Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: When G-d Lets Go, It’s a Vote of Confidence Between Pesach and Shavuot

my baby [Music] okay hi everybody thank you for coming I see I don't have to turn my head to the to the right tonight but Hashem everyone is a left Winger and uh uh first of all this year tonight is dedicated for for suleima for Shimon Ben Elka and um as well as the father and brother of Kaya Feingold David mosheb and Abram Fishel her Father Allah her brother again all of the nishamas have have an Aliyah it's interesting you know remarks a famous phrase how beautiful is it when something is said at the right time when you have the right words or the right occasion there's something special so indeed this applies to this week's Parsha this week's Parsha is parshus and more and pasture summer has many many missilesically it's a fascinating Parsha all the laws of kohanim who they can marry who they can't marry actually very very important nogea lamisa in a very practical way today and all the holidays all the young and tobim are described in parsaturated ETC so there are many many things to talk about but there's one Mitzvah in particular that's very relevant for this time of year Parsha semor is the source for the Mitzvah of counting the Omer counting the days between pesach and chavois it's apostic you shall count critical from the day after Shabbos we'll explain this from the day that you bring the barley offering that is waived in front of the altar you shall count seven complete weeks 49 days and then you have the holiday of shavuas this is the Mitzvah called counting the omers just in terms of translation Omer is a very neutral term Omer is simply a volume measurement like a bushel technically an Omer is the volume of 43 and a fifth egg how much water would 43-5 eggs displace that is called an Omer now omir comes up a few places in the Torah the amount of man that fell every day for your two meals was an Omer per person that's in the hummus when you're making a dough the volume it's not it's not a weight measure the volume of the flower which is makes you obligated to separate khala we talk about in power see it's common people usually give it to you in pounds simply because that's an easier measure to determine but technically it's volume that is it's the volume of 43 and uh a fifth eggs that's called an Omer and finally Omer was a measure of barley that was brought as a meal offering on the second day of pesach which generates Israel is hola moate and it came from the new newly grown newly harvested barley and until you brought the barley offering you were not permitted to eat of the new grain until you brought the barley offering so when we talk about counting the omir counting the Omer is almost a nonsensical term what do you mean counting the armor it really means counting from the Omer right you're counting from the Omer offering and you count 49 days now based on this most reshine him most medieval commentators have a very interesting point they actually say the Torah does not simply say start taunting the Omer from the second day of pesach it says start counting the Omer from the day that you bring the Omer sacrifice now today we don't have a base today we don't bring the Omer sacrifice so according to tosos there is no Torah commandment to count the Omer when you don't have a basam and therefore this is a rabbinic requirement based on zaker commemorating the base of magnesium so according to teslos the counting of the omir bismar is of rabbinic origin now God forbid do not take that to mean it's less of an obligation we have to keep these three of them but it's rabbanan it's not the orisa the one who argues is the rambam the rambam actually learns that the Mitzvah of counting is independent from the bringing of the sacrifice so even without a sacrifice there's a Mitzvah the orisa we can go into the differences between the two views is I'm just giving you this for your own information but what I want to focus on today is the other marker there are two markers in the possic for when you start the Mitzvah of counting the Omer one is from the day you bring the Corban of the barley the other is the day after Shabbos so here I'm sure you you know this over over the years there was a huge machlocus in the time of the second temple between the Sadducees that stook him which was a movement that denied the oral tradition and the Pharisees the prusem who in the New Testament are portrayed negatively but they are our sages they became they'd stook him who normally interpret the Torah hyper literally say hey Shabbos is Shabbos Shabbat is always Saturday and if counting of the Omer is the day after Shabbos you start counting the Omer the first Sunday after path and I don't mean after the whole holiday but after the first day of pesach so if pesach is on Thursday you'll start counting the Omer Saturday night Sunday whenever it is meaning according to the tsukim is taken very very literally Omer starts Shabbat the prusion and by the way the carrots just I don't want to get into the historical information is a little complicated there are carrier rights even today not that many but there is a movement called Terror rights and this movement is over a thousand years old do not confuse the Kaira IM with the tsudu Kim they do have a lot of common religious philosophy but they are two different movements the Stu Kim existed during the second temple only and by the time of the destruction of the temple by the Romans in the year 70 these two Kim apparently went extinct we don't find any reference to sadduce the activity after the qurban Basa mikhnash so the stukem were an extinct movement you might call them a Revival of stooky philosophy but they date from around 900 the 10th century so it's hundreds and hundreds of years right second temple was destroyed in the year 70. 1868 and 70. the kairites arose as a movement in the 10th Century in the 900s because a certain guy didn't get a job he wanted a non-bent of it so he decided to start his own religion it's interesting how how religious movements get started but there is a common so there are two different movements so do Kim and Kyra IM are two different groups but they do share a common theme they did not accept the talmud and the rabbinic traditions and the like and their approach to the biblical text was something that was hyper literal very very literal now it's interesting that although the karayim are Jewish they are Jewish but you know their their belief system is not acceptable to to us because they don't believe in the talmud and the like but it's interesting because they didn't accept the talmud They didn't accept rabbinic literature they focused all of their energies on biblical study and because of that the car rights became quite experts in grammar and occasionally commentaries from our side like the ebenezera or theobarbanel will utilize karaite interpretation to explain difficult words in San right so it's interesting that we actually benefit a little bit from Carol rights because they became very expert in biblical interpretation but be it as it may today say the counting of the Omer always starts the first Saturday night Sunday after the first day of pesach we say it always starts the second day of pesach whenever that is the night before you know after the uh after the first day of PESA and kazal and this was a controversy that apparently went on for hundreds of years hundreds of years and the sages went to great Great Lengths to try to refute that heresy and some suggest that the reason why the stooky reading was so attractive is it guaranteed that on shavu out you would have a two-day Holiday from work because let's think about this uh inherit Israel she was only one day to every other hug which is a one day hug you at least have a hola Maui so pesach you have a nice which was kind of a vacation sukos you have a nice Long Haul on my way one day and you're stuck right now if you follow the Saturday calendar s is always going to be on Sunday right because if you start counting the Omer if day one of the Omer is Sunday day 49 is Shabbos and chivalos is Sunday mostly Shabbos Sunday so that means you have a two-day vacation you have Shabbos and Sunday according to our calculation sometimes you'll have that sometimes PESA can be on Shabbos so we start contacting the Omer mozi Shabbos but many years not many years was only one day now I know from our perspective we're kind of a little bit lazy we sometimes are almost less happy when you have Shabbos and young Tiff we prefer just that one day of young Tiffin and then of course the three days of Yamcha stuff we have in the arrests is a very powerful impetus for aliyadh right drives people crazy and the light but the truth is when people were working very hard as it were they appreciated a two-day holiday and the sadnessy a calculation of chivalas gave them those two days and therefore the had to go to Great length to dispel this reading and they proved that when it says Shabbat in that pasok Shabbos does not mean Saturday Shabbos means the first day of pesach which is a yamtov and yamtov can also be called Shabbos why because anjumptive too we refrain from many not for everything we can cook and the like but it is possible for yomto to also be a day of shavita a day of refraining from malacha okay so everyone knows therefore that the bottom line is that obviously our tradition our masogra follows the reading of the Pharisees of the purushim that has Shabbat means the day after the first holiday of passach it does not mean Sunday okay got it so the question is very obvious why does the Torah employ a word that is so potentially the other way why do I mean the simple the truth the truth of the matter is don't don't quote me here because I don't want you in trouble but the truth is the chiro rights have a more logical reading of the verse and the stook him means Sunday that's how you normally would interpret it so you tell me Well we prove that Shabbos doesn't mean Shabbos Shabbos means pesach so why does the Torah say Shabbos so the epinephrine gives a partial answer but it's not really a full answer the Ebenezer says well let's look at the alternative so instead of saying Shabbat it could have said you start counting the Omer the day after pesach meaning the day after the first day of Passage so says the ebenezera that's not good in the Torah does not always refer to the 15th of Nisan it refers to the day you brought the carbon pesach which was when the 14th of nitha so if it would have said you would have said is the 14th is the 15th so you start counting the Omer on the 15th therefore the Torah had to say it's the day after a holiday where you don't do malacha Shabbat which would be the day after the 15th because would have meant the 15th because Passat could be the 14th and this is the Ebenezer's answer why he had to say Shabbat but the truth of the matter is all you're gaining is you're substituting one ambiguity for another ambiguity meaning if we would have said you would miscalculate but you can also miscatulate and say Sunday like the stupid if the Torah really wanted to to eliminate ambiguity there's actually a very easy way to do so give a calendar date don't say the day after Sabbath day was you shall begin Counting on the 16th day of the first month which is how the Torah reversed to Nisan and that would have no ambiguity you know it's not necessarily going to be a Sunday and you know it's not going to be the 15th the target are given the date so the question Still Remains therefore why does the Torah why does the Torah utilize the phrase of Shabbos to mean the first day of pesach when that is so potentially ambiguous because it could actually have meant like the Superman could have meant Saturday could have been Shabbos itself so first let me just talk a little bit about what is the general idea of the counting of the Omer so the safer who gives reasons for all the Mitzvahs basically explains and we talked about this a few times in connection with pesach that the Torah wants to link the holiday of Freedom which is with the holiday of shavuos which is the giving of the Torah so we would understand that freedom that is not connected to submission to the will of is not only worthless but it's destructive and counterproductive in other words freedom is Meaningful only when you take your freedom and you use it to serve Hashem and to be connected something greater than yourself and that's why the ramban actually says that are actually one holiday and the 49 days of the Omer is a long a long that connects pesach and shavuas in fact the rabbinic term for us interestingly enough is at share it now we think of a third we think of sheminia Sarat but in the mishnah shavuos is called the holiday of asserit now the word at seret means conclusion completion what is it what is it a completion of a completion of pesach and the talmud itself points out that the Omer offering that's brought on pesach is barley barley was commonly given to animals the grain offering that's brought on shavu out is wheat which is for human consumption a pesach that's not yet connected to Matt antola you're like the animal you're a wild animal you're free to do what you want it's that takes your freedom and turns it into human dignity and this is a very basic point you know uh Freedom does not give content to your life you can't say the purpose of my life is to be free that's a meaningless statement free to do what free to be what freedom is not an end freedom is a means to be able to accomplish certain ends when I have freedom I can accomplish certain things but Freedom alone does not provide the content for what it is that you need to accomplish with your life in fact Aristotle actually used these terms Aristotle described um I don't remember but the difference between negative Liberty and positive Liberty negative Liberty is the absence of restriction nobody's telling me what to do positive Liberty is when as a result of the freedom you are able to focus on goals and priorities and uh yeah I think you know it was not Arizona was Isaiah Berlin it was based in Arizona Isaiah Berlin was a Jewish guy he was a not religious per se but um he was a great uh political philosopher Isaiah Berlin in fact I'll tell you a little story about Churchill in a moment and Isaiah Berlin uh and as Evelyn wrote a lot about the fact that part of the decline of the West was an over emphasis on negative Liberty don't restrict me rather than the notion of positive Liberty what do I do with my freedom how do I direct my life the little joke I shouldn't take up time for this year but uh Churchill had read The Works of Isaiah Berlin and he was very very impressed this was during World War II so he asked to meet Isaiah Berlin he told the staff bring him Isaiah Berlin so there was another Berlin that was in London at the time and this was Irving Berlin famous composer now where everyone Belinda was a very talented person but he was not an intellectual in the philosophical sense so Irving William comes to Churchill and they have a nice conversation but afterwards Churchill remarks geez he really writes much better than he talks he got mixed up but okay um but be this maybe that's the general idea of counting this accounting of the Omer is to link freedom with responsibility that's what we're thinking about the purpose of freedom is to do something with my life sir if Hashem okay so that's the general idea of counting of the Omer now but our main question tonight is why does the Tyra use the term Shabbos to describe so I'm going to share with you a thought from the message very interesting thought he points out hierarchically if we look at the difference between Shabbos and yomtov there are two major halactic differences difference number one on Shabbos all the 39 malachouts are prohibited we are we are allowed to cook and do things that are necessary for our enjoyment the cooking malachas are permitted okay that's difference number one difference number two is the sanctity of time Shabbos is an automatic cycle that God put into the creation from the very beginning of the creation every seventh day is Shabbos it makes no difference if any Jew is keeping Shabbos if any two even knows that Shabbos Shabbos is Holy irrespective of anything we do and even though we make Kiddush on Shabbos but kiddish does not mean we sanctify Shabbos kiddish is our acknowledgment that God Sanctified Shabbos in fact how does Kiddush end Hashem blessed are you God mekadesh abat who Sanctified the shabbas I have nothing to do with making Shabbos a holy day I'm supposed to honor the Holiness of Shabbos but I don't create it yomptif is a very very different type of situation remember that yamchief depends on the lunar calendar is X number of days after a new moon Rosh Hashanah is day one of the new moon sulcus day 15 right the Nissan Navin now in the time of the bay samikdash and even afterwards Witnesses would come to the Sanhedrin and testify that they saw the new moon and the sanhedr would Proclaim that day to be and the holidays would be measured from whatever day the Sanhedrin proclaimed and according to the gemara even if the Sanhedrin proclaimed the wrong day to be rosh Scottish a day that was not astronomically the day of the new moon sighting the holiday calculation is not based on astronomy the holiday calculation is based on the day this Sanhedrin proclaimed in other words unlike Shabbos whose kadusha depends on God the Holiness of the holidays depends on the actions of man in sanctifying rosh grodish now you may ask me the question well that's not true today today we have pre-existing calendars that tell me when the holiday is well the Ramba ramban actually says that the only reason we have holidays today is because the last Sanhedrin around the fifth century made all these calculations in advance until the year 6000. and they Sanctified the new moon meaning it's not because of the calendar it's because of the bastians that the sanhedrin's actions in the year in the in the 500s and the 400s and that's why it is brought down you'll often see a statement that the Jewish calendar expires in the year six thousand and the year six thousand we will no longer have holidays that we have to keep now what does it mean to say the Jewish calendar expires the calculations don't expire based on the calculated system that we have we could predict when pesach is going to be in ten thousand years in a million years we have a system against a complicated system but we have a system by which rosh rhodesians are calculated based on lunar revolutions around the Earth and we can certainly if you ask me what day I mean I have to do Academy I can't feel it in my head but what day will pesach be in the uh year 10 000 right now we're 57.83 the year 10 000. we can figure it out so in what way can it be said that the Jewish calendar expires in the year six thousand very simple the Sanhedrin which Sanctified they actually went through imagine going through a thousand pages and saying okay we sanctify this this this this this they proclaim the sanctity of all the future Russia based on their calculations until the year six thousand and the reason is because since we are so sure that mashiach will come before the year 6000 we will then go back to the old system of witnesses going to the San edric so we don't need calculations after the year six thousand which means if counterfactually counterfactually mashiach is not here by the year six thousand the calendar expires there'll be no pesos no circus no Yom Kippur but Shabbos you'll still have because Shabbos does not depend on human input so bikiture we have two halachic differences between Shabbos and yamchev difference one yomtov has the dispensation for food preparation called okrafish Shabbos does not Shabbos if someone's life is in danger then of course we violate Shabbos it's not a violation but just to cook of course you don't cook on Shabbos and the second difference is the Holiness of Shabbos comes totally from God the Holiness of yumpness comes from our sanctification of the new moon that is why these Filas very very exact when we talk about Shabbos we say baruchemas blessed art you God you have Sanctified the Shabbos Israel you have Sanctified Israel and thrill I'm Israel being holy they're enabled to sacrifice is to sanctify the moadam right very mad and that's why everything's exact here when Shabbos and yamchev coincide the way the brother reads you don't say yes because Israel does not sanctify the Shabbos says these two halachic differences emanate from a third difference and that is the following the sanctity of Shabbos why is Shabbos a holy day has nothing to do with any particular experience or interaction that God had with the Jewish people God made the world in six days he rested on the seventh day so the seventh day is a memorial to his creation there were no Jews then we were not around Shabbos in a sense has nothing to do with us and that's why it's called the gift God gave us a gift that we memorialize him through Shabbos but Shabbos is not based on hashem's interaction with us and because Shabbos is not based on God's interaction with us we don't have control over the Shabbos Shabbos does not yield to our needs we can't cook on Shabbos because it makes life easier because Shabbos is an idea that predated the existence of a Jewish people and therefore we Bend to Shabbos Shabbos does not Bend to us so that's why there's no header of nephesh and Shabbos and that's why we have no control over the timing of Shabbos it comes from God yamchef however every single yantef at least the shoulders Rosh Hashanah may be a little bit of a problem but every single of the three regalem is based on a specific interaction that God had with army Israel is about the Exodus from Egypt shavuos is the giving of the Torah sukhaus is God leading us through the desert surrounding us with clouds of Glory and our precarious existence in booths they're you know there are two interpretations what the sukas are which means if there wouldn't have been a Jewish people there couldn't have been a yamtif Shabbos would be a meaningful idea even without a Jewish people yamchev would not exist without us without us there wouldn't be emptive therefore yomptif bends to us our needs like food preparation and therefore we are given control over the kaduce by sanctifying the new moon because without us there wouldn't be a yamctif is all about hashem's unique relationship and interaction with the Jewish people right so we have these two Hawaii differences which are explained by this third idea that Shabbos is a Transcendent idea that is not connected to the particularities of our historical experience as opposed to yamtuff which is intimately connected to us okay that's a very very again fascinating introduction as to the structure of yomtov and Shabbos now there is a little bit of a problem I think the message is 100 correct when it comes to pesachever sukis they are uniquely Jewish days without a Jewish people there wouldn't be these holidays when we come to a holiday like Rosh Hashanah it's a little more difficult because Rosh Hashanah does not celebrate anything that is uniquely Jewish Rosh Hashanah celebrates the creation of Adam on the sixth day of creation and it's more of a universalistic idea so it's not so clear how it fits the the Paradigm but I'll leave Rosh Hashanah apart basically the shallosh regalem this certainly fits very very well so now says like this again in case you're forgetting where we're going the measure clock was trying to answer the question why does the terror refer to pesach by calling it Shabbos that's the problem so with this introduction the message offers a brilliant explanation if we understand that Shabbos represents something that is not connected to us that we didn't deserve that God gave us gave us as a gift and therefore we don't have control or ownership over as opposed to yumsf where we become kind of proprietary of all the yamimtoven the most closest to Shabbos is in fact why is that so because pesachto we were not really deserving of redemption first of all we should have been in Miss Ryan for 400 years God had to take us out early 190 years early after 210 years because we were sinking like quicksands we were already in the 49th level of impurity if we would have hit Level 50 we would have been irredeemable and the meaning their Rizal says the meaning of the idea that we didn't have time to let our dough rise and we had to leave with matzah doesn't just mean pyro was kicking us out but Hashem himself said you better leave now or you're going to sink you're going to eat we don't even know what that means you stay another minute you're going to hit Level 50. so in effect pesach was an unearned Redemption God gave us more than we deserved God gave us more than we were entitled to it was a mat not just like Shabbos now that's less true for chavois Because by the time we got the Toran shavuas we were working on ourselves for 49 days the Omer and similarly Sukkot comes after the Intensive introspective repentance process of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur Sook us we worked to purify ourselves and become deserving but pesach is it's something we didn't earn something we didn't deserve something that God gave us that was beyond our capacities at the time and therefore although it's true that you can cook on pesach and the sanctity of PESA comes from Sanhedrin because after all without a Jewish people there wouldn't have been a passage that argument is still there but it's also true in the sense that it's not anything that came as a result of our actions you see and that is why pesach is described as a Shabbos it is as we would say in Yiddish a Shabba sticker holiday in the sense that it's a mat it is a gift that we did not earn by any effort on our parts and that's why it's called Shabbos so now let's move this to another question okay is called Shabbos that's how the Peru shim the Pharisees interpreted but we don't start counting the Omer on that day we start counting the Omer the next day we've been talking why is pastor called Shabbos we gave an answer to that if the purpose of counting the Omer is to link Freedom with Torah so start at the first date already start the Omer at the first seder never to sound the only Center so here I want to bring in a thought you know Breathless was a great grandson of the balchemtov it's very controversial I mean Bristol we still got a little controversial in a lot of ways but uh breast Love sometimes quotes his great-grandfather the Bell shemtov and he quotes in liquite Maran a question that the balship raises fascinating question when a person becomes about you a person was far from Hashem but they discovered mitzvos they discovered Torah they discovered God there's often a tremendous amount of excitement and enthusiasm everything seems to be in very bright colors every chakras is great Memphis Shabbos everything's wonderful beautiful exciting but then what happens is the person gets habituated you know you do it for weeks you do it for months you do it for years you do it for decades at some point you lose the excitement you lose the luster you lose the gishmacht now the simple reason you're going to tell me is well of course anything you do for a long time gets less exciting to you well that may be true for a lot of things but it badafka should not be true for mitzvotes because mitzvotes are connecting me to God and the more mitzvotes I do the more connected I am to God how could there be diminishing returns how could it be the more I do of serving Hashem the less I'm connected it's like as I become more religious I become less spiritual is that is that the correlation that we're talking about when I start off everything is wonderful and great and then in fact there's a whole bunch of jokes like how do you know when either aguer or a balchuva when do you know they're totally integrated into religious Society so the joke say Well when they talk during governing when they can bench in one minute now there's all the things that suggest less of an intensity in fact there was a fellow you know Lincoln Square synagogue in West Side Manhattan has a very very wonderful outreach program for many many Israeli bookwell has been running Jewish Outreach in New York for many many years probably over 50 years and they have a banquet every year so a few years ago I think maybe it was maybe 15 years ago the get the honoree gave a speech at the Outreach banquet it was called it was very funny the title may make you a little upset but it was very very funny speaking a very good speech says why I hate Bali chuva so he said I come home Friday night and I've been working all week and the only thing I want to do is get through kiddish and the meal in an hour so I could go to sleep so I started rushing and I just go of course Etc and all of a sudden this belshuba says oh uh can you explain I Rashi in the Parsha and others they want to learn they want to ask questions I hate it I want to go to sleep but the point was he was really making the opposite he was expressing how much we take things for granted and the newcomers bring a newness and a freshness and an excitement and a passion but the belshanto said that doesn't make sense the more I do and the longer I do it the closer I should be to God it's a good question and yet you see the opposite you do see the opposite so the belchemtov says a wonderful answer the Belgium says let's imagine a baby that's learning to walk so the baby begins to pull himself up and him or her but I'll use him just to not to capture these two pronouns all the time and initially the parents are holding the baby's shoulders and the baby takes a step and takes a step and takes a step and the parents are holding the shoulders the arms and it looks really good the baby seems to be making a lot of progress at some point the parents think ah the baby is now ready start on his own without the training wheel so to speak so they let go as soon as they let go plop the kid is going to fall down now it is very true and this is one of the wonders of hashem's Bria in fact the particular used to say you have to learn this from a baby babies never give up quite amazing you know baby will fall down a hundred times a thousand times the baby will get up it's amazing they're the human being is hardwired keep on going we learn later to give up and don't bother babies don't give up children don't give up until they're conditioned to them in fact I remember even Chronicles though I remember when my son began crawling you know it was so excruciatingly painful for him he was like yeah why is he doing this you know he could sit in the playpen and have toys there why is he stretching himself when he's so uncomfortable doing it but it's amazing Hashem put into the human nature I have to try to achieve this so the baby is going to get up again but why is he falling if the baby could articulate his thoughts the baby might say why was walking so easy five minutes ago and that was so hard I'm only 18 months am I regressing already what's going on but the answer is it was easy because your parents were holding you up now that you're ready to go to the next stage you make it your own that which you're being supported now your parents are still there to help you to protect you to be sure that you don't hurt yourself they're always there but you have to make it your own now and therefore the belshamtov says the chuva presence is like a baby learning to walk when a person initially is very far from God and they see mitzvos and Torah and Holiness and caducea God is picking them up God is holding them God Is Lifting them and that's why everything looks so beautiful so vivid so great because God is holding me up at some point God says now that I've shown you what you could become I'm putting you on the ground and it's your job to become it right that's the president so counterintuitively the belshamptov is saying when a person feels they might be regressing in their spiritual passion it's not a failure it's a vote of confidence from God that you're ready for the next step until now I was holding you let's see you do it yourself now do it yourself is it's not quite accurate of course Hashem is there all the time but he lets go a little bit so I become I reach that Madrid and this the balotanya says but he doesn't bring all the and he doesn't mean but the Bible Tanya says this is the relationship between pesach and shavuas pesach as I said already a few moments ago was a gift that we didn't earn God gave us understandings that were beyond our natural capacity that's why hazal say the lowly maidservant saw at the yams of the revelation of God that was even greater than the greatest Prophet you saw the he said the Throne of Glory pesach God lifted us up and he showed us the Grandeur and the beauty of Holiness but then he puts us back on the ground and says I showed you the top of the mountain I showed you what's there I showed you what you could become but now it's your job to become it through a gradual process see pesach is like a suddenness of Revelation is a gradual 49-day step process but there are books that actually write about the spiritual exercise of every day of the owner so you see that pesach is what God gives to us Omer and shavuos is what we give back to God by internalizing those madregas those Levels by our work by our efforts and that's going to be laborious that's not going to have the rush of pesach in spiritual progress sometimes it's two steps forward and one step back and sometimes it's one step forward and two steps back that's the nature of it but you got to keep going you got to keep walking don't stop go slow don't make dramatic changes but be consistent the old tortoise versus the hair right I remember the famous I think it's a Subs Fables about a tortoise was having a race with a with a rabbit obviously a rabbit can run much faster than a turtle but but the the turtle is going lot lot slow slow slow the hair says Ah I'll take an hour nap uh you know he'll never catch up to me but what happens eventually is slow slow slow slow you eventually get to the Finish Line in that in that way so with this we can explain why the counting of the Omer is the day after Shabbos because it's a different level pesach is God giving you all sorts of things that are really Beyond you but you're given the opportunity to experience them Omer is about your own work your own effort your own internalization so it's the next day it's the next step it's the new challenge is what the Omer what the Omer is about and in this connection the balotanya says he I think he I think he quotes it from the Zohar you know we have the Magilla of shirashiram song of Song Song of Songs is actually a very very beautiful book but you know that the song of songs almost didn't make it it almost got censored out of the because the song of songs is certainly has an erratic tone to it it's not it's not heavy duty but it's a very gentle erraticism and sexuality that permeates the song of songs it talks about a woman a princess with her lover and their different encounters their near misses Etc and there were sages that took the position that the song of songs does not belong in our Tanakh it is romantic love poetry why bring it into our sacred literature so the one who salvaged the song of songs was none other than Rabbi Akiva who said if all of the songs all of the poems in Tanakh Are Holy Shir has she rim is kodeshim the holiest of the Holy because it is a metaphor it is a parable it is a martial it is using human love and sexuality and passion and relationship as metaphors for the love that God has for the Jewish people and the Jewish people have forgot so the princess is the Jewish people and the king and the shepherd is God and every single person has to be understood in that way now this is the famous knock of art scroll uh people people criticize art school because um foreign Arts grow well I'm going to clarify this because otherwise I'm going to get a lot of comments I need to be careful how I say this um let's take a pus again shirashiram that says the woman says about her lover he ravages me with kisses he brings me into his private room right the sexual imagery is obvious so Rashi will say something like when God took me out of mitralium he gave me many gifts which is the metaphor so in the Arts girl text they don't say when he ravishes me with kisses they just say when God took me out of Egypt you know there were 10 plagues and as art scroll avoids the literal translation of Shira Shirin because of its erratic contents and therefore they only give the metaphorics and when you read the English translation you kind of Wonder like what is so you know God took me out of Egypt there were ten plagues and he gave me the money and he gave me the bear but but it doesn't have that erratic imagery now two points I have to make otherwise I'm going to get knocked by a million people Point number one is that Arts grow did make this decision they say based on consultation with Rebecca of Kaminsky I recognized so it wasn't their unilateral decision a Gothel gave them a decision the second point is even maybe even more important although the translation only uses the metaphor and not literal in the commentary below the text they do give you the literal translation before they explain the metaphor so you can contrary to what some people say you can indeed get the literal translation from the art scroll but you get it only in the commentary you don't get it in the actual translation because they say it's too prone to be misunderstood so my question is this if it's so prone to be misunderstood as erratic sexual literature then why did King Solomon write it that way why didn't he write it the way Arts grow translates it why does he talk about hugging and kissing an intercourse and meeting in the middle of the night why does he use that language and interestingly enough in the art school shirashiram they have a Hebrew letter which they didn't translate from rabbi gifter who explains it and they didn't translate that letter either but the letter says that even though shirashiram is a metaphor you can't understand the meaning of passionate love of God until you're capable of passionate love of a human being you need to understand the nature of those feelings and then you extrapolate it which is why I I believe very very strongly at least if you're teaching adults the imagery of shirashiram cannot should not be ignored sometimes people just jump immediately to the metaphoric meaning without exploring the literal meaning that is actually a disservice because the literal meaning will be the key to really understanding the metaphoric meaning you can't skip to the metaphor without looking at the actual language including whatever the sexual associations are now again teach it to children children anyway don't usually don't learn there would be a different challenge but for an adult certainly you have to learn it that way you cannot ignore the literal meaning okay but in the beginning of shiroshima uh the woman says to her lover pull me after you Naruto so we can run together and then she says the King has brought me into his innermost chamber Nagila so we can Rejoice with each other together right this is a possible so desire says the following when the woman who is the Jewish people in the Marshall says pull me to you Hashem that's pesach pesach God pulls us a we will run together and the balatonya explains it exactly like this pesach we're not really God's partner we're not really God's collaborator God is simply we're passive and God is showing us all of this Redemption was like pulled like a sack of potatoes pull me after you see that's right but by the time shavuas comes we've built ourselves up Naruto we run with God we're kind of together with God we're running together with Hashem we're doing our job we've internalized we're no longer the baby that has to be carried or dragged or both we are now not equal exactly of course but we're able to run with Hashem in terms of internalizing the madragos that we are in and the Bible Tanya says that is the difference between pesach and that is the counting of the Omer and that is why the counting of the Omar has to be the day after the Shabbos because it's the next step it's the next step and again that's the saying goes it is a thing um what God gives you is his gift to you what you do with your life is your gift back to Hashem we give a gift back to Hashem when we take the nishama that he gave us and we direct it to good things to Torah to mitzvos to have us Israel to building our families to helping our communities this is a gift we give to Hashem we give something back there's a relationship of reciprocity on some level in which we're not just passively receiving but we are giving giving back and that is why spirit is the day after Shabbos Shabbos is the passivity of God giving you something that you didn't learn I didn't earn Shabbos Chavez existed before me but now is the internalization of La plat through the counting of the Omer good job it's a good week [Music]