nooseisko

hey everybody!!!

Abraham our forefather (our 1st 4father. huh?), a man (child) who discovered his creator at the ripe old age of 3, fought his whole life against the flow, was called “abraham the ivri” cuz he was on the other “ever” (side) religiously than the rest of mankind, a g-d fearing person in an era when atheism and paganism were all the fad, his father was an idol seller for crying out loud, got thrown in a furnace, mocked by all his friends, ridiculed by all the important ppl of the time (except for shem i guess, and noach. did u know avraham learnt by noach? how cool is that! he heard bout the flood first hand!!!…….i think), and yet he did not allow any of this to budge him from his beliefs even in the slightest bit.

Abraham, the man of the 10 tests, from leaving his home, to having no children to having to slaughter his own beloved son (not all these things had already taken place at the time of the story which we will tell soon, but he was still the man who would pass all these teats in the future), the man who was the epitimy of following g-d’s word to the finest detail.

Abraham, the man who, as explained by Rav Brevda, had hashem on the forefront of his mind 24/7, the man who surely would not make a move without thinking of “what would g-d do”

Avraham, the man who went down to Egypt in the time of the plague the man who decided, surely after much deliberation, contemplation and prayer, that the best way to approach the dangers of egypt is by telling his wife to lie about their relationship. The man who surely was convinced that this was the best, and only feasible approach, that this was the ratzon hashem, for if it was not he would not have done it! he had already proven that he favored g-d’s will more than, even, his very own life. If he thought there was a better way to fulfill g-d’s will, he would have jumped at it! right? well maybe……….huh?

The ramban goes on an absolute rampage!!!!!! calling Avram no less than a sinner (albeit beshogeg, but still a sinner), how could the ramban fathom that such a thing was even possible? how could the ramban, after seeing avraham’s track record even attempt to say that avram made a mistake? where is he coming from?

I am in no way claiming i understand the reasoning behind the rambans peyrush, i am in fact not even claiming i trully understand the ramban even in the slightest bit! nor am i in any way, or, shape or any other appropriate word, coming to judge avraham avinu chas veshalom (even i am not stupid enough to do that……….sober), but i still think that we can learn a very important yesod form what the ramban said

NEGIOS, a.k.a BIAS. the evel of all evils, the one thing that can even fail the biggest tzaddik, the one consideration that no matter how righteous, smart, talented or expert you are, you can not escape under any circumstances. As soon as you are making a decision which will effect you, even in the slightest way, your judgment will be effected, warped, hijacked and any other appropriate word.

Avraham was arguably the most perfect human being that ever lived (i think most americans rank him right after the guy that invented the Ipod……loko americano). yet still when making a decision that effected him (it was a question of life and death for him), there was an outside input which he needed to get, not cuz he didnt want to do what hashem wanted him to do (which IS the case when we make “unbiased” decisions), not cuz he cared more about himself than the truth (which IS the case when we make a “mistaken” decision), and definitly not cuz he wanted to do what his yetzer hara told him to (which IS the case………). simply because it is a law of nature that “negios” exist. “hashocahd ye’aver eyney chachamim”- end of story.

Is this what the ramban is sayiing? i have not the slightest clue, was avraham also affected by negios or was he above them? your guess is as good as mine. will i be punished for suggesting that avraham made a mistake? most probably. is the yesod which comes out of all this blabbering a true one as far as our day to day lives are concerned? most definitely!

welcome back to me!!!

The female in this weeks parsha has 2 different names, “Isha”- “woman”, and “chava”- “hava”, why 2 names? what wrong with one?

Well you may just answer that nowadays as well, many people have 2 names, so why should the 1st woman be different? (not exactly sure how that would answer the question though), but we have to realise that names aren’t “STAM”, names describe the actual essence of the person, and who better than adam harishon, who gave names to all living organisms (well..at least to all animals, i wonder if he gave names to fruits and veggies too), each name specifically and particularly chosen to specially fit that being. Ans so why did chava have to get 2? coudn’t he encapsulate her essence in 1 word? maybe this means she had 2 essences??? hm……….

To cut a very long story (i actually had a whole story made up) short, the most simple way to answer the aforementioned qustion is………….chava/isha actually had 2 essences. Period. the end. But not only that, i wanna suggest (which prob means i’m wrong), that what we were being taught by the mention of both of chavas names, is that we ALL have 2 essences.

We are all schizophrenics!!!!! and so are we!

The name Isha which was given to chava, has actually become the term for all womankind, and so that name represented chavas outward, public, worldwide essence, whilst the name Chava stayed as her own personal (women may be refereed to as “bney chava”, but we don’t reffer to women in general as “chavas”) name, symbolizing her own inner, personal, intermarriage (i mean between her and her husband, and not what the word actually means, cuz i don’t think it is fair that this Webster guy should have a monopoly on the english language…i’m also entitled to an opinion!!!!).

We are 2 ppl, we have 2 essences, one which covers our goals for our own home, the other which is our job within klal yisrael, someone who is supposed to be dominant in his own home, doesn’t necessarily have to be dominant as far as klal yisroel is considered, the fact that someone is the ruling authority of halacha in his own home, doesn’t garantee that he will become the poseyk hador. Many times we get mixed up between our 2 rolls (yummy), and use the tools which were meant to be used on the outside, inside and vice versa. We MUST understand that we have 2 jobs, we must thrive to figure out (with the help of da’as torah) what those 2 roles are.

This is best seen in Chava/Isha, true she was the mother of all man[and woman]kind alike, she was setting down the foundations for all of us, and yet she was also the wife of Adam, and the mother of kayin, hevel sheys (and their twins) etc. not all of us have such dramatic roles when it comes to the public side of our lives, not all of us are ever intended to have such a strong effect on the world…… yet all of us fit in the big picture somewhere, as well as fitting in our own small picture.

The torah never writes an extra extra (haha) word, yet it went through the trouble of mentioning both of the females names? why? dunno………but till you do figure it out, just make believe it was put there to teach us the lesson i just attempted to teach you.

first of all i wanna explain the subject of this thingie (after long contemplation, i came to the conclusion that that is the best way to describe my divrey torah), i kinda feel bad for the last parsha of the torah, you know it never really gets the attention it deserves it’s always read the same time that so many other things are going on and it just never really gets to shine the way a parsha (especially this one) is supposed to, and so i wanna try and make up for some lost opportunities and focus on the parsha as apposed to the chag (has anyone ever taken more time to “i don’t really have any good divrey torah for sukkos”?)

Moshe dies……. just giving you all a second to contemplate that…….. and a couple of moments of silence in memory of the greatest leader we ever had.

Moshe taught us countless amounts of lessons throughout his 40 years of leadership, in fact if we trace back every single action he ever did from the moment hashem spoke to him at the bush and till the day he die, we can see that there is something to learn from every action, now what is there to learn from his final moments? or better so, what can we learn from the whole “dying” episode? many things, which i do not have the time, patience, energy or quite frankly the knowledge to share with u 🙂 but there is one point i do wanna discuss, one seemingly innocuous,or to be more exact, lack of, detail. I’m referring to Moshe’s burial place, as we are told in the torah moshe’s burial site has not been revealed to us. why? why is hashem denying all the travel agents from making the deal of their life? just think bout it, 7th of adar nothing else is happening , no one is really flying anywhere and then BOOM “moshe rabeynu’s kever for just 999 [plus tax, gas, food and bribe], go now before moshiach comes and moshe moves to a better place!!!!” it would be the perfect sales pitch, but NO hashem had to hide it………..why?

The gemara gives a very interesting explanation (i actually got acquainted with this gemara thru an Aaron Razel song……..so kudos to him!), if the children of israel (and moses, weather biological or other) would have known where the grave was, they would have gone there on their way into exile and pleaded with moshe to daven to hashem (all kever davening issues aside for now) to forgive them and allow them to stay in the land and………hashem would have HAD (kivyachol) to listen to moses’s prayers! and he never would have been able to kick us out of our land [so why indeed did hashem deny us that privilege? cuz going into exile is part of our purification process, ein kan mokom leha’arich, a.k.a i’m not getting into that]. That is the basis of the lesson…….now what is the lesson itself? dunno. JUST KIDDING!

When do we daven for something? when all else has failed, “there is nothing left to do now, all you can do is pray”- after we have tried fixing the problem on our own, after we have gone to all the “professionals” for advice, after we wasted many hours and money, only after that we go to our last resort…….G-D. I mean he did like create the world and stuff so maybe, just MAYBE, he will have an idea of how to fix it, it can’t hurt to try. that is BAD……..VERY bad!!!!!

Let’s go back to that gemara…….. just stop for a second to realize just how powerful prayers can actually be, if done in the right manner, and for the right reasons they can, so to speak, FORCE hashem to answer us! no matter how much of a “miracle” we are asking for!!! i am in no way saying prayers are a magic potion for everything, and i am in no way saying that every time we ask for something we will be answered (and i am especially not saying that every time we daven, plead, beg and even cry(!!!!!)really really hard that our team should win they will win, even if we go to every grave we know of!!!), all i am saying is that prayers ( a.k.a tefilos) are mucho mucho powerful! and as a result of their potentness (that is a real word right?) they really should be our FIRST option and not just some by the way last resort.

That is what the aforementioned “innocuous” (thats’s a lot of vowels, and i’m not even sure what the word really means……) detail was told to us for, and so even in death moshe teaches us, possibly the most important lesson of all!

So, will this lesson go like all others? in one ear, around the brain a bit and out the other? or……… try this. Next time something not so pleasant happens in your life, or next time you want something pleasant to happen in your life, before you go to all the “natural” ways of going about things, try the “supernatural” (and since we are in olam hasheker, then obviously we always get mixed up, cuz indeed the “supernatural” prayer method is really the most natural method, cuz our entire existence is “supernatural” and therefore supernatural+supernatural= natural……….huh???) davening method. no……..REALLY try it!!! i know it sounds weird, but just sit down, drown everything else out, and start talking to “him” (if you happen to be out doors put a cellphone ear piece in your ear so ppl won’t think ur weird!!!!).

We r instructed in this weeks parsha to choose life over death………let’s repeat that sentence, we r INSTRUCTED…..to choose life over death! how lowly does g-d think of us (r”l), doesn’t he trust us to chose life over death based on the simple fact that we are the highest form of intelligence on the face of this earth (well most of us are……… and even the others still rank pretty high) so why do we have to be commanded to do such a thing????????????

Let’s see if I can get outta this one.

Naturally speaking, we should be absolutely petrified of the retribution we will suffer [and we WILL suffer]

And so, hashem did a chessed with us and he took this natural fright away from us, in order to LET US LIVE! however we can now come and complain to him, that we never have a chance of doing what’s right, cuz he deprived us from our natural, defense from bad. right? wrong, cuz all he did was take away the exaggerated fear we would have had, and he left us with the ability to work on ourselves and reach a balanced fear, which will on the one hand stop us from sinning, yet on the other still allow us to roam this earth freely.

Same goes for death.

Naturally speaking we should be so scared of death that we would not be able to live! (so witty!!!!!!) we would be so scared of the idea that our life could end at any given moment, that even while being alive, for all intents a purposes we would be dead, “dead man walking” would become the norm. And so hashem did a chessed with us and removed that natural fright from us. Once again giving us the ability to work on ourselves and get to the level where we have a healthy balance between fearing death and living life. Why should we wanna fear death? once again as a tool to help us do right, if we realize that at any given moment we might be on the next train (or plane) to the next world, we will be more careful with how we spend our time down here.

We must choose death, but more importantly we must choose life, we must realize that hahsem never intended us to be so scared of death that we will not be able to live our lives, he just intended us to fear death so that we should not sin, sounds simple but not so easy to implement, SO not simple that hashem had to make a seemingly ridiculous (r”l) demand of us. CHOOSE LIFE!!!!

dunno why my thing didnt go up last night! probably cuz after all my “hard” work i forgot to press the “post” button!!!…….sheesh modern technology!!

well here it is….

what is a punishment?

The fact that we all punish for the wrong reasons and with the wrong intentions is a well known fact, and it is , in my “opinion”, one of the main reasons that children rebel against their parents, if parents really knew how when and why to punish their children, then their children would grow up being happy knowledgeable adults, as apposed to the angry annoyed ones they grow up to be in reality, but that’s not even what i wanna talk about. i wanna talk about what happens after the punishment.

Brace yourselves………. the whole point of a punishment is not to cause the “victim” pain!!!!…….pretty controversial no? the whole point of a punishment is so that the punishee (it’s a word now) learns his lesson, improves for next time but most of all is cleansed of the blemish which was created by his erring in the first place.

There is a very interesting passuk in this weeks parsha which tells us that right after someone receives his lashes he immediately becomes your “brother” once again, the second his punishment is finished with we have no right to look down upon him, no right to ridicule him, and no right to assume that he will ever fail again!

We tend to forget that very very often, we see someone who did bad and immediately we black list him forever, we see him doing an aveyra and we immediately assume that he is wicked to the core and should be burnt at stake, we see someone who is going thru a tough time and we immediately feel as if he is a nebech and he needs our pity (which isn’t really pity, rather it is really our way of boosting our own ego) for all of eternity.

What is wrong with the way we act? everybody does it, it is our “natural” urge to do it……………well the torah begs to differ, the torah tells us exactly how we should act towards someone who erred, exactly how we should feel towards someone who has been punished. So many times we actively ruin children and even adults by treating them the wrong way AFTER they were already punished, no one is denying the fact that every once in a while ppl deserve to get punished, if we do bad we deserve to get lashed, but as soon as the lashing is over and done with………silence. things MUST go back to normal, cuz if they don’t we will simply be pouring salt into an open wound, and never allow it to heal.

I know i wrote this in quite a unclear, boring, and choppy way, but what i am trying to relay (for a change) is actually a very important, and even life saving idea. read it. absorb it. live it. (that’s a good slogan for something no?)

hey, sorry i bailed on you guys last week, had a baby bla bla bla 🙂

BUT I’M BACK!

A dude walks up to you and tells you that at 3 o’clock this afternoon the sun will quickly set and then rise again 10 minutes later, you obviously pay no attention to him, and most probably try to cross the street or make believe you have a phone call, you continue on your liesurly walk wondering why hashem created such weirdos when suddenly everything around you seems to be getting darker, you pick your shades up but to no avail the sun is actually setting at 3 o’clock in the afternoon! it’s the weirdest scariest most amazing thing that you have ever experienced, everyone just stops in the street staring, bewildered, and then the weird dude shows up again and says that he is a prophet, the messenger of g-d and that all jews must from now on start keeping shabbat on tuesday, wear only pink socks, and call themselves a name which rhymes with Bob, as he says this the sun begins to rise again (exactly like he said it would) and as everyone turns their attention from the “prophet” to the sky, he quickly disappears as if into thin air.

What would your reaction be? as a straight thinking intelligent human being? you would as quickly as you can try to get some contact in china to ship 10 million pairs of pink socks so youcan make the deal of your life when everyone starts buying em. would you believe the guy? possibly not, but how bout if he does the same thing 3 days straight and lets u pick when the sun should set and rise? you would be left with “no choice” but to believe him! end of story. well let’s see what g-d has to say bout our “prophet”.

The torah tells us straight out that if a person shows up and starts doing tricks, no matter how supernatural they r, if the dude tells you to do something against the torah we MUST NOT believe him. ok fine, no prob, i just won’t believe him! BUT HE MADE THE SUN SET IN MIDDAY FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!!!!!! how can hashem expect us to not listen to this guy? if he catches me without pink socks he will probably turn me into a frog or something!!!! seriously, where r we supposed to get the “power” to not listen to such a person? HOW???? i’ll show you!

HISTORY (huh??????)

Think back to the future, if someone from nowadays would go back in time and whip out an i-pod ppl would most probably consider him a g-d, they would worship him kiss the ground (and pink socks) which he walks upon and do as he says. We have the “experience” of seeing that things change so much with time, many scientific “facts” from the past have now been proven to be no more than…WRONG (don’t ask me which ones cuz i have not the slightest clue, but a smart person told me that once so i believe him!), things which ppl would have been willing to swear by! things which today are common were considered totally impossible just 50 years ago.

And so, no matter how good the tricks look, it very well might be that in 50 years ppl will be able to make the sun set with a snap of the fingers, as hard as it is to believe now…just try to think of ppl that lived without electricity, Internet……. what goes on in our world is as unbelievable to them as the sun setting is to us.

I think i got lost here a bit………

In summary- it is true that many ppl will come and be very very convincing, they will have proofs, “natural” (how can u make money if u sit and learn? where will the money come from? who will support you? g-d? come on he doesn’t do that!) or even supernatural (they will repeatedly get 21 in black jack), to what they say, they might even threaten us if we don’t listen to them, and we will sit there with an honest dilemma, maybe these ppl really r right, maybe they really have a point, how can we measure if they r the real thing? very simple. if they tell u to do different to what the torah says……… don’t even give them a second thought. no matter how hard, how tempting, how “real” they may seem. And just remember the whole history example which we gave and it really will put things into proportion.

There is only one truth in the world. g-d, and he gave us just one manual……….use it!

What’s in a name?

This weeks parsha starts off with a series of names of places (don’t think that sentence was structured very well grammatically, but……who cares), and if we look back to last weeks parsha, where ALL the places which bney yisroel traveled to were mentioned we will realize that some of the places mentioned this week weren’t even mentioned last week! what’s going on?

Rashi indeed asks my question (or is it the other way around……whatever), and he answers that these places indeed had other names (as were mentioned in mas’ey), but the names in this weeks parsha were given to them too cuz they remind us of a certain occurrence which took place in that place.

What’s in a name?

Let’s take “di zahav” for example, the place was known as Sinay and now cuz of the sin which bney yisroel did there it was called something else, which means that the action which took place there changed the entire nature of the place, that is the power actions have.

Every point on the map, as well as every point in time has the potential to go either way, everything begins “nameless” and is named based on the actions of the ppl which lived thru those times and places, Dor hamabul, Dor hamidbar, the occurrences of those times had such a strong effect on the dor that the entire generation was named after what went on.

In every situation we face we can always go 2 ways, many times we think that even if we mess up it’s not a big deal cuz we messed up for that second but once the next second comes up, nobody remembers that we messed up and we can go on with life like nothing ever happened, but that is a very wrong way of looking at things, our actions do indeed leave a trail, the action which we did now labled that entire place, time or situation, and now every time someone looks back at it, it still has that name.

Bney yisroel had long left sinay, 40 years had passed, the whole generation already died out, moshe was on his way out, so many things changed yet hashem is pointing out to us that it is still called “di zahav” the strong effect that the actions had still remained and they continue to till today, the place which originally carried the good and innocent name “Sinay”, had been changed to the tainted “Di zahav”, and it remained so, cuz the actions which bney yisroel did there had changed the entire nature of the place, it gave the place a negative ting, a sin “feeling”, a dark shade (k, k i’ll stop now, i know i’m not very good at painting pictures with words, it’s not my fault that all the words needed for this our 10 levels above mine vocabulary wise!).

THAT’S what’s in a name. and WE r the ones that have the power to name everything………. so take responsibility for your actions, cuz they don’t really go away that easily.

k, it’s a bit long and windy….. but i think i get to some sort of conclusion at the end so just make yourself a big coffee….and enjoy the ride

Today we will speak about TZUR. (one of the) Princes of Midayn.

Do u honestly think he cared?????????????????????

When the name of the Woman killed by pinchas is mentioned, her fathers name is brought in for the ride as well, and as rashi explains to us the reasoning behind this is to show us just how important this girl was, she was a midyanite princess! and yet pinchas the knight feared her not (just to clarify something [as rav brevda always does regarding yehudah hamacabi], pinchas’s beard was probably down to his belly, and his fighting experience went no further than battling animals b4 shechting them. No bodybuilding, robocop type images allowed!),

Rashi also points out that even though Tzur was actually THE prince of the time, when the torah mentions him amongst the other princes he is relegated to 3rd place as a punishment to him cuz of what his daughter did………DISS!!!!!

Do u honestly think he cared???????????

Let’s try making things a bit more “nowadays”, let’s say Machmud Achmadianjadanowitzenstien (was scared if i actually wrote the name, i would get arrested) is considered the number 1 Iranian , celebrity nowadays according to all the recent polls (all competitors, and their voters were killed prior to the publishing of the results) and all of a sudden Israeli papers rate him as the 3RD most popular iraninan figure!!! SHOCKING!!! Machmud would be devastated!!!! he would not know how he could ever allow himself to be seen in public again!!!!! that’s exactly what the torah just did right? well………sortta

Do u honestly think he cared??????????

This is where reverse evolution comes in……………huh? as apposed to many (even though nowadays most scientists dont actually believe in it either) scientists which believe that with every generation the human race is getting more and more developed, and further away from our ancestors the cute little monkeys, WE (as in the torah………) believe (i.e know) that there is actually a decline with every generation, and we r getting weaker and weaker, as we stray further from our ancestors Avraham Yitzchak and Yaakov. And just as jews r declining so is the rest of the velt, cuz whenever the central, ikar point of anything declines, the entrie thing gets dragged down with it. And so just as todays jews are not like the jews of yesteryear (does that actually just mean last year??), so to the goyim of today are not the same.

And so, and we will start from our own shortcomings, we actually, really couldn’t care less what the torah wrote about us, as long as we r rated highly in ppl’s eyes, the torah can say whatever it wants! as long as holywood will respect us, it doesn’t really matter what g-d and his followers think of us. And since we think that way we project it unto our goyisha “friends”. In truth they also couldn’t care less now, but that is just cuz we have sunken to the level where we don’t care and so we dragged them down with us.

We don’t believe we r anything special, we r just Americans/british/aussies/israelis with sideburns/beards and funny yarmulkas/hats/shaitells/bandanas/tichels (don’t wanna get in trouble). But do not treat ourselves as the chosen nation, and so the world stopped regrading us as such.

One thing which has not changed over the years, is the hatred the goyim have towards us, as far as that is concerned the world is a very consistent, well patterned place to be. But as apposed to years ago when goyim hated us cuz we were something special, and cuz we represented ruchniyus in this world (something which flew in the face of everything they “believed” in), (where was that comma supposed to go? before the brackets of after em???) and cuz we were g-ds favorite son, now they hate us……………..CUZ. We are still all of the above, but we ourselves have for the most part forgotten about it. Yes we still live our lives by the torah (huh?), yes we still look different then the rest, yes we still have to wait 6 hours after we have a burger to be able to have ice cream, but are we really hashems representation in this world with every step we take????

And so, back in the day, the goyim respected the torah, they knew the torah was treu (french for “true”, they knew hashem was true, they knew the jews were true, they still hated us…but for exaclty those reasons. And so (i’m starting to get tired of that phrase), if the torah dissed them.,……….they were dissed, if the torah disrespected them they cared, if the torah “made fun of them”: they got hurt. And so (last time i promise….bli neder), when Tzurs descendants ( i think he was already dead at the time) saw that their great father was relegated into 3rd place, they were hurt till the depths of their stony hearts, they felt like a dagger was stuck into their solar plexus (get it???? pinchas……), Yes they DID care!

Here we go again…….. i’m not sure if i have enlightened u on the “source” of my divrey torah (not the “source” ur thinking of jaymat!!!), pretty much i see a vague idea somewhere and then i just “develop” it, and so on the one hand i don’t want ppl to think i actually thought of it all on my own, on the other hand i don’t wanna quote where the source is, cuz more often than not, by the time i’m done with it it actually has nothing to do with the original idea i saw. so let’s just call them “very loosely based divrey torah”!

Hashem instructs moshe to erect a serpent, which will help bring the ending of the plague, and hashem adds a very interesting detail into this commandment, he asks moshe to build the serpent out of his OWN money! huh?

Let’s backtrack a bit, why did the entire plague begin? cuz bney yisroel spoke badly against hashem and moshe, “blaming” them for taking bney yisroel out of mitzrayim just in order to die in the midbar, and so , at least partially, the reason the ppl were being punished was cuz they did moshe bad, and so why in the world would he have to suffer a financial loss in order to stop their suffering? they should be the ones to pay! in fact they should pay for the serpent and give him 10000000 dollars (not that much these days, cuz of the dollars situation, does that mean america is on it’s way down? NAH impossible, i mean it is such a huge superpower it can never fall apart right? just ask the egyptians, romans, greeks, mongols and soviets………) in damages. So what exactly was the meaning of this quite perplexing request hashem made of moses?

How bout we try this:- we (i.e me) make a very serious mistake in a very common situation, when we see someone do bad we immediately hate the person as apposed to hating his actions, we fail to realize that as jews we r supposed to understand that deep down each person is good, and it’s just the outer coating which sometimes gets rotten.

And this too:- we also make a very big mistake when we apologise for something we did wrong, we apologise as part of the apologising ceremony, very rarely actually meaning it, very rarely actually regretting the original back action which we did.

Now put those 2 factors together…..and what do u get? 2 totally unrelated factors!!!!

And so that is what hashem was requesting from moshe- hashem “realized” that in this case bney yisroel make a sincere apology, they fully understood the severity of their actions, they fully understood that they were being punished cuz they sinned, and they truly regretted and felt bad for what they said against hashem and moshe. As a result of that moshe had no right (not that earlier he had a right, and obviously not that earlier he actually bore a grudge) to bear a grudge to bney yisrol, so much that he should be willing to even suffer a loss just in order to ensure their return to health and safety!

This idea goes both ways- when u apologise to someone (whether g-d or someone who just thinks he is g-d) u have to do it in a way so sincere that the person ur apologising to will feel comfortable giving u money for something related to the very bad action which they did towards u in the beginning, u should make it such a true apology that the person u hurt should feel as if the wrongdoing which u originally did never even happened. Only that type of apology can be considered a true apology!

But the same goes for the opposite situation where someone is apologising to u! u have to realize that the person is truly apologizing (and even if he isn’t u have to try your best to feel as if he is) and u have no right, need or point of being annoyed anymore, to the degree that u would even be willing to pay for his recovery from the punishment he suffered for what he did to u in the first place.

But we have to take it even further, and not just “not bear a grudge” but to realize that there really is absolutely no reason to be angry anymore, after the person apologized there is no “bad” around anymore, a superficial bad action was done by an internally good person, and as soon as that person removed the dirty speck from his surface…….. all that is left is good.

That is what hashem was trying to teach us via moshe, and moshe obliged without any problems cuz he understood that in reality after bney yisroel apologized and realized their wrongdoing there really was no reason to be angry/annoyed at them at all!!!!! not easy…..but so so important!!

Hope u guys didn’t lose faith in me!!!!! i just didnt have a chance to reply, but thanks for all the comments!!!!

here goes this weeks feable attempt ( sorry….. its on shlach)

If we were ever presented with a nisayon like the one the meraglim went through, we would DEF pass it! right? i mean there is no chance in the world that we could far so far, so fast, right? i’m sure these r pretty much the thoughts that go thru all of our (i.e. MY) mind when we read shlach every year, and as a result we end up looking down at the entire dor hamidbar, and obviously at the meraglim who were their leaders, we conclude that there is nothing for us to really learn out of this episode (besides for the fact that ppl had weird names back then), and we just look elsewhere for inspiration (k, i might’ve exaggerated a bit, but let’s call it poetic license)

So what really went on back then? how can we actually make sense of the whole episode?

Firstly, let’s present the question very clearly, and then build it up, so that when we give the answer (which quite frankly is a very very simple, and yesodosdik answer) we will be able to see how the huge balloon we inflated POPS in 1 swift prick of a needle (k, i think i took the whole poetic thing a bit too far…..sowwy)

First attempt is to say that they honestly thought that (r”l) hashem didn’t have to power to take them in, and to that we say- hashem had made it very clear that the entire point of yeztiyas mitzrayim, and ALL the nissim which came along with it was so that bnet yisroel should receive the torah and the proceed to go into eretz yisroel. Would hashem really go thru all that trouble if he didn’t have an exact plan of how to get them in? Giants u say? the mitzrim were considered the world superpower at the time, and it didn’t really seem to bother hashem! he already showed that he was quite versatile with his powers, he beat the mitzrim on land, in the sea. u name it, and so why should these nations be any different? so there must have been something else going on!

And so, rashi tells us that there was indeed something else going on, the meraglim were scared that once they come into eretz yisroel they will loose their stature, they would lose their position. Huh? how could such a thing actually get the meraglim to do what they did????? so they would lose their position, that gives them the right to doom the entire nation? where is the logic in that? at least they should have had a plan B…….um let’s go back to mitzrayim, no no no no lets stay in the midbar FOREVER!!! once again totally nonsensical, and true ppl become corrupted when it comes to power, but we r not dealing with stam any ppl, these were the leaders (sarey chamishim, but nonetheless sarim!!!) of the jewish nation, so once again…….WHAT’S GOING ON?

Now, lets move on to the whole nation, what were they thinking???? after all they went thru? “ro’aso shifcha al hayam, ma shelo ra’a ben buzi” (i just LOVE the hebrish!), they had just gone through months of daily nisim, so what if there r 7 nations?

It goes like this. In reality (that is the real reality and not the olam hasheker “reality” which we seem to keep on thinking is the real one, “forcing” hashem to slap us every once in a while to wake us up… did anyone say financial crisis???) we never ever have a chance to beat the yetzer hora…EVER, the only way we ever do is with the help of hashem, he literally holds our hand and walks us through the nisayon, true we have to WANT to pass the nisayon and try as hard as we can, but at the end of the day, if it wasn’t for the help of hahsem we just wouldn’t have a chance.

Why were the meraglim sent? cuz the nation ask for ’em to be sent, they had a slip up in emunah, and they thought that they were the ones that would really be fighting the battle, and so they needed a PLAN, when in fact it was a situation of “hashem yilachem lachem ve’atem tacharishun” (i wasn’t actually gonna write that but it was the hebrish within that got me to do it!), as we see actually happened in yericho, and with the tzirah etc.

And so in affect (never sure if i get the right one) what bney yisroel were telling hashem was, “this one is on us”, we can take care of this one, hashem can take the day off, and the great jewish minds will figure out how to take care of these 7 nations….. and so, “bederech she’adam rotze leylech” (last one, i promise!!!). hashem let go…..

That was that, the second hashem let go, the second hashem left it up to us, we didn’t stand a chance of going through with it, true it made no sense, true with bney yisroels track record there was no reason for them to be scared, true the nations were petrified of us, just go through az yashir, just look at where the girgashi got their name from, but they chose to go on their own and so they stood no chance and they knew it……… (now all u wise aleks will be saying that if bney yisroel really had no chance then lemayse they did nothing wrong, cuz if they would have gone to fight in that situation [as did the ma’apilim] they would have lost, true but all they had to do was teshuva, and bring hashem “back” into the mix, and everything would have been fine and dandy…..)

SO…… do da (get it? dooda) meraglim have to do with us or not? how many times in our lives to we think that we r in a position to “take over”, we tell hashem to take a back seat and think we can handle things on our own……..IT WILL NEVER WORK!!! even the smallest most generic nisayon will be totally unpassable (not a real word? well then write it down…. and it will be!) if we try going “solo”. so just………DON’T