Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: Preparation for War and Diplomacy

[Music] it's [Music] okay yes today's uh tonight's share is dedicated uh for binyamin israel ben khanita that he should have a refuge leima the talksharkhold israel and all of the divreitora that we are saying tonight should be for the benefit of his refura and the benefit of all holy israel and indeed those who are healthy should also have the success of not getting getting ill again i appreciate the people that are coming and good evening and tonight we will be talking about the parashat shevua the parsha of the upcoming shabbos which is vayishlach but at the end we're going to segue a little bit into hanukkah and then god willing next week we will talk almost exclusively about chanukah uh parties for isla you know the last week's parsha parchesville say was an action-filled parsha you know jakob goes to a loved one's house he's there for 20 years he marries his four wives uh leia and their maidservants bill and zilpah he has 11 of his 12 children the last one binyamin is born only when he gets back 11 of his 12 boys i should say he also had a daughter dina and according to rabbinic tradition each sheave had also had a twin sister that was born with them although that is not specifically there the parsha recounts the birth of the tribes it recounts the difficulties in yaakov's marriage the fact that he had to work seven years thinking he'll get raquel and then he gets leia and then he has to work another seven years for raquel and then the various cheatings and strategies that love unemployed to deprive yaakov of wealth and the miracles that god did to give yaakov an increase in the wealth so a lot of things are happening you know when you read precious three say you're out of breath but finally at the end of the parsha yaakov is finally given the green light to return to eric israel return to the land that he always yearned to be connected to uh indeed there's a very interesting drudgery as i'll have that when he sends a message to asa because he hears that asa wants to kill him and he sends a message with gifts so he says the lashon imlavangarti i was dwelling with love on for all of these years dharti i was dwelling has the same letters as taryag 613 and yaakov was essentially telling asaph that all of the years in love one's house i kept the 613 commandments that's a very very famous russia that rashi brings but the qusam cipher has sakasa that there is a well-known ramban that says that the of us kept the torah even before it was given they knew intuitively what the commandments were but they only kept the torah when they were in the land of israel when they were not in the land of israel because of the holiness of the land they did not feel it necessary to keep the torah in fact this is ramban's answer to a famous question if the others kept the whole torah before it was given well one of the prohibitions in leviticus is that a man is not allowed to marry two sisters polygamy was permitted indeed polygamy the torah does permit but the torah does not allow you to marry two sisters so how could yaakov marry rachel and leia and you can't give me the answer it is before the torah was given because the avos kept the torah even before it was given so the ramban's famous answer is that the avvos kept the whole torah only when they were dwelling in the land of israel and since yaakov married rachel and leia outside of heritage israel he was permitted to do so and that that's one of the reasons why rachel dies shortly after they return to eric israel because at that point he's not supposed to have two sisters as a wife now there are other answers to that question and that's not the subject i want to talk about tonight but the sam cypher says according to the ramban how will the ramban explain yaakov's statement that i kept the 613 mitzvos when i was in lovan's house he obviously did not keep the 613 mitzvos when he was in levin's house the proof is he married two sisters and he was not in the land of israel so here the hassam cipher says a beautiful beautiful thought he says maybe we're mistranslating the word shamarti we translated it as i observed them i kept to them but there might be an alternative translation we're going to read in a few weeks that uh when yosef had all sorts of dreams of the stars bowing down to him and the sheaves of grain bowing down to him his brothers were very angry at him and they were jealous and they hated him because of it but the passage says aviv his father shamar he kept that message in his mind and is in his in his heart rashi says shomar means yoshev um he was sitting and waiting and hoping and yearning when will yosef be raised to a position of greatness so in other words the verb shamira the verb shamur does not have to mean you're observing something it refers to a certain attitude of hope and expectation so the kasam cipher says we can plug in that definition yaakov's statement taryag mitzvos shamarte meaning yeah i wasn't keeping all the mitzvos i wasn't in the land of israel but every single minute of my stay in khutslawarets i was yearning for when i could return to this land and this i'm speaking of course i'm from you shalom and i'm not sure if people hear this lahretz but this i think is especially an important message for those who are not yet here those who are in florida and again a person may have very legitimate reasons i'm not questioning the reasons of anyone who is not able to be here but one should know that even if for whatever reason you're not able to be in herita's realm and of course because of covet you can't even travel here really but every moment one should be yoshida zappa eagerly waiting and hoping when will i have the chance maybe it will be when mashiach comes and i'm yearning for mashiach as we all should anyway but the point basically is wherever your guth is physically situated your heart and your soul should be connected to this land and to this place and this of course echoes the famous words of the great poet yehuda halevi who spent most of his life in spain and according to legend and it may be a legend he finally got to eric israel and he was murdered by an arab horseman right in front of the gates of jerusalem this is an old tradition that we have and his famous words are liby libiba mizrah my heart belongs to the east belongs to eric israel even though my goof is bamarav even though my body is to the west in spain whatever it would be and this is what yaakov is saying now that's really only part of the sentence the way rashi gives the grash he gives the whole sentence in love on ghati i lived with lavan taryag mitzvah marti i kept the 613 mitzvahs moddati this is the next half of the sentence i did not learn from his evil deeds so one interpretation is yaakov is kind of telling asaph in a bit of a semi-belligerent tone don't mess with me even though i'm sending ace of gifts because i was in a hostile environment and i was still connected to the holiness of the land and i didn't learn i was not influenced by love un's evil ways therefore asaph i have certain spiritual merits that you should not yet he's doing in a very nice way very gentle way but he's hinting to asav that just keep your distance but i'll tell you abshad from my own rosh yeshiva the retriever of nari israel rav yakovitz like ruderman sadiq in which he says that instead of yaakov kind of boasting or intimating he has specials yaakov is actually giving musser to himself yaakov was saying i was with this great guy loving this rush i love him for so long why didn't i learn from him because there's one thing you can learn from evil-doers they approach their evil with enthusiasm with geshmach with passion yakov says i should approach my mitzvos with the same passion that he approached his cheating in other words you have to learn there are things you can learn even from rashaim on one level of course you learn what not to do okay that's that's obvious but then the other level you have to kind of take the passion and devotion they have to their perverted causes and apply that passion and devotion to that which is good and therefore yaakov was actually giving himself did i not learn from the evildoers of love and look at how determined he was how many times he tried to cheat me he never gave up right he never gave up and in our rookney as an arab at hashem we also need to never give up but be it is it may yaakov is frightened and the guardian bracha says although god had made a promise to him in the miracle of the vision of the latter that we read about last week but jacob was afraid we discussed this perhaps he sins perhaps he's not worthy of divine mercy and yaakov is frightened and yaakov develops a number of strategies cause i'll say yaakov had three plans to protect himself and his family from asap first plan is to try to send him gifts to butter him up to appeal to his vanity to kind of acknowledge asa superiority on some level to flatter him those are the gifts that he's sending he sends a lot of gifts there is a plan b in the event that asap is not placated yaakov is prepared to go to war meaning the initial response is one of reconciliation if that's not going to work and asa was going to try to kill you you have to fight back someone who's trying to kill you hashgame the hiroglo kill them first and then the third thing that yaakov does which is really the indispensable element for either course of action is the idea of prayer pray to hashem because without tafila nothing works without fila anything we do is going to be ineffectual yeah we can't just stop and we need to engage in diplomacy which is like gift giving or war if necessary we have to do that we need an army we're not on the madrega where i simply do nothing and say hashem heal me hashem give me parnassa hashem give me security give me peace we don't yet live in that type of world tragically and this goes back to adam harisha the curse we live in a work world where we have to work for our parnassa we have to seek medical attention for our health we need to develop a military and a police force yes we need to do that that is what is called hishtadlus but we also have to know that at the end of the day none of that is going to be successful without god that's why i was so hurt and offended and you know i'll judge him la capsuchus by a statement that governor cuomo made in new york now we know the jewish community obviously has disagreements with hume about the coveted regulations okay putting that aside but he made a statement uh about prayer and this and he said says it wasn't god that is reducing the number of sick people in new york god did not intervene in this one god let people die it was our hard work that resulted firstly had nothing to do with the vaccine anyway but it was our hard work that developed the vaccine that is a again perhaps he didn't mean what he said but that is a tremendously arrogant statement yeah a lot of human beings died and a lot of people worked you know endlessly to perfect this vaccine it's a remarkable a triumph really and by the way trump should get a lot of credit for this but ultimately why god didn't allow it to be developed earlier or why did god allow covet i don't know why did so many people die of polio or paralyze the polio in the 1940s and 50s and before and why was the vaccine not developed until the late 50s or 60s i don't know but the one thing i do know is that if we did achieve a success and if we did achieve a bracha and if we did achieve a breakthrough it is not because god was not involved it's exactly the opposite it's because god decided that now is the time that he will bless our efforts with success and again i the vaccine hasn't been tried yet really but as rather hashem it should be successful so this is what yaakov is saying on one hand when you meet the enemy there is diplomacy peace on the other hand be ready for war but know that without prayer everything is patel um everything is nullified nothing is going to work you got to pray you got a job and they say like you know um they're going to get a cup of coffee this is like the psychic praise may i be successful like everything there is nothing which you don't need hashem to give you success things can change in an instant like one of the lessons of kobe and i think we've said this more than once is that we think we live in a kind of a secure world but hashem shows us everything can change on a dime and you can't depend on anybody and anything and you need prayer so the thought that i want to share with you is this when ghazal would look at yaakov's encounter with asa which actually seemed to end well right asaf who initially wanted to kill him with an army of 400 people asap winds up hugging him kissing him he wants to travel with yakov and yanko figures out an excuse maybe not right now we'll we'll meet later rashi says we'll meet where moshiach comes and you'll be defeated etc uh but you know asap seems to have a change of heart jakob's encounter worked in many many ways but when ghazal looked at this they saw this not only as an isolated story but they saw this as a prototype of how a jew relates to a hostile secular culture that often wants to destroy the jew in fact it is said that whenever the rabbis whenever the would have to meet with roman officials either the emperor or the governor the provincial governor in caesarea isseria they would always study parshasvaishla because remember in rabbinic tradition rome is actually considered to be a descendant of asap in fact the roman exile which we're still in because we still don't have the temple they destroyed is called the golos of eddie the gulles of asus it's an interesting question one can delve into this a little bit uh is the ham statement accurate in a literal sense are the romans descended from the some say yes because some identify the as the etruscans who were the ancestral people in italy before the romans and the romans intermarried ninja bred so there's a lot of stuck in rome others look at it in more of a metaphorical way that the spiritual negative energy of rome western civilization comes from the ace of aspect of it but whatever it is khazal did identify rome as edom dome is the red man which is of course asap and whenever they would negotiate with the romans over the conditions of the jews and eretz israel they would always read parshas vayishlach to extract lessons as to how you negotiate with a somewhat of a hostile enemy right so they saw this as a blueprint as a prototype for dealing with secular culture so here i want to suggest in what way that would be that would be the case um and here let me share with you a thought and this is where chanukah comes in a little bit from the great rav shimshin rafal hirsch a little uh biography for a moment rebecca falch was a great 19th century german rabbi and in the mid and late 19th century the reform movement had spread across germany literally like a cancer a hundred years before germany had been a a big makham torah the city of frankfurt it was one of the great great torah communities in um israel you had the pineal yoshua when the great great godot so fair came from frankfurt and the like so it was really a city of torah it was like like lakewood whatever it would be and yet in the course of 50 or 60 years the reform movement decimated destroyed religious life in frankfurt it's quite amazing how rapidly it spread but we even have accounts it's amazing thing uh where a a child and when they became an adult they were writing about their their own parents who were orthodox rabbi and repetition the day that they decided to become reformed jews and to to salmon salmonize that decision they said we're going to go to a traif butcher shop and buy pork and the child actually describes the story how the father and the mother were trembling they were shaking because they had never had trait in their lives but they made a decision they were going to be reformed jews and they walked into the almost like i mean it's almost like they're doing a great mitzvah they're entering the holy of holies of course it's exactly the opposite and they buy the pork and these i mean it's a very dramatic description and the sun describes how his mother's hand is shaking and shaking and shaking but he finally ingests it and suffice it to say as the sun remarks somewhat sarcastically it was easier the second time and of course that's the nature of average so the point you have to know is that frankfurt which was one of the great jewish cities of am israel was totally its religious life was totally destroyed and not only that but legally the reform movement in germany got financial control of jewish institutions so they controlled a lot of money the community really couldn't the few religious jews who were left couldn't do anything so there was a group of only 10 religious jews in frankfort 10 a minion and they had the audacity to invite a very prominent rabbi who already was leading large congregations rabbi hirsch and they asked him if he would become thereof now if you think about that that was an absolutely almost idiotic thing to do it's like asking the rosh shiva of love ponovich or lakewood or mir which has thousands of students to kind of hey i'm starting a group of five students can you become ir why don't you leave me and leave pinovich and come to my little yeshiva it normally doesn't work that way and yet refersh saw this as his life's mission he saw this as a message from heaven and he gave up a large and prestigious rabbinate to simply lead a small little congregation and over the course of almost 50 years see we know refers from his wonderful writings that are still studied but one also has to know what a community builder he was he built the community into thousands of people and his message spread throughout germany and uh he was the one who really restored orthodox judaism torah judaism to the decimated german communities uh his community in frankfurt was destroyed in the holocaust but it got transplanted and the there's a big big german shell and german community in washington heights upper manhattan and that is the successor of ref hershey's shulin frankfurt it's the same name kahau adas yeshuran which was the name of hershey's kahima in frankfurt now the reason i'm bringing this in and again i think the biography is helpful to put things in perspective is reverse was universally acknowledged as a great great man a godot but he actually had a philosophy that was somewhat different than the philosophy of the main torah centers which were in poland lithuania and russia in poland lithuania and russia the great yeshivas right the great toshibas of mir slobodka kamenetz spironovich brisk these are the great great torah cities there was a very strong belief that if you were capable your life should be devoted exclusively to torah study the notion of university the notion of secular education was considered to be destructive worthless no good get away from it we'll call that superficially the torah only response refers had a different school of thought refersh developed a philosophy that was called torah eretz that means torah combined with word worldly affairs that's sometimes abbreviated i like tide t-i-d-e torah in derek and under the hershey and view reverse did not see secular wisdom as something to reject or first said that within secular wisdom whether it's science mathematics or even humanities literature and poetry there might be very very beautiful insights that you can incorporate in your world view and that will enrich and deepen your service of god and instead of rejecting involvement in the world as something that is destructive and negative the first says you can embrace it and bring it in now rehearse was very cognizant that there are dangers there there's much out there that is wrong that is immoral that you have to reject you can't simply have an attitude i bring in everything but refer says on a selective basis and in fact there are two justifications for this one is i can take from that secular world and bring it into my judaism and enrich it but then it also works the opposite way i take my jewish values and i bring them into my secular life so when i'm a lawyer a doctor an accountant a businessman i don't live like a split identity meaning from nine to five i'm a lawyer and after five i'm a religious jew no i have to be a lawyer in accordance with what a religious jew is in terms of my ethics in terms of my integrity in terms of the derek eretz i have uh for everybody i encounter whether it's my clients whether it's my competitors whether it's the other side whether it's the secretary whether it's the janitor you see there's a double movement here there's the bringing in of the secular into your judaism to deepen your understandings and then there's the bringing of your jewish values into your secular life and reverse actually held that that was the ultimate realization of the torah the ultimate fulfillment of the torah is not when you separate from the world it is when you somehow bring the torah perspective because after all the torah envisioned a jewish society in eretz israel and in that society you had to have businessmen lawyers farmers accountants whatever it would be so obviously the torah envisions that jewish people would be involved in all of the activities that modern society needs and that would change of course what those activities are will change with with the time and place and therefore there must has to be a torah perspective in fact this is uh i mean as you know the dominant philosophy of the kharadi world in israel is totally against this and uh and as i say the eastern european model was also against this that's why the kedolum of eastern europe had a bit of a problem with reference they didn't know exactly what to do with refursh on one hand they admired him they saw the great work that he did the great transformation that he affected in germany on the other hand he was espousing a model that they actually rejected so i don't want to get into all of the technicalities here i just want to point out as a result they interpreted refursh in a certain way which is probably not true they interpreted reference to basically mean listen of course this secular stuff is worthless no good counterproductive but refursh is dealing with an assimilated ignorant population this is the best he could have done if our first would have started talking about kolel and yeshiva they would have turned his bat their backs on him so he had to give them a watered down kind of almost distorted view of judaism because that's the only way he could bring them into the fold the way this is often expressed is torah im derek is a bidi ebved and not a live and the approach would be the torah only approach i just want to point out that that does not seem to be what jeff hirsch was espousing where first seems to have been espousing an alternative ideology but of course let me emphasize the obvious torah in derek eritz does not mean torah and worldly pursuits are equal partners here torah avodah sachem is the dominant goal and you're simply using the secular world as ways of deepening your understandings on one level and on the other level bringing the torah into those secular pursuits we didn't many of the greatest rabbis that ever lived have an occupation whether the rambam was a doctor rashi who made one yeah yeah i had a store yeah yes so here you have the differential you get into a lot of subtleties and and that is if refresher's only point was a person should have an occupation so that already we go back to the rambam you know parnassa but refresh's idea was you can learn something positive from these chakras meaning don't just go to get a job but literature there are insights that you can get i'm just building this example a master of could you even learn the torah whether it's the governor you drop whatever it is without knowing astronomy without knowing mathematics without knowing the biology yeah that's a good point in fact there is a quote in the name of the vilna gum who said that for every measure of secular wisdom that you are lacking there will be ten times as much torah that you won't understand and that's why the villenegon himself now bill nagong is the prototype of what is called the torah only right that the village learned torah 18 hours a day and yet the vilnigan was very very proficient in science mathematics and he actually commissioned his students to translate euclid's geometry at euclid the famous greek really founder of geometry uh and he he commissioned his students to translate euclid into hebrew so that people would be able to read mathematical books but i still think there's a bit of a difference because i think the villenegon would limit this with too much to what you might call objective knowledge science mathematics astronomy uh but when it comes to the humanities he would say that's kind of traif you know we only look at jewish things we don't look at else right now refuse brings a very beautiful source for his philosophy and that goes back to the story of noah and again i'm going to segue back to you by isla you'll see how all of this will be connected if you remember when noah got drunk after the flood and his nakedness was exposed and khan was mocking his nakedness and calling the brothers over to look at it so shame and yet the other two brothers they draped a blanket over their shoulders and they walked backwards to cover their father's nakedness without seeing it right the famous so noah gave is shall give beauty it's a pun yep ye yup god shall give beauty to yether and he shall dwell in the tents of shame now in english that sounds very bad but in hebrew it's not bad at all the tense of shame shame is a name so yes shall dwell in the tense of shem maybe i'll say shem instead of shame shem now what does that mean yep shall dwell in the tents of shem refers says this is very very interesting that noah is giving these two sons kham is kind of the excluded bad guy so he's out of the picture but the triam comes from the canaanites come from okay they're they're out but sheim and yates are given two missions shame is given the mission of spreading godliness into the world hashem of course founded the famous yeshiva of shem and aver aver was his great-grandson so shem's mission is to teach the world what you might call ethical monotheism holiness morality ethics faith in god prayer shame himself began the implementation of that mission but the primary bearer of that mission was shames descendants several generations later avraham avina and ultimately the jewish people we are called semites you know semites comes from shem because we are descended from shadow so hashem is given the mission of ethical monotheism godliness and holiness the fs is given an additional mission a complementary mission and that is to generate yofi to generate beauty in the world now remember one of the ephesus children was yavan yavan means greece the ancestor of greece comes from ephesus greek culture above all we would describe greek culture which was a very very high culture as a culture of beauty and this is true in many many ways there is the beauty of sculpture music which the greeks did have art poetry comedy drama i'm not sure if the greeks were into painting i'm not aware of any paintings from there but probably there was some type of visual art there too there is also the beauty of logic mathematics philosophy again although many of us are math phobic but people who are into mathematics often describe it as beautiful elegance right there's an elegance in mathematics there is the beauty even of athleticism the human body the olympics the glorification of what the body can do so yavan was a culture of beauty intellectual beauty artistic beauty athletic beauty and this came from this was a mission this was a legitimate mission to bring beauty in the world but what is nawak saying the beauty of yepus which was carried out to his son yavan is beautiful but only when it dwells in the tent of shem only when its subordinates only when it's mavatel itself to the ethical monotheism of belief in hashem and submission to morality and ethical constraints meaning when the beauty becomes an end in itself whether it's physical beauty intellectual beauty artistic beauty athletic beauty whatever it is when that is separated from the tents of shem and it's no longer seen as something that augments and deepens your service of god then it becomes corrupt then it becomes degrading then it becomes sinful then it becomes another form of idolatry in which you're trying to create a competition with god and not only that it ultimately becomes destructive in some ways this is even connected to uh nazism uh nazi germany officially uh was a christian country but not really the roots of nazism are in paganism uh they employed pagan symbols uh essentially i mean you know god was invoked sometimes just as an aside but it was not at all connected to the ethical monotheism of christianity which in turn is based on judaism i know people don't like the express most people do it the judeo-christian ethic uh that's a very incomplete and misleading phrase but but on one level it is accurate dignity of man etc immorality at least on that level there is a sadhashaba in which christianity did derive some truths from judaism although they were destroyed in that sense nazism was very very there was a very big glorification of beauty i mean if you ever see the pictures of nazi rallies you know kind of very impressive the flags and the uniforms and the discipline and the dancers and the singers yofi things were very pretty i mean i hate perhaps to describe nazism that way but it was a beauty that was totally divorced from any moral vision of submission in fact it's so fascinating that hitler hitler had a fairly deep understanding of what judaism was he knew a lot more about judaism than many jews did he knew that judaism limits your power judaism says just because you're strong you cannot oppress the weak just because you can do something doesn't mean you may do something he understood that the great contribution of judaism in the world was to put ethical constraints and human autonomy that's a pretty deep understanding of course he hated that and that's why he hated judaism and he hated christianity because he didn't want limits he wanted there to be unlimited power whatever you can do you should do oppress the we conquer their land take their property you see he understood judaism very well and he hated it in fact a lot of his hatred for the jewish people is ultimately a hatred of what judaism represented to the world and he writes this in mankind he's very very open i mean it's an amazing thing hitler was thought before 1933 because there was thought to be some isolated lunatic who would never get past dog catcher or whatever whatever or whatever it would be but he wrote in mineconf when he was a nobody exactly what he was going to do and rahman al-islam he did a lot of what he said he was going to do and this is this is it so what hersh is saying when we look at what greek culture represents aesthetics beauty the torah does not say it's something bad it is a blessing that noah gave to us and it's a mission that noah gave the efforts carried out by yavan but it becomes good when it's brought into the tents of shem but when it's separated from the tents of shem it can actually become a demonic destructive force so reverse use this verse as the predicate of his philosophy that we can and should embrace what is good in the world because that is also a blessing of god that can deepen our connection to him and deepen our service of him instead of rejecting everything that is outside of the four walls of the beta matters now again refers did make the point over and over again that everything has to be in the service of hashem and torah these are not co-equal things and refresh also acknowledge that there are dangers that sometimes you might incorporate corrosive negative elements which you have to be very vigilant to keep out of your life keep out of your philosophy and the lack so based on this based on refresh i i'd like to suggest that maybe these are the three things that yaga were doing that these are metaphors for how you respond to a secular culture a secular life yaakov's encounter with asap how do i respond how do i relate to a culture that is so different than the torah that's antagonistic to the torah and the suggestion is you've got to incorporate three strategies it's not a one-size-fit-all it's not monochromatic giving gifts is a symbol of welcoming right when i give you a gift i'm welcoming you so strategy one is be open to the good in these cultures and bring it in don't reject everything understand as our sages have said if someone tells you that there is wisdom among the nations of the world come in believe them torah they don't have but a great deal of wisdom they do have um many many examples of course uh ravi poston mentioned the example of the rambam learning medicine of the villenegon with mathematics uh the but in a more recent example we have vulba who was a great great balmooser that at one point when he was a young man he was stranded in switzerland during world war ii which was one was a neutral country so in switzerland was a fellow a non-jewish man jean piaget piaget was considered to be the greatest child psychiatrist in the world he was an expert and his particular interest was how do children develop a sense of morality right and wrong right and that's a very important question because all of us want to develop in our children a sense of right and wrong and revolver who was a student of musser which focuses on improving your character he actually apprenticed himself to piaget to kind of understand how human beings develop an intuitive sense of morality now piaget was not based on the torah in any in any direct way he was not jewish but ravoba thought that from psja he could get insights that he would apply in his mushroom teachings ravarin lipstenstein the corner of raqqa was a great rosh yeshiva in the dutilium world he was the son-in-law of rabbi joseph sullivan ravaran literature was a big thomas racham and rosh yeshiva for many years but he had a phd in english literature from harvard university and his thesis was about i believe connected to john milton's paradise lost now if you uh know uh what paradise loss is about i mean it's essentially a story about the fall of adam from ghanaian but it's really full of christian imagery it is really a christian piece but he saw that he was able to kind of extract from all of the stuff that we could not accept certain ideas that helped him in his abode of hashem right so there is this concept of some things you can welcome but we then have the second stage waging war in other words metaphorically what i'm suggesting is the idea that yaakov gave gifts and prepared for war expresses exactly the kind of double response we have to have to the culture of the world there are things we can embrace and things that we have to totally reject and either respond standing alone [Music] is not a good response because if you have a response i reject everything that's secular or you have a response i accept everything that's out there either way you're making a mistake now i will tell you the truth if you had to make a choice between rejecting everything and accepting everything rejecting everything is probably a better choice because accepting everything will poison you so much meaning if i reject everything secular so i'm limiting myself my judaism is not as rich it's not as deep it's not as colorful okay but at least i'll be a good jew if i accept everything then i'm going down the rabbit hole because then abortion gay rights you know i'm okay you're okay transgender that gay rights is an old it's not even an issue anymore now we're talking about uh transgender a whole whole new set of silence and and the like so i respect a person who basically says i will try to limit my connection to the secular as much as possible because frankly we're afraid we're afraid that those influences may be poisonous and that is a real concern but you need to understand that's not the optimal jewish way that is the lesser of two evils in other words i'm going to reject everything because the risks of infiltration are too big i got it i respect it but ultimately the highest and richest form of avodah is when you can take the goods and bring it in and at the same time repel the negative and that's the idea of why yakov has to engage in the strategy of both milkhamma waging war and giving gifts to welcome things to reject things now how do you know what to accept what you reject that's step three you gotta dive in you need a lot of divine assistance it's not an easy thing to do and as i say maybe an individual family might decide that we're not capable of that decision again and again i i as i say if you have to make a choice that is the better choice to make if it's neither or a decision it's better to err on the side of rejecting but at the same time there's also another element here every child is different within a family canoquelinaro p d'arco a child may have a certain interest in astronomy in medicine in science and math and poetry or music you have to be careful as a pedagogical matter not to shut off those avenues of expression because that's kind of where his soul is beckoning you see so this is why yaakov employs multiple strategies because yaakov is reminding us that our encounter with the world is not a fight or flight choice it involves an integration a synthesis a harmonization and that's a difficult skill that takes wisdom that takes discernment that takes judgment and the like so uh we know that mozai shabbos when shabbos is over in the amidah of arvids we recite abdullah we recite that god separates between the holy and the profane now in which bracha which blessing of the amidah is the havdallah placed it is placed in the blessing about wisdom and knowledge so the gemara asks why do you put abdullah in the blessing about wisdom and knowledge and the gemara's answer is because without wisdom and knowledge a person is not able to make separations meaning to be able to discriminate to be able to identify which is good and which is bad takes a great deal of wisdom so sometimes i might have to throw out the baby with the bath water so to speak but that's too bad i'm losing a baby right so it takes a great deal of wisdom and uh but i think ultimately this is kind of a mission that we should strive to achieve now the reason i'm connecting this to hanukkah is the following and again i'll have to i'll continue this next week the typical understanding of chanuk and this is very important is that although chanukah was a military struggle against the oven and that military struggle culminated in political independence of a jewish state the hasmoneans established a jewish state that lasted for more than a hundred years until the romans came in so you could look at hanukkah but i'm i'm not dealing with the candlestick i'm talking about the military victory you could look at this as kind of a military victory re-establishing jewish sovereignty similar somewhat to the war of independence in it was like a revolutionary war to overthrow foreign oppression you can look at it that way but it's very clear from the alhanism prayer that we say on hanukkah that although this was a war for political independence it was not undertaken for political purposes it was undertaken to be able to keep the torah that antiochus institute a policy in which jews were not allowed to keep mitzvos and the hasmoneans fought to throw off the yoke of oppression why not because they just wanted political independence they wanted to be able to keep hashem's torah and they were willing to risk their lives to keep the almighty's tower that's why the al-anism emphasizes over and over again that the goal of the ivanim was to make you forget the torah lahaviram to take you away m from the laws of god's will that's very important chanukah was not about political independence it was about religious ability to keep the torah the war was a means to that end that is why by the way uh the malchus of the khashoggi had kind of a tragic ending because eventually these the the hasmonean kings became persecutors of the and they became the very enemy that they overthrew it's quite amazing in fact it's also such a uh paradox that you know the the israel kind of olympic analog is called the maccabee games it's i mean the maccabees were fighting against all of those elements of greek culture so typically what you're going to hear in every yeshiva schmooze and again it's accurate i'm not saying it's wrong is that this was the war against yavan yavan represented the culture that was antagonistic to god and the hasmoneans overthrew yavan and that of course is true but the point i want to make is it is not inevitable that yavan is totally repudiated the yavan that separates from the tense of shame becomes a destructive evil force that needs to be eliminated but that doesn't mean we reject the beauty that can be within the oven rather our goal is to take that beauty and bring it into the tents of shem and have it augment our connection to hashem and our jewish identity the minori in the temple didn't have you know eight that had the three on each side they represents the six branches of wisdom yeah that that's absolutely correct uh that in the ancient world there was a kind of six branches of wisdom i always forget what they are but there's mathematics there's rhetoric they're different uh astronomy they're different types of and what's interesting is that all of the wicks of the six have to go to the center shaft of the menorah which represents god and the torah meaning all of the are useful and good when they are employed in the service of hashem so when we talk about chanaka as a war against yavan you have to redefine it you have to tweak it a little bit it's not so much a war against the oven it's a war against the yavan that does not dwell as a subordinate force within the tents of shem but when it dwells within the tenth hashem it then becomes something good and something positive and their avodah hashem can be enriched by those insights and by those obviously that's true for hard science in which astronomy and mathematics are necessary to understand the torah but even in elements of humanities there are certain unders like revolver and uh jean-pierre dr piaget there are ways we can understand life by looking at the collective wisdom of others and of course a very very current example we just nifter a few weeks ago i think we already spoke about uh rabbi jonathan sachs lord sachs uh and he of course was an exemplar of the modern example of the person who drew on all of these to convey the message of judaism to audiences who would otherwise not understand what that message is and that's kind of an example and a model for all of us to try to follow in our albeit in our greatly diminished way so that was my message for tonight i actually had more to say but i'll carry it over to next week i wish you all a shavua tov and may this hanukkah which is upcoming be a source of great light and redemption and may it be the light that shines through the deepest and greatest [Music] darkness [Music] here