Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: Blessing or Curse? Hashem Wants our Success

Heat. Heat. [Music] Okay, thank you for coming. I appreciate it. Um uh tonight Shorim are dedicated uh uh for the aliata uh in memory of Ruven Ben Simka dedicated by Dana Bolad Krauss. Uh Mosha Ben Manahim whose yard site is on the 23rd of Manakimab dedicated by Sarah Fyer Routman in memory of her maternal grandfather also in honor of Ri Bradwoods for sensitivity to mental health issues affecting the Jewish community. Uh may he be to continue his Torah. Thank you very much. I I appreciate actually every braha and uh the Ramban brings down an interesting point just if I could digress that uh he asked the kasha that sur when she hears from the three that she's going to have a child so she laughs and the say to why is she laughing and the raan asks why is sor condemned surah thought they were three Arabs sor thought they were over there bodor uh she didn't know they were angels of god But why should she pay attention to it? So the Ramban says an important that whenever you get a bra from anybody any source you always say amen. So I I say amen to the very nice brah. I appreciate it. Number three uh Miriam Basar Shimon Ley Shalam uh dedicated by fine who were so to have here tonight. Welcome. Uh and this is his mother's yard site is the 28th of August 8th. Um, oh that's today. Okay. And thank you and thank you as well for your own harra that uh many many people enjoy. And finally a special dedication by fineold for the aliyah nama for her father David Mosha ban fish and her brother Yon and David Mosha. Again we're very very grateful for the support of Tyra. May it be a big zus for all of the families whether it's for Afua or whether it's for the alias nama of of of um the para this week I may zigzag a little bit because last week I didn't speak about av because I spoke about the 15th of a so I'm going to speak a little bit about avail but this week's para is para again remember that the entire book of devour is taking place the last six or seven weeks of Mosher Rabenu's life this is the 40th year uh the book of begins rovat Moshe is going to die next month the seventh of Adar so the entire book are Moshe's farewell discourses as he is leaving the world and Mosha Rabenu starts off with the puk this this para behold see I am placing before you speaking in the name of Hashem a blessing and a curse uh it's interesting that paratrier is always read either Rosheshello or the Shabas in which were Rosheshello the Shabas before Roeshello and the Mapor point out that there are many many illusions in the para that we are approaching the season of L the season of introspection the season of chuba the season in which we prepare ourselves for the judgment of Roshashana by trying to make ourselves as good as we can we can do so let me just share share with you a few of the illusions uh of paras uh to to kello. First of all note the following idea uh grammatically the pusk is a little inconsistent. It starts off re look see that's a that is in the singular. So in English you wouldn't know the difference but literally you're switching from a singular to a plural is a lif in front of you is the second person plural. Why does the terrorist switch from Yid to Rabim? Point number one. So the clear gives actually a very very beautiful simple straightforward answer to this and he says that Mosher Rabenu in this discourse is describing a ceremony that is going to take place when they cross the yard after his death in which six tribes are going to stay be on one mountain Mount Gerism and six tribes on Mount Ael and the Kohanim and Levim in the middle and they will be pronouncing blessings and curses and the nations will theatim will answer amen. Now there was something very very pivotal at the ceremony of mount gerism and mount aal and that is the introduction of a new fundamental idea in Judaism called call is araven zazaf every Jew is responsible for every other Jew until that ceremony until they cross the ardane which Mosher Rabenu was now talking about everybody was responsible for themselves if I did mitzvos I got rewards If I did aos, I got punished. But the notion that I'm responsible for what you do was aes the notion of kal is like one goof and therefore there's a mutual responsibility. The word ar is a guarantor like a loan. You borrow money and you have to pay. If I'm an ar which is a foolish thing to be uh I am guaranteeing the loan, right? Famous last words. Oh, just sign your name. You know you're not going to have to pay. Again warns in the book of Mish many many many times unless you're prepared to give the money as saka which you know if you can do it you can do it do not be an ar because you're going to wind up paying so means that every Jew is literally a guarantor but that was nitadesh only after they cross the ardane at the ceremony of mount kisma and mount a so now the cleer says hashem is speaking to the y Yay you the individual you are now going to be connected to the whole seabore so whatever you do will impact not only on you it will impact on everybody and therefore be very very careful a person might say I don't care if I go to hell in a hand basket it's my business it's my life the answer is it's not your life besides your immediate family which of course you're always connected to what you do affects am Israel v that the path of bless blessing and curses is in front of everybody. So the cleer connects this to the idea of krael aren zel that is going to become activated in the ceremony of mount gerism and mount ael which mosher rabenu is describing right now although it's not going to happen until the book of uh the book of inidas they have a beautiful pun because the word which literally means guarantor I am a guarantor for you you're a guarantor for me can also be connected at homalytically to the word which is sweet. Every Jew is sweet to the other Jew. I look at another Jew and I see sweetness. I see goodness. Let me point out that is not just a spiritual concept in terms of how God interacts with us which is important enough. It also has very concrete implications. You know, the general rule is that I cannot be mozzardated. So that's why a who knows Hebrew cannot blow chauffeur or read migillah. Um a woman who is not in chauffeur because it's a timebound commandment although it's customary that they hear it cannot blow chauffeur for a man. a kan below bar mitzvah cannot do any mitzvah for somebody who is in a mitzvah because this is a famous rule a very a very important idea that if you're not muy in the mitzvah you cannot do it for somebody else so now let's ponder the following let's imagine it's Friday night and I made kdish for my family so I was yay kdish I'm no longer kayan kdish I was yay kdish and Then you show up and you knock at my door and let's assume for whatever reason I can offer you to make kdish. Yeah, but let's assume you don't want to make kdish. Am I allowed to make kdish again for you? Now if you were to apply the simple rule that once I'm not in a mitzvah, I can't do it for anybody else. I'm not in the mitzvah anymore. So how can I do it for you? It's a blessing in vain. So Rashi explains that I am since every Jew is responsible for another Jew. If you didn't hear Kdish, it's not just your obligation. It's my obligation. So I could make kdish again. And if after I made it for you, somebody else showed up, I can make it again and again and again and again. And Rashi says explicitly that this principle is based on Israel that is enough to make you know I'm not only in my mitzvah I'm obligated in the mitzvah that you have right so that's and the explains that that is the shift from the to the because the is going to be assuming a responsibility again The Tommy Drew Shami gives uh the famous mushel of people on a boat. We're all on a boat and there's a leak that develops under my seat and the water's coming in and the other people on the boat want to fix the leak and I say, "Mind your own business. It's under my seat." The answer is if my part of the boat has a leak, the whole ship is going to sink. And therefore, like the old cliche, a chain is only as strong as the weakest link. also applies to the Jewish people. We have a of responsibility towards each other. So that's uh the first observation and of course as we enter the season of yum no we have to think about our mutual responsibility it is brought down salant a very beautiful thing that one of the atos one of the practical strategies for trying to elicit a good judgment is to make yourself a person that other people depend on because even if I don't have so much merit on my own but if other people need me, I kind of get the benefit of their needing me. It's good to be a person that is needed by others and whatever level whatever level it is because then you get the benefit of the zusim of the other people not just not just yourself. Okay. Uh second point again these are just general connections between uh the message of the parha and the season of yim is you will note that there's only two choices here. Behold, I am giving you, Hashem says, a path of blessing which gives you life and connection to God and happiness and a path that leads to death and destruction. Even if in the short term there may be some pleasures that you get. Now, we don't think of things as two choices. I mean, isn't there a third choice called neutral? There's the path of life, the path of death, and then there's the path of neutral. Since the Torah does not talk about three roads, it only talks about two roads. That actually means as the Alavos writes that there is no such thing as a neutral decision in life. Something either brings you closer to God or if it does not bring you closer to God, by definition, it's wrong and will take you further from God. Yeah, that doesn't mean that does not mean that the only thing you can do in your life are mitzvah. I mean within this framework there is room for vacation. There is room for recreation. There's room to go out to eat. But the above explains and again the Rambam re reiterates this with great eloquence that every single decision you make has to be done with some type of intention that this will feed into my avodas hashem my service of God. So if a person needs relaxation a person needs recreation a person needs to calm themselves down because there's anxiety or agitation. So yeah, so go on vacation, do whatever you need to do. That's but understand that you're doing it to replenish your batteries and to regenerate enthusiasm and avote. And then the Rambam says even the recreation becomes a mitzvah becomes a hashem because you're doing it for the purpose of being able to serve God. So therefore a person has to ask himself actually there's a Christian book but but the title is good so I'm going to borrow the title. Uh it's called the purposedriven life. That's a very good that's a very good phrase. Purpose driven meaning every decision you make should be based on the purpose of your existence. Lincoln again Lincoln. Oh Lincoln said so Rick Warren got it from Lincoln. Huh? Victor Frankle. Oh, Victor Frankle. Okay. I'm not sure if Okay. I'm not sure um if Rick Warren got it from Frankle or not, but okay. Uh obviously Victor Frankle talks about man's search for meaning, but he uses the phrase uh purpose- driven life. Okay. But but it's the same it's the same idea for sure. So therefore, that's why there's no such thing as a middle road. Something either gets you in the right direction or ma automatically takes you in the wrong direction. The vil nagon says in his commentary to Mish when a person is not going up in life they are inevitably going down. It reminds me of an escalator. I don't know if you did this when you were a kid. I used to do it. I haven't done it lately. And that is when you have an escalator going up. I'm sorry going down going down. So you try to go faster. Can can you go up on an escalator when it's going down? So you got to be faster than the escalator. If you simply stand still on a escalator going down, you're not going to remain where you are. You're going to go down automatically. You have to exert energy just to stay in place. So there's no such thing as being stagnant. And therefore the rem here to the two roads is you're either choosing to advance in life or you're automatically going to be dragged going to be dragged down. That's uh point uh point number two. Now point number three is actually a little subtle and uh it depends on closely looking at the words of the puss. Let's look at the words of the puss. Behold I am placing before you today. Re see that I'm placing before you today a blessing and a curse. Okay. Then it says the blessing is a tishu that you will listen to the commandments of God. Now let's look at the curse puzz. The curse puzz makes sense. The curse will be if you don't listen to God's will, bad things will befall you. So note that this is not symmetrical. What the Torah should have said to be consistent is the blessing is if you will listen to the commandments, God will give you good things. The curse is if you don't listen to the commandments, God will bring bad things. That would have been an equivalence between the blessing and the curse. But that's not what the Torah says. The Torah does not say the blessing is if you keep the commandments you will have good things. It says the blessing is that you will keep the commandments. So what does that mean? So the em is Rashi was sensitive. One of the great things about Rashi and the Kamaliitz used to emphasize this over and over again is that Rashi almost always is trying to answer a question even though Rashi doesn't always ask the question. Meaning Rashi will give comments on verses. But when you ask yourself why is Rashi saying what he's saying you will often not always you will often discover some textual difficulty that Rashi is trying to answer even though he doesn't particularly point out what the difficulty is. Uh so uh one of um Tomidum was a good friend of mine who was a very eminent clinical psychologist Dr. Vic bancheka uh and uh he was a kim but also he was close to and he wrote five volumes in English called what's bothering rashi which exactly goes to a lot of rashis and shows how rashi's comment is answering a question now rashi comments on the braha is that you will listen the word ashare and rashi says aare does not mean that in this pk but it means alinas on the condition that you will listen. So therefore what rashi is trying to do is by a re-ransation of the word aair the braha is if or on the condition that you will listen rashi is creating the symmetry between the braha and the klala. So rashi is bada trying to make them the same. But in truth this is a bit of a forced interpretation because ashair normally means that you will listen. So how do you explain it? The braha is that you will listen. So the truth is you can actually explain this with a very uh interesting and important teaching of the Rambam Mymanades in Hilas Chuva in the laws of repentance and my manades discusses hab right the Rambam discusses that the reward for mitzvos is not in this world you really do not get rewarded for mitzvos in this world that's why righteous people sometimes suffer all reward for mitzvos is in the world to come. And this is the teaching of our sages mitzvah bah alma lea reward for mitzvos in this world doesn't really exist. So then the ram asks an obvious question. How can kazal say there is no reward for mitzvah in this world? Doesn't the Torah say in this parha and in last week's para and many places that if you keep the mitzvah of God, you will be rewarded in this world with health and with wealth and with prosperity and with fertility. The Tory very specifically always ties reward to this world, not necessarily the next world. So the Rambam gives the following answer. The Rambam's answer is when you do mitzvah and God gives you goodies in this world, he is not really rewarding you. Your real reward is but what God is doing is since you've shown you want to do mitzvah, I will give you more opportunities to do mitzvah. You'll have more money so you give sodaka. You'll be healthy so you can learn more Torah. In other words, according to the Rambam, the reward you get in this world is not reward. It is enhanced opportunity. And that is why by the way a righteous person will sometimes suffer because the righteous person is so good that he will do the mitzvah even under conditions of difficulty and therefore he doesn't need the carrot of enhanced opportunity to rise to the occasion. You see, if this would be an issue of reward, it's unfair to deprive the sadic of reward. But if you understand that the whole purpose of what are called rewards are simply mechanisms to enhance opportunity. So that sadic doesn't need those incentives and therefore he what he'll do through difficulty counts much more. So this is how the Rambam interprets the meaning in Peravos of the Mishna that says mitzvah mitzvah. The reward of a mitzvah is a mitzvah. Exactly that. The reward that God gives you for a mitzvah is the opportunity to do more mitzvah. And if that means you need to be healthy, if that means you need to be comfortable, if that means uh uh you need uh a more serene life, then that may be given to you but not as reward. It doesn't come out of your but as enhanced opportunities. So the ubiquitous thing that I tell you when you give them stuck mitzvos, may you merit doing mitzvos. That's exactly what the Rambam says the nature of reward. Now based on that Rambam the Puk is actually very very exact. The blessing is a share tishma that you will be able to do more and more mitzvah. Yeah. And if that means uh more and health and everything else you'll get that. But it is only in the nature of directing you and enabling you and empowering you to do more mitzvah. So according to the rama the lion of tishmo is very very exact. Uh all right so so far I think we mentioned uh you know three points. We mentioned the shift of lash to lashim based on k is every Jew is responsible uh for uh each other. We mentioned the idea that there is no neutrality in life. Every decision should be made in terms of does it bring me to my goal or does it not bring me to my goal. And as the vagon says uh ano y ano ola mala mala when a person is not going up it is inevitable he will be y ma ma. And then the notion that what we pray for in life is not so much I want to be rich, I want to be healthy, I want to have children. We pray for the mechanisms that will enable me to serve Hashem in the best possible way. And if it includes all of those things, then yes, then I should ask Hashem for them. But I'm not asking them as a reward for my mitzvah. I'm asking them as enhanced opportunities. That's why in the when we ask Hashem to remember us for life, it says remember us for life the God that's desirous of life inscribe us in the book of life for your benefit. So the explain that's the type of life you're asking for. Give me a life that will be lived for your glory. In other words, not that inscribe me in the book of life for your sake. Rather, it means give me a life that's that will be for your for your sake. Right? So that's the uh third point. Okay. Uh I'm I'm sorry that's the second one. Third point, the third point was the notion that aer tishu again means that the reward is given for the enhanced opportunities. Okay. Um a fourth point is the word hayom. That's very critical. Look look at the word here. See I am placing before you today underline today a blessing and a curse. You are at the fork of a road. The highway branches off in two directions. There is a direction of life and a direction of death. Now you're at this fork of the road today. What day is today? Today is whatever day it is. Every day is a today. When Mosher Rabenu was speaking, today was the day he was speaking. When I read the Torah, today is now. Right? Those words have an eternal reverberation across time. And this is extremely important. Rabeno Yona uh one of the great rishonim wrote a classic book that is often studied during this time of year called Share Chuva the gates of repentance it's been translated in English as well a few times and he goes through the steps of changing yourself improving yourself growing how to come to God and ask for forgiveness very very beautiful book by the way legend has that the reason he wrote the book Shahit Chuva is as a young man he participated in a campaign against the Rambam's philosophical writings to the perplexed where the Rambam tried to integrate Aristotilian philosophy and Judaism and there were segments of uh the karedum of the time who thought that was improper and they wanted to ban the Rambam's books And in a few places the Catholic Church actually burnt the Rambam's books uh because if the Jews were opposing it that gave them an excuse to burn them and Rabeno Yona later felt that this was very very improper especially since around a few years later there were 24 wagon loads of Gammoras handscopied manuscripts of Tolman that were burnt in Paris and that virtually destroyed destroyed all of the swarm in France and the gdollum of the time were were connecting that as divine punishment for what was done to the Rambam's books. You burned the Rambam's books, we're going to burn your books. Gantishov, one of the keynotes on Tishabove from the Mami Rutenberg Rutenberg is about the incident of the burning of the 24 wagon loads of the Gomorrah that's shalliame. It's towards the end of the keynotes. I think it's number. Uh but it is said that Rabenu Yona was so heartbroken over the sins of his youth that he resolved to write a manual teaching others how to do chuva which he applied to himself. And in addition he lived in Spain. And he wanted to travel to Erit Israel to ask forgiveness at the grave of the Rambam. The Rambam was buried and is buried in Tavaria. And what's the if I hurt somebody and I didn't have a chance to ask their forgiveness while they were alive? According to the I am to go to the grave with a minion of people and ask Maka at the grave. Rabeno Yona wanted to go to the Kev of the Rambam. The story has it that he left Spain to go to Erat Israel and he died before he got there. So he never got to Erit Israel. But be as it may um if you have the occasion, it would be very worthwhile uh to look at the safer Shahit Chuva. But Rabenu Yona wrote a much much shorter version almost a summary of Shahit Chuva only like five pages that's called Yodat Chuva the foundation of Chuva and in some moxars I think the arch moxar they don't reprint the shar chua that would have been 200 pages but they they reprint the assoda chuva which is like a five-page summary so it's very to look at but it's interesting that in the Isodacha even though it's supposed to be a summary he actually says some things that he doesn't say in Shah Chua so there's actually some new points in Yodachuva that are not emphasized in Shahit Chuva and one of the most beautiful points that he makes in Yodachuva is the very first thing a Balchuva has to understand is I'll paraphrase like the t-shirt saying Today is the first day of the rest of your life. Meaning sometimes a person might feel that they're so lost, they're so far from Hashem, they're so much on the wrong road that there's no way they can retrace their steps and never get back. And Rabeno says, "No, every single day, not just every single day, every single minute is a new decision." Meaning, no matter where you are on whatever road you are, you can decide to go on the right road. And that's the greatness of Hayom. Every day is new. Every day is a new beginning. There is no such thing as your being locked in to your past life. What you were does not limit what you can be now. And what you can become is not limited by what you are now either. Right? So your past doesn't dictate your present and your present doesn't dictate your past. The notion of hay today the vil nagon even talks about this ina he says if the beat you as you were saying one you're saying you're asking god for knowledge your mind is wandering so he beat you for that one you come back with the next or whatever it would be meaning you don't you don't have to have this idea like people sometimes say oh well This shimona assay is a waste. All right, I might as well just get it over with. Even in learning, a person's in yeshiva. So you have a long learning session of three four hours and let's assume that you know for 2 and 1/2 hours you know you were just wasting time. It happens you know so there's only a half an hour left. So sometimes ah it's only half an hour I'll just skip it. No no no you get a half an hour in five minutes you know you can make the last five minutes worthwhile. person has to understand every moment there are new decisions and that's the power of hayom and that's why yona says that although it is part of chuva that we think about our past and we regret our misdeeds but you don't start with that because if you start with focusing on the past you get immobilized you get depressed you kind of say ah it's just too hard rather don't think about the past just say hey what are my opportunities right now and then you build yourself up and then you have progress and then afterward you go back and you confront the things you got to fix but it shouldn't be the start of your process because at that point if you focus too much on the past you're not going to move towards the future and therefore that is the greatness that is The greatness of Hayong every day is a new start, right? And that that of course is a very very important message. I I mentioned last week, but I'll repeat it and I'll probably repeat it in future weeks as well as we get closer to the Yam Ray. You know, uh particularly those who have been in yeshivos, uh the the the month of El has, we might say, a certain heaviness about it. And the truth is you can never shake you can never really shake that heaviness. It's a serious time and people go around you know sometimes with a very serious demeanor like nobody in fact this goes back to Europe. I mean we saw Solander tells the story now we saw Solander died uh towards the end of the 19th century. So he grew up in the 1800s. So he writes when he was a child like 1830 1820 he was talking about the amadin the fear of judgment that existed during and he he said when he was a child he remembered that when the would say when they would bless the new moon roes l will be you know yeom there would be a cry from the women's section and women would faint they would swoon now that was Not because of the cooking they would have to do on a three-day object, but rather there was such a fear of judgment. And you know, people from Lithuania say they they remember stories. I I hear a lot of these stories. If uh two kids were fighting, just fighting like kids fight uh the mother would just stick her head out of the window and say, "It's evil." And the kids was like, "Stop, right? Stop right away." So there was a certain notion of amasadin. Amasadin is fear. We're on trial for our life. Very very serious time. And in truth we can't deny that on rashana god decides who will live who will die. On rashashana there's a preliminary judgment. The judgment is sealed on yum. But there's a big downside to this because if we focus so much on the fear and the trepidation. So there are some negative consequences there. Either we get depressed, we get broken, we lose our sim in our vote which is very very tragic. Or what might happen is since we don't want to be in a depressed state, we tune out and just ignore the message. I'm not talking about going off the deck. I'm talking about people who are keeping mitzvah. meaning I just want to glide through rashashana and yam kipper just kind of being catatonic until I get to sukus when can I when when I can finally have a good time and be relieved of this incessant internal pressure that keeps on gnawing at me. So these are the two responses that are both dysfunctional. One is the response of depression, nervous breakdown and the other is the response of obliviousness. I just want to forget about this. I want to be catatonic. I wish I could sleep from roesh till not not even till get up for but the thing that we got to remember is that side by side with this idea of God as judge l is a time of love a time of reconciliation a time of care a time of compassion Remember that ll has many illusions in different verses but the most famous illusion is the puk in Shiraim. Now Shirram is a romantic book of the Bible. It describes a passionate relationship between a woman who seems to be a princess and a shepherd. Actually, if you if you if you look at Shira Shirim totally from the narrative structure, it's not so clear is it a three character play or is it a two character play? Meaning to say the following. We have this woman and she's in love with somebody, but that somebody is sometimes described as a shepherd and sometimes described as a king. So there is a question are we talking about two men are vying over her or is the king the shepherd and it's all the same as I even from a literary standpoint it's not clear if you were to simply say what is the story line in Shirim it's not so simple but the point is though that kazal deemphasized the human romantic aspect of Shirim in fact there were rabbis who didn't want shirim to be in the Bible. They wanted to ban it like banned in Boston. They wanted to censor the Song of Songs. They said, "What are you putting in romantic love songs in Tanakh?" It almost got excluded. Although, as I say, as is true for all censored books, probably more people would have read Shir had it got censored. But okay, but it was going to be censored from Tanakh. So, who was the great savior? Who was the great protector of Shirim? Rabi Yaka. Rabi Yaka taught if all of the songs and all of the poetry in Tanakh is holy, Shirim is the holiest of holy because it is a metaphor. It is a martial the passionate love that God has for the Jewish people. God is the king. God is the shepherd and the Jewish people is the woman. And therefore all of the romance, all of the passion, all of the emotion, all of the feeling is God and us together. Even the tragic misses, right? There's scenes in Shira Shirim where the king or the shepherd knocks at the woman's door at night and the woman plays hard to get and she says, "I've gone to bed. I've taken up my robe. You know, how can I go back again?" She's kind of playing hard to get. And then she finally gets up and opens the door and her lover is no longer there. And she wanders the city looking for him and she gets beaten and harassed. Do you see what that is describing in a metaphoric way? God is waiting to redeem us. He's knocking at the door. of Salvia without getting into Zionism wrote a very very famous beautiful drussia that's been translated into English cold doc the voice of my beloved is knocking regarding the state of Israel regarding the implications right this is from a religious scientist perspective that this is God knocking on the door to redeem us and we're not ready we want to do other things but when we finally get our act together Hashem They say it's not the right time right now. Right? So, Shir is a power once you understand this, it's a powerful metaphor. All of the different scenes are playing out how much God yearns for us and how much we yearn for God. But sometimes the yearnings don't mesh cuz God has a schedule which is not necessarily our schedule. And when we're ready, you know, Hashem says it may not be the time. So in that song of songs there is a repeating phrase a phrase that appears more than once where the woman proclaims an I am for my beloved one. I pledge my loyalty and my love and my devotion to my beloved one and I'm confident. The woman says, "My beloved one pledges to me." [Music] So what do the commentaries say? The commentaries say that if you take the first letter of those four words, alf it spells the word. Lol is Anila doi. Now think about that because that is so different than the image of lol that I portrayed a few minutes ago. I portrayed the image of ll as heavy, as depressing, as scary, as frightening, as guiltridden. But the icker idea of ll is this is the month of love and reconciliation. where we can fix things, we can repair things, we can make things good again. And God is yearning. God is not like a gotcha person looking for our little flaws. We can say gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. He doesn't want us to fail. He's rooting for our success. Which will ultimately be to our benefit much more than than his benefit. So as a result therefore lol itself is this great amount of love and as RV cook points out and again I'm I'm drawing on things I said already but it's worthwhile to repeat comes when you feel a security in your relationship with God. If you feel God hates you, you know, you're going to say, "What's the point? What's the point of trying anything?" You got to be secure in God's love. And then you build then you try to become a better person because you're secure in that love. You know the love is there. And therefore of Cook points out that although Chuva does require introspection and Chuva does require a lot of internal work but it's and that may involve confronting dark corners and things that are not so pleasant, right? Parts of us that we would prefer we didn't have to look at. But ultimately it comes out of joy. It comes out of inner joy. the inner joy of fixing things, making things good because I'm confident and secure in God's love. And that comes from the notion of hayam. Going back, segueing back to the notion that the past is the past, but I got a present to deal with. And I can make the present good. I can choose any given moment. There's no such thing as being so far along the negative road that you can't get back. It's as if imagine uh exit ramps. There are infinite exit ramps off the road of death onto the road of life, right? So you miss this exit, there's another exit like immediately, right? Exit, exit, exit. The exit ramps are always going to going to be there, right? So these are some of the great great uh lessons in para sria as we prepare for the notion of chuva. One final point and then I'll say something about last week's para just to be yay last week's para uh is that note that the term that's used to introduce the idea of a blessing and a curse is the verb that says ri see look and again inasides there's a very big point that it's sometimes not enough to have a braha you need a braha to be able to see the braha. You know, God gives us many, many blessings, but we just don't see them. Remember by Hagar when Hagar was expelled from Abraham's house and Ishmael is dying of thirst. So, it says God sent an angel who opened her eyes and she saw a well. It doesn't say God made a well. God opened her eyes to see the well that was already there. Now that's an idea that applies to a lot of life. Life is filled with blessings, but we don't see them. The re is God is telling you if you keep my commandments, make the right choices, I will give you the eyes to see the blessings that are already there. And that is why hakara sat is such an evocative expression. The term we use for gratitude in Hebrew is hakar sat. But if you translate the words very very literally means to recognize the good. Right? It's not called uh it's not called thank thanking for the good. It's recognizing good because the very first step that enables you to be grateful for something is to know that you have it. Until you recognize it, you're not going to ever be appreciative. So the rea is see the blessings in your life. See the blessings. You know, Rabbi Victor Miller was a libera um a great great teacher. He died a few years ago. Uh he taught for over 70 years. Um he's a little controversial now. It's interesting because uh there there were almost I sometimes think there were two Rabbi Millers around uh but I'm going to talk about the non-controversial Rabbi Miller uh who stressed over and over and over and over again based on the Salvos the idea of gratitude of seeing the blessings in life that God gives you. uh he has a long talk I mean I can't do it justice like 20 25 minutes description of what you might call a meditation on eating an apple where he talks about color and taste and the mix of acidity and sweetness and the texture and he has the same thing for banana the idea of meditating on fruit and and all of these different things uh as a way of fostering gratitude. He talks about how you raise your children that way that you know we often complain about the weather right that's Mark Twain's famous remark everybody complains about the weather but nobody does anything about it uh so when it rains I remember there was a cartoon in the New Yorker it's a it's great cartoon where two elephants are coming down the gang plank of the cava of Noah's arc one elephant says to the other elephant what a lousy vacation it didn't stop raining for 40 days you know it's like not even realizing their life was saved, you know, because they were on the ark and the like. And we're kind of that situation where uh you know, we complain or we don't appreciate it's too hot, etc. So, so Miller had a whole thing that you try to raise your children with a certain attitude of optimism in life that when it rains instead of saying, "Oh, it's rainy, you talk about how great the rain is and when it's hot, you talk about how great the sun is." And you try to turn everything positive. Positive. Now it sounds like a game and maybe to some degree it is a game but the games that you play the games that we play do have an impact on how our children view the world and even have an impact as to how we view we view the world. We can change our perceptions in a lot of ways. We can't necessarily change the external realities and this does go back to Franco. The realities are what they are although they do have that thing. What is that thing they call it again? Uh you think hard enough about something you can change the it's like a pop culture thing now. Uh but I'm not going with that. Let's assume that you know I more or less don't have control over the external realities but I can view them in different ways. There was a movie. Now the movie's premise even to me sounds utterly preposterous but but it it made an interesting point. What was it called? It was about a father and a son in a concentration camp of all things, a concentration camp. And the father didn't want the son to know that he was really in a death camp. So he made it like a game. So the kid said he was hungry and the father said, "Well, that's our adventure. you know we're going to see you know and somehow again the premise is so preposterous it's very very difficult to believe in that context but it was making a point that you can take very difficult situations and you can reframe them and look at them in different ways and then the perception movie say again Italian movie yes what's that movie life is okay I I know the English I don't remember the English title I mean I am aware of it in English but I think it was made Life is beautiful. Life is beautiful. That That's correct. That's correct. So again, it's such almost an absurd premise, but but in its core, it's conveying a certain insight that is very very true, although using it in a very extreme extreme uh situation, right? And that's the notion of gratitude sat. Hashem will give you a braha to see to see the brahos that he put into your life. Very very important idea. Now I remember um well so this will actually give me a segue to the final thing I want to share with you from last week's para and that is um last week's para we learned that there is a mitzvah of benching. When you eat food, whether it's bread or whatever it is, you got to thank God, right? You have to and that's you eat and you're satisfied and you bless God. Now, this is the blessing after you eat. The blessing before you eat, interestingly enough, the Gomorrah's conclusion is is midra. You don't have to make a bra before you eat food and you have to you only have to make a bra after you eat food. Now the interesting thing is when it comes to Torah learning we actually go with the opposite premise. You're obligated to make a brah on your Torah before you learn it. And according to Nakmanadities, that's a Torah requirement. But you're not obligated to make a blessing after you learn Torah. So the question is why when it comes to food, the after braha is more important than the before braha. And when it comes to Torah study, the before braha is more important. There isn't even an after braha except when you're called up to the Torah. So the meta sim says a very beautiful thought says that what is the purpose of a braha? The purpose of a braha is to sensitize us to be grateful for what god has done for us. Teach us gratitude. So he says when it comes to food when you're in a state of need the gratitude is instinctual and natural and automatic and it doesn't have to be concretized in a fixed lurggical text. So imagine you've been walking in the street and say hot summer day for an hour without water. though not a good step. Always carry your water bless I didn't have water and I'm talking to myself I'm often there without any water. So finally you get home and you can have some water. So what do you think in your poor in other words even before I make the braha the gratitude is there. So at least on a Torah level it didn't have to be expressed but after you eat and drink even though you would think logically I ought to be more grateful but it's the other way around. The Torah itself warns us that we get fat and we kick at God and we don't need God anymore. We forget about how hungry and deprived we were 5 minutes before. So the Torah says, "Hey, after you eat and you think you don't need God anymore, remember where the food came from and be grateful." Right? So that's why the Torah was more concerned with the braha after eating than before because before the gratitude is more natural. When it comes to Torah learning, he says exactly the opposite. He says that before I learn Torah, I don't always appreciate what a gift it is. I'd rather sleep a little more, read the newspaper, have a cup of coffee. I don't want to shle out tobaca or what whatever it is Tuesday night. So I need the braha to remind me hey this is a real precious gift. But says after you learn Torah of course your gratitude is going to be profound because you see how beautiful it is. Meaning when it comes to food my gratitude is stronger when I'm hungry than when I'm full. When it comes to Torah the gratitude is greater after you get the Torah. Now, what if somebody says, "Well, even after I learned Torah, I don't feel that great, so maybe I should make a bra." Yeah. The answer is that these lurggical uh systems are designed to tell you what type of person we should try to be, even if we're not there yet. Meaning, ideally, I should be a person who feels the sweetness of Torah all the time. So, be hashem. Every day, we pray to Hashem in the blessings over the Torah. Make the Torah sweetness of the Torah. Okay. So, yeah, we do have to learn Torah even if it's a burden. That's very true. But the goal is to feel what is called the sweetness of of Torah. So, thank you. Um You see your birthday [Music]