Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: Healing the Leaper and Getting Rid of our Chametz

[Music] hi everybody good to see you we have a small group tonight but better shim out more people will be listening on the on the youtube uh this year tonight is again dedicated in the zeitgeist benjamin israel ben and again we welcome his parents that are joining us for a few months uh and they refuse leima to brya bhattacharva and rabbi postna uh asked me to again promote uh the pesach seder in yushanayam uh e bonne i'll be hosting the seder and the deadline for registration is april 5 and you can do uh so via the the website and hopefully it will be a nice experience for everyone and again supporting the very good work that ebony does today we have a very very technical parsha parshas tazria i still remember most of it is about leprosy it starts off with childbirth and then it moves to leprosy and i still remember uh when i was in ninth grade and we were supposed to learn the parsha with rashi by ourselves for a test so for some reason i wasn't aware of this till late thursday night and i had to somehow figure out parches tazria late thursday night and it was frankly hopeless it was such a difficult parsha burkisham i think they canceled the test because other people had somewhat of the same problem but it is a notoriously difficult a difficult parsha but one thing that one could think about is the amount of space and detail that the torah devotes to certain topics there is more coverage of leprosy than there is of shabbos then there is of kasras then there is of zara i mean if you were to make a list of this most important aspects of what is judaism often the torah alludes to it in a very short way and we have the oral law that elaborates etc but when it comes to tsarat the one thing you'll notice is that the details are you know constant one after another different types of leprosy different types of leprosy of the flesh and then leprosy of the houses and leprosy of the clothing and the amount of detail that the torah gives is mamash very very unusual in fact it might be the most the single most detailed halakhah category in the whole torah so i once uh saw an explanation from rabbi sol berman who's a modern orthodox rabbi in new york very very fine person a little controversial sometimes uh but he suggested the idea that saras is one of those institutions that is totally given over to a cohen to determine in other words it's like the umpires say it ain't a strike until i call it a strike uh whatever it would be you don't become a mitzora just because you have ceres you're not a metsura until the cohen proclaims that you're a miserable so the colleen is a person with great power a cohen is a person of great authority a cohen can determine whether you're going to be separated from your family for a prolonged period of time or not the torah feels that when there is power there must to use a modern term there must be transparency we need to know exactly what the cohen is doing a b c d e it can't just be a mysterious black box where the torah says you go to the co-ed and the cohen declares you've got to separate from your family and consequently the details are a form again perhaps it's a more modern political insight but i think it's valid the details are a form of transparency and accountability in which outside observers presumably tamil can hold the cohen to account for following the rules and not abusing his power so that's very very fascinating the concept is that the torah wants those that are in positions of power to be accountable for what they do and the way accountability exists is by transparency by setting out the rules in great detail in points of fact this was the traditional way halakha was decided a great rabbi would be asked at least in the in the several past centuries would be asked a shayla and he would write a chuva responsa now what is it shiva a chuba doesn't just say much or us or kosher traif it sets out reasoning it sets out proofs it sets out counter arguments why is that important so that in a sense the person is not going to simply be reacting out of the seat of his pants but there has to be a reasons justification and that creates responsibility and accountability this by the way is a critic i don't want to get too political here this is a criticism to some degree of the modern way is sometimes sometimes promulgated and that is by wall posters that simply say it's also to do this or anyone who does this does not have a share in the world to come without giving reasons in fact part of it is the internet part of it is sms uh in which sometimes shaylo sutrubos are given in one or two words with no reasoning no slora etc all right so if you had um well okay i'll be i'll be very specific in one one instance uh the great refrain from that we spoke about was certainly one of the greatest rabbis of our generation and in the eyes of many was the greatest rabbis of our generation now he typically because he was accousted by hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people every day he often would give two-word answers yes no do what you want don't do it better not to no reasons were given no sources were given but i have to say refrain established his credibility by the many many many detailed swarm that he wrote in which he did lay out arguments and lay out sources and discuss it wasn't like just a charismatic person who you go to and like an oracle just gives you answers again i hate to use modern terms but those are the terms that come to me he built up his credibility by the massive torah that he wrote and that he taught me mela once you have that credibility so sometimes just in the interest of time you have to give short answers but had he had he not been a person who wrote all of those swarm and he would simply be somebody in benebrach giving short answers you know we wouldn't necessarily listen to that because how do i know how do i know he's right yes because some guy in bernie park says something so rabbi berman wants to suggest that the reason why the torah goes into so much detail with regard to leprosy is because this really is maybe not a life-and-death decision but a decision that can be very traumatic for a person you got to go into quarantine you got to be isolated you don't see your wife you don't see your kids you're away from people well if someone's going to have that power over you we have to be able to check that they're following the rules and the procedures and we only know that if we have the information as to what the rules are so that's what roy berman's perhaps modern political understanding of why the torah gives so much detail when it comes to tsares but first before the the torah goes into leprosy the torah does discuss childbirth and there's a very interesting idea that when a woman gives birth to a child she is in a state of ritual impurity for a boy now it's a little complicated because there are two levels of ritual impurity level one is she is prohibited to her husband level two is she cannot enter the base of mikdash and eat corbanos now with respect to level one we have a curious distinction for the birth of a boy she is prohibited for seven days for the birth of a girl he is prohibited for 14 days right she is prohibited to him and for a boy after seven days she goes to the mikvah and they are permitted for a girl after 14 days she goes to the mikvah and she is permitted so that is level one of tuma which is concerned with her relationship with her husband but there is a level two that is much longer and that is on level two which includes level one but plus she's not allowed to enter the temple or eat corbanos and that is for a boy it's an additional 33 days so that's a total of 40. and for a girl it's an additional 66 days 66 plus 14 which is a total of 80. and then on day 8 day 41st after the birth of a boy she brings sacrifices and then she's completely pure and on day 81 for a girl does the same thing so the tuma the impurity of a you let it of a woman after childbirth exists on two levels one is the connection to her husband the other is her ability to go to the base on mktouch and the like but the common denominator between them is that boys and girls the period is doubled seven plus 33 for the birth of a boy and by the way when i say birth of a boy this even includes miscarriages so it's these halacho whether it is a live birth or a stillbirth they they apply equally a girl so it's a little complicated it's something you have to have both you have to have both both periods together they do overlap yeah they do over they don't they don't have to be counted separately uh so uh for a boy it's 7 plus 33 for a girl it is 14 plus 66. now if this sounds a little unfamiliar because typically a woman after childbirth uh does not go to the mikvah for at least sometimes six weeks those are because of rabbinic rules meaning technically speaking technically speaking to orisa i don't want to get into all of our lucky ramifications after the birth of a boy and woman can go to the maker after seven days and after for a girl after 14 days but because of various rabbinic enactments that will never happen so you will never see that situation so i just want to warn you do not possible from the mich but this is what the commission deed would permit on a do-raisa level so what's going on just uh stomp shot first of all why does ayola that's bring a corbin at all so the instinctual answer we would give is oh it's thanksgiving it's a thanksgiving offering but number one that doesn't fully fit because number one the corbanas that are brought are a sin offering not a thanksgiving offering number two for a stillborn there would be no thanksgiving offering anyway so rashi actually explains that a woman in childbirth needs ka para forgiveness because labor pains are so intense that she may have sworn she will never do this again so she needs to cut her out so it's a sin offering it's not a it's not a thanksgiving offering uh per se but what is the concept of ritual tuma and this will overlap a little bit a little bit with our discussion last week and why is it double for girls and boys how do you explain the doubling effect surah shimshin rafal hersh gives a very very fascinating idea he says all the laws of tuma are connected to death touch a dead body your tummy for seven days you touch a dead animal you're that wasn't shifted your tummy for one day uh even seminal emission is a death in the sense of a potential life that could have been created nida is ritually impure because the shedding of the uterine lining is also a life that could have been created okay that's great but why would childbirth be connected to death especially if it's a live child live birth so there are two possibilities one is that uh childbirth is actually dangerous to the mother there are there are even today women who can die in childbirth so there's a brush with death but refers gives another idea which is very intriguing you might buy it or you might not expire he says that when a person carries a baby there's a life inside of them when there is a birth the life that was in them has died yeah hashem the life is out there but there is a death within the person and therefore there is a connection with death that creates tumor oh so now he says the following this might explain the doubling of tumor periods for boy and girl because when a boy is born that's only one life it's one life a girl even a newborn baby in the fetus or in their womb has all of the eggs that it will ever have they're already there in fact i understand that one of the fertility technologies for egg donation is to harvest eggs from aborted female fetuses that actually means a woman or an unborn aborted baby can be a mother even though she was never born the person could be a mother who was never born because her eggs are capable of being fertilized amazing thing so therefore a first says the doubling effect represents that the death of life in the womb is a double death in the case of the birth of a girl the birth of a girl because it's both the girl and all the life that is within the girl as opposed to a boy that's single okay so this is part of the aspect of your letters uh now another aspect is the torah repeats the mitzvah of circumcision we know this already but the terms of the eighth day you give a breath so the gomorrah in shabbos asks why is there a repetition of that we know that mitzvah the answer is the kiddish is that you do the bris on the eighth day no matter what even if it's shabbos and this is the well-known rule that a bris mila is performed if this is the eighth day of the baby's birth it is performed on shabbos even though cutting the foreskin involves wounding and bleeding and molochos of shabbos but brit mila is so important that it overrides shabbos now we pass kin that is only the brit itself override shabbos not the preparations so a moell could not drive to a bris on shabbos because that's not the bris that's the preparation right because we do make a difference and the nor could the baby be driven we make we don't we do make a difference between the actual brits mila and the machi mila the preliminary right so this is the rule that a bris is doh hashabas now the rule that a bris overrides shabbos only applies to a bris that's on time on time we mean the eighth day when a bris has to be postponed because of health or whatever the brisk cannot be in shabbos so this raises a very interesting question just to mention hilariously let's say a baby is born friday late friday afternoon after sunsets but before three stars are out in the sky to keep it simple that is called bain hashmastos that is called twilight and the status of twilight is that we're not sure if it's considered to be day or night that's why shabbos has to start no later than sunset because maybe it's night but you can't end shabbos till the stars come out because maybe it's day that's why shabbos is longer than 24 hours shabbos is at least 24 and a half hours or 25 hours whatever it would be because of the bain hashmasters you have to be mahmir bain ashmajos in both hands so what is the if the baby is born bane hashmast friday afternoon so we're not sure if he's a friday baby or he's a shabbos baby if banashima shows is daytime he's a friday baby if bayanashima shows his nighttime he's a shabbos baby so let's see i can't do the bris on friday because if he's a friday baby the breath would be friday but if banash macho says nights then friday would be day seven not day eight so i can't do the bris on friday because maybe it's too early but i can't do the bris on chavez because if he is a friday baby shabbos is day nine not day eight too late so the paradoxical result is you do the bris on sunday even though for sure sunday is not the eighth day sunday is either day nine if banash mashot is shabbat or it's day 10 if banash must house is friday so this is an interesting anomaly you are for sure doing the bris on the wrong day but you don't have a choice because friday might be too early and shabbos might be too late mamaela you got to make it later by doing it on sunday it's not the wrong day it's just not the best day right the best day is the eighth day well you're you'd say yeah of course of course you certainly fulfill the mitzvah of with milan even if you do it when you're 55. in fact you have to get if a person got forbid didn't get a brisk as a child they must get a breath as an adult many people from the soviet union had brisbane as adults but there is a separate mitzvah in the torah to do a prison the eighth day and you can't do it in this case banash masho you cannot do it now how long is banashimasha so i believe in yushalayim where where it becomes dark pretty quickly i believe the standard is around 20 minutes meaning to say if a baby is born more than 20 minutes after sunset on friday they will do the breasts on shabbos if the baby was born within 20 minutes of sunset they will not do the brison chavez they will do it on sunday in places that are northern further north of the equator like let's say new york or whatever it would be i mean you know twilight is a function it's not a function of summer winter that's a common mistake people make it's true in the summer the days are longer and in the winter the days are shorter but that does not affect the length of twilight the length of twilight is actually primarily a function of how close to the equator you are the closer you are to the equator uh the faster it becomes dark so at the equator itself it becomes dark as soon as the sun goes down it's dark right away so eric israel which is closer to the equator twilight is a shorter period that's why it gets dark uh quickly uh the the further north or south you are twilight is a longer period so again this is a common mistake people make because they they correlate the twilight the length of twilight to the length of daylight and it is not connected to that it is connected really to the equator that is why according to strict halacha shabus is over more quickly inherit israel than it is in chris lawrence there are many that maintain that even if you followed i don't want to get too technical robeno tom's view that you have to wait 72 minutes after sunset to end shabbos that should not i mean there are those who say that should not apply in israel because in israel it's way way dark before that point but again some do apply it so i don't want to get into those um we're still uh in the morning period of refrain kanyevsky i just want to share with you uh a source that he identified um from the bottle eater one of the richonin but i did not know it firsthand it's something i heard not from him directly but i heard him say it and that is we know that um we do not wear to fill in on shabbos why do men not wear to fill in shabbos because phillyn is called a sign an oath of our relationship to god who kashar tomli oath tied as a sign and the brit mila is called an os a sign and shabbos is called an oath so during the week a man who puts on to fill in has two signs of his connection to god the bris and its filling but shabbos we already have the sign of shabbos and since all you need are two witnesses we don't where to fill in on shabbos because shabbos takes the place of the sign of trilogy the sign of brit mila is always there so during the week we augment that sign with the sign of tefillin on shabbos we augment the sign of mila with the sign of shabbos surafram kenowski used to ask a riddle is there any case where a person should put onto villain on shabbos that's a good good question you could raise this riddle at the shabbos table so reframe kaneshi quoted the ballah eater that says if god forbid a person did not have a bris because he had brothers who died from circumcision the is of god foreign before we knew hemophilia it really was an indicator of hemophilia that if two brothers in the family have died as a result of circumcision we do not circumcise the third brother because we treat that as a pattern that there's dangerous so it's possible for a religious jew a religious jew to be exempt from british milan because of sakana now today the truth of matter is under i mean i myself know uh people with severe hemophilia uh that how to bridge me love it obviously it's done under hospital conditions and the doctors you know so actually there are ways of doing it today but in the time of giza there were not always ways to contain this so meitu we know from the gemara so says the baba eater since this person does not have the sign of brit milah so during the week he only has one sign which is to fill in but at least on shabbos he should have two sides shabbos and finland so the bolo eater says a person without a bris should wear its filling on shabbos that's an interesting qrish we do not pass in that way so i don't know if it's no gay to anybody practically one should ask their rabbi if there is such a question but there actually is a possibility of filling on shabbos now i could give you a second answer which is actually maybe a simpler answer that is the gemara in the missionary and the aravind discusses that if you find to fill in god forbid on the ground on shabbos and there's no aero if you're not allowed to carry them but what you can do is you put them on so it's like a garment and that way you can carry them home so they shouldn't be babi zayon that's a mission in airmen so that would be a simple instance of somebody who would put fill in on themselves on shabbos but the difference is according to the baluitor the guy without a brisk would make a bracha that's villain because it's a mitzvah if you're putting on filling just to save them from disrespect and get them out of the street then you're not doing a mitzi i mean you're doing a myth of saving them but you're not doing the mitzvot's villain you would not make a problem so that would be a difference okay but now let me talk a little bit about leprosy first of all determine the torah is not the leprosy the term of the torah is soras the king james translation has been leprosy but it's important to understand that the modern illness in fact it's not even called leprosy today but the modern illness that used to be called leprosy called hanson's disease does not at all correspond with the leprosy of the torah and in fact the closest thing that corresponds to the leprosy of the torah is psoriasis which actually is connected to sarat sarat psoriasis very very similar word and that's not an accident they are in fact psoriasis was the greek for for fort saras and it's a skin condition it is a skin condition in which there are white splotches on the skin and uh and the like but again without a coen who's pascaling you're not a leper you don't have that status now maimonides who of course was a very famous physician makes the very important point that although saras manifests itself as a physical ailment it is not a contagious disease for example some people want to say oh the reason why the mizora goes into isolation is it's a it's a it's a concept of quarantine in order to prevent the spread of communicable and look how forward the torah is that the torah understood that diseases can be communicated and there needs to be separation now that sounds great it's both covet and all that stuff but maimonides himself says it's absolutely clear that the torah was not concerned with the physical spreading of disease sarat in that sense is not a communicable disease and the proof is that the mishna says in massachusetts negoyam which is all about leprosy that there are times in which a cohen is not allowed to pronounce a person a leper because that would create sadness at times of great joy the example that it says is during yamcha for eight a person wakes up and he sees saras he goes to the culling the cohen says sorry i will i will look at this after yamcha why because if he's a misoga he's going to take him away from his family take away the joy now if you're talking about disease that makes no sense you got to take care of it now or chevy broca's a wedding or a cowa discover saras at a wedding at a chevres cohen doesn't look at it he says i will look at it after your seven days of rejoicing now from a public health standpoint that makes no sense at all i mean you're allowing it's like those people who make these gigantic weddings during covert right i mean you're allowing a gigantic wedding what they call super spreader events so the rambam says you're right if a person had a communicable disease then you got to quarantine him as soon as possible but saras is not a communicable disease it is a divine punishment on a person that manifests itself in this way for various alveros that he commits and the primary of abraham the primary of era although there are a number of others isla shown hara speaking derogatory speech against others now that doesn't mean even when there was saras that did not mean every person who ever spoke leshan hara got surahs if that would be the case then all of israel would have had service but for whatever reason hashem chose who would be the sacrificial lambs so to speak in getting ceres and in that way the quarantine of the mizora is in order to give him or her or her the opportunity to engage in spiritual reflection meaning separate yourself from people to think about the damage that you've done the relationships you've destroyed the mahloksim that you generate so it's not we separate you because you're contagious we separate you because you need to think in fact the truth of the matter is that is even the source of the term penitentiary although i would not consider uh prison an ideal environment for chuva but but at least philosophically part of the notion of penitentiary comes from the word penitence we will separate you from society so you will think about your life and turn over a new leaf now prison may be the last place in the world where someone i mean although there are people who do turn over the leaf there are people who have become bully troop in prison there are people who have become good people but as you know most of the time the prison environment makes a person a lot worse an 18 year old first offender goes into prison he comes out a hardened criminal so that's a separate issue but at least in terms of lashon etymology penitentiary comes from the concept of chuva penitent by the way as a little aside lubavitcher reby appoints it pointed out it's not our partial but i'll mention that because it's connected to penitentiary that the torah by and large does not have a prison system but the closest it does have to a prison system is an ear mclut a city of refuge for people who are careless and negligent and as a result kills people by irresponsible behavior now inhibilat is a form of arrest because you're confined to a city it's not a prison but you are confined to that city you can't leave that city if you leave that city you're vulnerable the relative can kill you but who else lives in that city besides murderers who were sentenced for their crimes it's a city of livium the livium are the teachers of israel the sadiq israel so the rebbe says what is the torah's penal philosophy the torah's penal philosophy is that if you were careless if you were negligent if you were callous if you were indifferent to life we will put you in an environment where you're surrounded with good people righteous people and then you will learn from them and be inspired by them as opposed to putting somebody in with murderers and rapists and child molesters and everything else right you see so the rebbe says the torah does have at least a limited context a philosophy of imprisonment but the imprisonment is to put you with good influences rather than put you with a lot of people who are even worse even worse than you are okay but be it as it may that is the notion of the quarantine of the matsuri so now i want to take you through some of the steps of the mizora and then see if we could discern in the middle of the technicalities a spiritual message so a person wakes up he discovers this white splotch on his skin he goes to the colleen the coin must determine is it the right color colors of white shades of white is it the right size everything is very technical if it's not the right color it's not the right size nothing then it's just psoriasis nothing more than that but assuming color and size fit so the first thing that happens is quarantine the masaira is quarantined for seven days on the seventh day and if that's shabbos will be the day after the cohen inspects the mitsura and looks for three things one of three things number one assuming that saras is still there if it's gone there's no problem assuming it's still there if there was a black hair in the area or two black hairs rather did they turn white that's one sign or this is or is that saras bigger than it was expansion that's called pisayon or even if it didn't grow in size is there a clear or clean flesh in the middle now you would think that that's good but that's actually no good that's called michia right so there are three signs the colleen looks for the changing of black hair into white expansion or mikhya clear flesh if any of those three signs exist he is now upgraded or downgraded to being a definitive misara and he's not going to get out of it until that leaves and he brings carbanos and sacrifices and everything else let's assume though on day seven none of those three signs are present so we have a quarantine for a second week and at the end of the second week he undergoes a second inspection once again if any one of those three signs are present he is now a definitive messiah he's not going to get out of it till he brings sacrifices and everything else if on the other hand by the end of week number two none of those three signs are present he goes home now this is interesting he still has the leprosy he still has the original thrust but if it doesn't have one of the three signs of impurity by the end of the second week he goes home without sacrifices without any type of ritual okay so you understand the basic idea in other words uh the quarantine is initiated by the nega by the tsaras there is an inspection on day seven and on day fourteen actually it's technically day thirteen because day seven counts both as the end of the first quarantine and the first day of the second quarantine so state technically it's seven and thirteen if there is one of the three simanim of tuma on day 7 or day 13 he cannot leave his saras state until he brings carbanos which could be a long time until everything goes away if on the other end there is no uh sign of the tumor after the seven and thirteen days he goes home even with the tsurus okay so let's try to now this is only one type of taras there were other types of saras that actually have different waiting periods uh you know i'm not going to uh go over all of that now that we don't have the the time but again it's i think once you have a sense of the structure i think you'll find the other details will be easier to understand as well what does all of this mean i mean is there any particular meaning we can take from this is there any particular lesson and the answer is yes and this is really a thought that is adapted i am changing a few things from ravarin levin a great great uh rav in poland before the world war before the holocaust and he wrote a it was actually a member of the polish parliament as well uh and he wrote a wonderful safer at hamish called hadrash baha'ian those of you that are familiar with very prominent lawyers in the united states may have heard of nathan lewin who is a froome guy uh who really is one of the great great orthodox actually one of the great lawyers in the united states he happens to be a firm lawyer he represents chabad and he's done so many cases for kuala lum and lewin nate lewin uh nat lewin is the grandson of called the ray charo for viron levine who wrote a dress for you ian and this is what the joshua is says again with some adaptation the messiah is supposed to reflect on his life to realize what he did was wrong to try to change to understand the importance of community and actus and how much lash and horror destroys things you know the old adage that our parents told us when we were growing up sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me unfortunately it's not quite true sometimes the taunts the insults the humiliations could be a lot worse than even breaking bones you break a leg at least children they tend to cure they tend to heal fairly rapidly when we get older it takes a little longer but the psychic wounds of humiliation of embarrassment pain can stay with you your whole life in fact it's quite amazing i remember hearing an interview with richard nixon and nixon certainly went through a lot of things resigning the presidency in disgrace etc and i guess by the end of his life he kind of was semi-rehabilitated he became regarded as the elder statesman so it's amazing how america forgives everything right sometimes it's good i mean from a jewish perspective you know we we get along with nixon nixon actually did uh he may have been personally anti-semitic but that was a cultural thing but politically uh he was a friend of the state of israel for whatever the motive were but that's a fact of life but you'd figure a guy who resigned the presidency and was hated by so many people you know what would he be talking about he was talking about playground taunts when he was six sixth grade that was still like in his on his mind and it's a little scary when you think about you know world dictators on the scene we have whether it's putin whether it was it was saddam hussein you know whoever it is that a lot of the decisions they're making are based on what happened to them when they were in fourth grade so be careful tell your kids be careful what you say to you know your classmates you never know you know what they'll be and what they can do based on the way they were treated as children an amazing thing so we want the mitsira to know the power of words words can heal words can comfort words can strengthen words can build you up and words can destroy this is a possibility life and death are in the hands of the tongue this doesn't just mean literally although literally it's true as well that you can sometimes get yourself killed by the wrong words that that happens to be true you say the wrong thing sometimes you know you can be in big trouble but in a more metaphorical way life and death are not just referring to physically living or dead but you can destroy a person's life by harsh humiliating words and you can build a person up right so the whole quarantine of a metsira is to give them a chance to think dude suga but here is the thing whenever we confront our mistakes our failures our inadequacies we immediately put up a lot of defense mechanisms so we don't have to take responsibility for our actions the cohen examining the mitsira on day seven day thirteen for the shimane tuma the simone tuma you will see in a moment represent a physical expression of a defense mechanism that's going on and therefore when there's a cementuma you gotta remain in quarantine to go through a repentance process when you don't have a sim and tumor we can let you go home even with the saras because you're progressing appropriately so the semen tumor is how hashem tells the cohen whether the chuba process is proceeding properly or improperly so how does this work okay so the first type of defense mechanism we have is we simply deny that we did anything wrong so in the case of flesh and highway it might be you know what i said was true although that that's not a defense a lot of views everything i said is true not so it's okay or the guy deserved it or uh the guy is a lot worse than what i said these are ways in which we minimize what we did to try even even if we're not doing it to other people even if we're not saying it to other people but it's a way we convince ourselves ah it wasn't so bad what is that called in english one of the terms white washing so the black hair turning white is telling the coloring you haven't acknowledged the seriousness of your abeyra you're whitewashing right go back into quarantine and work this out right so that's one idea now the second strategy and maybe it's not a strategy is almost the opposite if whitewashing is a denial of responsibility you can sometimes have the opposite effect a person is so hyper acutely aware of what they did that they feel hopeless and helpless to ever change i'm so far off the path i'm so bad i am beyond help i am beyond tikkun i might as well continue what i'm doing because there's no way i could ever change now this could be true for us now but it can be true for any of abram that is called pisayon the nega that saras expands that's the attitude of a person who has so much self-loathing and feel so unable to make the situation better that they feel i'll just throw good money after bed i'll just keep on going in this pathway because there's no way i could ever change so that's a second issue where the cohen says think about that again so if the tsar levan is the denial of responsibility means the expansion of the tsuras represents the person who is so despondent that he believes there's no possibility of change he goes back also into quarantine think about it now there's a third response that's a little different and it may be connected to number two but it expresses itself in a different way and that is we will call that emotional distancing in other words that's the idea in which i don't want to think about this because when i think about it i get anxious i get uptight i get depressed i need to put it on the back burner and don't let it affect me that's not the same as a an active denial of responsibility and in fact often that'll be a type 2 person now there's if you're a person where when you think about an aveda you get so debilitated that you can't go on so your strategy might be i don't allow myself to go there i don't allow myself to think now in truth that is sometimes necessary and appropriate and there will be times in life in which we're not ready to confront aravera we got to work on strengthening ourselves that may be a legitimate response in point of fact but the cohen's message is go ahead and think about this some more and get out of that mode and be strong enough so the simone tuma actually represents the three mechanisms we have not to deal with the chuva that we need to undergo the white hair is denial the spreading of the nega is hopelessness the third which is the clean flesh what is the clean flesh you're surrounded by rocks but in the middle you don't let it penetrate called michia that represents emotional distancing i don't let it bother me they tell a story about robert hutchins who was a a child's prodigy who eventually became president of the university of chicago at a very young age age 25 there were many graduate students that were older than he was and a brilliant man and uh he was not taking care of himself physically he was not exercising so someone once asked him you know dr hutchins don't you ever have the urge to exercise so dr hutching said oh yes yes i very often do have the urge but i know if i just lie down for a few moments it will pass so i just have to be patient and don't let it bother me and indeed we know that that's often the case with with exercise and it's often the case with spirituality as well let's assume that you have a grudge or a fight with someone you feel like picking up the phone but if the phone is more than uh if you're more than one foot away from the phone or like that maybe tomorrow you know it doesn't have to be today and and and the like so in all of these cases when you have one of these three simanim of tuma what is the message the message is you haven't completed the chuva process go back in if on the other hand after the two weeks these simanim of tuma don't exist so that means number one the person has honestly acknowledged his sin to himself number two he believes he can change he doesn't have the hopelessness and number three he is not distancing himself from that reflection so at that point he still has the terrace he hasn't completed the tuba but we can say you can do it on an outpatient basis you can go home and do it because you're not using the defense mechanisms that would normally stop you from that type of kashmir so this is actually a very meaningful structure because we can apply it not only to lush and hara we can apply it to all of the things in our lives that we have to fix now interestingly enough uh you know most of the time parshas tajria is read after pesach because pesach would have been a month ago or whatever three weeks ago two weeks ago but on a leap year where pesach is later in the year so parshas tazria is read before pesach so it's interesting you can actually connect these three defense mechanisms with three understandings of comments right the message of pesach is get rid of your comments right khamenei is no good no mats are good and obviously historically it's connected to the fact that we were expelled from mitzrayim so quickly that we didn't have time to let our dough rise and we're remembering that event but spiritually the swarm tell us that khanites has many different allusions to the yetzer hara and part of the meaning of destroying hamates is also destroying the eights of iran in the course of becoming free we'll talk more about it as we as we get closer to pesach so let me just mention three aspects of chromates and its connections to the ethera and connect them to the three semanium of tumor of the methyl one symbol of khamenei is khamenei represents the yetzer i'm sorry this represents gaiver khamis represents arrogance this is a well-known idea hamas rises puffed up it represents guyva matzah is flat and simple it represents humility elements there is akasha here because now they make pesach rolls if you've ever seen they you know which look exactly like like hamitz rolls okay but subscribe the idea of chromates is arrogance the idea of matzah is simplicity and humility now arrogance corresponds to whitewashing because whitewashing is i never want to acknowledge that i'm in the wrong i'm always right so if i said something bad about you i had good reason so the cementum of whitewashing corresponds to chromates as a sign of arrogance and diver because arrogance and diver means you don't and i'm not talking about even acknowledging to other people even to yourself now again this is complicated it could very well be that arrogance also comes from a deep insecurity it's an interesting point i have to tell myself i'm right because otherwise i'm going to you know feel destroyed inside so it is interesting that guyva actually may correlate with low self-esteem rather than a healthy self-esteem the guyver is a compensation mechanism okay a second symbol of khames is that chromate spoils as opposed to matzah chromates rats bread if you have bread eventually you'll get mold you'll get bacteria on it it'll smell matzah does not spoil they have mats all the way from masada i think that's still around you know uh sometimes it looks like the schwarmasie you get there maybe from that batch but it does not rot so rotting corresponds to the hopelessness of giving up that things could ever be better that's the peace soyum the nega just gets bigger and bigger and bigger so the gaiva aspect of khames corresponds to the whitewashing the spoilage of comets corresponds to the hopelessness of the pisayon the spreading of the nega now then the final aspect of hamets which morale points out is that climates represents passivity and inertia matsu represents action now why is that so because when water falls on flour you don't need to do anything to make islamists you don't need to have yeast you don't need to have a starter it will become khanites by itself matzah requires that you do something so the morel says a lot of times evil comes from inertia and neglect so that corresponds to the emotional distancing i just don't allow myself to think about it so it is interesting that the three shimane tuma which prevent us from doing cuba do correspond with three meanings of chamez in terms of the sahara and the burning of the khames is also a ceremony that involves burning the eight sahara you know we'll talk about this some more um you know i for many years i don't know if it's true today the largest seder in the world was in kathmandu up in nepal and up there you always had a lot of israelis after they finished rented one of the things that's part of secular israeli culture at least is after you finish your stint in the army you got to be a world traveler you go to the india you go to nepal et cetera and you travel around up there in nepal kathmandu they make a seder and uh there were in many years there were more than 2 000 people at the seder and they don't use microphones so it's interesting how they do it but because uh this is almost 90 not a religious group uh these are non-religious these are secular israelis so they have to be a little avant-garde so they have a ceremony here of pesach which you know if you're very traditional you might say oh this is just a hippie type of thing but the truth is it resonates very strongly and that is when they make a big bonfire to burn the chamets so they have a ceremony every person should write on a piece of paper a negative character trait that they would like to get rid of and throw it into the fire so it should be burned with the comets so if you're a purist you might say these innovations but the truth of the matter is kabbalistically there is a prayer that some people recite not everybody when they burn the comments that says just as i'm burning the physical comments i want i want to burn away my heart there's a very strong association between muhammad and the horrific the hr is called the leavening agents in the dough so the truth is when we think about cleaning for pesach there is a lot of cleaning we have to do for pesach we have to clean our houses and if we have cars clean our cars yeah to be sure caution the kitchen but there's one aspect of cleaning we have to be very careful not to forget and try to clean ourselves clean our souls know that the khames is a remiss to the azera and the b or chamez is also trying to eradicate the atara and only then do we truly become free so shabbat shalom and the month of nisan is the month of redemption the month of gaola and yehi wrath saying that we should see the goula of israel and the whole world in this month of nissan [Music] is