Are You Ready for Purim? - Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz

[Music] everybody can't get kodesh and we are of course in the month of Adar I mean if Massoud are my remember simcha somebody told me in the name of crime can f ski that since the Chimera says that simcha always requires Buster and yayan as we find by Yom Tov so every single day of the month of Adar not just important one is believed to drink a little bit of wine because if it says you increase your simpler that would also mean you go up and drinking every day day one is one cup day - 2 cup Mar bimba simcha no I'm not yeah even I'm pouring you're not truly meant to be drunk but you know asserts a certain state of well that's a whole that is a whole issue you know the issue particularly as you fall asleep or you you know you there there there are ways out of that you know but but either way you know because I'll have a concept that that inebriation brings out the inner personality of a person that's the phrase thickness yayan yatza so if you've ever seen a great person get a little intoxicated so much Torah comes out and rook Nia's comes out and spirituality comes out and it's kind of an inspirational aura but when you have somebody who doesn't have a lot inside you know unfortunately not such good things come out so someone has to be careful in terms of what they are able to reveal what they should reveal and what is there to be revealed but anyway what I want you to talk about tonight just a little bit of a departure from the parsha of the week and I want to focus on the special Torah readings you know we have before Pesach for special Torah readings as the mobster and blast Shabbos was the first of the four and it's really a precursor to the month of Adar as it literally was and this is the parsha of Scullin the parsha dealing with the mitzvah of giving a half shekel and this was a mitzvah to support the base of mikdash essentially the base of McNutt the michigan and later the base on Mick - had a budget and the budget was necessary to buy animals for sacrifices by incensed by oil by wine plus money basically make this didn't always get it for free but these carbon o's had to be publicly funded you could not have likea Sheba as the supporter of the day it has to come from publicly collected money and this was based on a tax an annual tax of a half shekel now a half shekel was much much more it was not they have you know half n is you know half shock whatever it would be but a half chuckle was a significant amounts of silver and it has to be given on an annual basis to cover the temples fiscal year now the temples fiscal year was not from Tishrei that the fiscal year began in the month of Nisan that actually means from Neeson number one rich tradition ISA you are not allowed to buy corbino's from last year's money even if there's a surplus in the budget fact emission has all sorts of rules regarding what do you do with surpluses of any but the carbon house of the year have to be purchased from Scullin that were collected for that year now that would mean by definition by Rosh Chodesh Nissen already you already have to have some newly collected money to cover the car bonus until other people pay so as a result the Mishna says that we began to announce and collects column one month before the Nisan deadline so by the time we would have Rosh Chodesh Nisan we would already have new Scullin and this is why we read parsha Scullin either on Rosh Chodesh Aadhaar if it falls out on Shabbos or the Shabbos before Rosh Chodesh at garlic it was this year because that is as a slur that is a commemoration to the time of the basin mikdash when they would announce this column Rosh Chodesh etre by the way the famous scene in the Christian Bible of Jesus chasing the money changers out of the temple and upsetting the tables you know money changers getting a bad rap the money changers in the base of mikdash serves a very important function because people came Jews came from all over the known world and they would have to donate their half shekel before bidding of Pesach and and and the light and if they would come with euros or dollars or francs during their whatever whatever pounds whatever their currency was so the money changers would convert them into the half shekel coins to enable these people to fulfill their obligation now granted it is true that the money changers charged the Commission but you know people have to make a people have to make a living so Jessica was really not fair in terms of these were not people selling you know cars on the grounds of the base of make - these were people providing a very very important service so this is the union of masters to Chicano as you know we have a minute it's become a den but really it was a min up that we should remember the base to make their stuff before Magilla reading we also give Matsuzaka but that's an interesting transmutation because the halacha says that the way you fulfill the custom is by giving half of the official currency of the country so in the United States you would give the equivalent of fifty cents and in Israel you would give the equivalent of a half shekel although the half shekel is not the half shekel but in fact it meets the mimic of half shekel just as a half dollar would meet the minute of of half shekel this is Marcus Marcus our shuttle now what's interesting is that even though we read the part of the Torah that talks about giving the half shekel that part of the Torah is not talking about this half shekel meaning there are actually two different taft shekels that's the halacha talks about one half shekel is an annual contribution for the Corps Binoche of the base on macness that's an annual contribution however what the Torah is talking about in the beginning of kiss ISA is a one-time donation towards the building of the Mishkan in which the silver of the Scullin was melted down and they became the sockets that held the board's in place if you remember if you visualize the way the Michigan was constructed each of the thick boards had two teeth like prongs on a plug and they were set into silver Sox's sockets that the least a picture resembles kind of concrete blaps but they're made of silver they were quite heavy actually hundreds of pounds and that would that would cause the crushing the boards to be balanced and steady and when the Michigan was taken apart the boards will be pulled out of the Dunham's out of the sockets and then the both the sockets and the boards would replace ton wagons which would be transported from place to place so the actual half-shekel that the torah is directly talking about is not the annual contribution it is the one-time donation for the Dunham's but the problem is that's the closest creosote era we can get because there is no place in the Torah where the Torah explicitly declares that the half shekel must be given annually it seems to have been almost a halala motion machine i or there are some indirect references in the comments there is no direct reference in the punish well the mission of gets almost registers all track dates massacres column but there is no direct explicit mention in the Torah of such an annual contribution now I want to go back to an interesting passage in the Gomorra if you remember the Gilles Esther so like we can take liberty we're already in the month about there we can talk about McGillis Esther so ha maan goes to King Ahasuerus and Haman wants to convince a cachet rosh that there's this worthless shiftless nation in the middle of his empire that does nothing and contributes nothing and is a source of perennial trouble and we might as well get rid of them right if you remember the way Harmon presents this case yes no I met Allah there is this nation before before we've been on him they're scattered so they're not concentrated they don't have a power base but the same shownotes we call them their laws their practices are different than every other nation who lamella well that's the America am awesome obey the Kings law lamella ain't shovel line if i mean it's not worth the king's time or inconvenience to even bother to keep them again it's amazing how cavalierly you can discuss genocide i mean you know how many just sayin ya know who cares about them just get just get rid of them the Gemara says that humming was a big expert in kind of making the jews look bad he was making the point every time you ask you to do something he has the sharpest or yom tov coming up Shabbos on Pesach lie yo and then he used but you know I actually have some truth to it Russian grab me an aerosol we forget about that now because British am the our calendars are so attuned to the youngnam kelvin but those who come from the diaspora surely remember the difficulties around September in October every year when it was you know cancellation after cancellation after cancellation this is what humming is saying every time you ask me to do something he has some excuse in a way it is so astounding because the accusation so to speak seem to be relatively trivial and even so much variously going along with it it's hard to understand I mean Hitler at least tried to make a case this is not even a case and yes and yes ASHRAE which is such a willing accomplice that he said sure go ahead and do what you wants now the Gemara mentions to that hummin brought up other Ilocos that he tells that my church listener have a rush if you the King touched their wine they're gonna have to throw it out which is true right the non Jew touches the wine traif if a fly falls into their wine they'll remove the fly I'm not sure if everybody would do that but I'll remove the with the fly and drink the wine says you're worse than an insect in the eyes of the Jews an insect they'll throw away and drink the wine you touched the wine it's totally repulsive okay so Bemis it may come on thoughts he would have to pay for this privilege so he brought a huge amount of silver saris I love him keek are kesef 10,000 keek are of kesef kick irish translated in english as a talent of silver the talent itself is as around 200 pounds of silver 10,000 talents of silver a huge amount of silver and a favor said you know you can keep the money you can keep this overall I'll let you do it for free right after cherish is so charitable in this way so listen to what the Gemara says the gomorian masochist Magilla quotes a statement from ref shimon ben Lukesh that says the following gollu Evo dua it was known to God all the way back from the Torah being given that Harmon would try to acquire the right to kill the Jewish people by giving a lot of stuff so he gave us the mitzvah of our giving Scullin to counteract or countermands this column of hummin our skull him canceled out his skull him and that is why we give our skull and more with former Scottish I die which is before hummons column were buying the right to kill them and for him our skull in proceed what he was trying to buy now this is what rich lucky says the question is what does that mean how does our Sh first of all huh - long dead so whatever haumana tried to get with his skull and that's gone and second of all how does our Scullin have anything to do with his skull 'm and why do we still need to give our Scullin to count romantical them what is the concept of our skull 'm counterman Tish column right what is the meaning of that Association it's not a counter bribe to a flesh a rush so here a Mahalo that some a fortune have is the following it's it's your dua it's a very well known idea that McGillis Esther is perhaps you'll see in a second there may be one other exception the only book in Tanakh that does not mention the name of God it's very very quite amazing that you have a book in the kiswa kodesh in which the shame Hashem is not mentioned explicitly now I say there may be one other exception depending on how you punctuated words that is she Reshiram the song of songs which on one hand is a way because I'll understand it is a passionate metaphor for the divine love that God has for the Jewish people and the love that the Jewish people have forgot and yet the name of Hashem a you'd cave of K or you know some name of God that you know you wouldn't be able to pronounce and normally is actually not in she Reshiram but it depends because at the very end of Shira Shira it talks about love is like a fire that even the most torrential waters cannot extinguish and it says it is shall have Vesta shall have s SIA so there is a mock locusts both in the gomorrah and among the fortune if shall have SE ax is two words or one word if it's two words you actually read it shall have that car the burning torch of God in which case you do have God's name others say shall have scr is simply one word and is simply a poetic elongation of the word shall have it so in Shirish here in we have a bit of a mock locust is Hashem snake mentions but in the book of Esther it's not now interestingly enough you know you know the Septuagint Septuagint was the translation of the Torah into Greek that was Commission's around 300 BCE and if you recall cuz I'll considered that to be a sad time because you're making the Torah accessible to the Gentiles on the other hand Philo of Alexandria who was the leading Jewish leader of that community a great philosopher as well he considered that to be a holiday and he actually records a tradition that the Jews of Alexandria celebrated as a young tough so to speak the day that the Septuagint was completed it's interesting that in Eretz Israel are kazzal regarded it as a tragedy sangria seems to be a great simcha but beat as it may although the original Septuagint only covered the Torah Kamisha from Sephora but later there were organs right now the Septuagint covers the entire Old Testament but what's interesting is that there are some editions meaning to say that the Septuagint has some House of folks a few houses of felt that do not appear and some of them are in the Apocrypha and interestingly enough there are some additions to the book of Esther that do not appear in the canonical text and fascinatingly enough although one one might have suspected the Septuagint and the Apocrypha to have her welcome that are less religious and orientation their additions to the book of Esther involve Esther's prayers to Hashem and they put in a Shems name many many times you would think that that should give it authenticity and yet our command took the opposite point that the book of Esther specifically does not mention the name of God and those later editions were trying to make it look more religious as it were but in fact it was not authentic now why it doesn't mention the name of Hashem is a very very interesting mystery part of it is connected to the notion that the word Esther itself is connected to the word for concealment and this is a miracle that did not happen by supernatural intervention but it's a well established theme that every step in the poram story God is operating through nature and through the appearance of coincidence the appearance of coincidence etc and therefore God is operating in a concealed non miraculous way and that is why his name is not mentioned as if to say he is hiding his face but we have to look and see it as opposed to mitzrayim when he is showing us clearly that he's doing all of these miracles but whatever the reason whatever the reason there is in the ZOA a very important teaching that even though Hashem name is not explicitly mentioned in the Megillah whenever it says the word ha metal s that even though on a top level the king of course refers to a clash of a rush but there's a deeper level in which it is a reference to meld up maokai I'm locked in I cut this portal which means when you read McGillis Esther there are going to be two meanings there is lower meaning and there is higher meaning now these are not contradictory so for example when it says that the night of the great turn around when a hush favours couldn't sleep and I flesh rarest wants it to have somebody read the diaries of a chronicle of the kingdom and remember that's when he discovers mortify you saved his life was never rewarding so the plastic says well Lyle aho in fact about Cora even raises his voice at that person because that is actually the changeover from all of the bad decrees to the beginning of the redemption Valhalla ho that nights nada - and not sumela the king sleep was disturbed double meaning on one hand how Irish couldn't sleep on the other hand it's a reference as the meddra says to the puss akin to Helen Dean a low your noon below ye shun show Mary through the guardian of Israel I call this Bronco does not sleep or slumber meaning what looked like God being asleep at the wheel gods up now right so that's that double meaning permeates every aspect of McGillis Esther so now when we have a conversation the mellah or humman said to the Melek come on said to the mother that conversation needs to be analyzed on two levels the lower level is the flesh-and-blood anti-semitic Prime Minister come on is trying to make a case for the eradication of this troublesome people through the flesh and blood King Ahaz favours right that's simple but the secondary meaning or the higher meaning actually is that the heavenly power that Harmon represents the coop of a mulligan shaman is making a case against the juice in shamayim that they are not worthy of God's Redemption so let's go further in the conversation and just translate it under both readings yes no our methods mofos our ummah fahrrad ben-haim there is a nation that is Mahfouz our that is scattered and that is separated among the nations now from a human perspective what does the human Harman mean when he's speaking to the human affairs he's simply making the point that because the Jews are so dispersed and they're not concentrated in one place it will be relatively easy number one to get rid of them because they won't be able to unify to oppose us and number two their absence is not going to make a big difference in the economy because they're not in one place as you hear it you hear it you hear they're not together enough that their absence would make a difference that is what you mean Harlan is saying to human across a bridge but what is heavenly humma-nah Moloch saying to God the foes are Amma forgot they are disunited they are consumed with Sinatra none and therefore they are not worthy of redemption because when there is hatred and polarization among the Jews they are not deserving of divine providence there's a double entendre here but for Emma for rad could be understood as a logistical points that they're simply not concentrated but it's also understood in the higher level as a spiritual point that they are consumed with a Sanat scheming and this is a teaching causal is get have given us in other places as well that when there is sinatra nam we are vulnerable to the power of a Moloch because I'm not like after all exemplifies Sinatra none we become victims of Sinatra cling on to the degree that we practice Sinatra Pina now there's a very very famous Dunham and people have heard it I'm sure of many many times but I recently discovered the arguments actually from the shelah it's not a statement of closed eyelids and the shehnai Lakota Brits but it's a very very famous very many people say the name of the baal shem tov but the shelah was earlier than the baal shem tov this is hashem salsa hominem Ellis says Hashem is your shadow so these Shiva explains just as your shadow moves wherever you move when I move my hand so my shadow moves with me so to Hashem shadows us meaning me to connect it mucosal communicator give me de and that is I show Rackham women love I receive Raqqa women love I show hate and polarization I become a victim of the hate and polarization another source to this idea that this creates vulnerability to a Moloch is an interesting Comorian Bava Batra the gomorian Bava Batra says that our Moloch can only be defeated by rock cells children a male cannot be defeated by layers children and historically you see that over and over again the first war against on Moloch in the desert was under the leadership of yahushua been known from the tribe of ephraim it was yo safe Russia it was Schaal hemella the first king of Israel that was given the commandments to eradicate our Moloch although he did not fulfill it in its entirety what tribe is shallow from being young men who is from Russia and when show will messed up and didn't kill our dog she more like to kill her GOG but that's when homens ancestor got impregnated herman was eventually born we find that Deborah the malice finish the job mm Ella could not finish the job that was entrusted to a shovel because David is from seviche Hooda which is Leia and that Raquel the forum story that represents that yet another defeat of Amalek is Mordecai and Esther who are descendants of Sheol and because I'll make the point over and over again that they are rectifying the unfinished business that show failed to carry out and finally the very enigmatic messianic figure that is known as mashiach ben yossef before there is the ultimate mashiach ben david and we don't know a lot about mashiach ben yossef but some have posited that machine man Yosef is there to defeat the COAS of Amalek to pave the way for mushiya Ben Dov it well it does say he will be killed in warth indeed that is the statement he will be killed in Warner that doesn't automatically mean he is a soldier but your who knows he might even have been a private in world war 2 against against the Nazis you know it doesn't say he'll necessarily publicize himself [Music] well doesn't say again it doesn't even say that he identifies himself or just you know it just is now why sometimes the ruffle figure is from Yosef and sometimes the racquel figure is from Binyam in that we don't know but one consistent thing that you see is it always comes from Rafael and not Leia and one of the explanations that's given is that Raquel exemplifies the characteristic of selfless love because Raquel right knew that Leia would that love and woman rather would try to switch wives and therefore Russell and Yaakov you'll recall devised some hand signals and Raquel in order that her sister should not be humiliated gave her sister the semen in of course people always ask the question what gives Raquel the right to play with Yaakov I mean it's an interesting question Raquel doesn't want her sister to be ashamed or humiliated or hurts or embarrassed so she gives her sister the secret code that she had arranged with her future husband Yaakov well it's a wonderful thing to be selfless and giving and caring and compassionate but you're resourceful on trees to have a very famous saying you can't be in sogok on somebody else's freshman it's she is tricking Yaakov into marrying the woman that Yaakov doesn't want to marry because she doesn't want her sister to be embarrassed I mean does she have the right to do that okay it's a difficult question one answer might be might be that Raquel knew that Yaakov would have agreed to this the Yaak of himself would not have wanted the woman to be humiliated therefore in effect she's doing what she knows had Yaakov been aware of the whole situation Yaakov himself would have would have agreed it's a good question it's not the pressure we're talking about but it's something to to think about generally in fact it's an important rule in a vote assess them generally that if you you want to be more mahkum around a certain level you want to go beyond the luffa because you want a higher level of piety and a higher level of holiness which on some level might be a wonderful thing but that's going to be a great great great inconvenience to the other partner in your life one has to be very very careful whether it's even allowed to take such a step because you're being atomic by creating enormous and convenience to somebody else and even pain to somebody else it could very well be that the sin that you are committing by trying to be more righteous might be much greater than whatever gain you're gaming in your extra righteousness now I'm being gender neutral here but usually usually the direction that works is husbands trying to be extra mock mere in ways that would make the wife very inconvenience no if it works the other way then the sin will between the other way as well well yeah well yeah I mean there are many many examples I mean they're they're issues of marriage intimacy the issue of showing affection it might be in terms of what products are allowed in the house if something is kosher but you might say no we can only have the haka of so-and-so which would stop the way from she has to go again depends on the strain she has to go 20 miles out of her way to go shopping you know things like that these types of issues one has to be very very careful about insisting on certain smear standards that are way way beyond the halacha but you know so the wife has to dress and you know in whatever it is a very heavy full covering in the middle of that summer you know these would be the types of things that we are talking about of course nice of the dynamics of smears are very complicated because sometimes it's the women that are doing crazy things that the husbands don't want okay that's that okay that's a separate that's a separate partial okay so so so so but be it as it may going back to the main question why is it that our Malik is only defeated by Raquel and not Lea because since our Malik represents the not to none then number one it can only be defeated by a vodka Nam and Raquel represents selfless compassionate giving love and that defeats our Moloch Leia didn't have that and I'd only delay and not have that in particular but remember Laius children were guilty of the Sinatra Nam in the sale of Yosef rock Adele's children were not guilty of that Joseph was the victim and Benjamin was so young he did not participate so it turns out now you understand if it's not Tina makes us vulnerable to our mullick so when Harmon says to the king there is a nation that's mofos armor for ad the celestial Hammond is saying to the celestial king hey there Mahfouz armor for our there so not Lena they don't deserve your Redemption let Harmon kill them let them be vulnerable to the vicious hatred of our Moloch because they have vicious hatred among them now that is why that is why you'll notice that as soon as Esther in forums as soon as Mordecai informs Esther right Mordecai is wearing sackcloth and Mordecai informs Esther of this awful Gazzara so Esther says gather all the people and let them fast for three days but the interesting Russian is we take just the words looking at them alone late Kano's Escala yoohoo dim gather everybody to get in Kano's is the opposite of mahfouz our if our weakness is we are mahfouz are our chicken is Canosa bring them together this is why poor him has such an emphasis because poor him is the celebration of the downfall of our male and we were vulnerable to on my leg at least in part there are other reasons I'll get to next week but we're vulnerable in part because of sin Athena so when we celebrate the vanquishment of our Moloch we have to celebrate by demonstrating octaves and unity and togetherness that's why poor him really more than almost I mean all cry Jim this is an important theme the Torah itself talks about you have to you have to give pleasure to the widow to the orphan to the stranger that's the matura for every of this but poor him in particular mrs. Lachman oz you send food gifts to friends Ashley I am you support the poor that God could they conquer that it's mentions that the reason why the custom is when we send Shabbat my notes my notes we use a third party we use the sheliak meaning instead of me giving shots manage to you it's preferable I get a kid I get another person to give you shut up - in my behalf that's called the shoe Leah why do I do that because if she'll the commonness is to be Marbella rates to increase friendship the more people you get involved in the process the more it is although you have to be careful something for the show-off - you know sometimes we're giving away the stuff we got so you have to be careful to remove all the all the identifying information yeah and sometimes it resurfaces what somebody gave you winds up getting again getting back to them via a few okay all right and of course let me just remind you that the Rambam does right Liholiho that it is better to give more mutton Oakley of your name than to give me floor kimono so although both are wonderful mitts votes but helping the poor is considered to be even a a higher level but once again you understand the the conceptual connection here the the kids rug the prosecution in sham I am is Mufasa were forgotten the t-con is late Kano's and the celebration miss Lola come on out ich Laurier you might turn out to have Union so seen in this way we might just go back to scull them for a moment because I'll talk about a need to counteract the Chicago move Herman now the question I raised is Herman is long gone in what way do I have to counteract the currency of Amin so one might suggest the following answer when cuz I'll talk about the currency of hummin they don't mean the physical currency of the physical Herman but they mean the spiritual currency in shamayim which essentially was what was his argument against us in shamayim a mullux argument in shamayim and it was my foes arm of four rats and not Trina so in a sense this Chicago move Hammond in a celestial sense are still a source of accusation against Tom Israel because we still live in a world of sin not sanam and one doesn't even have to prove this really because we live in a world of great great great great divisive as I mentioned I think a number of times that even in the Israeli press they have these surveys about the leading problems in Israel and unfortunately you can make quite a big list of all sorts of problems ranging from Iranian nuke your terrorism to the price of cottage cheese and how expensive apartments are now we have many many problems and issues and just walk down King George any day of the week and there'll be some demonstration about something it's one of the interesting things about your salon there's always a lot of street theater going on but the thing is that's the number one problem that is always mentioned and and this is true whether the respondent is Kilani car ad that's helium a idly whatever whatever affiliation they have is that they perceive the lack of artists the lack of unity in um Israel again we talked about this a number of times because there is an intuition that Jews have that when there is a critical issue Burcu protects us when there's a lack of actors we're in great great Sakana so here is the point the Chicago I'm of Hammond that we need protection from are not the silver he wanted to give to us of a rush but his currency was the accusation of Mahfuz irmaferran seen in that way the Gemara is telling us the mitzvah of matzah tischenko counteracts the accusation of sin athena how is that so so now let's go back a little bit and look in more detail the mitzvah of master Sasha Co the Torah says about the mitzvah of master shekel the following rule there are share low Yarber the rich person cannot give more Kadal volume means the poor person is not allowed to give less the outstanding aspect of Max is a shekel is a notion of uniformity in contribution now on one level this is problematical I understand the idea that no matter how poor you are there's a certain minimum because you want to be part of a community you must contribute as part of that community if you have to borrow or get stuck er for it so be it this is even though it's a tough love stance so to speak but this is what it means to be at least this is part of what it means to be a member of a community you have to have some financial stake okay that's fine but how do you understand the first part of the verse rich person cannot give more as far as I know very few use Sheba's are going to turn down an extra donations if you see if a school has tuition at 24,000 Cheka or whatever it is and somebody says you know Brooke Hashem I have a good prognosis I'll give you 48 thousand the school is not going to say sorry we don't accept anything in excess of the 24 so how do you understand the idea that rich people can't give more now there are two possible answers one answer is that maxis a shekel actually functions depending on the year it had two functions one was a financing device for Kerberos the other was a census mechanism because you're not supposed to count used directly by heads so one of the ways they would count the census is by computing the half shekels and then they would know how many people there were now obviously if the masses are shekel functions as a census device it's only gonna work if you have a uniform contribution if different people gave different amounts you'd have no way of knowing how many people contributed based on that that might be a simple answer but that's not a complete answer because although it's true that in the desert the people were counted through that half shekel that was not always true later meaning the Masters checker was not always used as a census and yet the Torah still says or Sharon Ani have to give the same now another possibility and again I think about this when I think about the role of money in politics something to think about particularly in the United States and that is we don't want some guy the kind of on the base on Mukesh if you're gonna have a situation where wealthy people could contribute much more proportionally to the budget than your name you may have a situation where 99% of the base of make this just kind of owns you know by by some rich person we want there to be a kind of a sense of everybody being a stakeholder and that might be a possible explanation as well but let me share with you a beautiful thoughts from these famous Aceves sense the following when the Tiber says the rich person does not give more nor does the poor person give less rich and poor can be understood in in in many ways rich and poor doesn't only mean more money and less money but it can refer to the entire diversity of talents that human beings have some people on some level seem to be wealthy in many ways they may be wealthy and brilliance and charisma in organizational ability even in physical appearance whatever it would be right they are wealthy people then there are others who seem not you seem I mean there are many hidden blessings but who seem on some level not to be so blessed in many ways and what the tour is telling us is when it comes to serving God when it comes to be connected to God which is what the Bata make that is that's the mechanism of our or a tangible symbol of our connection to God rich and poor stands before Hashem with the quality of dignity and respect and worthiness because the standard of judgment that God employs towards us is not how much have we accomplished in an objective sense because then I could say this person has done so much more but rather how much have we done with the abilities that a college broker gave us and therefore the poor person in whatever sense who serves God to the best of his ability is as precious and as esteem in the eyes of a gem as the brilliance wealthy whatever the talent is because Hashem judges you by how much of yourself you have given to him we have a fun investment the famous Talmud of coffee time himself was a great God Alberto who died tragically in the Covenant ghetto uses this idea to explain an interesting example that Maimonides gives you know the Rambam of the laws of chuga discusses the fundamental principle of freewill my problem of course is really speaking against the certain Islamic philosophical strain that very much said that God's omnipotence basically means that there is no such thing as human autonomy and decision-making and every decision that you make was predetermined by God right that's the predetermination later revived by Calvin John Calvin and Christianity etc and around them we know in many many places the Rambam spoke against this idea over and over again by affirming the primacy of moral autonomy and free will and the Rambam essentially grounds this in a logical argument the logical argument is hey the Torah creates a system of rewards and punishments and the Rambam said it would be fundamentally immoral and unjust for God to punish people for decisions over which they had no control nor would there be any reason to reward people for virtuous decisions over which they would have no control in fact technically it would not be a virtuous decision unless there was some element of of choice and then the Rambam goes into a lot of textual issues which maybe I will say for another time but God hardening fire was right the Rambam has to deal with a number of textual anomalies which are very important questions but the bottom line is that in the normal operation of the world putting aside some of the unusual cases right Judaism is premise and moral autonomy and free well of course it's interesting that this has come surprisingly although free will now in recent years in fact there's an interesting article I saw it not on this trip to America but to two trips to go to America the Atlantic Monthly had a whole long long argument article on something called the death of free will because in truth the matter is many many philosophers do question it in light of biological determinism in light of the human genome in light of the mapping and sequencing of the genetic structure okay this is a difficult question but suffice it to say that although we do not deny the influences of environments and the influences of biology we acknowledge that such influences very much impact a person but we do believe there is the equivalent of a manual override call it the soul or whatever you want to call it in which a person is free to make those decisions remember how the Talmud put it the Talmud said he was born under the constellation of Mars now they didn't talk about DNA they talked about constellations but the point is you're born a certain way we would call the DNA they called it planets will be a shedder of blood that's going to be his personality he has no control over them but he can choose show Kate Noel or murderer or so well that doesn't give that as an example but that would be that would be there would be another example so be it as it may though we're becoming really focuses on what might be a peripheral point when the Rambam discusses behavior the random has the following was shown every person can be as righteous as Moshe Rabbeinu or as evil as yovan Ben Nevada was the first king of the ten tribes now Muhammad says wait a second here even if I accept the Rambam freewill yes okay everything's wonderful you can be at Sonic everybody can be a sect no matter what your backgrounds no matter what your environment no matter what your genetics okay but let's be real can you realistically tell a person you can be as great as Moshe Rabbeinu the greatest of all the prophets the person that whom the Torah says there will never be a prophet like Moshe so rebel fund investment explains it this way and he quotes a commentary of the red duck in the beginning of safer yoshua of david kimba 'they moshe is called in the beginning of safer yoshua EV red hashem the servant of god why is he called - ever - M so the reduction this is reminiscent of the halacha math Chicana event whatever a slave acquires belongs to his master if a slave finds a diamond watch of course she doesn't if he doesn't report it nobody knows but technically if he finds this watch and this watch has no identification let's assume you're allowed to keep it whatever the hell would be it doesn't belong to him a belong she was master moshe is called ever - m because every single talent he had he gave to god so Robocon investment says this is what the rambha means when the Rambam says every one of us can be like moshe Robina moshe rabbeinu x' talents were far greater than any of our talents but just as whatever he was he gave to God we can be like Moshe in whatever we give we give the gun now this is a great message of encouragement in life because far too often we look at other people and we see abilities we see talents again perhaps we're blind to our own talents but we look at other people only I could do this or this and this and this and this but if one understands that just doesn't like marathon runners say they are not competing against other runners they are just competing against themselves so - in the race of life to accomplish to serve God we take the talents that God gave us and we use them in the best way that we can and that is the meaning of matzah sashenka the rich and the poor stand with equal dignity before Hashem as long as they do the best with what they have and in fact the opposite may be the case the person with less who does more with what he has them the person that's a grater is held in greater esteem an example that some afore Shem give is let's imagine you have a very brilliant person who could learn $100 a day and the only does 50 which is a tremendous tremendous amount he does 50 blood a day that means what he finishes shots every month right but he only does 50 50 by the day you do 101 another person takes a week to do a single blood we might look at the 50 baht a day and say what an accomplished on mcLaughlin what a Torah scholar what a learn in person but in God's book the guy that does the one page a day is greater because he's giving God we're not none of us were hundreds of he's even got closer to 100 percent that guy's giving 50 percent hmm okay Hashem doesn't look at what you accomplish HM looks at how much of yourself you've given to him so this is the lesson of math especially not this a shekel in other words now you understand it the Chicago move Harmon our sin asana polarization polarization often comes from jealousy it often comes from begrudging the accomplishments of others because it reflects negatively on me but if master Sachiko teaches us but whether I'm rich or poor so to speak I am equally beloved by God based on what I do then that takes away the jealousy that takes away the competitiveness that takes away the idea that your gain is my loss and it also reminds us that every person has their contribution in life you know I remember reading years ago and they still had a space program in the United States maybe they're starting it again so one astronaut was asked what was he thinking of as the space says the rocket was about to lift off so he said well I'm thinking of the fact that this rocket has something like a hundred thousand different pieces parts to it and each part was contributed by the lowest bidder in a competitive bidding I'm a little I'm a little worried about that but the truth of the matter is we do know that the smallest little part is essential to the mission the fact we know that some of the tragic accidents that happens we're small things little screws heat shields that you can literally buy for ten dollars that we're not properly installed amazing that this multi multi-billion dollar project could collapse because of something like that and that reminds us that each and every one of us are necessary for God's job this beautiful story I heard reasonably but Arturo Toscanini the very legendary conductor of MBC Orchestra is a very family really a a musical prodigy as well so there was a reporter who wanted to interview him and Toscanini said well listen I have to listen to a concert on the radio I'm not able to be there in person I cannot be disturbed I have to concentrate so the reporter said I won't say a word I just want to follow you around I just want to observe what you do all right so he's sitting with Toscanini in front of these old-fashioned big radios and they're playing some Beethoven concert and Toscanini obviously has to concentrate very very carefully and it goes on for two hours and after the two hours the reporter says what a beautiful production fantastic and Toscanini says well there was a violin missing now this is a symphony orchestra of over a hundred pieces and they had 14 violins and there was only 13 coz Kamini on the radio where it was able to hear there's only 13 violins one is missing so the reporter didn't believe this was possible how are you going to listen to a symphony of 100 pieces and and determined that there's one violin that's not there so he called up the the conductor of the of the Lawkeeper and said listen I was with Toscanini last night I need to know how many violins do you normally have in the orchestra he says well we have 14 says how many were there last night he says well funny that you asked but you know right before the one of our violinists called in he got sick he had food poisoning he couldn't make it so he figured we'll do 13 no one's ever gonna notice okay that's Guinea noticed so the guy goes back to Toscanini and says I am absolutely amazed like highly how could you notice such a thing it was such a perfect performance otherwise so toasty Mimi said listen you're a member of the audience if it sounds good so it sounds good you don't really notice every little thing but when you're a conductor you understand every little thing counts every little thing makes a difference it is my job to see the significance of everything so this is said it was used as a Michelle Hashem is kind of the heavenly conductor of heaven and earth and every single person right has a part every single person has a role every single person has a unique irreplaceable contribution that they make to a Shems plan and even if we think nobody notices it's not important the conductor does notice and when one of the violins isn't playing correctly the symphony is going to be a little bit off and that is what the Gemara means when it says mock's it's our sheykh l is the antidote to the shakila hummin the Leehom on represent polarization jealousy anger resentments but master Sascha Keil teaches us the importance of every individual and it's a it's both a comfort to the army by telling the unnie you are value than you are needed and it's an antidote to the arrogance of the usher that without the unnie you will not be able to succeed and therefore in that way that's what the Gemara means our Scullin counteract and countermands this column of common so it's an important thing you know particularly if you have children I mean all of us were children once so perhaps we went through this but you know psychologists have quite properly identified the fact that there are many different types of intelligences in the world you know in in in in the Jewish educational setting we tend to value a particular intelligence which indeed is a very valuable intelligence well all that in Yiddish at America which is essentially kind of an analytical reasoning process that is based on textual understandings right let's call it Gamora head right so that's wonderful those are the people that will be honored those are the people that will be esteemed those are the people that will get recognition but not everybody has that type of intelligence that doesn't mean they're done and that doesn't mean they're not accomplished there are people who have brilliant emotional intelligences they have empathy they have understanding they they they can sense person who needs to be comforted and needs to be strengthened now the problem is we don't consider that necessarily a gift all the time or at least it's not validated as a color that's a tremendous color that can do so many things there are people with organizational abilities there are people with spatial three-dimensional spatial visualization which is very Geno it is said that the morale of pred had a great the great morale the pradd had a grandson who was not good in kumara now maybe he had a learning disability in those days they didn't diagnose learning disabilities maybe had dyslexia who knows what he had but whatever it was gemara just didn't sink into him he just didn't get it but he was very gifted with his hands and he could make models of all sorts of things so the morale had him make models of the Mishkan and the basin mikdash and as a result he became very learning in all of the arcane rules about corbino's and the like but he learnt it not through reading texts and analyzing but through actually taking his hands and and architectural e building these these models you know there are people you don't meet them so much today because most people are literate today but you know even when I was growing up there were people who were mechanics a brilliant brilliant car mechanic people would be just and they didn't even ought to read they did they didn't know how to read at all but they could look at a machine and are you gonna say these are not smart people these are people that are probably less smarter than most lawyers and doctors but they didn't have that particular aspect of so there's a lot in the human diversity of talents that are shem said that shem setup which are very very valuable and again matchless a shekel is reminding us to see every single piece as part of Hashem beauty in part of a ship's world and in that way we can get beyond the Sinatra nom that divides us I think that the truth of matter is I'm gonna have to work out the numbers because 10,000 talents is way way way way way much more in fact it's almost as if this is like until the coming of machine everything because the talents in the mid were only like a hundred a hundred the master says echo is only a hundred talents right so this is ten thousand talents you're gonna have to figure that out of the number actually works out but this is kind of the meaning of master Sascha Keil and that the rich and the poor stands equally before before I cut the sparkle and you know schools like to give lip service to this you know teachers will often tell students it makes no difference you know if you know more no less the most important thing is the effort you put forth but on the other hand the grade is gonna commonly be based on how well you did so like Mark Twain said about the weather everybody talks about the weather and but nobody does anything about it so it was kind of everybody talks about this but we Lim I said don't really implement it but in sha maíam that's exactly the standard that applies alright so we should all that good good week your friend Fralick afar - other [Music] [Applause]