Episode 10 BEYOND THE 7 (Know there is a G-d) with Rabbi Aaron Dovid Poston

[Music] oh hey good day folks welcome everybody back to uh beyond the seven live from jerusalem with rabbi aaron david poston i'm still enjoying this class now we took a bit of a transition last week into the six constant mitch votes and i know that there's so much in there it's such an honor to have a learned rabbi such as rabbi post and share this with us it's unique i don't know of anybody else out there doing something quite like this but let's tune in and see how the rabbi's doing tonight rabbi poston how are you doing tonight i know it's laden in israel thank you so much for sharing with us it means so much to us how are you doing tonight i'm doing well thank god hashem and i'm so glad to be here once again thank you and i'm glad that whoever is joining us now is with us and whoever's watching this afterwards also thank god you're joining us because the information we have is and should be life-changing you should definitely enhance your not just your relationship with god but your relationship with other human beings because you'll be a more godly person awesome that's the goalie so you want us just to begin okay i do want to mention that we transitioned after the um i think it was the eighth of the series of beyond the seven the ninth began a new series called the six constant mixes i mentioned that a book had come out well not so recently yeah i'm looking for it i know i have it here it is for those who want to buy it so i'll show it to you it's called the six constant mitzvahs it was uh written by a student of rabbi berkowitz rabbi berkowitz utah berkowitz is uh right now the dean of asiatora where i had spent hashem believe it or not 20 years i spent 10 years learning in 10 years in the administration there okay so he is now the uh we'll call him the looks like the dean right the rosha yeshiva but i'll tell you that when i when i started learning there i really wanted to learn with the best rabbis and i was kind of new i didn't really have a background i wasn't born religious i didn't go to yeshiva when i was young i had been in yeshiva about a year and a half before i came to isra torah and i wanted to learn with the best and in order to learn with the best you had to be in the top sheer and it was not easy to get into in my for my level so i really pushed myself and within i think um within two years of being in the yeshiva i actually got into the program the top program to learn with this rabbi because the only way you could learn with him is if you were in the top program and that was to become a rabbi i had no intention to become a rabbi all i wanted to do was learn with him and the result is that you get you get a certificate you're a rabbi so after several years of learning with him i achieved that certificate and um i still did not imagine myself certainly not being a pulpit rabbi but i just wanted to learn i wanted to learn that i wanted to share with whatever i had learned with other people and i'll explain tonight hopefully i'm going to get into part of my own story uh for those who are waiting to hear that part i'm not getting to it right away you're going to have to be patient but part of my life experience in becoming religious was through what we call 12-step experience a 12-step program and for those who are not familiar with it you'll just have to be patient for those who are there they probably want to hear more about it um okay so rav weinberg was the leadership at the time and unfortunately well of course this happens he passed on um and he's the one who developed this um a seminar let's say of the six constant missiles even though he developed a seminar you have to understand this is information that has been carried by the jews from time immemorial we mentioned in the beginning that uh if you look at the times uh book called the mission brewer he brings it down on the very first page right under the heading that says i shall place be hashem before me always it's very important that that is one of the found fundamental principles for a jewish lifestyle and i say jewish lifestyle because i'm not talking about only to jews but any person in this universe that wants to consider themselves righteous right we call hasidah um the the venenox that has decided they want more than just an intellectual or logical understanding of the seven mitzvoth but really desire an intimate relationship with hashem and therefore they will i guarantee this this is my guarantee that they will if they try hard enough with these seven mitzvahs and try to understand especially what we're talking about now the mitzvah to believe in the existence of god that they will right drum roll please they will have a place will come they will have a place in the world to come i just want to repeat that in case um you didn't hear it uh okay so we we reviewed last week at gamora marcos that describes how king david and the prophet isaiah the prophet michael the prophet amos and habakkuk took what we call the 613 principles or mitzvot the word mitzvah means to connect okay so yes the jew has incumbent um obligated 613 the non-jew has whether they like it or not whether they approve of it or whether you prove this message or not right you are obligated to keep these seven laws now if you keep them willingly wow and knowingly it's like a whole nother ballgame okay and um so i i've talked about this a lot so i'm not going to go into why it's important at this point but i will discuss this idea the king david took those 613 and narrowed them down to 11 and you can find them in psalms 15. okay let me just read it real quick so that we have we're on the same page this is if you want to be righteous if you want to have a place in the world to come psalm and by david psalm by david hashem who may see so joining your tent i mean come on who doesn't want to dwell with hashem who may dwell on your holy mountain these are questions from the king david asked himself and then he answers the question one who walks in perfect innocence and does what is right and speaks the truth from his heart one i'm sorry who has no slander on his tongue who has done his fellow no evil nor cast disgrace upon his close one with somebody's relative in whose eyes a contemptible person is repulsive but who honors those who fear hashem who can swear to his detriment without retracting who lends not his money on interest and takes not a bribe against the innocent the doer of thee shall not falter forever i i just invite you to listen to the previous uh recording i think that's number nine and that goes through the depth of king david's statement i'm not going to go through all the others but i will end with um i believe it was michael well have a cook habakkuk ends with this idea and it's very important because that's where we're going to lead into a righteous person will live because of the state in other words from the 613 king david it down to 11 and then we had the other prophets and then finally you had habakkuk who narrowed it down to one principle one principle and that is the righteous person will live by his faith so tonight we're going to discuss this idea of faith that's going to be the first of the six constant missiles to know or to believe there's a god and i'll discuss what's the difference between knowledge and faith is hashem and now before i actually enter into this idea i know it's really i'm really entering it i'm jumping in i'm jumping in but i found this week i'm not sure exactly what day of the week it was it's all confusing now but uh there are two rabbis i i'm not sure i think they're both in jerusalem and probably the listeners have heard of both of them rav daniel katz he's very much into meditation and a rabbi by the name of michael guttmacher i'm not sure if he's in the church i imagine he is but that's just my imagination he's like a real ben bentor ben israel ben eric and they both discussed this week after i had started last week interestingly enough they had discussed um the six constant mixes so it started off with daniel katz in meditation discussing this idea okay i'm not really into what his style of meditation i have my own but you can't you cannot escape it anybody that wants to become righteous and this is what we described described in the shocking ark itself the very first talaqah was that it says i place hashem before me always this looking david said this is the great overreaching overall principle of the entire torah and the attributes or these positive aspects of being sadiquim who walk before god and then i mentioned that the shocking art describes how it enhances all of your actions and one of the reasons is because we all know the verse and we don't know the verse and when i write it i'm sorry i know i wrote it somewhere here it is um in jeremiah 23 24. let's see if we can find it here you want to read it i hope this is the right one um jeremiah 23. i'd be glad to read it verse 24 says can any hide himself in secret places that i shall not see him saith the lord do not i fill heaven and earth saith the lord so the idea that the shocking arc is trying to bring down is that if you're really fulfilling this idea of placing hashem before you always then you'll know that he is everywhere that there's no way you can hide and do your thing right i mean you know let's take earthly parents for example when you're when you're when your parents say to do something or not to do something and you have you know an inclination to do it anyway you're most likely going to check to see if they're watching you right you're going to hide or you're going to do something uh um to distract them or you'll hide and you actually think that they don't see you it's possibly you know most probably true although parents have a uh a sixth sense sometimes i just remember i i myself as as a kid not so observant or god-fearing i did certain things and my mother i hope she's listening um at some point that she caught me you know because i left a telltale sign and she said you know why you left that telltale sign now i did everything i could in my own mind not to leave those uh i don't know hints that something i did against her will let alone she said to me you know why you left those telltale signs because you really wanted to get caught you wanted us to catch you because you really don't want to do these acts or whatever it is you know and uh you know as a kid you say yeah you know i'm just sloppy i just you know i messed up but the truth is i mean everything happens for a reason so for many people in their lives and i will discuss my own life hopefully there are um we really don't want to do the wrong thing we want to be you know in our in our souls and according to the tanya according to kabbalah that our souls actually swear to hashem before it comes into the world that we want to be righteous that we swear to be righteous we want to do the right thing and so every soul really wants that he may not be aware of it but that's really why right and wrong is something quite objective uh i'm okay i'm not going to go into that right now but i want to go back to this idea so that was in jeremiah a underlying principle that what's going to happen if you accept this idea of placing the hashem before you always you'll come to the full realization um that hashem is even in the darkest of places even right even where you cannot see him because it's very hard to imagine but we're going to discuss that a little bit in the beginning here tonight because when it says should say the mishna brewer brings down that one should actually place on his i use the word eyelids but when you close when i did meditation how did i begin to understand how it is that you could wipe out all the white noise wipe out distractions try to have just one focus if you can have just one focus then you can come to at least have no focus but anyway when you're distracting distracted and have so many things on your mind so when i was very young i don't remember how old i was but i was young in my early teens and i tried meditation and yoga and different things like that that basically what we did was we practiced staring at a candle which is quite easy you know it's interesting something interesting to look at and hyper focus on just the candle and then at a certain point you close your eyes and you still see the candle right so this you have nothing else in your mind except that one thing okay so here the the shopkin article they should say describes i'll just read the words and he says that meaning what what does the tsadikim do they should say but not show tummy they should picture in your mind constantly how you are standing before hashem blessed be because hashem fills the entire universe with his glory and it's written in the name of the arizaw that he says that one should picture see the word shitsayer is not just a picture it means like to to draw right to create this form of the name the yud always against your eyes that's why i mean like against your eyelids because now when i close my eyes i can see the yurt and the hay and the love and the hay and he describes how they should be vowelized it's not a secret we all know how it is vowelized but we don't pronounce it that way and i'll discuss that also tonight and he says this is the so this is the fundamental secret of placing hashem before me always and he says this is a toe ellis gutter this is a great benefit for anybody who wants to have niro shamayim in fact it's the exact same validation for year as for uk 5k which is number four uh one two three four five sorry number five in the sixth constant mixes keep that in mind the yeah you regularly that's one would have what and when they pray right we have a sea door in this door many of the spartaks he during have a front page and on the front page is something that looks like this called a menorah okay and what does it have it has the uh and the hay and the love and the hang but there's all kinds of verses and mystical teachings here but it also mentions these words i'm just pointing out shivity right before the word i shall place the uk above k lenegni against me parallel to me tommy constantly this is just one example of a menorah that people would use in almost every shul before the person who's the agent of the congregation who's praying they usually have something similar to this in front of him so that he is not distracted that he's focused or hyper focused on the name of god here's just another copy of it's called a minor because it looks like a minor if you notice the different branches the six uh well seven branches three on each side and the one in the middle um okay so this is how jews praying but we invite everybody to have shrieked hashem and danke tommy why not okay next concept i want to go into is what rabbi daniel um the cats had mentioned and rav guttmacher also mentioned that because i really think it's important teaching and if anybody wants they can go to i think on the facebook pages or they can contact them for more information um i'll just he gave a translation and i want to because he's into meditation so then your cat says like this placing the divine name of hashem in your mind constantly is one of the most important overriding principles in all of torah observance now i want to reiterate there and i'll discuss it because i told you last week i would go through some of the comments on gamora marcos that discussed these contra um constricting the 613 down into six constant mitzvahs there is no contradiction but there is no i don't understand why ben noah says i just want to learn from benenoch you must understand you have to learn from the rabbis you have to learn from the torah as was transmitted to us at harcini i want to go through it later but i just want to mention now that any mitzvah that was given to the forefathers right abraham isaac and jacob or even before right during the time of adam and the time of noah that is not repeated at mount sinai is only for the jews it's only those misters that were said earlier and repeat it again in mount sinai having this whole revelation of mount sinai on your mind on the tip of your tongue at your disposal to study is the only way you're gonna get the seven missiles getting off okay i'm going to go into it later i just wanted to mention it now so going back to this idea that this is the most important overriding principles in all of torah observance whether you're a jew or not you one wishing to fulfill this teaching in its full death depth should invest great energy in what we shall now cite in the name of the well-known book called the safe rafinoh it teaches there are six mitzvahs which we are charged to fulfill at all times there's no exemption from these mitzvahs not even for a single moment from one's entire life any time and every instant that a person meditates on them i i know that's really what the hebrew says i don't think he's um you know has an agenda here because he's into meditation but this is the truth this is what we just read below to concentrate and meditate on them he fulfills a positive minster there's no end to the spiritual reward and benefit one and benefit one receives from such mitzvahs and they are i'm going to read the first one now you'll have to go back to last week's number nine or continue on with us um and we're going to talk about them anyway today because it's very interesting what rabbi guttmacher says let's just go for the first because that's what we're going to discuss tonight to know and believe i remember i'm just reading from rabbi daniel pat's translation i think he's just better than mine that's all to know and believe that there is one divine power and source that exists who brought all reality into existence all that is now was in the past and will be in the future is generated only from his desire and will capital h-i-f h-i-s his desirable and it is he this is going to be key for what we're going to talk about tonight it is he who redeemed us from egypt and gave us his torah i mentioned last week that a non-jew who knows they were not in egypt and was not redeemed from egypt should not statist this he knows oh it's not for me it's more for you than anybody else i mean more than you more for you than you can only know and we're going to talk about that tonight because we have to understand what mitzrian is what is egypt okay so you may not have physically been in egypt with us maybe i don't know but at least understand what egypt is we'll talk about it tonight and he gave us his story yes he gave the jewish people the torah after we left egypt to know and believe so this is going to be key to know and to believe to know and to have a munna all this is a positive mitzvah that is taught as we know in exodus chapter 20 verse 2 this is the first of the 10 commandments we call them commandments i am hashem your god who is he he's the one who brought you out of land of egypt the essential meaning of this line is that we are to know and believe again know and believe that there is a guiding force behind all reality as evidenced by the in the fact that i revealed myself in history to deliver you from the suffering of egypt and now now we're going to give what does it mean to have this uh delivery from the suffering of egypt okay i want to know where i should go from here because i have so much i'm going to stick with this i'm going to go now to what rabbi um said he said some really amazing things and i don't want to get anybody too confused so i'm going to try to go a little bit slow i mentioned in my own past that we have five five commandments on each of the tablets okay and each one will parallel the other so one parallel six two parallel seven three parallels eight fine we're not going to go into that right now but the reason we're bringing that up because he is telling us that these six constant mitzvahs the first three parallel the second three so in other words to no believe there's a god which is number one is parallel to number four which is to love hashem so because you cannot love him unless you know and the more you know about him the more you will love him i discussed that is the principle that reverend weinberg taught us uh to how do you how do you love somebody how can you just it's an emotion how do you command an emotion so he said that when you look at the virtues when you concentrate on the positive you will come to love so okay so number one and number four are connected number two is do not believe in any other god so that would be all right when you know this is the one and there is no other you'll have a tremendous amount of all uh fear towards hashem and number three which is the god is unique and there is no other god is unique is one he's one and that is not number six is not to stray after the impulses of your heart and your eyes and we'll hopefully talk about that as well tonight but that is one two and three are parallel four five and six and he goes to great length to discuss it i wonder if i should do it but it's it's long but it's so fundamental and i love what he has to say about it and i want to end his peace with something so i wonder if i go to that now and then i go back to what he said in the middle i'll show you what he says it's the most amazing thing as everybody is aware or if they're not they should be that when a jew makes a blessing and we are commanded to make we're commanded it's a the king david brought it down that we should say a hundred blessings a day there's a formula and we're not allowed to change it so these words these six words are parallel to all six of the six constant mixes so if i say them now and then i'm going to go back to what he says in between and then we'll re we will review them because it's so beautiful so the word baruch is saying baroque means the source okay so it's a recognition that there is a god right that's um the word like we said the word brexit is the spring it means a source so by recognizing the source you're recognizing there's a god so baruch is the first of the six words in every uh blessing and then we say it's you and no other that's why the second command the second of the six commandments is have no idol worship don't worship other gods so it's baroque you are the source you and no other and the third word is uk now uk welfare you should know even though it's read one way but it's written a different way it's written uk buff k but we don't read it we don't say those words we don't say the word um we don't pronounce that word hey well it god that's that's the unity of god god is one why because we actually say a different name we say the name ado but what are we supposed to do we're supposed to in our mind think of god being merciful and we think of the good cave okay and what we say a different word which is god is the master right he's the king he's the master so i want to show you in most sparta the um sidorim whenever you see the word uk buff k you have underneath it or next to it let me point it out you have two names you have the uk vote which is you're looking at but you say the adnus you say the the mastery name because that's what it that's what we we do we unify so it's a broken hashem we're actually unifying god through mentioning god's name i just want to mention because there are some criticism against jews for doing this now i don't know why i do know why because of ignorance and i guess maybe even anti-semitism that if you go to exodus chapter 3 verse 15 i believe i really would yes please verse 15 says and god said moreover unto moses thus shalt thou say unto the children of israel the lord the god of your fathers the god of abraham the god of isaac and the god of jacob has sent me unto you this is my name forever and this is my memorial under all generations okay now this is my name forever so we're criticized by people who don't know even hebrew or don't know the jewish tradition god is introducing himself basically to moses right this is who i am is the burning bush and i'm going to redeem you so i shall be it's in verse 14 i shall be as i shall be so shall you say to the children of israel i shall be sent you to me sent me to you then your verse you read god said to moses this is what you're going to say to the children of israel the uk love k right the god of your forefathers gave god of abraham god of isaac out of jacob he's the one dispatched me to you this is my name forever now in hebrew lay olam is spelled one way okay in this verse it's not spelled i'm gonna say it's not stuffed properly if you want to translate it as forever but we all translate this forever because there i discussed last week at korean exceed the way it's written the way it's pronounced only through the oral tradition now it wouldn't even make sense could you imagine look at the hebrew it says le lam without a vow which does not mean forever zesh me this is my name that is hidden that's how you read it that's how it should be sorry that's how that's how it's written and sorry that's how i'm getting uh confused right now it is pronounced as if it says forever and that's why it's translated that way but the way it's written is not forever the way you would translate it if it was if you translate the way it's written is this is my name that is hidden so this is the big secret that moses is being told to this is my name and it's the door door what does that mean and i don't know how you translated it what is the next word i have the word it is my this is my remembrance memorial is what is the version but it means not to be pronounced right just to be remembered when you read it you are not pronouncing it you are thinking of it you're remembering it but that's it not to be pronounced this is my name that is hit him but not pronounced got my wife i just said i woke her up okay so this is very deep okay we're going back now to where we were which is in the it's you are god there is such a thing as god the source there is no other uk right that is the unity of god and then the next word is elokeno which means our god now our god means there's a love he's there's a relationship he's our god right and then the next word is melish melich is all right that all idea that he is the king there's fear trembling right when you're front of the king and the last word is which is referring to the sixth of the six constant mitzvahs do not follow after your heart of your desires because the word hallam is the world of course that's what happens in this world is where all the testing takes place so i'll just write what he i'll just read what he says underneath each one under the word baroque is the blessing when there's a relationship between two separated things one receives from the source number one there's a god number two atta you i don't even exist without him he gives me the power to save you he actually gives us the ability to say you so no there is no other the unity what looks evil is also good now that's that's an amazing concept because there is no evil the the time he explains we call it evil ra is evil we translate it's evil but what really is it all there is is good there's good that's revealed and known and felt and perceived as good and we relate to that and call that good and then there's what we call hidden good meaning you cannot perceive the good you it's missing right it's hidden it's good but when we realize that it's really good only after we pass on to the next world and we see the whole truth that everything ultimately was for our benefit and was for good but our obligation at least as jews and hopefully as people who believe that like i just described here that when i missed the bus and so that was for my good i don't see it right now but i have to know it was for my good why i can make up a million reasons why and i know they're all true right they all at least most of the time some of these variables fit in i'm able to talk to someone i hadn't seen a long time because had i not missed the bus i wouldn't have been or god forbid even the case for a guy this is the plane the plane blows up that's the worst case scenario but there's something is meant to be and i'm accepting it and it's good right i ultimately know that it's good in the future like we say in the prophets that in the in the futures god's name will be one it says it in the prophets and the question is what do you mean in the future god's name will be will be one isn't this one now okay so what we're supposed to feel even when we hear bad tidings or god forbid we stub our toes something bad happens we have to know that it's ultimately for our good and we have to bless hashem believe it or not for what we call hidden good as if it as if it's totally good he said about the word our god that was for the love of god that's the personal relationship with him because he's our god but to be in all of god that's the king the melech to be aware that he is the king of this beautiful creation and the last statement of the world which we said don't go after your evil desires the word lm the word olam even the root of olam world this world is something hidden meaning the spiritual well you've all we have to draw forth and look behind i think the wizard of oz right what's behind the curtain you have to look from what's behind the curtain that really it's full of spirituality and if it's not good for your soul don't go after it we have to be able to see if there are sparks that could be raised or if it's off off limits and that's true by benenoch as well which we'll talk about tonight okay so i wonder whether i should go back and describe most of what he said i think you have to you can contact him and i think we'll just move on because that's so much more that i prepared i don't want to spend that much time but apparently both of these were bonnie uh daniel katz he's a girl he's a genius when it comes to meditation and here's some really good insights for the six consequences how one can meditate and uh this uh it's just amazing this piece uh is beautiful okay so i'm going to put that those notes aside make my pile smaller over here i did want to discuss some of the notes that i took on this gamora makos that i thought were important um so you may not think it's that important i don't know um so i'll i'll try to talk about those things that are most important then because i have so much stuff but i wanna talk about my life story what made me change how i came to believe myself and and how light my life was basically staying okay so let's start with the one of the notes and basically i i i spoke about this briefly but i want to mention make sure that we see it inside that it says um also we should know that the seven misters of the north are included in the 613 meaning we have the word ketter ketter torah right the crown of torah and i keep repeating and i'll say it again this corona whatever it is virus or plague has it's a sign from god for me this is what i interpret that god wants us to re put the crown of torah back in its place so the crown of torah the word ketter is cuffed with red cuff tough which is um 620 and that is the 613 plus the seven this was what was revealed at mount sinai the 630 i'm sorry the 10 commandments have 620 letters there's 620 letters in the 10 commandments this what was revealed to the world and therefore includes the 613 plus the seven but we're talking about the one concept one concept which is katatora and this is what god wants us to put back in its right place this is the message the personal message that i feel i've received and i want to share with everyone else so he says like this that the rambam actually writes that the seven mitzvoth that were commanded to the children of noah they are counted amongst the 613 commandments that was given to the jewish people even though we say the jews say that whatever was said to moses they actually were said to moses at mount sinai these misses it's true they were already given before meaning they were spoken and commanded to humanity nevertheless whatever misses that we fulfill when we're fulfilling commandments i'm talking about the jews now we are fulfilling them because moses command they were commanded to moses and not because they were given to the forefathers beforehand now i think he's really actually talking about the non-jews right now interestingly enough because he gives an example the very fact that we were commanded not to eat a limb from a live animal it's not because they were commanded to know that we don't eat them but rather because moses our teacher commanded us at mount sinai so too by the brit mila now he's talking to jews by brittany by the circumcision we're not doing this because avraham was commanded and he did it to himself and his children or his household but really the reason we're doing it is because god that commanded moses that we should circumcise ourselves just like abraham did so too by the githanasha the gitanasha is the sinew that you'll find in the cow by the by the thigh we're not allowed to eat so it's forbidden not because it was forbidden for yaakov but because it was commanded to moshe and he gave it to us so the uh arethanaire explains explains this is what is written in gamora sanhedrin on page 59a that all the misses that were told over to the children of noah and repeated is very important repeated at mount sinai that was being told to the jewish people and to the rest of the the world to them they know how to say in hebrews you hear it then basinai all the commandments that were given over to the children of noah and repeated at mount sinai israel we're told over to everybody this revelation was for the universe for the world mitsubishi they know off along the sinai so any mitzvah that was only told to the children of noah and not repeated at mount sinai is only for the jewish people alone i mean come on guys if you're a better knock and you never heard this information this has to be life-changing you have to understand how important the whole not just the revelation but the transmission all the way from moses until present day this is it it's so important to understand this oh man everybody says like this i just lost my place nimsa comes out that whatever that israel fulfills whatever we're doing we're doing the seven missiles also is only because they were i'm sorry they were told at harcini and not because they were warned and told to the children of north before so these misses that were told over to many noah but not repeated at mount sinai it's never been it was told in truth only to israel and not to the children of noah okay so you understand why the six constant myths is part remember i just want to reiterate these are not just individual mitzvahs this is like the whole kit and caboodle this is like the what was the word you just said point p-o-i-n-t i'm going to use catalyst it's like the chemical that allows all the other uh 607 mitzvahs to um metastasize act yeah to be activated to have any meaning behind them like imagine the difference between a a smart non-jew and a believing non-jew we said that i'm going to say in hebrew it makes more sense the wise of the nations may have come to the conclusion that these seven missiles are very good for mankind but that's not going to get into heaven it's not he might not even help him be your champ and love not have all of god or fear of god the love of god it's those parts of these six cons mixes that take your seven overall reaching commandments to a much higher level that's what i wanted to say beautiful the gamora actually said that there were 365 i call them negative commandments i don't like the word negative but called lotase adults and they were parallel to the 365 days of the year and the 248 positive commandments dues were parallel to the um the limbs in a body so this is going to actually contradict something that's brought down in the zohar the zoar says that all of them the 365 are parallel to different parts of your body and the the 248 are parallel to other parts of your body so this is something that is worthwhile discussing uh well i wonder if i should just make a whole new uh series i want to talk about my life story and i see that uh maybe we'll take this up at the next next session i'll talk about my life story now so yeah why don't we do that because one of the most important things we talked about is that the first command is to believe there's a god and who is that god as we said he's the god as in the first commandment who took you out of the land of egypt so what does the word egypt mean and why is this applicable also to the nanak right if you know that you were not necessarily from egypt you didn't live in egypt like we did for 210 years so how can you believe in this god that took well first of all simply it's the same god that took the jewish people out when we experienced our own suffering which i'm going to talk about in my own life and then we experience what we call this the ten plagues so there was remember when god created the world there were no witnesses right you only had on the sixth day adam and eve so who saw all of creation there was no human being that could relate so this whole experience of being slaves to pharaoh we were royal slaves by the way we weren't slaves of each individual egyptian in other words we worked in the individual egyptian homes but we were royal slaves we belong to the king and this happened way back by joseph i'm not going to go into that right now but we were being trained to be royal slaves to hashem okay so this was the training ground of the suffering part but when god performed these ten and it took a year it was approximately one full year that these ten plagues took place during it was a how do i say it in language that we can all understand he was showing that he was the master of the universe and that he created the world by undoing or redoing all of what took place during those original six days that's what's called the seven days of creation there were no witnesses to the first seven days of creation but we witnessed what took place during that year was his showing mastery in a very concise and detailed way that he created the world like back then uh we'll say it was like 2400 years prior then you know the the the time that we were in egypt and that we were experiencing with our own eyes that he was the creator of the universe so that's one of the foundational things i want to mention about our own experience in egypt but what does the word egypt mean so if you look let me just explain the word matzah means a very tight constricting place if you go to psalms 118 i want you to go to psalms 118 verse 5. verse 5 says out of my straits i called upon the lord he answered me with great enlargement okay so look in the hebrew what is the straits what does it mean as straight as straight as those that place that very narrow place it's called this is verse 5 minha mata that's the root of egypt mitzrayim okay this was a place that nobody could escape from it was the armpit of the world worst in new jersey right okay so i got to forgive you for all those from new jersey it was it's pretty bad like sorcery black magic and the worst kind of sexual abominations and and on and on right of worship and you know it okay so basically this was a very dark and narrow place that nobody could escape from without the help of god anybody that tried to escape basically you know vanished never to be heard from again that's what now just think imagine for a second this is the birth of the jewish people so i'm going to use a picture and i hope it's not too risque but we had to break through water right when the sea split why why i mean come on this is very i think it's awkward i mean only because we grew up watching the movie the ten commandments and we know about the sitting the splitting of the sea but why did we need a waters to split right when a woman is uh towards the very very very end of her pregnancy we say that her uh her water's broke correct i think that's the language it's so we were we we came in fact if you look at the sinai peninsula there's a certain like a v-shape okay i'm not going to go too much into that but basically we're in this dark place and we're being birthed right we're being created as a nation and we're going through and there's a breaking of the water splitting of the sea and then we're coming through a a v shape okay use your imagination but we're now birthed we are now born as a nation just like a child i mean we we probably don't remember hashem has give given us the gift of forgetting um i imagine that it's somewhat traumatic i know that people do go into these um meditative states to ex i'm not sure if it's re-experiencing but to somehow remembering on some level uh the birthing process which is probably quite traumatic imagine for the woman god actually allows her or creates a forgetfulness because i think i could be wrong i never i never gave her that if she actually remembered every part of that experience she probably would never be with her husband again instantly but hashem created such i guess hessen for everybody involved especially the men that a woman should have some forget but what about us as children the brain i mean there are some soft spots in the skull right i i my first child yaakov if you're listening he was born through cesarean so his brain is such a skull his skull he came out looking like tweety bird tweeting birds such a beautiful round yeah hey this wasn't squashed or out of shape or i don't know i don't you know i'm not a doctor i haven't seen too many of these birds i only saw my own children but they're a little bit on the i don't know horror side horrific but they come out beautiful all my children are beautiful um but yaakov yaakov you know he came out looking like tweety bird because his brain his skull was not um um i don't know where it is no pressure whatsoever okay anyway so when so you're going through this narrow place and it's you know we're talking about bones we're not just talking about skin and flesh you look at the bones the only way that skull can fit through and has blessed us with a very soft skull at that point in our life um so this idea that um in our own lives every human being it's so amazing that so many mitzvoth so many of the 613 mixes do this in fact the sign the the picture of the wall behind me in order that you shall know in order for the the generations coming right for all your generations of the future that in sukkot you they you can't see it okay so let me just uh it's a picture of sukkot of the the um sukkot in the desert so in vainikra that would be leviticus chapter verse 40 um 43. so look it up read it for us um leviticus 23 43 if i'm not mistaken leviticus 23 verse chapter 23 verse 3. verse 43 says that your generations may know that i made the children of israel to dwell in booths when i brought them out of the land of egypt i am the lord your god okay so so many mitzvahs so many of them are related to remembering in order you should remember okay that you were in egypt the knowledge that we have to pass on to the world is our own personal experience and that's why i want to get to it eventually i just want to i want to go over this first commandment um before we get into my own personal experience and that is the rambam reiterates and says that this mitzvah to believe in god right which i will read one more time so we're all on the same page that we must believe that there is one god in the world okay who created all that exists okay i've actually read that from daniel katz but basically the ramban he doesn't say that it's to believe he says that it's to know and what's going to be the difference between knowing and um between knowing and believing so we're going to have to talk about that i want to i want to mention that um basically you have this idea it's brought down in this book the logic dictated that those we're talking about the israelites who were in in egypt they must have seen some unseen force that was controlling the world i mean you could imagine the the the sea or let's say the river turns the blood you got these frogs got the lights got everything going on around you until finally the first born of dead of the egyptians but it was moses who identified that force to be hashem we believed him it's true we believe moses that that was god but when we saw god face to face when he told us these misses i am hashem now we knew in other words rav noah weinberg says you have to know anything you know in this world you have to know with five finger clarity like you know you have five fingers how many fingers you have okay i feel apologize to anybody that doesn't have five fingers but they should understand the principle here and not to take personal offense okay so just as you know you have five fingers at least on this hand right altogether ted but you have five fingers that's how you have to know anything just like you know your sister is forbidden to you right you have to know whatever else has to be so crystal clear so knowledge is important the rambam says that we all must be philosophers we have to talk about amuna this is something part of experiencing and knowing it is to have these discussions also one of the main principles is to sacrifice to do the right thing we're going to talk about this a little bit next week um when you know the truth and you know this is right or you know what's wrong let's say i don't know you see um you're in a store and the person who's running the store walks out and you could take anything you want you have to be willing to give up maybe there's other looters maybe there's other people doing the wrong thing you have to sacrifice uh to a certain extent in order to do the right thing don't lose let's say you could lose an opportunity to earn money illicitly so you should refrain from doing so because you know that hashem is watching you at all times we're going to use our wisdom to build our amuna right in other words you're going to use your intelligence realizing you know there was a major seminars that asiator had performed and and put together called the discovery program it didn't really prove there's a god but it showed you that there's no way that a human being could have written the torah and showed you the magnificence of it um many other seminars that asiator put on in the past but you're going to use your intelligence to come to the conclusion that there is a god main thing is that there was a national revelation all the other religions talk about one particular guy going up in a mountain having an experience or whatever a couple people here you're talking about six hundred thousand men between the age of 20 and 60 altogether about three million people having a absolute um what do you call it an absolute um communal experience and there's one thing i want to do before i go into my personal story and that is we talked about how these the ten commandments two of those commandments were said to the jewish people by god directly and then the other ten were um the other eight sorry the other eight moses told over to us so there's a comment here that basically says if you look at the actual terminology used the first two commandments i am the lord your god you shall have no other gods before me are in the first person i whereas the other eight commandments are generally god speaking so this is one of the ideas brought down in case someone asks you oh where where did you hear that the first two commandments were given by god directly and the other eight were only given over by moses um so i just wanted to say that now i want to go to my personal story okay so i want to mention that i don't ever i have not ever spoken of my entire story in public uh many of my guests my shabbos table i speak a little bit here and there i just have never done so i already see that we're definitely not going to do that tonight anyway i'm not i'm going to just share very small pieces um because of this idea of believing in the god that took us out of egypt so i was in egypt maybe in my subconscious maybe in my previous life maybe my soul was there and i believe that but i actually was in egypt in this lifetime right this uh 20th century now in the 21st century but in the 20th century i was i was in egypt i was in a okay so i'll just say it without beating around the bush i have not touched drugs since i was 16. and whenever i say that to people they say well i only started when i was 16. so i i mentioned i was not brought up religious i was born in a very um like i say upper middle class home in a secular jewish home very proud jews but very very ignorant when it really came to deep the deepest matters of judaism so many of my friends many of them you know went to public school and drugs drugs was uh quite the thing you know um anyway we had some very very uh negative experiences i had some very negative experiences to the point that i just kept going down down down into the gutter um hiding from my parents the fact that i was doing uh behaving the way i was i don't mean to glorify anything i'm about to say so nobody should take this as a hatter or an okay it's quite the opposite it almost ruined my life and i was i wouldn't say i was suicidal but from my actions you might have thought that because uh waking up and possibly overdosing you know taking too many different types of drugs not really understanding the chemical this shouldn't be mixed with that um waking up in my own vomit many times uh being uh um being arrested by the police even at uh at gunpoint for different crimes that i didn't even realize that um what was so so dramatic or problematic believe it or not because of the drugs and um that was like looking into the gutter looking into the gutter to find some glimmering hope maybe i would find a diamond like something like i was looking for god in all the wrong places this is you know when you i shouldn't say when you when i experienced doing drugs whatever emotional hardships i had personally been going through i felt that the heavens opened up and i could relate to somebody that i found god i mean i really did some really it's not i'm not proud okay i'm not proud of some of the things but i was like a really wild kid so i used to take i used to take um pages of a bible and i used to use that to roll my my joints uh everyone knows what that is a a marijuana cigarette i uh i used it to snort cocaine like i i wanted to get so close to god i thought if i inhaled the bible and mixed it with you know i looked at the incense of the con guttal and i was for sure you know that marijuana cannabis was part of that and there's no reason why you shouldn't use drugs to get close to god i'm told that as a totally secular kid i wasn't being a philosopher i was trying to escape or either trying to escape something or trying to find something it was a combination of the two you know and um like i said when you do these drugs you feel like the heavens have opened up and you found your calling and like this is it i'm gonna be like you know i'm gonna come commune with mother nature i have found my calling you know and uh it just took me down such a steep hill and that i was called rock bottom and i eventually opened up to my parents and told them the the depth of what i was actually doing and how i was hiding it from them okay some money meant some of it they said we were aware of but i think that most of it was just denial and some of it i guess i was pretty good at hiding and eventually i went to a drug rehabilitation center where they did a lot there was a lot of therapy i wasn't new to therapy i had been involved in family therapy and but they introduced me to the 12 steps which was the beginning but also and in this drug rehab it was on the premises of the church they wouldn't let me go to synagogue i went to the church i started to dibble and dabble in conversations with the the clergy there the priests the nuns and um i actually enjoyed arguing with them as as a secular jew uh i held on to certain things like the shema israel and the i think the only song i really knew which was hatikva and adornolam and uh i struggled through the the rehab but mainly i did want to change i was working hard in therapy but mostly it was the understanding that there was a god to the point that i through the 12 steps which the first step is just to acknowledge you have a problem now interestingly enough i'll tell you later about three or four years later i got involved with a fundamental group of recovering addicts who had a a beautiful tradition they were the leadership of this group was actually part of an earlier group meaning they had sponsors who were sponsored by the originators of the 12-step program dr bob and bill wilson and they were quite fundamental in the belief that it's only the 12 steps and only the 12 traditions that you need to focus in on and not go with all the different therapies and therapeutics that many of the 12-step programs have had evolved into it was actually fascinating because they had copies of the original big book that used the word recovered and not the language that most people use in 12-step programs as well we're sick we're diseased and we're always going to be in this state and we're um we're never going to be recovered we're always recovering but the big book the original big book talked about the word recovered that you're the point where nobody would even know your past because you are such a changed person uh that's like one of the main ideas we're talking about real hope and understanding of the i'm going to call it the illness the the disease because it's not a disease it is okay maybe people argue with me about this but they called it a spiritual illness it's a lack of a relationship with god it's a lack of clarity in this world and that's how it's described in the original big book and the 12 steps were not 12 individual steps but there was a capital by the first you know capital letter by the first of the 12 steps and there was only one period at the end of the 11th step there was a comma after each of the first 10 steps so basically it was called one continuous experience or journey and once you've accomplished that then you have the 12 step as review right as as as having had experience then you're going to go out and share this message with others so until then you basically keep your mouth shut your your student of life and you learn from your mentor your big brother your sponsor and that was it it was just about the 12 steps so these people actually taught me what it meant to have an oral torah i had no concept whenever we would open our mouths and we would say yeah we heard this we heard that they said where'd you hear that from did you hear that from your sponsor who heard it from dr bob and bill wilson um or did you make that up or did you hear that on the streets in the therapy it did the concept i'm just using the term loosely but oral torah was so strict in this group it was unbelievable when i finally met an orthodox rabbi the rosh hashima in miami feature of uh yokonan and he's sitting with a gemara that's open at talmud and we're talking about what he heard from his rabbi and his rabbi all the way back to mount sinai was like it all made sense but most of all my first introduction to judaism was about the passover seder how we left egypt so one of the most fascinating things that this little fanatical i don't want to call the cult at all because but they always spoke about what is the fundamental principle of recovery of the 12 steps is this ready like drum roll please that these principles these 12 steps are the fundamental principles that what we call the from them the early israelites experience leaving bondage okay egypt represents bondage drug addiction or any addiction whether it's gambling sex emotions i don't know whatever the overeaters anonymous whatever different types of addictions there are it's bondage that's what it is and that's what egypt is it's a tight constricting place that you cannot get out of without the help of the kujamaraku without the help of the buddhist without the help of god and that was my experience going through these 12 steps and having had experience then and with the strength of this group that emphasized or overemphasized this concept of an oral torah and most of all the experience that the early israelites experienced relating back to egypt getting out of bondage now i still had not yet met an orthodox jew but when i did if all the pieces fell into place it was like wow this is what i've been looking for my entire life and i'm telling you what year i was 23 22 22 years old when i finally met my first orthodox church so i only gave you very small snippets but i don't want to date you i don't want to date you but if you were 22 23 are we going back right around 1980 early 80s or late late 70s here mid mid 80s mid 80s i'm sorry when i became when i experienced recovery that was in in 83. i'm sorry it was 81 1981 is when i went into the drug rehab and but it was only later about four years later i met this group and maybe a few years later i met my first orthodox jew and i was in yeshiva in 88. i'm sorry i came to israel in 88 so i was already in shiva in 86. um in yeshiva my 86 came to join 88 so but i recall recovery my recovery started in in 81. okay so i remember those days myself and uh yeah for me they were yeah coming out of the 70s into the 80s yeah long-haired hippie freak yeah i don't want to say anymore but i i had a birthday last monday and i'm just thinking back sir being happy i saw it i saw that on youtube and one sorry on facebook happy birthday so i just want to go back to that first step the first step was to realize that you're powerless over what this was a big misunderstanding in today's 12-step programs they say either alcohol or drugs but that's not the understanding in in the original it's your powerless over your addiction you in other words the yetzer hurrah i'm powerless and the gomorrah tell us in conduction that god created the exora created this and without his help you could never overcome it you need god's assistance to overcome that so that's the first step to realize in your own life you haven't you have this um craving or desire for something that may not be healthy for you and you could use god's sin you need god's assistance not that you could the only way to overcome it is with god's help and that's what we say is the song the torah is the axillary the drug of life it is actually called a drug of life so that is to counterbalance the negative the poison the cure so that's the first right then when you hear of other people's recovery or you see people who are living a healthy lifestyle you know that it's possible that's the second step to understand that you could be restored to sanity and sanity means you no longer have that desire god can remove that desire to go in the negative direction okay so then the third is to turn your life and your will over to the care of that entity that you now come to believe in and the way that the 12-step program describes this entity is basically as you understand them today because as we all know that we are constantly striving to have a deeper understanding so in the beginning of whatever stage you are in your life you will have a great hopefully a greater understanding of the rabbinical islam of the creator of the universe you know as children we have this one idea you know some old man sitting in the heavens perhaps i don't know there's different ideas of how children look at god or how we teach uh our children is gonna be very important that it is a journey it's a real journey but at that moment i was meditating on my bed in this drug rehab and i made a decision to turn my life in my will over to the care of god as i understood him at that moment and i actually felt the warm embrace i was left i felt myself levitating i was like the clay in the pot of his hand as we described in talking and in our prayers that this is the the idea of turning your will but it's it doesn't end there that's where the rest of the steps come in and character development in writing out or this discovering in an honest way the the flaws of your own character and what you need to uh make amends for what you can do to fix so they don't happen again it's all about and uh truva repentance now you could find on the give on their website and maybe i'll put it in the in the description box uh rabbi rabbi twersky rabbi avraham tawarsky who was big he had um he had a a drug rehab in pittsburgh some kind of rehabilitation center in pittsburgh and he spoke for yet by that he wrote a book called and they're trying to remember because it's two words one's recovery and the other one is repentance i think it's uh recover repentance through recovery a recovery to repentance i'll figure it out sorry i i messed up right now but basically he is a big writer he writes a lot in terms of spirituality judaism in particular and how this all fits in with the recovery programs so i encourage people to look that video up and check it out now we still have a little bit of time i there's really a lot of information i left out tonight but uh well i guess we'll have to pick that up next time around recovery repentance through recovery yeah it was recent because he put it out the two or three years ago and we did a big event for him here locally because he lives in my neighborhood i'm going to look it up real quick here we go see what it's called just a little bit through recovery and we put 2016. that was when it came out okay beautiful beautiful so that's my message for you tonight uh we will uh continue this there's a lot more to there's still a lot more to say on this first of the six i will try at the next time to bring it together so we can go to the next piece well i think at the beginning rabbi you were talking about you know faith and knowledge faith and knowledge uh the difference between you know walking by believing or faith you know to a degree but also knowing i think the whole experiences of life the experience of the hebrew people coming out of egypt nothing speaks louder than they lived it and they had to go through a lot of like you say withdrawals a lot of transition a lot of renewal i think you touched on some beautiful stuff today any any final words of summary then if we're going to call it uh a day and just there's so much to say so i don't even know where but basically one of the ideas we brought down was in the bishop himself he says how can one come to love god so since it says right away also in the shema you shall place these words upon your heart so not only is god one and you have to love god but right as hashem al-qaeda you shall love the lord your god then it says you shall place these words upon your heart these words upon your heart is talking about the torah so torah is called knowledge wisdom right so it's through the delving into the wisdom that you will hopefully right come out with a um a more appreciation for for the god of israel for the god of the creator of the universe and i pray and i hope a relationship you know in a normal situation where you have a person you really like a lot and you want to spend as much time with that person as possible you're a little bit selfish how how many people are you gonna share this relationship with your um you know you have a card lunch you can walk at any time this is somebody that if you shared with other people you might end up spending a lot less a lot less time with but when it comes to god it doesn't happen like that right abraham understood that he said you know more people i share this with it's only gonna enhance my relationship it's the opposite of a human where if i share this person with other people that means i get less but it doesn't work that way with hashem so you know when when someone has recovered has you know has experienced those 12 steps and is now in the 12 steps the 12th step he he only wants to share having had a spiritual awakening as a result of those steps because that's what it is it's a spiritual awakening then you want to you want to share this with others right so any human on this planet whether they're jew especially jewish but even a non-jew who's been awoken and i think i hear this word a lot whoa who really is woke right a non-jew who's mamish woke right who totally understands what it means to have this revelation about sinai and accepts the seven principles that's already changed their life dramatically why wouldn't they want to share this with other gentiles or even jews right who aren't yet so observant you can help them you can assist them in directing them to places like ishitara or sameach right there's so many avenues and venues out there in which they could improve their lives so with that i wish everyone a happy journey you know and to keep coming back to hear the next of the uh six constant missiles the six constant mr mitzvot in the beyond the seven classes i so appreciate you staying up so late for us there in israel to bring to us you know light the light of torah and uh um structure just just clarity and uh i hope that that's what the audience takes away from this uh so hashem willing same time next week rabbi hashem willing looking forward to folks till then have a wonderful wonderful week [Music] i [Music]