The Road From Pesach to Shavuos: Step by Step - Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz

[Music] Shalom everyone from yam I would like to share a a short thought about the upcoming holiday of Shabu house R nakan of breev brings in the name of his great-grandfather the balov a very very interesting question that perhaps will resonate with a lot of us and that is we find that when a person first becomes attracted to Torah and Mitzvah a person becomes a Bala there's a certain amount of excitement and passion and gmak in everything that they do every daving is wonderfully connected to God and shabas Kesh and basone and every Mitzvah is so exciting and so beautiful and so vibrant and yet with the passage of time uh Things become routine a person becomes complacent in fact there's a whole genre of Jokes which unfortunately might be a little serious as to when is a balcha fully integrated into the regular religious community and the answers are uh when they can DB in when they can bench in two minutes uh when they'd rather sleep Friday night then discuss Torah in other words all of these jokes have a punchline that when you stop getting excited about yish you're now a regular member of the from Community the B asks how can that even be possible I understand that you can simply give me an answer that anything that a person does over and over and over again they lose their enthusiasm but that shouldn't make sense for Tyra and Mitzvah if Tyra and Mitzvah connect us to the rebon shal then by definition the more Torah I learn the more mitzvos do the closer I am to God how is it even possible to talk about diminishing returns when I do more and I serve Hashem and yet I seem I seemingly get less out of it it's an interesting question how do you explain the burnout that a religious Jew experiences as opposed to the initial excitement of serving God and the Balto gives a remarkable muscle let's imagine a baby who is learning how to walk and initially the parents are holding the baby by the shoulder so the baby takes one step and another step and another step and the baby is thinking to himself if he or she could verbalize their thoughts hey this isn't so bad this walking stuff is working out pretty well but at some point the parents feel that the baby is ready for the next step so the parent par let go of the baby and as the baby takes a step forward in all likelihood the baby is going to plop down now just to digress for a moment one of the most impressive and amazing things we can notice in our children is that no matter how many times the baby falls down the baby will get up again to walk the baby does not get discouraged we are hardwired not to give up we are hard wire to accomplish this is not only true in walking this is true even for crawling I very well remember uh when my son was uh just a little little baby wasn't even walking yet crawling itself was a big big task for him and he was grunting and moaning as he was pulling his body across the floor and I was thinking to myself what are you working so hard you have a play pen you have toys you don't have to move and yet there is something in the human personality that says I have to grow I have to expand we are hardwired not to give up if in later life even in childhood we get discouraged that is an acquired attribute that is not something that is innate our innate personalities go in the opposite direction but that's a little bit of a digression let's go back to the mush of the balov so the baby could verbalize to himself if the baby could verbalize the baby might say why was walking so easy a second ago and now I'm falling and I'm stumbling and the answer is walking was so easy because your parents were holding you up but now you're ready for the next step to internalize and make this Talent your own and for that there may be the appearance of moving backwards but in fact you're moving forwards that's the progress of making what you were given into that which you actually own says the balov the process of chuva is very much the same way when a person is very far from God and God has decided to bring the person to him it would be so difficult for the person to come to Hashem that who carries him Hashem is holding you up and when Hashem holds you up everything is vibrant and everything is brilliant the colors the chabus the Bening the kasas beautiful wonderful but at some Pointes says I've shown you what you can become I've shown you the beauty of Torah I've shown you your potential but now that I've shown you what you can become it is your job to become it I'm going to let go a little bit now just as parents even when they let go of their child they're obviously there to be sure that the child will not be hurt so too Hashem is always with us always protecting us always looking after us but he lets go a little bit so that we can internalize this madrea this level and make it our own and therefore the bov andman say cter intuitively when a person feels that they are struggling with their Yiddish kit in a way that they haven't done before instead of looking at it as a failure it is actually a mark of confidence Hashem is basically saying you're ready for the next step I can let go little bit I don't have to carry you you can learn to walk on your own and therefore F the other way around a person should get a person should get strength a person should get encouragement in their struggles because Hashem is basically saying I trust you I believe in you you're ready for this next madga thead tell us that this is actually the relationship between pesak and shabas pesak was a Redemption for which we were not really deserving we should have been in mitzraim for 400 years but because we are on the 49th level of impurity and we would have hit the 50th level had we stayed even a few more moments Hashem had to take us out after 210 years 190 years early we were not deserving of the Redemption we were considered to be naked of the mitzvos that's why God had to throw in the Mitzvah of Corbin PES and the Mitzvah of Brisa circumcision because otherwise as the PES says we are area naked and that is why we are told that we left MIT means in a great Rush when you leave in a great rush you don't have time to prepare you're not really organized you don't have everything you need to have we were incomplete and a showed us things that were way beyond our spiritual madrea the 10 plagues the splitting of the Red Sea our sages say that the maid servant the lowly maid servant saw at the Red Sea a greater visions of all the almighty in heaven than even the nesel who saw the Divine Chariot and the kak covod God's Throne of Glory so PES represents God lifting us up to a madrea which was the highest madrea we could possibly achieve but it was something that was not intrinsic to us it was to give us that sense that Vista of what the possibilities are but after God shows us what we're capable of becoming after he shows us the beauty of cleaving to his presence after he brings us to the top of the mountain he then takes us down and he says I've shown you what's up there now it's your job to achieve it but when you achieve it it's not going to be a sudden Revelation it'll be a laborious process of step by step by step that is the counting of the Omare step by step laborious one step forward and sometimes it's one it's two steps forward and one step back and sometimes it's even one step forward and two steps back but as opposed to the sudden revelation of this is a gradual laborious process of internalizing spiritual growth culminating in shivu so by the time we reach shabos the idea is we're no longer recipients of God what God gives us we are now active participants in bringing that Holiness within our souls it's become our own level this might be the explanation of why the counting of the Omare starts from the day after pesak meaning the second day of pesak you know people do ask the question after all if the purpose of the counting of the OM is to link the holiday of Freedom which is PES with the holiday of Torah which is Shu and the basic message is that freedom without Torah is worthless and even destructive and that is why the grain offering of pesak is barley that is fed to animals and the grain offering of shos is wheat that is human consumption because the transition from pesak to shu is the transition from animal Liberation to human dignity and all of that is very beautiful the ramban even writes that the period of the counting of the Omare is one long as if to say PES and Sh are one holiday and all of that is beautiful and true but the question remains so why don't I start counting the OM the countdown towards shos on the first day of pesak why do I start counting M from the day after and it might be that the answer is because it is the day after it's a new level pesak is what God gives you even if we haven't earned it the counting of the Omare is the process by which through our own internal avodat Hashem our own striving our own spiritual growth we become worthy of receiving God's Torah it's the next step and that is why the counting of the Omare is the next day the balat brings in the SE Lut Torah an interpretation of the uh second verse in Shir shirim is a book of tanak that uh is written in terms of the imagery of the passionate relationship of a man and a woman and yet all of us know as r IA taught us all of the songs are holy but Shir shirim is the holiest of holy because it is nothing less than a metaphor of the deep love and relationship that exists between Andes God so to speak is the shepherd and the Jewish people are the princes and in the beginning of shirashi the princess talks about her lover and says pull me after you so we can run the balat brings the Z pull me is an illusion to naruta let us run is an illusion to shos and he explains exactly on on the lines that we've been discussing P we were not worthy of redemption God pulled us there was nothing we were contributing we were like a sack of potatoes that you drag on the floor but through the process of AEM in the nut we run with God we have a certain reciprocity in our relationship Hashem gives us Torah and mitzvos and life and BR but we give him back our service our mitzvos our learning our we run together God is Not Just dragging us but we give something back to AES as well this is the a of this is the a of Shas let me just mention that mat did require we encamped at the mountain is a is singular and Rashi brings the famous that mat required that we be one person one heart that we love each other that we connect to each other that we see the value in each other that we learn from each other because no one person has a monopoly on the truth every person has a because God is infinite and because the Torah is the will of God and because God's Will and God's Essence are the same so the will of God is also infinite because God is infinite the Torah therefore is infinite but Infinity by definition cannot be grasped in its entirety each of us has bits and fragments of EMS and each of us need to learn from each other to make our MS deep and complete and only when we are are we worthy and are we able to receive my for all of us is as the world is going through a lot of turbulence and a lot of difficulty we need to strengthen ourselves in AEM in mitzvas inab as we proceed ever closer to sh may all of us Merit together to stand at the foot of har and say we will do and we will learn hi this is Paris borer a proud alumnus of or now what you just watched is one of the many programs that orome provides leaving its impact on hundreds of thousands with so many more waiting to be reached Ora central campus in Jerusalem has over 300 students presently learning there and now you can be a vital part of spreading that Bounty of knowledge worldwide by logging on to donate. r.edu we can step up to the plate at this pivotal moment divor Sam's growth and bring the next generation of Jews home [Music]