Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: Receiving A Personal Report Card from Hashem

my baby [Music] thank you for coming and I hope that your pay suck was uh enjoyable and inspirational tonight's year is sponsored at Refuge Lima for khayam Shimon Ben Elka they should have refurbed social Israel and in aliasm as well as the father and brother of khaya Feingold David mosheb and avram Fishel the father and Jonathan Israel Ben tabithmosha the brother and once again we also have an anonymous donor so thank you Mr or Mrs or Miss Anonymous and finally a special thanks to all who contributed to the Kimberly Episcopal fund the special pesos charity funds Hashem Ivana reached 150 percent of their goal of our goal and was able to assist many more people and all of those who contribute to stucca particularly before pesach should be blessed with all of the bracos that College Park gives in the Torah to those who give give stalker I know that on one hand you know great yamchef I know that all of us our hearts were very very torn by the tragedies that occurred right before the tragic murder of the three women of the rabbi D's family and uh once again what can we say uh we need mashir we need gaula we're living in a world in fact in my own neighborhood this morning I think they're okay but I don't know human exotic neighborhood where I live uh two people were shot they were sitting in a car and they were shot Hashem I think they're okay and let's assume they should be okay but it shows you that the world is a dangerous place and we need the issue at Hashem many of you might have heard the story of Rabbi D an amazing story he came to show in ephrat on the seventh day of pesach and when it was when it was a time to say hello didn't want to sing Halal he felt it was not appropriate because it was such a sad time so he was going through Hollow goes very quickly and ravidi himself went over to the Hazen and he said you know it's a yamta we have to sing and we have to be happy we have to rejoice and he asked the cousin to sing and rejoice just remarkable remarkable way that a person is an habit of Hashem no matter what the situation and of course today last night today we think about a tragedy of even greater proportions we think about the ketoshim of the showa who died in the Holocaust this is and uh once again there are fewer and fewer people who are still alive from that time but there are some and that's very important that we don't forget not not because now again it's important to take a certain perspective about the Holocaust you know Jewish life in Europe for one thousand years is not only about holocausts and pogroms I mean there was kadusha and Holiness and culture and literature and all sorts of accomplishments we have to remember not just the deaths of the Jews but the lives that they created and the communities that they created and in many many ways all of our accomplishments are kind of built building on that this is the famous mashal of the rishonim that we are like midgets who stand on the shoulders of giants a who stands on the shoulder of a giant can see farther than the Giants but only because they're standing on those shoulders um and we have to look at it that way you know maybe we've achieved different things but it's kind of based on that foundation and that what they're very much we have to remember you know it's a funny thing about Israel about Eric Israel that everything is a political question I mean you may know if you've studied your history that the picking this date or this past date as Yoma was actually a matter of great controversy in the early years of the state of Israel and there were a number of great feelings that were hurt because what is the the not this day but on the day that just passed it was the Hebrew date of The Fall of the Warsaw Ghetto and there therefore the events that was chosen to commemorate the shower was the worst together now you have to understand the tension here in the early years of the state and even before the state of Israel right after World War II in 1945 there was a certain aspect of Zionist culture that was not very comfortable with the Jews who were killed in the showa they were thought to be sheep who went to the slaughter people who were passive they were called the gullus Jew the old-fashioned that was ineffectual and Powerless and we want to create a new Jew that's tough and strong and fights back and therefore when they were looking to what event should memorialize the show are they picked one of the rare events when Jews actually aggressively fought the enemy granted they ultimately were destroyed as well but this was an example of heroism now there was no question that the Jews who fought in the wars the ghetto are certainly Heroes that we have to admire and in fact there were great godolm in the wars together who said that sometimes Hashem is willingness to die and sometimes Hashem is willingness to fight so there's no question that the Warsaw Ghetto is an event that we should remember but you see many people were hurt in the early years of the state there were many more survivors and they felt this was almost a slap in the face to the people who were the passive victims of the Holocaust as if somehow they were a failure so there was something Locus there was a technical muklokus because Yama show ah you really shouldn't have sad events in the month of Nisan right so everything is mixed up yomahots we celebrate in the accounting of the Omer and Yoma we commemorate in the month of Nisan right so everything's wrong right if you look for problems You'll Always Find you'll always find something to criticize but more fundamentally there was a fundamental issue about what aspect of the show while do you commemorate the heroism the the physical militaristic heroism or the spiritual heroism now in truth I think I pointed out that in the book of The Maccabees you know the book of The Maccabees written at the time of the shortly after the chanukkah story we have actually there are four books of The Maccabees but in terms of History there's Maccabees one and Maccabees two those are the historical books and the history overlaps it's kind of almost telling the same story twice with supplementary details and the like but one of the things that I noticed and I didn't see anyone make this observation is that although they're recounting the same story in the same battles they do so from a very very different perspective both of the books are religious in orientation both of the books acknowledge God and prayer and and the like that's not the it's not a religious secular dichotomy but within the context of religious the book of The Maccabees one emphasizes military heroism and The Maccabees too gives us the famous stories of martyrdom like Hana and her seven sons who are willing to die so it seems to me that the same Locus that we had in 1948 regarding which aspect of the showa should be commemorated goes all the way back to the chanukkah story in which there were different views whether we should celebrate the military aspect or celebrate the spiritual murder now the amethyst this should not be an either or choice I mean that's really the issue ultimately we have to look at every aspect of what the Jews did as something heroic but different people will emphasize different things and the point is the machlocus regarding Yoma ties into a maclocus that dates with Maccabees one and Maccabees too very very fascinating Maccabees won safer makabim akhat does not have any of the stories of martyrdom everything is about you know the Army and yahudahamacabe and then and all of his military exploits in fact I'm told that for many years in West Point which is the you know the US United States military academy uh reading about The Maccabees campaign was a mandatory part of the curriculum because they had to study Ancient Warfare and it's actually a manual of Guerrilla warfare and Ancient Warfare and and the like and it was relevant to Vietnam because think about this because in Vietnam you had the U.S Army against a bunch of illiterate Farmers you know and yet those illiterate guerrilla warfare were able to defeat a powerful Army and that was very perplexing well that's what happened with The Maccabees right The Maccabees versus the Greeks Etc so safer was a very valuable military Manual of course from my perspective it wasn't only military it was Hashem helping them but still uh that was the difference in emphasis so that's something to think about so once again life is always filled with a mixture of the bitter and the sweets and we have to rejoice in the simplest and we have to cry when it's time to cry as Kohala says and laugh when it's time to laugh and understand that there's much in life that we don't really fully get in this world and maybe in Allah we'll have a deeper and better understanding so side by side with the hageem is we also have these different tragedies that we think about both Collective tragedies individual tragedies and we hope and we pray that the goal that should come and and the almighty God will erase or wipe away tears from all of the faces of the Jewish people uh and a non-leap year because we have fewer weeks in the year so we double up on partials right then there was essentially when it's a leap year you've got an extra four weeks we separate the part certain partiotes when it's not a leap year we combine them certain parts of the oats and this is one of this week that's coming up is one of the combined partials tazria mitsora which in a sense sometimes makes it difficult to give a share because you have double the topics and therefore like what do you choose and the like but the truth is it's not as difficult because both tasri and so are largely cover the same grounds so in a sense it's not going to be that difficult but I want to start off tajria begins with something which is not the main point of my share it deals with the very interesting of child's birth and what's interesting is now these are very technical and a lot of people don't even learn them they skip over them which is really too bad it reminds me of a line in Jane Eyre I think I mentioned a few weeks ago where little Jane Eyre who loves Bible says she loves Genesis and some of Exodus but Leviticus is just too technical for her right she doesn't enjoy Leviticus and I think many many of us have kind of the same feeling but it is worthwhile just to know what the laws of childbirth are because they're so different than what we do today so if you're a woman that's had a baby and you read this levitic you read tasria that doesn't sound like anything I did so let me just say what the Torah says and then I'll just tell you how this was changed impractical observance over the years the Torah says that when a woman gives birth to a boy to a zachar so she is forbidden to be with her husband for seven days and after the seven days you can go to the mix French she can be with her husband and even if she continues to bleed after that point up to another 33 days she's permitted to be with her husband after the seven days for a girl it is 14 days this is very fascinating that the period of separation is double for a girl than for a boy for a boy it's seven days of separation not seven Clean Days Seven Days even if she's bleeding after the seven days she can go to the make fun and then for a girl it is 14 days after the seven or after the 14 even if she's bleeding she goes to the Mikvah and she can be with her husband but she cannot enter the base of miktash or the mishkan until again it's doubled another 33 days for a boy which is a total of 40 days until she goes to the temple and for a girl 66 days so in other words there are two different periods of restriction the seven and the 14 are the restrictions on relations with the husbands the 33 and the 66 don't apply today anyway they are restrictions on going to the base hamiktash now after the finishing of that second period which will be day 80 80 for zachar of day dating and day 40 for zachar so the woman must bring a Corbin in the basement or the mishkan and this is called a Corban yolete now obviously that we don't do today we don't have a basic now if you were to ask why does a woman after childbirth bring a carbon the most obvious answer you would say is well of course it's a Thanksgiving offering for the great miracle of having a child and yet if you look in the Torah the offering the woman brings is not a Toda offering it is a sin offering she brings a sin offering after she has a child why would she bring a sin offering after what what's the sin so Rashi brings from that labor pains can be so extreme that the woman might have sworn in her pain I'm never going to do this again so in the event she made such an oath she needs the atonement of a sin offering okay so the 33 and 66 and the Corban are not relevant today but the thing that is perplexing is the initial period the Torah says after a woman gives birth to a boy seven days later she can go to the mix and be with her husband even if she's bleeding and for a girl it's 14 days well we know for sure any Orthodox person who's had a baby knows that you're not allowed to go to the Mikvah until all the bleeding has stopped and you have counted seven clean days which can sometimes be you know as much as six weeks after childbirth which may be medically advised anyway so you have to understand that although minutogram a woman can go to the Mikvah seven days after giving birth to a boy even if he's bleeding and 14 days after giving birth to a girl even if she's bleeding the rabbis proclaimed that in order to avoid confusion with the regular laws of Nita because the regular laws of Nita that apply outside of childbirth do require seven clean days and in order that people shouldn't confuse regularly needed with childbirth essentially what has happened is we apply the regular Paradigm of Nida to the special situation of childbirth and that is why just as a point of information because if this is not clear to a lot of people that is why what the Torah says is done after childbirth is very very different than what is done practically but when notorious says uh seven days you can be with her husband and death says on the eighth day uh you good brismila so this is the second place in the Torah where the Torah gives us the Mitzvah of circumcision one was of course through avraham and it's repeated in this Parsha by Yom hashmini IMO basor or lasa so there's a lot to talk about I was debating whether I should talk about circumcision or leprosy that was my choice I opted to talk about leprosy which I'll get to or it's a rat but one little digression about Brittany la and that is uh you know I uh today I I I I I give a a share in which is uh a collection of shioram online and we're doing tehilim and today I feel I should make a Sam on it I made a serum and to heal him Tess 119. and that is really a to him that is book sized 119 is by far not only the longest to heal him but the longest peric in all of uh because it has 176 verses because every letter of the olive base has eight sukum Apes beginning with aleph now they are short circum so it doesn't necessarily have the most words but uh a circle beginning with olive eight took him with bass again with Etc so if you multiply 22 Letters by eight you'll have 176. okay so Hashem May the CM and cuff your tests but in The Shins there's a very interesting that is connected to Brit's Mila and it's a famous pasig and it doesn't directly say it's talking about British Mila says I Rejoice over your words as if I found a great treasure now project plot is that this is a general reflection on the Torah in fact all of 119 is fundamentally about the gift of the Torah that is the theme of the chapter that I Rejoice over your Torah like I found a great treasure but Rashi brings out that imrata your statements is not just the Tory in general but it's a specific reference to Brittany lab and it mentions an interesting story that when David would go to the bath house or the Mikvah and David could not wear stitches could not wear it to fill in could not learn Torah could not say brother David felt very vulnerable he felt distant from God there are no myths votes that he's able to do but then he saw the Makoma that says that in your very body there is this sign of the Covenant that God gave you and therefore he rejoiced that in every circumstance he is connected to Hashem and therefore I Rejoice over Mila as if I found the great treasure now Rashi then adds why is the word imratecha your statement says a beautiful reason because most of the Mitzvahs of the Torah are introduced with the verb dibor Hashem but Brits Mila if you look in lechler Hashem El avram by your man so Brits Mila is without getting into what the difference is exactly but at least linguistically Brits Mila is introduced with Amira most mitzvotes are introduced with Deborah and therefore it's medulla kimote this is what Rashi brings a very very interesting magic I do want to point out that the notion that Mila is connected with is confirmed from another source in mcgillus Esther the famous that we recite every mozai but it's from Magilla sester right after Haman was hungry to the Jews there was light and there was simra sasan is also Joy yakar is honor so the gemara in Magilla takes each of those words and connects it to a specific thing they had light that's the learning of Torah that's called light candle and the Torah is a light simcha is yamchev Purim became a holiday a festive day sarson is British Milan now I'm not sure what that means I mean what they're not doing Britney love but apparently there was a renewal of commitment to the idea of britmila so it's very mad is Mila just as we see and yakar honor is the villain because the Torah says actually in an ideal way that when you wear the name of God the Nations shall be afraid of in fact they tell a story about the villagant that um there was a time in his life and when historians still debate exactly what was the cause that he was accused of a crime Etc of not having the proper papers essentially identification and he was summoned to court he was arrested and he was summoned to court and he had a Taoist over his head totally covering his head he didn't want to look at him he didn't even want to look at her show him at all and he's brought into court with him being Thomas over his head and the judge ordered the talents to be removed as we have to see who the defendant is and the villain of God worked fill in the whole day that was his practice so when they removed the tablet and the judge saw the fill in the name of God the judge was seized with so much fear he just said get this get him out of here just get him out of here send him home because he says now if that doesn't work for for most of us okay that's we're not on that that madriga by the way I recognized I am also talking to men and women and uh you might wonder well gee I mentioned two symbols of how powerful they are and both of them are male stuff right they mentioned British Mila and I mentioned fill in that's wonderful but women don't have rhythmilla and women don't wear it well at least they're not Hive to wear to villain right but the short answer is which would require a lot of a much deeper discussion that essentially women are connected to these on a deeper spiritual level meaning to say they're not connected through the physicality of it but they're connected to the spiritual roots that Finds Its expression in their neshama without having to be concretized in physicality so it's actually a higher madrega but it is a more concealed madrega because it is not expressed in in action and therefore because it doesn't need to be expressed in action okay but that's again as they say that's a much longer topic now in connection with this that Rashi says refers to MIMA I just want to mention that there is a miser from the great Rebecca veger in which he says he wants to learn it like Torah just it's referring to Torah not brismila like I touch it the Torah is like a great treasure and he gives him a shout let's imagine a person was taken to an island and the island as far as the eye can see is filled with precious jewels diamonds and rubies and emeralds and sapphires and the person who brought him for the island says you have 24 hours on this island whatever you take is yours but at the end of the 24 hours whatever you didn't pick up is gone so the person is not going to sleep that night he's going to spend every minute every time he picks up a diamond Baruch Hashem another Diamond another Sapphire another Ruby and there's tremendous Joy but there's also a sadness because he knows no matter how much I take there's so much I never got to like I found a great treasure everything I do is precious to me and joyous to me but I do have a sadness because life is not forever and there'll be so much Torah I never got to learn like a treasure and you don't get that in all of my body it is brought down in safarium that the only Torah you will master in Olam is the Torah that you learned in this world so if I learned something even superficially in Allah I will get a deep understanding but if I never looked at it at all in fact that's one of the arguments you know there's a one of the most famous programs in Torah learning is dafiomi right that's where everybody learns that page of of gemara and if you stick to the page stick to the program you finish the whole Babylonian talmudge in around seven and a half years I was even a woman share as well there are women who finish to finish the uh the talmud as well now in the Yeshiva World dafyomi uh we have an ambiguous relationship with it on one hand gee it's wonderful people are learning and people are going to shore him and people are finishing the talmud what could be wrong with that wonderful idea you know Yeshiva people tend to be hyper critical and they say but you know it's superficial and people forget it you know and they do so much a lot you know a whole page is actually a lot of Gamora to learn in a single day so wouldn't it be better for them to kind of learn in depth and learn thoroughly instead of this superficial learning so one of the defenses of duffyomi is at least your eyes have seen it because Concepts that your eyes have never looked at you're not going to get in the world to come if you've seen it if you've eyeballed it then you'll get deep understanding in the world to come right so that's one of the defenses of dafyami that things that you otherwise would never look you'd never know you'd never see it all so in a sense this is a little bit of a segue to the main thing I want you to talk about I want to talk about leprosy or what is called Surat uh Sarat II is a highly Technical and in fact it's quite amazing that more sukim are devoted to the laws of Sarat then I devoted to Shabbos kashras a so you think I mean Sarat okay I mean how how how much was you know how many people got surrounded wasn't the common thing necessarily and the ins and the outs and the technicalities but just look at the pursue most of tajriah after the discussion of childbirth is about Sarat and participate the the two partios are kind of in the same on the same topic uh and first of all as as I'm sure you know the common translation of Sarat as leprosy I use the Standard English translation but that technically is is incorrect leprosy was an older name for a disease that still exists today cause Hanson's disease and uh people are always scared of lepers right lepers always had this fearful idea the leper Hospital Etc but the truth of the matter is the symptomology of Hansen's is nothing is not at all what Sarat is and in fact the rambam who of course was in fact the closest thing to Surat is psoriasis which the words are related uh so rather skin condition and the Ramba made it very very clear and the rambam was a doctor that so that is not a contagious disease it is a spiritual punishment which manifested itself on the skin for various sins primarily Russian Hara Etc and it was not contagious in other words yes the Torah doesn't pose a quarantine on him it's over but people are making a mistake the quarantine Anna Missouri is not based on contagion it's not based on oh he'll give me Saras Saras is not contagious but what is contagious are sins like Lush and horror and the like so he's quarantined to avoid spiritual contamination not because of physical contamination and there's a fascinating proof that Saras is not a health issue the proof is this when a person has Saras he has to go to a Cohen who determines if he's a mitzoah or not and the coin is like the Umpire right what do Baseball umpires say it ain't a strike unless I call it a strike all right that's a famous umpire statement well Saras is exactly the same It Ain't So Raz until the Colleen says it is so interestingly enough there is a mishna that says that let's say got married and it's during chevros and he or his kala wake up and they have this white splotch on their skin that would beat Sarat and then that would have to go into quarantine so it mentions the coin should not pasquan and Sarat till after the seven days of Celebration not tomorrow the simcha similarly if somebody has Sarat the coin says sorry I'm closed come to me afterwards now if we're dealing with contagious disease that makes no sense at all what you're allowing people to endanger the public but the answer is it's not a contagious disease it's a spiritual punishment for sin and Hashem has that for times of joy we wait until we we do that right so the rambam says you see clearly that you're not dealing with contagious disease uh you're dealing with spiritual quarantine now there are many different types of tauras there's surrounds of the flesh there's saraths of the beard they're serastic comes after Burns there's sarath that comes after injuries then there's Saras of houses and sarasa clothes so it's actually very very bewildering but I just want to take one particular Surat and I want to trace it and then try to show you the lessons that we can derive from it and it's harass I'm going to talk about is not Saras of houses and not Saras of clothing and that's the rest of the beard and not surrounds of Burns and not sarasa bruises I'm dealing with plain vanilla no pun intended uh Saras of the flesh which is normal so right so to speak and that is a person wakes up one morning and he sees a white splotch on his skin on his hands at this point he has not yet been declared in Missouri but he is obligated to go to a calling to be checked out Wayne at the white spots and what is the coming looking at well he's looking at a few things number one he's looking at the size of it because it has to have a certain size and number two he's looking at colors because there actually are many different shades of white and some shades of white are not problematical other shades of white are but let's assume based on color and size it's very similar to what a REV does with Nida marutz but again that's neither that's blood this is Sarat let's assume that both by virtue of size and by virtue of color Cohen says Ah I think you got sarath bad news so what what happens I want to go through the process here what happens to this person right now so the is he is put in quarantine meaning he is isolated for a period of seven days on day seven this is going to be a little technical but there will be some good lessons that we get from this on day seven the coin comes back and examines him now there are a few possibilities if that Sarah just disappeared Cohen says go home even if the Sarat didn't disappear but if it shrunk below the requisite size Cohen says go home or even if it didn't shrink below the requisite size if the color changed so it's no longer a shade of white that's a problem go home so one possible outcome is the coin simply sends them home but what if the Nega it's called is still the the size and still the color so the Cohen checks for one of three signs that spell trouble in other words he has this nagat Sarat one if there was a black hair let's say it was on his arm let's say if there was a black hair in the middle of the Nega if the black hair turned white he is upgraded into a definitive material I'll talk about what that means or if the Nega grew larger than it was so the coming has to have a record of how large it was that's a semen of tumor or strangely enough if in the middle of the Nega there's clean flesh meaning let's say it was all white and then in the middle in the middle of it there's a spot of clean flesh these are three things that are called Simone if on day seven any one of these Simone Tuma exists he is then continued to be in quarantine which he cannot emerge from till everything goes away and he has to bring sacrifices okay meaning he becomes a definitive mitsura what if you don't have the sea monetuma meaning the Nega is still there but there are no Symone so he is given a second week of quarantine where the Cohen inspects them on day 14. if any of those see money till marry there he's upgraded to a permanent Messiah until it goes away and he has to bring Corbin out if there isn't a semantuma by the end of week two even though he still has the Surat he goes on me brings some bird offerings but he doesn't have to go through the whole ritual of Surat okay I know there's a lot of information but I think once I kind of give you the meaning of it I think you'll remember the detail a little bit more so again the concept is as soon as he has a Nega he must go to the KOA the coin determines requisite color and requisite size if the color and the size have been satisfied he is put in quarantine there is an inspection on day seven for the presence of one of the Simone etuma if one of the Simone Tuma is present he is now a messiah until that everything goes away and he brings a Corban an animal Corbin actually three animal corbanos if there is not a semen of tumor we quarantine him for another week and then even though he still has the leprosy he still has the leprosy I'll use the common word even though technically it's not leprosy but if there's no simantuma by day 14. he goes home meaning he goes home if there's not a semantuma by day 14 and the three simoneituma once again are black hair turned white the Nega grew bigger or there is clear flesh in the middle of the Nega okay so in Hebrew these are called SAR Lavan expansion of the Nega is called Pisa Young although I understand that the grammatical uh pronunciation is piscion again it's from and the third is called mirchia live flesh in the middle so this is obviously a very very technical type of limit but what spiritual lessons could this be offering us what inner meaning could we extract from these technicalities so let's go back a little bit to the notion of Sarat as being a Divine punishment points out ramban points out that Sarat is actually a gift from God although it's not a gift that we appreciate that much because you know I remember when I taught law school for many years you know so in law school exams are not given periodically there's only one exam at the end of the semester okay so a guy goes through a student's manner a woman goes through a whole course and really has no sense of how they're doing until the very end of the course when it might be too late to correct anything so people always say I wish I had feedback I wish I had a sense of how I'm doing and you know Nevada sashem very much the same thing like how am I doing God I'd like to know like do I what do I need to correct you know but God normally doesn't tell us directly but when there was Ceres you got a report back God said you know something you got to fix now I have to assume although I don't have statistics that not everybody who spoke was I mean is such a common sin the gemara itself says like everybody's initial unless not everybody was a leper so you have to assume maybe again we have no idea we don't have the statistics you have to assume that maybe only well two or two possibilities only the worst offenders got it or maybe only the most righteous got it because God held them accountable even for small sins in other words the comfort is the average Jew who spoke listenara probably did not get Surat even then you either have to be really bad or really good to get Sarah but the ramban points out as negative as it is it's a gift from God telling you what it is in your life that you need to correct and that's why he says Sarat correlated with prophecy when we lost prophecy we lost leprosy because we lost that direct feedback we lost that direct communication from the Almighty so that's the first thing to keep in mind Sarat is a gift from Hashem to tell us what we need to be metaken in our lives now the quarantine is understood in a few ways one I already said that Russian harah is so destructive it can break up families and Destroy communities that we have to isolate the person to kind of give him a message you're a cancer we gotta again not because your condition is contagious but your sin is contagious it can destroy but the other thing is that we want the person to be alone so they can experience the pain that they may have caused right Russian hurricane destroy friendships break up relationships people can feel isolated and lonely we want them with Sarah to experience loneliness so he will know the destructive Power by the way men or women women can be surrounds also they could know the destructive power and finally alone is an opportunity for reflection you know the very term one of the one of the English terms for a prison is penitentiary well the truth is that actually comes from penitence Cuba repentance the idea was originally I'm not sure it doesn't really carried out that much today although in some cases it actually does that you go to prison to make us to change yourself to become a new person to do chuva and the like of course the problem is with prison is recidivism you're taking an 18 year old who committed a crime and you say ah the way you'll become better is will put you in a environment where you're surrounded by people that are a lot worse than you and then I'm supposed to learn how not to follow in those ways right this is strange thing in fact your Abby had a very good point he says the Torah generally does not have a prison system but the closest we do have to a prison system is what you might call City arrest the ear McLeod where if a person killed inadvertently he is exiled to the City of Refuge to await the death of becoming now the City of Refuge is a prison I mean it's a whole city so you're not limited to a cell but you are limited to that City you cannot leave that City if you leave that City the gowell Adam can shoot you dead with impunity so essentially you have this indeterminate sentence so the rep he said pointed out that the RV McLeod had permanent populations in addition to the murderers that is they were levite cities the permanent population of the Year McLeod were levim kohanim and Levin kohanim and levium are the spiritual teachers of Ami Israel now a person goes to the year McLeod not when he commits a total accident if this was mohammish an accident I have no responsibility ear McLeod is for manslaughter meaning I didn't intentionally kill somebody but I was careless I didn't have enough respect for life I went through a red light I didn't stop at a stop sign I was throwing heavy garbage out of my balcony out of my maripath and I hit a kid so that's why there's culpability in other words it's not murder because there was no malice and intention to murder but there was disregard for life so you need to learn you need to reflect you need to do chuva so says the rebbe what environment do we put them in we don't put them in an environment of bad people we put them in an environment of Livia and kohanim and he said the ideal prison would be to create some type of environment where the person would be surrounded with good influences that could somehow make it better now again we're not talking about uh you know dangerous dangerous people who you can't just leave but in terms of a lot of crimes a lot of crimes whether they're Financial crimes even if they're just you know taking drugs or whatever whatever it would be they're not crimes that are endangering other people their crimes and the question then becomes the Ruby was suggesting that prison as we know it may not be the best environment because that will tend to make the minor Criminal into a major criminal that's what's called recidivism the return rate to prison is like 80 if you've been there once you're going to come back again and again and again okay but be it today going back to the Minnesota the quarantine of the Messiah is an opportunity to think about what you've done and YouTube and that's why Hashem gave you that Sarat and that's why you gave you that quality so seen in this way when the Cohen examines you the calling is kind of determining Are you seriously engaged in the juva process or not or are you deluding yourself so the Simone etuma is God's report card right that Sarat is God's report card on the aveira you see monetuma is God's report card on the chuva process how is that so when a person is confronted with sins we immediately go into defense mode we try to come up with defenses we have defense mechanisms and there are three defense mechanisms that a person might have now this applies for all of arrows but it applies specifically to lesson heart as well defense mechanism number one is simply denial I didn't do anything wrong in the case of Western Harbor a person might say it was true which of course is no defense at all but but a person might say to himself it was true I didn't lie or he's a lot worse than I said or he did it to me so I had a right to do it now none of these are valid but these are defense mechanisms the first thing we always do when we don't want to honestly confront our guilt is we try to come up even to ourselves with excuses to deny culpability and deny responsibility one of the terms that we use in English for coming up with excuses is whitewashing so when the black hair turned white God is telling the guy you're trying to cover up your aberos you're not taking responsibility so the Cohen has to say back to quarantine with you because you have not completed the process you need to complete so that is defense mechanism number one second defense mechanism maybe it's not a defense mechanism technically but it's a sense of hopelessness and despair a person might feel in fact this may be the opposite of defense mechanisms I internalize my guilt so seriously that I think I've reached a point of no return it's the opposite almost a person gives up hope a person says what's the use I might as well keep on going because there's no way I could ever change that is signified by expansion of the rats the rat of the leprosy gets bigger so God is telling the person you've reached the level of hopelessness and despair go back and think about this there's always a way out there's always a Derek of chuva there's no such thing as being Beyond The Pale of positive action and positive change so you understand what's going on here meaning the Simone tumor is Hashem giving the coin the ability to determine if this guy is carrying out the necessary introspective sugar presses if there's a what black hair that turned white he's in denial and excuse mode if the Nega grew bigger he's in despondency and despair say nope go back and think about this don't cop out by saying you're beyond help that's again that's an excuse actually it's a different type of excuse the excuse is can't help myself I'm beyond change now there is a third modality which is a little more difficult to Define and we'll call that emotional distancing meaning it's not that I think about my ovarian I come up with excuses and it's not that I'm so overwhelmed that I think I'm a failure it's just I don't want to go there I don't want to think about it maybe because if I think about it I'll get the spot we'll call that emotional distancing meaning I'm not gonna go there that signified by the healthy clean flesh in the middle you're surrounded by the rat but you don't let it penetrate your heart you don't let it you don't let yourself think about it emotional distancing we can call this the Oblivion response so there is the response of denial and excuse there is this response of the despondency and depression and there's the response of emotional distancing and Oblivion any one of those three indicates process is not preceding a pace go back if after two weeks there is no simantuma even though the Terrace is there the Cohen says listen you can now have Outpatient Treatment meaning yeah you still have the surajuva but the process is working you can do it at home that kind of explains why the Simone are correlated now what's very very interesting is you know we just finished pesach and normally this is the Parsha that's red shortly after pesach and if you think about it itself correlates with these three mechanisms that's why Clements is regarded as connected to sin although we eat from us the rest of the year foreign signify something negative so there are three reasons why comments is connected to negativity one is puffed up and it represents Diva arrogance matzah is flat it represents humility second reason is spoils and turns rotten matzah does not right I think there's matzah from asada that they have sometimes you feel getting it at your own seder and the light so matzah represents that which does not spoil it may get hard but it doesn't spoil turns rotten and the final point is that matzah I'm sorry represents inertia you let the water falls on the flower and you do nothing for 18 minutes matzo represents action I got a bake within 18 minutes now if you think about this the three evils of hummus arrogance spoilage and inertia actually correlate to the three simonetuma of mitsara the Whitewater who refuses to acknowledge any responsibility and comes up with excuses that comes from the arrogance and gaiva of thinking I'm above any fault the person who is despondent and that's why the Nega spreads is the rut of spoilage where it starts moldy and then it spreads and spreads and spreads and finally the lack of initiative and inertia comes from emotional distancing I just don't think about my spiritual life so I just gravitate I'll go through the motion sleepwalk and and like so once again you can see that even in the technical the most technical laws of Surat there are important spiritual lessons about taking responsibility for our life now the only thing is that one has to add is that there are three mechanisms that we use that are counterproductive right one is the excuse mechanism and the other is the despondency idea and the third is not thinking about it but I have to say that number three is a little different than number one and two one and two I think it's fair to say are just wrong we do it all the time but they're wrong it's wrong to come up with excuses and it's certainly wrong to lose faith in yourself and your capacity to change but emotional distancing May sometimes be a necessary temporary measure because it is true that there are times in life where we may not be ready to confront a certain crisis and then it actually is legitimate to say now is not the time I don't want to suggest in my remarks that you got to deal with every problem immediately sometimes you gotta put it on the back burner and that's legitimate deal with other things and when you're in a stronger Place go back to it so there is I think enough Kamina there is I think a legitimate difference between number three and one and two there is a Markham in a spiritual life not to deal with certain issues at certain times there is no mark on for denial and there is no welcome for despondency and and the issue so be it is it may uh we're in the period of the Omer we are preparing ourselves for Kabbalah Satora and one of the most important things about Kabbalah Satora is that we take responsibility for our lives both on the Bain Adam lamakam in terms of our relationship to God and Bain Adam our relationship to each other magician will be talking about the counting of the Omer uh in a week or two we'll actually have the Parsha of amor that deals with spiritual armors we'll talk much more about but I wanted to connect some of these of Sarat to both pesach and the period of tabalas so thank you very much and have a good good week by the way uh there's a famous abort that's brought down in Kabbalah the month of eor is coming up and some say that ER is Russia tevos Ani Hashem I am God your healer so the month of ER is said to be a month of healing both [Music]