Rav Yitzchak Breitowitz: Does Hashem Even Want or Care About Our Sacrifices?

[Music] okay hi everybody thank you for coming I know that uh it's a very very busy time of year uh on one hand I might feel guilty dragging you away from PES cleaning on the other hand maybe I'm doing you a great favor to give you a little break uh from all of that uh physically very demanding work um just to be sure people understand you know the chabas before pesak is called chabas aod the Great chabas and we'll talk about that I just want to emphasize though that a lot of people are thinking that this shabus is shabas not at all because since NE since PES will begin Mo shabat so shabas will be a of P the only thing is that the tradition that a rabbi gives a lengthy D and shabas will probably be given this shabas simply because the purpose of the jha is to teach people Theos of getting rid of and by the time it's the shabas of of P it's a little too late uh so in a sense this shabas will have some aspects of shabas AG but it's not shabas the reason I say this is because one of the people who dedicated to she uh wanted me to talk about shabas but I think he mixed up the weeks he wanted it to be this week it's going to be next week so this week I will not be talking about um shabas AAL but God willing next week I hope to be able to talk about it uh we have a lot of dedications tonight again as always praying for the the victory of in all the fronts of the war the lasting Unity of the of Isel and all those whose Health has been affected by the war and the safe return of all of the hostages and I would also add the return of all families to to their homes because they're still dislocation in the country to B Bena uh so we have a special dedication by Mike kleene for his mother's yard site which is gimmel Nissan Bas peret Andor shandel and as R post mentioned he did contribute all of the delicious fruit cookies and drinks put out for you to eat and drink and when you make a br I want you to have her in mind that the Mitzvah of the braa should be an elevation for her Nish uh it is also the artsite of Arnold Bramson fourth of Nissan father of Michael Bramson here I do have to un insert some personal knowledge here Rabbi Michael Branson who I actually saw this morning was a very very beloved rebi and this in the Silver Spring area he was one of my son's favorite teachers he made Aliah a few years ago and now he's a wonderful Seminary teacher number of seminaries uh in the usam area and uh wonderful person and this is the art side of his dad who was a wonderful person as well and uh Michael rites being one of the the very first students in the myman school in Boston he formed a special relationship with Rob salic and he taught his children how to show proper respect to rabim and why rabbis are so important in our lives I knew that I liked RAB M that's why I liked Arnold Bron so much he enjoyed a beautiful relationship with all the rabbis especially in the Silver Spring area and specifically with Ry brius again I that is absolutely the case uh Arnold was an O Shalom ver Shalom I I never saw any type of anger or tension or irritation in his life he was MOS and he truly was a role model of mid toos and he passed it on to his son his son is very much the same way I should also add that I also uh knew Mrs Bramson very well uh I don't remember her yard set but I imagine there'll be a dedication uh later when that comes and she too was was a truly truly remarkable remarkable woman uh the entire series during ad is sponsored by Reena and Marell in honor and appreciation for for the safety and success of the and return of the and and we then have an anonymous contribution again for the of all the and the messages to return safely and healthy to their homes hashem's protection for all of CLA Israel for the GMA in these days mhia can come every day except shabas and Y but the month of Nissan is the most probable period say we were redeemed in Nissan and the future Redemption will take place in Nissan as well so if you're praying for mashia this literally is your best month uh to uh hope and pray for the yearning of mashiah and perhaps even this year even this year we will be to bring the carbon P around two and a half miles from here uh soem uh all of you people just have a local trip you can walk it our brethren in other countries may have more of a difficulty somehow they'll get here one way or the other uh but to the Corban P finally ban is almost halfway towards its goal for it Kim campaign to help people of lower income to meet the expenses of P again it's a there's a general Mitzvah but there's actually a special obligation before PES uh to contribute it's uh there's a link on the website and below in the description box and again uh how can as the Torah itself says how can we truly enjoy our yump if there are people who are not able to really enjoy their Y and says the Widow and the orphan and the poor are hashem's children so Hashem says you take care of my children I will take care of your children this kind of a simmetry in that in that way okay all righty so uh we're starting this week of course the third for many people it's a little bit of a downer because B bous is so exciting with great great narratives andos we we have the Exodus okay by the time you hit the mishan already maybe your interest God forbid might be waning a little bit but a lot of shos has exciting narrative content but then we get into the mishkan the latter third of shos and then all these carbonos and all of these sacrifices and so many details uh it reminds you a little bit it's so cute uh there's a line in Jane a who was a precocious uh child and Jane a was discussing her interest in the Bible and she says I do love Genesis and much of Exodus but when it gets to Leviticus it's hard for me to concentrate and the truth is that's the feeling that many of us have and yet the medish actually tells us that the first Kash that they would teach young children we start with braus every school's of the raous in the time of the sages in the time of K they started with the book ofra when the 5-year-old starts Kish they learn byra because it says little children are pure they have not committed sins yet and therefore let those who are pure occupy themselves with matters of Purity and Holiness so VRA was studied even by young young children obviously in in relatively great great detail and the issue of carban the truth is the the details are actually very very interesting but but we don't really have time in a in a single share I mean if if ever R poon wants to create an additional Kish in which we would spend the whole year on the book of aayra uh that might be something to consider so I can't really get into that much detail in terms of all of the carbonos but I just want to make a general observation and that is is one of the theological problems that people have with carbonos is why does God care so much uh meaning does God want barbecued meat God has a thing and it even emphasizes oh the corbon creates a Reay a pleasant Aroma as if you know the Mangal The Roasting meat somehow is something that God likes what is the notion of corbus so the truth is there is a great great argument between rambam my Manis and nak Manis ramban and that is the rambam the rambam wrote a book the last book that he wrote is the guy to the perplex the morim which attempts to kind of reconcile the tenants of Torah with Aristotelian philosophy and to show that there's not a contradiction and the Torah is accessible to some degree to human reason and the rambam in giml in part three of theim attempts to give what you might call rationalistic explanations for the Mitzvah of hasem and he says with coronos the following he says that the Jewish people at the time of leaving mitam and until Matan Torah were very very adok they were very connected to idolatry and in fact idolatry was a recurrent problem throughout the biblical period where the Jews are always moving towards idolatry and that's the main AA for which the first temple was destroyed was aod Zora if we don't feel that urge today that's because the men of the great assembly at the beginning of the second temple took away the and they get replaced with desires for money the new idolatry or other things like that but the oldfashioned idea that I want to bow down to an idol and worship and Idol we don't even understand that today but that was a very very very powerful y har and as a result part of the attraction was the pageantry the pump the circumstance the Glorious sacrifices that were brought God forbid culminating in human sacrifices and theik it was just a pageantry that appealed to people it had a very powerful emotional draw so if God were to Simply command us to go cold turkey disengage from corbano and only worship Him by meditation by righteous acts we wouldn't be able to get away we would have been pulled towards aod with all of his attendant peoples so my manes writes that corbano were not intrinsically desired by the almighty but it was a concession to the weakness of the human personality in order to give us a framework within the Torah that we could serve him and not be n not be pulled after idolatry so according to the rambam the rambam seems to make a fairly drastic statement that carbonos are not intrinsically the will of God but they are a means of weaning us away from idolatry by giving us a substitute that's a regulated substitute ramban asks a whole bunch of questions on the rambam and the questions are fairly powerful and that is if Corban note are simply a concession to the uh evil incl of idolatry why would we pray for their Restoration in the amida every day we actually pray for the restoration of the sacrificial right and of course on chabas and on roses and on yomtov we have the mus service which is exclusively devoted fact if you look the reform movement uh which indeed does not subscribe to any sacrifices if you have not that you you should look at a reformed sitter or whatever but if you look at the reformed prayer book you will see that even those that try to keep Hebrew and they try to stick to whatever they could agree to in the amida any reference to sacrifices is pulled out but rest assured of course that my manes did not D from a reform sitter and I actually know that for sure because in the Mish Torah he gives you a sitter he gives you a sitter he gives you the order of prayers and in his Musa we pray for the restoration of carban so ramban argues that's not consistent with the notion that corbano are simply a concession to idolatry in many many ways we're better off without the temple we're better off without the corbano we're serving God with prayer and virtuous action and uh once again he so because of this commities adop says there's a much more much more deeper and profound idea of carbonos but it is because of the symbolic transformation of the worshipper and that is that when I commit a sin and I stand guilty in front of God I should feel that my life is no longer mine and everything that the animal goes through I should feel it's happening to me and therefore the reason why the Corban is a pleasant fragrance to God it's a metaphorical expression is God gets pleasure from how the Corban transforms me it is the self transformation that gives God pleasure but human beings often need tangible ritual acts in order to be symbolically transformed so there are mystical ideas here in which the Corban is a vehicle of transformation now this now H how would the rambam answer the rambam's question that that's a big big question so here we get into a whole scholarly debate whether the morim represents the rambam's true understanding of Torah uh there is a view and some contest this view that the rambam was writing morim for a very specialized audience people who were very conversent with philosophy and not that knowledgeable in Torah and therefore they wouldn't understand mystical ideas everything had to be expressed as rational constructs so he gave them a reason that they could live with but even myones would admit there are mystical and spiritual Dimensions that he did not necessarily address in the morim and in substance he would agree with the raban okay so that's a that's a debate whether we kind of have the schizophrenic myties of the Mish Torah versus the myties of theim and theim is an in complete U explaining of the Mitzvah okay so I say that's a a debate but going with ramban for a moment that the value of corbano is not in the ritual itself but in the transformation of the worshipper this can explain a very interesting thing you know when you look at the words of the prophets they often knock coronos like yeso says in the name of God who needs your offerings I don't want your offerings your offerings are worthless you bring your corbon and then you oppress the poor and you cheat the Widow do you think God cares about your offerings in fact the reform movement I don't mean to knock the reform movement in particular but it comes up here the reformed movement one of its names is prophetic Judaism because since they try to deemphasize Ritual in favor of social justice they say oh that's the message of the prophets God doesn't care about sacrifices God doesn't care about rituals God cares about treating people fairly showing Justice and mercy so first of all that's an inaccurate description because the notion that the prophets are only concerned with social justice actually is not true it is true of course that they are very concerned with social justice one cannot deny that but they also talk about Shabbat and they also talk about kashrut and they talk about the rituals of Judaism as well so it's not true that the NVM had an anti- ritualistic bias they understood that Jewish rituals are part of the Torah but it is true that they knock Corban know Sal lot and why is that so because here here is the thing you don't you never find for example you know the the Novi saying why do you keep shabas if you cheat in business why do you keep kosher uh if uh you know you you you you oppress the poor in truth that's not an argument just because I do one sin doesn't mean I shouldn't do another sin yeah being dishonest in business is bad oppressing the poor is bad but that doesn't render your chabus worthless but it may render your carbon worthless because carbonos only have a value if they transform you to become a better person because if you bring a corbon and it doesn't transform you you are bringing a Corbin with the mindset of an idolator let's think about that what did coronos represent to a pagan well besides the fact that the God is a false god that besides that but what what is the Pagan trying to accomplish with a Corban it is essentially Mafia protection money I want to buy God off I want either I want to buy his protection or I want to buy him so he shouldn't bother me I'm giving him a bribe you know we're we're so used to the idea that religion is concerned with morality and this is true in Judaism it's true in Christianity at least in theory it's true in Islam at least in theory if not in practice so we think it's like inevitable that religion and morality are together but you know in paganism that wasn't the case go back to the ancient Greek religions the Roman religions the Egyptian religions the Assyrian religions I'm not saying there was no such thing as a moral Greek or a moral Roman they probably were but it had nothing to do with their religion you know one when you say I must be merciful and compassionate just as Jupiter is merciful and compassionate well if you look at the Greek myths or the Roman myths Jupiter's a was a you know the head of the Roman gods you see that these entities were like super villains they raped they pillaged they they destroyed there was no sense of morality there so you're not bringing a sacrifice to Je because you want to be transformed into a more moral person frankly Jupiter didn't care I mean even under the religious system which was false false obviously but he didn't care what you did but you have to pay him off so here's the problem when you bring a corbon and you know become a better person not only is your corbon worthless it is deeply offensive it is deeply insulting it becomes a perver version because you're basically saying God can be bought and sold and God can be bribed and that's why the nbos if you're dishonest in business okay that's bad but keep shabas we're not going to tell you not to keep shabas but if you're dishonest in business don't bother me with corbano because you're looking at the Corban as Mafia protection money and that is a bizon that is a denigration ofes so instead of saying that the prophets are anti- ritual I think it is a fair statement to say that they are anti- corbon if the corbon does not effect a transformation of the of the worshipper and this is essentially ramban's idea that it's not that God cares about the meat but God cares about the person and the fragrance the pleasant fragrance of the corbine is a metaphorical usage that Hashem gets when we have changed as a result of these corbas okay so be as it may we do have this fundamental between R and ran if carbonos are simply a concession to the idolatrous impulse or they have a spiritual transformative effect on the worshipper that brings great Nas great satisfaction to our KES because we've become changed we've become elevated and that's why we still pray for the restoration of the Bas of M and by the way my Mones says explicitly that when the mhia comes we will have animal sacrifices as a little aside people often quote a passage from rev cook you know okay there's a lot of points here I mean rev cook does does say that vegetarianism is the ideal state of man because that was the condition of Adam Harish and it was only after the flood that man was allowed to eat meat and therefore there are statements in ruk that in the days of mashiach we will revert to the higher level of Adam harishon which was vegetarianism now a few things though this is often not clearly stated you'll often read that rev cook was a vegetarian uh he was not he didn't eat a lot of meat for sure only on chabas or yum number one I mean poverty was one reason but okay he he but he but he did eat meat when there was a Mitzvah to eat meat uh and R cook also makes an interesting point about gradations in Morality he says vegetarianism which is reverence for animal life is a spiritually very high level but you can't jump to that level until you've achieved a type of perfection in your reverence for human life meaning you go through the notion of reverence for Life progresses from lower to higher to higher to higher if you try to artificially jump levels before you achieved the intermediate levels that sets you up for Spiritual failure uh I know you can't prove anything by anecdote but Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian for example so that would hardly represent the notion of of reverence for life so R Cook's views on vegetarianism once again he does indeed say it's an ideal human state but he was not necessarily calling for it to be immediately adapted and he himself did not immediately adapted in his own in his own life uh and there's another passage that he says when Messiah comes the corote will be grains and vegetables they will not be animal sacrifices that seems to contradict the rambam who specifically says there will be animal corbon and indeed it contradicts the musaf offerings where we say in musaf the temple will be rebuilt and will bring the animal offerings so the answer to that is again these are complicated passages is the Messianic era itself is not monolithic meaning it starts at a certain point and it may progress at a different point and R cook might be referring to things long in the the future after mashia comes and not necessarily the immediate coming of mashia okay so that's another I know I think re goer teaches R Cooks and maybe he'll he'll uh deal with those particular topics but that was the first just series I uh of Concepts I wanted to talk a little bit about the idea of Corban and kind of an introduction to the book of of of VRA now the truth of the matter is with all of these General explanations that does not yet give us an explanation to the Labyrinth of details uh why are certain Carbono male animals and certain Carbono female animals and why are some of them goats and some of them sheep and some of them cows some of them bulls and here even the rambam throws up his hands and the rambam says in theim I will give you a general reason for MIT vote I will not be able to give you a reason for all of the specific details for those who are interested in pursuing it R H tries actually to go into the details of male female for different types of carbonos and the like and he tries to create a symbolism that is very very particularistic very granular very very detailed in that way okay uh but the main thing I want to talk about uh is uh the very very beginning of the Kish that say of aik that says El MOS God right the remember the end of shos the Mish is finished the month of Nissan and a Cloud of Glory covers the mishkan right this is not a cloud above the mishkan this is a cloud covering the mishkan and in that cloud is a fire that represents the fire of the sh so imagine you're looking at the mishan The Cloud of God descends on the building and there's a glowing fire from within ramban points out quite logically this is exactly a reminiscent a reenactment of Mount Si har Hari itself that was covered with a thick cloud and the fire was within the cloud okay so then it says and God calls Moshe and God speaks to him from the Temple of meeting o Moi the Temple of or the tent rather of meeting encounter now Rashi starts off with a question and that is throughout the Torah when hasem speaks to Moshe it just says hasem El mosar God speaks to Moshe saying it doesn't say he calls Moshe so why does it say here why doesn't it say like it always says El because after all what he said is you know run of the mill Commandments and there's there's nothing I mean every commandment is special but a commandment like all other Commandments about bringing burnt offerings different offerings and the like so what what is the unusual preface here ra El mosha so there's an interesting argument between Rashi and ramban the two greatest commentaries on the Kish as to what is the significance ofra El mosha Rashi actually says that this is not unique to this place every single time God spoke to Moshe he first called him by name hasem didn't just start talking to Moshe he says Moshe Moshe and Moshe would acknowledge hir and then God would begin speaking to him so Rashi says even though it only says fikra El mosha one time here that's because the Tor doesn't want to repeat it every time but every single time Hashem never spoke to Moshe without calling him by name so according to Rashi the significance of vayikra el mosha is what we call cras shame and according to Rashi that was not unique to this communication it applied to every communication cre ramban is ramban argues with this and the ramban says this was a special one-time dispensation and it's based on what we read at the end of the book of shos right I mentioned just a few moments ago that after the Michigan was set up so it says The Cloud of Glory descended from sh and it enveloped the mishkan and the fire of Hashem was in the cloud and it actually says Moshe could not enter the the mishkan Because The Cloud of Glory was there so he needed Divine permission to enter again the ran points out exactly as was the case with Mount Si when the cloud when harini was covered with The Cloud of Glory and the fire of God Moshe could not enter until a yikra El Moshe Hashem called to Moshe by mat Torah to enter so according to the ramban Moshe needed permission to encounter the Shina but once he was given the permission it's a permanent authorization so he only needed it once meaning when the mishun was built and The Cloud of Glory went in Moshe could not enter until was given authorization Moshe is telling Moshe you can come in now and once he had that he could enter whenever he wanted and when he enters Hashem speaks m in other words in the normal course of events mosha would enter the mishkan and he would speak to God in front of the holy of holies those are right outside of the holy of holies so normally mosha would just go and wait for Hashem to talk to him but this time he could not enter the mishun until God gave him special permission so that's the uniqueness of this occasion based on the p in MOS right very it fits the P very elegantly it says in the end of last week's par Moshe cannot come in because of the Anan El mosha is R to enter not withstanding the Anan paralleling Hari once he has that R he could enter whenever he wants and that's why everywhere else he would just enter the mishan and hasem elos then Hashem would speak to Moshe so it turns out we have a bit of a technical makus according to Rashi the significance of vayikra is calling Moshe by name and this was not unique to this encounter but every single time Hashem spoke to Moshe he would call him by name according to ramban this was the onetime necessity of getting rash to encounter the SH now this may seem uh like a a technical makus one wouldn't necessarily think there's a lot to say about this but as is often the case and actually probably was always the case in the most technical arcane there are some very very profound lessons in now let me go back for a moment to digress on I'm going to digress from this a little bit and then come back that is you know one of them in hug that we have at the Seder at least asham have at the Seder is after we eat the matah and the mor and the K that's the mat Mora sandwich and now we're finally ready to eat you know the meal the first course that is served is a hard-boiled egg a hardboiled egg uh now particularly among people who are not so knowledgeable they look at the hardboiled egg as the most important part of the St you could skip the matah and the mo but hard boiled egg mama you have to have but the truth is hard boiled egg is a custom it's not a but it is a custom and there are different reasons that are given for the hard boil egg but one of the most common reasons that's given is the egg is an oval food and oval food is what you give a mourner uh right after a Lev right after a Lev the very first food we give a mner is is an egg before tsha we eat an egg and the reason excuse me me the reason why we give an egg is because life is like a wheel a wheel of fate there are bad times there are good times and we want to comfort the mner by telling him yeah now is a difficult time but the wheel will turn and have hopeful moments it's very similar to the a story it's not a medish but it's a story that is brought down that schlom uh went to a jeweler and he asked Jeweler give me something on a ring that that will be available to give me insight and wisdom no matter what I go through in life that when I am successful in life I don't get hoty and arrogant and when I have defeats in life I don't get depressed or broken and the Jeweler came up with the saying gam y you can actually get a gam y ring this too shall pass there are bad times in life hard times they pass there are good times they also pass meaning we shouldn't get too overconfident we shouldn't get too broken so the egg is given to a mner now the question is okay I understand why you give an egg to a mner or why you give an egg on Tiss or the before Tish above but how does that connect to the Seder the answer is because even at the Seder there's a certain degree of mourning that we go through because after all the Seder is essentially a reenactment of the meal of the Corbin pesak and it's like making a wedding without the kala showing up meaning yeah we're celebrating a beautiful beautiful seder but there's no carbon PES and there's no carbon PES because there's no B Mikes so as result we give we eat the egg to kind of comfort us that be we will be to the mikash just like the first paragraph in the mag says uh now we are still slaves we're still in gas will be TR truly free now more specifically it's been pointed out that the first day of P which in this case is Mo shabas and Sunday is always the same day of the week as the ninth of a later in the summer so if the first day of PES is M shabas Sunday the ninth of is going to be M shabas Sunday and therefore we think of Tish at the Seder itself and we eat the egg now we have to assume that in God's Celestial calendar there are no accidents it seems a little odd a little in congruous that Tish and PES should be thematically linked by always falling out on the same day of the year same day of the week but there's something very profound here you know that P is called the season of our freedom and we have another holiday coming a short while after that that's shos which is man Matan T the season of Torah now we tend to look at them as two different holidays season of Freedom season of Torah but in fact the holidays are linked by a ritual called counting the OM that we start counting toward shivu during pesak itself suggesting a linkage between the season of freedom and the season of Torah in fact ramban actually says that you can look at the whole om period as one Longo that's as if to say you know you have P which has its own and then you have sh and all the days between them is the of one long holiday now be careful not to abuse that if you tell your boss you don't work during Colo then don't show up between P till after sh I am absolutely not warranting that your job will still be there but but if it would help you you could say well ramban says you know it's all see where that see where that gets you and the like what is the idea that it's one long holiday because a Jew has to understand that freedom alone when it's not linked to Torah is not only worthless but it's actually destructive freedom is a beautiful thing but it's a beautiful thing only because it enables you it creates a framework where you can accomplish what you need to accomplish in life Freedom itself is not a purpose a person can't say the purpose of my life is to be free be free to be what be free to do what even Eric FR not religious he happened to be Jewish disciple of Sigman Freud also Jewish but not not not religious Eric Fromm once said the whole Western World makes a mistake when they Define Freedom as freedom from something Freedom has to be Freedom towards something you can't just say I'm free from that but free towards what counting of the Omare basically says your freedom has to be connected to submission to God and that will give you the wherewithal to accomplish what you need in your life so it's not that we have two holidays the holiday of freedom and the holiday of Torah they're one long holiday and the truth of the matters you actually see this because the Mitzvah of the four cups of wine that we have at the Sor is derived from the four terms of redemption I will take you out I will save you I will redeem you I will take once me for a nation these are four leonos of GAA in parat VA well if you look at the verse you will see that the fourth Le of GAA is not even referring to the Exodus it's referring I will take you unto me as a nation is referring to Matan Torah so in the four Kos of the same the fourth cup is and make this point in other ways as well they point out that the grain offering that is brought on pesak is barley that's the famous om offering on the second day of pesak the grain offering that is brought on shos is wheat and in the time of the Torah before the invention of ched barley was primarily an animal th and wheat was human consumption the message is when freedom is not yet connected to Torah it is animal Liberation it is only when it's connected to the Torah that it turns into human dignity true freedom is connecting to something something higher and greater than yourself not freedom from but Freedom towards that's the lesson of the counting of the Omare the barley and the wheat and if I could quote a beautiful beautiful metaphor of the Indian poet Tori who was not writing about Jews I don't know if he even knew any Jews but he was someone who won the Nobel Prize for literature back in the 1920s and toori said a human soul is compared to a violin string there's a capacity for beautiful music in that soul but imagine a string that's simply loose on the kitchen table the string is totally unencumbered totally loose totally free what music can you get from a loose string the music can exist only when the string is tied over the bridge and the instrument that's a paradox we think that total freedom will allow me to express who I am that's not emth it is submission to God that will enable all of the creativity to come out in a beautiful way only the string that is tied down can generate its music so this is an important idea of how we view freedom freedom is a means freedom is not an end in fact I don't want to get to a to a far field in sociology uh and and the like but it is no accident that the suicide rates among teens are significantly higher in the developed world than in the undeveloped world meaning in third world countries suicide rates are very very low in the First World countries affluent economies they're very high when you're living in the third world you don't have time to think about the meaning of life the purpose of life you're spending your whole day looking for some bread and looking for some water so existential crises are not going to get you down it's precisely when you have enough food you have enough water you have a roof over your head you're free but then it's going to hit you like a ton of bricks free to do what free to be what free to become what and without a sense of that purpose life can be devastatingly distressing until one can reach a level of this spare that they take their own life and as we know in the United States they could actually you know the High School shooters they could actually go around killing other people God forbid as well so now here is the point I want to make for reasons that are a little difficult to discern we don't start counting the Omare until the second night of P so the Thematic linkage between free freom and Torah starts night two night one thematically is Pure Freedom not yet linked to Torah so maybe that's the secret when your freedom is not linked to Torah you will have a Tish in other words why is it that the night of the Seder is the same night as the ninth of a because freedom without Torah leads to destruction in effect in other words the hardboiled egg is the substitute for not counting the OM on the first night of of pesak now swinging back to VRA okay I didn't I didn't forget what we had been talking about we have this mlus Rashi and ramban as to what what is the significance of vayikra so let me first take ramban I'm going to do ramban and then go back to Rashi ramban says Moshe needed permission to enter God's holy space that's an important reminder to us that in our desire to be spiritual we have to follow the rules that Hashem laid down God makes the terms you know people will often say you know I feel spiritual but H is too confining to me I want to have a relationship with God without rules without details there is indeed the spiritual temperament sometimes tends I'm going to use a fancy English word towards antinomianism anti communism is a rebellion against rules because a spiritual person said I don't want rules I want to have my own relationship with God the ramban is reminding us if you want a relationship with God you got to follow his rules he tells you when and how you can have it you can't just enter the Tabernacle you cannot just enter the temple you cannot just encounter the sh until you're given that permission you can't create your own rules and assume that Hashem is going to agree with you maybe you'll be lucky who knows but one can certainly not make that assumption in life so I think from the ramban we're highlighting as I was talking about the idea that freedom has to be coupled with submission and only with that submission are you then free to develop your spiritual Persona and your relationship with God so that I think is what emerges from ramban but what emerges from Rashi is a contradictory albeit complimentary perspective that is before God talks to Moshe he called him by name he said Moshe Moshe what's the notion of being called by name a name represents and although many people have the same name but a name represents your Singularity as an individual you're not just a faceless Anonymous part of the collectivity you are a you you are a specific person with a a history with a future with a destiny with a personality and what this is saying is that within the halak system that requires obedience and submission and Conformity and homogenity because not you can't just make up your own religion we have the rules we got all got to follow there also has to be room for spontaneity creativity individuality and therefore I would say that the synthesis of the respective views of Rashi and ramban is ramban is emphasizing the imperative of obedience and submission and Rashi is emphasizing the aspect of individuality spontaneity and creativity because every person is unique every person is individual and Hashem didn't want to create a world where everybody's the same the medis tells us the beauty of a garden for most people is when there are flowers of many different colors although there is a certain Beauty to know 10,000 Ro red roses but most people get greater Delights different colors different textures in fact that's the whole concept of tribes why are there 12 tribes why don't we just have a Jewish people why is it important Ru Shimon Ley because each tribe represented a different focus in how they served God and each of us are different as individuals as well so this is a real challenge because you can see as is often the case people tend to gravitate towards one extreme or the other extreme there are spiritually inclined people who are very impatient with hoc rules and they say they want to create their own individual relationship with God and then there are people who are kind of rigid and mechanical in which this is the way it is and I don't think about it at all I follow the rules and I think the suggestion that emerges which is often the case is truth is kind of in the middle or truth is a combination of these true of these two perspectives that within our submission to God's rules we have to find and develop our own creativity our own song our own music our own way of doing things now that that admittedly is a challenge certainly number one is a sociological challenge at a minimum maybe more so in Israel than even outside of Israel because communities are sometimes fairly rigid in their parameters and you know if you're breaking the norm right you come to shoulding a gray hat instead of a black hat you know whatever it is is uh your children might not be able to find the sh or whatever uh so how you navigate that is is a challenge you know and again every person will have to find their own way but I think it's important for all of us to understand that God wants us to serve him based on his structure based on his rules but to also bring the individuality of our personality to this aod hasem as well and that is once again another way of expressing the relationship between PES and Sh freedom and submission and that is expressed in the mlus in the technical mlus Rashi and the ramban that when Moshe enters the mishkan ramban looks at the submission aspect you got to get God's permission to do it Rashi is emphasizing the individuality Moshe is an individual and we too have to be like mosha to strive to be individuals so as we approach let's remember that indeed uh we very much crave the freedom of the soul to be individuals but we also have to couple it with submission to a Kadesh Torah and only when our violin string is tied down across the bridge of the instrument will will be able to express the music that AR must possess so have a wonderful shabas and may take care [Music] oh n n