Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: The Incredible and Amazing Story of Rabbi Akiva During the Omer

my baby [Music] okay everybody thank you for coming and happy like Boomer and I was like what was over now but I hope you had a joyous and inspirational day the shirt tonight is dedicated for a refuge Lima Shimon benelga and may have a refresh episode Israel as well as well as the father and brother of Kaya Feingold David moshev and avram Fishel her father and Jonathan Israel Ben David Mosher her brother as well as the memory of Mikhail yaakov benmosa Aaron de bracha dedicated by yaakov Shore again we very much appreciate all of the generous support may it bring bracha to all of the families and all of the nishamas uh anyway uh today is was lagba Omer last night and today so I'm going to take the liberty of speaking about lagba Omer even though it's after the fact uh kind of Israel and uh hopefully you know something that at least retroactively you can give some meaning to it we know that the period we talked about this last week the period in the pesos designated as the Omer period because of the barley offering that is brought on the second day of pesach commencing the count is not intrinsically a sad time intrinsically it should be a happy time we're looking forward to matantora we're looking forward to hearing from Hashem at harsinai so if you were to Simply go through the period of sphere as a Omer in the time of the first base on mikdush and even the time of the second base to make this there would be no sadness there you'd make weddings you'd have music there was no issue and yet we all know that in the course of time this period of the Omer became impressed with certain aspects of sadness and this is not even in the time of the gemara this is post talmudic this is a Min hug that is recorded in the by the gaonim who say that our Minogue is not to get married During the period of pesach to show us later authorities not to go on him they added not listening to live music recorded music is a another another Shyla haircuts and the like and the reason for this avalut this partial mourning is because 24 000 students of Rabbi Akiba died during this period of time now again just to be sure we have our sources clear these statements that Rabbi Akiva had 24 000 students and the statement that the 24 000 students died between pesach and shavuos that is in the gamar the gemara itself makes that statement but the gemara does not derive from there any type of Avalos restrictions that only comes later in the time of the gaonium now in the course of time of later Jewish history there were many other tragedies that got folded in to the Omer period primarily during the Crusades it happened to be that many of the German and French communities that were massacred during the First Crusade in 1096 and the later Crusades it happened to be during the months of ER and the beginning of Sivan so as a result the Omer period became associated with the death of people al-qirish Hashem that is actually one of the interesting historical reasons why svardim are a little bit more lenient in the morning of the Omer than ashkenazim because svardim have the tamidam rabi Akiva Motif but they don't really have the Crusade Motif and as a result the later tragedies didn't have an impact on the homra of the havacha you know every Shabbos most of Usos of the year before musaf before the amida of musaf we recitement is a prayer that God should remember in heaven those Jews who gave their lives Hashem and every Shabbos we recite a prayer of remembrance it's almost a year score every week for those who died of Hashem that prayer was composed and added to the Liturgy after the First Crusade in 1096 and the original minhak was not to recited every Shabbos but only to recite it during the month of ER and Sivan later it got Miss pachette that spread through the whole the whole year except for some festive Shabbos it does turn out that although intrinsically the period of the Omer would have been a joyous period but it gets marred a little bit by the sorrows and the original sorrow that's connected to svira is the deaths of the students of rabbiakiva now we come to lagba Omer which once again lagbaumer is not intrinsically a hug I mean there's nothing special about the 33rd day of the Omer but we are told that the students of Rabbi Akiba Akiba stopped dying on lagba Omer now that itself is a little bit of a question because if he had 24 000 students and 24 000 students died then if they stop dying in lagba Omer that's because there was nobody else to die I mean I mean yours what is your symbol your simcha is they stopped dying yeah they stopped dying because they're all dead so so obviously we have to assume that the numbers here are approximate numbers meaning rabi Akiva may have had 25 000 students and 24 000 of them died and the other thousand were vulnerable but Lord vulner had stopped do I understand this to mean that latva Omar was a temporary break in the deaths but right after lagba Omer the deaths continued or do I understand that lagba Omer was the end of it and even after like warmer death does not continue and that of course depends by the Min hug him that you have some people uh if they start their sphere from the second day of pesach they will make weddings after lag Bomer other people say no like Bomer is a break but you have to continue the availis later right so that's so much Locus but be it as it may the one thing that we do know is according to our masora is that I'm not Bomer itself the Tommy them of stopped dying and that is reason number one why lagba Omer became a festive and happy day because death stopped so one question uh that's worthy of pondering is what was special about lagba Omer that the deaths of the students of Rabbi Akiva stopped why why did they stop on that particular day so to fully understand this we have to go back a little bit and talk about the origin of the 24 000 students and indeed the origin of Rabbi Akiva himself you know the talmud by and large we would not describe as a romantic documents but one of the few romantic stories in the Gomorrah even though it's not a romance in the secular way you understand romance is the story of the love of rabi Akiva and his wife Akiva Ben Yosef was an ignorant man he was an amrits we don't even know how observant he was and he had he was employed by one of the wealthiest landowners in yerushalayim and this landowner's name was kalba savua actually that was his nickname Palma is Aramaic for a satiated a stuffed dog now why was he called a stuffed dog that doesn't seem so complimentary because it says he was so generous and hospitable that any person who entered his home ravenously hungry would leave his home feeling like a dog that was stuffed now those of you any of you have any dogs you know a dog is never stuffed the dog always makes room for more food so if you could describe somebody as a stuffed dog that means they ate they certainly ate their fill so he was a very hospitable person and he employed many many people many people worked for him Akiva Ben Yosef I'm not going to call him Rabbi because at that point he was not Rabbi was a shepherd in the employee of calabasabour ignorant didn't know how to read he just took care of animals for some reason Raquel the boss's daughter we would say fell in love with him was attracted to him actually she saw spiritual qualities in him that even he himself didn't know that he had and he and she decided to get married this was an extreme humiliation could have had anyone he wanted for his daughter he could have had the best guy in pun event or Lakewood and that would have married Russia and his daughter Raquel marries an ignorant man an uncouth person a person that on some level lacked refinement and he was so angry at her he was so humiliated by this that he made a vow that she would get no benefit from any of his property he disinherited her and as a result she married Ravi Akiva Akiva then and they lived in abject poverty now I'm not sure if he even had a Shepherd job I'm not sure was he still getting his Shepherd wages or not but whatever it was they were very very very poor that's one thing second she decided that she wanted her husband to become so she sent him to learn in Yeshiva and your Salam and she gave him permission to go for 12 years he started he was already 40 years old and he learned with the first graders how to read Hebrew just how to read remember it wasn't just a question of see today in our March is a different connotation you know if I meet somebody who's an MRS like a Jew who doesn't know any Torah at least they know how to read English I mean they can read you understand and I'm Robert's meant he was illiterate because Hebrew was the language he didn't know how to read or write and he started with the little children and he learned for 12 years and he advanced in his learning of course 12 years after those 12 years he came to pay his wife a visit but before she sees him he overhears a conversation with a neighbor in which a neighbor says to his wife what type of husband do you have who leaves you for 12 years and of course this is what she wanted and you're living in poverty and she said to the neighbor I would be happy if he would go for another 12 years so without even saying hello without even stopping for a coffee break he went back for another 12 years now this story sounds pretty amazing and in some ways it's even a little disturbing number one why couldn't he say hello why couldn't he stay for lunch like he had to leave without even saying that he was there so there are two answers that are given answer number one is that he didn't want to break the continuity meaning there is a concept that one unit of 24 is qualitatively different than two units of a 12 and a twelve now he already broke the continuity by traveling but at least he wanted to minimize it as much as possible made this point in a martial he wasn't talking about Rabbi Akiva let's imagine you have a pot of water a big pot and it takes 30 minutes to bring the water to a boil but after 29 and a half minutes you shut the the fire shut the gas and you wait until the pot cools and then you turn on the gas again no matter how many times you do 29 and a half minutes you can do it a hundred times you'll never get a Boiling Pot because you didn't have the red stuff you didn't have the continuity of 30 minutes the question is making a point that learning Torah for two hours straight is not the same as an hour and an hour there's a certain critical mass of time and intensity and Rabbi Akira did not want to break that critical mass now let me just point out that it's absolutely the case that Rabbi Akiva was was even permitted to do what he did it wasn't just his wife gave permission it's this is what his wife wanted his wife wanted this she was willing to sacrifice for a husband to tell his wife hey I'm gone for 12 years and don't bother me it would actually be a tremendous event now this is something maybe we don't understand in our lives but this was her dream this was her yearning this was his desire and he was accommodate this was her desire and he was accommodating something that maybe she wanted more than him now the second answer they give to this question why couldn't he say hello it was also very interesting they say if he would have said hello if he would have allowed himself to interact with her and see how much she was suffering he wouldn't have been able to go back he would have broken down he would have just said I can't do this but since he knew that that's not what she wanted she wanted him to do go he had to kind of almost make himself cruel in order to do what he had to do because otherwise he would have broken down so this was the relationship of Rabbi Akiva and Racha now you might say that doesn't sound very romantic but in point of fact it was the deepest type of love that existed between them a love that didn't depend on proximity a love that didn't depend on interaction it was a love in which she saw a greatness in him that he did not even recognize that he had and she was going to build him she was going to enable them to become the person that he could become the leader that he could become and she was willing to sacrifice everything for that now it's interesting let me just mention an aside and I have absolutely no proof no evidence of this at all it's a total guess on my part but I think it's interesting yes talks about the Mitzvah of getting married and having children but the gemara mentions one particular Rabbi who never got married because he said he said what can I do my soul desires to learn Torah so much that I can't get involved in family life and the life if I used to make a joke when I was in Yeshiva and we had like older Bachelors people 25 26 27 who weren't married we used to call them they're members of the benazi club they don't get married their soul desires to learn terrorists so much and the like so benaz I the gemara says didn't get married I think from the usual me that actually been as I was married but he was divorced he married Rabbi akiva's daughter Rabbi Kiba had a son and a daughter from from Russia and they got divorced so what's going on so okay that that is from tosos that's not me so here's the thing I would add a little bit if you've ever been outside all you want to do is learn you don't want to be bothered with domestic chores you don't want to be bothered you know you want a wife that will handle everything now many women are not willing to live that way which woman would be willing to totally sacrifice everything so her husband would learn huh maybe akiva's wife was exactly that so maybe but as I figured like mother like daughter so Mary let me keep his daughter and she'll give him the same deal problem is daughter saw how much her mother suffered and daughter said I'm not going to live that way you see that was the miscalculation now again this is totally a guess in my part but I think it's a reasonable understanding of what's what's going on because benaz I basically was not Suited for a domestic life whatever the nature of his spirituality was such that he just had to focus only on learning but he had to get married so he tries to pick somebody that would be closest to that model that were kind of not impose any responsibilities okay be this in May let's go back to rabi Akiva so Rabbi Akiva after 24 years is no longer the ignorant Shepherd and no longer the person who's learning the Isle of Base he is now the greatest Rabbi in Israel the greatest Rabbi in Israel he comes back with 24 000. students who has the gemara expresses it twelve thousand pairs of Tommy them now think about this the largest Yeshiva in the world is it Lakewoods or Mir here but it's uh under 8 000 students between seven thousand and eight thousand students that's the largest receiver in the world are they yeshivas even if they're large or 500. you shall I am many yeshivas are 50 25 or even 10. so you see Mr small even in the Heyday in Europe the great Slovakia where they had like 300 people 400 people 25 000 people without a microphone system and the like and he comes and his wife is dressed in rags for 24 years she'd be living in poverty and she tries to approach it the tomidum think she's a crazy woman and they block her and remember you keep a teaser and Ruby Akiva says shall leave famous words that are on rabi akiba's grave and in tavaria foreign all that I am and all that you are is only because of her sacrifice her greatness without her there would be nothing at all now in the meantime composavua apparently did not see this exchange and kavascript didn't even know this was his son-in-law just here's a great Rabbi coming to town So after 24 years why did it take so long I don't know but after 24 years he finally recognizes that his daughter is suffering but he made a Netter so we have in halacha a procedure for the annulment of house now there are two ways you can mount your a nether one is you go before a basin of three that's what we do in Arab Rosh Hashanah and we go in front of three it doesn't have to be rabbis but a basin of three people there is another way that if an individual Rabbi is extraordinarily great in Torah he would have the power to another vow even this is called an individual who is expert now interestingly you would assume we have some people like that in the world I mean whatever it will be and yet for various reasons we don't follow that track today we never matter through an individual we require a basement but in the time of the gemara mishnan gemara uh figures oh I'll go to this Rabbi whoever he is he didn't know it was the son-in-law and get my vowel note so he goes to the rabbi and then Wekiva recognizes him but he does not recognize Rabbi Akiva he says you know 24 years ago I made a vow to disinherit my daughter and not to give her anything and she's been suffering for so many years and I regret the vow and I would like to be I would like to have the vowel now there's some technicalities here in order for a vow to be annulled whether it's by a Bastian or whether it's by a jahid an individual that's great you have to identify what is called a pesach means an opening and the typical opening means that there was some mistake you made that had you known of the facts you wouldn't have made the vow so The Vow was made under a mistake this can even be a trivial thing for example let's imagine that you're dieting and chocolate is your weakness so you make a nether I'm not saying you should make another but you could make another exactly better not to you make an header that either you will never eat chocolate again or even if you say I make an editor that I will not eat chocolate for a month okay to break my chocolate addiction then you go home let's say a man made the matter and his wife baked a great chocolate cake for Shabbos and she would be very very hurt if he wouldn't eat the chocolate so you know what the man has to do the man has to run to the nearest basement or the nearest and say you know if I would have known that my wife had made me a chocolate cake I wouldn't have made the vow The Vow was made under a mistake so that's called The Passage and the based in or the null the vowel based on a person he said if you would have known that your ignorant son-in-law would eventually become a great terrorist scholar would you have made the vow and Thomas said a Taurus scholar if I would have known he would know how to read I wouldn't have made the vow so at that point Akiva rabi Akiva said to him The Vow was annulled and he said he identified who he was and Rahul and rabi Akiva were United and from that point on they were actually living very very comfortably and it's a beautiful happy story because keep in mind when Rocco sees the 24 000 students all of her suffering has now become validated meaning she sees all the years of deprivation produced this wonderful wonderful wonderful results and of course even producer-wise there's there's a reconciliation with her father everything's great if the story would have ended there that would have been a wonderful thing but the story did not end there a few years later a short time later that is when the 24 000 students of Rabbi Akiva died in a brief period of time between pesach and shavors I mean besides the inherent tragedy of 24 000 people dying imagine Rocco's perspective she struggled she suffered she gave up everything and she thought that a dream was achieved but it all collapses it went into the dust how heartbreaking must have been to her and of course to Ruby Akiva himself everything was destroyed now how did the tomidum die this is some interesting questions about this as well the Gomorrah says they died by Oscar which is a kind of a plague or a disease that constricts your breathing and the like but in the chuva Saga in them I believe Mr of Schreiber guy says they died through shamada shamada is persecution meaning they were killed by the Romans but it's not clear why were they killed so some historians posits that they were killed because they were participants in the Barca revolt and as part of the Romans crushing that Revolt they killed many many people in fact again just to be sure you understand the chronology the Romans destroyed the second temple between the year 68 and 70. let's assume the year 70 is the most common uh date that's given but around 60 years later the Jewish community embarked on a massive second Rebellion against Rome led by a man whose name was Shimon Ben kuziva or Sherman Ben kuzba that Rabbi Akiva actually believed was the mashiach Rabbi Akiva named him the son of a star cochrav because mashiach is described as a from the oven was initially very very successful 900 villages in Arizona were liberated from Roman rule you know small villages there were some archaeological evidence that the foundations of the Third Temple on the Temple Mount were laid under the supervision of Rabbi Akiva minted coins you can even buy your cocoa coin it's not massively expensive coin says Shimon Ben kuziva Nasi Israel Etc but eventually what happened was Hadrian retaliated with overwhelming brutal force and the Custer's Last Stand of barcopa was in Batar and it's not the modern Baker but not far from the modern beta and that also happened on Tish above and the final casualties in Batar were according to the gemara numbers that were much much bigger than even that at the time of the Corbin base hamiktash and the fall of Batar the destruction of barkokla Revolt was I believe in the year 135 so it was 65 years after the destruction of the temple so some historians want to say that Rabbi Akiva was too old to be an active soldier of Ruby Akiva was the spiritual guide of the barkoku revolt and some of his stuff all of us don't meet him were actively fighting with and their deaths occurred from that so there is to the guy because of plague or did they die because of barkokova and the like again interesting the truth of the matter is so then people ask so why does the Gomorrah say plague the truth is the Babylonian talmuds is very very very reticent about anything to do with Barca where they never discuss it uh they refer to it by euphemism they refer to it by hint they refer to it by indirection it was not a safe thing to bring up because the Jewish people in bovill are also living under foreign domination they don't want to discuss revolts against existing governments that would be treated as subversive and as a result throughout the Babylonian talmud the Barca Revolt is barely mentioned and I don't believe name is even mentioned there's another well there is a character in Mercedes kitten who's called bargeroma strangely enough that it was otherwise unknown that seems to be a pseudonym for Park but himself is not is because not mentioned mentioned at all okay but how they die is less important than why they died whether they died by illness or they died by Rebellion against the Romans the Gamora and yuvamo says why did they die what was the spiritual avail that made them high of Misa so the talmud says they did not show proper covet covered his honor respect they did not show proper covers to each other and as a result 24 000 students of Rabbi Akiva died now this is a very important idea this reason is extremely important because it's the key to why we still mourn because people ask me a question all right 24 000 students 24 000 people dying is a tragedy one person dying is a tragedy but unfortunately we've had much worse we have Crusades and programs and of course the Holocaust so why is it that we're still focused on 24 000 people dying why am I mourning that above everything else that exists and the answer is you're not mourning an event just because it was a tragedy but rather you're thinking about the reason why it happens not showing covert and therefore your avoda in the Omer period one of your avodos is to rectify the sin of the tomidum of Rabbi Akiva who didn't show proper cover to each other by showing proper covet so it's not a morning ritual it is a ritual of introspection and reflection and that's why we still think about it and it's precisely during the Omer period because when we are preparing from we have to be as the Jews were at harsinai one person one heart now what does it mean practically they didn't show proper covered for each other we don't have a video from that time but one can assume that these were great people they were every Akiva students they were not no kids and if you were to observe their conduct you wouldn't see anything that was bad I mean they weren't saying get out of here idiot they weren't pushing each other out of line they weren't like you know taking uh you know give me your chilling you know I want to wear them instead of you presumably if you watched them you would not see anything that was improper so reception of all hurt has a beautiful observation the word covered that means honor respect is connected etymologically to covet covet means heavy weighty now weightiness refers to somebody having a sense of significance for example you might look at a person who's let's say a great expert in his field right the world's greatest no cancer researcher whatever however you measure that so one of the ways you might describe him at least in a slang way is he's a real heavyweight in his field now calling somebody heavyweight is not a reference to his weight and it's not even a reference to his boxing prowess but it's a reference to his stature he's a person of significance a person of Health a person with depth and meaning and knowledge and understanding and accomplishment the fancy Latin term which also means heavyweight but it sounds fancy because it's in Latin is the person has gravitas so covered does not refer to my being polite to you I could be polite I could follow the rules of etiquette but still I don't consider you to be significant in other words I'll be nice to you in a condescending patronizing way but not because I value you as having something to offer so reverse says the Sin of the students of Rabbi Akiva was much more subtle than being rude or pushy behaviorally they were doing fine but in their heart of hearts they did not look at each other and say you're a person of value or worth now even that is a question why didn't they but maybe because they had such a great teacher that they looked to the teacher and they didn't really see any benefit that they would get from their interaction with colleagues we have forever each of us as Rabbi Yakima so covert is not about behave showing cover to another person or having covered maybe for another person the first says it's not about Behavior it's about the internalization of looking at a person and seeing the godliness of their soul seeing their inner beauty seeing that they are people that you can learn things from that you're not just the one that's up here and they're down there but you look around and you see the value of many different types of people you know and it's not just you know so one person might be tremendous and he might be interacting with a very simple person so maybe he's not going to learn from that person how to understand but you can learn from all sorts of people Derek Harris Meadows consistency of behavior right in other words a wise person learns every single person you meet you'll learn from and you try to identify what can I gain from that person that's what troubled is okay now one might ask you another question well okay that's a great thing but to either do you deserve to die for that you they died because they didn't show proper coverage well the answer is it's not a capital crime but these 24 000 people were destined to be the Torah leaders they were destined to be the godolan they were destined to be the monhegan of Omi Israel in the coming generation and the most important quality of ammonic is to have faith in his people to see their inner goodness and if they could not see that in each other they were no longer qualified to be leaders they were taken from the world now it is interesting that Rabbi Akiva who must have been totally crushed totally crushed didn't give up he had a second round of Tommy them they weren't 24 000. they were only five and he ordained those five taught me them among whom was also will get to that there was also a big hero on like Balmer and all of the mishnah and all of the gemara and all of the Torah we learned today comes from those five it's an amazing thing rabikiva didn't throw in the towel he lost twenty four thousand and said I'll start again with five you know they tell the story I heard the story years ago it was a great roshishiva who came from Europe after the Holocaust Rabbi Hyman who had been a big Rich receiver in Europe he was a Thomas muvak of Robert who in turn was atonement of the crime salvation and he was a big Russia Chief in Europe when he came to America he got a job giving a share in Torah with us which at the time didn't have a lot of people so he was giving a shirt to five people just like grab you came by people and one of his acquaintances walked by and over here overheard him giving the sheriff with such enthusiasm and such passion as if he was addressing an audience of 200 people so he said to him afterwards says I mean listen uh I know that's how you used to teach in Europe when you had 200 students but why are you doing teaching that way you're only talking to four people or five people so he said I'm not talking to five people those five people are going to get married and have children and grandchildren and those five people some of them are going to be teachers of Torah and rabbis and they're going to have kihilots and there'll be hundreds of people and thousands of people and eventually ten thousands of people I'm not talking to the five people I'm talking to the ten thousands of people they're going to come out of this five I'm not just focusing on what I have now if I just look at what I have now compared to what I did have I might give up hope and might think it's not worth it but I'm not just looking at the present moment I'm looking at all the potentialities that could arise now keep in mind that driflower hymen at his height had only a small fraction of the 24 000 students of Rebecca so look at Ravi Akiva he lost 25 4 000. but he said okay I got five I'll teach five and from that five came everything we have today everything we have today came out of those so the story of Rabbi Akiva and Rachael is such a remarkable story in so many ways number one the love and devotion that Raquel had to be willing to sacrifice everything so he could achieve what he could achieve number two the story of Akiva himself that no matter how old you are you know there's always you can always become great in Torah and number three a third lesson I think is the Act II that even when you lose everything you go on and you rebuilt this of course is the story of the Jewish people after the Holocaust after so many tragedies we rebuilt whether it's institutionally like starting yeshivas again or whether it's individually people who lost families they lost their wives and their children husbands and their children they had the courage to start again and building it not forgetting the tragedies of the past but knowing that as long as there is life you have to live you don't give up salivation in the 1960s sat Shiva three times he lost his brother he lost his mother then he lost his wife and although he did teach for another 10 years but those who knew him well I did not know him well said he never recovered from the devastating impact of those tragedies but at the end of his third Shiva said because I'll tell us that God made many worlds before this world that he destroyed many worlds before this world what was the purpose of God making worlds that he destroyed why why didn't God get it right the first time and he said because Hashem wants to teach us a lesson that even if the world that you made gets destroyed you go on and you create because that's what Hashem said my world was destroyed although he destroyed it but he said my world was destroyed but I make another world I don't simply say forget about it very very important not to give up okay but now we looked at the tragedy and we looked at the rebuilding but then we are told on lagba Omer the deaths of his tummy them stopped either permanently or hiatus what was this is the question I began with what was special about Love by Omer got to tell me them we're liberated so to speak from the decree of their death so here we have to be a little bit capitalistic and that is we know that actually Sparkle that in Kabbalah is described as Ain sof without limit you can't say anything about God other than without limit but the ain't self interacts with the physical universe through divine emanations that are 10 different energy centers and they're called the tens fears now the ten spheros in turn are divided into a three and a seven the first three are called God's mochan God's brains they are God's internal thought processes of which we say nothing and know nothing and they are called understanding or some don't even count cancer they say cancer is above the ten zeros and they have wisdom understanding knowledge those are called gimmel rishonos the first three they are called mohen God's brain and they are not yet manifested in behaviors in this universe they are above any type of understanding but then we have the lower seven that's three three and seven or ten the lower seven which are called medos behavioral manifestations right the first three are movement and the lower seven are midice and these refer to God's Behavior as Manifest in the world and the seven spheroes go by the name kindness gavora strength kefiris beauty is eternity Victory endurance hold is gwari you sold foundation and mauchos is God's ultimate kingship of these refers to specific types of emanations and behaviors and whole books can be written and have been written describing exactly what types of behaviors these are and maybe it's some other time we could spend more time than we have right now now here's the thing each week of the Omer is correlated to one of these divine emanations meaning the spiritual power that comes into the world that week is connected to that Divine emanation so the first week of the Omer which is of course the week of pesach is the week of second week of the Omer is the week of divine strength now it gets more complicated because since there are seven days in every week just as each week is correlated to one of the seven spirits each day within the week is similarly correlated to one of the seven spirits so therefore and you can even see this in the city although it doesn't explain it that much the first day of the Omer which is the second night of pesach is called cassette loving kindness of loving kindness meaning the day of within the week now day two of the Omer the third night of pesach is called Inner Strength the day of inner strength Within the week of Hassan now don't confuse the second day of the first week with the first day of the second week the first day of the second week is the loving kindness in the week of strength so what's the difference between gavora Within within Gabor right so these are subtle there are 49 combinations 49 combinations each day of the Omer is connected to a Severa by virtue of the day and by virtue of the week now La Mesa although this is absolutely based I'm very Arcane Kabbalah to be sure but the truth of the matter is it's become a very very popular idea in many many she or him and there are books there are swarm in Hebrew that are not so difficult and books in English that actually correlates these sriva combination to particular spiritual avodos that you should do every single day of the Omer that when it's one thing you do when it's because it is something else and it literally gives you a calendar every day how to mimic the Divine energy of that day so you can incorporate it into your spiritual framework one book I actually wrote a a huskama for a letter for it by someone who sponsors who sometimes sponsors a share here in memory of her father was a mentor of mine this is a honey juravel some of you might know are very very popular a teacher and lecturer in New York and she actually wrote a book correlating all of these spheroes to the counting of the Omer so I can recommend it because I did recommend it so um again this is the free commercial for uh Honey's very very fine work but there are others as well not the only one so you can actually check check all of this okay so every day is connected to a sphera and every week is connected to a sphere these are the lower seven because the the first three the game will be shown us are beyond our comprehension okay so based on this for a moment let's plot lagba Omer Omar is the 33rd day of the Omer well the 33rd day of the Omer is located in the fifth week because after 28 days you finish four weeks oh yeah I do have to mention one one final point that the shiveros as well correlate to certain personalities who exemplify that Divine energy so the sphere of cassette corresponds to avram avinu the Spira of gaburra week number two Israel the svira of beauty week number three is yaakov of Eternity week number four is Moshe in Kabbalah we put Moshe before Yosef the sphere Foundation is Yosef and the after the sphere of glory and that's not his eternity number four is moja number five is Glory that's around number six is foundation that's Yosef that's why the USPS and go the same order and sphere number seven is dovet okay so this is mosha hold is our own your soul is you're safe so now let's plot lagbauma radva Omar is in the fifth week because the four weeks are finished 28 days is four weeks so 29 is cassette of Hoge because week number five is xyron so 29 is loving kindness about 30 is gavora of Hope 31 is to Ferris of Hope beauty of Hope 32 is Network eternity of Hope is Glory of Glory hold of Hope and since the meter of Hope is connected to aharan it is a double dose of iron meaning the spiritual Vibes the spiritual emanations the spiritual potentialities that God puts into the world on that day mystically are The Meadows exemplified by Aaron hakone intensified the whole week is the week of Aaron tonight is also the week of Our Own but I'm not by Homer it's the day of Our Own and the week of hour now what was Iron's dominant media so Percival says our own was uef Shalom the lover of peace the pursuer of peace you know it is said because I'll tell us now our own died a few months before Moshe iron died and Moshe died the next seventh of others so Marvin died a few months earlier but because I'll say the mourning and grief over the death of Our Own was even greater than the mourning and grief over the death of Moshe why was that so Moshe was the greatest prophet whoever lived who will ever live nobody reached the level of moshe's godliness if you think about it the average Jew didn't really connect to Moshe that much I mean how many I mean how often did you if you were in the Midwife how often did you speak so much you know maybe the first year when he would have when before Israel came along maybe Moshe was involved in a lot of different disputes but once Moshe listened to Israel to delegate Moshe was not involved I mean you could have gone through 40 years in the desert and you heard Moshe give public addresses and do miracles but you know he didn't really schmooze with him he didn't say how's it going today um if your milk spoon got mixed up with your fascia plate and I'm not sure money is part of anyway you know you didn't ask Moshe what to do there were other people who were there to answer those questions so Moshe was by virtue of his holiness somewhat removed from the people I wrote on the other hand was a man of the people Aaron was involved in adjudicating reconciling mediating husbands and wives parents and children business partners Aaron was somebody who made peace Aaron was someone who was proactive even if they didn't come to him he would volunteer now if you think about that that is the epitome of covert for another person because if you follow reference definition that covert is not about etiquette but seeing the value in the other person when your problem becomes my problem where if something bothers you it bothers me and I don't have the attitude now that's not important enough of my time what you're doing is you're building up a person and you're communicating to that person you better you make a difference so I think it's a relatively small jump to say that the media of always exemplifies seeing the godliness and the weight and the heft and the significance of every person so if Omer is the day where the spiritual color that Hashem brings into the world is Glory of Glory and that's a double dose of Ira qba Omar is Miss sugal for me to see the good in another person and for you to see the good in another person so now you can understand capitalistically why the students of Rabbi Akiva did not die on lagba Omer the only reason they were high of Misa is because they didn't see the value and the worth in the other foreign the scales were removed from their eyes it was like a cataract operation they were able to perceive that Godless maybe only for that day that depends on whether it was permanent well at the point at which they could see the covert they're no longer going to be hired Misa and that's why they didn't die unlike Bomer it's whole so if we ask ourselves what should our Focus be on Rod Bomer in particular it would be not just to be nice to people but to strive to see the hashivas the gravitas the significance in them which emanates from the meter of Aaron that Ariana Colleen was always shalom now just give me three minutes that is simcha number one simple number one is the cessation of the deaths of tomidum but then we have simcha number two which is a few years later and then on one hand we're rejoicing because because people stop dying but reason number two is oh we're rejoicing because somebody died that is years later it is said that this was the death of the great Rabbi Shimon bar Yokai who was one of Rabbi akiva's five tell me them so first why would you celebrate a death something about Amazon so so the Aries I'll explain it's not that we're celebrating a death but the day that he died he revealed the great mysteries of Kabbalah that are in the Tsar and therefore a great light was revealed to the world and therefore there's a Supply in fact the vacavillo points up and I think it's so much earlier of the banished high that the widely held belief I don't want to undermine any anything might be based on a printing mistake the original manuscripts of the Aries writings from vital describe as Yom simchas AF the day of the rejoicing of rapture Memorial which refers to the Zohar but not to his death in later manuscripts of simchas was dropped so if you have Shin mem and you take out the crest by mistake then you have Shin memsaf which reads sham mace so the whole Lima Yom shemess Rashmi rabbit is based on a chess that was inadvertently trapped so um I don't want to change people's monogamy but jakavel suggests and the banished says it earlier that there's no real Makar that he died I'm like Bomer but still we do celebrate rebe Shimon bar Yokai and that's why people go to mayron right one Hill over from svet [Applause] um it's hard to unlock my Homer I mean I mean there have been no tragedies I mean two years ago we had an awful awful tragedy in Hashem is protected us and the proper history was made to make it safer but still the crowds are very very daunting and uh mayron the whole year is a relatively sleepy place and if you got a lot go to my room tomorrow you'll have the cover of humor by your cry all to yourself you can spend hours and hours there with maybe 10 people next to you and that'll be great you go today you'd have half a million I don't know how many people uh there but uh in fact the old joke was that Marone is so crowded that even represent goes out of town I'm not the Homer you know he goes somewhere else but okay but but be this at May uh we celebrate because he revealed the great secrets of the Torah now that would also be the significance of bonfires we know that log Wilmer is one of kids favorite day because they get to make fires and at least in my neighborhood I'm sure other neighborhoods they start collecting wood for fire like before pesach already but before and they're not collecting it for beer comments they're collecting it for lagba Omer to have big big bonfires but I think there's a very good connection between and fires and of course in my room they make gigantic bonfires because they fire is a source of light and a source of warmth but fire is also dangerous without proper boundaries Fire Burns destroys kills well the mysteries of the Torah are very much that way they are beautiful and deep spiritual ideas but if you don't properly understand them they can be destructive that's why we discourage many people from learning Kabbalah people want to learn Kabbalah right away but it's something that you have to be ready for and that's why unfortunately there actually is a history of the greatest of capitalists Don Young the Ariza died at the age of 39. revnosha Cordova died in his 40s ravaria Kaplan I'm not comparing him to the arena Iraq was like modern kabbalist it was he did many other things as well he died young now again a doctor will say he died because of a heart attack and the leg and once again I'm gonna give my own totally unfounded speculation I have no evidence of it but I have a certain intuition that his involvement in Cabela was dangerous and the reason that so is actually a reason for that and that is when you explore the nature of intimacy with God your soul does not want to stay in its body and you can have an out of body experience and the Soul doesn't want to come back and will not come back and in fact Rabbi Kaplan himself writes it in a book he says when you're involved in kabbalistic meditation you have to have a buddy with you just like going swimming they recommend you go with somebody and teach you hit your head or whatever it is because your friend can see that you're going out of the world too much and give you a slap whatever it is bring it down to earth so I I wonder if Robert Kaplan underwent that very very thing that he described so that's the remnants of the fire so as a way tonight we're a different day but I hope that the light of lagba Omer will continue to give us light and give us warmth to be inspired both by the story of Rabbi Akiva and the greatness of his talmud Rabbi Sherman and in that way we will prepare romato to be one person with one heart so thanks so much and goodbye everybody [Music]