Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: Message for all Mankind the True Love and Awe of the G-d of Israel

[Music] since uh we are moai Tu bishvat already two days after tat just want to throw in one one little thought about Tu bishvat that's very very interesting I think very beautiful part tubish of course is the rash shat New Year for trees and technically that is a very very technical concept of and that basically says that any fruit or any tree whose fruit has blossomed buted after two belongs to the new year for purposes of truma and Maser uh and every tree that budded before Tu bishvat belongs to the old year even though it's after rashash 5779 and it's simply an assignment of what year a tree belongs to that's about it uh however there is a mystical significance that the students of the are put the tuat and that is the idea that a human being is compared to a tree tree and we are considered to be an upside down tree a regular tree is RO or the roots are in the Earth and it's growing towards heaven we are rooted in heaven and we are growing towards the earth and the significance of tub bishvat is the following why is it the rashash because really it's the middle of the winter now granted most of the time in AR we don't have any big snow but you know in the states there's a lot of snow going on but even in erus there's nothing growing yet uh things are dormant but the talet explains that by tub bishvat all of the sap has gone up from the roots and entered the trunk and the branches so tubish is really a recognition that even when something looks bleak dormant nonproductive there is within its pineus there is within its internal structure all sorts of potential for blessing and that's how we have to view ourselves as well of your ourselves and others sometimes we look at other people or ourselves even and we see not as productive as I could be I'm not growing I'm not producing but tvat is the reminder of looking at the hidden potential in things appearances are deceiving we don't make a holiday on the day that the fruits actually come out we make a holiday when internally all of the mechanisms are present so Tu bishvat is really a very important message message about Hope and resilience and optimism and not being dissuaded by the appearances of things because beneath the appearance there is a deeper reality than you can actually see with your eyes so I I thought that was a very beautiful thought about tuat uh that we can apply to our own to our own lives uh now what I wanted to talk about today though is actually connected to uh the splitting of the Red Sea and I'm going to start with the observation all of us know that ones and we have a Mitzvah to recite Hollow right Hollow are the the specific chapters from dilim that praise God for his miracles and for his kindness now normally there is what is called a whole Hollow right Hollow has a whole sequence but there are times of year in which we delete part of hollow and that's called a half hollow although it should be more accurately a two thir H because most of H you're saying but there is a deletion now there are only two occasions where we delete one is rodes ofes is a half and the other is the days of pesak other than day one on the first night during the Seder and the first day of PES we recited a whole the rest of PES we we only recite a half H now the question is I want to explain why that would be so now why a half is reced on is actually fairly simple normally in order to recite a Hal you either have to have a y or there has to be a great miracle like kanah Roes is technically neither a yto nor did any particular Miracle happen ones so as a result the gar itself says that the rodes is a Min it was a custom that developed it was not an absolute requirement and in order to differentiate between mandatory Hal and Minh Hal we recite Less in thees because it's only a minute that the ra actually pin you don't recite a and that makes perfect sense actually you don't recite a on thees because it is not a mandatory it is only a okay but that's fine that's a good explanation fores but that does not explain the last six days or in it's the last seven days no I'm sorry even it's the last six days can you say a full H first two days the last six days of P where you only recite a half hollow p is a and it's a Torah why should it be worse than sukot every day of sukot we recite a full Hala including so why would P be inferior the answer we give for is not a good answer for PES is not a p is a even is a to do caronus is it huh something to do with carbon so so the gamar actually gives a technical answer the gamarra basically says that the Musa the additional offering of every day of PES was the same and therefore you look at PES as one long yum and therefore the hollow of the first day will cover you as opposed to sucos that every day was a different carbon so it becomes eight holidays that's exactly what the gor says but there's another answer that we shown in bring which is actually a better a more well-known answer that I'm sure you have heard and that is the following the seventh day of PES commemorates the drowning of the Egyptians in the yamu that's the seventh day of P that's why we read aashir on that day as the Egyptians were drowning the gar tells us the angels in heaven wanted to sing to Hashem and praise him for what he was doing and Hashem said I don't want to hear the song of the Angels this is not a time of rejoicing it is not a time of Happiness my creations the Egyptians are drowning in the sea they are my Creations too the ATM sh and you want to sing and praise me when my Creations are drowning this is a very very amazing statement because on one hand God is not a pacifist God is killing the Egyptians here God isn't saying oh I feel sorry for them you know let them live there is a recognition that sometimes has to be eradicated but here's the thing you're never happy about it you don't glory in the destruction of human beings it is a sad tragedy when we have to take the ultimate step of destroying our enemies we do it someone who's coming to kill you go and kill them but we don't Rejoice schl said the downfall of even your enemy do not rejoice you know there's a famous statement from gold de Mayer some people hate the statement so don't get angry at me she made the statement uh but she said that we can forgive the Arabs for uh killing our children we cannot forgive the Arabs for making us kill their children now the first part of the statement I I do have to disassociate iate myself from uh we don't forgive them for God forbid killing our children but there is some Merit there is some wisdom in the second statement that from a Jewish perspective the tragedy is not only what we lost but the tragedy is what they lost because every human being is made in the image of God and every human being has the potential to be a good and virtuous person and when that doesn't happen that is a tragedy the almighty Grieves over what might have been I mean think about it this way again it's a difficult thing to imagine maybe it's not a pleasant picture but imagine if somebody had a child who grew up to become a mass murderer what are the parents feeling unfortunately you know we have these cases at least in the United States all the time what does a parent feel towards that child does a mother still love her child even though he's a mass murderer what exactly are the feelings now again I I don't I don't think there's one answer in every case the question is even sharpened when when it happens in the states yeah does the mother regret having given birth to the child yeah yeah yeah and all I can say is there must be kind of an ambivalence in which there's a simultaneous love for what this child could have been and could have become and a tremendous infinite grief not hate but grief at what the way the things turned out and in many ways that's what the almighty is going through there is grief that a person took the precious life that they were given the precious soul that God gave them and perverted it and corrupted it and used it for evil so is a very profound meditation on the notion that the tragedy of evil is not only uh with respect to the victims of evil but there's a tragedy in the life of the evildoer himself excuses what did you call it the this is the phrase this is what God Said the the creations of my hands are drowning in the in the sea that's the language of the gamar now all of this is in the gamar now now there's a medish that takes the gar one step further it's important to know this step is not in the gamor there is a medish that says just as God silenced the angels on the day that the Egyptians died and that's what the gumar says we diminish our joy on the day that the Egyptians died in the Red Sea by reducing our Hal from a whole Hal to a half again I I want I want to repeat that extrap vation is not in the talmud the talud makes the point that the Angels were muted the medish explains that is why we have a half Hal on the seventh day of PES because of M now the T one of the commentaries on the asks the obvious question well that explains the seventh day of PES but for the other five days why why don't you say a whole so the T says well let's go backwards we never want to be more significant than yum itself so you work backwards if on the last day of PES which is a you're not going to say a Hal then how could it be you'll say a so in a sense uh the tale of the tail has to Wag the Dog meaning to say the end of PES dictates the rest of the retroactively because you don't want to glorify by giving it a full H if penal PES will not have a full H this is what the Taz says and this is a well-known explanation that people give by the way some have applied it to something we do at the Sor and this is also a fascinating little bit of detective work that somebody did you know during the Seda when we recite the 10 plagues so there's a custom that we dip our finger in the wine and we pour off a a drop d s and one of the reasons that's most popular for that is that since the 10 plagues are discussing the sufferings of the Egyptians we want to diminish our joy a little bit now fascinating though and that in particular I want to mention something somebody had asked me a few years ago uh what commentary says that thought so I had seen in art school and other books that's from the abarbanel so I just said a barbanel barbanel I've used a barbanel quite a lot but it's a huge commentary so I have not read it word for word so I said I'm assuming it's in the a barbanel so he said well I went through a barbanel word for word it's not in a barbanel so I said so I thought well maybe aam not there the guy really did a lot of research so it turns out this is very very fascinating somebody wrote an article in a journal tracing the origin of this thought and the earliest mention of this thought for the pouring out of the wine is a 19th century Rabbi in Germany who is not even that well known uh and he just kind of invented this thought but this thought really caught on in popular English AAS because it expresses a univeral universalistic idea the classical reason that was given for the pouring off of the wine by by the finger simply to emphasize that the plagues are the Finger of God which was not connected to any commiseration so it's very very fascinating now how come the art scr set of barbano this is okay I don't want maybe it's too technical it's quite amazing it was printed this thought was printed in a book of German sermons and the grandson added this thought in the name of his grandfather and the grandson's name was bamin and when he added something he wrote Alf Bas which simply meant Omar binyamin but Alf Bas is often an abbreviation for a barbanel yeah so some later haos they saw the AL Bas they figured without checking a barbanel that this is from a barbanel and the way sources get replicated is and this is a very very common in writing people do not go back to primary sources if you see something quoted in a secondary source you just put the quote so it became like a virus in in which a million different hagadas are quoting something in the name of theel which in fact theel never said and that's because people don't go back and check an original source so if any of you are doing writing uh and you want to quote something that you saw quoted in another book always go back to the original book if you can that is uh good practice okay but be it as it may even if applying it to the pouring of the wine is a new thing but the medish does apply it to not saying Hal on the seventh day of PES that that is an authoritative source so the question I want to raise is this it seems that this idea that we don't Rejoice on a day that celebrate that celebrates the destruction of the enemy is based on kind of a universalistic idea that we care about the human race we don't only care about the Jewish people but we look at all human beings as being made in the image of God as having dignity as having sanctity as having potential for goodness even if they had gone off the wrong way now here's my problem on the first day of PES including the Seder we do say a whole now the first night of pesak there were quite a lot of deaths as well the firstborn of Egypt all died but we seem not care about that because after all we got our freedom so what's going on here uh are we parochial people that basically say as long as it's good for the Jews who cares or are we people that feel the pain and the suffering of others it's like a split personality here on the first day of pesak we seem to be focusing on what's good for us and you know let be damned whatever happened to them is their problem on the seventh day of pesak all of a sudden we graduate into universalists who are worried and concerned and commiserate with even the enemies that were destroyed now again we're still not pacifist even on the seventh day we don't simply say forget it but we do have a sense of grieving and concern so here is the thought that that I want to share with you that is there was a fundamental difference between the 10 plagues and the splitting of the Red Sea although both of them were used as vehicles for the punishment of the Egyptians and that is with respect to the 10 plagues the miracle was all in the direction of punishment for example the first plague God miraculously changed the water into blood so what is the nce the Nace was the Onish the Nace was the punishment for frogs every single Maka the sh the changing of nature was in the direction of punishment that which the plague did not affect the Jewish people was not a miracle per se it simply left the Jewish people in the scheme of the way the world normally operates there's a tea there's a normal way things operate normally water that you take out of the Nile is water it's not blood the Jewish people were left to the world of tea and the Nace was in the direction of punishment and retribution Kus yamu interestingly enough was actually an opposite pattern what was the miracle of Kus yamu that the water split and the Jewish people are able to cross the Egyptians did not die miraculously rather when God ceased the miracle if you happen to be in the middle of a uh sea Channel a Channel Through the ocean uh when there's no longer a miracle you die naturally now yes there are M rashim that talk about the Egyptians dying in a supernatural way uh that each one died in accordance with the way they tortured Jews but that's not the simple shot the simple shat of the PK is the Egyptians died naturally so there is a difference now we we don't know why why this makes a difference yet you know is it a distinction without a difference but there is this distinction the 10 makos the N was the Onish and the hatah and the Savior was te nature withu it was the opposite pattern the N was theah and the ones was the te right that is a difference now what is the significance of that difference so here let's go back to the PK the PK that we actually recite every day is that when the Jewish people experienced they said they saw the Great and Powerful hand that God did to the Egyptians and they feared God The Bash and they believed in God M and in Moshe his servant by the way this p is quoted in the and that is the only reference to mosha renu's name in the ha so if your kids are falling asleep you can offer them an extra prize if they notice when mosha renu's name is mentioned it's only mentioned once the de emphasis of mosenu in the ha is a remarkable thing because in the every virtually every P about the Exodus mentions MOS but wants to deemphasize the human element of leadership to emphasize the divine nature of but be it as it may the Torah makes the claim that I'm sorry the splitting of the Red Sea gave us or and the medish comments until yam we didn't have it wasas yamu that gave us y what does that even mean the 10 plagues did not Inspire awe and reverence what was it about K yamu that gave us an awe and a reverence that we did not have from the makos so the explanation that's given is the following there are real three different definitions of Y and fear is really not a a good way of capturing all of them the lowest level of Y is called haes what ises fear of punishment I better be on my best behavior because after 120 years God is going to hold me to account for the way I lived my life and therefore I better be as good as I can be because they'll be now the ram writes that that's an inferior level because you're essentially serving God not because you're serving God you're serving God because you're afraid of consequences that will happen to you and the rambam says such a is only for people who are not yet wise and don't understand that the reward of goodness is goodness you don't serve Hashem to get reward or to get punished but nevertheless although we like to demean this level but keep in mind if we would have a true Yates we would never sin we would simply be very very disciplined in the way we live our lives but that but it is true that in the hierarchy of spiritual levels yat ones is a relatively low level although Hal that we would internalize it in a proper way but then there's another level of Y which is not really fear it is awe that's why the word y has different nuances there is a era that is I'm afraid of something but then there's a era that is not fear but it's awe reverence respect and in the language of the rishonim the lower level of Y is called and the higher level of is called harat means the awe of God's grander and even on a human level we experience those things for example uh if a king or a president comes into a room at least today they're not going to cut off your head in the olden days maybe if you misbehave in front of a king uh they would order your execution or whatever it would be but if Queen Elizabeth nice lady uh comes into the room know she's not going to put you in the Tower of London uh or whatever whatever it is and yet uh we become a little self-conscious about our Behavior we try to behave in a better way now sometimes the the presidents themselves may be a bit buffoonish and without I don't want to get into those issues and that sense of reverence may not exist that much anymore but generally speaking uh powerful leaders inspire a certain sense of reverence a certain level of awe a certain level of what it might be now that's a very different emotion see the same Hebrew word is used fores and that's called but they are very different one is Fright or fear and the other is awe and reverence those are the classical two levels of ER but the maral and the balatan afterwards by the way for those who don't know the balatan the alter rebbi the first kabad rebbi was actually a direct descendant of the moral of pra he was actually a great great great grandson of the maharal very very interesting which means that although the maharal lived way before the bov the maral was grandfathered in as an honorary the maral is always treated with great great respect in all of all theic rebes for hundreds of years nonas were not studying maral maral now is popular but for hundreds of years maral was neglected except within theic world so the moral is honorary but both the maral and the the Tanya say that there's another type of fear or another type of era and this era is not of being afraid nor is it reverence but it's a y that is connected with love because Beyond fear Beyond y there is the notion of loving God you love God for his Essence and you love God for his kindness and that connects that that that generates an intimacy of feeling which is love and the balatan says when love is very very intense you are afraid you are afraid to do anything that will bring pain to the object of your love let's take an example a person let's say a person is very attached to their spouse and their spouse is sleeping and you want to get up when you want to make breakfast for your spouse but you don't want to wake up your spouse now you're not afraid of your spouse you're not afraid he or she is going to hit you if you wake her up you're not afraid of him or her and nor are you in awe of him or her but because you care about them so deeply you are afraid now we actually use the word you are afraid to wake them up you are afraid to make noise you're tiptoeing around the bedroom and around the house you are afraid not afraid of them but afraid of doing anything that will bring them pain or take away something that you want to give them that's a different type of era that's a era that comes out of an intensity of love the balatan quotes a beautiful passage from the Zohar the Zohar says love and fear are the wings that bring your Mitzvah up to heaven a Mitzvah is an external act and even if I don't have any particular elevated kot a Mitzvah is a Mitzvah but to truly give your Mitzvah Wings what makes your Mitzvah fly what makes them sore what brings them all the way up to God and therefore brings you up to God is not just the external act but it's the love and the fear that you bring to the mitzah but the balatan says the meaning of fear in that statement doesn't mean I'm afraid of God in some ways that's inconsistent with love but rather it's an intensity of love that says you love God so much you would never even imagine doing something that contravenes his desire because that creates k a pain on the part of the almighty now again you know the issue of God feeling pain is a is actually a difficult philosophical issue uh the rambam as a rationalist would in some ways deny that very possibility on the other hand I have to say that the god of the cabalist is very much connected Ed to these Notions of feeling and how do you reconcile the to is a question I'm not going to fully address but certainly certainly the language of Tanakh itself talks about God's feelings God's emotions and the notion that when we sin we are causing pain to the Divine uh is something that kazal or language at least that kazal use even though we're not entirely clear how to philosophically understand it but this is level three of fear not fear of God and not even awe of God but fear of bringing pain to that whom you love in such a deep level now based on this here is the idea if we go back to the plagues of Egypt in which God made miracles to punish the Egyptians that did give the Jewish people a great sense of God's infinite power and the fact that evildoers are going to get punished so we certainly left MIT with a very strong dose of Yates fear of punishment because we saw what happened to the Egyptians and we left Egypt with a great sense of awe and reverence for what God can do but we did not yet fully experience God's Divine love because although he took us out he did not do a miracle to take us out the Miracles were to the bad guys yamu was the very first time that God orchestrated a miracle not for the purpose of punishment but for the purpose of saving us and rescuing us as a result what about the man huh what about the man the man is later cam is the first one so now it turns out that we experienced the fear of punishment and the awe in reverence but the fullest expression of divine love was experienced by the splitting of the Red Sea now there's a beautiful PK in Mishay which I think ought to be the mission statement for many people's lives all of our lives what does that PK mean as water reflects the face that you show it so too the heart of man reflects that which is shown meaning of the PK if I have a pool of water and I look into that reflecting pool if I smile at the water I get back a smiling face if I frown at the water I get back a frowning face whatever face I show the water is what the water shows back to me schl says as water reflects the face that is shown to it so too the heart of man reflects that which is shown to it I show another human being love respect they will feel that for me it'll be mirrored back for me I show them disdain and denigration that is what they will feel in fact this is why many issues in Israeli Society uh never get uh resolved I'm not referring to Arab Israeli issue that's a separate para but I'm referring to all of the yeah the knesset and all of the political infighting and all of the religious secular Marcus because the custom in debate in Israel is that I look at the person who disagrees with me and they are either an idiot at best or they are mik or they're the devil uh and they're totally evil well if religious people look Aton or whatever it is and say they're evil then the will look at religious people and say they're parasites and therefore we have an escalating war of insult and derision and humiliation and embarrassment That Never Ends because each side is refusing to see the good that can exist in the alternative Viewpoint now how do you break that deadlock it just gets worse and worse and worse and worse tells us exactly how to break that deadline you look at the other person and you strive to see the good that is within them the legitimacy of at least part of what they're saying in in in Virtual all of these positions there's going to be something worthwhile some insight something that's salvageable build on it Build It Up look for common ground find some theud that is valuable in what the other person is saying and then give that person respect for the Integrity of their searching for the truth and then the miraculous thing happens I show that person person respect for their Viewpoint they will be open to understand my viewpoint and then you get closer and closer now the question becomes people sometimes say well why do I have to be the first one let him understand me and then I'll move the answer is yeah okay that's true but somebody has to be the adult in the room you know husbands and wives are fighting uh and you know his spouse is told make a move do try to reconcile well why should I reconcile let the other person reconcile okay okay but then nobody does anything and nothing ever changes so I think there's a special responsibility on people that follow the Torah and follow Torah values to specifically be the one that strive to see the good and the legitimacy in those other viewpoints to follow schlomo's advice that whatever you show the water is what you will get back Kam him upon Him upon him you know I remember a few years ago uh when the whole issue of drafting Yeshiva students to the Army uh first surface well it's been surfacing for many many years but the first legislative attempt so there was a big big Mass demonstration of I think they give numbers I think it may have been 800,000 a huge huge huge demonstration and uh they boasted that it was nonviolent which uh that's a great braa but in some ways boasting if the best thing you can say about demonstration was it was nonviolent that's like they say in Washington uh the best credentials of a politician is he hasn't been indicted for anything yet okay uh it's not violent but that's not that's that's not that much of a compliment okay uh but I thought to myself and again I don't want to get into the issue of the army this is an issue that people can debate and can discuss and there are arguments on both sides I'm not going to get into it but here's a thought that occurred to me so they gave speeches denouncing uh conscription of yiva students the importance of Torah learning okay Bader but I thought to myself what if at the end of all of the demonstrations they would have then recited to hill or prayers for the soldiers that are serving in the Army so they would have said that although we believe that people that are learning Torah are providing an essential national service which brings God's blessing on the Jewish people and therefore they shouldn't be conr red okay but at the same time we recognize how our are also risking their lives and we want to express our appreciation for them because we're ultimately on the same team although we're doing different ways of helping Israel if that would have happened with 800,000 people I I think mashia would have come and I'm not I'm not being totally factious that we would have had a situation where yes we stand for a certain ideology we believe that we need full-time Torah learning and we believe that but we also acknowledge what the other side is doing for our for the benefit of the Jewish people that's G that's mashia that's Building Bridges that's Kam upon and that would have changed the whole tenor of the secular side of the debate as well where we would understand where we're on the same team we're on the same page as opposed to having Waring factions which will never come to any type of agreement this is my upon Him upon him now if this is true for Human Relationships it's equally true for our relationship with the Divine and that is if creas yamu we experienced God's infinite love for us that awakens within our hearts our love for God so so far we have the following cras yamu demonstrated God's love for us more than the 10 plagues because the 10 plagues the miracle was a miracle of punishment K yamu was a miracle of therefore yamu we felt the love of God at a much higher level step one step two ifas yamu enables us to feel the love of God that in turn awakens within us our love for God based on the principle that that which you show the water the water shows back therefore creas yamu not only showed us God's love for us but it aroused in a powerful away our love for God that's step two step three when your love for God is very very intense it then turns into fear not fear of God but fear of doing anything that brings God pain therefore the medish that says cras yamu gave us y and we didn't have ER before that point does not refer to fear of punishment or or that we indeed acquired in Egypt but it refers to the era that comes from heightened love okay that's the explanation of the concept that cras yamu gave us y would you apply the three constructs of Y to the principles of Yas of your same that was the first level is fear of punishment the second for for parents me yes yeah well this makes actually this makes perfect sense the three the three levels about parents because there is a Mitzvah to also have besides besides honor the Torah says you have to have a man man or a woman must have y for their father and their mother uh again the three levels fit absolutely uh perfectly first is fear of punishment the first level is fear of punishment now again not that parents should be abusive but discipline whatever it is a child ised by discipline then it turns into a deep respect a person should try to awe they should look at their parents and ideally they should find some attribute that they deeply respect all that in awe a certain reverence uh that you have uh and again this this could be many many things I think many you know many of us find you Mark Twain once remark that uh when he was uh I don't remember the exact years but I'll make up the numbers when he was 17 he thought his parents were so foolish but when he was 25 he was surprised how intelligent his parents had gotten in just a few years and I I think this is an experience that that you know all of us go through on one level or the other uh that you know we may have sworn that we would not be our parents whatever then we turn into our parents in a good way sometimes uh and we certainly understand there was a lot of wisdom there so that's the awe and the reverence but the third is connected to love that is when your love is so great you just don't want to do anything that will hurt them in any way so the paradigms fit very very nicely that way so now with all of this introduction which is a little bit intricate let's go back to the the original question I started off with the question I started off with was that there seems to be a schizophrenia in how we view Egyptian suffering the first day of pesak plenty of Egyptians suffered and we don't care we say a whole Hal because we got out of Egypt and what happened to them is none of our business and in fact in the da it's not only none of our business we celebrate oh God you did this to them did this to them this to them you know we're really we're kind of happy right we have a DI on and we have a catchy n about all the bad stuff that God did to the Egyptians so uh on day one of PES we are what you might called parois we are only focusing on what's good for the Jews all of a sudden day seven we become universalists we are worried about the community of man well which one is it I mean is it one view of humanity or the other view so I would suggest to you that there's kind of a transition going on because the beginning of P we live in the world of y y is fear of punishment and awe in reverence when you live in the world of Y your concern is really egotistical I better behave because otherwise something bad may happen to me or I better behave in order that good things will happen to me when you live in the world of egotistical calculation what's in it for me even if it's spiritual then by definition you don't care about what happens to the other guy you're just happy for yourself because y itself is egotistical I better behave this is the first ER I better behave because otherwise things will happen but by the seventh day of pesak your relationship to God morphs it changes from a relationship based on fear to a Rel relationship based on love with the heightened fear of not hurting the one that you love now when you love somebody and then you know every marriage is aware of this one of the steps of love is to try to see the world through the eyes of the other person let's take a marriage as a good example men and women are very very different no matter what they are different they see the world differently they respond to the world differently but one of the things one does in a marriage if it's a good marriage is you try to understand how the other person sees things you put yourself to whatever degree is possible in the other person's shoes in fact a very common technique in marriage counseling is role playing it's done all the time uh husband and wife are at an impass so the husband is told make believe you're the wife and come up with what she feels and the husband does the wife does the same thing because you're putting yourself in the shoes of the other now that would suggest the following analogy if love means trying to understand the world from the perspective of the other then love of God would mean something that's actually impossible but on some level to see the world through God's eyes rather than your eyes so when my relationship to God is based on y I'm looking at the world through my eyes what's good for me I am making calculations when it's a question of what's good for me I don't really care about other people who suffered I got out but when your relationship to God is based on love you're trying to see the world through God's eyes through God's eyes all of those people that you thought didn't matter as as long as you got out wind up mattering quite a lot they are God's creatures they are God's children there are human beings with potential they have families and therefore the reason why on the first day of pesak we are parochial ISS and on the seventh day of pesak we are universalists is because we're moving from a relationship based on fear to a relationship based on love and when you have love of God you will have love of all of God's creation because they are what God made they are what God cherished they are what God cares about and you love God so you love what he cherishes right that's kind of the explanation now remember the book of yonah right the book of yonah is read the afternoon of yum Kipper Yona it's a very unusual book in many ways uh Yona number one is given a mission to the Gentiles that's very unusual most of the prophets of Israel are always given a mission to go to the Jewish people yonah is told to go to nve the Assyrian capital nve and warned them if they don't do chuba in 40 days the whole city is going to be destroyed and Y didn't want to go you know why you didn't want to go it's very fascinating he didn't want to go because he felt that the umot do Chua much faster than the Jewish people do and therefore they're going to make the Jewish people look bad they're going to do chuba the Jewish people have 100 prophets nobody does juuba so he didn't want to go he wanted to escape his Destiny and that itself was a fascinating story about getting swallowed up by the fish okay without getting into all of those details but ultimately the people of nve du cha and God forgives them because they repented the obvious connection to Yum Kipper is very very clear we're reading about even the most evil people even non-jews that's a very important Point God accepts the sincere person who repents that's an important message but at the end of the story Yona is very upset Yona feels he looks like a fool here he warned them you're going to be destroy and then you know God cancels it looks stupid so he's kind of upset and then if you remember the end of the story he's sitting out in the sun and Hashem makes a plant grow that that that that gives him shelter and he's very comfortable under that plant and then the plant dies and yon is cursing you know the Heat Of The Sun It's unbearable and God says you have so much compassion for a plant that's one day old it wasn't here yesterday it's here today and now it's gone and you think I don't care about the thousands of people the myriads of people they don't matter and I think that's a secondary theme of yum Kipper other words if we ask ourselves why do I read jonan yum Kipper so the obvious answer is the message of repentance that is the obvious answer but I think there's a secondary theme as well and that is God cares about everybody there's nobody that is so insignificant so unimportant or even so evil that God does not care about them and when you have a relationship to Hashem based on love you will share that emotion when your relationship to God is based on fear you will not and that explains the difference between the parochial attitude of I just care about me the first day of pesak with the commiseration with the nations of the world on the seventh day yeah if um we looked at the world through God's eyes love what about the seemingly the of the Torah that don't necessarily show God's love yeah so so so here's the important distinction yeah so here's the important distinction remember that even in Egypt when Hashem is expressing his care for the Egyptians he's not calling off this the destruction of the Egyptians uh which means to say there is in the world a necessity for the equivalent of amputation sometimes moral depravity is so serious that you literally have to amputate meaning destroy kill there is no way uh they're not going to change things are not going to get better uh just as for example I mean again I I'll use another example let's say uh a person has a child you know a grownup child who's trying to kill them and they kill their child in self-defense or to prevent the child from killing others they killed their child did they love their child at the moment I I'm raising hard questions did they love their child at the moment that they killed their child I think on some level they did but they did what they had to do so it is important to understand that this is not like the Christian version of love that you always turn the other cheek we don't believe in turning the other cheek we believe in sometimes destroying anmy but that's not a contradiction to the notion of Love at the same time it's a complicated scenario right so this is the mystery of divine love the notion that everybody counts but that doesn't mean there are no consequences that doesn't mean there's no accountability that doesn't mean there's no responsibility and that doesn't mean simply forget it and let people do whatever evil they do there are consequences in the world and that's needed for the moral order but there's still a love there at the same at the same time okay so uh this is the idea of why Camu represents a certain graduation of how we comprehend and relate to God and again uh rev cook writes about this quite a lot rev cook often writes that as you deepen your relationship with Hashem the concentric circles of your involvement and concern are going to get broader and broader and broader and broader uh it'll be not just your family right everyone starts off with themselves then you broaden it to your family and children then your community then the Jewish people than the world then the Animal Kingdom right that's where cook says in the ultimate Messianic age will be vegetarians right that even even graduate to that particular uh level and that is the nature of Love of seeing the world through God's eyes and not through our eyes so I wish you all a good week and we should to incorporate these lessons [Music] oh [Music]