The Purity of the Soul - A beautiful woman captured in war - Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz

[Music] they have led into the preparations for a Hashanah are proceeding apace and I want to talk about something in this week's pirate but I need to go back a little bit one week that is at the end of our show them we read about a number of people that I reckon going to war the person who be trapped the women and did not yet consummate the marriage the person that had a vineyard but that's not yet enjoyed the fruits because it's within the three years where it is or alone the person that built a home or bought a home and did not yet live in the home so they're given an exemption from combat duty we'll see and the final example that's very interesting the person who is fearful of heart because there is an idea that fear is contagious we don't want that person to necessarily interfere with the military efforts now the mission in my such as soap that says however that those exemptions number one are only from combat duty and it does not exempt them from participation in the military effort that's one thing number two the exemption only applies in what you would call a Malcolm entry shoots which is an optional war of expansion authorized by assign Hedren and the Orion Batum in which by definition we don't have today but in what is called a no comment Mitzvah in a war that is a mitzvah to age and there are three categories of no comments Mitzvah category one is a replication of our Moloch category 2 is eradication of these seven nations of command according to Ron bond I should add there's a to a and that is any war to conquer territory with in Eretz Israel is Mohammed's Mitzvah and the final category is a defensive war against enemies that try to destroy us basically the only Milkha bhaag that we have today given the fact that we can't identify Amalek and the seven nations are gone the no commits mitzvot that we primarily have our defensive wars against enemies but what the Mishna says is when it comes to Muhammad's Mitzvah there are no exemptions even the katana JETRO we will pull the cut time out of the wedding room and then surprisingly even says calumny couplet that we will take the woman that's a whole other thing from under the chuppah as well now obviously when you hear something like this the first question that will come to mind which is the question I'm not going to really address I'll just allude to it there's wait a second if indeed the milk hormones that the Medina faces that the Jewish people faces are generally almost always if not always the mill comments mitzvah because of people that are trying to destroy us and if it's true that will come into mitzvot there are no exemptions then the obvious question becomes so what is this whole business about exempting ueshiba students from so we learned from military duty because of Torah learning if it's Muhammad's Mitzvah there are no exemptions so obviously that's it that's a difficult issue but let me just say that part of the Sheep hole is really a logistical one and that is there was never an army where a hundred percent of population where's the mobile connectivity and therefore it is theoretically true that when there is a military need every single color person must put down the camera and participate question becomes is there an actual leader and I don't get into it and the question becomes whether the whether the universal draft is a security consideration or a homogeneous Asian consideration so people debate and delay that's that's not the main thing I want to talk about though there is what I want to talk about though is that what emerges from the Mishnah is that there is a distinction between Malcolm X Mitzvah and what kind of interest rates now there is another distinction between what come in from its final commentary should and that is you know momentum it's mine I don't mean a defensive war brother a war against the seven nations the Torah says you must destroy them entirely Louis of Haiyang column Hashanah you must eradicate men women children well that's going to be the question that I want to discuss briefly my shame cane biochemically should you destroy the combatants so to speak but you're allowed to let the other groups live at least take the best slaves and like now obviously these types of passages raise enormous enormous ethical issues because we look at the world we look at genocide we looked at various things that happen and we consider that horrendous we consider that evil and certainly jihad which tries to eradicate Isis all of these different things and then a person will say well what do you think you're so hiding righteous I look in your Torah and I see the equivalent of a genocide and wiping out men women children non-combatants and yes I mean you couldn't answer well that was a long time ago and those people are gone well part of what they're gone this because we did exterminate them and anyway it doesn't answer the ethical problem the fact that we don't do it anymore well I mean listen if you had a secular perspective and you said god forbid the tour is not from God and human morality evolves okay that's fine but if one believes that this is the divine will and one believes that God's targets perfect it was perfect thousands of years ago as well so you still have that problem how can you throw a countenance genocide so I'm not going to answer that either but when I want to I want to mitigate the severity I just want to mitigate the severity of the question a little bit by putting it in an overall perspective that you need you need to understand first there's a very interesting locust Rashi and the rhumba rocky and Maimonides regarding a mitzvah in the Torah called proclaiming peace right the Torah says before you go to war you must offer the enemy a peace term now the peach term has given a very precise a lot of definition the enemy in order to be spared the war must accept the Seven Commandments of not not become Jewish but the seven basic tenets of humanity and number two must accept the Jewish sovereignty over the Land of Israel if they do not accept Jewish sovereignty over the Land of Israel or they don't accept the Seven Commandments not such as renouncing terrorism that indeed one is that permitted to wage war against them right that's what the Torah says now the maloca thrashing and Rambam is the following according to Rashi this Mitzvah and this option of peace only applies to wars that are not waged against the seven nations against the seven nations there's no option meaning even if they want to accept a set of Commandments we eradicate them we don't give them any way out that is indeed rockies opinion but if you look at the romba the rambam surprisingly enough says that the option of clea and not the after the mitzvah creates your loan that gives them certain options even apply these two on the left and it even applies to the seven nations then it happened tonight and in fact there's a little bit of a textual support that won't call the proof necessarily to the Rambam because you find throughout Tanakh that there seem to be different remnants of Canaanites who continue to occupy the Land of Israel even after the conquest the days of yoshu and later dove in another for example one of them is very famous obviously his family became Jewish but but his ancestor he must have been Canada but sheriff's husband or you haven't eaten what does that mean warrior that Hittite what does it mean to be a hit target presumably simple shot is he was descended from benign States one of the Canaanite nations who made sure who read in peace without Israel we find at the beginning of Shmuel days after Shah who was killed in war there was a anabolic I used who claims credit for that thinking that thug would be happy so it winds up killing him for it but what are you what are you dealing with her mother granted sure made a mistake in spirits but nevertheless somebody else should have killed some holiday so according to the Rambam the explanation would be that even among the types and even sick types were permitted to stay in Eretz Israel if they embrace the seven mitzvot and if they accept that you wish sovereignty and therefore it doesn't eliminate the genocide problem but what it does recognize is that there are options that are not overly onerous that would permit these seven nations to remain now the Rambam then asks Akash on his own analysis Rambam asks a question on himself and that is let's consider in the book of yahushua the story of the give own him now what is that story give on which was a settlement near Jerusalem they had heard that all of these cannons were being exterminated so they were afraid so they disguised themselves as if they came from a far away country and they wanted a peace treaty and therefore there was a peace treaty and that was fine and when yahushua discovered the ruse yoshua wanted to kill them but not because of the Chihuahua that was made and therefore the give on them were relegated to a kind of servant class in which they were called by a team they became whit cutters the show of a lion and drawers of water now the question is according to the Rama what was the need for the Roos they could have identify because they where everyone around the corner here we're down the street and we are take the Knights that accept the Seven Commandments and Jewish sovereignty there was no need for any deception so the Rambam has to give him the random hand gives himself a dope like answer a forced answer by saying you're right they didn't have to do it but they didn't know they didn't have to do it they were not aware perhaps the king Kings didn't reveal the object and therefore they needed to engage in deception because they were unaware of the truth but a point of fact they could have negotiated a peace treaty the schola this is the ramp-up zone answer to this question now the genocide issue is much stronger according to Rashi because according to Rashi we do not give them the option even if they accept Jewish sovereignty we go ahead and kill them but let me point out that even according to Rashi based on a passage in the Talmud Jewish army they were given the right to leave the land before the panel started they were told get out we're giving you a certain amount of time to simply make it and then we will not hunt you down in that in that way this would have been an option that the Jews would have appreciated during the Holocaust in the very early years if it were indeed there was second choice but that choice closed down fairly early in the war in the war years in fact Rambam instead an interesting comment rem-pod actually says there is a mitzvah when we wait war against an enemy not to surround the enemy on four sides and to leave one side open to give the enemy the capacity to escape and the Rambam offers to every nation huh this madman and he offers two explanations for this one is as a matter of compassion and decency if they don't want to fight they can get out the other is an interesting psychological idea that when a person is fenced in they become more ferocious than ever paradoxically we need to give them that escape route and that will reduce the tenacity and fierceness of the so again I don't have a convincing explanation for this one thing I think thinking about is I'm thinking about a very famous short story maybe you read it and when you were younger by Roald Dahl in a British ship and a children's novel the author of children's stories and very well known SAS in which he describes a thought experiment that you're a doctor in the early part of the 22nd into the 19th century and you are called in the middle of the night to take care of a baby that seems to be dying or something and the mother is so concerned for her baby and the mother is crying and sobbing and begging you do what you can and she's telling you how much she loves her baby and you can see how much she loves her baby and your heart is breaking what would happen if in a moment of absolute clarity you saw that this baby is that outfit way and you saw with prophetic eye that this person will grow up and murder six million Jews 20 million people whether whatever it whatever it was what would the compassionate thing be at that particular moment in time now obviously we cannot make that judgment at all because we never know how people will turn out but the one entity that can make those that judgment is God then so remote it that's right so if God declares a genocide that is essentially saying that all of these little people may turn out to be Hitler's but again it's just difficult because you know people always say well so what would some other religions are the same thing and our answer is going to be never in our case God really said it you know you went into epistemological question meaning to say yes we can accept it because God said it as opposed to God didn't say those other things but the other people say the same thing so you're you're kind of in that in that quandary [Music] okay you know you're right you're ready you're right I mean he wants you to put Traven in a very extreme way but you're correct yeah essentially those who evil by the way it's an interesting question that people talk about the fact that there were a number of assassination attempts on my own I had an Alice who was able to disguise herself as a Gentile as a Polish Gentile woman during world war ii and she had a four-year-old my in my uncle not alive anymore i'm saying their cousin there's not alive anymore but he was a little boy four year old that she was taking care of itself for constant fear was he would word out something that indicated he was jewish those like fear 24 hours a day but she actually was a maid in a stock or generals house and she described that Hitler came to dinner with she served out of Italy and she said she was so close to him she could have taken a knife she decided not to because a short child whatever he made a judgment she wasn't going to do that that night but if you're into if you're into alternative history one of the interesting questions is if Hitler would have been killed in the middle of the World War two with that had stopped the Holocaust or with the Holocaust you mean how much did the continuation of the Holocaust depend on the physical existence to pick time after all Goering all of these Nazi fellows were you know they were very enthusiastic supporters detect even the architects of the final solution that may not have stops okay it all everything thank God runs the world etc none of us I can know any of this but it's not so pressure that killing hit you in the middle but not now I assume if Hitler would have been killed you know as a child in the roald dahl case they probably wouldn't have been the Holocaust but but in the middle of the more ready that might not have worked okay but the real thing I want to talk about is not there's so much the issue of genocide although that is a real real significant issue but I want to talk about another war crime and that is rape in time the war and that brings us to this parsha where the tourists used to say that when we are fighting a war and the Jewish soldier has a great great passion physical sexual desire to be with a beautiful woman so the turret creates a very very strange ritual in the first place it says he's given one bite at the Apple he can actually have physical sexual intercourse with this non-jewish woman well that's that's going to be the question that's going to be the question but the Torah allows the initial act of intercourse but if death says you are not allowed to continue the relationship unless you follow a very very detailed ritual you must bring her into your home you then kind of make her unattractive she lets her head for a while I'm sorry her hair is shaved shaved off her fingernails grow etc the theory is we want three to become repulsive in your eyes so you will then set her free because you were not allowed to keep her as a slave one you abused during that particular way your only choices are to marry her or to set her free you don't have the option of enslaving her no I do not had again luckily and you're not at relations with their and you simply that you could you could have taken earth or any other man and a man as well as a slave but once the woman was abused in this particularly way you are only allowed to either marry her or freer and clearly the Tober favors the freeing option because in the course of mariner you have to go through a ritual to make your unattractive so that you will center free so the tour is giving you the option of marriage but the tour is also discouraging it at the very same time oh well that doesn't go to men that doesn't go to mathlete father although I imagine it would be a factor in a decision now remember this woman is a man who she did not convert and in fact even when the tour said you may marry her the way that we shown him described it it doesn't mean she voluntarily converted but essentially so this is this is a much focused reality but if I get the Rambam and you look at the second the second solution the way it's understood is that all of the mass in re tonight are a condition for the BIA shaniyah for the second relation the Pierre Rochon name is which are even before and now if you learned your way which is a legitimate private circuit would be a much easier thing to understand that no no you have this passion well we can't just tell you know we'll give you yes but you got to run to a whole bunch of groups in the hope that your passion will dissipate but the Romberg says the favorites the roundup says explicitly that the bearish own is permitted now obviously from an electric standpoint this is extraordinary because you are permitting intercourse with a Gentile woman which is a very very great of era but the question is are we also legitimating raped that's a very important place meaning clearly we are permitting the man's having of course with the Gentile because of the heat of battle okay but are we dealing with consensual relation or are we dealing with with rape if it's right once again you have a big big problem that's a kin to genocide I mean genocide is a war crime rape is regarded as a war crime and certainly if God God forbid it would ever happen to to our people we would be absolutely and rightfully so outraged and yet it's the Toria legitimating us to do what would be considered to be outrageous and sinful and evil so here even though the simple reading of the zucchini seems to indicate that we are even legitimating at least a one time rape so to speak but there is a passage in the sifrin where the Supreme says lo you have send the milk a month now that means you shall not force her in the heat of battle of relations with you now there are two ways of learning the minimalist way of learning it simply means you're not allowed to have relations and the battlefields got to take her into a building and at that point if you do what you want but there is an alternative breathing that I think is much more easily be easy to accept that is royal cuts Emma says there cannot be coercion in this relationship yes the Toba is legitimating the commission of what is otherwise of sick that's true but the tour is not legitimating a coercive relationship and therefore at least we see that in spite of the fact that this is still a concessions in the inter Arab but it is not allowing that's the meaning of lo your cut Senna in which he's allowed to mourn her father and her brother and therefore and that is assuming that her father and brother were were were killed is the phosphorus that she would accept in that physical relations well I understand I understand I do understand obviously I'm not suggesting this is absolutely a purely consensual relationship you know it's not so likely to be but once again subjectively it's very typical there's a whole continuum ranging from no rape to loving marriage and there are many things in the middle like the legal system generally struggles a lot with the issue of what is called consent is amazing a lot the gleason issue but it's a major issue in in legal but very often people who are arrested for rape you know claim claim various forms of internal various forms of intermediate levels of consent and you have a similar problem and this basically is a process of conversion because in the end yeah but she's actually simply because again the idolaters can be executed that's not unique to that situation so there are problems here and again I I apologize for not it not fully addressing all of these problems because the reason I'm bringing it in is really for a metaphor that the RSI induces meaning to say that this raises enormous issues the ethics of war are very very very difficult but the arc I am bringing to the name of the ZOA a very very fascinating thought the beautiful woman is described in the torah as a shift you fight or the sower says a ship de facto ax is 1808 it is a metaphor for our soul it is beautiful and radiant and good and the plastic begins this way teeth say today love no ha ha ha your mouth when you go out to war against your enemy when the Sun no hashem elokenu be at death and God will deliver the enemy into your hands they shall be so ship yo and you will capture your captives the Zohar says the milk Allah against the enemy is referring to the milk come on against my etc which is the greatest enemy the enemy that tries to destroy me and I'm confronting an enemy of such enormity and such powers that it seems to be a hopeless struggle for which I'll never emerge victorious but what does such a say when the Sun no Hashem alone when you sincerely wage that war god will deliver that enemy and you will capture them and then he said and you will sing in captivity the beautiful soul that got in the soul of homeless the soul of goodness the soul of purity but the soul was imprisoned in time you know that some of you have you know that by the time he describes he was not the first one but he describes really poetically a tremendous suffering of the soul when it is imprisoned by the negative passions of the animals in which the animal soul see laziness and ease and hedonism egotism so you see the Asia trip October the 1st October and you yearn to be connected to it so it gives you a protocol how do we connect to yourself bring them into your home and they open your heart to what you really are then he says shave off her hair so again metaphor this is oh and the nervousness metaphorically the hair which grows out of the head represents the ideologies that lead you astray so divest yourself of the false ideologies of materialism let the fingernails grow because the hands grasp material pleasures when their fingernails are too long you can't grasp it anymore meaning separate yourself from material pleasures divest yourself of destructive ideas then it says and let your soul cry over her father and mother for 30 days to the sower says the father is Hashem he's crying over the pain that was caused to the Almighty the mother is the Jewish people the betrayal of the Jewish people never come in 30 days are the 30 days of the month of Elul that process you then have the ability to marry to re-engage with your now again obviously this is a Jewish this is not what the pursuit is directly talking about the positive directly talking about the ethics of war but as we say the Torah has multiple and infinite levels of meaning and one of the levels of meaning metaphorically to get there is a concept certainly in Kabbalah that every physical phenomenon is simply a reflection of an ultimate spiritual phenomena so human beings are waging war adult mcclee that is reflective of the inner war that we all have to weigh and that indeed is a tougher war sometimes than the war you wage against the external enemy when Pirkei avos says is a or people who is a heroic person who is a courageous person a kovash that's Israel the person who conquers his and his quotes Lamanna was a Michelin my shelf anything we were saying here he who contains and controls his spirit is better it's greater than the person who conquered the city I think we think that I think that the Santos once said there he once quoted I think he quoted someone in one of his early she or Inlet Wednesday this is this goes way back this goes back to the 1960s survey Steinhoff mentions that somebody mentions in this year that perhaps the reason why we are so interested in exploring outer space this was the height of the space program is because we are so it is so painful to explore inner space we like to focus on the how low it saw me so the puck is saying you have a beautiful Michelle you need to recapture you need to be unified the enemy has taken it away from you you need to get it back divest the foreign ideology get less involved in material mourn and to Shuba recognize that we've heard both died and referred the Jewish people and this is the time of year the month Abell Obama although there's a little bit of Akasha ellos only 29 that's good okay well yeah as the tourism secretary date the Torah says about it the other means the duration of a month that could be 29z right yeah doesn't have to be 30 days right this is again from the Zohar and this is brought to shame the are the or the automatic brings it in the name of the relax and therefore it is moving miles and is alluded in the part of agent about our the process of Shuba and Basia crying and sobbing that we go through during the month of le it also reminds us of a very important idea that comes up a lot that is Shuba is not about changing yourself it is about reclaiming the true identity that you have that true body which means return is not only return to God but return to you mean what am I doing with juma I'm reconnecting to the essence of - Shama and again develop Tanya beautiful he says over and over again - m and your assertion are not abilities that we have to learn that we have to get that we have to acquire they are already in us we just need to become aware of it that's not that's not necessarily an easy preference but it's something that it's already within the framework of our personal and by the way this is an important lesson not just in the abode of Tsukuba but this is really what Phoenix is so apparently and education is like whether whether you are the parent and whether you are the educator and ideally every parent is an educator every educators and parents the ideal relationship that should exist my goal is not to make my child in my image my goal is to uncover the goodness so that he becomes what he already is doesn't change he becomes fully truly discovered it's a true baby's self-discovery reclaiming the sugar okay so this is very beautiful again I understand that it does not fit what you might call the prosciutto she only trap but it does have a very very potent message but here is a question on that message and I'm going to move back and forth between the halacha context of the statement and the other girl context of the things rushing again clothing to see free which is the erotic metric from casado raises the question the institution of the frats TOA however you understand it does this apply to all wars or does this only apply to certain wars so Raffy actually says your flat TOA cannot apply to mohammad mitzvah it can only apply to Muhammad worship and the reason is in Mohammed Mitzvah you would not have the option of taking the woman as a wife because the Torah says you have to kill and therefore if the Torah says you have to kill men women child then definitionally a you're oh I can only a plot what love a dress so the actor could only apply the history of eventually having a marital relationship could only apply in optional Wars the words of which we don't have today it would not apply in moments so the question I want to raise is that there seems to be a logical disconnect here between the collected context of the statements and the metaphor or the allegory why is that so because if we were to ask ourselves the war that I waged against my gates are Hirai would we define that as a Mitzvah war or would we define it as an optional one obviously it falls on the side of Mitzvah where it is the greatest Mitzvah that we have is to struggle against the AIDS in Iraq so why is the milk I'm Italian Center which is in no hemic Mitzvah alluded to in a parsha that is specifically not talking about a no comment' Mitzvah he's talking about a more kind of research in other words if the turtle wants to teach you something about repentance about Cuba about struggling against the a turn around then it should have situated it in some discussion of no-comment Mitzvah so now granted I understand that the allegory doesn't have to match up with the hello to different spheres etc but still it's worthy of note that the allegory which is no comment Mitzvah is somehow being shorn into a car shot that is dealing with no common Christian right so what how could that be something so there actually is a very very profound understanding here and I'll just say it we keep throwing them elaborate the short answer is even though the war against the a to arrive is certainly no but you gotta fight it in the way you fight no summitry shirts and not the way you fight for heaven as well and therefore the Torah alludes to Mohammed I ate there in a car shop dealing with optional work not over the time what do I mean again the primary difference between Muhammad miss Ramos on their shirts is no comic Mitzvah you will radically in it you are literally the most high eight on the show me you destroy them no comic restrict you capture them and subject no summit I answer is a process of capture and subjugation and that alliteration what way is that so people come from different backgrounds right many people come from non religious backgrounds even if one was religious there may have been I mean that may all of us have various mistakes that we made various that they wrote that we make but when a person comes from a past in which they were not serving a channel in which they were not keeping the total and now they finally want to change their lives there are two different ways how do I do that there's one way of viewing the past is I simply amputated I behave as if it never existed that is a Cuba of amputation I look at it as gangrenous I looked at it as poison I look at it as toxic and my older is to simply distance myself in every possible way again in the Bolshevik community this is sometimes a relatively calm response perhaps the tour is suggesting that is not the proper approach now sometimes it might be necessary just that sometimes you have to amputate a little but just as amputation of the limb is a last resort not a first we do so to the toe is suggesting that the chupa process should not be something that disconnects you from your path but rather the past the very paths that may have been simple in some way can become the source of your strength and your insight and your uniqueness in how you surface a simplest example let's imagine somebody was addicted to cocaine for many years and now they finally go clean one way is to simply act as if they never took drugs in other words I'm not connected to that work but such a certain way stay number one first of all even in a real amputation there's a phenomenon called phantom pain you think you got rid of the limb it's still hurting around or if you use another example if you have to delete a complex computer program you think it's gone but it's floating around there in various ways there's numerous people who tried to do an email this got discovered in the course of persecutions and the way in if you go with the amputation besides the psychic pain and the ten and you know then Tiffany of not being yourself and trying to pretend to yourself about you know deceiving others that you're somebody else what do you do with that 10 20 30 40 years just didn't count and you're making your life a zero are you simply saying my life starts when I was paying 45 what happens to that pit no no I'm saying yeah so if the cocaine the guy becomes with the a drug counseling something like that you have to understand he's not simply doing something good his ability is actually connected to the city so meaning there are certain understandings a person has but the otherwise wouldn't at that now that's an extreme case that is a very extreme case but in truth we have to understand that if we come from different backgrounds and we come from different experiences and you look at those experiences as negatives that's not really the case because they constitute the core elements of my unique identity and how I relate to God and that is called no chemistry should where you're taking the enemy and your subjugated instead of obliteration and amputation this is the Trueba of transformation now a person looks around especially in a city like your Shanaya and you look around you can see people who come from families for hundreds and hundreds of years they've been unusual and another broken level of holy disc edition of total mitzvah and I come from whatever in North Dakota or Wichita Kansas or whatever it would be and I look and I'm saying I could never catch up you know whatever it is I mean I never would I like the finish here is that it's true that the 30th generation you show me has qualities that we don't have 100% but the secret is that the person from Wichita has qualities that the 30th generation usually doesn't get that if we understand that we did not determine where we would be born in which family we would come we didn't even have necessarily free will regarding a number of the formative experiences that we went through and God put us there and there was a reason we underwent our experiences the goal is not to amputate the goal is to recapture and transform and that is the meaning of a very handy Matic passage in the Gemara where the guevara says if one does repentance out of love you've turned your sins now that's hard to understand I understand that God will erase your sins God will forgive your sins although that itself is a wonderful gift but if I have a million sins good if God erases it that's a wonderful thing but that's the lazarey but you're telling me like if I'd repent out of love the million sins become the million it's most like they say the story the raping it's like a prediction went over to the town Russia and said I am so jealous of you all you have to do is chew out of love you'll be ahead of me way ahead of me but the understanding is if I draw on my even dysfunctional as the source of my insight and my strength in my uniqueness and my creativity then all of those years in which I seem to have been going against the will of my sin I have now been redefined they've been reprinted did any of any experience right just like a picture the appearance of the picture is determined by how its framed for some degree and therefore the sin can actually become in retrospect part of who you are in terms of your sensitivities your understanding your compassion your talent your uniqueness now I remember when the late great Rashid Ramirez was never with necessary Finkel relatively young men and dying here Parkinson's for many years a very courageous person who really yeah so he had a very interesting background he actually came from the very cultured family and he of course was raised religious he was not about rubra but he was raised in Chicago and he went to co-educational high school a mixed high school of boys and girls he was on the basketball team he was under the baby team we only have your yearbook pictures of him with women and the like in those days they certainly printed with pictures of the women but haven't even the men and the women so when he died very very suddenly the eulogies that were given that spay them had a certain type of tone each husband was look at what a person can become he even though he grew up in such a decrepit bad corrupt immoral environment look how he escaped his environments and became great and I have to admit I was a little irritated by that time there's nothing the truth he didn't become great in spite of his environment part of his greatness was because he came out of an environment for example he was able to speak to American kids of all backgrounds because he understood baseball and basketball and girls and he knew all the temptations that teenagers go through he could talk to people in their own language so yeah he would you would not send his own children get a throwing grunt he would not send his own children to the environment that he grew up in but that environment turns out to be tremendously positive in making him the person that he was that is the Trueba of transformation not creepy today I know I mean I know another this is a difficult thing but I know another aggression like who again came from a pro family but had their relatively secular background and he cannot makes believe that you know he never heard of college and never heard of any of these things and his sister comes to me sometimes his sister lives mistakes and she complains that he's like obliterating their whole past just making believe that past didn't exist at all that's the true that's the job of amputation no kindness Mitzvah but the no comments again sir it is a mystery but you wagered so you know we have issues I work for America many men put them and most of us do so and I don't we have a large percentage of people that have been shomer mix well to all of their lives but the majority come from non-religious homes and there's a recurring issue about their continuing relationships with their families they sometimes get when they get married they'll sometimes say well you know my parents don't keep on the percent kosher how can I let my kids go there or my parents are even worse than that sometimes they'll say my parents keep kosher but they have internet and see videos so how can I let my six-year-old go to an environment that has internet maybe they're going to see Walt Disney or something you know the cuts are showing I can't can't allow that to to happen now what's interesting is that in many ways because the nation wants points about the thing that's really contagious and life is badly don't meaning if a kid knows they have to keep Shabbos they have to keep kosher then they actually it's amazing it is very it's a very impressive very amazing even the five-year-old can understand well buddy it's a doorstop of the stock stuff and I mean can't always eat all the candy they give you so you should ask me and the five year olds will have the strength it's an amazing thing very impressive not to eat the candy and they understand some people keep Shabbat some don't but what is contagious is badly dumped that if they see people screaming yelling being inconsiderate that's contagious that's much more contagious than foolish about or watching videos so if we're worried about bad influences we ought to be worried much more about many of them well I mean listen this is this is a new difficult question having nothing to do with with this thought that I'm advancing all I would say is this I would say generative this is a very general answer as a general answer all pain that we suffer is a lesson in sensitivity and compassion and can be channeled in ways in which so that's a very general response to any type of psychic pain that cannot be fully fully satisfied no the Torah says and one of the most remarkable verses in the Torah you shall love the gear which is love the stranger because you were strangers in the land of Egypt now the lesson there is that sometimes when I've been a victim of abuse I developed a self-protective persona well all of my energies is to distance myself and it's all about protecting myself and again I'm not gonna be quick I'm not going to be critical of that because sometimes that's what a person needs to do to survive but the Torah is suggesting a people approach to open yourself up to your pain to remember what it is like to be a nobody to be abused to be an insignificant person and then use that pain as a basis for compassion to others that when you meet somebody without connections with our family with our feelings without wealth instead of saying I'm fine no he's not my problem I feel so my sexuality would be an example of that now the specific issue no I mean I graduate from the top of the ladder study one thing several years ago I received a petition that several a red light sign naturally basically stating that since God will never give you a test that you can't pass it is inherent that every homosexual would be shocked should be able to change their sexual orientation if they truly desire it because God would not allow them to remain in that state well I don't want to say that's a ridiculous argument but how about if I said this every person who loses an army will definitionally grow a new arm because God would not allow a person to suffer with only one arm obviously that's not that's not true and obviously when we say God doesn't give you a test that you can't pass that means God will give you the strength to live with one arm homosexuality is the same thing to make the point that it is inherent that you're able to change may not be the way that God gives you the stress [Music] we had [Music] well we see I would suggest that maybe maybe there's a different distinction there may be say the following you're referring to the issue of whether I'm still actively struggling with the negative forces or I have so subdued them that they're no longer struggling but I'm dealing with a kind of different aspect that is even if your life governor Bella that you've gone beyond the realm of struggle you're still using your past as a foundation of your it's really different it's a related point but it's why that's somewhat of a different point now the state so family issues is one thing another issue two talents again I speak mainly from my experience with with my with the students in our so that a person comes especially again outside of DC world is probably not such a big problem so I might be speaking about a parochial difficulty but people come with all sorts of talents they're writers musicians poets athletes and the injury achiever culture where they kind of get the message that these are not really the real good things you should be doing put away your guitar stop writing poetry etc and what happens is person gets a sense of what I am and what I do and those things that really gave me joy I guess I just have to put them away because they're not worthwhile but that's the trooper of application that gives you a lot of phantom pain that gives you a lot of malaise we see throughout these in the world throughout the Caribbean anyway they would you might call it a low-level depression maybe not clinical maybe a sub clinical depression or a certain sadness or lack of enthusiasm and this is what happens when you crush the human spirit but Shem gave a person talents that give them joy and it's because they feel a person's Machado and the process of trooper has to be to use those talents in a go decision and not to ignore that now I understand they're going to be certain activities that it's very hard to assume like if somebody was a striptease dancer in a bar you know I'm not going to necessarily automatically be able to say sure you know I'll go ahead but whatever it is if you take the talent and you find find avenues and and in the life so psychologically this is a very very important point this is connected to the issue of the kids at risk kids altogether either it is when you create an educational plan that is a one size fit all people who don't fit that particular agenda feel swell and the point is though it's deeper than kids altogether even the kids are the dough and even the adults on the day who get married and have kids and are you know upstanding they're members of the community no problems there can be a deafness when a person is not doing those things that's be tarnish on so the keeps order there's a great profundity here in analogizing the process of Shuba to know how that we should commit Vicksburg is the model of obliteration and application capture and transformation and we have to recognize the wholeness of our lives every part of our life had a meaning as a purpose it may not have been apparent as we went through it as we grow older and as we go back we need to see how everything fit how everything for a reason how everything contributed to the wholeness of who we are and we have to survive on this Bronco within the framework of that homeless right so as they say I know I left a tremendous number of the general questions open tonight I really want today between the season of Cuba I wanted to specifically connect Asian Shabak so I do elbow but I do understand that genocide all issues and the war rape issues are not totally resolved but I think it is important to be aware of this afraid that at least according to one interpretation of the supreme law do have sanobim Ohama relationship October is not a permission to engage in rape it does require at least a formal [Music]