March 23, 2006, Vayakhel/Pekudei
Unless you exert yourself, you won’t be aware of yourself. Keep this in mind when your wife wants to you to help with the Pesach cleaning.
In our chart of the four worlds, the bottom hey drops off—these are the stragglers. Our yiddisha kop always knows how to fight Amalek.
What does it mean to seek out your unity? How does this not lead to moral equivalency? If everything is a mixture of good and bad-
The focal point of the Torah is free choice. The Aish Kodesh made choices, twice to stay in the Warsaw ghetto/death camp when he could have gotten out—he made a pact with 15 Jewish leaders not to leave—he insisted that the davening not be filled with tears.
How can you have absolute free choice and absolute micro-supervision by G*d?
The Megillah where G*d’s name doesn’t show up contains more free will; we have a stronger feeling of HaShem than we did at the parting of the Sea of Reeds.
Aleph and Eyen: How can you have a dialogue between two silent letters? Ki Tasey (last week’s parsha) where Moses is not named, always precedes Purim. A silent force can have more power. Examples: Esther, klal Yisrael (the Jewish people).
Eyen, the eye: what the eye sees is frequently the shell of the walnut (World One).
Cosmetics are not just a poison, but are also a cure.
Esther represents the end of prophesy. When G*d becomes too powerful, the people become too passive.
Prophets were gadflies, they made sure the people did not become complacent. When a person received prophesy, he could not be conscious because he had to give himself completely over to G*d. The job of the prophets was not to tell the future.
More on Esther—she is one of our great teachers of how to form connectiveness when we’re in exile or feeling like we’re in exile, on the outside looking in. Did Miriam know that the Israelites were standing in unity with her, refusing to move until she was ready? Or did she do tchuva outside the camp not knowing that the Israelites were silently outside the camp with her?
Esther tapped into the inherited faith of the Jewish people that we don’t even know is there.
We can sense G*d’s presence in the construct of the story. Detachment/exile has to precede arousal/redemption. Being in exile gives us a clearer perspective. This is one purpose served by the Diaspora; we are able to distill the best of each culture and elevate it. It’s going down to go up.
The toxic eye: superficialities.
The inner eye: see past the walnut shell.
The women acted against despair when they used cosmetics in Egypt. Moses disdained cosmetics. He also disdained gold, yet he created the Golden Calf through his disdain. Disdain can be poisonous. Frontal assaults don’t work. Esther knew this.
Learning how to use exile is a vital concept for differentiation and a vehicle for choice. If you’re never the third one, the one on the outside, you never know who you are because you’re always ingratiating yourself.
The Torah is our exile training course.
The first triangle is the father looking at the mother feeding the baby—the father is the third man out. If the child sees the father not liking being left out, he learns that you should never be in the exile position. I’m nowhere unless I’m getting the bonded attention on the inside. We need to learn to use our time on the outside productively.
Our models for exile:
Jews in the desert
Jacob
G*d in Shushan
Joseph
Miriam outside the camp
There are three conduits of negative energy (Jungian forces):
The Satan
Amalek
Angel of Death.
They were left out of American Judaism; we turned them into cute stories, they were depressing, lost in the holocaust; we would have been marginalized, and we were petrified of sounding like fundamental Xtians.
People think that in orthodox Judaism there is no room for disagreement, that everyone is cut from a mold. However, in Meir Sharim (a very poor, crowded, extremely observant area of Jerusalem) there are more opinions than anywhere else (I heard this just this morning on an Aish tape). In other places you can subsume in the society, e.g., suicide bombers, Communists. But as you nullify yourself, you become more yourself. Stepping into the unknown, into the mystery.
We want to improve our maturity of choices, not just drown in our connections with G*d. Esther becomes more herself and more connected to G*d.
Israelites see Moses lying dead on the mountain. They were thinking, “We’re out in the desert and our leader is dead—we’re abandoned!”
White males over age 65 with health problems are the most likely people to commit suicide, this group has the highest suicide rate. Lehit habade, causing one to be lost.
When we’re discouraged, we can’t lift up our eyes and see that we have what we need.
We always have to hear the voice of the Satan. We can’t wipe out the primordial forces—we need the dialog to help with our decisions.
In this parsha we received the new moon—we’re changing from an up (sun) cycle to a down (moon) cycle.
Only the men’s jewelry was used in the making of the Golden Calf; the women did not contribute their jewelry.
The Israelites were frightened, so they had an orgy—Moses was implicated because of his fear of gold.
Time to be born—28 times in Kohelet—same as the 28 days in the women’s cycle.
Moving to the calendar based on the moon was a major shift.
Our goal in World One is to keep our feet on the ground. G*d gives us a place, we give G*d a place to keep feet on the ground.
Why do we build the mishkans all over the world? It’s a physical place to put our feet, to come together, daven, study. We can’t disdain the physical. Noah disdained people, so no one got on the ark. When we disdain people’s needs, we lose them.
It’s important to beautify things. Every mirror needed to be used.
Aish Kodesh, page 292.
We have to make Shabbos beautiful.
Moses wanted to know he would be remembered—immortality—our dialogue with death—through children—he lost his children (they became priests of idol cults) and he didn’t care about gold or cosmetics.
Moses is not going to be remembered for receiving the Torah, but for collecting ½ shekels. Why? In a world of tchuva, we value what people do with their weakness. Noah was brilliant but he didn’t know how to connect with anyone. Moses was collecting money, which was not his department, but through collaboration with his brother built the mishkan. He overcame his own weakness and did fundraising. Where is this person starting from?
Jews have feared the census would cause a plague all through history.
What are we liberating to go through these four levels, four weeks, to prepare for Pesach? You get as much out proportionally to the amount of preparation you do.
Preparing for Pesach is preparing a place for G*d.
The second week: Zuchor—remember to forget; how we handle the down cycle. The result of Amalek was the Golden Calf.
Third week: Red Heifer – the mother coming to clean up the mess of her calf.
Connect with the stragglers—they are us.
Page 309
The first two mitzvote which were given were:
1. Rosh chodesh,
2. Pesach.
Freedom is the ability to see clearly the things that go into making the right choice – chumatz is fluff that obscures. Assentot: something that keeps getting closer and closer without ever reaching – we can’t get rid of all the fluff.
As you grow in Torah:
More choices
Better choices
You see more
You’re more aware of habits, bribery.
When you go back to work after Shabbos, it’s a michaya.
Torah treats 400 years of slavery as an education – Aish Kodesh says the lesson was learned in 210 years, so they were able to leave early.
…not to fill the gaps in our faith…
Jews have inherited the soul-sight. Jung told the Jews they were the essence of the collective unconscious. (Why did it take a Swiss gentile to tell the Jews that?).
He can be a believer even if he is unable to access his faith, the same way his organs work.
Agada: to draw up like water from a well – we draw up and create a group revelation.
When you become conscious of your faith, it is added to the genetic inheritance.
Aish Kodesh collaborated through trust and faith. Aish Kodesh brings together, Amalek splits, divides.