March 16, 2006, Ki Sisa
The most important outcome of Purim was the Talmud
Outcasts:
Talmud: born in exile
Song of Songs: longing from exile
Esther: forced to live with gentiles and hide her Jewish identity.
Timna: rejected by the Hebrews
Miriam: Outside the camp to do tchuva (waters bubbling up)
When the Mishiach comes, the sun and the moon will be equal. The Jewish people are likened to the moon because it waxes and wanes. The Holocaust was a waning, a diminishment of the moon. The Talmud is the maximization of our mind.
In the battle with Amalek: HaShem is my nase. Does this mean banner or miracle or test?
The Talmud calls Sinai a rape.
As I become more who I am (waters bubbling lup), I become more myself and the nullification of myself. A Hoffman paradox.
The masculine response is: when I’ve lost my power (such as the destruction of the Temple), I’m lost. Lost is aleph bet dalad. ?????Suicide is the extreme form. Evid: I’ve nullified myself so I’m not vulnerable to attack: evid HaShem. Service is ????almost the same, but with an eyin. Oddly enough, the eyin takes the positive position and the aleph takes the negative, which is counterintuitive. ??is negative, lost,, nothing, which is one of Hashem's names. ??eyin is “eye. These two words are homonyms.
Essence of G*d: ohr, light. ????
Skin (superficiality): ohr ?????G*d sewed clothing of skins for Adam and Eve. Or did G*d sew clothing of light? Rabbi Meier says the eyin is complex, what the eye perceives; aleph is simplicity, G*d’s presence, objective reality.
This is the week to fight Amalek.
Purim will be the only holiday left after Meshiach.
The point of the yod the spark in every heart that can’t be diminishyed, the unity after Meshiach, that humans will see through a clear lens. Purim has good and evil, but we drink so much that we can’t tell the difference between “blessed is Mordechai” and “cursed is Haman.” We will have superceded, gone above, the Tree of Knowledge or the confusion of the Tree of Knowledge because most people don’t know good and evil when they see it and don’t know if something is a blessing or a curse.
You have to go beyond yourself, beyond knowledge. Yom Kippur means a day like Purim. The only day higher than Yom Kippur is Purim.
Stone Chumash page 388. Beshalach
Aish Kodesh, p. 292
Our internal struggle with Amalek needs an external model on a macro level. Thus in every generation we will have Amalek, Haman, the President of Iran.
The Aish Kodesh did not place his ego, his sense of self, with the Nazis, but with G*d.
What do you do in the face of annihilation of self?
How can you hear G*d’s voice in Hitler’s speech? How can you answer this without a Pollyana attitude? Page 292. How is not driving on Shabbos not in opposition to what we need—needs and wants are not always the same.
Humble confidence: bitul
Nullification: Moses wanted to be an ancestor, remembered for the Torah he taught—this is not ego.
Moses will be remembered every year when the half shekel is collected: to not count people but to make people count. One-half shekel is incompleteness (we lift the shekels on Purim).
The idea that everything can be sweetened into good is symbolized by the log thrown into the bitter waters.
Aish Kodesh page 264: Evil inclination, passion.
What does the earth have to do with Amalek?
Fire World Four
Water World Three
Wind World Two
Earth World One
Cynicism can’t be used for good, but passion can.
When I connect with people at the end of the line, I am energized. If you guild from the top, you have no foundation; superficial, not giving the Satan his due.
When stragglers are at the back, the groupo does’t make it up the mountain because a straggler has an accident and has to be rescued.
Purim is giving the Satan his due. Other holidays don’t need to be elevated by the magrefa, because of simcha, brilliance, liberation and tremendous sanctity. The magrefa was used to clean the ashes off the alter and made music with a hundred tones.
Sun v. the moon: elevate yourself but not in competition (Martha).
G*d assures us that we can’t destroy Amalek. The battle with discouragement is much bigger battle than the battle with sin because there is still passion in sin.
Detachment needs to precede arousal: longing is born.
Ashes—the Phoenix?—regeneration from ashes.
Continue page 293.
Page 391 Stone Chumash: Rephidim is the place of soft hands.
Why is this that you brought us up from Egypt to kill me and my child and my livestock with thirst? Talk about taking it personally! You made a million of us go out into the desert just to kill me! This is projective reality—with one word the Torah catches the whole meaning.
The water is the poison—the Sea of Reeds—GO!—and the cure: water from the rock—GO!
Massah u’meribah – the place of test and argument- who was tested, the people or the G*d of compassion?
Frontal assaults on discouragement don’t work. You have to invite Haman to the party.
The sun and the moon: how to shine the right way, how to shine without outshining?
How do you go from detachment into depression or simcha through the magrafa?