Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: The Fundamental Rectification During The 3 Weeks

my baby [Music] thank you for coming and tonight's cheer is a dedicated a refresh Lima for khayam Shimon benelka and Eliza khaya batleya may they have a report Israel and uhm and rubyankov Ben reptv as well as the late mother of Jeremy Bernstein Sarah basilia and we have a special dedication by Mitchell and Jeffrey Guest House on the occasion of the 20th the yard site this coming Sunday the 27th of Thomas of their father Mr jackass he was a holocaust Survivor who devoted his life to helping call Israel by his personal involvement in multiple yeshivas shows hospitals Jewish organizations and Medina Israel and again all of the people whose yard sites are being commemorated May the Merit of the Torah that we're learning uh be uh nilo nishama for them in Canadian so this week we have double Parsha it's actually the biggest Korea Satora of the whole year it's partios Matos parshus Masai so there's a lot of sukin and indeed there's a lot of different topics so it's going to be very very difficult to pick and choose by definition well we're never able to cover everything anyway and Homer in a week like this we will not cover everything but I want to talk a little bit about the three weeks and then connect it to the partios that we are reading we know that starting last Thursday the fast of the 17th of Thomas we have three weeks of the Year going all the way through Tish above in which we commemorate we contemplate we meditate on what it means not to have a basa mikdash and which really means not to have the Shekinah within us or within our myths and what we can do to rectify it's very very important that it's not just mourning about the lack of a building it's trying to resolve what we can do to be miss talking the idea of korban I know that um the Italian says the following idea every generation in which the base amigdush is not rebuilt is as guilty as the generation in which it was destroyed in other words you shouldn't think oh those Generations were So Unworthy that the temple was destroyed we're not righteous enough that we get it back but we're not as guilty as them he says no every single day the basic is not rebuilt it is as if it is being destroyed I know that Robert I mean it's based on the yushami but he used to he used to often mention this teaching in a very graphic way he would it would sometimes bring him to tears often bring him to tears in which he would say that you have to feel that you're standing in front of the base on miktash and it is mamish burning in front of your eyes you know we don't really understand that because we never experienced a world with a base on mikdash but that's what the Irish Army is saying it's being destroyed every single minute that we don't try to rectify the reasons for its uh for its Urban so I want to share with you uh three thoughts relatively quickly foreign regarding the idea of the three weeks first of all he points out this is observation number one or correlation number one that just as perkiavo says the world rests on three pillars three positive pillars of holiness Torah learning of Torah a Voda Divine service acts of loving kindness so too we have three destructive factors that take kadusha out of the world and these are this is also in perkiavos this is the statement of Rabbi Allah kina's jealousy Envy taiva is excessive Lust For Pleasure and covet the need for ego arrogance self-advertisement foreign they take a person out of the world and they are the showers they are the roots of all of the averos that we do in fact refuto correlates the three Cardinal loveros of murder of odazara uh Gili Araya sexual immorality and murder Shri krishnam and be correlated to kidnot type of a cup but he says jealousy can culminate in Murder very easily in fact many murders happen because I'm jealous taiva of course correlates to sexual immorality and a votazura he says car relates to gaiva because when man makes himself his own Idol He makes himself his own God self-worship that's idolatry and therefore he says about Azara giliary are symptoms of deeper character flaws so I can look at myself and say oh I'm not guilty of avodeizara I'm not guilty of guillerios I'm not guilty of Shri krishnam well maybe you don't have the externalized symptoms of them but the root causes of Kina jealousy type of lust covert an incessant desire for ego gratification that's ever present one has to be very very Vigilant about those meetings they're a cancer that can spread and destroy a person says one idea of why aravalus over the horben are mourning over the Temple's destruction is spread over the three weeks is because we have to work on these three basic character flaws each week so to speak devoted to emphasizing one of those meetups and that's why we understand that requires that we rectify the Temple of ourselves remember what the Torah says when the Torah commands us to build a tabernacle to build a temple the language of the prasek is vyasu limekdash make for me a sanctuary so I will dwell in their Miss Ile say it doesn't say it does not say vishwakanti I will dwell in it I will dwell in you yeah we have to make our hearts and our soul a dwelling place for God the physical betamic Dash is simply a Divine confirmation that Hashem is dwelling in our hearts and on ourselves when our hearts and our souls are filled with jealousy with taiva with covet with arrogance there is no place for God's presence to rest and therefore there can't be a base of mikdish because if you don't have if God is not in US then God is Not There of course Hashem is of course everywhere in theory but at least in terms of the revelation of God's presence we don't Merit them so that's correlation number one correlating the three weeks to a tikun a rectification of the fundamental flaws which are the roots of all that destroys us destroys the world and vanishes I'll say the manifestation of godliness in the world not not the essence of godliness but the manifestation of godliness so that is very quickly how are number one number two rev sadak focuses on the three half Taurus it's interesting that normally hazal don't tell you what have Torah you have to read for aparsha that's why you have different Customs Ashkenazi inspired him sometimes unique men hug him because as far as the gamara is concerned as long as your haftore is connected to the Parsha communities could choose their own thing so there was a lot of diverse there is a lot of diversity among communities about half Taurus but there are a few have torahs where the gemara itself says you gotta do it this way and among them are the three haftaros before the ninth above which are called the three haftoros of puranias paranius means catastrophe or tragedy followed by the seven half Tauros after teacher of comfort that's called the Shiva dinakanta the seven of comfort and that takes you all the way to Rosh Hashanah so here we're no longer connecting it to the Parsha we're connecting it to the time of year there are three half torahs of tragedy that we read during the three weeks and then we're going to have bezratt Hashem seven of toros of comfort and here the gemara does mandate what to have told us it'll be no difference we gotta follow what the Gomorrah lays down and the first tough Torah that we actually read last Shabbos is begin is the beginning of the safer year Mio and it's called divreirmio the words of your Mio first chapter the October this week is peric base of your Mio and it begins listen to the words of God and the third half Torah which is always the Shabbos right before Tish above is from peric aleph of the Novi Isaiah the Navy and that begins with the words the vision of yeshail and that's why the Shabbos before the ninth of is called Shabbat Zone by the way the rabbi used to say that the reason why it's called Shabbat khazan is on this Shabbos before Tish above every person should try to have a vision of what a base on mcdush would look like and what a world with the base on mcdush would be like you have to visualize it because when you visualize it in some way even though our visualizations may not be correct that makes it more real to you so RAF sadak says let's just focus on the first words of the hafta have Story number one talks about speech give me a words of your meow have Story number two talks about hearing shamia have Story number three hazon talks about vision so it's like the saying goes although it's a different order he says speak no evil hear no evil See No Evil and this is a very interesting progression although it may not be the progression of the popular saying and that is the first thing we got to do is we have to control our power of speech is very very powerful it says in mishlay her mother's life and death are in the hands of the tongue plastic in Proverbs the medrish even gives us a story about this the medrus says that all of the limbs of the body we're discussing I don't know exactly how they were discussing it they were discussing who is the most important so the hand said we're the most important without the hands you can't scrap things you can't do things the leg said we're the most important without the leg you're not able to walk so the tongue said no I'm the most important so they laughed at the time against the measures they laughed at the tongue because they said tongue you don't even have a backbone you can't even sit up right you lie prone what type of power do you have so the tongue said I'll show you so um they come to the king the person this is a an officer of the king whose limbs are discussing this so he comes to the king and he says to the king in the in the language good morning Mr dog good morning dog good to see you today because I'm a dog so the king says you know execute this man what type of crispa is this and then the man explains oh I was born in another country and in my language the word for dog in this language means uh wonderful great master so the king forgave him so the tongue then says to the other limbs you see I could have gotten you killed and I was the one that got you off the hook death and and life is in the hands of the time but here's the thing that you need to understand it's not only what I say or what I don't say that can kill me but the death and life of other people depends on my speech now death and life don't only mean physically dead or physically alive what's really being communicated is that with your speech you can build people up and give them life and give them courage give them resilience give them hope give them faith in Hashem and faith in themselves and your words can also destroy a person is very very profound now all of us know there are laws against Russian Iraq okay but the point is not to be silent that's a big mistake the point is not well I'm not going to say anything because I don't want to do Russian Harvard if that's the case you're not using your speech you're just ignoring your speech use words but use them in ways that build people instead of destroying people you know the old saying that our parents might have taught us at least when I was growing up you know it's an American saying or an English Saying sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me natural if my bones get broken by Sticks and Stones certainly if I'm young you know young people tend to heal pretty fast it's gonna heal probably gonna heal but the pain of humiliation the pain of embarrassment pain of Shame can last a person an entire life I remember hearing an interview with Richard Nixon who had already left the white house so I mean obviously a lot of things that happened to him and you know people have actually through this in terms of the people who came after us people actually missed Nixon in some ways he kind of managed to pull off a relatively successful Rehabilitation in people's eyes before he died but he was discussing his life and I was amazed He was discussing sixth grade taunts on the playground now here we have a guy in his 70s who was president of the United States twice who had to resign in disgrace because of Watergate and the thing that's still in his mind is what happened all those years ago so the idea that death and life are in the hands of the tongue is a reminder to use our words in good ways because words are powerful and like nuclear energy words can be used to destroy or like nuclear energy words can be used in very very positive ways so the progression of the haftarus is very logical first your mataken and that might be I mean that's hard that is a challenge but since that's your speech that's easier for you to control then you move not to have negative inputs from others in other words Shemia even though you might think of it I can't control what's being said around me but still you try to distance yourself from that but the third step is most interesting change your perception see and this is important we often think that the laws of lush and Hara are primarily concerned with controlling your speech but in reality if you're filled with negative thoughts about people and you're just biting your tongue that's that's only going to work for a short time because eventually you're going to explode the real key changing your perception of people see them in a good way to see them in meaning the teacon of the koak of Deborah ultimately comes through changing your vision changing how you view people in that way so I just want to point out going with last week's October right so that's the second correlation in which you have uh tikon hashemiah and then of your perception of reality but connecting it to last week's teakin of Deborah we actually see the immense power of speech from the first subject in this Parsha this partial the first of the two partiotes is persius Matos and parches Matos introduces the concept of making a nether or making a shavua and I'll explain in a moment the difference that when you make a nether or a shavua the Torah says you may not profane your word say me PIV a whatever comes out of your mouth you must keep now what is the difference between a Netter and a sport these are two types of vowels I mean the English translation is a shavua is called an oath a nether is called the vowel what does that mean exactly so the gemara actually says it's linguistically a different way of expressing something let's imagine I decide that I can't I shouldn't eat chocolate anymore [Music] but I don't have the willpower just to refrain from not eating chocolate so I can say the following a person that makes an oath he says a person says I'm just saying he's part of learning so this does not count as an oath that's the short I swear that I'm not going to eat chocolate that's called a shavua a net air is chocolate is prohibited to me so one is expressed in terms of the object and one is expressed in terms of the person be a semantic difference but it actually has an interesting how lucky difference let me give you an interesting fascinating difference if a person swears I'm not going to eat chocolate it makes no difference if he does it through Netter or he's Bound by it unless he goes to a bait in that can give him annulment but let's assume a person swears that they're not going to do a Mitzvah that's a serve a person swears I will not eat matzah at the Seder so that Allah is very clear you cannot make an oath that violates the Torah your oath is null and void because you already took an oath at Mount Sinai to obey God's Commandments and eat Matson pesach so if you took an oath in violation of that first oath the second oath is not binding not only that you committed the sin of taking God's name in vain because when you make an oath you make it in the name of God however strangely enough if a person didn't say I swear I'm not going to eat matzah a person said oh matzah is prohibited to me he did it as an editor as strange as it sounds a nether is effective even if it means you're not going to keep throwing your Apple you're obligated to go to a baked in and get the nether Renault but until you get that nether Renault you do not eat matzah because that's not a direct contradiction in other words when I say I am not going to eat my so I'm contradicting the Torah when I say matzah is Usher to me I'm not directly contradicting so this semantic difference has some very significant how lucky differences but the larger point I want to make is what a Netter does is another is extraordinary because they nether or gives you the divine power to effectively add prohibitions to the Torah God did not prohibit you to eat chocolate God did not prohibit you to eat apples but you have the power to turn this apple into a piece of pork you have the power to make it closer think about it if I eat chocolate before I made the nether or the shavua it's totally mutter if I eat it after I made an iteration it's as bad as eating trafe who made a traif was it God it was not it was you so what does a nether or teach us the power of speech to create realities in the spiritual world comes out very very powerfully when we contemplate the aspects of Nether and now at the end of the second Parsha we read there's another very interesting application of the KOA speech in the second of the partios we read about the ear McLeod these Cities of Refuge what is this this is a very unique idea that when people have killed without malice they've killed inadvertently but negligently if it's a total accident they don't have to go to the amicleta but they killed in a manner that to use a modern legal term we would call it manslaughter kind of a negligence they didn't stop at a stop sign they didn't look both ways they threw maybe a garbage can out of their morpeth than they'd hit a child so you're not amazed you're not a premeditated murderer who did it on purpose but you did it in a careless way so the toilet provides Cities of Refuge where you can go and you must go to be protected from the blood Avenger who is given permission to kill you so if you wander out of the city he could kill you but as long as you're in that City you remain protected by the way here too little baba turabi has a very very nice point he was once discussing the idea that in Judaism there really is not a prison system so for example if you're a robber the penalties are Financial we have sacrifices but the notion of sending somebody to be incarcerated does not really exist the closest model to incarceration is the City of Refuge now the City of Refuge it is uh it is incarceration in the sense that you're not allowed to leave a city but it's a whole city and keep in mind that there's a total of 48 cities that are already McLeod um yeah and all of them were levite cities meaning there was a regular population the air mclat was not just criminals the year McLeod with the levite cities that were scattered throughout the land of Israel and they would accommodate the people who murdered the showgake inadvertently so the rebbe pointed out that the single biggest problem in prison is you're taking a young kid who's 18 years old who did a crime and you're putting him with hardened criminals you're putting him with rapist you're putting him with murderers so who are his influences in life who are the ones that will direct him totally bad and that's why the recidivism rate the return rate in prison is very very like 85 meaning once you've been there once you're going to come back again and again and again because you will become habituated to more and more crimes and the crimes will get worse so what might have started off as you know a marijuana cigarette in the days when marijuana was illegal can turn into murder and everything else because people are influenced by their environments so here you take the sinner who was careless and callous and indifferent to life and you remove them from society so he should contemplate his ways and do chuva who do you put him with you put him with the most righteous of claw Israel the levium the teachers that sadika that will teach him reverence for life and therefore any type of penal philosophy should be geared not towards punishment but towards creating an environment where the person will aspire to become a better person and be given hope so Ori McLeod teaches us some valuable lessons regarding imprisonment but going back to the Arabic lot there are 48 array mcleods 48 and the people that go there are Those Who Kill the showgake and if they leave the city they um are subject to the goal hadam the blood Avenger a relative of the guy that was murdered who has the right to kill them right he has the right to kill them if they wander outside of the city technically they have two thousand almost around the city so technically there's a city and they're given a safe Zone 2 000 cubits around the city but if they go beyond they can be killed now how long does a murderer stay in the year michlet this is a very very strange sentence this is what is called illegally an indeterminate sentence they stay until the death of the coming now that's kind of strange if the coming God all dies one day after they come to the year michlet they go free after one day if the calling God Will dies 50 years after they go to their mikla they stay in the ear McLeod 50 years if they die before the coin guttle they are buried in the ear mikula to be relocated after the Cohen dies to be buried in the family plot or whatever it is a very very strange sentence whenever the coin got all dies El goes home and the goel hadam can no longer attack him now obviously he's still at risk because the girls I might want to take revenge but the point is the governor is a murderer at that point so in a way the rosette might almost prefer to remain in the air Michelin because once he's out he'll have to hire his own security guards in case they go let them is really vicious and and the light now the missionary courts that because of this the mothers of Colleen guttals used to bring food packs used to bring treats to the people in the ear mikla in order that the people in the air michelad should not pray that the colling guttle should die give them treats right so so if you've got trees from this uh sweet the grandmother you know you're not going to pray that her son should should die because she brings you chocolate chip cookies every week and everything everything else so the talmud asks the following question the implication is that if they would pray it would somehow be effective meaning theoretically they have the ability to pray that the Cohen guttle should die why would that prayer be effective the calling guttle is not guilty of anything why would they be able to pray that the coming would die so that they have to be bribed so the talmud says becoming God all is responsible for the deaths because he's the spiritual leader of the generation and he could have prayed that these accidents shouldn't happen on his watch now this is pretty funny the actual murderer can pray to God hey because the colangado didn't pray enough I did what I did therefore punish the going Gunner I mean one might say hey you're the guy that didn't look both ways but he could have prayed that I should look both ways and that's why the Cohen guttle is vulnerable because he should have prayed now let's ask ourselves the following question this is a little bit complicated if we were if we would be talking about earthquakes tsunamis natural disasters you can pray that God should not bring natural disasters but here we're talking about human sin in other words every road say I've committed a sin he didn't look he didn't care now your decision to be careless unthinking negligent is a function of your free will now don't we have a cloud everything is in the hands of Heaven accept the decision to fear God in other words I shouldn't be able to pray that you don't do sins I mean can I can I pray that somebody become exotic can I pray that somebody do chuva can I pray that somebody not be careless so accidents don't happen one might have thought that such a prayer could not be effective because that impinges on the Free Will of people but if indeed the Cohen guttle is expected to pray that people shouldn't commit these sins apparently the power of prayer word speech is so powerful that it can even override the principle of free will and in others to put it practically you can pray that somebody can do chuva you can pray that somebody that Hashem should help a person to be righteous you can pray that somebody make the right choices in life of speech the kayak to change the spiritual DNA of the universe which is a function of bakira this is what the Khazana says so people ask can I pray that members of my family do chuva according to the president you can you can Hashem will inspire them or might Inspire them in fact it's interesting condition has a fascinating story about again it's hard to understand how literal we take these stories that there was a ruined building a ruin in a city that was inhabited by a very terrifying seven-headed demon and people were afraid to walk by the City walk by the building because the demon might destroy them and they didn't know what to do because they were they were terrified at night especially to walk outside so Abaya gave them an idea he said you know there's going to be a great Rabbi coming to town and he's going to need lodging and everybody should deny him a place to stay so he's going to be forced to sleep in that building and I'll tell you for sure he'll take care of the demon so this great Rabbi came to town he needed a place to stay everybody said we don't have room but there's that abandoned building there you could sleep there so unbeknownst he didn't know there was any demon there so he sleeps there and this big demon comes and tries to attack him and every time the demon approaches the great Rabbi utters a prayer and one head of the demon it's a seven-headed thing one head gets slapped off and he does it seven times and the demon is dead and the city is liberated and everything's great so the next day the rabbi is a little annoyed he comes to Abaya and he says you know you could have killed me in there what's going on so we'll buy you said I had confidence that your power of FILA could overcome the demon I was so sure of that I knew I wasn't putting you at risk okay but the Marsha asks the following question there is a clown that whenever you benefit from a miracle a miracle you lose some of your Olam above because here's the thing when God rewards me in a physical way let's assume I do Mitzvahs pray and God blesses me with children or with wealth that doesn't take away from my spiritual reward because there's nothing physical that can compare to spiritual so my Olam Abba remains intact even though I've gotten physical reward but when God gives you something that's above the laws of nature coming from a high spiritual place in effect he's giving you some of your Allah so the Marsha asks the Republic a question even if Abaya is confident that he's not putting the rabbi at risk because he knew the rabbi's prayer would be effective but he's taking away his old some of his old on my bar because this is a mycenae this is a miracle so the martial answers you know that which you get through prayer is not Miracle it's nature it is God's natural law that prayer has a certain power to do things and therefore the rule that you lose your Ola Maba when there's miracles doesn't apply to what God gives you through tefila very very fascinating because Fila is called Teva it actually reminds me of a story now I will say ahead of time that this story may not be true and in fact I believe it probably is not true because the dates don't fit but it's a great story so I'm going to say it even though it probably did not literally happen uh I'm going to say this because otherwise people are going to send me letters they're all the proof that it didn't happen I'm aware of it but sometimes it's worthwhile to give a great story that has a good point even if factually it didn't happen and The Story Goes that the garage Mordechai was smuggled out of the Warsaw Ghetto and The Story Goes that he was brought to England now this is the part that already may not be true and Winston Churchill had hurt that this great great rabbi he's in London so he wanted to meet with the great Rabbi to get some spiritual advice about how to conduct the war against the Nazis so the gallery obviously was through an interpreter because the guy Rabbi only spoke Yiddish the garage said there are two ways you can win you can win naturally or you can win miraculously which way do you want to hear so he says well tell me both let's start with the miracle he says well the miracle would be you would organize your army and your Navy and your Air Force and you would fight the Germans based on your military capacity that would be a miracle says the natural way is open up your Psalms and pray to God that would be the natural way of winning the other way would be the Supernatural and you can't expect your Supernatural way is going to it's going to win again did the guy rebbe ever meet Churchill you know I actually don't think so but who knows you know you don't know there there could be all sorts of meetings that were not always we're not always aware of right so that once again is an illustration of the power of speech but now I want to say a little bit about the third Point remember I said there were three points about the three weeks the first point is jealousy lust honor the second is the hafturus to fix to rectify speech Rectify hearing input and rectify perceptions of reality and the third wants to point out we know when it comes to pesach like we have the Mitzvah of the four cups of wine because there are four Le show notes of redemption float say see I will take you out Hashem says read salty I will save you figurality I will redeem you I will take you unto me for a nation and because of these four terms of redemption we celebrate the fork with four cups of wine there's also a fifth language I will bring you to the land but that's not going to be fulfilled until the coming of the mashiach in its fullest sense and that's why we have Elio's cup because Elio will announce mashiach and when Elio comes we're gonna drink the fifth cup right now we have it on the table to remind us of mashiach and Amir sashem you know even by next year we're going to drink that cup the cup of elio Hanabi syrup sadrak wants to point out that in a sense just like those of you who remember old-fashioned cameras so you had photographic negatives many of you might have been born after those cameras became virtually extinct but you know you have the picture you have the negative from which the picture is constructed so too in a sense the three weeks Shiva server Thomas and Tish above are the spiritual negatives because if the foreign is the progress towards Redemption shivas orbitamas the three weeks and the ninth of Oz is the regression away from Hashem so the way he does it is Shiva Sur batamas is the connected the first lotion of redemption moving backwards then you have three weeks that covers the other lechonas of redemption and then Tish above is the movement away from the gaullah because the ghoul is the base of mikdash we lost the base of mikdish you see the correlation meaning four lechonos of gaula with the fifth version of the havasi the negative of that is shivas orbitamas three weeks that gives you four and Corbin based on mikdash but you have sadak says this journey this journey away is a circle rather than a line now think about this if you if you have a a series of points arrayed along a circle As you move further and further and further from a given point you're actually moving closer to that point from the other side see if it's a linear thing just a straight line then the more I move the further I am but if you're moving along a circle the further you are the closer you become says in reality Shiva server Thomas the three weeks in Tish above which signify our distance from God is actually a tremendous opportunity for closeness to Hashem the old saying in English I think it's from Shakespeare who some Claim by the way may have been Jewish but okay and that is absence makes the heart grow fonder as we become aware of how far we are from Hashem our hearts yearn to be connected and in that yearning to be connected which is reciprocated on an infinite level there's a tremendous closeness the closeness of the two lovers thinking about each other wanting to be connected can create a level of closeness that might even be greater than when we have the basement when we have the base of McDon we could take even that for granted so therefore repsaddock says the correlation of Shiva serpatamas the three weeks and Tish above to the foreign that fifth term is not simply in the nature of opposite but in fact it's a way of getting there in the alternative routes it may be a much longer route you're moving away but in the distance lies the closeness you're the great rough footner was when he came to Eric Israel towards the end of his life he was asked somebody asked him was there anything he missed about living in I'm not sure why they asked that question but they asked him that question hey do you miss anything about Cuts Lawrence so he said yes there's one thing I miss I miss the yearning to come to Eric Israel because I'm here and the truth of the matter is I think this actually resonates with many of them maybe most of us at least on bad days and that is you dream and you dream and you dream of coming here coming you know and wait every day and then you come here and you know life has its frustrations you know the buses and the thoughts and then every time at least initially every time you go to the bank it seems to be closed you know I remember years ago now it's a little now it's become a little bit more westernized but in the olden days you know everything was closed in the afternoon there's every everything like nothing was open in the afternoon so there were like dozens of times you know I needed to do something and I couldn't do it so a person doesn't have that same Joy you know you get habituated you live in you shall not generation Generations yearns to be able to even just see a little or touch the dirt of Eric Israel Maisha Robin Hashem let me be an animal let me be a bug let me be an insect Hashem said no and we have this but that's the way it is so the yearning of absence can sometimes be the strongest connection and therefore the three weeks shiversary Thomas the three weeks and the ninth above are also the show note of gaula and in fact that's the meaning of the famous statement the morale says it before of Southern that mashiach will be born on the ninth of us now morale says that does not necessarily refer to a physical birthday how much yet might be born any day of the year but it means that his ability to come into the world is created by the magnitude of our yearning on the ninth of us the more we yearn we bring him into the world that's what it means mashiach is born on the ninth of us not as a person but as a mashiach okay so that's the third point and here I want to connect it a little bit to the beginning of the second Parsha the beginning of the second Parsha which is the last Parsha in the book of babidbar is a listing of Journeys Israel the journeys of the Jewish people from Israel all the way to the Jordan River and it gives you a listing of the journeys a listing of the stop and um what's interesting is first of all it's pointed out this is Derek drush but I think it's from the Ariza that the word Maasai the journeys uh is actually an abbreviation uh one second to have this right uh okay let me hold up for that because I have to say something else first okay there are 42 steps 42 steps 42 Journeys from mitzrayim to the Jordan they crush the Jordan after moshe's death have a tremendous tremendous deep understanding of the great symbolic metaphorical meaning of these Journeys the journeys of beneath Israel from mitzrayim to the promised land correspond to the journey of the nishama going through the midboard of Life what is a midboard a mid bar is empty a midboard is desolate a midboard is dangerous this world is a dangerous place it's dangerous physically but that's not the main thing there are so many spiritual dangers so many pitfalls so many ways that we can be threatened we can lose our footing that's why the Gomorrah says this world was created with the letter hey remember because I'll say oh my bar was created with the letter yud ola was created with the letter hey and that's what it means Hashem created the worlds with yurt and hey and why is Olam why is is very open at the bottom and there's a little opening on top on the left meaning this world is quite a dangerous place very easy to fall out much harder to get back in through Chile the opening of chuva is small because it takes work it takes effort the fall is very easy so this world is a mid bar but the 42 stops represents Cities of Refuge that protect you in the middle let me just clarify something which I should have said before if you've been if you remember maybe you don't I said there were 48 Cities of Refuge let me clarify that the 48 Cities of Refuge actually fall under two categories there are six super ra McLeod and 42 secondary or immigrants what's the difference between super ra Nicollet and secondary re michlet so the gemara explains that the super ra michlet protects you even if you didn't even know you were in an ear Mickle let's imagine you have a rose who's running away from a Goa ladam that's pursuing him and the rosette happens to land in a place he doesn't even know where he is and the goal of Adam kills him God forbid well if it's a super Ari michlet the goal of them is guilty of murder because these cities protect you even without knowledge on the other end in the other 42 cities you had to know you were in an ear micklin so we typically instead of talking about 48 we typically talk about six and 42. now for a reason I will explain the mass the journeys are 42. I'll explain why we don't bring in the other six in a minute so what is the metaphor the Jewish people left Metreon and they had 42 stops on the road till they got to the promised land until they got to the Jordan River so too we as we go through the difficult and dangerous desert of Our Lives Hashem gives us Cities of Refuge that protect us that shelter us that give us strength and those Cities of Refuge are the Torah the mitzvos The Jewish Home the base knesset the Mikvah the base hamedrish in which we can get safety from forces that would otherwise destroy us physically and that's why the number 42 corresponds to the 42 re michlet and it also corresponds to a special Divine name of 42 lettuce and the like now the only question you'll ask me is given the fact that they were in reality 48 are a michlet why do we only use the 42 because the answer is this the 42 cities protect you only when you have conscious awareness so what the Torah is teaching me is in order for your Torah and your Mitzvahs to protect you you can't be a sleepwalker you can't just do them and go through the motions you need conscious attention right in the safer Tanya the other Ruby brings the the passage of the Zohar that says Hashem love of God reverence of God are the Trey godsmen they are the two wings like a bird that bring your Mitzvahs to shamayam now again the authority made the point it's not enough to have hours and your system if you're not doing the mitzis he says you've got wings without a bird also doesn't give you anything this is actually a very critical point the LG Robbie was very insistent you got to do the mitzvahs in other words inspiration is not enough but you have to augment your mitzvahs thoughts with feeling with passion what do they tell they tell the famous story about the Bell shampoo that he once went into a show and he said about the show this show is so crowded with Torah and mitzvos that I can't even move so the people of the show thought he was complimenting them oh well Hashem you know he says yeah there's no avas Hashem there's no yivas Hashem so all your Mitzvahs are on the floor here yeah but they didn't go up to Shania he said the Zohar says you need officers them are the wings that bring it up so that's why we correlated to the 42 because B6 help you even without consciousness but the way stations that we have in our life require Consciousness require thought that really was one of the great contributions again they didn't invent it nothing you have to understand nothing is ever invented if somebody were to invent a new system of religious belief we would simply say it was wrong but in our Kabbalah in our masoga there are many many many different ideas and in some generations certain ideas come to the Forefront and others are receded so all of the different legitimate movements in Judaism are simply bringing to the fore IGN ideas that may have been neglected so the balsamto certainly did not invent to have us Israel I mean obviously this is in the program but there were two votes where where certain things were not emphasized and the great great godolin brings certain ideas forward in that way so the notion of Hashem was certainly not invented by the balatanya but he's bringing up the idea that you can't have a connection to God just by doing stuff unless you consciously think about your relationship to Hashem in terms of Ava sashem right so that's the correlation of the 42 Massachusetts in our journey through the desert of life and even though it seems to be a journey away from God because after all before we were born we were with God but once again we're actually going in a circle right because our nation must go back to Hashem so every step we move further away is bringing us closer on the other side and that's the meaning of the of the three weeks of the three weeks as uh as as well now one other point about the number 42 that's very significant and that is there are the three weeks are comprised 21 days are 42 segments of day night if you divide it day night so the number 42 is in itself symbolic of the three weeks so once again there's a remise that in our journey back to God the three weeks the 42 halachim of Yeoman Lila is going to be the khalik that will bring us back okay so these are some ideas connecting the Parsha with the three weeks and again once again just to summarize very quickly these are the I mean I added a lot of stuff but these are the three basic thoughts of RAB sadak that the three weeks is a tikkon for Kenneth number two the three weeks is atikan for Deborah speech Shemia hearing and visualization and the third idea is that Chivas River tamas and the three weeks correspond to the four terms of redemption and Tish above is that fifth term of redemption and even though they seem to be negatives the Opposites in fact it is the journey that brings us back to God and that could be seen in the 42 Masa back to God to the promised land which is 42 is the dividing the 21 days into those two Muslim again obviously we have a general rule that certainly sukim always have their plain meaning so obviously the Torah is describing Journeys uh in a literal way but the McCollum always understand in any list especially you'll find this very much very very attuned to the types of things that we otherwise don't think are that important lists of names lists of places genealogicalness you know we tend to skip them just just a list they see in these lists the deepest secrets of the of the Torah in fact the deepest part of the Zohar called the idra is based on a list in of the eight Kings of Adam the eighth generations of kings of asaph and the Zora looks at that as the whole key to the sode of the breaking of the Calum you know Etc so the less important it may appear to our superficial reading the more significance it usually has so again I want to wish everyone well happy birthday everybody [Music]