Podcasts about ramak

RaMaK's book Palm Tree of Devorah challenges us to imitate God at a very high level, all the way to keter, all the way to forgiveness. We do this work preparing for Elul - in hopes of being forgiven, we learn to forgive.

The list of Pesukei Bitachon attributed to the Maharal is arranged in alphabetical order, and the first pasuk on that list is a pasuk in Tehilim , 84,13 יְהֹוָ֥ה צְבָא֑וֹת אַֽשְׁרֵ֥י אָ֝דָ֗ם בֹּטֵ֥חַ בָּֽךְ Hashem's is God of the Hosts, the God of celestial beings. Fortunate is the one who relies on Him. The Maharal says that he put this pasuk first because how could we list Pesukei Bitachon without mentioning Hashem's name first? The Yerushalmi in Berachot says there are two pesukim that should never your mouth. Ours is one and the other is Tehilim 46,8: יְהֹוָ֣ה צְבָא֣וֹת עִמָּ֑נוּ מִשְׂגָּֽב־לָ֨נוּ אֱלֹהֵ֖י יַֽעֲקֹ֣ב סֶֽלָה׃ Hashem is the God of the Hosts. He is a fortress for us. The God of Yaakov is forever. There's obviously something special about these pesukim that refer to God as the God of the Hosts. יְהֹוָ֣ה צְבָא֣וֹת God is the God of the hosts means God has countless galaxies and is in charge of billions and trillions of stars. But even with all of that, as it says in Tehilim 46,8 He is Misgav Lanu/ He is a fortress for us . He's down here taking care of us forever and that's an important lesson. Furthermore, as it says in Tehilim 48,13 יְהֹוָ֥ה צְבָא֑וֹת אַֽשְׁרֵ֥י אָ֝דָ֗ם בֹּטֵ֥חַ בָּֽך God of the Hosts- There are so many celestial beings, and even with all that says the Alshech, אַֽשְׁרֵ֥י אָ֝דָ֗ם בֹּטֵ֥חַ בָּֽך / Fortunate is the one that relies on Him- even though God is a King with millions and billions of subjects, every individual counts. With all that God has under His control, every individual that relies on Him will be Me'Ushar/he will be fortunate. The Radak adds, that fortunate means you should not despair or give up hope from the challenges that you're in, whether global or individual. God is the God of the Hosts also means that there's a concept of mazalot ;there are celestial forces that cause things to happen, but we say En Mazal L'Yisrael, we're above the mazal. God controls everything; we rely on Him. Therefore, we don't care about what nature seems to indicate will happen. We don't care about statistics. We know that above all of those celestial beings and all of those horoscopes and modern-day scientific predictions, there is Hashem, above them all, and that's Who we rely on. He deals directly with every single individual. As we said, these pesukim are from the earliest list of Pesukei Bitachon , because it goes back to a Yerushalmi that says these are pesukim that should be quoted. In our prayers we add a third pasuk ( Tehilim 20,10) יְהֹוָ֥ה הוֹשִׁ֑יעָה הַ֝מֶּ֗לֶךְ יַעֲנֵ֥נוּ בְיוֹם־קׇרְאֵֽנוּ God will help us, the God that we cry out to on the day of our need . The sefer Yosef Tehilot quotes, in the name of the Ramak, Rav Moshe Cordevero, that these three pesukim were said by Avraham, Yitzhak and Yaakov. Abraham said יְהֹוָ֣ה צְבָא֣וֹת עִמָּ֑נוּ מִשְׂגָּֽב־לָ֨נוּ אֱלֹהֵ֖י יַֽעֲקֹ֣ב סֶֽלָה׃ Hashem is the God of the Hosts. He is a fortress for us. The God of Yaakov is forever. Yitzhak Avinu said יְהֹוָ֥ה צְבָא֑וֹת אַֽשְׁרֵ֥י אָ֝דָ֗ם בֹּטֵ֥חַ בךֽ And Yaakov Avinu said יְהֹוָ֥ה הוֹשִׁ֑יעָה הַ֝מֶּ֗לֶךְ יַעֲנֵ֥נוּ בְיוֹם־קׇרְאֵֽנוּ God will help us, the God that we cry out to on the day of our need . Avraham is Hessed/kindness, Yitzhak is Middat HaDin/justice and Yaakov Avinu symbolizes Torah. The pasuk of Yitzhak Avinu is the pasuk that we're dealing with today. יְהֹוָ֥ה צְבָא֑וֹת אַֽשְׁרֵ֥י אָ֝דָ֗ם בֹּטֵ֥חַ בךֽ God of the Hosts, fortunate is one that relies on You Even though it's a time of Middat Hadin , a time of justice, if a person has Bitachon, he is above that justice challenge and gets a salvation. Many communities, primarily in the Sephardic world, say a mizmor , a prayer from Tehilim at the beginning of Mincha, which is chapter 84, which ends with יְהֹוָ֥ה צְבָא֑וֹת אַֽשְׁרֵ֥י אָ֝דָ֗ם בֹּטֵ֥חַ בךֽ God of the Hosts, fortunate is the one that relies on You The sefer Yosef Tehilot says we chose this Mizmor because it ends with that pasuk, which is the pasuk of Yitzhak Avinu. As we know, the three daily prayers correspond to Avraham Yitzhak and Yaakov. Avraham is Shaharit , which symbolizes a time of positivity- the sun is coming out, the birds are chirping, and we have all the opportunities of the day. יְהֹוָ֣ה צְבָא֣וֹת עִמָּ֑נוּ מִשְׂגָּֽב־לָ֨נוּ אֱלֹהֵ֖י יַֽעֲקֹ֣ב סֶֽלָה means God's protecting us. We're safe. That's Abraham's pasuk . Minha symbolizes God's justice. The sun is setting, things are beginning to look gloomy. And even then, we say, יְהֹוָ֥ה צְבָא֑וֹת אַֽשְׁרֵ֥י אָ֝דָ֗ם בֹּטֵ֥חַ בךֽ God of the Hosts, fortunate is one that relies on You Arbit means we're in galut . The sun has set already, and we need יְהֹוָ֥ה הוֹשִׁ֑יעָה הַ֝מֶּ֗לֶךְ יַעֲנֵ֥נוּ בְיוֹם־קׇרְאֵֽנוּ God will help us, the God that we cry out to on the day of our need God has to save us. We need the Yeshua already. We're in trouble. Today we're focusing on יְהֹוָ֥ה צְבָא֑וֹת אַֽשְׁרֵ֥י אָ֝דָ֗ם בֹּטֵ֥חַ בךֽ God of the Hosts, fortunate is one that relies on You, a pasuk which specifically mentions bitachon. There are challenges out there, but with those challenges, אַֽשְׁרֵ֥י אָ֝דָ֗ם בֹּטֵ֥חַ בך Fortunate is the one that relies on Him יְהֹוָ֥ה צְבָא֑וֹת The God of the Hosts, with all that He has going on in His control, אַֽשְׁרֵ֥י אָ֝דָ֗ם בֹּטֵ֥חַ בך every individual who relies on Him is fortunate. That's what we're going to try to do. As we said, this is one of the pesukim that we're supposed to have on our lips and say all the time. יְהֹוָ֥ה צְבָא֑וֹת אַֽשְׁרֵ֥י אָ֝דָ֗ם בֹּטֵ֥חַ בךֽ Adonai Sevaot Ashrei Adam Bote'ach Bach

The list of Pesukei Bitachon attributed to the Maharal is arranged in alphabetical order, and the first pasuk on that list is a pasuk in Tehilim , 84,13 יְהֹוָ֥ה צְבָא֑וֹת אַֽשְׁרֵ֥י אָ֝דָ֗ם בֹּטֵ֥חַ בָּֽךְ Hashem's is God of the Hosts, the God of celestial beings. Fortunate is the one who relies on Him. The Maharal says that he put this pasuk first because how could we list Pesukei Bitachon without mentioning Hashem's name first? The Yerushalmi in Berachot says there are two pesukim that should never your mouth. Ours is one and the other is Tehilim 46,8: יְהֹוָ֣ה צְבָא֣וֹת עִמָּ֑נוּ מִשְׂגָּֽב־לָ֨נוּ אֱלֹהֵ֖י יַֽעֲקֹ֣ב סֶֽלָה׃ Hashem is the God of the Hosts. He is a fortress for us. The God of Yaakov is forever. There's obviously something special about these pesukim that refer to God as the God of the Hosts. יְהֹוָ֣ה צְבָא֣וֹת God is the God of the hosts means God has countless galaxies and is in charge of billions and trillions of stars. But even with all of that, as it says in Tehilim 46,8 He is Misgav Lanu/ He is a fortress for us . He's down here taking care of us forever and that's an important lesson. Furthermore, as it says in Tehilim 48,13 יְהֹוָ֥ה צְבָא֑וֹת אַֽשְׁרֵ֥י אָ֝דָ֗ם בֹּטֵ֥חַ בָּֽך God of the Hosts- There are so many celestial beings, and even with all that says the Alshech, אַֽשְׁרֵ֥י אָ֝דָ֗ם בֹּטֵ֥חַ בָּֽך / Fortunate is the one that relies on Him- even though God is a King with millions and billions of subjects, every individual counts. With all that God has under His control, every individual that relies on Him will be Me'Ushar/he will be fortunate. The Radak adds, that fortunate means you should not despair or give up hope from the challenges that you're in, whether global or individual. God is the God of the Hosts also means that there's a concept of mazalot ;there are celestial forces that cause things to happen, but we say En Mazal L'Yisrael, we're above the mazal. God controls everything; we rely on Him. Therefore, we don't care about what nature seems to indicate will happen. We don't care about statistics. We know that above all of those celestial beings and all of those horoscopes and modern-day scientific predictions, there is Hashem, above them all, and that's Who we rely on. He deals directly with every single individual. As we said, these pesukim are from the earliest list of Pesukei Bitachon , because it goes back to a Yerushalmi that says these are pesukim that should be quoted. In our prayers we add a third pasuk ( Tehilim 20,10) יְהֹוָ֥ה הוֹשִׁ֑יעָה הַ֝מֶּ֗לֶךְ יַעֲנֵ֥נוּ בְיוֹם־קׇרְאֵֽנוּ God will help us, the God that we cry out to on the day of our need . The sefer Yosef Tehilot quotes, in the name of the Ramak, Rav Moshe Cordevero, that these three pesukim were said by Avraham, Yitzhak and Yaakov. Abraham said יְהֹוָ֣ה צְבָא֣וֹת עִמָּ֑נוּ מִשְׂגָּֽב־לָ֨נוּ אֱלֹהֵ֖י יַֽעֲקֹ֣ב סֶֽלָה׃ Hashem is the God of the Hosts. He is a fortress for us. The God of Yaakov is forever. Yitzhak Avinu said יְהֹוָ֥ה צְבָא֑וֹת אַֽשְׁרֵ֥י אָ֝דָ֗ם בֹּטֵ֥חַ בךֽ And Yaakov Avinu said יְהֹוָ֥ה הוֹשִׁ֑יעָה הַ֝מֶּ֗לֶךְ יַעֲנֵ֥נוּ בְיוֹם־קׇרְאֵֽנוּ God will help us, the God that we cry out to on the day of our need . Avraham is Hessed/kindness, Yitzhak is Middat HaDin/justice and Yaakov Avinu symbolizes Torah. The pasuk of Yitzhak Avinu is the pasuk that we're dealing with today. יְהֹוָ֥ה צְבָא֑וֹת אַֽשְׁרֵ֥י אָ֝דָ֗ם בֹּטֵ֥חַ בךֽ God of the Hosts, fortunate is one that relies on You Even though it's a time of Middat Hadin , a time of justice, if a person has Bitachon, he is above that justice challenge and gets a salvation. Many communities, primarily in the Sephardic world, say a mizmor , a prayer from Tehilim at the beginning of Mincha, which is chapter 84, which ends with יְהֹוָ֥ה צְבָא֑וֹת אַֽשְׁרֵ֥י אָ֝דָ֗ם בֹּטֵ֥חַ בךֽ God of the Hosts, fortunate is the one that relies on You The sefer Yosef Tehilot says we chose this Mizmor because it ends with that pasuk, which is the pasuk of Yitzhak Avinu. As we know, the three daily prayers correspond to Avraham Yitzhak and Yaakov. Avraham is Shaharit , which symbolizes a time of positivity- the sun is coming out, the birds are chirping, and we have all the opportunities of the day. יְהֹוָ֣ה צְבָא֣וֹת עִמָּ֑נוּ מִשְׂגָּֽב־לָ֨נוּ אֱלֹהֵ֖י יַֽעֲקֹ֣ב סֶֽלָה means God's protecting us. We're safe. That's Abraham's pasuk . Minha symbolizes God's justice. The sun is setting, things are beginning to look gloomy. And even then, we say, יְהֹוָ֥ה צְבָא֑וֹת אַֽשְׁרֵ֥י אָ֝דָ֗ם בֹּטֵ֥חַ בךֽ God of the Hosts, fortunate is one that relies on You Arbit means we're in galut . The sun has set already, and we need יְהֹוָ֥ה הוֹשִׁ֑יעָה הַ֝מֶּ֗לֶךְ יַעֲנֵ֥נוּ בְיוֹם־קׇרְאֵֽנוּ God will help us, the God that we cry out to on the day of our need God has to save us. We need the Yeshua already. We're in trouble. Today we're focusing on יְהֹוָ֥ה צְבָא֑וֹת אַֽשְׁרֵ֥י אָ֝דָ֗ם בֹּטֵ֥חַ בךֽ God of the Hosts, fortunate is one that relies on You, a pasuk which specifically mentions bitachon. There are challenges out there, but with those challenges, אַֽשְׁרֵ֥י אָ֝דָ֗ם בֹּטֵ֥חַ בך Fortunate is the one that relies on Him יְהֹוָ֥ה צְבָא֑וֹת The God of the Hosts, with all that He has going on in His control, אַֽשְׁרֵ֥י אָ֝דָ֗ם בֹּטֵ֥חַ בך every individual who relies on Him is fortunate. That's what we're going to try to do. As we said, this is one of the pesukim that we're supposed to have on our lips and say all the time. יְהֹוָ֥ה צְבָא֑וֹת אַֽשְׁרֵ֥י אָ֝דָ֗ם בֹּטֵ֥חַ בךֽ Adonai Sevaot Ashrei Adam Bote'ach Bach

31 Mart Pazar günü yapılacak olan seçimlere çok az bir zaman kaldı. Partilerin bugüne kadar gösterdikleri performans neticesinde, seçmen davranışının önemli ölçüde şekillendiğini söylemek mümkün. Özellikle İstanbul ve Bursa gibi seçimin son güne kadar yarış halinde olacağı illeri de dikkate aldığımızda, seçim sonuçlarının hem iller hem de partilerin genel performansı üzerinden yeni tartışmaları ortaya çıkartacağı açık. Hiç kuşkusuz 14 ve 28 Mayıs seçim sonuçları sonrasında Millet İttifakı bileşenlerinde yaşanan tartışmalar, ölçek farklı olsa da bütün partilerde gözlemlenecektir. DEM Parti ve Örgüt Baskısı Seçimlerdeki tutumu nedeniyle DEM, Yeniden Refah ve İYİ Parti'nin ortaya koyacağı performans, tartışmaların seyri açısından önemli olacaktır. Özellikle DEM'in İstanbul ve Mersin başta olmak üzere muhtelif yerlerde CHP ile kurduğu Kent Uzlaşısına rağmen birçok yerde kendi adayı ile seçime giriyor oluşu, DEM ile ilgili spekülasyonları artırmaktadır. Örgüt ve parti içerisindeki sol fraksiyonların yoğun biçimde etki alanına sokulan DEM'in özellikle İstanbul'daki tutumu ikircikli bir durum yaratmaktadır. Bir yandan Leyla Zana ve Ahmet Türk gibi isimlerin üçüncü yol siyaseti izlenmesi gerektiğine dair çağrıları diğer yanda ise örgütün üst düzey isimleri ve Sezai Temelli ve Tülay Hatimoğulları gibi aktörlerin Cumhur ittifakına kaybettirme motivasyonları.

On this episode of Women on the Line we speak with Iranian-born, Narrm based, visual artist and fine art photographer, Ramak Bamzar, about her show Pro Femina. Pro Femina is currently being exhibited as part of the Ballarat International Photo Biennale at the Art Gallery of Ballarat until 22 October this year. Her show features new works which comment on women involved in the Iranian uprisings of 2022, as well as selected works of her photograph series Moustachioed Women and Rhinoplastic Girls. We discuss themes such as Iranian culture and aesthetics, beauty in brutality and brutality in beauty and Iranian women's resistance and fight for freedom. Ramak Bamzar (born. 1980) is an Iranian-born visual artist and fine art photographer based in Narrm (Melbourne), Australia. Her work explores how cultural and religious norms can shape women's beliefs, values, and behaviours and influence their sense of self-worth and agency.In her works, Bamzar also investigates the influence of the male gaze on women's beauty and fashion and its consequences on women's self-esteem and self-image. Women who do not conform to these restrictive beauty standards may feel pressured to conform, leading to feelings of inadequacy, shame, and low self-esteem. Bamzar completed a Bachelor's degree in Fine Art– Photography in Tehran and her Master of Fine Arts from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University in 2022.

The eulogy of the Arizal for the Ramak

The eulogy of the Arizal for the Ramak

Welcome to Embrace Shabbat. In his sefer Tefillah l'Moshe (page 191), Rav Moshe Kordevero, famously known as the Ramak, teaches that the air of weekdays is tamei , contaminated, while the air of Shabbat is tahor , pure. He draws a parallel to the difference between the air in Eretz Yisrael and the air of outside of Eretz Yisrael, as it says אוירא דארעא ישראל מחכים , the air of Eretz Yisrael brings wisdom . Negative forces exist in the air outside of Eretz Yisrael, just as they do during the mundane weekdays. However, on Shabbat, the air becomes holy. It is for this reason that we mention Yerushalayim in our Shabbat Arvit prayers; Shabbat has a certain aspect of Eretz Yisrael. This concept is also reflected in our recitation of Shalom Aleichem. As he left Eretz Yisrael, Yaakov Avinu dreamt of angels going up and down a ladder; the angels of Eretz Yisrael were leaving him as the angels of Chutz LaAretz were coming to accompany him. Similarly, on Friday night, the angels of the weekday leave and the new Shabbat angels come to a person's home. We sing Shalom Aleichem, the angels of peace , to welcome the angels of Shabbat, angels of peace. Shabbat has a flavor of Eretz Yisrael. Rav Wolbe, quoting his brother-in-law, Rabbi Kreiswirth (they both married sisters, daughters of Rav Avraham Grodzinski, hy”d) explains the Chazal that teaches that the air of Eretz Yisrael brings one wisdom. Mekubalim teach that Moshe Rabbeinu personifies the trait of Netzach , eternity. Therefore, anything that he came in contact with lasted forever. For example, Moshe built the Mishkan, which will last forever. Because of this power, Moshe Rabbeinu could not build the Beit HaMikdash, as it would last forever and G-d wouldn't be able to destroy it. When the Jewish people sinned, G-d would be “forced” to destroy the Jewish people instead, because of the eternal power of the Beit HaMikdash. This is one of the reasons why Moshe Rabbeinu couldn't enter Eretz Yisrael. Instead, Moshe Rabbeinu went up to the mountain and looked at Eretz Yisrael. Rabbi Kreisworth teaches that by looking at Eretz Yisrael, Moshe Rabbeinu was able to uplift the air of Eretz Yisrael. Even after the Beit HaMikdash is destroyed, the air of Eretz Yisrael, which was uplifted and purified by Moshe Rabbeinu, has eternal powers until today. ישמח משה במתנת חלקו - Moshe Rabbeinu was the one who introduced Shabbat to the Jewish people. Therefore, just as the avir of Eretz Yisrael remains, the avir of Shabbat, touched by Moshe Rabbeinu, lasts forever. It still has its purity and kedusha . When a person merely breathes the air of Shabbat, he fills up with a different, holier air. We must be cognizant and ready for that wonderful kedusha that does not just come with the time of Shabbat, but also in the air of Shabbat. Have a wonderful day and a Shabbat Shalom.

הילולת הרמ"ק, רבי משה קורדובירו. פרשת מטות ומסעי - Hilula of Ramak Zy"a by Rabbi Benjamin Lavian

Living Emunah 2388 Every Tefila Some tefilot are answered on the spot. A man told me he was out of work for two months and just couldn't find a new job. He was told about a special tefila from the Ramak for parnasa, so he sat in shul one day and said it, pouring out his heart to Hashem. One hour later, he received a phone call with someone offering him just the job he was hoping for. I read a story about a man who is an eved Hashem and toils in Torah. He was not always religious, however. He used to serve as a judge in a secular court. He had a very respectable position and was publicized by the media as a very important person. During his journey of coming back to Hashem, he was called to preside over a ceremony appointing new judges. As is customary at these ceremonies, a special waiter was appointed to pour wine into each person's glass. This man was at the head table and all eyes would be on him when they would pick up their glasses to drink together. He was religious now and did not want to partake of the non-kosher wine, but it would be too embarrassing not to drink. He prayed from the depths of his heart that Hashem should save him from having to drink this wine. The waiter was going from glass to glass and precisely when he reached this judge, the wine bottle was empty. The waiter apologized profusely for the embarrassing mistake, saying he couldn't understand after so many years of experience with these events how he had made this error. We, however, know what happened; Hashem answered this judge's tefila on the spot. Sometimes people pray for years for something they want without seeing the results they were hoping for. Their prayers have surely made a tremendous influence, and it could very well be that the next prayer will put them over the top. Chazal tell us, a prayer with tears has so much power. The sefer Tochachat Musar quotes the Zohar HaKadosh who says that the door in Shamayim into which the tears go through is opened only by Hashem Himself. Rabbi Ephraim Sharabani told a story about a young man he knows personally. This young man has a very big issue which is the obvious reason why, b'derech hateva, he was having such a hard time getting married. Every girl who heard about his issue immediately refused the shidduch. One night, Rabbi Sharabani went upstairs in his shul and saw this young man alone in the midrash crying to Hashem. The young man did not realize the Rabbi was there. He was saying, “Hashem, I know You are in pain because I am your son and I am experiencing so much pain. Please, Daddy, help me.” Tears were streaming down his face as he kept praying. The Rabbi felt the intensity of the prayers and knew they were making a big difference in Shamayim. It was not too long after that night that he finally got a shidduch that was willing to go out with him. After the first date, he couldn't believe she actually wanted to continue. Eventually, they got married. And when he asked her how she is able to tolerate his issue, she said, “My brother has the exact same thing, I'm very used to it. It doesn't bother me at all.” Everybody has a match out there for them. Although people may have been praying for years with tears without seeing results, they should never give up because perhaps the next one will be the one that bring the yeshua. Every tefila makes an impact, some are answered on the spot, and some take more time. We must never give up. The more emotional the tefila is, the better it is.

Recording Available Via Telephone Dial: (605) 475-4799 | Access ID: 840886# | Reference #: 2380 Sponsored By Morris Ashear in honor of his wife Diane The hashgacha of Hashem upon us is mind boggling. There are so many things that go on that we are completely oblivious to. The Arizal taught us, every object in existence has a spark of kedusha in it. Every neshama has its own sparks of kedusha that get scattered around the world and no neshama can complete its mission here until it makes a tikkun in all of those sparks of kedusha that are related to its being. A person moves throughout his life from place to place and occupation to occupation. It seems like it is all part of the natural way of the world. But he has no idea that it is Hashem leading him to the places that he needs to be in to make the tikkunim that his neshama requires. When a person utilizes any object in the service of Hashem, he is able to pull out the sparks of holiness from it. Some explain this is why Yaakov Avinu went back for the פכים קטנים-the small containers- he knew he needed them as part of his tikkun. The Baal Shem Tov said, someone who believes in Hashem's hashgacha will get extra siyata d'Shamaya to be led to the exact places and objects that he needs to come into contact with to make his full tikkun here so that his neshama can soar to the greatest heights in the Next World. Every step that a person takes is calculated. The Shomer Emunim writes, it is decreed in Shamayim how many steps a person will take throughout his entire lifetime, including how many steps he will take each and every day. It is decreed how many words a person will say over the course of his lifetime. We have free will to choose what words to say, but the amount of words is already decreed. Hashem is calculating every single person's footsteps and words all at the same moment. The great tzaddik Rav Tzvi of Zhidichov was once walking with his students and they saw a wagon carrying straw passing by. Some of the straw fell off the wagon near them and the Rabbi told his students, “Every piece of straw that falls is determined by Hashem. Which piece will fall and where exactly it will fall is precisely calculated.” The simple explanation is the straw is going to be used to make bricks and it is carrying a spark of kedusha in it. Depending on whose house that piece of straw has to end up in, that's where it is going to fall. The Arizal taught us, regarding which leaves fall off a tree, as well as when and how, is also complete hashgacha. How long a leaf needs to stay on a tree is part of a tikkun. How many people have to step on a leaf that fell on the floor is also part of a tikkun. There are neshamot that come back down into this world as inanimate objects. We have no idea what is going on around us. Which fruits are eaten by which people is also b'hashgacha. Which fruits get eaten by a tzaddik, which fruits by a goy, or which fruits get eaten by a worm, is all calculated by Hashem. When things happen to people, we can never know the exact reasons for them, but there are so many potential reasons. The Ramak writes, if a woman, lo alenu, had a miscarriage, generally it is because the neshama that came down in the form of a fetus needed a certain tikkun to get to a higher place in Gan Eden. In a previous lifetime, this neshama may have done something that obligated it in one of the four death penalties. If the mother fell and that caused the miscarriage, the neshama is considered to have gotten sekila, and so on. The parents to which the neshama was sent also needed a certain type of tikkun. Hashem takes everything into account when things happen in people's lives. For us, we should know, even the smallest things in this world that involve even inanimate objects are so carefully dealt with. All the more so the bigger things that take place in people's lives. The more we believe in Hashem's hashgacha, the more He will lead us to the exact places and objects that we need to come into contact with in this world to make our tikkun.

The Shomer Emunim writes, whenever a person experiences even the slightest inconvenience or suffering, he should immediately recognize that it came from Hashem and should accept that it is what he needed for his best. It can be something as small as his food being delayed in coming or the taste not being the way that he wanted. They too were from Hashem for his best. If an individual hurts someone or shames him, or takes away his parnasa , and that person accepts it with love in honor of Hashem, the person's level will soar to the greatest heights and it is considered as if he gave Hashem the greatest honor. There are different forms of pain in this world. The Arizal and the Ramak, who knew how things work in the Upper Worlds, both said that when a person gets shamed by somebody else, it is worth more than any type of suffering in this world that a person could possibly give himself as a kappara . In the olden days, people used to bring upon themselves self imposed yisurin , but none of them can compare to one shaming from another individual. However, the value is only so great if the person accepts it from Hashem with love. The Arizal said, if people would know the true value of being shamed, they would actually go around the streets searching for people to shame them. The Gemara says, Rav Nachman and Rav Papa both decreed fasts because of droughts. They and their communities cried and prayed, but to no avail. When they did not get answered, the Rabbis felt ashamed that they were not worthy of Hashem helping them, and at that moment, the rain started pouring. The feelings of shame that they had accomplished more than all of their prayers and tears. And therefore, the Shomer Emunim advises us not to be foolish and lose out on the endless gains we can amass if we are ever shamed. The best reaction would be to say, “Hashem, I know this was from you and I know that I needed it. Thank You for doing what I needed and please forgive me for my sins.” A young man told me, he went to a class where the rabbi discussed this topic at length. The very same day, his boss at work utterly shamed him. His initial reaction was to snap back with anger, but he caught himself and realized the opportunity he was being given. That evening, he sat down in a room for an hour, working very hard to accept what was done to him and thank Hashem for it. He mentioned that for the last two weeks he had a shooting pain in his foot that went all the way up to his knee. After he finished accepting what happened, he got up and the pain was gone. I told him, the pain was obviously some type of kappara , but he accomplished way more than that pain could have ever given him with his acceptance of being shamed that day. The Shomer Emunim writes further, if a man married a woman who turns out to be someone with a temper and she causes him a lot of distress, that was decreed from Shamayim , based on the amount of suffering he needs to go through for his tikkun in this world. However, if he is able to maintain his composure and not fight back, but rather accept that it is coming from Hashem and turn to Him and say, “Please let this suffering be an atonement for me,” then in the words of the Shomer Emunim ,אז נתהפך הכל לטובה ושלום -Then the entire situation will change for the better and his home will become one of peace. The rabbi testified, he has seen with his own eyes this approach working numerous times. This is tremendous shalom bayit advice. If someone has a difficult spouse, each time that spouse causes him pain, rather than snapping back, the person should accept it as coming from Hashem, make repentance, and eventually Hashem will change that difficult spouse's heart to be one that wants peace and tranquility. Everything that happens in life comes from Hashem and when we accept what He does with love, the gains are endless.

Haur zelarik, telefonoa hartu eta EITB-1eko kasting batean eman zuen izena. Une horretan, "Betizu" unibertsoan sartu zen eta geroztik musika izan da bere egunerokoa erritmoz busti duena. "Betizu taldea", "Jeimon Turk Band", "Hesian"… "Lokaleko leihotik" kantuarekin maitasun deklarazioa egin diote noizbait? Ea zer dioen Arrosalik! Bigarren denboraldiko 5. atal honetan Zuriñe izan dugu, bere ibilbideaz -pertsonal eta profesionalaz-, musikaz, "Enraizadas" erretiroen proiektuaz jarduteko. Lagun bati deitu dio gainera… Pello Reparaz telefonoaren beste aldean!  Ai ama! Barre batzuk bota nahi?  Zuriñe sakonago ezagutu nahi? Ez galdu atala!

Haur zelarik, telefonoa hartu eta EITB-1eko kasting batean eman zuen izena. Une horretan, "Betizu" unibertsoan sartu zen eta geroztik musika izan da bere egunerokoa erritmoz busti duena. "Betizu taldea", "Jeimon Turk Band", "Hesian"… "Lokaleko leihotik" kantuarekin maitasun deklarazioa egin diote noizbait? Ea zer dioen Arrosalik! Bigarren denboraldiko 5. atal honetan Zuriñe izan dugu, bere ibilbideaz -pertsonal eta profesionalaz-, musikaz, "Enraizadas" erretiroen proiektuaz jarduteko. Lagun bati deitu dio gainera… Pello Reparaz telefonoaren beste aldean!  Ai ama! Barre batzuk bota nahi?  Zuriñe sakonago ezagutu nahi? Ez galdu atala!

Acknowledgement of Country// Headlines// Mere Tuilau spoke about self-determination and the Pacific Global Youth Movement pursuing the full UN Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons Ban as part of the Reverse The Trend Pacific event hosted to mark the International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons. Pacific youth continue to raise their voices against the twin existential threats of nuclear weapons and climate change that threaten the Pacific region and the entire world.// SUWA Show's Iain McIntyre takes a look at arms fairs in Australia and the local history of community resistance against these events. Iain has written extensively on this topic in the book Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life: The AIDEX '91 Story, which gives a detailed account of the November 1991 protest where over 1000 protesters blockaded the National Exhibition Centre in Canberra for 12 days with the aim of shutting down the Australia International Defence Exhibition.// We are joined by Matt Kunkel, CEO of the Migrant Workers Centre, who speaks on the Centre's new report ‘Waiting to Be Seen: Problems of Australia's Visa Processing Delays'. The report shows that Australia's migration system has denied tens of thousands of people the stability and certainty to build their lives, with unacceptably high numbers of onshore visa applicants, some of whom have waited as long as three years for the outcome of their applications.// We call in for live updates from Disrupt Land Forces 2022, an anti-militarist week of protest against Land Forces, which is the largest land-based weapons expo in the southern hemisphere. Disrupt Land Forces is running from 1-7 October, creatively disrupting the military industrial complex and fighting back against weapons manufacturers including Thales, Elbit, Rheinmetall, Electro Optic Systems Australia, Boeing and NIOA. Keep up to date by following along on Facebook, Instagram or via Disrupt Land Forces' website. Find out more about and get involved in anti-war organising by visiting Wage Peace. During the chat, Zelda mentioned Uncle Ned Jampijinpa Hargraves' staunch resistance at NIOA headquarters during DLF22, bringing the call for an indefinite police ceasefire to the arms manufacturers supplying Australian police. Find out more about the Karrinjarla Muwajarri campaign here.// Iranian-Australian photo media artist and costume designer Ramak Bamzar joins us today to share her experience of growing up in Iran, Mahsa Amini's recent death, the ensuing fight for freedom led by women and how creative practice has helped her tell the stories that need to be told. Ramak's work explores the connection between the male gaze and beauty standards in Middle Eastern pop culture. Through staged photography, she delves into her vulnerabilities, memories, and anxieties to explore the formation and development of female identity under religious dogma and traditional values.// Songs//Better Days - Airwolf Remix - Baker Boy, Dallas Woods, Sampa the Great//

Kabahla Taórica Es el aspecto teórico de la Kabahla que se ha desarrollado a lo largo de las edades en varias etapas. A efectos prácticos, la tradición de este estilo de Kabahla se puede dividir en tres ciclos básicos. 1er. Ciclo: Es la era de la publicación del Zohar, con los místicos de esa y la siguiente generación que articularon estas enseñanzas. 2do. Ciclo: Serían los místicos del siglo XVI que vivían en la ciudad de Safed. Este período particular de la historia se conoce como el gran renacimiento kabahlístico. El movimiento fue dirigido por las enseñanzas profundas y sistemáticas de R. Moshe Corodovero, conocido como Ramak, que vivió entre los años 1522 y 1570. Y particularmente por las enseñanzas de R. Yitzchak Luria, cuyo sobrenombre era Ari-Zal, que vivió entre los años 1534 y 1572. 3er. Ciclo: Fue con el nacimiento de R. Yisrael Ben Eliezer, conocido como el Baal Shem Tov, el Maestro del Buen Nombre, que vivió entre los años 1698 y 1760). Quien fue el fundador del movimiento jasídico, que en un camino directo o indirecto ha dirigido todos los demás movimientos místicos hasta el día de hoy. Prestemos atención al informe…

Series: Be'erot, Love & Relationship with God.     Episode Transcript:   Last time we were learning we had uncovered a very amazing feature about Yosef Hatzadik.  And that is that everything about what he is is hinted in his name that Rachel Imeinu gave him.  He's actually defined in two realizations in life: one is that, she declares as soon as he's born asaf Hashem et cherpati.  That G-d has gathered in my degradation.  And the other is she says rather, well, if he were listening when he was born he might have been somewhat disturbed by the other thing she says, which is naming him Yosef by virtue of  Yosif li ben acher, that I have a prayer that there should be another one.  It's a rather funny thing to be called.  Because it actually means about you that you're nothing but a transition.  Nothing but an avenue for other things to come into the world.  His mother expresses her sense of him as really being that which is to be traversed in order that the next child be born.  And in fact Rachel is very connected to that phenomenon as we've spoken about her in the past, that she is the behina of this world, she's the alma d'it galya , about which the rabbis say is simply a passageway to the next.  And her herself, she herself, participates in that as becomes reveals when she dies "on the way."  And Yaakov emphasizes that, the Chumash emphasizes that, she dies "on the way," derech Efrata.  Towards the place of fertility.  She never really arrives there.  She dies on the way to that realization, and so, in a sense Yosef is really her image in being the one who lives "on the way."  But what was most real for us about Yosef in that is what we explored last week, Yosef as the channel.  And his personal way of being which was – our primary last week was -- in giving over life.  And that's what Yosef does.  He gives over life, he's the mashbir l'khol ha'aretz.  And he stands in a radical difference from the way of living that his brothers live, or especially as expressed by Yehuda, which is of containment.  Containment.  Yehuda, who is the malchut , literally malchut is kelim, is, the letters of malchut actually is kelim.  That's what malchut does.  Is it creates kelim and it's very good at that, and that's very, very crucial, but it also has a tremendous failing when the kelim become self-serving, and the structures become a self-justifying reality in which the – like we all know it in politics – where the bureaucracy becomes its own self-serving system.  And we all know it in personality also.  When our personality actually becomes self-serving.  By which I mean, when we have a way of being in the world that we become very, very protective of.  Become very, very insistent upon.  And we become very expressed through and identified with, to the point that all we see is ourselves, and then, rather than being a picture of that which is beyond, which is what the malchut is meant to be – it's a temuna, it says in the kabala the malchut is the temuna --  it's the picture.  Instead of being a picture it becomes a false mirror.  In other words, a true reflection of what is, is the true path of malchut, in which it's expressing that which is feeding into it, and is expressing it outside of itself as the image.  So, too, in a personality.  When you're authentic to what it is that you're manifesting so that's an integris picture of who it is that you are.  But often times we find ourselves becoming very much involved in looking at the image that we've created and becoming, in a sense, worshipers of that image.  It becomes the avoda zara of personality when that which you've created as your persona becomes that which you worship, and that which you protect and that which you preserve.  And then instead of it being a picture of what is, it becomes a mirror of its own self.  And as we saw last time, Yaakov actually tells that to his children before they sat [set?] out on the path of their meeting with Yosef, their first meeting with Yosef.  Which begins, as we saw last week, with him saying to them, it says that Yaakov saw that there was shever in Mitzrayim.  That he saw – of course literally in the pshat is he saw that there was what to buy in Egypt.  There was food in Egypt. Shever; it means food and what to purchase.  But shever also means, as we know, a crack. He saw that there was a sever, a severing, in Mitzrayim.  Probably shever and sever, in English, are related.  Because there was a cleavage in Mitzrayim.  And that cleavage and that severing is what's called in the kabbala the ateret hayesod.  Which is the place where things open up into reality outside themselves.  And so he saw that there was this cleavage, this break in Mitzrayim, he saw there was an opportunity in Mitzrayim,  for something to be born.  And he says to his children lama titra'u.  How comes you're just standing around here looking at each other.  But, more deeply, because it's the reflexive, "how come you're just standing around looking at yourselves?"  He mamash says it to them; so clear.  You're just standing around looking at yourselves; all you have is these persona that you've created, and all you're doing is looking at them.  And the only relationship you have with the world outside you is just figuring out how it's going to harm or feed that which you've already created about yourself that you are going to maintain.  But you have no interest, really, in the outside reality as something from which you could possibly learn, grow from, which you would actually invest in, as something which would become a greater realization because of your investment in it.  That's not at all your interest; you're just interested in maintaining the institutions that you've created.  And they're great institution makers; I mean, they are.  Like, although, clearly I sort of see myself belonging on the Yosef side of the map, I don't want to denigrate the great institution makers, and they are.  But that's basically what Yehuda does; he goes to Mitzrayim in order to build the Beit Midrash there: v'yishlach le'horot.  He's sent ahead to teach in the Beit Midrash and to set up the yeshiva, Rashi says, that are going to be in Goshen.  That's his task.  But, as we all know, when an educational institution, for instance, just becomes its own self-serving fact, so then the students in it become secondary.  It's like, I'm working now with this charitable organization, who's supposed to funnel money that someone has donated to make a commemoration for Shlomo who was murdered a month and a half ago, and so, I'm just watching how they're really well meaning, you know, they really want to be a charitable organization.  But they've created this monster!  There's like all this overhead.  So from a rather large donation, they want to take 10%, which is more than $10,000. Just to give you a sense of what … Now, they don't have all that much work to do.  But, I mean, the people are there, they're full-time, I mean it's like there are 2 people on staff and there's a space they're renting, and it's like this big thing.  So then they need the donations to keep themselves running.  That's what institutions become instead of -- losing the vision of what it was they were set-up for – they become their own self-serving thing of seeing themselves.  And, literally, the attitude becomes one of spying, which we saw last week as Yosef's accusation to the brothers: "you've come spying."   Because when all you're doing is being committed to the maintenance of the forms that you've made, so then the only attitude that you're really going to be willing to have with that which is outside of you is to spy all the time, whether it's going to be to your advantage or to your disadvantage.  And the vision that you originally had that you're supposed to be a picture of, and maintain a perfect reflection of, becomes lost and clouded.  And this is one element of what the kabala calls kitzutz b'netiyot, when the malchut  is like a plant which has been cut off from its source.  Like a plant that's been cut off out of the ground.  That's ultimate sin in kabbala.   That's ultimate sin; that's the root of avoda zara.  And it is the root of avoda zara!  It's when the things that are creations that are pictures of that which is beyond  loose the beauty that they have as the reflection of what is beyond and they become self-serving phenomenon.  That was the sod of lama titra'u that Yaakov says to the children: "All you're doing is looking at yourselves.  What you need is the man who is the man of shever ."  And the man who is the man of shever is Yosef always.  Yosef is always in a crisis.  He's always in the place of the shever.  And he creates crises; he does!  Yaakov Avinu, when he was mevakesh shalva, as we saw, so, ele toldot Yaakov – if you want to see someone growing, toldot Yaakov, if you want to see Yaakov producing, ele toldot Yaakov, Yosef,ben 17 shana.  So bring on Yosef, right?  The rest of the brothers don't even matter in the depiction of ele toldot Yaakov: well where are the rest of them?  There's Reuben, Shimon, Levy, Yehuda, Yissachar, Zevulun, Dan, Naftali; where are they all?  The only toldot of Yaakov, the only one who makes Yaakov continue to grow, is Yosef.  Because Yaakov, who, as we saw last week, is simply a fire – just a fire burning, he doesn't reach out of himself – so he would just stay put. [16:44]  Kafatz alav rogzo shel Yosef Rashi says: the guy whose whole being says "hey, where you are, it's just a transition to the next place."  That's all.  It's just transitions all the time.  Don't get snagged on where you've come to; there's something else waiting for you.  That's Yosef.  Don't get snagged.  So kafatz alav rogzo shel Yosef : Yaakov knows this about Yosef.  He finds it out more and more.  And then finally, when he, I believe, comes to the realization that his path has been, sort of, "lehitra'ot,"  you know, to just "see himself" all the time, and for them to see themselves, when he comes to that, then he can send the children out to meet Yosef.  I don't know if these are conscious processes, but in the story that's mamash what happens.  He sends Yosef to the brothers to make shalom, which, as we saw last week, is always involved in moving beyond.  It's not shalva, it's not "peace."  Right?  It's not peace, as we saw, peace and pius is simply, what's it called, appeasement.   There's a fancy word: rapprochement.   That's not shalom.  That's like, ensconcing things as they are.  But Yosef insists on the moving; that's why he will always be the ish shalom.  That's such a different perspective, and we saw last week how much he plays that out.  But that comes from a perspective on reality which is that way.  Which is why we saw last week that he's the candle, he's the flame.  And he teaches his brother this consciousness, in telling them of 10 candles, 10 lights, 10 fires, flames couldn't put out one, certainly one can't put out ten.  When flames meet they just make each other brighter.  "I met you; all you did was make me brighter, and yourselves brighter, and that's all I've been about since you did what you did to me – all I've been about is making you brighter and making me brighter.  That's all I've been about.  And making the world brighter.  Doesn't matter what you'll do, and how dark a place you'll throw me into."  And they throw him into the darkest place.  It's like a way of living, all the time, to be touching that.  But he's also always in crisis.  There's always like a crisis, like a shever,  because he can never sit still, like, where he's come to is not good enough.  But for him it's not out of driveness, it's out of there's just so much more, there's always more fire to burn, there's always more reality to expose, always more connections to make.  Connections to make, which is where growth and reality comes from.  This is why he names his son Ephraim for.  He names his son Ephraim. And Yaakov recognizes Ephraim, even though he's the second son, as being the primary son.  Because that's, yeah, "that's Yosef."  The man of incessant creativity and fertility; that's Yosef; he's always opening up for more.  That's Ephraim.  So these are the themes that we explored last week with more openings here of the nature of how this works in personality, in human personality.  And how they became entrapped and therefore spies, and ceased to be brothers.  Which is what basically he accuses them of.  So, this is what we explored last time, and the nature of Yosef's name, is yosif li ben acher. And the other thing, which I'm not sure I spoke out enough, which I sorely don't want to forget, and that is Yosef in his being for those people he meets.  And this is another, this is a trap, which is a trap for Yosef.  It's not a Yehuda trap, it's a Yosef trap.  Yehuda we made enough critique of.  And Yehuda desperately needs Yosef.  Just as all the institution makers need the one who's always breaking the kelim. Always making a shever.  They need them.  They invite them in;  I don't know, they may have trouble with them.  But, that's a true need of the "Yehudaim" in the world, is that there be a shever to break the place out of what it just becomes more thickly and thickly self-justifying and self-creating-with.  So, but the great failing in Yosef is he becomes self-involved.  That's different than trying to maintain a veneer.  Yosef will never try to maintain the veneer.  He doesn't really care about the veneer; the veneer just gets in the way.  Doesn't care about the persona.  It's like, not his thing.  But what he does become in his failing, and where he needs Yehuda, is he becomes self-involved.  He just becomes, like, it's all about growing.  It's all about creating.  Right?  So, "leave me to my artistry."  And then there's no – this I give for Sarah  -- there's no "for-ness."  You know, what they call – I think that's a made-up word – but there's no for-ness, there's no being for the, for being completely devoted to truth, to creative expression, to realization, but then it becomes, in its failing, personal realization.  And personal involvement.  And that's his way of becoming, he's not titra'u in the sense of just looking at himself; it's not that he's looking at himself.  He's just like – in the sense of trying to mirror himself.  The way the Yehuda people become.  He's just self-involved.   He's not for the people he's coming in contact with.  That's Yosef who's fixing his hair, looking in his mirror making sure he looks nice.  He's outward directed, but self-involved.  That's Yosef the na'ar, the adolescent Yosef.  Who just becomes caught up in his own stuff and loses his for-ness.  Of course the great tikkun of Yosef comes by virtue of what Paro puts him in charge of, which is to become the mashbir kol ha'aretz.  Which is the greatest thing Yosef can do.  Is to become completely a channel for the goodness which he brings out and into the world from beyond himself.  And then he becomes a channel; that's like, clog up the Yosef and mamash the guy's going to die!  Once he realizes his tikkun.  And even when he's not in a realized tikkun he's like, he really in a sense deserves to die.  That's simply a reflection of what he himself is sort of giving off.  Because if Yosef isn't for others, if Yosef isn't out there seeking shlom acheicha, seeking the peace of your brothers, he's not out there and that's why his father sends him out to do that.  "You can't stay home, Yosef!  You gotta be out there seeking the shlom of your brothers, 'cause if you don't you'll just die!"  So, in a sense, Paro really gives him his tikkun, to make him mashbir kol ha'aretz.  It's just funny, because he'll be not only the one who provides all the nutrition and sustenance of the land, but he's also a crisis maker: the mashbir kol ha'aretz.  He creates crises!  He creates openings for people.  He was always shuddering them out of their complacency.  "Is he creating a crisis or revealing a crisis that's there?" Revealing the crisis that's there, beseder, OK, I'm not even sure.  I mean, of course, from his perspective he's only creating, he's only revealing something which is there, latent in the reality as it is and just kinda exposing the openings that people have not come to recognize in themselves, for sure.  But from the perspective of the people he's [? Working them? 26:10.2].  They probably experience him as making crises.  In any case, so, Yosef, that's his tikkun, that's when the yesod becomes a giver.  And that's his only tikkun, he's like, he's a dead man without that.  He's a dead man; there's no existence for him.  That's why Yaakov, knowing this about Yosef, as we saw, says about him that "you're the flame.  I might be the fire; I might have been perfectly happy b'eretz migurei aviv, just going back home."  Which is the way the chumash describes vyeshev Yaakov b'eretz migurei aviv ???? [26:59.3]:  "I didn't like that whole galus  thing, you know, that wasn't what I was looking for.  I just got, like, chased into it.  But, you know, I'm a fire.  But in order for a fire to get back to Eretz Yisrael, so, we need a flame in order to get back to the place from which we can really give. We need the flame.  That's you, Yosef."  So, you hear in that description of him -- these primary depictions of these characters is just so marvelous, how precise Chazal are, and so deserving of real, in Hebrew it's called mishush, you know, like, I don't know if there's a good English word for that, of like, just, touching them and caressing them and moving them around – but that depiction of Yosef is also a description of his essence and therefore also of his tikkun: he always has to be a flame.  Always has to be a flame.  And a flame is lighting others, and is also igniting others.  And [I'll? 28;16.2] experience him both ways.  So we saw, in our context of achoti, ra'ayati, yonati, tamati, so we saw in that context that Yosef brings this about in people by looking in their eyes.  We were in a context of achoti, ra'ayati, yonati, tamati, with achoti Avraham, ra'ayati  Yitzhak, yonati  is Yosef, he's the yonah who the kabalah says looks infinitely into the eyes of the other, her partner, all the time, she's always like, very … it's a deep, deep ne'emanut that the yonah has.  And it's in that both reliability and investment and faithfulness, so she exposes the infinite wellsprings of the other.  So, in that sense, it's like lighting the fire of the other to look in their eyes; it's very delicate, and you have to be careful how you do it.  It's tricky.  But, that's how you bring another person out really, unless they're so caught up in their own being ashamed of themselves that they can't let you look in. And that will be what it will be; it's, that's what'll do it, right? Like, we turn our eyes down; it's like, we're embarrassed.  And correctly so; we're embarrassed.  And often times incorrectly so.  But that's where a person who's embarrassed by something that's how, you know: "looked him straight in the eyes."  You know.  That's when it's power.  But that you're willing to hold the glance, and look back, that's when you can rely on me.  Right?  The one who's being looked at and being willing to look back, it's "you can rely on me; you can count on me.  There's nothing I'm ashamed of which I'm afraid that if it would be exposed then you'll cease to trust me."  I think all those words revolve around the issue of looking into each other's eyes, which the yona is representative of.  So, I don't know, but – I do know – that, I mean, we don't have explicit statements of this in Chazal about Yosef, you know, looking into people's eyes, but what we do have is that Yaakov Avinu calls him the shor.  The bull.  So people normally associate that with, and correctly, they associate with fertility.  But here's a deeper secret about shor:  and that is that shor means seeing.  It means looking.  In Hebrew mi yishurenu, his vision is so long, mi yishurenu.  Mi yishurenu is from Parshat Bilam.  Bilam says this.  "Wow!  [32:23.7?] tov…." I don't remember the precise pasuk, but mi yeshurenu.  Who can see it? shurai'na, in Aramaic means vision.  Shuraina.  Banot tza'ada alei shur is a play on words.  It's about the women in Mitzrayim who – it's got a triple play on words, it's unbelievable – Banot tza'ada alei shur: are you familiar with the pasuk?  It's in the bracha of Yosef.  Ben porat Yosef [33.00.4?] porat alei ayin:  he's the one, the fertile one, the beautiful one. Porat means fertile and beautiful.  Alei ayin:  he's the one who is above the eye.  He's the one who's above the eye, or, as some interpret it: he's the olay ayin, he's like the springs of the eye.  Springs of the eye.  Banot tza'ada alei shur: the women were marching on the shur – did we talk about this last week?  Great!  The women march on the shur, meaning, literally, it means a shur is a wall, so it's the origin of the – excuse the expression – they were "climbing the walls."  To see him.  'Cause he was so beautiful and so attractive, and so igniting.  Extremely charismatic personality.  Igniting everyone.  Banot tza'ada alei ishur is a play also on him being the shor.  Being the ox, as Yaakov calls him.  Then: banot tza'ada alei shur they're trying to get up and over the usual way of looking at things.  So that they can really look at him.  So shur is a wall that you climb up on in order to get a better view, it's an ox, because it's extremely fertilizing, and productive, and it's seeing.  It's [just? a] beautiful pasuk; it's really an amazing pasuk:  banot tza'ada alei shur .  And that's because Yosef, as we have revealed by virtue of him being connected to the yona.  In this pasuk Yosef is the one who brings out fertility by looking into the other's eyes.  And, in that looking, not from the place ruling and taking control, which is the abuse of that when you're looking at someone who's ashamed of themselves, so that's how you get control over them: you look them straight in the eye, right?  And you know that they feel lowly about themselves and demeaned about themselves, and they're like, just garbage.  So the more you look them in the eyes the more low they feel.  Because you must be seeing all that stuff that they've got.  And the more ashamed they are: that's how people gain control, the guys who can hold the glance are the ones – not because they're not ashamed of anything, just because they have the power, the "power glance" -- I think they have assertiveness classes – if they don't then I'll teach it to them!  Not that I necessarily have it, but I know what's going on!  The "power glance" is like, when, you're giving the glance in a way in which you're seeking to shame – this is extremely important for the second part of what we're going to explore this morning – but the power glance is when you're seeking to intimidate the other person by the way you're looking into their eyes, 'cause they're just feeling embarrassed and ashamed and belittled and nothing and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.  But that creates – it's for me not to just, like, slip into it – but that creates what's called ona'a, which is what we've taken upon ourselves to look at today, which is the other aspect of Yosef, who's totally against that.  But that creates ona'a, which we began to explore last time, which is the denigration and devaluing of the other.  Which we're going to explore more today.  Just put that aside for now, so you can see how the question of the use of the eyes and what you're seeing in the other person is so big.  But having the ayin tova of Yosef, having a good eye, is to look at the other in a way that empowers them.  That creates trust and love and connection and commitment and investment.  Those are all words for the yona.  That's really what those girls were looking for.  And climbing up the wall [for].  But you can see how – I mean, this is a delicate conversation, 'cause you can see how easily tripped up that can become into a power play, or into some base excitement that the charismatic people produce and then utilize that, when they're self-involved, to gain the sense of worth or control or whatever it is that they're looking for.  Right?  That's how charismatic people then become self-involved and use the charisma and use the chiyuniyut to destroy people's lives.  Mamash.  Destroys people's lives, and to destroy relationships.  And they always get involved in other people's relationships.  They always seek to break them, ruin them, and they can't keep their own.  They go from relationship to relationship, from woman to woman, from man to man, however it'll be.  So [39:01.3 ?? yesod], what're you going to do; it's heavy stuff.  It's the very foundations:  you don't have this? You don't have anything!  Mamash.  If you don't have this foundation in life, the things we're teaching this morning?  You mamash, everything else is just completely destroyed and you'll have Yehuda going haywire in all of his institution building and kelim building and persona building.  And you'll have the rest of the binyan clogged up and unable to come to expression.  And you'll have Yosef completely self-involved.  And just, using all these powers, to their precise perversion. Of what they're given to him for.  So, so to speak, the yesod needs the yesod.  Right?  The yesod needs to have within it this ongoing realization of "I'm just a passageway. Just, this is coming through me; it has nothing to do with me.  It's just what's coming through, and I want to share that and give that over and be with the other in that."  We saw that, if you remember, in David in lev tov, when [what?] he actually does.  But Yosef just does it with his eyes. He's not really so much the doer, Yosef.  He's the one who creates the belief that people can have in themselves to go and do.  But he's not the doer; he doesn't make the kelim.  The only way he knows what to do in Mitrayim is because he interpreted Paro's dream.  Couldn't have figured it out for himself!  There are some people who interpret Yosef as like the gashmiyut and Yehuda the ruchniyut and all these crazy things which are complete violations of the text: Yosef is not a kelim maker.  He just rides around on the chariot in Egypt and gets everyone really excited about being Egyptian, or whatever.  He doesn't really do anything.  He just interprets Paro's dream; he knows what needs to get done – v'yafked pikidi – and he sets up all of the pekidim – what's the word in English for that? they're called the clerks – they're like "take care of everything" and they take care of everything.  So,  if it's not flowing through him, then it becomes snagged on itself and it becomes extremely destructive.  I don't think there's anything more destructive than burning people up!  So, the yona, in her beautiful place of investment, commitment, liability, sticking with her partner – that's what the yona is the primary image of – is the real Yosef, so to speak.  And when he invests that into the malchut, so then the malchut can become for the people.  And not just for the institutions it's created.  And when he lives that, so then he can become for the other.  And not just for himself.  So this is some of the tapestry of the yona of Yosef, of yonati.  But there's another very, very deep and important aspect of this, and this is where we'd gotten to last week.  And that is the other aspect of his name.  And that is that Rachel says "you've saved me from shame."  And now you can really appreciate from this perspective and in this context how that's his first name.  "My first experience of you, Yosef," Rachel says, "is you protect me from shame.  Yeah.  When you look into my eyes, I don't feel ashamed, I feel trusted.  When you look into my eyes, I don't feel denigrated and small and embarrassed, I feel enlarged.  Like, there's more to be born here, more to grow here."  Asaf et cherpati.  You're whole being is built, and its tikkun, on the guarding of other's from shame, and relating to them in such a way that the shame will not be their primary experience.  They might be embarrassed about something, ok.  Like, we all have what to be embarrassed about.  We all have the things we're messed up about.  But that the primary experience should be that we're embarrassed and ashamed?  Is to enslave the person and to rule over them and to entrap them, because then they become so belittled that they have no power to do anything at all.  Shame is the greatest and most powerful disenabler.  It's like, you don't want anything, you don't want anybody to know about anything that you are, so it's better to keep it to yourself.  [45:27.7 "no excuse me"?]; people just walk into the room, you know, and create this whole environment of "excuse me; is it ok?" they sit down very carefully as if they don't want to bother anyone, like they're the most "bothering" people who could come into the room, are the ones who, like, come into the room with this sense of "I don't want to bother anyone!"  You know these kinds of things? Walk in and it's like [whispers] "excuse me," like, all closed up inside themselves; it creates this energy in the room of "eew! I don't want to be here!"  Because that's all they're giving off all the time is "I don't want to be here!"  Because to be ashamed, in shame, is to be in this shmama, which is literally what – are you allowed to do drashas on English words into Hebrew words?  No, it's a shmama; that's what it is.  Shame is a shmama.  Shame is the inverse – all right, as long as we went there, but we won't spend too much time on this – but, shame, like to make a name for yourself is, like, when you're ready to go out there.  You know, when the malchus makes a shem: baruch shem kavod malchuto, the malchus makes a shem, makes a name for itself.   It's not embarrassed, right?  It's not embarrassed.  When you're empowered, you're out there to make a name.  G-d says to Avraham Avinu agadla shmeicha, I'm going to make your name great.  But if you live shame, if you live the English version of shin-mem, then you're really living a shmama, which is your living "name" as a devastation.  Shmama is a devastation.  You're living the inverse of shame.  Forget the English for now; just listen in Hebrew.  The inverse of shame, of name, is shmama, is to be like a desolation.  That's what it means in Hebrew: a desolation.  And that's because of "shame" in English, that's because of embarrassment.  Of, ok.  Enough of that, enough explaining.  But the point is that Yosef HaTzadik is able to make the malchut want to be a name.  Is able to make another want to be exposed.  Is able to, himself, expose, himself, and cut away the blockages.  Because even though he may have things of which he is ashamed, and we all should, and do our tikkunim on them, that's not his prime experience of life.  His prime experience of life is asaf Hashem et cherpati – like Rachel implants it in him in the outset.  "This is who you are.  You know what you did for me Yosef?  Thank you.  You've taken away my shame. You've taken away my degradation."  That's so beautiful; that's her first experience of him.  Imagine being born into the world with that!  That means your primary reality is to function in the world in a way in which you are gathering people's shame by giving them the power to be who they are most fully.  And when Yosef's orientation is that, then instead of his charisma becoming a way in which he lords himself over people, it becomes a way in which he ignites them and burns their fire so that instead of burning with shame, which is the other possibility, right, instead they burn with creativity and fertility and then the malchut really becomes what it needs to become.  So I want to explore a little more of that today.  We have this curious word usage, words that come up around Yosef.  We saw shalom coming up around Yosef a lot.  We saw yosef, his power of tosefet.  We saw shever, and mashbir.  Another word which is a primal word, and the word is on. Alef-vav-nun: on, comes up a lot.  Comes up first in Onen, who's Yehuda's son.  It comes up again when Yosef marries the daughter of, my gosh of all people, the prince, the priest of On.  Bat Potifera kohen on.  And it actually comes up deeply the first time in the Torah in the name of Binyamin when Rachel says "oh, you; you are the son of my on", alef-vav-nun, ben oni.  Father calls him Biniyamin, but she calls him ben-oni.  M'eanyen.  'Cause if her prayer with Yosef was "Yosef li ben acher," so, who's the on that Benyamin is the son of?  I mean, literally it means, in the pshat, the son of my sorrow.  Because on means sorrow.  On also means power.  About Reuben, Yaakov says kochi v'reishit oni.  The first of my power.  So is Yosef the on that Benyamin is the son of?  "The son of my on."  I mean, he's the son that, in a sense, Yosef brought her, right?  Thanks to Yosef she'll have another son.  Interesting.  Now, an onen is someone who is sexually self-involved.  That's who On was, the son of Yehuda; clearly turned it on himself.  That's why he died, and Er died, etc.  What Tamar does, is she draws Yehuda out of himself.  I mean, as a whore, but she draws him out of himself to do the giving that he's meant to do, which is to fill her with a child that On  and Er did not.  So, in a sense, he has to overcome the, so to speak, onenut of his child in the relation with Tamar.  So, the Ramak, Rav Moshe Cordevero, says in the Erkei Kinuyim, in the Pardes, that Tamar is the Ateret hayesod.  That she's the opening of the yesod, and some say she's malchut.  What is that?  I'll tell you what that is.  And I think we began to hint at this last week.  She is a feminine embodiment of Yosef.  As the verse says: Tzadik k'tamar yifrach.  The tzadik, who is Yosef, blossoms like a Tamar.  Ah!  Oh, I get it!  So she's actually drawing Yehudah out into what he needs to become, the one who would impregnate another.  So she's functioning there as the teacher of Yehuda.  In a very similar fashion that Yosef functions as the teacher of Yehuda in saying "you're just spies, just involved with yourselves.  Just mirroring your own realities all the time.  Hey, take a look" – take a look, where? At the petach einayim, 'cause that's where he meets her.  She's sitting there at the petach einayim.  That's Yosef bechina:  "open up your eyes, open up your eyes!  Take a look, hey!  Here I am!"  Right?  She's sitting at the petach einayim.  And she gets Yehuda to open up his eyes!  And then again, it's not in the very best of circumstances, but nebech, some people need processes, as they say.  So, part of the process for some of them is – all right, enough said.  But the, yeah.  So, she does the most amazing thing.  And, it's really the pinnacle of the story, in the Chumash, and it's certainly the pinnacle of the story [as] the Rabbis describe it, and that is, she is ready to sacrifice herself, lest he be shamed.  That's what happens, right?  She's there, about to be burned, and she sends to him, apparently in a box, or someone that other's wouldn't see it, she sends to him "you know, the one who this signet and cloth belongs to?" – sorry, "staff, belongs to? That's the one who I've been made pregnant by."  Now, the Rabbis even have it more intense: hi mutzeit.  They have it she was already set on fire.  In Hebrew hatzata means to "ignite it."  With an alef means "she's been taken out," but without the alef , it means she's been "set on fire."  So she's already burning.  And she sends it to him in a discreet fashion, for him to decide whether he wants to expose himself or not.  I mean, come on!  Come on!  Just tell them it's Yehuda!  He's the one, actually, who declared "she shall be burned."  Ah.  So the Rabbis say, and Rashi brings it mamashi like a pshat, even though it's a Rashi in which his issue, I don't think, is in the structural problems in the pasuk, but rather it's in the content problems in the pasuk: "why is she doing this!  [she's] in danger!"  So he says, "well, you know what?  You know what she was?  She was observing the rule, which is 'it's better to be burned in an oven than to shame someone.'" Better you burn, then that they burn.  Basically.  Better that you burn, literally, then that they should burn in shame.  It comes down to halacha!  I mean, I don't know exactly what the precise application of the din would be, but the Gemara takes it very literally, and tells stories about people who actually lived that way, and almost died that way.  But you see the pinnacle of the story of Yehuda and Tamar is that she will not shame him.  And that becomes him saying tzadka mimeini, "wow; she is far more righteous than I am!  She's mode to that."  He learns that from her.  This thing about not shaming.  He learns that from Yosef's feminine version.  So, you know, the same root, in Hebrew, for on is the word that the Rabbis use for shaming another, and degrading them: it's called ona'ah.  Ona'at devarim.  It's when you say to someone "you stinking nothing; who do you think you are, to have something to say about this matter?  Why, just last week I saw you eating pork!"  Or, if you don't have him on something, "I know who your parents were!"  Or, if you don't want to… "Hona'ah?" Ona'ah.  Hona'ah is "trickery."  Ona'ah is causing this kind of destructive pain to another, but it's a very specific kind of pain.  On is pain, it's a power pain.  That's why in Hebrew the word on means both power and pain.  It's a "power pain," in which you use their pain to become empowered over them.  By shaming them.  Or, if you're not going to shame them, so then you just "toy" with them.  Like, if you walk into a store, the Mishna says, and you ask the guy "how much does this cost," while you're snickering – either inside or with your buddy – "how much does this cost?"  "Well, I'll look it up;" he's like, working it all out, looking it up, and, you know, "how much is that, and how much is that, and how much is that;" you've got the guy, like, ping-ponging around the whole store, you know, like – what's that machine called?  Like a pinball machine.  And like, "yuk, yuk, yuk, hah, hah, hah!"  Well, that evil laugh is the laugh of ona'ah, the rabbis say.  Now, there, you're not even embarrassing him.  'Cause you could actually walk out of the store without him knowing what you were up to.  But what you were doing is a power ploy.  In which you're using his weakness and his needs to lord yourself over him, by making him more and more worthless.  That's why the rabbis,  by the way, say "just like there's ona'ah, with commerce, there's also ona'ah with devarim.  Same thing.  When I overcharge you, or you under-buy me: same thing."  What do you mean "same thing?"  Doesn't look like the same thing; it's exactly the same thing.  It's a power-play:  I've got you being taken advantage of in my little play-thing.  Right?  That's what the picture is: my little play-thing.  That's a different madreiga, the one with playing with him in the store, or playing with the prices.  But the more painful one is when it's "you are nothing. Why, just a year ago, you were eating this or that, doing this or that."  Using shame against them.  As a ploy of power:  that's ona'ah.  Is that related to on, or  onen? Yeah, sure it is.  It's just all the self-involved use of my power, my charisma, my standing, my eyes, in the act of the precise inversion of reliability, integrity, and faithfulness.  It's the exact inversion of it.  That's what it looks like, it's oneinut.  So, guess what?  That word, on, the Radak says, is also written in Hebrew in the Tanach sometimes, like in Yishaya, in a word cherev hayona.  The yona comes from the same root.  It's the sort of destructiveness in that pasuk.  I have a whole list of them.  In Yermiyahu 25, verse 38; Tzefania chapter 3, verse 1. I guess sometimes it happens that way, right?  The same yona can become the birds in Hitchcock's "Birds."  That's what's so like, mastery of terror in that film, 'cause, "huh? Little birds?"  But, yeah, 'cause, [sigh] that's the way it is in life, you know.  Like, I don't know how graphic to get, but it's like, you can be a giver of life or you can pish on people.  That's the way… we use that term.  You know?  Pish on.  It's like, they're both functions of yesod.  Weird.  It's not so weird, because when you want to understand these powers, so you understand how they're mamash both in the same place, they're mamash in the same place.  Because the opposite of ne'emanut and emuna is ona'ah.  And so the opposite of the yona, who's the bird of peace and the bird of faithfulness, and the bird who looks in the other's eyes with empowerment and appreciating the infinite wellsprings of the other, is also the yona who pecks to death.  And lords over.  And abuses and shames.  Same word in Hebrew. So here's the [1:07:14.5 ?] perspective of what we were looking at last week of how Yosef – were we looking at it last week?  How Yosef tells them "what you thought was going to be evil, G-d has turned around to good."  Correct?  We were there?  I don't entirely remember why, but I can tell you why we're there again this week,  because here's the deeper aspect of that:  and that is that Yosef as asaf Hashem et cherpati is watching his brothers writhing in shame and telling them "enough of that."  Not that you don't have to pass through that.  He lets them experience that, and he actually purposely does it.  First he says ani Yosef achi, excuse me, Ani Yosef.  The first time he meets them, he says "I am Yosef; is my father still alive?"  V'lo yachlu dabr – they couldn't talk to him, ki nivhalu mi panav – 'cause they were in total pandemonium of embarrassment.  And of fear.  I think primarily of embarrassment.  Yeah.  I think that's how Rashi says it: boshu mi panav.  [checks the Rashi]  Yeah, nivhalu mi panav: mipnei habusha.  And I think he does it on purpose.  How do I say that; why do I say that?  Ha'od avi chai?  Is my father still alive?  Got it?  It's not like he didn't know whether our father was still alive: they've been talking about the father the whole time!  They've been telling him that they can't take Binyamin 'cause "our father will die, nafsho k'shura b'nafsho."  Yehuda's been pleading [with] him, that "send him back, because our father, our father…"  Yeah, he knows how to use it when he needs to!  "Is my father still alive? Or have you killed him? Yet. Like you almost did."  Well, then once that's been passed through, that's Yosef, the yona.  That's the cherev, man.  Careful!  Then, Yosef says to them: ani Yosef achichem, "I am Yosef your brother, whom you sold to Mitzrayim."  And then, right away, he says "and now, don't be sad, and let it not be harsh in your eyes that you sold me here.  Because it's all been for the good.  Thank you for what you did."  'Cause it's all been for the good, and he means it.  And the way he reveals it to them is when he says: ani Yosef achichem.  That's the shift.  "I'm your brother."  "That's great!  You're our brother?"  "I'm your brother." "How do we know you're our brother?"  "'Cause I'm going to now sew the whole thing together for you," that's ichui - ach, "going to sew the whole thing together for you now.  You know, all those things you thought you were doing that were bad, they were really – not only good – they increased light in the world."  But he'll only tell them that after they've done real teshuva.  Don't play with this one; people like to play with this one.  And they go to it too quickly:   "it's really ok."  Pat, pat, pat. Psychology-psychology-psychology, positive-, positive-, positive. "really, ok,  ok, ok, ok.  I'm OK; you're OK.  Everyone's OK, blah, blah, blah."  [next 2 sentences are unclear to me.]You can if you go there too fast, then, you have a [lived? 1:12:01.1] life. [Not a first? 1:12:05.0] ani Yosef, ha'od avi chai? "Huh? Is my father still alive?  Not your father; not the way you treated him."  Nivhalu mi panav.  OK?  Shame.  Fine.  Next.  Ani Yosef achichem:  "don't be sad, it's ok; everything you did has been for the good."  Imagine really being looked at that way.  Like [by] someone you really did wrong to.  But not in a way in which you become, like "I can't believe I did this to this person."  But, rather, he really, really, really, really, not only, means it, he brings you to mean it and to know it.  As it says later v'yedaber el libam, he speaks to their heart.  Wow, I'd love to meet someone like that!  That's the depth of the yona revealing the infinite wellsprings that you have brought into the world even when what you were doing was seemingly working against it.  That's real love.  That's the level of yonati.  It's not "I've such faith in you, it doesn't matter what you do."  "Love means never having to say you're sorry."  It's not that.  It's after you've said you're sorry.  Then, now, let's go someplace together.  [And with?] what's really happened.  And come of this.  That's Yosef's on.  Not his negative on, but his empowering on.  That's Binyamin ben oni.  The son of – the real on.  'Cause, the other kind of an on doesn't have children.  And, thank G-d they don't.  Wouldn't want to be a child of an onen.  Their little play-thing.  And we all have a little of that in our parenting.  Gotta be careful of your children being your decoration.  Your proof of success, your rectitude.  Your accomplishment.  It's all onenut.  You don't want to be a child of a parent like that!  You want to be a child of a parent who knows how to shame you, and then right away say "and now I want to tell you something about what you did and where it went.  And grow from that.  Let's grow from there." It's the exact opposite of the malbin panei chavero b'rabim."  It's the exact opposite of one who brings another to shame.  Tamar would never do that.  She'd rather die than do that.  And that's why she has this funny play in her name, that she is the beginning of the aperture to tamati.  To the final level of tamati, of the perfect reflection .  Perfect twinning.  Perfect revelation of what reality holds.  Must have been quite a personality.  Must have been, because she gave birth to the other shever person, whose name is Peretz, who breaks-out!  And becomes the father of David, and of malchut, and ultimately of Moshiach.  Came out of that zivug.  This is why this transition point is so crucial and it plays exactly into, if you remember how we saw Yehuda as the man who has hoda'a, by virtue of Leah's personal realization.  But in order to get from Yehuda to a malchut which functions rightly, which is not involved in its own persona and its own mechanisms and its own kelim, you have to pass through Yosef.  The belief in the other person.  And the commitment to them, so that the kelim serve that, and not that they serve the kelilm.  [That would be? Gotta be? 1:19:00.2] looking outside itself. Seeing itself in its own mirror-image all the time.  You must pass through yonati to get to tamati correctly.  And Tamar is the transition point.  Ateret hayesod.  So, there was once a great man whose name was Akiva ben Yosef.  Akiva, child of Yosef.  And he was the origin of all the Torah sh'b'al'peh.  The rabbis say. He had 5 talmidim that he had in his older age, the most famous Rebbi Shimon Bar-Yochai, but they were all great.  And Rebbe Akiva told us a great secret of how to be this way.  And, it's whatever happens to you, always say, whatever happens, G-d has done for the good.  kol de'avid Rachmana l'tav avid: everything that G-d did he did for the good.  And the Maharal says taught that you should say it, because when you say it, you channel the reality towards it.  Mamash, the Maharal says this.  'Cause when you say it, so you express the full bitachon in HKB"H.  And then, G-d sees you're relying on him, and he provides it.  There was one place, by the way, where Yosef failed in that.  And that was when he asked the sar hamashkim to tell Paro about him and get him out of jail.  The rabbis say because of that this sar hamashkim forgot him, he didn't remember him, and he forgot him when he got out, and he had to spend another 2 years in jail.  So the rabbis say "why, I mean, it says about the true tzadik" [pauses to look for a source].  It says about the true tzadik, ”ashrei hagever asher sam Hashem mivtacho,v'lo panav el rabin. [1:22:01.1]"  The true tzadik is completely boteach on Hashem.  If you lose that, then you lose kol de'avid Rachmana l'tav avid. And you lose the sense of reality as always flowing toward the good.  And then you become the manipulator, the spy, the advantage taker, the, all the things where the yona can fall.  But if you're reliant on G-d knowing that every place that G-d takes you is to light a greater flame, so then you get out of jail.  Otherwise you stay in jail.  So, though Yosef never said those words, Rebbe Akiva ben Yosef said those words. That's why when he sees the fox on Har HaBayit he laughs.  That's why, when they don't let him stay in the city, and he has to sleep outside, and then the wind blows the candle out, and the cat eats the rooster, and the lion eats the donkey, he just keeps saying, and turns it out that, "it's a good thing you didn't have the candle or the rooster or the donkey or stayed in the town."  'Cause it was ransacked that night.  But what was he saying when he was being burned by the Romans?  When Eisav finally got the upper hand over the flame of Yosef?  What was he saying then? kol de'avid Rachmana l'tav avid?  Well, yeah, "my whole life I've been in pain.  When will this verse come to me in fulfillment?  V'ahavta et Hashem Elokeicha b'chol nafshecha, efilu notel et nafshecah.  Love G-d with all of your life, even if He's taking your life?  When am I gonna live that?"  So, on that story, the Maharal says the most incredible thing.  He says "yeah, 'cause, let me tell you a mashal."  As if he doesn't know what he's talking about.  "Let me tell you a mashal, you know what love is like?  Love is like fire.  How's love like fire?  Well, you know, if a fire is burning, it's always going up.  It's always going up.  And no matter what you try to do to the fire, you can't make it stop going up!  That's just what it is!"  That's what love is.  It's not like fear, where you're reacting or responding to something else.  Love is when it's just the nature of what is, love of G-d, just the nature of what we are as humans beings, we have that love of G-d.  The only thing that blocks it is all the blocks of shame about ourselves and embarrassment; we're not worthy and we're not deserving, and all the things that get in the way of the flame flowing.  But the truth is, that we've got a flame that's always yearning for G-d.  And that's called love of G-d.  That's what the Maharal teaches.  That's why you bring all the yisurim you want on someone who really loves G-d and -- you don't want – but, if you do, you bring all the yisurim so he just keeps loving G-d and relying on G-d and keeps connected to G-d.  That's his essence.  Whereas someone who lives in fear of G-d, you know, when it doesn't go good, so, "I'm outta here!"  'Cause, then the fear is not being provided the response that it wants, I mean, after all, "I'm fearing you, G-d, because all the good things I'm expecting of you.  Otherwise it's not worth my while.  Because, if, anyway, it goes bad for me, so then there's no reason to be in fear of You, because apparently You're not really in charge around here."  Or, however it'll come out in that kind of thinking.  That's because fear is a reaction.  But love, the Maharal says, is an essence.  That's why Rebbe Akiva, at that moment, became the burning fire.  It's horrible.  But, he didn't think so.  And it's both, really, because we are committed to life.  And then, a most astounding things happens, and we'll end with this, the astounding thing that happens: he was in the reality of "my whole life I've been yearning for this moment, waiting for it to come to realization."  And then the story goes on and says "at the end his soul went out saying 'echad.'"  So the Maharal asks another simple kashya; he says "wait a minute!  Shouldn't his soul have gone out saying 'nafsheicha?'  Will all of your soul?"  That's the one he wanted to be mekayem his whole life, right?  Love has to do with yearning; love has to do with longing for.  Love, I add, has to do with listening.  Love, in a sense, is never requited.  It's never fulfilled; it's the eternal looking into the other's eyes.  Because, when it arrives at its fulfillment, it's no longer love.  It's just being with.  Echad.  Just being with the one [? 1:30:23.3].  It wasn't the time to say v'ahavta et Hashem Elokeicha b'chol nafshecha.  That's a verse to yearn for.  But when that verse is fulfilled, then there's only echad.  There's only "at one with."  "You are my completion, tamati. We are twins, ta'omati."  But when you're inside that, and there's no longer any longing for and yearning for, then it's just "what is."  Love is yearning, love is mashber, love is shever.  Love comes out of ra'ayati.  And moves through yonati.  To be realized in tamati.  And the ongoing and incessant back and forth.  Just the real life of love of G-d and of lover. Questions, comments? Crying? Singing? "I feel like that statement, or that place, where Rabbi Akiva was, of saying, or Yosef was, of saying 'all this is for the good.'  Obviously it's great for the person who's been on the side of suffering through the not-so-necessarily-experiences-good parts.  But what happens when the person on the other side, who's throwing you in a pit, or burning you, says 'don't worry, I mean, it's all for the good, like it's all,' like, isn't that kind of dangerous to…" Yes it is!  And the yonah is a cherev pifiyot – it's a two-edged sword.  It's, mamash, cherev hayonah is one of the verses that the yonah  has a cherev.  Now, I'm sorry; I'm going to mix up images for you.  It doesn't mean that, doesn't mean that the dove has a sword.  Literally it means that there's a cherev hayona meaning there's a sword of destruction and desolation.  Because ona'ah is desolation when it's destroying the other.  That's the ona'ah of the desolation of the other.  Right?  When the onen moves outside of himself, it's perversion and sickness.  Right?  But, I'm sharing with you that that's right, I mean, those most destructive features of the onen will end up [noise of shuffling 1:35:16.6] described too.  "Don't worry" – as you're being smothered under their thumb.  "It's all for the good trust me!  Trust me!"  Right?  That's what they'll always say: "Trust me."  That's, "ok; I'm putting my trust in you."  "Good."  That's the precise perversion of the power of yona.  I'm getting your trust so that I can desolate you.  And one of the most horrifying usages of, abuses, of that is what you just described: "I'm [building? 1:36:01.7] you, and it's all for the good.  You don't understand.  Trust me.  It's all for the good."  That comes from a precise opposite of being boteach on Hashem on that person's part, for sure.  It has nothing to do with Hashem.  They may present themselves as having a lot to do with Hashem.  Some of the most perverted and distorted abuse of people is empowered by the person's – who's doing it – presenting a face of being a complete One who relies on Hashem.  He has infinite backing for what he's doing.  And he has everything that you want.  Right?  "I have everything you want."  So then, [whisper ? 1:36:59.2], that's where yesod ceases to be yesod.  It's not a pathway through which it travels.  It's all about me.  Yeah, you're right; this can be extremely destructive.  All these things can be the most destructive ways that people get abused and destroyed, mamash.  Just 'cause it's so, it's so pnimi, because it's so much about everything we so, so want.  Everything we so much want.  That's why, the rabbis say, and this is a lot more destructive – there's a certain sense in which they mean that -- this is a lot more destructive than killing someone.  How do I know that that's kind of what we're saying?[not sure I heard last sentence right because of shuffling noises 1:37:44.8] Not sure it's "kind of," that's hedging a little, because I haven't completely thought it through, but the simple pshat is, if someone says about you "either I kill you or you kill them," so you're not allowed to kill them; you have to die.  But if you have the water, and they don't, so Rebbe Akiva says "keep the water. Keep the water.  He'll die; you'll live."  Because, your life comes first.  But, if we're right about Rebbe Akiva, and I think we are, that he's clearly faithful also to, rather than shame someone you'll be burned, so, hmmm, so you're not allowed – it comes out equivalent, right? – you're not allowed to kill that person in shaming them; you must rather die.  So, it's at least the equivalent of killing a person, that you're not allowed to do.  But it may be even worse, because, after all, you don't shame them; they, in a sense, shame themselves.  All you do is, "here Yehuda; isn't this yours?"  In fact, the rabbis actually say that about busha.  They say, e-hu d'avid l'nafshei, a person really shames himself.  Right?  I can't shame you!  I can say all kinds of terrible things, but, in the end the shame is going to be coming from you.  So, I didn't do anything to you!  It's like, you did it to yourself.  So, I can create a situation where you'll kill yourself, I guess, I mean, I don't know, like, do I have to give up my life rather than create a situation where you might come to kill yourself?  Lo yodea.  I'm not sure; it's an interesting question.  I'm not exactly sure what those situations are.  You know.  Steal all your money.  And you're one of those people who works on Wall Street.  Who jumps out of the 21st floor when he loses all his stocks.  And that's probably going to happen.  And I steal all your money.  Well, someone said to me, "if you don't steal all their money, we're going to kill you."  So [?] pikuach nefesh is doche, that is, sir, and we're allowed to steal your money. Even though I know that you're likely to jump out the window.  (Not you, chas v'shalom, none of us…)  That person is likely to jump out the window as a result of that.  But, probably, al pi halacha, I'm allowed to take the money.  Because, if he jumps out the window, that's him doing it.  If he says "we'll kill you if you don't push him out the window," that's something else.  But if they say "we'll kill you if you don't take his money away, even though he's going to kill himself," b'pashtut, al pi halacha you're allowed to take his money away.  And if he kills himself, that's his doing.  But I can't do that when it comes to shaming him.  If I do that, you're out of Olam Haba.  Why?, if he just shamed himself?  It's like a really ultimate type perversion and abuse.  But it's really our only possibility for tikkun.  It's our only possibility for Moshiach and tikkun is in that yona being there, invested in life, invested in other, invested in [the world? 1:41:59.5]. "In terms of the flames, like, so, like, it's sweet to say, like, or, maybe it's not sweet, maybe it's not nice to Yosef to say he got involved – got self-involved – 'cause he's just wanting the creativity.  'Cause I think there's a space also of, ok, so the plains[?] are all there and today they're covered by huge oceans with massive waves that are like, shooooo, spraying out all the time, so if you're a flame, and you're walking around like that, it's right!  You have the right to be self-involved sometimes for chizuk, not like self-involved.  And I think, like, when you said it, like, he just wants to be in the creative – creativity – [of the learning?] we did earlier, is like, yeah, the creativity, the flow, remembering, hearing Hashem, knowing that Hashem is just giving it to him and, you know.  And really, I think sometimes in the world, like, we're so "ok, we're the flame, we gotta go out and ignite the flame and we're all flame, flame, flame."  That's great, and I believe in it, and I also believe "good luck!"  You're gonna be totally, you're never, unless you understand the way to come back to your creativity, real creativity, you'll totally become "the system," totally become exactly what it is the ona… you'll become everything that you don't want to be.  And that, somehow we need, I don't know, I feel that, as Jews, like, in the same way, we're so clogged [clogged? Klal 1:43:36.1] out! Out!  And there has to be a space where we say like "no!" Like, "what's wrong with going inside, 'cause you need the creativity."  As long – it's right – ok, and I don't get stuck, whatever, it's a balance, but I feel that's a really crucial part, and I feel like Yosef, like bseder, like, 'take it! that's why you could go out, 'cause you took it and knew, like how to take that space!'" Hmm.  Thank you.  Yeah.  Thank you.  And it speaks to me on a number of levels; it speaks to me on a level of process, where, an adolescent needs to be an adolescent.  Let them be adolescents.  It speaks to me in the back and forth, which is so, so much, it reminds me of what we spoke of when we spoke of Avraham as being the root of all living, as being, having, the connection to the bliss of simple being.  As being the place where all must begin from, and that never being forgotten.  And what you're kind of bringing that down to is "and also, yeah, in the pleasure of who you are."  And taking pleasure in things in a self-involved way, sometimes, at the right moment and with the right context.  Someone told me the other day, I was working with a group, and she said to me, she said, like, "I'm like ruach. I flow there, I flow here, seeking truth, seeking what's real; I'm like the wind.  There are some people who are fire, some people who are water, some people who are earth; I'm wind.  And you know, the wind can get lost.  Flowing out there and turning around somewhere else.  So you know how I re-root myself in myself sometimes?   I take"  -- she had like this little plate of stuff on the table, "I take a little piece of cake, and I hold it in my mouth and I enjoy it.  "Why weren't Tamar and Yosef together?" Tamar's for Yehuda's tikkun just like Yosef is for Yehuda's tikkun.  In the end, it's malchut.  In the end, it's David.  In the end, it's the completion, and the bringing into kelim, the brining into realized, manifest reality in vessels.  In the end, that's a transition, after all, Tamar and Yosef.  They're not a zivug.  I don't think they're a shidduch, Tamar and Yosef.  They're "for."  It's like Chanina ben Dosa, who was also a Yosef personality, milashon 'chen', that the rabbis say "the whole world was fed because of Chanina ben Dosa."  But Chanina ben Dosa?  He didn't need any food practically; he would just eat a couple of charuvim from week to week.  But I don't think you put two people like that together.  "אתה אמרתה משהו על אהבת השם ויראת השם.  לא [??? 1:47:56.3]" מצוין שאת שואלת.  Yirat Hashem the Maharal says in the Netiv HaAhava that, we see that first passage there, he says v'chen ahava l'shem Yitbarach, shenimshach ha'adam el Hashem Yitbarach mitzad atzmo, so too the love of G-d is the person's being drawn towards G-d from his own essential being.  V'shem Yitbarach hu hashlamato.  G-d is his completion, ein bitul l'davar ze, you can't take that away from him, sh'hu inyan atzmi lo, this is something which is essential to who he is, v'hashlamato, and his completion.  Aval ha'yira, but fear, sh'eino yira rak shelo ya'aseh davar neged r'tzon Hamelech.  What is yira?  In its lower manifestation. But a person fears that he shouldn't do something against the King's will, lo shayach al davar zeh shehu atzmi al ha'adam.  That's not something which is of the essential nature of what he is, mashelo ya'aseh.  That which he will not do.  'Cause yira is all about not doing the wrong thing.  So, not doing the wrong thing is not something which is an essential expression.  It's a holding back.  Ein ze hashlamato, this doesn't bring a person to completion.  Hu neged ha'adam.  That's something which is against the person; in other words, if I do that wrong thing, then I've violated myself.  But yira is in the restraint from doing it, so it's not the essential expression of

Series: Be'erot, Love & Relationship with God.   Episode Transcript: I walked into a friend's birthday party, who's the Rosh Yeshiva up the hill at Makor Chaim, David Zinger. It's like a whole yeshiva up there, like three hundred guys, they're all dancing, you know, this and that, we'd hang out together to ferbreng with the kids. Well he says, What are you thinking about? I said, I'm thinking about simcha b'tuv layvav. He said, That's great, because that''s shvat. That's just what I was thinking about, simchah b'tuv layvav. Shvat. (What does that mean?)                 It means joy with a good heart. And I wanted to continue the exploration from last time, if you remember that the Rambam teaches about some crucial things for us in terms of our work in coming to understand the nature of love, and it feels like something of a summary of where we've travelled to see this Rambam. I'll just remind you, he brings it at the end of the year; basically, he brings it at the end of his halachas that have to do with Sukkot, being the tekufot hashanah, being the time that that year turns around—which is why we turn around so much on Sukkot and on Simchat Torah. Because it's called in the Torah the tekufat hashanah, it's the surrounding of the year and it has to do both with the fact that the year has come to an end and also with surrounding light, which is called in Kabbalah the mafikim, the surrounding light, hakafah. And so we do all kinds of hakafos on Simchas Torah. And we sit inside something which is maykif upon us, we sit inside a Sukkah, which surrounds us, and those makifim and considered to have their origin in a world called as we've come to know as binah, the mother world of joyous birthing—aym habanim smeachah, which is why, of course, Sukkot is such as holiday of joy. Vayhitah ach sameach is spoken about Sukkot specifically, because Sukkot is the holiday of the time of the deep expression of the joy of birthing, the joy of giving.                 And in fact, the teachings of Chassidut have it that, in looking at the paradigm of Torah, avodah and gemilut chassidim—that is, the three pillars that the world stands on—so the standing pillar of Sukkot is gemilut chassidim, when you stand outside of your boundaries and become a giver. You stand outside of the confines of your house, and you become a giver. And there is the transition in the teachings of Chassidut, that is the transition into the world of binah, which is the transition of the ability and the actualization of birthing. That's why it has eight days—if you remember when we talked about Chanukah, which is the eigth sefirah down from the top—this eight-day phenomenon of Sukkah is also a reference to its aspect of being the eighth sefirah up from the bottom. And that's why Sukkot has these eight days.                 But the point is, and what is most precious for us, is that it is the time when we enter into the birthing mother who holds within her the potentialities, and most importantly, the fountain of life—the fountain of giving—and the powerful ability to overcome those things which come in the way of sharing. And I speak of this with such significance because binah, as we've seen in the Zohar, is the origin of love. And even though we're used to chesed being the place from which love originates, the truth is that it's binah, and we came to understand that chesed is really the origin of the love of G-d, and chochmah and chesed are the origin of the love of G-d, which have to do with a more static state of being, which is wisdom of what is, and chesed, which is the connection to what is. Remember that we explained that gemilut chassidim, the giving of chesed, always requires the injection of the aspect of gevurah, of power, of something that recognizes distinction and delineation and therefore has an other to give to (whereas chesed belongs really in the world of bitul, on the level of abnegation on the level of being a static principal.) This is the opposite of what most people think, but we spent time explaining this at one point. That it is a being in existence and in chochmah, it's a being in being, meaning that there is no other than His being.                 Binah, so she is the one who turns outwards, and she becomes the ma'ayan . She becomes the lev haolam and the ma'ayan, she becomes the heart of the world, and the spring from which giving springs forth. And so we find, interestingly, that the other theme of Sukkot is the Simcha Beit Hashoevah, the great, joyous event of the water drawing, which was the special event once a year in the Beit Hamikdash when the Cohen Gadol would go down to the spring that is at he bottom of Har Habayit. You can still visit there today—it's a very striking place, you can go there through the tunnel. Chiskiyahu, that's the mea ha gichon. He would go down and draw up waters, and then trek back up the hill with these waters and go up on the mizbeach, and pour these waters down so that they would return to the depths of where they would come from. Basically, doing nothing. (Laughing) He'd draw them up, he'd bring them up to the top, and everyone would be in tremendous joyous extasy, then he would spill them out, and they would do back down into the tehom, so that I suppose that next year, he would draw them up again. And this happened during the seven days of Hag HaSukkot, during the primary cyclical phenomenon, which is the water cycle, which is the first thing you learn about when you learn about environmental phenomena, that there is an ecological phenomenon as a system which replenishes itself. This cycle is generally most available to us in terms of visualizing it and realizing it as this water cycle, the basic cycle that is celebrated at Sukkot—tekufot hashanah—which is the time of the cyclical aspect of the year, when the birthing is the birthing and then it returns to its place of reorigination, down into the tehom, to be drawn again. And man has the one and simple function of being he who transfers it where it has come to, up through some raising, which will then return into its bed of primary beginning existence. And this is what it looks like, and it brings people such tremendous joy. Dancing like crazy, and we talked last week about Hillel HaZakeyn, dancing, saying, Im ani kan hakol kan, if ani is here, then everything is here, and it really is an image of that, like all of the world is being passed through me as I draw the waters and pour them down.                 And this is the consciousness of binah, meaning that she is the life-giving force, but she comes with a consciousness of that life being flowed through me, and it needs that—otherwise it becomes a most disoriented and disconnected phenomenon, like it did for Chava, when she said, Kaniti ish et hashem, that I had made a man like G-d, really the way most of the mefarshim read it, although really you could read it "with G-d," but the sense of it is that she had done like G-d, which is true, but she had done it from a disconnected place, having already eaten of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, so that her name, which was Chaya, became Chava, which in Arameic actually means "the snake," a problematic name. And in giving birth to Cain from there, Cain and Hevel, brought the first fraternal strife into the world, because their life's playing out really was an expression of a consciousness of binah that had been separated from the originator of life, so their reality is one of contest and of jealousy, which we looked at.                 But the point is, when the consciousness is right, so it's very joyous. So today I want to get a more of a look at this, as we began to explore last week in the Rambam, because this simcha is not only the place of birthing that we're describing, but it's also the place of love, which the Rambam taught us that the simcha, she yismach adam basiyata mitzvah ahava ahavta hakel shetziva bahem avodah gedolah hi. Put them together, joy and love. So I want to contemplate some of that with you today. That introduction is a way of getting you oriented in terms of what kind of a spiritual reality we're orienting ourselves toward and referring to, and to also remind you that it has to do with this aspect of surrounding, holding us, containing us, makif.                 I don't expect you to understand everything; this orientation is just to give us an alignment with something so that we can explore it together in terms of how it comes down into actual halacha that the Rambam poskins at the end of Hilchos Sukkah, and tells us there's this great avodah of asiat hamitzvah v'avodat hakel. So last time, we saw that the Rambam told us that the great avodah and of love is to not get in the way. And he said that kol hamoneah atzmo mesimchah, reui lhiparah mimeno. That this person becomes like a Pharoah, basically, becomnes a separater. And he told us later, How does it happen that you are going to get in the way of this. The phenomenon of getting in the way is called neges da'ato, and kavod l'atzmo. His consciousness, his da'at, awareness, becomes bloated and coarse, and he separates himself out for his honor. So if someone were to ask you, how do you get in the way of love and joy? So I'll tell you. Become stuck-up with yourself, egoically involved, bloated in your da'at. And the reason for this is because the function of da'at is connection. As in vayedah Adam et ishto, that he connected to her in terms of carnal knowledge, which is an unfair translation of what the Torah means when it says knowledge, It's not really talking about the physical aspect of the knowledge, although that's clearly participant, but it's talking about the mentalities merged, it's talking about the personhood merged, and that's what da'at does. As soon as you're neges da'at, so then your da'at becomes coarse and bounded and blocks the ability to merge with another, because you've become basically stuck up with yourself, rather than being in a connective mode.                 The other reflection of that, as it comes down in terms of personality, is this person will be cholek kavod l'atzmo. You'll see him standing on the side. Not necessarily standing on the side like the wallflower at a party. He might be standing in the middle of the party. But he's basically being cholek kavod l'atzmo.  Meaning that his orientation is that he should be able to establish his honor and recognition in the world, in a way in which people will provide him with the worth that he so is desperately speaking. Or by simply wanting to experience life intensely, and so his orientation is attempting to get a hold of life, get a touch of life. That's cholek kavod l'atzmo. These are the reflections of how a person will block the simchah and tuv levav, and the simchah and the ahavah that are meant to flow through him. Imagine the Cohen going down to draw the waters and then coming up onto the mizbeach, saying, This is stupid, man, I just drew them up, and now I'm going to throw them down again? What are we doing here? We're not doing anything. We're just drawing the waters and pouring them back down, and then they get buried back down into the ground, go intot the tehom and then literally flow back down through the underground channel back into the gichon. As soon as he becomes self-conscious about that, and demands for himself that he should have significant place, then he's going to step down off that altar and not be interested in that process at all. It's only as much as he's in joy involved. It would be really like a mother whose in the birthpangs saying, this is stupid, this child is coming down into the world, and he's just going to be buried again in a couple of years, I mean, what the heck am I doing? It's really like that, that's what you're doing, I mean, how long is the kid going to live? Seventy, eighty, ninety years? A hundert und tsvantsik. In the end he's going to be back in the ground.                 But it's only when a mother selflessly becomes a mother of life, that she allows that to pass through her and the more selfless she is about it, in the sense of I see this as a flow and a fountain which is coming through me, so the more she'll be able really to be joyous in giving that birth. Chazal actually say this. They say that the passage in the Torah which describes G-d getting sad that He's made man, v'yitazev el libo, He got sad in his heart. It's at the end of Parshat Bereshit. This marvelous Parshat Bereshit, it all starts to fall apart fairly early on, and by the end of Parshat Bereshit, G-d is sad about the whole thing. So there is a midrash that asks, He's sad at the end, but wasn't He happy at the beginning—yismach Hashem b'ma'asav? He happy at the beginning? Didn't he see what was going to be? Didn't he forsee it? So the midrash answers, of course He forsaw it, just like a mother and a father forsee the death of their child. And nevertheless, they are joyous in celebrating his coming into the world. Now that's a deep thing, it's not just a trip people are playing. I am joyous in what is, and I celebrate it as it is, by being a place through which it will pass. And that's fine, and that's mamash the only way to live a kind of a life which remains connected to the eim habanim smecha.                 So binah is actually called l'hotsi davar mitoch davar, the power of drawing out one thing from another. And it's the origin of creativity, and interestingly, the origin of joy and of love. They all begin there and they all, so to speak, get divvied out along the way. So one thing that I can certainly say practically is being attentive to that is really the place.                 And I want to tell you a story, and it's a little bit embarrassing, but that's okay, because we're all friends already, and that is that mamash the Torah that I'm teaching you right now is derived from what I'm going to tell you about. And that is that there is a group of boys from this yeshiva up the hill, that had for some time been coming to learn with me Sunday mornings. I was sending sort of confusing messages whether it was happening or not happening. And they have to come special from home in order to get into Bat Ayin on time for us to learn together. So it came down to that I had said it wasn't going to happen and one of the guys shows up. So at that point, I'm like open the door, and I watch myself going into this space of mamash cholek kavod l'atzmo. Like, here's this one high school kid, he's a tenth grader, and I finally had a morning opened up for me to do the things that I want to do. To learn the things I want to learn. And so he comes in the door, and I feel myself, it's like an old pattern of I don't have time for you, so I basically say to him, I don't have time for this right now, I'm busy. You know, when you get it together, and it will be a group, so then we'll talk again. So, what am I doing? So if you want, we'll talk for ten minutes. Just won't have another chance to meet him. So he comes in and mamash, I just went into this space of lev tov and this Torah opened up. This Torah opened up in a way that I want to share with you this morning, thanks to him, I mean the kid is not only brilliant, but spiritually very sensitive, and was just the right person for me to be learning with. It's great, we had a great time, and he got to school late but it's their problem.                 So I'll tell you what opened up and it's very dear to me. I can't say that it's entirely worked out and it's a most marvelous teaching of the Rambam. To be honest, I don't remember if I said it to you last week or not, but I hope it will be okay. The Rambam, in teaching the way he did here, hinted to us that he's got a secret that he wants to share. And that is, when the Rambam brings a verse, he intends for you to know that the verse is the origin of what he's teaching. And I'll remind you that the verse he brings is the one that teaches us that we are going to go into exile because we have not served G-d b'simcha ub'tuv levav. In joy, and with a good heart. So you look at that and you say, Joy, I know what that is, but what is tuv levav? What does it mean to have a good heart? Am I a nice guy? Okay, but there is something deeper here. The Rambam is telling it to us in his delineation which is a tremendous chiddush; it didn't have to be this way. That at the end of Sukkot, the place you arrive at is simchah and ahavah, joy and love. How do I know this the Rambam says? Because that's the ultimate achievement in the work of G-d, proof being, it comes at the end of the year, the whole process is ending at tkufat hashanah, and I know it because the ability to return from galut, and here's a deep irony—involves going into the galut which is called Sukkot. The ability to return from or not go into Galut, to be more precise, involves going into the galut, which is Sukkot. You leave your house and you go out into these ephemeral, practically non-existant boundaries of the Sukkah. And we say, let this be a kapara, if I needed to go into galut. And here the Rambam says, that's about the simchah and tuv levav, about which the Torah said, if you are going to lose it, you are going to go into galut. So what you're telling me is that I need to leave and go into galut, so that I will not go into galut. (What is galut?)                 Galut is exile, separation, losing your embeddedness in the place that is meant to be yours. In other words, the simchah v'tuv levav which comes out of Sukkot, or is the reality of Sukkot, is that which goes into these ephemeral boundaries which are called the Sukkah, and only when one is able to be there, only then will one not become disconnected from his earthly root of the land of Israel and the place from which he is drawing the wellsprings of his existence. That's what the Torah is teaching us. So now, the Torah is telling us, I have two things to teach you. Namely, needs to be b'simchah, if you're going to stay here, and it needs to be b'tuv levav, with a good heart. So the Rambam tells you, What's the tuv lev? Tuv lev is love. Otherwise, where does he get his proof from? Tuv lev is love. And then he goes on and says, Merov kol.                 If you did not worship G-d with joy and in love, with the awareness that you have bountiful sources, a bountiful source, merov kol. From what would the word be? Exuberant everything? You can't really have rov kol, because kol is everything. You can't really have rov of everything, a lot of everything. It's like the best we can do for abundance in Hebrew is beyond everything. Merov kol, and I do want to check the kabbalah on this but I'm sure that rov kol is a reference back up to binah. Because kol is generally malchut, where it comes down to, so rov kol, is like the sourcing of that.                 So this tuv lev what is that? What does it look like in life, and what is the consciousness that it holds such that it should be? I want to show you a teaching in the mishnah which you can actually see yourselves. I want to tell you that one of our greatest teachers, Yochanan Ben Zakkai, whose name means "the man of chen," "the chen man, who is the son of the Zakkai, of the pure one, the zach one." So Yochanan Ben Zakkai had five students. And in a very unusual mishnah, in Pirkey Avot, chapter two, number nine, rather than starting with what he teaches and what his students taught, he tells us about his students, who there were, before he asks them the question which is the life question of what is the good way for a person to be davek. Or ayzeh derech hi tovah, what is the good path she yidbak b'haadam, that a person cling to in his life. So we're going to get a very important teaching from these five studetns. But before he gives us the five studnets, and their teachings, he first tells us who they are. Now that is interesting and unusual. He tells us that I have these five students and they have these five different qualities to them. The first one, anything I say, sticks. He stays with it. He doesn't lose a drop of water. The second one, happy is the mother who gave birth to him. The third one, he is a chassid. The fourth one, he fears sin. The fifth one, he is a flowing wellspring. Or more literally, a maayan mitgabeir, an everflowing, ever able to overcome wellspring. His name is Elazar ben Arach. So have the picture? (Could you repeat?) We have Eliezer ben Hurchenus, he's a plastered pit who doesn't lose a drop. The second, Rebbe Yehoshua, happy is the mother who gave birth to him; the third one, Rebbe Yossi HaCohen, he's a chassid; the fourth one, Shimon ben Netanel, he's a yireh chet. He fears sin. And the fifth one, he's a ma'ayan mitgabeir. He is a spring, which is overcoming anything that would standing the way of it. Beautiful, huh? And it's so interesting when you look at these, because he began with a pit that holds the water. Doesn't lose anything. And you end with the one who is the spring who's losing everything, and of course gaining everything by it. And then you have these other three in between who are amazingly enough just who you would expect them to be. Meaning, if it were so, that the first one is actually a holding of what is, well, then that would be wisdom, chochmah. The holding of what is. We're even treated to a color of it being a plastered pit with the translucent waters in it. Exactly the way it's described in the pardes of the Ramak that it was like a sapphire. And then the second: how happy is the mother who gave birth to him. Well, that's binah. Then the third, he didn't have anything to tell you about him, except that he's a chassid. The fourth is a yireh chet. He lives in fear of sin, in fear of the lack, chet. And the fifth, Ah. He's a ma'ayan mitgabeir, he's the wellsprings flowing out. He goes all the way down through the bottom. Getting to understand a little of Reb Yochanan wanted us to know who they are. (36:21) (That's malchut?)                 I'm not sure where that is, I think, yeah. I mean, Let's see, let's be open to what he teaches us. Now we're ready to ask each of them from his place, from consciousness, tzu ur'uh eyzeh hu derech she yidbak b'hadam. So the first one says, what is the good way, the way of goodness that a person should cleave to and cling to in his life? What is the best way to be? Now, in having introduced these five men, and their reality, so an attuned reader will of course understand that we are going to get five different perspectives. Well, so the first one's perspective is ayin tovah. Look from a place of goodness. Seeing the good. Not telling you to do anything. Just contemplate the good. Be in the good. That's what yous hould see. See the light. Ki tov. See the light. See it as it is, with an uncritical mind, not judging. That's what really is an ayin tovah. Judgmental capacity is already getting you into ayin harah. Just see it as it is, it's always good.                 Rebbe Yehoshua, who is ashrei yoludat'do, how happy is the mother who gave birth to him; the chassid, chaver tov. Be a good friend. What's a good friend? A good friend, I suppose, is one who is good to the one who is close to him. He may have many chaverim, but he is good to the one who is close to him. Okay. Rebbe Yossi says, be a shachen tov. Who is Rebbe Yossi? He is the chassid. Be a good neighbor. Meaning, you are in close proximity. There is a sense of fraternity in that. Close proximity. Be good to your neighbor. Rebbe Shimon says, Be careful, he's the yireh chet. Be careful and be aware of consequences. Haroeh et hanolad. The one who sees what will come of what he does. He's aware of consequences. Careful person, which is specifically referring to don't lend money unless you know you're going to get it back. And don't borrow money unless you know you're going to pay it back. It's all very bounded.                 And then comes Rebbe Eliezer. And each one of these needs its own exploration, clearly, and understanding of how they are associated. But Rebbe Eliezer says the most amazing thing. He says, Lev tov. Now remember who Rebbe Eliezer is. He is the man who is spring which is ever-flowing, overcoming all obstacles. His heart is open. He is creatively producing. It's coming out of him. It does have an association with binah, but the place where I think we are in terms of the hishtalshelut, coming down to things, is this is actually where it begins to become real in the world. The Maharal says, If you look at it, he's the only one who is doing it selflessly. The ayin tovah, he's not really doing anything at all, he's just observing but observing with goodness. But the rest of them, they all have something going on for them. If you are a chaver tov, if you are a shachen tov, if you are a roeh et hanolad. Lev tov, just the flow of life coming through him. Hmm. So from Rebbe Eliezer ben Arach, we're finding out what the lover looks like. And the lover has to be the one who is drawing life from a spring that is flowing. So if you're seeking a loving consciousness, so then a loving consciousness will be in which you experience life in its source as being a spring that is giving out its waters. The more you experience life as being a spring that is giving out its waters, the more tuv lev you will have, and the more tuv lev you will have then the more in love you will be.                 I don't know how to explain this, and I'm not sure if this can be explained. But I think that's when  people are happy. I think the experience of joy is always like that. It's like creative life is flowing through you and you just want to give it out. People who are really b'simchah, they are not cholek l'atzmam. They are not cutting themselves off from others. They are not in risk at giving life to others. (sic) They are not at loss for sharing what's coming through them, because it is a ma'ayan mitgabeir. That's literally what that is, an ongoing flow that is overcoming everything else. That kind of a consciousness is a consciousness of tuv lev and a consciousness of simchah. But it's almost as if there's a heart is a good heart (sic) if it's good enough to pump life into everything it comes into contact with. That's what a good heart is. (44:27)                 By the way, if you count the letters in the words in the Torah, so there are thirty-two letters, the numerical value of the word tov. Tov is the thiry-third word of the Torah, mamash. Bereshit barah elokim, etc. (sic) Because the whole reality of G-d's giving us life and existence is a reality which is one of His giving us ki v'yachol his lev tov. And yes, His lev tov, where binah comes down to, is the malchut. Because there is a lev which is the lev of binah, and she is the feminine of the upper supernal consciousness, and there is a lower lev, the lev of malchut, the actualization of bringing into reality and shraring of the fountain, which is David. So it would seem. I would really find support. I have seen in the Maharal who teaches the teaching but he gives it very subtley, because he doesn't like to teach kabbalah, but it says that any wise person who knows how to be mayvin, will understand how exact the order of these chachamim is. That's as much of an indication of what we are saying is right on. It feels right on. And indeed, when malchut is in tikkun, in leit lah migar mash, she's not seeking it for herself. It's like David says to Michal, You're trying to keep it all in kelim, you're worrying about my honor, Michal otiot keli. Looking out the window, being upset about me letting go in front of everyone. I'm telling you, that's the only way to be a king. And David says in fact, about himself, all the kings like to sit around and have high-falutent conversations that make them look good and important. You know how I spend my day? he says to G-d. Looking at women's bedikah cloths  (which you may know this or not, but it's a way of establishing whether a woman is pure for her husband or not pure for her husband—whether they can live together.) What are you spending your time with? any other king would say. V'yadayim m'luchlachut b'dam, he says, My hands are dirty with blood. But it's not the blood of the wars which he had to fight. It's the blood of establishing if people can live together. Because the entire orientation of and purpose of the malchut is to be a blood that flows through the bodies of the people who are in the malchut, in a way that they are held together so that they be given life, unity and connection. He has such a wild way of saying things: Lo chasid ani? Aren't I a chasid, if that's what I spend my day doing?                 Someone asked me, so is it simchah that leads to love or love that leads to simchah? I'm not sure it's a fair question. I mean loving people seem to be very full of joy. I'm not sure that all joyous people are full of love. (I think truly joyous people. There can be fake joyous people that aren't full of love. If it's real joy then they have real love. And when you have real love, you have real joy.)                 See, inour teachings, so the eim habaim smecha, the joyous mother of creative giving, is indeed the origin of love. And it all depends on how you see it. Because on the one hand, so love is born of heri chesed as the origin of the love of G-d and on the other hand love is born of her, just by virtue of her, with again the Zohar teaching that the love has its origin in bunah, eim habanim smecha. (Inaudible) I'd like to, I'm just kind of listening right now. But what seems, if we're correct in our model, that to love another human being, which comes out of binah, and down the left side so to speak to Aharon HaCohen,who is the hod, so the love of another human being comes out of joyousness. We seek to share it. It's really a weird thing. Seek to share it. You see, wisdom, which is on the right side, and shared that with chesed, is the pleasure and blissful consciousness with what is. And so the blissful consciousness and just what is is a very deep connection to G-d and produces, as the Rambam taught us love of G-d. So when you have a blissful connection of G-d and just being just as it is, then you have love of G-d. He says, You're just going to have to be in love with G-d. That's just what happens when you are in bliss with Him. But you will not necessarily come to be in love with people. They can actually be quite annoying to that state. That's why wisdom is supernal aspect, is a most marvelous reality of communion with him, but in a ceratin sense, you have to get your distance in order that it become love of people. I don't think that they're one and the same. And it's a mysterious transition, one to the other. And in fact, the Zohar teaches that if chochmah and binah are not forever attached in loving embrace, then the world just collapses. Which is sort of what happens is a meditation that just leaves you in the being of what is, so you're out of the world. And in bliss with G-d. But if that is the consciousness of reality, then the world ends. That's literally what the Zohar says, they have to be tre reh d'lo mispar they have to be two lovers that hold themselves together. But in loving embrace, so the blissful connection with G-d and the joyous mother of children, they create a world in which the emotive qualities of the planet, which you experience in your emotions, the emotive qualities of the cosmos, again, which reverberate through you in your emotions, they become the devotion to G-d in all of His goodness, in all of His life-sourcing reality. In Kabbalah this is called the z'er anpin. The yichud of the miniature face, which means that there is an experience in all of life in miniature, which you get in your emotional experience. The large face, the arich anpin, is the consciousness of mentalities, the condition of the attachment with him, everything is there, but it's not in an emotive reality. But when it comes down in to the world of midot, by which I mean your love, fear, beauty, ability to overcome challenge, and desire to acquiesce and give thanks, and your connectedness to life, those are the six primary traits. So when all of those are in rapture with G-d, and unified towards Him this is what's called yichud hailahah, this is one of the aspects of higher unification. Which comes by virtue of the relationship between wisdom and understnading, chochmah and binah. This is what's born of that when that consciousness is right. And it will produce a love both of G-d and of all of the disparate aspects of reality. But that finally comes to expression in the malchut when I'm holding it all here, down here. I'm holding it all.  It's not about my emotive integration into my devotion to G-d, I'm outwardly turned towards that which is and in love with it and participating together in this great unity. That's the lev tov. That's a good heart. You can have a heart, but it's not a good heart unless it's a connective heart .                 Remember, we learned about lev tov as being the aspect of connecting out. I don't know exactly I can answer the question in a succinct fashion. We can say stuff. What you say is true. A loving person is a joyous person, a joyous person is a loving person, but they are not one and the same. They might be different things. One seems to birth the other. And what it sounds like is that the joy is what births the love. The joy having to do with the consciousness of ma'ayan, of life in its goodness of flow, I am attached to and have flowing through me. (In couples work literature, I know studies have been done that couples that have four pleasurable experiences together to every one bad experience together are couples that thrive, as opposed to couples that have three or two pleasurable experiences as opposed to every bad experience together. There is some math that comes out. If you have this particular ratio of experiences together, then you will have a loving relationship, as opposed to if you have too many non-pleasurable experiences together, then love kind of fades out of the relationship.)                 They have actually made it into a statistic. But it's pleasure. It's interesting to look at the numerology. Love is generated by pleasure. It doesn't have to be. We have to be careful because we are so used to translating pleasure into some selfish activity. But that's not what we're talking about. It's a communing experience by a joint and shared pleasure. That is what I would think is what generates the love. I mean, you might be a chaver tov by pleasure that your partner has given you. You might even be a shachen tov. Or you might have a relationship that is roeh et hanolad, you might be aware of the consequences, you might lose it. But none of those will in any way compare to what is the real love, which is the ma'ayan mitgabeir. It's not because of good neighborly relations we provide each other with what we need, like chaver tov, which might be more of an abstraction of that we feel a certain affinity to each other, or just on pragmatics of roeh et hanolad like, listen, if you don't behave nice, she's going to walk out on you. That level, which also is generated by the pleasure of her company. What do you care whether he or she walks out on you? But the true consciousness in which it comes purely through you, which is the ma'ayan mitgabeir, which is, Life is coming through me and I'm together with you in it, and we're actually have one heart which is a good heart, beating life through all of us together. That's the deep knowing of the malchut, of someone who's not cholek kavod latzmo, it's not about my game, my honor, my ego—it's one heart that's beating for all. And then that's simchah, which is rooted in a communing oneg. (It's that the difference between simchah and joy?)                 That's the difference between pleasure and joy. Pleasure, like on Shabbat, is a blissful statis. Joy, which is on the moadim, on the hagim, is a joyous outburst and receiving of life and giving of life. That's why the Zohar says that anyone who has a meal on Yom Tov, where there aren't any poor or needy people at his table, is like he's eating the most distusting and decrepit thing. It doesn't say that about Shabbat, although we all like having guests on Shabbat. Everyone understands that if it's just Shabbat in the family, okay. Or even if it is Shabbat alone. There is something that's okay in that. But not about Yom Tov. Because simchah is the time, when it's like everyone dancing together. Simchah is the time when David HaMelech says, I don't care if I'm exposed. Adah rabah. V'nakolti ra mi zo.  I'm looking to be completely exposed, in the sense that I don't want to have blocks that stand in the way of this ma'ayan mitgabeir being able to be mitgabeir and flow out. I don't want to have anything that will be moeah this from me. Chas v'chalom. What are you talking about, Michal, what do you think you're going to gain from that? Live a life in which you're closed in and completely oriented on providing for yourself? And making sure that your standing is an accomplished one? No one really talks that way when they're in joy. And therefore, no one except through that pathway will really come to love. So without the joy, the effulgence of life is not providing you with the sourcing for being one who is giving it over. Otherwise, you go into galus. The only way to not go into galus is by being in galut in that sense. Being outside. (I have an exerise idea, if you want to do at some point. ) … (Can  you clarify the point you made about going into galus by being in galus?)                 I want to express appreciation of your asking questions, first of all. Second of all, can I clarify that more? It's an image. There's a certain kind of a being at home in yourself, where the established boundaries of what you know and are familiar with are what you become very invested in protecting and preserving. Like I see this with people who have a lot of trouble getting married. I'm comfortable with who I am, they say. I don't know if that's such a good thing. What do you mean, You're comfortable with who you are? What does that mean in terms of where change is going to come from? And growth. Life is always hitting you with the demand to grow. And being mistapek, having satisfaction with what you have, of yesh li kol, has nothing to do with being in the way of growth. Nor does it have to do with being comfortable with who you are; that's shalvah. Shalvah is a very bad state. Because that kind of complacence, it leads to keeping the home comfortable. Because I'm comfortable with who I am. That's a nefesh habehamit talk. So what is, then, the right consciousness? You could be happy with what you have. That's already a far more dynamic kind of langauge. But I'm happy already with what I have. But that joyousness already indicates a dynamic energy, like I could have more, I could grow into—but that already means that you have to go into galus from the confines of the personhood of who you have established as and become comfortable with. That's what I mean going into galus. (Going out.)                 Yeah, going out. But if you don't, then what happens is you become separated from the rest of life, because in becoming comfortable with what you are, you are unwilling and unable to accept what life keeps hitting you with, which is evolve, grow, this one's tough, there I am, here's someone else in your life, how are you going to deal with this? I'm comfortable with who I am, so I'm not going to deal with any of it. So that's the pnimi galus. That's an inner galus, in which you've separated and exiled yourself from the world. That's why the Rabbis say, ki nata v'an kavod, exile a person from the world, take you out of the world. What do you mean, Take you out of the world? There are very energetic and jealous people that I know and who seek their honor and are full of tyvah. They are really in the world. Those are the people really doing it, right? Those are the people that are in the world. The Rabbis say that's going to take you out of the world. What do you mean it takes you out of the world? What it means is that it's all about you, and your only interaction with the planet, is as one who is basically exiled from it. Because you don't really want to be living the life in connected with all, you only want to be providing yourself with the excitement and exhiliaration with the being that you're comfortable with. That stinks. You're totally out of the world. You may feel like you're totally alive, but you're totally out of the world. So you have to step out, go into the sukkah, loosen the boundaries and like welcome. So I said it in sort of like a paradox, because it's talking about two different kinds of galut, so it comes out as a paradoxical statements. (You say go out of the boundaries, but the name that I was taught that was associated with Sukkah is Shakai. And isn't that davka a name of—) I don't know. I was taught that it's the orot of ekyeh, so that would be different. Should get that one clearer. It's the ?? 1:11:54 (In terms of the going out in order to be able to come back in, I see in Sukkot the space of, after the yamim hanoraim, when we're really going inside, to see the habits or things that we really need to eke out and only a couple of years ago I started to understand and appreciate Sukkot I think because I could never walk back into my house and actually change. If after Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur I would have to go back into my dwelling place, I would be exactly the same. It's the ability to step out of that space and be told to sit. And when I sit, I sit with it, And after having those days to sit with it, I can walk back into my house and I'm totally changed. And it feels like, if I were not able to go into the Sukkah, we're going to get thrown out right away because we think we can hold it in our davening, but when we walk back into our house, we are too entrenched in it, so we need to break out of our space. So we have to embody it.)  (In Sukkot, we can be safe in our vulnerability so when we can go back in it feels good that we let go.) (Chaya: I was wondering, what is this lev tov? When do I experience that? Looking at, when does my heart feel good, and thinking that we could try and deepen into that experience of lev tov, to try to identify it in our lives, and when do we really feel that, and then even to do a mediation to identify lev tov experience or feeling, and see if it's connected to acts or moments in my life when I can generate that lev tov, or when that happens, and to write out a list of those moments of lev tov, and then to have the kavanah that we're going to go into life, trying to do those things a little bit more. Or in particular, if you look at certain relationships, such as with my husband, what are the things that create a lev tov, and write them out and be committed to try and do more things that generate pleasure, not just getting by every day. Because so much of relationship is like, marriage is like you're just trying to get by, and I feel that one of the point that you're saying is, raise up our life experience to pleasure, joy and happiness as opposed to that shalvah or getting by.) I'd like to do that. How's the rest of the room doing? (A comment. I'm seeing how joy and love and this important concept of to avoid going into galus you have to experience it yourself. I see love as joy that's giving, sharing with some other entity, and to continue to get out of ourselves. It appears to me that the ultimate galus is become exiled from the rest of the world. You are separated, so You have forgotten how to share and love, how to give, you've cut yourself off. So in order to continue to remain in the path of giving and attaining joy from giving and giving from a place of joy, you must contniue to exercise to do what a little difficult or scary, which is the galus, in order to improve and to continue to love and connect.)                 The transition point is letting go in trying, again, to hold on to what is comfortable and familiar and to risk by going out and giving. To take that risk. Your emphasis on giving is something that others share and it's important to recall it. And maybe in doing the work that Chaya is suggesting, so people will discover their points of maybe what am I thinking, what am feeling, what am I doing? In the realization of lev tov.                 What's missing a little for me here, and maybe it's missing for other people, is that we haven't really given a hard and fast definition of what lev tov is. I'm just sharing the Maharal, so the assumption is clearly that it has to do with giving. The Maharal says that all these other people are giving, but with some kind of self-interest. This one is just giving life, he's the ma'ayan mitgaber, he's giving life, he's a heart pulsing for all. So, but somehow, it seems different than gemilut chesed, in which I'm doing a good turn for someone. Here we're really sharing a life source, and that's a different experience. We're "life-ing" together. So if that helps in clarifying, for me it like—yeah, so let's take five minutes to honor that, and when have I experienced that? I guess you're asking? When has it been like that for me? What does it look like when it's happening? (Well, first off, what is my definition of a lev tov, let me consult my heart for a minute: okay, heart—) When are you good? (When are you good? When do you feel good? What is my personal experience of lev tov. And trying to identify experiences where I've touched that. So let's ask our hearts.)

This week's Parasha has a beautiful lesson. The Sefer Tomar Devorah written by Rabbi Moshe Cordevero (also known as the Ramak) discusses the 13 different attributes of mercy of God and how we human beings are supposed to emulate them. One of God's middot is called, “ Erech Apa'im. ”It says that God does not hold His anger forever. Even if a person continues to sin, Hashem does not stay angry forever. If a man does not do to Teshuva, God's anger abates. Even if the person is still sinning, God is merciful. He doesn't punish, and He hopes that the person will come back. Even if a person hasn't changed, you can't get be angry at somebody forever. This is how a person has to act with his friends, even in a case where he has the right to give mussar; even if it's his children, and they are under his control. At a certain point, you have to realize that you can't be angry forever. Rather , He says, turn around, and maybe you'll get him with love . Then he quotes pasuk from this Parasha, “If you see the donkey of your enemy, and he is collapsing under his load, should you not help him? Rather, you should help him. Someone might wonder why the Torah is talking about enemies/ hating someone, when we've been learning all about Ahavat Yisrael? In actuality, this is referring to someone who has sinned. You have a right to hate him for his sin. But still, the Torah tells us here, to Azov Ta'azov-Let go of what is in your heart.” Rather, what you should do is help him out, because, “ Maybe that approach will work.” And this is the middah that God has. Sometimes you see a sinner, who seems to be doing great and you wonder what is going on. The answer is that Hashem says, ” How long does it take? Maybe if I give him something, he will turn around and say, ‘God is great,' and do Teshuva that way.” That is this pasuk- Sometimes the way to change a person is just by loving them, and doing for them, and that will make them turn around. Have a wonderful day and a Shabbat Shalom.

Cam memorialising in a poem the very first time he heard a poem spoken in Persian back in late 2019 ... it was shared by a fascinating, arty woman he'd just met ... she goes by the name of Ramak! 'The Spring and The Forest'  by Cameron Semmens. Music : ‘Love her and she will watch over you' by Luke Pittman. Poem in Farsi in the background: 'Let Us Believe in the Beginning of the Cold Season' by Forough Farrokhzad.

Cam memorialising in a poem the very first time he heard a poem spoken in Persian back in late 2019 ... it was shared by a fascinating, arty woman he'd just met ... she goes by the name of Ramak! Poem 1 – FARSI – 'Let Us Believe in the Beginning of the Cold Season' by Forough Farrokhzad. Music : 'Clouds' by Rod Gear from the album 'The Wood That Sings'  www.rodgearmusic.com Poem 2 – ENGLISH – 'The Spring and The Forest'  by Cameron Semmens. Music : ‘Love her and she will watch over you' by Luke Pittman. Poem 3 – ENGLISH – 'Let Us Believe in the Beginning of the Cold Season' by Forough Farrokhzad translated by Michael Hillmann. Music : 'Clouds' by Rod Gear from the album 'The Wood That Sings' www.rodgearmusic.com Poem 4 – FARSI – 'The Spring and The Forest'  by Cameron Semmens, translated by Ramak Bamzar. Music : ‘Love her and she will watch over you' by Luke Pittman.   Additional music: 'A Warm Welcome' by Jared Haschek: jaredhaschek.com 'Dastgahe Homayun, Pt 2' from the album ‘Iran – Masters of Traditional Music, Vol. 1 (Persian Music)'.   Production and editing – Cameron Semmens : www.webcameron.com   Photography and graphic design – Ramak Bamzar : www.ramakbamzar.com

We ask Hashem in the Avinu Malkenu , מחוק ברחמיך הרבים כל שטרי חובותינו – to erase with an abundance of mercy any documents that were written for punishment. One of the ways in which we could have this accomplished is by overlooking when others have wronged us. Reb Zalman of Volozhin once saw a Jew asking for forgiveness from an acquaintance on Erev Yom Kippur and that man replied, “You ruined my reputation and the halacha says I'm not obligated to forgive, so I'm not going to.” Reb Zalman went over to that man afterward and said, “It's true you're not obligated to forgive, but now you have a chance to be מעביר על מידותיו – to go above and beyond and overlook, and that will do wonders for you, including causing Hashem to forgive you for all your sins.” The Chida writes in the name of the Ramak, "אין דבר שמכשיר את הנפש ומכפר על עוונה – there is nothing that can purify the soul and atone for sin – כמו שומע חרפתו ושותק – like when someone is shamed and he stays quiet and forgives the person for what he did – זה יותר מכל התעניות והסיגופים שבעולם – and this accomplishes more than any amount of fasting or self-inflicted pain that exist in the world. We don't ask to be tested in this area because it is extremely difficult to truly forgive another individual who has harmed us. But if it already happened, we have to know of the golden opportunity we have to make the heroic efforts and forgive. The Gemara says in Masechet Pesachim (117), there are three individuals that Hashem has an extra special love for. One of those individuals is someone who overlooks when he is wronged or shamed by another. The Gemara in Chagiga (5) says that Hashem gives extra years of life to someone who is able to overlook when he is wronged. The Gemara specifies, the extra life is given to a צורבא מרבנן דמעביר במיליה – a young Torah scholar who overlooks when he is wronged. The Ben Yehoyada explains the reason the young scholar was chosen because since he is young and hot tempered and he has the passion of Torah inside of him, the test for him to overlook is very difficult. Which means, the harder it is for a person to overlook, the greater is his reward. If someone is thinking, I could never forgive so-and-so for what he/she did to me . That just means that this person has an even greater opportunity to tap into the wondrous reward given for accomplishing that feat. David HaMelech earned the merit of becoming the fourth leg of Hashem's Heavenly Chariot by remaining silent when he was being verbally abused by Shimi ben Gera. For a king to remain quiet when being abused by one of his subjects is extremely difficult. The Chatam Sofer writes, Pinchas became Eliyahu HaNavi and lives forever because he was being publicly shamed, when he did his act of zealotry, and he did not reply, and overlooked instead. Somebody once went to Rav Chaim Kanievsky, shlita , for a blessing to have children. He told that person the Gemara in Chulin which says the world exists in the merit of someone who is able to keep his mouth shut during a fight. If the entire world is in existence because of that merit, surely the merit will enable him to help populate the world by having children. I heard a class from a rabbi who gave at least a half a dozen stories of people who were given yeshuot right after they were able to overlook when they were wronged. One story was about a man who was completely humiliated by his in-laws, and instead of responding, he said to himself, “I'm going to keep quiet as a merit for a refuah shelemah for my friend.” And indeed, that friend became healed. Yom Kippur is a day of forgiveness. We want Hashem to forgive us. The more we're able to forgive others, the more we'll be forgiven. And, if doing that is extremely difficult, it will only make the rewards even greater.

R. Moshe Cordovero_Ramak_23 Tamuz 5330, by Rav Binyamin Tabory, originally given for Parshat Matot 5768

Cosa resta di un viaggio nei deserti americani? La luce accecante, la polvere, leghost towne altre reliquie dell'abbandono raccolte in ottomila chilometricostellati di imprevisti e digressioni attraverso California, Arizona, Nevada, Texas e Louisiana. A percorrerli, con Giorgio Vasta, c'è il fotografo Ramak Fazel. Ritratto dell'America, ragionamento sul suo mito e omaggio alle sue narrazioni,l'incontro – moderato da Michele Lupi – collega riflessione e autobiografia per provare a comprendere cosa accade ai luoghi, e alle nostre esistenze quando le persone che li hanno abitati se ne vanno.

Tomer Devorah #6: This is the sixth class of a series of 10 min classes by Rabbi YY Jacobson in the book Tomer Devorah (the Palm of Deborah), written by the great scholar and mystic from Tzefas, Rabbi Moshe Cordovero (1522-1570), known as The Ramak. This class will bepresented on Thursday, 16Sivan, 5781, May 27, 2021.

Tomer Devorah #5: This is the fifth class of a series of 10 min classes by Rabbi YY Jacobson in the book Tomer Devorah (the Palm of Deborah), written by the great scholar and mystic from Tzefas, Rabbi Moshe Cordovero (1522-1570), known as The Ramak. This class will bepresented on Thursday,2Sivan, 5781, May 13, 2021.

Tomer Devorah #4: This is the fourth class of a series of 10 min classes by Rabbi YY Jacobson in the book Tomer Devorah (the Palm of Deborah), written by the great scholar and mystic from Tzefas, Rabbi Moshe Cordovero (1522-1570), known as The Ramak. This class will bepresented on Monday,28Iyar, 5781, May 10, 2021.

Tomer Devorah #3: This is the third class of a series of 10 min classes by Rabbi YY Jacobson in the book Tomer Devorah (the Palm of Deborah), written by the great scholar and mystic from Tzefas, Rabbi Moshe Cordovero (1522-1570), known as The Ramak. This class was presented on Sunday,27Iyar, 5781, May 9, 2021.

Tomer Devorah #2: This is the second class of of a series of 10 min classes by Rabbi YY Jacobson in the book Tomer Devorah (the Palm of Deborah), written by the great scholar and mystic from Tzefas, Rabbi Moshe Cordovero (1522-1570), known as The Ramak. This class will bepresented on Thursday,24Iyar, 5781, May 6, 2021.

Tomer Devorah #1: This is the first class of a series of 10 min classes by Rabbi YY Jacobson in the bookTomer Devorah(the Palm of Deborah), written by the great scholar and mystic from Tzefas, Rabbi Moshe Cordovero (1522-1570), known as The Ramak. This class was presented on Tuesday 22 Iyar, 5781, May 4, 2021.

Ramak Siadatan, Track and Field alum and Google Cloud Americas Partner Program Manager

Ramak shares about Nowruz – the symbology and her experiences. Cameron surprises her with a brand new poem: Standing in Love Enjoy!

In essence, this episode – The Fall of The Willow – is a spoken-word album, which you can listen to in one continuous stream. It's a curated compilation consisting of each one of Cameron Semmens' original poems translated and recited by Ramak Bamzar in the 2020 podcast season. These gorgeous translations have been brought together to create a single half-hour of swirling, twirling, whispered and hollered words declared and confided to YOU – our dear listener. May love and wonder seep into your bones...   NOTE: If you'd like to listen to Cameron's original poems in English, go to the previous episode: 16... SPECIAL: The Fall of The Willow – online album (all of Cam's poems from the 2020 season)   The poems:   1 :  As I Stand on Edge of The Park 2 : What Happened in The Forest? 3 : Still Trying To 4 : The Father of Butterflies 5 : Come Into Me 6 : They are a secret 7 : In The Mountains 8 : Petalled Pillows and Thorny Sheets – Part 1 9 : Petalled Pillows and Thorny Sheets – Part 2 10 : Rapid ‘I' Movement Towards You 11 : The Mind is a Yacht, The Heart an Oil Tanker 12 : Upon Approaching a Dead Person in a Hospice 13 : The Wattle and The Willow Music credits:   Title song : 'A Warm Welcome' by Jared Haschek: jaredhaschek.com 1 :  Rod Gear www.rodgearmusic.com 2 : Jared Haschek: jaredhaschek.com 3 : ‘Chasm' from the album ‘Separate Journeys' by Spike Mason www.spikemason.com 4 : ‘Viewed from The Climb' from the album ‘Separate Journeys' by Spike Mason www.spikemason.com 5 : ‘God' from the album ‘Henotic' by Spike Mason www.spikemason.com 6 : ‘Frederique' by Michael Carney. 8 : Rod Gear www.rodgearmusic.com 9 : Rod Gear www.rodgearmusic.com  10 : ‘Love her and she will watch over you' by Luke Pittman 11 : Rod Gear www.rodgearmusic.com 12 : ‘Frederique' by Michael Carney. 13 : Rod Gear www.rodgearmusic.com

Maamer Basi L'Gani 5721 #3: This is a text-based class on a Chassidic discourse, a Maamer, by the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Basi L'Gani 5721 (1961). It was taught by Rabbi YY Jacobsonon Sunday morning, Parshas Va'era, 26Tevet, 5781, January 10, 2021, streaming live from Rabbi Jacobson's home in Monsey, NY.

Maamer Basi L'Gani 5721 #2: This is a text-based class on a Chassidic discourse, a Maamer, by the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Basi L'Gani 5721 (1961). The second part of theseries wastaught by Rabbi YY Jacobsonon Sunday morning, Parshas Shemos,19Tevet, 5781, January3, 2021, streaming live from Rabbi Jacobson's home in Monsey, NY.

Zohar aligns with earlier thought or not See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. This podcast is powered by JewishPodcasts.org. Start your own podcast today and share your content with the world. Click jewishpodcasts.fm/signup to get started.

Zohar aligns with earlier thought or not See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Maamer Basi L'Gani 5721 #3: This is a text-based class on a Chassidic discourse, a Maamer, by the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Basi L'Gani 5721 (1961). It was taught by Rabbi YY Jacobsonon Sunday morning, Parshas Va'era, 26Tevet, 5781, January 10, 2021, streaming live from Rabbi Jacobson's home in Monsey, NY.

Maamer Basi L'Gani 5721 #2: This is a text-based class on a Chassidic discourse, a Maamer, by the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Basi L'Gani 5721 (1961). The second part of theseries wastaught by Rabbi YY Jacobsonon Sunday morning, Parshas Shemos,19Tevet, 5781, January3, 2021, streaming live from Rabbi Jacobson's home in Monsey, NY.

Episode 14 : Yalda Night Special Ramak and Cam share a night full of candles, cosiness, fruit and poetry! Gorgeous ghazals from one of the greatest of all Persian poets: Hafiz, as well as exquisite poems from Cam's 3 favourite poets: David Whyte, Mary Oliver and John O'Donohue…. and Cam couldn't not share a brand-new ghazal he'd just written. But some may be asking – What is Yalda Night? Well, Yalda Night is a winter solstice festival celebrated in Iran. Friends and family gather on the longest night of the year to eat, drink and read poetry (especially Hafez) until well after midnight. Nuts and fruits are shared. The red-coloured fruits, like pomegranates and watermelons, are particularly significant – symbolising the crimson hues of dawn and the glow of life. The poems of Hafez, which can be found in the bookcases of most Iranian families, are read aloud… and even used as a light-hearted form of divination called ‘fal-e Hafez', where the reader sends out a wish to Hafez, flicks through their book of Hafez poems, stops at a random page, and reads that poem as an answer to their wish… and on this Yalda Night in 2020 Ramak and Cam try a bit of fal-e Hafez… with thought-provoking results! Poem list: 1 : Sweet Darkness by David Whyte. 2 : A Summer Day by Mary Oliver. 3 & 4 : Ghazals by Hafez from The Divan of Hafez. 5 : Ode 44 (a ghazal by Hafez) translated by Richard Le Gallienne. 6 : A Silent Refrain by Cameron Semmens 7 : For The Break-up of a Relationship by John O'Donohue   All music by Jared Haschek: jaredhaschek.com Podcast produced by Cameron Semmens : www.webcameron.com Photography and graphic design by Ramak Bamzar : www.ramakbamzar.com

Derviş ve Salih, devrinin sonuna gelen PS4'ü ve Cyberpunk 2077 öncesi inceleme notlarını değerlendiriyor.

Episode 11 : And someone is dying ... In this episode Ramak and Cameron discuss times they have stood beside death. For Cameron, at hospital bedsides; for Ramak, as a documentary photographer, in the disaster zone of the 2003 Bam earthquake in southern Iran. And they wonder over the fact that… as someone is dying… another is coming to life. As Ned Kelly said in his famous last words before he hung from the noose: such is life. Poem 1 : Upon Approaching a Dead Person in a Hospice by Cameron Semmens; translation by Ramak Bamzar. Music : ‘Frederique' by Michael Carney. Poem 2 : Moonlight by Ahmad Shamlou; translation into English by Iraj Bashiri. Music by Jared Haschek: jaredhaschek.com Title music : ‘A Warm Welcome' by Jared Haschek: jaredhaschek.com Podcast produced by Cameron Semmens : www.webcameron.com Photography and graphic design by Ramak Bamzar : www.ramakbamzar.com

- Tzimtzum was חידוש if Arizal, Ramak didn’t know about it. - Understanding of sifrei kabala - ohr already has tziur, keilim limit the ohr. - True explanation - ohr is simple/abstract, keli brings tziur to the ohr. • Link to view this page in original sefer: https://hebrewbooks.org/pdfpager.aspx?req=31640&st=&pgnum=213 • Link to purchase the original sefer: https://store.kehotonline.com/prodinfo.asp?number=HRR-SM68 --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/levi-gelb/support

Ramak Seigh joins us today to discuss how he is creating a solar powered, self-sustaining Bitcoin mining datacenter Ramak has been a life-long entrepreneur across many industries who is bringing his multi-disciplinary talents and track record of success to the cryptocurrency mining industry.  Ramak began his professional life in the real estate industry by helping build acquire and operate a 1900-unit apartment portfolio in Houston in late 1980s. Later, he started, built and sold a successful online tenant screening service with one of the early nationwide criminal databases in the US.  He has been involved in ASIC mining and specifically Bitcoin mining, from selling equipment online to operating miners since 2017. Ramak has a BS in Political Science from the University of Houston and is fluent in English, Farsi, & French.  Plouton Mining will be North America’s largest solar-powered bitcoin mining facility. Based on 50 acres (Plouton Mining owns) in Western Mojave, CA. Plouton Mining will implement new sustainable mining practices via solar panels that will allow the industry to continue to grow, while also providing ordinary investors with the opportunity to participate in the process of mining via a security token. Because utility companies sell the bulk of their energy during peak hours when demand is highest, they are left with an excess supply during much of the nighttime hours when demand is much lower. Plouton’s next-generation ASIC miners will operate with maximum efficiency, both day and night. View this episode on our website here. *Disclaimer. None of this information is financial advice. ~ Want to learn more about cryptocurrency? Check out our blog today! ~ Follow us on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Uptrennd today! ~ Enjoying our podcast? Please leave us a 5 star review here! ~ Stay up to date with the latest news in cryptocurrency by opting-in to our newsletter! You will receive daily emails (M-S) that are personalized and curated content specific to you and your interests, powered by artificial intelligence.  ~ We were featured as one of the Top 25 Cryptocurrency Podcasts and one of the 16 Best Cryptocurrency Podcasts in 2020. ~ Are you an accredited investor looking to invest in cryptocurrency? Check out Crescent City Capital. ~ Want to take educational courses on cryptocurrency & blockchain? Sign up for Blockchain Training Academy today! ~ Earn Interest. Receive Loans. Trade Crypto. Start Today! Learn more about how you can sign up for Blockfi  ~ Want to be on our show or know someone who should? Contact us today! ~ We hope you are enjoying our cryptocurrency and blockchain educational content! We greatly appreciate donations, which all go directly towards creating even better educational content. Thank you for your generosity! Buy us a coffee here :) BTC: 3BpSmgS8h1sNtbk6VMiVWxoftcwBxAfGxR  ETH: 0x743c0426CE838A659F56aFC4d3c10872d758EC79  LTC: MKCpf3qEVfT6yprhDhkJJcdNpqh5PZXSbx

Sign up for our newsletter at https://Evolvement.io. Evolvement is a podcast hosted by Nye that revolves around Bitcoin, cryptocurrency, blockchain technology, and how these play a role in the current financial models and economic systems of the world. In this episode, I sat down Ramak J. Sedigh of Plouton Mining to talk about mining cryptocurrency in the Mojave Desert. The proposed setup is 10-12 MW in size and will be use to power a mining facility during the day and at night the miners will use grid electricity. Working with local government Plouton estimates the cost for planned setup to be $10-$12 million dollars. Learn more at www.ploutongroup.com/ploutonbitcoinmining/site/index.html Thank you to Ramak for his time. Thank you to our sponsors CasperLabs! And thank you to all our listeners! You guys help make this possible. Timestamps 00:02:00 What’s the premise, how does it work? 00:03:30 How did this all begin? 00:07:21 Is this a solution for Proof of Work cryptos? 00:08:10 What coins will be mined? 00:08:30 What about other coins or tokens? 00:09:05 What is the competition doing? 00:10:10 What does the future look like? 00:11:00 What are the regulations for something like this? 00:12:30 Where can people find you?

Ramak J. Sedigh, CEO of Plouton Mining, has been a life-long entrepreneur across many industries who is bringing his multi-disciplinary talents and track record of success to building N. America's largest solar-powered bitcoin mining operation in Western Mojave California. Ramak began his professional life in the real estate industry by building a 1900-unit apartment portfolio in the late 1980s. Later, he started, built and sold a successful online tenant screening service with one of the early nationwide criminal databases in the US. Ramak has a BS in Political Science from the University of Houston.   Plouton Mining (based in LA), will be North America's largest solar-powered bitcoin mining facility. Based on 50 acres in Western Mojave, CA, Plouton Mining will implement new sustainable mining practices via solar panels that will allow the industry to continue to grow, while also providing ordinary investors with the opportunity to participate in the process of mining via a security token. The way Plouton Mining will contract with local utility providers will allow for ultra-cheap operating costs when the sun goes down. This will benefit both the project and the utility companies themselves. Because utility companies sell the bulk of their energy during peak hours when demand is highest, they are left with an excess supply during much of the nighttime hours when demand is much lower. Plouton's next-generation ASIC miners will operate with maximum efficiency, both day and night.  

Mark’s guest today is talking to us about mining; the importance of it, the issues it faces and how self-produced renewable energy could be key. Ramak Sedigh is the founder and CEO of Plouton Mining, North America’s largest solar energy powered crypto mining facility. Tune in to find out why Ramak says that while crypto does undermine the US dollar, it’s a small price to pay for the technology that comes with it and all the areas it could revolutionize.

USA:s sanktioner mot Iran har skapat stora spänningar i Mellanöstern, men de påverkar även människors vardag långt därifrån. GP:s Gabriella Elbied Pettersson berättar om Mana och Ramak, som inte fick ta hit Manas pappa på besök för ambassaden.   Dessutom: Kraftig explosion i Linköping, Socialdemokraterna försöker bilda regering i Danmark och en ettåring kan ha dött av orent vatten i Norge.   Programledare: Andreas Granath  

Tehilim Perek 136 Hello everybody, in today’s NachDaily we’ll be discussing Tehilim chapter 13. This is the second chapter of the “Hallel Hagadol.” All of the verses end with “ki l’olam chasdo, His kindness is forever.” The Gemarah in Pessachim 118:a says that the 26 pessukim in this perek correspond to the 26 generations from the creation of the world until the receiving of the Torah. Up until Kabbalas HaTorah, Hashem sustained the world through His chessed. Although only the Jewish nation received the Torah, the whole world exists in the merit of Yisrael. B’reishis stands for “b’shvil Yisrael shenikra reishis, for the sake of Yisrael that is called ‘the first,’ […the whole world was created.]” This perek is called “Hallel Hagadol, the big Hallel,” because verse 25 says that “Hu nossen lechem l’chol basar, Hashem gives bread to all mankind.” That Hashem makes sure there’s enough for everyone on earth to eat is a great kindness. The Ramak says that the 26 pessukim in this perek correspond to Hashem’s Name of YKVK,which is numerically 26. This perek therefore contains very deep and hidden secrets. The author gives thanks to God for all He’s done, from the creation of the world moving all the way down to saving us from the perils of Mitzrayim. It was Hashem who split the sea and helped us defeat the world greatest powers of that era. He remembered us in our lowly state, saving us countless times. We’re obligated, therefore, to thank God for the goodness that He’s done for us and the world simply because His kindness endures forever! The perek opens with the words; הוֹד֣וּ לַיהוָ֣ה כִּי־ט֑וֹב כִּ֖י לְעוֹלָ֣ם חַסְדּֽוֹ׃ Praise God for He is good, His steadfast love is eternal. The Meforshim explain the fact that it opens with the words Hodu laHashem ki tov, that the author of this perek is unknown. The Ramad Walli tells us that the reason the author is unknown is to teach that God is intrinsically good. His goodness isn’t dependent on anyone recognizing it. God is good. There’s nothing we can do to detract or add to that fact. The Ramad Walli goes on to kabbalistacly explain that there’s no greater good than God bringing a Tikkun Haolam, a spiritual fixing to the world. Ki tov is numerically 47. Take two of Hashem’s names of YKVK which equal 26 and add that together with His name of AKYK Aleph Key Yud Key which equals 21, we get 47. Hashem’s two names, YKVK and AKYK equal 47 the same gematria as the words Ki Tov. Hashem is constantly guiding the world behind the scenes in a positive manner towards redemption, bringing the Tikkun Ha’olam. May we merit trusting in God’s goodness and singing together at the final tikkun, Hodu laHashem ki tov thank you God, for You are good! Thank you for listening, and have a wonderful day.

Tehilim Perek 119: Letter Aleph . Aleph is the first letter of the Aleph Beis. Its numerical value is 1, which represents Hashem, Who is Echad, yachid u’meychud. Always was, is and will be One. Just as Aleph is the head of all the letters, so too is Hashem the Head of the world. As Aleph is synonymous with Hashem, it contains all of creation in it. All that was, is and will be can be found within the letter Aleph itself! Mathematically, Aleph is the only letter whose numerical value equals itself. If you spell the letter Aleph out as a word: aleph, lamed, fay, it equals one hundred eleven (111), to remind us that Hashem is One. Furthermore, the word eleph means one thousand (1,000). If you take the gematria of aleph which is 111, and add an additional 1 for the eleph, you get one thousand one hundred and eleven. These 4 ones (1’s) in the number 1111 represent all the kochos, forces, in the 4 worlds which all emanate from one divine source and are unified by God, who is One. It should also be mentioned that they correspond to the four letters of Hashem’s name of HVYK, meaning there is one Force behind all of existence including the world we see, and the hidden world we don’t see. The letter formation of the letter Aleph is comprised of a vav and two yud’s. which is the numerical value of 26. This also corresponds to Hashem’s Name of YKVK, whose gematria is 26. If you look closer at the letter aleph, you will see a yud above with a vav in the middle, and a yud below. The yuds above and below represent the heavens and earth, while the vav in the middle represents the connection/joining of heaven and earth, spiritual and physical, which again are unified by God’s singular Presence. The literal meaning of the letter Aleph comes from the world l’aleph to learn or to teach. The passuk in Iyov 33:3 says, “v’a’aleph’cha chochma, I will teach you wisdom.” The modern Hebrew word ulpan, classes that teach people Hebrew, comes from this. Hashem is always teaching, in a sense schooling the world, by His Divine providence offering lessons for our everyday lives. The letter Aleph is one of the only two letters in Hebrew which can be used as a silent letter. This hints to the idea that Hashem is hidden in the world, often silent at times and cannot be seen. If you rearrange the letter aleph you get the word pellah which means a wonder! God is the Pellah Elyon, highest wonder of the world. In a certain way you can say that mankind is ultimately left wondering about God because He can’t be seen. One of the reasons that the letter Aleph appears at the beginning of the Aleph-Beis is to teach us the important of learning, and specifically Torah study. We are not to do miztvos by rote, but always learn and take our understanding to a higher level. As the Aleph represents Hashem, it contains no hard-consonant sounds. This represents the nature of the Divine, which cannot be seen and in a certain way is fluid. Hashem’s name is ineffable, meaning too great to be expressed or described in words. Hashem created the world “Yesh Mi’ayin, something from nothing.” Prior to this, Hashem’s light was “Ain Sof, unending.” He refracted His light and constricted His Divine Presence in order for the creation process to take place. The letter Aleph represents the way that Hashem created the world. Elokus, Ohr, and Ain Sof all begin with an aleph. Therefore, the Ramak and others learn that the Aleph corresponds to the highest level of all the sefiros, Divine emanations, as well as being the first to be formed at the creation of the world, which is the world of Keter, Crown. Last but not least, according to the ba’alei mussar, the word adom, meaning man, is really a hybrid word. Dom means blood. Without our neshamos we’re just sinews and blood. Attaching the aleph of Hashem to it results in the human race, which can strive for the Divine.

Son birkaç bölümdür, üç farklı gözyaşı türü ve üç farklı ağlama çeşidi üzerine konuşuyordum. O halde artık soğan doğrarken neden ağladığınıza değinebiliriz. Biz insanlar, soğan bitkisini 7000 yıldır yetiştirmekteyiz.  Mısırlılar, küresel şekli ve iç içe sarılı dairesel katmanları sebebi ile soğanın evreni ve sonsuz yaşamı simgelediğine inanırlardı. 4. Ramses’in mumyasının göz boşluklarında soğanlar bulunmuştur. Kaynak: iStockphoto İngilizcesi "onion" olak soğan isminin kökeni muhtemelen Latince “bir” (1 sayısı) anlamına gelen unus tur. Bugün soğan dünyanın tüm mutfaklarında ve tariflerinde çok yaygın olarak kullanılmaktadır. Peki, soğan gibi bir bitki neden tahriş edici kimyasallar üretir? Cevabı şudur: hayvanlar tehlikeden uzaklaşmak için hareket edebilirken, bitkiler hareket edemezler. Böylece soğan, aç otoburları kendinden uzak tutabilmek için tahriş edici kimyasallar üretmek üzere evrilmiştir. (E.N: Zira o bir meyve değil, köktür) Şu da var ki, bir mantar türü, bu durumu soğan aleyhine çevirmeyi başarmış ve soğanın ürettiği tahriş edici kimyasalın izini sürmenin yolunu bulmak üzere evrilmiştir. Soğanı bulur ve saldırır, çünkü bu kimyasal mantarı rahatsız etmez. Ama çoğu durumda, tahriş edici kimyasal görevini yerine getirir ve otoburu bitkiden uzak tutar. Bir soğan kesildiğinde veya kırıldığında hücreleri parçalanır ve saçılır. Ardından 3 aşamalı bir kimsasal süreç meydana gelir. Son aşama rahatsız edici, uçucu ve sülfür içeren bir gazın havaya salınmasıdır. Sülfür, yetişmesi esnasında soğan tarafından kökleri aracılığı ile emilip hücrelere alınmıştır. İlk aşamada, hücrelerin kesilip parçalanmaları, “allinase” adlı enzimin salınmasını sağlar. (Bu arada, soğan oldukça büyük hücrelere sahiptir. Bu hücreler basit bir mikroskop kullanılarak kolayca gözlenebilirler.  Bu yüzden soğan bıçakla doğranırken büyük ihtimalle bıçak hücre aralarına değil, hücrelere denk gelir ve hücreleri parçalar veya onlara hasar verir.) Daha sonra, allinase enzimi “1-propenil-L-sistein sülfoxid” adlı bir diğer kimyasalla tepkimeye girerek, bir üçüncü kimyasal oluşturur: 1-propenilsülfenik asit. (Kimyasalların isimlerine pek takılmasanız da olur. Başka isimlere de sahipler ama ben Nature dergisinde kullanılan isimlerini kullandım.) Üçüncü aşamada, bu kimyasal tahriş edici bir gaz olan propantial S-okside  dönüşür. Bu kimyasalın diğer adı lakrimatori faktördür. Gözlerinizin yaşarmasına sebep olan bu kimyasaldır. Bu kimyasal, gözü kaplayan ve konjonktiva adı verilen zara temas ettiğinde, konjonktiva üzerinde bulunan sinir uçları tahriş olurlar. Bu sinirler beyne, gözyaşı bezlerinin yaş üretmelerini sağlayacak sinyaller gönderirler. 2002 yılında, Japon bilim insanları, soğanın biyokimyası hakkında şaşırtıcı bir şey keşfettiler. Buna göre gözlerimizin yaşarmasına sebep olan kimyasal işlem ile soğana tadını veren kimyasal işlem farklıydılar. Aralarında krosover meydana gelse de çoğunlukla birbirlerinden ayrıdırlar. Bu bilgiden yola çıkarak, soğanın genetiği ile oynayarak göz yaşartıcı etkiye sahip olmayan ama tüm diğer özellikleri ile normal bir soğanı andıran bir soğan üretilebileceklerini düşündüler. 2008 yılınca, Yeni Zelanda merkezli Tohum ve Gıda Araştırma Enstitüsü ise bu fikri gerçekleştirdi. Soğandaki göz yaşartıcı geni baskılayarak, yeni soğanın tipik bir soğan tadına sahipken, doğrarken gözlerinize batmamasını sağladılar. Araştırmaya katılan bilim adamlarından Dr. Colin Eady, göz yaşartmayan soğanın raflarda yerini alması için 10-15 yılın geçmesi gerektiğini de söyledi. Peki can yakmayan soğan piyasaya sürülene kadar geçici olarak neler yapabiliriz? Bir: Keskin bir bıçak kullanın. Soğan hücreleri oldukça büyüktür. Keskin bir bıçak, temiz bir şekilde hücreleri daha az zedeleyecek şekilde keser. Bu da daha az tahriş edici kimyasalın havaya salınması demektir. İki: Su içinde kesin. Su, tahriş edici kimyasalı ıslatır ve gözlerinize ulaşmasına engel olur.

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