Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: Channeling Your Emotions Toward Holiness

[Music] okay hi everybody thank you for coming and our share tonight is dedicated ra for not Z Bor Ben feda and for the liberation of er Israel from its enemies safe return home of soldiers and hostages the lasting Unity of the people of Israel and for all of those whose Health has been affected by the war and we're also dedicating the shear uh to the release of Arvin nanel Ben Sona the young man in Iran that has been sentenced to death and we pray that Hashem should give him a a Yeshua Al for K elzar panina Pearl Bas elzar Anda who recently passed away want to thank Viola Luc for her kind donation and for bamin Isel SCH and his third yard side you may remember binyamin Ganer was a young man who fought uh cancer with great great courage and unfortunately he was nifter this is his third yard side on the tent of Tas and uh our thoughts and prayers are with uh ran and Carol on their loss Mayes bring much much comfort to their to their hearts uh I was thinking today uh to discuss uh after Trump the Trump assassination some of the laws of biras do non-jews make G Ving but you know I'll leave that alone assassination attempt assassination attempt yeah you're correct and but once again everything that happens in the world is ultimately for cl Israel there's no question so it's not so R to see the connection here and we hope we should see more and more evidence of of of this in a good way uh but uh this is the par of Bak so I want to start with a little bit of a cute but it's a it's a powerful vort in its own way I had mentioned last week by the paruma I had discussed a Maka from the op the famous of apov in Poland uh 19th century and he is known as the O Israel the lover of of Israel because number one his safer Onish is called o Isel and number two he himself exemplified the Mida so I talked about it last week one vuma that the Coen is willing to become T in order to help another yid that brings Purity into the world so now I'm going to give you another V from the O of Israel and that is uh he says every single par in the Torah begins with a lesson in AAS every para in the Torah is about so somebody asked him where do you see in Paras is now I have to admit I really don't understand the question because in Bam's bless curses that were turned into blessings there's so much about loving Jews but okay sometimes with the question is just the pretense to give the answer it's not a real question says where do you see is so he says very P the king of Moab his name is Bak V lamid K is an abbreviation love your friend as you love yourself B the mitvah of is so one of the asked forgiveness for your your great learning but two out of the three letters are not correct V you shall love is with a v v is V is with a l okay that's okay is with a cuff this is a k two out of the three letters don't match so the rebi said that's the point point when you have a you don't look so closely at things you don't examine everything under a microscope and see if it's perfect you understand things are not always perfect you love people anyway you love yiden anyway you see the good in yiden anyway and that's a word from the is a rem but be it as it may let's remember the time frame here this is the 40th year of wandering in the desert Aon has already died Miriam has already died this is really towards the end of Moser renu's own life and in that 40th year the Jews are east of the Jordan River right they haven't crossed the the ardan yet remember they tried to go through the land of Moab they were not given permission and then the land of of Ed Land of Edon first and then Moab and then Ammon and finally they ask seon the king of the amori to go through and he wages war and Hashem now says go conquer we couldn't conquer the moabit and the amonite territory because they are the descendants of L and God had given them that land until the coming of the mashiach we couldn't conquer the Edomite territory because God gave that to ASA these are all the descendants of Abraham or the family of Abraham but he fights us we fight back we conquered the land of and then the land of OG the king of Bashan and as you know that land was settled by Ruan and G and Sh manhe so now we're in the land of we are positioned to cross the ardan which we won't do until after mosha dies and all of a sudden balak the king of moav is afraid of B Israel and he has to do something to disable them and he hires a professional sorcerer have curse will travel who has the coak of cursing and his curses for reasons we'll discuss a little bit later are effective somehow and they figure they'll get him so the shame mmu great starts off with a very simple question he says what is the king of Moab afraid of the Jewish people specifically were told by God that they cannot go through the moabi territory we're not allowed to wage war with Moab that we had to circle Moab and go north and then we encounter SE and O and we conquer it MOA has gotten a free pass why because gave the land to L right Ammon and Moab are the illegitimate incestuous children of L and his two daughters so what is he afraid of why does the king of Moab hire billum to curse B Israel what is the source of his Pad so the shame ISM says a very interesting thing Moab Was Not Afraid or the king of Mo Bak was not afraid that the Jewish people would wage war against him he knows his nation is safe he's afraid they're going to come to ER Israel his goal was to destroy the Jewish Nation so they should not come to a Israel why does that concern him so the sh says we have to know that the wayes interacted with us in the Mido is fundamentally very different than the way he's going to interact with us once we come to ER Isel the midor is a supernatural existence in the most obvious way the man comes from Heaven the Clouds Of Glory although we when iron died we lost it but the Clouds Of Glory surrounded Us in the desert there was the traveling well of Miriam that even though Miriam died and we lost that you know Moshe hit the rack and we regained it in that sense every single moment you see the glory of Hashem the of God you're living in a spiritual cocoon in which you don't have to work for your bread you don't have to build cities you don't have to get involved in society in your political Society your whole Ava is r spirituality in fact in it writes that's why the consequences of Disobedience are so great in the midor you do in AA 24,000 here 48,000 here because you're in the Palace of Hashem you're with Hashem in such a direct way and indeed when you're with Hashem there's like immediate reward and immediate punishment because the whole idea of delay the whole idea that I can do Aus and nothing happens seemingly that's that's a function of upon him that's a function of concealment so I do Mitzvah and I don't see the good I do AOS I don't see the negative it's there but I don't see it because there's a certain aspect of AES hiding in the world for whatever the reason to facilitate free will you know whatever the the dynamic would be in the midbar there's no hiding in the midb everything's open and that'll be L to like the man and that'll be L the big onim that happen in the midor so that's the Dora midor once we come to ER Israel and in particular once mosha rabenu dies the Han haaga God's leadership of us is going to be in a much more concealed fashion surely theem is much more evident than the rest of the world that's obvious and that's obvious even today but Vis the midor even arel is in a mat uh of concealment we're not going to have the M we're going to have to plant we're going to have to plow and plant our Fields we're not going to have a traveling source of water we're going to have to dig Wells and collect the rainwater we're not going to have Clouds Of Glory we're going to have to maintain an army without getting into that political issue as it applies today in other and and in fact the Torah warns us that of the dangers of arrogance because you will be achieving success by seemingly looks like your efforts and what will you say for your heart will be high and mighty and conceited you will forget God and you will say in the famous or inFAMOUS words it is my strength and my power that accomplished mosenu warns over and over again do not attribute your successes to you yeah you have to have an army and you have to do all of these things the comes from Hashem in fact that is one of the sad tragic lessons of October 7 in which although Israeli military security is by far the best in the world much much better than the United States right we are the masters of detecting you know enemies and everything else and yet on October 7 on Simas Tor day there was a massive failure of intelligence all the systems were down and to this day to this day we don't fully understand witha what could have gone wrong to give Kamas free entry into the state of Israel and have what access for four to six hours without any even being there how did it happen see it's now you have to understand that part of why this war is so devast stating in the psyche of the Israeli public is not only the great great great tragedy of you know 12200 people dying and and more than 200 people being captured but it's the notion that gee our systems didn't work how did that happen again we're not Nim and we're not prophets and of course uh none of us can give the definitive message on this so I speak with acknowledgement that we're very very limited but at least one of the lessons is don't think your systems are going to protect you don't think your technology is going to be your Panacea everything can fail everything can break down no matter how great you think the Army is and your systems are and and your security and your intelligence they can break down and we can be vulnerable and we can be exposed because only a KES is the source of Yeshua so when we compare the midor and er Isel going back to the Sham ISM in the midor god running the show is an undeniable fact you see it every single minute once we come to ER Israel we Face a lot of different challenges besides the immediate challenge of Conquering the land and expelling the enemy we also face the amuna challenges are we going to understand that even though we're planting the fields and we're digging the wells and we're raising the Army it's only Hashem that gives us the n in fact a few weeks ago if you remember this was actually why the spies wanted to stay in the midor they thought the midor is a better training and godliness it'll protect us uh so when we eventually go to AR Israel we'll know that Hashem is in charge now says the shame ismo Bell is perfectly happy to let the Jews be in a spiritual cocoon in the desert because if they're serving Hashem and they're keeping Torah and they're learning Torah balak has and his nation has an excuse we're not living lives of Rus because we don't have those conditions the Jewish people have these artificial conditions where all they have to think about is Rus in God but we are real people with real problems we have to build cities we have to dig ditches we have to create professions God cannot expect us to live lives of kadha even a Noah is supposed to live a certain life of kadosha in other words as long as the Jews remain in the desert they are not a prototype they are not a useful precedent so to speak for other cultures and those other cultures have an excuse they have what's called a pison an excuse to say why aren't we righteous because we live in a real world we don't have that artificial condition but what happens once the Jews come to arich Israel at least when we're at our best we're not always at our best but we have the Nim at different times in our history we create Holiness we serve Hashem we live moral and Sanctified lives even though we're building cities and ditches and planting crops and harvesting them and maintaining an army and what are we demonstrating to the world that you can live a life of dedication to God even in the middle of a Hester P him so what does that become that becomes a rebuke that becomes a to that becomes a criticism of all the other cultures in the world that live with selfishness and self- agisent and egotism and forgetting Hashem so says the shame mmu the fear of bolock was not as you might think his Nation would be under attack he knew that wasn't the case because the Jewish people had detour around Moab but he said by all means I don't want the Jewish people to enter the land of Israel let him be in the desert it's a tiny bit reminiscent although it's not quite the same thing of a famous remark of Theodore Herzel when people raise the question if you create a Jewish State this goes back you know to the late 19th century when he was developing uh well the book the uden stat right the the Jewish state so someone asked him how are you going to control the religious people who are going to try to take over kind of a prophetic question in a way and Herzel said we shall confine the rabbis to the synagogues just as we will confine our soldiers to the barracks now the truth of the matter is neither part of th those statements were true unfortunately our soldiers have not been confined to the barracks they've had to go out and fight and for good or for bad that's a different matter of opinion our rabbis have not been confined to the synagogues but Herzel envisioned this idea let the rabbis stay in their synagogues so too is making a similar argument let the Jews stay in the desert the desert is k k is not life uh this is an artificial existence let them serve God under artificial conditions and that is not a criticism of us because we live under real life real time conditions and the like this is the idea of the shame M let me point out that in general one of the main themes ofas is the notion of serving Hashem within the material world that instead of creating a model of kadosa where you withdraw from the world and you focus only on what you might call spiritual things kasus very much taught the idea of eating drinking working all of these different activities they have to be part of the service of God and they have to have a consciousness of AES okay so that's a very important of the sh in that b was not afraid of a mil AR attack bolock was afraid of the Jews coming to AR the truth of the matter is this does answer another famous Kasha for which there are other answers that is the asks he says if bam has the power of blessing and curse because the says whoever you bless is blessed whoever you curse is cursed why does balak request that he curse the Jewish people B could have requested that bam blessed the moabites in other words why does Bak always go in the direction of curse instead of the direction of blessing now in truth the shame ISM that I just told you is an answer to that because B doesn't need B doesn't need a blessing because he's not afraid of anything B needs a curse that the Jews don't go to Isel himself gives another answer the's answer is it is the D of that even when blessing is an option they naturally gravitate towards the curse in other words balak could have accomplished his objective with the braa so why does he think of the negative that's kind of how a Russia thinks a Russia always thinks how can I destroy the other person particularly the Jewish people rather than how do I build myself up and say in his own life uh he exemplified the opposite U you know obviously was a person who had tremendous power uh in the sense of his connection with that kind of listens to the so people would go to the and they would ask him to curse Jew haters curse anti-semites curse people who were really very much enemies of the Jewish people and the said he is not mes with the K OFA he does not use the power of curse he only uses the power of bra bless the Jewish people even evildoers he doesn't want to curse he doesn't want to get into the business of cursing a yid wants to build people up so if if our people are suffering we ask for hashem's blessings we ask for Hashem to give us strength we ask for Hashem to protect Israel we're not into the notion of cursing and denigrating others this is what the this is what the said okay so this is the story basically of of of billum so what happens is that bolock hires bam orock sends Messengers to Bam to have him come to do this job and billum is initially told by Hashem twice don't go don't go don't go but B keeps on upping the anti is gold and silver and Hashem sees that bam really really want because V keeps on asking he got an answer why does he keep on asking so at this point we follow the normal spiritual rule the way a person wants to go God will lead him there you want to go on this path okay I'll let you go on this path but three times balock tries to curse the Jewish people and all three times Hashem changes the curse into a blessing rest assured that this is not what billum wanted to do I mean it's Mish like Hashem taking him over he wanted to curse got changed into a blessing billum is only a puppet in the hands of a bollock is quite Disturbed he keeps on moving billum around here to there to there to there and they build altars right all the different stick you know and nothing works and bolock is understandably very annoyed I'm not sure if billum gave a money back guarantee because he paid he paid but he paid B he paid billum quite a lot of stuff right okay now here is an though I want to discuss K say that Hashem wanted to give the nations of the world a prophet as great as Moser rabena because if they didn't have a prophet as great as Moser rabeno they would say to Hashem hey if you would have given us a mosha rabeno we would have been righteous how can you blame us so God gave them billum who was a prophet as great as Moser rabeno and they still were not changed so if you're a skeptic you might ask a very obvious question you didn't give us mosha raaben you gave us Bill other words our time what what what did the UMO say if you would have given us someone like MOS Reno we would have been good so Hashem says je also that's right so Hashem says okay I'll give you billum and see what happens well billum is not Moshe billum is a Russia the answer has to be that billum and Moshe start off from the same place meaning to say both were people who had supremely gifted powers of Prophecy and understanding they were deeply connected to the Dynamics of the spiritual Universe I mean you understand this I mean we really don't understand it but the power of blessing and curse can only exist in a person who is deeply connected to the mechanisms of how God's presence manifests itself in the world it's almost like in a superficial way it's almost like a machine you know the levers to pull you know the buttons to push now that's an enormous ego trip that's an enormous source of power that separates you from the rest of humanity in a very significant degree what does that do to your psyche see this is the thing Hashem gave mosha gave the umos a person who was given the same abilities as mosha Raben and yet that made him into the Russia into the Arrogant Bala that he was in other words it's not that God gave them a Russia God gave us a person who was given great abilities who became the sadic that he became the greatest of all and God gave them a person with those same talents and he made himself into the Russia that was filled with arrogance filled with GAA filled with TAA filled with lust if bam didn't turn out like Moshe it was not due to the fault of Hashem it was due to the idea that Bam's power corrupted him Bam's power destroyed him Bam's power went to his head in the most drastic sense it was Mas it destroyed him now the goes on and makes a very interesting point P contrasts the Disciples of Abraham it's interesting contrasted you're going all the way back to Abraham the Disciples of Abraham and The Disciples of bam the TM of Abraham right are considered to be um I in TOA I in Tova means you look at people with a generous kind ey I in nees a lowly soul that refers to you don't seek out the materialism of the world and r a lowly spirit is humility you look at people in a good generous kind way you don't seek out the pleasures and the lusts of the world and you're humble and modest those are the three midis of the Talam ofu the three midis of the T of bam those who follow Bam's ways are exactly the opposite I in ra you're always jealous you're always begrudging the good fortunes of others neph an expansive soul that I want more and more money more and morea and R arrogance and GAA right so these are the three distinctions between billam and AR so when we look at billum and let's assume that we had to draw a psychological profile of Billa there are two different ways ways we might describe him one way to describe billum is that billum is the cool collected superc competent professional think about uh a lawyer in a three-piece suit who knows how to win all of his cases he's a half cursed will travel he's a professional he gets paid for his Services he carries it out in that sense billum is simply the profession who is good at his trait not just good but is unusual in his trait in fact some even say that billum had no ideological commitments to anything good or bad they point out the word Bam could be a contraction bam he doesn't even belong to a nation he's a Hired Hand he's a mercenary if mosha would have hired billum to curse the moabites according to one interpretation he would have gone with that andoral no commitments stands for nothing he just does his job again uh I mean I myself I'm a lawyer so I so I'm not I don't mean to deme lawyers but you know this kind of the model of the lawyer like I'll represent I'll represent the murderer I'll represent the victim you know whoever you want me to represent I'll represent so one way of looking at billum is the cool calm collected professional the other way of looking at billum is he's a raging train of destructive emotions that are within him filled with evil thoughts of hurting people filled with jealousies rivalries lust arrogance if you could x-ray so to speak x-ray the soul you would not see the calm professional who gets the job done you would see a raging turbulence of negativity and destructive emotions so billum once again similar to a thought we talked about with korak bam is once again a tragic figure because bam had the greatness of Moshe and billum is being torn apart by The Evil Within his soul that initially was volitional initially he had B he had free will like everybody has free will but at some point you hit something that's a kin although not really to a point of no return where you're so much controlled by the negativity you literally have no way you can figure out how to disengage from it it takes you over remember this is uh the rambam's famous explanation of Hashem hardening parro's heart initially parro made his own decisions at some point you lose free will you lose Free Will you're taken over you're taken over so that's billum the tragedy of billum so the points out an interesting structural way of how the Torah is written throughout the Torah you know the division of the Torah and also into chapters is not of Jewish origin there is no peric Olive peric Bas chapter division was actually introduced from the Christians and the Jewish printers took it over as a matter of convenience in fact it's a little disturbing how much of uh our identification of tanak comes from the Christians the book of Shmo we have shmu Al Shmo Bas that's not a Jewish division there's only the book of shim same thing same thing even Ezra and kazal don't have a book called neya Ezra and neya are the book of Ezra so these divisions are from Christian origin and somehow it got Incorporated so we don't have chapter divisions the only book of the Bible the only book of tanak that has divisions that corresponds with chapters is safer to Hill toim has 150 uh Pim that is the division of T but even that even then there are some mid that say there's 147 chapters of t con the years of yovino and uh different chapters were split later all right so some say 150 some say 147 whatever so we don't have PR other thanm we don't have the concept of chapters but what we do have we do have paragraph divisions in the Torah and these are called BOS or stum if you ever look at a sa for Torah or a you will see that when paragraphs end and a new paragraph begins there are two different ways this happens sometimes a paragraph ends and then on the same line there is a blank space of the amount that it would take to write nine letters and then you start the next paragraph on the same line after a break of nine letters so that is called a stuma a closed paragraph because when the paragraph ends you don't have a complete blank line you start the new paragraph on the same line that's called a par satuma a closed para other times a paragraph ends in the middle of a line you leave the rest of the line blank and begin on the next line so that is called a par because the paragraph is open now if this sounds or inconsequential rest assured that this is of such importance that even if the tor's letters and words are perfect but you don't make the proper or stos the safer Tyra is p you wouldn't think that the Tyra is pule and the mza and thein are pule if you don't have the right or stot and this is part of how the Torah was given to mosenu all the way back at har so if you look through a in fact in in the printed you often don't see it it depends on the you don't see it as a paragraph division but you'll see the letter P or the letter Sam the letter P is P the letter Sam is but in some I think the you actually have the the visualization of the paragraph divisions as well it's not just unbroken text in Paras Bak virtually every para in the Torah has paragraph divisions in parak most of the par is one long unbroken block of text there is literally no division in Paras and the was ma that this is significant in the following way why are there paragraph divisions in thees at all Rashi explains that this goes back to the way Hashem was communicating to mosha orally Hashem would teach Mo or mitzvot and then give him a certain amount of time to integrate what he learned and if it's a stuma it was a shorter amount of time if it was a it was a longer amount of time but this is the idea of what is called r r is a space between adjacent versus and the why did God give Moshe so there are two reasons one is that Moshe could think about it but the other is frankly mosha had other jobs to do besides talk to God meaning mosha was given time to attend to the needs of the people to answer their Shas to give them so the interruptions represent the notion of he moved for freely freely from talking to Hashem to getting involved in the human needs of his people and therefore this represents andos represents the capacity of Moshe Renu to engage and disengage and engage and disengage Moshe didn't need preparation he didn't need meditation he didn't need to kind of be in a constant prophetic mood to be able to talk to God he could talk to God take care of business then go back to God that's a very very high level that he was not affected by all of the different things he needed to do they Say by ra mosha Feinstein that uh whenever ra mosha had a free moment he was always writing his chos he was writing hisim and anyone that studies R moshe's writings knows that R Moshe is very very intricate very very complicated that's why when people read R MOS chos uh they typically go to the last line the last because know very interesting questions a very good question can you do this can you do that what does mosha say m and they go to the right they read the question and they look at the last line for the answer and they kind of don't want to look at all the stuff in the middle because that's going to be complicated and in and out and this and that and that's why R mosha had another set of him which were his which were even more intricate and even fewer people read those because they were so complicated fact rabits and Fon used to say that whenever somebody brought up a question from the dios Moshe MOS that mosha extraordinarily happy because the dios mosha nobody read it was too complicated and you didn't have the bottom line of a you know answer to an interesting question so Dias mosha became a popular book I'm sorry igos mosha the shubas became a very popular book dibros mosha much less so even though ra mosha loved the dibros mosha even more so ra mosha is writing these intricate he's sitting in the b medish in mtj mfta to feris if anyone here is from the Lower East Side an old old old Yeshiva still there uh that R mosha was the Riva for many many years and he's sitting in the base medish and rosha was a man of the community in fact such amazing stories that um there were times in which he would do homework with a fifth grader like say on time a kid wanders into the mtj based medish and the only one there is rosha Feinstein learning and he goes up toosha and says could you help me with my homework myish homework and rosha is helping him with his homework and when other people come in they see r mosha with the six-year-old well we'll we'll uh you know we'll take it over you know the rash doesn't have to do this and R mosha says I am in this world to teach Torah what's the difference if I'm teaching Torah to old people great rabbis or I'm teaching Torah to fifth graders this is why I'm in this world so mha sitting there and besides the things like that people would come and have personal shess and they' have family problems and he would look up and he gave you all the time in the world there was never a sense you were taking him away from something there was never a sense that you know he's doing something more important he gave you all the time he cried with you he listened to you you know you did not feel rushed then as soon as you left he went back to writing his Chua and sometimes he had stopped in the middle of a word he just immediately went back to it now think about that when you're involved in some very very heavy intellectual work and you get an interruption first of all it's it's very very hard I mean I'm speaking myself it's very hard to pull yourself out of what you're doing and even think about and in your mind you keep on thinking when will this guy leave so I can get back to my business and when you finally get back to it it's going to take a long time to get into it again because you're out of it and yet Moshe ra mosha Feinstein like mosha Raben was able to move in and out in and out in and out that's the significance of r says why is that so what is the psychology that enables that type of quality after all naturally once we're into something it's hard for us to get out of it and once we're out of it it's hard for us to get back into it how do you just move seamlessly between these opposite things the answer is because to Moser rabenu and I would add toer mad even ra this was not a discontinuity it's not that he was leaving one thing to do something else all of it was AEM I serve God when I learn and I serve God when I write my Torah and I serve God when I help people and I serve hasem when I listen to their stories and I serve Hashem when I help the sixth grader with the homework so it's not that I'm going from a A to B so how do I get back to a if I pull myself out there was no A and B it was all a single Continuum because there are many many different things an EV Hashem has to do but all of those things are one job assignment I'm an EV Hashem and therefore I can move from here to here because if In This Moment hasm wants me to write my T I write Tor if the next moment I'm going to listen to a story for two hours that's what I do it's not a concept I got to shorten this because I want to get back to the other thing it's all the same thing it's all the same thing so the says this was the madrea of Moshe whose life was committed to to AEM andos and stos represents the the ability to engage and disengage and re-engage because you never left what you never left your assignments you never got out of it you always were in Aus Hashem billum on the other hand was not an Evan Hashem billum was a creature of his emotions whatever emotions gripped him were the emotions that governed him and therefore when he was in a prophetic State he couldn't stop and when he was not in his prophetic State and he was concentrating on his money and his Tyas he couldn't get out of that the lack ofus and stus represents whatever state he's in he stays in it because he is a creature of the moods and the emotions that take over his life and take over his MOS and that is why there are no and no stum out until the very end and Par so with this we can take this further does not say this but says very very interesting thought the garan Bros discusses what was Bam's great power of curse what was his technique so the says Bam could pinpoint the exact time what does this mean the says there is one moment every day one moment in which the world is suffused with Divine wrath how long is that moment so thear says re the amount of time it the word rea the amount of time it says to say the word regga is the amount of time of that wrath and it says in we say this every day in ding God's anger AO is Rea so there's one fraction less than a second in which there's Divine wrath in the world the gamarra even says that uh the red comb of the rooster turns white with fright in that moment of anger thear gives a story that rabie mayor wanted to curse some enemies who wanted to destroy him so he wanted to utter his curse at that moment of Wrath so he tied a rooster to his bed and he was staring at the rooster to try to see when the comb would change and he fell asleep you know he try to stare at one point for too long you know uh it kind of knocks you out and then rabie mayor realized as the said later that you know you don't go around cursing people of course I really don't understand this because you could lose this in a blink of an eye so I mean uh I assume had to Blink so I'm not sure how he thought this could work anyway but okay uh now the idea is Bam knew exactly when that time was coming and if you push the button at that moment the anger explodes on the world so Bam's greatness was he knew when that moment would be there he knew when it's coming he knew when it was there and therefore he cursed this is AAR Bros this is a be this is an explicit gar in so toos asks a very obvious question given the fact that the window for curse is so short uh what curse could you utter that would be so short that you'd get it within the window by the time you make a sentence you know you miss the time right so what is the Mila what is the advantage of knowing what's called the the moment of anger so there are two answers answer number one is a bit of a technical answer and that is well the way it works is as long as you get your curse in uh the right time you begin it you it once you begin it you get to finish it's like a bank right bank closes at 1:00 you get into the the bank at 5 to1 uh they're going to they're going to take you uh but nobody can come in after one same thing here uh the curse is ineffective after the r but once you got your finger uh one syllable in the door it's going to be effective by the way interestingly enough surprisingly enough there are some that actually use this as a halakic justification for a nonh halakic practice you know one of the problems among many movements is they are not keeping the they don't D the within the proper timeis after the kma after the and this is a very serious problem actually because uh you know kesma which is D has to be said within a certain time frame Shon has to be doed within a certain time frame what's the heter of going beyond the time frame so they make the following argument although it doesn't really answer everything they say well listen as long as you begin before the time expired even one word you can finish it afterwards and the proof is even for curses God says as long as you begin your curse in the right time you get to finish it and since God's quality of compassion is is much greater than his quality of punishment if God allows that type of reasoning for the curse he'll V allow that type of reasoning for theas for the blessings and the like now the truth is even if you accept this argument and I'm not saying you should that doesn't answer the situations where they start the am after after this man at most it would justify you started before and then it continued continued afterwards okay that's answer number one answer number two that toos says is that there is a remember the the time of anger is the amount of time that it takes to say the word rega Rea is two syllables so TOA says I'll give you a two- syllable curse that you could get in in exactly the time and that would be the word is l destroy them same number of syllables as reg and therefore TOS says b would get in to correspond to Rea and the curse would be effective right so these are two answers that toos gives one is as long as you begin the curse you could finish it even after the expiration of the time the other is the two syllable curse of khen theam sof goes on this second answer and he says the following if we look at Bam's personality and once again we see the tragedy in Bam's riches because here is a man who is supremely gifted with prophecy and ability to manipulate the spiritual Realms but billum is consumed with all of these passions of jealousy and envy and selfishness and egotism and he's smart enough to know that he has it meaning he's not oblivious to it sometimes a person is oblivious to their destructive midot and in a sense as the saying goes ignorance well it's not real Bliss of course but ignorance can at least be artificial Bliss but billum is no dummy billum sees the tragedy in his life just like much much later Elisha Ben avua a who is a great great great great in Torah saw the tragedy of what he had done with his life and felt he was helpless he was not really helpless but he felt he was helpless he felt he was trapped this is a situation by the way that many of us in distress sometimes feel we feel we're trapped we feel we're too far gone we feel there's no way to go back and that is is an unimaginable pain so when billum wants to curse the Jewish people the biggest curse he could think of is may you be like me may you be like me may you have the awareness of a life that go that's gone bad a life with so much potential a life with with so much kadus and may you be consumed by these negative forces so here's what the says the word CM which is Bam's two syllable curse could actually be read as an abbreviation colos kidneys La heart Mo brain now here's how it works the kid dis in some sources are identified with sexual lust and passion the life is identified with turbulent emotions the moak the brain is the intellectual and moral faculty within a human being CM means you allow your passions and emotions to rule over and subordinate your intellect and that's the greatest curse of all your brain has been hijacked by your tyus and billum knows how bad that is because that's him and he knows that it's him I mean think about this you can look at so many things in contemporary Society let's take the entertainment industry you know those guys who do all of these entertainments these are these are pretty brilliant people many of them are geniuses and they devote their minds to the different ways of entrapping people in all sorts of things billions and billions trillions I don't know how much money goes into entertainments and all of these things this is an example of the moak being hijacked by the Tyas and by the emotions and therefore Bam's curse which literally means destroy themer says can be understood allegorically as let their emotions rule over their minds let the mind be subordinate to the tyus now says theer let's reverse the letters of CM instead of Cam M you have meid or that spells the word Mel what is a king M my mind Le my heart kot my passions a king is where the Mind rules over the passions now that doesn't mean to be an automatan not feeling but the other way around your moral and intellectual and spiritual sense directs your emotions like the b t the whole first part of the Tanya to a large degree is all about the Mind must control the heart and when the Mind controls the heart then within the heart you will discover AEM andem but it's controlled by what the intellect that's why is called because it was not based on emotionalism it was based on intellectual contemplation of Hashem that opens up your heart so a real m is not one who rules over other people a real mik is one who rules over himself as Pavo says a giar who is a mighty persones one who conquers his Y and this is really based on a mish it goes back to he who can rule over his spirit is greater than the one who conquers a city brings the story about a general who is victorious in a great war and as he comes back home with a triumphal parade a Whispers to him you have been successful in the small War but now you have to fight the big war the small War all the enemies you vanquished out there the big war is the war within yourself that's a much more difficult war and that is why theam says you find the word Mel appearing over and over again when Bam's curses were turned into a blessing because quite literally the Tyra says God reversed Bam's curse into a blessing Bam's curse was Hashem changed it into into M so you know we're approaching obviously the three weeks next Tuesday if Mia does not come well the 17th of thas as a date will come but the fast of the 17th of thas will be observed only if we're not to mashia but it's a time that we think about improving ourselves we think about about being worthy of the GAA being worthy of the Redemption and there are so many different things to think about Isel is of course a major thing but generally how we can become people who are Guided by what our minds our intellect again I don't want to sound like a computer that's not the point but I include the intellect the morality the sense of what is right and that should be the guide to channel our emotions Channel our feelings into the directions of Holiness and goodness and then we become Kings we become MIM when we allow our emotions to take us over and we become enslaved that is CM that is the inner destruction of the great potential of man so Mayes help all of us to try to move in the direction of becoming Mal and becoming King over our personalities thank you [Music]