 years old right now so this is an old gazer that's been long gone so why is Hashem telling Moshe that gazer will be aned unless it means kind of just as I have annuled those decrees I will an know the the the present decrees so that's one medish there's another medish that says that the four leonos of gula correspond not only to MIT but to the four later Exiles that the Jewish people will experience in the course of their history right these are the famous four kingdoms The Book of Daniel the safer Daniel is filled with many many visions of the four kingdoms sometimes represented as four metals gold silver copper iron sometimes has four fearsome beasts right if you look at the book of daniil you see a constant reference to the four malot and in Rabin tradition the four malot are Babylon B Paras Persia yavan Greece and the final malus is called Edom Rome and we are generally considered to be situated in the Gus of Edam the Gus of Rome even today because even though there's no Roman Empire because Rome eventually morphed into western civilization and Christianity and the Jewish nation is generally subjugated by that and then there are later Madan that adds as a component of Gus Edom will also be the Resurgence of Ismael as kind of a fifth Gus which is the Arab Nations and the like and that's also marum is in Danel because in the Book of Daniel Nader had a dream of a huge statue whose head not the the Russia had the dream the statue was gold and the chest and the arms were silver and the abdomen and the upper thigh eyes were copper and the lower leg was iron and the toes were a mixture of iron and clay and a huge Rock came out from the sky and it smokee the statue and everything was crushed theader didn't know what the dream meant and daniil explained to him the dream is God is essentially unfolding the ultimate future history of mankind the gold head is Nadar and the silver represents Persia and the copper represents yavan and the iron is the destructive power of Rome but it's not clearly explained what does the clay right the expression in English clay feet comes from uh that description in danal but it's quite logical it's a very reasonable extrapolation that the clay represents yma indeed how do kazal describe the ishmaelites they worship the dust they worship the dirt on their feet interestingly so therefore the clay which is from the ground represents is and the fact that the toes are part iron and part clay represents that at the very end the heels of mashia there will be the struggle between Rome Christian civilization western civilization and yesel and the Jewish people of course the common denominated is the Jewish people suffer on either side of the equation that's going to be the final struggle so what's interesting is kazal don't talk about five Exiles because I'll talk about four Exiles we have to be honest they talk about Abel and Persia and Greece and Rome Edom they don't talk about Ismael as a fifth gallus but but in later sources they do there are many many sources that do mention that yesel will be a component of the fourth gas and indeed that's exactly what we have experienced and letu that is exactly what we are experiencing uh to this very very uh day so going back to the medish so the medish connects the four isn't it kingdoms not g because there are only three two or something I didn't know the what there only three yeah yeah yeah so so really we don't mean a SE yeah well egyp Egypt is pre preol G yeah so really it's four kingdoms that will dominate dominate the Jew the Jews till the till the end of to the end of days now the medish wants to say therefore going back to the medish that the four Promises of redemption are are not limited to MIT but they're actually future promises that just as I will redeem you from mitam I will redeem you from Babylon from Persia from Greece from edim and therefore the four Lonas OFA are conned the malos so we have a whole bunch of interpretations here uh I haven't I certainly haven't said all of them and I still have another one to say to say which will be a little longer uh we have the interpretation of the N that the four shown of gula simply represents the chronological unfolding of how the Jewish people were liberated that's kind of a pretty straight forward reading of the text uh we have the medish that connects it to the four decrees of parro uh the slavery The Midwives killing the babies the soldiers throwing the babies into the water and the gazer of gathering the stra and we have the medish that connects it to the four kingdoms the four Mot that will enslave and persecute the Jewish people until the coming of of mashia now remember just in terms of kazal and understanding it obviously both in tanak and in kazal by gar and medish this was pre Islam so when they talked about yesel they were not directly talking about Islam they were just talking about yesel and pre-islamic yishmael were simply pagans they were you know beduins who were pagan people uh Islam so to speak made them monotheist in that way so we commonly say you know Islam is yishmael but that's not a complete truth I mean number one there are Arabs who are not Muslim there are Christian Arabs and there are Muslims who are not Arab I mean Iran for example is not uh is not an Arabic Islamic country so the idea that Arab and Muslim are the same concept is not necessarily true but it is interesting that the has a fascinating observation tell us that yes Dida at the end of his life so since whatever the our forefathers do even yesmo is kind of a predictor of what's going to be that means the nation of Ismael will also undergo a chuva and the says the first stage of that Chua as bizarre as this may find was their conversion to Islam because that was a rejection of the paganism in favor of monotheism and that was their first step towards now granted that leaves a lot to be desired in light of their other behaviors but that was the first step towards KES and it may very well be if I could modernize it if I could update it a little bit it may be things like the Abraham Accords of United Arab Emirates and and the like Dubai might be part of a second stage in which there is at least a segment I mean there is Hamas which is the Other Extreme of evil but then there's another opposite segment within the Arab world in which they want to have some type of connection to the Jewish people and perhaps that's part two of yishmael doing a type of chuva you know who knows again one has to be very very humble in not prognosticating the ram already told us that anything we say about is at best to guess we will only know it in hindsight when mashia comes will'll be able to go backwards and say oh this was this and this was this and this was this uh as it's happening you have we have no idea what it really is okay so these are different perspectives on the four the sh not of G but I want to share with you uh a perspective again from the M on the meaning of the four note of GAA and he posits the following idea he posits that the reason why four terms of redemption were utilized is because the Jewish people being enslaved faced four dangers to their identity there were four dangers to us and therefore we needed to be rescued from those four dangers and he enumerates them the following danger number one is danger to our very physical survival many many Jews died I don't mean the four fifths that died during Darkness but just in the course of slavery you know babies were killed people were killed people died of disease they died of starvation they died because of working conditions so when you're a slave under any type of slavery first and foremost you face risks to your physical survival so that's danger number one danger number two which may be unique to the Jewish people is that in the course of your slavery you may lose your spiritual values you may lose your morality you may lose your ker to a KES we know this was very real because the reason why God had to take us out after 210 years instead of 400 years as he told abam is because we were we had reached in just 210 years the 49th level of impurity and we were slipping fast had we remained even the amount of time that it takes for the D to rise and become Kates we weren't able to let our D rise the Aral says that wasn't only because parro was kicking us out Hashem said you got to leave now you're going to hit Level 50 and as it were if four fifths of the Jewish people died in the pl of Darkness that's because they did reach level number 50 four fifths it the 1if was level 49 slipping so danger number two is a real danger you will lose your spiritual Essence your spiritual Essence will be destroyed by the dehumanization of slavery as well as your constant exposure to the decadence and tumor of Egyptian Society that was filled with idolatry filled with incense incest filled with magic and demons Egypt in particular was a particularly evil degenerate culture in that particular way so Sak number one is to your physical survival Sakana number two is to your spiritual Essence Sakana number three can can die only because they didn't want to go out of yeah it's not about r or something like that well yeah but but again I understand that that's true it's a good point but it's kind of all connected like the reason they didn't want to go out is because they had adopted that that morality so in a sense it's all it's all connected now danger number three is a bit more subtle but it's actually very very real and that is a slave particularly one who was born into slavery loses a sense of History they lose a sense that they came from somewhere you know there was a very popular series that actually came out of a um uh not a novel it was supposed to be a a biography or an autobiography turned out to be a lot of it was made up this is roots you might you might remember well and I don't think anyone here is old enough but in the 1960s U there was a phenomenon called The Roots phenomenon Alex Haley who was a black man who started writing about his ancestors who were Kings and princes in Ghana and they were captured and brought over to America as black slaves and he talked about how great his family was how much they had accomplished and how they just became lowly slaves and the The Descendants didn't even know where they came from and like now it turned out he made up a lot of the story I guess uh and now everyone talks about plagiarism because of uh the president of Harvard but plagiarism goes back a little bit uh even back uh even back then whatever it is but whatever whether it's true or not true or partially true or totally uh true it makes no difference but the point he's making is a true point and that is over the course of decades and centuries you just forget where you came from you don't have a sense of family you don't have a sense of you don't have a sense of anything to be proud of because your life is just this unrelenting cycle of work and especially in slavery it was very common in all slaveries to separate families so parents and children were often raised in different places they didn't know each other they couldn't tell you a story about uh sabba and Safta Bubby and zadii you weren't even in the same family all the time so that's a a third danger that a person faces I lose a sense of history and that's a very important thing because if I don't know where I come come from I can't have a clear picture where I need to go kind of knowing where I come from can give me a sense of direction in life and a sense of that you know I'm not a nothing I'm not a nobody I have connection to things that are good and Noble and beautiful so that's Sak number three lack of history and then there's a Sak number four which is is lack of Hope over time you reach a situation where you no longer have any hope that things are better you become resigned to your situation and at that point you become unredeemable now the truth is even in medicine at least anecdotally I'm not sure if we have no rigid scientific studies for this but it is said that when a person honestly has come to the when they honestly believe their situation is hopeless that generates kind of a psychosomatic response where their body begins to shut down irreversibly because when you don't have hope the absence of Hope becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy when you don't have hope you are hopeless you are in a hopeless situation that they even say with Voodoo dos if I'm a superstitious person and I believe that if somebody sticks a pin in my Effigy you know the person's going to drop that people drop de it's like a reverse Placebo Placebo is if I think it's going to work you know maybe it'll work if I think it's going to kill me it's going to kill me right the body will react that particular way so over so many years Jews lack hope and when you lack hope you have nothing you can't go on you don't have the energy to make the move that you have to make in fact that might be why the four fifths didn't want to go they just said you know this is it so the says that the four of are because of the four dangers the Jewish people faced dangers to their physical survival dangers to their spiritual Essence a loss of history and a lack of Hope an absence of Hope now he now takes the analysis further in a fascinating way in cabala we have a well-known term called isusa de isusa de this is just Aramaic isusa means an arousal and isusa means an arousal from above isata mean an arousal from below so there's a fundamental Concept in tabala that in order to elicit certain responses from above there has to be a response from below I start something here and that opens the Gates of Heaven now God meets me more than halfway in fact the tomet has a famous expression Hashem says open for me the eye of a needle and I will open up for you the expanse of the gates of the betam Mikes so it's not that I got to do 50% then God does the other 50% I got to do you know 0.11% then Hashem will do 99.9 whatever it would be but it got to start with me there has to be a his orus right it's ausus n that brings theusa so the says if it is true that the Jewish people faced four dangers from which they had to be redeemed what was their corresponding behavior that elicited the Divine response so here he identifies it in a passage from the Mela I mentioned part of the MTA last week talk about the fact that even though the Jewish people were on the 49th level of Tuma there were certain merits that they had and the merits appear in different lists and not all of them are the same but the is going to work and that's what I'm going to work with too with the list as it appears in the milila and the milila says these were the four merits that kept the Jewish people from sinking one/ fifth of the Jewish people from sinking into the 50th level of tumor he says number one they didn't intermarry they remained faithful husband and wives remained faithful to each other that's why Rashi brings there was only one recorded instance of a Jewish woman being unfaithful to her husband and even that may have been a mistaken identity the Jewish people were gimos they were faithful in their marriage commitments that's number one number two it says they did not speak Lan Hara against each other now let me explain what that means that does not mean they were frog and they were studying the it really means this is really a matter of what mean meaning it could be that Visa each other they were gossiping but it means they didn't turn against each other to the authorities meaning if you go back to a more recent history go back to the Holocaust so one of the tragedies of the Holocaust you know superimposed on the tragedy of 6 million deaths obviously but super imposed on that was the fact that sometimes sometimes I'm not going to say a lot of times but clearly there were some occasions where Jews were collaborators with the Nazis and you know they did it maybe I can't say it they did it for the best of reason I mean they they they did it to save their lives they did it to save their children they did it to try to squeeze out some little bit of opportunity most of the time they were killed at the end anyway but they turned against their fellow Jews in order to get some real or imaginary Advantage when kazal say they didn't speak lushan Hara it's not a from thing oh I don't speak Lan Hara it means they didn't turn against each other to get temporary advantages and that is why kazal tell us or actually the Kish mentions that the task Masters were beaten the Jewish task Masters were beaten when slaves didn't meet their quotas and the medish explains that the Egyptians wanted to know give us the names of the guys that were shers the taskmasters wouldn't give in and they got beaten they took beatings and by the way this is fascinating who were these righteous task Masters who were willing to get beaten duson and AA the big troublemakers who made moshe's life miserable and died with korak that's right you might wonder sometimes how did these guys make the cut four fifths of the Jewish people died does get to leave M yeah they get to leave M they were willing to be beaten in fact although I'm just speculating as amateur psychologist I actually think this is why such resentment to Mo here mosha rabenu grew up in the house of the king then he goes away for around 40 years shows up takes over becomes the great Liberator when DUS saying we were here all these years we're getting beaten we're getting tortured we're getting suffering we showed our loyalty we paid our dues again maybe I'm too humanizing this but I don't know I have a gut reaction that maybe that what was going on DUS were committed to the Jewish people in a very real way and then this Outsider shows up and kind of takes over the show okay again you know you can accept it or not but but I think it's an interesting uh possibility to look at the one thing that's indisputable is Dustin V made the 1 cut that's the one thing we know for sure so must have had some they must have had some again number one they were faithful in their marriage number two they did not speak L which I'm interpreting to mean the loyalty to each other don't turn yourself don't turn your friend in to get some Advantage then Merit number three this is from the m is they kept KES they spoke the Hebrew Hebrew language they didn't go into the Egyptian language they probably understood it but the language of the family was lashes and uh number uh number four uh one second uh I'm talking because there are different lists on on huh names they didn't change their names that's correct yeah yeah so the Mela mentions uh faithfulness in marriage not speaking lashara not changing their names that's the first one and not changing their language now I know that there are other lists to talk about not changing their clothing there are there are other lists but this is the list of the and you're you're correct there are other lists of form so here's what the says very very nicely the says the four behaviors of the Jewish people are the isusa deata it is the arousal From Below that will protect them against the four dangers meaning each one of these behaviors is something that can immunize you and protect you from one of the four dangers how is that so so let's take first so it's going to be in a different order but let's take first the danger to my body the danger to my goof the danger to my physical survival the greatest thing that protects Amis from physical dangers is the unity and the that we have the old story United We Stand when CL is is God gives them the ability to withstand the enemies that want to destroy them or as Thomas Payne said and I think I mentioned it last week we must all hang together for otherwise we shall surely hang separately he said that during the American Revolution so the not speaking lanara which we have interpreted to mean the group solidarity that we're going to have the united front we're not going to break ranks so individual people will get special favors that is what kept us physically alive because that AK guarantees our physical survival as a nation right so therefore the hisus milata that was mail us from the physical danger was the low diu lanara now the second danger we mentioned was danger to my spiritual values I get Corson I get diminished I lose a spiritual connection to Hashem what Behavior allowed me to at least remain above water 49th level to be sure but at least above the moras of the 50th level faithfulness to marriage the m points out that marriage is called kin sanctification Holiness it is in the relationship of husband and wife that the Shina is present and that is why a Jewish Home is called a mishkan a tabernacle because when there is Shalom between ish Isha God's presence is there and as corrupt and as debasing and as degenerate as the Egyptian Society was when the slave went into his H and sat down with his wife over a piece of bread or whatever it is they ate that was the residual kadua that stopped them from sinking to the 50th level so the L diu lashara is the isusa to a physical danger the faithfulness to the marital relationship was the kadua that kept us spiritually going again not great we were at the 49th level but at least it gave us something uh then not changing names so here the makes a point that may be a little anachronistic but this is what he says he says the Min of Cl Isel is that you always name after ancestors so when you name a child after a babby after sa SAA or after a Biblical figure Abra yob Esther d'vorah ra Rifka that gives a person a sense of history that shows I come from somewhere I come from an AB I come from a Sara I come from a a Rifka a dvorah and Esther I have a sense of History I'm not simply somebody born out of nothing and by the way even if a person is a g even if they're of non-jewish origin number one they can still take pride in their history whatever I mean I know for example uh GM who come from ancestors who did much good for the Jewish people and even if they didn't do good for the Jewish people they may have done good for the world but that's a sense of History you connect yourself to the Past you know in Yiddish you see this very beautifully you know in Yiddish we have these different diminutive for children we call them bua M tatala so sometimes people don't think about it they just use it interchangeably you call the kid bubbla but no that doesn't really make sense bubbla means little Bubby little grandmother mamala means little mother in other words the concept was you named a child after a grandparent and you didn't in honor of the grandparent you didn't want to use the name but you called the child you're my little grandfather you're my little mother my little father right and the child if the child can internalize that they know oh yeah I'm kind of you know I'm your mommy I'm your daddy I'm your grandmother I'm your grandfather see I'm connected to that I come from something so the preservation of names was very very important because it gave them a sense of History finally the fourth Sakana was lack of hope so here the says very beautifully retaining the Hebrew language is a great affirmation of hope that the galut will not be forever think about that there are quite a few languages we actually know the language we have dictionaries but they're extinct they're not spoken anywhere nobody speaks hittite nobody speaks Assyrian even though we do have hittite dictionaries and the Syrian dictionaries even Latin Latin at one point was the most widely spoken language of the world it was the language of the Roman Empire Latin now and even in America it used to be Latin was required I think in Israel as well Latin was required for legal education for uh medicine even today certain prescription terms are based on Latin even though Latin is not a required language anymore in Harvard the days of Harvard's greatness I don't know if they' lost it or not uh it used to be that you had to take three Classical Languages Hebrew Greek and Latin and for many years many years I think they stopped it in the 1950s uh there had to be a valedictorian address in Hebrew even by a non-jew you know people like Thomas Jefferson you know knew Hebrew again I can't say how absolutely fluent they were but you know Jefferson probably was fluent but you know Jefferson you know had a copy of the Talman in his Library you know things like that so but languages like Latin are extinct even the Catholic Church which was the last Bastion of Latin uh does not use Latin in the mass I mean there are some K Catholics who broke away from the pope they're called Old Catholics and they keep Latin but they're kind of crazy the pope excommunicated them they're they're put in the official policy of the Catholic church is you don't have to conduct prayers in Latin and the reason is a language becomes extinct if you no longer have a culture that uses the language so here we are languishing in Egypt and we're slaves and it's decade after decade after decade why am I teaching my kid Hebrew if we're going to be here forever and ever what is the purpose of this language so what is a parent telling a child when in the middle of the slavery I'm teaching the childes I am telling the child we are slaves in this land right now but we're not going to be slaves forever there's going to come a time I don't know if it's in your lifetime or my lifetime maybe it'll be after we're dead maybe it'll be your children or your children's children but there's going to come a time we're going to leave here and there's going to come a time we're going to go to our own land and there's going to come a time when we will have remember this is before Mo I'm not talking about what Mo this is before Moshe again this is the years of slavery they were doing this okay it's not after Moshe comes and does the plagues all those dark years those hopeless years parents are communicating to their child have hope have courage know that this is not where we're going to be forever maybe not in your lifetime and not in my lifetime but there will come so you see what the is doing four of because of four dangers and God redeemed us from four dangers but in order for God to redeem us from the four dangers we had to have four behaviors that represent the arousal From Below to trigger the arousal from above the physical danger we faced we countermanded by not speaking lanara the spiritual dangers we Face we countered by the faithfulness in our marriage vows the kadua of the marriage the lack of history and Roots we countered that with keeping names that connected us to the past and the hope that the future will be different by preserving lovingly lashes which is that that it's not just remembering our past but it's affirming a tikva affirming a future in an eventual Redemption so we have four four dangers for behaviors to be the hisor the arousal from below so the final point so it's actually four groups of four there's a fourth group of four and that is the M says this explains the positioning of the four cups in the Seder Co of the Seder again the order is not going to be the same but these four ideas will be there the first cup of the Seder is called the cup of kidush kidush is indeed the same word as kushan marriage and that is a celebration of the sanctity of the Jewish Home and there therefore that reminds us that it was the kadosa of the bias that preserved us spiritually the second cup is on the Magid now the Magid is the historical Narrative of the Jewish people that connects us to the past so that's similar to not changing the names which is your connection to the past history the third cup is bat now this is a bit more subtle but everyone understands that the foundational yod of bat ISAT gratitude to God and gratitude is actually a very important component of unity why is that so because so much disunity comes from rivalry and jealousy and I begrudge your good fortune but when I'm when I rejoice in what Hashem gave me there I can be unified I can be happy in your achievements and your possessions because I'm happy with mine so which Fosters creates unity and that corresponds to what saved us physically and of course Pon is about physical food and that corresponds to the not speaking you see and the final point is Hal now you'll remember from the Sader that the Hal of the Seder night is divided is bifurcated we say a little bit of the Hal before the meal and then we say a majority of the Hal after the meal and the rim explained that the Hal before the meal is thanking God about Yas it's past oriented that's why it's connected to maget but the H after the meal is no longer focused on it is focused on the future Redemption that is why what do you do right before that Hollow you open the door for ELO hanavi who announces mashia so what is the fourth cup hope and that corresponds to teaching the Hebrew language and the notion of not giving up so we we have this beautiful intricate tapestry we have four terms of redemption because of four dangers which were countermanded by four behaviors that find their expression in the four cups of the pesak Seder right this is kind of an elaboration of the M's thoughts on the four coot so beem uh even though it's not PES now but as I mentioned last week during these weeks of the light these the light of of pesak is actually shining at least in microcosm now and we could benefit from the spiritual Redemption that Hashem makes available to thank you and have a shabbat [Music] shalom [Music] it