The Power Of One Jew - Parashat Pinchas

0:02And this is what Rabbi Akiva is first telling us in the first part of the Mishnah, that know this: everything that you're going to do, Hashem already knows. He already knows before you're going to do it. So now to answer the question of if He knows it, why would He punish us if we make a sin? The Rambam asked the same question in Parashat Pinchas, this week's parasha. We already learned from previous parashot that Chazal tells us that by the time we arrived at Mount Sinai, Am Yisrael went from the 49th level of tum'ah, impurity and sin, to the 49th level of kedusha. We went from one end to the other. We became the holiest we've ever been at Mount Sinai. We've never been that holy again. Since then it's been downhill.

1:03Chazal say that the reason why Hashem took us out of Egypt at 49 is because if we reached the level of 50 in Egypt, since we did not have the Torah, He couldn't save us. Meaning one more sin and Hashem would have had to destroy the world, just like He did with Noach. So He had to take us out at that very moment before the next person sinned. One person sins, end of the world. This is why Chazal teach us that each person needs to view himself Appropriately by saying that the next mitzvah that I make puts Am Yisrael on the good side of Hashem at 50% plus one mitzvah, or my next sin puts Am Yisrael on the bad side. My next sin or my next mitzvah—my next action—can change the tides, either bringing a good decree or a bad decree on the entire nation. So why do you have to make a mitzvah?

2:06You say, "Oh, we'll back somebody else, probably made an aveirah, so we're probably at 50% again. So I need to make another mitzvah, and another mitzvah, and another mitzvah, and another mitzvah. We're always at 50%. My next action is going to change the tides." So now, no one knew, when they were in Egypt, that the next thing could easily bring their own doom. Except Hashem. Hashem took them out, and He brought them to Har Sinai. Ohr HaChaim HaKadosh says that at the end of times, right before the Mashiach comes, unfortunately, Am Yisrael is going to reach the 50th level of Tumah. It's going to be worse than it's ever been. Looking at the world around us, it's not so hard to imagine anymore when you have people celebrating wars against God and... on a day-to-day basis, it's not hard to imagine that we've already reached 50% a long time ago. To me, I think maybe Chazal was conservative. I think we're gonna reach 100%. Because seriously, look at the things that happen today. You compare them to the past, we're much worse. Everything, you can name anything and you can see something wrong with it. The religious world, the irreligious world,

3:25Everything. There’s something wrong everywhere. And it's not just something wrong with our ways; there's something wrong with the morality of the world, the way we think, the way we view things. It’s like we’ve somehow been rewired. But this is all prophesied. This is all in the Gemara, Masechet Sotah, page 49. It says that at the end of time, there's going to be certain signs. One of the signs is going to be a lot of chutzpah. A lot of chutzpah people are going to do things that are specifically against the Torah on purpose. So now, this very same Am Yisrael that reached the 49th level of Kedushah, the highest level ever. Okay, they made a sin, the golden calf, made a mistake, fine. Made a bunch of mistakes, fine. But it's still the same holy nation. Maybe they're not at 49 anymore, they're at 48 or 47 or 46 or 42, but they're much better than us for sure. This very same nation, in last week's parashah, at the end of parashat Balak, made a fatal mistake. A mistake that Hashem said, "This crossed the line, I'm going to destroy the world." What was the mistake? They decided to get a bunch of non-Jewish girlfriends.

4:49After Bil'am tried to curse Am Yisrael three times and it didn't work, he told Balak, "Listen, there's a thing that you can do, you don't even need me. You want to beat them? Just send your girls over there." That was Bil'am's idea. And Balak sends not only all the girls to the camp of Am Yisrael, but on top of it, he sends his own daughter. And they all go to the camp of Am Yisrael and unfortunately, we sin. They accept them and they start sinning with them. And Hashem, without warning, for the first and last time in history, starts killing us. Hashem starts killing us. Every other time He's punished us in history, He warned us. This is the one and only time in history that Hashem did not warn us. Even the evil, rotten generation of Noach used to kill each other, used to steal from each other, used to waste seed, used to be homosexual, used to go with their animals. I mean, there was no sin they didn't do. He gave them over a hundred years of warnings.

6:08Hundred years, Noach is making a teivah. What are you doing in the middle of the city? Making a teivah. Why are you making a teivah? Hashem is going to destroy the world. A hundred years, they're getting warnings. Sodom and Amora, many warnings. The generation of Mitzrayim, many warnings. What happened there? Before Mitzrayim, after Mitzrayim, during Mitzrayim. Here, we got the Torah. We made a few mistakes along the way, but we're still a nation. We still have Moshe Rabbeinu. Hashem says, you crossed the line. You crossed the line, and He starts killing us, destroying us with a plague that, within moments, kills over 24,000 people. 24,000 people exactly, it says actually. 24,000 die within moments, and the only reason it stops, as it says in the beginning of this week's parasha, Hashem spoke to Moshe, saying, Pinchas, the son of Elazar, the son of Aharon, the Kohen, turned back My wrath, meaning, because of him I stopped.

7:33turned back My wrath from upon the children of Israel, when he zealously avenged My vengeance among them. So I did not consume the children of Israel in My vengeance. "Chiliti otah" means consume, meaning destroy the entire nation. So here we knew what was on the line. Before, we didn't know. When we were making sins with the non-Jews, we didn't know. When we were in Egypt and the next sin could have brought us to the 50th level of Tumah, we didn't know. The people of Sodom and Gomorrah didn't know that if they would have had just a few tzaddikim in town, Hashem wouldn't have destroyed them. Just a few. The people of Israel that keep trying to draft all of the avreichim from the kollelim to Tzahal, to the IDF, they don't know that the only reason the IDF and the rest of the country exist is because of the very same people that are in the kollel. The people in America that are constantly trying to motivate their kids to go into the business world and leave the yeshiva world, or just study for a little bit, but just go be an accountant. Go be a doctor. Go be a lawyer. Go be rich. Go be this. Go be that. Torah on the side. Torah sometimes. Torah is a hobby. They don't realize the only reason this country exists is because there has to be something B'nei Yisrael (the children of Israel) benefits out of it. Has to be.

8:55To such an extent that the Zohar HaKadosh says there could be an entire structure, an entire building built by some sheikh, some sheikh from Saudi Arabia, in the middle of the desert. Middle of the desert. He could build a huge monstrosity, a billion-dollar building. Why? Because maybe one day a Jew will get shade from it. Not because Hashem cares about what's in the building, who works in the building, what comes out of the building, none of that. Maybe one day a righteous Jew will get shade from this building. But we're so worried about sending our kids to go be doctors and lawyers and everything else except by the, you know, people that actually learn Torah. Why? Because we don't understand what Torah actually means. We have no idea that the only reason this world exists is for the Torah, not the other way around. But now, Pinchas is telling us that despite us having this Torah, Hashem said, all bets are off. I'm destroying all of you. Every other time He warned us. He said, "Listen, you have a few tzaddikim, don't worry about it. We'll let this one go. Okay, Moshe Rabbeinu is praying for you, I'll let this one go. I'll let this one go. I'll let this one go." A million times He let this thing go. Here, He said, "No, you crossed the line. And if it wasn't for Pinchas ben Elazar, ben Aharon HaKohen,"

10:22"I want to destroy it all."