Rinat Chaim: As A Single Group To Carry Out Your Will Wholeheartedly with Rabbi Aaron Dovid Poston

[music] You my [singing] [music] [singing] birthday. [music and singing] Shalom and welcome back to the yate madrash. Uh w a warm welcome home to Torah. This class is dedicated to understanding the words specifically that we use on the high holidays and yam kipper. However, hashkuffically these are fundamental principles in Judaism and we're using Rabbi Kaim Freellander's book called Reinata. Okay, become familiar with it. And before we start, I want to mention that yes, Yanet does a lot of we are running a a campaign for the building and for our programs and the link to donate is below. The link below in the description box, but I just got a call from the B kayal in Tel Aviv. There are, ready for this? 30 soldiers in the process of converting and they're going to be finished on Hanukkah and out of the 30 20 do not have a pair to fill in. 10 do so. So we're collecting and you can imagine it's about 80,000 shekels to uh to provide 20 pair of to fill in and that'll be on Hanukkah will be their graduation. their conversion will be complete and if anybody wants to donate specifically for that let me know send me an email and the email is also in the description box below okay so let's begin what we are is what we're doing is going to continue from the last piece and I'm going to just sum it up the piece that we spoke about two weeks ago um the short summary is like this in the davening on rashashana we use these birds right the kulamura for they will form a single group now our hope right alenu right the whole idea is that the whole world will come to recognition of hashem however we discussed the idea a gura aas when you take your four your arbatamin your three let's just say you have an esrog in one hand and you have the lulav the hadasim and the arabos you you form a bond But they remain individuals. They don't transform into one unit. You are bringing them together and you're making a bond with all four, but they're not transforming themselves into one species. They still remain four unique species. That's going to be for the nations of the world. They're going to come together and recognize Hashem, but they're not going to be transformed into one unit. Whereas the Jewish people already are transformed into one unit. Therefore, our [clears throat] prayer is and I'll just repeat again the words for they will form as a single group. So this idea of a gurat is referring to the gentiles and we mentioned like the four species they um they still remain with their own identity as opposed to we're going to find out what's going to happen to Cla Israel. It's only Claus Israel that together we have the same goal. We're the ultimate servants of God. I know this is going to sound very uh I don't even know the word. I don't want to say it, but um you know, God says, "I'm going to place you above the Gentiles. You will be Elon over and above supreme." In fact, that's a good translation, but only in terms of service. We're not better than we are more into servitude. And we're going to see that the Gentiles are going to, I know this may not sound PC, they're going to serve as caim to the caim. We are the vessels who serve Hashem and they are the vessels that serve the vessels meaning they're also serving Hashem. But the way to serve Hashem is through assisting and helping cla Israel. And we had a verse in 2 Samuel 7:23 right where we ask where we say this at ma time on Shabbat who is like your people one nation on earth we are one nation as opposed to the other nations they're not one and another idea which we're about to see is and we spoke about this briefly at the end of last Greek that when we stood at Sai, okay, it says Israel encamped, but it's singular throughout all the um encampments in the desert. It says in plural they encamped the but on the the one encampment when we were ready to receive the Torah we were unified as Rashi says which means that each and every one of us is like an organ of the ultimate being right we're like cells of a unified being as opposed to what we spoke about the nations they'll remain uh individual iduals but they will be bound together. We're inseparable. We cannot exist without each other. Okay. So, what we're doing is we're starting uh one 2 3 4 5 6 7 8. It's nine lines down and that's where we're picking up. When we received the Torah, by the way, it says, right, we said what? we will do and we will understand. We'll listen. But in Hebrew, the nun, it's we will. It's we collectively took this covenant on. If there is one Jew who's not fulfilling his end of the bargain, we're all losing. We're all suffering. In fact, when Ahan is found out to be the culprit in Joshua who stole, it says Israel sinned. Well, Israel didn't sin. One Jew sinned. And yet, we're all held accountable. Well, it works the other way around, too. One Jew does a mitzvah, we all gain, right? And God forbid one Jew sins, we all lose. We are inseparable. Is Is that a word? We're right. Right. What does it mean? We were as if to say when we were actually totally unified for a a common purpose. And what was that? a vote of hashem that was in order to accept upon ourselves and to to serve to be of to be obedient to even be um submissive right to Hashem Torah and we were capable and worthy to receive the Torah. What comes out? What follows from this idea that we are unified in our service to God. We're actually we are actually one nation. We're one being which is not the case by the other 70 nations. There are 70 nations, right? This might be hard to swallow. We grew up, many of us grew up in the west where there's everything's equal. We are, it's true, we were all created in the image of God. But there are those who are the actual servants of God and that is our purpose. Our purpose is to serve and their purpose is to serve help. I'd like let's say the word help us serve God. Okay. So that we can serve Hashem. They're going to serve us so that we can serve Hashem properly. Hashem. So what are the nations? They're only instruments and helpers to serve Hashem. Just like a toolbox has many tools. There's so many different kinds of tools. Each different nation, each individual of those nations, they're all different tools. Each one has its toughed, its purpose, its duty and its unique features as servants as sorry as vessels to serve Hashem. They're not serving him as direct. In fact, the word is Yeshel. We go directly to God. That's why by Judaism, it's absolutely forbidden for us to use intermediaries to get to Hashem. However, I kind of understand why Christianity, you know, has their belief that they need, it's so interesting they chose a Jew. [laughter] It's like no mistake, right? They instinctively know that they have to serve a Jew in order to serve God. Like instinctively, right? We're not asking to serve us. We're asking them to help us to be instrumental. So what's going to come out through our prayers right that in the end of days everybody would all be all the nations would be a good that even the nations themselves would they would understand they need to get together collectively to be one to serve those who serve Hashemotra and right what comes out from this they're only a they're a single group, but they're still individuals to do Hashem's will. They're still going to remain different. I I mentioned about the ma major makus of Rebika. This uh men comes to Rabbi Kev and he says, "Rebika, you're not following your own Torah. It says in the Torah, you have to follow the majority. And the majority of us are whatever, let's just say a different religion or different religions." So you have to abandon your religion and follow the majority. His answer was like this. You're not one. So therefore, you're not really a majority. Like I mean many of us grow up in [clears throat] America. So we understand the Christian church. There's a lot of denominations and each denomination has different churches and sometimes they're one across the other on a street and they each think the other one's going to hell. They're not the same religion. Each church is a different religion than the other church because they have fundamental differences. There's no one common, you know, I'm going to call it religion. I mean, they have commonalities between each other, but it's not one religion. There's only one religion. I don't even like the word religion, but there's only one people who have this uh where we all believe in the 613 commandments and that we're all responsible for each other. And as you know when we see calamity happen like the war the unity unbelievable unity that we all witnessed and saw and hopefully participated in each one of the nations are doing their specific function the transforming themselves into one being like the Jewish people do and a paragraph begins just two lines. We we're claiming this single group will eventually happen aud when when this auda this union is finally established first of all matera there has to be um basically you have to set the goal the goal of the auda has to be set and certain asertations are What is the purpose of it? What is the purpose of the non-Jews coming together and making a union? Not to come against us like in mo, right? Not to come against us like you see today where who knows what they're going to say about uh sovereignty or what we want to do with Gaza or whatever, right? No, they have to come together for what purpose. Believe shal those are the words we use when we pray that they should become a gura aas to do God's will wholeheartedly and the word is with two bets. It could have just said shale. Why are there two bets? We already know in our own shimon it's referring to what? the two inclinations that we serve Hashem with our inclination to do good and whatever inclination we have let's say not to do good we're somehow going to transform that or use that for holy purposes. So let's talk about what it means to carry out and perform your will. What do we want to do? We want to nullify levato. My wife and I, we call it the BTO program, right? It's the BTO program. The Beatles. You all heard of the Beatles. The Beatles program. And we need to nullify the ego. That's the eye. and all of our individual will let's say egotistical desires to do only God's will and the important thing is not to do not to only understand this with our minds I also spoke about this I think a week or two ago that we have an obligation to circumcise our hearts here not just with our minds but shalim wholeheartedly we them the non-Jews as well that we we speak about the le the heart what is the heart it's the haronos it's the main source it's the main place the muck of our desires and our ambitions of a human being and there should not be in our hearts any other desires except to serve Hashem. This is our prayer. And again the last two lines on this page with with our whole hearts wholeheartedly anywhere that the word is spelled with the two bets it's shame just with lamid bet. What is the intent? Whenever we see the double bet on the heart. Interesting. We just got done speaking about and the heart as far as I remember has four compartments. But there's a left and there's a right. And what we say we're praying that we should have well we're we're actually thanking Hashem for the miracles that our hearts are able to function. Right. By the way, the heart is pumping the blood into the brain. So there is a brain um heart connection automatically. But we want to work on our hearts. We have to soften like the rafet right we someone mentioned that also raf kbasar is also to become soft to soften our hearts. So that's what he says over here that we we have two inclinations. We have a yates and a yates. Hashem created us. This is by the way what it means in perkyavote that God created us in his image. This was the greatest gift. Rabbi Kea in fact he said the greatest gift that God gave us was what? That he created us in his image. He's the ultimate in free will. We have like an image of free will. You know Salame Elohim. I put my hand on the table. I'm sorry with the with the light and what do I see? I see an image but it's not a real hand. It's just an image. That's us. We're like a smidgen of Hashem and he's the ultimate in free will and we have like it might even be an illusion that we have free will, but we have free will nevertheless. And oh by the way, so not only not only does Perkyo say that God loved man so much that he gave us free will, it says he gave us an extra gesture of love by letting us know. And that's the Torah. The Torah itself says, right, I place before you life and death, good and evil. Choose. He wants us to make a choice, the right choice. Choose lifeal. It says in Midbar, actually it's a little bit of a um a typo in Midbar Rabba chapter 22 parak 9. So you have the English sheets in front of you. We'll get to that in a second. Um it says here and also in the Zohar inos 107. So whatever this means spiritually the right compartment of your heart the right is the good inclination whereas the small the left is that's the place of the evil inclination on the left side of your heart. Um, we actually say in the which we say every day in the Schma on we say the we're asking God to unite our hearts even the inclination not to do the right thing that it should be united with the good side in order to do what? In order to love and fear your name. It's amazing. It doesn't say uh the but it's our hearts that we should serve Hashem even with our hashem. We should use that inclination just to serve Hashem. I'll give you an example. I mean we all are familiar with the idea of a sexual drive. It could be that if man did not have that sexual drive, it could be he wouldn't have children. Right? There was a time and period we have in our tradition that at the time of the the prophets and the the sages towards the end of uh the beginning of the second bas mikdash uh they prayed that the desire for illicit sexual relation should be removed and at that time even the chickens weren't laying eggs it was so drastic that they had to retract say even that so we wouldn't have children I mean I don't know how many men you know But there are men who aren't thinking [laughter] and uh they might not be interested if if it had responsibilities. That's why a man has a responsibility to have ma to get married and to have children. Women do not have that obligation. There's various reasons why but one of them is because a man may n may not naturally want to have children. May not even want to get married meaning responsibility, right? It may be obviously man has evolved to a certain extent but mankind is still mankind trust me on that. [snorts] So he says, "So why do we have the atra? Why do we have this?" Right? But talking about other religions, for example, the Christians get it big time wrong. I'm not sure they all believe this, but to a certain extent, I know some of them do that God their their definition of God is not is at war with the Sutton and he's not capable. He doesn't have the power and you have to help him. Like that's how weak their God is. Right? We believe that God created everything, all the angels, and there are no fallen angels. In fact, he's doing God's will. And what's he doing? He's rock. He is testing you and he's challenging you in order for you to manifest your free will. Because we don't believe in in in what's the word I'm looking for? Uh bread of shame. In other words, God his ultimate desire, if we can say such a thing, is to give. He just wants to give us reward. And in order for us to have value on that reward, it has to be earned, right? If it was the bread of shame, what I used before, it doesn't have as much value. And we know people who are born with a silver spoon in their mouth and never had to work for anything, unfortunately, they have a very low self-esteem. Many of them, I shouldn't say many, but unfortunately, there are a certain amount of uh suicide rate is much higher for people that have no self-esteem. They have lots of money and they don't know what to do with it and they never earned a diamond in their life. I don't know what they call it, but it's spoiled, rotten, right? There is a certain concept like that. Um, so to earn makes it valuable. a har through the free will that we have right by using our yates to our good inclination that it will conquer and subjugate the evil and that's why I think in Hollywood I mean it doesn't matter who is behind the scenes making and writing the script you always seem to come out and think okay there's always a conflict between good and evil and if it's a good movie you know you walk away smiling that the uh the good overcame the bad God forbid evil should not be victorious. We're about to explain there's actually a possibility to use your evil inclination to serve Hashem. However, this is considered a very low level. But look, who do we think we are? We're not angels. Okay? So, we also can admit sometimes we're on this level. And it's called serving. It will eventually become. Let me explain. A person should always be involved in doing the right thing, learning Torah, performing mitzvah. Even if even if right best case scenario is you're doing it to serve Hashem properly but you know you have to do it. So maybe even just what do they say? Fake it till you make it. I've heard that expression used. Do it anyway. Be obedient. Follow the rules because you know what? Maybe eventually you'll do it for the right reasons. Right? Let's say you have ulterior motives for whatever reason. We do the mitzvah or we're learning Torah for ulter ulterior motives. But eventually it will bring you closer to Hashem and a clearer mind and eventually you may do it for the sake of heaven. So that's what it means. I think fake it till you make it. As he says, you reach the point where you're doing it for all the right reasons. So what comes out from this that we say that the uh the evil inclination is being used um to serve hashem rights even our evil inclination is being used to serve hashem that's what we mean when we say to serve hashem with a full heart both sides even the negative died that even the evil inclination will serve like a vessel to do Hashem's will. I'm not saying there's necessarily any connection between what we said by the non-Jews as being cle to a cle, but in a certain sense, even the evil inclination can be a cle to a cle. Now, if we just take a look quickly at this mid rabba I have here on the English sheets, [cough] it brings down um that by the two and a half tribes on the other side of the Jordan, right? Ruvane and God and part of Manasha. Well, Ruven and God, they had abundant livestock. Where did they get all the livestock from? Right? So we had the war of og and so we we captured they captured a lot of of livestock. They actually wanted to go but it was one of the six it's not even one of the mitzvah of the Torah meaning it's not one of the 16 six3 mitzvah but it says to be clean in the eyes of God and man. And by them saying, "We want to have this property for our our our our livestock, and we'll see what else they said, it gave a very bad impression. In fact, it could even break the morale of the rest of the Jews coming in." And Moses gave them some rebuke and they clarified, "No, we were going to fight all along. We just have a lot of a lot of livestock." But something they said caught Moses' attention. the order of their priorities. So it says here like this in that verse that Reuben and the children of God had abundant livestock. So the mid says this is the import of which scripture states. It says in Ecclesiastes 10:2 I think we spoke about this recently. A wise man's mind is to his right while a fool's mind is to his left. Um what does that mean? That leak is to his right. That's the Yateser hat. That is shahun bamino. It was specifically placed on the person's right side. And what about to conceal the fool? The fool's mind is to his left. That's considered the evil inclination. This is the evil inclination which is placed on one's left. Another explanation. What does it mean? The uh the wise man's mind tends to his right. That's referring to the righteous people. They set their minds toward the Torah which comes from the right. How do we know the Torah comes from the right? Because there's a PC in Deuteronomy 33:2. It says das lamo that when God presented the Torah, a fiery Torah, it was his right hand. This is where the wisdom is. This is where you know so to speak uh comes from the right side and what about the left seal is smallo these are the rashy these are the wicked while a man's while a fool's mind tends to his left this is referring to the wicked why are they wicked because their minds are toward attaining wealth that's why as we have a a verse in proverbs 3:1 16 right that the right, I'm sorry, that the left is where wealth and honor comes from. So, we're going to just see one more little piece, but I don't want to get into politics, but it could be that there's no coincidence that the right is the conservative Torah following or let's say scripture following people and the left, again, I'm not saying it is. I'm just saying maybe it's not a coincidence. Could be. could be that they have uh some things that are really off. Okay, the last interpretation that I want to just build on is this idea. Um same verse, right? A wise man's mind tends to his right while a fool's okay, this is an illusion to Mosha Rabenu. He was obviously at Sadic. While a fool's mind tends to his left, this is referring to at least the the rebuke that Moses gave to Ruvane and the children of God. Why? Because they considered they considered what was primary to be secondary and what was secondary to be primary. Okay? So um when they originally said to Moses, we want to stay here what to build here a place for our livestock corrals for the livestock and cities for our small children. But Moses turns around to him says no the first thing you do is build the cities for your children and then you build a uh um a place for your livestock. So he was trying to tell them what is correct. Remember the Torah is an instruction manual. Learn the Torah and you'll find all the secrets of life and hence it ends. A wise man's mind tends to his right. That's referring to Moses. While a fool's mind tends to his left, this was referring to the children of Ruven and God who had their priorities mixed up. Trust me, this is not the only shot. According to the he says they had no intention. It was just a miscommunication. Again, you have to be clear. You cannot put yourself in a position where people will look at you or think bad about you. You have to be clean in the eyes of God and man. Um according to the clear these particular animals were fierce. They could uh spear uh with their horns bears and they wanted to set up like we have at weddings we call gather. You can put up uh you know um some plants because you want to make like a mita. They wanted to make a mita between the the enemies and the Jews by having these livestock uh built first and uh that would be a security for the Jewish people. It could be that their downfall was they were they were relying on the physical manifestation of the physical fence of the livestock as opposed to relying on Hashem. But it's an interesting shot. Okay, so let's end here. We'll continue in two weeks from now. >> Huh? What does Matt say? The ban said >> I can't hear you. >> What they just said? Where did you find that? >> Oh, that's in the clea car. I give that shir every Thursday night and you can find that on um the links down below in the YouTube channel as well. And I want to wish everybody a great week. We all had a nice rain. We all started praying for rain like just a few weeks ago and the rain the gishim should continue in the right place at the right time with the right amount and you know what that means in the right place at the right time in the right amount [music and singing] [music] of My [singing] [music] go [music and singing]