Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: Miracles of War, Freedom, Gerim and Kindness

[Music] okay hi everybody thank you for coming right before pesak or shortly before pesak um they share tonight is dedicated for a Ben zel and as always for all those whose Health has been affected by the war especially for the safe return of our brothers and sisters helding captivity and to the IDF and am Israel and the lasting Unity of the people of Israel al benzar Dr Yos Walder by Alisa bullo and by Mrs Jean alevy for the El of her beautiful and beloved daughter Lisa who is n t Nissan first day of PES at age 23 18 years ago again May her n have an Aliyah uh finally is collecting for its annual Kim Fund Raising money to distribute food coupons to needy families we've already distributed tens of thousands of shekels to families in need and are in need of more contribution tions to distribute to participate in the MIT of they're synonymous I see they switch terms in the middle there but they're the same thing uh use the link below in the description box or the website and it's a not only is it a general mitvah it's a particular obligation before P we are obligated to give money for people to be able to afford the you know uh it's interesting there's a in m Prophet M uh which God is quoted as saying when the time of the G comes I will show you wonders like the days that you left MIT that the G is going to be compared in many ways to the and people often ask you know why doesn't God do Miracles like he did in the good old days the good old days splitting of the Red Sea all of that good stuff uh today no Miracles are happening if only God would do Miracles I would be a believer so the truth of the matter is ramban says you know how many times does God have to prove himself you know he did he did all this stuff if you believe he did it then he did it what does he have to keep on doing it uh but there's another way of looking at it and it says who says God doesn't do Miracles you know maybe you slept through it I slept through it but Saturday night God did a miracle the idea that Iran sends you know almost 400 missiles to attack Israel and basically virtually nothing happened I think one uh Arab uh young girl got hurt uh I think she was there but but she she before schma get anything is forgettable but one that is such an unbelievable rate of success on the part of Israel that as great as our army is as great as the Iron Dome is as great as our security system is nobody could believe that this was capable of happening and it is a miracle it absolutely is a miracle I I've heard people say and I actually heard a physicist say who was involved in the security system that this was a miracle that was greater than anything that happened in the Six Day War he said it was greater than the yamu okay I don't know if I could go back and say that I wasn't I'm not that old I wasn't there uh but Six Day War yeah you know and it's an amazing thing it's just amazing it's is almost as if you know it was said you may like this or not like this it was said in 1948 that the establishment of the state of Israel was God giving us a a a kiss after the Holocaust after the devastating devastating tragedies of World War II the loss of 6 million Jews we were broken and God needed to give us a hug show us yeah bad things have happened but I'm with you and the state of Israel was said to be God's hug after the Holocaust again I'm not explaining the Holocaust I'm not going there at all but it was simply the reassurance that I'm with you well I me Bram even October 7 was not the Holocaust I don't want to compare that but still we're facing a bit of an analogous situation with the massacre of October 7 and the hostages and the constant fear that we have that you know who knows what's going to happen every single day and then something like this happens in which God's love and God's care is so evident in a super really a super natural way so once again it's kind of God's hug after October 7 that he's with us that doesn't automatically you know solve everything we still have all of the problems that we have to struggle with but Hashem is showing us that he's with us he's on our side and this is a tremendous thing you know think the medra says that there were different Kings you know D prayed that God should give him Victory to fight fight the enemy and another person just said I don't have the strength to fight I'll just do in and said I can't fight I can't D I'm just going to go to sleep and you'll handle it let God handle it well for a lot of people Saturday night was uh just went to sleep you know I'm not even I'm not I'm not even a heavy sleep I'm a very light sleeper because I didn't I didn't wake up at all so I wake up in the morning around like 5:30 and I have 20 emails from the United States expressing fear and concern and how are you and what's going on and are you safe and then I I had no idea what they were talking about so I I look at the news now I'm scared to death gee that's what happened you know I didn't even I didn't even know I didn't hear any Sirens I mean there were I said there were Sirens but I didn't hear anything so it's really what K say sometimes a person benefits from a Divine miracle and doesn't even know a miracle happens and that's what this is so it's something we have to think about really very very carefully you know who knows what'll happen the next time who knows if there'll be a next time you know who knows there's a lot of stuff we don't know and you know when God does miracles for you there's also a reciprocal responsibility to try to give something back in some way and we got to think about what that's going to entail but nevertheless we should Revel and rejoice in this yeshuat Hashem that came in a very very most unlikely and unexpected unexpected way uh how Israel should respond I I'll leave to the politicians although my well maybe I shouldn't even say my personal opinion okay what is my my personal opinion is that this may be the only issue on the Middle East that Joe Biden ever got right but whatever it is I I kind of agree with him but I I understand the argument to something I don't I don't want to get into the Pol politics of it it's kind of nothing happened let's just go on we we we don't need to be involved in a war on uh you know multiple fronts but okay but I'll leave that to uh other people to debate and and discuss but right now we should see that in the month of Nissan the month of Nissan is the month of redemption the month of Miracles and Hashem gave us a Nissan Miracle this year something to be very very grateful and maybe just maybe it once again is a Harbinger a prediction of mashia based on the PK that before Mia comes I will show you miracles analogous to an amazing thing uh now a lot of what I'm going to talk about I think we have covered in various weeks I'm going to bring bring going to bring a few things together I mean after all when we didos what were we talking about we were talking about and the like so now we're back to PES and we have the same type of uh type of inim uh let me just start though with an interesting historical Point uh people ask when was the first Sader so obviously the first seder was in Egypt the night before we left mitzraim we had a corbon pesak and we ate the Corbin pesak and we sat around that last night counting well we couldn't recount everything cuz some things haven't happened yet we couldn't recount right what was the story of The Exodus before there was an exodus so obviously we were not yet talking about things that didn't happen yet but we were talking about things that were going to happen and we talked about the plagues and we talked about the faith in God you know all of those things so that was the first Sader the second Sader was one year later exactly one year later we're in the desert and we had one Corbin pesak in the midbar right that was the second seder uh that was actually premm because the the M didn't uh start falling into no I'm sorry the m the m started the Eeyore before yeah yeah the M had been falling for 11 months but okay now if we then ask when was the next corbon pesak that was brought it was in the day days of yahushua Bin nun the rest of the 40 years in the desert there was no carbon PES the holiday of PES in terms of not doing M presumably they kept as one of the mitas of the Torah but they didn't bring the carbon PES they didn't eat matah they didn't eat marar they didn't do any type of hag they didn't do any type ofas so it's very very interesting that for the 40 years in the desert after the first PES there actually was no Corbin pesak till Yeshua bin nun now there's something a little odd even about the Yeshua bin nun PES it mentions that from the time of the spies onward no children that were born no male children that were born had a bris meaning all children born in the desert after the sin of the spies did not have Brit Mila why was that so the gari discusses that as a result of both the sin of the agel and the sin of the spies we were no longer protected by God to the same degree that we had been protected before we had we had M we had the Clouds Of Glory but we didn't have all of the healing that God gave us and as a result it was considered to be a Sak not to do circumcision while we're actively traveling so as a result an entire generation of Jewish boys in the desert did not have Brit mea now what is the of carbin P you cannot bring a carbon PES if you are uncircumcised but more than that you can't bring a Corbin pet if any of your children are uncircumcised which means to say if I would have a son and this is even if it's medically necessary meaning even if it would be a Sak like hemophilia for the baby to have a bread so I'm excused I'm not allowed to eat to bring a carbon PES so there is a reason why they didn't bring a carbon PES in the desert for those 40 years at least some of the families had boys who were not circumcised and that would prevent the fathers and the mothers from bringing the corbon PES now that wouldn't necessarily cover everybody because not everybody had a boy any given year I mean I say I didn't have a boy in year two or whatever it would be but the other reason why they didn't bring a Corbin PES was because the Corbin PES is really connected to a basa mikdash meaning it's the other way around bringing it in the desert was the exception the norm would be you'd have to wait till ER Israel and the like but what's interesting is they finally did bring a Corbin PES in the days of Yeshua B and in the book of Yeshua it discusses there was a mass circumcision ceremony hundreds of thousands of people had to be circumcised in order to bring the Corbin PES keep the people who left were circumcised the people who were born in the desert were not circumcised they're the ones coming to ER Israel we have to circumcise them but here is the odity there is another Hal that got activated when they came to ER Israel this is very fascinating this is the eer of eating kadash now I don't want to get too detailed but just just in terms of just understanding something what is kadash kadash applies to grain particularly grain that grows in the land of Israel mainly grain that grows in the land of Israel the five grains not kidneys the same five grains that become KS wheat barley oats Rye spelt that new grain that grows cannot be consumed until you bring a sacrifice of barley on the second day of pesak which is called the OM sacrifice Kash is user until the Corban om is brought now now you may then ask me so how can I ever eat today if we don't have a bikash and the Corin is not brought so the gamar in rosashana explains that there's a two- tiered system when there is a basa mikash you cannot eat the new grain until the corbon of the OM is brought when there's no Basa mikash it is the start of the day of the OM meaning the OM is brought on the second day of pesak which is the 16th of Nissan so when there's no B mikash you can't eat the grain of the new year until the morning of the 16th of Nissan butak was Mak that you got to wait until the 17th of meeting and then words he basically said that that day is no longer permitted the reason is because maybe the temple will get rebuilt and if you got used to eating it first thing in the morning that's not going to be allowed when the temple is built because you're going to have to wait till they bring the OM you see in other words if they bring the OM at 12:00 noon you couldn't eat the kadash till 12:00 noon but if you got into the habit of eating it at 6:00 in the morning then next year when the temple gets built you'll eat at 6:00 in the morning so they therefore said eat it on the 16th at all and when the temple is built then you'll eat it on the 16th when they bring the OM okay whatever is so the practicality simply means the following even today I cannot eat kadash till the morning of the 17th of Nissan and D until the morning of the 16th of Nissan I cannot eat kadash on the 15th meaning anything I eat before the 16th or 17th of Nissa has to be grain that preceded last year's Omer date so now this race is a very intriguing question the first seder that we have in erus real now what were we eating we came to ER Israel Rec crossed the Jordan River the book of Yoshua says we cross the Jordan River on the tenth of Nissan right mosha died the seventh of AD we mourned mosha for a month and then we made 3 days of preparation crossed the Jordan on the tent of Nissan that's a month and three days after Moshe died at that point we were living on M that that even though M normally only lasted M stopped falling when mosha died but God allowed the man not to spoil so we were living off mun we come to erel are we allowed to eat the grain of erel we are not it's kadash and kadash is not going to be permitted till we bring an OM offering on the 16th of Nissan so we lived off the man or we lived off fruits and vegetables or meat or cheese or eggs there's a lot of stuff you can eat but we couldn't eat grain okay so you might think that not a big deal okay they don't eat grain like plenty of people gluten intolerance they don't they don't have grain but here's the problem how did they fulfill the Mitzvah of matah at the first seder they had entering the land of Israel all of the grain is kadash no om had ever been BR yet the kadash is not going to to be permitted till they bring the Omar offering on the 16th of Nissan the second day of PES so the first night of PES we could have Mor we could eat the corbon P okay we couldn't eat the matah or could we so the Tama Shi actually says they did not fulfill the Mitzvah of matah at the first sers do you understand why it's only a problem this year because after the first year even though they can't eat the new grain they could eat grain from the prior year which was covered by last year's Omar offering because last year they brought an Omare but the first year they didn't bring an Omare till the second day of PES so all the grain is kadash if all the grain is kadash they're not allowed to eat it till the second day of PES so the actually the B says it as well I mentioned shash on it but both the B and thei say absolutely they did not fulfill the Mitzvah of Mata at the first Seder in some ways it's kind of like starting off on a bad foot I mean this is your first Sader in AR Israel and you can't you can't eat matah very strange so that's an interesting historical point that I wanted to share with you let me just mention the interesting question of the USI the Jerusalem talm asks a fascinating question there is a general rule in that if something is prohibited by a negative commandment Thou shalt not do something but I have a positive Mitzvah to do something and the only way I can do the positive is by transgressing the negative I don't have another choice so what do I do do I do I obey the negative and not do the positive or do I say listen I got a positive commandment and I don't have any way out so maybe the positive overrides the negative right what and you understand the problem here I have a conflict of directives the negative commandment says don't do something the positive commandment says to do it so if I have a way of doing the positive without the sin of course I got to do that that's obvious but if I don't have any other alternative which has precedence the positive or the negative so H gives you an answer H basically says the obligation of doing a Mitzvah overrides the prohibition of not doing something this is called a the positive Commandments pushes aside low the negative commandment the most common example although it may not be totally apt is the notion of doing a Brit if a baby is born on chabas now doing a bris actually involves violating m causing bleeding and bruising so it's a negative commandment it's desecration of chabas on the other hand there's a positive commandment to circumcise on the eth day so what do we do the positive commandment of Brit overrides the negative commandment ofas I say loasa so thei asks a very logical question isn't that that exactly the situation the Jews found themselves on the first seder night in the time of Yoshua on one hand there's a negative commandment do not eat the new grain until the Omar is brought on the other hand we have no other grain all we had was m m is not Kosher for matah it may taste like matah but m is not matah matah requires from the grains itself we have no no other grain and if that's the case the positive commandment of matah should override the negative Commandments of not eating the kadash so that's a thei asks it does give various ansers uh we don't have to get into all the technicalities but I just want you to bring out the historical anomaly okay and um there's a lot of logistical problems in PES a lot of logistical problems it's interesting um I assume most people here have migrated from Karis I don't think anyone here was actually born in Israel so all of us remember the old country you know the olden days where we had two Sedar and uh some people say maybe most people say that you know having one day yump is one of the greatest benefits of living in erel particularly for pesak and the other hand on the other hand I have heard a respectable minority who actually say they miss a second seder because it gives you a chance you know practice makes perfect it gives you a chance to get it right uh there may be different types of Torah insights that uh you didn't want to you know use up all the time the first night because it was getting late but that way you can split it you have two occasions to try to bring out different uh uh different ideas uh so logistically a Seder is a difficult experience first of all um it can be uplifting it can be joyous it can be Redemptive it should be Redemptive but part of it is logistically difficult because how are you going to pitch it to the many different types of people and different types of interests that exist in the audience on one hand the Seder seems to be something that should focus primarily on children very much so because the Mitzvah itself in the Torah is described you shall tell your child this is the occasion when a parent tells his child about what does it mean to be Jewish what is our history how did we become a nation of God and what does mean for us the notion of contemporizing even though it may sound a little 11 guard is I would suggest not at all a foreign idea we have to ask ourselves what does it mean that we were slaves in mitam and God took us out of that slavery what are the implications what is the significance of that for the way we live our lives on a day-to-day basis these are very important questions on the other hand we also have adults we might have grandparents we might have aunts and uncles and the like so you got to kind of throw a lot of balls in the air and you have to try to speak to everybody on some level but then you run into the problem uh you know jack of all trades master of none in which the attempt to try to do a little bit for everybody means that nobody totally gets everything they need so I don't have an answer to that I can't even give you an answer to that you just do the best you can and pray that at some point The KES will take over and give you theay to try to make it inspiring uh and and the like let me just remind people that if a person let's say let's say you have some people who really want to talk a lot about uh the hagada and the Seder and other people maybe elderly they need a quicker seder you can talk about even after the Seder is over so you can do the Seder relatively quickly and then be after the S and you are still fulfilling the Mitzvah of okay so that's something one should think about you can do a lot of poster uh learning uh and speaking of dor and like I've said before that one of the major themes of The Exodus is the linkage between freedom and responsibility you'll notice that we start counting the OM the OM the 49 days between the bringing of the OM and Shas the second day of PES in would be the second s and it's already the first day of the ramban suggests that that actually means PES which is freedom and shos which is Torah are not considered to be two separate holidays they are one holiday and in fact the whole Omare period can be regarded as a long of course P has it own but there's you know first day of PES last day of PES but then the ran says the whole period of the OM is like a connecting holiday number one which is PES with holiday number two which is shabas and in fact this is born out by the rinic name for the holiday of shabos the Rabin name for the holiday of shabos is a bit strange if you're not familiar with it it is called when when kazal say the worder they are not talking about Sher the word atas in the mishna is shos why is that so the word ateres means conclusion one of the meanings of the words shos is the conclusion of PES what's the message Freedom has value only when it is used as a vehicle to submit to God and live your life in accordance with his will PES is worthless unless it's connected to Matan Torah submission to God's will God's morality you see this is kind of a mistake that we have in modern culture freedom is not an end in and of itself a person says the goal of my life is to be free that's a meaningless statement free to be what free to do what freedom is not a goal freedom is a very very important means to achieving a goal yes yes so I I I I agree that even political freedom is an important thing but it's important not because it's intrinsically important it's important that through freedom I am able to achieve the meaningful goals of a life so freedom is a means it's not an End Eric Fram who happened to be Jewish but not observant a talet of Sigman Freud who also happened to be Jewish not observant although Freud himself came from a line of rabbis Eric frm once remarked we make a very big mistake when we Define Freedom as being freedom from something Freedom has to be understood as Freedom towards something right or in the language of Aristotle uh you have to look at Liberty as a positive Liberty rather than a negative Liberty a negative Liberty simply means absence of restriction positive Liberty is the creation of a sense of values that gives your life structure and purpose I think I mentioned more than once the beautiful metaphor of the Indian poet Tori um who's not Jewish I don't even know if he knew any juice um he described a human soul like a violin string within every soul is a tremendous capacity to generate music if you take a violin string and it's totally loose it's not attached to any instrument put a free unattached string on your dining room table your kitchen table what sound will you be able to get out of that string nothing paradoxically in order for that string to produce music it has to be tied down it has to be confined it has to be limited it is only within the structure that the music of the string gets revealed a human soul is very much the same it is in the structure of submission that we achieve Liberty otherwise we are just slaves to the Yer Hara we are slaves to whatever passions we have whatever emotions we have freedom is when we have the inner strength to do the right thing even if my urges would pull me in a different direction fact this been well said people think Freedom means I can do whatever I want real freedom is I can decide to do what I don't want to do but I should do and I don't have to do what I want to do in other words it's the other way around instead of saying freedom is the ability to do what I want freedom is the the ability not to do what I want if doing that is not good that's a person who's free a person who's free is a person who says you know I don't have to give in to that urge I'm better than that that's Freedom that's Freedom it's an amazing thing sometimes you see it with with kids and I and I I actually I know some stories where uh the adults were enormously impressed whatever um a story about um a non-religious grandmother takes her K children to a kosher style restaurant in New York or whatever it is because that's the place where she has her Social Circle and the owner like offers the kids candy and you know kids love candy right and the kids uh looked at the at the rapper they didn't see a hexer they said we're sorry we can't have the the candy and the guy went crazy the guy's said I never saw children like this children who who are able to have the discipline he almost became a baluba there he was so absolutely amazed at that notion of I'll turn down the candy if that's not what I'm supposed to do and the like those are those are things to think about so the point I'm making is this is why in the Jewish calendar PES and shos are linked by the Counting of the OM see what the counting of the OM does the counting of the OM says on our day of Freedom or our season of Freedom we think about Torah now kazal made the point in a very interesting way they pointed out that the grain offering of pesak the grain offering which is the Omar offering is barley barley before cholent was invented was commonly fed to animals the grain offering of shos is wheat which is human consumption so moving from PES to is moving from animal Liberation to human dignity versus m you see and that's why we need counting of the OM now you might have thought well GE let me think about the next holiday after this holiday why why should I be thinking about Shas in the middle of PES it's actually a violation of another principle you don't intermingle one Joy with another Joy so I'm thinking about the Om I'm counting towards shos when I'm celebrating pesak the answer is yes shos gives meaning to PES now we see this in another way that that's interesting there is an ashkanazi custom I don't know if Sim practiced this and it's a custom it's not a d although for some reason some ashm take this Mish more than eating matah that is that the first thing that you eat after you finish the matah the mor and the sandwich the K and you're ready for the meal finally so the first thing that is served is a hardboiled egg dipped in salt water again it's a minog if you're watching your cholesterol don't worry about you don't have to have it but it's an old minog that that people have a hardboiled egg at the Seder why is that so so the explanation that's given is a hardboiled egg is also the first food that you give a mourner when a mourner comes back from the funeral from the Leva he's going to sit Shiva so people bring him food this is a very important T the OV should not have to get him self food people bring him something to eat and among the things that are brought to him is an egg and the reason is because an egg is an oval shaped and it represents the wheel of life life life is perceived as a wheel of good experiences and bad experiences difficult times and joyous times and the circular or oval nature of the egg reminds a person that there is a cycle in life that yes there may be tragic and difficult times but there will also be good and joyous times in fact it's reminiscent of the famous medish which I see now they made it into jewelry and the light in which schom the wisest of all people uh asked uh someone asked a Craftsman give me a ring that when I Ponder the ring it will keep me uh in equinity meaning to say I will not become arrogant when I am suc uccessful and I will not become despondent when I fail give me a motto that will sustain me in all aspects of my life and the the inscription on the ring was gam this too shall pass I'm arrogant I'm proud I think I'm the greatest guy come be humble I'm broken I'm suffering I'm defeated things will get better gam Yore and they they may you can actually buy a gam Yore ring they sell it now jewelry and the like so part of the egg is telling the G but you'll ask me so what does have to do with P why why do I have that message on PES the say there is a happy occasion so one answer is this the reason is that the first day of PES always falls out the same day of the week as the ninth of a later in the summer so if PES this year is Monday night Tuesday TI is going to be Monday night Tuesday and therefore we remember especially when we don't have the carbon P we remember theik at the Seder and we eat the egg to give us comfort so it's a very strange symbolism so not only are we bringing in shavuos in the counting of the OM course that's the the next day but we're also bringing in Tish with the eating of the egg there are no coincidences in the Jewish calendar why would it be so that the first first day of pesak the day of Liberation the day of freedom is going to be the same day as the ninth of of why should that be so here is my um speculation I have no source for it whatsoever but it's a thought and the thought is the first day of PES is the only day of the that is not yet connected to the the counting of the Omare because you don't start counting the Omare till day two so the first day is Pure Freedom without a connection to submission to Hashem so maybe the lesson is freedom without submission leads to Tish above and destruction in a sense the egg takes the place of the OM right the OM counting is designed to remind me of the linkage between freedom and responsibility what happens is first night later you don't have the Omare that is the function of the egg remember Tish a freedom that is not connected to submission to God will inevitably lead to destruction and so that once again so we see a number of ways uh in which PES and are going to be linked that freedom without Torah is not only meaningless but it's actually destructive a person doesn't have any they're like a a a kite that that's not being held it just floats out floats up into the stratosphere there's nothing holding it down there's nothing that gives it a structure a purpose you know I mean I don't want to get too far a field but it's no accident that um the teen suicide rate is is relatively high in primarily affluent countries you know it's interesting in very poor countries uh suicide rates are very low because the reason is because when you got to spend the whole day looking for a piece of bread you don't really have time to be philosophical and think about the purpose of life you got some more immediate concerns but precisely precisely when basic needs are more basic physical needs are are more or less met is when people are consumed with angst depression despair anxiety we're hardwired for purpose and meaning that's the nature of a n a Godly soul that seeks connection to the Transcendence seeks connection to the spiritual you know when people try to drowns El in whatever it is in drugs in alcohol in sex in workaholism these are distractions because inside there's an aching need for meaning and for purpose for connection to something greater than yourself and you don't know know without a Torah without some type of guide like that you don't know where to go what to do with it and that can result in suicide as well as violence to others I mean that self-loathing can easily spill into killing others that's why every week in the United States there's some school shooting somewhere and the like but it comes from The Emptiness of a person who is starving starving to fill up the aching void within them they don't know how to do it that is a life of freedom without submission to AES The Emptiness of that life sometimes it's better to be a slave the slave you know doesn't have the time just like the person looking for bread to be distracted with these questions once we're confronted with these questions they're very hard to escape and God forbid they can result in some very very extreme uh consequences right so that was really one point I wanted to share with you the idea that we got to focus on it's wonderful that we're free but what do we do with our freedom again it's kind of analog analogous a little bit to these people who win the lottery right this it's a Well document documented phenomenon that the people who win millions and millions and millions of dollars in the lottery are almost at a 100% rate like totally miserable for the rest of their lives uh they're miserable because number one they're like thousands of people come out of the woodwork you know claiming to be their friends and they misin the money they don't know what to do with the money you know a guy you know a guy's been working as a janitor and you know he wins a hundred million lottery oh I'm going to buy an airplane you know whatever there literally is there's no sense of what my life is about when you don't have that purpose the physical world is not going to satisfy you so I I don't want to lecture too much but as I say we have to think in ourselves and try to communicate to our children but once again you can't communicate to your kids something that you haven't understood yourself fully is what does it mean to be free what do you do with your freedom what's the purpose of things right now again I'm not saying you can discuss all of this at the Seder maybe not but it is something to think about in the course of the Year remember that the Mitzvah to Remember The Exodus is not just P the Mitzvah to Remember The Exodus is every single day and night of the year so this is a discussion you can have any time but P might be a time where you know some point during P you you think about this have this type of discussion what is is the meaning of freedom now one point I I did suggest again I I may have said this a few weeks ago uh is that you see from the Torah that is actually the source of Jewish compassion and Jewish empathy the Torah says many times you shall love the gar love the converts because you were slaves in the land of Egypt actually says you were kind well you were G you should love the g g now let's just plug in our translation here we normally translate GIS convert but if that's the case the sentence doesn't make sense love the convert because you were converts in the land of Egypt we we were not really converts of the land of Egypt so you have to go back to the original atmology yeah g means a convert g means a non-jew converted to Judaism but the literal meaning of g is the stranger the other remember what it was like to be a g in biblical times and to some some some degree even today but certainly in biblical times in biblical times economy was landbased right you owned land that was kept in the family even if it was sold it would go back to your family in the Jubilee year a landbased economy an agrarian economy an economy or a society based on tribal affiliation ruang Shimon Ley Yehuda and now we have a g a g doesn't own lands AAR has no tribal connection AAR has no protexia to use a modern word he comes to you as the stranger he comes to you as the other the natural inclination of a person who is secure and comfortable in his life is he doesn't pay attention to the insignificant people on the bottom rungs of the ladder not that he's goingon to be bad to a g but he's not going to pay attention I'm sitting pretty I got my land I got my tribe I got my clan and whatever he's doing is this his business not my business what is the torah's message the torah's message is when you see people who are powerless you see see people who are weak you see people without influence remember their pain because it once was your pain remember not just the Exodus of Egypt remember the slavery of Egypt remember what it was like to be a slave remember what it was like to be a nobody remember what it was like to be poor and humiliated and Afflicted and Abus used and use that Collective memory as the source of empathy and compassion to others who are going through that same experience this is a remarkable Insight of a lot of contemporary application you know we live in a culture more so in America than Israel but in America certainly it's a big thing where VI victimization or victimhood is almost a professional status everybody is a victim again I don't want to get too political I don't know if any of you came across um the unfortunate incident at Dean Irwin cherin's house in Los Angeles whatever he's a Jewish guy he's not he's not religious at all he happens he's the dean of University of Southern California Lao he's a Jewish guy he actually his field is freedom of speech on First Amendment he's a very eminent constitutional scholar and his wife is a law professor as well so every year he invites students over to his house for a barbecue so he invited like the Palestinian students and the like Hospitality he was very very nice so one woman wearing a heat job gets up and uh she takes a loudspeaker and starts giving a YouTube she starts get recording her self giving an anti-israel speech so uh the professor said please you know stop that or leave my house you're a guest in my home and I don't want you to make the speech in my home and uh you know there's no First Amendment right to make speeches in somebody's home you know go somewhere else and make your speech and the wife I think maybe the wife overstood a little the wife like put a hand on the woman like giving her a little a little push and uh the woman starts saying she made a whole public thing I have never been so abused in my whole life uh the professor's wife you know fondled my breast just a w a wild exaggeration and turning it into like sexual assault and criminal assault and battery and everything else uh so these things you know uh happen as it were uh that one has to realize that being a Jew is still very very precarious in this world so the notion of identifying with the outsider can be taken to extreme and absurd in other words the point I want to make is that don't take a good point and turn it into absurdity yes one of the lessons of Yas MIM is empathy compassion looking at the suffering of all people Jews and non-jews absolutely but don't allow victimization to be taken to absurd so in the United States everybody's a victim of something how does the Torah view victimization so here's what the Torah says if you have been victimized instead of using your victimization as like a shield for entitlement use your Vic imization as a source of empathy and compassion for others and then you're no longer a victim you become a hero now these are dangerous words to say and I I may I may very well get um negative responses because I I I I want to make it absolutely clear there are certainly victims in the world very serious who have suffered sexual abuse emotional abuse we have to have compassion we have to have respect we have to take the steps that protect them there is no question about that and I want to make it very very clear I am not demeaning the legitimate uh you know I'm not defending the the abuses that people have suffered but you see if that victim becomes a narcissistic preoccupation with self- entitlement then you're living your whole life as a victim the torah's message is extraordinarily powerful remember your slavery remember your victimhood remember your pain don't make believe it didn't exist but use that pain as the source of how you help others it's a tremendous idea and it also has a very healing effect on the victims themselves when a victim can kind of go beyond themselves and use their pain as a catalyst to help others they become redeemed they become liberated they can move on they life acquires a purpose okay so again something to think about uh this idea that one of the lessons of is the notion of feeling the pain of others through the empathy of remembering the collective pain that we went through in that connection I'll just end with a with a little story some of you might have read the biography of rakov Yos Herman this is all for the boss it's a remarkable book uh Yakov Yos Herman was the father-in-law of uh well the father of represent shinberg the father-in-law of P shinberg one of the great great K Ador the one who wore 100 pairs of of C he looked stocky you know you would know he looked like a like a football player but he really was quite thin but he wore a 100 pairs of cittas nobody knows why and uh none of his children do it and he told them not to do it but whatever this was his his thing but his father-in-law was rakov Yos Herman who lived in New York and the end of his life lived in erisel he came from Europe to New York and then eventually uh spent the last years in Israel and he was a remarkable person I mean he was religious at a time when very few Jews in America were religious and his daughter ramash Shain Ritson shinberg sister wrote a very loving biography of her father filled with beautiful beautiful stories ramain was a great writer anyway but filled with stories and all for the boss so it's one of those inspirational books of stories of great people that it might be worthwhile to read so she tells a story in the book I'm not uh totally accurate in every fact here but I'm going to give you the general gist of the story she says that her father came to America with his parents when he was like 11 years old or whatever it is his parents quickly saw that they could not make it here so they went back to Europe but they left him alone they thought America was better for him they left him alone in the country as a young boy can you imagine that they set him up with a relative charging rent for a room that was something like uh $5 a week which in the 1920s actually was expensive rent but it was manageable as soon as the parents left the rent was raised to $10 a week at that point little Yakov yose who was working there were no child labor laws in those days he couldn't afford it he got evicted he got evicted Friday afternoon he spent all of chabas in Central Park which granted was safer then than it later became and you can imagine maybe you can't imagine how frightened he was all he had was two little rolls with him he was cold he was lonely he was frightened he was scared his parents weren't there he had no place to go he had no home to live and what's going to happen after shabas he had a job but in those days you know how it was if he didn't go to work on chabas you had to find a new job on Monday you worked from uh Monday cuz Sunday was off you worked from Monday to Friday you were expected to work on Saturday didn't show up on Saturday no job so what's going to be he really was in a situation of abject hopelessness there seemed to be no way out so he told his daughter you know years later that that night was the most frightening scary despondent night of his life but at some point he got himself together little boy and he said he doesn't know how and he doesn't know where or what but he has auna Shala that God will take care of him and then he said to God he asked God for one thing only he asked ask God that he should never forget the pain and the loneliness that he feels tonight that when he becomes successful and he was sure he would become successful he wants to remember what it's like to be bereft of everything so when he meets people who are suffering he will know what they went through this was the prayer of a little boy in Central Park which granted was safer then than it later became and you can imagine maybe you can't imagine how frightened he was all he had was uh two little rolls with him he was cold he was lonely he was frightened he was scared his parents weren't there he had no place to go he had no home to live and what's going to happen after shabas he had a job but in those days you know how it was if he didn't go to work on shabas you had to find a new job on Monday you worked from uh Monday cuz Sunday was off you worked from Monday to Friday you were expected to work on Saturday didn't show up on Saturday no job so what's going to be he really was in a situation of abject hopelessness there seemed to be no way out so he told his daughter you know years later that that night was the most frightening scary despondent night of his life but at some point he got himself together little boy and he said he doesn't know how and he doesn't know where or what but he has MAA Shala that God will take care of him and then he said to God he asked God for one thing only he asked God that he should never forget the pain and the loneliness that he feels tonight that when he becomes successful and he was sure he would become successful he wants to remember what it's like to be beere of everything so when he meets people who are suffering he will know what they went through this was the prayer of a little boy in Central Park The Story Goes that brashem eventually he became successful he was in the fur business and he married a Ritson he married a woman who became his reiton and uh they had a house which not only had all all the visiting Ras of Europe they ate there but it wasn't only great this was a house that was open to people that we would not be very comfortable having in our house people who were mentally ill people who were dirty people who kind of extended their stay for 6 months or longer they just didn't leave at the end of the meal people who were abusive to him and to his wife and when people would ask when the normal people would ask him how can you bear these crazy people he would say I know what they're feeling I know what there's like I know what their life is like I remember it and therefore we have compassion for them we don't reject them because I know I've been there and my say in the depression he lost his fortune as well and he you know then he moved there toel Etc so he had ups and downs even after his successes but he prayed to Hashem that he should remember that suffering and to generalize this point a little bit more part of the idea is that in all adversity there is Redemptive potential in all suffering we don't know why Hashem brought it you now we can't really explain God but we ask ourselves always what can I gain from this how can I grow from this how do I become a greater person from this this is the lesson of to understand that the slavery itself gave us something it's not just believing thean it's the being in M gave us something and that's true for all the many mits that people have you know life can be very very difficult I mean here in Israel we're going through difficulties but apart from the national struggles that we have which are obviously very very significant and of course the national struggle turns into the personal struggle when your own family isn't you know involved but we have whatever challenges we have in many many many many areas and we can get overwhelmed and we can get crushed we can get defeated we can get despondence but the message of is to understand there is a Redemptive potential in all of that adversity and our job is to find the Gula even within the gas fact there's no accident moral says that g and Gula share so many letters he says basically Gula is seeing the seeing the AL seeing God in the Exile seeing God in the darkness converts Galos into GAA and that's really what our our job is to kind of see Hashem even in the darkest moments so I wish you all a and thank you for coming and May niss once again be a time of G on the 6th of Nissan as I said at the beginning we were to Miracles may we be to many many more miracles the release of the hostages shalom in call and [Music] it