Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: The Real Story of the Suffering Servant and the Gift of Affliction

[Music] okay hi everybody again thank you for coming especially with this weather you know i am uh from new england and i lived in chicago so uh this is kind of mild uh for us and uh but for hashem it makes me feel i was going to make you feel at home but you know a jew in israel should never talk that way because this is home but it just reminds me of my prior prior life which you know gives a certain amount of nostalgia anyway today's sheer once again it's sponsored for the aliyah and the shama binyamin again we it was a young young boy that we prayed for for uh quite a long time and hashem his parents have been very very generous in sponsoring this year i don't have any specific names but for all who are ill inoculated uninoculated whether covet related or non-covet related in addition ibanez has launched its end of the year fundraising campaign and ibanez is a wonderful wonderful organization in addition to the shiuri torah and there are many fewer other than me so i'm not just self-promoting ibanez also in uh is very much involved in acts of hesed and kirif and it's a very worthwhile organization if you check the website you can see some of the things that they the many things that they do and the link to contribute can be found in the youtube description box as well as the banner website so uh i know that unfortunately there are many many demands on cloud israel and many many institutions to support but i would hope that this could be one of those that would make your make your list we're now beginning of course the second hummish of the of the torah and it's very very interesting that the nisiv in izakama points out that every chumash has a nickname a rabbinic nickname so for example hummus braces is referred to by khazal as safer hayashor the book of the upright because it is the story of avram yitzhak and antiakov the book of shemos i'll come to in a moment the book of ayikrah is called torah's colony the laws of the kohanim because it deals with corbanos and the avodah bay samiktesh by the way that's that closely corresponds to leviticus which is actually the greek for the laws of the levites it's actually very close the book of bamidbor which actually means the book of sensai also corresponds with numbers because it is bracketed by two population counts one is the population counts of those who left mithraim and then in parashat pinchas towards the end of the book is the population of the new people who will be entering eretz israel and finally the book of duvarim is called mishna torah which means actually it's the same name that the rambam appropriated for his code but for a different meaning mishna torah means the repetition of the torah because although there are many many new myths votes in devotion one should never make that mistake but a lot of devoriam moshe is reviewing the history of the jewish people uh over the 40 years in the in the desert and indeed deuteronomy actually is again greek for the second law or the second torah or the repetition of the torah and the like just as a little aside the rambam called his great compendium of the oral law the double torah but in a slightly different sense not in the sense of reviewing but in the sense of duplicating meaning we have the written torah and then we have the oral torah so the mishnah torah was meant to be the oral torah side by side with the khumas by the way the private and others attacked the rambam mercilessly for that that type of claim they claimed that the rambam was trying to replace the study of gomorrah because the rambam writes in the all you need is the homage for the torah and my book for the torah balbara so a jewish library only needs two books maybe a sitter will put in as well okay that's not even true the rambam has a sitter in the mission of torah too so all you need is two books and the rest of your time should be devoted to philosophy and the rambo was attacked of undermining talmudic study the rambam said he didn't mean that the truth of the matter is i think there is a good chance that he did mean that in fact because well this is a talk for another time the rambam understood the greatness of talmud torah primarily in a practical instrumental way now there's the rambam envisioned that unlike refrigeration that there was some really great great great value in theoretical learning and depth the rambam understood that the purpose of learning in depth was to come to firm halachi conclusions and therefore he felt if a person had the firm conclusions it was less necessary to go into all of the depth okay but be it as it may that's mishna torah so every book has a name so what is the name for shameless right i didn't say what it was so the nasiv brings from the balco dolos the bag one of the go on him that the name for shamos is a very undramatic nickname is the second book what type of name is that i mean every hamish a safer hayashore torasco named mishna torah shamos safer hashemi what's going on so the native says that safra hashemi doesn't just mean the second hummish that wouldn't be a title at all but it means part two of bereishit because safer boracious is the book of creation genesis it's also an evocative term for that book it is the book of the creation of the world but the world was created for a purp the universe was created for a purpose israel rashi brings in the beginning of hamas for the torah and for the jewish people so consequently if humish gracious is the what of creation is the why of creation that there would be a jewish people that comes out of mitzrayim that receives sachem's torah that builds a tabernacle that brings the shrine in the world and therefore is a very beautiful title because it is really considered to be an appendix to hamish braces because schmos will tell us why was there a braces in the first place and the answer is because of everything that's going to unfold in this hamish this is what the nitsif says in the deschamos the ramban much earlier in his akdomatismos has another name for the book of shemos called sefer hagoula the book of redemption and he points out that the book of shemos fundamentally has three themes there are a lot of what you might call wrong turns in the book of shemos such as the sin of the golden calf but if you look at thematically the development of the jewish people you see three stages you see the exodus from egypt it's seattle you see the receiving of the torah and you see the building of the mishkan that brings god's presence into the earth and these are all aspects of redemption we leave the negativity of mitzrayim the spiritual enslavement as well as the physical enslavement we then get purpose and direction in our lives instructions which is and finally we achieve the highest epitome of being able to bring the shakina down to earth in the mishkan which is really a remiss to the mission of our hearts and and the like in fact the ramban has an interesting phrase the ramban describes thank you the ramban describes building the mishkan which takes up many many partials right in shmot as shovel that by building the mishkan they were able to return to the madrega of their forefathers presumably meaning avraham yitzhak yakov that the mishkan was seen as the completion of a circle to bring them back to the holiness of avramitsa kanyaka rather amban does not explain this it's literally only three words one of the things you'll notice if you learn ramban is he's very concise and he slides a lot of ideas under the radar you know if you're kind of just reading it you know you can lit you can quite easily miss a very very important idea because the ramban said it in two words or three words and what does he mean that the mishkan is shovel lamala savosam so one of the explanations is actually a very beautiful explanation that pertains to us in our own family lives you know if you remember when yitzhak encounters rifka when rivka is brought back as a young girl so it says he brought her into the tent of sarah his mother and he loved her so rashi brings a very beautiful madrish that there were three miracles that were associated with the tent of sarah imenu the home of sorry menu that the candles the light that she lit in honor of shabbos lasted the whole week there was a bracha in her dough that you could eat her bread you would be full for a long time and there was a cloud of glory over the home which symbolized the divine presence when sora died in spite of the greatness of abraham all of that left and only when rifka came into the home everything came back so yitzhak loved her not in not because of you know some superficial reason yitzhak loved her because he saw in her the embodiment of all that was good and all that was holy all that was noble all the qualities that his mother possessed and therefore she was the right person for him so it's been pointed out that there were three miracles in the mishkan and later the basa mikdash that corresponds almost exactly to the miracles of sarah's tent the candle lasting a whole week this is called the near tamid you must have it yeah oh is it on yes are you right about me yeah uh in which in fact people think only hanukkah lasted for eight days and the truth is that uh for many many years when at least when the jewish people were righteous not all the time there was one candle of the menorah that never went out technically okay even for hanukkah technically i don't want to get into the halaquahs they're just a little complicated they actually had to blow it up because every candle had to be lit every day so it never went out by itself people have the wrong picture they think that the near tamid never went out in point of fact it was blown out every day to be re-lit but it never went out by itself no matter how long it was burning until it was time to relight it again but be it same thing with hanukkah by the way they had to uh you know they lit the candles and they burnt for eight days but every single day the candles had to be blown out and re-lit because that's the mithvideo raisa of hadlaka-saminara that mitzvah was not suspended even for the chanukah days it gets a little different a different picture than we picture it but once again the miracle of the near tamid corresponds to the near of khan of sarah that was balok mayor of shabbas the heir of shabbos the blessing in her dough that corresponds to the lechon upon him there were 12 khalos that were baked every air of shabbos and put on the gold shochan in the mishkan and later the base of mikhdash and they would be kept on the shohan till next shabbos where the kohanim would eat it and the new bread will be put on the and even though that bread was there may really from shabbos to shabbos it was still warm and fresh there was a blessing in that dough by the way again i don't want to get too too technical even though this is described as 12 halos you know we're so used in our language whenever we say khala we think of khala actually the lekha mapanim was matsu it was not khala so uh in other words it was unless it was unleavened bread although it probably was like spartak in fact not probably we know it was like svardic soft monster it was spongy but technically it had to be masa and not remits okay and finally the cloud of glory over her tents is the cloud of glory that was over the michigan so there is actually a correspondence between the mishkan and the tent of sarah and the tent of sarah in turn is a symbol for the ideal jewish home and the relationship of husband and wife you know it's a cliche but the truth of the matter is most cliches happen to be true that's why they are cliches and people say oh yeah because things are closed because they happen to be true most of the time and the old cliche is the most important institution in judaism is the home more than the shome more than the yeshiva and that's why how logically when you build a jewish community the very first institution you have to have as a mikvah because a mikvah enables the relationship of husbands and wife and that's really ms because what the ramban is telling us is a wonderful thing we think having a mishka and having a base on mikdash is the highest level no what it does is it enables you to go back to the jewish home of abraham and zara meaning the basa mikta shows us what we are supposed to accomplish in our homes our homes are the mikdash of hashem our homes are the sanctuary where hashem comes in indeed the gemara says beferesh in vamos when a man and a woman live in harmony the divine presence is with them that's exactly what the word mishkan means comes from dwelling it is the dwelling place of the shakina that's what the word michigan means you know what otherwise what does taberna say tabernacle just like filling right to fill in our phylacteries what on earth are phylacteries oh phylacteries are filling you know that's the translation is is much more confusing than the hebrew word itself which most of us are are familiar with so tabernacle what's a tabernacle tabernacle is mishkan but but mishkada is the dwelling place for yasulim what does god say make for me a holy place this is so i will dwell within your heart that's an important point as well that the mishkan is not so much a place where god dwells but god dwells in our heart and soul and one of the most important if not the most important way that that is accomplished is by the relationship of husband and wife and that is what the ramban means in three short words okay now be it as it may yet cs mitzrayim remembering the exodus is central to jewish life uh there is in point of fact obviously we have an annual mitzvah to talk about the story of the exodus in great great detail and that of course is the mitzvah of the night of pesach leo pesach and we'll have occasions to talk about that as throughout but there is a daily mitzvah according to most opinions at least to at least mention and think about the exodus twice a day day time and night and technically the mitzvah goes by two different names the annual mitzvah is called sipor you'd see at mitraim sipor is an elaborate narration of the exodus and the daily mitzvah is called zakiras you see us mitsrayam to remember it but remember is not just mentally it actually requires some type of verbalization so if you look in the art school sitter or whatever in krishna in the third parasha of shema when you say the verse right i am the lord your god is sheriff yes mitzrayim who took you out of mitzrayim leo kim to be for you a god so you'll notice on the side or to be if you the god you'll notice on the side when saying this verse one should have intention to fulfill the mitzvah of zakhiras yet it's a mitzvah minatora there's a bit of a question maybe again we'll talk about it later when the rambam lists the 613 commandments 248 positive 365 negative the rambam does count the annual mitzvah of seaport as one of the 613 he does not count the daily mitzvah of zakira as one of the six thirteen although in the mishnah torah he says it's a key of the arisa and that's an open contradiction if he says you are high of menatora to mention the exodus day and night so why would it not be counted as one of the six thirteen so this is a a difficult kasha that acharonim discussed the nativity huda discusses etc but the bottom line is that whether you count it or don't count it because there's all sorts of technical reasons why things are not counted in the list that's a whole in and of itself but it does not negate the fact that the rambam does say substantively that it is a key of the orisa to be musker and we throw it in all sorts of things in the middle of kiddish which is about shabbos we say zeke mitzrayim to remember the exodus it kind of like pops up in all sorts of contexts god wants us to remember and once again the concept is because that is what that and matantora are the two formative experiences that made us a nation so what i want to talk about is this one of the halachos in the mitzvah at least the annual mitzvah of recounting the story of the exodus is something that the mishnah calls a messiah this is a mishna in our veip it's not enough to talk about the good stuff that god did you've got to begin your story with all the bad stuff halal if i were if i were to just sit at my seder and again obviously we have a whole haggadah but one one i mean you understand that uh one could be yo say the doris without the whole haggadah the haggadah is a liturgical text but though raisa if i don't have our gutter i talk about the exodus okay so obviously most of us will have a haggadah so we'll just follow what it says but if we're asking minimally what is it that i got to talk about it might be very short i might just say thank you god for taking us out of egypt and redeeming us etc so that's not enough you got to talk about how bad things were and there's even a mach locus what part of the haggadah is a fulfillment of the negatives one opinion says we were slaves in egypt and we focus on the slavery the other opinion says it's the other passage that originally we were idolaters and pagans before hashem appeared to avraham in other words the question is do you emphasize the physical slavery or the paganism whatever and that's why we say both in fact it's very very interesting that our haggadah and again this would take a long share in and of itself is actually a composite apparently there were two different versions of our goddess there was version a and version b version a talked about the transition from paganism to monotheism version b talked about the transition from slavery to freedom and version a and b were synthesized into a version c which emphasizes both themes at the same time so i saw that rep david cohen he should be well as a very very flushable raven flatbush actually tries to go through paragraph by paragraph of the haggadah which paragraph belongs to version a and which paragraph belongs to version b because ar haggadah is a composite but be it as it may there is a halacha that you got to talk about the bad you can't just talk about the good this is concretized in the mission itself so the question is why is that so important why is it so important to talk about the bad times why can't i just focus on the positives how good hashem was to me so i'm going to give you two explanations one is a simple explanation one is a little more complex the simple explanation could very very well be true and that simply is that it is the nature of a human being all human beings that we only appreciate the good when we remember how bad things were you know a person is that is has good health the person is not sick we take our health for granted if god forbid the person has been through an illness unfortunately the past two years many people have been through illnesses but whatever it might be coveted or not going and then a person feels better how much they appreciate their health because they take it for granted you know those of you that have uh parents or grandparents who are either holocaust survivors or people who came from oppressed societies like the soviet union the old soviet union uh how much they appreciate living lives of freedom they're very patriotic whether they come to eric israel or they come to the united states but somebody was born into freedom takes it for granted the chivas already noted that more than a thousand years ago he already noted that this is in a way very illogical he gives a martial like this he says about imagine if you were a person who was born into abject poverty and you never had enough to eat you didn't have clothes you slept on the ground you didn't have a roof over your head you were exposed to the elements you were beaten by whoever was your master and your life is unending suffering and one day a benefactor comes and the benefactor redeems you and the benefactor takes you to his palace and you have food and clothing and shelter you should even be more grateful i don't have any of the pr my whole life i was filled with this present and yet it's exactly the opposite right since i didn't go through the suffering i don't appreciate it so the simple idea well there's a simple idea but it's a true idea the simple idea of material bigness messiah is i need to think about how bad things were because that's the only way i'll really be grateful because the assault of remembering the exodus well there are there are a few users one is that you know you're you're servant of god that's why he freed you the other is gratitude it's simple gratitude in fact this idea that the assad of remembering the exodus is gratitude is actually used by the space ms to answer a halachic problem you know the post game actually the reshanam asked the question normally before you do a mitzvah you make a bracha a share ki deshana mitzvosov god sanctified me with his commandments to do right philly and sis lula esro shofar now if there's a mitzvah and a torah to mention the exodus every day and certainly there's a mitzvah minatura to do with lail seder why don't we make a bracha before we do that mitzvah so it's a it's a question that even the rishonim asked so the semester wants to say the following this vase says that since the assault of mentioning and remembering the exodus is gratitude you don't want to say i'm grateful because god made me do it you should be grateful because there should be a spontaneity in your gratitude in other words when you make a bracha in the midst you're saying okay god i'm taking the lula because you told me to do it that's why there's no bracket for honoring your parents why don't i make a barakah and keep it open and what do you say hey dad i'm bringing you a cup of coffee because god says in the torah i have to do this that itself is a moral khisaran in not feeling the spontaneity of gratitude so you don't mention and think about the exodus because god commanded you you do it because gratitude is what one has when something good has been done hakaresatov gratitude in fact this was in another place says a tremendous thing i think i've i've said this more than once but i'll mention it because it comes up again that this is the very reason why jews are called you who did why are we called yahudim after all yahudah was only one of the tribes every jew is called yehudi so he says let's look at why leia called her fourth child yehudah because she said apam o death hashem i am now grateful to god why is she grateful only with son number four and not the other sons she had three sons already so rashi brings a madrish that leia knew with ruach kodesh that there would be 12 tribes and she knows there are four women from whom these tribes will emerge so she figures everybody's entitled to three so when she had the first three this is what she's entitled to you're not grateful you're getting what is owing to you when she had number four she wound up having six but when she had number four she got more than she was entitled to that's gratitude so this emma says every jew must go through life with the sense that god has given me more good than i deserve and that's why that name yehudi is what we are the very definition of a jew you know in the south they sometimes use jew at least according to the american heritage dictionary a jew is someone who cheats in business or someone who drives a hard bargain so they might say don't jew around with me this was actually in the slang section of the american heritage dictionary i remember at the time that the adl anti-defamation league you know protested anti-semitism but the truth is you know it's a slang usage dictionaries i guess put in what they put in you know uh for example why how did how does become like an anti-semitic reference because apparently is connected to circle or something in german it's similar and when jews came in ellis island many of them could not write their names in english or any language some of them were literally illiterate so they would just do a circle so the jews were known as kickler's kicklers are people who draw circles or italians wap wap just means without papers because a lot of the italian immigrants showed up without any type of documentation so the bureaucrats just put in okay so these things were relatively innocuous actually but they became you know pejorative uh but to juice somebody so if jew is going to be a verb it doesn't mean cheating business it means to be grateful we are supposed to be a grateful people that is mitzrayim gratitude so that's the simplest explanation of why you got to start with the negatives in order to uh appreciate the positives i mean i i myself i mean brooke hashem i was not thank god i was not seriously ill but i had kobet and i was out of commission uh for three weeks uh i didn't go to shalonyam kippur i was home circus and christopher like pretty a pretty long time uh you know again i did not have to go to the hospital so thank god but i remember when i was able to get out it was like a new world like a new world like things that uh i didn't ever pay attention to kind of there was a sense of something very very special in the world being able to walk being able to breathe all of these different things so that's the position but although it's undoubtedly true it's there's no question that this is a true understanding but there is a cash on that and that is so let me think so i have to remember the slavery and the bitterness of the slavery because that makes me grateful to god for the redemption but wait a minute wait a minute here who put me into slavery in the first place it was god god told avraham avinu at the covenant of the parts that your children your your descendants are going to be strangers in a land that is not theirs they are going to be enslaved and they are going to be persecuted for 400 years yeah god does say and the nation that oppress them i will punish and you will leave with great wealth but god said sorry your children will have to undergo alienates being strangers slaves persecution for 400 years now granted god was kind and for various reasons he took us out after 210 years 190 years early because we are on the 49th level of impurity had we stayed even a few minutes the time that it takes for the dough to rise to hamas we would have put 50. so god took us out early but imagine this scenario i take you and i throw you into a prison cell for no apparent reason i lock the door and i say you're going to be here for 400 years assuming you'll live that long and i come after 210 years and say out of the kindness of my heart i'm letting you out 190 years earlier be grateful well you might want to pretend that you're grateful because you want it you want to get out of there you don't want to you know you don't want something bad to happen but still you might be thinking with some justification well why did you put me in for the first 210 years so if the concept is i'm grateful for the redemption because i recall the bitterness of the slavery that could actually have the opposite effect well why did god put me into that slavery to begin with so the deeper answer has to be this we were free we were slaves we were free if the only thing that freedom accomplished was to put us in the same place we were before then we might have a legitimate grievance god why did you put us through it but the answer is the freedom that we had after slavery is qualitatively different than the matzah for freedom we had before slavery and therefore the deeper idea of remembering the slavery along with the redemption is not just to create a before and after contrast but to understand that the slavery itself is part of the redemption meaning i am grateful not only for the fact that god liberated me i am grateful for the slavery in mitraim itself in other words the persecution is part of the redemption it's not just the thing from which i was redeemed it is a talent of the goula itself how so what does that mean in what way is mitzrayim something to be grateful for so there are a lot of different things you could say i'll i'll just offer two explanations you know i mentioned last week a well-known maimer this comes in a few variations that although the jewish people were on the 49th level of impurity they had certain fundamental merits that enabled their redemption they didn't change their names they kept their jewish names their hebrew names they didn't change their language they spoke leshon kodesh according to one version they wore distinctively jewish clothing that that's one version another version says they didn't intermarry apparently there were options of intermarriage and they didn't speak russian hara against each other against each other by the way people asked me akasha about that how could the medras say they did not speak lash and horror if you remember when moshe killed the egyptian who was beating the jew and somehow got known because the jews had informed on him so moshe says rashid brings this moshe says now i know why these people are not deserving of redemption because they're informers and they spread lotion hara so that is a direct contradiction to not speaking elijah but i think the answer would be that they didn't speak lashinara against each other but they regarded moshe rabe in other words moshe abenu was a strange person in their eyes because moshe rabena was growing up in pyro's house he was the great great aristocrat but he would come and visit his brethren now apparently we don't know exactly the conversation but apparently they kind of knew his origins they knew he was jewish and he would come to reassure them now dustin vaviram right they were the people who were being beaten they were the ones that were being beaten they looked in fact that's exactly i think that's why they were enemies of moshe throughout they basically said you know we're the task masters we're being beaten because we are refusing to inform on our fellow jews and yet when it comes to leadership this guy moshe who grew up in the palace of the king he becomes the big shot we ought to be the people who get leadership so when the ghazal say they spoke leshen horror that means they spoke lester about moshe because they looked at moshe as a traitor they looked at him as a quizling they looked at him as somebody who opted out of the faith that is befalling all of ami israel but visa be each other they were very loyal and indeed the gemara tells us even dust and vaviram who are known to be rishayam who died with karach they were beaten because they would not inform on jews who didn't meet their quotas as slaves so you know when we simply talked about dustin abirum as you know worthless people i mean remember they were beaten because they would not inform another church you know if you remember the holocaust superimposed on the awesome awful tragedy of six million jews dying was other i mean there's like so many levels of tragedy that sometimes jews did turn against other jews sometimes and become informers because they thought this could be the only way they could survive and their children could survive it happened to be that most of the time that didn't work because in the short you know they maybe they were kept alive a little bit and then they were killed too but that was the short-term survival strategy of jew against jew and that didn't happen in israel it's very very notable that's what means it doesn't when it says they didn't speak lashing hara it's not referring to the prophet they learned prophet hotline and and all the hallow it wasn't a haulak thing it was a group solidarity thing we're not going to turn against each other to gain some type of concession or privilege from the ruling class and the line so basically what this list tells us is that the jews were strong in terms of community and actus we're not going to turn against each other we're going to keep our language we're going to keep our names we're going to keep our clothing we're not going to win to marry although apparently intermarriage was was an option so the basal navy says is a contradiction because the metris tells us that when yosef died and when the tribes died the shavatim and not the father but the you know the the descendants of fight they made a hushman and they said if we are so beloved and we are so accepted among the egyptians when we are separate and distinct how much more so will they love us if we assimilate and we adopt their ways and the medrash basically says that after the tribes died there was a wholesale abandonment of jewish distinctiveness and the jewish people fell into assimilation and that's why god made pyro enslave them to remind the jew that when you want to be like the the guardian will repel you as we see in jewish history over and over again so which is it the medras seems to say there was a slide towards assimilation but the other medra says they kept their identity very strong there's a contradiction in those two teachings so the basil levy says very simple one is before slavery one is after slavery meaning to say before slavery we're living in a culture we're very well respected yosef was the benefactor yosef was the savior and we are yosef's family and they love us so let's become like them let's get rid of our differences slavery taught us the futility and self-destructive nature of that response when we saw that when we attempt to be like the others and assimilate we will be met with hatred and revulsion that gives us the hakara that gives us the recognition that all we have is each other and our relationship to akadesh park so mitzrayim in that sense actually i i wrote an article that you could find it in jewish action right he wasn't that it was a transcript of a speech i wasn't able to write the article article but it had somewhat of the provocative title the hidden blessings of anti-semitism now obviously we don't want anyone to suffer from anti-semitism we don't want any jew to be harmed in any way and we pray always that no one should be harmed but as part of the divine plan even anti-semitism serves a positive function because it reminds the jew that although a jew is always a constructive positive force in every society we live in that's always true just from a pure economic standpoint jews add value to wherever they go science education literature music whatever it is and we're supposed to we're supposed to be positive contributing members of society of course in inherit israel we're doing it in the jewish society barak hashem but even when we're living in the diaspora our job is to contribute to that society not negate it not destroy it not undermine it that's why the halacha says dina de makhlu sadina we are obligatedly to obey these secular laws of the state you know within obviously boundaries but at the same time a jew has to know that their difference and sometimes it is the hatred of the umotea olam that gives us that very vivid and important reminder so going back to the it's yet misrayam it's not only we're not only grateful for the exodus from egypt but we understand the positive role that mitzrayim created in fostering group consciousness unity community the idea that we have to care for each other because unfortunately no one else is really going to care for us you know i don't want to get too overtly political you know people talk about nations being our friends the truth of the matter is it's well known that in politics this is an old famous saying in politics there is no such thing as nations do not have friends nations only have interests well you know all national decisions are based on self-interest so it may be in in someone's interest to have a relationship with you but that's not that's not love that's simply self-interest and we need to know that sometimes sometimes we get uh a little enamored uh with uh the good will that somebody's showing us when we know that that could change in in a minute and pierce said this by the way hobbies be very very careful of getting too chummy with political powers because their decisions are all based on what's good for them and uh when it's good for them to be nice to you they'll be nice to you and when the winds change they won't and again okay i'm not going to be more specific than that but that this is often the political world uh that we live in so explanation number one is the basal labia tells us that the slavery in egypt made us realize the importance of jewish unity assimilation is not a solution you know going back to 19th century zionism you know theater herzl and again i'm not going to knock theater herzl i know that you know maybe in the religious world you know we have to talk about what a bad guy he was no i don't think he was a bad guy i think he was a person who actually cared very much about jewish people he saw jewish suffering he saw european anti-semitism and he wanted to do something about it the man had no jewish education but that's not his fault he just didn't know anything and he saw uh the creation of a jewish state or a state of the jews it's actually a maclogan how to translate his book his book's title there's a different implication jewish state or state of the jews it it makes enough camina so to speak but be it as it may he saw that uh may that he he saw the problem of european anti-semitism was that jews were too different they had they didn't have a nation they didn't have a country like other nations have uh they had these separate commandments uh they they weren't mixing so herzl's thesis was that anti-semitism would be cured by jewish normalization by obliterating the distinctions between jews and non-jews the more you could make jews to be like non-jews in all ways have an army and have a banking system and have a kind of a country normalization would take away anti-semitism this was his overall philosophy well uh in that sense we have to say that that that was a total failure and that was a total failure because it is apostle hashem says when bait israel says there will be awesome destruction that will come in that wake or as revere shapiro said when a jew fails to make kiddush the guardian will make which means if we don't embrace the life of sanctity the non-jew is going to separate us and the like okay so that's one lesson that you see that it's not just yetis mithralian but mitzrayim was the crucible in which we acquired a self-awareness that we have to be together we have to be unified we can't assimilate assimilation is a dead-end street that will ultimately come back and bite us in very severe ways now we haven't always learned that lesson and we haven't always followed that lesson but by the tyra telling me you have to remember this every single day the torah is telling us think about that lesson but interestingly enough there's a second thing we got from mitzrayim and it's almost an opposite message like 180 degree different now the torah says in a number of more than 30 places you must love the ger you must love the convert you must treat the convert with respect and with love because you were rim [Music] in the land of mitsuram now clearly you have to understand something you can't translate that pus is really although how logically it's referring to a convert but it doesn't mean love the convert because you were converts in the land of mitzrayim we weren't converts in london that's right so really what is the word geramine the word gary means a stranger it's the term that tyra uses for a convert to judaism because they're coming from outside so look at the pusic in a more general sense instead of looking at it in the narrow halachic sense how i treat converts the stranger is the person who comes into your society without friends without connection without family without wealth really because a gear could not really own land in the land of israel when land was divided according to tribes aguero essentially had to rent and the like and he's a bottom person on the totem pole now what the tyre is telling me is a very beautiful and powerful message when you encounter the weak and the vulnerable the insignificant and the lowly and you're sitting high in your land with your government and your power and you forget what it's like to be in that state the torah says remember that you were once there remember that there was a time in your collective existence where you were a slave you were a nobody you were an insignificant person you were abused you didn't count and remember that situation and that will be the source of your empathy and your compassion for those who are suffering this is very very remarkable it is not yet see at mithralium that gave us empathy for those who suffer it was the slavery in mitzrayim itself there are two basic sources because they'll tell us that it must be the essential characteristic of a jew to be rahmanim to be compassionate by shanim to be humble people who want to perform loving kindness and we have two sources that feed into that one is of course our ovals and our ema we look at avraham and sarah that's one source the other source is mitzrayim the slavery experience i look at a person who is suffering and i remember that's where i once was i mean that's really the difference between sympathy and empathy there are different concepts sympathy is i can look down at you and say oh okay i feel sorry for you and that which is again sympathy is a noble emotion emotion as well but it's like i know bless oblige it's kind of from high to low empathy is hey brother i've been there i know what it's like i know what you're going through i feel for you and that's a tremendous thing and that's why even jews who are so far from torah who don't keep the mitzvot they didn't learn about the mitzvah it's almost part of the dna that they gravitate towards hoping to downtrodden now sometimes that does take wrong terms sometimes it can lead to a lot of distortions but for example so many jews were involved in the civil rights movement in the united states including some who got killed because of it in south africa there were jews who were imprisoned with nelson mandela although that's someone is not necessarily did not necessarily return the favor in a full way uh but jews were with him i will even say now i may get in big big trouble for this maybe i should not i'd like to say thanks um that is we have well-meaning jews who are who are totally wrong and i will say they're totally wrong but they will agitate for palestinian rights and they will claim israel is an oppressor now their vision of reality is delusional distorted wrong but you know i can't help but feel it's coming from a good place in their heart they see suffering and they want to address it again i i will repeat i do not endorse at all what they're actually doing but i say to myself you know even when a jew is deluded and even when a jew is really going in the wrong way it comes from a certain goodness in their hearts same thing maybe this is even more troublesome the uh maybe i shouldn't say this but the irrational connection of jews to the democratic party which in many ways many ways makes no sense at all but why is that so because they think our democratic party wants to do welfare they want it they want to help they help they look at it again rightly or wrongly but they say i will be for the party that has more compassion for people even if that destroys israel or whatever it would be again i'm not endorsing or okay whatever but what i'm saying is that one of the wonderful things about jews is that even when they're wrong it comes from a good place there's a pint of the yid that can get distorted and messed up in all sorts of ways and that's where torah comes in and hopefully corrects us but we feel for people suffering go to my mayor's infamous quote again infamous quote she said we can forgive the arabs for killing our children we can't forgive the arabs for making us kill their children now obviously the first part of her statement has enraged many many many people so let's do what they are called paulgina and deborah will split the statement okay let's forget about the first part of the statement but the second statement i actually think has a certain profundity that we suffer not only when we suffer we suffer when they suffer even though we're not pacifists even though abolish somebody's coming to kill you kill them but we don't do it with joy we do it with that we do what we got to do that's very important we do what we got to do but we don't have joy when we do it we have sadness we wish things could have been different and we got that from yet see us mithraim this is something we gained i'm saying not from the atheism from mitzrayim right so going back to the original question i raised the question why do you bring up the bad just bring up the good and why should i be grateful to god for the good if he brought me the bad the answer is because the bad is also good now i gave you two specific examples how that works and you see it's misreading but that's a lesson for life as well it's a lesson for life because every person in life has challenges has adversities has things that happen that are not what they plan and not what they preferred and sometimes that can make us bitter that could crush our spirits that could take away our hope but the lesson of uts mitralim is to see the redemptive potential not only in the blessings that god gives you but even in the adversities because the adversities are indeed hidden blessings they might be the awesome awful i use awful in the in the older english sense the awful blessings of god but they are blessings nonetheless i'll just end with a little story some of you might have uh read the book written by rebecca and rachael machain allah shalom about her father all for the boss it's a very kind of a famous uh famous book and she writes about her father her father was a man review sister was rebecca scheinberg so rav pinscher scheinberg sequoia lubraca was the sonoma of ref hermann and she tells the story the refurbishment was an interesting person he was like very very very strongly from orthodox at a time when there were almost no orthodox used in the united states and he managed to persevere and eventually he was okay to spend the the the last decade of his life in eretz israel but she tells a story in the book which is a quite a beautiful powerful story she says that her father came to america with his parents uh before worlds were one and he was i don't have the exact details but he was like 11 years old his parents could not make it in this country so they decided to go back to europe and they left him to fend for himself this is before there were child labor laws i mean kids were working he was left to fence for himself at the age of 11. and they arranged a rental where he was you know he had a job and he would pay like five dollars a month for rent and as soon as his parents left the landlord raised the rent to ten dollars a month double the rent on it ten dollars a month this boy could not afford it he didn't make enough money for ten dollars a month he was evicted from the apartment probably from the room half room friday afternoon and he spent shabbos in central park all alone and all he had i don't know if there was a river carrying whatever it would be that could be couldn't even carry possibly uh all he had were two challahs and he was sitting on a park bench the whole night he was cold he was frightened he was scared he reached a matzah where he felt he had no hope in his life his parents were not here he had no place to go he had a job but in those days if you didn't come to work on saturday you had to find a new job on monday and that would repeat itself over and over and over again so it was the most difficult night difficult time he ever had in his life ever would have in his life as well and he told he must have told his daughter this she writes that he told his daughter that in reality he knew hashem would take care of him but he prayed for only one thing he said he prayed that he should never forget the feelings of fear and vulnerability that he has that night because that will be the source of the racomim he will have to other people who are going through that suffering and indeed as the book unfolds we do find that eventually you know eventually you know he got married he became successful he lost it in the depression but but at least until then he was successful he created a home in which literally he and his rebecca it was an open house in which hundreds of people would go through but although he did have his share of godolam he did have the great rabbis of europe or gohan and robert baron of shimon shkap when they came to america he was literally the almost the only house they would eat in and he had them but he also had a lot of guests that we would not so much enjoy at our shabbos table he had homeless people who wound up staying for six months or longer he had crazy people different stories she recounts where if the challenge wasn't to their liking they would dump it on his head right dirty people smelly people crazy people disruptive people and people would ask him normal people would ask him how can you have these people in your home and he said if you knew what they were going through if you knew they're suffering you would not ask that question but i know what it was like and therefore i know what they're going through so all i can have is and love for them and this i submit is the gift not if you see as mithraim this is the gift of gullus mitzrayim itself so bequetzer we actually have almost a contradiction on one hand it teaches us kind of jewish exclusivity we got to stick together and not think about others on the other hand it also teaches jewish inclusivity not only for jews primarily for jews indeed but for everybody to feel for others to feel their pain to have empathy and this applies in a whole range of issues this can apply to well even even something as maybe unrelated as homosexuality people struggle with gender confusion same-sex attraction the halachus are relatively clear we can't compromise with allah we're we are not the owners of the compromise but you know even when the luck is going to be that something is us her that doesn't mean you can't cry with a person who's going through these things and sometimes i think we have a little bit of a problem sometimes that we just dismiss those who go through different struggles when in fact what people need is empathy and compassion and love and this was the gift of yetis mitzrayim so thank you very much you should have a wonderful wonderful shabbos [Music] me is