Rabbi Binyamin Yuhanan Mystical Insights Into Parashat Ki Tavo 2

when a person is healthy he doesn't appreciate his health he abuses his own health and then he becomes sick and when he is sick he starts remembering and saying how foolish I was that I didn't appreciate when I was young I didn't appreciate when I was healthy I wish that Hashem would give me back my health and when I become healthy I will appreciate it I I will use my life properly so Hashem gives him another chance he gives him Health returns him to his um health and a wise person will make a a note a reminder every day to thank hash for his health and to pray for his health as the talud says always a person person should pray for his health when he's healthy when you pray for your health when you're healthy you will remain healthy why because you will show Hashem that you recognize that he is the source of your health that you're not taking it for granted and you will actually enjoy your health and so with so too with any possession that we have there's a famous uh story about Rabbi aviga Miller when he was in his 80s he came for a dental checkup and the dentist told him sir please remove your dangers before the checkup and Raba Miller said I don't have dangers so the doctor said again to him sir take out your fake teeth and rabam said young man I know what Dentures are I don't have Dentures so the doctor said how can it be you are in your 80s I've never seen a person of such age without any teeth missing so he promptly checked all his teeth which were all healthy and he was amazed and he said Rabbi tell me what's your secret and raber told him the reason why in my old age I have all my teeth is because every day I say I say thank you Hashem for this tooth and thank you Hashem for this tooth and like this I go around my whole mouth and I thank Hashem for each and every tooth that I have and you don't even have to spend any time on it while you are chewing feel your teeth and with every bite and with every chew say thank you Hashem for this tooth and for this tooth and thank you Hashem for the tongue and for my lips and for my nose and for my throat and for my stomach use the time of eating for self-perfection and spiritual growth and that is a way to protect your health to protect your wealth and this is the way to protect your relationships if we recognize the good relationships that we have with our relatives and friends and we appreciate it and cherish it those relationships will continue being successful and um positive so the Torah tells us the reason why these curses came up upon you was because you stopped being happy and now we know why people stop being happy and that is because they start taking things for granted they stop appreciating what they have and they stop recognizing where did all their blessings come from the blessings are do do not come from our own effort our effort is required in order to activate God's Bounty because God doesn't want us to be lazy bombs and uh not U feel that I earned it and therefore I enjoy the fruit of my labor however what once we put in a little bit of effort Hashem wants us to recognize that he is the source of it so a person who thinks that I don't have to thank God I am the source of my parasa of my livelihood and of my health because I know how to eat healthy such a person is blind to the truth and not only that he is going to cause himself to lose all his blessings his wealth and his health because the reason Hashem gives us all these blessings is in order to give us a a reason to rely on Hashem to have gratitude to Hashem to serve Hashem with happiness if and if instead we rely on ourselves such a person removes God from his life as well as he will develop worry and anxiety because if I only trust in myself and I rely on myself then thoughts start coming up in my mind but what's going to be when I become old what's going to to be if God forbid there is an accident and I can no longer work what's going to be if someone steals my money what's going to be if there is inflation or if the government or economy collapse there are so many worries that a man who trusts only on him in himself will have so a person who denies the true source of our security and our blessing is creating for himself a a life of uh worry and pain and therefore Hashem says T because you didn't serve god with happiness by now recognizing that he is your god that he is the source of all the good things you have and being happy by by uh paying attention and counting your blessings that's the expression count your blessings because otherwise they're not blessings if you don't know that you have it it doesn't count and that is the reason why bad things happen to good people now in addition to the blessings that this paraa gives us the promises of all the good things that are going to happen to us if we keep the Torah and the curses as we said the guard rails that Hashem placed to protect us there are a few more lessons in this we's Torah portion for example the Torah tells us that we the Jewish people chose Hashem as the only God that we will ever have what does it mean that Hashem is our God it means that we will not recognize any other power in the world besides God we will not rely on any other power besides God and Hashem says if you do that I will choose you as my only nation in the world it's like the relationship between a husband and a wife if they're loyal to each other they marriage lasts if one of them is disloyal the other one feels I don't have to stay in this marriage and they leave as well so Hashem says if you are loyal to me I'm going to be loyal to you if you don't recognize other gods I will not recognize any other nations and uh what does it mean other gods any other power in the world doesn't only mean Idols the ancient Idols that we make fun of but even modern day sources of security and power that we feel are real Hashem says if you rely on them then you not relying on me fully and therefore I will not be able to protect protect you and be your only source of power because you yourself are turning away from me so a person has to be very careful not to put his trust in anything or anyone besides God and we can test ourselves do we think I can handle it I can do it without asking God for help if so that means we are relying in our own intelligence or our own physical abilities our talents which by the way all of it God gave us and we're forgetting about God's assistance and we're forgetting about that our talents are god-given and if I say I can do this job I'm going to go and do it then I am forgetting about God or if I'm relying on my uh my um Sy my alarm system and that's what's going to protect me from robbers so it's as if I'm giving a challenge to God and saying look I don't need your help I set up cameras and alarms security no robber is stronger than my system and Hashem will take the challenge and send you a robber God forbid that is going going to go around all the systems that you set up as opposed to a person who who yes you can be normal and set up all those systems but a person who recognizes Hashem I set up these systems just because I want to be normal just because I don't want to show show everyone that I'm relying on open miracle that there's so much crime and all the houses are being broken into and I don't lock my door and nothing happens that is not going to happen we have to behave in a normal way so I'm going to set up the alarm system and the cameras however God I know the truth you are my protector you are my provider and therefore I'm not afraid of robbers I'm not afraid of fire God forbid I'm not afraid of flood or anything else why because I'm relying on you my trust is based on my knowledge that you God are kind you love me you are capable of providing me with all my needs you are my Creator and you are in control of the whole world and therefore I don't have to be afraid of anything or anyone and if I sleep securely at night not worrying what if the criminals invent a new way I did what normal people do and I don't have to worry so in such a case you recognize where your security comes from and nothing will happen to you this is the same with a person taking medicine yes we should take vitamins and if one is sick you should take medicine however when we take vitamin we shouldn't think that I'm going to be healthy because of this vitamin I'm going to be healthy because I do exercise daily I'm going to be healthy because I um eat healthy food we should still do all these good things but we have to keep in mind that God you created my body God you gave me wisdom to find out what is healthy God you gave me the environment the proper environment in which I can take care of myself and God you control every molecule and every atom of my body and of everything around me and Hashem please help me stay healthy and these vitamins or this medicine or this activity like exercise or healthy food are only my effort to be normal in the world sounds funny but that's how the world works we are only alive because of God we're only healthy because of God we're only protected because of God because our concept of Hashem is not someone we turn to only when we need help otherwise we are self-sufficient no our concept of God is that there is nothing besides him in the world we are nothing and the whole world around us is nothing it's only what he thinks and wills to be and the fact that he Wills me to be and I'm here in the world doesn't mean that I will be here the next Mo moment I have to still pray and rely on him that he will continue recreating me and the entire world around me every moment in the future and with this attitude we are going to be at the Forefront of God's mind like it says about the land of Israel that God pays attention to the land of Israel the whole day every moment of the day and the same with the Jewish people that Hashem is guiding us Hashem is protecting us what we call Private supervision not a general supervision but individual supervision Hashem takes care of every minute detail of every living being but that's only if we are aware of it and we allow God to play his role however if we say Hashem it's okay you don't have to be here you can go do something else I'm going to take care of it myself so Hashem says you think if I leave you're going to stick around you're going to disappear as soon as I stop thinking about you but let me God says do an experiment for you I'm going to withdraw my attention to you a little bit I will still think about you but from a distance and let's see what happens and the person says Hashem it's okay let me take care of it and the person goes and works hard and tries and he fails nothing works until he turns to Hashem and says Hashem I need help and then all of a sudden everything is smooth so we can create our own smooth sailing Life by keeping Hashem in our mind just like it says in the Torah you chose Hashem as your God Only God and Hashem chose you as his own only people when we focus on Hashem Hashem focuses on us we think about Hashem he thinks about us we believe in him we trust him he provides for us this is another lesson of this week's Torah portion and the final lesson of this Torah portion is the Mitzvah of M the farmer separates 10% of his produce for the Levites he then separates 10% to be taken to Jerusalem and eaten there by his own family and in year 3 and year six he separates 10% in order to give to poor people and once in 3 years the farmer needs to come to to uh Jerusalem to Beta mikdash and make another pronouncement what's called V and he has to say Hashem I fulfilled everything that I was supposed to I supported the Levites I supported the poor so this is something that we still do today in a different form what we earn the money the salary or the business income we separate 10% and give it to poor people or institutions of Torah study and we come in front of Hashem and we say I did what you asked Hashem ask us asks us to be like him to be Merc merciful to be kind to share with others to support others to help others and then the farmer says the following look down from your holy Abode from heaven and bless your people the Jewish people Israel and the ground that you gave us the person who separates M the person who shares with others the person who takes care of others he has a special power to give blessing to himself and to the entire Jewish people as and that is why before a woman lights Shabbat candles what does she do she takes a coin and puts it in sadaka because this is the power of kindness this is the the power of taking care of less fortunate we become like God to such a degree that we ourselves can direct God's blessing to whomever we want so the lady who puts a coin in a Sedaka box then lights her candles and then she starts praying she prays for herself she prays for her husband she prays for her children for the entire Jewish people and at that time her blessings her prayers are very powerful and so it is anytime that you want your bless your prayers to be fulfilled give charity give a dollar to a poor person or put it in a sadaka box and then say Hashem please help me and the talmud even says that this is considered a proper way of of giving charity even though you're giving charity and you're hoping that the Merit will help you as well it is not only permissible that but it is the proper thing to do because we recognize that it's not only our um asking Hashem that causes it but it's also our deserving our effort hasem wants us to change our character to improve our character and therefore when we say Hashem I need something from you but I also recognize that you want me to do something for you and that is you brought me into this world and you want me to improve myself and therefore hasem I'm going to improve myself I'm I'm going to make myself more kind charitable merciful Hashem look I'm taking my money and I'm giving it to someone else I'm putting it into Saka box Hashem now please give me what I need and Hashem says very good you are improving your car character with every coin with every dollar bill that you give to poor every time you go out of your way to take care of someone else you improve yourself you are fulfilling your mission in life and therefore you be you now can ask me for anything you want that is why it says that when a person overcomes his anger he has the power to give blessings that is true with overcoming any character trait we generally don't want to give out money and I overcome that and I become generous I can ask Hashem for anything someone bothered me and I became angry I control myself I can ask Hashem for anything why because we are fulfilling our mission in life self-improvement and therefore in return we can ask ask Hashem for anything that we want BM we should apply the lessons from this Torah portion that if we want blessings we fulfill God's Will and anytime we experience pain we say thank you to Hashem because that pain is our sensor that we're doing something wrong and Hashem put it in place for our own benefit to direct us to the right um path and therefore anytime we experience pain we look at our own actions and we say Hashem what did I do wrong let me see I don't blame God I look at myself and I say thank you Hashem for reminding me to look into myself oh I see yesterday or today I did something I shouldn't have done I'm not going to do it again I'm going to apologize and that's it I fixed the problem the pain goes away we we should recognize the good that we have in life we should be happy with all our possessions talents and we should ascribe them to God thank Hashem and that is the source of our success source of our happiness we should use our life in this world as an opportunity to earn and we should be proud of ourselves when we cross that threshold between life and the next World knowing that we used this life properly and EM we will enjoy our life in this world and the next world thank you for joining have a good night and shabbat shalom