Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: Zealousness - Love Should be Stronger than Hate

[Music] okay hi everybody and thank you thank you for coming again it's good to see uh more people coming back face to face it was a little difficult sometimes just to speak to a wall or just speak to a an empty room and i'm happy that that you're here uh today shir is again dedicated uh for a reforeshalema we're very grateful for their support and in addition the sponsor of the uh ganshir family lizekhar nishmas in memory of uh benjamin yes well ben as as all of you know uh we were praying for him for a year and a half and unfortunately he was tragically taken from us but the family is continuing uh to dedicate many shiurim uh that it should be the elevation of his nishama in ghanaiden and we hope that that will will be the case he was a pure nishama and in some ways he will have a very very great place in ganeden he will have a very great place in ghanaiden even without the sectors the should bring it even higher in addition i think all of our hearts are very very distressed over the tragedy that happened in the miami area with the collapse of the building so many people died and so many bad people are still unaccounted for it is possible that there may be survivors you know no one ever knows but still this was extremely unusual type of events it gives all of us really a great great concern for the medal that is in the world and and we pray that uh people will be found who will be survivors and for those who did lose loved ones uh they should be comforted and uh strengthened in their time of adversity and challenge i don't know the breakdown is it you or nanjo how many people uh were victims but as as we know from our tradition uh we commiserate and we feel the pain of all human beings who suffer and they are in our thoughts and uh and in our and in our prayers uh so today's parsha is really a continuation of last week you have to read the end of last week's parsha to understand the beginning of this week's project uh just to remind you last week this is the the 40th year of the jewish people they are poised to enter the promised land and you will recall that last week the king of moab hired bilaam a professional sorcerer to destroy the jewish people by cursing them bilaam had a very good reputation as an effective cursor an effective sorcerer and miraculously god changed all of his curses into blessings and when bilaam opened his mouth to curse out came the magnificent blessings of the jewish people in fact they pursued that in the sitter at least many people don't say it but it's the first thing you say when you walk into show matovo yakov mishkin osaka israel how good are your tents jacob and your dwelling places israel right that in the sitter is the first thing you say when you walk into the bait kinesat those are none other than the words of bilaam harasha that god gave him so bilaam is now leaving in disgrace because bildum was hired for a job he didn't do it and bullock says get out of here as i mentioned last week i don't have a full answer did bullock get a refund on his deposit we don't really know what bilham's policy was but balak basically says get out of here you're a disgrace but bilaam is so devoted to the cause of hurting the jewish people that he comes up with an alternative plan he says you know the cursing thing didn't work very well okay but i have another idea let's devise a strategy where the jewish people will be entrapped in sin in aveira in fornication in idolatry let the daughters of moab come and dress up in beautiful garments and entice the jewish people both to be promiscuous with the daughters of moab and ultimately to worship the gods of moab and indeed that took the vinod's moaf came and they dressed up et cetera and they were israel and there was a plague and jews were dying left and right and actually 24 000 jews had died and then in the eyes of the entire congregation the head of the tribe of shimon or one of the heads one of the distinguished leaders of the tribe of shimon zimri ben sallu publicly publicly means literally outside publicly fornicates with a mid united princess cosby bassoon and people are crying the torah says people are seeing a leader doing something and nobody can stop this this is how bad things have become pinchas who is the son of al-azhar the son of aram takes a sword and he kills them both and this is actually exemplary of a certain halacha which theoretically even applies today but i would not advise people to automatically apply it the halacha has some very very severe limitations and that is the following if a jewish man is publicly now publicly means outside in the presence of people not in not in a hotel room or in an apartment but if a jewish man is having sexual intercourse with a non-jewish woman in the eyes of the public then if you are a zealous person we'll have to define that who is acting for the sake of god you are allowed to kill them but only as they used to call it in texas in flagrante delicto which basically means only while they are actually doing the sexual act once they separate it you're not allowed to punish them they would have to be taken to court or baited or whatever it is so note that there are gazillions of conditions here number one it is limited to jewish men with non-jewish women actually not not even the reverse number two it must be out in the open public number three it must only be while they are physically together not when they separate and number four which is the most amorphous ambiguous qualification you must be a person whose motives are totally for the sake of god now how do you gauge that that's very very difficult that's kind of a subjective test but god knows which means an act if all of these conditions are met it's a mitzvah but if you're not acting for the sake of god you are a murderer in other words it goes from one extreme to another extreme on one hand it could be the great merits of saving on israel on the other hand it could be one of the worst sins of all the sin of murder and in fact it's brought down that if you ask ishaima you are let's say you ask your rabbi should i kill these people once you ask the answer has to be no it's only you're so motivated for the glory of god and what happened was pinchas stopped the plague i mean imagine a raging plague that is going through ami israel and pinchas was zealous for the glory of god and he stopped the magefa now that is actually at the end of last week's persia this week's parsha god says because pinchas acted to be zealous for my name i will make with pinchas covenant of peace we see shalom we'll have to define that term and for us and to him to he and his children afterwards there's a covenant of eternal priesthood now just in terms of simple shots it's not so clear what is god giving to pinchas that he didn't already have pinchas is a cohen because his father is a cohen and his grandfather is a cohen ira so god is now telling pinchas because of what you did i am making the giving you the covenant of priesthood pinchas is already occurring right so what exactly is the extra thing so rashi actually points out a very fascinating point pinchas was not a coin because again uh what makes a colleen a cohen is that he's born from a culling but here's the thing aron himself was not born a cohen right iron was not a cohen when he was born aaron was made of colleen because he was anointed with divine oil and given a divine mission and de lazar and his some are around's two remaining sons because none of one of you died were also anointed so they become kohanim from their anointing and any children born after they're anointed are children born from cohen's who are kohanan but pinchas was actually born from eldazor before elazor was anointed a coin so pinchas was not born a cohen pinterest was born a commoner or technically penthouse would be born a laby and when a lazar and our own were anointed pinchas was not yet anointed so the gemara actually says pinchas was not a cohen until he killed zimri and that's what god is saying god is saying now i will make you a calling why is that so hilariously it's a very interesting thing because there actually is a rule that if a cohen it applies even today if a cohen kills a person the cohen is not allowed to recite the priestly blessing even if it was an accident or whatever it was so if pinchas would have killed zimri as a kohen he would have been disqualified and therefore god deferred the kahuna of pinchas until after he killed henry but the main point i want to talk about is it's kind of anomalous that the bracha that god gives pinchas is a bracha of shalom peace reconciling the ability to bring people together with god and together with each other pinchas action is an act of violence yes it was done the shame shamayim it was done for the sake of god but it's a little paradoxical and counter-intuitive that an act of violence and an act of murder should be rewarded by what is called a brit shalom as meritorious as it might be with all the conditions is not an act of peace so to fully understand this let's go back a little bit you know alexander pope once remarked that you know people knock hypocrisy people say hypocrisy is no good i don't want to do things because i'm a hypocrite but pope pointed out that hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue think about that a little bit a meaning a hypocrite understands there's a certain standard of behavior that's right so even if in the privacy of his house he's not able to live with that standard he at least acknowledges that there's a standard right that's the what you might call the positive side of being a hypocrite there's a lot of negatives of course but hypocrisy basically means you're doing the right thing even if you're doing it for the wrong reason you might be doing it to fool people you might be doing it to deceive people but at least you're acknowledging a standard and there is something to be said for the acknowledgement of standards now i don't want to editorialize into all sorts of other issues but you know the issue of gay marriage would be a parallel type of idea they've all there's always been there has always been uh the practice of homosexuality throughout history if the torah forbids it it's because people were doing it and people did it and people did it and people did it and whatever it is you know we're not interested in going into people's bedrooms but there still was an acknowledgement that it wasn't you know what god wanted so people did it today it's a very different orientation where people want to change and redefine what is right and what is wrong and there is a fundamental difference between saying i'm doing something wrong but it's too hard for me to change that's one level and saying i'm redefining the wrong to be right same thing with intermarriage um probably the older people remember this you know uh there was intermarriage you know 50 years ago 100 years ago whatever it would be but if i was making a bar mitzvah and i was going to invite my uncle harry who was married to a non-jewish woman it was understood as a matter of basic etiquette basic politeness basic derek eretz that the non-jewish spouse does not show up for a jewish religious event nobody was offended nobody was hurt nobody was miffed it was understood that you know yeah i'm married to a non-jewish woman but you know it's a religious event a jewish religious event so you know she's not today if there would be any type of request made of that nature there would be tremendous offense because it's not enough today to be tolerant you have to accept you have to validate you and and that's really the problem of changing the standard and that's really what pope is saying that even if a person is a hypocrite is it they're at least acknowledging a standard now let me bring you a very interesting proof that hypocrisy on some level is a virtue a virtue in the limited sense i'm referring to that at least you're acknowledging you're giving lip service to a standard of behavior and it's from the daughters of moab uh the terror says in par in in safer dvaram but it's based on these events that a moabite who converts to judaism is not allowed to marry into the jewish people god basically said the moabites are not welcomed into khloe israel and the reason is because when we are trying to go through their land on the way to israel and we ask them for food and water and we're willing to pay them for food and water they are cruel they lack compassion they don't have a heart and because of that cruelty they are not worthy of entering on israel this is what the torah says and yet we know that this halacha only applies to male moabite converts it does not apply to female moabite convert and the proof of course is the story of ruse russ was a female moabite convert she is the great great grandmother of dubbin hamillah so the question is if the men are excluded why aren't the women excluded so the gemara gives the following reason the men are excluded because they should have given the jewish people food and water as a matter of elemental kindness but we can't condemn the women because it wouldn't have been modest for the women to bring out food and water to a foreign army so we can't blame the women they were acting because of cenias now think about this is it true that the moabite women didn't give us food and water because of modesty considerations when we read in this parsha how they entice the jewish people to promiscuity and fornication and idolatry but when it comes to giving water sorry you know we don't talk to strange men so obviously the moabite women had nothing their concern had nothing to do with sneeze but what's the point but their action was a tsunua action meaning it wasn't it wouldn't be proper for women to go out to a foreign army so they did the right thing even for the wrong reason and they still get rewarded for it right you kind of see the idea that yeah of course their motives were not because of modesty but they did a modest thing so we'll give them some reward for it so the idea that people often say you know i don't want to put on to fill in because i'm a hypocrite or i don't want to you know keep kosher in a restaurant because i'm a hypocrite you know it's okay to be a hypocrite a little bit because you're trying to do you know just be again the philosophy is just because you're not doing the whole thing doesn't mean you can't do a little bit of the thing mitzvos everyone matters so to say i'm not going to do mitzvoth until i'm doing them 100 that's voltaire's famous statement that you can't allow the best to be the enemy of the better the person said i can't do the best in fact uh um the founder of orthomark was not not alive i remember weinbach's used to have a saying and it's a very it's a very nice thing you know everyone knows the saying anything worth doing is worth doing good everyone knows that he changed it a little bit anything worth doing is worth doing bad and if you think about that the concept basically says even if i'm not going to be perfect it's worthwhile doing it anyway meaning better to do something bad or incomplete let's say than not to do it so on one hand hypocrisy has its place do what you can but there's one area where you can't be a hypocrite you've got to be totally devoted and that's to be zealous for the glory of god if you're not doing it for god if you're doing it out of anger if you're doing it out of power if you're doing it out of ego if you're doing it out of self-advertisement you're not going to get credit for doing the meritorious action in the case of pinchas you'll be a murderer kannauts kanoat means zealousness for the sake of god has to be for the sake of god and i include in this all the different modern forms barak hashem zealousness today does not take the form of murder for the most part although we've had some instances but british em most of the time that's not gonna happen but whether it's throwing rocks whether it's lying in front of cars whether it's blocking traffic whether it's calling names if you're doing it to disparage if you're doing it to denigrate if you're doing it to humiliate if you're doing it just to give yourself a sense that i'm better than them whoever the them is then your zealousness becomes illegitimate and becomes sinful because it is not being done for the glory of god salvatrik used to point out that the relationship between a legitimate zealot and an illegitimate zealot is similar to the relationship of a housewife who buys a cat to get rid of the mice that are in the house let's say now the housewife and the cat have a common agenda if there are mice now we want the cat to get it but the difference between the i said household i think it doesn't have to be the right maybe the husband whoever is buying the cat but the difference between the one who buys the cat and the cat is the person who buys the cat would be a lot happier if there wouldn't be any mice the cat will be sorely disappointed he says a legitimate zealot for the glory of god does not get joy in exposing the shortcomings of other people there's not like a gotcha moment i'm exposing you i'm showing you who you really are showing the world who you really are a person who acts for the glory of god feels pain that shabbos is desecrated feels pain that there's immorality feels pain that's whatever the issue is that people are not honest in business although as far as they know there are no demonstrations for that although there could be and there should be and in fact they feel pain not only because of god's name that's being desecrated but they feel pain for the jews that are being led astray in other words the ideal feeling of the kanawhi when he sees a jew that's desecrating shabbos is not anger and hate and self-righteousness but it's pain and even love for a jew that does not have that is not connected to that heritage and therefore i would be much happier if there wouldn't be this thing i got to expose but the illegitimate kanoi gets a great deal of joy in uncovering the soft underbelly of whatever it is they can uncover this kind of a sense of triumphalism a sense of see how good we are sometimes you see this i mean again you often see this in eric israel when when god forbids tragedies happen like marone or whatever it is so sometimes sometimes people jump to ascribe the tragedy to some sin that somebody's doing but it's always a sin of somebody else it says you see this happened because of you again whoever the you is everyone everyone's pointing a finger in a different direction as opposed to what did it what is it that i could do to rectify the situation now i remember many many years ago before i was even a congregational rabbi so i used to listen to sermons more than i have to give them so one shabbos shiva in baltimore i went to two synagogues one was a very what you call the charade yeshivasa synagogue black hat kolo people and the rav gave adrasha about the importance of keeping shabbos meticulously in accordance with all of the halachos and everybody loved that russia because everybody in the show was keeping shabbos so they're nodding and saying yeah yeah then i went to another show which was a more modern orthodox orientation and the rabbi spoke about the importance of greeting people welcoming people you know loving your neighbor as you love yourself and again people were nodding now um maybe i have a cynical temperament a little bit so maybe it's not so good but i was thinking to myself you know the the yeshiva shakha baby show everybody they're already kept shabbos but sometimes it was a little cold and unwelcoming and the more modern orthodox show everybody was very nice and warm and fuzzy but maybe they weren't always as meticulous in keeping shabbos and the ritual laws so i thought to myself it would have been a wonderful thing if the dress shouts were switched uh because you see what happens is when when you're hearing a dress shirt that's simply appealing it would call preaching to the choir so what does everybody think they're thinking so the rabbi is talking about keeping shoppers saying yeah yeah that's why that show over there you know isn't doing its job and then when the other rabbi is talking about the need to be warm and friendly yeah that yeshiva shield over there isn't doing its job because each one is using it to kind of cast aspersions on the other one instead of recognizing our own our own our own our own work and the light so kanot has to be the shame shamayim and not only the shame shamayim but i'm adding another point it has to be out of love and not out of hate it has to be out of a genuine care for am israel and this explains a famous beautiful beautiful vort from ref cook that rav celibacy used to i used to quote very very often of yosef salvatrik of yeshiva university shmona israel is called the 18 blessings but actually it's actually 19 blessings during the week the weekday amida is 19 blessings and the gemara explains originally it was 18 but in the time of rabban gamlio after the destruction of the temple rama gamlio wanted to make a special blessing against the heretics and the missionaries it's not entirely clear who was the people he was trying to make a bracha against but many say it referred to the early christian movements many of whom most of whom were jews that were infiltrating the bait knesset and trying to bring jews away from the torah towards the belief in jesus and the like these are called meenan mean em are sectarians and rabbit um leo says who can compose a blessing against the sectarians if he was really at a quandary who can write such a blessing until they finally identified a man who is known as shemoil hakatan that means shmuel the humble and he is the one who authored the bracha against sectarians this is the 19th blessing of shmona esray and this is the blessing against informers against missionaries against all of those things this is the gemaran brachus this is the gemara so rav cook has the kasha what's reverend kamil's big question who can write a bracha against the heretics and the missionaries the same people who wrote the other 18 could write this one what is so unique about this blessing that we have to find a special author and what is so unique about shamu al-khattan that he is that special author so cesaro cooked the following vlamal shinim is very unique it's very different than the rest of shmona's rain in all of shimon ashrae we are asking god for blessings give us forgiveness give us redemption give us health give us parnassa we're asking we know we're praising god of course and we thank god but in the middle we're asking god for things there is no barakah that talks about hurting other people the only brother that asks god to destroy the or at least the main content is destruction is almost so here is robin gamliel's quandary when you're asking god to destroy your enemies you can't be coming out of hate out of anger out of a desire to hurt that's treif that's puzzle that is not a legitimate kavanagh to come to god rather your motivation has to be out of love for um israel if i ask god to destroy enemies it's not because i want the enemies to suffer it's because i want the jewish people to be saved and to be rescued so rather galil says who could possibly compose a blessing with the requisite qabana that way because the romans and the missionaries and the informers have it's like saying you know who could compose a blessing that god should defeat hitler without feeling a personal animosity and hatred towards hitler it's impossible surah gamil says we have so much hurt and so much pain from these enemies then by definition the bracha would incorporate the anger and the hate but that's not legitimate to turn to god so who could do it can do it why is that so we know very little about shemola qatar and we know he was an extremely righteous person in fact the gemara gives us a story that once the sages were sitting in a chamber and a voice came out of heaven and said there is a person in this room who is as worthy of the shakina resting on him as mosha rabeno but the generation is undeserving and everybody in the room looked at shmoel hakutan very great very saintly but there's very little that that that of his sayings that are preserved in fact there's only one saying of his that is preserved in pirkei of us and it's not even his saying it's apothecan proverbs used to say the phrase means he said it constantly this was his motto this was his mission statement and it's not even his own words it's the words of mishlai bina fal or yivaca when your enemy experiences downfall do not rejoice in other words don't rejoice in the sufferings of others says that's the guy who can write vlamal because he's not acting out of a desire that people should be hurt or humiliated or destroyed he's acting out of a love for amy israel and that's pinhus in fact many of you might have heard of the uh now he's retired but uh the very colorful and controversial rabbi avi weiss and happy west is a controversial guy and i have to say at the outset because i'm sure i'm going to get now that these things are broadcast i get all sorts of uh critiques from all over the place so i got to be careful i certainly do not endorse everything avi weiss does but as a person i i do like him and i admire him and avi weiss made his reputation all the way back he was involved in the struggle to liberate soviet jewry when there was a soviet union he often got arrested etc he was a big activist he was always getting in the newspapers on television he once said a remark that i found very very interesting he said if you want to be a true activist you have to hate what you're doing you can't love what you're doing because if you love getting your name in the paper if you love being on television then it's no longer about the cause it's about you a real activist doesn't want the publicity he doesn't want the glory he doesn't want the honor but he says nebucha i gotta do this for the greater good and that's what pinchas says pinchas didn't act because he wanted to hurt with sha'im he acted because he loved ami israel and he saw them being destroyed and the kasab sofia who is the son of the hassam salfir says this in a very beautiful way when the torah describes pinchas it says pinchas the son of al-azhar the son of aram so most understand that to mean pinchas was the son of elazar and their lazar is the son of iran and that's the that's the genealogy and then the professor have a problem why are you connecting him to his grandfather normally when the torah identifies a person it just says name son of father it doesn't connect him to the grandfather so the commentaries go into different reasons why you mention the grandfather but you know what the kisab sopha says the kasab sofa says this is homolytical granted that you can translate the passage in a different way instead of saying pinchas is the son of elazar and al-azhar is the son of aram you can translate the passage that pinchas has two fathers pinchas is biologically the son of al-azhar and pinchas spiritually is the son of aaron pinchas what is the point of connecting him to our own because our own's outstanding midah is of course oh hey shalom varudev shalom a lover of peace a pursuer of peace and the torah is telling me pinchas was a man of peace not a man of war pinchas did what he did not because it was his nature pinchas did what he did even though it wasn't his nature but it had to be done for the greater good penthouse was following exactly what abi wise says pinchas hated what he did but he had to do it out of the love that he had from himself and this goes back to my original question and that is why god gave him the bracha of peace because pinchas may have done a violent act but this was a violent act to excise a cancer that would have been destroying amy israel and he acted not out of hate and not out of triumphalism but he acted out of love for israel and therefore hashem said you will have the capacity to bring peace between the jewish people and god and between jews like ira to be a lover of peace and a and a a pursuer a pursuer of peace right so this is kind of the general understanding of kannauts of the notion of being zealous you know it's not a game i have to say that it often hurts me very much when i see the various zealousness that goes on whether it's throwing stones or blocking a road or whatever it is and often it's you know a young you know not yet not very young but often adolescents who are in yeshiva and it kind of becomes like a game they're laughing you know it's kind of a nice you know a nice game that we can block traffic on yafa road and the like and you know when you're turning into a game even though people are being inconvenienced and people can't get to medical appointments sometimes and the like then you're not doing it out of a sense of grief and pain and the desire to bring jews together and you become like the cat that gets a perverse joy in finding the mice and that is the kanos that reframe solavei who himself was a great kanoi in fact that's a whole interesting story yeah you know there's always the rav of brisk was the ancestor of of all the briskers and uh they are very very zealous and refrain was very zealous i have to be honest rafael was well this is a whole interesting story maybe we'll we'll devote a shirt to it one time ruffham salvajic before he was the rev of brisk was the junior rosh yeshiva in the world's famous velocinator yeshiva and those were the happiest years of his life with hayem was a wonderful rav but his nishamah was that of a rosh yeshiva rafael those 12 years in belgium were the greatest happiest years of rafael's life and rafael was the junior rosh yeshiva uh the senior rosh shiva was the grandfather of hayem's wife and that's the nisiv of naphtali tv to berlin to berlin was russia for 50 years and the last 12 years he was joined with with hayan salvajic they had a very different i mean they were they were very different in so many different ways the natives approach to learning was very encyclopedic that it was a master of every obscure reference in the babylonian talmud the jerusalem talmud the tysepta the zoa or the madrish like and instead of like knew everything and would bring everything in so when the nasiv would analyze a sugya he would always bring every type of obscure little-known reference to bear rafchayam on the other hand was not into bringing so many references ravqueyam was known for his depth his acuity is going very very deep and that's why in velojin there were some students who gravitated to the nasiv and some students who gravitated to refrain most of the great rosh hashibas of the next generation were followers of rafael the analytical in depth ralph cook actually was very very close to the mitsif but the reason i'm bringing the sins a little bit of a digression is that there was another big difference in my rifle and then itsev and that is their attitude to the zionist movement as it was emerging uh and that is the native was a kind of a supporter of zionism now again he was very very saddened that so many zionists were secular and they were not keeping the torah but he saw zionism overall as a positive force in on israel and he felt that if more religious people would be involved in the zionist movement they could make it a more torah-based uh ideology so he was a sport and he saw that even in the secular zionist he saw some positive developments this of course was exactly the attitude that ruff cook absorbed so we sometimes think we've cooked like invented all of these things ref cook of course put his own stamp on things he had an amazing creative individualistic stamp but a lot of the basic foundations of his ideology were from the native now there's of course a chicken and the egg problem uh did rav cook become who he was because of the nisiv or was he attracted to the nasir because rafcook already had that philosophy that you know that you know i don't know rafchayam on the other hand considered zionism to be a rebellion against god and refrain was an absolute anti-zionist and he felt it was sinful to be involved and the point i'm making is this that rafael was a very zealous person but rafael is the one that uses the analogy of the housewife and the cat that if you're a zealous person you have to be motivated out of love and concern and not a with the german word schrodinger which is kind of a joy in the failures exposing the failures of others that is not a positive attribute so what i want to just mention a little bit is i want to mention that zealousness is sometimes justified we do have to sometimes stand up against wrong but it does have some costs and one needs to be aware of the costs and i i would like to identify four negative things that can happen to a person when they develop this tendency towards zealousness as opposed to a tolerance and an acceptance and an openness first of all when you constantly focus on the negatives in other people you develop a negative cynical attitude that impairs your ability to respond to ketucha because if you look closely enough everything can be traced you could eventually create a world where everybody to the right of you is a fanatic everybody to the left of you is an api chorus and you create a world that gets increasingly narrow narrow and narrow and your children's rebbe is you know not really teaching the ms and the rev of your show isn't good and this scuttle isn't good and this cuddle isn't good and everybody keeps on getting excluded and excluded and excluded and excluded and at some point you lose the capacity to be inspired by holiness because your eye has been trained to see the negatives and see the notes in everything that everybody does and when you lose the ability to see the good in what people are doing and you focus so much on the negative that destroys your ability to appreciate i remember reading this is maybe uh an analogy out of the total left field mark twain in one of his book oh yes in life on the mississippi you know mark twain his name was samuel clemens and mark twain was his pen name because that was something if you were a riverboat pilot on the mississippi river mark twain is mark twain means two and you when you had to demarcate a certain area of the river mark twain is what you would call i have an affinity to mark twain because mark twain spent his adult years in hartford connecticut so the mark twain house for those of you who are ever planning and traveling to west hartford connecticut is in west hartford and this was a common school trip when i was in elementary school so mark twain writes in life on the mississippi he said he loved being a riverboat pilot but he said he lost something very precious listen and again he says it much better than i can say it he said you know you look at a river and you see a beautiful body of water that shimmers and glimmers and you know as the sun hits the water at different places and the trees create shade you see beauty and you see grace but when you're a riverboat pilot you realize all you're looking at is the reason there's a shadow here is because there's rocks and there are fallen trees and there are roots and you're so focused on the negatives and the dangers that you literally lose the capacity to see the beauty and he gave an analogy of an orthopedic surgeon watching a ballet forgive me maybe it's not the most similar example he says a person could look at a dancer and you i mean okay man and you see movement and you see grace and you see fluidity now you're an orthopedic surgeon saying oh i see that ligament stretching and i see that muscle tearing and i see that he says and at some point you're only seeing the negatives and you don't see the beauty you know i remember a very dear friend of mine who was nifty recently uh rabbi yitzhak some of you might know him he was the director of ncsy in the atlantic seaboard in the baltimore area for many many years and he inspired really generations he was a kasira shiyid and he was working with public school kids but he inspired them tremendously and i i in the 80s i used to work with him so i remember that what ncsy does they still do it is when they have shabbatons for public school kids so mozai shabbas they have a kumsits you know that they they close and they shut the lights and and the kids get up and they tell their stories it's like true confession time very very emotional stories so i remember a girl got up she was like 14 years old and she was saying that not only are her parents not religious but they are absolutely opposed to her keeping shabbos so when she's at home what she has to do is 11 o'clock at night after her parents are asleep she goes into the bathroom she lights shabbos candles she recites abraca well then she blows out the candles and turns on the fan so there won't be any any smell and then she goes to sleep now you could actually give a smith how many prohibitions did this girl commit like how many melakos did she do you know it would be a very interesting you know you can come up with 20 20 things you did wrong plus a brocco in the bathroom you know a million things so i could look at this and i could say uh violated shabbos said blessings in vain sin after sin after sin that's true but on the other hand look at how much she cared look at how much she tried you know she's a girl who doesn't have her own place she's totally under the control of her parents and they're not letting her serve hashem but she still so much wants to do so i can't speak for god i don't have that authority but i can't help but think that in hashem's book that counts not just for something it counts for a lot in spite of all the mistakes that she made because she didn't know and i my guess is i don't know i haven't been following her my guess is that you know maybe she's living in yerushalayim you know a totally religious life precisely because of her self-sacrifice in those early years so cost number one is that when you become negative cynical and judgmental it robs your ability to be inspired by spiritual beauty and in fact here is something that's scary this even happened to pinchas himself pinterest himself was victimized by his very legitimate and pure zealousness absolutely pure zealousness and that is based on the rabbinic tradition that pinchas never died pinchas morphed and eventually became elio hanabi who never died and if you read the book of kings you actually find that although yo navi had the singular distinction of going up to heaven alive great great merit unparalleled merit but essentially he did so because he was fired if you remember uh he did a great miracle at mount carmel where altars were built and fire came down from heaven and everybody said hashem okay hashem is the god what we say after yom kippur and he brought ami israel to chuva and the next day ahav tells him the evil king tells him that was a great show you did yesterday but don't think anything's changed i'm still going to kill you and the jews reverted back to idolatry and at that point elio navi is broken and he says to god get rid of these people forget about these people they annulled your covenant by the way the gemara says that's why leonavi has to go to every bris because he declared they don't keep your breasts hashem says oh yeah you've got to go to everyone they do keep the bris right by and large brah hashem and elianovi wanders in the desert and he comes to haarseni and there's a famous scene one of the most famous scenes in tanakh where there is an earthquake and god is not in the earthquake and there's a fire and god is not in the fire and there's a hurricane and god is not in the hurricane but god is in a small quiet voice and essentially he tells elio and navi anoint your successor you've lost faith in your people you cannot lead them again in fact indeed in some ways that was the sin of moshe rabeno himself and there are many interpretations hitting the rock etc but ultimately it came out the fact that he lost faith in israel so essentially the kannauts eventually turned into losing faith in the people and the leonabi was replaced he was honored of course the tremendous honor of his righteousness but he was replaced so that's one idea the second idea is that when you're too focused on identifying the flaws of other people that gives us too much of an excuse not to look at ourselves because i'm always looking at yeah he didn't right now you might like my example with the two dresses of the shows right yeah in a way you know i always feel a little guilty because i i might be you know guilty of the same thing i'm talking about against if i'm giving you a speech about not looking at the flaws of others so what gives me the right to talk about the flaws of others that's a good question that is a good question and it's a question that bothers me all i can say is that what i hope to be doing for myself is to turn it inward and apply it to myself i i don't mean to look down at others i don't mean to be critical of others i mean to simply identify processes that i think all of us are prone to and we need maybe to be a little more conscious of it in the sense of not paying such close attention to the flaws of others because that's often a very convenient excuse not to engage in our own introspection and our own and there's a third lesson that's very relevant here and that is you know the old english saying uh what i always he said what goes around comes around or is it what comes around goes around which way you say it but there is a concept again uh a buddhist will talk about karma i'm not going to use i'm not going to use karma but there is a concept that the pain that we cause in the world even if it's justifiable comes back to bite us that if we do things that cause pain embarrassment humiliation to others we will suffer from it even though it's justifiable let me give you the example you'll see from the example what i mean when haman and megillah tester decrees that the jewish people will be wiped out and mordechai gets the news of haman's decree so the passage tells us he cried mordechai cried aloud and bitter cry now point out that that phrase a loud and bitter cry only appears one other time in tanakh and that is when asav discovers that yaakov took the brachos that were intended for him and yakov took the brachus and asaf comes back with the meats for yitzhak and yitzhak says sorry i gave the brachus away already however you understand that the gemara megillah says because yaakov caused asaph to cry a loud and bitter cry the descendant of asaf that's harman because i'm alike is a descendant of descendant of and haman of course is a descendant of amalek causes the descendant of yaakov mordechai to have that bitterness in that crime now this is not because of a punishment because the assumption is however we understand that parsha that'll be a talk for another time if we assume that yaakov was justified in what he did yaakov did what he had to do if he did what he had to do why is he suffering negative consequences for levitz explains that the notion that when you cause pain you will get pain is not because of reward and punishment it's a law of nature it's a law of spiritual nature the example would be let's say the following let's imagine god forbid there's a fire and a baby is trapped in the fire and you dive in the fire and you rescue the baby did you do a good thing yes did you do a mitzvah yes does that mean you're not going to be burnt no because getting burnt when you dive into a fire is not a question of being punished it's just the natural consequence sometimes god may do a supernatural miracle but usually not usually god does not usually the way god runs the world he usually does not do a supernatural miracle which means if you dive into the fire you're going to be burnt whether you're diving in was justified or not justified because it's a consequence for if haims beloved says causing pain to another human being has a cosmic consequence that they'll come back to bite you now that doesn't mean you avoid it meaning sometimes it's necessary for me to do and i will do it but i need to know that there's going to be a cost it's not a freebie and if it's not a freebie i better be very very certain that this is the right thing to do again the the the response is not to say never intervene but to be aware there's a consequence to your intervention it's not just a game that you play and this is something to realize that canal woods can often mean that the pain and the embarrassment the shame and the hurt that we inflict on others can come back to haunt us in various ways i mentioned that was a very very tolerant person i mean both refrain and initiative were tremendous control and by the way i don't want god forbid say anything negative about refuge if i am on a personal level was the paragon absolute paragon of kindness and tolerance and love it's recorded rev the native's youngest son was of mayor berlin who changed his name hebrew sized his name to mayor bar elan right the famous barilon street named after rav mayor barilan it's interesting that native had two sons the older son who was kai in berlin who was kharedi kharedi kharedi and the younger son was mayor barilan who was religious zionist religious i and this religious zionist they were from different wives maybe that may have something to do with it as it were but mayor bariland was from the native second second wife but romero barilan wrote a book of fascinating memoirs because he knew rafhaim salavaitrik as a young boy right and and even though his path was totally remember i mentioned if heim considered zionism to be opie corsus and kefira and heresy but dr of mayor so everything rev mayor bariland stood for rafael rejected but you can see to me it's so fascinating you can see the tremendous affection that existed between repair manager of mayor berryland how they loved each other so i don't i don't want anyone i mean even though i'm digressing i don't want anyone to walk away with the idea that rafael was was a meanie he absolutely was not but he had very strong ideas but the nitsir as they say was was very open and very tolerant and in the math to his great commentary hamikdabar he actually explains you know everyone knows the famous gemara that says that the first pesa mikdash was destroyed because of the sins of avodahzara idolatry gileario sexual immorality and murder that's the first temple and the second temple was destroyed because of irrational groundless hatred and polarization among the jews and the german goes on and says ah the first temple that was destroyed for the worst of eiros the gallaudet was only 70 years the second temple that was destroyed because of sinatra nam we're still in the galut and we can add a thousand years to the gemara state more than that etc so then it's this is the gemara this is not the native but then the tip says what was the manifestation of the s and then it says because there were many different religious groupings and each religious grouping looked at the other religious grouping and said you're a heretic you're an api chorus and they were not willing to see the good or the legitimacy within the movements now i want to point out the netsif himself was severely criticized for making that statement because obviously the sid was applying it to contemporary situation in the 19th century so in a sense he got criticized for his criticism of people who are critical it kind of goes in a circle it reminds me of when i think the last pope pope benedict made a statement that too much of islam was violent and he was met with violent protests disagreeing with his assessments you know i've kind of kind of proved the part in a way uh so i don't mean to compare the two the opposition to the native kind of proves exactly what the anitsiv was saying but he says that that was the sinatra nam of the bayat cheney now i just have to end that this is a difficult difficult dilemma that one faces in life because on one hand we talk about the goodness of tolerance and acceptance and openness and seeing the good and striving to look at other people in a favorable way on the other hand there is a concept of truth and there is a concept of principle and there is a concept of not diluting the integrity of one's core beliefs and the question indeed becomes how do you have one without the other well one without the other guy but how do you have both that's the problem how do you become a man of intel person of integrity and at the same time to be open receptive positive to others right you can be one or the other you can be a man of integrity and be a zealot that is always protesting and lambasting or you can be and i'm okay you're okay everything goes that's not good either gotta try to be both at the same time that's really quite a quite a very very great challenge but i think in many ways the great key to this is a pasuk and michele that again i have used many many times so you've heard it many times command upon him upon him as water reflects the face that you show the water so too the heart of man reflects that which is shown to it and the biligon explains when i look at water reflecting water so the face that i show the water is the face i will see in the water i smile at the water i will get a smiling face i frown at the water i get a frowning face so the passage says the same way water will reflect back whatever you show the water the heart of one human being will reflect back that which i show that human being i show that human being love and acceptance and respect they will be open to love and respect what i stand for i show them denigration that they're worthless that they're nothing that they're happy chorus they will look at me and not see value in what i stand for so in many many ways the best way to promulgate the ideas that you think are authentically torah that's always a question is to kind of be open to see the good in others because then you have and melakh's promise kamayam happaniya melt on him so we are in the three weeks it is our job in these three weeks to try to rebuild the base of mikhtash and one of the most important ways we would build the base of mechdash is not by bulldozing the temple mount and getting rid of the mosque although some people do say that but we by and large told that that's mashiach's job but we have to do the internal work and the internal work is to rectify the sins and the gamim the defects that caused the kharban sinatrinam is the greatest of them may hashem give us the ability to do that may we be zoha to the binyan betamiktas bim thank you [Music]