Ultimate Contribution to the Tabernacle by Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz Parshat Terumah 5778

[Music] everybody the Rambam in the beginning of safer schmoes basically tells us relatively simple idea that the book of schmoes deals with three themes that are actually interrelated a theme number one is the Exodus you'd see Atmos ryeom theme number two is the purpose of the Exodus that is mattandsarah and theme number three is the purpose of math on Torah which in a sense is establishing a tabernacle and in the casillases forum they explain it this way and we mentioned this before that the concept of PHCs mitzrayim is not just the historical events but it refers to a spiritual power that God put into the creation right the Haggadah says each person must regard themselves as if they personally bir liberated from its Ryan and the question is very obvious I was never in with ryeom how could I say I was personally liberated with Ryan and the bhava Tonya explains that the word Mitzrayim does not have to mean Egypt mitzrayim is a term that connotes limitation constriction blockage governor Miller says men are mates are karate Cara called out to God for mates are mates or it's the same word as myths Ryan the narrow confines that choke me and seem in this way we talked about this just to review very quickly every person has their own myths Ryan then with Ryan could be their egotism their selfishness their laziness their anger their materialism their lack of self esteem or self-awareness all of these things are blockages all of these things are myths ryeom's and when I could have Sparkle liberated the Jewish nation from the slavery of Egypt the slavery of mitzrayim he put a certain power in the world that each and every one of us can connect to that did see us with Ryan and therefore we do experience the Exodus personally not in the historical sense we were all in Egypt but in the spiritual sense that each of us has a mitzrayim from which we need to emerge so step one in spiritual journey is to identify your Mitzvah and then liberate Havisham liberate yourself from it but then the question becomes freedom itself does not give life a purpose why am i free what do I do with my liberation what do I do with my freedom that is step two submission to the will of Hashem that is Mansoura people make a very big mistake and it's an obvious mistake when people say freedom is the purpose of life freedom is not a purpose freedom might be a condition in order to achieve a purpose but the ultimate purpose is subservience to the will of God now you might say well that's the opposite of freedom so I've mentioned before the Indian poet Tagore II who was not writing about Judaism at all I don't know if he knew would you but he once compared a human soul to a violin string and as a marvelous capacity for beautiful music but if the string is totally free it cannot make any music only when it's tied down can it express the music within and the human soul toggery rights is very much the same the music of our soul can be expressed only by submission only by being tied down and thus because I'll say a mentoring L Amisha o sake Bottari the only person that is free is a person who learns and commits to the tower now at first glance that's a strange extract expression I understand if we would say the only person that is holy is the person who learns Torah or the only person that is righteous is the person that learns Torah but I wouldn't automatically associate freedom with that activity I would say well a person is free if he can do whatever he wants but not really because without submission to Hashem we are simply slaves of whatever moods and passions are driving us at that given moment of time we have uncontrollable appetites we have moods we have emotions we are really like a train wreck basically whatever is grabbing a that particular moment is what we do the Torah gives the person a guide how to control how to be master of their lives master of their faiths not necessarily the external faith but one's internal state it is within my control you know when the Nazis attacked the city of Keller which was the home of a great great mystery Shiva the altar of Esau cylinders primary Talmud was the altar of Kellan and the city was massacred these were great great tsadikim and the central teaching of Kellum was the notion of self-control and calmness no matter what is going on in your life you just understand that whatever is happening is supposed to be happening at that moment even if you don't understand why and your job is to respond with dignity and self-respect and kiddush Hashem and there were very very few survivors but the very few survivors of that awful massacre again one of numerous massacres obviously that the Nazis did remarked about the fact that all of these people of kalampore in such control of themselves that they weren't crying they weren't weeping they weren't begging for mercy which in any event never came but never talked but they simply understood that their job right now they lived for God's glory and their job right now is to die for God's glory and what was such staggering was that even the Nazis were overwhelmed by this they didn't know what to make of this nobody was begging nobody was crying nobody was shrieking and it's recorded that like one some of the Nazis said to each other well you know maybe maybe maybe just maybe we should let these people go maybe it's even the devil got overwhelmed with a certain condition that they saw of course at the end they overcame the moments of goodness that beam but that's the point of being a free person a free person is not a function of your external conditions it is the freedom to choose how you respond to whatever deck of cards so to speak life deals to you this of course is the thesis of Viktor Frankl in his book man's search for meaning and Franco of course was not he was not in an observant Jew he didn't have the background didn't have the knowledge I was gonna say he was not a religious Jew but I that's not a correct way of speaking I believe he was very very deeply religious and very very deeply spiritual he happened not to have the knowledge of Jewish rituals and Jewish mitzvahs but intuitively he understood much of the ideas that the Torah teaches in which he said that the very definition of freedom is how you choose to react to the situations that life gives you we have no choice over what those situations are we have the choice how to respond to them and that is the dignity of human freedom and that is what we mean that's what Kazaa mean when they say only a person who submits to the will of God can be totally free to become what they're capable of becoming so that's step one you'd see estimates ryeom is try to free yourself from all of those in Slate and slavers with in step two submit to the will of Hashem that's my canto room so what is step three step three is the ultimate purpose to make a tabernacle fresh M the word is Myshkin because I'll already point out that the Mishkan the dwelling place of God's presence is not really the building the dwelling place of God's presence is our heart and our soul the soul emic - Hashem says make for me a sanctuary boishakh Antibes is so calm so I will dwell in their mists and you know the famous words which are taken from the safer as I read them now it's a beautiful song and now it's also the title of some very beautiful books that spiritual development and Judaism Diwali Myshkin ethnic in my heart I will construct a dwelling place for the divine so those of you that took learn Tanya or those of you that are familiar with the Bible this is an expression of the alter rebbe uses that Chabad must use hundreds of times a day like every other sentence that is it was God's desire to make a deer of attack chthonian a dwelling place for his presence in this lowly earth that although a shaman heaven has the angels and all of the great spiritual beings that are billions and trillions beyond us but God's true love is to make his presence reside within us within our hearts within our souls an old martial love to see them used to use it's earlier than about Danny I think it's about a child who was once a crying and when someone asked them the parrot test why are you crying the child says well we're playing hide-and-go-seek whatever the Polish equivalent to fighting your sequence we're playing hide-and-go-seek and I'm supposed to be the one that's hiding so the parents asked so why are you crying because I'm hiding and nobody's looking for me hmm and the marshal was that this is Hashem is crying as well it's true that Hashem has concealed himself in this world but it was such a tragedy that nobody's looking and the Shem also Christ Capcom Shem cries over the fact that no one is still fast yes hello Kim no one is looking this is what the movie shows us at the very end of the book he says I've made myself available to be found and nobody is a delicious so in a sense the book of schmoes is really in an abstract way it is really the plan of our life it is the journey of our existence in which we want to leave the mitzrayim leave the egotism leave the selfishness leave the resentments leave the anger that enslaves us that shames us down embrace the will of Hashem unconditionally which is not sevenish ma we will do even before we understand what it is and then the ultimate payoff at the end is V us early mikdash we built for ourselves a sanctuary not just a building the building is a symbol the unsub li mikdash we goes for ourselves a mikdash of the hearts so that hashem dwells in our heart and in our soul you may remember from the Russian and Yom Kippur liturgy again you only say once or twice a year in the repetition of through sodium may not be me and I have a meeting to come back to you but there's a a very there's a poem and it's written in a few different versions for chakras for most of you know it's written in different ways but it alternates one stanza describes the glories of the angels which are with God in shamayim this is a new God are with this and that and that Matt Matt Matt Matt but you desire your praises from us so then it talks about how lowly we are you know from the piece of dirt you know from the from the driven leaf and it compares the glory of the heaven with the lowliness of the earth and us and each time it says Hashem prefers the lowliness of us right right Caesar right okay so that's one thing we think about when we read about the Michigan now of course obviously there are many many details that one should learn because every detail is very very significant but it's also important generally that we don't allow the trees to obscure our view of the forest that the overall forest is we also mimic Dutch we make a holy place fish or hunt now it's interesting that the hummus of course is describing the Michigan and the haftorah quite logically is taken from the book of Malacca and is describing the base HaMikdash that analyst built in Yerushalayim on the Temple Mount right exactly here about two miles away whatever whatever whatever it is so obviously the connection is obvious both the parsha and the haftorah deal with the construction of the sacred space in which we bring the Corbin house and the and the sacrifices indeed I just want to point out that there's a date given in the haftorah that is actually a cornerstone of biblical chronology and that is it is recorded that Mela built the first temple in Yerushalayim 480 years after we left with rallyin and since we wandered in the desert for 40 years that would mean we were in Eretz Israel four hundred and forty years before we built the temple which is pretty amazing and the Quran uses the state to calculate all sorts of things I mean this is like a fixed date that is the basis of all biblical chronology but the interesting question is we were in you an average Israel for four hundred and forty years there's the whole period of the judges etc and there was no base invictus there was a Mitch gun that was in Shiloh for a long time and then sheilo got destroyed in the time of a Lee that's when Haley died and then temporarily it was in no the city of the Kohanim and then in give-up meaning to say because I'll tell us the way they understand it we could not have a base on McNish until there was peace until all the wars were over that's why governor Miller from self could not build the base of McNish because she of war not a man of peace and although WLX wars were totally justifiable these were mitzvah Wars but still the baser mikdash cannot come through violence it cannot come through bloodshed and as a result it was more than four centuries in which the base of victors could not be built because only in melet's time was their peace with an absence of conflict now that's an interesting point you know the Rambam that makes a similar point if you look at the Book of Shem well you know who shall I am was a city that we gained of course it was a sham promised it to us but we gained it by war we gained it by conquest you lion was conquered from the abou see now how was it conquered is quite complicated because it seems to have been conquered in different stages there was a conquest in the days of Yahshua and they conquest in the days of the judges and then a final conquest in the days of governor Miller but you shall I am was a city that was acquired by military conquest and yet if you look in the book of Shmuel the Temple Mount was not acquired by conquest the Temple Mount was acquired by purchase the temple mount Mount Moriah the mountain upon which Africa was willing to sacrifice his son yet sky resolved by a young Lucy around a hayabusa and mm Ella collected money from each of the tribes so in a sense it's collective land although it's in the salic of you who do but it is like the land that is owned by everybody and ever develop bought it and the Rambam says if all of you shall I am was through military conquest why was the temple why was the Temple Mount purchased and the problem says because the mahkum hamikdash has to come from the peace and cooperation it cannot come through us I will leave the political implications of that to ponder in the sense of the present situation that we have but the base omit this requires that even the non-jews recognize this when Messiah comes they will have that recognition but one of the argument you know that people who argue why don't we build the base on make session el why don't we just do it so putting aside the you know the probable repercussions of that would happen but you know some religious people say what do you mean repercussions God will surely protect the Jewish people if we took such a step but at least one of the reasons without giving your whole analysis is that the base of McNish is not supposed to be built until even the yumoto love recognize that this is ours and this is legitimate and this is the place of God and that's why until there was peace there could be no base of McNish and the Temple Mount itself could not be conquered it has to be negotiated and had to be purchased ok alright so that's one thing so the connection between the parsha and haftorah very obvious one is Myshkin one is Mick - but if we think about the difference between Muskaan and Mick - we actually see two differences which are really one difference but two manifestations one is the Mick - is a single location you can't move it the Mick Dodge is where it is the McDonough is harder Maria the Macduff is the Temple Mount the Coalition of judgment has to be exactly where it is it is stationary the Mishkan on the other hand moves from place to place to place into place so the mikdash represents a holiness that we would call stationary holiness and the Mishkan represents a holiness that we would call portable holiness the mission represents the portability of kedusha now the second difference which is really the corollary is that the mikdash of course is only in their rich Israel the Muskaan although there wasn't much gone the first hundreds of years in every hotel but the michigan was primarily inputs lords alright so the two differences are meet josh is fixed and stationary michigan moves around number two Mick - is usually emeritus well Michigan is closed Laurence and it's very very surprising how much of the foundations of Judaism are reproductively Florence especially if we consider the wrong bombs comment you know their own Bonneville has a comment that says that we know of course there are many myths vote that you can only do in the Land of Israel so obviously Aristotle is special with respect to those myths folks you don't take off Trueba you don't take off my Sarah you don't observe shemitah all of this is only an error just well but we might think that things like Shabbos gosh restful increase my same if I do it here same if I do it in New York it's not a mitzvah that is connected to the land and yet what the ROM bond says is a striking idea based on a metric he says even the mitzvot that are not seemingly connected to Erica's realm have their ultimate meaning only if they're done here the only reason Hashem gave us Mitzvah a foot Suarez to keep in foot Suarez is to keep us in training so we will know what to do when we get back here which means it's not just here I can do shmita and there I don't do shmita know here when I put on tefillin I am truly fulfilling what that Mitzvah represents when I do it into its Lawrence it's only a reminder now granted it's a Torah requirement God requires me to have that reminder I'm not suggesting it's just something you make up yourself but still a mitzvah any Mitzvah that is done in foot slide does not have the same ultimate though so if that's the case it's quite surprising that the torrent itself was given not the anigh richest realm the Torah was given in her Sina and of course the Michigan is good slots and even the oral law is connected to its Levites right we have two talents we have the Samba Jewish ami which is a product of era to surround but we have the Talmud Bavli the Babylonian Talmud which is a product of Iraq and we know in terms of her logic decision-making the Talmud Bavli is more authoritative than the saw magician so what is all of this cuts lurid stuff that's so important if we're supposed to live in Eretz Israel as we are if the meaning of the myths vows is only in Eretz Israel as it is why is so much of Judaism based on things that we're outside of air in Israel including Mactan Torah itself and the resolution to this is really the idea that in Judaism there are two contradictory ideas that you have to live with in this first glance they seem to be myth nugget they seem to be in opposition but in fact you have to deal with both of them the first idea is the idea of kazoo shots macomb that there are places in the world that are holier than other places what do we mean when we say a place is holier we don't mean that God is there more than God is somewhere else because God by definition is not bounded by any space the other way around the whole universe exists within God so to speak so what do we mean a place is holier what does it mean I richest travel is holier than the hood slaughter it's what does it mean you show my am is holier than the rest of America so what does it mean the Hara bias is holier than usual I am what does it mean that in the base on Mukesh itself you have different level levels of holiness culminating in the codification and even within the cottage suggestion we even subdivided further exactly where the art was so holiness is not a reference to where God is but where God can be perceived in other words the image think I may be a frivolous analogy you know you have cell phones right so cell phones there are certain areas where the reception is better and certain areas where the reception is not so good so a holy place is one where the reception the ability of you to receive godliness is stronger it's all up to us so just as there's holiness of space there's holiness of time Shabbat is considered to be a base of McDuff sometime in that way so Judaism clearly recognizes that some places are better than other places that's called to do shots mother but at the same time Judaism teaches that Hashem is accessible everywhere and the same can be reached everywhere did you see to do shot McCollum has a certain downside to it because when you define your spiritual identity exclusively by reference to a place a circumstance that is external to you then if this if the vicissitudes of life puts you in a situation where you have to be somewhere else the person might think what's the use of my serving hm I'm not in a situation that is so conducive and this goes well beyond their just so versus Whistler's I'm using this only as an example very often a person might be in yeshiva for a while and when they're in yeshiva they're learning is intense they're da burning is intense they're surrounded with spirituality but then they go back to college they go back to work and often they'll think if the holiness that I had in that environment I'm not able to replicate what's the use but that's a very big mistake coffees high himself when my Shura Boehner was first activated into prophecy so he is standing by the burning bush he's 80 years old and he sees the bush that's burning and it doesn't get consumed and he hears a voice that says take off your shoes remove your shoes from your feet because the place where you are standing is holy ground now the carpet time says what place was that and he said Hashem is addressing each and every one of us the place where you are and I don't just mean geographically but your situation your job your family your environment has the potential for holiness people often say if only I had a different family a different school at different Abruzzo a different community then I could serve Hashem probably a Shems message to Moshe Rabbeinu is with your family with your environment with your situation with your circumstances the place where you are is holy though obviously if a person is in a toxic situation that they are able to extricate themselves from so you change your environment but if you're kind of stuck with what you have then you have to recognize that this too can be your destiny this too can be your challenge this too can be the basis of your holiness so as a result therefore judaism vacillates between two opposite poles on one hand there is the emphasis on kaduche at mcconnell the base of McDuffie Eretz Israel this is where it you has to be and at the same time there's a parallel emphasis on the ability to transcend Malcolm and that is Mukesh versus Michigan mikdash represents the fixed connection to holy ground and Michigan represents the portability of kedusha from place to place to place and that is why in the history of transmission of Torah it goes back and forth the Mishnah is a product of Erica's realm the Babylonian Talmud is the product of the Diaspora the Rambam is the product of the Diaspora the show choleric is the product of Eretz Israel does a Shem is showing us on one hand there's a special kaduche of to the lands which we can never forget and have to be connected to and at the same time know that we are connected to Hashem everywhere and when we're in gullets our Shem is and gullets with us as well and that is why we have the concept of Michigan and mikdash and therefore I would suggest that the haftorah is not simply one of associational there's Michigan and there's mikdash but rather it's by way of contrast of recognizing that side by side with kaduche as Macomb is the recognition that I could ask or Crow is male caller it's Kubota and the ground that we are standing in no matter where that ground is is cut in by the way this is a message even if you're living in there at Israel obviously a person could be living in Eretz Israel and have a whole bunch of reasons why they feel their spiritual life is not as rich as it should be and the person often says if only there would be another situation but you have to know this situation has the potential for for greatness right so that's going to be I think a very important both comparison and contrast that one needs to be needs to be aware of let me mention another point about this last week I was interesting I gave I was talking like the wrong half terawatts I was talking with after of the party last week but actually we read a special up to her so I want to go back a little bit the Shabbos before we wrote a satire or when we wrote aside our falls out of town Shabbos so we have a special master a special Torah reading that is called partial skull him it deals with the mitzvah of moccasins of Shechem and that's why we have a special Torah reading about the half shekel and then we have a half taller that dealt with the collection of a half shekel during the later kings of the first base of McNish now what is the midst of the half shekel the midst of the half shekel by the way which was a lot more it was way way more than a half shekel today there's nothing to do with the value half shekel would be around $50 in contemporary you know American money so what is the app shadow it was an annual tax that was levied on wall males 20 and above this money was used to finance the acquisition of sacrifices in the base of macness because the core bonus of the base on Macduff I don't mean the private cabanas but the cabanas that were brought every day the Corbin Thomas the Moussa on Shabbos Rosh Hodesh and youngjun the incense the oil for the menorah this has to be public you couldn't tell like these Sheba says the pioneers are young you couldn't have some guy that says the service in the temple today was definitely no by George Smith or something because the car burners have to be owned and brought on behalf of the whole Jewish people so it had to be publicly collected money but more than that and that is there are accounting rules here the fiscal year of the base--emitter and the michigan does not begin with Tishrei this begins with Nissan Nissan is the beginning of the years throughout the Torah and starting from Nisa brothers Nissan all car Bono's have to be purchased from publicly collected money that was specifically collected for that new year so even if there was money in the temple treasury from last year that was not spent even if there's a lot of money because I think the price of animals went down that money could not be used after were Scottish Nisa what did you do with that money so if we learned the Mishnah mystify scotland there are actually our accounting rules what do you do with surpluses what did they say you know and government offices they use it or lose it this is a problem that government agency sells and no in the United States probably the Israel to that if they don't spend their budgetary allotment for that year you know they're gonna lose it next year right so the same thing here and there are rules that were use for city improvements that can make you to repair potholes they're different things so it turns out as soon as well show this needs sometimes we have to have some immediately new collected money for the new car bonus so although it's true that much of the population paid their skull Amman dribs and drabs over the whole year and some were even late payments they paid back taxes the next year but there needed to be some immediate money so as a result they began collecting the half shekel in Adana one month before so by the time Nisan comes there is some new shekels in the temple Treasury this is what they did bhisma hammock - and as az-zahra loved mukesh to remember and commemorate what they did in the base of Mukesh and the Shabbos before we wrote a satire we read about the Mitzvah of mass associate oh the famous scene in the Christian Bible of Jesus going into the temple and chasing out the money changers you know really the money changers get a very bad rap the money changers in the temple there were money changers in the temple so honey they had a very very legitimate function simply because pilgrims Jewish people came from all over the world I mean even from America where they came from Babylonian they came from Persia and from Greece and from Rome and not all of them had half shekel coins so they came with their local currencies and in the basin mikdash they had to convert those currencies and do half shekels now yes I will admit that the money changers did charge the Commission for it so there was a little bit of profit but that was there for nothing this was a legitimate service the same way there were animal merchants and oil merchants and wine merchants because people needed these things for carbonyls so there were money merchants who changed currencies into half shells so Yoshika was a little bit too aggressive there when he comes in and he overturns the tables but that's what is that's exactly what is being described as he's describing the people who were involved in currency conversions for the masses acceptable okay now which the mass was a shekel the Torah gives us one interesting Commandments and it says how I share low your bet rich people cannot give more Adal low Yami's poor people cannot give less and it's an interesting question I can understand we can understand why poor people cannot give less because there is a concept everybody has a certain level of religious and civic responsibility and you know this is the minimum it's not too much but you know everyone has to do this but what's the concept rich people can't give more I don't think any show would have a policy like that I mean let's assume as shown as membership somebody says can I give know twice as much can I give more I don't think a show would say no certainly the Shiba some familiar with was certainly not saying no if somebody wants to give more than full tuition we will take it and yet the Torah insists not only do poor people have to meet a minimum standard but rich people are not allowed to go above the minimum the minimum is both a minimum and a maximum and why should that be so so one answer might be I'll give you the simplest answer and that is the max is a shekel was not only a revenue device for kirbo notes but it was also a census device for counting a population because according to halakha you're not supposed to count heads directly so the way we computed at least the population of people from 20 was we would count the number of half shekels and that would give us a total now obviously that's only gonna work if everybody gives the same amount if some people give more some people get less then you're not going to be able to figure out a population by Counting the half shekels because maybe somebody maybe one guy gave one check out you know two shekel three check off whatever it would be so that would be a good answer but the reason why it's not a complete answer is that although it's true that there were some years that the half shekel was used in the census that was not true every year many years it was just for the COPO notes in fact we even have accounts it's interesting we have accounts from the gaudium of convoys of wagons coming from Babylonia bringing the equivalent of in modern money millions of dollars of silver to shamaya and of course the tremendous fear was pirates and robbers and they had it was like an arm trap they had like armies of guards surrounding that money may actually have described descriptions like that and the mission itself already discusses what are the obligations of the money gets stolen what if I sends my half shekel through this type of transport and it got stolen do I bear the risk of responsibility until the temple gets it or was I yelled say by putting it on the convoy right there are all sorts of discussions generally speaking you actually do bear the risk of loss so I'm not sure if there were insurance companies that offered shekel insurance or the life but generally speaking until your shekel was received by the base of Mukesh you were not off the hook I imagine that's true for every taxpayer right so mr. Freddie taxes right like mail my taxes either to the here or to the IRS and it gets lost in the mail I assume I I still have to pay you know so it's a similar thing with the shekel of the base of McNish so we're back to square one if in fact the shekel was not always a census device then why is the torso insistence that rich people can't give more so there's a beautiful thoughts again from the tsipras and Cedars in which they say the concept of rich and poor needs to be understood in many ways rich is not only in money and poor is not only in lack of money but rich can refer to the entire spectrum and diversity of talents and abilities that human beings have there are people who seem to be wealthy in many many ways they might be wealthy in intelligence in personality and charisma in leadership in organizational ability in creativity people who just seem to be gifted in many many different ways and then there are people who may at least initially seem to be bereft of many many gifts they are impoverished in different ways and one might assume that somehow in God's eyes the rich is greater than the poor but the lesson of masses a shekel is this when he comes to the service of the Almighty when it comes to connecting to God when it comes to dignity when it comes to access to a Kevin the rich and the poor stands before Hashem with equality and the reason that so is Hashem does not judge you by how much you can do objectively because of your talents Hashem judges you by how much of yourself have you given to him and a person with great so just as we would say in Stuber if a multi-billionaire gives ten dollars and a very poor man gives twenty-five cents in the shams eyes the twenty-five cents of the poor man might be a Morse much more significant donation than the $10 with a hundred dollars of a thousand dollars of the person that is very very well because Hashem looks at how much of yourself you have given to him and in that way rich and poor stands before a sham with equal opportunity to surfing you know it's interesting when the Rambam is hopeless children discusses the idea of bashira options free will and the ramp-up says free well is a fundamental principle in Judaism a chef does not predetermine if you're going to be righteous or evil because the Ramba mark is quite logically if I shouldn't decreed that you would be if I said the creat that you would be righteous or evil how could you be accountable for your sin and how could you be rewarded for your good right the whole concept of reward and Punishment accountability and responsibility presupposes free will so the reason why the Rambam discusses free wealth and the laws of Trueba is really twofold it is free well that is the reason I have to do two but because my actions were my decisions and it is free well that makes it possible for me to do true but because otherwise everything would be predetermined so it's the reason i have to do to be' and it's the reason I'm able to do two but beat us it may when the Rambam brings in free well the Rambam has a statement that at first glance sounds a bit hyperbolic that is every person can be as righteous as Moshe Rabbeinu and as evil as you rub them and now righteous as Moshe Rabbeinu how could that be good a person could be its addict but Moshe Ave know the Torah says they will never be a prophet as greatest motion the reason why we don't accept Christianity in this language because they claim that's the revelation to Moses that cyanide was superseded by greater revelations we say that's impossible so how could we how could we possibly state every single person can be as great a Sadiq as Moshe Rabbeinu Sura Bohanon basserman says the following at the beginning of the book of Yahshua the Torah says by yamas Moshe everything Moshe was the ever division the servant of God and Moshe died why is Masha called an effort Hashem the Radek of David Kim see when the greatest of the apportionment not says that the appellation of attention is designed to bring us to the halacha masha kana event kana raba what does that mean what ever and ever owns belongs to his master if in everett finds a diamond ring it belongs to the master if and ever it finds $100 at welcome to the master the evidence nothing himself everything the avid owns it belongs to the master moshe Robina was called airbed hashem because every single talent he had he gave the gods service so what kind of a sermon says the following what does the Rambam mean when he says every person can be a psychic like motion of a know what that means is just as moshe rabbeinu totally all of the abilities he had which were so magnificent and he gave them to God we too can take our talents which are of course much much less but we too can be an evidential like Moshe revena and that is what a sham judges Asylum does not judge us by the objective size of our talent that was determined by him we have nothing to do with that Hashem judges us by how much of our talents have we utilized in his service and in this connection the Gemara has an interesting story about the son of Raghu yoshua been lady and the son of a fisherman Lavy had what we might call a near-death experience today he was in a coma and when he was revived he recounted an experience he had going up to Olam haba dar Nathan and he was asked what did he see and Gunny and he said I sigh topsy-turvy upside-down world now y'all him the big shots in this world were at the bottom there tight on him and the people that were lowly and despised in this world they were in town and his father told him my son you did not see a topsy-turvy world you saw a world of truth you saw the world the way it really is now the my bids Reb Moshe Ben Yoseph Trani who was the dyeing of spots in the time of reverse at Cairo he was a guest of Kairos collaborator the mob it says what does it mean el young in big shots and Tottenham and lowly people it can't mean rich powerful versus poor because that's pita of why would you think why is the boy so surprised boy so surprised that the big and powerful were not important in the world to come why would there be a half of Mena that money and power would mean anything that's obvious it doesn't mean that much so here's what the my bid says what what made the boy so surprised was a yo name and Tottenham men's people who seem to have been superior in spiritual attainments were nevertheless inferior in gun agent and the example he gives is imagine you have a person who was so brilliant and learning that he's able to learn one hundred dharam of Gemara a day that's a phenomenal face and amazing base so and then you have another person who struggles and struggles and struggles and can only do $1 week and let's imagine further that because the guy that can do 100 by the day is so much superior to anybody then he decides to only do 50 blood a day which is still a phenomenal amount she does 55 a day and the other guy is struggling with one blood a week so we look at these two people and one person I say what it's hamid khan from what a london what a scholar what an evil ii now look at the other guy and i say well you know he's trying but you know he's not he doesn't really amount to that much in god anything it's gonna be the opposite cuz that poor little guy only did one daf a week he worked as hard as he could and the brilliant genius who did 50 blood a day only gave Hashem 50% of his color and that was surprising that even the people who spiritually seem to be doing more are not necessarily gonna be in a position of superiority and that's what the motto so shekel says that's the rich and the poor start off equal and it all depends on how much of themselves they give to action you know we like to say both as parents and as teachers we tell our kids we tell our students the only thing that matters is efforts but you know in the world that we live in it's not really totally true no the teacher might tell the class the only thing that matters is effort but if the MYSA the kid who's not so bright doesn't get the answers right no they're gonna get it worse grade they're not gonna get the a the one that gets the right answers is gonna get the a in the employment market it's certainly that way the one who gets the job done so in this world it is true that you're not judged by effort you're judged by results but you know them how far it is only the effort that matters right the results are up to God maybe you'll be successful maybe not none of us have really any guarantee of our success and therefore this is the beautiful lesson of noxus a chateau to understand that each person has equal dignity before God and what makes a person great is not the abilities they were given because that's not up to them but what they have what they do with those abilities how much of their coats do they give for the service of the repo neshama and the person that may have quantitatively and qualitatively Lesko coats but gives those coats to Hashem it's actually considered to be higher in esteem than a person there's more cocodes and gives less of intuition now there's another blood cast there's another lesson in boxes a shekel as well so though so the lesson that I was developing primarily is the idea of equality of dignity but there's also a lesson again a very famous start you probably averted before that the Masters a shekel is a fractioned denomination why don't you give a whole shuttle why is the tower giving you a mark since why is this she or a max it's a shekel they have and here there's an important lesson that 1/2 is by definition incomplete unless you join it to another health it takes two halves to make a whole and the Torah wanted to emphasize that each one of us as an individual is incomplete unless we connect to others and that's a very very important lesson and really it's a lesson in two directions and you have to understand what this means on one hand it reminds me that no matter who I think I am I am incomplete unless I have the humility and the willingness to connect to others and learn from others in that sense it's an antidote it's a corrective to arrogance but you also need to understand it is also a builder of self-esteem because the same way that the matricis checker communicates to me that i am incomplete unless i connect to others it also reminds me that others are incomplete unless they connect to me so it gives me a sense that I matter I make a difference I have a contribution that they need me to you see it works in the opposite directions it teaches one go different people different people need different lessons one person needs the lesson don't think you're so great that you don't need others and the other is don't think you're so insignificant that others don't need you you have a role to play you know when there was a space program years ago so I remember that one of the astronauts was asked what for his final thoughts right before liftoff and he's sitting in this very tight space capsule on top of the rocket and he said well I'm thinking to myself that this space capsule in this rocket has something like 100,000 or 200,000 different parts and every single part was purchased from someone who bid the lowest price you know that's a scary thing when when I'm thinking everything here was by the cheapest bidder to the contract but you know the truth that matter is and I had some even such a jump because there were tragedies in the space program that sometimes a little screw a little nail a little panel something that might might go for 30 cents although government pricing is out it's always the pricing is much more than that but things you get in the hardware store and you think who needs these little things I focus on the big complicated computers or whatever it is I'm supposed to say I'm supposed to pay attention to to little little screws and yet without those little screws the whole thing falls apart so even if you know our parts in Hashem plan may seem to be relatively small it is absolutely sickening essential and significance to the entirety of the enterprise and master shekel reminds every Jew that you have a role you have a destiny you have a place you have a purpose you have a contribution and God's plan in this world cannot be accomplished without your contribution and therefore the notion of my sins is a tremendous double message it reminds me that I need others and it also reminds me that others need me because I do have a purpose in this world so in that sense the matzah session is a great great message for us and of course as we enter the month of Adar as I'll say mishenichnas adar from our bimba simcha when the month of Adar comes in we increase our joy and part of why we increase our joy is connected to the skull and when we recognize how important we are to a chef's plan how valued we are how needed we are and therefore we should all endeavor to try to find what our mission is finds what our contribution is and then give it back to our college board and that will be the measure of the success of our lives thank you it a good that good [Music]