Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: The Red Heifer Atones for the Sin of the Golden Calf

[Music] okay hi everybody hope uh you're all well and again muzzle tough to rabbi and uh reversing poston uh well i guess i'll announce that as well another khasna they had last night much much muslim today shir is dedicated uh for a reforest leima to bryan batrava and svee ben abraham may they have a reforged layman but israel and aliyah of avraham ben abraham and um okay so again i made a learning billy nish mateau and then we have another anonymous contribution for tonight's class and thank you we really appreciate it and another anonymous contribution as a mazel tov to the post and family for the wedding of yaakov to shelly argy r israel we're going with the parts of khukas this week in the parsha frucas have a very very interesting mitzvah that is considered to be perhaps the most enigmatic mitzvah in the torah and that is called the mitzvah of the para aduma and again halaqay to understand the para haduma it is a ritual that is necessary to become purified from contact with a dead body we've discussed before that there is a concept in the torah that when a person comes in contact with the dead they are in a state of tumor impurity now impurity doesn't mean they're traif they're not a jew for most purposes a person can go on in regular life as a tummy person a person can go to show a person can learn torah a person a man would pronounce villain et cetera but tuma does have disabilities connected to the basa mikdash and the harebayat and eating corbanos and eating trauma so in the time of the temple in particular it was a disadvantage to be connected to a state of tuma and the torah gives us purification rituals to get out of the state of tuma and for a mace tomas mace which you contract by either touching a dead body moving a dead body or being under the same roof as a dead body including a tree overhanging you and a grave so the rituals are more complicated you have to be sprinkled with the ashes of the red heifer that are mixed with water spring water and then a little bit is thrown on you on day three of your contamination and on day seven and then after that you go to the mikvon day seven and you will be tahor at night okay so if for example a person became tame on monday i'm picking monday for a reason so day three of their tumor is monday tuesday wednesday wednesday is day three and then day seven is thursday friday saturday sunday sunday is day seven they get their second sprinkling on day seven they go to the mikvah later that day when nightfall comes they become tor now there are many many different forms of tuma and most of them do not require para douma the outstanding example would be a woman that's anita it isn't a state of tumor we'll discuss what that means and obviously we know that a nida only needs immersion in a mikvah after the requisite number of days there is no concept of para aduma so para aduma is only for tomas mace contact with a dead body and since we don't have paranuma today anyone that ever came in contact with a dead body by being in a cemetery is tomay and there's no way to get out of it that is a hospital today most likely a hospital or a hospital or something and again we talked about higher bias and then the implications of that but but the issue is all of us are tames so the concept is that the ritual of para aduma is called the hok in fact that's the part of us is a law of the torah for which there is no reason that we can figure out now obviously everything god does has a reason but it's a hoax in the sense that it's beyond our comprehension and this is said to be the choke par excellence of the torah because it is so inexplicable in so many different ways why red why a heifer why ashes why water et cetera we'll talk about some other paradoxes as we go on again let me just clarify the obvious point that some people might not realize the red of the para aduma is not fire engine red if you had to have a fire engine red cow you would be very very hard-pressed to find it that is not a color that appears in cattle naturally the red of the para aduma is actually not an unusual color at all it is the orange brown that is commonly the color of many types of cows but the rarity of para duma is it has to be virtually 100 that color you're allowed to have up to one black hair if there are two black hairs how many hairs does a cow have i don't know five million it's hard to know but two black hairs it's already disqualified that means someone has to take a magnifying glass black or any other color any color any color and anything that's not not that reddish brown uh and someone has to go through every you know millimeter of the para juma and of course what happens is even if you get one it might change right it might a color might change and the like so because of that para adumas were rare and when they were needed and when we had to find one at the time of the temple the person that had it could often get a lot of money for a para azuma that's a famous gomorian conduction uh where the gemaran condition discusses keyboard of the aim the mitzvah of honoring parents and it uses as the example of keeper daviam a non-jew dhamma ben nasina from ashkelon that one time the the zekanim the sanhedrin needed a precious stone in the cohen guttal's breastplate and he was the only one that had that particular jewel but the key to the jewelry case was under his father's head and his father was taking a nap and he would not wake up his father even though he lost the sale of that jewel they had to go elsewhere and the gemara records that god gave him a reward that the next year he had a para aduma in his flock and they were going to offer him even more money than they offered him for the jewel but he said i'll only take what you would have given me for the jewel the story of dubum in the scene is how luckily a very interesting story because although the talmud praises him for the tremendous respect he showed his father one could raise a question of whether that was a sensible response i mean imagine that somebody comes and offers you millions and millions of dollars but you don't want to wake up your father because the key is there or the information is there and then when dad wakes up you say you know dad i want you to know how much i honor you i gave up 10 million dollars not to wake you up from your nap i mean what would your father's reaction be would he be honored and happy or would he be very very upset so it could very well be that dhamma ben nasina's action was not halal proper but it came from a pure heart and therefore khazal record the fact that he's considered to be a righteous gentile because of his willingness to sacrifice on behalf of his his father now paradium has many helacos that the tory itself says it's not just the color that's an issue the issue is that it you could not have done any work with this cow if you used it to draw a plough it's no good if you put a yolk on top of it it's no good even if it was mated with a zachar with a bull that would disqualify it you put your briefcase on top of it while you were getting something or something it becomes puzzled so a parathuma has to be watched very very very very carefully the ritual is not connected to the temple per se if you look in the torah you will find that the slaughtering and the burning of the para duma is not on the altar it's not in the temple it's on the mount of olives it's him and after it's prepared the sprinkling with the water can be anywhere it could be in svas it could be in suveria in fact the the mission that tells us that supplies of the ashes were distributed in many places in the land of israel so when people were tamay up north or in the south they could go to regional purification centers right so in many many ways there's almost nothing about the para duma that is directly connected to the beta mikdash obviously the mount of olives is near the basement dutch but it's not the harebias itself the preparation of the para is harassaism and the sprinkling of the water and the ashes that occurs uh wherever it is at least in heritage there would be halaq problems and even transporting the para douma ashes to khuslaris but at least anywhere in eric israel is a kosher place for haz so as it were hazal tell us that even melech who seemingly understood every single part of the torah when it got to para duma he said this is too much for me i don't get it so the meforshim start off with a question that that may be a small question but it has some interesting answers and that is uh the the puzzle describes para duma with these three words zos hatorah this is the hoke of the torah now given the fact that we're only describing a specific hoke we're not describing the whole torah why does it say zos torah it should have said zos sapara this is the khokh of the para aduma why say those torah so there are a number of answers of the mephorsham give the arachim gives a very interesting answer and he says that you find that the laws of impurity directly correlate to the level of torah that a person has in the following way tuma represents the void that is created when holiness leaves the world when holiness leaves the world there is a vacuum there is an emptiness there is a void and therefore that becomes impure that becomes tame therefore the higher and more elevated the holiness the greater is the tumor when there's an absence so for example uh a dead plant does not convey any impurity if i touch a dead plant that's no longer growing i don't become tummy if i touch a dead animal that wasn't shakhtar that's not a problem but if i touch a dead animal that was not shifted kosher or non-kosher i become tame for one day i don't need paradigma but there's a tumor for one day a dead human corpse i'm tummy for seven days you see the greater the life the greater the tumor plants have no tumor at all animals have limited tumor the tumor of a human corpse is a much more severe tumor and the tumor of a jewish corpse is also a different level than the tumor of a non-jewish corpse the tumor of a non-jewish corpse creates tumor by touching him by movement but if i'm in the same room as a non-jewish corpse called oh hell i'm not tame but a jewish corpse conveys tuma even the ohil even under the same roof so what you see is you know kind of a paradox a little bit and that is the greater the holiness the greater the void and the vacuum and the emptiness that is created as a result of tumor so tumor correlates the tumor of death correlates directly with the kadusha of life and that's what the passage means these laws not just paradigma but the general laws of tumor are connected to the holiness of torah that is within the framework of that individual the plant is less than the animal or the plant is uh or the animal is more than the plant the person is more than the animal the jew is more than the non-jew all of that comes from the hierarchy of satoru that is shot number one that is said in the name of the or hachayam or the iraqi makhadesh says it ben atar shot number two is based on a very fascinating comment of the villenegon all of us know the famous ghazal that torah is compared to water towards compared to water and there are a million reasons why taurus compared to water water purifies torah purifies water is necessary for life torah is necessary for life but the vilnigan offers a startling reason why torres compared to water he says it's the nature of water that whatever water is poured upon water will facilitate growth and the water is indifferent if the thing that it is stimulating is a positive or a negative if i pour water on seeds i'm going to get the growth of a plant whether the plant is a rose bush or whether it's poison ivy or whatever it is water is masmiach water causes growth irrespective of whether that growth is positive or negative so here's what the villenegon says and this is really such an interesting even controversial idea that there have been places where i said this idea in a yeshiva group and they said it's impossible that villenegon could not have said this you know you'll see why in a moment and the villenegon does say it and he says the following tyrus like water because torah will bring out in you whatever is there so if you're a kind compassionate generous humble person the torah will make you kinder gentler more compassionate more humble so far no controversy there but listen to this this is where it's quite an amazing statement if a person is arrogant selfish and overly connected to his ego the learning of torah might make him more so that was the part that the language people didn't believe that the bill negotiated now keep in mind the vilna gun was no slouch when it came to learning you know one could say if it would be a movement or whatever that wasn't makshif talmutora you could so much okay you know it comes from that side of it the villenegon's whole life was learning torah the villain learned torah 22 hours a day for for more than 70 years there was nothing in the bilnagon that was as important as learning torah and still the bill nagon says if you don't consciously work on your midos tovos the learning of the torah is not going to make you better it may even make you worse torah is water if you're competitive your learning will just be another avenue in which you can be competitive and have one upmanship and delay now the truth is this is actually quite a controversial idea and there are many contradictions in the vilnigan's own writings there are a number of places where the villenegon says that learning toray itself will improve your character and make you better i'm not going to deny you can find those passages at least in this passage though he says learning torah alone can even make you worse unless you consciously work on your midos togos this is why it is said that the vilmagone in a sense was the father of what later became known as the muslim movement and you can even trace this in terms of talmud and rebbe because the vilnigon's talmid mufak his closest talmud was rafael velajan and richard of course started the famous volusioner yeshiva and uh one of his tamidim was rav zundal of salant from the city of salons and rezundal of salat was a very very hidden sadiq very hidden he did not have yeshiva he did not have position but his disciple was of israel salater who started this emphasis on musser and in a way there was a messiah going back to the villenegon that one has to consciously work under meters this was a controversy whenever we saw cilantro started there were a number of yeshivas that were against any concentration on musser because they said terror learning is enough and uh velasjan itself did not have uh incorporate musser in their in their curriculum uh brisk was a brisk was and to some degree is against the concept of a formalized emphasis on musser so it's still kind of a live controversy is torah enough the em later described it that torah is the ideal diet for a healthy soul if you're a healthy soul the torah will keep you healthy and make you stronger but if you have sicknesses of the soul you need some extra medicines you need some extra therapies the torah will not itself help you you need to augment with musa and working on your medos and and the like so this is a famous comment of the villenegon so why is it connected to paraguay which this this the village does not say but this is my extension of it we say paradum is a hok well what's so hoke about it what's so mysterious is it just the red cow so the meforshim actually say what is really inexplicable about the para is not merely the myriad of details that don't make sense i mean there are many things in the torah that i don't can cannot make sense of but the problem of the para duma is a paradox and a contradiction that is built into the mitzvah and that is the following the para adhuma purifies those who are coming but everybody who handles the ashes becomes tummy now that's right this is a famous phrase it purifies those are impure um and it can take somebody that's pure and make him tummy now i just want to clarify again this is this is obvious but some people might not realize this people ask the question if that's the case how is it ever possible for all of the jewish people to be ritually purified won't there always be somebody who's holding the bag so to speak because here's the thing let's imagine i have a lot of people who are tame mace so i'm a cohen so i sprinkle on you but now i'm tummy because i handle the ashes of the para douma so i need somebody to sprinkle on me and assuming i have the requisite days so now i'm pure but he's tummy so somebody sprinkles on him so he star somebody else's tummy how are you going to get everybody to be taller if the people who handle the ashes of the para douma are always going to be tummy you have what's called an infinite regression problem in which no matter how many times you go through it there'll be somebody that's going to be tummy the answer is that's not a problem and one reason it's not a problem there are a few reasons why it's not a problem but one reason why it's not a problem is the person who becomes tame because he handles the ashes of para aduma does not need to be sprinkled with the ashes of para aduma the only tumor that needs to be sprinkled with the ashes of bharatuma is the tuma of mace touching a corpse or moving a corpse if i'm tame because i'm dealing with the edges of para doma all i have to do is go to the mikvah so whatever it is so after i sprinkle everybody i'm tame yeah that's true i go to the mikvah i'll be taller at night right so there's no problem you'd only have an infinite regression if every person needs to be sprinkled with the ashes of the paradigma that's not the case now a second reason i say this because i don't want to get an email telling me i whatever the second reason is that as a matter of fact although it is true that the people who handle the ashes of para duma do become tamae that does not apply to the one who sprinkles uh the ashes in other words that person does not become tame so you don't have to write me that that rashi says that i'm aware of that so those would be two reasons why there wouldn't be uh an infinite regression problem yeah well there's funny there are people that have to gather the ashes they transport the ashes uh right so all of those people do become tummy for only one day only one day and they have to go to the mikvah so ghazal say that the paradox of para duma is not only the inexplicable nature of the red heifer and everything else but it's connected to the contradiction that how can the same thing that generates purity generate impurity but that's exactly the paradox of the torah right if you have good meadows the torah makes you better if you have bad meadows the torah makes you worse so zouz satora says the same choke the same paradox you have in paradiumma you also have in the torah itself now there is metahere as that's mayhem as they say this is a controversial teaching of the villenegon but it does highlight the idea that we have to be consciously working on midos tovos improving our character because the process of learning alone is not going to is not going to do that now a third answer to the question why does it say this is the hulk of the torah rather than this is the hulk of the of the para is the idea that a person's attitude to the torah can be measured engaged by how they deal with the choke a lot of the torah makes sense so if i keep the parts of the torah that are sensible to me is that because i'm following the will of god or am i simply doing what is logical and sensible to me so how do you know how does a person know if i'm truly committed to hashem it's primarily through the khukib because the khukim involved a suspension of your rational belief makes no sense you're only doing it because of hashem now once you show that your loyalty to hashem is not limited by your reasoning then even the mitzvos you do that make sense now become service to hashem rather than serving yourself so those khuka satora the way you keep the hulk is your attitude to the torah as a whole that it's a matter of serving far too often and you know i could say this is what the conservative reform did for the truth is even even in the orthodox world we do this as well so i don't i don't want to single that out we kind of have a preconceived notion of what we want and then we look in the torah and we cherry pick different sources to support what it is that we want to do the issue about roe versus wade in recent days is an example where all of a sudden different people are finding all of these sources in the torah that support the right to an abortion which is you know pretty bizarre but the torah supports the right to choose or because it says in genesis it is not good for man to be alone and that is what god decreed so the torah must support gay marriage okay i don't want to discuss these hot button issues because again i i have compassion for everybody that's involved in either the struggle of an unwanted pregnancy or the issue of same-sex attraction i i don't mean to denigrate but there's a certain mental process in which i want to come to a certain result and then i'm going to find in the torah that result that is using the torah to advance your agenda rather than nullifying yourself to god's will even if it's not now again as i say i mean even in the orthodox world this type of thing is done and maybe it's human nature but the hoke is the example of unconditional obedience even when it doesn't make sense and that exemplifies a person's whole attitude towards the torah zos so now let's talk a little bit about another idea that rashi brings rashi quotes usually most of rashi's sources are midrashim gamoras right that's that's the raw material out of which rashi constructs his commentary rashi almost never quotes like later authorities that are after the time of the medrash but here he does he quotes an authority in the generation before rashi but after the talmud and the madrid rabbi mosha hadarshan rav mosha the preacher and it's interesting where did rashi get this because we don't we don't really have a book of rav mosha darshan rashi apparently did have access to a safer authored by ramos darshan and it's one of many swarm that sometimes we've lost and have not come down to us it's very quite amazing uh there are many many farms that are lost and um even non-suffrage were lost for example aristotle this is kind of a very amazing thing just as a little aside irish title had two different totally groups of works one was called exoteric meaning easy to understand intended for a popular audience kind of you know philosophy for dummies whatever it would be in which everything was explained absolutely clear and then there is what were called the esoteric works of aristotle that were like his footnotes his eon his in-depth study that is much more difficult to understand and almost they were personal notes his own notes that were not even intended for the public for some crazy reason i don't even understand the presence it is only the esoteric works that survived none of aristotle's exoteric work survived you would think the opposite you would think the part that was popular and everybody got to appreciate madafka that would have been that which would be available we have no trace of it at all i mean we we have testimonies that had existed not here i mean imagine to have aristotle you know in like clear clear shots you know that would have been a a great thing in many ways but what's even a much greater aveda than not having aristotle is that we've lost midrashim and we've lost ghazals and uh even from the time of qazal and we've lost ramosha haddarshan but rashi does bring for mojo darshan an interesting idea that the para aduma is a kappara is an atonement for the seita eggel for the sin of the golden calf right the sin of the golden calf was a form of idolatry that the jewish people practiced it was a great avera even though it was formally forgiven on yom kippur but there's a certain stigma a certain trace of the sin of the golden calf that is still with us to this very day and the ritual of the para aduma is a kapoora for the kaido ego and the analogy would be that if a baby comes into a house and a baby messes up the house the mother must come and clean up after the baby so too the calf which messed up the mother the para the cow must come and wipe up the filth that the baby generated so let's explore this in what way would the para aduma be a kapoor for the first of all how can you call it a kaphora it's not in the basa mikdash it's not a sacrifice and it's not brought the tauri does not describe the para duma as an atonement for sin the torah describes the para aduma as a purifier from tomas mace it's a different function it's not a kapara function it is a tahara function it is a function of a purification ritual so to understand this a little bit let's go back to the general idea of tuma now as i say there are many many forms of tuma in the torah but refrigerator says the common form of tumor all tumor is derived from connection to death now in some cases this is absolutely obvious i touch a dead body i'm tummy i touch a dead animal i'm tummy obviously that's connected to death but even forms of tuma which are not directly connected to death are indirectly connected a needha a nida has a status of tummy why where's the death because the shedding of the uterine lining is a potential life that could have been created in that month that was not a leper a matsura when they we had seras is treated as a connection to death because the skin is rotting away etc a man that has a seminal emission is tame you don't need paradigma but it is tame because a seminal emission is also in a sense a form of wasting seed that could have gone for reproduction now even a woman who gives birth to a child is in a state of tumor why would childbirth be connected to death it's the opposite she brought a new life into the world so there are actually two reasons one is because every child worth i don't want to scare anyone but every child birth is a near-death experience it is so in a sense there is a brush with death and number two which is more of an abstract idea reverse says childbirth as strange as this may sound is the death of a life that was within the woman's body there was a life within her body now the life has been externalized but in a sense there is a void within there is actually a void and an emptiness within that she's no longer carrying life so references point is all tuma of all types not just actual corpse tumor all tumor is based on a connection with death why does death cause tuma because in a sense death came into the world by virtue of the hate of adam and chava eating from the eight sadas hashem's original plan was we would live forever eating from the eight zadas death into the world so every single time we encounter death we get re-expelled from the garden of eden because death is connected to the fate of the eight sadas and the fate of the eight sadas creates expulsion from ghanaian when i get connected to death i'm reconnecting to the height of the eighth hadas and i get expelled now what is gun aid in on earth ghanaian on earth is the basa mikta that is why the laws of tumor don't apply in most areas of life as i said in the beginning a person who's tame by any reason can learn can davin can go to show that's not a problem we go around our lives being tame and there's no problem that we have per se but you can't go to the baitham-iknish you have to suffer the consequences of expulsion from ganadan because death connects me to the height of the eating of the eight sadas now what was the root of that faith and this we spoke about a few weeks ago the root of the height of the eight sadas other rites was covered honor glory ego gratification because how did the nakhosh entice hava to eat from the fruit he had two strategies one was she was told by adam not to touch the tree because the day that you touch the tree you will die and that was a distortion because hashem didn't say don't touch the tree hashem said don't eat the fruit but adam didn't trust his wife and he told don't even touch it and the nakhash pushed her against the tree and she touched it and nothing happened and concluded that this commandment is not relevant that's where hazal say be careful not to add to the torah because if you add to the torah you'll come to diminish it that was strategy number one but strategy number two is the nakhosh marketed the fruit of the eighth hadas as a god pill the knockout said the day that you eat from this fruit you will be like god in total mastery of good and evil understanding the nature of good and evil whatever that was imagine somebody comes to you and says take this pill and you can be hashem that's the ultimate ego trip the merida the rebellion against god in the faith of the eighth sadas came from arrogance came from gaiver came from covet and that's very significant because in many many ways we are god-like we are created in the image of god selam elohim and that has concrete meanings there are many many dimensions in being created in the image of god it doesn't mean a physical image god does not have eyes ears nose but it means there are attributes of the human personality that are divine attributes among them are creativity initiative we are given wisdom understanding a certain control over the world pedro sullivan used to write about the idea that draining the swamps and conquering disease trying to trying to do it is a religious mandate because that is one of the ways we exemplify being in the image of god to kind of take charge of the world in various ways so we are godly and of course in holiness certainly so but the problem is that could easily slide into arrogance that can easily slide into a sense as the torah warns us over and over again of kohi viotsumyadi when a person says it is my strength and my ability that accomplishes everything that's why we've learned over the past few years that in spite of all of our systems and all of our technology and all of our mastery things can make everything fall apart very very quickly i mean the whole experience of covet whatever your particular take on it is something that's very very humbling it just shows us how the whole world can come to a standstill and in the united states other things the disintegration of society the black lives matter and the defunding the police all sorts of meshuggahs that one would never imagine but all of these things you know go on and the world is kind of gets out of control and when it spins out of control we realize that we are not the masters of our faith that we often think that we are so death could be seen not so much as a punishment by god but as a reminder that we are not god meaning there is a chasm there is a gap between creator and created we have so many godly attributes but we're not god we don't live forever we die so this is all built and referred to this idea that all tuma is connected to death death is connected to the sin of the garden of eden that requires expulsion from the garden of a uh from the garden of eden which is the base amiktosh and it is connected ultimately to arrogance gaiver pomposity thinking we are masters of our fate and it is death that ultimately reminds us that we are not now this explains yet another feature and you'll see how this will link up to para duma this explains why if death comes into the world because of arrogance why the purification rituals that liberate us from death are rituals of humility and modesty what are the two rituals that too must make let's take tomas mesas as the highest tumor number one the ashes of para duma and number two immersion in a mixer right those are the two rituals that a person needs mikvah we still have today para duma we don't ashes is said to be the great symbol of humility when avraham avinu prays for the cities of saddam and amore and avraham avinu declares that he's really not worthy he says anoki off for afer i am dust i am ashes in which you actually put yourself in the vulnerable environment of water you put yourself in an environment where unless you're aquaman you will not be able to survive right i put myself under water put it for a second granted that's fine but i'm in an environment where i have no capacity of living right if i stay there for 15 minutes or a half an hour whatever it is i'm gone and that's why indeed the mikvah is treated as a birthing experience you put yourself back in the amniotic fluid and you re-emerge as a new person both of those rituals is shedding the ego obliterating the arrogance achieving humility and re-creation so you see the correlation here if death comes into the world because of arrogance gaiver and ego i beca therefore i am re-expelled from ghanaiden i get purified and readmitted by humility modesty and submission and that is the idea of the ashes now that doesn't explain why a cow why red i'm not explaining all the details but the notion that purification is connected to ashes because that's the antidote that is the refua for the hate that brought tuma into the world in the first place okay i s death came because of gaiva i am liberated from death by humility and this is the great muscle i mean many people know it from greek mythology the phoenix bird but the truth is we have it in our own madrusham a bird called the net called the ziz and this is a burr right in the phoenix myth which people know a bird gets burnt into ashes and it rises from the ashes and ghazal have an identical midrash the met now whether literally there's such a bird is not really important many midrashim are speaking allegorically but the symbolic meaning of this is a very powerful one and that is it is precisely by obliterating our ego and our arrogance that we achieve immortality and new life like you might think the opposite if i kind of destroy my ego i'm not here the other way around that is how you get empowered that is how you get recreated you rise from the ashes so with this idea rab sadaq the svasmis suggest that we might even have an understanding of the paradox of paradium now again obviously we have to be very careful here if even hamel doesn't understand the para duma then obviously we're not going to be totally successful but still the svarim want to offer a little bit of insight again what is the paradox of para doma it purifies the impure meaning it creates purity but it also generates impurity how can the same thing have two opposite effects if we understand that the symbolic meaning of ashes is humility and submission and obliteration of the ego then the suggestion of the para aduma is there is what you might call good humility which purifies and liberates and then there is destructive humility that destroys and contaminates the same type of character idea can move you in opposite ways humility that says i'm nothing without god and i have to link myself to god that's a wonderful thing that's kind of connecting to the ultimate power source that empowers you that liberates you that strengthens you that gives you courage because you know that you're not in charge you just do your best and hashem will help you that's the humility that purifies but there's another humility in which because i think i'm nothing why should i bother to do good in the world whatever i do doesn't make a difference a lack of self-esteem a lack of recognizing your potential a lack of knowing that you have a power to do good in the world so the rem as is there are ashes of empowerment and transcendence and spirituality which make you pure and there are ashes of paralysis self-doubt worthless and hopelessness that make you impure that's the remnants on one hand humility is the greatest of all qualities on the other hand when it engenders within a person a sense of worthlessness and despair it actually becomes the yetzer horror it is a yetzer hara coming in the guise of something religious i'm such exotic because i'm so humble whatever it would be humility can be very very destructive a person has to know their worth the person has to know their value that is why para aduma which purifies by virtue of the humility can also convey tumor with this introduction let's segue back to rav mosha haddarshan which was a question i raised and didn't answer ramosa darshan writes that para duma is a kapara is an atonement for the sin of the golden calf and the question is how is it an atonement for that i mean just because mother cleans up after the baby but what thematically is the kappa so let's remember the sin of the golden calf itself ramban and kuzari both explain that the sin of the golden calf was not availed azaria they didn't think that this calf that they just made was the god that took them out of egypt and created heaven and earth it's very clear from the torah that the jewish people looked at the ego not as a substitute for god but as a substitute for moshe rabino moshe was late they need something that spiritually will be an intermediary we don't understand that process of moshe revenue why because they felt we are not worthy of having a relationship with god without an intermediary force we are too insignificant we are too sinful we are too lowly to dare to approach the almighty we needed mosha rabeno as an intermediary and now that he's gone we need the golden calf again this is a process we don't understand but the ramban explains how diego was seen as a spiritual channeler of divine energy so in a sense the fate of the golden calf the hate of the ego was a displaced modesty in which you don't realize how beloved you are in hashem's eyes you don't realize your worth it's not so much a rebellion against hashem as it is a failure to understand who you are a failure to understand that you can and therefore must have a relationship with god that was the saito ego reps otherwise and i've said this more than once just as a person is highest they must have a muna in themselves the ego was a failure to have a muna in themselves now here's the thing is a purification ritual that involves humility humility ashes but what does it do it purifies me so i can go into the basal mikdash so in a sense what i'm doing is i'm taking the same attribute of humility which was used in a destructive way for the ego to say i'm not worthy of connecting to god and i'm taking that same humility and using it in a positive way to have that connection now the random writes what is the ideal repentance how does a person know that they're truly repentant when they put themselves in the same situation well i shouldn't say put themselves actually not allowed to put yourself but if i find myself in the same situation that caused me to sin and instead of sinning i don't for example a person was in a certain bar or a certain city and he used natural and alcohol or other things he's not supposed to put himself in the same situation because how do you know right so for sure don't do it but if you find yourself in the same situation and you don't sin then hashem that shows you've truly changed so that's exactly what's going on here the humility that generated diego is now being used to generate a participation in the avodah of the basa mikdash you've taken that humility and you've converted it from a negative destructive force to a positive constructive one that's true that's what moshe darshan means when he says the para aduma is a kapara for the heidegger because if i didn't believe i was worthy of going to the base of mikveh why would i bother being sprinkled with the paratuba right i don't i don't need it lmi i want to go to the base i make this right i'm not going to say i'm unworthy right so that's the idea of of of kappa let me just end with one one final thought and that is there are certain mid-russians that are actually called medrish paliya midrashim that are unknown meaning their meaning is so elusive that they're just called difficult madrassion so there's a medrush paliyah that says if you want to understand para duma you must understand avat israel the secret of para duma is the love of one jew for another and the question becomes you know it's hard to see the connection there so here is what he says he says you know if all the people who handle the para duma become tummy if you're a culling that's a major inconvenience because karate are supposed to work in the base of mikdash and this kind of disqualifies them they get supported on the basis of trauma and a coin that's tommy cannot eat rumor so really any tuma that a cohen incurs is going to be an inconvenience and a detriment to him but why is the coin doing it to enable another jew to become pure that's a selfless act of paradigma so based on this here's the idea instead of looking at it as a paradox it makes people pure and it makes people impure it's actually a reason because it makes me impure that is the secret of its power to purify because by being willing to make myself impure i am inconveniencing myself for a fellow jew the willingness to inconvenience myself brings purity into the world so you see the in other words instead of saying oh it's a contradiction it's matami some people and mata or other people no because it's me and i'm willing to do it that is the source of its power of purity into the world of us israel when a jew cares for another jew that changes the world you know they tell an old story about a child who was learning how to read and uh you know hashem's name is often printed in saduram has two yards and we pronounce it as a nun uh like pronounce it that's hashem's name so the child was told whenever you see these two yards you pronounce it hashem's name if you look into printed hamish at the end of a passage when you have like a colon it looks like a yud on top of a yod a little bit so the child when he came to the end of the puzzle he read hashem's name so the rebbe said no no no this is just a period this is not anything so the kid asked how come when i had the yod and the yud before it was hashem's name and now it's just a period so he said this is a pun the letter yod is the same as the yiddish for a yid yid he says when you have two yiddans standing next to each other helping each other considering themselves equal that's when god resides hashem is there but when one yoda is on top of another yard looking down at the person that's the end of the puzzling the torah cannot go any further with that type of attitude a yid next to it is the shrine a year on top of it the torah stops it does not proceed you know we're entering the month of thomas this week and tom was the 17th of thomas we'll be talking about it obviously is the beginning of the three weeks where we mourn and we think about the basa mikta and this is surely one of the things we have to contemplate as well in the beginning of the month as the third of thomas the art site of lubavitchurebe and you know whatever one's view on the different controversial issues within khabad there is no no question that the rebbe was was great and holy and glutton and torah but especially great and avas israel devoted his life to connect to every single jew and as we come to his yard site we should try to emulate his ways to whatever degree that we can and in that way each and every one of us can be makarev thank you and have a good chance [Music]