Parashat Tetzaveh: PRIDE, Humility & Science in the Torah

0:00So this week's parasha, Tetzaveh, is from Exodus 27. Do you know what a parasha is? A parasha is, in essence, one part of the Torah, each part of the Bible, divided into sections for each week. So each part is called a parasha. Each week, we're all obligated to learn one of these parashot. It's parashat Tetzaveh, which is from Exodus 27. Do you know what a parasha is? A parasha is, in essence, one part of the Torah, each part of the Bible, divided into sections for each week. So each part is called a parasha. Each week, we're all obligated to learn one of these parashot. Okay. There's a few extra ones that are more than the 52 weeks of the year that we read at different parts of the year, but overall we read one parasha per week. And each part is about something else. Now this week's parasha...

1:13Unlike some of the parashiyot that we had before, which were telling us about the storyline of what was happening with Am Yisrael in Egypt, and then they left Egypt, or Avraham, Yaakov, Yitzchak, and pretty much the overall history of Yisrael, this parasha is actually God telling us that there are certain obligations that we have to do in order for us to worship Him the right way. So in this week's parashah, He's telling us how the Kohanim are supposed to dress, certain clothes that they have to make, certain structures that they have to build, and certain prayers that they have to pray in order for them to worship Him the way He decreed to do so. One thing that's very, very unique about this week's parashah, we always say that one of the proofs that the Torah is divine is that supposed to dress, certain clothes that they have to make, certain structures that they have to build, and certain prayers that they have to pray in order for them to worship Him the way He decreed to do so. One thing that's very, very unique about this week's parashah, we always say that one of the proofs that the Torah is divine is that, despite when it is, despite whether it's this year, or it's last year, or it's 20 years ago, or 20 years from now, there's always something that you can learn from that particular week's parashah that's relevant, not only to today, but is actually relevant to your life at that point. Which is something that you cannot find in any other book.

2:19Despite when it is, whether it's this year, last year, 20 years ago, or 20 years from now, there's always something you can learn from that particular week's parashah that's relevant not only to today but is actually relevant to your life at that point, which is something you cannot find in any other book. You know, none of the other religions have such a thing, and no other book out there in the world has it. It's very, very unique in this week's parashah, and one of the things that I found truly unique about this week's parashah is that it's actually specific to our group. Specific to our group. If you think about it, parashat Tetzaveh is talking about the Kohanim. It's talking about this very, very, you know, detailed parashah talking about the Kohanim, and the Kohanim were from the family of Moshe, which were actually Leviyim, but then they were called Kohanim. So there was Moshe and there was Aharon, and then there was Miriam, but the priesthood, which is what a Kohen is, was given to Aharon and his children. And Hashem said that it travels. This is unlike Judaism, which travels from the mother to the children.

3:37the priesthood, the aspect of being a Kohen, travels from father to son. Meaning that if the father is not a Kohen, is not from that gene pool, but the mother is from a Kohen pool, the child is still not a Kohen. They are both Jewish, but they are not a Kohen. This means the Kohen is a special family within the Jewish people. So one thing that I found very, very unique is that this parsha specifically talks about the Kohanim. And as you heard a few minutes ago, we have a special event today, which is for Tomer's father, for his soul to go up. And being a Kohen is something very unique, very special. And one of the best things that you can possibly do for someone that's passed... is to do mitzvot, to do good deeds that God decreed, in their name. Meaning, do what God said, whether it's learning Torah or doing the things that He told us, in their name. Now, when you do it in somebody's name, the benefit here is that the person that's doing it gets the credit, obviously, gets the mitzvah upstairs. But the person that you're doing it in the name of also gets it. So it's just like, it's not like something in the material world.

5:02If, let's say, for example, we have $100,000, and I say, okay, you know what, we should split it amongst a group of five. So if we split it amongst a group of five, each person is going to get $20,000, and pretty much the guy that actually had the original $100,000 is losing $80,000, really. So yeah, maybe he's happy for about half a second that everybody has a smile on their face, but about half a second later, he's very upset because he just lost $80,000. With a spiritual thing, it's like fire. If you ever notice that if you take one candle that has fire on it, and you take another candle that doesn't have fire on it, and you exchange, and you put the two together, then both of them have fire, but the one that had fire stays exactly the same. It doesn't lose fire. So spirituality can only grow. It cannot shrink. And that's one of the beautiful things about mitzvot and the amazing things that Hashem gave us. If we involve other people, to do what God said, we benefit even more than us doing it by ourselves. Because, number one, we are still doing it, and number two, we're getting the credit for encouraging somebody else to do it. So now, instead of you having one fire, you have two fires, or ten fires, or twenty fires. So, making one other person religious, instead of you just doing mitzvot, even if you're the biggest tzaddik in the world—which tzaddik means righteous.

6:27even if you're the most righteous person in the world, and you do everything that God said, and your entire day is consumed with Torah and mitzvot, and doing everything that God said, your whole day, from morning to night, everything you're doing is perfect. But you're by yourself. And then there's another person, maybe he doesn't necessarily do as much as you, but he does a lot. But he encourages 500 other people to do mitzvot. He's going to have a lot more credit than you. Why? Because it's him times 500. And those 500 are going to encourage other people. It's another 500. Another 500 could be a whole nation. So he's making a chain. He's making a huge event that's changing the world. And that's part of our mission in life as Jews—to make the world better. The Jews are not just a chosen people because God said, "Listen, you're special and someone else isn't." That's not... everyone that's in this world is God's creation. Whether they're Jews, Catholics, Christians, or Arabs, everything is God's creation. But the Jews were called the Chosen People because we have, number one, a special deal with Hashem that we have to do certain things, and in return, He will not only reward us, but He will also protect us. So if we know throughout history, we have

7:52Every major civilization has tried to destroy us, whether it's the Egyptians, the Romans, the Greeks, the Turks, the Germans, the Spanish, the Arabs. Name them, they've tried to destroy Israel. And now, none of them exist, with the exception of one. It's a matter of time. Thank you. None of them exist, but the Jews are still here. This small, tiny, little nation comprised of 13 or 14 million people. If you think about it, the fact that 14 million people make that much of a change in the world by itself is a miracle. It by itself shows that they're a holy nation. Because if you look at the entire world, you have over 7 billion people. Now, when they're calculating 7 billion people, the people that are doing this math are saying that it's either 7 billion or maybe 7 billion 80 million. So it could be give or take 80 million. So the 13, 14 million Jews out there are like not even a statistical mistake, a statistical error, in the grand scheme of things. But yet you hear about the Jews in Israel every day, more than any other nation out there. So it's amazing. To be part of that nation by itself is special. So that deal that we have with Hashem is that we're going to have protection forever. We're going to survive forever, regardless of what...

9:14Nations try to go against us. We have Hashem on our side. The other thing that we have is that we have a special obligation that we are here to make the world a better place. Not only amongst ourselves, but also amongst the other nations. So Hashem sent us as part of our exile after they destroyed the Beit HaMikdash about 2,000 years ago. Hashem said that He's going to spread us into the four corners of the world. One of the reasons that He spread us amongst the four corners of the world is because, aside from it being a punishment of not having our own country for a couple of thousand years, everything that Hashem does is for the good. So in this aspect, what He said is that I'm going to spread you around every corner of the world where you will always find a Jew in every location in the world because I want you to influence the world and bring them closer to Me. So part of our mission in this world is actually to, number one, influence the world, to be monotheistic, meaning to believe in one God, and, two, even convert some of the people who are not Jewish, bringing them closer to Hashem and making them part of our nation. So, as Jews, we always have to remember that when we're walking around, unlike someone who is not Jewish, who can do what they want, and it's between them and Hashem, we have an additional responsibility.

10:39We have an obligation, not only to Him, but also to everyone around us, because what we do, everyone is watching us. So we have an obligation to make sure that everything that we do is something that we realize that we are expected to be on a higher standard. So one of the things we learn from this parsha is that we learn about the kohanim. And again, it's relevant to our group, but aside from that, this parsha has something very unique about it, where... Since the book of Exodus started, Sefer Shemot, until the end of the Torah, until the end of the Five Books of Moses, Moshe is mentioned in every single parasha. Why Moshe? Because Moshe obviously gave his entire life for Am Yisrael. He was the only one who spoke to Hashem face to face. He went to Har Sinai. He received the Torah. He received the Aseret HaDibrot. I mean, he was the leader of Am Yisrael. He gave his entire life up for Am Yisrael.

11:40This is the only parasha where he's not mentioned. So people sometimes don't notice this because they're used to seeing him every week. But in this week, they're only mentioning Aharon. They're mentioning Aharon's sons. But they're not mentioning Moshe. Even though some of the things that are here are actually relevant to him. But they're not mentioning him by name. So there are a couple of reasons for this. First, the reason we learn is from next week's parashah. Next week's parashah is a very, very important one. It's Parashat Ki Tisa. Ki Tisa is the sin, as after we got the first set of Ten Commandments, Israel sinned by building the golden calf and worshipping the golden calf. So in that parashah, obviously, Hashem wanted to destroy all of Israel. And Moshe went back up to, after destroying, after breaking the first set of Ten Commandments, he went back up to the mountain and asked Hashem for forgiveness. Initially, Hashem did not want to forgive. And what He said to Moshe is that, "I will build a nation from you. You're a tzaddik. You're righteous. You didn't sin. You're My chosen one. Let Me kill them and I'll start a whole new nation from you." Any normal person would say, "Sure."

13:08Even better, you're just starting a nation for me, then it's not going to be any problems, because they know that for sure I'm the leader. Here, you have some people questioning it. We'll learn in a few parashot, in a few weeks, we'll learn Parashat Korach, where there's another person, a big chacham, wasn't a fool, he was a big sage, who was also very, very wealthy and ended up becoming an enemy of Moshe and Hashem. Because he wanted to be the leader. So not everybody necessarily, even though Moshe took everyone out of Egypt with Hashem's help, obviously, and he was the leader, not everybody necessarily is listening to him. So when Hashem tells him, "Listen, I'm going to kill everybody, and I'll start something with you," you would think, sure, why not? Okay, fine. I'll have fewer problems. But instead, Moshe did something that's not natural.

14:09He did something that makes him who he is, makes him the most significant human being that ever existed in history. And he said that if You don't forgive them, if You don't want to forgive them, and You're going to kill them, make sure that You erase me from Your book Yourself. Myself. I don't want my name to appear in Your book. I don't want anyone to ever be reminded that I even existed. And be reminded that I was a leader that failed the nation. So that's one reason why his name is not mentioned in this parasha. Now, why this parasha specifically, not any one of the other ones, is because this parasha always happens to fall under this week, Zayin B'Adar. And Zayin B'Adar... is Yahrzeit, his askara. That's the day that he died. Born and died. So, this parasha always happens to fall under his askara, his memorial. The second reason is even more unique. So you would think, okay, you know what? If Moshe said,

15:31take my name off, obviously Hashem said, okay, you know what, I don't want to take your name out, and I'm going to forgive them, and I'm going to give them back the Torah, and the Ten Commandments, and everything is brand new again. But still, Moshe said something that's very strong to Hashem, obviously you can't just talk to Hashem like he's your buddy. So there was a minimal punishment there, where his name had to be removed from one of the parashot. So why choose this one? Why not any other one? Why the memorial of his birthday and his death day? It's because Moshe was trying to teach all of us something very, very critical to our lives, which is humility. Someone that has humility can get close to Hashem. very, very close to Hashem. Someone that has a lot of pride is repulsed by Hashem, meaning Hashem cannot stand that person. Someone that thinks that they are better than everybody else and wants everyone to give them special respect and treat them in a special way, which unfortunately in our generation is very, very common. In all generations it's been around, but in our generation specifically, people want

16:57People like to have pride. Their entire life is consumed with pride. That's the reason why people spend so much time making money—because they want to have more money than everybody else, so everyone knows that they're the richest. They spend so much time chasing women because they want to make sure that they have the most beautiful woman, so everybody looks at their woman and they feel special. They want to have a special position at a company or in the government because they want everyone to give them respect since they're the boss. People want pride. Anyone that spends their life searching for pride, at the same time, the spiritual connection that Hashem is supposed to have with each human being runs away from them. Runs away from them. Why? Why? Because Hashem is telling us there can only be one God. So if you think you're something special... If you think that you're better than everybody else, then in essence, you think that you're the Creator. You think that you're the one making the money. I'm not giving you the money. You're making the money through your hard work. You're doing all these wonderful things. It's not Me that's giving it to you. So in essence, you think that you're somewhat of a god. You think that you're in control of your life. I'm not in control of your life. So if you think you're a god, and I know I'm God, there can't be two gods, so we can't be in the same room.

18:20The same thing with Pharaoh, Paro. Paro is exactly. It was the same. Same exact thing. Every major leader in history that's, you know, in those nations has had that issue, whether it was Hitler or it was Paro or even some of the people that are running governments today. It's people love pride. They like these special respects. And you've had wars started over that both through countries and friendships. Sometimes you have... entire families breaking up just because of pride. One guy says, "I don't want to call him because he didn't call me last time." So they stopped talking for five years because one guy forgot to call the other guy. And this is one of the most foolish things in the world, but unfortunately, it's very, very common in our life. So Moshe, as great as he was, had the most, the deepest connection with Hashem, was the only human being to speak to Hashem while he was awake. The other people that are mentioned in the Torah who have spoken to Him were always either sleeping or meditating. They were not awake. Moses was speaking to Him like you and I are speaking to each other. Now, obviously, God doesn't have a body, doesn't have a face, doesn't have any type of thing that we can look at. But when they say "speak face to face," they don't mean a physical face to face. It means that he was awake and alert and walking around or sitting, but just in essence speaking to Him normally like you and I are speaking, just without seeing Him.

19:41This is one of the mistakes that some religions make, thinking that God has a living body of some kind and that people spoke to Him. That's a complete mistake. God does not have a body. It's actually one of the core foundations of believing in God that He does not have a body. He's not human or anything remotely close to human. So now, Moses was the only one who ever spoke to Him that way. He was the smartest. He knew the most Torah. He knew everything. And on top of that, he was rich and he was a king. No human being has ever had more than he did, but yet he was the most humble. He had the most humility. Why? Because he knew who he was standing next to. He knew that God is the great Creator who gave him everything, and that in a second He could take everything. So a couple of weeks ago, we had a verse where the nation of Israel is complaining to Moses and Aharon, and he's saying to them, what are we? We're nothing. Complain to Hashem. Tell Him. So he's saying, we're nothing. We're not even something that you should even complain to. We're not existent. We're just human beings. He's not even considering himself a human being. He's just considering himself absolutely nothing. Complain to the Great One. Don't complain to me. Same thing, something similar that Avraham said. Avraham said, what am I? I'm just dust.

21:09King David, also one of the greatest human beings in history, said, "I am just like a worm." So you see, you notice, one of the great things about the sages in the Torah, the ones that had the most to be prideful about, had the deepest connection with Hashem, but at the same time, they were the most humble. And that's part of the reason why they had such a deep connection with Hashem, because Hashem says that if you have humility, I want to be next to you. I want to be part of your life. If you don't have humility, we have nothing to talk about. So Moshe is telling us that on a day that usually people would want others to remember them, I don't want you to even think about me. I only want you to think about Hashem. Think about this parasha and learn about the important mitzvah. that we need to do in Beit HaMikdash. I don't want you to think about me at all, especially on a day that usually people want others to think about them. I don't want you to think about me. I want you to think about Hashem. Remove me from that equation. And the other lesson that it teaches us is that sometimes people do good things. They give tzedakah.

22:25they give all types of help to people, but they also want people to know that they did it. So, somebody that donated a lot of money to a hospital wants one of the buildings to be called in their name. Somebody that donated money to the Beit Knesset wants the entire synagogue community to know about it. Somebody that did anything always wants everyone to know about it. What Moshe is teaching us here is that Number one, if you're going to do something special, you don't need to publicize it to everyone. It's actually better that you don't. But the other thing is, is that Moshe, just like any of the other big sages, was sent to this world with a specific mission. And even until this day, with all the Torah that we've learned, we still don't know exactly how much they really did. Because what we know is only a small part of what they did. Because they didn't publicize everything. And Moshe is telling us, listen, if you're going to be a tzaddik, you're going to be righteous, you're going to do good things, you don't necessarily need to get them officially recognized. God knows. That's enough. So on the day that you're supposed to remember me and that everybody wants to generally remember, it's, you know, there's a lot of things that I did that you don't know. So be reminded of that.

23:40So I know that with Tomer's father, God bless him, I'm sure he did a lot of really, really amazing things that even his own family doesn't know, and the community doesn't know. And the beauty of it is that you see that that is the stuff that we take to Shamayim, that is the stuff that counts, and that's what Hashem considers special. So there's a lot of things that we do in our life, and sometimes we want to tell people because we're proud of it. It's better off that the Boss knows and that's it. And that's one of the things that I found right away, right in the beginning of this parasha, that's special about it, that's relevant to us. Not just to human beings in general, but to us specifically, to our group. The other thing that's also interesting, and this talks about the Kohanim, it talks about a lot of different things, about how they have to wear certain clothes. But first, it tells Moshe... that, even though it doesn't mention his name, and you shall speak to the wise-hearted people whom I have invested with a spirit of wisdom, and they shall make vestments for Aharon to sanctify him, to minister to Me. So in essence, Hashem is telling us that He's given a certain type of people a special type of wisdom

25:09and a special type of spirituality that you will not be able to find in any other Jew. Now, when we talk about spirituality, we can say, okay, listen, you know, there are several tzaddikim in the world, they are special people, they have a certain type of memory, certain knowledge. Great. But how can we prove it physically? One of the things that we learned in recent science over the last 15 or so years is that There are a lot of things that are in the Torah that are scientific that we weren't able to prove until the last 20 or 30 years because we didn't have the tools. There was a scientist by the name of Carl Skorecki and another scientist, Dr. David Goldstein, and another scientist, Dr. Neil Bradman, who heard about this and heard about this and said, "You know what, these tribe of Kohanim, they're the priests, they're the special ones in Am Yisrael. Is there something physical? Spiritual, okay, it's a matter of belief or not believing. Either you believe it's right or you don't believe it's right. But is there something physical that we can prove that makes them special?" And after several years of research, they found something physical.

26:34As you all know, we talked about the DNA of human beings. The DNA of all creatures has the same basic foundation. DNA is comprised of two lines that are squiggly lines that go against each other, and then there's the chromosomes in there and the bridges that put them together. Now, all human beings have the same basic DNA. The difference between males and females is the number of chromosomes that they have in it. There's the X chromosome and Y chromosome. Not to go too deep into the science part of it, but the unique part is what these scientists found out is that the Kohanim, the people that are 80% of all the Kohanim, they've tested hundreds of them, 80% of all the Kohanim, all the people that have Kohanim lineage, and not all of them necessarily have the last name Cohen, They're just from that family. There are Katz, Katz, and several other names. But anyway, they know themselves that they're from the Kohen tribe. And they tested it. Over 80% of them have a gene within their DNA called a...

27:57CHD or something like that. It's a different gene within their DNA, distinct from all of mankind. All Jews, all human beings, everyone. And it's a physical proof something that Hashem wrote over 3,000 years ago. One from Russia, one from Yemen, one from... Right, exactly. And these people came from all over the world. It's not like they all live in Israel, they all live in America. These people are from all over the world. They don't even know each other. They're not even related to each other. They don't know that the other person exists. They tested people from all over the world. he said that over 80% of them have a different DNA than every other human being in the world, and all of them have this exact same mark. In essence, it's like God put a signature in that DNA, specifically in those people that's different than everybody else. So how do you explain that 20% or so that don't have it? Over the last few thousand years, a lot of people have had intermarriage, they married into different families,

29:05And what happened is that sometimes people, like we talked about before, have pride issues. They want pride, so they want the Kohen name, but they don't want to necessarily follow the Kohen decrees that they need to do. They don't want to follow the mitzvot and the things that they do. So as I said before, the aspect of being a Kohen travels from the father to the son, not from the mother. So sometimes you had people not married into a father that's a Kohen. father to another Jew, but not a Kohen, but they still decided to call themselves Kohen. Because they knew that that family is special. So you have several, you know, quite a few people that are not really Kohanim, but call themselves Kohanim. So when the Mashiach comes, he's going to know exactly, without doing any DNA checking, obviously, he's going to know exactly who's a Kohen and who's not. Because those are the people that are going to be the ones that are going to be running the Beit HaMikdash. The holy temple of God that's going to be built, the third one is HaMikdash. So this is a unique thing to learn about, how it's a physical proof that we can see with our own eyes of how the Torah, which was written 3,300 years ago, put something into us that no human could have known back then. We didn't have the science or anything else to know such a thing. So it's not like they had the equipment or the technology to do it.

30:33So then it talks about the different clothing, the robe that the Kohanim have to wear. Now, there are two types of Kohanim. There's the Kohen Gadol, which is the chief, the chief Kohen, and then there's the regular Kohanim. There's only one chief, and then the rest of them are regular. The clothing that the two wear, the regular ones wear four garments, four pieces of clothing. The Kohen Gadol, which is the chief—in this case, the first one was Aharon, Moshe's brother—wore eight pieces of clothing. And he also wore this breastplate. This breastplate had something... The breastplate had many unique aspects. We'll talk about it in a second. So the Kohen Gadol... He was the priest of everyone. He was the chief, in essence, and all the others were below him. Once he passed on, if he had a son, it would immediately go to his son. His son would have priority over any of the others. Even if perhaps some of the others were smarter, wiser, and so on, it still would go directly to his son first before anyone else was picked.

31:56What's the significance of the Kohen Gadol? We learn in this parasha that the Kohen Gadol was the only one that was able to go into this room called the Holy of Holies, Kodesh HaKodashim, during Yom Kippur, which was five minutes where he had a one-on-one with God. Very dangerous. And he pretty much had to beg for forgiveness for the entire nation for those five minutes. And if he had one bad thought, just one bad thought, just one negative thought, he would instantly die. So it wasn't exactly the job for some regular person. This person had to be extremely pure. They could not have even one bad thought. So they would train and focus the entire year just for these five minutes. No one else could enter this room. What would happen is that they would actually have a chain connected to his leg because, in case he did die, they couldn't go in there because they would die also. So they would have to pull his body out. So this position is not a regular position. This is the highest of high positions. The only one that was higher than the Kohen Gadol was Moshe Rabbeinu. But after that, there wasn't anyone else. After Moshe Rabbeinu, there wasn't anyone else. So the Kohen Gadol was somebody very, very special.

33:18Unfortunately, during, you know, we had two Batei Mikdash. We had the first one, we had the second one. The first one was built by King Solomon. It lasted 410 years, and there was about a 70-year break. And then we built the second one, which was built by Ezra, and it lasted for 420 years. And the first Beit HaMikdash had the most special things in it. It had the original Ten Commandments in there. The second ones that we got were the same thing, but not... The first ones were literally written by God. The second ones, Moshe made, just following what God said. So they were extremely holy, but one degree less, or several degrees less. But still, we had both of them. We had the original Sefer Torah in there. And we had this ointment, which we'll talk about in a few minutes. There was a special ointment that... each person that became either a kohen gadol or actually specifically a king would have to have this ointment on them, which is a spiritual ointment that was one of the creations during the first six days of creation. This ointment, we'll talk about it in a minute, is actually one of the things, believe it or not, that creates the biggest confusion in history. This ointment, this oil, just because of what it's called.

34:47And a few other things that were in the first Beit HaMikdash. The second Beit HaMikdash did not have these things, because after the Beit HaMikdash, during the last days of the Beit HaMikdash, of the first one, the... they saw that the city was being attacked, and eventually it was going to be destroyed, so they hid these things. And they weren't able to find them during the second Beit HaMikdash. So even though the second Beit HaMikdash was extremely holy, and holier than anything else we have in this entire world, it wasn't as great as the first one. The third one, B'ezrat Hashem, that's going to be built when Mashiach comes, is going to be more than anything else we've ever had. But until then, we have this missing part. So, now we have... The Kohen Gadol, in the first Beit HaMikdash, were extremely holy. There was a certain process, and they tell us the number of Kohanim that we've had throughout those 410 years was very few because each person lasted a long time. In the second Beit HaMikdash, though less holy but still holy, we had over 300 of them in a matter of 420 years.

36:01much, you know, 500% more. And the second time, even though it was only around for 10 more years—the first one was 410 years, the second one was 420 years—you would guess that the two would have, let's say, if the first one had 40 during 400 years, the second one should have 40. Or 50, maybe 60, but why 300? Why so many more? Unfortunately, what happened during the second one is that people had The disease of pride. Same problem we talked about in the beginning of this parasha. So people that were very, very wealthy, they were very, very rich. What they would do is that they would buy the position of being the Kohen Gadol. Now, to teach us how sick someone can be when they have so much pride, the degree of how crazy they can be, is that they wanted to buy not just to be a Kohen; they wanted to be the Kohen Gadol. which means that every year they would have to go to this room, to the Holy of Holies, and be there for five minutes and survive five minutes without having one holy thought. And there's a very big chance they're going to die. Now, I don't care how much money somebody has or how rich they are.

37:17or how, what, you know, anything else. Everyone knows, at the end of the day, they can tell everyone what they are, they can pretend they're a big tzaddik and everything else. At the end of the day, you look at yourself in the mirror, you know who you really are. So these people obviously knew who they really were. They knew they weren't big tzaddikim. They knew they weren't big righteous people. But they still had so much pride that they still wanted that position, even if it was only for a few months, because the minute Yom Kippur arrived, they would go into that room and they would die instantly. So even though they knew they were going to die, just to have the kavod for those few months was enough for them to give up their life. That's how crazy people are when it comes to pride. And that's why Hashem can't stand it, because it's such a disaster that someone is willing to give up everything just for somebody to honor them. And that's one of the foundational lessons we have, not just from this parasha, but from all of history. Because you see the ones that always fell were the ones that had a lot of pride. The ones that were humble, generally you see them having a connection with Hashem that's deeper than anything else and achieving their purpose. I'm not saying their life was easy, but they definitely achieved their purpose.

38:43and they're remembered much better. So while the ones that are worrying about pride want to do everything that they're doing just so everybody remembers them, people only remember them for bad things. The ones that are very, very humble and have a lot of humility, people remember them, but they only remember them for good things. So they're not even worrying about what everybody thinks, and the best part about it is that everybody ends up thinking about them anyway. So that's something that's very unique because, again, we spend our whole life trying to be number one, but in reality, if we just listen to the instructions that Hashem gave us, we can be number one without all the headaches and nonsense that we deal with. So that's another amazing lesson we have. The other thing is, also, when we talk about the choshen, the breastplate, Hashem tells us something about this that He also told us about the Beit HaMikdash.

39:43He told us that, you know, He wanted this breastplate. It has these two stones on each shoulder that have the names of the 12 tribes. And then it has these 12 stones made of different jewels. One was a diamond, one was an emerald, and so on, different types of jewels. This is the biggest Kohen, the Kohen Gadol, yeah. The chief. Right, the chief Kohen. would wear this breastplate, and it had each different stone, with each stone having a different tribe's name. There were the 12 tribes: Reuven, Yehuda, and so on. Levi, Shimon... So each tribe had their own name, their own stone. Also, this Choshen, this breastplate, had a pocket in it, which they put something called the Urim and Tumim. The Urim and Tumim were something that had Hashem's real name on them.

41:05And this is what put the breastplate into what made it work, in essence. And what did it do? This breastplate was the way that Am Yisrael was able to speak to Hashem without Moshe. Not everybody was a prophet. Not everybody was able to talk to Hashem. So the Kohen Gadol was able to speak to Hashem, especially during times of war and during times of need. So what happened is they would ask a question. For example, we're going to war. Which tribe out of the twelve tribes should be the first ones to go to battle? So the Kohen Gadol would ask this question. Immediately, the stone that has Judah's name on it, let's say he's the tribe that was chosen, would be lit up. And then the letters, the Urim and Tumim, would make the letters spell out a word.

42:05spell out a word with the letters that are on it, would spell out a word. So, for example, it would say, "Yehudah Ya'aleh," meaning Judah should lead. So this is the thing that made the, it wasn't, the Choshen, the breastplate, wasn't just for beauty. It was something, it was a direct connection with Hashem. It's like having Hashem on speed dial. Or text messaging. Another amazing thing scientifically about this breastplate that we learned is that Hashem told us to do something with the breastplate, and the way they made it is the same way they built the Beit HaMikdash. Hashem said that the Beit HaMikdash and this breastplate are holy and are supposed to bring peace to the world. They're supposed to create peace and life, not death. So that means He did not want steel to ever touch them.

43:06Now, if you look around the world, anytime that you want to put a nail into a wall, what do you use? You use a hammer. What's a hammer made out of? Steel. You go to war, what do you use for a war? You use a sword. You want to build a building, you build it with steel. Everything is made of steel. You want to cut anything, you use steel. Hashem says, I want you to make all of these things. I want you to build the Beit HaMikdash, cut every stone in a precise way. You can't just put any stone there. The Beit HaMikdash was very, very precise. It gave us the exact measurements of how to build it. Each stone had to be a certain size. Each stone had to be a certain difference between it. It was a very, very, very deep analysis of what was put into this Beit HaMikdash. And the same thing goes into something that seems simple, like the breastplate, the choshen. And He told us that I want you to cut this precise measurement of each stone. He tells us which stones to use. And each one had to be a certain size, and the size differed between each one. But you could not use metal to cut them. So how do you cut stone or anything without metal? What we learned about today, in our world today, is that you can cut things with lasers. And one of the things we also use today is radiation.

44:30Now, if the sages of that day would come and see us today, and they would see the radiation that we use to cut things and for different technologies like medical equipment and things of that nature, they would say, ah, the technology that you're using is artificial, meaning you made it. We had the original. What was the original? It was a special worm. A worm like a bug called Shamir. And this worm generated radiation. They were able to direct it to cut these stones and make everything without metal ever touching anything. It's actually both of these scientific things that I told you about in that book that I gave you, the... Zamir Cohen's book. The book that I gave you over there, both of these things you'll see more. It's an amazing tool that they keep the worm in a box of Oferet. How do you know Oferet? Like you go to Rengen, you know. If you have a problem, Rengen, so you put on a vest of Oferet. Yeah, they put them in a very, very simple box because if they put them into a metal box, it would cut through the metal. Yeah.

45:56So the only thing that the thing can cut through is something that was very simple, very ordinary. I thought it was lead. No, no, no, not lead. It's not lead. It's not metal. It's not a metal. It's a... It's a lead. Lead? Lead is not a metal. The lead is this. Lead? I think it's something else, but anyway, I know there was also a... a certain food product in it. I forgot the... Actually, you know what? Let me ask you a question. The book talks about the Shamir. Do you have scientific proof? No, the Shamir, we don't have scientific proof because they don't exist anymore. So what does it talk about in the book? How did they cut the stone? It talks about it. It shows you different verses from the Torah about the Shamir. So here it was.

47:03How is the Shamir worm stored? After the Temple was destroyed, the Shamir ceased to exist. It existed since the six days of creation. When placed upon a stone or a beam, they split apart like the pages of a book. When placed on iron, the metal broke apart and fell away. Nothing could withstand it. How did they store it? They wrapped it in soft wool. It wasn't lead. Yeah, I knew it. It was soft wool. It existed since the six days of creation. When placed upon a stone or a beam, they split apart like the pages of a book. When placed on iron, the metal broke apart and fell away. Nothing could withstand it. How did they store it? They wrapped it in soft wool. It wasn't lead. Yeah, I knew it. It was soft wool. Tzemel, not lead. Soft wool and filled in a barley bran. Barley. Barley is what you put in food. No, no, this is what it is. It's barley and wool. It was not lead. Lead is a metal. There's a story of Shlomo HaMelech. I don't know if you've ever heard of it.

48:04...where he didn't know, he was building the Beit HaMikdash. How to build it? He didn't know where to find the Shamir. And he went to a bird, a bird told him. He asked the sages, he asked the sages, how can we build the Beit HaMikdash if we can't use metal? And they said, the Gemara says, it says that we have to use... the worm, the Shamir worm, just like Moses had in Har Sinai. And they found it. They found this worm. And that's how they cut all the stones in the Choshen and also in the Beit HaMikdash. So it’s definitely amazing things that you see that we have in the Torah that are pretty amazing. Again, every time Every week, I try to find different things that are not only relevant to our life, but also I tell you guys that anything that's of any good in this world has to come from the Torah. Nothing is new. The Torah says, "Nothing new has been created under the sun," meaning that man has never invented anything. They may have innovated, but they never actually invented. Nothing was created by man.

49:30And anything that we have that's any good has to have a source in Torah. Whether it's a saying, like for example, there's a famous saying, "Don't judge a book by its cover." So I told the guy the story a few days ago. It's a very good story. There's a big sage named Ibn Ezra. was a huge sage, a giant chacham, had so much Torah in him, it was amazing. But what he didn't have was mazal. He said himself, that if he started a business of hats, people would be born without heads. If he started a business of umbrellas, it would stop raining. And if he started a cemetery, people would stop dying. That's how little mazal he had.

50:31So, Ibn Ezra was very, very poor. One day, Ibn Ezra goes to a shul. He wants to say something. He wants to teach a little bit. But they look at him and how he looks. These are all rich, successful people, and they look at him. He's a poor guy. They don't think he knows anything. They say, "No, no, no, no, no. Get out of here. Get out of here." They kick him out. He says, "Oh, okay. You want to do this to me? I'm going to teach you a lesson." So, the next week... He goes into the market and he sees this guy dressed nicely. He starts talking to him. And the guy, he's like, "You know Torah?" He goes, "No, I don't know anything about Torah." He goes, "Well, what do you do?" He goes, "I sell meat." So, the regular meat salesman. But the guy had a little bit of money. He goes, "Okay, listen, how much do you make a month? Let's say just for argument's sake, for the example." He goes, "I make $2,000 a month." He says to him, "You want to make $200,000 in one month?" Yeah, of course. He says, "Okay, come with me and just do whatever I tell you." So the guy wears a suit, has a big stomach, beard, looks the part. So he comes back to the shul with Ibn Ezra. And again they see Ibn Ezra. They go, "No, no, no." He goes, "No, it's not for me. I'm not here for myself. I just brought this big, giant tzaddik from out of town." So who is this guy?

52:00No, no, he's a big tzaddik. He's so righteous that you guys are not on a level that you can hear his voice. So everything that he says, he has to tell me, and I have to tell you. Like, really, how wise is this man? How wise is this man? He's like, listen, ask whatever you want, and he's going to tell me. So they ask him a difficult question. And... He reaches out to the meat seller. He reaches out to the meat seller, and the meat seller doesn't say anything in his ear. And the Ibn Ezra obviously knows the answer, so he tells him the answer.

53:04Okay, so he reaches out to him. The guy doesn't know anything, obviously pretends like he's whispering something into his ear. He doesn't say anything. The Ibn Ezra knows the whole Torah. So he tells him, "Okay, this is the answer." Then they ask him another question. He pretends like he's listening to the guy and gives him another answer. Another answer, another answer, another answer. Like, wow, this guy's a giant chacham. They start donating money to him. This one guy says $1,000, $2,000, $5,000. $1,000, $2,000. They start giving him money. Four days in a row they're asking questions and Ibn Ezra is giving him one answer after another, after another, after another. They've never seen anything like this. So after four days, they got the $200,000. All the richest people in the city came to see this giant chacham. And they see this guy, this big guy with this poor man next to him. And the guy doesn't speak. He only talks to the poor man. And the poor man is giving them all the answers. So after four days, Ibn Ezra tells the meat seller, he goes, listen, we got the $200,000 that I promised you. I'm leaving. I proved my point.

54:31He goes, "No, what do you mean? You're leaving? I made $200,000 in four days. Look how much money we can make in another month!" He goes, "No, okay, you make it. I'm leaving. I don't need this money. It's not for me." He goes, "Okay, but what do I do? I don't know any Torah." He goes, "Listen, they're going to ask you three questions." He goes, "What are the three questions?" He goes, "One question, one guy's going to come to you and say, 'Listen, I want to divorce my wife.' He goes, 'Okay, so what do I tell him?' You tell him, 'Come back next week.'" His wife comes back next week, goes, ah, because he goes home for a week, after a week he's going to get along with his wife, he's going to forget he wanted to divorce her. So the guy is a fool, he doesn't know anything, so he's repeating, come back next week, come back next week, come back next week, come back next week. Over and over and over again. He goes, okay, the second question I'm going to ask you, somebody's going to tell you, they're going to say, listen, I dropped my tefillin, what do I do? And you tell them, pick it up, kiss it, and give tzedakah. Tzedakah. So the guy's like, pick it up, kiss it, give tzedakah. Pick it up, kiss it, tzedakah. Pick it up, repeating over and over. He's a fool. He doesn't know anything. He's repeating it over and over and over again. The third question they're going to ask you is, listen, I have this meat. I slaughtered this animal. I don't know if it's kosher. He says, put the lungs in the water. If there's a bubble, it's not kosher, treif. If there's no bubble, it's kosher. Put it in the water.

56:00If there's a bubble, it's not kosher. If there's no bubble, it's kosher. He repeats it over and over and over again. Okay, if it has what it says, okay, I'm leaving. Goodbye. So this meat seller, like I told you guys several times, he's a fool. He confused all the questions. So a few days later, somebody comes to him and says, listen, I dropped my tefillin. So you tell him to come back next week. Another guy comes to him and says, Listen, I have meat. How do I know it's kosher? He goes, pick it up, kiss it, and give tzedakah. Instead of putting it in the water. And another guy says, listen, I want to divorce my wife. He goes, put her in the water. If there are bubbles, there's no divorce. Completely confused. So obviously these people thought, what is this guy? This guy is crazy. He doesn't know anything. So they go after him. They start to get, what do you know? They kick him out. They go find Rebbe Eliezer. They're like, what did you do? Who did you send us over here? This guy doesn't know anything. He goes, ah, he doesn't know anything all of a sudden. When I was there, you asked him all the questions, he gave you the answers. Because you saw he's dressed nice, but it was really me who gave you the answers, the guy that's poor. He says, so he teaches us a very, very famous quote that became that quote that I just told you guys. He says, don't look at the jar. Look at what's inside it.

57:25So, modern people changed the verse a little bit, and they said, don't judge a book by its cover. But it means the same thing. Showing us that anything that's any good, anything that's any wise, has to come from the Torah. Another thing that's very interesting that I learned recently, you know, everybody sees ghosts in the movies all the time. And something that's become very, very popular, especially over the last 10 years because technology has advanced, is superheroes. You know, superheroes, Hulk, X-Men, Iron Man, all of these things. Very popular movies. So everybody gives credit to the guy that wrote the Marvel books. Wow, so innovative, amazing. So amazing that he has these ideas, such imagination. came up with these characters that have all these special strengths: Superman, this one, that one. The funny thing is that if you read the Midrash, which was written a few thousand years ago, and you read about the sons of Yaakov, the twelve tribes—Yehudah, Shimon, Yosef—and you read the Midrash of their wars with other nations, and you read about their superpowers, you see exactly where he copied it from.

58:44And some of the modern technology, like weapons and things like that, yes, but the strength and the jumping and the flying and all of that stuff existed in the Torah. Yeah, Yehudah had a special roar that they said was even more than the biggest lions. But the roar was so loud that it would make people, for example, they had a war against this one nation. And they had a big brick wall around them, and all of the soldiers from the other nation, thousands of soldiers, were standing on the walls. So Yehudah, instead of fighting them one on one, he just roared, and everybody fell off the walls. And a lot of other details. They talk about how he jumped onto the wall in one leap. So the point I'm trying to make here is that all of those superhero stories were already written a few thousand years before Marvel Comics was ever created. The Hulk. The Hulk or anything else. Naftali was one of the tribes. Superfast. Superfast.

1:00:01Very, very fast. He was able... He ran back from Egypt. Ran back and forth from Egypt. Even before that, he ran back and forth to different locations. So, super fast, super strong, big jumps. A lot of these cool stories that you read about in the Torah that... superhero, like legitimate superheroes. He put a lot of mileage on his feet. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, a lot of interesting things. So... Let's see. So the next thing is, okay, so I told you guys something about this all. Shimshon HaGibor didn't have as much strength as the 12 tribes. But in his generation, not in the generation of the 12 tribes. The 12 tribes were something different. The 12 tribes in one of the wars... that the 12 tribes had. They had seven days of battle. Seven days. Every day there was a new war. Just on the first day, they killed 12,000 of them. Only 12 of them killed over 40,000 people. The first battle—40,000 people. And not one of them got injured. 40,000 people just to start. No, no, they lived...

1:01:29There's no way you can ever compare, but I'm telling you that the 12 tribes are much higher. The generations only got lower after that. So let's say, you know, with the exception of Moshe Rabbeinu, who is the highest of high, we only got lower over these. So the next thing that we learn about in this parasha is the word I told you guys about. Anytime someone, to become a Kohen Gadol, or to become a king... You had to have this special oil, which was one of the things that was created in the first six days of creation, the special spiritual oil. What do you mean by spiritual oil? It means that after they used it and emptied out the small bottle, it was empty. They would look at the bottle a minute later, and it was full again. It would refill by itself. It wasn't an oil that they had to make. And this is the oil that Hashem decreed they have to put on each king. Now, this oil creates one of the biggest confusions in the entire world, only because of how it's called. Meaning that when they say that you have to put this oil on somebody, they say meshachta. Or, meshachta is to anoint. Anoint with the oil.

1:02:49or when they say that, for example, the Kohen Gadol had the, what's it called, had the oil, a Kohen Gadol, a Mashuach. So they called him a Mashuach. Not that he was the Mashiach, not that he was the Messiah, but meaning that he was anointed with this oil. So what happened is that people that don't speak Hebrew, the holy language, what happens with them is, is that they think that every time it says Mashiach in the Torah, it's referring to the Mashiach, meaning the one that's going to come at the end of times and at the end of the world. Like Marah, virgin, betulah, almanah. It's a different word. So this word, this word, which, you know, comes, you know, or in essence, the root of that word creates a lot of confusion.

1:03:55for people that don't know how to speak Hebrew properly, they think that any time it refers to something that's from that root of the word Mashiach, it's referring to the Mashiach, and it's not. As a matter of fact, 95% of the time that word is in the Torah, it has nothing to do with the Mashiach. It has to do with the fact that that person was anointed by God as a leader, as a king, as a Kohen Gadol, something like that. Not the Mashiach, the one that's going to come at the end of times. Maria the Virgin? Come on. Yeah, also another thing that's, for example, another example is, it's not as good, but like what you said, Eli, is the word, the New Testament that the Christians and Catholics use has been using a mistranslation of the word alma. for 2,000 years, saying that "alma" means virgin. "Alma" really means young woman. So for 2,000 years we've been trying to explain to them that it doesn't mean virgin. A virgin in Hebrew is "betulah." And there are actually several places in the Torah that prove that that's what it means, but only until about the last 15 years or so.

1:05:11have they even acknowledged that we've said it? They've completely ignored us for 2,000 years. Only a few of them have decided that we are right, but most of them still, if you look at any debate between a Christian and a Jew, they constantly mention, "No, it says 'alma.'" Why do they say "alma"? Why do they say that "alma" means virgin? Because they're trying to prove their religion, they're trying to prove their religion through our Torah, because our Torah is... the first book, in essence. They're saying our book is the first book, their book is the continuation, it's the second book. So in essence, the second book has to agree with the first book. So they're saying that our book has the source, the proof for their books. They're using a certain word, "alma," to prove something. Even though in general it's a completely different topic, but even if the word didn't mean virgin, it still doesn't matter, but the point is it doesn't mean virgin. The people who don't speak Hebrew properly and don't know it, I'll make a lot of mistakes, and this Masechta is, or Meshicha or Mashiach is by far the most confused word in all of the words in the Torah because people constantly think that it means Mashiach, like the Goel, the one that's going to come at the end of times, and it does not. Where is it written Kohen Mashuach? I've seen it before, Kohen Mashuach. I'll tell you in a second.

1:06:39I'll find it for you. I think it actually has a source. Let's polish up. Yeah, I'll look for it too. For half a minute. I'll find it after. We'll go over it afterward. No special tool. This is the only tool. Oh, no. No, you know, Natan likes to throw a little...

1:07:58challenge. Challenge in the middle. If there's no challenge, sure, it's not worth it. Okay, next one. So we'll find it after. I have it highlighted somewhere, but it's just going to take too much time to find it. So anyway... Okay, so now, the next thing that they talk about is something we actually talk about, we repeat in prayer every day: the Ketoret. Ketoret, if you remember, is mentioned in our prayer in Shacharit, and also in Mincha.

1:09:07It talks about the besamim, where you make these, they're putting these incenses together that are specific, that Hashem decreed specific ones to use. They would burn them on a separate altar, and it would make a special smell from these incenses, and there was also going to be smoke. So Hashem is telling us, you shall cause the entire... You should make this elevation offering to Hashem, its satisfying aroma, a fire offering to Hashem. And we repeat this in the morning and also in the afternoon, which also teaches us about this whole aspect of doing korbanot. In the Beit HaMikdash and even before the Beit HaMikdash, this whole tabernacle that we had, we had sacrifices that we would make several times a day. And a lot of people don't know

1:10:08Most people know, but a lot of people don't know that that's where prayer came from. Even though Avraham Avinu had the morning prayer, Yitzchak Avinu had the afternoon prayer, and Yaakov Avinu had the evening prayer, their prayer was different than our prayer. It wasn't the same exact prayer. In essence, their prayer would be with a korban, would be with a sacrifice. So that's where the sacrifices came from. But our prayers that we do every day, Shacharit, Mincha, Arvit, is a replacement of the korban because we can't give a korban. We don't have the Beit HaMikdash. So instead of the korban, we do a prayer. We pray three times a day. So now, the question I have is that Hashem, in two of these prayers that we pray each day, Hashem is making us recite these verses. which come from the Book of Numbers. But anyway, it's also mentioned here that if you put these incenses together, it makes a special smell, and then it makes a special smoke, and it's pleasing to Him. Okay. While Hashem needs us to help Him make something smell good, He has the whole world. He created everything. Why does He need us to make all this smoke? There are napkins over there.

1:11:34Why does He need us to make all this special smell? It's a good question. Why do we have to have this special smell? The answer is not the smell. Even though the smell is a special smell, Hashem doesn't need our help to make a special smell. What Hashem wanted to do is have us have this smoke. is to have us create this smoke. And the smoke would travel high into the sky. The smoke would serve two purposes. Two things that, until this day, remain a Jew's responsibility. As we talked about earlier today, we have the responsibility to make the world a better place, not only for other Jews but also a better place for non-Jews. This smoke accomplished both objectives. The smoke was something that would travel high into the air. And as you all know, something that's high in the air, you could see it from far away. So any Jew that was far off the camp and decided to go off the derech would be reminded by seeing the smoke, they're talking to Hashem. That is, in essence, kiruv. Because reminding, ah, before I do this aveirah, before I make this sin...

1:13:01It's a reminder. Hashem is right there. They're talking to Him. It's not theoretical. So it reminds someone that's even far away because the camp of Israel was very big—several square miles. A lot of people, millions of people. Someone that was far off or even someone who decided to leave the camp would be reminded regularly. There was constantly smoke going up into the air, and people would see it from far away. The second thing that it would do is that it would show all of the nations around the world that were in the area, that were able to see this. In some cases, there are some people that say it was miraculous, where everyone could see it, that the Jewish nation is doing what Hashem decreed, is doing what Hashem commanded. And that's what makes them special. They're not just special because Hashem is prejudiced, because technically Hashem created everyone. They're special because they're doing what Hashem told them to do.

1:14:01And the proof of that is something that everyone can see, which is this smoke. So this would do a Kiddush Hashem. This is something that would give Hashem honor that He's chosen the right nation. And it would remind the other nations why He chose them. So something as simple as that, we don't usually pay attention to, because sometimes you read it in prayer, you get very, very used to the prayer. You go to the Moshe, ta'aseh et zeh, ta'aseh et zeh, you know, it's very, very specific. Put this thing in it, put that thing in it, all of these different parts, you know, different plants in this ketoret. But then if you remember, it says that if you make a mistake, If you make a mistake, just a mistake, a tiny mistake, chayav mita. Meaning, you get the death penalty. If you make a mistake, you get the death penalty. Why? Because then, instead of doing Kiddush Hashem, you're doing Chilul Hashem. Mistake in what? Because you're showing a mistake in making the ketoret. If you make a mistake in the ketoret, chayav mita. Ketoret is the incense. It's the thing that they put together, they burn it and make this special smell in the smoke.

1:15:23You burn it; it smells good. Like the Indians, they have something that... Incense, incense. Close, just to... If you can imagine, you know. So, if you make a mistake, you have to repent, but if you do it well, it's a huge mitzvah. It's a Kiddush Hashem. Why? Because Hashem says that if you do it right, the whole world will see it. If you don't do it, no one will see it. So they will think that I chose the wrong nation. It's a Kiddush Hashem. Yeah, the winds would not make the smoke move. It would go up like a pillar. So, very, very interesting about the Ketoret. And again, we read this. We read this in our prayer every day. And most people don't even know what it means. Most people just read it and read it, and they know it by heart, but they don't really know what this stuff means. They just say it, and they don't understand why making incense is so important. Why do I die if I make it wrong? I make a mistake. I'm just human. What's the big deal? It's a big deal. Why? This is something that Hashem decreed. Hashem is telling you. Either you do Kiddush Hashem or Chilul Hashem. Each one has consequences. Each one has consequences. That's the bottom line. Another interesting thing about the parasha is they mention the bread. The bread they make. The special bread that they made is called the Lechem HaPanim.

1:16:52that they would use in this area by the Kohanim. And this bread, one of the Midrashim explains what this bread was. It was, you know, one bread after another. It was huge bread. It was a square shape. It was very puffy. They said the bread would stay warm from Friday to Friday. Stay warm the whole week. It was always warm. It was always like you just took it out of the oven, even though it was outside. And on top of that, it was kosher for Pesach. Yes, holy bread. What's that? Holy bread. Jerusalem bread.

1:17:53It's Kabbalah. It's Kabbalah. It's Kabbalistic stuff. It's not something that most people practice. Even bread, you can even do on one piece of bread. You don't have to have two. You don't have to have two. I don't know. okay, so the next thing is something very interesting that we talked about earlier today. When we talked about the scientific parts, we talked about something very different about the Torah versus any other book that was ever written. And over here in verses 29, 45, and 46, Hashem says... I'll read it in Hebrew and then in English.

1:18:56so the most important part about this specific point, it's different from any other book. Oh actually, I'll read it in English, I'm sorry. I shall sanctify the Tent of Meeting, and the altar, and Aaron and his sons shall I sanctify to minister to Me. I shall rest My Presence among the children of Israel, and I shall be their God. They shall know that I am Hashem, their God, who took them out of the land of Egypt to rest My Presence among them. I am Hashem, their God. So the most, in verse 46, it says, they shall know that I am Hashem. פריוד וכי אני ה' (Preyad uki eni Adonai). Not that they believed that I am Hashem and they knew I am Hashem. This is something that's very, very different. There's a significant difference between those two words. Every religion in the world, whether it's Catholicism, Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, or anything else, is based on faith. Someone said that something happened, and you have to believe it because they say so.

1:20:22Believe, believe. Why did this happen to me? Believe it's for the good. How could I prove Hashem? Just believe He's there. How do I know this? Believe, believe. If you go to a doctor or you go to a scientist and you tell them, "Listen, you did this experiment or you're going to do this surgery. Do you know if you're going to succeed?" And they say, "No, I believe I'm going to succeed." What's the difference between the two words? If I believe I'm going to succeed, that means there's a certain part of me that says there's a chance I may not. Meaning there's a certain part of me that says that I don't really know. I hope. Hope, believe. Believe means hope with a lot of ambition. I believe, I'm confident that it's going to happen, but I don't know for sure. To know... It means that it's fact, that there is no other way. So Hashem says, unlike what everyone tells you, which is to believe in God, in every single verse in the Torah with the exception of one time, Hashem says, I want them to know that I am God, not to believe that I am God. Meaning that I gave them enough tools in the Torah and around the world and in different things that we have in creation.

1:21:48I gave them enough words, I gave them enough things in creation that should give you enough tools to know that I am God, to know that there is a God, not to just believe that there is a God. Whether it's through science or through spirituality, Several other ways that you can try, if you search enough, you can confirm one hundred percent that there is a God. One of the things that people have difficulty with, as far as believing in God, is that people believe that they know science. And anytime you hear a few things about science, people think they heard something in class, they heard something in school, and... And they think that just because they heard that some scientist said something, and he has a degree, and he has a doctor before his name, or a PhD after his name, that makes him right. Unfortunately, what most people don't know is that the vast majority of science is theoretical. Theory, by definition, means it's a guess. It's just an educated guess.

1:23:13So when somebody says the theory of relativity or the scientific theory that they have about, you know, the Darwin theory or quantum theory or any of these other theories that they have, it's an idea that somebody has, that they made an educated guess that they think this is what happened. They can't prove it 100%. They believe this happened. Theory. Theory. Unfortunately, when people are uneducated, they think because somebody says "theory" and because he has a "Dr." sign on his business card and maybe he has hair like this and he has a beard like this and he looks a certain way and maybe even wears a suit, that makes him right. If they spend just a little bit of time... looking on Google what "theory" means, or even if they ask that person or something, just read about the theory itself, they would see that this is just a guess. Unfortunately, people don't do that. People don't spend much time doing research. They just assume that what people say is right. One of the things I told you guys when we first started this shiur, and I try to tell you guys all the time, is that anything that we read over here, we talk about over here, I encourage you guys to go check for yourself. Why? Because you shouldn't take my word for it. Maybe I'm lying. Maybe I'm making it up.

1:24:37That's why some of the sources that I have, whether it's the book from Zamir Cohen, or Torah, or Midrashim, or anything like that, I always tell you guys the sources after, before, or during. So you go check it yourself. See where the source is. If I'm lying, then you know I'm lying. You shouldn't come again. If I'm not lying, you see it's right. This should be something that should cause you to change. One of the things that people have difficulty with... ...is something called the Oral Torah. The Oral Torah is something that we also received at Mount Sinai. However, we were not allowed to write it down, unlike the Written Torah, the Bible, the Old Testament, or whatever other names it has. We call it the Torah, as Jews... Torah is the written part; the Oral Torah is the part that we were supposed to memorize. We weren't allowed to write it until about 1500 or so years ago. One part of the Oral Torah is the Gemara. People have difficulty since half of the Oral Torah is stories about rabbis and their lives, and the other half is the explanation of the different mitzvot, the different commandments that Hashem has, and the different verses that we have in the Torah.

1:26:06So people that don't know much about Torah or science immediately cancel it out. They say, "no, no, it was written by rabbis" because they heard somebody say that it was written by rabbis, so it's not true. They assume immediately that it's not true, so therefore, "I'm not going to believe it." And they don't believe that it came from Hashem. So anyone that spends a little bit of time... researching the Oral Torah, the Gemara, would see that there are things in the Oral Torah that could not come from man, could not come from human beings. One of them is the number of stars. We talked about this a few months ago, and we'll mention it again because we have a lot of new people today. It's worth looking into. The number of stars. Masechet Berachot says, Actually, it's right there, and I think you can give it to me. Yeah. Masechet Berachot, I think it's daf 32. Yeah. Masechet Berachot, you have Am Yisrael...

1:27:26Resh Lakish is telling the story. Resh Lakish is one of the sages, one of the key figures in the Gemara. In his past life, he used to be a gangster. We told a story about him a couple of weeks ago. There's more to learn from that story, but anyway, we'll focus on this point. He says, the congregation of Israel said before the Holy One, blessed is He, "Master of the... Ordinarily, if a man marries a wife, in addition to his first wife, he recalls the action of the first. Meaning, he's trying to say that if someone has a second wife, or he divorced the first wife, and he went to a different woman, he still remembers the first wife. She was still his wife, even though he's not with her anymore, or she's not as important as the new one, he still remembers her. You, however, have both forsaken me and forgotten me. He's saying, "You destroyed the Beit HaMikdash. Hashem, You destroyed the Beit HaMikdash. So You punished us. So why did You forget us? Why? Even someone that leaves his wife remembers his old wife. You see that this story, obviously, is not literal. He's trying to teach us something." have both forsaken me and forgotten me. He's saying, you destroyed the Beit HaMikdash. Hashem, you destroyed the Beit HaMikdash. So you punished us. So why did you forget us? Why? Even someone that leaves his wife remembers his old wife. You see that this story, obviously, is not literal. He's trying to teach us something.

1:28:51So the Holy One, blessed be He, responds: "My daughter," which He's referring to all of Am Yisrael. "Twelve constellations that I created in the firmament. And about each and every constellation, I created thirty army commanders. And about each and every army commander, I created thirty legions. And about each and every legion, I created thirty rahaton. And about each and every rahaton, I created thirty karaton." And about each and every karaton I created thirty gistera. And about each and every gistera I suspended in the firmament 365,000 myriads of stars corresponding to the days of the solar year. And all of them I created only for your sake. And you say, "You have forsaken me and forgotten me." So what is this? This is Hashem telling us You're saying that I forgot you. I created a universe, not just the world here that we see, that we live in. I created galaxies. If you spend two minutes on the internet and you type up anything related to the universe, they'll show you stars and galaxies, and they'll show you how tiny the globe is in comparison to the universe, in comparison to everything. Tiny. And in this universe, there are many, many stars.

1:30:18A few thousand years ago, people believed that there were only 800 stars in the sky because that's all they could see with their eyes. Some years later, some people said, no, no, there are more, maybe a few thousand stars. A few more years passed, and they said, a little bit more. Around the year 1600, so about 400 years ago, A man by the name of Galileo Galilei came up with an invention called a telescope. He told the world, "Obviously, you're all wrong. There are not thousands of stars; there are millions of stars. You just can't see them with the naked eye. But with my tool, with this telescope, you can see these stars." You fast forward another 400 years, and more, more, and more technology, advancements, and people discovered that there are a lot more stars. In 1996, NASA conducted research, connecting a supercomputer to a telescope to count the number of stars in the entire universe. There was another research study by the Australian National University in the year 2003, so about seven years later.

1:31:45Both of them came up with similar numbers, which is 7 times 10 to the 22nd power. The other one came up with 10 to the 21st power, meaning it's a 1 with 21 zeros. Big number. Infinite. What we just read, Hashem told us, you think that I forgot you. You think I forgot you. But I created the world, all of these, with 12 parts, like the 12 signs that people have. You know, people ask you what your sign is: Cancer, Libra, and so on. There are 12 signs; there are 12 parts. And in each part, I gave 30 parts. And within each section, I put another 30 sections. And in each section, I put another 30 sections. He gives you an exact calculation, a mathematical calculation. And at the end of it, he says, in all of these different sections that I have, it's several 12 times 30 times 30 times 30 times 30 times 30 times 30. And at the end, it says times 365,000. I'll give you the exact calculation at the end.

1:33:10And that is the number of stars that are in the universe. And all of them I created for you. So you say that I forgot you? So, number one, He's teaching us, how could you say I forgot you? I created everything that's in the world that you can see and can't see just for you. And the second thing, He's giving us a little bit of a secret. The secret of the Torah, not just the written Torah, but the Oral Torah, the Gemara, has to be from G-d. Because there's no way for man to ever know such a thing. Why? Because they came up with a number very similar to the scientists, actually a little bit more precise, exactly more precise, which is 1064 340 and then 12 zeros after it. Yeah, 10^64. 1, 0, 6, 4, so it's in essence 10 to the 19th power. It gives you the exact number of stars in the universe, close enough to where the scientists obviously are. The 20th power, the 21st power, it's the 19th power. The bottom line is it's close enough that the scientists are coming closer and closer to us rather than getting farther from us. Because just a few years ago, they thought there were 800 stars, then 8,000, and a few thousand, and a few million stars.

1:34:30So when we wrote this Gemara, we didn't have calculators. We didn't have numbers like this. We still to this day don't have numbers like this. You don't use a number like this for finance. There's no such number. Nobody has this much money or this much population or this much of anything. This is not a number you use in regular life. So when we said this is the number 2,000 years ago, the world laughed at us. They said, "Ah, see, this is your mistake. Your Torah is baloney. Who has this number? It's crazy. We only see 800 stars. You're saying there's 1 to the 19th power. How could you know? And you give an exact number. It's not a 1 with just zeros like NASA came up with. It's 1,064,340, and then a bunch of zeros. It gives you an exact number. So anyone that says... Gemara is now real, it was written by rabbis. You should check out again, Masechet Berachot is just the first masechet of the entire Gemara. Page 32, you have yourself already the first proof of why you're wrong. Yeah, no, there's millions of proofs. This is just one of them. There's millions of proofs, but the point is that this is just one that cannot be given by man.

1:35:53Even the one that they say where one of the Greeks, one of the Greek chachamim, one of the smartest people in Greece, did research, and he said, listen, you Jews say you're very, very smart. I'm going to prove that you don't know something. So, he took a snake and he raised it to find out how long it takes for the snake to give birth. It took him seven years to find out. It takes seven years. So he went to the Jews and he said, "Ah, do you know how long it takes a snake to give birth?" The first guy didn't know. He goes, "No, I don't know. You should go to him." And he went to one of the big chachamim, and he gave him the answer right away: "Seven years." And the Greek started smashing his head against the wall for the next few hours, being upset that it took him seven years to find out something he could have found out in 30 seconds. because it's already in the Torah. So there's a lot of interesting things in the Torah that when you don't know, it wakes you up to see some of these things. Another interesting thing about this parasha, which we're going to learn about later on, is also that it was unique and full of miracles, not necessarily...

1:37:19but the Mizbeach, anytime they did a lot of these sacrifices, obviously, if you guys ever spent two minutes in a butcher shop, you'd see that there are tons of, you know, flies and bugs and so on. It's part of life. So, you would think that when they're cutting and sacrificing all of these animals, one of the things that they have to do is take the blood and put it on the Mizbeach. So you would think that this Kohen Gadol, instead of being full of holiness, would be full of bugs because they were chasing them. But that was also one of the miracles. There was never one bug in the Beit HaMikdash or in the desert when they had the sacrifices. Interesting thing about science, as far as people with science, there's a funny story, but it's also a good story about life. One time there was a rabbi and his son going on a plane, and there was a scientist, a professor, a respectable guy, and his son, on the same flight. So they're on a long flight; they're going from Israel to America, or vice versa, it doesn't matter, they're on a long flight. So a few minutes into the flight,

1:38:44The scientist's son says, Abba, I'm hungry. So Abba says, okay, don't worry. Tell the stewardess, please, can you get my son food? Okay, she gets him the food. A few minutes later, Abba, I'm thirsty. Okay, don't worry, I'll get you the drink. Abba, I'm cold. Okay, okay, I'll get you a blanket. He goes and gets him the blanket. Abba this, Abba that. And then the scientist sees the rabbi. A few minutes into the flight, it's the exact opposite. He says, "Abba, are you hungry?" "No, no, I'm okay, I'm okay." A few minutes later, "Abba, are you thirsty?" "Yeah, okay, okay, I'll get you something." The kid goes to the stewardess, gets a drink, gives it to Abba. A few minutes later, the kid gets up, goes, gets a blanket, gives it to Abba again. Doesn't even ask him, gives it to him to make sure that Abba is comfortable. So the scientist can't take it anymore. He says, "I don't understand it." all my life I've spent going to school, and colleges, and teaching, and learning, and I have this degree, and that degree, and I'm a doctor in this, and a doctor in that, and I'm smart, and I'm successful, and I make this much money, and I have this kind of car, and you, what education you have? Well, you went to some yeshiva your whole life, big deal. But how is it that the entire flight

1:40:10My son is asking me every two minutes for something and I have to go get him. But your son is like your servant. How did you train him like that? He teaches that in the Torah? He goes, no, no, I teach you something different. He goes, what? He goes, see, in my religion, in my belief, we all came from Adam. We all came from one person. And each person after it is one level lower. So Adam, then you have Noach... then you have Shem, then you have Avraham, Yitzchak, Yaakov, eventually the 12 tribes, Moshe, and then we have the sages, then we have the Rabbanim, the Gemara, and today, and each level is lower than the last one. So my son knows that I am closer to the bigger people than he is. He's lower than me. So he gives me respect. He goes, "Okay, so, in your religion, you believe in science, right?" He goes, "Yeah. In your religion, you came from a monkey. So your son says that you came from a monkey, and you're closer to the monkey than he is. So you're lower than him. And that's the problem. That's the difference. It's not necessarily that he thinks our education is better."

1:41:34So he's showing that your education is the problem. You're telling people that we came from monkeys. So your son is saying, you're right, Abba. You came from a monkey. So you're closer to the monkey than me. I'm a better person than you. I'm more developed. Your grandfather was probably even closer to the monkey. So he's probably even worse. So we've continuously improved over time in science, whereas in Torah, we've improved. gotten lower. And that's the difference. That's the difference teaching, that you don't think that something so small would be so significant in the way people live their lives. That's a rude awakening. That's what it's called. Scientists didn't like that story, but realized there's something that has to change after that. Something has to change. Another good story about father and son teaches us about language. You know, we talked about it at the beginning. We talked about how pride, pride is one of the most critical problems of our current generation. Not just in Am Yisrael, but everyone else. People like kavod. They live their entire lives for kavod. People's families get destroyed because of kavod. Oh, I don't want to call him. Why? Because he didn't call me.

1:42:55Oh, I'm not going to go to the wedding. Why are you not going to come to the wedding? Because he didn't call me to invite me, he just sent me something in the mail. Oh, I'm not going to do this because he did this. Everybody constantly wants respect from everybody else. And sometimes you see it in the wrong places, like Beit Knesset. Like we had a conversation, we're not going to mention any names, but we had a conversation with somebody just days ago that had a problem with somebody else in the Beit Knesset. Young boy, that has a mental deficiency. He has a mental deficiency. He has a medical deficiency. He has something called Down syndrome. So the kid has a mental disorder. They don't think he does. He does. You see it. But he's a great kid. Very cute kid. Unfortunately, somebody has a problem with him. He doesn't like him. It bothers him. The kid's not stable for him. He walks around instead of sitting down. The kid has a mental deficiency. He's obviously not going to be like everybody else. I personally like the kid. I like him a lot. I think he's great. You spend five minutes with him, you love the kid. But anyway, this one guy has a problem with him. So we talked about it. I'm not going to talk about the whole conversation, but the point of what I'm trying to say is that I told him, listen,

1:44:22you sit very close to where his father sits. So obviously you're going to see a lot of him because he wants to go to see his father. So what you should do to solve this problem is go to a different seat. Solve the problem. He's not going to come to your seat. No, I'm sitting in this seat for 18 years. I'm not going to move. Completely wrong. I'm sitting in this seat for 18 years, I'm not going to change. He has to change. Do you see what we're talking about here? He expects someone with a mental deficiency to change before he lowers his pride and changes a seat to one that's 10 meters away. That's how bad kavod is. That's how bad pride can get to. We talked about the Kohanim. This is the first time somebody told him the truth. Everybody always appeases him and I don't necessarily like to please people. So, the point I'm trying to make here is that people's pride is very important to them. They live their entire life trying to get people to respect them. And one of the things that people do is they talk in a certain way, and they expect people to just comply with whatever they say.

1:45:51Meaning they could talk to you in whatever way they want, but you can't talk to them in the way you want. And you can see that in a lot of companies. Any boss that runs a company, something happens, he starts yelling at the people. Not every boss, but a lot of bosses do. Whether store owner, company owner, somebody screwed up, they mailed something to the wrong address. They made a bad sale, something happened, there's a mistake that's made, it's a human error. Immediately, you see somebody starts yelling. Yelling, yelling, yelling, screaming at the guy, embarrassing him or the girl, embarrassing them, which is a different problem with Hashem, but that's a different story. And yelling, yelling, yelling. But, if the guy starts yelling back, if the employee starts yelling back, you're fired. If you don't yell back, just sit there and take it, okay, it's over. He finishes yelling, you go back to your job, and that's it. But if you yell back, or even answer in a certain way that he doesn't like, you're fired. But as long as you don't answer, you keep your job and just continue listening to his yelling forever. What's the source of that problem? Pride. One person made a mistake, which is a human error. People make mistakes. If you run a business for five minutes, people are going to make mistakes. We ran a very big company; we know people make mistakes.

1:47:16That's a problem. It happens. Whether you're going to survive or not as a business is going to be determined by how you deal with your mistakes. Because the mistakes will happen. Mistakes will happen in every business. How you deal with those mistakes will determine if you survive or not. So if you're one of those bosses that yells at people and complains and yells and complains and yells and embarrasses them and everything else, I guarantee you, from experience and from knowledge that I have, you are guaranteed to fail. Guaranteed. Whether it's one year, two years, five years, ten years. In the family, it's the same. Eventually, you will always fail. If your wife... In family, fail. Everything in general. Push the car. Someone that has that type of attitude is guaranteed to fail in whatever they're doing. Because eventually, the time will come where the people around you. from experience and from knowledge that I have, you are guaranteed to fail. Guaranteed. Whether it's one year, two years, five years, ten years. In the family, it's the same. Eventually, you will always fail. If your wife... In family, fail. Everything in general. Push the car. Someone that has that type of attitude is guaranteed to fail in whatever they're doing. Because eventually, the time will come when the people around you will be repulsed by you, meaning they'll be disgusted by you, and they will not want to take it anymore. And no one will want to be around you, including the customers. So whether you succeed or fail is based on whether you decide to change or not. So you say, okay, I'm not going to yell. Fine. But I can talk to them in a certain way. What's the big deal if I say something, if I curse them, but I don't yell it? There's a nice story about how speech, how talking, just talking, just the way you talk, same words, different tone, change everything. There's a story about a father and a son. The father sends his son to school, and he says, son, whatever you want, just write me a letter, and I don't know how to read, but I'll have the neighbor read it for me, and I'll send it to you. Thank you, Abba. I appreciate it. I love you, Abba.

1:48:43speech, how talking, just talking, just the way you talk, same words, different tone, change everything. There's a story about a father and a son. The father sends his son to school, and he says, "Son, whatever you want, just write me a letter, and I don't know how to read, but I'll have the neighbor read it for me, and I'll send it to you. Thank you, Abba. I appreciate it. I love you, Abba." It's my favorite son. I love my son. Great. He sends the son away. The son, after a couple of months, writes a letter, sends it to the guy, sends it to his father. The father doesn't know how to read, so he gives it to his neighbor. The neighbor says, "Oh, Abba, I need money. Please send me $200." Ah, my son. I love my son. Yeah, of course, I'm going to send him $200. He takes one out of his pocket. He tells his neighbor, "Please send it for me." Sends it to him. Another couple of months pass. He says, Abba, I need pants. He sends a letter. So the neighbor that day, he's not in a good mood. He goes, Ah, you again? He goes, Yeah, yeah, can you read this? It's only a short letter. Can you read it for me? He goes, Abba, I need pants. He goes, My son talking to me like this? What happened to him? No, I'm not going to answer him. So a month passes. The kid didn't get the pants.

1:50:12He sends it to the father. Again, another letter. Abba, I need pants. The father comes. He goes, my son, can you please read it for me? The guy is also again in a bad mood. He goes, Abba, I need pants. He goes, my son has developed an attitude. They're ruining him over there in his school. Another month passes. He sends him a letter. Same letter. This time, the neighbor is in a good mood. He goes, "Oh, hey buddy, how are you?" He goes, "Yeah, I have a letter again from my son. I don't know what's wrong with him, but he sent me this letter." I said, "No, he says he just needs..." He goes, "Ah, there goes my boy. I love my son. Oh, of course, I'm going to send him pants." He wrote the same thing three times. The only difference was the tone. Because he didn't know how to read. The other guy was angry the first two times. And that anger came out in his voice. Same thing with us. It applies to our life. if you stay not only interested but also alert, you're most likely to come back. At least, I'll make some more hummus and you'll definitely come back for that. But the key that we need to learn from this parasha is that Moshe Rabbeinu, we said it in the beginning, I'll repeat it again because some of you guys came a little later, Moshe Rabbeinu, the most important figure in history, was mentioned in every single parasha from the beginning of Shemot until the end of the Torah.

1:51:39you can stay not only interested but also alert, you're most likely to come back. At least, I'll make some more hummus, and you'll definitely come back for that. But the key that we need to learn from this parashah is that Moshe Rabbeinu, we said it in the beginning, I'll repeat it again because some of you guys came a little later, Moshe Rabbeinu, the most important figure in history, was mentioned in every single parashah from the beginning of Shemot until the end of the Torah. This is the only parasha that he was not mentioned. Not only because of next week's parasha where Hashem said, "If you're not going to forgive them, take my name off," but also because this week happens to be the same week that is his yahrzeit, that is the day he was born and he died. And he wanted to say to us that one of the most important characteristics of a human being to connect to Hashem is to be humble, to have humility. And on the day that people usually want the world to remember them, I don't want you to think about me; I want you to think just about Hashem. Just about Hashem and His mitzvot. And that's the gadlut, that's the significance of the people in the Torah. That's why Moshe Rabbeinu was Moshe Rabbeinu. So, with the help of Hashem, we learn enough about this parasha that gets us closer to Hashem just a little bit more. We get closer to Hashem; we celebrate Hashem.

1:53:08And all we live for is Kiddush Hashem. Thank you very much.