Rav Yitzchak Breitowitz: Allowing the Lessons of Tzarat to Penetrate Our Hearts

[Music] You see your tomorrow [Music] Okay. Hi everybody. Thank you for thank you for coming. Um I uh first uh want to say that obviously tonight uh is um a designated day in the Israeli calendar. But really every every Jew and every religious secular whatever you are is someone should think about this. This is Yomi Kuron. Uh this is the day that has been designated to remember uh the sacrifices of those who died. uh in order to defend the Jewish people and defend uh the security of Erit Israel and uh unfortunately people are still dying to this very day and it's a time in which we remember them we honor them and we pray to aesh that we should be giving the braos of shalom uh so there will no longer be the occasion of Jewish blood uh being shed. Uh there is a famous uh story that they tell about the greatlman orbach whose yeshiva cola was is was and is in Bayagan which is near Mount Herzel the military cemetery that one of his students once told him that he was going up toat to be able to davin at the graves of the sadikim the Arizal or Joseph Kairo big big sadikim are invat and said why do you have to shle so far to go to Kit Sadikim. He says when I feel I want to dab in by the kev of its I just go to the military cemetery on Mount Herzel which is right right next to bay vagan and that's where I dab by the grave of its because a person who gave his life for Ami Israel is righteous. Now there are two versions of the story so I don't want to take sides which is the authentic version. Some say that he said this even if the even if the soldier did not keep other mitzvot others say he said if he's a shmer mitzvot and he does this okay be it as it may uh there's a great great sus for those who give their lives for for am is therefore you know in this in Israel everything becomes a debatable issue everything becomes pmical everything becomes uh controversy do you stop for the siren uh is a question of imitating you know gush him and hug him of moments of silence. You know the truth of the matter is there are enough real issues that divide us on many many things that we don't need to make up fake issues. There's nothing wrong and everything right in honoring people who made great great sacrifices for Israel. So whether you stand still or whatever it would be say kapah to hillm you know that's nothing to fight over that this ought to be maybe one thing that uh we should be able to agree upon and again I want to dedicate this year tonight that it should beam and they should go to higher and higher levels in Ghana. Um and again our our normal dedication praying for the victory of our soldiers and all of the fronts of the war, the lasting unity of of Amy Israel, for all of those whose health has been affected, for the safe return of all of the hostages. I just heard or saw that at this point um Natano or Siri Netanyo said there are only 24 or less uh that are still alive. We hope that is not true. We hope there are more but whoever is alive should be returned and uh those even who are dead they should be brought to Kev Kev Israel. Um now Aliat Nishama uh Lieba Ahuva Basihir uh dedicated by Dina Mark and Braha Fleshman. Mark as well as Rabi Fleshman. Here I do have to talk a little bit. Um, uh, Lee Huva Libby Fleshman as we knew her, Zakron Lraa, uh, was our neighbor in Silver Spring, Maryland, uh, for, uh, 25 years. She and her husband Dab Yehuda Fleshman. Uh, she was a great great sad, a modest woman, a righteous woman, a woman who was Mabel Kadeser Panim Yos at all times. uh among many other things, she was a teacher and she was also the mikvah lady for the for the community and uh just she was a very beloved person simply because uh she loved you just as I always mentioned the verse that water reflects back the face that you show the water. So too uh when a human being treats you with love and respect, you feel love and respect uh for that person and again it's a tremendous tremendous loss not only to her family but really to Claw Israel because she really was her life was a life of Kdesh Hashem and to her husband Rabhuda Fleshman he should be well uh was was uh professionally a mik for many many years I don't know how many years, 60 years, 70 I I don't in in that range between 60 and 70 years probably. And uh he and Libby went to many many communities till they finally wound up in Silver Spring. And then few years ago, they relocated to Baltimore to be closer to their children. And once again, uh he is a is a person not just was, is a person whose whole life is a life of keshm. And together they were a real pair. Together they really made the name of Hashem beloved in the eyes of all who knew them. So I'm very personally very very gratified that I have the opportunity to say some words about the about Libby and her husband. Uh and really all of the family they they raised. Obviously they they were never rich uh in any any gashmistic way. uh and yet they were rich in kaduca and rich in rrooknas and the kadeshb who blessed them that all of their children and grandchildren and great grandchildren are ben and bos tora that are okorra uh uva mitzvah in fact uh I have to insert a little bit of a tiny personal story involving my son uh one of their daughters that's mentioned here Braha Fleshman Mark but she was Braha Fleshman she was uh she used to be one of the babysitters for my son. Now, when my son was growing up, he had this idea, which actually makes sense to me. But even when he was very young, he didn't like people watching him sleep, you know. He So, so he always would tell u tell my wife, tell his mother that, you know, tell the babysitter not to watch me when I'm sleeping. Uh and then when Bra was going to come over one night, so my wife said to him to Moshe, uh should I tell Braha not to watch you sleep? and he said, "Braa always knows what to do. She always does it right. You don't you don't have to you don't have to tell her." Uh, by the way, another babysitter uh came over with her friend to watch uh to babysit my son and they did watch him sleep. Uh but the friend that came along to watch him sleep uh became his wife around uh around 25 years later. So, you know, you don't know. So that's the one person who did watch him sleep. But okay, bes. But anyway, be as it may, um, you know, Clav Israel really needs families like this. And uh, when we lose at least part of a family like this, it is really a loss. But we try to walk in their ways or try to learn from them and by learning from them, they kind of remain in the world because the goodness that they created continues to be an influence. So he zikra and then finally tonight's learning is dedicated to all of the precious souls who gave their lives for the Jewish people. Uh but you know just like people say you know Judaism doesn't have a mother's day or a father's day because the mitzvah of kim says you got to honor your parents every day. So in some ways we can even say every single day we think about the people who gave their lives uh to save Claw Israel or to help Cloud Israel. Okay. So that's just a little bit of uh introductory material that I wanted to uh share with you. um the uh para uh here you know when people you know people are very scared of Aayikra right people love I think there's even a passage in Janeire uh where Janeire was a precocious little girl is talking about her love of the Bible and she says I love Genesis and Exodus some of Exodus because of the interesting stories but when I get to Leviticus it's a little hard for me to hold interest and uh Vayikra is known known to be very very scary in terms of its detail. And if we had to pick maybe the most complicated part of it actually is this para where we get into a true labyrinth of all of the manifold of leprosy. It begins okay it begins with childbirth and it does begin with the idea that a woman after childbirth must bring a sacrifice. And it's interesting theory discusses why does a woman after childirth bring a sacrifice. Now the initial thing we might have thought is well it's a thanksgiving offering. It's thanking Hashem. But actually it's not a corbin toad. It's not a thanksgiving offering. Uh there is a sin offering that's involved. Why would a woman have to bring a sin offering after child birth? So the Gomorrah says because in many cases labor pains might be so extreme that you know before anesthesia that a woman might swear that she never wants to go through this again which is a sinful statement to make. So she has to bring an atonement for that particular reason. Uh whatever the reason. Uh but that's the hak of childbirth. And to this very day, uh by the way, I want to point out that when Mashiach comes and the B mikdash is rebuilt, uh all the mothers are going to owe a lot of back taxes because uh just because the child was born when there was no basikdash, that doesn't exempt you from the corban, right? So you got to keep a record of corbanos that are going to be owed to the basikdash toad when the basikdash is going to be rebuilt. But as soon as we finish the reference to childbirth as well as circumcision because it's also mentioned again besides to it's also mentioned uh in this para after childirth we then get into uh the labyrinth of sarat. Now sorat is commonly translated uh in in English as leprosy right that's how uh the English term is but but obviously sorat is not the disease that we know today actually we don't even call it today leprosy that used to be called leprosy which is Hansen's disease or whatever it is in fact the closest thing soras is is psoriasis the word psoriasis is relatively close to what soras actually is uh and uh some people like to say, "Oh, the fact that the one that has the leprosy is quarantined uh shows that the Torah anticipated communicable disease." But as the Rambam points out, that's not really EMS. Uh because Soras is not a contagious disease in a physical or biological sense. We'll talk about the quarantine in a moment, but it's not because you catch Saras. You don't catch Saras by being in proximity to a mitzvah. And the Rambam also points out that if Saras were a medical problem, it should be handled by a doctor rather than a cohane. And yet every aspect of Saras is handled by a cohane. This indicates therefore the Rambam who of course was a great doctor himself. This indicates the Rambam concludes that Saras is a physical manifestation of a spiritual problem. And what is that spiritual problem? So it depends. There's saras of the person. There's saras of clothing. There's soras of a house. And each one has different aos. The primary sin of saras of the person is lon speaking negatively or derogatorily about other people. And in fact the very word mit comes from he who says bad things about others. Uh foradim for clothing it is called gasut haruak that is arrogance hubris ga. And for saras of the houses it is it is an an excessive craving for money or materialism. And the Ramban points out in some sense although Saras does impose great hardships on people as we'll go through it. It is actually a braha because God is telling you exactly what you need to correct in your life. And that's that's a pretty good thing. You know, people always complain, "If only Hashem would tell me what I need to fix." When there was Saras, you got that feedback. And that's why the Ramban points out that Saras only existed as long as there was nva, as long as there was prophecy. Because Saras in a negative way, it's not a way that we we we welcome. But Sarah is a form of prophecy. God is giving you direct unmediated uh messages. Now that doesn't mean you always got it and that I mean I'm I'm sure listen if if if if every time a person spoke lash and har would be then 99.9% of Israel 99.9% of the time would be we don't have statistics I can't tell you what percentage of the population when there was a ba mikdash were mitim at any time but I think it's safe to say it was a very very small percentage. And so who gets it? Who who who gets the misfortune of the lottery, so to speak. So you could look at it two ways. I honestly don't know. You could say that Saras afflicted the most righteous because only the most righteous were held so accountable that if they misststepped, they got Saras. Or you could say the other way around. It only affected the people who not who were occasional violators, but it affected the people who did diveros over and over and over again. So you could look at Saras as something that was given to the worst of the worst or something that was given to the best of the best or maybe both ideas were operating at the same time. We just don't have the information. There are of course cases of mitsurra that are mentioned in the Torah and of course in the Torah those who had Saras tend to be very great. there is Miriam and earlier there is Moshe Rab right those are the two examples uh in the book of Malim we have Ghazi and his three sons who were considered rishim and they were uh the original servants of Alicia and they did not behave properly and and they were given Sarah so you see it both ways as well as one case of a non-Jewish Msra Naman uh so you don't really have a clear biblical record of how often this was, but it's very clear that Saras was seen as a physical sign of God that a person must do chuva, a person must repent, a person must uh improve their ways. Now, the uniqueness of the mitsura is the f let's okay, let's go over it. Now, mitsura soras is very complicated. In fact, people have pointed out a very interesting thing. If you were to make a list of what are considered to be the most important parts of Judaism, so you would mention Shabas, you would mention kosher, uh the laws of family purity. And yet if you look at the number of sukim, the number of words devoted to Shabas and the number of words devoted to Kash and the number of words devoted to Brit, which is even much less than Shabas and Kashras, uh it is much much less. It is less than half the number of sukim devoted to leprosy. Leprosy gets I'm using leprosy even though it's not the disease called leprosy. Leprosy gets more than double of the most important mitzvot of Judaism. Way out of proportion. And it's an enormously complicated typology because we have the soras of the person, soras of the garments, soras of the home. And then within soras of the person, we have plain soras which is called saras of the flesh. We have soras in hairy areas of the body such as the scalp and the beard. And then we have uh soras that comes after a burn or a bruise. And each of them have different laws. They're totally different. And the Kish goes into so much detail. And then we have a track whole trackctate of Mishna which is one of the most complex trackctates of Mishna dealing with all of the details of Tarz. So in the toes of in the toes in the variety of different types enormously enormously enormously complicated. I still remember um some of us have nightmares about this. Um when I came to Ner Israel, the yes in Baltimore as a high school student in ninth grade, you know, from Hartford, Connecticut. So one of our one of our duties as students was we were supposed to learn the para with Rashi every week and we would get a test Friday morning. So, I remember that I wasn't able to get to learn the para until Thursday night, but I figured, okay, Thursday night, I'll stay up a few hours. I'll go over the para with Rashi. But I remember when it was Paras Tazria, and for some reason, I had never learned Parasa Tazria before. And I'm encountering these laws of leprosy, which were absolutely incomprehensible. I I I did not understand a single thing I was reading. And I remember this terror. I I'm going to fa I'm gonna fail the test. I'm going to be expelled from Yeshiva. I will bring eternal shame upon my parents and my my family. So, I think I think the Rebi didn't even give a test. He said, "This is a little hard for you." So, uh he let us he let us pass. I still remember that feeling in the pit of my stomach. This is going to be impossible. And the truth of the matter is when I learn the para now it's still hard. It's still very hard and very incomprehensible. So what I want to do is I want to take one instance of Saras the plain vanilla. No pun intended. Saras is white. The plain vanilla Saras. I want to take us through the process. But keep in mind this is only one of many varieties of Saras. And that is we're going to talk about uh saras or basar or with an ion. Saras that's on the flesh. It's not on the scalp. It's not in the hair. Just saras here. Okay. So how does it work? So saras is described as a discoloration of the flesh to a certain shade of white. White. White. So a person wakes up in the morning and a person discovers that there's a white splotch somewhere on his skin. Now let me point out that Saras is very interesting. This is yet another proof that it's not a sickness. He's not yet a mitzvah. It's not the splotch that makes him a mitz. It's the coain's declaration that is saras that makes him a mitsur. Like there's I think there's a saying among baseball umpires, you know, it ain't a strike until I call it a strike. Sarat is exactly the same. The person is not a mitzvah until a cohane proclaims that he's a mitzvah. And that is why the Mishna gives a very interesting rule. There are times in which a coane is not allowed to proclaim that somebody's a mitsur. It mentions let's imagine a or a because men and women can be matured, right? So it's the middle of and all of a sudden one of them realizes that they have a white splotch but if they go to the coen they're going to be quarantined. The coain is not supposed to pronounce them a mitsura till after the seven days of rejoicing. By the way the Rambam once again brings a proof from here that we're not dealing with a medical condition. if we were dealing with a medical condition. I mean, that's like saying, "Oh, well, you have CO, but I'm not I'm not going to diagnose it tonight because I don't want you to ruin the wedding." You know, that would that would be that would be stupid. That would be crazy. If Saras would be a communicable disease, there's no way that we would defer it till after the seven days of rejoicing. But if you understand it as a chuva purification ritual, right? So, we could say we're going to wait a little bit till after the the sim is over. This is yet another proof that Sarat is not a medical condition. Okay. So the person has a white splotch. Now you might think, well, if I'm not going to be a mitsora unless the coen says I am, so why should I go? You might think, so let me not go and I'm fine. Well, the answer is unfortunately you can't take that position. The Torah says you must go to the Coen. When you see something that may be you are to go to the Coen. Okay. So I go to the Coen. The Cohen examines the discoloration. And this itself is a very very technical exercise. There are many many different shades of white. Most of which we couldn't tell the difference anymore. They say Eskimos because they have to know snow, ice, and everything else have like 200 words for different shades of white. We don't even notice. There are many, many shades. Some of the shades are on the side of Sarat. Some of the shades are not on the side of Surat. So the coane has to figure out the color. There is also a certain requirement of size. Although it doesn't have to be very big, but it has to cover a certain area. assuming so if the shade is not the requisite white or the shade does not cover sufficient area the message is go home don't worry about it see a dermatologist if you want but there's nothing to worry about if however it meets the test of color meaning the the shade of white the brightness of white and size so then the person is put into a quarantine. Now, the word quarantine is a little misleading because most of us assume that quarantine means absolute quarantine. The truth of the matter is he's he's allowed to be with his family. His family is allowed to visit him. It simply means that he is removed if he's in a walled city, he is removed to an area outside of the walled city. Uh so it's not really a quarantine, but it does mean we isolate him a little bit. Now he is isolated for 7 days. Okay? So I'm going to get into some detail for a few minutes, but then I'll I'll go back and explain the spiritual meaning of this. On day seven, he is reinspected by a coain. If the nega the nega is the discoloration. If the nega has gone away or if the color of the nega has changed to be a non tame nega then he simply goes home. No problem. No problem at all. If however the nega stays the same, meaning it didn't shrink, still the wrong color or the bad color and it's still the requisite size, he is quarantined for a second week. So, so far I gave you two possibilities. If on day seven the nega is either no longer a problematic color or the nega is uh no longer a problematic size goes home. If the nega is the same he's quarantined for week two. But there's another possibility and that is the nega is augmented with one of three signs of additional tumor. Sign number one, one of three. Any of these three are going to work. That if there's black hair, let's say it's on a on his arm and there's hair in the arm. If the black hair growing where the nega is turns white, that's simuma number one. Or if the nega grew bigger, even that's simuma number two. Or simuma number three, which may be counterintuitive. is that in the middle of the nega which had been just white there now becomes uh clear flesh in the middle there's a little clear flesh so these are one three simma the first is called sar lavan the black hair turned white the second is called pion actually grammatically it's pission but the but the but it's normally mispronounced so we Pion expansion and the third is these are called threeim of tuma and if he has three siman of tuma he immediately is declared an absolute mitz right he's no longer a provisional mitzra he's an absolute mitzra we'll talk about that now if he did not have any of those three simuma He go he remains in provisional quarantine for another week, week two. And on day 13, the reason I say day 13 is because day seven counts both as the last day of the first seven and the first day of the second seven. So day 13 there is a second examination and here if he has one of the three sim tuma he becomes a definitive msra but if he doesn't have the three sim tuma then even if the nega is still there as big as it was he goes home okay I I I hope this is not uh overly complicated. Remember this is only one of many types of Saras, but this is the plain vanilla Saras. Okay. So, which means to say any person who has Saras who does not develop a simma by the 13th day from the start of his quarantine goes home with the Sarah. Okay? Because at the end of week one, he either goes home or he has another week. At the end of week two, if there's no simmon tuma, he goes home. If there is a sim tuma, he gets upgraded or downgraded to be a permanent mitz. So, he can become a permanent mitzvah after week one with a simuma or a I don't mean permanent, but a a definitive mitzra after week two with a simuma. Now once you're a definitive mitz, so then there's a lot of ritual that's going to be involved. You do remain in quarantine until the nega shrinks below its size. That may be well it could be a few days, it could be a year, but if it's a year, it's a year and then there are sacrifices that are brought at the end. Okay, I won't go into the details of the sacrifices, but the sacrifices are not brought until you've graduated to the permanent sorat. Okay, so this is the ritual of sorat or basar. Okay. Uh you could be uh a mitsurra, provisional mitsura for as little as 7 days. Or if you get upgraded or downgraded, whichever word you want to use, to uh a definitive mitzra, then you got to wait until the nega shrinks below the requisite size and then you count seven days after that and then you bring a carbon. Okay, this is it. So this is even this one case which is only one case of many different cases of Saras and it is complicated details hard to remember but I think it's important for all of us to know that even in the most technical details of the Torah there are deep spiritual messages and lessons that we apply to our lives. So today I just want to point out uh you understand why uh even if a person wakes up and has a white discoloration that resembles psoriasis you don't have to worry about sorat because if you don't have a basikt and a coen then even if you have the identical thing that would have been saras in the time of the temple you don't have that problem because saras requires the declaration of the co. So let's focus on a few things. First of all, why is it so important that it's the cohane that determines Saras? Number one. Number two, why is the mitsura quarantine? Now the mitsur is a form of impurity, but there are many types of impurity which don't have this requirement. Somebody who contacted tuma by a dead body. He can't go to the temple. Okay, granted, but he's not expelled from community, right? So, what's the role of the coane here and what's the role of the quarantine? So, the basic message here, I think, is relatively simple. Let's start with the role of the quarantine. Uh, people sometimes say, you know, what's what's what's the wrong with Lashanhara? It's only words. Words don't do anything. Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me. I think all of us may have heard this as we were growing up. And yet the Torah says very very definitively that words create realities and words can destroy relationships and words can destroy families and words can destroy marriages and sometimes words cannot always be taken back. Sometimes we might be able to navigate it sometimes not. the story of the somebody went to the how do I retract the lash I said about somebody so the said ah I'll give you an exact way of doing it take a pillow that's stuffed with goose feathers down so the guy's really excited he thinks maybe he has a sigula here you know we're always looking for sigoula get on the roof okay this is great shake it and shake it and shake it till all of the pillow all of the feathers Get out of the pillow. So the man's really excited now. Wow. Wow. Wow. I got this magic antidote to lash. The said, "Oh yeah, yeah. One final step. Put the feathers back into the pillow." And that's how you undo lash. Now remember the was talking about pre-in. And if we consider the way the world operates today, social media mass communication, the devastating impact of words is unbelievable. Said death and life are in the hands of the tongue. And that doesn't just mean physical life. Although it's very very true that uh there's a saying in the Navy, loose lips sink ships. Uh and indeed that's happened. But life and death are understood in other ways as well. You can kill a person in many many ways. You can kill a person by shooting him or sticking a knife in his chest. But you can kill a person by breaking their spirit, by humiliation, by taking away their sense of worth. That's murder. That's a form of murder. And that's the murder that is done by speech. So the quarantine is to remind the person, hey, you think all you were doing were words. Words destroy communities and therefore you need to be isolated. You need to be quarantined so you will realize the devastating impact of your words. And this also explains the role of the cow. We know that Perky OS describes Aron the Coen as oave shalom verde shalom. Aron was the lover of peace, the pursuer of peace. Now the lesson here is that okay lashar is so bad. So a person might think I'm not going to talk. I'm not going to interact with people. I just won't say anything. That's not right either. You have to recognize that the power of speech is a gift by the creator. And we use our speech for healing, for comfort, for giving people strength, positive affirmations for dra for drail. And therefore the coain is teaching the msora that the appropriate spiritual response is not to just shut up. The appropriate spiritual response is to learn how to use your words in positive ways as a did to be o shalom verdev shalom a lover of peace a pursuer of peace. Also, I want to point out that the whole ritual of Saras shows that words create realities because look at the huckic structure. He's not a mitsura until the coen says the words, you're a mitsura. How could that be? He either is or he isn't. How is the declaration a person that god forbid has cancer? So the doctor determines that there may be cancer but but the the existence of the cancer does not depend on the doctor saying it. You know if the doctor misdiagnosis the guy still has cancer or if the doctor says cancer and that's an erroneous diagnosis he doesn't have cancer. Meaning the declaration does not determine the fact when it comes to Saras as I indicated the declaration creates the reality. So what is the lesson to the mitzra? Words make a difference. Words do create realities. Okay. But now what I want to analyze a little bit. So we explained the quarantine aspect and we explained the cohain aspect. But now I want to explain the three simony of tuma. Meaning to say a person has Saras and that's a sign of the spiritual rat within that needs chuva. But he's not going to be upgraded to a full mitzy unless the nega the nega is the discoloration is augmented by either the black hairs actually has to be two black hairs two black hairs turning white savan or pis expansion or miky clear flesh in the middle because if by the 13th day he doesn't have that he goes home even with the saras intact. He's no longer tame. There are no sacrifices that have to be brought. You need the sim tuma to make him a full-fledged mitz. What exactly is the meaning of that? Okay, so let's look at it this way. The person has saras. He goes to the coain. The coane says it's real. The person is quarantined. The goal of the quarantine is to give him time for reflection, introspection. In fact, by the way, uh this was the original idea behind prisons. Uh the term penitentiary, I don't know if you ever noticed this, uh the reason why jails or prisons were called in English penitentiary comes from penitence. The jail was a place where you would reflect on your life. and do chuva, return to God and return to morality. Um, sometimes that that does happen, but as you know, very often uh prison is kind of the opposite place. It tends not to make you better, it tends to make you worse. Uh, that's why the recidivism rate once you've been in jail once, the chances that you're going to go back are over 70%. uh in many cases maybe we'll leave that talk for another time uh but penitence so the quarantine of the mitsra is to make give now when we reflect as to our failures our inadequacies our sins one of the things that all of us are very good at is defense mechanisms we try to create excuses that kind of let us off the hook. We play games not only with other people we play games with ourselves by refusing to acknowledge the reality. And what I'm going to suggest again this is actually based on Raarin Levvin the rarer a great great God in Torah who died in the in the Holocaust in the safer that the sim tuma are expressions of the types of games that we play with ourselves in order to evade responsibility. One game that we play with ourselves is we simply don't acknowledge that we're at fault. We live in denial. For lashhara, a person might say, I mean the these are hakically not valid. Well, everything I said is true. Well, unfortunately, that doesn't work because lash is user even if it's true. Or the guy deserved it. Or the guy is a lot worse. I could have said a lot worse things than that. That's called denial. Meaning I don't accept that I did anything so bad. Well, one of the terms we use for denial is whitewashing. Covering yourself up as if there's no problem. So the black hair turning white is Hashem telling the person, "You're not ready to go home yet. because you have not properly used your chuva presence. You're still not acknowledging to yourself to yourself not to other people. You're not acknowledging to yourself your responsibility. So the whitewashing kind of kicks him into be a permanent not permanent but to be a a definitive mitsura because Hashem is basically saying you need more introspection here and the sign is the black hair turned white. You're living in a state of denial. Now a second impact may actually come from the opposite phenomenon. The person might have a hyperactive sense of responsibility. Feels guilt is racked with regret over what he did. But he feels he is so far gone that the pathway of chuva is no longer open. There's no way I can change. There's no way I can improve. There is no way things will ever be better. So, I might as well keep on going on the path of destruction because I am beyond help. Simmon number two, the rat of Saras grows bigger as if to say, I'm already messed up. I might as well keep on going. Whether it's and again this goes beyond lojara uh drugs, alcohol, whatever it is, I might as well keep on going because there's no hope. So this is also a message from God that go back and introspect here. You've given up hope. I don't want you to give up hope. You can fix this. Go ahead and think about how to fix it. So you see the point here. The white hair is God's message to the Mitsurra. You're living in denial. Go back and think about it. Take responsibility. The pis the spreading of the nega is you are hopeless and despondent and feel that there's no possibility of change. Not true. Go back and think about it. Like this is a voice you know we say in the ar we say in my every night remove the satan the evil impulse from in front of me and from in back of me. So the maforsham asked the question and that is I understand the satan in front of me I want to go to the beta medish I want to learn I want to dabin but there's a yateshara so to speak that's blocking me that's telling me ah go home sleep some more uh enjoy life so that's the satan that's blocking me he's in front of me and I ask hashem give me the strength so the sultans that are stopping me from moving forward be taken away. But the question is, who is the Sultan in back of me? If I'm already past him, I've passed him up. He's in back of me. What am I worried about? So the is a famous for famous for which is not the word I want to emphasize but I'll mention it that it it said that when he was rash when he not rasha but he founded the yeshiva in Ren that after midnight he would go to the base medish and he would shut off the lights and he would uh make the boys go to sleep because he says this is the yateshara that will tell you to push push push don't sleep don't eat because even though it looks like in the short term your account you're accomplishing so much learning but in the long term you'll ruin your health and he's going to win. So the says sometimes there's a in front of you that's blocking you from entering the beta medish and sometimes the in back of you that's pushing you to go to the beta medish and therefore you have to know that that's also the one that's pushing you to ruin your health and not take care of yourself and the like. That's a very famous thought from the about the satan in front of me and the satan in back of me. But they say much earlier than kind of a different that he says the sat in front of me indeed is the sat that's blocking me from doing mitzvot like the said the sat in back of me is when I want to do chuva and go back to god right like I'm I'm doing a but now I want to turn around the one in back of me is saying don't bother God doesn't care about you anymore. you're hopeless. You're a failure. That's the sat in back of me. I'm trying to go back to and the and said that's a bigger than the of the sin itself. There was a that made me sin. But then there's another that says once you've sinned, you have no way of fixing it. And that is the second simuma of pis the nega is bigger. Now the third simuma which may be a little counterintuitive is that the white splotch develops some clear clear healthy flesh in the middle. Now at first glance this is a little peculiar that this becomes a sign of impurity. One might have thought it's a sign of healing a little bit. But here I would suggest that this represents what you might call emotional indifference as if to say I'm surrounded by rat but I don't let it bother me. Meaning it's not the denial in which I'm innocent and it's not the overwhelming sense of failure. It's I simply don't want to go there because it makes me too uncomfortable. Now it may be because he's a person who might be prone to hyper guilt whatever it is but it's an emotional distancing from this situation and that too is not ultim now this is a little different than the other two because denial and hopelessness are never appropriate. Emotional distancing actually might be a necessary step that you need to take. Sometimes that actually is true, but it can't be your permanent modality. Meaning you sometimes need to distance yourself in order to regroup, but eventually you got to deal with the situation. So essentially the message is this. If the guy has sarass or the woman, men or women can have sarass has sarass. That's a sign from God you got to do chuva. But if after two weeks there's no simmon of tuma, God's message is we can treat you on an outpatient basis. Meaning to say, yeah, you got to do chuba. You still got the suras, but you're proceeding in the proper direction because you're not living in the world of denial or hopelessness or emotional distancing. So you can go home and do chuba. So he goes home, he he still has to do chuva. But when there's a simmon of tuma, God is saying, "Wait a second here. The process of repentance has not really begun. Either you're living in a state of denial or you're living in a state of hyper guilt in which you don't in which you don't think there's any possibility of rectification or you're not allowing the message to penetrate your heart like you're surrounded by all of this damage but in the middle you're clean and happy. So the message is got to spend a little more time thinking about this. You're not ready to go home yet. Now granted, Saras might be in the particularistic context of lush and har. But I hope you can readily see that this message applies to any aspect of our spiritual life that we need to work on. We can't live in denial. We got to take responsibility. On the other hand, we also have to believe in change. Things can be fixed. I think I mentioned before uh uh the famous saying again of breast of you know I um my my son has a dog and uh years ago last time I was there so I had a jacket draped over a chair and the dog was a puppy then now the dog has grown up and the puppy just chewed the jacket totally. how puppies love to love to chew. And I I would not bring it to any kind of tailor in America because America they're not going to fix it. They'll say get a new jacket. But I figured I'll go to Mayore. People are poor. So they'll they'll try to fix everything. But even then I was embarrassed. So I went to the tailor and I said I got this jacket here and I said you probably can't do anything about it but just in case. And the tailor says anything that can be ruined can be fixed says and he you know he you know he made him he actually did did something for it. Uh and I learned later that this is actually a famous mimer of breast. If you have the power to destroy you have the power to build. In fact, this is one of the lessons we learned from Rishim actually. He says, "If a Russia has such power to wreck havoc and destruction in the world and God through human choice empowered Hitlers of the world to you know to kill six million people whatever it would be then it must be how much more so did Hashem give us the power to do good in the world." So you actually see from the magnitude of the evil that human beings can do, we can actually get a sense of the magnitude of the good because certainly Hashem is not going to give goodness less of a power than evil. And we know what the power of evil is. This we we've seen. And therefore we learn from the rishim the power of our actions if they could destroy so much it's a wonderful wonderful message and therefore I think this is a generally important lesson in generally that technicalities are not just technicalities technicalities have lessons. Uh, of course the uh additional benefit is you'll probably remember the laws of mats matsur more than you would remember without the meaning. Once you have a a meaning then the details fall into place a little bit better. So I just want to end with with uh the final idea that you know we're emerging from Pesak of course and in many many ways the three negative meanings of the simum correspond to three negative meanings of KT itself right during pesak is bad what's so bad what is so spiritually bad about so there are three in a more general sense there are three interpretations that are given about Kates. One interpretation is Kmet represents arrogance. It represents ga because is puffed up and airy and matzah is flat. Kate is arrogance. Matzah is humility. Well, that ties into denial because when a person denies their wrongdoing and they think they're righteous and they think they've done nothing wrong, that often comes from arrogance. It comes from ga. It comes from an unwillingness to even admit to themselves that they might be wrong. So therefore uh meaning number one oft arrogance gya corresponds to the white hair which is whitewashing and denial. Now the secondar of moral points out is rats spoils. Matzah does not rat right. You can have matzah that they keep from msada and sometimes looks like we're that's what we're getting getting for the seder. U but matzah does not spoil spoils deteriorates. That corresponds to the hopelessness of pis in which the nega grows and grows and grows. And therefore one message of the Kates is don't enter into despondency and hopelessness. And the third association oft is the moral again from the moral is that represents inertia. Because here's the thing when water hits flour you don't have to do anything to make it. You don't need yeast. You don't need a starter is what happens by itself as opposed to matzah where you got to do something. So uh so the three messages oft are uh arrogance. Uh the other is rot and the third is inertia. Inertia is emotional distancing. I don't allow myself to be motivated because I don't want to go there. It makes me feel uncomfortable. So it is interesting that the three shiman tuma of the mitsur mirror three messages of of oft so you know we're in the period of the counting of the omare and this is a time when we try to purify ourselves both to receive hashem's and to correct our interpersonal relationships to be a tikun for the 24,000 students of rabbi aka which we we'll talk about uh in upcoming upcoming weeks And as we all engage in our process of chuva and inner purification uh we have to remember to take responsibility but remember anything that can be ruined can be fixed and finally even though we might sometimes need emotional distancing that's why I say the third factor is a little different than the others I mean there are times in which you need not to think about something I I actually agree that that may be legitimate, but in the long run at least, you got to confront reality. Uh reality exists whether you like it or not. That's kind of the unfortunate uh nature of reality. It just is. And uh you can't always wish it away. But uh that's where you need to be honest in confronting it. and taku will give us the divine assistance to be able to improve ourselves and ultimately bring gula and Yeshua both to ourselves and to um Israel that the month of Ear in a sense uh kind of has a double message. It is said that Raosha Feinstein was always a little unhappy when the month of Eeyore came because kazal say we were redeemed in Nissan and the final redemption will come in Nissan although Mashiach can come every day but Nissan is the highest probability. So when Nissan passed without Mashiach you know he felt a little sad because we weren't so to the gula. So that's one side of the month of Eeyore. Uh the other side of the month of Eeyore is that it's brought down inus that Eeyore is an abbreviation for the PK in the Torah ani the alf is ani and the yud is hashem ani hashem roa it's in the I am hashem who is your healer that nissa that is msugal for both physical healing and spiritual healing so that's a very very great kak of the month of Eor and May it indeed be a month of rafu for all of the Israel. [Music] My birthday is your sh