Transcription
[Music] okay so we are starting a new Hamish. okay so this finish is called via crap which means and he called. so this is God calling to Moshe. this is the Commissioner has most of the Commandments in it. so the very beginning chapter tells us a lot about Moshe and a lot about the conflicts that we have in life in drawing close to Hashem. the word via Krab which means that he called is written with a small other. the way you spell it is VAR viewed cool freixa Aleph and the Aleph is miniaturized. so the reason for that is is to tell you that the reason why Hashem is calling Moshe isn't because of Moses perceived greatness but because of moshus perceived smallness. so I have to give you a bit of a vision of what makes a person the prophet and what humility is and why it's a virtue. here's how prophecy works. any person could develop a certain level of spiritual sense. it's a sensitivity as we all have. it's an example of a minor level of spiritual sensitivity is if you see somebody fall down in the street on the ice. what will you do? laugh? push somebody else? because if that one fell on the black ice but some of us, okay, would conceivably go and pick that help the person get up. is that true? okay. so what are you thinking? this is the important part. put it in to put your thoughts into words. and when you're thinking you may not have words but try to put your thoughts into words. someone slip, yeah, and you go to help them. what are the words you're thinking as you cross the street to help them get up? one of the words you're thinking? yeah, oh my gosh, I hope they're okay. would be reasonable. okay, clear. so that means I am invested in them. I hope that they're okay. so that comes from seeing them and you is being on the same team. you understand this? so true humility is from that space. true humility is very, very different than low self-esteem. a person with low self-esteem will see everybody else as a competitor. that doesn't lead to empathy at all. okay. so humility means I'm a creation, you're creation, but there's a step beyond that. so that gives you the base level of spiritual sensitivity. to get to a higher level of spiritual sensitivity, you have to realize and who I am and who you are is a gift from God. I didn't create myself. I didn't put myself in my family. I didn't give myself my education. I didn't give myself my body. I didn't give myself my capacities. so what neither did the other person. so if you are more gifted than the other person, you feel fortunate, but not better than. you understand the difference? okay. so the more fortunate you feel, the more gratitude you'll feel towards God. so that gets you into a situation that will sound paradoxical. the more you think you are, the more humble you'll be. if this is how you think. so person with, let's say, musical ability, great beauty, intelligence, who sees that as a gift will feel very humble before God. okay, clear? because look how much they gave them. okay. so that means the true humility means feeling small and beloved. what would the opposite be? it would be feeling not beloved and therefore having a great need to feel big. you understand this? so to all hinges on how about how beloved you can let yourself feel. okay. so with that in mind, Moshe was enormously humble. it says in the story that he was more humble than any human who ever lived. why was he so humble? do you think he didn't notice that he split the sea, took an entire people out of Egypt? you think he was like Gary Cooper from some 1950s Western who would have said, gosh, Auntie Bill could have done it? okay, exactly. they say, look at the role God gave me. how will I ever live up to what he gave me? so the greater a person is, the more humble they are potentially, but that's only potential. so what people do is they attribute their gifts to themselves. they confuse the gift with the giver. okay. so did you ever come across somebody with like a huge ego? okay. so I want you to envision this because it's like somewhere at Hebrew University, there's an office and this office is inhabited by the head of a department. and this office, which is since he's a head of the department, is a nice office. so most is almost as big as this room. what's in it? describe it. what's in it? windows with a view, yet months gopis, what else? lots of diplomas, yeah, pictures of him with important people, right? what an espresso machine, you've got it, yeah, and what else? books, okay, impressive books, right? okay, big wooden desk, right? and your, you ready, one chair, gotta, okay. so everybody comes in there, ends up feeling like a petitioner. okay, clear. do you think that that's accidental? for sure or not? I mean, for sure not. okay, clear. so someone I know, who sometimes I say it's a friend and it's really me, this wasn't me, but it was very sorely tempted. so somebody actually sat on the car like [Laughter]. it's not the thing to do if you want to get what you want. okay. but in any case, why, but why would he do that? because the sense of security is so weak that he has to feel big because he attributes his his sense, his being a significant person to what other people will tell him he is because he has no sense of internal significance. got it. so Moshe was awfully humble, and this is why Hashem spoke to him. where did Hashem speak to him? so until this point, the answer would have been anywhere. so there are five differences between Moshe and other prophets, most of which have to do with the level of preparation that other prophets had to do to get prophecy. so I only took you to step one and step two, basic spiritual sensitivity in a sense of being given in humility, but there are more steps. the more a person progresses spiritually, the more instinctive understanding they have of what God wants of them. okay. this is clear. so that's not prophecy though. it's a high level. it's called - a Hakodesh. it's not prophecy. prophecy is being able to actually hear a voice from Hashem, which there isn't anymore. so other prophets had to clear themselves of foreign thoughts, had to conscientiously wipe away ego. most of their prophecies would have be happen either in a dream state or asleep. okay. Moshe could have experienced prophecy if he was eating a falafel. how come? because to him, eating a falafel was a spiritual experience. the taste, the texture, the smell, the nurture, the fact that anything can grow from the earth, all of that gave him more God consciousness, not less. for us, eating a falafel, at least for me, I would get totally absorbed and what the falafel. okay. there. okay. so that's Moshe. so Hashem, from this point on, only spoke to him in the Mishkan. why the Mishkan? so over the last several parts, yet we learned a lot about the Mishkan, right? okay. the Mishkan was the collective statement of the entire Jewish people's longing for closest to Hashem with their minds, with their hearts, with their bodies. so Hashem appeared to Moshe only in the Mishkan because he was appearing to Moshe as a representative of the entire Jewish people. so he and them are, in a certain sense, one person is the representative of the whole Jewish people. so therefore, he has to get his prophecy the place was donated and made by the whole Jewish people. okay. so there's a riddle in the Gemara, which woman had the biggest family ever? okay. so the answer to that is, you're covered because Moshe was like the entire nation. so if you had them all on one side of the scale, Moshe on the other, it would balance. so it doesn't mean he was so huge, he was like the whole nation. no, he was so humble that he saw himself in every single member of the nation. so because of this, prophecy took place in oh hell no aid. okay. so from now on, the Mishkan is going to be referred to in the Torah as the oh hell. okay. sometimes oh hell no ed. so the Mishkan is going to refer to what was inside the arc and the menorah and all of that. the oh hell, the tent is structure. well, no, it means the appointed tent. so now we're going to get the first things that Hashem is telling Moshe. so why would you expect the very first thing? it's a representative of all the Jews. here's what they could all do. you and them, they could all draw close to me. we could all be one. okay. why do you, if you were God, how's that for fantasy? okay. what are the first bits? what you would give a psyche? say, and remember Shabbos, it's the way. but it's not love. that's why we live. expected you to say, said, if you want a relationship, you have to know how to take yourself and bring yourself to me. I'm here. you have to know how to bring yourself to me. okay. so what's going to be the main topic in this parsha? are is how to do this. which part of us is distant from Hashem? the body. okay. so remember me eating falafels? what am I thinking about when I eat falafel? falafel. they have sub questions, maybe with more tehina, maybe not. you're familiar with that? maybe laughi would be even better. but okay, okay. so we, so our bodies keep us right down here in the physical world. so these don't. what's going to happen here is the whole tour about how to elevate the body using sacrificial offerings as a vehicle. okay. so our bodies and animals bodies are very similar. is that true? okay. but there are crucial differences. the crucial difference is that the body for humans is meant to express the soul and can express the soul, but it requires effort. so there are different aspects of the body. bear with me. this is a way of thinking that you're not used to. there's an aspect of yourself that's analogous to fish, an aspect of you that's analogous to birds, and an aspect of yourself that's analogous to animals. okay. so fish are never offered as sacrifices, and they also don't require any specific helices about how they should be killed before you eat them. okay, clear. so what, what are we learning from this? there's an aspect of you that doesn't need any further refinement. the way it is is the way it is. okay. it doesn't need any visualization. it's holy as is. okay. so that part is analogous to fish. so I want you to think about fish. they still, they live their entire lives in the water. so there's an aspect of self that always feels, so to speak, surrounded by goodness, truth, longing, love. what's that? that's the spiritual soul. so when you're talking about the Jewish people as a group, there are some people who live their whole lives like this. the real said, you can live like this all of the time. okay. there's another aspect of self which is analogous to animals. me eating the falafel. okay. okay. so an animal can't totally leave the earth. so even if it jumps, like I'm sure you've seen horses jump, did you ever see this? they have this in huge line, by the way, but if you see a hoist up, it's very dramatically, you actually leave the earth, but they're down in a second. okay. an animal will always go back to the earth. okay. so even though it has a mind, even though they have primitive emotions, they always come back to the earth. so there's an aspect of us, of every one of us, that's earthbound. there will always come back to the earth. and that would be true for for any person. that's the aspect of self that requires the most ritualization. so all of the laws concerning food, for instance, it has to be kosher, you have to say a blessing, a blessing before, blessing afterwards. okay. all of this is because our need to eat is don't to go away. we're always go to like it. we're always going to enjoy it, but we could bring the rest of us to it. we don't have to stay on the ground like an animal. but the animal self will always reverse to the ground. so therefore, there's lots of halacha about food. there's lots I love Halak about sexual engagement. there's lots of halacha about death. there's lots of challah. okay, you understand this? so the more as a variant and activity relates to the animal self, the more Holika you need. so because of that, the laws of sacrificing animals are going to be the ones that inform us about what to do with the animal self, and they're very, very specific. now, between animals and fish or birds. birds could fly, but they can't fly indefinitely. all birds eventually have to land. okay. they would they would die of exhaustion if they float if they would fly continually with no rest. so the birds, as is narrated in the creation narrative, we're not like the fish that came from the water, and they weren't like animals that came from the earth, but they came from the water and the earth together. they came from mud. so there's an aspect of self that can be raised and could fly, but in the end, it's drawn down to the earth. so that aspect of self requires less Halawa, but still requires some. okay, clear. so some aspects of life that that that would be included in would be speech, for instance. okay. everyone's speech reveals their soul, but speech will also take you down to very base and negative things. could you see where this is sir? so you require some Halawa, but not to the degree to the more base aspects of life. okay. so what I'm going to do now is I'm going to describe the sacrificial offerings that we're done with animals and with birds, and I'm not going to take it tell q2 the meaning very deeply yet because let me to say so they just realize I had this horrible foot. how long are you learning till before paisa? you have so you're not like stopping tomorrow or something like that. just at this. so yeah, I'll give you. it's all in great detail. wait a minute. what if this is the end? okay, okay. because the more detail you know about this, the more you'll be able to uplift your animal self. this is extremely important stuff. so here's structure, and tomorrow we'll do meaning. so today we're mom is only going to do structure. okay. so there are different, there are two, two, two basic kinds of offerings. okay. they have many subdivisions. one is called Ola, and the other is called slummin. Ola means something that rises. slummin means something that makes peace. okay. so an Ola could be offered if a person recognizes that they neglected to do something that they should have done. they didn't do something wrong, but there was an opportunity that because the animal self took over, they just didn't do. so a simple example of that, it would be, gosh, the whole day, the whole day passed, I didn't say the Shema. why? because I was busy eating, drinking, whatever, and I just didn't. and the person wants to say, but I don't want to be an animal. I want to meet. I want to be able to say I'm alive. or they reach out to every opportunity. the other reason for offering in Ola would be that there's something you could have done to fix a mistake and you didn't do it. meaning you stole it, say, and you could have returned the money, but you didn't. now the man died, or now you can't trace him any longer. okay, clear. but you recognize this as a lost opportunity. okay. ash LOM M is completely different. okay. I can't know. there's more to Enola. another kind of Ola. okay. would be from the Jewish people as a well. we recognize that we're not finished yet. we're not complete. our journey still has to go further. another kind of Ola would be when a person would actually sin, but not any old kind of sin. they sinned inadvertently, but it was a serious inadvertent sin. okay, clear. okay. what's from him? slobbery literally means peace. so it's where you want to make peace between the different aspects of self or different parts of the Jewish people. so with an Ola, the entire offering would be sacrificed on the altar. with ash LOM, it would be divided. some of it would be sacrificed on the altar, some of them would be donated to the Kohanim who officiate in the temple, and the rest of it, which is usually a lot, would be eaten by the person who's the owner donor of the sacrifice together with his friends, family would come to celebrate with him. so this would be done in times of gratitude towards a Shem, the birth of a child, escaped from danger, or because she just felt like it. okay, clear. okay. now, the animals that were offered will have enormous symbolic value, but there was a sliding scale. so the animal of a show of choice for an Ola would be a bull or a cow, but if a person couldn't afford it, they could bring a sheep or a goat, and if they really couldn't afford even that, they could bring a bird. and we're going to talk about money has to do with all of these three different levels. and if they really didn't have the funds even to bring a small bird like a pigeon, they could bring a flower offering. a flower offering is called Aminta. okay. there are five different kinds of Monaco's, the plural of minhas minik hot. so the clients have been a hot. there was one is just flour, flour mixed with away on that baked, just flour. another kind would be baked like a loaf. another kind would be flat cakes. another kind would be fried in shallow oil, and another kind would be fried in deep oil. now again, why we're not taking today? today we're only doing what? okay. so now we have three kinds of offerings. we have Adam Lauren's bread offerings and flower offerings. okay. so the animals that were used in animal offerings could be cows, Bulls, okay, and that's basically it. okay. what, so the three offerings we have, animal offerings, then we have lesser animal offerings like sheep and goats, but they're still animal offerings. then we have birds, which is a whole different category, and the ritual is different, and then we have flour, which is still the third category, and the ritual is very different. so, okay, clear. so we have animal offerings, which are subdivision into major and minor, then we have bird offerings, then we have flower offerings. okay, clear. so again, remember you're gonna go so boring, but you're not going to be able to understand what it meant until you know what it is. so bear with me. okay. so the major animals of Warford were cows and bulls. alternatively, if the person didn't have the money, they could offer sheep or goats. the first step in any offering was selecting the right animal. the selection of the right animal is based on two things. what is the person's financial capacity? but the other is the degree to which the their-their obstacle, what they're trying to get through or give the higher voice to relates to the specifics of the animal. so sometimes the turo will say, in this circumstance, let's say a holiday, this is what you offer. in that circumstance of that holiday, you offer something else. sometimes if the offering is voluntary, because only a person that every person knows their own heart and those that they missed an opportunity or not, they'll say, was the sheep in it made me Lord, who's it, or the go to me, or whatever. okay, clear. so the first is the selection of the animal. the animals for an Ola have to be male and they have to be perfect. okay, fresh lemon. they don't have to be male, but for an Ola, they have to be male and again and again, the reason will be discussed tomorrow, and perfect. okay, no be kid. they can't be missing a limb. it can't have like there won't there a defined criteria for what we could be considered a defect in an animal. okay. the next step is that the person who's offering the sacrifice has to forcefully put his hands on the animal's head so that they identify with the animal. so they feel this is really me. this is the earthly me. this is me. okay. so this is called Smita, which means leaning. if it was a woman who was offering the sacrifice, she only did Smeal if she wanted to. she didn't have to. some women are uncomfortable touching animals that much to have to put your hands forcefully leaning on. okay, okay. the next step, the next step is that the animal, after having been examined to be sure it's per is perfect, is standing. remember what the Mishkan looked like? it was in this, there's this whole yard around it. so there in the yard, facing the altar, okay, not on the altar, facing the altar, and then the animals slaughtered. the way you would slaughter an animal for eating it, it's the same method. okay. the only difference would be what happens next. so up until this point, no Kohan was really involved, right? the person chose his own animal, he leaves his own hands on it, an ordinary show faith could kill the animal. a Kohan has to have especially prepared and consecrated bowl or vessel, and when the shoka kills the animal, the blood has to be contained in this vessel. so this is the first thing that made it a Corbin. until now, the person could have been eating steak for dinner. this is what makes it a Corbin. okay, clear. okay. at that point, the blood will be passed around to a whole team of Kohanim to see that it doesn't begin to coagulate, and depending on the kind of offerings that's being made, the blood will be poured usually on the northern end of the altar. okay, clear. in the meantime, the rest of the animal is removed from the altar area to a side place. its flayed, flayed means that the skin is removed, just like again, this part is as though you would be eating the animal, and it's divided into sections, and then if it's an Ola where the whole thing is offered on the MS baya, on the altar, a procession of Kohanim will be sometimes as many as, I think they think the maximum is 16 or 18, I don't remember. Kohanim would carry the various parts of the animal to the altar, where in the meantime, the altar was very big, by the way. people picture an altar like this, and altar was like the top of it was much bigger than this room, even. there'd be a fire in the center and four fires on the sides. okay. so the procession of Kohanim would go up to the altar, and they would ignite the fire, and then a fire would come down from heaven and consume the animal. okay, clear. so it was partially done by human hand and partially from Hashem. okay. in the meantime, while this is happening, okay, in the temple, yet as this is not taking place, the procession, all of this other Kohanim and levin will be singing songs that are inspiring and like Vegas kind of songs, so that the person who's the owner donor recognizes that they don't have to be an animal, they could be more, and that the animal could be dedicated in them, they could take themselves to reach a higher level. okay, this is clear. okay. if the animal was a smaller animal, a sheep or a goat, the process is basically the same. okay. I skipped up an important part, by the way. the animal is thoroughly washed before it's Wofford. okay, clear. no, so that's category number one. that's an animal. let's move to bird. for reasons that we're going to discuss tomorrow, the bird had a whole different ritual. there are only two kinds of birds that could be used, turtle doves and pigeons. okay. the turtle but do you know anything about birds? will this interest you? I don't know. whatever. in terms of their age, for those of you who have an interest in birds, a turtle dove, they're both species of dub, a pigeon and a turtle dove. for both species of dove, a turtle dove is a dove that reaches full maturity, which you could tell when its feathers change color. okay. conversely, an ordinary pigeon, as using the tourist terminology, it's its feathers have not yet turned color. okay. so the bird is selected. there's no leaning ones hands on the bird. the the bird, it's brought in a basket. okay. the Kohan who has to be specially trained for this, it's going to hold the bird in his hand, and the slaughter of the blood takes place through the cohan's nails, which have to be grown very long and sharp for this, like knife likes. he has to go like this to kill the bird. parsh. okay. and then the rest is completed with an actual knife. okay, clear. then the bird, the bird is opened. it's not de feathered. this isn't important. an important part of it, and it's placed on the altar. so why it's done this way is again tomorrow, but bear with me. okay. so the offering of the bird, since it could by the nature of things Susan was offered by people who were poor, was considered to be one of the holiest of all of the offerings. okay, clear. next, flower. how was that done? so the flower was measured out. the two components that were always there to begin with were flour and oil. the amount of flour that was offered is a tenth of an ephah, which in conventional measurements is around a couple of quarts of flour with olive oil. so it's mixed together. all of these, it always begins with being milk, but that actually, it's almost always begins with being mixed. so if it's going to just be offered as such, it's placed on the altar. but the cow, and this was considered to be the most skillful of all of the things. the whole thing's not going to be sacrificed. only a handful will be sacrificed. so the current has to be skilled enough to put his hand into the oil and flour mixture, take it up with three fingers, brush off any crumb that might be redundant with his other two fingers to the point that those hands are absolutely clean. if you ever try to do this, this is not easy. okay. that's the part that's offered, and when it's placed on the altar to burn, frankincense and salt is placed upon it. the rest of this baked conventionally, and it's eaten by the Kohanim. okay, clear. if a coin is the one who's offering it, then the whole thing is burnt. but this required some skill. so if it was a loaf, the loaf was placed in a loaf plan. okay. and again, the same process had to be done, which was easier because it's not slippery, and the same thing would hold true if it was any of the fried offerings or the flat cakes. okay, clear. okay. so those are the three kinds of Wharf rings, and this is what was done. last step, the last step is that the owner donor, who's the same person or a cohan representing the Jewish people, has to be there, and they have to talk to Hashem about what it is they're trying to accomplish through this. so this could be confession of sin, this, whatever it is, but that's the, the experiential part is mates make the verbal part work. the without the verbal part, the quote, the whole Corbin is a waste. so tomorrow we're going to learn the meaning, but doing the sacrifice is the only Halawa other than wearing tefillin where the person's mind has to be with what they're doing. so if their mind would go away from everything we're going to learn tomorrow, then the whole thing was just like a wasted animal. okay, clear. okay. so that's it for today, and tomorrow we'll learn what all of this means. okay. if any of you want to do, any of you think you want to learn it more seriously than we could do in a class. okay. I can't cut all of the material I would want to teach you tomorrow into a one-hour frame. there's a lot of other things going on. okay. so if you want to know more, I'm just saying it. the place to look all of this up would be the her Shroomish where he goes, he gives you a good 20 pages on the meaning of it. okay, clear. [Music] [Applause]