Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: Healing Properties of Shabbos for Our Soul

[Music] okay hi everybody good evening and uh thank you for coming uh we have a number of dedications for tonight the first uh this year tonight is dedicated uh the yard site is on the 21st of other aleph this is the mother of uh lynne and larry vinson again i i myself knew uh shulamis and very very sweet and righteous woman and again i'm honored in a sad way to be able to dedicate to shirley nishmata in addition to sarayento basarathi in memory of her 21st yard site on the 22nd of other aleph by ben aniva taylor again it should be the lietness that again we we've cared about for such a long time and in memory of barbara dickman by ronald dickman again all of these that the nishama should have an aliyah uh in addition uh we have a special dedication it's a little long uh the full the full uh no will be uh posted on the site uh this is from again a good friend of of mine devore and yakov shore and essentially they say nice things about me i'm a little hesitant to read it all but the rowie poston will take care of it but after that he does talk about the very good work of ibo now which i will read ibanez is a unique and special organization whose mission it is to spread torah by recruiting great teachers to give stukka to important causes and bring traditional judaism to lost jews who are searching for their identity and a purpose in their lives and yes your co-author of poston and i would say robertson poston as well founder and infatigable director of ibana uh devorinai yaakov and devorah applaud his efforts and those of his repetitions so again thank you iaco ventavora uh we very much appreciate uh your friendship both personally and institutionally and support and may you be so good to have much knock us from all of your uh several classes by the way oh and this is for several classes so there will be a continuing dedication again uh the beautiful misak will be posted in the appropriate location okay so today uh we leave the realm of theory and we go into practice truma to sava even kisa hashem is giving moshe commandments but he's in mount sinai then we had diego and he went up and down and up and down the last time he went down it went up rather was rosh chodesh ello and he was there for 40 days he comes down on yom kippur with the second luchos and i'm not sure if i mentioned this there's kind of a chicken and an egg situation what is the connection between yom kippur the second luchos and the capara the atonement for the sin of the golden calf is it that god forgave us that day because it is yom kippur or is it it became yom kippur because god forgave us in other words is yom kippur like a predetermined day of forgiveness or did it become a day of forgiveness because that was the day of the kaphora of the ego either way parches vayakel begins the day after yom kippur the 11th of tishrei where moshe assembles all the jewish people and he essentially commands them about the mishkan he gives them all the details right so truma is hashem talking to moshe vayakkel is maisha rabeno talking to claudia israel that's why you'll notice there's comparatively few rashis on bayako pakude because everything that moshe is saying is more or less what hashem already said to him and that was explained before so there was little need to kind of explain it again now you'll notice though that before maishira bainu begins with a discussion of the mishkan he gives them an introduction that six days you shall work and on the seventh day you rest do not do malacha and anyone that does malachi and shabbis umass shall die and then it mentions specifically do not burn fire on shabbos i'll come back to that point separately and only afterwards does maisha go into mishkan so rashi explains why does rash why does moshe mention the shabbos before the mishkan as if to say that even though you have a great and sacred mitzvah to build a mishkan do not do that on shabbos meaning shabbos will limit your kayak to build the michigan and as most of us know the very definition of what is malacca what is prohibited labor on shabbos is derived from the 39 categories of activity that were involved in the building of the michigan so shabbos precedes mishkan to teach me maleficent the construction of the mishkan is not doka does not set aside shabbos shabbos is overriding the mullahs now there is a side question which the gemara discusses and there are many suggests connected i don't want to go into it a lot and that is if the torah says do not thou shall not do melaka and we know that burning is one of the 39 molecules why does the torah then separate out do not set a fire on shabbos what is the purpose of that isn't that already included in not doing luck after all the torah does not say do not write do not harvest do not plant do not cook because we know that's do not do malacca so why does it mention burning the gemara does discuss it and it gives various halachic reasons why havara havara is burning is mentioned separately but i want to give a hasidic answer of homiletic so it's not it's not the answer the gemara itself gives but it makes a beautiful point one of the great early hasidis shirabis was the rebbi rebellion of luzensk he was a talmud of the masrita maget who was the balshempt of salmon and in fact the rebbe rabbi malach is actually given credit to bring khasidos into parliament now the marketed measure is very interesting leader he was actually crippled he was not able to walk but he divided europe kind of like medernick you know in the 19th century he divided europe into maps we have the ukraine and we're not going through some service now we have the ukraine we have hungary and we have uh all of these different countries poland he says which rebbe should be in charge of which country because different personalities were connected to the different personalities of the indian and the mesoricious magic assigned the rabbayam who would go to different parts of the european continent for example the baalha tanya rashner zalman of lyadi who was uh one of the younger talmudim of the market he was sent to lithuania he was called the lit-fuck because after all litvaks are cold and rational people who you can't just fool around with emotions they want to have clear analysis and of all of the daily hasidis the balatanya was the most literature in fact actually he was a lit but but uh you know the balatanya number one was a master of shas and poe skin and number two was also a very deep philosophical thinker so he was good for the literature other christina shireby's were more emotionally expressive and they were into regis and the like so he sent her a different obey him there so the rebbe rebellion was sent to be the founder of hasidis in poland and he died uh towards the uh beginning of the 19th century so he had told me them tell me they don't even affect his yard site is in order i don't know if it's past already i don't know if anyone knows but uh to this day in poland it's a very very big event i i happen to have been in the one time i was in poland i happened to have been at the place at the art side of rebellion that was part of the planned trip with a seminary and literally okay i'm not going to say it's uman it's not uman uh everything should be well uh but uh in legends there were uh there were hundreds and not hundreds tens of thousands of yidden mainly hasidim from merits israel who were there and they make a very very big symbol so the story i want to tell you is that at some point there were talmidam of talmidam who never knew the rabbi ali malek and they were desperately looking for somebody who remembered him who could say something about him so they would have a mice to hold on to so they finally found a very old woman who had been a cook in the rebbe's house and the cooking the rebbe's house was not easy because there were hundreds and hundreds of people uh even during the week and on shabbos calvo homer so there's a whole staff it was like a hotel more or less and she was by this time a very old woman she was in her 90s her mind was not working so well she didn't remember so much but they were really begging her can you tell us anything can you tell us any memory of what life was under the leadership of rebellion so she thought for a long time because i just remember one thing i really you know i i didn't even talk to the rebbe that much i i don't have any real personal interaction but i remember one thing you know our kitchen was always a very tense place you know cooks were fighting with each other this had to be ready that had to be ready and we were always like yelling and screaming and fighting and throwing pots and pans but somehow when shabbos came even though the tension was even higher because there were more guests somehow the rebbe brought in this ruach of shalom in which all maklakus was banished and she said i never understood that there even used to be dogs that would hang around for scraps of food and they'd always be barking if they didn't get their meat or whatever it is and on shabbos she said even the dogs were quiet and she didn't understand it but it struck her that shalom was what came in on shabbos and the hasidim say that that's rush do not burn fire on shabbos fire is a remiss to the age of mach like it's the fire of mahlegas animosity and shabbos has a broken that's why we say to this day shabbat shalom right at least in in the hebrew greeting there's a piece of shabbos himself is called shalom and on shabbos when you have the nishami you say with the extra capacity of the soul to appreciate akadesparco that brings shalom into the world and that's life of our age don't start fires avoid much like this on shabbos because here there's a counterpoint and that is it's brought down in many many makiras and kabbalah and hasidas that a yetzerhara gets stronger and stronger when you're when you're on the verge of accomplishing something very great the sitra akra the other side whatever that means exactly the kaikes of tuma try to hold you back when you're on the verge of accomplishing that the swarm actually say if some spiritual project you're planning to do is coming too easy it probably is not the razon hashem it's only when badafka it's hard that means it's something good something good is happening here and the hr wants to stop you so based on this the bodily muslim point out that particularly on arab shabbas there's a great yatahara for husbands and wives to get into arguments the duff got an air of shabbos you know everybody knows the phenomenon of heir of shabbos you got to get ready for shabbos and no matter when shabbos is we're always running late which is a strange thing when shabbos is four o'clock in the winter so we're somehow ready at four so you'd figure if shabbos is eight o'clock in the summer we could be ready at four two but no we're not ready at the 7 30 or quarter to eight whatever it is the work expands to fill the time available and there's a lot of tension there of shabbos right here is a lot of tension now this isn't ready that isn't ready but that's the mice of the eight sahara because shabbos has so much potential for shalom and bracha that the atahara works overtime so we shouldn't have that shall i'm sure we should enter shabbos in a state of maklakus so one has to be strong one has to be tough one has to resolve in their lives i'm not going to let myself get pulled into mach lokas before shabbos because that would deprive me of the great bracha that shabbos brings in it actually reminds me of another story i don't want to get into too many stories i want to get into a point but another story they tell they tell the story about a balabayas who had a very successful business but he was such an ice age but that he almost didn't like when a customer came in he had swarm in front of him he was learning learning learning a customer came in he had to stop and take care of the customer but he was so much in business so when he died his son he was a firm guy but the son was an ambitious businessman he said you know if my father did so well even though he really was not actively involved in the business that much and he didn't even like customers to come in i'm going to go all out i'm going to have advertising campaigns i'm gonna you know expand the business i'm gonna i'll be open for more hours and what happened was customers stopped going and then you know the business fell apart so he went to a rug and he says what's going on he says how can my father didn't even care about the business and it was so musliah and i put my ley venefish into the business and it falls apart he says ah you don't understand the eight sahara your father was using his time to learn to strike to grow the eight sahara was determined to stop him so he sent him customers and he sent him success he sent him every type of distraction to get him away from learning so he was successful in his pranasa he says you the agent hurry doesn't have to work with you you're not learning anyway you're not uh spending your time anyway so the hr doesn't have to work on your behalf to get your customers right so that's the idea that sometimes when when things take me away from aveda that's that's a semen ministry that my await is very precious that's a little myself introduction that's what they say it says in parakeet of us literally that means learning is less important than doing mitzvos but the bali drush like to say that the russia is less important than the story aloha madrid okay but what i want to say is this let's look at parches ki sisa before the kheiro ego when hashem is talking to moshe at the end of the 40 days hashem completed giving moshe the directives about the mishkan and about the garments of the cohen and about the kior the basin and about the katoris about the incense and about the shemin hamishra the special anointing oil and then as i mentioned last week he talks about shabbos bisham so note when hashem speaks to moshe he first tells him about the mishkan and then he tells them about shabbos when moshe speaks to binet israel he first tells them about shabbos and then tells them about mishkan he reverses the order in both cases there is a juxtaposition of shabbos and mishkan but in opposite sequence if you look at rashi in both kisa and vayakel rashi in both places mentions the juxtaposition and rashi in both places gives us the identical information why does hashem connect shabbos to mishkan to teach me that even though there's a mitzvah to build a mishkan don't do it on shabbos mullet is forbidden and in fact that's the definition of malacca those creative activities that were involved in the michigan so the question on rashi is very obvious if indeed the smiths the juxtaposition of shabbos and mishka is teaching me the identical lesson one is hashem telling moshe one is moshe telling beneath yourselves and what question number one is why does the turret record it twice that's one question yeah i mean it had to be twice because hashem tells motion emotions when they sell but why do we need to have a transcript of both but number two why is there a deviation in the order if the meaning is exactly the same meaning the order ought to be the same order so because of this now this is not a terror this is not an answer for rashi it's a different explanation the mesh says a remarkable interesting very very interesting finish you know there are historians or novelists actually sometimes historians sometimes novelists who specialize in a field that's called alternative history in other words you try to reconstruct a history based on what if you know what if hitler would have won the battle of britain what if john f kennedy would not have been assassinated you know what if the communist revolution you know was crushed by the tsar and you create very elaborate scenarios about how the world would be different alternative history because altered history is what didn't happen it's the road not taken the mesh and one of his interesting approaches in climate i mean he never articulates it as a complete approach but episodically he actually suggests that the torah itself would have taken a different direction had there not been a sin of the golden calf that even though which is theologically interesting the torah pre-existed the creation of the world and it was on white on black fire on white fire two thousand generations before bria olam nevertheless the commentary say the grace says it didn't exist as broken up words it existed as unbroken sequences of letters and those letters could have been split into different words and there's a titus what might you rebel got in the first 40 days may not have been the same as what he got in the second forty days in the second forty days he got the torah that we have the great right but the first forty days there could have been differences in various ways we don't know we don't have the transcript the mesh wants to suggest the following had there not been a kaito egal the building of the mishkan could have taken place on chagas and it's only as a result of the seito ego that the building of the mishkan cannot take place on shabbos therefore at the beginning of parshas ki sisa where hashem is speaking to moshe in the first forty days before the khairo egal first there's mishkan and then there's shabbas because hashem is effectively saying shabbos is tophel shabas is subordinate to michigan mishkan is so important and shabbos is secondary literally it's placed second because it's secondary it's only after the ego when we have that shabbos is elevated from secondary to primary and mela therefore shabbos michigan so that's why you have the repetition because it's not a repetition it represents two different stages in shabbas and mishkan hashem speaking to moshe in kisa before hashem moshe is speaking to benedict and presumably of course hashem told moshe this change moshe speaking to benediction mishkan the question is okay we understand that structurally how that fits the question is why should that be so why should the ego have a particular impact on whether shabbos is dokha mishkan doka let's look at the practical halaquah that we have right is based on bayakal that we cannot build the michigan or the base amigners for that matter on shabbos right you can't do morocco's to build the basement now we know that you can bring corbano sun chavez if you walked into the base of mikdash on the shabbos you might be very very shocked unless you knew the habakku's what's going on here is this a reformed temple what's going on they're slaughtering animals and they're burning incense and they're lighting menorah the carbon tummy was brought on shabbos the carbon mossad was brought on shabbos the menira was lit on shabbos the incense was burnt on shabbos what's going on so it's xaira sarcosev the torah tells me the avaida of corban ice override job it's not not now not every avoider there are laws about this so for example individual offerings if i have to bring a sin offering or a burnt offering i cannot bring that on shabbos that's called the carbon yohid a carbon of an individual cannot be brought on shabbos indeed cannot it cannot even be brought on yamcha but if it's a corbon seabor if it's a communal offering an offering on behalf of the jewish people the luck is very clear a voida of either means divine service in the temple or the mishkan is dokha shabbas so how do you understand the idea that on one hand the avodah does override shabbos but the building of the basa mikdash or the mishkan does not override shabbos right you can't just say shabbos is so important that none of these activities override because avaida does override so the answer would be pushups that there's a difference between avodah divine service and that which is a preliminary to be able to perform divine service an example would be a bris you can do a bris if this is the eighth day of birth we do abrasion shabbos but we can't dry the mayo cannot drive to the bridge on shabbos the difference is the torah permits the actual mitzvah even if it involves desecrating shabbos by bleeding by cutting it does not permit what is called heksha preliminaries to the mitzvah so how luckily we would classify building a basal mikdash or building a mishkan or setting up a mishkan as preliminary to being able to being bring corbanos so makshire avodah meaning preliminaries to the service do not override shabbos just like makshire mila do not override shabbos but the avodah itself does right i mean that's the halal that's exactly how that is defined so instead of the metro talk with the following had there not been a haitian our relationship to god would have been so strong and so powerful that we don't really need a michigan to be able to bring corbanos we could have brought carbonos everywhere you don't need gohanim you don't need anybody we would have had that direct relationship with god so why are we building a mishkan we're not building a mishkan in order to be able to bring corbanos rather the building of the mishkan would in itself be an act of homage an act of glory the sm building of the mishkan would have been a type of corban so says the mesh if before the the building of the mishkan would have been an act of avida so the same way corbanos can be brought on shabbos even though there's desecration of shabbos you could build a mishkan on shabbos it's a corban it's an aveda but after the fedor egal there was a change in our relationship yes barack who forgave the ego yes he did not destroy um israel yes he showed moshe rabbenu the glorious 13 attributes of mercy that to this very day hashem shows up israel when we dive and we pray but the relationship changed a little bit and hashem is basically saying you can still approach me but you have to have a building you have to have a structure you cannot bring corbanos anywhere you want only special people can bring about us in other words instead of the mishkan being a carbon the mishkan became the preliminary structure that is needed to serve god in that way the mishkan got downgraded from avodah to makshimayavoda once the mishkan becomes makshire of oda it's not going to be doka very very fascinating the idea of alternative torah the torah would have had a different form even halachically before the ego than it is after the faith ego and the meshach explains that is why the sequencing of shabbos and mishkan changes now i just want to point out i don't want to get this too complicated that rashi obviously does not learn that way rashi learns that even in kisa where mishkan is mentioned before shabbos shabbos overrides michigan i do want to point out that rashi actually had to learn that way rashi could not possibly learn like the mesh for the following reason we discussed this i think a few weeks ago according to rashi had there not been a hair ego there wouldn't have been a mishkan at all and rashi because we wouldn't have needed a mishkan so according to rashi even when god is talking to moshe in the part of the torah that is before the ego it actually occurred after the ego in the second 40 days and rashi says this is an example of a torah the torah does not follow chronological order so rashi rashi the way rashi constructs the order of the verses specifically could not learn that mishkan could be built on shabbos before the federal ego because according to rashi had there not been a federal ego we wouldn't have needed a michigan for anything that's why rashi has to learn that the significance of the juxtaposition of shabbos and michigan is the same in both cases then you have akasha if they are the same why is there a switch and sequence you know that is akasha that is a strong kaja and rashi's interpretation but basically rashi is boxed into his interpretation based on his position that the torah is not speaking in chronological order obviously the mesh although he doesn't say it but the mesh is following the view of ramban that the hashem did give moshe a commandment of the mishkan even before the remember the ramban doesn't like to ever put the torah out of chronological order unless he has to sometimes you do have to but most times the ramban tries to make it in order and then that the mesh says that yes there would have been a mishkan without an a without a regal but it would have had a different function it would have been an avaida it would have been a carbon to hashem a carbon of gold and silver an unusual carbon rather than a preliminary requirement for carbonus this is quite again this is very very intriguing because you know it's part of a much much longer complicated issue the rambam lays down as a principle that the torah is unchangeable right it's called the immutability of the torah it can't be added can't be subtracted prophets no matter how great they are cannot tell us a message from god that a certain mitzvah no longer applies this was very important in the jewish christian polemic of the middle ages where christianity claimed and really still claims that yes god gave the torah to the jews but he superseded it with greater revelations to other prophets and we say no again we're not proving it right now but but our belief system says can't do that torah doesn't change this is called immutability of the torah we can talk a lot about this maybe at some point i'll give a give a whole share on it because there are conscious review does raise a number of questions under rambam's idea of immutability after all benzoma says in the gemara that when mashiach comes we will no longer fulfill the mitzvah of remembering the exodus because it will be replaced by the messianic miracles is that not taking away a mitzvah from the torah again regressive elbow in the book of ikarim discusses this and the like and maybe i'll leave it for another for another time but the point i want to make is a more modest point and that is the immutability of the torah kicks in only when moshe dies meaning once moshe dies the torah assumes its final unchangeable form but in the 40 years of the desert there's a great deal of fluidity and flexibility and alternative directions that the torah could have gone gone to and there are occasions where the torah itself alludes to the first edition and the second edition such as this example of ayakio so the immutability idea means once moshe dies that in fact you see if you look at the rambam's description of immutability the unchangeability of the torah he says that after he discusses the supremacy of moshe rabbanu's prophecy in other words it seems to be connected because moshe rabeno is the greatest prophet that ever lived and ever will live therefore his prophecy is not changeable which means until moshe dies things could be changed in different directions in fact let me give you another example of this although well actually it's in last week's parsha but it's not really connected to michigan at all it's connected to sukkas you know you might you may remember after the ego when moshe goes up a second time there are a few things that are said and there's a mention of the three pilgrimage festivals it mentions pesach and shavuos and then it mentions the third pilgrimage festival which is succos but it doesn't call it sukkos the holiday of sukkos is not referred to as sukhos it is called khako asif which is one of the names of means the season or the holiday of the in gathering meaning the grain lies in the fields for the whole summer to get dried out and sukkos we bring it inside and that's also true in parshas mishpatim a few weeks earlier the first time you find that the holiday is called sukkos is in after the michigan has been up already and in the book of dvarim where it's repeated and by midway there's no mention of the holidays anyway so the measure huh no that's what i'm saying in in mishpotem and is only called it is not called khaka sukhos the first mention of khaka tsukos is in emor and then in actually pinterest pinnacles mentions and then in re so the metric is i made on the fact and in fact not only that but in mispatiment sisa it mentions it but it doesn't even say there's a mitzvah of sukkah it doesn't say there's a mitzvah to sit in a sugar that's only in partial summer yes so yes that is correct uh that is correct so the mesh says the kabbalah thing based on a comment of the gura which is a well-known comment of the gra the parish of the grand shira shirin i know we have kevin bachman i know whoever if david cohen loves loves this grah he talks about this girl all the times you probably heard a lot a lot about about this and that is the gra is trying to again forgive me for talking about circus but it is connected to last week's question a little bit of this week's that we say that the sukas we passkin commemorates the clouds of glory that hashem showed us the divine presence and sukha our hut a commemoration for the clouds of glory that's how we possibly can at least so the tour asks very good tasha we got the clouds of glory when we left mitzrayim so why do i keep sukkos in tishrei i ought to keep succos around pesach time you'd see us right maybe that would make life easier we would combine i don't know pesach and sukis and one khan so you could sell your house to a guy and move into the sukkah i don't know if that would be easier or more difficult right uh so the tour gives the terrets which is a very difficult answer he says you know pays time the weather is so pleasant uh if we were to sit in a sukkah sleep in a sukkah pay such time people would think or would look like we're just doing it because it's comfortable but sukis already is getting cold and if we sit in the sukkah we're doing it the shame shaman the truth of matter is you know maybe that's a good terrorist for france or germany i mean the truth is sukis is pretty hot here circus is still more or less unless it's global warming i don't know uh you know circus is just as warm as pace essentially so it's a difficult it's a difficult answer the guerra gives another answer okay even right right that's right there you have the other the other cigarette it's cold even during pesach yeah i remember chicago too and we had like i think light snow during pesachi even okay but the gra in shirashiram his parish gives another answer very beautiful the grass says that we are not commemorating the clouds of glory that we got when we left mitzrayim those clouds of glory we lost because of the freitag we lost it and when did we get it back to the grand mexican moshe comes down on yom kippur with the second luchas that's the tenth of tishrei forgiveness on the 11th of tishrei vayakel he assembles the people and gives them the instructions for building a mishkan on the 12th and the 13th poker baboker that is when people are bringing the gold and the silver on the 14th mosha has to tally everything up to be sure that everything's there on the 15th which is the first day of circus when we're ready to start with the michigan everything has been completed the ann nane came back to amy israel says the gra the anane hakavo that we celebrate and that is why we sit in a sukkah is the anane hakavo that we got as a result of our juva and our forgiveness and our generosity in malachi samiskan and that's why the anamiya cover is celebrated not pesach time but sukkah's time this is a well-known graph the mesh says based on the graph it actually turns out had there not been a haitian and had there not been a forfeiture of anonymous there would be no reason to call the holiday sugars we wouldn't have a holiday friend on there covered and there wouldn't even have been a mitzvah to sit in the sugar there still would have been a pilgrimage festival which would be called we're thanking hashem for the harvest but there'd be no commemoration of the clouds of glory and that's why in paris mishpatim which is before the egypt the holiday of sukhos is called and in kisa even after the ego haven't come back yet hashem is describing the holidays because that's its only significance it's only in the civilian that hashem gave after the return of the account that sukkos acquires a new nature a new messiah it's no longer well it's still gossip it's still one of its names but in addition to asif it becomes and it's not just the change of name the mitzvah of sukkah was nisgade after the return of those anonymous coming again this is another striking example of how the heidel eggel and his aftermath redirected the pathway of the torah into a different a different direction so that's uh a beautiful aurora to think about and again this is one of the you know you know uh i mean the metric does not systematically discuss this he does not you know it would be nice to have in one place where he talks about how there's the pre-ego torah and the post-aego torah he does it episodically at various places in the torah he shows such an idea but it's a very intriguing idea to try to reconstruct this metamorphosis of the tay ray itself and as i indicated it is not a violation of the immutability principle because the immune ability principle kicks in only with moshe rabbanu's death and it really limits other prophets being able to have a different message with my cerebeno things can be changed at various points how do you reconcile that with the primeval torah that predated the creation of the universe so again we have to say with another thought of the graph that that was a tire of unbroken letters that did not yet assume the specific configuration of the of the words okay so that's one thing now uh a second thing i want to talk about i want to talk about shabbos in a more general sense because after all by yakyo we can talk about the kedusha of shabbos this opens up everything about shabbos and i want to share with you an interesting thing uh if you've ever done in a hasidisha minion you will notice that minha of shabbos minha before shabbos the weekday minh of shabbos begins with the recitation of the long chapter of tehillim which is the helm 107 kofsayet now talem kuznayan is actually hierarchically a very important capital although it has nothing to do with shabbos it is actually the halachic basis of the baraka that we call birka sagomel what's birkasa gomel if a person was in a dangerous situation or even a woman after childbirth or a person who was sick in the hospital or you know i'll talk about even if you come back on a plane voyage which might be dangerous or whatever it would be so there's a bracha that a person recites that god has done good to the undeserving maulani kaltov that he has done good for me and you do this in a minion and the minion answers that god that did good for you should continue to do good for you etc this is called birka sagoma and ghazal looked to tehillim kufziyan as a source of what are the situations that you say birka sagomel because david melis is describing the different dangers that people face and at the end of each of the dangers there's a chorus so to speak yo one should give thanks to hashem for his loving kindness the nifla's and the wonders that he does for people so after danger a i'll mention the danger zone after a it says after b after c yo yo after d yay and based on this ghazal identified from that chapter four situations where a person has to make the bracha of thanking hashem one situation again this is taken from kufsayan from the talent is people who wander around in the deserts and they get lost okay we're not referring so much you know you don't know your street and whatever it is and your gps is not working we're talking about you're you're lost in a dangerous place like a desert uh the second is a person who is imprisoned right i'm not sure if i have the order here a third is a person who was deathly ill and recovered so we have people who wander in the desert we have people who are imprisoned who get out of jail we are people who are sick uh and the final uh is people who were lost at sea they were in water and there and they came back now it's interesting you know it's common the minutes comment today that people bench go mail as is called when they come back from an overseas trip and what category does that fit so the truth is some posts can say since you're flying over water you're nichole in a person that's coming back from a sea voyage now that's interesting because the truth of the matter is flying over land is actually more danger i mean if you're worried about a crash god forbid and brothersham air travel is relatively safe pretty safe safer than driving uh or being driven uh but the truth of the matter is if they have god forbid there has to be a crash landing it is actually safer on water than it is on on lands because the impact is less and they have flotation devices and like whatever it is they it wouldn't be a comfortable situation either way now we also extrapolate go mail to other situations you were in a terrorist attack although i noticed that in eric israel maybe because israelis are used to dangerous situations it doesn't bother them that much all sorts of situations that in america for sure we would bench go mill uh they don't bench komal here for example you're sitting on a bus and the seat in back of you is vacant and a big heavy rock crashes through the window in the seat right in back of you now if it would have hit you god forbid be a serious thing so i hear that postcard say well it wasn't in your row so you really weren't in danger i don't know i would i think instinctively kind of gravitate towards benjamin gomel but whatever it would be like you know the bullet didn't hit you did it you know the bullet missed your man okay no take it in stripe okay but be it doesn't know these are the four categories based on tehillim kufzayan that you're muhoyev to make a berkas hagomeo uh wandering in the desert imprisonment uh the person that is uh sick the person that is lost at sea uh that is the actually that is the first one that's mentioned all right and the reason why it's gomel because there's a refrain after each one of those four yay you must give thanks to hashem okay so the question is what does that have to do with shabbos and why do khasidim recite it as they enter shabbos what's the shaikhs so historically let me point out that this was a takana this was an enactment of the baal shem tov himself the balshampton was masake that his talmidam should recite to hillary zion as they enter shabbos okay what's the shitless to shabbos to hillary 92 which we everybody says ms moore shirley that also has nothing to do with chavez but at least it begins with the words ms marshall yo meshabbas that's another cache wrote a song for shabbos that doesn't talk about shabbos okay but at least it says ms mercedes the omashabas tahilam kupzain has no reference to shabbos whatsoever what is the valshamtov's kashman in making it kind of the entree into shabbos so what the swarm tells us is the following this farm tell us actually that the four categories of dangers in which people have to give thanks to hashem when hashem redeems them are not only literal but they figuratively metaphorically refer to the predicaments that we face as we try to serve hashem in this world of illusion this world of distraction this world of temptation and shabbos is seen as the weigh station the spiritual hospital where god can redeem us from all of the confusions and the turbulences that we feel the balchemt have wanted us to talk about these dangers and apply them to our lives and then be mocker that hashabas itself is giving us the spiritual hospital so let's go over each of the four relatively quickly okay again the i don't remember the order but the first one that's mentioned i know i remember it is you got lost at sea you're wandering in the ocean like a shaker that's actually in the language of the like a drunk person who staggers around right you're in the ocean the ship is going back and forth lot of water but certainly let's talk about the ocean so here we know that water although water is a reminiscent torah that's true but water is also a remiss for the hedonistic pleasures of the world water is connected to pleasure to ease to comfort to taiwas so the sheker who is lost at sea is the person that is so meshukah so invested in the pleasures of the world that they cannot tear themselves away whether it's eating drinking drugs sex alcohol right that's the one who is drowning in the water steeped in the pleasures of the world that they can't even get out of it so that's one type of danger then we have the sick person the sick person is a person who is consumed with negative emotions anger hatred lack of self-esteem guyva or arrogance this is called holy hanefesh in fact the rambam rights the rambam who was a doctor in shimoni parakin which is his introduction to pierce right the shmona the famous eight chapters this is an example of the introduction having more chapters than the book the turkey of us is six chapters the rambam's introduction is eight chapters okay but be it as it may the rambam specifically uses medicine as the metaphor for working on juan's medos the rambam describes bad character traits as sicknesses of the soul and the rambam writes the same way when you're physically sick you must go to doctors who know how to treat the body when you're spiritually sick you need to go to the doctors who know how to heal the soul and the doctors who know how to seal the soul are the wise sages of the torah who know how the torah helps us heal our illnesses of the soul and the random uses throughout shimono barakim and hukusdayas as well the rambam talks about character deficiencies as sicknesses and by the way the truth of the matter is and i think the rabbi even followed this as well if you go back to classical medicine of the ancient times aristotle galen hippocrates they actually did discuss personality uh imbalances as a function of the four humors too much green too much blood red too much black et cetera and these are responsible for being out of kilter and part of mussar is to learn how to adjust all of these humors in fact to this very day i don't know i don't think it's true in modern hebrew but in rabbinic hebrew depression is called mara shachara which literally means the black uh fluid the maharashtra there's that idea that all of these imbalances come from imbalances within the body itself so the one that is lost at sea represents the baltiva eat drink and be married for tomorrow we will die the one that is sick is the person that is consumed with negativity hate anger resentment including self-hate including the idea that my life doesn't matter i'm a nobody okay now then we have the third level which is the level of the prisoner now that's a little different the prisoner is the person and maybe this is even worse than the sick person the sick person is still in the world of feeling even though the feelings are negative the imprisoned person is the person who is so locked into himself that he's like a stone no longer feels no longer loves no longer hates elite wisely used to say that the opposite of hate of love rather is not hate but indifference even in a marriage marriage counselors will tell you if a person says he hates his spouse there's some hope for that you can work on that he has feelings there's something in fact there are feelings here he he or he makes a difference to me but when a person reaches a matzah i just don't care that may be beyond the point of no return there's nothing there's nothing there i don't care there's a difference between a hot heart and a cold cultured even if the hot heart is negative in some ways so that's the difference between the sick person who is consumed with negative feelings and the imprisoned person who is simply dead inside and then we have the last category which actually may be positive that's the person who is seeking i'm in the desert i'm looking for water meaning i'm looking for wisdom but i don't know where to find it i'm looking in the wrong places that would be the jewish buddhist or whatever it would be or the jew for jesus in other words that's a person who actively is looking for god but is kind of going up the wrong alley so the bolshevik says in all of these situations god can bring redemption god can redeem the hedonist and god can redeem the sick soul and god can redeem the person who who seemingly has shut down and god can help the searcher find wisdom and the balshempt there was that shabbos is the key to all of these four categories finding their yeshua shabbas is the spiritual hospital and that's why based on this havana this understanding of zion in a metaphorical deeper symbolic way this was the hakadama this was the introduction to the kedusha of shabbos shabbos heals the soul now it's interesting ralph cook said that just as shabbos is the refuella of the soul in zaman erich israel in theory can be the refuga of the soul in malcolm in place somebody asked for a cook how come there's so much mock locus in there why is there somebody so much fighting everyone's fighting here in eritrea everyone's fighting not just religious secular religious religious gossip mistaken and raf cook very well knew about the fighting in eric israel because in his lifetime a lot of it was directed to him so he certainly knew what that was like and roof cook's answer is how come there are so many sick people in hospitals the answer is hospitals is where hopefully people can come to get better so he said it's sometimes the hashikaka that eric israel attracts ballet mach lokas people who like to fight because over time if quick was an optimism yeah that's uh that's a double push of drug cook was tremendously optimistic it's not for me to judge he was a truly great person there were golem but felt roof cook was maybe naive uh but nevertheless cook had a great great faith not only in our college park but in quality israel and in heritage israel and he felt over time not overnight but over time eric israel itself can bring people to a state of inner healing and the fact that we have so many balay makhlokas here is like the hospital of the neshama that brings people that brings people together this was rough cook um fact it's interesting somebody who sent me appropriate nothing in particular somebody sent me a a youtube clip a six minute clip of rav yoshi bear celebration of your university the american brisker site uh the zion or they say the the briskers of eric israel are anti-zionist and the briskers of courseware are zionists but okay but but uh solavei czech was only in eritrea once in his life and he met drift cook once in his life but he never went back he was this was the early 30s you know and he did not go back for the next 50 years or 40 45 years but he told the story that at some point rav soloveitchik visited a kibbutz and this was an irreligious not just the religious but a shomerhot sawyer kibo trimeritsa here i don't know if there are any german turkey puts them today but whatever they were not just regular communist communists they were stalinist variety communists this was real real real communist anti-religion hating religion not just not religious but you know they just hated religion somehow absolutely chick wound up visiting there or something and you know they gave him their whole story about this and that and they kind of made fun of him in a polite way american robo it comes to wikiboots you know whatever it is and they offered him food he said he can't eat anything they offered him grapes they thought he could eat fruit he said you know i can't even eat the fruits or turmeric and moisturise everything else so finally they told him you know rabbi our kitchen is 100 kosher sarah sullivan said to them why is your kitchen kosher i mean you don't believe in anything he says well our kitchen is kosher because rev cook paid us a visit uh around a year or two ago and we cautioned our kitchen so they said what was the story he says cook shows up one friday afternoon and they show merhad so irki boots and he brought with him like two colors or four colors whatever it is and a bottle of wine that's all he would eat and rav cook sat down at the table with all of the kibbutznicks uh he made kiddush he made himozi he benched and all around him people are turning on lights and turning on fans and sewing and cooking they says they did not do a single thing differently in honor of roof cook they they were they were openly mahalo shabbos no problem you know cook sat with them and schmoozed with them et cetera he didn't even say it to our torah and then the next morning he asked them if they could assemble a minion and they said no no sort of cooked ovens they even refused to give him a million okay he said at lunch he made kiddish talk to them no demar torah suda salisha same thing he makes abdullah you know same thing like nobody is paying any attention to him mozart chavez they have a party they have a kumsits and he dances with them they do israeli horrors or whatever whatever they do he dances with them and then at the end he talks and again he didn't say any different we just talked about his parents for some reason he talked about his parents and his family and uh you know the memories that he has of growing up and he knows how hard it is to leave your family and come to a new land and build up a new land and then the next day he leaves and the only thing he tells them is i hope next time we could eat together that would be really nice and he left there was not a single word of mustard there was not even a single word of torah actually and as soon as he left it's like simultaneously all the members of the kibbutz like threw out the pots and they said let's go to the kitchen and this person tells you i've salivated like two years later we cautioned our kitchen because rev cook was here and jose chick pointed out you know uh if rafcook would have put them in heirem or they would have been a kharim and vakuta he said that would not have had much influence on shomeratsuya but somehow when you meet somebody who so totally accepts you who loves you who cares about you who sits with you and doesn't criticize you but just does this thing that can make a tremendous okay joseph was saying how amazed he was what an amazing in fact he said people think rough cook was a great philosopher a russell bachchick happened to be a great philosopher so he's because he wasn't a philosopher at all uh he was not systematic he didn't have like this definite thing he says he's speaking uh a very heavy european accent he speaks in very wonderful english but it's a very thick accent he says he was a religious personality and that's what it was he did not change people by his philosophy he changed people by his personality and that was an amazing thing yes and then russell baichik said that although russell beach knew the greatest of the greatest his grandfather was refrain his uncle was the brisker of uh his own father of moshe salvatrik was a great great talmud but he said he never met anyone like ref cook who could change people by kind of doing nothing at all just by the force of sitting with them and not even saying one word of guidance or so i just wanted to share that little story and this connects very nicely to the notion of shabbos having the capacity to cure our nishamas may we be zaifa to take advantage of that therapeutic opportunity [Music] is