Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: Lag B'Omer and Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai

[Music] yeah thank you hi everybody good to see you all and I do want to apologize for going uh awall last week I I mistakenly thought that we're all Zionist here and I thought y was was a night off uh but again I apologize the Torah was not b and you all managed to hear a wonderful Shear so I don't feel as guilty as as perhaps I I I ought to feel anyway uh tonight Sher is dedicated a Raa to Nat Ben and for all those whose Health has been affected by the war and for kers benzar Talia B and for the El of D's mother Dora bise on the occasion of her third yard site in addition an anonymous contribution was made for the of all as well as for the hostages to return safe and healthy to their homes and hashem's protection for all of Isel for the G sha I know that's something that all of us share in artas and and finally a special thanks for all those who have donated to the titis and Fillin fund Bon has already sent over 70 pairs of fill to the front lines and uh the rabut the Army rabut has said that the demand is still very great it's a wonderful wonderful thing uh to donate uh there's a link on the ion website link below so once again it's a great great Mitzvah and specifically fill in are said to inspire fear and reverence uh of Hashem in the other side that when the Nations see that the name of God is upon you they will fear you and RAB elzar hago darsin thein of the r Inspire Myra now granted perhaps the ideal of the Torah was soldiers would actually wear Fillin going into war uh we don't do that for various reasons but still spiritually the fillan brings in a an aura of kadha and that kadha still kind of exists even when you take off the Tain and that actually causes or helps facilitate a sense of n in time of of of uh so uh I'm going to talk tonight about something that actually is connected to the paraa but it's more connected to the special event that we have on Sunday uh we know that we're in the middle of counting of the Omare uh but uh Sunday is L B the 33rd l l gimo the 33rd day of the Omare and the 33rd day of the Omare for somewhat mysterious reasons is kind of the most special day of the Omare uh for example according to most men hug him not all men hug him according to most men hug him the have restrictions they're not getting married they're not getting haircuts is at least suspended on LBA om some even say it's terminated that even after L Bomer you can do it depending on your Min hug him there are many different Customs how to observe but according to virtually all men hug him not all LBA om is at least a cessation of the morning this year there happens to be an interesting halakic leniency and that is since LBA om is right after chabas so you actually have a hetcher this Friday to get a haircut in honor of shabas and L Bomer now you wouldn't be allowed to do that if L Bomer would be Monday or Tuesday you'd have to wait but when L Bomer is adjacent to shabas the H is you're allowed to get a haircut on Friday not Thursday night but but Friday however if you didn't get a haircut on Friday you wouldn't be allowed to get a haircut till Sunday morning you could not get a haircut Saturday night or shave uh or the like so that's a a special heter when LBA om is adjacent uh to Shabbat and the like but I want what I want to talk about though is what is the big deal about LBA om why is it special so first one point that has to be made according to the she of roseo LBA is actually a nonevent r ofo basically says some SP don't follow this that you got to observe 33 days of a from the second day of pesak through LBA om and the terminates the 34th day of the OM meaning according to the sheet of the M there is nothing special on LBA om which is kind of interesting because the maab lived inat I mean SWAT is right next to meon and yet according to the maab there was no really L celebration but most men hug him do have a l b celebration I want to discuss what it is so first of all there is a tradition and I'll discuss the source of that tradition it's not so clear that that L om was the day that RAB Shimon bar died it is the yard site of R Shimon bar and that is the origin of the widespread custom to go to Mayon where he's buried on it is called hilula the celebration hilula rash rash is rabish Shon uh if you ever been to meon I assume you know they always say every person must go to merron Once in their lives but not necessarily twice uh meon is a place you have to go uh we now have hundreds of thousands of people two years ago unfortunately there was a great great tragedy but bem people come back and they've improved some of the safety aspects and we should hope and pray that no one at all will get hurt uh in meon but it does attract hundreds of thousands of uh of people uh then it becomes a commercial thing people are selling refrigerator selling cars you can buy buy anything you want in in meon uh and uh and the like uh the joke goes that meron is so crowded that even rabi shim B leaves uh for the day he goes somewhere else the truth of the matter is if you were to go to meon today you would have the Kev all to yourself I mean there'll be there would be like 10 people there you could spend hours and hours daving by the Kev saying to helim learning Zohar L Bomer in some ways is the worst day to go to meon because you you know it's hard to reach the Kev and you have to push I remember uh when I took my son to meron uh he was around 10 at the time and I was holding his hand very tightly holding his arm tightly because we're going through the crowd but then it's like a tidal wave you really get it's scary in some ways in which I feel I'm I'm losing him like you know like he's get getting out of my grasp I can't I couldn't let that happen so I went back to my old football days and I just not really I but I just like rammed rammed the crowd as hard as hard as I could uh just to get through so brem uh we emerged uh in in in safety but again the idea is this is the yard site of rabi shiman bayai now question number one you would ask is a very obvious question why would that be a happy event the site the death of a sodic is something that causes pain why would this be a joyous day ah because there's another tradition on the day that rabish Shimon bar died he revealed before his death the greatest secrets of the Torah he revealed the light that later became concretized in the zor meaning did not write the book of the Z but the Z's core are the teachings of R Shimon and this was the light that was revealed on LBA om that sometimes a sadic can reveal great things precisely when his Nisha leaves the world in the world he's in the body he might be limited as the Nish is leaving a great light can be revealed so therefore side by side with the fact that this is when he physically left this world this was the day of the revelation of the zor now what's interesting is that some historians have shown that there really is no Mak no authoritative marar that he died in like om because here's the thing in the karal it does describe a lot but by the way when I say Kari you understand it's not really the AR's writings the Aral wrote very very little what we call Kari is predominantly R vital his disciple who wrote down teachings of the so it's not directly the but it's but in the it describes as y r shim the day that RAB shim died but it was shown if you look in the first printings of the kisari it does not say it says adding a instead of shin it says sh which is a bit of an obscure expression but it means the day of the rejoicing of meaning the revelation of this hour in later printings the got dropped by mistake so instead of the word simat you have shet so some have actually posited the whole idea that this was his yite was based on a mistake through a printing error that dropped the but be it as it may whether he did die or didn't die on that day that is said to be the day that he revealed the Z and therefore with shim it's a day in which we try to connect to the great of RAB shim there are many in fact virtually all the Om songs that there are are cabalistic compositions about the greatness of rabi Shimon B he was a disciple of RAB Akiva in fact after the 24,000 students died rabaka started over again with only five he was one of the five and RAB AKA once said about him he says Shimon the world does not know who you are it's enough that I and the almighty know who you are RAB shim and his son rabab shim now to understand exactly who was and therefore what is let me go back to an interesting in it says in the if you keep he will give you reward you will gather your grand the tah promises you you keep the mitv you will gather your grain so reab Ismael says H if the Torah promises you you'll gather your grain that means you're allowed to make a living meaning even though there's a mitzah to learn as much Torah as you can you're allowed to make a parasa which kind of makes sense you can make a living for your family which makes sense right well interestingly enough RAB shim couldn't accept that interpretation he said Gather your grain if a person is going to plant when it's time to plant or plow when it's time to plow plant when it's time to plant Harvest when it's time to harvest thresh when it's time to thresh how will he be connected to Torah so he said if the Jews are truly doing the will of God God will take care of them there's no such Concept in his lexicon of having to make a living I have a job in this world to learn Torah and do mitz and hasem will take it it's God's responsibility to take care of me very extreme now toos asks the obvious question now RAB shim says that the verse you will gather your grain is talking about Jews who are not doing God's will that's what he says how could that be it says if you do the mitzvos you will gather Your Grave how can you say it's talking about Jews who are not doing the will of God so tosas explains oen the anos meaning to say of course they're doing Mitzvah they are doing things but they're not living at the highest level the highest level is to forget about all that stuff God will take care of you the gamari then goes on and says many people followed the path of rabi Ishmael they combined their Torah learning with parasa and God blessed them they were able to succeed many people followed the path of rabish shim barai and they said forget about perasa forget about living God's going to put the check in my bank every every uh week and it says they wind up starving now the gar indicates that rabim is not for most people most people have to live in the world of RAB by the way I want to point out I think a lot of people misunderstand the nature of this M A lot of people think that the and is versus working that RAB Ismael says you should work and not K and and says K now the issue of K versus working is a very important question and we can debate that with many many different sources but in my humble opinion that has nothing to do with this because a person goes to call at least he has a plan I get x amount of money here I get x amount of money here and and therefore I've complied with rabi ism's principle that I have to be involved in economic planning the of rabish is much more radical much more radical than just going to K he's basically saying don't do any planning at all don't ask how am I going to get any money of this that don't even think about it you serve God God will take care of you okay so I want to point out that his position is extremely radical and it's not just coell versus working it's you're not even supposed to think about where the money is coming from and that's why the gumar says many followed his path and they were doomed to failure now it's interesting that what induced RAB shim to have such a a radical view is because of his own life he actually saw that in his own life he and his son had to flee from Roman persecution because he had said some very derogatory negative things about the Roman authorities so he and his son went into hiding for 12 years in a cave and in that cave fruit trees or right outside the cave fruit trees sprung up giving them fruit Springs materialized out of nowhere giving them water Birds brought them meat of course once you start thinking about the K's problems there are a lot of issues I mean first of all when a new tree is planted you're not allowed to eat the fruit for three years so why wasn't there an orer problem with those trees that's question number one meat the birds brought you meat what hash is on the meat was there a plumber was there some type of sign thereus or or whatever okay but I'm not going to get into those questions but the point is Rabbi shim bai's attitude may even sound a little naive but he basically said hey this is the way God interacted with me you can be the same way the gamar says he was unique but he was actually generalizing it to everybody now the gamarra then says after 12 years he finally got worried that the people who were persecuting him died or lost off off whatever it is he and his son can leave the cave and he leaves the cave and he rejoins everyday society and he sees people working and Farmers Gathering and he couldn't believe it he said I can't understand this how can people abandon eternal life for the temporary and ephemeral and the trivial and he looked at these people and kazal say his very gaze burnt them up now again we're not assuming that he used his heat vision to kill people he he did not intend to kill anybody I'm absolutely sure of that but the Holiness was so intense that people could not exist and God said to him you're not ready for this world yet go back into the cave he went back into the cave for a year after the year he came out on arav shabas AR of Shabbat and he saw a farmer carrying two bundles of hadasim two bundles of Myrtle and he was about to give him his heat vision again but then the you heard the person say I have two bundles in honor of chabas one Ked remembering chabas to keep it holy and the other is observing the chabas so if shim had an epiphany he realized that even involvement in the worlds could be holy and Noble so rabish shim represents a type of attachment to God an attachment to spirituality that's kind of beyond our level and it's not even a level we should necessarily try to be but we need to connect to it sometimes in fact I think that's a connection to shita because in sense shita in which for a whole year out of seven the farmer does not cultivate the land in a way is attaching to rabish shim Bai on that level we get to exper now not we so much we're not Farmers but the farmer certainly gets to experience something like that of just totally relying on Hashem now the vagon has a very interesting a very interesting close reading of this when the gar says many did like rabi Ismael and they were not successful I'm sorry they were successful and many did like rabi Shimon barai and they were not successful the gar does not say the is like RAB is or the is not like it simply makes a factual statement many people followed RAB isal and things were good and many people followed rash it wasn't good so says the word you got to underline here is many many many for the masses for most people they should not follow rashby but in every generation the rambam said the Von says there are people who can live at that level and not only are they permitted to live at that madrea but Hashem expects them to live at that madrea the madrea of RAB Shimon it's only Haru many tried to be like and they were not that is what is condemned but for it may be the appropriate Med so obviously the big question a person asks themselves at least some people ask themselves is well am I a rim person or am I a rabi isma person now I can tell you off the top that it's very clear from the gar that most people are RAB isma people but how do I know maybe I'm a Rai person so I want to point out the following to be a r person it's not enough that you like like to learn and it's not enough that you enjoy learning and it's not even enough that you're a very devoted learner essentially to be a ra person you have to be a person who's number one imuna in Hashem is so great that God will take care of me and I don't worry once I worry that kind of shows I'm not on that level a person who doesn't worry and the second is a person who is happy not just tolerates it but is happy to live the simplest life that's possible because when says God's going to take care of you he doesn't mean he'll get you air conditioning and he doesn't mean he'll get you an SUV and he doesn't mean he'll get you you know a five bedroom apartment he'll get you bread and water if you're happy with bread and water when they say you I include wife and children I don't just mean the person on his own if the family is happy with bread and water then yeah God will give them bread and water it's like the story somebody came to the brisker RV and said he has to leave kyel because he has to put uh food on the table so the risk grov asked him do you have bread he says I have bread yeah do you have margarine says yeah bread and margarine you have food on the table what's the what's what do you mean you have to put food there there that's food on the table but most of us can't live that way most of us would be embittered most of us would suffer if you suffer it's kind of a pro now you don't the point is you don't force yourself into that modality because that's fake that's not real so not only is it not real but you're condemning yourself to misery but if a person reaches a level and there are there are people like that in which they really don't care they're happy they're there is such a what Theon is teaching so it's not simply I like to learn so I want to you know I don't want to seek parosa the rest of my life that's not enough it has to be a certain level of amuna and a certain level of what's called his I'm happy with very very little and then Hashem will take care of you one way or the other so the vonish again what's the vones the Von is that when the gamar rules out R shim it is ruling it out for the many but for the Y there are who can indeed live on that level the brisker has a wonderful wonderful proof to the villon you side the Bon doesn't bring this proof but this is such a wonderful proof a little technical but I I have to share it with you it's a proof from the last mishna in M Kad those of you who have learned kadushin might remember that the last mishna is a very very long mishna and it's not about marriage at all it's just the general teachings about life and it starts off with a teaching by Rabbi mayor rabie mayor says a parent should always teach his child omness a profession a job Talent Nik that's clean clean probably means honest that's honest valala and relatively easy so it doesn't take up you know 18 hours a day teach your kid a job or at least pay for his education so he can get a job that's Rabbi mayor Rabbi nuray a few lines down says nah he says I would forget about every job in the world and I would only teach my son Torah nothing else now BOS when I look at these two opinions they seem to parallel exactly rebi Ishmael and rebi shim rebi mayor who says I have to teach my son a trade is RAB ishmael's view that you have to have a pessa rabi who says Ah forget about parasa Torah is the only thing that matters is RAB shim so the pus is I would just match up those two opinions with those two opinions right that's how I would learn but here's the problem the problem is the gamar in aravan tells us nuray and mayor are the same person they are the same person in fact noay is simply arama for May what does May mean to illuminate May noora is light in Aramaic so here you got a problem it's the same person he starts off saying you got to teach your son a job and then he says I would only teach my son Torah and I would forget about jobs you can no longer say it's the r is and it's a s it's a contradiction in the same person so says the brisar a beautiful answer based on the vagon the difference between the masses and the individual look at the different way the two statements in kadan are worded the first statement is a generalization yam espia I should a father must always teach his son an honest and relatively simple profession that's a claw that's the directive as a directive the gamar said most people should follow Rabbi ishma but when revur makes a statement who is also rebbi mayor he's no longer speaking about generalities he's talking about his particular child a because he saw that his child was capable of living on the madrea of RAB Shimon barai so through the vagon distinction this answers what otherwise would have been a contradiction in the mission of kadan by the way uh you can vocalize instead of I would teach my son Ben Torah it could also be read bonai my sons and it makes me think of a famous story that maybe these are the sons of Rabbi mayor who actually died prematurely do you remember that the great Rabbi mayor who was again a student of of rabi Akiva was married to a very very wise woman the daughter of another great Rabbi rabi khanina Ben trajin and this wise woman of course her name was brya a great learned wise wom and one day on a shabas Reby mayor's two boys died suddenly and she covered up their bodies on on the bed when Reby mayor came home he asked where are the children and bruya said I have to ask you a Shila first someone gave me two precious jewels to watch and guard and hold on to till they wanted it back and they've come back to me and they want the jewels back do I have to give it to them shie mayor said you're a wise woman what are you asking me an obvious question this is not your property it was given to you to watch of course you have to give it back so she took her husband up to the room she uncovered the bodies and says these are the two precious jewels that the master wanted back and we have to give it to him you my husband gave me a that we have to give it back without complaint so I'm wondering I'm just wondering if perhaps the reference in the mishin kadan I would only teach my son's Torah rev May is referring to these children before they died which kind of adds adds point i y to the story how great they were how holy they were we don't really know how old they were you I don't know I really don't know if they were children teenagers adults I I I I don't think you see any context in the gamorra as to what their age was they they might have been adults even probably they weren't married because they were you know living in that home but these were children if my speculation is correct that rebby mayor felt could have lived on the madrea of RAB Shimon bar who was her mayor's colleague again and the like so when we think about rash B we think about passion we think about devotion we think about we think about we think about Torah learning we think about not being overly involved in the physical and material world which as rash said is it is temporary it is ephemeral it is Trent one should focus on Eternal matters so that's one side of LBA now there's another side of LBA om which is not at all connected to rash but it's connected to rash's rebi rabi Akiva RAB AKA had 24,000 Tom them now again I uh let me go over quick I think I may have gone over this but in case I didn't let me just go over it very very quickly reaka started off his life as a very ignorant shepherd He was employed by one of the wealthiest land owners in Jerusalem whose nickname was CBA saua CBA saua means an overstuffed dog because he was so hospitable that even if you were a dog you would walk out stuff and those who have dogs know that dogs are Never full can always keep on eating but if you were in kabo sau's house even the dog would walk out full so he was righteous he was hospitable he employed this ignorant Shepherd to be one of his Shepherds one of his workers AKA was a worker for some reason TBA sabu's daughters ra fell in love with this ignorant Shepherd she saw greatness in him she wanted to marry him her father father was shocked he could have gotten the best guy in Lakewood he could have gotten anybody he wanted she's Marrying an I'm hor so he took very drastic action he made a vow that none of his wealth could be shared by this woman his daughter if she married AKA she married AKA and she lived in poverty she lived in poverty they lived in a barn the gamar says AA would would take straw out of her hair she lived in poverty yeah it's hard to I have to admit it's hard to understand the father a little bit but indeed the father was very committed to this she got nothing not only did she get nothing but she sent her husband away to learn for 12 years and he started with the first graders learning how to read and after 12 years he came to pay a visit to her and he overheard her say a neighbor say to her what type of husband do you have that just abandons you and she said for Torah I wouldn't mind if he'd go back for another 12 years he didn't even have a cup of coffee with her he went back for another 12 years again there are a lot of Cotes on the story I I understand I mean he he couldn't say hello some say he couldn't say hello if he would have let himself see the pain of her life he wouldn't have been able to go back but he knew that was his Destiny she knew that was his Destiny and again let me make the obvious point if she did not want this not only he would not have been allowed to do it but he did it because she wanted it and she knew this was his Destiny but if he would have had a cup of coffee with her he wouldn't have been able to go back he had to hold in that emotion so after another 12 years after 24 years of learning 24 years he is now the greatest Rabbi in Israel he comes back with 24,000 students 24,000 students can you imagine that the largest Yeshiva in the world today m is how you count it it's either Mir here or Lakewood in New Jersey but whatever the number is it's no more than 8,000 8,000 is your approximate number of the largest Yeshiva in the world and 90% of yeshivas are much smaller than that this is the absolute largest is 8,000 he had 24,000 and they come back and this woman in rags wants to come up and speak to RAB AA and they think it's a crazy woman they don't want to let her talk but he knows who it is and he says to them the famous words everything I am everything you are sh is all hers without her there would be nothing thear has has a bit of a humorous aside where um her father who does not know this is his son-in-law finally wants to get released from his vow finally after 24 years he feels sorry enough for her and he goes to AKA thinking he was a great Rabbi he doesn't know it's a son-in-law and says can you release me from a vow so in order to get released from a vow you have to identify had you known a certain thing you wouldn't have made the vow so he asked him had you known that your son-in-law would be learn it would you have made the vow he said learn it if I would know that he' know how to read I wouldn't have made the vow so AKA said The Vow is permitted and from that point on they shared RAB AKA and his wife became wealthy through calba sau's benevolence so if you look at it just from the woman's perspective for a moment can you see what this meant to Rael all the years of sacrifice all the years of suffering all the years of deprivation they're worth it look at what was accomplished look at what she accomplished 24,000 people who will be the leaders the teachers the the perpetuators of Torah it's a beautiful beautiful beautiful story but it's not the end of the story K tell us that 24,000 students those students they died we don't know exactly what date what year they died in a plague between PES and Sh and that is the reason why we observe mour not getting married not um not getting haircuts because of the deaths of the students of RAB AA now 24,000 students Torah students great Torah students is of course a tragedy but once again I want to personalize it a little bit look at it from ruel's perspective her life was filled with suffering she finally sees a purpose and then everything collapses into the Dust Rael died a short time after the students died it's my undocumented speculation I I I I have no proof for this whatsoever that this killed her the deaths of the 24,000 students broke her because she suffered so long and so intensely and she finally saw the reason for it and then it's all taken away and collapses in the dust I think again don't ask me for a source I don't have any Source I think it did kill her rabo lost his precious ra shortly after they were reunited and interestingly enough it didn't break RAB AA Raba started from scratch riko lost everything he started with he found five students to teach one of them were who was that group of five and the gar D from R AA the idea that no matter what you did when you were young don't give up when you're old having children or whatever it would be because you never know which God which will be the blessing that God gives you all that Raba accomplished with the 24,000 was lost what he did with the five is the or La that continued in the mishna the gamarra and and and the like so here's the thing people ask the question okay 24,000 students really really bad but to be brutally Frank you know we've had worse you know we've had Holocaust we had communities being wiped out why am I still almost 2,000 years later why am I still mourning the deaths of the students of RAB AA and the answer is the following it's not so much a Mourning their deaths because we've had other deaths but kazal tell us the reason why the students of Rabbi AA died they died because they did not show proper cavote respect honor to each other what does it mean they didn't not show proper respect are we to assume let's say we had a video of them they're pushing each other in line they're calling each other idiots raur says a very beautiful thought ra says we can assume that the students of rabi AKA were behaving exactly correctly polite D they weren't pushing they weren't calling each other names but C out He suggests is not matter of etiquette or politeness it's a certain attitude the Shish of kavod of Rights is from caved caved is heaviness I don't mean physical heaviness but the notion that I look at another person and I see their significance I see their weight I see their gravitus I see them as significant I'm not just polite to some somebody that I look at as an inferior person but I'm polite because I'm a sadic rather I genuinely strive to see the dignity and importance and significance in what that person is offering and that refur says was something some of the students of RAB AA lacked maybe because they had such a great teacher that they felt they couldn't they didn't need to learn from each other hey who needs you I'm connected to the big guy it's again it's a bit of a problem especially since RAB AA was the one who taught we discussed two weeks ago is the great great principle of theah how could his students be guilty of not having that cover for each other but this is ref hs's understanding they didn't show propeper Coven and that's why God took them because you might ask the question well even if they're guilty of that do you deserve to die for that is that an AA that you die for the answer is it's not so much that you know God is punishing you but they could not be the leaders of Judaism they could not be the teachers of Torah of the Next Generation because if a teacher of Torah does not see the significance the radiance the goodness of the other person they cannot be one who conveys God's Torah so they were taken again not so much God is punishing them but they can't be the ones they can't be the ones who bring Torah to the Next Generation re AA had to start again so this is why we commemorate the tragic deaths of the students of rebaka now there is a tradition and this is the second aspect at the first aspect of is it is a celebration of RAB shim the second explanation of L Bomer is it is the day that the plague stopped the plague stopped maybe either e it either stopped permanently or there was a Hiatus that UNL had stopped and therefore it's a s because that's when the stop dying so now I want to explain cabalistic why would it be LBA om that would be the date why why would their death stop on l b so here I need to be a little cabalistic I I'll try to be as as simple as I can we know that we have 10 spheros 10 energy centers through which God interacts with the Universe all the whole universe the Multiverse you know everything and the first three are God's what would you might call mental operations kesser Crown wisdom understanding so we don't really deal with that but the lower seven are emotional Behavior attributes loving kindness gura Inner Strength tiferet Beauty n eternity hold Glory y foundation and the last one the 10th one or the seventh of the lower seven is malus kingship and exactly what the manifestation is is a complicated thing and we could spend many many Shor on it I don't want to advertise in other share but in in the center nor we've been learning the beautiful safer to d'vorah and we've been going through spus now I I cannot claim that my Tom dvor share is the best one on YouTube but I can I think I can claim it may be the longest on YouTube we're already up to 85 sessions so it's long we've done it we've it's a small safer but we really were Mar we were very very um lengthy she on it so it is it is a long series of shim but the tar is basically basically explaining the ethical meaning of the spheros now the way it works is each spher is linked to a Biblical personality who exemplifies that spiritual energy so loving kindness is Abraham Inner Strength is tier Beauty which is really the synthesis of and G is Yakov Moshe represents eternity and Aon represents Glory and Y represents foundation and D represents malus so we link each of the lower seven spheres to a personality and you'll notice that in this type of nomenclature Moshe and Aaron are before ysf Moshe is four Aon is five Yosef is six even though ysep lived earlier and the Yan once you go with this this is one of those things that permeates everything the YP is based on the spos and these personalities and the seven weeks of the OM are based on them that is week one is the week of that's the week of PES week two is gor week three right so first week is Abraham's week yak's week jakob's week moshe's week aon's week yosef's week David's week now now to make it further each day now there happened to be seven weeks and there's also seven days in in each week so each day of the Omare is connected to a SPH both by virtue of its day and by virtue of its weeks we get quite complicated so let's take day one of SPH which is of course the second night of PES that's called it is the day of loving kindness situated within the week of loving kindness super the second day is called gura Inner Strength within the week of and don't confuse that don't confuse the second day of the first week which is g with the first day of the second week which is so you actually have 49 permutations and I mean this actually deserves a whole series of Shor but you can actually get books Hebrew and English that try to correlate what is the spiritual essence of every day of the Omare now based on that map a little bit let's look at LBA om now LBA Om Day 33 of the Omare is the fifth day of the fifth week because four weeks we finished it last night is 28 days we're now in the fifth week see it's a little confusing because we're counting it's 4 days and one day four days and two day right we're counting it but but we're in the fifth week it don't be thrown off because we haven't finished the fifth week yet so what is 33 it is the fifth day of the fifth week what is that that's hod Glory of Glory double do of Aon Aon squared Aon represents lover of Peace pursuer of Peace seeing the good in others seeing the value in others seeing the significance in another person and when it's an IR and IR the whole fifth week is the week of Hod but when it's hod shod the sensitivity is very very strong that's the spiritual vibration so now we can understand why RAB aa's students didn't die on that day if the reason for their death is they didn't see the significance of the other on the day of hold shold they became liberated from their myopia they became Liber ated from their prejudices and maybe it didn't last maybe the next day it started again but at least on that day she hold I can see the radiance of y n my vision gets clear and that's why the students of rebba were liberated so biter to summarize we see two different things here on one hand we're celebrating rabi Shimon bokai and on the other hand it's h shod Glory of Glory in which the students of RAB AA sto dying interestingly enough these two faces of LBA om may be a little bit inconsistent with each other in other words we're being called upon to engage in two opposite types of spiritual reflection because when I look at shim what I see is zealousness Passion True Believer looking down at the people who have to work and do all that other gmas materialistic stuff when I Ponder Hood I'm looking at tolerance Unity a is accepting people for who they are just like aan was O Shalom for SH now in the world that we live in these two dimensions are often in conflict because you often find that the more passionate I become about my Divine service the less tolerant I am of people who are not living up to my standards I see them as failures I see them as substandard I see them as inadequate sometimes I'll call them a like or whatever a or whatever it would be and then the other way around the people who are tolerant big tent accepting generous nice they don't stand for that much they say I'm okay you're okay you you believe in gay marriage you believe in abortion on demands you know okay who am I to judge so you seem to have two personality types you have the RAB shim Zealot who stands for the truth and will never compromise and then you have Aron nice guy he'll even build a golden calf if people want it so to speak so you're one or the other and you look around some people are the Zealot and some people are the nice guys but the two faces of LBA om teach us something very very important these are not supposed to be contrad addictions you have to integrate and synthesize both dimensions passion Devotion to truth not compromising your values understanding the Primacy of Torah learning and Mitzvah over everything and at the same time looking at people with kindness with tolerance with acceptance with respect for where they are are and to see the good in them and these are not meant to be contradictions of an either or they're not binary choices you got to be both and indeed in some ways this whole talk is a commentary on a single biblical verse in the z a Jew must love truth and a Jew must love peace the kutar Reb used to say it's easy to love truth if you don't care about peace and it's easy to have peace if you don't care about truth I if I don't care about truth I can I can get along with anybody the challenge in life is to love truth and love peace and this I would suggest are the two themes in logb Omar the r shim is connecting us to truth and the glory of Glory with the students of RAB not dying connects us to the importance of shalam and therefore in LBA Omar we think about both of those ideas and beem L B is not just one day but the the thoughts of L should carry us through in our daily lives again I I say virtually every week that if there was any Silver Cloud or silver lining in the dark clouds of War it was the sense that in many many ways the bridges of separation between different parts of our society uh the separation Bridges have been built meaning the there was separation and bridges has have been built unfortunately we already see that some of those bridges are beginning to disintegrate we kind of are getting back to our bad habits and maybe L Balmer could be a time of re-evaluation where we try to get back on the course that knowem we were on uh for several months following the brutalities of October 7 and in that way we can be Z to be ready to receive the Tor and even more importantly to be to receive the mashia and the GAA that should come so thank you [Music]