Rabbi Breitowitz "Living With The Parsha" series Mishpatim The 4 steps to receive the Torah

[Music] tonight we're going we're giving a share for special yard site tonight share is marking uh Mar and Betty tomsky toberman Miriam bakov fi viora her eighth yor site Maran was taken to her maker at the age of 86 eight years ago today the 26 of Schatz and uh steveen her son is sponsoring the share and hopefully uh his vote and our learning together will bring her another step in her so we hope that uh that should be the case very much so all right anyway I wanted to uh you know um this is par m m of course uh if you have a legal background like I do mishpatim is like my favorite para you know because there's so many laws in it uh but in reality mishpatim is also a continuation of the Matan narrative so I'm going to take a little bit of license and kind of talk about and Mish uh together remember the ramban points out in his introduction to the book of shos that the book of Exodus has three basic themes but they're all interrelated theme number one is The Exodus of Egypt uh theme number two is the receiving of the Torah theme number three is the building of a mishkan of a tabernacle to bring God's presence into the world and metaphorically this is really the journey that we all have to take in our lives we have to leave MIT I think I've mentioned a number of times the very profound commentary of the balatan that the word mitam does not simply mean Egypt but mitam refers to limitations and constrictions and God gives us the capacity to be liberated from that which enslaves US provided we honestly recognize that which enslaves us whether it be our arrogance our laziness our uh lack of self-esteem whatever it would be that a MIT within us that we have to break through and that is which gives you a freedom from that which constricts and disables you from realizing the beauty of your soul but Freedom has to then be coupled with responsibility because a freedom that is simply the absence of restriction uh ultimately does not bring uh fulfillment to a person I think again I've mentioned before tagor Tori was a famous Indian poet who won the noble PR for literature and toari described the human soul like a violin string which is capable of beautiful music but only when it's tied down on a framework on a bridge the bridge of the violin if you have a string that's totally free a loose string on the table free unencumbered can't do anything and we make a very serious mistake when we confuse Freedom with purpose you know one could not logically say the purpose of my life is to be free freedom is not a purpose in any sense Freedom might be a condition that enables the realization of a purpose and that is why has to be coupled with it is that way in the itself and it's that way in the holiday cycle thus for example we have the holiday of P which is and we have the holiday of sh which is and we have the counting of the om which essentially is a linkage between p and in fact some of the commentaries I believe it's the ran himself but not in the but in one of his the ran actually compares the counting of the OM to it's a long meaning to say you have the holiday of P holiday of and in between is a you know 49 days of because it really is one holiday because a PES without sh is unthinkable because Freedom requires discipline and commitment so if you take a job and you stipulate to your employer that you don't work during perhaps you could take a longer a longer break than the boss uh anticipated and the like but all of this so this is theme one and theme two but all of this even mat T itself is really a means to a greater end and that end is to bring God into your life and into this world sometimes you know the morale of Prague has a very very uh iconoclastic comment I would think it's a bit of a controversial comment you know it's interesting sometimes you know in the Yeshiva World or even in the Torah World generally we learn all sorts of great thinkers and we kind of just assume they're saying the same thing meaning they're all in agreement on basic points in point of fact there's often radical disagreements that aren't even identified when we when we read it uh so for example in a Shiva you might study the the duties of the heart and you might study the both of them are great Classics of Jewish thought uh and you know you learn you know you learn then you learn and you everything is good be a good Jew uh one has to understand these are radically radically different different Works puts based on the Von puts the study of Torah as the highest possible way of connecting to God that he makes the point that one should not even think about directly connecting to God because that would take you away from focusing on the Torah that you're learning and all you should do is focus on the Torah and that itself will connect you to God and if you think about connecting to God on a conscious level that actually deflects you from that ultimate tacus this is kind of the mission statement of the Lithuanian Yeshiva if you read the which was written almost a thousand years before I mean much much earlier actually ridicules ridicules the theoretical study of Torah if it does not focus directly on connecting to Hashem uh he he gives there a famous story where somebody uh once uh asked their Rabbi a very obscure question in the laws of divorce how would a certain get work if it was done in a certain way kind of a shishak kind of an intellectually subtle question and the rabbi is said in the story is said to have ridiculed him and said why are you asking questions about things that will happen only once every thousand years if then why don't you ask about how you can become a servant of God now if the same story would have been presented to ra valer he would have said exactly the opposite he would have said yes yes yes delve into that theoretical obscure obtuse question because that will connect you to the essence of God so the point so so the morale this was a little littleit bit digressing because I'm I'm actually starting a bunch of sh tomorrow so you got a little bit of a pre- Bradway you know pre- Bradway uh comment uh but the maral makes a similar comment there is a famous passage in M that raises the question why is it sometimes that the son of a will not always be a of course there are many many exceptions to that but the T stated that it was often the case that it was not and one of the explanations the maral gives is the following a has such a love for the Torah that he no longer thinks about the no Torah he no longer thinks about God who gave the Torah and therefore if one learns Torah and sepers it from a conscious ATT to build a relationship with God it is like cutting a branch off a live tree the branch may still have its fruit but the branch is dead it can produce nothing new after that because it's severed from the root and the morale says there's an occupational hazard sometimes that a person who loves the intellectual Joy of Torah study sometimes disconnects that from having a connection with God now once again this is 100% 1,000% the opposite ofer's point I think uh and that is why the maral was very very beloved by the moral of course lived uh 200 years before the balov but the maral was an honorary so to speak meaning to say theic movement did embrace the moral for number one the balat himself was the maral's great great grandson literally uh besides that the maral's philosophies were preserved by Kim uh at a time when most of the rest of the Jewish world were not even aware of the maral's writings only in recent decades has the maral's writings become very very popular in the broader Jewish World there were hundreds of years that gersan sholam no not not a religious man Gan sholom the great academic scholar of cabala uh has occasion to refer to maral's writings and he says the now forgotten writings of rabuda eloi the maral so see that uh that they had been forgotten but they had observed by so the point I'm making is going back to the ramban shos has three themes escaping our limitations which is freedom using the freedom to have commitment to the Torah which is mat Torah but the third is to understand that the Torah itself is really a vehicle so that you bring Hashem into your heart and into your soul and that is the meaning of mishkan right the Mish The Dwelling Place the Tabernacle what does the say make for me aash make for me a sanctuary so I will dwell in their hearts and souls God is not in the Tabernacle God is in the Heart and Soul the Tabernacle the mikdash the bikash is simply a symbol that hasem is with us and that is why when we are not worthy of being a repository for the divine presence then the Bas mikdash becomes just a building and anybody can destroy it meaning theoretically the only people who can destroy the house of Hashem are us theim cannot destroy the house of Hashem when the Romans and the Babylonians destroy the temple that's because God is not living there anymore God left so if God left it becomes a building that anybody can destroy but God leaves because when there's not a an ability to have Hashem dwell within our heart and in our soul so the is gone so those are the three themes of the book ofos T and building the the Mish so if we go back a little bit and we read mat Torah last week so perut Begins the third month from from the time that the Jewish people left the land of MIM third month because we always count Nissan as month number one in the Torah Nissan on that day they came to midbar si in other words the Torah is telling me when did they arrive at the foot of Mount Si Roes they got the Torah they got the Ten Commandments a week later on the sixth of s which is the holiday of according to one opinion actually on the seventh of s and I will discuss at a much later date the interesting uh problem that if you follow the view of the tanim that the Ten Commandments were given on the seventh of San why do we celebrate Shas the wrong day in other words nobody's arguing about sh sh is when sh is but Theus is did we get the Ten Commandments on the sixth of or did we get the Ten Commandments on the seventh of San now if we got the Ten Commandments on the sixth of San we are celebrating shos on the day that we got the Ten Commandments which is what we've told all of our children throughout their lives but if you hold that we got the Ten Commandments on the seventh of Sian we are actually celebrating shos on the day that we didn't get the ten commandments so what is it that we are celebrating okay I'll let you citate over that question till and then we'll get to it we'll get to it later in the year but be it as it may whether the Ten Commandments were the sixth or the seventh we got to midbar on Roes okay good that's P PK B then says it seems to be going backwards we're already talking they arrived at midb B says they journeyed from ridim well we know that we know ridim was the stop before sin because that's where amik attacked us you'll recall in the end of bash so why repeat the information that we know from the end of bash and then it says midbar and they came to midbari but I know that also that's what pasak said and then it says yet again midb and they encamped in the midbar well if they came there that's what they would do and then it repeats yet again so the problem basically is p base is absolutely redundant there is not a single bit of new information that you directly get from P base the end of Bak already told me they left rafid Al tells me they came to [Music] mides so why do I need p b to then say they left raid they came to Mid they encamped in the desert and then it repeats again they encamped next to the mountain so there's a very very beautiful from the theim is of course Rim Benatar great great uh godo from Morocco who who came toim he's buried on harim and uh his y side is actually does still attracts thousand of people uh was it's in thousands of people to the and he's one of the relatively few yeah which one right T right and uh he's one of the relatively few mafor that we still use call the appalation K or you'll often say and he says the following he says the purpose of PK B this is peric PK B is not to discuss the geographical movement of the Jewish people we already know they left ridum and came to harini but it's discussing the spiritual journey the Jewish people had to take before they became worthy of Matan and he divides PK Bay into a nice four-step plan there are four steps we must take in order to be worthy of receiving God's Torah now of course of course these four steps are much easier said than actually done but he gives you a very uh easy to State at least four step plan step number one you must travel from the place called R now we know Reid is an oasis we know ridim is where a mik attacked us butal say ridm is also a symbolic name ridm is an abbreviation or an acronym for the phrase ra y their hands were loose their grasp was weak and this refers to the idea that there's a fundamental concept that AAL has power over us only when there is some type of flaw within us that makes us vulnerable to aik in fact the Mitzvah of the Torah eradicate amalik is not only referring to the external but it refers to characteristics within us that make us vulnerable to Amal that is how we fulfill and say what made the Jewish people vulnerable to Amal at least in part was the idea of ra ra now what does that mean this is an idiom uh when you care about somebody let's say you're carrying your baby across aicum so you're going to hold your baby very very tight so the more you care about something or someone the tighter you hold on to them when you don't care about something that much your grasp might be very very loose you know you don't even know it's in your hand you may drop it it makes no difference so the phrase refers to a certain attitude that a person has towards religion towards spirituality towards Torah that is even if a person keeps the Torah in the mitv they might do so with coldness with indifference with complacency with boredom with a lack of excitement as we say in yish a lack of gmak that is the attitude of R and when there is R we become vulnerable to amalik and that is what the Torah means when it says if you want to accept hashem's Torah you must leave complacency indifference boredom and you must try to inculate we must try to inculate within ourselves and within our personalities a notion of sim excitement in AEM now this is a this is indeed a a a a very very significant challenge you know because even if a person keeps the mitzvos person who merits to now of course let me be the first to say better to keep the mitzvos in a complacent non uh committed way than not to do it at all meaning I'm not no one is saying don't do the mitzvot unless you can do them at the highest possible level but still all of us are prone to the idea that AEM can sometimes become very sterile atrophied dry fossilized petrified etched in stone because and of course the MIT are etched in stone but but our heart should not be etched in stone and in many ways this is whatas came to bring back to CL Israel much more of an emphasis on the enthusiasm and excitement of and the writes you have to leave leave the to tr truly receive God's story now the EMS is the great R sok who lived much later Ric rebbi makes the same point but from a different phrase not from ridm but in Paras where the Torah reviews what amalik did to us there's a phrase which in English is translated amalik encountered you in the way but Rashi brings a medish that K can also mean made you cold K made you cold and the mush that Rashi brings is when the Jewish people left mitzraim the whole world was afraid of them the whole world was afraid them there were 10 plagues and griu you don't mess with the Jews thing bad things happen to you if you mess with the Jews they were like a boiling scalding hot bath nobody would even touch it they wouldn't put their finger in it amalik was the very first nation that jumped into a boiling scalding hot bath understandably they got burnt but they made it less hot for the next guy because once they broke the aura of invincibility it made it more possible for someone else to take the next step in other words the attitude is oh well they they attacked the Jews they didn't win but you know but at least they attacked that maybe we can do it as well so that's the meaning aik made you cold that's what Rashi says R sadok goes with the same atmology made you cold but he runs with it in a different way that Amal represents a coldness of the heart that when your heart is cold in aod then you become vulnerable to M so the same thing that K saw in the wordid s reads into aare of course it's interesting I may have mentioned this story before that you know uh I always have a feeling that R saduk is being a bit autobiographical here you know R saduk was was not a born into aish family was born as a mate and he was a very very brilliant person he knew no Shas and and pokim at a very very young age and when he was in his early 20s he had occasion to travel and he met one of theid rebes the ish bitzer who was later popularized by schlom carach but uh but the is was actually R sok's rebi divorce huh it was a divorce yeah it's all very interesting tragic story sok demanded a a divorce from his wife because he thought she uh shook uh someone's hand in a store whatever it is uh so he was very very kanoi in those things and she refused so he was trying to get a uh heter of Mayor ranim of 100 ranim to allow him to divorce her without her consent and as a result this young genius had occasion to meet many many people in Europe and he became a I just want to say I don't want to be on this story so much I just want to say that R sok uh was married twice after that he was a widower and uh and then he married a third time he had no children from uh any of his marriages and uh he said at the end of his life that it's because of the harsh way that he treated his first wife not in a proper way that Hashem punished him and again if you if you read R suuk you can actually sense how painful it was that he did not have children it was not just I mean you know it's hard for everybody but uh there was a certain whole spiritual Dimension that he saw in this and he said it was because of the way treated he haded very very deep deep regrets she did marry and she did have a family uh he was not so but but be it as it may uh he did become Aid as a result and The Story Goes that he went to the ish bitzer just I mean he he didn't know the ishz was he just went to hear sud and the ish bitzer was giving a drasa and in the middle R saduk had to borrow a a Christian term he had an epiphany and in the middle he started crying he said my heart is on fire and then he started clasping his head and he says all I was was a brain but I want to be a person I don't want to just be a brain and he to he totally changed he he still became I mean obviously uh as a cerebral enormous he remained the enormous that he was but uh he understood very much the idea that a person could be so enwrapped sometimes in uh mental operations that one loses sight of the greater more important goal of connecting to AES and thus he spoke about the idea of am being connected to the coldness of the heart that one has to have a warm heart one has to be filled with passion and without uh trying to fully address a very complic ated phenomenon part of the issue there are many many reasons but part of the issue of uh the kids at risk phenomenon that the Orthodox world has become more aware of of children going off the Der I there are many many many reasons and some some are really not even reasons things just happen we can't always give a reason for anything but part of it is that uh if the je if the yish kite in the home or in the school or the Yeshiva is not conveyed with a warmth and with a joy if it's conveyed as a burdensome sense of things you can't do don't do this don't do this don't do this don't do this and all you're doing is taking things away one after another but there's no sense of the Sim in serving Hashem then at some point a person might Rebel and say who needs it I don't want it anymore right so so the issue of uh this is what we call in the industry you know just just like we talk about kirim drawing people who are far from Hashem back to mitvah there's also a need for kir ofen even people who are absolutely religious and observants we all need kind of a jump start and to embrace Judaism with joy and excitement and and the like now again uh this is the whole conflict because obviously sometimes when you there's a pendulum here when you emphasize the subjective religious experience of joy you sometimes become less conscientious in h which is also a mistake when you emphasize the meticulous following of the rules you sometimes leave the realm of joy and S so as is always the case the truth is somewhere in the middle in which you have to embrace both of those ideas but at least ref them the says is leave refed them leave complacency embrace the Torah Embrace Hashem with passion in fact here the balatan makes a very very interesting point the balat writes there's a difference he uses two words again the way he uses the words is a bit idiosyncratic but he uses uh two different words for a certain sadness in serving God one is a good sadness and one is a bad sadness one term he uses is marus the bitterness of spirit in which I feel pain that I am separated from God that's called maras and the other is called atus atus which literally means sadness is the insensitivity of not feeling anything like a dead stone so the balatan writes although dominantly one's attitude should be Sim but it is appropriate at different times of day to feel a yearning and a sadness that you're not close to God but that yearning in sadness is very much alive it is a feeling it is a striving it is a yearning in which you cry out to Hashem I want to be connected to you he says that is healthy and that is necessary because that expresses the yearnings of a soul that wants to grow and although if you have too much of that you get depressed and sad and that's not good and therefore you need to have SIM most of the time but there are times of course it's always amazing the T he see always be describing you know you could turn your emotions on and off like a faucet like 15 minutes a day you know you're supposed to have be sad and you cry to Hashem and then the rest of the day you be happy you know most of us can't really work on that particular level but he says that's marus marus is a sadness that's alive it's like a living thing I want to be connected but then there's another type of sadness which is a deadening kind of a weight in which you just don't feel he says that that is not good because that does not lead you to connect to Hashem that just causes you to fall deeper and deeper and deeper so leaving Reid them is to embrace with love and with fear and with joy and with enthusiasm and with passion AEM that's step one step two for y midbar they come to the Sinai desert so here the emphasis is Desert now some people love the desert for many people it's too hot but they love the desert and one of the things they love about the desert particularly photographers and artists often like the desert precisely because it is so empty there isn't a lot of stuff in the desert there isn't a lot of clutter there's something magnificent in the space without the buildings without the roads without the trucks without the crowds and therefore the suggests that the second stage in our journey to sin is we should try to declutter our life and not to be so involved in materialism and possessions and things now this is a bit tricky because it is true that Judaism is not an aesthetic religion we're not told to renounce we're not told to take vows of poverty in fact there's even a don't tell your kids they'll use it against you that we are going to be held to account after 120 years for every pleasure we could have enjoyed in this world that we didn't enjoy that's permitted so you know why didn't you go to the Grand Canyon why didn't you see the Alps why didn't you take that extra roller coaster ride or or whatever huh well pleasure has to be pleasure pleasure okay dep depends if you like it or not you know uh so if you like it you forgo it because there might be bugs in it well okay that's a reason okay okay I understand but but the basic idea is that Hashem made a world of beauty Hashem made a world of grander and part of how you serve Hashem is by appreciating that beauty and enjoying it in in many many ways a person who doesn't want to have any connection to that world is basically denying the goodness of the world that Hashem created okay so a Jew should be someone that appreciates color and music and and and the variety of of experience in life uh but but nevertheless like everything else nevertheless we do understand that when your possessions get control of you it takes you away from God and and and there's a very logical reason for this you know the same way there's concern actually there's actually educational concerns not these not not even Jewish concerns in particular about the effect of the internet on kids ability to concentrate in school because the nature of web surfing uh is such that you know you jump from think to think to think to think and you never really focus on trying to develop an idea at any length and that is absolutely deadly for gar you know what people are trying to do now in the modern Orthodox Community is they're trying to create Tuda curriculums based on hypertext and hyperlink I okay but but you know the truth of the matter is when all is said and done although those things can help when all is said and done you got to learn how to concentrate that's it I'm sorry you know web surfing is not going to be the solution to create in any meaningful in any meaningful way but what happens is that once you get habituated to instant gratification and web surfing is fairly instant the same way you live on candy bars you're not going to spend three hours to make a French meal because you want something quick and the same way if you're doing hyper uh web surfing you're not gonna read William fauler or William Shakespeare okay now I'm remember because I remember in college it was really like going through aish trying to read a funner novel but okay uh but the same way that um once you get habituated to the instant gratification you can't take the pleasures that take time so too the joys of possession the joys of instant gratification ation take away a person's ability to focus on Spiritual Development which is often a long and laborious process it's not going to be an instant Nirvana you know so consequently the second step in the or's four-step program is to try to simplify our life and of course simplification has many many benefits first of all it generally eliminates clutter even in a physical sense kind of creates an ability to be more Serene to f focus on priorities and the less I'm involved in the acquisition world and the rat race the more my heart could appreciate aades so that's the second plan travel to the desert simplify empty your life out take out the stuff that you don't you don't need now I remember uh hearing a story once about a u a BAL Chua who had been a professional uh bicycle racer he had done tour to France all of these different things and he had to give it up because the bulk of the race is always on on chabas so somebody was asking him you know must have been hard you were you were competing on a professional capacity you had to give that up so he said well he finds that competitive cycling is very similar to keeping chabas so what's the connection he says well you know when you're competing at a very high level so uh the difference between a first place and a second place just like Olympic swimming or something might be you know a fraction of a second so people look for all sorts of ways to improve their time you know they shave their uh their body hair uh you know they'll discard a scarf or a sweater because it slows them up a little bit so he says so one of the things that Competitive Cyclist learns is get rid of the stuff you don't need in life because it just weighs you down and he said that's what chabas represents to me the idea that simplify my life get away from the things I don't need and that puts me in a frame of mind where I'm able to to grow and then when I go back to my possessions I understand that I can be a master of my possessions but my possessions don't have to be a master for me I remember uh Pepsi Cola uh for a while had a an advertising campaign in fact it was very interesting in fact there was even a famous law case about this where uh they they had a joke it was a joke commercial where you know know you can get prizes for a certain number of points so they said if you accumulated 20 million points uh you could get this fighter jet they actually had a kid who showed up to high school with you know this is a commercial now they picked a number BFA that would not would not be humanly possible for anyone to ever have that number of points because you'd have to have you know one million Pepsis within a year or something but lo and behold some kid managed to do this I don't know how maybe the maybe the Iranians hired him and he accumulated all of the Pepsi Points and he demanded that they deliver him a fighter jet because he says this was a commercial you made a contract I accept your contract I want the jet which of course would have been illegal under under us law you know a private citizen cannot just buy a military jet but it actually went to court actually went to courts and the judge basically come on kids you knew they were joking okay whatever it is but uh but their motto in this campaign was drink Pepsi get stuff meaning it doesn't even make a difference what you get just I just want stuff more stuff right get stuff that's an end that's an end in in and of itself one of the things that uh one of the many many blessings in in Isel is you know we still have a lot of stuff but we have less stuff than we have in America so uh in some ways uh we we are able to absorb this message in just in the course of of living here to have a a bit of a a simpler life uh it's a complicated life in many other ways but at least in terms of not being so involved in the rat race for possessions okay now third step it then repeats again they encamped by the desert so desert does double duty Sayid that's simplicity so here the says this is another connotation of emptiness and that is to be empty not to be filled with yourself and this is the third idea that in order to receive hashem's Torah you have to have the maida of humility all of us know this is one of the reasons Torah is compared to water because water goes from The High Ground to the low ground Torah leaves the arrogant and goes to the humble quite logically P says who is a wise person made M someone who learns from everybody if a person is arrogant not only will they not learn from people who they think are below themselves they won't even learn from people who are better than them because they don't think anybody's better than them by definition when you're filled with yourself you will not be open to learn from others you will not be open even to accept hashem's words when they conflict with your reason and your argumentation and your position so as a result therefore if the second if the second element which is the first midbar in that PK refers to Simplicity the second mention of midore refers to humility so so far we've identified passion Simplicity humility we then come to to the fourth element and here we already have a Dr of after it says they encamped it then seems to repeat they encamped by the mountain but here already on this fourth element Rashi himself points out that the second is singular as opposed to the and this teaches us that to receive the Torah they had to be one person one Soul there had to be there had to be without there would be no way to receive God's Torah so this is our Simple four-step Plan you can write it on an index card uh passion Simplicity humility unity and you got it and you're there now you know the hag the you know we have the one of the parts of the ha is Dau right if God would have done this and not that we still would have been grateful some of Theos are hard to figure out you know if God would have split the Red Sea but would not have taken us through in dry land Dao that would have been enough well gee God splits the Red Sea I'm walking through and then the walls collapse on me I'm not sure if that would have been enough I mean I would have I would have died in the process you know there if you go through each di you can you're gonna have to ask yourself gee why would that have been enough I'm not gonna answer that one but I want to raise another if you would have brought us to Mount Si elu and you wouldn't have given us the Torah that's enough what Dano you bring us to a mountain and nothing happens what's the Dao what would there be to be grateful even c yamu i could answer that for me to see such a miracle of God even if I died a second later possibly you could even but to be brought to Mount Si without the Torah what would have been the blessing at all and one of the answers that's given is because at Hari we reach the level of now granted that was in preparation of the Torah but even if there wouldn't have been a Torah to reach the level of that would have been that would have been a wonderful wondrous thing that Jews connect to each other in tremendous love and togetherness we know of course that the second B mikdash was destroyed because of and it cannot be rebuilt until we eradicate as R cook used to famously say if thean was because of the ban requires a love without measure a love without any type of Need for justification and and and the like and all of us know I don't need to document this that's is certainly one of the great great great problems that we still have in CL Israel and by I don't mean throwing rocks but you know can be cold as well as hot can be indifference it can be apathy to the other it can be the idea that I care about my click in my group and I don't care about your click in your group because those who are to the right of me are Fanatics and those who are to the left of me are aor and Heretics wherever I am it's where I am that is correct and on either side of me you know don't don't count that is also right so we have to be aware of it doing a great great part in trying to uh bridge the gap and bring people together of all different uh types of philosophy and has and levels of practice and that is what needs that is what brings indeed that is how the b mikdash gets rebuilt and that is how mashia mashia comes and the like so in this connection I I want to just end with this thought it's a very very brilliant thought from the you know all of us know the famous teaching of K that God actually offered the Torah to all the nations of the world and they turned it down because they asked Hashem what's in it and when Hashem gave them an answer that didn't fit their liking so they said sorry I can't do it again this medis is actually enormously philosophically and historically complicated because uh what would have been if they would have said yes buta the Torah is the story of the Jewish people so exactly uh what form would the Torah have taken now there and there was is is Asa gonna willingly accept that whole story about jakov taking the bras you know exactly what what what what it would have meant is quite complicated but the one thing kazal say is that the great thing that the Jewish people did was that they didn't even ask they said the statement whatever Hashem says then we will do and then we will hear meaning we're giving God a blank check as opposed to the Nations that say tell me what you're offering we said to Hashem we'll take it even before we know Raji actually says that every single day when a man puts on tfillin this is why you put on the hand tfillin before you put on the head tfillin right that's the because the hand represents the commitment to action the head represents the ability to understand cognition and just as Matan Torah was a commitment to action even in the absence of a cognitive understanding of what that entailed so every morning putting on thein is a mini mat T of right that's actually a very very good explanation of why you put on the Y before you put on the the RO but what's interesting is this perhaps you noticed it that the famous Immortal PK which kazal use as a source of praise for the Jewish people actually appears in this week's Torah reading but in last week's Torah reading before God offers the Ten Commandments they don't say they say and you know you're almost waiting where's that nishma here my missing a word you know whatever whatever it be or the B skipped nishma right somebody might even call out nishma and yet it's 100% true that in it does not say only says so what's the explanation so the says the following idea that these two do represent two different periods in Jewish existence that is the following all of us know that the Torah has 613 mitv and we know that 248 are positive Commandments Thou shalt do and 365 are the negative Commandments Thou shalt not do now kazal correlate them to parts of the body there are 248 bones and every positive Commandments give spiritual life and vibran to one of those bones and there are 365 Senus or ligaments in the body and every negative commandment will impair the health of that ligament now what that actually means it's hard to know because I don't think it means if you keep the the the the mitzvot you won't have arthritis or or some type of you know but but in some spiritual way it gives spiritual life so now if that's the case we actually have a very significant problem there has never been a righteous person man or woman in Jewish history that is able to keep all 63 Commandments it's impossible some are only for kohanim some are for men and not for women some are for women and not for men many only apply when there's a b mikdash many only apply in Isel but here's the problem I mean the problem basically is if God created a system where all 613 are necessary for my spiritual life then by definition every person is a spiritual now it's one thing if I'm a because I made bad choices not to do Mitzvah that's fine that's not God's responsibility but God cannot set up a system where it's impossible for me to get the spiritual Aura of of 613 Commandments that's a very unjust system God says I'm making a system that requires 613 for you to be whole and within that system it's impossible if you would ever do that doesn't seem right so theam say that we have two answers to this dilemma answer number one is Torah learning and this is part of the reason why Torah learning is so important because even a Mitzvah that I'm not able to actually do the spiritual light of that Mitzvah can penetrate My Soul by learning about it for example K say he who learns the laws of carbos is as if they brought corbano same thing is true for the laws of leprosy the laws of G right no one's going to say for example I mean get is actually a good example uh you know giving a get is a positive commandment you know if you want to get divorced so what's going to be uh one of my bones if I don't give a get one of my bones is going to be impaired am I supposed to go go around giving getting to my wife because otherwise I got that bone not working very well obviously the answer is no and you achieve the light of the Mitzvah by learning about the laws of get or or whatever it would be that is why the writes know one of the things the did was the reinstituted the modern learning of the gamar about Corban which had been neglected for really hundreds of years and somebody would criticized the like why are you telling people to learn things that are not relevant Hally as if the didn't care about relevance I he wrote the Mish but okay but you know why are you telling people to learn so the gave two answers one answer is if you believe in mashia then this is highly relevant because we do believe the carbonos are going to come back okay again that that's another debate but the second thing the said was that precisely when you're not able to do a Mitzvah there's a special importance in learning about it because that is how your soul gets the spiritual light so that is answer number one to the tag quander the path of tud toah but there's an answer number two to the tag quandry how can I do 613 and that is AAS is how is that so let's imagine Fillin again to go back to Fillin a person a man puts on Fillin on his left arm if he's a Wy now how would he describe what he did would he say my arm did a Mitzvah today my hand did a Mitzvah today no the arm is connected to the person so what my arm does is what I do so too if you connect to the Jewish people with bonds of Love togetherness and Unity you become like a limb on top of this transcendental organism that has a past present future or even a cell and as a result when I connect to am Isel which is past present and future the Mitzvah of the men become the Mitzvah of the women the Mitzvah of the women become the Mitzvah of the men the Mitzvah of the Coen becomes the Mitzvah of the Lei or the non when I separate myself then I'm only doing my MIT I'm going to be defective so is is a way of connecting yourself to an entity that is larger than yourself and therefore even if you as an individual cannot do these Mitzvah you get the spiritual light via your your connection to everybody to everybody else so the M says these twoim areas in the two in look how how he's M it says the following call everybody answered together call deem whatever hasem says that's referring to a time which was the time of Matan Torah itself when there was unity and togetherness and when there is Unity we can declare to God everything you commanded us we can do I can't do it all you can't do it all he can't do it all she can't do it all but together we do it all in the word is omitted that's a remise that there's going to come a time in where there will not be a there'll be there'll be polarization there'll be division there'll be dissension under those circumstances we can no longer say everything God said we can do if I'm not connected to CLA Israel I can't do all of these mitzvas so we have to go to plan B even though I can't do them but I can get the light by learning about them that's what it means Nas we will do through through the process of learning and trying to understand and therefore the T right so you'll notice the de here in we can say n without it has to be so it seems that these are two different the and the of T but in reality these are two roads that ultimately converge and become one because tell us we say this every we say it every day in ding in most peopleim say it only on shabas the statement Shalom that those people who truly learn Torah they increase peace in the world of course there's an old rabbi's joke why do increase peace in the world because he says you know you got two people who are fighting all the time and they can't agree on anything but when it comes to criticizing thereof they'll they'll make Shalom and they'll they'll mutually you know okay no but the simple meaning is once again now this this raises you know personally painful issues here because unfortunately we we see in ER Israel sometimes the case that even among the great great there is sometimes outbreaks of that are very very hard to understand but I'm just quoting I'm not editorializing have told us that the sincere learning of Torah is supposed to bring peace into the world it is supposed to create Unity it is supposed to create togetherness it is supposed to create love and interconnection among Jews and therefore even though initially we have twoim when there's we fulfill the Torah by deed and when there's notus we fulfill the Torah by learning but the learning itself gives rise to Aus and unity and therefore D number two turns into DK number one as well okay that's the for the two for the two verses this is why generally you know um in Jewish Outreach there just there are two different different approaches there are some many people who feel and again there there's a good argument on each approach that if I want to help somebody become a better Jew and so I want to learn Torah with them but I can't learn Torah with them until I absolutely convince them that the Torah comes from God Etc and therefore we have to spend a lot of time on the Divinity of the Torah and going through the proofs and the counterproof and the arguments because if they don't believe that the Torah comes from God then how is it going to affect them in any positive way but there are those who take an opposite position actually there are those who say let the theology come a little later let us go directly to the teaching of the Torah so I could have an attitude that would say for examp okay I believe the Torah from God you don't but let's just see the wisdom and the message that it might be giving us and then there is a concept it's based on the talmi that God actually says even if they leave me let them learn my Torah because the light of my Torah will bring them back to me so there is a concept that learning Torah is in fact a very good way in in a practical sense of breaking down barriers among Jews because even if we disagree as to the ultimate theological predicate of the Torah we can agree that it has been a source of wisdom for the Jewish people let's learn what it has to say and let's bring our insights to it and that can break down many many barriers uh that's why we have the phenomenon I mean in fact narrative well you have some very interesting configurations that are even a little bit bizarre but you know you have the concept of the secular B midash have you heard about those things uh or like Ruth C and people like caness in other words people who are not uh religious but they want to look into the Torah into into the talud and see what message might have now some people might say hey how can you do that you have no right to appropriate the Torah unless you go along with the whole agenda but there's another way of looking at it that is at least they're looking at the Torah at least they're mining the Torah at least they're trying to get the values out of the Torah and that ultimately is can be conducive to Bringing clly shell together uh in many many ways I mean it is a I mean it is a very Delight now they say Hashem has a has a great sense of humor you know it is uh kind of a funny cute thing that almost the uh first Speaker who ever quoted like gorz on the knesset floor was Ruth Calon I mean there there 50 or 60 years of of you know K parties but they would never bring in uh any teaching of the Torah that canant for because they figured nobody would be interested and here you have uh a secular woman who actually uh is willing to talk about learn a piece of gamorra in her in her speech on the kesse but okay may we have a nice uh four step uh plan that we can put into action and Mayes give us the strength and the desire to live with these values and in that way we should be Z to receive hashem's Tor into our own lives and to bring all of us closer to the thank you