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.
[00:00:07] It's a double parsha this week, and I want to jump right into it.
[00:00:12] But before we do, there's the usual spiel and one more thing I wanted to talk to you about. So number one is if you have any questions, comments you would like to say hello, I love the feedback. Send me an email. Rabbi Shlomo Cohen, kohnmail.com I'd love to hear from you.
[00:00:31] Additionally, I wanted to start this podcast out with a plug. It's very important.
[00:00:36] Judaism is a major focus on Hakaras Hatov, gratitude, being grateful.
[00:00:42] And my wife and I are extremely grateful for our community and the Mensalem Jewish Outreach center in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.
[00:00:53] Part of this podcast existence is attributed to this organization.
[00:00:59] When I was working as a director of outreach, it was one of the things that I started off on doing this podcast. It was outgrowth of my position, and really it's grown on its own. It's something that I'm doing.
[00:01:14] But I believe that this podcast in part is due for my.
[00:01:20] Is due to my involvement with my community and with this organization. Currently, we're having our annual campaign to help support this organization. And actually, this organization means so much to my wife and I that we've committed to do our best to raise $3,600 towards the upcoming dinner, which will take place this Tuesday.
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[00:02:07] 1500-360180-15436, 18, $10, whatever it is, if you're able to give a donation to help this worthy cause, I'd be extremely grateful and appreciative. The link is in the show notes. You could put this on pause. Do it right now and we'll get back to the episode.
[00:02:29] So, as I mentioned before, this, uh, week's parsha is Achremos Kedosin.
[00:02:33] And just to give a quick overview of the parsha, Parshas Acharymos primarily deals with the service of the Cohen Gadol of the high priest on Yom Kippur. On the holy day of Yom um, Kippur talks about the service.
[00:02:50] And there was a certain lottery that was done to pick these two goats.
[00:02:56] One of the goats was given as a sacrifice and one is the scapegoat which is pushed off a cliff. A lot talked about. You could listen to past year's episodes that talk about this scapegoat that gets pushed off the cliff.
[00:03:12] Additionally, the Parasha tells us, um, about the Yom um Kippur service, the incense service, and the eternal commandment of Yom Kippur.
[00:03:21] Additionally, the Parasha also talks about the prohibition of eating blood.
[00:03:27] And there is also a commandment to cover blood. When certain animals are slaughtered, the blood has to be covered with dirt and the special blessing that is made. Additionally, the parasha concludes with different forbidden relationships. Incensed the forbidden, the prohibition of, um, sodomy and bestiality, and the prohibition of the molech, as well as the holiness of the land of Israel.
[00:03:53] Parshas Kedoshim talks about this idea. The underlying theme of Parshas Kedoshim is this is the concept of being holy.
[00:04:04] And I've also talked about this in previous years. What does it mean to be holy? Does it mean you have holes in your socks and you're a holy person if you have holes in your socks? Haha.
[00:04:14] Or there's a deeper meaning to it, the parsha really, this idea of Kedoshim being Kedoshim means to sanctify ourselves not just with the minimum, not, not just to be happy with the minimum that we want to do and that we are required to do, but rather we live our lives on a higher plane, always looking to strive to get closer to Hashem. And that is our outlook. That outlook drives us. Obviously, you have the foundation of the Torah and the mitzvahs that give us the framework of what we are supposed to do. But having that attitude of how we could serve Hashem in the best way, that's really the underlying theme of Parsha's Kedoshim. The Parsha talks about this different mitzvos that it covers talk about honoring, um, your mother and father, honoring the Shabbos, staying away from idols, gifts to the poor, being honest with others, loving your fellow as yourself, forbidden mixtures, um, and the parsha finishes off with being honest in weights and measures, as well as the different penalties for the forbidden relations.
[00:05:33] And again, holiness in general, and the connection between holiness and keeping the laws of kosher. The first idea I want to share with you today takes us, uh, to Parshas Acharymos, where the Torah talks about the different forbidden relationships that people cannot have now, before the Torah delineates for us which relationships we're not allowed to be involved in as far as you know, the forbidden relationships, the Torah gives us a little intro. In the psukim, the verses read as follows, says, ish esmeshpotai taasu ves chukaysai tishmayru lechespohem ani hashem elokehem. The first verse reads, carry out my laws and safeguard my decrees to follow them. I am Hashem, your God. The next verse continues, Um, you shall observe my decrees and my laws which man shall carry out and by which he shall live. I am Hashem.
[00:06:41] So I saw a beautiful idea brought down by Rabbi twersky from the KSav Sofer.
[00:06:48] The KSav Sofer writes that if you read this verse very literally, it can be translated in a very beautiful way to teach us a very important lesson. So what does the first verse that I read say? It says, Uh, hm, right. It says, carry out my laws and safeguard my decrees to follow them.
[00:07:15] I am your God. Now, if you look at the words, right, Carry out my laws and safeguard my decrees to follow them, that's, uh, how we translate it. But if you take the words which is being translated as to follow them, carry out my laws and safeguard my decrees to follow them, it can also be understood to go in them literally is if it's translated very exactly.
[00:07:45] It's translated as literally, to go in them that carry out my laws and safeguard my decrees to go in them.
[00:07:54] Right. The Torah could have, you know, everything in the Torah is exact.
[00:07:57] So what's the lesson that the Torah is teaching us here by saying to go in them? Meaning, fine, you could read it as to follow in them. But the way that you literally understand it, it means that these mitzvahs that we have that Hashem has given us, we have to go in them.
[00:08:17] We have to go in them.
[00:08:21] Now, we know the Gemara the Talmud brings down.
[00:08:25] There's a concept mitzvah and avera, uh, geres, avera.
[00:08:35] One mitzvah, uh, leads to another mitzvah, and one sin brings to another sin. Meaning if we do good things, it'll lead to other good things.
[00:08:48] If we do bad things, it'll lead us to other bad things. And I think this can be understood very easily, right? A person gets involved with bad habits, it usually ends up with more bad habits.
[00:09:04] If a person gets on a good streak, he'll continue doing good things. At the same time, though, we know that. We know people, maybe even ourselves. We've done one mitzvah, uh, we've done, you know, we've put on tefillin. We know somebody that has learned some Torah, uh, we know somebody has done certain mitzvahs, but it doesn't necessarily lead to another mitzvah.
[00:09:26] So what happened here?
[00:09:27] If it says in Piraki Avos, in Ethics of the Fathers, that a person who does one mitzvah gets involved with another mitzvah, why are people not all the time doing mitzvahs? What happened? Right. I know somebody that has done mitzvahs, but there seem to be maybe to my eyes, the same person as before.
[00:09:48] So Rytorski brings down. He says that if we look at the context, the Mishnah, it says before, Benazeh says. He says Benaze was the author of the Mishnah. He says, benaze, omer avi rutzl mitzvah kalag u beir' ach min aveira. The context of this concept that one mitzvah, uh, begets another mitzvah and one aveira begets an avera, is depends how we do it. If a person, because Benazeh says, run to perform even a small mitzvah and flee from sin, meaning run, go, do it with an emphasis, with a zeal, with enthusiasm.
[00:10:28] And maybe that is the key for us to have this reward of another mitzvah. When we do something good, maybe that cues us in to this concept of being able to gain another mitzvah, uh, from the mitzvah that we're doing.
[00:10:45] And if a person does a sin, if they do it with a. If they do a sin with also this alarcity and this because they want to do it, and they are, you know, they do with enthusiasm, that's when it really pulls them to do the next one. But the point is, I want to focus on this concept of one mitzvah, uh, leading to the next, and how it ties back to the parasha. One of the challenges we have as Jews is that we live this life where we like routine. We want to do things every day. Not we want to. We need to do them every day. We daven every day, put on tefillin, you know, every day except for Shabbos, we learn Torah. We do mitzvahs throughout the year, throughout the day, throughout the week.
[00:11:26] We need to be in a routine. Now, the risk of being in a routine is that things become monotonous. We just do them out of autopilot. We're not doing them because we're thinking about it. And there's this balance that we need to get to in our lives.
[00:11:40] We're doing things daily, but yet at the same time, we're doing it with emotion, we're doing with love, we're doing enthusiasm.
[00:11:48] And it's very important for us. Not that it's not just enough that we have to do mitzvahs, but we have to do it that they have to be part of us.
[00:11:58] Um, they have to be, you know, we have to fall, we have to go in them.
[00:12:03] Mean to say is we have to do them with enthusiasm, we have to do them with zeal. We have to be excited. We have to have that want to do it.
[00:12:12] It's not just enough to check the box off, right? When a person goes to the DMV and they're there and they're, you know, they're renewing their license, the person behind the desk. And again, nothing against anybody working in the dmv, it's, it's honest profession, but the point is, is that they're just checking the box. Do you have your birth certificate? Check.
[00:12:30] Do you have, uh, your passport? Check. Do you have proof of address? Check.
[00:12:36] It's not that it's important to them, and this is, you know, they're enthusiastic about it, is that you need to check the boxes off. So the question is, is that how we're doing our mitzvahs? Is that how we're performing the mitzvahs that we're doing? We just need to check the boxes off as we get through the day. Because it can't be that. It has to be something that becomes part of us that gives us the. That we have enthusiasm about, that we want to do, that we're excited about.
[00:13:01] And that's what it means.
[00:13:06] Carry out my laws and safeguard my decrees.
[00:13:10] To go in them. It's not just enough to follow them, we have to go in them.
[00:13:15] And this is so important because if we think about something, if, uh, we had this opportunity at work or to make a million dollars, what would be our attitude?
[00:13:29] You know, how excited would we be if we had this opportunity to make a handsome profit? Would we just doing it to, like, check the boxes off? Or are we doing it with some alarcity, with some zeal, with some excitement?
[00:13:44] The way we do mitzvos and the way we serve Hashem needs to be better than how we would, you know, act when it comes to gaining money or gaining honor or gaining anything within this material world.
[00:13:58] And that's insight to the next verse in the Parasha, because it says, carry out my laws and safeguard my decrees to go in them.
[00:14:08] Right?
[00:14:09] I am your God, and what's the next verse, you shall observe my decrees and my laws which man shall carry out and by which he shall live. I am your God. Meaning to get to a place where we're living with the mitzvos, that we're not just doing them, we're living them. It has to go in us.
[00:14:29] We have to have these two verses go together. We have to have that the mitzvahs go inside of us. We internalize them. We're excited about them. We want to, uh, perform them. It's not just about checking the box now. It is a challenge. We need to do things every day.
[00:14:46] There is routine, and we want routine. It's healthy. But at the same time, we need to strike that balance of still being excited, still having the enthusiasm. If we want to live with Hashem, we have to let these mitzvahs come into us. That's a beautiful idea from this week's Parsha.
[00:15:02] The next idea I want to share with you today takes us to Parasha Kedoshim and the two thoughts I want to share with you from Parasha Kedosim. Really beautiful ideas.
[00:15:11] The first one is regarding the mitzvah of rebuke.
[00:15:16] Now, we are Americans, at least for those of you who are in the United States, and one of the mottos of America is mind your own business.
[00:15:25] In the Torah, it says, nowhere mind your own business. Right? Obviously, you have to be normal. But the point is, is that m there's a commandment in the Torah of hohi achtochiyasa esamisech avchet, that if you shall rebuke your fellow man and you shall not bear sin because of him, that if somebody is doing something wrong, if a Jewish person is not following the Torah, they are not doing what they are supposed to be doing. You are supposed to rebuke them. Now, before you start going out the door to screaming at somebody, Rabbi Akiva brings down in the Talmud, it's brought down that Rabbi Akiva said that this mitzvah of rebuke is one of the hardest mitzvahs to do properly.
[00:16:07] That, you know, we could all understand that. Because how easy for is it for us to look at another person doing something wrong and say, oh, how could they do that? We're better than them, or they shouldn't be doing that. Or emotions could be getting involved, or we're. There's a fine line of telling someone they're doing something wrong and putting them down. We're not allowed to do that either. Just because someone's doing something wrong, you're not Allowed to put them down. You're not. Let him, you know, you have to do it the right way. It's a very hard mitzvah, uh, to do properly. And Rabbi Akiva, who was one of the greatest sages, and he said in his time that it was extremely difficult to do. All the more so nowadays.
[00:16:47] How do we do the mitzvah, uh, of rebuke? How do we. How do we set our fellows straight? How do we, you know, make people do the correct thing?
[00:16:55] Because. Because we know the commandments of the Torah are eternal. It doesn't go out of style. And I heard a beautiful idea brought down from the Chavez chaf. And I heard a beautiful idea brought down from the sephasemes.
[00:17:08] The sephasemes says, when it says, uh, he says that the person giving the rebuke has to look at it as if he's part of it. What does that mean, people?
[00:17:24] That the swasemis explains that if a person sees someone else doing an aveir or doing a sin, he has a part in that sin.
[00:17:32] As it says.
[00:17:40] A person shouldn't throw the whole aveir, the sin, onto this person that's doing it. Rockli saarev atsma, Leshuv, alzeh. Meaning rather, he has to share in it. And the idea that's what he's trying to say here is that when a person sees someone else sinning, we know that all the Jewish people are one. We're all connected. And if Hashem God made you see this person do this, avera there means that somewhere, in some place, in some way, you're connected to it, that in you, there is something that's lacking. In me, right? In me, there's something that's lacking that caused me to see this.
[00:18:16] And therefore I need to look within myself to see what needs to be fixed before I give anybody else rebuke on what they should be doing. That's what it means.
[00:18:29] You shall.
[00:18:31] It's a double lush, and it's repetitive.
[00:18:34] You shall rebuke. Surely you shall rebuke, right? The Torah doesn't repeat things. So it's including the person who's the rebuker in this rebuke.
[00:18:44] And I think this.
[00:18:47] I mean, you need a. You can't throw the aveira onto him that only he's doing it. Rather, you have to view yourself as part of it as well. And that's really the key to giving proper, you know, proper rebuke. That if we view ourselves as part of this, that we're not perfect ourselves. You do it out of, you know, it's out of love. It's out of, you know, it's empathy.
[00:19:09] You're not viewing yourself as better than anybody else.
[00:19:13] So then surely your friend will feel it. And It'll also be Ms. Oyer B', Teshuva, meaning to say, is if you have the feeling of teshuvah to see yourself in the aver that was done. So your friend will see that and also want to do teshuvah to return as well. And in fact, the Chavitz Chaim brings down that he actually encouraged speakers to always stress the positive, to emphasize the positive aspects of living a Torah life. That we shouldn't just focus on the negative, but also the positive should be stressed. That we should always, you know, not just look at the bad. I think in general, when it comes to empathy and people see that you're authentic and you're real, they.
[00:19:58] They're more receptive to the words you have to say, and they're not necessarily just looking that you're trying to point bad at them. You know, I remember when I was engaged, there was this class I took about, you know, this marriage class for, um, you know, people that engage couples that are engaged. And one of the things that the speaker said is that you have to. In a bank account, you can't just make withdrawals. You have to make deposits. And when you. And I think this ties into the idea of the svasemes and really what the Chavez Chaim, you know, encouraged that when we have to maybe rebuke somebody, we have to make sure we do it in a way where we see ourselves, we empathize with them. We see where that. Where what we saw or what they did, how could apply to us how we can become better.
[00:20:41] We also, you know, maybe put it in a more positive way. Everything is how it's said to do things. Not just with negativity, obviously, not with. Not with anger, not with emotion, but to do it in a more positive way. Need to do it sometimes, but doing the right way. And I think this is a insight into how we can perform this mitzvah of giving rebuke in the proper way in this generation at this time.
[00:21:07] The last idea I want to share with you takes us to the famous mitzvah of vahafta lereicha kamoyicha.
[00:21:13] We have to love our fellow as ourselves. And there's a famous story that the Gemara brings down that Talmud relates that there was once a non Jew that came to Hillel, and he said to Hillel, he said, teach me the Torah on one foot.
[00:21:29] And you know, other rabbis sort of scorned this fellow. They thought he was making light of the Torah. And Hillel had patience for everybody, had this certain sense of humility. And he said to him, he said, mash hasani lechavrech altavid, meaning whatever you despise, don't touch to your friend.
[00:21:47] Really, this is the mitzvah of Yahav to are. And actually Rabbi Rukham Levavitz brings down that when Hillel was referring to this commandment of loving your fellow as yourself, you know, why didn't he just say, if he was referring to it, why did he say, what you dislike, do not do to your friend? This is the entire Torah. He should have just said, you know, this is the whole Torah. Why did he say, say it in a way that what you dislike, do not do to your friend? And Rabbi Ruham explains, you know, if we think of the words v' yahav' el reich hakamocha, love your fellow as yourself, you might just think that if we feel this love in our hearts, we feel it. The love, the feeling, the good vibes, that's enough. And I don't have to do anything more than that. What Hillel was teaching this fellow who came to Mansed, teach me the Torah on while I stand on one foot. That's what he wanted to do, convert me while I'm on one foot. What he told him was, he says, it's not just enough to have the love in your heart of Yahav Kamocha, because that's what a person might think mistakenly. But the truth is the feelings of love alone is not sufficient. Rather, it's the love that gives us the motivation to do the positive things for others and to hold back from any actions that might cause pain to another person.
[00:23:03] You know, this is, this is, that is really the output, the end result of yahav to Loreha kamocha, right? We know we have to love our fellow, uh, we have to love our neighbor as ourselves. But even more than that is putting it into action. Judaism is an action based religion. And this is, you know, really the epitome of the mitzvah of hafta reha kamocha ani hashem, love your fellow man as yourself. I am the Almighty. It's not just enough to feel that love, lovey dovey feelings, but we have to use that feeling to motivate us to do positive actions and to refrain from doing things that can cause pain to another person. With that I'm going to finish for today's podcast. Hope you enjoyed. If you have any questions, comments or would like to reach out, feel free to send me email at Rabbi Shlomo konkohnmail.com have a great day.
