Ki Taitzai 1

Divorce:

This week's parsha (24:1-4) discusses the concept of divorce. The pasuk says (24:1) "If a man marries a woman and lives with her, and it will be that she will not find favor in his eyes, for he found in her a matter of immorality, and he wrote her a bill of divorce..." There are a few points I would like to focus on here.

The first point is "for he found in her a matter of immorality" this part of the pasuk is a little confusing. The first part said she did not find favor in his eyes now it says because she did something immoral. Well what if he just did not like her? Can a man just give his wife Get because he does not like the way she brushes her teeth or something like that?

A second point I want to talk about is a sefer kritut "bill of divorce." What exactly does the term mean. The torah never uses the word Get instead it uses the phrase "a book of separation." This word comes from the same root as the word karet. This is a punishment where your neshama is actually removed from Hashem's presence. When this happens you just stop existing. It is the worst possible thing that can happen to a person. While dying is not permanent your neshama being destroyed is not something that can be fixed. What does this word karet have to do with divorce?

There is a very interesting chazal on the subject. A rabbi comes to a few of his friends and tells them that he wants to get a divorce with his wife because he cannot even find one positive quality about her. So they ask if she is pretty, he says no. They ask if she is smart, he says no. They ask if she comes from a good family or if she is a good mother or if she can cook or... and at each question he answers that she cannot and is not any of those things. So they ask him what her name is he answers that her name is the Aramaic equivalent to the word 'dirt'. They say that is the perfect name for someone like her and for this reason he should not divorce her. This is quite a puzzling chazal. With all of those negative traits more men nowadays would not stay married to her for more than a week. The torah has a very different understanding about what marriage means that many people nowadays just do not get (no pun intended).

According to the torah marriage is more than just a physical and emotional connection between two people. Marriage is the connection of two parts into one whole. "It is not good that man be alone." (Bereishit 2:18) When a man marries a woman she becomes part of him. Now if someone's leg started hurting him he would never think to remove it he would go to the doctor to get it better so too if someone did not get along with his wife he should try to disconnect rather he should fix their relationship. Chazal say that a woman does not really have free will for the way she acts towards her husband and that everything that she does to him is from Hashem. Therefore if someone is in a fight with his wife he should not get angry at her instead he should figure out which sin he has committed and fix his relationship with Hashem. This is what this pasuk is trying to tell us. It is not enough for someone to not like his wife to give her a divorce, because any problem he sees in her is a problem with him. The only reason to get a divorce is because she did something immoral. Also this explains the second point, the sefer kritut. A Get is not just a separation between the two people it is literally a separation of an organ from the body. When Hashem created Chava from Adam's rib He was showing Adam that his wife is literally part of him. So a divorce is actually removing part of your body from you.

Now for a deeper meaning behind these pasukim. We have discussed earlier the idea that the Gra brings down that the man represents the neshama and the woman represents the guf. So now let us go through these four pasukim again with this in mind. Hashem places the neshama into the guf and the neshama is so disgusted by all of the bad things that the guf is doing that he wants out. So just like the story in Yonah the neshama leaves the guf (the boat). Now the guf leaves the neshama meaning that they get separated. The neshama goes to be judged while the guf gets buried in the ground. The Gra explains in Yonah that there is an angel named Dumah that is in charge of all of the bodies in the graveyard so this may be the man spoken about in pasuk two. Now the guf is in the ground being watched by Dumah and it is time for techiyat hamaitim "rising of the dead." So Dumah leaves all of the bodies. Now in pasuk four the guf wants to be connected to the neshama again but they can no longer be connected. The Gra explains that in the time of techiyat hamaitim not all of the bodies come back, only that guf which perfected itself will be able to come back but all other bodies are disconnected from their neshama forever. (Of course there are many who disagree with the Gra...) I do not know for sure how well this works but I think it fits pretty well.

Shoftim 1

Before the dvar torah I would just like to wish mazal tov to my brother and sister in law for having a baby boy this past Tuesday, Rosh Chodesh Elul, may he be zoche to Torah, Chupah and Ma'asim Tovim!

Cities of Refuge:

We all know the halacha of ir miklat (the city of refuge). The halacha is that if someone kills accidentally the family of the victim can kill the murderer until he gets to one of the six cities of refuge. The murderers must then spend all of their time until the death of the Kohen Gadol. If, before that time, the murderer takes even one step out of the city and the victim's family is there they can kill him. There is another halacha not as well known directly after this parsha. From perek 19 pasukim 11 and 12 in this week's parsha says "But if there is a man who hates his fellow... and strikes him mortally and he (the victim) dies and he (the murderer) flees to one of these cities... then the elders of his city shall send and take him from there and place him in the hand of the redeemer of the blood..." What?! They must remove the man from the city? Why can't they just kill him there why must he first be taken out of the ir miklat? I believe the answer to this question is quite revealing especially since we are in the month of Elul.

We all know the power of Teshuva. Someone can perform a sin and upon completing the requirements for teshuva not only will that sin be forgiven but it will actually be transformed into a mitzvah. When someone commits a sin he creates a chalal (vacuum) in the world. In this place Hashem's presence is removed. The whole purpose of Hashem creating the world was so that He can rest in it. But our sinning is removing His presence from the world. Now when we do teshuva the chalal is removed and the Shechina is returned there. This is the power of Teshuva.

Now there is another way for us to be forgiven for our sins. This is not as powerful as Teshuva but it does remove the sin that would otherwise stay with us for all of eternity and damaging us in Gehenom. This process is called Isurim (pains). If someone gets hurt that pain reduces his pain after he dies. One such pain is Galut (exile). Many gedolim throughout history put themselves into galut to atone for their sins. The idea of the accidental murderer running to the ir miklat is that he is putting himself into galut and as long as he remains in galut it is as if he as no sin. So too, a murderer who killed on purpose. Even though he killed on purpose the moment he steps into the ir miklat he is sin free. The judges cannot touch this man because according to halacha he is sin free. The murderer cannot be touched. Only if the elders of the city remove him from ir miklat can he be put to death.

This idea teaches us a very important lesson for this time of year. We all know that we will be judged for all of our sins in just a couple of weeks. We all know how important the next month is, but if we take a step back and realize how far our teshuva can go. Every little act that we do can get us out of countless bad things that we deserve. If a murderer walks into an ir miklat he is forgiven for his sins. But we must also realize the other side. That these small steps must get us somewhere. If after the month of Elul, Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur we remain unchanged then we have wasted our time. It is just like the murderer that goes to the ir miklat and then after a few days decides to leave. He worked so hard to be free but in the end it was all for nothing because he did not stay in the city. This is even more true for the person who killed on purpose. He would be forgiven if he would remain in the city but once he leaves the city he is the same murderer when he came in. If someone sins and then does the teshuva he is like this murderer who walked into the ir miklat. The real question is will he remain in the ir miklat?

Rav Pincus gives an interesting mashul in the introduction to one of his seforim. He says there are two types of people that go to the airport. One type who goes to the airport goes on line and gets through to the plane. Then the plane takes off and he leaves to a new place. The second person walks into the airport and walks through security he gets to the gate where the airplane is and watches all of his friends get on the plane. The man watches as the plane leaves the terminal and takes off. After a couple of minutes he turns around and heads home. He went to the airport but never went anywhere. Are we going to go through the entire month of Elul, Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur all just to watch the planes take off or are we going to get on the planes and go somewhere?

May we all be zoche to have a month of extreme spiritual growth and may we all get on the planes in the end.

Re'eh 1

Prophecy for the Future:

The Jews have just spent the last 40 years in the desert. The majority of the people where under 20 years old when they left Mitzriam and have spent the large majority of their lives in the midbar. Now Moshe is telling them about what they should do when they enter Eretz Yisrael. The first thing he tells them to do when they get there is destroy all traces of Avodah Zara that exists in the country even the names of the Avodah Zara should be destroyed (12:3). The reason is because if they do not they will be effected by their neighbors and it will lead them to do Avodah Zara (12:30). This seems pretty far fetched, the nation who has spent the last 40 years surrounded by Hashem is going to be so effected by their neighbors that even if just the name of the Avodah Zara still exists they will still sin. As the people are hearing this they are probably thinking that there is no way this is going to happen, even if they leave a small group of survives nothing will go wrong. So what does Hashem do? He says not only will this happen but I will show you the step by step process that leads you to worshiping them. First, you leave some remnant of the Avodah Zara and you do not think that is a problem. Then as time goes on prophets begin to come saying that Hashem sent them, then later these false prophets will not even say they are from Hashem they will say they had a prophecy from an angel. Then, others will be lead off the derech by these prophets which will lead to them trying to get you to sin. Then tons and tons of people are worshiping this idol to the point where they are now in the majority. This is exactly how Hashem lays out the Halachot in this week's parsha. First the command to destroy the idols then to stop false prophets. After that to stop others from leading others to sin and finally to the halacha of Ir Hanidachat (The Wayward City). All of this is in perek 13. Then Hashem gives us advice, do you want to know how to keep away from doing all of these things? It is very simple, 1) do not cut yourself 2) do not cut your payot 3) do not eat non kosher food. These three things will remind you that you are different than the nations that surround you. Imagine you work in a big company. The company is going to eat out at some fancy restaurant and all the big wigs will be there. You get there and everyone is eating delicious looking non kosher food. These are your friends, the people you spend most of your day with but you feel removed from them because you cannot eat with them. This is how we remain separate from the other nations. Hashem has warned us in this week's parsha, if we get to close we will get burned, we must keep our distance. Of course to live in this world we must live among non Jews but we must always remember that however close we get we are different then them, we are Hashem's nation.

Many times when people see a list of Halachot, much like this week's parsha they begin to remove the Godly aspect from the mitzvot. They just become things that must get done. We wake up in the morning and daven, not because we love Hashem and want to shout it on the rooftops rather because it is our obligation to daven. If we stop considering mitzvot as obligations and start realizing that Hashem did not just give us 613 mitzvot because He wanted to make your lives miserable, rather He knows what is best for us and we must do everything necessary to stay away from everything else in the world. If we can see halachot as a way to help us live happy lives then we will live happy lives, if we chase after pleasure of this world we will not get anywhere. This is the message that Moshe is telling us before he dies, if you truly want to live a spiritual life you must completely remove everything else from your life. If you leave anything of it, even just its name, eventually you will return to those things you were trying to get away from. That is what this week's parsha is trying to teach us.

Eikev 1

More Zuhama:

Another piece from my favorite topic. This time with a lot of sources, mostly Zohars that I saw in Rav Brevda's sefer on the Gra on Yonah, I highly recommend it, not that Rav Brevda needs my haskama.

The pasuk in this week's parsha says (9:9) "... I remained on the mountain for forty days and forty nights; bread I did not eat, and water I did not drink." There is a midrash by Yaakov Avinu that says that he spent 14 years in Yeshivat Shem V'Aiver and did not sleep at all. We know that a person cannot possibly survive so long without eating drinking or sleeping, so how are these things possible? The gemara, which I have quoted before, gives us the answer. What was special about Yaakov and Moshe? When the gemara in Shabbat 146a says "In the time when the nachash came to Chava he put in her zuhama, when Bnei Yisrael stood on Har Sinai their zuhama stopped Rashi explains that at Har Sinai of the people there who were hurt were cured all the blind and deaf were cured... Rav Abba son of Kahana said the zuhama stopped Yaakov, because after three generations of holy people the zuhama was removed." Before we go through this gemara let us explain the story of Adam and Chava in a completely new way.

The Zohar Chelek Alef (124b) says "The body is to the neshama like a woman to a man. Meaning that a man in the torah represents the neshama and a woman represents the guf (body). In this light let us examine the story of Adam and Chava. So on the sixth day of creation Hashem creates man. Hashem first wants to create man and woman as one. The gemara in brachot explains that Chava was like an extra limb to Adam but not an equal. This means that the neshama was the dominant side while the body did not really do anything. Then Hashem decided to create man and woman separately. So He creates man (the neshama) and places him in Gan Eden. Hashem then tells the neshama to name all of the animals, and we know that Adam can see into the depths of each animal and know their names. The midrash, quoted by Rashi, says that Adam actually had relations with each of the animals, but only had true pleasure later when he was with Chava. What does this midrash mean? It means that Hashem placed the neshama into the world and asked it to choose a good body, after trying each one of them out the neshama was not satisfied with any of them. So Hashem put Adam to sleep and used part of Adam, the neshama to form Chava, the guf. This shows that some of the neshama is located inside the guf while some is outside of the guf. And the pasuk says (2:22) "and He (Hashem) brought her to the man," meaning that the guf was brought before the neshama. Now the pasuk says that Chava would be a "helper against him," this shows that the guf can either be a helper for the neshama to reach its shlaimut or be against it causing it damage and preventing it from fulfilling it's purpose.

Now to explain the nachash. The Zohar Chelek Alef (74b) says that there are both a male and female part of the sitrah achrah (evil force). The male is known as the Samech Mem and the female has three names one of which is nachash. There is a famous idea by the Gra that there are two forces that drive man 1) Tavni (desire) 2) Ca'asi (Anger). These two forces are the two forces that cause man to sin. Ca'asi is represented by the male sitrah achrah while Tavni is represented by the female force. So the nachash represents the force to follow your desires. The nachash got Chava, the guf to sin. So our gemara means that the nachash, who is also the yezter hara got the guf to fulfill it's desires by eating the Pri Eitz Hada'at Tov V'Rah. What is the idea of this pri? The zohar explains that the Eitz (tree) represents Eitzah (an idea). This idea seemed good, Tov, in the beginning but then was discovered to really be evil, Rah. This is what the Eitz Hada'at was. The gra in mishlei explains that this is exactly what the yetzer hara does. He gives you advise that you think is good but upon later examination you discover it was really bad the whole time. Before eating from the Eitz Hada'at man's yetzer hara was an outside force, but after the guf took in the Eiztah of the nachash the yetzer hara became an inner force, called zuhama. Now Hashem comes down to judge the Neshama and the Guf for the sin they did. The gemara in Sanhedrin (91a) says that the Guf says that the Neshama sinned... the the neshama says that the guf sinned... So too Hashem takes the neshama and throws it into the guf and judges them like one. This is the exact story that is said with Adam and Chava. First Hashem asks Adam why did you sin. Adam says it was Chava who did it. This means that Hashem says to the neshama, you are pure good, you are supposed to control the body, why did you mess up. The neshama says that it was not it's fault, the body sinned not me. Why should I, the neshama get punished? So then Hashem turns to the guf and asks for it's excuse. So the guf turns to the yetzer hara and said that the yezter hara gave it too hard of a test. When Hashem was coming to punish them Adam was totally confused, he did not know why he should be punished after all it was the guf that caused him to sin. Hashem explains that the neshama connects to the guf and any sins the guf does must later be fixed inside the neshama. So Hashem punishs the neshama and the guf. Then He turns to the nachash. He says that the nachash's test was too hard and that for now on the yetzer hara will not be able to give a person such a hard challenge for now on the yetzer hara will only be as powerful as the person is. This is what it means that Hashem removed the arms and legs of the nachash. As an outer force it was fair that the yetzer hara could challenge the guf with hard tests because it is a lot harder to be convinced of something when it is outside of you, but once the yezter hara became inner force it was too powerful so Hashem cut off some of it's power to make the fight fair.

Now there is a midrash a chazal that says that one time a rabbi (unsure if its a tanna or amora) went into Ma'arat Hachapaila and found the bodies of the Avot and Adam and Chava. Upon opening the casket of Yaakov he say that Yaakov's face was shining. Then when he went to open the casket of Adam and all he could see was Adam's feet which were shining brighter than Yaakov's face. Adam was still shining from being in Gan Eden even though he got kicked out and Yaakov was also on the level being of Gan Eden. We know that after Moshe came down from Har Sinai with the second luchot he had to wear a mask because the people could not look at his shining face. What do these three people have in common? Each of them reached a level that their zuhama were completely removed and they were completely ruled by there neshamot. The shining was from the light of their neshama that could be seen through there guf. See the gemara in Brachot 5b which speaks about Rav Yochanan who was in a cave and rolled up his sleeves to reveal his glowing arms.

As we see from our gemara both Yaakov and Moshe got to the level of man before the sin of the Adam HaRishon. This is hinted to by Yaakov when he fought with the angel, who was the yetzer hara in its external form. Being that both of these people were on such a high level they no longer were controlled by their guf, they no longer needed to sleep, eat or drink like the rest of us do. This is what it means that Yaakov went 14 years without sleeping and Moshe went 40 days without food or drink.

Ve'Etchanan

This week's dvar torah is for a a refuah shelaimah for Rav Chiam Kanievsky- Shmaryuhi Yosef Chiam ben Pesha Miriam, who was rushed to Mayni Hayeshia Hospital.

The Blind Walk Through the Street:

There is a pasuk in Eicha (4:14) "The blind wandered through the streets..." keep this pasuk in mind for later. In this week's parsha (4:12) the pasuk says "... you were hearing the sounds, but you were not seeing a likeness, only a sound." The pasuk speaks of the Jews seeing sounds. We know there is a midrash that says that when Hashem gave the torah at har sinai He got rid of all diseases, He made the deaf be able to hear and He made the blind be able to see. There is a gemara in Eiruchin (daf 16) that asks "what are isurin (pains)? Trying to take out three coins but only taking two out." Rav Brevda in his sefer Yibane Hamikdash explains that that means that in an ideal world every single time a person tried to pull out three coins he would. Every time someone wanted to do something it would just work out every time. This is the optimal world. We could not imagine a world were everything just works but Rav Brevda explains that before Adam HaRishon sinned this is how the world worked. So too, when mashiach comes that is how the world will be again.

There is a famous chazal that everyone knows that we have 613 parts in our bodies each one attached to a mitzvah. It used to that people did not need doctors. If a certain body part was hurting they would know which mitzvah they have to fix and after fixing it the pain would go away.

I once heard Rabbi Nissel quote a very interesting Rav Amram Gaon. He asks what will the times of Mashiach be like. He answers that we must all imagine that everyone in the world was blind. Now everyone spends their lives thinking what life would be like if people could see, but since no one has ever seen it is all just speculation. Then, all of a sudden everyone in the world has the ability to see. There are no longer questions because everything is so clear. The times of Moshiach are like a time when everyone gets a sixth sense (partially the ability to see dead people...) and everything is so clear that there are no more questions.

After the beit hamikdash was destroyed we lost many of the mitzvot we used to do. There are seforim out called 44 Mitzvot For Today or 75 Mitzvot Done Today. But the point is that we are no longer anywhere near the 613 we used to be at. Once we lost all of those miztvot our body parts just stopped working as they used to. This is what is means in Eicha when it says that blind people walked through the streets. Because now that we lost the beit hamikdash it was as if we were all blind.

I started listening to Rav Kahn on the Gra on Mishlei. He explains that the Gra splits the sefer into 3 sections. The final section is called Torah. The meaning of this section is that the torah tells us what is wrong and was is right.

Rav Kahn explains that the worst type of prison is one where you believe you are in a palace. He brought a story. A king has a son who constantly gets drunk. The king decides that he will bring his son to the worst place in his kingdom where his son will see all the drunk homeless people laying on the ground. When the son gets there he is delighted and runs to the first man and asks him where he could get the whiskey he is drinking. The prince is so involved that he thinks this drunkard is the one that knows how to live. He is living in prison but he thinks he is in palace and that is the worst type of prison.

Nowadays, people think that we are living the good life. The only thing is that we have never lived so we do not even know what to compare this to. If we knew how people used to live we would not enjoy this life rather he would be disgusted by it and would yearn greatly to be freed from this prison.

The reason we cannot understand that we are truly prisoners is because our bodies are not working as they should. Let me give you some examples. The last perek of Avot speaks of a bat kol that comes out everyday from Har Sinai, yet we hear no bat kols... We know from this week's parsha that the Jews could see sounds yet our eyes cannot see any sounds... We know that humans only use about 10-15% of their brains ability... We have organs in our bodies that scientist have no idea what they do because they have stopped doing anything for us (your appendix)... The torah gives many many pasukim about our Leiv (heart) thinking but our hearts are just muscles that move our blood through our bodies...

We all think that we are living yet we have never experienced a single day of life. Without the beit hamikdash we live in a world that we think is a utopia but we do not know how bad it is because we cannot see what is right in front of us!

Devarim 1

Having the Right Kavannah:

Moshe is a week away from death. The Jews stand on the border into eretz yisrael. Before Moshe dies he begins to give the Jews tochacha (rebuke). At first he begins by just mentioning the places where the Jews did bad things but then he starts going into detail. He explains how he used to judge every court case on his own and that it began to get to hard for him to judge every case. He tells Hashem that he wants to choose judges to help him and Hashem agrees.Then Moshe explains the story of the meraglim. He says that the Jews had just left Har Sinai and they were about to enter the land. The Jews say that spies should be sent into the land to scout it out. Moshe says that he likes the idea. The only problem was that the Jews did not really want to enter the land so the entire mission was sabotaged from the beginning. The Sfat Emet (Sfas Emes...) says that the reason why Moshe added in the fact that he thought that sending the meraglim was a good idea was because that was part of his tochacha for the Jews.

I have several question: 1) Why was Moshe's decision to choose judges a tochacha for the Jews? 2) What does it mean when the Sfat Emet says that Moshe's agreement to the Jews was a tochacha? 3) How did the Jews wanting to stay out of the land mess up the mission of the meraglim?

Stay with me here there is a lot of background information for this one.

We all remember the story of Yitro. He comes to Moshe at some point and sees Moshe judging all of the people. After Moshe finishes Yitro tells him that what Moshe is doing is not good. By Moshe doing all of the court cases he is making himself weak. Therefore Moshe must assign more judges to make his job easier and will free up his time to allow him to do the more complicated cases. Yet when it comes to this week's parsha Yitro is not mentioned. Why doesn't the Torah say that it was Yitro's idea to get the judges?

If we remember back to parshat Shlach we all recall the "cute" dvar torah that I wrote (assuming we have read it) from the Daat Zekanim. The Daat Zekanim explains the words "Shlach Licha" (send for you) that the sending was for Moshe. How is the sending of the meraglim of sending for Moshe? The Daat Zekanim explains that Moshe had heard the prophecy from Eldad and Maidad and knew that he would die in the desert. By sending the meraglim the Jews would spend another 39 years travelling. Since they were not going into the land Moshe would live an extra 39 years. This is why the sending was for Moshe. Yet it is not mentioned in this week's parsha that the meraglim would be beneficial for Moshe, yet it says that he thought the sending was a great idea.

There is an idea that the reason why the mergalim spoke bad about the land was because they wanted to stay in the midbar because there they were constantly surrounded, protected, and fed by Hashem. In the desert the Jews led a more spiritual relationship and they were afraid that their entering into the land would decrease their spirituality.

Rav Chiam Volozhin in his sefer Nefesh HaChiam quotes rav Chiam Vital. He says that everything in this world has something called Chiut/Chius. This means that every thing in this world has both a physical element and a spiritual one. He explains that before someone eats food he makes a bracha. The bracha that the person says makes the food satisfy both the body and the soul. In other words, the kavannah one has when doing something makes it both a physical thing and a spiritual thing. If someone does a mitzvah but does it for the wrong reason it may not be considered a mitzvah anymore, and may actually be considered a bad thing. A person's kavannah decides if their actions are good or not. So too the opposite, someone could do something but have the greatest intentions so even though their act was bad they were rewarded for it (Such as Pinchas killing Zimri).

When Moshe retells the story of how he chose the extra judges he leaves out Yitro, why? Because Yitro's reason was not to help the Jews it was to help Moshe. When Moshe later asked Hashem if he could chose extra judges he asks because he needed help to look over the Jews, his reason was from a higher purpose, helping the Jews, not helping himself, Yitro's reason.

Now in this week's parsha when it mentions the meraglim it says that Moshe thinks it would be a great idea to send them. By having people who actually experienced the kedusha of the land all of the people would want even more to get into the land and they would be even more excited about it. His reason was not for his own life, it was not so that he could have a longer life. There was just one problem, the Jews did not really want to go into the land. Now, when Moshe sent the mergalim, which could have been an excellent boost for the Jews they were sent by the Jews to bring a bad report. This negative chuit/s effected the entire mission and led to the death of the entire generation.

By putting both of these stories in this week's parsha right next to each other we can see what great tochacha Moshe is trying to teach "Kol Yisrael", everyone, not just the Jews then but even us now, that when we do something for the right purpose then it will always work out if we have the proper intentions. But if we have the wrong intentions then everything will fail. Moshe said the story about the judges to say that he chose the judges for the right reasons. Also he pushed out of his mind the fact that the meraglim could lead to him having a longer life and instead focused on how it could be good for the Jews. The problem was that the Jews intentions were no good and we see what happened because of that.

Every year parshat Devarim is read the shabbat before Tisha B'Av. That was the very day that the meraglim brought their negative report. In a few days we will all be fasting for Tisha B'Av. We will be reading Aicha, we will be saying Kinot, and we will be sitting on the floor. All of these actions are great ways to yearn for the rebuilding of the Beit Hamikdash but if we are all thinking about something else then what is the point? If we all spend our day killing the time by doing other things then we are missing the whole purpose of the last three weeks. If we were to actually focus on what we lost and how we have all been in galut for almost 2000 years then it will greatly effect our Tisha B'Av. If for just one day a year on Tisha B'Av the very day that the Jews so many years ago made the mistake of doing a good thing with bad intentions let us all concentrate on what we are doing and spend the day having good kavannah for the thing we are doing. Hopefully through that we will merit to see the rebuilding of the Beit Hamikdash quickly in our days. "The one who mourns the destruction of the Beit Hamikdash will be merit to be happy at its construction!"

Matot Masei 1

Women's Vows:

The parsha starts of with the halacha of vows. We know that the way a man gets out of having to follow a vow he makes is that he goes to chacham and tells him why he did not mean to make the vow. Then the chacham asks him if he would have made the vow if he would have known what he knows and the man responds by saying no, so the chacham annuls his vow. [There is a famous story about Rabbi Akiva that after he got engaged to his wife her father vowed not to give them any of his money, even though he was one of the richest men in all of Eretz Yisrael. Later, after Rabbi Akiva became the leader of the generation everyone in town is waiting to get a bracha from him. His father in law gets to him and does not recognize Rabbi Akiva. He asks Rabbi Akiva if he could annul the vow he made not to give any money to his daughter. Rabbi Akiva asks if he would have made the vow if his son in law was a talmid chacham. His father says that he would not have, so Rabbi Akiva says that he is his son in law and he annuls the vow.] So the Torah says that when a woman makes a vow her husband, upon hearing her vow, can annul it. How can this be equal to going to a chacham and talking over the vow with him? When a man and woman are married they have a connection that makes them both greater, they influence each other to be better. When a woman talks over her vows with her husband it gives her a greater understanding of what she did. This is how a relationship grows, by the man and woman discussing things it helps them grow together, not only into better people but closer together as well.

Killing all of the Midyanim:

Hashem commands the Jews to go and kill ever last Midyan boy, even the smallest baby. He uses the word vengeance, but why these little children? What did they do? Also, doesn't this go against the halacha of not taking revenge? Why is okay for the Jews to go around killing all of the little babies in Midyan?

Rav Brevda was discussing a bracha that did not fit the normal laws of brachot. He said that normally a bracha cannot be changed because the mishna in brachot says that a long bracha cannot be made short and a short one cannot be made long. So how could this bracha be altered? He quotes the Brisker Rav who says that since chazal were the ones to institute brachot they were the "baalim" (owners) of brachot. As the baalim they had the right to change the laws as they saw fit.

So too here, Hashem is the One who gave the torah. Therefore, He is the baal of all of the mitzvot. Whenever He sees fit He may alter them. People wrongly think that because we live in a moral world we do not need the torah to tell us how to live. This is the farthest thing from the truth. In fact, it would possibly have been better for us not to live in a moral world so that every time we did something good it would not be because it is the good thing to do, but rather because Hashem told us to do it. The problem is the people put morals in front of the torah. For example one could say: how can Hashem say that homosexuality is bad, morally we should let them live however they want? Who is the One who decides what is good in world? Only Hashem makes that decision, therefore, He can tell us to do something like kill little babies and it not be an issue. He is the one who decides what is moral.

Koshering Utensils:

The Chofetz Chiam had an amazing vort on koshering utensils. He explains the process of koshering. First a person must take the utensil and remove any rust that is on it. Then, after it is clean you must rid the residue by doing to it the same thing that made it not kosher. If it became traif by fire then it must be burned, if by water it must be put in water. He then says that the same is true by man. To rid oneself of sin a man must remove the sin (remove the rust). Then, he must say that he will never do the sin again. The only way to make sure that one will not do the sin again is to turn himself around and do the exact opposite. If one speaks a lot of lashon hara then he must use his mouth (the very thing that sinned) to speak words of torah (remove the thing caused by fire using fire).

Reuven, Gad, and Chaitzi Menashe:

Josh told me the following idea.

There is a halacha in the shulchan aruch (240:2) quoting nedarim daf 20b that says that a man may not think of one cup while drinking from another. The halacha means that while a man is having relations with his wife he may not think about any other woman. Chazal explain that if a man does this then it can mess up the baby that is born through this union. If we look back at Bereishit we remember that when Yaakov was having relations with Leah he thought that it was Rachel, and in that union Leah had Reuven. Then later, when Leah thought that she could not have more children she had Zilpah sleep with Yaakov, but at that point he thought she was Leah, in this union Zilpah gave birth to Gad. Later, we have the story with Dinah having relations with Shchem. We are told that she had a baby (possibly two) through this union. We know from the midrash that that baby girl later marries Yosef. So now Yosef has two children. One fourth of the children are from a grandfather who is not Jewish. Later on this 1/4 is 1/2 of Menashe. We see that each of these tribes had something wrong and that is why moments before they where going to walk into Eretz Yisrael they chose not to get that land.

Masei:

The Travels:

At the beginning of Parshat Masei the torah lists in less then 50 pasukim all of the travels that the Jews did in the Midbar. Forty years of travelling spanning 3 full books of the torah are summed up in 49 pasukim. What can we learn from this? We know that there are two types of learning, biyun and bikeut. In biyun one spends a lot of time on a short peace understanding all of the tiny details. In bikeut one learns a large amount of information very quickly covering a lot of ground. We see from this piece of torah that sometimes the details are not the most important thing. That sometimes a person must look at the big picture and see everything, after a long climb up the mountain it is a great experience to look down and see how much you climbed. Sometimes we have to push off the tiny details and look at the big picture.

Ir Miklat:

After a person kills accidentally he runs to live in an ir miklat. He cannot leave without risking his life until after the death of the Kohen Gadol. Why the Kohen Gadol? On Yom Kippur the upon leaving the kodesh hakodashim the Kohen Gadol says a special prayer that no one should be murdered. The fact the someone killed accidentally means that someone was murdered. The only way that would have happened was that the Kohen Gadol did not have enough kavannah during his prayer. Now as long as lives anyone who killed accidentally will be davening that he should die. So as a meida keneged meida for not having kavannah to stop death a group of people have kavannah to have him die.