Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: Return, O Wayward Sons - The Word of The Lord

[Music] okay everybody Shalom uh thank you for coming and uh today's here is dedicated for a raura for Nat benvia as well as all those whose Health has been affected by the war and especially for the return of our brothers and sisters in captivity all of us are uh doing and praying uh like I heard the the the government of the army made an announcement I mean it's hard to imagine this that uh they feel that the war may be n for the entire year of 2024 which is pretty unbelievable we hope that beem that should be a a a wrong estimate and it should be over much much soon but in NE event uh we have to pray for our brothers and sisters in captivity and the and uh this is also dedicated as for benzar B Ben MOSI who's y side on the 28th of Tate father of Daniel Goldstein as well as as being dedicated by a fry manomi finlin in memory of their parents Rabbi and Mrs Philip finlin and I've I've spoken more than once of the very important role that Rabbi and Mrs finlin played in my life and in the life of many young people in Hartford Connecticut and finally a special thanks to those who have contributed to the end of the Year campaign uh it is much appreciated especially now we are still bringing ion still bringing and ctit to our brave and courageous soldiers on the front lines thanks for contributions towards all the activities of Ean which they will be planning and producing this year and as always in a time of is one of the things that saves us uh God forbid from Death or other bad decrees and therefore this is a specially opportune time to be ourselves to strengthen ourselves in and uh this week uh we of course begin uh the second Kish of the Torah the book of shos and ran has a very interesting observation you know kazal gave a nickname to every Kish so saer brous is nicknamed saer haar The Book of the upright AB is and yov saer I'll get back to is named tasim the laws of the priesthood okayer is named The Book of Numbers same as the English and saer is called Mish Torah the repetition of the Torah because so much of it is a review of the preceding book so every KES has a nickname what is the nickname of shamos so the N brings from the bah one of the gonos that the nickname of shos is the second that's not much that's not much of a nickname says second book book to so what type of name what type of descriptive name is Kash Hasen so the writes in his that theat is the book of shamos is part two of braus and indeed that's exactly what it is because Genesis the book of braus is about the creation of the world how God created the world and eventually how the Jewish people were created through Abram Y and yov shos explains why the world was created what do kazal say because of the Torah that is called RIT the beginning and because of the Jewish people that are called RIT Hashem created the world without a Torah without am Israel there wouldn't be a purpose for creation and therefore the concept is the book of shamos is an appendix to the book of braus braus is the book of creation and shamos gives the reason and the justification for that creation that is why it is called kashen however not withstanding the bag's remark that the nickname of shos is the ramban actually gives a good nickname the ramban actually says that shamos can be called saer The Book of redemption because there are three themes in shos all of which deal with the Redemption of a person from a state of enslavement the First theme ofos is The Exodus of Egypt or from Egypt uh the second is the giving of the Torah that liberates us from the har and the third is the building of a mishkan which is make your life a sanctuary for God's divine presence liberate yourself from your mits subjugate yourself to the law of Hashem and make yourself a sanctuary a dwelling place for AES right so the themes of redemption are all very very present because in all themes of shos we are walking we are journeying towards that towards that Redemption now we know that um according to the cabalists the weeks that start from you know last Sunday the weeks in which we're going to read shos uh so we spell out the first letter of all of these paros shos they spell a word they spell of him these weeks are called the weeks of sh of him and some people uh particularly on a leap year they extend sh of him by two more weeks to embrace truma and T so they call it shat truma T now shim is very interesting on one hand it is just an acronym for the paros on the other hand shm is a word in Biblical Hebrew shm means way word people who wander off the path a person is shv when they're kind of wild they're not behaving in the right way Hashem says when he calls upon B to do cha he says return wayward children to God so these weeks of Chau of the the cabalist teach are weeks in which we're supposed to examine our ways we are shv and to take the shv and make it Chua the words are very similar in a way they're opposites you know in Hebrew there's a phenomenon that uh a word can mean its opposite so for example shes means a root butes can mean to uproot or it could mean to root right so the same thing a shv is connected to Chua returning to God but chv also means moving away from God so these weeks are said to be weeks specifically connected to Chua um in it's a big deal actually many many particularly have special fast days and special of of these are ideas that are very very dominant uh during this period of time but be it as it may the this is AA of Chua and I'm going to try to explain why this idea of Chua is connected toas MIT the centrality of in Judaism is very very apparent uh when we do MIT we say it is a commemoration a memory of every year we have a big event called arader in which we lovingly go over the story in detail after detail and even people who may be very far away from the overall traditions of Judaism feel that they have to get together pesak night and recount the story but not only is this a Mitzvah once a year it's a Mitzvah every day and indeed twice a day if you look at the mitzvot you will see that there's an annual mitzvah which goes by the name to narrate the story that's a once a year Mitzvah on the night of the 15th of Nissan which is the night before we left MIT but then there is a daily Mitzvah every single day to mention the Exodus in the morning and at night and that goes by a different appellation Z right so is a daily is an annual mitvah that is why in the you know shma has three paros but the third par of shma is the par of situs it's not really part of kma it is not part of kma why do we recite it so one of the reasons why we recite it is because it contains the verse I am your God who took you out of Egypt and if you look at the art scroll sitter it'll even say one should have intention when reciting this verse to fulfill the Commandment of the Torah to remember verbally not just in your head to remember verbally every single day of the year we have to remember it we have to remember every single day of the year is a great great foundation of the Jewish religion now there's a famous thought from the great ra Sal ra brisker where he raises an interesting question he says you're supposed to mention the Exodus every single day and every single night so even if there wouldn't be a special Mitzvah the 15th of Nissan to mention the Exodus I would have to do it anyway so he asked the question yes you are correct it's mlo Ben Z and the sages you're correct that according to to one opinion you only have to mention the Exodus during the day and not at night according to the other opinion you have to mention it day and night that is Aus and that is actually alluded to in the itself but the is like Bena that you do have to mention it not only in the daytime when we left but even at night so asked the question if I have to mention the Exodus at night anyway what is the Tyra adding by making me do it the night of the 15th of Nissan I would have had to have done it anyway because of Zak what isore adding that I don't have in Zakir now when you first heard that question you might say what type of question is that of course there's a big difference P I got to read a I don't have to do that the whole year well that's true but keep in mind that the Tyra itself when it tells you to recount The Exodus P does not tell you it has to be a text of the ha as far as the Torah is concerned you could improvise and say your own thing so in terms of the Torah what is seore adding to me that is not already picked up with s in other words seore seems to be Superfluous in light of the fact that I already have to mention now you're right like the opinion that says the whole year I don't have to do it at night so I have to do it at night but if I have to do it at night anyway what is sear adding soim explains very very clearly and beautifully that although the text of the hag is not mandated by the Tori the Tori does not mandate a text at all there are four structural Elements which the Tyra requires as part of seore which are not necessary in Z and the is based on those four structural elements and that differentiates seore from Zakir so I'm going to enumerate the four but I'm only going to talk about really one of them because we have two you know a few weeks going which I'm I'm going to elaborate on this idea the four points that R mentions is number one the whole year I only have to talk about God took me out of Egypt PES night it has to be question and answer format it must be and this is the basis of the Manana and the EMS say even if you're by yourself you have to have questions so cha is unique to the Mitzvah of seore it does not apply to the Mitzvah of right there have to be questions you know I still remember you know obviously the Manish Tana is is our fulfillment of it but if you look in the gamor you actually see that the Manish Tana is like uh cliffnotes uh the ideal is a person should bring his own questions but neb if you don't have any questions we'll give you the questions to ask the four questions so I still remember this I mean I I may have been like 8 years old I don't know I mean but it was such a memory at 8 years old it struck me as very very funny we were invited to a Seder at some friends and uh I think the kids were a year or two older than me and they were peppering their father with all sorts of questions about PES you know how come this how come and the father was getting very impatient he says stop asking questions we got to do this later and I remember even you know the whole point is you know this is the Sor you know ask all of these questions right okay we'll come back to it I want to this list them first the second element is that uh the whole year I just talk about the final thing God took us out of Egypt P night I got to begin with the bad you can't just talk about the Miracles you got to talk about the slavery you got to talk about the degradation so the first one is the second one is the third element is the famous statement of raban gam in the Seder that anyone that does not explain three mitzvos does not fulfill his obligation and the three mitzvos are eating the Corbin pesak eating matah and eating Mor now let's just parse that sentence anyone who does not explain P mat has not fulfilled his Mitzvah what Mitzvah has he not fulfilled so Thea make it very clear R gamil does not mean you haven't fulfilled P matah if I eat matah and I don't explain it I am mat P I am even without the explanation what I'm not is the Mitzvah and this is unique the whole year I don't have to integrate my praise of God for with the explanation of p on well P I have to okay so these are there is a fourth one I'll get to in a moment but these are Rim's point that the the three structural features that differentiate from SE number one sh number two number three which you might count as three actually the need to explain P mat and therefore even though the T does not mandate a specific lurgical text it does require a text that incorporates these three elements based on this uh Rim disagrees with a famous answer that is given to a famous question and a famous question is asked given the fact that P there's a Mitzvah to narrate The Exodus why don't we recite why don't we say why don't I say famous question one of the answers that that's given and you'll see why does not agree with this answer one of the answers that's given is that since the Tyra does not require any type of minimum statement you can say as little as you want you can just say thanks God for taking me out of Egypt and that would be a fulfillment of there is no of on mitzvos that don't have a minimum quantity that is an answer that the Ron him give R maintains that is not a valid answer because it is not true that you can be with just a single sentence you have to have question answer you have to begin with the bad and you have to explain so gives other answers there are many many other answers for this but the answer that your say or whatever it is thank you God uh is not maspic because we have these structural elements um okay uh now there is a fourth element though and the fourth element is going to be a very important key to understanding the other elements and to understanding sh of him and the relationship of these weeks to Cha and that is in the we read it's really the it's from the M each person must regard themselves as if they themselves were taken out of Mitra meaning the whole year I remember I commemorate P there's an obligation to regard yourself as if you yourself were liberated from Egypt it is not enough to commemorate the an obligation to experience the brisar son used to say that this was the hardest Mitzvah of P anyone who knows the brisker about matah baking matah and getting rid of knows how hard they work for PES and the bris says this is harder than this is harder than mat baking to kind of put yourself in the mat as if you yourself were taken out of Egypt you're not remembering you're experiencing you're living and this is a unique aspect of SE P that goes beyond Z so I want to explain a little bit what is the meaning of the statement each person must regard themselves as if they themselves were liberated from Egypt in what way is that true now I it's we need to differentiate it from another statement in the hag in the beginning of the hag there is a statement that says if Hashem would not have redeemed our forefathers from Egypt we and our children and our children's children would still be slaves to pyro which means we would have assimilated we would have disappeared that's not the same thing as saying I was taken out of his that's simply saying I am grateful for what God did to my forefathers because if God wouldn't have done it to my forefathers I would be suffering I wouldn't be here today that's a different thing that's like saying you know if you have parents who were liberated from a concentration camp you can say I am very grateful that my parents were liberated from a cons ation Camp because if they were not liberated I never would have been born okay that's not the same thing is saying I have to feel as if I was in a concentration camp so the first statement that if God wouldn't have taken my forefathers out of Egypt I wouldn't be here today that's giving thanks for what happened to my forefathers because it impacts on me okay but the second statement I have to regard myself as if I myself was taken out of Egypt I'm not just grateful for what Hashem did for my ancestors but I myself was taken out of MIT what does that mean it was not true I was never in Egypt and if some of us happened to be in Egypt they were not in a state of slavery what does it mean so there are two basic explanations for what does it mean I have to regard myself as if I was liberated from Egypt MIT explanation number one is offered by the rambam and I'll paraphrase the rambam a little bit the rambam says it is really the obligation to harness the power of imagination to trigger certain spiritual feelings meaning to say Obviously the isod of both and is gratitude but the point basically is if we were never slaves we don't fully appreciate what the gift of freedom is so what we have to do is we have to imagine we have to like you remember the old um American School of acting that was called method acting right what they Lee straber you know Marlon Etc uh the concept was you got to put yourself in a role you have to imagine that you're that person right and you know a method actor you know can't talk to you for 24 hours they have to imagine themselves you know whatever whatever they are and the like so the rambam he doesn't use the method acting analogy but the rambam says that if I really want to appreciate God's Redemptive qualities I got to imagine what it's like to be a slave to be whipped to be tortured to be humiliated to be degraded and only when I can imagine myself in a state of slavery I can then appreciate the blessing that God has given me by Liberation so so to be frank according to the rambam's interpretation it's not meant to be a true statement the reason why I have to regard myself as if I was taken out of mitam is only through harnessing the power of imagination are you able to feel the gratitude that you owe kades so even though it actually is not true that I was in MIT but I got to make believe as if I was because then I feel the for the G so that we might call a very rationalistic explanation uh harnessing the power of the imagination to elicit powerful spiritual feelings fact lein the great great most tremendous sedic the great Mash of panovich he was mere in Europe and then panovich in Isel one said a balm muser a person who really focuses on character development has to have a very vivid imagination when he thinks about the splitting of the Red Sea he has to imagine himself there when thinks about Matan Torah he has to imagine being at har you have to put yourself in that situation and then hopefully you can elicit powerful spiritual feelings so that's rationalistic explanation number one explanation number two is cabalistic and it basically says that every single soul of the Jewish people that would ever be born was in fact within the the bodies of those people who were enslaved in Egypt and therefore yeah my Nish your Nish was enslaved in Egypt and was liberated inas so according to the cabala it is taken as a 100% literal interpretation I was redeemed from MIM because my especially in cabala there's a very powerful idea that the totality of the Jewish people is encased within the number 600,000 that even though there're whatever it is 15 million Jews but we're kind of offshoots the the basic of are 600,000 and those were theot at least of the men inim and they represent everybody and therefore all of our shot were liberated that's the position of the mual but the there's a third thought from the balat who was re and a great mobo as well which is very very moving and very very powerful and he says that the word MIT itself has multiple meanings MIT does mean Egypt and this was the ancient empire that enslaved us that persecuted us and I took us out of that slavery but the word mitzraim also means limitations boundaries constrictions blockages when DAV says in Hal I call out to God from the narrow confining blockages that are not allowing me to go forward I am desperate answer me with expansiveness are the same word MIT are the blockages the constrictions in the human personality that prevent us from connecting to our KES and to other people and to ourselves seen in this way the batan said every person has their own MIT a person could have the mitam of arrogance a person can have the MIT of selfishness of egotism of Anger of laziness of self-loathing of Despair or depression or loneliness this is a mitam it blocks me it stops me from going forward so and indeed the inner MIT might be a lot worse than the outer MIT the outer MIT May enslave me on the outside the inner MRI is within me you know there used to be an old cigarette commercial in the years when they had cigarettes commercials about Salem cigarettes you uh was it um you uh can take the country uh you can take Salem out of the country but you can't take the country out of Salem so so you say you can take the Jew out of mitzraim but it's much harder to take mitam out of the Jew so once we understand that everybody has their mitam mitam is not just Egypt I have my limitation I have my constriction I have my boundaries then here's what the balatan says when Kadesh liberated the Jews from MIT he put into the creation a spiritual force that allows every person to latch onto that kak to be liberated from their own inner MIT so each person must regard himself as if he was liberated from Mitra according to the balatan it does not necessarily mean I got to make believe I was in Egypt and I was a slave in Egypt but it means I recognize my mitam and by connecting to the kak of Hashem will liberate me from the mits that enslave me and that block me it's kind of piggy but like you you kind of jump on the to become liberated from your own inner MIT which means when we think about we're thinking about two things we're thinking about both history and metaphor and here I'm going to digress to just make a general point you know people often debate not so much in the fir world but in the world generally are biblical stories meant to be history or are they meant to be myth now myth the word myth itself needs some explanation as well you know myth in common speech is pejorative a Bubba you know story just a you know nothing nothing important but in the sociology of myth the word myth is a very important word myth is a vehicle that expresses fundamental spiritual truths in non-literal ways calling something a myth is not an insult a myth might be a higher truth than reality if you have a myth a story that brings out something very powerful maybe the story is not factual but even if it's not factual it's a lot more meaningful than the fact that I had a hamburger for lunch right I Hade a hamburger for lunch that's a fact but it's not an important fact a myth conveys things of deep significance now in the realm of Med and a it is well established the rambam writes this that the rambam says people have this binary question are midashim true or are they not true the rambam says that's a false question because in fact he says anyone who believes all Rush are literally true is a fool and anyone who believes they're simply empty stories is a Russia the truth is all mid rasham are true but truth is sometimes metaphorical and spiritual rather than literal so it's not a question of false it is truth that is expressed in a nonliteral way that doesn't take away from the significance of matters that actually enhances it so in medish it is a well-known interpretive approach that MIM can be interpreted metaphorically non literally to express powerful meaningful spiritual ideas that's a well-known approach some people question that as well but certainly it's an approach the rambam endorses it's an approach the maharal endorses fact the great of Moses Shapiro when people ask him questions about uh a contradicting science so he said he would just say very briefly says okay go with morale you're not going to have a problem meaning uh a was not meant to be factual statements it was meant to express Rous truths okay but when we get to the Torah though it gets a little more tricky you will find in Progressive circles that people will talk about AB inov oh there never was in AR there's no archaeological evidence there ever was in aov but they represent mythical figures to talk about the foundation or Adam and Eve you know mythical is a metaphor for the struggle of the human being against the inner MIT so the typical religious Rance is we believe in the historicity of the Torah these things happened and other people on the so SoCal I don't want to call the progressive on the so-called Progressive side believe in the notion of metaphor allegory and once again they pose the question is the Torah history or is the Torah allegory and I would answer that's a false dichotomy the Torah is both history and allegory as a religious person we must believe 100% that there was an AB there was a there was a yob there was a s r they lived there was M there was a slavery in Egypt and God redeemed us from that slavery with 10 plagues and the splitting of the Red Sea it's not metaphor it's not mush it's reality but at the same time the historical events do represent spiritual ideas that keep on happening and rehappening every single day so it's not is it history or is it metaphor it is history which is also metaphorical for the spiritual Transformations that happened to me as an individual and happened to Claus and happened to The World At Large and that's why the in fact it this is routinely the language of they talk about roel and Leia as archetypes that would be the the yungan term now that doesn't mean there's not a Rael and there's not a Leia there was a woman Leia there was a woman ra but they also represent concretizations of spiritual ideas that keep on appearing so what the balat is saying is is both a historical event and it's symbolic of the spirit ual power that God puts into the world that we can become liberated from the mits that enslave us and therefore when the hag says the mishna says each person must regard themselves as if they were taken out of MIT it doesn't mean I have to make believe I was a slave in Egypt but it means I have to believe that I can be liberated from my mits that's why you know you know it's interesting sometimes if you go and see the hagadas you realize there are more commentaries on the hagada then there are commentaries on thees it's unbelievable the ha has the most commentaries of any book in the whole Jewish literature and you can see every single year I know some people actually try to keep up with all the got is it is impossible at some point you got to just say you know like people ask me can you suggest a good Hagar you know it's uh very very very very difficult everybody has their favorites so after a while you have your favorites and you know you look at that your favorites and the like some people have the minog that every person at the Seder table has a different ha so that way uh they can share ideas from the different hagadas other people think it's better to have we should have the same ha so we can announce the pages or or or or or whatever it is but all right so even in the Rel I World there are numerous numerous hagadas but once you go beyond the religious World you'll see all sorts of things you'll see the Civil Rights hag which emphasizes the struggle of black you know African-Americans to achieve Liberty you'll have the gay and lesbi the gay and Les in hag that will celebrate that thing uh you will have the women's Liberation hagada I I once actually once picked that up once for the da you know the da would have been enough so they have a list of grievances you know if if the only thing would have been is that we would been inferior it only get 50% of what men were Dao that would have been enough to complain about it's the other way around they're turning Dao into all the things to complain about instead of all the things to be grateful for what whatever it would be so you know you look at those counterculture hagadas and you know you laugh at them and you say but the truth is there is a point to it because there is an idea that once is not only about but it's about my own inner blockages so there's a notion of personalization of The Exodus that applies to each person in that in that way so this is a very very important yot and typically this spiritual power comes in at PES time but it is brought down that during the weeks we are reading the these parot that power is there as well so the importance of as a of CHA is precisely in the fact that the weeks of Hashem puts a power in the world that I can become liberated from my inner constraints that's the connection of CH so now let's get back to the second element again I'm going to save some of the other elements uh for succeeding talks and that is The Exodus story you have to begin with the bad it's not enough just to say God took me out of Egypt I got to begin with the bad I got to talk about the slavery I got to talk about the persecution I have to be why would that be so important importance and how does it apply to my own personal MIT now again one can give a simple explanation of why you have to begin with the bad and once again it ties into the notion of gratitude it is the nature of a human being that we only appreciate goodness when we contemplate the opposite a person appreciates Health when they've been sick those of you that have um who came from persecuted environments whether it be uh Nazi death camps or whether it be the Soviet Union uh people who come from persecuted environments tend to be much more patriotic and appreciative of freedom than people who were born into free societies so we got to begin with the bad because I got to remember how bad things were otherwise I don't appreciate things that's a simple explanation and that's a valid explanation but here's the question if I'm supposed to be grateful to God because he took me out of slavery and therefore I think about the slavery to be grateful to God what about the fact that God put me into slavery Hashem told aru your children are going to be enslaved in a land that is not theirs for 400 years and then I'll take them out now granted God took us out after 210 years 190 years early because otherwise we would have hit the 50th level of impurity and we would be unsalvageable but it's like imagine I take you I throw you in a prison cell and I say I'm coming back in 400 years when you'd be alive and I come back after 210 years and I say be grateful I'm here 190 years early well you probably wouldn't want to argue with me because you want to get out of there but you might be thinking you know why am I here for 210 years what's the notion by thinking of God enslaving me or at least decreeing that I would be enslaved that generates gratitude to me because he took me out maybe it's the opposite maybe it generates resentment he put me in so the answer has to be a very profound deep and maybe counterintuitive answer that when I am grateful to Hashem I am not only grateful for him taking me out of Egypt I'm grateful to Hashem for putting me into Egypt meaning before MIT we were free MIT we were slaves after MIT we were free if the only result of the freedom after MIT is to put me in the same place I was before the slavery then indeed I'm going to have resentment why did I go through this but if we understand that the freedom after slavery is quality atively different than what I had before then I understand that the slavery the slavery is part of the Redemption so what does that mean concretely what does it mean that I'm grateful to God not just for The Liberation but the slavery gave me something the slavery the Gus the Gus it's not a before or after it's not remember how bad it was so you appreciate the end product rather the bad is part of the good it's part of the good as you said I'm feeling terrible right that the terrible is part of the good how is that so so I'll give you two very concrete statements of how that's so and it works in in opposite directions I mentioned last week that in the 210 years that the Jews were in with front actually they were only slaves around 100 years they were supposed to be 400 years it got cut down to 210 years but of that only around 100 years were slavery because none of the slavery began until Yakov and all of the tribes died all of the tribes okay but be it be it as it may whatever amount of time we were slaves we reached a very very low level the 49th level of impurity if you hit Level 50 you're out and that we couldn't even let our dough rise to become bread because the Aral explains that the amount of time the few minutes that it takes we would have hit the 50th level and God said you got to leave now it's not just as you know the Kish May indicate that parro was saying get out of here Hashem said you got to leave now so we were in a very bad way we were actually wor shipping Idols except for shav Ley the men were not practicing bris Mila except for shav Ley so what were our merits for the 1 four fifths actually hit the 50th level and they died so I mentioned last week our merits were we didn't change our language we didn't change our clothing uh we didn't intermarry According to some view we didn't speak Lush and Hara about each other to get advantages and as I said last week I don't want to repeat it totally but I said last week that these were not frite things these were not religious things this is is identification with my people that we had a sense of solidarity of helping each other of strengthening each other so biter it would appear from that kazal that in spite of all of the negativity that the Jewish people experienced in MIT and in spite of all of their y there was in a is and they refused to assimilate culturally to MIT but there's a KAS on that the medish actually says that when yoseph died those who remained now yoseph was the you know all the brothers died so the B Israel said the following if we were so successful and so Beloved the Egyptians loved us they treated us like Heroes because we were yosef's brothers Yosef saved Egypt ysf saved the world so they made a they said if we're so beloved and accepted when we live our separate ways Will Be Loved if we assimilate and adopt the Egyptian culture so they decided to be like the Egyptians so God put hatred in the hearts of the Egyptians to enslave them so they should not be able in other words this is a very familiar pattern in Jewish history that when Jews want to become so close to the non-jewish world this is I wrote an article once called The Hidden blessings of anti-Semitism and this is really part of it it and that is at some point I mean unfortunately the intermarriage rate in the United States is 70% in some places so it's pretty bad but at some point God God steps in Hashem will not allow the Jewish people to self obliterate by this type of assimilation and if we don't do Chua then one of the ways that this is prevented is by anti-Semitism that says you're not one of us used to say when don't make Kish when Jews do not Proclaim sanctification the non-jewish world makes havdalah separation right we don't make Kish they make up of course we you know we actually see this in America now without getting too political uh with all of the IV league universities and various other things uh that that are going on so which was it did the Jews have akas as the first statement indicate they didn't change their names Etc or would the Jews assimilating the basav answer is very very simply it was the slavery that created the Yas as long as Jews were successful and doing well each man for himself but when we realized we weren't going to be accepted when we realized we were hat hated we turned Inward and reconnected to each other so was there a br to Pur ution was there a blessing to anti-Semitism was there something good that came out of the slavery experience yes it formed the notion of unity togetherness that's we have to be there for each other because nobody else is going to be there for us a person can live under the illusion that other nations other cultures other countries you know are going to protect me are going to take care of me are going to befriend me are going to validate me I mean I saw I saw a video about I mean a Col you know a girl in one of the Ivy Leagues uh was like sobbing to an administrator in they want to kill me and he was saying protect me why don't you protect us and you know maybe I was a little callous I don't know maybe I shouldn't be callous but I was thinking to myself you know what on Earth do you expect what do you expect why do you cry to this administrator that they're supposed to protect you are they supposed to protect you are they the ones who give you protection that's the way life is so in many ways the arus or I'm sorry the persecution generates a very powerful sense of arus and we see it of course in a slightly different Nuance we see it in the time of War when we have forces that try to destroy us we come together you remember before October 7 how polarized this Society was course it's coming back a little bit already so you can even get you you can even get used to War uh but okay but it's been pretty good it's been pretty pretty good in the sense that when we're faced with enemies who try to destroy us we do come together and although we pray every day and every minute that we should have Shalom but it happens to be a very uncomfortable truth that certain good things come out of these most difficult situations So when you say begin with the bed this created Aus this created the unity of not changing their language not changing their clothes not intermarrying without the we were on a wholesale decline towards let us be like the Egyptians that's one aspect of why even the adversity becomes part of the Redemption the adversity is not just something to be escaped but it's something to be embraced and learned from but then there's a second idea of what we gain which is almost the opposite you know the Torah says more than 30 times you must love the convert you must be sympathetic respectful compassionate towards the G and it says in many of those verses because you were GM in the land of Egypt now it's clear that although halachically the word g refers to a convert but that's not exactly what the PK is saying you should love the convert because you were converts in Egypt we were not converts so remember that the literal word of of g means stranger and it's a very Stark term I mean one might even feel it's a little pejorative the convert to Judaism is called The Stranger why is that it's really designed to make me be more sensitive a person comes to Judaism without family connections without contact without protexia and certainly in the time of the Torah where ero was a landbased economy the G did not own property in ER Israel and what is the Torah telling us the Torah is telling us there's going to come a time where you're sitting pretty in your land with your property and your government and they will be people who will want to join you who are without power they're weak they're ineffectual they're the stranger and you might not pay attention to them because they don't matter they don't count so what does the Torah say remember you were once that person you were once that person at the bottom of the to totem pole there was a time in your history where you were poor and you were oppressed and you were nothing remember that experience and use it as the source of empathy and compassion to those who are suffering you know we live in a culture again more maybe more so in the United States of professional victimization everybody's a victim except Jew Jews don't have the the right to be Jews who are who have been victimized Jews are the one group that cannot invoke victimization but everybody's victimized I've been victimized these are called microaggressions uh you know the the the man wants wants to be known as a woman and if he's called a man by a pronoun by he you know that's a microaggression and uh rest assured that the president of Harvard would 100% expel that student uh for that type of unforgivable offense of using a a masculine pronoun for a man inadvertently there would be no second chance for that one as opposed to calling for genocide of the Jews which has to be judged in context um okay um uh so what but here's the problem I mean there there are victims in the world there's no question about this I mean there are VI there are victims of sexual abuse there are victims of emotional abuse physical abuse these are serious issues these are very very serious issues and we have a responsibility to deal with it with compassion and understanding and support no question and God forbid I I wouldn't want anything I say to be construed in the opposite direction but the thing is sometimes what happens with victimization trauma and and again it's understandable is there becomes a narcissistic almost obsessive idea that I have to be protected at all costs meaning I I use my victimhood status as a protective shield to immunize me from further pain again understandable in many ways the Torah is basically giving us a different approach the Torah is saying don't distance yourself from your hurt remember it experience it relive it but let it be the source of the empathy and compassion you have to others who are suffering and this is why Jews are compassionate towards all human needs we have two sources one is from Theos and the other is The Exodus the slavery not The Exodus the slavery ingrained in us the idea to care about the down Trad care about the poor that's why Jews were involved in civil rights and anti-apartheid in South Africa and even maybe this is not the right time to to mention it but even the wrong turns even the idiotic turns even the deeply mistaken turns of The Advocates of Palestinian rights and the like when that IND dangers amus we can be rightfully very very critical of this but at the same time it comes from a Jewish heart a Jewish heart cries over all suffering again sometimes the heart is not connected to the brain sufficiently and that becomes a problem and when it's not connected to the Torah that becomes even a bigger problem so I'm not validating every type of liberal cause to which a Jew Affiliates but I'm not going to knock a Jewish heart a heart that feels rim and where does that Rim come from the experience of being a slave so you see what's interesting is that what we acquired from MIT are almost two opposite ideas one is the sense of solidarity and Aus with each other and the other is a broader compassion for all of the sufferings of humanity and and this is why we thank Hashem not just for The Liberation from MIT but we were kind of we acquired certain inan certain ideas in MIT that we wouldn't have had it's not simply oh I was free I was slave and I was free I'm not back to square one the freedom through that slavery gave me gifts that I wouldn't have had otherwise so now when we personalize this to our own inner MIT the lesson would be the following see the Redemptive potential not only in the good that God gives you but in the challenges and the suffering that God gives you understand that in that suffering there are hidden potentials we don't always see we don't always understand but we grow from those adversities we grow from those challenges sometimes the challenges areem not so onerous although they can still bother us I didn't get into the school that I wanted to get into again it's could be a very big disappointment a certain relationship didn't materialize those are difficulties but we have to ask ourselves what do I learn from it how do I grow from it what light do I get out of this darkness and sometimes the darkness can be so much deeper and so much more profound that I literally cannot see any light in this Darkness or it's like a person drowning underwater in the middle of the night now there's not there's not even a light in the water surrounded by suffocating water in total darkness and yet and yet and yet even there it may take so much time but even there there's something the depth of is to see the Redemptive potential in even the most difficult situations and that will be an important kak that will help liberate me from my MIT okay again um this will be a multi-art in the sense that we have the other elements what we'll talk about but uh this is the one thought I wanted to share with you the bat's idea that everyone has their own inner MIT and the notion that Mas is one of the ways that we can be liberated from the inner struggles that we have so thank you and have a good [Music] chance here