Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: Mystical MarCheshvan - Making the Ordinary Extraordinary

[Music] everybody's got a stove you know Mark Twain I have a special affinity to Mark Twain although he was born in the in Missouri but he spent his adult years in Hartford Connecticut which is where I grew up and our standard class trip used to be to the Mark Twain House which is in West Hartford Connecticut so Mark Twain Samuel Clemens was his real name wasn't agnostic and indeed towards the end of his life he had lost his wife lost his daughter he suffered a number of tragedies so he became quite bitter and he would often make fun of religion because he felt it was offering false platitudes of comforts when in fact real life was cruel unpredictable arbitrary capricious so in one of his unpublished writings just as a satirist he portrays a conversation of Adam and Eve after Adam named all of the animals and Eve points to a lion and Eve says to Adam why did you call that animal a lion so Adam is very impatient he says it looks just like a lion what else do you think I would call it and of course he was making fun of the arbitrary idea that somehow the name signifies its essence but the truth of the matter is I don't know if Mark Twain was conversant with Kabbalah or not but according to Kabbalah if you translate it back into Hebrew that is exactly the answer there is a concept in Kabbalah that the entire physical universe was created through the various combinations of spiritual powers that exist within every letter of the olive base just like water if you take two hydrogen atoms and add it to one oxygen atom and that creates a molecule of water so two Aleph represents a certain spiritual color and Raich represents another spiritual color and yield is a third spiritual coax and hay is a fourth and when you combine them in a certain sequence that is how God creates a lion so when Adam harish own name all of the different animals he did what we would call reverse engineering he basically looked kind of a spiritual x-ray into what is the composition of all of these different forces and the lion is Allah Frazier day and the cow is you know pay rachet etc and therefore Mark Twain's point is exactly the Kabbalistic description of names Adam did not create a name he simply identified what are called needs a roof a osios the combination of the letters which gave rise to creation in fact we have a Kabbalistic work that tries to explain this process this is called safer you'd see where the book of creation according to some it was authored by none other than our Rama vino according to others it goes back to other Marysia you can actually get it online you can even get an english translation although we hardly understand what those things mean and through the co-ack of safer yet zero even a human being was able to create various forms of life because i'll tell us that there were Technium and mo ryeom that would create a cow through say free athira which they would shift and eat on Shabbos and safer yet Syria is the source of the power to create what is called the goal of the artificial man again there's all Shaolin allaka does a golem count for a minion now it's interesting golems cannot talk because speech is connected to the divine soul and the golems not have a divine so it's kind of a humanoid etc the most famous golem is of course the golem that was reputedly made by the morale of Prague kind of a superhero that would defend the Jewish people from various accusations I do have to say that in all probability the Golem story is a legend it is simply not true and the basic proof for this is that the morale died at the end of the 1500s the end of the sixteenth century and the very first time we hear about the golem was in the eighth in the 19th late 19th century when a rabbi claims to have discovered a long-lost manuscript that talked about the golem unfortunately this rabbi and one could write a very interesting psychological profile the rabbi was an eminent Thomas Clark might want to mention his name he was a Talmud kharkom he was a PO sake and he wrote legitimates for him but for some reason he also was a notorious forger I mean we have other instances where he deliberately forged things so as a result he basically is not reliable at all with respect to any type of attribution now it's still the case if you go to Prague and you go to the Morales beit knesset they will tell you in the locked attic there is the goal of and you better not open up that attic or the golem who is now sleeping will become recommissioned as it were and wreak havoc and they tell stories of Nazis going into the Attic and bad things happening now again I'm not willing myself to go into the attic and see if I'm right or wrong but again very very eminent historians including many orthodox historians dr. Gennaro linemen for example have concluded that the Golem story is largely a legendary story although I've heard it said that the previous Lubavitch arevery not the last one but his father-in-law called the free of the Caribbean actually claims to have been in the Attic and to have actually seen the go but you know who knows it's hard to know rabbi wine remarks about many specific stories that if you believe them that they all happen you're an idiot but if you believe they couldn't happen you're a heretic so it's kind of this idea did the morale make it golem probably not would he have made one had he wanted to probably yes you know so whatever it would be now the reason I'm bringing this in is just to give you a little introduction to say for you see rep because I want to mention another part of safer yet Syria that is relevant to today and that is one of the things that safer you sirrah does is it uses the power of the olive bass not only to give rise to matter to physical reality but even to create different types of time right there is sacredness of time and with that what it does is that for every month every one of the twelve months it says that the unique holiness of the nature of that month comes from a particular letter of the olive bass when it is combined with a human sensory function whether it be sight or hearing smell or or the like now what's strange is that the letter doesn't have to be a letter that's actually in the word of the month itself just it's kind of a metaphysical idea that from the letter and the hosh gives rise a level of kedusha and it does this for every one of the twelve months of the year and one of the things that rough sadaq the greater of southwark does is as you go through his commentary on flemish priests attic whenever he gets to the time of year the parsha that would be connected through a straw - in the case of catchment it's between gracious and Noah he always explicate the passage of say free in ceará that talks about the nature of the month in fact some more recent Moloch team have taken all of those passages out and have made a whole safer on Rosh Chodesh according to Rob's a dog in which he explains these various passages so I'm not going to go through all of the months obviously but I want to go through the month of freshmen for a moment the irish college freshmen and by the way tonight is really rosh chodesh when you understand that in the jewish calendar when you have a two-day Rosh Hodesh although we do have to say yellow vfo and all the road is prayers technically the first day of Rosh Hodesh is the 30th day of the old month so if you were getting married last night or today you would not date the Suva Rosh Hodesh Marcus Ron null talked about marks estrin in a moment you would actually have to date it shallow Shem Tishrei so tonight and tomorrow is actually our freshman the only exception to this and it's a little too complicated right now to explain this is Rosh Hashanah itself Rosh Chodesh Tishrei is obviously also two days these are the two days of rashanna but the waiver Hashanah works is day one is our lift its ray day two is based it's rate and some Gedaliah is gimel Tishri but that is the only instance of where today Rosh Hodesh day one is Aleph of the kodesh every other two they rush so - day one is day 30 of old month and day two is day one of the first month so this is really Rosh Chodesh cushman tonight and what's a Fiat Syrah says is the following God took the letter known and he combined it with the hush the sense of rayak aroma smell and from the conjunction of none and smell emerged the sacred month that we call festerin yes the name is their name is Marc Ashwin in fact now by the way there's a whole no no I understand that but as they say the combination is not connected to the letters of the months and whether you call this question or Marc Leishman that's not going to change it this is a spiritual entity by the way the whole concept but by the way of ascribing Seyfried Syria to of Rama V no is problematical just in terms of the nomenclature because we know that the names Tishrei marcus rain kiss slave whatever it is our of Babylonian origin and they were not used by the Jewish people till the Exile to Babylon and we brought them back to average Israel in the Amish for example those names are not used at all rather all the months are counted from the Sun and all we say is for the Shoshone first month second month etc so it's a little problematic all because safer you'd see ray uses the words Tishrei might recommend kids slave debates etc and yet in the time of Avraham those were not the months that would be used and the sovereign himself was using Babylonian months which might be because indeed that was his place of origin but be it as it may the question becomes what is the connection between none andraia and why would that be appropriate for such fun so here's our drum setup says it's a very famous chimera I'm sure you've learned it before heard of it but for let's take the famous psalm 145 which is colloquially called ASHRAE which is recited three times a day technically by the way RA is not part of that capital ASHRAE is the plastic from another capital but cou from M he begins the lava Java dharmam crush em okay hemella so all of us know that ASHRAE is now a better girl-- acrostic but there is one letter of the olive base that does not have a parsec that begins with it and that is the letter noon ASHRAE goes from them Malcolm somehow hood column in and the next one is so may Hashem : o flim there is no park in ASHRAE that begins with the letter none this was problematic oh by the way there is a version of the Psalms and the Dead Sea Scrolls that actually has a nun in ASHRAE but that's not considered part of our Misawa sourav Jochen and raises the question a mile own mr knowing the US right why is there no known in our shrine how come there was a plastic beginning with none so of Jochen and answers because none is a remiz - Neff Fela falling down as it says in almost when almost is describing the awesome punishment of the Jewish people through gallows and Corbin almost says knopfler she has fallen low sights if comes she will not be able to get up again Basu lucky thread of the Virgin of Israel David hemella did not want to begin a puck with a letter that connotes defeat crushing Nephila falling down he did use the Fila in the next verse but only in connection with Hashem supporting you so may Hashem look all the new Flemish M supports all who falls down but he did not want to begin on the note of Mithila by the way the Kumari then goes on and says that Rovio : is reading the pus again almost in a very pessimistic way no flaw she has fallen low socialism she won't get up again it mentions that there were other hidden in Eric Israel who read it they moved the camera around and they read it in an optimistic way because commas are importance nuff low-low so since she will not fall again come arise the celestial so depending on where you put the comma you either have a very pessimistic dire prediction or you have a very very promising one I guess if you live in Eretz Israel you have to be by definition an optimist you have to be a person of great hope although revealing himself lived in Eretz Israel and he interpreted the prusik in a dire negative way the truth of the matter is it's up to us right to prusik if we live our lives with chuva then we get the second interpretation enough llamosa if God forbid we don't do treatment then bad things could happen but be it as it may what was the Florida phrase you used enough LaMotta yeah yeah yeah well again the Feli they as a negative connotation so here is what we have so dr. ascetic says if none connotes the idea of Nephila so of all of the months of the year it is fresh fun that we are most prone to falling down because we just had we talked about this last week we just add a month of column of the highest pivotal experiences of the holiness of Rosh Hashanah and a Sarah sham a true of Yom Kippur and the joy of circus and simplest Torah and all of a sudden we hit a month in which there is literally no yom tov anymore now some say this is a folk etymology it actually is not true but but it's a very very popular thought that the reason why the name of flesh fun is actually mark Cushman and that is how it has to be written it makes Suva and they get it is connected to such fun being bitter it's a bitter month because we don't have again we don't have festivals there's a certain sadness although young too pathetic and I understand that unsub to some degree there might be a relief that we don't have all the elements of him but there's a tremendous letdown now this is a very famous which we might which you might call a folk etymology Marvin the bitter month of ashwin the well-known statement which was let's examine that very quickly that Cushman is the only month of the year that doesn't have a young chef well let's let's check that very quickly kiss life has Hanukkah okay tave eight has the second part of chronic as Hanukkah straddles kiss left a base shots my tuba fats or we're already being a little liberal into what's called a young tip but to betrothed is a happy festive day and maybe more so in Eretz Israel then than other places a dollar of course is poor em nice honest Pesach er peso Jamie the make up for peasant which actually is a festive day and if you are at Sione your mouth smooth as well as lock ball Mara is also again where we're stretching a little bit what we mean by mmm Tobin then you have seven which is Shavuos now Thomas is interesting the only notable event of Thomas is the first day of the 17th of Tammuz and yet because I'll tell us based on the puss against Acharya that all of those fast days when the basin mikdash is rebuilt will not only no longer be fast days they will actually be days of celebration and thus of the ninth of of is going to be a day of celebration and of course you also have the 15th of F which has all say together with yom kippur ello now LOL actually also does not have any type of car game but we say you know you're already blowing show for your anticipating so in a sense you can look at it as the precursor for the saga Tishrei but such one is after the car game bereft now obviously what happens is well we spoke about this last week when a person experiences all these moments of sacred special unique time and all of a sudden they are confronted with the ordinary the everyday the mundane there is a sense of letdown we kind of lose our spiritual momentum I remember even as a 9th grader I say just a 14 year old kid that you know in every year it works this way that after Yom Kippur the day after Yom Kippur is bein as my name right vacation and it just struck me even then we were you know working and learning and praying and diving so hard Rosh Hashanah Yom Kippur and then M keepers over this is even before service all right you're on vacation it seemed very very I mean listen I I took my vacation I didn't I didn't turn it down but it seemed very very strange and freshman has that the sense strangeness because it's all gone how do you hold on to things so if so doc says the none of Cashman has to be balanced with rheya aroma smell fragrance what is aroma and fragrance aroma is what lingers when the thing that generates the aroma might be long gone imagine you have a room that's filled with whatever would ever think about whatever food that you like whether it's a roast chicken or whether it's Joe Leeds or whether it's the baking of bread right they say when you sell a deer a sell a house you should always bake bread so it'll have that pleasant fragrance that makes the home more inviting and alike and those of you that are more literary you might remember proce remembrance of things past that's a huge huge book I have not read it myself but it's like 6,000 pages and oh volumes and volumes and volumes and the book begins with a stream of consciousness because somebody smells an aroma that reminds them of something they experienced in childhood and that creates 6,000 pages of memory and and and and the like so such fun well said oak says in a spiritual way we no longer have the youngnam totem but spiritually we have the rayak of the mmm tell him we can still hold onto it and bring it into ordinary life and in that sense freshmen might be the most important month of the year with semi purply because it is easy to be inspired when you're in the sacred moment it is much more difficult to take the sacred moments and apply it to the mundane nature of ordinary life now in truth even freshmen is not bereft number one we're so dish is considered to be a moet number two most important of all we still have Shabbos which is holier than even Yom Kippur and that's very interesting I can prove to you that Shabbos is holier than Yom Kippur because in the order of Torah reading Shabbos has seven Aliotti Yom Kippur has six Elliot jumped up is five Rosh Chodesh komomo it is for regular Monday and Thursday is three the hierarchy of Aliotti indicates relative sanctity shabbat is holier than yom kippur ah you'll ask me the famous question but Yom Kippur is described as Shabbat Sabbath own which is the Shabbos of Chavez's well that doesn't mean it's holier it's true that your Kippur has a special characteristic of forgiveness that a regular Shabbos doesn't have but Shabbat Sabbath town means the resting of resting meaning to say on a regular Shabbat we rest from work on Yom Kippur not only do we rest from work we also rest from eating and drinking so Shabbat Shabbat own is not a statement of what is holier it is a statement of the Savita the resting of Shabab yom kippur is more expensive than the resting of Shabbos now this is an interesting point the fast of Yom Kippur is not described as a fast it is described as a resting that's a very very fascinating meaning Hashem is I mean we don't look at it that way Hashem is relieving you of the burden of eating and drinking he's taking it off our backs so we don't have to be distracted by our physical needs that's why people ask the question is it appropriate to wish somebody at some cow right we always say have an easy fast hmm some say what wait a second here maybe fasting is supposed to hurt you know have a bed have a hard fast you know so one might say again this is not a halakha that maybe there's a difference in the ninth of avignon Kippur the ninth of of supper so to speak feel bad korban based on McNish yom kippur transcend the physical nature of your body so it doesn't matter to you so annoyed by Yom Kippur would mean deprived your animal soul deprived your necklace the animals are meaning put the animal so out of the way okay yeah that's always good yeah yeah I thought I first heard that in silver spring and I thought ah reckon that's the typical silver spring consideration but but i but I hear now that it's a relatively common sentiment so they probably don't get credit for inventing it but that's good that's kind of have a meaningful fast which that's all purpose that works for all of the fast days [Music] yeah well part of it is yeah yeah yeah well again it's a it's a difficult issue but part of it is to faster in our personalities a sense of appreciation for the wonders that surround us everyday how correct itself is a great great key to to feel the wonder of your life because in point of fact therefore to recognize that the notion of ordinary life is not really ordinary there that every moment is extraordinary and the truth of the matter is in some ways with all of the daily frustrations that we have living in Eretz Israel should we should be able to have a stronger sense of what that means if you think about how your grandparents and great-grandparents and before that how they yearned how much they would have given for the opportunity to spend like one day of their lives here and we're just here and we're not just here just here like under Iraq but look at the country and the State of Israel and all of the things that Hashem has allowed us to achieve and accomplish and one could be filled with such tremendous gratitude so as a general idea the more gratitude and appreciation you have for life the more you recognize what a gift it is the more you are able to be mom shift to continue that sense of holiness so that's what is art and every time right and the the point of question is to recognize that the ordinary is actually extraordinary and that's a very very important idea and of course we said in the Amidah three times a day only Sakura Shibuya me mano we thank a Shem for the miracles that surround us every single day only suckers your butthole Yomi ma no and that's an important idea you know the concept of mindfulness which is a term at least that is from outside of the Jewish tradition at least as a term but if you follow these different trends you will see that mindfulness now a very popular type of exercise even within the religious Jewish community and really for good reason in many many ways the concept of mindfulness involves living in the moments appreciating the experiences as they come into your life and that is really what gratitude is about in fact even the word correct our Tov I mean Hebrew is a very subtle language as you would expect a karate toe which we translate as gratitude does not literally mean gratitude a curette is the recognition of the good see it it's not that we're not grateful just we don't notice so many things how correct a toe is about noticing when you notice you automatically become grateful because you see all of the cuts are dim that surround us all of the all of the time right so that's kind of refresh when is a is a challenge we have to and again all of us go through this I mean after is always a letdown after peak experiences right you might be depressed after a child gets married or bar-mitzvahed that you've been working on for months and months and months and one has to understand that every moment in life has its blessings has its potentialities and has its ways of connecting to our College worker so that was reps others thoughts on Rosh Hodesh freshmen now the other thing I want to share with you is not not not at all my own thoughts and them again there may be something that you're familiar with but it's really a very very beautiful bit of partial notes from Rev Joseph Joe Sullivan Bishop University by the way it's fascinating point of trivia maybe I don't know if I should get into this that human diversity which is a very fine institution but in the karate world there's there's been some disagreements with the university because of its integration of religious and secular studies so as a result whenever rev salivate check is quoted in the Haredi world his title is always give instead of saying Rosh Yeshiva where you refuse to go huntin which is why his name he's always described as I've based in of Boston because he actually happens to be the chief rabbi of Boston as well although that was a much of a secondary title so so whether you call him chief rabbi of Boston or Russia Shiva of why you makes no difference but one of his most famous articles which was written in English was an article in tradition I think it goes back to the 1960s but then it got republished as a little book and that's called the lonely man of faith and it truly is a very very classic and beautiful book and in that book the essence of the book is based on explaining an interesting contradiction in the book of rages and I'm sorry neither book in Parshat bration and last week's parsha and that is the two contradictory accounts of how the human being was created there are two differences there are two different stories about the creation of Adam both of them happened on Friday but there is the story as recounted in Genesis one perikala for Bridget and then there is an alternative story that is described in Perak base now the secular Bible critics are not our people so to speak they use this as proof that the Bible has multiple authors etc and as a result there were two different accounts and some editor slapped them together of course that's a pretty incompetent editor I mean if you have it I mean one of the things in editor is supposed to do is iron out contradictions so to say all of these contradictions show multiple authors well I would fire that editor if you simply don't even it out but nevertheless this is standard plain vanila biblical criticism in which they point to contradictions and discrepancies and they use that as proof so to speak of multiple authorship now obviously we as Jews who believe that the Torah is divine and the Torah comes from God and every single word of the tower except perhaps the last eight verses was written down by Moshe hearing those words from from God then if indeed there are contradictory accounts God put in those contradictory accounts and the reason is because there are certain lessons that he meant to convey by giving you two versions of a story meaning when you're given two versions of a story the divine lesson is not did this happen or did that happen Hashem is really telling you I'm not telling you exactly what happened but I'm giving you two models of reality so you could extract lessons and you have salivate check points out without going over all of the details that there are four basic distinctions between the account in Chapter one and the account in Chapter two first chapter 1 emphasizes that man was him and the human being was created but Selim elokim like the famous statement that God said NASA Adam let us make man bits almay no kids Moo say no in our form and in our image and obviously as Maimonides very emphatically writes this does not at all refer to physical image because I shall does not have a physical image but this refers to autonomy creativity freewill etc the image refers to spiritual characteristics not being a creature of instinct so in Genesis 1 brace aspera caliph the human being is described in very exalted majestic terms the image of God and it does not mention it does not mention in perikala he was taken from the dust of the earth that detail again we we almost read it into the narrative because we're so used to it that does not appear until peyrac pays Hashem took the dirt of the earth and for formed man so in a sense para calif emphasizes man and the same era included women men and women the human being as the image of God Perik Bay's are for men are Dhamma nothing more than dirt second difference is mission statement in para caliph Adam is given a mission demand hava true or vu be fruitful and multiply mill Lewis or 'it's fill the earth the Kip shoe ha conquer it's dominated control it subjugate it in fact there are actually environmentalists some of whom blame the so called judeo-christian ethic for the despoiling of the environment they say Oh Genesis 1 tells man to control and dominate nature rather than live in harmony with it and some people like to blame the Jews for everything including the condition of the environment so Genesis one talks about domination mastery and control in Genesis 2 it says Hashem put Adam in GaN Eden love da to cultivate foolish chambre and to protect now that's a different connotation than domination and control rather this requires a notion of kind of almost a subservience I'm here to take care of this to nurturance and alike so there is a difference in the mission right so difference one is selam aleykum versus our farm in Adama second is kif schewe vs. leav dalu Lashon ha number three is when did woman come on to the scene in para caliph we don't read about the story that autumn didn't have a and it's not good for man to be alone all of that appears in parrot base in Perry Calif it says za Haruna kava bara Oh Tom God if you read it literally God created a man and a woman there seems to be the simultaneous emergence of man and woman it is only in Perak base that we have a whole different version of the story that there was man and man named the animals and man did not find a mate that it was compatible with him and uh Shem said it is not good for man to be alone I must make him a helpmate and I should mate I don't fall asleep and he took his side and he constructed but para caliph says ocarina cave on borrowed time so there's a pretty strong contradiction para caliph suggests the simultaneous emergence of a man and a woman Perik base suggests there was a man that are the sense of an aching loneliness than a Shem addressed by creating a partner and finally a different name of Hashem is used in para caliphs the only name of God that is used is el lo Kim Bereshit bara elokim and that is used throughout Parekh Aleph Parekh base we introduced the Shaima via the UK love king now these are for again all I'll repeat them these are four basic distinctions in the account of how Adam and hava were created one is Selim elokim in para caliph versus our farm in Adama in Perak Bay's number 2 key Bush conquest domination mastery in para caliph vs. loved working and cultivating and protecting in Perak days in para caliph the third difference is simultaneous emergence of men and women as opposed to Adam feeling inadequate and feeling incomplete and therefore the woman was created from him afterwards and finally the friends in the shamash M elokim versus shame Avaya now again the Bible critics noted all of these things and this was their basis among a million other arguments they make for multiple authorship we do not accept that we reject that we believe God put in both accounts and the question is what is their significance so again Russell matrix point is this and this is a point by the way that is not limited to this particular case this is a way to understand all of discrepancies and contradictions and that is Hashem is using a story as a vehicle to convey a moral truth and it's not even intending to give you the exact details of the story in fact in this sense I mean maybe I shouldn't even say this word because it is such a dangerous loaded word that I might lose my job but in this sense and you have to know what I mean I'm going to be very careful to explain what I mean in this sense the Toraja it does don't repeat over right in this sense certain certain aspects of the Torah are our myths now again you have to know what I mean by a myth a myth does not mean not true it does not mean a Bubba MYSA a myth means a myth is a very very strong reality but it's a reality that is not concerned automatically with physical facts but rather Hashem uses the sewage of salvation essentially says although he doesn't use this word essentially the Torah is using a description to convey a spiritual message which is of divine origin and 100% true and here what ruff salivate success is this if the the creation of man is described in two different ways that highlights the binary nature of the human being and in rough survey six famous language para caliph talks about Adam 1 and Parekh Bayes talks about Adam - these are not two different people these are the same person but it has two dimensions and atom one is what he calls majestic man and atom two is what he calls redemptive man and he says these are two aspects of the human personality Parekh Aleph of braces is designed to give a human being a sense of their inner greatness and their potential you know there are there are religious philosophies maybe Buddhism might be an example there might be described as quiescent quiescence essentially means passivity this idea that God controls everything and your job is to simply grin and bear it Christian Scientists for example if someone gets sick they do not seek medical attention because they they take the belief well if God didn't want you to be sick he wouldn't have made your sick and therefore who are you to contravene the will of God in other words there is at least a theoretical idea that if you believe God runs the world there is nothing for you to do at all Judaism rejects that idea very strongly Judaism beliefs that although God of course runs the world God has made us his junior partners in trying to make the world a better place so yes God is the source of your penis ah but you have to work yes God is the source of whether you'll get better or not but you're obligated to go to the doctor or take whatever medical treatments are necessary we believe that a Munna requires that we be actively involved in making the world a better place we drain the swamps we fight disease we try to combat injustice even in Torah learning the whole concept of the oral law where the harkaman take the text of the Torah and they grapple to apply it to new situations reflects a certain idea of human responsibility God could have given us all of the rules I mean we have all sorts of my cloak 'some about everything right microwave ovens on Shabbos or whatever it would be why didn't God tell Moshe the answer why do I have to have my cloaks in between the remote refine steaming of zalman or butter because Hashem gave the Torah in such a way that we have to take responsibility so consequently the message of Boreas para caliph is connected to man's power as an autonomous thinking entity and therefore the message is you are in the image of God you have the qualities of free will autonomy creativity power ability mastery that is why your mission is said to be conquer don't be a passive victim of the blind forces of nature but fight them when necessary conquer that is why it describes the commonality of men and women emerging simultaneously because it is only as a team that we're able to do that meaning man in a state of aloneness cannot create families cannot create communities so when you talk about the majesty of man the power of men it has to be in connection with the ability to form families and that is why the name of God that is used in para caliph is the shame elokim because L o Kim is the only name of God that can also be applied to human actors because then we vocalize it as Elohim judges are called Elohim etc because and that's why man is B'Tselem elokim he's not B'Tselem javea shame avaya I have no connection to elokim power over nature so para caliph is sketching out that man has a destiny man has a role in the world that you don't simply take the world as is and roll with the punches although when we have to do that we have to do that but rather we have a job we have a role it is our responsibility to make the world a better place it is our responsibility to fight disease to combat injustice to interpret even God's will how it applies to new situations that is the majesty of man but there's a Sakana in that vision of man because that could easily lead to you Burris to arrogance to divert to thinking that I'm the master of the universe that I decide what goes on and therefore F so vetrix says that the you in the human personality there has to be as it were to use this fancy word a dialectical tension there has to be another aspect of reality that you incorporate in your psyche and that is that which redeems man from his arrogance and his Gaia and that is called redemptive man yes you are but Selim elokim that's what para caliph says but remember you were made from the dust of the earth yes you are given the power over nature but you must exercise that with responsibilities and limits that's what beric basis to cultivate and protect yes you have the ability to form communities and Families men and women but remember the existential loneliness that you experienced and how unless God stepped in to give you your mate you would be bereft and alone and vulnerable and afraid as it were right that's the idea of lo toven is not good for man to be alone and yes maybe you connect to God on the level of elokim but there is a javea there is a supremacy of Hashem that is above anything you're able to do sir our survey Jaques says the two accounts of the creation of men are designed to highlight the fact that in our personalities we must try to incorporate these two opposite tendencies if all you have is Adam one you have arrogance Guyver hubris in which you think you can do anything without limits if all you have is Adam two you have passivity you simply don't change anything you simply let things happen you know if God wants there if God doesn't want malaria God will eliminate it or polio or whatever it is and therefore you need the combination of Adam 1 and Adam 2 now in many many ways these symbols are these two visions of man coming from the two accounts of creation are mirrored in the two experiences at least of a Jewish boy we know that an eight day old boy if he's healthy it gets a Brit Milah gets a circumcision now you know that in the world today there is a bit of an anti-circumcision movements some of whose leaders are unfortunately Jews there was even a referendum in San Francisco to ban non-medical circumcisions on the grounds that this was a non therapeutic operation without informed consent somebody ought to tell them that when the kid is 18 is going to hurt a lot more but until he's 18 you can't agree there was even a court that got reversed but there was a court in Germany now the case was Islamic circumcision but it was the same principle that basically said that it was against the doctrine of sin of respect for people to allow parents to circumcise minor children for religious reasons because the child is not capable of giving consent and there was actually a court in Germany that essentially would have banned religious circumcisions although that reversed I like to think about that when I here was a German court I like to think about Wow how much more humane Germany's gotten in the years I mean that's 60 years before or 70 years before they really didn't have so much solicitude to children in Brooklyn over the years they become much more compassionate and open it reminds me a little bit I visited Poland once with a seminary and we went to Auschwitz we went to lunch was the concentration camp and it's you know it's a museum basically it's an exhibit you have to pay admission so when I was there this is I mean this is a funny story but they're also a very sad story there was an older man who just kind of walked through the gate without pay he did not pay the get in touch with so the German guard called him back hey hey you got to pay so he rolled up his sleeve he had concentration camp numbers he says oh I'm sorry about that last time I was here they let me in for nothing I mean what a lie so the guard like turned white and just you know so alright that's not something - don't you think about but okay so this idea so brick me lies so one of the arguments that anti-circumcision people sometimes make on a religious level strangely enough is that if God wanted Jewish boys to be circumcised he would have created them circumcised who are you to improve on God's creation are you saying God created Jewish boys at least defective that had to have to be corrected no obviously it's an absurd argument because God is the one that gave us Brit Milah but in fact this argument was actually raised in the Midrash by a Roman princess a Roman matron who asked rabbi akiva if God wanted Jewish kids to be Mahal then why did he create them up hell Surya Kira gave the following example you know God we say in every bracha himoto see let them minarets hashem brings forth bread from the ground now we don't get bread right i don't go to the ground and pick up the bread what happens is we plant seeds we have to plow and then the the wheat grows and we have to harvest it we have to thresh it we have to grind it into flour we have to mix it with water and make dough and have to bake it so why doesn't God just give us the bread the answer is because Hashem wants us to be part of the process Rabbi Akiva says the same way that God gives us the bread via our participation in this process so to Hashem did not want to create a perfect world Hashem created a world in a state of imperfection giving the human being a responsibility to become his partner so circumcision Rabbi Akiva says is the remnants of human responsibility for improving a defective world Hashem left the world that refers says iShare bara elokim la assaults hashem created the world la assets so more needs to be done he could have made it differently but he wanted us to be his partners in making the world better so circumcision is the connotation really of Adam 1 the majesty of men the capacity of man to go beyond what he was given and to change reality in a positive and constructive way but we know that Brit Milah is on the eighth day which means by definition the baby must experience a Shabbat or at least part of us uh but you know he's born on Shabbat the Brisbin SEPA so he has two halves of Shabbat so to speak now the metric says that the following way the measure says before you can do the before you can enter my covenants you must greet my Matra Nisa you must greet my Queen the Shabbos meaning only after you experience the matter Anita can you enter the bris now if you think about it Shabbos is exactly the opposite message of Brits Mila if Brit Mila is that that I am an active actor in making the world better I am God's partner Shabbat is the essence of what you might call passivity I refrain you know I tell the story a lot maybe I said it here more than once but you know when I was I went to a North Iraq state school in Hartford Connecticut but most of my classmates were not sure my Shabbos this so this was the day before the conservative movement had their own day school so anyone who wanted their kid to have a Jewish education would go to the Orthodox day school that's all there was so a lot of my classmates really 70 percent were not sure my Shabbos at all so I remember once there was a Bar Mitzvah one of my classmates in the reformed temple and I was walking to go to this reformed tempo again without getting into the Holocaust there we didn't focus on the details so much in those days and there was no area so it was a hot summer day and I didn't have any water so as I'm walking trudging through this Reform temple my one of my English teachers drives by a Jewish woman on Shabbos and she offers me a right so I say well you know I can't go into a car in Chaves so she says why not so I said I was only like like 12 years old I said well you know it's work because you go into the car and your extra weight causes more more gasoline etc and you're making a fire you know so you can't you can't do it so she said let me understand you're telling me that for you to go into a car an air conditioned car which will get you to the synagogue in five minutes is prohibited work so instead you're going to walk five miles in the summer heat without water and that's not prohibited work so at that point I just I was already confused myself so I kind of just disengaged from the conversation but it's a good point my people always raise the point wait wait a minute driving a car is work and walking five miles does not work you know moving a very heavy table in the house is not work but carrying a toothpick if there's no area of outside is work what's going on and the answer is actually relatively simple the definition of Melaka on Shabbos and this is from our first is not physical work it is creative mastery over the raw materials of nature and it doesn't have to involved work at all in a physical sense whether it's writing whether it's cooking what you're doing is you're taking the raw environment and you're transforming it in various ways that's why the old argument people say oh you don't turn on an electric light because it's fire that's because in the olden days it was rubbing two stones together today where's the exertion for carrots if anything it's more of a mastery that I can create all of this light and the light which means on Shabbat going back to Shabbat sir Shabbat is about refraining from exercising my mastery over the raw materials of nature thereby recognizing that our Kaddish Barco is the master of these processes so it's interesting therefore that if you go with Rob's elevate Rick's dichotomy between majestic man which is about domination and control and redemptive man which is about deferring to a greater authority and that's mirrored in Adam 1 and Adam - that actually is the dichotomy between Shabbat and Brit Milah Shabbat represents the redemptive man the afar men Adama and the miele represents the initiative of man as someone that can make decisions and change reality the only thing that's interesting is that the sequences are reversed in the Torah itself the majesty of man is para caliph and the the the subservience of man is Parekh base here we have Shabbat and then Mila so that's an interesting question why is the see reversed but as they say this is all in again with some some additions obviously but this is Repsol great success a the lonely man of faith which I think was republished recently and to me it is such a useful paradigm not only for the distinctions you Adam won and Adam to majestic man and redemptive man but because it really is a way of dealing with contradictory biblical narratives that they are designed to give you two distinct facets of spiritual reality because the Torah is not always that concerned with historicity in fact we can broaden this discussion there not tonight too many many conflicts between religion and science that emerge in the beginning of braces but you know the short answer is that until recent years the traditional Torah Judaism has not had the problems that the Catholic Church has that the Catholic Church has a long long history going back to the Middle Ages and and before of having difficulty with assimilating scientific discoveries whether it be Galileo whether it be Copernicus and you know people were forced to recant throughout the famous recantation of Galileo where he had to publicly recant and then mother under his breath but it's still true you know and and the like Copernicus but Judaism we find was able to go with the flow meaning as science determines various things the morale for example incorporates Copernicus into his worldview with really not even barely a comment because the Catholic Church looked at the Bible in a very very literalistic way and Judaism understood that the Torah is primarily a spiritual teaching and it is not intended to deal factually with all of the details of the mechanics of creation so in many many ways conflicts between science and religion are the classic apples versus oranges type of problem in which religion Torah and science are dealing with two different types of questions they are not dealing with the same questions science is dealing with the mechanics of how the world came into existence Judaism is dealing with the more important question why did the world come into existence again I'm really alluding to things that deserve much much longer treatment but as a result many thinkers within the traditions of Judaism very much believe that we can live with evolution we live with the age of the earth we can leave with everything as long as you posit the Supreme God that is the architects and the master of all of these processes even a first set refers wrote very shortly after Darwin's Origin of Species was published in the 1870s were first wrote that evolution was an unproven theory he did not accept it as true and they're still current debate about that but he then said even if it were to be proven to an absolute certainty it would have no effect on my theological beliefs because if God is infinite God has an infinite array of tools in his palette or car whatever metaphor colors in his palette and if evolution is one of those tools there's no particular problem with that so again he did not endorse evolution and nor do I endorse it but he said he did not feel that he's posed any particular religious challenge to a believing Joe that's a very important point to keep in mind because there are people that say I can't accept the Torah because the accounts in Genesis do not correspond to modern science and you know the short answer is if you want to be a heretic find another reason to do so this is not a legitimate reason because we are open to incorporating all of those different approaches yeah [Music] yes yes yes so you know we don't have time to fully address this in a sense that was a huge huge step backwards to the detriment of the Jewish people meaning to say rabbi Slifkin spokes were not at all revolutionary again he's a very very fine scholar but he was not breaking new ground and in fact yeah I know yeah yeah yeah in fact robberies lifting himself is the first to tell you that he was in fact that's why he was kind of shocked he was not breaking new ground he was not introducing some revolutionary hypothesis that nobody ever thought of before he was actually articulating mainstream arguments again at least within religious Jews who were scientifically educated and all of a sudden he gets hit with a barrage of very very vicious attacks and many people were very very surprised many people in the teller camp were very very surprised at the negativity now why in fact was he attacked it's an interesting question I think there was a fear that this may sound a little strange and that is when the arguments were made to Bali chuhwa who were not coming from religious homes it was okay but grab a slogans books were beginning to permeate the general religious audience and that was thought to be dangerous a little strange if something is a suitable discussion for one group then obviously it's not demonstrable false so why would it be trade for the other group but there was that idea as long as you're living in a Dasia Torah or Sameach you know let them say whatever they say that's fine that'll get people into the fold but don't you dare introduce these ideas into the mainstream again I don't want to disparage anybody I think the Slifkin incident was initially totally totally unjustified but what happened then was that he you know understandably so he was hurt he did react in way in other words just like they say the cover-up is worse than the crime in in a sense Rabbi Slifkin reaction you know made his situation much worse and then it kind of became a vicious cycle that just got worse and worse and worse and worse till Nelson Slifkin had to become that time Slifkin and he officially left the shiva shoe world to embraced a more modern orthodox world etc and pressures him he's very happy and he's a very beautiful by the way he has a very beautiful Museum in the Ramat beit shemesh that you know many many Jews of all types from the most religious to the most secular to enjoy but he writes on his blog that when the religious people when they array them come to the museum he kind of hides the dinosaur evidence and everything else he he tries he strike he's really trying to avoid any controversies these these days okay you all be well above Cordish Tov and a good week [Music]