Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: The Time for Redemption has Arrived!

[Music] and everybody and thank you for coming in this in this weather appreciate it and obviously we're in the Parsee Oh to VCS Mizrahim and we read at the end of last week's parsha that Moshe Rabbeinu was a very reluctant messenger he argued with Arkady Sparco over and over and over again according to Casal 'god was arguing at them for an entire week and Moshe came up with every possible argument why he shouldn't go he said he's not worthy he's not great enough he doesn't speak well and then he said they're not worth if they're not great enough they don't deserve to be redeemed and the Kurdish bar who finally convinces him and Moshe says he finally goes to Pyrrha with our own and our own is his interpreter ironies and is is as intermediary and what happens is pyro makes things worse not only does he not release the Jewish people but in fact he says from now on they have to gather their own straw and they still have to still meet the quota of their bricks so Moshe Rabbeinu is very perturbed and of course the people are very angry at him at one point they greeted him enthusiastically as a potential Redeemer and then he goes in and he makes life worse for them so he's lost a lot of friends in the general Jewish population and he goes to the Almighty and he says Lama Hari oh so Leo Massa why did you make it worse Lamas Ashlock Thani why did you send me I didn't want to go wasn't it bad enough that it has to be even worse and at the beginning of this parsha God rebukes Moshe by saying I appeared to the Yabo's to the forefathers patriarchs Avram you suck in Yaakov and I made promises to them and in their lifetime they didn't see a lot of those promises but they never complained they always had faith they always knew there would come a time why should you be lacking in faith that's a real tokus cuts in Moshe Rabbeinu it's a very complicated situation you know it turns out eventually the storyline of the Torah is Moshe Rabbeinu is the greatest of all I mean that's time the basic idea and yet we find that Moshe Rabbeinu too had struggles in faith Moshe Rabbeinu too had questions Moshe Rabbeinu - of course he had here that he had a good source to ask those questions he could pose them directly to God but I think that's an important lesson in of itself that even the highest level of spiritual greatness one still has struggles in life struggles in faith and this was a true crisis of faith for Moshe Rabbeinu that everything he wanted to accomplish simply utterly failed and not only was he not successful but he made things worse and God tells him basically that no they'll be a Redemption etc in Turkish Park who uses for the shownotes of redemption this is a very well-known teaching of cos I'll tell B'nai Israel I am God I am the God that is faithful votes ACSM I will take them out of the burdens of metrium he salty Escamilla vadas um I will save them from their work go out the yes time I will redeem them bestowing the true yah with an outstretched arm Ruby Schwarz him get a limb and with great judgments but Lacock the ethically Liam and I will take them for me unto me as a nation these are called in the language of Kazan language of the Gemara are by all the show notes of gula the four terms of redemption josè see heat salty go LT love Cathy and as you know this is the primary reason it's not the only reason this is the primary reason why cause I'll vernacular that the Seder we have four cups of wine the four cups of wine are a celebration of the four terms of gula that are college bar who used in speaking to moshe rabbeinu now there actually is a fifth expression the fifth expression is the next pasa cave ACS mlrs I will bring them to the lands and because of this there is one opinion in the Gemara that actually says there have to be five cups of wine and we don't pass them that way but there actually is a minute among some to see their groups maybe because they like to drink that they do have five cups at the Seder but even though we do not have five cups of the Seder some say that that is the whole logic origin of Elijah's cup the cup of Alejo which we do not drink because the concept is that the bringing to the land is not fulfilled by the fact that we live in the land now it's a messianic prophecy of the building of the base hammock - and as a result who will announce mashiac Elio an ugly and therefore the Kosovo Leo and Navi is the cup that we will drink when Messiah comes and the fifth love shown is going to be is going to be fulfilled so we have this concept though that there are four the showiness of google and not counting 251 and that is why we have the mitzvah of the four cups of wine now the question is very obvious what exactly is the concept of the four lashauwn note of gula UCS mitzrayim was a single event Hashem took us out of material what are the four the show knows of the hula so I'm going to give you tonight two explanations one is the explanation of the nassif which is more of a rationalistic historical explanation and the other is that of the Mesha hokhmah Romare sympathy or Sameach who gives more of a spiritual explanation the missive actually points out that you see estimates rhyme was not a unitary event rather the Jewish people were freed in various stages and agree and he shows this in the program he says stage one was the following at the height of the slavery they were involved in what was called a vote dot spiracle oh that's Paris is very hard back-breaking humiliating and even worthless type of work the Gemara mentions that they were told to do construction projects where the buildings collapsed were men were commanded to do women's work women were commanded to do men's work in other words part of the Egyptian mentality was not simply to get work out of the Jews but to humiliate them to break their spirits so that's called arvo dot spareth parish means back-breaking it has two connotations there is the ranking of the back so to speak and there is the breaking of the spirit Prieta also has a psychological connotation in fact they tell the story it may be apocryphal about a fellow in a concentration camp that was turning a wheel they're doing some work and supposedly something was being done behind a wall as a result of his movements he thought he was doing some type of construction activity and then eventually he was able to see what was going on behind the wall and nothing was happening at all meaning it was totally worthless and the story goes maybe it's a legend that he committed suicide because the concept of so much work without any type of productivity is very very devastating to the human spirit in greek mythology of course that is the story of Sisyphus the ultimate punishment of pushing the boulder all the way to the top of the mountain just to have it roll down again over and over and over again no points no productivity so stage one there was the height of the slavery what's called a vote out spirit humiliation the breaking of the spirit so the first gulag that occurred during the MCOs the missive actually says that pyro did make various concessions during the MCOs so the first thing was they were niggle from a vote that's Paris but they still remained of a dim meaning to say there was no longer a campaign of humiliation and breaking their spirit right so that's the first Russia they were taken from that but they were still about them the second gulag that occurred during the MCOs and Venice it was metallic then it safe shows this by closely reading the verses was that they were redeemed from being Adam but they still were not allowed to leave Egypt and according to Kazan that actually happens on Rosh Hashanah before Pesach meaning six months before you see us mature I'm six and a half months they were no longer over there but they weren't given a passport they couldn't leave the third stage occurred tessick itself when they left and the fourth stage is when they received the Torah and that was their purpose and direction in life so the native basically says the four Lashon note of gula and the fourth was shown is specifically ma tante or overlock actually as from li liang i will take you unto me for a nation is Matt Santoro so actually they post pacer Redemption but tanishav says you'd see us with Ryan took place or the liberation of the Jews from slavery took place in four stages first they got out of the abode that's Peres second they got out of a pardon third they were able to leave fourth they were able to be Makabe vitória and again without a commission without a blackboard or whiteboard or an overhead projector it's hard for me to show you the exact wording but then it's if has a very very beautiful and intricate exegesis of the terminologies that are used in the various Mako's to indicate that although the tourist seems to present spyro as an iron wall no no no no no until the very end in fact Pyrrha was making various concessions throughout the various groups of the narcos albeit he didn't let us go until the 10th Makkah the plague of the firstborn and that's why he is magic in the language that Atari uses in describing Pyro's reaction to the Makos again a very interesting shots and historically this explains why we have for the show note of gula what's interesting is though that according to the mid sieve the fourth LeSean of gula the fourth cup is actually connected a post exodus event Matt Santoro and that's fascinating because that goes back to the idea that Pesach is always linked to Shavuos this itself is a very very significant idea Pesach is the holiday of freedom shoe Boulos is the holiday of submission to God now we can't we start counting the all mayor during Pesach itself and in many ways Pesach and Shiva are treated as one long holiday in fact the rabbinic term for the holiday of Shavuot is at Sarat at saris in the Mishnah does not mean SH mean yet service at service and the mission of means Shavuos and what does that saris mean conclusion Shavuos is the conclusion of Pesach odka decock that the Ramban remarks that the 49 days of counting of the omer are considered to be whole Hamo waits as if to say you know Pesach has its own color mode but essentially you have one long holiday Pesach divorce and all the days of the Omer are considered to be colum OE now you got to be careful not to take this overly literally if you tell your boss for example you don't work Colombo 8 and you don't show up between paisa fans and schools you know you may not have the job waiting for you at that particular point but spiritually it's one holiday now why is that so because the essence of the torah's teaching is freedom has meaning only when it is coupled with responsibility and submission to God a freedom that is not linked to submission is worthless and not only worthless but it's destructive you know it's important to understand this very basic it's really simple idea freedom cannot be a purpose of life you can't say the purpose of my life is to be free free to do what free to be what the most you can say about freedom is freedom is an enabler that gives me the opportunity to do what I'm supposed to be doing with my life but freedom itself is not a purpose and that's why the Torah constantly connects Pesach and Shoeless number one by spirit to Omer is the outstanding example number two cuz I'll make the point that the grain offering that is brought on Pesach is a barley offering which was typically before cholent was invented was typically fed to animals the grain offering that's broad and Shavuos is wheat which is human consumption Pesach is animal liberation Shavuos turns into human dignity a Pesach without a shovel us you're no better than an animal in fact I'll share with you a speculation that I had again I'm not sure if it's right Ashkenazi I'm have a custom and show me a custom some people treat it like a sacrosanct thing but it's a midnight that after you eat the matzah and the morrow and you're about to start the meal the very first thing you have is a hard-boiled egg it's not a feel but this is a custom and the reason why we have a hard-boiled egg again there are a few reasons is that a hard-boiled egg because of its oval shape is the food that we give a mourner right right after and the Leviathan mourner eats is a hard-boiled egg because technically a lentil there could be a bean as well but has to be something oval because that represents the Wheel of Life that even though there are difficult times even though there are hard times but life does get better do not despair right so the egg is a food of comforts it represents what is called gaugau tacos air the wheel that turns there are going to be hard times there are going to be good times do not be despondent when times are tough do not be overconfident and arrogance when times are good you know the famous med rich the hemella I wanted to make a ring the would give him the wisest advice that anyone could give him and the advice that was inscribed on the ring was GoM's a Yavor this too shall pass whatever whatever it is this too shall pass so the egg is the food we give to a mourner so what does that have to do with the seder because the Knights of the Seder is the same night later in the year or the ninth of us meaning if the Seder is Sunday night Monday is the first day of Pesach tisha Bob will be Sunday night Monday etc so therefore we think about Tish above Lael Seder especially since we don't have the carbon peso and we think about that and we yearn for it and we pine for it and we even have a little bit of sadness now in Judaism there's never any coincidences why would it be so based on the Jewish calendar that it is inevitable that the night of the Seder is always the night of the ninth of us so here is my speculation I don't have any source for it and that is the following the first night of Pesach is the only part of Pesach that is not yet linked to matin toha because we don't begin counting the all Meir till the second night so night one represents pure freedom that is not yet connected to responsibility so what's the lesson a freedom that is not connected to Torah leads to tisha buf leads to korban leads to gulls and this is a very important idea because Erich Fromm was happen to be Jewish but he was hardly a religious person Erich Fromm once remarked that we make a very big mistake when we define freedom as freedom from something that's only a negative freedom has to be towards something it has to be towards a goal and one needs to think hard and strong as to what is my life about and that is why there's a linkage but the point I'm making from the missive is that in spite of the fact that there's no Omer there is still an illusion - Matt Santora even the first night because that is according to the missive the fourth cup the fourth cup that is corresponding to the language from Lacaze as from me liam is actually much on tourists so in the sense that almost undermines the thought that i just said because you actually are bringing in at least symbolically of course many people wouldn't realize this symbol but you are bringing in Matt Santoro even the first night via the gula of the fourth cup and finally I'm not going to move to the metric LACMA but one other point there was a marvelous Indian poets who died the number of years ago Tagore II who again was not writing about Judaism at all I'm not even sure if he knew any Jews probably did and to glory once gave a beautiful metaphor for the notion of submission and he said a human soul is like a violin string within every one of us there's a tremendous capacity for music for beauty for radiance for holiness for goodness now take a violin string and put it on the table totally loose unencumbered not tied down no responsibility so to speak what music can you get out of that string can't get anything so paradoxically on some level the ability of the string to express the beauty within is only when the string is tied down so we think submission to God studies us it squashes us it takes away our creativity it takes away our ability to self actualize when in reality it is only that submission that will give you the maximum ability to do it and I think about a second totally secular analogy if you want to say for example let's take something like music in art so let's say you listen to a jazz musician who does a lot of riffs there's a lot of improv and you say I want to play the trombone like that so you never had lessons before so you start taking lessons and your music teacher tells you you got to practice scales for the next three hours say I don't want to do scales don't ring me for you do that a hundred times I want to do rips but here's the thing if you try to be creative without submitting to technique and mastery you're no better than a two-year-old a two-year-old can also pick up well I don't know if he has a lunch yet but whatever you can pick up a musical instrument and start blowing into it or start banging piano keys so one has to understands that's the ability even to be creative the ability to improvise the ability to be individualistic is also a function of first submitting yourself to a certain regimen and a certain discipline and then you can fly if you simply want to fly without first being grounded you go into the stratosphere and you simply disappear and therefore the idea that I want to be creative I want to be me I want to be an individual I don't want to be locked into boundaries well Judaism and we talked about this many many times Judaism certainly wants us to be individuals wants us to be creative wants us not to be monochromatic now sociologically why that doesn't always happen is an interesting question but do not confuse the sociology of Jewish religious communities with what the Torah itself encourages and fosters but in order to have that creativity you have to be rooted in submission to the will of a color Sparkle and that is why the freedom of Pesach is always linked to the submission to our cottage partner and then it sieve locates that in the fourth law shown of ghoul okay so that is kind of than it saves understanding of the for the show notes of gula so now let me mention the thought of the metric augment the metric ocular points out that the reason there are four terms of gula that are utilized is because when a nation or a person is enslaved over a long period of time there are four distinct dangers that they face so the for the show notes of gula are not chronological stages of redemption rather it was a unitary redemption but there were four cycles that we faced from which we had to be saved and that's why there are four leshawna's of gula what are the four dangerous so dangerous in I elation when you're a slave your life your physical existence is very precarious you might be killed by a taskmaster you might die of disease I mean again thinking about the Holocaust disease starvation brutality hard work I was gonna say marching in the snow that probably was not a problem in Egypt but but whatever it might be or dehydration dying in the heat heatstroke could certainly be something so whether it was the Egyptians intentionally killing babies or whether it was the brutality of a taskmaster that killed you if you didn't meet your quota or whether it was dying of disease or starvation there was no question that physical survival was a major problem and therefore the concept was the first Sakana that you faced is that a physical annihilation from which you need God's Redemption the second problem you face is that of spiritual disintegration that over a long period of time you lose your values either you become assimilated to the values of the host country or generally through the Koshi Ashi bud the difficult inhumane conditions you lose faith in God indeed this happened to the Jewish people over the years that they were enslaved most of the Jewish people were idolaters they worshipped idols they stopped doing brits Mila only shaven Lavy remains faithful odd kid a that at the splitting of the Red Sea the sea didn't want to split for the Jews the sea basically said why are the Jews better than the Egyptians the Egyptians worship idols the Jews worship idols so over over a long period of time one spiritual sense of values can certainly disintegrate and this is the meaning of Casals famous teaching that the Jewish people had hit the 49th level of impurity and indeed four-fifths of the Jews hit 50th level and they did die so that's the kind of number two and that is the loss of your spiritual values and your connection to God and but well even if it's not a question of assimilating to the host culture but when one's whole preoccupation is on basic survival and again if you think about the concentration camps you can see a number of examples one no longer thinks so to speak of high in noble thoughts life is about getting that piece of bread life is about fighting to get that last bit of space or whatever it is and that can sometimes have a tragically dehumanizing effect on a person's spiritual nature Baruch Hashem in the case of the Holocaust we have numerous numerous examples of people who rose above it but unfortunately we also have numerous examples of people who were broken by it and again obviously none of us are in any position to be critical or to be judgmental because we certainly do not know how we would have responded to the awesome challenge that that presented but it is an undisputed phenomenon that this can break your spirit and in many ways dehumanize you turn you into an animal of some sort that is a cunning number two from which God had to salvage us redeem us Sakana number three the metric of my sense a slave loses an initial overlap with second with the losing spirituality a slave will lose a sense of history those of you at least from the United States may remember and that was in the sixties of the 70s the phenomenon of roots roots was a book and then it became a TV show it was a movie as well a black writer Alex Haley traced his ancestors and it turned out that they were royalty in Ghana and eventually they became American slaves they were brought over to the United States there was some many some accusations that he made up parts of the book to get into that that particular issue but he wrote very very eloquently about the idea that slaves who were separated from their families often grew up without a sense of their history they had no sense of where they came from they didn't realize they came from nobility they came from great people that came from people of accomplishment it's as if they were born into nothing and that is a tragedy of a slave that a slave no longer as a connection to his roots and can no longer have pride in their origin and as the old saying goes if you don't know where you came from you can't really have a sense of where you need to go so that was kinda number three that the Jewish people faced a lack or potential a lack of historical consciousness then finally we have sacani number four which is connected and that is lack of hope at some point in life every day slavery torture humiliation beatings at some point a person gives up at some point a person no longer has a vision that life will be any better and that is very fatal even in terminal illness there are actually scientific studies although some of them might be anecdotal but they are in medical journals let's say that when a person truly has come to the decision there is no hope the body itself begins to shut down in various ways it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy when you have no hope the situation physiologically becomes hopeless because the body responds to that decision there's even some anecdotal evidence as bizarre as this sounds that people who believe in voodoo if you believe that if somebody sticks a pin into your effigy you're gonna drop dead if you believe that I mean it's crazy belief and you see your enemy stick a pin in your energy you might drop that we can call that a reverse placebo effect right that in other words just like people think if I think the sugar pill is going to heal me I get better if I think the pin is going to kill me I die it's a reverse reverse placebo there is this concept see if I can say elderly people who have really significant event coming up I'm going you keep some going absolutely so absolutely so sometimes a person will will themselves and Hashem goes along with it a person wills themselves to stay alive for the wedding of a grandchild or a graduation or something and then they die right afterwards one story I'll tell you the greater of simcha Vassar man who was the only surviving son of the gun rebel Hyman Rassman who died in the Holocaust so simple of a sermon was a great great great man but he in his repeted no children and they devoted their lives to spreading Torah in all sorts of locations that were remote and when he said it's not good for you for us to travel she said if God did not give me children it's because you should have the time and the energy to spread to her she was an utterly selfless woman when her husband died she said the following she said this I do not want to live anymore because I cannot live without him but a man like him needs somebody to sit Shiva for him it can't be that nobody was the chair of him so she sat Shiva for him the day after Shiva she ties that she completed Shiva and she died I mean she literally said I have to sit Shiva for him because he was such a great man which indeed he was so that's an example of someone willing themselves I'll die after ship amazing the mind-body connection is something that you know even though the physicians you know can't fully understand but this is the idea of hope hope and a slave at some point loses hope and when you lose hope you become irredeemable so the metric customer says the following the notion that there are four the show note of Gulu la corresponds to for sake knows that we face the Sakonnet to our physical life the Sakana that spiritually will become dehumanized and lose our values of generosity and caring this Arcana that will that we will not be connected to our history and the Sakana that we will lose hope that there will ever be a better future so now listen to what the metric of me says and I actually mentioned this house out last week but I'm gonna come back to it he says as a general rule in order to merits God's Redemption you have to engage in some behavior that elicits the response from above in the language of Kabbalah this is called ISA Russa Dilla Tata that's his Aramaic for an awakening from below brings us a Russa dilemma the awakening from above so if indeed we faced four dangers and God had to redeem us from this four dangers there must have been some behaviors on our part got addressed those dangers which elicited the divine blessing and here the measured hokhmah quotes the Messiah that I mentioned last week that says that although the Jews were in the 49th level of impurity there were four merits that they had that preserved them and again there are different listings in different magician but we're going with the Messiah the four merits are they did not change their names they did not change their language they did not intermarry they remained faithful to their wives and the fourth was they did not speak loshon Hara against each other to death temporary advantages or the or the light so the men shakakwa wants to say these four behaviors correspond they counteract the four dangers and this is how we set that up so I'm going to take them out of order to correspond with the dangers that we enumerated he said if danger number one was physical danger to our physical survival the best way we counteract that is by not speaking loshon Hara against each other now he does not mean because of spiritual reasons he's not talking about learning how to eat I am etc but he means that when you're a persecuted community and there is so much temptation to inform on other people in order to get temporary advantages just as let's RA know some Jews in fact did during the Holocaust most of the time we did not help them the only way you can preserve your physical existence is if you have a united front we don't crack we don't give in this is our community we have artists the famous statement of either Thomas Paine or Benjamin Franklin we have to hang together or otherwise we shall surely hang separately and therefore the Metra customer says the not speaking Russian hara which is artist which is unity we're not gonna give in we're not going to betray each other we're not going to be unfaithful or disloyal that is what enabled our physical survival through thick and thin and again you see this idea in the Holocaust people often were on the verge of dying because of marches or whatever it is but only because somebody picked them up somebody said to them don't die stay alive keep going that enabled some people to survive you see this in countless stories about how a sister took her sister and said you can't go no they'll be rich Israel you know you'll meet you know you'll meet different people etc right so these not speaking loshon Hara is symptomatic of United Front United Front is what maximizes our chances for physical survival now second Sakana was the challenge to our spiritual values because of the process of dehumanization what behavior did we have that managed to salvage our humanity in our spiritual essence the meta hokhmah says the faithfulness of husbands and wives to each other because essentially what that means is the relationship of a man and a woman the connection of a husband and a wife is a sanctuary of holiness it is a base of McNish and therefore even amidst the greatest tumor when there was a loving relationship of husband and wife that kept the divine presence just as was I'll say when a man and a wife live in peace and Shalom and harmony the Shekinah is with them and therefore what protected us from spiritual destruction which was the relationship of husband and wife each vicious Justyna Sharia bainham that is why as you've heard in countless chevre Bravo's Ayesha Anisha they have the same two letters of our affection but each has a youth yah has a hey Jordan hey are one of God's names ha we pronounce it so what that means is when God is in the marriage everything's wonderful take God out of the marriage you have h h is a destructive fire of selfishness and egotism so now you see where the magic arm is going magic arm is going with the idea that what protects us physically is our unity and togetherness what protects us spiritually is the strength of our marital bond now the third Sakana was lack of history not being connected to the roots here the metric LACMA says this could be addressed by not changing their names he makes the point now given this may be a little anachronistic so it's a little of a problem for me that Jews historically named after ancestors although again I think there's a problem because you don't necessarily see that in Tanakh but if you go with the idea that we name people after ancestors fry them do it even after ancestors who are alive astronaut them do it only after people that are dead but that makes no difference it still named after people of the past what that does is that reminds every child that you don't come from nowhere you come from another homage it's like a Yaakov and Moshe I saw a rifka a Rockley Devorah an ester it connects you to the past it reminds you that you come from something and even if a person is a gehrer so they don't physically genealogically come from something but their name is a spiritual connection to me I am spiritually I am a child of Avraham and Sarah because I embrace the teachings of Abraham and Sarah and therefore they are truly my father and my mother perhaps even more so than somebody who might be born but does not connect to those teachings Ketchel hu is not biological connection but the issue is I connect myself to that path fact in Yiddish it's such a beautiful thing you know in Yiddish we have all of these diminutive names for children bobollo mom alert hi fella and sometimes people just use them indiscriminately I just call a kid to Allah but think exactly what those words mean tequila is when a child was named after your father taco el Amin's little daddy little mami little bubby little Sadie what is that telling a child he says you know you're named after somebody very special somebody very good someone that we have so much covered for we don't even refer to them by name but we just calls a diva beaba EEMA mama love tequila those are not just you know interchangeable terms of endearment they actually have specific meanings so the metric hokhmah says the concept of not changing names is your linkage to history and that gives you strength and courage to go on because I don't come from garbage as a slave might think I come from greatness either genealogically or spiritually no the final Sakana was lack of hope things will not get better over and over again everyday torture abuse humiliation work go to sleep for a few hours start the same thing over and over again never-ending well think about the notion of not changing a language you know there are a lot of languages there are kind of dead languages Latin now somewhere know around 50 60 years ago Latin was a very commonly taught language and in fact in some professional schools you needed to learn Latin and until recently I think that's at least a valedictorian addresses in Harvard required three speeches by different people one in Greek Latin and Hebrew in addition to somebody I guess for it is somebody that in English as well but that's not true anymore Latin is more or less a dead language even within the Roman Catholic Church some of the old Catholics are against it but you know the official doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church is that mass may be pronounced with all Russia just that creates vacuum people call Russia and will have deal man a mass can also be call Russia now think about this Latin was the language of the Roman Empire the most powerful empire that the world has probably ever known the biggest the richest the most powerful it's a dead language Brina I mean we have Latin dictionaries but it's more or less a dead language why aren't people trying to revive Latin because we don't anticipate there will be a resurgence of the Roman Empire Yale University produced an assyrian dictionary to be sure but we don't really have people clamoring to take courses in a syria because you know frankly there's not going to be an assyrian empire so languages are spoken only when there's kind of a reasonable possibility that these will become a civilization that will use this language so think about it we're languishing as slaves in Matera generation after generation but we continue to teach and speak to our children in motion our kodesh what are we communicating to those slave children we're telling them yes we're slaves but we're speaking this language lashonna kodesh because there will come a time that we're gonna be redeemed I don't know if it'll be in your lifetime or my lifetime I don't know when but that time is coming and when that time comes we're gonna go to our lands and we will need the language and this is the language that we're going to speak the teaching of leshawna kodesh when freedom seems to be an impossibility from the rational perspective is the greatest affirmation of faith in gula that one could imagine the idea that we're not going to be slaves forever and therefore we have to preserve this language that's why you know Eliezer ben-yehuda early Azure Perlman he was born as a he Russian Jew who really became a fanatic I mean he was a fanatic in terms of Russian akagi's I mean his wife didn't even know he broke when they came when he came to Palestine Israel and he did not allow her to speak he prohibited her from speaking either Russian or Yiddish in the house and for a while he couldn't say anything you have to talk and if story actually goes we actually knew this son wrote a by wrote a biography thing his name was Ben seoane and he was a slow talker because you know his father wasn't around his mother was not allowed to talk so she kind of listened to her husband but and therefore he was already four years old and he wasn't talking because he never heard of me any words so finally one day and Leah's it but you to comes home early and he hears his wife singing a Russian lullaby to the son so he was so furious he broke a chair so the son's first words were and whatever Yiddish I think no no don't do it yeah so if you said he the way what made him finally talk was this idea of they said fanatical response but the truth the mother Zoe as we do is a controversial person in in the religious world because he actually was no he was not religious he he opposed a lot of the religious world the only rabbi that befriended him was rough cook and he used to go to rough cook every Friday to ask her if cooked che lots about the meaning of words in mid Russian and Gomorrha which he could then incorporate into modern Hebrew so he was not interested in the teachings per se but he was interested in linguistics of what various words go they tell a story this is a total digression but it's it's as I said a beautiful story that one Friday he came to rough cook and he spent an hour asking rough cooked different questions about this word and that word and that word because a lot of his dictionary was you know he made up a lot of words obviously he coined a lot of words and a lot of his words were taken from Talmudic and midrashic sources that's why by there if you ever get a hold of his dictionary well he has given you this dictionary like 11 volumes it is actually a very interesting book to read because he actually gives you animala geez of all the words he made up which is quite quite interesting Midrash him and Gomorrah and so are you know differen different sources but the story goes that after he spoke to have cooked at Friday or if cook said to him in Everett of course Eliezer F sharp as man hadiyyah-lah so shuva maybe the time has come to do chuhwa hmm how about it and Eliezer answered f shall shall have so deck perhaps the Rav is correct that's Friday night Eliezer ben-yehuda died in Yerushalayim as the custom is we do Levias right away so the ouvea was mode say Shabbat let's say Shabbat it was well attended but not by the religious community none of the rub on him came except they say rough cook came and Ruth cooks hispid was that the Rambam says even if a person does chuva right before their death they are considered as righteous in the eyes of God and the only ezra Pena who did he consider to be about Shiva by the words of shahe Ralph so Dec the of cooker cook was the great optimist to always put a positive spin on everything but in truth apart from whether Elia Japan you did true VAR did not do chuhwa the very fact that he was so instrumental in the revival of the Hebrew language whatever his motivation was itself is a tremendous support because remember that one of the supply out of the Jews in me triumph was lo she knoweth leshawna now I understand if you really want to be critical you could argue well if rich and will show narco - are not exactly the same okay they're not exactly the same but they're pretty closely related I mean they're you know they're at least first cousins and probably closer to brothers so I think we could subsume even modern Ifrit into the lotion or what was shown um that they maintained the the language but the metric Hockman is saying so now do you see the point here the point that mr. kaufman is making is that the for the show note of Gulu la are because we suffered four dangers and we needed God to redeem us from those four dangers but in order for God to redeem us from those four dangers we had to have behaviors in our own life that countermand those dangers and therefore if danger number one is danger to our physical lives our behavior was united front we didn't speak less an era against each other if danger number two is the dehumanization of losing the essence of refinement and goodness and care that was faithful to our wives the preservation of that marital bonds kept you a human being if danger number three was not having a sense of history or roots our behavior was we kept our names that removed us for the past and if danger number four was lack of hope that things could ever be different that was addressed by teaching mahjong ha'qodesh speaking wasana Kodesh that is telling our children we're not going to be here forever as bad as the situation seems which means those four behaviors are the asar Russa dela Tata the arousing from below that gets us the asaru Sidhu Laila the arousal from above so one final point just to complete this circle we know that the four cups of wine are positioned in four different places in the Seder right the first cup of wine is drunk after kiddush the second cup of wine is drunk after we conclude the Haggadah the Marga the narrative of your theater material the third cup of wine we recite benching over baccata Mazzone and then we drink it and the fourth cup of wine we recite Jaleo and then we drink it by the way it's important to understand this you're not just drinking the wine you're reciting things over wine so the first cup we recite kiddush over a cup of wine the second cup we recite Haggadah over a cup of wine the third cup we recite benching over a cup of wine the fourth cup we recite how though there's this is her luckily important if a person were to say for example I'm gonna recite the Hagana and when it's time to drink the wine in our pour a second cup like you might wonder why does that gotta always say like by the mannish Tana pour the second cup you might think hey I'm not gonna drink consider for another hour this is very important the Mitzvah of Arabic osos is not simply to drink the wine it is to recite portions of the Haggadah over a cup of wine I recite kiddush over wine I recite Haggadah over wine I recite bearcats Amazon over wine I recite halal oh boy in fact bris peers have a corner that the wine that you drink has to be the same line that you recited so they say the following if I recited Hurghada over a cup of wine and then that cup of wine spilled and I got to fill another cup I got to say the Haggadah again because drinking the other cup doesn't count because that's not the cup of wine over which I recited I got it correct amazingly that that's how much more they are it could be maybe if there's something left but the idea and most of the time I guess there would be but that's how important the recitation is so listen to the metric utmost final point he says that if we have for the show note of gula and they correspond to four dangers and they are addressed by four responses in our brain this actually explains what each cup means in the Seder itself because cup number one is kiddush kiddush is sanctification sanctification refers to the relationship of husband and wife which indeed what is one of the terms for marriage key douche in holiness sanctification so the first cup is the celebration of the marital bonds that enabled us to remain holy and goods even in the middle of the dehumanization of slavery when I say holy I mean in a relative sense because Lamesa we were still on the 49th level of impurity but that saved us from the 50th now the second coast is Haggadah what is hagatha Margot Margot is the history of the Jewish people to remember our past remember the love that God showed our forefathers in the miracles of mitzrayim that corresponds to not changing our names which are linked to the past and therefore the first cup addresses spiritual integrity this is out of orders not the same honor the second cup represents connection to the past now Birkett Amazon this is a little less obvious but obviously the primary theme of Birkett Amazon is gratitude gratitude for what God has given us when there's gratitude for what God has given me I'm not jealous of you if I'm not jealous of you I can live with you in harmony so therefore Birgit Amazon is a prayer and a ritual that promotes solidarity unity and Octus by ensuring that each person is some Mayock Basilico happy with their lives and that corresponds to the not speaking loshon Hara the group solidarity that in turn guaranteed our physical survival we finally come to holla now if you remember the Seder you will remember that Hallows actually split up there is two paragraphs of Hallel that we recite before the second cup as part of the maggots and then there is the rest of how well that we recite after the meal and that hallow people often I mean sometimes when it's not so knowledgeable they sometimes skip that part of the Seder that's very very sad that's a very very important part of the seder and why is the hollow split so the commentaries basically say this the the most prominent idea is that the first two paragraphs of how L refer to you CS mitzrayim the exodus of Egypt and you're thanking us them for the past that's why it's connected to Margot but the hell that you're saying after the meal is no longer focused on the past it is looking to the future it is the Halal of machines the Halal of redemption that is why it is introduced by opening the door for Elio Hanavi who is the announcer of machine so what is the Howell about hope faith so it's a beautiful symmetry here for dangers for redemptions for behaviors and for positionings of that cut in the seder spiritual salvation physical survival connection to the past hope for the future that is the hollow of afterwards and that's why there is something very magical about the Howell after the seder because it really is the challah love machine the downside is this is the religion this is maybe part of the problem one number one it's late number two you've already have three cups of wine so you're a little intoxicated but number three you're not allowed to be mop stick so in the market we have all sorts of discussions and commentaries once you're saying the Hallel you're not allowed to interrupt the challah so as a result there's less opportunity there's no opportunity really for discussion so you have to compensate by singing it so if you're up to it it's a very beautiful thing to to bird Africa sing the Hallel of lille Pesa and that gives you more of a sense that you're connecting yourself to a messianic experience so you should all have a good week and again thank you for coming [Music]