Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Hello, my friends, and welcome back to this week's episode of the Practical Parasha podcast. This is Rabbi Shlomo Cohen, and I hope you are well.
[00:00:08] We've finished the Torah and now you know what we do? We start it again.
[00:00:14] We're back at the beginning of the Torah, Parshas Bereshas.
[00:00:18] And actually over the holiday, it was actually really special because on Simchas Torah, we finished the Torah and we also started again.
[00:00:28] And the two most special honors that you can receive on Simcha's Torah is number one is Hasan Torah, which is the last aliyah of the Torah, which goes to the rabbi.
[00:00:44] And there's Hasan Bereshis, the aliyah to the Torah, which is the first aliyah of the new Torah, meaning of the new cycle.
[00:00:54] And that's when we start Bereshas.
[00:00:56] And in fact, this year, I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to receive Hassan Bereshas to be the one who gets the first aliyah, who gets called up first for the new cycle of the Torah.
[00:01:13] Very thankful that I had that opportunity. There's a lot of blessing and good things that come with getting that honor.
[00:01:22] And I was thinking to myself, I can't not give a podcast on Parshas Bereshis. If I got Chasin Baratius, it just doesn't go well. If I'm starting off the new cycle of the Torah with the first aliyah, with being the first one called to the Torah for Parshas Bereshas, how could I not do this week's episode?
[00:01:45] So I'm here to share another amazing episode.
[00:01:50] If you've been with this podcast for a while, thank you.
[00:01:54] And if you've just come aboard, welcome, welcome, welcome to the Practical Parasha podcast family. I hope you enjoy.
[00:02:02] And something that all the regulars know already, but any newbies might need to hear, and you'll get used to hearing that is that in this podcast, we welcome all feedback, we welcome questions, we welcome people saying hello, we welcome people introducing themselves. The way you do that is you send the email to Rabbi Shlomokon Kohmil.com I'd love to hear from you.
[00:02:31] This week's Parshas Parshas Bereshas.
[00:02:34] Now, Parshas Bereshas starts us off with the creation of the world.
[00:02:41] How Hashem, ah, how G D created the world from nothing. And the Parsha goes through the seven days of creation that G D created in six days. And on the seventh day, he rested. That's why we have the Mitzvah of Shabbos. That's why we have a day of rest? Because since Hashem rested, since G D rested on the seventh day, so too we as Jews, we rest on the seventh day, which testifies to the fact that God created the world in the first six days. Because we see that since God rested after he worked the six days and he rested on the seventh, so too we do, we work six days and we rest on the seventh. Which shows that we believe in the fact that God created the world.
[00:03:29] Now, you know, the different, the Parsha goes through the different creatures and plants that were created on the different days. And even before creatures and plants, God split, you know, the lower waters and the upper waters and the sun, the moon, the stars, vegetation, it's all different days they were created.
[00:03:50] And on the sixth day of creation, Hashem, God created man and woman, which is the pinnacle of creation, meaning the rest of creation was made to serve mankind and the mission that he is to fulfill. The parasha also tells us how Adam, uh, Harishan, Adam, the first man and Chava, Eve, what happened to them while they're in the Garden of Eden? They were created in Ganeidan, in the Garden of Eden. And soon after their creation, they make a fatal mistake. They're enticed by the Nachash, the serpent, to eat from the Tree of Knowledge, meaning Hashem sets him in the garden and he gives them one rule. Do not eat from the eight's Hadassah and the Nokhash. The snake entices them to eat from the tree. Once they eat from the tree, there's a lot of depth and, uh, understanding, layers and layers of understanding to the story of bracious and the story of the eitzadas, the story of the Tree of Knowledge, you know, what does it mean beforehand that did they have a desire to do evil? And now when they ate from the Eitzadas, this desire to do evil went into them. It wasn't exterior anymore, it became internal.
[00:05:16] But either way, they make this mistake. And they realize as soon as they eat from the eitzadas, from the Tree of Knowledge, that they've done something terrible. And now Hashem, G D tells them that since you've done this, you have to, you're expelled from Ghanaian, you have to go out of Ghanaian and they're punished. And there's different punishments that Adim and Chava, Adam and Eve and their descendants, which include us, have because of that original sin of the Eitz Hadassah of, uh, eating from the Tree of Knowledge. And because of this sin, man would have a new reality in the world.
[00:05:55] Things wouldn't be as easy as they were before.
[00:06:00] They would have to work hard and to get to the spiritual plateau that Adam and Chava, that Adam and Eve were on in Ganedan.
[00:06:09] That's something that would take effort and hard work.
[00:06:13] The parasha continues with the story of Cain and Abel, that the two sons of Adam and Chava, Cain and Hevel, their brothers Cain. Cain is somebody who works the ground.
[00:06:30] Abel is a shepherd. And the parshash tells us how Cain, Cain becomes jealous of his brother, how his sacrifices are accepted, which comes to a point, this jealousy builds up inside him to a point where he rises up and kills his brother. Parsha tells us how Hashem M deals with him and how he was actually sent out into exile.
[00:06:57] Finally, the parsha finishes off with the genealogy of mankind, the generations from Adam, from, uh, Adam to Noah to Noach, and actually talks about how the people, they start to have this moral decay, which is really a prelude to the generation of the flood, the great flood of Noah, which is next week's Parasha.
[00:07:24] Now, the first idea I want to share with you today takes us to really the beginning of the parsha.
[00:07:31] When Hashem created Adam, when G D created Adam. It says in the verse as Vayitzera Hashem elokem ESA Adam afar mena Adama vayifach ba' apav nishmashayim vayihiya Adam le nefesh chaya and Hashem. God formed the man of dust from the ground, and he blew into his nostrils the soul of life, and man became a living being.
[00:07:57] Parasha is telling us that before Hashem, before G D blew his breath, so to say, into man, he was really just a lump of dirt. Man was just dirt from the ground.
[00:08:10] Then Hashem blew into him his spirit, and he became alive, became living.
[00:08:16] The commentaries explained on this a lot of depth and understanding. But the main idea I think, which we could take out of this is that we look at ourselves.
[00:08:28] You know, one of the most common problems that people have today is that people don't have self esteem.
[00:08:37] People don't believe in themselves.
[00:08:40] And we all can relate to this in different ways.
[00:08:44] But if we think for a moment that every human being in this world, every person is. There's a spark of godliness inside of them, him and her, everybody, every single human being.
[00:09:02] This should give us a realization of the greatness that each and every person has. And, you know, hopefully we're using it for good things.
[00:09:12] And, you know, obviously there's people Doing the right thing, people doing the wrong thing.
[00:09:17] But if a person is living his life correctly, he's doing the right thing. He's trying to, um, be moral and just and be honest. And for a Jew to, you know, to do the mitzvos, to learn Torah, to get closer to Hashem, to get closer to God, realize that intrinsic greatness within you, there's a spark of godliness. God blew his breath into you.
[00:09:47] Me, to bring out the life within us.
[00:09:51] Something which is, you know, I don't think we internalize that and realize that we don't appreciate it.
[00:09:58] And I think if we just look at the verse and think about that, Hashem, uh, blew into Adamarish, into Adam. It's us. We're an extension of Adon. Or in fact, actually, there's an interesting idea I heard from Rebbets and Young Rice.
[00:10:12] She said, why did Hashem create human beings from one person? You know, Hashem, God could have created many people. You know, he could have created 10 people. And then we all could have gone and, you know, populated the world.
[00:10:27] But Hashem created man from one, from Adam and Chava, Adam and Eve. And if it's really, it's actually mind blowing because humanity comes from one person.
[00:10:40] Everybody, we all come from Adam Harishan, he's the father of mankind. And the way this, you know, this is so. It's mind blowing because everyone looks so different. There's so many people in the world.
[00:10:52] You walk, you know, recently I was just in Manhattan, and you look at the multitudes of people walking around, and everyone is so different. Everyone looks different.
[00:11:03] And aside from looking different, everyone acts differently, has different mannerisms. There's a whole world to themselves, and yet we come from one person.
[00:11:12] And the reason Rebbetzin Jungre, she explains that God set it up this way, that we come from one person is because no nation or individual can say, I'm, um, the first person.
[00:11:27] I'm better than you. I'm, um, better than you.
[00:11:30] We all come from Adam, Harishen. We all come from Adam. We all come from the same source.
[00:11:37] And that's why Hashem created the world in a way that humanity as a whole comes from one person.
[00:11:44] That's something I think we should need to recognize, especially nowadays, having the respect for other people, dealing with other people properly.
[00:11:55] So it's realizing the godliness in each person.
[00:11:58] And on top of that, to realize that we all come from one person. We're different.
[00:12:05] It's okay. We could be different. We could disagree. We don't have to agree with each other, but we can get along.
[00:12:11] I think that's something we see from this week's Parasha. The next idea I want to share with you today takes us to the story of Cain and Hevel, the two brothers, and really the story of the first murder in humanity.
[00:12:24] So as I said earlier, Cain is jealous of Abel, Cain is jealous of Abel. Abel is a shepherd. He brings these very special offerings to God, and his offerings are accepted. Cain brings his offerings and they're not, as you know, special. He doesn't bring the best, and they're not accepted.
[00:12:50] This bothers him tremendously to a point where he rises up and kills his brother.
[00:12:57] And the Parasha actually speaks out the back and forth, how God asks Cain, where's your brother Abel? And you know the famous line, am I my brother's keeper? But if you look in the verses, there's a very interesting give and take. The posse reads as follows. And Hashem, uh, said to Cain, why are you annoyed? And why has your countenance fallen? Surely if you improve yourself, you will be forgiven. But if you do not improve yourself, sin rests at the door. Its desire is toward you, yet you can conquer it. And it's actually interesting because if you look at the sferno, he explains on this verse that Hashem was telling Cain a very deep message here.
[00:13:45] He was telling, um, him, why are you jealous of your brother?
[00:13:49] Why did you rise up to kill him?
[00:13:52] Right? We know that he felt very jealous and bad that his sacrifice, his offering, was not accepted.
[00:14:01] And he got angry and jealous of Abel that his was.
[00:14:09] And Hashem says, why are you lamacharolach?
[00:14:14] Why are you, you know, why are you annoyed?
[00:14:21] Why are you getting upset that his Karbon, his sacrifice was accepted?
[00:14:25] Ah, right. No, he didn't do anything wrong.
[00:14:30] And the Sferno explains in this, he's like, why did you, why are you feeling downtrodden? And the Svarna explains, When you have a problem, when you have an issue, It's not proper to look backwards.
[00:14:51] Avro roi lishtada lahasig tikun l'. Ossid.
[00:14:55] Rather, you need to, you need to gird yourself. You need to look forward facing, you need to be solution focused for the future.
[00:15:05] You know, the expression goes, you don't cry about spilled milk. You can't go back, it's done, it happened. The only thing you can control is yourself going forward. How do you make the situation better?
[00:15:21] And that's a very powerful lesson. We see here that this from the story of Cain and Hevel from Cain and Abel, where Hashem, God is telling Cain that he's giving him musr. He's giving him a little bit of rebuke, saying, why are you getting upset? Why are you getting angry about the past?
[00:15:43] Your brother's karban. Your brother's sacrifice is accepted. Yours wasn't. It bothers you to a point. Will you kill him?
[00:15:50] Why don't you focus on. On fixing up yourself, on making your own sacrifice accepted to Hashem, you know, don't dwell in the past. This is going to cause you to make a mistake. And that's what happened. He made a mistake. He killed his brother. And I think this is a very powerful lesson when it comes to ourselves in life.
[00:16:11] We always are going to make mistakes.
[00:16:15] We're humans. We're not perfect.
[00:16:18] We make mistakes.
[00:16:19] But, uh, the wise man learns from his mistakes and hopefully only makes that mistake once.
[00:16:27] That's it. You make the mistake, you learn from it, and you become better.
[00:16:33] And that's why we live in a world where God made us imperfect, to learn from our mistakes and to become better people. Because who we are and the way we are, a lot of it has to do with the life experiences and the situations that we go through.
[00:16:52] And a good portion of that is not from when everything goes right.
[00:16:57] It's when everything goes wrong and how we handle it and from the mistakes that we make and become better people from.
[00:17:07] This is a huge thing that I feel like we all have to become better in and learn and internalize.
[00:17:15] Because if we make a mistake, often if we are a perfectionist or we want to do good, we want to succeed, we all want to do well and succeed. And I can relate to this very much.
[00:17:26] When we make the mistake, we need to hear from somebody that's a higher authority than us that we are going to be okay. It is okay. Don't worry about it.
[00:17:37] And if we don't hear from that person, we're going out of our mind.
[00:17:42] The truth is we have to realize that, Hashem, God himself tells us how to handle mistakes.
[00:17:54] Look towards the future, right? Why are you focusing in the past, Cain? Cain, why are you looking in the past? You need to pick yourself up and go forward and become a better person.
[00:18:07] We don't have to worry about having our superior or someone who is a higher authority than us make us feel better. We should realize that the Almighty himself tells us what to do.
[00:18:18] The last idea I want to share with you today takes us towards the end of the parsha, where the Torah sort of gives a prelude to the generation of the flood, where humanity as a whole is deteriorating.
[00:18:32] There's a very interesting pasuk. It says, hm, And Hashem reconsidered having made man on earth and he had heartfelt sadness.
[00:18:51] There's a very interesting verse here, because we know Hashem is all knowing. He knows the future, he knows what we're going to do, but at the same time, we still have choice.
[00:19:01] But either way, what does it mean that he reconsidered having made man on earth and he had heartfelt sadness.
[00:19:10] So there's different explanations to this.
[00:19:12] One I saw was that Dakita Sitzak explains that just like a person who owns a lumber yard and he plants a tree to, you know, for wood for his lumber company, and he works hard to plant that tree, to grow it, to water it, to do everything it needs to do, he's still sad when he has to cut the tree down, even though he knew originally, from the moment that he planted it, that he would have to do that same act because of all the hard work and the effort that he put into it. Now, obviously, Hashem doesn't have effort, but the point is that the Torah puts it into human terms for us to understand that even though Hashem had to punish mankind, he still had, you know, this.
[00:19:55] His heart aggrieved him. Right, Whatever that means for us to understand.
[00:20:00] But either way, Rashi brings down on this verse that there was once, uh, a non Jew who asked Rebshua Ben Karacha, he says, don't you admit that Hashem, you know, he knows what we're going to do, and he sees everything.
[00:20:18] So he says, of course, I answered him, of course Hashem knows everything. But then why does it say in this verse in the posseh that God had sadness, he regretted.
[00:20:28] So he answered him. He answered to this fellow, he said, you know, have you ever had a son, a child? He said, yes, but why are you happy if he had a child? Isn't this child going to die one day? Should be sad. So the man answered, what do you mean? Now is the time to be happy, and in the future it'll be the time to be sad. Said same thing with Hashem, that even though he knew he would have to destroy humanity, a good portion of it, he still created the world in his abundance of kindness for the righteous generations and people that would come out from it and at the end of it.
[00:21:05] And the lesson here that Rabbi Plissken brings out from Rashi is that we see a very important foundation to living A happy life. The future is something that we have to plan for, something we have to consider, something we have to think about.
[00:21:23] But living in the future is not going to cause us happiness.
[00:21:28] Worrying about what might happen, it's just going to give us anxiety, right? So just like a child comes into the world, we're so happy, we're so excited, there's exhilaration. We're not thinking about that this child is going to one day pass on at an old age. We don't think about that because now's the time to be happy.
[00:21:49] Sure, we need to plan for the future. We have to do our due diligence. But worrying about things that might happen, probably won't happen, is not a way to have a happy life. And this is a very powerful idea. We see from this week's Parasha from this rasi that one of the keys to happiness is trying to be in the present, to live in the moment. Don't worry about things that haven't happened yet.
[00:22:17] Usually Hashem takes care of them for us. And I feel even myself, maybe today's experience proves this.
[00:22:25] I was very, you know, maybe a little tense about certain situations I had to deal with at work today, and I feel that they worked out by themselves. Hashem, uh, solved the problems for me. I didn't really have to do much. It wasn't complicated. All the, all the scenarios that I played out in my brain which stressed me out, it wasn't necessary. I was worrying about the future when I was just wasting that, you know, that feeling, that emotion didn't happen.
[00:23:01] And I think that's a very big key for us to living a happy life, living a content life, a calm life, to try to be in the moment. So with that, I'm going to finish for today's podcast. I hope you all enjoyed. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to reach out to me at Rabbi Shalomalkon kohnmail.com have a great day.
