Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: The Period of the Omer and Love Your Neighbor as Yourself

[Music] okay hi everybody good to see you hashem it seems like the uh in-person crowd is getting uh a little bigger so perhaps we're coming out of uh covet although i have to say well let me first announce the sponsorships then i'll have a comment uh this year tonight is sponsored again the iloi nishama of binyamin yasrov and halevi very courageous young man that we dive in for for a very long time uh his parents are usually here i just got word that they have kovit and biases hashem they should have a rafa and be able to join us very soon uh in addition aliyah nishamah for anita adam and finally from an anonymous contributor uh mr mrs anonymous nishmotes all of the sadikim that were taken in recent attacks and you know it's often quoted in the name of the rambam although the source is not so clear that anyone who dies because they were jewish anyone who was killed because they were a jew which is really any victim of terrorism in israel certainly is considered to have died al-aqir shashem and has the status of a kadosh so that's something to think about and finally a refugee leima for brea base israel i mean those who are healthy remain uh healthy first let me just make a minor point that some people might say was a major point now there is a rule in halacha by israel that you have to be innocent not only in the eyes of god but also in the eyes of man so i must clear my reputation somebody pointed out that last week when i was drinking water i did not make a bracha before drinking the water uh i do want to clarify that i start drinking before the camera is on so as a result i already please rest assured that i did make it so all of you out there i do make broncos before i drink uh before i drink water perhaps i should bazafka not drink until the camera's on okay but whatever that whatever it would be okay um so be it as it may tonight is going to be a part two about the counting of the omer so although it's not directly connected to the partial last week was in fact the mitzvah of sverata omer uh this week uh well actually kutzler they're going to be reading parts of them are will be coming up in fritzlarets but in addition to sriracha omar i'm going to connect it to parshas kadoshim which was two weeks ago because you're going to see that it's going to be connected rasa omer as we practice it today embodies two very very different types of commandments with very different emotional moods at its basic or iso level it is a preparation to receive the torah and it's the linkage between the holiday of freedom and the holiday of torah the ramban even says that the whole period of spherata omir could be regarded as linking the holiday of pesach and shivuas as if it's one long yumtif and we prepare ourselves for matantora by reminding ourselves every single day that we're getting closer and closer to matantora now if we were to ask ourselves what would be the dominant emotion at that particular time the answer would be very obviously it would be joy it would be simbra there is nothing inherent to sverasa omer that would cause any type of sadness we are looking forward with great anticipation to the great revelation of god at mount sinai the torah that gave us direction that gave us guidance that gave us a purpose for our lives because just to be free without a purpose without a goal without a connection to god can be very can and is very very disruptive so the instinct that people have oh svera is a sad time is actually not true this is supposed to be a joyous time so where do we get all of the restrictions it comes much much later in our history and that is in the time in fact it's post-homologic in the time of the gaonim which is after the talmud it is recorded that there were certain minhagems certain customs of mourning and sadness that are observed during this time such as not marrying and not getting haircuts and that is because to commemorate a tragedy that did occur in talmudic times but there was no halacha connected to it and that is the deaths of the 24 000 students of rabbi akiva and that occurred between pesach and shavuot and as a result in the time of the gonim there became various minha gim of available i'm not here to give a complete habakkuk here you'll notice i only mentioned two things that are technically forbidden during the omer period getting married and getting haircuts or shaving i did not mention music and indeed there's a very very big discussion that although it has become the custom that we don't listen to at least live music during spira the halaq basis for that is actually much more murky than what one would assume in the shogunarak prapper it only mentions marriage and it mentions haircuts ramosha feinstein writes that is because the shokanarak had no reason to create a severe rule because the shogunate maintains you're not allowed to listen to music the entire year to commemorate the basa mikdash so if somebody says as modern orthodox people like to say don't give me new rules i just want to follow the shulker and i want to listen to music during sphera well sorry that's not going to follow if you want to follow the show you don't listen to music the entire year answering music during sphera or the three weeks is a leniency not a stringency okay be it as it may i just don't want to mention one particular halachic rule i don't want to get into too many details because it's very very practical unlike the counting of the omer that is 49 days no question about that the morning of the omer period m-o-u-r-n-i-n-g is only for a segment of that time because the students did not die for the entire 49 days and as you know undoubtedly there are many many variations of what days does one observe the morning of the omer so let me mention very quickly the three most common minha gim minute number one is you start from the second day of pesach and you go up to lagba omer and from lagba omer onwards everything is permitted everything is permitted from omar onwards that's min of number one minute number two is you do not start your morning in the month of nisan because nissan is a happy month so you start from rosh chodesh your which is two days and you go up until the three days before montantora which is the third of seven and like bomber is a hiatus so like boma is mutter but the avalanche resumes after lag by omer until the three days before shivohos the third of sivan and then it's mutual minogue number three is just like you don't observe aveilus in nissan you don't observe available either so you start after rosh godish and that's you've lost two days so you go until erev shibuyas the fifth of steven with again lagpa omer being a hiatus okay so our three most common minhagem is second day of pesach until lag bomber lag bomber onwards everything is okay second minute is starting from rashkodesh ior until the third of seven but again lagbaomer itself is okay and the third minute is starting after kodeshi or going until erev shavuos once again log balmer is okay two more minhagim that you should be aware of is the irizals minogue is you keep availas for 49 days with lag bomber being an exception and finally there is the minute of spartan that is recorded by yosef cairo that lag bomber doesn't interrupt anything you go through lagpa omer and weddings and haircuts are permitted from lads baomer the 34th day of the omer onwards okay five min hugging whatever your minute is you follow your minute but one very important question and i'm just this is the one practical question i want to raise is what if i am invited to a wedding that is during my morning period but it's not during the morning period of the hassan and kala the example would be let's imagine that the sun is getting married goes from second day of pesach up until omer but he couldn't reserve the wedding hall unlike bomber so he's getting married after lag bomber so for the hassan and the kala that is a permissible marriage because they only keep available until lag ba omer but let's imagine i'm a person who starts from rosh chodesh or i start after rosh kodesh and even though lag bomber gives me a break but once it's after lag by omer i am subject to the laws of mourning so what do i do if i'm invited to the wedding of a friend or a relative which for them is after they're available but for me it's within my avalanche so what's interesting is people ask the question the wrong way the typical way people ask the question is can i change my min hug from year to year that is actually a complicated question i'm not going to answer that i just want to share with you a soccer of moshe feinstein ramosa feinstein says you don't have to change your minute at all because there is no halacha in svera that you're not allowed to go to a wedding the halaqah of svera is you're not allowed to get married so as long as you are not the hassan or the kala you are perfectly free to go to a wedding this is to be distinguished from the laws of availas when a person is mourning over a parent then the halaqah is you're not allowed to go to a wedding so we have to talk about hetero doing work or whatever it is but it's very very interesting in hiroshima the emphasis is not attending a wedding in hilco svera it does not say you cannot attend a wedding it simply says you cannot get married sir moshe says therefore you are allowed to go to the wedding without changing your mind now the only question is okay so there's no problem in going to the wedding that's fine but what about the fact that i go to a wedding i'm going to hear instrumental music and the minute is that we don't listen to instruments at least at least live instrumental music during sphera sir moshe says once you're allowed to go to the wedding uh then it's part of the mitzvah of making a husnan kala rejoice that there be music so you're allowed to be there and even dance perhaps that's less clear and not only that ramosa says but if you're a little unkempt you are allowed to get a haircut before you go to that wedding now the the important part of this trip this is actually a very practical question this comes up a lot is this has nothing to do with changing your minh hug him you can keep your avelus minogue and you'll still be allowed to do all of these things so that was just one halaq issue i wanted to bring out because it does come up we get invited to weddings people will be getting married after lag by omer and if you're keeping your availas after lag balmer you need to know uh rob moshe's psych now to be fair not every post sake will agree with rip motion some posts can say hey just like you can't get married you can't go to a wedding in fact there's some indication that even the hassam sofia an eminent eminent one of the great great godzilla post kim uh took a stricter position uh but ramosha and i was very independent and ramosa basically said that's not the way the halaq is worded does not say you can't go to a wedding it says you can't get married that's what it says and therefore there's not going to be a problem so that was one halaq i wanted to raise but the question becomes like this the question becomes so we are mourning the deaths of rabbi akiba's students we're mourning the deaths of ruby akiba students 24 000 people died first let me remind you of the story of rabbi akiva it's a very very beautiful story and i think when we know the story that adds a certain tragic dimension extra tragic dimension to the deaths of the twenty-four rabbi akiba was an ignorant shepherd he did not even know how to read he was in the employ of a very wealthy landowner this is after the hormone base of mikdash and the wealthy landowner in jerusalem his name was kalba sabor which is really a nickname cava sabua means a stuffed dog now anyone that's ever had a dog knows that dogs never get stuffed dogs can always continue to eat but he was called the stuffed dog because he was so hospitable that even a dog in his house would be full couldn't eat anymore like he gave huge huge meals and the like so he was a big sonic he was well at least he was a generous person a big bald stalker and he employed uh people and rebbi akiva was one of his employees rabia kiva was a very ignorant shepherd and his daughter kabusabu's daughter raquel somehow fell in love with rabbi akiva she saw in rabbi akiva greatness that rabbi akiva himself didn't know that he had and she wanted to marry him and they were going to get married kalba sabua was incensed he was furious uh he's such a hush of a person and she's marrying a a low life a person without education without refinement eat not not even with wealth without wealth as well without connections and he was so furious that he made a vow excommunicating her from all of the wealth that he owned he says if you marry that man you will get zero from me and she married robbie aquiver and she lived in poverty and we know the story that she sent him to yeshiva to learn torah and he started off with the first graders learning how to read et cetera and he learned to torah and yerushalayim for 12 years and it's recorded he did not even visit now it's not clear if that is meant to be absolutely literally or not but for 12 years he was away from home and after 12 years he came back to take a break and he overhears his wife talking to a neighbor and a neighbor says to her what type of husband do you have who leaves you for 12 years and she said i would not mind if he would go back for another 12 years and learn torah so the story goes now this is very hard to understand that rabbi akiva did not even stop by for a cup of coffee or say hello he went back he went back for another 12 years and after a total of 24 years amazing thing 20. he came back he was no longer the crater child he was the greatest rabbi of israel he was the great rabbi akiva who had 24 000 students the number 24 is obviously very significant here 24 years 24 000 students in kabbalah it connects it to the twenty four thousand jews who died in the plague uh with the moabite god baal poor where pinnacles was involved and somehow these neshamas were a tickle for that but whatever it would be and his wife had been living in poverty and deprivation [Music] for all of these years and she finally sees that everything was worth it she sees what her husband accomplished 24 000 i mean there's no yeshiva in the world that has 24 000 students today all his students and she comes to approach her husbands and this will meet him see this raggedy woman kind of approaching and they think she's crazy and they push her away and rabbi akiva utters the immortal words shall ever shalom all that i am and all that you are shallow belongs to her so just from a human standpoint can you imagine the joy in her heart can you imagine the fact that all those years of suffering produced this result but this was very short-lived those were the 24 000 students who died everything that she thought had been accomplished over 24 years of sacrifice was destroyed was decimated now just to finish the story at that point though talbot savour finally regrets mistreating his daughter for so many years so he hears there's a great rabbi who came to town who might be able to annul his vow he didn't know rebecca was the son-in-law so he goes to rabbi akiba not knowing who he is and he says you know many years ago i made a vow disinheriting my daughter from all of my property and i would like to be released from the vow be akiva asks him if you would have known that your son-in-law would become a talmud would you have made the vow so he says it's if i would have known he would have known how to read i wouldn't have made the vowel so the akiva mater dinette he annulled the vow and at that point rebecchiva and andraka were able to share in some of the wealth of kalba savor but shortly afterwards the twenty four thousand students of robbie akiba died tremendous tremendous tragedy but here's the question so every single year we mourn the deaths of 24 000 students of rabbi akiba every single year this is the mourning of sverasa omer so the obvious question is okay of course this is a tragedy one jew dying is a tragedy of course but frankly we've had worse i mean we've had holocaust crusades we've had more people than the twenty four thousand students in rabbi akiva why is it that badafka i mean i mean we don't have three weeks of morning or six weeks of mourning for the holocaust why bedafka do we observe availas for the tomedum of rabbi akiva and the answer is very simple if the issue would simply be commemorating tragic events then you're right why would i commemorate this event over and over again but the difference is this is an event for which we are given a definitive reason most tragedies in jewish history people speculate people come up with reasons but we don't know for sure here we know for sure and the gemaran yuvamas tells us hazal tell us that the the students of rabbi akiva died in a plague between pesach and chavuz and the spiritual reason why they died in a plague is because they did not show proper honor to each other and therefore we mourn not to grieve we mourn to be cognizant of this flaw and try to specifically rectify it in our own lives this is not a mourning of sadness or reminiscence this is a mourning of tikkun rectification you see you almost can't do it for other tragedies because i mean i could say the holocaust calls upon me to do chuva for x y and z but how do i know if it's x y and z and not a b c or whatever it would be in other words we don't know i mean obviously people give reasons i think they're miller robbie miller you know gives this reason to that reason and we can talk about it but this is the only tragedy other than the corbin basamiktash itself which is another thing in which we are given definitive reasons the students of rabbi akiva did not show proper cover to each other and 24 000 of them die and the gemara says that torah was almost totally destroyed from israel there were five tommy that ruby akiva got later and the whole torah chobalpa was reconstituted from those five students imagine torah's hanging by a thread so here's the question okay you don't show proper cover to somebody i mean do you deserve to die for that is that something you die for 24 000 people died because they didn't show proper covenant and and second of all what does it mean they didn't show proper covenant robbie akiva was the greatest rabbi in israel one has to assume that if you're a student of rabbi yakiva you're a great person abhikivi didn't take anybody off the streets in his yeshiva so these are 24 000 students who are eminent who are tamidek who are ready to be the leaders of the next generation now how did they behave they didn't show proper coverage if you were to zoom in at the time like is one saying oh you're an idiot you know get out of line he pushes him out of line and knocks him down and punches him out of course not the assumption has to be that if i could take a video of the students of rabbi akiva everything externally would look perfectly fine derek iris all of the halachas were observed it's pressured that way we're not going to assume that the students of rebbi akiva were behaving like a bunch of you know rude adolescent kids in a high school so what is it that they fell short in and why should that result in their deaths so the key is to understand an insight of refursh kavot they didn't show cove out for each other now kavod is honor respect but refuse points out that kavod is connected etymologically to kaved now kaved means heavy cove out reverse says is not about being polite to somebody i could be polite to you but the truth is i'm doing it as noble uh no bless oblige meaning you know this person is a nobody but i'll be nice to him because i'm a good guy cove-out is when you see the weightiness heaviness not in the sense of weight but in the sense of gravitas you see the significance of a person you see the chashivas of a person you're not nice to him as a matter of charity or benevolence but you genuinely are making the person and that i mean even then we're left with the problem and that the gemara says that tamidima rabbi yakiva fell short now why is that so i mean who knows perhaps because they had such a great teacher they linked to the torah via the great teacher and everybody else looked like a nobody's compared to their teacher so their connection was what you might call a vertical connection going up as opposed to a lateral or horizontal connection where they embrace their chaverum so the issue of covert is not simply being nice the issue of kavod is seeing these significance of people even when you disagree with them even when you think they're wrong even when they have a different perspective on life you try to understand the other person's perspective and give it an amount of respect and this is what the tomi the rebel kiva didn't have now the question still is so why did they die is this a capital offense the answer is it's not intrinsically a capital offense you don't get the death penalty for not showing kavod you're not having cover to another person but when you are the leaders of the next generation when you are the transmitters of torah when you are the ones who represent what judaism is it is essential that you have the attitude of covert for the people that you're teaching and connecting to and if you don't have that media god essentially says you can't be the leaders of the generation i will have to take you and replace you with someone else that's an amazing muscle the importance of covered up rios now let me throw in another little paradox on this two weeks ago we read the famous verse love your friend as you love yourself and rabbi akiva himself was the one that thought god albertora this is the most fundamental principle in the torah by the way just a little two points about that puzzle the afterlife first the word for friend in that passage is reia now we know another word for friend is khader what is the difference between raya and khabar so the kizab kabbalah says chaver comes from le chaber to connect so a chaver is a friend who thinks like me who agrees with me we have a common philosophy raya is connected to the word trua true is the sound of a chauffeur that's a broken sound separation in fact even ra even evil the word ra and re are very it's the same word minus a letter is connected to disintegration so reya is a fellow person with whom i don't have a natural affinity and a natural connection he's separated from me he sees the world in a different way the torah has no need to say love your chaver as you love yourself because obviously i will love my herber he thinks like me again i'm not going to address the fascinating psychological issue about if you don't love yourself how can you love others okay that that that's a very important idea and keep that in mind too but let's assume that you love yourself if i love myself i'll love my craver because he thinks like me but the torah says even when you have arya who's different than you love them embrace them that is why by the way husband and wife are not called them beloved friends they are called reima because men and women indeed see the world in very very different ways and part of the difficulty of marriage is to try to see the world from the perspective of the other the man must try to see the world through the eyes of a woman as a woman must endeavor to see the world through the eyes of her man right ready and we're not because we are so different in fact there's even a lesson in khazal men and women are two different nations exactly they're considered to be two different nations okay so that was one point the difference between reya and and and uh the second point of that puzzling i want to bring out though is that why did rabbi akiva say for your happily a beautiful thought rebbe akiva is speaking based on his own life because there is a relationship here love and covet we need to identify them because you might think they're two different things habla is love covet is respect honor you might think that two different things i could love you and not honor you i could honor you and not love you but in reality there's a very deep and profound connection between love and covet the villenegon says all true love that is not based on infatuation or sexual desire is based on a recognition of the divine qualities of the neshama that are in the other person why do i love somebody i can have a lot of reasons i can love somebody because of their kindness i can love somebody because of their wisdom i can love somebody because of their patience i can love somebody because of their sense of humor the villain says what you really love is you love the qualities of god that are imprinted in their neshama and just like different people are retuned to different frequencies so we sense different aspects i mean god is infinite but each of us sense and responds to different types of qualities of god in other words it's my i receive different qualities so the villenegon says remarkably all human love is essentially love of god i love the qualities of godliness that are manifest in that soul that i can appreciate therefore true love presupposes a deep respect and regard for the other person because if i don't sense the godliness of their souls then the most my love can be is infatuation or sexual desire or something like that so love and covet are inextricably linked you see because love is a sensitivity to that which is significant in that person's neshama that which is godly in their neshama so the kasam cipher says rachel saw greatness in rebbi akiva she saw not just his brilliance even though he was an uneducated person but she saw his spiritual stature and she loved him because she saw his greatness which was a greatness that he didn't even know he had in fact it's very interesting rabbi akiva describes in later years he describes what his feelings were when he was an amaha or it's an ignorant man and he said he hated if it's if he would see it he would bite him and he says not like the bite of a dog but like the bite of a wild donkey that breaks the bones and you know again i i speculate i don't have any particular proof for any of this but i i speculate that rabbi akiva would be akiva's hatred comes from a person who kind of knows he's smart but he doesn't have the tools and he sees all these great people who are so educated so learning and he's condemned to manual labor and he doesn't really have a sense of what he is but subconsciously there's kind of a sense of what he is and if you think about think about the scenario because the truth of the matter is uh in real life you sometimes have that subject you can have a person who might be a janitor or might be uh very lowly but may have tremendous tremendous tremendous intelligence but no way to express it no training how to express it no opportunity to express it and that can create a tremendous sense of anger and resentment so rabbi yativa was kind of like he wasn't a kid but a kid at risk and it was rakha who unlocked his greatness so that some cypher says when it doesn't just mean it's a fundamental principle of the torah but it's a fundamental principle in bringing out a person's torah greatness it was the love she had for me which was predicated on seeing my greatness that brought me to torah it's a beautiful point so with this introduction to that passage this compounds the question even more so if rabbi yakiva teaches the ahafte is a claustora number one number two if the ahafta presupposes kavod seeing the goodness in the other because that that's the connection of love and covert then when rabi akiva taught the primacy of that included the notion of seeing the covered in the other person so that makes things even worse so how could the 24 000 students be guilty of not having covered eliza if that was indeed the primary teaching of rabbi akiba the truth is i don't have a great answer to this the answer would be that god judges us according to our madriga in other words precisely because they had a teacher who taught this to the highest possible level god holds them accountable to the highest possible level meaning it could be that they were doing this but they weren't doing it the way rabbi yakiva was teaching it perhaps after they died that's an interesting question the question is when did he make that statement that is a very interesting torah so he was saying maybe that was rabbi akiba's response to the tragedy it could be you know uh you're highlighting an interesting issue and that is um we very rarely have precise dating for when various statements were made so it's very hard to reconstruct where they said in response to a particular event or not again so i'm really just throwing out different things that one that one can can ponder by the way i can't help but also add a little kind of a famous hasidisha joking vote but it's really really very very cute and it actually has a strong truth to it even though it's kind of a joke there was a famous rosita shireby the opterov the rav of opto and he wrote a safer and humish that's called oh hey the israeli and he was also known as the o way of israel and he made the point that every parsha in the torah has lessons about abbas israel so somebody asked him uh let's take a partial like balwak we're going to read later in the summer uh bullock was going to curse us where do you see abbas israel now i have to admit i don't even understand the question because when billam's curses turned into blessings there's plenty of beautiful things about the greatness of the jewish people so they say with hasidis you know the question doesn't have to be good it's really just an excuse to give an answer right all right so this is what the abdur-rev said ah abbas israel and for sure departure begins talking about a guy called bolak vaes lamedkuf so the vase russia tavis is viajafta [Laughter] and the laminate is there and the proof is kamoka so one of them somebody said excuse me rabbi it doesn't quite fit two of the three letters are wrong via hafta is a vove and balak is a vase or a base that's correct and this is kuf how can you say well luck is rasheed for you have to come okay so the update remy said that's the point when you have avas israel you don't look so closely at things you're looking so closely he says you know you don't have to look so closely at things that aren't perfect right look with a kindly generous eye i mean it's a joke but it's a very beautiful thought that you know what am i what am i paying so much attention to this not right and this is not right and this is not right i should look at people in a good generous kindly way and then i will love them i will love them even with their mistakes because i make so many mistakes and that's true for all of us again we're not dealing tonight with the issue of of fighting and opposing false ideologies i mean of course there are times that we have to speak out against things certainly there are times but even then even then it can be with love with care and with even trying to understand the other person's point on some level it's an amazing thing uh i mentioned this plus i got all the time almost every other week i'll mention it again come on upon him upon him as water reflects the faith that you put into the water right i smile at a reflecting pool of water i see a smiling face i frown i see a frightening face cain lay pardon me a heart reflects back that's which i show it so if i show even the people i disagree with i show them respect i show them i understand their points then they will understand me as well they will come to understand me they will be open i mean i've seen this many many times i i once had whatever i once had to debate a a very very famous uh american academic and i was a last-minute substitute i mean i wasn't i wasn't the main show but the person who was supposed to debate this person couldn't show up so at the last minute i was drafted so um the first thing i did was like and this guy was ready for red meat he was really ready to kind of demolish you know orthodoxy and torah and everything else and the first thing i did was i acknowledged that a lot of his critique had validity but but and that kind of absolutely radically changed the dynamic of the debate it was no longer hostile he began on his own to speak about the good points and things that i didn't say oh you forgot to say here's something else good about orthodoxy and good about torah and the like because he was accepted there was like a partial legitimation of what he was saying and then he became open to all sorts of things and this is simply kamayama lopez now i'm not suggesting this merely as a debaters tactic although it happens to be a very good debater's tactic but i'm suggesting it as a reality and there's a beautiful quote from ref cook i didn't bring it in because i didn't know i would mention it but i'll paraphrase it i don't remember the exact words it was in hebrew anyway but the english paraphrase goes that it is a way of a wise person to try to increase wisdom and not to criticize ignorance to try to create light and not to attack darkness to try to build and not to destroy and in the course of doing those things the evil can kind of get much weaker and it also decimates i mean part of our problem in eric israel is that we have the uh the exact opposite type of debating strategy and in fact it's not even a i mean it plays out in religious secular but it truly plays out in policy it plays out maybe it's a middle east thing and that is uh when you have an opponent you have to totally delegitimize like you know the opponent is an idiot or a russia or as an amalek or a parasite and each side totally says that the other side is a zero well because of that nothing ever gets better nothing ever gets resolved because i call you a zero you call me a zero and we keep on going and going and spiraling downward and downward and downward and downward and downward and downward as opposed to if we took the position that i hear your criticism your criticism let's say of certain parts of the torah world may be legitimate but you also need to see the other side of it and let's look at this let's look at it together and let's honestly try to identify the good and the bad and the questionable and then at that point that that changes that that does change attitudes that changes attitudes and that can create repression and that can create coming together in various ways that's the assault of kavod salazar this is ref hershey's insight going back to reference kavo doesn't doesn't just mean being polite polite but it means seeing of the other person you know many many many years ago i was giving a shirt to a group of non-religious uh people uh they were not even balichuva they were just no non-religious but they were in the process of exploring judaism in various ways although i i think i just well based on the story you'll see i just misspoke myself in a way i'm not following my own story but here's the story the woman went over to me a woman went over to me after the class and she prefaced her question by saying i am not as religious as you but so i said i violated my own rule here i said why do you say you're not as religious as me maybe you're more religious than me there may be commandments that i keep presently that you may not keep yet maybe i keep shabbos more than you or kosher more than you but maybe you honor your parents to a higher level than i do maybe you're a kinder person you're a more charitable person that's part of torah and mitzvos as well so instead of kind of labeling from non-from you know orthodox non-orthodox these various demarcations and of course in israel we have many more demarcations than just from and not for me we slice it up in 500 ways or more let's recognize that all of us have strong points and good points and all of us have weaknesses so i might be more a little more careful in shabbos maybe the other person is more careful in lash and hara in treating people with respect and i can admire that and i can learn from that and i can consider that an expression of them serving hashem all of this is nikhlau in the idea of covered i guess that's the main point tonight that kavod is not simply an amorphous avast israel i love everybody you know i just love everybody that's okay that's good too that's good too but covet is a much more focused idea in which i strive to see the kashivas in people and then they understand what it is that i'm trying to convey or teach or delight by the way if hamster levitt says this is the this is the identical meaning of the mitzvah of kibbut of the aim you'll notice that the word that the torah uses for my uh relationship to my parents in the assays adipros is honoring your parents refrain levitt says that the mitzvah of kipid of the aim is not just behavioral although the gemara seems to describe it as behaviors he says it is attitudinal you must strive to identify within your parents qualities that are worthy of admiration and emulation for most of us that's not necessarily that difficult we can see qualities of admiration but sometimes it's a challenge now let's um i'll give you a simple i'm not i mean obviously if a parent is an abuser that's a different type of partnership but let's assume you simply had a the workaholic parent who didn't make time for his children right so you grow up and you might feel very hurt and unjustifiable you know hurt rejected but then you think you know dad didn't have you know such an emotionally rich life but he was dependable he understood that he had to take care of his family and the way he showed love was by all of that work that he put in and i know that there may be a limitation there but at least i can appreciate that he did what he could that again i'm just giving you an example of how to put things in an appropriate setting where you can have coverage you can admire someone for what they tried to do right i try he tried to show his love by taking care of his family okay again this is an example that can be extrapolated in many many ways that's the idea of kavod said now one other point about the haptic work and then i'm going to move to a story of a story of hillel and that is when rabbi akiva said the ahaf de la reich is a great important clown in the torah there was another one another rabbi ben azai that said oh i got a clown that's even more important than that and that is the pasuk that says man was created in the image of god that's even more important the melbourne offers a beautiful interpretation of what the mach locus is the maklocus is how do you come to love another person ben azai seems to say you come to love another person by intellectual contemplation of the greatness of the human spirit i look at you and i say you're made in the image of god god breathes his essence into you and by that philosophical contemplation i come to love that's what benazzai is emphasizing rebbi akiva says that philosophy only takes you so far because you can love people by abstract thought but when the rubber hits the ground and you're actually confronting people in real life your philosophy is not going to take you very far in fact they tell the famous story about leo tolstein that leo tolstoy was not only a great novelist but he was a social reformer he he wrote books against serfdom against you know freedom of man economic rights this was in cyrus russia but he himself was taught with count tolstoy he was a member of the russian aristocracy and he didn't treat his serfs that nicely so somebody said to telstar you know pantostar you are a great advocate for the freedom of man the emancipation of serfs why do you treat your serfs poorly so tolstoy is said to have responded just because i love humanity doesn't mean i have to care about people now tostoi certainly understood the irony of what he was saying and that is sometimes we're wedded to globalism you know i want freedom democracy but we can't treat our next door neighbor or our spouse or our kids with decency so rabbi yakiva emphasizes the album writes grammatically is not a commandment of emotion if it commanded you to feel of it would have said to your friend means do actions of love in other words rabbi akiva says instead of starting with the intellectual and emotional response start with behavior and it is the behavior that will bring you to the love that's what we have to liberate acts of love acts of benevolence as opposed to saying my actions are a product of my emotions judaism very much believes that actions can educate the emotions actions can cause feelings to arise by virtue of that okay but now uh let's go to a famous story in the gemara and this is a story of a great rabbi who was before rabbi akiva this is the story of hillary right there was a non-jew famous star mr shabbas there was a non-jew who wanted to convert to judaism and he first goes to shamai and he says to shamai teach me the whole torah while i stand on one foot and shall my thinks that this guy is mocking him so he kicks him out then the guy goes to hillary who was renowned for his patience and forbearance there are many stories in the world there about phil's patience and hillel says i'll teach it all to her while you're standing on one foot mother son what is hateful to you do not do to your friends what you wouldn't want people to do to you don't do to your friend see and the rest of the torah gilgamore you can go and learn it later this is the whole torah on one foot so there are two questions you can ask on this gemara question number one is what hillel is articulating is often called the negative golden rule he doesn't say do unto others as you would like them to do unto you he says the other way he says what you wouldn't want something bad to be done to you don't do it to somebody else don't do bad things that would hurt you don't do it to somebody else in fact christian theologians like to contrast the how to the pharisaic attitude of hillel to the much more generous and compassionate attitude of jesus of nazareth and this is what they say this is absolutely ridiculous you'll see this in a moment they say jesus yashka called upon people you shall love your friend as you love yourself you must actually love but the pharisee morality is don't hurt people but you don't have to care about them so jesus is a superior moral vision to pharisaic morality now it is very true that joshua did say okay he said it but he is quoting a passage in the torah itself so that raises a good question so now you have a good question if judaism advocates not only not harming people but affirmatively loving them and taking care of them and that is in the torah why does hillel modify the affirmative mitzvah of love and turn it into a negative principle of not harming somebody he's giving a lower standard than the torah itself says that's question one question two is how is this the whole torah at most you could say it's talking about sensitivity to other people don't do things to hurt people so that's being adam la cavero that's between man and my fellow man but in hilo's formulation where do you see shabbos where do you see koshers where do you see filling where do you see citrus the non-jew asks teach me the whole torah when i stand on one foot this is not the whole time at most you could say it is a summary of the torah that deals with interpersonal relationships so on the second question how is this the whole torah none other than rashi himself gives us a beautiful beautiful answer rashi says it is the whole torah because when hillel says what you wouldn't want someone to do to you don't do to your friend who is your friend your friend is your fellow human being and your friend is also akadesporjo akadesporco is also called your friend and rashi brings a passage in michele al ta'azov do not abandon your friend who was the friend of your father going all the way back so this is very beautiful i wouldn't want somebody to ignore me i wouldn't want somebody to consider my wishes worthless don't do that to my friend don't take god's wishes and disregard them so it actually is the whole torah meaning i wouldn't want to be hurt or humiliated i don't hurt and humiliate another person i wouldn't want to be treated cruelly i don't treat another person cruelly from the perspective of god i wouldn't want my wishes ignored don't ignore the wishes of your friends akali spoke by the way the notion of god as friends is remarkable it's really something that uh you know could be a you know meditation something to think about because we know that hashem is described in many different ways he is described as our king he is described as our parent he is described as our spouse in shira shiram like he's our lover but he's also described as our friend that sometimes a person feels lonely abandoned friendless person has to know they always have a friend in akkadesparco he is our friend in addition to everything else and when hilo says what is hateful to your friend do not do to another i'm sorry what is hateful to you do not do to your friend that includes hakadosh burku as well okay but we still have the first question in other words this explains how this is the whole torah but why does hillel express it in the negative why doesn't he say love your friend as you love yourself as opposed to what you wouldn't want to be done to you don't do to another okay like what what is the point of hillel changing the positive obligation of love to the negative obligation of doing no harm so i'll give you two uh quick answers to this both of them i believe are in the name of roberto salanter he says you're assuming in the question that a negative is lower than a positive meaning it's a much higher spiritual level to affirmatively love somebody than simply not harming them but really saucelandra said in real life it may very well be the opposite when i do hesed for you i get a certain ego satisfaction people will see what i'm doing you'll see what i'm doing and as a result part of my altruism might actually be based on a certain amount of pride that i get that i'm a great guy when i refrain from harming you i mean let's imagine that you insulted me and i'm very upset but i control my anger i don't lash out at you because i wouldn't want you to less out at me i don't get any i don't get any credit for that you don't you don't even know you don't even know that i'm not lashing out like i'm so frustrated nobody knows what exotic i am in other words sometimes the negative is a harder thing to do than the positive because the positive has a certain ego satisfaction that the negative doesn't have okay a person knows hashem of course knows and that's important okay but there's a second point that goes back to everything we've been talking about tonight you know in the hippocratic oath that physicians take without talking harmonically are you allowed to take a note or whatever it is the first obligation of the physician is said to be do no harm here's the thing before you start loving somebody be sure that you're not harming them in the course of what you're doing let me give you a very simple example and then we'll extrapolate it you know when people are sick people have a cold people have the flu there are different styles of how do you experience your sickness some people just want to be left alone they don't want anybody to bother them they don't want phone calls they don't want visitors they don't want people to make soup for them they want to sleep all day and rest and get back their energy that's one modality okay another modality is i need people to come to me and i wanted to have people talking about you know this and that so let's imagine you're a person who just wants to sleep away the day you feel lousy but you have a neighbor who rings your doorbell at 7 30 in the morning before she goes to work and says brightly i made you a beautiful pot of chicken soup come and take it eat it for breakfast now you might say well thank you so much but you know i really need to sleep and the person says i have been up since 5 30 in the morning making chicken soup and you mean you're not gonna take it okay this is a caricature obviously but the point i'm making is that sometimes we impose on people what we think they ought to want what we think is good for them without covered without recognizing where they're coming from what they need so hillel says before you want to be a sadiq who saves the world be sure that you're not doing to a person which you wouldn't want to be done to you you wouldn't want to be treated as an object where your wishes and your feelings don't matter don't treat another person that way so there's something very profound in the negative because the negative says before you do get take the time to step back and know and respect the person that you're trying to help this is actually very relevant uh in the jewish outreach world in the kiwi world sometimes it's you know the natural mindset of a person that if i have torah and this person doesn't have torah i am here to you know this person is a nobody and i am here to give him wisdom to give him insight to make him good but i never step back to realize that he too has a personality he too has a history he too has insight he too has wisdom but i'm ignoring what he has to offer because only i have something to offer i'm doing to him what i wouldn't want somebody to do to me so hillel's point is before you love do no harm and that requires stepping back and seeing the totality of who the person is and that is the only way you will be able to be a positive influence so there's something psychologically very very deep in starting off with the negative uh because the negative i'll give you another example i i once saw an advertisement for it stuck up and it was a well-intentioned advertisement but it rubbed me the wrong way and i hope maybe all you'll see with the problem it was talk about how important stucca is and it says you should look at an ani a poor person like your lulav or your esrog or your tv that through them you're doing a mitzvah and you're gaining all of haba the ani is ah mitzvah and must be treated that way so i understand what that's trying to say but you see the problem that's basically saying i'm looking at another human being and i'm saying you are an inanimate object through which i'm going to gain my ulama that is totally ignoring the humanity of the person the neshama of the person you see people are not objects and people can't be regarded as objects through which i'm going to get my mitzvah it's the opposite of cover covert is you see them in their totality and that is what hillel is emphasizing don't start doing hesed till you see you're doing dealing with a human being with feelings and with needs and with insights and when you can treat him in a way that wouldn't hurt you if somebody treated you that way then you are ready to love them take care of them give them what they need so we are exactly tonight as the actual you know midpoints as if sure i counted already so that's what i can say today day 25. so don't say okay i counted before the brook i made the book already these days with internet like you know everybody is watching me like a hawk so i i have to always clarify my stance and everything um but bieters hashem i hope as we prepare for mata and torah we will also grow in abbas israel in being mesaken and in that way we will truly be worthy of being macabre who's torah [Music] is