Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Hello, my friends, and welcome back to this week's episode of the Practical Parsha Podcast. This is Rabbi Shlomo Cohen, and I hope you are well. We have a double parsha this week, and we have a lot to get to. But before we jump right into the parsha, I want to make my usual appeal that if you have any questions, comments, would like to reach out, please feel free to introduce yourself, say hello. My email address is Rabbi Shlomo konkohnmail.com I'd love to hear from you. This week's parsha is Parshas Achremos Kedoshim, meaning it's a double portion that some years we read achremos, and then the next week we read Kedoshim. But most years we read it together. And this week we'll be reading Achremos Kedoshim. And just to give a quick overview of the Parshios, Parshas Achremos talks about the Yom um Kippur service and the different parts of the Avodah, the service of Yom Kippur, the day of atonement, what the Cohen Gaddo, what he would do, meaning every day there was a service in the Beis Hamikdash, in the temple, in the tabernacle. But in Yom Kippur, there was a more elaborate and special service.
[00:01:16] And actually he would go into the holy of holies only once a year on Yom Kippur. And the parsha deals with the different offerings that were given on Yom Kippur. Specifically, it talks about the two he goats, the scapegoat, right. Two goats looked exactly the same. One was offered as a sacrifice and one was pushed off a cliff. And in previous years, I've discussed this concept of the scapegoat. You know, that's where that term comes from. It comes from the Torah, the scapegoat, and the meaning and symbolisms behind it. So if you want to look at it, you can look at the rebroadcast from this week's Parasha, and there's explanation there. The parsha also tells us about the Ketorah incense service that was the incense service that was offered Yom Kippur, as well as the eternal commandment of Yom Kippur. The parsha continues with the mitzvah, uh, to not eat any blood, as well as the forbidden relationships that the Jewish people are not allowed to have. Parshas Kedoshim continues with a discussion on holiness. And that's what actually Kedoshim literally means, to be holy. Talks about holiness and the mitzvah is reiterated again in this week's Parsha about having honor for one's mother and one's father, as well as gifts to the poor, dealing honestly with other people.
[00:02:48] The mitzvah to love your fellow as yourself, is in Parsha's Kedoshim.
[00:02:54] And the Parsha also deals with having honest weights and measures and the punishment for giving.
[00:03:02] For doing this sin of molech, which is in ancient times, people would sacrifice their children, you know, the heathen nations, that they would bring their children as a sacrifice to their, quote, unquote, their gods. And that's prohibited in the Torah. The Parsha also delineates the punishments for someone who marries his relative going against the Torah. And finally finishes off with the connection between having holiness and the land of Israel, as well as holiness connected to this idea of keeping kosher. The first idea I want to share with you today takes us to the commandment of the Torah about not marrying certain relatives. Certain relatives, a person is not allowed to marry. And the Torah says, um, you shall observe my decrees and my laws, which man shall carry out and by which he shall live. I am Hashem.
[00:04:05] Now, the question that's asked is that in this verse, which is a commandment that we should follow these laws that the Torah spells out for us, it also adds in a extra. You know, there's no extra, but it seems maybe a little superfluous. It says, you shall live by them, right?
[00:04:29] Which man shall carry out and by which he shall live. I am Hashem.
[00:04:33] And the commentaries discuss this question. What does it mean?
[00:04:39] And you shall live by them.
[00:04:42] Now, I saw a very interesting understanding of this verse that Rabbi Fran brings down. We know that Judaism is a religion that focuses on life.
[00:04:55] We have a tremendous emphasis and respect for living.
[00:05:00] Every moment of life that we have is precious.
[00:05:05] And in fact, you know, in Judaism, a person is not allowed to end his life.
[00:05:12] It's not our life, you know, it's God put us here for a reason. He will decide when he takes us out of here and takes us back to him, takes us to the next world. We can't decide when to end our life.
[00:05:26] It's a tremendous sin for a person to commit suicide, God forbid.
[00:05:30] Additionally, we know that in Judaism, we have mitzvahs, we have commandments, we have positive commandments, and we have negative commandments. We have things we shouldn't do.
[00:05:41] Now, generally in Judaism, if a person is faced with a situation where it's either giving up his or her life or committing a sin, a person does the sin. Now, there are three exceptions to that rule, that the three cardinal sins, which are idol worship, murder, and adultery, that if somebody says to you commit these three sins or one of them, one of these three sins of idol worship or murder or adultery, a person has to give up their life. But in regular times, if someone says to you or me to transgress a certain sin that are not these big three, you do the sin and live.
[00:06:27] Additionally, we know that if someone's life is in danger and they have to break the Shabbos, break Sabbath in order to save their life, or in order for them to be saved, they have to eat chomets on Passover or eat on Yom Kippur.
[00:06:45] We learn out from this week's parsha that from. It says, from the fact it says in the parsha, in the Torah, it says that you shall live by them. We learn out from this that we transgress the Torah for the sake of life in most situations, except for those big three.
[00:07:05] Now, the question that's asked is if this comes out, that a person does not have to give up his life for the Torah in most situations, right? A person can transgress a commandment in the Torah to live, to get to a hospital on Shabbos. So it seems that it comes out from this that life in and of itself could be more valuable than mitzvah observance.
[00:07:33] If there's a question of doing a, uh, mitzvah versus living, it seems to be from this week's parsha, from the verse in this week's Parsha, which is the source of this halacha, of this Jewish law, that life is more important.
[00:07:49] But unfortunately, this is a big misconception, because if you look at Rashi, Rashi explains that when it says that, uh, you shall live by them, it doesn't mean in this world, but rather it means in the next world. Because if it would mean this world, a person is going to die in the end of the day. And it can't mean shall live by them. It can't be referring to this world. It can't be. You know, we can't understand this passage in the Torah as telling us, as teaching us that a life is more important of mitzvahs in of itself, that a life without mitzvos is something which is worthwhile.
[00:08:30] Rather, the way that we understand this verse is a little bit deeper that the teaching of the Talmud. What the Talmud is teaching us, what it's expounding from the posseq of V' Chaibohem is that when it comes to the Mitzvos, we are allowed to transgress the Shabbos in this situation to save a life, because it's better that one Shabbos now should be broken, because a life that might be lost because of the many Shabbos in the future that will be saved, right? That in situations of a risk of life, a person's allowed to transgress the Torah in order to help him fulfill it more later on.
[00:09:11] Now, obviously, we can't. We could only use this leverage and this leeway in the places where the sages permitted us to. I mean, we can't make calculations on our own. Oh, uh, it's better if I work this Shabbos, so I could be off for the rest of the Shabbos of my life. No, we can't make that calculation.
[00:09:28] Only when it comes to life, life or death, which was legislated by the Sages based in the verse in the Torah that it says, it's referring to life, that we want you to live forever. And what's the way that you are going to live forever? It's by doing mitzvahs in this world, by learning in this world, this is the world to do. The next world is the world to receive. So it's better that a person should transgress, should desecrate one Shabbos to save a life that he should live going forward to fulfill many Shabboses, right? A person should not be able to do a mitzvah this one time to save his life. So he should be able to do that mitzvah many times in the future and many mitzvahs besides that. And that's how we understand this verse. Now, there's another way to understand this on a little bit deeper level, is from the Chadushe Harim. And the Chadushe Harim explains on this verse that when it says in the Torah, vichaibohem, it's teaching us something very special that we know. Everybody has things in life which get them going. Some people, they enjoy a good steak. For other people, they listen to a song. I don't know. Everyone's into something, right? People have hobbies, people are into their jobs, their careers.
[00:10:50] But the question is, what is your chias? That's the way saying it in, you know, in Hebrew, what gets you going? What gives you fulfillment in life?
[00:11:01] What, you know, what gives you meaning, right?
[00:11:05] You know, if we just say that it's in life, the way that we're working hard just so we should go on the next vacation is that something which is fulfilling. Is our lives fulfilling if we're just. We're working to work more? And what's the meaning?
[00:11:22] What's the thing in life that gives us meaning?
[00:11:25] And the Chadushi erim explains that when it says it's teaching us that, uh, not just that a person should do the mitzvos and fulfill the commandments, but also that where he gets his sense of fulfillment and his sense of enjoyment is from the spiritual and meaningful things in life, right? The things that have a higher calling, a higher purpose than the stake, than the job, than the vacation. That what gets him going every day is not about making money, not about becoming a millionaire. It's because he wants to make himself a better person. He wants to be closer to God. He wants to make the world a better place. And that's what it means, right? The Torah says, you shall follow these statutes, right?
[00:12:13] And the quote, unquote, extra words here are not something extra, but it's teaching us it's not just about fulfilling the commandments, it's about living by the commandments, to make them what you live for. That's where you get your sense of enthusiasm, where you get your mission, where you get your purpose, where you get your meaning. It's not enough just to do them.
[00:12:34] And certainly I think for every person that the things that we should make meaningful in our lives, the focus of our purpose shouldn't be just for these mundane purposes of just to make money, to make money or to be rich, you know, finding what we need to work hard when we work, and we need to work hard at the things we do. We need to put an effort. But the bottom line is that it's not what. What are we doing that for?
[00:13:00] What's the higher calling for all the things that we're doing? What. What makes us excited in life is that, you know, is it our bank account? Or are there things that are, again, more meaningful and more substantial? And that's what it means, that six Parsha v' Chaibim. You shall live by them. It's not just enough to do them. You have to live with them. You have to be excited with them.
[00:13:22] That's a very powerful lesson from this week's Parsha. The second idea I want to share with you takes us to Parsha's Kedoshim. Now, there are a lot of commandments in this week's Parsha that don't just deal with our, uh, obligations to God, man to God, but rather also man to man.
[00:13:39] For example, there is A prohibition of the Torah to hate someone in your heart.
[00:13:44] There's a, uh, mitzvah in the Torah to love your fellow Jew, right? There's also a mitzvah in the Torah to not take revenge. These are all commandments that are between man and man. You know, there's two aspects to our relationship with God. There's relationship between man and God and man and man. Uh, besides, for we have to be good to God, we have to be also good to our fellow man. And one of the sukim, which talk about the commandment, uh, to not hate your brother in his heart, reads as follows, says, you shall not hate your brother in your heart. You shall reprove your fellow and do not bear a sin because of him.
[00:14:29] The verse is giving us two commandments. Number one, to not bear a grudge against somebody. Not to hate someone in your heart, not someone, to have a hatred towards someone inside of you. And number two is if someone's doing something incorrect, doing something wrong, there's a commandment in the Torah to try to correct him, to try to help him fix up his issue, right? If you see someone doing something incorrect, you need to tell him what he's doing is wrong, that he should be able to rectify his mistake. And the Torah goes on to say that, um, and do not bear a sin because of him, which Rashi explains that if you give him musr, if you reprove him, and you do it in the wrong way, you're gonna get the sin. So this is a very interesting commandment. On one hand, if you see someone doing something wrong, you have to correct him. But on the other hand, you can't do it in a way as such to embarrass him, to make him hate you. You gotta do it the right way. And you could think, you could just imagine that in our generation, how hard it must be for people to do this mitzvah properly. I mean, anytime for anybody, it's always hard for us to hear that we're doing something wrong or to be criticized.
[00:15:46] Even if we did something by mistake. It's very difficult, I think, just for us to understand this mitzvah a little bit. It's like, imagine if we would see someone driving, going off a cliff, about to go off a cliff, right? Wouldn't we want to save them? Wouldn't we want to tell them, don't go down that road, it's about to go off a cliff, right? Or if someone's about to eat poison, right? We would surely we would stop them from eating the poisonous food. If we saw it right in front of them, we could stop them. So all the more so a person who's doing an avera, a person who's doing a sin is doing something wrong where it's eternity. It's not just this world, it's forever. So. So all the more so we should want to try to prevent that person from going down, going off the cliff, from losing their eternity. But, uh, the thing is, how do you do this in the right way? That a person shouldn't feel threatened, shouldn't feel attacked, should accept it, should want to think about it, and shouldn't feel like you're better than them? Right? It's a lot. It's very challenging. And the Torah itself recognizes that a person can do this wrong and therefore cause himself more problems. So I saw a very beautiful understanding from the sesame. The sesame says that the way a person does.
[00:17:06] That's the term, right?
[00:17:09] The way that person rebukes his brother is. We see it from the. From the double wording of the posse. It says that we know that the Jewish people are all connected.
[00:17:23] We're all from the same source, right? We're kishachad, b' Levichad. We're like one man with one heart. And I think kabbalistically, there's a lot of ideas here that all the souls of the Jewish people are connected to one.
[00:17:36] And that if we see someone else doing something wrong, that hashem caused us to see someone doing something, or we notice a certain trait in a person that's negative, that's bad, it must be that within us as well, if we're able to see it, to notice it, that we have a trace of that trait as well. We have a trait of that deficiency in ourselves because we're all connected.
[00:18:04] And the way that a person gives over.
[00:18:08] Guess, I don't want to say rebuke, but maybe is able to give over constructive criticism, is if he himself takes upon himself to improve in that area, to make himself better in the area that he notices in his friend, that's going to have an impact. That just like if I notice that my friend has something negative, that he's speaking negatively about somebody, that he's very haughty, that he is, you know, is very jealous that you name the trait. If I notice it in you, that means I have that trait, right? So all the more so if I fix up my haughtiness, if I fix up my jealousy, if I notice that you're not making a bracha nicely, if I. So then if I work on myself to do that. It's going to affect you to become better as well. And I think this is a very powerful tool in general when it comes to dealing with other people. That when we speak to people and we have to speak about the way we feel or something that they've done to us, it's always very helpful that instead of saying you, you say I. And I feel like this ties right into this idea that the sephasemas is bringing down. Because when we. When we make ourselves part of the. Of the problem, I guess, you know, that it's not just them, it's us as well. You know, you say, I feel instead of, why did you do this? Right. You know, I feel hurt by. I, uh, was hurt by X, Y and Z instead of, why did you hurt me? You know, you're able to get the message across. People don't feel as threatened. I think this is the idea because you're showing it's not just him, it's me as well. Right? We're connected. And I think in general, we know that the best way of influencing somebody, the best way of making impact, is when we live as role models, right? When we are, when we show everyone how we act. So then that is the best example, the best way to help someone who's, you know, that's the best form of rebuke, that when someone sees that action, you know, how you act, that is the, uh, best way of going about it. Because ultimately, each and every person change themselves. And the way that people change themselves is not by humiliation, embarrassment, threats.
[00:20:31] It's by seeing the beauty in other people's lives and sort of internalizing that to take it forward. And I think this is this insight about criticism, constructive criticism, this idea of how to give tochaka, how to give rebuke in the proper way, especially in our time, to make ourselves part of the equation. To not, you know, to look at ourselves just as much as we're looking at them, to realize that if we see something, we must have it as well. And actually, in fact, the Talmud brings down kol ha pesal be' mu v' mum poisal, that whoever sees something or says something about someone else, they themselves have a piece of that in themselves. And if we're able to see it in someone, we must have an aspect in ourselves of that same trait which we notice in others, because we wouldn't be so in tune to it if we didn't have it ourselves. And in turn, if we work on ourselves, if it works one way, it works the other way as well. If we work on that trait, we work on our Midos, we work on those negative things that we see in others, which is role modeling as well. And also there's a spiritual dimension that we are connected spiritually to each other. It'll have an impact, make that impression and help us all become better people. So with that, I'm going to finish for today's podcast. I hope you enjoyed. If you have any questions, comments or would like to reach out, feel free to send me email at rabbishlamokonkohn. M at gmail com. Have a great day.
