Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: The Struggle between Israel and Greece

[Music] they mentioned a few times I'm giving a classic presently in the rom bonds disputation of barcelona and that's when i mentioned it was a very interesting political repercussion and that is the ROM bond refused to participate in any debating about Christianity unless he was given full immunity from prosecution for anything that he said and the King granted him that immunity but then when the Ramban wrote up a record of the proceeding which he then circulated he was prosecuted because they told him the immunity only extended to the oral statements and not to their written dissemination and he was actually up for a death sentence but the King happened to like him so which was changed to exile that's why the Rambam came to a ridge Israel so would you participate in a debate like that I would not not out of principle but because you know I'm not I'm not a great debater and therefore I would not want to do anything that would god forbid to undermine I know I'm not a retort ition or whatever it could be so I would not want to do it for that reason although I'm happy you know again I'm happy to talk about Christianity I do it but they're not in a debate format so to speak did you say you're teaching a Shearer about the disposition yeah yeah it's almost finished that we know everyone sure we have a class in these different different Spartans what happens to be we're doing the dissertation at Barcelona it's very short it's only around 10 pages that's your Theo your center no it's a drubbing winding social Knesset embassy okay anyway I hope everyone is well and again if I had a kid if I can start with another digression I overheard while I was happening that some questions were raised about Devorah and this is not of course the Devorah the judge of tonight but this is a different that is only mentioned once in the whole Torah and she is described as the main a cat's whisker the nurse made of riska and her death is memorialized her death she's buried in a certain place on the road it's called a loan but the tree of crying and sobbing and remember even rific his own death does not mention Leia's death does not mention the Bill of zilpha's death does not mentioned only Sora and Raquel and devorah who is only may not get drifter and you know there are different reasons that are given but I just want to share with you a thought that I saw one of the commentaries gifts and that is Devorah is actually one of the great great unsung heroes in the Torah because here we have this little girl rifka who was raised and they corrupt idolatrous and moral environment and somehow rifka was pure and righteous and she was a fitting wife for you to talk and to be a founder of clown Israel I have given birth to Yoko as well but Yaakov and then the twelve tribes what was the secret you know if you look in the literature of resilience as a whole psychological school you know you have kids who grew up in gangs kids who grew up in broken families some children are just broken they get into drug addiction to get into gangs they get killed and other people make it like Ben Carson for example came from that type of background and the literature says that these most important factor in determines whether a kid will be able to transcend the limitations of his environment is was there in adults who truly cared about them and directed them in a good and a moral way sometimes that could be the mother and a lot of these broken families and sometimes it's a father figure who goes to baseball games and plays basketball etc Devorah it was in a sense the spiritual figure in Rifkin's life we know nothing about Devorah we don't know where she came from we don't know why she was a righteous woman but Devorah was the person who made your if Mariska and the lesson of that is that sometimes a person's destiny is not focused on what they themselves accomplished in the world but the fact that they enabled somebody else to become great the stories for example there are great great roaster Shiva's in the world great leaders of Torah who may have come from background which were not so great not so religious but they had you know in fifth grade they told me Torah teacher or a Rebbe that inspired them and that Rebbe lived his life in relative obscurity maybe in a small town somewhere he taught him a conservative day school or maybe even a northern state school but never became famous never became somebody that the whole whole world looks at and yet it's precisely those figures behind the scenes that are often the inspirations for those who become very very pivotal in the history of on Israel and the prototype of that idea what you might call the hidden hero the person who is not celebrated for their direct accomplishments but because they enabled others to become great is exactly this devote a humble unassuming person of whom we know nothing about it all and yet the Torah records her death because her leaving the world was a genuine loss the genuine loss of a force were good in a quiet relatively unknown unknown way so it's something to think about sometimes people might get frustrated certainly people in Phoenix in Jewish education are often frustrated if they're in small towns or whatever it is and they don't necessarily feel or see that they're accomplishing great things but sometimes just the effect you have on one single person can ultimately be of enormous significance but not only to that person but indeed to Chloe's route as a whole so that's kind of the message of Deborah that this commentary wanted to want it to bring out and again it's a very very meaningful message because I remember my own life you know people who labored in relative obscurity their whole lives and yet they were really a tremendous force for good on so many people who grew up and had families and ripple effects and did many many different accomplishments and it's all to their it's all to their credit okay so that was just a little bit of a digression about jewelry purchase fahisha and the haftorah boyish lock it's interesting that of torah by yesh lach you can actually make a cm on a book of naath it is the the shortest book of tonight is the book of a vodka he is one of the twelve prophets and the entire book is only one Parekh and that is the haftorah for purchase fahisha so we read the whole book of a vodka as the haftorah Obagi himself was a convert a convert who was descended from a south and he was given the mission of prophesied about the eventual destruction of a self with the coming of messiah so basically connecting the authority to the parsha obviously in the parsha we read about the encounter of Yaakov Anissa after many years of separation and azam used to read our shots by each leg for many many lessons of dealing with the Roman authorities because close al had a miss Oelrichs it's not it's not so clear how you trace it that the Romans were the descendants of ASA and it's not entirely clear from the Tanakh itself where you get that Jesus some have suggested that the were the Etruscans that were the people in Italy before the Romans and when the romans interbred with the Etruscans who have in effect Idi Amin in Rome nevertheless it's a well-known established Messiah in kazow that Edie dome is identified with Rome and this goes back to the famous theme of the four exiles the Babylonian exile the Persian Exile in exile and the Roman exiled the goggle to Vento and those are the people who are identified as destroying the second temple obviously a dome is identified with the Roman Empire itself so whenever the famine has to have meetings with the governor governments of Rome whether it was the Emperor or lesser official says they always studied par shots by each lab to determine what types of interactions should we have with the with the ruling authorities and the most famous statement there are many statements in comes out but the most famous statement is a message that says Yakov Aveeno prepared three strategies for dealing with Adam strategy number one was door own gifts giving bribery so to speak he was sending gifts to a self to put a sub in a favourable State of Mind Plan B was to wage war if necessary if we need to defend ourselves by violence by bloodshed we will do so and Plan C which is necessary both for plan a and Plan B is to turn to God in prayer as yahuwah been afraid so we initially start off with the peace and overtures and and generosity we are prepared for war as a necessary evil if that becomes necessary and we need a Kadesh Barclays sea otter - Maya no matter which way B though so there is a thoughts that these three direct him are not simply how we deal with the in particular but how do we deal with secular culture in a general way right because we live in a world in which there are many many values that aren't typical to the tourists and the question is what is my relationship and what is my family's relationship to secular culture literature arts music science what do i do so in truth there are sometimes two opposite responses there is a response within collinsville that wage is unrelenting war I don't mean by bloodshed but they unrelenting rejection ISM against anything that is not within the foremost of the base of a courage right so war is the stance of rejection I don't allow it in my home I want my home to be in violence I want my environment to be pure no computers no internet no cell phones etc that's one response there is another response which is called gift-giving in which I welcome everything in I create an open environment and what the tour is suggesting is that this should not be an all-or-nothing meaning to say those who wage unrelenting war are making a serious mistake because after all that's cause I'll tell us mob aghanim if someone tells you is there wisdom among the Gentiles or there is wisdom among the Gentiles time in you have to believe it there is wisdom there is insight there are things that we can learn in sites of course and science technology mathematics literature psychology there are many many things no the world has not been dormant the world has not been stagnant and there have been things outside of the framework of Orthodox Jews that are meaningful that are productive that can enhance our religious experience as well as the enhancing the practicalities of our lives so milk lemma is not it's not a complete response nor is doro doro Nia's gift giving which is symbolic of I welcome everything meaning the philosophy that says I reject everything and the philosophy that says I accept everything is incorrect there needs to be a synthesis and there needs to be an integration Yaakov adopted both strategies not one or the other he adopted the strategy that there are some things I'm going to reject and then there's a strategy that there are some things I'm going to accept huh well Yakko Yakko some initiative is giving the gift but right but well well yeah it's stretching it a little bit if the idea of gift-giving is I am open to a relationship with you I'm inviting a relationship with you now Jews also have given the gift juice after themselves have contributed to the greater civilization consider the Nobel Prizes that that that use have won and the light so therefore the concept of the war and the gift represents the synthesis of how we relate to secular culture we have to have the wisdom to be able to incorporate that which is good no bullying and then we have to have the courage to be able to push away and reject that's which is degrading and destructive to the human spirits and it is only by prayer and connection to a shell that we will be given the wisdom and the insights to make those discriminations because in a sense it is always easier to be an all or nothing personal it's relatively easy to simply say everything out there is bad although practically you really can't live that way I mean after all even in the most Carini home there will be a telephone I mean I ran the refrigerator so nobody is rejecting martha matter in life totally but whatever it is philosophically it's relatively easy to say everything's bad and philosophically it's relatively easy to say everything's fine but wisdom consists of discrimination and cuz I'll make this points very beautifully mostly Shabbos we incorporate a Havdalah in the Amidah itself Abdullah God separates between the holy and the profane in what bracha do we insert the separation of holy and profane in the bracha dealing with knowledge and wisdom and understanding and the Tommy guru Swami says it mayn't us without discernment habit Allah me nyan how will you know to discriminate the mark of a refined mind is the ability to make discriminations and not to simply have wholesale rejection or wholesale acceptance but to understand that there is a mixture of good and bad there is that which in Nobles that which enhances that would shock lips that which creates beauty for the human spirit and there is that which degrades and that which denigrates and then creating your own family in your own community you have to try to figure out how do I have that balance so in a sense therefore Yoko's three strategies are kind of a prototype of how we with secular and I'm really just culture Christian culture whatever whatever you wanted why do you want to say that ships and her father she who was really the rescuer the Redeemer of war that actually in 19th century Germany people don't realize that the Germany had been a great tourist sector to go back to the 16th century and earlier great great cattlemen were in Germany it's a trashy for a time was in Germany but with the rise of the reform movement the reform movement in Germany spread like wildfire so there were great cities like Frankfurt and Hamburg in which there was barely a minyan of Orthodox Jews barely a minute and refresh became the rabbi of Fred of the Orthodox rabbi in Frankfurt at a time when they were very very few Orthodox Jews and over a career that spans 50 years he built up his gajala to around 2,000 families but more than that his writings are very immortal and still studied today but he was a great community builder we know him from his writings but in fact he was very very essential in the growth of Orthodoxy in Germany and that community which largely destroyed in the Holocaust except for the Washington Heights Enclave in the light and we know that rehearse developed a philosophy which is not accepted so much by the mainstream yeshiva world particularly in Israel and that philosophy is called Torah in derech Eretz which is tight abbreviated di de and that was for a purchase idea that although a Jews primary allegiance is to God and to Torah and not to secular wisdom but we need to incorporate secular wisdom to be able to turn the lessons of the Torah into the practical lessons of life and we should be able to draw insights from all the cultures in order to enhance our own religious and spiritual identity this was in Contra distinction to the dominant Orthodox religious philosophy of Poland Lithuania and Russia which more or less rejected second wisdom in a number of ways Kent's a bit more complicated with that but that's at least in very very general terms now in establishing this idea of touring their affairs and of course it's interesting that after the Holocaust the only congregation really that survived as a an authentic Tory of directorate's congregation was the broader scale of a brewer was for the rough in Washington Heights upper Manhattan in New York and it's interesting that most of the children and grandchildren of those Holocaust survivors went to Lakewood and they became full-time Torah scholars and in effect they repudiated the very philosophy of Torah and directorate's that was the basis of their congregation so in fact even the rough of lawyers at some banquets that's one of the art sites of Egyptian fathers basically said Torah em derech Eretz is dead it's no longer a viable philosophy because of the decadence of popular culture we need to emphasize full-time Torah learning and some of the old-timers of the congregation I mean they were in their 90's and they were in walkers but they got up in protest and tried to leave the room because they felt you know a to brutality I mean the very rub of with Tory of derech Eretz congregation is repudiating the idea of Democrats but Dena submit without getting into the politics we're a first points out if you go back all the way to the parsha of Noah and if you remember that when Noah got drunk after the after the flood so Noah was naked his nakedness was exposed and Hum noticed and hung mocked it and from called his brothers to go and look at it and the brothers walked backwards to cover up their fathers nakedness and as a result scum was cursed to be a slave that has some implications but shame was blessed and yet us was bled and the blessing TFS is especially interesting Yaffe's tell o Kim Lee Epis may God give Beauty TFS the ishka and he will dwell Bo Holly shame in the tents of Sheng in English that sounds bad but in Hebrew Sheamus is the main may he dwell in the tents of shame the son of Noah now yet as we know was the ancestor of Yvonne Greece Greece of all of the ancient cultures Greece was the one that most excelled in what you might call secular wisdom whether it was philosophy science mathematics art drama etc even athleticism Greeks Greece excelled in that Greece was certainly a culture of great beauty both both aesthetic beauty and intellectual beauty elegance and the fs is therefore the progenitor of Greece so y FS was given the mission to promulgate culture and beauty in the world shame was given the mission to promulgate ethical monotheism and submission to God and the sovereign comes from shame so what Noah envisions is a division of labor and with no access Giavotella kingly office God has given the gift of beauty TFS and that beauty should dwell within the tents of shame meaning to say that the beauty of the FS will be beautiful when it is coupled and connected to the ethical monotheism of shame and not when it is separated so there's really two messages there one message is that shame is supposed to incorporate the beauty of llaves into its life and the other is a message the Epis that when you separate from shame then your beauty becomes egotistical destructive and damaging to the human spirit now this is a very very important message about chronic if it's Hannukah in fact it's coming up is in fact the struggle of army israel against the oven because remember that the oven is not like common yaga yaga antiochos did not try to destroy us physically antiochos trying to destroy us well let me put it this way obviously it turned into a war I mean Antiochus eventually through that turn the struggle into a war but initially it was not a war initially for simply a desire for assimilation a modernization adoption of Greek values and it is the struggle against the other by advocating ethical monotheism but in point of fact it's not so much that we are rejecting your life but rather we are rejecting the uncoupling of the oven from the message of shame otherwise Yocto mckinley Epis y FS and yog on represent beauty when it is yes code violation right and that is what Yaakov Evita was Muromets when he sang there is that which we reject but there also must be that which we accept and through to Fela we will try to get an insight and understanding into ourselves as to what is the proper balance for our children for our families for our communities for our schools I am Tom in is a reality that one cannot deny that teaching but one has to know how to separate the good from the bad that is not an easy question and that is not a question that even as a single answer across the board it may vary from person to person from family to family there are certain ideas that can genuinely help some people there were other ideas that could be very destructive and damaging it takes a great deal of wisdom and refinement part of what we sometimes encounter in Eretz Israel is the inability to make distinct either one goes to one extreme or another we are a country of extremism in almost everything and the truth of the matter is you can call this being a milquetoast or being a nerd or whatever it would be or a wimp but in truth ms is normally going to be somewhere in the middle where you combine different perspectives and you draw truths from all sides of course as the Casa Caribe famously remarked when you walk in the middle of the road you will get hit by traffic moving in both directions and so it is dangerous to walk in the middle of the road but the middle of the road is probably where the MS lies and this is what yatta was doing when he's combining the Hama and don't run now there's another point yes so apparently the concept would be that when it comes to understanding things that is called Kozma and the non-jewish world contributes to our understanding of everything whether it's science whether it's technology philosophy literature music there can be a contribution but Torah is the ultimate guide to what is your spiritual realm in the world and there you have to look at Torah as your source of values of ethical values and then based on that core of values you then ask yourself what hokhmah can help me deepen my values and the like but the values themselves have to emerge from Torah and this was a point that refreshed himself made over and over again Tory and Darren Farris is not a a relationship of equality there's Torah there are merits and they're all equal rather Torah is the source of your ethical vision and you then look into the greater world to see how you can enlarge and apply your vision in the practicalities of a black well dermis Eretz okay this is an interesting point yes that's correct that that's correct that's correct and maybe that is that is so reverses okay let me put it this way everything I said is a clear definition of terrorism notice already know what I mean tarimov means Torah and knowledge that's why I am university's motto and rabbi Norman lamb unfortunately he's not very well he shifted over a bravura is wrote a whole book called Toronado in which he expands on this philosophy with great eloquence now rehearses philosophy from the 19th century actually went by a different name Torah in derech Eretz and the question becomes what exactly are they different philosophies are they not different philosophies so that itself is a mouth locus either interpret rehearse some interpret or endeavor parents as just an earlier name for tamada and philosophically they are indistinguishable others do put a different spin which is not the explanation I've been using tonight in which they say that reverses orientation was much more pragmatic and practical meaning he wanted people to have a par Nessa he wanted people to it to be economically self-sufficient he was not so much emphasizing intellectually connecting to the outside world as he was simply emphasizing productive economic activity I am and the like based on that there is a difference between touring their appearance which is really kind of a pragmatic adjustment to the world such as trade schools for tourism or or whatever it would be versus tour Amada which is a bit more grandiose in actually looking to secular wisdom as a source of insight and understanding now it seems to me though in reading refreshes own writings it seems that refers did in fact endorse a valuable role for secular wisdom in deepening your understanding of life so I would in fact equate refresh to Toro Mota even though rabbi Lam disassociates the table you thing is robbery I wanted to have an original movement but in fact I think it's it's very much connected by the way people ask the question well aren't is artis just Modern Orthodoxy you know Modern Orthodoxy well not not really they are the modern orthodoxy of Rev Sullivan chicken revelation see yes but typical modern orthodoxy is not a particularly intellectual movement at all a typical modern orthodoxy is much closer I'm going to use a harsh word but I don't mean to be so harsh I'm just using it very purpley it is primarily a hedonistic movement to say it's simply a way of being able to go to the beach or whatever it would be meaning if you have a rap song of a check if you have a reverent listen theme these were people who genuinely mastered the intellectual Canon of the West and tried to figure out what they could draw from that wisdom to enhance their abode assertion and there are bonuses Shem was absolutely serious into a serious and it was deep and it was a conscientious difficult endeavor but as people say maybe there's only two months I'm neither a tea with some of that else and that was from selling a check and reviving mutton speak typically modernity in Judaism in many cases again I'm really exaggerating and I've been very you know I'm stereotyping and being over general but in many many cases it is not really an intellectual movements at all with it's simply a movement to give you greater freedom and how you live life so it's not really connected to Torian derech Eretz or Tohru mother there's going to be a correlation many Modern Orthodox subscribe to Torian derech Eretz and Tallulah Mata but they are not the same modern Arthur actually tends to be focused on behavioral freedom as opposed to intellectual depth of exploration of what modernity can can can add to the Jewish tradition so all of these names have different implications then of course there's open north again I don't want to get into all of the names they say that the Eskimos have 300 words for different types of snow because they need to know every different type of ice and snow etc so they're very sensitive to nuances that other people wouldn't notice so too we have three different three hundred varieties of Judaism and it gets it gets very very confusing again I'm really over generalizing and of course there are many many exceptions but yeah and I think to a large extent I remember I once participated in a symposium with conservative reform rabbis and my own yeshiva was absolutely furious they they threatened to revoke my Smith I say really really were a very very yeah against my doing it but I did it I don't know if I would do it again but I did it and the experience was very very fascinating because you know I presented what I thought was the Torah position and they presented the author that be conservative at the farm position and the reaction from the audience was fascinating there was a reform guy who got up and he said to his rabbi he says listen I'm reform Jew because I'm lazy I'm a reformed Jew because you know it's too hard for me to keep Shabbos and keep culture so I don't so I do what I do but how can you philosophically you say how can you philosophically justify it I don't understand at all the philosophy was incoherent and it's inconsistent and you say well God told us some things and so it's interesting that here the reformed guy openly admitted that he is a reformed Jew not because of ideology and not because of belief but because of convenience and he accused his rabbi of having an incoherent philosophy so that's kind of it basically in which becomes a lifestyle decision now again we want that ax people are guilty of that too you know we have a lot of compromises in our personal religious life which are not necessarily out of principle so it's only it's a question of degree so good we're not going to drive on Shabbos but yeah there are plenty of things we do that no you really followed the show Canora with the yoke perhaps we shouldn't we shouldn't be doing so so I don't want to cast stones I don't want to look down at anyone I don't want to be negative on anyway but I can say that a lot of religious decisions that everybody makes are not always matters of principle and they're not always consequences of a well-thought-out philosophy but they are matters of convenience and a certain degree of laziness that all of us have in some areas on the other hand the total matter Tory of their parents are not lazy philosophies they are actually very strenuous endeavors to try to figure out truth by considering all of the different sources that God put into the world first and foremost Torah but then looking at the world looking at science looking at mathematics looking at philosophy looking at the struggles that great thinkers have had over the years and how their struggles and their ruminations can inform the way we deal with life issues the road from a Sullivan chick wrote an essay in which just an interest in in losing God but it happened because the Enlightenment opened up a host of possibilities through Jews to be free in the world protect upon us to be a part of the world and that was a very exciting proposition and the only thing is that couldn't do it if they observed Shabbos you couldn't do business you couldn't have Commerce you couldn't have all the culture so if that's the case if the rub is correct there that I think that should rehearse in his Torah and Eric Harris was really addressing that issue he needed to combat this feeling and saying no you want to go into business you want to be a part of the world right so that's the Derrick Harris okay I think you have some truth there if you look at the rapper his seminal work I'm Tory I'm derech Eretz which he wrote anonymously and this is cold though the 19 letters the very first letter I can refers to out all the letters but the very first letter was written by a Jew who was alienated from Orthodox Judaism because he wanted to participate in the modernity of culture and all the exciting developments and refers actually put these words into this but not know this person this character straw the straw man in which the person was vituperative he was attacking Judaism as full of superstition and being old-fashioned and not participating in the glories of science and philosophy and all the new opportunities that finally have taken the Jews out of the ghettos in other words that was the accusation and that was only one letter and then the other 18 letters refer D responding so how Judaism can enable you to function successfully in the modern world so I think around solavei checks point is borne out by the 19 letters themselves the very very interesting book to read on the other end let me give you a little example you know repair established a system of religious schools in Frankfurt and in his elementary school they celebrated the German poet Schiller non-jewish if a very famous German poet they celebrated his birthday with a public assembly in which they would read and even sing some of his poems so clearly where first did have a certain attraction towards the German Romantic culture it says he even went to the Opera you know etc so like all complex great thinkers you can find different nuances you missed out but but your point is very well taken of Aging points it's certainly very very relevant on what refers was trying was trying to do but be as it may certainly when you go to Rosa listen Steen and rough soloveitchik you are moving to a total modern idea in which Karmapa going in becomes an independent source for knowledge and understanding as I say this is highly relevant to the conduct of story because if you don't do amazing you've got to see these Sheba worlds the Hanukkah story will be portrayed over and over and over again as the struggle of Judaism against Greece which of course it is it is but the struggle is a bit more subtle than you might think it's not that Greece is totally bad y'all are bad Judaism good rather the concept was there has to be a way to selectively incorporate yoga within yadus as opposed to the oven that tries to extinguish ya dose and you have to be very very countable too much of a good thing can be very destructive and one has to know how to strike the balance in fact my realm himself makes this point my route points out that Yavin if you rearrange the letters spells noise new involve youth which is beauty but the words you involve none which we read yoga but it comes to maturation of own to oppress which means Yavin can become a stranglehold and an oppression or it can be a great great source of beauty depending on whether you integrated the already shown or you separated from violation and we saw cilantro talk about a scholar piezo cilantro gave me Marshall about house color that when you have a team of wild horses that has been confined for a very long time and you open up the gates they are just going to run and there's no way to stop them you have to understand Jews were confined and limited for so many decades if not centuries that when they finally got that freedom they kind of went stir-crazy that's abandoned they just abandon everything the same thing happened with the large scale immigration to the United States where people threw over threw over there to fill in an element they got to have this island right because they're finally given freedom now freedom is a tremendous blessing you know Thanksgiving is coming out I don't know how many of you are celebrating it's giving or whatever it is on one hand freedom is a tremendous blessing and Rebecca Feinstein Rhodes how we we owe a debt of gratitude those of us who are Americans to the United States for creating an environment where we were able to live and prosper and and accomplish and keep our religion and have economic security and economic prosperity that's a great thing one does not turn your back on that at the same time freedom can also be toxic you're like a wild horse that finally gets liberated and you simply go crazy with it right so now that's not Americans well you know we shouldn't blame around that one that we didn't react we didn't always react properly to the freedoms that we were given of course when I promise I hope there still is that rough soloveitchik used to and shear early you know he lived in Boston but he was in New York a few times a week for this year so Thursday was one of his shear days so he always started his shear early of Thanksgiving so he could fly back for Thanksgiving dinner so there are two solution you learned from that you have to condition kiddush number one is he had a Thanksgiving dinner and he did not consider it to be imitating who goes ago him that's finish one finish - is he did not cancel this year he rescheduled it meaning to say that there was no reduction of Torah learning on Thanksgiving he just made it earlier instead of later this year was the same two hours or two and a half hours so remember you can't go with citta chuan unless you go with finish - right so you got to keep both of the tradition together in question of the five-day workweek and in my history is very fuzzy on this subject it doesn't that really mark the time when a Jew could be observant and function in secular society well it obviously made it tremendously easier there's no question but but listen even when Shabbos was a workday many Jews of course did not keep Travis but there were some courageous people who did and if they had to look for if they didn't show up on Saturday they had to look for a new job on Monday they did it these are really heroes the unsung heroes these are the people who founded the unnies real movements again maybe someone was only a handful that's very very true but nevertheless they always were the Jews that we're willing to give up everything in order to keep shots okay now I want to move to something else and that is the night before Yoko's great encounter with the angel but with ASA he finds himself wrestling with a mysterious man who we discovered in the course of the narrative is actually an angel and they're wrestling all night and sometimes Yaakov is on top and sometimes the the angel is on top but finally in the morning Jaakko pass him pinned down and the angel says and Yaakov says give me a blessing and the angel says gotta go gotta go let me go I gotta give this is he probably would like to point out a bit of a joke when it comes to fighting Yaakov the angel has plenty of time he can spend the whole night fighting the Sooners Yakov wants a blessing angel says sorry gotta go now but okay that's the way people are when it comes to my locusts we're always willing to put in the time when it comes to Abraha they're in the rush but because I'll tell us this angel had a one-time appointment to sanctify God's name and if the time would pass and you would never come again okay but be this at me I want to mention a few observations on this very mysterious entity cause I'll identify him as none other than the guardian angel evasive himself that somehow the night before Yaakov encounters the physical essence Yakko has to has to wrestle and struggle with some spiritual force that is åsa and the gabbai that's an interesting story the Gemara asks who did this angel resemble so one opinion says the angel resembled a like an axe murder resembled a murderous criminal the other opinion says the angel resembled a pious righteous person what's going on there so some modern books and I think well though I didn't see this in classical more fortune but I think they have an insight that's worth repeating they suggest that part of the struggle that Jakob is going through with the so-called angel of Asaph is they struggle with in the a sovath himself that's a struggle within himself because Yaakov is confronting a sub in the flesh but Yaakov himself knows that he's wronged Asaph in a number of ways he bought the birthright they took advantage of Aesop's starvation he took away the blessings by deceiving and dressing up as a son in which that blessing was not available and Yaakov was confronting an enemy that may want to destroy him but Yakko going through the necessary struggle of the Midnight's am i worthy of these blessings he is struggling with the demons of his own nature am i worthy a my righteous am i deserving and the Torah is telling us that ultimately he came to a conclusion he came to a resolution God himself informed him that your struggle is a noble one and through that struggle you will be uplifted your name shall no longer be closed which means to heal your name shall be Israel the one who has struggled with God and prevailed and of unfortunate already say this idea that Yaakov refers to struggling and honestly looking at yourself wrestling in the dirt like a heel with Simba in the dirt that from the Yaakov you come to a state of resolution and triumphant and that's what the Gemara means that Yaakov is looking into himself and he has two identities he's the Sadiq and the righteous and the pure but he's also a mirror image of the ace of himself these two faces are the two faces of Yaakov and Yaakov struggles to to establish which identity is the real is the real imbel this is the freshman a nephesh that every person has to go through lonely nobody else is around you don't have the artificial ease of somebody patting you on the head and saying you're okay you're fine you have the honesty to stare into them and the depths of our own mistakes our own depravity and then resolve how to try to turn it into something positive and something good that's why one thought another thought is from your happy time so now we'll move back into more traditional interpretation the coverage time actually has two thoughts of this thought number one why do we find that an angel only tries to attack Yaakov and we don't find a parallel angel trying to attack Avram and yet son so the carpet I am has a nice board the time says we know that Pirkei avos tells us that the world stands on three pillars Torah avodah height or divine service and Camille is fussing and we know that each of the of us represent one of those pillars Avram represents the relation of love - and yet schmuck who was a sacrifice represents divine service and Yaakov who spent 14 years in the yeshiva of Shaitan a bear represents unrelenting am Amos in Turin Sears what the Cubbies claim says the coop evasive that represents evil in the world is perfectly willing to let Jews grow in Nevada and in jameelah's fessing because even though that is tremendously good but it's not going to have intergenerational continuity it is only with Torah that there's a certain continuity that Kali so will have and therefore the sorrow chalets of only attacks Torah and not to press it and that's iboga because the HR looks at the long-term effect lets us be righteous now if it's not going to last now again those of you that are American if you know the history at least of American Jewish life you actually see this pattern very very clearly in the 19th century in the 1880s after the pogroms in Russia that was the first major wave of Jewish emigration having there were Jews in America for a while before colonial times but the first major wave huge wave of thousands of thousands of Jews was in the aftermath of the pogroms in Russia in 1880 there had been an earlier German immigrant in fact the German Jews of the Polish Jews never got along because the german jews were very very highly assimilated the polish jews less so and there was a lot of animosity the german jews were embarrassed by the Polish Jews but initially the first institutions that were established were what you might call chess in institutions burial societies fraternal aid free loan societies Jewish hospitals there's no particular reason for a Jewish Hospital today but but you know the Jewish hospitals date from that era when a Jew couldn't necessarily get treated in a regular in a regular hospital so that was an emphasis on asset and yet that generation largely became assimilated intermarried unassimilated the next generation built magnificent synagogues synagogues that they don't do that way anymore beautiful stained-glass windows Cathedral like but they can be sealed so there was an emphasis on our bow down to FEMA a decorum the beauty of the synagogue service and a lot of those synagogues not all are now churches you can go through any inner city in a major American city and you will see in big churches you will see the Hebrew of the Ten Commandments entered into the wall like because these room wants synagogues they want super synagogues the old shoulder which I grew up I think that was torn down might not but it became a church and again how that mean this is extremely problematic I'm not going to get into the whole office of how you are allowed to do it so many say you're not allowed to do it but it was done all the time so the coverage times prediction turned right a Jewish society that emphasizes I said without Torah it's not gonna last I vote out without Torah is not going to last rise and the success of the Orthodox community in the United States is a function of the establishment of a network of day schools by tolaram Sora that started back in the 1940s and now they have a Jewish day school in every Jewish community in the United States that was at least 5,000 Jews these are Orthodox Jewish day schools and then with Torah I'm Sora then came the Shiva high schools and color them because it makes a lot of sense intergenerational continuity is a function of learning Torah studying Torah understanding the values of Judaism so the perfect time said this a long time ago the harvest time said that let Avraham do his lesson and let it start build his synagogues because yeah they're doing a lot of good but that good is not gonna last but Yaakov I must destroy because Yaakov represents education Yaakov represents Torah Torah is continuity tourism it's fields these fields I'm gonna write that's the kibbutz Hyams first point the harvest time that makes the second point that's the angel the base that was not victorious but the angel evasive did have a partial victory Yaakov is still around but Yaakov in the morning is hobbling limping he got struck on the sciatic nerve and he's not able to walk for everyone the Zohar says the following idea the Zohar says just as the thigh supports the body so the thigh represents those who support Torah Yaakov represents Torah the thong of yakou represents the Thompson the erisa those who support the Torah so here's what the so r700 time expounds upon us the angel of ASA was not successful in destroying Yaakov there will always be Jews that will study Torah even if they have to starve they will remain committed they will remain connected but there will be a can which makes me there will be an Achilles heel to the support of Turan that is the support of Torah will always be precarious the partial victory of a sub is yeah you'll learn Torah but you will not get the support that Torah needs how could they conquer the toughest I am sense that any Jewish Torah institution that does not suffer financial pressure you must question its authenticity because if it doesn't have any financial problems maybe it's not a genuine tor institution so British a most of the institutions that we regard as authentic do qualify for the coverage science definition yeah I think so yeah yeah you buy that you put that qualifies so British M and the like so people might say well wait a second here so why should I give money for Tory education a Shem says you're supposed to be looking you're supposed to not be on a good foundation well let me give you an analogy copper was cursed that she will give birth with great pain labor pain now in the 19th century when anesthesia was developed for childbirth there were actually Christian theologians all of whom were men who said women are not allowed to take anesthesia during childbirth because the Torah says you are supposed to suffer now the Jewish position is without getting into natural medicine or alternative medicine but by putting those issues aside a curse is not the same as a commandment in other words God did not say thou are obligated to suffer Hashem created a temper Shem created a nature it is the nature of things that childbirth has a great deal of physical suffering I am creative and nature but we are permitted to alleviate pain and suffering just as we do in every case of sickness we don't regard a pen city even a curse as a divine commandment that it has to be this way it is simply a declaration of what is the natural starting point which we are then allowed to try to alleviate and moderate same thing here it is true that God has given a sub a partial victory that the financial support of tower will be precarious but God has also given us a commandments of snuck up to try to strengthen Torah and overcome that propensity and it really is quite amazing because if you look at the amount of money that is available in the world for all sorts of projects like you wonder why is tour is so shortchanged why is there so little money photograph' compared to the resources that are devoted to entertainment and Assyrian studies and Hittite dictionaries and and all sorts of things that really have you know much much less importance but you say that there is a certain curse in which God is making us making us struggle let me just said with one final thought about this so Yaakov that asks the angel tell me your name tell me your name at the NGO till juncos I'm giving you a new name or a chef will give you a new name but the agent but the jackal gas didn't come to your name and the Angels response is la maza - shall wish me what are you asking my name so the simple meaning is as Rashi says the angel says I don't have a fixed name my name depends on whatever job Hashem has assigned me to do so sometimes it's one thing sometimes it's something else there is no name I could give you that that's what Rashi says but the Blake customers one of the great barley Musser says why are you asking my name is the name of the angel the angel is called why are you asking my name the older folks undoubtedly think of Costello who's our first exactly that but Goethe who was the guy's name etc the Angels name is why are you asking my name what type of name is that sir white craftsman gave the following Marshall well Wayne Osmond said there was a published peasant who had never been to the big town the big city and he finally arrives at the big city and he's overwhelmed with all the different things that he sees he buys a flashlight etc and then he's told if he buys a ticket and he goes into that building it's a movie theater he will see animals and people coming out of the walls amazingly they will materialize out of a solid wall no he never heard of a movie that but this is how it was described him somebody buys a ticket mm-hmm he sits in a dark room and all of a sudden he sees animal and people coming out of the walls I mean he thinks they're actually coming out of the walls and he didn't understand he had walked by the wall when he was going to his seat and he didn't see any doors how did they get him so he pulls out his big flashlight and he shines it on the wall to get a better look about that there's any hidden entrances but of course when you shine a bright light on a movie screen the picture no either sister Peters or gets obscured so people were screaming at him and they said shut your light we can only see the picture when it's dark right that's the story the black craftsman says that is a mushroom for Obama's M when you sit in darkness symbolically you don't think about the meaning of life then all sorts of things look like they're real and significance even though they're fake whether its power or whether it's money whether it's accumulation of different things it's like a movie it looks so real but it's not really there on the other hand when you're sitting in a dark movie theater you could have a bag of diamonds on the next and you may not even notice it so darkness does two things it makes you see things that aren't really there and it takes away your ability to see things that are really there when you turn on the lights the opposite happens that which isn't real disappears and then you see what is real and he said that's symbolically turning on the lights is trying to understand what is important about life so going back to Yaakov when Yaakov have created tell me your name Yaakov is really asking you know what is your power because Kabbalistic aliy a name represents the spiritual power that you have but the ariza even says when parents name a baby it is a prophecy from God regarding the nature of the babies the shove-it now we're not sensitive sensitive enough to the nuances of names to understand exactly the differences in the neshamah of repeats of Yaakov motioned of it Esther Sahra whatever it is but it is a prophecy that identifies a special co-op of the neshamah that's why a name is a big deal so Yaakov is asking the angel how do you trick people with the answer Hara how do you obscure people from seeing the truth in life and the angel answers my secret is my name my power is nobody bothers to ask what I really am meaning they live in the darkness and they don't bother to turn on the lights la maza meaning if you don't ask don't think about what I represent you can be easily fooled and easily drawn into living based on frivolity and secondary ideas so therefore Yaakov asks what's your power over people answer people don't think they don't ask they don't pose questions if they don't pose questions they live a life of inertia in which you simply go with the flow and you get into certain patterns destructive behavior and you never achieve what Hashem wants us to achieve in the world okay so that's replacement observation as to the name of Allah most of us me okay wish you all well and have a good [Music]