Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: Freedom and Responsibility

[Music] okay hi everybody uh welcome and uh today uh our shira is once again dedicated uh by the same sponsors of last week aliyat nishama of gabriel cambis ben matla said zada and in addition our torah learning should be a sukhus for the refuge leima of binyam and israel benjamita a young man that uh hashem has finished radiation in chemo and he's already been going to school and uh we hope his refura will continue and progress and he should have a refusal of israel and our fearless and our learning should be for his uh reforest lama the ramban writes uh in the introduction to the book of shmos that the book of shemos deals with three major themes with a few uh highways and byways uh theme number one is of course yetis mitraim the exodus from egypt theme number two is receiving the torah and theme number three is constructing a tabernacle so that god's presence shall reside within our hearts and within our soul we are now beginning this week part two of the book of schmos meaning we completed the story of the exodus the story of the ten plagues the splitting of the red sea the jewish people are finally out of mitzrayim although as i mentioned a few weeks ago it's easier to take the jew out of mitsrayam than it is to take me try him out of the jew and we're still struggling with trying to take the mitzrayim out of the jew but at least we have left mitzrayim but now in parashat israel we are going to begin with the second major theme that we are going to receive and accept god's torah now it's very important to understand that there's an intimate relationship between theme one and theme two theme one is freedom theme two is responsibility and one has to understand this because sometimes people think oh freedom is an end in and of itself people might say the purpose of my life the goal of my life is to be free but fundamentally that's a non-sequitur because freedom is not a purpose freedom is not a goal freedom is an enabler to achieve something meaningful with that freedom and the absence of restriction itself is fundamentally meaningless that is why in the jewish calendar passover pesach and shavuot passage is liberation shavuos is receiving the torah are not considered two different holidays in fact through the counting of the omer i'm getting a little ahead of myself in the calendar we are linking the holiday of freedom with the holiday of montanto to underscore the idea that it is only by submission to the will of god that freedom has any meaning and any purpose eric from a happens to be jewish not not religious but a disciple of sigmund freud once remarked that we make a very big mistake when we define freedom as freedom from something freedom has to be towards something and that is the counting of the elmer freedom from slavery so that we can dedicate our lives to the goodness and compassion and the value of serving akadeshwar this is why the gemara minako says that the korban the grain offering that was brought on pesach is barley that's called the omer offering and the grain offering that was brought on shivolos is wheat the stehalichem two loaves of wheat bread at least before challenge was invented barley was more commonly given to animals so freedom without torah is the freedom of the wild animal with torah it becomes human dignity and liberation animal liberation becomes human freedom and therefore theme one of the book of shemos which is exodus and theme two which is matan torah have to be linked i think i mentioned more than once tagari the famous indian poets and he was not writing about jews i don't even know if he knew any jews but he said the human soul is like a violin string that is capable of producing beautiful music but paradoxically when the string is totally loose put a loose string on the table you'll get nothing out of it it's only when it's tied down when it submits so to speak is the beauty that is within revealed and that is so much a truth not just of jewish life but it's really true of human life as tagari is is using it and that is it is precisely by submission to something greater than ourselves something beyond serving our hedonistic urges our animal instincts that we achieve in inner liberation of a spirit and an inner joy in fact you see this by any endeavor i mean let's imagine for example a person loves listening to jazz music so i'm listening to improvs i'm listening to rips and i want to do that so i get myself an instrument whether it's a saxophone or a trombone and i start banging away and someone tells me oh no you have to take lessons you have to play scales you have to practice and i say but no i see this guy he's doing everything without practice everything is improvisational i want to do improvisation but the difference between a john coltrane and a three-year-old both of them might just might just be banging on the instrument but the difference is there is a banging that comes after mastery of technique after dedication after discipline then your creativity and your improvisation can be channeled to create great beauty versus the person who says i want to skip the foundational steps i want to skip the intermediate steps and just start with the improvisation okay that's called a three-year-old you know banging on a piano or blowing a horn so too in religious life religious life spiritual life can be deeply individualistic creative autonomous be your own person don't just be a blind conformist find your own path to god yes but before you can do that improvisation you have to have the discipline and the submission of accepting god's torah and then like the violin string that is tied down across the bow of the instrument the bridge of the instrument rather you can then express the beauty and creativity that is within you know we live in an age where many many people are seeking spirituality and sometimes it takes the form of what's sometimes called new age spirituality where everybody is trying to do their own thing and as i said a moment ago there's a certain validity in that approach but only after you have the discipline of submission because without the discipline of submission your desire for spiritual growth is nothing more than a narcissistic expression of self-indulgence and self-advertisement and that is why freedom and matan torah are linked together in fact a great rabbi once remarked human beings have the great capacity of free will right that's the whole idea the whole idea of accountability is based on free will that we can choose to be righteous or evil god does not pre-program now if we ask a person what do you mean by free will what is free will so the standard answer will be well free will means i can decide to do what i want but this rabbi remark maybe it should be the opposite doing what you want is simply following an animal instinct that's not freedom i'm controlled by my instinct true freedom is i have the ability to do what i don't want and not to do what i would want to do that is freedom that is the freedom of dignity the freedom of i don't have to give in i want to knock somebody in the page i want to punch somebody i don't do it that's exercising free will i don't simply follow whatever demons whatever forces whatever feelings grab me at that particular moment i don't eat anywhere i want to eat or anything i want to eat i don't have sex with anyone that i want to have sex with i have self-control i have discipline i am the i'm not referring to me but we have the ability to defer our gratifications that is freedom freedom is not whatever you want freedom is the capacity to make decisions not to do whatever i want when that's not the right thing to do so my point is that theme two and theme one are very very much interconnected that's why they're both in the book of exodus and of course theme number three is the culmination of this making your heart and soul a sanctuary for god as the verse says we'll talk about it a little later on vyasuli mcdosh make for me a temple a holy place the shakhanti betoham so i will dwell within them the torah does not say that god dwells within the temple their tabernacle god dwells within the heart and the soul of the people within our heart within our soul our ultimate goal is to make ourselves a sanctuary for the divine so as a result just as there is a mitzvah and we have spoken about this to remember the exodus every single year i'm sorry every single day there's the annual mitzvah and every single day we have to mention the exodus morning and evening according to ramban according to mahmondis there is a mitzvah to remember the receiving of the torah at mount sinai every single day a mitzvah to remember that experience that every single day there should be a newness a freshness an excitement about accepting god's torah now there's a famous psalm that we recite from ello through the end of sukis including shmedyazaris this is psalm number 27 that's a mori god is my light and my salvation and at the end of that psalm are probably the most famous verses of that psalm i have asked from hashem only one thing o sa avakesh that is the only thing i seek shifty debates hashem khalim let me dwell king david says let me dwell in the house of god all the days of my life lach says banayam hashem to experience the pleasantness of being with god hello and to visit his sanctuary so the refresher massachusetts there's a little bit of an inconsistency david melo starts off saying i want to dwell in the house of hashem all the days of my life i want to be a permanent resident i want to be there always and then he says and i want to pay visits to his sanctuary well what which is it you want to be a visitor you want to have a tourist visa or you want to be a permanent resident a citizen is it shifting or labor praying for both things he should have a permanent connection to the house of god but he should always have the passion and excitement of a first-time visitor let's imagine the mitzvot's villain and i remember it than any any man that puts on phil and remembers it when you start putting on to fill in whether it's bar mitzvah or later in age if you're a belchuva so you start a month before the bar mitzvah two months three months a week or whatever your minute is how much excitement there is again it might be a little difficult initially for whatever reason when kids put on filling the rings tend to collapse and they gotta you know adjust it uh but it's so exciting it's so wonderful so sweet you're looking forward to it for weeks and weeks before you do it and then you finally do it and you feel the holiness but then of course the days become weeks and the weeks become months and the months become years and the years become decades and like everything else it loses its excitement you know you do it you do it you got to do it but it no longer has that schmuck it no longer has that passion david prays that he should always be connected to the torah of hashem but he should have the excitement and passion of the visitor eric israel is the same way i remember the first time i came to eric israel it was 1979 i had graduated law school and my parents alayama shalom bought me a ticket to israel round trip ticket to israel as a law school graduation president president and we were not a family that you know some families are able to go to israel you know every year or something this was the very first time i had not been terroric israel at all until at that time and it was the first trip and the first trip is like they say the first love there's such an excitement every blade of grass every flower every kiosk where you bought in those days there were more kiosks you'd buy a shelter or whatever it would be everything was exciting waiting for the bus was geshemak then what happens is you know after a while you know we could take even your lion for granted even the base amigdas for granted and the like and w melodic is praying we should never take precious gifts in our lives for granted don't take our parents for granted they won't be here forever don't take our marriages for granted don't take our children for granted because they're going to grow up and be out of the house and i can tell you that all of the frustrations you may have had when they were in the house you're going to miss them don't take your torah for granted don't take eric israel for granted don't take yerushalayim for granted be with it always dublin says and feel as if it's the first it's the very very first time and thus when we remember tarsina when we remember standing before sinai and hearing the ten commandments we should not look at it as something that was in the past but every day god is giving it to us anew and every day we are re-accepting it anew with a joyous spirit with enthusiasm with passion and that's what ghazal says every single day the torah should be as if it is new because when it's new there's excited there's excitement you know some of you who are listening from new york may be familiar with the uh beginners program in the lincoln square synagogue a very very famous jewish outreach a program that's been operating for many years forever brian bookweld he should be well has been running it for you know before the memory of man he even knows it quite quite a long time and he should continue to be much leah so i remember reading years ago that in one of their dinners there was an honoree and this is a speech well-known speeches on the internet and the honoree was you know honored because of all of his work with beginners and he called his speech something like why i hate balaycheva and there was a humorous remark and he basically said i hate balichuva because i invite them to my house friday night and all i want to do is finish the meal in a half an hour and go to sleep and they say oh you didn't sing this samiros you didn't sing this in me rose or could you explain something in rashi in the hamish and all they want to do is sing and darwin and talk about torah when i want to go to sleep and eat quick and of course this was a very uh affectionate kind of humorous remark because what he was saying is that sometimes a person who's just an orthodox jew as wonderful as that is we can also take yiddish guide for granted and what we can learn from the newcomer the closer betrutha it's not just what we can teach it's also what we learn their questions of course are good but beyond that the enthusiasm of newness seeing something through fresh eyes that's part of what parenting is as well right the jaded adults can experience or re-experience recapture the wonder of the world through the eyes of a child that is experiencing it for the first time so this idea of newness is an important idea of being jewish it keeps us going it keeps us alive it keeps us vibrant otherwise god forbid we could be going through the forms kind of the formalities we can going through the rituals but we're fundamentally dead inside the analogy would be you can look at a tree that still has beautiful leaves and good fruit but the tree might be dead inside might already be dead and what's going to happen is in a short amount of time the leaves are going to wither and the fruit is going to spoil externally it still looks good but unless there's something inside that's vibrant and keeping it alive all of that goodness is not going to last and unfortunately spiritual life is very much that way that is the day of matantora call yom beyon every day should be new so now when the jewish people approach mount sinai so chapter nineteen paraquates passage base tells us they traveled from refugee refugee was the oasis where amalek attacked us the of midbar sinai and they came to the sinai desert by yahannuba midborn they encamped in the desert by israel negator and they encamped adjacent to the mountain the aurahaim the famous commentary on the homicide from refrain benatar says that this whole pussock is seemingly superfluous it's not imparting any new information because we already know from last week's parsha that the stop immediately before coming to sinai was refeed him it says i'm all like attacked us and feed him that's where moshe hit the rock by the way let me just make an obvious point here in rafidim moshe hit the rack and water came out but moshe was told to hit the rack people get confused sometimes someone asked me a question over shabbos gee how can we say moshe was supposed to speak to the iraq here moshe was told to hit the iraq the answer is yeah here he was told to hit the rock the story of speaking to the rock is another story that happened 40 years later when miriam died and there god switched the command in fact that might have been part of moshe's confusion because now he's told to hit there he's told to speak and therefore when he hits that is a grievous sin so don't confuse the two stories but be it as it may we know from last week's parasha we were in rafinha and pasagolov says we came to sinai so what's the point of repeating we left graffiti and came to sinai and even in that passage this repetition it says we came to sinai and we encamped in sinai and we encamped by the mountain you're saying you think you're saying the same thing three times we came we encamped and then you repeat we encamped what's the point of the repetition so the aura makadesh explains that the purpose of this pussac which again chapter 19 verse 2 is not to tell us the geographical way the jewish people traveled but it's to show us the spiritual steps that they had to undergo in their own lives in order to receive god's torah and in this passage the arachim identifies a four-step plan to bring hashem's torah into your life four steps so let's go over it briefly step one you must journey from repeat them that's the puzzle by yeshua now what is refereedum rafitim is a place for sure and that is the place in fact two two significant events happened in last week's parsha that is where moshe hit the rock and generated water and number two that is where amalek attacked us but because i'll say names are not just names but names often have a hidden spiritual significance and repeat them itself is a contraction of two words rafu yadayam minatora which means their hands were weak from the torah now this is an idiomatic expression let me explain what this is let's assume you have to cross a busy street and you're holding your baby you're going to hold your baby very tight because something that's important to you god forbid you don't want to trip you don't want to drop you don't want to slip you're holding the baby tight if on the other hand you're holding something that's not a big deal to you it's a tissue or whatever it would be you'll hold it loose because if it gets blown away it's not a big deal so roughly your dam the loosening of hands is an idiomatic expression for something that you have a certain amount of complacency or a lack of interest or a lack of passion so cause i'll say amalek was able to attack us because our attitude towards our vodat hashem was refeed him a lack of interest a complacency of course this is before the torah was given but even already we already had a number of mitzvos in the oasis of mara we were given a lot of commandments and even in egypt we were given various commandments and one can do the commandments but without enthusiasm without passion a sense of boredom so step number one is in order to receive god's torah and this ties into what i talked about earlier you have to leave repeat him leave complacency leave boredom generate within our personalities enthusiasm and joy and passion in fact i i could even say this that if a person is serving hashem and they find that it generates within them depression sadness and anxiety there has to be something not right in the way they're serving god because torah and mitzvos are not supposed to cause that you know you might be bringing something else in a certain negative influence it might be the wrong teacher whatever it might be but it's not the torah that's giving you the sadness torah should give you joy but on the other hand when we misinterpret or distort the torah then it may give us sadness but it's not the torah that's doing it it's the various distortions that human beings sometimes even rabbis impose on the torah which intrinsically may be foreign to the torah itself so step one in our journey to sinai is leave complacency behind you leave graffiti and embrace joy and enthusiasm and renewal that's step one now step two it says they encamped they came to the desert they came to the desert now desert has an interesting significance you know there are both painters and photographers that find desert landscapes extraordinarily beautiful and part of why they say they're so beautiful is because of their emptiness the desert is not filled with a lot of stuff you're not going to see cars and trucks and buildings desert is empty and in its emptiness and in its simplicity there is a certain naked beauty that comes across many artists will describe a desert landscape like that so the aurachaim says that step two in our journey to sinai is to simplify our lives and not be overly connected to material possessions and pursuits now this is a little tricky because on one hand i think it's fair to say that judaism is not an ascetic religion judaism is not a religion that rejects physical pleasure in fact it's very much the opposite we know for example the nazir who makes a vow not to drink wine is a sinner and one of the reasons is because he's depriving himself of a legitimate pleasure that god put into the world the talmud you saw me says after 120 years a person is going to have to give an accounting to god for every pleasure of the world that they could have enjoyed that they didn't enjoy god put pleasures whether it's colors smells tastes sights so we should enjoy in fact that's connected to tubercult that we celebrated a few days ago the notion of enjoying the world and using it as a catalyst to be grateful to god but at the same time we have to be very careful do we own our possessions or do our possessions own us what becomes the controlling factor in our lives i need more more more more more and the truth of the matter is that the more attuned we are to an over investment in the physical the less sensitive our hearts and our minds are to spiritual truths and there's a reason for that because physical pleasure tends to be instantaneous gratification spiritual pleasures are subtle and incremental you're not going to get sudden nirvana you want to learn gemara gemara can be tremendously beautiful but there's a lot of work that one takes and in life once you get habituated to the instant gratification you can't go back to the slow pleasures that take time and effort right once you're addicted to web surfing you're not going to be able to read a book it's just too much effort once you're addicted to junk food you're not going to make a three-hour french dinner well if that's true from physical to physical how much more so physical versus spiritual so consequently the arakayam says one should strive for a relatively simple life in terms of not being overly invested in stuff and stuff can mean all sorts of baggage it can mean material goods success rat race a workaholism it could be divesting myself from grudges and all the resentments that i have which are like baggage cluttering me up i get rid of the junk throw it out and then you're free to connect yourself to things of meaning and purpose and ultimate value so that's the second step the first step is try it we should try to develop enthusiasm and joy the second step is to simplify our lives by getting rid of the clutter and the over investment in the material now the third also mentions desert and they encamped in the desert so it repeats desert twice so the arachim says that is because deserts is a double metaphor right deserts is both a description of simplicity simplicity but it's also a description of modesty the fact that it's so empty means it's humble it doesn't have pretense now this is an interesting mixed metaphor we know of course the famous teaching of our sages that torah is compared to water and there are many many reasons why torres compared to water just as water goes from high ground to low ground torah goes from the arrogance it leaves the arrogant and it goes to the humble there are other reasons too water is necessary for life torah is necessary for life water purifies torah purifies but a well-known idea is that water goes from high ground to low ground so the torah goes from the away from the arrogant and towards the humble well interestingly enough the same way that water connotes humility desert also they're using almost opposite metaphors water is humility and desert which is devoid of water is humility and this is step number three so step number one leave repeat him leave complacency embrace enthusiasm step number two come to the desert simplify your life be less involved in the incessant pursuit of materialism or ego or power trips or grudges or resentments clear out that junk so there's room for something meaningful step number three be humble tell us who is a wise person hallo one who is able and willing to learn from everybody it is only through humility that one could be connected to hashem hashem number one loves the humble and number two it is only through humility i can learn because when there's humility i'm willing to admit when i'm wrong and i'm willing to correct myself i'm willing to hear what other people have to say and therefore humility is an indispensable element in the learning of torah so that's the second mention right so both of them are the the fact that the word midbar is repeated uh twice in the pasuk because the first midbar is simplicity and the second midbar is humility now we come to the fourth element of the passage now the third element already says they encamped in the desert yahanub amidbar and that refers to humility as we just said but then the fourth element says also means israel encamped next to the mountain and in english it seems to be repeating the statement they encamped in the desert but in fact grammatically if you look at the hebrew word there is a difference the first word they encamped but yeah that's balashon rabbim that is plural the second is in the singular and there is a famous rush that most people have heard of rashi quotes it israel they encamped at the mountain why does it use a singular rather than plural form because when they encamped at the mountain they were ish they were one heart one person this is unity the torah can be received we can journey to sinai only when there is unity togetherness israel because the torah was not given to individuals the torah was given to a nation and if i accept it and i bring it into my life i must bring it into my life as part of that nation which means i link myself with bonds of love to my fellow jew you know in the haggadah of pesach we have the section that is called dayenu dayenu simply says oh if god would have done any one of these things dieno it would have been enough reason to be thankful now some of the dienas are a little difficult for example if god would have split the red sea and wouldn't have taken us through in dry lands dayenu well that's a little difficult if that would have happened we would have died okay so so you have to go through the dianas but the diego i want to focus on is this one of the dayenu said oh if you would have brought us to mount sinai and you wouldn't have given us the torah dayenu that would be enough to be grateful for now one mighty question this what would the point would have been i understand things like oh if you would have taken this out of egypt but not given us the man or wouldn't have killed the firstborn okay diana we would have survived one way or the other but if you would have brought us to mount sinai and you wouldn't have given us the torah dieno what would the myla what would the game be by bringing us to mount sinai what would have been accomplished what would have been accomplished so there are many but one of the explanations is that when we came to mount sinai we achieved the level of ish and that is such a beautiful beautiful level that even if it wouldn't have culminated in matan torah it would have been something to be grateful for that coming to sinai brought us together so we have a nice four-step plan leave refrigerant involve have your yiddish guide be one of enthusiasm and joy and renewal and positivity step two simplify your life get rid of the baggage that impedes us whether it's excessive materialism workaholism grudges resentments ego trips get rid of it it's not helping you it's just holding you back number three humility willingness to learn from all and number four unity israel this is the four things we need to do much easier said than done of course these are the things we need to do to achieve our own journey to harshinai our journey to sinai the kabbalah torah that we must engage in every single day of the year now it's interesting that the last week we read about the splitting of the red sea and the passage says the water formed a wall to the right and to the left the water split into two walls according to the meadows every tribe had its own uh two-wall path to walk through whatever but in one of the verses that that verse that phrase appears twice and in one of the iterations the word coma is spelt without a vowel in other words when it's normally spelled it's this is without of us although we read it homa but those consonants kasme without above could also be read means anger the water was angry what does it mean the water was angry so the medrash tells us that when god ordered the water to split the angel in charge of the water had anger the angel said to god why should i split for the israelites and then close myself onto the jew unto the uh i'm sorry why should i split for the jews you have the israelites and then close myself upon the egyptians the jews are no better than the egyptians halal of their voters are the egyptians are idol worshippers and the jews even in the amps if there were jews that were idle worshippers manish tanu hey lumieva why is one group better than the other group why should i split for ami israel this is what we call a kittrug a prosecution an accusation there was the meetha sadin the attribute of judgment that was arguing with god so to speak saying the jews are not deserving of this miracle and in truth god really didn't have a convincing answer god's only answer was i'm doing this miracle on credits not because they deserve it now but because they'll be a kabbalah satora they're going to accept the torah so that's why they deserve it now here's the question the jews have just emerged from a whole year in egypt where there were 10 plagues every single plague afflicted the egyptians and did not afflict the jewish people so when god turns the water to blood but the israelites still have water why didn't the angel of the water say then why should i punish the egyptians and not the jews the jews are of their voters are so blood frogs lice plague of the firstborn whatever it would be how come there's no kids root why does kittrug only emerge by kriyasyamsaf and not by the ten plagues so the mesh explains that it's true that in mitzrayim our forefathers were not worthy they were idol worshipers except for the tribe of lady they didn't do bris mila except for the tribe of living they were not in good shape the 49th level of impurity if you go a little further than that you hit level 50 and you're gone but and we discussed this before they did have the unity and togetherness remember they didn't change their names they didn't change their language they didn't intramarry they didn't speak lashing hara to the authorities turning people in even dustin and aviram the troublemakers who died with kodak and we normally look at them as rashayam they were taskmasters in egypt and they were supposed to report on jews who did not meet their quotas and when the jew did not meet their quota and das and baviram were asked to identify the jew they were willing to be whipped without being informers so the one thing that the jews had in mitzrayim was a sense of solidarity and unity and community says the mesh when jews are united when jews are together then god to some degree will give them compassion even when they are undeserving in terms of their own personal sins so in mitzrayim the actors protected us from the kit rook that we were of their bodhisattva an amazing thing avas israel elicits a judgment from god that is much more compassionate than would otherwise be the case but what happened by kriyasyamsaf by kriyasyamsev in the panic and terror of the moments between you know looking at the water and looking at the egyptian army the jewish people lost their sense of unity and like rats fleeing from a sinking ship each one was looking for their own survival strategy the medrush tells us there were four different groups some people said let's commit suicide let's jump into the water to drown ourselves another group says let us surrender to the egyptians the third group said let us wage war and a fourth group said let us call out to the nations of the world let us go to the u.n. and seek their protection i've always felt that fourth group is the with the most foolish now the mesh takes the medrash in slightly different way most people just understand that they simply had different responses he's learning differently these responses meant that i no longer cared about the other guy i was just looking at what i thought was best for me so here's the problem when you have a disintegration of unity in ivat israel when you separate yourself from the seaboard then mita can negate mida you focus and you function like an individual god judges you as an individual as an individual i could be very vulnerable because of my average in other words the mesh is making this very critical point that's a very important point in this day and age when i disassociate myself from being care from having care and concern for all jews it's not just an isolated sin that i'm committing which it is but it redefines the whole way that god evaluates the totality of my life that when there's actus and unity and i'm connected to the nation god will judge me based on my connection to i'm israel which elicits compassion and love and forgiveness when i disassociate myself from the nation then i get judged as a discreet individual as a discreet individual i'm very wanting in other words it's not just my lack of obviously throughout its my shabbos will be judged my conscience will be judged my torah will be judged my in other words every single aspect of my life is going to be under a much more difficult scrutiny and that's why the akhtas and the unity is such an important component you know in the haggadah of pesach we have the statement of hussein very famous statement that which has kept us going ourselves and our forefathers it is not only one that has tried to destroy us elizabeth in every generation om de millennial hallucino there are those who rise up to destroy us and hashem saves us from their hands so in the initial phrase so the standard translation is it is not only one that has tried to destroy us and that's the meaning but the space ms offers a homological twist a little bit shalom does not mean it is not only one but it means it is only the fact that we are not one in other words the only thing that makes our life precarious is shalom that we're not one i think i mentioned before that every year there are surveys in israeli papers as to what jews regard as the number one problem that the state of israel faces again i imagine this year it'll be corona covered whatever it would be but in past years and in a way it's kind of a funny thing you know uh we've been so preoccupied with copen that we don't remember all the problems that we had before covet those problems haven't gone away but in some ways the new service make us forget the old service but the state of israel the jewish people in israel have many many problems to choose from whether it's terrorism whether it's the threat of nuclear a war from from iran whether it's the cost of housing uh whether it's even water you know from the kinera depending on the year cost of cottage cheese all sorts of things the state of israel has many many many problems difficult problems and yet the number one problem that was always identified whether the respondent was secular or datilium a religious zionist or kharedi or khasi to the degree that hasidim responded to surveys was the lack of unity in israel there is an intuition that we have that when there is unity and togetherness god is going to protect us and when there's not we're vulnerable we're weak i think it was either thomas paine or benjamin franklin i'm sure that uh i will be corrected one way or the other by an email who famously remarked it's a famous remark although i say it's either thomas paine or ben franklin that said we must all stand together i'm sorry we must all hang together we have to hang together because if we don't hang together we shall surely hang separately and that's i'm going to borrow that and apply it to the jewish people we have to hang together you know this is a very difficult time this has been a difficult year and the difficulties are still here covet has really wreaked havoc on the world there are families there are people that have health issues and that's very very tragic sickness and death and we pray for them and hashem should give them all a rafish lama in a shamayam and of course we feel the pain of families that have lost loved ones but even the people who brought hashem do not have sickness problems even the people who are healthy the people who are not suffering any sickness the economic dislocations the collapse of businesses the loneliness the isolation the untreated medical problems because people are afraid to leave their houses i've exacted a tremendous psychic cost a tremendous tremendous cost in terms of human happiness in terms of increasing uh misery even in terms of deaths due to depression and psychiatric conditions and everybody wonders you know what what is god telling us what is the message and i'm not going to be able to answer that question i'm not going to try to answer that question because the ways of god are often mysterious and people who claim to be prophets are either fools or children because i'll say that prophecy no longer exists today except among fools crazy people and children but all i can say is this based on the teaching that when there is avat israel god judges us in a kinder more compassionate manner and given the fact that we are living in a world right now that seems to be governed by a midatadin an attribute of justice and we need it to be converted to mercy it would seem that one of the things we can do is try to reach out make connections and show people that we care now granted precisely because of the isolation and lockdowns that's a little more difficult to do but on the other hand with zoom with technology with virtual ways of communicating in real time there's a lot that we can do to comfort the lonely to give strength to those who are in isolation to do favors and kassadin for people to take elderly people for vaccinations because hashem and israel actually vaccination situation is a little better than it is in a lot of countries you can get it relatively quickly but in the united states for example it's still the case that you may have to wait in line three or four hours so if you could take an elderly person to the vaccine and bring them a chair and take care of them in various ways that would be an act of loving of loving kindness because you see precisely when we're forced to be so separate we have to make special efforts to still be and the bracha of that is that that redefines the standard of judgment that god brings to this world it's mahapesh it reverses to the miza of so me as it may i think all in all this is the part of the year part of the torah where all of us are making our journey to sinai because it must be new and in making that journey let's be reminded of the old t-shirt saying that life is a journey and not a destination meaning none of us ever makes it but that's not the point making it arriving perfection that belongs to god our job though is to stay on the road try to make the trip and go as far as we can go and help other people make that trip as well and be israel hashem we will all merit to stand at the foot of our own individual mount sinai and proclaim to god as the jewish people did thousands of years ago all that god has said na seven ishmael we will do and we will endeavor to understand so schwarzevan everyone should be well thank you [Music]