Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: Covid-19 Pandemic - Arrogant Masters of our own Fate

[Music] obviously the topic that's on everyone's mind uh is the coronavirus kind of which is escalating rapidly and it's already there into a worldwide crisis in which there are quarantines isolation limitations of of going out even some synagogues particularly in the united states have simply closed down something that even during the holocaust people take kept mignonim in the warsaw ghetto and here we actually see that people are shutting uh down to what they can see out and uh in a way this gives a new meaning to something that we say in davening you know in the avinu malcanus that we recite uh during the asari shima shiva and on fast days so we have a phrase that says abhinum our father our king withhold plague from your inheritance and we think of plague we think of the bubonic plague we think of the cholera epidemics we think of them as past events that destroyed people but certainly with the advances of science and medicine we don't really think of plagues that much anymore and yet at some point something that we thought was simply a past part of history becomes very very vivid and very very frightening and obviously we don't have prophecy obviously anyone that tries to say i know the reason why this is hitting us as ghazal tell us anyone who claims to be a prophet is either a child or a fool and therefore it is not for us to give kind of definitive reasons and i'm not going to give any reason i just want to make a few uh points my talk tonight is not about corona i'm going to go into something else a little to be indirectly connected but i want to as a hakatama as an introduction i want to talk about a little bit first of all one has to know that the panic is actually worse than the mahala itself the sickness is serious it must be taken seriously i absolutely uh strongly support all of the guidelines to protect our health this is a mitzvah minatora not to either expose ourselves to danger or even if you're young and healthy and you're not really within the risk of any serious complication one has an absolute responsibility not to expose other people to danger such as the elderly so none of my words should be construed as not taking very seriously all of the health recommendations uh i follow them and i hope that all of you will follow them in terms of washing our hands frequently not having large groups trying to keep uh our social interactions both limited and at a distance very very important but at the end of the day one does have to remember that for the vast majority of people even in the worst case scenario of them getting ill shalom generally speaking most people will get over it and it's very very important not to panic because we know from our ghazal from our sages that panic and fear can become a self-fulfilling prophecy there is a puzzle in michele perak utress pasuku dalid 1814 and i'll talk about the significance of that that says ruach ish it is the spirit of a person that will sustain him in his illness first of all fascinatingly enough the targum which is an aramaic translation of mishlai for the word mahalayo's sickness it uses the word karanohi which sounds a lot like corona although it's an aramaic word for sickness but be it as it may whether this is a specific reference to corona or a general idea of of sickness rashi and the mitsurus all interpret the verse to mean is that when a person has a spirit of optimism hope faith in hashem and a sense that hashem loves you and hashem will take care of you that itself is something that is therapeutic it either protects you from the illness or it sustains you even when you go through that illness so we have to understand that this is even documented scientifically absolutely the attitude of hopefulness and optimism itself gives you a much much better chance of recovery that's explained psychosomatically but as a religious jew we explain it that the more faith and trust i have in the almighty the more he will give me his blessings the less faith and god forbid i become less worthy of receiving god's blessings so we do have to understand that although it's important to take precautions the panic is actually the real danger that the world faces in fact the panic may wipe out the economy it may bring the united states not only to a recession but to a depression as well as much of the world businesses get wiped out they may not be able to recover so in some ways the what you might call the collateral damage of corona is significantly worse than the direct damage of the illness itself and there's really no reason for that we need to be concerned we need to be conscientious we need to take precautions and then we need to live our lives we learn we should daven again whether with a minion without a minion i'll leave it to every individual case i want you to talk to one's rabbi as they say but even if one does not leave one's home one has to recognize that the home itself can now become like a bait knesset there's a beautiful teaching from of ablaze you know hazal tells us that when mashiach comes all of the shoals of are going to uproot and come to eric israel the rebbe says that if this is true for abate knesset talvachomer how much more so it'll be true for a jewish home that is based on holiness because he says a jewish home is holier than abate knesset the bait can assets most of the commandments we do are rabbinic commandments like uh krishmas minator but sebastian juraban in a home there are so many mitzvot to orisa that we do so if labia signature versus says ghazal's promise that the bait knesset will uproot itself kalvahomer will apply to a jewish home but obviously that's true only if the jewish home is a source of holiness so in a way quarantine or limited social isolation maybe gives us a chance to kind of infuse our homes with the holiness that our yoshi votes and our brother can i see out have and in that way we could be zoha for those of you who are not yet inherited speaking from your shalom but you can prepare your homes to kind of be uprooted and come to air to israel with the layman refrain also points out a very interesting thought if you look in the torah quarantine is imposed in only one situation and that's the leper the mizora the person that has saras is also quarantined now one has to understand that also although tzarat manifests itself as a condition of the skin it is not a contagious disease in the medical sense the quarantine of sarat is not because the mitsura is in danger of infecting somebody saras is a spiritual punishment that comes upon a person because of a variety of aveirot we're going to read about it in a few weeks and the primary of era which is the source of sarat is lashon hara the negative derogatory speech we have about other people even if it's true and why does that warrant quarantine because it's kind of a midaken meda because one who speaks in hara creates dissension breaks up relationships creates disharmony among people so we want the mizora to feel the pain of being alone so he'll think twice before he destroys the unity and friendship that exists among people now this is the case of mitsura iframe kinesi suggests that if god has brought into the world a type of illness which compels quarantines and isolation perhaps there's a message too that we have been a little lacks in lush and hara we have been a little lacks in interpersonal relationships we have not fostered avat israel the way we should we have not created the actus that we should so god wants us to suffer a little bit about what it means to be alone what it means to be isolated so then we resolve in our lives that we're going to try to build bridges instead of building walls we're going to try to open doors instead of closing them so i think that although as i said before we're not in the vm and to give any type of definitive explanation does not make any sense but these are things that we can think about and things that we can try to improve and the way i want to make another point about this and that is modern man is very very sophisticated uh the advances of science technology are absolutely remarkable we've conquered most of the diseases that we know about not all uh we've mastered our environments we can create different things and destroy certainly destroy we can destroy more than we can great at this point but still there's so much we can do and the fatal flaw of modern man is the illusion that we are in control of our fate we are masters of the universe in fact people even use this against religion they say oh you know why there's religion religion came at a time when human beings didn't have science they didn't understand why there were earthquakes why there were eclipses they didn't understand any of that so they had to attribute it to some type of superior power but that was simply god forbid people say ignorant superstition but we who understand science and the ultimate causes of things we don't need god we can simply factor out a god so man in a sense makes himself god the ultimate authority the ultimate arbiter of the universe we are the masters of our faith we are the captains of our ship and when the human heart is filled with arrogance and hubris it cannot receive so every once in a while what god does is god brings something to the world in which we are totally unprepared we don't know what hid us and hashem shows us he could make us panic even with a tiny little virus that i think is a billionth of a micron it reminds me a lot of the story about titus when titus destroyed the beta mikktus right he was the roman general who later became emperor who destroyed the second temple it mentions he entered the holy of holies and god forbid it's awful to even say this he spread a torah a sacred torah on the floor of the holy of holies and he fornicated with a prostitute on top of the safer torah in the holy of holies you can't imagine a greater desecration he then took his sword and he pierced the parochia at the curtain and blood came out of the curtain and he figured huh i killed god this is god's home i killed god and then when he goes on the ship to go back to rome with the spoils of war including the utensils of the base of mikdash there's a great storm and the ship is being tossed and turned and it's it's going to going to sink and titus realizes god is still alive and then he says to god hey god you're a big shot on the water you drowned pyro in the and his army in the red sea you destroyed the world by a flood so in the water you're a big shot but why don't you wait till i get on dry land and fight me then and god said to this again probably it was not a direct communication but god was saying in heaven you think i have to fight you i'll take my smallest insignificant creature and the weakest smallest thing i have can totally destroy you and then the talmud tells us that when tito's got back to rome there was a little parasite or a little flea or an insect that entered his nostril and that's okay and it eventually grew and grew and grew and eventually he died as if to say god doesn't have to use his significant power to destroy us he can imply the smallest little thing little virus and god is telling you telling us not to telling all of us that don't think you're in control but even our panic reminds us of that because the panic the fear as i indicated before the actual god is doing this in a relatively gentle way because the sickness itself is not the black death bar hashem but it's serious enough that we're going crazy and when we're going crazy like a chicken without a head the one thing that it does teach us is we are not the bosses here we had we thought we were in control that was an illusion and in many many ways this brings us to truth now it's a hard process and people will suffer people suffer medically those who are at high risk everybody suffers in terms of the restrictions that we have to obey and businesses and the economy will suffer in a very serious way as well in fact even yeshivas will suffer because if their financial support depends on people who are in the stock market when the stock market crashes some of the sport of torah is difficult so we are suffering but the light at the end of the tunnel and indeed the light in the middle of the tunnel is we internalize ain ode milvado there is nothing but god it doesn't just mean there is no god but god means there is nothing but god we are not the masters of our faith and that's bar hashem is a precursor to mashiach because when we get rid of our arrogance when we get rid of our guyva when we get rid of our hubris when we realize as the mishna says there is no one that we can rely upon except our father in heaven and when we are humbled and recognize that that is when we are ready for the redemption we become a vessel to receive god's light because our vessel is no longer filled with our egotism and our hubris we make it panoy we make it vacant we make it empty to be able to receive the light of the almighty so indeed one can look at this turbulence at this anxiety at this fear as this panic as indeed part of the mashiach part of the birth pains of mashiach typically we viewed it you know when people think of probably mashiach they think of other things that we've gone through we think of wars and unfortunately you know we have those things were going around too but khabli mashiach can be all of these pains all of these panics that scare us that agitate us but ultimately one has to know that when you know that everything in the is the hands of god and god is merciful and loving that should give a person courage and hope and the capacity to keep on going on i've mentioned before the story of the brisker of when the brisker of velvet is absolutely checked uh was in the war ghetto and broke hashem he got out and came to eric israel and and he spent the last years of his life in jerusalem but when he was in the warsaw ghetto it was noticed that he was very calm he went around his daily business now the brisker of generally had somewhat of a nervous temperament because of his year at shamayim he was always worried about did he do this mitzvah right that mitzvah right maybe i shouldn't call the nervous temperament i could say he was so conscientious about his obligations of mitzvot that it often made him nervous and tense but in the warsaw ghetto he's doing fine davine giving shiorim uh one looked at him one did not see any tension any nervousness so someone had the chutzpah it's a pretty close video question somebody had the hoods but ask him you know rebbe you're so nervous all the time like here you have a real reason to be nervous people are dropping dead every day starvation disease random nazi shootings in the street deportations to death camps in the in the later part of the uh the warsaw ghetto the brisker of himself lost his wife and a child i think maybe two children so what's going on so the briskerov answered when it comes to mitzvot that's my job when it's my job i'm nervous i can mess up i can make mistakes i can do it wrong so you're right i am nervous about things that are my responsibility but what happens if you're put in a situation where with all of your precautions there's really nothing you can do to guarantee your safety you're in the washington ghetto what can you do there's nothing you can do so some people might go crazy with anxiety and indeed commit suicide the risk of says with me it's the opposite when i know it's not up to me that gives me calmness and security because i'm in the hands of god now let me point out the brisker of was not espousing what you might call a pollyannish idea of ammuna he wasn't saying as long as you believe there'll be a happy ending the risk of lost his own wife and there was a holocaust so the risk grab is not saying emunah means everything will work out the way we want it to work out but at munna means everything is ultimately for the good everything has a purpose hashem loves and cares about us and even if we don't understand his ways things will work out the way they're supposed to work out and that's a very very positive message it really can help us through the difficulties that we face so my only practical advice is basically take the precautions but don't be scared have faith have trust have courage uh learn diabetes help the people that you're able to help either by virtual visits or by going shopping for someone who's not able to go out cassette is a great great in this time of of sorrow and the like but again no reason to panic no reason to be scared this is when we work in arbitrage this is when we become humble this is when we recognize our limitations and in that way we are paving the road from so going through all of this is tremendously positive because this is creating the framework through which meshiac can enter the world because it can't enter the world when we are filled with gaiva and we think we are in charge you know it's fascinating there's a vort from the kutsker rebbi kazuki very interesting person very enigmatic figure and maybe his biography i'll leave for another time he was in the 19th century and he offered a an interesting explanation on a mimer hazard is that if a person has bread in his house and he says what will i eat tomorrow so it describes such a person as ketane he is a person who is weak in faith now most people understand this to mean the following why are you worried about tomorrow hashem will take care of you and if a person is worried about tomorrow he lacks faith that's the standard interpretation the cutscene rebbe turns it on its face he said you know what the problem of this guy is he thinks he only needs god for tomorrow and today he's okay he says today i'm fine the answer is no you're not even today you need god in other words if he thinks i only need god for tomorrow and i don't have the bread yet that's a reservation i need god every day and well you know again one of the things that all sickness and all danger makes us realize is the preciousness of life and the preciousness of health and in a sense therefore those those of us who are still healthy and hopefully will continue to be healthy this is a real occasion to be sensitive to the notion of gratitude and akaratato that's what brachas are about right that's why we make a bracha before we drink water or eat bread or eat fruits or in the morning we make brachas that god gave us eyesight and god gave me the capacity to walk etc we take these things for granted too much and sometimes when these epidemics hit the worlds it makes us kind of have a kareta tov for the gifts that our kalish porku has given us even going to the bathroom right we have a breakfast sometimes kids make fun of it you know we make brokers go to the bathroom but i read an article a very very good article by a religious urologist who treats male 1 who treats people that have elimination problems and he says if you see the pain that people go through god forbid when they have those types of issues you would understand that the bronco that you can go to the bathroom is not to be taken lightly at all this is something to be extremely grateful when the human body is operating the way it is supposed to be operating in the uh whether it's pneumonia or this particular virus it's the ability to breathe the oxygen then goes from the end of the lungs into the bloodstream yes if that that's what's happening with this virus it's filling up with liquid infection and closing off this closure how cause you're not able to go into the bloodstream yeah so now every time we breathe that's right that's right that's right that's a beautiful thought you know um the last verse of tehillim to hillary that we recite every day in surgery call hannah so literally that means every soul shall praise you god but hazal saying without vowels could also be read nishima for every breath i must praise you just the ability to breathe and so as i say when it's the nature of life that we appreciate health only when we're confronted with illness so this is really an occasion where we can work on akira tattoo i've mentioned i think a number of times before but it's always worthwhile to repeat that the very word jew is connect yehudi is connected to gratitude leia called her fourth child yehuda because she said now i am grateful to god and rashi explains why is she grateful for number four because she knows there's going to be 12 tribes and she knows there are four women rachel leia bill osilpa so she figures each each wife gets three kids so when you get what you think is coming to you you're not grateful but when she got number four she wound up having six but when she got number four she said oh natality i have gotten more than my portion that equals gratitude so says the svasemes why are all jews called yehudim after all we're not all from the tribe of yehuda now historically the reason is because the ten tribes were exiled and the remaining kingdom at the time of the corbyn basa mikdash was yehuda but he offers homologically a beautiful thought that every jew is called yehudi because we have to go through life feeling god has given us more than we deserve in a good way so the whole word jew yehudi means a grateful person that is the very definition unlike the southern slang definition of jew which is to drive a hard business bargain don't drew me around whatever if jew is to be a verb at all it is to be thankful to be grateful so these are just again some some reflections i know it's a difficult time and i'm aware of hassans and talas weddings where they literally could not have their friends at the khasna and that's sad but even in the case of a wedding i would i like to remind the hassan and kala that there's one guest that is surely there even in the middle of the corona virus and that is because when husband and wife join together with shalom khazal say the shakhina is with them the shechina is there whether you have 10 people at your hasanah or 10 000 people at your is there and if he's there that's all you need the gemara says by the sembra space of show eva hilo used to say imani khan if i'm here hako khan everybody's here now there are different interpretations but many we shine him learn hillel is not talking about himself he's talking about god he's but he says when god is here then that's all you need that's going to be the foundation of of of how to build a bias nema so hopefully hassan and kala should also be be comforted and joyous in that particular particular idea okay so that was just a little bit of preliminary talk about the coronavirus let me go on to my main topic which actually is is connected as well and that is i want to go back a little bit last week or last shabbos we had the third of the four special parshiot and this shabbos will have the fourth one again to remind people the four special parshiots in the month of adar or starting the shabbos before the month of aadhaar is the maf there's an extra torah reading that we append to the parsha of the week and the first one was parashat shkalin which talked about the mitzvah of giving the half shekel and the second one is right before purim is parashat zakhar and that talks about the mitzvah to remember and eradicate the evil of amalek and those are the two that we read before purim and then last week right the shabbos after purim we read about the para aduma the mysterious red heifer and this week which is the shabbat before rosh chodesh of nissan we read parsha sakhodish we read about the different laws of the pesach sacrifice but last week we read parshas para and why do we read parshas para then simply because in order to bring the corbin pesach people have to be in a state of purity and they needed to be sprinkled with the ashes of the red heifer so we read about that as a preparation to the carbon passage but let me talk about the para doom a little bit because we know the para duma is considered to be the most mysterious law in the whole torah you gotta find a red heifer a red cow by the way red does not mean firehouse red fire engine red red is actually a relatively common color red red means reddish brown or orange brown is considered to be red so that is the standard color with cows the reason why the paradium is rare is because it has to be one hundred percent that color it can have up to one black hair but more than that it would already be puzzled so as a result the paraduma was hard to find every few years some farmer claims to have a pardon i believe there actually is a paradigm that's still being raised by a christian farm somewhere but often what happens is we have this paradigm and then it develops a discoloration of more than one hair and at that point you are in you are in trouble and what do you do with this paratuma once you have it so it is slaughtered it is burnt and its ashes are mixed with spring water and whenever a person has come in contact with the dead body a mess so they have to be seven days they're tomay and on the third day and on the seventh day they are sprinkled with the water in the ashes and then after seven days they are pure and they are permitted to enter the beta mikdash and bring corban out and eat corbanot and the like now para aduma is only necessary for tomat mets there are other types of impurity in the torah such as the woman that's anita the man that had a seminal emission even touching dead animals where a person is tame or even a leper has the status of tuma but para aduma is not necessary for them paraduma is necessary for only one tumor the tuma that is contracted by contact with a human corpse locus about non-jew and non-jewish corpses but certainly a jewish corpse that would be the case and you could become tamae by contact with the corpse in three ways by touching the corpse which most of us don't don't do by moving the corpse even if you didn't touch it or the most common problem is if you're under the same roof with a corpse and a roof can include a tree or whatever it would be so if you're in a cemetery and there's a tree overhanging you and the grave you become tame that is called tumat o the tuma of a tense and that's a big problem in cemeteries it's a problem in hospitals etc and since we don't have paraduma that means practically any person who was ever in a cemetery in his life is permanently tame until we have the para tumor because you have no way of becoming tahar the seven days does not take away the tumor unless you also were sprinkled with the ashes of paradiumma so that is without getting into too many technicalities that is the basic issue of going on to the hara harabayats as you know most orthodox jews follow the position that we do not enter the harabayat and the reason is because the part of the harabayat that is the courtyard of the temple a tame met is not allowed to enter and since all of us are tommy mets we can't enter now in theory the outermost perimeter of the harebayat is mudra for atami met it is actually mudra because that does not have the status of the temple court so in principle it actually is halally permitted but most condolent rule that because we're not sure exactly where the prohibited area begins it's like walking to a minefield if somebody told you oh you can walk through this minefield just be sure you're two inches here and three inches here most of us would say i'd rather not get involved those who permit are willing to make the judgment what is out or what is inner so really it's not a much locus in principle everybody has the same alleluia principles since we don't have para duma we are all tamamet everyone agrees with that principle number two you're not allowed to go on in the part of the harabaya that was the temple courtyard and principle number three you are allowed to go in the higher part of the harabaya that's not the temple court yet those three principles everybody agrees with the maklocus is simply how do you apply them are you willing to make a demarcation point of what is good what is not good most posts can say don't do it some post kim do allow it so i'm again i'm not here to give you a hello quick ruling but be it as it may the mystery of para duma is so profound that ghazal tell us that was able to understand the reasons for every mitzvah of the torah but when he came to para duma he said i'm stuck this is the possibility ecclesiastes i thought i would be many but it was too far from me and as the meforshim explained once he realized that para aduma was part of god's inscrutable unknowable wisdom he understood that even the mitzvos he thought he had a full understanding of he did not fully understand it in other words it was mcgowan it's revealed that the whole torah is a hulk and in fact that's why it says this is the hoke hope means a law that we don't understand the hulk of the halt or the whole torah is the koch there are parts of it we think we understand but all of it is a hook which actually goes back to the idea of we think we're in control now the question is though what is so i mean granted a lot of paradigma doesn't make sense but a lot of a lot of you know why don't you why can't you wear sharpness why can you only eat animals uh that have split hoofs i mean there's a lot of the torah we don't understand fully intellectually so what makes para aduma so unique that it it is the prototype of the unknowable and the inscrutable i mean i could make a list of 50 things 100 things that we really don't understand so the standard explanation is that the hulk of para duma is not simply the details that we don't get but it's the paradox and the contradiction of paradium the contradiction is it purifies those who are impure indeed if i'm a tama met i get sprinkled with the ashes of the para douma and i'm pure you know day three and day seven then i go to the mikveh that i'm pure at night but paradoxically all of those people who handle the ashes they become ritually impure so the paradox is how can the same thing that purifies the impure be that which contaminates the pure by the way as a little aside i just want to raise the uh paradox that people sometimes raise or the kind it's not really a paradox though and that is how is it possible for all of the jewish people to ever achieve a state of purity because here's the thing let's assume ashiyak comes and we have the para duma so somebody sprinkles me and i'm pure they're impure somebody then sprinkles them so they're pure and the sprinkler in other words you're always going to be left with the last guy holding the bag how is he going to get pure but people ask the question that there'll always be somebody at the end of the process who is going to be tummy but the answer is that that's that's a false assumption because the tumor of handling paradigma ashes does not require para aduma sprinkling the only tumor that requires paradigma sprinkling is the tumor that is contracted by direct contact with the dead so if i handle para duma ashes and i become tame all i have to do is go to the mikveh and that's it so the last guy so to speak just dunks dunks into the mikvah and he's going to be okay uh yeah he would need sunset in fact it's a term of only one day it's not it's not even a seven day tumor the tumor of handling para duma is a one day tumor he goes to the mikva in the day in the day and he will be taught at night and by the way i should also add another thing uh just to be sure because sometimes since these things go out uh so audience people send me comments i want to be sure to make this halacha clear the rule that people who handle the para duma become tame does not apply to the actual sprinkler so if i'm a cohen who sprinkles you i do not become tummy so the people who carried it etc they may have a problem the sprinkler does not even though even though the torah actually says the one who sprinkles his tummy and that's what it does say it does say that but hazal interpret that to mean that that's the quantity that the handler must handle in order to be tummy the amount that's needed for sprinkling but the actual sprinkler does not become does not become timmy so people say that the problem of para douma though is the the the reason that malek didn't understand what was going on is because how could the same thing that brings purity cause impurity would be like a a virus or a germ that makes some people healthy and some people sick it's hard to understand how that works so here is the very very interesting point that this fus ms says and rav sadaq says although obviously uh we cannot be wiser than if somehow said he couldn't explain this it would be crazy for us to offer a definitive explanation and yet the swastemus offers a thoughts that kind can kind kind of can explain the paradox let's focus for a moment on the very important biblical and halachic concept called tuma right there's an idea that when a person comes in contact with many many things they have a status that is called tumor now tuma does not always affect your daily life a person whose tummy diabetes learns puts on fill in does mitzvos but all of us are coming and we do what we do but tuma does have certain restrictions and particularly when there was a basal mikdash the restrictions were very severe you could not enter the temple ground you could not eat carbonos etc so tuma essentially is a banishment from the beta mikdash now tumor is a very complicated subject and there are many many types of tumor but dropship rafale hirsch points out that the common denominator of all tumor is contact with death now this is not so self-evident obviously if i have contact with a human corpse or an animal corpse that's death but even things like seminal emissions our death because sperm was potential life a woman that is a needa the shedding of the uterine lining is death because that was a potential pregnancy that did not take place right the uterus is shedding the lining that could have sustained a child paradoxically even childbirth where the torah says a woman is tame for a certain period of time child's birth is death now that's a little strange child birth is death yes it is the death of life within her body even though the life has now gone outside of her body right there is something in her that's no longer there leprosy is a decomposition of the flesh that is kind of a form of death so the refer says tuma equals contact with death okay why does contact with death banish us from the temple like what's the connection between the two the idea is the following let's go back to the fact that adam harishan was originally supposed to live forever but eating from the eight sadats eating from the tree of knowledge in violation of god's commands brought death into the world but what was the shirish what was the root of that available says you can learn differently bureau of sadok says the shairish of the sin of the eight saddas was hubris and arrogance because the nakhisha's key line the snake's key line in enticing adam is saying if you eat this fruit yesem kelly kim you will be like god you will be god knowing good and evil imagine the ultimate ego trip somebody offers you a god pill somebody says take this pill and you'll be god but god said i don't want you to take it well it's hard to resist so death came into the world as a result of hubris guyva arrogance ego [Music] and death is the ultimate reminder that we are not god because in many ways we are godlike in many ways we are in the image of god we have intelligence we have creativity we have power over our environment or at least we think we have power over our environment we are in the image of god but the ultimate reminder that we're not god is death we don't have immortality so death is not so much a punishment as it is a corrective to the egotism that can lead us to believe that we are god we don't live forever so now you understand that the beta mikdash is kind of gone aiden on earth it is that holy place of ghanaian the same way that man's sin caused him to be expelled from the garden of eden whenever we're connected to death which is reminiscent of the faith of the eight sadas that brought death into the world we get re-expelled from the garden of eden and in modern terms that would mean we we don't have access to the basa mikdash which is ganesh and it is the lower ghanaian that exists on this earth so death is connected to hubris arrogance diver ego that is why the purification from death comes by being sprinkled with ashes though i'm not explaining why a cow and why red but the notion of taking the cow and burning it into ashes because ashes is a symbol of humility and submission if death comes into the world because of arrogance and guyva i become liberated from death liberated from the impurity of death i get readmitted to ganedham when i abrogate my ego by being connected to ashes you know you've heard of the famous greek mythology of the phoenix bird which is a bird that's burnt to ashes and then it gets rejuvenated but the truth the matter is we have such a phenomenon in ghazal azal talk about also a bird exactly the exact same thing where the bird gets burnt and it gets reborn out of the ashes now this is an extremely meaningful metaphor now whether it's meant to be literally true or not that i don't know not all the midrestrum are meant to be literal but it establishes the idea that it's precisely by the abolition of my egotism that i achieve true existence we think the opposite we think if i nullify my ego i'm not i don't exist it's the other way around the true existence comes when you're movato your ego and therefore the usaid of para aduma is we become liberated from the impurity of death when we are tell we nullify our egotism now with this basic understanding of para douma we can get a little bit of an inkling into the paradox because there are two things to know about ego and daiva on one hand it is poison it is destructive it is the worst possible meda that a human being can have the gemara incitor says hashem hates the balgaiva so much that he says you and i cannot live in the same world true proposition number two a sense of ego is the most important thing you can have in your life matter and antimatter how can these two propositions be true how can i say ego is the worst media you can have and ego is the most important media you can have both of them are true arrogant skyva bad but they sense that i matter a sense that i have a mission in the world a sense that god gave me abilities and powers and talents and i have to use them is essential in avodah hashem because if you truly think you're nothing then you think that what you do makes no difference then you'll never become the person you're supposed to become so in other words taking the metaphor of ashes there is good ashes which purify and there are bad ashes that contaminate meaning the good ashes are i am humble i am submissive i realize that all of my gifts and my talents come from hashem and i am not the master of my faith and my job is to serve him those are the ashes that purify and those are the ashes of empowerment because when you realize you're connecting to the ultimate power source you get energized and not only that you're no longer afraid of failure because many people don't do many good things in life because they're afraid they're going to flop and they'll look foolish but if you understand all accomplishment comes from god and all i can do is effort then i'm not ashamed if i fail it wasn't up to me i'm ashamed if i didn't try but the ashes that can purify can also be the ashes that contaminate when it gives you a sense of your worthlessness and then it becomes the yetzer hara and i think although this was not directly about the coronavirus but i think this dichotomy that humility can give you purity but humility when taken in the wrong direction can be itself a very destructive meda that grabs your self-worth and self-esteem is kind of exactly the balance that we have to have here on one hand something like corona reminds us of our vulnerabilities and our weaknesses and our need to be humble but if a person were to say with this humility well who am i to work on a vaccine who am i to go to a doctor i just have to accept god's will that would be kind of crazy we have to know that god gave us talents god gave us abilities and bedrats hashem we have to exploit those abilities to the best way that we can let me just end with a a final vort and the final vort is um a medrash that's called a madrish paliya madrish palia means a wondrous mattress these are like certain enigmatic midrashim that makes statements and on its first glance it makes no sense the statement doesn't seem to compute in any way and it mentions in this madrish plea that if you want to understand why the para duma works you have to understand israel the sod the secret of para duma is israel that's all the medra says problem is of course what does para douma have to do with albany israel so they say the name of the opterov the following idea and this is another interpretation of the paradox we think there's a paradox that how could the ashes contaminate if they purify he says this way in the time of the basa mikdash being tame was a major inconvenience there was a lot of stuff you couldn't do and particularly if you were a coe in fact if you think about the laws of nida when a person was a cohen the laws of needed would be many many times more complicated she couldn't make food for him you know she they couldn't you know whatever it would be while touching they don't do anyway but even the cooking would be halachic problems so becoming tummy is a major inconvenience now if you're telling me the kohanim that are handling and transporting this paradigma stuff become tummy then what are they doing they're putting themselves out to help another jew so he says instead of looking at it like a contradiction how can it purify if it contaminates it's the other way around the kayak of the para duma is when one jew puts himself out to help another jew and inconveniences himself that itself brings purity into the world so the fact that it makes me tame is why it makes utah purity comes when we selflessly give ourselves to others to help them in whatever way we can help them so i just want to wish everybody a good health and good health not only physically but spiritually may you be filled with ammunition remember that certainly the jewish people have been through things that were much worse whether it was the bubonic plague whether it was the crusades whether it was the inquisition whether it was the holocaust we know what it's like to be through difficult times hashem has our back and he will have our back for this as well so this stuff [Music] is