What are we talking about?

I'm talking about a Torah dispersing person.

If you like him, you follow him and you stick with him.

It's an important thing.

Because sometimes you shop around.

Maybe this person, maybe that person today.

No, you stick with the person that's good for you and you just let it have an impact.

And that's the whole purpose, right? So if you don't got that, then maybe what's the point of the mitzvahs?

[murmurs]

Yeah.

So it says, it says, "kitete lemilchamah al oivecha", when you go to war, "kitete lamilchamah", when you go to war, "al oivecha, unasanu Hashem leka beyadcha", Hashem will place them in your hands.

So if you look-- if you compare these two verses, in kitete it's like an instant win.

When you go to war on your enemies, Hashem will place your enemies in your hands.

"Unasanu Hashem leka beyadcha", straight away.

But over here in Parshat Balak it's different, that when war comes to your land with the oppressor that oppresses you, you will sound the trumpets, Hashem will remember you, and then Hashem will save you.

[murmurs]

Challenge accepted.

That, yeah.

So, so Rav Yerucham Levovitz who was the, was the mashgiach of Mir, he put Amitai's words into, into a different, um, perspective.

And, and Ari's already said this in the fifteen hundreds to his Talmud, to his student, Rav Chaim Vital.

He said the times-- there's so much tumah.

Imagine Ari's telling his Talmud, Rav Chaim Vital, in the fifteen hundreds in Safed, "The tumah here is so great," in, in Safed in the fifteen hundreds.

"The tumah here is so great that your words of Torah are gonna bring Mashiach because compared to the tumah in the streets and the pritzus and the terrible things you see in the fifteen hundreds in Safed.

The, the, the quick, like, how much time? How much you got?

[murmurs]

Yeah.

So it says, it says, "ki tetze la'milchamah al oivecha", when you go to war, "ki tetze la'milchamah", when you go to war, "al oivecha, unasanu Hashem lehiyakah beyadecha", Hashem will place them in your hands.

So if you look-- if you compare these two verses, in ki tetze, it's like an instant win.

When you go to war on your enemies, Hashem will place your enemies in your hands.

"Unasanu Hashem lehiyakah beyadecha", straight away.

But over here in Parshat Behaalotecha, it's different, that when war comes to your land with the oppressor that oppresses you, you will sound the trumpets, Hashem will remember you, and then Hashem will save you.

[murmurs]

[background chatter] Um, at Har Sinai when HaKadosh Baruch Hu, when Hashem was giving us the Torah.

So it's famous-- There's two famous things that, that occurred over there, and they're completely contradictory.

Um, they're often not posed as contradictory, but it's important to realize that.

Um, right, that there's the famous Midrash that Hashem went and offered the Torah to all the nations of the world.

Famous Midrash that Hashem went to the children of Yishmael, the children of, of...

I, I don't even know how you say that in English.

Kanievsky

...

Kanievsky and, and begged for advice, Reb Chaim told him, "Find someone who gets insulted and does not respond.

Ask that person for a blessing." Hmm.

This is based on the Gemara, which states, quote, "One who is insulted and does not respond, one who does so with love and accept his difficulties about him, it is said, let those who love him be like the powerful rising sun." Okay? The man wondered how he would find such a person, but he began to keep his eyes open.

So it happened that at the time, there was a major dispute between two neighbors in Bnei Brak.

Although they had gone to the Beis Din, several rabbonim to resolve their dispute, it had not been worked through, and there was very bad blood between them.

Ki Tetzei.

When, um, a job opportunity came up for me to move to New Jersey and to do what I'm gonna do over there, um, Jewish outreach, kiruv.

So besides the obvious real reason to do it, which is like reaching out to Jews who are unaffiliated, um, my Rosh Yeshiva and I had an interesting conversation.

Um, so one thing was I said, "But what about the guys in Yeshiva there? They're gonna need me." He said, "Irreplaceable.

We'll find someone else to do it.

Don't worry." So besides that, it's nothing to do with what I wanna say.

Just need to get that off my chest.

So there's a Kaddish that we say, it's called Kaddish Tiskabel.

Why is it called Kaddish Tiskabel? Because we add on the, the, the part of the Kaddish that says, Tiskabel seloson uveshalom.

What are seloson uveshalom? So if you look in the art scroll, it says, it says, "May the prayers and the pleas be accepted before Hashem." So what's the difference between a prayer and a plea? So it says in Parshas Vayechi, when, uh, Jacob is giving a bracha to Yosef, he says that, "I've given you an extra portion in the land of Israel.

I've given you, um, the la-- the Shechem, the city of, of, uh, of Shechem." So the words of the passage is, it says, "Vani nasati lacha Shechem echad al achecha asher lakachti miyad ha-emori b'charbi uvikashti." I've given you-- read you the English.

"I've given you Shechem, one portion more than your brothers, which I took from the hand of the Amorites with my sword and with my bow." So b'charbi uvikashti, with my cherev, with my sword, uvikashti, with my keshes, my, my bow.

So Rashi already says that this is not to be taken literally.

So the Shemoneh Esrei is where we're, we're most intimate.

Very nice.

[microphone rustling] um, it's very common to hear people singing the song, "We want Mashiach now." You know that song? "We want-- We don't wanna wait." It's a great song.

Right.

So, so do we really want Mashiach now? Mm-hmm.

So it's one of the thirteen principles of the Rambam.

If you go to the end of Shacharit, at the end of the morning services, it has the thirteen Ani Ma'amins, the thirteen things that some people add that on to their davening in the morning, "I believe." So one of the thirteen things is that, "I believe with full faith in the coming of the Messiah, and even if he will, uh, mitmama-mitmamaea, that he'll delay, achakilu, I'm gonna wait for him." So it's one of the principles of faith.

So it seems pretty important.

We're supposed to remember that Hashem

gave us man.

Now what does that have to do with covering the challah? Because there's two psukim.

There's one pasuk that says that dew fell in the camp.

There's another passage that says, dew lifted above the man.

And the Gemara resolves this seeming contradiction.

Did the dew fall on the ground, or did the dew fall on top of the man? So the Gemara says that the dew fell on the bottom and the top, and it formed like a box.

to build

I was giving this class during a time when my grandmother actually passed away.

She passed away at the age of 94.

That was about three months ago.

So it was somewhat personal, but she lived a nice, long, healthy life until the end.

So it wasn't so terribly painful.

She made it to 94.

And

so the rabbi said to him.

isn't Burma anymore.

You know more than me.

I don't know what to tell you.

Anyways, so I asked him, what religion are you? He said he grew up Buddhist.

And he said, but what did the statue ever do for me? I don't know why people are praying to statues, but I'm Christian now, he said.

I said, so why did you switch? He said they have good messages.

I said, okay.

much

Thank you, Rabbi.

Didn't really have a chance to gather my thoughts, but I want to talk about prayer.

So we know in the periodic table of elements in chemistry, there's all these different elements.

There's sodium, and there's...

I can't even list them.

That's how out of the Parsha I am.

But whatever, there's all these different elements, and they all do a very specific thing.

which one should we start with?