Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: Is There an Obligation to Believe in G-d?

[Music] okay hi everybody shalom and thank you for coming and uh the people that are here welcome and for the people on zoom you know welcome as well that'll zoom in on youtube later uh today's here is uh dedicated of binyamin yisrael and halevi and sevilla and all of those that are ill inoculated uninoculated uh and those who are healthy should remain healthy uh and biases hashem our torah should be a source of health and rafula for all who need it uh in addition uh this week's class is sponsored by a friend of mine from uh new york from brooklyn uh yes if kalimi in honor of the rav and appreciation for all of this arbusa start thank you i'll i'll send you the money uh your fee a little later so today this week's parsha we actually begin the second great theme of the book of shemot right the book of shemot we know is safer hagoola the book of redemption and it deals with three main themes with a few left turns once in a while one theme of course or the first name is yitzyas mitzrayim the ten plagues the splitting of the red sea the getting out of egypt the second theme is the receiving of the torah which was the purpose of yudhis mithrayam and the third theme is the construction of the mishkan and the smas emis actually writes that in a more general way these parallel stages of spiritual development that all of us go through as individuals remember the idea that mitzrayim does not just mean egypt but mitzrayim comes from the lachon that means constriction boundary blockage and every every one of us has our own mitzrayim that we have to leave we have to leave our selfishness our egotism our cruelty our laziness our hedonism that is our inner mitzrayim and as zabala tanya writes that when hashem took the jews out of mitzrayim he put into the world a liberating kawak that we have the power to leave mitzrayim but leaving the negative is not enough you must then take your newfound freedom and direct it and channel it towards something positive and that is matantora i've mentioned more than once tagori the indian poets beautiful analogy that a human soul is like a violin string when it's totally free and unencumbered put a string on a kitchen table you get no music from it only when it's tied down is it able to express its music that's the paradox we think if i'm free i can then flourish and do whatever i want but in reality the beauty of the human soul is only when it's tied down so matzon torah is the tactless of inner freedom freedom is in fact eric from who was not religious he happened to be jewish uh eric frohm was a talmud of sigmund freud who also happened to be jewish uh and fromm said we make a big mistake when we define freedom fr freedom from something freedom from something is only a negative it has to be freedom towards something and that's exactly why the torah connection sees mitzrayim because without matantora your freedom is simply the freedom of an animal khazal underscored this point by the fact that on pesach the grain offering that is brought is barley that's the omer offering and shivuas the grain offering that is brought is sita wheat bread and the difference is in the time of the time of the torah at least barley was primarily animal fodder and wheat was human bread so the concept is a pesach without a matantora freedom without torah is simply animal liberation it is the torah that elevates freedom to human dignity and that's again a very very important point uh everybody wants freedom but freedom without responsibility is ultimately destructive it's a self-defeating proposition in fact sometimes you find that suicide rates are actually a bit higher particularly among adolescents in affluent countries than they are in poverty-stricken countries so for example the suicide rate in the united states will be higher than in india or china or those places why is that so because in a less affluent country you're spending all your time looking for bread you don't really have time to think about the existential issues of life so life goes on but precisely when you're free from material wants that's when you begin to ask yourself what is the purpose of my life what am i living for what does all this mean and we're really the truth of the matter is human beings in general and the jewish people in particular are hardwired to search for transcendental meaning and purpose victor frankel in his classic work man's search for meaning talks about the idea that having a sense of purpose is as important to a human being as food and drink the food and drink is what keeps my body alive but if my soul does not have a meaning and a purpose i'm starving my my innermost essence i need meaning and when a person does not find meaning they can be overwhelmed with such a sense of despair that they literally take their own lives thank you so the relationship of torah and freedom is very very significant in fact if i could uh again i'm a little out of zeman here because i want to say you thought about pesach but it's connected to youth misrayam as well spacex is connected to cs mitrayam you know it's very very interesting that uh one of the minhagem it's not a halacha but it's a minnow and one of the ashkenazic minhagem of lael cedar is that we eat a hard-boiled egg you know after we eat the matzah and the moroar and the korek and we're finally sitting down for the shulkin arak for the meal right long anticipated meal so the very first course at least among ashkenazim is we have a hard-boiled egg now why is that so what is the significance of the hard-boiled egg so the michenum already say that the hard-boiled egg is the food that you give to a mourner when a person is an avedos you give a person a hard-boiled egg and that's because it's oval it's circular and it represents what is called the gaugal hakozer the wheel of life in other words even if things are very difficult they'll turn around they'll be good it's the hammer it is the food for nihom is an egg in fact after a lavaya the first thing we give the orville is we give them a hard-boiled egg typically or adashem in a lentil something of that shape so the question is why are you mourning on the first night of pesach so one reason is because we don't have a carbon pesach so there's a certain sadness at the seder the other reason that's given is that the first night of pesach is the same night of the week first day of pesach the night and the day is the same day as tish above later in the summer so if for example the lael seder will be you know wednesday night thursday tish above later is going to be wednesday night thursday so precisely similar to khasna that at the highest joy of the khasna you break a glass to remember you shallayim so leo pesach we remember the quran being the section now obviously there are no coincidences in the jewish calendar in sacred time and why would it be so that al-qarash barco arranged that the great night of the nithius mitzrayim is the same day of the week as the ninth above so here is what i would suggest i didn't see any source for this it's just a speculation and that is the first night of pesach is the only night of pesach where the exodus is not connected to matantora why is that so because by the second night of pesach we already begin counting the omer which connects us to matantora so you might say that the first night and day of pesach is the freedom that is not yet connected to responsibility and submission to god so maybe the rem is is when your freedom is not connected to torah it will lead to a tish above it will lead to a destruction it's kind of reminding us so to speak that freedom without torah becomes destructive becomes toxic becomes something that's very very negative as i said last week i think as was last week that when people say the purpose of my life is to be free that is a nonsensical statement free to do what free to be what freedom cannot be a purpose in life freedom at best can be an enabler it can enable me to do something but i still have to define what it is that i want to do and as i said before that itself is connected to this suicide in many cases in some extreme cases a person doesn't have a sense of what their life is about you know i i taught laws as many of you might know i taught love for many many years so i'm a little familiar uh with what you might call burnout in the legal profession as students go through and we actually find it's quite a serious problem it's somewhat similar to alexander the great at the age of 30 or he died yes he died of a plague but or some say he was murdered this maloco is exactly how he died but the legend has it that he died in despair because he had conquered the whole known world at the time and he said he has no more worlds to conquer so in a sense lawyer bernard is that way as well we live in a very competitive society you know we even have competition about getting your kids in again outside of the torah world which we have our own competition problems but in the secular world there's competition about getting a kid into a kid in kindergarten there are like exclusive private kindergartens in new york city it'll cost a huge amount of money that have a five-year waiting list a five-year waiting list for kindergarten so that means as soon as mommy is pregnant or maybe even before mommy is pregnant you know you're going to register the fetus so to speak that in five years uh they'll be able to go to this kindergarten like what difference i mean i understand kindergartens they're good kindergartens and bad kindergartens but why would somebody you know care so much about an exclusive kindergarten ah because you meet the right people you get the right connections and then uh people want to go to the best high schools if they're doing with private high schools and then colleges and then graduate schools right everything is a rad race that never stops best kindergarten best private school best high school best college best graduate school and then you get into a profession whether it's law and med or medicine and you keep on going and going and going now again i'm most familiar with law and then person makes a partner and senior partner and then does mergers and acquisitions but at some point like there's nowhere further to go like alexander the great there's no more worlds to conquer you know you know we call this midlife crisis we call it burnout we can call it a lot of different names but at some point it may start as early as 35 or 40 or 45 or a little older or 50. it's going to hit a person what do i do exactly with the rest of my life another merger and acquisition you know i've worked to reach where i've gone i'm not going to be on the supreme court you know i'm not going to be president of the united states i'm not going to win an olympic gold medal what do i do with the next 30 40 or 50 years of my life if a person doesn't invest in building a spiritual identity and their whole life is surrounded with professional advancement now for that can give rewards and that can give satisfaction for a very long time but at some point without a spiritual underpinning it's all going to collapse you know we spend so much time investing in a livelihood that we never invest in a life and again this is not only i'm not only speaking about this from the perspective of an orthodox rabbi you know even from a secular standpoint how much effort do people invest in their marriages in their children right so on one hand they can have the biggest house for their kids but at the expense of never spending time with their kids right and the person wonders i mean this is kind of what gohellis is about right now that's meditation about life you accumulate wealth you do all sorts of things and then you die and like what was the point exactly what's the point they they have a story about a um a monument in a british graveyard that i think goes back to the middle ages it says born a man died a grocer kind of person was important i guess the person was also a little burnt out or a little upset about the way life went and that's really why the torah constantly juxtaposes matan torah with yet see at mitzrayim freedom without torah is destructive and then of course the ultimate goal is mishkan because what is mishkan building a sanctuary for god and the main mishkan is the human soul bill vavvy mishkon i build a tabernacle for god in my life so the the the major themes of shamos parallel my spiritual development an inner freedom a submission to god and the building of a misgun in my heart that's the most important thing and as they say i mean although i've been perhaps talking about you know jews who are not connected to the truth the matter is these are problems even for us who are connected to torah because even if we keep the commandments even if we keep the mitzvos even if we're from but how much of it and again i don't mean to give anyone muslim i'm talking to myself as well uh perhaps primarily to myself but how many of us cultivate an inner spiritual relationship with hashem and how much of our mitzvoths are kind of superficial going through the motions we're part of a community so we behave a certain way right so uh this idea of cultivating an inner spiritual life is not only a message or a criticism of those who are not following the derek of the torah but perhaps even more so it's something that we ourselves have to reflect upon now you know the phenomenon of off the derek kids or kids at risk which is a a major major problem in the firm community whether it's in eric israel or kutzlares whether it's haredi or datilio me the issue of kids leaving the fold well it's a very complicated problem and obviously there is no one reason you can't say this is the reason why kids leave there are a million reasons but at least one of the reasons is that it's often the case i don't want to over glorify kids at risk but it's often the case or at least sometimes the case that these are very very sensitive children these are actually very spiritually aware children and when they see kind of an emptiness in the spirituality at home they see families going through motions with no real internalization that is something they can't accept and in desperation they go on other other pathways now again i'm not saying this is in every case but there are at least some cases where that's very very true so when people are worried about how do i keep my kid from part of the answer is how do i how do i become from how do i become religious how do i become a person that truly internalizes my avodah hashem that it's not simply superficial right so all of the musser is not only directed against those people out there but it's something that we have to internalize within within our own lives and that's why the book of shemos as again we've said a number of times already is not only about klaus israel but it's also about the individual israel the individual jew and his struggle with having a relationship with god it's a fascinating thing i remember i was once talking about uh the importance of a relationship with god i used the english term and somebody said it was very funny somebody said they were very uncomfortable with that that sounds too like too much like the way christians talk christians always talk about a relationship with god he says jews don't talk about a relationship with god jews talk about a relationship with torah a relationship with mitzvos an interesting phenomenon i mean uh as a sociological observation he actually is correct uh if the typical vocabulary that we have in a sheer or a musser schmooze is you have to be connected to torah territory we don't necessarily refer to connecting to god and there may be a reason for that because we don't want to put god in a human form we don't want to you know uh talk about god as something we understand so we only understand god through the torah but it does have an unfortunate side effect in which we think so much about the particulars of mitzvot that we don't think about the relationship with hashem that the mitzvah is supposed to bring us uh bring us to in fact i um i'm not sure i don't i don't think i said it here maharao has a striking observation there's a gemara in masaka snadorum that says that uh there are times in which the children of tamidek do not become tomide again hashem there are many many exceptions i mean ifram kenoski is of course an exception to that i mean his father was uh one of the godzilla hedorah and he is certainly one of the guido and many people say the god alhador whatever it would be but the kumari does point out that sometimes it is the case that the son of a talmud is not the talmud and the maharal is mazbear fascinating morale says because sometimes the talmud is so fixated on the torah that the neglects the no sane torah he neglects the one who gave the torah hashem and as a result it's like cutting a branch off a living tree and when you cut a branch off the living tree the branch does not grow anything so as a result the tamil khakim's connection will be a dead connection that is unable to transfer growth to a new generation this morale says because when there's no connection to hashem then by definition the torah itself is not going to have an intergenerational perpetuity so that was just the general point i wanted to talk about but baruch hashem we do have mata ontario in this parsha the jewish people come to harsinai uh two and a half months after they left mitram they left mithraim the 15th of nisan they come to mount sinai rosh they get they hear the ten commandments either on the sixth of seven or the seventh of sivan that itself is a mclokas i'm going to leave for later in the year the famous question of the muggin of ram we have a machlokist when did the jewish people hear the ten commandments did they hear the ten commandments on the sixth or did they hear the ten commandments on the seventh now it's actually locus and the mugging of ram proves that we actually pascan that the jewish people heard the ten commandments on the seventh of stephen and yet when do we celebrate the holiday of shavuots we celebrate the holiday of shavus on the sixth of seven in other words a lot of people get confused they think oh if there's a mach lokas do you uh was the torah given on the sixth to the seventh so there's a maclocus when you have the holiday of shiva's certainly not nobody's arguing that the holiday of schwarz is the sixth of seven so the big kasha is of course if you hold the terror was given on the seventh of seven why do we celebrate shibuyas on the sixth of seven we're celebrating it a day earlier good question famous question not going to talk about it tonight we'll talk about it later later in the year but be it as it may they come to amid barcenae uh the rosh sivan and they get the torah so first just a little point of definition they got the torah what does it mean they got the torah so actually it doesn't mean they got the whole torah the jewish people did not get the whole torah on the sixth of seven they heard the ten commandments and that itself was locus according to rashi's understanding they didn't even hear all of the ten commandments they only heard the first two commandments i am the lord your god who took you out of egypt thou should not have any other gods then they were afraid then they went to moshe and moshe was the intermediary for the rest according to rashi the only thing the jewish people heard were the first two commandments according to other interpretations the kuzari they heard the ten commandments by the way even ten commandments is a misnomer the word in uh or the phrase in the isla [Music] the ten statements the ten utterances and if you actually go through the ten commandments as we call it in english you will actually find there's around fourteen or fifteen commandments for example the second commandment says you shall not have any other gods you shall not make idols rights there is so even in shabbos remember shabbos uh rest on chavez don't do moloch on shabbos these are separate prohibitions so if you actually break down and maybe we'll have some other time not tonight a shear about how many commandments are in the ten commandments that might be a worthwhile thing to go through but be this at may the torah was then given to moshe for 40 days at mount sinai but even he did not tell binay israel the whole torah after all if you look at the flemish you clearly see that the torah was given to the jewish people in dribs and drabs over a 40-year period because there are mitzvos in the book of devarim that the jewish people are hearing for the first time so when pirkei ovo says moshe got the torah at sinai that doesn't mean we got the torah at sinai we got the torah over 40 years it's an important point meaning there was no safer torah in existence until the very last day of moshe rabena's life when he wrote miraculously thirteen sephora torah one was put in the kodi saktashim and one each was given to each of the twelve shvatim okay so this is an important point because uh people often think that the torah we got the whole torah at mount sinai first of all that wouldn't even make a lot of sense because there are a lot of historical events in the torah that didn't happen until after harsinai korak maraglim we didn't know about those things until they happened i mean korek didn't get a script like a hollywood director and says stand on that line know the earth is going to open the earth is going to open up so so the first thing you need you need to know is maybe just a very simple point but it's a basic point that matan torah was the divine revelation in front of three million people plus the arab route in which god revealed his essence god revealed the fact that we are his slaves god revealed to us that we are going to be committed to his service but the specifics of the service were not even revealed to moshe except over the 40 days at harsinai and we received it at various times throughout the desert experience now that also means and this is a little bit of a question uh which again i'm throwing up more questions than answers tonight you know uh one of the very very famous arguments for the proof of the torah how do we know the torah is divine right yeah maybe the torah is made up right people like archaeologists say uh moshe and not even moshe later people ezra just wrote a book about all of these things and it doesn't come from god how do you know the torah comes from god at all so one of the most famous arguments of how we know the torah is from god is the argument that is articulated on some level by review the halevi in the kuzari and this is a real controversial argument so uh people love to debate this uh it goes back and forth you can see it on the internet you can see it in books you can see it all sorts of websites but this is actually called the kusari principle and the kuzuri principle is that judaism makes a claim that is very unique in the history of mankind that is every religion claims to have started with a revelation from god god came to me like muhammad god came to me and gave me a mission yashka and then the person because of his charismatic character because of his apparent righteousness because of his saintliness he convinces people that he's the genuine thing and the religion grows judaism makes a claim that god did not appear to a small group of people who then convinced others to follow them but god appeared to three million people this is a mass revelation argument now that's very different than other religions now there's other religions depend on my trusting the individual i trust him he's so righteous he's so saintly but as a matter of fact any religion that depends on trusting an individual the guy could be a liar the guy could be deluded the guy could have hallucinations uh the guy could be psychotic whatever it would be but judaism says god did not appear to one person who then convinced other people to follow him god appeared to three million people now the problem reviewed our levy says is that's not a lie that you can make up in other words it's one thing if i come to you and i said god appear to me i might be able to convince you you know you look at a first right but if i say god appeared to everybody in this room that's going to be a little harder because you're going to you know i don't remember god appearing to me when did it happen and god appeared to every person in the united states in israel so if you don't levy says that is not something that could possibly be believed unless it was true and therefore the truth of the torah revital levy says can be seen in the fact that it makes a claim that is so audacious that if it wouldn't be true it would never have been believed in the first place now there's no doubt even a reformed person who denies the revelation at sinai cannot deny that jews believe there was such a revelation in other words up until 200 years ago and that's a historical fact jews i mean let's assume i might not be chorus and i'll say that was a foolish superstitious belief but i can't deny that that's what they believed and the question becomes if the label says how did they believe that unless it happened so i don't want to undermine the kuzuri principle because it is a it is a principle that that uh well number one we use in in jewish outreach extensively but you know it's an argument and it's a principle but i do want to point out it does not prove the content of the rest of the tar because in point the fact if all we heard were the ten commandments are even just the first two commandments so when we talk about how do i know the mitzvah of situations comes from god how do i know the mitzvoth's villain comes from god well gee who taught us the mitzvah of sisters who taught us the mitzvah's villain we're not making the claim that we heard it from god it was moshe robin who heard it from god so i'm just maybe maybe it's not productive for me to be skeptical i just want to introduce that the kuzuri principle proves there was a sinaitic revelation it does prove that god spoke to 3 million people but it actually proves less than sometimes people think it does because it does not prove the specific divine origin of all of the commandments but be it as it may it's important that definitionally you understand what matan torah is matan torah is the hearing of the ten commandments now again a big lokas did we hear ten commandments see if you read parashat israel you get the impression we heard the asera sadvarim but rashi says we heard the first two and then we were scared and then we asked moshe to be the intermediary now uh even though rashi's explanation does not fit the biblical text it is what gazal saying messiah's marcos josale saint-maced that the torah has 613 mitzvoth and this is based on the gematria torah siva lanu moshe moshe gave us torah so the gemara says wait a second your numbers are not quite right the gematri of torah is 611. so what do you mean moshe gave me 611 if there are 613 answer moshe gave us 611 two mitzvoth we heard directly from god anoki and yeah so that's how you get that that's the source for rashi that we only heard the first two commandments from god so now i just want to ask a question so you see clearly from the gemara that the the two commandments we heard from god is i am the lord your god to take you out of mitzrayim from the house of slavery you shall not have any other gods before you now the gemara calls that two mitzvahs so here's the question what mitzvah is embodied in the verse i am the lord your god or to i mean normally a mitzvah is either to do something or not to do something to do something is called a mitzvah say and not to do something is called the mr slosa now the second commandment lo ye allah you shall not have any other gods that's a commandment not to worship other idols or whatever it would be but the first statement i am the lord your god who took you out of egypt in what way is that a mitzvah is it a mitzvah is there a mitzvah so the rambam actually says is counted as one of the mitzvoths of the torah it is the mitzvah of emunah god says i am commanding you to know that i exist and i am the god who not only created heaven and earth but i am the god who is actively involved in providence of human beings that's why it says you see it mithraim the ramban says that god is not just the god who created things but god is the god who intervenes and is actively involved the god of history not just the god of creation so the rambam says is the mitzvah of emunah ramban asks akasha on the rambam ramban says how is it possible for god to command them if i believe in god i don't need to be commanded to believe in him i believe in him elohim god is telling a non-believer believe in me well why should the non-believer believe it it's like i'm telling an atheist you're not allowed to be an atheist and the atheist asks me why not he says because god said you can't be an atheist but i don't believe in god in other words the ramban says it's logically impossible to command emunah because if a person is not a mayman there's no authoritative source that's telling him to change his ways and if he accepts that authoritative source he doesn't need a commandment in that effect so because of this the ramban actually says is certainly not a commandment it is the prerequisite to receive commandments that one have in munna now the emma says the ramban's position is very logical but it is contradicted by the governing markets the quran marcus does say anoki is one of the mitzvahs of the torah so the truth of the matter is the way we can answer the rambam is actually fairly simple that is the rambam himself is a very interesting definition of what does it mean to believe in god what is the mitzvah of ammuna and the rambam says and this has been a controversial definition throughout jewish history that it is not enough to believe in god because i was taught that by my parents by my rabbis by my but i am to intellectually convince and persuade myself by going through the philosophical premises that there is a supreme one deity who created heaven and earth so according to that the ramban's question is not so strong the torah is talking about a person who believes in god you who believe in god you must convert your belief into what is called yadia what is called firm intellectual knowledge that's the rambam now as you know this was actually controversial because according to this the rambam is actually requiring that we philosophically delve into the proofs for god and come to the conclusion uh others felt that that was dangerous that was counterproductive because god forbid once you start philosophical inquiry you might come out on the wrong side of the page and therefore that was discouraged that's why for example in the morin of the guide to the perplexed where the rambam does devote uh much effort to the various intellectual proofs for the existence of god uh typically uh you will find that in many many circles many yeshivas for example that type of lemur is actively discouraged and there were jewish communities in fact in the middle ages that proclaimed they say them in spite of their great respect for the rambam they proclaimed a prohibition to learn the mora nebucham right even in a regular-based mattress right uh the rambam's works are displayed you know very prominently so you come in you're looking you know you see the rambling you might ask that god i support him uh where do i find the mourinho and either they won't have it or they'll direct you to some back room somewhere uh they're not going to put them on the book on the standard shelf so that itself has been in fact even the khabisalovas which is earlier than the marina is a great great muster safer one of the greatest greatest ethical books ever written in the jewish tradition uh in fact the rambam even testifies that his father's favorite savior was the kavaz alabamas at that time it was in arabic that was the original language so the covers of love is learned to this very day with great great prophets but the very first chapter of the khebasalavas is called sharayikh the gate of unity and that is an intellectual discussion of proofs for the existence of god so a common statement attributed to the bill negon is all of khobas alabamas is wonderful but you should start from chapter 2. do not learn in fact there's a beautiful you know the kravis was in arabic it was translated into hebrew by the ibn tibon family who were the great translators of the arabic works like the rambam's work but more recently uh repentance lieberman's equinal of raqqa uh translated the khaiba salah re-translated the vessel of us into a modern hebrew and it's much much much more readable very very good but he didn't translate the shah he printed it there and he gives you a 50-page introduction of all the gedolim that say not to learn it and he just produces it in the original text but he does not begin his translation until chapter two so this issue of the rhombus was quite controversial the rambam's understanding of amuna but uh i certainly are supposed to know this i mean ravnoch weinberg uh felt quite quite strongly that we should follow the rambam on this at least on some level and go through the philosophical underpinnings not just believe in god as a matter of tradition but to believe in god by internalizing the idea that there is a god so that actually answers the ramban's issue that the mitzvah of amuna is directed to a mayman and telling the maymen turn your emotional belief in god into a rationally defensible understanding of hashem okay but be it as it may i want to go backwards a little bit and that is when the jewish people came to harsinai so the pussic says bahresh it was the third month let's say spanish mitsuba from the time they left mithrayam but yom hazel beau mid barcena and that very day they came to midbar sinai so when i walk away from passage i'm already told they have arrived at the sinai desert i know that that's what the puzzle says so the second pussock seems to go backwards it seems to be telling me things i already know it says and they left the oasis of rafitim by yitsu mirafidhim arsena and they came to mid-barcenae and they encamped in the desert and then by yikan israel nagatahor and they encamped at the foot of the mountain now we already know from parshas bashalach last week's parsha that we were in the oasis of rafita that is where moshe hit the rock and got the water remembered don't confuse this 40 years later moshe hits the rock and he gets in big trouble that's then this time he was told to hit the wreck that some of some learned very question that the basis of moshe's mistake 50 years later is he thought he was supposed to do the same thing he did 40 years before very understandable this is the second time he is told to take his staff and get water from iraq he logically figured it would be the same thing okay so don't confuse it that the hitting of the rack the first time was al-pi hashem it was not it was not improper and graffiti was also the place where we encountered amalek so two things happened in her freedom very important to place refidem is where moshe hit the rock and got water and we feed him is where we encountered amalek and the next stop after we feed him is sinai so if the end of bashallah tells us we were in graffiti and then possible says we came to sinai why does it have to repeat we left rafiti when we came to cena right the the passage is redundant what is it teaching me and then you'll notice too that the verb of encampment is used twice yakanuba midbar vayikhan israel gives us a beautiful explanation he says that the purpose of passage base is not to give us a geographical description of the jewish people going from point a to point b we already know the point a to point b by comparing the end of bashar which says they were in repeat him to pascale that says they came to mid barcenae but passage base is referring to the spiritual preparations that the jewish people had to undergo in order to receive the torah in other words passage is the physical journey and passage base is the spiritual journey and this is especially relevant for us because matantara is not a one-time event every single day we have to re-accept hashem's torah because i'll say every single day the torah has to be fresh vibrant and new and the ramban says there's a mitzvah say to remember my midhar sinai every day just like there's a mitsubishi you may see at the end of chakras and many sidorim there's something called six things you're always supposed to remember one is remember shabbos etc remember the exodus well one of the things we're supposed to remember every day in the ramban council as a mitzvah in the torah is to remember and to re-experience standing at harcina and getting the torah so consequently the urichaem says the importance of looking at their spiritual preparations is because we need to go through the same preparations in our personal and daily kabbalah satire so seen in this way the arachim gives us a very straightforward four-fold plan for receiving god's torah and he divides plastic base i'll go over each segment quickly into four ideas and each of these ideas is a component of our spiritual preparation for matantora idea number one by yeshu mirafidim you have to leave repeat him now what is rafita me freedom of course was a place and it was a place where events happened the hitting of the rock the war of amalek but ghazal have a beautiful observation that the name or freedom is no accident the name of rafitim actually expresses why we were vulnerable to amalek the phrase for freedom can be broken up into two words rafu yedayhem minatora that the the rats within that made us vulnerable to amalek was our hands were weakened with the turret now what does that mean in english that is not such a meaningful idiom but let me explain what it means let's imagine that you're crossing king george street and you have to carry your baby across you don't have a you don't have a carriage you're going to hold your baby very very tight because something that's precious to you you don't want to drop so when you care about something you hold it tight when you don't care that much about something you know maybe in your hand like a tissue etc if it blows away you know even if you're not a person who litters deliberately but you know you don't really go crazy if if that happens so rifian yadayam a loosening of the hands is really an idiomatic expression for not caring about something very much being complacent being casual a lack of passion a lack of enthusiasm so ghazal understands that when jewish people are connecting to torah but without joy without enthusiasm without passion they become vulnerable to the amaleks of the world vulnerability to the external amalek is connected to refeed them roughly adam and natalya now technically this is before mata ontario so obviously in that case it didn't mean the whole torah but whatever their rookney is was there was a rifian yadayam so the arakayam says when they were going to accept god's torah and when we in our own lives accept god's torah the very first step is leave the complacency of repeat him embrace the torah with joy with passion with enthusiasm because when you live on the level of graffiti now of course don't get me wrong it's better to do a mitzvah without enthusiasm than not to do a mitzvah a person should never say oh i don't really feel inspired so i'm not going to do anything no that would be a big mistake but nevertheless if one truly wants a relationship with god there must be enthusiasm there must be passion and this too by the way goes back to the kids at risk situation again i i do emphasize it is a multi-faceted complicated problem but once again uh if the kids grew up in a house where the there's not an enthusiasm and a passion and i vote as hashem then they're going to wonder at some point why do i have to suffer why do i have to go through all of these rules and regulations if there's not simcha if there's not enthusiasm if there's not passion if there's not geshmaq so the arachim says first step get away from refeedim embrace ruknia's spirituality with simtra enthusiasm and passion that is step one step two i'm just following the possibility it says uh via mid-barcenae they came to the mid-bar so midbar can have a lot of connotations but one of the connotations of midbar is a midbar is empty right a true midbar is devoid of a lot of material things there aren't buildings there aren't cars you know in fact many people love the desert precisely because it is so empty so this is a rem as the aurachaim says to the idea that we should try to cultivate lives of simplicity that are not overly involved in the material acquisition of a lot of stuff now here we do have to explain this a little bit uh we mentioned in tu b'shvat that judaism is not an ascetic religion per se judaism does not say deny yourself the pleasures of life in fact we know that the nazir is considered to be a sinner because he's depriving himself of legitimate pleasure i mentioned to bishop that says that after 120 years we will be held to account for every pleasure we could have enjoyed in this world that we didn't because we understand that god put pleasures in the world to give us joy and by giving us joy we become grateful to hashem and we love hashem we come to love hashem by contemplating all of his goodness so our relationship to physical pleasure sensual pleasure is a little confusing because in one hand we do embrace its legitimacy but it's also true that if you're overly involved in possessions your mind and your heart will not be panoy will not be open to be connected to god you can own your possessions but you can't let your your possessions own you when they start owning you then you know you're in the wrong place so the arakayam says the second level of the plan yesumir is midbar disengage a little bit from the rat race disengage from the materialism disengage from having to have more and more and more and be willing to live a life of simplicity and moderation and that's an important point because the more we're meshuggah i remember pepsi cola had a campaign years ago maybe they still have it in which you know if you buy pepsi and you give in the bottle caps or something in the bottle cap you get prizes so the campaign was drink pepsi get stuff so it always struck me that it didn't even say what stuff you were getting in other words i just want stuff it doesn't make a difference what it is i just want stuff it's like and that's the way that that's what more stuff right so meatball is the opposite the beauty of the midbour is its emptiness so that's step two so step one is passion and joy in ruknius step two is a certain degree of disengagement from the material world which is midbar be like a midbar now step three repeats midbar a second time by yahoo by mitbor they encamped in the midbrain so midbourne's mentioned twice in that puzzle so the arakayam says mitbar has a seconds connotation and that is the midbar is dirt right the midbar is sand sand you trample on you walk on we find in the amidah that that's a sign of humility okay my soul should be like dirt meaning i shouldn't mind the insults and the humiliations that i suffer maybe we'll have to talk to for another time that that doesn't mean you have to be a dish towel or whatever it would be but whatever it is there's a notion of humility now we know because i'll use a different metaphor the opposite metaphor they use water it's interesting that the arachiam uses desert as a sign of humility khazal use water as a sign of humility the torah is compared to water and so many reasons water purifies water is necessary for life but one of the interpretations is just as water goes from high ground to low ground torah leaves the arrogance and goes to the humble so it's an interesting mix of metaphors khazal see it in water the aurochaem sees it in desert midborn the second use of midburn humility is indispensable to learning torah and that's for a lot of reasons number one when i'm filled with my ego and my sense of greatness and entitlement to my arrogance there's like no room to let hashem in a person is filled with their own gaiver and of course if a person is arrogant he will not be willing to admit his mistakes he will not be willing to learn from other people he will not be willing to try to understand things because he's never willing to go to anybody else right so it's another budget that without another one cannot really connect to hashem so we've mentioned leaving graffiti leaving complacency simplifying your life humility and the final part of the passage also repeats the verb camping israel and here already rashi helps us out because you'll notice the first time that it said in camping it was vayacanu which is la shine rabbim but the second time it says it and rashi says that means there has to be unity in quality israel unity without unity there could not be cabalas in fact uh people are mozbir that in the dienes right at the end of the market we have all the dieters if god would only have done one thing and not the other thing we would still have to be grateful so one of the diana's is a little problematical uh it mentions actually a few of them are problematic as you go through it but one of them says if you would have brought us the harsini and you would not have given us the torah dayenu that would be enough to be grateful now i understand the other day at least some of the other dieters you know if god would have taken us out of mithriam and wouldn't have killed the firstborn or if god wouldn't have given us their wealth all right we would have been out of israel even the one that says if he would have split the red sea and would not have brought us through in dry land which seems to say we would have drowned in the red sea even then one could say all right hashem i died seeing a great miracle i mean even that could be a dieno i left the world seeing this but what on earth is the significance that hashem brought us to harsinai and didn't give us the torah what would the point have been what would the myla have been and many before shem say that in harshinai we reached the level of ishachar one person one soul if we would have achieved achtus even with nothing else that would be something to be grateful for of course i do want to point out the proportion point out dayenu even though dayeno literally means it would have been enough it doesn't really mean it would have been enough it would not have been enough it would have been enough to thank hashem that's an important point dayenu doesn't mean we didn't need the other thing we need of course we need the torah but dayenu even if khashoggi wouldn't have gotten the torah we would owe hashem a debt of gratitude so the dayenu is is going on the dayenu to be mockertof not dayenu that we didn't need the next stage so now the orachian beautifully gives us a four step plan embrace the torah with enthusiasm and passion simplify your life and don't be overly attached to the physical world and although judaism recognizes that some connection to the physical can give a person appreciation and gratitude to hashem but if you're overly invested again an analogy one might think about is you know if you're habituated to instant gratification it's very very difficult to invest in things that have a much more long range gain so if one eats junk food you're not going to spend five hours making a french meal or whatever it would be if you do web surfing you're not going to sit down and read shakespeare because you can't concentrate on it physical pleasure is instant gratification torah learning is something that doesn't automatically kick in immediately it takes time it takes effort it's much deeper it's infinitely deeper but once we become habituated to the instance no longer have the patience for that that requires work so that's the second step disengage from materialism the third step is humility and the fourth fourth step is the camaraderie and unity and togetherness that we must have with other jews because here is the thing the torah is infinite because the torah is the will of god and god is indivisible so every aspect of god is infinite and therefore the torah which is one with god is infinite in its wisdom but i as a finite person can only grasp a part of that truth and therefore every person has their helic in the torah and the more i connect to others the more i can learn from their heilig that i would not be able to perceive on my own and that requires both humility and it requires a sense of unity and access these are easy to state not necessarily that easy to do but it's a beautiful in which he takes us through pasuk bays and he shows us how these are the spiritual preparations we need for matantora because these were not just the steps that the jewish people did in the past but these are the steps that we must take every single day so biazrat hashem i hope that all of us will be zoha every single morning to be macabre hashem's torah with enthusiasm with passion with love in fact every day in birha satora we ask hashem to make the torah sweet to us we ask hashem that not only do we keep the torah but we should feel the sweetness of the torah bias hashem you know it's after this fight again i mentioned that actually i don't know if we mention this but it's brought down says that all of the barakah that hashem gave us on rosh hashanah we don't start drawing on it until after tubashrun meaning until to bespot we're living off last year's brother after tubersfat we're living off this year's barakah and that means the tradition says that a sensitive person will feel a difference in their abaydah sashem pre-tu bashvat and after now not necessarily better because maybe you know customers show them tough shin paybays the sarah was not as good but but but it'll be different and we hope of course it'll even be better so we should be open to new potential new renewal that comes into our world that you know based on russia based on the real rosh hashanah based on the first rosh hashanah that is now becoming available for the first time so we should be so glad to take advantage of it thank you [Music] is