Rav Yitzchak Breitowitz: Gratitude and Grace After Meals

You see your tomorrow [Music] Yeah. Yeah. So before we begin, let me just make the specific dedications again. Praying for the victory of all of our soldiers and all the fronts of the war and as all of you know, some new things are happening in terms of Gaza. So uh we're not out of the hot water yet for the lasting unity of Ami Israel and for all those whose health has been affected by the war and of course the safe return of all of the hostages that we desperately are praying for. uh an aliyah nama for Moshe Ben and the dedication in honor of Ibana by the castle family with the following message with gratitude and appreciation for all the Torah classes. May Hashem bless you and yours. And finally, an anonymous contribution for the nitan of all of our kayim as well as for our hostages to return safe and totally healthy uh to their homes and hashem's protection of all of Israel and for the gula shalma bahraum. Again, as I say, uh this year we were not yet za that the nth of would be a holiday. We were not yet Zohy Bikdash, but we do hope that it was this was the last tishov that we will so be in mourning and by the time next comes it'll once again be a a yamtiff as we celebrate in the rebuilding of the basikdash and the gaul of kal Israel. Uh there are really two uh subjects I want to talk about uh which are indirectly connected but not not explicitly. So one is a mitzvah in para. Now remember the whole book of Dvarim, the whole book of Dvarim are Mosha Rabenu's farewell speeches the last five weeks of his life. How do I know this? Because the book of Dvarim is dated. Moshe begins talking Roshes of the 40th year in the desert. And we know that Mosher Rabenu dies on the seventh of Adar. So all of the book of Dvarim is from Roshesvat until the seventh of Adar which is literally one month and one and one week. Uh but these are Mosher Rabenu's farewell addresses. Now an interesting problem that does exist is that the rabbitic name for the book of D'vorim is called Mishna Torah. That's the name that the Rambam adapted for his code. But originally Khazal gave the name Mishna Torah to the book of Deuteronomy. And Mishna Torah literally means the repetition of the law. And in fact uh the Greek name duterronomy is exactly that the second law that's what it means. So it's quite an accurate quite an accurate name uh for the kumsh. And the reason it's called the second law is because Mosher Rabenu is reviewing much of the things that have happened earlier both in terms of history. So for example in this para he goes over the sin of the golden calf. The week before it was the sin of the spies. So it's a review of the history and it's also a review of many commandments that were given before. But the thing is it is really not accurate to say that the book of Dvarim is only a review. There are actually quite a few mitzvot that appear for the very first time in the book of Dvarim. One example which I'm going to talk about is the mitzvah the bench after you eat mazan. It only appears in this para. Another example is yum. Right? If somebody dies, if a man dies without children, there's a mitzvah on his brother to marry the widow to perpetuate the memory of the dead. That is nowhere else in the I mean there's an illusion to it in the story of Yehuda and Tamar, but it's not made a mitzvah. The first time it's made a mitzvah is here. and uh get giving a get uh the procedure for terminating a Jewish marriage by giving a bill of divorce only appears here. So one conceptual problem that you might have in just trying to get your hands or wrap your hands wrap your head or wrap your hands whatever metaphor you want to use around the book of Dvarim is that in the book of Dvarim it's not no longer God that is talking Moshe is the narrator so it doesn't say uh and this happened to Moshe rather it says this happened to me the narrative voice in the book of D'vorim is Moshe as opposed to the rest of the Torah where the narrative voice in the rest of the Torah is God. So how do you understand the idea that Moshe is giving us mitzvos that we had not previously heard before? Uh normally mitzvos have to come from God. Right? Throughout the rest of the Torah it already it always says Moshe lay God speaks to Moshe saying go command ben Israel. I mean let's take benching as an example. I don't see any verse that says God said to Moshe go tell Ben Israel that they should recite blessings after they eat. It's simply Mosher Rabenu talking who says when you eat and you're full you shall bless God. So one of the interesting questions is how do you understand I understand the notion of Moshe being the narrator when it comes to pre-existing history or when it comes to reviewing commandments that were given. But how do you understand Moshe as the narrator when you're talking about a new commandment that had not been previously given by God? There is no Elmo Mosha. So the truth of the matter is uh the answer that's given is probably not as good as the question, but it's kind of a forced answer. And that is the Ramban says over and over and over again that it's axiomatic that Moshe would never and didn't have the authority to add any commandments to the Torah beyond the will of God. So consequently, if Moshe gives us a command, it must have been that God told him, "Go command the Jewish people." So even though that obviously creates a problem because how come for the commandments in the other books, God's command is always always precedes Moshe's communication in the book of Dvarim. God's command is simply implied by virtue of Mosha's communication but there is no particular statement. So I don't know there are actually a lot of problems in the book of Dvorim but the Ramban asserts as an axiomatic fact that Moshe would never be madesh any mitzvah that he was not commanded to be madh by God. Okay. So therefore there's an implicit by hashem el mo. But be it as it may, one of these new mitzvah is as I indicated the mitzvah that when a person eats a meal of bread and is satiated, one is obligated to recite a thanksgiving blessing to God. Now, let me point out when we say that Birkatam is a Torah commandment, we don't mean the text of Birkaton is mandated by the Torah. The Torah in fact does not give us a text. Technically, you could say whatever text you want. Kazal do tell us that the first blessing of benching was actually written by Mosher Rabenu uh when the Mun fell in honor of the Mun. The second blessing in honor of Erit Israel was written by Yahushua. The third blessing that asks God to bless Jerusaleim and the temple was written by David augmented by Schlommo. And the fourth blessing we actually discussed last week was added way way way way later uh uh after the destruction of Betar when we finally were allowed to bury the hundreds of thousands of corpses of Betar uh and they didn't decompose Khazal enacted an extra blessing. So it's true that the some of birkatamone is very ancient as old as Mosher Rabenu but still that does not make it to the Torah does not mandate a text. Technically, you could do it in your own words. You know, what say rub a dubdub, thanks for the grub, you know, say, whatever, what whatever it would be. I mean, technically that might be a valid under Torah law, right? So, when we say something is do, we don't necessarily mean the actual words. Another example of this, it is the opinion of the Rambam that there's a mitzvah to pray to Hashem every single day. The Rambam understands that one is obligated to pray to the Almighty every single day. But still it's very very clear that the actual text of the prayer the shimona the amida is not in the Torah that came much much later. So the Maporum all understand that according to the Rambam, in fact the Rambam himself says this, the original idea of prayer was a more spontaneous type of communication in which you would pray to God in your own words and only later it became standardized for various various reasons. Okay. But be it as it may, uh even if the text of Mazone is not prescribed, nevertheless, it is a dissa to thank God after you eat. Now, it's interesting. There's only two benedictions that are required by the Torah under doa. One is the obligation to thank God by a blessing after you eat. And the second is the obligation to thank God for the giving you giving us the Torah before we learn Torah Torah. So for food, the Torah commands a blessing after you eat. For Torah, the Torah commands a blessing before you learn. That actually means under Torah law there is no obligation to make a braha on food before you eat. The blessings before we eat, which of course we we do, they are rabbinic laws. They are not Torah laws. The blessing after we eat is a Torah law. When it comes to Torah learning, the opposite is the case. The blessing before we learn Torah is a Torah requirement, although not the text of it. And there is no blessing after we learn Torah except when you're called up to the Torah. So it's an interesting asymmetry why when it comes to food, the braha after you eat is more significant than the braha before you eat. And when it comes to Torah study, the opposite is the case. Uh it is more important to make a braha before you learn and after you learn. There actually is no braha at all except in a particular context of an ali. So the mesh of mayor a coin of dinsk again he's known me is his book on kesh or sak is his book on the raam and the shiva I work for or is actually named in honor of ra mayor sim dinsk who died without children. and he had he and his wife had one daughter who died uh very early in her marriage and they were not survived by any children. Uh so he's often called either the orak or the mesh kma uh either way but he offers a very very beautiful explanation to explain the difference between beros hamazone and beras hatra and he says what is the purpose of a braha generally you know when we bless first of all conceptually there's a very interesting question. I mean every every bra every standard braha begins with hashem blessed art you god I'm giving god a blessing let's just stop right there you know I can give you a blessing you can give me a blessing because we all have lacks we have things that we don't have in the world and therefore Or you can give someone a blessing which really means may God bless you to receive certain things. But God has no lack. God has no nothing that he doesn't have. How can you give a blessing to God? What is it that God is lacking that God would need a blessing in some form? So on that there are two ideas. One is an interesting re-ransation does not mean I am blessing you but it means I am acknowledging that you the almighty are the source of all blessings that exist in the world. See, it's different. In other words, when I say that God is bar, it's not the same thing as I'm saying you should be bar. When I say you should be bar, what I'm saying is God should give you something that you need. Whether it's physical, spiritual, internal, or external. When I say God is bar, I'm not praying that God should get something. I'm simply acknowledging that God is the source of all blessings. So that's explanation number one. You, Hashem, are the source of all blessing. That's explanation number one. Uh of the vagon's disciple in nephim has a bit of a more radical interpretation and that is god created a system. Again, I don't want to get into pmics or controversial issues, but many of you probably uh either listen to or are aware of Rabbi Manus Friedman and u his famous or infamous statement that God needs you and numerous discussions whether this is heretical or whether it's right and they even shle me into it. They took an excerpt five five minute excerpt somewhere says does Rabbi Bowits agree with Rabbi Manus Friedman. So even though I never I never met the person but they they spliced things together. Uh but the truth of the matter is as I did say in what Kabad retrieved uh the notion that God needs us is not only a uniquely notion of who is the great disciple of the villagon says the same thing in the following way. It's a bit of a subtle point. God created a system where God's benevolence is conditional on Jewish people doing Torah and mitzvah. When we do Torah and mitzvah, we open pipelines. We open channels. We free God, as it were, from a self-imposed limitation. And since God's greatest yearning is to give and to shower compassion, we give God a braha, so to speak, by releasing him from his binds through our mitzvot to be able to give. Now, obviously, this is not an inherent limitation. This is a self-imposed limitation. That's why it's not a weak, it's not a weakness or a deficiency. God could have made the systems any way he wanted. But the system that God created is that God to some degree to some degree is subordinated to human action because God's responses in the world are controlled and determined by the virtue and vice of human actors. So therefore, by thanking God, by acknowledging God, we are releasing God from his enslavement to be able to give. That's the idea of of a braha. To go a little further, again, again, I'm I'm I'm going a little I'm digressing a little bit, but since we're talking about brahos, it's worthwhile. Did you ever note that many many brahos are grammatically inconsistent? Let's take the braha on the water. Already made the brah so I'm not going to make it again. But right blessed are you. Blessed are you God bido. Everything came into existence by his word. You see something? You shifted from second person speaking to God and all of a sudden it became third person. That's a contradiction within a a very short braha. Either it should have said everything came into being through your word. Or you could say, "Blessed is the Almighty. Everything came into existence through his word." But the barem shak is a switch in the middle of the bra from second person direct to third person. So this on this we have the Audra David Abu Draam uh 15th century commentator on he's called the avu still the uh one of the primary sources on the understanding of and the vuam says this is because in every braha we are connecting to god on two planes ata is a relationship of closeness as if we're as if God is right here. Blessed art you, the imminence of God. And it suggests a friendship, a camaraderie, a relationship of love. That's the ata. But then we have to combine the love with reverence and awe. And that's already the third person. Meaning every braha encapsulates the notion of ava which is an imminent closeness of a relationship to hashem and yera a which is more of a distant transcendent relationship with God. And that's why you switch it. You're going from imminence to transcendence. Love fear. When I say fear I don't mean being afraid. When I say fear, yera, I mean awe, reverence, the notion that God is not your buddy, so to speak. God is the supreme power in the universe. And at the same time, we acknowledge that we have a closeness with Hashem, a relationship of love. Every braha encapsulates those two dimensions. Okay, so that was a little digression. But to go back to the main question that the mesh addresses, why would it be as it were that for food the main braha is after and not before? And for Torah, the braha is before and not after. So the medma says very beautifully ultimately the purpose of a braha is to generate within our personalities a sense of gratitude for what hashem has given to us uh being the very meaning of a Jew yudi yhoudi right we are called yhoudim now technically yhudah is only one tribe why are we all called Yehudin because Yehuda comes from gratitude. When Leia had her fourth son, Leia said, "Hapam, Yehuda, hapam oashm." Now, I am grateful to God. Why is she grateful to God now? Because she knew that there will be 12 sons and she knows that those 12 sons will come from four mothers. Rael Lea Zilba. So she figures every mother is entitled to three. So when you get what you're entitled to get, you don't feel gratitude. But when Leia got more than she wound up with six, but when she had four, she realized she got more than her portion. When you get more than you think you deserve, that is when you have gratitude. So says the Swas, every single Jew is called a Yehudi. Every Jew, whether you're from the tribe of Yehuda or not, because every one of us must go through life with the feeling that God has given us more good than we deserve. So the meaning of being a Jew is to be a grateful person. I mean quite literally. I I don't mean theologically what does it mean to be a Jew? The word Jew, the word Yehudi. The word comes from gratitude, thanksgiving. And that's what brahas are about. That's why we make brahas on food. That's why we make brahas, you know, go to the bathroom. The body is functioning properly. So we make braos when we see the wonders of nature, oceans and mountains. One should be grateful for their life and grateful for their world. So brahos are ways it goes in both directions. There are ways of expressing gratitude but it also works backwards. It is a way of learning gratitude. Meaning the ritual of braha when I internalize it properly forces me to step back a little bit and think about what it is that God has given me. So here's what the mesh says and I think a day like today we could actually see this fairly well under the perspective of the Torah. when you're actually hungry and you're actually thirsty and let's say a day like today, right? You came out of the heat as as I did without and I was without water and I finally got two bottles of water that I drank in around two seconds flat. What do you what goes through your head? Thank God. In other words, when a person is in a state of need, they naturally feel gratitude. So there was less of a requirement to legislate it or impose it because it arises spontaneously from the nature of the need. Now apparently in later generations we became so insensitive insensitive that they have to require a braha even then which is why I make a braha before we drink water but originally there was no need for a braha the gratitude when you're in need is a spontaneous reality and that's why the toyra does not require a braha before you learn but after you eat here's a Funny thing, even though you would figure, well, wait a second. If I was hungry and if I was thirsty and now Hashem, I feel fine. I ought to be more grateful. But in point of fact, that's not the way it works. Once I get what I need, I think, I don't need God anymore. So the Tyra says, "When you're full and when you're no longer in a state of need, remember to thank Hashem who gave you this food. Don't forget Hashem in your affluence, in your prosperity, in your smuggness, in your self-satisfaction. That is why the Tyra puts greater importance on the blessing after you eat than before. Because before you eat, when you're in a state of hunger, and again we have to remember, you know, in modern society, in modern society, although there is famine in the world for sure, but most people do not actually suffer genuine genuine hunger. But for most of history, you know, people didn't have unlimited food whenever they wanted to eat. So there really was a sense of, you know, I am hungry, you know, and I need to eat what I can eat. So that is why the Tyra didn't require a braha before you eat because it relied on the natural sense of need that gives rise to gratitude when the food or the drink is there to satisfy the need. Now says the mesh with the learning of Torah, it may be exactly the opposite. Before a person learns, a person might not be so grateful for the Torah. A person might rather not learn Torah. I'd rather sleep a little longer. A night like tonight, I'd rather stay at home with the air conditioner, relax over a cup of coffee. meaning I don't necessarily perceive the Torah as something to be so grateful for. So the Torah says before you learn, think about the gift that God gave you. Appreciate it, savor it, cherish it. But it says mayor Simra after a person learns, of course they're going to be grateful. They see the sweetness. They see the goodness. You don't need a in other words the concept is you don't need a braha because the feelings of gratitude are self-evident after you learn of course you see how wonderful it is. So a person might say, well, what if you're a person who even after you learn Torah, you know, you're not so excited about it, right? But you have to understand that sometimes the halic structures are there to teach us what our reality should be, even if it doesn't mirror the reality that we're presently in. Meaning by creating a structure where you make the braha before you learn and not after the Torah is communicating that ideally after you learn your nisha should be suffused with that joy and if you're not there yet that's a goal to aspire to but the hala is echoing the ideal structure of reality uh even if it doesn't correspond respond with the actual reality that I am that I am in. Okay. So that is the the idea of the mesh who differentiates between the blessings over the Torah and the blessings over Birkatamaz. By the way, let's look for a moment at the four blessings of Birkatamaz. We spoke a little bit about this last week. If you look at birkatamazone as a hakara satov exercise gratitude, you can see in the four blessings ascending levels of gratitude. Each braha brings you to a higher and higher and higher level of gratitude which goes beyond what you achieved in the earlier brahas. The first braha which praises God for sustaining the human beings was written as I said at the beginning by Moshe Rabenu in honor of the miracle of the man. Now the man is the most obvious example of being grateful because the man was a supernatural miracle that occurred every day except Shabas for 40 years in the desert. supernatural obviously comes from God and therefore you're going to be grateful. Fact, the man had all sorts of supernatural attributes. It could taste like whatever you wanted it to taste like. You wanted um they probably didn't know what an ice cream sundae tasted like, but it could be ice cream. It could be anything you want. The Gumar simply says uh that for nursing women it couldn't be onions or garlic because somehow that would affect their milk that uh that their children would would be taking and the like. Uh another aspect of the mun that was very strange is that if you were righteous the man for your daily man was right near your tent. If you were not righteous you had to keep on looking until you found it. So I always had a question. Let's assume that a righteous man lives right next to a non-righteous guy and the non-righteous guy sees that mun over there. He'll take that mun, right? What's going to stop him? So my understanding is he literally didn't see it. Meaning he didn't see the man that was intended for other people. So imagine this type of miracle and and you couldn't save it. You couldn't hold it over. It would spoil. So every single day you're looking to God as the only source of your pnasa nothing else. So hakara for that is quite obvious. So braha number one of benching is the most obvious type of gratitude for the supernatural and the miraculous. Now brah number two according to khazal was composed by yahosua bin uh after the Jewish people crossed the yard and conquered Israel. It's a bra alone. We thank Hashem for the gift of this land. Now this is already a bit tricky because unlike the man that came down from heaven in a supernatural way. The produce of Eric Israel comes through human effort. We number one we have to conquer it. We then have to settle it and we have to plow and irrigate and do all sorts of work. So it's very possible for a person to think hey this is not God here. This is me. It is my power that has done all these things. So, brah number two is taking us a little further in the gratitude route. Don't only think that God is helping you out in the supernatural open miracles. But even when you make your living supposedly through your effort and your work, it is only that is giving you the braha. And without hashem's braha, we would get nothing. None of our efforts would be successful. That is a more subtle level of we then come to the third blessing which asks Hashem to have mercy on you and the destroyed temple and to restore uh the Davidic monarchy Mashiach. So there the hakura is that even in adversity and even in galut where on one level it seems as if God is rejecting us. We are grateful even for that because the galot brings us to chuva and the galot reminds us that even when we are separated hashem is looking after us and the fact that we weren't destroyed that's a great miracle the fact that the Jewish people endure so this is a third level of hakaratov to be makerto even in galot and hurban yes we pray for the galot to end and we pray for the to end but we still have gratitude to Hashem even for what happens to us in the galot. And then finally the fourth braha was added after in the aftermath of the unspeakable massacre of betar in which hundreds of thousands of corpses were not given burial for three years. Miraculously in the aftermath of the barba revolt miraculously the corpses did not decompose. And when after 3 years and one week on the 15th of a we were given permission to bury the rug betar a blessing was added the fourth blessing at mv god is so good because the bodies didn't decompose and god does good that we're able to bury the dead. Now, this is a peculiar type of gratitude. I mean, I'm thanking God that the hundreds of thousands of corp of pe people that were massacred mercilessly didn't decompose and I could bury them. Well, what about the fact that hundreds of thousands of people were brutally slaughtered? And of course, in the Holocaust, you'd have the same analogy. You know, so many Jews we were not able to bury. Occasionally we could bury people and we're grateful. But what do you mean? So this is the highest level of a that even in darkness, even in tragedy, even in unimaginable suffering, a Jew squeezes out something to be grateful for. You got to squeeze it out. Look for it. Never assume that there can't be light in the greatest darkness. The zoir talks about something that's called bhsina deardusa. Bhutina de carnusa lit is Aramaic for the lantern of darkness. It's a black light just like you know we know that there are all sorts of light ranges that the human eye cannot detect infrared ultraviolet right so the zor says there's something called a pure black light what's a pure black light I mean scientifically that's not possible I mean uh black is the absence of light right but just as when you have special goggles you can see certain certain frequencies that the naked eye cannot perceive. So the zor says there's a certain spiritual goggle. It's in which one perceives not only the light at the end of the tunnel but the light that exists in the middle of the darkness itself. That's the fourth blessing. the tragedy of betar and to squeeze out a gratitude for being able to bury the dead that takes a very very high perception instead of being bitter and vuperative and attacking and resentful. Theim Israel saw a reason to be grateful. So these are different levels of hakaras. Now uh so that was point so really the first part of my my share I wanted to talk about birkatam mazone. Uh the second part of the share which is is going to be connected is I want to talk about the seven haurus of comfort. You know all of us know of course that uh on Shabas and Anyto uh after we read uh Torah the Torah reading we have excerpts from the prophets that is called the Ha Torah. Uh when I was little and I first learned about this in Schul I heard the word Ha Torah I didn't know what it meant exactly. So I came up with the the theory, this was my own thesis that okay, Torah is holier than prophets. So Torah is called Torah and the prophets are called half Torah. Like it's like it's just half. Uh I thought that was pretty good. But then when I got to have Havdala at the end, I didn't I didn't know what to do with that. Why are you calling it half dollar? So all right. So I I had to uh go back to the drawing board on that. Uh but uh it's well known. It's a it's already a law in the Gomorrah in the Mishna that the creassor and Shabas is followed by the ha Torah the reading from the prophets. But what's interesting is that the Gomorrah does not ind the Talmud does not indicate what the horra has to be. Meaning this was actually left to local communities to find prophetic portions that are connected to the para. That's why there are different customs to this day. Ashkenazim, Sardim, Tammanim, Kabad, Italian has its own, Rome has its own unusual huras because basically the Talmud does not require a particular haft Torah. It was left to local communities. So different communities developed different customs. But there are a few rules that the Talmud lays down and that is it does say that although normally ahaft Torah is connected to the Torah reading right somehow there'll be some thematic connection there are certain times of year which override that choice and it mentions very specifically that the three weeks before tishab you read Three ha toos dealing with tragedy and catastrophe. The seven weeks after tishabove which started last shabas you have seven ha toros of comfort based and all of them are taken from the same na'vi the na'vi and the point that the garumar is making is that the requirement of three ha of tragedy followed by seven comfort overrides any connection to the parata Now people find and the like but even if there's no connection between the para and the ha but this overrides it. Now the garra says the following pattern three haurus of tragedy followed by seven hauros of comfort. This is called Shiva in Aramaic, the seven of Toras of comfort. And that takes us all the way to Roshashana, right? All the way to Rash. The last Torah of comfort is the last Shabas of the year right before Rashashana. And then the Gmorrah indicates we read various havos dealing with repentance and the like during the Roshashana yam kipper season. So what's the pattern? Piranios tragedy comfort chuva repentance turning to God. Now this tracks the Jewish calendar very well because you know we have the three weeks culminating in tishab then we have comfort and then we go to rashashana yam kipper which are seasons of soulsearching and chuva but in reality spiritually that's not the pattern that's not the way things play out in last week's para which happens to also be the Torah reading on the nth of a Torah describes the standard picture We become sinful and because of our sins there is galut, there is there is persecution. The enemy tries to destroy us. We are exiled from the land. And then what happens? And in our suffering, we turn to Hashem and we do chuva and then he redeems us and brings us back. In other words, it's not suffering redemption chuva. It's actually suffering chuva redemption. The way we structure the ha to is not corresponding to the actual cycle that the itself indicates. Same thing is true in the let's look at the we ask God help us Hashem to do chuva and then God forgives us and only then God redeems us. In other words, sin generates suffering. Suffering generates repentance. Repentance generates redemption. So why is the pattern of the hauros catastrophe comfort and then chuva? It should actually be catastrophe shuva and then comfort right so uh it's an interesting point that it almost appears that the comfort is a freebie that we get without chuva even though that's not emis says beh as the itself indicates that the Jewish people will experience redemption only through the process of chuva. Although the Rambam does say God promises we will do chuva but we need that chuva. So in order to go back to this, I want to focus on a puk that was in last week's para, but it's also in this week's para in somewhat of a different wording. And that is a very strange wording where Moshe Rabenu seems to blame the Jewish people for his shortcomings. Mosher Rabenu alludes both last week and this week to the fact that he will die in the desert in this few months month one month from the date that he's saying this and he will not be Zoha to enter Erit Israel and he says God was angry at me because of you. God was angry at me because of you. Now, the simple meaning of that verse is actually a bit disturbing. We know that Mosher Rabena was commanded to speak to the rock after Miriam died and water would come. And because the Jewish people were rebellious, Moshe lost patience and Moshe called them rebellious ones. And Moshe hit the rock in anger. At least this is, you know, one shot. And God says to Moshe, "Because you did not sanctify my name, therefore you shall not bring my nation to the land of Israel." So Mosher Rabenu seems to be saying, "It's your fault I'm not going. You made me do it. You got me mad." I mean, what are we talking about here? It's like the old story of the of the abusive husband who uh punches his wife and says, "You know, you had it coming to you. You got me mad. You got me upset. What do you What did you want me to do? We certainly wouldn't accept that." And for a saddic, a sadic any saddic, forget about Mosher Rabenu, the greatest of all, a saddic does not blame others for his shortcomings. Yes, the Jewish people had shortcomings. The Jewish people were rebellious. The Jewish people did not have faith in Hashem. Yes, a lot of problems. But how can Mosher Abenu say, "I got punished and it's your fault." That's not the way a sadic would talk. That's not the way Mosher Rabenu would talk. So what does it mean when Mosher Rabenu says God was angry at me because of you? So the run raenu Nissim one of the rishonium of the 14th century says that maybe we're mistransating this here. When Mosher Rabenu says, "God was angry at me because of you," he's not casting fault. He's not saying, "It's your fault that I sinned." But he's saying it was in your honor that God punished me for my sin. And this is what the Ran says. The Jewish people rebelled against God over and over and over and over again. And then it's true that at least a generation of the spies would die out in the land, but but but their children would go. God did not stop the Jewish people from going because of their sins. God forgave the sins against God's own honor. But Mosher Abenu sinned against the Jewish people by calling them rebellious, by losing his temper. by having anger. And God said, "The honor of my people is so great that I cannot forgive slights to them, no matter how great you are." In other words, Mosher Rabainu is not even criticizing here. He's trying to build people up. Remember, you have to understand this is the la once again, this is the last month for the last five weeks of Mosher Rabenu's life. [Music] He is the one who took them out of Egypt. He is the one who split the Red Sea. He is the one who gave them the Torah. He was their connection with God. He's going to be leaving. He's going to be gone. And he's leaving them exactly when they're facing a challenge that is immense to conquer Eric Israel, to face the Canaanite armies. People are bewildered. People are confused. People legitimately wonder, can we possibly succeed in this endeavor without Mosha Rabenu? And Moshe who in most of the book of Dvarim gives Muser and criticism has to switch gears a little bit by emphasizing don't be afraid. Look at how beloved you are in God's eyes. You sinned against him over and over and over again and God forgave you. I sin against you once and God says that's unforgivable. So instead of viewing yourself as puny, as insignificant, as ineffectual, be aware of your greatness. Be aware of your goodness. know that God will be with you even when I'm gone. God will be with you even without Mosher Ra because the Jewish people is greater than any particular leader that the Jewish people have and that the Ran says is the meaning of the verse. God was angry at me because of you. Not it's your fault that I sinned. But he when I stepped on your toes, God didn't give me a second chance. When you step on God's toes, he gives you a chance and a chance and another chance. Which means the Ran says, and this is really an important lesson to parents, to teachers, when you have children, when you have students, in fact, even in a husband wife relationship, you sometimes got to point out things that are not right and not correct. Otherwise, there's never going to be progress. But you got to couple it with affirmations. You can't just tell a kid everything that's wrong with him. You have to build them up. He has to rec he or she has to re has to recognize and internalize their greatness and their beauty because otherwise they're not going to be motivated to change because they think they're not fixable. No person, it's been well said, is ever motivated to change for the better unless they're convinced they're already good. Because if they think they're broken, that's not going to motivate them to get better. That will just reinforce the idea that I'm a point beyond beyond return. And that's why Mosher Rabenu has to switch the strategy a little bit here and not emphasize the failures of B Israel but to emphasize their strengths. Now let's go to how the Jewish people felt and maybe we can feel a little of this in post October 7. And if you have parents or relatives who went through the Holocaust, they experienced it certainly in the Holocaust. A person experiences cataclysmic tragedy, unbelievable tragedy. They think that God has rejected them. They think there's no way that God cares about me. There's no way that God loves me. How could a loving God engineer any of this? And as a result, a person is so broken that they either lose their faith or if they have faith, but they're not motivated in any constructive way because they feel they're devastated. So in order to get a person to do chuva, they have to first internalize that they are redeemable. They are worthy of redemption. They are worthy of love. So now I want to go back to the pattern of the haurus in a very subtle way. What was the question I raised? The pattern of the haft to is first there's tragedy then there's comfort then there is which is redemption comfort redemption and then there's chuva problem is that's not what the Torah says is going to happen the Torah says what's going to happen is first there's tragedy then there's chuva and then there's redemption so how come The pattern of the ha toos differs from the pattern of the humish. The answer is this. It is true that we first have to do chuva in order to get redemption. Yep. As the Rambam writes niguva, the Jewish people will only be redeemed with chuva. But psychologically what enables what empowers a person to do chuva is the sense that God loves them, cares about them, cherishes their relationship. So even though chronologically it's true, we're not going to get the redemption till we do the chuva, we have to have the vision of redemption in our minds in order to get us to chuva. The notion that God cares, that God loves me, that I'm worthy, that I'm precious. Once I have that, now I'm ready for chuba. So the hafty are not describing the actual chronology as it will unfold in real time but it's describing the psychological process that we have to go through in order to come to chuva. I am redeemable. I am I meaning I as individual and I as Jewish people. I am worthy of God's love. God wants a relationship with me. And then I'm ready to put in the work for Chuva. So the seven of terrors of comfort are really the precursor to the spiritual work of Chuva. You don't come to chuva by your failures. You come to chuva by your strengths. It is your strengths that enable you to then look at your failures and fix them. But without that it's not going to be you know and of course it's been pointed out many many times that the comfort is more than double right three have to of tragedy seven haurus of comforts God is saying you know when you've been hurt when you've been hurt you need a double embrace to get over the pain you know they say that Um, children remember the very first time that um they were lost that that somehow they got separated from their parents. And I I actually I do remember this. I was um um Hartford, Connecticut had a wonderful wonderful old department store, privately owned departments at G Fox, one of the last private uh companies uh I mean I think now they're they're they're closed, but uh last private companies uh in department stores and the 11th store was a 11th story was a wonderful wonderful toy department. So um I was with my mom and uh she was doing something on that floor. They had something else there. And I wandered off to look at the toys. And then I didn't know where my mother was. It was only five. It was only like less than a minute for sure. It was not a big thing like, you know, I was really But I had I had a real panic. I had a panic. I thought to myself, "Oh, I'm lost forever. You know, I'm an orphan. Who's going to who's going to take care of me? Where am I going to sleep?" You know, I really had this total fear that I was lost forever. and what's going to happen to me all of this as I say was less than a minute but you know still um this notion oh so so what happens so you start I start crying you know kid cries and mom comes and hugs the kid and kisses the kid and says I love you I love you I love you I love you now you know you may ask well why does why does mom have to say I love you a hundred times you know she said it once right if you were be a brisk or lumbus why do you to say, you know, again, the answer is that a broken heart needs reassurance. It's not a logical process. You can't like say it once. So with the seven of comfort, people point out there's an extraordinary amount of repetition in the ha. So if you ask me what is the theme of the first ha of comfort. So it says well God will redeem us even in our suffering. Okay. And what is the theme of the second ha of comfort? God will redeem us even in our suffering. And what is the theme of the third haftra? Same. Fourth same. Fifth same. Sixth same. Seventh same. A lot of repetition. So the maporam try to show that synonyms each synonym for joy and love has a different meaning. But I would suggest maybe a different approach here. And I would say that if you look at the seven of terrorists of comfort as God hugging us after our devastation, then you don't have to have a new meaning in every reassurance. You need the reassurances. The heart needs reassurance beyond what the head absorbs. And that's the shiva in beautiful beautiful language. God is you know we we were estranged. We were lost. We were separated. We still are separated. But God is telling us I love you. I'm with you. I care for you. Don't give up hope. Don't despair. There is a glorious glorious future of redemption and braha that is awaiting. And as I say, this ties in very very logically to the season of chuva of the yam because the basic idea is that once we know once we're secure in our relationship with Hashem, then we have the inner strength to do the work that we need to do. So, God willing, may we get the joy of these weeks, even in the sorrows that we're still facing, and may it prepare us for a new and blessed year that is coming up, maybe sooner than we might imagine. So, thank you. [Music] You see your body [Music] so much here. Oh my