Rav Yitzchak Breitowitz: Self Sacrifice to Make the World a Better Place

[Music] You see your tomorrow. [Music] Yep. Hi everybody. Thank you. Thank you for coming. Um and we have a lot of uh dedications this week. Uh this year is dedicated praying for final victory of and all the fronts of the war. The lasting unity of ami Israel all of those whose health has been affected by the war. the safe return of all of the hostages rafu for borak and freda uh and aliot nama for Esther Mala Basram Yakov Halea the mother of Yehudes Silverberg who's in the art site is the third of Nissan uh we have other dedications in honor of um Ada Adam Bernstein's Kasna to engagement rather to Ayella Serriano the wedding will be on foresh Nissan very soon. Uh dedicated by his very proud parents Jillian and Jeremy Bernstein and grandparents Ununice and Lenny Morris. And uh again we since Adam had been a regular attendee here, we want to wish him a a great Maselto as well. Uh dedicated by Yoseph Halemi for the hata and for continued braha and health of the family and in honor of the Rav. The entire series during Adar is sponsored by Reena and Markell uh in honor and appreciation of my brothers for Zakus uh the safety and success of Sahal and return of the Katuim and Nishma is Ben Rafael Zev. Again, we thank all of our sponsors for their support of Torah. May it be auticated. Uh finally uh Iban started its Kima de Piska campaign. Remember there are two terms that are used here. One is called moim money for wheat. The other is the Aramaic Kim Piska flower for Pesak. They are synonymous more or less. So you'll so don't get confused by the two different titles that are used. But there is a special in a takana of the that before Pesak because the expenses are relatively high for many many people have difficulty uh meeting those expenses and there are many anem uh sadly uh initial uh so I has a campaign to help families that will need help during pes and uh it's a it's actually a special besides the mitzvah of there is a special before pes to provide some financial assistance. So there's a link on the website and in the description box as to how you can uh contribute. I assume that kind of 100% goes to the anam there's like no administrative costs that are going to be going to be withheld. Um it's hard to believe that next a week from this shabas shabas you had mentioned it that's a little a little scary but okay but we'll deal with that when we come to that. Uh but anyway um I want to talk about something that is not directly connected to the para but it's connected to the overall time of year. We've already had occasion to mention a number of times that in the month of Adar there are four special supplementary Torah readings that we have in addition to the parat hashua. Uh we have starting parasol uh reading about the half shekel and then right before purim we have reading about the destruction of amalik and then last week we read about the red heer the par aduma and this week is the last of the four special Torah readings in which called parases in which we're going to read uh in schmos pericute bay uh the laws of the corban pes and the matzah and the mor and the prohibition of k which is obviously a segue a preparation for pes itself. So we have in other words zakar kesh right. So this is kesh this is the end of the four and I want to share with you a general thought that articulates with respect to all of the four parodot all of us know the very famous Mishna in pavos ala the world stands on three fundamental pillars of holiness the all of the study of Torah on divine service either through sacrifice or through prayer and gaadim and on acts of loving kindness it's a well-known idea that each of the aos represented one of those pillars of Ramavina represented the pillar of loving kindness and yitzk who was literally a sacrifice represents divine service and yakov who spent 14 years in the yeshiva of shame and a before he went to lavan repres represents the pillar of Torah Torah gus that's a very well-known idea very important idea in fact I I believe that I is essentially an organization based on those three on those three pillars but Perkyas also tells us that kashame just as there are three pillars that bring holiness into the world there are three negative forces that destroy holiness from the world three forces of tuma and the three forces of tuma of impurity are also in pyabos a little later on and it's from Rabbi Lazarapur who talks about kina jealousy envy tya is excessive lust for the material and the sensual and cavote the need for glory egotism self aggradisment so what does rabel kapper They take a person out of the world. Now, that has two meanings. It takes a person away from the world to come because you live a life in which you're obsessed with those three negative characteristics. They wipe you out spiritually. They destroy you spiritually. And the altar of Slbatkco used to remark, it also means you live a miserable life even in this world. You kind of you're a real you're a real loser because the world to come you totally forfeit and your life is going to be pretty lousy even here. So like gee, what's the point? But nevertheless says the following. Pesak is about freedom uh and achieving closeness to God to become liberated to serve God. Uh, and that's often described as building a ladder. Just like Yakov, there was a ladder that's on earth and it reaches up to the heavens. But when you have a building site, before you can really build the building, you got to remove the junk and the garbage and the trash from the building site, right? You got to clean it. Suruk says before we're ready for the the freedom of PES, we got to work on getting the garbage out of our system. The garbage is saddak says the following idea. Shikim will help us deal with jealousy. Zakar will help us deal with lust. I'll explain how paga last week can help us deal with egotism and arrogance and after you've gone through eradicating the kina the you are ready foresh you are ready for you are ready for renewal and you're ready to enter the pesak right so he looks at the four parot as a very very significant transition to pesak getting rid of the negative ives that then enables you to be open and receptive to his uh which is a little you know again that's an important reminder you want to have renewal you want to have some spiritual connection but you got to kind of dig deep sometimes and get rid of the negativities because the negativities are blockages the negativities prevent you from absorbing holiness in the Rambam's language they are makita they are like walls of separation in which the holiness of the Torah, the holiness of the mitzvotes, the relationship to God can't penetrate because there's so much negativity. So what I want to go over since this is the last of the four parotes. I want to go over very very briefly uh how the four parotes are correlated to these negatives resulting in the fourth one which is a positive his now I had actually spoken about so I'm just going to be very very quick but the idea that para skullim is an antidote that helps us deal with jealousy and envy was a theme we talked about I'll just mention it very very quickly just uh so everyone will be on the same page and that is the idea of the Tyra emphasizes uniformity. Rich people don't give more to the half shekele. Poor people don't give less. So characteristic number one of the half shekele is uniformity. And characteristic number two is you give a half shekel not a whole shekel. So the half does not become a whole entity unless it's joined to the others. Now both of these ideas independently help us deal with envy and jealousy because as I had mentioned from theat when the Torah says rich people don't give more and poor people don't give less. Rich and poor don't only mean a lot of money or not a lot of money. But rich can signify the entire range of human talents and abilities. A person might be rich in wisdom. A person might be rich in organizational ability. A person might be rich in leadership. And poor can mean a person that might be relatively bereft of some of these talents. And obviously a person who is bereft may feel envious of those who seem to be more accomplished. And vice versa, those who are more accomplished might have arrogance and disdain for those that they perceive as their inferiors. By the Tyra emphasizing that everybody is equal, the Tyra is saying rich and poor by whatever definition you define stands before God with equality of dignity because the only thing God asks is you give him the best of yourself. And you have two people. One person might be really, really, really great and one person may not be so great. But each of them are giving the best that they can. They are equally beloved and equally cherished in the eyes of God. And the other way around, if the person who has so many abilities only gives a little bit of his ability, even though it's much more than the other guy, the other guy will be more beloved by God because he's giving more of his abilities. Again, a few weeks ago, we talked about this at length. I I don't want to spend a lot of time on it, but you can readily understand how this helps us deal with jealousy because it highlights the equality of dignity that every person has standing before God. That also emerges in the notion of half versus whole because a half is incomplete unless it's joined to another half. That reminds us of interdependence meaning everybody is needed. Everybody has a role no matter how great. In fact, the idea of minion brings that out. You could be the greatest sadic and rabbi of the generation. But unless you have nine other Jews with you, you can't say kadesh, you can't say kadusha, and those nine other Jews can be anybody, you know, anyone that's Jewish, so to speak. The notion that everybody's needed, everybody has a part. And that too is an antidote to jealousy and envy because as simple as I might be, I am needed in God's plan. The world would not be quite the same. So that's para number one. In other words, parach galim both by its uniformity requirement and by its interdependence requirement to halves make a whole kind of help a person deal with jealousy and envy. Rab saddak points out the reason why it's the first of the four parot is that envy is the most difficult mida to eradicate. You need the most time. So we got to start relatively early in order to keep on moving moving with it and hopefully we'll achieve some modicum of success. Okay. So that's the connection between kina and shikalib right kina is dealing with now we then come to amalc eradicating amalc and that deals with tya. Here the association is a little bit more abstract but again the there are themes that we did touch upon so I'm going to be relatively uh abbreviated on this as well that is if you remember uh one very important theme about the evil of amalik is that there is an amalik within us and an amalik outside of us and the amalik outside of us is empowered when there are aspects of amalik within us. So when the Tyra gives you a mitzvah of eradicating a malik, it certainly does refer to the external amaliks whether they're kamas or anybody else that there is indeed such a mitzvah. But it also has a reference back to you to kind of work on eradicating the amalik within me. That's part of the mitzvah as well. Because when we successfully eradicate the amalik inside of us, the amalik outside of us simply vanishes like a bad dream. So here's the thing. So what is the amalik within us? You could identify different things but saddak identifies the amalik within us as coldness and indifference of the heart. Because after all the Torah uses the word about a Malik which is translated they encountered you in the road. But Rashi himself points out that car can come from making you cold. And Rashi uses it in a different sense. Rashi says when the Jews left Mitsam everybody was afraid of them. They were like a boiling hot bath. Malik was the first nation that attacked us. So they jumped into the bath. They got burnt but they made it a little cooler for the next one. That's how Rashi does it. Saddok takes the same etmology but draws a different message from it. A malik represents coldness of the heart. Meaning even if a person learns Torah, does mitzvot, but sometimes they we do it without enthusiasm, without passion, without excitement, without to use the Yiddish word without gishmach, coldness of the heart. And that is amalik. And the coldness of course is not only in bay between man and God but also the coldness. See when people think about hatred it's not only the hot hatred of calling people names or throwing rocks at them. You know that's one type of hatred. But there's a more subtle type of hatred. And maybe in English we wouldn't call that hatred, but I think Kazal subsumed that within hatred. That is kind of an indifference to people who are not in my group, who are not in my click. I'm not even thinking anything bad about them. I just don't think about them. They're not in my radar. Well, I know that in English it might be very uh bit of a stretch to call that hatred. But I think we can call it coldness. Coldness we can call it. And that's also the characteristic of a malik. A malik is the coldness of the heart. The coldness of the heart. Now sadduk then says and this may be a little bit of a tough love message. He says what generates coldness of the heart. I mean Torah is so beautiful. Mitzvah are so uplifting. How can there be coldness of the heart? Every time I do a mitzvah should be gavaldic, gavaldic, kavaldic. Suruk says at least one of the factors that generates coldness of the heart is an overattachment to the physical and material part of the world. The same way that uh let's say a person who is I mean even in a physical sense this is true. If you're attached if you're a web surfer, right? you look at the internet and you jump uh you surf from sight to sight, you won't be able to read Shakespeare or William Faulner, you know, a hard book because you're used to an instant gratification and you don't get it by something that takes a lot of thought. And the same way that a person who is habituated to junk food will not spend three hours making a French meal because when you have instant gratification, you're not willing to put in the effort for things that require more effort but are ultimately more rewarding. That's true in the physical versus spiritual realm. spirituality, a Torah study, prayer, they can be the greatest joys of life. But it's not automatic. It takes work. It takes effort. Physical pleasures tend to be quick. And once you become habituated to the quick, you become less sensitive to rrooknas. And even if you go through the motions there will be a coldness in the heart. Suruk says when we read about a malik and we read about the mitzvah to eradicate amalik and that means also the amalik of the heart and the amalik of the heart is the coldness of the heart. We have to work on disengaging a little bit from the materialism of the world. Now, I say a little bit because Judaism does recognize that uh we're not supposed to necessarily strive to live in poverty. You know, if you're in poverty, you accept it and uh with sima, but know there's no mitzvah tok yourself poor. And Judaism frowns upon aestheticism. So, we're supposed to enjoy the world, but still we should enjoy the world, but the world shouldn't control us. Now I remember years ago Pepsi Cola was running a campaign to encourage uh purchase of Pepsi. So their advertisement was drink Pepsi, get stuff, you could get prizes. Now get stuff to me was a very very interesting thing because that represented a commitment to materialism that wasn't even focused on anything. You didn't even know what it is. Stuff. I want stuff. You know, I just want stuff. That's kind of addiction to stuff and uh unfortunately we sometimes live in a culture where we are addicted to stuff right so therefore you understand soduk's point if shikim helps us deal with jealousy amalik this is a bit of more of an abstract idea helps us try to disengage from materialism and too much involvement in the gashmiot of of the world because that will take away the coldness of the heart because I will find pleasure in rrook in spirituality. Uh so that that's that's the connection between skullim and jealousy and zor and tya. We now come to the third idea cavote. Cavote is a desire for honor, for glory, self advertisement, egotism, etc. And para aduma helps us deal with that. Now although parcious por was last week, I did not talk about it last week. So and as part of this message, I'm going to talk a little bit about it now because this is the one thing that I did not address in prior in prior weeks. Paraduma, the red cow, the red heer uh is one of the is considered to be the most mysterious mitzvah in uh the whole Torah and it has a very specific purpose. Uh the purpose is that when the paradum is shed and it is burnt into ashes and the ashes are mixed with spring water all people who have come in contact with dead bodies only for that purpose they get a little sprinkle even one drop and they get sprinkled right their tame for seven days. So they get sprinkled on day three and on day seven and then they go to the mikvah and they will be pure meaning until they go through the paradum as well as going to the mikvah and counting seven days they are ritually t now to be ritually t unless you're a coin is actually not a big problem but it does mean you can't go to the ba mikdash you cannot bring corbanos that's actually theic issue of why we don't go to the harabay because all of us are ritually tame by contact with the met and without we haven't become pure yet. So as a result we don't go to the harabite. Again those who do go uh agree that you can't go in the temple area but they simply are more confident where that area is. There's really no maklo in principle meaning the I'm not going to address this issue but the argument to go to the harabayat or not go to the harabayat uh is not a mlo about principle. Everybody admits that the part of the Temple Mount that belongs to the Ba Mikdash courtyards, it absolutely is forbidden to go unless you're pure and anything outside of that is permitted to go. So everybody agrees on that and the Maklo simply is are we confident enough in the boundaries right? So the world tends to be stricter on this. There are segments of the datomi world that is a bit more confident in their identification. But it is important to underscore that there is no makus on the principles that govern this. By the way u I used to think as a kid actually even after I was a kid that the paraduma was a fire uh fire engine red uh cow which would be very very rare indeed. I don't think there is such a thing. Uh but the truth of the matter is the color of the paradma is not an unusual color for a cow. It is simply the reddish orange brown that is a very common color for cows. Uh the reason why the paraduma was was rare however and expensive when they had to buy it was because it had to be virtually 100% that color. Meaning you were allowed to have up to one black hair. If it's two black hairs or white, no good. So that's rare because cows will have different colors of of of of hair and the like. Uh but the color itself is not so rare and as you know there are people who who say they are they do have paradumas and that's a proof of mashiach coming what whatever it would be. Okay. Now para aduma is only for the impurity of met for example other levels of impurity like the leper a mitsura or a woman that's a nida is also a certain level of halic impurity or even touching dead animals there's a certain state of impurity but for those all you need is mikvah the only tuma that requires the paraduma is the tuma of contact with a human corpse either by touching the corpse or by moving the corpse or being under the same roof with a corpse. Which is why, for example, um walking into a cemetery, you have to understand, does not automatically make you tummy. Why are you tame? Because I walked into a cemetery. I didn't touch a corpse. I didn't move a corpse. But the reason you're tame is that you might be under a tree that overhangs both the grave and so you're under the same roof or there is a principle your body can become its own tent. So for example if I lean over a grave so I become the tent over the grave that's matamei but in theory if I remained straight I remained upright and I didn't bend over the grave and there's no tree overhanging in theory I'm not tummy even in a cemetery I'm not tummy in theory a coane in theory would be allowed to enter a cemetery under those conditions but we don't do that because things can go wrong uh and and the like. Okay. So what makes paradum so mysterious? So Rashi and all the commentaries say that what makes Paraduma so mysterious is that there is a contradiction or paradox in the law of paradum and that is on one hand para aduma takes an impure person and purifies him shat but you know there's another that anybody that handles the ashes is becomes ritually impure. So the same thing that brings purity to the people on whom it is sprinkled, it brings impurity to those who handle it. Now I just want to clarify that though uh because a person might ask a question. Well, how is it possible for all of the Jewish people to ever be purified? Don't you always have last guy holding the bag? Because remember before Pesak let's say when people brought the carbon pesak and really before all the pilgrimage festivals everybody wanted to be pure because they want to enter the bas. But here's the thing you were in contact with the dead body. So I'm a co I sprinkle you but now I'm so I need somebody to sprinkle me. So now I become pure. But the guy who sprinkled me becomes tummy, right? So you're going to have like an infinite regression problem. So there's a last guy whoever whenever you stop the problem who's going to be T. The answer is that's false. And the reason that's false is the following reason. The guy who becomes tame because he handles the paraduma ashes doesn't need to be sprinkled with paraduma. Because the only tuma that needs to be sprinkled with paraduma ashes is the tuma of a person who touched or moved a corpse. The tuma of handling paraduma is a regular tuma. All he has to do, in fact, it's only a one-day tuma. He just the last guy just jumps into the mikvah and he's fine. He doesn't need to be sprinkled. That's a mistake that people sometimes make because sprinkling is only for the tumat. It is not for the tuma of the paradum addresses. Okay. So this is why paraduma is so mysterious. And this is the famous saying. It purifies those who are impure and it contaminates those who are pure. Paradox contradiction. That is why say that Muhammad sought to understand all the commandments of the Torah and he had reasons for everything. But once he got to this one, he was stumped. And then he realized even the mitzvot for which he thought he had a reason, he didn't fully understand. Meaning it wasn't just this one. He understood that there are infinite secrets. By the way, my rashiva ravyman sua of the nar in Baltimore uh once said this about NCSY. Again, it's a very interesting interesting thought. Um no NCSY is the youth program of the or the OU the Orthodox Union and NCSY works with uh teenagers who are in public school and from totally non-religious backgrounds and it is a phenomenal they have NCSY in Israel too. It's not on the same scale but in America it's a it's a very it's a big big organization. I used to uh be involved with them for a number of years and they are a phenomenal organization. They change people's lives and uh the kids grow like there's nothing uh no organization like like NCSY. It's a beautiful beautiful organization. But NCSY is a co-ed organization. So you're talking about high school kids, boys and girls together. Uh the girls in particular are not always going to be tenas when they first come. So there's a big big shila in the yeshiva world. you know, NCSY wants yeshiva students to kind of teach and be involved. On the other hand, it's an environment that may not be right for uh yeshiva students and the like. So, different yeshivas have different policies regarding uh whether they let their single boys uh participate or even single girls participate in NCSY programs. If you're married, it's okay. I I was married when I was involved in the NCSY but if you're not married so my Rashiba I think gave a classic line about NCSY he said NCSY is like the paraduma he says it purifies those who are far but maybe it may have a negative effect on those who are already studying Torah says you got to be careful you know it brings purity and it brings impurity uh at the same at the same time now obviously Schlamaik was the wisest of all people. So if Schlama couldn't give an explanation for this paradox, how dare we try to even give an explanation. Nevertheless, our tried to offer a partial explanation of this and this is from the great and he says the following. Let's think about the institution of tuma. tumor you go we translate it as impurity although it's not quite the right the right definition it has nothing to do with hygiene or anything like that uh tuma comes from death all types of tumor comes from death the obvious tumor of contact with a dead body is contact with death but even less obvious tumor is connected to death a seinal emission creates a one-day tumor of mikvah you have to go to the mikvah that's because once again A seminal emission is a loss of a potential life that could have been created. A nida has a status of tumor because the shedding of the uterine lining also represents a potential pregnancy that did not take place that time. Uh touching a dead animal is a form of tumor although not with the severity of a human corpse. So tuma very much correlates with death. Now let's think about this for a moment. Death came into the world. Death was not the natural state of God's world. God created to live forever. And the only thing was after they rebelled against Hashem by eating from the fruit of the eight, the tree of knowledge, Hashem then decreed, ah, we have to kick them out of Ghana lest they eat from the tree of life. and they live forever. Meaning the ideal plan actually was an amazing thing. Adam and Kaba only had to wait to shabas. They were tell they were created on a Friday afternoon. They were commanded not to eat from the tree of knowledge. But it's brought down in the Arizal says if they would have waited until Shabas the das would have been permitted and then they would have eaten from the and they would have lived forever. But they jumped the gun and because they jumped the gun and rebelled against Hashem they get expelled from the garden of Eden and they no longer have the and death came into the world. So it's it's it's pushed from the narrative of the kish itself that death came into the world as a result of rebellion against God that death was not part of Hashem's original plan and that is why kazal tell us at the time of matan tora when we reached the level of marishan before the sin we actually had immortality until the where we lost it. Now, what was the origin of the rebellion of Adam and Kava against Hashem? Now, you might be tempted to say, well, it's probably Tyra. They saw a nice fruit, etc. So, they had a taet says no. The actual origin of the was a desire for covet honor and glory because the said the day that you eat this fruit you will be like god who knows good and evil. The aadash was marketed as a god pill whatever that means. Imagine somebody gives you this pill and says take it and you will be God even though God told you not to take it. We might be very tempted the ultimate ego trip to be Hashem to be all powerful unlimited power. Now the truth of the matter is the human being is very godly. We are made in the image of God. And being made in the image of God certainly does not mean a physical image. Hashem does not have a nose, eyes, but it refers to spiritual qualities. We have powers of free will, autonomy, intelligence, the ability to create and to innovate and then to destroy. Meaning certainly it's an infinite miniaturization of God. But in a sense we are mimicking God in all of the creativity that we can do in the world. So we are godlike but we have to recognize our subservience. We have to recognize that we're the very much the junior partner. Death. So death came into the world as a result of man trying to replace God by becoming God in their own in their own mind. Seen in this way, death is not so much of a as a of a punishment as it is to remind the human being that there is an unbridgegable gap, an unbridgegable chasm between the creator and the creator. No matter how godly you are, you're mortal. Death is the ultimate reminder. I'm not God. I am not God. I don't live forever. So it turns out that death came into the world because of arrogance, conceit, egotism, hubris. That's what brought death into the world. So soduk explain and together they have similar thought here. They explain the following because death came into the world because of hubris and arrogance. And that hubris and arrogance resulted in my being expelled from the garden of Eden. Every time I encounter death, I touch death, it's kind of reconnecting me to that sin and I get re-expelled from Ganen. What is the equivalent of Ghana in this world? The BA mikdash. Meaning the primary consequence of being is you can't be in the BA mikdash. It's an exact parallel. If Adam and Eve and Kaba's arrogance brought death into the world and that necessitated their expulsion from Ghana, when I come in contact with death, I'm reconnecting to that sin, I become expelled from the lower Ghana. The lower Ghanaeden in this world is the base amikdash. Now this also explains why par aduma is the necessary purification ritual. Now this will not explain everything. Why red? Why a cow? We're not fully explaining that. But why ashes? Ashes is a symbol of humility and submission. When Arainu declares that he's unworthy to pray to God on behalf of Saddam. So Arainu's language is ani of a I am dirt and ashes. Ashes is humility. So look at the association here. Death comes into the world because of arrogance. conceit, hubris, and ego. How do I become liberated from the impurity of death? By attaching myself to the ashes of humility, submission. It's batlut, subservience to that which is greater. That liberates me from death. That gives me new life. That's a tuin for the of the eight sadas that came through kabot. It liberates me. It's very similar laavdale. La havdale although we have a a medish very similar to the Greek myth to the Greek myth of the phoenix bird. The phoenix bird is a was a legendary bird in Greek mythology. It's burnt into ashes and it rises from the ashes. This is an important idea. Now the Emma says because the Greek myth is more known than the khazal I said it as a Greek myth but the truth of the matter is I shouldn't have because in point of fact there's actually a medish that describes the identical phenomenon a bird called the nets which once again rises from the ashes. And that's an important idea because we sometimes think that when I'm humble, I'm destroying myself. I'm destroying my identity. I'm not assertive. The lesson here is by kind of getting rid of the ego, you attach yourself to God as the ultimate source of power and then you have life. From the ashes you get purity. From the ashes you get liberation from death. Again, maybe not from the immediate physical death that that we face, but in a spiritual sense. Humility is not about destroying yourself. It's about creating yourself by getting rid of the egotism that truly destroys you from the inside. So seen in this way we can see how para aduma with its emphasis on afair reminds us not to seek cover glory ego gratification. But what about the paradox? What about the paradox? So soak and this take this in a very beautiful direction. If afair is a symbol of humility, just like there's matter and antimatter or there are protons and electrons, there's good ashes and bad ashes. There are good ashes in which I recognize that God is the source of everything and I live with humility and submission to God and I dedicate my life to his service. But then there's bad ashes where a person thinks they're worthless. They have no abilities. They're a failure. They're a zero. Now, on one level, superficially, you might say, "Oh, well that sounds from that sounds religious. The person is modest and humble." But that's a destructive form of humility. That's the humility of despair, the humility of helplessness, the humility of hopelessness. the sense that I don't matter. And if you think about it, that type of humility, if we want to call it that, is really a Yateser horror. Because if I'm a zero, then what's the point of my mitzvos? What's the point of my dabing? What's the point of my learning? What's the point? Who am I to make a difference in any way? And that is the greatest of the horus. to feel I don't matter. So that's the subtlety of the rem of paradum. The ashes of humility can bring a person to the greatest purity. But when taken in the wrong direction, they can destroy you. It's like atomic energy, right? Atomic energy can give you all the power that you need and it can also destroy the world. So we have to be very very careful with this. Um if a person thinks he's nothing, he'll never accomplish what he's supposed to accomplish in the world. This is encapsulated in the famous statement that people say people often say it in the name of but it's not from it's from the 19th century rebi even though people say it like it's a medish he says a Jew every person has to have two ideas in his two pockets one is I am nothing. I am dirt. I am ashes. I am nothing. And in the other pocket, because of me, the whole world was created. The whole universe. Hashem made many dogs and many cats and many cows and many lions, tigers, and bears. But he only made one man and one woman. And the gar the Mishna says one of the reasons is that each person each person must say because of me alone this would have justified the whole creation. Now that's not going to be arrogant because the same way that I can say the world could have been created for me alone that's equally true for you. So that's not an arrogant thing but that's the thing that makes makes me recognize how important my life is you know um of uh one of the great great great bal Muser uh preWorld War II once said the person who is not aware of his shortcomings is a foolish person if I think I'm perfect I'm simply dumb. I'm just, you know, ignorant. Obviously, we all have flaws and the like. But he said the person who is not aware of their greatness is a tragic person because he never has the tool. He will never be aware of the tools that he has to achieve his role in life. So you got to be aware along with the which keeps me humble I have to have bishi there's a similar thought with Resler Resler the great uh mash well he was in England for many while he was Lithuania then England before World War II and then uh the last years of his life he was the mashia Panovich one of the great great again Bali Muser in fact just in terms of swarim sales his books Mikta Leo which in English is strive for truth is actually one of the best sellers in the Jew world of Jewish books is what it's it's never been out of print and it's uh it's may have sold more volumes than virtually almost every other s other than the basics like sitter and kish uh and uh the story goes that at the kazinishes in benra which I I think was 1953 I I think. So there was a boy and a Panovich student who was at the Levaya and the boy was sobbing. He was crying over the death of the of the Khaz. So Rodesta went over to the boy and he said to the boy, "Why are you crying over the rav the g and the sadic, the great great rabbi who's buried there in the ground?" He then pointed to the boy, "You should cry over the rav the goon and the sadic who's buried here in you." Because the rav the goon and the saddic who's buried in the ground became the rav the goon and the tonic. But how many of us have a greatness within us that we're never aware of and we never become and maybe it's easier not to be aware of it because that creates less responsibility. That might be part of the dynamic also. You know if I'm a nobody I there's nothing I got to do about it. Right? etc. But that that's kind of the that's kind of the lesson and that's the paradox of the paraduma. The ashes of humility are wonderful but when it turns into depression, hopelessness, helplessness, then it becomes a negative destructive force that brings tuma into them. So this is kind of a panoramic view of the four parot in which shikalim again helps us deal with jealousy. Zakar helps us deal with materialism and and hedonism because of the coldness of the heart and pora gives us a perspective on the meaning of kavot and then we're ready for kesh which is his renewal because when we clear away the junk on the building site the garbage we're ready to build and construct a meaningful identity as we approach the holiday of Sodak makes the point that it's very very important now kesh comes from kadesh kadesh is something new that is when a person feels inspired after working through this negativities you need to concretize the inspiration by taking a step even a small step because inspiration as a feeling tends to vanish relatively quickly unless it's concretized into action. You know, there was a famous American academic uh kind of a child prodigy uh Robert Hutchkins who was the president of the University of Chicago at like the age of 25. So he was older than I'm sorry he was younger than many of his graduate students and he was already president of the university because he was really one of the brilliant brilliant uh acade academicians and uh apparently he was not taking care of his health that much. So somebody once said Dr. Hutchkins do you ever feel the need to exercise? So the answer that he gave might be an answer that may be familiar to familiar to me familiar to some of us. And he says, "Yes, I do. I do get that feeling every once in a while, but I know if I lie down for a few minutes, it will pass. So I so I don't let it I don't let it bother me too much." And uh that's very true for exercise for sure. And it's true for spirituality as well because all of us have moments of inspiration. It could be after Yam Kipper. It could be the Peser. It could be uh our own weddings or our children getting married. It could be being at the hotel. It could be being in your life. Right? The moments in which you just feel connected. But you know the thing is unless you concretize it with some type of action like you know you learn you d you you reach out to a person to make a connection inspiration comes and goes. And it doesn't last. And that's the meaning of this last shabas. Meaning after you've gone through this process of working on your jealousy and on your ta and on your kavote, you have to be mad. Take a step. Take a positive step. Create some connection to spirituality that will concretize the feelings that you that you have because that's that's very very important. Um, inspiration is very short-lived that that that happen. Again, it's an inescapable fact of life that you know there are moments of elevated feeling but they do pass relatively quickly. We can't live on a sustained high all the time. But when we have those moments and we concretize it then becomes part of us and then we'll continue to go as again tells us mitzvah mitzvah one mitzvah causes another mitzvah. Okay before we break I want to share with you one final thought about paradum which is not connected at all to anything I said but it's a really really neat thought. And this is from the Abdur. The Apurv was one of the great Sherebies of the 19th century. His book on Kish is called Oheave Israel, the lover of Israel. And in fact, that's why the Abdur is often called the Oheav Israel. And uh part of why he's called that is like virtually every vort he has in his abat Israel in some ways. So he brings a very enigmatic medish that at first glance makes no sense. And the enigmatic medish says if you really want to understand paradum you need to understand avas Israel seems to be a nonsequator. I mean we talked about paradum but it's hard to understand how it's connected to avat. So here's what the opt says. You know, we we did discuss the idea that the Cohen handling the ashes does become ritually impure for one day. Now, you have to understand that if you're a Cohen in particular, becoming tame is a major imposition. For most of us, becoming tame is not a particular problem except when we had a basikdash during the pilgrimage festivals. But if you're a common, you got a real problem because not only are you disabled from going into the bas, but you can't eat truma when you're in a state of tuma. So, your wife made a nice uh meal uh with Truma vegetables and the like. If your tummy can't eat it, can't eat supper, you're going to have to go out for pizza or or or whatever whatever it is. So, so what's going on is this. When a cohane is willing to inconvenience himself in order to help another Jew that brings purity into the world. So the says instead of looking at this as a contradiction it makes him tame and makes him it actually is a cause and effect. The coain's willingness to become tame to help another Jew is what brings purity to the other Jew. And therefore he says if you understand what Israel is, you will understand that when we sacrifice to help others, we make the world a better place. And therefore instead of looking at it as a paradox the abdov says it's a cause and effect because it's the to person is willing to become tame that is why it's that is why it it purifies. So that's again something something to remember and uh I'll just end with where I began that this is especially true around now when we have the obligation to give moim to think about others. You know at the seder we announce all who are hungry come and eat. But you know it's a little peculiar. We're sitting at our table already. uh the door is closed even if it's a little even if it's a little open but you know nobody's gonna usually usually sometimes not nobody's going to show up. So we're making the announcement when it's pretty we're pretty safe we're pretty sure nobody's going to show up the last minute. It expresses a value system but right now we still have an opportunity to kind of make that a reality. So beem again call on people to be generous and wish you a wonderful wonderful week and a good uh paraesh. Thank you. [Music] You [Music] must sh