Tremendous Kindness Bestowed Upon Israel and Feeling Diminished with Rabbi Aaron Dovid Poston

[Music] the ibn abate midrash welcome home to torah a warm a very very warm welcome back to torah and i want to mention by the way we always try to encourage everyone to learn hebrew please use the hebrew put your finger on the spots for those watching or afterwards you could find there'll be a link down below in the description box to to our website where we actually have the source sheets the material just in hebrew in order to get the english sheets you have to email me and be on my email list or show up live and you'll get an english supporting source sheet also i would encourage you we usually only deal with like one or two verses of the whole parsha of course we spent close to an hour discussing it but if you want to go back into other what do you so call other sentences of the pursuing other paragraphs so again if you go down below there'll be a link to the same page where you'll find the source sheets and you could purview you can go and look at other parts of the parsha which i strongly encourage this is all based on the writings of the clear car and here we go let's get started as i mentioned we're in chapter 32 of genesis and it's actually verse 11. now even though that's the verse he will be discussing the clear cleo car will be discussing some of the previous verses some of the verses that come after but this is the verse itself and it says okay when did yaakov say these words on his way back right he's about to approach he's about to approach aesop he has not yet seen encountered asov yet but he is preparing you know he sent the angels he sent the gifts he made his prayers he split his um he split his um encampment into two and so there you have there you have um the beginning the lead up to this verse and he says i have become small from all the kindnesses and from all the truth that you have rendered your servants so he's referring to hashem he's talking to god and then he says from with my staff i cross this jordan meaning when he originally left eric israel to go to haran to right to find the wife so what did he have with him just a little bit of the background that elifaz this was a um and one of the sons right one of the sons of asav what asaph sent him to kill yaakov okay and instead of killing him he was sympathetic to aesop to yaakov his uncle and what did he what did he do he basically made a deal yaakov says look if you're considered a poor person you have nothing to your name it's like you're dead why don't i give you everything that i have and then you can go back and you can tell asap that you killed that you killed me that i'm dead with that money okay so okay but what did he have left with him he had this staff and this staff if you go in the english short shoot i added something at the very end that um as rabbi brydowicz mentioned that when noah sent the dove to right on one of his final trips the dove come back came back with an olive branch and attached to the olive branch were some olives and he crushed those olives and he himself used them but they were hidden away so to speak and apparently when yaakov at is at the um at the place where you know the the dream took place with the ladder and he anointed the place he anointed the rocks with oil then where'd he get that oil that was what he kept within his staff he had like a little pocket within the staff that's the oil some say that it was miraculously showed up but it according to others it was handed down from noah and this same oil apparently is what he went back for also right pakin for these small vessels and it had his stamp because believe it or not yaakov was like a koingado in other words when the miracle of hanukkah which is coming up actually happened a long time ago but the celebration the the memorialization the reliving of hashem of rededication of the temple and it's it goes all the way back to these earlier ideas whether with noah whether with yaakov and of course with the uh with the hasmoneans finding a park that had the seal of the kong as some say was actually yaakov's seal okay let's go back into let's start with this idea we read the verse but what happens is the clear car immediately begins and says let's take a look nirim and devarim the way we see it is like this the yaakov was his killer in our verse now really it's not our verse it's the verse before actually it's verse 10. so if you go to on the english sheets but i believe number 10 yeah so it says over there and yaakov said o god of my father abraham and god and my father isaac the omar yaakov hashema o marily artsakha ulamura taka okay so what we're focusing really on is the god right god said return to the right this is at the point where he's supposed to be going he's on his way back to earth's israel and yaakov is reminding god that you made these promises you said to me return to your land which is now erect israel and i will do good to you now in hebrew it says it's the etiva imach i'm going to do good to you or with you that's going to be the question but right now let's say it means i'm going to do good with you now rashi had mentioned that's what he's doing okay and that he's that he's reminding hashem just like you promised me you're fulfilling them now let's read on the umar shame just like you fulfilled for me one of the promises what are the two promises first of all we'll see we'll see clearly in the next half a minute just like you fulfilled for me one of your promises please right he's requesting just like you fulfilled already one of the promises right you will fulfill not even a request a statement of faith right you will i know you will you will also fulfill with me the second one which is like this mira now if we actually go to chapter 28 verse 15. remember we're we're in chapter 32 but if you go back to 2815 you can find this number six on the sushi and behold i am with you god is saying i am with you it's true and i am with you that's why i'm going to translate images with you and what else will i do i will guard you ushmatika i am going to go with you i'm going to guard you everywhere you go that is what i am with you i am with you therefore i'm going to guard you everywhere you go and the second promise is and i will return you to this land to the very land you're leaving from is going back to chapter 28 right and i will restore you to this land for i will not forsake you until i've done what i have spoken concerning in other words i'm not going to abandon you i'm not going to leave you until i have fulfilled everything that i have spoken to you about so what are the two promises number one when you go to khutsarts when you leave this land or anywhere i'm always going to be with you number one and number two i'm going to return you back to the land of israel just keep in mind we say simon uh what do you call myself these are foreshadows or heartbreakers things that happen to our parents they were not just prophetic i mean they were ingrained in them not just history right they were to for unfold in the future they happened once they'd happen again keep that in mind it's called so these were the two promises so what's happening here we mentioned he said after you've fulfilled one i'm sure you're going to fulfill the other the akha shikhavar al-shmirah after the fact you have fulfilled remember he said for all the goodness you've done to me i have become diminished i am small compared to all the goodness so he obviously would the whole time he was at levan and trust me he had a hard time there were a lot of pains it was not easy for him imagine working 14 years for the woman you really love remember it was seven years he got tricked and he worked another seven years right for rachel okay so 14 years and then another six years just to acquire whatever wealth he did have in order to come back and it took him another two years of traveling time and whatnot so he was away for 22 years but after the fact that you have you did promise me regarding the shmira and that i know was fulfilled the shia shiv el eris molato and there's the i'm going to be returning to the land of israel where i was born this is like the crucial question that cleo car is asking why then in chapter 31 remember this is still before we're in chapter 32 why while he's in the house of lavan before he returns to israel god says el eris maladita return to your land okay that's a good thing i need to know when to go god tells me fine i'm going to go the imach and i will be with you didn't hashem already promise him once wherever you go i'm going to be with you and i'm going to do good for you ah that's going to be like the crucial question why did god need to reassure him or what does it even mean i will be with you and the cleokar says ella vadai with absolute certainty okay this is a little bit hard to understand and i hope that we can all meditate on these ideas but it seems that what the clear car is saying is this promise that i'm going to be with you is not necessarily promising him that bad things wouldn't happen as we know i wouldn't i don't know if we're cloned bad but usurim challenges tormenting pain right sometimes we can even translate as punishments but even the word punishment needs translation because that's not a good word without understanding what's really behind it but anyway so it's not a shmira a guarding against miko ra like we have a verse um actually i didn't write down where the verse is but it's a famous verse it's in proverbs right su me rava asetov i think i do have it here written in and you'll find this in actually it's in psalms 3415 shun evil and do good so in hebrew it's okay so there's an idea that it's not good enough just to not do evil right i'm sure there's a lot of expressions nowadays about this right it's not good enough for good men just not to do evil we have to make a tikkun we have to make a real action a real some initiation of positivity right it's not good enough just to refrain but to actually to do good okay keeping that in mind that when god said i'm going to guard you it's it was not guarding you against evil meaning to say retaliate it wasn't that he was just going to or maybe even be involved in removing evil but the whole idea of the barakah that i'm going to be with you is what to do good for you it's meaning it's synonymous just like the words i'm going to do good with you or for you is the same as i'm going to be with you as the cleokar explains what does it mean asetov hainu haiti limo that he's actually going to do good with yaakov in other words they're synonymous in other words i can't just keep saying the same thing but that's what it is it's a in place of i will do good for you he's saying i'm going to be with you which proves that it's synonymous when god is with you that's good that's really good okay okay that's the first pair i think we should have a takeaway from this and that is that when we even when we think that what we consider bad it's not even bad in fact that balaton explains what is the word ra right in fact in in isaiah 45 i think it's 45 7. god says i create everything right he says i create evil right i create all these things even god says i create evil so evil cannot be bad because no emanation of what we call bad so let's not translate raw is bad the balatonia explains there's good that's revealed and open and we call that good we actually refer to that as good and then there's good that's hidden and we refer to that as evil or bad it means we don't understand the goodness that's going to result or come from it in the end okay the next paragraph begins like this regarding that goodness what the clear car he's a he's an expert in in grammar and in in language and he assumes that there's an easier way to say it that i'm going to do good to you the etiva lach but you know what it says imach but rather it mentions the word i'm going to do good with you to teach you what okay now this is a little bit complicated for me i hope you guys get it there's a few ideas it's going to teach you that should be indian kabbalah to vote regarding the idea of receiving this goodness from hashem well let's say receiving goodness in general sarika yod bala which is a strange concept but there is a halacha by shomrim interestingly enough people who do guarding well or people who are borrowing things and are responsible for the item that they borrowed that's what they're called a shomer so if you're with the person you borrowed the item from for example you borrowed someone's ox and you're doing some plowing and the owner of the ox is with you and the ox dies or is injured but he's with you the owner's with you he can see you didn't whip him too much you didn't not feed it right there's nothing it's called um normal usage or a freak accident so you're not going to be responsible if he was not with you you very well maybe you know you borrowed something he's not around you have to give him back what you borrowed but the very fact he's with you even though you borrowed it and you're responsible in this case you're not responsible so interestingly enough that when the owner and in this case i think we're told hashem there's this a a lessening of responsibility on our part or maybe culpability let's say use that not responsibility culpability a lessening of culpability in our point when hashem is with us that's how i'm reading this okay so all he says is that regarding receiving the goodness the owner needs to be with you whatever that means now the next thing it says now another idea of receiving goodness is the person who's receiving the goodness still has to do everything we call every normal effort that a normal person needs to do under normal circumstances i know i use the word normal quite a few times here lecture standards right there's standards of efforts that are made like if you don't buy the lottery ticket you won't there's no way to win right if you don't show up for the interview you don't get the job and if you don't show up the next day you're not going to stay stay employed right there's certain things and you have you get the idea that when you when you um in order to succeed there is a minimum mil you know you should be doing at least the minimum in in the natural world now which reminds me of two gemara's and i want to show you then it's number three number four on the sewer sheet and this idea of rabbi yanai this is in shabbos 32a it's on page one at the bottom whenever he would cross a river on a ferry i don't know exactly how we would examine the ferry but i guess he would he wouldn't get on a what do you call that a scuba suit and go and check the hole from the outside perhaps he would just check from the inside and everything that wasn't leaking right he wants to make it across the river in a healthy way he would check to see maybe the maybe there's a tudor maybe there's a little bit of an inspection sticker right it's up to date who knows but he apparently would check the ferry before he um he crossed the river and there's a statement that he said was a person should never stand in a place of danger saying that they will that hashem who's on high will perform a miracle for him maybe he won't what's the guarantee and not only that if a miracle was performed i'm not so sure he'd be so happy about it because when miracles are performed for you god forbid i'm going to say god forbid it sounds really weird it's counterintuitive that there is a deduction from your merits of eternity hashem is changing nature for you now and to benefit you now so in other words it doesn't mean that every miracle that ever happens to you is a deduction it may not be for you and that's the best right when a miracle happens for the jewish people as a whole right but what happens just to you personally it's not necessarily always a good thing okay because there's a deduction of your merits all that you built up for yourself in heaven you're in your bank in your bank account in heaven there's like a little bit of a deduction you take you're withdrawing some of that and you're not necessarily interested in that i'm sure um reference where do we know this from and it's our verse when when yaakov says i am not worthy of all the mercies so what is also what does that mean what was he worried about what was he concerned about to even make such a statement we already know that god took care of him god was with him that's true but what was he worried about now coming into the land that maybe there was some diminishing okay so could we could say maybe he felt there was a lot of miracles and there were a lot of miracles on his on behalf on things that he did yes so as we just mentioned and larry had said that um you know when you say i i'm diminished i'm small for all the kindnesses i got more than i deserve so that fits in well with this idea if i got much more than i deserved that could be a deduction of my merits and i need my merits when i'm coming against asaph another idea is that he actually um felt that maybe he made him sin a mistake in flattering his brother asap when he sent them when he sent the the um the angels in the beginning of the parsha so uh he mentions my lord asav a few times he says you're you're your servant yaakov a few times right so this also and he bowed down to him seven times there's a certain idea that that's called flattering an evil person and flattering to an evil flattery to an evil person could be considered sin obviously it was understood in order to save his life he was not held in account for flattery in this case but he felt maybe this would also diminish from right because sin also could diminish and does diminish from the merits okay so that's how he felt let's go on we are um in the first second we're in the third line on the second paragraph where we just mentioned that a person needs to do everything humanly possible in with with his own efforts but but you don't create take credit as larry just mentioned it's about his humility the so you begin the work hashem will finish it for you keep this in mind and not only will hashem finish the job for you but wait till you hear the next three words he add or forwards hoisieflow hashem will do even more when he finishes it off than you could have done if you were finishing the job off yourself unbelievable as he mentions earlier in the actually it's in chapter 32 verse 6 when he says now i'm not going to go into it it's quite complicated but the verse itself says when he's speaking to asa i used to talk telling the the angels i have acquired oxen and donkey now that's singular in other words what he had was as far as the eye can see a lot of flock right and oxen uh what do you call that herds so but he says in the singular the truth is it's actually appropriate it's okay to use the singular language for many like we all know in heb in israel today if you have 20 if you have five shekels you say five skalim but if you have 20 it's in the tens and above you say estream shaco so the more you have the lower the singular fashion of the denomination of money so here when he says he wasn't lying but he was trying to diminish the in other words he didn't want his brother to become so aroused and jealous he's already afraid he's mad at him for stealing the bracha of wealth and if he comes back showing him all this wealth remember he also split it into two camps but he wanted to let's say down play he wanted to downplay the the amount of wealth and that's what he means when he says right he says the god you promised i'm going to do good with you so god would guard him and do do the aceto do the good stuff and we also said he's going to return him to the land shall have ticho as a bracha basamath and he would he would he promised to send him this blessing of abundance so that so far is where we're at regarding this promise what was said derek it was said in this case right in our verse basically it certainly shows this was already fulfilled god already was with him because he says katonti ka tonti mikola kasadim i have become diminished from all of the kindness you gave me so much more than i deserve so he already gave him the shepherd so to what yaakov was great at was his humility yaakov himself felt and understood his smallness in his own power that he would not hang all of this unbelievable wealth that he came back with on his own shoulders and saying i did it it's because of me i was so smart i knew how i knew the trick of how to make uh i guess it's called breeding right there's a husband dream right the truth is i gave in a different share how he did this it's the mystical divine use right but in the um safer igaris hakodesh by the ramban that speaks about it's it's sex about procreation um that what you have in your mind okay goes and flows down to the seed and that enters the woman and it's what you have on your mind holy thoughts or god forbid the other way around whatever kind of thoughts you're going to have is going to have an effect and that's why he was able to let's say reproduce he wasn't he was involved in the reproduction process through the pictures that he drew or showed the sheep and the goats while they were procreating anyway that's a whole nother shear and you'll have to go and find it maybe i'll if i if i can find this this year i'll put the link down below and you can look at that but what yaakov was not doing was taking credit alcohol who also low es but rather it was the unbelievable el cassette of god the kindness of hashem himself that he gave him every single day that he produced this unbelievable success the horizon the proof for this remember he says when i went over the jordan to to visit and find a wife to visit levan what did i have with me nothing but this one little stick that's all i had waiting ray kamiko i had nothing i was poor as dirt as they say i couldn't even rub two nickels together right i had nothing i was completely empty i had nothing in my hand except for my staff the auto look as it says again now we're in that well chapter 32 verse 11. again that verse all i had is my i'm sorry um right now now i have two camps i've become two camps it's the very end of 3211. i have become two camps what does he mean by that the otter iron tough hey is now now right now what does the word now mean snap to it it means now it's happening it's really like we're going to see this word keherif ayan means like the in the blink of an eye like i'm going to just translate differently a very very short time a significantly short time if we think of nature for the amount of time it would have taken for him to amass this amount of wealth would have been much more than 20 years meaning that he would have had to come already to lovin's health house with a significant uh let's say starter breed right a gr a herd that he already started with and then over 20 years period was going through natural means that's what he would have had but you know what it was only the six years so when um when it says kaherif iron he's referring to the last six years where he acquired all this what he acquired should have took taken at least 25 30 40 50 years okay so let's look at the words what does it mean the auto right now is there or what he is saying now is as if what what ha all the success happened very quickly okay again the word is like in a split second but what does he mean he we know he worked for 14 years for the two daughters of love on vishay shanin bitsanav and another six years for the rest of the flock that he right really that's that's the six years luke's now what did love one say to him look in chapter 30 verse 28 um it's number 11. okay then he said specify your wages for me and i will give them meaning ask ask for your wages and i will give them now this all took place i'm assuming in the beginning of the six years but he didn't get it he i mean he got it at the end right so it's like if he got it all once or he got it in six years remember he didn't have in six years he only asked for it six years prior so he only got it just before he left but it did take him two years to travel again when did he meet up with aesop in that two years it's not so clear because it looks like he went to sukkot after and i think he was in sukkot for either six months or 18 months i forget which one it was but there's a whole process of two years of traveling so i think he met up with aesop pretty much as soon as he entered everest israel okay so now um we we mentioned this verse in chapter 30 verse 28 knock the sakhara then just tell me what you want and i'll give it to you bisman it was in a small period of time let's just say six years that he created or he made all of this abundant amount of flock that which according to nature it would not be possible to to achieve this amount of multitudes of flocks in such a short time like this again referring to the six years or perhaps even less imlo kiyad hashem astazot unless hashem was personally involved as god said i'm going to do good with you i'm going to be with you very nice ah the next paragraph alfa pishiyaka of sherlock beh even though in the message that yaakov sent to aesop which was just short of hamor i have ox and i have donkey very strange message obviously is a lot and yet he says the opposite as we already explained referring to in chapter 32 verse 6 where he says all i have or i have an ox and a donkey ki lo now the word means to contradict but here it means in a sly fashion remember yaakov is emes yaakov is truth and yet we all know the yaakov as i'm not going to use the word deceiver in a negative sense because even rashi explains it was with wisdom right remember that he comes from rifka right and rifka right she's the one who told him to deceive his father yes right he's listening to his mother and where did she come from she's coming from loving you know this whole place over there okay now so there is this seeming deception we're just quoting rashi rashi says it's called with wisdom he didn't lie yaakov is emis he says it is i yitzhak wants to know who is this it is i is that a lie so far no asap is your firstborn is that a lie no but if i say it is i asav your firstborn it certainly can sound like a lie because i'm presenting myself as ace of your firstborn but that's impossible because yaakov is telling the truth and even though his mom told him go in there be deceptive he even says i can't do that okay so he we this is the the character trait of yaakov and here yaakov is doing the same thing with asa he says i have sure of hamor he's not lying he does have sure of a hammer lots he dove or shekhar if there's no way unless he has some kind of fear that he would even go ahead and kikesh contradict the truth let's say lamar losha tarak bitsono komeshik asrimshana he gave him the impression this is what he's telling him you don't know this that i only worked the last few years for these sheep i was away for 20 years you may think that it took me 20 plus years it was not this mirror i mean he's conveying to asaf it wasn't like all these miracles that took place because that would arouse jealousy again within his brother god did for all you because the bracha you got the bracha right no don't worry the bracha might still be with you you have no fight with me right what i have here took a lot of work took a long amount of time but really between him and god he is acknowledging it's nothing i did i started it you god you finished it off with all the shepherd right away no kane but the truth is it didn't take 20 years there's no way that yaakov would actually try to say these words that it was me there's no way that yaakov would try to get the message across it's because of me being smart because me being brilliant because i know the secret of husbandry or divine you know ways to have these miracles happen to me nope that message was everything happened the court in the natural fashion that's the message he's trying to convey and not lying about it okay now and this is now what we mean when the verse says the auta now now i have divided into two camps again again means in a very short period of time if it was all in one it would look like a tremendous amount but if you can divide it into two it looks less so again in a short period of time how could he require so much iluhilo sono bakar ba avruka varsi yardin if i would have originally when i left to go to um lovin's house remember he was already away for 14 years in the in the uh midrash of shame and aver so it could be in asan's mind he already had 14 years worth of husbandry and making a huge amount of uh a flock but no he says right when i went like in other words if i would have had all this to begin with a huge amount to start with haiti then everything that i have today all happened over like i said 25 30 years for almost 40 years worth of husbandry avalakshav but the truth is now it's teaching you where he's actually hoda he's actually admitting i mean he's revealing to us not to his brother asa that when i went over the jordan to go to lovin's house the only thing i had was my staff that's all i had in kane kavod jose yes me and so it's like kind of like a rhetorical question when would all this stuff have happened like in a blink of an eye yeah the truth is yeah vaday may tashem and it's absolutely clear now for all this wealth to happen in such a short period of time it had to be from the hand of god and al cain be cash this is why yaakov is requesting a second time let's say or he's requesting more kashem shikhiyam to li in other words now that i'm coming back into the land and you're fulfilling that part of the promise god lead also i'm sure right and i want you to fulfill also that first promise about the shmira remember i'm about to run into asav and i'm afraid what that i either i diminished my goodness either i got too much good or i sinned but either way he's afraid that he doesn't have the merits so he's asking as the verse says in 32 12 the hats elenina save me please from the hand of my brother from the hand of asap if he was already promised god would be with him never told him that the bad stuff wouldn't happen but he would be with him now the word auto means him right but we're not going to read it that way i fear because right of him no the word o toe can mean because of it i fear because of it what is he fearing his sin the flattery okay the militarist is completely superfluous it's not necessary to say because i fear i fear him right you have your eye you don't need oto elisha rama's this hints the word o toe to it to the sin that he fears of the the result the consequences of his sin by giving flattery to such an evil person as his brother that that would transform what we would say his merits into the opposite here he says kodesh so the word oto which means him but in our case it means it is referring to the avon the sin itself now the last two sentences go like this the yeash omrim there are some that say shall atmo yaakov was not afraid for himself he had total confidence total faith he knew that he didn't sin and he knew that he was a good guy and he knew that god was with him but what was he afraid of for his wives he prayed for them listen to the words he was not afraid for himself kikivar hoof that promise regarding guarding him that was already promised and he already lived with it but you know what he was afraid of as the verse against 32 12. let me just find it so i can have the whole verse in front of me look at how it says in number 12 on ver on page 3. now deliver me from the hand of my brother which sounds very personal from the hand of asaf for i might have afraid of him now look at the english lest he come and strike me and strike a mother with children but in the hebrew you don't have to read it like that penavo the that i'm afraid that he will not strike me but that he will strike the women with the children and therefore even if i feel secure i am like this with god right but look at look what's going around us right pray for others pray for the salvation of others right so this is the message here it's a very deep uh parsha we only skimmed the surface here um and i i encourage people to just learn on their own learn with rusa there's so many places right there's partners in torah if you're looking for kharuta you can email me and i'll try to set you up with somebody join us online whatever it is there's so many places to learn the whole world is full of sheck air right there's unbelievable misinformation falsehoods going around the only thing that has been true will always be true has been the torah and i encourage you don't get lost in in the media stream and what's going on around us keep the faith keep learning and welcome home to torah and have a great shabbos and a great life and we'll see you next week [Music] is [Music]