Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: The Oral Torah is the Interaction Between Hashem and Israel

[Music] hi everybody shalom and thank you for coming really appreciate it um although hashem we do have a good audience on youtube but i just find that it's much so much nicer when there's actual human faces that i can i can talk to so uh you're doing me a great favor as well uh today's sheer is a dedicated uh the that's the dad of eric davinski the earth site was on the sixth of odar miriam basmasel the york side is zion adaralif and binyamin israel ben the young man that we prayed for for a very long time all of them should have an aliyah and shaman ganedan in the success in addition we want to wish a reforest leima to sarah khanna bach briando the wife of a person that i i knew fairly well ramosa aaron shores the criminal of raqqa avraham bansara and really all of the holy israel should have a rafa refuse a nephesh or foreign and those who are healthy should be as rat hashem remain remain healthy today's uh parsha parchester sava is really quite uh much a continuation last week we read about the mishkan and this week we primarily read about the big day cohen got all the various kahuna the various garments that both the regular coloring and the going gutter wears i see that a lot of people call the parsha with the theme clothes make the man uh i recognize that's not that's not necessarily my strongest point but nevertheless we're going to talk about uh summoning of big day kahuna as well as something that's a bit more general and let me start off with a very general point that's quite interesting and this that is this is the i'm sure you've heard this this is the only parsha in the torah from the time that moshe rabbena was introduced that the name of moshe rabbenu does not appear in the parsha at all his name is not here and from parashat shemos to the end of the torah there is no other parsha where moshe is not mentioned and there are three reasons that are given for this now the first reason is that by the fei ta egel said if you don't forgive the jewish people erase me from your book now even though hashem did forgive the jewish people but lamay said the gemara says the curse of a sadiq can be so powerful that it will come to pass even if the condition was not met moshe avenue cursed himself by saying i want to be erased from the book so god erased them from the book now the problem is of course that that well-known answer doesn't explain why is it only this parsha i mean it could have been fulfilled in any part especially its little anomalous that this parsha is badafka before the saiytohego and that is the fulfillment of the curse so there's a second reason that the villenegon offers and we'll see how that plays out this year and that is that parchas tetsava is always read the week of the seventh of adar and the seventh of adar was the day that mosher abanu died so the torah is alluding to moshe rabbenu's absence in the parsha that is read the week of his patera the vilna gone gives a gowaldega remus to this idea parshastusava has 101 psukin so what's the significance of that so this is a little complicated when you spell out the letters of the aliface every letter of the aleph base can be spelled out for example aleph write a single aleph can be written alef lamed pay alef and the way this works is the first letter which is always the same as the letter you're spelling out is called the nikla the revealed part of the letter and the rest of the letter is called or the rest of the letter that's spelled out is called the um the nister the hidden part of the letter or the meloy the filling out of the letter so let's spell out moshe men is right so the mr the hidden part of the letter is 40 just as the revealed shin is shin you'd none so the yid nun is the hidden part of the letter that is 50 10 and right so you have i'm sorry 60. so you have men 40 yards which is 60 that's a hundred and the last is hay that is spelled hey aleph which is aleph 101 so the concealed part of moshe has a comatria of 101 indicating that moshe will be concealed for 101 verses because this is the week of his patera now there's an interesting question i don't know if i want to spend too much time on this is well how does that work on a leap year i mean what's the luck of generation salah of the mice comes up a lot let's assume that somebody is keeping a york site for their parent in the month of adar now if the parent died for example one of the art sites tonight in order alef or other bay so it's a double push it on the leap year you keep the yard site either in other aleph or other base and if it's a regular weather you keep it in a regular water so that's not a problem when someone dies on a leap year the yard side is relatively easy where it gets a little problematical is if somebody died on a regular year somebody died in order and now it's a leap year do you keep the art site ador aleph or do you keep the your side audor base what is considered to be the real month of adar the shogunarak says that the real month of other is utter shiny and you keep the yard side under shaney the rama brings that many have a minute to keep the yard side adar alef and the halakha is it's best to keep two york sites that particular year to be out say all of the opinions so vis-a-vis maisha rabino right so the truth of the matter is uh this is a leap year but review that maisha abano himself died in a leap year and maisha rabenu was born in adar alif and mosherabenu died in other base now the truth of the matter is to say that moshe rabena was born ajar aleph is actually very very difficult to even understand why would there have been an other aleph i mean remember the whole purpose of an extra month of adar is that we want to be sure that pesach falls in the spring so when pesach gets too early we've got to have an adar all right so by the time moshua bainu died the jewish people were keeping pesach but when moshe avenue was born that was before the exodus so why would there have been another aleph at all that that's a good question who determined other aleph but nevertheless if yenis snape just wants to say that maisha rabbanu was born under aleph majira died under base and he uses this to explain a famous gemaran magilla the gemaran megillah says when haman was drawing lots to determine when would be a good time to kill the jewish people he came up with the month of udar and he was very happy because oh there is a bad month or there was the month that moshe abano died the muzzle of the jews is very low but the gemara said he didn't realize that it's also a month of blessing because moshe rabenu was born then she says if haman is so sophisticated that he knows when moshera bainu died why wouldn't he know when moshe bainer was born says ravianus who was before some for the sharpness of his mind haman is a very smart guy as sometimes the great anti-semites are haman knew moshe rabena was born under aleph he died under shaini and the gizera of purim was for other shane he says it was a leap year that year therefore he figured we wouldn't be covered by the good muzzle of adar because that was under aleph his mistake was that we treat uh both months of other as one long one long month and and the like but be it as it may therefore according to a vietnamese and apeshits this year the zion order would not be so significant because measurable died under shaney right so the little aura that the vilmigon's vort at least like ravionis and apeshits does not work this particular year i guess that's something to uh to keep and keep in mind but going to the sm parsha itself there's a third reason why michael bainer's name is not dimensioned this parsha is profoundly embarrassing to him it's a bizarron it is a shame because this is the parsha in which moshe might imagine what if this is the parsha where he is given the task of appointing aron to be the cullen it was god's original plan that mosher abano himself should have been the kali and what happened was this is an ownership because moshe rabbenu was refusing to accept god's mission by the by the burning bush hashem took away that distinction now obviously moshe albano is not concerned with kavod's or ego that's obvious he was the most humble of all people but the special unique opportunity to serve hashem in the mishkan was something that moshe abbaynu yearned to do and what is the parsha where aron is designated to be the colony it is this partial and therefore there's a pain that moshe being who suffers and just as we say like the the analogy would be that friday night we cover up the bread when we make kiddush why do we cover up the bread when we make kiddush so there are a lot a few different reasons but one of the reasons is we don't want to embarrass the bread because normally at every meal bread is given the place of honor but friday night we honor the wine first the bread feels shame so it gets covered up so it shouldn't experience the shame hashem covers up moshe so to speak that we shouldn't be thinking about moshe as we consider our own being elevated that would be a source of busha of course as little aside they tell the story of the time that when the khopitryam was traveling as a younger man selling his swarm he was once invited to someone's house for shabbos and when he comes in the balabayas notices that his wife forgot or didn't cover up the bread so the man is a little embarrassed he doesn't want to have him to think he's ignorant so he starts saying to himself why don't you cover the khala the khala is always supposed to be covered said to the man tell me rabbit why do we cover up the khala before kiddush so the person said oh not to embarrass the bread everybody knows that again he wants to show that he knows so the khabib's claim says um i see in your great zealousness not to embarrass the bread you have no problem with embarrassing your wife what do you think is more important and again like like a lot of simple stories this has actually a profound point what do we mean don't embarrass the bread does bread feel embarrassment and after all the bread has been through the ringer already it's been threshed and it's been beaten and it's been ground and it's been made into dough and pounded and then baked in a you know whatever 300 degree oven you think the bread is going to be offended at that point the answer is that this is a symbolic exercise in giving us sensitivity towards human embarrassment by by creating an atmosphere where i behave as if i can't even embarrass the bread i learn how sensitive i have to be to another human being kalvahomer one's wife but really anybody so the time is telling the guy if you're so you've learned the lesson of the bread but you're not applying it to human relationships you've totally misunderstood the meaning of that ritual this is an important maftayah that even jewish rituals are supposed to have an ethical and spiritual meaning they're not like just rituals and i have to say sometimes maybe that's a kisarin in our educational system where we might teach all the halakhas of covering up the bread but we're not going to extrapolate from that lesson the concept of sensitivity and the like so that's why moishra baner's name is not here because we don't want to highlight the embarrassment that he's feeling maybe embarrassment this is the wrong word it's not embarrassing but the pain that he's feeling by being passed over and the opportunity he could have had but the ramban makes the point that the very word via titsaber and you shall designate aaron is grammatically and little unusual normally the torah just has the plain imperative the ramban says we are taught is god is telling moshe you must do this personally you can't delegate it jewish you have to show that you are agreeing to aaron becoming the kohen kodo in other words otherwise people would think maybe there's resentment maybe moshe was not supportive and the truth of the matter is this is mizaki negative because remember the many many years that moshe was gone from israel aron was the spiritual leader number one aaron was older and number two iran was the spiritual leader and when moshe came back to mitzrayim to become the big man so to speak the torah says around went out personally and aaron had great joy in moshe's kavod now moshe must reciprocate in showing the joy that he has at the great great covert that is being given to arma but the interesting point is this the medrash tells us that moshe did have a great deal of distress but god said to him don't worry about it need not torah you have something even greater you're the one that got the torah from israel so why are you feeling so bad so the bali musser make an interesting point here exactly of why moshirabena was so sad and they say it's not just that he's not the coe although once again that is part of it but rather moshe is kind of bemoaning his fate as to the difference between the crown of torah and the crown of kahuna the crown of gahuna is hereditary and automatic there's nothing you have to do to earn it once siren is a calling his son is a cohen his grandson is a cohen the crown of torah on the other hand is not automatic the crown of torah has to be re-earned by every generation there is no rule that because your father was atomized you will be it's indeed the gemara nadaram says the opposite it is sometimes the case sometimes the case that the son of a talmud will not be learned torah requires work torah requires effort tori requires yugiya so moshe is bemoaning the fact why is our own's distinction something that is so automatic and my distinction is like the myth of sisyphus the greek myth of sisyphus sisyphus was condemned to roll a stone to the top of a mountain and then it rolled down again and you have to start again and take says that's the nature of torah torah requires work it requires effort it requires commitment there is no such thing as automatic pilots on one hand what that means is the crown of torah is the most democratic of all gifts that hashem gave because it is open to everybody everybody right i can't be a calling if i wasn't born a cohen i can't be a melech if i'm not from dublin's family but to be learned in torah is open to everybody but at the same time there's a certain maybe heartbreaking aspect that it always requires that effort and that yugiya and that's what hashem is telling moshe you were given the crown of torah but unlike the crown of kahuna it's not automatic it has to be earned and worked for in every generation and not only in every generation but in every day every day even the talmud himself cannot rest on his laurels one has to continually go in fact that's why a great scholar of torah is called taumid if you think about it that's a little bit of an odd name talmitham either means there are two translations actually the word itself is a little ambiguous in translation is talmitracham a student of the wise or is a talmud a wise student he could have two translations he can either be an adjective or an indirect object in terms of its placing but either way you're calling the vilna gown at a great the greatest talmud that implies you're only a student i mean that seems to be an inferior level in reality it's not because the hallmark of torah greatness is the willingness to keep on learning to be a talmud your whole life right as i i remember um once having a debate uh actually khan october wrote it into a story although it's a bit of a fictionalized story but i once had a debate with a very very famous jewish law professor it was actually a friendly debate i don't want to call it young people want to make it a big debate whatever turned out that uh he and i were kind of saying the same thing and he was pleasantly surprised whatever it was but he once made a statement and part of that debate that until i was 20 i was there to listen from 20 onwards i talk meaning he talks meaning he's not here to learn anything he's here just to tell other people what he says kind of the opposite of being the perpetual talmud but greatness in judaism is i want to keep learning i want to keep growing they tell the story about the great robbie eliezer silver who is a very very colorful rabbi european rabbi who died in the 1960s he spent most of his career in cincinnati but the beginning of his career he was in a new england town i don't want to mention the name because it's a little bit of a latin arab and he came to america like after world war one and legend has it or story has it that he was fired from his first rabbinical position because he was using the show's electricity by learning in the show late at night this was in the 1920s so when he said you know they said you know you're wasting our electricity you know we can't afford you so he said but i'm learning torah so the president said that's the point we wanted a rabbi who finished his education you know you're not going to keep on going to school on our dime and the story goes he lost his first uh rabbinic position because he kept on learning anyone who knows anything about torah knows how utterly ridiculous uh that that that is the truth of the idea that lima tatara requires work and effort and commitment we actually see in the first mitzvah of this parsha and that is the daily lighting of the menorah the menorah in the base of mikdash is lit every single day it was prepared the lamps were prepared with new oil and wicks every morning prepared they were lit in the late afternoon and they would burn through the night and in the morning all of the candles were extinguished already except for one that's called the near tamid which the culling would actually extinguish people make a mistake the narcamid did not always burn rather it didn't go out by itself but every day the cohen had to put it out to fulfill the mitzvah menorah but this was a miracle from hashem it didn't happen all the time in our history but when we were on a spiritual level there was an air committed so remember so chanukah is not that unique the uniqueness of chanukah was all seven candles of the menorah didn't go out by themselves but even before chanukah and after chanukah there was an air tamid right we have an intermediary right that's the zeker that we have to the near temit now the meforshim tell us that the menira as a whole is a remiss to the light of the torah the light of the torah is the menorah the near talmid shows that the torah shall always remain in omni israel but think about the menorah that it requires human interaction every day the cohen has to fill the lamps and replace the wicks and the menorah itself has many colored flames you look at a flame it's not constant it goes in different directions there are different colors different views by the way i once read something in ravi kaplan metabolistic observation and ever since then i always watch the candle and see my wife and i have a little bit of a contest do we get to see him that is he says that if you can see the deep blue of a flame that's like a special revelation of the shakina in the flame it's especially the blue of the flame so sometimes you see it sometimes you don't whatever it would be but the menorah is a remiss to the interaction of the human being with the divine the different colors the difference nuances the effort and the work that the cohen has to do in fact even the oil the oil has to be kassis now kasis means when you take an olive you squeeze the olive gently so the first few drops that come out of the olive through the human squeezing without sediments they are what you use for the menorah afterwards you put the olives in an olive press and dead weight squeezes out other oil and that is kosher for meal offerings so the oil of the menorah requires the human effort of squeezing the oil of the meal offerings is dead weight and the meforsham say the meal offerings represents parnassa menorah represents torah torah requires human efforts parnassa also requires effort but you can also rely on the college parkour giving you what you need even if you do minimal parnassa and and the like and that's why monochromes are clustered with dead weight oil requires the squeezing the hadushi irim writes that torah that there are two symbols of torah in the mishkan or basa mikdash there is the arena kodesh that's behind the koda shaktism and then there is the menorah which is outside of the kodashak darshan and he says very pleasured why are there two symbols of torah because there's toresha berksav there is the written torah and there is torisha alpe the oral torah the luhas the tablets in the kodesh represent the written torah they are quite literally etched in stone the written torah is fixed it's finite there is nothing i can add to it it's there but it's inaccessible it's hidden we don't really know its meaning the menorah is the oral torah which is dialectical interactive you see it in the different flames you see it in the human efforts the oral law is the collaboration of god and the jewish people in the creation of truth that's why i one of my pet peeves is when when people say which of course is true that the oral law was given by god to moshe and handed down people mistakenly think that means every word in the talmud was simply given to moshe which is which is kind of ridiculous really although it's well intentioned because the gemara is a conversation people are talking people are debating they're not reading from a script as to what they're supposed to say so when we say the oral law was given by god we mean principles were given by god but the working out of the principles is our job it is interactive it is dynamic you're not just passing things on you're discussing you're working things out a muscle i often given again i probably have said it more than once here so forgive me is like making a cake you know uh if you want to make a cake for your four-year-old the easiest thing to do would be to go to a bakery actually that would be the easiest thing and the second easiest thing would do would be bake the cake when the child is asleep or in done but if you really want to show your love you make the cake with the child now making a cake with a four-year-old the cake is not going to be as good as a bakery cake and it's not going to be as good as the cake you could have baked without the kid the kitchen will be messy there'll be sugar on the floor and chocolate on the counter and it'll be lumpy and part of it might be over-baked and under-baked and there may be an eggshell you know in there but the love is in the interaction seen in this way the oral law is very messy and i say that of course not with any irreverence but with a great deal of affection gemara is messy you're going through this and that and that and that god could have given us the rules straightforward without ambiguity without much locus without the need to debate over and over again but what does god say i want to make the cake with you i want you to be my partner it's got to be messier i could have done a better job myself god says but so what the love is the messiness that we create together again i hope it's not too irreverent to talk about this as messiness but the process of the aural law is messy you go through this possibility and that possibility you're looking here here here and there and there and there and there and people even ask why do i have to go through all of this why don't i just have a bottom line because hashem says you work with me we work together and that's why the menira is that symbol of interactive dynamism that is characteristic of the oral law and the halaq process and that's why i still talk about the rla even though you might say well the oral law is now in books well not totally yeah a lot of it has been written down we still discuss we still debate we still interact new questions come up the torah is eternal but the life is ever-changing and we have to figure out how to apply these eternal rules to new situations and god does not give us the answer god says you've got to figure out the answer from what i've given you in fact the rambam says if a prophet were to give you an answer from god as to what the is we would say sorry we don't listen to you god wants us to figure it out that's the meaning of the verse the torah is not in heaven get a whole story about that okay so that's uh one set of things i want you to focus on but now let's move to the garments right after menira we have detailed discussions of the garments of both irregular kaling and the unique garments of garments of the kohen gadol that has right there are four garments of a regular coin there are eight distinct garments of the colleen godot and there are two preliminary points i want to make about these garments point number one is these garments are not just a fashion statement if a koang does the service in the michigan or the temple not wearing the proper garments the whole sacrificial right is invalidated these garments are an essential part of the kosheros of the avaida not only that even if he has the proper garments but is wearing an extra garment let's say colleen decided to put on a nice scarf or a necktie right looks nice mahalaka is that's called marooba begat him too many begot him a vote is no good so that's one thing to keep to keep in mind that these are extremely important parts of the service the second thing to keep in mind although i'm not going to talk about it but it's worthy of thinking about that at least in the cohen goddess garments there actually is a mixture of wool and linen which is pretty amazing one of the general prohibitions of the torah is shotness you're not allowed to wear garments that are comprised of wool and linen it's saucer now you could you could have by the way people ask me that you're you actually are allowed to have sharpness in curtains and the like things that you're not wearing shortness is only in what you wear on your body but still on what you wear on your body we're very strict you cannot have wool and linen mixtures and yet the very thing that is prohibited outside of the basal mikdash is mandatory within the garments at least of the cohen gadol that suggests again in a very profound way that that needs uh development i mean this could easily be a theme of all share although it's not what i'm going to talk about but the connotation here is that in the basa mikdash opposites can be integrated in the basal mikdash everything can be brought together we no longer live in a world of oppositions we no longer live in a world of contradictions we no longer live in a world where things have to be separated but under the holiness of the mishkan and the basa mikdash we bring things together in unity just as in heaven itself god unites opposite forces and brings them together that's the deep meaning of the shaktis there's a very very interesting mahlokas between the rambam and the rivet what is the halacha if a cohen goddell wears his garments which have shatness when he's not doing the temple service the rambam says well listen uh if he's not doing the temple service he's just wearing sharpness he will get lashes for wearing shatness meaning it's only the temple service that overrides the shotness law that's the rambam's opinion derivative says the torah took off the prohibition of shotness lagamri on the garments of the cohen so even if he wears it when he's not doing the temple service he is no longer guilty of shadows that's an interesting mahlokas so those are two preliminary points about big dekuna but then i want to talk about something more one of the colleen guttal's garments is called the aphode the afoot is like an apron that's belted in the front and the apron has shoulder straps that come over his shoulders and actually are attached to a belt below and on the shoulders on the shoulder straps of the aphote there are two onyx stones and on the onyx stones are the twelve engraved in the onyx stones are the twelve shevatim of the jewish people six on one stone and six on the other stone big mach lokes arashi and the rambam what the order is according to rashi it is the order of the birth of the tribes which is really paternal meaning the order that yaakov had these children so it's ruvain shimon levy yehuda and then after leia had four children raquel's maidservant had done naftali so that gives you your sixth then on the second one god i'm sorry sahar in other words the order of the father that they were born to yaakov the rambam says it's the order of the mothers we first have all the children of leia then all the children of billah then all the children of zilpah and then the children of raqqa meaning according to rashi the stones the onyx stones follow the father according to rambam it follows the mothers so that's why you suckers of wolden are put earlier because they are the two other sons of leia the prophet chureby again because the church has controlled osam according to their birth question is based on the father based on the mothers the barbecue rebbe gives a whole beautiful beautiful explanation as to the makhlokas rashi and the rambam and what it might mean on a spiritual level obviously the concept of the kohingol carrying the names of the jewish people on these stones is connoting the essential unity of israel that it is in the merit of god's love for the jewish people that god will give the cohen guttal success in his mission and the culling guttal must be aware of that every moment so it's a remiss to unity and but there's two types of unities one sense of unity is i look at you and i realize we all come from the same source we all come from god we all are one cosmic neshama that was subdivided from the kisayakava in other words there's an actus in which i look through you and i see that what appears to be differences are actually not differences we are one in essence that is essentially the way a human being is created you have right the father you have a drop of sperm that fertilizes an egg at that point unless you have a microscope origin your biological background you see the sameness of human beings we all come from the same source but when you look at it in terms of mother pregnancy and development then you see differentiation so rashi who emphasizes the sequencing based on the father is highlighting a unity based on seeing through the differences to understand our common source rambam is highlighting a more subtle idea that the deeper level of unity is not ignoring our differences but to recognize our differences and see them as a source of strength there is a unity based on homogeneity and a unity that is based on diversity and the rebbe wants to say that looking at a person from the paternal side will tend to emphasize commonality because the father's contribution kind of is seems to be indistinguishable at least in its initial stage we come from a common source in god looking at the mother through pregnancy and in which every individual person becomes different recognizes the individuality right so that's the meaning of the stones on the a vote but here is where it gets very interesting because the 12 tribes of israel are represented in two different places on the cullen gutter's uniform we have two onyx stones on his shoulders where it's six tribes and six stripes but then we have a breastplate that's called the hoshan and the hoshan has 12 jewels right jewels precious stones that are arrayed in three horizontal i'm sorry four horizontal rows of three stones each so you have one two three one two three one two three one two three and on each stone is engraved a tribe ruvain shimon levy yehuda and the tyrant says twice the kawang shall carry the tribes on his heart and the puzzling is virtually repeated twice why is it repeated twice says beautiful beautiful interpretation the message is both a physical message and an emotional one physically the tribes of israel are physically positioned over his heart but it's not enough to have them physically positioned over his heart emotionally they must be connected to his heart you want to be a servant of god you want to be a culling the most important quality is that you love the people that you serve that you want to help when the cohen goes into the mishkan when the cohen godol goes into the base of mikta he must carry the tribes of israel on his heart in his heart so the meshach has a very startling pictorial analogy to this the cohen guttal has on his forehead a gold plate and the gold plate is called that sits and on that sits our engraved two words kodesh hashem so so you're facing the coming look at what you're going to see on his shoulders are the two stones reuven shimon right of the twelve tribes of israel onyx and on his heart are the twelve stones of the aphote with the names of binay israel now kodesh is a kind of an odd sign to where uh is he is he described what is the order yes yes yes so there the the order uh seems to be uh the order of the mothers reuven shimon levy uh etc and i'll talk more about that in a moment the colleen has i mean is he wearing a sign i am holy the guy i am holy it's a little it sounds a little pretentious says you've got to read the text going down kodesh yoga you the jewish succeed that are kodesh and he says although the picture is not quite totally exact that this resembles phillin the kodesh and the stones on the shoulder are like the head filling that have straps going down and the breastplate that's over the heart is like the hand filling that is supposed to be adjacent to the heart and what do we mean the gemara in broncos says that hashem wears to fill in too we you know men wear to fill in and hashem wears to fill in and in art villain we praised god israel what's in god's villain what sukim are in god's to fill it the gemara says if arts fill in praise the almighty god's to fill in praise the jewish people who is like your nation israel a unique nation anonymous amiros which a lot of yeshivas don't don't say but uh many shows say it there's a reference to this payroll a lie god's glory is upon me might fill in proclaim the glory of god i'm sorry okay yeah god's glory is on me pay re and my glory a love is so the meshman wants to say that the two sets of stones that the kalingado wears he's wearing god's filling the kodesh la shem and the avnei khoshan are these filling of the roche that talk about the holiness of the jewish people and i'm sorry the admin afo the ones on the shoulders and the ocean although it's not on his arm so the the picture is not complete but says but it's positioned where these villains show y'all is adjacent to the heart represents the filling of the heart and it's hashem's filling which talk about the greatness of the jewish people you see and that is how the cohen merits to be able to do the avodah um a more maybe a disheartening note i remember um very very crush of a rabbi rabbi was a rabbi for many many many years and for various reasons sometimes it happens even with a great rabbi a great thomas hakam a show might decide that they want a younger person a more dynamic person you know it happens it's a not a nice thing so the rabbi when he got when that there was a segment of the show that wanted to get rid of him he just retired and he told me you know i could have beaten them back very very easy i mean because they were what 15 percent i i could have if i wanted to stay i could have stayed but he said i felt i had to leave because what did he say something like i no longer felt i loved the people that were opposing me and when i didn't feel love for them i said myself it was not right for me to be their rabbi because if the rabbi does not feel love for his congregation he cannot be their rabbi so he left on his own simply he said i could i could have i could have easily stayed that i wanted to make an issue of this but if i didn't have that love i was not going to stay in that show anymore and this is what the coming is doing he's wearing the filling of hashem when he goes in the shoulder stones are the straps so to speak of the head filling and the breastplate is the positioning of the hand villain and this highlights as well that love manifests itself in two different dimensions both of which are important there is the emotional connection i care i love and then there's the practical connection you've got to think about how you can help them you know it's very nice to love somebody but then you got to think what can i do right that requires the mind like you can't be a leader without the mind either i mentioned this morning in another share and again it's just something i think about a lot uh rafael soloveitrik the great great love of brisk who to this very day uh is known for the the incredible depth and analysis of his learning i mean refrains derek is literally the gold standard of talmudic learning right to understand refrain and et cetera and all the russian sheriffs that came after rivkaim to this very day are student or not students are students of students of students of rakhine now there's no one alive today as far as i know that even if i'm died in 1918 quite a long time ago sharokina was known for his brilliance but people say that uh there are two great people that the world misunderstands one is the khaki trying and one is refrain sole of egypt people think that was a bigger sadiq than he was talmudic genius gone and people think rafhaim was a bigger gown than he was at sadek it's the opposite the khabib time was even a bigger gown than he was inside it and refrain was a bigger sadiq than he was a god many ways was kind of fanatic he was absolutely against zionism he was going to uproot it root and branch refrain was against secular studies now brisk was actually a modern city people don't realize this brisk had many religious people but brisk had quite a few zionists socialist communists secular jews and they thought refuge was frankly crazy they thought rafael was a crazy man because every single progressive idea they had he would shoot down but you know they loved him and when he died they cried because they knew it wasn't personal they knew he was totally against him ideologically but they also knew if they ever needed anything in life whether it was money or a place to live he was there for them very remarkable people don't realize this refinement was i mean i kept all deep deep respect he was very very fanatic about the causes that he believed in and to this day the briskers and eric israel have that characteristic but every jew knew everybody knew he cared about them he would take care of them he would give them what they needed other than the ideological issues where he would not would not conceive and that's remarkable that's what a jewish leader is he stands for truth but always in the context of love and care okay and that's the meaning of the two sets of stones the head filling and the hand filling so with this let me share with you a very very interesting sofa the gemara insight explains now here we're talking about the ocean not not the shoulder stones but the 12 stones of the ocean that in addition to the 12 tribes of israel there was engraved on the stones avraham yitzhak yakov and shifted yeshurun the tribes that are upright and straight now there's a big mach lokasri shine in how the engraving worked according to the rambam on the first stone that said ruvain on top of ruvain's name was avram yitzhak yakov and at the bottom stone which is binyamin stone it said bin yum in and then shift day let's shift there you sure in shift to yeshua so according to the rambam the first stone had the three of us and the last stone finishing it shift day yeshurun the tribes of uprightness that's the rambam with brings a different configuration that's maybe a little difficult to visualize that every stone had to have six letters to make 72 letters connected the shame of hashem so the way it works is this vein is five letters right right so it has five letters plus aleph the first letter of avraham shimon had five letters plus bass levy is only three letters so you finish avraham's name in other words each one will have a letter or more letter so you'll have six that also means that the tribes that already had six letters didn't have any letter on them and binyamin has six letters so so shifting yeshua and was finished above nine with yosef so you see my clockus what the picture is is it like the first stone has avra mitsuki yakov and the last stone has shifted showren or each stone has six letters and you spelled out the avraham yitzhak and yakov that way and by the way the way the aura invitorium worked uh the auram vitonim is not the same as the ocean people get mixed up with this the is a breastplate we can call that the hardware the auranvitumim was a parchment on what which was written the names of god that was inserted in the folds of the ocean and that activated prophetic inspiration that the lights would light light up spelling out the words that the cohen guttal would interpret so it says that during the second base of mikdash we didn't have urine bitumen people misunderstand that i've actually even seen rabbi say that the cohen goddel did not have the breastplate during the second temple that's not true first of all he had to have it he couldn't do the avodah without it second of all why couldn't you have it just make one just make it if you lost the original one you make a replacement so it does not mean that cohen got old didn't have the breastplate it meant he didn't have the prophetic software that would create the revelations of the orient and based on what we've said you can now understand why that's so because the cohen guttal's ability to connect to god depended on the love that he had for the jewish people and during the second temple period the characteristic of ami israel was deactivates the prophetic impulses of the ur invitory so the quran sulfur wants to follow the view of the rhombus let's go with the rambam's view but on stone number one abraham yitzchakyako on the bottom stone is shifted yeshu roon now the rambam writes that what was written on the bottom stone was shifted says the rambam is contradicting the gomorrah the gemara seems to say what is inscribed on the bottom stone binyam in stone is shift day yeshuran why does the rambam switch it to shift day so the kasam cipher gives an ingenious interpretation and he connects it to a famous story in the gemara about dhamma ben nasina dhamma ben nasina was a non-jew who lived in ashkelon and he is held up as the paradigm of the one who honors his parents and the story goes that one time the stone of binyamin had somehow got loose from the ocean and dropped away it was called yoshva some say joshua is a diamond others say yoshva is kind of a multi-colored stone that we're not sure what it was but the binyamin stone got lost and the only person that had a comparable stone was this dhamma bendicina and they went down to ashkelon to buy the stone but the key to the jewelry case was under his father's head who was taking a nap and dumba and the cena forego for whence the tremendous amount of money he could have made by selling that jewel because he didn't want to wake up his father now i'll leave for another time would his father be happy with that decision his father wakes up and he says hey dad you know we lost 10 million dollars because i didn't want to wake you up okay that's another question uh but at least he was willing to lose 10 million dollars whatever it would be and because i'll say the next year god gave him a reward that he had a para duma in his flock and he was able to get the same amount of money because para dumas are also rare so the qasam cipher says why was the stone of binyamin the one that got lost binyamin represents the paradigm of selfless love of all the brothers all the brothers who sold yosef obviously had hatred and yosef himself was a party to fomenting dissension and makloches he brought legendary to his father so everybody is tainted with makhlokas binyamin is pure love without makhlokas without sinner that's why the shift day is showing because you should ruin upright connotes the love and unity by he be shurun so that's why binyamin although it's going on everybody but bin yaman gets the designation shift day yeshurin because he represents selfless love that stone was lost because it's during the second temple god is saying the jewish people are not living by binyamin standards they lose that stone so the kasam cipher says that's why when they got a new stone and they had to make a new engraving they understood they could no longer use the title yeshurin yeshurun is only when there's unity and love among the jewish people so we're still the shift they call we are still the tribes of god but we're not the tribes of yeshua so the razam zipper says it's no contradiction when the gemara says the inscription was shift day yeshurun that was before the stone of binyamin got lost but when the stone of binyamin got lost and they had to make a new one they understood minasha mayam that the designation yeshurun was no longer appropriate to their madrega by the way the netsif of velajan in a very very famous akdama for which he was criticized says that the sinatrinam of the second temple the groundless hatred of the second temple was a sense of religious gaiva in which people would look at other jews and say oh you're not because you're not religious enough or they would look at people who are very religious and say you're a fanatic you don't live in the modern world and it was each side saying basically anyone who's to the right of me is a fanatic and anyone to go left of me is an apocalypse it's only where i am whoever the eye is that is emmaus and then it says it was that type of arrogance that was the sinatrinam of the bayachini paradoxically the natsiv was criticized for that very hakhtama by saying he was being soft unless religious jews now the point is that criticism is actually a validation and proof it reminds me of i mean i don't mean to compare it totally but there's a little bit of a comparison pope benedict the last the last guy at one point made some announcement made a statement that um islam has turned too violent there's a violent aspect to islam that needs to be condemned so his remarks were met by widespread rioting and violence to protest his remark that islam was violent well you know kind of the protest proved the remark so in some ways again i don't mean to compare them i mean it's the the opposition to the nazif's statement of tolerance is a proof that he was correct that that intolerance it can be a very very destructive thing um but be it as it may this is how the hassam cipher understands the shift from shift yeshurun to shift day shift deca so again as they say there's beautiful beautiful lessons here and if you combine the two lessons from the beginning of the parsha and then the end the beginning we talked about the need to work in torah to struggle in torah then we end with this idea of loving army israel and appreciating their diversity so i'll go back to a point that i've made many times again there but but the points come up again and again and again that sometimes these two roles and these two tasks seem to operate in opposition to each other that the more i get you know connected to torah learning and the like the less i could tolerate and accept people that are not living up to my standards and the other way around the more open tolerant and accepting i am it's because you know i'm not so connected to torah learning and the like and what you see is that this is a false dichotomy that it has to be that in our learning and in our yugiya and in our work and in our striving there also has to be an open heart from and conversely as well as we open our hearts to others we also have to be connected and shakua immersed in the learning of hashem's torah these should not be contradictions these should be two ideas that each one strengthens the other one instead of detracting from it so that's kind of what we might be able to take away uh from this parsha so thanks [Music]