Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: First Fruits and Lessons of Subjugation and Emancapation

[Music] okay um hi everybody again uh thank you for coming uh still uh we have not recovered to our pre-corona levels of in-person attendance but uh i do appreciate everyone that's coming and everyone that's listening uh this year tonight as a number of sponsorships uh first aliyah nishamah that all of the learning and torah should elevate during the shamat to gane den madre and ganedan a refuge leima to blue malaya batsora bayla and sarah freda about raiso that they should have refused israel and then we have a special mention of a sponsorship by gila manelson who you may know is actually a very well-known author and lecturer in her own right check out her website and her books which i myself have used on occasion and we appreciate her sponsorship and finally i do want to make special mention that even is an organization that is based not only on torah learning and torah teaching but also based on ghasset and stacca and before the yomim tovim and during the holiday season they do run a charity campaign to help people with all of the expenses that are connected to the umph before the umphif and after the and uh once again any contribution you could make would be very much appreciated and would be very well used for the people who really need it and i think you can go to the website and there'll be a link on the website of ibanez as to how you can make a contribution through the stuka particularly during this season what do we say during governing that repentance and prayer and charity uh can help cancel whatever difficult or negative decrees a person or a family or a community may have so this is a season especially where staka has even stuck as important the whole year but it's especially important uh during the uh during the yom narayan so please uh contribute uh generously to the banner campaign uh i'm not yet going to talk totally about rosh hashanah but the truth is the parshiot themselves are connected to the themes of yom narayan so at least indirectly this will be about a theme of the um but in particular i want to talk about the very first mitzvah in this parsha and that is the mitzvah of bringing bikorim now let me emphasize bequarium is actually one of those mitzvoth that we do not do today there are a number of mitzvoth to liyot that we do keep today whether it's the raiser abandoned we're going to be keeping shemitah you know in a few weeks we do separate trumos and masros and we do that although we don't give it to the cohen but we do do a separation but bikurim we baklao do not do we do not do the mitzvah bikuram at all today and that is because bikurim very much depends on the existence of the basa mikdash and when there's no basal mikdash or mish there are no bikurim right that's a well-known al-lakha that's why if you look at i don't know if you've ever had the occasion of separating trumas and masters yourself most of us buy food under hashgaka where it's taken care of but if you look at the seder for the separation of trumas and masras you will notice that there's no reference at all to separating bikurim because when there's no basal mikdash there is no mitzvah but still it's instructive to look at this mitzvah that when it did apply what does the torah say you shall take the first fruits now fruits is a little bit of a misnomer because becorum is not limited to fruit bikorim is from the seven species of which eric israel is praised so what are the seven species quita wheat so it's not a fruit saura barley gepen is grapes or wine tana is a fig rimone is a pomegranate zeitchemen is the olives that produce oil or olive oil and davash honey as you should know does not mean bee honey that's not an agricultural product per se but it means the honey of dates and therefore divas in the torah refers to tamarim not devohem is a separate separate thing so if i'm a farmer and i live in the time of the base of mikdash i go into my field and i look for the very first thing that seems to be ripening the first fig the first pomegranate the first uh the first dates the first stalk of wheat the first stalk of barley and i tie it with a little string so i will know what is the bikurium and then at some point i bring these bikorim to the yerushalayim to the basa mikdash and there is a ceremony that i go through and the bikuram are given to a cohen they're not a corbin they're given to the cohen and the cohen consumes them they are the cohen's property now the mitzvah of bikorim is there's a whole tract date of mishnah called masaka spikorim that deals with the mitzvah bikurim there is no babylonian talmud on the mitzvah bikurim but there is a tamadur xiaomi masekorem has a talmud yucami that's characteristic generally of most of the masektos of the first order of the mishnah that deal with agriculture there is no talmud bavli but there is atomic you shall me tell me you shall me on trumos and masros on shemitah on kalayam an orla and ananbikur become in fact is the very last masakas of the order of of zero and perikimmel describes a very very beautiful festive ceremony in which people from a whole town would gather together meaning if you were from whatever it is hollown or rejovo to whatever it would be like all the people all the farmers of rehoboth which kind of traveled yeshua on the same on the same day and it mentions that when they would reach yushalam they would have a festive procession and they when when they would reach ushalayam all of the artisans who were working the blacksmiths the tailors they would stand up to honor the procession and they would say anshei rehobot come in shalom now i want to correct a very common misconception that people have one of the names of the holiday of shavuos is that shibuos is called yom habikurim and if you ask most people and i will even include rabbis maybe why is shavuos called yamabikuram because people the answer you'll get is oh that's when people brought their bikorim to the base of mikdash that is actually not true bikurim where badafka and not brought on schwarz because bikorim is not a holiday carbon and you don't bring a private offering like that on the yamcha uh the reason why schwarz is called yamabikuram is because there was a corban of two loaves of wheat from the new harvest and that made it be korean but shavuos is the beginning of the bequarium season because it's the time of the end of the harvest and the light so in reality people did not bring bekorim on shavuot but they started bringing bikurim right after shavuot throughout the summer so that's why different delegations came different dates one day maybe recovered one day maybe they brought spa tavaria all whatever agricultural cities that you had and that's why we have artisans who are working if it would be on if it would be on shibuya's they wouldn't be working at their trade so this is a very common misconception uh the bequarium were not brought on chavos but rather the day after schwarz was the beginning of the bikurium season okay so i'm from mercury and i'm coming with all the recovered farmers and we have uh you know an ox that is you know leading the wagon of the fruits and the ox has you know an olive leaf around it etc and there's gold in there silver and we make our way to the bay samiktas and then each farmer takes his basket of fruits love after fruit the shiva saminim shivasaminim and he gives it to the koen and the cohen and he lay it down in front of the mizbaya and there is a brief recitation of the history of the jewish people so these are two different myths say mitzvah to bring be quran and a mitzvah to be kore to recite these verses and it mentions that if the person is capable of reciting he would recite them himself if not the cohen would say it and he would recite it word for word with the kuwait he would have to recite it and then it mentions eventually in order not to embarrass people who were ignorant even if you knew how to read or you knew the verses the cohen would recite it and you'd repeat after the co-aid so that way everybody was treated the same way by two different mitzvahs a mitzvah of bringing the bequarium they're placed in front of the altar there is recitation of history i'll go over that in a minute and then the be quorum are given to the colleague and the choline doesn't have to eat them in the basameknes the kohen could eat them outside of the basement but there had to be a hanaka there had to be a placing of the bikurim in front of the mizbaya so we have hava'a bringing hannah placement in front of the the altar korea recitation and then the bequarium are given to the coe the recitation is only five verses and it begins with the declaration arami oveid avi failed misraimov and if this sounds hopefully not more than vaguely familiar this is actually the basis of the haggadah shall pesach the verses which are the foundation of the magid in the haggadah are taken from mikra bikurim so let's go over the verses very very quickly arami o vedavi harami the syrian tried to destroy my father that already is an enigmatic phrase but it's universally understood by ghazal that the sirian is none other than lovan so it doesn't say love one's name love on the syrian tried to destroy my father and eventually my father yaakov went to mitrayam the usham lagoygado atsumvarav and eventually his descendants became a great great nation and the egyptians enslaved us and we cried out to god and god heard our cry and heard our sorrow suffering and god redeemed us with signs and with wonders okay those are four verses in the haggadah now in the torah itself it then continues this is not in dakar he brought us to this land that is flowing with milk and honey and i'm bringing the first fruit so that we don't say in the haggadah because only takes the four verses that are connected to isis mithraim so what the haggadah does is it takes each part of it divides each verse into many and then it explains and elaborates by bringing in other verses to elaborate now what's interesting is why did ghazal use the parsha of bikurim as the foundation for the haggadah i mean i might have thoughts that the haggadah should be about the exodus so why don't we read the book of shamos let's read the book of shmoos that's the whole story of isiah smith's riot so i'm going to give you two reasons why chazal didn't want us to use the book of shemos as the foundation of the haggadah reason number one is length the story of isis mitzrayim in the book of exodus is fourteen chapters so if you were to read the whole story from the khomesh schmos you would not finish the seder on time you would go into the next morning uh not only would you miss the afikomen khatsos which people miss anyway you would miss chakras uh the next morning so ghazal were looking for a very short abbreviated narrative which they could supplement by other verses and that short and sweet narrative is mikrabi current that's reason number one a very pragmatic reason mikrabikuram is a beautiful four verse summation of the seats mitzrayim the slavery the miracles the redemption that's it that's the basic story and we do elaborate on that by bringing in other verses that's reason number one reason number two is that it's a well-known theme that the knight of pesach we don't like to emphasize moshe rabbenu that much mushroom is not mentioned in the haggadah he's mentioned once as an aside but in the basic narrative mushroom name is not mentioned at all and the reason for that is that pesach night we want to think about god as our redeemer and we don't want to think about any human being even as great as moshe as our redeemer now here's the problem if you were to base your narrative of siath mitzrayim on the book of shmoes moshe's name is every other word so we got to find khazal had to find a narrative of utsiyet mithrayam that does not mention the name of moshe rabina where are you going to find that not in the book of shemos but in becoring moshe boehner's name is not mentioned in those four verses therefore that was the ideal and the third reason why the partial b quorum was chosen is bequarium is all about gratitude it is all about hakaretatov it's all about appreciating what god has given to us that is what you'd see as mitrayam is and the knight of yzsmith ryan we incorporate a narrative that is about gratitude that is about hakaratov and in fact it's pointed out i think what matrix points out that there's almost a gezera shava a similarity of wording that ghazal don't specifically state but maybe we could darshan this way because the mitzvah of separatist mithraim is he got it you shall narrate to your son how does the kriya of becoring begin i declare to god arami obeidavi therefore the fact that the word haggadah is employed by bikorim may suggest it is the appropriate narrative for pesach okay but now i want to share with you a very interesting arabic cipher let's look at the first phrase in the mikrabi korean arami o vedavi love on the ireman the syrian wanted to destroy my father and my father went to mitzrayim there seems to be some type of cause and effect that's being posited here because lavan wanted to destroy my father my father had to go to mithronium but that's not the narrative yaakov was in loven's house a total of 20 years seven years he worked and he wound up with leia although he wanted rocco then he worked another seven years for raqqa although he got raquel right away after the first seven years but he had to work another seven years and then he worked six more years to build up his wealth and after 20 years he finally comes back to where it's israel and that's where bin yamin is born and of course rocco dies in childbirth and then when yosef is 17 years old he sold and yaakov winds up in mitzrayim because there's a famine and yosef is there in other words yaakov going to mitzrayim has nothing to do with what lovin was doing and there were many many years between yaakov leaving lovan's house and yaakov uh going down to mitrayam a number of years maybe a decade or more because uh yosef was not so well yaakov did not go down to misrayam until yosef was 39 years old right uh how old was yaisa when yaakov returned to europe as well we don't really know but we know he was sold at 17 so there are 20 at least 22 years there so what's the chairs what's the connection between love on the arimian who wanted to destroy my father by yay mitsrima and my father went to mitzrayim so the kasam sofa says a very very interesting explanation if you remember in the covenant of the parts when hashem told avraham your children will be enslaved there will be strangers and enslaved and a land that is not theirs for 400 years although it wound up not to be that long but the nation that oppresses them i will judge and then they will leave in great wealth or with great wealth you'll notice in the brisbane apsarim there was no particular mention that it had to be mitzrayim hashem did not decree that it had to be metronium in fact the rambam actually says that's why the egyptians could be punished because if god said the egyptians are supposed to enslave them then the egyptians had no free will and the rambam understands since hashem did not decree that a particular nation would enslave them and he certainly did not decree that particular individuals would enslave them that was a matter of their free will and that's why they're accountable that's what the rambam says in the hillcock the very very famous answer to the question of how could the egyptians be punished by the way this is not the same do not confuse this the rambam asks two separate questions about the egyptians one was if hashem decreed to avraham that the jews would be enslaved how could he punish the egyptians on that the rambam's answer is hashem didn't make egypt enslave the jewish people hashem did not make individual people enslaved the jewish people and therefore they are accountable for their evil choices now the second question is how could pyro be punished because there god did harden pyro's heart that's a different question because there you can't give the answer hashem did not make somebody behave a certain way in the case of pyro hashem did make him behave a certain way i said don't confuse them these are two separate questions question one is on the nation of egypt as a whole because of the bris ben-habsarim question two is hashem harden's power's heart and on that the rambam gave another famous answer which is not what i want to talk about tonight so much and that is that the rambam says that the reference to hashem hardening pyro's heart is only in the last five plagues and it is the consequence of paro repeatedly rebelling against god and there is a concept that one of the punishments that an evil doer can have for his volitional evil is that he eventually loses the capacity of free will but these are two separate questions do not confuse them a lot of people kind of look at them as one question they are two separate questions with two separate separate answers but going back to the first point so it turns out in the brisbane absorbing hashem never said it had to be mithraim it could have been anywhere says just as a matter of economy so to speak occam's razor keep things as simple as possible given the fact that yaakov was already in lovin's house couldn't the sheba take place in loven's house why does hashem have to bring yaakov back to heritage israel and then engender us yosef and a famine that brings yaakov down yaakov is already in goddess jacob is already in 11th house so let the fulfillment of hashem's decree be in love oneself the answer is if it would have been in lavan's house we wouldn't have survived because the difference between lovan and yaakov lovan and para was paro came to us as an enemy that hated us he wanted to enslave us he wanted to oppress us he wanted to subjugate us love on came in the guise of a friend in the guise of a brother and the fassam cipher says we couldn't have survived in love one's house pyro oppressed our bodies but we were able to hold on to our souls at least on the 49th level we were pretty precarious there too but at least we held on to something but love on is the nissanian of assimilation the nissan of imitation the nissan of friendship that's the what it means arami vedavi lovan would have destroyed the jewish people therefore hashem had to bring us back so the golos would take place in mitzrayim that's the connection and this is the famous idea lubavitch rebbe used to say that it was easier to be jewish in siberia than suburbia again obviously oppression is an awful thing whether it's a holocaust whether it's a pogrom the expulsion of the jews from spain all that sorrows that you didn't have gone through but with cyrus at least we know that we're jewish and we know we can't assimilate and we know we cannot be kahala gayim but there's a famous theme in jewish history that when we try to escape being jewish the umota olam are going to remind us that we are you know there was a famous mach locus when napoleon was going through europe and napoleon was conquering country after country and he was finally going to conquer he thought russia cyrus russia and napoleon promised liberation for the jews napoleon gave jews civil rights emancipation this is after the french revolution the collapse of the ghetto jews could own property jews could go to universities napoleon i told you may have been crazy in terms of his lust for power but in many ways he was a civil libertarian he was willing to give freedoms to everybody jews under cyrus russia were living in extreme oppression poverty religious persecution you had the cantonese system which was horrendous a nightmare in which uh children as young as eight years old were forcibly taken into the tsar's army for 30 years most of them just converted they were converted as children there were a few that held out they remained from for 30 years in the czar's army there are books about this this is called the cantonese and it's it's very very interesting it's interesting and it's so tragic those who remained fruit after 30 years essentially went crazy they were not normal in other words when they finally got released they could not live in regular communities they just couldn't so they used to create jewish communities of their own just imagine communities of broken despondence the shamas that remained faithful to god for 30 years but they literally could not live in regular civilization and they would have visiting rabbis that would come once in a while to help them a little bit unbelievable tragedy in fact i can i can talk about this because part of what happened was part of to make it even worse is the czar required that jewish communities deliver these children they would pick quotas every community had to give whatever is a hundred children or whatever the number was and this was not done by lottery often it was proteccia meaning rich people would arrange hoppers hoppers were kidnappers jewish kidnappers that were just fake poor kid who had no connection and we have a number of stories where he saw cilantro got up in the middle of yom kippur he stopped the yom kippur dominic and he said nobody's going to dive in another word till we ransom repay bribes to get these children out i mean it's just hard to imagine so life under the tsar was no picnic there was the pail of settlement jews could only live in a certain part of russia and that changed like every month so every month you have to have maybe thousands of jews having to to go from place to place to place to place so there was a much locus among the godolam of europe should we pray for the victory of napoleon who will give emancipation and rights or should we pray for the czar who only gives us oppression and persecution most of the zelda said that life under desire is so bad that we need the freedom and we should pray for napoleon the bada tanya of schneer zalman of lyadi the altar rabbit he said the other way around he said the czar persecutes us but the jews remain faithful to hashem when we are given rights and emancipation and freedom we will reject hashem and therefore he said better to pray for the tsar than napoleon and of course now we know the valentine's felix were answered and point to fact napoleon was not successful in russia but if you think about this i mean as difficult as is and of course we pray to hashem for rachman but if you think about this the aftermath of napoleon indeed was the reform movement was intermarriage was assimilation all of these things happened the haskala kind of came in that in the wake of the french revolution and then napoleon and if you think about life i mean what was the torah life in cyrus russia i mean it's crazy that's where you had the ville nego and that's where you had the saga zarya that's where the legendary mcgee bager the altar rebbe himself look at look at how torah life flourished you know oppression now again i i i don't want to uh be criticized you know i'm oh i'm calling for jews to be oppressed i'm calling for a new holocaust it's good for the jews khashoggi i pray like all of us pray there should be rakhmim there should be gaulah but we have to understand that freedom has its costs and for various reasons we sometimes do better under difficult conditions than we do under easier conditions and this is what the hassam cipher says aramidavi life with lovan we couldn't have survived and therefore the brisbane apsarim had to be fulfilled in misrayam under conditions of oppression and not under conditions of assimilation and i think some cypher of course lived during the napoleonic times i think hazam cyprus specifically may have had that phenomenon in uh in mind by the way the fact that the alta rebbe was a supporter of the tsar came to haunt khabad later because in 1917 with the russian revolution so one of the excuses i mean the communists didn't need that many excuses to arrest hasidis but one of their excuses was that the rabbis of chabad were counter-revolutionaries they were imperialists because they supported the tsar and that was one of the excuses to put them put the friezakareba in jail in prison and the like because uh they used to say that the communists had memories like elephants right elephants never forget so says the legends they never forget you know you crushed them once even it was a even it was 100 years earlier it's going to come back to haunt you one way or the other although they tell a cute story uh you know the fria deca rebbe was indeed in prison and uh he was treated brutally and it really affected his health for the rest of his life uh ravina mendel uh the last rebbe was not in prison uh but there's an interesting story that he was in the university of berlin for a while together with rev josef sullivan of yu and uh the story goes before he was rebbe he was known as ramash of menachem schneerson so i'm for him uh he got a little inebriated and he was standing outside giving divrei torah imagine the rebbe was giving divrei torah on purim now in a german university you needed papers you needed a license you needed authorization everything had to be by the book so the rebbe was arrested for giving a public speech without uh proper authorization or permit and you know it was like a one day thing and up so they chick bailed him out so rachel told him then he says now i know you're going to become rebbe someday because every chabad rebbe has to be in prison so this was your imprisonment you were yet to say the condition for being a patriarchy so indeed ref salvation was right and maybe you know who knows maybe maybe he's right maybe khabad rebbe has to be uh i mean the alta rebbe of course uh was in prison and that's the famous rosh hashanah of khasidas called 19th of kisly which is when the altar rebbe was released from from prison all right so it goes all the way back to the altar every and even even before uh before that although they tell a story just a digression they tell the story that when the ultra rabbi was finally released from prison he was supposed to be he was supposed to be picked up by one of his khasid whose name was goldberg and somehow they delivered him to another goldberg who's a big misnogate of the altar rabbit and the arthur abbey had to spend four hours in the miss nagy goldberg's house before the other goldberg came to pick him up and the miss nagy goldberg spent four hours telling the altar rebbe how bad casitas was and how it was not right and the like so for four hours death rabbi he's hearing a harangue against his sheets against his terror so he said afterwards he says you know those four hours were a lot worse than the prison itself so you know the prisoner was better than that because he didn't want he didn't want to argue with the person he didn't want to uh you know because on one hand the person was giving him a house for a few hours so he didn't want to get into any much locus at all but the person was unrelentingly attacking him for his for hasidah and everything else okay um but that's an important point in which as i say that sometimes judaism flourishes better with difficult conditions and if you think about poland russia you think about the torah that was generated there which has really never even to this day has not been reproduced but now i want to talk about another aspect of the mitzvah bikurim the mishna in paragumal of bikorim mentions a very very fascinating idea that people would bring the bikorim if you were rich you would bring it in baskets of silver and gold and you would get back get back the basket the coin would take the fruit and give you back the basket silver and gold if you were poor you would bring the bikurim in a wicker basket and you didn't get it back you know it was too cheap to to get it back and you were embarrassed to ask and the commandment of akama remarks from here we see that the poor tend to get poorer because you're so poor that you bring a wicker basket and you lose your basket the rich guy gets his basket back the poor guy loses his basket the poor get poorer by the way there was a famous famous study in the united states by the federal trade commission this goes back to the 1960s i'm not sure if it's the same now or in israel if it ever was the same but they actually showed that prices for basic groceries in poor neighborhoods are higher than they are in upscale neighborhoods so with a loaf of bread right loaf of bread whatever it'll be uh will be a dollar in a poor neighborhood it'd only be 80 cents and whatever the price would be in a rich neighborhood now the reason is there are actual reasons for that because poor neighborhoods tend to be high crime insurances is more expensive uh without whatever it would be so actually poor people pay more for equivalent rich people get caviar they get more expensive stuff but for the same basic necessities the milk and the bread poor people might actually pay more for the milk and the bread than a rich person pays for the milky way very amazing it's another illustration of the poor get poorer in that in that way okay so the taisus yamthaf asks the following kasha tyson actually he was the um he was the one of the rebellion of the clioqa right the cleoker became rav of prague and the morale were up on him of prague before that point texas jumped up there for one of the great great gedown and he wrote great a great commentary on mishnais and many other sloane and he asks a very very good question we find that ghazal are very concerned about not humiliating poor people because of their poverty for example it used to be that with funerals rich people rich dead bodies would be dressed with very fancy clothing and fancy coffins and poor people would wear their their rags whatever it would be but robin gamlill who was a nazi ordered that when he dies he'd be buried in plain white tahrir and a simple pine co simple wood coffin shallow lavash esme chain low not to embarrass people who are poor on the 15th of when all the women went out and their husbands would be found for them so what does the mission to say they all wore borrowed garments rich people didn't dress more fancy and poor people less fancy because we don't want to embarrass people we don't want to call attention to the fact that you're rich and you're poor so frack the titus yamtif why by bequarium which is a very public ceremony do we allow rich people to come with gold and silver and poor people with wicker you're openly humiliating poor people why don't we make a takana that everybody must bring their bighorn in a wicker basket right shallow lava that's misha just like we have by funerals and by the the marriage ceremonies of the 15th above so the texas yamcha's own answer is that logically we should have made such an enactment but since this is a ceremony that's honoring hashem in the basa mikdash so it's important to do it in the most beautiful way you can so even if that means that some people are going to get embarrassed beta mikdash you have to do it the best way that you can which means people are getting embarrassed but the paramount idea of glorifying hashem in the basa mikdash overrides the uh busha that some people might feel right so that's a that's one answer that the texas yum just gives but i see before shrimp give a different answer that's actually very very beautiful and actually relevant for yom the last mission in massachusetts says when he talks about all the different brachas that you say of a person is obligated to make a bracha to hashem on bad things that happened to him tragedies just as he makes a bracha to hashem when good things happen now the gemara explains right away it's not the same bracha when tragedies happen there's a dayana ms god is the true judge when good things happen you make a bracha of shakiano or hatovah nativ so it doesn't mean you say the same bracha tayana ms for for raw oats for tragedies shakianu tova major for good things but you've got to make a bracha for the good and for the bad and the gemara goes further than that and it says in both cases you make the bracha now this also needs some explanation you're makabel the good with simbra you're makable the bad the so-called bat with simcha now here too although the gemara does not explain it it's very very clear that the simpha over the good is not the same thing as the symbol over the bed nobody is saying that if somebody loses a parent or a spouse they're supposed to dance on the table and you know sing joyously obviously you don't do that because the raya is we have something called tilco surveillance meaning to say the halakhah itself doesn't allow that type of joy so sebre itself is a multi-faceted word in fact uh raf stein's el salvador wrote a very very interesting little book it's not very well known i think it's called simple words and his thesis is which is very very true that simple words are the most complicated and there's something when you when you have a highly technical words usually it has a precise definition right so you may have to learn what it is but highly technical words have very specific definitions so they can be very precisely defined simple words like joy sadness growth we all know what these words mean but not really because these are amorphous these are general categories and their specific application is elusive joy happiness however you translate it exactly is an elusive word because there's different types of happiness there's the happiness that you might call manic i don't mean that in a negative way but the manic you know demonstrative i'm laughing i'm smiling i'm amazed and then there's a happiness in which you're not overtly expressing joy but you have a sense that there's meaning and purpose in what i'm going through even though it's hard and even though i'm suffering you can have that type of simcha even in your suffering and it's not a contradiction because you have a muna in hashem and you know that there's a reason why hashem is doing something and you don't know why but you know that he loves you know that he cares about you you know that he will give you the strength to get through this one way or the other and that can give a person even in the middle of a very very difficult time that's a very high madriga now an extreme example of this is a famous famous story with the meso richer margaret the meza richard maguire of dove bear was the talmud mufak of the balshem tof and was the rebbe of the altar rabbi and all of the early hasidis igdom of laviatsiga berdichev all of these were told me them of the mesorichor magette in fact the major richer margin is really the founder of casitas as a mass movement when the balshemptov died maybe there were a hundred khasidim in the world the maggie the meza ridge made hasidas into a movement that basically conquered europe and uh talmud asked him as a richer margin i don't understand how you could be makabel bad things with simcha i don't understand the mishna and the alta rebbe said you have a very good tasha go to my talmud rob zusha and he will give you a turret so he goes to rev zusha and rosacea lives in poverty and the roof is leaking and the children don't have clothes and there's no food in the house and you know goats and chickens are going in and out of the house and rezuccia has a very very difficult life and he says are you zucha he says yeah i'm zusha and well the rebbe said i got to ask you a question it says in the mishnah you've got to thank god for the bad as like thank god for the good and do it for he says you can explain it to me sir of zusha scratches his head and says i really don't know why the rebbe sent you to me nothing bad ever happened you know so that's kind of the answer kind of there's a certain perspective on the other hand you got to think about that because that's not so push it that story seems to suggest that a person reaches a level where they no longer differentiate between good and bad it's all the same lahabdil that's exactly what buddhism teaches that evil is only an illusion suffering is only an illusion it's not so clear that judaism actually goes with that knowledge judaism recognizes the reality of suffering it recognizes the pain of bereavement the struggles of illness we don't deny the reality of suffering we don't say it's an illusion but we say it has purpose it has meaning hashem is with me to give me strength and resilience even if i don't get so to speak what i want but to quote mick jagger maybe i shouldn't quote him i get what i need it's a very very it's a very good statement you don't always get what you want but you get what you need it really is uh you know genuine i mean i'm not that he's basing it on that but it is a genuine torah thought you don't get what you want from god but he will give you what you need so this is an important his side of let's go a little further the gemara then quotes a braiser in the name of rebbe mayer what is the source in the torah that you have to bless hashem for the good and the bad because it says in the torah you shall have simcha in all of the good ashar nasaan that's the name of din in other words whether you're getting rakhamim or whether you're getting din we should have simcha that it's all good that's the makhar in other words the makhara of the statement of the mitchna of okay fine where does that passage appear it appears at the end of the parsha of bikurim after you've done all of these mitzvos the torah says now this is a matana thing this is a strange thing bikurim is a great festival bikorum is a day of great joy why would the torah teach me you've got to be grateful for the bad and the good and the part should be called maybe the torah should have taught me about the death of aaron's sons or a tragedy but you got to be macabre the torah teaches me this in a parsha dealing with simcha it should really incorporate that in tragedies the answer is that bikurim itself in a very small subtle way involves deprivation and suffering because i'll say morin bhavamithiya adam writes abhikav a person loves a small measure of grain that they themselves produced more than nine measures they would get from somebody else rashi points out a person has a special love for that which they produced that's why people sometimes frame you know a business they frame their first dollar or first shekel or whatever it would be because it represents their earnings what they've done what they've made it's very important to a person what they've created in the world so here you have a farmer and you know farming is rough it is very very rough you depend on the elements you work very very hard even today it's hard right in the olden days farming was rough rough work and then you finally see the first fruits of your labor and the first fruits of your labor are precious to you they're beloved to you you want to hold on to it but what does the torah say ah the thing that you love the most you must give up to hashem give to god now overall that's still a context of joy and i'm celebrating but there's a little lesson here that i got to take to heart that sometimes in life you have to give things up that you love the most sometimes in life the thing that you most want to keep you have to lose because that's god's will and even when that happens your attitude should be simplified again i don't mean jumping on the table but the serenity of knowing gamsulitova and that's why bikurim teaches me to be grateful and serene even for the difficulties in life because life sometimes involves sacrifices it sometimes involves giving up what you would really want to keep and do it besimbra do it with serenity do it with acceptance so now let's go back to the ptosis jumpthis question okay if you remember the question the question was rich people bring the gold and silver and poor people bring the wicker why do we allow that type of discrimination aren't you embarrassing the poor and shouldn't we make an enactment that everybody does the same not to humiliate people but if one of the lessons of becorim in particular is to recognize that whatever god has given me is good then what am i supposed to be ashamed about why should i be ashamed that i'm poor why should i cover it up why should i make believe that's not my situation or why should the rich guy kind of feel bad that god gave him that blessing god gave the rich guy the blessing of wealth for whatever reason and god gave the poor guy the blessing of poverty for whatever the reason each state has its challenges each state has its blessings be corim is about accepting the goodness of your life and not trying to cover it up by being something else so badass what are we gonna say cover it up or make believe you know you're not poor or make believe you're not rich no no no my life is good the way it is i don't need to be somebody else you see that's why in a deeper level becorum is about seeing the goodness in the life that hashem gave you no pretenses no masquerades no cover-ups now seen in this way this actually overlaps with what we talked about last week just using it from a different perspective and that is that also applies to our spiritual lives we come from different backgrounds right you talked about the people who come from montana or whatever it would be and sometimes you come to a place where people are religious for generations and generations and we feel kind of left out a little bit you know we'll never be you know we'll never have the yikus of 10 generations of of sadiq or whatever it would be we'll never have the torah knowledge we became from in a later age or whatever it is 20 30 40 whatever whatever it would be and we look at our lives as kind of inferior lives second-rate lives but that's a tremendous mistake the life that hashem gave you and the circumstances that hashem put you through which were not matters of your choice hashem decided where we would be born and all of these factors it's because our neshamas needed those experiences and it's true that the tenth generation may asharin has many many attributes that we'll never have but the person from south dakota has something the maya sharon person doesn't have hashem gave everybody the opportunities to perfect themselves and become close to him and be corin is about the legitimate pride in what you have that even what looks like the apparent or disadvantage is in fact a tova so i just want to end with one point because you may ask me akasha on what i just said so be quorum we're not concerned about embarrassing people because you're not supposed to be embarrassed you are what you are and that's a bracha so you may ask me akasha i had mentioned to you that originally the people who could read would read and the people who couldn't read the cohen would read and they would repeat after the calling but then the didn't want to embarrass people who didn't know how to read so they enacted that the cohen reads and and people respond for everybody ah didn't i just say that because we're not concerned about embarrassing the answer is some things in life you ought to be embarrassed about you're living in eric israel you didn't learn how to read hebrew oh maybe be embarrassed a little bit but but look at the genius here this is this is such an amazing educational they didn't want to embarrass the illiterate person so they enacted that the cohen reads for everybody so what does that tell the illiterate person gee if they're doing this because they didn't want to embarrass me it must be this is something i ought to be embarrassed about this is mamish brilliant reverse psychology you're causing him to understand that this is something he should be ashamed of but you're doing it without shaming him you're doing it so he'll realize that gee maybe this is something i ought to work on this is brilliant educational strategy they could have just shamed him they don't want to shame him i don't want to shame a jew but i want him to know privately no one knows who's in our marriage who's not in our marriage because the cohen reads for everybody but the amaritz knows the amaretts realizes huh they're doing it for me maybe there's something because they don't want to embarrass me gee i didn't even realize i was supposed to be embarrassed about this i realize i am maybe i'll go learn torah a little bit you see so aina kinami rich poor nothing to be ashamed about you know they tell the story of refrainer brisk the brisker rub used to tell this story that there was a man in brisk who was an asher muflag he was very very very wealthy and he used his wealth wisely he was at thomas he learned he did mitzvos he gave stukka with generosity and with kindness as well and he was modest he was humble he really really used his wealth totally the way hashem wanted and then one day came he lost everything he lost everything he lost his house he lost his business he lost everything he was living in the street and even when he was doing that he still was exotic but this broke the brisker road the brisker river was ruff hayem's son the bishop went to his father and he said i don't understand i don't understand what hashem is doing here i don't understand this was a man that was at sadek he was an anaf he was kind he learned torah every moment that he could why should this happen to him and refrain said you know it's interesting to have him used this mushroom because refrain was very against secular studies and universities but he used a muscle of a university you know universities have all sorts of graduate programs they have law they have medicine they have economics they have political science right because uh and sometimes after a person is muslim in one mixoa right he's mastered one subject he goes to another subject like there was a famous cartoon dunesbury i remember the 1970s in which this guy was a perpetual student he wanted to get every phd the university offered he ran out of phds he didn't know what he was going to do he was going to have to get a job at some point and he was really panicking there was no other doctorate for him to get so if him says in life hashem has many many programs to be muslim-made persons in the shama sometimes there's an isaiah of wealth he's wealthy will he be humble will he be kind will he be charitable will he be modest hashem gives a person that messiah to see what he'll do with it but then rafhaim said when a person masters that hashem loves him so much he wants him to master the other nissan as well he says this man mastered the nissanian of wealth hashem wants him to master the nissanian of poverty and raphaim said to his son and he's doing that too now why couldn't hashem have done it in reverse that's my gosh a little bit poverty and then well okay the ways of hashem are mysterious but if i'm said it is hashem's love of this person this precious person that he wants this person to be a muslim in all of the nissionos of of life in rich and in poor in poverty and in wealth there are ways of opening up that connection to akadesport nothing to be ashamed about nothing to be embarrassed about one understands that for the brave it is all good hashem whether it comes from the or it comes from the den so i wish you all a good shabbos and be well and thank you for coming [Music] is