Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: Elul - What is so optional about battling Evil?

[Music] trepidation because we're looking at our lives and we're preparing our best defense and that we literally will be on trial it is called the Omaha den the day of judgments and then yom kippur is the also a day of judgment although it's a day of forgiveness as well but at the same time it's very very important to remember as the alter rebbe writes in the third part of the tanya Higuera tsukuba and rough cook develops it as well that the experience of chuva should be a profoundly joyous experience it is the joy of renewal the joy of reconciliation the joy of feeling Hashem loved as he wants us to come back to him and even the process of looking into the aspects of my life that are negative and need to be corrected can be approached in a very joyful optimistic hopeful spirits that yes there may be problems but uncle Mitch Berney who gave me the colour to correct them because Hashem would never give me a mission would never give me a job unless he also gave me the co-host to be able to overcome that which I needs to overcome now the alter rebbe throughout the tanya writes a lot about something that even he acknowledges would be difficult for many people and that was even in that generation and called the comer today and that is the simultaneous emotion of joy and sadness the simultaneous idea of renewal and at the same time remorse and regret he says most people are not able to handle two contradictory emotions at the same time not only that but they can't even switch it we can't say for example from 10 to 10 15 you are to be sad and then at ten fifteen to ten thirty you are to be happy although the alter rebbe seems to have behaved in that motility he basically says designate a little bit of time every day to cry over your sins with profound sadness and then shut it off and just be the symptom though it's not so easy to kind of move back and forth that way but that was the alter rebbe said raka so once again therefore although there's no question that the yum-yum nope I am literally days of our days of trepidation and days of seriousness that is why the gomorrah says we don't recite Hallel on your session a yom kippur even though they're hugging because tsipras hiya mister freemasons circle more fun of the books of who was alive and who is dead is in front of hashem that's not the time for the unrestrained joy that how well represents some so once again i hope that all of us should be soca together with all of qualities throughout through axiu azeema Toba and certainly be france for for for eretz israel so what i do want to talk about today is really connected to last week's parsha but there is a universal message and one that is appropriate for this time of year i'm going to pick keysight's a is very very difficult parsha to speak about for a very simple reason it has by far the most mitzvahs of any parsha in the torah 74 mitzvahs in a single parsha 74 out of 613 are in one parsha so you can pick anything but i'm going to pick the very first mitzvah which raises a whole bunch of controversial moral questions and i will not be addressing those controversial moral questions i'm going to really use a peripheral aspect of the mitzvah that's relevant for ello and that is the whole Halawa of the beautiful woman that is a captive in time of war the asia you fat toe her and the torah describes a scenario when the jewish people go out in war against their enemies and god will give them success and if a man sees among the enemy among the non-jewish enemy a beautiful woman and he lusts after her and he wants to take her for a a wife so the Torah basically says he is permitted he is permitted to have relations with her remember she's a non Jew at that point but if he wants to continue with our relationship there is a protocol where he brings her into his home she must shave off her hair kind of bald she must let her fingernails grow wild at least it's mcCluggage but that's how Rashi interprets she mourns and she cries for her father and mother for 30 days and only after that period of time if he still desires her may he then marry her if he does not want to marry her he must set her free he cannot keep her as a slave or his servants had he not had intercourse with her and he simply captured somebody as a prisoner of war he would have been allowed to keep her as a maid servants but because he had somewhat abused her by the sexual relationship the only alternative is either marriage or freedom meaning marrying her or freeing her but at the same time the Torah wants to discourage the marriage so the Torah says if you want to continue the relationship you have to bring her home but make her repulsive in that short 30-day period so that you will not want to marry her so the tower is like doing two contradictory things at the same time it is setting up the possibility of marriage and at the same time discouraging marriage now the parsha of a shoe shop not so art is extraordinarily difficult number one how could the Torah possibly legitimate intercourse with a non-jewish woman but number two which is even more disturbing at least to modern sensibilities is is the Torah permitting what would be called military rape rape in time of war I mean that is a war crime under international law now granted the Torah doesn't have to follow international law but I think most people feel intuitively that this is a very very despicable violation how could the Torah permit it so the one thing I do want to share with you is the comment of the toast was rid this house first Reid was a Rishon Ravi Shia of Trani rubbish ioud atrani and he was a bit of a very independent thinker even among the we shown him and I just want to point out that he does make a point that the whole parsha of Asia Shafaat o R is not referring to rape it is referring to consensual intercourse that's very very interesting that does not seem to be the impression you would get from reading the verses but at least a toast was read who is certainly an authoritative source and I think people need to be aware of this a lot of people aren't even aware that there is such a commentary that the social sphere does indeed say that the Torah is not at all the Judah mating rape the Torah is still permitting the extraordinary violation of being with the Gentile that much the Torah is permitting and that's in that itself is a big finish but Laharl approach we are not dealing with a violation against the will of the of the woman now you may recall a few years ago the Rafah rushy of the Sahel the the chief military robbery of the Sahel wrote an academic article just a toe article about you flat toe where he was my flower Belle and it's a little bit and he was certainly not advocating anything practical but some of the higher-ups thought he was actually advocating the reinstitution of via futur I believe he was he had to resign he was forced out of his position because of his people on your photo our Sierra Keisha is a little different than American America people can write all sorts of theoretical articles because everyone knows their theoretical anything you write in Israel might be taken as something you can actually do another example would be of I'm not sure if they were doing it theoretically they were tore up on him who wrote a very very interesting book on the sheva mitzvos bnei Noah not that you know if a non Jew violates the Noahide laws according to halakha they can be put to death and this book was espousing the idea that you don't need a baton you don't need a court to officially carry out the Noahide laws the nullified laws can be enforced by by anybody so no they wrote it as the Sheba type book you know people of sources and listen that but the government arrested the two rabbis they consider them guilty of incitement to riots because obviously it's a very dangerous idea once you start saying hey if I'm aware of a non-jew violating no oxide well I can just go in and kill them well they'll be quite quite a few of our neighbors that might get killed and unfortunately if our neighbors get killed and monoliths Lud it may turn out in the other direction as well so the police actually arrested the to rub on him on accusations of incitement so in Israel you have to be careful things are because we're in a Jewish state these discussions are much more than academic okay so that is my little acknowledgement that Asia plateau are is an extraordinarily difficult Varsha to to understand Rashi gives us a little bit of a hint of what's going on and Rashi hint is the Ayatollah can negate Sahara the Torah makes a concession to the overpowering evil inclination that flares up in moments of stress and times of war because if we would not give the person some type of carte blanche then indiscriminately there might be rape and various other violations and therefore by the Torah giving you a protocol giving you a procedure that at least directs the passion moreover if the guy knows ahead of time that if he is with this woman he must bring her home for 30 days and go through a whole protocol that may act as a deterrent against him doing it so part of the protocol is to reduce the likelihood that it's going to take place in the first place that's also a very important point it's not that the Torah wants him to do it and then follow a procedure rather the procedure might be a way of him disengaging from the act in the first place because he's aware of the great consequences and the inconvenience that will follow the commission of the Act by the way the Bollywood sir often gives this suggestion in other contexts as well of simplices on the altar of Kellum had a minoc he had a kabbalah he accepted upon himself that whenever he felt angry he would not allow himself to express anger till he put on his special red jackets that was called his anger jacket now all of us know whether it's putting on a special jacket or counting to 10 if you have to go through that ceremony by that time you know the anger dissipates of the light so psychologically why do you go through those games why you say I will not get angry to like count to ten I will not get angry till I put on my jacket why don't you just say I'm not gonna get angry the answer is that if you simply say I'm not gonna get angry in other words I'm totally not gonna sin the eights of hurry gets very very strong but if I say yeah I'll get angry but I just got to do something first so psychologically that dissipates the feeling so you factor or reason is along the same way if the turret just would have said no the guy's gonna break the rules but if the Torah says yes but you gotta do X Y & Z at some point the guy's gonna say huh it's not worth me the bother okay so there's a whole bunch of moral questions as they say I'm not going to be addressing them tonight what I want to share with you is a beautiful allegory that the hora Kaiama Cardoso offers in explaining if a tower and how it would apply to this time of year in particular he starts off with there and again it's based on the aerosol and it's based on the ZOA as well the hora time many of you heard of the hora hora Khayyam he is roof hi I'm Benna he was requiring Benatar very great grav from Morocco in the 18th century who came to you shall I am he's buried and her as a team his yard site is and Tom is Thomas and it does attract you this very day tens of thousands of people on the yard site and every Mick Road could dole out every homage with commentaries has the commentary of the orihime a very very great mokuba one of the great great tsadikim now the ORAC I am writes that the neshamah of a person can be described as a beautiful woman the neshamah has radiance it as Grace and as holiness it is a failing economy mal in fact it's a part of the Shekinah that is within us and as you know the word Shekinah itself is a feminine word it refers yemen's this is already quite complicated but it refers to a certain feminine aspect of divinity because God is infinite God includes all aspects - Rena is the feminine aspect of vodka - vodka so the beautiful woman is your neshama so here's what the Torah says ki say se llama llama allo Yvetta when you go out to war against your enemy who is your enemy what is your greatest enemy your greatest enemy is the HR Hara those forces within you that want to lead you astray that want to lead you to negativity to sin to rebel against God to hurt people to be selfish so a Shem says when you sincerely decide to engage with your enemy the Torah promises unison oh Hashem Aloka club yadava God will deliver the enemy into your hands this is a war that you can win there may be defeats there may be battles that you lose but even when you lose the battle if you persevere you will be victorious right so Nike that's the first buttock Keisei Salem el shamah away avec la una Sano Hashem Aloka Fabia deca when you go out to war against that enemy Hashem will deliver that enemy into your hands you know in the Tonia the first part of Tonia which is the first relate a lot much the largest part of Tonia the first 52 program is called say fresh shall be known in the book of the middle of the rotors some say the book of the mediocre but actually Arizonans definition of Bane Ernie is not very very far from mediocre day no-name means a person who lives in the world of struggle you can be a 100% righteous person but you're struggling and that's what a Ben Oni is and if sneers almond rights that as long as the beta niece struggles he is considered to be victorious even when there are occasional failures so bad as is saying the battle is the victory that's actually we think if you think about that saying that's really a gorgeous statement a beautiful statement the battle is the victory it's not the winning of the battle that we're not always going to do in the short term but that I remain engaged I remain committed I'm going to keep on fighting I'm not going to get discouraged with the fact that last year I fell into the same traps as the year before every year every day every minute there's a new opportunity to make a new decision and the decision I make this minute doesn't have to be limited by the decision I made a minute ago things can change things can be different so that's the first bus again if you truly engage this enemy in war you will be victorious it then goes on you see in captivity this beautiful woman so allegorically once again this refers to you see your beautiful neshama that seems to be imprisoned it's not able to express its radiance its holiness its closeness to God but you want to marry her meaning you want to be connected to it you want to be connected to your true self to your better self so what do you do there's a protocol that takes a number of steps first step is shave off her hair so what does that mean allegorical again this is not this is certainly not pursuit Oh show me grab this is a homiletic Oh allegorical interpretation so here comes out of the skull now it looks like it's coming out of the brain although obviously it's not but a hair can represent the wild and immoral ideas that we have incorporated over the years some of these may be intellectual ideas that are simply not valid some of them maybe priorities in life some of them maybe grudges feelings misunderstandings so shaping up the hair means disabuse yourself of those ideas and those mental and emotional constructs that are simply putting impediments in your ability to achieve communion with your true essence cutting off their meaning getting rid of the ideas in this connection I'll tell you a little story that I once heard from a ripe a soft Crone and I don't know if this is in his book so this might be the Toraja bellperre the oral teachings over pace for another bite now it's probably in a book I heard it many years ago and he talked about a certain person that he knew who became a cozy bed chuva a person who became a religious and this person had been a competitive bicyclist so he was in Tour de France he was in all of these 200 kilometer bike bicycle races and the like and when he became shomer Shabbos he had to give it up because these races are over Shabbos so people asked him was it difficult to give up the passion of competitive bicycling so he said he found that when he became a shomer Shabbos it was very much like competitive bicycling why was that so what's the comparison so he said you know when you're doing anything on a very high competitive level the difference between first place and second place is not like a half an hour you're talking about sometimes fractions of seconds like on an Olympic swimming I mean the difference between a gold medal and a silver medal might literally be hundreds of a second that's why they have to have special timers and the like now when you're dealing with such a small margin every little thing can make a difference that's why swimmers will shave off body hair because a little hair on the arm a little hair on the chest that could throw up the whole thing you'll lose a minuscule amount of time but you lose two hundredths of a second Silver's that are gold so the same thing with the bicycle race you know you're right you're riding your bicycle and this guy is like behind you tiny little bit so you start getting rid of all sorts of unnecessary baggage get rid of your hat get rid of your app get rid of your scarf because all of these little things even if in normal life the amount of time they they they would impede you is by a minuscule amount but when you're dealing with those small margins every little thing that's not necessary get rid of so he said competitive cycling taught me the importance of getting rid of unnecessary superfluous baggage and now I become a Jew and that's exactly what Judaism teaches me as well get rid of the baggage you don't need now unnecessary baggage takes a lot of forms it can take the form of physical clutter in your living space for sure I'm familiar with that one it can take place it can take the form of emotional baggage resentments angers but all that's doing is holding it back stopping you get rid of it guiltless Rocha cutting off the hair get rid of all that stuff in your mind that you don't need that's step number one again this is the allegory step number two let her fingernails grow long now we know people have hands and hands are a symbol of grasping things I want more and more materialism when the fingernails are long it's more difficult to grasp so the second lesson here is to become less of a materialistic person be less involved with acquisition now the Tori doesn't want us to be ascetic the Tori does not want us to suffer because I'll talk about a beautiful home and beautiful things as giving a person a certain contentment a relaxation a serenity that's an important aspect of spiritual life as well the realm of even writes that this is the utility of looking at beautiful arts the Rambam writes in the hectometer Pirkei avos that arts relaxes the mind it makes the emotions more tranquil and that in turn allows a person to me to be more open to Rukia but nevertheless we know that if a person is grasping grasping grasping for materialism and the like that ultimately takes a person away from us um as well so shaving off the hair disabusing ourselves of the negative ideas that take us away from God letting the fingernails grow to simplify our life and become less materialistic remember this is the process of how you get married to your neshama and then your neshama cries over her father and her mother her father is God because when we sin were not just hurting ourselves we're bringing in infinite pain to our colors Parco hashem suffers when we said not because he suffers but because he suffers when we suffer when again the analogy would be a parent sees a child just going in the wrong way the pain that the parent feels is even greater than the pain that the child feels because the parents love for the child is so great in a shams infinite pain is much much greater than the pain we've caused ourselves so cry over what you've done to your father and if father is God mother is the Jewish people and cry over what you've done to the Jewish people because when we do in a Vera we're not we're not just hurting ourselves we are hurting all of Ami's realm because cause I'll tell us Kolya Israel I Raven Zelizer every Jew is responsible for each other we're all in the same boat and the Sanwa Duchamp me uses the boat example in a very literal way let's imagine everybody's in a boat and the boat springs a leak under somebody's seat I'm sitting over a hole and the water is coming in and people want to repair the hole and I say get out of here this is my seat there's a hole under my seat it's my business well the short answer is if the water enters under your seat the whole ship is going to sink coleus Rael I Ravens elbows in so we have these four steps so far we have shaving the hair we have letting the fingernails grow long we have crying over the father of what you've done to your father Hashem and what you've done number four what you've done to your mother I'm Israel and it says how long do you cry yeah hmm a month of days says they are a I am that is the month of L oh that is set aside for this process of chuhwa and introspection and if you do that you then are entitled to be married connected mr. ha bear till your neshama and to your holiness so it's a very beautiful allegory in which the Asian chief Attila is seen as a much all for the reclamation of your soul and to be connected to your inner self to your true self to your real self as it were but now I want to raise a question about this you know in the laws of war now I'm going to switch to a heretic idea in the laws of war there are two types of wars that the tower legitimates if a war is illegitimate it's treated as murder you understand this in other words any conduct of war has to be legitimated by the TOA because war intrinsically is a sinful act you're killing people you're destroying property war is a sin unless it is legitimated within at least for Jews within the confines of halakhah so the question becomes what wars are considered to be legitimate in the eyes of halakhah so there are two categories of war that how local recognizes category one is called no comets mitzvah wars that are commanded Wars they're obligatory Wars and here we have three examples of Muhammad Mitzvah two of them are no longer applicable the third one unfortunately still applies today category one is the war to destroy Amalek it's a mitzvah we're obligated to destroy your Moloch number two the war to destroy the seven indigenous nations then inhabited Kanaan again they are considered to be extinct today there are no Hittites around but that was a mitzvah war so the first two we don't have today the third category we do have today and that is a defensive war to protect the Jewish people and the Jewish lands from an enemy that wants to destroy us so that would mean that all of the defensive wars that the State of Israel has fought since 1948 would generally fall under the category of milk I met mitzvot because they are defensive in nature now luckily things are not always so simple what do we mean by a defensive war certainly if the enemy has invaded my territory that is now a defensive war but what about things like preemptive strikes what about when Israel will bomb a nuclear reactor before there's been an attack is that defensive or is that offensive again the post can talk about this again not that these really government asks any questions over button although sometimes because of election coalition's they they they might but again many posts can say that if the enemy clearly intends to attack you you don't have to wait till they cross over your boundary it is fundamentally a defensive act it is an act to prevent an attack therefore it falls under defense now one thing about Mohamed mitzvah that's very interesting is you may recall a few weeks ago we read about people who are exempt from going to war a person who be trust a woman did not yet consummate the marriage a person that planted a vineyard did not yet enjoy and did not yet enjoy the fruit a person who built a house or bought a house they've not yet live in it so the Torah says they are exempt from military activity the Mishnah in Soto says that only applies to optional warrants which I didn't define yet but when it comes to mitzvot Wars there are no exemptions and everybody must fight if needed if needed yeah you don't need 100% combat recruitment but if needed there was no exemptions so I don't want to talk about this topic but again since I am touching a pallet I'll just mention it that you understand that this raises some very very interesting Harwick issues regarding the draft exemption for yeshiva students from military service because here is the thing and one end the argument among arrayed them is that full-time people who learn Torah should not have to go into the army well the counter-argument is well wait a second here if the war is that the State of Israel fights are not optional Wars if they are Mohamed mitzvot because they are defensive in nature and the mission in SOTA says that no crime at mitzvot has no exceptions you even take the collar from under the chuppah and the carton you know from the from the bridal room and alike then the whole idea of any type of exemption seems to be inconsistent with the notion of milk I met Mitzvah okay good question interesting question I'll leave it for discussion but let me just know matter is that in virtually all countries that have a draft there has always been an exemption for clerical students of the United States I remember very well DJ's are Vietnam which was the high point of his Shiva attendance in the United States the Kiva's were filled with people and we registered for the draft and I had I think I still have my my draft card I didn't burn it and there was an exemption for rabbinical and Esther's relatives but any students of clergy even world war two which was certainly a kind of a national emergency there was such an exemption so even if it's true how logically so to speak that everybody is eligible on the other hand as you know there's still room there's still room for an exemption and indeed many have argued that nothing to do with religion that Israel should not have a draft at all that's that actually is a controversial issue they should move to an all-volunteer army so I know again I'm bringing up a lot of things that I'm not gonna be fully addressing but that's category one that's Mohammad so that's that's another very very excellent question no comments Mitzvah means if we're fighting a war everybody can be drafted everybody now the question becomes okay beside a no exemptions but what if we're not fighting a war why do I have to be drafted to basic service and the like we're not yet in the MILCON miss mitzvah situation so the question becomes it's a very difficult question the question gone well yeah but you can't fight an army with untrained people so mamimi if in anticipation of the possibility of defensive wars we need to have a cadre of people who know what to do so that might be included but that's a very good question I mean that is a very good question because we are not in an everyday brush M we're not in a day today today today state of war and the other hand that we do need to be in a state of readiness so as you know this issue about Toula and drafting and of course spiritually we believe that learning tour is also one of the met ways that God blesses the Jewish people with success as you know it's a major major focus in Israeli society not only between religious and secular but even within religious and one hand you have the her ad world that fights very much a foreign foreign exemption that that may be part of the reason why Netanyahu couldn't form a government after the first election in April because Lieberman refused to have any type of coalition with committee parties over this over this precise issue and then the other hand you have the dirty leo me world Rivera in Liechtenstein rava Mattel Citroen Amla bracha who very much supported the idea of the Hester yeshiva in which the person is committed to learning Torah and will also be involved in Hagen autumn Medina again I'm not here to tell anybody what to think everyone has their own day of their own opinion their own rather spiritual authority but as they say I have maybe a bad habit that when I touch upon something I like to mention something I'm not going to talk about just to throw it out as further food for thought now that is called Mohammed Mitzvah what would they want well we don't have a tremendous history I mean listen we don't have a record exactly I mean I can tell you though that when loads going back to the Kailash when lote was captured by the four kings so it was a problem of Inu himself who led the military mission to save well so there at least there was not such an exemption now there is another category for it though that seems a little bit inexplicable that's called milks I met Richards optional Wars what's an optional war a non defensive war of expansion huh that sounds mighty peculiar are you telling me that if Israel decides one day it would like to invade Turkey or Cyprus or any of those kind they can just do it they have permission how can you talk about a permissible what non defensive war of expansion so this term is very misleading and this is what you have to understand in order to fight the Mohammed we should there are numerous kin dishes number one it must be authorized by a Sun Hedren but most importantly it must be authorized by God through the medium of the Orion Batum the or inverter liam is the calling goggles breastplate and through the lighting up of the jewels and the names of the tribes that were inscribed in the jewels this was a medium of prophecy which means no comet vicious doesn't just mean Eric just Rogers can decide to aggressively conquer a country they have to be given explicit divine authorization which means for all practical intents and purposes there is no such thing as a halakha flee legitimate aggressive war this man has a the only possible war that the Jewish nation is permitted to fight really any nation is a war of defense a war of aggression must be sanctioned by God in the specific medium or in Vitoria which we do not have today by the way for those of you that are interested the motto of Yale University is actually the Hebrew words that spell or remove its whom in most most people who are not that Jewish wouldn't read that wouldn't be aware of it and even if they read it they wouldn't know what it means but or in the children that which enlightens and that which communicates and you know in colonial times it was standard university education that a college students would know three classical languages three classical languages were Greek Latin and Hebrew Hebrew was a classical language and Harvard University I they may still do it I'm not sure but certainly until pretty recently they had a valid valedictory to address in Harvard College give somebody gave it in Hebrew they still were keeping up the old classical languages thing yeah yeah you could be anti-semitic that was a separate thing yeah they didn't hear that Hebrew Hebrew thing yeah when Thomas Jefferson had at least a rudimentary knowledge of Hebrew we had Hebrew books and his in his library in Monticello okay so I baby doesn't made therefore so we have these two types of wars no crime at the Mitzvah no climate for sure now once we have that dichotomy Rashi raises the question which type of war is the Torah talking about in Asia ki Fateh OA is Asian Shikata we are talking about no-comment Mitzvah or is Asia too fat so we're talking about Mohammed Rashid so Rashi says it has to be talking about optional Wars because in Mitzvah wars like a Moloch and the seven nations there are no captives when you're fighting on Moloch of the seven nations you must kill men women child so if there's any possibility of a captive it could only be optional war not Mitzvah war and therefore Rashi says the whole parsha of Asia you fight o'er is talking about optional Wars not Mitzvah wars that's Russia so that's my question so that's so that's my question right so that's exactly my question my question is that if we were to ask ourselves is the struggle against the HR Haram a mitzvah war or an optional war we would certainly answer there is no Mitzvah greater than that that is the purpose of our life that is why we were put in this world so it's a very funny thing why would the Torah allude to the struggle against the eight sir Hara in a parsha that is specifically talking about optional wars since this particular war is an obligatory war in other words there's a mismatch between the marshal the the example and the inner meaning the much all is describing an OP and you're giving me an inner meaning of the struggle against the HRA but the struggle against the HRA is not an optional war it is a mandatory war so why is the tire of Aramis the fight against the 8th Sahara in the parsha of the optional war so the answer here is a very deep answer the answer is that the tire is teaching me that even though the war of against the 8th Sahara is a mitzvah war you have to fight it like an optional war and not like a mitzvah war meaning tactically the Mohammed I ate there which is a McClement Mitzvah must be fought as a no chemistry shirts and not as a Mohammad Mitzvah what do I mean let's look at it this way a person lived a certain life away from a sham for many many years 10 years 20 years 30 years 40 years a person finally comes back the person finally does chuhwa god forgives that's reconciliation there's connection but how am i Mitya says how do I relate to all of those years of estrangement of separation there are two modalities of chuva one might be called the amputation modality I just cut off that part of my life that's not me anymore I'm a different person that part of my life is gone over I make believe it doesn't exist now just as it is sometimes necessarily necessary to amputate a physical limb because of gangrene and a person could die without amputation so it may be the case that some past relationships some past behaviors were so toxic so evil negative that the only choice might be amputation sometimes that is necessary but just as amputation of a physical limb is always a last resort and not a first resort spiritual amputation has to be dealt with the same way because there are a lot of disadvantages and detriments to spiritual amputation first is the phenomenon of phantom pain when you amputate a limb there could be tremendous tremendous pain that you still have as if the limb is still there and as people like Hillary Clinton discovered when you try to amputate or delete complex programs in the computer there will always be something that's floating around there and up in the cloud where we're in the cloud and in the machine whatever it is the stuff that you want the stuff that you want may be gone but the stuff that you don't want we're still going to it's still going to hang around and the other problem with the amputation is simply this okay I've erased my sins I've purified myself I was had a deficit of you know ten trillion deficits and I erased it but that still leaves me with a big zero what is what do I do about my 10 20 30 40 years there are just a nothing but there's a different modality of chuhwa it is not a chuhwa based on amputation it's a chuhwa based on reclamation of your past your past including those experiences that were not following God's law can become the source of your strength and your creativity and the uniqueness of your relationship to God and things you can do based on that past with accomplishments you would not have been able to do had you not had those very experiences this is not the true ver of amputation this is the true ver of recapture of sublimation of transformation of redefining your past as the source of your strength and the source of the uniqueness of your relationship to God you know people come to you shall I people come to you shall I am and you meet great great people you meet you show me that have been here for a hundred generations or ten generations full of Torah full of avodah full of mitzvahs and you come from Montana North Dakota wherever you come from and brush-up a person there's a total life but a person says to himself how will I ever catch up to what these people do on a good day my Hebrew will be as good as this fifth-grader you know I'll know as much Gomorrah as the fourth grader or whatever it would be and the person feels you know broken crushed a person feels that I'll never really be part of this but here is the interesting little secret if it is true that the tenth generation you shall me has many many gifts that we will never have it's also true that the person from Montana North Dakota has precious gifts that the tenth generation Shami doesn't have because here's the thing you did not decide we did not decide in which family we would be born we did not decide where we would be born we did not decide most of those decisions in the early part of our lives certainly were not functions of our bashira of our free will God put us there and if God put us there the decision was made this is what our nationís needed our souls needed that journey and that journey is part of our Micajah to Hashem and even though that journey may have been negative in some ways that journey may have not been seen to be a spiritual experience in fact those experiences are the building blocks of our identity so when a person becomes about troub and just makes believe that path doesn't exist in effect they're spitting in God's face they're basically telling God you made a mistake you put me in the wrong place and now I have to believe I was never there to some degree this chuhwa of amputation which means forget about your relationships to disassociate yourself with your parents it takes different forms if you have certain talents like music or arts get rid of them they're not you see Bishop to some degree this is why you do find in the Shiva world and again I I know this from from first-hand knowledge a certain low level depression sometimes a higher level but but certainly a low level whether you call it subclinical or not I'll leave I'll leave it to the psychologists but there is a certain sadness because a person feels they have to cut themselves away and pretend to be something and someone that is not really them because they're taught that the only way they connect to a Shem is by leaving behind their history their families their connections their talents now it's tricky it's tricky I don't mean to suggest that you know everything from the past can be safely imported if a person was a nude topless dancer or whatever it would be you know you have to find ways to adapt and and incorporate but a simple example would be if a person was a drug addict on cocaine and British AM they managed to get away from it so one way is to make believe there was no addiction meaning to say I have no connection with that world but that means there twenty years of addiction was a total waste the other way is if a person becomes a drug counseling it's precisely his experience with cocaine that gives him the insight and ability to deal he's using his this is the meaning of an enigmatic statement in the Gemara that says when a person does shuva out of love the ave rows are not only erased the Aveiro s-- themselves become mitzvos now the question is obvious I understand that God forgives me even that is an amazing thing that's quite amazing but okay forgiveness I have a lot of a various Dadi races than when I'm sincere God forgives me okay brush em but forgiveness alone just brings me to a zero it takes me from a negative billion to a zero but you're telling me a million or a billion of Eros become mitzvahs they tell the prediction of Libya to get ready Jeff Telles one of the town retiree says I'm so jealous of you all you have to do is choose out of love and you'll be a much bigger subject than me of so many of Eros they'll all get converted but the meaning of how in our favor can become a mitzvah is that when you draw even upon the negatives to build your unique foundation in our voters ahem God retro actively looks at your sins as the training route for your mitzvahs in other words using the addiction example the 20 years of cocaine addiction was your training to be the drug counselor right this was your education right some people get educated in school some people get educated on the streets the street was Richard okay I'll give you credit this enabled you to do what you watch what you're doing you know many people remember the receive of mirror of lessons V Finkel and a great great man a person who died a few years ago relatively young and for many years he suffered from MS and with great great courage she continued to persevere to teach Torah to travel as difficult as that was to raise money and he made Mir a huge huge yeshiva and many people also know that he has a very unusual background he was not a Kosair but Ruby came from a very much of a family but he lived in a modern orthodox life in Chicago he went to a co-ed High School and he was on the basketball team he was on the debating team and he became where Shiva Mir so when he was niftier very suddenly so all of the hispid have made the similar point and they said look at what a person can become in spite of his worthless degenerate backgrounds he came from dirty non-religious Tommy backgrounds and he is able to go beyond its and become the great person that he became I myself came from roughly similar background so I'm hearing these Hispanic yeah I don't I don't feel you know my Hartford Connecticut background in that way I see this as very positive in some ways and here is where I think that has paid him were income incomplete I'm not saying they're wrong because there was something about that as well that he had a commitment for Torah that went far beyond the environment but here's the thing part of the Russia Shiva's greatness was not that he became great in spite of the environment he came from part of his greatness was he took many many positive things from that environment you know one of the great talents the receiver had was he was able to relate to every type of American teenager you had American teenagers who visited Israel and they had never seen he achieve of intensive learning this was a totally even if they were shomer Shabbos this was a totally unfamiliar concept factor of finkl used to say his same thing when he came to meet her and they were learning in the morning from nine to one he was like totally exhausted nine to one you know four hours it's so that his cover ISA okay what do you guys do in the afternoon he do this again he couldn't you know he couldn't there you said he couldn't so here you have these American kids and they come to Israel and they see all of this intensive learning and they don't know how to process it and then they're gonna see this Russia Shiva dressed in black long beard and you know they have no connection to him and all of a sudden he starts talking to them about jump shots and various things about sports and debate and he says yeah I was on the basketball team and he talked their language and they saw that you could be a great Thomas haha and still live in the world he did not repudiate his environment he took from the Chicago experience some very important lessons tolerance understanding different types of Jews the patience to deal with people based on where they are not artificially imposing something these are things he got from that world yeah there may have been aspects of that world that he had to move away from but he didn't amputate he took the good and that was his foundation I mean I'll tell you myself that when I went to day school in Hartford Connecticut so in those days long time ago the conservative movement did not have day schools there were no cell Manchester day schools so as a result any parents who wanted their kid to have a good Jewish education even if they were not Orthodox they all sent themselves to the same day school so in my Orthodox day school we had I would say 75% were not sure which office we had was co-ed number one and number two we had conservative reform and and the like and even though that would not necessarily be the scenic that I might choose today although that we can talk about that that would be a difficult thing but I have to say that there are things you learn from that environment you learn how to get along you learn that you can work with all Jews you can be friends with altars and I remember walking to bar mitzvahs and even bas Mitzvah that were in a reformed temple again I'm not getting into the halacha with just that idea fact I have a whole story about that a little digression I was walking like five miles it was 12 years old I was walking five miles to some reformed synagogue and there was no area of so I had no water it was the summer so one of my teachers my one of my English teachers drives by and offers me a ride so I say well I can't go into the car so she says why not so I said yes I said well you know and Shabbos you're not allowed to do work and you know going into the car increases the gasoline consumption and that's you know doing work so she says so let me see if I understand this you go into the car it'll take two minutes no to get to the synagogue air conditioned car but you can't do that because you're not allowed to work on Chavez so instead you're gonna walk five miles without water because that's not working so I don't know this is when you think about of course that's not our topic tonight but the question is the definition of work obviously the definition of Malacca and Shabbos is not labor because rest assured walking five miles without water is a lot more laborious than sitting in the car Malacca has a different definition be it is ignite but what I'm saying is I myself have taken from that environment and I think about it with a great deal of fondness and very very good memories of what out this is because as unfortunately as we sometimes progress into more religious communities and you know indeed those are good movements to a large degree but sometimes that Octus and that tolerance and that friendship and that accept is something that recedes in the past and great people like with lessons free like the Russia Shiva's Ekron Oliv raha were able to keep the good of that environment and bring it into their lives I'll leave you with one final story along the same lines there's a friend I have in mayishan I think I probably said the story before but it's worthwhile to repeat and he grew up in Falls Church Virginia and not not only he was not reformed he was totally unaffiliated totally secular and after he graduated college he did his trip through Asia and Israel was a stop he was nothing to do with religion but as often as is often the case he became a religious Jew became a shomer Shabbos well he was never Giselle but he didn't just become the or Sameach aja Torah Bal Juba he became a Garrett Hudson scribe on that astragalus Puttock that's a vertical straw kneesocks pea speared long coats yiddish-speaking even quite amazing not too many people become ballet children in that particular form and amazingly enough he got married to the only other person who must have done the same thing some woman who did the same thing became a casino woman how does it happen doesn't happen that often so they get married so I'm invited to the continent and the fashion it was Emmaus RM and forget about Makita the women were in another building the building was like half a block away the man here the woman there and I was wearing a black hat dark suit but I was 11 I was you know a tiny bit uncomfortable it wasn't my usual venue a Yiddish speaking and like but I remember his parents his parents were there from Virginia they had not seen their son since his transformation and I can only use the world shell-shocked I mean their mouth was a gape their eyes were staring if you know the old show the twilight zone it was mama mama they couldn't even put into words they were so confused they were so disoriented yes it didn't make sense to them what is going on here is this like a play is this a TV show that summer you know it's going to be candid camera you know we're fooling you you know whatever it is so so at the end of the cosna they bring the caller they had to wait they have to bring the caller from a block away and I went for Shepherd Broncos they bring the college and then the cousin gives it to our tour in Yiddish amazingly enough and then he speaks in English to his parents and he says you know mom and dad I just want to say a few words he says I know that the person I seem to be is very different that the person you thought I would become and the life that I'm living is very different than the life you thought I would live but I want you to know that 90% of what I am is from you and the 10% that is not is because you gave me the courage and the intellectual integrity to find the path in life that I needed to find so I just want to express my gratitude to you that all that I'm able to accomplish came from you now I was sitting next to a a Ksyusha guy who seemingly didn't know English although maybe he was also an American who went through this and he stopped puffing away and he's nodding away you know and he didn't understand a word but everyone had a sense as because I'll say devar him hi Yotes him in a life when words come from the heart and it's nuts in Malay they enter that I think everyone there sensed that whatever these words were they were very very powerful and I still knew English then so I also saw it as a very very powerful and beautiful statement because what it's saying is yeah my environment may not have been at our environment but I'm going to take the good from that environment and I'm gonna build a foundation so now let me go back to you if I were just to be sure that I'm not sure if I made the point explicitly the difference between a mitzvah war and an optional war is in a mitzvah war you owe glitter destroy in an optional water you can capture the enemy and subjugate it so here is the thing is the war against the eight Zara a mitzvah war surely it is a mitzvah but it's placed in the parsha of an optional war because it's teaching you a profound idea that the way you deal with your life and your personality is not by obliterating it but by capturing it transforming it and using it as the foundation of your identity so the idea here the finish here is this is the one you'll come at mitzvah that you have to fight like a Muhammad Rashad's capture utilize don't just reject because again you were put in a world with certain experiences those experiences are what your neshama needed it's a great great mystery that how could how could that be true even with a virus and it's a hard it's a hard issue because in one hand and I Vera is not following that on the other hand in retrospect everything is part of a Shems plan as well we needed to go through certain darkness in order to reach certain light and we need to connect even to that darkness in order to experience the light that comes after the darkness right so this is something that we can think about in Arvada Tsukuba that our Yiddish guide should try to create a sense of wholeness a sense of integration a sense of bringing all the different pieces together what do I learn from it how do I grow from it what does it say to me to have a Yiddish light that builds bridges instead of erecting barriers and repeats us now as I said before sometimes it is the case that amputation is medically necessary and sometimes it is the case that amputation is spiritual say I'm not denying the need for an extreme remedy but it should be the exception by the ways in this connection I just came across something it's a little bit connected to this a year score prayer for a parent who abused you some of you somebody about B I don't even think was an Orthodox rabbi but it was this is an issue that sometimes people face a person has an abusive parent they cut off all connection the parent dies there's your skir they're Scottish and some kids some children understandably have a great deal of difficulty in memorializing a parent that abused them in a deeply a profound and painful way so somebody wrote a prayer that was really quite quite really quite beautiful I was quite quite moved by it in which this child the adult child on one is talking to God and talking about the pain that they suffered but they also pray that their parent can be relieved of the pain that made them become the people that they were and that in God's justice and mercy may the parents also find some relief from the reasons that made them sin I mean it's a very very beautiful thing because it's not a denial of your suffering but it's trying to understand it's a much broader perspective and even acknowledging that my parents did give me life and for that I have to be grateful in spite of everything so you're not really going to be successful in true until you can kind of go back to your life and bring all of those pieces together so may I coach probably help us all to try to engage in that process and hopefully we should achieve some successes as James promised if you fight the war Hashem will give you the needs ahum [Music]